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It Is Written

Sabbath School 2nd Quarter 2026: Growing in a Relationship With God

Nina Atcheson

Eric Flickinger

01 Reality Check

02 To Know God

03 Pride Versus Humility

♪ Welcome to Sabbath School brought to you by It Is Written.

We are studying how to grow in a relationship with God.

This is a 13 week journey that we are going on.

And right now we are looking at lesson number 3.

What role does pride or what role do pride and humility play in our relationship with God and whether we grow in that relationship or become stagnant?

Father, thank you for being with us today and continuing to guide us on this journey.

Our great desire is to grow in a relationship with you.

And so we ask that you will be with us as we look at this very important subject.

We're grateful also to have the author of this quarter Sabbath school lesson with us, and that is Nina Atchison.

You are a curriculum specialist and an author.

You've penned this journey that we are going on.

It's something that you're very passionate about.

Now, this week we're looking at pride and humility.

On a journey through how to grow in your relationship with God, you've chosen to address pride.

I think that's intentional and I think it's really important.

Why are we looking at pride and what is its significance in this journey that we're taking?

In fact, the dictionary says it's a feeling that you are more important or better than someone else.

The fact that it's a feeling, it's not true necessarily, it's just a feeling that we have, it's so destructive, this feeling.

And I think it's important to highlight this as we explore how to strengthen our relationship with God, because it does affect all of us, often without realizing it.

We allow pride to creep into our hearts, which really makes us kind of either push God away or dismiss that we even need him, or worse still, put ourselves in the place of God.

Pride inhibits our relationship with God.

And can that help us to understand the debilitating nature of it?

So we know that pride originated with Lucifer.

He was a covering cherub, an angel in heaven.

And we don't know how or when these thoughts of pride started to creep into his mind, but they started the greatest war our universe has ever known, the great controversy.

It propelled our universe into this terrible situation that we're in.

And we see that Satan is the complete opposite of God.

In fact, let me read for us all to consider Isaiah chapter 14, verses 12 through 14.

And just listen to how many times the word I is used in these verses.

How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning.

How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations.

For you have said in your heart, I will ascend into heaven.

I will exalt my throne above the stars of God.

I will also sit on the mount of the congregation, on the farthest sides of the north.

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.

I will be like the most high." It's really just a terrible, terrible outcome that an angel could come to this place to be.

And in contrast to this, we read in Philippians 2, verses 5 through 8, that Jesus is the opposite of this.

It says here, "'Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, "'who being in the form of God, "'did not consider it a robbery to be equal with God, "'but made himself of no reputation, "'taking the form of a bond-servant "'and coming in the likeness of man.'" And so we know that pride originated with Lucifer, who became Satan, the adversary of God.

And ever since he was tempted, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden, and our human race is fallen, he wants us to feel pride.

And I really do think that this is a very intentional strategy that the enemy has to each of us, whether it's through self-promotion or those selfish desires that we have to promote and love ourselves.

It's very, very destructive in our relationship with God.

So there's a stark contrast between the character of Satan and the pride that he had and has, and the character of Christ, who set himself up as a servant more than anything else and humbled himself.

When we stop and take a look at ourselves though, that probably gives us pause to consider some uncomfortable thoughts, characteristics.

Why is it important for us, even though that may be uncomfortable, to stop and take stock of where we are and our view of ourselves?

Do you know, Eric, I think we often don't really think about this.

And I actually do think all of us struggle with pride.

I think it's something, because it's so invisible and so unseen in our lives.

And sometimes it might just be wanting to justify ourselves, that, well, I'm in the right, or promoting, self-promoting, guess what I did, or wanting to look better or have something better.

And really, I think whenever our identity is wrapped up in anything other than Christ, it's often connected to pride.

I think the devil wants us to think that we are what we have or what others say about us or what we do.

And it's an important reminder, I think, for all of us to realize that pride inhibits, destroys our relationship with God potentially.

There's a really poignant parable that Jesus tells in Luke chapter 18 verses 9 through 14.

It says, also he, Jesus, spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others.

2 men went up to the temple to pray, 1 a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector.

I give tithes of all that I possess." And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, God be merciful to me, a sinner.

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other.

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." It's a really powerful parable that Jesus told and I think it's worth us looking at this closely in our own personal time.

You know we have this respected elder, church elder, who's very proud, does all the right things and wants everyone to see it and know it.

Then we have the tax collector, a fringe dweller, and he's at the back of the church.

I can imagine he has tears in his eyes and he's just feeling so unworthy And yet his humility is what draws him to God.

And so I think we need to ask ourselves, when did I last parade my own goodness?

And how does this impact my relationship with God?

Am I more like the Pharisee or the tax collector?

It's very easy to exalt ourselves, I think.

And I think that the temptation to do that, the enemy really does tempt us probably every day in this kind of way.

In Luke 18 verse 14, we are told, "'Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, "'and he who humbles himself will be exalted.'" It also tells us in Luke 14 verse 8 that the person who takes the lowest seat, we should allow the host to elevate.

So our worst enemy really is ourself when it comes to this kind of thing.

And I think unless we're aware of it, pride creeps in and it is very destructive in our relationship with God.

And it doesn't originally seem like that bad a thing, that big a thing.

I mean, if we were to look at the 10 commandments and say, well, I'm not a murderer, I'm not an adulterer, I'm not a liar, I'm not a, you know, fill in the, I don't steal things regularly from people.

But pride, it seems like it's just kind of, It's a lower down there, it seems that way.

And yet it's the root of everything else.

And if we were to take off our spiritual glasses for a moment and look at these 2 individuals in this story that Jesus tells, we'd probably look at that Pharisee and say, he's the 1 who seems to have his act together.

He seems to have, you know, be pulled together and so forth, and the other guy, who'd want to be like him?

And yet Jesus says, no, you got to put the right glasses on and see things from heaven's perspective.

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Series

Sabbath School 2nd Quarter 2026: Growing in a Relationship With God

03 Pride Versus Humility

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

01 Reality Check

28m

02 To Know God

28m

03 Pride Versus Humility

28m

Sound Doctrine