Pride

Jeremiah 13

Main Idea: Pride before God leads us to exile from God.

1. Two Word Pictures (13:1-14)
   1. Sin spoils (13:1-11).
   2. Sin destroys (13:12-14).
2. Two Warnings (13:15-27)
   1. We are warned against pride (13:15-17).
   2. Pride brings exile (13:18-27).

Throughout the teaching of Augustine, humility is put forth as the chief Christian virtue. This is no frivolous superlative. He was right. Think about the liability involved in the presence of pride and the absence of humility.

• Only the humble can have God’s leadership (Prov 3:5-8).
• Only the humble can forgive (Matt 18:21-35).
• Only the humble can rejoice when people come to Christ (Luke 15:25-32).
• Only the humble can be saved (Matt 5:3)!
• In fact, the humble are the greatest in the kingdom (Matt 18:4).

By way of contrast, pride is sometimes referred to as the mother of all sins. This is not a reach. We talk about stumbling into sin. The metaphor is a little misleading. Every sin is a choice. It is willful. And it is willing against what God has willed for us. Sin is suggesting that God’s way for us is not as profitable for us as our own way. Perhaps this is why Proverbs 5–7, the most direct warning to young men on the danger of sexual sin, is woven with discussions on seeking wisdom. The antidote to sexual sin includes self-restraint, but it does not end there. The ultimate antidotes to sexual sin are seeking God’s wisdom on the subject and acknowledging that his way is the best way. The root of sexual sin is pride. It is saying that what we want is better than what God wants for us. His will is deficient in some way. We simply don’t trust him. This is a heart filled with pride.

A prideful heart cannot be led by God because it cannot hear from God. Prayers become about us and not about God (Luke 18:9-14). Pride keeps us from seeing the future clearly (Jas 4:13-16). Pride can ultimately damn our souls (Matt 27:23-44).

Relationships are strained because of pride, and this is why the opposite of a prideful heart is the heart of Christ. Unlike those of us who focus on the offenses of others and will not let them go, the humility of Christ deferred to others. Christ lived as if our need for salvation was more important than his comfort. Therefore, he willingly laid down his life for us; then he was exalted like no other man. He humbled himself like no other man; therefore, God will exalt him like no other (Phil 2:1-11).

Jeremiah’s sermons have had many sins in the crosshairs. However, now he deals with the mother of all sins: pride.

God gives Jeremiah two powerful word pictures: the loincloth and the wine jars. This leads to a discussion of pride and the most explicit warning about exile thus far. The remainder of the chapter shows the fruit of the root of pride: iniquity, forgetting God and trusting in lies, and spiritual adultery.

Pride is intuitive to the way we live; humility is counterintuitive. In fact, pride is so natural to our fallen flesh that we may think God is fine with it. It’s an acceptable attitude—just white noise in the background of our lives. Yet that’s not the way God sees it. God reacts strongly against pride.

Two Word Pictures

Jeremiah 13:1-14

How does God react to pride? Before God gives his specific response to the sin of pride, he gives Jeremiah two provocative word pictures that illustrate how God feels about Judah’s sin generally.

Sin Spoils (13:1-11)

God gives Jeremiah an odd assignment. The “linen undergarment” was the loincloth, the fine linen garment that was worn under the robe as the most intimate article of clothing. Jeremiah was commanded to buy the garment, wear it, and then go to the Euphrates and stuff it into a crevice. This was a long journey for Jeremiah, which would have had a profound impact on his audience.

Of course, after he hides it in the rock and then retrieves it a long time later, it is ruined. It was a perfectly useful garment, but now it cannot offer intimate protection from the elements as it was designed to do. The symbolism is explained in verse 8. The loincloth is Judah. The kingdom was filled with pride. They were intended to be close to God, so close that they would be God’s people for his “fame, praise, and glory” (v. 11). However, they would not obey. In fact, they refused to listen to God, were stubborn, and followed other gods (v. 10). For this reason God was going to ruin them. The reality is that they effectively rejected the intimacy that God wanted with them. They no longer wanted to make God’s name known. Now the de facto separation became formalized. They didn’t want God to use them, and now God is obliging: they will be useless.

In this metaphor the elements of nature—the wind, rain, etc.—decay something that had been perfectly good. It was exposed. In the same way, a relationship with God that is exposed to the elements of sin and not protected will eventually be ruined.

Our temptation is to think we can sustain a moderate position toward God: not aggressively going forward yet not walking away from him. Like a car that is not in drive or reverse, it is just in neutral. However, this metaphor assumes we are on level ground. A car in neutral is a dangerous thing if it is parked uphill! In that case neutral is not neutral; it is backwards. The most ordinary mental behavior of a Christian is to underestimate how steep the ground is we are facing—to underestimate our potential for failure and the power of our enemy. Exposed to the elements of our natural environment, the elements of sin, our relationship with God is destroyed.

In Judah’s case, they could not see that the pride of neglect had destroyed their relationship with him. Here it is again: they would not listen (v. 11). The refusal to listen carried the other consequence of not hearing the warning about the destruction that was coming. God reacts to pride. Sin spoils, but sin also destroys.

Sin Destroys (13:12-14)

Here we notice a shift. The first metaphor warns about the passivity of sin. The second warning warns of what God will do when he is neglected.

This includes an odd saying: “Every jar should be filled with wine.” Some have suggested, “The saying may have originated as a raucous cry at a drunken feast, but it probably had become a confident expression that God would continue to prosper the people” (Huey, Jeremiah, Lamentations, 145). However, Jeremiah turns this into a statement of judgment, as if this cup of wine were the cup of wrath. Jeremiah specifically uses the idea of the judgment of God as a cup of wrath in 25:15-29. This brings to mind the wrath of treading the grapes from Isaiah 63:2-4. God is trampling his enemies, as one would tread the winepress. So in the metaphor, now Israel is the enemy.

God was going to cause them to be as if they were drunk. In other words, the blessing of the wine was now going to be a curse. The provision of wine now made them as vulnerable as if they were drunk. Then in confusion they would turn against one another and eventually be crushed against one another. Empty jars are easily smashed. A nation whose leaders were drunk on God’s wrath would not be able to stand. They would fall into confusion.

Here there is a twist on the old axiom that an unguarded strength is the greatest weakness: A blessing that we abuse becomes a curse. They were blessed with prosperity; their jars were always filled with wine. In their pride they assumed that this would always be the case, even if they rejected God. Like Saul they committed presumptuous sin, assuming God would bless them despite their sin. Tragically, their great blessing became their curse, making them vulnerable.

This is true over and over in Scripture. Saul’s victories, David’s courage, and Peter’s boldness—all these great blessings would become great liabilities. When we act in pride, God is not afraid to curse our blessing. This leads us to the big warning of this passage: their pride would lead them into exile.

Two Warnings

Jeremiah 13:15-27

After the two word pictures come two warnings: against pride and of exile.

We Are Warned against Pride (13:15-17)

Verse 15 is an imperative. “Do not be proud, for the Lord has spoken.” In other words, don’t stiffen your neck and reject the Lord. Instead, give glory to God before it’s too late. This brings to mind Proverbs 29:1:

One who becomes stiff-necked, after many reprimands

will be shattered instantly—beyond recovery.

From the general warning against pride now comes the specific warning of exile.

Pride Brings Exile (13:18-27)

Verses 18-20 are a specific encouragement to humble oneself because exile awaits those who reject God. For this reason Judah should consider themselves warned about the future.

A hard heart will ultimately be destroyed. In fact, this hard-hearted pride is similar to that in the strong warnings of the book of Hebrews. Those who live in pride and do not respond to the Word will experience spiritual drift (Heb 2:1-4). Eventually, a hard heart will attract God’s judgment (Heb 3:8-15; 4:7). This is Israel’s pattern. It cost them protection in the wilderness, forced forty years of wandering, and eventually brought a divided kingdom. The tragedy here is the inability to learn past lessons. Even though the tapestry of their past is woven with the threads of pride, they can’t see it. Since they were already drunk with their own sense of invincibility, God now makes them as vulnerable as a drunken person. This leads to the painful result of pride: captivity.

If there is one driving thought to this passage, it is that pride leads to exile. Make no mistake, this is a specific warning to a specific people at a specific time. Based on a life of pride as expressed in a rejection of God’s Word, they would be in exile. It would be hard for them to imagine, while they were experiencing the blessing during the reign of Josiah, that they would, ultimately, be in exile. But it was true. It happened. Its seeming inconceivability did not alter the reality. Pride brings exile.

While this is a specific promise for a specific people at a specific time, it is a perfect metaphor for what pride does to us. Pride isolates us from God. In fact, this is more than a metaphor for us to examine. James expresses this as a promise in James 4:6:

But he gives greater grace. Therefore he says:

God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

This promise, also quoted by Peter in 1 Peter 5:5, comes from Proverbs 3:34:

He mocks those who mock,

but gives grace to the humble.

What does it mean that God resists the proud? Well, the word hardly needs elaboration. Simply put, he is against you. He is not ambivalent or undecided; God is decidedly against the proud. Bill Elliff uses the metaphor of playing football in the NFL. You are on the line, and across from you is a lineman who weighs over three hundred pounds. He is not ambivalent about your presence. No, he is against you. He resists you. The force that resists the proud is God himself.

Pride is a form of spiritual plagiarism. It is taking credit for what God and others have done in our lives. God knows that this is not right, and he rejects us. The same God that exiled Israel due to their pride is the God who exiles us. The person who is full of himself will, in the end, only have himself. He is exiled to do life on his own with his own resources. God not only resists the proud; he isolates the proud—exiled to their own powers, abilities, and desires.

God resists the proud. God exiles the proud. Pride is synonymous with loneliness. When we think of ourselves in terms of singular goodness, we are left with just ourselves. A day would come when the children of Israel would weep when they thought of their glory days.

We are given other reasons for why God is so angry with them. They have incurred general guilt (v. 22), they have forgotten God and trusted in lies (v. 25), and they have committed the spiritual equivalents of adultery and depraved prostitution (v. 27). The enemy from the north is coming. Israel will be exiled. But like a leopard that cannot change its spots, the nation cannot repent from its sin.

Again, pride is the mother of all sins. The taproot of all these sins is the sin of pride.

Conclusion

Rather than a taproot and a tree, perhaps a better metaphor would be a centrifuge—an instrument used in laboratories. The centrifuge spins at a high rate of speed. Denser particles are pushed to the outside, and less dense particles are borne toward the center. Thus, the centrifuge gives researchers the ability to understand which particles are denser by spinning them off to the sides.

Unlike a vortex that draws things to its center, a centrifuge repels them. So this grocery list of sins is actually created with the singular centrifugal force of pride. That’s all. When pride is actively rotating in our hearts, multiple sins spin off from it. A life of sin is the symptom of pride spinning in the heart. It is the force that pushes the heavy seeds of sin to fully mature action.

This tough passage ends with an appeal in verse 27: How long will you be unclean? What is the specific length of time you will stay proud and dirty? Good question. Hopeful question. It implies that we prideful people are not destined for pride.

In other words, the centrifuge can be turned off. If we want to stop spinning out sin into our marriages, our parenting, and our work and schooling, then we need to be purified by the Word that crushes all pride. And this is the good news: since all sin is rooted in pride, if we attack pride, we turn off the source that is spinning sin out into our lives. Pride leads to exile, but the exile from God is not predetermined. We can crush it under the weight of the Word, then we can repent and be made clean.

This is because Jesus Christ, our Savior, modeled the ultimate form of humility. He humbled himself to the point of death (Phil 2:5-11). In his ultimate trajectory of humility, we are able to have true salvation.

This passage is a warning against pride. Yet the strange irony is that the prideful cannot repent. They cannot turn because they cannot hear the Word. Pride keeps us from God’s Word, and God’s Word keeps us from pride. Pride exiles us. Yet your exile is not your destiny.

The cause is not hopeless. Every warning is a hope. Grace overcomes hopelessness. Repent and be clean.

Reflect and Discuss

1. What is the one driving thought of this passage?
2. In what way is pride the mother of all sins? Was Augustine correct when he called humility the chief Christian virtue?
3. What are the two powerful word pictures God gives Jeremiah (13:1-7, 12-14), and how do these word pictures relate to pride?
4. What are the “fruits of pride” Jeremiah discusses in this passage?
5. How does the sin of pride spoil and destroy?
6. How do abused blessings become a curse? Explain.
7. What do Hebrews 2–3 and James 4 say about pride?
8. What does it mean for God to resist the proud?
9. In what way is pride a form of spiritual plagiarism?
10. What was the specific warning of exile in this passage? How does Jeremiah relate the exile of Israel to their incessant pride?