Dear friends, the text that I want to bring before you this morning is found in 1 John 2 and verse 16. It is just a portion of it. It is just four words from verse 16 of 1 John chapter 2. We read these words, 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. And the previous verse, it says that we are not to love the world. And so we are not to love these things that is mentioned here, but it's just that phrase, the pride of life that I want us to consider this morning. You see friends, there are moments in life that when we are forced to face something that is uncomfortable about ourselves. Maybe you have faced that. I'm sure you have. A doctor may give you news that will shake you. A friend may tell you a truth that you didn't want to hear, but because they have been good friend to you, they wounded you because they wanted you to be healed and be helped. A situation exposes something in your heart that you didn't know it was there. And these moments, friends, are often painful, yet they are necessary for us. And ultimately, we thank God for them. I'm so thankful for that painful experience because it led me to better things. Ultimately, it led me to God and His salvation. He helped me. And because nothing is more dangerous, my friends, than ignoring the truth about yourself. Do you ignore truth about yourself? Do you want to cover things up in your life? You see, we live in a world that takes physical health seriously. People check their blood pressure. People check their diet. People check their pulse. People check their weight. They want to know how long they might live. how strong they are, how healthy they feel. But very few actually want to check the health of their hearts, check the health of their soul. How is your soul? How is your heart? No one lines up to ask the question, how is my heart before God? Not many people. No one asks the question in this world, what is wrong with me morally, in my behavior? What about my habits? What habits are there that are destroying my character, myself? What sins are there that are controlling my life? Why is it that I'm in the mess that it is? Is it because of other people? Or is it because of me? One reason for this silence, this kind of ignoring of these things is simple. We don't want to hear the answer. We don't want to be confronted. We do not want that light to shine too closely in the secret places of our hearts. And you're not the only one. I am the same. All of us are like that. We don't like it. The things become too close, too personal for us to have to deal with. We are happy with generalities. But the Bible speaks about specifics. Specifics. The Bible does shine its light. It speaks plainly. It names the deepest problems inside every human being. It tells us that the most powerful enemy in your life is not outside of you. It's not other people. It's not the government. It's not all sorts of things that's happening in this world. It's actually the biggest enemy of you is within you. And the Apostle John calls it, this one aspect is the pride of life here. The pride of life. It's a small phrase, just four words in English. But these words, they open as if they're the door to the understanding of why I resist God. Why is it that you resist God? Why is it that we cling to sin? Why we find it hard to confess what is wrong? Why is it that I find excuses like Adam and say, no, it's not my fault. It is what you've done, God, in my life. This woman that you gave me, this situation that you gave me, this circumstance, that's what's wrong with me. And we find it hard to confess it. We find it hard and difficult to bow our hearts before the Lord Jesus. There's an enemy within you see, and if you don't face this enemy, it will ruin you. It will keep you from God now and it will keep you from God of heaven forever and ever. So I want to help by opening up this passage and for you and I to see this enemy. And it's not to crush you. I'm not speaking to anybody specifically here. But if you think I'm speaking to you, then take that and say that's from the Lord. Because I've been speaking to myself about this too. And the same God who shows you your sin is the same God who can deliver you from it. So there are a number of things I want to say. First of all, I want us to think of this, that pride, here it speaks about the pride of life, that pride is this universal disease of the human heart. Everyone's infected with this. Everyone has it. Pride is not something rare. So I can point to every single one of you, including myself, and say there is some level of pride in some aspect of our lives. And it's not limited to people with certain personalities. It is not only found in some kind of a person who's loud and who's noisy and who's confident or who's outspoken individual. No. Pride hides in quiet people. I found that very much. Pride hides in thoughtful people. Pride hides in religious people. Pride hides in moral people who believe they are righteous. Pride hides in young people, in old people, in rich people, in poor people, in educated people, in uneducated people. It's a universal disease of mankind. The whole mankind is infected by it. Pride is not just simply feeling good about something done. No. The Bible is not against thanking God for the gifts and rejoicing in something wholesome. No, that's not pride. To thank God, Lord, I'm so thankful for this. I managed to pass these exams. I'm thankful, God, for these things. That's not pride. But pride is very different, friends. Pride is the inward conviction that I am my own center. My thoughts are revolving around me. And so the conversations that you have is about you and what's affecting you. That kind of a language is a language of pride. I am my own judge. I make the right assessment of everything in my life. I am my own hope. I am my own truth. Pride, you see, is self-worship, ultimately. It is that desire to be first, to be understood, to be appreciated, to be known. It is that refusal to bow, to humble ourselves. Just think about a simple illustration that may help. Just imagine a house with many, many rooms and pride is like a thick smoke that enters every room. Have you burnt? I think the worst thing you can burn is carrots. I don't know why, but the smell of it lingers everywhere. You burn it and it doesn't go away. You open all the windows, it still stays there for days and days. I don't know what it is about carrots. I'm sure you've found other things too. But it's the smoke that enters into every room. You close the door to one room, but the smoke finds another way in. And you open the windows, but the smoke returns. And you cannot escape it, because it rises from your own furnace, your own hob. And this is how pride fills the whole character of a person. It colors how I speak. It colors how I react. It colors how I look at things and look at other people. And we make assessments of people. We don't want people to judge us. But we make, within five seconds, we have already made judgments about the person. Maybe you've done that. I'm sure you've done that. I've done that. I'm looking at you who is frowning. Is there someone frowning here? I'm looking at you, someone's smiling. I'm making assessment, you see. And sometimes I'm making wrong assessments. And I've noticed this for sure. Some of you have been frowning. I think, oh, they don't like the sermon. But I forget, actually, you're concentrating. It's your concentration look. And I'm misjudging you. And I thought they hated the sermon. I saw a man, and I won't look at the person right now, because that person is here. And he had his hands on his head. And I thought to myself, oh no, what have I said? But actually, they were so thankful for what they heard. And it was such an encouragement. But I was misjudging. And we do that. I'm just personalizing it here. Because all of us are doing it. Children do it. Adults do it. Women do it. Men do it. Sometimes men are oblivious, but they do it too. So all of these things happen. And where is that coming from? This assessment of others, making judgments of other people. And then we don't want that to happen to us. We don't want people to assess us wrongly, to judge us wrongly. And you see pride is seen in the excuses I make, in the excuses that you make. When you do wrong, pride whispers, it wasn't really your fault. You look at, see what things, what others have done and why you did this, rather than saying, no, actually I did wrong. It doesn't matter what led me to this, but I did what was wrong. When we fall into sin, pride says, well, they should understand, people should understand. You see, pride protects the self at any cost. And we've done it. Pride defends your image like a soldier defending a sort of a fortress, a country. You must always look good. You must always appear right. You must always appear strong and be seen to be strong. Pride is also seen in how you measure yourself. It's not just how you are seen by others, but how you measure yourself. So we rarely compare ourselves with people more holy and more humble. No, you compare yourself with those who believe that you believe are worse than you. So this person was more angry than me. This person is more judgmental than me. This person is such and such a thing, more than me, but they're worse than me. And so I'm judging myself with them. And if someone lies, you say, but at least I'm not like him. If someone is doing something and say, well, this is the kind of habit that they have. This is the kind of addiction they have. The pride says to your heart, well, at least I'm not like her. I'm not like him. So you build your senses of goodness by looking downward. That's what we do. Never upward, never to God's standard. And even when we do that, we say, well, that's just human nature. That's just human nature. Everyone does it. Pride can always find a convenient example to justify itself. And even when someone seems modest, pride you see may be working quietly inside. Some people, they speak softly and appear humble, yet their heart is full of self-importance. They easily get offended. Others loudly boast, yet both are driven by the same disease, my friends. We underestimate pride because it hides so well. It's hiding everywhere. It's tainting everything. It's that detergent that we think is cleansing, but actually it's leaving its mark, leaving its flavor, the smell on everything that it has touched. Just think about it. There is a poisonous plant that has roots underground. You're seeing the leaves, but the danger lies beneath. We have a plant at the back of our house and it has long shoots, but then the more you pull, the more you realize there's more to this. And then under the ground, it's planting itself everywhere. That's what it is. Sin is like that. Pride is like that. And so pride's root goes deep in the human heart. And if you pull up your heart and you see it as God sees it, then pride would be the thickest root and the most extensive root that has run through everything. It's right in the center. And so this sinful disease, this sinful offense to God alone is enough to condemn us before God. But pride does more than that. It works by lies. It works by lies. So let's just move on to the second thing I want to say. And that is pride lies to you about who you really are. Pride lies to you about who you really are. It speaks about for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life and not of the, is not of the father, but is of the world. It says, this is what the world does. This is coming from this sinful world into which we have fallen into, we are born into, and it's gone all over us and gone inside of us. So the most powerful weapon of pride is deception. It lies constantly to you. It lies loudly to you. It lies gently to you. It lies words that you speak and in the thoughts that you hardly notice. It lies until truth feels like an enemy. And so when a person speaks to you truth, you say, no, that's not true about me. You don't know me enough. First, my friends, pride lies about your sin and my sin. It convinces you that sin is small. It convinces you that sin is understandable. People should understand your failings, but you won't understand other people's failings. It tells you that everyone else is doing it. It assures you that consequences will not come. There will be nothing about this. Yes, you can carry on with this kind of a life, this kind of a habit, and there will be no consequences. And yet God says, no, there is consequence. You have to face me one day. Pride will tell you that guilty conscience is unnecessary. Don't feel bad about it. Pride will tell you that guilt is weakness, that shame is outdated. It's something of the past. Imagine someone standing before a sort of a tall mirror that has been warped. The reflection is distorted, and maybe you have seen it, haven't you? You've gone, and it's one of those warped mirrors, and you look tall in one, and then you look very short in one, you look very thin in one, and you look very wide in the other, and so on. In one, your head is too big, and your legs are small, and the other one, your legs are very tall, and yet your upper body is very, very short. You see that, and that's what pride does to us. It's all distorted. So it makes us look very different. And so it's this kind of a mirror. Don't see yourself in the mirror of pride and mirror of this world and mirror of your heart. because it is reshaping your flaws until your flaws look fine. It erases the edges of sin, so sin appears harmless. It is coloring your hair and having you wear a wig when you don't have any hair. It's covering everything. It's lying to you, you see. It is like a person I know, personally, who thought if they just put some dye on their head, they would look very nice. But they didn't realize they used someone else's dye by mistake, and all their hair went, well, pink or purple it was. Well, I suppose in this day and age, it's not such a big thing. But it was really strange. And they couldn't wait till they could change the color. But at the time, they couldn't. The more they added more, they think it would make it darker. It made it worse. But this is what we laugh at these things. And we laughed at this person for a long, long time. But because we were not used to him. I won't say anymore. But sin does that. Pride does that to all of us. And we might laugh at these things. But when it happens to us, we don't realize it. We don't realize it. Others might see it, but we don't. We would see it in other people, but we don't see it in ourselves. Because it is so subtle. It is so deceptive. Another thing is this. The second thing that pride does Pride, I said, lies about your sin, but pride lies about your goodness as well. So you notice the little good that you do, and you forget the greater good that you failed to do. So the things you actually don't do, that you should be doing, you ignore those, but just a little thing, then it's expanded. You see the kindness on one day, and you forget your anger on the other day. You take credit for strengths that you never gave yourself. You refuse to admit that everything you have is a gift from God. And so you begin, and I begin to think that I am self-made. I'm self-sufficient. I'm self-secure. It's about me. Pride is quick to say, I'm enough. People just need to accept me as I am, and I'm enough. But the Bible says, I all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. All of us. Another thing that pride does, the third thing, pride lies about your need of God, your need of Jesus Christ. Pride says you can fix yourself. Pride says you can save yourself. Pride says that heaven is your right to have, and hell is for other people. Pride says, religion is fine as long as it doesn't tell you what to do. As a young man said to me, I'm not a fundamentalist. I don't want to be a fundamentalist. I said, I don't want you to be a fundamentalist too, but I want you to be a Christian. That's what I want you to be. Pride says, no, that's not, I don't need that. Pride doesn't mind a distant God, a God who blesses me, but I don't have to know him. He's a sort of a welfare state. I don't have to deal with the people as long as I get my stuff. That's all I want. As long as the money comes into my bank and they don't ask me to fill in any forms, they don't want me to do any of these things, but I don't need to know them. Just give me my stuff that I want from the government. So we want a sort of a welfare heaven state and forget about God. But we don't want a God who rules our life. Pride hates his law. It hates his authority. It hates his claim over your life. Another thing is, fourth thing about pride is that pride lies about truth itself. It lies about truth itself. Pride doesn't simply misunderstand God. Pride actually resists him. Pride fights him. Pride suppresses the voice of conscience. Pride avoids the Bible. Pride mocks holiness. Pride refuses correction. Pride will accept any explanation for the world as long as the explanation leaves God out. Or it leaves him as much out that it doesn't have to touch my life. And that's why atheism, my friends, is not merely an intellectual position. It is a moral rebellion. Pride says, I do not want God to rule me. And people dig into science. not simply to understand, but sometimes to escape the accountability. But this is not true science. It is pseudoscience, what pretends to be science. And so the search of the sky is to find evidence that the universe made itself, not because the evidence is strong, but because the alternative is humbling. You have to deal with this. Pride wants a world without God, because pride wants a life without judgment. That's what it is. And pride ruins relationships. How many relationships are ruined? Even between us, pride destroys our relationships. That's why the scripture speaks about confession of sin and it speaks about humility and repentance and such things. Pride destroys trust. It destroys marriages. It destroys unity in a church. It destroys unity within an office. It prevents apology. It blocks forgiveness. Pride makes small issues large. And pride turns misunderstanding into arguments. Haven't we all been there? I've been there. I'm sure you have too. Pride turns stubbornness into bitterness. Many homes have been torn apart, not because of great sins, but because of great pride. Pride is a liar. It lies until it kills. But pride also does something even worse. It shuts your ears to the gospel. It shuts your ears to Jesus Christ. So the third thing that I want us to think about is this. Pride shuts your ears to the gospel of Christ. The greatest danger of pride is not what it does to your relationship or to your character. The greatest danger is what it does to your soul. Pride closes, you see, the door of heaven, as it were. And God resists the proud. The gospel of Jesus Christ, it humbles me, tells me that I am a sinner and I need the Lord. I need Him who died on the cross for me. And that's why many reject it, because the gospel humbles me. It says you are nothing, but you need everything from the Lord. The gospel tells you that you're guilty. It tells you that you cannot save yourself. It tells you that your best of works, your highest of works cannot wash away your sins. That's what the gospel tells you. It tells you that you must come to the Lord Jesus Christ as a sinner. Not as a strong person, not as a respectable person, not as a moral person, but as a lost person. Pride hates this. Pride wants to contribute. Do you want to contribute? Do you want others to contribute? Pride wants to do that. It wants to stand upright. Pride wants to be deserving. Pride wants to be told that it's good enough. But the gospel says, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. That's what the Bible says. Pride says, I am not that bad. Christ says, you must be born again. You're so bad that you have to be born again. Pride says, I can fix myself. The Lord Jesus Christ says, without me, you can't do nothing. You can't fix yourself without me. Pride says, I'm better than others. The Lord says, all of us have sinned. We have sinned. The best of our works are filthy in God's sight. It's a stench to God's nostrils. Pride says, I don't need mercy. The Lord Jesus Christ says, I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. Just think about this. There's a man, there's a picture of a drowning man. He's in deep waters, he cannot swim. And somebody, a rescuer approaches him with a rope, but the drowning man is refusing it. No, no, no, I don't need this. He insists that he can manage. He insists that he has learned how to swim. He thinks he can float. He believes he's strong enough. His pride, you see, rejects the only thing that can save him. And this is how pride treats the gospel. This is how so many young people, brought up even in the church, they treat it like this. The Lord Jesus Christ, you see, offers salvation, but pride refuses to take hold. No, that's my parents' religion. I see all of their mistakes, all of their problems, and I'm not gonna have Jesus Christ for that. How silly that is. Pride, my friends, is killing countless souls because they do not want to bow to the Lord. But the good news is this, dear friends, and maybe you see these things in yourself. Jesus Christ can break pride. Jesus Christ can change a proud heart. The Lord Jesus Christ can save sinners who could never save themselves or been full of themselves. And so let me move on to the fourth thing, and that is that Jesus Christ alone can break the power of this enemy within. Jesus Christ can break that power. You say, I can't get away from this. The smell of it is everywhere. I'm tainted with pride. I feel so important and I get so prickly. I don't like to be told things I don't like to hear. So what hope have you against pride? You can't reason it out of yourself. You can't discipline it out. You cannot educate it out. You cannot sort of hide from it. You cannot listen to enough sermons. And so I've listened to enough sermons on pride. You can't bury it under sort of self-improvement. Pride will always rise again because pride lives in the heart. But Jesus Christ came to destroy the work of sin and Satan. He entered this world not to praise proud people, but to save those who've been broken under the sin of pride. He humbled himself. He made himself of no reputation, the Bible says. He lived in obedience to his father. He suffered in weakness. He endured insults. He went to the cross as a substitute for sinners. That's what he did. And on that cross, he took the punishment that mankind, with all of their pride, deserve. The proud sinner deserves judgment. but Christ bore judgment. The proud sinner, you see, deserves condemnation, but Jesus Christ was condemned for us. The proud sinner cannot save himself, but Jesus Christ saves to the uttermost all who come unto God by him. Just think of the cross of Jesus, where he died on that cross, like a great exchange. The sinner brings all of his sins, including his pride, The Lord Jesus Christ brings his righteousness to them. The sinner brings his guilt. The Lord Jesus Christ brings mercy. The sinner brings pride. The Lord Jesus Christ brings his humility. And on that cross, Jesus Christ takes the sinner's punishment and gives the sinner his peace. That's what he does. So if you come to the Lord Jesus Christ, your pride was nailed to him. He died for it. He carries it. He was judged for it and he rose again to give sinners like us a new heart, a humble heart, a teachable heart, a heart that can confess sin and receive forgiveness. That is why my friends, if you're a Christian and there are problems in your life and there are issues that are happening, there is hope because God has given you a humble heart. And the Lord Jesus Christ will help you and bless you as you humble yourself before him. There is hope then in you, in your relationships. After God saves us, pride doesn't disappear of course, but it loses its throne. It's no longer ruling you. You battle it and you battle with strength that is given from God. There is hope for you. When pride rises, the Lord Jesus Christ gives grace to resist it. When pride tempts you to sin, Christ gives the desire to obey the Lord and not look at your feelings. When pride tries to destroy relationships, Christ gives the power to forgive, to confess, to serve, to love, to own. This is the miracle of conversion. It's not simply entering into a church. It's not adopting some sort of a religion. It's not picking up some sort of moral habits. It's conversion. This conversion is God changing a proud heart into a humble heart. So let me finish then. And let me speak plainly to you. Now the greatest danger that you and I The greatest danger in our life is not outside of us, as I said. It's not your friends. It's not your past. It's not your problems. It is this enemy within you. Pride. The pride of life. Ask yourself some honest questions then. Do you resist God's authority? Do you avoid the Bible, the scripture, because it confronts you? Do you struggle to admit you're wrong? Do you refuse to consider eternity? Do you believe that you're good enough as you are? Do you think that you have time to delay repentance and trusting in Christ? Do you justify your sin? Do you minimize your guilt? Do you say it is everyone else's fault? Do you imagine heaven will be yours without Jesus Christ? If these things are true, my friends, then pride is there in your heart, to some degree, and maybe even ruling your heart. And pride never leads you to life, my friends. Pride only leads you to despair, to loneliness, and pride will lead you away from God. That's what pride does. Just think about a man. He's walking towards a cliff, but there's a thick fog that is preventing him from seeing the edge of that cliff. And he's stepping forward confidently. He sees no danger there. And people shout for him to stop, but he's saying, no, no, you don't understand. I can see, I can see. He trusts his eyesight. He trusts his steps. He trusts his judgment, but his confidence is false. One step more and he will fall. That's how the unconverted walk. That's how those who are being moved by pride walk. Pride covers their eyes. They see no danger, but danger is real. The cliff is real. The judgment is real. Eternity is real. And unless something changes, they will fall into a lost eternity. But God is calling. The Lord is calling. He says, stop, turn, turn back. He's stripping away the fog. He's showing you about your heart. He's warning you not to take another step toward destruction. And the Lord Jesus Christ stands ready to save. But pride must fall, my friends. You must come honestly. You must come humbly. You must bow your heart and you must say, Lord, save me. I am the sinner. I'm the sinner that I have been reading about and I've been hearing about. I have this proud heart. I need thy mercy. And so if you come to Christ, He will receive you. If you come to Him humbly, He'll forgive your pride. He'll forgive all of those things that you've said, all of those things you have thought and done. He will break the chains. He'll wash you clean. He will give you that new life that He has promised, a new purpose, a new hope, a new heart. Just think about these things, dear friends. There is this open door for sinners. Don't stay in the prison. Don't stay in the prison alone by yourself. Christ can save you. Christ can change you. He is the one who can transform that enemy and actually kill it within and make you a servant of righteousness. Dear friends, the world will pass away, as it says in verse 17. Your pride will pass away. Your glory will fade like grass, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever, it says in verse 17. So, will you face this enemy? this enemy within, this pride of life. Will you bow before the Lord Jesus Christ? Will you leave your pride at the foot of the Lord Jesus Christ and take hold of the Savior who died for even proud sinners like us? Well, may God give us each one the grace to do so. Amen.