Words of Wisdom: Humility

And thank all of you for being here on this Labor Day weekend.

I greet you all in the name of God, our Father, Christ, our risen Savior,

and in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, our Comforter, Counselor, and Guide.

To those of you who are present in this beautiful, beautiful sanctuary,

and to everyone who's watching online, wherever in the world you may be this time,

I'm delighted that you all have joined us for our traditional worship service

here at the Woodlands Methodist Church.

If I may be so bold as to quote the Apostle Paul from 1 Corinthians, the first chapter,

Here, here we preach Christ crucified and risen,

a stumbling block to some and foolishness to others.

But to those whom God hath called,

Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

We're glad that you're here.

Our Words of Wisdom sermon series continues this morning

by us taking a good look at what the Book of Wisdom, the Bible, says about humility.

Humility.

Surprisingly, the Scriptures have a lot to say about this

often-mentioned,

often-misunderstood Christian virtue.

What is humility?

Throughout the Scriptures, the Greek definition most often translates this way,

lowliness of mind.

Lowliness of mind.

However, humility is much, much more.

It is meekness, submissiveness,

and an absence

of self.

The understanding that I have carried with me throughout my ministry says that humility

happens when we die to self.

When we die to self.

Now if these definitions sound strange to you, I'll tell you why.

It's because we don't live in that kind of world.

I might as well be speaking a foreign language when I say that we must give up our self-worth.

We must give up all rights to ourselves and be passive, gentle, and humble.

Language like that goes against everything that we've been taught, and that's the problem.

What if I told you that that kind of worldly thinking goes against everything that God stands for?

Now, we have a choice.

You can be right with the world,

or you can be wrong in the sight of God.

And guess which side will come out on the winning end?

God's side.

So this morning, I want to make my case as a lawyer in the courtroom of the spiritual arena.

I want to make my case this morning for humility.

Because whether you know it or not,

humility is the one thing

that God cannot give you.

It has to come from within.

So having said that, let us pray.

Let us pray.

Open my eyes that I may see.

Glimpses of truth thou hast for me.

Place in my hand the wonderful key

that shall unclasp and set me free.

Silently now I wait for thee.

Ready, my God, thy will to see.

Open my eyes.

Illumine me.

Spirit divine.

Amen.

When I went in search of the perfect meaning

or the perfect definition of humility,

my search ended when I stumbled upon C.S. Lewis's quote.

This is what he wrote.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself,

but thinking of yourself less.

In those 12 words,

this remarkable British writer and literary scholar

somehow captured the very essence

of what humility is all about.

And for all you A-type personalities,

I've asked them to leave it up there

so when you count to 12, we'll move on.

We have nothing else to do but wait for you.

So count it, okay, 12 words.

He captured.

I have fun doing this.

He captured what humility is all about.

Knowing how difficult it is for this generation

to identify with words such as submissiveness,

meekness, being humble.

What happens if we thought of ourselves less

than what we do?

That's what that is all about.

That's what humility is,

thinking less of yourself.

It's not a complicated thing.

We want to make it complicated,

but it's not.

But it becomes conflicted

when we are always thinking,

and this is, it's about me.

No, it's not.

What am I going to get out of this?

No.

What do,

what do I have to pay?

What is it going to cost me?

You see, let me be clear with you this morning.

Humility doesn't mean the elimination

of striving to be the best person you can be.

Nor is humiliation having a low opinion

of yourself or of your gifts.

No.

Humility frees us.

It frees us from our captive state

of always falling into that trap

of being overly proud,

arrogant even,

self-assured,

and even conceited.

That's the difference.

That's a burden that you don't have to carry around

because humility frees you from doing those things

that are only about you.

Benjamin Franklin,

the early American statesman,

made a list.

He made a list of character qualities

that he wanted to develop in his own life.

When he mastered one virtue,

he went on to the next,

and then to the next.

And he writes in his memoirs,

I did pretty well

until I got to humility.

Every time he thought,

he was making some significant progress

in being humble,

he was so pleased with himself

that he became proud.

Had to go back to square one.

Now some of you are at square one today.

If I could just move the needle a little bit

and get you to square two,

or three,

and get you to think about yourself less,

then I will have accomplished my goal

in this courtroom.

I will have accomplished my goal

in the courtroom of spirituality.

A young seminarian

was excited about preaching

in his first sermon in his home church.

After three years of seminary,

he felt adequately prepared and ready.

In fact, overly ready.

And when he was reintroduced

to the congregation as being their son,

he walked boldly up to the pulpit.

His head held high,

radiating self-confidence.

But he stumbled reading the scripture.

And then he lost his train of thought

halfway through the message.

I can identify with this story.

He lost his train of thought

halfway through the message.

And then he panicked.

And so he did the safest thing at that point.

He quickly ended the sermon.

He prayed and walked away dejected.

Dejectedly from the pulpit.

His head bowed down.

His self-assurance gone.

And later,

one of the saintly elders of the church

whispered to this embarrassed young man.

He said,

Son,

if you had gone up to the pulpit

the way you came down,

you might have come down

the way you went up.

Now for those of you who did get that,

if you went up in humility,

you'd come down in self-confidence.

So you see what the elder was saying was,

God resists the proud,

but gives peace to the humble.

Let me let you in on a little secret.

I don't share this often, but,

every Sunday when I step up to the pulpit,

from the distance of that chair to here,

there's a little prayer that I pray.

Just a one-sentence prayer.

And it says,

Lord,

hide me behind the cross

and let your words

become my words.

Every Sunday

that I stand here behind this pulpit,

I am constantly praying.

I'm praying even as I'm speaking to you.

Every Sunday,

I'm constantly praying

that God would use me

as his instrument.

And that in spite of me,

he will allow his message

to be heard,

not mine,

his message.

When I was young in the ministry,

and my dad,

who was a Methodist minister for 65 years,

I went to him one day,

and I said,

I was having this nervousness.

I said,

Dad,

do you ever get nervous

in the pulpit?

I do,

and I just need to know how to deal with it

when I get,

do you ever get nervous?

And he said,

yes, son.

I still get nervous.

I said,

really?

I said,

why?

Why is that?

He said,

when you stand in the pulpit,

you are in the presence of God.

You become God's spokesman

in that moment.

And this is what he said,

I'll never,

when you cease to be nervous,

it's time to do something else.

I've never forgotten that.

And yes,

I get nervous every time I'm up here.

You need to know that,

but I put myself in God's hands,

and I listen to what God has to say to me

and pass it on to you.

This is what I shared last week

when the college graduate

walked out of his commencement

and shouted to the world,

I'm ready for you, world.

I have my AB degree,

and here I come.

And the world shouted back,

sit down, son.

We're gonna teach you the other alphabets.

From childhood,

we are taught to succeed at all costs,

to be the best,

to distinguish ourselves

from everyone else,

to be number one,

just like the Aggie foam rubber thing

with the one finger there.

I bring up Aggies

because I got a new name for the Aggies now,

a new long-suffering.

Long-suffering.

Now, everybody who's acquainted with A&M

will walk out of here today

with that look on their faces,

and everybody from Texas will have a smile.

I've already put myself out there.

Anyway, we've been taught to be the best,

to distinguish ourselves,

and you may not realize this,

but godly wisdom reminds us

there's nothing wrong with that.

We want you to be the best.

We want you to be number one.

But when you achieve those things,

that's the problem.

Because when we fail to practice humility,

when we fail to acknowledge

how and where the source

of those blessings come from

that allows us to accomplish those things,

our goals,

then we have fallen

into the trap of foolish pride

and destructive self-satisfaction.

I have a problem with that old saying,

pick yourselves up by your bootstraps.

I have a problem with that

because the first question I want to ask is,

who gave you the boots?

Who put the straps in them?

God!

You didn't do this all by yourself.

Michelangelo had a saying that went like this,

Lord, grant that I may always desire

more than I can accomplish.

That keeps you humble.

Grant always the desire

to always do more than I can accomplish.

And so it was in this passage

that was read for you just a moment ago

that says all of you,

clothe yourselves with humility

toward one another

because God opposes the proud

but gives grace to the humble.

Humble yourselves, therefore,

under God's mighty hand

that he may lift you up in due time.

The phrase clothe yourselves

with humility translates into a rare word

that refers to a servant or a slave.

Putting an apron around the waist

before serving.

Clothe yourselves.

Does that conjure up an image

of what happened on that last supper

when Jesus got up from the table

and he girded himself

and began to wash their feet?

Clothe yourselves.

Humility, and this is my case,

humility is demonstrated by submission.

It is the dying of self

in order to claim God's agenda.

You can't hold on to your agenda

and claim God's agenda.

You have to let go and claim God's agenda.

Even if God's agenda is expressed

through another person.

True humility is the willingness

to perform the lowest,

to do the smallest service

for Jesus' sake.

To be conscious of your own inability

to do anything apart from God.

I love our ushers.

I love what they do

and they greet you, they welcome you

and they come and that was,

I think it was Milton who says,

we also serve who only stand and wait.

Whatever the lowest

or whatever the smallest thing

that you can do for the kingdom,

you have to do it in conjunction with God.

And when you do that,

worries about ambition and success

and being popular

or being someone else other than your true self,

evaporates, goes away under the command

to humble yourselves

under the mighty hand of God.

I want you to hear the words of wisdom

that Jesus spoke.

Listen to the master,

the voice of Jesus.

For everyone who exalts himself

will be humbled

and he who humbles himself

will be exalted.

Oh.

The person who is greatest among you

will be your servant.

Whoever honors himself

will be humbled

and whoever humbles himself

will be honored.

In Matthew's gospel, the fifth chapter,

that's the sermon on the mount,

the greatest sermon ever preached.

Jesus saw the crowds gathering

and he went up to this mountainside,

the mount to teach them.

And it's no coincidence,

it's no happenstance

that the very first words of the beatitude

that came from the mouth of Jesus

were these words,

blessed are the poor in spirit

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

What Jesus is saying is that you have to recognize,

only you can do this,

you have to recognize your own spiritual poverty.

I call it my spiritual bankruptcy.

I have to recognize it for myself

and my need for God

and come to God in humility

and God will lift you up,

will lift me up in due season.

That's why I said this is the one thing

that God can't give you.

It has to come from you.

James Hudson Taylor

was a British Christian missionary to China

and founder of the

China Inland Mission.

You may have heard his name.

He spent 54 years in China

bringing over 800 missionaries

to that country

and created over 125 different schools.

And on one occasion,

Taylor was scheduled to speak

at a large Presbyterian church

in Melbourne, Australia.

And the moderator,

the MC of the service,

got up and introduced the missionary

in eloquent and glowing terms.

He told the large congregation

all that Taylor had accomplished

while in China.

And then he presented him with these words

as our illustrious guest.

Our illustrious guest.

And so when Taylor got to the pulpit

or the podium,

he stood quietly for a moment

and then he opened his message by saying,

Dear friends,

I am the little servant

of an illustrious master.

The little servant

of an illustrious master.

It's only when we recognize

our smallness,

our being so little

that you would not even think

God would pay attention,

but when we recognize it,

when we come to God in humility

and in servanthood,

God lifts us up.

Let me close with this.

In northwest Oklahoma City,

there's a church,

a beautiful church,

called Church of the Servant.

It's shaped like a pyramid,

sort of like a pyramid there.

It's on MacArthur Street.

Many of you know where that church is.

Inside of its magnificent sanctuary there,

there's all kind of symbols there.

As a matter of fact,

the inside has trees and palm trees.

It's like a garden on the inside.

And when I got there as a bishop

and was being shown around,

I said,

why all of the garden themes?

And the pastor said,

because we live between two gardens,

the Garden of Eden

and the Garden of Gethsemane.

And then I turned around

and saw this beautiful bronze statue,

larger than life,

of Jesus.

And the statue has Jesus

leaning down on one knee,

bending over a bowl of water,

preparing to wash the disciples' feet.

He has a towel on his leg

and he's bending down.

And I asked the pastor

the significance of this beautiful statue.

And he said it represents two things.

He says the only way that you can look

into the eyes of Jesus like that

is that one,

you're kneeling,

or the other,

you're a little child.

Kneeling or a little child,

it's the only way,

he says,

you can look into the face,

into the eyes of Jesus.

That's humility.

Oh, today, my brothers and sisters,

we have an opportunity to look directly now

into the eyes of Jesus

and participate in the greatest act of humility

the world has ever known.

And it sits right before us on this table,

this communion table.

And it reminds us of the night

that he was betrayed.

He humbled himself.

And he became obedient unto death.

You know what the Scripture says.

He did not count equality.

He did not count equality

as a thing to be grasped.

But he emptied himself

and became one of us.

He humbled himself obedient to death,

even death on a cross.

Therefore, it says,

God has exalted him

to the highest place

and given him the name

that is above every name

so that at the name of Jesus

every knee shall bow

and every tongue confess

in heaven and on earth

and under the earth

that Jesus Christ is Lord

to the glory of God the Father.

In due time he will lift you up

but come to him in humility

and in thankfulness

acknowledging

that you didn't come this far

all by yourselves

and give him due honor

and praise

for what he has done for you.

Oh, I rest my case.

Hallelujah.

Thanks be to God.