Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Leviticus 16:29-31

Today’s sermon text is from the book of Leviticus chapter 16, verses 29-31. Leviticus 16:29-31. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Leviticus 16, starting at verse 29:

“And this shall be a statute forever unto you, that in the seventh month, on the 10th day of the month, ye shall afflict your souls. And do not work at all, whether it be one of your own country, or a stranger that sojourns among you. For on that day shall the priest make an atonement for you to cleanse you, that you may be clean from all your sins before the Lord. It shall be a Sabbath of rest unto you, and ye shall afflict your souls by a statute forever.”

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you, Father, for this our observance today of all the festivals of the Old Testament rolled together into our worship service. We thank you for the day of atonement, for the purification from sins, and for the affliction of souls that you commanded your people to enter into. Help us, Lord God, learn how to afflict our souls and grant us, Father, character in Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

I was out pruning the roses with my wife yesterday and I thought as we were cutting them down, I wonder how these roses feel about this. I wonder what they think, chopping them, chopping, chopping, cutting them down. Yet, we know that the purpose of this is to produce beauty and pleasure and for the health of the roses.

We just sang that wonderful song, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing. Tune my heart to sing Thy grace.” Well, you know, I think that God tunes our heart the same way that we prune the roses. Much of the tuning of our hearts is through difficulties, trials, and tribulations, afflictions.

We find in the text from Leviticus a ritual affliction of souls. This was a rite. This was a ritual that they were to enter into. And they were to afflict their souls on the day of atonement, a day that was given specifically for the purification of the sins of Israel.

So what part of our service is a ritual affliction to us? How do we, what part of the Lord’s service do we afflict our souls ritually at?

Well, it would be the confession of sin and the assurance of forgiveness because that is what in our service matches the purification offering. And the great annual purification offering was on the day of atonement. The text we just read describes it. It was the sixth of the seven feasts in Leviticus 23, coming on that sixth day when man was created and sinned. And so lining up with that purification, cleansing from sin aspect of the sixth festival.

And we do it first because in Leviticus 9:22 we’re given a divine sequence of worship. The ascension offering and the tribute offering and the peace offering followed the purification offering. So we have a ritual affliction of our souls as well on our Sabbath, on the Christian Sabbath.

What does it mean? What is the purpose of it? Well, I want to investigate that a little today. I want to talk about humility and affliction.

In the Old Testament, the Hebrew words that are translated humility and affliction are from the same root. And actually those words are used interchangeably in the book of Isaiah. So humility and affliction go together.

We have in the church calendar, the church year—churches that observe it—we just kind of touch on it here at RCC, but we do touch on it. We have some notation of the season of Lent as we prepare for Resurrection Sunday. And there’s a sense in which the season of Lent is another one of these ritual afflictions of our souls that people enter into.

And so it seemed good to at the top of our order of worship today note that this is the fourth Sunday in Lent. So this is a time again when the church, leading up particularly to Good Friday, considers the difficulties, trials and tribulations that God puts us through. And I want you to see it this way—in the sense of roses being pruned and our hearts being tuned.

So we have this ritual affliction every Lord’s day in our service. And then in a more heightened fashion in this season of preparation for the resurrection.

So we have this movement: two weeks from today, we’ll have a Palm Sunday service as we always do, and we will on that service install Brian Erland as a deacon and Doug H. as an elder. And we will talk about the role of the officers of the church in helping us as his people to process into the city the way Jesus processed into Jerusalem.

And this is good preparation for that. In Zechariah, it says that our king is lowly, mounted on a donkey. And of course, this is a reference to what we now observe at Palm Sunday, the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem at the beginning of so-called Holy Week. And this lowliness of the king riding in is to mark the servants and officers of the church. So it seemed good to talk about that then.

And of course, it’s a preparation for the true exaltation, right? The humility of Jesus, emphatically on Good Friday and Saturday in the tomb, and on Resurrection Sunday we see the end of that—it is not perpetual affliction and suffering. It’s to an end. It’s to a purpose of exultation.

In our Psalms Sunday school class today, we are continuing to review the flow of the books of the Psalms. I mentioned that Psalm 6, our Psalm of the month through the Lent season, has this movement of suffering and then answers to prayer. Psalm 22, the heart of book one, has this movement: crucifixion on the cross and then the great resurrection and the demonstration of the truth proclaimed that Jesus will conquer the whole world.

And if you’ll want to look at book two of the Psalms, there’s a priestly set of Psalms in book two and then a kingly set. The kingly set begins with Psalm 51, another penitential Psalm, another Psalm of suffering. And those kingly Psalms end in Psalm 72, that section, and that concludes book two of the Psalter. And of course Psalm 72 is the basis for “Christ Shall Have Dominion” and many other such wonderful hymns of postmillennial victory.

And so we have the whole movement of the kingly book—a kingly half rather—of the second book of the Psalms. The same movement. You see, this is just built into life. This is the great movement of life: pruning and then blossoming, affliction and then exultation, humility before being brought into victory.

And so we practice this every Lord’s day because it’s God’s way of preparing us for the future.

Now, my wife is perpetually on me to talk about the seven lively virtues. I preached on the seven deadly sins and eventually—I don’t know, maybe I’ll preach on the seven lively virtues. I’ve been reluctant to do it. I’m not sure why.

I’ve listed them for you on your outline: seven deadly sins—Pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, sloth. And on the reverse of the outlines is kind of a little summation I found on the internet. I didn’t come up with it. It’s not what I would have written, but it’s an interesting way to look at current marketing techniques as playing up to the seven deadly sins and playing down the seven lively virtues.

The seven lively virtues were finalized or put in their present list by Augustine of Hippo, very early origins in the church. They are listed here: Faith, Hope, Love (three), and then the four cardinal virtues—Fortitude, Temperance, Justice, and Wisdom.

Now we have other lists found in the scriptures. I’ve given you the texts here: Galatians 5, Colossians 3—fruit of the Spirit. And these are other places to turn for examination of our character, training up ourselves, our families, our children in terms of Christian character.

We should know the seven deadly sins. We should know the church’s articulation of the seven virtues. And we certainly should also know the list of the fruit of the Spirit or be familiar with them from Galatians and Colossians. And in both those passages, humility or meekness is of course an essential element to Christian character.

I’m going to talk about humility today because as the church looked at the seven deadly sins, pride wasn’t like all the rest. Pride was seen as the root sin. So the other six sort of grow out of pride. So the great sin is pride. The church fathers would tell us.

So I think we could say that the root of the seven lively virtues would be the absence of pride, or rather the presence of humility. So humility is kind of this base virtue out of which everything else will flow in the Christian life.

And so while I’m not going to preach on the seven lively virtues, I am going to talk about what I think is the base of them, which is humility before God.

Humility is formed by affliction. As I said before, I’ve got a couple of references here to popular art.

There’s a movie called “Character.” Sorry, I’m going to give this away for you if you haven’t watched it and intend to. It’s been around a long time. If you haven’t watched it by now, shame on you. No, just kidding. It is an excellent movie. The only Dutch movie I know that I’ve ever watched. It has English subtitles, I believe. It’s Dutch.

And it’s the story of a young man, and some of you have heard talk about this, but it’s a story of a young man named—I won’t tell you his name yet. And he has no father. Well, he has a father, but he doesn’t know the father. The father is in the same area. The father is a very wealthy man with lots of power and influence, but dark. He’s a dark man.

And what you find out as the course of the movie progresses is that the father has been behind the scenes causing his son nothing but trials, difficulties, and afflictions throughout his whole life. And particularly as he tries to establish himself in business, his father is working against him every step of the way.

And there’s a final confrontation between the father and his son in an office and the father ends up dead. And the question is, did the son kill him? Well, the son didn’t kill him, but he wants to, you know, he’s moved with tremendous anger and hatred for his father because he recognizes that his whole life his father’s been conspiring against him.

Well, what you find out at the end of the story—as the son sort of is reflecting back to the police the story that he’s gone through for many years and probably coming to grips with his father’s own life—you find out then he gets the will delivered to him and he has been given by his father everything that he has, which is immense riches.

So the father, you see, is preparing the son for rule and authority through the causing of afflictions. While we wouldn’t agree with some of the things he does, the point is: the movie, based on a book, a Dutch book, very popular and it’s required reading in most schools in Holland. The book “Character”—you see, the son is being developed, his character to rule, through the father’s afflictions that he’s given to him and then he ends up ruling a vast amount of wealth.

That is, the son’s name is Jacob.

See, so Jacob struggles with his father Isaac. He struggles with Laban. He struggles in lots of ways. He struggles with Esau. But at Peniel he is taught that all these things are being overseen by the sovereign God. That the sovereign Lord is building into Jacob character to rule. He wrestles with God all night and moves forward in victory because of the afflictions that God has placed upon him.

We don’t like it when God does bad things to us. It hurts. And yet what I’m trying to say today is that this is God’s way. He commanded his people to richly afflict their souls, not just their bodies, to the end that he would form character in us and would give us rule and authority.

Another movie I’ve mentioned here is “The Return.” I just saw that last night for the first time. It’s another movie where a father comes back after being gone for 12 years, takes his two young sons on a trip. They don’t know how to deal with it. What is our father trying to do? Is he trying to kill us? Does he hate us? Is he doing this just for his own purposes? Do we mean nothing to him?

These are the temptations the children wrestle with. You see, and these are the temptations that we wrestle with when Father gets actively involved, takes us places where we don’t want to walk.

And several of you, you know, this last six months or a year, you’ve gone places where you did not want to walk. And you’ve asked, “What is God doing? Does he hate me? Is he trying to kill me? What is happening here?”

And the end result of this is, of course, that the scriptures teach us that affliction produces humility and humility produces glorification of us. It’s for our well-being, for our effectiveness as being God’s people in this world that these things happen.

Not to leave out popular music, I’ve included here a couple of references to songs. There’s a wonderful song called “Too Much Pride” by a guy named Chris Rea. The CD is called “God’s Great Banana Skin.” “You got too much pride. And that’s his advice in the song. And I’m going to help you. Listen up now. You just got too much pride, it’s making it crazy.”

Pride is the root of all these sins and difficulties.

Bob Dylan has a wonderful song called “The Disease of Conceit.” Not that interesting musically, but the lyrics are wonderful: “A whole lot of people suffering tonight. Whole lot of people dying from the disease of conceit. The doctors, they have no cure. No one says.” So they spent a lot of time on it. But the doctors can’t fix that, you see. But God can. He cures it through his afflictions.

There’s another very nice song by Bob Dylan called “Foot of Pride.” Well, it’s very interesting. It’s called “Foot of Pride.” And you know, most people have no idea, but “Foot of Pride” is a phrase from the King James version of Psalm 36, verses 10 and 11:

“Oh, continue Thy lovingkindness unto them that know Thee, and Thy righteousness to the upright in heart. Let not the foot of pride come against me. Let not the hand of the wicked remove me.”

So, not only is pride deadly to ourselves, it’s deadly to others because in our pride, we step on people with the foot of pride. And Dylan does a wonderful job of talking about that in a song of the same name called “Foot of Pride.”

I’ll throw one other popular song reference in. Jackson Browne, “Don’t You Want to Be There?” Wonderful lyrics, beautiful music about heaven, I think:

“Don’t you want to be there? Don’t you want to go?
Where the light is breaking and the cold clear winds blow.
Don’t you want to be there in the golden glow?”

And then later, there’s a lyric that I wanted to read specifically from that song by Jackson Browne:

“Don’t you want to be there? Don’t you want to know
Where the grace and simple truth of childhood go?
Don’t you want to be there when the trumpets blow?
Blow for those born into hunger.
Blow for those lost beneath the train.
Blow for those choking in anger.
Blow for those driven insane.”

And wonderful song. And I hope today that the Lord God uses these verses we’ll look at so that the trumpet would sound through them. That if you’re choking in anger because of situations that the Lord God is putting you through, if you’re choking in doubt, in frustration, if you are having a hard time controlling yourself these days because of the difficulties that the Lord God is putting you through, then I hope these trumpets blow today to free you from those things and to get you to see that the Lord God is chastening you as a beloved son or daughter of Him—not always for our sin, but always for our maturation, for the development of our character, our effectiveness in the world.

This is what the Lord God does. So may the trumpets blow.

And if you’re not choking in anger or struggling with pride or going through one of these difficulties now in your life, well, then maybe you need to struggle a bit today. Maybe you need to feel a little convicted because you have pride in your life. Or maybe you’re doing fine and you just need to file this sermon away for the next time troubles and afflictions come to you because they surely will.

Now, as I said, the text in Leviticus—the word that says “affliction” there is the same basic word that is also translated “humility.” They’re from the same root. And so these things are really two sides of the same coin.

We could say the root means to try to force submission, to punish or inflict pain upon somebody. So Sarah afflicted—humbled—you know, her maidservant. Same word here. So God afflicts us. He causes us to richly afflict ourselves and to process and to understand His putting us through pain.

So the idea is affliction involves pain. And as I said, the end result is humility. These things are two sides of the same coin. And in fact God explicitly says in various texts of scripture that He brings affliction to people so that they might be humbled. He said it both about the 38 years in the wilderness—that He did that, He afflicted them so that they would be humble. And then later He also said the same thing about the exile—that the exile was an affliction, putting you to pain so that you might be humbled.

So affliction is for the purpose—God says, in both the major crises of the Old Testament, the wilderness wanderings and then the exile—back to the wilderness. We could say in both of those God made it clear that we understand that affliction is for the purpose of humility, for developing this core, this base, this tree from which the other virtues of Christian character comes.

And as I said, Isaiah uses them interchangeably.

So, if you’re keeping track, Deuteronomy 8, verses 1 and following, you might write that down: Deuteronomy 8, one and following. These are verses that talk about God afflicting His people for giving them humility that I just referenced. Deuteronomy 8, the next few verses talk about that.

And Leviticus 26:41 is the other verse for the exile:

“If their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they accept their guilt, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob.”

So the promise of exile in Leviticus 26 is explicitly tied to the development of humility on the part of His people.

Okay. Now that’s all by way of introduction, and what I want to do now is move through the rest of the outline. And to begin with, we will work hard at affliction and humility if we value it properly.

So first of all: Value Humility.

Proverbs 16:18-19 says this:

“Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. Better to be of a humble spirit with the lowly than to divide the spoil with the proud.”

Okay. Now we all want stuff. We all want riches. We all want to be good at vocation and get blessings from it. Nothing wrong with that if properly obtained. But here, we’re told that it’s much better if you have nothing, if you’re hanging out with people who are lowly and the poor, and yet have humility. Better to be of a humble spirit with the lowly than to divide the spoil with the proud.

Value humility is the point here. I want to get your attention. It is something to be highly valued that we’re to seek out for.

How do we get it? Well, the scriptures are clear that in general, Christian sanctification is a process. We’re told in Ephesians of putting off the old man and putting on the new man. And so really most sins—this is what’s involved: you put off sinful action and you put on positive action contrary to it, positive rather.

And here in the context of putting off and putting on, we are told explicitly in two different places to do this.

Colossians 3:12 says:

“Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering, bearing with one another…”

The middle of those five things we’re to put on is humility. So, you know, how do I do that, Dennis? Well, this is what you do: you try to attain to it. You try to put off prideful actions, noticing them for what they are, and try to act like you’re humble. That’s what you do. And as we do that, we’re obeying this verse in Colossians 3 to put on humility.

In 1 Peter 5, same thing. Verse 5:

“Likewise, you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yea, all of you be submissive to one another and be clothed with humility. For God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you in due time.”

So again, 1 Peter says the same thing. Put on humility. Be clothed with humility. Try to attain to it. Try to act like it. Put off prideful things. Put on humble ways of being.

And then specifically it goes on to say:

“Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”

So what does that mean? It means that the way the devil is going to devour you is by taking off your humility, by encouraging you to be prideful. You see, at least that’s what it seems to me this text is talking about.

Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, particularly in times of affliction. Satan’s going to come to you and say, “Don’t be humble and submissive. Get mad at God. Do some venting at the Lord God. Yell out in anger at him.”

You know, I don’t like that phrase “vent.” I guess you could say that Psalm 6, that we talked about a couple of weeks ago, David is venting, you know, but notice as we’re getting real familiar with Psalm 6, notice what godly venting is like.

It’s not, “Boy, you’re horrible. Gosh, you’re mean to me. Gee whiz, I can’t take this. I’m so tired of you.”

I’ve heard preachers and people, Christian men, say, “That’s what we should do in our prayers to God—yell at him somehow—that this is honest and truthful and getting it out.”

No. What David does is express his turmoil, his consternation, his difficulties, physical and emotional—to express those to God, to cry out for deliverance. Yes. But the devil would have us distrust God in our sufferings. That’s what he did in the garden: “Don’t trust God who says you got to wait for rule and authority.”

So we’re to put off pride and we’re to put on humility.

Now I’ve given you on the outline today the “putting off” section as well. I’m not going to talk about it. You can look at that later, or if you’re interested, I’ve got a sermon tape in the library from the seven deadly sins series—of which there were 20 some, I think. And this was one of those: the first sermon on putting off the root sin of pride from Psalm 10.

And just mentioned that pride essentially is an exaltation of self that is accompanied by a debasement of God. Okay, it’s never one or the other. If you exalt yourself, then essentially you’re debasing God who is the sovereign over you. And in Psalm 10, as well as lots of other scriptures, this is what pride is.

It’s thinking too highly of who we are. It’s evidenced in trusting in your strengths. This is the way of pride. The Lord God gives you strengths, abilities, things you can do well. And when we trust overly in those things, that’s our pride, you see. Pride will accentuate what we do well, and the very thing that we do well will be the cause of our downfall.

Joab, you know, is a mighty guy, good warrior, but he used it improperly. He trusted in his political strength, his political intrigues. Eventually, David has him killed or executed. On his deathbed, David tells Solomon, “Get him.”

Trusting in strength is an evidence of pride.

An inappropriate speech: you can listen to your speech. Am I being prideful in my speech? Pride not only exalts ourselves in our speech—talk too much about what we think—pride also puts down other people in our speech. So speech that’s mocking and sarcastic of others is evidence of pride.

Pride results in an abandonment and destruction of community and a rejection of authority. See, pride exalts yourself. And at the same time, when your speech is destructive of authorities, this is an evidence of pride. And so, you know, if you’re always complaining about your boss at work or if you ever complain about him in a negative way and try to put him down and are destructive of his authority, you end up destroying the community of the workplace as well.

When you talk to other co-workers, and if children talk about their parents in a negative way, putting down authority of their parents, it destroys community in the family. And the same thing in the context of the church. It’s prideful speech that produces contentions in the context of the church. And a lot of times it’s pride because people aren’t in a position of ruling like they think they ought to be—”that goofball’s ruling and he’s messing up and it really ought to be me doing it.”

This is pride. So this is what we’re going to put off: pride. But we’re going to put on humility.

And I’ve got several items here about putting on the root virtue of humility.

Now I call it the root virtue because if we look, for instance, at the Beatitudes of Matthew 5—right, Jesus opens His mouth and He taught them saying blessed. So the series of blessings here: blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

This is the header section of the rest of the Beatitudes, right? The blessings. And the first one is sort of a summary of the rest. And it is those who are humble, those who are poor in spirit, those who have afflicted their souls. They are the ones who have the kingdom of heaven. In other words, if you’re not poor in spirit, you don’t get the kingdom of heaven. So it is an entrance quality. It’s an essential mark. It’s the prime virtue from which the other virtues that bring blessings and benedictions flow.

So: Put On the Root Virtue of Humility.

And in the next point in the outline, I refer to it as the family crest.

Psalm 34 says this:

“I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make its boast in the Lord. The humble shall hear thereof and be glad.”

So he’s talking about blessing God, praising God in the context of community. Remember, that’s the fear of the Psalmist in Psalm 6—he won’t be able to do his very purpose in life to praise God to other people. So in Psalm 34, he’s praising God to the saints, right? And how are they? What is their mark? How are they described?

He describes them as the humble. The humble shall hear of my praise and they shall be glad. So it’s the family crest. If you wanted to make a crest for, you know, your family and describe some positive elements of it, well, the motto of the Christian, the word that can be used instead of the congregation, the convocated host, Christian, Trinitarians, whatever word you want to use—the word Psalm 34 uses is the humble.

You see, it’s the root virtue. Matthew tells us Jesus, and in Matthew in the Beatitudes, it is the family crest. It’s the slogan. It’s what we can be referred to as a people: the humble. You see, it’s that important. Not just another little virtue that maybe I want to work at someday. It is essential.

Secondly, it’s the precursor of answered prayer.

I’ve got Psalm 6 there—a little typo—but Psalm 6, you know, that dramatic movement I’ve talked about throughout the Psalter and the scriptures and life: affliction. And those guys who cry out to God in their affliction, and that produces answered prayer. It’s the humbling of affliction that is the precursor for answered prayer.

Psalm 138, verses 6 and 7:

“Though the Lord is on high, yet He regards the lowly. But the proud He knows from afar. Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You will revive me. You will stretch out Your hand against the wrath of my enemies. Your right hand will save me. The Lord will perfect that which concerns me.”

Why? Because the Lord has regard for the lowly. He answers the prayers of the lowly. You see, so humility is the precursor to answered prayer.

Psalm 9:12:

“When He avenges blood, He remembers them. He does not forget the cry of the humble, the afflicted, those whose afflictions have produced humility.”

“Have mercy on me, oh Lord. Consider my trouble from those who hate me, You who lift me up from the gates of death.”

And by the way, I went on to the next verse here. Listen, this is just like Psalm 6: it’s the humble, the afflicted, the meek, the lowly ones that cry out to God, and it is the precursor. Their humility is such that His answer is:

And then for what purpose? Verse 14 of Psalm 9:

“That I may tell of all Your praise in the gates of the daughter of Zion.”

Same thing as Psalm 6. Hear me. Save me because I want to praise You—this side of my death, when it will be an act of obedience to You and sanctification, when I’ll have an opportunity to do it here in church with the hosts. So it’s a precursor to answered prayer, which leads then to the very purpose of our existence—to praise God here in church and throughout the rest of our lives.

Who knows? You don’t know. Maybe today is the last day you’ll get to do this. Maybe you walk out of here, drive home, car hits you, you’re dead. This may be the last time you hear the blowing of the trumpets calling you to praise God today with humility and giving thanks to Him with your word in the context of your community.

Job 22:29:

“When they cast you down and you say exaltation will come, then He will save the humble person. God answers the prayer of the humble person.”

Humility is the precursor of answered prayer.

It’s the slogan of the Christian life. It is the root of all the rest of the Christian virtues and it’s the necessary condition for receiving three gifts. Three gifts stuff. You hear this from me all the time. I’m probably going to talk about it next week, German Christmas, Christmas Eve. You don’t see that tree yet. Christmas morning, they open the doors to the living room and boom, there’s the beautiful tree. All the presents are underneath it. Kind of a cool way to do it. Locked away till Jesus comes.

And when Jesus comes, the door is open. And you know, Jesus comes, he dies on the cross, the door opens. And the veil is ripped in two. And there it is: the tree, the mercy seat where God sits. And around the tree are the presents: Aaron’s rod (glory), the golden pot of manna (life), right? The tablets with the law (knowledge). Glory, knowledge, life.

Every Lord’s day morning is Christmas. Here you come, the doors of the church open. Jesus is present with us and he gives us wonderful gifts. The thing we want most: glory, knowledge and life. But he gives these gifts.

You see, he gives these gifts to the humble. Humility is the condition for receiving these gifts.

Jesus tells us in Luke 14 and again in Luke 18 that it’s those who are humbled, who sit in the last place of the dining hall, that He will then glorify, give glory and honor to by saying, “Come sit up here in the primary seat.”

And He tells us in verse 11:

“Whoever exalts himself will be humbled. He who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Be given glory, honor, and privilege. You see, that gift we want—to be somebody, we want to be exalted. That’s right. We should be. But the way to get to that position is through humbling ourselves. That’s the necessary precursor for receiving the gift of glory.

And then He talks about, later in Luke, about the Pharisee and the publican. And who goes away justified? The publican. He says, “Have mercy on me, Lord God.” Who humbles himself before God. Who prays that prayer of confession—the ritual affliction every Lord’s day morning—in the right way with his heart saying, “I’m glad I’m not like other people.” No, saying, “Have mercy on me, Lord God. I know I sin. I’ve got something to say during that 30 seconds of quiet time that Pastor Shaw leads us in,” saying, “I know I’ve been horrible. I’m a wicked person. I sinned.”

And if you humble yourself under God, those are the ones He gives glory to.

Verse 14 of Luke 18:

“I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

The gift of glory: He gives to those who humble themselves.

Psalm or Proverbs 3:34:

“Surely He scorns the scornful, but He gives grace to the humble. The wise shall inherit glory. The wise are in parallel with the humble. The humble, He gives grace to them that they might get glory.”

This is the great gift that He gives to us. But He only gives it to the humble. You see, and if you’re not humble, you come here, you go through the ritual actions, but you don’t get the gifts. You see, Jesus has presence for us, but they’re to those who are humble.

Proverbs 18:12:

“Before destruction, the heart of a man is haughty. Before honor or glory is humility.”

And then in Proverbs 29:22 and 23.

Oh, by the way, in I should have read verse 11 in Proverbs 18, the rich man’s wealth is his strong city. Like a high wall is his own esteem. Before destruction, the heart of a man is haughty. Before honor is humility. You see, there’s a contrast because honor is wealth. It’s riches.

And the rich man who has lots of money, see, it’s hard for him because he feels like he’s got his glory already and it’ll, you know, be able to take care of him. But God says, “No, even if you’re rich, you should humble yourself before God and receive the true riches, the true glory that comes through the forgiveness of our sins.”

And then Proverbs 29:22 and 23:

“An angry man stirs up strife, and a furious man abounds in transgression. A man’s pride will bring him low, but the humble in spirit will retain honor.”

You see, those who are choking in anger choke in anger because of their pride. And the way to hear that trumpet blowing for you, to release you from being choked in anger, is the trumpet is blowing, telling you to humble yourself under the sovereign working of God. He’s the one that in His sovereignty brought to pass, He has decreed whatsoever things have happened. Nothing is happening outside of His control.

Whatever difficult things you’ve gone through that cause you anger, the Lord God has superintended every one of them. He’s just, you know, cutting the roses. He’s tuning your heart. The trumpet blows to you saying, “Put off anger. Put on humility. Put off pride.”

A man’s pride will bring him low. But the humble in spirit will get that glory, get that gift, right?

Proverbs 15:32 and 33:

“He who disdains instruction despises his own soul. He who heeds rebuke, who heeds rebuke, who wants the affliction of rebuke from a friend, gets understanding. The fear of the Lord is the instruction of wisdom. And before honor is humility—a necessary precursor for glory, affliction, humble enough to hear and desire the rebukes of one’s friends.”

Proverbs 11:

“Dishonest scales are an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is His delight. When pride comes, then comes shame. But with the humble is wisdom.”

With the humble is wisdom. So knowledge. Now we’ve gotten glory. Now we get knowledge—with humility. And specifically, it’s properly using the right scale. That’s why those two Proverbs go together. When you’re prideful, you’re using fixed scales. It’s not right. You got way too many, you know, you got balances that are going to make it in your favor every time.

That’s who we are as fallen people. The heart is desperately wicked. All we’ve got are improper scales. And living in community is the way to humble ourselves. The afflictions of God tell us, “Hey, trim the scales, right?” Okay? Understand that you’re not the great one here. I am. Humble yourself before me. And you know what? If you do that, I’m going to give you this wonderful gift of glory under the Christmas tree. And I’m going to give you the true skinny, right? The true knowledge. Wisdom will be yours if you humble yourself before me.

Psalm 119, verse 61:

“Before I was afflicted, I went astray. But now I have kept Thy word. Thou art good and doest good. Teach me Thy statutes. The proud have forged a lie against me. But I will keep Thy precepts with my whole heart. It is good for me that I have been afflicted that I might learn Thy statutes.”

Verse 71.

So what is Psalm 119 about? It’s about learning the statutes of God. How are we given that knowledge of the word of God? If we come here humbly, if we come here intending to hear the voice of Jesus blowing trumpets, bringing us knowledge, if we come here with a humble mind, if we come here afflicting our souls before God, then He gives us not just glory but He gives us knowledge as well.

And finally, He gives us life.

Proverbs 22:4:

“By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches and honor and life.”

Life is the gift of God to those who are humble before Him. So humility is our motto. We are the humble ones. We, yeah, we use the word Christian. Maybe a word like “Trinitarian” might be nice. Is he a Trinitarian or not? That kind of says it all in a way. Is he trinitarian? But really, if we want to talk about it from another perspective, the title is: is he one of the humble ones?

It’s that important. Does he have the base virtue that will lead to all the other virtues? Is he going to get answered prayer? Meaning, is he humbled before God? Do we get the good gifts Christmas morning, every Lord’s day morning as the doors are opened? And Jesus is present with us. Do we get that—the rod of authority of Aaron? Do we get that golden jar of food, manna, the delicious tasting stuff? Do we get the true knowledge?

Well, if we’re humble, this is the necessary condition for receiving these great gifts from God.

We talked about scripture choruses. Friend of mine wrote one years ago based on Jeremiah 9.

Jeremiah 9 says:

“Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might. Let not the rich man glory in his riches.”

Well, those are the three gifts again: might (for the preservation of life), riches (are glory), and wisdom (is knowledge).

And that’s what we tend to do. We’ve got enough of these things. We can get them on our own. But God says, “No, let him that glory in this: that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord, which exercises lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, says the Lord.”

Don’t be puffed up with your riches, your knowledge, your ability, political maneuvering, or physical strength. Don’t be puffed up with false gifts because then you’ll miss the true gifts of God. Humble yourself before God. Boast in Him, and He’ll give you these wonderful gifts of glory, knowledge, and life.

Humility is also the promoter of true Christian unity.

On the outline, in James chapter 4. Actually, chapter three. No, James chapter 4. Humble yourself verse 10.

“In the sight of the Lord and He will lift you up.”

And then in my Bible there’s inserted an uninspired separation of the text which says “Do not judge brother.” Verse 11 goes on to say:

“Do not speak evil of one another, brothers. Do not speak evil because you see those things go together. Humility builds community. Pride—the foot of pride coming down on people through sarcasm, mocking, scoffing, whatever it is—this is what destroys community.”

Remember, pride thinks higher of itself than God and certainly higher itself in relationship to others. And when we do that, we begin to produce dynamics in the context of community that are destructive to that very community.

And James is almost, you could almost treat James like a sermon on this topic. Just read the whole book. It’s all about trials and difficulties and afflictions. And the whole point of those, God says repeatedly, as I’ve demonstrated this morning, are to bring humility. And then the admonation is to have this humility. And it’s said in the context of not destroying community.

It’s pride that produces contention in the church or in the workplace or the home or the neighborhood or the sports team. You don’t have to look very far. You don’t have to try to figure out things too deep. When you see contention and difficulties, James says the root is pride, and that’s what you have to do: root out the pride in yourself, and then you’ll build up the community.

James is a dissertation essentially on that very thing. He says:

“If you have bitter envying and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth.”

Bitter envying and self-seeking, see, they go together. Prideful looking after ourselves, looking out for number one, relates to envy, bitterness—that I can’t have what other people have—as opposed to accepting the gifts that we have as we minister to each other in community.

You see, so James is sort of a dissertation on this.

Verse one of chapter 4 says this:

“Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and you do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and you do not receive because you ask amiss that you may spend it on your pleasures. Adulterers and adulteresses. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?”

And then he goes on to say, you know, that He gives more grace. Therefore, he says:

“God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

And then he calls for the answer:

“Therefore, submit to God.”

So he describes these social, these communal contention, this breakdown of community. And when he gets right down to the end, he cites the Old Testament verse about pride and then the answer is to humble ourselves.

So the book of James is this extended discussion: pride, the lack of humility, is destructive to community. And on the contrary, the presence of humility builds community up. Humbling cures this worldliness and brings about well-being. And then later in that same text:

“Do not speak evil of one another.”

Okay. So again, the point is that pride is what causes us to speak improperly of one another, and we’re to put off pride, humble ourselves before God, and community is built up.

Fifth, humility is the chief characteristic of our walk. Or it is to be—it is. It’s also a virtue worth imitating. There is false humility that is in the world, but it’s to be what is the essence of our walk. It’s our slogan. It’s necessary for answered prayer. It’s necessary for getting those great gifts that exist in community, and it is essentially the way we walk as Christians.

You’ve heard me talk about this lots.

Micah 6 says, in verse 8:

“He has shown you, oh man, what is good.”

Another one of those beautiful verses to memorize, to maybe sing a chorus about, to store away because it’s so important, because it’s a nice little summation.

“Dad, what do Christians do? How are we? What are Christians like? What are we supposed to do? Gosh, there’s 66 books and all kinds of stuff. It tells us, is it simple?”

Yeah, it is. Because God tells us what we’re supposed to do:

“To do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God”—

things we do, things we love, and then the way we walk. And the walk is characterized simply as being humble before God. It’s the simple requirement. It’s the characteristic of our very walk, who we are as Christians.

Ephesians 4:1 says the same thing in the New Testament:

“I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you are called.”

So he’s going to tell us how to walk. What’s it like, Dad, being a Christian? Well, Paul tells us here: here’s how you walk worthy. And the immediate thing he lists is:

“With all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love and to keep the unity of the Spirit.”

So how is the walk characterized? Very first thing out of Paul’s mouth—he’s going to talk about the walk worthy: lowliness, humility. Accepting afflictions, having them do their proper work in tuning your heart to sing the grace of God. Humility. Put it on, act like it, put off pride.

Now, Colossians 2 warns us that there is false humility, that there are men who take delight in false humility and worship of angels. They’re puffed up by their fleshly mind. And then later in that same text in verse 23:

“These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom and self-imposed religion. False humility.”

He’s talking about people that fast or put off certain foods, have certain disciplines going on, and it’s a false humility. So you got to be careful. There is a false humility that one can enter into. But nonetheless, the Bible says that we’re to put on the true humility of God.

And the way it’s demonstrated in Colossians is the guys who are falsely humble are still trying to tell you what to do. They’re still pushing their agenda, right? And they’re still causing problems, contention in community.

So our very walk as Christians is to walk in humility, to walk with lowliness of life. Humility is looking to God’s word. That’s you’ve heard me say this again here, but Democrats love mercy. Republicans do justice. One group focuses on benevolence. The other group focuses on justice and punishment of criminals. But neither party walks humbly with God, saying, “How should we best do benevolences and how do we actually accomplish justice?”

And as a result, men in their pride end up doing both things wrong.

So humility is looking to that word of God for how we go about then doing these things in our lives, whether political, social, economic, or ecclesiastical.

All right. Sixth, the demonstration of heavenly wisdom.

Humility is the demonstration of heavenly wisdom. And I’ve got a little bit of text here. I think I’ve preached on this before. I can’t remember. But James 3:17.

“Wisdom from above”—wisdom from below. There’s a demonic wisdom. There’s a heavenly wisdom. And we want to put off doing things with political maneuverings and with demonic wisdom that produces contention. We want to put on the wisdom from above. And it’s described for us in James 3:17 and the book of James.

I just told you what that was about. But look at this. Look at the structure here. He describes that it’s first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality, and without hypocrisy.

And I believe that this little structure here is right. I believe this is self-conscious, kayastic parallelism that we have going on here. These things match up.

Purity means not having hypocrisy, right? The first day of creation, pure light. Sabbath day, the light of God comes with us. So the wisdom from above is pure without hypocrisy. The wisdom from above is peaceable, bringing God’s will on earth as it’s done in heaven. The firmament, you know, makes us this bipolar reality, division, but we’re producing peace in the context. We’re wedding God and man. And we do this without being partial toward this person or that. We treat all men the way the scriptures tell us to treat them.

The third characteristic is gentleness. Gentleness matches up with full of mercy and good fruits. Gentleness talks about our work that we’re doing with others. And just as the fifth day teemed with birds and fish, our lives are to teem with mercy and good fruit as a result of our gentleness. Our being gentle means to be helpful to other people, like the kind in 1 Corinthians 13.

So we want to be kind. We want to be helping other people. We don’t want to show partiality. We want God’s peace and order in our world. We want to demonstrate and build purity and not hypocrisy in the church. And the very core virtue from which these all emanate—as if from the center ray of the sun—is what? It’s being willing to yield. It’s being humble enough to yield to other people. “Willing to be intreated” is another way, another translation of the text tells us.

How easily are you intreated? You see, there’s everything cut and dry. You give the order. That’s it. That shows pride. Are we humble? When we enter into discussions with other people, that’s at the core of the wisdom from above. It’s at the core that produces the kind of wonderful, gracious, peaceful, pure community that’s described in the rest of it. It all emanates from that core of humility.

Humility is the demonstration of heavenly wisdom.

And then finally, humility is the guarantor of God’s benedictive gaze. And I don’t know, I made that word up, I think. But God’s—you know, when we pronounce the benediction on the people, “The Lord lift up His face upon you, give you peace. The Lord God, you know, His face comes up, He looks at you, He smiles at you.” That’s what the benediction is. And the presence of that benediction from God, His gaze on us, His loving gaze on us is empowerment.

You see, so it’s a benedictive gaze of God upon us. Who does God look upon? Who does He look upon to bless? Well, it’s the humble again. No surprise.

Isaiah 57:15, verse 15:

“Thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy. I dwell in the light and holy place with him who has a contrite and humble spirit.”

God dwells in the holy place. He’s here with those who are humble and lowly in spirit.

And then in Isaiah 66:2:

“All those things my hand is made. All those things exist, says the Lord, but on this one will I look.”

On this one will I give My benedictive gaze. On this one I’ll be in the presence of him. But more than that, I will give him power and transform him and love him with My presence, which transforms him.

“On this one will I look, on him who is poor and of a contrite spirit…”

The humble. Humility is the necessary condition for the benedictive gaze of God upon us at the conclusion of our worship service.

And then He gives an indication of what it means to be poor and of a contrite spirit:

“…and who trembles at My word?”

Do we tremble at the word of God? Do we recognize His sovereignty? Do we humble ourselves before Him? Do we want so much to have what we do transformed by His word? Do we want His glory, His knowledge, His life, as opposed to the meager substitutes for that we seek after?

Do we recognize that we need to be saved? Do we recognize that we have difficulties in our life that only one man can give us real salvation and health—from the Lord God? And do we recognize that the condition for all these things is to see ourselves contrite and lowly before Him and before each other?

Easy to think we’re humble before God, but do we humble ourselves to one another in the context of our homes, our church, our vocation?

God says this is the great blessing, the core virtue, the mark of the Christian. This is the very characteristic of our walk—that we are lowly and humble before Him. And to such a people, the Lord God says He will indeed lift us up. He will produce salvation and help.

The Lord Jesus Christ has enabled this because He is the humble and afflicted servant of God who for our sake endured the cross. He is the one who has brought us blessing.

Jesus says:

“I am gentle and lowly in heart. Come to me. Learn. You will find rest for your souls if we come and receive the humility of Jesus Christ today. Gentle and lowly in heart.”

That’s what the trumpet blows today. That’s the voice of Jesus out to you.

Come to Him. He is lowly and contrite in heart and He will give you His humility.

Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God and He will indeed exalt you.

Let’s pray.

Father, please forgive us for pride, for a lack of humility. Forgive us, Father, for the way we hurt community through our lack of humility before You. Forgive us most of all, Lord God, for the horrendous way we slander You when we think that we are something when we’re not. Forgive us for failing to tremble at Your word.

Thank you for that word. Thank you for the transformative power of it. And we pray now that as we come forward, we would do so committing ourselves to put on humility, to be clothed with this characteristic toward You and toward one another.

In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.