Love Is Not Proud
#LoveIs5
OKAY, so we are in this series called, ‘Love Is…’
AND – as I have repeatedly said since we kicked this puppy off on October 13th… THIS – is an absolutely critical and vital conversation for us to have, both as a church and as individual Jesus follower.
BECAUSE…
• Nothing is more important than love
• Nothing is more powerful than love (like it has the power to change people… from a hawk to a little white dove)
• Nothing is more needed than love… needed in our homes, our churches, in our community and in our world.
AND BECAUSE – God’s holy, inspired, alive, active and authoritative Word says the following about love…
I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you must also love one another. By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another. - John 13:34-35
Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. – Romans 13:8
The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. – Galatians 5:6
Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins. – 1 Peter 4:8
No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us. – 1 John 4:12
NOW – so far in the series we have talked about…
‘The Unrelenting Love Of God” … AND – about how “Love is patient and love is kind and love does not envy…”
QUESTION – so how did you do with this envy thing since we last met?
LIKE – did you STOP comparing, START enjoying (remember love loves grace… grace to you and grace to others)…
AND – did you keep trusting… Trusting in God’s goodness and in His plan for your life?
AND MGCC – listen, here’s the deal…
IF YOU – want the world to know that we are His followers
IF YOU - want God to live in and through us
IF YOU – want to do the only thing that counts
IF YOU – want to fulfill all of the law
IF YOU – want to cover a multitude of sins
IF YOU – want to see and experience… radical change in your homes, marriage, relationships, in this church.
THEN YOU – need to not merely listen to these truths about love, you need to live out what they say!
SURE – it’s great to sit in here and be convicted, but actually living it out is what matters!
GET IT?
AND – that is the reason why we have these 2 ‘Love Is Walls’ up here… and the goal of these walls is simple. For you write down (do not include you name) ways that you have lived out love during the past week.
Let us spur one another on to love and good deeds. – Hebrews 10:24
OKAY SO – this morning we are going to unpack the last 4 words of 1 Corinthians 13:4…. That describes yet another facet of God’s kind of love… ‘Love Is Not Proud.’
NOW – I did a lot reading and a lot listening to various teachings on this subject this past week…
One guy (Francis Chan) said that he has always found speaking on the topic of pride to be extremely frustrating…
BECAUSE - the people who really need to hear the message are people who struggle with pride…
YET BECAUSE - they ‘are’ proud they are less likely to hear and to connect the message to themselves…
They have eyes, yet they cannot see
They have ears, yet they cannot hear
SO – as we begin this conversation, I would like to ask…
IF YOU – will make yourself open to the possibility that you struggle with pride?
LIKE – is it possible the pride has been an issue that has keep you from loving the people in your life well?
AND LISTEN – if you can’t be open to that possibility, then I think you have already pretty much answered the question.
OKAY – here is how I plan on attacking this morning’s conversation, by unpacking 3 statements.
• The hate God loves
• You might need some deflating if…
• It’s time to try humilify
Love is not proud… - 1 Corinthians 13:4
Now the word in 1 Corinthians 13:4 translated as proud is the Greek word…
Proud – (physioo) to inflate, to puff up, to blow up, to bear one’s self loftily, to be proud or arrogant.
MGCC – love is not proud…
TURN – to the person to your right and left… “love is not proud”
UNDERSTAND - whenever there is pride, love is missing.
OKAY – let’s do this, ‘Love is not physioo…’
And the first point in your notes is.
I. The Hate God Loves
OKAY – let me ask you a question: what do you hate?
What do you hate?
UNDERSTAND – when it comes to the things that I hate, I actually I have two lists.
NOW ONE LIST – is kind of silly and trivial, and you will find on it things like…
• I hate meat loaf
• I hate diet soda
• I hate onions
• I hate cranberry sauce
• I hate cottage cheese
• I hate watching people eat cottage cheese
• I hate single ply toilet paper
• I hate all sports teams associated with New York
• I hate the Pittsburg Steelers
• I hate paper jams on printers
• I hate slow or erratic wi-fi
• I hate wrongly cooked fried chicken
What do you hate?
NOW – my second list of things I hate is not so trivial
• I hate abortion
• I hate child abuse
• I hate racism of any kind
• I hate sex trafficking
• I hate false doctrine
• I hate when people lie
• I hate gossip and slander
• I hate cancer
SO – what do you hate?
QUESTION – do you know what God hates?
God hates pride.
HEY – check out this quote from one of the books I read through this week…’
You and I hate nothing to the degree that God hates pride. His hatred for pride is pure, and His hatred of pride is holy. - C J Mahaney (Humility: True Greatness)
Which is why brothers and sisters – there is a hate God loves…
UNDERSTAND – God loves when we hate pride.
Especially when we hate the pride in our own life, because love is not physioo.
NOW - from my study this week, I’m convinced there’s nothing God hates more than pride.
YES GOD - righteously hates all sin, BUT LISTEN - biblical evidence abounds for the conclusion that there’s no sin more offensive to our God than pride.
I MEAN WHEN - His Word reveals in Proverbs 6:16,17 those seven things “that the LORD hates” and “that are an abomination to him,” guess what sin leads off the list… it’s the proud man’s “haughty eyes.”
AND WHEN - the personified wisdom of God speaks out in Proverbs 8:13, it could not make this truth any clearer…
To fear the Lord is to hate evil. I hate pride and arrogance… - Proverbs 8:13
AND IF YOU – need more proof of how your God feels about proud… check out this divine perspective on pride revealed in
Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the LORD; be assured, he will not go unpunished. – Proverbs 16:5
B/S - stronger language for any other sin, simply cannot be found in Scripture. AND – here a few more verse to drive this truth home even deeper.
Haughty eyes, a proud heart, and evil actions are all sin. – Proverbs 21:4
In his pride the wicked man does not seek him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God. – Psalms 10:4
Whoever slanders their neighbor in secret, I will put to silence; whoever has haughty eyes and a proud heart, I will not tolerate. – Psalm 101:5
The Lord tears down the house of the proud, Proverbs - 15:25
Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. – Proverbs 16:18
God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble. - 1 Peter 5:5
UNDERSTAND GOD – hates, detests, tears down, will not tolerate, and opposes the proud.
NOW - I can think of a lot of people I wouldn’t want to have as an opponent. I would not want to be in a swimming lane opposed by Michael Phelps. I would not want to be on a basketball court opposed by Labron James. I would not want to be opposed by Bill Gates at an auction.
BUT – the person I really don’t want to be opposed by is God, because there’s no way that I am EVER going to win that battle. AND LISTEN MGCC - the Bible says that when I am prideful, God is not just mildly irritated at me it says that He is in opposition to me.
YES – the love God hates, is pride…
Because pride really does lead to destruction.
UNDERSTAND – pride destroys
• Our relationship with God
• Marriages
• Homes
• Governments
• Churches (in fact pride was a major cause of all the division and disunity that existed in the church at Corinth.. 7 times Paul calls them out for being puffed up and inflated and full of pride)
Pride undermines unity and can ultimately divide a church. Show me church where there’s division, where there’s quarreling, and I’ll show you a church where there is pride.
- C.J. Mahaney (Humility: True Greatness)
II. You might need some deflating, if…
In 1993 the comedian Jeff Foxworthy released an album called ‘You might be a redneck if…’ It sold 3 million copies and started the ‘you might be a red neck fad,’- helping millions of people discover whether or not they are a red neck…
• If you own a home that is mobile and 14 cars that are not, you might be a redneck
• If you’ve been married 3 times and still have the same in-laws, you might be a redneck
• If you’ve ever been accused of lying through your tooth, you might be a redneck
• If you’ve ever cut your grass and found a car, you might be a redneck
• If your dog and your wallet are both on a chain, you might be a redneck
• If directions to your house include the words ‘turn off the paved road,’ you might be a redneck
• If your mother keeps a spit cup on the ironing board, you might be a redneck
• If you think the stock market has a fence around it, you might be a redneck
• If you think a subdivision is part of a math problem, you might be a redneck
• If your wife has ever said, "Come move this transmission so I can take a bath." You might be a redneck
OKAY – that was fun, I don’t care who you are…
NOW – do you remember the meaning of the Greek word for proud in 1 Corinthians 13?
Proud – (physioo) to inflate, to puff up, to blow up, to bear one’s self loftily, to be proud or arrogant.
WELL – I would like to suggest 6 things that will help you figure out if you struggle with pride and might need some deflating
You might need some deflating, if…
You have a tendency to take everything personally
NOW - some of you are like, “No, I don’t do that. I don’t take everything personally.”
Easy, all right?
If this is you,…you have a tendency to get defensive.
You have a tendency to kind of put up a case for yourself.
LIKE - if someone asks you a question and they don’t mean anything by it, you hear it as an indictment.
OR YOU SEE - a couple (of) friends talking; you assume they’re talking about you and that it, probably isn’t nice.
And you kind of approach people with a “what’s that supposed to mean?” attitude. You take things personally. You’re quick to defend yourself.
BOTTOM LINE - being easily offended is rooted in pride. We can’t get over ourselves. We can’t stand to be disrespected or misunderstood.
You might need some deflating, if…
You think your feelings are the most reasonable
AND – if this you, you expect other people to recognize that your feelings and your thoughts, on any given subject, make the most sense.
AND LISTEN - it’s not enough for you to know you’re right, but you will insist on other people recognizing that you’re right.
B/L - the people in your life know that it is not okay for them to disagree with what you think or how you feel.
AND SO WE ARE - constantly overestimating our own feelings, our own opinions on all kinds of different subjects.
I was reading about this survey that was done on a group of people who were members of a dating website. And so they asked thousands of members of this dating website a number of questions but one of the questions was: “Are you a genius? Would you consider yourself to be a genius? Yes or no?”
Now on that survey…thousands of people surveyed…the men especially…the number stood out because the men…two out of five of the men…two out of five…almost half of the men said,
“I mean, if you’re gonna…if you’re gonna corner me on this, uh, yeah. I mean, technically I guess I would be considered a genius by most people.”
Two out of five! Now statistically speaking, that number should be about one in a thousand.
Like, scientifically that’s probably what that statistic would look like: About one out of a thousand men probably would technically be considered a genius.
I love the way the website put it. It said, “Two out of five men consider themselves to be one in a thousand.”
And I thought, “Yeah, that’s…that’s the problem with us,” right? Like, we overestimate our own capacity. We tend to not always have an accurate view of ourselves, and we want everybody to agree with how we think and how we feel. and that’s all rooted in pride. And that causes a lot of conflict.
In fact the bible says in Proverbs 13:10…
Where there is strife, there is pride
A) You might need some deflating, if… Your desires are the most important
NOW - this is a little different than your feelings and thoughts. Because this is what you want, right?
SO IF - there is a car full of people and you’re trying to decide where to eat, it just seems reasonable to you that whatever you want is what everybody else should want.
OBVIOUSLY - that’s where everyone should go, because that’s where you want to go.
AND IT - just seems like your desires are the most important.
The music that gets played, the shows that are watched or the way a job gets done…
B) You might need some deflating, if…You always think it’s the other person who needs to apologize or change.
NOW JESUS - warned us in the Sermon on The Mount about pointing out the dust in someone else’s eye, while ignoring the plank in your own eye… But that’s what pride does.
YOU SEE – not only does it blinds us to our own weaknesses,
BUT - it magnifies the weaknesses of others.
And so oftentimes we justify broken relationships or constant conflicts or anger issues by saying,
“Well, if this person would do this differently then I wouldn’t have had to respond this way.” Right?
AND WE - just instinctively blame somebody else, and we focus on what they need to do differently or how they need to change.
C) You might need some deflating, if…You tend to be negative and critical instead of positive and grateful.
UNDERSTAND - some of you have experienced this.
LIKE - Your negativity has alienated the people in your life from you. They feel like…
• no matter how hard they try that it’s not good enough
• it doesn’t matter what kind of effort they put forward, you’ll still find something that they should’ve done differently.
AND MGCC - when that happens, eventually people stop trying.
AND MAYBE - that’s happened for some of you.
AND SO - maybe your spouse…their whole marriage strategy is to be in a different room than you, because they know you’re going to be negative or going to be critical and they’re tired.
OR - you’ve had friends that have just drifted out of your life because the negativity eventually just…they just didn’t have anything left in the tank.
So let me put it this way:
The language of pride is complaining and criticizing. The language of humility is gratitude and encouragement.
D) You might need some deflating, if… You keep thinking of other people who need to hear this.
LIKE IF – as we have gone through this list and you just keep thinking,
“Oh, I’m so…I’m so glad my spouse came with me today, because he is so critical and negative,” right? “I’m so glad my friend…” or “I wish my friend would be here today because I have to tell them about this online because you’re describing them,” right?
SO AS – I’m talking, if you’re thinking of other people it’s a good indication that this is you, right? AND LISTEN - the more you have a tendency to see this in others. but not yourself, the more of a problem you might have.
The Bible tells us in Obadiah verse 3 that this is what pride does to us. It says,
The pride of your heart has deceived you… - Obadiah 3
IN OTHER WORDS - pride causes me to say, “I’m good, but I know some other people who could hear this.” NOW If you say I don’t struggle with pride, that’s fine, but just understand it’s pride that’s making you say that. That’s what pride does.
QUESTION – is it possible brothers and sisters that you might struggle with pride?
UNDERSTAND – The real issue is not ‘if’ pride exists in your heart, it’s ‘where’ pride exists and ‘how’ pride is being expressed in your life.
At every stage of our Christian development and in every sphere of our Christian discipleship, pride is the greatest enemy and humility our greatest friend. – John Stott
III. It’s Time To Try Humilify
OKAY – compete the following statement… “God helps those who help themselves…”
UNDERSTAND – that is not in the bible… and it is not necessary true.
BUT LISTEN – here is a statement that is always true.
God helps those who humble themselves
UNDESTAND – as much as God’s opposes and is against the proud…
HE – is for and lifts up the humble. I MEAN – check out the following Scriptures.
You SAVE the humble… - Ps 18:27
The Lord GUIDES the humble in what is right… - Ps 25:9
The Lord SUPPORTS the humble… - Ps 147:6
With humility comes WISDOM… - Pr 11:2
Whoever humbles himself will be EXHALTED… - Mt 23:12
God…gives GRACE to the humble… - James 4:6
This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. – Isaiah 66:2
Nothing escapes His notice. He’s aware of all things. But though He’s aware of everything, He’s also searching for something in particular, something that acts like a magnet to capture His attention and invite His active involvement.
God is decisively drawn to humility.
The person who is humble is the one who draws God’s attention and is the one that God (according to the passages we just read)…
Saves, supports, guides, exalts, AND gives wisdom and grace to….
(not too shabby of list is it?)
QUESTION - if God has promised all of this to those who are humble – where does it come from, how do we get it?
FIRST OF ALL – we need to understand that humility it’s not something that’s done to us…
INSTEAD - humility is something that we must chose to do ourselves. ALL THROUGH - scripture the Bible tells us, ”Humble yourself before God.”
AND SINCE – humility is a choice, humility is something that we can work on. It’s something we can learn to do. YOU SEE - we need to practice humility just like we practice riding a bike, driving a car, swinging a golf club or playing an instrument… BECAUSE – when we do something over and over and over, we start getting good at it.
AT FIRST - it doesn’t seem natural. It’s usually pretty difficult. But the more you do it, the better you get.
SO – let’s talk about a few practical ways that we can ‘humilify’ and pursue humility.
AND LISTEN – we should really make a decision to pursue humility #1 - because God – (saves, supports, guides, exalts, looks to, and gives grace to the humble)…
BUT – (hates, detests, tears down, humbles and opposes the proud).
AND # 2- because love is not proud…
NOW – I have some really good news MGCC about pursuing humility… I mean, I have discovered something very exciting…
(Video – ‘Humilify’ sermon spice)
OKAY – in case you didn’t figure it out, unfortunately there really isn’t a Humilify pill….
HOWEVER – there are some practices that you can adopt, that will help you make friends with humility and over pride your greatest enemy.
A) Practice Giving Up Your Rights To Others
Your attitude should be the kind that was shown by Jesus Christ, who, though He was God, did not demand and cling to His rights as God – Philippians 2:5,6
QUESTION – is that an easy thing for you to do?
Is it easy for you to give up your rights, to give preference to another person? To let someone else go first?
IMAGINE - you are standing in the checkout line at Kroger. It’s the longest, slowest line. DO you have the picture?
So you’re waiting there and you’re in a hurry. The guy behind you is hitting you with his cart. A 3 year old is screaming about wanting a piece of candy…. The person in front of you must have a family of 22 and every coupon ever printed… THEN - all of a sudden you hear these words over the intercom, “Lane 4 is now open, with no waiting.”
QUESTION - what are you going to do at that moment?
A - Take the Rambo approach, knock down small children and elderly women, and go right for lane 4.
B - Take a ham, put it under your shirt and say, ‘Lady with a baby!’ & make your way to line 4
C - Employ the misdirection strategy. Point the wrong way, “Lane 4 is open!” Then make a mad dash the right way.
YEAH - it’s hard to let others go first – to give up our rights… Leonard Bernstein, the famous orchestra conductor, was once asked what is the most difficult instrument in the orchestra to play? Do you know what he said? - He said, “Second fiddle.”
YOU SEE - everybody wants the top spot.
BUT – the truth is, only one person can have it.
Everybody else has to be backup. However - without everybody else, there is no symphony. Because - it takes everybody doing their part to make it work. I like how the Message Bible words Romans 12:10; “Practice playing second fiddle.”
AGAIN – Jesus is our perfect example… Your attitude should be the same that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not demand and cling to his rights as God. He made himself nothing, he took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form. And in human form he obediently humbled himself even further by dying a criminal’s death on a cross” Phil 2:5-8
QUESTION – do you see the full impact of those words. Jesus gave up his honor and glory, he let go of his position, he relinquished all of the riches of heaven, in order to become one of us, in order to save us from our sins. He gave it all up in order to become a human. Not even an adult. That would be humble enough, to give up the glory of heaven to become a man. But instead he became a helpless little infant.
THINK - about it: God the Son - completely at the mercy of Mary and Joseph. Unable to feed himself, unable to move about, to communicate. Unable to do anything except eat, sleep and dirty his diaper. And here’s the irony of it all. God - is now dependent upon the man and woman he made, to take care of him.
HANDS - which formed galaxies, set the stars in place and spun the earth on its axis, are now just waving around, unable to do anything. The mouth that had spoken the universe into existence, is unable to speak one word.
The Sovereign Lord of Creation, had now become the very picture of weakness – a tiny baby. AND – if becoming a human baby wasn’t humble enough… in human form he obediently humbled himself even further by dying a criminal’s death on a cross
JESUS – humbly put our needs ahead of His own. AND we are to do the same thing…
QUESTION – so, what does giving up our rights/what does giving preference to others look like – LIKE - what are some ways that we can practice and pursue humility?
I came up with a few things we can do, that will begin to build humility into our life…
1. Rather than always doing the talking, actively listen
2. Choose discomfort so others can be comfortable
3. Build someone up whose ability is in the same area as yours
4. Take a personal loss so someone else can win
5. Serve even when you haven’t been asked – because you see a need
6. Serve in an area of weakness
7. Take the spotlight off yourself and shine it on others, making them the heroes.
8. Refuse to boast no matter how good you think you are
9. Go with someone else’s plan in an area that doesn’t matter all that much
TO – pursue humility we must practice giving up our rights…
AND we must also…
B) Practice Learning From Others.
UNDERSTAND – being open to suggestions, being able to take correction, even being open to criticism - is a major component of humility. BECAUSE - part of humility is teach-ability.
QUESTION – are you open to correction?
Can you learn from criticism?
Are you able to learn from other people?
Are you teachable?
If you reject criticism you only harm yourself. But if you listen to correction you grow in understanding. - Proverbs 15:32
LISTEN - criticism is always a test of our humility.
Can count on it. YES - anytime we are criticized, God is testing our humility, to see if we are going to respond in a defensive and offensive way… OR - in a humble way.
Instruct a wise man and he will be wiser still; teach a righteous man and he will add to his learning. - Proverbs 9:9
UNDERSTAND - Humble people are always learning, because they’re open to correction. They are always ready to learn new things… “Wow that’s awesome I didn’t know that?”
OKAY – here’s the bottom line, we’ve got to decide in life whether we want to be wise or appear wise. Whether we want to be smart or appear smart.
NOW - if our goal is to appear smart, then we can never let on that we don’t know something… WE WILL - always dance our way through situations, pretending. “Sure I knew that…”
AND – in the process we never learn anything new.
Proverbs 15:14 says,
An Intelligent person is always eager to take in more truth…
TO – pursue humility and live out God’s kind of love…
We Must Practice…
1. Giving up our rights
2. Learning from others, 3rd … we must
C) Practice Admitting When We’re Wrong.
B/L - we need to follow the truth wherever it leads…
IF – it leads to you’re wrong, follow it…
IF – it leads to you need to apologize, follow it…
Follow the truth wherever it leads.
NOW - this comes a little easier for some of us than it does for others. BUT – that doesn’t matter because we all make mistakes. SO – we best figure this one out…
AND HEY - do you know what else? I have found that I can make a mistake even in admitting I am wrong… Let me explain… It’s easy for me to say, “I was wrong,” if I only have to own that for about 15 seconds and then I can go back into the attack mode. “I was wrong. But you…” or “I’m really sorry, but if only you had…” or “I was wrong but it was because of….” When in fact what I need is to be brutally honest. “I was wrong. I’m sorry.”
A man who refuses to admit his mistakes can never be successful, but if he confesses and forsakes them he gets another chance. – Proverbs 28:13
WHEN – wrong we need to admit it quickly and thoroughly… DON’T – force it to become some huge issue, where a lot of people have to get involved…
DON’T – make people break your arm and pin you to the mat before you own up to it.
YOU KNOW – it’s crazy but somehow we believe if people find out that we’re less than perfect, our value in their eyes will diminish. Guess what? They already know we’re not perfect… AND – guess what else… rather than our value in their eyes going down, the more we own up to our mistakes the higher our value becomes.
HUMILITY – is something we must pursue if we are going to ensure that our love is not proud, so that we can ride the waves of a love worth living… AND – we pursue humility by… practicing
Giving up our rights - Learning from others
Admitting our mistakes
And 4th by…
D) Practice Doing Good Deeds In Secret
Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired by others, - Matthew 6:1
YOU SEE – pride loves to call attention to and shine a light on itself…
• Pick someone in your life and immerse that person in prayer (I mean every day, for months, or maybe for the rest of 2019) AND – don’t tell anyone about it….
• Make a sacrificial gift to a person in need – inside or outside the church AND – don’t tell anyone about it…
• Come and do something at the church and try not to let anyone know…
Practice living in the awareness of both the greatness of God and the wonder of the cross
UNDERSTAND – both of these not only cast pride from us, but they humbly bring us to our knees…
LISTEN – living in an awareness of God’s greatness will indeed keep us humble.
The difference between God’s being and ours is more than the difference between the sun and a candle, more than the difference between the ocean and a raindrop, more than the difference between the arctic ice cap and a snowflake, more than the difference between the universe and the room we are sitting in: God’s being is qualitatively different than we are… a is and should be very humbling.
Then the Lord answered Job from the whirlwind. He said: Who is this who obscures My counsel with ignorant words? Get ready to answer Me like a man when I question you, you will inform Me.
Where were you when I established the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding. Who fixed its dimensions? Certainly you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? What supports its foundations? Or who laid its cornerstone while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Who enclosed the sea behind doors when it burst from the womb,
Have you ever commanded the morning to appear and caused the dawn to rise in the east? Where does light come from and where does darkness go? Can you take each to its home? Do you know how to get there? But of course you know all this! For you were born before it was all created, and you are so very experienced!
Have you visited the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of hail? Can you direct the movement of the stars… Can you direct the constellations through the seasons Do you know the laws of the universe? Can you use them to regulate the earth? Can you shout to the clouds and make it rain? Can you make lightning appear and cause it to strike as you direct?
- Job 38
Then Job answered the Lord: “I am unworthy—how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth. – Job 40:3,4
The grand difference between a human being and a supreme being is precisely this: Apart from God, I cannot exist.
Apart from me, God does exist. God does not need me in order for Him to be; I do need God in order for me to be.
This is the difference between what we call self-existent being and dependent being.
We are dependent. We are fragile. We cannot live without air, without water, without food. No human being has the power of being within himself. Life is lived between two hospitals.
We need a support system from birth to death to sustain life.
We are like flowers that bloom and then wither and then fade. This is how we differ from God. God does not wither, God does not fade, God is not fragile.
The greatest and best men in the world must say, by the grace of God I am what I am, but says absolutely… I am what I am
E) And we need practice an awareness of the wonder of the cross…
You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. 14 He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. – Colossians 2:13,14
Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote the following about the surest way to pursue humility:
There is only one thing I know of that crushes me to the ground and humiliates me to the dust, and that is to look at the Son of God, and especially contemplate the cross.
When I survey the wondrous cross On which the Prince of Glory died, My richest gain I count but loss And pour contempt on all my pride.
Nothing else can do it. When I see that I am a sinner… that nothing but the Son of God on the cross can save me, I’m humbled to the dust…. Nothing but the cross can give us this spirit of humility.
And John Stott helps us understand why the cross has this powerful effect:
Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to be saying to us, “I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.”
Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross. All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousness, until we have visited a place called Calvary.
It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.
