Love Destroys Pride, Part 1

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. Now if you think about it, when I love God with all that I have, I see God for who He is.

But something else happens. I see me for who I am. If I'm consumed with my love for God, think of Isaiah. He saw God.

And what was his response? I saw God. I saw God. I said, hey.

Right? He just said, wow, I saw God. He said, whoa, I'm undone.

I'm undone. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. This is a terrible sin that almost always we overlook. Andrew Murray said this. It is the root of every sin and evil.

John Bloom wrote this. He said this sin marks ambition. He said it perverts sexual desire into unspeakable lust. It interprets net worth as though it's self-worth and it twists competition into conquest. It has been championed by the Greeks, the Romans and the Americans. It has been embraced by philosophers from Aristotle to Nietzsche. But God hates it.

And he says, I hate it. Jesus said that it defiles a man. And the Bible says. That it always precedes destruction.

Talking about. Pride. And the reason I'm talking about pride is since the beginning of this pandemic, pride seems to be on the rise.

And not just with the culture. But in the Church of Jesus Christ. I've had conversations with believers who want to let me know and the world know that I have my rights.

No one is going to tell me what to do. It's pride. Those are statements of pride.

They have no place in the life of a follower of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, are you willing to be last? So that you could be first. Are you willing to serve? Everybody.

Brothers and sisters in Christ and the world at large, your world. How do we overcome the sin of pride? By the way, if you are a proud fool, you don't think this is for you at all.

Just talk to someone who you trust and knows you well. My experience with powerful people is they never see it. But everyone else does. You see, how do we overcome? Our pride. We know that the opposite of pride is humility. That's how we do it. You know, that's how you destroy pride with humility.

Yeah, but how do you do that? I will make myself humble. That's how we'll do it. You can't make yourself humble. Humility is the result of a process.

And in fact, if we could make ourselves humble, would be proud of it. But there's a different approach in the word of God. I invite you to start with me in Matthew, chapter 22 and verse 34. Verse 34 says, But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together. And one of them, a lawyer. That means, by the way, he's a scribe. One of them, a lawyer, ask him a question.

Actually, the word questions in italics is not in the text. Ask him to test him. This scribe wants to test Jesus because they realize that when Jesus talked to the Sadducees, he made them look like fools. So he wants to turn the tables on Jesus and ask him a question.

He said, teacher or rabbi. Which is the great commandment of the law, the law being from Genesis to Malachi? What is the great commandment of the Old Testament? Notice that Matthew doesn't say and Jesus pondered this and thought deeply about it.

He just spoke it. He said, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment.

The second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself on these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets. Jesus said, if you want me to summarize. The way God wants you to live from Genesis to Malachi. Here it is. And I'm telling you, if you wanted to say, how does God want us to live from Genesis to Revelation?

Here it is. That's Jesus statement. He said you are to love God.

With all you have. Everything about you and the words going to be used that I'm using this morning for love is the word agape. OK, that that we get in a lot of trouble in our culture, the way we use the word love. Love fluctuates. In our culture and you hear it and I hear this often, I've heard it just not long ago.

Someone in a marriage tells their spouse. I don't love you anymore. As though that justifies what they're about to do, I don't love you anymore.

And our culture says, well, what can they do? They don't love each other. That's not this word. You see, the three words in the New Testament, the first word is follow. That means friendship, relationship. The second is eros. That means physical attraction. And you could see how those would fluctuate.

Hey, you fight with your spouse for six months, you might not want to be as close of friends as you were before. And the Bible says beauty fades, falls under the law of diminishing returns. But this is agape.

This is your choice. Agape is a willful choice to love. That is a very different thing. It's exactly the way God loves us. It's non-conditional.

It's agape. And he says that's the way you have to choose to love God this way. Now, if you think about it, when I love God with all that I have, I see God for who He is.

But something else happens. I see me for who I am. If I'm consumed with my love for God. Think of Isaiah. He saw God. And what was his response? I saw God, I saw God, I said hey.

Right? He just said, wow, I saw God. He said, wow, I'm undone.

I'm undone. Remember the book of Job? We've talked about that a lot in the book of Job. Job just said I'd like to have an audience before him because I'd like to know why I'm going through all this. And then God appeared to Job and he saw God. How'd that work out? Job repented in sackcloth and ashes.

Why? He saw God. You see, that's what happens when we say that we see God. I see my nothingness in the presence of His greatness. I see my sinfulness in the presence of His holiness. So once I really have a consuming love for God and see God the way He is, I see me for the way I am.

And there's something that that does to me. It challenges and beats out my pride. What am I proud of? How do I stand before God and I'm proud? He says you also love your neighbors yourself. Let me follow this up with what Paul says about that for us. Go with me to Philippians chapter 2. Philippians chapter 2, the first four verses. The apostle Paul says this, therefore, if there is any encouragement in Christ.

By the way, these are first class conditions of assumption in the Greek. It means of course there is. Is there any encouragement in Christ? Yes. Is there any consolation of love? Yes. Is there any fellowship of the Spirit? Yes. Is there any affection and compassion?

Yes. Then you make my joy complete, Paul said, by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intended on one purpose. He said, let me explain what I'm saying here.

Let me try to tell you what this looks like. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit. So what can I do for my empty conceit, my pride? What are the things that I can do as a believer in Jesus Christ? The champion, my own pride.

He said nothing. He said, but with humility of mind, regard one another as more important than you yourselves. Do not merely look out for your own interest, but look out for the interest of others.

Do you do that? Is everybody else in the world more important to you? Do you look out for their interests? Is that what you care about? Is that what you're preoccupied with?

You see, this is sort of like through this pandemic, I think a lot of our mindsets are every man for himself. You know, we just I've got to get this. I'd love to deal with you people, but I can't right now. I'm dealing with me.

He said, well, that's not exactly loving. Your neighbor is yourself. I mean, you want a simple illustration. Think of the whole controversy, even in the church. But think of the whole controversy of wearing masks. No matter what the epidemiologists, the biologists say, no matter what the government says, local government, state government, no matter.

We turn this into something. You know why I wear a mask? For you.

Not for me. In fact, that's what they even told us. The medical community has said you wear a mask for other people. So the idea I'm not wearing a mask because I know my rights, that's just empty pride.

You wear a mask because you love other people. It's as simple as that. We consider the other people as more important than us.

That's the way we love our neighbors ourselves. Notice he goes on. He says, look, have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus. You want to be like Jesus?

Then destroy your pride. You want to be like Jesus? Be sacrificial. You want to be like Jesus? He said, who although he existed in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.

He emptied himself, taking the form of a bondservant being, he said, made in the likeness of men. Being found in the appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even to the death on the cross. And therefore, for this reason, God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above all names. If there's someone in the universe that could be proud, it's the Son of God. I mean, after all, I am the Son of God. I'm part of the triune God. And how did he solve our dilemma? He humbled himself. You've heard me say this before, but when the Son of God became a man, it'd be just like me becoming a slug.

And there's probably more distance between him and man than there is between me and a slug. He said, I'll do that, but not just any man. I'll become a servant of them all.

Why? I consider them all as more important than me. Not just that. I'll go to the cross and die an unfair death for them. The sacrificial love of humility. He said, God loves that. He bestowed him a name above all names. He exalted him just like he would us when we don't act out of pride, but we do act out of humility.

Why did he do that? Go with me to Romans chapter 5. Romans chapter 5. It's a great chapter, one of my favorite in the New Testament.

He starts out in verse 1. He says, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That's what happened when Christ emptied himself, went to the cross. You and I, as sinful people, have a relationship with God. We have peace with God. We've been reconciled with God. He says, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we exalt in hope of the glory of God. Not only this. He said, we exalt in our tribulations.

I talked about this before. Even in the pandemic, we exalt in our tribulations knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance. Perseverance brings about proven character, proven character hope. Hope doesn't disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Then he writes this. For while we were still helpless at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for a good man someone would dare even die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us. How does God demonstrate his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us?

Wow. That humbling of the Son of God ends up demonstrating his love toward us. That we are enmity, Paul says in Romans, with God. We're not as friends. We are enmity with God.

We are lost in our sin. He said, yeah, but I love them. And so I would die for them. You see, his love is demonstrated by his sacrifice. How is your love demonstrated?

What is your sacrifice? See, how do you show your love? To who? To the rest of the world. How do you show your love? To your brothers and sisters in Christ, your neighbors.

How do you do that? Or do you at all? You see, that's a very important part. You see, when it comes to pride and humility, the key is love. How does a proud person become humble, love, agape?

They love God with everything they have, and they love everybody else like they love themselves. That's the solution to pride. You will never, ever overcome pride if you don't love. You never will. And you'll never be conformed to the image of your Savior while on earth. You'll live your whole life in pride, which God says he hates. It's an amazing thing.

I can still remember how shocked I was the first time I went to conferences with a lot of other pastors from around the country. And really, when you just sit and listen to the conversation, so much of it was simply one upmanship. Oh, you have something to brag about? You know what I have to brag about. Let me tell you what I've done. Well, I can tell you what you've done. Nothing.

Same as me. This is Jesus Christ. We're all susceptible to this. Turn with me now to 1 Corinthians chapter 13. This is an amazing set of verses in light of what I'm talking about this morning. I'm sure most of you know this, but what was the Church of Corinth like? It was, by a mile, the worst church in the New Testament.

In any area it could be wrong, it was wrong. And when you read the whole book, guess what Paul is able to illustrate? What was the root of all their wrongness? Pride.

They were man-followers, name-droppers, they were everything you could be. They even took spiritual gifts, graces from God, and made them an issue of pride. And Paul's like, what are you doing? There is nothing in our experience or lives as important for you and for me as to love God with everything we have and love others like we love ourselves.

There's nothing more important than that. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called oneplace.com. That's oneplace.com and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.

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