This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

This is day four together of our look through Matthew chapter 11. We're talking
this week about the struggles that you and I have that can keep faith at arm's
length in our lives. We've talked about indifference and we've talked about the
struggles that we have with doubt.

Today, we're going to take a look at our struggle with pride. In verses 25 to
27, Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you
have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little
children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.

All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except
the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son
chooses to reveal him. " These are verses about those of us who struggle with
pride.

Now, there's all kinds of pride. Even in the scripture, you can see even a sense
sometimes of a negative pride and a positive pride. We talk about the positive
pride that we might have in our family or the positive pride we might have in a
work that we've done for God.

But for the sake of today's conversation, we talk about pride, we're looking at
the negative side of it, the side that's focused on me, the side that's focused
on selfishness. When you talk about that kind of pride, sometimes it can be a
materialistic pride, sometimes it can be an egocentric pride. Today I want to
talk about a spiritual pride.

There's a kind of pride that can come into our lives that's about our own
spirituality. I'm more spiritual than you are. I understand God better than you
do.

Maybe it's because you were brought up in church and you understand the Bible
better than a lot of people. Maybe it's because of the way that you're wired in
your personality or in your intellect and you're able to understand things or to
feel things that other people can't understand. One of the barriers to our faith
is when we start to compare ourselves to others and this spiritual pride starts
to creep into our lives.

And to those of us who struggle with pride, and that's by the way I believe all
of us, it is the sin that we all struggle with in our lives. So to all of us,
Jesus has something to say. First he tells us that God has intentionally set
things up so that instead of spiritual pride being the way that we understand
God, it's spiritual dependence that causes us to understand God.

Did you notice Jesus said, "You have hidden these things from the wise, but you
revealed them to little children. " For many people, the truth about God is
hidden behind their own spiritual, intellectual pride. They can't figure it out
by themselves or they can't figure it out in a way that makes them feel better
about themselves, like I could figure it out, but you can't figure it out.

So it must not be true. This is what's behind the false teaching of Gnosticism.
That Gnosticism, the word Gnostic means knowledge.

And the whole idea is because I know more than you, I can be closer to God than
you. That's what's behind many of the cults of today. Cults teach that you can
be closer to God because you know something somebody else doesn't know.

It's spiritual pride. But it's also what's behind the pride that many of us have
who have been in church for a long time. We see somebody new come in.

They don't understand. They don't understand God's word. But instead of feeling
like, "Well, I see that.

I was there just a few days ago, even if I became a Christian as a child. It
hasn't been that long," instead of feeling that, we allow this feeling of pride
to start to come in. I understand it and they don't.

But you'll see very clearly in the words of Jesus and also the reality of this
world that the people who really understand, who are deeply used by God, are not
the ones who are prideful about their spirituality. Spiritual truth is not a
matter of human intellect or learning. It's a matter of your heart.

I know people who think, "It must not be true if I can't prove it. " But if
that's how you think, you're never going to truly love because love is not a set
of provable theorems. I know Christians who think, "If I understand enough about
God's word, if I can figure out the keys to the book of Revelation or the keys
to the book of Daniel, then I'm going to be the greatest Christian that I could
possibly know.

" But Paul clearly tells us, knowledge by itself puffs up, just makes you more
prideful. It's love that builds up. Jesus clearly tells us the commands are to
love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, to love your neighbor as
yourself.

So Jesus says those who are thinking they're the ones who are wise, who have all
the learning, they can't get to the truth because it's hidden behind their
spiritual, their intellectual pride. Who gets the truth, Jesus says? You've
revealed it to little children.

What is it about children that causes them to be able to understand spiritual
truth? What is it about children, Jesus said you need to become like a child.
What is it about a child that I need to become in order to understand spiritual
truth?

Well, the simplest thing that I can see is that children know to depend on their
parents. They know they are dependent on their parents. They can't go out and
earn a living.

They can't make it on their own. They depend on their parents. People of faith
depend on God.

As long as I'm depending on myself, and that even goes to my intellect to figure
it all out, then Jesus says you're never going to figure it out. No, you depend
on God and what God can reveal. And that leads us to the depth of the truth of
what he wants to say to us here.

He begins to talk about the Trinity and about what's revealed. And he says as he
talks about the Trinity, the end of this is going to be that Jesus, the Son,
chooses to reveal God to us. But he gets there by saying all things have been
committed to me by the Father.

No one knows the Son except the Father, the Father except the Son, and those to
whom the Son chooses to reveal him. What he's telling us here is the only way I
can know God is by the truth, the fact that God has chosen to reveal himself to
me through Jesus. That's the only way I can know the truth about God.

It is not discovered, it's not figured out, it's revealed. And as long as I
think I am discovering the truth about God, as long as I think I'm the one who's
figured out the truth about God, I'm a million miles from the truth. It's only
when I have the humility to admit I can't figure you out, God, I need you to
reveal yourself to me, reveal your love to me, reveal your forgiveness to me.

That's when the truth starts to invade my life. How does that happen? How does
God reveal truth to you?

Well the scripture teaches us, without going into a long study of this, the
scripture teaches us that there are three primary ways. He does it through his
spirit, he does it through his word, and he does it through his people. God
reveals truth through his Holy Spirit.

Even before we're believers, the scripture tells us Jesus teaches us that the
spirit convicts us about sin and righteousness and judgment, about what God's
doing in this world. Through God's spirit, he is revealing his truth to us. He
also reveals himself through his word.

In the word that we read about the life of Jesus, we read the words of Jesus so
that Jesus can reveal himself to us. If you really want to get the truth about
God, you read God's word depending on God's spirit. But then there's a third
thing.

It's also through God's people. You let God's people speak into your life. Many
times I'm going to miss the truth.

Even though I'm trying to listen to God's spirit, trying to read God's word, I'm
going to miss the truth because I'm caught up in myself, I'm caught up in some
cyclical way of thinking that I can't escape, and I need someone from outside of
myself to give me the truth. That's the encouragement that changes our lives.
That is the preaching and teaching and friendship and encouragement and strength
that changes our lives.

Now really, it takes all three. Some people depend just on other people, but the
problem is other people can be wrong. They are certainly not perfect, and
sometimes instead of searching for the truth from other people, we search for
the person who tells us the truth that we want to hear.

You know what I'm talking about? You'll talk to ten people just looking for the
one person who tells you what you want to hear. All other nine told you the real
truth.

You didn't want to hear that. You looked for the one person who told you what
you wanted to hear. So it's not just people.

It's God's word, God's spirit, God's people, but in the end, it's God. God's the
one who's revealing his truth into our lives. When I struggle with pride, one of
the keys is having the humility to realize I can't figure this truth out for
myself, and I'm not meant to.

It's spiritually understood, and the only way that can happen is through God's
spirit working in my life. So let's ask him to do that right now. Our Father, we
ask, and really this is behind every day as we look at your word together, we
ask that your spirit would reveal your truth to us.

Just look into our hearts, look into what we need, and open up the truth in a
way that helps us to understand ourselves and the world around us and what you
want to do in our lives. Today, we ask that you reveal to us the truth about our
own spiritual pride. The times when we feel better than others because we know
something somebody else doesn't know yet.

The times when we feel like somehow we're closer to you because we pray more
than someone else or we memorize a verse someone didn't memorize. God forgive us
of that pride, and in its place, I pray for it. We pray for a humility before
you, the humility of knowing you and knowing that everyone in our lives can know
you as Jesus reveals himself to everyone.

We ask this in Jesus' name, Amen. Now don't miss tomorrow. We're going to talk
together about God's answer to our struggle with weariness.