C.S. Lewis, in his masterful work Mere Christianity wrote, “A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.” The word of God allows us special insight into the heart of a man who personally experienced the danger of lifting one’s heart up in pride. “At the same time my reason returned to me, and for the glory of my kingdom, my majesty and splendor returned to me. My counselors and my lords sought me, and I was established in my kingdom, and still more greatness was added to me. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just; and those who walk in pride he is able to humble.” Listen to the words of experience!
My good friend Dr. Everett Piper in his recent Washington Times article shares, “It’s June, and for the rest of the month, we will be inundated with our country’s monthlong celebration of pride. We will see it everywhere. It will be pervasive. The rainbow’s ever-increasing colors will be inescapable. We will see it in the news. We’ll see it at Target. We’ll see it in Walmart. We’ll see it in our public parks and at our schools. We’ll see it in our theaters. We’ll see it on T-shirts, umbrellas, bumper stickers, and even at our churches.
In case you’ve forgotten, up until about five minutes ago, in the course of human history, pride was listed as one of the seven deadly sins. But that is no longer the case. Rather than being considered sacrilege, pride is now sanctified. Pride has become America’s ultimate virtue. Pride is now our nation’s summum bonum. Pride is our highest good. Not courage. Not chivalry. Not modesty, maternity, sacrifice, chastity, family or fatherhood. Not confession or repentance, but pride.”
Nearly 100 years ago, G.K. Chesterton wrote that if he had “only one sermon to preach, it would be a sermon against pride.” Pride, he said, “is a poison so very poisonous that it not only poisons the virtues; it even poisons the other vices.” He went on: “It is amazing to me that [we] really have so very little to say about the cause and cure of a moral condition that poisons nearly every family and every circle of friends. There is hardly [anyone] who has anything to say about it that is half so illuminating as the literal exactitude of the old maxim of the priest: that pride is from hell.”
On March 30, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln called the nation to prayer… “And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.
And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
The book of Proverbs has quite a bit to say about pride. “These six [things] doth the LORD hate: yea, seven [are] an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood.”… “Pride [goeth] before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. Better [it is to be] of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud.”
Just as Adam and Eve fell prey to the lies and deception of Satan in Genesis chapter three, Satan still attempts to cause men and women to inflate their self-worth and to replace the role of God in their lives. We are tempted to tell God the creator, “I’ll decide what’s good and evil, right and wrong in my life.” That my friend, is a dangerous place to be.
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