The Church of Eleven22 - Wk 5: Humble Yourself

Episode Date: May 21, 2017

Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it’s not even thinking of yourself less. Humility is thinking more and more and more about the glorious nature of Jesus until we forget to even think of ourselves at all.

Well, good morning, church. How are you guys doing? There we go. We're awake. San Pablo, Bay Meadows, all of our venues. It's good to see you guys. We are going to go ahead and dig in. If we hadn't met yet, my name is Ryan Stone.

I'm one of the pastors here at the church, 1122. I get the opportunity to serve our body primarily at the Bay Meadows campus. And so if we hadn't met yet, I'll be down front afterwards here at San Pablo. We'll meet at Mandarin. You'll just have to, I am this tall and good looking in real life, I promise. Let's do this. We're going to dig in. You want to go to Luke 14.

We're in this series called The Storyteller. And we've been walking through these parables of Jesus. And Jesus was undoubtedly one of the greatest teachers to ever live. You do not have to ascribe to him being the Son of God, the Savior of humanity, to be able to say he was a good teacher. He was. He was one of the greatest teachers ever. And one of the ways he would teach is a thing called,

parables. He would tell these stories and would use these kind of everyday experiences and lay aside them these truths, these heavenly kingdom gospel truths. And the heartbeat behind these these parables was to help people look at the world a little bit differently and in looking at the world differently be able to see this kingdom perspective. And so we've just been kind of going story by story and that's what we're going to do again today. And here's what happens before this story. You need a little bit of the context. Jesus gets invited to eat dinner with the Pharisees. And the Pharisees were the religious rulers of the day, and they invite him to dinner.

And it's not necessarily this pure invitation. They're actually trying to study him and figure out a way to take Jesus out to end his ministry. But nonetheless, they invite him to dinner, and Jesus, he shows up. And as he shows up, it was kind of before dinner time. And right before dinner time, Jesus tells this story. And before we study the story, I just want to read it too. you and then we'll come back and study it verse by verse. Luke chapter 14

verse 7 now he, Jesus, told a parable to those who were invited when he noticed how they had chose the places of honor, saying to them when you were invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone

more distinguished than you be invited by him. And he who invited you both will come and say to you, give your place to this person. And then you will be begin with take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place. So that when your host comes, he may say to you, friend, move up higher. Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humble.

And he who humbles himself will be exalted. Now, you guys are smart enough after reading that story to know we're going to talk about humility. And here's the one danger I would say that lays before every single one of us. When we hear the word humility, we know we're about to hear a sermon on humility, the danger is that every one of us begins to think of someone who needs to hear this sermon. Right? Every one of us in our mind is like, I know who needs to hear this. Some of you are married to them, and I apologize. But every one of us go, I am thinking of someone to hear this sermon. And can I just for a second beg of you something? Can I beg you not to listen for someone who might should be hearing this sermon, but can I beg you? you, please listen to this sermon for your heart and for your soul.

Pastor C.J. Mahaney says this. The real issue here is not if pride exists in your heart. It's where pride exists and how pride is being expressed in your life. Scripture shows us that pride is strongly and dangerously rooted in all of our lives, far more than most of us care to even admit or to think about. Now here's what I know is true. every single person in every single campus in every single venue, all the podcasters, everybody who will hear this sermon, pride is an issue for us. For some of us, it's the kind of flagrant arrogance that we normally write off as the only category of pride, like the arrogant.

That's who we're all thinking of that needs to hear this sermon. But for some of us, pride shows itself in worry and anxiety. Worry and anxiety are really just, it's just an expression of pride because worry is all about you. Pride is all about you. And then some of us, insecurity is the way that pride kind of shows and reveals itself, this insecurity of people pleasing. And people pleasing is actually rooted in what do people think about you?

So if pride is you think you're awesome or if pride is you worry about you or if pride is you want other people think you're awesome, all of us deal with pride. So as we dig into this story from Jesus, please, please don't listen for your friend. Listen for you. I'm going to listen for me. Let's do it together. hear back to the story. So Jesus is in the room. It's dinner time. He sees the Pharisees, the religious leader starting to kind of jostle for position. And Jesus goes, ooh, it's story time. And they're all

just trying to get the seat of honor. And we've all been there, right? Like, have you ever been to a wedding that has like seated, like it's got seated dinner, but it doesn't have like a seating chart. Right. And you got to like engage the buffet properly, right? If you engage the buffet too early, you will sit down with whatever food you want, but you now have no control of who can sit with you. It's just you, your date, and like six chairs, you're like, please, Jesus, right? Not the weird people.

But if you get buffet too late, if you engage the buffet too late, you don't get any deviled eggs, which is, that's a crime and a sin in itself. And then not only do you not get the deviled eggs, but you don't get to choose who you sit with. You have to sit in the seats that are left, and you know where those seats are.

They are with the weird people in the back left corner next to the kids table. No option, right? You want to engage the bus. buffet table about a third of the way through it being open. You get all the deviled eggs you want. You can get the whole tray if you want. And when you come away from the table, you go, okay, they're weird. They're weirder. I'm sitting at that table, right? Another place you find yourself looking for the seat of honors. Maybe you've been like a sports bar and you're just

trying to get the table that's facing the University of Georgia football game and you're in that seat of honor, not the seat of shame that makes you watch, makes you watch blue and orange, right? That is another place. Or have you ever been at like a birth? party with like helicopter mom. Maybe like you're at a kid's party. I got a five year old and a four year old and you're hanging out. And then there's like helicopter mom and she just keeps moving her kid next to the birthday girl like for the picture and the cake and the presents.

And then you've been at the adult party later with the same mom. And she's just kind of like trying to get into every conversation. And I'm thinking you just need to quit trying so hard. Like woman, you're weird and you're making your kid weird. You're reproducing weird. It's not healthy, right? Or, I mean, every time I fly, I watch this happen, right? And you're flying on an airplane on your ticket.

It gives you a number. And even if you had a curbside check your bag, your bag's going to make it where you're going. You've got a seat number. They promise to fly you there, unless it's united. And then it's like an iffy one. Too soon. All right. But people are like, it's like, we're now boarding the diamond, platinum, Rubik's Cube, elect.

And everybody goes to the door. And I'm looking at this lady going, man, you have never flown. an airplane in your life. You are not dime in the leg. What zone are we on? Not zone. You're not getting on the plane till the end. Get in the bag of line, right? Now, I get it if you're on Southwest. I get it because Southwest is like the real life hunger games, right? I'm convinced to get to heaven. You have to fly through Atlanta. I'm convinced to get to hell. You just board a Southwest plane. And you're there. Right? And I remember, I flew at one time and I get like B-25. I'm in the lane. And just like if you're at the grocery store and you're counting how many people are in like the express checkout, you have 12 items, ma'am.

I'm B-25 and I am counting heads. And I know someone in front of me is a liar from the pit of hell because I'm B-25 and there's 26 people in front of me. Then there's two people that I'm about to read the Bible to and just condemn them right there. And then this sweet little grandma walks over and she's like, where am I supposed to be? She's got like C-60. I was like, man, if you'll just wait, they're going to let you board and sit on the toilet in a second. You'll be fun. Airplane is dropping.

And no one's immune to this desire to sit at a seat of honor. Every fall, we do this thing called saturated. It's like revival. It's like camp for adults. And we get to bring some of the best preachers in from around the world. And some of the nights, after some of our pastors and some of our staff take our guests out to dinner. And sometimes we kind of open it up to the whole staff. And we'll go into a restaurant and have like a spot of the restaurant that's just for us.

And every time I walk in, and I'm just amazed at, like, people who preach and lead worship and lead care ministry and kids, like the people that we adore, oh, they're just so godly. They get in a room and, like, Pastor Jovey sits down and then, like, Leon's Crump or Ryan Kwan or, like, one of those, like, preachers sit down. And it is, like, throwing bows trying to get to that table. I mean, I have seen men run over women to sit at the table. And I'm like, you bunch of wretched, blackhearted sinner. Save my seat. right and so it does not matter and we've all been there at that spot where we are jostling for position here's what i love about the text it says when he noticed you see jesus isn't the same room as these guys jostling

for position and jesus was not concerned at all for his position at the table he was really concerned about the people in the room around them here's what i've noticed about my life and it's true about all of us when we rush to be acknowledged and we rush to be the center of attention we miss every opportunity to know and love the people around us. When we make our families look at us and make our friends look at us and make our coworkers look at us and how awesome we are, we instantly miss the opportunity to know our family, to know our friends, to know our coworkers.

And then when we don't know someone, we miss the opportunity to love them. So Jesus sees all this hustle and bustle and he goes into storytime. Verse 8, when you're invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the place of honor. Let's someone be more distinguished than you. Unless someone more distinguished than you has been invited by the guest. And he who invited you both will come and say to you, give this place to this person,

and then you will begin to take, you begin with shame to take the lowest place. This is Greek for the walk of shame, right? Here's what happens. When you think you're more important than you actually are, you're just setting yourself up for the walk of shame. Jesus says, hey, look, if you're at a, If you're at like a wedding, sit at the kids' table, and then the person who invited you,

be like, you don't need to be there. Why don't you come sit at the head table with me? And then I don't know if this is exactly how it translates. It says, then you can get up from the kids table and you can kind of like Rick Flair strut it up to the big boy table. And everybody's like, oh, he's a big deal. That's what Jesus is saying. And like, lower yourself to a point that then you can be elevated by someone else. Now, I remember a day at school.

It was before I met my beautiful wife. And I remember it crystal clear because it was in the math department, and I only went into that building one semester. And then once I got out, I was like, see you later, guys. I don't need you anymore, right? My goal was never go back. So it was that semester that I had the math class, and I walk out. I'm wearing a Georgia football t-shirt, and I walk out of class, and this pretty blonde girl comes walking through the courtyard. And it's really hard to pick beautiful women out at Georgia.

You know why? They all are beautiful. You know, you call a pretty girl at Florida? A visitor. And so, I'm just, I don't know if that's in the scripture or not. I can't remember. So I'm walking out and this, she's beautiful. I mean, and I, like, I've actually got one beautiful girl to talk to me and then I married her. And she's a covenant woman, so she's mine forever.

But I'm not really good with beautiful girl. So this beautiful woman's walking up and she starts waving. And I've got a Georgia football t-shar on, so I assume she thinks I play football. I don't have enough integrity to tell her no. And so I'm just, I'll give her the head and I'm just. She's walking over, she's waving, she's getting closer and closer. She starts to smile more, and I kind of start giving her attention, my heart starts pumping. And right about the time I go to kind of like step towards her and say hello, she walks past me to give her boyfriend a hug.

And I realize in that moment, when you think more of yourself than you should actually think of yourself, you've only created the opportunity for the walk of shame. So I put my head down and I tried to figure out how to walk out of the courtyard without walking into someone. honor is something that one does not assume for themselves. Honor is not something you can just self-declare. Honor is better bestowed upon you than wrongly presumed by you. He goes on verse 10. When you are invited, go and sit at the lowest place so that when your host come, he may say to you, friend, move up higher.

Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the least place. table with you. Here's the goal of biblical humility. The goal is this, is that you and I would think high enough about others that we could think rightly about ourselves. The goal of biblical humility is that we would think highly enough about other people that we could actually think rightly about ourselves. Our problem is that we flip that paradigm. We tend to over-evaluate our own contributions and under-evaluate the contributions of others. This has a lot to do with the fact that we are, we are aware, intimately aware of our most minute accomplishments and mainly ignorant of the profound accomplishments of others.

In other words, we know what little bit we've done and we've measured it great. We do not know what great things others have done because we have measured them small. Like, have I ever told you about the year that I was a part of the University of Georgia football team. I've got two SEC championship rings. Kind of a big deal. I mean, I was a part of the SEC championship team. I've got a letterman jacket. I'm a four-year letterman. And let me tell you about the SEC championship gang. You know what I did? 2002, we had in one one in 20 years, and there I was. You know what role I played? I put air in the football. And then I handed the football to the ref. Right? Now, I can tell that story as if I won the SEC championship.

But the reality is the only thing I did is put air in the football, way more than the Patriots do, but I put air in the football and I handed it to the ref. We are really, really good at taking some little small thing we did and making it sound ultimate and taking some ultimate things someone else did and making it sound minute. Why? Because we have just arrogance in us. There's pride in us. Now here's my warning.

Do not go and develop false humility. False humility is this. Fault's humility is any form of humility that is not rooted in Jesus Christ. Fault humility is any form of humility that is not rooted in the nature and person and work of Jesus. In reality, it is not actually humility. It's just self-preservation. It's not actually humility. It's self-preservation.

Now, I have a few signs of false humility I would like to share with you. And here's how I found these. I just did a very in-depth research and evaluation of just my own life, and I found a bunch of areas in which I'm, like, falsely humble. Like, it looks like humility, but it's really just self-preservation. One of them is this. If you ever, like, do self-defication, like, you just kind of, you talk bad about yourself, but it's really just a tool to bait someone else's flattery. For example, I've lost a little bit of weight, and when people go, how much weight have you lost stone? I tell them, and they're like, man, that's a lot of weight.

How did you lose that? And I'm like, well, to lose that much weight, you have to start by being really fat. And I say that. And they're like, you know, they're like, okay. And you know what I'm actually doing? I'm not saying, hey, thanks for your compliment. I'm going, I was really fat. And now I'm just kind of like thick.

So tell me how awesome I am. Like I'm kind of, I'll talk bad about myself just to trick them into talking good about me. Right. Or here's another one. You know, the whole, like if you are sitting in the back, you know, like the kind of the pseudo back and you're just waiting for someone to notice you. Maybe you go to get in a car with a group of adults and you're like, I'm going to sit in the back seat, no problem. But you get in the back seat and you don't really close the door and you don't really buckle up because you're sitting there going, well, obviously they're going to notice

that I was back here and they're going to be like, Stone, you should move to the front. I do it every time I get in the car. I will show up to places having not buckled in because I think maybe they'll pull off the side of the road and go, I'm sorry, Stone, come on up front, right? Another one is this, complimenting others just so they'll return the favor. I see this among the female version of our species. He's often, we're like, hey, did you get a haircut? And the second female is like, no. And the first female was like, I don't have hair, so you can imagine flocked, right? And it's almost like, I love your hair.

All you're doing is going, I'm going to say something nice about you because you will then have to say something nice about me. It's called false humility. Another one is this. If you ever ask a question, only to get that person to ask the question back to you, you're dealing with false humility. Now, I just keep telling on myself, because I think if I tell on myself, it'll make us all realize we're. We're all jacked up. And if you're like, if you come to church and you're a little scared of church because you're like, they're just a bunch of hypocrites.

We're not hypocrites here. We're not. We openly declare that we're all jacked up, wretched, blackhearted sinners in need of a savior. So no hypocrites here, just a bunch of crazy people. You found a home, right? And so here's one of the things I have to struggle with. I'll be at like a church conference and I'll ask somebody, how's your church going?

And they'll start telling me about all the cool things God's doing. And I'm not actually listening to them. I'm actually just waiting for them to go, well, stone house, house things going for you? Well, I'm glad you asked. I'm pastoring one of the campuses and the campus that I'm at, just the campus alone would be considered one of the largest churches in America. And we launched another church, another campus at Mandolin, the church 1120 to at Mandjord, and just the kids' ministry at that campus is larger than the average U.S. church. So things are going really, really well. And I completely ignore whatever God's doing in their life. That's called false humility.

Here's the problem with false humility. It's just enough humility that you can ignore the spirit's conviction in your life. It's just enough false humility that you can ignore the conviction in your life and then just kind of keep on living for yourself. Verse 11. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Now, I want to challenge you to do this. I want to challenge you if you are going to live a life where you exalt yourself, don't kind of quasi do it. I want you to exalt yourself as much as you can.

If you are going to live a life that's all about you, don't stop it being kind of quasi about you. I mean, I want you to go George Foreman style and name every one of your kids after you. Like, I should have named my kids Ryan, Rihanna, Rihanna, I mean, just every form of like the masculine and feminine versions of Ryan. Just do it. All right? I want you to start a business.

I want you to start a company and everybody who works for you, I want you to make them wear T-shirts with your face on it. Like if you're going to exalt yourself, go for it. But here's my promise. When you get to the age, some age in life, you're going to look back and go, yeah, it wasn't really all about me. I built this whole kingdom about me for it just to crumble. I'm kidding around a little bit, but here's my experience.

I've done this. I've spent time in ministry. Like not just working somewhere, working at the church, making it all about me. We were getting ready to launch this church, and I just moved from student ministry to this world. den of where I just kind of got an opportunity to serve in multiple different ministries. And they're like, well, you got to have a title. And they let me, I was like mid-20s and they let me make up my own title.

Not a good idea. I was like, well, no problem. I'll be the pastor of strategic ministry initiatives. You know what that means? I didn't either. But it took two business cards to say it. So I was like, well, here's both of my business cards. Put them together.

That's my whole title. I'm a big deal. Right? And so I thought I was a big deal. And I would brag about, like, I would do 1% of something, somebody else. would do 99% and I would try to take all the credit for it. And I just was kind of building this kind of like brand of Ryan Stone. And I don't think I was consciously doing it, but just the ego in me was doing it.

And then the church was so gracious, they gave me a sabbatical. Right before we launched Bay Meadows, they gave me like six weeks off to go and pray and reconnect with Jesus and reconnect with my wife and my kids and just some time to rest. And I came back from that sabbatical and lo and behold, the church had not fallen apart. the church actually was growing and people were getting saved. And in that moment, in that moment, what I realized is that if you exalt yourself, the Lord will humble you. I felt like I came back and I felt like, man, this place doesn't even need me.

And it was in that moment I heard the Lord just in my spirit say, well, good, you're finally ready to be used by me. Ooh, it was rough. It's just great promise that pride comes before a fall and humility comes before greatness. that if we kind of build our own brand and build our own kingdom, we don't have the strength to keep it standing. The foundation of you is not enough to support you. And so we've crumbled and we fall. And God's word is, but the humble, the humble God will exalt.

But what if he doesn't exalt me? I know some of you are asking that question. What if I humble myself and I lay down building my own kingdom and I'm as humble as I can be, what if God doesn't exalt me? Now, I'll say this. If you're asking this question, you don't really quite yet get gospel humility. Humility is not a life hack to get the cash and prizes of God. Now, don't be afraid. You're not alone. On Monday, I actually asked this own question in my own personal time with the Lord.

God, I am cool. I'm okay if I humble myself and you exalt me. But what if I humble myself and you don't exalt me? And I think the Lord's answer for us is this. Is obedience to Jesus in his word enough? Or do we simply do what Jesus says to get things from Jesus? Like is the person of Jesus enough for our obedience? Or would we try to just obey scriptures in order to trick God and get something from God? 1st Peter chapter 5 says this. Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders.

Clothe yourself, all of you. This next phrase is for all of us. clothe yourselves with humility towards one another, for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. I would rather be humble and never be exalted the way that I think I deserve to be exalted than to choose a life where I'm the king of my own world and my enemy opponent is God himself. I would rather be humble and never be exalted than choose a life in which God himself opposes me. Verse six, humble yourselves.

The Greek word here means like lower in point or height. It would be translated, make yourself low. Now, we have abused this humble yourself concept, and here's some ways that it gets translated that's not right. It is not one who despises himself. That's false humility. A minute ago, we talked about false humility where you just kind of ask questions to get people to flatter you? Well, the other side of false humility is this, whoa, pity is me. I despise myself.

I look down on myself. If you look down on yourself, you don't get the gospel. The gospel says this. Christ came from heaven, put on flesh, and died, and his blood purchased you. So you are incredibly valuable because the Son of God himself gave his life up for you. Humility is not when you have no regard for yourself. Humility is not the abandonment of self. Humility is not this weird, pitiful way in which you stop brushing your hair, brushing your teeth, bathing, and just trying to make yourself the lowest of lows by just totally abandoning yourself. Humility is actually more like this. It's one who would cause his heart to bow down. Like when Peter says humble yourself, he's saying, make your heart small. One of the ways we would say this in our common English,

would be one who would lay down the desires of his own heart for the needs of others. Sounds a lot like Jesus, doesn't it? The humility to make yourself low is bowing the desire of your heart and what you want so others can have what they need. It's not pity. Pity is not the gospel. The gospel is Christ died for you. And he gave up himself for you.

And in the example of Christ, we give up. up ourselves for others. Peter goes on to say, humble yourselves. Therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time, he may exalt you. I love this mighty hand of God. Peter is actually borrowing this phrase from the book of Exodus. And what he's reminding the reader is this.

The Israelites were in Egypt, slaves and captive, and at the right time, God exalted them and made them their own nation. Now, what you have to understand is what Peter is saying, Don't forget Israel was in captivity and slavery for 430 years. What's Peter's saying? Peter's saying this. God's promise to exalt is not based off of our timeline, but his infinite sovereignty and his eternal viewpoint. God will exalt.

Why? Because his word says God cannot lie, and his word says he will exalt. So God cannot lie. If God says humble yourself and I will exalt you, then I can guarantee you. based on the character of God, you will be exalted. It may not be in our timeline. It may not even be in our small view of cash and prizes, but I guarantee you from the eternal view of things,

if we humble ourselves before the Lord, God will exalt us. Verse 7. Casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. I love this. This is kind of like a, you've got to kind of be a grammar nerd here. So even if you're not, don't worry. I'm not going to go too far into this.

you don't have to not pay attention. Just stay with me. The casting all actually modifies the verb, humble yourself, just the way it's written in the text. So it's almost like 1A, 1B. Humble yourselves, cast your anxieties. Why is it like that? Anxiety is the opponent of humility. What is humility? Humility is when you acknowledge, I'm not in control. Like with open hands, I just admit I'm not in control. I'm desperate for God to be in control. It's not about me. It's not about my comfort. I relinquish control.

What's anxiety? Anxiety is this fear or worry that grows in you the more you realize you're not in control. Therefore, when humility, when you say I'm not in control, anxiety rises up by saying, whoa, whoa, worry, worry, worry, you're not in control. Here's what I think. I think anxiety is the mountain peak between humility and trust. Peter, what Peter's doing here is he's saying, look, the moment you humble yourself before the Lord and say, I trust you, in that moment, Peter's saying the enemy is going to come at you with things to worry about. I mean, think about this.

Maybe it's not true for you, but it's true for me. The areas of my life where I have the most amount of worry are the same areas in my life where I'm trying to surrender and be humble. Let me give you a couple examples. One, my kids, I have to, in humility, every single day open-handedly, go, Lord, I'm not in control. Here's it. I want to be the kind of dad and the kind of father, the kind of preacher, pastor, that raises up my five-year-old and my four-year-old girl to love Jesus. And I'm not talking about, like, being good Sunday school girls. I'm talking about annoyingly advancing the gospel in whatever high school they're in.

Like the kind of were like halfway through the math class, a teacher has to stop teaching algebra because my kids have heard of proclaiming the gospel again. Like missionaries to their schools. But I can't make that happen. I have to humbly go, God, you are sovereign in control and I give you my girls. And then, you know, that area where I'm trying to be humble is the same area I lay awake at night and think, what if God saves one of them and not the other one? I begin to worry. How would that reflect on me as a dad and a pastor? How is that going to reflect on you, God? Anxiety becomes to just rise up in my soul. and God reminds me, the gap, the mountain peak between my humility and trusting God is this little thing called anxiety and worry. Another one is this, finances.

I don't know if you know this, but when I became a pastor, I did not get any signing bonuses like any of the guys in NFL draft. Right. I didn't get enough money to buy myself a car, much yet to buy, like, my mom, a brand new car. And so I knew that going in. And so I just kind of surrendered and said, all, Lord, I trust you. And then before all things comes up, and God calls us to do some things, our family where our income reduced, and yet the Lord asked us to give more than we've ever given, which I'm asking, God, do you have a calculator? I'm just running the numbers. Decreased income

is not increased output. And God's going, I don't need a calculator. All right, you're right. And so he began to kind of press on me. And so we begin to give more than we've ever given before, not because we're awesome, but because God asked us to do that. And every single month when we do our budget, I go, God, I don't even know where this is going to come from. And every single month, God reminds me that the mountain peak between humbling yourself and doing what I say and trusting me is this mountain peak of anxiety. And the enemy would come against us. And so why does this verse come right here? Because Peter says, humble yourselves.

God gives grace to the humble. And here's what I love. We can cast our worries on him. Why? Because he's our creator. He's our savior and he's our king and he cares for us. God is not just some iron-fisted God in heaven going submit and humble yourselves or I will smash you. God's in heaven going humble yourselves because I love you and I care for you.

Not only did Jesus tell stories about humility, but he gave us the example. In John chapter 13, it says this. Now before the feast of the past over, when Jesus knew that his act was, hour had come to depart out of this world to the father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. And during supper, when the devil had already put into the heart of Judas Ixerite, Simon's son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the father had given him all things into his hand and that he had come from God and was going back to God, Paul's, here's what it's saying. They're in the room. Jesus already knows Judas is going to betray him. And Jesus is also

cognitively aware of this fact. He is the greatest in the room. He has the authority. He is worthy of worship. He knows that he's fully God and fully man. It's just a moment in which John goes, Jesus knew he was the greatest in the room. And here's what he does.

He rose from supper. He lay aside his outer garments and taking a towel and he tied it around his waist. And then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around. him. So Jesus, knowing he was the greatest in the room, gets up and goes and takes the role of the least of the least of these. He takes his coat off, he wraps his towel around, and he goes

to the corner. Normally there would have been a servant in the corner. And as these men would have come in, remember, they're in like, you know, ancient times. They've got like some Jesus Tevas on. It's like dirt road everywhere. They might be a little like dust in my boot. They don't have any boots. They just got nasty Kmart feet. And so they would walk in with their jankyty Kmart feet. And normally the servant would sit in the corner and wash their feet before they came in. Well, apparently that servant was off. And so Jesus goes to take this role.

Now, this wasn't just a role of a servant. In fact, there was a rule in Jewish households that the foot washer was not allowed to be another Jew. It was a job reserved for a non-Jewish slave. A Jew wouldn't even wash a Jew's feet because they were so dirty. and here's Jesus, the king of kings, Lord of Lord's, worthy of all worship, he wraps a towel around his waist and he begins to watch each and every disciple's feet. Verse 12. When he had washed their feet, all 12 are their feet, by the way, including Judas's, and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, do you understand what I have done to you? You call me teacher and Lord and you are right for so I am. and if then I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet.

In other, Jesus goes, if I'm the rabbi, if I'm the Lord, if I'm the master, and I have done these things, then what I am teaching you and showing you and asking you to do is now to do them to one another. Verse 15, for I have given you an example that you also should do as I have done. for you. Any Christian that refuses himself or to humble himself or herself, any Christian that would refuse to humble themselves as a servant, not only missed the story of Jesus, you've missed the person of Jesus. Let me say that again. If you are a Christian and you refuse to humble yourself, you have not just missed the stories of Jesus, you have missed the person of Jesus. If he is is Lord and master and says, do what I say and humble yourselves, and you refuse to do that.

You have missed him as Lord. You have missed him as master. And my fear is that you have missed him as Savior. Jesus does not leave us any room to ignore the call to humility. He teaches the stories about it. He gives us the examples to follow. And just in case we're going to miss it, he also commands us to do it. Mark chapter 9 says this, if anyone would be first, He must be last of all and servant of all. You want the cliff notes to the kingdom of heaven? If you want greatness in life, you become a servant of all in your life. If you want to be great in life, then you serve every single person that God has put in your life.

Here's the big idea. It's simply verse 11 from Luke. Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled. And he who humbles himself will be exalted. Now, humility is not natural. It's not. You and I were born and bred with an incredibly high self-orientation. Another way to put it is this.

We are prideful by both nature and nurture. Like, we're born, wretched, black-hearted sinners all about pleasing our own desires. And then we're raised. And most of it, it starts with our mom telling us we're the greatest thing ever. And then we spend the rest of our life just trying to turn all the world and all the attention of the world on ourselves. Right? It's only getting worse. Every day a new snowflake and a new rainbow is born.

And now our entire culture is going, you're different, you're unique. And so we're born wretched black-hearted sinners and then told how awesome we are by nature and by nurture. We are very self-oriented. And here's what I want you to hear. The goal of today. The goal of reading the gospel and studying the gospel is not that we would rush out of here and try harder. Humility is not a matter of a, of a goal. greater effort. Humility is a matter of complete surrender. Humility is not a better version of you.

Humility is you with the right view of Jesus. I've set in sermons like this and it's so easy for us to go out of here and just try to do humility, just try to do six things better today to be more humble. But my prayer for us is not that we would manufacture humility out there, but we would let Christ grow humility in here. It's not that we would try to go produce humility, but we would let the spirit of God in us produce the fruit of humility. Now, I'm trying to think of a way to talk about the difference between fruit and manufacturing. And I just began to think, I'm a visual guy, which is like saying the same thing, right? I'm a guy. I'm a visual. I'm a visual guy. And so I began to think about how do we think about Christ's producing humility in us and through us? One of the

the things I want us to begin to think about just for the next few minutes is this, is that humility, humility is actually starts with the right view of Jesus. We have a thing around here called a discipleship journey. It's this triangle. It's in our vision piece. You can find it online, but it's just a tool that we use to talk about what a disciple is. And one of the things that that triangle says is that a disciple, that we deepen our relationship with Jesus through faith that is fueled by worship, word, and prayer.

In other words, as we worship together, as we corporately gather and we sing songs of Jesus, as we worship with our lifestyles, what we're actually doing is taking our hearts affections and we're putting them on the person of Jesus. And as we study God's words, we're actually taking our mind's attention, and we're putting it on the truth and the life of Jesus. And as we're praying, we're intimately having a conversation with the creator of the universe. We're having a conversation with Jesus. And why is this so important?

Why does humility start here? Because here's the deal. When we get the right view of Jesus, humility is the byproduct of that. And what do I mean by right view? I mean like we gaze upon his beauty. Like we look at Jesus and begin to dwell on the fact that he was fully divine in heaven. And that Christ, as Philippians tells us, he laid aside the privileges of heaven and took on humanity. And it's not like he became 50% God and 50% man.

man, he was still fully God and fully man, a hundred percent God who put on flesh because God was planning to do something on our behalf that God could only do when putting on flesh, suffer and die. And so Christ took on flesh so that he would suffer and die on our behalf. The whole purpose behind Christ putting on flesh was that he would die a criminal's death and that the glory of God would be declared through the suffering of his own son. And we begin to just dwell on the person of Jesus and we think how powerful. perfectly perfect he is. How divinely divine he is. How glorious in nature he is. You know that Jesus never began and he never ends. He always was and always will be. And Jesus doesn't have to

try to love you. Jesus is love for you. And we begin to dwell on the beauty of Jesus and he's gloriously, fully God and fully man. And the glorious nature of Jesus begins to just overwhelm. every ounce of our fiber, every ounce of our being. We can't breathe and excel without thinking, Christ gave me the ability to even do that. We begin to stare at the glorious nature of Jesus, and what happens is then our heart is overwhelmed by his glory. I mean, like, the weight.

Glory means the weight or the renown of God, and the glory of Jesus, like, weighs our heart down. And in that moment, we are led to repent, of our self-righteousness. We're led to repent of our self-orientation. Why? We see how glorious Jesus is and we realize it's all about you. It's not about me.

And what happens is when we surrender our heart is that our actions begin to then, in gratitude, begin to kind of model the person of Jesus. In response to His grace, we are overwhelmed. And I'll tell you this, a heart that is constantly in check with the glorious nature of Jesus will constantly respond with humility. Now, Paul tells us something that we all know. Paul tells us there are times even when we are over around by the glory of Jesus, that there are sometimes, even when our spirit is just being nurtured and fed by the love of Christ,

that sometimes we still have this thing called the flesh that just kind of pops up. And we just got to learn to shame the flesh. Galatians chapter 5 says that this way, the spirit in me and the flesh, there's a constant battle. The spirit wants to obey Christ and the flesh just wants to serve itself. Paul says it this way. The things I want to do, I don't do, and the things I don't want to do, I keep doing. Well, what happens?

There's just constant battle. And what is healthy is that we reflect the glorious nature of Christ. Our hearts are overwhelmed and respond and repent and our actions model it. But there's sometimes, I'm just going to be honest with you. We just got to learn to shame the flesh a little bit. What do I mean by that? I mean there are some things that we just should probably practice that on their own are not enough, but in response to the glorious nature of Jesus, fulfill everything.

Like, I would encourage you, like, actually sit last. Like, any time you go to, like, a large lunch with people or a meeting or something, like, and you're at, maybe you're at a party or something and there's, like, sitting, I would encourage you literally sit last. Like, get in the back of the line and sit last. Why? Because you never, ever have to choose between, am I going to try to position myself and manipulate it? manipulate this situation to sit next to somebody, or am I just going to humbly take whatever

seats less? Or how about this one? Talk a little less. Like, talk a little less. I got a neighbor, I won't embarrass him. He's one of our elders, and I would hate to tell you, his name's Chuck Gersbach, because that might embarrass him. And every Tuesday night, when I go to take the trash out, I tell my bride, hey, I'm taking the trash out. Not because I'm, like, proud of, like, I take the trash out. That's my job. I have a wife, and I have two little girls. They produce trash, I take it out. I think they think I take it out daily the amount of trash they produce, but nonetheless, it's my job. I'm not telling Blair I'm going to take the trash out. I'm going to hurt these. I'm telling her because if Mr. Chuck is outside, the three-minute

trash run may become 45 minutes. And here's why. I love talking to Mr. Chuck. I have one game I play with him. I always try to get Chuck to talk about himself more than I talk about myself. You know why? Chuck is one of the most humble people I know. And humble people don't talk about themselves because they don't feel like they have anything to prove to you. So every time I walk out the trash and I'm, well, Mr. Chuck, how's your, how's your, how's your, how's your grandkids? And he'll tell me about 45 seconds about his grandkids. And he'll go, speaking of grandkids, how are the grandparents of your kids? And then 45 minutes later, I'm walking back to the house going, who he got me again, right? Literally, focus your energy

on talking less and asking more. And here's one more ways to shame your flesh. Start serving. Some of us, we show up to church, and this is a great step in this maturing of your faith. We start by showing up the church and going, I just need to be fed. But there's a moment in our maturity where we're no longer just consuming the goods and being fed, but we are led to contribute to the body. And I would tell you, one of the best ways to shame your flesh, you just start serving. And if you're scared to serve with like the three-year-olds, no problem. Serve with the two-year-olds.

Shame your flesh. Maybe you're like, I'm just, I can't commit to be here every other weekend to serve in the parking lot or reach team. No problem. Commit to be here every weekend. Why? Discipline your flesh to say it is not about me. It is about him. Now here's the problem.

Here's what happens so often is that we hear a good sermon and we start focusing on Jesus. Or maybe we hear a sermon about humility that actually says nothing about Jesus. That's a whole other conversation. And what happens is we begin to try to develop humility without, um, uh, uh, without intimacy with Christ. Humility as a virtue to the gospel response is just, it's exhausting and unattainable. What happens over time is that instead of focusing on Christ,

we begin to kind of lose sight of Christ. And so we're kind of growing, and we're kind of like our heart becomes, as our minds stop thinking about Christ, our heart starts longing for them. And over time, we are just all about our own actions. And we're just about how I behave and how I feel. And I'll say this, activity,

Without intimacy is exhausting. And in exhaustion, we finally just say, you know what, it doesn't matter. It's really about me. It's about my pleasures. It's about my desires. We start loving things and using people. And what we do over time is we just kind of focus the whole world on me and pride rises up. Now, maybe you're here right now or maybe you've been here.

And in this moment of kind of being all about you, occasionally we get convicted. it. And one of the dangerous things we can do with conviction is when our flesh gets shamed, then we're like, you know what, I can fix this. I'll just be a better version of me. I'm going to do behavior modification. I'm just going to work on me. I'm going to be a better version of me. You start to become a better version of you. And in that moment, you're like, I'm going to kind of do a little heart check. Now, some of you, you didn't really get much better. So in your heart check, you're like, well, I'm way better than Ted. I mean, Ted is so arrogant. I can't believe.

Ted's wife is married to him. I mean, you know, I tried to tell my wife one time, hey, baby, you don't have it that bad. There's a lot of other women who would be married to me. Did not go well. Don't try that, right? But we look, we go, look, I'm better in Ted. Or try this one. Hey, I'm better than I used to be.

This is what most of us think Christianity is about. It's about an imperfect me being better than an old imperfect me. And what happens in this, like, oh, I'm better than I used to be. As we show up at church and we're like, well, Jesus, are you proud of me? Are you proud of my humility? Because I sure am. And we begin to approach Christ and we're like, look, I had this problem, I started working on it. I'm better than I used to be. So Jesus, you better be proud of me.

Here's what scares me to death. Here's what scares me to death. I think more people are going to miss heaven because of legalism than any other sin. And what scares me is that in this model of I'm going to support the weight and expectations of Jesus, that in this model, my fear is that some of us would miss heaven because you were, just too good at earth. And you put this weight on your shoulder of behaving in a certain way. We call it self-righteousness, where you behave so well that you can support the expectations of Christ. You know what I pray for as one of your pastors? I pray for all the time. I pray that Lord would

break you, that he would rock you. Your flesh was never designed to carry the weight of a holy and perfect Christ. The expectations of God on us is perfection. And we, can't do that. My prayer is that something in your world would rock you and that you would realize in my flesh I can't carry the weight of expectation. Here's why. Because when we're broken and when we're bruised and when we're on our knees and we look at the glorious nature of Jesus and we think we're going to see his eyes and we think he's going to be disappointed in us and when we're broken and we look at him and all we can see is compassion. it'll change our lives forever.

We look into his eyes and we see compassion. What happens is our heart surrenders yet again. We surrender all of our rights for his righteousness. And then we don't try harder to be a better version of ourselves. What we actually do is begin to model our reaction to Christ because it's no longer, I'm going to work really hard to get Jesus to be proud of me. But Jesus has already gone to the cross and declared his glorious love for me. So I'm not trying harder. I'm just surrendering. And then every time the flesh

rears its head, we just quote scripture and we go, you know, the number one way to shame flesh is to put flesh to death. Paul says, take off your old clothes and put on your new clothes of righteousness. He talks about the fact that we had these old, sinful clothes that weighed us down. And here's my prayer for us is that we would understand that humility, humility is an action that we don't try harder to do, but humility is a reaction to what Christ has already done. Humility is not thinking less of yourself. That's pity.

When you think about yourself and you think, I'm just not worthy. You are worthy. You know how I know this? Christ went to the cross to declare your value. You don't get to tell him your value. He's already declared it. And his humility, it's not thinking less of ourselves.

It's not even thinking of ourselves less. It's exhausting to go, I'm going to think of myself less. I'm going to think of myself less. I'm going to think of myself less. Humility is not thinking less of yourself or thinking of yourself less. Humility is thinking more and more and more and more about the glorious nature of Jesus until you forget to even think about yourself at all. It's staring at his beauty and being mesmerized at his sacrifice, knowing that he's perfectly perfect,

that he's divinely divine, and being so over. overwhelmed with who Jesus is that we forget to even think about ourselves. We can live a carely free life because His word declares he cares so much for us. My prayer is that we would not live this upside down life in which we try to support the expectations of Jesus, but that we would fall in love with Jesus. When I came back from sabbatical, I had one phrase that God burned on my heart, and it was this, if we flex, God will humble us. But if we walk humbly, God might just flex amongst us.

What if? What if, because of our humility, Christ began to change our family? What if, because of humbling ourselves before the Lord, Christ used this church to put, I mean, just campus after campus after campus, so geography would never be an excuse for those who don't know Christ to know Christ. What if at your church? work instead of it said of you being the person who brought people to church what if because of your humility hundreds of people actually surrender their life to Christ not in a

building but in your cubicle what if because of our humility God would say I want to and I'm going to use you and here's how we here's how we're going to respond today it's not try harder it's not six things to humble yourself before the Lord it's this let's stare at his glorious nature. Let's sing about his glorious nature. Let's pray to him in his glorious nature. And let's let his glorious nature overwhelm our heart. Would you stand with me here in all campuses?

We're going to stand and we're going to respond. And here's how we respond. We respond to this as your home by giving of our ties and offering. We respond by coming and praying. And some of us to repent of our pride. And we're going to sing this song where we're going to declare you were perfectly perfect, you were divinely divine. And I want to encourage you, church,

to lean into this moment. At all of our campuses, there's no reason to rush out, but lean into this moment where we were just going to sing about the glorious nature of Christ. I'm going to pray, and when I say amen at all our campuses, we're going to go for it. Let's pray. Jesus, we love you and we thank you

for loving us. God, what your grace did for us is overwhelming to our souls. And God, we don't think of ourselves with pity. And we don't think, we don't try to exhaust ourselves by by thinking of ourselves less than being humble. We just want to stare at your glorious nature. We want to be mesmerized by you being perfectly perfect, divinely divine, and yet laying aside the privileges of heaven to come and to dwell amongst us in humanity and to go and to die on our behalf

so that we would know you. And so as we sing together, would you just dwell in our praises? And would you just declare to us that our worth is rooted in you? And therefore we can humble ourselves before the Lord because you care for us. It's in your precious and holy name we pray. Amen.