Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Humility

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

Contemporary people stare at the biblical concept of humility the way a cow stares at a new gate.  The approach of our culture is expressive individualism, and it completely flies in the face of what the Bible says about the importance of humility. So let’s look in Philippians 2 at this concept of humility.  This magnificent passage tells us about 1) a sickness we have, 2) what we would look like if we were healthy, and 3) how to get the cure. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 23, 2010. Series: The Real Signs of the Spirit. Scripture: Philippians 2:1-11. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. Many of us try to change through sheer willpower, conquering bad habits or forcing better behavior, only to find ourselves snapping back to old patterns. In today's message, Tim Keller is exploring the fruit of the spirit, showing how real transformation isn't about moral restraint, but a heart that through Christ is changed from the inside out. tonight's scripture reading comes from the book of philippians chapter two verses one through eleven if you have any encouragement from being united with christ if any comfort from his love

if any fellowship with the spirit if any tenderness and compassion then make my joy complete by being like-minded having the same love being one in spirit and purpose Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility, consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of God. of a servant being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man he humbled himself and became obedient to death even death on a cross therefore god exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name that at the name of jesus every knee should bow

in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. This is God's word. This is a great passage on humility that you just had read. When we have talked in the last few months about justice and the poor, I've always sensed that even though it's important, it's what the Bible says, we have the cultural window our back. Do you know what I mean? The culture says, great, we're really glad that you Christians are thinking about that. We're interested in that too. So you have your wind to the back.

But when you get to this subject, and this subject is humility. When you get to what the Bible says about humility, we have the cultural wind in our face. Contemporary people, especially contemporary New Yorkers, stare at the biblical concept of humility the way a cow stares at a new gate. Recently, a commentator on the trends in the culture said this. said humility has come under attack in our society over the last few decades. Self-effacement has become identified with conformity and self-repression. A different ethos came to the fore, which sociologists have called expressive individualism.

Instead of being humble before God in history now in our society, salvation is found through intimate contact with oneself. and by exposing the beauty, the power, and even the divinity within. See, that's the approach of our culture, and that completely flies in the face of what this text and what the Bible says about the importance of humility. Let's notice three things, this magnificent passage. We could easily do 30 weeks of sermons on just this passage, but we won't. Instead, I'll give you a top-level look at, this is going to tell us about a six-year,

that we have about what we would look like if we were healthy and how to get the cure. Sickness, a picture of health, and the cure. Now, the sickness is, find it in verse two and three. Be like-minded, he says. Have the same love. Be one in spirit and purpose. Now, he's describing a unified human community. This is what we all want. We all want to live in a human community that there's no fighting in divisions, but there's love and there's oneness of spirit, one of of mind and okay instead we have bombs in times square and political polarization and war and you say but this is actually talking about the church right that's the point the point is there's something wrong with the human heart so wrong that even inside a body like the church where everybody shares the same

faith there's all there's constant fighting the reason paul's bringing this up is you will know if you read just read on to the end of the short letter is there's there's contentions going on between a couple of key figures in the church churches are filled with fighting and divisions just like the rest of the world why because there's something wrong with the heart what is that well he mentions it he says if you're going to have oneness therefore do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit now the selfish ambition isn't a particularly illuminating phrase it really just means the spirit of divisiveness, which is kind of what we know is the problem. But the second phrase is crucial. The reason why we do things out of selfish ambition, or the reason why we have this

division while we're always fighting, is because of what he calls, what this translation calls vain conceit. But it's a single Greek word, kinodoxius. Kino means to empty, kinosis, to empty oneself. And doxa means glory and honor. respect what does it mean to be to be characterized by kinodoxia it means to be glory empty to be hungry for honor hungry for respect hungry for that kind of assurance because you don't feel like you are a person of importance this is radical cosmic insecurity this is feeling i don't count i don't matter i'm ephemeral i'm a wave upon this I need assurance that I'm okay, that I'm important, that I count,

you know, hungry for respect and for glory and for honor. This is the human soul. It's much better, is it not? It's much better to be hated and attacked than to be ignored. Remember at the end of the movie or the play, Amadeus? Why is the aging salieri in a kind of living hell? Because as this composer gets old, he's not disliked, he's been forgotten. And because he's been forgotten, that's hell.

To be absolutely and finally dismissed and ignored. Now, you see why, being glory empty, feeling like, I'm not important, I don't count, leads to the division. I mean, you can see it in a street gang. What are street gangs? They're filled with generally young men. that do not feel in any way valued by their society and very often not valued or loved by their families. And as a result, they walk down the street

and if you slight them slightly, they'll pull a gun on you. Because they're glory empty. Because they don't feel important. They fight. And you say, well, of course, that's easy to see. Yeah, that's them. They have low self-esteem, et cetera.

Yeah, I know, except if you read history, if you just read history, you'll know that nation states have always acted the same way. way as street gangs, you know, slight them slightly and they go to war. Because it's what we are corporately. It's what we are corporately. Why? Why are we this way? Well, think of what the Bible says. I don't have a better diagnosis. The Bible says we were made originally to live forever. But because we've turned away from God, now we're fading. We know. We were made to never be forgotten. We were made to stand in the presence of God and get his favor. We were made to

last. But because we've turned away from God, we know we're dying, we know we're fading, we know we're going to be forgotten, we don't feel real. We feel like a wave upon the sand. We feel like a moon beam in the hand and all that. And so we desperately look to everybody we possibly can to get them to say, you're good, you're important, you're worthwhile, you know, you'll never be forgotten, you're so significant, and we just desperate, and that's why we fight. Lewis Smeads, the Christian writer, says this about pride. Because what we're talking about, this hunger for glory, is pride. And he says, pride is, in the spiritual sense, is refusal to let God be God.

It's to grab God's status for oneself. It's wishing to be the creator, independent, reliant on one's own resources. And that is the greatest illusion, the delusional fantasy of all fantasies, cosmic put on. The fantasy that we can make it as our own gods, which is what, where everybody is, leaves us empty at the center. You hear that? It leaves us empty at the center. Therefore, we learn to swagger. We're attacked by demons of fear and anxiety, so we bluff. We look around, and whenever we see a new person, we use people as buttresses for the shaky ego that pride created. Every time you meet a new person, you are unconsciously wondering,

how can this person contribute to my need to prove that I count? Life, therefore, becomes a constant battle to use people to bolster your own self. So there's the sickness. Pride, which is a hunger for glory, a need for respect, a need to be assured that we're real. What would health look like then? If we didn't have this, what would health look like? And the answer is intriguing. It's all summed up in the word humility.

Because, see, keep on going. He says, in verse two, I want you to be unified. Verse 3A, the first part says, and the reason you're not is because of this emptiness, this vain glory. That's what the King James Bible, which is a little better. It translates emptiness, you know, devoid of glory. Because of your emptiness, because of your pride, therefore, he says, starting verse 3B, in humility, consider others better than yourselves.

each of you should look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others boy that tells you a lot but let me let's first of all look at the word humility what is it is a simple Greek word that means gentle modest deferential gentle modest deferring to others outside of the New Testament

this Greek word whenever it was used in any other kind of ancient Greek literature was always derogatory because in the Greco-Roman society, to be deferential and to be gentle and to be modest, was the attitude of a slave. See, that old society valued strength. And they believed that actually social stability was based on fear. People had to respect you. They treated you with respect. Then society would hold together. And the only way for respect is that people feared you. Gentleness and deference and

modesty. Ha, that's for slaves. And yet, this word in the Bible, or a version of it is used 270 times and almost always positively. You realize what a worldview revolutionist was in Western culture? The humility, only Christianity comes along. If you go back and you look at the Greeks and you look at the, you know, Aristotle and Plato, you look at all their emphasis on virtues, you'll never see humility in there. And yet, do you know how important humility is in the Bible? It's not just important.

I want you to think of something for a second. Jesus says the meek, the humble will inherit the earth. When Jesus says, take my yoke upon me and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest of your souls, what is he saying? Well, think about the gospel for a second. If you come to God and say, I want to have a relationship with you, look at all my accomplishments, look what I have done. I was going to turn you away, saying, you don't know who I am, you don't know who you are,

you don't know what the cross of Jesus Christ means. But if you come and say, oh, Lord, I repent, I need your grace, I have nothing with which to merit your favor, but I ask that you would save me for Jesus' sake. That's repentance and faith. You're saved by grace. You're saved through faith. But you know what that is? That's humility.

The only thing that can kill you, the only thing that can destroy you eternally is the lack of humility. You can lack almost any other thing, but not that. because that's what connects you to God. In fact, if you want to think about it, basically God's plan of salvation is to lift up the humble. He says so in Luke 1. His plan of salvation is to lift up the humble. Do you see how important it is?

Well, what is it? What is it? Well, actually, Paul gives a pretty good top-level answer, but let me, since one of the advantages of this series has been to give people tools for self-evaluation, let me take you to Jonathan Edwards he is he spent a great deal of time is a Christian minister that spent a great deal of time thinking about spiritual growth and true Christianity and in a couple of different places he spends a fair amount of time treating the subject of what does the Bible say humility is and I have summarized into four things what he says pride is and therefore opposed which is opposed to humility and they're actually pretty good ways for me to look at my own life and to think about myself he says pride is opposed to three four things and therefore pardon me pride is four things

and humility therefore is opposed to these four things drivenness scornfulness willfulness and self-consciousness okay think with me for a minute first of all humility is opposed to drivenness. Be careful. It is very possible to be passionate and hardworking and desiring excellence because you love the thing that you are pursuing. If you pursue excellence in art or in music, if you pursue excellence in business or education or your academic field, it might be because you actually love the field. It could be that, for example, you just love running and you love to see people run and you just love the athleticism of it. And if that's the reason why you are running and trying to run faster and faster as an athlete, if it's true that your competitiveness

is a joy-driven competitiveness, then you will be almost as happy if your friend breaks the record as if you do. But that's not how it usually works, is it? Because our competitiveness is not driven by joy. It's driven by an inner vacuum. This is the reason why there's a great place where C.S. Lewis says in his book, Mayor Christianity, he says, pride, real pride, gets no pleasure out of having something. Pride only gets pleasure out of having more of it than the next person. You may think you're proud of being successful or intelligent or good looking, but when surrounded by those who are equal or better than you, you lose all pleasure in those things. It's the comparison that makes you proud. It's the pleasure of being above the rest. And that's exactly

right. And so, first of all, Jonathan Edwards says, here's how you can tell if you are a proud person. You're driven. You need to succeed. You're always unhappy with, you're just, you didn't do that well. You didn't do it right. You can do better. You're driven. You're restless. But humility, is content content with circumstances content with being imperfect humility is the opposite of drivenness think about that secondly humility is the opposite

of scornfulness now by the way sometimes you can be sarcastic especially about a really really wrongful thing and you might want to use sarcasm to maybe get your point across but in general as I think Edwards rightly says

He says, treating others with contempt, jeering, ridiculing is always a manifestation of pride. Why? Because you're putting people down. That's the metaphor we use. You're putting people down so you can be above them. Instead, humility means treating all those who are lesser than you or opposed to you with courtesy, grace, and affability always. So one of the ways you see pride is drivenness. Humility is the opposite of that. One of the ways that, you see pride is scornfulness, mocking, sarcasm all the time, put downs, humility is the opposite of that. Thirdly, humility is the opposite of willfulness. Edward says that one of the marks of spiritual pride in churches is, he says, spiritually proud people are always absolutely sure of

every point of their beliefs. A proud person cannot admit they're wrong. Proud people can't admit they're wrong. They can't take advice. They can't take correction. They don't like repenting. If they repent, it's always under duress. They're not teachable. They're not open to advice. They're not willing to change their mind. They don't listen. They're not teachable. So willfulness. So pride is opposite to drivenness, scornfulness, willfulness, and self-consciousness. Now, think about this with me for a minute. When you and I think of proud people, we almost always think of arrogant people, but that's not the only form of pride. We think of people who are self-remoters and who are bragging all the time,

but that's not the only form of pride. Oh, no. Because ultimately, pride, the opposite of humility, is this insecurity, this need for honor, this need for glory. And that can be as much a manifestation, that can be as manifested as much through an inferiority feeling as a superiority feeling. because if you're always down on yourself and you're always beating yourself up or if you're afraid of compliments you're afraid of any kind of attention it's because you're just as painfully self-aware

you're just as absorbed in thinking about yourself you're looking at yourself and wondering you know how am I coming across as the person with a superiority complex so humility is the opposite of self-consciousness With Christmas just around the corner, we are inviting people to sign up for our Advent Devotional series, which you can receive daily from November 30th to December 24th. The daily meditations will help you take time to think about the meaning and joy that comes from Christ's birth. Each day of Advent, you'll receive a devotional with a meditation on a Bible passage that focuses

on why Jesus came into the world, to reconcile us to our Heavenly Father. We believe that during this short season, this is a great tool to help you focus on the hope, joy, peace, and love we have through Christ's birth. You can sign up by visiting gospelonlife.com slash advent. Again, to sign up, go to gospelonlife.com slash advent. In addition to the daily emails, you'll also receive a video message each Sunday. The weekly video message starts each week of Advent with a meditation from Tim Keller, followed by a brief discussion with Tim and Kathy talking about something they noticed to, in the meditation. It's our prayer that through this Advent series, you experience the hope

and joy that comes from Christ's birth, and that it is a source of encouragement to you this Advent season. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching. Listen, let me press this a little bit on you. In the screw tape letters, there's a devil named screw tape. This is written by C.S. Lewis. And he is... giving advice to his junior devil nephew on how to tempt a human being which he calls a patient.

So whenever you read something in a sermon out of screw tape letters you have to kind of turn yourself upside down because the devil giving advice to another devil about how to tempt a human being. But listen to this. Screw tape says,

I see your patient has become humble. Have you drawn attention to the fact? Catch him at the moment he's really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind, I'm being humble. And pride in his own humility will appear. Now listen to this. Abjection and self-hatred can do us such good, us demons,

if they keep the man concerned with himself. And self-contempt can be the starting point for a life contemptuous of all other selves and therefore a life filled with gloom, cynicism, and cruelty. so let your patient think of humility not as self-forgetfulness but as a low opinion of his own talents and character and see that brings us to the text itself what's so brilliant about this text is he says i want you to have humility well he describes it what does that mean each of you should look not only to your own interests but to the interests of others look at that he didn't say

hate yourself don't have any interests don't have any goals don't have any needs he didn't say that humility is what you're looking at that's the reason why what screw tape is saying and what c s louis is saying is true humility is not thinking less of yourself or thinking more of yourself it's thinking of yourself less it's not noticing yourself because you're not glory hungry it's not always worried about how are you looking

it's not being down on yourself it's not being up on yourself it's just not talking and thinking about yourself so much did you hear what screw tape said he says self-hatred is a wonderful way to get people to be cynical and gloomy and cruel. Because if you don't like yourself, then you're not going to like other people and you're going to be very cruel to them. So you see, humility is the opposite of self-consciousness, self-awareness.

Real humility is self-forgetfulness. The best way I can illustrate this is your body parts. If you go to work tomorrow, and somebody comes in saying, boy, my elbows feel great. You're going to say, well, the only reason anybody would ever say that, is if yesterday their elbows didn't feel great

because ordinarily if your elbows are working fine they don't grow attention to themselves it's somebody saying oh man my knees are bending so well today I mean when I sit down they bend when I stand up they unbend it's just incredible well you got to figure it must be that the knees weren't bending

I mean you would never even think about it unless there was something wrong you don't think of your knees unless there's something wrong with them you don't think of your elbows unless there's something wrong with them okay now let's look at your ego your sense of self if you were healthy

you wouldn't even think about how you're doing what people are saying about you you wouldn't even think about it you wouldn't be looking at yourself or your own interest you'd be looking at other things looking at God looking at your neighbor looking at everybody else

and yet we ought that's true you're always thinking about yourself how are you looking you're always getting your feelings hurt you're always getting, you're feeling insulted, you're feeling snub, you're feeling, you know, or here's a person over there that you want to like you more than really that he or she does. So you're always thinking about yourself, why, there's something wrong with your ego, just like if you're ever thinking about your elbow, there's something wrong with your elbow.

We're not healthy. We're vain, glorious, we're lacking in glory. And as a result, we're not humble at all. We're filled with drivenness, scornfulness, willfulness. and self-consciousness so what's the cure well i'd like to show you that this passage is giving us a top it's sort of a top cure it speaks broadly middle and in it and practically too it wasn't until fairly recently as well as i've known this passage this is one of the most famous passages in the bible if you're a theological student and you're trying to learn what is the bible teach about

Christ, you study this thing word for word, almost letter for a letter. I know I did, you know, a long time ago. It's an amazing, sweeping, magnificent hymn. It's a hymn. You notice why it's laying on the page the way it is, looking like it's in verse, because either Paul wrote this this way or else he was quoting somebody else's, but this, because of its lexical links, it's parallelism, its rhythm, this is a hymn, this is a song. It's a hymn of praise to the deity of Jesus Christ, the greatness of who he is and what he's done. Now here's what I want to ask, here's the first question, and this is actually the first answer to the cure here. Why would Paul do this? He's talking about something very, very practical. Humility and

fighting in the church. Very practical. And all of a sudden, he goes into this sweeping theological discourse. Why? And here's the reason why. You cannot work on humility directly. it's a byproduct of something else you can't work on it directly do you know what i mean by this i mean i've already do you realize they have already gotten less and less humble as the minutes have gone by here don't you know why in other words it's impossible to work on it directly we kind of got that from the screw tape letters there real humility is not thinking about yourself but that's what we're doing so for example okay you've got this little you know this little set of evaluation tool in your head now for a minute.

I don't know how long they'll be there, but for a few days, you might remember, drivenness, scornfulness, willfulness, and self-consciousness, okay, next time you see somebody being scornful, next time you see somebody being willful, what are you going to do? You're going to go,

proud. Not me. I'm not going to do that. And the only way you can possibly work on humility is to really lose it. You know why? Because you can't work on humility. If humility is self-forgetfulness,

you can only work on not appearing proud. You can only work on appearances, which is to destroy it. Humility is the shyest of virtues. You can't talk to humility without it going away. It just doesn't want to be there. And therefore, you can't work directly on humility. You mustn't try to work directly on humility.

Well, then what are you supposed to do? you're supposed to look at someone else and this isn't just theology this is a hymn it's written to be chanted or to be recited or to be sung and what is paul saying paul's saying the way we're going to fix what is the most wrong with us in our center you've got to see jesus you've got you've got to have the theology you have to have biblical doctrine on fire in your heart

something you praise god for something that captures your magic nation, who Jesus is and what he has done. And it's doctrine on fire, theology on fire, in your heart, humility is a byproduct of wanting something more than to be humble. Because if you want to be humble, it's all about you. It's all about you. If you want to be humble, why would you want to be humble? Except, I mean, I don't want to look proud or I want to, you know, I want to be right or I want to, you got to want him. You got to worship him. You've got to see him. Humility is a byproduct of wanting something more than humility, wanting him first. That's the top, that's the first part of the cure. The second part of the cure, though, it's not, this is not just doctrine

in general. Look at what it is. It's a, it's a, it's a trajectory. In fact, somebody said that this passage of verses 5 to 11 is actually a symphony in three movements. The first movement is incarnation. Though he was God, he became human. The second motion is to atonement. Though he was human, he didn't just have a nice comfortable life, but he went to the cross. And the third movement is up. He comes down, he goes even lower, therefore God has highly exalted him. Now, what did he do? Here's what he did. This is the heart of it all. Right in the center of this passage it says and being it says it says though in the very nature of god he did not count equality with god something to be grasped in verse seven but made himself nothing now do you know what

that word is the greek word kynosis canosis does that sound familiar to you yes it says he emptied himself though he was god he emptied himself and the big question that theologians have been asking for about two thousand years is emptied himself of what doesn't say it just says he emptied himself and some people have said oh of course he was god so he emptied himself of his deity he emptied himself of his divinity but that's not what it says it never says that he gave up being god it says he started being a servant he did not shed his divine nature he assumed a human nature and more than that he became not just a king he became a servant and there it is. He emptied himself of his glory, not his deity. What? Yeah. Listen, in heaven, if you were

transported to heaven, then or now, and you saw Jesus as God, his godness manifested itself through an expression of glory, his beauty, his brightness, it would just knock you down. When you see something beautiful. When you see a piece of art or a waterfall or anything, it's just absolutely beautiful, even earthly things that are beautiful. You've got to adore, right? It's so glorious. It just evokes adoration. But Jesus Christ came without that. Isaiah 53 says, he had no beauty that we should desire him. He emptied himself of his glory. He emptied himself of his beauty. He emptied himself of that which evokes honor and so he came and he was lonely and he was poor and eventually he was beaten and he was tortured and he was killed he emptied himself of his glory he became

small not a king at all he became rejected he became beatable and he was beaten he became rejectable and he was rejected. He lost all of his glory. He came out of his glory. He didn't stop being God, but he emptied himself of his glory. Therefore, God has highly exalted him. Why? Why is he resurrected? Why is up there? Because he saved us. He took our punishment upon himself. So he's redeemed a new humanity and he's leading us into the future. And so there it is. There's a trajectory. What is the trajectory? Everybody. The way up is down. the way to be truly rich is to give away the way to rule is to serve

and the way to become infinitely happy is to not seek your own happiness but seek the happiness of others and the most glorious thing of all the greatest form of glory is to give away your glory for somebody else and now you see the word kinosis shows up twice and look at it. You and I are desperately trying to fill ourselves with glory,

but we end up empty. But Jesus Christ, who had true glory, emptied himself so we could be full. Full? Yes. Because Jesus Christ became small, we are big in the eyes of the Father. Because Jesus Christ lost all of his glory, we are now given his righteousness

and his record. This is what the gospel is. That Jesus Christ was treated the way we deserve, So now, when we believe in him, we are treated as he deserves to be treated. And you know what this means? Jesus Christ looks at you and says, to me and in me, you are more precious than all the jewels that lie beneath the earth. To the degree you know that and believe that.

To the degree you are gripped and you are praising God and you're singing about Jesus' trajectory for you, you will be able to walk that same tree. trajectory here. Because you will know the way up is down. The way to be rich is to give away. The way to be happy is not to seek your own happiness, but the happiness of others. And when you see that he did that for you, that fills you up. So you're not empty anymore. And you'll be able to not have to think about yourself and out you go. Let me give you just one practical thing on this. I've already told you that in a sense you can't work on your humility, but you can

work on your pride. Here's what I remember. This King James version, the King James version of Philippians 2.7 is he made himself of no reputation. And I remember some years ago, one of the humblest men I've ever worked with was a pastor on our staff named Dick Kaufman. He was here in the 90s. And I always wanted to know, you know, you can't say to a humble person, what is the secret of your humility? Because if they answer, you'd have to go find somebody else. You know, you've ruined them right there. You know, they said, oh, why, thank you. Yeah, let me think about it. I guess it must be, no, you don't want that. You don't want that at all. But I do remember one day he confessed to me that there are two things that he couldn't stand,

hardly. One is when he didn't do his best. And the other was when he got real sharp unfair criticism. You know, he said, if I get good criticism, okay, if I get unfair criticism, or if I feel like I didn't do my best. I said, so why does that bother you so much? He says, because there's nothing more important to me, unfortunately, than my reputation. There's nothing more important to me than my reputation. It means everything to me. If I think anything is hurting my reputation, then I just start to fall apart. And he says, but here's what I've learned to do, and it's really helped. I meditate on Philippians 2.7. I realize Jesus made himself of no reputation. He lost his reputation for me. And if his reputation didn't mean anything for him,

If he gave it up for me, then I can give it up for him. Do you know how to do that? Is there a place in your life? Is there a spot in your prayer life? Is there a place where you regularly hear Jesus say, in me and to me, you are more precious than all the jewels that lie beneath the earth? So why the heck do you care if somebody snubbed you?

Why do you mind what you look like there? Who cares about your reputation? When you know that I love you like this. Is there someplace where something like that happens in the depths of your soul? See, that's how you develop humility, not by looking at yourself, but by looking at him. I heard a story some years ago about a young man who went into a little British town to climb the mountain right behind the town, and they all said, oh, now look, it's higher than you think, and the weather is worse than you think, but he was sort of overconfident,

and he didn't go up with appropriate gear, and he thought he knew what he was doing. so he walked out of the village one morning to go up the mountain with his head held high and several hours he came back crestfallen he hadn't even gotten halfway up and it was an old lady who saw him come back in and said son if you'd gone up the way you came down you would have come down the way you went up which is another way of saying humble yourself under the mighty hand of god and he will exalt you in due time let's pray father we thank you for the gift of humility, which is not something that we ever get, if we ask for it, look for it, see whether we've gotten it or not. It's a shy virtue. But we know this, that if we look at you

and we look at your humility and we look at what you've done for us, and we just look at it and look at it until it catches fire in our hearts, until it moves us to tears, it's going to change us. We will not be as marked by drivenness and scornfulness, and will. We will not be as marked by drivenness and scornfulness and willfulness and self-consciousness. So we pray that you would make us like your son, who came not to be served, but to serve and give his life a ransom for many. Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel and Life podcast. We hope that today's teaching encouraged you to go deeper into God's Word. You can help others discover this podcast by

and reviewing it. And to find more great gospel-centered content by Tim Keller, visit gospel and life.com. Today's sermon was recorded in 2010. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Thank you.