PRIDE AND RICHES

WHAT IS PRIDE?

Pride is the opposite of humility. It a spirit of arrogance that enters a man lifting them to see themselves above others and to think that they are on top of the world. A best example here is king Uzziah the son of Amaziah who reigned fifty-two years in Jerusalem (2 Chr. 26:15-16) “And he made devices in Jerusalem, invented by skillful men, to be on the towers and the corners, to shoot arrows and large stones. So his fame spread far and wide, for he was marvelously helped till he became strong. But when he was strong his heart was lifted up, to his destruction, for he transgressed against the Lord his God by entering the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense” (Kindly secure some of your time to read the whole chapter to see the outcome of this king) The self-exalting attitude of pride seeks to dislodge God as the center of all things and deny Him the glory that is due Him. Pride stands behind the fall of Satan and the fall of Adam and Eve. Pride infects each one of us and involves trusting in oneself and exalting oneself above God. A proud person does not feel a need for God as Savior. It can also show itself in our tendency to boast about what we have received as a gift from God, such as ancestry or personal abilities or spiritual gifts. These things should be considered worthless compared to knowing Christ. Pride easily becomes a part of our lives if we do not consider or regard the giver or the lifter of men. Because the Bible places a high emphasis on the humility that keeps us receptive to the Lord and His word (Phil.2:3-4) “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each one esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interest of others,” there are warnings against pride in the Old and the New Testaments (Deut. 8:11-18) “For the land which you go to possess is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and watered it by foot, as a vegetable garden; but the land which you cross over to possess is a land of hills and valleys which drinks water from the rain of heaven, a land for which the Lord your God cares; the eyes of the Lord your God  are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the very end of the year.”

It had not come to my knowledge that the land the Lord gave to the children of Israel was almost similar to that of Eden!  A land where God Himself cares for, from the beginning of the year to its very end. God in His mindset and plan for man, He never wanted us to sweat to get our daily bread; but because of man’s pride and disobedience we suffer lack and want as it is experienced in our lives today. (V. 13) “And it shall be that if you earnestly obey My commandments which I command you today, to love the Lord your God and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, then I will give you the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, your new wine and your oil. And I will send grass in your fields for your livestock that you may eat and be filled.”  Man is just sinful, pride and disobedience in nature and I wonder what God will do for man in the end so that man can submit fully to God to receive the good things that He wished for us and that which we are ordained to possess and not struggling and suffering, the very opposite of what He want for man. (V. 16-17) “Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them, lest the Lord’s anger be aroused against you, and He shuts up the heavens, so that there be no rain, and the land yield no produce, and you perish quickly from the good land that the Lord is giving you.” God is a God of jealous; He wants us just to serve Him alone and obey Him and in return He bestows all our needs. But just simple rules, statutes and command man cannot follow; because man thinks he is above God and he can do all things by his own knowledge and power. But however, man lifts himself up, he is not supposed to forget that life and death is in the hand of God only! Dust he came and dust he shall return empty handed as he came on this earth. In (Job 33:4) says, “The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.” Beloved, I urge us to submit to the Almighty God, the “I AM WHO AM” and let me know if your life will remain the same again. God knows who are His and He will by no means leave them nor forsake them. The Spirit of God has made us and the breath of the Almighty gives us life! Man! What will you do, when the breath of the Almighty ceases to give you life? (V. 18) “Therefore you shall lay up these words of Mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.” This is the only thing, the Lord required of us beloved, try it and see it for yourself.  The only boasting we may do is in the Lord Jesus and in His cross (Gal.6:14) “But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the Lord.”

GOD AGAINST PRIDE AND RICHES

The preacher had said, when riches increase, do not set your heart on them. In another verse he says, riches have got wings, and will fly far away like an eagle to heaven. When they get wings and fly beloved, what will we do? (Ezekiel 26:12-14) “They will plunder your riches and pillage your merchandise; they will break down your walls, and destroy your pleasant houses; they will lay your stones, your timber, and your soil in the midst of the water. I will put an end to the sound of your song, and the sound of your harps shall be heard no more. I will make you like the top of a rock; you shall be a place for spreading nets, and you shall never be rebuilt, for I the Lord have spoken,’ says the Lord God.” The political importance of Tyre at the time of Ezekiel accounts in part for the great length of prophecy against that city. Along with Babylon and Egypt, Tyre was the most glorious exhibition of worldly power in the ancient Near East. The prophecy against Tyre is an indictment against the mistaken faith which the people of the merchant city put in their world-famed riches. Unfortunately, when their riches increased their heart became proud, and as a result they made their heart “as the heart of a god” (Ezek. 28:6) “Therefore thus sys the Lord God: “Because you have set your heart as the heart of a god, behold therefore, I will bring strangers against you, the most terrible of the nations; and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of your wisdom, and defile your splendor.” Tyre was a city of merchants, and she rejoiced over the destruction of Jerusalem because a commercial competitor had been eliminated (V. 2)”Son of man, because Tyre has said against Jerusalem, ‘Aha! She is broken who was the gate way of the peoples; now she is turned over to me; I shall be filled; she is laid waste.”  This intent worldly mindedness led to heartless indifference to the destruction of Jerusalem. The secular world will never allow the ethics to get in the way of business (Joel 3:4-6; Amos 1:9) “Indeed what have you to do with Me, O Tyre and Sidon, and all the coast of Philistia? Will you retaliate against Me? But if you retaliate against Me, swiftly and speedily I will return your retaliation upon your own head;  Because you have taken My silver and My gold, and have carried into Your temples My prized possessions. Also the people of Judah and the people of Jerusalem you have sold to the Greeks, that you may remove them far from their borders;” And Amos says, Thus says the Lord, “For three transgressions of Tyre and for four, I will not return away its punishment, because they delivered up the whole captivity to Edom, And did not remember the covenant of brotherhood.” Tyre represents the world in its opposition to God, its unbridled ambition, its fleshly confidence, and its pursuit of selfish purposes. Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy (1 Tim.6:10) “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” Money is not in any way a sin to possess but when we love it and set our mind soul and heart to it; that is how now it becomes the root of evil. Money gained with the knowledge and power of the Lord will by no means control a man, but that which is gained by evil ambitions; it will by all means lead a man to wickedness for he will always do wickedness to possess it and more wickedness to acquire more of it.

CHARACTERISTICS OF A PROUD PERSON

1.       A proud person tries to be like God: (Gen. 3:4-6) “Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.” The woman met the deceiver the devil who lured her to eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Because of pride the devil had fall, and he didn’t want to be alone but enticed man also to rebel against God.

2.       A proud person thinks himself or herself better than others:  (Luke 18:10-12) “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men- extortioners, unjust, adulterous, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithe of all that I possess.”  Here we see the Pharisee justifying himself. I have been privileged to be in the Middle East for several times and in different countries and served different nationalities; I would boldly say without fear or regard any man, this is the spirit that operates in the middle east (men wearing white “kadora” in some countries and “kodra” in other countries with women in black “abayas” seems to be holier than thou and regards not, other human beings).

3.       Boasts about ancestry: (Luke 3:8) “Therefore bears fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.”

4.       Proud men take pride in the temple: (Jer. 7:4) “Do not trust in these lying words saying, “The temples of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these.”

5.       Proud men takes pride in self accomplishment: (Ezek. 28:1-5) “The word of the Lord came to me again, saying, “Son of man, say to the prince of Tyre, “Thus says the Lord God: Because your heart is lifted up, and you say, ‘I am a god, I sit in the seat of gods in the midst of the seas.’ Yet you are a man and not a god, though you set your heart as the heart a god (Behold you are wiser than Daniel! There is no secret that can be hidden from you! With your wisdom and your understanding you have gained riches for yourself, and gathered gold and silver into your treasuries; by your great wisdom in trade you have increased your riches, and your heart is lifted up because of your riches).” Pride comes before man’s fall.

NOTABLE EXAMPLES

1.       Adam and Eve: The Scripture we had seen above from (Genesis 3:5-6)

2.       David; (1 Chr. 21:1-7) “I will not write the entire Scriptures, but just brief of how Satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel without God’s consent (Please check my post about, “CONVICTION AND REPENTANCE”

3.       Uzziah: (2 Chr. 26:16) The Scripture is also above.

4.       Hezekiah: (2 Chr. 32:25) “But Hezekiah did not repay according to the favor shown him, for his heart was lifted up; therefore wrath was looming over him and over Judah and over Jerusalem.”

5.       Nebuchadnezzar: (Dan. 4:30) “The king spoke, saying, “Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for a royal dwelling by my mighty power and for the honor of my majesty” (please read to the very end to see how God humbled him).”

6.       Herod: (Acts 12:21-23) “So on a set day Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat on his throne and gave an oration to them. And the people kept shouting, “The voice of a god and not of a man!” Then immediately the angel of the Lord struck him, because he did not give glory to God. And he was eaten by worms and died.”

7.       And not forgetting the most notable one, the devil himself which out of pride was thrown from heaven to earth because as a good worshiper, he attempted to share the glory with God.

“Grace to you and Favor from God our Father and the Lord Jesus be with us all. Amen and Amen and Amen.”