God Loves… Himself

The following quote is devastating to the modern version of evangelical Christianity. Many modern versions of Christianity are really forms of humanism brought into the professing Church and baptized. There are many sincere people in professing Christian churches today that have no idea of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They are sincere, committed, dedicated, and all of those things but they are simply dedicated to a false god and a false gospel. This sounds arrogant, judgmental, and perhaps even brutal. But we have got to see through the charade of humanism brought into the professing Church. It is no different than what Balaam did in the Old Testament. He could not curse the Israelites directly, but evidently he gave advice to Moab on how to get the children of Israel to commit idolatry. Moab feared the Israelites, but no one can defeat God. So he found out how to get God to fight against the Israelites. See Numbers 22-25 for this story. Numbers 31:16 fills in some of the blanks for us: “Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of the LORD.”

“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. Egocentricity in religion is seen perhaps at its simplest and crudest in hat conception of sacrifice which is expressed in the formula do ut des. I offer my gift in order to win the Divine favour and so to obtain what I wish from the Divine power. But the same egocentric motive can be exhibited equally, if less obviously, at much more refined levels. It finds characteristic expression in the moralism, or legalism, or the eudemonism which, commonly going hand in hand, are to be observed in many otherwise widely differing forms of religion. Moralism means that my moral and spiritual attainments are regarded as decisive for the establishment and maintenance of the religious relationship. I have to do or become something in order to enable God to regard me with approval and in this way secure my standing with Him. My good and meritorious works, for example, or my personal holiness, however conceived and acquired, are assumed to be the essential basis and guarantee of my acceptance with God. Eudemonism means that my desires and needs, whether temporal or spiritual, are the fundamental inspiration of my quest for acceptance with God. I seek God in pursuit of my own interests. Impelled, for instance, the fear of hell and hope of heaven, or by a yearning for present peace of heart and mind, I seek God no less for my own satisfaction than if I sought material advantages at His hands. In egocentric religion, fellowship with God depends ultimately on man’s achievement and is sought ultimately for man’s own ends. God is characteristically conceived in terms of the answer to human problems and needs.” (Let God Be God! An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther)

Humanism has been brought into the professing Church and passed off as Christianity. This is simply the pride of man being expressed in religion. Egocentric motives are nothing but the motives of self which must be denied in order to follow Christ. Moralism is nothing but the pride of man in thinking that he can be good enough to please God and to obtain things from God. Legalism is nothing but the pride of man trying to set up rules that he can keep and replace those of God which he cannot keep. Eudemonism is an ancient philosophy that sets up its ethics in terms of gaining personal happiness. The author (in the above quote) sees that within forms of Christianity in their seeking their happiness in God. This is not a denial that believers are to rejoice in God, but it is pointing at an insidious beast that takes a true Christian teaching and changes it. No longer is it truly God that gives me grace to share in His joy in Himself, but now it is that my desires for this world and the next are what I really desire in my pursuit of God. Surely it can be seen that this person is now seeking self out of pride rather than God. This person is now seeking self out of love rather than God out of love. It may also be the case that the person thinks that s/he loves God when in fact this person only loves self and then God because s/he thinks that God loves him or her.

As Balaam counseled Moab on what to do to get God to fight the Israelites, so the pride of man has brought many things into the professing Church. God brought His wrath on the Israelites then and His wrath is upon the professing Church now. We have idols erected in our hearts as surely as the Israelites had idols then. We worship self now as the Israelites worshipped self then. We follow our own laws now as they followed their own laws and not God’s then. We seek our own pleasure now as the Israelites sought their own pleasure then. It was nothing but pride and self with the Israelites then and it is nothing but pride and self now. We have turned to the idols of self and God is now against the professing Church. We are deceived in thinking the professing Church has much true Christianity left. It may have morals and it may have some doctrine, but our pride means the living God is absent.

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)

We can imagine a local church that is orthodox in theology and conservative in its moral view points. It teaches doctrine and morality according to its confession. It has as its conviction that God created the world and all things in it. It believes that God is sovereign over all that it does. It holds out that people must repent of sin and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. It believes in justification by faith alone. It knows that it must be God-centered and that the church’s preaching and teaching must be Christ-centered. It even holds to Soli deo Gloria (to God alone be the glory) which was a central teaching of the Reformation. It believes along with various catechisms that the chief end of man (primary purpose) is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

All that this church does has the correct words. But can it be that the real heart and motive of the church is nothing more than an illusion? Can it be that all of those things are not inconsistent with a church that has developed for itself an illusion that it is God-centered? For a church to be governed by self would simply be some of the people in the church (a church consists of individuals) to be governed by self. It is easy to imagine one person in a church being utterly devoted to the study of theology for nothing more than self-centered considerations. Paul told us that “Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies” (I Cor 8:1). Paul also told us that people are proud of their association with certain names: “Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, “I am of Paul,” and “I of Apollos,” and “I of Cephas,” and “I of Christ.” 13 Has Christ been divided? Paul was not crucified for you, was he? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (I Cor 12-13). It would seem from this that people were dividing over whether they were of Christ or of Paul or of another.

Now if people divided over Paul, Apollos, Cephas (Peter), and even Christ in that day, it is certainly possible for people to do that now. Now, of course, we have people dividing over Luther, Calvin, and Wesley in the older days and then over Piper, Sproul, MacArthur and others today. It is almost as if people think they are holding on to their righteousness by defending a certain name today. It also appears that some seem to think that their righteousness is obtained or held on to by being a part of a certain denomination or not being part of another. It is also the case that people divide over which confession or creed that they hold to. In other words, there are myriads of ways that people of orthodox beliefs and confessions can have the illusion of God-centeredness while being thoroughly centered upon self. Jesus put it this way: “But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Mat 6:23).

The minds and hearts of human beings are depraved. They will hold on to a church, a church building, a theologian, a denomination, a creed, and anything else before they will look to Christ alone. A person can know that s/he is saved by grace alone through faith alone and yet trust in something other than Christ. As there is a vital distinction between believing that one is justified by faith alone and being justified through faith alone so there is a vital distinction between believing a creed as true and believing in the truths of a creed because Jesus teaches it in Scripture. The self will gladly hold in an intellectual way certain doctrines if it believes that it will be saved by believing those things. Correct doctrine and correct creeds can be nothing more than self finding a way to save itself. One does not have to deny self to hold to a creed and the doctrine of a church. One does not have to die to self to believe that all must be done to the glory of God. One does not have to die to self to assert that one is doing all to the glory of God. But to actually live to the glory of God one must die to self.

It is certainly possible for a group of proud people to hide from themselves and from others their proud hearts as they believe and do all things in an orthodox manner. The proud and self-centered heart can also be quite proud of its theology and practice. It can even be proud that it does most or maybe all to the glory of God while it does all in the name of God but out of love for self. The heart that is taken up with self does not like to hear the teachings of Scripture which stress self-denial and the death to self. So it is much easier to believe in the intellectual things of Christianity and hide from the obligations that the soul is under than it is to deal with the death to self. Pride is the beast in the soul that hides itself from the soul. Pride is that exaltation of self which can hide itself in the guise of humility. Pride can hide itself under the guise of an external love and Christian activity. Pride certainly builds an illusion of God-centeredness to the soul while it is being damned by its self-centeredness. After all, it is easy to point fingers at the Pharisees for their pride in religious activities if we are blind to our own pride. If we have not truly died to self and the self-centered nature of our proud hearts, then we are doing the same things that the Pharisees did. We have orthodox theology for self. We pray and give alms for self. But we have not denied self and so are blinded to the truth by the pride of self. The illusion of God-centeredness is impossible for the natural man to cast away once it has blinded him to it. This takes grace. But the proud think it will just take a little more knowledge and a little more activity. How utterly blind we are to our own pride which blinds us to our pride.

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 is a vitally important statement that reflects how it is that so many people can be deceived about a nation, the state of a church, and then of their own souls. America has developed the illusion that it is a Christian nation because it has a lot of religious activity. Many churches think that they are centered upon God because they talk about God and they use His name a lot. Perhaps they pray in His name and ask for things that they think will honor Him. A lot of talk regarding church growth uses the name of God and of the things of God as well. Many people do what they do while using the name of God and say they are doing things to the glory of God, but this is not new in history and it is found in the Bible as well. Paul spoke of not having anyone to send to the Philippians because he did not have a man that would have the true welfare of the people and the interests of Christ at heart. Instead, they were more concerned with the interests of self (Phil 2:19-21).

In the Old Testament on multiple occasions God became wearied with the external performances of the Israelites even though they were externally carrying out what He had commanded.

“What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me?” says the LORD. “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams And the fat of fed cattle; And I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs or goats. 12 When you come to appear before Me, Who requires of you this trampling of My courts? 13 Bring your worthless offerings no longer, Incense is an abomination to Me. New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies– I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly. 14 I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts, they have become a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them. 15 So when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood 16 Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Remove the evil of your deeds from My sight. Cease to do evil” (Isaiah 1:11-16).

Clearly the Israelites were doing what God had commanded, but their hearts were not doing them out of love for God. They were going on in their proud hearts living on in their sin and yet thinking that what they were doing fulfilled what God had commanded. In the pride of their hearts and in their self-centered world that they lived in they thought that God would be pleased because they were doing the outward things. The Pharisees continued this proud tradition as well. They did all of the outward things and thought quite highly of themselves. But they were the ones that God was most angry with as Jesus reserved His hardest words for them. But surely, we think, we are not like those Israelites and those Pharisees. We think that the Pharisees fought the teachings of Jesus and we do all in the name of Jesus, so we think we have escaped what the Pharisees were guilty of. Jesus also said that many will say “Lord, Lord” to Him on that day and yet He will turn them away because He never knew them.

If our hearts have not been turned from their self-centeredness and pride, we are using the name of Jesus to do things for self rather than doing them out of love for His great name’s sake. We can use the name of Jesus more as a magic potion of some sort seeking things for self when our pride has hidden our self-centeredness from us and we are going on in our idolatrous ways in much the same way as the Pharisees and Israelites. We pray in the name of Jesus, but we are not seeking the will of God but seeking the will of self. We may say we want God, but what we want is to have God on our side. We pray in the name of Jesus in order to manipulate God to do what we want rather than to seek the will of God in the name of Jesus. We pray for self and the things of self with the trappings of religion rather than seek the Lord and His will in order to pray according to His will. Oh how deceitful a proud heart is and how a proud heart ruins all the spiritual or religious things it touches. Our pride makes us unclean and all we touch is unclean as well. That includes our religious activities no matter how much we use God’s name.

Ezekiel 28:17 – “Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; You corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor.”

The passage in Ezekiel 28:17 (and surrounding context) shows that Satan was beautiful, but that his heart was lifted up (pride) because of that beauty. It led to his fall and the fall of numbers of angels, as well as the promise he made to the woman that she would be like God (Gen 3:5). It is not that Satan lost all knowledge of God, but his pride gave him a focus on himself. That is the problem with human beings too. The fall has caused us to focus on ourselves and all of our lives are full of self unless God changes our hearts and gives us eternal life which consists in knowing and loving Him. It is lost on the modern day with its self-esteem and self-centered focus that a person can be very self-centered and very religious at the same time. We live in a time where biblical Christianity seems to be all but lost because the true doctrines of it have been twisted to man-centeredness. The promise of Satan that we would be like God has been swallowed by so many today, including Reformed conservatives. The quote below is the same quote as given in the last BLOG. It is devastating to what passes as Christianity in our day.

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)

Reformed theology is the theology that claims Luther and Calvin as those that God used to bring back the core of biblical truth from great darkness. However, one can have their doctrines without their theocentric focus. One can even have their doctrines and speak highly of God and yet miss the driving theocentricity that drove them in all that they did. One can have a creedal belief that all things are to be done to the glory of God and yet miss what that really means and not have a true love for God in the heart. It certainly seems possible that in the modern day that the Reformed theology that is having a resurgence does not have a thorough theocentricity at the heart of it. It is possible to love the doctrines of the Reformation because of their history. It is possible to love the doctrines of the Reformation because of their logical consistency. It is possible to love the doctrines of the Reformation because they are rather novel and can spark others to irritation. It is possible to love the doctrines of the Reformation because they are biblical. Yet all of those reasons and more can be from nothing more than a self-centered heart.

The Pharisees believed in the doctrine of election, but they did not love the true God. The Pharisees believed in many things about sovereignty, but they did not love the sovereign God. The Pharisees believed in some version of limited atonement as they did not believe there could be any atonement for the Gentiles. The Pharisees had their own version of depravity as well. However, though it all they were focused on themselves and nothing but themselves. When they prayer, they sought the honor of others (Mat 6:1ff). Their works of righteousness were done in order to be seen by men. The heart that is focused on self and the things of self can so easily be taken with a god of some sort while thinking of nothing else but self. Reformed theology can be nothing more than an illusion that we have been delivered from self while in fact we are still enslaved to self. Reformed theology, since it is closer to the truth, has the possibility of a great degree of delusion. The proud heart will believe that it is justified by faith alone because it believes that justification by faith alone is true. The proud heart will believe in limited atonement because it can so easily believe that Jesus would die for it and not others. A proud heart can believe in a great God that loves it because it loves itself so much. It is easy to love a God that loves self since self loves all that loves it. But that is not true love. Pride blinds in Christian things too, and perhaps even especially so.

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.

Ezekiel 28:17 – “Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; You corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor.”

The New Testament speaks highly of Abraham and his faith, so unless we have read the Old Testament we would not see the battle of his heart. Abraham was indeed of the promised seed and he is looked at in the New Testament as the standard of faith. “Yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, 21 and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform” (Romans 4:20-21). Yet Abraham was a man that made some blunders. He went in with Hagar who was Sarai’s maid at the request of Sarai so that she might obtain a child through Hagar. That had disastrous consequences. Once again he looked to his own reasoning and had Sarai (who was now Sarah) pretend to be his sister in order that he would be treated kindly by Abimelech. God’s promise had faded into the background for the moment.

The issue of self comes up and we think that we are in our own hands and left to our own devices. This is the battle that human beings have to face each and every day. Do we believe in the promises of God or do we follow the reasoning and promises of self? Abraham fought the battle and sometimes he fell behind but God kept him from falling completely. Abraham had received promises directly from God and even a strong covenant promise from God. The direct promises of God also included Sarai and God changed her name to Sarah. Yet the battle of self and of pride was still there. It seems as if the pull of self that is in the heart of all human beings came out in Abraham and it is amazing to us now. Yet we have the promises to Abraham made clear and we even have a resurrected Savior who also ascended into heaven. Even more, the Father and the Son have sent the Spirit. Yet the battle with self continues. God promises to be the possession of His people. He promises to dwell in them and that they would partake of His very life. Yet we still sin. How ugly is that pride and self as we rationalize and reason to ourselves about how we are to do what God commands in our own way.

The battle that Abraham had was epitomized in his son Isaac who was the child of promise. We must remember that Abraham was the seed of the woman and that seed was going to be passed on through him to someone. It was not going to be Ishmael who was the result of a plan to help God out. It was going to be Isaac who was to be the child of older parents and whose mother had been barren until then. When Sarah had Isaac one can only imagine how joyful Abraham and Sarah were. They had waited for years and now not only did they have a on in their old age, but they saw the promises of God being fulfilled. But then God commanded Abraham to take Isaac and offer him up as a burnt offering (Gen 22:1-2). The battle that went on within Abraham the next three days as he journeyed to the place where he was to sacrifice Isaac must have been intense. God had made promises about Isaac it was in Isaac that all of His promises would be fulfilled (at least in the line of Isaac). Now God told him to go and sacrifice Isaac. It would have been so easy for Abraham to have reasoned his way out of this as he had reasoned about Hagar and the two times he told others that Sarai/Sarah was his sister. It is true that she was part sister, but that is not what Abraham was saying to the kings. It was nothing more than a lie in an attempt to do his part to save his own skin. The inward wrestling that Abraham went though had to have been very intense. But after he had learned his lessons, he now knew that God would not lie no matter what and that God could do as He pleased. Nothing would or could stop God from keeping His promises.

Hebrews 11 tells us of the incredible faith of Abraham: “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son; 18 it was he to whom it was said, “IN ISAAC YOUR DESCENDANTS SHALL BE CALLED.” 19 He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type” (Heb 11:17-19). As Abraham walked along he either came to the conclusion of Hebrews 11 or he came to that conclusion immediately and did not waver from it during the three day journey to the place of sacrifice. His faith is seen in Genesis 22:5 when he said that “I and the lad will go very there; and we will worship and return to you.” He said that both would return. The faith in the promises of God that was in Abraham overcame the power of self and the reasoning of self and Abraham was going to kill and burn his son in a sacrifice while believing that God would raise him from the dead in order to keep His promises. The promises of God were ultimately kept in the seed of the woman and the seed of Abraham years later. They were kept in Jesus Christ who was killed as a sacrifice. He was also raised from the dead. It is nothing but pride to argue God’s promise can come in any other way. How wicked is the pride of the human heart.

Ezekiel 28:17 – “Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; You corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor.”

As we follow the trail of pride from the heart of the serpent and then as he sunk the poison into human souls, we can see the trail of destruction that pride has brought to the human race. Not only that, however, it has brought massive changes to the created world and to animals as well. Human beings are so blinded by pride and self-love that they simply do not see how despicable and hideous pride and self-centeredness are and what they do to all that they touch. If we can imagine how life would have been without pride and self-centeredness, then we can see the horrid nature of pride. Adam and Eve never would have blamed each other for anything. They would have depended on God for all wisdom and all things. They would have been perfectly one with each other and they would have walked with God as individuals and as a couple. Their children would have grown up without sin and both Cain and Abel would have loved God and each other.

The children of Cain and Abel would have gotten along well and they would not have went after multiple wives and challenged God like Lamech did if they had not been full of self and pride. The trail of pride and self wins itself through the paths of the Old Testament and the hearts of human beings as a serpent winds its way along a trail on a mountain path. We can see the awful results of pride in the hearts of those in the Bible and some in our own day, but we don’t see that same pride in our own hearts. We don’t see the path of the serpent or the effects of the poison of the serpent in our own hearts. We don’t see that pride and self when our desires are not what God desires. We don’t see the pride in our own hearts when we are angry when our wills are crossed and we don’t get what we want. That pride blinds us to our own hearts because the self in those hearts are always providing justifications for our own behavior. We provide ourselves with justification for our own actions and hearts while we condemn the same things in others. Pride and self simply blind us to our own hearts.

From the midst of a people with hearts devoted to self stepped a man that was from the seed of the woman. He was a descendant of Shem who was the blessed son of Noah and his first name in the Bible was Abram (Gen 9:26). The Lord told Abram to leave his people and to another land that he would show him. The Lord made great promises to Abram regarding his future and that he would make him into a great nation (Gen 12). The Lord also promised Abram that the one who blessed him He would bless and the one that cursed him He would curse. The promise even came to Abram that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed (12:1-3). Abram believed these promises enough to leave his relatives and head toward the land the Lord led him to. However, when Abram arrived in Egypt the power of pride and self took over.

It is easy to see how the love of self filled Abram when he was willing to have Sarai his wife pretend to be his sister to save his own life as he thought, but how is that pride? It is pride because he thought of himself rather than the promises of God. He valued his own life more than the words and promises of God. The Lord had told him that He would curse those that cursed Abram. But Abram preferred his own method. Pharaoh and his house were then struck with great plagues because of her. God honored His promises even though Abram in his pride sought to save his own skin in his own way. Abram was blessed, not because he was a great man in and of himself, but because God is a great God who makes promises and keeps them.

The same thing is true today. We can see the promises of God in Scripture, but we still do things our own way. It is pride in our hearts to think that we have the resources to take care of ourselves and even to do the will of God as we please. We are so focused on the survival of self in so many realms that we do not look to the hand of God. While we may mock those that say things like “God helps those that help themselves,” that is still the language of our hearts. We may use the excuse of God using means, and in fact He does use means, but we can use means as a way of serving self under the guise of orthodoxy. God calls His people to be aliens or strangers in this world since it is not our final home. We are just passing through and are not to set up a permanent camp here. We are headed for the true Promised Land. Yet our pride blinds us to the things of the world and we begin to focus on self. Our self-preservation fueled by pride finds reasons to focus on the now. We make excuses, but it is our pride and self that keep us from focusing on the promises of the Lord. How we need to keep our eyes on Him rather than on self.

Ezekiel 28:17 – “Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; You corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor.”

Genesis 6:5 is a devastating verse. We see that as a result of human beings being so wicked because every intent of the thoughts of their hearts were wicked that God sent a flood to wipe out all but one family. One might think that such a judgment on pride would have eradicated it. But then after the flood we see this:

20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21 The LORD smelled the soothing aroma; and the LORD said to Himself, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done. 22 “While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, And cold and heat, And summer and winter, And day and night Shall not cease” (Genesis 8:20-22).

Another way to look at this is to say that even this great flood that left one family had not wiped out pride from the human heart. But the covenant that God made was not to destroy every living thing as He had previously done. The enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent continued in Noah’s family. As with Adam and Eve and their children, there were different seeds from the same family. Cain killed Abel and demonstrated that right from the start there was enmity between the seeds even in the same physical family. We are then shown that within the family of Noah the same thing is true. To be a child of those who have received grace does not mean that grace passes to the children automatically. The seed of the serpent is in all who are born into the world in the human race. The heart of pride controls all those that are not controlled by the indwelling life of Christ.

We also see animal sacrifices in Genesis 8 as well. This shows that sin had not been eradicated from the earth at all. It took a clean animal (Gen 8:20) to make a sacrifice and which shows that the right way to worship God is according to God. It takes a perfect sacrifice to be acceptable to God and a heart that is sinful can never be perfect. These sacrifices pointed to the one sacrifice that alone could really take away sin. The lambs of the Old Testament pointed to the Lamb of God (John 1:29) who alone could truly take away the sin of the hearts of sinners. The fact that they had lambs to picture Christ points to the need for the sacrifice to be humble. It took a humble sacrifice to pay for the pride of human souls. It takes a humble Savior to live the life of humility in the hearts of humans as opposed to the pride of the serpent. Philippians 2 shows us the depths of the humility of Christ who took human flesh to Himself and then humbled Himself even more to go to the cross. How this points to the wickedness of pride in the human heart. How this shows us what we should be in heart rather than proud and self-centered.

As we move into Genesis 9 we see the sin of Canaan. It is hard to know the exact sin here and the degree of what is going on, but we do know that Canaan dishonored his father and was then cursed for it. The other two sons strove to honor their father. But let us not forget the sin of Noah here is getting drunk. He did not have the New Testament teaching on this nor did he have the Proverbs, but his conscience was enough for this. God had created man in His own image and that image of His is to live in control and godliness rather than to get drunk and result in the sin of Canaan. Genesis 10:15-20 tells us that the curse of Noah on Canaan came true and he became the father of the families of Canaan. But Shem, who was blessed by Noah, had Abram who became Abraham as his descendant. The seed of the woman continued and of the serpent continued from the same physical family. The Canaanites and the Israelites were at war in the Old Testament and there is still war between them.

In Genesis 11 we see the pride of human beings that had not been stamped out in the flood. The people of the earth wanted to build a tower where the top would reach into heaven and they wanted to make a name for themselves (Gen 11:4). They did not want to scatter across the earth and fulfill the command of the Lord to fill the earth and subdue it (Gen 1:28). Some think that the thought of building the tower (in their ancient mindset) was that they could actually reach to God with it. The rebellion and pride of these people is given in just a few words, but if we look at what is going on we can see the depths of pride in the hearts of these people. Human history is simply the history of pride and of man following his own way on the earth and trying to make his own way to heaven rather than looking to the Lord alone. The serpent’s poison of pride always rules unless the humble Savior reigns there.

Ezekiel 28:17 – “Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; You corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor.”

Genesis 6 is the next move of God in terms of the seeds. The proud seed of the serpent had apparently taken over the earth except for one man. Verse 5 tells us that “the wickedness of man was great on the earth.” While the modern day religious folks might think that homosexuality, abortion, and divorce were the causes of this, the LORD had His eye even deeper than those things. As in New Testament times when the Pharisees were focused on external things, but their hearts were all about self in the sense that from their pride they sought the honor of men, so the LORD in Genesis sees that “every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Here is the indictment of the LORD on human beings. It was not just that they had many wicked things to answer for, but that their thoughts were evil. It was not just that the thoughts of their hearts were evil, but that the thoughts of their hearts were only evil and that continually. But it was not just that each thought of each heart was evil, but that ever single intent of each thought of each heart was evil.

If we catch even a glimpse of this text we must gasp as the horror of our own hearts settles upon us. God looks upon my heart, but He also beholds the thoughts of my heart. He not only knows the thoughts of my heart, but He sees the intent of the thoughts of my heart. 1 Chronicles 28:9 tells us this: “As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve Him with a whole heart and a willing mind; for the LORD searches all hearts, and understands every intent of the thoughts. If you seek Him, He will let you find Him; but if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever.” Hebrews 4 drives the stake, so to speak, even deeper: “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (v. 12).

What we see from these two texts is that God has not changed from Genesis 6:5. God still judges the intents of the thoughts and it is not just something in ancient history. But, some will surely say, I don’t have many evil thoughts and I surely don’t intend them in an evil way. They will say that they are basically good people and that they are not like those people in Genesis. I am sure that is pretty much what the people in Genesis 6 would have said. In Genesis 6:12 it tells us that “all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.” Later on in Scripture that is precisely what is said about sinners in Isaiah: “All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him” (53:6). “I have spread out My hands all day long to a rebellious people, Who walk in the way which is not good, following their own thoughts” (65:2).

How can it be that every intent of the thoughts of the heart be wicked? We must see what God thinks is wicked rather than accept our own standards for what is wicked. We have seen the pattern of Genesis 3:1-5 carried out in 1 Jn 2:16: “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.” It is not just that a thought has to be wicked, but when we have pride of life we are living and thinking in a way that is according to pride. Proverbs 21:4 also tells us that “Haughty eyes and a proud heart, the lamp of the wicked, is sin.” That which guides the wicked and gives light or is that which they follow is pride. When a person follows his or her own way rather than God’s, that is wickedness. When a person is interested in what is good for self rather than God’s, that is pride.

The pride of the devil was in being lifted up in his own heart and seeking his own way and his own glory. The pride of the Pharisees was in being lifted up in their own heart and seeking their own way and their own glory. The people described by God in Genesis 6:5-12 were not all outwardly wicked people, but they were following their own ways as they followed their own hearts doing what they pleased. When a person is following self, even the religious deeds of that person are vile and wretched before God. There is a lot of self in the modern religious scene. There are many arguments about how to worship. Most of those discussions are about how “I like to worship.” Yet God tells us that true worship must be in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). When we want a church to be like what we want, that might be simply following the ways of self. Ephesians 2 speaks to this: “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind.”

The seed of the serpent flourished in Genesis through the pride of human beings. The seed of the serpent flourished in the religion of the Pharisees through the pride of human beings. They simply followed their own way which is to follow the pride of the heart. To follow the pride of our own hearts is to follow the course of the world. It is to follow the course set out by the prince of the power of the air who still works in the sons of disobedience. It is to indulge the desires of the flesh and of the mind. Those who live in open sin do this and those who are very religious can do this as well. When the intent of a thought is for self, there is nothing but a wicked intent that is there because it is pride. After all, we are commanded to love God with all of our hearts and minds. It is nothing but pride to have an intent of a thought of the heart or mind to be for self. How many thoughts pass through our beings everyday that are not out of love for God but are oriented on self? Those are proud intents and therefore are wicked intents in His presence. Even if the thoughts are good, they have wicked intents. Pride is that which spoils everything that we think or do. It is a poison that poisons all we do. We must be humbled or all we thing and do comes from a proud heart. God destroyed all by water once, but He will destroy all by fire the next time. Let us seek to be humbled from our proud hearts.

Ezekiel 28:17 – “Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; You corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor.”

The devil, who was the serpent of old, deceived Eve who led Adam into sin and in so doing sunk his poisonous fangs into the nature of human beings. Human beings, after that point, were driven by pride and self. Instead of confessing his own sin, Adam blamed Eve. Instead of confessing her sin, she blamed the devil. Pride blinds us to our own sins and blames them on others. We saw how Cain became a chip off the old block (not a chimp off the old block). His pride was such that he was angry at Abel when Abel offered an acceptable sacrifice while Cain’s was not. Cain eventually displayed his poisonous nature of the devil and killed Abel. Indeed the enmity that was part of the curse (Genesis 3:15) is seen from the start. Cain was of the seed of the serpent and Abel was of the seed of the woman. This is the line that can be traced throughout the whole Old Testament. This is the enmity that was eventually between Israel and the nations. This is the enmity that is seen now between Christ and the world.

That enmity between the seeds is because the nature of the rebellion of the serpent is now part of the nature of human beings. This can be clearly seen over and over in the Bible which gives us the inspired record of the enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. The Bible moves directly from Cain being cast away to that of the generations or seed of Cain. A few generations down from Cain we find a character named Lamech in Genesis 3:18. Lamech’s proud and desire to be elevated above God is seen in Genesis 4:23-24:

23 Lamech said to his wives, “Adah and Zillah, Listen to my voice, You wives of Lamech, Give heed to my speech, For I have killed a man for wounding me; And a boy for striking me; 24 If Cain is avenged sevenfold, Then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”

God had promised to avenge Cain “sevenfold” in Genesis 4:15 if anyone killed Cain. Lamech was so great in his own mind and wanted to be superior to God that he was going to avenge himself seventy-sevenfold. What a display of pride and arrogance, and yet this is exactly what the seed of the serpent does. This seed is at enmity against all but self in its own way but especially against all who love God and then God Himself. The arrogance Lamech has is almost unimaginable, but he is bragging in front of his wives. He wants to show His supposed greatness in front of them and then to show his greatness as compared to God. He wants to show them that he takes greater vengeance than God. It might also be the case that he was trying to control them and retain a strong rule over them. But regardless of all the reasons, the pride of Lamech is on display. It might also be helpful to note that the Lamech of Genesis 4 is not the same Lamech of Genesis 5. The Lamech of Genesis 5 was the father of Noah.

Genesis 6:1-4 records the history of how the sons of God came to the daughters of men and the result of that was that the wickedness of human beings became great on the earth. There have been many ways of interpreting Genesis 6:1-4, but the easiest and most natural way to interpret it is to look within the text of Genesis itself. We must not forget that we have a major theme given to us by the text itself. That theme is the enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. This is not just a physical seed, but it is also a spiritual seed as well. After Cain (seed of the serpent) killed Abel (seed of the woman), we are told that Eve bore another child and his name was Seth. He was named Seth because Eve saw him as a replacement for Abel. In other words, this was the man that the seed of the woman was to come through. It was when Seth had a son (Enosh in Gen 4:26) that “men began to call upon the name of the LORD.” Some think the translation should be “then men began to be called by the name of the LORD.” The latter translation is what fits with the context before and after. In Genesis 5 there is the “book of the generations of Adam.” In verse 1 Adam is said to have been made in the likeness of God. Then in verse 3 it tells us that Adam had a son “in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.” The line is then traced to Noah. There is no mention of Cain being a child of Adam in this context.

It is in this light, I think, that Genesis 6:1-4 should be looked at. It was when those who were called by the name of the LORD began to intermarry with the daughters of men that wickedness spread on the earth even more. It is of interest to note that Abel offered the acceptable sacrifices and Cain’s were not acceptable. We can see the seed of Cain were those that were at enmity with God with Lamech being the example. We see the seed of Seth as being Enoch who walked with God for three hundred and sixty-five years and then God took him. Enoch was the great, great grandfather of Noah who was righteous. After the mixing of the daughters of men with those called by the name of the LORD, we are left with one man named Noah. Pride and self had filled the earth at this point.