Pride and Humility

...God is opposed to the proud, 

but gives grace to the humble.

For though the Lord is exalted,

yet He regards the lowly, but 

the haughty He knows from afar.

James 4:6, Psalm 138:6

Here are ten things the Bible teaches us about pride and humility. 

  1. Pride ultimately exalts itself over God, and humility ultimately makes itself low before God.  

  2. Pride pushes God away, while humility draws near to God.  

  3. Pride depends on itself, while humility depends on God.  

  4. Pride boasts on itself, while humility boasts on God.  

  5. Pride credits itself, while humility credits God. 

  6. Pride follows its own path, while humility follows God's path.  

  7. Pride is self-seeking, while humility is God-seeking.  

  8. Pride always leads to disobedience, while humility always leads to obedience.  

  9. Pride is the opposite of godliness, while humility promotes godliness. 

10. The proud will be destroyed from the earth, while the humble will inherit the earth.

A Working Definition of Legalism

Legalism is a morality, a code of conduct,
which holds to a form of godliness, which 
smells of religion, which promises acceptance;
but ultimately is not grounded in Christ, in 
His person and His completed work.

Whitefield and Pastoral Leadership

In his biography of George Whitefield (Volume II page 155), Arnold Dallimore gives us some insight into George Whitefield as a leader.  

...Whitefield did exercise an effective leadership of this movement. It was not, however, a leadership by domination and the giving of commands; rather it was one of affection and example. Most of the exhorters had been converted under his ministry and looked on him, as many of them stated, as a spiritual father  In turn, holding him in such high esteem and seeing in him an embodiment of so much of their own Christian ideal, they delighted to be his co-laborers and to co-operate with his plans. Whitefield was inflexible in matters of moral rectitude and expected the men to maintain a life of strong Christian discipline and tremendous activity, but in general his relationship with the people and exhorters throughout his movement was by his heart-felt concern, his unfailing encouragement, and his personal example. (Italics mine)

If you think about it, this is where pastoral leadership, spiritual leadership starts. And these elements should never depart or be de-emphasized.

Christmas and the Incarnation

As we celebrate the incarnation, the appearing of God in the flesh, I thought this quote from Charles Spurgeon would be appropriate, both for its profundity, and its succinctness.  It is taken from Steve Lawson's book The Gospel Focus of Charles Spurgeon page 91.

"He is not humanity deified.

He is not Godhead humanized.

He is God. He is man. He is all

that God is, and all that man is

as God created Him."

And because Jesus Christ is both God and man, He then is solely and uniquely qualified to be the the Savior. The Word became flesh. He was the only begotten God, the Savior born for us in the city of David, Christ the Lord.  So along with the angels let us praise God by saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased." (Luke 2:14).  

Let us preach this Savior and His salvation.  Let us tell the world of the appearing of the grace, kindness, and the love of God for mankind in the birth of Christ.  For Christmas is the heart of the gospel message.

Christ, Our Example

but so that the world may know that I love the Father,

I do exactly as the Father commanded Me.

John 14:31a

As Christians, we know that Christ is our model, our exemplar, and as such view Him as the example of how we are to live our Christian life.  While this is true and right, what we miss so often is that He is the model for how our relationship with our heavenly Father should look, as well.  

I don't know if you have ever thought about what your relationship with God should look like, but to know what it should look like you have to look no further than Christ.  In going through the Gospel of John, you will see Christ in a much more personal way than in the other gospels, and one of things you will notice about Him is His relationship with the Father; and how He fulfills all righteousness by first fulfilling the greatest commandment, which is to love the Father above all else.  

Loving the Father was His greatest desire and was the springboard for all that He did.  As you go through the Gospel of John you will come across verses that give you insight into His love of the Father and how that is manifested in His life here on earth.  Let's look at some of them:

John 4:34 Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish all His work.

John 5:19 Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son does in like manner.

John 5:30 I can do nothing on My own initiative....I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.

John 8:28b-29...and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father has taught Me.  And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.

John 12:49-50 For I did not speak on My own initiative, but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me a commandment as to what to say and what to speak.  I know that His commandment is eternal life; therefore the things I speak, I speak just as the Father has told Me.  

So we see in these verses that the things Jesus did were what He saw the Father doing and the things He said were what the Father gave Him to say.  We also see that what sustained and nourished Him was doing the will of the Father, and that He always did what pleased the Father.  And what was His motivation, His foundation, if you will, for this great desire to please God and accomplish the Father's will in His life.  We see it expressed in John 14:31 above. Out of His great love for the Father came forth the desire to please the Father, and the desire to please the Father manifested itself in His obedience to the Father.

And what kind of obedience was this? It was a loving obedience.  It is obedience that was born out of love and its accompanying desire to please the One who is the object of that love.  My friends, it is to be the same for us.  Our obedience to the Father should not be a legalistic obedience or the obedience of duty or the obedience of fear, but an obedience that springs forth from a heart full of love for our heavenly Father.  In fact, our obedience is directly connected to our love.  This is why Jesus told His disciples (and is meant for us, too), "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments."  Jesus could make this statement without the slightest twinge of the guilt of hypocrisy, because that is exactly what He did.

So let us love the Father and the Son by being obedient to them, and may our obedience to them be an obedience born out of love; and may our love and its obedience know no bounds.

  

The Surpassing Value

More than that, I count all things to be loss in view

of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus

my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of

all things, and count them but rubbish so that 

I may gain Christ.

Philippians 3:8

The other day I was thinking about my relationship with Christ, and how its value far surpasses anything else; and how He is worth the sacrifices I make for Him   And in the process of thinking about this, I had a scene come into my mind.  A scene that comes up occasionally when thinking on sacrificing for the Lord, and how He is worth sacrificing for.  It is a scene from my own imagination, that came about as a result of reading a missionary biography a few years back.  I wish I could remember the missionary's name, and where I read it, but here is the gist of it.  

There was a family that felt led of the Lord to go and witness to the natives of the New Hebrides, and were dropped off on the island to begin their ministry.  The inhabitants were cannibals, and were fierce warriors.  Over the next couple of years the children and the wife died and were buried, and the father/husband slept on their graves every night for fear that the cannibals would dig up their graves.  This man would later remarry and return to the island to continue to share the gospel with these people.  Of course, there is more to the story, but the scene that keeps coming to my mind is one where this man, having given up all his possessions, comforts, and security to come to this foreign and hostile land; and then losing his entire family, is alone in the darkness and stretched out over the graves of his wife and children.  And in my mind the man is proclaiming to the Lord, "You are worth it!  You are worth it!"

My friends, I don't know what you are giving up to serve the Savior.  I don't know what sacrifices you are making or have made; but I do know this, "He is worth it!  He is worth it!"  He is worth the work of our faith and the labor of our love.  He is worth the taking up of our cross. He is worth the suffering of shame for His name sake.  He is the pearl of great price who is worth all of what we have.  He is the One who paid it all, and so He is the one who is worth it all.  Let us take our lives and offer them up, so that along with Paul, we too may gain Christ and may be found in Him on that day. 

Spiritual Insecurity

This is a repost from 2007, that I thought would be timely.


In 1964 Martin Lloyd-Jones preached a series of sermons over 21 consecutive Sundays on the topic of spiritual depression, its causes and its cure as he had noticed how many Christians seemed spiritually depressed, and even the great preacher himself had dealt with a season of spiritual depression. It seems to me that in our new century we are seeing another issue that is pervasive in Christianity in our country and that is spiritual insecurity. This spiritual insecurity is becoming a polluting, corrupting, and paralyzing force in the life and faith of the body of Christ. Sad to say many who are insecure spiritually are so because they do not have the Spirit, but there are also many others who are believers who are struggling with being insecure in their faith.

I do believe that one of the factors contributing to this is the postmodern age in which we are now living. With its emphasis on uncertainty, its elevation of personal experience as the arbiter of truth, and its deconstruction of all truth claims, it is easy to see why those who have succumbed to this way of thinking and viewing life would be insecure. The church has always been in danger of being influenced by the surrounding culture and its accompanying philosophy; and the more immature the church, the more immature the believer, and, therefore, the more susceptible they are to adopting the cultural mindset of the day. Take, for example, what we see addressed in the books of I Corinthians and James.

Another contributor to this spiritual insecurity is the lack of the knowledge of God. It is sad, yes tragic, that many Christians just do not know God very well. II Peter 1:2-3 tells us that grace and peace are not just given, but multiplied to us in the knowledge of God and His Son, Jesus Christ; and that we have been given everything pertaining to life and godliness through this true knowledge. In Hosea 4:6 God tells us "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." Then in Hosea 6:3 He exhorts us, "So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord." Since the Scriptures are true, if Christians are insecure in their faith, their relationship with the living Lord, then they must not have much of the knowledge of God and His Son that multiplies grace and peace in their lives. The lack of the knowledge of God is destroying His people and His church in America today, and can be directly related to the preaching to felt needs and the therapeutic gospel that have been in the main for the last 20 years. It may seem odd that self help, feel good, Jesus loves you for who you are sermons would not make people feel more secure in their relationship with God, but the key to security in any relationship is an intimate knowledge of the other party in the relationship. When preaching and church life are all about you, and teaching about God and His salvation are absent,  then how can you ever know about God?

Finally, the third contributor to this spiritual uncertainty comes from the proliferation of Arminian and Semi-Pelagian (you can look these up at http://www.theopedia.com/) views of the role of man in his salvation and sanctification, from "getting himself saved" to "keeping himself saved." When man takes the responsibility for his salvation, and the working out of that salvation, upon his own shoulders he will never feel adequate for the task. For deep down in his soul he is all too aware of the sin that so easily entangles him, and his own lust that entices and carries him away. Without a solid foundation built on the doctrines of grace and the sovereignty of our great and merciful God in our salvation, from its beginning to its end, man is left to rely only on the strength of his own arm,the power of his own piety......and, for all of us, our faults and foibles are ever before us.

Where are you today, my friend? Are you struggling with being secure in your relationship with God and living the life of faith? Are you plagued with doubts and uncertainties? Confess this to God, cry out to Him for relief, for peace in your soul, and rest for your heart. In Jeremiah 33:3 He tells to call upon Him and He will show us great and mighty things which we do not know, which, I believe, are the things of God Himself. According to Jeremiah 9:23-24 God wants our only boast to be that we know and understand Him. If that is what He wants then He has provided the means for that to take place, and those means are the Word of God and the Spirit of God. In fact, in Jeremiah 1:12, He tells us that He personally watches over His word to make sure it is fulfilled, that it is carried out to the fullest. Start your journey to spiritual security by reading the Psalms and in each Psalm mark with a colored marker each verse that tells you something about God. Meditate on these things and ask God to reveal to you deeper insight about that aspect of His nature and character.  Read the first nine verses of I Peter, and Ephesians 2:1-9, and reflect on the great salvation that God Himself has provided for you.  In Jeremiah 29:12-14 He has promised to be found by us when we search for Him with all our heart. Take Him up on that promise today.