THE PROBLEM OF PRIDE-PART II (Proverbs 6:16-19)

The problem with pride is that it is a spirit of independence from God, it is a spirit of a lack of gratefulness, it is a spirit of competition that causes us to think of ourselves as somehow better than somebody else. It is a spirit that makes God your adversary.  It angers God.  The Bible says that you provoke God to anger when there is pride in your heart. It is not just that God will not help you; God literally becomes your adversary. This means that God stands and brings the whole universe against the proud man.  That man has God for an adversary.

Pride will produce domestic ruin. Homes become battlegrounds because of pride. Pride produces financial ruin. Do you know why many people are in financial bondage? Because of pride. They are buying things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, to impress people they don’t like. The reason we get in trouble is because our neighbors keep buying things we can’t afford, and we are trying to keep up. It is wanting more than somebody else. Pride produces financial ruin. 

Do you know what else pride will do? It will ruin you emotionally, because it will make you a slave to the opinions of other people.  Pride says that you’ve got to have the right symbol on your shirt. You’ve got to have the right emblem sewed on the hip pocket of your jeans.  That is a form of slavery that will never be satisfied, and it will ruin you emotionally. 

Pride also brings eternal ruin, because the devil is going to say to you, “Keep your dignity. Don’t admit your need of the Lord.” But until you admit your need of the Lord, you will never be saved. “Well,” you say, “I’m not all that bad.” Pride is a matter of the heart. Stop comparing yourself with other people and compare yourself with the Lord Jesus. There is none so bad that he cannot be saved; there is none so good that he need not be saved. The worst form of badness is human goodness when that human goodness becomes a substitute for the new birth. The reason that some people are destroyed, and destroyed forever, is because of pride.  Pride will sit down in the seat beside a person and say, “Don’t you go down there and make a fool of yourself. Don’t you admit your need. Do not confess that you need the Lord.” But the Bible says, “God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.” (1 Peter 5:5)

Click on the link below to hear a message that tells us what we need today is God’s grace, for pride precedes destruction. It is pride, not unbelief, that keeps many from coming to the gospel. Don’t be that person who would let pride sentence them to an eternity in hell.  Come and find Jesus as your Lord and Savior.  Put your pride aside, repent of your sins, and put Christ on the throne of your life.  

Amen.