Pride Series

7 Deadly Sins Series

July 20, 2008

Pride

Not all sin is created equal. While all sin is equally offensive and wrong in the eyes of God they are not all equal. There are some sins that some people will never deal with in their lives. There are people who are so full of encouragement that they may never envy another person. There are some people who have no love for money or accumulation of stuff and will really never have a problem with greed. How many of you really have a hard time not offering sacrifices to other gods? Some sins are pretty avoidable. Yet there is one sin so vile, so pervasive, and so powerful that every person who has ever walked this earth has struggled with it. Not just struggled with it every person has fallen to it. It is the worst sin, the father of all sin, it is the sin that ruined angels. Every sin, every wrong action all root back to this one particular sin. Pride.

Turn in your Bibles to Genesis 3:1. Our story takes place in the garden of Eden. God created a paradise for man to live in with but one rule: do not eat of the tree in the center of the garden. Do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Genesis 3 tells us of the fall of man and the sin that caused it. Lets look at what it says:

Ge 3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, Did God really say, You must not eat from any tree in the garden? Ge 3:2 The woman said to the serpent, We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, Ge 3:3 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. Ge 3:4 You will not surely die, the serpent said to the woman. Ge 3:5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Ge 3:6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

Pride comes before the fall. That wise proverb is simply a statement of fact. The first sin ever committed was pride. It is the original sin. Notice what happens here in the story. The serpent comes to Eve and tempts her to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree. He denies that she will die which is a helpful comfort but not what does Eve in. Look at what he says to her in verse 5. This is what Eve is tempted by. Think about it. She is in a garden full of fruit. Eat from this tree or that tree she isnt looking at this forbidden fruit and considering eating it because she is starving and there is no place else to get food. She is looking at this fruit because it does have a unique benefit. She takes the fruit for one reason. The sin of Eve and the sin of Adam is not just disobedience, it is pride. They ate fruit because they wanted to be like God. Adam and Eve were not as great as they thought they were. They were not content with all the things God had given them and the paradise He had made for them. They wanted to be God, or at least His equals. As a result of their pride they sinned. Pride literally came before the fall.

This is our last week in the series on the 7 Deadly sins. We saved the best for last. We all have pride in our lives. If you sin you have a problem with pride. Maybe you are not proud but you do have a problem with pride. Lets look at our sins: 1. Greed. Why are you greedy? You think too highly of yourself and want more for yourself, this is a result of a pride problem. Lust, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Gluttony¦all of the 7 deadly sins are a direct result of pride living in our hearts. If you struggle with anger why do you struggle? You think too highly of yourself. People, things, or problems make you mad not because those things are so bad, but because you think too much of yourself. Prides fuels your anger which gets you into trouble. Pride then keeps you in trouble when the anger that got you there wears off. Can you believe he said that, to me? To me being the key words of your frustration. Who are you to tell me what to do? Dont talk to me like that! These are statements of pride that come from our feeling that we are better than we are. In any given fight between two people there is one inevitable truth. If either one of them would swallow their pride for just a little while the fight could end. Most of the time when you fight, you sin, you suffer, you feel pain in your life you feel these as a result of pride. You are not as great as you think you are.