The Titanic Syndrome

This is a story that's a popular story, one that has been the subject of a couple of movies over the years. There have been blockbuster movies. It's a story for the ages, if you will. If the world was to go on for hundreds of years, I think they would be telling this story forever, because not only is it interesting, but it is sad in a way. It has all the human elements into it. And it has a moral that if someone wrote it, it wouldn't be the same as the fact that it happened in real life. And that story is about a ship that's maybe one of the most famous ships of all time, and that's the Titanic. All of you have heard of the Titanic, right? If you haven't seen the recent Titanic movie, which was, what, 20 years ago now, you probably have seen A Night to Remember, I think, is what the original one was called. And you remember all the events that happened during that time. Well, back in the 1900s, if you were going to come from Europe over to America, there was only one way to get here. There was no airfare or no air flights or anything like that. You pretty much had to come by ship, and you had to prepare yourself for a several-day journey. Well, as commerce goes, there were a few companies in England that really were into the ship, the cruise business, if you will, the Atlantic cruise business. And they began kind of, as happens in some time in competition, ramping up what the ships were like. One of those cruise lines was called the Cunard Cruise Line in 1910, I think it was. They launched a ship that was considered to be the most beautiful and fastest ship ever to cross the Atlantic Ocean. And you look at some of the pictures, and you think back to 100-some years ago, and they were really beautiful ships.

But the other line of the day, the White Star Line, knew that they had to do something to keep up with it as well. So they commissioned a boat that was going to be even more beautiful than the Mauritania and the Lusitania, which were the other lines' ships. And it was going to be even safer. And they had hoped it was going to be even faster. So I don't know what they spent on it. You know, in today's, it would be millions, if not, well, millions at least, that they did in devising this ship.

And they had engineers work on it in all the finest minds of the day to come up with a ship that everyone would want to take if they were going to go from Europe over to America.

And it took them years to do it, but in 1912, I believe it was, it was ready to launch. It was so popular in the news of that day, it was covering that ship so much that when they just took it out of the building to launch it, not into the ocean, but into another place just to touch, just to test the water-worthiness of it, a hundred thousand people came out just to see this ship. It was such big news at that time. Of course, it was called the Titanic.

So it had its maiden cruise. It passed all the tests. It went out there, and the news, the news media were all about this ship. It was not only beautiful, but it developed the reputation of being an unsinkable ship. It was the thing that the newspapers carried, the engineering. It was a feat of the day that if you were on this ship, you didn't have to worry. It was basically unsinkable. If you look at the actual stories, it never specifically said it is unsinkable, but likely to be unsinkable is what they said. But of course, as human minds go, it was an unsinkable ship. And it developed this reputation that it was going to be an unsinkable ship, and everyone wanted to be on it, and it's made in Bournage. When it was left on April 10th, all the dignitaries were on it. The people who had designed the boat, the people who had, you know, all the executives of the company that had done the boat.

And it was a happy atmosphere. 2400 people were on that boat. And for the first four days, everything went smoothly. It was a beautiful, beautiful voyage. Everything was going well. When they got up around the Greenland area, then they started hearing, as you remember, the calls about the icebergs in the area. So they had to be a little bit cautious of what was going on. But in the minds of the captain and the people who were in the boat, this boat was unsinkable.

They didn't need to really worry that much about it. They had to steer clear. And they did take some precautions. They slowed down a little bit, but they were really interested in setting the speed record between England and America. So that was in the back of their mind. But they did slow down a little bit. And as they came to the icebergs, they were able to maneuver themselves around. And they thought, you know, put it out of your mind. We've been able to dodge the bullet, if you will, and everything will be okay. Well, what they didn't know, they felt a little bit of jar down below. But beneath the surface, there was this gash that turned out to be 300 feet long. That was down there below the surface. And they didn't really think much about it. After all, it was an unsinkable ship. And so they didn't really go down and check on it until they realized something was going on with the boat. When they went down there, it was too late. The water had been rushing in, and it went from compartment to compartment. And even though they thought they had these compartments waterproof, they hadn't done it all the way to the ceiling. So the water would roll in over the walls, and it went from one to another to another to another, and it was too late. And they knew that that boat was going to sink, and so they had to get everyone together on it. There were only 978 lifeboats for a group of 2,400 out in the middle of a very cold Atlantic Ocean at that time of year. So all the confusion and everything that went on there, 1,500 people died in the ocean that night. Because of that ship. Because on its maiden voyage, the unsinkable ship did the unthinkable. It sunk. It sunk. And it became a legend for all time. And the moral of the story is one that hasn't been escaped on people. One of the reasons it's so popular is because of the human element into it and what people thought, but the pride that went along with it, and the thing of the Titanic that really is the thing that everyone thinks of and remembers. It was the unsinkable ship, and it sank the first time out. If you go back and you look at what History.com says about the history of the Titanic, it concludes its article this way. It says, Titanic's demise has taken on a deeper, almost mythic meaning in popular culture. Many view the tragedy as a morality play about the dangers of human pride. Titanic's creators believe they had built an unsinkable ship that could not be defeated by the laws of nature. And because of that, several of the people who have looked back in time said, it's because of that attitude that they didn't take the precautions they should have. They thought they were above all that. That that ship couldn't sink. If they believed it could sink, that it could be brought low, they would have done something different.

It's a lesson for all of mankind. That lesson isn't escaped on anyone. It hasn't been escaped on business either, because you know there is something in business that's called the Titanic Syndrome. And it's about companies who think they're beyond the risks. Whatever risk they take, they're fail-proof. They can't possibly fail. They say of the 2007 and 2008 economic fall that we had here in this country, that we were a victim of the Titanic Syndrome. We believed no matter what we did, no matter what money we lent out, no matter how it was documented, or the lack of documentation, our economy couldn't fall. And we learned a tough lesson in 2007 and 2008. We came that close to going under, just like the Titanic did. And in business, if you're in business, you and one of the company thinks it's infallible. When it thinks it can't be brought down, when we think it's going to last forever, beware of the Titanic Syndrome. You and I need to be aware of the Titanic Syndrome. You and I need to be aware of the Titanic Syndrome, because God talks a lot about the Titanic Syndrome in the Bible. You could recite to me some of the verses in the Bible that you know where God talks about pride. In Proverbs 8, Proverbs 16, verse 18, it says, Pride goes before a fall. When we can look at the Titanic, that ship before it sank, pride was all over it. It's unsinkable. It's the best boat ever. Nothing can touch it. Proverbs 11, 2 says, When pride comes, then comes shame. And to the shame of that white star line, and the shame of the people who were operating the Titanic that night, when the pride came, it became not known for its beauty, not known for its speed, not known for its luxury. It became known that someone didn't pay a whole lot of attention to what is going on, and they let their own pride and their own ideas and their own hubris, if you will, get the better of them.

As we're here, approaching the days of Unleavened Bread, pride is all over the days of Unleavened Bread and the Passover. Pride has been there from the very beginning of mankind's time on Earth, and even before that. Let's go back to Ezekiel. Ezekiel, as we talk about the Titanic, and look at that story and what happened, the most beautiful boat, hopefully the quickest boat, the most speedy boat, luxurious boat, the unsinkable boat, and everything that went with it, and then to find on its very first trip out of the harbor, you know, its sink to the bottom. It should remind us of a story that's back here in Ezekiel 28. The story of Satan, because the story of the Titanic pretty much parallels what went on with Satan.

If we look in Ezekiel 28, verse 12, it says, Son of Man, take up the lamentation for the King of Tyre. Now Tyre, if you will, was an ancient city. Some reports say it was in existence back as early as 3000 B.C. The wealthiest and rich city of the time, the America of that day, everyone wanted to be in Tyre. They were a seafaring colony. They had wealth. They had it all. And even up until the time of David, Tyre was still in existence and was considered a very profitable or very wealthy nation. Take up a lamentation for the King of Tyre. Notice King of Tyre. This is the king. This is the preeminent one in that civilization. Say to him, thus says the Lord God, You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was your covering. The sardius, topaz, and diamond, barrel, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold. The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes was prepared for you on the day you were created. You were the perfect specimen. You had it all. King of Tyre, the one who would inspire Tyre, you were the anointed cherub who covers. I established you. You were on the holy mountain of God. You walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created till iniquity was found in you.

You were perfect. You were unbeatable. Everything you did was going to be so great and so magnificent until something was found in you that was going to bring you down.

Let's talk down to verse 17. Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty. Ah, you began looking at yourself. You thought you had all the answers. You thought there was no one quite like you, and you allowed that to continue to build and build in you until you thought you were even supreme over God. If you go back and look at the companion verses here in Isaiah 14, you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. You began to think of you and you lost wisdom. You began thinking of what it meant to be you and how you could glorify you rather than glorify God. And God said in the face of all that, I cast you to the ground. You will sink. You will fall. You will decrease. I laid you before kings that they might gaze at you. And they would look at you and say, What happened to you? How could you have been such this splendid kingdom, this splendid being? And now you're cast to the ground and you're nothing, just like the Titanic, laying there at the bottom of the ocean when it had so much promise, so much potential. Satan, the angel of light, became an angel of darkness when iniquity was found in him, and it began with him lifting himself up. I'm better than everyone else. I'm better than this. It's my way. I need to be doing this thing. It eventually, not overnight, became, I'm even better than God. I want to displace him, if we can even imagine. But that's what happens in pride. It keeps growing and growing and growing until it's checked. Jesus Christ spoke about Satan, and he shows us back in John 8, what happens with pride when it enters into Satan and when it enters into us. And make no mistake, all of us, all of us have some pride in us. There isn't one person here who's perfectly humble. Everyone of us has something in us that God will eventually, if not this year, show us where that pride is that needs to be weeded out because he is looking for people who are humble, like Jesus Christ was humble, and there was no pride. No pride in Jesus Christ at all. John 8, verse 43. Jesus speaking to the Pharisees, and they were always contesting him. They were always countering everything he had to say. He would tell him things, and in verse 43 he says, Why don't you understand my speech? And then he answers, Because you're not able to listen to my word. Why, Pharisees? I'm talking in clear language. You should be able to understand these words. I'm not speaking in hidden things to you. I'm giving you clear, concise statements. And you won't listen to me. You just keep doing the same thing. You won't listen. And he says, Because you're not able to listen to my word. What was keeping them from being able to listen to God's word?

And then he goes on and he says, You are of your father the devil. That's who you are, Pharisees. You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.

First came pride, and out of pride came murder, came lying, came a whole litany of sins. Pride is the father of sin.

When we think that we are above it all, that we can't be touched by that little iceberg or whatever it is beneath the surface, that we are above it all, we better beware.

First Corinthians 10 and 12 says, Take heed, you who thinks he stands, lest he fall. When we think we've got it mastered, we better get on our knees and ask God, show us. Show us what we need to do.

Show us what we need to do. But Jesus Christ here, he gives us some clues of what pride can do. It will keep us from hearing.

The Pharisees couldn't hear. He goes, You don't listen to what I say because you're not able to listen to my word. What did they want to do? They wanted everything their way. They wanted the way they had written the scope. They wanted to do traditions rather than the commandments of God.

They had closed their minds. So that God couldn't even get through, they just wouldn't listen. Because you're not able to because your mind isn't opened. You're not able to. Of course, God hadn't called them at that time either.

But what happens with pride is it closes our hearing. It closes our hearing. And we don't hear what we need to hear. And it will lead to other sins, even murder, he says, of Satan. Even lies of Satan.

And he tells the Pharisees, You're just like your father. He wouldn't listen either. It started with pride and it branched out into these other sins that were there.

Well, we know that God's way is not the way of lying. It's not the way of murder or any of those things. God's way is to admit what is going on in our lives and to be truth and to be of a repentant nature.

Let's go back to Ezekiel.

Ezekiel 28 we were in.

Let's go back to the beginning of the chapter now. We read about Satan, the king of Tyre. In the first part of Ezekiel 28, let's read about the prince of Tyre.

The king is the father. The king has princes. In chapter 28 and verse 1 we read about the prince of Tyre.

Now what was he going to be like? The son of the king of Tyre.

Verse 2 of Ezekiel 28 says, So the man say to the prince of Tyre, Thus says the Lord God, Because your heart is lifted up.

Well, there we go. He's just like the king of Tyre. He's just like the one who would inspire pride, the one who would use that in the kingdoms of the world.

In our hearts, if we let it.

Because your heart is lifted up and you say, I'm a God, I sit in the seat of God's, in the midst of the seas.

Yet you are a man and not a God. Though you set your heart as the heart of God, behold, he says, kind of in the sarcastic way, behold, your wise earth and Daniel.

It's a secret that can be hidden from you with your wisdom and your understanding. You've gained riches for yourself.

And indeed, Tyre was a very wealthy nation, as other civilizations have also been very wealthy down through the ages.

And as America is today, with your wisdom and your understanding, you've gained riches for yourself.

You've gathered gold and silver into your treasuries. By your great wisdom and trade, you have increased your riches and your heart is lifted up because of your riches.

You look around and you say, man, I have done a really good job. It's because of me all these things have happened.

That's the attitude of the Prince of Tyre. Therefore, though says the Lord God, because you have set your heart as the heart of God, behold, therefore, I will bring strangers against you, the most terrible of the nations.

And they will draw their swords against the beauty of your wisdom and defile your splendor. They shall throw you down into the pits and you shall die the death of the slain in the midst of the seas.

Will you still say, before him who slays you, I am a God? But you shall be a man and not a God in the hand of him who slays you.

You shall die the death of the uncircumcised by the hand of aliens, for I have spoken, says the Lord God.

Now, those are some pretty harsh words for the Prince of Tyre. Or anyone who would be the Prince of Tyre who would have that same attitude and be led by that same spirit.

It's all about me. I've done this. My wisdom says this. I've worked hard. I've brought about all this stuff for myself and for my nation and for my family or whatever else it would be.

You know, the same? The same defals all pride. God has set his mind against pride. He hates pride. We talked about some of those verses. Let's look at a couple here in Proverbs 16. Proverbs 16 verse 5. Proverbs 16 verse 5 says, Everyone proud in heart is an abomination to the Eternal. Another word, abomination. It's disgusting, despicable, something that God detests. Everyone proud in heart is an abomination to the Eternal. Though they join forces, none, none will go unpunished. None will go unpunished.

Over in Obadiah, the little book of Obadiah, Amos and then Obadiah, God makes another statement.

About pride. Come right down to your note there, Proverbs 8.13. I was going to turn there. Proverbs 8.13 says, The fear of the Lord is to hate evil, pride and arrogance and the evil way and the provided mouth I hate, God says. I hate that element. I hate that attitude. And with good reason, because he knows what it engenders. What he saw had happened with Satan and he saw and he sees what happens with us. In Obadiah 3, just one chapter in Obadiah, Obadiah verse 3, speaking of Edom, which is also a proud nation that had that element about it, it says, The pride of your heart has deceived you. And we learned something about pride. It deceives us.

It makes us think we're something when we're only we're nothing. It makes us see ourselves in a different light than what reality is. It makes us think that we're all in control and that we are just exactly what maybe even God wants us to be. But it deceives us. It deceives us. It's a very dangerous thing. It's that hidden iceberg down there that can cut the gash in us, that can lead to our ruination and our sinking, just like that hidden iceberg sat there and sunk the Titanic. The pride of your heart has deceived you. You who dwell in the cliffs of the rock, whose habitation is high, you who say in your heart, Who will bring me down to the ground? Though you ascend as high as the eagle, though you set your nest among the stars, from there, God promises, I will bring you down. Not might. God says to the proud, My heart is set against you. My heart is set against pride. If pride is there, I will bring it down. Now we see it throughout Scripture. We see it in life. We see it in Titanic. We see it among the history of the nations. When pride sets in, eventually God will bring it down. Satan, in his pride, was cast to the ground. He was brought very low. He was cast out of the element that he was in. He lost it all. And he still hasn't learned his lesson. He still hasn't learned his lesson. He's still prideful. He still thinks in his arrogance that he can defeat God, that he can turn God's plan upside down, and he can thwart it in some way. He hopes that he can thwart you and me and turn us away from God. And whatever he needs to do to turn us against God, he will. He thinks in his pride he can win. And against all odds, when we look at it, we think, Satan, you know the Bible, you look at it, how on earth can you think that you're going to defeat God? Haven't you learned in the millions or maybe billions of years, you can't defeat God? You're not going to upset his plan? He's brought you down. And yet Satan in his mind thinks, yes, I can. I still believe I'm more powerful than God. I think I can do it my way. I think I can be who I want to be rather than what God wants me to be and do it his way. Pride is very deceitful. Pride is very blinding.

Pride can cause us to walk down a path none of us want to be on. None of us want to be the titanic of the Church of God or the titanic or the titanics that will lose it all because they weren't able to overcome pride or perhaps even identify pride.

Back in James 4 and verse 6.

The author here says, but God gives more grace. Therefore, he says, God resists the proud. He resists them. They're not going to be around. He'll be patient, but eventually their faith is determined. It's not if and when or if and if or but. It's going to be when. And only God knows when. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. And he says, therefore, submit to God. Do it his way. Don't think you're better than him. Don't think you have a better answer than him. Don't think you have your training program better defined than he does. He knows what you need. He knows what I need. Sometimes we can think, what are we going through this trial for? Don't I have that nailed? Probably not. Probably not, we learn when we really examine ourselves. I did have that in me. Yes, I see now when God takes the blinders off that there's something there. But therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Resist him. Resist him. And as we move toward the days of unleavened bread and as we look at ourselves and as we get ourselves ready for that time, spiritually looking at ourselves, we can look at the sins. We can ask God, is there pride in us?

And let me give you a clue. If the answer you come up with is no, pray again and fast. Because in all of us there is something. There is something that is something that is there and that pride leads to other things. Well, I mentioned that in the days of unleavened bread, as we read through Exodus, the Gospels and whatever, as we see what God did back in Old Testament times and the parallels in our lives today, you know, certainly one of the characters that comes to mind is Pharaoh. And Pharaoh was, of course, the preeminent one in Egypt. He was the Prince of Tyre of that day. He had a kingdom.

He thought he was God himself and he was God to the Egyptians. They were supposed to worship him, bow down to him. Anything Pharaoh said, they just did.

And we can learn a lot of lessons from Pharaoh because in him we see what pride did. And you know the story of Pharaoh. And I'm not going to go through the detail of all the plagues. But you see how God did the same thing to him that would happen to the Titanic. He was brought low. He lost it all. The pride in him was so well known probably in that time. Maybe people didn't understand what it was. But in the Bible we see pride is all over Pharaoh. He was going to stand up in the face of God and say, not me.

Who is this to tell me this? Well, let's go back and look at Exodus 10 and look at a few things that we can learn about pride as we see it in Pharaoh's life here. Exodus 10, verse 1, The Eternal said to Moses, Go into Pharaoh, this is I think the fifth plague now that Moses is going in to tell him, Pharaoh, you need to let the people go.

The Lord said to Moses, Go into Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his servants, that I may show these signs of mine before him. Now we can stop right there and say, okay, God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Why would God harden Pharaoh's heart? Was that fair to Pharaoh that God hardened his heart? Oh, in the scope of it we could look at and say, well, God purposed this. And indeed, you know, he did say to Moses early on, Pharaoh's heart will be hard.

He's not going to do anything that you say. He's going to resist you every step of the way and he's going to resist God every step of the way. And through 10 plagues, he's going to resist everything I have to say. But you look at Exodus 10, verse 1 here. A few times in the Bible it says God hardened Pharaoh's heart. But as many times in the Bible it says Pharaoh's heart grew hard. We know from who Pharaoh was, he was a very proud man. He was the king of the world at that time. He was the one who was the preeminent one.

He was the God. And he wasn't about to let anyone tell him what to do. So we see what God had done. And as Pharaoh... Well, we'll get to that in a minute. I won't get ahead of myself through here. But you know, as we look at the plagues and as they progress through, you would think any normal person, after they saw plagues 1, 2, 3, 4, you would get to the point that you'd think, I can't defeat this God.

All these gods that I'm worshiping, and Pharaoh would think, and me, I can't do what Moses' God is doing. Rational, logical people would say, I give up. I give up. I'm losing everything. And if Pharaoh, his heart, he was so full of pride, he lost it all. Because he just couldn't admit there was a God greater than him.

Or a God greater than the people of Egypt. And so when he heard, saw these plagues come in, he had the same reactions as the Pharisees. The Pharisees, when they heard Jesus Christ speak, they couldn't listen to him. They immediately discounted it. As he was speaking, they were thinking about their response. But it wasn't like taking anything to heart. It was like, nope, not doing that. Nope. Nope. And Christ said, why aren't you listening to me? He could say the same thing to Pharaoh. Why aren't you paying attention to what is going on? Why aren't you looking at what is happening? He couldn't.

He couldn't because every time it happened, and early on, he hardened his heart. I will not let the people go. I will not listen to this God. I will not yield myself. I will not submit to another God. And so here in chapter 10, God says, I'll harden Pharaoh's heart.

But it wasn't because Pharaoh was this nice guy who was willing to submit, and God did this thing to him. Pharaoh did it to himself, and God is continuing it here. And Pharaoh is just continuing the pattern that he had said.

I'm the only true God. This is happening that you and your sons will know. Pharaoh will eventually know. He'll come to the point where he will have to admit. Maybe he never did admit. Maybe he just died without ever admitting that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses was much, much, much greater than his God. So Moses and Aaron came into Pharaoh and said to him, thus says the Lord God of the Hebrews, how long? How long, Pharaoh, will you refuse to humble yourself before me? How long is this going to take? All you have to do is humble yourself before me and say, okay, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God of Moses, okay, I'll let you go. God says simply, let my people go, that they may serve me. God might say the same thing to us. How long? How long, Rick, will it be before you humble yourself before me? How long will you keep doing these things until you realize you have to do it my way? You have to get yourself out of the process. You have to get your ideas and your pride and whatever else is between you and me. It has to all disappear. If you're going to be part of the kingdom, you have to do it my way. Pharaoh, you won't listen. God will say to you and me, are you listening? Will you listen? And so, we know the story of Pharaoh. It didn't happen. Let's back up a few chapters here to Exodus 5. Because the more that the plagues that God sent on Pharaoh, the more he hardened his heart. The more he was resolved to say, I'm not going to give in. Exodus 5, verse 1. Look at the attitude that Pharaoh had here out from the very beginning. Afterward, it says in verse 1, afterward Moses and Mary went in and told Pharaoh, Thus says the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I don't know him, and I won't let Israel go. Who is he? You see the attitude that's there? I mean, some people would say sometimes, if in an employment situation someone says, You didn't do this the right way, you should have done it this right.

Who are you to tell me what to do? I know better than what it is. I know the course. I know how to do these things. Who are you? Well, if we ever find ourselves saying, Who are you? We might want to stop and listen. We might want to stop and look at the attitude that's there. Because God will show us and send correction, you can find in the Bible many examples, I haven't written them all down here, where things that people should have listened to came from other than the voice of God.

Because God uses us to see each other, to help us overcome, to see who we need to be, to keep on the right track, to keep moving toward the kingdom.

So if we ever have an attitude, Who are you to tell me that? We might want to think back to Pharaoh and say, That could just be an attitude of pride that's there. Who are you? Who are you? Now, Pharaoh said, Oh, I already read that.

I don't know the Lord. He's not my authority. You don't have the right to tell me what to do. And that's what he did. But he had an arrogant and a superior attitude about him. And a Who are you attitude? A Who are you attitude? It's something we might want to be paying attention to. A couple chapters forward. Exodus 7, verse 13. This is after they came in, they threw the rods down on the floor, the serpents turned into serpents. Pharaoh's magicians did the same thing. He kind of justified in his mind somehow that Moses, the serpents of God, the Moses serpents swallowed his serpents, but didn't bother paying attention to that. In verse 13 it says, and Pharaoh's heart grew hard. He looked at it. He saw what happened. He knew that the serpents that Moses sent down swallowed his. I thought, I'm not going to pay attention to that. I'm not listening to that. I'm just going to close my eyes to that. I don't want to think about it. My people did the same thing. My gods are just as powerful as your God, Moses. I'm going to close my mind to it. But Aaron's rods swallowed up their gods. Am I in the right verse here? And Pharaoh's heart grew hard, and he did not heed them. As the Lord had said, God had prepared Moses. They're not going to listen to you, Moses. This is the attitude of pride. They're not going to listen to you. Pharaoh's heart is hard. He refuses to let the people go. So God was saying, He's not listening. It's a sign of pride. The Pharisees wouldn't listen. I'm sure Satan was counseled many times during the course. Satan, listen. What you're doing, you've forgotten who you are. You've forgotten who's created you. You've forgotten why you're here. None of us are here because of our wisdom or because we're such smart people. It's because God opened our minds. Everything we have comes from God. Satan didn't listen. He kept going down the road until he was cast to the ground, and he became no more. And at the end of the book of Revelation, we find that he will be cast into the bottomless pit, and he will not be let out of that pit again forever and ever. The same thing befalls all who become the victim of pride. They refuse to listen. Just like the Pharisees, just like Pharaoh, just like Satan, maybe just like the captain of the Titanic, who thought I've got an unceakable ship. I don't have to slow it down that much. This boat can't be affected. This boat, nothing can happen to it. We can keep going the way that we want. Chapter over. Exodus 8. We see Pharaoh playing a game. It's beginning to get to him a little bit. He's beginning to say, okay, there are things here I can't really say in my mind that it's there, and he doesn't know what to do, so he decides he's going to play kind of a game with God. And we can fall into the same trap as well. Certainly, Rehoboam, when you read in the book of Kings, he fell into that trap, the same trap here that Pharaoh began to. Exodus 8 and verse 9. Moses said to Pharaoh, accept the honor. This is after the frogs were on the land of Egypt, and Pharaoh acknowledges, my magicians can't make the frogs disappear. Moses, will you go back and pray to your God and ask him to get rid of the frogs, and if we get rid of the frogs, I'll let your people go. So in verse 9, Moses said to Pharaoh, accept the honor of saying, when I shall intercede for you, for your servants and for your people, to destroy the frogs from you and your houses, that they may remain in the river only.

So he said, tomorrow. And he said, let it be according to your word, that you may know that there is no one like the Lord our God. So Pharaoh says, if you do this, I'll do it. Moses said, fine, tomorrow they'll be gone. And the frogs shall depart from you, from your houses, from your servants, and from your people. They shall remain in the river only. And Moses and Aaron went out from Pharaoh, and Moses cried out to the eternal, concerning the frogs which he had brought against Pharaoh.

So the eternal did according to the word of Moses. The frogs dried out of the houses, died out of the houses, out of the courtyards, and out of the fields. They gathered them together in heaps, and the land stank. Everything was as Pharaoh had said. But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart, and didn't heed them as the eternal had said.

Hmm. I got what I want. The frogs are gone. Why do I need to let these people go? We might say the same thing. Ah, the trial is past. Things are back to normal again. Maybe that wasn't of God. Maybe that was something that just happened by coincidence, or that was unrelated.

I'll just go back to life the way it used to be. I won't pay attention to that. And if we do those things, if we don't pay attention to what the lessons we learn, and keep them fresh in our minds, and help us to propel forward in the way that God would have us be, we can play games with God.

Like I said, Rehoboam still did. As soon as something of trial would occur, he would pray to God. God would relent. He would go back to the way he did before. This is what Pharaoh did. I hope none of us play games with God. Pharaoh thought he had outsmarted God.

Oh, I can get him to do that. Look at that. I'm smarter than that God after all. Well, he learned after the next plague, and the next plague, and the next plague, and the next plague, that wasn't at all the case, because God brought down all the gods of Egypt. One by one, he showed that he was the God that was far more powerful than any of the gods of Egypt.

Let's look at Exodus 12. Exodus 12 and verse 12. That tenth plague, that tenth plague, where Pharaoh would lose his son, he would lose the things he loved, and all of Egypt would pay the price for Pharaoh's pride and his refusal to listen for the games that he was playing, for his hard heart, where he counted, just wanted to hold on to, I'm the greatest, I'm the best, I can outlast this God. Exodus 12, 12. God says, I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and I will strike all the firstborn of the land of Egypt, both man and beast. And against all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment.

I am the eternal. I will prove to Egypt once and for all, and Pharaoh once and for all, there is no God like me. He's not equal to me, or even close, nor are any of the gods, and one by one over ten plagues, God executed vengeance on all those gods and proved he is the one true God.

If God did it in Egypt, do you think he'll execute vengeance on all the little gods we have? Do you think one by one, if we're holding on to little gods that we put in praise, or execute not vengeance but judgment, think one by one, he'll execute judgment on all our little gods? Will we listen when he executes judgment on all those little gods that we probably all still have? Whenever something happens, where do we turn?

Do we turn to God, or do we turn somewhere else? Where's the first place in some of our trials that we look to? Do we turn to God? Do we turn to ourselves? Turn anyplace else that you might think of? Or is it truly to God that we look at because if we don't look at him first, if we haven't, we don't let him train us to look at him first. He'll execute judgment on all those gods. One by one, because he's in the process, and we're willing participants, willing participants, I hope, we knew what we were saying when we committed to God, perfect us, purify us, execute judgment on all those gods, get them out of our lives, get the pride out of our lives, help us to yield to you, because we don't want to be victims of the Titanic Syndrome.

We don't want to find ourselves sunk in this world and mired in it and never reach the goal of America if we're in the Titanic mode or the Promised Land, the Kingdom of God. So pride, we see, continued in Pharaoh's life. Pride is like a cancer. If we don't check it, it'll just continue to grow and grow and grow. If we don't take the means to get rid of it in our lives, it's not going to go away by ourselves itself.

We have to do something. We have to do something and take the action to counter it. Let me read. Let me read. If you go on the Internet, you can find all sorts of quotes about pride. And there's authors here that have some very astute things that they've said about pride. One of them is this man named C.S. Lewis. I don't really know who C.S. Lewis is. He was a theologian of some sort. When I gave the sermon in Jacksonville, someone came up, and they gave me two books by C.S.

Lewis. I have them on my desk to read, and I thought, well, okay, very good. But here's what he says about pride. He says, pride is spiritual cancer. It eats up the very possibility of love or contentment or even common sense. Now, isn't that true of everything we've read so far? Didn't it eat up love, contentment, and even common sense of Pharaoh? Didn't it do it to some of the other people that we might look at as we look at people like Judas?

He had a cancer. He had a God besides God, and it killed him. Money was his God. He loved having his hands on all that money. And he showed in the end that it was more than just being a steward of it. It was his. And he was willing to sell Christ for the sake of some money, because he let that continue to grow in him.

He didn't check it. He didn't try to overcome it. And I'm sure somewhere along the line, it was told him of what he needed to do. Pride is like a spiritual cancer. You know, cancer is when you read about them. You see that they're not the type of things that you always know right at the beginning. They can grow for years undetected in someone. And then all of a sudden something shows up. And you realize, oh, there's a problem. And sometimes it's too late.

Sometimes it's too late. So you go to the doctor and he'll say, nope, it's too late. And we learn it's never too late with God. And we learn that cancer is not the type of thing that the day one begins spreading in your body that you know it. People with all types of cancer will say, you know, I never felt a thing.

Never felt any pain. But then I had this thing show up and it's like, oh wow, it's far advanced. And then there's work to be done. And relying on God and looking at him to heal. Pride is exactly the same way. It can go there undetected for a long time, but sooner or later symptoms will show up and it'll become evident.

Maybe in the health that we have, maybe begin to see things in people and you think, oh wow, oh wow. How they said that. How they're positioning themselves. It's gone too far. They need to arrest that. They need to get back. They need to humble themselves before God. Because we must remember that God is committed. He's committed to halting pride. He's committed to bringing it down. He says it over and over in the Bible. We're not going to be the exception to the rule. Lucifer, Pharaoh, Judas, Nebuchadnezzar. All people like that, you can read them through the Bible.

They were all prideful people. They were all brought down. Nations, prideful nations have been brought down. Prideful nations will be brought down in the future. Pride doesn't stand before God. He hates it. And He expects us to use His Holy Spirit, to use His Holy Spirit to bring it down. Let me read something. It's talking about cancer and C.S. Lewis said this as well. Sometimes it can grow in us. The Titanic had this gigantic ash that they thought was nothing. Here's another quote from C.S. Lewis. He says, There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves than pride.

And that's true, isn't it? When we see someone who's conceded or arrogant, it's like, you know, that's just, that's what you have to be so proud of. Where's the arrogance coming from?

We dislike that when we see it in others. But we don't see it in ourselves. We know that. Lucifer still doesn't see it in himself. The Pharisees didn't see it in themselves. Pharaoh didn't see it in himself. Nebuchadnezzar had to be brought low. He goes on and he says, there can be no shorter proof of a confirmed pride than a belief that one is sufficiently humble. Isn't that interesting? As 1 Corinthians 10-12, I'm humble enough. I don't have any pride in me. And if we say that, no matter who we are, even Christ, you know, was perfectly humble.

But he didn't run around telling people that. He just lived it. Let's go back to Luke 18. Let's look at Christ's words here because he said a number of things through parables here. Luke 18 verse 9. Luke 18 verse 9. This is the parable of the publican and the tax collector. 18 verse 9. Yes, okay. Speaking of Christ, also he spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. So he looked around and he goes, you know, you people are trusting in yourselves. You think you have all the answers.

You think you're self-sufficient. You think you need no one except yourself. So he spoke this parable to him in verse 10. He says, Now we can learn a couple of things here from this parable. We can see where pride is and what it does and what it can affect in us. We've already seen many things. We know that pride blinds. We know that pride hardens hearts. We know that pride deafens us. It gives us a superior attitude. But here in this parable we learn a few more things about pride.

Pride looks down on other people. As the publican was praying, he looked down and he goes, man, I am so glad. I'm not like this person and that person and that person. Aren't you proud of me, God? Look at this. This person, this, what do you even say, the extortioners, the unjust, the adulterers, I'm glad that's not me at all.

He looked down on people. And the Jewish people of that day, they looked down on all whole segments of society. They didn't practice at all what Christ preached. They were not, they were respecters of persons where Christ wasn't. And so they looked down on them. If we ever find ourselves looking down on someone, I'm better than them. I don't have to spend my time with them. We might want to stop. We might want to think.

We might want to remember this parable and say, it's not for us to look down. Jesus Christ didn't look down on anyone. He was willing to sit down with anyone. He didn't say, this person is beneath me or that person is beneath me. He was willing to talk to even the Samaritans that the Jews of that day were not going to pay attention to. The Republican wasn't. He was pride. And in his prayers, you could see the pride come out in it. On the other hand, the tax collector who was at the bottom of the barrel in the Judean society, he didn't pray that way at all. He just said, be merciful to me. I'm a sinner. What attitude would God have us be? Because we are all sinners. Yes, we've been forgiven. Yes, we've been forgiven, but we still sin. And we still need God's mercy. We still need His forgiveness. We still need to repent. We still need to examine ourselves. We still need to understand that we are at the place that God wants us to be. And we shouldn't relax in our lives until He lets us, until we are there. So the Republican will look down at people. And the other thing that the Republican wanted to do, he wanted to be seen by others. He wanted to be seen praying. Look what I'm doing. Look who I am. I'm out here praying on the street corner. I'm up there and I've got my eyes held high and people are looking at me and they see what I'm doing. Aren't I something special? In his prayer, you can see the pride. He wasn't doing it because he was really trying to reach God. He was doing it to be seen by others. Before this, Christ says, don't fast to be seen by others. Don't do your charitable deeds to be seen by others. Do it in private. Do it because of the way that God has built you to serve. Not to be served. Not to be seen. Not to promote yourself. Whenever you see someone trying to do things for others, trying to convince you there's something, pray for them.

Pray for them that that pride that God will reveal it to them and that they will not follow the way of the public and follow the way of the tax collector. Follow the way of the humble. Do the things that God wants them to do. Because God is committed to bringing down the pride. The proud.

Far much, far better, as it says in 1 Corinthians 11, if we would judge ourselves than to wait until God will judge us. If we will catch that in ourselves.

Well, we can talk about that. Let's look at one more place here. I'm going to go a little bit over time, but we've had a long time before sunset anyway.

We see another place where pride is all over 1 Corinthians as well. Let's go back to 1 Corinthians 4.

1 Corinthians 4. Remember, I've said it a few times in the past few weeks. 1 Corinthians was written to a Corinthian church, a very wealthy church, not unlike we are here in America. But the Corinthian church had become puffed up.

When we talk about the Corinthian church, probably the word puffed up becomes one that you would pop to mind. But in 1 Corinthians 5, when he's speaking about the sin that's so evident in Corinth, it's the only time he says it. Let's look at 1 Corinthians 4 and verse 6.

Well, let's read verse 5 to lead into verse 6.

God says, all the things that are hidden, they will be revealed.

Now, the Greek word translated puffed up there could also be translated arrogant. And my Bible, arrogant, is out there in the margins. It probably is in your Bible, too. When Paul says puffed up, he's using a very unleavened bread type of symbol here to kind of make a point to them, because he's writing this letter before the days of unleavened bread and making a point to them. He goes, don't let any of you sort of add to this and add to that and think, I've got all the answers and this is the way it is, and boom, boom, boom. I'm so smarter than this person and that person and everyone else that you become puffed up in this way and start thinking that you're something. He says it again down here in verse 18. As he goes on and he talks about the affection that he has for them, he says, now some are puffed up. Because remember, this is a corrective letter. He's telling the church, you've got all these sins that are happening to you. And if you read through Corinthians, you see it's this puffed up attitude that he says is allowing these sins to be present in you. Now some are puffed up, as though I were not coming to you. He's writing this letter and he's saying, you know, some of you are out there and I think, you know, Paul's like a thousand miles away or hundreds of miles away. He's not going to come. We don't have to listen to him. We can just keep on going. You know, we don't have to do any of those things because what can he do? Well, Paul really was coming and he really was going to tell them exactly what the thing was. But I will come to you, he says, shortly if the Lord wills, and I will know not the word of those who are puffed up, but the power. For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power. We could fool others. Pride leads us to fool ourselves.

But it's the power of God that will be, that will overcome the pride. That will either bring us low or reveal to us and help us to overcome it. As he moves into what we have is chapter 5, he talks about the sin that is there in Corinth that we talked about. Verse 2, he says, and you are puffed up. You haven't rather mourned that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you. A sin that was so grievous that he said even the Gentiles in that area wouldn't do it. And he said, you're puffed up. He lays it at pride's doorstep. Pride has caused this in you. You should be mourning. You should be grieving for what's going on there. But you're not. You're puffed up. Here's one of the commentaries, say, on chapter 5, verse 2. It says, strangely, spiritual arrogance is also the father of permissiveness. It's very popular for people to boast in their ability to tolerate sin. People are proud of the way they accept things and participate in things the Bible warns about. The church in Corinth had the same attitude. A couple in the church was sexually immoral. And the church was proud of their ability to tolerate it when they should have rather mourned over it. Now, what is one of the key words in society today? Tolerance, right? We should permit everyone to do everything. Who cares what the Bible says? Be tolerant. That's the element of strength that people would tell us we need to have. Not at all. Pride leads to permissiveness. Pride leads to tolerance. It's not at all what the Bible says. The Bible never tolerates it. Paul wasn't tolerating it. He said, get rid of it. Get it out of your church. Build the temple in the way that it's supposed to be built, with gold and onyx and precious stones, not with hay and straw. Pride leads to tolerance. Pride leads to permissiveness. Pride leads to complacency.

I've done enough. I don't have to do anymore. I can just take my own road to salvation. I'm good enough. Pride leads to all those things in addition to the sins and all the other things we talked about. The deafness, the refusing to listen, the hardened hearts. I've heard it enough. I'm not listening to it anymore. I'm done with it. I don't want to hear that anymore.

That's an attitude. If we ever say those words, or if we ever see anyone say those words, caution them. Pray for them. Pray for them. Pray for yourself. Fast, if you ever see those things going. Jonathan Edwards was a preacher back in the 1700s. He had some interesting things to say.

He says this about pride. Later on in chapter 5 and over in 1 Corinthians, Paul uses this... I'm not going to give you the references. I'm not going to turn there. You can look them up. He says, he puffed up in 1 Corinthians 13.4, Colossians 2.18, and 1 Timothy 3.6. You can go back and read those verses and see what he's talking about when he's using this arrogant attitude. Jonathan Edwards says this. He says, This is the first and worst cause of errors that abound in our day and age is spiritual pride.

This is the main door by which the devil comes into the hearts of those who are zealous for the advancement of Christ. It is the chief inlet of smoke from the bottomless pit to darken the mind and mislead the judgment.

Pride is the main handle by which he has hold of Christian persons and the chief source of all the mischief that he introduces to clog and hinder a work of God. Spiritual pride is the main spring, or at least the main support, of all other errors. All other errors. Something we need to look at. Something we need to examine ourselves. If there's sin, what is in us that's leading to that sin that we think we can get away with that and God will overlook it?

Well, let me quickly here. If you see sin or how can you determine if there's pride that's there? Here in 1 Corinthians 11 and 2 Corinthians 13.5, Paul says, let a man examine himself. You know when we examine ourselves and you have an examination by a teacher, he asks you questions.

This and that and whatever. When we examine ourselves, ask yourself some questions. Have I ever displayed that attitude? Have I ever displayed an attitude of some of the things that we say? Have I ever been like the publican? That person is not worth my time. What they're doing, they don't need my prayers anymore. I don't need my attention anymore. Do we ever do things that we want others, we just are aching to let them know what we're doing?

And we have to make sure that they know, like the publican. Do we harden our hearts like Pharaoh did? That if someone says something to us, we think, I'm not listening to that anymore. That's just your idea. Who are you to say that to me? Who are you to insinuate that I might have that problem? One thing we can look at that I've learned about myself sometimes, how do you take rebuke? Do you take it and look, maybe I did do that.

Maybe there is something in me that I need to know about or examine. Or do we just say, no, that's just his idea, I don't need to listen to that. We learn a lot about ourselves and we're corrected about something. How do we handle that? Do we listen to others? Long ago, not in the church, but a boss that I had back early on, as I was moving back early on, told me, listen to what others say about you.

Listen to what others say about you. You need to know the rules of the company, you need to do what the company has, you need to keep the vision and the mind. But listen to what others say about you. If you hear things once or twice or three times, don't just think, hey, it's okay. Learn from them. And if we hear things from our spouses or not from our spouses or other people say this and that and whatever, and we're just discounting it and saying, not a problem, listen.

You know, I follow that advice throughout my life. If I hear something once, I stop and think, huh. If I hear something twice, I think, it's a problem. I need to examine and see, what am I doing? What's my thought process? How do I handle these things?

You want to detect pride? You got to go under the surface. You got to ask yourself some honest questions. You got to examine yourself the way God would examine us. If he was standing here and he was standing in front of me, he would say, did you do this? What about this? How do you think about that? Answer him honestly. Don't answer him the way you think that God wants to. Answer him the way that it needs to be, the honest answer in yourself. And you'll begin to see where the pride is.

And you'll begin to detect those things and you'll be able to let God then, as you ask for His power, to correct that in you and to give you a humble part. Let me close in Isaiah 66, verse 2. You know, the Titanic is a sad story, but it's a lesson for all of us all the time. As long as the earth goes on, people will be retelling the story of the Titanic because it's absolutely amazing what happened to it and what led to it.

God says, and I hope all of us will work on this. I include myself. For all these things, God says in verse 2, my hand is made and all these things exist. But on this one I will look on Him who is poor and of a contrite spirit and who trembles, trembles at my word. May we all heed His advice.