Wise Up – Proverbs 16:18-19 – Pride & Humility

Proverbs chapter sixteen, verse eighteen to nine.

Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Better to be lowly in spirit with the oppressed than to cheer plunder with the proud.

Proverbs chapter 11, verse 2.

Proverbs 11:2

When pride comes, then comes disgrace.

But with humility comes wisdom.

Proverbs chapter 16, verse 5.

Proverbs 16:5

The Lord detests all the proud of heart.

Before of this, they will not go unpunished.

Proverbs chapter 18, verse 12.

Proverbs 18:12

Before a downfall, the heart is haughty, but humility comes before honor.

Proverbs chapter 15, verse 33.

Proverbs 15:33

The fear of the Lord teaches the man wisdom, and humility comes before honor.

Proverbs chapter 2, verse 4.

Proverbs 2:4

Beg pardon?

Proverbs 22, verse 4.

Proverbs 22:4

Humility is the fear of the Lord.

Its wages are riches and honor and life.

And the last verse for this reading, Proverbs chapter 27, verse 2.

Proverbs 27:2

Let another praise you and not your own mouth, someone else, and not your own lips.

And so it reads God's word.

Welcome if you join us while we're singing.

My name's Mark.

I'm the lead pastor here at City, and you're very welcome.

As we conclude really the topical section that we've been in in the book of Proverbs, uh, we're going to uh round out the whole series in Proverbs in the month of June by kind of going back to Proverbs chapter 30 and walking uh more methodically over four weeks through chapters 30 and 31.

Proverbs 30 · chapter mention

But this is the last topical one.

So what to pick?

Because there's still lots to do.

And so what do we decide to look at?

Well, we decided uh that we would look at the topic of pride and humility.

Uh, because what's the most famous proverb?

What's the proverb that everybody knows?

Pride comes before a fall, right?

A haughty spurred before destruction.

That's the proverb, proverb 16, right?

And uh pride can be uh we can have a kind of caricatured idea of uh of what pride is, or the pride person who's kind of brash and full of themselves and and arrogant.

And that the humble person, well, they're the person who's kind of they're a bit more quiet, they're a bit more introverted, a bit self-loathing, uh, that that's what humility really is and should look like.

But the reality is actually much more subtle.

Pride and humility are issues around whose attention are we focusing on.

Pride places ourself at the center, and that can be in exaltation, I think I'm brilliant, or that can be in all-consuming negative obsession, I think I'm terrible.

Pride is placing ourselves at the center, which means that we compare ourselves to others all the time.

How am I doing relative to this other person?

Listen to what C.S.

Lewis says about pride.

He says that pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next person.

We say that people are proud of being rich or clever or good looking, but they're not.

They're proud of being richer, cleverer, more better looking than others.

Pride wants glory to flow to us, to be recognized, to be seen, to be esteemed, to be approved of.

Equally, to grow in humility is not to loathe ourselves more, it's actually to forget ourselves more.

It's not about thinking less of ourselves, it's about thinking about ourselves less.

The humble heart does not look to get glory, but to give it, to give recognition, to give honor, to give esteem, to give praise, to give approval.

And if I were to ask you, well, which are you, particularly if you're a follower of Jesus, you know, which are you?

You'd probably sit there and go, well, it's kind of complicated, isn't it?

We're kind of a mix of both.

Many of us struggle with what we call fear of man, that kind of feedback loop that goes on in our head when we're at work or at school or when we're talking to people.

That feedback loop of, how am I coming across?

What do they think of me?

Oh, I wish I hadn't said that.

What did they think now that I have said that?

I should have said that instead.

You know that you know that internal monologue where you go away and you replay the conversation afterwards.

Some of us are quite ambitious, some of us are quite driven, and that can look to lots of people like arrogance, like pride.

Question I asked there is, well, where's the where's the glory going?

Some of us don't like to appear weak at all.

And so we put on a show for others, and then find that actually inside ourselves we're exhausted.

Some of us think that we are only weak all of the time.

And we are our hardest critics.

What if you could be free of that?

Wouldn't that be nice?

Pride, as with all sins, idols, pride tells us lies.

Pride tells us lies about ourselves, it tells us lies about God, it tells us lies about other people in the world around us.

And humility encourages us to embrace some truths that will be freeing, healing to us.

So, this morning, here's where we're going.

We're gonna look at four lies that pride tells us, and then we're gonna look at four truths that humility offers us, and then I'm gonna make two final reflections.

So, how many points are there?

Math geniuses?

Ten.

Who said eight?

Come on.

Dear, oh dear.

Uh, I've already warned the City Kids leaders to buckle in.

Uh, and so you guys should do the same.

We'll move quite quickly through them, okay?

Four here are four lies that you're tempted to believe that pride tells you.

Number one, I am my own maker.

It's all down to me.

I'm my own maker.

It's kind of summed up in the kind of Invictus poem.

Um, you know, it matters not how straight they get, I am the captain of my soul, I am the master of my fate.

I hate that poem, right?

Uh or um uh if if I was more kind of hip and dying with the kids, I would quote uh Believer by Imagine Dragons.

Um second thing, second, don't you tell me what you think that I should be?

I am the one at the sale, I am the captain of my sea.

You're welcome, didn't write it down on the head.

Um but that's sort of that sort of idea.

It's it's all done to me, it's all on me, it's all up to me.

I am my own maker.

Listen to Proverbs uh 21.

We're kind of all the way through the book of Proverbs today, hence the reading that we had.

Listen to Proverbs 31, sorry, Proverbs 21, verse 31.

Proverbs 21:31

The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but victory rests with the Lord.

The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but victory rests with the Lord.

Who's it all down to?

Well, the horse can be ready, can there can be planning, you can take certain actions, but who determines the outcome?

Who's it all down to, actually?

Pride says, me.

Pride says, I built this, I earned this, I got here on my own by my own strength.

But the victory rests with the Lord.

The result of believing this lie is that it can often lead us to a place of great isolation.

Where you've believed this lie of it's all down to me, and what that leads you to is a place of saying, I must carry this on my own.

I can't let anybody shoulder this burden with me.

I have to do this myself.

And you find yourself quite quite alone.

It also leads you to a place of insecurity.

It's all down to you.

You've got to build it.

It's all, you know, I'm the captain of my sea.

But what if you're actually struggling?

Actually, internally, you feel like you have to carry all of this, uh, but you know that you can't.

And so you begin to feel this anxiety and insecurity because you can't be honest.

You can't be honest about the struggle that you're feeling.

I was um I was really confronted with this uh very early on in Cities Life.

The very first partner church that we had, when we didn't have a church, uh, it was just it was just me and Kieron, the guy who I planted with.

Uh, and we had a lot of passion and not an awful lot of plan.

And there was a church in Austin uh called City Life Church.

They used to meet in the ballet in the center of Austin in Texas.

And the pastor there was a guy called Jonathan.

And uh they were introduced as us uh to us and they started giving really generously to us before we had anything at all.

And as a 28-year-old church planter, uh, I felt quite a lot of pressure to kind of deliver on their expectations.

And so we would kind of have these Skype calls.

Remember what Skype is?

Uh it's now been retired, you've got to go on Microsoft Teams now.

Uh, but we'd have a lot, we'd have Skype calls where we would catch up and and I would constantly give him stories of successes, stories of good things that were happening at City.

That wasn't because there were only good things happening at City, as with any with anything, with any job.

Certainly with planting a church, things are messy and complicated.

There's good things and there's bad things.

But I felt like his support was dependent on me showing him the successes.

I felt really insecure that actually if he saw that it was difficult, that we were struggling at various points, that it all felt really uncertain and fragile, that that he would just kind of walk away.

Wonderfully, actually, one of the in one of those Zoom calls, after I kind of, you know, uh polished everything up to look amazing, he actually stopped and he said to me, He said, you know, you don't need to pretend that it's all going great.

He's like, I've been there, I've done that.

I've I planted a church.

It's it's hard, especially year one, year two.

It feels really fragile.

People leave and you count it on them, and then things change, especially in a city, and these things happen.

Don't feel like you need to hold that back.

I want to walk with you in that.

I just remember feeling myself just deflecting, just kind of oh it was such a relief to know that actually I didn't need to carry this all myself because I was believing the lie that it was all on me.

The lie that pride tells me.

Second lie.

I deserve more.

That's the second lie of pride.

I deserve more.

Or you could replace it.

I deserve this.

I am entitled to this.

This is the this is the primal garden of Eden, sin of pride.

Because what is the snake tempting Adam and Eve with in the garden?

He's tempting Adam and Eve with the lie that God is withholding something good.

That actually, if they grasped for something that God said you shouldn't have, that they would they would realize this new peak of joy that God who is mean-spirited has been keeping back.

Listen to Proverbs 25, verses six and seven.

Do not claim a place among his great men.

It is better for him to say, Come up here, than for you to be put lower in front of the prince.

Pride says, I have been overlooked, I have been wronged, I have been underappreciated, I should have more recognition, I should have more responsibility.

The result, as Proverbs 25 says, of believing this lie of entitlement.

I deserve this.

Don't you see how much I have given?

Why haven't I received this?

Well, Proverbs 25 says that actually the result of believing this lie is that you find yourself being lured.

You find yourself by the king being put back in your place.

Where does that lead us?

Well, that leads us to a place of bitterness, to a place where just our joy is gone.

Don't look to crying yourself.

Proverbs 27 then says, just a couple of chapters later, it says, Let another praise you and not your own mouth.

That's good advice, isn't it?

You always you know the person who's just like, well, you know, I don't mean to kind of blow my own trumpet, but uh actually the so another way it's so you graduate professionals will do this, uh, particularly the uh who have done a humanities degree.

Um so they will start uh they'll maybe start kind of defensive responses with as a sociologist.

As a if you ever start a sentence with as a you get a claim to authority in your own, well, as a mathematician, um okay.

Let another praise you, not your own mouth, someone else, and not your own lips.

That's the lie that we believe.

That we are entitled to recognition that we deserve more.

Lie three.

I know best.

That's lie three.

I know best.

Proverbs 26, verse 12.

Proverbs 26:12

Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes?

There is more hope for a fool than there is for him.

Do you see a man that is wise or a woman that is wise in her own eyes?

There is more hope for a fool than for her.

Do you know the thing that I have found that exposes pride more than anything else, with the possible exception of suffering, is correction.

How do you know whether somebody is proud or humble?

How do they respond to correction?

How do they respond to rebuke?

How do they respond to an opportunity to learn and to grow?

If it is just defensive, stay away from how dare you say this.

They go on the offensive.

Well, what about you?

What about this thing that you did?

Hmm.

That's concerning.

Are you able to admit that you're wrong?

When was the last time you apologized?

Is there somebody that you need to apologize to?

When was the last time you said Yeah, I need to learn more about that actually?

The result of believing the I know best lie is actually you end up pretty lost.

You end up pretty directionless.

Because you're too proud to ask anybody else.

You know, the caricature of uh, you know, of the husband and wife kind of driving along and they don't know where they are, and uh the wife is constantly saying to the husband, Well, pull over and ask for directions, and the husband just won't.

Um, because why would we?

That's a that's an admission of weakness on our part.

Uh, but we end up getting completely lost.

So it's the same sort of thing.

The people who think that they know best find themselves utterly directionless.

Fourth lie.

I'm better.

Or I'm holier.

That's the religious version of that.

And spiritual pride is the most insidious form of pride.

Why?

Because it masquerades as virtue, it masquerades as uh as piety, and them looking dreadfully holy and godly.

When people feel more theologically knowledgeable or more morally superior than others.

Proverbs again says there are those who are clean in their own eyes, but who are not washed of their filth.

Spiritual pride.

I'm clean.

But actually they have not been washed of their filth.

That's really what that's kind of the accusation that Jesus is laying at the Pharisees, isn't it?

All the way through the Gospels when he calls them uh, you know, whitewashed tombs, beautifully painted on the outside and full of death on the inside.

The result if you believe this lie of a kind of moral superiority, how do you know that you're believing that lie?

People don't tend to kind of go around um uh thinking thinking, uh, well, I'm just I'm way ho uh I'm pretty holy.

What we do is we do it comparatively.

We know that we're believing that lie when we actually when we look down on others.

We're beginning to believe that lie when we look at somebody else and we go, well, actually, I would never do that.

I can't believe that she said that.

I can't believe that he did that.

Need to be very careful.

Because the result of believing that lie is that we can lose sight of our own need of a savior, that we can lose sight of our own need for cleansing.

Pride is a thief.

It steals the glory and honor due to God by attributing our own successes to our own strength, our own ability, our own influence instead of to him who gives the victory.

It blinds us to our dependence and inflates our own sense of importance.

Four lies.

Do you remember them?

I am my own maker.

Or again, remember, these can be these can be believed by the person who hates themselves.

These can be believed by the self loathing person.

The I am my own maker is it's all down to me.

I have to carry this.

I deserve more.

I'm entitled to more.

I know best.

Kind of I I can't can't ask for help.

I am holier.

That could be inverted into a kind of I am too, I am actually too dirty, I'm too broken.

That also keeps you from a savior.

If you think I cannot come to the cross because my sin is too bad.

That's a lie that pride is telling us.

It's not that we're focusing on ourselves going, oh, look at me, I'm great.

It's that we're focusing on ourselves going, oh no, I'm terrible.

But the focus is still the same.

And it still keeps us from the cross.

Which of those four lies hits you right now?

That's the lie to do business with this week.

That's the lie to be praying into, to be repenting of, to be asking for grace and forgiveness before you come and take bread and wine in a few minutes' time.

Let's offer a little medicine to our hearts.

Four truths that complement these lies that humility offers us and encourages us to embrace first.

I wonderfully depend on another.

I depend on another.

That's the first truth.

Remember, the horses made ready for battle, but victory rests in the Lord.

Or we looked at all the way back in, I don't know, 1973 when we started this proverb series.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.

Do not lean on your own understanding.

Do you ever, maybe some of you are here right now and you're in this season, we all go through seasons of life where the things that we were leaning on, whether it's the kind of the acknowledgement or approval of someone that we love or respect, or our success, or financial security, or our comfort.

We're all leaning on something, maybe a couple of things.

And we find ourselves every now and again in a season where God comes along, and do you know what he does?

He kicks it out of the way, takes it away, suddenly, it's gone.

And you don't even know that you were leaning on it until God came along and went, see you later, comfort.

See you later, approval.

See you later, you know, the career that you thought you wanted.

Bye.

Oh, thanks.

Why has he done that?

Because he hates you?

No.

He loves you.

What does it say?

Do not lean on your own understanding, but trust in, lean on who?

On him.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart.

Lean on him completely.

He's not going to kick himself away.

He kicks those things away because they're not good for you anyway.

Depend on him.

I am dependent upon another.

My successes, my strength, my future, they rest in God's hands, not mine.

Instead of striving to prove something.

Humility abides in God's provision, in his sovereign care of us.

And that frees us, friends.

It frees us from performance, from striving after the approval of others, and it anchors us firmly in his grace.

Second truth.

Giving honor brings me joy.

Giving honor, giving glory brings me joy.

Remember the proverb about the king?

It is better for him to say, Come up here.

What's he doing?

What's the king doing?

He's giving that person honor.

Saying, come up here.

Or let another person praise you, not your own mouth, someone else, and not your own lips.

Humble people are people who celebrate the successes in others, who affirm the goodness and blessings that others have experienced by the hand of God without bitterness and resentment.

And this is only possible.

This is only true if your own identity isn't rooted in your own position or achievement or affirmation.

But in Christ and who He has made you to be and who He has redeemed you to be.

Free to delight in others.

I was out watching a napping baby.

Did we sing the new song?

Did we do it at the start?

Right.

It's a great new song.

What's the interplay?

The interplay is between glory and good.

That we give God glory and he gives us good.

Or another way to put it, joy.

Right?

There is a constant kind of interplay between glory and our good.

If you seize at glory, if you grasp at glory, it will never be for your good.

It'll actually take your joy.

But if you give glory, you will get good.

You will get joy.

If you seize glory, you will lose your joy.

That's what pride does.

Pride is a thief.

It steals glory from God and it takes away your joy.

Pride people are very rarely happy people.

But if you give glory, if you give honor, you will find joy.

You'll find joy and true delight in knowing who you are.

And you'll try and find true joy in sharing in the blessings of other people.

That is the second truth.

Humility depends on another.

Humility gives honor that brings us joy, gives glory that brings us good.

Third truth.

I have more to learn.

I'm not finished.

I'm not beyond correction.

I'm not beyond rebuke.

I haven't reached perfection yet.

I've got more to learn.

Proverbs 15, verses 31 to 33.

Proverbs 15:31–33

We looked at it a couple of weeks ago, but let's dive a little bit more deliberately into it.

The ear that listens to life-giving reproof will dwell among the wise.

Whoever ignores instruction despises himself or herself.

Do you hear that?

Who are you harming by not taking correction?

Who are you harming by not going, oh, actually, there is something to learn there.

I probably should apologize, probably should repent.

Who are you harming?

It's not the person.

Yourself.

You want a bit of self-care?

Learn.

Change your mind.

Apologize.

Be corrected.

Whoever ignores instruction despises himself, but he who listens to reproof gains intelligence.

The fear of the Lord is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor.

Teachability is a core mark of a heart that is growing in humility.

To say, I don't know, without fear of ridicule, to say, I need help, without fear of mockery or exposure, to be open to feedback and criticism, because it is an opportunity to grow and not a threat.

Humility listens, it confesses, it seeks growth.

This, friends, must be the posture of our heart.

This is true humility.

That we are learners before we're teachers, that we are stewards rather than possessors.

We're stewards of all that God has given us, the gifts and talents and treasures.

We're stewards of the gospel.

We don't own it.

We don't master it.

It masters us.

This would transform each one of us, and it would transform us as a church to have a culture of learning.

Stewardship.

And I see so much of it here.

I would I would want to give you examples, but I would not embarrass the people that are here.

Who have sought to learn and to grow.

What a thing to grow in that kind of culture of feedback and learning, especially coupled with the culture of honor giving, glory giving, where we encourage and we praise and we thank and we we thank God for what He is doing through people.

Imagine what that would do in and amongst us Fourth Truth.

This is maybe the hardest one.

Humility now honor later.

Humility now honor later.

This is the constant theme through the book of Proverbs.

And maybe the most important thing to note about humility in the book of Proverbs.

We picked it up in Proverbs 15, that last verse, verse 33, that I read, it came up in the reading that Precious read for us.

Listen to it again.

The fear of the Lord is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor.

All the way through.

Humility now, glory later.

Humility now, riches later.

This, friends, sums up the entire dynamic of the Christian life and experience.

Humility now, glory later.

Suffering now, glory later.

Humility is not self-loathing, but self-forgetting.

It is giving glory to another rather than seizing at it now.

Because the Lord promises to exalt all those who walk this road, the road of taking up our cross and following Jesus.

This is the way of the gospel, friends.

The cross comes before the crown.

Do you believe that?

Cross now, crown later.

To have the Holy Spirit massage that deeply into our souls is what will sustain you through seasons of trial, through seasons where it feels like God has just come along and kicked away that thing that you're leaning on.

It will sustain you through seasons of ridicule, of uncertainty, of anxiety, of injustice.

The cross comes before the crown.

Suffering now, glory later.

Four truths.

I depend on another.

Giving glory brings me joy.

I have more to learn.

Humility now, honor later.

And in the same way that I asked about pride, I ask about those truths.

Which one of those hits in a different way?

Which one do you need to breathe into and embrace?

And so I would invite you that when you take bread and wine and you return to your seat.

Look at those elements, those those means of grace that are to encourage our hearts and spur us on to follow Jesus into this next week.

Look at that piece of bread and look at that cup of wine and say, I depend on another.

Or say, Allow me to give honor that I might know joy.

Or give me the heart of a learner.

Or cross now.

And then eat.

Let me close with a couple of final reflections.

What do you do about giftedness?

What do you do about being driven or ambitious?

How does that play in to pride or humility?

The reason why I want to deal with this is because this is what kind of it's what hits home to me and what I've discovered from actually your feedback from the sermon series is that if I just kind of come up and confess my sins, you seem to find yourself helped.

So here's today's confession.

I'm actually quite ambitious.

I'm quite driven.

I like to work.

I like to start new things.

I do it too much.

And I sometimes work too hard.

I push myself and I can get a bit stressed because I'm ambitious.

Sometimes that can be motivated by a kind of pride.

And maybe you're like that too.

You've got particular gifts, talents.

There's things you want to achieve in your life, and you think, well, do I just need to kind of turn aside from all of that?

Do I need to not be like that in order to be humble?

Here's what I have learned mostly this week.

The key, I think, for the ambitious, driven, like to achieve person is this.

Where's the glory going?

Where's the glory going?

Who's getting the recognition?

Who's getting the honor?

Whose name am I seeking to make great?

Mine?

Mark Smith?

I mean, there's loads of us.

People would just get confused.

I'd end up making some other Mark Smith's name great.

Whose name am I seeking to magnify?

I am encouraged actually in my reading of Proverbs that Proverbs does not condemn ambition, drivenness, hard work, but it does condemn prideful ambition.

Ambition that is self-referential, that points the glory towards myself, ourselves.

Godly ambition flows from trust.

That actually the victory belongs to the Lord.

I'm going to saddle my war horse.

I'm going to ride into battle with all the might that I can possibly muster for as many years as God has me here.

I want to reach people with the gospel of the Lord Jesus and I want to plant churches.

That's it.

I'm going to saddle my war horse.

And I'm going to do as much as I can to try and cultivate and transform something of the gospel ecosystem, not just in Dublin, but across Ireland.

Right?

That's my ambition.

But the victory belongs to the Lord.

It flows from trust.

It flows from a desire to serve, not to be served.

The thing that I am encouraged by as I have read this is to pursue excellence, yes.

But not applause.

That if honor comes, fine.

But never to chase it.

The question is not then, am I ambitious?

But whose glory am I ambitious for?

Skill and success can be platforms.

But the spotlight of our life should always be pointed heavenward.

So I've used this illustration before of, you know, the the statue of Christo Redentor in Rio de Janeiro.

That great kind of Rococo Art Deco statue of Jesus.

It's up lit at nighttime, so you see him looming over the skyline.

I want my life to be like one of those spotlights.

Finally.

The Lord Jesus.

If pride is a glory thief, then humility is a glory giver.

And if that is true, then Jesus is the ultimate glory giver.

He had it.

He had it in unsearchable light.

The Prince of Heaven.

He certainly deserved it.

All honor and all praise.

He possessed all power.

And yet he gave it all away.

He laid it down.

Not out of insecurity.

Not because of threats, but out of perfect love.

So those of you who are at the prayer meeting a couple of weeks ago, and if you weren't, why not?

Will remember these words.

That though he was in the form of God, he did not count a quality with God as a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself.

He humbled himself to becoming obedient to the point of death.

Even death on a cross.

The beautiful Lord Jesus did not climb for recognition, but stooped to serve.

He washed feet.

He didn't exalt himself.

He trusted that his father would do that in time.

And so Paul concludes that him in Philippians 2 by saying, And so God has highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

The gospel offends our human pride.

You are not the master of your fate.

You cannot save yourself.

It tells us that our best efforts still fall short of God's holy and perfect standard.

But just as the gospel offends human pride, it humbles us in the most healing and glorious way.

Because it says that God has done it all.

He has come for you to do what you could not and to rescue you and to pick you up from the miry bog and set your feet upon a rock.

The gospel tells us that all of this is a gift.

It is not a wage that you deserve, but a kindness that you embrace.

And it tells us that every good that he works in and through us is a work of his spirit for his glory and our good.