Self-Distress
A scientist warned of a Tsunami before the Boxing Day Tsunami.
- He warns again.
- A proud heart is “foolish” or “senseless” (Romans 1)
- Natural buckling of the tectonic plates.
- Ignoring and not moving
- maybe because circumstances are more important.
- maybe because serving money instead of God.
- Deadlines for God’s work.
- Faithful with little?
- Working for our Father vs working for a company.
- Sons vs Servants
- Do I have to follow up and remind you?
- Working for our Heavenly Father makes us Sons.
- Communication – How can you “Go” went you are too proud to even talk?
- Being afraid is exalting fear over what God can do, therefore a subset of pride.
- Are you guilty of walking with God with a perverse mouth?
- Proverbs 6:12-15 A worthless person, a wicked man, Walks with a perverse mouth; [13] He winks with his eyes, He shuffles his feet, He points with his fingers; [14] Perversity is in his heart, He devises evil continually, He sows discord. [15] Therefore his calamity shall come suddenly; Suddenly he shall be broken without remedy.
- Self-pity is another form of pride.
- Proverbs 7:26 For she has cast down many wounded, And all who were slain by her were strong men.
- Need for inner healing – hole in the heart
- Strong, power driven – having no regards for God
- Reflects on the condition of the heart.
A proud perverse heart is an abomination to the Lord.
- Proverbs 11:20 Those who are of a perverse heart are an abomination to the LORD, But the blameless in their ways are His delight.
The distress that the proud heart brings upon itself is even noted by psychologists:
- Any neurotic is living a life which in some respects is extreme in its self-centeredness….
- Thus, most complexes there are, from the point of view of religion, mixed with the sin of pride.
As Augustine explained, “By craving to be more, man becomes less; and by aspiring to be self-sufficing, he fell away from Him who truly suffices him.”
This is the truth of Jesus’ words that “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled”
- Luke 18:14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
- A theologian rightly remarked, “The image of ourselves as center of the world is fantasy”
Pride can lead us to seek the destruction of the other person or to withdraw from people altogether.
- Both are done for the sake of preserving our self-image.
Double-Hearted
The second major defect of the natural heart flows directly from the first.
- The proud heart is prone to deceit.
The Bible records deception as being “Double-Hearted”
- Psalm 12:2 NKJV They speak idly everyone with his neighbor; With flattering lips and a double heart they speak.
The “double heart” (lit. “a heart and a heart”) does not indicate different opinions or uncertainty but rather a double standard as in dishonest “differing weights”
- Proverbs 20:10 Diverse weights and diverse measures, They are both alike, an abomination to the LORD.
- Deuteronomy 25:13“You shall not have in your bag differing weights, a heavy and a light.
- The differing weights are literally “a stone and a stone”
In deception the very center of the person—the heart—is split resulting in a badly disintegrated existence.
- Duplicity/Facade
Arrogance of your heart
The prophet Obadiah says of Edom, “The arrogance of your heart has deceived you”
- Jeremiah 49:16 Your fierceness has deceived you, The pride of your heart, O you who dwell in the clefts of the rock, Who hold the height of the hill! Though you make your nest as high as the eagle, I will bring you down from there,” says the LORD.
Human speech, so vital for human life with God and others, is defiled by deceit issuing from pride:
- Psalm 12:2–4 2 They speak idly everyone with his neighbor; With flattering lips and a double heart they speak. 3May the LORD cut off all flattering lips, And the tongue that speaks proud things, 4 Who have said, “With our tongue we will prevail; Our lips are our own; Who is lord over us?”
The severity of the heart’s problem of deceit is revealed in Jeremiah’s words:
- Jeremiah 17:9–10 9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it? 10 I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings.
This language of Jeremiah must not be diminished.
Aside from the great deceiver Satan, there is nothing in the world that is more cunning and crafty at attempting to make its pursuit of evil look good than the human heart.
- Revelation 12:9 So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
- Satan is not being considered here by Jeremiah
Desperately Sick
The deep fountain from which all of man’s life flows is desperately sick
As the Hebrew term suggests, it is “incurably ill” (the same word)
- Jeremiah 15:18 Why is my pain perpetual And my wound incurable, Which refuses to be healed? Will You surely be to me like an unreliable stream, As waters that fail?
- Jeremiah 30:12 “For thus says the LORD: ‘Your affliction is incurable, Your wound is severe.
It is literally used for wounds that cannot be healed.
Moreover, according to Jeremiah, the depth of this illness can never be plumbed by the person himself or any other human. Only the LORD, the searcher of human hearts, fully knows it.
- Hebrews 12:11 Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.