Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 429
Romans 3:27.
PRIDE is most obnoxious to God. As a sin, His holiness hates it. As a treason, His sovereignty detests it. As a rebellion, the whole of His attributes stand leagued to put it down. God has touched other sins with His finger, but against this vice He has made bare His arm. There have been, I know, terrible judgments against lust—but there have been ten times as many against that swelling lust of the deceitful heart. Remember, the first transgression had in its essence, pride.
The ambitious heart of Eve desired to be as God, knowing good and evil, and Adam imagined that he should be lifted up to Divine rank if he dared to pluck and eat. The blasting of Paradise, the sterility of the world, the travail of human birth, the sweat of the brow, and the certainty of death may all be traced to this fruitful mother of mischief, pride.
Remember Babel and how God has scattered us and confounded our tongues. It was man’s pride which led him to seek for an undivided monarchy that so he might be great. The tower was to be the rallying point of all the tribes and would have been the central throne of all human grandeur—but God has scattered us—that pride might not climb to so high a pitch. Pride, you have indeed suffered severe strokes from God. Against you has He furbished His sword and prepared His weapons of war.
The Lord, even the Lord of Hosts has sworn it, and He will surely stain the pride of all human glory and tread all boasting as straw is trod for the dunghill. Talk no more so exceedingly proud. Let no arrogance come out of your mouth, for the bows of the mighty have been broken and the haughtiness of man has been bowed down. Remember Pharaoh and the plagues which God brought on Egypt, and the wonders which He worked in the field of Zoan.
Remember the Red Sea, and Rahab cut, and the dragon broken. Think of Nebuchadnezzar, the mighty architect of Babylon, driven out to eat grass like the oxen till his nails grew like birds’ claws and his hair like eagles’ feathers. Remember Herod, eaten of worms, because he gave not God the glory. And Sennacherib, with the Lord’s hook in his jaws, turned by the way he came to the place where his sons became his slayers.
Time would fail to tell of the innumerable conquerors, and emperors, and mighty men of earth who have all perished beneath the blast of Your rebuke, O God, because they lifted up themselves and said, “I am, and there is none beside me.” You have turned wise men backward and made their knowledge foolishness and no flesh may glory in Your Presence.
Yes, when pride has sought to shelter itself in the hearts of God’s chosen people, still the arrows of God have sought it out and have drunk its blood. God loves His servants still, but pride even in them, He abhors. David may be a man after God’s own heart—but if his pride shall lift him up to number the people, then he shall have a choice between three chastisements. And he shall be happy to choose the pestilence as being the least of the plagues.
Or if Hezekiah shall show to the ambassadors of Babylon his riches and his treasures, there shall come to him the rebuke—“What have they seen in your house?” And the threat—“Behold they shall take your sons to make them eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.” Oh, Brethren, forget not that God has uttered the most solemn words as well as issued the most awful judgments against pride. “Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.” “Him that has a high look and a proud heart will I not suffer.” “Pride and arrogance do I hate.”
“The Lord will destroy the house of the proud.” “The day of the Lord shall be upon everyone that is proud and lofty, and upon everyone that is lifted up, and he shall be brought low.” “I am against you, O you most proud, says the Lord God of Hosts.” There are hundreds of terrible texts like these but we cannot now recount them all.
Now mark, to put an everlasting stigma upon human vanity and to hurl once and for all mire and filth upon all human glorying, God has ordained that the only way in which He will save men shall be a way which utterly excludes the possibility of man’s having a single word to say by way of vaunting. He has declared that the only foundation which He will ever lay shall be one by which man’s strength shall be broken in pieces and by which man’s pride shall be humbled in the dust.
To this subject I ask your attention this morning. It is to enlarge and amplify the sentiment of the text that I seek. “Where is boasting, then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith.”
We shall notice first of all, the rejected plan of Law. Then we shall note the excluded vice. Having so done, we shall notice in the third place, that the very fact that boasting is excluded permits of the reception of the worst of sinners. And we shall close by observing that the same system which excludes boasting includes humble and devout gratitude to God for His Grace and mercy.