OPEN: A man told of driving West Texas highway. There were no cars in sight and he was going about 70 mph when suddenly, as he went over a crest in the road, he could see up ahead a huge hawk feeding on a rabbit who’d been killed by a passing vehicle. Now ordinarily, what do you think a bird would do when faced by a speeding car? That’s right, it would fly away. But not this bird. The giant hawk straightened up and looked into the man's head lights, spreading its wing and opening it beak in bold defiance … just before he hit it. There was this "whump" sound, and suddenly this once proud bird lay dead on the highway. The man ended his story by saying that neither the dead rabbit the bird had died defending, nor the bird’s pride, were of any good to him at that point.
Proverbs 16:18 says: “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” And that giant hawk was proof of that.
For the next few weeks we’re going to be talking about the sins of Sodom. Most people believe that Sodom only had one sin. In fact, if I were to ask you what sin Sodom was known for, what would you say? (Homosexuality). In fact the sin of homosexuality if often called “SODOMY”
We’re told the story in Genesis 19:1-7 & 10-11 “The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. ‘My lords,’ he said, ‘please turn aside to your servant’s house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning.’ ‘No,’ they answered, "we will spend the night in the square.’ But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate.
Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. They called to Lot, ‘Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.’ Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, ‘No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing…. ‘The men (the angels) inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house and shut the door. Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the door.”
So Sodomy/homosexuality is the sin that is identified with Sodom. And that’s the sin we think of when we hear the name of that city. But here in Ezekiel God’s telling us there were ACTUALLY 6 sins of Sodom: Pride; Gluttony; Laziness; Neglect of the poor and needy; Haughtiness; and an “Abomination” (that last word is the one Ezekiel uses for homosexual behavior).
For the next few weeks we’re going to focusing on each one of those sins…and we’re going to ask WHY each of those sins made God so angry. But today we’re going to be looking at the sin of Pride.
The Bible tells us that “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble" James 4:6. Notice that God doesn’t just NOT LIKE proud people, He ACTIVELY opposes them. He deliberately works against them. His intention is remove them from the board.
But what’s the big deal? I mean, a lot of people are “proud” of things in their lives. They’re proud of their family/ car/ home/ job/ accomplishments. But that’s not the kind of pride God talking about here. If I say I’m proud of kids, I’m saying I’m pleased they’re part of my life. In fact, I’m so pleased that I want YOU to know how blessed I am. (I pulled out my wallet and pretended to show the picture section) I’ll show you their pictures, I’ll tell stories about what they’ve said and what they’ve done, I’ll tell you what they want to do with their lives. I’ll brag about them every chance I get. And that wouldn’t necessarily be a BAD thing. It might be annoying… but not necessarily bad. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever read in Scripture where God was angry with that type of pride, because that’s just ME telling YOU how blessed I am to have them in my life. That’s not a bad thing!!!!
So if that’s not a bad thing, what kind of pride is God talking about here? Well, the key to understanding this sin is in that verse: "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." What’s a humble PERSON known for? Well, they’re humble. They don’t brag about themselves. They’re not all wrapped up in themselves.
ILLUS: C.S. Lewis noted that the sin of “pride is a telescope turned the wrong way. It magnifies self and makes the heavens small.” In other words, a proud man is more focused on himself than He is on God. As Psalm 10:4 tells us “In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek (God); all his thoughts are, ‘There is no God.’”
Now, why would a proud man not seek God?
Well (long pause) WHY SHOULD HE? He doesn’t need God. He’s quite capable of doing things on his own… thank very much.
ILLUS: Back in the days of the Watergate scandal, one of the men involved in that crime was a man named G. Gordon Liddy. Shortly after his release from prison said, “I have found within myself all I need and all I shall ever need. I am a man of great faith, but my faith is in George Gordon Liddy. I have never failed me.”
A proud person is usually a godless man. Now, that doesn’t mean they don’t believe in God… they just don’t need Him. For example, the Pharisees were very religious men… but they weren’t Godly men. Jesus spoke to them once declaring: “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me’” Mark 7:6
Jesus was talking to the Pharisees and the Scribes and He was saying that their hearts were FAR from God. They were literally godless people.
In their “self-righteousness” these folks like these don't need God. If anything, they think God needs them. God should be grateful that they even bothered to show up at church.
Now you can often tell a proud person (godless person) by how they treat others. The Pharisees (for example) really didn’t treat others very well. Jesus told the story of the Pharisee that went to the Temple to pray and, standing close by, was a tax collector who’d also gone to pray. Jesus said:
“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. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’
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!’
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.”
Jesus contrasted the godlessness of a religious man with the humbleness of an imperfect sinner who loved God. This Pharisee was a man who compared himself with others because he was PROUD of who he was and he believed that was BETTER than everyone else.
ILLUS: This kind of remind of an old nursery rhyme. It goes: “Little Jack Horner sat in the corner, eating a Christmas pie” Do you remember that one?
“He pointed with glee at the guy next to me, and said, "What a BETTER boy am I!"
I know, that’s not the way it goes - I just made that last part up - but it does go to show the kind of thinking that drives the proud and the godless. They don’t need God… and they don’t need you, because they’re better people than YOU and me. Their righteousness is all wrapped up in themselves. That’s why it’s called SELF-righteousness.
So, be careful. Be very careful.
If you find yourself looking down on others in the church, or at work, or with your family, or your neighbors. BE VERY CAREFUL if you look down on them because you view them as not as righteous as you are; not as holy and religious as you are. Be careful because those are the symptoms of proud/ godless. As Scripture says: “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
One last thought. I found it interesting that this sin - pride - is at the top of the list here in Ezekiel. There are six sins listed here and the top sin is not (as I’d expect) homosexuality… but PRIDE! And I wondered about that!
But then Terri (the wife of our associate minister) found something interesting on the internet this week. She discovered that June is now called “PRIDE MONTH”. Pride month? What’s that all about? Well, it seems that the “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT)” group has designated this month as their “Pride Month.”
Now isn’t that interesting? Pride is the first on the list of sins that angered God about Sodom, and Sodom is the city known for its sexual perversion of homosexuality. And now, here – in our day – homosexuals are telling us that they are PROUD of their lifestyle. They have a PRIDE MONTH.
You see, this is one of the OTHER reasons that God hates pride. Pride often lies behind a person embracing their sin. These LGBT folks are PROUD of their sin; of their impurity. And they’re not the only ones who do that. They’re not the only ones who are proud of their immorality.
ILLUS: Several years ago there was an R-rated movie called “American Pie”. I never saw it. Don’t want to see it. I knew when it was being advertised that it was a raunchy movie. It seems that the directors of the movie – the Weitz brothers - had to make 4 trips to the offices of the people who rate movies trying to modify their movie to avoid the toxic NC-17 (the rating where movies go to die because nobody goes to the theater to see them). They were shooting for a more “respectable” R-rating. One of the brothers named Chris Weitz was quoted as saying “I’m proud of our film’s vulgarity”
Really? He was proud of being vulgar!!!!
That seems to be the nature of those who embrace sin. For example, there are those who are proud of their drunkenness will brag about how much alcohol they can consume and how they can’t remember everything they did the night before. Isaiah 5:22 declares: “Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and champions at mixing drinks”.
Others are proud of the drug use and of the kinds of drugs they can get their hands on. And there are men who are proud of the number of women they’ve taken to bed. I remember one NBA star bragging that he’d bedded over 3000 women – HE KEPT A COUNT!
I even had a relative that was proud of his collection of porn magazines, and he left them out for people to see. That was where I was first introduced to this impurity.
There are lots of people who are PROUD of their sin.
But, why on earth would people be proud of their sin? It wouldn’t seem to make any sense… EXCEPT (pause) except if you realize that these are people who’ve turned their backs on God (godless). They don’t want God in charge of their lives, they want to run things on their own. They don’t want to be “nice” people – I mean, they don’t want to be “bad” people, they just don’t want to be nice. They want THEIR SIN on their terms and they don’t want you going and telling them that they’re wrong to do so.
As I was researching scripture for this morning’s sermon I ran across the most intriguing text in Psalm 31:18. It says “Let the lying lips be mute, which speak insolently against the righteous in PRIDE and contempt.”
In other words, there are folks filled with PRIDE and CONTEMPT against righteous people… and so they tell lies about them. But WHY would the proud be so angry about righteous folk? Well, because righteousness threatens them.
II Corinthians describes it this way: “we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life…” II Corinthians 2:15-16
In other words – you stink! When people, who love God and want to please Him, get around the proud and unrighteous of this world, they give off an unpleasant smell. The proud and unrighteous smell death - their death. They smell God’s judgment of how they live their lives. And so, in self-defense, they brag about how good they are at their sins. They try to make their lifestyles look “normal” and THEN they criticize those who intimidate them with righteous lifestyles by making it seem those people are somehow abnormal.
I’ve watched over the years as people in the media and Hollywood will viciously attack anyone who dares to challenge sinful behaviors. They’ll do everything in their power to belittle and throw mud at people until the rest of the world begins to question their integrity.
CLOSE: James tells us not to be deceived by that kind of thinking:
“… don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’ Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you... James 4:4-8
Pride says “I don’t want to do that. I don’t need God and I don’t need you. I’m quite good enough as I am without God and His church.
Humbleness says “I can’t do this without even the least member of this church. I need every last member here to help me grow in Christ. And I DEFINITELY can’t survive without God because I believe if I come near to God He will come near to me.”
INVITATION
Footnote: A couple of things that I did not get to use in the sermon that I thought would be interesting to someone who would use this sermon for a resource.
1. The world “PRIDE” and the word “SIN” both have the same middle letter – “I”.
2. Pride was the sin that felled Satan. The passage out of Ezekiel 28 is believed by many scholars to be addressing – not just the city of Tyre – but Satan himself when it says: “Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground; I exposed you before kings, to feast their eyes on you.” Ezekiel 28:17. Paul seems to appealing to that truth when he advises Timothy not to select a novice to be an Elder of the church: “lest being puffed up with pride he fall into the same condemnation as the devil.” I Timothy 3:6
