Humility is Self-effacing and it is Modest. It is quiet, reserved, shy, gracious, mild-mannered, and doesn’t believe it’s own press clippings. Humility is essential if you are a follower of Christ. Today’s Big Idea: Be Humble if You Want God to Work for You.
“Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen” (1 Peter 5:5b-11).
1. Clothe Yourself with Humility
“Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, 7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:5b-7)
Peter writes to motivate you to be humble. First, he says that God opposes the proud. Nothing could be worse news for the arrogant. That a powerful and holy God opposes you. Second, God gives grace to the humble. This is wonderful news. Humility draws the gaze of our Sovereign God. “All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But 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). Humility acts like a magnet to capture God’s attention. There is something you can do to attract more of God’s grace. There is something you can do to attract more of God’s underserved, supernatural strength and assistance. Nothing could be better than to have an infinitely powerful and wise God treat us graciously. He does that to the humble. The reason is not that humility is a performance of virtue that earns grace but that humility is a confession of emptiness that receives grace: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).
“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” 12 He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. 13 But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just” (Luke 14:11-14). Christian humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less, as C. S. Lewis so memorably said. It is to be no longer always noticing yourself and how you are doing and how you are being treated. It is “blessed self-forgetfulness.”
WHY SHOULD YOU BE HUMBLE? Because God will Work You. By the way, that’s the message of the Cross. God works for you. Explain the cross.
HOW CAN YOU ACHIEVE HUMILITY? BY CONTINUALLY CASTING YOU CARES UPON GOD.
Dr. May of the Mayo Clinic has said that “Tension is one of the most urgent problems of our day. Anxiety is the official emotion of our age. Casting your cares on God is an expression of humility. Notice again 1 Peter 5:6-7: “Humble yourselves … casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:6-7).
Casting your cares on God is trusting God with your future. It is trusting His promise that He cares for you and has both the power and wisdom to work for you. Trust is the opposite of pride. Trust is the essence of humility
1.1. Be Worried about Worry
And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold” (Mark 4:18-20).
Worry calls God a liar. It says to God, “I am not sure You can do what You promised.”
1.2. Count on Future Grace
The root of anxiety is an inadequate faith in our Father’s future grace. God has never worried. Not once! In a million trillion years.
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. ‘Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble’” (Matthew 6:25-34). The raven doesn’t pace his tree limb at night worrying, “I wonder if there will be any road kill tomorrow. What’s the weather report.” The Bible word for anxiety means “to divide” or “to distract.” Anxieties divide our minds, so that we cannot concentrate on anything else. Someone has defined “worry” as “a small trickle of fear that meanders through the mind until it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.”
1.3 Worry is Arrogant
“I, I am he who comforts you; who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the son of man who is made like grass,?and have forgotten the Lord, your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, and you fear continually all the day because of the wrath of the oppressor, when he sets himself to destroy? And where is the wrath of the oppressor” (Isaiah 51:12-13)?
At the root of this self-reliance is pride. Suppose you were on a ship which encountered a fierce storm at sea. You don’t know anything about handling a ship in such rough waters, but the captain is a seasoned veteran who has brought his ship safely through many such storms. Wouldn’t it be the height of arrogance for you to go up on the bridge and tell him how to run the ship or, even worse, to take the helm from him? If you were anxious in the storm, your fears would subside if you stopped to think about the captain’s competency. If you had a chance to talk to him, and he assured you that he had been through many such storms, you could relax and trust that he will get you through this one. You still may be in for a rough ride, but you can go through it without anxiety because you humbled yourself (by not taking control) and exalted the captain by trusting him.
2. God Works for His Children
There is so much today that promises to work for you. Valium, Zoloft, Prozac…
“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen” (1 Peter 5:10-11).
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:3-5).
Third, humility is only achieved as a byproduct of understanding, believing, and marveling in the Gospel of grace. But the gospel doesn't change us in a mechanical way. One sociologist pointed out that for the most part, the frameworks of meaning by which we navigate our lives are so deeply embedded in us that they operate “pre- reflectively.” They don’t exist only as a list of propositions, but also as themes, motives, and attitudes. When we listen to the gospel preached or meditate on it in the Scriptures, we are driving it so deeply into our hearts, imaginations, and thinking that we begin to instinctively “live out” the gospel. So let us preach grace till humility just starts to grow in us.
