MWUTT 51: Pride Will DESTROY You. Jesus Can Humble You!

Pride will destroy you, and our culture will cheer it on while it happens. Here's how to spot it before it costs you everything, and why the humility of Jesus is the only cure. Culture tells people to celebrate themselves, affirm every feeling, and take pride in whatever they choose. It's called confidence and empowerment, but scripture calls pride sin. It is deadly because it puts you at the center. Correction feels like an attack. You stop living like you need God. Pride is not only out there in the world, it shows up in the church when being right matters more than being humble. It shows up when you look in the mirror, too. So let's bring it into the light.

A reminder that our podcast, Men Who Understand the Times, that title is based on a passage from 1 Chronicles 12:32. "From the descendants of Issachar, men who understood the times and what Israel should do." So the three of us on this podcast are not saying that we understand the times, but rather that by the study of God's word and the application of that word, we want to be men who do understand the times. And so the whole concept of this podcast is that we are talking about things that frankly we don't often talk about in our confessional Lutheran churches, and we want to learn how to apply God's word to be light in a culture that is becoming darker and darker, and we want to be salt in a world that is decaying. So welcome Josh back to the podcast. So Josh, what is pride, and why is it so deadly?

Well, pride is breaking the first commandment. Um, I think the first commandment's first because it's easiest to break. You shall have no other gods, and pride is putting yourself in that position. Um, Proverbs 21:4, "Haughty eyes and a good heart, they're the lamp of the wicked. They're, they're sin." And Proverbs 16:5, "Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the Lord. Be assured he will not go unpunished." And so pride's very dangerous, and pride becomes your, your default settings un- unless you intentionally fight against it.

All right. Zach, what do you want to add to that?

Josh is right on with breaking the first commandments. I have another proverb for my, for myself. Uh, Proverbs 16:18 says, "Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before the fall." So not only is this a breaking of the first commandment, but it's an extremely dangerous commandment to break. God tells us that pride comes before destruction. Pride will destroy you.

Yeah, and there I was thinking of the parable that Jesus tells of Luke chapter 18 of the Pharisee's pride. So you can read it for yourselves, Luke 18:9-14, but there you can notice the Pharisee's pride in his body language, in that how he's standing so that everyone can see him, as opposed to the tax collector that's standing off by himself. You notice the Pharisee's pride in the pronouns, that four times in that short parable Jesus has him saying "I." And then there's the prayer content, that he says, "Well, I'm glad I'm not like the robbers, the evildoers, the murderers, and the adulterers, and especially that I'm not like that humble Pharisee over there." What Jesus does in that parable is He's flipping the script, because in that first century of Jewish culture, the people would have looked to that Pharisee as someone, you know, to model themselves after. But instead Jesus says, "No, I want you to model yourself after that humility of the, of the tax collector." And then I've got two Bible verses also. Uh, Psalm 10:4, "With his nose in the air, the wicked man does not seek God. There is no room at all for God in his thoughts." And 1 Corinthians 10:12, "So let him who thinks he stands be careful that he doesn't fall." I know you guys are well-read. Uh, one of my favorite authors is C.S. Lewis. So in Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis calls pride the essential vice. And then in The Screwtape Letters, it's a conversation between two demons, and the one demon is teaching the younger demon, uh, Wormwood, uh, here on Earth in, uh, oh, during the Second World War in England, telling him how to tempt someone. And there it's interesting, he's telling him, "Well, you need to, uh, work on the man's pride, and especially because he's gonna be so proud about his newfound Christian humility." Uh, and there, you know, an application I think of when I go mountain biking with the guys here at church, uh, some of them used to be downhill mountain bike racers. So they're not very good at biking uphill, so I make sure to crush them going uphill, and then they're behind me, and then y- I can hear them on their brakes because I'm coasting, and they're just... They wanna race, but I'm coasting 'cause I realize that's when I'm gonna get hurt. Because in pride, I wanna go fast, but that's where the roots and rocks are gonna trip me up and I'm gonna go flying off my bike, and at 55 I'm not gonna heal like I did when I was 25. So you have to balance that pride and humility. So then Zach, where do you see pride in our culture, but then also where do you see it within the Christian church?