Mark 1:14-15
14 Later on, after John was arrested, Jesus went into Galilee, where
he preached God’s Good News. 15 “The time promised by God has come at last!”
he announced. “The Kingdom of God is near! Repent of
your sins and believe the Good News!” And I'm so grateful Jesus gave his life to win our pardon and break the power of sin in our lives.
Introduction
From the very beginning of his ministry, Jesus
spent his time reaching out to sinners.
He preached to them, taught them, ate with them, forgave them, and
healed them. Most importantly, he urged
them to repent of their sins. Sin is
madness. It is a form of insanity. It destroys our lives, hurts people we love,
and a damages the world around us. Worst
of all, sin separates us from God—the source and purpose of our life. Despite all this, we continue to struggle
with sin. It’s madness! I’m so glad Jesus came preached, “Repent of
your sins and believe the Good News.
Most people realize we are sinners and we
don’t have a problem asking God to forgive our sin. However, we might use the word sin
in a general way without thinking about the specific ways we sin. Unfortunately, you can’t address a problem
unless you know what it is. So let’s consider some of the basic ways people sin
so we can repent and ask God’s forgiveness.
Last week we considered gluttony—over-indulgence and
over-consumption. Today, we will study pride.
In the movie “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate
Factory”, the character Violet Beauregarde represents the sin of pride. Violet is
vain, self-centered, snobby, and disrespectful.
Violet chews gum obsessively and boasts that she has been chewing the
same piece "for three months solid", a world record which Violet proudly
proclaims was previously held by her best friend. Violet is aggressively
competitive and proud of her gum chewing trophies. Unfortunately, Violet’s pride gets her is BIG
trouble. She steals some of Willy Wonka's defective gum and turns into a blueberry. She has to be squeezed to get rid of all her juice before she explodes.
The
Madness of Pride
Pride is a terrible sin. All sins are bad, but people tend to think of
some sins as worse than others. Who
would disagree that murder is a heinous crime?
Treason against one’s country?
Deplorable. How about a sexual
sin like rape or molestation? But pride? Is pride really that bad?
Consider this: the Bible teaches that Satan
was once an angel in Heaven. However, he
grew proud (Isaiah 14:13, Ezekiel 28:16) and thought he could take God’s
place. Therefore, God cast Satan from
heaven and he will ultimately be destroyed in hell. Pride caused Satan to fall.
The Bible firmly condemns pride. Examples:
·
Proverbs 8:13 – I hate pride and arrogance, corruption and perverse
speech
·
Proverbs 16:18 - Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall.
· Isaiah 13:11 - I will crush the arrogance of the proud and humble the
pride of the mighty.
· 1 Peter 5:5 - “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
·
Philippians 2:3 - Don’t
be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as
better than yourselves.
It can be somewhat confusing because we also
often use pride in a positive way. When
I was little and I played peewee football, the coach often told us he was proud
of us when we did our best. He also told
us to “Have some pride in our team—whether we win or lose.” And of course, come July 4th, we
may proudly salute the American flag and sing “And I’m proud to be an American
where at least I know I’m free!” Our hearts sometimes swell with pride in a healthy way.
There’s nothing wrong with having confidence,
dignity, and self-respect. Furthermore,
it’s OK to be proud of your kids, which is just a feeling of deep pleasure and
admiration you have from being associated with their accomplishments. And when it comes to our country, we can be
proud of our shared identity as a nation who has been truly blessed by
God—though I would very strongly caution that we must never be so arrogant as
to think our blessings were won by our own efforts. That is the very sin the Bible condemns
nations like Israel for in the Old Testament.
(Amos 6:8 - …the Lord God of Heaven’s Armies, says: “I despise the arrogance of Israel, and I hate their
fortresses. I will give this city and everything in it to their enemies.”) Sinful pride leads us to believe we don't need God. We trust instead in our own power and might and means.
The Pride the Bible condemns is arrogance,
vanity, and conceit. It is thinking more
of yourself than you should. And it
leads you to think you are better than others.
And as with Satan, it can make you forget your place and act as though
you are higher than God. Pride will puff
you up as big as Violet Beauregarde when she turned into a blueberry. And the only cure will be for God to squeeze
you until there’s no more prideful juice left in your body. But you don’t have to go through that; not if
you just humble yourself and stay away from pride.
It’s Hard to be Humble
“Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble, when your
perfect in every way. I can’t wait to
look in the mirror, ‘cause I get better looking each day…”
We need
to let go of pride and be humble. To be
humble is to understand who you really are according to God. Humility is knowing the world doesn’t revolve
around me; it is having my place in the universe in proper perspective. God made humanity from dirt of the ground,
but we were made by the very hands of God in His image. We are the only creatures authorized to
represent God. So humility also
recognizes of how unique and special we are without leaving us with a big head
to think we don’t need God.
Christians
are called to be humble. But how do we
become humble? Is there anything we can
do to become more humble? Yes there
is! We can pray and cooperate with the
Hands of God that want to sculpt humility into our soul.
Here
are some exercises that can help God establish more humility in you.
The Little Way
The
first exercise is called “The Little Way”.
To follow the little way means
that throughout your day you actively seek out the most menial jobs, welcome
unjust criticisms, befriend people who annoy you, and help those who are
ungrateful.
Example…
Following
the little way can help develop more humility within you.
Solitude
Another
practice that can help develop humility is solitude. Solitude means to take some time to be
alone. It is a great practice to get
away from people for a little while so you stop worrying so much about what people think and remember to care more
about what God thinks.
In the
age of social media, we are constantly sharing with others what we are doing,
where we are, what we’re eating, etc.
Through Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, we are in constant
contact with our “friends” and the whole world has a chance to give us feedback
of what they think. Think how much more
spiritually grounded we would be if we were as constantly connected with God
and seeking His approval as we are with our social media networks.
Through
solitude, we step away from the world—both our face-to-face interactions with
people and our virtual interactions through social media—to focus on
interacting only with the God who forms us.
Jesus, the Son of God, knew the great benefit of going away to be by
himself. At the onset of his ministry,
he spent 40 days alone in the wilderness fasting and communing with God. It prepared him for his three years of public
ministry, culminating in his death and resurrection to save the world from sin. And throughout his ministry, we read that
Jesus rose early in the morning and went away to a lonely place to be by
himself and pray.
If a
man as busy as Jesus—with twelve disciples to teach and lead and crowds of
people constantly following him around begging for food and teaching and
healing—could find time to be alone with God, surely we can find more time to be alone with God. Maybe, it could help us break free from the
madness of sinful pride.
Conclusion
The solution to pride is not to run around
belittling yourself all the time. That's just low self esteem or false-humility. The
solution is to glorify God and give Him the credit. It’s not so much that we are so low; it’s
just that God is so high. Rather than
focusing on yourself, keep your eyes lifted up to God. When we focus our sights on our Heavenly
Father, all the rest of life seems to fall in place.
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