We're continuing this morning with our weak Links message series, and over the last several weeks we've been taking a look at different qualities and characteristics that we might have that can sometimes cause some difficulties in terms of our faith walk with God. We started off talking about depression and despair and the effects that can have on us.

We talked about bitterness and despair. We talked about anger last week. We talked about patience. And this morning I'm gonna talk to you on a topic that honestly wasn't even in my original series that I was planning on speaking on. Cuz I had a couple people ask me, Hey, are you gonna do this topic?

And at first it was like, no I wasn't planning on it. But when the second person said it, then I thought maybe I should and the. Thought about that. Tamar thought, yeah, I really need to talk about this topic because if we're gonna look at weak links what I'm gonna talk to you about today is potentially maybe the weakest of all the links that we might have.

It's one that can do the most damage in terms of our relationship with God. But before I tell you what it is, I wanna encourage you with these words that the topic that I'm gonna speak to you on, it is very easy to think that man, I. Topic is about this person. Like this one is one that we don't necessarily always identify with ourselves, but we will identify to someone else.

But before I tell you what the topic is, I wanna encourage all of you in here do what you can to not think about. Who this might apply to in terms of someone else. Think about how it might apply to you because it's not one that we normally apply to ourselves. What I wanna talk to you this morning about is a weak link of pride, and pride is one of those things.

Once again, I just say that word and we're, we can all think of a proud person that we know, but. A proud person isn't gonna think of themselves. So we need to be thinking about how does this apply and speak to me. Cuz I think what we're gonna find is I work my way through it, is that more of us in here have pride than what we realize that we do.

Now, when we talk about pride, we have to we have to differentiate maybe good pride from bad pride. That's a question that I always have. When someone speaks about pride, we speak about it just being bad in general. And technically yes it is, but there's an issue with the English language that, that we use the word.

Pride in being proud and we can use it in multiple ways. And one of the ways that we can use it, that it's not bad is is like take pride in your work, right? We've all said that before. That's not wrong and that's not bad. We're using the word pride but what we're really saying is do your best at work and that's that.

Biblical statement. The Bible says, whatever you do it as if you're doing it for the Lord. So in that sense, we're using an English, the word pride, but there's a lot of other words we can put in there. But that's not the type of pride that is, is forbidden in scripture, and it's considered a a grievous sin in scripture.

The type of pride that we want to avoid that scripture tells us to avoid is this concept of being proud. And that is this like admiration of self that is never appropriate and that is never right, and this concept of being proud. It's always been seen as not only a sin, but a grievous sin.

The Catholics group their categorize, their different sins, and they've got their seven deadly sins. Pride is one of them. Why do they consider pride such a significant sin? You're about to see why, because of what scripture says about it. Let's start looking at Proverbs six, 16 to 17.

It says there are six things that the Lord hates. It's a big word, but there's seven that are abomination to him. We like to use that word over certain things, like that's an abomination to the Lord. The Bible says it. Guess what? It also says it about pride. That's an abomination to God. There's seven of them that are abominations.

Guess what? The very first is? That's mention. A proud look. So God hates it. In fact, he not only hates it, it's an abomination pride. James four, six. God opposes the proud, but he shows favor to the humble, so he hates it. It's an abomination. He opposes the proud Psalm 1 0 15. Whoever has hotty eyes. And a proud heart I will not tolerate.

So God hates it. It's an abomination. And once again we only like to use that word in, in terms of another sin, but pride is an abomination before God and he will not tolerate. And so that leads CS Lewis, I don't know if you know that name, but he's like foremost Christian author over the last hundred years and brilliant theologian.

This is what he says about pride. He says, according to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil is, Unc, chastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that are just mere flea bites in comparison. He says it was through pride that the devil became the devil. Now, think about that. It's through pride that the devil God created.

He didn't create the devil. He created a magnificent angel. That magnificent angel becomes the devil because of pride.

Si Lewis says, pride leads to every other vice because it is the complete anti-God state of mind. So you've got the Catholic concept of the seven deadly sins. You see how God speaks about how he hates it? It's an abomination. You hear what CS Lewis says about it. If you actually look at the early church fathers, that is just after the time of the New Testament.

You got Augustine and a Aquinas who call Pride the root of. You got Kelvin and Luther at the time of the Reformation that says pride is a great sin. So you got Roman Catholics, Ethan or Orthodox. You got Protestants all in agreement. That pride is a horrible thing. Why? Because the scripture says it, but ultimately because it reflects the heart of sat.

And not the heart of.

Now, here's the problem with pride. God hates it. It's an abomination, but we don't think it's a big deal. We don't, let me prove it to you. If when I started this message I'm like, you know what I have to confess to you guys is here's your pastor. I struggle with pride sometimes. If I had said that you guys be like, okay.

No big, no one would be running for the doors. You'd be like, whatever we all do, or just, it wouldn't be a big deal. But if I'm like, Hey guys I need you to know I, I struggle with porn or some other sexual sin. You'd be like, man, did you hear what my pastor, he's a perv. And you, a lot of you would stop coming if I said, Man I I've got this drug addiction.

You'd be like, man, my pastor's an addict. Or if I said I'm an alcoholic, you'd be like, man, my pastors are drunk. And some of you'd stop coming. We would hand a big deal about those things. What CS Lewis calls flea bites. But if I said, Hey, I struggle with pride, you'd be like, eh, whatever. We just don't think it's a big deal.

E, even in the church body that we're a part of, if a pastor commits a sexual sin, you are kicked outta the ministry. But man, you can be proud all day long and that's not a big deal. That doesn't get you kicked outta the ministry. In fact, you meet some of these pastors, you think it's a qualification.

And so we don't think it's a big deal, but God does. So we gotta treat it that way. God says he hates it. He said he opposes it and he detests it. Why does God hate pride? Pride is an interesting sin. It's different than all the others. Sin normally draws us away from God. Sin normally makes us feel inferior.

If there's a sin that you're struggling with, you feel bad about that and that might even cause you to not come to church. It's just you don't feel worth. To come into the presence of God because, you struggle with this sin and so it's just it just makes you feel bad about yourself.

That's basically every sin does that except one pride doesn't. Pride makes us feel well, a little closer to God, a little more godly, above the ordinary, above the rest. And that's what's so damaging about it, where all the others make us feel unworthy. Pride makes us feel worth. And as contrary to what God asked of us is contrary to what God shows us.

When God sent his son into this world the word of God became flesh and lived and dwelt amongst us. In, in equality with God wasn't something that could be grasped. So he did what he humbled himself. He took on the very nature of a servant. We see that in, in how he would serve others. He didn't even wash the feet of his disciples.

So the model that God gives us is that of Jesus humbling himself and being a servant. And we see throughout scripture we're encouraged that, if you want to be a master, you've gotta be willing to serve. If you want to gain your life you gotta be willing to lose it.

We always see this Pushing down. Don't consider yourself. The Bible says any more highly than what you want. The Bible says when you go to dinner, don't be so proud, so arrogant to sit at the head of the table or the position of honor. Rather, it's better to sit in a position elsewhere on the table, maybe midway or some somewhere, because it's better for someone to say, oh no, you're our honored guest, and have someone come and move you to the place of honor than to you.

Sit at that place of honor and say, oh, I'm sorry. That's that's seat. Would you move over here?

Being proud is contrary to all of this that we're taught in scripture. There's also something else that's interesting about this that we gotta consider is, The Apostle Paul talks about this thorn and his flesh and how this thorn makes him weak. And so he pleaded with God three times. God, whatever it was, take it from me.

But God said, no, my grace is sufficient for you. In fact, Paul, it's a good thing that you're weak because my power's made perfect in weakness. Paul's oh. If your power is made perfect in weakness, guess what? I'm gonna boast about weakness then. So that your power might rest on me for when I'm weak, I'm strong.

So when we're physically weak when we're just suffering when things are going bad, those are the times that we rely on God and that's when we're strong. There's this inverse relationship then what do you think happens when you're feeling pretty good about yourself? And you're feeling pretty proud and you're feeling pretty worthy.

That's when spiritually we're at our weakest for the remainder of our time together. I just want to. I wanna talk about some real practical reasons why pride is bad, and the first one that I'm gonna share with you is from a spiritual perspective, which I've laid the case, but I'm gonna just say a little bit more about that.

Then I'm gonna talk to you from a worldly perspective. That pride does a lot of damage to the relationships that we have, and we need to be aware of that. We need to confess that we need to move on from that so that our lies might be made whole again. But let's start off talking spiritually.

Ultimately, pride keeps us from having a right relationship with God. It's a big issue with pride is in the end pride. Is corrosive to that relationship with God. If you've ever seen how acid over time corrodes or like I'm from up north originally, and back when I was young and before cars were undercoded, they put salt treatments on the road and you have these strong cars that come off the assembly line.

But over time, rust starts working on those cars and like that metal, like the property actually changed through the rise. And you can just like eventually poke your finger through it. It just, it. It becomes weak. It corrodes and that's what Pride does with our relationship with God.

Pride has been in God's creation since the very beginning, and we see its working itself out over the course of time in and working against God in his creation. We see it at the very beginning with Satan. Remember Satan, God didn't create the devil. God created a magnificent angel that wanted to be like God.

He wanted to have the recognition that God had. He wanted to have the power that God had. He wanted to have the authority that God had, and so he tried to elevate himself up as God himself A. And he led this revolt and he led this rebellion. Why did he do this? Because of pride. And then so from Satan, then you go to God's creation.

And what does Satan tempt Adam and Eve with pride? Because in the end, God created them and he gave them certain gifts and abilities, but they knew that if they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would become more like God. It was pride and then we see it in, in Adam and Eve's son, Kane and Abel.

Kane gives a sacrifice that God does not approve of. Abel does. And how does, what does Kane do? Kane kills Abel. Why does Kane kill Abel? Because his pride is hurt that his brother sacrifice is looked favorably upon by God and his. He could have thought, you know what, I need to step it up some.

I need to, bring a better sacrifice to God next time. But his pride caused him to just kill his, to wanna live in the denial of the reality of why things were the way they are and to kill his brother. So you got it from Satan to Adam Neve, to Cain and Abel to across humanity. Then Pride is on one level, the cause of all sin.

Because it's in the end all about me and what I want and what I desire. And what's interesting is this, it's all about me. Can come from two angles and we're only used to th seeing it one way. When we think of the proud, we think of arrogant people and arrogant people, it's all about them, right?

They think they're smarter than everyone. They think they're better than everyone. It's always about them. Look at me. It's all about them. And so that is being proud. But guess what? On the other end of things, it works the same way because on the other end of things, it can be as like, whoa is me, man.

I I never get a break. E everything is just, always goes against me and I can't do anything. And I'm never gonna, that's me. Pride is this obsession with self. And we can be obsessed with ourself to the good, and we can be obsessed with ourself to the bad, but they're both obsession to self

because pride at its core is selfish. Look at Proverbs 16, A 18 Pride goes before the destruction. In a hotty spirit before a fall. I mentioned how pride is like Russ, that it's slowly corroding our relationship with God. And so pride, it starts with pride, but that goes before that will lead.

That's corroding the relationship with God. That pride will ultimately lead to destruction. It will ultimately lead to a fall. So that's the problem with pride spiritually in terms of our relationship with.

But pride has some real damaging impacts in terms of our relationships with one another. And this is where I hope to help you all understand that a lot more of a struggle with pride than what we realize. First of all, I need you to understand pride keeps us from asking for help, and there's a lot of us that fall into this category that we just won't ask for.

In fact I wanna challenge you. How many right now are of you are struggling in your marriages? That it is so rocky. You guys have so many arguments, you're not seen eye to eye. It's just not a good thing. But you won't ask for help. In fact, you do the opposite. You go out of your way to try to make it look like everything's fine and everything's perfect.

Why? Because pride won't allow you to say, my marriage stinks. What do I do? How do I fix it? And so we put on this image that everything's perfect and everything's fine with our friends and on Facebook and this, that. And then what happens is one person ends up leaving the other.

Everyone's shocked. Where'd that come from? What you didn't know is that we've been having problems for a long time. Dee was doing this, and people like,

But pride's no, everything's great.

How many of you right now with your children, especially when you get with them into those teenage years, you're struggling and you're worried about them. You're worried about 'em, cuz maybe they're sneaking out at night, you're worried about 'em cuz maybe you found drugs in their room.

Or you suspect I'm up doing drugs maybe you're worried that they're gonna stop going to church. Maybe they don't believe, we, we have all, maybe they won't go to college. You have all these concerns about your kids, but once again, pride won't say, Are there any resources?

What do I do in a situation like this? Help I, I don't really know how to get through to my kid anymore. Pride makes it say everything's great. Once again, we're posting on Facebook. It doesn't look like there's any problems. Meanwhile, things are going horribly wrong and they could get better if we just be willing to say, it's not going good.

I don't know what to do. Help. How many of us are struggling financially? And we don't wanna admit, I stink at budgeting. I don't know how to budget. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know where my money's going help. I need help and trying to find someone that might be able to come in and to help you to structure your finances in a way in which you don't have to, go paycheck to paycheck and wonder if you're even gonna be able to pay rent or pay mortgage.

We just, we won't talk about it because of pride, but these are things that are just rampant amongst. How about mental health and emotional health? How many of you are in a bad place right now, but you're hiding? Because pride says, I can't admit that, that I'm in a dark place. Someone says, how are you doing?

Oh, I'm doing fine. What you, what's reality? And what's truth is for the last six months you've been really down. You're in a bad place and maybe you're feeling a little hopeless that things will never get better. What you should be doing is asking for help, but pride won't allow you to ask for help.

So you keep living in the hell that you've created for yourself because of pride.

Pride not only keeps us from asking for help, but pride can also keep us from accepting help. And this one can be an interesting thing cuz here we find pride sometimes in. People that we don't nor normally associate as being proud. It's just a different kind of vein. It's a different kind of thread of pride.

I know this one's one that I struggle with getting better at it, but I still struggle with it cuz I, I don't know if receiving help makes me feel like I'm. Not doing my fair share or I'm weak or like I'm being lazy or whatever. But man I one, I don't like asking for help, but I don't like accepting help either.

And what really what pride says is, you know what, I can do it myself. In fact, I'll probably do it better if I do it myself. So I'll just do it myself. Like I said we know people like that. And once again, this isn't the same type of pride that we normally associate with like arrogance pride, but yet it's still pride.

And what's interesting is if I wanna pull a character out of the Bible that shows this type of pride, it's not one that you'd normally associate as being proud. If we're gonna say a Hey, name me a biblical character that's proud. We probably have to hit on King David, probably on Paul and a few others.

But if I was gonna say, who according to the Bible, would you say is humble? Most of us would probably hit on Moses. He seemed to be a pretty humble man, but he had this pride of I can do it myself and. It honestly seems to have been somewhat damaging to his family. Now we don't have the full backstory to this, so I'm reading a little bit into it, but I don't think I'm really stretching it too far.

Look at Exodus 18, 6 13 to 24. Moses' father-in-law, jet Row sends word to him.

Hey Moses, I you know your father-in-law, Jeff. Hey, I'm coming to you and by the way, I'm bringing your wife and two kids. The first question we gotta ask is, why is the father-in-law bringing the wife and two kids, why are the wife and two kids not with Moses? We're gonna see the type of wife that Moses was living, and now we probably understand why the wife and kids were living with the father-in-law and why the father-in-law was making a trip to go see Moses.

Verse 13, he says, it says the next day Moses took his seat to serve as judge for the people, and they stood around him from mourning until evening. Now, when his father-in-law saw all that Moses was doing for the people, He said, what is this you're doing for the people? Why are you alone sitting as judge while all these people stand around you from morning till evening?

Well, Moses said, I'm the only one who can do it. I'll do it better myself. He says because the people come to me to see God's will. And when I, whenever they've got a dispute, it's brought to me, so I have to decide between the two parties. I have to inform them of God's decrees and God's instructions.

Moses' father-in-law replied, what you're doing is not good. You and these people who comped you will only wear yourselves. The work is too heavy for you and you can't handle it alone. Listen now to me. I'll give you some advice and may God be with you. You must be the people's representative before God.

You must bring the people's disputes to him. Teach them his decrees and his instructions, and show them the way that they're to live and how to behave. And then go and select capable men from amongst the people who fear God, people who you can trust, people who hate dishonest gain, that can't be bribed.

And then go and appoint them as officials over thousands, appoint them over the hundreds, over the fifties, and over the tens. Then have them serve as a judge. The judges for the people at all times. But there's gonna be some difficult cases that have come up. And when the those cases come, have them bring the difficult cases to you.

The simple cases, they can decide themselves, that will make your load lighter cuz they'll share it with you if you do this in God. So commands. You'll be able, and that it's interesting if you do this and God so commands, you got Moses who talks to God on a regular basis, but it's father-in-law telling him God's commanding this.

He says, if you do this and God so commands, you will be able to stand the strain and all the people will go home satisfied. And so Moses listened to his father-in-law and did everything that he. So Moses received the help. But what we see is like Moses had that mindset and that mindset is, you know what?

I can do it better myself. And he's doing it all himself. And as a result, his marriage looks like it stinks. And once again, I'm reading a little bit into it, but like the wife and kids are living with the father-in-law. So the father-in-law is trying to get Moses to have a little bit better balance in his.

To let go of that, that, that pride, that he's the only one that can do this job, and mainly so he can probably get his house back to himself again.

Next problem with pride is pride ultimately keeps us from admitting fault. See, pride, proud people. They can't admit that they're and we all know, people who are like that, people that even when they're in the wrong, they won't say they're in the wrong and they won't say that they're sorry.

We all know people who won't say that they're sorry. And this is so destructive on relationships. It's destructive on families. It's destructive within marriages. It's destructive within relationships between parents and kids. You have maybe teenagers that have done things that they shouldn't have done and got caught.

Or they said they were maybe mowed the yard or cleaned the room and didn't, they won't say, listen, I'm sorry and I'm wrong. They just won't say it, but you got likewise parents who maybe flew off the handle and were overly harsher or maybe didn't really understand the full situation, that won't admit they're wrong.

And this creates all kinds of difficulties. It's destructive in the workplace when people won't admit fault. We've all worked with people that when things go right, they want the credit. But when things go wrong it's always someone else's fault. They won't say, you know what, I really messed up on this.

I really made a mistake. Have you heard, ever heard a politician say, man, I really screw that up. They don't you don't really hear that too much from pastors either, or leaders of many kinds. And that's because ultimately a proud person can't say, I messed.

And Jesus warns of this. Look at Matthew chapter seven verses three to five. He's talking to proud people here. He says, why do you look at the speck of saw dust in your brother's eye and you're not even paying attention to the plank in your own? How can you save your brother? Hey, let me take that spec outta your eye when all the time you got a plank in your own.

You hypocrite, you proud person first. How about getting rid of that plank in your own eye and then you'll see clearly enough to remove the speck in your brothers? The problem with a proud person is they can never see what's in their own eyes. They're only able to see what's in yours.

And then the last one, and then just some closing thoughts after that. Pride. Ultimately it keeps us from accurately seeing ourselves and from accurately seeing others. Let's look at the two angles of a proud person that thinks they're really great if they were to ask.

Objective friends, they would not see them as great as they see themselves. They're not accurately seeing themselves. They're like looking into those mirrors at the funhouse that make, short people tall and, fat people skinny. They're paying attention to their strengths.

And that's all they focus on. And they're dismissing their weaknesses. And so they're not objectively seeing themselves people who are on the other end. All they're seeing is how all their failings and how miserable and how bad everything is, and they're not recognizing what they're good at.

They're not recognizing what's good in their life. And so they're skewed in terms of how they see themselves. And the problem is if we don't see ourselves appropriately,

Then we can't have a healthy view of others. And once again, and a proud person up here who thinks they're really great and arrogant, they don't appropriately see other people because they don't see any of their flaws. They just see their greatness. But all they see in you is your flaws, and that helps 'em to keep feeling that they're great.

And a person who's on this end of the spectrum, who only you know, sees their flaws when they look at you, they don't see your flaws. They don't see what's bad in your life and what your struggles are. They just see what's great and so when we don't have a healthy view of ourselves, we can't have a healthy view of others and is extremely destructive to relationships.

So what can we do? How do we battle pride? It doesn't matter if you're an arrogant, proud person or you're a woe is me proud person. The first thing that you gotta do is you gotta start thinking about yourself less because this person up here that, that is arrogant, proud, they're always thinking about how great they are and what they can do, and what they can be and what they've done.

It's always them. Think about yourself less. And if you're down here, it's how miserable you are and how woeful everything is and you never get a break and you can't ever do anything. Once again, think about yourself less. And the Bible gives us a phrase for this. It's called humble yourself.

Look at Matthew 2312. For those who exalt themselves will be humble. And those who humble themselves will be exalted. That's Jesus speaking. Then James four 10, humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. One Peter five, six, humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you.

The phrase is humble yourself. It's not. God's not gonna do it. He can do it. Can do some things to humble you, but ultimately humble yourself. No one can force you to be humble. It's gotta be an act of your will. You gotta just choose to stop obsessing about yourself. Stop obsessing about how great you are.

Stop obsessing about how miserable you are. Stop obsessing about how rich you are. Stop obsessing how poor you are. Stop obsessing about, stop thinking about.

I, it's as you go through life is the spotlight on you, on your greatness or on your misery, but it's on you. It's just me

or is it where it should be like on Christ and others? And when we take that spotlight off of ourselves and we turn it to Christ and we turn it to others that. That is where we humble ourselves and it's so hard to do in today's culture because today's culture it's about me. Social media, Instagram, Facebook.

It's about me. Look at my vacation. I'm just taking, look at my new vehicle. Look at my amazing family. Look at my kids. Look at this. Look at that. We take pictures and video ourselves, from high because I look better here than this way. But in, in the end, it's just pride.

It's about me, it's about me, it's about me. And this is the world in which we live. And it's a celebration of me. And what we gotta realize is that pride is detestable to God. He hates it. It's an abomination. And when you can teach yourself to think of yourself less and think about others and God more, then you will have imprisoned the devil in all of us that has destroyed so many lives, so many relationships, and even faiths, and that devil is none other than pride.

Would you join me in a word of. Gracious Almighty God, as we hear this word today, I pray that we would open our hearts and minds to the possibility that in fact, we have some pride that we did not realize that we do have.

I pray, gracious God, that you would help us to think less about ourselves, less about our wants, our desires, and more about you and about others. I pray gracious God. You would help us to drop the pride of trying to pretend to be the perfect person with the perfect life and where we need help, that we would just admit it and that we'd look to you, and that we would look to other professionals that might be able to help us with whatever it is that we're struggling with.

Gracious God, we know that. That pride is an abomination before you help us to not be proud people. But I pray, gracious God, that we would by the power of your Holy Spirit, humble ourselves

as your son showed us what it was like to humble. He who being very nature God humbled himself to a servant and became obedient to death, even death on the cross. Keep our eyes focused on, on him, and on the cross and on others. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.