John Gunter: I was sitting here kicking myself this morning because I didn't tell Tyler to lead that song. Much to my surprise, he got it. Way to go. I don't know if somebody tipped you off or the Lord just said this is what you need to be singing. We'll go with the Lord tapping somebody to tell you.
That's what we'll do. Again, glad that you're here with us as we continue our our study, the marks of a true disciple. Have talked week one is about being faith filled, trusting God even when you can't see what's ahead. Week number two last week was being love driven, loving sacrificially and unconditionally like Jesus, which is very difficult for us to do. And today, we are talking about being humble in spirit.
Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord. So, if I haven't covered it well enough, why why do we have a series like this? Well, why do you need to know the mark of a true disciple? Because there are a lot of people out in the world or a lot of different views on things where people, they claim Christ, but they don't act like Christ. You understand that?
I'm gonna claim something as Christian, but it's really not Christian. So as people sitting in this room who claim Christ, we should know what it looks like to live a life that is like Christ. Right? You ever known someone to be a so called Christian but they were the most hateful person you've ever met? Yeah.
We wanna fight back against that. We wanna push against those things. Right? And say, yeah, you're claiming Christ but we're not gonna acknowledge that. That is not being a true disciple.
Right? And so we see this all over our culture and the way that people act toward one another politically, you know, we're the we're the party of the Christians. No, we're the party of the Christians. Right? All of those things.
So we need to know what does it look like to be a true follower of Christ, and that is the reason for doing this kind of series. So as we open with this humble in spirit, let me ask you this question. What do you do when no one notices how you're helping or how you're serving? What happens when someone else gets the credit? I can answer that openly because I have two boys who fight about who did what and somebody didn't do their part.
Well, pride says, I deserve more. Humility says, Jesus deserves all. You ever met someone who just constantly, in everything that they do, says, all glory to God? All glory to God. No matter what, you wanna thank them, they're the nicest person, thank you, thank you, thank you, all glory to God.
Like, well, no no no, I wanna give some glory to you. Right? But they have postured themselves in a way that says, I I put myself in the right priority. That that's the root of a lot of our issues. Right?
We get our priorities out of line. Here I am up here, here are you down here, right, and all the things in between that I like or don't like. And so when our priorities are messed up, we don't we don't get this. And so we're gonna start in Philippians two, starting in verse one as we talk about humility this morning. If there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord of one mind.
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. I don't like that one bit. How about you? Can we boo that? No.
Let's not do that. But okay. Do not think from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. I think a lot about me and what I want. How about you?
But to put someone else's feelings and and and to to want to see them do great things, maybe even better things than me in life, that that may be a struggle. Because I want to do this, I know how hard I've worked or what I'm I'm trying to do and what I like, well, that that may be a struggle to to look at you and say, well, I hope that what their family gets is all of this. Right? I I hope John Gunter wins the lottery because I'll do great things with that money. Now, don't know what what sister Smith will do with it.
Right? I don't think we have sister Smith, do we? Okay. Good. Nobody's feeling feeling stepped on this morning.
I don't know what they're gonna do with it, but I want the great things you know the great things I will do with this. Right? And we elevate ourselves over and over. Count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Now, notice what he says there, look not only to his own interests, he does he does not say Paul does not say, count yourself as worthless, don't worry about what you want. Right? There is Paul's not stupid. Paul knows we are going to seek out our own interests. Right?
But don't only do that, also seek out the interest of others. And what that keeps you from doing is disrespecting people, stepping on people to get things you want. Right? I'm not gonna talk bad about you to elevate myself. I I want to also look out in love that we just talked about.
I wanna look out at you in love. Okay? And I care what you want. Also look to the interest of others, having this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. So if we are doing things within Christ Jesus, we ought to be able to do this.
Right? If we are having the mind of Christ, we ought to be, okay, I I wanna see people as more valuable than me or but worthy of my service. I want to have the mindset of Christ kind of shape how I interact with people. You ever interacted with someone and later you thought, oh, that was not the right thing to do? Anybody do that this week?
No no, confessions? That we have sometimes, our emotions get the best of us. Right? We think, I need to apologize because I did not represent myself, I did not represent my faith, I didn't do any of this the way I want to represent myself. And so but I want to read this.
I want to see what what Paul is telling us here that we ought to have the mind of Christ, and that ought to shape us in everything, that we do. And so humility is one of those things I think we need a few slides here to kind of talk about what it is and what it isn't, because I think it can be a little confusing. What humility is I like this quote from Rick Warren. I think this is out of Purpose Driven Life, I think is what it's from. But he said, humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.
I like that a lot. I'm not devaluing myself, but what I want to do is also think about you and care, you know, how your life goes. K? So I have to think of myself. Well, I can't be completely self centered and focused on me.
I also need to care about you, and that's a lot of love right in there. Right? Alright. What humility is not? Humility is not self loathing or insecurity.
I'm not gonna beat myself down to raise you up. Right? Again, using that word devalue or or or something like that. It's not self loathing or insecurity. It's not allowing people to walk all over you.
Sometimes as we talk about having the mind of Christ, we end up with toxic situations at home or or things like that where where somebody might allow someone else to abuse them because I'm being humble. No? Jesus never asked you to take abuse like this. What he is saying is, think about others. Well, guess what?
If you're being abused, they are definitely not thinking about you. Right? K? That's not what that is. Okay?
You're not allowing people to walk all over you in this way. And I've got a few slides of notes because I I felt like everything has a caveat today. Note, valuing yourself is not pride, it's recognizing who you are in Christ. Okay? So sometimes when you value yourself in a healthy manner, people look at it and say, well, you're not humble.
You're not a humble person. No. Valuing yourself is not pride. Okay? You should value yourself.
Again, you can really slip into abuse if you if you don't have you feel like you don't have any value. I'm worthless. Right? I deserve this treatment I'm getting. No.
Valuing yourself is not pride, it's recognizing who you are in Christ. And and bullet number two there, humility doesn't erase identity, it rightly orders it under God. Do you hear that? K? We we we like to kind of put ourselves up with God.
Right? We we wanna rightly order these things. Alright? We should think about other people as well, not just us and God and all of those things. And also, you can set healthy boundaries and still walk humbly.
Alright? Boundaries is a big word. We need to be using them more, I think. You can set healthy boundaries and still walk humbly. In fact, boundaries are often an expression of humility because they acknowledge both your limits and your worth.
Because sometimes we we will sign up for things at church and we will just get overrun and burn out. You know that there are some people that work so much here that every time something new comes up, I said, we are not asking that person. And most the time, it's a woman because you ladies are just killing it around here. But we don't want you to be so overloaded in this that you are burned out. Right?
Because sometimes what we do is we just give and give and give, and we have nothing left. Remember, even Jesus, he he steps away from the crowds. He didn't just stay there until he was just absolutely just burned out and just couldn't do anymore, he stepped away and went to pray to be with God. He had to refuel. And that's why I take a Sunday nap.
That's why I'm gonna stand behind that. Okay? And so having healthy boundaries like that is that I can do so much, and I understand my limit, or I'm gonna protect some of my time, and that that gets tricky as a minister. Right? Somebody asked me one time, it's like, when is your actual off time?
Because you really can't be off from being a minister. I said, no, you can't. But I do have to set boundaries. If I don't, I may be great in our relationships with you and I, and I may lose my family. Right?
And so even in situations like this, we have to have healthy boundaries. Now, that doesn't come into, if I have to tell you, no, I've got family time, that doesn't mean I hate you. Right? That doesn't mean I'm prideful and I just think of my family more. Right?
But no, that is considering both my family, myself, and you, that we can do this. And so that's a I think a good example of of how to do this correctly. Now, one thing I want to note, some people will interpret your healthy boundaries as arrogance. Again, because when they see that, they may say, well, you're you're holding yourself up above. No.
I have to set boundaries to be healthy in my marriage, to be healthy in my relationship with my friends, or some other situation in life. Right? And so sometimes I hear people are like, well, just thinks he he's better than everyone else, or something like that. Well, that is not the case. And often, what that's telling you is their view of themselves.
Why aren't you holding me as important as your family time that you've set boundaries around? Okay? And so we have to do all of these things in a healthy manner, so I think these are these are some of the ways. In Philippians two, starting in verse six, who though he was in the form of God, again, about Jesus, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by be becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Now, what I wanna point out is this is kind of the, man, that font is big. Okay. You can see it though. I'm gonna have a quiz over this part exactly. You notice in those three verses there, Jesus descending.
Did you catch all of that? Very nature God. Does it get any higher than that? Alright. Well, he did not cling to that status.
Well, he emptied himself. He became a servant, and he was humbled to death, and even death on a cross. And so what we see from Jesus is this, okay, I'm I'm going to descend. Jesus didn't just lower himself. He came all the way down from the the glory of heaven down to earth, from being in status one with God to being servant of man.
Jesus went all the way down, and we celebrate that humility, don't we? We should. Because Jesus God loved you so much that he sent his son that his son would do this for us. But the question that should linger for us is, are you willing to follow him there? Because I think we are often okay and we love that Jesus bent down to raise us up to his level, and we're good with that, but we're not willing to do the same for someone else.
Thank you, Lord, for bending down to bring me up, but I will not bend down for someone else and to bring them up. We love a savior who does that, but we're not willing to have his mind. But if we are going to follow him and and really follow him, we don't just admire him and say, hey, what a great thing it was that Jesus did this for us, We follow him in that. Right? We follow his example.
Church, you cannot be the body of Christ if you are not willing to have the mind of Christ. You cannot be out here saying we are the hands and feet of Jesus if our minds are saying, I'm first. And it's gonna be all about me. Right? Alright.
Why humility matters? From James four and verse six. He gives more grace, therefore it says, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Pride kind of I think this idea of pride repels grace, humility invites it. Humility says, I need grace.
Pride says, I've got it all together, I don't really need you. We've got it we've got it all worked out. I saw a church website one time that that said, we're not restoring anything. We're not you know, we I grew up in a church that said, we're restoring New Testament Christianity. The idea that we're going back to the beginning, we're gonna learn from Jesus and and make it into the the way it should be.
I came across a church website one time that said, we're not restoring anything, we've already done it. Oh, wow. The pride and the arrogance in that. Right? And so that's what you see here, is is pride kind of repels grace and says, I've already got it figured out.
I don't really need it. I'm I'm a good person. I don't really need God. I don't really need Jesus' sacrifice. But humility says, I am a sinner in need of a savior.
Are you in that situation this morning? I am. I am a sinner in need of a savior, and we should posture ourselves toward Jesus in that way. That God, I need you. Oh, I need you.
Are you singing that for an invitation song? Okay. I'm just seeing what kind of level we're on today. But we should posture ourselves in that way to say, God, I'm a I'm a broken person. I I just can't get through life like that, and hopefully, we do.
And number two from Ephesians four verses two and three, with all humility and gentleness, with patience bearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. I'm gonna stop right there because man, oh man, if our church had this mindset, we would eliminate so much. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. You know that? That's not a secret. Right? That groups, churches, all over every church I've been associated with, if we could live this, we would stop all the pettiness, all the arguing, all the bickering, all the, oh, I gotta tell you about so and so, with all humility and gentleness, with patience.
We don't have patience for one another. Bearing with one another, how how many ways can he say it here? You need to have patience with one another, you need to have gentleness, you need to be bearing with one another, you need to be eager. You see that word? You need to be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.
And how many times do we say, well, I heard this, I'm done. Right? Have you you know, we start we start gossiping among each other and we just kind of grow a cancer within the church. Right? Be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.
How does humility have anything to do with that? Because if you look at someone else and you're really wanting to point out what they're doing wrong or how bad they are, you ought to have a mirror in front of yourself and going, boy, but God has forgiven me a lot. Amen? We are quiet this morning. What is wrong?
Maybe I'm the only one. I'll turn around the other way and preach to myself only. Okay? We ought to be approaching people that way, but often it is again, we assign the motivation to the person, well, they're just a bad person. I don't like them, they're a bad person.
Well, be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit. We don't have that desire a lot of times, church. My eagerness is to hold myself up here and you down here. I have an eagerness for that. I don't have an eagerness to bear with one another and love.
I don't have an eagerness to be gentle or to be humble. I have an eagerness to, oh, this is juicy. Let me tell you about this. I've heard things about myself in this church that never happened, it's crazy, but said as fact. You ever been there before?
Like, what? To who? How? Okay. Show me show me the evidence of that.
It never shows up. Well, okay. Do you have an eager to bring people together or to tear them apart? Humility says we're gonna come together in this way. From Luke 18, we see Jesus tells this parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector.
He positions the Pharisee as someone who who really looks down on the tax collector, and as he prays, he's like, man, I'm glad I'm not like this person. And if somebody did that this morning to you, you'd come up and you'd say, oh, let me tell you something after church, wouldn't you? But as he positions this, he says, but the tax collector standing far off would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. And Jesus says, between the two of these people, between this religious leader and this tax collector who you hate, who you see as a tea as a cheat, as you see as someone working for the enemy, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other, rather than the religious leader. Oh my goodness, why?
He went to church every Sunday. Again, the reason we have a series like this is it doesn't matter. Right? If if you go to church every Sunday and Wednesday, and we got a Sunday evening, now we're having a special Saturday thing, you can go to every one of those, and I hope you do. But if you go to every single one of those and your core, your heart is rotten, you're gonna go back to your house unjustified.
You understand? That's what Jesus is saying. And that person that you may think, boy, I'm glad I'm not like them, may be coming with a heart that Jesus says, they're justified. They're right before God. You spent a whole lot of effort worrying about them, you should have been worrying about yourself because the inside is rotten, and that's what he's throwing out right here is that, okay, well, can't live this way.
Well, how do you do this? I think you how do you live in a in a humble way? I think you do this. You you approach God in this way, saying, be merciful to me a sinner, to own those things you already know. Right?
Everyone in here has sins that I don't know about. You have secret sins that this person doesn't know, this person doesn't know, you all know the sins you have in your life. And and a lot of times, we operate with as long as they don't know, they'll think I'm a good person and all that. We should operate with, I have sinned, I'm in need of a savior, God be merciful to me a sinner. And that'll help you live a humble life.
Again, admitting your own sin. If you can do that to people, I'll tell you, it'll open up a relationship in ways that you can't explain. Because think about it, think about the closest relationships you have in your life. Think about those people that you can tell anything, and think about how close that relationship is. Because we operate a lot of times in church thinking, if she knows what I have done, that's gonna pull us apart, and we're just gonna not have a good relationship.
While also knowing that the closest relationships I have in my life, we can talk about those things. Now, how do you how do you rectify those things? How do you justify those two things? Well, we don't. And until we quit pretending, until we quit acting, we're not gonna bring those things together.
But we need to live a life that we are sharing those things together. True humility grows through hidden inconvenient acts of service. And I love an idea like that, how can I serve? How can I serve others? You ever gone through a drive through and somebody's paid for your your meal?
You ever done that before? Nobody? We can start that today. Alright. Yeah.
Have you ever had it? Those of you who've had it done before, Ryan, you're going do that today. You ever done it and got you went to the drive through and somebody paid for your meal and you paid for the next person's meal? I'm only looking at like two other people so there you go, Starbucks. That's big get in your pocket thing right there.
If they bought three drinks, you may have to call the bank and say, hey, switch some over from savings. I don't know. But yeah, you can think of others as you go through how much time and effort is spent worrying about my day, what I'm going do, what I'm going to accomplish, how I'm going to afford all of those things I put on my calendar. What if we thought about other people? I had a lot of people say they've never had anybody pay for their stuff in the drive thru.
I'm going to challenge you this week, at some point, you're going to be running, you're going to be going, you're going go through a drive thru somewhere, I want you to say, I wanna pay for the person behind me, and see how that goes. Alright? They may honk, they may wave, they may do you may start a chain of people that are eight people in a row, you know, paying for somebody else. Now, I did see a meme about this or a joke about it that somebody did that and they knew it would keep going, so they hurried around to get back in line. Don't do that.
Think of yourself think of yourself. Think of other people, okay, just as much as yourself. Okay? So don't don't be the one that speeds back around and see if you get a free one after all. Alright?
Do these inconvenient acts of service. Do things in life that you're not gonna get recognized for. Right? I love recognizing people. I think we all love recognition to some degree.
Right? We we want to know that we're doing a good job, that somebody cares about us. I love getting messages that, hey, I appreciated the sermon this week, and that helps me because sometimes it feels like, well, I don't know if they heard a word I You know, when I asked them about the drive through thing, nobody said anything, you know, it'll be in my feelings later. But we want those things, but do things also that you know nobody is gonna be able to to give you the credit you deserve or anything like that. Do things for people who can't do things back for you.
Jesus did this in John 13. He said, now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and wiped them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
Jesus did this, and you notice scripture points this out, John points this out that it had already gone into Judas. He already knew that Judas had made the decision to betray him. And what was his response? What would your response be? Right?
Well, I'll wash his feet, but I'm going to scrub them hard, we're going to make those things bleed. Jesus, still knowing Judah's position and what he was about to do, sits around, pushes up from the table, by the way, which I'm sure was fried chicken and gravy and all that stuff, but he pushes away from this dinner table to wash feet even of the person he knew was gonna betray him. Now, that may feel like a challenge because I think it is. But that is a true example of, I'm going to, in humility, serve people, even people that don't like me, talk about me behind my back, surely church people don't do that. Right?
But I'm gonna I'm gonna show humility even if it means, okay, I've got to lower myself in this situation. I really am not happy about it, but I wanna lower myself. And so, I think one other thing we can do is we can invite accountability. We can ask people in our lives, you can ask those people with whom you have those close relationships, where do you see pride in me? Is there a a part of me that that I am showing a pride that maybe is not evident in me?
Because sometimes, again, we look at other people and say, oh, it's a prideful, arrogant individual. But we don't see it in ourselves. Right? It's the whole beam versus the the little splinter. K?
Another another thing we can think about is humility listens, humility learns, and humility stays small. And so, if I'm going to ask and I really care and I really trust you to tell me, I want to listen and I want to learn, I don't want to get defensive. I want to listen to kind of your position on it. Now, it is true that somebody could be wrong, and they could just be seeing it some way, and it's not actually true. But we want to, in every part of our life, be open to learning.
I see myself as a life learner. I have to be because out of high school, thought I was done with school, period. Then got one degree and thought, I'll never do that again, then changed it completely and went and got another one. So I've had to see myself as a life learner. Have to keep learning.
And I'm sure Katie would say, I go down all the YouTube rabbit holes, I know how to do all all the stuff, but I want to see myself as learning. But that includes church. Right? That includes people that have been sitting here for so many years, and and and maybe sometimes we feel like we've got it all figured out. Maybe God wants to teach us something else.
Maybe God sees pride in us that maybe we haven't seen, and God wants to show us the way. We have to have a posture that says, I'm open to that. I wanna learn. The world says, lift yourself up or get yours. Jesus says, humble yourself.
The world says, be first. Jesus says, be last. The world says, make your name great. Jesus says, make his name great. So whose voice are you following?
I love that Jesus came and he lowered himself in such a way, And we cling to that and we should, but what I want to encourage us to do is not just admire that, as I said earlier, not just say how great that is, but I also want to emulate it. I want to see that as something I want to to copy, somebody I want to be. When when he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, do you understand what I have done to you? You call me teacher and lord and you are right for so I am. If I then, your lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet.
For I have given you an example that you should also that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. It's not enough this morning, church, for us to just come and agree on these verses and say that sounds like a great thing, and we go our separate ways this week. The best thing we can do is say, search me, oh God, and change me.
We we say, make me, mold me. And so that begins right here with us. And so this week, would you focus on that, the humility that you should have towards others. And if Jesus lowered himself to do this for us, how much should I do this for other people? Alright.
We've got a time of invitation. We'd love to pray with you. You haven't put on Christ in baptism, we'd love to see that done today. Would you come as we stand and ask ourselves?