Arrogance Is Ignorance

“It is not bragging if it is true.” Have you ever heard or said that? What does that mean? Every claim is relative to some bigger fact. For instance, if I am proud because I have a million dollars, it is simply because relative to the people I am with that is more money than they have; so I brag about it. If I have dinner with genuinely wealthy people, millionaires or billionaires, all of a sudden, it is a different story. People can be a big fish in a small pond and be smug, but when they are transferred, they become a small fish in a big ocean and hardly know who they are.

The problem is not fact; it is the scope of the fact. If I have a million dollars; that is a fact. If I am arrogant, it is because of my limited scope. I am comparing myself to those who have less, not to those who have more. In both cases, it is probably not good. In either case, I either get arrogant or jealous. What I am missing in this picture is God.

C. S. Lewis says that “pride gets no satisfaction out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.” So, I am not arrogant or proud because I have money, smarts, or friends. I am arrogant and proud when I compare myself and think I have more of it than you. If I compare myself and feel like I have less than you, then I become jealous.

II Chronicles 32 gives us this kind of scenario. It is about a wicked king of Assyria named Sennacherib and a godly king of Judah named Hezekiah. Assyria had besieged Jerusalem. In verse 13 Sennacherib said to those in Jerusalem, “Know ye not what I am and my fathers have done unto all the people of other lands? were the gods of the nations of those lands any ways able to deliver their lands out of my hand?” That is a rhetorical question because the obvious answer is no. Nobody had stood up against them and that is why they were smug and arrogant.

Verse 14 says, “Who was there among all the gods of those nations that my fathers utterly destroyed, that could deliver his people out of mine hand, that your God should be able to deliver you out of mine hand?” We have a problem because now he is attributing the same lack of power to Jehovah that he saw in the false gods that had come before.

What you learn from this is that almost always arrogance is ignorance. If I am arrogant, it is because I am missing something, comparing myself to a standard that is not perfect. Do I have more money, knowledge, or anything else than God? No! I am bankrupt in comparison. So, Sennacherib was not really speaking against Jerusalem; he was speaking against God. Verse 19 says, “And they spake against the God of Jerusalem.” That was because they thought he was just like all the other gods, the work of men’s hands. Verse 20 says, “For this cause Hezekiah the king, and the prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz, prayed and cried to heaven.”

So, arrogance is ignorance. This is true in a couple of ways. Arrogance is ignorance of God’s strength. When Assyria came up against Jerusalem, they assumed they would defeat them as they had every other kingdom they had come into contact with and that is because they were ignorant of God. They had ignored God; therefore they did not know what they were up against. So, when I am proud, I am ignorant. Arrogance is ignorance.

God delivered Judah because Hezekiah trusted in Him and prayed. The strange thing is that after this happened, when Judah remained unscathed by the Assyrians and had gained some prominence, Hezekiah was all of a sudden magnified. Foreign nations brought gifts to him and to the Lord in Jerusalem. One of the nations that did this was Babylon. Hezekiah was flattered and he showed them everything, giving them the grand tour, little knowing that one day Babylon would be the very power that would conquer him. The Bible says “His [Hezekiah’s] heart was lifted up: therefore there was wrath upon him.” But verse 26 says, “Notwithstanding, Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart.”

So, Assyria was ignorant of God’s power and Hezekiah was ignorant of his own weakness. Untested virtue is not virtue. It is easy to think we are doing well when we haven’t been tested. Both prosperity and threats can test your virtue. Sometimes prosperity tests you more than the threats. Verse 31 says God left Hezekiah to his own devices to try or test him. If you think you are doing great, see how it is when God leaves. Hezekiah’s heart was lifted up, but when God pushed back on Hezekiah, he humbled himself. The Bible says he was a good king.

The bottom line is don’t be arrogant or ignorant. Don’t be ignorant of God’s strength or your own weakness. Someone has said, “You don’t know the strength of the current until you try to swim against it.” Oftentimes we think we are strong simply because we are floating along. We are not trying to swim upstream. In both cases we need God. We are missing something if we feel smug or are overtaken by fear. What we are missing is God.

Perhaps the best statement of this in the chapter is when Judah is being besieged. Hezekiah told his people, “With him [Assyria] is an arm of flesh.” All Assyria had was people. He continued, “But with us is the LORD our God to help us, and to fight our battles.” That was what mattered. Then it says, “And the people rested themselves upon the words of Hezekiah king of Judah.”

Don’t rest on your own abilities because when they are gone, you won’t even know who you are. Don’t fear the strength of danger. Rest yourself in God; rest on a wonderful truth that God is supreme and gives grace to the humble. What is arrogance? Arrogance is ignorance. It is ignorance of God’s strength and your own weakness. Today, don’t live in arrogance or fear. Rest your mind on the Lord God.