The Problem of Pride | The "S" Word | Trinity Sermons

Hello and welcome to Trinity Sermons. This week we are starting a brand new teaching

series at Trinity and that series is called The S Word. We're talking about sin, that

thing that, you know, we talk about a lot in churches but we don't actually really like

talking about and maybe we don't even really know what that means. So we're going to spend

the next few weeks diving into this topic together starting this week by talking about

the sin of pride. And even though pride can be a good thing, it actually can also be something

that's really insidious, something that is really harmful for our relationship with God

and others. So listen in as Rob unpacks pride for us.

Our reading today is from the Gospel of Luke chapter 18 verses 9 to 14. To some who were

Luke 18:9–14

confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable,

two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The

Pharisee stood by himself and prayed, God, I thank you that I am not like other people,

robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even this tax collector. I fast twice a week and I give

a tenth of all I get. But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look

up to heaven but beat his breast and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. I tell you

that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who

exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted. The

word of the Lord.

We used to live on a hobby farm and one day I noticed we had a problem. I went out to

the chicken coop and I saw these little holes in the floor and piles of dirt. And then I

noticed that some of the bags of feed that we fed that the chickens, I had holes in that

and it was spilling out onto the floor. And then eventually, of course, I started to see

them, rats. We had rats and I thought, oh, one rat, two rats, who cares? But we had a

lot of rats. I had never, never struggled with rats before but here we were. We had

rats. And so what I did is I went to the farm store and I was like, guys, we got rats. And

they checked my ID, they checked my farm business registration number and then they grabbed

this big tub of rat poison and they put it on the counter in front of me. This rat poison,

there was a lot of pieces in there, like 60 pieces of these little Lego blocks. They look

like blue Lego blocks of rat poison. And they said, this will do the trick. And I said,

that's a lot of poison. They said, this will do the trick. So anyways, I took it back home

and I took two or three of these pieces of rat poison. I put it around one of the big

holes I noticed. I happened to step out of the chicken coop just for a few minutes and

by the time I came back, they were already gone. And I was like, oh, geez. So I put three

or four more there. I went and ran another errand, came back and they were gone. And

so I took like half a bucket of this stuff and I started sprinkling it in different holes

here, there and around the chicken coop again. By the next morning, all the pieces of rat

poison had disappeared. I don't know what was going on, but these, these rats were eating

the rat poison, you know, faster than I could lay it out. They, I mean, the stuff was, I

think it's warfarin, like it's a poison, but to them it was tasty. It looked beautiful.

It smelled good. And, and I had to go back to the store and I had to get more of this

stuff. The poison actually didn't kill the rats right away. What we would start to notice

is the, you know, maybe a week later we'd be walking through the chicken coop and there

goes a little scraggly rat, somewhat confused, looking disheveled, staggering across the

floor. You see what was happening was this poison was, it didn't kill them right away.

It was eating away at them from the inside. Gross, you say. Rob, why are you talking to

us about something so disgusting? That sounds horrible. I agree. It was horrible, but actually

what we're going to be talking about in the season of Lent, a lot of people would also

say gross and this is unnecessary and it's uncomfortable. We don't want to talk about

this word, the S word sin. And that's what we're going to do for the next several weeks

throughout the season of Lent. Specifically, we're going to be looking at the seven deadly

sins. And I tried to kind of get us started on Ash Wednesday. If you missed that sermon,

I encourage you to go back and take a look at that because that kind of laid the foundation

for why we're doing this. But the point is this sin is a lot like rat poison, right?

It looks desirable. It seems to be harmless, tastes sweet, smells good and doesn't appear

to have any immediate consequences. But over time it eats away at us from the inside. It

diminishes our souls. It warps our hearts and it withers us away into the human beings

that we were never intended to be in the very beginning. It destroys us if it's left unchecked,

which is why today we are going to start with the very first sin of the seven and that is

the sin of pride. Because if there was ever a sin that appeared harmless and even looked

attractive and seemed to have absolutely no consequences associated with it, it has to

be pride. I mean, pride, we don't see pride as a problem. We see pride as good. It's a

good thing, right? It's a positive character trait. It gives us a sense of achievement.

It gives us a sense of worth. It's something we try to instill in our children, correct?

We want them to be winners. We want to be winners. We want them to be proud in who they

are. And so we don't actually use the word pride in a negative way these days. We say,

you know, oh, my attitude, my attitude. Oh, that's not arrogance. That's self-respect.

Oh, you mean my behavior. Oh, that's not egotism. That's just self-confidence. Oh, the way that

I look. Oh, no, that's not vanity. That's just, I have a positive self-image. Oh, that

thing I said, that horrible thing I said to somebody. Oh, that's not conceit. That's just

my self-esteem. I don't have a problem. I have pride, pride. And yet underneath this

thing we call pride, underneath this self-confidence and this self-worth lies something far, far

darker. It's what C.S. Lewis actually calls the great sin. Pride, he says, is the great

sin. And he writes this. He says, there is a vice of which no man in the world is free,

which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else, and which hardly

any person ever imagines that they are guilty of themselves. And the more we have it in

ourselves, the more we dislike it in others. The vice I'm talking about is pride. He goes

on to say, this is the center. It is the essential vice, the utmost evil, unchastity, anger,

greed, drunkenness, and all that are mere flea bites in comparison. It was through pride

that the devil became the devil. Pride, it leads to every other vice. It is the complete

anti-God state of mind. So that's what pride is. It's the great sin. But secondly, in there,

we also see that it's the devil's sin, right? This is how the devil became the devil. According

to the Bible, the devil was once an angel, but that wasn't good enough for him. No, what

he wanted was God's glory for himself. He wanted to ascend above the tops of the clouds

and make himself like the most high. And so the reason that the devil fell from heaven

wasn't because of anger or greed or gluttony or lust. No, it was pride. And every time

we seek glory for ourselves, then we are just walking in the same path of the devil. It's

the devil's sin. It's the great sin. But thirdly, it's also the original sin. This is the sin

of Adam and Eve. This is the sin in the Garden of Eden, right? When the serpent tempted Eve,

he didn't just say, here, have some fruit. He said, you can become like God, right? Pride

whispers, you know what? You don't need God. You're pretty good. You can be God. In fact,

you should be in control, right? You can handle things on your own. That's why pride at its

core is actually a rebellion against God. And whenever we choose to follow our way over

God's way, then all we're doing is we're walking the way of Adam and Eve. We are repeating

Genesis three over and over again. So next, though, fourthly, pride is also the root sin.

You know, Gregory the Great said it's the root sin, meaning that this is the sin from

which really all other sins sprout. And if you think about it, it's true. After all,

why do we lie? It's because we're proud of our image and we don't want people to think

bad of us. It's pride. Why do we steal? Because pride says, huh, I deserve more, right? Why

do we get angry? It's our pride that refuses to be wronged by another person. It's we're

just the pride is like this rat that keeps reproducing and reproducing and reproducing

all these other sins, all these other rats, they all come from one source. They all, it

breeds more and more types of sin. Pride is the root. So price, the great sin. It's the

devil's sin. It's the original sin. It's the root sin. But finally, it is also the

compare sin, right? Pride is all about competition. It's all about comparison. You know, pride

won't let you have pleasure of having something only if you have more of it than someone else.

You hear people say that they're proud that they're rich or they're proud that they're

clever or they're, they're proud that they're attractive. Uh, but that's not true. They're

actually proud that they're richer. They're proud that they're clever. They're proud that

they're attractive. Er, then someone else, right? If we actually saw each other truly

as equal, that there would be no pride because pride is completely based on this idea that

some are better than others and we can compare and comparison is actually what makes us proud.

You see that don't you? In our reading today, you see that God, I thank you. I'm not like

these other people, robbers, adulterers, evil doers, even this, you know, this tax collector,

this guy, he's pretending to lift up his voice in prayer, but all he's really doing is lifting

himself up in comparison to the people around him. That's the disguise of pride. It looks

good. It smells good. It sounds good, but it is poison. It is poison. Now, some of you

are like, oh my gosh, that sounds horrible, right? I hope I'm not a proud person. Well,

well, there are some signs you can look for a little bit of evidence here and there. Just

like when I walked into the chicken coop, I saw, oh, there's a hole over there. There's

some feed, a hole in my feed bag over there. There are signs, there's evidence that pride

is burrowing into your heart as well. And don't worry if you can't see it, other people can't.

Okay. First, the first sign, the first piece of evidence is self promotion. From childhood,

we crave attention, right? Kids say to their parents, hey, look at me, look at me, look

at me, look at me. And that desire does not fade over time. We still want people to look

at us. We still want to be the center of attention. And so pride pushes us to name drop. It pushes

us to show off. It pushes us to flaunt our success. Look at me, look at me, look at me,

look at me, right? Pride encourages us to curate that perfect image on social media,

right? Pride is that athlete who is the ball hog. Pride is that graduate who keeps going

on and on about all that she's learned at university. Pride is that influencer who is

just obsessed with likes, refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh. And so let's be honest here,

right? Those of us who even get up onto this stage, like myself, pastors, preachers, worship

leaders, life group leaders, whoever you are, when you're in places like this, it is so

easy to make this about you and not about God. It's all self-promotion. It's what we've

were born thinking about. And we still think about it all the time. The Bible calls this

boasting sometimes, right? Let not a wise man boast in his wisdom or boast in his might

or boast in his riches. Lots of times that self-promotion comes across as boasting, but

not always. Other times it can just be this quiet hunger that we have within ourselves

to just want to be noticed by others. So that is the first sign that you might have rats.

You might have pride, self-promotion, but there's another type. You see, cause some

of you are saying, Oh, well then I can't be proud cause I'm not good looking and I'm not

talented and I'm not rich. In fact, my life is pretty bad. So I guess that means I've

got nothing to brag about. I've got nothing to promote. So therefore I can't have pride.

Not so fast, right? Pride wears many masks and one of those masks is self pity. Whenever

we find ourselves saying, Oh, poor me, poor me, poor me. It's still all about me. You

still want you to focus on me. Self-promotion says, I deserve attention cause I've accomplished

so much. Self-pity says, I deserve attention cause I've suffered so much. Self-promotion

says, look at how great I am. Self-pity says, look at what I've sacrificed. Look at what

I'm going through. Look at how badly I'm being treated. Both, both are self-focused. Both

are looking at the self, not God. Both say, look at me. So self-pity though, actually

sometimes feels like humility. Oh, you know, when we beat ourselves up in front of others,

we feel like we're being humble, but actually all we're doing is turning pride in words.

And so we, we, we have this thing where if you feel self-conscious or if you feel, you

know, that you're overlooked or you feel insecure, you might not realize it, but that could actually

be pride. It could actually be you saying, poor me, really poor me. Now some people who,

some people really do need our attention. Some people really are going through crisis.

Some people really do need to say, poor me, I need help. That's true. But there are others

who say it out of a wounded ego. They're just craving attention. And so that's why self-pity

is just another form of pride. So you've got self-promotion, you've got self-pity, but

of course the third and most insidious type of pride, the proof of pride is when you start

to see self-righteousness appear. Jesus told this parable to people who were confident

of their own righteousness and look down on everyone else. So notice two things. They're

confident in their own righteousness, which means that if that's who you are, that you

don't need God's grace. You don't need God's forgiveness. God actually, I'm doing all right

over here. As you can see, I know how to live a good life. So thanks for your grace, but

I don't need it. Thanks for your mercy. But you know, I actually, I'm doing pretty good.

That's self-righteousness. But secondly, self-righteousness also looks down on everyone else. Well, God,

as you can see, my life is pretty under control, but that person over there can certainly use

your help. They could certainly use some grace or mercy in their lives, but I'm good. I'm

good. So proud people always believe that somehow they have the moral high ground, that

they live a better life than the people who are around them. So, so self-righteous people,

they say two things to God. They say on the one hand, God, God, I'm good. I'm good. And

they say, God, God, I'm better. I'm better than them. Now within this category, there's

a special case we got to talk about, and that is religious pride. You know, that video skit

that we use to introduce the sermon, I can't wait to see the next ones, but they're based

on the book Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. How many of you have heard or read of the

Screwtape Letters? I would encourage you, this Lent, get a copy of C.S. Lewis' Screwtape

Letters. It is this amazing little book that is basically supposed to be this correspondence

between two devils as they try to decide the best way to corrupt one of their subjects,

this poor man. How are we going to lead him astray? It's very, very humorous, but also

very true. And one of the things that's surprising in the book is that they say that one of the

best ways, one of the best ways to actually get the subject, to get the man to tend toward

pride is actually to talk about his religion, right? To make him proud of his own faith,

to make him proud of his own church attendance, to make him proud of his own prayer life,

right? That's religious pride. That's spiritual pride. You know, Christians, Christians can

feel puffed up, not because they might have more money or they might have better looks

or more talents than other people, but because they know more about the Bible or they know

more about prayer or they understand more about theology or they have a better sense

of this doctrine or that doctrine. And the funny thing is those things should actually

be drawing us closer to God. The more you read the Bible, the closer you should get

to God. The more you pray, the closer you should get to God. But they can actually push

us away from God when those very same things become a source of pride for us. So do you

see how sneaky pride is, right? Self-promotion, self-pity, self-righteousness. These things

are really easy to see in other people, but they are really, really hard to see in ourselves.

And if you do not think that pride is a problem for you, then pride is a problem for you.

And if you're starting to feel a little proud right now that, yeah, I'm willing to admit

that I'm pride, pride, prideful, proud, then you know what? There it is again. Now you're

just getting proud of your own humility. You can't get away from it. Pride is something

that's going to chase you your whole life. So you might say, oh gosh, well then so, so

what? Oh, fine. Sue me. I'm guilty of pride, right? What difference does it really, really

make? Well, just like that rat poison, it may not seem that dangerous at first, but

Jesus makes pretty clear that there are devastating consequences to pride over time. When we let

pride take root in our hearts, three things inevitably happen. The first is this. It isolates

us from others. Even in the parable Jesus told, right, the Pharisee stood, say that

with me, by himself, stood by himself and prayed. He separates himself from others,

physically, but also spiritually separate from others. And why is that? Because he's

measuring himself against others. That's what pride does. It turns friendship. It turns

community into competition, right? And that's why pride is so toxic to relationships. Proud

people can't have friends, right? They can only have competitors. Some sins actually

bring us closer together. So people who like to drink too much, let's do it together. You

like to eat too much. Let's do it together. Like to spend too much money, whatever. Sometimes

some sins actually bring people together, but pride always, always means separation.

You distance yourself from people. Why? Because they might outshine you. You distance yourself

from them because you know what? They were right about something and your ego couldn't

handle it. Pride always separates us. And that leads to the second consequence of pride.

And that is the pride not only isolates us from each other, but it separates us from

God. After all, when you come to God's presence, you are coming up against one of the most

magnificent and beautiful and awesome beings that ever existed and will ever exist. We

don't even come close to this person, this God. And therefore, if you're proud, you're

not going to like that, right? Because you like to look down on people, but you will

never see God if you're looking down because God is always above us. Some sins that we

struggle with, we know we need help. And so we actually go to God and we say, God, I'm

struggling with lust. God, I'm struggling with greed. God, I'm struggling with my anger.

I have a horrible, horrible anger problem. But the proud, no, no, no, they're not going

to go to God. They're not going to go to God, right? They don't need God. They're already

their own God. And so they don't know God. That's why the Bible says that God opposes

the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. In some ways, pride makes God's grace impossible

for you. How do you receive God's great gift of grace when your hands are already holding

on so tightly to yourself? Which means ultimately that the final consequence of pride is destruction.

Pride leads to a fall. Jesus said, all who exalt themselves will be humbled, not might

be humbled, not could be humbled. You will be humbled. Pride always leads to a fall.

Proverbs 16, pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. And how many

times have we seen this play out in our world over and over again? How many times have we

seen an athlete or a pastor or a celebrity or whatever, a leader, right? They believed

their own hype, right? They thought they were invincible and they came crashing down. And

sometimes that crash is spectacular. There's a scandal. It's in the newspaper. Everybody

knows about it. It's humiliating, right? But there's another way that you can crash and

burn with pride, which is quieter and not everybody sees it. It's when pride keeps you

from asking for help. And so you ended up just suffering alone or pride makes you too

stubborn to apologize. And so you lose your relationship. So our pride convinces you that

you don't need God. And so you just drift further and further away from God. And then

one day you wake up and you realize you're completely alone. This is why pride is spiritual

poison. It doesn't just isolate you from others. It doesn't just separate you from God. It

actually destroys us from the inside. All who exalt themselves will be humbled. The

only question is, will you humble yourself before you are humiliated in some way? So

humility is the solution to pride. How do we get it? How do we get humility? It's a

great question. And I just want to remind you, the whole point of us doing this teaching

series on sin is not to beat us down. It's to build us up. Lent is a perfect time not

to just remember the brokenness inside us, but how we can be cured, how we can be healed

and how we can be restored. And to do that for pride, today I want to encourage you,

this Lent, to lean into three Christian practices that will help us overcome pride and become

people of humility. Ready? Here they go. First is this. It's confession. Confession. If you

think about it, pride is all about self deception. It's lying to ourselves. It's lying to others

about ourselves, right? But confession is telling the truth, right? It's telling the

truth to ourselves. Confession means telling the truth to others. And confession means

maybe telling the truth to some of the people in your life. Pride says, you're fine. Confession

reminds us we're not. World says, believe in yourself, trust in your own goodness. But

scripture comes along and says, if you claim to be without sin, you're deceiving yourself.

But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us. Confession isn't

self hatred. It's just self awareness. It's just being honest about who you are. You know,

there's this old Jewish saying that says that Jewish people basically have two essential

beliefs. The first is there is a God. And the second is you're not it. Confession is

how we remind ourselves of that second one. Confession reminds us that we are not our

own little gods ruling our own little lives. So this land lean into confession, confess

your pride, whether you do that at home in your own prayer time or whether you just come

here Sunday by Sunday. And as we're about to do, we confess our sins together as a community.

Confession as a habit will lead to humility, tells the truth and leads us back to God.

That is the first thing that we can do. Now, there is a second, a second practice that

cures us of pride and teaches us humility. And that is service. Here's why pride keeps

us focused on ourself. But serving causes us to focus on others. You know, C.S. Lewis said

that humility isn't thinking less of yourself. It's just thinking of yourself less. And that's

what serving does. It allows us to somehow forget ourselves long enough to realize, oh,

there are other people in this world and there are people I can love and take care of. We

forget ourselves long enough to love another person. Jesus modeled this perfectly on the

night that he was arrested. He was having dinner with his friends and guess what they

were arguing about? Who's the greatest? Who's the greatest? But he, at that moment, melt

down and he washed their feet. Right. He said, I'm doing this to set an example for you.

Right. He set an example. He says that you should do for others as I have done for you.

Jesus stepped down from his throne to come down and serve us so we can do the same. We

can step down from our little thrones where we're king of our little kingdoms and serve

others. So ask yourself seriously this week, ask yourself, who can I serve this week? Who

can I go and listen to who needs to talk without me feeling like I have to be heard? Right.

Who can I give something to without expecting anything in return? The more we serve others,

the less we focus on ourselves. That is a cure for pride. So confession is a cure for

pride, right? Service is a cure for pride. But thirdly and finally, worship is a cure

for pride. What you are doing this morning is a cure for pride. Why? Because if the cause

of pride is that we worship the wrong thing ourselves, then the cure for pride must be

that we learn to worship the right thing, which is God. There's this rule and the rule

says that you become like that, which you worship. If we worship God, we will become

more humble, which means God is humble. Right? We become like that, which we worship. And

if we become more humble by worshiping God, then God must be humble. Now that sounds crazy.

But humble, I've never heard anyone say God is humble. God is the most beautiful, most

powerful, most amazing being there ever is. No one else comes close to him. If anyone

had a right to be proud, it's God. And yet God is not proud. God doesn't go around forcing

himself on other people. In fact, many people go through their whole lives and they never

notice God at all. And when God actually came down and walked among us as Jesus Christ,

he didn't draw attention to himself. He didn't go around saying, Hey, everybody, look at

me, look at me. I'm God, I'm God, I'm God, I'm God. In fact, many people met Jesus of

Nazareth and walked away saying he's just another guy. He's just another rabbi. God

is humble. Right? God emptied himself in order to get down to our level. That is not a quality

we often associate with God's. But if God isn't proud, God isn't proud. Why on earth

should we be? We're created to be in the image of God and we are most human when we are most

like God and we become most like him when we worship him. So even when we worship God,

you know, it's funny. A lot of people think, well, why do we worship God? Is it because

actually God secretly is pride that he likes his ego stroke that our worship makes God

feel special? No, that's not it. In fact, the Bible tells us God doesn't even need our

worship. God doesn't need bulls or goats. He doesn't need sacrifices. He actually already

has everything. He has every animal, every tree is a thousand cattle on a thousand Hills

or whatever it is. No, we don't. We don't worship because God needs it. We worship because

we need it. Worship isn't about giving God something that that he lacks. It's about realigning

our hearts, changing our priorities and reorienting our focus. If you worship success, you're

going to be restless your whole life long. If you worship power, you're going to be ruthless.

If you worship approval, you will always be anxious. But if we learn to worship God, it

will become humble like God. And so as we end, I just want to remind you of one thing

we do every single week here at Trinity in our worship that actually is probably the

most humbling act, the most countercultural act of worship you could ever think of. What

we do is in a few minutes, you're going to get out of your pews and you're going to come

forward. You're going to line up and you're going to hold your empty hands out like this

empty hands, like children, like children who don't have anything, who are waiting to

receive something. This is, this is so odd. It's so countercultural. Normally in life,

we come with clenched fists holding onto everything that we have and what we think we've earned.

But here we come with open hands, admitting actually we don't have anything. And I'm admitting

that if we don't get something from God, we're going to remain empty. This is who we are.

This is, we're not the big self-sufficient adults, but we're just weak and empty souls.

We're weak, empty children, desperately in need of grace. You cannot enter the kingdom

of God with your fists clenched on all your stuff and your, your status. You have to become

hungry and humble like children. So the question is, will you do that today? Will you come

to God today with fists clenched? No, with hands open, ready to receive. The Pharisee,

he walked away unchanged, still proud. The tax collector walked away justified because

he came humbly with nothing except his need. May we come to God in the exact same way.

Peace be to God. Amen.

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Trinity Sermons. This sermon was recorded

at Trinity Church Streetsville in Mississauga on March 9th, 2025.