Alright, we're going to go to our Bibles this morning to Proverbs chapter number 16. We're going to be in Proverbs a lot this morning. I've got a lot of references there, particularly. We're going to start in chapter 16 of Proverbs. We're going to continue our study in the obstacles in our spiritual development. The past couple of weeks we've talked about obstacles that have been very easy to both pinpoint and deal with in our lives because nobody minds admitting the fact that they have discouragements or fears, right? It's almost like some sort of, what you talk about a lot, Seth, virtue signaling in that they recognize that they have discouragements or fears that they can work on so that, you know, it almost makes you more spiritual that you admit that you have them and you deal with them, you know? And so some people use that as a crown in their spiritual life that they've recognized it and through their faith they have defeated these discouragements or fears. So those two in particular were a lot easier, if you will, for us to pinpoint and locate and use and recognize that it was preventing our spiritual development because we have the quote-unquote strength to admit it and deal with it. Well, we're going to deal a couple more over the next few weeks. I won't be here next week, but the next week after, the next two lessons, we're going to be dealing with something slightly more difficult because it's something we don't want to deal with because we don't think it's unmerited or we don't think that it's We don't think that we're wrong in doing so. We reason through it. It's something that we've done or earned in our life and we should be awarded to us in some season of life in which we have worked towards this goal. We have met this goal. This is something we ought to be okay with. So today the obstacle, of course, is something that we need to pinpoint because it's something that as we get older either gets easier to recognize and deal with or it gets more deceitful in our own hearts. This obstacle today is of course the obstacle of pride. The obstacle of pride. No nudging. Just keep your elbows to yourself. My anniversary is coming up. I've got this. So pride is a two-fold issue to deal with and it's starting with where pride comes from and then leads into how to deal with it. So our text today comes from Proverbs chapter 16 and verse 18 because this is obviously what you go to when you preach on pride, right? It says, pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. So When you think of pride, what do you think of? Having a higher opinion of yourself. Okay, that's a good one. Entitlement. Entitlement. For those of you who are thinking in your head, a group of lions, that's also okay, but it's not applicable to the lesson today. So, pride simply means, and simply put, the quality or state of being proud. The base meaning of pride is the quality or state of being proud. But see, the context in which you use pride is what's especially important because this particular word is never used on its own. It's always used in a context. So you have to be in the state or quality of being proud of something. That's always what it's going to boil down to. You're never going to say, yeah, I've got pride, and it's just something you go out and buy or something you go out and do. It's going to be something you're proud of, whether it be your boy, your work, yourself, of course. If you go and look up pride in the dictionary, there's actually several clarifying texts after the meaning of it, because it always applies to something. It's always something you take in, something you look at, something you compare, something like that, to where it's never just one thing where you say, that man's prideful. Well, is he prideful in his work? Is he prideful in himself? Is he prideful in his attitude? Is he prideful in how he deals with things? It's always something, how you're dealing with it. So first, to recognize pride, you have to understand that it's a very broad topic. And I say that a lot. But to further understand, you have to understand that pride means being proud mostly of you. That's generally the context we use it in. It's being proud of yourself. We do live in a world where we have a lot of people that encourage you to be true to yourself. Don't worry about what everyone else says. Don't worry about what everyone else does in regards to what you do because the only people we have to worry about making proud is yourselves. You have to believe in yourself. You have to be proud of yourself. You have to understand that no one will motivate you except yourself, except the motivational speakers you listen to, to motivate yourself. It's a vicious cycle. So we live in a world where this is, where pride is something that one, has been misconstrued, and number two, is something that's very prevalent. Because, you know, you gotta be proud of something, might as well be proud of yourself. I've heard people say that a lot. In Proverbs 11.2 it says, When pride cometh, then cometh shame, but with the lowly is wisdom. An important element of this lesson is recognizing that pride isn't automatically assigned to some sort of inflated ego. There are several clarifications in Webster's we talked about in regards to what being proud of is. Of course, the most is being proud of yourself. So, everyone, when you say the word pride or prideful, you have a face pop in your head, correct? We all know that person. When we think of pride, we think of, insert name, Everyone in this room probably has a face that pops into mind when I say a prideful person. Now think a little deeper with me, was that face your own? I'll answer for you, it probably wasn't. It probably was not your own self when I said a prideful person because nobody thinks that they're prideful. Nobody wants to recognize pride in their own self. That's what makes this one of the most dangerous elements or obstacles of your spiritual development because this will hold you back and you won't even realize it. You won't even catch yourself doing it without actively thinking and keeping your heart soft towards this issue. Pride is a dangerous thing because it acts rashly, defies basic reason, and will provide the brain with a filter with which it will single-handedly cripple the spiritual growth of a Christian. So a couple things about pride that you need to remember. I've only got two things wrote down here and then a conclusion, so bear with me. Number one is pride brings contention and low quality of life. The pride brings contention and low quality of life. Say, how do you know that for certain? Proverbs 13.10, this personal point right here, it says, only by pride cometh contention. That was easy. Only by pride. Contention only comes when there's pride involved in your life. But with the well advised is wisdom. That's Proverbs 13.10. Only by pride cometh. Now the Bible is very particular here. super particular in that he narrows it down and he says, sometimes pride is the cause of contention. That's not what it said. So, that boils it down really quick. It's not like that syrup making why it does where you gotta boil it forever. This is really quick and to the point. Only by pride cometh contention. The only way you will have contention in your life and with other people is by pride. In fact, when we talk about problem resolution, what's step one? We just gotta swallow our pride and settle this. Because with pride, there is no solution. There is only contention. Proverbs 29, 23, I said there was a lot in Proverbs. It says, a man's pride shall bring him low, but honor shall uphold the humble in spirit. Think with me, if you will, in every place you've ever worked, every place you've ever lived, And you notice at work that nothing gets done. There is never any order to things and there is never any resolution reached. Why? You ever see a clock that just has one cog with the gears worn down or where the gear is slightly large, slightly too small, or has one cog that just doesn't spin at all? You can call pride that cog because nothing runs when there's pride involved. I've been in multiple places where things could work smoothly, but one person wanted to be more in charge than they were. Pride inflates your sense of self-importance. It inflates your sense of how, like, there are people at work that say all the time, this company couldn't run if I wasn't here. To which I say, well, you know, everybody's replaceable. You know, they sell new parts and there's people around every corner wanting the job. Not all of them have the same potential, but there is potential to replace you. But see, their pride tells them that, makes them laugh and say, well, yeah, you think that. And we do the same thing at home, at church, and in our Christian life. This church couldn't run if I wasn't here. This home, this trash would never be taken out if I wasn't here. Wizards probably says that every week, I don't know. But it's one of those deals where you say that to yourself, like this would never be done if I was, what would you do if I wasn't here? Who said that before? That is an inflated sense of pride. Because take you out of the equation. Take you out of the equation. Say you didn't come home for a week. Generally, what does a family, a work, a church do? They adapt to the circumstances and we figure it out. Because that's how God created us. We are the only beings that do that. We're not ants where if you erase the line they go nuts. We just build a new line. So with that in mind, how important are you now? See, pride is misunderstanding the way of God and that God puts us all in our life for each other's benefit and not for each other's functionality. Now your benefit depends on how you view this very thing. A private person is generally not well liked. A prideful person generally doesn't do as much as they think they do because they do so much to themselves that they don't have to do that. When I was in car sales, and I use this a lot as an example, I was the low guy on the sales totem pole, even though we all made the same money depending on what we sold. Other people just had more customers, right? Well, a customer base was like the more customers you got, the more prideful you got because you could actually sell a car. That's a pretty big thing. And so when it got to moving the lot around to get people interested, moving cars around, parking them in different places, they'd have what you'd call a lot party. And you'd all go and grab keys and you'd start moving stuff around. One guy was the director of all the rest of the monkeys running around with cars. And eventually it turned into a real kindergarten session where we were just driving around having fun, burning the gas out of these cars. And one guy was like, no, over here! It just got to be real fun. But you see, there were three people that didn't think they had to do lot parties anymore because they'd been there X amount of years and they sold their cars and they didn't need those cars moved to sell their cars. So while everyone else was forced out of the lot away from the phone leaves and everything else and people walking in, they get to sit in their offices because they've done their time and now it's your turn. Inflated sense of self-importance. And you see what they robbed themselves of the most was the camaraderie with the other associates so that you could work together, which was not popular in sales, and actually get something done. Pride hurts you the most. Now while everyone else sat back and complained that those three just sat on their high-end dens and sold cars while we did all the work that made it easier for them to do so, The people who went out got along. We had fun. And sometimes we'd just go out to lunch. We're like, OK, well, that's done. Let's go eat something. Some people in there had absolutely nothing to do. The same thing at home. The same people who say, why isn't this done? Why isn't that done? What would you guys do if I wasn't here? What if I just left for a week? What would you do? This trash would pile up. This sink would never get washed. The cows would never get moved. Just take your pick on just some random chore that wouldn't get done if you weren't there, or so you think. Do you think it makes people glad to see you come home if I were to come home and say, kids, this place is a pigsty. The living room needs vacuuming. The dishes need washing. Your room's a mess. You didn't clean up. Elizabeth, why are these dishes even here? You're supposed to do dishes every day. What is this? What would you do if I wasn't here? She probably recapped the fact that I wasn't there and I was actually just walking in the door. But moving on from that, how pleasant would that be if I came home to start ripping on everything? Because obviously, text messages don't convey the day you're having. How's your day? Good. When in reality, the kids puke twice, one's got a fever, They've had to run around and do all this stuff, school, and on and so forth and so forth. Maybe they didn't have time to do the dishes. Maybe the kids just happened to dump the toy box three seconds before you get in there. That happens sometimes, OK? They just take their way a bit where they're just like, oh, I need to find something. They just dump it out. Maybe it was just cleaned up. Dorothy is the worst about this. She wants to show me if she's cleaned up. Drags me all the way to the back room just to find that Adeline had knocked every book off the shelf looking for one book. She gets so frustrated because she was going to show me what she cleaned up because she knows I like it tidy. But it's frustrating. Would that make it very pleasant if I came in and just started trashing everything that they haven't done all day long? Why would I do that? Role play. Why would I do that? Because I've gone out, I've gone to work, I pay the bills, I pay for this house, I deserve to have a clean house when I walk in. It's a sense of pride. It's an inflated sense of self-importance that because I do all this, I'm entitled for you to do this. Yeah, it's very arrogant. It's much like children, where they say, I birthed you into this world, and this is how you treat me. Elizabeth jokes around sometimes. She goes, I went through nine months for them to talk to me like that. You can just hear it in her voice. She didn't say it directly, but you can just hear it. And you're like, whatever. It's a sense of pride. This is where kids come in and say, well, I didn't ask to be born. It's ridiculous. Why do you think they say that? Because that's exactly what you have conveyed their entire life. You have conveyed a sense of entitlement and pride. But a lot of times, if I walk in the house and they've had a hard day, and I'm not bragging on myself, because I don't do it all the time, I am not Superman. I walk in there, and if I've had a bad day, it's just better to shut my mouth and just start picking something up. Because I live there too. Because I've had a hard day, she's had a hard day, let's quit making our days hard and start helping each other. You have to swallow your pride, put it aside, recognize it for what it is, and quit entertaining it. Anyone or anything that deviates from what you know about how things should be turns into an instant debate because you know how it's supposed to be. And the way they know it is obviously a shamefully wrong. Essentially, when you enter this phase where you demand things be a certain way because you know it, because they say one thing, you say another, it's a contest. I mean, all the pride, the contention is there. And so you stop learning. You put a mental block on learning anything, totally and completely. Dorothy is a very interesting child. When she goes to learn something, she wants to learn it. But the moment you say, you're too little for this, she gets so aggravated. And so she will stop learning anything else you want to show her until she learns this. Until you tell her, you have to learn this first in order to learn this. That mental block she puts there because she's so set on learning that now because she wants to be a big kid is the same way that we do when we put a complete block on learning anything because we know how it is. I've been around the horn. I know how this is. I'm this old. I've done this. I've been here. I've checked all my boxes. This is how it is. Yeah, you're right. I am the world's worst about being hard-headed, and I've really grown out of it. When I was at Walmart, especially, I was a one-way joe. I mean, this is just the way it was. It's the way it's going to be. Walmart changed all the time, so you'd have to adjust your way, but, you know, it was still, at the end, that's the way it had to be. This is the end goal. This is where we're going. I was like that in my life, too, where, you know what? This is just what we're going to do, and this is what's going to happen, and you can't tell me any different, because this is what I know, and this is what's going to happen. You just kept saying, keep saying that to yourself. This is what's going to happen. I don't care. You're going to do this because that's the way I understand it. It's just, we all get that way because at some point in our life, we have to understand the pride that sets us there. I'm not saying to let everyone go off the rails and start sinning because you can't control anybody. That is ridiculous. But in your pride, you will push them to do something sinful in spite of you. unless they really have just some sort of absolute set on doing right. You are purely relying on them at that point, because you are obviously not doing right in having that prideful spirit. So, to understand what that is, is not only to save yourself, but others as well. Because you have to understand that pride hurts you the most, but you're not the only one it hurts. And this goes for marriage, it goes for church, it goes for work, it goes everywhere with your children. There's no end to this because pride has a very far reach and a very short fuse. It's a big problem because there are going to be people that disagree with you. There are going to be issues where you don't quite line up with people on it. And I'm not saying you just fold and agree with them because, you know, we just don't, I don't want to be prideful about this. So I'll consider your point of view. You need to be set in the truth because the truth has no pride about it. And this is where everyone gets confused is you're preached your whole life to be steadfast in your beliefs, right? You have to be steadfast in what you believe. You have to be steadfast in your belief of Christ and your following of Christ. But they say to be steadfast and not prideful because pride is rooted in knowledge without understanding. Pride is also rooted in us being right in our knowledge without trying to understand. In 1 John 2.16 it says, For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. All the things above that are listed has an utter emptiness that will never be filled. This is a growth block mainly because of everything we will never realize with those blinders on, that filter on in your brain. We always attach this with younger men especially, my age, or Zach's age, or anybody, because We're prideful. I'll just be honest with you. Young men generally are very prideful. There's a gentleman at work, slightly younger than me, not much, but he is just a grade A doofus sometimes. And it's really hard to contain myself because he is so unreasonable. And he just makes statements that are so ignorant. You're like, I could say one thing and completely derail that, and you still wouldn't believe me. You're wasting your breath. Pride is an issue that you have to deal with in all stages of your life. This isn't just something for young men to deal with. Granted, if you don't deal with it young, you get a lot worse as you go and it's harder to recognize because you've deceived yourself into thinking that you're right. That's the biggest thing about pride is the more you let it go on, the more you think that you're okay with it. It's not your fault. You have justification. You have the Bible to back your pride when you don't. Another reason to avoid pride and recognize it and nip it in the bud at all costs is this very simply, God hates pride. God hates pride. I'll probably clip that out and I'll never run for president, but that's just what it is. In Proverbs 16, verse 5, it says, everyone that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord. Though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished. In the New Testament, James 4, 6, it says, But he giveth more grace, wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble. Just that right there is understanding that there will be no growth in grace for those who are proud because he will resist you. You're going to miss out on so much growth and understanding and harmony. through understanding the scriptures, the light, and the fellowship with the spirit of God, when this pride is present in your life. If you don't root it out, there is no fellowship with God, because there is no fellowship light with darkness. Where has any light been? Where is it ever okay, just by listening to the scriptures I've read, where is it okay to have pride in your life? When is it okay? Where is it okay? How is it okay? What good ever comes of it? There's not even good intentions involved here. This is why it's so detrimental, because we'll recognize discouragement and we'll recognize fears, but we won't recognize pride in our life because it's painful and it hurts to get rid of. Satan was extremely prideful, which is how he got booted from heaven, because he had an overinflated sense of self-importance. It sounds terribly elementary, but how can we expect to grow spiritually when we entertain the characteristic that the Lord literally resists? We've talked about it before a little bit with bitterness, but if we let it take root and settle in our heart with an almighty justification that we have, how can we continue with Christ? If we consistently obsess with our misplaced sense of self-importance in our life as a father, husband, employee, friend, anything, there's very little chance we're going to grow in any area because pride eats up all aspects of life and it grows like a cancer until we become just okay with it. We're okay with this person not liking us. We're okay with just unfriending them because they're just toxic in our life. Pride will deceive you with that idea too. It'll deceive you with everything. Just how, you know, that person's just talking, that person's just walking, that person's prideful but not me because I know what's right. Exactly. If you don't like it, just get rid of it. There was one person I knew for a long time And he was huge on the Proverbs. Huge on the Proverbs. So much so that humility was something he just made a point to do. He thought he was so humble he should get a medal. Yes, he was literally proud of his humility. He had a successful business, he had a big family, and all of them had money. He just absolutely was so humbled by what God has done and how great God thought he was and that he gifted him all this stuff. He was so proud that he was humble because he would attribute everything he had to being so humble. And he had a good heart and he was a good man, but there was so much blocked in his understanding of everything because he wouldn't come off it that he attributed everything to the humility of his own faith. You miss God when you do that. Because he wasn't proud of, in his eyes, he wasn't proud of everything he had. He wasn't proud of his kids, he wasn't proud of his money, he wasn't proud of his business. What he was proud of was how humble his faith was. We can do that too. Make such a point to be intentionally humble. Because I'm gonna show people what humility is. that you absolutely lose it because we lose sight of what it should be. Proverbs 8 13 it says the fear of the Lord is to hate evil pride and arrogance Arrogancy in the evil way in the forward mouth. Do I hate it's lumped in with all of that? Everything that's absolutely terrible pride is a word that's been hijacked and used for other purposes Which has caused it to be a disgusting representation in our mind of a lot of things whenever you see the word pride is usually in rainbow, but we need to start seeing pride and black and white and understand that just because We're not of that stripe It can still apply to us in the actual meaning of the word. Why can't we stand to be wrong? Why can't, why won't we admit it? Why won't we fix it? Why do we have to be right? That's a sense of pride. Why do we think pride isn't something we should struggle with? That in and of itself is pride. Because we don't recognize it for what it is and get rid of it. In one way, that's why it can't abide in a spiritual person. It's not us that has to be right. Because see, we're never truly right. We're all wrong. But see, where we get our truth, that's what's right. And that's what you have to be rooted in. Because truth isn't right because we believe it. Truth is right because it's God's truth. And so when somebody contests it, it's not us that has to defend it. We don't have to come up with some great answer. We don't have to reason through why it's right, because God has already done that in His Word. It's the truth in which we plant ourselves like a tree by a river of water. That's where we get it from. The tree doesn't get it from the roots. It gets it from where the roots are in the water, where the water comes from. And so when you think of that and someone argues with you and you get genuinely mad about it, usually it's because you run out of answers. You can't reason within reason anymore because your reasons are outside the Bible. So you see, pride goes right along with getting your own answers, running your own life, understanding the way things should be understood your own way, instead of how the Bible lays it out in His Word. There is no pride inside of the Word of God. There's love and knowledge and understanding, which should grow in your heart, which will not foster pride. Pride comes in a lot of facets, be it your job, your position, your standing in your church, your home life, or whatever, but where is that stunting your growth? Where is it blocking you, blocking your understanding? Where is it hurting your relationships? It says in Proverbs 16, 19, better is it to be of a humble spirit with the lowly than to buy the spoil with the proud. Proverbs 18.12 says, before destruction the heart of man is haughty and before honor is humility. Pride will never do anything good for your life. In fact, when life starts to crumble, that's really where we start looking. We don't really start looking with ourselves. But maybe that's where we should start. Because pride is not something that will ever come of growing in the spirit. It'll root it out. It'll take it out. Are you prideful this morning?