HALL MONITORS IN THE SCHOOL OF CHRISTIAN MATURITY: PART 3 – HUMILITY

HALL MONITORS IN THE SCHOOL OF CHRISTIAN MATURITY: PART 3 – HUMILITY Colossians 3:12 February 3, 2008 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction Chan Gailey, football coach for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, told how he learned a lesson in humility. Gailey was then head coach of Alabama's Troy State, and they were playing for a National Championship. The week before the big game, he was headed to the practice field when a secretary called him back to take a phone call. Somewhat irritated, Gailey told her to take a message because he was on his way to practice. She responded, "But it's Sports Illustrated." "I'll be right there," he said. As he made his way to the building, he began to think about the upcoming article. It would be great publicity for a small school like Troy State to be in Sports Illustrated. As he got closer, he realized that a three-page article would not be sufficient to tell the whole story. Coming even closer to his office, he started thinking that he might be on the cover. "Should I pose or go with an action shot," he wondered. His head was spinning with all of the possibilities. When he picked up the phone and said hello, the person asked, "Is this Chan Gailey?" "Yes, it is," he replied confidently. "This is Sports Illustrated, and we're calling to let you know that your subscription is running out. Are you interested in renewing?" Coach Gailey concluded the story by saying, "You are either humble or you will be humbled." We are now three messages in to the series, Hall Monitors in the School of Christian Maturity, having covered the topics of compassion and kindness. I realized I have not even yet quoted from Micah 6:8: He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. 1. Walk Humbly with Your God What a great text that is! Straightforward, simple and easy to understand. And I want to draw on its wisdom for my first point this morning. If we are going to put on humility as the apostle Paul commands us in Colossians 3:12, we will have to begin right here – walk humbly with your God. Humility is all about us not having so high an opinion of ourselves that we fail to serve others or give them the honor they deserve. So Kindergarten class in the school of learning humility is, first, to be humble before God. I call it Kindergarten, because it is foundational to learning humility. First thing, I must learn to humble myself before God. He is the easiest one to humble yourself before, after all. He is almighty, omniscient, holy and righteous, omnipresent, just and merciful, right? When you walk with Him, you don’t look so big, do you? 1 Peter reads this way: Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s might hand, that he may lift you up in due time. (1 Peter 5:5-6) Pride is the enemy of God. Proud people stand in opposition to Him. There are a few people I can think of that I would not want as my enemy: Mike Tyson, Bill Gates, but mostly God—I’m sure I don’t want God as my enemy. If that’s the case, then I need to unload all my pride. This is the way we walk with God: surrendered, unpretentious, respectful, submissive, and humble. We simply have to, first of all, learn our place under God. It’s a big deal to some that we have retained the words “one nation under God” in our pledge of allegiance to the flag of the US. Some people are so proud they can’t imagine themselves under anyone or anything else. Adam and Eve thought they knew better than God; they rebelled and lost fellowship with God. Why? They would not walk humbly with their God. It’s insecurity, you know, at the base of pride. The proud person can’t be told or taught by anyone else. The town know-it-all strolled in to the blacksmith’s shop, where a few of the boys were hanging out. No one liked this guy because he always knew better than everyone else. But they greeted him courteously. He reached out and picked up a horseshoe off the anvil not knowing it had just come out of the fire. Just as soon as he grabbed it he dropped it with a clang on the anvil. Smiling, the blacksmith said, “Hot, ain’t it!?” The smart aleck said, “No, it just doesn’t take me long to look at a horseshoe!” I love the account of President Teddy Roosevelt, and have shared it before. When he would host visiting dignitaries and heads of state at the White House, before retiring, He would lead them out on the portico and just stand there looking up at the heavens, saying nothing. Eventually he’d say, “Well, I guess we’re small enough now…let’s go to bed.” The first step in putting on humility is to make sure you walk humbly before your God. Secondly, in order of importance and in sequence, 2. Cultivate a Mindset of Humility Over in Philippians 2, Paul wrote the monumental and beautiful hymn of praise about the incarnated Christ. There he makes it clear that Jesus was pre-existent and divine, but in obedience to the Father he relinquished voluntarily all claim to the divine. He became a man, died unjustly as a criminal even though He was innocent. Therefore God highly exalted Him, giving Him the name above every other name. Do you remember the words in verse 5 that introduce that great hymn? Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. . . How are you going to get the same attitude that motivated Jesus toward such self-denying, self-sacrificing love? How are you going to get that mindset into your heart? Let me suggest a simple Trinitarian formula: Ask the Father, Meditate on the Son and trust the Spirit. Jesus promised His disciples, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive and your joy will be complete.  [webmasters note: John 16:23-24] What’s our biggest problem in praying these kinds of prayers that have promised answers? We rarely are confident that what we are praying is in accord with the Father’s will. But, I ask you now, is there any way, any way at all, that your asking the Father for a heart of humility falls outside the purview of His perfect will for you? Pray, brothers and sisters; pray with faith and confidence, asking God to give you a mindset of humility like Jesus operated under. The biggest problem about praying for an attitude of humility is not that we don’t believe God wants to give it to us—no! It’s that we’re not sure we want to have a mindset of humility! We think to ourselves, Am I really ready to live a life like that?! So this biblical counsel is not for the spiritually cowardly. It is for those who are tired of wrestling with their own pride every time they are called to an act of obedience for the Lord. It’s for those who are weary of the carnal fight, and who long to live the disciplined life of instant obedience to God. If you are there, come to the Father with your sincere request for an attitude of humility. Secondly, to gain an attitude of humility and to maintain that mindset, no matter what comes your way, I suggest you meditate on the life and ministry of Jesus. Take passages out of the gospels and commit them to memory. Passages like John 13 and the occasion when Jesus washed the disciples’ feet. Run through that story over and over again, looking to find the things that drove Jesus. As you meditate on the story, see Jesus getting up without a word, grabbing the servant’s towel and was basin, then bending down in front of His surprised friends. Hear His knees pop as he squats low enough to serve them. Notice His own dusty, yet untended feet. Hear Him say, maybe for the first time, “You don’t have any idea what I am doing, but later you will understand.” And, “Now that your Lord and Teacher has washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you and example…” Watch the dramatic refusal of Peter to let Jesus wash his feet. At first it looks like humility, but then you realize it’s really pride. Think deeply, perhaps for weeks on end, about what it means to you to be a disciple who is commissioned place others above yourself. Meditate o the deep truths bound up in His words, “I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.” Such prolonged and committed meditation as this will change you. Study every encounter of the Lord with the people he served in so many different ways. Let the master’s attitude be massaged into your heart. Le t this mind be in you which is in Christ Jesus. The record of the ministry of Jesus is recorded in the Word for a purpose, and it is profitable to us for teaching, reproving, correcting and training in righteousness. Be deliberate about exposing yourself to His life-changing example. Thirdly, realize it’s not really up to you to do the changing. Your job is simply to posture yourself openly before the Lord, asking and seeking His will for your life. And it is the Spirit who gives life, effects change and glorifies God through changing you more and more into the image of Christ. It is the indwelling Spirit of God in the life of the believer who bears spiritual fruit, grants spiritual unity and maturity, manifests spiritual gifts and brings us spiritual reassurance. So, we aren’t called to trump up or try to generate humility in our lives. Let Him change you! Every time we try that it turns sour and comes out looking like false humility. And there is nothing less becoming in a child of God than false humility! John Stott, in his book, Basic Christian Leadership, says, "At no point does the Christian mind come into more violent collision with the secular mind than in its insistence on humility, with all the weakness it entails. The wisdom of the world values power, not humility . . . . Nietzsche dreamed of the rise of a daring ruler-race — tough, masculine and oppressive. Nietzsche worshiped power; he despised Jesus for His weakness. The ideal of Nietzsche was the Ubermensch, the superman; but the ideal of Jesus was the little child. There is no possibility of compromise between these two images; we are obliged to choose." 3. Relate to Others with Humility Once we have determined to walk humbly with God and we learn to mediate on the divine example of humble service Jesus modeled in His earthly ministry, we can and should prepare to give ourselves in humble service to others. But don’t try to do this if you are not first humble before the Lord and drawing on the teaching and example of Jesus. There are several passages of scripture that exhort us to act in humility toward one another. Romans 12, for example, teaches For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. (Romans 12:3) Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. (Romans 12:16) What does this mean, practically? Here we go, face-to-face, toe-to-toe, brother-to-brother. Here’s what we need to here. First, get off your high horse and stop thinking that you don’t need the others in the body of Christ. Once on a hot summer Tuesday I walked through the WTC foyer area and was almost knocked out by a horrendous stench. The day before had been a holiday and the office was closed and the nursery area had sat with no air conditioning running. In the late afternoon the sun came streaming in to the nursery, illuminating and heating the diaper pail. Someone had forgotten to empty it after Sunday services, and it was like Warren Buffett’s bank account—several huge deposits had been made. It smelled bad in the church house! The attitude that I have it all together and I just hang around to be a blessing to them has a real smell about it, and it smells like carnal pride. Let me ask you, how long has it been since you honestly took someone else’s advice? How long since you let a brother or sister speak into your life words that were words of challenge or correction? Are you not in meaningful relationships because you think you’re better than others and you really don’t need them? Not in a Life Group because you really don’t want to invest the time and energy in a group with some of those people? Smells like pride. Smells like smugness. Smells bad in church! When we decide in advance to be humble we are ready to honor others in practical ways, like giving them time and truly listening to them. I hear the Holy Spirit challenging believers to come together having decided in advance that they will treat others’ needs as more important than their own. Even though it would be a lot more comfortable to just hang out with the old friends, they would step out and serve someone they’d not met before, or make a first time visitor feel at home. To the maturing Christian worship is a golden opportunity to bow low before God in abject humility, inviting Him to reveal anything He wants to them; taking the opportunity to praise the Lord, no matter what songs or music style is being used that day. The Christian who has humbled himself before the Lord has nothing to protect from injury by others. He’s totally secure, and can risk serving those around him. One other note here about the practice of humility. Being humble means forfeiting the right to compare yourself with others. You realize that all that one-upsmanship is delusory nonsense. So what if another person can’t build a doghouse as good as you can; what does it really matter that you can’t sing or speak as well as another person? Does anything important at all hang in the balance if you play sports better or worse than your neighbor? When we compare ourselves with others it reveals to us our own insecurities—that we’re worried about our personal value. God has already spoken to that. He said you are made in His image, uniquely gifted for the tasks He prepared in advance for you to walk in. Every person has his own special value. And the tragedy is that when we start comparing ourselves on a human plane our ability to see and appreciate our real value gets blurry. Humility means facing the truth about myself. It is useful to remind myself that the word itself comes from humus, earth, and in the end simply means that I allow myself to be “earthed” or grounded in the truth. And the truth is that God is God, and I am his creature. As I hold on to this truth it helps prevent me from putting myself at the centre, and instead allows me to put God and other people at the centre. A young man named John Gilbert lived in the town of Paradise, CA. He’s probably dead now. He was supposed to live only to age 25 because he was diagnosed with Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy, a genetic, progressive and very cruel disease that gradually destroys every muscle in the body. John was teased mercilessly by the other kids in school, as there were so many things he couldn’t do, and his body was twisting into awkward and odd positions as the disease progressed. Bullied and humiliated it was hard for John to even go to school. He said it was worst in Jr Hi. Tony Campolo once said he thought that the Roman Catholic doctrine was right at one point—the was a purgatory, a place between heaven and hell where you suffer for your sins, and it was Jr Hi. In his eighth grade year, John was named ambassador for MD. He was flown to Sacramento to personally meet the governor. That night the NFL sponsored a fundraising auction diner at which John was a guest. Players let him hold their Super Bowl rings, which actually slid up to John’s wrists. When the auction began, on item especially caught his attention. It as a basketball that was signed by all the players of the Sacramento Kings NBA team. John got a little carried away and when that ball was being bid on, he kept raising his hand. As soon as it went up his mother pulled it back down and smiled a “no” to the auctioneer. The bidding for the ball kept rising to extreme figures, until finally one man shouted out a figure that almost doubled the current bid. Nobody would go any higher. He went to the front and collected his prize, but instead of returning to his seat, the man walked across the room and placed the basketball in the small thin hands of John Gilbert. Hands that would never dribble it down court and never pass it to a teammate or drop it in for a 3-pointer. The room melted in appreciation. Couple questions . . . How appropriate would it be for John to take that ball back to school and show it off to the bullies, to make sure they knew he was something, too? He didn’t. He didn’t need to. How good do you think that generous bidder felt giving the ball away? Do you think it was worth the price? How about you? How do you identify with this story: are you like the boy, or the bidder or the bullies? A little humility could go a long way for any of them. When we practice humility among one another, everyone wins. God knew that when He had Paul urge the believers to clothe themselves with humility toward one another.     [Back to Top]