Welcome to the Potter's House Salmon Arm podcast. We are a Bible-Believing Church located
in beautiful British Columbia, Canada. We are proudly part of the Christian Fellowship
Ministries with 3,000 churches around the world. We are a church focused on world evangelism,
discipleship and church planting. Here we will share recent sermons from P.H.S.A. Church
and other sermons from throughout our fellowship. I am Pastor David Bickford and I will be
your host for this podcast. I thank you for listening today and we hope these messages
are a blessing to you and bring you closer to God.
Hello and welcome back to the Potter's House podcast, the Potter's House Salmon Arm on
the
because wrath, envy, and pride,
we've talked a little bit about the sins of lack
and the sins of excess, right?
And so with this though,
we're gonna look at wrath, envy, and pride.
So wrath is a frightfully overwhelming anger
that typically has no reason.
It's a call for extreme punishment
of those that we perceive having wronged us in some way,
but with such a fraught excess
that it is wicked in the eye of the Lord.
So during World War II,
Hitler and the Germans labeled the Jews as such an enemy
that they needed to be destroyed.
And many atrocities were committed by the hateful wrath
that consumed Hitler and the Nazis.
And with that though,
there's lots of other examples to wrath
that we can see even in our own lives
when we allow ourselves to be compelled by anger
to a point where we lash out in wrath.
And so Frederick Nietzsche, he had a quote that says,
"'A bad conscience is easier to cope with
"'than a bad reputation.'"
And so this is an interesting thing because Nietzsche,
he underpins and he underlines a lot
of what eventually became fascism,
both with Mussolini and with Hitler, right?
So like Nietzscheism or the idea of Nietzschean thought
is one that is very Machiavellian
in some senses where the ends do justify the means.
So he's saying that it's easier to cope
with the evil of a bad conscience.
It's easier to cope with your own conscience
than it is to deal with a bad reputation.
That's a very scary thought from a very scary philosopher
is the thought that you could,
as long as you're able to maintain the assemblance
of a good reputation,
well, then you can do all sorts of wickedness behind
and allow yourself to deal with your own conscience
at a later time.
It's a very worldly view and we see that today
in our world quite often.
The text we're gonna be working from today is Ezekiel 33
and we'll be diving in at verse 10,
go through 10 through 20, roughly.
So with that, I'm gonna go ahead
and jump directly into the text today.
And so it says in verse 10,
the subheading to this portion of scripture
is why will you die Israel?
So in verse 10,
and you son of man say to the house of Israel,
thus have you said surely our transgressions
and our sins are upon us.
And we wrought away because of them.
How then can we live?
Say to them as I live declares the Lord God,
I have no pleasure in death, in the death of the wicked,
but that the wicked turn from his way and live,
turn back, turn back from your evil ways.
For why will you die, O house of Israel?
And you son of man say to your people,
the righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him
when he transgresses.
And for the wickedness of the wicked,
he shall not fall by it when he turns from wickedness.
And though the righteous shall not be able to live
by his righteousness when he sins,
though I say to the righteous that he will surely live,
yet if he trusts in his righteousness and does injustice,
none of his righteous deeds shall be remembered.
But in his injustice that he has done, he shall die.
Again though I say to the wicked, you shall surely die,
yet if he turns from his sin and does what is just and right,
if the wicked restores the pledge
and gives back what he has taken by robbery
and walks in the statutes of life and not doing injustice,
he shall surely live, he shall not die.
None of the sins that he has committed
shall be remembered against him.
He has done what is just and right
and he shall surely live.
Yet your people say the way of the Lord is not just
when it is their own way that is not just.
When the righteous turns from the righteousness
and does injustice, he shall die for it
and when the wicked turns from his wickedness
and does what is just and right, he shall live by this.
Yet you say the ways of the Lord are not just.
Oh, house of Israel, I will judge each of you
according to his ways.
Just gonna go before God and pray real quick.
Dear Lord God, I pray that you'd open the eyes,
open our hearts to your word, Lord God.
Help us to dig into the meaning of these scriptures
and how they can apply to our lives and to this day.
We give you all the praise and glory, amen.
So the first point I wanna talk about
is the battle against nature again.
And we're gonna go with a starting off point with that.
We're going to be defining what wrath
and envy and pride are defined as.
I like to define things because I think it's important
in this day and age that we come to each topic
or each idea from the same starting point.
Now you can argue these points later on
and I'm more than happy to have those conversations
with you, but the reality is is that we need
a starting point to launch off from
to get that conversation started.
So wrath is typically used as a noun
and it's a strong, stern, fierce anger, right?
Deeply resentful and indignation and ire.
Vengeance or punishment as a consequence of that anger.
So when you're wrathful, a lot of times you're so wound up
that you're gonna take vengeance as your own.
And we know that's not something that we're called to do
as Christians and we'll get to that in a little bit.
But some synonyms to wrath are acrimony or asperity.
Conniption, I really like the word conniption
because have you ever heard the term,
oh, that person's having a conniption fit.
They're raging out, if you will.
Like in today's vernacular, that would be like,
you know, maybe a Karen moment.
You know, somebody just flipping out on somebody else.
They're having a conniption.
Exasperation, a flare up, fury, hate, hatefulness.
Madness, you know, people can be overwhelmed
in their wrath and be in madness.
Some anonyms or opposing words would be calm,
calmness, delight, happiness, glee, kindness,
love, peace, things like this.
Wrath is like a stage four cancer.
By the time wrath takes over,
it's often because the rot in our souls is so extreme
that we have nothing left,
but the purely animalistic response,
some sort of animalism response to whatever's happening
in our life or situation.
Lashing out like a cornered beast, we will do anything,
even ungodly violence at times.
When man takes wrath into their own hands,
it's this emotionally fraught idea.
And it's often lacking in any kind of logic.
Godly wrath, on the other hand, is pure and righteous.
And that is why we are called to leave wrath only to God.
In Romans 12, 19, do not take revenge, my dear friends.
Believe room for God's wrath, for it is written,
it is mine to avenge and I will repay, says the Lord.
This is an important thing for us as Christians
to understand and to know.
We are not supposed to take all the wrath
on God's responsibilities.
And so with wrath, he tells us clearly in the scripture
to leave this to him because he is the ultimate judge.
That's why we're called to love.
We're called to love our neighbors.
We're called to preach the gospel and love our neighbors
because that message of repentance
is what the core is in our faith.
And when you think of the book of Jonah, the prophet Jonah,
he knew what God could do with his message of grace.
And when he was sent to Nineveh, he fled the scene
because he didn't want to see the Ninevites saved.
In his own anger and hatred towards the Ninevites,
he would rather see them come to the judgment
and the wrath of God than to ever have the opportunity
to be forgiven because he knew that God was a gracious God.
And Psalm 711 says, God is a righteous judge,
a God who displays his wrath every day.
And he does every day, but it is his to display, not ours.
Hitler and the Germans hated the Jews
and many may have started from a place of envy.
And this is where we continue on moving from wrath into envy
because they're closely tied.
The Jewish people are still God's chosen to this day.
And for that reason, they are blessed people.
In Germany, before the rise of the Nazis,
they were also very successful.
As a minority ethnic group,
this is mostly due to their strong family connections.
Have you ever wondered why society is always trying
to break down the family?
There's a nugget of truth here
that when you link as a family in faith in God,
that there's going to be an element of protection.
So this connection allowed for Jewish culture
to be able to sustain itself.
And so Jewish culture that still strove
the fall of the law of Moses was able to carry on
and maintain a distinct culture.
Their piety has always made the Jewish people a target,
both in Europe and throughout the world.
But what really caused them trouble in the 1930s
was their prosperity.
Even in a time of economic depression,
it was clear that the children of Israel
were being well taken care of by the Lord.
And this allowed the spirit of envy to rise up in Hitler
and he was able to weaponize the German people
by acting on this envy and turning it into hate
and eventually wrath.
Here's a quote from Alexis de Tocqueville.
He says, Americans are so enamored of equality
that they would rather be equal in slavery
than unequal in freedom.
So even in the Americas, we can see that envy
can start to grow.
It can start to grow in people's hearts
because they'd rather be equal in poverty.
They'd be rather be equal in despair
than to be unequal in that freedom.
Because freedom requires responsibility, right?
Freedom requires you to work, you to put in some effort
and to take responsibility.
But envy, let's define that, is a feeling of discontent
or covetousness with regard to another's advantages
or perceived advantages.
Success, possessions, or to have an ill will
towards someone who you deem is better off than you.
So similar words to envy are begrudging, bitterness, hatred.
I like this word bitterness because bitterness
can be stored within your soul.
And it can start to do real physical damage to yourself.
Have you ever seen somebody who's just,
they feel like they're, or you can look at them
and you can tell that they're just holding on
to such anger and hostility or bitterness
to some wrongdoing that came against them at one point,
that they just look like they're all twisted up.
They're bitter.
Jealousy, malice, prejudice, resentment,
backbiting is a good one too.
Because oftentimes when you're envious of someone,
it's very easy for you to start backbiting
and saying, well, they've got it easy.
They didn't have to work for what they got.
You might see influencers online
or people who've been very successful in business
and you're very quick to judge.
They're like, oh, they didn't have to work for it.
Tell you the truth, most people who actually build
a company, they do it and it's very, very hard.
They take a lot of risk to get there.
It's a lot of work.
So it's not wise to backbite, to be envious.
It's not wise to be covetousness or to show covetousness.
Other words for envy or terms, the green-eyed monster,
you probably heard that one.
So anonyms or some opposing words would be friendliness,
liking, loving, comfort, confidence, contentness, goodwill.
It's very interesting how we talk about these habits.
We talk about these traits and it always seems
like the anonyms for these words are the gifts
of the spirit that we read about.
But envy is often the root to a multitude of sins
and for Paul proclaimed it in 1 Timothy 6, 10, he said,
for the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.
Some people eager for money have wandered from the faith
and pierced themselves in many griefs.
It's the actual love of money or stuff
that can be the root of all kinds of evil.
Where does this love of money start?
It can often start with envy and a feeling of discontentment
when left unchecked.
When we allow ourselves to feel sorry for our situation
or we grumble against God,
often we turn our gaze to others.
The children of Israel did this
when they were in the wilderness,
when they were in the desert after leaving Egypt.
God had done miraculous things,
but they were very quick to turn back onto God
and to start grumbling under their breath.
We always hear this term, the grass is always greener
on the other side of the fence.
In fact, everything they have is better.
If we neglect to judge these feelings,
they can grow into that green-eyed monster.
And we talked about it last time,
as far as taking your thoughts into control,
being responsible for your own thought life.
Because if we're not, these thoughts,
they can live to devour those
whom they set their gaze upon.
If you allow these thoughts to just dwell within your mind,
you become that monster.
And as we look at the last portion,
we look at pride.
At this point, it was easy to take the German
people and pour out nationalistic pride.
And by pouring out that nationalistic pride
onto the German people,
this fever swept over the land
and it twisted this noble country
into to commit horrible atrocities.
We see this also outside of any kind of ethnic
or religious background,
but we see the same thing happen within
the rise of communist China.
Where you get entire groups being willing
to turn on their family, on their parents,
out of envy, out of pride,
noble pride or nationalistic pride.
Millions of Jews and those allied with them
were executed during World War II.
Even more so during the purges of Russia and China
during the communist revolutions.
The reality of these sins, immensely powerful
and unlike the sins that we have looked at already,
these sins tend to be infectious in a way
that the others are not.
Many countries fall to envy, then pride and then wrath.
We could see an example of this in today's world.
Many leaders strive to separate us by leveraging
our envy, our greed and our lusts.
Then they push pride into dishonorable hands.
Then they push pride into dishonorable things,
puffing up many that should not be so excited
to highlight their own sinful desires.
Once this is done, then the purpose of the ungodly leaders
is to turn the groups against each other,
to foment this vitriolic overwhelming hate or wrath.
Now it's not about what this group has
that that group doesn't have.
It's about how wicked it is for us to be over here
with nothing and what they have and we need to take it.
It becomes even more dangerous.
It eventually becomes hate and wrath.
Pride is also a noun and it stands for high
or inordinate opinion of one's own dignity
or your importance or your merit.
It's a superiority whether as cherished in mind
or displayed in bearing.
It's the pleasure of satisfaction taking something being done
or belonging to oneself or believed to reflect credit
upon itself, civic pride.
So civic pride can be a good thing.
But when that civic pride is tied to envy and wrath,
it can become a very wicked thing very quickly.
For example, the celebration of a specific minority group
or the affirmation of equal rights for members
of that community.
The idea that you're going to give one group more power
over another group because of pride
quickly becomes a very dangerous thing.
So some similar words for pride
and the respect of how we're dealing with it today
would be ego or self-love, self-worth.
Those things can be fine,
but self-glorification can become very dangerous.
Whereas the opposing words,
some of them can be considered as modesty or timidity.
And this is not necessarily a negative thing in itself
because we are supposed to be another one,
like humility, modesty and timidity.
These are things that we're called to be
when we're called to be meek in our Christianity
in the sense that we know we're fallen
and that it's only through Christ that we're saved.
So pride is one of the largest of the sins
that we know about.
If I had to rank pride as a sin,
it would be the highest sin,
but only because out of pride,
we can commit blasphemy and blasphemy
against the Holy Spirit.
That being said, the consequence to unchecked pride
can be extreme.
Satan himself was cast out of heaven
for the sin of pride.
His pride was so strong that he led a third of the angels
in war against God himself.
And you can see that in Isaiah 14, 12 through 15,
or Ezekiel 28, 15 through 17.
So let's look at biblical wisdom then.
When we go back to our text in 33, 10 through 11,
and we can look at what can be done
with these sins or with these habits.
In verse 10, and you, son of man,
say to the house of Israel, thus have you said,
surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us,
and we will rot away because of them.
How then can we live?
Say to them, as I live, declares the Lord God,
I have no pleasure in death of the wicked,
but that the wicked turn from his ways and live.
Turn back, turn back from your evil ways,
for why will you die, O house of Israel?
Patience cures wrath by one of the first understand,
like by first understanding the needs and desires of others
before acting in the way of God.
When God is speaking,
in Romans 922, what if God,
although choosing to show his wrath
and make his power known, bore with great patience
the object of his wrath, prepared for destruction?
Psalm 37, 8, refrain from anger and turn from wrath,
do not fret, it leads only to evil.
Proverbs 15, 1, a gentle answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger.
Kindness cures envy as well,
by placing the desire to help others
of the need to supersede them.
And we could see that in 1 Corinthians 13, 14,
love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy,
it does not boast, it is not proud.
Job 5, 2, resentment kills a fool
and envy slays the simple.
James 3, 16 through 18 says,
for where you have envy and selfish ambition,
there you find disorder and every evil practice.
But the wisdom that comes from the heaven
is first of all pure, then peace loving,
considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit,
impartial and sincere.
Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.
Humility cures pride by removing one's ego and boastfulness,
therefore allowing an attitude of service.
And remember Christ came as a servant
and he died for our sins and through his resurrection,
we have the opportunity for salvation through grace.
But in Proverbs 16, 18 it says,
pride goes before destruction,
a haughty spirit before a fall.
Proverbs 11, 12, when pride comes, then comes disgrace,
but with humility comes wisdom.
And finally, if Philippians 2, 3,
do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit,
rather in humility value others above yourself.
This is a pretty hard thought,
to value others before yourself.
Now you might think, oh, it's simple, I can do that.
What it's really talking about is a servant spirit.
If someone takes your chair,
because you got up, let them have your chair.
And then maybe say, hey, can I get you anything?
I mean, that's pretty simple, it's pretty silly,
but at the same time,
a lot of people will get extremely upset
if they feel like they've been slighted
even in the smallest way.
I've known people who, if you sat in their pew at church,
they'd be like, well, that's my pew.
Will they get there earlier?
But in the meantime, be nice to this person
and maybe introduce yourself and have a good conversation.
Show some humility.
So as we close, let's look a little bit more
at some biblical wisdom.
Turning to God's Word in Colossians 3, 12,
therefore as a king,
therefore as God's chosen people,
holy and dearly loved,
clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, humility,
gentleness, and patience.
As we turn back to our initial text in Ezekiel 33,
we see in verse 17 through 20,
yet your people say the way of the Lord is not just,
when it is their own way that is not just.
When the righteous turns from his righteousness
and does injustice, he shall die for it.
And when the wicked turns from his wickedness
and does what is just and right, he shall live by this.
Yet you say the way of the Lord is not just,
O house of Israel,
I will judge each of you according to his ways.
We are called to practice humility, kindness, and patience.
Now I know this is not easy,
but when you make your focus on others,
then you will find that in the Lord,
you will have the strength
to serve others with all of these traits.
When you are tired or frustrated, fall upon the Lord
and remember that you do not do these things for anyone,
but the Lord.
The outcome, the response from other people is not the point.
But rather your faithful service to the Lord is the point.
I don't make the, to be honest,
like even preaching, even doing videos like this,
I don't do this for any reason except for the Lord.
I do it under the Lord.
Now I hope it helps people.
I do.
I hope it resonates with people
and I hope you get something out of this.
But the reality is that
I'm exercising something for the Lord.
I know that over time, he'll help me be better.
He'll help me to do, to be able to reach people for his purpose.
But if I focused only on the responses I get back,
it's very easy to become, you know, bogged down.
It's very easy to say, well, it's not,
I'm not getting enough traction or another, it's not,
it's not working quite right.
Or if, for example, but you know,
other kind of content creators, stuff of that nature,
they'll get like negative reviews and they'll just be like,
oh, I can't do this anymore.
But if as a Christian, we do it unto the Lord,
and that is the point.
The outcome, the response
is not the point, like I said,
it's, but rather it's, it's a call to service.
For Christ died for us.
He hung upon the cross for us.
He died and he rose again so that we can be saved.
And it is that message of the cross that compels,
you know, Christians to act a certain way.
It compels me to preach.
It compels me to, you know, hopefully get a message,
a gospel, simple gospel message out there.
I'm not the most eloquent person in the world,
and I'm not the most eloquent person in the world,
and I don't even try to be.
But the reality is, is that I want his message to get out there
and I hope that it impacts the people.
Even because even while I was still a sinner,
Jesus went and died for me.
And to the thought of what that means,
you have to really understand, like, let's say you're on trial
for murder, you killed somebody.
And then someone comes in off the street and says,
I'll take the punishment for that person.
You don't know who that person is.
As far as you know, there's no connection to that person and you.
That's what he did for us.
We're all dead in sin, but it was Christ
who came to set us free.
So if I could have, you know, if you're listening to this as a podcast,
like while you're driving, of course, don't do this.
But if you're not listening to this,
if you're not, if you're at home, if you're just doing something around the house,
I like to have every head bowed or every eye closed wherever you're at.
For just a quick second.
Proverbs 22, four says, humility is the fear of the Lord
and its wages are riches and honor in life.
At the end of every message, I like to give an invitation.
Maybe, just maybe,
this message impacted you and you feel the presence of God
and you feel the weight of sin in your life.
You don't have to live in that sin.
You don't have to live in a place where you feel condemned by your actions,
the actions of your past.
You could throw that upon the Lord.
You can give him your life and he will give you through grace, salvation.
And it's very simple. The way to do that is just to repent of your sin,
which means turn away, to turn away from your sin,
accept him as your Lord and Savior
and allow him to be in your heart.
So if you were to put it into a simple prayer, it'd be like something like this.
And you can repeat this after me.
Dear Lord God, I know that I'm a sinner.
I know that I'm not perfect.
I turned from my sin.
I repent and I accept you, Lord Jesus.
To be my Savior, I accept you into my heart.
Help me, help change my heart.
Thank you for the gift of salvation through grace.
In Jesus name, we pray.
Amen.
That simple, simple prayer takes you from having to carry the burden of the
wages of sin, which is death, and being entered in the Lamb's book of life.
That's it.
Now, what I recommend asking you to do is to ask God,
and then find afterwards is fine.
You know, get a Bible, start reading your Bible.
You start praying, which just means have conversation with God.
Just pray.
You can learn, you'll learn as you go and then get into a church, a Bible
believing church.
And when I say Bible believing, I mean the whole Bible.
From beginning to end, find a Bible believing church.
If you're in the Salmon Arm area, British Columbia, then come and visit us.
If not, reach out and we have fellowship churches all over the place.
We have over 3000 worldwide.
But I thank you again for taking the time to listen to me.
I hope this message resonated with you.
And I look forward to, you know, doing another one of these messages for you.
And if this is impacting you, reach out to me.
I'd love to hear that it's that you're getting something out of it.
And I do this under the Lord.
Thank you for the time.
Amen.