rebellion &arrogance

September 5, 2010

1 Samuel 15:23-

For rebellion is like the sin of divination,

and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.

Because you have rejected the word of the LORD,

he has rejected you as king.

This verse caught my eye a few weeks ago when I was reading through 1 Samuel. The comparison presented in this verse caught my eye because of how different in seriousness the things compared seem. Divination and idolatry, to me, are pretty blatantly 'big' sins. Both have some pretty dire consequences. People who practiced divination were to be put to death (Leviticus 20:6, 27); idolatry leads to rejection by God and the bringing about of plenty of misfortunes (read through the Old Testament for proof, haha). Today, we as Christians are pretty good at staying away from going to psychics or tarot card readers to figure out our futures or going to Buddhist temples to pray to some idols; it's pretty obvious that those things are a no-no.

However, rebellion and arrogance, to me, seem to be those sins that we kind of let ... slide. After all, everyone struggles with pride and disobedience once in awhile right? I mean, it's not like we're murdering people right? In our minds, we have set some sins to be graver than others. In a way, yeah some sins have much more obvious and dire consequences to the physical eye, but in terms of spirituality, all sins lead to but one thing: the damnation of our souls. And so here, in this verse, we see the downright graveness of the sins of arrogance and rebellion.

Rebellion is like the sin of divination. How so? To me, rebellion against God is just disobeying God, going against what He has set out for us for our well being and going about things our way instead of His way. And so it is with divination; instead of waiting for God's answer, for God's timing and plans, we want to use our means to figure out what awaits us in the future, what it is that we can do with our own hands to get what it is that we want. We rebel against what God says is best, and we chase after what it is that we want using our own means. Hence, rebellion is like the sin of divination. Pretty serious indeed.

We rebel and we disobey everyday. One of the most commonly excused instance of disobedience and rebellion is worry. Jesus specifically tells us to not worry (Matthew 6:25) but we worry so much. I worry about things going wrong, things not going according to plan, and just the future in general. But Jesus says to not worry, and I need to learn to stop rebelling against His words and simply set aside my plans and my desire to control and plan things my way and obey Him and trust Him with all things. No more rebelling and insisting of things my way, but an obedience to God and His ways.

Arrogance is like the evil of idolatry. This was a bit more obvious to me. Arrogance is the exalting and consequent worship of self; idolatry is the worship of created material things. I am a created being, and the exalting and worship of myself is arrogance and idolatry. Pride is the root/cause of many of our sins. I get angry because someone has treated me less than how I believe I ought to have been treated. I have a hard time apologizing because it offends my pride. Etc, etc. And so, pride and idolatry both are the worship and exalting of something created and not the one and only God. Pride is indeed one of those things that is hard to kill within us. From the start, pride was the cause of Satan's as well as our downfall. Pride is difficult to kill because we come up with so many excuses for it and it has become so natural for us to have it within us. But we must put it to death and place ourselves in our rightful place with respect to God. How can Jesus, the humble King, dwell within me, if I allow my pride to stay within me as well? My pride will place myself on the throne and there will be no room for Jesus to be king of my life.

Both rebellion and arrogance is a rejection of God and His words (see last two lines of the verse). God does not force us to obey or accept Him and His words; if we reject Him, He will reject us. If we do not want to obey His laws and precepts and do not want Him as king of our lives, well then we have made our desires very clear: we have rejected God as God and placed ourselves as our own gods. If we reject Him, He will reject us.

We often do not fully comprehend the graveness of these two sins: rebellion and arrogance. We let certain sins slide in our life; we are in no rush to stop the sins that occur so frequently in our lives because we do not see them as the very things that are choking our spiritual lives to death. I fall into this. I allow myself to persuade myself into thinking that some sins don't need to be cut out right now. I could always do it later, I'll just repent, and after all, no one is perfect right? It's not that bad. But no, it IS that bad. Sin and God cannot coexist in my life; I can only serve one and if I am determined to serve God, then sin must go. I must constantly ask God to convict me, to sensitize me again to the terrible effects of sin, to help me realize and understand the urgency of cutting out all those sins that are undermining Christ's power and transformation in my life, particularly those sins of rebellion and arrogance (actually all sins can probably be seen as falling into one of these two categories).

May we aim to put to death our natural sinful selves, and allow Christ and His resurrection to be displayed in full power and glory in our lives. May we, with the help of God, fully realize the graveness of rebellion and arrogance and as soldiers against enemies intent on killing them, approach the fight against sin wholeheartedly, courageously, and with but one goal: to put it to death lest we ourselves die as a result of it.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)