Marcus Mecum - The Disease of Insecurity
2 Chronicles 21, and let's look at verse 4. I wanna talk to you about the disease of insecurity. "Then Jehoram established himself firmly over his father's kingdom, and he put all his brothers to the sword along with some other officials in Israel". So, just kinda get a picture here. This young king has just been given the throne in Judah and the first thing that he does is he takes his sword, and he starts to go and destroy lives. He goes and murders people. And the Bible says that because of this, the prophet Elijah, in verse 12, writes him a letter and he says "This is what the Lord would say to you king," you young king, don't know how to deal with some of these insecurities you got.
"That the God of your father David, says: 'you have not followed the ways of your father Jehoshaphat, king of Judah. But you've followed the ways of the kings of Israel, and you've led Judah and the people of Jerusalem to prostitute themselves, just as the house of Ahab did. You've murdered your own brothers, members of your own family,'" watch this, "And men who were better than you". I would underline that phrase. Men or women, people that you think are better than you. "So now the Lord is going to strike you, your sons, your wives, everything that is yours, with a heavy blow. You yourself will be very ill with a lingering disease of the bowels, until the disease causes your bowels to come out..." Everybody say, "Nasty".
You know, I wish I would have done an illustrated sermon on this scripture today. "After all this, the Lord afflicted Jehoram with an incurable disease of the bowels. In the course of time, at the end of the second year, the bowels came out because of the disease, and he died in great pain". Watch this. This is just staggering to me. "But his people made no funeral in his honor, as they had for his predecessors. He was 32 years old when he became king, reigned for eight years. He passed away," watch this, "To no one's regret, was buried in Jerusalem, but not in the tombs of the kings".
To understand a little bit about this young king the Bible introduces us first to his father, Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat, we know is one of the greatest kings in Israel's history. He had a great respect for God. He wasn't a perfect king, but he did have a desire to seek God with his life. As a result, the Bible says that, "God gave Jehoshaphat peace on every side". One of the few times that Judah, or Israel, I guess, you know, you have the Southern Kingdom and the North (another sermon). But in Judah, he had peace. God gave him peace on every side. So, when he's passing on the throne to his son, Jehoram, he was passing on a kingdom that was at peace.
Some of the greatest victories God gave Judah were under the leadership of king Jehoshaphat. He was an incredible, incredible leader and God gave him some profound victories. Well, the Bible says, of course, that this is Jehoram, or Jehoshaphat is in the lineage of David. So, you go back six generations from Jehoram to king David. So, king David, the giant slayer, cuts off Goliath's head, that David is the great, great, great, great, granddaddy, six generations back of Jehoram.
So, this young king would have been raised hearing about the great victories of his father David. He would have been raised hearing about even the early stages of David's life about how his brothers had rejected him and how his father even, Jesse, had rejected David. He would have been raised hearing about king Saul, David's mentor, and how insecure Saul was. And how he tried to destroy David because David had strengths that Saul did not have and giftings that Saul did not have. And so, he would have been raised hearing about those types of stories. He would have then also been raised reading the Psalms of king David, the Psalms of worship that David wrote: Psalms of God's faithfulness, Psalms of how you can put your confidence in God, Psalms about how God has got your back and you can walk in great confidence that God will see you through anything that you're up against.
Now, because of that we would have also known that Saul's son is Solomon, that Solomon wrote the Proverbs. King Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes. So, not only would Jehoram have been raised hearing about king David, and not only would he inherited a peaceful kingdom from Jehoshaphat, he would have had the sentence of sermons is what I like to call Proverbs. Just a little sound bite, just a little thoughts, just a few words that are just power packed with a sermon. How many of y'all wish I could just do a sermon in a sentence? Wouldn't that be awesome? Just one sentence and we're done, "God bless you". But Proverbs is just packed with wisdom.
And so, this young king would have been raised reading the Proverbs, reading about Ecclesiastes. He takes the throne. He does not pull on the history and the faithfulness of God that God showed David. He doesn't pull on the wisdom of Solomon. He doesn't pull on the peace that his father, Jehoshaphat, gave him. The Bible says when he took the throne, he was so insecure, so eaten up with that inferiority that the moment he becomes king he takes the sword, kills his brothers, and murders anyone he believed was better than him. And so, his insecurity targeted those he perceived to be a threat. His insecurity targeted anyone that in his mind was better than he was, had a gift that he didn't have, had the strength that he didn't have, had something going for them that he didn't have going in his life, and he would look at them and he would perceive them as a threat.
And so, it teaches us in the story that insecurity is a killer, insecurity is a murdering spirit. And it ended up killing not only his brothers and his family, but the Bible says it caused a disease that killed this king. Insecurity is something we all deal with. No one in here is someone that's outside of the bounds of dealing with moments where you feel insecure, where there are times when you feel like you don't measure up, and you don't have what it takes, and you don't have enough to face something that's coming at you, or you don't have enough to seize the opportunity or the dream that's in your life.
Something happened along the way, and it just begins to grab a hold of you and get a grip on you and say, "You can't do that because of something that you're not". And that's what insecurity is. "I can't because I'm not". Remember Moses, God comes to him and says, "I wanna use you to be a voice to your generation". What does he say, "I can't". Why? "Because I have a stutter. I'm slow of speech". He would say, "I can't because of something I'm not". God came to Jeremiah the prophet before he had ever spoken one word in the name of the Lord, and he said, "I'm gonna use you, raise you up to be a prophet to the nations". And Jeremiah said, "I can't because I'm not able to speak, because I'm not old enough or I'm too young". He would say, "I can't because I'm not".
Jeremiah would go on to become one of the few major prophets in the Bible. Major, not meaning greater than. Major just meaning he had more to say than the minor prophets, prophets like Habakkuk, or Malachi, or Zechariah. Those are the minor prophets. And it's not that they were less than, it's they were entrusted with less to say. So, here you have Jeremiah, begins in his life saying, "I can't because I'm not". But yet when he was able to overcome that, because what did God say? God was saying, "Hey, listen, I'm not asking you to be something because of who you are, I'm asking you to confident in what you can be because of who I am".
So, confidence is not, "I am because of something I am or something I've got". No, confidence is, "I can, I am, because of who God is". That's what Paul the apostle said. He said, "I can," watch this, "Do all things, not through who I am, but I can do all things through," who? "Through him, through Christ, who gives me strength". So, godly confidence says, "I am able because of the God I serve. Greater is he that is in me. Not because I'm great but because I can become great because my God is great". There might be a church that wants to hear this somewhere. And so, this king is so eaten up with insecurity, the Bible says that this disease gets down into his bowels.
Now, bowels in the Bible speak of your inner life. It's symbolic, bowels are symbolic of your heart, your lungs, your kidneys, your intestines, your guts. In other words, it's not just one part of your insides, the point of any reference to bowels in the Bible is it encompasses the very being of a person. Think about that. That when the Bible here says the disease got into his bowels. He was saying that his entire being was eaten up with this insecurity. It says that this disease was a lingering disease. It says that it was an incurable disease. It says that this disease caused Jehoram to die in great pain, that it was fatal, that it had a horrible ending.
Listen to it. "That his guts came out". One commentary I read said that he died from a fatal case of hemorrhoids. How many of y'all think that's the nastiest thing you've ever heard? And when I read that I said, "God, that is completely unnecessary thing to put in the Bible". Like, we can get a lot of imagery about a lot of things. We don't need that image. I'm trying to read the Bible and go to bed, and I read that. And I said to God, I said, "That is the nastiest, grossest, most disgusting thing I've ever heard. It made me throw up in my mouth". I said, "Give me a barf bag, God". And I felt like the Lord said, "Good, you're finally getting a small glimpse of how I feel and how I see insecurity in your life".
It is nasty in the eyes of God. We're not designed to be filled with insecurity. We're not designed by God to live in constant comparison. In this king's life his inner being, his inner life was so diseased, it rotted out his insides. "It was agonizing," the Bible says, and that's what insecurity is. It's an agonizing way to live. It destroyed his life, and that's what insecurity does. It erodes away at your relationships. It erodes away at your confidence. It erodes away at your self-image. It erodes away at your ability to get up in the morning and say, "I want life. I wanna take life on. I don't want life to take me. I wanna take it on".
It erodes away at you. Studying the gut, I found out that it's incredibly sensitive to emotion, especially insecurity. It causes anxiety. It causes sadness and anger. So, watch, what starts in the mind triggers symptoms in the gut. We all know the cliches. "I feel like I got kicked in the gut". Nothing physically happened, just a thought in the mind triggers an emotion, and in your gut you feel like someone kicked you. "My stomach is in knots. That's gut-wrenching," we say. "I have butterflies".
What happens in the mind can negatively impact and influence my gut. There is a hundred million nerves that connect your brain to your stomach. They call your gut, its nickname is the second brain or the small brain, because it shares many of the neuro transmitters as your brain and the brain and the gut are in constant communication. They're constantly talking to one another. And so, this young king, Jehoram, in his mind he thought, "They're better than I am. They got strengths I don't have. They have gifts that they don't have, they haven't gone through a divorce. Their kids aren't going crazy. But, you know, they got the promotion at work. They got the new car. They got the nicer house. They got the this, they got the that. I don't have what they have. I don't have what they've got".
And immediately, because he thought that it rotted out his insides. The moment he felt insecure, watch how you can tell. This is the first symptom that you can maybe see if insecurity is got a grip on you, is the moment he felt insecure, what happened? His sword came out. So, this disease tells us, "If I cut people out that I perceive are better than me, I'll be better. All I have to do is eliminate anybody that is a perceived threat from my life. I just eliminate them". How do I eliminate them? "I pull my sword out. I come out, I feel less than, so I pull my sword out and I go to swinging and I cut you out or I cut you down and I do whatever I have to do. I'll demonize you. I'll villainize you. I'll unfollow you. I'll unfriend you. I'll cancel culture you. I'll do whatever I need to do".
And all of us have felt the strong, painful cut of insecurity's blade. Come on, think about it. You've been cut down. Some one thought it was their responsibility to cut you down to size. Someone felt it was their responsibility to let you know what you're not, and what you can't do, and who you can't be. What about being cut out thinking, "What did I do wrong? Why wasn't I invited in? Why wasn't I included? I don't understand what's wrong with me that I can't fit into that world or that circle, or those relationships".
And in this story, imagine being the people that are looking up to the throne. They are looking up to this king. They're looking up to someone that's to be admired. And this king who has everything going for him. He's young. He's powerful. He's got a kingdom at his disposal. Everything you could ever imagine wanting, he's got it. They would never imagine a king would cut them, someone they admired would cut them. Have you ever had that happen where you looked up to someone, you admire them, you looked up to who they were, maybe the position that maybe it was a parent.
You didn't think, "Ah, there's no way a parent would cut me. There's no way a boss would cut me". What about this one? "There's no way a pastor would cut. There's no way that that friend would cut me. That's no way that that person in that position, that teacher, that coach", and maybe you're in a place where you thought, "Man, I didn't think they would ever cut me. I didn't think I'd ever be attacked by them, accused, or blamed. I brought a towel to the relationship. I brought a desire to serve, a desire to bring something positive to the relationship. I had no idea that they were gonna pull out a sword and go to swinging".
You see, insecurity doesn't show up as insecurity. It shows up as a sword, hypersensitivity, negativity, jealousy, anger, violence, backbiting, being territorial, jumping from one relationship to another. Why? Because the second that you don't feel something in the relationship, you cut them down and you cut them out. And a lot of people are living, addiction most of the time isn't addiction. Think about it. It's, "I'm done feeling like I can't because I'm not, and I don't wanna face what I'm not, so I gotta do everything I can to numb myself so I don't have to face these things". Jumping from relationship to relationship is just simply a form of just, "I'm insecure". And so, you cut others thinking that that's gonna make you better, thinking that's gonna make your life better. But we find in this story it's impossible to cut others and not hurt your own life in the process.
So, I came to church on Sunday to tell you someone needs to start a movement called, "The drop your swords movement". Stop the cutting, cutting everyone down, cutting everyone out. In church I thought about handing you a barf bag, right, when you walked in today because there is nothing grosser, nothing nastier, nothing more disgusting, nothing that should make you wanna throw up in your mouth more than a spirit of insecurity. Not just being in your mind but taking over and eating up all of your life, who you are. Everything about your inner life being consumed by insecurity is completely nasty to me, and really, forget me, to God. So, Elijah sees this, and he says, "I'm gonna send a letter to the king. And because this king can't put down his sword, I'm gonna let him know that it's gonna destroy his life".
And in the end, insecurity killed a king. Insecurity is torture while you're alive. And it's an agonizing way to get to the end of your life and look back and say, "My whole life was given to a spirit of insecurity". The Bible says "It caused this king to die in great pain". And this to me is the worst part. Jehoram was the only king, we read it, in Judah's history, they held no funeral in his honor. They couldn't even think about how to put a funeral on for this guy because his life was so filled with insecurity, so filled with swords and cutting down and cutting out, they couldn't even hold a funeral for him. And then the Bible said that they refused to bury him with the other kings. They tried to wipe his memory, out of their history. They wanted nothing to do with this guy.
And then the Bible says in verse 20, "He died to no one's regret". No one even cared that he died because no one mourns the death of an insecure leader. And this is the deal, we all compare ourselves to people. We all look at someone else and conclude, "They're probably better than me at this, better than me at that, have this strength, have that thing going for 'em. They didn't do that. They don't have that failure. They don't have that issue. They don't have that problem. They don't have that history". You know, 96% of women don't consider themselves as beautiful. Most of us say, "There's something wrong with me that makes me unlovable. No one can really relate to me. No one really cares. Really, they don't care. If people really knew who I was, they 'd never accept me".
So, insecurity is a disease that everyone deals with. And if what's in our mind gets into our hands, gets into a sword and cutting everybody up, and it gets into our gut, into our inner life and it begins to consume us, it destroys us. But there is a cure. Think about the word insecure. The word cure is in the word, and it's not a sword. It's not cutting people down and cutting people out. The Bible says, "If you live by the sword you die by the sword". There is a cure to insecurity and I wanna show you what it is. Genesis 43.