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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Norman McNulty

The Danger of Kingly Power

Well, it's a privilege to be here with you again this morning.

We had a powerful weekend 2 weeks ago up at Pine Springs.

The Lord was very much with us in a special way at Southwest Youth Conference.

If you weren't there, I would suggest you listen to the messages on AudioVerse.

And at Southwest Youth Conference and in various places people continue to ask when Joelle and I are going to leave Loma Linda.

So I'm going to take another opportunity to give you an update.

For those of you who don't know, Joelle and I are going to Trinidad to be missionaries at the Adventist Hospital.

And paperwork oftentimes doesn't come through as fast as you think it should.

The Lord has provided a job for the time being, so I'm fine.

It looks like we will be here through at least November, so I guess that would be 2 and a half more months.

So, If you see us here in December or January, please don't get mad at us.

We are just trying to follow the Lord in his timing, and when it happens, we will go.

So at this time, I would like to have a word of prayer and we will get into our message for today.

Father in heaven, we thank you for this beautiful Sabbath morning that we can come together.

And I pray in a special way that you would be with me as I speak, but I pray that I would be lost sight of and that Jesus Christ would be lifted up and that at the end of this presentation Christ would be seen more clearly and more beautifully and I would be forgotten.

Please turn with me to 1st John chapter 2 verse 15.

1st John chapter 2 starting in verse 15, a verse that we all know very well.

Here the Apostle John says, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.

If any man loved the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world." Today I want to talk to you about the danger of kingly power and the pride of life.

And I came across a news article this week that epitomizes the problem of the pride of life in the culture that we live in.

As Americans, you often hear the term, we pride ourself in.

This was actually in the New York Times just 4 days ago, written by David Brooks, a fairly well-known political commentator.

And he writes, this is an op-ed column, the title of the column is High 5 Nation.

He says, on Sunday evenings, my local NPR station airs old radio programs.

A few weeks ago, it broadcast the episode of the show Command Performance that aired the day World War II ended.

Command Performance was a variety show that went out to the troops around the world.

On V-J Day, the victory day at the end of World War II, a number of celebrities appeared.

The most striking feature of this show was its tone of self-effacement and humility.

The Allies had on that very day completed 1 of the noblest military victories in the history of humanity and yet there was no chest beating.

All anybody can do is thank God it's over, 1 of the show's hosts said.

Today our deep down feeling is 1 of humility, he added.

Going on, this columnist says later in the article, he says, when you glimp back on those days, the 1940s, You see a people, even the rich and famous celebrities, who were overawed by the scope of the events around them.

The war produced such monumental effects and such rivers of blood that the individual ego seemed petty in comparison.

Then he goes on to say you also hear a cultural reaction.

As the Times of London pointed out on the day of victory, fascism had stood for grandiosity, pomposity, boasting and zeal.

The Americans, they're humble, they're just thankful that it's over and that good has prevailed.

The enemies, those who were on the other side, they stood for grandiosity, pomposity, boasting, and zeal.

And going on, he says, when you look back, when you look from today back to 1945, you are looking into a different cultural epoch, across a sort of narcissism line, humility, the sense that nobody is that different from anybody else, was a large part of the culture back then.

But that humility came under attack and in the ensuing decades.

Self-effacement became identified with conformity and self-repression.

A different ethos came to the fore, which the sociologists call expressive individualism.

Instead of being humble before God and history, moral salvation could be found through intimate contact with oneself and by exposing the beauty, the power and the divinity within.

This is a secular columnist who's saying this.

Notice what he then says as he closes in these last 3 paragraphs.

Everything that starts out as a cultural revolution ends up as capitalist routine.

Before long, self-exposure and self-love became ways to win shares in the competition for attention.

Muhammad Ali would tell all cameras that he was the greatest of all time.

Norman Mailer wrote a book called, Advertisements for Myself.

Today, immodesty is as ubiquitous as advertising, and for the same reasons.

To scoop up just a few examples of self-indulgent expression from the past few days, there is Joe Wilson using the house floor as his own private crossfire.

There is Michael Jordan's egomaniacal and self-indulgent Hall of Fame speech.

Baseball and football games are now so routinely interrupted by self-celebration, you don't even notice it anymore.

And he closes by saying, this isn't the death of civilization, it's just the culture in which we live.

And from this vantage point, a display of mass modesty, like the kind represented on the VJ day command performance, comes as something of a refreshing shock, a glimpse into another world.

It's funny how the nation's mood was at its most humble when its actual achievements were at their most extraordinary.

You know, do you think that that attitude has stayed out in the world alone or has it made its way into the church?

We just read in 1 John 2, verses 15 and 16, to love not the world.

And you may say to yourself, well I don't love the world, I love Jesus.

But what about your personal life, your personal experience?

And are there certain things that you would only do if you would—the only way you would do it would be to be recognized for your humble acts of service.

And what John is saying in 1 John 2, love not the world, do not partake of that spirit of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life.

It's interesting, Jesus in the wilderness was tempted on all 3 points.

And of course, Hebrews 4 tells us Jesus was tempted in all points, like as we are yet without sin.

So that's ample evidence that we do not need to partake of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

Do you think Jesus was tempted to be proud?

Here was Jesus on this earth, and every time He was ridiculed, every time He was put down, oh, there's the crazy man from Nazareth saying something again.

Do you think he might have been tempted to say, don't you know who I am?

Now this issue of the pride of life, where does it come from?

Isaiah chapter 14 verse 12, speaking of Lucifer, this is where we first find the issue of pride and I'll just read this passage briefly.

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning?

How art thou cut down to the ground which didst weaken the nations.

For thou hast set in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God.

I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north.

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.

I will be like the most high, yet thou shalt be brought down to hell to the sides of the pit." Notice how the word I keeps popping up.

And If you find yourself saying, I want to do this, I don't want to do that, be careful.

Be careful of what spirit may be driving the thoughts behind these ideas.

But Lucifer, a perfect being created by a perfect God, developed pride.

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The Danger of Kingly Power

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