One of the most frequent headlines the past several months has been the Firestone tire safety issue on certain Ford Sport Utility Vehicles. However, not only have these two companies been linked together by business deals, they have also been linked together by marriage.
In 1947 Harvey Firestone, Jr.’s daughter Martha married the grandson of Henry Ford, William Clay Ford, who I believe still owns the Detroit Lions football team.
The Ford party traveled to Akron for the wedding in brand new Lincolns that were dutifully parked in the Firestone executive garage.
It was called to Mr. Firestone’s attention by the garage manager that all of the Lincolns had Goodyear tires and would Mr. Firestone like to kid Mr. Ford’s father, Edsel Ford, about this?
"No," was the reply with a big grin. "Just jack up all of the Lincolns, take off the Goodyear’s, and put on ours!"
As the manager went off to do that, Firestone turned to the reporter of this story and said with a twinkle, "I’m not going to have a daughter of mine married on Goodyear tires."
A case of ego, perhaps?
Or how about the young minister who often boasted in public that all the time he needed to prepare his Sunday sermon was the few minutes it took him to walk to the church from the parsonage next door. After a few weeks of hearing his sermons, the congregation bought a new parsonage - five miles away!
Pride - one of the seven deadly sins. It creates walls between friends, lovers, family members, spouses, and co-workers. It alienates persons because no one likes to be around a person who is so self-centered.
We have finished looking at ways of improving our spiritual vision and hearing so that we can see and hear God more clearly than ever before. However, we also need to understand how Satan, our spiritual enemy, tries to get us to see and hear the wrong things and keep us from walking closely with God.
So for the next five weeks we are going to look at five ways that Satan will work to keep us from becoming both persons of God as well as the people of God.
This morning, we begin by looking at the trap of self-sufficiency or, as I call it, pride.
If there is one symbol of history and culture that represents the strength that pride has it is the mirror. Think about it.
How many people, including yourself, do you notice or see primp in front of the mirror?
Last week I was driving up route 3 and I notice a young woman putting makeup on as she drove down the road.
Then there is the Disney classic - Snow White that contains the memorable wicked witch who barks at the mirror, "Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all?"
When the mirror gives the wrong answer, the witch flies into a fit of rage and Snow White becomes the target of her resentment and pride.
God wants us to grow and be all that we can be in Him. He wants The Church, our church to do the same. Satan knows this and so he will use pride as a way of bringing us down by encouraging us to be self-sufficient instead of humble.
There is a story in the book of Luke, chapter 18:9-14 that illustrates this reality. But, before we read that passage together I want to briefly speak about Satan.
There tends to be are two responses to Satan. The one response is to minimize his power and place. The other response is to over state his power and place. The truth is in between.
The one leaves out the reality of the battle of good verses evil. It is going on. It is for real.
The other creates an undue fear that often turns paranoid.
Satan is not as powerful as God. An historic view of Satan is that he is a fallen angel who attempted to overthrow God and failed. And while he does have power, and we must accept that truth, he is not as powerful as God though he has influence in our lives.
Flip Wilson the black comedian who had a variety show in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, had a phrase spoken by one of his characters that has become a well used phrased, ’the Devil made me do it.’
The reality is that Devil does not make us do things. He suggests, he tempts, us, to do things. Remember the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3 and the temptation of Jesus in Matthew 4. Satan did not make Eve eat the fruit nor did Satan make Jesus do what he wanted Him to do.
WE make the choice to either do what is right (good) or what is wrong (evil). Satan tempts us to do what is wrong.
And one of those ways he tempts us to lose ground as we walk with God, is get us to let pride to take hold of our lives and Jesus illustrates the difference between pride and humility in Luke 18:9-14.
(READ THE PASSAGE)
One of the way that pride is used by Satan is to get us to move from humility to self-sufficiency. We can see this illustrated in this passage of scripture.
Notice first of all that the intent of the passage, according to Luke, was to take aim at individuals who had great self-confidence and scorned everyone else.
Now, there is nothing wrong with having self-confidence. Especially self-confidence rooted in the truth of who we are and can be in Christ.
We are His best work, created in God’s image, for God’s honor. We are valuable to Him and we matter to Him.
The problem really is the second half of that statement - the scorning of others. Being self-confident is one thing, being arrogant, like the Pharisee was, is another.
The problem with pride is that it creates an attitude of self-sufficiency that basically says, " I can do it all! I don’t need anyone else’s help."
The Pharisee, by comparing himself to other types of people, elevated himself to a place of really not needing God - he could do it "by myself, thank you very much."
When self-sufficiency gains a foothold in our lives, then the kind of honesty we need in our lives to deal with reality is not there. We shut ourselves off from others who care about us and we shut ourselves off from God who cannot do anything for us because we are unavailable and unwilling to let him.
The result is isolation and quite frankly, an arrogance that creates even more isolation. One then becomes like a dam that creates a backup and blocks the flow of God’s spirit.
What God seeks to help us develop is humility. Now what is humility? It is an honest assessment of what we are with a willing embrace of accepting whose we truly are and what we truly can become through the power of God.
Humility is not a doormat, ’woe is me,’ mentality. It is not a constant berating of oneself. That is really a reverse sort of pride.
I think that it is harder to be truly humble because we take a risk of being used. But, take a look at the tax collector.
Like in our time, those responsible for collecting taxes were despised and hated. They were considered traitors to their people and they were considered as a lower class of individuals.
But, the honest confession of who he was helped him be open to the work of God in his life. He acknowledged that he was a sinner that he was alienated from God and he needed help.
When we are truly and healthfully humble about ourselves that enables God’s grace to be at work in our lives. Not so with the proud, the self-sufficient. They don’t need anybody.
Jesus recognized the difference in the two men and made the correct and truthful observation, "The proud will be humbled, but the humble will be honored."
How then do we not let self-sufficiency and pride take root in our lives and in our church?
1. We make the decision to be honest about ourselves and do our own confessing.
I have had several friends involved in various 12-step groups over the years. I have had the privilege of reading their material and setting in on some open meetings:
One of the phrases that they have in their literature is this one, "a way of living which demands rigorous honesty." For those who deal with any kind of an addiction, it requires a ’rigorous’ honesty that helps them admit to their problem, what causes the problem, and what they need to do to recover from their addiction.
I don’t know about you, but this sounds a great deal like the tax collector’s confession. He admitted that he had problems because he admitted he was a sinner, he wasn’t perfect, and that they only way that he could change is with God’s mercy and forgiveness. His "rigorous" honesty was not lost on God. It created the opening through which God could work.
2. A second way to prevent pride and self-sufficiency is to be accountable to one other trustworthy person about what is going on in your life. Pride is a creature of the darkness and what happens when you shine a light on creatures of the darkness? They scatter and hide.
We need at least one person that we can bare our souls to and know that we will be asked tough questions, but loved and cared for in spite of our honest answers.
One of the most amazing and interesting dialogues that I have ever seen on TV took place during a special about the Blue Angels, the US Navy demonstration flight team.
After every performance they debrief that performance and each pilot begins his comments with something like, "My name is ________ and I am grateful to be a part of this team." And then the speaker commences to talk about his own performance that day, starting with the parts he did not do well."
For us on the ground, we did not see those parts. We stood in awe and watch them do amazing things with their F/A-18 Hornet jets.
But, from their perspective, they knew where they needed to do more work. Because their very lives, and those of their teammates depended on it.
When we make ourselves accountable to another person, we create an environment for honesty that does not allow pride and self-sufficiency to take root and grow.
In fact, one of the most interesting things I have ever read in the literature of AA comes from their 12 Steps and 12 Traditions. "When we have been honest with another human being we have been honest with God."
We do not fly high performance fighter jets several hundred feet above the ground. We have a far more important task - we are responsible for the honest care of our souls and those around us.
There are eternal consequences to this task and we dare not take them lightly. I don’t and I hope that I never do.
Has Satan tricked you into thinking that you do not need help from anybody and that you can live your life "all by myself, thank you very much!"
Such a decision affects not just you, but those who love you, work with you, go to school with you, and worship with you. My hope and pray for all of us today is that we will have the honesty and willingness to let go of our pride and self-sufficiency, humble ourselves before the Lord and one other safe and trustworthy person, and allow the forgiveness and grace of God flow in our lives once again.
Amen.
