GET OVER YOURSELF PART 1: PRIDE: Thinking Too Much of Yourself

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1 GET OVER YOURSELF PART 1: PRIDE: Thinking Too Much of Yourself Matthew 7:13-14 Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. When you think about this passage, what path do you see yourself following? (wide or narrow) Either you don t really think about it at all or you presume you are numbered with the few on the narrow way. It s not likely you are thinking you are amongst those of the wide and easy path. Does that concern you? Consider the idea that most people in church would contend they are on the narrow path if that were a fact, wouldn t that devalue the statement as a whole? The reality is many who believe themselves to be on the narrow path have deceived themselves. The root cause of that deception is pride. This is just one example of how Christians are misled by their own prideful thinking. Pride is so sneaky and tricky. It changes its attack, whether we are up or down, while maintaining its strangle hold on our lives. It seeks to keep us distracted, ineffective and potentially kill us forever. As we begin this morning, this will be part one of a three-part series called Get Over Yourself. 1) Pride: Thinking Too Much of Yourself 2) Anxiety: Getting in the Way of Yourself 3) Allegiances: Choosing Against Yourself PRIDE: There are 6 different Hebrew words in the bible that are used for pride. Each of them convey a lifting up, magnification, presumptuousness, or rebelliousness of self. In the New Testament Greek, there are two concepts conveyed to mean pride, a straining or stretching of the neck meaning to hold one s head up to express his accomplishments or what he thinks he has made of himself, and the other, blindness to the degree that he is in a cloud of smoke (like he is able to see but can t because of the cloud). Puritan writer Richard Baxter says of pride, Pride is so undiscerned by most, that it is commonly cherished while it is commonly spoke against. -both at the same time Jonathan Edwards wrote, Pride is the most hidden, secret, and deceitful of all sins. Jason Meyer, a commentator, describes fighting pride is like fighting a shape-shifter. I like that. Do you understand what he means by shapeshifter? Pride twists and turns, it s up and down, all

2 the while digging its hooks into our emotions causing us to feel the tension between either having or lacking earthly achievement, fulfillment, satisfaction, self-worth, personal value all of which on an earthly level are temporary at best, and never do they pay off in the long run. The actual outcome is depression, defeat, and destruction. It results in independence, loneliness, isolation and at best you get a life with no risk or heavenly effectiveness. It s because you have sought to preserve yourself from danger, guard yourself from hurt, insulate yourself form pain, distance yourself from vulnerability, and protect yourself from reality. If Jesus had sought those things we would be doomed without hope. Let s be honest, none of that self-preservation really works, does it? You become the center of your world and your feelings rise and fall based upon your capability of keeping your safe little world together. And if anything disrupts it, you melt down. It s a system you keep up for yourself because it all centers around you. Pride. And slowly you hurt and push away the people who care about you. Earthly achievement, fulfillment, satisfaction, self-worth, and personal value are empty because, while they might attempt to satisfy you in the moment, none of them give you hope beyond death. Each of them are a knock off of the real elements that come from God. God s version of these are things we can t take credit for. They are kingdom purpose, peace of God, joy, kingdom worth, eternal value. I can give you loads of scripture to back these up but I ll leave you to search for passages yourself. He who has ears to hear, let him hear Pride is our default setting as human beings. It comes built in. And it manifests itself in arrogance, high knowledge, defensiveness, lashing out, anger, looking down on others, selfjustification, envy, entitlement, superficial judgment, vanity, doubt, self-esteem, accomplishments, hate, selfishness, using or abusing people, mocking, sarcasm, striving to obtain position or striving to keep position, etc. It can ruin very good things in such a subtle creeping way. It makes us believe we are in control of our lives. It causes doubt in God s sovereignty (power and control). It makes us buy into the humanistic principle that you should believe in yourself, which, as Matt Chandler says, is the air we breathe in our day and age. Is there a larger sin issue that we can discuss than pride? I used to think self-centeredness was the apex sin but upon further consideration, I have come to the conclusion that pride is the hand inside the puppet of self-centeredness. It s the hand inside the puppet of every sin. We will look at some of the facets of pride in all its ugliness and I will try to cover enough of it to hopefully show you how God has enabled us to work with him to fight against it for the good of His Kingdom. Let s look at some passages, things God says are facts: Proverbs 16:18 Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. -FACT. it s a link Proverbs 16:5 says, Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the LORD; be assured, he will not go unpunished. -FACT. Pride is an abomination.

3 Proverbs 6:16 There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: 17 haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, 18 a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, 19 a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers. -FACT. Here haughty eyes is one of the Hebrew terms for Pride. All the subsequent sins listed here are an outflow of pride and God hates it. 1 Peter 5:5 Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. -FACT. The proud not most of the proud. Proverbs 8:13 The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate. Wisdom speaking -FACT. Pride is the way of evil. The bible concludes that not only is it the essence of all sin, but pride contends with God for supremacy. See, it seeks to elevate the sinner above God. It is pride that says I am more powerful than God it is also pride that says I am too nasty to be used by God. Thus, you have two different categories of pride. The first is what we call forward pride and the second, we refer to as backward pride or reverse pride. As we start into this, I remind you that the word pride is in the title of both of them. One isn t better than the other or more preferred than the other. Let s look at these for a moment. There are three general aspects to each category of pride: FORWARD PRIDE: Self-Exaltation, Self-Promotion, Self-Justification -Forward pride comes when we succeed and others fail; when we receive favor and others don t; when we gain position and others lose. -in this version, we take some or all of the credit for our success, we put our successes out there to get credit from others, we use our credit to prove ourselves in right standing before God and others in essence, we lift ourselves up and keep our scope on the failures of others. They find validation in being better than others. It s clearly depicted in the Pharisee in this passage: Luke 18:9-14 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: 10 Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get. 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner! 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. The sly Christian knows how to smooth this one over to look righteous on the outside while doing the I m so great dance inside. Am I saying we can t ever be excited about achievements? No. I m saying that pride so easily begins to attach self-worth and self-value to

4 things that, let s be honest, we never deserved or earned in the first place. It s all from God and should cause thankfulness and gratitude toward God. See, something God gave you for good can so easily become a point of pride. BACKWARD PRIDE: Self-Degrading, Self-Demotion, Self-Condemnation -Backwards pride comes when others succeed and we fail; when others receive favor and we don t; when others gain position and we lose. -in this version, we stew over our losses, throw pity parties which highlight that we have less or are worse off than others. In this backward version, we see each element above is a backdoor version of the forward. We degrade ourselves hoping for exaltation, we demote ourselves hoping for promotion, and we condemn ourselves with the hope of being justified. So, BACKWARD PRIDE is a backdoor version of FORWARD PRIDE. Instead of having arrogance for achieving what we believe we have earned or deserve, we have frustration and bitterness (or at least self-pity) for not achieving what we believe we have earned or deserve. Again, the sly Christian knows how to make this seem humble on the outside while doing the where s mine tantrum inside. When we talk about ourselves, we often say we fall in either one category or the other. While I do believe, we tend more toward one than the other, I believe more so that we have an equal amount of both. The one that reveals itself the most is based upon how things are going currently at this point in our lives. I have a strong representation of both in my life. I can think I am pretty awesome when things are good and then think I am the worst and most pitiful just moments later. We have to be on point to battle pride in our lives. I find it interesting how many Christians would say I m not prideful and walk away from considering the issue in their lives. Just because you don t make a list of the things you do well and share it with others, doesn t mean you are without pride. Remember, pride is the hand inside the puppet of every sin. Are you without sin? It isn t an issue of IF you have pride but WHERE your pride manifests. Then there are other who say, Oh yes, I have pride but do little to nothing to fight it. They brush it off as the flesh or a bad moment and move on. We re called to something better something different. HUMILITY A definition: Humility: The mindset of Christ. A servant, focused on God and others. A pursuit of the recognition and the exaltation of God, and a desire to glorify and please God in all things and by all things he has given. Colossians 3: Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

5 1 Peter 5:5 Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. 6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you. Proverbs 15:33 33 The fear of the Lord is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor. James 4:10 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. Scores of other passages speak of God s blessedness and attention to the humble: Psalms 18:27, 25:9, 34:2, 55:19, 69:32, 76:9, 89:22, 147:6, 149:4 that s just the Psalms. It s been said that humility is the photo-negative of pride. The two cannot co-exist at the same time. If pride is a strong dependence on self, then humility is full dependence on God. Humility is an opportunity available to all Christians. However, in God s distain for pride, He will gladly bring you down if you prefer not to do it yourself. Around here we are fond of saying humble yourself in the sight of the Lord or He will do it for you. Spurgeon has said, Every Christian has a choice between being humble or being humbled. Humility is something not natural to us, that we must strive to clothe ourselves in. Other inspiring quotes about humility: Humility creates a vacuum that divine grace fills -John MacArthur. It s not thinking less of ourselves, but thinking of ourselves less -C.S. Lewis Perhaps you feel that all this is well and good philosophically theologically, but how does one actually fight pride? In my experience, fighting pride can oftentimes feel like emptying the ocean with an eye-dropper. I think this is where we make our biggest mistake. We get lost in the overwhelming feelings that we are incapable of overcoming it. This ought to help your despair YOU ARE INCAPABLE OF OVERCOMING IT ON YOUR OWN! -and it is pride that makes you think you can do it on your own. Sick, right? We need something more than us. This is where the wide gate might become the narrow gate for each of us Remember the opening passage? It s because few of us will actually take the steps to fight pride in our lives. The passage says that the gate is wide and easy which leads to destruction. If you are looking for easy, Christianity isn t it. It will be the most rewarding thing you will ever do and the most challenging. Being broken of our pride is hard it can seem impossible because without God, it is impossible. God provides us 3 tools to crush pride. 1) Conversion 2) Sanctification 3) Glorification Have you ever been truly humble? Think about your conversion. Let me ask you this, was your conversion to Christianity an intellectual choice or was it a sober grasp of who you really are

6 before God? What I mean is did you just join the club or did you wake up to your depravity? True conversion happens in a moment when we realize we are desperately wicked and confess our sins to God, admitting we are powerless to fix ourselves. Once there is repentance, we receive the atonement of Christ s blood on the cross for our sins. It s not by weighing out of two different options and choosing the one that most benefits us. It s by logically being convinced by human reasoning. It s also not by borrowing the track of belief that your family has, believing you re going to ride into heaven because your grandma was a believer or because your family is historically religious. In its most basic sense, conversion happens when you are at the end of yourself and you meet Jesus. No one in the presence of God felt worthy to be there. Look in the scriptures. They all freaked out. Isaiah, when in the presence of God, confessed he was a man of unclean lips and when Peter realized Jesus was God, he said, Depart from me for I am a sinful man, oh Lord. There is some connection between being in the presence of God and knowing we are wicked. True conversion is our first exposure to humility. I don t care how strong you are, how much money you have, how much influence you have you will still die and burn in hell for eternity without the total intrusion of the Savior into your life. We don t almost have it but just need a little help the truth is we don t have it at all and we need Him to overhaul it. When I met God, everything changed for me. It got sober fast. I was made new yet still flawed. The Romans 7 war began the fight between me and sin in me. So, the first step is to be biblically converted to Christianity; be saved. If you come to see the cross correctly, you will see yourself correctly. Humility is vital to repentance. NEXT is sanctification. While we are fully saved, we are yet in the process of being changed. This is where we join God in the process of our growth. Here are a couple of scriptures to consider: Philippians 2:12-13 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. 2 Corinthians 3:18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. James 1:22-25 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

7 As a Christian seeking humility, we must continually seek the word of God and expose ourselves to the law of liberty. James says looking into scripture is like looking in a mirror. We look into a mirror to see what needs adjustment. We brush our hair and wash our face as needed because of what we see in the mirror. In the same way, we take part in the growth and transformation of our lives by looking into the word which shows us things that need correction. This leads inevitably to regular confession contrite hearts. For sanctification, God provides His word, His Spirit, prayer, and the church for our growth. Let me ask you, how many of these resources are in full swing in your life? I am often amazed at how many Christians do not read the bible regularly or pray regularly or play an integral part of their church consistently. At the same time, humility-less Christians often attend church regularly, read the bible regularly, sign up for everything they can, lead bible studies and run ministries. They do it not to seek growth through humility or glorification of the kingdom, but to build their own perverted position of power and influence. If they have done it long enough, they can make it look pretty legit. The odd thing is they can listen to a study on pride and say, so glad Joe is here to hear this For the record, I your pastor, need this and I need it all the time. If at any point I believe myself to be sufficient and look at God as a means to get what I want, I set myself up for a fall. It happens to pastors and ministry leaders all the time. When one falls in our midst (and they always fall BIG), I don t point fingers at them, I get concerned if I will be next. We are all one prideful choice away from blowing things up. This is a war that every single one of us must fight daily. Thank God for the holy spirit, repentance, forgiveness and the grace to continue. Humility is NOT the center of attention, it does NOT show contempt toward others, it s NOT self-promoting, it sees grace in others and celebrates other s accomplishments. Ministry leader, does that describe you? How about you, Christian? Contrary to growing up physically, spiritual growth should make us more dependent not independent. We should see a growing need for God and the church in our lives. Pride isolates and humility unifies. If you dare, I put a self-test out at the JFB central table for you to take. It will test your pride level and your humility level. He who has ears to hear, let him hear God s final blow to pride is Glorification. Glorification is the abolition of pride forever. It s that day when life on earth terminates and eternity is the primary environment. Sin will be gone. That day will be wonderful and I look forward to it. Our work will cease. All sadness and struggle will be over. If you aren t fighting sin today, this probably doesn t seem like a big deal contemplating eternity. But if you are at war, you hope in eternity. I can t wait for it to come. God, come quickly!

8 However, both John and Peter encourage us to keep our eyes on that day for strength to fight today. 1 Peter 1:13-16 Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, 15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, You shall be holy, for I am holy. 1 John 3:2-3 2 Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. If you see it right, then it makes total sense when Paul says, To live is Christ, to die is gain. As we close this morning I want to leave you with a few thoughts. As you grow closer to God, you should begin to see things as he sees; to grow in distaste of the things God hates. Can you say without a doubt that you hate pride? -if you say, yes, what evidence can you point to in your life to prove it? 1) Ahhh, there isn t really any? -then you don t really hate it. Perhaps it s something you actually feed off of. 2) Yeah I hate it I really suck, I don t think I will ever do anything good -um, no... that s still pride my friend, try again 3) Yes, I hate pride. It may reach up and bite me or fool me now and again but I am at war seeking the word, prayer and accountability to keep it at bay. -you got it! Is your pride just shape-shifting or is it getting a beat-down? Pride ultimately is a worship issue: We cannot think about ourselves less unless we think about something else more. Jesus. His kingdom and His Glory. We need radical and consistent confession. God is so good to lavish upon us the Holy Spirit and grace power. If you are hearing me today, I want to close this sermon with probably my alltime favorite and one of the most encouraging passages for me in the bible when you doubt what you are doing or where you are sometimes when you are in the mess of war when you need help Peter writes: 2 Peter 1:3-15 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, 4 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. 5 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue,

9 and virtue with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. 8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. 10 Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. 11 For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. 12 Therefore I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. 13 I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, 14 since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me. 15 And I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things.