Welcome to this weekend's In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. No one likes to feel weak and in need, but those moments can be our greatest catalysts of spiritual strength. Today's podcast helps us explore the obstacle to humility in the life of the believer. As a believer, which sin do you believe would be the most difficult to detect? Which one would be the hardest to confess?
Which one does God hate the most? And which one is the very opposite of humility? Now I want you to turn, if you will, to the book of 1 Peter. 1 Peter chapter 5, and I want us to read a few verses here. The title of this message is Humility, the Obstacle.
The obstacle to our humility is certainly pride. And Peter is writing to those who have been scattered abroad and he is warning them against dangers that are coming. He realizes that it is coming and he's trying to prepare them for that oncoming danger and so he's warning them and encouraging them and admonishing them to be humble, to be watchful, and to be hopeful.
And it's that first one that I want us to notice beginning in verse 1 of chapter 5. His first part is to the pastors and he says, Therefore I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed. Shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God, and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness. Nor yet is lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proven to be examples to the flock.
And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Then he says in verse 5, You younger men likewise be subject to your elders, and what he's referring to there primarily is to those more mature saints, and all of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another. For God is opposed to the proud, but He gives grace to the humble. Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your cares, your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you. So here is a word of admonition to all of us, because all of us that probably at times have to deal with this whole issue with humility, and the greatest obstacle of that is our pride. All of us are subject to it. It is very cunning, very deceitful.
It can have its roots so deep that it cannot be identified at first. But sooner or later, it's going to come out. What is God, Almighty God's attitude toward pride? Well, I want you to follow these Scriptures if you will. Let's turn first of all to Proverbs chapter six. Back to Proverbs, and we'll stay there for a few moments. Proverbs chapter six, this is God's attitude about what He says in His Word concerning this issue of pride.
And here's what He says. He says in verse sixteen, look at it if you will, chapter six, verse sixteen. There are six things which the Lord hates. He says, in fact, there are seven of them, which are an abomination to Him. Now, if anything is an abomination to God, it is absolutely repulsive. That is, God hates anything that is an abomination. It's something that He despises and it's repulsive to Him. What's His first sin He mentions?
A haughty eyes. A prideful look, God says, is something that He absolutely hates. Now, when you think about what God hates and why He hates it, why would He hate pride? Because pride says, I don't need God. And so we ask ourselves the question, well, if He hates pride, does He hate the person who is proud?
No, He does not. When He says He hates pride, that doesn't mean that He hates the person who is prideful. God loves all of us, but He also knows what is destructive to us. Look, if you will, in the eighth chapter of Proverbs and look, if you will, in verse thirteen. The eighth chapter and verse thirteen, again, He is expressing what He thinks about it and what He thinks about it is right for the simple reason, He knows it's destructive power in our lives. Listen to verse thirteen, the fear of the Lord is to hate evil, pride and arrogance in the evil way, and the perverted mouth I read. Now, when He says the fear of the Lord is to hate evil, that is, if a person genuinely reverences God, acknowledges who He is, submissive to who He is, we will hate evil. We will hate the things that God opposes. We will hate the things that destroy ourselves. We will hate those things that destroy God's people and destroy others. And so He says, listen, the fear of the Lord, that is, when we reverence God, we will hate evil, pride and arrogance in the evil way and the perverted mouth God says I hate. It doesn't fit who we are. So when you think in your own life, well, is there any pride in my life? Is there something here that maybe I've not identified?
Or is there something going on in my life I'm not aware of? If it's prideful, God says He hates it. Proverbs sixteen, again, He says it's an abomination. And remember we said a few moments ago, that's something that is absolutely repulsive to God. Look what He says, this sixteenth chapter. He says in verse five, Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord.
Assuredly he will not be unpunished. Now that is a very clear, concise statement. He says it's an abomination. It's repulsive and offensive to God. Because if you'll think about it, He desires that you and I be dependent upon Him. That's one of the reasons He sent the Holy Spirit to enable you and me to become the persons He wants us to be, do the things that God wants us to do in life, and therefore knowing that we cannot within our own strength, He sent the Holy Spirit to be a helper. But the prideful person says, you know, I can do it without God. I don't need God.
I don't need anybody. I'll handle it no matter what. He says the very idea is extremely repulsive to Him and certainly obnoxious to His ways because they don't fit. His plan for us, His will for us, His purpose for our life, none of these things fit. Now look in this fifth verse of the fifth chapter of 1 Peter.
You younger men likewise be subject to your illness and all of you, clothe yourselves. He says with humility toward one another, for God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble. He not only hates it, He says it is an abomination to Him and He says He is in opposition to it. Now when He uses the word here, resist or He's against it, it is the word used by the military to array their battle line ready for battle, ready to go to battle. He says God has arrayed His battle line against the prideful. That is, when a person begins to think prideful and act prideful, they are in opposition to God. He said He opposes the proud. He doesn't say I oppose just the unbelieving prideful. He says I oppose pride. I oppose the proud. That is, whatever's going on, I'll show you in a few moments, God will not allow it to go on long. Somebody says, well I know a few proud, prideful people in life and they seem to be getting by.
No, it just may look that way. But He says it's an abomination to Him. He hates it and He says He's absolutely opposed to it. Now, how does God resist the prideful? How does He resist them? I'm going to give you four things and I want to illustrate them in the Scripture here. There are four ways that He resists those who are prideful.
Number one, He refuses to speak to them. You'll remember in the twenty-third chapter of Luke when Jesus was standing before Herod, for example, in the eighth and ninth verse. Herod was a very prideful king and everybody knew he was that way.
That was his reputation. And he was very curious about Jesus and all these resurrections and healings and so forth. And so he was delighted to have Jesus stand before him and so ask him a bunch of questions. Ask Jesus all these questions and Jesus absolutely said nothing. He would not even answer pridefulness. You and I cannot come to God in pride and have our prayers answered. God is not going to speak to us as long as we come to Him. Father, I know, in fact, you remember the passage that we talked about last time, the Pharisee and the publican standing in the temple praying and the Pharisee saying, I thank you that I'm not as others, not as this tax collector.
I pay my tithes and I do all of these things. And the public and the tax collector beating on his breast saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. Jesus said, that man went down his house justified, forgiven, saved. But the Pharisee, God didn't hear him.
Why? That's God's response to pridefulness. He doesn't speak. The second thing, listen, so first of all, he refuses to speak.
The second thing he does is he ridicules the schemes of the prideful. For example, turn to 2 Chronicles, for example, and the twenty-six chapter. 2 Chronicles chapter twenty-six and let me give you an example here.
And while you're turning, it's a good passage to turn to. 2 Chronicles, 1 and 2 Chronicles, King Uzziah came to the throne at the age of sixteen. He was a very godly young man. And the Bible says the Lord blessed him in so many ways. And the last part of the fifth verse of that twenty-six chapter says that the, that as long as he sought the Lord, God prospered him.
He won battle after battle. He led the people in a godly fashion. He was respected and highly loved. Then the Bible says, verse fifteen, the latter part, hence his fame spread far. For he was marvelously helped until he was strong. That is while he was young. God blessed him.
He was helped by the right kind of people he had around him and he made major, major improvements throughout the whole nation. And then verse sixteen, but when he became strong, his heart was so proud that he acted corruptly and he was unfaithful to the Lord his God, for he entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense, which means simply this. The law of God from the very beginning was only those appointed priests who were appointed for that task could burn incense on the altar. And so Uzziah, becoming prideful, egotistical, decides he'll do that. He's done everything else. He can control everything else. He'll do that.
He walks in. The Bible says there were eighty valiant priests. Not just priests, but valiant priests. Azariah, the priests entered after him and with him eighty priests of the Lord, valiant men. They opposed Uzziah the king and said to him, It is not for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord, but for the priests, the sons of Aaron.
Get out of the sanctuary. You have been unfaithful and will have no honor from the Lord God. So Uzziah, instead of humbling himself and saying, I'm wrong, you're right, with a censer in his hand for burning incense was enraged.
And while he was enraged with the priests, the leprosy broke out on his forehead before the priests in the house of the Lord beside the altar of incense. Pride is destructive in every single way. God refuses to listen to it. He ridicules the schemes of the prideful and He ruins the success of the prideful. Then I want you to turn to Daniel chapter five, because I want you to see something else that God does. Not only does He ruin the success of those who are prideful, but the Bible says He also removes their status. Look if you will in Daniel chapter five.
Let me give you a little history here. Nebuchadnezzar was the king who went to Jerusalem, destroyed it, brought Daniel and some of his friends and brought hundreds and thousands of people to Babylon. And he had a dream. God spoke to him and he had become so prideful and egotistical and arrogant himself.
And the Scripture says, that Daniel had interpreted what was going to happen to him. And it happened just like he said, he lost his mind. In fact, he absolutely lost his mind.
And as a result, his fingernails became long like claws, his hair became long, he crawled on the ground, he ate grass, he lost his mind for a long time. Then the Bible says about him, that something happened in verse thirty-seven of chapter four, Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise, exalt and honor the king of heaven, for all his works are true and his ways just, and he is able to humble those who walk in pride. Now you'd think his son would have learned a lesson, but he didn't. His father had, listen, had lost his mind because of his pride and arrogance. And Belshazzar knew the story. He knew what happened to his dad. And yet, absolutely ignoring God's judgment upon his father, he commits something even worse.
And so what he does, he takes that which is sanctified unto God, for God's use only, and makes a big party out of it, boasting of what they were doing. Then the Bible says, and they worshiped, they praised the gods of gold and silver and wood and all the rest and stone, absolutely idolatrous and all of a sudden, without any warning, the fingers of a man's hand emerged and began writing opposite the lampstand on the plaster of the wall, the king's palace. And the king saw the back of the hand and did the writing. Then the king's face grew pale and his thoughts alarmed him. His hip joints went slack and his knees began knocking together. He was about to have a collapse right there. He had a reason to.
Couldn't figure out what it was all about. Called Daniel. And listen to what Daniel said to him. Beginning in verse 18. Oh, they promised him, if you can interpret this, we'll give you all this. He said, keep your gifts to yourself.
I'm not interested in that. Verse 18. Oh king, the most high God granted sovereignty, grandeur, glory, and majesty to Nebuchadnezzar, your father.
Because of the grandeur which he bestowed on him, all the peoples, nations, and men of every language feared and trembled before him. Whomever he wished he killed and whomever he wished he spared alive. Whomever he wished he elevated and whomever he wished he humbled.
But when his heart was lifted up and spirit became so proud that he behaved arrogantly, he was deposed from his royal throne and his glory was taken away from him. Verse 22. Yet you his son, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart even though you knew all this.
And then the last part, in verse 30 that night, Belshazzar the Chaldean king was slain. Somebody says, well, what is God's response? That is, how does God work in all these things? He refuses to speak to the prideful. He ridicules their schemes and laughs at them and scoffs at them because he knows they're coming to north. He ruins their successes and he replaces them. That is, he ruins them. He absolutely destroys their status and their position in the way. Now somebody says, well, why would God, why would the sin of pride stand out above all the rest?
Well, I think there are probably several reasons. One of them is this, that all other sins are against the laws of God. Thou shalt not this, thou shalt not that. But pride is against God himself, against his very being, against his very sovereignty. God rules and reigns in the universe. He says his throne is established in the heavens and he rules and reigns over all. And pride says, well, he may ruin and reign over most things, but he's not ruling over me.
He's not reigning over me. So one of the reasons that it stands out above all other sins is because it is a defiance of the very being and person and sovereignty of God himself. Secondly, it's because it's the root, it's the cause of all other sins in the Scriptures. And not only that, pride draws our heart away from God, but not only does it draw our heart away from God, it lifts our heart above other people and causes us to be absolutely useless in the kingdom. And when God begins to use the person and they become prideful and arrogant, what you'll find is this, that before long they're on the shelf. And there may not be any literal reason for it to be true, but God knows the human heart.
God wants us to walk in humility before him, dependence upon him, acknowledging that he and he alone is the source of every good thing in our life and every single opportunity and all the gifts that we have in life are all from God. In fact, if you'll think about it, tell me if any of us has a single thing we can boast of in life other than Jesus Christ. Because everything we have from the first breath of our life, every talent, every gift, every opportunity, every privilege, every possession, it all comes from God. You say, well, I did it myself. Then my friend, you are thoroughly deceived.
No, you didn't. You say, well, why have I got so much then? And I'm not a Christian because the Bible says, no, you're not, that the goodness of God is for the purpose of leading you to repentance. And you've missed the point that if good things have come your way and you're not a believer, it's because God is saying, look, look, look, I'm a good God. I'm long suffering.
I'm giving you an opportunity. All this came from me. And when a person shakes their fist in the face of Almighty God, that is an expression of rebellion. Unless there is genuine humility and repentance, God's judgment will come upon them. Listen, pride isn't just a sin.
Pride is the most dangerous of sins because it is a blatant expression of opposition to the personhood of Almighty God and who He is. Thank you for listening to The Obstacle. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
