How are you? How is your week going? Have you ever heard the phrase, “Pride comes before the Fall?”
I have seen this phrase be used to describe actors, entrepreneurs, politicians, athletes, sports teams, leaders, pastors, professors, Christians, friends, and family before their fall from grace.
It’s a rather true statement, isn’t it? When you feel like you’ve made it, you tend to become too complacent or too comfortable or too prideful so much so that you fall into some type of failure.
This phrase comes from the book of Proverbs, but I wonder if King Solomon had Babel in mind when he shared it. In the story of Babel, man used his gifts, talents, and abilities to construct this “great” tower to get to the heavens, or in other words, to be God. This is the sin of Adam and Eve, and this is the sin in us.
We try to build towers for our own glory. We build a wall of our achievements. We make a list of all our righteous deeds. We are full of pride.
And as we settle in our pride, just like the Babelites, we don’t go into the world to display God’s glory. We don’t want to witness to others about Christ. We don’t want to do outreach in any way. Why would we when we want to live for our glory, comfort, and success?
We don’t want to sacrifice our time and effort for others, because we want to use them for ourselves. That’s pride. We don’t want to be humiliated because of our faith. That’s pride. We don’t want to lose our comfort and security for the sake of the gospel. That’s pride.
We are the Babelites, and pride will come before the Fall. Thank God the story did not end there this past Sunday. We saw the rise of the hope of promise in Abraham in the very next chapter.
While the Babelites stayed, Abraham went. And by His going, He was blessed to be a blessing to the world. But we know that Jesus is the ultimate Abrahamic descendant. He is the ultimate blessing to the world.
He is the exact opposite of Babel. Babel is man trying to get to heaven to be God. Christ is God who was in heaven who became man to save man. He is the One who left His home in heaven to come to earth. He came to live the perfect life. He came to die the death for us. He came to redeem and restore His sinful people.
Through Christ, we are blessed with life forevermore. Through Christ, we now have the ability to not be like Babel but to be like Abraham. More than that, because Christ is in us, we can be like Christ who went. We can go be a blessing, because we have been blessed so much through Jesus.
New Life, may we not be prideful, because we will fall. May we not pursue the towers of comfort, security, and success, but may we pursue the glory of God, by going. We go, because Christ first went to come save us.
See you on Sunday for Lord’s Day Worship! Please do stay for Topical Study. It was a tremendous blessing last week!
In Christ,
Pastor Tim
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