Humility - October 23, 2016 - Luke 18:9-14
Worship. Worship. There is nothing like worshipping God. There’s nothing like being in the presence of Jesus and adoring Him.
And that’s because there is nothing and no one more beautiful than our God. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, God who is three in one.
He fills our praises with his presence. He ministers healing to us, and we have the incredible privilege of entering His presence and focussing on His worth, His goodness, His glory and majesty.
That’s what we’ve been doing this afternoon. That’s why we gather on Sundays, to worship God.
We also learn about God, enjoy the community of God’s people gathered here, but mainly we come to worship the living, true God, revealed in Jesus, in Whom all the fulness of the Godhead bodily dwells.
Where do we get that word, worship? The word ‘worship’ comes from the Greek word ‘proskyneō (pros-kü-ne'-ō)’, and it means to bow in humble reverence, to lay prostrate before the living God. It’s a profound act of submission and adoration.
It’s also symbolic because when we’re laying prostate (demonstrate) we can’t go any lower. We can’t be more reverential toward God.
Whether we are actually laying prostrate or bowing, or standing, it’s all about the attitude of our heart.
Worship is an act of profound personal freedom too. Because we personally and willingly bow ourselves down low.
We affirm that God is God and we are not God. I want to suggest that worshipping the living God in humility and honesty and truth is why we were made, ultimately.
It will be our greatest joy, in eternity. With all the angels who cry ‘Holy, holy, holy’, we will join our voices to that great chorus.
When we worship here and now, we are touching eternity, because we are, yes, joining our voices to heaven, joining our voices to the believers who have gone before us and to the whole heavenly host.
So the word worship means to, in our attitudes if not in our bodies, lie prostrate, flat on our faces, before God.
There are other ways to go low. Sin can take us low. Sin humiliates us. Sin strips us of dignity, removes from us our sense of worth.
It creates shame and embarrassment. And it distorts something very basic and beautiful about you and me.
That is simply that we are made in the image of our Creator, and we’re intended to live as a reflection of our God.
So the believer, who perhaps once was brought low by sin (that’s me. Perhaps that’s you too), comes to worship the living God, the Creator of heaven and earth, the Redeemer and Saviour of our soul.
And in our hearts if not physically, we bow deep before our majestic and beautiful king.
And here’s the thing. As we willingly bow before God, we are brought low. But that ‘lower state’ is in truth much higher that the state that sin brings us to.
Today’s passage is a powerful one that makes us take a hard look at ourselves, if we are willing. It’s very clearly directed to a specific audiences.
It says: “To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable”.
Jesus places a very high value on humility. He says in Matthew 5, the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth”.
There, as elsewhere in the beatitudes as in the gospels, he flips conventional thinking on its head.
What do I mean by that? Don’t we value strong people? Don’t we look up to strong, authoritative leadership?
Aren’t we pulled toward confident people who know their minds?
Human history is filled with people following apparently ‘strong’ leaders to very dark places regardless of their character or the evil they do.
But Jesus has a different view. And so he tells a story.
“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ 13 “But the tax collector 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.’ 14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
So it looks like it’s possible to be humble in God’s presence, or arrogant in His presence. We can pray with very different attitudes of the heart.
Coming to church, even on a regular basis, is I’m sorry to say no guarantee that things are right between us and God.
That’s because it’s all about what’s going on inside, not about outward appearances. Man looks on outward appearance. God looks at the heart.
And humans are so mixed up sometimes that it’s even possible for us to be twisted in our gratitude.
The pharisee in this story is grateful; he expresses thanks...that he is better than everyone else. Better than thieves and those who do obvious evil, those who commit adultery.
And he looks with contempt on the other fellow in the story who is kneeling beside him who he knows is a tax collector, a hated conspirator with Rome.
Even in prayer, he attempts to justify himself before God. “I fast twice weekly and I tithe 10% of everything I get”.
Now, this for all appearance is an upstanding guy, if you think about it, if what he’s saying while he’s praying is true. He lives with morals and an ethical code.
He does the spiritual disciple of fasting. That’s not a bad thing at all. He even tithes. He puts a tenth of all he makes in the offering bag.
Does it really matter that he’s not particularly humble, or not even a little humble?
Jesus talks about the tax collector, who again is a fellow who makes his living conspiring with the Roman government.
He collects taxes for Rome and then adds more than he should to his take. He is not respected by his countrymen. He’s a traitor, really, to the nation of Israel.
But how does he pray?
13 “But the tax collector 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.’
What’s the difference between these two fellows? I’m asking.
Yes, the second fellow, the tax collector is humble. Completely humble. Prostrate before God. He beats his chest and only says: “God have mercy on me, a sinner”.
What does he know that the pharisee doesn’t know? Why is his attitude so different? What does he bring with him to synagogue, or to church in our context?
He knows he’s a sinful man. He’s aware of himself. He’s on a different path, a different trajectory than the pharisee. It’s the path of humility. He is not proud of what he does. He simply asks for mercy.
If the story ended there, with the tax collector's prayer, we might have differing opinions about the point that Jesus was trying to make.
We might want to think that the pharisee was just self-aware.
A good guy walking a good path who was just feeling pretty good about himself, and pretty confident that all was well between him and God.
We might think that the Tax Collector was just a bad dude. We don’t see him repenting of his sin.
He’s just stating a fact and not feeling great, maybe because no one likes him because of his job.
But Jesus doesn’t let us go there. He puts a fine point on his story. He says of the tax collector,
14 “I tell you that this man (the tax collector), rather than the other (the pharisee), went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
What’s the key difference again between these two men? Humility. That and nothing else. The tax collector in this story is justified, made right with God, and the other is not.
They both came to do the same thing, to pray, to deepen their walk with God or to do what they just felt they should do.
And one walked away unmoved and unchanged and unreconciled to God, and the other walked away completely right with God.
Jesus puts a fine point on this story: “For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted”.
In the gospel of Luke, chapter 14, Jesus illustrates His point: 7 When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable: 8 “When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. 9 If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this person your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place.10 But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. 11 For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
What is humility? Humility is not ‘feeling bad’ about ourselves. It is not ‘walking around slumped over’. It is not hating ourselves. It’s not having an inferiority complex.
It’s being honest. It’s having an accurate idea about ourselves. It’s recognizing in ourselves our frailties, our needs and weaknesses, especially in the light of God’s goodness and holiness and power.
In other words humility is understanding our need for God.
The pharisee was doing so well on his own, he was quite self-sufficient, thank you very much. He barely needed God. In fact, he was really just reporting in to God about his awesomeness.
The tax collector on the other hand. He could barely find words.
In his own heart he felt he dare not even look up to heaven, but instead he beat his chest and what does he say? “God, have mercy on me, a sinner”.
There’s a verse in James 4:10. “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up”. Here is a challenge and a promise.
Someone has said, “They that know God will be humble, and they that know themselves cannot be proud.”
The challenge each of us face is to know who we are and to know who God is. We’re called to not think too highly of ourselves nor to be too harsh on ourselves.
Have you noticed how God designed us? God wisely designed the human body so that we can neither pat our own backs very well nor kick ourselves too easily.
God calls us to worship and he calls us to humility.
But He doesn’t just say those words. God Himself models to us humility.
Which is pretty amazing. The Creator of heaven and earth, the One Who is perfect in majesty and has all power. The One who is so worthy of all of our devotion just because He is God.
Jesus told this story about the humility of the tax collector. But Jesus Himself was the perfect example of the deepest kind of humility there is.
Philippians 2 says: 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of
others. 5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
Our Saviour is the perfect example of humility. From His example one thing should become very clear to us about the nature of true humility.
Humility is not weakness. It is power. It is power under control.
Humility is not demeaning or dignity-robbing. It is the path to godliness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death--even death on a cross! 9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Let’s pray. Father God, we thank you that you give grace to the humble.
We thank you that in Jesus Christ we have the opportunity to learn what humility is and the fruit that it bears in a life.
Will you grant us a humble spirit God, so that we may clearly and accurately see who we are, and so that we will always relate to you as you are...the King of Glory, the friend of sinners, the Lover of our soul.
This we pray is Jesus matchless name. Amen.
