Book of Proverbs

Submission, Humility, Rebellion, Lucifer, and the Ultimate Sin of Pride

Lesson 5

Part 4

How do we cure the my way, pride problem?

Now remember Isaiah 53:6 says,

6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid

on him the iniquity of us all.

All of us at birth.

“All we like sheep have gone astray.” What is the essence of what’s wrong with us at birth?

“We have turned, everyone,” what? “To our own way.” God is in an all-out war against pride

in our lives. He wants to stamp out pride in my life and in your life. We were born that way,

our flesh. I’m a brand-new creation in Jesus Christ. My spirit, my internal operating system is

from God, but the rest of the package is born of this world and there’s a constant war going

on between my flesh, that’s who I was born as and my spirit that’s who I’m born from above.

God is in a war against my flesh running my life. I should join Him in the battle. I should do

all I can to say no.

 If we were to study the first teaching on this, written down, we’d have to go to James. So, go

 with me in your Bible to the book of James. Now remember, James is the first New Testament epistle

 that’s written. Now, the apostle Paul is alive and working in his missionary journeys, but James,

 before Paul even got saved on the road to Damascus, James the brother of Jesus Christ, James was

 the pastor of the first church in Jerusalem. James is a monumental New Testament character and James

 preaches the word of God to this early gathering of those saved from the day of Pentecost. He became

 recognized as an early church leader and pastor of this group.

In this first New Testament epistle,

the earliest one written, James has 108 verses and 54 imperatives, those are commands. In James 4,

you’ll see them. He is very, very direct in what he says, and this is how to cure the pride problem.

1 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?

2 Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not,

because ye ask not.

3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.

4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever

therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.

5 Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?

6 But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.

7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

8 Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye

double minded.

9 Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness.

10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.

11 Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother,

speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law,

but a judge.

12 There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another?

13 Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and

buy and sell, and get gain:

14 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth

for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

15 For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.

16 But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil.

17 Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.

How does pride rot me if it’s allowed to seep through my life? That’s the first thing that James teaches.

Pride rots my life. It rots all my effectiveness, my fellowship with God, my relationship to others if

I allow it in my life. That’s what James says in the first six verses.

I’m going to go through these six points he makes. Now think about James, his preaching and his topic is

what will pride do in my life if I leave it. This is what he says, and I’ll read these points to you on

the slide, and then we’ll walk through the verses.

Number one, pride will poison my relationships.

Number two, pride will pollute my life.

Pride will produce anxiety in my life.

Pride will plunder my prayers of any effectiveness.

Pride, this is the serious one, provokes God’s enmity.

Pride will make God my enemy.

The bottom line is, pride prevents my spiritual growth.

Now think about this, take your Bible, and let’s walk through these.

First of all, James chapter 4, verse 1.

“Where do wars and fights come from among you?” If you’re not getting along with someone; if you’re

having problems with your roommates; if you’re having problem with your parents; if you’re having

problems with your partner, your husband, or your wife; if you’re having problems with your boss or

your supervisor; or your neighbor from where do wars and fights come from among you?

Pride poisons relationships. Never forget that. The more I clothe myself with humility the more I’m like Jesus Christ,

that even His enemies didn’t know what to do with Him because he was so amazingly wonderful. He was meek,

and lowly, and gentle. Pride poisons our relationships, makes us un-Christ like, is the best way to put it.

Look at the second part of the verse. “Do they not come from your desire for pleasures that war in your members?”

See, pride pollutes my life. It makes the fresh clean water, when you pour a pollutant in to it, it ruins all the

water. Pride pollutes my life. It makes the outflow of my life, my thoughts, my words, my attitudes, my actions,

it pollutes them.

Next, look at verse 2.

Pride makes me anxious. “You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain.

You fight and war. Yet you have not because you ask not.” What it says is that pride is making me anxious.

I’m all worried about, I have this… I want more. Pride makes me always want more, never content. It produces

anxiety.

Verse 3, James says this. “You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your

pleasures.” Pride also plunders my prayers. Remember Jesus said, if you ask anything in my name, I’ll do it.

But if I’m proudly asking, if I’m asking for myself, for my own pleasures, He says, I’ll not answer that.

You’re not praying according to the will of God. Remember Jesus said, I always come to do my Father’s will.

That’s the secret of prayer. If my prayer is… not give me, get me, I want, but my prayer is… not my will,

 but yours be done, what you want Lord, done in this situation then the Lord says there’s no limit to what

 I’ll do in answering your prayers. Pride plunders my prayers of power.

Verses 4 and 5 “adulterers and adulteresses!” Oh, wait a minute. What? I thought this was written to the church.

 I thought these were Christians? What does this talk about? Jesus said, you and I are engaged to Him and he is

 our bridegroom. We are His bride. We are betrothed to Him and we are to be keeping my single loyalty to Him.

 Pride makes me disloyal to the Lord and starting to live life for myself. That’s what spiritual adultery is,

 having others that we love more than God, more than God the Son, more than our Redeemer.

So, “Adulterers and Adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?” Whoa,

pride provokes God’s enmity. What does that mean? If I have enmity, that means I am having a fight with you.

I have enmity, hostility, I don’t live peaceably with you. I’m resistant to you. I don’t like to be around you.

“Don’t you know, that friendship with the world is enmity with God.” This is the world, man’s way. This is God’s way.

 When I am proud, I am aligning with the world, I am not aligning with God. So, when I’m aligned with the world,

 I’m at enmity with God. God becomes resistant to my life.

In fact, it says, keep reading, “whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

 Or do you think the Scripture says in vain,” verse five, “the Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”? The

 Holy Spirit is jealous of our attention, of our loyalty, of our focus of seeking Him first. In fact, I said

 in a previous class, some of you treat your I-phones or your Galaxy Samsung’s, whatever digital device you have…

 some of you treat that with more love and respect than God. You love your phone. You’re on your phone all day long.

 It takes away time in the word. It takes away time and prayer. It takes away time and serving God. The Lord says,

 do you think that the Holy Spirit who dwells in you isn’t jealous? Pride means I want to do my own thing. I want

 my time to be filled with what I like, and God says, no, no, humility leads you to submission, to my way. I want

 to do your will not my own.

Here’s the last one, look at verse six, right at the beginning. “But He gives more grace. Therefore, He says:

‘God resists the proud.’ ” The final evidence of the rotting that pride does in my life is, pride prevents my

spiritual growth. Now pause for a minute. Why don’t you get anything out of your devotions. I don’t

get anything out of the sermon. I don’t get anything out of Sunday School class. I don’t get anything out of

small group. You know what God says? Pride prevents your spiritual growth. What’s an example of pride?

That I want to do my way more than God’s way. God’s way is that I seek Him first. I seek Him most.

I love Him completely. I repent, I confess, and forsake all known sin and I don’t want to go my own way.

I want to go His way.

What happens when we resist pride? The answers right there below it. We humble ourselves.

This is what happens the instant we humble ourselves. Now I’m going to read all five of these and then

we’re going to walk through the scriptures again together.

Humility prompts the grace of God.

Humility provides the deliverance that God offers to us.

Humility prospers our intimacy with God.

Humility promotes cleansing from God.

Humility, I love this, prompts God’s success.

Now take your Bible again. Remember you’re looking at a sermon from pastor James,

and this is what the original, what I call authentic Christians, we’re getting in church. The first century

believers. This is why we talk about those amazing first century believers that stood against all the persecution

of the Roman Empire and stood against the ostracism as culture just pushed them out. How did they stand so boldly

and full of joy for Christ? Because they were humble.

Now let’s go through one at a time. These verses starting in verse 6, the bottom.

Now we ended with “God resists the proud.” That’s God has enmity toward us, that we make God our enemy but look

at the second or the last line of verse 6, God “gives grace to the humble”. Wow. Now, I have a marginal note in

my Bible. You might have a Bible that has little notes or little letters and then at the bottom there are footnotes

down here or maybe it’s in the center column. I have one, do you know what it tells me? That verse 6 is a quotation

from Proverbs 3:34. What a tie? James is quoting Proverbs. James is applying Proverbs. James knew these themes.

James, the pastor of the first church of Jerusalem had studied the Old Testament scriptures. He knew about the

Spirit of God coming on, and the servant heartedness, and the selective choices and this submissiveness that

battles against pride and he quotes this in his sermon.

(“Heartedness” is a suffix that means the state of having a heart, or a particular kind of heart, and is often

used in combination with other words. For example, “warm-heartedness” describes someone who is warm, while

“cold-heartedness” describes someone who is cold.)

Here’s lesson,

Number one, humility prompts the grace of God. Do you want to be showered with God’s grace? You

know what grace is? It’s the divine power of God, to live out all the promises of God, to live the way the Bible

talks about is only possible by grace. Practically, it’s like plugging in your computer or your iPad or your

cell phone. It’s the power source. Grace is the Holy Spirit bringing about the will of God in my life. Grace is

God giving me what I don’t deserve. How do I get that grace? It’s more valuable than money. How do you get it?

Look at verse 6. “God gives grace to the humble.” Humility prompts the grace of God.

Look at verse 7,

“Therefore submit yourself to God. Resist the devil…” and what does it say in verse 7?

“He’ll flee from you.”

Secondly, humility provides deliverance, from God. Do you want to resist the devil? How does that

happen? Submitting to God leads to resisting the devil, causing him to flee from us. We don’t have to do some kind

of incantation or claiming something that that we do. No, it’s God overwhelming the darkness of Satan, delivering.

God delivers us from evil as we humble ourselves, get doused with His grace. Submit to God and just say no to the

devil.

Now some of you, let me pause and say, some of you are experiencing the reptilian nature of sin. What I mean by

that? Well reptiles, when you learn in biology class, that reptiles grow a little bit bigger every year. That’s

why they go into the jungles and they find these massive, these gigantic reptiles that are in all these nature

shows and everyone’s amazed at them. Do you remember dinosaurs? Dinosaurs got bigger every year. They were reptilian. Now, what does that have to do with us? Sin is reptilian. Any sin that we don’t do what Proverbs 28:13 says, which says we confess them, forsake, and God gets rid of it; when we leave it alone and overlook it or cover it up, it grows a little bigger. Some of you at your young age, you’re in college and you’re starting to be shocked at the hold that sin has on you. That it’s almost like you feel trapped, by maybe anger that you’ve cultivated over the years, or maybe anxiety, or maybe pride, or maybe lust/physical lust/sensual lust. Sexual desires are reptilian when they’re not kept in the banks. Sex is like a river, it’s beautiful when it’s in the banks, in the channel that God designed it. But when you let it overflow and flood, it’s very destructive. How do you get Satan to flee from controlling us through our lust? By humbling ourselves, submitting to God, and saying no.

You want to grow spiritually? Say no to your current sins that are besetting you. The ones that seem like you do over

and over, you say, Oh I shouldn’t have done that, shouldn’t have done that. Well, first you say, Lord I want to

humble myself. I wouldn’t be doing that sin if I wasn’t proud, going my own way and so I want to submit to you.

I resist the evil one. If you could open your eyes and see from God’s perspective, you’d see Satan fleeing away.

Here’s the next one.

Humility prospers intimacy with God. Look at verse 8, “Draw near to God and He will draw near

to you.” It’s very interesting, if we were in Greek class, I would say that there’s a different tense in those two

words, draw near to God and He will draw near to you.

The first one is, a once and for all attitude.

I say, God, I want to draw near to you. That’s my heart’s desire. I might feel you. I might sometimes not act

that way, but the choice of my life I want to draw near to you.

Do you know what the tense is of the next one? God will ever be coming closer and closer and closer. He’s going to

be drawing nearer and nearer and nearer. It’s a present, active, indicative. He is coming our way. All you have to

do is open the door to Him by saying, I want to draw near to you. Here He comes. What does that humility prosper?

Intimacy with God.

And it promotes cleansing from God. Look at the second half of verse 8 and verse 9.

“Cleanse your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep! Let your

laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.” What is that? Thinking and talking and acting like sin,

is what God says it is. It’s agreeing with God about sin. I sorrow, I have godly sorrow for my sin. In fact,

I tell people I’m the worst sinner I know. I don’t know you. I’ve met some of you who are reading this.

I know others of you through texts or emails or messages or whatever comments you make but I really know myself.

I know why I do what I do. I know when I do what I do, I know what I do. You know what? I know that I know so much

about God, that I need to more and more submit to. I know that I’m hardwired to be a rebel and I know that pride

is at the root of sin in me, that I was born into this world with. I have to be, all the time, saying no to it.

So, I want cleansing from God. I say to Him, I don’t want that sin in my life, I repent of that sin in my life.

What is repentance? It’s a change of mind, that issues into a change of behavior. So, cleansing from God is

promoted by me humbly, repentantly as it says in verse 9,

Lamenting and Mourning and Weeping and Sorrowing.

Paul said in 2 Corinthians 7:10,

For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.

Worldly people are just sorry they got caught. They’re sorry that they have cirrhosis of the liver, they drank too

much. Or they’re sorry they got an STD because of their immortality. But godly sorrow is not that I got caught,

but that I sinned against God. I love Him. I want to serve Him. I want to submit to Him. I want to humbly receive

His grace.

The last one, humility prompts God’s success.

Look at verse 10,

“Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.”

The only medication that defeats pride is God’s grace.

The only pathway to that grace is submissiveness.

Grace enables us to clothe ourselves with humility.

The evidence of, the grace of submission, is when we submit humbly to one another.

The attitude we need is in John 3:30

“He must increase, but I must decrease.”

The action we need to take is in Colossians 3:12.

“Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind,

 meekness, longsuffering;”

Now read John chapter 3:30th verse.

“He must increase, but I must decrease.”

Number one, the conclusion:

This whole lesson of submission, rebellion, and the ultimate sin of pride is having an attitude.

If you’ve never done this, this is the moment to do it. This is a moment to say, Lord, I want this attitude.

It’s the most vital seven words in the Bible. Got it? “He must increase, but I must decrease.”

That becomes my lifelong attitude. I want more of Christ, less of me; more of Him, less of me.

It’s not something that instantly happens. It’s a lifelong process of saying, how is this choice going to

make more of Christ or is it just going to make more of me? Is what I’m posting right now, going to point

at Christ or make me struggle more with pride? You understand, this changes everything. Your social media,

the entertainment you listen to, the games you play… is that making me decrease and Christ increase?

That’s my attitude for everything, from now on in life. Now, this is the testimony of John the Baptist,

but Jesus said John was the greatest human born of among men. He was the greatest human to that day. Well,

Why? Because of that attitude, Christ must increase, I must decrease.

Now look in your Bibles, the Second one is Colossians 3.

“Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind,

meekness, longsuffering;”

“Therefore, as the elect of God,” what does elect mean?

God picked us to be on His team. Election is that God eklektos. He calls us out. He says, come to me

and He elects. We respond in faith and come to Him. “As the elect of God,” those who’ve responded to the

grace of God, “holy, and beloved.” That’s how God sees me, no condemnation I face. God looks at me as a beloved

member of His family. And holy because Jesus has cleansed me of my sins, even though I still sin all my sins

have been put on Christ. Past, present, future.

Verse 12 continues and the next word “put on” is an imperative.

What’s that? It’s a command, it’s not an option. You go through the cafeteria line and they say, would you like

ketchup or mustard on your hotdog, would you like salt or pepper? Those are options. This is not an option.

Verse 12, “put on tender mercies, kindness,” there it is, “humility.” Pause. Think about this. The attitude

God wants from me, to clothe myself with humility, is saying those seven words. He must increase, I must decrease.

The action I take is Colossians 3:12.

When I get a shirt out my closet. How did it the shirt get on me? Did it attack me? Did it knock me and pin me

to the floor and put itself on me? No, I walked in to where my clothes are, I picked that shirt, and put it on.

That’s as clearly as Colossians 3:12,

In the action we’re supposed to take you and I. As much as we pick our clothes that you’re wearing right now,

every one of you picked out clothes that you’re wearing, we need to pause spiritually and obey the command of

Colossians 3:12. Clothed ourselves with humility. How do you do that?

In the closing prayer. We’re to submit to God, not be rebels, and avoid the ultimate

sin of pride. Now listen, how do we do that? This closing prayer. We clothe ourselves with humility. Let’s bow.

Dear Father, I right now again, repeat to you that I want you O Christ, to increase in my life and I want to

decrease. I want there to be less of me and my goals, and desires, and plans and I want there to be more of you,

in all of your beauty, and glory, and power, and majesty. So, I reach into the closet of your word and I know

that you have said that humility is a choice. So, I take the action right now of saying, Lord clothed me with

humility. I’ve taken it out of the closet. I pray that you would cling close to my heart, that choice of humbling

myself and your sight. I just expect you to pour your grace upon me and upon every one of those, that

in their hearts say, Lord, I want you to increase, I want to decrease; clothed with humility so we can resist

the evil one and you can pour your grace on us. In the precious name of Jesus we pray. And all God’s people said,

Amen.