“I will break down your stubborn pride and make the sky above you like iron and the ground beneath you like bronze.”
Leviticus 26:19 (NIV)
What a sobering chapter to read, as the LORD lays out the history of the Jewish nation long before they experienced it. This is not a recitation of what had already happened, but rather a promise of what God would cause to happen when His people refused to listen to Him and carry out all His commands. As we read the bible, it becomes very clear that His people refused to walk in the way of blessing and would rather walk in their own way, straight into destruction. They were chosen to be a holy nation and instead as Amos 9:8 points out became the sinful nation. Year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation, century after century, God’s people deliberately hardened their hearts and refused to walk in His ways. Instead of walking with their heads held high in the freedom God had provided for them, they fled in shame from their enemies straight into bondage.
We are not to see these people as extraordinarily dull, but rather as examples of all humanity, for the chosen people have their story written down for all of us to look at, not for us to shake our heads at, and wonder how could a people be so foolish for so long – but to learn from their experience.
What should we learn from Leviticus 26? Stubborn pride will be met by God’s might and He will humble us under His mighty hand! Pride that lifts the creature above the Creator, that replaces His perfect ways with our disastrous ways, is an affront to our holy God and the enemy of our soul. The apostle Peter whose pride is on full display in the gospels tells us to humble ourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand that he may lift you up in due time.
Pride can be defined as ‘inordinate self-esteem’.
Have you ever thought “who does he think he is?” to yourself about someone whose behaviour or attitude doesn’t match their position? How must we appear to God when we demand our way instead of His Way, when we judge Him, instead of allowing His Word to judge us. Insanity – craziness- death wish are all words that describe a person who allows pride to run amuck in their lives. It is an enemy that must be met and destroyed. To meet it and defeat it we must first identify it in our lives. There is no better way to identify stubborn pride in our lives then to read God’s Word and pay attention to the resistance in our minds and hearts to the careful obedience of God’s commands, confessing our stubborn pride as soon as we identify it, killing it at the root.
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