Respectable Sins – Pride
What are you most proud of? Do you take pride in your work? Are you proud of your children? Pride comes into so many areas of our lives and yet very few of us would like to overhear someone say of us: “They are a proud person.” You see Pride really is one of the most subtle and respectable sins in life today. Why? Because pride normally, (though not always), feeds on our good points. Rarely, though if you look at much in the media this view is changing, will anyone be proud of their sins. Though as I say that is changing more and more as we witness people being boastful of their sins and their immoral lifestyles. I would say to you that the day is drawing near when God will say: “Enough” and judgment will fall. This morning I want to share with you from God’s Word a challenge to us all in the area of Pride.
Pride – according to the Oxford English dictionary it means “having too high an opinion of oneself.” We would say ‘they are full of themselves’ or on occasions we may not be as polite as that about the person who is puffed up with pride. Let me interject at this point two important, if not critical, points:
1. Good self-esteem is not the same as pride. It is important to have a right perspective on ourselves. Poor self-esteem, poor self-image is not the same as humility and it often leads to depression and other emotional etc illnesses.
2. Becoming a Christian does not automatically erase pride from our lives. It often actually brings more things into our lives on which pride can feed – for example a morally upright life.
So with those two caveats in place let us look at Pride in our lives.
The Cause of Pride.
If you turn to Matthew 18 verse 1 you will see the cause of Pride displayed amongst the disciples. Pride comes from how we measure or view ourselves against other people. The disciples wanted to know who was ‘top dog.’ The disciples wanted Christ to create a pecking order amongst them. To us it seems a crass question and an embarrassing moment. The disciples haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory at this moment. But let me ask you something: “Are you any different?” In HT how often are egos bruised and conflicts created because pride in my position, my organisation, my standing has been in some way slighted?
You know what was at the heart of this question by the disciples was spiritual superiority. Each disciple had a mental picture of where he stood in relation to the other 11 disciples. Each disciple had measured his spiritual state against what he believed to be the spiritual standing of the other followers of Christ. Oh, I would never do that? Don’t fool yourself. I do it every week when I become the Pharisee looking at the publican and so do you. How often do you measure yourself against other people and place yourself above them? Be honest with yourself this morning.
Pride comes in the form of spiritual superiority. The saying ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ is true of us all but you know when I say it, when you say it, I wonder how much pride is in the statement? How much more superior do I, do you, feel to the person we have referred to in the statement. The truth is that it is only by the grace of God that I am not a hell bound sinner because that is all I deserve this morning.
Pride comes in the form of our achievements. How better I am than you because I have achieved more. Now competition is a healthy thing but it can quickly become unhealthy. I can quickly become proud of my achievements and use them to ‘put other people in their place.’ I can use my achievements to make others feel small and to boost my ego at their expense. But let me share with you a more subtle form of pride in this area – pride in my failures. I was recently in the company of a pastor who spent most of his time talking about how God does not use people unless they have been wounded in some way (now there is absolutely nothing biblical in that statement). What a lot of the other people in that room did not know was that he had been off ill for quite a long period of time, and it was right that he took time off to recover from his illness, but (and I hope I am not judging wrongly here) pride in his illness, in his brokenness, led him to place himself above everyone else in that room. Can I say, as humbly as I can to you this morning, some of you take pride in your failures and it is as equally sinful as taking pride in your achievements to put others down.
Concern of Pride
Look at verse 2 and following of the gospel passage we read. Do you notice what Jesus does to the disciples? He turns their attention away from themselves. Pride will focus your attention, your heart, your thoughts and ultimately your praise on yourself. The concern of pride is ‘I, me, mine and myself.’ This is a monument that we have built and one at which many people, even Christians, worship each day. In contrast Christ calls his disciples to have the humility and the dependence of a little child. Please hear me when I say that Christ did not tell them to be childish but to be child like but to trust like a child trusts, to believe as a child believes and to love as a child loves. The disciples, and we, in contrast focus on ourselves. I can doe this in my own strength. It is my achievement. I can do this with my own knowledge and wisdom. It is my judgment that is sound. Yet hear the Word of God this morning from 1 Peter 5.5 and James 4.6: “God opposes the proud.” God is in opposition to those who because of pride are focused on themselves and have puffed themselves up in their own eyes and tried to do the same in the eyes of others.
You might say this morning but that is not me. Stop right there for a moment. When things go well in your life, accomplishments are achieved and praise is being applied – Who do you direct it to? I am always amused, never surprised, as God gets blamed for all the wrong things that happen, all the disasters and illnesses that befall this world and yet man gets all the praise for the good things, and the ‘successes.’ Is that not true in your life also? Do you not turn to God when things go wrong and cry ‘Why?’ Yet when good happens, when success comes you bask in the praise and God is sidelined. God is opposed to such and when you do it He is opposed to you and your sin of pride.
At this moment let me point out one of the most blatantly obvious consequences of pride in the life of this congregation. At least it is blatantly obvious to me as the pastor – an independent spirit. This spirit manifests itself in two areas – a resistance to authority, especially spiritual authority and an unteachable attitude. Often these two go hand in hand and I have honestly despaired at both in this congregation. I want to say to you I am including myself in this. When I left college I came out with an independent spirit which manifested itself with disrespect for authority and an attitude that I knew more than those older and longer in ministry. God has continued to break that spirit in me and challenged me when it has raised its ugly head. Within HT such an independent spirit reigns at times. You may believe that I am a dictator and there my even be times when you think I am a tyrant but in God’s providential care and sovereign will He has placed me here as your pastor. Let me read to you Hebrews 13.17. Now I am asking all of us – do we obey this Word of God in HT? My honest answer to you this morning would be ‘No’. An independent spirit comes from pride and it is a sin before God and a direct contradiction to His Word. In fact it is a challenge to His Word. Friends, let me say to you that an independent spirit is as prevalent amongst adults and older more mature Christians in this congregation as it is amongst the young people. In fact the young people display it far less than the adults do.
Let me balance what I have just said to you. In my role as pastor I do not have the authority to direct your life concerning your marriage partner, your job, your career etc. It is not that sort of authority. My concern is for your eternal salvation and your daily walk with Christ. I want to say to you that I deeply love you as a people and when I challenge or rebuke it is out of love and a concern that you and I might be obedient to Christ. I feel this morning that this independent spirit within our midst needs to be addressed and challenged because it is doing untold damage to the body of Christ in this place and will, if unchecked, destroy this church.
Cure of Pride.
Look at verse 4 of chapter 18 – humility, right perspective and attitude. In Luke 14.11 Jesus said that we were not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought. We need to see ourselves as God sees us and to look at ourselves the way God wants us to view ourselves.
Humility is a garment I should wear everyday. It is an outer garment that I put on from the inside out. It is a garment that follows the example of Christ as spoken of by Paul in Philippians 2. I set aside all my rights to follow the will of God. God’s will and plan for my life, as revealed in the Bible, comes first. I am humble, even unto death, for me here and now that means dying to myself. Dying to all my ambitions and desires. Dying to all that I want to do because each day I take up a cross, the symbol and place of death, and it is this I carry – I die each day to myself, to sin and to this world so that I might live to and for Christ. Jesus made a child stand amongst his disciples. The child was small in stature compared to them. The child was not worldly wise compared to them. The child had not followed Christ around Galilee for 3 years. The child had not witnessed all the miracles nor heard all his teaching, unlike the disciples. The child stood in complete contrast to the disciples and yet Christ says to them, and to us, you must be as humble, as loving and as a teachable as this little child and then you will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
Look on a few verses in our passage, verses 8-9. This seems a shocking thing for Christ to say. He is using hyperbole to make his point. What is his point? Pride needs cut out of your life! If it causes you to sin then cut it out of your life for the sake of your eternal salvation. Let me ask you this morning: Are you prepared to cut ‘xyz’ out of your life for the sake of your eternal destiny? Are you prepared to give up that career for Christ? Are you prepared to remove the things you are proud of in your life because they have become your idols? Challenging words spoken by Christ.
Pride is a subtle and dangerous sin in the life of anyone. It feeds on our good points, mostly. Yet Christ calls us to be humble and teachable as a little child if we want to be great in the eternal kingdom of heaven.
We all need to pray this morning and to ask God to reveal to us, to open our eyes, to the areas of pride in our lives that block his blessing and hinder our walk with Christ.
We as a church need to repent of our independent spirit which refuses to acknowledge the biblical and God ordained role of spiritual oversight and authority in a congregation.
We as a church need to repent of our independent spirit which expresses itself in an unteachable attitude. If we do not then this congregation will go nowhere with Christ and we will be like the church of Sardis whom God called to waken up, to obey and to repent because though they had a reputation for life they were in fact dead men walking.
Pride – a respectable sin which leads to eternal death. Let us confess our pride this morning, repent of it and walk humbly with Christ and before God and one another.
Amen.
