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The speaker emphasizes the importance of humility in the Christian life. They explain that while the presence of God is important, it is through the Word of God that one can experience true transformation. They discuss how grace is given to the humble and how pride resists the work of God's grace. They urge listeners to hate pride and recognize its destructive nature. The speaker also talks about the humility of Jesus and how God's goal is to conform believers to the image of Christ, which is characterized by meekness and lowliness. They highlight the dangers of pride and the need for humility in order to fulfill God's purposes. Well, praise God. I know you guys are excited to hear the Word this morning. I said in the first service that if Martin Luther was here this morning, he would believe this to be the most important moment because the Bible is about to be opened. The Scriptures are seeds that go into the ground of our hearts and bear forth fruit. There is no fruit without the seeds of the Word. The presence is awesome. I love it. It satisfies my soul, but that satisfaction makes the ground fertile to receive the Word so I can change. See, if you just have the presence, then you live this wonderfully satisfied life, but you find yourself stuck because you need the Word to change. The Word has got to reprogram how you see life, how you see others, how you see yourself, how you see the purposes of God, how you see God, and what matters to God. So we're going to look at this today, if that's all right. Turn in your Bible to James chapter 4. I've come to you today to speak to you not as a doctor, but as a fellow patient. My goal is to promote unity in our midst, not by reminding us who we are, not by reminding us of a nation's purposes, not by rallying around a cause or even rallying around souls, but to promote unity by speaking of the humility of Jesus Christ. This is the only thing that will cause the breath of the Spirit to be strong enough inside of us to melt our egos down so that we can merge together. There's so many different ministries in this room, so many different callings in this room, so many different giftings in this room, so many different colors in this room. And this is what we need most of all, is a revelation of the humility of Jesus Christ that we might walk as one body before the Lord. Praise God. So as you turn in your Bible to James chapter 4, I have to first say that this message is difficult for me because I know far more about pride than I do humility. And in James chapter 4, the sixth verse, the scripture tells us something very clear. He, God, gives, this is free, greater grace. I want you to say this with me, say greater grace. Did you know that grace can increase in your life? Grace can be upon grace. Thank God for that. Grace is not just how you got saved, it's how you live out the spiritual life. Grace is that moving current of God on the inside of you that makes you love him, desire him, look for his word, desire his purposes, selflessly lay down your life for someone else, be patient. But this is all the work of grace. No man can have fingers strong enough to fashion these things inside of themselves. Only the power of the grace of God can work this nature, this character, this kind of thing on the inside of us. And you see here that the scripture tells us there is greater grace. There's increase of the current of God on the inside of you that is possible to be experienced. Grace is best described, in my opinion, in Philippians chapter 2, verse 13. God works in you both to will and to do praise God, the work of God on the inside. But he says here, greater grace can be given. Therefore he says, and I tell you how you find the greater grace. God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. So the grace of God freely, freely flows into the humble. So as we live low, the current of God comes in and takes us into patience and takes us into love and kindness and goodness. All these things are the work of the current of God's grace, but pride resists the current of God's grace. So you're not taking me into patience. You're not taking me into kindness. You're not taking me into love. It's the work of God's grace on the inside of us that creates these things. And the scriptures tell us clearly, God gives this grace. It's free, man. You can't even earn it. You just got to go low and he'll give it to you. Oh, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. So we see grace is given to the humble, but God resists the proud. I want to call us today to see, yes, the humility of Jesus and to recognize what the fear of the Lord really looks like. The scripture tells us in Proverbs 8, verse 13, the fear of the Lord is to hate pride. It's to hate arrogance in every evil way. I mean, it's easy to recognize somebody doing something that is grossly evil and say, I hate that. But then when we see pride in our hearts, we're just like, well, that's just who I am. The Bible tells us to hate, despise pride, hate it so much because you realize what it is. It's a poison. Realize what it is. It is that thing that turns your back to God and resists the current of God's wonderful grace. As one old thing said, pride is slight from God's help. So we must hate, hate pride. I pray God do it in me today of fresh hatred for everything that smells of pride in my life. Every tone, every thought pattern, every motive, every intention, every action, every plan that has at its root the exaltation of myself. I pray I would smell that stench and hate it and cast it to the ground and say, oh God, forgive me. Forgive me. And we read in the book of Daniel that God knows how to humble those who walk in pride. And I'm telling you, that's something you don't want to walk through. I don't want to walk through it either. The scripture has this incredible prophecy in Ezekiel, chapter 28. This is outstanding. And inside of the prophecy, there's this imagery of Lucifer before the world. And the scripture says that he walked upon the stones of fire in the presence of God. That's an image, isn't it? Satan, Lucifer, walking on the stones of fire in the very presence of God. And his heart rose up against the Lord, which shows me a principle that I think needs to be emphasized. It's that even in the presence of the Lord, walking on the stones of fire, your heart can freeze with pride. You see Adam and Eve in the garden, they're in paradise. They're in a sinless world. They're in the paradise of God and walking with him. Yet even in the midst of the beautiful garden of God, you have the slither of pride there, which shows us many times God can be moving tremendously. God can be pouring out his spirit in incredible ways. People getting blasted by the fire and still the heart be frozen with pride. You can create a church in which the atmosphere just seems to be like the garden of Eden. And yet the snake of pride still slithers there. Say, Eric, what are you trying to say? I just want to point at this pride that God wants to destroy in us for the sake of his purposes. The number one obstruction to God's purposes in the earth is pride. If you look at Isaiah, chapter two, verse 12, there is this incredible statement, Isaiah smashes pride by the power and the movement of the spirit, it says this. The proud look of man will be a base, the loftiness of man will be humbled and the Lord alone will be exalted on that day. Praise God for 17. The pride of man will be humbled. The loftiness of man will be a base and the Lord alone will be exalted on that day. Verse nine. So the common man has been humbled and a man of importance has been a base. Praise God. You're noticing something here. As a matter of fact, in verse 12, you see it again for the Lord of hosts will have a day of reckoning against everyone who is proud and lofty and against everyone who is lifted up. Do you see there is an appointed day of judgment? And the main thing God has his arrow pointed at is pride. Pride is that thing that provokes God's pride, makes man God's enemy. The prophets are trying to pry out to us to show us the source, the root of every ill is pride. There is nothing to oppose to God as selfishness and self-sufficiency and self-effort and self-centeredness and self-exaltation and self-consciousness. All these things are opposed to God. Vance Havner, the great evangelist, once wrote, if Jesus didn't come to save us from self-infatuation, I don't know what he came to do. Andrew Murray once wrote, one of the reasons why God sent Jesus to the earth was to bring humility back here. In Matthew, chapter 21, verse five, in the King James Version, there's this incredible statement, it says, Behold, thy king cometh meet, praise God. Behold, means take special notice of this. Who? What? Thy king, the king of the kingdom of God, the king of the kingdom of the ages, the king of the kingdom that will have no end. This king comes in a certain way and it looks like this, meekness. Think of all the attributes that could have been labeled on Jesus, thy king cometh powerful. It doesn't say that. Is he powerful? Yes, but that's not what he wants to emphasize. Thy king cometh gifted. Yes, he is very gifted. He's God, but it doesn't. It's not the one. It's not what he wants to point at. It's not what the emphasis is. Thy king, the king of the kingdom that we're a part of, he is meek. He is lowly, he is humble, and none of us are above him. Pride, acting out in pride is to take a position above your king. It is to approach your king wearing the armor of his enemy. Matthew 11, chapter 28, we have the only self-description Jesus ever gives of himself. He says, Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart. You will find rest for your souls. What's he saying? He's standing up, clearing the air, saying you may think this, he may think that, he may label me this and he may label me that. But this is what I want you to know about me. I am meek and I am lowly. This is Jesus's revelation, self-revelation. In Romans 8, 28, 8, 29, you guys know these verses very well, but it's extremely clear that God's goal is in predestining us. He's predestined us to the image, to be conformed to the image of his Son. So if the image of the Son is what his whole goal is, Jesus, the Son, whose image we're supposed to be, tells us what his image is. It's humility. It's meekness. If God has one plan for you, one end goal for you, it is to make you humble, to make you a lowly person. In Matthew, chapter 20, you see Jesus literally takes our whole understanding of life and he flips it upside down and he goes, if anybody wants to be the greatest, they've got to be the slaves. We understand a slave doesn't have any rights, he's got no power, he's literally, he's nothing. But to Jesus, that's everything. When you've lost yourself in finding him. To Jesus, those little self-denials that no one can see, those little self-denials that you do that no one can see, these are the fragrance of the cross and nature and goodness of Jesus in your life. That is the smell, the aroma that gets God's attention. To this man will I look? What man? The man who sows these seeds of humility when no one can even see him. This, these seeds of humility where no one can see you give up your own will for the promotion of another. These little seeds are the garden of godliness. This is what makes God happy. And in James, chapter 4, verse 10, there's this incredible verse, Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, in the presence of the Lord, which to me reveals how humility even comes about. It is recognizing the presence of the Lord. When we realize the grandness, the greatness, the glory of God Almighty, the only response is to fall down on your face and recognize his wisdom is better than my wisdom. His plan is better than my plan. His power is greater than my power. I give up myself to him who's greater than I. That's humility. Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord. Charles Spurgeon said it perfectly by saying a vision of God is the quietus of pride. It's the, it removes the head of pride. It's the finishing stroke of pride. When you see God, you fall down. I would venture to say that a lot of our disputes amongst ourselves, crazy verse in Proverbs, chapter 13, verse 10, it says only by pride comes contention. That's a scabber. If there's a contention, pride somewhere. I would venture to say that most of our contention comes forth from somebody that will give themselves up. Somebody who wants to hold on to their life and not give it away. Andrew Murray said humility is the displacement of self and the enthronement of God. Humility, it's not a verse to among virtues. Humility is the root of all virtues. Everything flows from the low place before God. Your love will come forth from being low before God. Peace, patience, goodness, kindness, all these things will flow forth from being low before God. I got a statement I like to say a lot, that the bottom of the cup gets the water first. When you fill up a cup, the water rushes in to fill the lowest place. If you want to live filled with the spirit, stay low. People are dry because they're too high. Humility. Humility. Is what impresses God, we need to be impressed with the thing that impresses God. Without humility, a man only has the appearance of virtues, without humility, his gifts are hollow before God. Without humility, our ministries become quests for honor and our own legacy. How will they remember me? Forget you. Jesus is King. What's the wonderful, what's the wonderful quote from George Whitefield? Let the name of Whitefield perish that the cause of Christ may win. It's this that causes unity. We melt into one another when we see God is the only one who deserves glory. When we see there's one heart that we're after, then we all just kind of merge together in song, like a like a melody and harmony unto God. We work together unto God. Praise God. So promoting self, as A.W. Choser says, promoting self under the guise of promoting Christ is so common that it excites little notice these days. Our humility, listen, is not seen in our ministry. Humility is not seen behind a pulpit. Humility is not seen by laying hands on people and they fall down. Humility is not seen when you pray for someone and they get healed. Humility is seen in how you treat other people. Humbling ourselves is the only right attitude before God. It puts God where he belongs and it puts us where we belong. You see, if if I can heal the sick and raise the dead and cast out devils and I can preach really good or pray really loud or fast a lot, if I can do all this stuff, but yet I can't love my brother, how is anything worth anything? You say, Eric, but you're talking about love. Yes, love and humility are married together. If you've been married for any amount of time, you know that love and humility are married together. Jesus teaches us what humility is by his life. In John 5, 19, he says the son can do nothing of himself. In other words, he doesn't touch his own power. He gives all strength, gives all strength from God. John 5, 30, he says, I can do nothing and I do nothing. He has no decision in and of himself. Everything's for the glory of God. And John 7, 16, he says, even the words that I'm speaking to you, they don't even belong to me. They belong to God. John 8, 28, I do nothing on my own initiative, even my initiative comes from God. I don't have an initiative apart from God and his glory. That's humility. You can say pride is the complete opposite. When you have an initiative that's apart from God's glory, specifically, it has to do with your glory. John 8, 50, Jesus says, I seek not. I'm not even looking for my own glory. Who is the only person to ever live that has the right to seek their glory? It's Jesus. And he still won't. That's king. That's your king. That's the king of meekness. Jesus is teaching us that the spiritual life is one of absolute self-renunciation and total reliance upon God. That's humility. Praise God. The desire for God's glory is the essence of humility. See, I fear, this is what I fear, that more often than not, our striving is a restless eagerness to obtain spiritual things by our own power. I fear that divisions amongst us are silent acts of self-deification. Silent acts of self-deification. You're replacing God. When you begin to fight with your brother, what you're doing in fighting against your brother in these ways that are divisive, what you're doing is you're putting yourself above God. It's self-deification. But self can never cast out self. And it is only as we relinquish ourselves to God that God can actually be all to us and through us. You see, in reality, let me just use a Puritan analogy. When you play a game of chess, the queen is so much more important than the pawn. She's got so much more power. She can do so much more. He's stuck in one little space at a time. But when the game is over, the board is cleared and all the pieces go in the same bag. So it is. You may think you're really great and more powerful than other people. But when God shows up, the board is cleared and everybody's in the same bag. Humility clears the way. There's a story of a young Catholic girl. And she used to love to look up at the stained glass windows with a picture of St. Francis there with a bird on his shoulder or something. And she would stare up at the stained glass windows. And one Sunday morning, the Sunday school teacher says, does anybody know what a saint is? The kids look at each other and they're like, I don't know. And the little girl staring at the stained glass window says, oh, I know. The teacher says, what is a saint? And she says, they're the ones that the sun shines through. What does that mean? Humility removes all the obstructions so that the light of God and the character of God can come through you. Praise God. His character. B.S. Lewis said, proud people are always looking down on others. And if you're always looking down, you cannot see him who's above. And it's the same same way. That smile that you want from God, that's all that matters. What does it matter? As Linda Ravenhill says, what does it matter if you have the if you have the smile of men, if you have the frown of God? And what does it matter if you have the if you have the frown of God, but you have the smile of men? It doesn't matter. So Andrew Murray says this, and this is outstanding, he says it is in the insignificance of daily life. The insignificance of daily life, these are the important the importance is in tests of eternity because they prove what spirit really possesses us. The insignificance of daily life, these are the importance is this is important stuff because they prove what spirit really does possess you. Praise God, pride manifests itself in certain ways, touching it, harshness, impatience, control, irritation, judgment, cynical competition, comparison, jealousy, bitterness, demand for honor, separation of ourselves as some higher class of believer. Dear God, if you're going to be in war, don't you want to be side by side, arm in arm with shield and shield? Why do you want to run off by yourself? The scriptures talk of super apostles and it's not a positive term. See, these things that I just read out, these judgments and comparison, jealousy, harshness, impatience, all these are evidences of exalting ourselves. It's the neglect of God and the tending to ourselves. There's nothing more dangerous, there's no pride so subtle, there is nothing so insidious as that pride that believes God uses you because of something in you. He says, Eric, he does. No, no, no, you've got it all wrong. It's Jesus. It's the Jesus, it's the Christ. This is what pleases God. There's an old quote from an old writer. He said, even if you could obey God on your own, it still wouldn't please him because he's only pleased with Jesus. This is why Paul says this, yet not I, but Christ live in me. I don't live anymore, not the old Paul, not the new Paul, Christ, praise God, all glory, all honor goes to Jesus. There is only one that will be exalted on that day. And it's not just because it's that day, it's because it was always him from every day. Praise God. So, pride sometimes starts to take notice of how advanced it is compared to other people. See, we must take caution in professing to others the extent of our religious restrictions or restraints or the spiritual disciplines of how much we fast and how much we give and how much we pray. We have to be very careful of these things. Because sometimes we can say these things and all we're doing is really building a monument of ourselves for others to see. We've got to be careful in how we tell testimony because we can tell testimony unto our own glory instead of the glory of God. It should be that we testify of what Jesus is doing rather than recognizing I can do this. This is the way that God uses me. No, no, no, no. The gospel work. It is Jesus Christ, period. St. Moses of Egypt wrote this, he goes, you fast, but the devil never eats. You work hard, but the devil never sleeps. The only way for you to outwork the devil is humility because he has none. And just to poke a little bit more at the religious spirit, Charles Spurgeon once wrote, some men fast from food and gorge on pride. Oh, even what we have, we give up, we give it all to the Lord. We have to even be careful of sacrificing Isaac in public. This is something that just kind of slips in, we find ourselves being super spiritual and we don't want to tell everybody all the stuff we've given up for God. What's that doing? That's raising the knife, not on top of the mountain, it's taking Isaac back down in front of everybody to say, look at what I'm going to do for God. This is not what God wanted. He said, you and the lad go yonder and worship. We're dealing with this directly with you and me. That's where humility is. We have to be careful of sacrificing Isaac in public. Beware of anyone who sacrifices Isaac in public because it's contrary to the nature of Jesus. So such pride, it can be hidden inside of a tone, just the way you said it. It can be hidden in the way that we speak. See, pride counsels and teaches others to make itself indispensable. What that means is the counsel and the teaching that comes to that person is to get that person to come more to you. But the only way we can be of any benefit for anybody in counsel or in teaching is to point them to Christ, the only one who can heal, the only one who can save, the only one who can deliver, the only one who is really a rabbi. He is the voice behind you saying this is the way, walk ye in it. I told you I'm not coming to you today as a doctor. I'm coming to you as a fellow patient. Someone suffering from the same disease. So our pride is often seen in presenting ourselves as the standard, talking in the way as if one day if you do the things that you see that I'm doing and you continue to follow my teachings, you'll one day arrive to where I am. This is contrary to the way Jesus is, Jesus nature is not like this. I often like to tell myself the greatest thing that I can do today is forget me and adore Jesus. I have to say I have to say this sometimes to myself every three minutes, forget yourself and enjoy the Lord. See, we're never more humble than when we adore Jesus, see that soul that loses itself in finding him no longer compares itself with other people because itself is lost because its presence frees us from the need to have relevance and significance in the eyes of other people. It doesn't even matter. What God sees is all that matters. You say, yeah, I have need of nothing. I have no need of the praise of praise of man. I have no need of relevance or significance in the eyes of others. It's just you and you alone, Lord. See, other people love the other stuff. Crowds sometimes gather to other things other than humility. People love when someone can exalt themselves as a standard. I don't know why, but this is contrary to what Jesus does. Jesus goes low. I remember reading in the biography of Andrew Bonner. He said that his friends were getting more preaching engagements than him and he wasn't getting any invites and he was kind of down on himself and he writes in his journal and he says, I found that my unhappiness rose from my unwillingness to be nothing. I wonder if that's the reason why many of us live many parts of our lives are lived unhappy. It's because it's rising from our unwillingness to be nothing. Needing to be seen is vexing. You'll never get back a minute. You wasted trying to be recognized there. What are you talking about? I'm trying to talk about this disease that runs through our veins and only Jesus is the antidote for it. Jesus and Jesus alone. Martin Luther said, if God created the world out of nothing, then if he's going to create anything out of me, I must first become nothing. See, when we really find what humility is, we don't even recognize being forgotten because we're out of the equation. I want that. I want to live that way. God will smile on one humble man, over a million gifted men. Will God use gifted men? Absolutely. He uses gifted men, but his heart belongs to the humble, to this man. Will I look? Praise God. See, it's the disturbances and the hindrances, the inconveniences of life that expose our lack of abiding in Christ. Let me just show you for a second the way that Jesus shows forth his humility in a certain way. In Luke chapter 6, verse 17, he spends the entire night praying and he comes down and he picks his disciples. And after he picks his disciples, there's three things that happen. One, it says he came down. Two, it says with them. Three, on a level place. I see three things here. Number one, Jesus is superior to every single one of those disciples in every way. As a matter of fact, sometimes we think, how could I prefer someone above myself when I know I'm greater than them? How do I prefer someone over me who I know I'm smarter than? How do I prefer someone over myself when I know I'm more successful than them? I have more money than them. I'm more gifted than them. I'm more experienced than them. I have more influence than them. How am I supposed to do that? Well, Jesus, superior to all the disciples, comes down. And then he's with them, meaning not only does he come down to them, but he's not ashamed to be seen with them. They're sinners. He's not. They don't care. Not only this, but he looks at them at a level place, meaning he treats them as equal. Good Lord, what kind of a person is this? God Almighty, the one who dwells in light, unapproachable, drops down out of heaven by the weight of love becomes a human being and then mixes in with these dirty, sinful beings and looks at them and treats them as equals, talking to them. Praise God. That image should literally take your heart and run away to heaven. You should literally say that man deserves all my love, that man deserves my allegiance and my commitment and my devotion. That man, you see, is greater than all. By what he has done. So my heart just kind of leaps today, wanting to just think on this beautiful humility of Jesus. The kind of humility that his reputation with God is not found in his presentation to men. He knows this. That's why he's able to walk into the waters of sin. He walks into the baptismal waters shared with Harlots. He walks right in there. Why? Because his reputation with God is not found in his presentation to men. He's obedient. This is humility. But a lot of times we get literally bent out of shape the moment somebody doesn't give you the honor that you think you deserve. Did you know your king is Jesus? Because you're looking like your king is the other one who loves himself and exalts himself and says, I will make myself like the most high. Oh, my goodness. The scripture tells us he was corrupted by his wisdom. In other words, he put his confidence in the things that he had received and he took his confidence out of God. Oh, how easy it is for us to do this. You say, Eric, what's your point? I say, let us flee to Christ until we're clothed with humility. I said, let's recognize today in our marriages where humility has been lacking. Let's look at the friendships around us and see where there hasn't been humility applied. Let's look around at our ministry partners or or people that we work with and find out where have I exalted myself and held on to my own will? Because right there, that has stopped the kingdom of God from flowing through right there. That's where grace is stopped. That's why it's so difficult. The situation is so difficult for me. Watch, because grace isn't there. Watch, because you're proud. Humility will burst open the streams and the current of God's grace will come in and he'll call you to love. I'm telling you, you can even just forget about trying to work on your love and work on your patience. Just go low and they'll all be there.
