Self-Promotion: The Challenge of Pride – Luke 9:46-50

Luke 9.46-50 Study Guide

DISCLAIMER: I told my congregation that I have been deeply influenced by both Tim Keller and C.S. Lewis on the subject of Pride. I have borrowed heavily from them both in this sermon.

Promoting Self: The Challenge of Pride

An Orderly Account:

Encountering Jesus in the Gospel of Luke

Luke 9:46-50

The Text

On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him…

Introduction:

At the end of Luke 9, Luke records three stories, back-to-back-to-back, of the failure of Jesus’ disciples.

Last week, Luke showed the failure of the disciples’ faith. Next week, we’ll see the disciples defiant rather than submissive. And, as we just read, today we see them full of pride and self-promotion.

In other words, the ending of Luke 9 is an extended reflection on how even Jesus’ closest followers have deep, twisted character flaws that—unless uprooted by his grace—will destroy them and everyone they know.

So, what does this text teach us about pride?

1. How to Identify It
2. What It Destroys
3. How It’s Cured

First…

1. How to Identify Pride

Luke says an “argument arose among them as to which of them was the greatest.” The word argument makes it sound like a shouting match took place, but we see that Jesus only knew it was taking place (in v. 47) because he was able to discern their hearts. As they were on the road, walking behind Jesus, though their voices were soft, and though they outwardly appeared unified there was a boiling competition between them.

• Who had performed the most miracles?
• Who had followed him the longest?
• Who did Jesus invite into private conversation more than others? You can hear them building their case.

Then, in the second story, John actually vocalizes one of the arguments: “Master, we saw someone casting our demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he does not follow with us.” (v. 49)

Despite the fact that Jesus personally chose them, walked with them, and empowered them, they’re still threatened by other miracle workers—their own sense of respect, validation, and worth leads them to see the men who ought to be their best friends as competitors.

This will come up again next week—they enter a town called Samaria and when the people reject them, two of the disciples say, “Lord, give us permission to call down fire and cleanse this town.”

• They cannot handle with one disciple getting more attention than the rest.
• They’d rather someone remain demon-oppressed before allowing a stranger to heal them and get the credit.
• They’d prefer to set a city on fire before letting someone disrespect them.

Now, we’ll talk about the catastrophic damage all this threatens in a moment—but let’s stop and ask: “How does this help identify pride?”

These stories essentially tell us that pride is concentration on the self. What am I getting, or not getting? Who’s noticing me, who’s ignoring me? As one writer put it: “Pride is ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration on the self.”

Pride makes everything about you. So, you never get into a relationship unless it makes you feel good. You never take a job unless it promotes you. You never talk to people to learn about them, but only to turn the conversation back to you.

Which means that nothing is ever about the thing you’re doing—it’s only about you. That’s why C.S. Lewis, in his famous chapter on pride, writes:

Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. [You may think you’re proud of being wealthy, intelligent, or good looking, but you’re not. Because the moment you get around people who have more, you lose all pleasure in them.

You see, pride is all self-focused comparison, which means you can be prideful in two directions. You can either concentrate on your superiority to others, or your inferiority.

You can either say, “Look at how great I am,” or “Won’t someone notice how pitiful I am.” Either way, it’s sleepless concentration on the self. And we see this in the passage.

Superiority:

In the second story, the disciples stop someone from casting out demons. Why? Because he “does not follow with us.” In other words, we’re superior. We have status. We’re with Jesus. We’re part of the right tribe. Superiority. Look at how great we are.

Inferiority:

Even within their own group, they argue over who is the greatest. Three disciples were invited to see the Transfiguration while the other 9 stayed down below and failed to cast out a demon. Which means Peter/James/John, possibly felt superior while others felt inferior.

On the one hand they feel superior to the outsider, but on the other they fear being inferior to one another. And you can be prideful in either direction.

On the one hand, pride turns everything into a means of getting superiority. It steers conversations toward accomplishments. Look at my portfolio, my well-behaved children. It downplays the success of others while inflating their own. They exaggerate their strengths in order to gain respect and praise. That’s the superiority.

But, pride can just as easily exaggerate all your weaknesses, all your flaws, all your troubles, as a means to get attention. Another person turns every conversation to highlight their struggles. No one understands them. Their boss is out to get them. Their life has been dealt uniquely unfair cards. “You have no idea what I’ve been through.”

You see, whether you act superior or inferior, its still pride because the focus is on yourself. Inflating success or weaponizing weakness. You’re always adding things up to see how it affects you. That’s why Lewis says it’s ruthless, sleepless and unsmiling concentration on the self.

See, if you understand pride as self-absorption you can begin to understand humility. The Bible teaches that humility is not beating yourself down or talking down about yourself.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s just thinking of yourself less. Humility is not needing the attention, the focus. You don’t have to steer the conversation. You can enjoy wherever it goes. You greet people. You strike up conversations. You ask questions. You approach your work with openness and curiosity. You aren’t calculating every move.

Tim Keller said that if you ever met a truly humble person, you wouldn’t come away thinking they’re humble, all you would remember is that they’re happy and they were incredibly interested in meeting you.

In the Screwtape Letters, Lewis explains one way Satan trips us up is by keeping our minds revolving on ourselves. God, on the other hand, wants us to reach a place where we could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice its beauty, without feeling any more or less glad we did it than if someone else had created it.

Pride is ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling focus on self.

2. What it Destroys

Verse 49: John says “we saw someone casting our demons in your name, and we tried to stop him.” Now this is incredible. We’ve seen several demon oppressions in the gospels. The victims of demons are tortured by their host. Thrown into fire to burn them. Thrown into water to drown them. They cut themselves with stones. Their communities are forced to put them outside of the town. They have to live in caves. And here is someone who, apparently, had the ability to deliver these helpless victims—and John stops the deliverance simply because the healer isn’t with his crowd.

Do you see how callous pride will make you? Pride refuses to enjoy to success of others. It refuses to rejoice with those who rejoice.

A prideful person cannot celebrate the promotion of a friend, or the engagement of a friend. It cannot stand that “she got pregnant before me,” or that “they have more than I have.” Because pride is always calculating, it can never enjoy the good that’s right in front of it. Pride renders you unable to enter into the joy of others because their success means your failure.

Verse 46: a contentious dispute flares up as the disciples are on the road. They are supposed to be best friends. They are supposed to be co-laborers in founding the church. They will be responsible for carrying on the ministry after Christ’s departure—and pride utterly divides them.

Pride self-isolates from true friendship and intimacy.

Listen to me… if you are prideful, people will not get close to you—not really. They will use you but they’ll never open up their heart to you.

They’ll keep you at arms length because they know everything with you is transactional. They know you’re calculating. They know that if you give them a compliment, it’s only to get one in return.

If you scratch their back, it’s never because they itch and you love them—it’s because you have an itch and you need them to scratch you.

Listen—their pride even isolated them from Jesus. Verse 47: Jesus only knew about the argument because he could read their hearts. In other words, they were attempting to hold back part of themselves from God.

Pride kills joy, isolates us from one another and from God. Pride also distorts reality. Think about it… the disciples just came down from the mount of transfiguration. They have just witnessed the unveiled glory of the Son of God, and their first topic of conversation is “how great are we?” And it doesn’t even enter their awareness that they consumed with pride.

Lewis says, pride is the “one vice of which no man in the world is free; which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people… imagine that they are guilty themselves.”

Pride is like carbon monoxide. It’s odorless, colorless—you don’t even know it’s there—but it’s killing you.

As one preacher said, “You know when you are committing adultery. You never say, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re not my wife.’” No, you know you’re blowing up in anger; you know you’re dealing with lust, you know you’re embezzling. But by definition, the more prideful you are the less aware you are that you’re prideful.

In 20 years of ministry, I’ve had people confess anger, addiction, and adultery. I’ve never had someone confess pride.

Now, let me show you how deceptive pride is… up to this point in the sermon, haven’t you mainly been thinking about a couple other people in this sermon. Haven’t you been thinking, “Boy, this sounds just like him. This is her!” It takes a measure of pride to listen to a sermon on pride and only apply it to others.

Let me take this one final step, to show you how destructive pride is: pride is the one sin that religion can only make worse.

Here’s what I mean. You say “Ok, pride is bad. So, what’s the solution.” And you expect me to say, “God.” You have to go out there and beat your pride. You have to obey God. God hates pride. Go conquer your pride. But I’m not going to do that. And here’s why:

If you are struggling with lust, you can apply moral pressure to yourself to beat your lust and to some extent you can do it. If you are blowing up in anger, you can work on controlling your temper. But if your solution to pride is to obey God, obey the 10 Commandments, pray, humble yourself—when you do all those things it will only make you proud that you accomplished it.

You see there is no pride like religious pride. There is no snobbery like religious snobbery. There is no groveling inferiority like religious inferiority.

Lewis put it this way: Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison to pride: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil.

This is the worst sin, it’s the root of all other sin. Why are we angry? Why do we lust? We are we greedy? We are curved in on ourselves in pride—and it’s destroying us.

3. How it’s Cured

Verse 47:

⁴⁷ But Jesus, knowing the reasoning of their hearts, took a child and put him by his side ⁴⁸ and said to them, “Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. For he who is least among you all is the one who is great.”

In Matthew’s account, Jesus adds:

“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Jesus says the cure for pride is someone who takes on the characteristics of a child. Now, of course, he isn’t saying to become like a child in every way. Kids can be unstable and easily manipulated.

So, in what way are we to become like little children. In this: little children really have nothing to offer adults. Rather, they are completely and totally dependent upon others.

A one-year-old—if someone doesn’t change his diaper, mush his peas, and spoon feed him, he’ll die. He has nothing to offer his parents. His entire existence draws upon their resources for his own survival.

And Jesus says, that’s the way you must approach God. Because God cannot be improved one wit by associating with you. You have nothing to offer him.

In Psalm 50:12, God says, “If I were hungry (if it were even possible that the infinite God could become hungry), I wouldn’t tell you.”

If a human parent is superior to his child, imagine how much more infinitely greater the uncreated source of all being and reality is than you.

Lewis says, “In God, you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurable superior to yourself. Unless you know that God—and know yourself as nothing in comparison to him—you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you can’t know him. Because proud people are always looking down on things—and as long as you’re looking down you can’t see something that is above you.”

Little children are always looking up. They’re always reaching up. They are always asking. Can I have that? Can I have more? Their entire life is dependence and need. And that’s the way you have to approach God.

A proud person comes to God and says, “Look, I’m not perfect. But I’m not a bad person. I have something to offer. Yeah, I cheated on my taxes, but I treated my wife to a vacation.” “I’m a good wife.” “I’m a good mother.”

In other words, a prideful person comes to God thinking he or she has something to offer that could improve God.

But only someone changed by the power of the Holy Spirit comes to God as a child and says, “God I’m a sinner. I have nothing to offer you. I need sheer grace and mercy. If you gave me what I deserved, I would be in ruins.”

And Jesus says, you will never cure pride until you embrace the gospel—that is you cannot be saved by you own work—you must receive the free grace of God in Christ. That’s the first thing.

The second thing is you have to see who really really is the greatest in the kingdom. Jesus says

“For he who is least among you all is the one who is great.”

Who’s the greatest in the kingdom? Jesus says the greatest is the one who comes the lowest. Who has come the lowest?

The Apostle Paul, in Philippians 2 says that the Son of God, Jesus Christ, emptied himself. The one who had no  need, in becoming a man, became needy. The eternal Son of God became a needy little child.

Jesus Christ, who was the highest, went the lowest—he went to the cross, and died for our sins.

He’s the greatest in the kingdom of heaven

And when you see him coming down this low for you, though you could never repay him, it will be no problem for you to humble yourself to help those who can’t repay you.

The gospel is the cure for pride.