Who am I?

0:00Thanks for tuning in to Manna, a short daily meditation to feed hungry souls with God's Word. These episodes were prepared by our day ministers for a radio broadcast called Voice of the Church and are now republished by the Reform Perspective Foundation, a Canadian charity that applies biblical truth to the issues of our time, here's today serving. Hello dear listeners, here's a question for you and for me. Who are you? I'm tougher than the toughest dandelion. I'm the cause of things like murder and adultery, but no one sees me lurking in the background. I was the devil's first sin, and I'm your sin too. Who are you? You are pride. The Englishman, G.K. Chesterton once said, if I had one sermon to preach, I would preach on pride. All evil began because there was a sneer in heaven.

1:02The Bible tells us that man's sin too began because he wanted to be like God. Let me for a few moments take you on a journey exploring this sin, and also how God addresses it. How pervasive is your pride? Let me take the lead here. Pride is why I often feel hurt or wounded. It is why I won't admit I don't know something. I'm reminded of C.S. Lewis' observation that the devil loves to cure a small sin with a bigger one. Someone else observed that insecurity is a sign of pride. Strange, but I think it's true. Pride is at the root of so many of our sins. Why are we irritable and difficult to deal with? It breeds quarrels, relieved in the Bible in the book of Proverbs chapter 13, verse 10. Why do we so often fail to love others like we should because at bottom we really look

2:06down on them. It's pride that suffocates our love. Take a look for instance at the parable of the good Samaritan. In this story, Jesus confronts someone who came to him thinking he was pretty good. What do I have to do, Jesus, to inherit eternal life, he asks. And when Jesus tells him to love God and his neighbor, he asks, and who is my neighbor? In the parable, Jesus tells and responds that there's a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan. When they see a wounded traveler beaten and left for dead on the side of the road, the first two pass by without a pause. It takes a Samaritan to love and care for the injured man. Like all of Jesus' stories, there's a deeper message. It's more than a story about loving people in need. The point of the story, as you may know, relies on the fact that in those days Jews look down on Samaritans.

3:08They were seen as no account heretics. Now notice the story doesn't go like you might think it would. And in the end, the Jew helps a Samaritan. Instead, it's the Samaritan who helps the Jew. The point of the parable then is not just to tell us to love everyone. In Jesus' story, a Samaritan is better at love, better than two Jewish holy men, even. It's a Jew who is at the side of the road in need of some serious help, and he has to accept the help of a Samaritan. When you imagine the Jews listening, bristling, I certainly can, the man who first asks about love needs to see he has a bigger problem, one of pride, and that's true for all of us. Do I need to describe further how infected we are with pride? Just look at the auditions for American or Canadian Isle.

4:09How easy it is to think we're great when we're not. I write we because that's ourselves too up there on stage. This is the sort of thing our self-centered society encourages in all of us. See us, Lewis noted that pride is quite good at camouflage. But there are ways to glimpse your own pride. When you see the pride of others, for instance, why does their pride or cue? That's your own pride drawn into action. There's nothing that bothers pride more than others pride. In the Bible we see a God who deals with pride. First of all, he does it in judgment in the consequences of sin. Look at that first sin, Adam and Eve wanting to be like God. Did he get what they desired? In Genesis 3 we read, then their eyes were opened, sort of what the devil had promised, and they realized they were naked, and they sowed fig leaves together.

5:13Imagine that. Promise to be like God, and now they're fumbling with fig leaves. They have new knowledge, but it's of guilt and shame. Sin always leads to shame, and that's God in His poetic justice, dealing with the pride that goes before the fall. Hell is a big part of this too. Hell is first of all a place of shame. Hell is a place where human pride is silenced forever. Look at the rest of the Old Testament. It puts us all down and not sure too. We see ugly stuff like cay and killing Abel. A world so bad God sends a flood. Even King David committing adultery. In fact, the people of God is a whole don't seem to have a faithful bone in their body. In the end, they're carted off into exile, and the temple is destroyed. In many ways, the first half of the Bible is a long, sober look in the mirror.

6:17Your reaction after reading the Old Testament is supposed to be one of humility, even humiliation. It's the lead you and me to one conclusion we've got at bad. We're in over our heads. Our bragging and babbling about ourselves ought to stop. We need serious help from no on less than God Himself. And that's how the New Testament opens. Jesus is born. The Son of God. It's both joyful and humiliating at the same time. It's like a teenager in trouble so bad that mum or dad actually has to show up in person to bail them out. Look at the work of Jesus too. It's not something little. He has to die for us. He has to live for us. And all we can do and must do is accept it in faith. Salvation too is a beautiful way God deals with our pride. We don't make a single contribution.

7:17We don't offer God a penny, which is good because spiritually we haven't got a single one. Salvation costs us nothing. Accept our pride. The Apostle Paul in the book of Ephesians notes that in the church, all social conventions are destroyed. And as a result, even proud Jews and proud Gentiles get along. How so? Because to be a Christian means to put aside all pretensions. Everything you're proud of. Be frank about your spiritual poverty and other helplessness. And together, drink completely from the forgiveness of God in Jesus Christ. The ground at the cross is level. One between kings and slaves. There's more. Look at the transformation Jesus works in His followers. He makes sinners into saints. He teaches those prone to hatred, to love.

8:18Not just their neighbor, but God. How can we proudly keep talking about ourselves? The marvel and magnitude of what Jesus does in the lives of His followers has to forever change our tune. God has a wonderful way of dealing with human pride. He not only answers pride in judgment, but also in salvation. He sends His own Son. He works so greatly in our lives with His Spirit so that in the end we are forever humbled, stunned into silence by what is so clearly His power, His love, His grace, and nothing of us. In fact, when Jesus' work in His followers is finished and unveiled on the last day, even demons will be stunned, drop not just their job, but their pride, and confess the greatness of God. There are two ways that you can live.

9:19Two kinds of pride, you might say. The one is all about you, or you can abandon that and turn humbly to Jesus, and then you will learn instead to boast in God. The one is shrill and hollow, gets thinner by the moment. The other is beautiful and ever-deep. The one is the old tune of the devil. The other is the new song of God. The one alienates you, isolates you. The other joins you to others, even a whole new creation that together into eternity, we will revel in the goodness and power of God. Which will it be? Amen, and thanks for listening.