Rule 7

Sit Down. Be Humble.

I have a workout playlist that’s part of my daily routine. Every morning, I wake up, take my retainer out, go to the office, put in my headphones, go to the kitchen, mix my preworkout, fill my water bottle, grab my gym bag and my keys, and head to the gym. While I’m walking to the elevator - I walk up the stairs, not down them, I turn on my workout playlist. You might think I’d turn music on when I put my headphones in, but I don’t, they just sit silently in my ears until I get into the hallway. Anyway, on this playlist are some tracks you might expect - I’ve got Here Comes the Boom; Work Hard, Play Hard; POWER; and Lose Yourself. On this playlist are also some songs you might not expect like Thnks fr th Mmrs and Dangle, Snipe, and Celly. There’s also one song that’s somewhere in between - Humble by Kendrick Lamar. There are only like thirty songs on the playlist and I listen to it for like an hour every day, so I hear each individual song a lot. Which means when I sat down to write a sermon from a text on humility, Humble by Kendrick Lamar came to mind. I looked into using some of the lyrics in this message, but when I actually looked them up I realized . . . that I couldn’t use the lyrics.

And this is partially because Kendrick is liberal with his use of explicit language, but more than that - because I can skip words - the song is almost the opposite of the Biblical understanding of humility. The lyrics brag about how he can buy the world for some random girl, how he’s getting a page from Obama, and how he spends way to much on bottled water. He’s consistently building himself up and the only reason for the title is that the chorus tells everyone else to sit down and be humble.

So I guess it gives us a counter example, because Biblical humility looks nothing like that. We just read in Philippians that we shouldn’t do anything from selfish ambition or conceit. When we think about humility, we have to stop looking inward! Biblical humility challenges us to look outward and think of other people, Biblical humility demands that we recognize the importance of the people around us more than our own ego. In short, humility is selflessly considering others as significant . . .

Turn Outward

Now somewhere along the line I think we picked up a mistaken idea that humility is about how you view yourself, is about tearing yourself down, or is about denying your gifts and abilities. For example, if Matt were to go around saying “I’m really not a good chiropractor” or “my practice is not successful,” that’s not humility. He is a gifted chiropractor and his practice is undeniably successful - to say otherwise is to deny reality. Or if Carl were to go around saying “I really just ruin every brisket I touch,” that’s not humility - he’s just lying to you. I’ve had his brisket and it’s real good. Thinking that humility is just tearing ourselves down is just another way that we turn inwards and make it about ourselves, but humility is a selfless thing.

C.S. Lewis explains it like this in the Screwtape Letters, “humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it, and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible.” Rather, God wants us to “be so free from any bias in [our] own favour that [we] can rejoice in [our] own talents as frankly and gratefully as in [our] neighbor's talents - or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. He wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognise all creatures (even himself) as glorious and excellent things.”

So we need to stop this idea that humility demands that we turn inward and think of ourselves as less, because the Bible tells us that humility is to look outward and think of others as more!

Lift Up Others

We understand that humility is selflessly considering others as significant, not by tearing ourselves down, but defining something by what it is not isn’t particularly helpful. It’s like if you ask someone to describe me and the response is “he’s not Kevin Hart.” I mean, you’re right, but that hasn’t really given you any meaningful information about me.

So let’s talk about what humility actually is and how you can go about being more humble. Philippians 2:3 says that we should

Philippians 2:3 (ESV)

in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

So part of humility is considering others as more important than you are. That means looking at your family members, your friends, your neighbors, the workers in the grocery store, the servers at a restaurant - looking at all of them with that attitude that they are more important than you are. Not that you aren’t important - remember, we’re turning outward - but that they are important. And this should impact your daily life. It means when you walk into a room, that room does not become about you because the other people there are important. When you enter a conversation, you don’t make it about whatever you want to talk about because the people already talking are important. When someone gets seated ahead of you at a restaurant - even if you were there first, you don’t get upset because the people they just seated are important. When you’re at a store, you don’t expect special treatment because everyone else is important.

As we stop ourselves from turning inward, as we turn our focus outward, we live with humility that is considering others as more important than ourselves.

The Interests of Others

And what this drives us to do is to, as Philippians 2:4 says

Philippians 2:4 (ESV)

Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

In our consideration of others as more important than ourselves, in the practice of real humility, we selflessly look to the needs and wants of others. We look around us and think about how we can help and serve the people around us.

Now admittedly there’s some nuance here. How many of you have been on a flight before? Now, if you pay attention, they tell you that in the event the cabin loses pressure, oxygen masks will drop from above you. And they make it very clear, if someone around you needs help putting their oxygen mask on - like a child or someone without fine motor control - you put your own mask on first and then help them. The logic there is, if you pass out from oxygen deprivation trying to help them, you both have a problem. But if you put on your mask, you can then help them and minimize the danger to everyone involved. In the same way, Philippians tells us to not only look to our own interests but also to the interests of others. You shouldn’t completely ignore yourself, but your concerns should have no greater priority than the concerns of the people around you.

We called to this, we’re challenged to this - to be humble. Not in a self-deprecating way, but in a way that considers others as more important than ourselves and always has their needs and concerns in mind. And I want to specifically challenge you today, to sometime this next week do something that lifts up someone else as more important than yourself or do something just for the sake of someone else’s needs.

And if you need an example, Paul points us to Christ. He looked at us and saw something of value, He saw people worth loving, He saw people worth saving - even though we did nothing to deserve it! He considered us as important enough to forsake His own interests and suffer here on earth, He considered us as important enough to be convicted despite His innocence, He considered us important enough to die, and now that He sits on His heavenly throne, He considers us as important enough to forgive us all of our sins. That’s perfect humility, and that perfect humility saved us. Amen.