“Above All, Forget Pride” – Genesis 3:1-13

An interesting thing happened in the summer of 1972 in Chicago, Illinois. That summer the minister of Chicago’s Vernon Baptist church planned a parade intended to draw 15,000 people for the sole purpose of paying honor to God. It was labeled a “Happy Parade” and was set up not to protest against anything, but simply to praise God for being God. The Mayor of Chicago was invited to march and 214 police officers were assigned to the parade route. The interesting thing was that no one showed up. Absolutely no one came. There was no parade because no one was present to praise God.  (https://www.sermons.com/sermonweb/jobef2.html)

Yet, this coming June will be the 48^th annual Gay Pride Parade there in Chicago.  For nearly 50 years, that parade has gotten bigger and bigger.  My purpose today is not to bash gays but it is a perfect example of what our topic is this morning.  Romans 1 makes it very plain that the homosexual lifestyle is a sin and in that passage it says that “Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death (spiritual death), they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.”

Isaiah 5:20 says, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.”  Isn’t that exactly what the marchers in the Gay Pride parades are doing?  They take pride in who they are and how they have chosen to live.  They say it’s good; in fact, it’s so good let’s have a parade to celebrate it.  They approve of this lifestyle and those who practice it so much and are so proud of it that if you Google the word “pride”, most of the pages have something to do with homosexuality.

Did you know that Proverbs 8:13 says that God hates pride?  Hate is a strong word but it’s clear that God hates pride.  I’m not saying that God hates homosexuals; not at all.  But He hates that lifestyle and when you add pride to that lifestyle, God says, “Woe unto you.”  That’s not “whoa” like you would say to horse telling him to stop.  That’s “woe” as in bad things are about to happen.

Now, so far, this may be one of those messages that you feel comfortable saying “amen” to.  Well, don’t get too comfy.  You know, the older I get the easier it is for me to forget things I need to remember but it can also be easy for me to remember things I need to forget and pride is one of those things.  We need to forget pride, above all, forget pride.

Do you remember what Isaiah 43:18-19 says?

“Forget the former things;
    do not dwell on the past.
¹⁹ See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.”

For true believers; for real Christians, real disciples, people who truly have a relationship with Jesus, pride is a thing of the past and we need to forget it because God is doing a new thing in our lives and there is absolutely no room for pride.  Above all, forget pride.

God is making the impossible possible and making a way where there is no way but when we have sin in our life, sin like unforgiveness, anger, bad habits and worry, that puts a barrier between us and God and we miss out on so many of his miracles, so many blessings, so many awe-inducing God things that our lives start to look like the lives of worldly people.

Are you ready to live a full and abundant life?  Are you ready to see God at work in our lives, our church and our community?  Then we have to forget those former things and above all, forget pride.  I say, “above all, forget pride” because pride is at the root of every other sin.  Pride is telling God, “I got this.”  Pride is looking at the Creator of the universe and saying, “Look what I did!”  Pride is the root of all sin because pride comes from thinking your wants, needs and desires are more important than anything else, including what God says or wants for us.

Let’s look at the very first sin as recorded in the book of Genesis and we will see where pride played a part in the fall of all mankind.  Genesis is one of the most fascinating books ever written and also one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted books ever written and the reason is that it doesn’t read like we want it to.  We want it to read like a novel, fully giving explanations to every detail and every topic and answering every question our minds can conceive but what we need to remember with Genesis is that if it is in there, God wants you to know about it.  There is a reason for it being there.

Likewise, if it’s not there, it’s not something we need to know so don’t read between the lines with Genesis.  In fact, if you want to understand it better, read it like the Hebrews would have read it since it was originally written for them.  When they read that a snake talks to Eve about a piece of fruit, they just accept it as a talking snake and a piece of fruit and go on.  If it’s not explained, it’s not meant to be explained.

So, if you ask me when this is over if the dinosaurs were still around when Adam and Eve lived, I will punch you because you have missed the point.  Just be warned.  Let’s read Genesis 3:1-13 and see how pride and sin entered into the world for the first time.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” ² The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”  ⁴ “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  ⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. ⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.  ⁸ Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. ⁹ But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”  ¹⁰ He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”  ¹¹ And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”  ¹² The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”  ¹³ Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”  The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Let me help you get the picture of what is going on here.  Use your imagination with me for a minute and visualize the Garden of Eden.  It’s just the right temperature.  It’s not too hot or too cold.  You don’t need a jacket or shoes.  There are no stickers to hurt your feet.  The sky is perfectly blue.  The grass is a deep shade of green and there are beautiful flowers everywhere.  Food is plentiful and delicious.  You want for absolutely nothing.

God visits with you often and you know what is expected of you and you know the consequences of disobedience but that’s not a problem because you have everything you could ever need in abundance.  But here you are standing before the one, true and holy God Who has provided it all to you and you dare to look at Him and tell Him that your sin is not your fault because your needs are greater than His provision.

Can you imagine that?  Can you imagine the guts, the gall, the nerve of Adam and Eve to say, “Yes, God, we know what you said and we know what the consequences would be BUT…we have needs that weren’t being met and that is obviously your fault, God”?

Isn’t that what Adam is saying in verse 12?  “The woman YOU put here with me…”  “This is your fault, God!”  Can you ever imagine saying such a thing to God?  Of course you can, because we all do it every single time we sin.  Every sin; our greed, gossip, lust, envy, anger, homosexuality or cuss word is telling God that our needs are greater than your provision and I wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t created me this way.

That’s pride.  Now, we start to understand, when we think of sin like that, why God says He hates pride and that pride comes before destruction (Proverbs 16:18).  And destruction is exactly what Satan wants for you just like he wanted for Adam and Eve and so he comes to us and twists God’s word and what God has said to us just like he did with Eve putting that little seed of doubt in our minds about God’s provision for us.

Pride is thinking that we have needs that God can’t or won’t provide.  Pride is taking credit for something that only God can do.  Pride is putting ourselves above God in our thoughts or choices or what we say.  Pride is essentially self-worship and we all know how God feels about it when we worship something besides Him.

Now, the obvious question is what is the difference between good pride and bad pride?  I have struggled with this question all week.  Because we all know it when we see it but where is the line between the two?  We know good pride when we see it.  We often encourage young people to have some pride in how they look or in the job they do.  We all know that’s not wrong.

But we also know bad pride when we see it.  Some people don’t even have to say anything.  You can just see the pride on their faces.  Noses up, eyes narrowed, mouth clinched tight.  Maybe their arms are crossed.  You look at that guy and you can just see the pride and it’s disgusting.  The Bible calls that “haughty eyes”.  Proverbs 21:4 says, “Haughty eyes and a proud heart produce sin.”

The Bible almost always speaks of pride negatively, although, Paul tells the Corinthian church, “I take great pride in you.” (2 Cor. 7:4)  Think of pride as a word that is a wide spectrum from good to bad; a spectrum that includes how much pride one has and who gets the glory for that which one is proud, how it is shown in public and how it is shown toward God.  Those are all things to consider when we talk about pride.

When you see Troy Pittman, do you see a proud man?  Do you see a man with haughty eyes, a turned up nose, bragging about what he has or what he is?  Of course not.  Nobody would describe him that way and yet, just yesterday, Troy himself told me he was proud.  Do you believe that?  He said he was proud of the chain link fence that we put up around the church.

Troy, Brian, Jeff, Robert and I all put in some labor to put that fence up and, even though none of us knew what we were doing, it turned out pretty nice, I have to say.  There are some others who loaned tools or gave good advice.  Still some others who just criticized from afar.  But it is something to be proud of.  It took twenty-four trips to the store.  That I’m not so proud of but Troy should be proud.  He worked hard.

But he will tell you that God provided everything we needed to get that accomplished.  God gave wisdom, energy, patience and some YouTube videos and we all got it done.  Thank you, Lord, and thank you, Troy, for your hard work.  That’s a good kind of pride.

The bad pride kicks in when we start to compare ourselves to other people and feel like we are better than them in some way.  Or when we compare our lives to how we think it should be because basically that is comparing ourselves to God.  “If I were God, I would provide this, this and this…”

But again, that is just Satan twisting the truth into a lie because while we sin when we compare ourselves to God, having a right vision of who God is and who we are in comparison is exactly what we should do to keep from being proud.  The trick is to have the right vision of God and the right vision of ourselves.

Last Thursday night, we had a big meal for our Thursday Bible study and I decided to prepare my world-famous hominy casserole.  Okay, maybe not world-famous but it’s at least popular around here.  Well, okay I like it and I don’t know how to cook many other things so I poured the hominy in the bowl and then opened the pop top on the Rotel sliced tomatoes and when I did, the lid curled up and cut my hand.

I knew it was pretty bad but I didn’t want to look at first so I just balled my fist and held it for a few seconds.  When I did look at it, I wished I hadn’t because there was a huge chunk of nasty, red flesh just sitting there on my little finger.  It was gross and as soon as I saw it, the pain got considerably worse.  You know how it is. 

So, I stood there for a second thinking about what I needed to do.  This was a huge chunk of flesh and obviously I’m going to need stitches.  That means hours at the emergency room, lots of money and lots of pain, right?  Then I realized I was starting to get dizzy and light-headed and my stomach was feeling sick.  Great, I hope I don’t pass out.  All because of some sliced tomatoes.

But then I reached down and went to move that huge chunk of bloody flesh to get a better look before I passed smooth out and realized…it was a sliced tomato.  It was covering up the tiniest little cut on my finger that didn’t even bleed.  You can’t even see it now but when I thought it was my flesh I just knew I was in mortal peril.

See, my vision of the truth, how I saw reality, was completely wrong.  It felt like I was in real trouble.  It looked like it but I couldn’t see the real truth and it’s the same with our pride.  We feel like we need this or that.  It looks like God is not going to take care of our needs.  It looks like we have done all this on our own and we will just have to continue fending for ourselves since God won’t but…that’s a lie from Satan who wants you to be destroyed.

So, let’s boil it all down to see how we can keep from being prideful.  Nobody wants to be proud.  In fact, nobody thinks they are proud but we all know people who are so just assume that you need to hear this because we all do.  Help me out here.  What’s God like?

He’s perfect.  He’s holy.  Majestic, loving, gracious, generous, just, etc.  Now, what are we like?  Fallen, sinful,  needy, hurting, deceived, worried, angry, unforgiving, regretful and…proud.  That was Job’s real problem.  Did you know that?  He lost everything.  He lost his family, his health, his livelihood, everything and still sat on the dung heap wearing sackcloth and ashes and bragged about who he was to his friends.

Who do we think we are?  We have nothing, are nothing, can do nothing without God’s amazing grace and mercy and yet we dare to be proud of who we are and what we have done and even insist that God give us more or He doesn’t love us so we better just do what He can’t or won’t.

Pride.  It’s a wrong vision of who we are and who God is and it will destroy us individually, as a church and as a country.  That’s why God hates it.  It is an affront to Him and yet He still loves us.  Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

We can’t fully understand that kind of love and we can’t fully understand how God is in control of everything and yet we still have freewill but it’s true.  I know I say it all the time but God loves us and is in control so what do we have to worry about?  What do we have to be angry about?  What do we have to be unforgiving about?  What do we have to be proud about?

Above all, forget pride.  It’s not hard once you get a real vision of who you are and who God is and once you do you will find that because He is in control and loves you that sin becomes less of a temptation.  Accept His love.  Accept His forgiveness and accept Him as your Lord and Savior.  He’s making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland but you have to be His.

Admit you are a sinner.  Ask for His forgiveness and believe He is the only way to Heaven and start living that way.  Do it today.