Introduction: Recapping last week’s sermon "We Are Saved to Serve", from the example of Jesus:
(1) Choose Service over Self-Interest
(2) Always Think Like A Servant
Today, I want to talk about HUMILITY and how I achieved it!
· Just joking - if I boast about how I achieved it, it wouldn’t be humility.
One critical characteristic of a servant - in fact, one that you cannot do without, if you want to be a servant, is HUMILITY
Let’s read Phil 2:1-11
At one point or another, I believe all of us have to wrestle with this issue about our PRIDE.
· We find it hard to serve because we regard ourselves more highly than we ought.
· We see ourselves as SOMEBODY - someone with greater dignity and honour than others.
· Rom 12:3 "Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you."
That’s the problem with Satan, and that’s the problem with Adam and Eve when they were influenced by the devil.
· Before creation of world, Satan was a beautiful angel Lucifer
· Pride took over him and he rebelled against the most High God.
· Isa 14:12-15 12 How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! 13 You said in your heart, "I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. 14 I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High." 15 But you are brought down to the grave, to the depths of the pit.
· Lucifer - "What I want to do for myself!" Instead, SOMEONE brought him down.
· Satan makes 5 boasts and each of them is driven by I and what I is planning to do.
· God kicked Satan out of heaven and he has been going down ever since, and one day, he’ll be cast into the pit of hell.
· He is on a downward journey and will never return...
In the Garden of Eden, Satan tempts Eve...
· Gen 3:4-5 4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
· You’ll just be like God, isn’t that great?
· That was a lie, but Eve swallowed it.
· Since then, humanity has been swallowing that - You don’t need God, you don’t need Jesus, just be your own god!
PRIDE will always leads to ruin, because we’ve shifting our confidence away from God to SELF.
Story of the Frog
A frog wanted to go south with the birds for the winter. It was too far to hop and he couldn’t fly, so he thought about it and came up with a solution. He got a couple of his bird friends to hold each end of a stick in their beaks and then the little frog clamped down on the center of the stick with his mouth.
The birds took off and the frog was hanging from the stick they were carrying in their mouths. They flew over a couple of farmers who observed the scene. On farmer said to the other, “What a brilliant idea! Whoever came up with that idea is a genius. I guess it was one of those birds who had the idea!”
When the frog heard that, he just couldn’t take it. It was his idea after all. It was my great idea! So he said, “It’s...” and he fell to the ground with a smash.
The moral of that story is: Don’t boast. Better to keep your mouth shut!
Prov 16:18 “Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
The way to greatness in the Kingdom of God is not UP but DOWN.
· Jesus humbled Himself (v.8) and "God exalted Him" (v.9)
· The disciples have learnt - after hearing from Jesus and seeing Him serves
James 4:10 "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up."
1 Peter 5:6 "Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time."
· The "paradoxical topography of the Kingdom of God" - the way up is down.
How can we truly serve that way? In the words of Paul - two practical advice:
1. "Consider others better than yourselves" DON’T OVERESTIMATE YOURSELF
Rom 12:3 "Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought...
2. "Look to the interests of others." CARE FOR THE INTERESTS OF OTHERS
1. DON’T OVER-ESTIMATE YOURSELF
· A.W. Tozer: “A humble man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority. He has accepted God’s estimate of his own life. He knows he is weak and helpless as God declared him to be, but paradoxically, he knows at the same time he is in the sight of God of more importance than the angels. In himself, nothing, in God, everything.”
· Remind yourself that you’re just like the donkey Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
The donkey was so overjoyed at being chosen, he held his head high as they entered the city. He drank in the songs of praise and enjoyed walking on the palm branches underneath his hoofs. He relished the attention and the enthusiasm directed toward them.
A week later, the little donkey wanted to enjoy it again, so he walked out to retrace his steps – but this time, the people didn’t pay him any attention. He said, “Where are the palm branches, don’t you know who I am?”
The people who heard him threw rocks at him instead. The donkey neared the city of Jerusalem, and said, “Where are the songs of praise for me? Don’t you remember me?” Inside the city, nobody paid him any attention, they just shooed him away from their stalls in the streets.
The little donkey went home dejected and humiliated. When his mother saw him she said, “Foolish child. Don’t you know without Jesus you are nothing?”
That’s true for each of us. Without Jesus we are nothing, but in Christ, we can do all things. That’s humility.
Once Jesus was invited to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee - see Luke 14:1, 7-11
· At this feast (for the VIPs) Jesus saw this undignified scramble for the places of honour - and He used it an object lesson.
· (1) True honour (greatness) is something given to you, not something you seizes yourself.
Don’t look for places of honour, let others invite you to places of honours.
Paul says, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit..." (Phil 2:3a)
· (2) "a person more distinguished than you may have been invited."(v.8) - don’t overestimate yourself!
Paul says, "consider others better than yourselves" (Phil 2:3b)
If we are going to be men and women of God - who can really make a difference in this world today - then our view of ourselves have to be different.
2. CARE FOR THE INTERESTS OF OTHERS
· Some people live their lives as if the world revolves around them, and forgets that the world actually revolves around the sun (and SON)
· If Jesus had not looked at our interests, we would all have died and remained condemned in sin.
John Wesley and George Whitefield - the two great preachers of the 18th Century - were both great men of God. Sadly having been great friends at Oxford, they fell out over the Arminian/Calvinist debate. (Basically the Calvinists say that God chooses us and the Arminians basically say that we are saved because we choose God - and the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.)
There was quite a bit of animosity between their followers. Once one of Whitefield’s followers said to him: "We won’t see John Wesley in the heaven, will we?"
To which Whitefield humbly replied, "Yes, you’re right, we won’t be able to see him. He is such a faithful servant of God that he will be so close to the throne of God and we will be so far away, that we won’t be able to see him!"
Isn’t that a humble attitude - despite their disagreements - he sees his friend still better than himself.
The respect for the other was so great that when Whitefield died in USA, John Wesley preached at George Whitefield’s memorial service in London.
We Need Goat Sense
Martin Luther said, “We need goat sense.” He tells of seeing two goats meeting on a path on a narrow mountain ledge. Instead of butting one another, one of them lay down and allowed the other one to pass over him. How are you treating others?
The Balancing Act
A New York skyscraper was being built. Hundreds of people paused one day to watch a ponderous metal beam being lifted into the air to take its place in the steel skeleton. The watching crowd saw a workman lean out from the 16th floor to seize the end of the girder.
Nearer the girder came and the workman was about to grasp it, when with gasps of horror the spectators saw that he had lost his balance. But as he fell he struck the end of the girder and clutched it with arms and legs. The hoisting engine was stopped. But the weight of the man at one end began to tilt the beam to vertical position, which would eventually cause the workman to lose his grasp, slip off, and fall to his death.
With swift decision another workman on the same floor, seeing his friend’s predicament and disregarding his own safety, leaped through space and landed on the other end of the girder, where his weight caused it to keep from tilting further.
Amid the applause of the crowd below, both men were safely lowered to the street.
Every day all around us, people are losing their grip - on life, on God ... they are slipping away towards death and hopelessness.
· They need friends who are interested in helping them - to keep their grip on.
· The world needs Christians who are keenly concerned about the needs of others.
· By our exemplary lives, by our sacrificial living, by giving up things that we might have enjoyed so that others can be helped.
Here no one applauds, but it will be worth it all - one day, back home in heaven, we’ll receive the approval of the Master. We’ll see the happy faces of those whom we’ve helped.
Prov 18:12 "Before his downfall a man’s heart is proud, but humility comes before honor."
1. Don’t overestimate yourself - God exalts the humble
2. Be on the look out for the Interests of Others.
