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Sunday, September 06, 2009
The Worst Sin
By Rev. Jerry Herships
Proverbs 16:18
18Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.
I want to do something a little different tonight. I want to read a quote from C.S. Lewis the Christian writer who lived from 1898 to 1963. Then I want to read our scripture and go into the message.
C.S. Lewis writes in his book, Mere Christianity:
“There is one vice of which no person in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly anyone ever imagines that they are guilty themselves.
There is no fault which makes a person more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.” Have you guessed it yet? It is pride.
Lewis goes on to say, “I pointed out a moment ago that the more pride one had, the more one disliked pride in others. It is because I wanted to be the big noise at the party that I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise. The point is that each person's pride is in competition with every one else's pride.
Which brings us to our Bible passage today?
Scripture Proverbs 16:18
18Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.
Proverbs comes to us from the Hebrew Bible, what Christians call the Old Testament. It is introduced as the Proverbs of Solomon, but there are few if any scholars that would accept that Solomon penned this himself. Rather they represent the “wisdom” of Solomon. In most cases these sayings were passed down from father to son or from teacher to student. The sayings were designed to help the student succeed in life and were highly pragmatic. They were not just focused on religion.
In chapter 23 we are given advice on table manners in case you are invited to dine with a ruler. I guess that could come in handy. When we look at chapter 16 verse 18, we see that pride has been a known stumbling block for a long time, all the way to today.
I have a friend who is speaking at a religious conference. And I started looking at the line up of speakers and checking out their websites. They are rock stars with books, seminars, and panel discussions. Their websites list their touring schedules. THEIR TOURING SCHEDULES, I’m not EVEN kidding. Make no mistake, I totally get the hypocrisy of me calling that kettle black. I have a website, a Facebook page, and I Tweet. I have a book, albeit in my head.
I have been of that world and I guess this is what brought this week’s topic to the surface. I had a moment when I thought to myself, “When are we bringing glory to ourselves and when are we bringing it to God?” Are we pointing the way to God or are we pointing a bit to us? I also realized, about half way through writing this sermon, that what bugged me about these conference speakers, was my pride rearing its ugly head.
I had someone say to me recently that this service was all about me. I don’t buy that. I do buy it about a lot of traditional services, however. I think that is one of the problems of celebrity preachers.
Now there is only one thing worst than pride and that is false humility. I do think some people come to hear what I have to say, to see if it rings true in their lives. I buy that. But I, also, think there are as many, or more, that come because of the music. I think a huge portion of the people that come to AfterHours come for the community or the service element. They dig that what they do TODAY helps a fellow human being TOMORROW.
Laura emailed me this week. The subject line was, “Cereal is off the list!” She went to the Denver Urban Ministries (DenUM) website on Wednesday and saw that cereal was no longer on their list of most needed items. Afterhours and St. Andrew single handedly eliminated DenUM’s desperate need for breakfast cereal in our inner city! You should feel AWESOME about that.
I think that is part of the reason people come to AfterHours. Some people come for the fact that we are big on the non-judgment piece. That’s part of our tag line, More Love, More Laughs, Less Judgment. When I have all my baggage and junk figured out, I will tell you how to fix your stuff. Until then, let’s try to get through this together with God’s help.
It is safe to say most of us have pride issues in some area of our life. We start to think we are all that and we forget to give credit where credit is due.
I saw a band play a gig at St. Andrew right after we moved to Orlando from L.A. After the band played, I ran into the lead singer backstage. I said, "Wow, you were great." He said, "God's great. Thanks though." He said it with not a hint of piety or holier-than-thou-ness. I was so taken aback that I didn't know what to say. That to me was the polar opposite of pride. That is a business where it is so easy to think that it is, all about you, when in reality, it’s safe to say that God had a hand in it.
Last week I quoted the Nelsen Mandela inauguration speech that was written in part by Marianne Williamson. Part of that speech says, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine.
Wait. Isn’t that prideful? Isn’t that saying, “Look at me! Look at how great I am!”? Well….kind of. It is saying we are great. But that’s not pride. Pride is when we say we are ABOVE others, especially above God. The rest of that speech says, “We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us. It’s in all of us. We are doing two things by doing that; we are acknowledging that any greatness we have comes from God and it levels the playing field. It says we are ALL great.
That is not normal. It is not natural. Try this. Turn to the people at the table you are sitting at and tell them, “You’re great!” Go ahead, even the cool people. I’ll wait. Now say, “And by the way, I’m great too!” Now let me ask you, which was harder? We have been trained to not own the greatness that is in us as a result of being a child of God. It has been taught that this is prideful. It isn’t. It is only when we separate ourselves from God that it becomes prideful. Own how great you are and remember how that came about.
Pride is not thinking you are great. It is putting others down and yourself up. C.S. Lewis got this really well in his book, Mere Christianity. That first part I read was from the chapter called, “The Greatest Sin.” I totally ripped off the title of this message from that chapter. This is how he says it. "Pride isn't saying you are rich, and handsome and successful, it's saying you are richer, more handsome and more successful than THAT guy!" It is the comparison piece that gets us in trouble, especially when, “THAT guy” is God. (Excuse the gender specific lingo.)
Here are a couple of examples where God was “the other guy.”
The first one that comes to mind is Adam and Eve. They ate because in Genesis Chapter 3, verse 5 the serpent told them, “You will be like God.” Well we made it to the third chapter before we started thinking, you know, being God would be a pretty sweet gig. And we never turned back. We have been trying to grab the reigns from God ever since.
We are not the only ones. Isaiah 14:14-15 tell us about Lucifer, “14I will ascend to the tops of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High.” 15But you are brought down to Sheol, to the depths of the Pit.” WOW! Wrong answer.
Understand that God does not want us to put ourselves above God because of an ego issue with God. It has more to do with the fact God knows this will be a huge wall that will go up between God and every individual who thinks they are better than God.
This sin of Lucifer thinking he was better than God was the first sin. Way to go Lucifer! You screwed it up for everybody. Pride was the sin of Satan. And when we think we are better than God, well, we are in lousy company.
We do this, on a smaller level, every time we think to ourselves, “I can handle this.” We are essentially saying, “I don’t need God for this one.” We need God for everything. Go to God with all your needs. In Paul’s letter to the Philippians, he tells us that God will provide all our needs (Phil. 4:19).
We can so easily get into the mode of, “I can handle that. I don’t want to bother God with that.” Yea, cause God can only handle so much? Please. God is GOD! God can handle it. Take EVERYTHING to God. When we think, I don’t want God to handle this, I want ME to handle this, then it can become a form of self-worship. I am big enough to handle this. That is when, in our own little way, we want to be God.
Paul says it again in 1 Corinthians 4:7. "What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as though you did not?" His point here is, if it came from God, don’t think you are such a big deal for having it, and by the way…IT ALL CAME FROM GOD. Again, I’m paraphrasing.
So again, how do we keep our pride in check? By constantly giving credit back to God. Our God is truly an amazing God. We see it all the time by how God works through us. Our little breakfast drive was a great example. That was an awesome thing we did. But let’s not get caught up in saying how great we are or how great AfterHours is or how great St. Andrew is. It is God who gets the applause. We are just doing the work we have been called to do.
I want to close with one more line from C.S. Lewis. He tells us how we can find out how prideful we are. He says it like this:
“ If you want to find out how proud you are, the easiest way is to ask yourself, 'How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me, or patronize me, or show off?'
Personally, I can’t stand people that do that.
So, as long as you are okay coming to a service where your pastor is constantly committing the worst sin…I encourage you to walk with me as we battle our challenges together.