Your Choice: Pride or Humility Sermon Series: A Look at the Seven Deadly Sins Genesis 3:1-7; 1 Peter 5:5b-6 Rev. Michael D. Halley Oct ober 15, 2017 Suffolk Christian Church Suf folk, Virginia Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Seven Deadly Sins are pride greed lust envy gluttony wrath, and sloth. This list had its origin in the early fathers of the church. You will also find in the Bible, in Proverbs 6:16-19 1, and in Galatians 5:19 21 2, similar lists of sins that God especially hates. So, we are taking a few Sundays to look at this traditional list of sins and how we can deal with them and overcome them in our lives. Let me say again, as I did last week, that I believe that if we took a survey among us we would find varying opinions and thoughts about sin. It is not a topic that all of us are comfortable in thinking about and even less comfortable in talking about. Our culture, unfortunately, sometimes glamorizes sin and gives praise and stature to bad boys and bad girls. What is sin? It is missing the mark. It is failing to please God. It is living your life under your decisions and control and not God s. It is
disobeying God. And that is what we find in this wonderful story we just read about. There they were, the first man and the first woman. Living in paradise. Lacking nothing. There was only one thing... one thing out of the thousands of other things in the garden... one thing they could not have: The forbidden fruit, we often call it. Then the serpent came along and asked Eve a simple question: Did God really say, You must not eat from any tree in the garden? Page 2 Eve was intrigued. Her answer was, We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die. Die? the serpent said. You won t die! What is going on here? Is God so jealous of his wisdom and power that he doesn t want you to have any! (Well, at least that is my informal translation!) And Eve was now hooked in. Hmmm, she must have thought. Be like God. Gain wisdom. Besides, that fruit looks so delicious. Do you suppose that God really did tell us a lie? And as the old camp song 3 puts it, So she took a pluck and she took a pull... And then she filled her fig leaf full. Now, let s not just blame Eve. Evidently standing somewhere nearby, it wasn t long until Adam came for his share of the forbidden fruit. And, the serpent actually told them the truth when he told them their eyes would be opened. After taking the fruit, suddenly their innocence was gone and they realized they had no clothes on. So hurriedly, they fashioned coverings made of fig leaves.
Page 3 What was it? It was pride. As Proverbs 16:18 puts it, Pride is the first step toward destruction. Proud thoughts will lead you to defeat (Easy-to-Read Version, ERV 4 ). Rather than humbly accepting God s love and promise, Eve and Adam thought they could do better. They thought they knew more than God. One man wrote, Pride is the dandelion of the soul. Its root goes deep; only a little left behind sprouts again. Its seeds lodge in the tiniest encouraging cracks. And it flourishes in good soil. 5 There was once a clever salesman who closed hundreds of sales by telling his customers, Let me show you something several of your neighbors said you couldn t afford. 6 An appeal to pride, of course. Pride is an inwardly directed emotion... in a negative connotation pride refers to a foolishly and irrationally corrupt sense of one s personal value, status or accomplishments; [It is] used synonymously with hubris. 7 So, what is hubris (YOU-bruss)? It is arrogance, conceit, haughtiness, self-importance, egotism, pomposity, or superiority. Surely nobody here is guilty of all that! But we are. It is inbred. It is part of our human nature to wrongfully demonstrate pride. We are, after all, the children of these two who first exercised pride. Saint Peter put it so well: God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble. Then he goes on to add, Humble yourselves, therefore, under God s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. (1 Peter 5:5b-6) Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than of other people, nor does it mean having a low opinion of your own gifts. It means freedom from thinking about yourself one way or the other at all. 8
Page 4 And who is our guide and role model for humility? It is Christ Jesus. Saint Paul, in Philippians 2:6-8, says of Jesus: Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal s death on a cross. (NLT 9 ) He humbled himself. He came all the way from heaven to this very sick place to live in humility and obedience to God the Father. He endured all manner of rejection and torture. He died a criminal s death. But he rose from the dead on the third day, conquering sin and death. Can we do anything but love our Lord Jesus? Can we be anything but humble in his presence? As the great preacher D. L. Moody once said, Be humble or you ll stumble. 10 There is one more lesson, in addition to pride, that we can learn from this story of the fall of Adam and Eve. Was the fruit in the middle of the garden poisonous? Of course not. Did it really contain a magic potion that would make Adam and Eve as wise as God? Of course not. Why, then, did God forbid their taking this particular fruit? I believe it was a symbolic thing. I believe God wanted to remind this first man and first woman, as role models for all of us, that some things belong to God exclusively. Some things are hands off. Some things are to be set aside as a reminder that everything belongs to God. What am I saying here? This is a lesson in stewardship. That s what our
giving is all about. All that we have, every fruit in the garden, so to say, belongs to God. And to remind us of that fact, God wants us to set aside a portion of that abundance of fruit for God alone. Substitute money for fruit, and you see how this is stewardship in action. Page 5 In the Old Testament, the portion set aside for God was 10%, or what we call a tithe. This is certainly one standard of giving you might adopt. But I do not believe it is a hard and fast rule under the New Covenant. I do believe that the actual amount we set aside for God is less important that the attitude of our heart in doing so. Carmen s and my weekly offering envelope is, in part, a symbol to us to remind us that everything we have comes from God. That in itself is a very humbling thought. I want to issue a challenge to you this morning. Let s get serious about this matter of humility. For the next seven days, I challenge you to take some quiet time each day and sincerely and fervently pray and ask God to make you humble. You may even want to take a personal inventory of your actions and thoughts that show pride and not humility. And then I challenge you to go a step further. And you may want to write these down. I challenge you to think of the qualities and actions you could show in your life that would demonstrate humility. Let me give you a few suggestions. How about compassion? Compassion is concern for the sufferings and misfortunes of others. How about empathy? This is the ability to understand the plight of others and to share their burden.
Page 6 How about love? Here I mean agape love, the love that seeks only the highest good for the other person. Well, that s a start and you may think of other qualities you may wish to add to the list. Pray every day for these things. Dear friends, we have too much harshness in our world. Too much cruelty, too much hardness, too much crudeness, too much cruelty. I can t change the world and neither can you. But I can change my small corner of the world, and when we add my efforts to your efforts, we can carve out a fairly significant area where humility reigns. That s the kind of world I want to live in! Only through prayer. We will do this only through God s grace and power, and we will access that grace and power only through prayer. And just as God clothed Adam and Eve in the garden, God can clothe you and me in his grace and righteousness in Christ. Open your heart to God s love. Let us pray together: Heavenly Father, all praise and honor and glory are Yours. We confess that we are prideful human beings, taking credit for things we do that are things we can do because of Your power and Your grace in our lives. May we live humble and holy lives, lives of compassion and caring and holy love for others. May Your Holy Spirit teach us daily the things of Christ, that we may be channels of Your glory and righteousness. Amen. Amen. +==+==+==+==+==+==+ All Scripture references are from New International Version, NIV, copyright 1973, 1978, 1984,
Page 7 2011, by Biblica, Inc., unless otherwise indicated. +==+==+==+==+==+==+ Sunday Sermons from Suffolk Christian Church are intended for the private devotional use of members and friends of the church. Please do not print or publish. Thank you. Suggestions for sermon topics are always welcome! 1. The sins listed are: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies, and a person who stirs up conflict in the community. 2. The sins listed are: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. 3. Them Bones Gonna Rise Again. 4. Easy-to-Read Version (ERV), copyright 2006 by Bible League International. 5. David Rhodes, in Pride, www.sermonillustrations.com. 6. Source unknown; from Pride, www.sermonillustrations.com 7. This definition is from Wikipedia. 8. From Christ in His Church (London: Macmillan, 1925), by the Right Rev. William Temple, Lord Bishop of Manchester, England. Quoted at Humility, www.sermonillustrations.com. 9. New Living Translation (NLT), copyright 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. 10. Dwight Lyman Moody (1837-1899), also known as D. L. Moody, an American evangelist and publisher connected with the Holiness Movement, founded the Moody Church and Moody Bible Institute. This quote was taken from Humility, www.sermonillustrations.com.