I remember a time during my early days of college when I was driving from Lawrence to Kansas City. I was driving through a torrential rain storm, one of those storms where your wipers just can’t keep up. But, like most men, I haven’t yet seen a storm that I don’t think I can drive through, so I kept driving. I did at least take the “sensible” precaution of slowing down to about 50 mph.
I honestly should not have been driving because I could barely see in front of me, but I thought I could see the lines well enough that I could stay in my lane. Well, when I got into the city, I went under an overpass, which gave me that brief moment of clarity when the overpass stops the rain and your wipers can briefly catch up. In that moment, I discovered that I actually wasn’t on the road—I was driving on the shoulder, and I probably had been for miles. That spooked me a little bit, but instead of stopping, I just moved over to the right until I thought I could see another line, and I kept driving. I couldn’t have been more than a mile or so beyond that overpass when I passed a car on my left that was parked on the shoulder of the road. If I hadn’t gone under that overpass, I would have slammed into a parked car as I was going almost 50 mph—all because I chose to drive blind.
Blindness is a great illustration of the sin of pride that we all wrestle with in our lives. Pride distorts the way that we look at everything around us—ourselves, other people, and even God. But the most dangerous aspect of pride is that it keeps us in the dark about its presence in our lives. Proud people are usually the last to know about their pride!
I’m sure you’ve all heard the old saying “Pride comes before a fall.” I’m sure we all want to avoid a “fall,” so we must ask ourselves—if pride comes before a fall, what comes before pride? What attitudes or actions invite pride into our lives and make it feel right at home?
Our passage of Isaiah this morning is a case study in pride. Thus far in the book, the prophet has been speaking mostly to the southern Jewish kingdom of Judah, but in chapter 9 he starts to direct his attention to the northern Jewish kingdom of Israel. He speaks of the discipline that Israel was facing because of their pride, and He reveals to us how God opposes pride wherever it may be found. So, if pride comes before a fall, what comes before pride? Let’s find out!
1. Failing to accurately assess your circumstances (9:8-12)
The northern kingdom of Israel was about to be invaded by the Assyrians, and they were already facing some hard times, but let’s see how they assessed their situation [READ 9:8-12].
God had already begun to express his anger against the people’s pride, but they looked at their situation and said, “these happy days are yours and mine…” (my apologies if you don’t know the theme song from “Happy Days!”). They were convinced that their best days were still ahead of them! Now, they may have had a good reason to think that if they were turning back to God in repentance, but its clear that their confidence was in their own ability to rebuild.
But their overconfidence in themselves kept them from seeing why they needed to rebuild in the first place! Why were they facing problems? It was because God was disciplining them, as He had clearly told them through the prophets. But they didn’t listen to the prophets, so they didn’t understand why they needed to rebuild, and thus they didn’t make the necessary changes to worship God in truth once again.
Pride can blind us to the causes that lie behind our circumstances, and discipline is one of the measures that God uses to help us see clearly again. Thus, it is very important for us to accurately assess our circumstances in light of Scripture. The Bible is like a fog lamp that cuts through the mist and haze of pride to allow us to see things as they really are. If we are facing discipline from God, the Bible will show us where we have gone wrong; it will help us see our lives clearly.
2. Failing to seek wisdom from God (9:13-17)
Let’s see how this failure played out within Israel [READ 9:13-17]. As we see, the people had chosen to take the advice and counsel of people who were actually leading them astray. Notice that this group of leaders actually included “prophets who teach lies,” according to v. 15. These prophets claimed to have a divine message, but they were in fact teaching things that were not true. This should be a sobering reminder to us that not everyone who claims to speak for God truly does speak for God.
Now, in the rest of the Old Testament, we discover that prophets like this gained an audience because they were basically “yes men” who told people what they wanted to hear. A message like that would naturally be more popular than the message of repentance that the true prophets delivered from God.
But the people’s acceptance of the false prophets led them to believe that everything would be okay—they could go on living just as they were living now, and they had nothing to fear. So their pride was fed by the source of advice and counsel that they chose to embrace.
This situation teaches us how important it is to seek wisdom from God and to be willing to embrace His wisdom, no matter how difficult it is for us to hear. Even as we seek God’s wisdom in God’s Word, it is easy for us to dismiss what the Bible says or explain away the commands that call for us to do hard things. But as I have said at times, we must place ourselves under God’s Word the same way that place ourselves under a surgeon’s knife. We must entrust our well-being to God and allow Him to cut away anything in our lives that is detracting from our spiritual health. This kind of spiritual surgery can hurt in the same way that physical surgery does, but spiritual surgery is just as necessary, and in the grand scheme of things, it is far more beneficial.
3. Oppressing other people for personal gain (9:18-10:4)
In the next few verses, Isaiah speaks first of all about the people of Israel in general, then he focuses on their leaders, who write the laws of the land. Let’s read about the people first [READ 9:18-21]. Isaiah graphically portrays the people’s wickedness as cannibalism because they were committing wicked acts against their own flesh and blood. They were like a group of drowning people who were pushing each other down to keep their own heads above water.
This kind of behavior creates a self-centeredness that only allows pride to thrive all the more. Everyone views their own needs and interests as all-important and all-consuming. And when we commit wicked acts against others, we isolate ourselves from the healthy relationships that help us combat pride.
Now, leaders can be particularly vulnerable to pride because their position gives them a measure of power of other people. That power can be used for good, but it can also be abused, and that is exactly what was taking place in Israel [READ 10:1-4]. The leaders were oppressing the helpless among them, but ironically, they would be the helpless ones on the day of punishment that was coming from the Lord.
Virtually all of us will occupy some position of power in our lives. Some of us will be church leaders, some of us will be supervisors at work, and most of us will be parents. As we function in these positions of power, we must have the attitude of our Lord Jesus Christ, “who, existing in the form of God did not consider equality with God as something to be used for His own advantage. Instead He emptied Himself by assuming the form of a slave, taking on the likeness of men. And when He had come as a man in His external form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death—even to death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6-8, HCSB). As Jesus Himself said, He did not come to be served, but to serve (Mark 10:45), and He modeled this attitude on the night before He died by washing the feet of His disciples, which was a task reserved for the lowliest servant in the house.
Pride drives us to think only of ourselves and to view other people as tools to be used for our own interests. We must resist such a temptation and embrace the attitude of our Lord instead.
4. Failing to understand the truth about God (10:5-11)
At this point, we see a fascinating change of focus in the text. Thus far, the Lord has been speaking through Isaiah to the people of Israel, warning them about a coming day when the full measure of His punishment would be poured out. Now, the Lord speaks against the very nation that would carry out His punishment and condemns them for their pride. We see here that their pride originated in a failure to understand the truth about God [READ 10:5-11].
This is a fascinating passage about the interaction between God’s activity and man’s activity. God was raising up Assyria to invade and thus discipline the people of Israel, but as we see, the Assyrians had their own motivations for their actions. They were being used by God for His purposes, yet they were being condemned by God for pursuing their own purposes.
Their greatest mistake was viewing the God of Jerusalem as just another idol, like the gods of all the other nations. Thus, they failed to understand who they were dealing with. When we fail to understand the truth about God, we are begging for pride to come into our lives, because we begin to exalt ourselves rather than God.
When we fail to understand that God’s wisdom and knowledge are unlimited, we can begin to think that we know more about life than God does. When we fail to understand that God is in control, we can begin to think that we are in charge—that we can call all the shots and take credit for all that we have done.
What you believe about God is tied directly to what you think about yourself. So if you embrace a lie about God, you will also embrace a lie about yourself. Whether you realize it or not, you will give yourself the characteristics that the Bible assigns to God, and that is the essence of pride. We see that this is exactly what the king of Assyria did in vv. 12-19 [READ 10:12-19].
Pride would ultimately lead the Assyrians to their downfall, and it was going to bring down the kingdom of Israel as well. But as God so often does in the Bible, He gives a reminder of hope with a warning about judgment. In the next few verses, He reminds Israel of the glorious future that He has in store for them, and we see that in that day, the people will embrace the remedy for pride, which is leaning on the Lord.
The remedy for pride—“Leaning” on the Lord (10:20-27)
Let’s read vv. 20-27 [READ 10:20-27]. These verses show us that God is undeterred in His intention to bless Israel. Though many generations of that nation have lost out on God’s blessings because of their disobedience, God will draw a generation to Himself through which He will fulfill His promises to Israel.
According to this passage, that remnant will “lean” on the Lord, which is precisely the opposite of the proud attitude that the people had embraced at that time. Leaning on something is a great picture of humble reliance. When you lean on something, you are entrusting your weight to it. You are showing that you are confident in its strength to hold you up. Also, we often lean on things when we are tired and weak, so we are acknowledging our own weaknesses as we acknowledge the strength of the object on which we lean.
This picture thus illustrates the remedy for pride. We must acknowledge our own weaknesses as compared to God’s strength, and we must entrust ourselves to Him, believing that He will hold us up and sustain us. If we will lean on Him in this way, we can avoid pride and the downfall that it brings.
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