Pride The Destroyer

Delay of deliverance is a weighing of men.

Suspense is very trying, and constitutes a searching test.

This divides men into two classes by bringing out their real character.

The proud and the just stand out in relief: the uplifted and the upright are far as the poles asunder; and the result of trial in the two cases is as different as death from life.

The tarrying of the promise—

I. REVEALS A GREAT FAULT—“his soul which is lifted up.”

The man is impatient, and will not endure to wait. This is pride full-blown, for it quarrels with the Lord, and dares to dictate to him.

1. It is very natural to us to be proud. So fell our first father, and we inherit his fault.

2. Pride takes many shapes, and among the rest this vainglorious habit of thinking that we ought to be waited on at once.

3. In all cases pride is unreasonable. Who are we that God should make himself our servant, and take his time from our watch?

4. In every case pride is displeasing to God, and specially when it interferes with the sovereign liberty of his own grace. Shall he be dictated to in the matter of his own love? “Nay but, O man, who are you that replies against God?” Romans 9:20.

II. BETRAYS A SAD EVIL—“his soul is not upright in him.”

1. He does not know the truth. His mind is out of the perpendicular, his knowledge is incorrect, and his judgment is mistaken. He puts “bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter”: Is. 5:20.

2. He does not seek the light. His heart is not upright: the affections are perverted. He has a bias towards conceited views of self, and does not wish to be set right. Obad. 1:3.

3. His whole religion is warped by his false mood of heart and mind. The very soul of the man is put out of order by his vanity.

4. He will not endure the test of waiting; he will sin in his haste to be delivered; he will rush from God to other confidences; he will show by his life that his real self is not right with God.

III. DISCOVERS A SERIOUS OPPOSITION.

He grows tired of the gospel, which is the sum of the promises, and he becomes averse to the exercise of the faith which it requires.

His pride makes him reject salvation by grace through faith in Jesus.

1. He is too great to consider it.

2. He is too wise to believe it.

3. He is too good to need it.

4. He is too advanced in “culture” to endure it.

   • Most of the objections to revealed truth arise from a mind thrown out of balance by pride of intellect, or pride of purse, or pride of heart.

IV. DIRECTS US TO A PLEASING CONTRAST.

1. The man who is really just is truly humble. The text implies a contrast in this respect between the proud and the just.

2. Being humble, he does not dare to doubt his God, but yields to his word an implicit faith.

3. His faith keeps him alive under trial, and conducts him into the joys and privileges of spiritual life.

4. His life conquers the trial, and develops into life eternal.

   • The Believer has the blessing promised, and truly lives while he lives.
   • The Unbeliever misses the blessing, and is dead while he lives.
   • What folly to refuse faith because of pride, and so to miss eternal life and all its felicities!

Quotations

“I think it is decidedly unscriptural to fix any time with God for his doing anything. The times and seasons the Father has put in his own hand. The Man Christ Jesus has asked for the heathen, and he will get them, but he has waited eighteen hundred years already, and has told us that as Man he knows nothing of the ‘when.’ Pray on, and believe; you shall reap.”—From a letter of Brownlow North to a Christian worker.

Strange that the mortal, who cannot believe in the healing power of the sparkling Jordan, will often willingly go down to the muddiest creek of Abana and Pharpar!—Edward Garrett.

As the first step heavenward is humility, so the first step Hellward is pride. Pride counts the gospel foolishness, but the gospel always shows pride to be so. Shall the sinner be proud who is going to Hell? Shall the saint be proud who is newly saved from it? God had rather his people fared poorly than live proudly.—Mason.

Poverty of spirit is the bag into which Christ puts the riches of his grace.—Rowland Hill.

We must be emptied of self before we can be filled with grace; we must be stripped of our rags before we can be clothed with righteousness; we must be unclothed that we may be clothed; wounded, that we may be healed; killed, that we may be made alive; buried in disgrace, that we may rise in holy glory. These words, “Sown in corruption, that we may be raised in incorruption; sown in dishonor, that we may be raised in glory; sown in weakness, that we may be raised in power,” are as true of the soul as of the body. To borrow an illustration from the surgeon’s are: the bone that is set wrong must be broken again, in order that it may be set aright. I press this truth on your attention. It is certain that a soul filled with self has no room for God; and like the inn at Bethlehem, crowded with meaner guests, a heart pre-occupied by pride and her godless train, has no chamber within which Christ may be born in us “the hope of glory.”—Guthrie.

A heart full of pride is but a vessel full of air; this self-opinion must be blown out of us before saving knowledge be poured into us. Humility is the knees of the soul, and to that posture the Lamb will open the book; but pride stands upon tip-toes, as if she would snatch the book, and unclasp it herself. The first lesson of a Christian is humility; and he who has not learned the first lesson is not fit to take out a new.—Thomas Adams.

But for pride, the angels, who are in Hell, should be in Heaven (Jude 6); but for pride, Nebuchadnezzar, who is in the forest, should be in his palace (Daniel 4.); but for pride, Pharaoh, who lies with the fishes, should be with his nobles (Exodus 14.); no sin has pulled so many down as this, which promised to set them up. Of all the children of pride, the Pope is the father, which sits in the temple of God, and is worshiped as God (2 Thessalonians 2:4.).… But for pride, the Pharisees would have received Christ as gently as his disciples; but for pride, Herod would have worshiped Christ as humbly as the shepherds; but for pride, our men would go like Abraham, and our women like Sarah, as they would be called their children; but for pride, noblemen would come to church as well as the people; but for pride, gentles would abide reproof as well as servants; but for pride, you would forgive your brother, and the lawyers should have no work.—Henry Smith.