Date: September 15, 2013
Bible Text: John 4:1-13 | Steve Damron
Series: Transcribed Sermons
Bible Text: John 4:1-13 | Preacher: Steve Damron | Series: Transcribed Sermons
John chapter four. Starting in verse one.
And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness,
2 Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered.
3 And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread.
4 And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.
5 And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
6 And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
7 If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.
8 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
9 And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence:
10 For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee:
11 And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
12 And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
13 And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season.
We’re going to look in the middle of this passage in Verses five, six, and seven is our text passage. We’re using it and we’re going to try to understand a little bit about it, and then go on from there.
5 And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
6 And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
7 If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.
It’s believed, we see in verse one, this is right after He was baptized. We know that Jesus was born in Nazareth in the life of Christ we’ve been studying that. Nazareth, Galilee area, and He comes down to the Jordan river area, and here it says that He was led by the Sprit into the wilderness. In the Judaen area, they’ve made shrines because they believe that’s the site where Jesus was tempted. But it’s believed that he went out into that wilderness area, and it’s out there that the devil came after he was alone without food for forty days. There’s lots of debate on why Christ would do that. Some say it’s because maybe He wanted to bring His flesh to a place where might be a little bit equal with ours and still show that His flesh in itself wasn’t strong enough and yet give us an example that we through God’s power can overcome temptation. And I kind of lean towards that. That Christ being out in the desert for forty days not having food, He still relies and shows us He’s still has enough fortitude to come and say, ‘You know what? I can’t beat the devil by myself. I’ve got to still cling to the Word of God.’ And so He shows us how to defeat the devil. But tonight we’re going to look at the idea coming out of five, six, and seven that the devil throws at Jesus Christ. He takes Him up into a high mountain, he shows him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee and the glory of them for that is delivered unto me. You know it’s amazing, here we see the devil standing before Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, one of the trinity, one of the persons of the godhead, and here he throws at him. Here Jesus Christ according to Proverbs, we believe, chapter 8, we believe that Jesus was the One that spoke things into existence, he’s the One that created things. And so here, he is talking to his creator, saying, “Hey, all this was given to me, Jesus. All this is mine. And I’ll give it to you, Jesus. I’ll give you all that honor cause that’s given to me to do. What do you gotta do? If thou, therefore wilt worship me. All this shall be thine.” And it seems like he’s saying, it seems like a silly temptation. It’s actually the, we know in I John chapter 2:15, there’s three temptations—the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and we see the pride of life. And tonight we want to look at that pride of life.
It’s an age-old battle because I think that Jesus standing here high on this mountain probably thought back to the beginning to time and remembered creating Lucifer. Remembered creating this glorious angel, and many believe that he was in charge of the music and bringing praise to the Godhead. And I’m sure he thought back to that time when Lucifer was created, and then He said, “No, why can’t I have worship?” And He cast him out of heaven, and now thousands of years later, high in a mountain, this fallen angel stands before his creator and he says, “Hey, this was given to me. Just bow to me and worship me. It seems silly. This seems just as silly today because the pride in our heart works the same way, and it makes fools out of us. It makes us silly people. You get caught up in our pride. I read a couple of silly illustrations about pride. There was a lady that came to a pastor. He had preached on pride and she had been convicted of it. And she heard the sermon and waited afterward back in the foyer and wanted to catch the pastor. She told him that she was in great distress of mind and that message just hit her great and she just wanted to mention to him and confess that you know what, I’ve been working on this pride thing. And the minister said, “Well, what do you mean, this sin of pride?” She said, well I sat before my mirror for an hour some days ago admiring my beauty. The pastor looked at her and said, “well, ma’am that’s not the sin of pride. That was the sin of imagination.”
Many times we are pretty foolish. It would be foolish to say it, first of all, but then I read about this. I actually asked Mrs. Martin and I wanted to make sure that the German was correct. It was pretty funny because it said that back when John F. Kennedy was alive. He was served a big slice of humble pie. And this is why. He was president and he concluded his speech at the Berlin Wall in 1963 and he was trying to say “I too am a Berliner.” However, in the German language Berliner, I asked her and she said Berliner means jelly donut. And so, actually, here he is at this momentous in his life, and he says, “I too, and a jelly donut.” And he got served a big ole’ piece of humble pie.
We don’t like being served up humble pie. We don’t like the facts, really, we look around us and we see the effects of pride all around us. We see it often in politics, you see it in sports, at the work place, you see it all around us, but then when it creeps into our life, boy some way the devil is able to hide it.
We want to look at this idea of pride tonight and see if we can maybe understand it some. See if we can help avoid the pitfalls of pride.
The effects of pride. Three simple things I want to look at. I want to look at the forms of pride. I think we all can understand the forms of pride. What are some of the forms of pride? Well, Pharaoh teaches us that there is a haughtiness in the face of God. What do we mean when we say a haughtiness in the face of God. We can remember back in the Old Testament, the book of Exodus, him saying over and over, “Who is the lord? Who is He?” Over and over Moses and Aaron would come in and he’d say, “Who is that?” And we look at Pharaoh and we say, “Boy, he sure is haughty.” Even when I read it now, I think, “Man, what haughtiness there. I k now he’s pharaoh and I know he’s conquered the world, but he’s talking to god here. What about us? Are we haughty to god when he tugs on your heart? When He speaks to you, the spirit of god says to change this, or it’ll ruin you and we flaunt our spiritual muscles and we stick our spiritual nose up in the air and we say, “Who is God? Why is He telling me to do that?” All of us do this. All of us get this haughtiness inside, and it raises up and we say, “Who is He?” He’s God. He’s your Saviour. He’s your Lord, He’s your king, and we need to bow before Him. How many families, how many young people, how many children, how many college students, we all could sit here and have people say, “I remember so and so,…” You can think of people that they listened to their haughtiness. They listened to that person inside that lifted up against god because God put His finger on something and they didn’t like it. And we could line up all across, every time I’m with a pastor, and I’m sitting there talking with them, and they go down the list and say, “O man, I could remember ten fifteen, twenty years ago, this family, or this young person, this deacon, or this pastor over here,…” And what happened? God tried to pin them on something and they didn’t like it. Are you haughty in the face of God? Do you say, “Who is the Lord?”
What other form of pride do we see? Well in the Bible I see a haughtiness in the face of sin. Where do we see that? Very clearly shown to us, we can think of Samson. Play with it. Play with it. Hey, bind me, bind me. Oop. You can see him; he’s just toying with it. Haughtiness in the face of sin. And how many of us are not scared of sin? So, we play with and we play with it. And that razor of pride comes and shaves our power away. Shaves it away, and it’s gone! And all of the sudden, the Bible says, “…he wist not that the Spirit of the Lord was gone.” You may be sitting here and have been sitting here for a long time, and you don’t even know the Holy Spir9it hasn’t been in contact with you in a long time. Haughtiness in the face of sin.
What else do we see? I think we see in I Samuel 15, I think we see a haughtiness in the face of God’s man. Where do we see that? Well in I Samuel 15, here we see Saul coming back, and he was given instructions by the man of god to utterly destroy the Amalekites, to utterly destroy them. Everything—destroy it, and he was satisfied in partial obedience. He was satisfied with just good. He was satisfied with just a little recognition. I know I sinned, but just give me a little recognition. He had a haughtiness in the face of God’s man, and what happened? The kingdom was ripped from his hands. It was pulled away. Haughtiness in the face of god’s man.
I think in Luke 18, we see another form of pride. We see two people standing and basically coming and praying to god and one man is kind of bowed and he must’ve been hunched over. The burden of sin was upon him. He said, O god, help me. I’m wicked. I’m a sinner.” We see another man standing next to him and he says, “Thank you, Lord, that I’m not like this publican.” What kind of pride is in your life tonight? Is it a haughtiness in the face of god, a haughtiness in the face of sin, a haughtiness in the face of god’s man, or just a haughtiness in the face of other sinners?
A haughtiness in the face of other sinners. You know, there’ s a false humility that a lot of people have. Spurgeon says this, “None have more pride than those who dream that they don’t. You may labor against vain glory until you conceive that you are humble and the fond conceit of your humility will prove to be pride in full bloom. It aids humility full well and is then most truly pride. Pride is a sin with a thousand lives, it seems impossible to kill it. It flourished on that which should be its poison, glorying in its shame. It is a sin with a thousand shapes by perpetual change it escapes capture. It seems impossible to hold it. The vapory imp slips from you, only to appear in another form and to mock your fruitless pursuit to die to self, one would need to die himself.”
What is Spurgeon saying? There is a false, or fake humility. You know, how many times have I said, “Well you know me. You know I’m just nothing. I’m just nothing.” But it sure seems that you’re proud about that nothing. But that’s the way we get. And so we have a false humility and in the face of other sinners we say we have nothing, but then when it comes to my children, well, are you saying my child sinned? I mean, don’t you know, don’t you know that he’s a Damron? What’s that? What is that? Alright, so he jerks and quakes, bounces everywhere, you just described him. Yeah. And he’s a sinner. They’re sinners. And I’m a sinner. Well, you say, don’t you know, don’t just treat me like some vagabond. Don’t just treat me like some un-churched person. I’ve been in this church for 25 years! Yes, and I would think after that amount of time you realize and I realize that we’re nothing. And it’s not a false humility, it’s not, how many times do we go around? What are we teaching our kids? I’ve talked to a few parents about this. What are we teaching our parents when you go, “Those kids over there are all bad. Don’t hang with them.” You know what you should do, just go ahead and insert, inflate, stick that needle in and start pumping. My dad just said that all them are bad. That means that I am,…what did you just say without saying it? You are good. No, you know what you say? Those kids may be alright, but you’re a stinking rotten sinner and you can’t hang out with them. Look at that. It solves the problem doesn’t it. But what do we do? We always got to save ourselves, don’t we? Because don’t you know, that’s my child. That’s my child, and he can’t be that bad. It’s amazing, and we’re haughty in the face of other sinners, and you condemn the Pharisee. I mean, look at him. Looking down at those publicans, but we do the same thing. How many of us over the past few weeks or month or so, we’ve even thought it. Well, you know, that bus kid, he’s just a bus kid. You’ve heard it, and you’ve thought it. And there’s been many bus kids, I know. We have a Saturday program called TnT, called Teens on Target. Teen parents, there’s a couple of those kids, they don’t have the character, I would admit that. But some of them that have worked with them know they’ve got a lot more heart. Why is that? Why? Well because every day when they get up, oh they may see the bottles of beer in the kitchen, when they come home, their mom and dad may say, “Hey, we got this video.” And they have to stop and say, “God, today You’ve gotta make me strong. I’ve gotta fight this.” We can’t have a haughtiness in the face of other sinners. We think we’re so high and mighty, and really, we show that we’re shallow Christians.
As one man said, Because it is a vessel that is the fullest that sinks more in the earth. What form of pride do you have? What form of pride is inside of you? But what about the fate of pride? We can think back to Pharaoh and in Proverbs 16. Let me just read this verse for you. Verse 5. The Bible says this. “Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord. Though hand join in hand, he shall not go unpunished.” You know what the fate of pride is? That punishment is sure. It’s coming. Can you see that in my mind and my imagination, I think of Nebuchadnezzar, remember when he was warned by Daniel that someday you’re going to walk out and you’re going to say, “All this Babylon I made,” and watch out. And can you see him, here’s the king, he was the greatest. Study history. Babylon—they were the greatest at the time. They had destroyed it all. He ruled the world. And there he is on all fours, out in his yard. Here, Nebi, Here Nebi. I’ve got a Scooby snack for you. Here, Nebi.” It’s, I mean, it’s crazy. I mean, here’s he’s got these claws that all, here’s this king and what did God do? Punishment is sure. Can you find his ruins? We looked it up. I remember in family devotions we studied it. Did Pharaoh survive? We were searching for him in the Hebrew there. We couldn’t find him. Did Pharaoh survive? He must be in the Red Sea, when the waters came rushing over. Who is the Lord? I don’t hear you. Punishment is sure. Punishment is sure. Hey you can be haughty in the face of sin, but punishment is sure. Ask Samson down there. Ask him as he’s grinding and grinding, as they take maybe those hot pokers to his eyes and they’re heading there. Hey, Samson, is it sure? Can I get away with being haughty? Ask him. Ask him as he blindly is led up and he tries to feel for those pillars and he cries out to God, “Just one more time, God. I’m humble now. Give me that power one more time. Punishment is sure and punishment is severe. It’s severe. It crushes completely. The millstone of God crushes completely. We need to understand that when we take on these forms of pride, that the fate of pride is sure and severe. But what about defeating it in our lives? What about that? Well, I think there’s two things that can help us in defeating pride. I think one, you need to recognize the source. Remember when Peter was there and Christ was talking about how that He was going to have to go to the cross and He was going to have to die and He was trying to explain what was going to happen to the disciples. Peter rises up and he says, “Lord, I will never deny you. You’re not going to do that. I will never do that.” And what happened? Jesus turned around and rebuked Satan. He rebuked Satan. “Get thee behind me, Peter? Satan.” You know what? I think you need to recognize the source of pirde. You know, any time we think we’re not just getting recognized like we should, push it down. Satan is there. He’s around somewhere. You mark it down, he’s there. He’s talking to you. He’s trying to get you stirred up. We’ve got to understand that Satan from the beginning of time has said, “I need more, and even in Christ here in our text passage in Luke chapter four, what did he talk to Jesus Christ. I, Me, Thine…it’s always been about him. It’s always been that I need to be on the throne. And we need to understand in our life, recognizing the source and that is Satan. WE need to get away from him, flee him, resist the devil and he will flee from you. We need to recognize self. We need to recognize self. Again, Spurgeon says this about self, “Self-sufficiency is inefficiency. The fullness of self is a double emptiness. He that has no sense of weakness has a weakness in his sense. I believe, brethren and sisters, that any man that God uses for a great purpose will be so emptied out that he will wonder that ever God uses him in the least degree. He will be ready to hide his head and long to get out of public notice because he will feel himself to be utterly unworthy of the favor that God manifests toward him. That’s the right attitude toward self-sufficiency. In I Corinthians chapter four and verse seven. For who maketh thee to differ from another, and what hast thou that thou didst not receive. Now if thou didst receive it, why does thou glory as if thou hadst not received it? What was he telling these people? What are you glorying in? It was a gift. We say that and sometimes it’s again that false humility. You know somebody comes to us and says, “That was just a wonderful, wonderful gesture. You know, Amen.” And there goes your head. Inflate. All right. So we did a nice gesture, can’t we handle that? There Satan, don’t we recognize that in myself dwelleth no good thing. You’ve got to believe the Scripture. What does the Bible say in Psalm 139? Verses 23 and 24, here should be our attitude. Search me, o God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. We should come before God and say search me. Why? I need the search light on. I need it showing on me. Why? Because inside is wickedness. There’s wicked ways that are inside me. Jeremiah says this in Jeremiah 17. He says Thus saith the Lord, in verse 5, cursed be the man that trusteth in man and maketh flesh his arm and whose heart departeth from the Lord. For he shall be like the heath in the desert and shall not see when good cometh but shall inhabit the parched places and not inhabited. Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord and in whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as the tree planted by the waters and that spreadeth out her roots by the river…and right after that phrase he says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it? You know who can? The person we can trust in—the Lord. That’s why he says in verse 7, Blessed is the man who trusteth in the Lord because we can trust in Him. But I can’t trust my heart. I can’t trust that it’s going to make wise decisions. I can’t trust that it’s going to lead me in straight paths. I can’t trust that it’s going to keep myself under. No, I’ve got to recognize the source, but I’ve got to recognize self. It isn’t any good. Self isn’t any good. Paul, of all people, should’ve lifted himself up. Look at me, a Hebrew of the Hebrew. I am zealous. But what did he say, I keep myself under. I keep myself under. I die daily. I am crucified with Christ. How come Paul over and over instructs us and tells us to watch out for self? There’s not any good thing in self. Because maybe Paul when he was sitting there in the prison was thinking, “I was a good person, I’ve done good, I was zealous.” God said, “Wait a minute, there’s nothing good in you, Paul.” You say, I’ve been writing these books and I’m trying to instruct these people and God says, “Hey, there’s nothing good in you, Paul.” And today the same message comes through to us. We may sit there and say, “I was out on the bus route all weekend, I’ve been working here at the church, and my kids seem to be doing okay,…”There’s nothing good in us. There’s nothing good in us. All the glory needs to go to the Lord. All the glory goes to the Lord. What about pride in our lives? What about it? How is it working in your heart? Where is it showing itself? Is there a haughtiness in the face of God’s man, is there a haughtiness in the face of God, is there a haughtiness in the face of sinners? Is there a haughtiness in the face of sin? Do you understand that pride, the fate of it, is sure and it’s severe. The punishment will be horrible. Are you willing to work at defeating it? I think if we look at Christ, you would understand the right perspective of self. What was his pride and birth. Matthew 13 they said, is not this the carpenter’s son. What about the pride in his wealth. Matthew chapter 8. The son of man hath not where to lay his head. What about his personal appearance. Wait. He took pride in that. Isaiah said he hath no form or comeliness. What about his reputation. He was pretty concerned about keeping that, I mean, “It’s my reputation.” Philippians 2 said he made himself of no reputation. What about superiority, I mean, he was God the son. He said, “I am as he that serveth,” in Luke 22. What about his ability, I mean, I’m God the Son again. He said in John 5, I can of my own self do nothing. What about his will? In John 5, I seek not mine own will. What about resentment? There’s a pride there in resentment. Looking down at other people and hating other people. In Luke 23, He said, “Father, forgive them…” Boy, it seems like Christ is a pretty good example of humility, of a humble person. Why don’t we reach His level? How do we get there? You’ve got to push yourselves down. Jesus said, “He that is greatest of all will be the servant of all.” You want to be great in God’s eyes, start serving. Put that pride under. It’s not about position. Jesus takes up that basin, and He takes up that rag, and He starts washing His disciples’ feet. Why? Because we know Jesus was great and He came here to serve. He came here to show us as an example that we need to serve and put ourselves under. Nobody else, we go back to our text passage in Luke chapter four. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
Topics: Pride,Pride of Life
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