The Uniform of the Kingdom

If you're new around here, my name is Whit, and we're honored to be worshiping with you this morning, and then I wanna say welcome to our church family that maybe couldn't be here this weekend. Maybe you're traveling, maybe you're homebound right now, whatever the case may be, welcome to you. And then also, we have churches in prisons here in Oklahoma, one at Eddie Warrior, and one at Dick Connor, and we like to say hello to them every week, so come on, help me say welcome. God bless you guys and gals. Glad to have you. We are in week eight of our series on life lessons, and if you have a Bible grab it, and open it to first Peter chapter five, as Pastor Lee just told you, we're talking about humility this weekend. Here's what I've learned, is that humility is both the entrance and the pathway to greatness in the kingdom of God. You're not gonna accomplish anything with the Lord, for the Lord, the Lord will never accomplish really anything through you and with you apart from humility. And so we're gonna take a look at this, dive into it, understand what is humility really all about, how does it work, why do we need it, that kind of thing. And we're looking at this text from Peter, first Peter five, Peter, writing to the church, and here's what he writes. Clothe yourselves, all of you with humility

toward one another. For God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore. Under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. This is the word of the Lord, and we all said, thanks be to God. Three points I have for you today. The first one is this, humility is the uniform of the kingdom of God. Have you noticed that there are certain roles in society, jobs that kind of require a uniform that are identified by their uniform? We see this all the time. Don't we police officers identified by the uniform? Firefighters wear a uniform. Those in the medical profession wear a uniform. You can tell that someone is in a certain profession, often just by what they wear, athletes wear a uniform. And a uniform is a marker of identity, isn't it? It tells you kind of who a group of people are, what they do, what they're about. Here Peter says, and let's look at it again, we just read it, clothe yourselves, all of you, in humility. The idea is that humility ought to be the identifying characteristic of someone who belongs to Christ.

The word that Peter uses here, clothe yourselves, is a unique word. As far as I could tell, it's the only time it's used in the New Testament is here by Peter. It means to sort of tie a garment around you. And I have to think that Peter here when he's writing this is kind of conjuring up a memory. He's got something in mind, something I think that was so significant, a life altering experience that he had, of course, with Christ. We read about it in John's Gospel, chapter 13. On the night before Jesus is to be crucified, he gathers with his disciples. This is where he institutes the practice of communion, which we still remember him with or in to this day. But on that same night, he did a couple of other things. One was he washed his disciples' feet. We read about it in John 13 starting in verses four and five. He laid aside, this is speaking of Jesus, is out our garments and kind of look at the idea here. Taking a towel, he tied it around his waist. It's the literal description of what that word clothe yourselves with all humility means. He's taking on the garment of a servant. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. The idea is pretty clear here that humility is to be the identifying characteristic of people who belong to Christ.

It's what should mark us as a people, as a community, as families, just as someone in the medical profession where scrubs or perhaps a doctor's white coat that identifies them with their profession. So two Christians ought to be marked identified by their humility. This was a big moment for Peter, huge. In fact, I think a life-altering moment. We know this because of another detail that was recorded in a different gospel, but as we continue, we can see that Peter struggled with this whole idea. He comes to Simon Peter who says to him, "Lord, do you wash my feet?" And Jesus answered him, "What I'm doing now? You don't understand." But afterward, you will understand. his concept of power, his concept of honor, operated on a completely different wavelength and principle. What we're gonna find is that Peter had somewhere down deep in his identity had been tangled up with pride. It's often the case for so many of us pride being the insidious sin, really the root of all sin is pride. That is invisible. We miss how prideful we often are. And we see this because, as I said earlier, a detail that was recorded in another gospel from that same night. Matthew records it in Matthew 26. It says this, "When Jesus is predicting

"that the disciples are going to betray him "or going to leave him, I will strike the shepherd." He quotes this verse from the Old Testament and the sheep will scatter. All the disciples begin to say, "Well, it's not gonna be me, I won't do that." Peter particularly is vocal here. And look at what he says. He says, "Though they all fall away because of you, "I will never." Notice the language here. It's a language of comparison. They might leave you, but I will never. And this is a clear indicator of pride because anytime you start comparing yourself to other people, pride is at the root of that. Pride seeks to kind of gain a sort of identity, a sort of righteousness, a kind of self-understanding, a justification, if you will, by comparing yourself to other people. And we do this in the positive and the negative. Some of us compare ourselves to other people feeling superior to them. Others of us compare ourselves to other people always feeling inferior at the root of it though is pride. Why is it pride? Because it's a desire to justify oneself. Rather than to be justified by the Lord, you're trying to justify yourself

by gaining some advantage over others. And we see this with Peter. They might leave you, but I would never. And this is what pride does. All through the Scriptures we see this. Pride seeks to elevate to exalt itself. Pride lifts the way the Bible talks about the proud is that they lift themselves up. That's the idea of pride always trying to lift oneself up. Ironically, what we find is that those who exalt themselves, Scripture says God will humble them. But the reverse is also true. That those who humble themselves, Scripture says will be exalted. Pride attempts to lift oneself up. Humility brings oneself low. Not in a self sort of kind of, what's the word I'm looking for? Defeat is kind of a way always talking bad about yourself. Often that's how we think of humility. That somehow humility is the opposite of pride in this way. If we're pride exalts oneself, humility is always kind of trying to beat yourself up, to talk badly about yourself. But that's not the way that humility and pride work actually at all. Humility is when you bring yourself into submission or under the submission of the Lord. Peter makes that really clear in verse six. Humble yourselves, therefore, here's the idea,

under the mighty hand of God. It's not about beating yourself up. It's about bringing your life into submission under the authority and rule of the Lord. You're accepting the created order. He is God, I am not. This is where humility begins. And this is why humility is such a necessary quality of a believer. It's because you're never gonna get anywhere with God when you're trying to take his place. That's what pride is. Essentially trying to get above the Lord, to be God for yourself. But humility is to bring yourself into submission, to humble yourself under the authority and rule of the Father. So quick illustration, we have three dogs in our house. Our oldest is Ted, he's a Frenchie. We have our newest addition to the family. Ferris is a little Jack Russell terrier, and he brings all kinds of excitement and ridiculousness. And to our family, if you have a Jack Russell, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And then in the middle is our kind of people person. And that's Rocky. He's a little mini Aussie. I don't know how many of you have had an experience with Australian shepherds or mini Aussies, but he's kind of the people person dog in our family,

brought a picture of Rocky just so you could kind of ooh and awe. Yeah, say I'm not above showing you a puppy picture to get your attention. This is Rocky, right? And so Rocky, he just loves his people, which means that whenever you come in the house, he's eager to greet you, he's happy. they have this unique way of greeting you. They call it the wiggle butt. I don't know if you've seen this, but they kind of like walk up to you like hello, like this, and they wiggle up to you. This is what Rocky does. Every time I walk in the door, he just comes up and he just starts wiggling his butt at me. And then he does something I'm not going to demonstrate, which is he falls down on the ground and rolls over onto his back and he lays there in front of me. You could ask why? Why does he do this? He's just looking for like a scratch on the belly maybe to some degree, but if you know anything about canine behavior, you understand this is a mark of submission. Dogs are hyper aware of where they stand in the pecking order of the family. And so what he's doing is he's rolling over in submission. This will preach. He's exposing the most vulnerable parts of himself to me, the one that he understands to be greater than him. Here I am. You have access to all of me. Friends, this is what humility looks like. It goes low. It submits itself. It brings itself under the rule, the authority, the leadership, the guidance, the correction of the one that it recognizes as being over him. That's what humility looks like. And this is why humility is so necessary. Hopefully now you're starting to kind of get this glimpse of the necessity of humility, because pride is to set yourself an opposition to God. Peter makes that very clear. Look what he says in verse 5 that God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. In other words, that when you operate in pride, what you're doing is you're setting yourself in opposition to God, or worse yet, God is set in opposition to you. Pride makes you an enemy of God. Why does it make you an enemy of God? Because you're trying to take his place. That's what really pride is. John Stott puts it like this. "The stubborn refusal to let God be God." That's what pride is, but the corresponding ambition to take his place. And we often don't think of pride like this. We often think of pride as being very loud, very boisterous, someone who's just overtly and obviously arrogant, and no doubt that person is prideful. But there are subtler forms of pride.

Every time we choose to exert our will over and against God's will, we're operating in pride. This is why many thinkers and pastors and theologians down through the centuries have rightly identified pride as the root of all sin. It all starts here. Look at what John Stott says, that pride is this ambition to take God's place. It is the attempt to dethrone God and enthrone ourselves. Francisco's all the way back to Genesis 3. Do you remember the initial temptation of the serpent? You can be like God. That's what pride is. Pride is you saying to the Lord, not your will, but my will be done. So anytime we sort of act in opposition to God's will, whether willfully or ignorantly, either way, we're acting in pride. But humility is to bring yourself under the Lord's rule and authority. This is why Graham Bannon rightly notes that humility is not a mere ornament of the Christian life, but an essential part of the new creature. It is a contradiction in terms to be a Christian and not humble. In other words, it's impossible to say you're working with, flowing with the Lord, walking with him, and yet be operating in pride. This means that humility is an essential characteristic of Christianity. In fact, it's the starting point. It's what I said right from the beginning. It's the entrance to the kingdom of God, but also the pathway to exaltation in the kingdom. It's how God takes you from one degree of glory to the other, is that you have a posture of humility that is submitting to his rule, reign, and authority. You're bringing yourself under him. That's why humility is the starting point for everything. You can't treat humility like an add-on to the Christian life. You ever buy something where they offer you an add-on? It happens all the time. In fact, increasingly more and more, you're buying something online. You put it in your cart, you hit purchase, and then somewhere in between the actual purchase and hitting that button where you're going to say, "Yeah, I want to buy this." They try to sell you a couple more things, little add-ons. What do you want to add this with it? You want to purchase this with it. Humility is not an add-on to the Christian life. It's not a wouldn't it be nice if. It's a starting point. It's in this in humility, which is to bring yourself under the rule and reign of your father, your creator. Andrew Murray puts it so beautifully, he says it like this, humility is the only soil in which all the good gifts of God, the grace is root. The lack of humility is the sufficient explanation of every defect in failure. Humility is not so much a grace or virtue along with others, it is the root of all, because it alone takes the right attitude before God and allows him as God to do all.

In other words, when you think about the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control, right, these fruit of the Spirit, when you think about those, the soil that makes that possible is humility. Because again, God's not going to be able to work out his character in you as long as you're fighting against him. It's when you're willing to humble yourself under the mighty hand of God that he begins to lift you up by endowing you with his character, training you in righteousness, but it begins with humility, which brings me to point number two, which is this, the true Christian humility must be rooted in God's grace. In other words, all sort of human attempts at humility ultimately and ironically wind up right back in pride. This happened so often, as I said a moment ago, often our concept of humility is sort of like a personality trait, in awshocks, not me, I'm no good, I'm nobody, I'm nothing special kind of personality trait, and some of you are more predisposed to that kind of personality than others. And so we tend to think of humility as kind of pride's opposite in that as pride tries to lift itself up, that humility is always talking down about oneself. But actually what's ironic is that when you talk down about yourself, you're really not operating in humility, you're actually operating in a subtle form of pride. Because true humility is accepting God's judgments about you, above all others. Sometimes I run into people who tell me about their past and they'll say things like, "I know that God forgives me, but I'm not sure that I can forgive myself." It sounds humble, it sounds contrite, it's actually quite the opposite. It's a subtle form of pride. How is that? Because what you're saying truly is God's judgment about me may be that I'm forgiven, but there's a higher court than the Lord's and that is my own. I'm holding myself to a higher standard than what the Lord holds me to. God is not the ultimate judge. I am.

Do you see how pride is there? What is it? It's a refusal to accept what the Lord says about you. That is pride. And so true Christian humility has to be rooted in grace in an accurate appraisal of yourself in the presence of God. Seeing yourself as God sees you. And this begins with what Jesus calls a poverty of spirit. Do you remember the sermon on the Mount? The Lord's kind of entrance or beginning of kind of his preaching, what he was going to say about the kingdom of God. Do you remember how it starts? You've heard this before. He says this, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." And a lot of us misunderstand this or quite frankly just don't understand it at all. And so we are puzzled at what Jesus means here. What he's saying is, "Blessed are you when you recognize your poverty of spirit." What does that mean? I've often said it like this, "The good news of the gospel can't really be good for you until the bad news is really bad." Jesus said it like this, "He who is forgiven much loves much." The inverse is also true though, that he who has been forgiven little will love little. So when you stand in the presence of God and you feel as though you've experienced or you need very little grace, then you will extend very little grace toward others. Whereas those who are aware of the great grace that the Lord has extended and shown to them, those people tend on the whole to show much more grace to others. Why? Because they're aware first of their gap between them and the Lord. This is how it works. The beginning to the kingdom of God, the Lord doing work in you is to recognize first your

poverty of spirit, that you cannot save yourself, that you're far worse off this this is what happened in my life. I grew up in the church, some of you are second generation Christians, and this may particularly be for you a problem. Because for those of you that kind of came out of a worldly lifestyle, right, you knew you were a sinner, and the Lord saved you radically by grace. You can remember, it's not hard for you, to cast your mind back to where you were, and to recognize that the Lord has been gracious to you. But when you grew up in the church like I did, often you can kind of be plagued of feelings like, I don't know, I have no testimony. I have nothing to really share. There are people who can get up and talk about how the Lord delivered them from drug addiction or this lifestyle or that lifestyle. But I really have nothing to say because for me, I've been a Christian as long as I can remember. What changed in me was that I recognized that I was actually the chief of all sinners because I was the religious type. I was like the Pharisees who hated Jesus, the ones who celebrated when he was crucified. That was me. I thought I was pretty good in and of myself because I had sort of been a decent person by all the kind of external behaviors that at that time the church really emphasized.

You don't drink, you don't smoke, you don't run with those who do whatever that phrase was, you remember that, I don't know, that kind of thing. Like I didn't cost at least that much. All of this external behavior that we talked a lot about, I was pretty good at avoiding. Meanwhile, sins of the heart, pride, arrogance, lack of compassion, all of this, these were things that I was guilty of. And when the Lord finally started to reveal this stuff to me, when I started to see just how broken, how sinful, how religious I was, it was then and only then that my heart started to soften toward the Lord. What's changing, I'm starting to see myself as I really am. This is what I'm talking about where humility comes from. It comes from an accurate appraisal of yourself before, God, Ray Orton put it like this. He said, "Do you know who ends up in hell?" Everyone who sincerely believes he deserves heaven. Do you know who ends up in heaven? Everyone who sincerely believes he deserves hell but is saying to Jesus, "Be merciful to me, a sinner." See, it starts with this accurate assessment of yourself in the presence of God. That's where it has to begin. The good news can't be good until the bad news is really bad. The best place I can kind of point you to biblically speaking to unpack this for you

is Isaiah chapter six. Do you remember what happens in Isaiah six? Isaiah the prophet sees a vision of the Lord. It says in Isaiah six, when the year king, Isaiah died, I saw the Lord. Isaiah says, "Hi," and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. He's seeing God, in some sense, in all of his glory. And it wrecks Isaiah. In fact, what we read in verse five, he says, "Woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts." Maybe we can sort of understand what Isaiah is saying here, but this is kind of archaic language. The ESV is usually pretty straightforward, but this is, I don't know, a little bit unrelatable to kind of the way that we talk today. So let's look at it in a different translation. I think the NLT captures a bit more of how we might say it in our time. It's all over, Isaiah says, "I am doomed, for I am a sinful man." What's happening here? He's recognizing the immense gap, the chasm, between the holiness and the righteousness of Almighty God in his own sinful condition. Too many of us, in fact, most of us, especially these days, we go through our lives unaware of just how holy God is

and just how sinful we are. In fact, in our culture, we don't even like talking about sin. We much prefer to talk about issues, struggles. We don't call adultery, adultery anymore. It's an affair, sounds much more pleasant. We don't even like the word sin. We like to talk about our past and trying to get beyond it. We tend to want to blame, interestingly, I think, in our culture, and you're seeing this happen like crazy right now. We want to blame shift people's evil actions onto some other situation. We want to explain it. Notice, like in the last 10, 15 years or so, there's been an explosion of movies explaining why the traditional bad character isn't really as bad as you used to think they were. Have you noticed this, pretty much every Disney villain gets their own movie in which you find out were pretty good actually. And that they were mistreated and excluded because they were different. And so now what you think of as the villain is actually just somebody who's been wildly misunderstood. It's an aversion to sin. It's a refusal to call evil, evil, to actually acknowledge that evil exists inside of humanity. You wanna know why we don't wanna acknowledge that? We don't wanna acknowledge it

because we don't wanna think it's possible for us too. If we can excuse away the evil that other people do and give up reasons for why they've done what they've done, then we can feel a little better about ourselves. That's the idea, that's what so often happens. And so we are constantly kind of filled with self-esteem and encouragement language. That's how our society kind of functions. I do workouts with my Apple Watch and Apple Fitness app. I don't know if any of you used that. I have a subscription to it, which allows me to do some workouts at home from time to time. And the workouts are good, but the trainers and the way they talk to you is very uncomfortable for me. It's almost too encouraging. I prefer a trainer that's gonna beat me up a little bit. You know, brow beat me a little bit, tell me I'm not doing very good. I'd much rather that than to just constantly be encouraging me. In Apple, they take it like way, way too far. If you've ever done an Apple workout, you come to the end of the workout and they're like, thank yourself for showing up today. Give yourself a hug, you know, for being here. It's like, this is so weird. Constantly trying to encourage ourselves, that's the language of our culture is self-esteem. That we form our own identities,

that we encourage ourselves, that's the idea of kind of the current cultural climate, but the scriptures work differently. But the scriptures, we rightly recognize the gap, our own failings, and then we receive grace. That's what's happening here in Isaiah. He's recognizing just how far the gap is between him, his sinfulness and the righteousness of a holy God. Our house sits facing the east. And we have quite a few windows in the front of our house, which means that in the morning, we get the sun, you know, beaming through the windows. And I'm the guy that's responsible in our home for keeping the floors clean. And I try to do the best job that I can. I actually, I was in Best Buy the other day, just lusting over vacuums. It's just, it's a thing. And I sent them to my family, pray for me, this is a problem. I want a new vac, I just, I like vacuuming the floor. Some of you are like, you're crazy. But I do, I like to keep the floors clean as best I can. And so I think a lot of times that I'm doing a pretty good job until the sun shines through the windows. You ever had that experience? You think the place is clean and then the sun shines through, you know, like the ray of light that shines through in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of Lost Ark

and hits the staff of Raw to show the location of the Ark of the Covenant. You're like, that's kind of what's happening in my living room. I'm realizing just how filthy everything is. And I'm so disgusted by what I see. These floors are terrible. You ever feel like that? Your house is just such a mess. It's like, let's just move, sell everything or burn the place down and collect the insurance money. But I can't live here anymore. You ever feel like that? That's what I feel like that. I see all the disgusting dog hair and dirt and everything and I just, it drives me crazy. That's what's happening with Isaiah. He thought he was pretty good. And then he steps into the light of the Holy God. And he recognizes, oh my goodness. I'm so much more sinful than I thought. That's what happens when you step into God's presence. Holy, holy, holy scripture says is the Lord God Almighty. But I want you to notice what happens next. In Isaiah's kind of fear and trembling, he realizes that he's done for. The things are so terribly broken and wrong. He's just waiting to be annihilated, waiting to be judged. But look what happens. Then one of the Seraphim flew to me

with a burning coal he had taken from the altar. That's interesting, the place of sacrifice. And he touched my lips with it. And he said, see, this coal has touched your lips and look at what happens. Now your guilt is removed and your sins are forgiven. Where he was expecting to find judgment instead, he was extended grace. This is the gospel. The gospel is simply this. You're far worse than you think you are. But it's also this, you're far more loved than you realize. And you can't really, I am a sinner. How can you receive grace if you don't think you need it? But it starts with acknowledging I'm a sinner before holy God. Then when you receive God's grace, it mobilizes you for action and partnership with the Lord, which is exactly what happens with Isaiah. Look at verse eight, then I heard the Lord asking, "Whom should I send as a messenger to this people who will go for us?" And look at Isaiah's response, "Here I am, send me." Isaiah is not acting now out of obligation. This is not some trying to pay God back. This is joyful service. You have extended grace to me. Now it is my joy and honor and my heart's desire to serve you and to love others.

That's what happens. When you experience God's grace, you become a vessel for God's grace. You can extend it to others. In fact, I go so far to put it like this. If you struggle to show compassion and grace to other people, it's because you've experienced very little of it for yourself. See, spiritual pride works in this way. I've earned something. I've worked hard. I've been disciplined. I've made the right choices, which is what allows me to look down upon other people. And we do this. We do this in such subtle ways. I read this quote this week from Jonathan Edwards that just wrecked me and reminded me of just how far I have to go in this area. Look at what Edwards writes. He says, "Spiritual pride tends to speak "of other person's sins with bitterness or with laughter "and an air of contempt." How often do we do this? How often, when a public figure falls, particularly a pastor or someone in ministry or someone who professed to be a Christian, do we look at them with disdain? Do we look upon them with contempt? Do we, maybe in the inward posture of our heart,

think of ourselves as being better than they are, that we would never make such foolish and stupid decisions. How dumb, how silly, how awful whatever their mindset is. We're better than that. I would never. How often do we characterize those who kind of take up a different perspective than we do as sort of being idiots, dolts, morons, people who just aren't as enlightened, smart as us, as if somehow we are who we are by our own choosing and making. As if we've been brought into the kingdom of God by our own efforts and works, that we've somehow made really good decisions and they've made bad decisions. I'm not saying that we can't acknowledge evil and sin as sin, but when we do so with contempt and a kind of air of laughter as though we're better and smarter than others, we're not exercising humility. We've given place to spiritual pride. A pure Christian humility, Edwards writes, rather tends either to be silent. How would this change our online discourse? About these problems or to speak of them with grief and pity. Spiritual pride is very apt to suspect others, but a humble Christian is most guarded about himself. He is as suspicious of nothing in the world as he is of his own heart. The proud person is apt to find fault

with other believers that they are low and graced and to be quick to note their deficiencies, this sentence just wrecked me, but the humble Christian has so much to do at home and sees so much evil in his own heart and is so concerned about it that he is not apt to be very busy with other hearts. He is apt to esteem others better than himself. See, friends, nothing cultivates a spirit of humility more than spending time in the presence of God. Why? Because it's there that I realize how great he is and how my righteousness, best I can dress myself up, is like a filthy rag that I am dependent upon the grace of God. So I say, the gospel is not the ABCs of Christianity. Too often that's what we think, that we need the gospel to sort of get in the door and then we graduate on to the deeper things of God. But it is not the ABCs, it is the A to Z. You need the gospel to sustain you for apart from it. You will drift into spiritual pride. You will begin to think you're better than other people, but by spending time receiving grace for yourself, It's what happened to me. I began to love other people. The Lord formed me a compassion for other people by showing me the grace and compassion He had extended to me. So true humility can never be separated apart from the grace of God. We must gain it there.

Number three is this, humility must be practiced. It's not gonna happen by accident. In other words, you will never drift into Christian humility. Without just practicing it, putting it on, on purpose, making an effort in this area, it will not happen. Pride is the natural tendency of our hearts. What does the great hymn come thou found? Say prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, Lord, take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above. That's the idea that apart from a continual and a regular habit and practice of allowing the Lord to minister His grace to me through the gospel, I will drift into spiritual pride. So humility is something I need to practice. I need to cultivate. How do I do it? Ray Orton offered three practices that I wanna share with you that I think are so good. He puts them like this. Humility reveres, it listens, and it confesses. These are things that you can practice. Let's talk first about it reveres. Proverbs 13, 13 puts it like this. Whoever despises the word brings destruction upon himself. But he who reveres the commandment will be rewarded. What does this mean? It means you elevate God's word to having first priority and value in your life. You elevate the word of God above your own thoughts, desires, dreams, and feelings. Even the parts you don't understand.

You may read the Scripture and say, I don't know what that means yet, but I trust that it's good. I believe, Lord, that what you have here is true, and that it's wise, and that it's good for me. That's the posture of a wise person, someone who reveres God's word above all else. The second is that they listen. This comes from Proverbs 15, 31. The ear that listens to life-giving reproof will dwell among the wise. In other words, you gotta have people in your life that can call you out on your pride. So often, pride is hard for us to see in the mirror. We don't realize how prideful we are. So we need other people in our lives to help us see what we can't see for ourselves. This is part of where the church community comes into play, having brothers and sisters in Christ in your life so that they can point out to you areas of growth. This is for your good. It's not fun. It's not pleasant. We don't like to hear the truth from time to time, but we need it because we often miss it ourselves. Ray Orland puts it like this. He says, when was the last time you said to someone you trust? Help me see myself. How can I improve? If you are not in any relationship

where you trust anyone enough to open up like that and then really listen, there is a reason. And the reason is not that you can't find someone good enough for you. The reason is your pride. But humbly, listening to trusted correction is an essential to entering into the community of the wise. Can I just tell you this? The more powerful you are, the more influential you are. And we're all powerful in different roles. We all have a measure of authority in different places and spaces in our lives. The more authority you have, the more you're going to have to actively work at this. Can I just tell you the truth for a second? Some of you, you run a business. You have a lot of people underneath you. Can I tell you, they're not going to tell you the truth apart from you being really making a real effort to ask them to tell you the truth. They won't just volunteer it. You wanna know why? 'Cause they don't believe that you really wanna hear it. Most of the time, people just want to not rock the boat. So we just kinda keep our observations to ourselves, particularly when it comes to power dynamics. So for the leaders, we have to be willing to say, hey, no, I'm serious, I'm listening. What do you see that I don't see?

I could think of a few difficult times in my own life and journey where I had to have someone trusted in my life speak the truth to me. I remember my dad several years ago, early on, in my pastoral tenure, sharing a difficult truth with me about my leadership. I used to think, especially when I first started pastoring, that if an idea was good that we should just choose to do it, regardless of how ready people were to follow. We lost a lot of people like that. I hurt a lot of people in my leadership thinking didn't know or see or understand what I was seeing and understanding I would make decisions quick and one day I was on the phone with my dad and this is just kind of how we talk and our family my dad said to me he said what you're like a flatbed truck with a lot of furniture on the back of it that's not strapped down. You go around the corner and you make the corner because you're the truck but that furniture scattered all over the road and that's your people. It hurt to hear but it was exactly what I needed to hear. It was a truth about me that I couldn't see in myself. That's listening, hearing reproof and correction. One of the things we started doing several years ago at church on the move and Lincoln is that we started an anonymous employee survey we actually bring in a third-party company that we have no control over. They come in and they conduct a survey with our employees asking them kind of what it's like to work here. It's pretty extensive survey and what they do is they grade you against other churches, schools, organizations of the sort and when we first started doing it I don't think our employees really thought that we were honest when we said we do not know what your answers will be. We had to really drive that home because they thought that we were going to kind of find out who said what and then fire the people who spoke badly about us. It's just how people think about power and we had to say no no no we're really serious this

is anonymous and that first year the results came back oh it was so hard to see kind of where we were at. We were not in the toxic category but I mean just above and this is in the early days of my leadership at the church and you want to know what one of the lowest categories that we scored in was in the inspiring leadership category. I wonder who that pointed to. It was so hard to hear that. It was so hard to read the comments that again I didn't know who they were coming from about the way that I was leading but rather than rejecting and here's what I'll tell you pride is more concerned with reputation management and explaining a way why people feel like they feel rather than listening. You want to know if you're prideful that's how whenever criticism comes rather than saying you know what there's an element of truth in this you just immediately begin to defend and explain but humility says you know what I ought to listen to this not all of it's going to be true it often rarely is right that's the idea but what you can find is an element of truth in there and that's exactly what we did we took these things to heart we made changes I'm happy to tell you that for five years in a row church on the move and Lincoln Christian School are certified best Christian workplaces we're in the like 90 plus percentile of churches and their staff culture and I just say that to tell you that the only way that something like that happens is that you listen to criticism you listen to feedback that's what happens we have to otherwise we we begin to believe our own press we begin to think that we're doing everything just the right way we're not we need to hear from other people and so we need to listen and then finally the third point is that they confess look at what Proverbs 28 13 says whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy you want to talk about how to reach the heart of God you want to talk about how to win the respect of other people be honest about your failures confess your sins can I just tell you dads moms when you speak disrespectfully to your spouse when you speak with dishonor to your wife or wives when you speak with dishonor to your husbands or when you're harsh with your children can I just challenge you it's

not easy to do confess be honest don't worry about how you're going to appear just be honest and say I failed you here and even when you didn't do it to your children but you did it in front of your children getting a habit of saying you know what guys I spoke harshly to your mother that was wrong of me I need to repent nothing will earn you more respect don't do it for that reason do it because it's right and because it honors God but I'm just here to tell you that when you're willing to acknowledge your failures it doesn't bring you lower in the eyes of other people it actually lifts you up people can respect you more why because you're willing to acknowledge where you failed and the same is true for the Lord look at this look at this parable in Luke 18 this is Jesus he also that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. And look what it says. Two men went up into the temple to pray. One a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed in this way, God, I thank you, that I'm not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get. But the tax collector, he stood far off. He wouldn't even lift up his eyes to heaven, but he beat his breasts saying, God be merciful to me. I am a sinner. I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. And here's the idea for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself

will be exalted. Psalm 51 puts it like this, the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. Oh God, you will not despise our willingness to come before the Lord and say, I've sinned. I've blown it again. I've transgressed your law. I've, I've dishonored you. I've allowed impure thoughts into my mind. I've, I've spoken with disrespect and dishonor to those that I should have honored. I've, I've not treated people with compassion. The Lord honors that kind of spirit. He elevates that kind of person who's willing to humble themselves. This is the entrance and the pathway to greatness in the kingdom of God is through humility. Lord, help us to be a humble people. Let it be our uniform so that all may know that we belong to you because we wear the serving towel that you wore. Clothe yourselves and humility, all of you, toward one another. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Would you bow your heads, close your eyes. Let me pray for us as we conclude today, Father. In heaven, thank you for your grace, your mercy, your kindness that has been extended toward us.

Help us to live in the light of that grace to see ourselves rightly in your presence. Not to beat ourselves up, not to try to pay penance so that we can get you to acknowledge us and to love us, but to just receive the grace that you have extended toward us sinners who did not deserve it. We don't deserve heaven, we deserve hell. We don't deserve a second chance, but you've given it anyway because you're kind and you're good and you're steadfast and you're compassionate. Thank you, Lord, for your grace extended to us. Help us not lose sight of it. Help us to remember it. Help us to remain and abide in your love and compassion and grace so that we might extend it to others. In fact, let us, Lord, fulfill the great commandment to love the Lord, our God, with all our hearts, soul, nine in strength, and then love our neighbor as ourselves. Help us to walk in humility. In Jesus' name we pray, everybody said, amen. Hey, as we close today, our prayer team, as always, will be down front. They lie in the front of the stage at the close of the service and they're gonna be facing that direction. That's how you'll know they're part of our prayer team. If you are in a place right now where you're maybe working out some things in your relationship with God, maybe you're really getting serious about your faith. Would you come forward and just mention to our prayer team, hey, I want to get that book that Pastor Root was talking about.

We wrote a resource for you called What Does It Mean to Be Safe? Really, what does it look like to follow Christ? This is for you. It's free, no strings attached. We just want to be able to give you this as you're figuring out what it looks like to follow the Lord. So come down front. You might want to grab this for a family member. That's fine, too. You can come grab that as well. We would love to be able to give you this. And then maybe you just have a prayer need. Maybe you're going through something that you would like prayer for. We would love to be able to pray with you as we close the service today. Stand to your feet. We're gonna conclude with this blessing out of Numbers chapter six. We do this every week and we like to say it out loud together as a church family. It's on the screen. You can join with me. Here we go. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. God bless you. I love you. We'll see you next week. You're dismissed.

Thank you so much for watching this message from Church on the Move Tosa. We really hope it encouraged you to take a step toward Jesus. Church on the Move is a family of churches in Northeast Oklahoma each with its own in-person pastor. We love our Bibles, learning and community, and taking steps toward Jesus. If you live in the area, we would love for you to join us in person. For more information, check out our website at churchonthemove.com or we've got a few videos we think you might like. Check them out here. [MUSIC] (upbeat music) (upbeat music)