Bible Verse: Luke 14:1, 7-11
Full Sermon Transcript
WELCOME
Pastor Chris Paavola:
Once again, everybody, good morning. I was sitting here going, I got to stop thinking about what just happened with this great Bible giveaway. I have a sermon to preach. I’m choked up with every child. It was awesome. Wasn’t that awesome? It was just wonderful. Yeah. The Great Bible Giveaway is one of my favorite Sundays of the year. I think it did this to you too. It makes you go, oh yeah, I need to treasure this book for myself as well. I need to cherish this book and read it for myself. It’s that important for a child and it’s that important for me. So I hope at least that’s one takeaway you have. But thank you guys for being a church that supports kids, and for being a church the next generation calls their own. Thank you for your generosity to be able to give Bibles like this to children.
It’s awesome. So thank you guys so much. And part of the reason we give Bibles to kids, kids, part of the reason we gave you a Bible is it’s a book about how much God loves you and his love for you, but also his wisdom for you. Things in that book that can help you be wise.
ABOUT THIS SERIES
And that’s really what we’re talking about in this entire series that we’re going to get into now called Two Types of People. And in this series, we’re getting wisdom for life according to the Proverbs of Solomon that are right in the middle of your Bible. And these are ancient proverbs from a king named Solomon who the Bible calls the wisest man who ever lived. And so he gives advice and tips and insight on a wide variety of topics, but usually when he does his Proverbs, his writing style, he compares two types of people, A or B, this or that, and then you have application from there.
So in week one, we talked about the wise and the foolish. And the difference between them is how do they respond to the truth? In week two, we talked about the wicked and the righteous and the difference between them according to Solomon is how do they respond to commands or law, whether it’s God’s law, government’s law or grandma’s law. Week three then, we talked about the patience and the quick temper, and we actually learned breathing exercises that Solomon talks about. And then in week four last week, we talked about the blessing and the cursing and what that means, like people who are blessers and people who are cursers. And we expanded or we narrowed down our definition from a broad definition of blessing down to a narrow definition. And we talked about what a blessing really is in its original sense. And then with cursing, we kind of expanded it from a narrow definition that we have into what it really is, what we’re doing when we say cursings.
And I gave you guys a challenge at the end, a blessing challenge to go and bless somebody in your life who needs a blessing, speak a blessing over them. We did that as a staff on Tuesday because we’re going through this as a series, as a staff, we’re planning things. And so on Tuesday, we went around the table and as a staff, we blessed each other. It was tears. I know you think I cry all the time, but it was other people crying too. And they were crying because blessings are just so rare. When somebody is speaking edifying positive words over you and prescribing a future for you and lifting you up, man, it was powerful. And I hope you had that same experience.
ABOUT THIS WEEK
If you didn’t, that’s okay because today we get another challenge that we’re going to be talking about two types of people and then I’m going to end with a challenge for you this week to put this into practice because today we’re talking about the humble and the proud, the humble and the proud.
THE HUMBLE AND THE PROUD
And we kind of have a pretty good idea of what these words mean. Humble is where you don’t think of yourself too highly and proud is where you think of yourself too highly. But when I say the word proud, I don’t mean like proud to be an American, proud parent of an honor roll student bumper sticker. That’s not the proud I’m talking about today or that Solomon’s going to be talking about. The proud he’s talking about is the proud that really enjoys yelling at people in traffic. The proud that really is competitive. The proud that refuses to apologize or say the words I was wrong. You were right.
The proud that doesn’t forgive someone holds a grudge because it’s something you can hold over them. The proud that hurts us in the long run, damages our relationships. The proud that, because you guys know the pride goes before a fall. Actually, that’s what Solomon said. You know half the proverbs. So you had the Bible memorized and didn’t even realize it. Solomon in Proverbs 16:18 says “Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.
Proverbs 16:18
So that phrase is a conflation of that proverb. Pride goes before a fall. There it is. That’s the origin of that statement. Solomon, Proverbs 16:18. But he kind of does the comparison thing and another Proverbs, Proverbs 18:12 where he says “Before a downfall a person’s heart is proud, but humility comes before honor.”
Before a downfall a person’s heart is proud, but humility comes before honor.
Proverbs 18:12
So, he’s saying you could trace it back. You see somebody who had a downfall, see the fall, trace it back, you’ll find pride.
See somebody being honored, trace it back somewhere along the way, you see humility. It’s kind of this self-fulfilling prophecy, this promise of Solomon and this proverb. Before a downfall, a person’s heart is proud, but humility comes before honor. And there’s kind of again, a promise to this, but the reason he says this is because it’s deceiving. If it was obvious, he wouldn’t have to say something. It’s a proverb because it’s hidden and we miss it. A couple years ago, like three years ago before the whole construction out there, we had those doors. I don’t know if you remember if you were here at the time. And then there’s a sidewalk. It was just a step up. And we decided to make it a little bit more accessible because the ramp was further down. So we decided to cut out a small section on the sidewalk right by the front door and make a little ramp right there.
Do you guys remember that? So we made this little ramp and it was just to be accessible. And the week that we did that, the very first week that we did that, three people bit it on that sidewalk. They thought the ramp was extended further out. I guess our peripheral vision doesn’t go down or whatever and people saw the ramp, they’d walk in and then they would trip on the curb. And I was like, “Oh no, we are going to have little tally marks on the wall for people that bite it here. This is not good.” So we decided to paint a little yellow strip on the curb there so people wouldn’t trip. And wouldn’t you know it, just that simple little social engineering thing, painting that strip, no more trips. They stopped. And that’s what Solomon is doing here with this proverb. He’s painting a little yellow strip.
Be careful so you don’t fall. Here’s the thing that’s going to trip you up. It’s pride. And the reason pride trips us up, one of the main reasons we don’t see it and we trip on it and we have the downfall is because we can’t see it in ourselves very well or we can see it in other people. You have a radar to pick up other people’s pride and you’re like, “Oh, she is so arrogant. She thinks he’s all that. He thinks his…” We see it so easily in others, but we miss it in ourselves.
TESTING YOUR PRIDE
So, I’ve got a little quiz here, 10 questions. We’re going to test areas that might be a trip up for you with your pride, things that might make you stumble. And it’s going to be a 10 finger quiz. So you don’t have to hold it up or anything, but just kind of hold up or put up a finger for every one of these that applies to you.
And if you don’t want to do this already, give yourself one finger. Okay, so here we go.
First question, hold up one finger if you are competitive at board games. You don’t have to do this. You can put it just down here discreet. Maybe you need two fingers. All right, here we go.
Second one, hold up a finger if you’re wearing anything that’s a name brand. And if you’re like, well, it was on sale. Now you’re justifying yourself. That’s pride. Okay? So there you go. Second finger.
Third one, hold up a finger if you get offended when someone cuts you off in traffic.
Hold up a finger if you have a hard time asking for help.
Hold up a finger if you have a hard time saying the words I was wrong. This is going to be an interesting one and you have to think about kind of why.
Hold up a finger if you are often anxious.
Hold a finger if you have a hard time watching others succeed, if you get jealous. Okay, this is one that’s going to cut a lot of us.
Hold up a finger if you use sarcasm or teasing as humor.
Hold up a finger if you don’t want others to look at how many fingers you’re holding up.
And then, okay, hold up a finger if you want others to look at how many fingers you aren’t holding up.
That’s called proud of being humble. I’m so humble. And here’s why, I mean, we miss this and we’re like, oh yeah, that’s kind of true. Oh yeah, that’s true. And for some of us, it’s one thing. For some of us it’s another. But the reason we trip up on it is because it feels so good. If something feels so right, how can it be wrong? It feels so good to win at Monopoly.
You prove your intellectual superiority over your family members, right?
It feels so good to win at a football game or to wear the crown, to get the medal, to be crowns, homecoming king and homecoming queen. It feels so good. It feels so good to wear a brand, brands, brands, brands, right? All marketing with TV commercials, internet ads, magazine ads, all they’re doing is appealing to our ego and our vanity. Drive this, wear this, eat this, drink this, buy this, and you will be the envy of the people around you. You will feel better. It feels good to yell at somebody in traffic. It feels good to hold a grudge and not apologize because then you can have something over the other person. It feels good.
It feels good when others fail. It feels good when we cut people down with sarcasm and teasing and it builds up our proud heart. And then think about the lyrics of the songs we listen to, y’all. I want to kiss myself. I’m so pretty. Too hot, right? Call the police and the fire, man. It feels good to take a Louisville slugger to both headlights. It feels good to be that girl on the scene, the dancing queen, and everyone’s watching you. It feels good. And humility doesn’t feel good. It hurts to be humbled because it’s hard to be humiliated. I say it often, humiliation is the path to humility and it’s hard to bite your tongue in traffic. It’s hard to compliment somebody your envious of. It’s hard to come in second place, to get passed over for the promotion, to not win the most popular in the class.
It’s hard. My dad growing up used to tell me, don’t pray for humility because God gives us humility by humbling us. I think you can pray for humility. It’s fine, but his point is that it’s hard to be humbled. It hurts. And the longer you sit with us, the more you realize, check this out, in the Proverbs of Solomon, you get the sense that proud is the path we want that leads to the life we don’t want. And humble is the path we don’t want that leads to the life we do. You want honor. You want glory riches fame, but it comes in a way that doesn’t make sense to us. It’s like long-term view or shortsightedness.
BECOMING LIKE GOD
Now, when you think about pride and humility, if pride goes before a fall, well, if we’re taking this painted yellow strip analogy, what is the thing that can tip us off that we’re about to become proud? What’s the thing that triggers all of this? And as I sat with this a little bit, which is what I think you should do with a proverb, you’re supposed to sit with it. The longer I sat with it, the more I realized that the source of pride and the source of humility is the same thing. Say it another way. If pride goes before a fall, well, what comes before pride? And if humility goes before honor, well, what comes before humility? And wouldn’t you know it? It’s the same thing.
COMPARISON
There’s a guy named C.S. Lewis and he writes this about pride. He says, “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something. Pride only gets pleasure out of having more of it than the next person.” We say that people are proud of being rich or clever or good looking, but they’re not. They’re proud of being richer, cleverer, or better looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich or equally clever or equally good looking, there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud, comparison, the pleasure of being above the rest.” And I like how he ends it there.
It’s being above others and it starts with a comparison. You compare yourself to others and you want to be above them. And so pride is elevating yourself over others at their expense often, and humility is elevating others at your own expense. And what’s so interesting when you think about this word comparison is when you look back through the Bible, it’s comparison that makes the devil the devil. So Satan, in the very beginning in creation, it talks about how Satan looked on God’s throne and was jealous of him.
I will make myself like the Most High.
Isaiah 14:14
He was insecure. It wasn’t fair. He’s on the throne, not me. And then a book called Isaiah, it writes about the conversation that God had with him and it says, “You told yourself, Satan”, so this is God talking to Satan. “I will go up to heaven. I will put my throne above God’s stars. I will sit on the mountain of the gods, on the slopes of the sacred mountain. I will go up above the tops of the clouds. I will be,” say it:
Response “Like God most high.”
Pastor Chris Paavola; “I will be like God.”, comparison. And it leads to pride. And what happens? God ends the rebellion. He casts Satan and a third of the angels out of heaven and sends them into the depths of hell.
And Solomon’s prophecy is proven true. Pride goes before the fall of Satan and before pride was comparison. This is why God, when he talks about pride and the proud and the arrogance and the haughty and the vain, he says, “I hate it. I detest it. I abhor it because it was the first sin and it led to all other sin.” And if you think about any of your sins, lying, cheating, stealing, killing, doesn’t matter. Name the sin, behind it is a proud heart. Every argument ever argued, every war ever wage started with proud people who were too proud to stop.
And so he makes the first command, “Thou shall have no other gods before me.” He knows comparison is in our heart. This is the first and greatest command. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. And speaking to comparison, and it shouldn’t surprise us then, check this out, that Satan who fell from heaven because of pride after he compared himself to God, when he tempted Eve, what did he do?
God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God…
Genesis 3:5
When he tempted Adam and Eve, he started with comparison. He did. The Garden of Eden is perfect. Everything’s great. And Satan goes up to Eve one day and says, “Hey Eve, did God really say you must not eat from the tree in the center of the garden?” She goes, “Yeah, that’s what he said because if we eat it, we’ll die.” And he goes, “You’re not going to die.” Take a look what he says. “God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be open and you will be” say it:
Response: “like God,”
Pastor Chris Paavola: “knowing good and evil.” And so she ate. And once again, Solomon’s prophecy proves true. Pride goes before the fall of humanity and before pride was comparison.
And I love this because God, what’s his solution? Well, he looks at this proud and fallen humanity and he’s like, okay, you want to be like God? Watch this. And God becomes like man. And he lowers himself and is humiliated and takes on flesh, but it gets better. He lowers himself and is humiliated and is born in poverty, but he gets better. He lowers himself and humiliates himself and lives under tyrannical rule of Caesar, but he gets better. He lowers himself and is humiliated and dies on a criminal’s cross, a shameful death that he didn’t deserve, but he gets better.
The third day he rises from the grave and he ascends into heaven and he is seated at the right hand of God receiving all glory, praise and honor. And Solomon’s proverb becomes prophetic once again. Before a downfall, a person’s heart is proud, but with Christ, our humble servants, humility comes before honor. And then he looks at us and says, all right, you want to be like God? Your turn. Pick up your cross and follow me and you will be like God. The apostle Paul in the book of Philippians, he talks about have this mind, this attitude in you that was in Christ Jesus and honor one another above yourselves, humble yourselves.
HUMILITY CHALLENGE
And so, this leaves us with a challenge then to be humble. Pride is like a muscle, being proud is like a muscle. You can build it up. You can have a lot of things that give you pride, but the more you use it, the more you exercise it, the more proud you can become. But the same is true of humility. It’s another muscle. And if you exercise it, it can be built up. And there are things that you can do to kill your pride and humble yourselves and lift each other up. I’m going to give you five and I’m going to ask you this week, your challenge is to do two of them. One of them you’re going to do in here. So it’s already just like an easy layup. Okay? So your challenge, this is a humility challenge for you this week. Do two of these. Here we go.
First one, say the words I’m sorry to someone. Now this might not apply to you, but if it does, it just came to mind. You just thought of it instantly, it just came to mind. Someone you need to say I’m sorry to, use those words. Don’t say, I felt bad about that. Don’t say, I’m sorry, but when I did that, I did that. Don’t explain it away. I’m sorry, period. End of sentence. Their turn. Okay? Just say, I’m sorry. And you will lower yourself and raise them up.
Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.
Proverbs 28:13
Solomon in Proverbs talks about how confession brings health to the bones.
Second one, serve in secret. Jesus talks about this a lot, but he talks about one time in particular, if you do a good deed, don’t let others see it. Do it in secret. Now, there’s other places where he talks about letting your light shine before people. And so there’s a balance here, but when you do a good deed and others see it and praise you for it, you’ve already received your word. Do something in secret that takes your pride completely out of it. Do something in secret and great as your reward in heaven. So what does this look like for you? Who is someone in your life that you can serve, something you can do to bless them, to surprise them, do something for them and make them wonder, who mowed my lawn?
Who was that masked man? Do something that doesn’t get you the credit. Okay? Second one.
Third one, ask someone about themselves. Everybody’s favorite topic is themselves, right? So it’s funny, if you listen to people talk to each other, sometimes it will be a conversation where they’re just saying things about themselves. And that reminds me of a time that I, and this is Johnny, one better conversation. They’re trying to, and it’s me, me, me, I, I, me, me, me, I, me, me. It’s all about, and they’re just talking about themselves. It’s exhausting and a boring conversation, right? So if this is you and you’d like to talk about yourself, I don’t necessarily cast a dispersion of that. I get it. Some of us are verbal processors, but just go up to somebody, have a conversation and ask them about them. Ask them about that doctor’s visit.
Ask them about their vacation. And then just listen. Don’t try to be like, “Oh, I also did that.” No, just listen. Just listen. Listen, Linda. Linda, listen. Just let them talk and ask questions about them and you will kill your pride. You will humble yourself, lower yourself and raise them up. Two more.
Sing someone else’s praise to them. I have somebody in my life who will praise me to other people, but never to me. They compliment me to other people and then there’ll be people like, “They think you’re so…” And I’m like, “They’ve never said that to me.” There’s our pride there where it’s like, especially if you’re jealous of their success, that’s probably the person that you could do this to. Watch what happens to your heart when you compliment somebody that you’re secretly envious of. Watch what happens and watch what happens to your heart when you lower yourself and elevate them.
Last one, sing God’s praise to him.
Praise. What we did this morning is we sat in here saying, “Praise to the Lord the Almighty who prospers your work and defends you. Joyful, joyful. We adore thee. You are boasting about him to him. You’re praising his name, not your own. You’re making his name great, not your own. You’re lifting up his glory high and lift it up. We praise you, God. And when you do that, you’re doing that at your own expense. You’re choosing to do that instead of praising yourself and you’re humbling yourself. I mean, think about it. If Satan looks at God and compares himself to God and wants to be like him, that’s one response.
But our response is to look at him and be like,” You’re amazing. You’re incredible. “Humility. Solomon actually calls this kind of boasting, this praise, this recognition of God’s greatness and our not greatness. He calls it a word and a phrase that it hits our ears wrong. It doesn’t sound But he calls praise. He calls worship the fear of the Lord, the fear of the Lord. If you look through Proverbs, it’s everywhere. It’s another word for worship, praise. Comparison that makes you go, “Wow, you’re awesome.” Reverence. So there you go. That’s your humility challenge. We’re going to do one of those in just a moment. We’re going to sing God’s praise to him. In just a moment, we’re going to close the song where we sing praise. We lift him up. Check. Look, you already got one done. You got four more to choose from. This week, your challenge is to humble yourself in the sight of the Lord that he may lift you up.
And once again, when you do that, when you do that this week, I promise you what has been true will be true. Before downfall, a person’s heart is proud. But, but after humility, after you humble yourself, you will be honored. Let’s pray.
PRAYER
First thing really, we need to say, God, is we’re sorry. We are so overwhelmingly proud. We are a proud people. And you want what’s best for us, and so you warn us against it. You want to protect us from the ruin and the downfall. And so God, first forgive us. We want to humble ourselves, lower ourselves, that you may lift us up in due time.
And God, would you show us areas of our life, maybe even areas we haven’t touched on in these past few moments together, but areas in our life where we are proud. And it’s hard to pray, but we trust that you’re a good God. Humble us, Lord. Make us humble. You may lift us up in due time. You may bring honor to us. So God, help us to trust you when humility is hard, believing that your promises, your riches, your blessing are in the wings. And God, we thank you for Christ who humbled himself all the way to a cross. And he taught us to pray about your kingdom, not our own. And so we pray his words as we close:
Our father,
Who art in heaven,
Hollowed be thy name,
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven,
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us,
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil,
For thine is the kingdom,
And the power,
And the glory,
Forever and ever,
Amen.
