YOUR GREATEST SIN

TEXT:  Proverbs 6:16-19
 
THESIS:  To show that pride, a sin of the spirit, is the root of many sins, including sins of the flesh.
 
INTRO:  

A.  What would you say was David’s greatest sin? 

🖤Adultery with Bathsheba? 
🖤The murder of her husband, Uriah? Both adultery and murder are heinous sins. 
🖤David’s dual sins got him into deep trouble and created turmoil in his life, family and kingdom for the rest of his life. 
🖤The scarlet sin of adultery and the bloody sin of murder left scar tissue on David’s soul and diminished his respect, leadership, power as King and destroyed his family. 
 
ILLUS:  👀Adultery has become as common as horseflies in a barnyard in our nation.  Because of Hollywood and TV, the adulterous mentality has spread throughout our once God-blessed nation.  This barnyard morality – everyone neighing after his neighbor’s wife (she may be a magazine, film or TV “wife”), as Jeremiah said has permeated our society. 
👀An evangelist recently said to me that as long as the people in our churches (and the preachers!) watch sit-coms on TV, ✔where people fornicate, ✔live together, ✔swap wives, ✔divorce freely and ✔have live-in boy or girlfriends, there will not nor cannot be revival!  AMEN! 😢(Now we even have the elderly in nursing homes committing fornication!) It is indeed a degrading sin. But it is not the worst sin.
               Murder is on the rise in America. Again, thanks to Hollywood and TV, where you can see several murders each hour in prime time and movies are more violent than ever, life has become cheap. Violent video games teach our children this principle at the earliest age.  This week our Supreme Court struck down capital punishment for murderers, etc. cheapening life even further. Add to this the abortion butchery carried out by our doctors who have sworn to protect and save lives, and you see how murder is no longer all that bad in our society.  But in the Supreme Court of heaven, it is still near the top of God’s list of worst sins! But it is not the worst sin.
 
B. But what was David’s worst sin❓ 
🔸We know that God hates all sin, and that the wages of sin is death. 
🔸It seems logical that if one sin causes more death than others, in essence it is more vile and wicked and filthy and ungodly than the others. 
🔸When David committed adultery with Bathsheba four people died:  Uriah, the illegitimate baby, Amnon and Absalom, David’s two sons.  It was sad. 
🔶But David committed another sin with which God was so displeased that 70,000 men in Israel died!  
   🔸It was after David had led Israel to win a great battle.     🔸He got proud and succumbed to Satan’s suggestion to number the people.
   🔸It was as if he was bragging because of their military superiority, instead of giving God credit. 
🔶Satan appealed to David’s pride. 
   
   🔸It wasn’t because of David’s wicked sins of adultery and murder,
​   🔸but because of his sin of pride! 

🔶This was David’s greatest sin. Could it be “YOUR GREATEST SIN?”
 
1 Chronicles 21:1,7,14
1 And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.
7 And God was displeased with this thing; therefore he smote Israel.
14 So the LORD sent pestilence upon Israel: and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men.
 
TRANS:  Note in our text in this list of 7 sins which are disgusting (“an abomination unto [God]”), which sin is listed first.  It is the sin of pride! 

👿“Pride is put first,
     1. because it is at the bottom of all disobedience and rebellion against God's laws.
     2. It is the very opposite of humility, which the apostle, in Eph 4:2, mentions as the basis, as it were, of all the virtues.
     3. All pride is intended, and the face of the Lord is against this pride. ◼He "resisteth the proud;" ◼he "knoweth them afar off;" ◼he "hath respect unto the lowly;" ◼he "will bring down high looks" (Psalm 18:27); ◼he judgeth those that are high (Job 21:22).” (from The Pulpit Commentary, Electronic Database. Copyright (c) 2001 by Biblesoft)
 
I.   PRIDE IS A FOUNDATIONAL SIN:  
 
A. The Root Of Pride:
 
   1. Pride began in heaven!
   2. Pride made a devil out of Lucifer.
 
     a. He had great beauty, wisdom and position.  “…the anointed cherub”
     b. He didn’t have any flesh to sin with, but he had a spirit that could be lifted up with pride.
 
ILLUS: 
⭐If you commit fleshly sins, like adultery and murder, they are wicked. 
⭐When we are committing sins of the spirit, we are imitating the devil! 
😈Pride made a devil out of Lucifer and it will make a devil out of you!  You say, “I’m glad I’m not proud!”  That attitude is prideful! 
😈Pride will be the root of your sins in the flesh! 
😈Pride caused David to commit adultery and murder, as well as to number the people. 
😈He was saying  “I am the King, I can do as I please.  I can have an officer in my army killed.  I can sleep with his wife.  I can boast of my military prowess.”
 
   3. Pride made King Saul lose his throne and God’s approval.
 
1 Samuel 15:17
And Samuel said, When thou wast little in thine own sight, wast thou not made the head of the tribes of Israel, and the LORD anointed thee king over Israel?
 
   4. Pride caused Nebuchadnezzar to wander in the wilderness like a beast for 7 years.
 
Daniel 4:30
The king spake, and said, Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?  (He was a lot more humble on his way back…)
 
Daniel 4:37
Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase.
 
II.  PRIDE IS A FOOLISH SIN:
 
    A.   The Fruit Of Pride:
                       
1.   Pride is at the root of most Christian’s differences, and church divisions and produces rotten fruit!
 
James 4:1-2
From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?  Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.
 
                 a.   Pride reveals itself in self-righteousness:  “I am more spiritual than…”
ILLUS:  We set ourselves up as more spiritual than others.  We always take the high and “more spiritual” position when there are differences.  We can even find Scripture to justify our pride and our actions.  We look down on those who are “less spiritual” than us.   We become judgmental.  We categorize people.  We become rigid.  We refuse back down even when in our heart we know we are wrong.  Then the war is fueled by our pride.  Pride was what kept the elder brother from going to the homecoming party for the prodigal son who had come home.  He was proud of his faithfulness and judgmental of his brother’s sinfulness.  Who was more a sinner in God’s eyes:  the one who sinned in the flesh or the one who sinned in the spirit?
 
               b.   Pride reveals itself in a pious and fraudulent humility or timidity.
 
ILLUS:  You say “I’m too timid to go soul-winning.”  That’s pride cloaked in a garment of humility.  Your pride causes you to use humility as a covering for your disobedience.  You don’t want to go soul-winning because of your fear of what someone may think of your or say to you.  You are afraid to have your feelings hurt or that someone may say something unkind to you.  Your pride not only destroys you it sends souls to hell.
 
              c.   Pride rears its ugly head even in the ministry:
 
                    1)   We can become proud of our faithfulness, success, service, purity.
                    2)   Pride is so subtle if even dresses itself in piety.
                    3)   We can even become proud of our victory over sin, of our gifts and talents, our physical
 appearance or health!
 
CONCL:  “YOUR (OUR) GREATEST SIN” may more likely be a sin of the spirit, not a sin of the flesh.  I am not saying it’s O.K. to commit adultery or any other sin of the flesh, but to that we had better deal with sins of the spirit just as harshly as sins of the flesh.  We had better deal with the sin of pride which is a root sin which will produce all kinds of rotten fruit in even the best Christian’s life.  Pride was David’s most deadly sin.  Could it also be yours and mine?
 
2 Corinthians 7:1
Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.