Randall Caselman
Bella Vista Church of Christ
November 17, 2002 P.M.
Conquering Pride
Reading - Luke 18.9-14
Hildebrand became Pope Gregory the 7th in l073 AD... He was perhaps the most powerful Pope of all time. So powerful... In fact... That he challenged all civil rulers, including the Emperor... Henry the 4th. Well... It was no contest, the Emperor lost and the Pope demanded a new ruler be elected in Germany. What does a dethroned Emperor do? There was only one road open to Henry and that was the road to Canosa. Canosa was a small village in northern Italy where Pope Gregory was staying. The dethroned Emperor dressed himself in peasant rags and walked barefoot into Canosa, fell face to the ground and asked the Pope's indulgence and forgiveness.
Have you ever traveled that road??... The road of humility versus arrogance and pride?
The road to Canosa has become known as the path one must take when we...
- Humbly...
- Penitently...
- Genuinely...
- Unselfishly...
Need the assistance... and or forgiveness of someone else. How many of us tonight have ever taken that road?
Karen... In the movie Out of Africa takes this road... The road to Canosa. You recall near the end of the movie, she loses the plantation. You see, Karen has shared her land with a group of native Kenyanians who have worked the plantation for years. She knows the bank... And the new owners will run them off. So, Karen makes her appeal to the new English Governor. He passes her off with a bureaucratic wave of the hand... Don't bother me ... But Karen doesn't give up. She falls on her knees before the Governor and begins to beg and plead. Those around are embarrassed. No white person grovels and begs, but on her knees Karen pleads. Finally the governor's wife steps forward and says... OK... The natives can stay on the land.
It's the road to Canosa.
When human pride is given up in favor of humility. Jesus speaks of the Road to Canosa here in Luke 18. He says two men went up to pray... One stood and prayed...
- I thank you God that I am not like other men.
- I am quite a catch for you Lord... A real asset to the church here.
- I flaunt my righteousness before everybody.
- I am probably the best contributor percentage-wise you have in Bella Vista.
- Lord... Do you know how fortunate you are to have me?
Meanwhile... The Publican... Standing off in the corner of the courtyard...
- Humbly bowed his head...
- Smote his breast...
- Saying... God help me... Father be merciful to me a sinner.
He is willing to travel the road to Canosa.
In way of application... Jesus said... The road to our salvation is the road to Canosa... There is no salvation unless we are willing to travel this road. We must be willing...
- In our filthy rags of sin...
- Barefoot...
- Falling on our knees...
- To humbly...
- Penitently...
- Unselfishly...
Travel the road to Canosa... Are we willing to HUMBLY submit to God? Or, are we much too proud?
Our Sunday evening series is entitled... Hearts Fit For The Journey. The series was inspired by Max Lucado's most recent book... Traveling Light.... In which he makes the point that quite frequently we pack so much, carry so much extra and unnecessary luggage that we cannot possibly enjoy the journey.
We do the same in life don't we?... We carry so much emotional baggage through the airport of life that we seldom enjoy the journey. What we must learn to travel light... We must learn to jettison all that stuff that...
- Burdens our hearts...
- Drags us down...
- Exhausts us physically...
- Tries our patience...
- Depresses us...
- Makes us weary of the journey...
One such piece of emotional baggage is PRIDE!!
Webster says pride is...
- Arrogance...
- Conceit...
- Unjustifiable self-respect...
- Self-elevation because of an act... An attitude... Or possession....
- Haughty behavior....
- An ostentatious display.
Tonight's subject is at the top of God's list of His most hated sins. Perhaps you didn't know God had such a list... He does. It is found in Proverbs 6.16-19... Seven things that God hates... Number one is Pride.
The King James says... A proud look... The NASV says haughty eyes... A lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that schemes wickedness, feet that run to do mischief, a false witness and one who sows discord among the brethren.
Jesus was and is against pride. In fact, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus pronounces a blessing on the Humble... Meek... the Poor in Spirit.
In Mark seven... He personally places pride in a long list of sins which includes Adultery... Murder... Stealing... and Lying.
Listen as I read from the lips of Jesus... For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, PRIDE and all kinds of foolishness.
Wendell Winkler, in his book Heart Desires and Their Cures, points out that pride is what got Nebuchadnezzar thrown out of the human race. God caused him to became an animal grazing in the pasture... All because of his pride.
- Adam & Eve were expelled from the paradise garden...
- Hamin was dismissed from the government...
- Satan was excluded from heaven itself...
- The Pharisees were excluded from the Kingdom of God...
- And Harod was eaten by worms.
All due to... (What??)... Their PRIDE.
Augustine named pride as the greatest of all sins.
Defoe said... Pride was the president of hell!!
C. S. Lewis wrote... Pride is the complete anti-God state of mind.
Doris Black & Charlotte Mize... Wrote a ladies class book titled But How Can I. They listed four kinds... Four forms of pride. All four are sinful...
First on their list is Spiritual Pride.
Jesus in our text called it self-righteousness. Verse nine says... That they trusted in themselves. They trusted in their own goodness... Their own righteousness. They were proud. They were self-confident. Arrogant and haughty.
You see church... Nothing appears to be as repulsive to Jesus in His three and a half year ministry as those who considered themselves to be righteous and were not. Those who considered themselves to be better than someone else.
And today, when there is trouble in the church, we will find the problem is the same...
- Those who think they are righteous and are not.
- Those who consider themselves better than others.
Are usually responsible for disunity and trouble.
I want you to know that the worst thing about spiritual pride is that it is always found in the best, the most committed and active in the church. That's right... In the best of us. You see... Self-righteousness doesn't occur out there on the fringes of churchgoing people.
- They don't consider themselves righteous.
- They don't consider themselves that close to God...
- They don't really care.
Satan leaves them alone.
Spiritual pride robs our Bible classes of our best teachers... And our pulpits of our most powerful and studious preachers.
One Sunday, Martin Luther finished a powerful, great sermon. And as folk were leaving the building, one man said... Doctor Luther, that was an incredible sermon Luther said... Yes... I know... The Devil just got through telling me the same thing.
I want you to see tonight that these Pharisees and Scribes were the best.
- The Scribes were men of the book.
- The Pharisees were those who were trying to carry on God's traditions in their day.
- They were calling for Israel to walk in the Old Paths of faithfulness to God.
We must not be so hard on them... They were the best Judaism had to offer... They were not on the fringe... But were... Core members of the faith... Core members of the synagogue... The church of their day.
You see... Self-righteousness is a Sunday night... Wednesday night disease. The Sunday morning only crowd is basically immuned. My good people, we here tonight... Are the most susceptible... The most vulnerable... To SPIRITUAL PRIDE.
We are the ones that must be careful that Satan does not infect us with this spiritual malady... Spiritual pride... Self-righteousness.
Then there is Intellectual Pride. We call it arrogance.
In our generation this pride is primarily a result of education... We feel we are better than others... Not because of our spiritual accomplishments... But because of our educational achievements.
We must never build life on our own knowledge and wisdom. Proverbs 26.12 says... When you find a man wise in his own eyes, there is more hope for a fool than for him. In our text... Jesus speaks of... Those who trust in themselves. Look at our text... Intellectual pride is a fascination with number one... An unhealthy fascination with self.
Notice what the Pharisee says in verse 11... God, I thank you that I am not like other men, robbers, evildoers, adulterers or even like this tax collector... I fast twice a week and I give a tenth of all I get. It is the Big I which stimulates intellectual pride.
It is intellectual pride that...
- Causes young people to look down on their parents as being out-of-date... And as old fogies.
- It causes us to view Godly Elders as back-woodsy... And non-progressive.
- It causes us to say preachers are narrow minded men who live sheltered lives.
- It causes us to think that preachers preach sermons directed ONLY AT US.
- It causes preachers and teachers in the church to put letters after our names instead
of book, chapter and verse in our sermons.
- Intellectual pride causes young people, and some not-so-young, to accept theistic evolution instead of Bible facts.
The Apostle Paul was not easy on the intellectually proud. In Romans chapter one, Paul sandwiched the sin of intellectual arrogance in between those who practice the sins of idolatry... Homosexuality... Backbiting... and God haters.
Listen to this list from Romans 1.29 through 32... They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful... They invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
You see church... A self-made man can never rise above himself. God does not measure the value of a soul by...
- Our IQ...
- By earned degrees...
- By business acumen...
But by our willingness to submit to Him in humility.
God measures us on our willingness to travel the road to Canosa.
Then there is Material Pride. We call it vanity... Our feeling superior to others because of possessions... The house we live in, the car we drive, the clothes we wear. In our text... We can almost hear the Pharisee say... "Lord... Look at me... I am quite a giver... I tithe of everything... Not just my basic income, but all of it, every mint and cumin." I'll bet if we listened closely... We could hear what he was thinking too... "And Lord... If you fail me... I can always fall back on my material possessions."
Max Leanch... In his book Christianity and Mental Health, says, we have daily drilled into us that things...
- Like bonds...
- Money...
- Savings...
- Insurance policies...
- Investments...
- Retirement programs...
- Social Security... etc, can give us security.... and a feeling of superiority.
In our culture... Material pride causes us to divide our trust between God and money. This places us in direct opposition to Jesus' statement that we cannot serve two masters... We cannot serve God and money.
- Listen to Isaiah in Isaiah 31.l... Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on
horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength of their horsemen, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel, or seek help from the LORD.
- Paul concludes... People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge us into ruin and destruction.
The question becomes then... To those of us who are sincere... How can we know if we are suffering from material pride? The answer may be simpler than we think... Do we possess our possessions... Or do our possessions possess us?... Do they make us feel superior to others?... You see church...
- If our material things...
- If our making money...
- If our reliance on money...
- If our vanity...
-Keeps us from doing the Lord's will...
- If it keeps us from walking church aisles...
- If it keeps us off the road to Canosa, then we are dealing with material pride.
Then... Number four is Social Pride. Do you see this in the text?..."I am proud that I am not like other men." In our studies, we have found James to be a frank, outspoken New Testament writer. He says it so plainly... Don't show favoritism... Don't get caught-up in social prominence.
Social pride causes things like...
- Racism...
- Bigotry...
- And prejudice.
I once had an elder in the church tell me that he needed to feel superior to someone. So, he fulfilled this need by being racist. Folk, this sin is hated by the God who created us all... And each in his image.
Social pride causes us in the church to be too sophisticated to be involved in evangelism.
-We become too sophisticated to knock doors
- Too above it all to ask others about their soul salvation...
- To sophisticated to mention religion... or Jesus to our neighbor or friends...
- Too good to invite others to accompany us to worship services...
Listen to me class... If the church of Jesus Christ is an embarrassment to us... Then we are suffering from social pride... And this is a sin... A sin God hates will all His heart.
Let me read you a statement about prejudice from Anthony Compolo's book, Seven Deadly Sins that hammers home what social pride is... And is not... And how we as Christian people should handle it.
A little boy came home from school in tears, threw himself into his mother's lap, and cried, Mamma, am I a nigger?... His mother asked firmly... As only a black mother can... Who told you you're a nigger?... The kids down at school... They told me I'm a nigger." ... Listen, said his mother... You're a nigger when I tell you you're a nigger... And I never will.
You see... Whenever others around us attempt to degrade us... Make fun and light of us... And our faith... We must remember what and who God says we are...
- He calls us to a high calling...
- He gives us a name above every name...
- We are His children... Created in His image...
- He clothes us with dignity...
- He clothes us with the righteousness of His Son...
- He sets us free from sin...
And Jesus said... When the Son sets you free... You are free indeed... INDEED!!... How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Dear friends, we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
What a great promise!!... What a great promise!!
You see... Every baptized believer belongs to God in two ways...
- By creation,
- And by redemption.
He created us... And He purchased us with the blood of His Son. This is true, regardless of...
- The color of our skin...
- The slant of our eyes...
- Our education or the lack of it...
- Or the amount of money we make or have.
Some of us here tonight may need to get on our knees and travel the road to Canosa. Some of us need to deal with our social pride... RIGHT?
OK... Let's notice how to win over our pride... How to effectively deal with pride?
I think it should be rather obvious at this point in our lesson that everyone of us here tonight has too much of this human element in our life and we need to deal with our pride on God's terms...
So... What is the solution to our pride?? Paul said... We are more than conquerors... We can do all things through Him who gives us strength... That's Romans 8.37 and Philippians 4.13.
So... You see... We can do it... We can... With God's help... Win this battle over pride.
To do so... We must first acknowledge our sinfulness. First , we must admit that we have a PRIDE PROBLEM. The Bible tells us that one day... We will all acknowledge our sins... Either here or in judgment... The choice is ours tonight.
One night a drunk came home after making all the bars. His wife helped him undress... Helped him into bed... And knelt by the bed and asked... John, do you want me to pray for you?... Yes... He said. So she began... Dear Lord... I pray for my husband who is drunk. Before she could finish... He said... No, no, don't tell Him I am drunk... Tell Him I am sick.
It's not really humorous is it?
Here it is church... Our sins... Our pride will remain with us until we HONESTLY confess saying... God I am guilty here... And I desperately want your forgiveness...
- Guilty of spiritual pride...
- Guilty of selfish intellectual pride...
- Guilty of materialism... material pride...
- Guilty of social pride... bigotry... and prejudice.
"If we confess our sins... If we will acknowledge our sins... He is faithful and just... And will forgive us our sins... And purify us from all unrighteousness."
Secondly... We must acknowledge that all we are... And all we have comes from God. He created us... And blesses us with every good blessing. We are nothing... NO THING without him. We must all be willing to agree with Paul in Acts 17.28 & 29..." For in Him we live and move and have our being." We are his offspring... Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that He is like gold or silver or stone-- an image made by man's design and skill.
You see...
- We must die to self... And self accomplishments.
- We must be willing to crucify the old man... And put on Christ.
- Like Paul... We must bury self to the extent that others will not see us... But Christ living in us... Are we willing to disappear in favor of Jesus living in us?? Are we willing to be like this tax collector? Or, will we be like the Pharisee?
Well... We've got to stop.
Here is God's statement on our subject tonight... Pride goes before destruction. And a haughty spirit before a fall. How about it...
- Are some of us walking on the edge with God... And with our brethren because of our pride?
- Are we about to fall out of relationship with Him... Or one another because of our pride?
The Road to Canosa begins on our knees... barefoot... and...
- In our own rags of righteousness...
- In humble... penitent... unselfish submission to God.
You see... Prideful people don't walk church isles.
But tonight I am asking us to forsake our pride.... And come to Jesus in HUMILITY.
Forsake our pride and become a child of God by faith, repentance and New Testament baptism, immersion in water for the forgiveness of sin.
May we all... Like this tax collector... Forsake our pride and acknowledge our sins asking God's forgiveness. If the lesson has prompted you to come to Jesus, come now as we stand and sing.
