Hello and welcome to Trinity Sermons. This week we are starting a brand new teaching
series at Trinity and that series is called The S Word. We're talking about sin, that
thing that, you know, we talk about a lot in churches but we don't actually really like
talking about and maybe we don't even really know what that means. So we're going to spend
the next few weeks diving into this topic together starting this week by talking about
the sin of pride. And even though pride can be a good thing, it actually can also be something
that's really insidious, something that is really harmful for our relationship with God
and others. So listen in as Rob unpacks pride for us.
Our reading today is from the Gospel of Luke chapter 18 verses 9 to 14. To some who were
confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable,
two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The
Pharisee stood by himself and prayed, God, I thank you that I am not like other people,
robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even this tax collector. I fast twice a week and I give
a tenth of all I get. But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look
up to heaven but beat his breast and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. I tell you
that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who
exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted. The
word of the Lord.
We used to live on a hobby farm and one day I noticed we had a problem. I went out to
the chicken coop and I saw these little holes in the floor and piles of dirt. And then I
noticed that some of the bags of feed that we fed that the chickens, I had holes in that
and it was spilling out onto the floor. And then eventually, of course, I started to see
them, rats. We had rats and I thought, oh, one rat, two rats, who cares? But we had a
lot of rats. I had never, never struggled with rats before but here we were. We had
rats. And so what I did is I went to the farm store and I was like, guys, we got rats. And
they checked my ID, they checked my farm business registration number and then they grabbed
this big tub of rat poison and they put it on the counter in front of me. This rat poison,
there was a lot of pieces in there, like 60 pieces of these little Lego blocks. They look
like blue Lego blocks of rat poison. And they said, this will do the trick. And I said,
that's a lot of poison. They said, this will do the trick. So anyways, I took it back home
and I took two or three of these pieces of rat poison. I put it around one of the big
holes I noticed. I happened to step out of the chicken coop just for a few minutes and
by the time I came back, they were already gone. And I was like, oh, geez. So I put three
or four more there. I went and ran another errand, came back and they were gone. And
so I took like half a bucket of this stuff and I started sprinkling it in different holes
here, there and around the chicken coop again. By the next morning, all the pieces of rat
poison had disappeared. I don't know what was going on, but these, these rats were eating
the rat poison, you know, faster than I could lay it out. They, I mean, the stuff was, I
think it's warfarin, like it's a poison, but to them it was tasty. It looked beautiful.
It smelled good. And, and I had to go back to the store and I had to get more of this
stuff. The poison actually didn't kill the rats right away. What we would start to notice
is the, you know, maybe a week later we'd be walking through the chicken coop and there
goes a little scraggly rat, somewhat confused, looking disheveled, staggering across the
floor. You see what was happening was this poison was, it didn't kill them right away.
It was eating away at them from the inside. Gross, you say. Rob, why are you talking to
us about something so disgusting? That sounds horrible. I agree. It was horrible, but actually
what we're going to be talking about in the season of Lent, a lot of people would also
say gross and this is unnecessary and it's uncomfortable. We don't want to talk about
this word, the S word sin. And that's what we're going to do for the next several weeks
throughout the season of Lent. Specifically, we're going to be looking at the seven deadly
sins. And I tried to kind of get us started on Ash Wednesday. If you missed that sermon,
I encourage you to go back and take a look at that because that kind of laid the foundation
for why we're doing this. But the point is this sin is a lot like rat poison, right?
It looks desirable. It seems to be harmless, tastes sweet, smells good and doesn't appear
to have any immediate consequences. But over time it eats away at us from the inside. It
diminishes our souls. It warps our hearts and it withers us away into the human beings
that we were never intended to be in the very beginning. It destroys us if it's left unchecked,
which is why today we are going to start with the very first sin of the seven and that is
the sin of pride. Because if there was ever a sin that appeared harmless and even looked
attractive and seemed to have absolutely no consequences associated with it, it has to
be pride. I mean, pride, we don't see pride as a problem. We see pride as good. It's a
good thing, right? It's a positive character trait. It gives us a sense of achievement.
It gives us a sense of worth. It's something we try to instill in our children, correct?
We want them to be winners. We want to be winners. We want them to be proud in who they
are. And so we don't actually use the word pride in a negative way these days. We say,
you know, oh, my attitude, my attitude. Oh, that's not arrogance. That's self-respect.
Oh, you mean my behavior. Oh, that's not egotism. That's just self-confidence. Oh, the way that
I look. Oh, no, that's not vanity. That's just, I have a positive self-image. Oh, that
thing I said, that horrible thing I said to somebody. Oh, that's not conceit. That's just
my self-esteem. I don't have a problem. I have pride, pride. And yet underneath this
thing we call pride, underneath this self-confidence and this self-worth lies something far, far
darker. It's what C.S. Lewis actually calls the great sin. Pride, he says, is the great
sin. And he writes this. He says, there is a vice of which no man in the world is free,
which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else, and which hardly
any person ever imagines that they are guilty of themselves. And the more we have it in
ourselves, the more we dislike it in others. The vice I'm talking about is pride. He goes
on to say, this is the center. It is the essential vice, the utmost evil, unchastity, anger,
greed, drunkenness, and all that are mere flea bites in comparison. It was through pride
that the devil became the devil. Pride, it leads to every other vice. It is the complete
anti-God state of mind. So that's what pride is. It's the great sin. But secondly, in there,
we also see that it's the devil's sin, right? This is how the devil became the devil. According
to the Bible, the devil was once an angel, but that wasn't good enough for him. No, what
he wanted was God's glory for himself. He wanted to ascend above the tops of the clouds
and make himself like the most high. And so the reason that the devil fell from heaven
wasn't because of anger or greed or gluttony or lust. No, it was pride. And every time
we seek glory for ourselves, then we are just walking in the same path of the devil. It's
the devil's sin. It's the great sin. But thirdly, it's also the original sin. This is the sin
of Adam and Eve. This is the sin in the Garden of Eden, right? When the serpent tempted Eve,
he didn't just say, here, have some fruit. He said, you can become like God, right? Pride
whispers, you know what? You don't need God. You're pretty good. You can be God. In fact,
you should be in control, right? You can handle things on your own. That's why pride at its
core is actually a rebellion against God. And whenever we choose to follow our way over
God's way, then all we're doing is we're walking the way of Adam and Eve. We are repeating
Genesis three over and over again. So next, though, fourthly, pride is also the root sin.
You know, Gregory the Great said it's the root sin, meaning that this is the sin from
which really all other sins sprout. And if you think about it, it's true. After all,
why do we lie? It's because we're proud of our image and we don't want people to think
bad of us. It's pride. Why do we steal? Because pride says, huh, I deserve more, right? Why
do we get angry? It's our pride that refuses to be wronged by another person. It's we're
just the pride is like this rat that keeps reproducing and reproducing and reproducing
all these other sins, all these other rats, they all come from one source. They all, it
breeds more and more types of sin. Pride is the root. So price, the great sin. It's the
devil's sin. It's the original sin. It's the root sin. But finally, it is also the
compare sin, right? Pride is all about competition. It's all about comparison. You know, pride
won't let you have pleasure of having something only if you have more of it than someone else.
You hear people say that they're proud that they're rich or they're proud that they're
clever or they're, they're proud that they're attractive. Uh, but that's not true. They're
actually proud that they're richer. They're proud that they're clever. They're proud that
they're attractive. Er, then someone else, right? If we actually saw each other truly
as equal, that there would be no pride because pride is completely based on this idea that
some are better than others and we can compare and comparison is actually what makes us proud.
You see that don't you? In our reading today, you see that God, I thank you. I'm not like
these other people, robbers, adulterers, evil doers, even this, you know, this tax collector,
this guy, he's pretending to lift up his voice in prayer, but all he's really doing is lifting
himself up in comparison to the people around him. That's the disguise of pride. It looks
good. It smells good. It sounds good, but it is poison. It is poison. Now, some of you
are like, oh my gosh, that sounds horrible, right? I hope I'm not a proud person. Well,
well, there are some signs you can look for a little bit of evidence here and there. Just
like when I walked into the chicken coop, I saw, oh, there's a hole over there. There's
some feed, a hole in my feed bag over there. There are signs, there's evidence that pride
is burrowing into your heart as well. And don't worry if you can't see it, other people can't.
Okay. First, the first sign, the first piece of evidence is self promotion. From childhood,
we crave attention, right? Kids say to their parents, hey, look at me, look at me, look
at me, look at me. And that desire does not fade over time. We still want people to look
at us. We still want to be the center of attention. And so pride pushes us to name drop. It pushes
us to show off. It pushes us to flaunt our success. Look at me, look at me, look at me,
look at me, right? Pride encourages us to curate that perfect image on social media,
right? Pride is that athlete who is the ball hog. Pride is that graduate who keeps going
on and on about all that she's learned at university. Pride is that influencer who is
just obsessed with likes, refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh. And so let's be honest here,
right? Those of us who even get up onto this stage, like myself, pastors, preachers, worship
leaders, life group leaders, whoever you are, when you're in places like this, it is so
easy to make this about you and not about God. It's all self-promotion. It's what we've
were born thinking about. And we still think about it all the time. The Bible calls this
boasting sometimes, right? Let not a wise man boast in his wisdom or boast in his might
or boast in his riches. Lots of times that self-promotion comes across as boasting, but
not always. Other times it can just be this quiet hunger that we have within ourselves
to just want to be noticed by others. So that is the first sign that you might have rats.
You might have pride, self-promotion, but there's another type. You see, cause some
of you are saying, Oh, well then I can't be proud cause I'm not good looking and I'm not
talented and I'm not rich. In fact, my life is pretty bad. So I guess that means I've
got nothing to brag about. I've got nothing to promote. So therefore I can't have pride.
Not so fast, right? Pride wears many masks and one of those masks is self pity. Whenever
we find ourselves saying, Oh, poor me, poor me, poor me. It's still all about me. You
still want you to focus on me. Self-promotion says, I deserve attention cause I've accomplished
so much. Self-pity says, I deserve attention cause I've suffered so much. Self-promotion
says, look at how great I am. Self-pity says, look at what I've sacrificed. Look at what
I'm going through. Look at how badly I'm being treated. Both, both are self-focused. Both
are looking at the self, not God. Both say, look at me. So self-pity though, actually
sometimes feels like humility. Oh, you know, when we beat ourselves up in front of others,
we feel like we're being humble, but actually all we're doing is turning pride in words.
And so we, we, we have this thing where if you feel self-conscious or if you feel, you
know, that you're overlooked or you feel insecure, you might not realize it, but that could actually
be pride. It could actually be you saying, poor me, really poor me. Now some people who,
some people really do need our attention. Some people really are going through crisis.
Some people really do need to say, poor me, I need help. That's true. But there are others
who say it out of a wounded ego. They're just craving attention. And so that's why self-pity
is just another form of pride. So you've got self-promotion, you've got self-pity, but
of course the third and most insidious type of pride, the proof of pride is when you start
to see self-righteousness appear. Jesus told this parable to people who were confident
of their own righteousness and look down on everyone else. So notice two things. They're
confident in their own righteousness, which means that if that's who you are, that you
don't need God's grace. You don't need God's forgiveness. God actually, I'm doing all right
over here. As you can see, I know how to live a good life. So thanks for your grace, but
I don't need it. Thanks for your mercy. But you know, I actually, I'm doing pretty good.
That's self-righteousness. But secondly, self-righteousness also looks down on everyone else. Well, God,
as you can see, my life is pretty under control, but that person over there can certainly use
your help. They could certainly use some grace or mercy in their lives, but I'm good. I'm
good. So proud people always believe that somehow they have the moral high ground, that
they live a better life than the people who are around them. So, so self-righteous people,
they say two things to God. They say on the one hand, God, God, I'm good. I'm good. And
they say, God, God, I'm better. I'm better than them. Now within this category, there's
a special case we got to talk about, and that is religious pride. You know, that video skit
that we use to introduce the sermon, I can't wait to see the next ones, but they're based
on the book Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. How many of you have heard or read of the
Screwtape Letters? I would encourage you, this Lent, get a copy of C.S. Lewis' Screwtape
Letters. It is this amazing little book that is basically supposed to be this correspondence
between two devils as they try to decide the best way to corrupt one of their subjects,
this poor man. How are we going to lead him astray? It's very, very humorous, but also
very true. And one of the things that's surprising in the book is that they say that one of the
best ways, one of the best ways to actually get the subject, to get the man to tend toward
pride is actually to talk about his religion, right? To make him proud of his own faith,
to make him proud of his own church attendance, to make him proud of his own prayer life,
right? That's religious pride. That's spiritual pride. You know, Christians, Christians can
feel puffed up, not because they might have more money or they might have better looks
or more talents than other people, but because they know more about the Bible or they know
more about prayer or they understand more about theology or they have a better sense
of this doctrine or that doctrine. And the funny thing is those things should actually
be drawing us closer to God. The more you read the Bible, the closer you should get
to God. The more you pray, the closer you should get to God. But they can actually push
us away from God when those very same things become a source of pride for us. So do you
see how sneaky pride is, right? Self-promotion, self-pity, self-righteousness. These things
are really easy to see in other people, but they are really, really hard to see in ourselves.
And if you do not think that pride is a problem for you, then pride is a problem for you.
And if you're starting to feel a little proud right now that, yeah, I'm willing to admit
that I'm pride, pride, prideful, proud, then you know what? There it is again. Now you're
just getting proud of your own humility. You can't get away from it. Pride is something
that's going to chase you your whole life. So you might say, oh gosh, well then so, so
what? Oh, fine. Sue me. I'm guilty of pride, right? What difference does it really, really
make? Well, just like that rat poison, it may not seem that dangerous at first, but
Jesus makes pretty clear that there are devastating consequences to pride over time. When we let
pride take root in our hearts, three things inevitably happen. The first is this. It isolates
us from others. Even in the parable Jesus told, right, the Pharisee stood, say that
with me, by himself, stood by himself and prayed. He separates himself from others,
physically, but also spiritually separate from others. And why is that? Because he's
measuring himself against others. That's what pride does. It turns friendship. It turns
community into competition, right? And that's why pride is so toxic to relationships. Proud
people can't have friends, right? They can only have competitors. Some sins actually
bring us closer together. So people who like to drink too much, let's do it together. You
like to eat too much. Let's do it together. Like to spend too much money, whatever. Sometimes
some sins actually bring people together, but pride always, always means separation.
You distance yourself from people. Why? Because they might outshine you. You distance yourself
from them because you know what? They were right about something and your ego couldn't
handle it. Pride always separates us. And that leads to the second consequence of pride.
And that is the pride not only isolates us from each other, but it separates us from
God. After all, when you come to God's presence, you are coming up against one of the most
magnificent and beautiful and awesome beings that ever existed and will ever exist. We
don't even come close to this person, this God. And therefore, if you're proud, you're
not going to like that, right? Because you like to look down on people, but you will
never see God if you're looking down because God is always above us. Some sins that we
struggle with, we know we need help. And so we actually go to God and we say, God, I'm
struggling with lust. God, I'm struggling with greed. God, I'm struggling with my anger.
I have a horrible, horrible anger problem. But the proud, no, no, no, they're not going
to go to God. They're not going to go to God, right? They don't need God. They're already
their own God. And so they don't know God. That's why the Bible says that God opposes
the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. In some ways, pride makes God's grace impossible
for you. How do you receive God's great gift of grace when your hands are already holding
on so tightly to yourself? Which means ultimately that the final consequence of pride is destruction.
Pride leads to a fall. Jesus said, all who exalt themselves will be humbled, not might
be humbled, not could be humbled. You will be humbled. Pride always leads to a fall.
Proverbs 16, pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. And how many
times have we seen this play out in our world over and over again? How many times have we
seen an athlete or a pastor or a celebrity or whatever, a leader, right? They believed
their own hype, right? They thought they were invincible and they came crashing down. And
sometimes that crash is spectacular. There's a scandal. It's in the newspaper. Everybody
knows about it. It's humiliating, right? But there's another way that you can crash and
burn with pride, which is quieter and not everybody sees it. It's when pride keeps you
from asking for help. And so you ended up just suffering alone or pride makes you too
stubborn to apologize. And so you lose your relationship. So our pride convinces you that
you don't need God. And so you just drift further and further away from God. And then
one day you wake up and you realize you're completely alone. This is why pride is spiritual
poison. It doesn't just isolate you from others. It doesn't just separate you from God. It
actually destroys us from the inside. All who exalt themselves will be humbled. The
only question is, will you humble yourself before you are humiliated in some way? So
humility is the solution to pride. How do we get it? How do we get humility? It's a
great question. And I just want to remind you, the whole point of us doing this teaching
series on sin is not to beat us down. It's to build us up. Lent is a perfect time not
to just remember the brokenness inside us, but how we can be cured, how we can be healed
and how we can be restored. And to do that for pride, today I want to encourage you,
this Lent, to lean into three Christian practices that will help us overcome pride and become
people of humility. Ready? Here they go. First is this. It's confession. Confession. If you
think about it, pride is all about self deception. It's lying to ourselves. It's lying to others
about ourselves, right? But confession is telling the truth, right? It's telling the
truth to ourselves. Confession means telling the truth to others. And confession means
maybe telling the truth to some of the people in your life. Pride says, you're fine. Confession
reminds us we're not. World says, believe in yourself, trust in your own goodness. But
scripture comes along and says, if you claim to be without sin, you're deceiving yourself.
But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us. Confession isn't
self hatred. It's just self awareness. It's just being honest about who you are. You know,
there's this old Jewish saying that says that Jewish people basically have two essential
beliefs. The first is there is a God. And the second is you're not it. Confession is
how we remind ourselves of that second one. Confession reminds us that we are not our
own little gods ruling our own little lives. So this land lean into confession, confess
your pride, whether you do that at home in your own prayer time or whether you just come
here Sunday by Sunday. And as we're about to do, we confess our sins together as a community.
Confession as a habit will lead to humility, tells the truth and leads us back to God.
That is the first thing that we can do. Now, there is a second, a second practice that
cures us of pride and teaches us humility. And that is service. Here's why pride keeps
us focused on ourself. But serving causes us to focus on others. You know, C.S. Lewis said
that humility isn't thinking less of yourself. It's just thinking of yourself less. And that's
what serving does. It allows us to somehow forget ourselves long enough to realize, oh,
there are other people in this world and there are people I can love and take care of. We
forget ourselves long enough to love another person. Jesus modeled this perfectly on the
night that he was arrested. He was having dinner with his friends and guess what they
were arguing about? Who's the greatest? Who's the greatest? But he, at that moment, melt
down and he washed their feet. Right. He said, I'm doing this to set an example for you.
Right. He set an example. He says that you should do for others as I have done for you.
Jesus stepped down from his throne to come down and serve us so we can do the same. We
can step down from our little thrones where we're king of our little kingdoms and serve
others. So ask yourself seriously this week, ask yourself, who can I serve this week? Who
can I go and listen to who needs to talk without me feeling like I have to be heard? Right.
Who can I give something to without expecting anything in return? The more we serve others,
the less we focus on ourselves. That is a cure for pride. So confession is a cure for
pride, right? Service is a cure for pride. But thirdly and finally, worship is a cure
for pride. What you are doing this morning is a cure for pride. Why? Because if the cause
of pride is that we worship the wrong thing ourselves, then the cure for pride must be
that we learn to worship the right thing, which is God. There's this rule and the rule
says that you become like that, which you worship. If we worship God, we will become
more humble, which means God is humble. Right? We become like that, which we worship. And
if we become more humble by worshiping God, then God must be humble. Now that sounds crazy.
But humble, I've never heard anyone say God is humble. God is the most beautiful, most
powerful, most amazing being there ever is. No one else comes close to him. If anyone
had a right to be proud, it's God. And yet God is not proud. God doesn't go around forcing
himself on other people. In fact, many people go through their whole lives and they never
notice God at all. And when God actually came down and walked among us as Jesus Christ,
he didn't draw attention to himself. He didn't go around saying, Hey, everybody, look at
me, look at me. I'm God, I'm God, I'm God, I'm God. In fact, many people met Jesus of
Nazareth and walked away saying he's just another guy. He's just another rabbi. God
is humble. Right? God emptied himself in order to get down to our level. That is not a quality
we often associate with God's. But if God isn't proud, God isn't proud. Why on earth
should we be? We're created to be in the image of God and we are most human when we are most
like God and we become most like him when we worship him. So even when we worship God,
you know, it's funny. A lot of people think, well, why do we worship God? Is it because
actually God secretly is pride that he likes his ego stroke that our worship makes God
feel special? No, that's not it. In fact, the Bible tells us God doesn't even need our
worship. God doesn't need bulls or goats. He doesn't need sacrifices. He actually already
has everything. He has every animal, every tree is a thousand cattle on a thousand Hills
or whatever it is. No, we don't. We don't worship because God needs it. We worship because
we need it. Worship isn't about giving God something that that he lacks. It's about realigning
our hearts, changing our priorities and reorienting our focus. If you worship success, you're
going to be restless your whole life long. If you worship power, you're going to be ruthless.
If you worship approval, you will always be anxious. But if we learn to worship God, it
will become humble like God. And so as we end, I just want to remind you of one thing
we do every single week here at Trinity in our worship that actually is probably the
most humbling act, the most countercultural act of worship you could ever think of. What
we do is in a few minutes, you're going to get out of your pews and you're going to come
forward. You're going to line up and you're going to hold your empty hands out like this
empty hands, like children, like children who don't have anything, who are waiting to
receive something. This is, this is so odd. It's so countercultural. Normally in life,
we come with clenched fists holding onto everything that we have and what we think we've earned.
But here we come with open hands, admitting actually we don't have anything. And I'm admitting
that if we don't get something from God, we're going to remain empty. This is who we are.
This is, we're not the big self-sufficient adults, but we're just weak and empty souls.
We're weak, empty children, desperately in need of grace. You cannot enter the kingdom
of God with your fists clenched on all your stuff and your, your status. You have to become
hungry and humble like children. So the question is, will you do that today? Will you come
to God today with fists clenched? No, with hands open, ready to receive. The Pharisee,
he walked away unchanged, still proud. The tax collector walked away justified because
he came humbly with nothing except his need. May we come to God in the exact same way.
Peace be to God. Amen.
Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Trinity Sermons. This sermon was recorded
at Trinity Church Streetsville in Mississauga on March 9th, 2025.