Humility

Isaiah 52: 13-15

Hebrews 2: 5-9

John 18: 19-24

Humility

Three boys in the school yard were bragging about who had the better father. The first boy says, "My Dad
scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a poem, and they give him $100." The second boy says, "That’s nothing. My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a song, and they give him  1000." The third boy says, "My Dad is even better than that. He scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, calls it a sermon, and it takes four men just to collect all the money!"

A  United Methodist pastor, a Presbyterian pastor, and a rabbi were having a conversation one day over lunch. The Methodist pastor proudly proclaimed, “One of my ancestors preached alongside John Wesley.” The Presbyterian pastor said, “One of my ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence”. They both thought the rabbi would be very impressed by this. To his chagrin, the rabbi responded, “I understand your pride. One of my ancestors signed the Ten Commandments.”

One of the problems with pride is that there will always going to be someone who can top you. They will run faster, jump higher, win more, be more beautiful, tell a funnier story, receive more applause and go one step farther than you did. Even if no one beats your record in your lifetime, someone eventually will.

But an even greater problem with pride is that it puts you in opposition against God. He is the only one who should receive glory, and when we try to steal some of his glory for ourselves, we commit a sin. That is why God did not choose those the world saw as wise and the beautiful and those who had everything together to do his work. He chose the weak because they would be smart enough to understand that the only way that they could ever accomplish anything of any value would be through God’s power. And so, whenever something good happened, they knew they had to give all the glory to God.

Sometimes, we forget our weakness and start to allow pride to creep into our way of thinking. When we do, we are in for a downfall, sooner or later. We are opening ourselves to humiliation, which is to be shamed, or disgraced, or at least to be taken down a notch or two.  It is something we do to ourselves, not something done by others to us. We cannot be humiliated by someone else.

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The Sanhedrin, the Jewish court that demanded Jesus’ death and the Roman soldiers who carried out the execution, all tried to humiliate Jesus. They beat him, spit on him, taunted him, and tortured him. But nothing they could do would humiliate him. Why?  Because Jesus was humble.

There is a huge difference between humility, which is the quality or condition of being humble, and humiliation, which is the self inflicted result of too much pride and self confidence rather than recognizing our place in God’s work. Humility is freedom from pride and arrogance.

There are some things we need to consider or remember about our judge and reward giver the Lord Jesus Christ. He wants us to do what he commands us to do. We will not be rewarded according to what our circumstances were, how hard the work was, how long we had to endure rough conditions, or what the results of our labors were. Jesus who was humble in the face of death, and who offers us salvation, has called us into his service and will judge us according to how faithful we were to do what he asked us to do. 

It is Jesus who chooses the field of service for each of us if we will allow him to, and he will reward according to our faithfulness in that field. It is not how successful we are in doing good works, as we can never earn our way into heaven. It is in our humble service to God that counts. It is our acceptance of Jesus not just as Savior, but also as Lord. 

The biggest obstacle to serving Christ as he wishes is pride. Not pride in the pursuit of excellence. In fact, not to pursue excellence is a sin. It means accepting mediocrity, and not doing our best on behalf of God with the gifts he gives to each of us. Pride is sin when it’s a God-defying and neighbor-disdaining arrogance. The key is the distinction between excellence and arrogance.  If we consider our success in our work for God all our own doing, we are being arrogant, not humble.  As long as we think there is anything in us that God can recognize and reward, we are pride-deluded.

The story is told of two ducks and a frog who lived happily together in a farm pond. They were great friends and enjoyed playing together. When the hot days of summer came, however, the pond began to dry up. They soon realized that they had to move. This was no problem for the ducks because they could just fly to another pond. But the frog was stuck. So they decided to put a stick in the bill of each duck that the frog could hang onto with his mouth as they flew to another pond. The plan worked well ­ so well, in fact, that as they were flying along a farmer looked up in admiration and said, “Well, isn’t that a clever idea! I wonder who thought of that?”

To which the frog said, “I did…” Be careful of pride ­ it can cause you to fall.