“O Lord, It’s Hard to be Humble”
Luke 18:9-14
You wouldn’t think it would be all that difficult.
We were all formed from the same dust of the earth, by the same Creator.
Basically, our bodies are pretty much the same.
We all get sick, we all need to eat, all of us are lonely at times, everyone has insecurities and fears, we are all sinners, and we’re all going to get old (Lord willing) and then eventually die.
I remember as a real young kid thinking that the guy who played the Six-Million Dollar Man on t-v and was married to Farrah Fawcett—Lee Majors was just the coolest person in the world—almost god-like.
Then, one day, my dad told me, “Kenny, Lee Majors has to put his pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else.”
This revelation was quite startling, and at first, a little difficult to accept.
It is hard to come to grips with the fact that the idols we worship are no better than we are.
And it may be harder still, for us to realize and accept that we—ourselves—are no better than anyone else.
I remember when my sister Lisa found out that she was going to have to get glasses.
She ran into the house, up the stairs, and into her room crying and wailing!
I asked my mother why Lisa was so upset by the fact that she needed glasses.
My mother replied, “Don’t worry Kenny, Lisa has just found out that she is not perfect.”
When did you first find out that you were not perfect?
When did you first find out that you needed a Savior?
The founder of Methodism, John Wesley—up to the age of 36—had always been extremely successful.
He was a scholar.
He was an overachiever.
He was a well-respected Anglican Priest in the Church of England.
He had never really failed at anything in his life…until…until…he came to America, landing at Savannah, Georgia in order to convert the heathens over here.
But his trip was a disaster.
Not only did the Americans have little interest in what he was trying to tell them…he also fell in love with a young woman who did not feel the same way about him as he felt about her.
So, one morning, an angry Wesley refused to serve this young lady Communion…which was against the law…a warrant went out for Wesley’s arrest…and he quickly got back on a boat headed back to England…feeling like a failure for the first time in his life.
It was during this time that Wesley began to question his faith and his relationship to God.
About this time Wesley reflected in his journal, “I was still under law,’ not ‘under grace’; for I was only striving with, not freed from, sin: neither had I the witness of the Spirit with my spirit, and indeed could not; for I ‘sought it not by faith, but, as it were, by the works of the law.’”
A little later Wesley went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where someone was reading Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans.
“About a quarter before nine,” Wesley writes, “while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed.
I felt that I did trust in Christ,
Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
From that point on, the heart of Wesley’s understanding of God was Grace!
What is the heart of our understanding of God?
So often we must be humbled…by something outside ourselves…before we are able to humble ourselves.
O Lord, it is hard to be humble!
We are a society which is caught up in “works righteousness.”
But now this “works righteousness” does not necessarily involve our Christian faith.
In this generation, in our society “works righteousness” involves our looks!
We spend loads of money on ‘hip’ clothing, hair dye, the latest styles, the trendiest diets…
…we are working to look young.
Works righteousness also involves how much we ‘know.’
We are in a fast-paced world and knowledge is power, is it not?
Material wealth is another bit of “works righteousness” we are striving for.
But with all these things…
…well…
…biology does its work to show us what a sham all these delusional ways of living and striving really are!
Works righteousness gets us no-where does it not?
And for the Pharisees of Jesus’ day…that was all they depended on!
They were the ones who followed all the laws…plus a whole bunch more they had come up with on their own…to the tee…and were quite certain that by doing this they were better than everyone else…
…especially the hated tax collector mentioned in our Gospel Lesson for this morning.
Why should a Pharisee repent of his sins?
What sins?
It is only as we understand ourselves as we truly are—sinners in need of a Savior—that we are able to come to repentance beat our breast and say: “God have mercy on me, a sinner.”
This is dying to self and living for God!
God is in the mercy business!
But in order to receive mercy…we must be open to receiving mercy.
God does not force us to do anything.
In our Epistle Lesson which Judy read for us earlier Paul, a man who learned a whole lot about humility is writing to his young protégé—Timothy: “…the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness…”
In the song Get Down by Christian Rock Group Audio Adrenaline the band sings these lyrics:
“Lavishly our lives are wasted
Humbleness is left untasted
You can’t live your life to please yourself
That’s a tip from my mistakes
Exactly what it doesn’t take
To win you’ve got to come in last place
To live your life you’ve got to lose
And all the losers get a crown.”
I don’t know about you, but I want to be a loser for Christ…which actually means sharing in the greatest victory imaginable!!!
But it’s not my victory.
It’s not your victory.
It’s Christ’s Victory which Christ wants us all to share…without price, without price!!!
In Jesus Christ Superstar, the character who plays Jesus sings:
“To conquer death you only have to die
You only have to die.”
Are we ready to die to self in order to conquer death and live—really, really live???
What is it that you need to repent of…that I need to repent of?
It is different for everyone, and it is a journey…a daily experience which moves us toward sanctification, or as John Wesley put it: “Having a habitual love for God and neighbor.”
I want that more than anything in the world!
How about you?
In 1738 John Wesley drew up the rules for what he called “The Band Societies.”
These “Band Societies” would be the catalyst for the Great Awakening which swept across Europe and the United States and changed the world!!!
These “Band Societies” were the beginning of what we now know as the United Methodist Church!
It was a revival within the established Church which God used to save millions upon millions of souls!!!
In his journal Wesley wrote of these “Band Societies” that “such a society is no other than ‘a company of [persons] having the form and seeking the power of godliness, united in order to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that they may help each other to work out their salvation.”
We are now the established Church.
And if these “Band Societies” worked for the early Methodists there is no reason they will not work for us!
There is a green insert in your bulletin.
We are going to restart John Wesley’s “Band Societies” right here at Grace Church in Soddy Daisy.
If you feel God calling to you to be a part of a “Band Society” please fill out the bottom section of the insert and place it in the offering plate or hand it to me following the worship service.
One thing many of us have noticed in working the Pumpkin Patch this month is that more than 50% of our neighbors who visit the patch do not have a church home.
We owe it to them to have a strong Christian home where they can come, meet Christ, and be saved and transformed!!!
I see no better way to become strong and begin a revival in this community than by having all of us participate in a “Band Society.”
One of the books I am currently reading is entitled UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity…And Why it Matters.”
It has been put out by the Barna Group.
And from their research, the Barna Group has discovered that Christians are being perceived as everything but representatives of Christ…especially by persons between the ages of 16-29.
We are being perceived as “hypocritical,” “insensitive,” “judgmental” and…unChristian!
According to the findings of The Barna Research Group “outsiders’ most common reaction to the faith [is]:they think Christians no longer represents what Jesus had in mind, that Christianity in our society is not what it was meant to be.”
Quoting the findings in the book, “The primary reason outsiders feel hostile toward Christians…is not because of any specific theological perspective. What they react negatively to is our ‘swagger,’ how we go about things and the sense of importance we project.”
Now does this perception of Christianity by a world of folks who are lost and dying and need to know Jesus as Savior and Lord sound more like the Pharisee in our Gospel Lesson or the tax collector?
My friends, all of us need to start walking…no scratch that…lying face down on the ground not even looking up to heaven and crying out: “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
This is the only way this world will come to know Christ through our witness!
This is the only way to be a Christian!!!
I don’t know about you, but I’m humbled by someone or something which is much greater than I.
We’re very good at trying to build ourselves up by comparing ourselves to other sinners, but how about comparing ourselves to Jesus Christ?
Will this not cause us to be humbled to the very dust?
My friends, look at Jesus Christ…
… “Who,” as Paul writes in Philippians chapter 2, “being in the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name…”
This is what humbles us.
Jesus emptied Himself.
How many of us are able to “empty ourselves”?
So many of us work so hard, get so stressed out, and expend so much energy trying to make others think we are something great.
And no matter how much we may say we want to please God, we are really wanting to please other people….which means a phoniness…a selfish desire to please ourselves rather than God—which doesn’t work anyway!
Jesus “made himself nothing,” and we are told that our attitudes should “be the same as that of Christ Jesus.”
Are they?
In striving to have the same attitude of Christ Jesus, we must empty ourselves of everything that separates us from God.
This means that any and all of our prejudices and superior attitudes must fly back to hell where they came from!
Because prejudice and attitudes of superiority become our gods and control our actions.
Christ did not discriminate.
Christ did not “swagger.”
Christ helped the poor and the rich, the mighty and the small, the strong and the weak…with equal love and care!
Too often, when we help others, we are thinking about ourselves…
…like…
…what can I get out of this?
But when we strive to have the attitude of Christ…
…what we get out of a situation no longer matters—just as long as God is glorified and other persons know they are loved and cared for by God!
In the kingdom of the devil, the so-called great people are the ones who are served, but in the kingdom of God the great do the serving!
“What is man?” Job asked.
And what Job discovered is that humankind is nothing in comparison to God.
Without God nothing lasts.
The only things that last and matter are those things that are done for God!
Material wealth fades away…
…worldly fame and glory vanishes…
…only God and God’s love are eternal!!!
Even though, from the very beginning, the position at God’s right hand was rightfully His, Jesus was willing to give it up.
Because of His love for us Jesus gave up His position in heaven.
And because of that love Jesus died on a Cross, so that we who stand naked with all of our sins uncovered—can be truly covered once and for all with the shed blood of Jesus Christ!
Two men went to the temple to pray.
One man prayed about himself.
He was blind to his own faults, but very aware of the faults of others.
The other man “stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God have mercy on me, a sinner.’…
…. ‘this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Let us pray: O blessed Lord Jesus, we come to You, hungry, sinful, miserable, blind, naked—unworthy even to wash the feet or Your servants. We do, here and now, with all our power, accept You as our Lord and Head. We renounce our unworthiness, and vow that You are the Lord, our righteousness. We renounce our own wisdom, and take You for our own guide. We renounce our own will, and take Your will as our law. In Jesus’ name and for His sake we pray. Amen.
