Pride Kills

I’m not sure why anyone would want to do it. Do something that would make God go to war against you.

I’ve heard of how He killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in a single night. I know; it’s the Original Testament, right?

But in the New Testament, a beautiful covenant of grace and love, we read this: God is opposed to the proud.

Yikes.

Pride is sin, and God will oppose you when you walk that way.

What causes pride? Let’s talk about two primary causes.

Insecurity
Pride is the brat kid of insecurity.

To avoid pride, we must be secure rather than insecure.

Secure in who God is.
Secure in who God says we are.
Secure in how God works.
Secure in what kind of God-story we find ourselves in.
Secure in God’s call.

It’s an entirely external security. We could even call it an Outsecurity that overcomes our Insecurity. Our security comes 100% from the LORD.

When I am secure, I have nothing to prove. Nothing is on the line. And far from that making me lazy, it empowers me. It’s my rocket fuel to be about the Father’s business!

The scriptures are given to us to develop this security in God. We get a front seat to God’s story of redemption, or victory against insurmountable odds, of using the least qualified people, of miracles, of complete forgiveness, of a God who wants to walk with us daily in the cool of the day.

So we become students of His story and grow in our friendship with God so we can fully experience the security of being in such a great relationship!

Success
Pride is also the brat kid of success.

When you get a few wins under your belt, you might actually start thinking it was you who did it, rather than God at work through you.

Once again, like our security, our success doesn’t come from within but from without. God wants us to be successful. Scripture says it this way: “It is to My Father’s glory that you bear much fruit.” That’s Jesus quoted in John 15.

Let me tell you the story of king Hezekiah. He was the king of Judah about 700 years before Jesus walked the earth. He started well. He followed the Lord in stark contrast to his father, king Ahaz who was wicked as sin!

2 Kings 18:5-7 recounts, “Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him. He held fast to the Lord and did not stop following him; he kept the commands the Lord had given Moses. And the Lord was with him; he was successful in whatever he undertook. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him.”

But you have to know Hezekiah’s story to appreciate some of the magnitude. As a child, he witnessed his brothers being sacrificed to the flames of Molek. His wicked father’s cowardly attempt to appease the gods and be saved from the savage, mighty Assyrians didn’t even work.

Hezekiah had to watch his father pay a significant percentage of his country’s income to the Assyrians every year.

When his father dies, Hezekiah immediately removes the idol worship from Judah and even stops paying the tribute payments to Assyria - a risky move!

God works on Judah’s behalf and makes them super prosperous.

So prosperous that the Babylonians take notice and send ambassadors to ask for his friendship. Here’s the story from 2 Kings 20:12-19.

At that time, Marduk-Baladan son of Baladan king of Babylon sent Hezekiah letters and a gift, because he had heard of Hezekiah’s illness. Hezekiah received the envoys and showed them all that was in his storehouses—the silver, the gold, the spices and the fine olive oil—his armory and everything found among his treasures. There was nothing in his palace or in all his kingdom that Hezekiah did not show them.

Then Isaiah the prophet went to King Hezekiah and asked, “What did those men say, and where did they come from?”

“From a distant land,” Hezekiah replied. “They came from Babylon.”

The prophet asked, “What did they see in your palace?”

“They saw everything in my palace,” Hezekiah said. “There is nothing among my treasures that I did not show them.”

Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the Lord: The time will surely come when everything in your palace, and all that your predecessors have stored up until this day, will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the Lord. And some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood who will be born to you, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.”

“The word of the Lord you have spoken is good,” Hezekiah replied. For he thought, “Will there not be peace and security in my lifetime?”

I’m sorry…what?!? Pride is so sneaky that he neither realized (until later) that he was proud in both his life and in his response to Isaiah’s prophecy.

So the story goes like this. Hezekiah was in his palace, and one day some foreign diplomats from Babylon came seeking his friendship. This so puffed him up that he showed them everything he was proud of:
- His palace
- His weapon stockpiles
- His walled fortresses
- His water supplies
- His favorite toys…everything grand

And then the prophet Isaiah has the boldness to come and give him a stern word from the LORD.

And while he finally begins to realize his pride. How did his pride show itself? He simply didn’t acknowledge that the LORD was the Source and Provider of everything. Instead, he took that position himself. He wanted just a little of the glory due to the LORD, just like Satan did.

We must know how to walk in the opposite spirit of pride. Why? Because God is opposed to, He resists, He battles against the proud. Don’t you remember what He did to the 185,000 Assyrians in a single night?

What is the opposite spirit? The spirit of humility. Better said, the action of being humble.

But what is humility?
It’s a DOUBLE-RESIZING. I’ll explain.

First, I need to realize
- my smallness
- my limits
- my lack
- my need
- my inability
- my puniness
- my unglamorous “clay-pot-ness”

Next, I can now see God’s greatness, His ability, His power, His authority, His providence, and His sovereignty.

There’s a place I love to go to in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, that resizes me. It’s called the Pinnacle Overlook. You drive through hilly farmland, enter the park down a wooded lane, and suddenly it opens up into this overlook where you can see the Susquehanna River four hundred feet below.

You see how the river has cut its way through the hills on either side over thousands of years. It’s remarkable. (I even got engaged there!)

When I walk up to the railing, I feel like I’m standing before greatness. I feel very insignificant. All my problems and struggles get right-sized. My ability and potential get right-sized.

That’s what the revelation of God’s greatness does to us.

We begin to worship Him as a response to that revelation.

That’s the first resizing we need to walk in humility.

But the second resizing is just as significant. Can you guess what it is?

This same huge God lives in me!! He has placed this treasure in us, the clay pots. What is this treasure?

Let’s look at 2 Corinthians 4:1-7

Now, it’s because of God’s mercy that we have been entrusted with the privilege of this new covenant ministry. And we will not quit or faint with weariness. We reject every shameful cover-up and refuse to resort to cunning trickery or distorting the Word of God. Instead, we open up our souls to you by presenting the truth to everyone’s conscience in the sight and presence of God. Even if our gospel message is veiled, it is only veiled to those who are perishing, for their minds have been blinded by the god of this age, leaving them in unbelief. Their blindness keeps them from seeing the dayspring light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the divine image of God.

We don’t preach ourselves, but rather the lordship of Jesus Christ, for we are your servants for Jesus’ sake.

(We don’t preach ourselves, teach ourselves, worship ourselves, share ourselves, proclaim ourselves, highlight ourselves…insert your verb of choice.)

For God, who said, “Let brilliant light shine out of darkness,” is the one who has cascaded his light into us—the brilliant dawning light of the glorious knowledge of God as we gaze into the face of Jesus Christ.

We are like common clay jars that carry this glorious treasure within, so that this immeasurable power will be seen as God’s, not ours.

See, it’s not us. But HE is HUGE!

When we fully GET Who He is in us, we’ll see that we can’t hold Him in a small vessel after we’ve been resized down. So there needs to be the second, holy resizing in us that allows us to fulfill the call appropriately He has given us.

Humility is like repentance. It’s active, or it isn’t humility. If one of my children says sorry for something but keep doing it, did they repent? Nope. If I say I’m humbling myself but don’t change or do anything, I’m not.

Humility is an active verb. Therefore, we must not just aspire to be humble, we must BE humble, we must humble ourselves.

Take the High Road
The high road is always the low road. Humility is always the answer to a problem. I used to have a quote on my office wall to help me respond in humility by humbling myself. It was bold. It said, “There is no problem that can’t be solved, no situation that can’t be addressed simply by walking in a deeper level of humility!” That’s the power that walking in humility gives us.

-Dave Helmuth
(purchase my book, "Worship Fertilizer: (the first hundred)" HERE)

Pride Kills (Nº 290)