A Long Island Church Reaching People and Growing Deeper for Christ
Being Humble
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Being Humble
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Being humble is recognizing our dependence on God, viewing things as He does and not as we or the world does and coming to him recognizing our sinfulness. As we discuss humbleness, we need to remember throughout this discourse: John 15:5 – “apart from him, we can do nothing”. As long as we keep this in mind, we will be able to agree on the points laid out moving forward. However, as long as we think that we are able to do anything without God’s hand, then we cannot understand what it means to be humble. This is the stumbling block our culture has tripped over today. With that, we need to begin our conversation with the fact that God is the Almighty and Holy Creator of all:
Yet even though He is the all powerful and Holy Creator, he chose to come into this world for our sake: Philippians 2:5-8 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Even on this Earth, he humbled himself:
As Jesus humbled himself, we ought to also:
If you aren’t humble, don’t feel bad – after the disciples were with Jesus for 3-years, they were still talking about who was the greatest among them (at the Last Supper). Jesus’ response to them: Luke 22:25-27 And He said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who have authority over them are called ‘Benefactors.’ But it is not this way with you, but the one who is the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like the servant. For who is greater, the one who reclines at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at the table? But I am among you as the one who serves. Yet even as we recognize that the disciples fell short, we are called to be humble:
We are all sinners. We have all fallen short. The problem is that we forget that we have sinned against God and we become proud in our salvation. Jesus, who is our salvation, was humble. Yet we who did nothing for our own salvation are proud. We do not remember from where we came. We are taught that since we have been forgiven our sins by the blood of Jesus, that we should remember them no more. Is this how Paul acted? Paul persecuted the church. He was part of the murder of Stephen. He imprisoned believers. Yet after he came to be saved, he didn’t forget all these things. Instead, he reminds us of what he did and he calls himself the greatest sinner. This is the secret to Paul’s humbleness. He never forgets what he has done and who he was before Jesus saved him. This is always in his mind so that he can never become proud of who he is. His pride is in God, the all-powerful and Holy Creator and this causes him to become humble in himself knowing that he is a sinner and that he was destined for hell, but only by the mercy and grace of God, has he now been blessed in many ways. Paul keeps these sins he has committed close to mind because he knows that he can very easily return to sinning again. In Romans 7, he tells us that he desires to do that which he knows he should not. He never claims to be holier than thou. He never says that he is better than anyone else since he is the great apostle to the gentiles. He knows his salvation is from Jesus and so is always humbled by what Jesus has done for him as we see immediately following in Romans 8. It is God who does these things for him and he is humbled by this. Romans 5:20-21 but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. This isn’t saying that we should sin more so that we can attain more grace. It is saying that no matter how much we have sinned, that God’s grace is greater and can overcome our sin. This is a key to our being humble. When we realize the things we have done, how can we not become humble before God for the things that He has done for us? If we forget our sins and act as if we are righteous, then we take God’s glory for ourselves and we’ve received our rewards here on Earth. However, if we remember our sins and recognize that we are only forgiven by the blood of Jesus, then how can we not become humble? If you are having a hard time humbling yourself, you need to remind yourself that you were heading to eternal death. You need to remember those things you’ve done – and the things you haven’t done. Remember these things and humble yourself before the Lord. If you are having trouble remembering the sins you have committed, read Matthew 5-7. What we miss is that without humility, there is no faith. Faith is recognizing that we are unable to do anything without God. Faith is realizing that we would be heading to eternal death if it were not for God’s grace in giving us Jesus’ work on the cross for our salvation. As long as we hold on to our self-confidence, self-effort, self-centeredness, we can never have true faith, which requires confidence in God, God’s effort in our life and God being the center of our lives. We see this truth in Jesus’ reaction to people whom he called great in faith: Matthew 8:5-10 and Matthew 15:21-28. In both, the case of the centurion and the case of the Canaanite woman, we see that Jesus says that he has not seen such great faith and how great the faith is. In both cases, Jesus’ words come after he sees the humbleness of heart that these people have. Both recognize they are not worthy of anything but they come humbly to the One who can help them in their need. Both tell Jesus how unworthy they are and both are commended for great faith. How we desire to hear those same words from our Lord! How we yearn to hear him say to us, “What great faith I have not seen!” or “Your faith is great!” Yet will we hear this? When we are with our Lord and our God, will we hear these words from him? His Word has shown us the way; we have the roadmap to great faith. God has shown us that it is in humbleness that we will find ourselves pleasing to God for it is only in humbleness that great faith can exist. Yet let us not fool ourselves into thinking that we can be humble and lead a comfortable life. Phil 2:8 tells us that Jesus “Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Humbleness leads to death. In fact, humbleness and death are inseparable. You cannot be humble without dying to self and you cannot die to self without being humble. One of our problems is that we don’t like to die to self. We want to be able to continue to live for ourselves while we call ourselves Christians. But the Bible doesn’t give us that option. If we are to be Christians, we are to humble ourselves to God, which means we need to die to ourselves and put God first in all things. “But I already do that,” you say. Is this really true? Do you know that the almighty powerful and holy God knows your heart and that there is nothing you can hide from Him? If you were to be told to put God before your child, would you do it? If you were to be told to put God before your money and job, would you do it? If you were to be told to make God a higher priority than your comfort, would you do it? If there is anything that you have placed before God and you have made a great justification for it, you can call yourself an idol worshipper. If anything is a higher priority than God and you refuse to change that priority, you have not died to self, but you have made yourself and those things into God. Yet if you realize there is something that holds you back from placing God first in your life, then die to it, humble yourself. You will find that when you place God first, that God will bless you and you will have your reward in heaven. Jesus humbled himself and died to self even unto death on a cross. His reward was not on Earth. By his own admission, he had nothing, not even a place to lay his head. When the Roman guards threw lots for his clothes, he officially died with nothing to his name. Why would we expect different? Is our faith great enough to humble ourselves and die? Our problem is that we think happiness comes from our things, our comfort, our family. Our culture has ingrained in us that we must have these things to be happy. But this is not what the rest of the world, the rest of history or the Bible tells us. In the world, there are many who suffer for Christ in the persecuted Church. They have no things. They find comfort not in their living situations but in God. It is only in the past 100 years that we have moved from an agricultural culture to what we now see today. The idea of living without running water, indoor bathrooms, available food wherever we go is all new. Luxury cars, airplane travel and instant entertainment were all non-existent. All these ideas of happiness are for our time and our culture, but it is not biblical, nor is it historical. This is a new idea – that we need all these things to be happy. We have become brainwashed as to think that the only way we can be happy is to live like the world and have the things of the world and the ways of the world. The sad thing is that we know that the world is not happy. We see the number of people with depression continue to grow. We see suicides continue to rise. We see people snap and start shooting up schools, malls, post offices and trains because they were not happy. Yet we continue to follow the culture’s powerless formula for happiness. How many failures does it take to realize that our culture has it wrong and it does not know how to bring happiness? 2 Corinthians 12:10 Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong. Philippians 4:11b-12a for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means We too can learn to become happy not based on our situations. Paul was happy with the things that came his way – whether they were from God or from man. He realized that when he was weak, then he was strong. When he was humbled and made weak in the eyes of the world, it was then that he was strong in faith and in the eyes of the Lord. He learned to be content and find happiness in whatever circumstances he was in. He realized that it wasn’t the circumstances that brought happiness and contentment but his relationship with God through Jesus. If we want to be happy, we need to change our mindsets and stop thinking that we need to be great in the world, rich in the world, worthy of honor by those who live in the world. If we want to be happy, we need to be like Paul who was able to worship God in prison, rejoiced in the Lord always and explained that this joy came not from his circumstances but by his humility before God. God gives grace to the humble.
So here we see the final point: the reward we look forward to, our reason for desiring humbleness. It is that when we humble ourselves, we will be exalted by God. The world may never praise us or exalt us. The world will look at us and laugh quietly as they self-righteously say as the Pharisee said, “God, I thank you that I am not like them”! But Jesus explains that it is the humbled sinner who beat his breast and said, “God be merciful to me, a sinner” who was justified. The world has always and will always think that we can be exalted by our own efforts but God has shown us that it is only by humbling ourselves that we can truly be exalted. As Jesus was exalted on the cross and not while he was here on Earth, so can we be exalted at the end of our lives here on Earth. Let us know that it is through our humbleness that we will be exalted. It is not through the things we know or the things we have done. If you think you will be exalted because of what you have done, then you are like the Pharisee who did many things that seemed in his mind to be for God but these things did not bring exaltation to him. What brings exaltation is recognizing how sinful we are and how helpless we are to do anything about it, humbling ourselves at the mercy and grace of God and knowing that it is God who will exalt us and not the world. Then when we see our God face to face, we can be certain that he will say to us – “What great faith you have”! 9 Ways to be humble:
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