TPW 29 Pride and Humility from the Conference on Proverbs

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Do you know anything of what he's talking about there? How evil we really are. What we really do deserve at the justice of God.
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Has the holiness of God humbled your sin sick soul to the dust of the ground to beg for mercy.
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Welcome to the Father's and Witness this is Pastor Patrick Hines here at Quickwell Heights Presbyterian Church in Kingsport, Tennessee.
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And today I wanted to post the sermon or talk that I did, actually it was a sermon it was at a worship service at our
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Proverbs conference I haven't had a chance to edit and actually pull the sound files from the other speakers.
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My hope is to eventually get that on our sermon audio site. But this is what I preached the
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Sunday morning of the conference on the issue of humility in the book of Proverbs.
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We looked at a lot of other passages as well. This is something that everyone has to work at.
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Pride is one of the worst sins that people have. You see a lot of that in ourselves.
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You see a lot of it in others. It's a repulsive quality. But we all have it at times in a sinful way.
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So I really tried to hammer this as hard as I could in a sermon. A number of folks told me that it was really a blessing and helpful to them.
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It was convicting to me to work on this topic, to deal with pride and to look at what the scriptures say about humility.
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So I hope you find this out of find. Let's pray together, please. Our heavenly father, we thank you for breathing forth the words of eternal life, for showing us what is good and what you require of us.
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We thank you for the gospel of Jesus Christ by which we stand and by which we are saved.
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Lord, teach us to understand, to believe and to receive your truth with faith and love, to lay it up in our hearts and practice it in our lives.
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We ask in Jesus' wonderful name. Amen. Please take your Bibles and turn to Proverbs 18 verse 12.
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There are a lot of passages in my sermon manuscript this morning on humility.
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So we're going to have a short scripture reading because I'll be reading a lot of passages to you as the Bible has much to say about humility and its opposite, pride.
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Proverbs 18 verse 12. Proverbs 18 verse 12.
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This is God's word. Before destruction the heart of man is haughty, but humility goes before honor.
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May God bless the reading of his infallible word. Paul wrote in the great application section of the epistle to the
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Romans in Romans 12, 3. For I say through the grace given to me to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.
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Psalm 103 15, the word of God says, As for man, his days are like grass, as a flower of the field so he flourishes, for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.
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James chapter 3, speaking of the tongue of human beings, says, Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasts great things.
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Proverbs 21, 24, A proud and haughty man, scoffer is his name, he acts with arrogant pride. 1
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Peter 5, 5, Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
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I've given you three points there in your bulletin, if you'd like to follow along that way, we're going to cover these three things this morning.
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Number one, what is pride? Number two, pride's unique evil, and then true biblical humility, number three.
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So what is pride? Pride's unique evil, and then true biblical humility. What is pride?
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First and foremost. Pride is a vice that most people despise when they see it in others.
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Few things are more repulsive than a young man who is so sure of himself that he will not hesitate to open his mouth and share his great wisdom with all who are willing to listen.
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The Pharisees were castigated constantly by our Lord for their outward pretentiousness, but inward pride.
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To illustrate this, the text of scripture records for us our Lord's parable of the tax collector and the
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Pharisee who both went up to the temple to pray, and the Pharisee prayed, God, I thank you that I am not like other men.
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And the tax collector stood far off and beat his chest and wouldn't even raise his eyes to heaven and said,
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God, be merciful to me a sinner. Guided by the Holy Spirit before he told that great parable, and Luke, as he recorded it for us in Luke 18, described the reasons for that parable as follows in Luke 18, 9.
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As he spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others.
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That's what that parable was intended to address. Now, before we all start thinking to ourselves, boy,
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I know someone who would benefit from this message. Let's try to focus on weighing ourselves in the balance first.
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If such thoughts cross our minds when we hear an introduction regarding the vice of the sin of pride, if we're immediately thinking of all the prideful people we know who really ought to be here, then the chances are maybe we need to hear this ourselves.
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Remember the Pharisees were confident of their own humility. They were proud of how humble they were.
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And they were proud of their righteousness, and they despised others, it says in Scripture. Pride is a very ugly sin, and those of us who have the most of it are likely to be the least who recognize it.
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Pride resides in the deepest, darkest, and most secret parts of our hearts. The Pharisees washed their hands in a special way that had been handed down from their forefathers, not in Scripture, mind you, but from their forefathers, and they did many other outward acts in order to give themselves the appearance of inward holiness.
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But Jesus taught that the source of our sin is not circumstances. It's not food that comes to us from the outside.
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It's not dirt or anything else that's on the outside of us. Wickedness is on the inside.
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It's already there. Wickedness is what we are. It's where we live. Jesus told those same
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Pharisees who were proud of washing their hands in this traditional way to keep themselves from being defiled.
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He told them, for from within, out of the heart of man, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, and foolishness.
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The Greek term that Jesus uses there for pride means an undue sense of one's importance, bordering on insolence, arrogance, haughtiness, pride.
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This is what is in the heart of fallen man. It's in the heart of everyone in this room.
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It's in the heart of even newborn babies. That overblown sense of our own importance, our own greatness.
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Proverbs 13, 10. The scripture says, by pride comes nothing but strife, but what the well advised is wisdom.
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And the Hebrew term that's used there for pride means presumptuousness overconfidence.
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Presumptuousness and overconfidence. This presumptuous overconfidence, this undue sense of one's importance which borders on insolence.
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Folks, you need to hear me. God hates it. The God that made everything you see, the
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God who redeemed us in Christ, hates the pride of man. The first trait listed in the seven things that are
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Toeva, are an abomination to God. The first thing listed is a proud look.
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A proud look. An arrogant face. Proud looking eyes are hard to forget.
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Proverbs 21, 24. A proud and haughty man. Scoffer is his name. He acts with arrogant pride.
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In the prophecy of Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, he delivered several special messages from the
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Lord to prideful people. God's words are memorable and stirring to consider. Weigh these carefully.
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In Jeremiah 50, verses 31 and 32. Behold, I am against you, O most haughty one.
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Says the Lord God of hosts. For your day has come. The time that I will punish you. The most proud shall stumble and fall, and no one will raise him up.
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I will kinder a fire in his cities, and it will devour all around him.
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The prophet Isaiah also delivered similar warnings from the Lord, from our God. Isaiah 2, 11.
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The lofty looks of man shall be humbled. The haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the
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Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. For the day of the Lord of hosts shall come upon everything proud and lofty, upon everything lifted up, and it shall be brought low.
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Our Lord echoed the same ideas in his ministry. Jesus detested the proud because he is
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God. In the same way, Luke 16, 15, Jesus said, You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts, for what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.
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To say that God is not impressed with human beings who think too much of themselves would be a massive understatement.
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God detests the pride of men. God detests the arrogant, the self -assured, those who think that they are really something special and have an undue sense of their own importance.
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And folks, you need to know, if you haven't noticed this yet in your life, pride destroys everything. There are friendships in this room that have been ruined by pride.
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Marriages ruined by pride all over the place. Denominations ruined by pride. Churches destroyed by pride.
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In fact, James makes this terrible and stirring statement we would all do well to take to heart. James 3, 16,
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For where envy and self -seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there.
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Where there's self -seeking, where there's pride and envy, where people don't rejoice in each other's gifts but rather are envious of one another and have self -seeking and have pride, an undue sense of themselves, you will find confusion and every evil thing there.
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And so that's pride. It's an undue sense of one's self -importance. It's presumptuousness bordering on insolence.
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That's what the Greek and Hebrew terms mean. Now look at point number two there. Pride's unique evil. Pride is a uniquely evil sin.
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It's a uniquely evil sin. Why is that? Because most sins that we commit turn us away from God. Pride is a direct attack on God.
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A prideful heart lifts itself above God. Pride was God's first enemy.
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The Puritan writer George Swinnock said, Pride is the shirt of the soul. Put on first and put off last.
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God even refers to people ruled by pride simply as the cursed ones. Psalm 119 21.
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You rebuke the proud, the cursed ones, who stray from your commandments. Why does
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God have such a special hatred for pride? Because pride is man's attempt to dethrone him and to exalt ourselves to his position.
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What could be more presumptuous and foolish than for clods of dirt from the ground created to worship and glorify
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God to desire that worship and glory for themselves. What's more irrational and crazy than that?
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Pride is a terrible vice. Even the great Jonathan Edwards wrote in his diary 20 years after his conversion about how he groaned over the quote bottomless infinite depths of pride
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I see in myself end quote. That glorious opening catechism question, what is man's teeth end?
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What's the purpose for which we exist? The purpose for which God formed the dirt into us human beings in his image.
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To glorify God and to enjoy him forever. Pride causes us to do the very opposite for which we were created.
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Why do I exist? Why did God make atoms and put them together in this body and give me a mind and give me eyes and ears and time to live in this world to worship and glorify him.
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That's the only reason we're here. The universe is about the display and the glory and the magnificence of the triune
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God. Not for the display of the glory and the magnificence of vapor that appears for a moment and then vanishes away.
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Seeking glory from men by pride and arrogance and the display of our gifts brings us to the dust of the ground.
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And I want to warn you. If you seek glory and praise and honor from people, the very same people who pat you on the back are often the first to stab you in the back.
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The praises of men rarely come to us because of true piety or godliness. The godly person seeks praise and approval from their lord and savior, not the fickle hearts of men, but make no mistake about it.
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Men will praise you when you prosper, when they see your earthly or worldly success and it can be intoxicating.
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Listen carefully to God's admonition about this one. Psalm 49, 16. Do not be afraid when one becomes rich, when the glory of his house is increased.
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For when he dies, he shall carry nothing away. His glory shall not descend after him. Though while he lives, he blesses himself.
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For men will praise you when you do well for yourself. He shall go to the generation of his fathers.
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They shall never see light. A man who is in honor yet does not understand is like the beasts that perish.
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The praises of men come and go. Stars rise and fall. And then they're unceremoniously forgotten.
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And yet, because of our sinfulness, we at times long, we long for the praises and the approval of men.
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For them to think highly of our gifts, to praise us, to think that we're something special. It's one thing to desire encouragement.
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It's quite another when praise and approval for men is what motivates our actions. When it dominates our thoughts, our fantasies.
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And we all must recognize together how susceptible to this temptation we are. There is a tendency to think far more of ourselves than we ought to.
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There is a tendency to have an almost narcissistic fascination with ourselves, with our unique gifts and talents.
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And pride is as complicated a sin as can be imagined. Pride is multi -layered.
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It's multi -layered and it's complicated. It often sits in our hearts layer after layer like an onion.
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So potent is pride and so powerful are its sinful and evil effects that God the Holy Spirit explicitly forbids new converts from serving as elders.
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Think about that. How wise is that on God's part? The reason is really simple.
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You remember it? 1 Timothy 3 .6, about the elder, not a novice. Lest being puffed up with pride, he fall into the same condemnation as the devil.
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Really? Elder candidates, if they're selected by their congregations too early and their lives are too quickly after they're converted, can fall into the same condemnation as Satan himself?
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Can be puffed up with pride? If a young man is particularly godly, particularly gifted, and particularly eager to share his remarkable gifts with God's people, this would be a great blessing as there's no shortage of need for such men.
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We pray that God would give them to the church, but such a man must stay on his face before Christ in prayer that he be not snared by the bear trap of arrogance.
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Because often once it's stepped into, it's like that trap. It's clamped shut and will hinder them from being able to do much of anything.
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We all know that phrase from the Proverbs, pride comes before a fall. Let everyone here remember that pride can feed off of almost anything.
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Pride is a ravenous lion looking for something to feed it and make it bigger and stronger. People will ask our advice for something big in life and we're puffed up.
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I must be known as wise. People come to me and want my counsel, want my advice. Someone makes a compliment to us and it's as though they dumped a bucket of gasoline on the already burning fire of pride in our hearts.
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We go through a season of time with few trials and we assume God's blessing me because I'm righteous and I'm obedient and I've got everything in order.
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We're asked to serve God in some special way or in a special place and we begin to assume we're God's greatest gift to his church.
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Pride is like a reptile too. Reptiles have incredibly efficient metabolisms.
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An alligator can come up out of the water and eat a chicken and it's good to sit and bask in the sun for about a month before it needs to eat again.
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Your pride is a cold -blooded reptile. It's a cold -blooded reptile. It uses very little food and it's incredibly efficient when it finds something to consume and once it's consumed that little bit of food, it's good to sit still for a long time before it requires another meal.
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It's difficult, folks, to starve a sin like pride when it can live and thrive on so little.
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And this vice resides deeply in every heart here, mine included. We are far too easily impressed with ourselves.
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In describing the wicked who are always at ease, the psalmist said therefore pride serves as their necklace.
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What about the Apostle Paul? Here is a man whose humility is manifest and open to the world.
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In Luke's recordings of his self -sacrificial and blameless missionary journeys,
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Paul was a very humble man of God who seems to have put his nose to the plow and never looked back.
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He's one of the most humble people you could ever study. Reading through the book of Acts, reading his letters, this guy was extraordinarily humble but he shares something dark and frightening about his personal life that we would all do well to take to heart.
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In 2 Corinthians 12 7, Paul wrote, And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan, to buffet me lest I be exalted above measure.
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Now, we don't know what this was. What is this thorn in the flesh? Commentators speculate I've seen as many as 13 different things they thought it might be but we're not told what it is other than a messenger of Satan, an angelos of Satan, that word angel, a demon to buffet him.
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That term means, the kalaphizo means to strike with a fist to cause physical impairment, to torment.
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Paul says, just so I wouldn't get a big head and be exalted in my own heart and mind, God sent a demon to strike me, to torment me, to cause a physical impairment, to hit me.
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You know that same word, kalaphizo, to strike, to hit, very same word that's used to describe the
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Roman guards when they struck Jesus over and over again. Whatever this was
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Paul had to deal with, it must have been just a terrible thing. He asked God three times to take it away.
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Remember the answer? My grace is sufficient for you. Paul. And therefore my strength is made perfect in weakness.
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And then Paul says, okay, fine, then I'll boast of my weaknesses for when I am weak and God is strong. Paul knew it was given to him graciously and lovingly by God just to keep him humble, just to keep pride from creeping into his life because of how much truth had been revealed to him.
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Remember folks, especially seminarians, knowledge puffs out. When the scripture says that, that is an indication of how frail our hearts really are.
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The more you learn, the more it should drive you to your knees and on your face before God. Now brothers and sisters, if a man whose humility is remarkable like Paul, if he was given a special angel of Satan, a messenger of Satan, a messenger of the adversary,
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Young's literal translation translates it, to strike him and torment him, to keep him from having an undue sense of his own self -importance, do you think that perhaps maybe all of us ought to make asking
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God to grant us a spirit of humility more of a priority? Probably. Should all of us ask the questions of ourselves, do
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I care more about my reputation for godliness or godliness itself? Do we depend a bit too much on the praises of others?
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Cotton Mather wrote after dealing with a serious battle with having a prideful heart, he wrote this, quote,
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I endeavored to take a view of my pride as the very image of the devil, contrary to the image and grace of Christ, as an offense against God and grieving of his spirit, as the most unreasonable folly and madness for one who has nothing singularly excellent and who had a nature so corrupt.
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The Puritans wrote about this kind of thing a lot, in their diaries, in their journals, battles with pride.
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They would write a lot, they would preach a lot, people would come from all over to hear them preach, and their heads would begin to swell, they'd start thinking more and more of themselves, and they would write, what a wretched thing that was, the swelling of pride in our hearts.
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Consider with me a moment, just how much, how frequently, and how seriously all of us have sinned throughout the course of our few years thus far in this world.
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How much of our time has been spent in vainglorious fantasies in our mind where we're the center of attention and praise?
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How much time have we wasted on frivolous nonsense? How many times have we destroyed every person on earth who has ever wronged us in the theater of our mind?
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How many times have we failed to show mercy to our fellow man? How many times have we reacted in righteous indignation, folks, against people who are doing things that we know we have done ourselves?
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How many times have we failed to do our duty? How many times have we boldly rushed into sin?
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How many times have we failed to take proper precautions in order to keep our besetting sins from besetting us?
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How many times have we violated the law of God and dishonored the name of Christ? What sort of morbid fantasies have played out in the bold theaters of our minds that are in themselves abominable in the eyes of our sovereign
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God and judge who sees them all in plain view? And a lot of the answers to these questions that every person listening would have to give if they're honest.
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I would ask what the Puritan Richard Mayo asked long ago, quote, should that man be proud who hath such a heart as thou hast?
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Should a man be proud who's done all these things? One theologian was once asked the question, how can we get across to our world today the message of human sinfulness?
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To which he very quickly replied, I usually just talk candidly about my last 24 hours. We did a sermon series here not long ago on sovereignty of God and suffering and in our trials and how suffering and trials and heartache and things that really test us and push us and try us are always used by God for good to make us more like Christ, to make us long for heaven, to push us into the scriptures, to make us pray harder.
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We looked in detail at all those good purposes for which God brings those trials and sufferings to us. Suffering marked the entire life of our
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Lord Jesus. From the time he was conceived, there was a trail of blood around him left by people trying to destroy him.
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He was the special object of Satan's temptations after 40 days of fasting in the wilderness as we just saw.
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And the old prophecies described him as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. If we would live humble lives, we must look to the sufferings of Christ.
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Joel Beakey said, quote, nowhere is humility so cultivated than at Gethsemane and Calvary.
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When pride threatens you, consider the contrast between a proud person and our humble Savior. Sing with Isaac Watts, when
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I survey the wondrous cross on which the prince of glory died, my richest gain
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I count but loss and poor contempt on all my pride. The great
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Augustine was asked, what three graces does a minister need the most?
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And Augustine said, there's three. Humility, humility, and humility. So let's talk about humility now.
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What is humility? Number three. Let's look at just a few passages from Proverbs on humility.
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Proverbs 13 .10, by pride comes nothing but strife, but with the well advised is wisdom. Strife's an ugly word, isn't it?
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Psalm 133 begins with a glorious verse that very often is not experienced by Christians the way it should be.
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Because of pride. Psalm 133, behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.
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It's hard to do that if you're not humble. It's hard to do that if you can't admit you've ever done anything wrong. What about strife?
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What generates strife? Pride, the passage says. Now sometimes, sometimes strife is necessary.
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If the truth of the gospel's at stake, don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying peace at all costs. But when there is strife in normal human relationships, it's usually because of pride.
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Proverbs 28 .25. He who is of a proud heart stirs up strife.
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So what is humility? Well, it's the opposite of everything we've been talking about. It's being unpretentious, lowly, having a low estimation of yourself.
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Let us remember that humility is a prerequisite for being a Christian. Humility is a prerequisite for coming to Christ.
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What does the Holy Spirit always do in the hearts of every person who is powerfully, irresistibly and effectually called to Christ?
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Question 155 of the Larger Catechism asks, how is the Word made effectual to salvation? The Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the
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Word an effectual means of enlightening, listen, convincing and humbling sinners and of driving them out of themselves and drawing them unto
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Christ. To come to Christ, you've got to be humbled first. You've got to see your need. You've got to see how helpless you are without Him.
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You've got to see how sinful your wickedness really is and what it really deserves at the justice of God.
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Until a person has been convicted by the Spirit that they are in fact a helpless sinner under God's just condemnation for their sins and headed for hell, that person will not really see their need for Christ.
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Seeing our need for Jesus is a prerequisite to our receiving and resting upon Him alone for salvation as He has offered to us in the
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Gospel. All of God's children must confess with Ezra, in Ezra 9 verse 6,
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Oh my God, I am too ashamed and humiliated to lift up my face to you, my
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God. For our iniquities have risen higher than our heads and our guilt has grown up to the heavens.
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Folks, you need to understand that prayer and that mindset, that heart, that's where we live every moment of our lives as Christians.
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Not just once in a while but every moment from the moment we come to Christ until we die.
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For every person, we must be taught by God how evil, how selfish, how desperately hopeless we really are apart from the grace of God in Christ.
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Our wickedness and evil may not display itself in overt acts of pure evil against the innocent, but our sin itself manifests itself in so many more ways.
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The fact is, folks, if the Holy God were to hold us accountable, let's say for 17 minutes, for 17 minutes while we were awake one day,
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He would see enough just in our mind to land us in the blackest corner of hell. If we were judged by God for just 17 minutes of our thoughts for one day, that would be more than enough for us to be doomed.
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In an excellent collection of essays called, Won't Let You Go Unless You Bless Me, an author, a woman named
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Andrea Sue, who wrote these essays, I believe she wrote them shortly after she lost her husband, she wrote this.
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Listen carefully to this. These are the thoughts of a woman driving home from the stop and shop on an ordinary day.
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She conjures three comebacks she could have hurled at Ellen had she not been caught off guard.
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She spots the baby shower invitation on the dashboard and hatches excuses to be busy that weekend.
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Then thinks better of it because she has a favor to ask the sender at a later date. She sizes up a woman standing at the bus stop and judges her.
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She stews over a comment her brother made behind her back and crafts a letter telling him off and sounding righteous in the process.
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She reviews the morning's argument with her husband and builds her case against him for the evening installment.
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She imagines how life would have been if she had married someone else. She magnanimously let a car merge into traffic, then is miffed when she doesn't get her wave.
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Somebody rides up the shoulder and budges to the head of a traffic jam and she hates the driver with perfect hatred.
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She passes the house of the contractor who defrauded her and fantasizes blowing it to smithereens.
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She passes Audrey working in her garden and waves but thinks if Audrey has chronic fatigue syndrome
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I'm a flying Melinda. She glares at a driver who runs a red light forgetting she did the same thing a mile ago.
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She mentally touches up her upcoming woman's Bible study lecture on Ephesians and considers how she can improve it and make it better than Alice's talk last week.
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She is angry at God because she is a Christian and broke while her good -for -nothing heathen of a brother is rolling in dough.
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She wonders how her parents will divvy up the inheritance and how long she has to wait for it.
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She rehearses reasons why her sister and not she should take care of the folks when they're old. She thinks about her childhood and counts the ways her parents have screwed up her life.
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An SUV cuts her off and she decides to punish it by tailgating. Her heart smites her for this.
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So she thinks about trying to live righteously from now on. Maybe if she is good she thinks
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God will reward her in some amazing way like her husband divorced her and then lead her to Mr.
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Right. She tries to pray but doesn't get past our father. She pulls into her driveway.
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Total drive time 17 minutes. And if you were to ask the lady as she rustles parcels from the car what she had been thinking about on the drive home she would say, oh nothing in particular.
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And she would not be lying. Imagine believing that we don't need a savior.
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The last seminary course I took in seminary was an elective on Jonathan Edwards. Taught by the late
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John Gerstner. We had to watch DVD recordings of Dr. Gerstner. If you ever wondered why
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Sproul sounded the way he did, just listen to Gerstner. In fact, I thought it was Sproul when I first started hearing it.
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No, that's not him. That's someone else. That was his mentor. Jonathan Edwards is a fascinating person.
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And why shouldn't he be? The Encyclopedia Britannica identifies Jonathan Edwards as the keenest scholar
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America ever produced. The man was a biblical, theological, and scientific genius.
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His book, his treatise on the religious affections, and his book on original sin are still in a category all their own.
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Edwards was one of the most godly men I have ever heard of or ever read about. Ian Murray's biography about him on Jonathan Edwards is one of the five most important books
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I've ever read in my life. If I showed you my copy of it, I think there's a tab on almost every page in that book with things underlined.
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He had a wonderful marriage and 11 children. His home was a model of Christian piety and devotion. Part of the class required us to read some of Edwards' diary.
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That's another book I underlined almost everything in. Young Jonathan Edwards' reflections on his own sinfulness are some of the most precious jewels ever written by a
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Christian. Listen to this godly young man. Listen to what he wrote while meditating upon his own sinfulness.
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Quote, often since I've lived in this town, I've had very affecting views of my own sinfulness and vileness.
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Very frequently to such a degree as to hold me in a kind of loud weeping, sometimes for a considerable time together, so that I have often been forced to shut myself up.
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I have had a vastly greater sense of my own wickedness and the badness of my heart than ever I had before my conversion.
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It has often appeared to me that if God should mark iniquity against me, I should appear the very worst of all mankind and all that have been since the beginning of the world to this time, and that I should have by far the lowest place in hell.
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When others that have come to talk with me about their soul's concerns have expressed the sense that they have had of their own wickedness by saying that it seems to them that they were as bad as the devil himself,
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I thought that their expressions seemed exceeding faint and feeble to represent my own wickedness.
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My wickedness as I am in myself has long appeared to me to be perfectly ineffable, swallowing up all thought and imagination like an infinite deluge or mountain over my head.
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I know not how to express it better, what my sins appear to me to be, than by heaping infinite upon infinite and multiplying infinite by infinite.
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Very often for these many years, these expressions are in my mind and in my mouth, infinite upon infinite, infinite upon infinite.
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When I look into my heart and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell, and it appears to me that were it not for free grace, exalted and raised up to the infinite height of all the fullness and glory of the great
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Jehovah, and the arm of his power and grace stretched forth in all the majesty of his power and in all the glory of his sovereignty,
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I should appear sunk down in my sins below hell itself, far beyond the sight of everything, but the eye of sovereign grace that can pierce even down to such a depth.
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And yet it seems to me that my conviction of sin is very small and faint.
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It is enough to amaze me that I have no more sense of my sin."
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Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.
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Before destruction the heart of man is haughty, the scripture says. To be a
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Christian requires humility about what we are. What are we?
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We're ruined. We're ruined people. One thing that has always bothered me is seeing
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Bibles ruined. When you become a Christian, when I became a Christian when I was 18, the thought of throwing away a
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Bible is just not something that's to be done. And I was a camp counselor and one morning after it had rained hard all night long,
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I saw a brand new Bible that had been opened right down the middle on a picnic table all night in the driving rain.
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And I thought, I'm going to save it. I'm going to save this Bible. I'm going to save it and it's going to be a great story one day.
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And I set that Bible up, opened, laying on the side in front of a box van that night and the next night and the next night, tried to open up other parts of the
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Bible to dry off all the pages, but the more I tried to dry those pages, the more they got puffy and brittle until the
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Bible was easily three times its original size. Eventually I could see
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I wasn't going to be able to save this Bible. In fact, everything I did just made it even worse.
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So I threw it out. Folks were like, that Bible, left out in the driving rain, face open, pointed up all night and no matter how hard you try to dry out every page, it's just going to puff them up and make them bigger and you're not going to be able to save it.
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It's the same with our souls. Any effort that you make just makes the problem bigger. It only makes the guilt worse.
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Do you know the shame of which Edward spoke in his diary? Do you know anything of what he's talking about there?
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How evil we really are. What we really do deserve at the justice of God.
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Has the holiness of God humbled your sin sick soul to the dust of the ground to beg for mercy?
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Do we not see the depth of our own sins such that we are the quickest to forgive and to overlook a transgression?
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Because 100 denarii is nothing compared to a thousand talents. And yet we are injustice collectors.
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I hope the holiness of God has struck all of us. It is the poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness who are blessed of God.
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Why does pride go before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall? Because pride is fundamentally self -destructive to what
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God made us to be. It is us being the very opposite for which we were created. Jesus came to save sinners, folks.
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And he only came to save sinners who know that they're sinners. He came to save the broken who know and confess that they are broken.
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He came to give his cross work and his righteousness to those who know they need his perfect forgiveness and his perfect righteousness.
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If pride is an undue sense of one's importance bordering on insolence, then humility is having a true sense of oneself before God.
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Pride ultimately is a lie. And humility is truth.
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Folks, we have no rights. We have no rights. And yet this holy
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God whose wrath and justice burn against us freely chooses among those undeserving sinners a multitude so vast that no one can count them and chooses to save them at the cost of the bitter and agonizing suffering of the only perfect man who ever lived.
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The only man who ever had the right to be proud humbled himself. And we who have no rights to be proud exalt ourselves.
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The only way any of us can be forgiven and justified before God and then adopted into his family as his own children and then brought into heaven itself to be eternally happy was for the
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Son of God to come himself to take a true human nature upon himself and to do everything for us in our place and in our stead.
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Does it hit us every day how dependent we are on someone else to bring us into heaven?
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The horrifying holiness of Almighty God fell in an unrelenting hammer blow of perfect justice on the body and soul of Jesus on the cross as our substitute.
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And aren't you thankful that he died for the pride that we have even as Christians? And the righteousness of Christ achieved in withstanding all his temptations and loving
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God and neighbor perfectly is ours by imputation, by that legal transfer through faith alone. Because it can't be anything other than that.
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So insistent is God speaking in Scripture on this principle that Christ alone by his work alone saves us by faith alone and not by works or anything we do that Paul said speaking by the inspiration of the
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Spirit I do not nullify the grace of God for if righteousness comes to the law,
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Christ died in vain. If I could do anything, anything at all to contribute to my salvation,
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Jesus didn't need to die. It's the ultimate the ultimate humbling act to us.
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The only way you can get in here to be with me in heaven, I've got to come down here and be one of you. I've got to do everything for you.
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And yet we sit here in our smug pride at times. It's just like that old Puritan, Puritan was it
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Cotton Mather, what is pride? It's insanity. He called it madness.
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Folly. If we would be true Christians, we have to see this. We are ruined, undone, and dead in our sins without hope accepting
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God's sovereign mercy. There is nothing more humbling than seeing this and coming to Christ. It requires that we have been humbled regarding who and what we are.
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Remember what Richard Mayo the Puritan said, should that man be proud who hath such a heart as thou hast?
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God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Humility is where all of God's children must live their lives.
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So folks, don't let foolish pride ruin your soul. Don't let foolish pride ruin friendships, ruin your marriage, ruin your church.
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Believe what is true and be humble. And reject what is false and don't be prideful.
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Let's pray. Our God and Father, we thank you that our
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Savior who was with you before the creation of the world did not consider equality with you a thing to be held onto but willingly humbled himself and stepped down out of eternal glory and became obedient all the way to the death of the cross so that we could be adopted into your family.
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Lord, when our heads and our hearts swell with pride, remind us of the irrational folly that that is.
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Remind us that that's attacking you for you alone are to receive glory. You created man in your image to glorify your name, to worship and love you, not to glorify ourselves.
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Lord, forgive us for the ways that we do that so often in our minds and our actions. Help us never to have an undue sense of our own importance but to see ourselves the way your word teaches as a vapor that appears for a moment and then passes away.
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May we redeem every moment of strength you give us in this world so that the eyes of our fellow man would know that you live and that Christ is real.
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We pray in his name. Amen. You can find us on the web at www .bridwellheightspca
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.org And may the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.