Humility and Other Bad Words
Notes
Transcript
It is said that the nine most important words in a marriage are: “I was wrong. I am sorry. Please forgive me.”
These are also some of the hardest words to say. They take humility. And no one really truly desires humility.
Merriam-Webster defines humility as the freedom from pride or arrogance. It comes from the root word: low.
Humility is being lower than someone or something else. But, we don’t like being lower. We like being higher. We like to follow our own path. We like to prioritize our priorities. And we don’t like to admit when we were wrong and we are supposed to bend our will to someone else.
Proverbs says:
When pride comes, then comes disgrace,
but with humility comes wisdom.
Pride calls us to pursue what we want no matter what is in our way. Pride is what compelled Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Pride is what compelled the Jewish leaders to seek to kill Jesus, their Messiah. Pride is what forced Pilate to condemn Jesus to crucifixion on the cross. And pride is what keeps most of the world from turning to Jesus in faith.
Everyone single human struggles with pride. And consequently, we struggle against humility. We hate bundling our pride into this tight ball and throwing it away, getting on our knees in front of someone else in confession or service, lowering ourself and lifting them up.
We don’t want to do this to another human. We don’t want to do this to God.
Unfortunately, Jesus modeled humility for us and calls us to follow him in it.
We read in our passage today:
When they came together in Galilee, he said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised to life.” And the disciples were filled with grief.
After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma temple tax came to Peter and asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?”
“Yes, he does,” he replied.
When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. “What do you think, Simon?” he asked. “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own children or from others?”
“From others,” Peter answered.
“Then the children are exempt,” Jesus said to him. “But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”
In this passage, we will see that Jesus humbled himself by becoming obedient in life and death. We will look at Jesus and then we will look at ourselves.
Before we dive in, will you pray with me?
1. Jesus Humbled Himself
1. Jesus Humbled Himself
In this passage, we see a blatant discussion of Jesus’ humility.
Studying the passage in reverse, we see that Jesus humbled himself by submitting to the authorities
A. By Submitting to the Authorities
A. By Submitting to the Authorities
The temple tax collectors approached Peter about the temple tax. This wasn’t a huge tax, when it is budgeted, but out of the blue, this is rather steep. Two-drachma’s were a half-shekel, basically equal to two days wages. If we consider our current minimum wage of $13.5 and 8 hour days, that is $216 dollars in taxes that the temple tax collectors were asking if Jesus was going to pay.
Now, this tax, or this tribute, was originally based on law, but was enlarged by custom. Leviticus calls for a temple tax to be payed when people were counted, and the money was paid as a means of redemption. It was not a tax to be levied year after year. But, as customs happen, this morphed to be a tax which was paid yearly by all males over the age of twenty for the upkeep of the temple.
Let’s throw in a different twist. Formally ordained rabbis were not expected to pay this tax. They were exempt. Would Jesus, known as a rabbi, but not formerly trained. Would he claim the same privilege?
As Spurgeon points out, it is as if the questioners are asking: “Surely Jesus does pay the tax: we would not suspect him of neglecting to do so. A person of such eminence cannot fail to be peculiarly exact as to this customary fee.”
What is he going to do?
Well, he tells Peter:
“Yes, he does,” he replied.
When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. “What do you think, Simon?” he asked. “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own children or from others?”
“From others,” Peter answered.
“Then the children are exempt,” Jesus said to him.
Jesus, the Son of God, is Lord of the temple. It was created to worship him, as part of the triune God. He doesn’t need to pay money for the upkeep of that temple.
According to our philosophy so many times, we would tell Jesus: Just ignore them. Don’t pay. It’s not your responsibility. But that is the response of pride.
Jesus humbled himself by submitting to the authorities.
He told Peter:
“But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”
As Paul notes in Phil 2, Jesus though God, made himself nothing, humbling himself for us.
B. By Dying on the Cross
B. By Dying on the Cross
This illustration presented by Jesus to Peter, and to us, is a picture of Jesus’ ultimate purpose in life.
I referred to this passage, but let’s read it:
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Jesus came for the purpose of dying. That is the epitome of humility. He left the glories of heaven and made himself nothing, made himself low, so that he could lift us up.
He tried to explain this to the disciples, but they couldn’t get it.
When they came together in Galilee, he said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised to life.” And the disciples were filled with grief.
Thankfully, they learned a little bit from the last time when Peter rebuked Jesus and Jesus called him Satan. There is no rebuke now, but just grief, because they don’t want Jesus to die. They still don’t understand that dying is why he came.
As he explains to the disciples later:
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
And then John remembers and explains the bigger purpose:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
He didn’t have to die. He created all things and as creator he could take all things out of existence. He almost did it in the flood. Because of our sinfulness, he could say that he is fed up and wants to start over. Wipe the slate clean.
But, he didn’t.
He made himself nothing, humbling himself by becoming obedient even to death. Remaining in the grave for three days and then blowing the rocks apart, proving his godhood and his offered salvation.
He didn’t have to do this. But he did, humility because of love.
2. We Should Humble Ourselves
2. We Should Humble Ourselves
That opening to the Philippians passage is pretty pointed:
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
As Jesus was humble, so we should be humble.
This passage points to two specific ways of humility:
A. By Turning to Jesus
A. By Turning to Jesus
The first is humbling ourselves to turn to Jesus in faith and belief.
He proved his love to us by dying on the cross for our sins.
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
And as John so succinctly wrote:
We love because he first loved us.
His love compels us to turn to him
Paul talks about this in 2 Cor 5 14-15
For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
Ask for a volunteer
Say someone ran into a burning building for you and saved your life, literally. Would the normal response be: Oh, thanks for doing that! Have a nice life!
Say the guy wants to be your friend, maybe take you out on a date. Would you say: sorry, I’m good.
That would be cold.
But most of the world is doing that to Jesus. He humbled himself, dying on a cross for their sins, to save them from an eternity in hell, apart from the goodness, peace, and love of God. And he reaches out his hand and says: I want to have a friendship with you. I want to know you and for you to know me.
And most of the world says: yeah, I know you did that. You died for me and everything, but I don’t want to have anything to do with you.
Why?
Well, so many reasons, but the main one is pride. Turning to Jesus in faith requires humility. It requires a statement that we need to be saved, that we are in fact sinners, not able to do anything for ourselves. It requires a statement that what we were following and doing before Christ was actually wrong and in error. It requires a statement that we need him.
Humility, being brought low and pushing the other up.
We get down on our knees before the cross and say: I confess that I am a sinner doomed to hell for all eternity and I need someone to save me from this fate. I trust in you alone, your death on the cross and your resurrection from the dead, to save me.
We lift him up, and the moment we do that, we are saved. And we have a relationship with our creator for all eternity, bought by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.
We follow Jesus in humility by trusting in him alone to save us.
B. By Not Causing Offense
B. By Not Causing Offense
We follow Jesus in humility by not causing offense.
Do you remember the narrative that we first studied? About the taxes?
Well, Jesus doesn’t just pay for his own tax. He pays for Peter’s as well.
Jesus tells Peter:
“But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”
Jesus has been preaching about the kingdom and showing how one can enter the kingdom, and not just enter but be a son and a daughter of the King.
As John points out:
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
Peter and the rest of the disciples could have the reaction: I am a child of the kingdom, I don’t have to pay the temple tax. But Jesus, in order to not cause offense, tell’s Peter to pay the tax.
It is interesting that Jesus brings up this idea of offense, because he had no problem offending the Pharisees in the matter of ritual hand washing and other things. He calls them White-washed tombs. That’s pretty offensive. But he doesn’t protest the temple tax. In fact, he has a pretty good relationship with tax collectors at Capernaum. Jesus generally treated sinners gently (yet cf. 15:21–28) and religious hypocrites more harshly, but his followers today tend to get this backward, treating religious hypocrites with much deference and protesting loudly against known sinners.
What is Jesus going to with this concept of offense?
We are called to humble ourselves so that we do not get in the way of the Gospel. The Gospel itself is pretty offense. We cannot water it down to remove offense, but we can live in a way that does not put a barrier against the Gospel. We can try to maintain relationships and appearances, so that we can have opportunities to share the Gospel.
I think about Paul who many times did not use his rights as a Roman citizen so that he could share the Gospel in crazy places. Other times, he used his rights, so that he could share the Gospel in other crazy places.
Many times, this call means humbling ourselves, making ourselves low and raising others up. And that can grain against us. Sometimes this will be humility with finances. Sometimes it will be humility in social standing.
No matter the means of humility, we are called to follow Jesus in this, for the sake of the Gospel.
And I am grateful that Jesus has promised to provide for our needs, even as we humble ourselves. He did not tell Peter to go to his bank account to pay the two days wages. He told him to go and fish with a line and hook. And the exact amount would be provided.
Just as we get to join Jesus for the eternal redemption that he provides, so also we can humble ourselves, because the king will take care of his people who walk close to him.
Jesus humbled himself by becoming obedient in life and death. Let us look to the king and follow in kind.
