Proverbs - Humility: The Joyful Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness

We study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel, as most of you know.

We are taking six weeks to just take a few themes from uh the book of Proverbs, that ancient treasure trove of God's wisdom.

We do have some uh extra copies.

If anybody needs a copy, feel free to raise your hand up.

Somebody will drop one off at your aisle.

And uh, if you uh want to uh uh look up any of the passages that we happen to be taking a peek at today, you can you can do that.

Humility is our theme, as uh Kim mentioned earlier.

It's a fascinating subject to study.

And uh we've only really got a few minutes to consider the connection between wisdom and this beautiful virtue of humility, to ponder what humility is, uh how we can nurture humility within our our our own character, and the role that humility plays uh if we desire to walk in the wisdom and ways of God.

And so um we'll we'll be focusing in on that.

I was trying to think of a title for today's sermon.

There's the one that we settled on, and there were a couple throwaways, like like this one I thought didn't work at all.

Um humility, the one virtue I'm really good at.

Uh pro tip, uh, when it comes to humility, there's no such thing as a humble brag or any of that, any kind of brag whatsoever.

Um, I like this one too.

Um, the one virtue my spouse needs more of.

Now, if um if you're not married, you you know, you could say my neighbor, my roommate, or my co-worker.

That's that's fine.

But I'm still not gonna use that as the subject of the sermon.

Um I like this one too: seven easy steps to humble someone.

Just sound, you know, that's like like just sign on to Twitter or just sign, what's that, X now or whatever it's called?

Just sign on to Facebook or whatever, and that's everybody's mindset is I'm gonna get me somebody, you know, and there's that that sort of uh I don't think it's easy to humble others.

I I think they resist.

As do we when we get in our defensive postures.

Uh, I started getting a little closer when I why it's not always about you.

Okay.

And now I thought, okay, now that's starting to get a little better.

I can kind of see, I think everybody might understand a title like that, or how to get over yourself.

And then I thought, well, no, then that that'll make this the most shared sermon online that we have ever had.

Because a lot of you will be sending it to someone you're thinking of instead of prayerfully considering how it might uh then as they consider the world that we live in, and you know, why uh there's sort of a you know, so many self-help books.

If there were, I mean, if they worked, would there be so many?

I guess I have to ask that question.

If they worked, would we need the self-help section in the bookstore?

I don't think we would.

Um there's a trouble with self-esteem.

There's some good to it, too.

I'm not saying it's it's all bad.

Please don't hear me saying that, but um uh I don't, I, you know, we're not we don't get you to come in here so that we can remind you that you're just dirt in the toenail of the body of Christ or something like that.

That's not that's not the goal here to sort of, you know, beat everybody up and send them off really depressed about themselves and the world that they live in.

But I do like our title.

It's kind of a mashup of a couple of books that I enjoyed reading uh this week.

Tim Keller has one called uh The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness, and Gavin Ortland has a book called Humility, The Joy of Self-Forgetfulness.

And I thought, well, man, those guys are really smart.

Let's just call it the joyful freedom of self-forgetfulness, and we'll we'll take a little bit uh from each of them.

Let me pray for us, and then we're gonna read some stuff up on the screen.

So uh some verses from Proverbs.

Um this comes, uh, this prayer for illumination comes from Ephraim, the Syrian fourth century church father.

Uh he wrote 400 hymns all the way back then.

Isn't that amazing?

Yeah.

Lord, master of my life, give me not a spirit of sloth, vain curiosity, lust for power, and idle talk, but give to me, your servant, a spirit of soberness, humility, patience, and love.

O Lord and King, grant me to see my own faults and not to condemn my brother.

For you are blessed forever and ever.

Amen.

Oh God, cleanse me, a sinner.

So humility does indeed run uh all the way through the Bible from cover to cover.

Um let's do what we did.

I'll I'll throw up a couple slides, and we did this a couple weeks ago.

We'll we'll uh I'll put two verses on each slide and we'll start with you guys.

You read the top verse and you guys read the bottom verse.

You don't have to just clarify, you don't have to read the reference that's up there as well.

I just post those because I think if if some of these verses catch your eye, you might want to go back and look at them later.

But we're gonna read these with gusto, okay?

Um, and and we're gonna read them and and we're gonna read them slow enough that we want them to sink in a little bit.

Okay, let's start over here.

When pride comes, with the humble is wisdom.

The fear is wisdom.

Yeah, so so notice there the connection uh as we're looking for the wisdom of God and the ways of God.

Notice the connection between the humble or with humility as a as a beautiful, handsome characteristic of heart, and with wisdom itself.

Um we're also going to see how it works in many directions.

Humility as we go along.

Okay, over here.

Pride and a haughty.

It is better with a lowly than to end a high pride.

See how it's more important than how much stuff you have.

Uh you see how on the first verse, pride, the opposite of humility, actually leads us onto a self-destructive path.

And in so many ways, you can probably think of somebody who's self-destructed just because they're too proud.

Or their relationship fell apart because they're there's just too much pride.

Um, so yeah, that's that's pretty clear to see, isn't it?

Okay, over here.

Before the heart of man is haughty, but humility goes before honor.

The reward of humility are riches, honor, and life.

There's practical outcomes that attend the humble in heart and those who embrace humility as a way of life over here.

Then do you see a man wise in his own eyes?

There's more hope.

A man's love spirit will take harm.

Yeah, all right, there's so much here.

Um we could spend time with each slide, probably uh a 30-minute uh sermon easily.

I'm gonna ask a question before you answer by uh indication, just by raising your hand.

Think it through.

How many of you could honestly say you can think of somebody that you know right now or that you have known in the past that exhibits this beautiful, handsome habit, this quality of heart we're calling humility based on your understanding of it?

Raise your hand if you can think of somebody.

Come on, raise them up, Pilas.

Let's be proud of our humble ones.

Yeah, that's good.

All right, now raise your hand if you thought somebody might be thinking about you.

And what I think that shows, the fact that you laugh, that's good.

We're on our road to wisdom here, okay?

This is this is really good.

Um I like the way Lewis said it.

If anyone would like to acquire humility, I think I can tell them the first step.

The first step is to realize that one is proud.

If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.

It's one of those jewels of the entire biblical worldview, isn't it?

Humility is if you think you've got it, you probably don't.

Pride is if you don't think you have it, you probably do.

Um it's really interesting to ponder through this.

Some have claimed uh a little humility might have saved the Titanic back in the year 1912.

Uh, some of you may have heard that uh on launch day, the legend is that um on its maiden voyage, someone asked an employee of the White Star Line whether the ship was safe.

His reply was, not even God Himself could sink this ship.

And uh and sadly, 1,500 people uh lost uh were lost at sea.

I heard another preacher say once that humility is God's plan A, humiliation is God's plan B.

And then he said, choose plan A.

It's always good.

I think that's really, really good.

Jesus, in talking about humility, said, Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

That from uh Matthew chapter 23.

Matthew 23 · chapter mention

So what so what is this thing?

And we've kind of described it a little bit in some of these proverbs.

Sometimes we gain insight, though, I think by describing what something is not.

Uh that helps us to see what it is.

Uh in this case, some of the opposites of humility, I just made a little list myself, but pride, arrogance, self-obsession, superiority, vanity, conceit, um, entitlement towards ourselves, uh, contempt toward others.

Is any of that taking up residence in your heart as we enter the election year?

Any of any of that taking up residence in your heart just as you go to work?

Just as you rise each day in your own household?

Um really uh interesting week for me.

In contrast, humility maintains a modest, realistic view of one's own importance and significance, a balanced disposition of heart and mind toward oneself, one's status, and one's achievement.

Uh another help uh that I found this week as I was considering, well, how do we nurture humility?

And even in just in the practical realm, here's where you live.

Look up on the screen there.

I mean, that's us.

And sometimes it's really helpful to be reminded of how small we are.

And I think at the same time, um, as Bible believers, as people of faith, it's really good to remind ourselves of how mad majestic, how big God is, because I think a lot of us tend to think of God in terms of how we even look at ourselves.

And we're often creating God in our image, and then what the result is is that our God becomes too small.

Um, those he might accept, those he might love becomes too small a list.

Those he might show grace to becomes a shorter list.

Because we think he's just like us when he's not, his thoughts are higher than our thoughts, his ways are higher than our ways, and it's really good for us to remember that.

By the way, those of you who do hold a little uh bit too high a view of yourself, I'd like to point out that since with astronomy we realize there is now no, there's no center of the universe, therefore you cannot be it.

Um and neither can the person you're thinking of, whoever that might be right now.

Um each of us are uh one of close to eight billion human beings on this dust ball-sized planet up there.

I mean, look how tiny we are.

And and one of my favorite stars to look at at night, I'm Kim and I enjoy uh going out at night sometimes to looking up in the night sky.

Arcturus comes around during the summer, and we can see Arcturus, and yet it's so far away, you know?

And it's so much bigger even than our sun, you know?

So what you see up there is nothing.

I mean that that's our sun, and I think I think the estimate is that you could put, I think it's 1.3 billion earths inside of that sun, just in terms of volume itself.

That's amazing to me.

Um I also uh love the word humility and its etymology.

It comes from that Latin word humus, which means soil, earth, or dirt.

And I think we're sometimes reminded of this when we go to funerals and we hear ashes to ashes, dust to dust, right?

Um but the Bible teaches us that we're created beings.

And all the way back in the book of Genesis, we're God, I mean, God describes how he kind of scooped up two God-sized fistfuls of dirt dust and breathed life into it after he fashioned and shaped and formed man and woman in his own image.

And that's the unique thing about human beings, uh, all creation.

The only thing that the creation event teaches us that is is created in the image of God, Imago Dei, is the human person.

I think that's fascinating.

So at one and the same time, we're just made of these raw materials that are simply dirt.

And at the same time, we're in the image of God.

That's the beautiful paradox of the Christian faith and of a biblical worldview of what it means to be a human person.

That's why we now have a basis for actually saying that it's not just a political or moral issue to me, that human life is valuable and intrinsically valuable.

But it's actually a theological and a biblical issue for me.

And I hope it is for you as well.

Every single human life, even if they don't believe in the existence of God, every single human life, at the very least, has been created in the image of God.

I don't bear that image very well sometimes, neither do you, if you're honest.

And we can probably all think of some people that really don't bear it very well.

But each and every one of us has this intrinsic value because of we are human beings created in the image of God.

And that means I cannot identify someone else as a repugnant other.

No matter what they've done to me, no matter how they act, no matter what they believe, no matter how they're voting.

And we'll be hitting that one hard for the next little bit because we want to be an oasis from the hate and the rancor and the acrimony that's out there that you're being smothered with all the time.

When you come in here, Jesus is more important to us than anything else.

And because we have a common view of who Christ is as our king, see, we can rise above those kinds of temporal and earthly differences that might divide us in some way.

There are times when I don't actually get this right in my head about being sort of created in his image and also being at the same time just you know made of earth and dust.

And it works against sometimes, when I forget that, it works against the way I'm thinking about God or responding to God, or it works against the way I'm thinking or responding to others, or it works against the way I'm looking in the mirror.

And by that I just mean thinking about myself.

Um, because I think there's something we can learn about all three of those relationships, a relationship with God, our relationship with others, and our relationship even with ourselves.

And I'll spell it out this way.

I think humility, this joyful freedom of self-forgetfulness, begins with God.

I think that's where it starts, a recognition of who God is.

That I'm not God, that you're not God, that nothing else is God except God.

And Francis Schaeffer used to draw that big line and just say, there's this distinction, there's this line between God, the creator of everything, and over here on this side, everything else that isn't God.

Which includes us.

Even though we have the distinction of being created in the image of God, unlike any cockroaches or parrots or plants or any other kind of created thing.

It's fascinating.

But God is over here, we're all created over here and on this side, and that's why we need to have humility before God.

If we want to walk in the wisdom and the ways of God, we must bow before God in humility in every category, intellectual categories, moral categories, spiritual categories, physical categories, philosophical categories.

We must bow.

He's the creator, he's unique that way.

Suite Generis, there is not another one.

He's one of a kind.

And that line, see, when you start to try to blur that, what happens is we get haughty, we get proud, we try to take control back, we want to create ourselves, we want to define ourselves, or we want to define others.

Or we want to worship something that isn't God.

It's very important, I think, that we keep that line and hold that line.

Um, the current social imaginary is training us, and more importantly, training our young to see themselves as belonging to themselves within the hubris of believing that we are our own ultimate authority.

We must then reject and even silence all ideas that would suggest otherwise.

I've said it before, it's no longer truth that's in question, but reality itself.

Some clever human beings have created all kinds of virtual realities and cyber plazas where their users become almost imperceptibly addicted to use by their stealthy operational algorithms.

As the mindless, clueless drift off to sleep in the proverbial dream of the matrix, we may find ourselves in another Tower of Babel moment.

In Genesis 11, we read how a self-absorbed humanity set out to build a city, a tower, and a name for themselves.

Autonomy is the altar at which we worship today.

We meaning the culture.

In our hubris, we are abandoning all sense of humility.

And I believe we are also losing sight of our humanity in that regard.

So revisiting the ancient wisdom of Proverbs reminds us there is a God, and you are not him.

Neither am I.

That's really important.

We cannot take God's place, and if we even begin to try, we do so to our own demise.

We need to restore our humility before God if we're gonna find the joyful freedom of self-forgetfulness.

Sometimes the deep wisdom that we need is displayed most brilliantly in the deep past, in the deep history.

And so I'm gonna throw up on the screen a verse from 2 Chronicles chapter 34, where the Lord speaking through a prophetess, not a prophet, but a prophetess named Huldah, goes to young Josiah, and the Lord speaking through this prophetess Holdah says, Because to Josiah, because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before God when you heard his words, and because you humbled yourself before me, tore your clothes and wept before me, a sign of contrition, repentance, surrender, submission to God, right?

2 Chronicles 34 · chapter mention

I truly have heard you.

See the connection between humility and a right relationship with God.

Humility has an eager mind, a tender, teachable heart, and this uh submission before God, a faith that God knows better, and God always knows best.

Jesus later would say this: whoever then humbles himself as this child, he had a child brought before him, and he stood the child in front of everybody he's speaking to, and he said this.

If you humble yourself like this child, he's the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

That's not to become childish, but to become childlike, dependent, eager to learn, open, teach me, reveal yourself to me, God, uh, over and over like that.

And this half uh Jesus, half-brother named James, same mother, different father, he said this.

But he gives greater grace, therefore it says, God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

A few verses later, humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and he will exalt you.

I don't know about you, but I can always use more grace.

Well, actually, I do know about you.

We could all use more grace.

Somebody give me a non-denominational amen, please.

Yeah.

I just want to make sure I'm tracking with you here.

You know, it's because it is a very progressive thing.

This week uh studying a subject like this, of course, even when we talked about it with the preaching team, there's three or four of us around the table.

And it's kind of like, oh, you want that?

You want that one?

You want that one?

You know, it's kind of one of those things nobody's an expert at.

Um and but then I'm reminded at the same time that none of us that get up here and open the Bible and teach from it or preach from it, none of us do this because we've got something worked into our lives 100% right.

No, we we get up here and do this because it's the Word of God speaking to us.

And it's 100% true.

And so we're learning together, even as we're speaking, we pray for each other that the Lord would speak to us, then speak through us.

And then we as a uh a congregation would learn how to do this together.

Indeed, it is a progressive thing, learning what humility is all about.

Lewis said, and Mir Krishna, I wish I had gotten a bit further with humility myself.

If I had, I could probably tell you more about the relief, the comfort of taking the fancy dress off, getting rid of the false self with all its, look at me, aren't I a good boy?

And all its posing and posturing to get even near it, even for a moment, is like a drink of water to a man in a desert.

The joy, the joyful freedom of self-forgetfulness.

It's really true.

Even on the way to church this morning, this is how it creeps in and subtly undermines all of who we are, right?

I'm sitting there thinking about what I'm gonna wear today.

Nothing wrong with thinking about what you're gonna wear, it's okay.

I mean, some of, you know, I know, I know sometimes people come in here looking like they didn't think of it at all.

I get that.

I get that.

But I'm sitting there going, okay, now I'm gonna wear a white shirt.

I think I'm about to do a white shirt thing.

And then I start picking my jacket and I I reach for this jacket, and I thought, it's not humble enough.

So it's it's like all of a sudden you find yourself going, it's all about me.

It's you're no, not all of a sudden.

You're still doing it, is what the problem is.

You you can't get rid of it.

It's hard to shake it and get rid of it.

And so then I put the coat on against myself thinking that way, after I went in and talked to my lovely wife and said, Honey, is this coat too much about me?

Is this coat, does this coat work with a sermon on humility?

And she's just so gracious.

And she said, looks great.

Go with it.

And and then I I walk back down and I'm going, okay, now, what color belt should I do?

You know, and I fall right back into it again.

And I can't seem to shake.

How do you get there?

And at some point, it's just like Lewis says, and Keller uh says it later, I'll put that quote up in a minute, but it's not trying to think less of yourself, it's trying to think about yourself less.

That's a huge difference.

It's not about me or my cult or whatever.

It and the minute I start thinking it's about that stuff and worrying about that stuff, I'm too concerned.

Even with preaching, sometimes people go, Do you do, after 22 years, do you still get nervous when you preach?

And I go, I I mean, my general reaction is there should always be a certain amount of sitting on the edge of your seat about this.

This is sacred material we're talking about.

So, yes, you're handling holy things.

And lives and souls and minds are at stake.

They're on the table, and you're talking so that's true.

But at the same time, if I am obsessed with how I feel about how I did or what I said or whatever, or how I was perceived by folk or online or whatever, then all of a sudden it's you you start to see how you got trapped into thinking it's about you again.

And it's just not about me or us.

And when we walk out just to go to work, it's not about us.

Same thing.

That's what I call the freedom, uh, the joyful freedom of self-forgetfulness.

And I think that's what Lewis is talking about.

It's a drink of water to a man in a desert.

And the desert out there is training us to think it's always about us.

Did we get answered?

Did we get like?

Did somebody text us back?

All that kind of stuff.

And we're starting to evaluate ourselves based on what others say.

We're looking to someone else as our decisive validator out there or some system.

When the only lips that matter saying, well done, are his, right?

That's really the only ones that matter.

What would it look like for you to humble yourself before the Lord more, increasingly, let's just say, okay?

Two, I have three.

Humble before, humility before God, humility about ourselves.

Some of you know who Leonard Bernstein, the late uh conductor of the New York Philharmonic, uh, was.

He was once uh evidently asked what was the most difficult orchestral instrument to, what was the most difficult one to play, without even giving a thought, he said second fiddle.

He said, everybody wants to be first chair and the first violinist, but to find one who wants to play second violin with that much enthusiasm, that's a problem.

And yet if no one plays second fiddle, we have no harmony.

And that's so true.

Pride is living at odds with our creator, entrapped in a never-ending competition with others, and suffocated by an insatiable lust for affirmation and reassurance.

Humility, on the other hand, is at the root of holiness.

All you know, any growth in holiness.

Humility and holiness together result in this freedom and joy of self-forgetfulness.

Now, one of the two books that I mentioned earlier is by Gavin Orton.

It's called Humility, the Joy of Self-Forgetfulness.

He says humility means you don't interpret everything in relation to yourself, and you don't need to.

It is the death of the narrow, suffocating filter of self-referentiality.

You want to let that sink in.

Self-referentiality.

It's the it's it's all of those times.

I'm not gonna say the person, I'm gonna say it's me.

It's all of those times when I have to keep steering the conversation because I just can't not, back to me.

I'm talking with somebody over coffee, they say blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I go, and that reminds me of something in my life, and I go, well, that's like when I, and I just can't ever let it be about them.

Anyone know anybody like don't do it.

They might be thinking of you.

Make it a point at lunch today to not let it be about you or your career or your next opportunity.

And sometimes we do it, we sort we dress it up like a little religious thing.

We go, hey, listen, it's kind of like the religious version of a humble bird.

Hey, listen, would you all pray about this?

I'm up for a Grammy, and what I'm really hoping is, you know, I'm hoping that I'll win in all five categories.

Oh, did I say five?

I only meant I was up for a Grammy.

It's that's we can't do that.

Let's not make it about us.

What would happen if 300 people in Nashville started making it about them instead of about us?

And we became others-centered in our conversations, in our use of resources, in our use of time, um, and even kind and civil toward others who are different than us or think differently than we do.

What would happen?

Wouldn't some people look at that funny building, that 100-year-old convent building up there on the hill in Hillsborough Village and say, whatever those guys got, I want some of that.

Um that antidote to all that is going wrong out there.

How do we do that?

How do we nurture all of that?

I love the way Chesterton said it.

How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it?

He goes on to say, angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.

It's just another poetic way of saying the same thing he's got up there, right?

How much larger your life would be if your self could be smaller in it.

The people that you raised your hand when you were thinking earlier, and I said, Can you think of somebody who exhibited this beautiful, handsome habit of heart called humility?

What was it about them?

What was it?

At least for in some part, it had to be that they often made it about you and not them.

Perhaps in another way, like Jesus, um, they came to serve and not be served.

They showed up at something, some event or whatever, to serve and not be served.

When you walk through the door here, this is the way we say it often, come in and think of yourself not as a guest, but as a host.

What would happen if 300 people were the hosts and everybody walks through the door?

We're so glad you're here.

It's awesome that you're here.

We can now, we can finally get started because you're here.

You know?

What if we just stopped coming in going, you know, show me what you got?

Musicians, speaker, Bible teacher.

You know?

That one thing you said two weeks ago about Solomon's wisdom being so respected by Cleopatra, it was the Queen of Sheba.

It wasn't Cleopatra.

And by the way, I've been living with that for two weeks, and it's killing.

It's just killing me.

I don't like to be wrong about stuff like that.

Well, anyway, humility about ourselves, this balanced view.

And again, not I'm dirting the toenail of the body, not that that, because I think we've all been around people that just overdo the sort of self-flagellation, you know, you know, and at some point you just want to take a fire hose to them and wash them off or something.

But it's not that.

It's not that at all.

Uh it's just not this self-obsession that we see around.

Hold firm to your first principles because you first are humble before God.

You hold firm to those because God's the most important.

And then, secondly, as it regards as regards yourself, be that be here for others.

See your life as for his glory and for their good.

Uh that's a that's a real important aspect.

And that kind of leads us to the last point.

Um, humility before God, humility about ourselves, and humility toward others or towards, depending on if you're from England or not.

The S goes on, I believe, in England.

Uh, what would it look like for us to become humble towards others?

Uh I like the way Keller said it.

I'm gonna put that up there.

The thing we would remember from meeting a truly gospel humble person is how much they seem to be totally interested in us.

Because the essence of gospel humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself.

It is thinking of myself less.

Gospel humility is not needing to think about myself, not needing to connect things with myself.

It is an end to thoughts, such as I'm in this room with these people.

Does that make me look good?

Do I want to be here?

True gospel humility means I stop connecting every experience, every conversation with myself.

In fact, I stop thinking about myself.

The freedom of self-forgetfulness, and that's the title of his book.

Humility begins where all self-serving, self-obsession, self-focus, and even some entitlement thinking stop.

Humility was put on full display in the personal work of Jesus.

The Apostle Paul wrote this about the humility of Jesus.

He says in Philippians chapter 2, verse 3 do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourself.

Philippians 2:3

It's very direct.

Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

And then he goes on in verses five through eight, I'll put it up on the screen.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Obedient to who?

Obedient to God the Father, came sent by the Trinity, sent on a mission to rescue and redeem us.

To do so, laid down his life while we were yet sinners, while we were all wrapped up, concerned about me, myself, and I.

He came for me.

He came for you.

And this is what should begin to humble us before God.

And then I think at the same time, we need to proactively humble ourselves before God.

There is gospel humility, I think, in its most luminous expression in the personal work of Jesus.

None of us will get this 100% right until he comes and sets all things right.

But we do have Jesus to look to, and the Apostle Paul made that so beautifully clear there.

Some of you will know who Andrew Murray is.

The 19th-century South African writer has a book called, oh, somebody help me, in Christ, or living in Christ, or life in Christ, something like that.

This book on humility, he says, Christ is the humility of God embodied in human nature.

The eternal love, humbling itself, clothing itself in the garb of meekness and gentleness to win and serve and save us.

That's what that symbol up there on the wall is all about.

It's not just a sign of a tragic, another good person tragically lost to some brutal death.

No, that cross is God's display of God's combining justice and mercy and love.

All of that stuff and his wisdom.

All of that, all four of those things, maybe for each direction that cross reaches out in.

God's love motivating him to come here for you and for me.

God's mercy offered to you and me through the death of Christ, which is God's loving justice.

He didn't just sweep our sins under the rug, he paid the price for them himself.

He took the wrath of God in our place.

Jesus did.

And that all is just a brilliant display of God's wisdom.

I want us to continue as we go through Proverbs to be eagerly looking for the wisdom of God and the ways of God.

Not just hearing words like humility and letting it go in one ear and out the other, but actually thinking about how we can nurture that beautiful characteristic in our own hearts.

Remember, it's plan A.

And I love plan A.

We should all love plan A.

Let's pray.

Lord, thank you for this subject.

Thank you for not only talking about it throughout your word, but coming here to earth and showing us what it looks like.

And I pray, Lord, for each and every one of us, Holy Spirit, that you'll do that work inside of us, that good work of opening our eyes to see those places, those relationships that need to, that we need to change, the disposition of our heart toward those.

And then, Holy Spirit, do what only you can do.

We can't do this on our own.

We aren't good at changing the direction of our affections.

We aren't good at changing our priorities.

We need your help, your power at work in our lives.

Please come and do that.

And as we come to the table now to remind ourselves of what you, Christ, have done for us, I pray that indeed with humble gratitude, we can come and say thank you.

In Jesus' name, amen.