Peter writes, “Clothe yourselves with humility
toward one another, because God opposes the proud, but shows favor to the
humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand.”
We don’t talk a whole lot about the virtue of
humility. We also don’t talk a lot about its opposites, the sins of pride
and arrogance. I don’t know why that is. Maybe it’s because, unlike
some sins, pride and arrogance have less to do with outward behavior, which
everyone can see, and more to do with inner attitudes. And because of
that, maybe we think of it as more of a grey area. You know, murder,
adultery, things like that, those are things that are black and white.
Either you did them or you did not. Arrogance? Well, a lot of times
that’s a matter of opinion. And so, we don’t talk about it much.
But that’s not right.
It’s not Biblical. God has a lot to say on the subjects of pride and
arrogance. A few years ago, when we did a sermon series on the Minor
Prophets, I was struck by how often God, speaking through the Minor Prophets,
spoke out about the sin of arrogance. In fact, when you look through the
Old Testament, arrogance is all over the place.
And inevitably, it gets people
into trouble. What happens, time after time after time, is that God
blesses the people and the people prosper. And then, those prosperous
people decide that their prosperity is because they’re so good and they’re so
great. They don’t give credit to God for their success--they take credit
for themselves. They become arrogant. And eventually, God decides
it’s time to show them how wrong they are. God withholds His blessings,
and things almost immediately fall apart. At some point, the people
realize what’s happened, they humble themselves before God, and eventually God
blesses them and they prosper again. This cycle happens over and over and
over.
Because that’s really where our
arrogance becomes a problem--when we don’t humble ourselves before God. I
mean, yes, it’s not good to act arrogantly toward other people, either.
But think about what we’re doing when we act arrogantly toward God.
I mean, really that’s taking
arrogance to a whole different level, right? We’ve talked about this
before, but think about who God is. God is all-powerful. God is
all-wise. God is all-knowing. God is all-seeing. God is the
one who created the world and everything in it. God can be everywhere and
do all things at the same time. God can be at each point in history at
the same time. God is bigger and greater and more than anything we can
ever imagine. You and I cannot even begin to get our heads around how
incredible God is.
And yet, how many times do we
think we should be able to tell God what to do? How many times, when
things are not going the way we want them to, do we get frustrated with
God? How many times do we act like God owes it to us to explain what it
is that God’s doing? Or not doing? How many times do we ask, or
even demand, that God explain what God’s doing to us? And when things are
not going the way we think they should, as is happening a lot right now, how
many times do we question God or even doubt God? How many times do we
wonder if God cares or even knows what’s going on?
And it works the other way,
too. How many times, when things are going well, do we do what the people
in Old Testament times did? How many times do we give ourselves credit,
believing that things are going well because of how great we are and because of
all the wonderful things we did? How many times do we look at ourselves
as the source of all our good fortune, rather than giving the credit to God?
All of that is rooted in
arrogance. It’s rooted in a feeling that we know better than God.
We’d never put it that way, but that’s what it is. It’s a feeling that we
don’t really need God, and that in fact, God would do well to take our advice a
lot of times. It’s a feeling that God really should be doing things the
way we want God to do them. It’s a feeling that we know what God should
be doing, and if God’s not doing things that way, then, well, there must be
something wrong with God. It’s a feeling that God owes it to us to make
things go the way we want them to go, and if God’s not going to do that, then
God had darn well better explain to us why not.
Again, we’d never put it that
way. In fact, when we do put it that way, it sounds kind of silly.
It sounds ridiculous, really. That you and I would put ourselves on the
same level as God? And in fact, that we’d put ourselves on a higher level
than God!
I wonder how God must feel,
when we do that. We may not know that, but we know what God did, at least
in Old Testament times. God withdrew His blessings and let the people
deal with the consequences of that. Basically, God said, oh, you think
you don’t need Me? You think you know better than I do? You think
you can do things without Me? Well, then I’ll just let you go ahead and
try. I’ll let you do things without Me for a while. I’ll let you
see just how that goes. And of course, it does not go very well.
Does God do that with us
sometimes? I think God probably does. Now, don’t get me
wrong. God always loves us. God always cares about us. God
always wants to help us. But when we refuse God’s help, when we make a
conscious choice to live without God, I think God probably pulls away and lets
us live with the consequences of our choices.
But the good news is that God
always gives us a chance to turn around. God gives us a chance to turn
back to God again. When the people of the Old Testament did that, God
forgave them and gave them His blessings again. And God will do that for
us, too.
Remember the quote from our
Bible passage that I read to start this message? I quoted Peter as
saying, “Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because God
opposes the proud, but shows favor to the humble. Humble yourselves,
therefore, under God’s mighty hand.” And that’s an accurate quote, but
some of you may have noticed that it’s incomplete. The full quote says, “Humble
yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due
time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”
When we humble
ourselves, when we acknowledge who God is, when we acknowledge how weak and
insignificant and low we are in comparison to God, when we put our faith and
trust in God’s goodness and knowledge and wisdom, when we listen to God and do
things God’s way, rather than trying to force God to do things our way--when we
do all that, God will lift us up.
Now it may not
happen right away. Peter says God will lift us up “in due time”, not
necessarily right away. Even after we turn back, God still may make us
deal with the consequences of our choices for a while. God may want to
teach us a lesson. God may want us to learn from our mistakes, from our
sins, from our arrogance. God may wait so that we know our turning back
is real. But God will lift us up. It will happen “in due
time”. In God’s time. And God’s time is always the right time.
But that means
that sometimes we have to wait. And waiting is not easy. When we
want something, when we need something, and yet we have to wait. We get
worried. We get scared. There’s a lot of anxiety involved in
waiting.
And God
understands that. And God does not want us to be worried while we
wait. God wants us to trust Him. That’s why Peter tells us
this: “Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.”
It all fits together. If we humble
ourselves before God, we can trust God. And when we humble ourselves
before God, God will lift us up in due time. At the right time. And
when we humble ourselves before God, we don’t have to worry. We don’t
have to be anxious. When we humble ourselves before God, we can give all
that worry and anxiety to God, because we know how great and how good God
is. And we know that God will use God’s greatness and God’s goodness for
our benefit, because we know God loves us and cares about us.
Arrogance and pride will always get us
into trouble. But when we humble ourselves before God, we can
relax. We don’t have to worry. We don’t have to be afraid. We
can rely on God. God has it all handled. God cares for you.
And He always will.
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