A Humble Exaltation

I Peter 5:6

I grew up in a house where people wanted you to start doing these like things from a younger age, probably not unlike most of you here. And when I was 3, 4, or 5 years old, my parents started having me to chores around the house. Now, I didn’t particularly enjoy any of my chores. I didn’t like putting my clothes away or dusting, or when I got a little older, I didn’t like doing all my laundry by myself or vacuuming taking the trash out. Every once in a while I would help make a meal or be responsible for making one myself, and that was fine. But there was one chore that I hated above them all. I had to do it every Friday and I didn’t like Friday’s for awhile for this very reason. I did not want to clean my room.

To this day, I don’t really love doing it. But what I noticed every week after I got done cleaning is that the room looked good, and it was worth the work and time to clean it. Is it something that I enjoyed doing in the moment, no, but the end result made all endless toil and pain and suffering worth it. In the passage today, we’ll be looking at a command given to Christians that isn’t particularly easy or fun to do, it might feel more like a chore even, but the end result, the reason that we follow this command is so, so worth the work we put into being faithful to the commands that God has given to us.

1 Peter is a book focusing on 2 different key aspects of the Christian life. Part of the book talks about how you yourself should live as a Christian, talking about the blessing of our salvation and how we are called to suffer and stewarding well what the Lord has given to us. The second part of the book talks about how to deal with different people. It talks about submitting to authority, enduring persecution, marital roles and so on. The interesting thing about this passage is that it’s sort of a combination of the two aspects. Humility is personal in the fact that you have to humble yourself, and this involves loving other people by putting them above yourself. Now, we should get one thing right here: Being humble doesn’t mean to belittle yourself and to recite “I am human trash” 30 times a day. That’s not what it means at all. True humility is simply putting the interest of others above yourself and thinking of them instead of yourself. CS Lewis put it best in this well-known definition, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.” We shouldn’t be seeking to put ourselves down, but rather to lift others up higher than ourselves.

Taking a look at our passage for today, it’s quite beautiful. I mean, there isn’t really any hidden meaning we need to discover. If you humble yourself, you will be exalted in due time. That’s why I have entitled this little sermon “a humble exaltation.” For the sake of context, let’s briefly see what’s going on. Chapter 5 starts off with commands to the elders of a church to faithfully shepherd the flock of Christ, who is the ultimate Shephard to His sheep. And even though elders are called to lead the flock, they shouldn’t become power-hungry because the Great Shephard is still above them, so they are to lead by example. In verse 5, however, the focus turns to the lay-members of the church, exhorting them to submit to the elders who are under their authority, and that they should be humble to one another, and now here we are at verse 6.

Main idea: God lifts up those who lift others up.

Not too hard to understand, and we’ll unpack that as we make our way through the text. The nice thing about this passage is that it clearly lays out what we are to do and why we are to do it. If you do that, then this will happen. The “if” and “then” are actually going to relate to the 2 points for today.

1. The command – Humility

2. The consequence – Exaltation

1. The Command

The command that we are looking at is very plainly laid out. “Humble yourself, therefore, under the mighty hand of God.” In other words, put God before yourself. Lift the Lord above yourself. You can almost sense the commanding presence of Peter in these two words “humble yourself.” There isn’t one hint of request or any kind of sugarcoating, but a bold exhortation from Peter to church lay-members to be humble.

Look at the very next word, though. “Therefore.” It’s kind of weirdly placed. Another way to say this is “because of this reason, be humble.” But we don’t actually get the reason in this verse or any of the verses to come, actually. 1 Peter 5:6 actually takes place in the middle of a thought, so in order to actually see the reason for this word “therefore,” we need to go back to verse 5. Let’s go back and look at it for a minute.

It says “Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” So, this verse starts out by telling the young members of the church to submit to their authorities, namely the elders, but then, again, we see this exhortation to be humble. But look at the language used. Clothe yourselves with humility. I think the reason he uses this word “clothe” is because clothing is what people see when they look at you. Hopefully, at least. So then to be clothed in humility means that people should be able to see that you are humble. They shouldn’t see pride or arrogance, but when seeing how you talk with and engage other people, a nature of true, godly humility should emerge from you. There’s a lot more I could say about that, but we want from verse 5 is why verse 6 commands humility from Christians. We see this in the last 10 words of this verse.

“God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Grace is given to the humble from God. Every single person here is in need of grace. We don’t even live without it, but it seems here that an extra measure of grace is given to those who lift others up higher than themselves. This is why we are to be humble, because God gives these people grace.

Notice, also, why you should not be prideful. God opposes the proud. I can assure you that you never want to be in a situation where you are in opposition to God. The God who holds the entire universe in His hand, and in this VAST universe is a galaxy, and in this galaxy called the Milky Way, and in the Milky Way is a solar system full of planets, and in this solar system is earth, and in earth is America, and in America is Kentucky, and in Kentucky is Louisville, and in Louisville is Boyce College, and in Boyce college… is you: A spec on a spec on slightly bigger spec. Again, you do not want to be in opposition to God, who holds us along with the entire universe in His hand.

And speaking of the hand of God, that is what we are to be humble under. We should be humble to other people as verse 5 says, but God should be infinitely more lifted up. It is the mighty hand of God that created the world. It is the mighty hand of God that lead Israel out of slavery in Egypt. It is the mighty hand of God that has judged whole nations and peoples who have disobeyed Him and defied His laws. When you think about the power that God possesses, it should not be hard at all for us to think of Him as greater than us. But I think this speaks, also, to the power of sin. If sin in the form of pride is not put to death, we can become so disillusioned that we somehow believe that we are greater and more powerful than the One who created the entire world! And because the world is so full of sin, thinking that you are the most powerful person in your life is actually a lot more common than you might think.

How often do you think of yourself as great and mighty? How often do you put ourselves above God? Friends, beware of pride, always be on guard against it. If we saw in full the sheer glory and power of God, I have full confidence that we would come to this conclusion: God is mighty, and we are not.

2. The Consequence

Here we are at the second half of the verse, which is the promise that is given to us. It says we should be humble “so that at the proper time He might exalt you…” We live in a culture that loves to exalt itself. We try to exalt ourselves on numerous things. It could be what we wear, what job we have, where we went to school, how much money you have, and so many more things. Our world thrives on trying to make itself look great. But they struggle, don’t they? They get insecure about themselves or when they show themselves off, they don’t get the response that they want. So then what happens? They try to improve themselves to look better in the eyes of the world, and this cycle is repeated over and over and over again. People want nothing more than to make themselves great, and often times, this includes Christians.

Why is it that people struggle with this? What makes it so hard to do? The answer is, humans were not created to exalt themselves. We were never made to make ourselves look good. But the Lord does that for us through our own humility.

Think about a plant. The first thing you need is a seed, and that seed gets planted into the ground. After awhile, depending on the kind of plant, that seed will continue to stem up and grow until finally, on some unknown day, the flower comes out and the potential of it’s beauty has been seen.

This is similar to what the Christian life is like. We start off as seeds in the ground. The ground represents where humility should have us. We shouldn’t be high and mighty, but instead, we should be lifting everyone around us up higher than ourselves. Now, don’t be confused. This doesn’t mean you should see yourself as worthless. As someone who has been made in the image of God, you are extremely precious to Him. And as a seed in the ground, you have the potential to grow.

As you continue to live your Christians life and become more like Christ in the process of sanctification, which means to become holy, this is where you start stemming up. You continue to grow as you have greater humility, a greater love for God, and a greater hatred for sin.

But then, at the proper time, you will be exalted. On your own? No, and that’s the whole point! We are planted as seeds and grow not through our own power, but through the power of God in us! He is who makes us great in due time. Now, it isn’t quite clear what kind of exaltation this is talking about. Some commentators have said this is exaltation on the earth, and others have said that this is talking about life after death when we are in heaven with Christ. Going back to our plant analogy, our time to “flower” is not known by us, but what is promised is that it will happen. This just gives us another opportunity to lean on the Lord, and trust that His timing is always perfect.

And here’s the thing, we may have earthly greatness if that is what the Lord wants for us. That is possible, but it is not absolute. What IS absolute, however, is that as believers in Jesus Christ, we will be exalted in heaven. That is promised to us. Do we know when our time is to die? No, no one knows when that time is, but God has promised us that we will be exalted “at the proper time.” He alone knows when our time is, and He alone is completely sovereign over that. Friends, don’t waste your time trying to make yourselves look great. Worldly greatness will not last. Everything on earth is temporary. Instead, give your life over to God who has promised to exalt those who love and obey Him.

I cannot think of a better example of humility than Jesus Christ Himself. Turn over to Philippians 2 for a minute. We’ll start at verse 3 and end at verse 9.

3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,[a] 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,[b] 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,[c] being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name…

Look at the multiple ways that Christ humbled Himself. First of all, He came down from glory and took on the form of a human. That is so many levels below where God should be. But Jesus showed humility in another way. He obeyed His heavenly Father. He did exactly what 1 Peter 5:6 says we should do. Jesus Christ humbled Himself under the mighty hand of God, and He was so incredibly devoted to obeying His Father, the Jesus Christ died by crucifixion. You have to realize that this was probably the most humiliating way to die in this time period. It was public, and it was shameful. This was not an honorable way to die.

But why did He do that? What was the point of this death? Jesus Christ died to save prideful people like you and me. He was perfect but infinitely loved people who were full of sin, and he saved us from the wrath of God that we deserved to bear, and took it upon Himself instead. Jesus Christ was humble to the point of death, even death on a cross.

But look at verse 9. Because Jesus Christ did this, God exalted Him! He exalted His Son! Three days after Christ died, He rose from the grave defeating the power of wickedness and sin and death and hell itself, and now He sits in heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father, awaiting His return to earth, at which time all will be made new. Christ Himself was exalted because He was humble, and we, being made in this image, are to faithfully follow that example.

How willing are we to do this? How willing are we to be humble under God’s mighty hand in obedience to Him? If it came to it, would we be willing to die for Him? That can be scary to think about, but friends, find rest and peace in the fact that God is always with you, and nothing on this earth is going to happen that is outside of His control. He loves you and has complete control over the lives of His children. The greatest sufferings of this world could never compare to the glory we will see and experience in heaven. Be faithful in the time you have here on the earth. Be humble, and at the proper time, God will exalt you in his heavenly kingdom forever.