Humble and proud of it!!
LK 18:9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 10 "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: `God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
LK 18:13 "But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, `God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
LK 18:14 "I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
A proud person is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you can’t see something that’s above you. (CS Lewis.)
Once I was in Queenstown - ice skating on their artificial rink that used to be in the gardens there. I was enjoying running quite fast on the skates and was quite proud of how well I was doing. But then I was going at full speed when a spectator put his foot out and very unkindly foot tripped me. Flat on my face in the ice with my pride wounded I learned a lesson about pride.
Today I would like to consider the area of pride and ask you to consider how it affects you and to offer three antidotes to this disease.
English author CS Lewis says:-
There is one vice of which no man in the world is free: which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people; except Christians, ever imagine they are guilty themselves. I have heard people admit they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time I have seldom met anyone, who was not a Christisan., who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which we are more unconcious of in ourselves. And the more we have it in ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.
The vice I am talking about is pride or self conceit and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals is Humility.
According to Christian Teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkedness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison; it was through Pride that the devil became the devil; Pride leads to every other vice it is the complete anti-God state of mind.
If you want to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, "How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take notice of me, or shove their oar in, or patronise me, or show off???The point is that each person’s pride is in competition with every one else’s pride.
We need to understand, though that a reasonable view of yourself is not pride. Pleasure in being praised is not pride. .
LK 18:9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 10 "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: `God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
LK 18:13 "But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, `God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
LK 18:14 "I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
CS Lewis says:- The child who is patted on the back for doing a lesson well, the saved soul to whom christ says "Well done", are pleased and ought to be. For here the pleasure lies not in what you are but in the fact that you have pleased someone you
Wanted to please. The trouble begins when you pass from thinking, "I have please him; all is well." To thinking, "What a fine person I must be to have done it."The more you delight in yourself and the less you delight in the praise, the worse you are becoming. When you delight wholly in yourself and do not care about the praise at all, you have reached the bottom..
It seems to me that one of the things that every christian needs to be alert to then, is this whole area of self exaltation or pride.
The bible certainly has a lot to say about it.
For example:-(PROV 11:2) "WHEN PRIDE COMETH, THEN COMETH SHAME: BUT WITH THE LOWLY IS WISDOM."
(PROV 16:19) "BETTER IT IS TO BE OF AN HUMBLE SPIRIT WITH THE LOWLY, THAN TO DIVIDE THE SPOIL WITH THE PROUD."
(ISA 66:2) "FOR ALL THOSE THINGS HATH MINE HAND MADE, AND ALL THOSE THINGS HAVE BEEN, SAITH THE LORD: BUT TO THIS MAN WILL I LOOK, EVEN TO HIM THAT IS POOR AND OF A CONTRITE SPIRIT, AND TREMBLETH AT MY WORD."
(MAT 23:12) "AND WHOSOEVER SHALL EXALT HIMSELF SHALL BE ABASED; AND HE THAT SHALL HUMBLE HIMSELF SHALL BE EXALTED."
(1 PET 5:5-6) "LIKEWISE, YE YOUNGER, SUBMIT YOURSELVES UNTO THE ELDER. YEA, ALL OF YOU BE SUBJECT ONE TO ANOTHER, AND BE CLOTHED WITH HUMILITY: FOR GOD RESISTETH THE PROUD, AND GIVETH GRACE TO THE HUMBLE. {6} HUMBLE YOURSELVES THEREFORE UNDER THE MIGHTY HAND OF GOD, THAT HE MAY EXALT YOU IN DUE TIME:"
Lets consider then How we can avoid the sin of Pride and therefore walk in humility before God:-
LK 18:9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else
Surely the first thing with pride is to get a realistic view of yourself.
The problem with the Pharisee was he was comparing himself with the publican.
His hidden vices were ignored and his perfection was compared with the Publican’s public obvious sins.
Sometimes it does us good to get a healthy view of our own sins.
Position does not eliminate sin.
You might be a leading light in your community - you might be A Headmaster a Minister - a Prime Minister a Bishop or a Pope - but your sin will not be affected a bit by your position.
The only way we can come to true humility is as it says in 1 John 1 verse 9
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.
That is what the Publican is doing in the story Jesus told he is coming to God with genuine confession over his sins and it is this confession and grief over his sin that brings God’s forgiveness - that is why Pride is so debilitating because
If you don’t confess it it aint forgiven.
Dwight L. Moody once said God sends no-one away empty except those who are full of themselves.
MT 22:8 "Then he said to his servants, `The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9 Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ 10 So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.
MT 22:11 "But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12 `Friend,’ he asked, `how did you get in here without wedding clothes?’ The man was speechless.
We need to be clothed in god’s forgiveness and that will deal with Pride.
The second point is:
A proud person will always run into trouble when they encounter God:- to quote CS Lewis again:
How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appeat to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approvves of them and thinks them far better than ordianry people: that is, they pay a penny-worth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound’s worth of Pride towards their fellow-men (or woman). I suppose it was of those people Christ was thinking when He said that some would preach about Him and cast out devils in His name, only to be told at the end of the world that He had never known them. Luckily, we have a test. Whenever we find that our religous life is making us feel that we are good - above all, that we are better than someone else - I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether.
CS Lewis about 1943.
Whilst I am sure that we could discus the small dirty object with the result that we might prefer small forgiven person - bathed in the grace of God - the central thrust of what he is saying holds.
How then can we avoid this great trap of the devil?
Jesus makes it plain - "For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
I am not sure that the story that Jesus told fits that comfortably into the vast range of self help psychology books or even some christian psychology schools of thought - For the publican does not accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative - rather he accentuates the negative - he squares up to his sinful state and it leads him to tears of sorrow and grief before a Holy God.
Whereas the Pharisee beats his breast and does what all of us are prone to do
He justified himself.
You may think that the great people of faith were perfect - but they weren’t they were simply forgiven.
The apostle Paul often talks of how he had faithfully followed God but in one incredible moment he reveals his humility:-
RO 7:21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!
The key to destroying pride folk is a complete understanding of the gospel in our own lives.
When we have that we are free from artificial ugly ego trips.
Free of sophistication which I understand in Greek means deceit.
Free of restrictions in sharing God’s love and God’s word with others.
It is as Jesus has said - If the son has set you free then you are free indeed.
Finally as charles Spurgeon said;- Be not proud of race, face, place or grace.
Pride and Humility verses for reflection and prayer.
JAS 1:9 The brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his high position. 10 But the one who is rich should take pride in his low position, because he will pass away like a wild flower
"God opposes the proud
but gives grace to the humble." James 4 verse 6.
James 4 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
1PE 5:6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
LK 1:52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
ZEP 3:11 On that day you will not be put to shame
for all the wrongs you have done to me,
because I will remove from this city
those who rejoice in their pride.
Never again will you be haughty
on my holy hill.
ZEP 3:12 But I will leave within you
the meek and humble,
who trust in the name of the LORD.
ZEP 2:3 Seek the LORD, all you humble of the land,
you who do what he commands.
Seek righteousness, seek humility;
perhaps you will be sheltered
on the day of the LORD’s anger.
Isaiah 66 verse 2:-"This is the one I esteem: and trembles at my word.
PRIDE>
Pretty
Reliable way of
Imitating the
Devil’s
Ego.
