Copyright © Jerald Finney
January 26, 2024
Contents:
1. Introduction
2. Some Facts about Pride
3. Some Results of Pride
4. Marriage and the Family According To God
5. Conclusion
1. Introduction
Choosing to kill one’s unborn baby is the result of pride. Pride is “the attitude that declares its ability to live without God.” It results in idolatry, the replacement of God with another god or other gods. When one chooses abortion, the killing of his or her baby, one says, “I am my own god.”
2. Some Facts about Pride
- “Pride of heart is the attitude of a life that declares its ability to live without God.”
- Number one on God’s hate parade listed in Proverbs 6:16-19 is pride.
- “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate” (Proverbs 8:13).
- “… [T]he pride of life is not from the father” “1 John 2:16).
- The pride of life comes from the devil. Pride was the sin of Satan (“I will.”). See, Isaiah 14:12-17 for Satan’s eleven “I wills.”
- The pride of one’s heart deceives a person.
3. Some Results of Pride
Examples of the results of pride of life:
- It causes one to “live lower than animals.”
- Pride leads to other sins. One’s “philosophy of life is going to gradually work its way down into your fingers, your feet, your eyes and all your senses.”
- Pride leads to violence. Sometimes one kills his/her baby. Sometime one beats his wife.
- Sometimes one commits sodomy or lesbianism or declares that he/she is not of the sex God made him.
- Sometimes one becomes a drunk. “You may have heard the story of the pig in Kentucky that got out of its pen, wandered out in the woods, and found a still. Mash had leaked out of this still which the pig began to eat and also to drink the liquid leaking out with it. The pig got drunk, and I mean drunk. He couldn’t walk, and he sprawled right down in the mud. He stayed there for twenty-four hours until he sobered up. Then as he started off grunting, he was heard to say, ‘I’ll never play the man again.'”
- Pride leads one to associate with others who are guided by pride.
- Pride leads men to betray others for various reasons. It causes judges to favor those who give the most to their campaigns rather than in the interest of justice. It leads to dog eat dog practices in the business world.
- Pride leads to the judgment of God.
4. Marriage and the Family According to God
God created all things for his pleasure (Revelation 4:11). Obedience to God brings Him pleasure.
God’s word tells us that He ordained marriage and the family and gives us his rules for the father, mother and children.
God ordained marriage in the Garden of Eden. Jesus said, quoting from the book of Genesis: “Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matthew 19:4-6).
God instructed the first married couple: “Be fruitful, and multiply” (Genesis 1:28).
“My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them” (Psalms 139:15-16).
“Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward” (Psalms 127:3).
God is not pleased when one kills his child. “And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD” (Leviticus 18:21). “In other words, God said, “Do not offer a human sacrifice. Do not take your child and offer him as a human sacrifice. To do so profanes me.”
Killing one’s baby is offering him as a human sacrifice to the god of self.
5. Conclusion
“What consummate conceit of man, living apart from God, to think that he has evolved from an animal when he is living lower than an animal.”
“How many people today are attempting to run their lives as if they were God? They feel that they don’t need God, and they live without Him. The interesting thing is that when God made us He did not put a steering wheel on any of us. Why? Because He wants to guide our lives. He wants us to come to Him for salvation first, and then He wants to take charge of our lives. When you and I run our lives, we are in the place of God. We are in the driver’s seat. We are the ones who are the captains of our own little ships or our own little planes, and we are going through the water or the air just to suit ourselves. That is pride, and anyone who reaches that position, if he continues in it, is committing a sin which is fatal because it means he will go into a lost eternity.”
“Men and women walking through life with their heads down like animals (only man looks up, animals look down), there is only One who can lift them. Evolution has not lifted mankind one inch. Look at our world that has been schooled in this godless philosophy. The deadly poison of godless materialism and humanism will bring upon us the judgment of God! God says, ‘Though you be lifted up, little man, I’ll bring you down.’”
“But He also says, through the lips of His Son, our Saviour: ‘And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me’ (John 12:32). Which way are you going, my friend? Down the way of pride, pessimism, unbelief and rebellion, down, down, down? You who were made in the likeness of God can be restored. You will have to lay aside your pride and come in helplessness to this Saviour. He can lift you.”
Note. Those statements in quotes, unless otherwise indicated are from Dr. J. Vernon McGees Commentaries on the Books of Obadiah and Micah.