Unburdened (Part 4): Living Without Pride

Hey, welcome.

It's great to be together again at Orchard Hill, Butler County, the Strip District, Wexford in the gym, in the chapel, socially distanced.

Those of you worshiping at home or somewhere else, it's great just to be together.

And as we continue just regathering this summer, I know many of you it will take more time for you to feel comfortable to come into a large gathering.

And I just want you to know we support that.

If that is where you are, continue to worship at home.

And some of you might fit into what have been called kind of the vulnerable population.

We especially want to encourage you to not return until we're certain kind of the direction of everything.

But for those of you who are doing other things out and about, we are having socially distanced worship, and it has been great just to be able to gather again in rooms and spend time worshiping, learning, experiencing community together.

Let's take a moment and pray.

Father, as we gather, I pray that you would help each one of us today just to understand your word better and to apply it to our lives.

God, I pray that my words would reflect your word in content and in tone and in emphasis.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So I've been uh pastor for uh almost 30 years.

I don't like to say that because it kind of gives away my age, but uh I started actually my first church job was 1989.

So it's actually been 31 years to be exact.

And in all that time, I have had literally thousands of conversations with people.

Um, you know, if you just go back and think about a typical week and then project that out, like like literally thousands of conversations with people who have come and had all kinds of different things that they've wanted to talk about.

Sometimes it's the loss of somebody or something, sometimes it's uh relational trouble or difficulty, sometimes it's uh a blase kind of feeling of their spiritual life.

But here's something that I can say I've, to my memory, not ever had somebody come and say, here's something I'd like to address or talk about.

And that is I've never had anybody in 31 years come and say to me, I feel that my pride is a problem.

In fact, I've never had anybody say, I'm proud, and that's my spiritual issue.

And yet, pride in the Bible is a huge deal.

In fact, we set up this series, we called it Unburdened, and we're talking about taking some things that are heavy out of our backpack of life and setting them on the side so that we don't have to carry them.

We talked about living without condemnation.

And my guess is many of us said, yeah, you know what, that's really helpful.

Then we talked about living without bondage, what it means to live without the power of sin overcoming us and dominating us.

And my guess is many of us said, that's helpful.

Last week we talked about living without despair, how we can groan in this world and yet still live without a sense of being overwhelmed by that despair.

And again, my guess is many of you are helpful.

And if you're a person who tracks and said, Oh, today we're talking about pride, you're probably like, eh, okay, whatever.

But but let me just give you a few verses that show you uh the significance of pride.

And this these are just a small sampling of the verses that we could use.

Here are just a few.

James 4, 6 says this God opposes the proud, but shows favor to the humble.

God opposes the proud.

Jeremiah 9.23.

This is what the Lord says let not the wise boast in their wisdom, or the strong boast in their strength, or the rich boast in their riches.

And then it goes on to say, but basically let those who boast boast in that they know the Lord.

In other words, don't be taken with your success, your wealth, don't be taken with your strength, don't be taken with your own wisdom, but know that the only way that you have real credibility ultimately is because of God.

Proverbs 8 13, the fear of the Lord is to hate evil.

And then he says, I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech.

Proverbs 11 2 says, When pride comes, then comes disgrace.

But with humility comes wisdom.

Where there is strife, this is Proverbs 13:10, where there is strife, there is pride, but wisdom is found in those who take advice.

Proverbs 13:10

That's an amazing verse because it says, whenever there's there's uh people who are at odds, pride is one of the factors that makes that happen.

In other words, if you have a family where there's disputes and people don't get along, if you don't get along with somebody at work, what Proverbs 13, 10 says is it's because of pride.

And then Proverbs 16, 18, pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.

So just taking those verses, I would guess that many of us would hear that and we'd go, okay, pride should be one of those issues that I should be concerned about in my life.

Because getting rid of pride will help me have better relationships, it will help me avoid destruction, it will help me not have God be opposed to me in my life.

So my question is, why, at least for me, in 31 years of being involved in church work, have I not had people come to me and say, Can you help me defeat pride in my life?

And I would guess that one of the reasons is that our pride blinds us to our own pride.

We're so proud sometimes that we can't even see how proud we are.

Now, at first glance, Romans chapter 8, verse 26 through 30, which you heard read, does not appear as if it really addresses pride.

Romans 8:26–30

But I think when you see what this addresses, you'll see exactly how this addresses pride, because I think that there are three different assertions that if we make them, it will help us address pride.

Three realizations that if we say these things are true, it will help us be somebody who will not live on that pride side, but on the more on the humble side.

And the first is this, and that is we have to acknowledge that our weakness is God's strength.

And here's where we see this, verse 26 through 27.

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness.

We do not know what we ought to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.

And he who searches our hearts and knows our the minds of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God.

Now, here's what that just very simply says is that when you come up against something and you don't even know how to pray, you don't know what to do, when you feel overwhelmed by the process and the decision, that you can basically know that God's Spirit will intercede on your behalf.

In other words, he will pray for you.

Now, sometimes people read this and they see uh the gift of tongues in this section of the Bible.

And the gift of tongues is a gift, if you read in Acts, especially Acts chapter 2, was a gift that God gave to people to be able to speak a known language to others that they didn't personally know, so that others would go, wow, that's God.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

And then some would say that in 1 Corinthians and beyond, it's more of a private prayer language.

And so here they'll say, This is tongues.

Now, this is not an un impossible reading of this, but it's not a necessary reading of this.

And what I mean by that is that whether you read or see tongues in this, that ultimately this is saying that God's Spirit will do this praying for you when you don't know how to pray.

In other words, this isn't necessitating any kind of special prayer language.

What this is saying is this is how God works.

And the reason that I say we have to see that our weakness is God's strength is because this idea of weakness is picked up several different times in Scripture.

Here's one of them.

This is 2 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 7, and following.

2 Corinthians 12:7

Says, but because of the surpassing great revelations, therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me.

Now, this is the Apostle Paul basically saying that I had some kind of extreme difficulty.

And there's been a lot of debate about what the thorn in the flesh is.

Some people see it as a person, some people saw this as eyesight, some people saw it as other sickness.

And the answer is we don't really know.

He says, three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.

But he said to me, and then he says this my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

And what he's doing here is he's saying that God revealed to him very clearly that the way that God's strength is made clear is when our weakness is clear.

But here's the thing: many of us don't like the idea of being weak.

In fact, what we want is we want to be strong and we want God to give us strength so that we can always have victory instead of being able to acknowledge our weakness.

But sometimes acknowledging weakness is the only way to get strength.

I was uh thinking about this the other day because uh a while back I had had to move some furniture, and right now I have uh some young men living in my house, uh sons and another uh guy who's living with us.

And and if I want to move something, I have built-in furniture movers, which is really kind of nice because I can just say, hey, I need a hand, and somebody will come, give me a hand, and we can move furniture.

Now, now, what I need though is I need to acknowledge that I cannot simply move the furniture by myself.

Now, I can try, and some furniture I might be able to move, but if I'm proud, what do I do?

I say, I don't need any help.

I have this, I'm in charge of myself on this.

And in doing that, I don't actually receive the help that I need.

Now, that's not probably the most significant example, but what we need to see is that when we acknowledge our weakness, we're actually inviting God's strength, and that the Christian life is not a journey from weakness to strength, but a journey from thinking we're strong to acknowledging we're weak.

It's a downward progression of believing that I'm uh that believing that I'm good to knowing that I'm the chief of sinners.

In other words, it's saying, I know that I'm weak.

The gospel is good news for those who know that they don't measure up, and therefore it's offensive to those who think they do.

And when I'm able to say I'm weak, but that's when God is strong, that's when we step away from some of our pride.

And what we see in Romans chapter 8 is that God the Father is the one who is at work loving and knowing his people.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

God the Son is interceding on behalf of the people who have an accusation against them.

That's why there's no condemnation, and it's the Holy Spirit who prays for us in our weakness.

And so, if we want to counter pride in our lives, one of the things that we have to do is acknowledge that when we're weak, he is strong.

Here's a second thing, and that is I think we have to acknowledge that our future is God's responsibility.

This is one of the most quoted verses in the Bible, Romans 8, 28.

It says, And we know that in all things, God works for good of those, the good of those who love him and have been called according to his purpose.

And what this is ultimately saying is that God is at work and God is going to bring about the ends that God wants, and that those ends are good.

And here's why I say that this is ultimately something that we need to acknowledge for pride, because when my pride says, I know how the future has to go, and here's how God has to work, and if God doesn't work this way, then God isn't for me, or God isn't working, then what I'm doing is I'm projecting my way of seeing the world onto the world and saying, this is how God has to work.

And what we really need to do is acknowledge that the world doesn't have to be the way that we think it should be.

In fact, sometimes good circumstances can be very harmful in our lives, and difficult circumstances can be helpful in our lives.

Sometimes the very things we pray for could drive a wedge between us and the very God that we pray to.

And so God, who sees all, says, I'll work all things together for good.

The future is my responsibility, but in order for you to encounter that, you actually have to trust me that I know what's best in a way that you don't know what's best.

I don't know if you've ever, when you've gone to uh amusement park or a carnival and gotten on a roller coaster, if you ever had a moment before you got on the roller coaster and you said, I hope that somebody checked this thing.

Because you see the thing take off and you know it does all these twists and turns and people are dangling out, and you think, you know, if something went wrong, that thing's gonna fly off and I will go to my death.

And then what do you do?

If you're like most people, you get on the roller coaster, you have a good ride, and you think that was great.

But what did it require for you to get on the roller coaster?

You had to say, I trust that somebody did maintenance.

Either some traveling carney, you know, who was in charge of this, or there's somebody at the park that took care of this.

And you said, That's what I trust if I get on a roller coaster.

Well, here's the thing your life, my life, it is like we are on a roller coaster full of highs and lows, ups and downs, twists and turns.

And God says, But if you trust me through all of it, I will bring you safely and fully to an end point that is for your good.

But if you don't trust God, then you're just on a roller coaster not knowing that you can trust the end.

That's what Romans 8.28 is talking about here with this incredible assurance.

But our pride sometimes says, I can't trust that God is actually in charge or that God actually knows what he's doing enough to be trustworthy in this.

Martin Lloyd Jones, in writing about this a generation ago, said this.

He said, I believe that Paul had a special reason for using the term love rather than the term believe at this point.

One of the best ways whereby we can decide immediately if we love God or not, is our reaction to adversity.

There are many people who, when trials and tribulations arise, feel that they have been let down.

You see what he says?

He says that that God using the phrase here, those who um have been called according to his purpose, and those who love him, indicates that our heart is actually not so proud that we say, I can't handle adversity.

Now, sometimes there's there's some ways that those of us who have been followers of Jesus can can misunderstand kind of how God sees suffering.

Some of us will think if we live well enough, we can avoid all suffering.

But Romans 8 is very clear that this isn't the case.

Verse 18, I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed in us.

Verse 37, no, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For I'm convinced that neither death nor life, um, you know, neither demons nor the present nor angels, nor the past, the future, or any other powers can ever separate us from the love of God.

And what gate frames this is he says, this, shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword separate us from the love of God?

In other words, even being faithful to God doesn't mean that we avoid difficulty.

And one of the reasons that we insist on our life going a certain way sometimes is we say, God, if you love me, then these things will work out.

Sometimes what we'll do is we'll assume that our suffering is a result of our sin, that the reason we suffer is because of the sinful choices we've made.

Now, to be fair, there is some suffering that's a result of our sinfulness.

In other words, there are times that we will reap what we sow.

That's Galatians 6.

In other words, we choose to do something and then we'll pay a price for it.

But in the Bible, without any question, not all suffering is a result of our sinfulness.

There is suffering that is a result of living in a fallen world, and sometimes things happen that are not because of things that we've done or not done, but because of the world that we live in.

And God takes those and he says, I'm gonna arrange all of these in a way that will bring about good.

And then I think we have to understand that not every storm will lead to a rainbow.

I remember uh one of the first funerals that I was part of as a pastor.

Again, this goes back a lot of years, but I remember this lady had, this woman had lost her husband.

She didn't lose him, he died.

Um, and so when this husband died, I went to the funeral home and I was going to be uh part of officiating this funeral for the first time.

And I remember standing there, and she was a Christian lady and woman, and she stood there, and as she was there, she was basically saying, I know that God is going to work all things together for good.

I mean, this was her husband of 35 years at the time.

And she's saying, I know God has a plan.

I trust God, I trust Jesus.

And I remember as a younger pastor thinking, don't you need to grieve?

Isn't it okay to be sad?

You don't need to go to Romans 8.28 on the day of your husband's funeral and act like you're happy about your husband dying.

That's not what this is saying.

What this is saying, that even when your spouse dies, even when something terrible happens in your life, that it's not outside of God's control.

I heard one person, uh pastor of another generation's outline of this kind of idea, and he said this.

He said, because we know that all things work together for good, we know that, uh let me read this so I get it exactly right.

He said, We know that our bad things will turn for good.

We know that our good things can never be taken from us, and that our best things are yet to come.

Because we know that all things work together for good, we know our bad things will turn out for good, our good things will never be taken from us, and our best things are yet to come if we love God and are called according to his purpose.

And then here's a third assertion we need to make if we want to defeat pride in our own life, and that is our salvation is God's work.

It's God's work from beginning to end.

Verse 29 through 30.

It says, For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

And those he predestined, he also called, and those he called, he also justified, and those he justified, he also glorified.

Certainly this raises questions for many people because as soon as they hear this, they say, Oh, predestination.

You said the P word.

And, you know, if you're in a life group, I know that many of you can have uh vigorous debates about what predestination is or isn't, but here's the thing: I don't think here that Paul gave us this word so that we would have a nice debate and have a nice theological system that we could all say, here is what I believe and I'm right and you're wrong.

In fact, that actually goes against pride.

What he gave us this word for, ultimately, I believe, and this concept of saying, saying, Listen, here's the purpose of salvation, that you'd be conformed to my image, but here's the process, and that is, I called people, I predestined them, I drew them, and I will glorify them.

And all of these words are in the past tense in the original language, meaning that God says, I've already done it, I've already achieved it.

This is not something that you do, something you earn, something you make your own.

This is something that I have done on your behalf, and because I've done it on your behalf, you don't have any reason to take pride in your position.

Sometimes people's biggest objection to people of faith is that they look at people of faith and they say, All the people I know of faith are so proud they think they're right and everyone else is wrong.

They think that they're better than everybody else.

But when you understand Salvation as God's work from beginning to end, what happens is instead you say, I know that I am a sinful person, and it wasn't even that I figured it out and chose Jesus, it was that Jesus worked in my life in ways that I don't even fully understand.

Now, you may say, okay, that's something that you know has been around for a while, and theologians have debated, but but the gospel message is ultimately tied to this very idea, and this is where the whole flow of Romans comes in, that we are sinful people, that we rebel against God, that even our goodness, our religion, read Romans 2, Romans 3, the beginning of those chapters, falls short of what God wants.

So even when we say, I'm going to do all the right things, we don't quite get there.

But that our real standing is because of what Jesus Christ has done on our behalf, and not only that, but he's the one who draws us.

And and this word predestined is interesting.

And I heard this, and and I'm not entirely certain because I didn't verify all of this.

Uh most of this you'll understand, but I'm uh the use of the word predestined is what I'm referring to here.

But uh when Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, which is um right in this time frame, and this is you've probably learned about this when Brutus led the revolt, and ten people came and assassinated Julius Caesar, and they were planning to take and divide the kingdom into ten, um, the Roman Empire into ten kingdoms that they would each have.

And and then what happened was that when they opened his will and testament, he had a statement, and this is the part that I'm not 100% sure about, but I know that the history's right, but not the use of the word predestined, that he designated one of his nephews, who was like in his early 20s, that was way off the political map of everybody to be the person who inherited his entire kingdom.

I mean, this is a college student sleeping on a futon with nothing to offer.

And he said, This is who I choose to be in charge of my kingdom, and this is the man who became Caesar Augustus.

And this is when you read your New Testament and you hear about Caesar Augustus and some of these things, this is the backstory.

But what he did is he said, supposedly, that he predestined this Caesar, who wasn't Caesar at the time, to be his sole heir.

And so what possibly Paul is doing here is he's taking the same word that would have been in people's psyche of the day, and he's saying, just like he was predestined, who didn't have any claim to the throne, who hadn't done anything to earn it, who wasn't even on people's political landscape, and was given the opportunity to be in charge of the kingdom, you are being predestined to be the children of God.

In other words, God has worked in your life in a way in which you don't get to say, I'm good, that's why God chose me.

I'm moral, that's why I'm part of what God has done in my life.

That it's God's work from beginning to end.

Now you may say, okay, so we've talked about a lot of things.

How does this help me with pride?

Isn't it just better to kind of think less of myself so that I'm not as prideful?

Well, C.

S.

Lewis once said this.

He said that pride or humility is not to think less of yourself, but to think of yourself less.

In other words, the way that we ultimately come to not be full of pride is not by trying to obsess about how we can think less about ourselves, because that's really insecurity, and insecurity is just another side of the coin of pride, where we're always saying, I'm not enough, I'm not good enough, I'm I'm all these things, rather than saying that God has made me valuable because of what he did in Jesus Christ.

But it's coming to a point where we think less of ourselves and not less, think of ourselves less, not less of ourselves.

And here's how this plays out with these assertions.

If you're able to say that my weakness is God's strength, then you're able to, in essence, say, it's okay for me to be weak.

I don't have to assert my strength, I don't have to demonstrate my strength, I don't have to make everybody think I'm strong.

I can say, God, I'm not strong enough for what's in front of me.

In fact, I don't even know how to pray, but your spirit will pray for me.

You're able to say, uh, my future is God's responsibility, and what that means is you don't take the weight of saying every decision is so um heavy that if I don't get it right, my life won't turn out.

But instead, you're able to say, all things will work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose.

And so I can look at my future, I can look at my life, I can look at everything that's going on, and I can say, I don't have to insist on how my life turns out.

Because there's somebody, the God of the universe, who's actually in charge of everything, who is who is uh orchestrating things that will ultimately work out for my best, even when it doesn't seem like it to me right now.

My bad things will turn out for good, my good things will end up being even better, and my best things can never be taken from me.

And then finally, we're able to say, even my ultimate standing with God, my salvation is not about my effort, my performance, what I do or don't do, but it's about what Jesus Christ has done from eternity past to the present to eternity future.

And as a result, there's nothing that I need to assert or be proud about.

And you see, if we're able to make those assertions, then what happens is we'll be able to say, I can live without having to always try to prove myself or make much of myself or make myself strong or look good.

And then I won't end up on the side of having God being opposed to me or in relational turmoil because I'm always trying to do something a certain way.

In fact, what I'll be able to do is say very simply that whatever good I have in my life is God's hand.

And the things that don't seem good to me, God hasn't finished his work in it yet.

And that allows me to approach this life with open hands, saying, God, this is your world.

And I'll trust you in it.

Now, some of us hear this and some of these concepts sound foreign.

Spirit praying for us, God working even in our worst things, and and the idea that that God has worked and foreknown us and predestined us to be accord to to be um conformed to his image, you say, Oh, this is this is just uh a lot to take in.

But here's what this passage is very clear about, and that is if you are called according to God's purpose, if you are somebody who has acknowledged Jesus Christ as your Savior, then these things are true.

But if you're not, then these things aren't.

And here's what that means: it means that your strength is the best you'll ever do.

It means that the good things you get now are the best things you'll ever have.

And it means that your moral record is the record you'll have to stand on before the God of the universe.

And what salvation is, is coming to the point where you say, I'm not strong enough, my record isn't good enough, and I'm not wise enough to know what the best thing is.

So, God, I come to you and I want Jesus to be my savior, my substitute.

And you can do that today, where you are, by simply saying, God, I know that I've tried in my own strength, my own way, to save myself, to make much of myself.

But today I acknowledge that Jesus Christ is my savior, my substitute.

And then you can begin the journey of saying, I will live without pride being a heavy burden in my life.

By the way, this isn't the kind of thing you do once.

Pride will slip back into your life over and over again.

And so we have to keep coming back to these affirmations and saying, my weakness is God's strength, my future is God's responsibility, and my salvation is all God's work.

Let's pray together.

Father, we thank you just for a chance to understand a portion of Romans 8 a little better.

And God, I pray for me, I pray for each person who's listening that you would help us to see how these great affirmations impact us to set aside our pride.

And Father, we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.