Study on Arrogance
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 632 aired on October 8, 2017
Good morning and welcome to The FLOT Line, that’s right, The FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick
Hughes and for the next few minutes please stay with me because it will be a short time of
motivation, some inspiration, some education and we do this without any type of manipulation.
We’re not going to ask you for any money. We’re not trying to con you into joining anything,
giving anything. I just want you to listen as I try to verify and identify how God’s plan works. It
is a show about the Bible, yes, but no ranting and raving. No jumping up and down, no yelling
and screaming. Just listen, listen and learn. That’s the way we grow, listen, learn, and make some
application. Sometimes people wonder about the name The FLOT Line, what does this mean? It
stands for the forward line of troops. This is a military acronym and we’re using a military
analogy here, as the Bible does quite often. What I’m trying to show you is there are 10 unique
problem-solving devices. If we learn these 10 problem-solving devices taught in the Bible,
nothing new that I came up with, they’ve always been there. If you learn them and use them they
will act as a defensive perimeter inside the soul of the believer and they will stop the outside
sources of adversity before they becomes the inside source of stress. This is why we say often
that adversity is inevitable and stress is optional because adversity is in fact what circumstances
do you and stress can be what you do to yourself. Think about this. Understand how important it
is to live this marvelous, unique, supernatural life called the Christian life. It is unique. It is an
advantage that the rest of the world doesn’t have because we have the amazing power of the
Word of God at our fingertips producing divine viewpoint. We have the amazing power of the
Holy Spirit in our life, giving us the ability to operate under the filling of the Spirit and not the
energy of the flesh. These are all problem-solving devices that we have like problem-solving
device #1, rebound, to address sin. We all sin. It could be a sin of the tongue such as a lie. It
could be an overt sin such as getting in an argument or a fight. It could be a mental attitude sin
such as jealousy or hatred. When we sin, 1 John 1:9 says,
“If we will confess our sin then God
will be faithful and just to forgive us and purify us from all of our wrongdoing.”
This is
something that the believer has to do on a consistent basis. Sometimes you may have to confess
seven or eight times a day and I know you’re going to say, “I can’t remember every sin I ever did
Rick.” I understand this. This is why it says,
“He will cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
These are even the ones you don’t remember. To live the Christian life, to live this marvelous life
God gives to us, to enjoy the benefits we have to be operating under the filling of the Holy Spirit
is why we spent a couple of radio classes talking about the unique spiritual life and how it
operates. If you are indeed operating under the filling of the Holy Spirit, this means that you’re
dealing with sin consistently when it pops up in your life. If you are in fellowship with God you
are a spiritual Christian. If you’re out of fellowship with God because of unconfessed sin in your
life you are a carnal Christian. There’s another step and that’s being a mature Christian.
What is a
mature Christian?
Spiritual maturity is based on the filling of the Holy Spirit and the content
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of God’s Word in your soul.
As you learn the Word of God and apply the Word of God under
the filling of the Holy Spirit, you become a mature believer. You don’t want to stay a baby
believer. When you become a mature believer this is when you are dangerous to the enemy. This
is when God can count on you. This is when you begin to live the professional Christian life, the
life you should live as a Christian, and this is what we’re looking for. We’re looking for those of
you that listen to the show, anywhere from California to New York, to be mature believers in
Jesus Christ. You want your life to count for God. You want to be the person that God can
depend on because you are growing to spiritual maturity. You’re the kind of person that I would
like to meet. You’re the person I’m talking to. I don’t need anything from you, that’s not it. I
would just like to encourage you to keep growing
“In the grace and the knowledge of your Lord
and your Savior Jesus Christ”
(2 Peter 3:18). It’s the most important thing you could ever do.
Now today I want to talk to you about the biggest enemy the Christian faces. I know you’re
thinking it’s the devil and we do operate against the world, the flesh, and the devil. I want to talk
to you about something that Satan himself got involved in. I want to talk to you about arrogance.
Arrogance is the number one enemy to the believer in time. Satan uses arrogance.
He used
it to get Eve to go for the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He appealed to
her arrogance and she disobeyed God.
You cannot afford to let Satan manipulate you by
appealing to your arrogance.
Often we blame Satan for our sins and for our failures. We say,
“The devil made me do it.” I think there was a comedian named Flip Wilson that came up with
this statement 20 or 30 years ago but more likely it’s just our failure to follow the protocol plan
of God. It’s not Satan, it’s our own flesh. Every one of us has a sin nature. This is why we have to
die because this sin nature will not operate in heaven. We have to get a different body. This body
is plagued, it’s infected with sin. Romans 5:12 says,
“For by one man sin came into the world,
and death by sin and now death has passed on to all for all have sinned. “The wages of sin is
death”
(Romans 6:23). Literally, it’s impossible for us with our sin nature to execute the protocol
plan of God. Thus God provided for us a way to live in and follow His plan. He’s given us this.
This is the Holy Spirit. This is the Bible. This is developing the mind of Christ. This is thinking
divine viewpoint. This is not operating in the energy of the flesh but in the energy of the Spirit.
The contradiction to God’s plan, the major, number one contradiction and the primary reason we
fail to execute this plan and to live His purpose is this arrogance. Let me tell you how you can
spot it.
Arrogance is always identified by self-justification.
Self-justification is when someone
justifies why it’s okay to disobey authority. Maybe a student would justify why it’s okay to cheat.
Maybe a husband would justify why it’s okay to cheat in the marriage, saying his wife is not
fulfilling his needs and so he’s going to go out and find someone else. Maybe it’s okay for a
politician to justify taking money.
Self-justification is the first stage of arrogance and
arrogance will destroy all of us if we let it take root in our lives.
Arrogance is identified with
self-justification. When you justify the sin and you say it’s okay to do it because of this or that,
you are totally self-deceived.
Self-justification leads to self-deception.
Self-deception is you
lying to yourself, not necessarily lying to other people, but lying to yourself and convincing
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yourself that you had a right to do this, that it was okay, that God would understand. You needed
to be able to fudge a little bit on these taxes or you needed to be able to fudge a little bit on that
speed limit so you could get to work early because you were late yesterday and so you justify
why it’s okay to break the law, why it’s okay to break your vow, why it’s okay to do anything.
This self-deception leads to self-absorption.
Sooner or later you will be totally absorbed with
yourself. This means you will be looking at only yourself, not at God. You’ll only be looking at
what you want, not what God wants. For the Christian, self-absorption always leads to self-
destruction.
Self-justification, self-deception and self-absorption lead to self-destruction.
Why? Because Hebrews 12:6 says,
“Those that He loves, He disciplines.”
Sometimes He has to
scourge us with a whip. Discipline always comes in three stages. Stage one, warning discipline.
God will warn you and you may be involved in that right now. Already God has been speaking to
you and screaming at you through circumstances that you are wrong, you’re out of line, and
you’re sinning. Warning discipline is there. It is best to rebound, confess the sin now rather than
go through intense discipline because that’s where the pain comes in. That’s when the Father has
to take us out behind the woodshed and give us an attitude adjustment. Since we have no genuine
humility, He has to take us out there and give us some enforced humility so we will mind Him as
children of His. If this doesn’t work, if we react to the discipline instead of responding to the
discipline, then He may even call you home early. Proverbs 15:10 says,
“He that hates the
reproof of God shall die.”
There it is. There are many believers that have gone to heaven real
early. Maybe they should have lived a much longer life but they got out of fellowship with God.
They justified why it was okay to do what they did. They became self-absorbed with it and when
the discipline came into their life, they got angry at God. Instead of getting angry at themselves,
they get angry at God. They thought it wasn’t fair.
If you are thinking, “Why did God have to
do this to me?” this is a bad place to be in your life.
The first creature who demonstrated any
arrogance in the universe in regards to God’s plan was Lucifer himself. Ezekiel 28:14-17
describes his sin to us, it says this,
“You were the anointed cherub who guards and I placed you
there. You were on the holy mountain of God, and you walked in the midst of the stones of fire.
You were blameless in your ways from the day that you were created until unrighteousness
[this
is the word for arrogance]
was found in you. By the abundance of your slander
[maligning God]
they filled your inner life
[his motivation, his thought pattern, he wanted to be like God, higher
than God, wanted to run the show] w
ith violence. You sinned and therefore I
[God the Father]
have cast you out as defiled from the mountain of God, and I have excluded you, O guardian
cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you
were vain
[that’s the arrogance]
. You corrupted your wisdom because of your glamour
[that’s his
arrogance]
and I cast you to the earth.”
Satan had all the beauty, he had all the authority in
heaven, he was very smart, but he was also very ambitious. He wanted to take over the throne of
God. In Isaiah 14:14 he made this statement,
“I will make myself like the most high God.”
This
thing we call arrogance is a high self-respect apart from any reality in your life. It’s some form of
the real or imagined superiority that we get. Glamour and wealth and prestige are never a
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substitute for wisdom, the Bible says. It’s interesting, Hollywood actors behave like they’re the
smartest people in the world don’t they? They act like they’re qualified to tell us how we should
vote or how we should live our lives. They’re just actors, they’re not geniuses. Most of them
couldn’t even tell you who they are if they had to because they can’t differentiate. They have an
unrealistic self-image and because of their self-righteousness they think they’re better than you
because they are multimillionaires. Now they want to tell you how you should live your life.
These arrogant types often display vanity, empty pride, excessive desire to be noticed. Why do
you think they do all these award shows and why do you think they do all these talk shows?
Because they want to be noticed. They want to be in the mainline of attention. They want to keep
their careers going. They want their fans to see them and that’s fine as long as you’re not
arrogant, as long as you don’t think you’re smarter than God. This lust for attention or praise from
others is always an indication of arrogance. This supercilious authority, superiority, looking
down their noses at other people including things like jealousy, bitterness, and conceit, any type
of self-righteousness and the use of verbal sins to destroy people they don’t agree with, calling
them names, slandering them, demonizing them, maligning them, and with social media today,
they do it every day. Every day some Hollywood person is slandering or maligning another
person or a politician, calling them everything you can imagine, even foul curse words. They
think they have a right to do this. Well, what happened to respect? What happened to privacy?
People need to learn to keep their noses out of other people’s business and especially in politics.
It’s amazing, some of these actors that think they can run down the President of the United States
regardless of who he is and they think they could do a better job? I doubt it.
Arrogance is the
only disease known to man which makes everybody sick except the person that has it.
Isn’t
that amazing? You get around an arrogant person and it doesn’t take long and they want to talk
about themselves. They want to talk about what they’ve done. They want to malign or slander,
run down somebody they don’t like. When you get around somebody like that, cut and go. Don’t
stay in their presence. You’re wasting your time. They’re wasting your time talking to you. The
day is too short to hang around arrogant jerks like this.
Proverbs 11:2,
“When arrogance comes,
then comes dishonor.”
Proverbs 16:18,
“Arrogance precedes destruction and before a fall
there’s going to be a lifestyle of arrogance.”
Proverbs 23:29,
“A person’s arrogance will bring
him low but a lifestyle of humility will attain honor.”
Humility is a code word for respect for
authority. It’s orientation to the grace of God, this is what humility is.
When Philippians
2:5-6 says,
“Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus who humbled Himself and
made Himself of no reputation,”
this is guidance for you and me.
Our concept of living the
Christian life is to take on the personality profile of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Humility was His personality profile. These disciples walked with Him and talked with Him for
three years and they were some of the most arrogant people in the world. Let me give you some
illustrations. For example, at the Last Supper they are having the communion supper and they’re
fighting over where they were going to be sitting at the table. Luke 22:24,
“And there was a
strife among them as to which one of them should be accounted the greatest,”
competitiveness.
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This goes on in the church every day. Church members fighting over who needs the attention of
the pastor, who is the greatest, who gives the most, who does this or that. Our Lord was about to
die on the cross. He was having His last supper with them and they were arguing over the seating
arrangement. Another time on the road to Capernaum after leaving the Mount of Transfiguration,
passing unseen through Galilee, Jesus Christ told them He was going to be killed and that He
would resurrect on the third day. You can read about it in Mark 9:30-31. Then in Mark 9:33-34,
listen to this,
“When they arrived in Capernaum and being in the house He asked them, ‘What
was it that you disputed among yourselves on the way?’ But they held their peace, for on the way
they had disputed
[or argued]
among themselves about who was the greatest.”
Proverbs 13:10,
“Through arrogance comes strife, but wisdom is with those who receive instruction.”
There was
jealousy and envy among the ranks of those disciples. They still thought that He was going to
bring in the kingdom and they wanted to have a high position in the kingdom but they had to
recognize their sin of arrogance. This had been brewing for a while. Remember now, most of
these guys were fishermen. I’m a fisherman so I can tell you this, often fishermen are liars and
very competitive. So our Lord had to teach them a lesson that day in Mark 9:35.
“Sitting down
Jesus called the twelve and said this, ‘Anyone who wants to be the first among you must be the
very last and the servant of all the others.’”
This is how you become first in God’s kingdom, not
trying to promote yourself or take the place of honor next to the seat of Jesus, but being a
servant. John and James had an unrealistic self-image and they had to learn the hard way. In
Mark 10:35-40, listen as I read it,
“James and John, the two sons of Zebedee came up to Jesus
saying, ‘Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we ask of You.’ He said, ‘What do you want
Me to do for you?’ They said, ‘Well grant that we may sit one on Your right and one on Your left
when You come in glory.’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Do you know what you’re asking? Are you
able to drink the cup that I drink or to be baptized with the baptism which I’m about to be
baptized?’ And they said, ‘We are able.’ And Jesus said, ‘Well the cup that I drink you shall drink
[that’s death],
and you shall be baptized with the baptism which I’m about to be baptized
[that’s
suffering]
but to sit on My right hand or My left hand, it’s not Mine to give, but it is for those
whom it has been prepared.’”
In other words God the Father made those decisions and here are
these two wonderful disciples wanting to have the place of honor when they came into the
kingdom.
If God does not promote you, you’re not going to be promoted. God promises that
the humble believer who is grace-oriented will be promoted.
James 4:6,
“But He gives all the
more grace. So He says, ‘God opposes the arrogant but He gives grace to the humble.’”
When
you take on the mind of Christ as Romans 12:3 says,
“Stop thinking of yourself in terms of
arrogance beyond what you should think, but think in terms of humility as God has assigned to
each one of us a standard of thinking from His Word.”
When you take on this attitude of
humility based on divine viewpoint and orientation to the authority of God, humbling
yourself, then you’re eligible to be promoted.
Then God can count on you because He knows
that you’re not in it for the ego. He knows you’re not in it for the attention. Peter had his own
arrogance as well. In John 13:8-10
“Peter said unto Him, ‘You are not going to wash my
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feet’
[this is the foot washing episode in John 13].
And Jesus said, ‘Well, if I wash you not, then
you have no part with Me’
[He used the Greek word
nipto
for partial cleansing of hands and
feet].
And Peter said, ‘Well, not my feet only but also my hands and my head.’ And Jesus said,
‘No, you don’t need a bath
[He uses the word
louo,
you already had a bath at salvation].
You just
need to have your feet washed.’”
Peter was so arrogant. “The Son of God is not going to wash
my feet. I’m not going to let that happen.” There was a reason our Lord did this. He had to
demonstrate humility to them because they had none. In John 13:34-35,
“A new commandment I
give to you that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.”
Not fighting with
one another, not bickering with one another, but expressing love for one another. Simon Peter
said in John 13:36-38,
“‘Lord, where are you going?’ Jesus said, ‘Where I am going, you can’t
follow Me, but you will follow Me later.’ And Peter said, ‘Well, no, I’ll lay down my life for You.’
And Jesus said, ‘Really? I’m telling you this. Before the rooster crows in the morning, you’re
going to deny Me three times.’”
Old Peter had an unrealistic self-image. He thought he was
something that he wasn’t and sure enough, that night as our Lord was taken captive and before
the High Court of Caiaphas, Peter did in fact deny the Lord three times. Was he still saved?
Certainly. Luke 22:60,
“Jesus came out from being persecuted and saw him, and Peter went out
and wept bitterly.”
Arrogance will destroy you. An unrealistic self-image is very destructive
and it can even cause mental illness in your life. Then there is also national arrogance.
That’s where I need to go next. I need to talk to you about national arrogance. This arrogance my
friend calls artificial intelligence, that’s arrogance and ignorance put together. I hope you’re
listening and you’re learning. I hope you’ll stick with me because this is Rick Hughes. I’m the
host of The FLOT Line and I’ll be back with you next week, same time, same place