We read frequently in the Bible of God moving and even doing miraculous things in the lives of people and nations. We read these biblical stories with excitement as we observe God being so active in their lives. And yet here in modern times, at the beginning of the 21st century, we tend to think that God is much less active than He was in biblical times. But I think it would be safe to say that most, if not all of you, would love to see God as active in your life as you read about Him being in people’s lives in the Bible.
If you would love to see that, then I have some great news for you this morning. Now we cannot put God in a box - we agree on that right? And one must be very careful about coming up with some kind of formula whereby you are guaranteed God will respond in a certain way. Many times it is presented like this: "If you will do these 4 steps, then you can be assured that God will do ____." Formulas are dangerous. God cannot and will not be manipulated. Yet, and I almost hesitate to say this, in these passages we are going to look at whenever I read of a person doing this particular activity, alongside of it I also read of God responding to that person and doing something special in their life. In fact, and this may surprise you as we look at some of the examples, even when a wretched wicked sinful person did this particular activity, it still prompted God to respond to that person. That’s pretty significant. Please understand, I am not trying to offer you some formula, but what I am saying to you this morning is this: there is something about this particular activity that causes the heart of God to be compelled to respond to you.
The activity is this: humbling oneself before God. And we drew this contrast last week between Esther, who humbled herself before God and Haman whose chief characteristic was pride.
One of the hardest things for a man, woman, young person, even a child to do is to humble themselves be it before another person or God. And yet I declare to you today that it is one of the things that will bring the richest blessings from God. If you want to know something that moves God to work on your behalf, to bless you, to involve Himself in your life it is in the act of humbling yourself before God. And so today I want you to see, even among some the most wicked people who have ever lived, the response of God to that person who will humble themself before Him.
As we look at these passages they will not require a lot of explanation, maybe some explanation concerning the context but they speak pretty powerfully by themselves of God’s response to the one who will humble himself before God.
2 Chronicles 12 - 2 Chronicles 12 describes the reign of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon. He is the 1st king to reign over Judah since the division of the kingdom. Rehoboam was not the wisest of fellows. In fact, it was because of his unwillingness to heed the godly counsel and wisdom of the elders and rather accept the counsel of his peers that led to the 10 tribes splitting off and forming the northern kingdom of Israel.
But we are told in 2 Chronicles 12:1-2 that after Rehoboam was established and strong that he forsook the law of the Lord. And because of his unfaithfulness, the Lord allowed the king of Egypt and some of his allies to come up against him. In 12:5, the Lord sends a prophet to Rehoboam and says to him, "Thus says the Lord, ’You have forsaken Me, so I also have forsaken you to Shishak’" (who was the king of Egypt.
Now watch - 12:6 - There’s the humbling before God.
Watch what happens? There is an immediate response from God - 12:7-8
We do need to note something important here. Please observe that God did forgive Rehoboam and He did turn away from His judgment but He did not totally deliver him. He did not allow them to be destroyed (12:12a) but He did allow them to become slaves, not because He was still stewing over their unfaithfulness, but in order that they might understand the difference between having God as their King and master vs having an earthly king as their master. He lets them come under the rulership of another master so that they will understand how good it is to have the Living God as your master.
So one of the things we need to learn here is don’t think that just because you humble yourself and repent of your sin that God will immediately wipe out all the consequences of that sin which is what we frequently expect Him to do. He will not necessarily "fix" everything we messed up by our sin. But also note that the reason why God does not fix everything is not that He is still angry but because He wants you know that it is much better to be under His service than the service of sin.
So Rehoboam was unfaithful. He forsook God, but the moment he humbled himself, God responded.
2 Chronicles 29:1-3 - We now come to the 12th king of Judah - Hezekiah. As you probably know, Hezekiah was 1 of the truly good kings of Judah. And we see the direction of his heart as soon as he became king. His father, Ahaz, had literally closed up the doors of the Temple and so Hezekiah’s 1st action was to reopen the Temple - notice it says in the 1st year of his reign, in the 1st month, he opened the doors and repaired them. Hezekiah addressed the spiritual problems of the kingdom first. Christopher Knapp, (The Kings of Judah and Israel), p.123 - "The temple was to the kingdom as the heart to the body - when it ceased to pulsate with activity and life, the body politic, or nation, could not but languish, stagnate, and die." So Hezekiah correctly diagnosed Judah’s ills - she had abandoned the true worship of God. Hezekiah repairs the Temple. He then has the Levites consecrate the Temple and as they come that 1st day to offer the sacrifices that had so long been ceased, we read in 29:27-30 of part of the service & we can see the humbleness before God of this king...
Hezekiah then calls on Judah and those not taken into captivity in Israel to join him in remembering the Passover. And so this great host of people comes together, but because they had so forgotten the law of God, they forgot about purifying themselves. And so we read in 30:18-20. What a beautiful picture.
In chapter 31, we see the results of this great gathering - 31:1. In other words, this had not just been a great time of worshipping and praising God and an emotional high, but they carried the significance of it back home and destroyed all the emblems of idolatry that they had. And so through Hezekiah’s leadership and example, true revival spreads through the nation.
If you know your Biblical history, you will recall that is was in Hezekiah’s reign that the Assyrian king, Sennacherib, besieged the fortified cities of Judah and then laid siege against Jerusalem. The commander of Sennacherib’s army issued grave threats against Hezekiah & Jerusalem if they did not surrender. But once again we see the humbleness of this king for in the parallel passage in 2 Kings 19:15-19, we read of Hezekiah’s prayer...
And so Hezekiah, in humbleness, pleads for God’s intervention. And once again, we see an immediate response from God. He delivers a beautiful message to Hezekiah through the prophet Isaiah. He even states that in that enormous Assyrian army, that not one soldier would even shoot an arrow at Jerusalem. And if you remember the story, you will recall that God sent forth His angel & killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers. God responded to Hezekiah’s humbleness before Him.
It was at this time that God sent word to Hezekiah. He said, "Set your house in order, for you shall die & not live." Hezekiah again turns to God in humbleness for healing. This is in direct contrast to the pride of Asa, the 3rd king of Judah. Asa had become deathly sick, but because he had reacted in pride to a earlier incident and that pride had continued to gain a stronger grip on his heart, instead of humbling himself before God in his sickness & seeking God’s healing, we read of him that "even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but the physicians" (2 Chro.16:12). And the implication is if he had humbled himself and sought the Lord, the Lord would have responded and healed him. Maybe Hezekiah remembered that, I don’t know, but he did humble himself and sought the Lord for healing and God gave him a miraculous sign through which He declared that He would add an additional 15 years to Hezekiah’s life. God responds again to humbleness.
Because of Hezekiah’s humbleness and obedience, God had greatly prospered him. And you know the tendency of prosperity to encourage pride. Well, Hezekiah experienced that as well, for when an envoy came from Babylon, for they had heard about Hezekiah’s miraculous healing, Hezekiah responded by "showing them all his treasure house, the silver and the gold and the spices and the precious oil and the house of his armor and all that was found in his treasuries. There was nothing in his house, nor in all his dominion, that Hezekiah did not show them" (2 Kings 20:13). Because it was done in pride, God was displeased and sent Isaiah to pronounce judgment on Hezekiah and Judah.
But once again we read of Hezekiah humbling himself and once again see God’s immediate response - 2 Chronicles 32:26.
Are you beginning to see how God responds the person who humbles himself before Him?
2 Chronicles 34 - We now move on to the 15th king of Judah - Josiah and he truly was one of the greatest kings of Judah in terms of his devotion to God. In fact, God Himself declares that in 2 Kings 23:25 - "And before him there was no king like him who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him."
Josiah brought reform, cleansing and purification to the nation. During this process, one of priests found a copy of the law of God which had not been destroyed during Manasseh’s reign. As the law was read to Josiah, he gains a much clearer understanding of just how deeply Judah had sinned.
2 Chronicles 34:19 - Josiah humbles himself before God on behalf of his kingdom. His actions compel God to respond once again - 34:26b-28. Judah had so steeped herself in sin by this time, that God refused to turn from His judgment on the nation. But because of Josiah’s humbleness, He does choose to postpone that judgment and to reward Josiah with peace.
We have looked at 3 kings so far, but remember I told you that humbling oneself before God so moves His heart that He will even respond to the worst sinner, if he will humble himself. And I want you to see this before we close our study of this subject. We’re going to look at 2 kings, the worse king of Israel and the worst king of Judah.
Ahab - You will be hard pressed to find a more wicked man in the Bible. Listen to the Bible’s description of Ahab:
1 Kings 16:29-33
1 Kings 21:25-26
And so this was an incredibly wicked man. He was steeped in wickedness. But on top of that, the Bible tells us the story of Naboth who owned a vineyard, a vineyard that Ahab wanted. If you remember, Ahab goes about pouting because Naboth won’t sell him the vineyard & so Jezebel comes up with a plan to falsely accuse Naboth so that he can be stoned to death. In response God sends Elijah to Ahab with a pronouncement of judgment - 1 Kings 21:17-24.
Well, this really shakes up even wicked Ahab. Notice his response - 21:27. He humbles himself and so notice there is again an immediate response from God, even to Ahab - 21:28-29
Now I don’t know what you are thinking but I’m thinking, "come on, this isn’t Hezekiah or Josiah, men who were followers of God; this is Ahab, the most wretched man on the planet. And this isn’t any kind of true conversion. Ahab is going to settle right back into his old ways. There is no permanent repentance here." One almost feels like saying, "Come on, God, don’t be swayed by his little act. He’s not going to change." Don’t you think God knew that? And yet God still responds even to this man when there is even the slightest move toward humbling himself. This absolutely amazes me. I can understand God’s response to Hezekiah & Josiah, but not Ahab. What a tremendous picture of the heart of God.
Manasseh - What Ahab was to the northern kingdom of Israel in terms of wickedness, Manasseh was to the southern kingdom of Judah. Listen to the Bible’s description of his rule - 2 Chronicles 33:1-11
One would be hard pressed to say who was worst, Ahab or Manasseh. But once again watch what happens: 2 Chronicles 33:12-13...
Same scenario - Manasseh humbles himself before God and God responds. Manasseh is different from Ahab for his appears to be a genuine and lasting repentance for he immediately tears down the idols and sets up the true worship of God. But God responds and restores him to his kingdom.
And so time after time after time, we have observed that when a person humbles themselves before God, God is compelled, it would appear, to respond to that person in a way that they know that it is God.
Question: Why does this act of humbling oneself before God so move God’s heart and causes Him to respond to that person, no matter who they might be or what they have done? The answer comes in studying the word itself. The word "be humbled" in the Hebrew means this: "it denotes bringing a proud and unruly or ungovernable people or spirit into subjection. The emphasis is upon a proud and independent spirit abasing itself before God.”
And so when you humble yourself before God, you are putting yourself into the position or relationship before God that you were created and designed to be in - a position of submission and dependence. And that stirs the heart of God like nothing else. And it leads Him to declare like He did to one of Judah’s other kings, that He constantly searches the whole world to find that kind of person and when He does, He says it is His expressed desire to strongly support, to show Himself strong on their behalf.
And so back to beginning question: would you like to see God active in your life like you read about in the Bible? If you do, the way to experience that is to live in humbleness before God for as you do, nothing, nothing will be able to keep Him from coming to you & being the mighty God in your life. Praise be to God.
Chorus #34 – (last line) “Humble yourself and see what God will do.”
