"The Persistence of Pride" - 2 Samuel 24:1-17

How can David's military census of Israel reveal to us about our ongoing struggle with the persistence of pride?

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Well, Cedar Street, I love you so, so very much. It's my joy to be with you here this morning. I hope everybody is having a great month of June as we are inching closer to that July 4th that we're celebrating here today. Uh as Joseph prayed and Jody sang, just grateful to be in a country where I can come and I can proclaim the name of Jesus Christ without fear of persecution, and I don't take that for granted. There's many today who are gathering in houses and they're they're claiming the name of Jesus with their enemies listening on the other side of the wall. So let us never take this for granted. Well, we are at the end of a journey together. This is going to be our final Sunday. I know you're you're grieving over this. Uh this is your our final Sunday in the book of 2 Samuel. We've been walking through this together, chapter by chapter, precept upon precept. And we've learned a lot from King David, as you can see on the screen. Our series has been entitled Faithful and Flawed. And we've said that David is a man of great faith who ran after God's own heart, but also a man of great flaws who ran after God's amazing grace. We've learned just as much in his failures as we have in his successes, and of course, everything that King David does points us to the greater and eternal King Jesus. And again, if you're if you're just here for the first time or you've been in and out this spring and early summer, we have talked about so many different areas. We've learned about what the kingdom of God is all about, being patient for God's promises, what true worship is, how to show gratitude for God and his greatness and all his attributes. We've learned about grace. We've learned about sin. We've learned about sovereign discipline. We've learned about justice. We've learned about seeking God in every storm. We've learned about having confidence in God's covenant that he makes with us. And again, last time we spoke, we talked about David's song of confidence in God. And I wish I could tell you that was the last chapter of the book. It would have been a great way to end on a high note. But we live in reality. And the last chapter of 2 Samuel is a chapter that leads on a very painful note for King David. And it's something that you and I have to deal with today. As we look at 2 Samuel chapter 24, verses 1 through 17, our title here this morning is The Persistence of Pride. The persistence of pride. You know, there's a lot of different ways to talk about the human heart. When the Bible says heart, it means the centerpiece of who you really are. You know, it says in Proverbs 4, guard your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. Your heart is the real you according to the Bible. And there's a lot of different ways we can talk about the heart. Here in Meadow, Georgia, you've heard it a thousand times from the great evangelist Michael Guido, who gave you a seed for what? And there was a seed for the garden of your heart, right? Well, guess what I know about the garden of our hearts? There's weeds. And guess what I know about weeds? They don't give up, they're persistent. You spray them, you pull them, you mow over them, and week after week, month after month, they press through the dirt again to remind you that they're still there. The most persistent weed in the garden of your heart and in the garden of my heart is pride. It's pride. It never goes away. You can rip it up, you can mow it down, and a week later you're gonna have to deal with it again. And guess what? Until you and I go and be with the Lord in heaven, this is a weed that we're gonna have to tend in our garden every single week because if it starts to overgrow and choke the flowers of the garden, we got a mess on our hands, and that's exactly what happens to David in this passage. So as I read this, I want you to be painfully, soberingly clear and vulnerable and honest about your own heart. And if you leave here today saying, I don't know where the weeds of pride are in my life, just ask the person sitting next to you, because they'll be happy to show you. I always said pride is a lot like body odor. Everybody can smell it on you, but you. And David has a lot to teach us about this. David's still a man after God's own heart. But the pride that was rising up in the garden of his heart, it boy, it has a major effect here in these final words of chapter 24. So, what's our big idea in one sentence? Here it is. David's decision to take a military census of Israel reveals our ongoing human struggle with the persistence of pride. Say it again. David's decision to take a military census of Israel reveals our ongoing human struggle with the persistence of pride. So if you want to know more about this persistent weed of pride in the garden of your heart and how we can eradicate this weed with the help of God, but how it's an ongoing project, would you turn with me to the book of 2 Samuel? Again, if you're new to the Bible, it's after 1 Samuel, it's before 1 Kings. If you don't have a Bible, just grab the Pew Bible in front of you or beside you. We're on page 326 in your pew Bible. And if you would stand at this time, out of the reverence to the reading of God's holy, infallible, inerrant, and fully sufficient word, we are in 2 Samuel, again, chapter 24. We're going to read the first 17 verses. Hear God's word to us, starting here in verse 1. It says, Again, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, Go, number Israel and Judah. So the king said to Joab, the commander of the army who was with him, Go through all the tribes of Israel from Dan to Beersheba, and number the people, that I may know the number of the people. But Joab said to the king, May the Lord your God add to the people a hundred times as many as they are, while the eyes of my lord the king still see it. But why does my lord the king delight in this thing? But the king's word prevailed against Joab and the commanders of the army. So Joab and the commanders of the army went out from the presence of the king to number the people of Israel. They crossed the Jordan and began from Arar, and from there to the city that is in the middle of the valley towards Gad and on to Jazer. Then they came to Gilead and to Kadesh in the land of the Hittites, and they came to Dan, and from Dan they went around to Sidon, and came to the fortress of Tyre, and to all the cities of the Hivites and the Canaanites, and they went out to the Negeb of Judah at Beersheba. So when they had gone through all the land they came to Jerusalem at the end of nine months and twenty days, and Joab gave the sum of the numbering of the people to the king in Israel. There was eight hundred thousand valiant men who drew the sword, and the men of Judah were five hundred thousand. Verse ten But David's heart struck him after he had numbered the people, and David said to the Lord, I have sinned greatly in what I have done, but now, O Lord, please take away the iniquity of your servant, for I have done very foolishly. And when David arose in the morning, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Gad, David's seer, saying, Go and say to David, Thus says the Lord, Three things I offer to you, choose one of them, that I may do it to you. So Gad came to David and told him, and said to him, Shall three years of famine come to you and your land, or will you flee three months before your foes before they pursue you, or shall there be three days pestilence in your land? Now consider and decide what answer I shall return to him who sent me. Then David said to Gad, I am in great distress. Let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is great, but let me not fall into the hand of man. So the Lord set a pestilence on Israel from the morning until the appointed time, and there died of the people from Dan to Beersheba seventy thousand men. And when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord relented from the calamity and said to the angel who was working destruction among the people, It is enough. Now stay your hand. And the angel of the Lord was by the threshing floor of Arona the Jebusite. And David spoke to the Lord when he saw the angel who was striking the people and said, Behold, I have sinned and I have done wickedly, but these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand be against me and against my father's house. Let's pray. This is a sobering text, Lord. We read these words, and we recognize David as a man after your heart, a man who loved you and served you, a man that you inspired through your Holy Spirit to pen most of our psalms, a man whose kingly bloodline traces all the way to Jesus. A man that was faithful in so many ways, and yet a man who's flawed and shows us our flaws. Lord, we are prideful. We trust in everything but you. And you didn't make us to be that way. But our gifts blind us. The grace that you give us puffs us up. Lord, help us to be painfully honest today as we sit here in your house and we hear the proclamation of your word and the stirring of your spirit. Show us these persistent weeds in the garden of our hearts, Lord. Show us the pride that we have in our life, the misplaced trust that we have in our gifts, the lack of surrender that we have to you, Lord, and the painful consequences of living a prideful life. Be with us, humble us, open our eyes, convict our hearts. Be with us right now, I pray. In Jesus' name. And God's people said. Amen. So I think it's helpful to define our terms. When I say pride, I feel like most of us know that word. We know it when we see it, but we may not know how to define it. When I think of pride, biblically speaking, I want to say that pride is two things. Pride is a misunderstanding of God's grace that leads to a misplaced trust in ourselves instead of God. Again, if you're a note taker, I want you to hear that again. Pride, biblically speaking, is a misunderstanding of God's grace that leads to a misplaced trust in ourselves instead of God. That's pride. And pride is something that you and I have been dealing with since our original ancestors, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden. God blessed them with many gifts, but they did not want to honor God. They did not want to rely upon God. They did not want God to be on the throne of their hearts. They wanted to have the knowledge of God so they could be self-sufficient. And Satan knew that. And Satan drew that pride right out of them by enticing them to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And since that time, because of the fallen nature that we have inherited from them, we have the same mindset today. We want to do what we want to do in our own strength for our own glory. And it's rooted in every single human being somewhere. And if Jesus Christ does not come and take the heart of stone and replace it with the heart of flesh and put his Holy Spirit within us, we have no hope of overcoming this pride. And even when we do receive a brand new heart, when you and I place our faith in King Jesus, we still have to tend the garden because those weeds, they come from every direction. And some of us are not even aware of it. But I'm going to try to get as specific as I can. You know, uh, 1 John 2.16, we've talked about this a lot over the last few years. If you want to get after sin in your life, it says in 1 John 2.16, for all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life is not from the Father, but from the world. That's the root of sin right there. All right? The lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, power, possessions, pleasure, and honor. You and I seek it because our heart is filled with pride. We do not want to live purely for the glory of God and the joy of experiencing the intimacy of his presence. We want things from God. That's the human nature. That's pride. And Satan himself is the king of pride. Satan himself was given many gifts from God. As he was the angel Lucifer, he was the most beautiful of angels. And he was cast out of heaven because of pride. And so when you're attacked by the world, the flesh, and the devil, know this the devil's main objective is to pull pride out of you. Because if he can pull pride out of you, he can lead your life down a road of destruction because pride messes everything up. It does. It did for David here at the end of his life, and it does for us. I can tell you as I stand here right now, if I had to list the nine or ten things in my life that have caused me the most pain, you can trace every single one of them somehow back to pride. Somehow back to pride. And one of the reasons that we're so blind to this, and I'm not saying this in an accusatory way, I'm just being honest. In the years that I've been in ministry and I've done counseling, I've never, ever, not one time had someone called me and say, I need counsel, and then come and during the counsel session say, I'm really prideful and I really want to grow for my pride. Would you help me? It's always, here's my problem and here's who's at fault for it. Can you give me counsel? Because it's this person's fault and it's this person's fault and it's this person's fault. And we never look in the mirror. But you know, the word of God and the spirit of God show us what is inside the person of God. And so I hope it's a mirror for us today. Now, here's the thing about David. Here's why pride sneaks up on us. Do you remember, okay, for those of us here at Cedar Street, we looked at it last year, but for any of you that's ever read a Bible, one of the most common stories that we read, and by the way, it's the most misinterpreted story of the Old Testament, is the story of David and Goliath. All right, that's the beginning of the journey of David when we looked at 1 Samuel last summer. All right, in 1 Samuel 17, we see a young shepherd with a slingshot, and he was not a man of pride. All right, I want you to hear, I want you to listen closely because, again, a lot of times, and I've even seen this when I've gone to youth camps and other things, and I've seen people talk about that story being brave like David. That has nothing to do with the story. David defeating Goliath has nothing to do with courage and pride in yourself. It's recognizing that you can't, but God can, and I'm gonna put my trust in the one who can. Listen closely to 1 Samuel 17, verses 46 through 47. You know the story, but listen to words you may not have heard before. It says, this is David talking to Goliath. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head, and I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves, not with the sword and spear, for the battle is the Lord's, and he will give it into our hand. Now hear this with new ears. This is not David being brave. David saying, Goliath, I absolutely positively know that I'm going to kill you in a few moments. But it's not going to be because of my strength, I'm not strong. It's not going to be because of my weapons, I've got a slingshot. It's not because of my wisdom, I'm a young shepherd boy. Why is it? Right here, again, let me read this again. That all the earth may know there is a God in Israel, and that all the assembly may know that the Lord saves not with the sword and spear, for the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hand. David understood grace. David experienced it over and over when he was a shepherd out in the field. He talked about killing lions to protect his sheep, and he knew he did not have the strength of a lion. What he had was the grace of God. And so he started out this ministry as king of Israel with humility and understanding. Then you get to the end of the story here. The same David that says, God does not save with sword and spear. At the end here in 2 Samuel 24, guess what he's doing? He's counting swords and spears. He's looking to himself and to military power instead of looking to the God of Israel to provide the victory. And if a man after God's own heart who started with that much humility could fall into that much pride at the end of his life, it can happen to any one of you, it can happen to me. And by the way, it has happened over and over again. This weed of pride, it doesn't go away. It's persistent. And this is why repentance and faith, this is why confession, this is why constantly humbling ourselves, this is the posture of the Christian life. You know, when you get saved, you get that number on your chest, that's not the end of the race, that's the beginning of it. And that's why we talk about heads, hearts, and hands being transformed. This is where it happens, this is the epicenter of it. So we need to see our struggle with pride in light of David's struggle with pride. So as I walk through the text here, I'm gonna hit some high notes. I want you to think about David for a minute, but I want you to think about your life. Where are the weeds hiding in your garden? They're there. Where are they hiding? Let's look at this together. I'm gonna be looking, again, we're gonna move at a good pace here, and we're just gonna hit some high notes. But I want to look, number one, as we walk through the text together, let's look at the call of pride. In verses one through two, it says, Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, Go number Israel in Judah. So the king said to Joab, the commander of the army, I who was with him, uh, go through all the tribes of Israel from Dan to Bathsheba and number the people, that I may know the number of the people. Now let me stop right there and answer an issue. All right. You could be really confused in verse one if you don't see another passage in Scripture that helps you to understand it. In verse one, it makes it sound like God is telling him to number the troops, and he's not. Alright, it says that he incited David against them, saying, Go number Israel and Judah. However, when you see a passage like this and you're like, God is not test or tempting people to sin, surely that's not his nature. Always know this. You interpret scripture with scripture. And there's a mirror passage that mirrors this, and it's 1 Chronicles 21. You can't understand 2 Samuel 24:1 if you don't know 1 Chronicles 21. And 1 Chronicles 21, it's the same story, but the author says it is Satan himself who tells David to go and number the troops. We need to know this about God. He may test your faith, but he will never tempt you to sin. It is not in God's nature. Okay? God does not tempt us to sin, but God does allow evil to happen to bring out the truth of what is in our hearts. Sometimes when we think of Satan, we think that Satan somehow tiptoes around God and that never happens. When the snake, when Satan slithered into the Garden of Eden as a snake, you think God was aware that Satan was there? You better believe it. Why did God allow it to happen? Because Satan just drew out of Adam and Eve what was already in their hearts. And in this passage, God is allowing Satan to draw out of David what is already in his heart. And God will do the same with you. He will allow situations in your life to draw out of you the pride that is already in your heart. You know the way that he most often does it? He leads somebody into your life who criticizes the area that you have the most identity in. Now, you and I should have. Our identity fully in Jesus. Our identity should be that we are loved, that we are forgiven, that we are in covenant fellowship with Him, that we have eternity promise, that He's making a place for us. Our identity should be in who Jesus is, not in what we do. But because of our sin, when God gives us gifts, we find our identity in those gifts. Now, it's funny because it's different for everybody, but I've been with people, even in this community, who are very calm and very self-controlled and very quiet and they don't get upset about many things, but then I'll be with them one day and I'll see somebody criticize them in an area where they find their identity and ooh, I found the weed. You don't think you have weeds? Let somebody point out something in your life that you are very, very passionate about. Let somebody criticize how you are as a mother. Get out of your way. Men? Let them criticize you on how much how hard you work. Let them call you lazy. For those of you that are leaders, let them criticize your leadership. You're not really good at leading men as good as you think you are. Watch a man's weeds come popping through the dirt. Now it's different for every one of us, but it's there. I know what mine are. I don't know all of mine. But I have touch points, and when that happens, I recognize that God is showing me I've got some misplaced identity. Your identity is not your gifts. There was a day that you didn't have those gifts, and there's a day that you may not be able to use those gifts again. You know, I um my sweet brother who's gone to be with Jesus, David Gorham, most of you know him, passed away a few weeks ago. And God gave me a great grace. I was able to see him a few weeks ago, and he was so frustrated. He was excited that he was going to be with Jesus, but he was frustrated. He was laying in that bed and he only had function of one arm as ALS was eating him alive. And I said to him, and he's not the only person I've ever said this to, I said, Brother, the value you bring to this earth is not what you do, it's who you are in Christ. So even if you're in the bed and you can't move or do anything, you're bringing great value to this world because you're a person made in the image of God, filled with the Spirit of God, and your identity is not in your gifts. But oh, we got to get those gifts stripped away from us for us to realize that. Well, in this passage, God is allowing Satan to incite David to take a census of the military because there something somewhere along the line, David stopped believing that the God who saves not by spear and sword all of a sudden is now saving by spear and sword. And so he starts counting the military and counting the power that he has. And I will say this again: you and I, until we go to be with Jesus, it's never going to go away. There's always gonna be seasons of your life where God will use a situation to call out your pride because he wants to rip out those weeds at the root. That's the call of pride. We all deal with it. Now, number two, let's look at the caution of pride. Look in verse three. Joab recognizes what is going on. It says, But Joab said to the king, May the Lord your God add to the people a hundred times as many as they are, while the eyes of my Lord the King still see it. But why does my Lord the King delight in this thing? Joab said, This is not a good idea. I'm your military commander, I know our army, I've seen God work. Why do you want to count them? Same is true in your life. When you're being prideful, other people in your life are going to point it out. In all honesty, your spouse and your children will see it crystal clear. And it hurts the most when they're the ones that point it out. But it is right there. God enables pride to come to the surface, and he almost always does it by the people closest to you, the people that know you, pointing out areas about where you're being prideful. And what is our typical response? Thank you so much. I had no idea what an amazing person you are. It is so loving of you to tell me where I'm being prideful. No? The three words that typically come to our mind are, who are you? Who are you? Who are you to call me out? Who are you to tell me this? And a lot of times we say, Who do you think you are to tell me this? You don't have the right to because you're not where I am. Well, guess what? A lot of times, if we're waiting for someone to have the same exact gifts that we do to call us out when we're prideful, we'll never get called out. Nobody else was the king of Israel but David. David could have said, I'm the king. Who are you to call me out? But it's not a matter of if somebody's qualified. Any God can use anybody to point out your pride. And they're qualified because God's using them to call it out. It's not fun when it happens. But if we do not recognize our pride and we do not do the hard work of confession and repentance and seeking the grace of humility, if we don't actively do this, it's not going to happen by itself. Christians do not grow in spiritual formation by just coming to church on Sunday and expecting it to happen naturally. The soul is just like the body. You go to the gym and you sweat, and muscles get teared apart or torn apart and they get built back. The same thing with our souls. When God points out pride, we have two responses. We can get angry and the weed will get stronger, or we can get humble and God can rip it at the root. Who in your life right now is cautioning you or you're being prideful? You need to be open to that. I need to be open to that. When that happens. Because if not, it leads us to number three. We've saw the call and the caution. Let's look at the causes of pride. As you look at verses four through nine, I'm just going to read verse four, and then verse nine is a bookend. Verse four says, But the king's word prevailed against Joab, he didn't listen, and the commanders of the army. So Joab and the commanders of the army went out from the presence of the king to number the people of Israel. Now skip to verse nine and find out. At the end it says, And Joab gave the sum of the numbering of the people to the king. In Israel there was 800,000 valiant men who drew the sword, and the men of Judah were five hundred thousand. In this particular situation, pride came from two major areas. It came from authority, and it came from power. Do you know how hard it is for God to trust a human being with authority? And how much harder it is for God to trust a human being with power. Look at human history. We've not done well very often with being entrusted with authority or with power. Now David flexes his authority right out of the chute. Joab says, Don't do this. David says, I'm the king. You're going to do what I tell you to do. And then the power. We do see from the time where David started to where David was at the end here, God had built a military force. Those are impressive numbers. But you got to get this. God never gave David authority because he was so great with authority. He gave it to him because it was a gift of grace. And God never gave victory to Israel because of their numbers. He gave it to them as a gift of grace. These things cause pride. Gifts cause pride. There's something inside of us that wants to look at where we are and say, I have this because I made it happen. If I dug to the deepest part of your garden, you want to give credit to you. It's there. It's there. I remember years ago, a person was visiting this church and his son was getting baptized. This was like seven or eight years ago. A real nice man, I don't even know his name, only met him one time. And I asked him what he did for a living, and he said he was a contractor. And I said, Well, praise God that God has given you great gifts to be able to use your hands to provide for your family. And he said, I wouldn't call it gifts. I mean, you do what you have to do. I mean, he just there was nothing in his mind that said, before I was ever born, God instilled in me special gifts to be able to build with brick and mortar and to be able to cut wood and be able to lay cement foundations and be able to erect a home for somebody. He just thought, I learned it, I do it, I am a self-made man, and I've gotten from where I was to where I am by my own wisdom and my own hard work. Boy, that's some of the biggest weeds in your garden. There is nothing that you have in your life that did not become possible because God allowed it before you ever showed up. Whatever gifts that you have, God gave them. Even if you had to work hard to cultivate those gifts, the work ethic came from God. You say, well, I came from nothing. Well, the situation that provided a built-in motivation came from God. If you are successful in this room before you were ever born, God chose the position that you are in today. And if you don't believe that, you got some weeds that need to be pulled. This is, I mean, there's something inside of us. We want to say me, I did it. And we take God out of the equation, and when we do that, we cause problems. We misplace our identity. We don't trust God. We want to trust in ourselves. What David is experiencing, all of us have experienced, and I want to say this, not trying to be falsely humble when I say this, trust me. I look at my life and how pride has caused damage in my life. And here I am pastoring a church in the middle of the cotton fields of South Georgia, outside of this town, nobody knows my name. If I was king over a nation, my goodness, the damage I would cause. I was thinking the other day, when I was growing up, uh, my best friend from pre-K till about sixth grade, whose name is Jared, he's my next door neighbor. And uh it was funny, ever since we were little, we would talk about what we wanted to do when we grew up. I said I wanted to be a sports caster, and until ministry I was. He said, I want to handle other people's money. Well, he's a partner at TD Waterhouse right now. I was talking to my dad this week when I was on the trip, and I said, How's Jared doing? He said, He and his millions are doing well. Well, I don't know where Jared is in his spiritual walk. He's been a good friend over the years, we've kind of lost touch. But I don't envy what he has. If I had his money, my goodness, the weeds that would be growing in my garden right now would be unreal. I I've gotten to the point now where I look at people who are financially much more successful than me, and I really have begun to believe this. God has given that to them because he can trust them more than he can trust me. Because I've not been totally trustworthy with what I do have. You know, all of us in this room, we at times we've prayed, God, give me more, give me a raise, give me a new job, give me greater responsibility, greater influence, a bigger house, you know, a better retirement. Give me more. Are you being humble with what you already have? And if he gives you more, what's that gonna lead to? One of the greatest things God may have ever done is say no to your prayers. Because if he said yes, your garden would be overrun with the weeds of pride. Oh, he knows us. He knows everything about us. That's the causes of pride. But guess what that leads to as we look at number four? The conviction of pride. This right here is why we still remember David as a man after God's own heart. Listen to the first part of verse 10. It says, But David's heart struck him after he had numbered the people. What happened? In a word, the Holy Spirit brought crystal clear conviction, and he was struck at the core. Why is David still remembered as a man after God's own heart, after all the issues that we've seen? Adultery, accomplice to murder, now not trusting God and doing a military census. Why do we still say that? Because what David did, as well as anybody else that we see in the Old Testament, is when he was convicted of sin, when he finally came to his spiritual senses by the power of the Holy Spirit, he got on his face before God. That's the difference between David and most of us. Most of us have had these moments of conviction, but we don't do anything about it. Now, I'm just saying this so I can be practical. I'm not picking at anybody, but over the last 10 years of ministry, when I've preached sermons and I'm at the receiving line at the end of service, someone always says, Whoo, preacher, you'd have stepped on my toes today. Let me just say this: the stepping on of your toes is not the purpose of the preaching of the Word of God. Conviction is not the purpose. Conviction wakes you up to the purpose. And I think Southern Baptists are worse than any other denomination. When we leave the service feeling convicted, we feel like we've changed. And we haven't. Conviction will make you a hypocrite if you don't respond in repentance and faith. What conviction is, is God tapping you on the shoulder and saying, I want to make a change in your life. It's not actually changing. So if you leave thinking that the purpose was to feel like your toes were stepped on, but then you go to lunch and never do anything about it, you're just adding to your guilt. God is not impressed with your conviction. He takes notice that the next thing, as we look at the second part of verse 10, we look at number five, the confession of pride. Look at the second part of verse 10. David goes straight to his right on his face before God. It says, And David said to the Lord, I have sinned greatly in what I have done, but now, O Lord, please take away the iniquity of your servant, for I have done very foolishly. When you're convicted about something in your life that needs to change, I'm telling you this right now. The immediate response that God wants you to have is to get on your face before Him and humble yourself and ask for His grace. Don't put it off till lunch. Don't say you're gonna deal with it next week because guess what? The human heart does not get softer, it gets harder. The absolute best time to respond in confession and repentance is the moment that God pierces your heart about something He wants to change. And can I say this in every person in this room, including me? There are things He wants to change. We're not Jesus just yet. We're not the perfect human being. We're being molded and shaped into his image. It's a lifelong project. And just as you're pulling out one weed, he's gonna show you another one. You should not expect anything different on this side of heaven. And you say, Bo, man, this is kind of miserable. No, it's the process of growth with the hope of when you and I stand in the kingdom, in his heavenly kingdom forever, the weeds will have been finally eradicated from the garden. You know, one of the greatest sermons ever preached was a man named Jonathan Edwards in the 1700s. He preached a sermon called Heaven is a World of Love. And there's a passage in that sermon where he says, the ones with the highest rewards in heaven will actually be the most humble because the closer they get to God, the more they realize how unworthy they are. So it'll be the exact opposite in heaven as it was here on earth. Here on earth, the more power, the more success, the more pride in heaven, the more power, the more success, the more humility, because they recognize God is the one doing it. But can I tell you this? We're not in heaven yet. So we've got to be about confession and repentance. We've got to pay attention when the Holy Spirit prompts our hearts, and that's exactly what David does. But as the passage ends, we end with number six, the cost of pride. I've ran out of the letter C, so this is our last point. The cost of pride. Verses 11 through 17. I'll just read verse 15 because this kind of hits right after it. So the Lord set a pestilence on Israel from morning until the appointed time, and there died of the people from Dan to Bersheba 70,000 men. You say, Bo, that is not fair. All these innocent soldiers of Israel die at the hands of God because of a prideful king. Well, guess what? The higher up you go in power and authority in this world, the more people that are going to be impacted by your pride, whether you like it or not. I just want to say it again. Maybe there's some of you in this room that you want more authority. You want more power. You want the next rung of corporate success. You want the next office to be in charge. And I just want to say this: if you knew how much your pride would impact all the people that are under you, you may have caution either about that role or about tending your garden and ripping out those weeds. Leadership affects everything. There's not a day that goes by in the privacy of my own home when I'm by myself and nothing is happening, but I'm in my house thinking through things, and I know even my own thought life affects the people of this church. And that's why I need help when people point out things to me that need to change. I need to be one to listen. You know, when 2026 started, I shared the two words God gave me for the year were trust and prayer. I felt God bringing those two words to me over and over again: trust and prayer. Well, guess what? I've prayed this year like I've never prayed at any point in my life. My prayer life has completely changed in these last six months. But as I've prayed, guess what new word God has given me? Humility. I can't get away from this word. Everything I read, the word pops up. Everything I'm thinking about, the word keeps popping up. And can I say this? God's not bringing the word to say, Bo, I want to show you what you're really doing well in right now. I just believe this. Humility is the soil by which every good fruit will grow in that garden. If we do not pursue the humility of Christ, we'll deal with these weeds the rest of our life. So, how do we do this? Well, as I sum it up, I'm going to try to be practical. Let me sum it up in one sentence. To evaluate our own persistent pride, we must constantly ask ourselves, What do I really have apart from God's grace? Again, to evaluate our own persistent pride, we must constantly ask ourselves, what do I really have apart from God's grace? I get this from 1 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 7. Here's what Paul says. Paul says, What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? How do we deal with this pride? When something good is happening in your life, just what Eric read in the Psalm this morning. Everything is worthy of praising God and thanking God and recognizing that it comes from God. When you and I begin to look at something that we have as a gift and believe that we earned it and made it happen ourselves, that's pride. When we begin to get defensive at other people who call out our issues, that's pride. When we begin to place our identity in our gifts, and then when we lose our gifts, we get angry with God. That's pride. In every single one of us, no matter what stage of life you're in, there's something deep within. There's roots that He wants to pull up of pride. The answer is always humility. Now, humility, let me say this. Maybe if God will give me a great grace, I can preach a series on this, not because I've become humble, but because I'm pursuing it. Here's what I've learned about humility and all the reading and praying I've done in the last year. Humility is not being soft spoken. Humility is not being, you know, in self hatred. Humility is being free. To live in the truth of who I really am in light of who God really is. Humility is saying every good thing that I have is a gift from God, and even my limitations. I don't have to be insecure about men in this room that are better leaders than me because God gave them a greater gift than he gave me. So if I have someone criticizing my leadership, humility would say, if they're a better leader than I am, I better listen to them. Now my nature doesn't want to say that. God's nature does. So growing in humility is receiving criticism and being able to say, you know what, I do need to change. For somebody pointing out something, yeah, you're right, that's an issue in my life I do need to work on. I wish I could say every day I wake up and say, what other criticisms do you have for me today? But a humble person says, I want to grow and I'm comfortable where I am. I don't have to be great at everything. All the gifts come from God. God, I just want to be used of you today to build your kingdom. Help me. As we draw to a close in our time of invitation, where are the weeds in the garden of your heart? I'm saying this without making jokes. If you want to know where they are and you don't know, ask your wife or husband, ask your children or even your neighbors or coworkers. I guarantee they'll point out areas in your life where you have pride. Will you be humble enough to listen to them after you ask them? And is pride keeping you from surrendering yourself to Christ? Again, I want to say surrendering to Jesus is not something you do once. You get saved in a moment, but you work that out in a lifetime. I learned this from Michael Guido. I have it in my own words, but each morning as I pray, I resurrender my life to Jesus. I'll share my prayer. Maybe it'll be helpful to you. I say these words. Lord Jesus, with all that I am, and with all that I have, and with all that I do, I surrender all of myself to you, and I place all of my trust in you. Lord, take all of me and place it completely into all of you. And I have to pray that every day because it's not like once you pray it, you you reach this status, you're working on it over and over. God, I need you. Jesus, I want you to be on the throne of my heart. Jesus, I want to live for you. I don't want to be prideful. I want to trust in your grace. I want to surrender to your power. I want to live for your glory. That's the invitation today. How's the garden of your heart? How surrendered are you to the grace of God in your life right now? As I pause and let the Holy Spirit speak in this time of silence, how will you respond to the persistence of pride? Father, I trust, I trust that you will speak to our hearts through your Holy Spirit. I know that you don't tell us everything. We couldn't bear it, all the weeds that are in our garden. But what's the one right now that you want to pull up at the root, Lord? Where are we misplacing our identity? Where are we not trusting in you? Where are we taking credit for what you have done in our lives? And where are we trusting our gifts to get us through tomorrow instead of your power and your presence? Speak to us now, Lord, for your servants are listening. In Jesus' name. Amen.