Pride is a powerful weapon in Satan’s arsenal to destroy us. Pride is encased in deception. Pride says, “You can do it yourself. You don’t need God. You are God.”
Strange thing is that pride is a weapon we use against ourselves. We set it up; we use it to destroy ourselves while the devil watches for the outcome. You see, although pride brought the devil down, he caught us in the deception too, through Adam. So now, pride is entrenched in us as well. Satan doesn’t have to do anything. He only eggs us on.
Why does God hate pride?
James 4:6 NLT
[6]…”As the Scriptures say, “God opposes (ranges in battle against) the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
Our independence and self-sufficiency are the most impenetrable barriers to God’s grace. He can do nothing for us unless we humble ourselves enough to cry out for help.
John 15:5 NLT
[5]“Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.”
However, in God’s wisdom, He allows pride to do its own work. Our pride backfires for His own purposes!
Take the experience of David, God’s model king. At the peak of his reign…kingdom expanded, enemies subdued, peace established.. David’s pride led him into forbidden territory, and eventually exploded his self-importance. He became nothing more than he was inside, a guilty criminal. Without God’s mercy, he was finished!
And God did nothing to stop him! No warning, no teaching, just waiting. Remember the old proverb, “Pride comes before a fall”?
Why is it important that we experience some kind of fall before we realise how heinous pride really is? Until we feel the terrible humiliation of a fall from our ‘high horse’, we will never really take seriously the effects of pride that create a chasm between ourselves and others, and most of all, between ourselves and God.
David’s pride brought him back to reality with a bang. For one terrible moment, he thought he didn’t need God, all his years of humble obedience obliterated by one thought, one act of rebellion.
The consequences of his pride were agonising. He even suffered physically because he refused to acknowledge his guilt.
Psalms 32:3-4 NLT
[3] “When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long. [4] Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat.”
David knew he was wrong but he did it anyway. However, God’s work in him was thorough and effective. Lifelong lessons came out of his foolish and high-handed rebellion.
He knew that there were sacrifices for sin unwittingy comitted, but he also knew the law. He knew the consequences of his adultery and murder but he did them anyway.
Hebrews 10:26 NLT
[26] “Dear friends, if we deliberately continue sinning after we have received knowledge of the truth, there is no longer any sacrifice that will cover these sins.”
God could have legitimately killed him, but He didn’t. He allowed David’s pride to do a thorough work in him, dragging him down to the depths of humiliation when his sins were exposed.
David’s only escape route was to admit his guilt, repent of his sin, and cry out to God for mercy and forgiveness. God heard his cry, but there was a heavy price to pay which he could not escape. His family was torn apart by his sin.
What did David learn from this horrible glitch in his character and the deeds that followed?
He learned that…
- He carried a flaw in his nature from birth which he had no power to overcome. Perhaps he thought, up to this point, that he was a good guy, that he was okay with God, always doing what he was told without question until….his ungodly desires caught him out.
Psalms 51:5 NLT
[5] “For I was born a sinner— yes, from the moment my mother conceived me.”
- Only God’s mercy could save him from his evil deeds. No amount of animal blood could pay for what he had done.
Psalms 51:1 NLT
[1]”Have mercy on me, O God, because of your unfailing love. Because of your great compassion, blot out the stain of my sins.”
Psalms 51:16 NLT
[16] “You do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one. You do not want a burnt offering.”
- What he had done was against God and His Word. It was not against any human first, as bad as that was, but against God Himself that he had rebelled and flown in the face of God’s commandments.
Psalms 51:3-4 NLT
[3] “For I recognize my rebellion; it haunts me day and night. [4] Against you, and you alone, have I sinned; I have done what is evil in your sight. You will be proved right in what you say, and your judgment against me is just.”
- Repentance and confession were the only way to forgiveness. He didn’t window-dress his sin. He called it what it was. It was rebellion that he acknowledged and from which he turned. He had revolted against God and His Word.
Psalms 32:5 NLT
[5]”Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, “I will confess my rebellion to the Lord.” And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.”
- He discovered something about himself, that what he had done was the outcome of a perverse nature. The Hebrew – ‘avon’ – translated ‘iniquity’, is from the root meaning ‘perverse’,… “showing a deliberate and obstinate desire to behave in a way that is unreasonable or unacceptable” (dictionary definition).
Psalms 51:3 NLT
[3]”For I recognize my rebellion; it haunts me day and night…”
(Hebrew ‘pesha’ (rebellion), meaning ‘revolt’).
Only trust in God’s unfailing love could deliver him from the attitude of rebellion that provoked him to do the terrible things he had done.
Psalms 32:10 NLT
[10]”Many sorrows come to the wicked, but unfailing love surrounds those who trust the Lord.”
- There was something about God rhat he discovered through his rebellion that gave him deeper insight into God’s covenant love, ‘chesed’. God’s love for him was so great that He forgave and restored him because of the sacrifice of the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, which David himself foretold in his Psalms.
Psalms 51:1 NLT
[1] “Have mercy on me, O God, because of your unfailing love. Because of your great compassion, blot out the stain of my sins.”
Psalms 32:1 NLT
[1] Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sin is put out of sight!”
Psalms 32:5 NLT
[5]”Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, “I will confess my rebellion to the Lord.” And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.”
- His pride, his deep-seated root of rebellion, had to be effectively crushed, broken in pieces, before he could accept the ‘bit and bridle’ of God’s authority like a horse broken in to submit to the rider’s control.
Psalms 51:16-17 NLT
[16]”You do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one. You do not want a burnt offering. [17] The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.”
He needed to take his demolished pride and had it over to God as a sacrifice, to receive, in its place, a ‘broken and contrite (Hebrew ‘dakah’ – meaning ‘collapsed’) heart’ – a disposition of submission and obedience totally dedicated to God.
Then, and only then, would God accept his sacrifices of animal blood as worthy worship because they represented a far greater sacrifice that would make this exchange possible.
Psalms 51:19 NLT
[19] “Then you will be pleased with sacrifices offered in the right spirit— with burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings. Then bulls will again be sacrificed on your altar.”
So, to conclude David’s story, if the process of pride and the lessons to be learned, are to finish pride’s work, we must allow pride’s fruit to destroy our pride so effectively that we can offer to the Lord a crushed and collapsed heart and spirit (attitude). Then we will truly please Him and offer to Him the worship He accepts.
Paul’s story was of God’s intervention to save him from the ravages of pride…
2 Corinthians 12:7 NLT
[7] “… even though I have received such wonderful revelations from God…, to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud.”
Paul pleaded three times for deliverance but God refused, for one simple reason.
2 Corinthians 12:9 NLT
[9]”Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.”
If pride cuts us off from God’s grace, weakness keep us humble enough to depend on God’s power to overcome. Grace provides every resource to live abundantly despite our suffering.
2 Corinthians 12:10 NLT
[10]”So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. [10] That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
Paul’s response was much more than to endure and survive. His weakness was the very thing that qualified him for God’s grace. He rejoiced in and celebrated his hardships because it was, in the first place, through God’s grace that the hardships he suffered, kept his feet on the ground.
When we finally understand what God is doing, we too will rejoice in our sufferings. We know that God will do whatever it takes to obliterate the pride that cuts us off from grace, for “He resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.”