Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1733
“Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.” 1 Peter 5:6.
PRIDE is so natural to fallen man that it springs up in his heart like weeds in a watered garden, or rushes by a flowing brook. It is an all pervading sin and smothers all things like dust on the roads, or flour in the mill. Its every touch is evil as the breath of the cholera-fiend, or the blast of the Sahara wind. Pride is as hard to get rid of as charlock from the furrows, or the American blight from the apple trees. If killed, it revives; if buried, it bursts the tomb. You may hunt down this fox and think you have destroyed it, but lo, your very exultation is pride! None have more pride than those who dream that they have none! You may labor against vainglory till you conceive that you are humble and the fond conceit of your humility will prove to be pride in full bloom. It imitates humility, but is most truly pride!
Pride is a sin with a thousand lives! It seems impossible to kill it, it flourishes on that which should be its poison, glorying in its shame. It is a sin with a thousand shapes and by perpetual change it escapes capture. It seems impossible to hold it—the vapory demon slips from you, only to appear in another form and mock your fruitless pursuit. To die to pride and self, one would need to die himself. Pride was man’s first sin and it will be his last. In the first sin that man ever committed, there was certainly a large mixture of pride, for he imagined that he knew better than his Maker—and even dreamed that his Maker feared that man might grow too great!
It has been questioned whether pride was not the sin by which the angels fell when they lost their first estate—I will not go into any controversy upon that subject—but there was certainly pride in the sin of Satan and pride in the sin of Adam. This is the torch which kindled Hell and set the world on fire! Pride is a ringleader and captain among iniquities—it attains unto the first three of Satan’s champions. It is a daring and God-defying sin, arraigning Divine justice as Cain did; challenging Jehovah to combat as Pharaoh did; or making self into God as Nebuchadnezzar did. It would murder God if it could, that it might fill His Throne. While it is first to come and first in horrible supremacy, it is also last to go. As Paul said, “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”
I think I might say that the last enemy but one is pride, for even at our deathbed pride will be found in attendance. In his last moments, John Knox had a sharp conflict with self-righteousness though he had preached against it with all his might and knew, with a clearness seldom given to men, that salvation is of the Lord alone. Even within an hour of Glory he had to make a stand against that vile thing, the pride of the human heart! Many others of the Lord’s valiant ones have been sorely assailed by the same crafty foe which shoots with feathered flatteries, shafts of destruction. In the most quiet minds the deadly calm of self-conceit may be found. Our hearts are deceitful above all things and in nothing less to be trusted than in this matter of pride.
Even while we breathe out our souls unto God it will attempt to puff us up—yes, it will puff up poor dying worms! Brothers and Sisters, for certain you and I are in danger of pride—possibly we are even now victims of it! Let us be on our guard, for it may be ruining us without our knowledge, even as the moth in secret eats up the garment, or as unseen rust cankers the hidden treasure. Let pride lodge where it may, it does its entertainer great mischief, for it bars out the favor of God, “God resists the proud.” It must be sent adrift before God can visit us with favor, for no Grace comes to the proud, “but He gives Grace unto the humble.” Humility is the Grace that attracts more Grace! As money makes money, so humility increases humility and, with it, every other spiritual gift.
If you would have much Grace, have much humility. God has assistance for the humble, but resistance for the proud. You know how He fought Pharaoh. What blows He struck at the haughty monarch! He would have him down from the pinnacle of defiance, one way or another, and make him learn, in bitterness, the answer to his own insolent question, “Who is the Lord?” Remember how Nebuchadnezzar had to eat grass like an ox because he spoke with a haughty tongue? Wherever God sees pride lifting itself on high, He resolves to level it in the dust! He draws His bow, He fits His arrow to
the string—and pride is the target that He shoots at. The more pride enters into the Christian’s heart, the less Grace will enter there—and the more opposition from God will come—for pride is never so hateful to God as when He sees it in His own people.
If you see disease in a stranger you are very sorry, but if you discover its symptoms in your own child, your grief is much more deep. A viper is loathsome anywhere, but how it would make you start if you saw the head of one of those creatures peeping out from the bosom of a beloved friend! So pride is detestable anywhere, but it is worst in those whom the Lord loves best. If God sees pride in a David, He will smite him till he ceases from his high thoughts. Or if it is in a Hezekiah, he will abase him—and you can be sure that if the Lord sees pride in you, he will smite you! Yes, smite you again and again till you wait humbly at His feet!