The history of Israel as it moves from Abraham to Isaac and then through the Old Testament is one seen through various lenses. The Old Testament is the revelation of God to humanity. It was God revealing Himself bit by bit to a people that He had called out to reveal Himself through. God Himself set up the ceremonial and civil laws of the nation. Those were meant to point to Him as well. The pride of the human heart is so visible when it is looked at in that way. It appears that vast numbers of the Israelites, if they had any real concern about the religion set up by God, were more concerned with the outward or external parts of the religion. They became man-centered in their religion which was to be thoroughly centered upon God. It is pride beyond human measure to take a way of instruction about God and the true worship of God and then turn it for the convenience of men. In one sense that is a major story in the Old Testament. It was also a major story in the Reformation and it is a major story in the modern day. Human beings have taken Christianity which is to be all about God in all ways and have turned it to be all about the self. It seems that many have taken the theology of the Reformation and are using it as a means of self as well. This is pride taken to atrocious levels. Read and meditate on this quote:
Now it might well seem as if all religion must, in the nature of the case, be theocentric; for if the word ‘God’ is to have any meaning at all, it cannot but signify the dominant centre of life and of all existence. And it is true that no religion is entirely lacking in awareness of this fact. All religions display at least some traces of theocentricity. Such traces, however, do not generally suffice to form what may be termed the leitmotif of the religion; they are not determinative of its character as a whole, but in one way or another are subordinated to the egocentric tendency. For illusion occurs in religion as easily as in the physical world. Even though I have learnt that the sun is the centre around which my earth moves, and I with it; I will tend to live and think as if the sun moved around my earth and me. Similarly in religion, although I readily admit that God must be the centre of existence, I do not as readily perceive or accept all that this implies; and it is the most natural thing for me still to live and think as if I myself were the centre around which all else, even including God, moved. I find it exceedingly difficult to rid myself of this illusion and allow God really to be the centre, that is, really to be God. (Let God Be God! An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther)
This way of looking at things gives us glasses on how to look at the actions of people in the Old Testament. It will also give us a way to look at the disciples of Jesus, the Acts of the Apostles, and the epistles. But it will also help us to examine religion today. It is possible for people to speak highly of God, be conservative in theology and in morality, but also be very centered upon themselves. The reason that they speak highly of God is because they think of Him as loving them and doing things for them. It appears to me that much of what passes as Christianity falls directly under this condemnation. It is nothing but pride in the human heart that would do such a thing. Pride in the human heart is still directly linked to the injection of the poison of the evil one back at the Fall. The pride in the human heart has its source in the devil and it is of the same nature. The devil wants to rule over himself and wants to draw worship away from God. As the first promise of the devil to the woman was that “you shall be as God,” so that is the heart of human beings. All human beings are born into the world with self-centered hearts that are proudly fixed on self and want all things to be about them. That includes religion.
Romans 3:23 tells us that sin is to fall short of the glory of God. That means that all that man does is to fall short of the glory of God and nothing that man does is pleasing to God. The proud heart thinks it has fallen just a bit short and thinks that as long as it is good more than its bad it will be okay. But the more orthodox heart thinks that as long as it has some intellectual belief about God then it will be okay. But notice how all of these things flow from proud hearts and in truth revolves around self. The heart that is broken from pride and self (though not perfectly) is a heart that knows that it deserves nothing but wrath from God and depends utterly on grace and grace alone. The Bible tells us that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. The proud want something they think of as grace, but they hate true grace in reality. They want to help themselves some and retain the rights to self even when they tell others that Jesus is Lord. That little bit of control is the proud heart turning from a God-centered Christianity to one that is man-centered. How easy it is for a proud heart to have the illusion of true Christianity.
God Loves... Himself 
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