The Seven Deadly Sins: Pride

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Pride
First message in the series The Seven Deadly Sins
Length: 40:17
Size: 14 MB
Format MP3
Speaker: Glen Davis – 1/26/2005

I begin this message by reading some excerpts from the very illuminating op-ed piece “The Lowdown On High Self-Esteem by Dr. Roy Baumeister. The full thing is worth reading.

Also, here’s this week’s handout:

Pride: A Sin-opsis
The Sin Cluster: Pride, Self-Absorption, Self-Centeredness, Conceit, Hubris, Arrogance, Haughtiness
The Virtues They Distort: Confidence, Humility, Satisfaction, Self-Awareness
Biblical Stories About:

• Satan: pride started him down the road to ruin (Eze 28:11-19, Isa 14:12-17)
• Adam & Eve: they wanted to define morality for themselves (Gen 3:1-24)
• Absalom: vanity was his downfall (2 Sam 14:25-26; 2 Sam 18:9)
• Nebuchadnezzer: was warned by God yet still fell victim (Daniel 4:24-37)
• Uzziah: thought he could worship God whatever way he wanted (2 Chron 26:16-19)

According to the Bible, Pride

• deceives us—Jer 49:16
• causes conflict—Prov 13:10
• prevents us from growing wise—Prov 8:13
• leads us to destruction—Prov 16:18; Prov 29:23
• is opposed to faith—Hab 2:4-5 , Rom 3:27
• is opposed to God—1 John 2:16
• is judged harshly—Isa 23:9, Zeph 3:11
• is stupid—Isa 10:15
• ignores that God gives us the very abilities which we boast of—Deut 8:17-20
• is a failure to keep God in focus—Deut 8:11-16, Hos 13:4-7, Jer 9:23-24, 1 Cor 1:26-31

Some questions
What about Galatians 6:3-5?

What does humility actually look like?

How can I tell if I’m succumbing to pride?

And finally, here are some of the quotations I shared last night.

Phillips Brooks (1835-1893)

The true way to be humble is not to stoop till thou art smaller than thyself, but to stand at thy real height against some higher nature that will show thee what the real smallness of thy greatness is.

The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis

Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.

G.K. Chesterton

With the removal of all question of merit or payment, the soul is suddenly released for incredible adventures and rewards. If we ask an ordinary person how much he merits, he becomes hesitant and instinctively modest. It is doubtful whether he merits six feet of earth.

But if we ask him what he’ll take or what he’s capable of enjoying–the sky’s the limit. This gay humility, this holding of ourselves lightly and yet ready for an endless string of unmerited rewards, is the secret of humility, a secret that is almost too simple to grasp. In fact humility is so advantageous and practical a virtue that people suspect it must be a vice…

Humility is mistaken for a vice all the more easily because it generally goes with a certain simple love of splendour which amounts to vanity. Humility will always, by preference, go clad in scarlet and gold; pride is that which refuses to let gold and scarlet impress it or please it too much.

And I closed by reading Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias.