Cloak of Humility | Pride & Humility by C. H. Spurgeon A Sermon (No. 97) Delivered on August 17, 1856 At New Park Street Chapel, Southwark
Proverbs 18:12 | Before his downfall a man’s heart is proud, but humility comes before honor.
INTRODUCTION:
Almost every event has its prophetic prelude.
It is an old & common saying, that "coming events cast their shadows before them;" the wise man teaches us the same lesson in the verse before us.
When destruction walks through the land, it casts its shadow; it is in the shape of pride.
When honor visits a man's house, it casts its shadow before it; it is in the fashion of humility.
"Before destruction the heart of man is haughty;"
pride is as surely the sign of destruction as the change of mercury in the weather-glass is the sign of rain, & far more infallibly so than that.
"Before honor is humility," even as before the summer, sweet birds return to sing in our land.
Everything hath its prelude.
The prelude of destruction is pride, & of honor, humility.
There is nothing into which the heart of man so easily falls as pride, & yet there is no vice which is more frequently, more emphatically, & more eloquently condemned in SCRIPTURE.
Against pride, prophets have lifted up their voices, evangelists have spoken & teachers have discoursed.
Yea, more; the everlasting GOD has mounted to the very heights of eloquence when he would condemn the pride of man;
& the full gushing of the Eternal's mighty language has been most gloriously displayed in the condemnation of the pride of human nature.
Perhaps the most eloquent passage of GOD's WORD is to be found toward the conclusion of the book of Job, where, in most splendid strains of unanswerable eloquence,
GOD hides pride from many by utterly confounding him;
& there is another very eloquent passage in the 14th chapter of Isaiah, where the LORD's holy choler seems to have risen up,
Isaiah 14:1-5 | For the LORD will have compassion on Jacob & choose Israel once again. HE will settle them on their own land. The foreigner will join them & be united with the house of Jacob. The nations will escort Israel & bring it to its homeland.
Then the house of Israel will possess the nations as menservants & maidservants in the LORD’s land. They will make captives of their captors & rule over their oppressors. On the day that the LORD gives you rest from your pain & torment, & from the hard labor into which you were forced, you will sing this song of contempt against the king of Babylon: How the oppressor has ceased, & how his fury has ended! The LORD has broken the staff of the wicked, the scepter of the rulers.
& HIS anger to have waxed hot against the pride of man, when HE would utterly & effectually condemn it.
HE says concerning the great & mighty king of Babylon,
"Hell from beneath is moved for you to meet you at your coming [Isaiah 14:9]
it stirs up the dead for you, even all the chief ones of the earth;
Numbers 16:29-33 | If these men die a natural death, or if they suffer the fate of all men, then the LORD has not sent me. But if the LORD brings about something unprecedented, & the earth opens its mouth & swallows them & all that belongs to them so that they go down alive into Sheol, then you will know that these men have treated the LORD with contempt.” As soon as Moses had finished saying all this, the ground beneath them split open, & the earth opened its mouth & swallowed them & their households—all Korah’s men & all their possessions. They went down alive into Sheol with all they owned. The earth closed over them, & they vanished from the assembly.
it has raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak & say to you,
● Have you also become weak as we? ● Have you become like us?
Your pomp is brought down to the grave, & the noise of your viols: the worm is spread under you, & the worms cover you.
How have you fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!
● How you have been cut down to the ground, which also weaken the nations?
For you have said in yours heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of GOD:
I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
Yet you shall be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
They that see you shall narrowly look upon you, & consider you, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms."
Mark how GOD addresses him, describing hell itself as being astonished at his fall, seeing that he had mounted so high;
& yet declaring, assuredly, that his height & greatness were nothing to the Almighty, that HE would pull him down, even though, like an eagle, he had built his nest among the stars.
I say there is nothing more eloquently condemned in SCRIPTURE than pride,
& yet there is no trap into which we poor silly birds so easily flee, no pitfall into which,
like foolish beasts of the earth, we so continually run.
On the other hand, humility is a grace that has many promises given to it in SCRIPTURE.
Perhaps most promises are given to faith, & love is often considered to be the brightest of the train of virtues;
Yet humility holds by no means an inferior place in GOD's WORD, & there are hundreds of promises linked to it.
Every grace seems to be like a nail on which precious blessings hang, & humility has many a mercy suspended from it.
"He that exalts himself shall be abased, & he that humbles himself shall be exalted;"
"Blessed are the poor in spirit;"
& in multitudes of other passages, we are reminded that GOD loves the humble, but that HE
"brings down the mighty from their seats, & exalts the humble & meek."
Now, this morning, we shall have a WORD to say concerning pride & humility.
May the HOLY SPIRIT preserve us from the one, & produce in our hearts the other.
I.] In the first place, we shall have something to say concerning the vice of PRIDE.
"Before destruction the heart of man is haughty."
Pride, what is it? Pride, where is its seat? The heart of man.
And pride, what is its consequence? Destruction.
1.] In the first place, I must try to describe pride to you.
I might paint it as being the worst malformation of all the monstrous things in creation;
it has nothing lovely in it, nothing in proportion, but everything in disorder.
It is altogether the very reverse of the creatures which GOD has made, which are pure & holy.
Pride, the first-born son of hell, is indeed like its parent, all unclean & vile, & in it there is neither form, fashion, nor comeliness.
In the first place, pride is a groundless thing. It stands on the sands;
or worse than that, it puts its foot on the billows which yield beneath its tread;
or worse still, it stands on bubbles, which soon must burst beneath its feet.
Of all things pride has the worst foothold; it has no solid rock on earth whereon to place itself.
We have reasons for almost everything, but we have no reasons for pride.
Pride is a thing which should be unnatural to us, for we have nothing to be proud of.
What is there in man of which he should glory?
Our very creation is enough to humble us; what are we but creatures of to-day?
Our frailty should be sufficient to lay us low, for we shall be gone to-morrow.
Our ignorance should tend to keep pride from our lips.
What are we, but like the wild ass's colt which knows nothing?
And our sins ought effectually to stop our mouths, & lay us in the dust.
Of all things in the world, pride towards GOD, is that which has the very least excuse; it has neither stick nor stone whereon to build.
Yet like the spider, it carries its own web in its bowels, & can, of itself, spin that wherewith to catch its prey.
It seems to stand upon itself, for it has nothing besides whereon it can rest.
Oh! man, learn to reject pride, seeing that you have no reason for it;
whatever you have, you have nothing to make you proud.
The more you have, the more you are in debt to GOD;
& you should not be proud of that which renders you a debtor.
Consider your origin; look back to the hole of the pit where you were dug from.
Consider what you would have been, even now, if it were not for Divine grace.
And, consider, that you will yet be lost in hell if grace does not hold you up.
Consider that amongst the damned, there are none that would have been more damned than yourself, if grace had not kept you from destruction.
Let this consideration humble you, that you have nothing whereon to ground your pride.
Again, it is a brainless thing as well as a groundless thing; for it brings no profit with it.
There is no wisdom in a self-exaltation.
Other vices have some excuse, for men seem to gain by them; avarice, pleasure, lust, have some plea;
but the man who is proud sells his soul cheaply.
HE opens wide the flood-gates of his heart, to let men see how deep is the flood within his soul;
then suddenly it flows out, & all is gone-and all is nothing, for one puff of empty wind,
one word of sweet applause-the soul is gone, & not a drop is left.
In almost every other sin, we gather up the ashes when the fire is gone; but here, what is left?
The covetous man has his shining gold, but what has the proud man?
He has less than he would have had without his pride, & is no gainer whatever.
Oh! man, if you were as mighty as Gabriel, & had all his holiness, still you would be an arrant fool to be proud, for pride would sink you from your angel station to the rank of devils,
& bring you from the place where Lucifer, son of the morning, once dwelt, to take up your abode with hideous fiends in perdition.
Pride exalts it head, & seeks to honor itself; but it is of all things most despised.
It sought to plant crowns upon its brow, & so it has done, but its head was hot, & it put an ice crown there, & it melted all away.
Poor pride has decked itself out finely sometimes; it has put on its most gaudy apparel, & said to others, "how brilliant I appear!" but, ah!
Pride, like a harlequin, dressed in your gay colours, you are all the more fool for that;
you are but a gazing stock for fools less foolish than yourself.
You have no crown, as you think you have, nothing solid & real, all is empty & vain.
>> If you, O man, desires shame, be proud.
A monarch has waded through slaughter to a throne, & shut the gates of mercy on mankind to win a little glory;
but when he has exalted himself, & has been proud, worms have devoured him, like Herod,
or have devoured his empire, till it passed away, & with it his pride & glory.
Pride wins no crown; men never honor it, not even the menial slaves of earth;
for all men look down on the proud man, & think him less than themselves.
Again, pride is the maddest thing that can exist; it feeds upon its own vitals; it will take away its own life, that with its blood may make a purple for its shoulders:
it saps, & undermines its own house that it may build its pinnacles a little higher, & then the whole structure tumbles down.
Nothing proves men so made as pride.
For this they have given up rest, & ease, & repose, to find rank & power among men:
for this they have dared to risk their hope of salvation, to leave the gentle yoke of JESUS, & go toiling wearily along the way of life, seeking to save themselves by their own works, & at last to stagger into the mire of despair.
Oh! man, hate pride, flee from it, abhor it, let it not dwell with you.
If you want to have a madman in your heart, embrace pride, for you shall never find one more mad than he.
Then pride is a protean thing; it changes its shape; it is all forms in the world; you may find it in any fashion you may choose, you may see it in the beggar's rags as well as in the rich man's garment.
It dwells with the rich, & with the poor.
The man without a shoe to his foot may be as proud as if he were riding in a chariot.
Pride can be found in every rank of society-among all classes of men. Sometimes it is an Arminian, & talks about the power of the creature;
then it turns Calvinist, & boasts of its fancied security- forgetful of the MAKER, who alone can keep our faith alive.
Pride can profess any form of religion;
it may be a Quaker, & wear no collar to its coat; it may be a Churchman, & worship GOD in splendid cathedrals; it may be a Dissenter, & go to the common meeting-house;
it is one of the most Catholic things in the world, it attends all kinds of chapels & Churches; go where you will, you will see pride.
It comes up with us to the house of GOD; it goes with us to our houses;
Let me hint at one or two of the forms which it assumes.
Sometimes pride takes the doctrinal shape; it teaches the doctrine of self-sufficiency;
it tells us what man can do, & will not allow that we are lost, fallen, debased, & ruined creatures, as we are.
It hates divine sovereignty, & rails at election.
Then if it is driver from that, it takes another form; it allows that the doctrine of free grace is true but does not feel it.
It acknowledges that salvation is of the LORD alone, but still it prompts men to seek heaven by their own works, even by the deeds of the law.
And when driven from that, it will persuade men to join something with CHRIST in the matter of salvation;
& when that is all rent up, & the poor rag of our righteousness is all burned, pride will get into the Christian's heart as well as the sinner's
—it will flourish under the name of self-sufficiency,
teaching the Christian that he is "rich & increased in goods, having need of nothing."
Pride will tell him that he does not need daily grace, that past experience will do for to-morrow-that he knows enough, toils enough, prays enough.
It will make him forget he has "not yet attained;" it will not allow him to press forward to the things that are before, forgetting the things that are behind.
It enters into his heart, & tempts the believer to set up an independent business for himself, & until the LORD brings about a spiritual bankruptcy,
pride will keep him from going to GOD.
Pride has 10K shapes; it is not always that stiff & starched gentleman that you picture it;
Pride is a vile, creeping, insinuating thing, that will twist itself like a serpent into our hearts.
It will talk of humility, & prate about being dust & ashes.
I have known men talk about their corruption most marvellously,
pretending to be all humility, while at the same time they were the proudest wretches that could be found this side the gulf of separation.
Oh! my friends, you cannot tell how many shapes pride will assume; look sharp about you, or you will be deceived by it, & when you think you are entertaining angels, you will find you have been receiving devils unawares.
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