Ephesians 4
AI-GENERATED SUMMARY
This sermon transitions from the doctrinal foundations of the church’s covenant to the ethical requirements for maintaining unity, specifically focusing on “lowliness of mind” or humility2,4. Tuuri argues that orthodoxy (right belief) must issue forth into orthopraxy (right practice) and piety, as “doctrine must yield to our doings”4. He defines true humility not as self-pity or a denial of God’s gifts, but as a vertical recognition of one’s total depravity before God and a horizontal esteeming of others as better than oneself1,5. Practically, this humility is the antidote to “vainglory” and strife within the church, requiring members to serve one another rather than seeking their own prestige5.
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
We’ve been going through the confessional statement and covenant document of Reformation Covenant Church. Several weeks ago, we finished the confessional side of it. We began then a discussion of the covenant statement itself. And we’ve been spending last week and we’ll be spending several more weeks on the statement that one is to endeavor to support the confessional statement in this fellowship of believers.
If one is in covenant relationship with this church. Last week we began a discussion then as we transitioned as it were from a from the confessional statement into the covenant document. We began a discussion of the foundation of our unity as a church and the foundation of the church universal as well. We spoke about the basis of our unity being one Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God, one Lord as it were, one Lord who is Lord of Lords, and King of Kings.
Not a Lord of Sundays, not a Lord of just the churches, not a Lord just of our private ethics, but our public life as well. Not a lord just of private lives, but a Lord also that applies to the civil magistrate. The civil magistrate rules underneath the Lord Jesus Christ. And in the confessional statement of our church, we have statements relating to the sovereignty of the lordship of Jesus Christ in salvation, Calvinism, and election, in ethics, theonomic, and abiding validity of God’s law, and in history in terms of the expectation of the advance of the church militant.
We are as a church blessed to have such a foundational statement. I think it’s very important and we also understand that we do have one faith and so we’re biblicists in this church. We recognize that there is one system of faith that God has called us to. That faith is apprehended through the study of the word of God and prayer. And that it’s therefore important to study the scriptures to understand a biblical perspective not just on what we do in church.
Not just in what we do in our prayer time but in the unity of life that God has given us. We also talked about one baptism and how we’ve been placed into the body of Jesus Christ which is after all the theme of Ephesians 2. The unity that we have is in Jesus Christ the circumcision and uncircumcision being brought together in union in Jesus Christ. We’re placed into that through baptism. One baptism one placing into the community of the faith in the one Lord Jesus Christ.
And we marked also that baptism besides signifying our placement into the body of Christ also should bring to mind to us who are covenantal an understanding that our relationship with God is covenantal. Baptism is after all a sign and seal of the covenant and certainly it signs various very important things depravity God’s election cleansing and grafting new a new name that we’ve been given baptized into the name of Jesus Christ and a new life an entrance from a life filled with rebellion against God into a life and a society not just a church that’s built upon the foundation of the one faith and one Lord.
But it’s a covenant act and it’s the important thing to remember that our unity with God and with each other is a covenantal unity. I was listening to the radio this last week and there was a very famous pastor preacher on the radio talking about the unity we have within the church and he compared it to a sponge and how various pieces of water get placed in the sponge and they all get soaked up together.
Well, it is quite accurate. Our unity is rather covenantal. It’s not through the intermerging of all of us together into one unit. It’s not through losing our identities totally. It’s not through giving a giving no credence to what God has called us to individually. It’s rather a covenantal bond we have. The same thing with our it mirrors or images our unity with Jesus Christ. Our unity with Christ does not mean we want more and more grace or more and more being filled with God himself.
And so becoming part one with God and merging with him, as James B. Jordan talks about, but our unity with Jesus Christ is a covenantal unity. God has deemed it his place to relate to man through covenant. And so when we read that we have one baptism, one faith, one Lord, we should recognize that’s covenantal application from last week. We tried to stress therefore we have a firm foundation. The foundation we have in our faith and in this church is not upon Pastor Tuuri good as he may be at times, as terrible as he may be at times, our unity isn’t founded upon some of the teachers that we’ve gained so much from.
Our unity isn’t founded upon the person of Rushdoony, for instance. Although one man once commented in our church, I think appropriately, what’s wrong if we do turn out like little Rushdoonys? After all, he has done a great thing. And Paul said, “Be imitators of me.” But Rushdoony isn’t our foundation. Not even the Apostle Paul. Our foundation is Jesus Christ himself. The key, the cornerstone, the capstone, the essential foundation that’s a that’s a stumbling block to those who are perishing, but it’s light and life and a grand foundation for those of us who have been called to election and salvation in Jesus Christ.
We also try to and we also stress there the firm foundation that this church has upon the teaching of God’s word. When Paul says that the foundation lies in one Lord and one faith and one baptism, he didn’t say one institution. He didn’t say one pope, one head of the church in the in the worldly sense rather as Calvin pointed out we read from him last week where the teaching of God’s word is there’s the foundation of the church where Jesus Christ is preached we also try to exhort you strenuously that since we have one faith is apprehended through studying the scriptures to study the scriptures and I want to stress that again today you need to study your scriptures we’ve stressed vocational calling in our church but it would be wrong to say that because of my vocational calling, I don’t have time anymore this week or this month to study God’s word to understand how I do that.
We’ve stressed the importance of child rearing. It would be wrong though to think that our children have priority over our study of God’s word. It’s the study of God’s word that gives substance, gives understanding and instruction from God as to how we relate to these other areas. We stressed the importance of reading other books besides the scriptures and many of us have very much appreciated various books we’ve read in the last couple of years.
But if we’re so busy reading those books that we don’t study the scriptures, we’re in trouble. Some of us are trying to establish home businesses, a good and noble thing, particularly in light of what we know that coming judgment upon our dead economy. But if we’re so busy establishing a home business that we don’t study the word of God, we’re too busy. We have our priorities wrong. The scriptures say to seek first the kingdom of God and all these other things, happy homes, good businesses, blessing, from God in terms of having enough to eat, having a roof over our heads, unity in the church.
All these things will follow if we seek first the kingdom of God. Same thing could be said and we talked about the tithes some months back and about Sunday worship and we’ll be talking about those more in the future. But the basic pattern is the same thing that we seek first. We give God the preeminence with our time and that’s what the Sabbath is all about. We set aside the first day of the week and thank God for it.
We know we work the rest of the week in relationship to how we thank God on Sunday for what he’s given to us. To think that we’re too busy to come to church is a big mistake. To absent yourself from the body of Christ for the sake of building up your family or your business is putting God and the kingdom of God and the teaching of his word secondary and it will result in cursing. Same thing’s true with your money.
If you don’t think you have enough money to tithe, you don’t understand the sense of priorities. You’ll work as God tells us in the minor prophets to put money in your pocket and your pocket will have holes money will go right through and you won’t be able to build that foundation that you want. We have to study the scriptures and as a church it’s good that we come to an understanding of the importance of the scriptures to every area of life but mean nothing if we don’t study them to see how God commands us to run our lives.
Having said that and having stressed the foundation of the church and unity being not in a merging up against one another and not in a lowest common denominator sort of unity In other words, not just stressing the least thing that we can stress and not offending anybody, but having said that our foundation has to be Jesus Christ, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, we do want to stress now that the other side of that is the working of that through in a book called the piety of the Princeton theologians, there’s a quote from Archibald Alexander when he delivered his farewell sermon to the Philadelphia congregation that he pastored who was going to become the first professor of Princeton Seminary in 1812.
And he said two things I have constantly aimed at. First to inform the understanding. Secondly to impress the heart. And so it was that Princeton which as I said which is the first professor at Princeton became a seminary known both by its nursery of vital piety as well as sound theological learning. Writing about Alexander’s life, Leithart contended that Alexander put the stamp of his attainments and his fervent piety upon the whole life of the seminary.
It’s important to understand that these things are not mutually exclusive. Piety is not found apart from a correct understanding of the word of God. And a correct understanding of the word of God will be linked to and flow forth into piety and into relationships that are marked by God’s word and his commandments. So there’s a unity here and that unity is built upon a theological foundation that issues forth in piety.
We have orthodoxy in this church. Correct understanding of the word of God. We must have orthopraxy practice. We must put it into work. We must have correct relationships with one another governed by the word of God. Our doctrine must yield to our doings. Must usher forth into correct doings and a correct apprehension of the person of God and our relationship to him and to his church. So, we’re going to shift gears today to the doing side of it and to personal piety as it were.
And to stress that on the basis of our understanding of the foundation of Jesus Christ, we then have to act in certain ways. We have to count certain things as true. And we’ll talk about that in the next few minutes. We’ll beginning a discussion this week of unity’s ethic. And some of you might notice that I’ve already changed things. Last week I said we were going to speak on the passage from Ephesians for the next three or four weeks.
And yet we read the sermon scripture from Philippians 2 this morning. But we did change things rather than I at first had intended to talk about the ethic of unity in one week and from Ephesians 4 to deal with loneliness and meekness, longsuffering, forbearing one another in love to deal with those things in one Sunday. I’ve decided instead to break it up into four different sermons at least because I think all these things are very important and they’re very important to us as well.
Maybe particularly to us as the church for reasons I’ll comment on in just a minute. So, we’ll be discussing over the next four weeks these various aspects of how we’re to be diligent to endeavor to keep the unity that God has laid in the foundation of Jesus Christ. I said it’s real important for us. I had a talk oh since several months ago now from a man who had attended a seminary that I won’t mention the name or the location, but we probably wouldn’t mind spending a couple years there.
He’d attended a very good church in the area supposedly I guess according to him that it was a good church had correct doctrine. You know he told me he said those people were very concerned about bouncing balls on Sunday which is you know an application of the understanding of God’s lordship over that particular day. He wasn’t faulting that necessarily. We haven’t discussed some of the ramifications of the Lord’s day and setting it aside in this church yet.
We will do that. But he said they were real concerned about, you know, not breaking the Sabbath, not doing things in the Lord’s day that were their own pleasure. But when his wife had very difficult times homeschooling their children and tried to go to some of the people at church about it, they really weren’t very concerned. They were concerned with an orthodoxy, but they weren’t putting it into practice in terms of personal piety, in terms of piety toward one another and serving each other.
Now, that unfortunately is very characteristic of many churches that we would find ourselves in doctrinal agreement with. It seems like every year when we go up to the reconstruction conference and sell books up there, somebody will come up and say, “Well, you know, you guys better be sure you add love of Jesus onto your understanding of your correct doctrine.” You don’t want to be just frozen chosen, you know, the way the people who have developed in the reformed tradition are sometimes.
I think these things aren’t just you know, you can get sort of irritated about it and say, “Well, they shouldn’t be distinguished I mean love for Jesus should go along with an understanding of who he is and that tradition forth into a love for his people but unfortunately in all too many cases in the reformed tradition the Presbyterian tradition there hasn’t been this personal piety involved in the reconstruction movement in the last four or five years it’s been marked by some very accurate terrible debate amongst various elements of it and it may be easily discerned from outside the camp as it were that some of the things we’ll be talking about in terms of humility, meekness, longsuffering, and forbearance aren’t necessarily being practiced in some of these cases.
Now, we’re a young church and we’ve stressed doctrine for the last three or four years in this church and that’s important, but we have to understand that it yields forth into these other areas of life. We’re a growing church and if we don’t have some of these attitudes, if we don’t work hard to keep these attitudes in us and to practice these things toward one another, we’re going to have real problems here.
I thank God for what God’s done. I was thinking this morning of how pleased Judge B. would have been to see last week Tony and Susie’s children be baptized. Judge has known Tony for several years and had really worked with him and prayed for him and he’d worked done it with all of us and he’d just be pleased as punched as he was developing at this church as he meant and committing themselves to a study of the word of God.
And he’d want this to grow and I want it to grow and God wants it to grow. But in order to do that, we have to understand that our foundation has to yield forth into these attitudes toward one another. In the next couple of weeks, we’re going to be talking about various responsibilities here in the church and realigning some responsibilities. And these character qualities that’s talked about here are going to be very important to keep in mind as we work through some of this stuff.
These things aren’t necessarily easy. So, we’ll be spending the next four weeks talking about humility, meekness, longsuffering, and forbearance. And today, we’ll be talking about humility. However, before we start that still more introduction, some of this is introduction to all four weeks. So, I can go a little bit longer at the introduction. Before we start that, I’d like us to look at Ephesians 4 for a minute.
It tells us in Ephesians 4, verse three. Well, let’s start in verse one. “I therefore the prisoner of the Lord beseech you that you walk worthy of vocation wherewith you are called.” Now that worthiness there by the way does not mean that you can attain unto the calling that God has given you. It’s not worthy in the sense of you know meriting what God has given to us. He’s saying that since this is what you have that you’re through baptism you’ve been placed into the world life you of one faith and one Lord walk that way.
It’s that simple. Walk in the way that you’ve been called by God. He says you’re this now do it. But God but Paul beseeches us that we walk worthy. Now other translation in New American Standard says Paul it says that Paul entreats us to walk worthy. Other ways of interpreting that word can be to urge or to beg us to implore us to walk worthy of the vocational of the calling rather of which we’ve been called.
Verse three says after he says with all loneliness and these character qualities we’re going to talk about “endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace” to endeavor to earnestly strive to keep the unity in the bond of peace continuing with an eager earnestness is another way that’s translated to maintain to work hard at it what am I saying I’m saying that as we look at these character qualities we better remember these admonitions of Paul that he’s begging us he’s imploring us he’s beseeching us to do something that we strive diligently to maintain that unity.
God has given us a foundational unity. But to think that it’s going to be like falling off a log from here on, it’s not. He’s, you know, God doesn’t entreat us anywhere in the scriptures to think well of ourselves to say, “I entreat you to have good self-respect or to, you know, love yourself.” No, he doesn’t do that cuz it’s easy, right? We all love ourselves. The scriptures assume we do that. We as parents don’t entreat our children to be earnestly striving to eat their dessert. You know, we entreat our children to eat their vegetables. Well, I mean, some kids love vegetables, too. But there’s various foods that they don’t like, and those are the things that are good for them. You’re going to have to entreat them, implore them, sternly recommend what they don’t to be diligent to eat. Well, so it is with these things we’re going to talk about. It’s not easy work.
But we can do it. God doesn’t ask us to do anything that he hasn’t given us the ability to do. And so, how are we to accomplish this? We’ll go back to Philippians now, and we’ll spend the next few minutes talking about Philippians chapter 2. Now, these are really it’s a parallel passage. You could look at Philippians 2, Ephesians 4, and Colossians 3 all together if you want to in your personal studies at home.
That’d be a good thing to see how those things lay out alongside of each other. And all three passages are preceded by a stress upon unity and upon the unity found in Jesus Christ who fills all and is in all that we’ve been placed into this body of Christ and he is the Lord of all creation. So upon this unity then God works out these other God instructs us to work out these other things. And so it is the Philippians 2 that has preceded in Philippians 1:28 and 29 that we’ve been given various things in Jesus Christ in the in the second half of Philippians 1 he talks about that unity in verse 27 for instance “to stand fast in one spirit with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel” and you have that same idea of unity pre-existing unity in Jesus Christ we don’t work for to develop a foundational unity it’s there but we strive on the basis of it.
Well, anyway, in verse three, “let nothing be done through strife or vain glory, but in loneliness of mind, let each esteem other better than themselves.”
The first thing we see here is that there’s some negative things that we’re not supposed to do that will interrupt this unity that God has founded in our churches and will put it to problems. Strife and vain glory. Strife is fractiousness, contentiousness, looking for your own good instead of somebody else’s good, exalting yourself, selfishness, factiousness, this sort of thing. Those are possibilities within the body of Christ that people would act fractiously and seeking their own well-being and actually being divisive in the church. It’s important to recognize there that he’s not talking about strife or fractiousness in relationship to correct doctrine.
What he’s talking about there is the divisiveness that comes when some of us want what we want to do apart from an understanding of God’s scripture to be prevalent in the church. This is emphasized in the fact that strife is linked here to vain glory. No strife or vain glory. Now vain glory is also translated in other ways in other translations as empty conceit, vanity, pride. But you know vain glory isn’t too bad a translation really.
The Greek word there is a combination of two words. The second half of it is doxia which we when we sing our doxology we sing glory to God. Doxology means glory and kenosis uh means to empty and some of us have thought through the doctrine of kenosis and that will be found in this chapter as well that’s a big word you when it says later on in the chapter that Jesus emptied himself that’s people the doctrine that’s being taught there some people believe that Jesus divested himself of all godhood but we know that isn’t true but anyway way that word for emptied himself is this word kenosis and so it has to do with an idea of being not there nothing empty okay so you combine the two words kenos none or having no foundation and then doxa being glory and you get the idea of vain glory empty glorying in other words glorying in something that just isn’t there glorying with nothing as its as its foundation and that’s the root of strife and that’s the opposite of what God calls us to do in terms of humility.
We’re not to glory in ourselves. That’s vain glory. We’re to glory in the cross of Jesus Christ. So there’s no empty glorying allowed in the church. And empty glorying in the church in individuals glorying in themselves which is nothing will produce strife within the body of Christ. And then he gives us the antidote of that in verse three also. “But in loneliness of mind Let each esteem another better than themselves.”
Loneliness of mind. That’s the same verse in Ephesians 4 and the same word in the Greek in Colossians 3. Loneliness of mind. And some of the newer translations, New American Standard translates that with humility or humbleness. Okay, that’s what we’re going to be talking about for the next few minutes. The antidote to the strife that can occur in churches based upon vain glory. That antidote is humility.
That’s the quality that God has called us to do. And so humility has a relationship to unity within the church. Now, humility, there’s a lot of verses in the scriptures that talk about humility. I got cutting and pasting last night in my computer print out. I was going to bring my computer print out and have, you know, all these pages full of all these verses on humility, but I cut a lot of them up to put into this, so I can’t do that.
But believe me, there’s a lot of them. If you’re going to study through them all, you’ll find lots of material there to talk about for a long time. It’s a very important thing. Humility loneliness of mind. Just one verse. Proverbs 22:4. “By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches and honor and life.” You want riches and honor in life. How do you attain them? By the fear of the Lord and humility.
You can’t have those things without humility. It’s important. It’s not an optional characteristic here. And why is that? Because in 2 Corinthians 10:5, we’re told “to cast down imaginations, that we are casting down imaginations, every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Jesus Christ.” Now, what does that have to do with humility being the foundation for our life in Jesus Christ?
Well, remember that there are various words that are talked about in opposition to humility, like You said vain glory being puffed up, having more what I guess more apprehension or more esteem for yourself than you really do. The basic word for humility has in English has its roots in the word humus. The same Latin word that the word humus has its roots in and it just means low or depressed, earthly as it were.
And when you talk about the exaltation that the opposite of humility that means up high. So humility is a real easy thing to see in relationship to these word pictures that we can develop that humility is a depression. Exaltation the opposite of humility is a wrist lifting up. And so on the basis of that we can see that if a person has vain glory puffs himself up thinks of himself too highly what has he done?
He’s cast up a thought or imagination against the truth of God. God says we’re to have humility. And it’s the essence of denial of the faith in God to cast up things before God. We’re to tear those things down. Now, we’re good reconstructionists in this church. And we can see all kinds of evil in the world around us that we want to tear down. We want to rebuild and reconstruct positive systems, positive institutions, positive ways of thinking.
But the scriptures say that these things begin with thoughts in the hearts of men. And here in this church, we’ve got to be careful that we reconstruct ourselves, that we cast down our thoughts that have raised themselves up to thinking of ourselves too highly in relationship first of all to God and then to other men. Humility is extremely important then and a denial of humility is a denial of the faith that God has called us to and therefore issues forth in death and not life.
That statement of Proverbs 22:4 that by humility are riches and honor and life. It’s preceded by another verse or two before that by saying that the Rich and poor have a common bond. The Lord is the maker of them all. Our humility is in relationship to who we are first and foremost to God. And a denial of humility of self-exaltation or thinking too highly of oneself is a practical denial of the creator creature distinction.
God made us. And God says that I made rich and poor alike. You’re all made by me. So to exalt yourself, to think of yourself more highly than somebody else, is a denial that you’re a creature like the other guy that has come forth from the hand of God. Okay. So on two points that casting up thoughts against Jesus Christ against what his word teaches us and denying the creator creature relationship distinction rather humility or lack of humility is denial of the faith.
The beatitudes in Matthew 5 begin with “blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Now, we’re big on the kingdom in this church, too, aren’t we? Rightly so. Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And we understand that baptism is placing into the kingdom of Jesus Christ, not just within the church, but in all society, Christian culture. But we have to recognize that if the people that people that have the kingdom of heaven as it were, this kingdom that we’re talking about are those who are poor in spirit.
What is Poor in spirit means. Poor in spirit means to understand your poverty in spirit. We read this morning that Jesus said, “I came to preach the gospel to save the poor.” He didn’t mean that there was like in today’s messianic state that there was an income level below which you could be saved and above which you couldn’t be saved. That’s not what he was talking about. If you look at the quotations from the Old Testament, including Isaiah 57, what he’s saying is that God with those who recognize their poverty and spirit, who believe it, who understand it in relationship to God first and foremost.
Those people are poor in spirit. They recognize their poverty in spirit and to them belong the kingdom of heaven. All men are poor in spirit. But those who recognize it are the ones who receive the blessing from God. It’s very important humility. Calvin and by the way also in the very first pages of Calvin’s Institutes, he talks about the relationship of humility to self-knowledge and Calvin actually implies in the Institutes that a lack of humility self-knowledge combined with a lack of humility is the root of all philosophical error.
Okay. To know oneself does not necessarily mean that it’ll yield forth into humility before God even though we know a wretched condition. No, man rejects the truth of God, doesn’t he? He suppresses it. And so when he does that, he develops all these systems based upon a lack of humility.
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COMMUNION HOMILY
No communion homily recorded.
Q&A SESSION
# Reformation Covenant Church Q&A Session
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri
Q1:
**Questioner:** What I really wanted to talk about from the Institutes was a quote where Calvin quotes from Augustine. Calvin says, “A saying of Chrysostom has always pleased me very much: that the foundation of our philosophy is humility. But that of Augustine pleases me even more.” Augustine said this: When a certain rhetorician was asked what was the chief rule in eloquence, he replied, “Delivery.” What was the second rule? “Delivery.” What was the third rule? “Delivery.” So if you ask me concerning the precepts of the Christian religion—is Augustine saying this—first, second, and third, I will always answer humility. Calvin said, “I like that.” Calvin would agree with that as well: first, second, and foremost—second and third rather—to the understanding of the correct precepts of Christian religion is humility. What is this humility?
**Pastor Tuuri:**
First of all, we’re going to talk about it in terms of its vertical understanding—our relationship to God, our humbleness before God. That’s where we should begin. We’re Calvinians here. We recognize that man is Imago Dei. That to understand who man is, you have to start with an understanding of the person of God. And that will teach us who we are. And that’s what the scriptures do. They reveal God to us.
They reveal God as the sovereign of all creation. And they reveal God as purely holy, righteous, and pure altogether. And in relationship to that, we see ourselves and our sinfulness after the fallen Adam as being abject in terms of our depravity. So the scriptures teach us first of all that we have a vertical humility with God. Humility then is a recognition that we are in this state of depravity before God.
It has a correlation to election. Election says that God calls us on his own. He doesn’t call us for any merit that’s in us. Humility is working out of that practically with God, with other men. There’s no merit in the creature. Men are totally fallen. Men are totally depraved. That doesn’t mean we’re as bad as we possibly could be, but it means that everything we do in the unregenerate state is driven by a desire to be our own god, to decide for ourselves what’s right and wrong.
Now, sometimes we’ll do the right things. We’ll raise godly children or not godly children rather. We’ll raise good children, moral children. But we won’t be doing it for God. We’ll be doing it for ourselves and for our own determination of ourselves as God. So the scriptures teach us that man is totally depraved. And that understanding of ourselves in relationship to God is the basis for our understanding of our humility before God.
We have no merit to God. Those people who reject God’s sovereign election tend to have injected into their system some idea of merit in the creature. And so they lose all humility—the foundation for humility—which is an understanding of ourselves in relationship to God. And that’s why Jesus said, “I came to preach the gospel to the poor and to save them.” And that’s why in Isaiah 57:15, God says, “For thus saith the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy, I dwell in the high and holy places, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.”
We have to recognize you have to have true contrition before God, humility before God in relationship to his holiness. And then God will come to us and will bring us out of that. And of course, that’s only possible through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. A good picture of this in Luke 18 is that of the Pharisee and publican.
God tells us that two men went up to pray before God. And one was a Pharisee and the other was a publican. And the Pharisee said, “Well, I thank you, God.” Looking up to God in heaven, he said, “I thank you, God, that I’m not like these other guys. I tithe everything I’m supposed to tithe. I do all these things. I pray three times a day. Thank you, Lord God.” And the publican wouldn’t even lift his eyes up to heaven, the scriptures tell us.
He cast down his eyes before God and said, “Forgive me, God. Be merciful to me a sinner.” That’s to be our attitude toward God when we go to him in prayer. We’re not to be boasting in our works before God. We’re to recognize that we are what we are, that we’ve been fallen in Adam. We have sin. We have sin that affects all of our lives. And we’re to subject ourselves to God. And that’s what the publican did.
And Jesus said that of those two men, the one that came out justified was the one who came out and said, “Have mercy on me, Lord God. I’m a sinner. Forgive me.” That’s the man who goes out justified. Now, we know that this is not just an attitude that is to occur one time when you enter into salvation. That attitude of humility before God is to flow through all of our relationships to God, all of our life in our relationship to God.
Now, we in this church in our communion service, we every week have a prayer of confession at the beginning of our communion service which reads thus, or at least in part: “Lord God Almighty and everlasting Father, we acknowledge and confess before your holy majesty that we are poor sinners born in corruption, inclined to evil and unable by ourselves to do good. And that every day and in many ways we transgress your holy commandments, thus calling upon ourselves your just judgment, condemnation, and death.”
Now, there are some people who don’t like praying that kind of thing particularly every Sunday and who think that positionally now we’re righteous in Jesus Christ. And why should we pray that we’re poor sinners and that we sin. We pray it because it’s true. Because the word of God tells us to keep that attitude in ourselves of humility before God. And if we don’t, God will bring us low. That prayer should be a continual reminder to us week after week to have that humility in our minds, a correct apprehension of our righteousness before God, which is totally outside of ourselves in Jesus Christ.
Augustine said that humility isn’t just saying, “Well, I’ve got these problems and in this area I don’t really have any rights before God, but over here I’m okay.” That’s not humility. Humility is saying in all these areas, “I have no claim upon God’s favor. No claim whatsoever. It’s totally of grace.”
—
Q2:
**Questioner:** [Reading 1 Peter 5:1-7]
**Pastor Tuuri:**
“The elders which are among you, I exhort, who am also an elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed. Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly. Not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind. Neither as being lords over God’s heritage, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away.
Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility. For God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time.”
The scriptures teach us that we’re to continually humble ourselves before God, so that he’ll exalt us. In First Peter, this whole section here teaches us that it’s that humility for God that is the basis for our humility for men. He says, “Humble yourselves before God.” That’s the reason why we can have humility to those in authority over us and relationally with others as well.
So the humility we have before God is the foundation for these things. It is incidentally a denial of the teaching of human rights. What right does the creature have to the Creator? Is there a right to life? Well, no, there’s not a right to life based upon Adam’s sin and based upon our own actions as well in terms of sin. We have a right to only one thing, and that’s death and judgment from God.
To believe that we have a right to life inherently, to believe that we somehow have merit with God and should be able to live and to prosper in this world apart from his grace, is a denial of our humility. Humility says we have no rights with God. That whatever we get from God is of grace. It’s not of right.
That then issues forth in horizontal relationships. The vertical humility we have with God, a correct understanding of our position in relationship to his holiness, then issues forth also in a call to be humble toward other people. That’s what we see in First Peter 5 here, we see in other verses as well. In Romans 12:16: “Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things but condescend to men of lowest state. Be not wise in your own conceit.”
So we’re told there to be condescending one to another. That doesn’t mean condescending in the sense of looking down and thinking you’ll go ahead and relate to that person anyway. What he means is to bring yourself down, to understand your position, to bring down your own estimation of yourself in relationship to your brother to a peer level. Okay?
In 1 Corinthians 4:6: “And these things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself and to Apollos for your sakes, that you might learn in us not to think of men above that which is written, that no one of you be puffed up for one against another.”
It’s possible in the church to be puffed up for one against the other, to let’s say, to deny humility in terms of somebody else, to be puffed up for one against the other. Be puffed up for Paul, for Apollos, or for Rushdoony as opposed to North or Jordan as opposed to Bahnsen or something—to be puffed up for them. That’s not what we’re supposed to do though. We’re supposed to understand that we’ve all been brought to position through grace in God, to understand our correct position before God and theirs as well.
And so we have real clear instruction in Philippians. Back to the passage we started off in, he says it real clearly: “Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory. But in lowliness of mind, having correct apprehension of who we are before God, let each esteem another better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.”
And so humility, vertically and horizontally rather—working out this understanding we have of ourselves in relationship to God—means that we should put other people on a par with us and their interests above our interests and look out for their things and not just our own things. That’s humility.
—
Q3:
**Questioner:** [Asking about humility toward authority]
**Pastor Tuuri:**
Now, in 1 Peter 5, the passage we just read, we understand that a portion of that humility is to those in authority over us. Now, we all have people in authority over us. The children are to humble themselves in relationship to their parents. They’re to be contrite before their parents. They’re not to be uppity. They’re not to be haughty toward their parents.
In Proverbs 30, it talks about the one who has the haughty eye and how that person whose eye does not esteem their parents. Well, let me read it. Let’s see here. There is a progression that occurs in Proverbs 30 that’s important to point out.
“There is a generation that curseth their father and mother and does not bless them. There’s a generation that are pure in their own eyes and yet is not washed from their filthiness. There is a generation, oh how lofty are their eyes, and their eyelids are lifted up. There is a generation whose teeth are as swords and their jaw teeth as knives to devour the poor from off the earth and the needy from among men.”
God is saying here that these are all one generation. It’s not four separate generations. These things—where a person curses his father or mother, doesn’t have humility in relationship to the authority that God has placed over them. The one who has haughty eyes, who may act in obedience and yet looks down upon their parents as if they were higher than their parents. The one who has haughty eyes toward other people in the church.
Those people who have haughty eyes then yield forth into a generation that shows that their estimation of themselves is too high. They haven’t been humiliated. They haven’t brought themselves down. They haven’t been abased. And what’s the result of that? They are swift. Their teeth are as swords and their jaw teeth as knives to devour the poor from off the earth.
That’s the issuance forth of a lack of humility in relationship to the authorities that God puts before us. There’s a foundational work there that should be understood: that humility is important in relationship to the authorities that God has placed above us.
Verse 17 of that same passage says: “The eye that mocketh at his father and despiseth to obey his mother. The ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it.” A curse from God comes upon those children who have haughty eyes toward their parents.
Kids, this should be a real warning to you that you’re to treat your parents not just with feigned obedience, not just with obeying the commands that they give to you, but with the correct attitude—to have a humbleness of mind and submitting yourself to your parents and not thinking of yourself as smarter than them or above them.
Well, 1 Peter 5 tells us of course those authorities also existed in the church. We had elders in the church that we should submit ourselves unto. And we know of a case—many of us know of a case in the last few months—where I think the root problem was this failure to humble themselves before the authorities that God put before them, and it issues forth terrible judgments from God against those people.
But it’s not just in relationship to the people that God has placed in authority over you that you’re to be humble. We’re to be humble as well to the other people in the church. And the rulers themselves are to rule in all humility. So it says here: “All of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility. God resisteth the proud.”
Sure, people are to submit to the eldership of the church. And sure, children are to submit to their parents and be humble before their parents. And we’re to be humble before the authorities that God has placed us in our nation and our jobs. But it also means that if you’re in a position of authority over your children, that you’re not to lord it over them. Your humility in relationship to them will be to serve them. You won’t deny the authority that God’s placed over you, but you’ll lay down your life. You’ll serve your children by instructing them in the things of God.
And so you won’t rule over them the way the Gentiles would rule. Rather, you’d follow Jesus’s example that Philippians 2 tells us about. Jesus, although he existed in the form of God, yet came to earth, laid aside all the glory that he had in heaven. And then, wonder of wonders, though he was found as a man, he humbled himself by taking upon himself our sin and by doing what was best for us through his transaction of the cross.
That’s the humility of Jesus Christ, his obedience to the point of death. And so he laid down his life for our life. Now, that’s the model that God gives us in Philippians 2. A model for what? First and foremost, a model for how we’re to relate to one another, to preserve, to be diligent, to keep the unity that God has given us in this church. We’re to lay down our lives for each other. We’re to esteem other people as better than ourselves. We’re to count them, as it were, as more important, and their things more important than us.
That’s real important. Not necessarily easy, but it’s a real important thing to do.
—
Q4:
**Questioner:** [Asking about different types of humility]
**Pastor Tuuri:**
So we have humility before God when we recognize our position before him in terms of his righteousness and holiness and our fallenness. We have humility with men when we count them or esteem them as more important than ourselves. We submit to the authorities that God has given to us, not just in obedience and outward appearance but with a heart attitude of humbleness before the authorities that God has given us.
And if we’re in a position of authority, then we serve those around us. And all of us in some way or another are capable of serving each other in this church humbly by laying aside our desires and helping them with their desires.
However, there’s a caveat that needs to be thrown in here. In Colossians 2:18 and 23, he talks about false humility. It says: “Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshiping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind. Verse 23: Which things have indeed a show of wisdom and will worship and humility and neglecting of the body, not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh.”
What he’s saying here is that there are those people in the world who will use even the thing that God has called us to recognize as important—an understanding of our relationship to God and other people, humility. God has called us to esteem ourselves lowly. They’ll use even that. The perverse man will twist that and have that be a source of pride for him, to pride yourself in your lowness, to be puffed up and exalted because you’re so low.
You know, the depths of the depravity of the human heart is incredible when it can do that kind of twisting, as it were. And yet we do it all the time. And so we want to be careful here that we don’t encourage the sort of humility that is condescension in the bad sense of the term.
In other words, we could go out of here this afternoon or after the talk is over and go downstairs and eat, and see who can be more humble than the next guy, you know? And who will give up his food more readily to the next one? And who will get each other the chair quickest, you know, and say, “How can I help you?” in a prideful sort of way. And we can deny the humility that God has called us to. We can glory in our humility. That’s crazy. All you’ve done there is, in addition to your pride, you’ve added hypocrisy. And so now you’ve got a double judgment from God coming upon you.
But false humility has many other faces as well. We talked earlier about the doctrine of kenosis. And some people believe that since Christ emptied himself of all his deity—which he didn’t do—that we then should empty ourselves of all thought for ourselves. And this is kind of like doormat humility. And some of the churches I’ve been in, there’s been a lot of doormat humility. And people are encouraged to be doormats for one another.
You know, if somebody does wrong, well, that’s okay. You just lay down and let them walk all over you. But now, what’s that doing? That’s putting our own sense of well-being in terms of our humility above the righteous requirements of God’s law. We’re not to do that. Why aren’t we to do that? Because we think more of ourselves? No. Because we think more of God than we do the other person.
We’re not to suffer sin in this church out of some sort of great humility. And that’s just what they did in the Corinthian church, wasn’t it? This guy was sleeping with one of his relatives, and they were being puffed up by it. They thought, “This is great. You know, we won’t bring judgment against this guy. We’ll be a doormat for him.” Well, that isn’t true humility. That’s a perversion of the doctrine of humility.
Humility is humility before God. And it has to be grounded in the foundation of our understanding of the person of God and our relationship to him. If we have that in place and that’s our focal point, then we won’t let our horizontal relationship with man turn into a thing that would bring dishonor or not glory to God.
—
Q5:
**Questioner:** [Asking about refusing to take on responsibilities]
**Pastor Tuuri:**
Now, there’s another aspect of false humility also, and that is when we won’t want to do things because we say we’re not really good at it. Moses, for instance, when God wanted him to be a spokesman to Pharaoh, Moses said, “I can’t talk very good,” you know. He was supposedly being humble: “I really can’t do much. I don’t really want to do this thing.” And we can supposedly in an effort to be humble in this church say, “I can’t do that. Please, you know, I’m just not good enough.” But is that humility? No, that’s not humility. That’s denying what God has called us to do.
Humility doesn’t deny the grace that God has given us in performing tasks. Humility doesn’t say no to God. After all, what was Moses worried about here? Well, he was worried about making a fool of himself. Probably he wasn’t really humble. He was just—he didn’t want to be humble, is what he really was doing. So it’s not humility to keep back from doing things that God has called us to do.
Self-pity is not humility. Self-pity comes from the ungodly line. It was Cain, after all, who said, “You know, what you’ve done here in terms of your judgment upon me is too much. I can’t bear it.” It was Cain who squealed, you know, “It’s too much for me. Please let me out. I’m just an abject pity here before you.” You know, the whole idea of self-pity is an exaltation of oneself in relationship to others. It may not seem like it, but it is.
It’s saying that myself, my own personal peace, is more important than perhaps standing up and doing what people have asked me to do and perhaps falling on my face before them. Humility seeks not to be puffed up. Humility seeks to edify.
Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13: “Love is not puffed up.” Remember that being puffed up is opposite to humility, being cast down. What does love do? Love edifies. So our true humility relationally to one another is not self-pity. It’s not doormat humility. It’s not a priding oneself in humility. It’s an edifying humility. It builds each other up in the faith. It doesn’t seek its own. It seeks that of its neighbor.
—
Q6:
**Questioner:** [Asking about acknowledging God’s work in our lives]
**Pastor Tuuri:**
Now, there’s also one other caveat here before we get into the blessings and cursings, and that is that humility should not be seen as a denial of what God has done in our lives. What do I mean by that?
I mean that Nehemiah, for instance, several times in the book of Nehemiah, he says, “Remember me, God, for the work that I’ve done.” Well, that doesn’t sound very humble, does it? There’s no chastisement from God involved in those passages. It’s a good thing. Why? Because Nehemiah understood that the work he did for God was totally rooted in the grace of God, shed forth into his account in terms of the covenant.
Nehemiah could thank God for what he had accomplished in his own life. Now, a lot of us couldn’t do that maybe yet. Maybe there’d be a lot of pride that would enter into those sort of statements. But we should be able to do it eventually. We should be able to agree with God in what he’s done in our lives, recognizing—as you would have to recognize to avoid pride in this matter—that it’s God who is at work in you both to will and to work according to his good pleasure.
Nehemiah understood that. So it’s not wrong to thank God for what he’s done in your life and to call God to remember what you’ve done in your faithfulness. It’s not wrong.
The same thing in Galatians 6. Galatians 6:2 says: “Bear ye one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law.” Okay? Or theonomic. It’s theonomic to be humble and to help other people and to put other people before ourselves and not to be prideful or haughty toward them.
Verse 3: “For if a man thinketh of himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. But let every man prove his own work and then have rejoicing in himself alone and not in another.”
The word “rejoicing” there is like “boasting.” He’s saying it’s okay to boast in yourself. It’s okay to be proud of what’s been done if you’ve gone through the rest of that verse and the first part of that verse. If you don’t think of yourself to be something when you’re nothing, if you recognize that in and of yourself you’re nothing, and yet God in his grace has called you to a work and brought you to salvation in Jesus Christ and done certain things through you, then you can be happy in the work that God has given you to do.
And then you can say with Nehemiah, “Remember me, God, for the work that I’ve done.” Those are all caveats to a proper understanding—some dangers you could fall into the other way in terms of humility.
—
Q7:
**Questioner:** [Asking about the blessings and cursings of humility]
**Pastor Tuuri:**
Finally, we notice that there are all kinds of scriptures that talk about the blessings and cursings of humility. Matthew 23:12: “And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased, and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.”
James 4:6: “He giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.”
James 4:10: “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.”
Proverbs 15:33: “The fear of the Lord is the instruction of wisdom, and before honor is humility.”
A good picture of this is found in Luke 3:5: “Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be brought low and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough roads shall be made smooth.”
It said at the coming of the Messiah, all the hills will be brought low, the valleys will be brought up. Now, we’ve correctly heard some teaching the last couple years about how that was how they made a highway for the king. When a king came through, they’d bring all these things level so his horse wouldn’t go bumpy-bump. That’s okay. But I think also what we have is a clear picture of our attitude at the coming of the King.
We’re to humble ourselves. We’re to bring ourselves down so that God will bring us up. And if we don’t, if we count ourselves as something when we’re nothing, God will bring us to nothing. He’ll make it clear in our lives.
Blessings and cursings in relationship to the biblical principle of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. If you’re going to exalt yourself, God is going to bring you down. If you humble yourself the way that God teaches us to humble ourselves, then he’ll exalt you.
If you want to sit at the head of the table next to the speaker, that’s not a bad thing. It’s not a bad thing to want to sit next to Greg Bahnsen when he’s here. But don’t go running for that seat when you come in the door. Now humble yourselves and say somebody else would want to sit next to Greg. Maybe somebody else wants an opportunity to sit next to him. And then maybe Greg will sit down and tell you, “Why don’t you come on up here? I want to talk to you about something.” I don’t want to give Bahnsen cause for stumbling when I say things like that, but it’s a practical application of what we’re talking about here.
Don’t think of yourselves first. Think of others in the church. We’re going to be asking people to do a lot of things here in the next few weeks in this church. For instance, this Wednesday night to come out and help stuff envelopes. So that’s not too glorious, is it? It can be a good time sometimes depending on the kind of refreshments we have and whatnot. But you know, it’s not a glorious work at all. It’s a work that needs to be done.
And there’s things every Sunday at this church that needs to be done. Doesn’t look like it, you know. You come in, you know, come in and sit down. Everything just seems to happen, you know? But it happens because people are at work. They’re at work because they’re counting you as more important than themselves that morning. And they’re working to try to get ready for you to sit down in the pew. That’s the attitude we should have toward one another.
If we don’t have that, God will curse us. If we do have that attitude, he’ll bless us, because humility in relationship to God and to others is a covenantal fact.
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Q8:
**Questioner:** [Asking about humility and Reconstruction]
**Pastor Tuuri:**
Finally, I said earlier that humility is important for Reconstruction. We want reconstruction in this land real bad, don’t we? Boy, I do. I want it real bad. And I have great hopes for my grandchildren that this will be a reconstructed country one day. I don’t know if it’ll be called the United States or not, but I know that one day on this land there’ll be people worshiping God—not just in isolated little churches on Sunday. No, throughout the entire land. We want that reconstruction.
But you know, it’s impossible if we don’t have this humility. 2 Chronicles 7:14, that we love to quote in relationship to the nation: “My people which are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways. Then will I hear from heaven, will forgive them their sin, and will heal their land.”
Dennis Tuuri 
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