Proverbs: Humility

Discussion Questions

1. As you think about someone in your life that exhibits biblical humility, what are the qualities that makes you think of them?  Have you ever asked God to give you more of the humble qualities you admire in them?
2. How are biblical wisdom and humility connected?
3. How can you practically “think of yourself less”, rather than “thinking less of yourself”?
4. Humility begins with an accurate recognition of who God is and who we  are before Him.  Is your God too small?  Have you made yourself too big?

Transcript

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 the Book of Proverbs, that ancient treasure trove of God’s wisdom. We do have some extra copies. If anybody needs a copy, feel free to raise your hand up. Somebody will drop one off at your row, your aisle, and if you want to look up any of the passages that we happen to be taking a peek at today, you can do that.

Humility is our theme, as Kim mentioned earlier. It’s a fascinating subject to study and 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, how we can nurture humility within our own character, and the role that humility plays if we desire to walk in the wisdom and ways of God. And so, 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 this one I thought didn’t work at all, “Humility: The One Virtue I’m Really Good At.” Pro tip, when it comes to humility, there’s no such thing as a humblebrag or any kind of brag, whatsoever. I like this one too: “The One Virtue My Spouse Needs More Of.”  Now, if you’re not married, you could say “My Neighbor” or “My Roommate” or “My Co-Worker,” that’s fine, but I’m still not going to use that as the subject of this sermon. I like this one too: “Seven Easy Steps to Humble Someone.” That’s 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 everybody’s mindset is, “I’m going to get me somebody.”

I don’t think it’s easy to humble others. I think they resist, as do we when we get in our defensive postures. I started getting a little closer: “Why It’s Not Always About You, okay?” Now I thought, “Okay, now that’s starting to get a little better. I can see I think everybody might understand a title like that,” or “How To Get Over Yourself” and then I thought, “Well, no, then 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 …

Then I considered the world that we live in and why there’s so many self-help books. 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. There’s a trouble with self-esteem. There’s some good to it, too. I’m not saying it’s all bad. Please don’t hear me saying that, but 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 the goal here, to 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 a mashup of a couple of books that I enjoyed reading this week.

Tim Keller has one called The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness and Gavin Ortlund 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 take a little bit from each of them.” Let me pray for us and then we’re going to read some stuff up on the screen, so some verses from Proverbs. This prayer for illumination comes from Ephrem the Syrian, fourth century church father. He wrote 400 hymns all the way back then, isn’t that amazing?

Lord, master of my life, give me not a spirit of sloth, vain curiosity, lust for power and idol 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 all the way through the Bible from cover to cover. Let’s do what we did. I’ll throw up a couple of slides, and we did this a couple of weeks ago. I’ll put two verses on each slide and we’ll start with you guys. You (on the left) read the top verse and you guys (on the right) read the bottom verse. Just to clarify, you don’t have to read the reference that’s up there as well. I just post those because I think if some of these verses catch your eye, you might want to go back and look at them later, but we’re going to read these with gusto, okay? And we’re going to read them slow enough that we want them to sink in a little bit, okay? Let’s start over here.

When pride comes then comes dishonor. But with the humble is wisdom.
Proverbs 11:2

The fear of the LORD is the instruction for wisdom, and before honor comes humility.
Proverbs 15:33

So, notice there the connection 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 beautiful, handsome characteristic of the heart and with wisdom itself. We’re also going to see how it works in many directions, humility, as we go along. Okay, over here:

Pride goes before destruction. And a haughty spirit before stumbling.
Proverbs 16:18

It is better to be humble in spirit with the lowly than divide the spoil with the proud.
Proverbs 16:19

You see how it’s more important than how much stuff you have? 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 there’s just too much pride. So that’s pretty clear to see, isn’t it? Okay, over here:

Before destruction the heart of man is haughty, but humility goes before honor.
Proverbs 18:12

The reward of humility and fear of the Lord are riches, honor and life.
Proverbs 22:4

There are 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 for a fool than for him.
Proverbs 26:12

A man’s pride will bring him low, but a humble spirit will obtain honor.
Proverbs 29:23

Yeah, all right, there’s so much here. We could spend time with each slide, probably a 30-minute sermon easily. I’m going to ask a question before you answer by 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 high. Let’s be proud of our humble ones. Yeah, that’s good.

Now, raise your hand if you thought somebody might be thinking about you.  What I think that shows, the fact that you laugh, that’s good, is that we’re on our road to wisdom here. This is really good. 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.”
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

It’s one of those jewels of the entire biblical worldview, isn’t it? Humility, if you think you’ve got it, you probably don’t. Pride is, if you don’t think you have it, you probably do. It’s really interesting to ponder through this.

Some have claimed a little humility might have saved the Titanic back in the year 1912. Some of you may have heard that, on launch day, the legend is that, on its maiden voyage, someone asked an employee of the White Star Line whether the ship was safe, and his reply was, “Not even God himself could sink this ship.”  Sadly, 1,500 people 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.
Matthew 23:12

So, what is this thing? We’ve described it a little bit in some of these proverbs. Sometimes we gain insight though, I think, by describing what something is not. That helps us to see what it is. In this case, some of the opposites of humility—I just made a little list myself–are pride, arrogance, self-obsession, superiority, vanity, conceit, entitlement towards ourself, contempt toward others. Any of that taking up residence in your heart as we enter the election year? 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? It’s a really 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. Another help that I found this week as I was considering, “Well, how do we nurture humility and even just in the practical realm?” Here’s where you live. Look up on the screen there. That’s us. And sometimes it’s really helpful to be reminded of how small we are. And I think, at the same time, as Bible believers, as people of faith, it’s really good to remind ourselves of how 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 that our God becomes too small.

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 (Isaiah 55:8-10) and it’s really good for us to remember that. By the way, those of you who do hold a little bit too high view of yourself, I’d like to point out that since with astronomy, we realized there’s no center of the universe, therefore, you cannot be it and neither can the person you’re thinking of, whoever that might be right now.

Each of us are one of close to 8 billion human beings on this dust ball-sized planet up there. Look how tiny we are. And one of my favorite stars to look at at night, Kim and I enjoy going out at night sometimes looking up in the night sky, Arcturus comes around during the summer and we can see Arcturus, and yet, it’s so far away and it’s so much bigger even than our sun. So, what you see up there is nothing, that’s our sun and 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.

I also love the word humility and it’s 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? But the Bible teaches us that we’re created beings. And all the way back in the Book of Genesis, God describes how he scooped up to 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, all creation. The only thing that the creation event teaches us that 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. 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 ranker 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, you 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 made of earth and dust. And it works against, sometimes when I forget that, it works against the way I am 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 because I think there’s something we can learn about all three of those relationships—our 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.

1. Humility before 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 Schaefer 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 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. Sui 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. 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 going to 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 going to throw up on this screen a verse from Second 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 Huldah, says to Josiah,

“Thus says the LORD 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), I truly have heard you,’ declares the LORD.”
2 Chronicles 34:27

See the connection between humility and a right relationship with God? Humility has an eager mind, a tender, teachable heart and this 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 them. He said this,

Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Matthew 18:4

That’s not to become childish, but to become childlike, dependent, eager to learn, open, ‘Teach me. Reveal yourself to Me, God,’ over and over like that. And 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’” (James 4:6). A few verses later,

Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord and He will exalt you.
 James 4:10

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.

Amen!

Yeah, I just want to make sure I’m tracking with you here. Because it is a very progressive thing, 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 like, “You want that? Oh no, you want that one? You want that one?” It’s one of those things nobody’s an expert at, but then I’ve been 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 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 congregation, would learn how to do this together. Indeed, it’s a progressive thing, learning what humility is all about. Lewis said,

“I wish I had got 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.”
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

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 going to wear today. Nothing wrong with thinking about what you’re going to wear. It’s okay. 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 going to wear a white shirt. I think I’m about to do a white shirt thing.” And then I start picking my jacket and I reached for this jacket and I thought, “That’s not humble enough.” So it’s like all of a sudden you find yourself going, “It’s all about me.” No, not all of a sudden, you’re still doing it is what the problem is. 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, does this coat too much about me? Does this coat work with a sermon on humility?” and she’s just so gracious and said, “Looks great. Go with it.” And then I walked back down and I’m going, “Okay, now what color of belt should I do?” And I fall right back into it again and I can’t seem to shake it. How do you get there? And at some point, it’s just like Lewis says and Keller 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, and that’s a huge difference. It’s not about me or my coat or whatever.

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, “After 22 years, do you still get nervous when you preach?” and I go … 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 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, 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 an answer? Did we get a like? Did somebody text us back? It’s 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?

2. Humility about ourselves. Some of you know who Leonard Bernstein, the late conductor of the New York Philharmonic was. He was once 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—well, any growth and 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 Ortlund. 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.”
Gavin Ortlund, Humility: The Joy of Self-Forgetfulness

You want to let that sink in, self-referentiality.

It’s all of those times—I’m not going to say the person, I’m going to say it’s me—it’s all of those times when I have to keep steering the conversation because I just cannot, “Back to me.” I’m talking with somebody over coffee. They say, “Blah, blah, blah,” 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. Anybody know anybody … 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 do it, we dress it up like a little religious thing. We go, “Hey, listen.” It’s like the religious version of a humblebrag. “Hey, listen, would you all pray about this? I’m up for a Grammy and what I’m really hoping is 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.”

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 and our use of time 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.” 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 yourself could become smaller in it? Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.”
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

It’s just another poetic way of saying the same thing, “Is God up there?” How much larger your life would be if yourself 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 in some part, it had to be that they often made it about you and not them. Perhaps in another way, like Jesus, they came to serve and not be served (Matthew 20:28). 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 host and everybody walks through the door, “We’re so glad you’re here. It’s awesome that you’re here. Now we can finally get started because you’re here”? What if we just stop coming in, going, “Show me what you got, musicians, speaker, Bible teacher? 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 just killing me. I don’t like to be wrong about stuff like that.

Anyway, humility about ourselves, this balanced view and not dirtying the toenail of the Body … Not that, because I think we’ve all been around people that just overdue the sort of self-flagellation, and at some point, you just want to take a fire hose to them and wash them off or something. It’s not that. It’s not that at all. 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 regards to yourself, be here for others. See your life as for His glory and for their good. That’s a real important aspect and that leads us to the last point, humility before God, humility about ourself and humility toward others—or towards, depending on if you’re from England or not. The S goes on, I believe, in England.

3. Humility toward others. What would it look like for us to become humble towards others? I like the way Keller said it. I’m going to 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 thought 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 stopped thinking about myself. The freedom of self-forgetfulness.”
Tim Keller, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness

Humility begins where all self-serving, self-obsession, self-focus and even some entitlement thinking stops. 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. Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.”
Philippians 2:3

It’s very direct. And then he goes on in Verses 5 through 8, 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.”
Philippians 2:5-8

Obedient to who? Obedient to God the Father. He came, sent by the Trinity, sent on a mission to rescue and redeem us. To lay 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 person and 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, 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.”
Andrew Murray, Humility

That’s what that symbol up there on the wall is all about. It’s not just a sign of another good person tragically lost to some brutal death. No, that cross, it’s a 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 and 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 and 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 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 and amen.