Theme: Burdens Rolled Away: Pretense and Artificiality
This week’s lessons talk about the need for every Christian to be marked by humility, and that the sins that fight against this humility can only be taken away by the Lord Jesus Christ, whose own humility took him to the cross for us.
Scripture: Matthew 20:20-28
2. The burden of pretense.
2. The burden of pretense. The second burden Tozer writes about is the burden of pretense—of pretending to be something we are not and of hiding what we truly are. The man who is moderately successful in business tries to look wildly successful. He is ashamed to be thought of only as a moderate achiever. A person of limited education pretends to be more highly educated than he is and fears to meet a thoroughly educated man. Even if he is well educated, he fears to meet a person who is better educated or to be in a position where the unfavorable comparison shows. A cultured person fears to be with those who are even more cultured. Tozer says, “Let no one smile this off. These burdens are real, and little by little they kill the victims of this evil and unnatural way of life.”2