Untitled Sermon

While thinking over the diverseness of my life, I so recognized God’s hand in both the good and the bad! Truth is, my life has been God’s grace. His grace is the extreme reality! The compass that’s pushed me around continually. His Extreme has been a grace of Care! For me! His care plan, although unappreciated more often than not; gave life without justification and unqualified happiness, though He knew the beginning from the end, and my exact present.

The extremes of my life made a colored path. Prayers of grace and love unconditionally descended as the great northern lights I experienced from the Alaskan skyline and the milky way viewed from the bed of a pick-up truck in Venezuela. Though this knowledge created a mental picture, I found and find myself again today looking through that glass of wisdom as looking through the Apostles Paul’s stained widow, knowing still only in part and not in the complete. Apostle Paul writes in ; “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part but then I shall know just as I also am known.” Then goes on to state (v13); “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Love and Humility, His grace package, must have the same skin, I’m thinking!

What is Humility?

Is it an extreme grace?

Something I underlined reading (5 (May) - 11 - 1989) Andrew Murray’s (Humility): “Let us look on every brother or sister who tries or vexes us as God’s means of grace. Let us look on him or her as God’s instrument of our purification, for our exercise of the humility Jesus, our life, breathes within us. And let us have such faith in the all of God and the nothing of self, that we may, in God’s power, seek only to serve, one another in love.” (pg 50)

“Let us look on every brother or sister (I will focus on the son, me) who vexes us as God’s means of grace,” which immediately reminded me of my mother’s thoughts “when I pray for you, (when she prayed for me) my pain goes away!”(her bodily pain would stop during those moments) as God means of grace.” I was made conscience that God’s grace takes precedent in the most extreme manner. Then, just as quickly, my spirit became aware of the greatest reality, Jesus Christ came and paid the most extreme price for this grace, displaying a humility He and He alone can claim. So how extreme are the graces our Heavenly Father bestowed on me, us, and all mankind?

Murray went on to write about three great motives that urge us to humility!

It strengthens me as a man, as a sinner, and as a saint.

The first can been seen in the heavenly hosts in unfallen man, in Jesus as the Son of Man.

The second motive appeals to us in our fallen state, and points out the only way through which we can return to our right place as men and women.

I have sometimes thought in our Christian teaching, that Murray’s second aspect of man as sinner, has been too exclusively put in the foreground. Some believe we must keep sinning if we are indeed to remain humble. Others have thought that the strength of self-condemnation is the secret of humility. And the Christian life has suffered loss, because believers have not been distinctly guided to see that nothing is more natural and beautiful and blessed than to be nothing, so that God may be all. It might seem unclear that sin doesn’t humbles us most, but grace. It’s that’s soul’s humility, led through its sinfulness to be occupied with God in His wonderful glory as God, as Creator and Redeemer, that will truly take the lowest place before Him.

In Matthew’s gospel we find these words; “But, he who is greatest among you shall be your servant,” simply teaches us the blessed truth that there is nothing so divine and heavenly as being the servant and helper of all. It would take much time should we endeavor an exegetical understanding of the word “ALL” as represented by the Greek language.

Looking back on my own religious experience, I stand amazed at the thought of how little “I” sought after this distinguishing feature of the discipleship of Jesus, or then how much proof there is that humility is not esteemed the cardinal virtue. But seeing the life of Jesus, should it not be considered the only root from which the graces can grow, and the one indispensable condition of true fellowship with Him?

And the third, we have the mystery of grace, which teaches us that, as we lose ourselves in the overwhelming greatness of redeeming love, humility becomes to us the consummation of everlasting blessedness and adoration. (p5)

In Matthew’s gospel we find these words; “But, he who is greatest among you shall be your servant,” simply teaches us the blessed truth that there is nothing so divine and heavenly as being the servant and helper of all. It would take much time should we endeavor an exegetical understanding of the word “ALL” as represented by the Greek language.

Looking back on my own religious experience, I stand amazed at the thought of how little humility is sought after as the distinguishing feature of the discipleship of Jesus, or how much proof there is that humility is not esteemed the cardinal virtue. But seeing the life of Jesus, should it not be considered the only root from which the graces can grow, and the one indispensable condition of true fellowship with Him?

Humility strengthens me as a man........

In rehearsing two well know stories or passage of Scripture: The first story being Man’s origin of existence that acknowledges, he owes all (everything) to God. Man’s chief care, man’s highest virtue, and his only happiness, now and through all eternity, is to present himself as an empty vessel in which God can dwell and manifest His power and goodness. And while Genesis gives us the beginning of almost everything, like the universe, life, man, sabbath, death, marriage...... sin..... redemption, family...... sacrifice..... to name a few...... Genesis also demonstrated the attitude of pride, a total disregard of humility, as being the main cause of all enmity between mankind, God says; “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; ...... What transpired the day Satan deceived Eve became the soil in which all humanity sprang. No tree can grow except on the root from which it sprang. Through all its existence it can only live with the life the seed that gave it being. This truth, in its application to the first and the Second Adam, can greatly help us to understand both the need and the nature of redemption there is in Jesus.

Pride, a disregard or lose of humility, is the root of every sin and evil. It was when the now fallen angels began to look upon themselves with self-satisfaction they they were led and were cast down from the light of heaven into outer darkness. When the serpent breathed the poison of his pride - the desire to be like God - into the hearts of our first parents, they, too, fell from their high estate into the wretchedness in which man is now sunk. We have to know and realize, after all the preaching and teaching we’ve set under, that pride and self-exaltation are the gate and the curse of hell!

in verse 12 and following: “How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, You who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart: I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation.... I will be like the Most High,”

How often and throughout my yesterday’s looking forward, did I find myself trying to figure out the fences of my life, and in all reality ascribing my position as the son of the morning, described so well by Isaiah? How often have I deceived myself from the soil of pride, in which I too were birthed.... and listened, and yielded my desire and will to the prospect of being as God ----- thinking I too knew good from evil — right from wrong — ?

How often, more clearly by yesterday’s looking forward, have I found myself placed in the figuring out of my life’s fences, in the above position as the son of the morning, Satan, described so well by Isaiah? How often have I over looked the soil of pride, in which I too were birthed.... and listened, and yielded my desire and will to the prospect of being as God ----- thinking I too know good from evil — right from wrong — ?

Verse 14; Here is unbounded arrogance! How could the Babylonian spirit ever plan such a thing? The answer is that Babylon had sought to render void the work of God. God’s plan was to bring salvation to the world through the coming of a Saviour. Babylon had set herself in opposition to God and would thwart His plans by means of self-exaltation against Him. We are not to understand any of the individual Babylonian kings as specifically ever having uttered precisely these words, but what they express is rather the intention of the Babylonian power or spirit. Just as we may not have expressed intentional opposition to God’s plan but when we give into that same power and spirit of opposition to God’s will for our life through pride, it all boils down to the same spirit of exaltation.

In the last analysis, it is to be either the selfish attitude of Babylon or God. Even in the high places of the clouds, as high as one could go, the king purposed to scale. The Most High is exalted, but the king purposed to scale. To ride upon the clouds is God’s prerogative, and the king therefore shows that he wishes to be equal with and to rival God. Intentions such as these are the prelude to downfall. “You shall be like God,” the serpent had said in the garden. When men have designed to raise themselves to an equality with God, a downfall is coming. In the overall analysis of life! How many times have we, because of a prideful spirit, and overridden the spirit of humility of Jesus and repeatedly found ourselves being god of our lives?

Pride has its root and strength in a terrible spiritual power, outside of us as well as within us. We must confess it, deplore it, and be aware of its Satanic origin. This may lead us to despair of ever conquering it or casting it out. But it will also lead us all the sooner to that supernatural power in which alone our deliverance is to be found — the redemption of the Lamb of God. The hopeless struggle against the workings of self and pride within us may, indeed, become still more hopeless as we think of the power of darkness behind it all. But eventually, we will better realize and accept the power and life outside of ourselves — the humility of heaven, as brought down by the Lamb of God to cast out Satan and his pride. Humility strengthens we as a man..........

Even as we need to look to the first Adam and his fall to know the power of the sin within us, we need to know well the Second Adam and His power to give within us a life of humility as real and abiding and overmastering as has been that of pride. We have our life from and in Christ, as truly, even more truly, than from and in Adam. We are to walk ‘rooted in Him,” “holding fast the Head from which all the whole body increases with the increase of God” (,).

Our one need is to study and know and trust the life that has been revealed in Christ as the life that is now ours. There is only one answer: it is His humility.

Humility appeals to our fallen state........

Being humility is the root of the tree, its nature must be seen in every branch, leaf, and fruit..... If humility is the first, the all-inclusive grace of the life of Jesus, the secret of His atonement.... then the health and strength of our spiritual life will entirely depend upon our putting this grace first, too. Is it any wonder that the Christian life is so often feeble and fruitless, when the very root of the Christ-life is neglected, is unknown? Is it any wonder that the joy of salvation is so little felt, when that is which Christ found it and brings it is so little sought? We must seek a humility which will rest in nothing less than the end and death of self; which gives up all the honor of men as Jesus did, to seek the honor that comes from God alone; which absolutely makes and counts itself nothing so that God may be all, that the Lord alone may be exalted.