Common Ailments - Unchecked Pride
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Introduction:
This month - we are looking at Common Ailments.
We know the church is to behave as a hospital for sinners - this is a medical facility, a place where people come to receive care. The members of the church are part patient, part staff. We are all challenged with helping one another to get better.
Sometimes we look like a nursing home, just providing day to day care as we move closer and closer to going home.
Other days - we look more like an emergency room, bringing everyone together - pouring all of our resources a few bigger situations.
And just like natural medical facilities - we have some common ailments - sicknesses that all of us, as staff, need to know how to identify, treat, and prevent.
We have things that it seems like we struggle with significantly more often than others.
Last week - we looked at the poison of forgotten forgiveness.
We looked at what the Bible had to say about forgiveness and why we really must forgive others, for our own sakes.
Brushing something off - isn’t forgiving someone of their sins against us.
We looked at the Biblical process of forgiveness.
Consider the offense / the debt - think about it. It is important to be intentional here.
Surrender the offense and all rights to punishment, to the Lord.
Direct your mind to good things.
Work for the good of the one who offended you.
And the story of Joseph - who showed us it is possible to forgive, even in the worst of circumstances.
Today - we are looking at another common ailment that we wrestle with, as believers. Something that gets into our body that we have to deal with.
And as in the last few weeks, we are talking about how to find these things in ourselves and how to see them in others, we are talking about how to treat this in myself and how to help treat it in others.
That ailment is Unchecked Pride.
Baseline:
Our baseline for pride is a little tricky. A healthy Christian will have a right understanding of who they are and who the Creator is.
Healthy for us is understanding what Jesus did on the cross.
Healthy for us is understanding that everything that we have comes from him.
Healthy for us is understanding that he gives us everything.
Diagnostic:
Some ailments are relatively new, only been discovered within the last 100 years.
Pride is not one of those things. Pride has been around since almost immediately after Creation.
Pride is one of the oldest enemies of God.
If we were trying to relate pride to a medical condition - it has a lot of similarities to arthritis.
Arthritis, technically speaking, is where you exist and then hurt because of it.
Sometimes it's small - you need to take an Aleve once a day, and you get it with the soft lid so it doesn't hurt to open it.
Other times its so bad you can't walk and you need a knee replacement.
Thing that makes pride most like arthritis is that as adults - we all struggle with it. Some of us a little bit. Some of us a lot a bit.
Pride test:
Do you long for attention? “Look at me” - could be look at how good I look, or look at how sad I am”
Do you become jealous or critical of those who succeed? (I Can’t believe they got that award, they weren’t even that good!)
Do you always have to win? (board game cheaters?)
Do you have a pattern of lying?
Do you have a hard time acknowledging when you are wrong? (Nobody’s perfect!)
Do you cut in line? In traffic, in the grocery store?
Do you have a lot of conflicts in your life? (You might be the problem)
Do you get upset when people don’t honor your achievements? (They didn’t even say thank you)
Do you carry an attitude of entitlement or thankfulness? (I deserve this, I worked hard)
Do you honestly feel you are basically a good person and superior to others?
“You know what, I am doing pretty good.”
“You know what, I earned this”
“Im pretty much a gift to the world”
We ask those questions of ourselves and we can ask them of those in this church that we love.
Pride, like foolishness and laziness, is not simply a matter of you are or are not…
The question becomes - how prideful are you?
Because everyone deals with this issue in one way or another. It is the great fall of mankind. Because pride is to take our focus off of God, and place it completely on ourselves.
Pride is like bad breath. Sometimes - you don’t know you have it, but everyone else does.
Probably the most important verse to highlight here in this passage of scripture is James 4:6
6 But he gives greater grace. Therefore he says: God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.
We have to understand that the pride in us, causes resistance from God. And to understand that, we should understand that resistance from God is really that you become an adversary to the almighty, omnipresent, Holy one. And that is not at all a place that you want to be.
And it spews out from our fallen nature. Going all the way back to Adam and Eve in the garden - we chose to think of ourselves instead of God.
And like all other evil, it becomes a slippery slope.
Pride Says - Look at me, look at what I can do.
Pride Says - I can because I am.
Pride Says - I deserve Better.
Pride Says - I don’t need God.
Pride causes depression - because we can’t stop thinking about ourselves.
Pride causes anger - because we deserve to be treated better.
Pride causes anxiety - because the world does not conform to our wants and needs.
5 It was I who knew you in the wilderness, in the land of drought;
6 but when they had grazed, they became full, they were filled, and their heart was lifted up; therefore they forgot me.
7 So I am to them like a lion; like a leopard I will lurk beside the way.
8 I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs; I will tear open their breast, and there I will devour them like a lion, as a wild beast would rip them open.
Pride comes in like this.
God provides…
We get dumb, fat, and happy....
And we forget that God did the things.
And that angers God.
Pride - can be regular pride… where we are proud of who we are.
Pride can also look really different.
If we understand Pride to be a resistance to acknowledging God for the sake of ourselves....
Then fear and doubt become part of the sin of pride.
Treatment:
BELIEF - NOT FALSE HUMILITY.
It’s not “awe shucks, I’m not really good”
44 How can you believe, since you accept glory from one another but don’t seek the glory that comes from the only God?
35 “I am the bread of life,” Jesus told them. “No one who comes to me will ever be hungry, and no one who believes in me will ever be thirsty again.
37 On the last and most important day of the festival, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.
Jesus offers a satisfaction that cannot be matched, If we understand in our hearts who He is.
23 “ ‘This is what the Lord says: The wise person should not boast in his wisdom; the strong should not boast in his strength; the wealthy should not boast in his wealth.
24 But the one who boasts should boast in this: that he understands and knows me— that I am the Lord, showing faithful love, justice, and righteousness on the earth, for I delight in these things. This is the Lord’s declaration.
So treatment looks like this:
1. Self or others check.
2. Acknowledge in our minds/hearts how little we have actually done.
3. Give God the appropriate Glory.
Responses -
Prevention:
skit. Story in Luke.
7 He told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they would choose the best places for themselves:
8 “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, don’t sit in the place of honor, because a more distinguished person than you may have been invited by your host.
9 The one who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this man,’ and then in humiliation, you will proceed to take the lowest place.
10 “But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when the one who invited you comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ You will then be honored in the presence of all the other guests.
11 For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
12 He also said to the one who had invited him, “When you give a lunch or a dinner, don’t invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors, because they might invite you back, and you would be repaid.
13 On the contrary, when you host a banquet, invite those who are poor, maimed, lame, or blind.
14 And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
We exist for God’s glory, not our own. We exist to love, honor, serve, obey, enjoy God and help others. And if I am at the top of the pyramid of my life, I can’t lovingly help and serve people. And I don’t believe I have any need for God. I’ve become my own god and I expect people to worship me. I don’t expect to worship God by loving and serving people.
Pride is about getting glory! “Where’s my seat at the table? Where’s my honor? Where are my accolades? Where’s my ‘at a boy’?” Humility’s about giving glory. “Jesus, you’re great. Thank you. Yeah, I did something, but I did it by the grace of God. Yeah, I’ve got a good mind. Hey, thanks for my mind! Yeah, something went well, thanks for the opportunity! Yeah, I worked hard, thanks for the strength!” It’s all by the grace of God. It’s all by the grace of God. So that the grace comes to us and the glory goes to him.
Pride is independent. “I’ve got this covered. I’m organized. I’m disciplined. I’m self-sufficient. I don’t really need God and I don’t really need people. I can take care of myself.” Humility is about dependence. “God, I really do need you to help me and I really need your people. So I want to be in community in the church. I’m blind to my own blindness. I’m finite, fallen, and foolish. That means I need some friends.”