In 1974, Philippe Petit, the world-famous high-wire artist, fulfilled his dream of walking a high wire between the World Trade Center towers. In 2015, Tristar Productions produced a motion picture telling his story called The Walk. In an early scene from the film, he's under the Big Top in France. Take a look (show The Walk practice scene).
Philippe says, “So [my mentor] Papa Rudy let me travel with his troupe. Of course, I never did any performance. But any time the big top was empty, I would practice on the wire.”
In the next scene, Philippe is high up just under the tent's ceiling and balancing himself on a wire with a pole. Papa Rudy enters the tent and looks up at Philippe, who was walking carefully but confidently across the thin wire. He hesitates as he is about to reach the platform and then takes a more assertive forward step. But suddenly Philippe and his wire start shaking precariously. He falls to the side, grabbing on to the wire with both hands, barely avoiding falling to his death as the pole plummets to the ground.
As he hangs onto the wire with both hands, the ground a great distance below, he slowly works his way to the platform. Breathing heavily and making his way down the ladder he faces Papa Rudy who tells him, “Most wire walkers, they die when they arrive. They think they have arrived, but they're still on the wire. If you have three steps to do, and you take those steps arrogantly, if you think you are invincible, you're going to die” (The Walk DVD, Directed by Robert Zemeckis, 2015, Tristar Productions, 25:29 to 27:02; www.PreachingToday.com).
Pride goes before a fall every time (Proverbs 16:18). So how do you avoid the pitfall of pride? How do you keep arrogance from ruining your life? Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Obadiah, the Old Testament book of Obadiah, where Edom, Israel’s neighbor to the southeast, learns its fate because of its pride.
Obadiah 1 The vision of Obadiah. Thus says the Lord GOD concerning Edom: We have heard a report from the LORD, and a messenger has been sent among the nations: “Rise up! Let us rise against her for battle!” (ESV)
God sent a message to the nations, telling them to rise up against Edom in battle, because of the nation’s pride.
Obadiah 2-4 Behold, I will make you small among the nations; you shall be utterly despised. The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rock, in your lofty dwelling, who say in your heart, “Who will bring me down to the ground?” Though you soar aloft like the eagle, though your nest is set among the stars, from there I will bring you down, declares the LORD (ESV).
God determines that He will bring down this proud nation. They’re proud of the place in which they dwell—high in the cliffs of Petra in current day Jordan, virtually impenetrable by any invading army. As a result, they feel invincible, but that didn’t stop God from bringing them down.
In 586 B.C. Edom encouraged Babylon to destroy Jerusalem (Psalm 137:7). Soon after that, the Nabateans, from northern Arabia, drove out most of the Edomites. They had invited the Nabateans in for a banquet, but the Nabateans, once inside Edom, turned against their ally, killed the guards, and drove the Edomites out of their homes (Baker, BKC).
Pride goes before a fall!
God brought them down from their lofty place.
God also plundered their lofty treasures. For the Edomites were not only proud of their place; they were proud of their possessions. They farmed irrigated, fertile valleys and lived on a major trade route, so they became extremely wealthy. But God took all that away when the Nabateans deceived them.
Obadiah 5-6 If thieves came to you, if plunderers came by night— how you have been destroyed!— would they not steal only enough for themselves? If grape gatherers came to you, would they not leave gleanings? How Esau has been pillaged, his treasures sought out! (ESV).
Even thieves and grape pickers leave something behind, but those who plunder Edom will leave nothing behind. They will totally pillage or ransack the nation—literally, they will thoroughly search out and expose all of Edom’s wealth, taking it all away. Now, Edom is called Esau here, because Esau, Jacob’s brother, was the founder of the nation. You see, no matter where you are and what you have, you can lose it all very quickly. That’s what happened to Edom.
Obadiah 7 All your allies have driven you to your border; those at peace with you have deceived you; they have prevailed against you; those who eat your bread have set a trap beneath you— you have no understanding (ESV)/
Deceived by an ally, they had no idea what was coming! Pride goes before a fall! God brought them down from their lofty place. God plundered their lofty possessions, and God confounded their lofty perception. God made fools out of their wise men.
Obadiah 8-9 Will I not on that day, declares the LORD, destroy the wise men out of Edom, and understanding out of Mount Esau? And your mighty men shall be dismayed, O Teman, so that every man from Mount Esau will be cut off by slaughter (ESV).
Teman was Edom’s capital, named for Esau’s grandson (Genesis 36:10-11). Even so, God will slaughter every man! Pride goes before a fall every time!
One commentator said, “Edom’s arrogance led to her complete humiliation. Her security and wealth would be gone, and her wise leaders, soldiers, and others would all fall under God’s mighty hand… What a false hope pride gives [those] who try to find security in their own strength apart from God (Baker, The Bible Knowledge Commentary, Victor Books).
So, if you want to avoid the pitfall of pride, stop depending on your own strength, wealth, or wisdom. Instead…
TRUST YOUR GOD.
Depend on the Lord and humble yourself before Him.
It starts when you recognize that you cannot save yourself. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). And the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord (Romans 6:23).
You cannot save yourself, but God can save you! That’s why He sent His Son, Jesus. The Bible says, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). That is to say, Christ died in our place on the cross. He took the punishment we deserved, so God could give us eternal life.
All you have to do is trust Christ with your life. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).
God saves you not when you work for it, no! He saves you when you humbly depend on Him, when you put your faith in Christ, when you trust Him with your life. Please, if you haven’t done it already, trust Christ with your life. Commit your life to Him, and then live your life in daily dependence upon His Spirit.
David Brooks, in his book The Road to Character, contrasts two great quarterbacks who faced each other in 1969 from opposite sidelines in Super Bowl III—Johnny Unitas and Joe Namath. Both were raised in the steel towns of western Pennsylvania, but they had grown up a decade apart and lived in different moral cultures.
Unitas grew up in the old culture of modesty and humility. His father died when he was five and his mother took over the family coal delivery business. Unitas weighed 145 pounds while playing quarterback for his high school team, and he took a beating during every game. He went to church before every game, deferred to the authority of his coaches, and lived a football-obsessed life. After college he had a brief tryout with the Pittsburgh Steelers but was cut. Then he got a long-shot call from the Baltimore Colts. He made the team and spent many of his early years with the Colts steadily losing. Unitas was not an overnight sensation in the NFL, but he was steadily ripening, honing his skills, and making his teammates better.
He was a deliberately unglamorous figure with his black high-top sneakers, bowed legs, stooped shoulders, and a crew cut above his rough face. He was loyal to his organization and to his teammates. In the huddle he'd rip into his receivers for screwing up plays and running the wrong routes. Then, after the game, he'd lie to the reporter: “My fault, I overthrew him” was his standard line. Steve Sabol of NFL Films captured Unitas' character: “He was an honest workman doing an honest job.”
In sharp contrast, Joe Namath was the flamboyant star, with white shoes and flowing hair, brashly guaranteeing victory. Broadway Joe made himself the center of attention, a spectacle off the field as much as on it, with $5,000 fur coats, long sideburns, and playboy manners. He openly bragged about what a great athlete he was, how good-looking he was. “Joe! Joe! You're the most beautiful thing in the world!” he shouted to himself in the bathroom mirror as a reporter looked on.
He embodied the autonomy ethos that was beginning to sweep through the country. He once said, “I believe in letting a guy live the way he wants to if he doesn't hurt anyone. I feel that everything I do is okay for me and doesn't affect anybody else, including the girls I go out with. Look, man, I live and let live. I like everybody” (David Brooks, The Road to Character, Random House, 2015, pp. 240-243; www.PreachingToday.com).
Johnny Unitas and Joe Namath—two great quarterbacks, but two very different ways to live your life. What will it be for you?
Frederica Mathewes-Green once said, “Ego builds a cardboard fortress that humility must, every day, tear down” (Frederica Mathewes-Green, The Jesus Prayer, Paraclete Press, 2009, p. 9; www.PreachingToday.com).
So, if you want to avoid the pitfall of pride, I suggest you live your life humbly, in dependence upon the Lord. Trust your God, and then…
LOVE YOUR BROTHER.
Care for your neighbors. Show compassion to those in need. For pride can cause you to disdain people as the proud Edomites did to the Jews.
Obadiah 10-11 Because of the violence done to your brother Jacob, shame shall cover you, and you shall be cut off forever. On the day that you stood aloof, on the day that strangers carried off his wealth and foreigners entered his gates and cast lots for Jerusalem, you were like one of them (ESV).
When the Babylonians plundered Jerusalem in 586 B.C., the Edomites stood aloof and even encouraged Jerusalem’s destruction.
Obadiah 12-14 But do not gloat over the day of your brother in the day of his misfortune; do not rejoice over the people of Judah in the day of their ruin; do not boast in the day of distress. Do not enter the gate of my people in the day of their calamity; do not gloat over his disaster in the day of his calamity; do not loot his wealth in the day of his calamity. Do not stand at the crossroads to cut off his fugitives; do not hand over his survivors in the day of distress (ESV).
They gloated over Jerusalem’s destruction, rushing in to loot the city, capturing any survivors, and turning them over to the Babylonians.
Wiersbe says, “We see the angry [Babylonian] soldiers as they wreck the walls, slay the people, and burn the city. But we see something else. We see a group of neighboring citizens—the Edomites—as they stand on the other side and encourage the Babylonians to ruin the city. ‘Raze it! Raze it!’ they are calling. ‘Dash their little children against the stones and wipe out the Jews!’ (Psalm 137:7–9) (Wiersbe, W. W., 1993, Wiersbe’s Expository Outlines on the Old Testament, Victor Books).
This was the attitude of the proud Edomites towards their Jewish relatives! Their ancestors, Jacob and Esau were brothers (Genesis 25:21-26), who became and remained enemies for generations. So, when the Babylonians decimated the Jews, the Edomites participated in their destruction. Now, that’s no way to treat your brothers, but pride will make you disdain those you should love.
William Muir, a researcher at Purdue University, studies the productivity of chickens. He wants to know how to breed chickens that lay lots of eggs and create environments that foster greater productivity. To research how to make super chickens, he did an experiment.
Muir put chickens into two groups. One group contained normal, healthy chickens. He left them alone for six generations of a chicken’s life. Another, separate group included all the super chickens, those who are proven high producing egg layers. Muir also left them alone for six generations. He provided food, water, and a clean environment, but did nothing to influence the chickens egg laying.
At the end of the experiment, Muir discovered that the group of normal chickens were flourishing: they were laying more eggs per chicken than when the experiment started. In the group of super chickens, only three were left. They had pecked the others to death (MaryKate Morse, Lifelong Leadership, Nav Press, 2020, page 9; www.PreachingToday.com).
What we don’t need are a bunch of superstars with big egos, pecking each other to death, no! Rather, God uses humble people, who look out for each other, causing everyone to flourish.
Jesse Jackson tells the story of a visit to the University of Southern Mississippi. While touring the campus with the university president, he noticed a towering male student, six-feet, eight-inches tall, holding hands with a midget coed barely three-feet tall. His curiosity piqued, Jackson stopped to watch as the young man, dressed in a warm-up suit, tenderly picked up the midget, kissed her, and sent her off to class. The president explained that the student was a star basketball player. Both parents had died in his youth, and he made a vow to look after his sister. Many scholarship offers came his way, but only Southern Mississippi offered one to his sister too.
Jackson went over to the basketball star, introduced himself, and said he appreciated him looking out for his sister. The athlete shrugged and said, “Those of us who God makes 6' 8" have to look out for those he makes 3' 3"” (Philip Yancey, Rumors of Another World, Zondervan, 2003, p. 204; www.PreachingToday.com).
If God has gifted you with great stature, power, and/or wealth, that’s not a reason to boast. That’s an opportunity to serve. That’s an opportunity to use your gifts to benefit those less fortunate than you. If you want to avoid the pitfall of pride, trust your God and love your brother.
Now, if you’ve been the victim of mistreatment and abuse, don’t lash out in anger or give up in despair. Instead…
HOPE FOR YOUR FUTURE.
Anticipate better days ahead. Look forward to God making all things right as He pays back the perpetrators, and you possess His Kingdom. That was God’s promise to the Jews, who had just been exiled to Babylon.
First, He would pay back their enemies. Look at what God says to the Edomites and all of Israel’s enemies.
Obadiah 15-16 For the day of the LORD is near upon all the nations. As you have done, it shall be done to you; your deeds shall return on your own head. For as you have drunk on my holy mountain, so all the nations shall drink continually; they shall drink and swallow, and shall be as though they had never been (ESV).
They shall drink the wine of God’s wrath until they cease to exist. For God will do unto them as they did to others.
My dear friends, you don’t need to seek your own revenge. Just let God take care of those who hurt you. “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord (Romans 12:19).
Delia Owens, in her best-selling book Where the Crawdads Sing, introduces her readers to a young girl named Kya, living in Barkley Cove, North Carolina. Known to locals as “Marsh Girl,” she had lived a hard, lonely life, abandoned and forgotten by virtually everybody. Then, one of those characters returns to the marshes of North Carolina. It was Tate, her first love and the only family she knew. He had left the swamp for success elsewhere, promising to return for her. But Tate never returned, and he never wrote to explain why.
One night Tate came up to her front door. Kya is enraged at the sight of him as he attempts to apologize:
Kya, leaving you was not only wrong; it was the worst thing I have done or ever will do in my life. I have regretted it for years and will always regret it. I think of you every day. For the rest of my life, I’ll be sorry I left you. I truly thought that you wouldn’t be able to leave the marsh and live in the other world, so I didn’t see how we could stay together. But that was wrong.
Finishing his plea, Tate watched her until she asked, “What do you want now, Tate?”
He responded, “If only you could, some way, forgive me.”
As Kya looked at her toes, she thought to herself, “Why should the injured, the still bleeding, bear the onus of forgiveness?” (Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2018, p. 198; www.PreachingToday.com).
That’s a good question—Why should the injured bear the onus of forgiveness? Oh, my dear friend, if someone has hurt you, you don’t have to bear the onus of forgiveness alone, because Jesus bore it on the cross. Just release the hurt to Him and stop seeking your own revenge if only for yourself.
Someone once said, “Doing an injury puts you below your enemy; revenging one makes you even with him; forgiving it sets you above him (Anonymous, Men of Integrity, Vol. 1, no. 1; www.PreachingToday.com).
Set yourself above your enemy by letting God deal with him or her. Trust His promise to pay back your enemies.
Then trust His promise to provide for you His kingdom. Depend on the Lord to make all things right in the end. That was God’s promise to His people.
Obadiah 17-18 But in Mount Zion there shall be those who escape, and it shall be holy, and the house of Jacob shall possess their own possessions. The house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau stubble; they shall burn them and consume them, and there shall be no survivor for the house of Esau, for the LORD has spoken (ESV).
The house of Jacob, the Jews, will flourish while the House of Esau, the Edomites, will burn.
Obadiah 19-21 Those of the Negeb shall possess Mount Esau, and those of the Shephelah shall possess the land of the Philistines; they shall possess the land of Ephraim and the land of Samaria, and Benjamin shall possess Gilead. The exiles of this host of the people of Israel shall possess the land of the Canaanites as far as Zarephath, and the exiles of Jerusalem who are in Sepharad shall possess the cities of the Negeb. Saviors shall go up to Mount Zion to rule Mount Esau, and the kingdom shall be the LORD’s (ESV).
God will restore His people to their land, and He Himself will rule. He will establish His Kingdom on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Though devastated, the Jewish people can look forward to a glorious future. They will possess God’s kingdom someday.
And that’s God’s promise to all His people. Jesus said to all His followers, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 24:10).
The Kingdom is yours! Your pain is not the end of the story, because there is a glorious future ahead for all who put their trust in Christ. So don’t dwell on the pain. Focus on God’s promise of restoration.
Several years ago, state authorities selected the site of a hydroelectric plant. They planned to put a dam across a river, which would put a small town under water. Now, they announced the plan to give the residents of that town plenty of time to get their affairs in order and relocate.
However, in the intervening months, something strange took place. House upkeep stopped. Community improvement ceased. Infrastructure, basic lawn care, all came to an end. The town looked abandoned long before any of the residents had moved away.
One resident explained the phenomenon in these terms: “Where there is no hope for the future, there is no power in the present” (H.B. Charles, “Hope to Face Any Situation,” Dallas Theological Seminary, 2024 Spiritual Life Conference, 1-24-24; www.PreachingToday.com).
My dear friends, even in the midst of your pain, please, don’t lose your hope for the future. Instead, hold fast to the hope set before you (Hebrews 6:18), because God has promised restoration after the ruin, and He cannot lie.
In pain or prosperity, hang on to your hope, hang on to your love, and hang on to your faith. Trust your God. Love your brother. Hope for your future.
