Hello, everyone. Again, it's good to be here with
you guys. I'm really excited to be here
worshiping with you, but I'm actually really excited.
Pastor Tim's actually going to my church.
Pastor Tim's such a good, faithful, godly, solid man that
China and I, we look up to. I know China left.
It's been almost 10 months, I think, but still to this day, I
think about him sometimes in ministry settings.
I think about what would Pastor Tim, what would Pastor Tim do?
What would Pastor Tim say? You know, not to the degree of
like, what would Jesus do, but like we I think about it and
because of SPMCI can say with confidence that I think come to
believe community really is what God meant for our well-being of
our soul for a Christian life. So I want to thank you before we
turn to God's Word day, I just want to share the heart behind
this message For those of you guys, check the passage on
Instagram Story yesterday or the announcement yesterday.
I brought another passage. Actually, I apologize for that.
One of the reasons is because this is the latest sermon I
gave. But another reason I would say
more important reason is because as I was preparing and praying
for our time together, but I just felt like the Lord was
landing something on my heart that we all struggle together,
which is the root of the things that make us sin or sometimes
drift away from God's love or receiving his love.
So in my church, I started a new series, what's called signature
sins. What churches commonly or
historically called the seven deadly sins or these seven sins
are not the worst since that is not that's not why because
churches call it deadly, but it's deadly because it's the
root sins from which a lot of others sins spring up and branch
out. And I one of the sins I brought,
one of the sins I brought is pride.
We're going to talk about pride today and the reason for it
because I already shared this with you, but in ministry
setting, something I realized, and not just as I minister to
other people, but as I see something going on in my heart
in my Christian walk is that I noticed Sunday worship or even
Christian life sometimes could feel like just managing sins, as
Dallas Willard once put it, that we're just whenever we hear the
gospel, we feel like, oh, there's a remedy.
Good. And then we go back to the old
same patterns that make us sin or make us commit to do things
that we don't necessarily want to do.
And a question in my heart and question that I want to share
was why is it? What causes it?
Why do we still go for it? And that's the heart behind it.
The title is Pride is sin beneath all sins.
So with that, let me read you 2 passages first and we'll pray
together and then we'll go right in.
So one passage from Genesis 3, one through 7, and the other
will be from James 46. I'm reading from ESP.
So here's the word of the Lord Genesis 3.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the
field that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, Did God actually say you shall not eat
of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the
serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden.
But God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that's
in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest
you die. But the serpent said to the
woman, You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat
of it, your eyes will be open, and you'll be like God, knowing
good and evil. So when the woman saw the tree
was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and
that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of
its fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her
husband who was with her, and he ate.
And the eyes of both were open, and they knew that they were
naked, and they saw fig leaves together, and make themselves
low in clothes. And moving on.
James 46. Therefore it says God opposes
the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
This is God's word. Would you join me?
Bring our hearts to God and ask the Lord to speak to us.
Father, we ask that now, may we worship You through this time.
Help us not to be spectators, help us not to just passively
sit and logically understand what this Word or what this
topic is about, or help us to rely on Your Holy Spirit who
speaks to us through Your Word. You may the words in my mouth
and meditation of our hearts be pleasing and honorable in Your
sight. Allure a rock and a Redeemer.
We pray this in Jesus name, Amen.
Not too long ago there was a national survey done for young
people from the age of 13 through 17.
And the question was what do you want to be when you grow up?
And I don't know about you, but to my surprise the most common
answer was not that I want to be a teacher or a doctor.
The most common answer was I want to be famous.
And now if you think about it now there are different ways we
can analyze to say what's wrong with the new generation or
whatnot. But as I sit and think about it,
I thought what to begin with, it makes sense why?
Because we all as a human beings have a desire to be seen, don't
we? We want to be seen, we want to
be valued, we want to be heard and we want all of that.
We want to matter to someone. We want our lives to matter to
people. So we have that desire in a
sense. I don't think it's a bad thing.
If anything, I think it's a good thing because God made us for
that. He designed us for relationship
with others and with him, not for self-sufficiency.
So when we desire to be connected and to be seen, to be
noticed, it's a it's a, it's an innate desire that we have from
God. But The thing is, even any even
good things can easily turn into something bad, right?
And as we think about it, what we see is that the good desire
to be seen and valued can just turn it into a desire to be
admired for attention, for recognition.
It will start chasing attention. Like just as long as people pay
attention to me and look at me and recognize me, everything
will be OK. It will just fill my empty
heart. It will feel the ache that I
have in my heart. But the truth is that longing to
think about it isn't just a modern thing.
It's not just 21st century issue.
It's actually started in the beginning of all things.
In Genesis 3, we saw that in the garden.
The serpent whispered to Adam and Eve.
He said God knows when you eat of it, your eyes will be open
and you will be like God. And that was a temptation to
begin with. You will be like God.
It wasn't about eating the forbidden fruit.
It was about being centered. It was about it was about being
seen and being in control. And I believe the same voice or
the same heart that whispers still echoes in every human
heart today. But think about some of the
examples I can give you is when we say you can define good and
evil for yourself now in a setting like this.
We're at a church. Many of you guys are already
believers, committed believers, and we, we don't verbalize it.
We don't say, oh, I can define, I don't, we don't say it.
But if you look at our lives practically, that's what we do.
Sometimes we do. You don't need God's help.
You've got this. Again, we don't say it out loud,
but if you look at our lives, when was the last time prayer
really felt like something you have to do and you want to do,
even though we know it's the right thing to do, it felt like
I know what to do. I know how to fix this.
Why would I pray about it? I'll just go to go fix it.
It's more easy for us. Another thing might be if you
deserve more than you have. It's the mentality that we often
have. Maybe we don't verbalize it, but
I think many of us have that. And the result is what we
constantly reach for the throne. But what happens after every
time is that we fall. Every time we reach for the
throne, we fall. So from the Garden of Eden to
all to today, the story of humanity is a story of pride.
And that's the pattern of the Bible.
That's what I want to show you. We just want to in the Bible.
And today we try to live without God, only to find ourselves more
empty, more alone, more disconnected, and less human.
So the question I want to consider reading today is why
does pride still lead us to fall?
Why is pride still effective? Because we saw that in Genesis 3
and after Jesus in redemption. Now we have the Holy Spirit.
Why does it still lead us to fall?
And how can Christ lift us up again?
Three things we're going to see. The first thing is why?
Because we tend to exalt ourselves against God.
There's a innate human nature, a human sinful nature that we tend
to exalt ourselves against God. Pride is not, you know, firstly
not about arrogance. Sometimes we tend to think that,
oh, it's pride is about arrogance.
No, pride is initially not about arrogance.
It's about autonomy. It's the desire to live apart
from God's rule and say, I want to be living under my own rule.
I want to be the center of my life.
In Genesis 3 when the serpent tempted Adam and Eve, he didn't
say, well it didn't say eat this fruit, it tastes good, right?
That's not what the serpent says.
Serpent said eat this and you will be like God, you'll be like
God. And pride begins not in
rebellion against rules. Any sins doesn't start with the
wrong things. Pride and any sins starts in
rebellion against a relationship and that's what the serpent
does. Notice how the serpent works
here. He questions God's word
initially serpent question God's word.
It says, did God actually say that?
Did God actually say you will die if you eat this fruit?
And then he questions God's character, right?
God's holding out on you. He's not, there's something he's
not telling you because if you really eat this fruit, you'll be
like God. But he doesn't want that.
So he's not telling you. Go for it.
And then finally offers the bait.
You can be your own God, right? And that's the root and origin
of pride, self exultation that dethrones God so that you can be
your God. You know, today we don't have a
tree that we literally eat from, right?
But again, we, I think we do the same thing practically almost
every day when we say or when we think in our minds, you know,
I'll forgive that person when I'm ready, not what God says,
I'll talk to that person. I try to take the initiative and
then reconcile when I'm ready. Not necessarily when God says or
when we say. I'll give when it's comfortable,
but not when it costs. I'll serve when I feel like it,
when I want to, but not necessarily when it costs me
something or when we decide. I'll define what's right for me,
what's godly for me, what's working for me.
Every sin whispers it's it's packaged differently, but every
sin whispers the same voice and that is I know better than God.
So CS Lewis, he said pride leads to every other vice.
It's the complete anti God state of mind.
That's why pride isn't just one sin among many.
Pride is actually the soil in which every sin grows.
It's the sin beneath all sins. That's why it's worth paying
attention and uncovering and bringing our heart to God and
see what God surfaces up and see what what's the root of it.
Lord, when do I try to just grasp onto my pride and live my
own life? In the book of Daniel in the Old
Testament chapter 4, we find a great king of Babylon named
Nebuchadnezzar and he's looking over his great nation, you know,
just great troops and everything.
And he tells himself in Daniel chapter 4 verse 30, he says, is
not this great Babylon which I built my by my mighty power as a
royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?
Isn't this great? And God says, oh, you think
you're good and you think you're God.
Let me show you how you're an animal.
And what happens is he lost sanity.
And he begins to crawl on all fours and eating grass for years
until he finally comes to realize and acknowledges that
oh, I am not God, God is God. And just 7 verses later, this is
Nebuchadnezzar's confession. It says 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's able to humble. You see, what we see here is
that pride dehumanizes. It makes us less than a human
being that we need to be and we can be because it disconnects us
from God, whose image we bear when we say God, I know better,
God, I am better, I can do this on my own.
What happens is that we become a less human, not more.
And that's the tragedy of pride. It promises to lift you up and
say you'll be great. And that's what the problem.
That's the how idol promises in the Bible.
All throughout the Bible. If you bow to me, if you give in
to me, I'll give you the world. In the end, no idol keeps a
single promise, and that's what pride does.
So we fall in to pride because we tend to exalt ourselves
against God. Second reason why we give in to
pride is because we tend to elevate ourselves above other
people. That's what pride does, right it
it disconnects us from God and it disconnects us from others.
It's a passage we read in James 4/6 and it says God opposes the
proud, but it gives grace to the humble.
Now, the word opposed in Greek is interesting word because it's
supposed not in the sense that he's just standing against you,
but it's in the battle formation.
It's a military word. So when God says, when God sees
a proud person, he's not saying I don't like it, don't do it,
let's find a better way. He's saying I am standing
against you in battle formation. I'm going to fight you.
I'm going to fight pride. You know why?
Because it disconnects you from others.
It disconnects us from other people.
How does it separate us from other people?
There are probably many things we we find, but at least two
things I want to share. The first thing is because pride
constantly seeks comparison, right?
Always. Pride always needs somebody to
look down on. So it doesn't.
Pride never says I'm good. Pride always says I'm better, I
know better, I know more. That's why pride can exist in
the heart of a Pharisee as much as in the heart of a preacher
and as much as in the heart of a parent and as much as in the
heart of a politician. With all the unbelievable things
that's been happening around this country, I'm not going to
get into that. But as we see these things, we
might be tempted to say, oh, I can't believe he did that or she
said that, or he did that. But The thing is that same
desire and heart is right here in us as well.
We're no better, as the Bible indicates, and it speaks to us.
You can even proud of your own humility.
It's very sneaky. It's hard to detect.
Back in Austin high school, I was part of the praise team and
what we did very in a sneaky and subtle way, is that when we
circle up and share our devotions, what we did is we'll
often end up sounding more like just bragging about how simple
we were and underneath we were bragging to each other.
I'm more godly because I confessed worse sins.
So it's like, hey, I, I, I said that to my parents, I'm worse
and then I cheated on my exam. OK, you're worse.
OK, you're more humble. All right, I did this.
All right, you're more humble. It's like the outset, see, we're
talking about sins and confession and still it can turn
it into as a form of pride. It's very sneaky, you know, have
you ever posted something online on I can't think of anything
Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or different platforms and maybe
about serving or giving or and then have you noticed?
Have you ever caught yourself like constantly checking views
and how many people watched, how many people liked it?
And perhaps you've been overlooked for recognition at
work and life and you suddenly notice the resemble resentment
bubbles up. You think, why don't they
appreciate me? I did all that for them.
And how come nobody says a single thank you?
And I can't believe that. Pride, you see, doesn't need
applause to survive. Pride just needs attention and
recognition. So Rebecca Deyoung, professor at
Calvin University in Grand Rapids, MI, she defines pride as
the excessive desire for recognition and approval from
others. You see, pride is not about
being first. It's just about being noticed.
Pride says look at me or we're going to get there.
When humility says look at Jesus.
Pride constantly draws people into you.
Look at me, what do you think of me?
How do I look? How do I sound?
Another way pride separate us from people is by hiding our
insecurity. That's what pride does.
It hides our insecurity. That's how we disconnect us from
other people. Pride is often the armor we bear
to hide our fear. It says, if I can impress enough
people, if enough people come to believe that I'm good, I'm put
together, I'm OK, then I'm OK. So we spent a lot of our energy
and efforts to look OK, to sound OK, don't we?
Oh, I'm fine, I'm OK. And underneath, you know for a
fact that you're not doing well. But you can't be vulnerable with
other people. You can't share your emotions
with other people. Why?
Because if you do that, you feel like you're going to lose a part
of you. Oh, I can't give that.
But no amount of approval or recognition can quiet a soul
that's disconnected from God's grace.
If we don't know how to receive God's love, you will never know
what it's like to be content. And what's going to end that?
We're going to end up just always chasing after something
more and more and more. And then what happens is that
we're going to constantly try to avoid people because we have to
hide. Or we're going to constantly try
to meet people so that we are going to look, OK, but we're
going to think, Oh yeah, you, you meet a lot of people, so
you're good. The other extremes that
sometimes we see in ourselves. Again, CS Lewis, he says as long
as you're proud, you cannot know God.
A proud man is always looking down on things and people.
And of course, as long as you're looking down, you cannot see
something that's above you, right?
If our eyes are down here, we cannot look up.
And when we are down here, we cannot look to God.
And we're just busy here taking care of our own lives.
And that's the truth of pride. The more we create to be seen,
the less we actually are. And if that sounds modern, let
me tell you, this is something that was already defined and
processed and dealt with in the early church.
Well, we read that in the Bible, but early church in the 4th
century, as Saint Augustine once called pride as the love of own
own excellence. And what we get here is that
it's the pride is really the oldest addiction in human
history, which is the addiction itself.
I love me, me, me saturated society.
In a sense. I'm afraid that our generation
has given pride in microphone when people go for it.
And we live in a world where self promotion is not just
tolerated, it's rewarded. It's celebrated.
What? This is a society that
celebrates Independence Day. When you're 18, what do you do?
You become an independent adult. We love independence, So what we
do is that we create, we add it, we present only the best angles
of our lives to look good. We turn the mirror into a stage.
And yet the more we do that, the more we post in pride, the more
we live our lives with pride, the low near we become.
You know why? Because pride cannot sustain
community. And one way in which I want to
suggest you think about it in your own heart is notice your
heart about CGS, about joining ACG if you're not and in CG, can
you open up your heart with other believers?
And of course, we don't want to share all, everything.
We don't want to over share. That's that's another case.
But can you open up? Can you share your heart?
Or do we constantly think about how to avoid that conversation?
Oh, I'm good. I'm fine.
Life is OK. Yeah, I'll listen to you, but
you're not going to listen anything.
You're not going to get anything out of me.
I don't want you to pay attention to that.
You can't truly love people you're competing with.
That's why James says God gives grace to the humble, because
only grace can break that comparison game.
Only grace can break that our our tendency to hide from other
people, hide our insecurity to say I'm OK, I'm good.
Exactly what's grace? How do we receive that grace?
And that's the Third Point that I want to understand, I want to
consider today, which is instead, instead of elevating
ourselves, we must encounter the humility of Jesus.
We must encounter the humility of Christ.
If pride is self exultation that dethrones God.
Humility is the self surrender that enthrones Christ to say
God, you are God. As Nebuchadnezzar said, you are
God. God is God, right?
We see that in Philippians 2. It gives us the ultimate
reversal. We see in verses 6 through 8
says though he was in very nature talking about Jesus, it
wasn't that Jesus was in very nature of God.
He did not consider equality with God something to be
grasped, but he made himself nothing, taking the form of a
servant, and he became obedient to death, even death on a cross.
What happened is that in the Garden of Eden, humanity grasped
that being like God. And what happened?
We fell at a Calvary where Jesus died, God himself humbled to a
point of dying on the cross. And what happened?
He saved us, right? The cross is a great turning
point of all humanity. Where Adam said my will, not
yours. The same place.
The second Adam, Jesus said not my will, but yours be done.
And he took that cross. Pride built the distance between
heaven and earth, between US and God.
Humiliate breach, that when we're talking about the
humility, sometimes we I don't think it has a good connotation
on us anymore, especially in our society.
But what is true greatness? And I can tell you the greatness
is not grasping for position and giving ourselves for others as
Jesus humbled himself. When Jesus knelt to wash his
disciples feet, have you noticed that Jesus did not?
Jesus did not stop being God when He knelt down to wash the
feet of disciples. Did you notice He always was
God? Even when he was washing the
feet of disciples, He still was God.
What he modelled for us then was that he model for us what
Lordship look like, what it means to live a Christian life.
Can you steep low and wash other people's feet as Jesus did?
Again, CS Lewis hopefully explains humility this way.
He says humility isn't is not thinking less of yourself.
Humility is thinking of yourself less.
In other words, what humility is about is not that you have to
constantly put yourself down. What humility is just stop.
What's a little bit less thinking less of your thinking
just a little about yourself, right?
Kind of slow down. Oh, is it about me?
If you noticed, if we, if you have a tendency to make things
about you, that's when we can slow down and say, oh, is this
about me or is this about this person or is this about God?
What is it about whose is about? It's refusing to build your own
worth in other people's opinions or your own achievements.
And that's the freedom. Pride can never give you the
freedom to love without needing to be noticed.
So how do we live that way? Well, easier said than done.
But James 47 gives us A1 clear way.
It says submit yourselves to God, submit yourselves to God.
Humility begins when you stop fighting for the control and
start surrendering. And this is not something that
we have to go to 48 hours, 72 hour or ten months intense
retreat to actually do it, but something we can practice on a
daily basis. Just as you go about your day,
you can say, Lord, I don't have to be right all the time.
I don't have to be admired. I don't need people's
recognition all the time, but I need to be formed by you, Lord,
would you do that work in my heart?
Lord, I, I need to worship you. Would you prompt in my heart to
do that? Would you work in my heart?
The gospel frees us from proving ourselves because Jesus has been
approved for us. So we don't.
We no longer have to climb up the ladder and say, look at me,
because Christ came down from it.
And when we try to go up that ladder, we're trying to undo
something that cannot be undone. And how about we receive that
grace of Jesus and say, Lord, I will live my life with you.
So the question is, VMC is not if we struggle with pride, we
all do one or the other ways. The question is, where in your
life are you grasping for control instead of surrendering
for grace? Is it in your marriage you feel
like you have to always have the final word?
Or is it work? You just feel like you need the
recognition People need to validate you all the time.
Maybe it's in your heart. You feel like I have to build my
life, build a case for myself to say I'm enough, I'm necessary,
I'm lovable. And the good news is that the
past same passage we read in James 46 comes to us as a
blessing and comfort. It says God opposes the proud,
but he gives grace to the humble.
And that grace has a name, and his name is Jesus.
He gives grace. He gives Jesus to us.
So how about we go to Him now and one way we can do is right
now I just want to give you just a few minutes to bring your
heart to God and just begin this process.
Lord, what's at the root? Where in my life am I trying to
grasp for control and power and my voice to be heard and for my
image to be seen in a certain way to frame but and notice what
surfaces up, what God brings up. And instead of just rushing
ourselves into the gospel and say, oh, God is good, Oh, I'm
good, God is good. How about we slow down and see
Lord, what is it that you're bringing up to surface and how
can I sit in that? How can I receive your love in
that? So one way I can help you.
I wanted to help. Something I share with my church
is I don't know if we're some of you guys have the bulletin or
the sermon note with you on the right side.
I thought I brought one. Oh yeah, for this community
groups, maybe before the community groups this week or or
just by yourself before the community groups or during the
community groups. You don't have to go all you
know in one sitting. But what I would encourage you
just I hope it's self-explanatory, but as you go
over, just ask yourself and the Lord, Lord, where am I still
where am I still reaching for control and all these things am
I won't note that encouragement. Well, I'm sorry, 2 is 1 is try
not to rush into the gospel. We have the gospel so we can do
this without the gospel, we won't be able to pray, right?
We pray because we have the gospel of Jesus because we are
safe in Jesus, we can pray to him, right?
So when things come up in your heart just discomforting and
uncomfortable, sit in that and ask the Lord, what what are you
bringing up in my heart, Lord, and how do I, what do I do with
this? And the second thing is debrief
with your community, with other people.
You don't have to give an ultimate answer or try to fix
each other. We can't, we can't do that.
We know that. But what I the reason I'm
sharing this is because don't get stuck in your own prayer in
your heart and think, oh, I'm miserable.
But as something comes up, just share with your community groups
not to a degree that you'll regret sharing that at night.
And why did I say that? Not to that point, but enough
for you to feel lighter and enough for your community to
pray for you and say, I don't know what we're doing exactly.
I don't know where this is going, but how about this is
what I sense? This is something that was come
up and I just wanted to give it to you.
And can you pray for me, right? No trying.
Let's not try to fix each other, but let's pray and listen
because the Holy Spirit is right among you.
So as you do that, I want to transition into time of prayer
before that main point, as when we stop grasping for glory and
start giving in to God. Grace sets us free.
Will you join me in prayer?