Humility

Hello, and welcome to the Kalamazoo church of Christ podcast.

Thank you so much for listening.

We're startup church.

We just planted in September, 2020 and at the Kalamazoo church, we believe that Christianity is done best when it is done together.

And so if you live in the Kalamazoo area, we would love to connect, be it coming to a Sunday service, one of our small groups, or even just grabbing coffee with a member to learn more.

You can visit kalamazoo.church in order to do that.

We pray that you are inspired by what you hear today.

All right.

Good to see everybody.

That was a lot of bumping on that last song.

Jordan, uh, that, uh, that's a silly song.

Anyway.

Uh, my wife, Lori normally comes, she's in the state of Maine visiting her sister, uh, eating lobster and seafood and all that kind of stuff out there.

Uh, she's, uh, ready to get back.

Her sister likes to talk a lot.

So, uh, I talked to her on the way down this morning.

She said, she's really looking forward to coming home.

It's had a great trip.

So, uh, we live in case you don't know, if you go straight up one third of the way, you get off at 10 mile road.

Uh, we're not far from right there.

So, uh, it was a beautiful drive down today.

We normally see, uh, Oath and Cynthia from the Grand Rapids church.

They, uh, they live right around the corner nowadays and, uh, are down here.

So it's a special treat to see them.

But, uh, I wanted to talk about this topic, humility today.

If I were to start out and say, this is going to be the most awesome thing I've ever done, this is going to be the most awesome sermon you've ever heard.

Uh, in fact, there's nobody in Kalamazoo, probably not even in Michigan that can do this as well as I'm going to do it.

It's going to change your life forever.

You'll never be the same.

Listening to me speak for the next few minutes.

Uh, I don't believe that.

And, uh, it's definitely not true.

On the other hand, if I were to say this might be the lamest sermon you've ever heard, I'll probably drool and spit and my nose will run and, uh, I'll misquote scriptures.

Well, that didn't very well.

And, uh, you know, I just, I just give me a little bit of attention so I don't feel totally insecure, stuff like that.

That would be called false humility.

I don't believe that.

I don't think that will happen, but maybe God will humble me right now.

But this topic of humility, I think is an important one.

Jesus epitomizes a couple of things in contrast.

On one hand, he is our Lord.

He's the savior.

He is the son of God.

He is God in the flesh.

He is the word.

And the list goes on and on of all the adjectives that describe who Jesus is.

And so of all people, all people should be focused on him and literally bow down to him.

But on the other hand, we see in Jesus this level of humility that's really pretty amazing.

And so I want to talk about some of those things today.

This next slide here.

Humility is simply an honest view of yourself.

You see yourself as you really are.

A lot of times before we're Christians, this is really kind of hard to do.

We don't always see ourselves as we really are.

But as we get in touch with the Bible, as we deepen our relationship with God, have a deeper understanding of who Jesus is, we start to see ourselves.

We see good things that God is pleased with.

But then there are times when we see things in our lives that are not pleasing to God.

But that's the awesome thing about God.

When he reveals those things to us, then we have an opportunity to change and pattern our life after him.

In the dictionary definition, they use it in this sentence.

He needs humility to accept another way may be best.

This is part of what's plaguing our society right now.

Everybody is so steeped in their personal opinions and ideologies and beliefs that they can't even begin to fathom that maybe another perspective is as accurate or even more accurate than their own.

And so we see on social media, in the news, all this agitation and hostility and people digging their foot in and entrenched in their own beliefs.

They're not even open to considering that some other way may be better.

And since we're part of the world, we're tempted to go along with those things.

On the other hand, the call here is for us to consider that maybe another way is better.

Turn to Matthew chapter 11 a minute.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

All right.

Verse 25 is that time?

Jesus said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children.

Yes, father, for this was your good pleasure.

All things have been committed to be my by my father.

No one knows the son except the father.

And no one knows the father except the son and those to whom the son chooses to reveal.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

This is the whole premise of becoming a Christian is to realize that there is a better way to live than most of us have ever realized.

That's why we decided to make Jesus the Lord of our lives.

It doesn't mean you are a loser or a failure in life, but there's something more important than just being successful in the eyes of the world.

There's something about what's deep inside of our heart.

There is a void that God places in every one of us that can only be filled by him, his Holy Spirit and the knowledge of the son of Christ.

And it takes some time.

Perhaps we have to wrestle with these thoughts for a while, but eventually we start to see, you know what?

I've been living this way and this is where it's gotten me.

And now I'm ready to try a different way to have the humility to say to ourselves and admit to ourselves, Jesus has a better way for me to live and conduct myself in this world.

So all of us that are Christians, we made that decision at some point.

And maybe some of you are right in this wrestling stage.

It's okay to wrestle with this.

I did for a while.

My wife and I, we grew up a little bit religious, just enough to be dangerous.

Enough to think we knew what we were doing, but we had no clue.

And so when the truth was presented to us, we wrestled with it.

Because now we started to study some things that were accepted by my wife and myself.

Like we learned these things growing up and we had no problems with that.

But then when the Bible started to expose what's really going on in our hearts, in our minds, and kind of reveal the path that we were on compared to the path that God wanted us to be on, we had to wrestle with that.

But eventually, everybody that becomes a Christian gets to a point where they realize Jesus has a better way.

And that first act of humility changes the entire course of our lives.

Amen.

So we see this in Jesus, and we won't turn to all these passages, but we're well familiar with the story about Jesus's birth.

We celebrated it at Christmastime.

I think it's pretty unlikely that Jesus was born on December 25th, but that perhaps is a class for another time.

Right, right.

Wow.

But, you know, the virgin birth.

And think about this.

The Son of God.

He was in heaven with the Lord himself.

When the earth was created.

And now he's sent to earth as an unborn child inside of the womb of a virgin.

And then he goes through childbirth.

He has to be nursed.

Someone has to change his diapers.

Somebody has to wipe his nose.

Somebody has to feed him and care for him until he gets to a point where he can, like all children, start to take care of themselves a little bit.

But think of the humility that that took to leave his place in heaven and come down and experience humanity from the very beginning, the same way all of us entered into this world.

It's amazing humility of Jesus.

Yeah.

We see it in his life, as he lived his life.

In this passage in Matthew 20, 25 through 28.

Earlier in the passage, there's this argument about who's the greatest.

And the mother kind of instigated this among a couple of her sons.

And then all of a sudden, the other disciples hear about what's going on.

They became indignant.

And now all of a sudden, these 12 guys that Jesus had been with for three years start arguing about who's number one.

There's opinions for it, but not in line.

They're just squabbling.

And I can only imagine Jesus watching this unfold and going, man, are you guys so dull?

Have you learned nothing from me this time that you've been with me?

Have you ever seen me do the things that you're doing right now?

And I feel a sense of humility starting to set in.

But then in the latter part of this verse, Jesus says, you know, whoever wants to be first must be your servant and slave of all.

So Jesus kind of flips this whole idea about position.

It's not about authority.

It's not about your title.

It's not about the clothes you wear or the cars you drive.

They didn't have problems with that back in those days.

Maybe what kind of cattle you have or something.

It doesn't have anything to do with any of that stuff.

It's really about our humility to be a servant of all.

And isn't that what Jesus did?

From the washing of the feet to talking with people that were basically discarded by society, lepers, people that had illnesses.

Even women were considered second class back in that time of life.

And yet here Jesus is getting his hands dirty, getting engaged with people that needed his help and needed somebody's help.

And maybe for the first time, they felt some love and connection from Jesus that they had never even felt perhaps from their own family.

And so Jesus in his life demonstrated this humility that it's not about me.

It's actually about all of you.

That's how he lived.

And then, of course, we know about his death that we celebrate every week, his death, burial, and resurrection in the community.

He had the ability to put the whole crucifixion to a halt.

I don't know if you knew that or not.

He voluntarily laid his life down.

Even just before he was arrested, he wrestled with God in the garden.

Take this cup from me.

But then he said, not my will be done, but your will be done.

Tremendous act of humility and submission to God himself.

And then as he was being arrested, the disciples tried to protect him.

One of them, Peter, will find out, actually pulled out a sword that he had hidden in his tunic, evidently, and cut off the ear of one of the soldiers that was trying to arrest Jesus.

And then at that moment, Jesus said, stop.

Don't you know that I could, right now, I have at my disposal more than 12 legions of angels that I could call down and intervene on my behalf right at this moment.

But in his humility, he didn't use the power that was at his disposal.

Instead, he surrendered to the will of God.

I think there's a lot of lessons in there for all of us, because to one degree or another, we can find ourselves in all of these stories about how Jesus demonstrated humility in his life.

Peter, there we go.

Peter's had this journey with humility.

He started out like all of us, and he agreed to follow Jesus.

He admitted that Jesus's way was better.

He didn't always know what that meant, but he was willing to find out and go along with the program.

You know what I'm saying?

How many of you, and maybe you're at this point right now, just before you're becoming a Christian, you know you need to be baptized for your sins to be forgiven.

You're right there.

You're close, but then you're wondering, man, should I do this or should I not do this?

How many of you ever wrestled with that conceit?

All right.

The rest of you that aren't, I'm going to go ahead and raise your hand now.

We all wrestle with it.

I was so nervous I let my wife get baptized before me.

Within minutes.

It was the same day.

Yeah, and part of the problem is we have no track record.

There's nothing in our past that tells us we're going to be faithful for the rest of our lives.

And so we're kind of stepping on to this moving walkway, and we don't know all the places that it's going to stop, and we don't know how long we're going to be on it, but we've got the faith and we've got the humility to at least get started and believe that God will see us through.

For Lori and me, that was 1982 in Tampa, Florida.

That's a good long time.

Some of you just got baptized this last year.

Amen for that.

You're going to be on the walkway a long time.

And we all have to stay on it to the very end.

You can't do it without this quality of humility.

Then we see in Peter's life, even though he started out with humility, he also struggled with humility.

The passage that I referred to earlier when he reached out and tried to intervene in Jesus's arrest, when Jesus was going to wash all the disciples' feet, he said, no, you'll never wash my feet.

And then Jesus persuaded him, yes, I am going to do this, and you probably ought to get along with the program here.

And then he says, okay, not just my feet, but everything.

Wash me from top to bottom.

I'm sure Jesus didn't want to go quite that far, but nonetheless he did.

And then perhaps Peter's greatest failure, after being loyal to him for three years, just before he was taken to be crucified, he denied three times that he did.

And Jared and I feel like I've done some things to help Jared, and he's not doing anything like that.

Not yet, not yet.

Jared's done a lot for me.

I'm your generation a little bit.

But, you know, if that were me, and then I saw Jared deny that he even knew, could you imagine how devastating that would be?

That's small compared to what Jesus must have felt when he saw Peter turn his back on him and even deny, call down curses upon himself.

I don't know him.

So Peter, though he started out with humility and had some humility throughout his experience with Jesus, he struggled with humility throughout his life.

I think that's pretty true for all of us, isn't it?

There's probably not many weeks that go by where our humility is just not at the level or maybe even non-existent.

It shows up most often in our interaction with other people, which we'll talk about in just a minute.

But humility is how we get started.

Humility is how we stay faithful.

And humility is what brings success to the life of a Christian.

Amen?

Amen.

So, and then he gained humility as an older man.

Go ahead and turn to 1 Peter 5.

We'll spend the rest of our time here, if that's okay.

And if it's not, then you should have listened to the first part of the lesson.

Start in verse 5.

All right, we'll start in verse 4.

And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away.

Young man, in the same way, be submissive to those who are older.

All of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.

Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.

This is now Peter, about 30 years after he followed Jesus.

So, when he started to follow Jesus, he was probably in his late 20s, early 30s.

Now, when he wrote 1 Peter, he's an older man, about 30 years later, so he's in his 60s.

And so, these words are coming from not a young disciple, but an older seasoned disciple, who had the opportunity to struggle with humility and to embed some lessons about humility deep into his heart, and ultimately to pass them on to the people that he's communicating to.

He says, be submissive to those who are older, but then all of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because God opposes the proud, and gives grace to the humble.

This is an unchangeable law of spirituality.

God does oppose pride, and he does honor humility.

And a lot of times, we get these roles reversed.

We think that the way up is by the elevate ourselves, when in reality, that's the way to be humbled by God.

Instead, if we voluntarily humble ourselves before the Lord himself, and one another, then God, in a miraculous way, lifts us up.

This has played out every relationship that you've ever had or ever will have.

Many of you in this room are married.

This is the perfect breeding ground for this lab experiment about pride versus humility.

I would guess from time to time, you get into squabbles with one another.

Is that true?

Yeah.

Nobody's making eye contact with me right now.

Yeah, Lori and I still do.

We've been married going on 44 years.

We still lock horns every now and then.

Not physically, but we have disagreements and squabbles.

Really, when it gets down to the bottom of it, a lot of it is misunderstandings.

Like, she thought I meant one thing, but I didn't mean that.

But the way that I said it, I can see why she took it that way.

And so there's humility on both parts that have to be acquired to get over this stuff.

And then other times, it's just being inconsiderate.

And putting yourself above the other person.

And it's the perfect example of this constant battle between humility and pride.

Yeah.

It shows up in your children.

I think children—and Lori and I are going to be down here next Saturday.

We'll do a parenting workshop for all of you.

Man, you've got a lot of kids in this church, huh?

It's awesome.

But it's also frustrating, huh?

It's like, what were we thinking having so many?

I don't know.

You know, I do believe—and we'll talk about this next week— I do believe children need to be loved, but they also need to be disciplined.

And they need to be taught how to be respectful to everybody, especially to mom and dad and then others.

But sometimes, as children get older, we fail to remember that now they're at a different age, and they're becoming young adults, and the way that we parent has got to change.

Otherwise, it comes across to them that mom and dad are just being vital.

It doesn't mean that they're not accountable for their behavior and things like that, but more on that through Saturday.

That was maybe to see if they didn't want to come.

People lose jobs because of pride.

People get promotions because of humility.

Sometimes it's always not fair.

Sometimes bosses are, you say, jerks from time to time, huh?

I don't know if I can say that.

There's a lot of kids in there.

You're okay with that?

But there is something elevating about living a life that has a good dose of humility in it.

None of us are going to be perfect all the time at this, but it really does show up in a major way in our interactions with other people, husbands and wives, parents and children, friends, even people within the church.

You guys are young enough and small enough where everybody knows everybody, and there's no hiding in the Kalamazoo Church right now.

But there'll be a day when it's a bigger church, like the one that Deanna Bianca and Lori and I came from, Milwaukee, 250 members, where it's big enough that if you didn't like Blaine, let's say, I'm just, I made eye contact with him.

Blaine is just a little abrasive for me.

I'm not big in his hairstyle.

He's got more hair than I do.

But Milwaukee's big enough that I could find a way to totally avoid him on a Sunday morning or a Wednesday midweek.

And I just go over to that corner of the church and not have to interact at all.

But that doesn't do anything for my humility.

A lot of times we have these attitudes towards one another in the church, and they sit there, and we don't do anything about it.

And then all of a sudden we're at a point one day where we just, we've got a major attitude towards this person or the other person.

And it's all because we weren't humble enough to say, hey, look, I don't know what it is, but for some reason, I feel like you and I are off.

There's been a guy visiting the Grand Rapids Church, and this goes all the way back to our New Year's Eve service.

We had it in house churches.

And I did the little lesson for the house church that we were in.

This guy was visiting.

And all of a sudden at the end of the lesson, he jumps up and kind of takes over the sermon.

And I thought it was a little weird.

I didn't punch him, though.

And he said, I just have to read this scripture.

And it was a scripture, so how can you argue with that?

And it seemed to be appropriate, went along with what I was talking about.

But I wasn't real excited about it.

It was a little bit of an awkward setting, if you know what I mean.

And then as soon as he read the scripture, I said, okay, thanks.

And then we went into communion after that.

So three weeks ago, he comes up to me on a Sunday morning, and he said, I just want to confess the five that I have in my heart.

And I was like, what?

What is it?

He said, you remember that service, New Year's Eve?

And he said, yeah.

And he said, you know, I just felt like you bullied me.

And I know it's not right.

I know it's my fault.

It's not your fault.

I know it's me.

And this guy is not even a Christian.

But he's starting to identify with this whole concept of humility.

Wow.

We had a great talk.

And we went out for tacos the next midweek.

And he's still studying the Bible, still coming to church.

But I thought, what a great example.

Here's a guy that hasn't even really fully committed himself to be a disciple of Jesus, but he's learning about humility.

And how that little episode affected his heart.

And it was something I didn't know anything about.

I'd seen him for several months, but never knew that he was feeling that.

But he had the humility to speak up and give it a go.

I think there's a powerful lesson in that.

Yeah.

That everybody can learn from that.

Because you're all going to have to do that at some point.

Yeah, I know that.

Right?

Right.

Right, right.

So, you know, if we consistently make decisions to live a humble life, to live a life that's not just sprinkled with humility, but saturated with humility, it's amazing how much you will see your character change and how your interaction with other people will change.

So I want to leave you with this.

A life lived without humility is actually lived in opposition to God.

You're fighting God.

You're opposing God.

God doesn't want to do this, but He will.

He will humble you at some point in time or another.

The harder you fight, the deeper the fall is going to be, if you know what I mean by that.

And so let's not do that to ourselves.

Amen?

Amen.

That's self-induced punishment and pain, living a life without humility.

On the other hand, if we choose to live a humble life, imperfect as it always will be, but if that is our focus in life, I've got to crucify this pride that always wants to take over, and I'm going to choose to live a humble life, then I live in concert with God, and we're all on the same page working toward the same goal.

So I want to leave you with that, and I think as we prepare our minds for communion right now, there's no better lesson to go into this time other than humility, because we're remembering the sacrifice of one man for our salvation, and not just salvation, but also to have a life that's meaningful and productive, that's lived in service to others.

And so we're remembering and reminding ourselves, I want to be just like Jesus.

I eat this cracker because it represents his body, but not just his flesh, it's the way he lived his life, what he did with his body throughout his life, and then I drink this cup, this juice, and it reminds me, reminds all of us, that it was with great cost that Jesus paid the price for our forgiveness, and how could we not humble ourselves before a person like that?

Amen?

Let me...

Brother, what's your name?

Yeah.

What is it?

Yeah.

You're going to pray for communion right now, okay?

Sorry to put you on the spot.

Amen.