Staying in Your Lane
Lessons from Uzziah on Staying in Your Lane - 2 Chronicles 26
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good morning welcome if you're new here among us my name is gene i serve here at c3 church as your lead pastor and we've been getting to know our church family our church culture a little better we've been spending the last couple weeks doing that so two weeks ago we talked about worship even within this series amos came up perfect time to talk about worship and how we see worship here at c3 church we've been well over the last few years kind of moving to try to get the church so that this is the one and only program god that's it we don't need a worldly overlay we don't need like this yeah but god and also you forgot something no he didn't forget anything it's all in here and it's perfect but sadly in the modern church they put overlays things on top of it we got to add to it even though he says don't do that and so we've been trying to kind of nail that down over the last couple of weeks getting to know us better heather shared the rest of her story with you trying to show you guys we're very transparent we want you to come as you are but not stay as you are that is real church real people it's a family now i know it's really serious for the beginning of one of my sermons right like what is happening now who did what was it me oh no no here comes the joke so as a part of heather's testimony she couldn't help but talk about new york that's where we're from nobody is from here unless you're very young right so we're from new york we moved here about 10 years ago we had businesses there and i can honestly say i'm almost almost a fully adjusted floridian i do not dress like this during the week it is sandals but almost i have almost found good food almost there are some now and it's debatable because i had a friend from new york kind of say this to me correct me i said oh there's really good pizza at such and such a place and they're like you've been here way too long man you got to go back but i seem to think that there are some pretty so i've adjusted at least it's acceptable i'm not complaining or crying about the food anymore so that's a good thing but here is what i cannot adjust to i just don't think it's ever going to happen and that is the driving down here it's atrocious deputy johnson we're gonna talk about him it is crazy now let me just explain something to you if you're from new york you're gonna you're gonna nod a lot today an awful lot it's hard to get a license there my wife and i both failed our driving test the first time we took it and they make it really hard on purpose and now you're gonna say no they're not they're aggressive like people who visit there they complain oh new yorkers are certain no no no no it's a beautiful ballet of aggression that's what driving you think of like like birds you know like a flag of birds or bees if you will they're swarming but it's it's all a ballet it's beautiful we know what we're doing people here not so much my daughter got her driver's license i think she just went to the dmv and asked nicely i think that's how you get your driver's license here it's like really should she be driving that's kind of crazy now naples where stop signs are a suggestion right so it's all the rules are broken but there's one thing in particular that i want to address this morning i just i need i need to get this out there it is proper lane usage that is my real pet peeve proper lane so i've got to teach you guys this today just in case you don't know it's just important let me get it off my chest and we'll get to the bible so okay if you're looking over here now this can get confusing so i'm going to help you this is my right hand but it is your left are we good there we go you can okay which hand is which this is but this lane for you not me for you and this is going to get confusing i know but still over here this if it's a three-lane road so imagine three lanes and i'm gonna get run over so three lanes this for you not me this is what i call the fast lane or the passing lane so let's talk about that lane if you're in that lane you should be passing someone that's your job all right so that's your lane you need to be passing now this has been verified by deputy johnson so it's got an official seal if you're in this lane and you're doing the speed limit you're not passing anyone and now you've passed several exits you can get pulled over you can get a ticket for that am i going to get an amen no he left him anyway you can get a ticket for that that's a real thing that's a real yeah new yorkers are like uh-huh so what you need to do if you've passed several exits you know i'm not talking you can for a reasonable amount of time get over there and then you know make your turn there's a thing called a blinker if it's on this side of the steering column you push that down and that tells everybody who's not a profit on the road that you're you're about to change lanes and then make a turn right so they understand that's great great but if you're not doing that you need to push the blinker up that lets all the people on the road who are not profits know that you're going to move over into the next lane i want to talk about the middle lane right so this is the traveling lane so speed limit let's say it's 45 miles per hour this is where you're going to do the speed limit and you're just going to travel along right that's the traveling lane now if now see this is a thing down here so i talked about the kids right they have their cracker jack box driver's licenses well on the other side of things people come down here they retire and they discover something called day drinking it's a real thing and so for those people you're going to find them over here right in the slow lane or i'm about to give up lane or i'm about to get pulled over lane or some people call this yes i said day drinking in church if you're new here those of you who are not you're like this is not a surprise trust me it's it's a wild ride people go back and listen to my wife's testimony anyway so this lane here is the turning lane slow lane or i'm about to give up lane right right here i can't handle it this is too stressful get over there you need to be over there now let's go back to the fast lane so if you're traveling in that lane you may have had this happen to you you may have had someone ride right up i'm not going to say it just really close to you bumper to bumper really close and then if you look they're from new york they got a new york plate and because they don't realize yet that you don't need the front plate here that's pretty awesome so they still have their front plate on and they're talking to you here's what they're going to do they're going to start talking they're going to talk and sometimes this lever if you pull back on it it flashes and they're gonna talk with their headlights and they're gonna flash it about five times the first time get out of the way stay in your right so but if you get more than five flashes those are words i can't say in church so that's that's what's going to happen and they're going to persist because that's their lane stay in your lane you belong in the travel lane and they're just going to stay on it they're going to be very persistent that's the right thing to do here's what people do in florida this is the wrong thing to do so in florida they start the same way right up your so they're there real close right no front plate they're from florida here we go and they're going to give it a couple seconds and then get antsy then they're going to decide i'm just going to take over all the lanes so they're without no blinker no nothing they're going to strafe middle lane guy right behind him oh dear you know so there they're gonna wake drunk guy up then that's not enough that's not enough they have to go back across all the lanes they got to take ownership of every lane that there is and they're going to shape and if you're a middle lane person this this is what you say this is great middle name person says this we we're the cops when this happens where are the cops where are the cops when this happens where's deputy johnson you're gonna start calling him now you're on your phone so yeah right but we're the cops that's middle lane where are the cops you've said that right across then that person is going to get in the fast lane slow down so that the person policing the left lane they've deputized themselves they're at the speed limit it's 45 right they're in that lane and i won't say your name and then right there so that they can see who that person voted for their stick figure family and the jesus fish on the back of their car thank you for being a wonderful brand ambassador uh yeah we have fun we find ourselves in the rest of the story where we're talking about driving because they had cars in the new testament right no they did not we talked about worship now we find ourselves at uzziah we're in second kings and so we talked about prophets we're going to be taking some of those books of the bible and reinserting them in the accounts of the kings we're not going to necessarily do that today we'll do that again next week but we're looking here at uzai you can watch these messages in our app online if you want to get caught up it'll take you about oh two or three years anyway so just read your bible you'll be good so second kings 15 1 uzziah and i inserted this in here because some bible versions have his other name there making it even more confusing so same guy two different names son of amaziah who got assassinated began to rule over judah in the 27th year of the reign of king jeroboam ii of israel he was 16 years old when he became king and he reigned in jerusalem 52 years his mother was zechalia from jerusalem he did what was pleasing in the lord's sight just as his father amaziah had done but he did not destroy the pagan shrines and the people still offered sacrifices and burned incense there the lord struck the king with leprosy which lasted until the day he died he lived in isolation in a separate house the king's son jotham was put in charge of the royal palace and he governed the people of the lord so a couple things that play there if you don't understand the bible leprosy skin disease it's something you get it's not good and so they kind of separate you they put you in like a quarantine you're outside the camp if you read the old testament so that's why they don't want to spread this disease around now here's the thing you might think if you're just reading this oh the pagan shrines that's why god struck him with the leprosy and i've seen even pastors kind of make mistakes here because they're not reading enough they're not you got to be in the word if you're going to teach it just an idea but they make mistakes because they're not reading the whole thing a lot well why did he get the leprosy i told you guys there are many books of the bible and some are parallel accounts and that's where we're at right now some give more information some give less information not contradictions right they're just giving us info so the parallel account is in second chronicles 26 1 starts kind of the same way all the people of judah had crowned amaziah's 16 year old son uzziah as his king in place of his father after his father's death uzziah rebuilt the town of elath and restored it to judah muzziah was 16 years old when he became king and he reigned in jerusalem 52 years his mother was jecoliah from jerusalem so similar ish says he did what was pleasing in the lord said if we keep reading there's a guy zechariah and it gets confusing because that's not the zechariah the priest that got killed and it's not the zechariah book of zechariah the prophet it's just a different one imagine that sometimes people can have the same name happens today too so that's what's going on there he's a pretty good military leader he defeats the philistines the unites might say ammonites in your version he also recruits a really big army so there are 2600 clan leaders running it 307 500 500 men 307 500 men i'm very bad at mass anyway can remember numbers but i can't count them so he takes care of them he gets them all the equipment they need he even builds on jerusalem's walls special structures to protect them while they're shooting arrows down at people so he's doing well so far if we keep reading it says he becomes really powerful then ii chronicles 26 16 but when he had become powerful he also became proud which led to his downfall he sinned against the lord his god by entering the sanctuary of the lord's temple and personally burning incense on the incense altar as ariah the high priest went in after him with 80 other priests of the lord all brave men they confronted king uzziah and said it is not for you uzziah to burn incense to the lord that is the work of the priests alone the descendants of aaron who are set apart for this work get out of the sanctuary for you have sinned the lord god will not honor you for this so he's standing there with the incense burner and he's furious at the priests but the leprosy breaks out on his forehead they freak out they get him out of there and then again he's in isolation he even gets buried in a separate place because he has the leprosy uzziah's problem was that he didn't stay in his lane so we heard heather's story last week and one of the things she mentioned is that unfortunately she had to go to the hospital at a certain point and i'm not sure if she mentioned it or not but a part of my story was that i've also been to the hospital i had a tia but i don't really think it was that you see i was being called out of the business world and then into ministry and i didn't want to go i was basically like nope like jonah right so he put me in the belly of the whale one night in the hospital not three so put me in timeout think about it a little bit it was pretty serious and so a part of that luckily i mean it's not luck it's a god incidence my wife was home started to go numb the whole left side of my body and i'm like oh this is not normal so what are stroke symptoms yup heather you got to take me to the hospital now this is an alarming thing to hear because i hate the hospital i don't like it it's because i do not enjoy germs if you do you're crazy and don't label me we talked about that this morning anyway i had to i can make this funny because everything's funny to me so not to her she gets me in the car and drove me to the hospital and i'm pretty sure she broke every rule of the road that there is got me there quick right so here's the thing though i don't remember everything but i know i got there fast what if there was someone in the fast lane trying to police it you got middle lane person maybe day drinker and she can't get around what if you see we aren't always privy to why someone might be doing something so you have lane police going it's 45 blocking the lane for a woman who's trying to get her dying husband to the hospital think about it you see and here's the thing on the anniversary date of her sobriety it all happened on the one year anniversary all that's going on and somebody there just needs a police elaine you see there's your business and there's none of your business and so whatever she's doing those traffic infractions that's between her and deputy johnson right that's his job that's what we pay him for right like you that's it that's not your job it's your job to get in your own lane get out of the way we don't know why this happens so much whether it be in ministry in our jobs if we're being honest it happens a lot it's very important to stay in our own lane this is uziah's problem he became powerful and he became proud so sometimes people get powerful in one area and then they think they know everything even though he was powerful in one area it didn't make him a priest have you ever had someone tell you how to do your job i know deputy johnson has that guy was doing something way worse than i just did that you pulled me over for didn't you see them am i causing didn't you what am i paying you for but think about what you do think about what you do if you're professional i'm sure you've had someone tell you how to do your job but think about it it's really annoying because maybe you went to school for a long time for that job maybe you've been doing that job for a really long time you know what's up and the person telling you how to do it usually doesn't know anything about it it's frustrating so think about it for a second what did you hear you might have heard something like you don't know what you're doing you're stupid you're negligent you didn't think of that it's insulting yet people do it all the time some people think they know everything disclaimer this is where some people who want to just continue doing this are going to go i know where you're going to go but what about malpractice and negligence yes that's a thing but that's not the majority of the time and that's not what i'm talking about it's not used to many excuses not what i'm talking about talking about normative day-to-day stuff here so for those who are always suspicious and accusatory of everything you're displaying an attitude of arrogance like uzziah powerful and proud so we need to stay humble and we need to stay in our own lane but from uzziah's time to now there are many kings who think they should be priests but they don't understand that there is much from one area that simply does not translate to another there are some things that do but it takes humility obedience and time to figure that out for us it took humility obedience patience and time and i'll we did open our mouth sometimes and we shouldn't have but i'll give us this much credit when we came into church heather was asked first she's both better looking and smarter than i am so into leadership right so you're a good business woman we'll use you here didn't ask all right then i'm later i came kicking screaming needed to go to the hospital a little more stubborn sometimes but here's the thing we at least had the common sense to recognize that the pastor was there for a reason he respected his training seminary discipleship whatever he went through and we respected the fact that he was in this a lot more than we were he knew the rule book so we knew stay humble sometimes we didn't understand why he was doing stuff sometimes he would complain a little bit he's got to have a reason knows what's going on you see this is not a career so whatever you do in ministry in the church is not a career anyone trying to advance through ministries to get a career wrong disqualified this is a calling this is something you get called into it's not something that really anyone in their right mind wants tony johnson was a pastor now a cop tells you everything that you need to know we didn't ask for these roles she didn't ask for any of these roles we were called into it we didn't even want them we're invited you see when the lord calls you into something it's almost always into a position of humility not elevation the key to knowing your place is getting invited into that space a lot of people if you think the lord is saying it but there's no one confirming it that's not the lord leadership is always going to confirm it when it's time now jesus clarifies this for us check this out luke 14 starting at verse 7 when jesus noticed that all who had come to the dinner were trying to sit in the seats of honor near the head of the table and gave them this advice when you are invited to a wedding feast don't sit in the seat of honor what if someone who is more distinguished than you imagine that has also been invited the host will come and say give this person your seat then you will be embarrassed and you will have to take whatever seat is left at the foot of the table instead take the lowest place at the foot of the table then when your host sees you he will come and say friend we have a better place for you then you will be honored in front of all the other guests for those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted those who humble themselves will be exalted those who exalt themselves will be humbled now jesus might have had this in mind proverbs 25 6 don't demand an audience with the king or push for a place among the great it's better to wait for an invitation to the head of the table then to be sent away in public disgrace let's take a look at another proverb pride goes before destruction humility precedes honor pride leads to destruction humility leads to honor another proverb and look at this 14 12 16 25 there's a path before each person that seems right but it ends in death when god repeats it it's important you need to pay attention we have to stay off the path of pride and take the highway or the low way to humility so we've been doing a lot of affirmation and confirmation lately so this is really important being a martial arts instructor formerly have not done that in a long time also being a pastor your students require encouragement it's just required you don't know you're not sure and then there are in martial arts people beating you up all the time here maybe i don't know but tell me about it you know you shouldn't be doing that here but it can get discouraging because here's the thing sadly sadly what we do here is different it's different that's what people come in when they're in the word i can always tell they don't come back or when they're not in the word when they're in the word they say this that was refreshing and i think that's really sad but welcome home seriously i've heard that was too many scriptures huh is there such a thing so we're holding firm we're holding firm but the problem is and this requires affirmation i'm going to give you a little confirmation in a minute because the rest of the world other people maybe they left are saying something different no no no no that's not the way you should do it you gotta we have a better program guide here than that right or they're out there and there's more of them there's more bad stuff out there than good stuff it's like fine dining right if you can relate it to something and that's just a thing well then why does everybody do that or say that because the majority is usually not correct jesus told us this didn't he it shouldn't be a surprise we have shows out there that are very very popular let's say no this isn't you know the author of this one didn't get it right let's just add to it add a whole bunch of stuff and we'll make it better wow talk about arrogance this is perfect i don't need anything else perfect but it's wildly popular to add to it and actually call it like a bible study are you kidding simon the zealot does karate now that's a real thing i thought it was a joke a parody this is unbelievable the level of arrogance and the majority is going that way but what did jesus say road to hell very wide the right path is very narrow so there will be less of us that make it here's the thing and this is interesting so i'm going to share confirmation i've been sitting on this one for a long time because what's been happening is god has been sending people not just from new york into the church but he'll send people whether they pass through or they stay it's not the point and they're like prophesying and they don't know it and they'll be from new york but not just from new york but like the same place like one person came through he actually was a doctor at the hospital where sophie was born my daughter what are you trying to tell me this is too sniper-ish like this is like weird right and they'll have different things to tell me and they don't know and so i figured it out you see when we were in new york if you know my story we didn't do like the typical karate school thing where like the kids get the black belts and you have the karate birthday parties and whatever it is we did none of that it was kind of like what this church is for martial arts basically like we want to actually do it right like this is about fighting you're going to come here learn how to fight you're going to get tapped out like that's just a thing or knocked out or something by a girl whatever so she told you about that but anyway we tried to keep the quality really high and at every turn we were discouraged over and over no if you want to be successful you've got to give the black belts a kid we can't you can't get one in this art two they're 18 and you really really really know how to fight i had a black belt already it took me 10 years doing it professionally to get one in this it was hard but we were like no quality no quality no quality we stuck with it slept on the mats it was hard but eventually the cops started finding out and it would fill up they brought their families the people who got it started coming and then everybody started coming the gym got really really big and so what the lord is saying to me through this is hold the line keep your integrity my word is enough if you check off all the right boxes the lord will send all the right people in we're seeing that happen here it's amazing so i want to tell you about one of these happenings cj and beth they come in how many weeks ago a two month do it that long wow i'm getting old i'm gonna die really quick so anyway two months i thought it was two weeks anyway i'm ready lord so uh but anyway they came in maybe it's two months ago you're right i don't know i'm probably wrong not good with dates they get introduced solani or lonnie introduces himself to them resident fact checker here and so they're seated up front which is weird for first timers so i'm like all right no i make it a point to try to get you if you're new here i'm trying to figure out it's hard to see with the lights who's new and i try to get you first but then the people here all the time interrupt me and i'm like get out of the way i got to get to the new people see you in the cafe anyway but anyway i get to them right because they're right up front it's easy lonnie makes the introduction he gets it he knows what's up so the first thing is cj throws beth under the bus so we'll work on that later the counseling and all that other stuff he's like she's been watching online forever she loves your messages i'm like oh okay we'll see you in my office if you come back but i asked them where they're from when they say new york i'm like where in new york and he kind of does what some people do that guy you wouldn't know kind of thing i'm like oh no trust me i probably do this is happening a lot and so he describes where they come from and it's literally right down the street from where i live we know all the same places all the same things the church right to everything and it's kind of mind-blowing and so beth is like i'm paraphrasing something so i'm not going to do like any accents paraphrasing like basically i've tried out all these churches and i've never felt home that was the word never felt at home but i feel like i'm at home here so give her a big hug and i said welcome home clearly the lord sent you here that's some confirmation right it gets better so they say they're coming to bible study and pastors we get like pessimistic we're all cynical because we get lied to all of the time so they say we're coming to bible study i'm like all right you know what i mean right there's like a two percent chance of that happening so okay whatever wednesday comes now here's the thing i do not like dressing like this so i'm in my office i'm in my shorts my sandals i'm comfy but bible studies coming and i understand that when i'm sitting here my hairy legs are at eye level that's disgusting so i make sure that i put a pair of pants on before the bible study usually a good idea before you do a bible study and so i'm on my way out of the offices to go get my pants and there's beth right there right in my face and she's like i really need to talk to you you know what's a better time before the bible study or after the bible study not seeing this in my head neither neither really so this is not not a good time but you know i'm like lester of two evils what do i do so i'm it's been a long day wednesday's a really long day i'm here all day i'm meeting with people doing a lot of different things i do the bible study i get kind of exhausted i want to go home and eat that's it i'm done right so i think okay before i know this material pretty well i got it there's nothing she can say that's going to throw me i'm good to go before have a seat on the couch she's like exactly right pretty good memory sometimes anyway anyway get my pants on good thing when you're meeting with a female to do guys so i sit down and we start talking and she says you don't know me but i know you past her face hmm right so you're just being quiet she's from new york she's not going to be quiet so i just let her keep going i don't have to prod her along at all she's going to give me all of the information and then stuff so you got to do better than that but not seeing that you don't know me but i know you i'm like next thing i've wronged you um get in line i have wrong that's pastors just get wronged that's like our job i stole from you get in line right so that gets better i stole from your house i'm listening now i'm listening now now i'm like okay you know this lady still may be crazy but this is getting interesting and it's developing it's going somewhere all right so she gets a little more specific she's like yeah you know now here's where i got to explain something i'll give you background that i'm beginning to understand because i don't think it's the house here i kind of know where she's going because she's from new york so when we moved here we sold a portion of our business we kept the one in new york running residual incomes nice so that's why i didn't want to leave it we kept that one running and then we were going to open another what we did we opened another one here all right so double the money a and that's that was our mindset and so what we did to compensate the instructors whom we thought we could trust was we let them live in our house that we still had in new york kind of a good deal should be kind of enough for teaching just a couple classes a week or so we thought now we discovered this a little later but those instructors decided to rob us blind they robbed us now it wasn't obvious through the thing and if you know how there's testimony we had reasons for not being able to go back and forth she was in several car accidents actually it was a bad time we kind of knew it but not really we were being robbed literally like towards the end i think the whole house got cleaned out it's just everything they should nodding stainless steel professional grade appliances anyway i'm over it but anyway so here's the thing about beth she was not like taking the stuff and selling it this individual was she worked for the person and just asked her to help so i don't think she was wise about it right away no so it wasn't like malicious or anything like that but later she realized that was really fishy like that was really weird what was going on here so just here's the thing just wrap your minds around it was enough that they lived down the street from me now this and now it's attached to the martial arts so this is god saying uh-uh okay this is a new start do what you did there hold the line but better because it's for me and not money now so this is what i'm gathering now in this moment i'm kind of trying not to smirk and say ah you're a prophet you don't know it so that's what's going on now here's the next set of things that come out of beth's mouth if you got to call the cops that's fine i don't know what the statute of limitations is but that's fine and it kind of like it like jolted me because i don't care anymore i don't care anymore jesus healed that care for that kind of stuff i'm like maybe you rob my house now i don't need so much stuff right so it kind of like jolted me back to new york or something like i couldn't believe she's saying this i was trying to process it and it was really difficult in the moment because i'm like well i get it but then something else occurred to me in this moment that was obedient the lord told her to come in and admit a crime let's think about it if it was a lot of stuff yeah like grand theft admit to being an accessory to a crime she didn't know me she realized it after she came to church she figured it out later realized whoa that's who that person is so what are the chances that she's going to come here and that i'm a pastor now what are the chances she robbed my house the lord tells her go in there confess it apologize what got incidents there's no coincidence here none absolutely just if she had known that instructor that would be kind of mind-blowing all the places she could have went to church so all this is going on in my mind it's like fl i'm trying to figure it out like being a pastor basically don't say the wrong thing don't say the wrong thing don't especially me right so you know that's really it and i'm like ah you know what is from the lord what's from new york like i gotta kind of parse this out right now she's taking me back and i said i don't need to say this i don't need to say this because jesus has changed i'm just not that person anymore i barely recognize him so i don't need to say this but you need to hear this you are forgiven you're forgiven home think about this for a moment what would you have done she could have picked another church people don't come back here for a lot less than that think about it people do not return here for a lot less than that she came back i don't know how many don't raise their hands but just think when jen just said this is pretty difficult i think i'm just gonna find another church but here's the thing the lord told her to come back here to come to bible study and confess this what she didn't know is the lord was talking to me through her it wasn't about that amazing you see when you are humble and obedient when you stay in the lane the lord created for you regardless of what the cost might be when you stay on the lord's path he will lead you home let me pray for you lord i thank you for everyone who came here today who watched online i just hope they understand that your path whether in this world or ultimately the next staying on your path will lead them home it will be difficult we will be faced with trials but please lord encourage everyone who's hearing this to stay on your path you're saying come home to me lord build us up strengthen us by the power of your holy spirit so that we can be wonderful vessels vehicles for your love your grace your mercy i ask these things in jesus name amen you