Pride is an insidious, deadly poison. It has the capability of alienating us from God, and of provoking His resistance upon everything we do. In this message we will examine carefully nine reasons why pride is a major sin. We will also see how humility enables us to draw near to the Lord to receive from Him. Our text is James 4:6–10. But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” The King James Version says, God resisteth the proud, as though there is something from God Himself constantly putting pressure against all of the plans of the proud—all of their achievements, all of their work.
I do not know why it is that God traces the basis of most sin back to pride, but it seems to be that way. Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you doubleminded. Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.
Pride was deeply involved in the first sin. Satan came to Eve and asked, “Has God said that you are not to eat from any tree of the garden?” Eve answered, “Yes, God said that.” Satan then told her, “God knows that in the day you eat thereof, you’ll be as God, knowing good and evil.” It was not so much disobedience that hooked them; it was the pride of being exalted and being like God. That pride snared Eve; so she ate and gave to Adam (Genesis 3:1–6).
That was very similar to the temptation that Satan tried to introduce to the Lord Jesus Christ when He was in the wilderness. When he said to the Lord, “Cast Yourself down from the temple,” he was actually implying, “If You want people to accept You, cast Yourself down from here and everyone will see that You really are God!” There was again an element of pride in Satan’s appeal: “I will give You all the kingdoms of this world, if You bow down to me.” The pride of position—to be exalted, to be accepted by men—all of that was there (Luke 4:6–9).
As we get into this idea of pride and begin to understand it, we see that everything that had happened to the disciples, even their defeats, had prepared them for the fullness that they were to receive at Pentecost. Their defeats had only emphasized to them that they were nothing, and that realization led them to humble themselves before the Lord. In that humility, the fullness of Pentecost came to them (Acts 2:14).
As we look to the Lord for a fresh anointing, we are reaching into this same thing. As never before the people of God are reaching into such an actual appropriation of the presence of the Lord. This is the Word that we need. It is so important to understand pride, and to understand what it is to be humble.
Pride, as the Scriptures indicate, is a major sin. Observe from the Word why it is a major sin.
(1.) Pride keeps us from an admission of our sin and repenting. Many of you could have gained a victory over some sin in your life if you had just been humble enough to bring it out and expose it—but your pride kept you from confessing and repenting of the thing that was in your heart. As I have observed and talked with many across the country, I sense those whom God is going to bless and bring through something. Their pride does not cause them to close up in a moment of defeat or failure; they still humble themselves before the Lord. They do not humble themselves only for a certain sense of release from having repented. Their humility is a real thing. The humility leads them to confess their sin and lay it out before the Lord, saying, “I’m not going to hide this any longer.”
The greatest blow to pride that you can make is for you to come to a full admission of your sin, and repent of it. Can you now see why pride is the absolute enemy of sonship? Pride is the absolute enemy of sonship, because it will keep you from confessing your faults, from confessing the failure of the old nature and letting God deal with it in order to bring forth His own new nature within you.
(2.) Pride keeps us not only from the admission of our sin and repenting, but it keeps us from humbling ourselves before God. Do these two reasons seem to be the same? Let me explain. Some people would never admit to anyone else that they have made a mistake; but they go into such self-condemnation that they constantly are crawling before God, thinking that is the only thing God will accept. True repentance is not that kind of an experience. Self-condemnation is next door to pride insofar as its rank as a deep sin. Self-condemnation can be as disastrous as pride itself; because in self-condemnation, you retain the pride of choice and decision—you sit on the throne, and you decide, “I’m a terrible person. Oh, God, I’m a terrible person!” That is not what God is trying to accomplish in you. Humility helps you to humble yourself before the Lord, not merely to condemn yourself without true repentance.
(3.) The third reason why pride is a major sin is that it keeps us from being reconciled to a brother. This, too, is one of the deadly aspects of pride. It is the venom that the serpent injected into Eve back in the beginning, and that is the poison that he has bitten us with ever since. It keeps us from being reconciled to a brother. That is what keeps a husband and a wife from being reconciled to each other. Both of them are too proud to say, “I was wrong.” It becomes a contest to see who is going to come out on top. There is a certain smug look on the one who finally wins as the other one says, “Dear, I’m sorry. I apologize!”
“That’s all right. I forgive you,” the winner replies condescendingly. That contest of pride keeps us from being reconciled to a brother or to any other person.
(4.) Pride also motivates us to assume a position or a ministry. Pride can be the most strange counterfeit of faith that you have ever seen. Faith will lead a man like Stephen—full of faith, humble before God—to stand up and preach a Word to men when they are about to stone him to death. Now that was not pride; that was deep humility and dedication to the Lord, and faith in God. He had such a faith in the Lord! It did not matter to him whether he lived or not; he had to speak the Word of the Lord! (Acts 7.) That was faith.
But be aware that pride can look like faith, too. A brother can get up and prophesy and sing psalms and look very bold—but it may really be pride that is motivating him to assume a position or a ministry. How are we going to know the difference? Only your heavenly “Doctor” knows for sure whether you are moving in the illness of pride, or in a state of spiritual health. You may say, “I know that I’m not proud! I tell you, I’m a humble person! Everybody sees how humble I am.” There is a pride that assumes a place and a position and simulates humility.
Do not worry about people who are never pushing themselves into a place of prominence yet are believing God and giving Him their whole being—their reticence will be no handicap to them. Everything that they are, they give to doing His will. If their faith and the dedication is that great, it will overcome all the reticence in them.
Let us describe those we should be concerned about. I remember one man who was in one of our churches for many years, and finally left. Would you like to know what he said? “I am leaving, because you won’t give me the place I should have in this church. You won’t recognize my ministry!” What he was asking was not a valid request. After prophecies and commissioning are spoken over any man, it is up to him to in faith move into the place that God has for him. But this man was assuming something that he did not have. His pride led him into the strangest self-deception that a person can have—that he could actually feel that he was walking with God, while he really did not have that walk at all; it was pride that was motivating him to assume a position that he did not have. We have been through many years of the Lord leveling us so that there is not much drive left in us to be anything but simply a channel for the Lord to move through.
Would you like to know something more about pride?
This is a simple message that can do you a great deal of good. To constantly face your need of humility in your own approach to God is good. It is good to come before the Lord and humble yourself. This is probably the one thing that helped David more than anything else. David occasionally did that which did not seem like the wisest thing to do—sometimes not the most moral thing to do—but there was one thing about him: he certainly was a good repenter. He would come and humble himself before God, and God would forgive him (II Samuel 11–12:24; I Chronicles 21:1–2, 17, 26–28; Psalm 51).
It is better to make a few mistakes and be humble than never make a mistake and be proud. The pride would be more detrimental to us in the long run than our having made a few mistakes. This should be a Kingdom Proverb: “I would rather make a few mistakes, and be humble and repent of them, than never to make a mistake and be so proud of it that God could not use me.”
(5.) The key to the fifth point is hinted at in this wonderful passage about faith and pride in James 4:7: “If we submit to God, and we resist the devil, he will flee from us.” Pride seems to draw satanic oppression. When an individual is given to a basic deep pride—an arrogance—demonic oppression gradually but consistently comes into that life. Why is it that Satan seems to be attracted or repelled according to your pride or your humility? Verses 7–10 say that if you draw nigh to God, you submit to God, and you resist the devil, he will flee from you. Humble yourself in the presence of God, and He will exalt you. It is very simple.
Why does God bless a humble man so much, and why does He so strongly resist the proud man? You may object, “I’m not proud; I don’t have much money.” It isn’t how much money you have—some of the poorest people are the proudest. Their life may be unspeakable, yet some are very proud. Sometimes great pride is found in people who have no reason to have any pride at all. God deals with them; little by little, He humbles them. You may wonder, “They’re already poor; why does God have to humble them?” Because pride grows in any climate. Pride grows in any level. Pride grows in any class. Job was a rich man, but he was a humble man (Job 1:3). Abraham was a humble man. David was a humble man. Their status financially had nothing to do with being proud or humble (Genesis 13:2; I Chronicles 22:14).
You must realize that pride is a strange tangible that can get into your spirit, and it can be deadly. God resists that, and Satan is attracted to it. Demon possession can come to a person through the open door of pride. On the other hand, when a man humbles himself it frustrates Satan to no end; the humility attracts God to that man, so Satan must encounter God—and he is not disposed to do that! Satan does not want to encounter God. For Satan to oppose a man who has humbled himself—who has confessed that God is everything to him, that Jesus Christ is his Lord in all—is for Satan to oppose Jesus Christ; and the day that Satan has that confrontation with Jesus Christ is the day that he will go into the pit (Revelation 19:11–20:10). If Satan does not flee from the humble man, he will prematurely, ahead of schedule, encounter the Lord of lords and the King of kings who will bring his downfall. The demons knew this in Jesus’ day. They cried out, “Are You come to torment us before the time?” because they knew that the time of their final judgment would come (Matthew 8:28–29).
Do you realize that your humility and faith is the foxhole that will shield you while the fiery darts of the wicked one are flying overhead? Even when you do not seem to have much faith—when you cannot say to yourself, “With the shield of faith I’ll stand up there and fight!”, when you do not even have that shield of faith, when you have a lot of questions and a lot of confusion—get out your spade and dig a little hole of humility. Crawl into it, and wait there a little while until all the ammunition of the enemy has been wasted. Then rise up and go on with God.
Humility is a beautiful thing before God. For years He has been working that humility in us. Have you felt that this has really been something He has been trying to work in you? I have sensed God working that in me too. I have no fear of people, because the word I speak is the flow that the Lord gives. People often say, “You do not seem to be proud of anything; you do not seem to be exalted.” I believe and hope this is true. Things are also said against me, yet that does not bother me. And when something good is said about me, I know that I have only been a channel for the Word to come through. To the Lord be all the glory!
It is a wonderful thing to see that the Lord is producing a humble, faithful people to serve Him. This is being done in all of you who have opened your hearts to His Word. I have never seen anything like it. What would have happened to this walk so far if it had been given over to pride instead of humility?
(6.) Pride inspires selfishness and greed. We could have had churches filled with pastors and people who were all following the course of the world—selfishness. Instead, there is a great deal of humility, and a great deal of deep dedication which accompanies it, in this walk with the Lord.
(7.) Pride focuses our attention on our outward image instead of on the Lord. The proud person is always wondering what impression he is making, how he is projecting himself, what kind of an image he has. Humility brings you to the place where you do not care. Think about that a while, because some of the communities where our churches are located have quite a bit of pride. In their own (perhaps inconspicuous) way, they are proud, very self-righteous little towns. Self-righteousness is what you might call the coat that the proud put on. That was true of the Pharisees.
(8.) Pride provokes God’s resistance. If I wanted God to bless me, the last thing I would do is be proud. Even if I were doing legitimate things, I know that God would resist my doing them. You can say, “I have prophecies over me; I have a commission from the Lord. I’m going to do my thing and it will be wonderful.” But if pride is behind it, God will resist even His own directive and His own commission over you-because God will not allow you to fulfill His will without that will being done in your heart also. He is not after only the mechanics of it. He is not just looking for you to be a success in something—He is taking it a step further. What is He doing? He is saying, “You are not only going to do My will, but when you do it, I will be exalted in it.”
In the third chapter of Acts, Peter and John went up to the temple and healed a lame man, and that man leaped to his feet and went into the temple with them. The Scripture says he was clinging to Peter and John! Then, of course, the rulers of the Jews seized the apostles and put them in jail. But not until thousands of people had been converted to the Lord (Acts 4:14). Thousands of people! The devil is always just a little bit too late with his persecution. If I were the devil, I would have started our present persecution back in 1951, when hands were first laid on me, and really done a good job of it. I would have put out a contract and had me shot! Now there are thousands of Living Word tapes that will never stop. It is the Word that will prevail.
But the devil takes a look at the humble man and says, “That guy is nothing, so why bother with him?” It is the guy who is nothing that you had better worry about, if you are a devil. It is the fellow that is nothing, because the Lord takes the man who is nothing to confound the world, and that which is foolish to confound the wise (I Corinthians 1:26–29). His ways are amazing! Why would God want to take a bunch of insignificant people to exalt His name? That no flesh should glory in his presence. I Corinthians 1:29. God is a stickler on this thing of humility and pride!
Pride can cause you to boast, “I have fine training and background, eminent qualifications, good influence, and I have the best friends. Therefore I am qualified to be an apostle, to go forth and preach.” You know that God is not going to bless that! The disciples did not have enough influence to keep themselves out of jail! (Acts 4:3; 5:17–19; 12:4–5; 16:23–24.) But they had enough power to turn the world upside down (Acts 17:6). The humility was there. They were “nothings”—nothings!—but the Lord had determined that He would bless them.
I once visited a precious, dearly beloved brother when I was in South America. I remember sitting down with him to a little bread and some cheese. He ate very humbly. As we sat there, he looked up and said in his booming voice, “O Father, we who are humble by choice rejoice in You!” This man is world-famous, a genius in many fields—but what a humble man he is. It is amazing the knowledge that he has, but this man always walks so humble. You would never know that he is anything. And he made that one statement, “We who are by choice humble.”
Humility can be chosen, or it can be rejected. Pride is the insidious root of defeat that will grow in any soil, in any climate, in any occasion. But humility is a quality of spirit that God will give you if you say, “Lord, I choose to be humble. I am not as humble as I ought to be, but I choose to be a humble person. I will not be proud, nor am I making this an occasion of self-abasement; I’m simply humbling myself before You.” What a blessing the Lord will bring.
Humility takes you down without defeating you. Humility is probably one of the greatest relaxers there is. Pride makes you always strain to be something that God does not want you to be—something that God is resisting in the first place, something that will only lead you into demonic oppression. Humility helps you to just relax before the Lord. It lets the Lord be the great One. This is what He has had in mind all the time.
(9.) Our final point: Pride vaunts itself; therefore pride falsifies love. I Corinthians 13:4b says, Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. Pride is one thing that crosses out divine love. And for no other reason than that, I choose to be humble. I do not want anything to stop that flow of divine love that is reaching out in the name of the Lord.
Lord, bless this Word to our hearts. Out of it could come this one simple thing that we live with day by day: “Lord, we choose to be Your humble servants. We humble ourselves in Thy presence, knowing that Satan will flee from us, and You will be the One who exalts us in due time. We choose to be Thy humble servants.”