Hidden Forms of Pride --And What to do About Them

My text today comes from Genesis 11. It’s the story about the Tower of Bable. Listen please as I read. As always, you have the text in your handout:

“Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. They said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. The Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

We could unpack this text and spend a lot of time talking about the truths embedded in this section of Genesis; But for today, I want us to focus on the motive of these men of Babel for building that tower. It was this: “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name.”

Their motive? Pride. Plain, simple, clear, uncomplicated, pride. But as I prepared this message, I discovered something about myself that I’d not realized was so deeply buried in my heart. And what is that? Yes – pride. It is as Jeremiah warned: (17:9) “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” And the Psalmist prayed: (Psalm 19:12) “Who can discern their own errors?”

And, listen – If I have been able to hide my sinful pride from myself, it’s possible some of you here might be doing the same thing. So, I bring this text to our attention for our own personal consideration and thought. After all, we want, as Paul urged Timothy, to “discipline [ourselves] for the purpose of godliness.” (1 Timothy 4:7)

We’ve spent the last several weeks looking at what it means to ‘discipline ourselves for godliness.’ As faithful followers of Christ, we want to pay close attention to St John’s plea to us in his first epistle: “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”

Christian – we know intuitively that we ought to walk as He walked. We know intuitively that we ought to adjust our lifestyles to reflect His. And we know from the Scriptures that God calls us to discipline ourselves for godliness, to purify ourselves as we fix our eyes on Jesus, the Author and perfector of our faith.

I would guess the average age in this sanctuary circles around 75 years old. And at our stage in life, it will come as no surprise when I remind us that ‘pride’ will destroy us. It ruins relationships. It destroys families. It will eventually take one’s life. We’ve seen it happen to others in our years of experience, and some of us can sadly testify how it has ruined our own lives in the past.

As we have seen already in these early chapters of Genesis, pride was at the root of Eve’s sin when she ate from the forbidden tree. She believed Satan’s lie that she’d become like God. Pride was the reason Cain, out of jealousy, killed his brother, Abel. Pride seduced Lamech to boast about killing a young boy for wounding him and a man for striking him. In Babel, it was pride that motivated them to build a tower, so they’d make a name for themselves.

And don’t we all know that it is pride that keeps people from the Savior? For good reason the Lord warned His listeners: (Mark 2:17) “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners”? If we like to think of ourselves as virtuous, as moral, as worthy of God's pleasure, if we’re too proud to admit that our sins – ANY of our sins – are worthy of eternal damnation, then we’ll never admit to ourselves – or to God – that we desperately need a Savior.

Solomon warned: (Proverbs 16:18) “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before stumbling.” Several centuries later, another Jewish writer wrote these wise words of sober warning: “Pride is like a fountain pouring out sin, and whoever persists in it will be full of wickedness.” (Sirach 10:13, GNT).  

As damnably dangerous as pride is, I think its subtlety is sometimes equally hard to spot. Why is that?  Well, as Jeremiah reminds us in that text I quoted a few minutes ago, our hearts are more deceptive than all else. As a result, pride distorts our spiritual eyesight, so much so that we don’t realize the Lord’s warning to the Christians in the church at Laodicea also applies to us: (Revelation 3:17-19) “Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from Me . . . . eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore, be zealous and repent.”

Those in the city of Babel built their tower because they wanted to make a name for themselves. But we should be careful about pointing fingers at them, and others, who let pride rule their lives and lifestyles. We should be careful about doing so because it is just as likely that we are expertly hiding from ourselves the same sins. Our pride – hidden or not-so-hidden – might not manifest itself as openly as those in this 11th chapter of Genesis, but the results of our pride, if left unchanged in our hearts, will lead to the same result of judgment.

My research for this message led me to a number of online sites that list some attitudes we might hold that give evidence of unhealthy pride. I’ve limited the list to only thirteen – a baker’s dozen. I’m including them in your handout so you can review them yourself later on.

1. Are we critical of others – for example, the way they speak, the way they dress, the way they eat, their backgrounds, their schooling (or lack of it), and so forth?

2. Do we worry how others think of us more than how God thinks us?

3. Do we think we know God as well as we need to know Him?

4. Do we think we know the Bible as well as we need to know it?

5. Do we usually reject the honest criticism of others?

6. Do we neglect the genuine physical, emotional, spiritual, or financial needs of others when we are able to assist?

7. Do we usually need to be the focus of attention?

8. Are we often jealous of others?

9. Do we justify and rationalize our sins against God instead of repenting?

10. Are we reluctant to apologize to others when we’ve sinned against them?

11. Are we easily offended, angered, or get our feelings hurt?  

12. Are we reluctant to accept the help of others – whether practical or spiritual?

13. Do we spend undue attention, money, and effort to avoid the appearance of aging?

As I said earlier, pride is such a slithery sin that easily hides itself in our hearts under the cover of self-rationalization and self-deception. But Jesus deserves far better than our cover-ups, doesn’t He?

I’ve told some of you of my own recent battle against my pride. It happened last October when I was walking our two dogs by our neighbor’s house. He was sitting on his porch waiting for me. When I passed, he ordered me to pick up the dog excrement someone had left on the grass by his curb. I told him it wasn’t from my dogs, but he insisted it was. He then stood up, walked toward me and again ordered me to pick up the mess near his curb.

That’s when my anger started boiling up, and in my early days I’d have actually gotten into a fistfight with the guy – over what? A pile of dog excrement and my offended pride?

Long story short, we settled the issue on a positive note when he realized I was telling the truth about my dogs. But my point is this: I had for DECADES successfully hidden and rationalized my pride that results in being easily angered. But on that day in October of last year, God revealed to me how my pride is so very close to the surface – and how that pride is not only wrong, it is sinful.

The Holy Spirit revealed to me once again that I desperately need a change in my heart. I’m a Christian, one who is supposed to follow AND act like Christ. And as a Christian I represent Jesus Christ to a world fatally diseased by sin. What kind of a testimony for Christ would I have been if I’d let my pride-driven anger bring us to a fistfight?

And, by the way, what kind of testimony for Christ would YOU be if you let your own pride-driven anger or jealousy, or negative criticism and gossip bring you to unkind words toward someone sitting at another table in the dining room?

Christian, we simply CANNOT be – we MUST NOT live with the attitude popularized by the Sammy Davis, Jr song: “I Gotta be Me.”

“Whether I'm right or whether I'm wrong/Whether I find a place in this world or never belong/I gotta be me, I've gotta be me/What else can I be but what I am.”

Christian – don’t fall for that demonic tripe. We gotta be what GOD created us to be – and that is the image of Jesus.

So, how do we successfully overcome that slippery sin that shows up in multiple ways? It is to that question that I now devote the remainder of this message. And it is to that question that I offer some recommendations that I believe can guide us closer toward the holy lifestyle we all want.

First: If your conscience has been pricked by any of the things I just listed in this baker’s dozen, then the first thing to do is to thank God for that revelation. Thank God that He’s opened your eyes to how the many different forms of pride have infected your heart – as they have infected mine, for unless He shows us the SPECIFIC areas of our lives where we offend Him, how can we repent and seek His cleansing and change?

Which brings us to the second recommendation as to how we can walk more intimately with Christ in the holy lifestyle we all want. And that recommendation is this: Once He shows us the specific forms of pride that have hidden themselves in our hearts, we must then ask the Holy Spirit to do whatever it takes to change our hearts. 

Whatever. It. Takes.

Do not expect this to be an easy thing to do – to LET God do whatever is necessary to change our hearts. Our flesh will immediately and steadily argue and fight against it. As the apostle recognized in his letter to the Christians at Rome: (Romans 8:6-8) “For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

But those who are SERIOUS about pleasing God, for those who are SERIOUS about letting Him root out sin in our lives in whatever form it may take, then fighting against our fleshly nature is something in which we must persevere.

Some of you might remember the lyrics of this song – lyrics which speak directly to this point of letting God change our hearts:

There’s a voice calling me from an old rugged tree/And it whispers, “Draw closer to Me/Leave your world far behind/There are new heights to climb/And a new life in Me you will find”/For whatever it takes to draw closer to You, Lord/That’s what I’ll be willing to do/And whatever it takes to be more like You/That’s what I’ll be willing to do.

Take the dearest things to me/If that’s how it must be to draw me closer to You/Let my disappointments come/Lonely days without the sun/If in sorrow more like You I’ll become/I’ll trade sunshine for rain, comfort for pain/That’s what I’ll be willing to do/For whatever it takes for my will to break/That’s what I’ll be willing to do/That’s what I’ll be willing to do.

Am I critical of others? Then I need to keep asking the Holy Spirit to ‘ping’ my conscience every time I slip into that form of pride. Am I jealous of others – their successes, their popularity, their appearance, their ‘whatever’?  Then I need to keep asking the Holy Spirit to root out that form of pride from my heart. Am I more concerned about how others think of me than how God thinks of me? Am I generally reluctant to let people know I need help? Am I easily offended by others?

Christian! How many of the things in that Baker’s Dozen list of evidences of pride apply to you? Quite a few apply to me. OH! How we so desperately and urgently need the Holy Spirit to ping our conscience every time we fall short of His holiness! Whatever in that list applies to us – we need to keep asking the Holy Spirit to do whatever it takes to make us more like Jesus.

Those who built the tower of Babel did so “to make a name” for themselves. But the Lord Jesus came to make a name – so to speak – for His Father. For example, here is John 12:27-28a: “Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.”

Pride – in whatever form it takes – if we let it remain unconverted by the Holy Spirit – pride will damage us and our relationships. It might even kill us. That is why it is GOOD when the Holy Spirit reveals to us our hidden sins. In so doing He gives us the opportunity to repent and give it to our God for cleansing.

I close this message with a text from Paul’s letter to the Christians at Philippi: (Philippians 2:3-8) “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” 

Oh, may God the Holy Spirit continue to mold us more and more perfectly into the image of Christ. Amen.