It is my great privilege as a preacher of the Word of God to tell you that the same power that brought Jesus Christ out of the grave is available to you. Today, I’d like for us to talk about the secret of exalted living, to have the same kind of power that brought Jesus out of the grave living in you.
Our text comes from Luke 14 beginning in verse 7. The first verse of this chapter tells us that Jesus went to a banquet at a very prominent person’s home, and they were watching Him. In verse 7, we learn that He was watching them.
Read Luke 14:7-11
It was Earnest Hemingway who said, "Only a bullfighter lives life all the way up." Well, I don’t want to be a bullfighter, do you?
I would like to live life all the way up, and I believe that’s what Jesus is all about. He’s telling you, "I want you to live life all the way up."
Living Life to the Fullest
Isn’t that what He meant in John 10:10? They asked Him, "What are You doing here? If You are who they say You are, what are You doing here?"
He replied, "I have come that they might have life, and have it abundantly." That they might have it to the fullest.
Jesus wants you to live life all the way up.
I think that’s what this parable is about. It’s a strange parable and sounds like it’s totally irrelevant. I mean, what should banquet etiquette for the first century have to do with you and me? We don’t go to banquets like that. We don’t have to wonder where to sit because they tell us where to sit. They have the places at the head table all assigned.
What does this have to do with us?
What about this funny, little story of proud men running around, trying to figure out where they fit in the pecking order. It’s about men trying to figure out who’s less or more important than them so they’ll know where to sit. They had to be careful. If they sat in a place of great importance, the host may come with someone who came late and tell them that the seat they took is to be occupied by someone of more importance. That would be embarrassing.
That’s not what it’s about.
I think Jesus is saying to these men what He would say to those of us who wear the clothes we wear, drive the cars we drive, live in the homes we occupy, and use the positions that we have to say, "Look at me! I am somebody! I have arrived! I have made something out of myself in this world."
This isn’t funny to Jesus because He says, "You’ve missed it. You’ve missed it by a country mile. Your vitality, importance, and greatness is not in what you have, wear, and drive or where you live and work. Your greatness is inside of you. It’s deep inside of you, and I want you to know it doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not you set at the head table. I want to show you how to find the deep part of you and to face up to the real important part of you. Then you can become what God intended you to be."
In 1 Corinthians 2, beginning in verse 7, the Lord begins to talk to people about the wisdom of God. This wisdom will never be understood by even the sharpest and most powerful of people of this world. "Eye has not seen. It’s invisible. Ear has not heard. It’s inaudible.
Neither has entered the mind of this world’s men the things that God has for those who place their trust in Him. It is incomprehensible to them because it comes from the depths of God."
Now I try not to give you too many Greek lessons, but there is in this original Word that God gives to us the word for "deepest" which is bathos.
We get our word bathysphere from this word. Do you know what a bathysphere is? It’s a steel diving bell that they lower on a cable down to the deepest part of the ocean, so they can search out parts of the ocean that they’d never see without it.
His love and wisdom are like that. The Holy Spirit of God allows us to see the deep things of God that the world can never see.
I hope it’s not sounding too judgmental or negative for me to say that I’m deeply concerned. I feel that so much of what we do, even in the name of Christ and Christianity, is so shallow. Instead of going down in to the deep things of God, we just hang around at surface level and miss all the wisdom of God and all the great things of God.
Sometimes we try to substitute activity for reality. You know, activity is not necessarily life, is it? When I was a child, my folks bought their eggs from an egg man, and he always brought some baby chicks. We finally managed to raise three of them to a size big enough to eat.
It was a real revelation to me that the chicken dinner we ate on Sunday started off with a real chicken, feathers and all. I was used to going to the store with my mother where we would see all of those poor, little chickens that had been stripped covered with nothing but goose bumps and huddled under that cellophane wrapper. I was embarrassed for them.
Did you ever think about what those chickens must have thought when someone would come into the chicken coop. You know that’s the prison compound where those chickens are kept prisoner. Sometimes, people come in bring them food and water. They probably like that. At other times people come in and steal their eggs. I don’t think they like that.
A few years ago I conducted revival services in Emmanual Baptist Church in DeQueen, Ark. A couple in the church raised chickens and sold them to one of the big chicken concerns like Tyson.
When we asked the lady about her enormous chicken coop, she said, "I don’t think you can call something that costs a quarter of a million dollars a coop." But she showed us how some of the chickens would have problems and it was obvious that they were not going to survive. Instead of continuing to feed them, she would walk through several times a day and become the executioner. She’d grab a chicken by the head and start wringing it around and around.
Have you ever seen a chicken when it’s just lost it’s head, literally.
They do some unbelievable things. There used to be a dance the teenagers would do, at least the Methodist teenagers, called the "funky chicken." They didn’t even come close to what a chicken does when it’s lost it’s head. It appears that there is more life there, than at any other time. A chicken that’s lost it’s head will do a lot more than it ever did in a better frame of health. It isn’t life is it? There is a lot of activity, but it isn’t life. It is the activity of death.
Colossians 1:18 says that Jesus Christ is the head of the church. I wonder what a church looks like when it’s lost it’s head. There’s a lot of activity, but it’s not life.
It’s the activity of death and for this reason, I think the Lord seriously calls us to hear this phrase: "For everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted."
It is in this humiliation that we look into the deep part of ourselves and God.
In the X-ray waiting room of a hospital in Kansas City, there’s a quotation from Hamlet by Shakespeare on the wall. It’s from the scene where Hamlet does a play so that his mother and father will see themselves as very guilty of murder. Hamlet takes his mother Gertrude, pushes her down in a chair, and says, "Sit you here. Come, come. Sit you here. You budge not. You depart not hence while I set before you a glass that will show you your inmost parts of you."
That’s a great line for an X-ray waiting room, isn’t it?
I think God says, "Come, come. Sit you here. Don’t budge. Don’t depart hence while I set before you a glass that will show you the inmost part of you." That’s what humility is all about. Isaiah 6 says humility is an admission of our sinfulness. Deuteronomy 8 says humility is a pledge of obedience to God. II Kings 22 declares that this is a submission to God of people who know He made them.
It is God’s highest example, isn’t it?
Tell me who you admire in the Word of God, and he’ll be humble.
Moses, the greatest leader, perhaps, of all time was a very humble man.
The Man above all men, the name above all names ... as you read the Scripture, you find out why Jesus Christ is the name that everyone will bow before ... why His is the name above all names. It is because He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death on the cross. You read further, and you realize the whole thing is written to the end that you might humble yourself exactly like Jesus did.
That’s why these things are said. God’s example to us is His greatest desire for us.
The Secret of Eternal Living
The prophet asks in Micah 6:8, "And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."
Humility is the secret of eternal living. It is the secret of peace with God.
In one of the early Psalms, we read God gives salvation to the humble.
In Psalm 149, it says, "He crowns the humble with salvation."
He says, "I want to save you."
Have you ever wondered why people don’t line up to come to Christ?
I’ve wondered that a lot. I have cried before God and said,
"Lord, why don’t they come to know Christ as Savior?"
Is there anyone here who thinks you’re not going to die?
Is there anyone here who doubts you’re not going to stand in judgment before God for everything you’ve done?
Is there anyone here who doesn’t know that Jesus Christ says, "I want to give you eternal life.
I want you to have the gift of life." Then why don’t people take it?
Why don’t they do it? Why aren’t they lined up, saying, "I want to spend eternity in heaven, not in hell."
God says, "I’ll give you this." Why don’t they line up and take it?
Pride. That’s why God says, "The thing I hate is pride. The world’s greatest sin is pride."
That’s why He was so disturbed at little men who were supposed to be men of God, running around and arguing about who was greatest and should set at the head table. It was pride.
Admit your sinfulness before God? "Not me," says the proud man. "I won’t admit my sinfulness to anyone." Obey God? "Not me," puffs up the proud person. "I run my own life. I do my own thing. Submission to God? Ha!" And people miss eternity because of pride.
The Beatitudes are in order of succession.
They are not just some salad where all the goodies of God are tossed together and thrown out there. There is an order.
The first one is foundational: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:3). You start there with your poverty of spirit. You can never be in the kingdom of God as long as you think you are king. Humility is the secret to eternal life.
It’s the secret of restoring your life in Christ. Has your faith gone putrid? Did you used to have a great walk with God, but now it’s not there? The zing and joy is gone. The pride has come in. You’ve left God and gone back to your own way of living. You realize it’s not working, that you’ve lost it. How do you come back to God?
When the temple was dedicated in II Chronicles 7, Solomon was now back alone with God. That’s when God does His best work with us ... when we’re alone with Him. Solomon was there for the dedication of the building, but the significant things were said when Solomon was alone with God.
God said, "Solomon, I like the building. It’s all right. But I’m a lot more concerned about the hearts of My people, and when My people become proud, arrogant, and stray from Me, then you tell them this, will you? ’If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land’ II Chronicles 7:14).
The secret is humility, and humbling ourselves before God is the secret to coming back to God.
The Secret of Confident Living
Not only is it the secret of eternal life, but humility is the secret of confident living. Some people think that humility is a personal weakness. Humility is really knowing that weakness is believing in our own personal strength. Humility is confidence in God as opposed to confidence in ourselves. Humility is truly living a confident life.
George Mueller of Bristol England was traveling by ship to the United States. When the ship was off the coast of Newfoundland he came to the captain of the ship who had been on the bridge for 24 hours straight and said, "Captain, I have come to tell you that I must be in Quebec Saturday afternoon." The captain said, "It is impossible."
Mueller replied, "Very well, if your ship cannot take me, God will find some other way. I have never broken an engagement for fifty-seven years. Let us go down into the chart-room and pray."
The captain looked at that man of God and thought to himself, what lunatic asylum has that man come from? He had never heard of such a thing. He said, "Mr. Mueller, don’t you know how dense this fog is?" Mueller replied, "No, my eye is not on the density of the fog, but on the living God, who controls every circumstance of my life."
He knelt down and prayed one a very simple prayer, and when he had finished the captain was going to pray; but Mueller put his hand on the captain’s shoulder, and told him not to pray. "First you do not believe He will answer; and second I BELIEVE HE ALREADY HAS, and there is no need whatever for you to pray about it."
The captain looked at him and Mueller said, "Captain, I have known my Lord for fifty-seven years, and there has never been a single day that I have failed to get audience with the King. Get up, Captain and open the door, and you will find the fog gone." He got up, and the fog was indeed gone. On Saturday afternoon, George Mueller was in Quebec for his engagement.
Humility is truly living a confident life. Paul’s second letter to Timothy was his last letter. He was in prison and was about to be beheaded for following the Lord Jesus Christ. He writes to Timothy, "...because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him for that day" (II Timothy 1:12). These are words of confidence.
I read somewhere that Lazarus went around telling people that Christ had raised him from the dead. Wouldn’t you? Don’t you? The officials came to him and said, "Lazarus, you’ve got to quit telling that story. If you don’t we’re going to kill you." Lazarus laughed. That’s living in confidence, folks, really living in the presence of God.
Have you ever looked in your Bible to see how often the Word says, "He is able..." That phrase of confidence is repeated over and over again: "To Him who is able to keep you from stumbling ..." (Jude 24). "Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think ..." (Ephesians 3:20).
I Peter 1:3-5 says, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade ... kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time."
Confidence is humbling yourself and coming to the Lord Christ.
Confidence is there.
Have you ever wondered why God wants to be number one? Does that ever bother you, or do you think about that? Why does God want to be the most important one in our lives? Is God on some kind of ego trip?
Is He vain? If He really loves us, why doesn’t He make us number one?
Because, of course, He knows something about us. He knows that we will feel about ourselves what we think the most important one in our life feels about us. You may be one of the brightest people anywhere, but if you think the most important person in your life thinks you’re dumb, you’re going to feel dumb. You may be handsome or beautiful, but if you think the most important person in your life thinks you’re ugly, you’re going to feel unattractive.
Our Lord knows that if you make Him the most important person in your life, you’re going to know that you’re loved. You’re going to know that you’re protected. You’re going to know that you’re energized with life. You’re going to know that you have nothing to fear in this world or the world to come. You live with confidence when you humble yourself and come to Christ.
The Secret of Successful Living
Not only is humility the secret of eternal life and confident living, but it is also the secret of successful living. In Psalm 111, the Word says God gives wisdom to the humble. In Psalm 15, it says God gives honor to the humble. Do you want wisdom and honor? The Word says to humble yourself and He will exalt you. Three times, Jesus said on separate occasions to humble yourself unto the mighty hand of God,
and in due time, He will lift you up.
Humble yourself, and you will be successful. You will live on the highest level of living. Exalted means "to be lifted up, to be on a higher plane." It means to really live.
It’s your call. That’s the awesome part about this statement. Would you read it again? "For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
You’re going to be humbled. Even the biggest tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Probably before that, you’re going to be humbled. Life will probably humble you. God may have to humble you.
Death will definitely humble you.
You’re going to be humbled, so your decision is: "Am I going to be humbled, or am I going to humble myself?" If life, death, or God humbles you, then there’s nothing but punishment. God’s Word says, if you humble yourself, there’s life, confidence, and successful living.
Are you ready to humble yourself? It seems like the wisest thing to do, doesn’t it? Are you ready to say, "Lord, I am a sinner. I admit my sin. I declare my obedience to You. I submit to You as God of my life. I will humble myself, and I will live on the highest level."
Humble yourself and you will be exalted.
