I Will Build My Church: A Humble Hierarchy

The psychologist and philosopher Jordan Peterson says that all of life is built on hierarchies. And a hierarchy is basically just this pyramid. That virtually every domain of your life is part of a hierarchy. Our economy is built on hierarchies. Our workplaces are hierarchies. Our neighborhoods, our churches, everything is hierarchical. Now, that seems unfair, but the reality is that in every domain of life, there are people who are better at things than others, or who are highest on the hierarchy. So let me put it this way. THose who are viewed higher, at least in our area, are poeple who have a longer history. We value people who have longstanding relationships, we value people who have healthy families, we value poeple who like what we like. And these hierarchies are everywhere. Now, in the first century wrold, the hierarchies were highly based on shame and honor.

Exegetical

Hierarchy: So,

Who is the Greatest?: Now, you have to recognize that the first century church was a church that was in a shame-honor culture. Because it was a shame honor culture, when the disciples were asking “who is the greatest” they were saying who is the worhthy of the most honor. Now, honor and shame in this world was very community based. So someone who was honorable was someone who was viewed as having a great reputation, as someone who was esteemed as being important. The most honorable person in a community was the kind of person who would get to make decisions, they were the person with the most influence, they were the person whose voice was the most important. And the disciples are saying, “Who is the greatest, who should get the most honor?” We mgiht it put it this way.

Cultural examples of honor: Now, in this day and age, they probably would have seen that honor could come from a couple different places. So honor might be a result of having a big family. It might be the result of having a lot of land or a lot of property. There was a certain level of honor that was associated with age. However, for Romans, the man who was able to amass the most power was deemed as being the most honorable. The person that had the best family connections. The person who had the best oratory. Now, here is the deal. Jesus had just told the disciples to pay the temple tax to not give offense. So the disciples were probably wondering, whose rules do we play by? Do we play by the Jews’ rules or by the Romans’ rules? They were wondering, where do we get honor? Where do we get face? Where do we get importance? Who gets to make decisions in the church. What kind of person do we want to put in our leadership positions? What kind of person do we want to make elders or deacons? What kind of persons do we pay attention to?

Christ is the prime example of humility: Now underneath this, we know how Christ has led. Christ in fact, later will tell James and John and their mother in … Christ himself says, “Hey what I am doing is a very humbling thing. Jesus says, I do not insist on my own way, I insist on my Father’s way. I am not saying anything he has not told me to say. Therefore, I will do as my Father has led me to do and go into the places that he has sent me and do what he has given me to do. Christ has given himself up and sets everything that he has. In fact, this is one of the things that is consistently proclaimed about Christ: his humility. For example:

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So Jesus says, I have humbled myself and given everything I have to serve my people. And can we say, that this is just so gracious of Christ. Because he has been with the disciples for long enough that they should be picking it up. They should begin to see Christ’s self-effacement, his humility, his kindness, his gentleness. But Christ is so gracious, and he knows that because he will humble himself, this will create a deep and profound understanding in the disciples that they can only begin to grasp this now.

A Child: So, Jesus takes this child. Now, it is important that it is a child for two reasons. First, in this day and age, the child, especially a peasant child from Capernaum, had virtually no honor. I mean, he ddidn’t have a lot of connections. He didn’t hgave a lot of strenght. He didn’t have a lot of wealth. He wasn’t the father of a big family. Instead, a child was basically the lowest rung on the social ladder. Secondly, the child has basically no way to acquire honor. So not only is he totally without honor, he can’t really fix himself. He needs to look for honor from somewhere else. So, the child is totally dependent on others. So Jesus takes this child and says, “look at this child, there is nothign that this child has that we should esteem him, and nothing that this child can do to make us honor him.” In the kingdom of heaven, the person who is like that is the person who is the greatest. But notice how Christ says this first.

Conversion: Turn and Become Like Children to enter the kingdom: Now, notice that Christ doesn’t start out by answering “who is the greatest.” Christ starts out by answering, who can enter into the kingdom of heaven. How can they come inside of the kingdom? What does it take to become disciple, a follower of Jesus? What does it take to become a Christian? Well Jesus explains that there are two steps. He says, first, they must turn. They must stop looking for ultimate honor and significance from anything. In other words, Jesus says, “You need to stop looking for signigifance because of your family, or your hard work, or your spirituality.” Jesus says, “you need to stop thinking that God should be impressed with you.” Jesus says, you need to stop putting yourself ahead of others for any reason whatsoever. Then you must “be like a child.” You need to put yourself at the bottom rung of the ladder. You need to see yourself as the servant of all and the master of none. And you need to recognize that any signifigance, any honor, any hope that you have of being approved from God, has to come from outside you. you need to humble yourself in the sight of God and see that to have anything at all from the hand of God requires that you receive it by grace. So here is Jesus’ point: the person who humbles himself, who throws hismelf on the grace of God totally is the person who will enter the kingdom of heaven.

Faith begins with humility: Here is the point of what we are saying. Faith begins with humility. It begins with us saying, “God you are God, we are not. We have looked for honor from a thousand different places, and we have not found it.” To put your faith in Jesus Christ, you have to recognize that you do not have honor in yourself, and the only significance that you have in found in him. Faith is humbling because it starts with recognizing that we lack something that only God can give. Faith is humbling because it says, “If I could have saved myself, Jesus would not have had to die on the cross.” Listen, here is the awfully awesome truth of the gospel. That however bad you think you are, you have not even begun to scratch the surface. But here is the good news. However good you think God is, you have not even gotten your toes wet.

Whoever continues to humble himself is worthy of the most honor

Whoever continues to humble himself is worthy of the most honor: Now, al of this is only describing how the person enters the kingdom. It does not yet answer who is the wrothy of the msot honor. But, it is necessary to talk about this first, because of what Christ says next. He says, “whoever humbles himself.” Now, this verb is actually a future tense verb. You see, the person who can enter the kingdom is the person who humbles himself once. But the person who is worthy of honor is the person who is willing to continue to humble himself. The person who is worthy of being a leader is the person who continues to humble themselves. They are the person who continues to humble themselves even when they grow in stature, wisdom, intelligence, wealth, and authority. You see, they are the person who, though they have grown spiritually, see their need for Jesus all the more. Listen, the elders, deacons, and leaders in our church need to be people who humble themselves, who don’t insist on their own way, who put others ahead of themselves. You see, God says, “I see your hierarchy, humanity, and I am going to turn it on its head. the way up is down. The way to the top is the bottom. The way to become the most important, is to be the least important.”

Big Idea Reveal: The greatest in the kingdom are the humblest.

Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me: Now, vs. 5 kind of sets the stage for what we’re going to talk about next week, but it also kind of finishes the passage this week. Jesus says, “hey, if you receive a child in my name, you receive me.” Now, what does that have to do with anything. Well, here is the deal. So if you recognize that you hae nothign without Christ, and you want him to be your everything, then you want to give eveyrhting to him. Which means, to be great in the kingdom of heaven is to put yourself at hte bottom of the rung, and you will take in anyone from the highest to hte lowest into the kingdom of heaven. Which means, a truly humble person accepts other humble people.

Illustration: Matthew 20:20-28

Application:

Even unbelievers know humility is important: Now, here is the amazing thing about Scriptures. That even in our day and age, when an unbeliever hears this, it resonates with them. Now, the reason that epopel across the world value humility, is because God has created all humanity in his image. He has put in each and every person a stamp, an imprint, a reflection of his glory. This is what theologians have called the imago Dei. That God has put inside the heart beat of every single person a stamp of his finger. And part of that, is that we respect humility. There is something about humility which is appealing to us. That God has put inside the heart of every single person a gravitational pull towards people who are humble and an aversion towards people who make much of themselves.

Viz: Abraham Lincoln: One of the greatest examples of this, in my mind, is Abraham Lincoln. To my understanding, for most of his life, Abraham Lincoln was not a Christian. It was not til his son died while he was in the White House that he underwent a religious conversion. But, something that Abraham LIncoln was universally known for was that he was humble. He would always look to try to make much of what others have done. he would always compliment others. He was consistent to make much of other people.

We struggle to be humble: But here is the deal. We know that humility is good and important. We know that humility is important, but have you ever noticed how hard it is to be truly humble. You see, when it comes to humility, we tend to make one of two mistakes. First, we tend to just be overtly braggarly. We talk about ourselves. We put ourselves forward when given the chance. We put others down to elevate ourselves. But the other problem is that we tend to have a false humility in ourselves. So maybe we don’t elevate ourselves in front of others. But we certainly do in our mind. Ane, in fact, we resent others for being more liked than we are, and higher than we are, and more important than we are. ANd here is the reality. Have you ever noticed how hard it is to not slip into one of these two things? We either talk way too much about the ourselves, or we resent that others are talking too much about themselves. NOw isn’t that ironic. We value humility so highly, but we recognize that it is so hard to attain. Humility is like the mirage on the horizon, we see it, we want it, we reach for it, but we never attain it.

Christ was teh most humble person: But here is the reality. If this is how you view humility, stop looking at yourself and start looking at Christ. There was no other person who was so worthy of honor and glory and no other person who did not insist on it for himself. Christ was the most humble person who has ever existed. I love how describes him. He was someone who gave everything he had for others. He humbled himself to exalt us. He emptied himself to fill others. He submitted his will to the Father, followed the Spirit. You see, when we had absolutely no reason to expect honor from Christ, Christ gave every honor to us. By grace we have been saved.

Because he was humble, we can be humble: And here is the deal, because he is humble, we can be humble. Because he gave everything for us, we give everything for him. Because he emptied himself for us, we can empty ourselves for others. You see, when we do everything we can to be humble in ourselves, it doesn’t work. When we do everything we can to be humble it doesn’t work. We become, as Martin Luther liked to say, we become curved in on ourselves. But when we focus on Christ, we begin to look like him. When we look at Christ, rather than curved in on ourselves, we become straightened up. We are freed from making much of ourselves to make much of others. We can become humble because he was humble.

These are the kinds of people we need: These are the kinds of people that we need in our church. We need humble

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