Sermon Tone Analysis

*The Pride of Humility, Part 1*

*Matthew 18:1-5*

Andrew R. Rappaport

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Introduction

·         In the last few messages we have looked at a picture of God.

God's holiness showed us how unlike God we are.

It reveals that God is so much greater than we are.

Next, we saw God's justice and that He rightly judges and does not accept our justification of our sins.

Lastly, we show God's love.

He loves us with an eternal love and as such we should love one another.

Now we bring this all together for Matthew 18 and begin with a discussion on pride and humility.

·         Jesus' ministry is coming to a close and He is trying to provide final instructions before He departs this earth.

Jesus is informing the disciples on how to administrate the church that He will establish after His death.

Jesus is starting to transition their thinking about the kingdom of God and the plan of God for His people on Earth.

He needs to transition them from their selfish thinking of who would be greatest in the kingdom of God to be leaders of the body of Christ.

·         The disciples argued specifically over who would be the greatest at least three times as recorded in Scripture (Matthew 18:1, Mark 9:34; Luke 9:46; 22:24).

*Transition:*    

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I.             Pride in Yourself

·         In our society, pride is almost always considered an admirable trait.

Is seen as a positive, commendable thing.

Instead of warring against it, our society actually promotes pride.

It is increasingly apparent that our world has lost touch with the idea that pride can be very destructive and evil thing.

Unfortunately,  Unfortunately, this is often true in the body of Christ as well.

·         When we slander other people, it is usually because of our pride.

Putting others down, we think, makes us look better.

·         In the center of pride is the same thing as in the center of sin; I.

·         As a sin, pride is unique.

Most sins turn us away from God, but pride is a direct attack upon God.

It enlists our hearts above him and against him.

Pride seeks to dethrone God and in throne itself.

·         Pride is complex.

Jonathan Edwards wrote, "it takes many forms and shapes and compass is the heart like the layers of an onion-when you pull off one layer, there is another underneath".

·         Pride often wants to be seen by others, it manifests itself before other people by being selfishly ambitious and greedy for honor and being ostentatious, even practicing righteousness for the sake of being noticed by others.

·         A godly person fights pride, where as the worldly person feeds pride.

·         Pride consists in attributing to ourselves and demanding for ourselves the honor, privileges, prerogatives, rights and power that are due to God alone.

Thus, it is the very root and essence of sin because pride, at its core, is idolatry of self.

A proud person has put himself or herself in God's place.

·         In regard to view of oneself, pride makes self focus.

Proud people look about their needs, their wants and their reputations.

They expect praise from others and they are blind to their own faults.

They are easily offended.

·         In regard to a view of other people, pride refuses to admit mistakes and never asks to be forgiven.

Proud people do not submit to authority; they are disrespectful, slanderous and rebellious.

They blame others and justify themselves.

They reject correction or instruction and they do not listen well.

As they are self-serving and expect to be served by others.

Essentially, proud people have a distorted view of reality; they delude themselves into thinking that they are superior to other people and that they understand other peoples thoughts and motives.

They trivialize the bad things they have done to others and exaggerate what others have done to them.

*Transition:*     Where our society says, that pride should be upheld and even honored; God says that there are consequences of pride.

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II.

The Consequences of Pride

·         One of the consequences of pride is an uncontrolled tongue that lashes out at others.

Proud people hurt other people because they are slanderous, gossiping, quarrelsome and divisive.

The alienate people and destroy relationships.

Another consequence of pride is being unteachable.

Proud people are stubborn and therefore they remain spiritually immature.

Pride leads to dishonesty and inconsistency.

Proud people cannot be trusted because they do not value the commitments they have made to others.

Ultimately, pride robs people of joy, peace and usefulness for Christ.

·         A very prideful preacher preached a message on humility and was upset that people were not mindful of the message.

Why were they not attentive?

Because the messenger corrupted the message.

The message may be good, but the messenger must live it out.

If any believe me not to be a humble man, then this message, as good as it may be, will be ignored because they will say, "physician heal thyself" and that I should practice what I preach.

I wish to be more humble.

·         Illustration: bats – if one does not share that one is cut off from the rest and left to his own.

*Transition:*     Pride takes many forms.

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III.

The Forms of Pride

·         One form of pride is when *we believe we know what we cannot know*.

This is when we think we know absolutely the motivations of another or what is inside someone's head.

We believe that we fully understand their motivation in their thinking without them sharing, or even more so they say the opposite is true.

We can believe something about someone to the extent that in her own mind we believe it to be true even though it is our own perception.

Illustration: There was a man who worked on railroad cars for a living.

Because it was one of the crewmen's birthday the supervisor gave them all a couple hours off early.

This one particular man happened to stay at work not realizing that everyone gone off early and left.

When he realized the time he went to leave the railroad car only to realize that he was locked inside.

He started to panic and bang on the door kick and scream until he had no voice left.

He banged on the door and those hands were bloody.

As he started to shiver he found a piece of cardboard and a pen.

He realize this may be the last few hours he had left on Earth and thought he should leave a memoir behind.

He started to write about his experience of the past few hours being trapped inside the car.

He explained how he was shivering in the cold was overtaking him.

His hands would shake as you try to write and he dropped the pen a couple of times.

He tried doing jumping jacks and push-ups to get the blood flowing but the called just seemed to overpower him.

In the morning when the men came to work they open the railroad car.

There they found the man in the corner frozen to death.

The piece of cardboard was by his side.

They read his note and saw the ordeal that he went through the night before.

The autopsy report validates that the man did indeed freeze to death.

However what confused everyone was at the railroad car the man was stuck in was broken!

The temperature never dropped below are at 55° to 60°.

The man's thought became his reality!

This is what can happen with people especially people who have known each other for a very long time.

They tend to believe that they understand what one is thinking or what motivates someone, based on history.

Parents do this for children all the time.

But you know this is a form of pride?

Do you not know that God is still working in the heart of every believer?

As Christians we must understand that people are growing.

We all have a tendency to think of people the way they were when we first met them.