Too Proud To Duck

Too Proud to Duck

by Pastor Jim May

The story is told of two ducks and a frog that lived together in a farm pond. They were best of friends. All day long you could watch them amuse themselves and play together in their pond. When the hot summer days came, however, the pond began to dry up, and soon it was evident they would have to move. This was no problem for the ducks. They could easily fly to another pond. But the frog was in trouble. He would be long dead before he could find another pond to live in. So it was decided that they would use a stick that could be held on both ends in the bill of two ducks that would fly side my side. That way the frog could hang on to the stick with his mouth as they flew to another pond and safety. The plan worked well. It was a strange sight to see the ducks and the frog flying along and so, as they were flying along a farmer looked up in sky and saw them. In admiration for their ingenuity he said. "Well, isn’t that a clever idea! I wonder who thought of it?" The frog forgot what he was doing and with a sense of great pride in his wisdom he opened his mouth and said, "I d i i d ..!" A few moments later he was dead, splattered on the ground. He was too proud of his own accomplishments to keep his mouth shut and save his own life.

Pride is a terrible thing. That frog found out in a very hard lesson that the Word of God is true in Proverbs 16:18, where it says, Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

It was pride that caused man to fall in the Garden of Eden. Adam was too proud to admit that he could not be as God. It was pride that caused the population of the whole world to perish in the flood. Their pride wouldn’t let them repent and be invited into the Ark. It is pride that causes so many people today to refuse to confess that need God and that pride will certainly lead to their eternal downfall.

How many times does God give us the way out of our sentence of death for sin in His Word? How many places can we find where God gives us some specific instructions on how to live in a manner that is pleasing to Him? How many times does His Word tell us that he will be our God, if we will only be His people? Time and time again God reaches out to mankind, making every effort to bring people back into right relationship with Him, but pride won’t let us hear him. Pride won’t let us obey Him. Pride won’t let us surrender our will to His will. Pride leads us through life like we have a ring in our nose and it’s pulling our nose upward all the time. We are snubbing our nose at God with arrogance and pride saying that we just don’t need Him, we can make it on our own.

The Word of God contains a very pointed story of the pride of one man. It speaks to each of us concerning our own pre-conceived ideas of how God should move on our behalf. We are so arrogant that we think we have it all figured out and we try to put God in a box and tell Him how to bless us and where to lead us. Even Christians, who are born again and filled with the Holy Ghost, often have this same sense of pride. We think that we know what’s best for ourselves and we don’t even ask God what He thinks. We just do our thing and then expect God to bless us just because we acknowledge Him from time to time.

My friend, God won’t fit into your box or my box. He isn’t restricted by our pre-conceived ideas and notions. Romans 11:33 says, O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! Just when we think we have it all figured out, God bursts forth from our box and begins to move and work in ways that we could not have imagined.

That’s what happens in this story found in 2 Kings, chapter 5. Let us examine the story together and glean for ourselves what the Holy Spirit and the Word of God would say to each of us.

2 Kings 5:1 Now Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master, and honourable, because by him the LORD had given deliverance unto Syria: he was also a mighty man in valour, but he was a leper.