Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Dave's Really Good Sermon On Humility

by Dave Wilkinson

Romans 12:16, 1 Corinthians 13

June 25, 2000

In one of his books, Charles Swindoll writes: "Someone told me about a fiftieth anniversary their grandparents had celebrated. They were, by then, great grandparents. Ted had lost much of his hearing during this time. And yet they were still getting along together and were celebrating this great anniversary. Their family came from all over end enjoyed celebrating together through the midmorning into the afternoon. Finally, toward sundown, all the family went home.

"Bessie and Ted decided to walk out on the front porch and sit down in the swing and watch the sunset. They didn't say much. The old gentleman pulled his tie loose and leaned back. Bessie looked at him in wonder and said to him, "You know, Ted, I'm real proud of you." The old gentleman turned and looked at her rather quizzically and after a moment said with a puzzled look on his face, 'Well, Bessie, I'm real tired of you too'"

So much for Hallmark moments.

Well whether we are Bessie or Ted -- whether we are proud of someone or tired of someone, we need to learn how to love them over the long haul. Whether we are proud of each

other or tired of each other, we are to act toward each other in love. That is the theme of Romans 12 which we have been looking at togther. In Romans 12:16 Paul continues to describe the practical outworkings of love. He writes that we are "Think the same with one another. We are not to set our minds on the high things but we are to put our identity with the humble. We are not to be conceited."

Let me start with that last phrase first. We are not to be conceited.

I don't know how many of you saw a strange film called "Being John Malkovich." It's a thoroughly weird story with some very unappetising elements but it helps us understand the nature of conceit.

The story is about man who discovers a tunnel that will allow him to travel inside the mind of actor John Malkovich to see what he sees and to feel what he feels. He starts to sell tickets so others can have the experience of being someone else for fifteen minutes after which they are dumped out of Malkovich's mind and end up in a ditch next to the New Jersey Turnpike.

Eventually John Malkovich himself gets wind of this business and shows up at the entry point demanding the opportunity to go inside his own mind. What he discoveries is that to him, everything and everyone around him is about him. All the conversations in the restaurant are about him. All the items on the menu have his name. The woman across to table from him is actually him in another form. The woman singing with the band is actually him. He discovers that he is living in a world that is bordered on the north, south, east and west by himself. This goes on for fifteen minutes before he is expelled to the ditch by the Turnpike.

I have to admire Malkovich for being part of a film that makes fun of his own notorious conceit -- which I bet was just what he was hoping for. You know what a conceited person looks like. A conceited person really believes that if they had never been born, that he entire human race would be sitting around trying to figure out why.

Reading that, I'm not sure I should have titled this sermon, "Dave's Really Good Sermon On Humility." Maybe "Dave’s Most Excellent Sermon on Humility"...

No. For Paul says that a healthy Christian life requires that we keep our minds properly focused. Our minds aren't to be focused on ourselves. Our minds are to be focused on ordinary people -- because that's where our Lord's mind is focused.

Lloyd Ogilvie, former pastor of Hollywood Presbyterian Church. and a popular speaker and writer once spoke at a large convention. The woman who introduced him began by saying, "we have a very unusual privilege tonight. In our midst is without a doubt the world's finest communicator. He is extremely sensitive, alert, compassionate and wise. He can sense a person's true needs immediately and speak just the right word to heal a hurt."

Dr. Ogilvie later confessed that he felt both flattered and frightened. How could he live up to all that? He didn't have to. For as the woman came to the end she said, "We are in for a tremendous experience tonight because this supreme lover of people is in our midst. Who is He? He is Jesus Christ. And now here is a man named Lloyd Ogillvie who will tell us about Him.

Sometimes any one of us needs to come down a few pegs. And there is nothing like looking at the cross and the model of Jesus, to accomplish that. Jesus fraternized freely and naturally with those the society considered rejects. He calls His followers to do the same with equal freedom and naturalness.

Do you remember the words of Jesus in Luke 14: "When you give a dinner or a banquet do not invite your friends, or your brothers, or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you." In Luke 6:32-37, Jesus said that the measure of our love is not doing good to those who can do us good in return but in doing good to those who can be of no possible benefit to us. If we do this, Jesus said, we will be "children of the Most High for He is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish." We are to be merciful, Jesus commands, as our Heavenly Father is merciful -- for God is not merciful to us because we can benefit Him. He is merciful as a pure decision of love.

In Romans 12:16, Paul writes that our minds aren't to be focused on what he calls" the high things." The Greek word there for what we aren't to fixate on is upsela which refers to things that are lofty or heavenly.

Now that might seem like a strange statement because in Philippians Paul writes that we are to " set our minds on the things that are above -- not one the things that are on earth." But it's not a contradiction. The emphasis in Philippians is on proper focus. We are to seek the ways of God. Here, in Romans, Paul is talking about the conceit of the mind. He is talking to people who are convinced that they have insights into God and His ways that set them apart from the common herd of believers. He is talking to those who consider themselves not only believers but super-believers.

This was a real problem in much of the early church. There was real pride in that Greek influenced culture at being able to understand mysteries and secret things that were beyond the grasp of ordinary humans. There was a pride in knowing the meaning of an arcane and specialized language -- kind of on the same level of some medical doctors today.

When this Greek tradition of intellectual arrogance came face to face with the gospel, it didn't like what it saw. It saw a teaching that anyone can understand -- even a small child. It saw a movement without hidden truths. It saw this and it didn't like what it saw because there wasn't sufficient room for pride. The intellectual athletes sought to change the gospel into something they liked better because they could compete with each other through it. They sought to change the gospel into a movement called Gnosticism.

Gnosticism comes from the word gnosis which means knowledge. The Gnostics claimed to be in the inner circle of Christian insight and experience. They claimed to know the true, spiritual meaning of the words that were used by the church. They claimed to have access to mysteries of the faith through various rituals that were way above and beyond the experience of ordinary believers. Gnosticism is still very much with us today in the forms of Christian Science and Mormonism. But it's not the gospel.

1 Corinthians 13, Paul's famous love chapter, is in many ways a parallel to this 12th chapter of Romans. Many of the same themes are covered. In Romans 12:16 Paul says that we are not to be fixated on upsela -- the things that are lofty or heavenly in an intellectually elitist sense. In Corinthians he writes, "though I understand all mysteries and all knowledge, but have not love, I am nothing."

Paul was a very educated man. He understood the mysteries of the faith well enough to write about half of the New Testament. But he knew enough of knowledge to know that it could become a wall between believers. Paul draws a deliberate dichotomy between knowledge and love. He writes to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 8:1, "Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies." In 1 Corinthians 13:4 he writes: "Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant."

Now most of us in the church today would not call ourselves gnostics. But we can have gnostic attitudes attitudes of intellectual snobbery. You find in phrases like: "When you've been a Christian as long as I have, you'll understand --" or "When you come to know your Bible, you'll see --" You see it in seminaries where some people only want to hang out with people who share their love for Biblical minutia and God forbid that anyone say something that smacks of practical ministry or something being actually accomplished. We can get so focused on the upsela -- and I do hope that you are impressed by my use of an actual Greek word --- that we ignore the people for whom Christ died, the common people who heard Christ gladly because he spoke to them in their own language.

Now I love a good discussion or even argument as much as anyone. I have a competitive streak in me a mile wide. Anyone who plays Cathedral or Trivial Pursuit with me at the church camping trip is heading for a beating. That’s just the way it is. But Jesus never designed the church as a place for intellectual one upmanship. He designed the church to be a place of cooperation where we share our gifts toward achieving a common goal.

I've used this illustration before but it bears repeating in this situation. God did not design the church as a high speed race. He designed the church as a convoy traveling through dangerous waters. The speed of a convoy is determined by the top speed of the slowest ship in the convoy. If the slowest ship can travel at ten knots, then the whole convoy moves through those submarine infested waters at ten knots. The ships that are capable of much higher speeds the destroyers and the frigates don't use their superior ability to race ahead of the others and reach port first. They use their superior ability to protect and guard those that are less able. God's will for us is not that any of us get there first but that we all get there together.

That's why Paul starts Romans 12:16 by saying: "Be of the same mind with one another" because we are in this together. We are not to set our minds on the high things but we are to put our identity with the humble. We are not to be conceited.

This is an important teaching for us for a number of reasons.

First, we need this teaching because it's so easy to find good reasons not to intentionally associate ourselves with the humble -- whoever the humble might be in a particular situation. and to be completely unaware that we are cutting people off.

When I was in college I worked two years on staff at Forest Home. It was a great place to work. I really believe in the ministry there and I am delighted that so many of our groups go there. There was, however, a downside to the experience. The downside is that the staff was informally divided into support staff people who waited tables or fixed things and the program staff people who led the music and did the speaking up front. I was the maintenance assistant at the Junior High Camp, the Ranch which meant that I was the only live-in support person in with about six program staffers. Since my work took me in other directions than the rest of the staff, I tended to be left out of the fun after work as well. Plans were made during program meetings and then carried out. But I wasn't included.

Now this is not a rankling sore with me. I've gotten over most of the snubs I experienced over thirty years ago. I have enough recent offenses to resent without digging up the ancient past. I really don't believe it was intentional. They seemed to like me just fine. It was just that they had their own world a world where I tended to be invisible.

Now the funny thing is that I have since read books or articles by at least two of these same people on precisely these issues -- aggressive inclusiveness to make sure that no one is left out. I'm sure they believed it too -- just as I believe it. And this raises a question for me.

Here is the question: If they could be so unaware of when they were acting against they own core beliefs, I have to ask how often I unintentionally do the same thing. I have to ask how often I put people even in the church into "us and them" groups instead of seeing them as a part of the "we" group.

It is a good question for our life together at Moorpark Presbyterian today. I hope you will ask yourself the same question. Who are the people who are, even unintentionally, invisible to you? What do you intend to do about it?

When we close worship this morning, we are going to sing "The Church's One Foundation." That's a great hymn. But there's one jarring line right at the end. We sing. "Lord give us grace that we, like them the meek and lowly, on high may dwell with Thee." The reason that line is so jarring, in light of our text, is that we are saying that we are quite willing top be with the meek and lowly especially if that gets us to heaven and besides, they make quiet neighbors but we don't want to be the meek and lowly. But Jesus says that's who we must be with each other because that is who He is with us.

Second, need this verse because we never know who we are dealing with.

A friend of mine named Greg Roth went to the City of Fremont near Oakland to serve as the pastor of the church there. The first Sunday he was going to preach, he arrived at church early. Now it's a downtown church so he didn't look too out of place when he went outside and sat on the steps dressed as a homeless man. He wanted to see how the people of his new church would react to having him there. Most of the people pointedly ignored him pulling their children to keep them away from whatever he might do. He just sat there.

Then, when the time came to start worship, Greg walked in through the front door of the church, walked down the aisle, took off his old jacket, put on his impressive robe and began to talk about James 2:1-4: "My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say, "You sit here in a good place," and you say to the poor man, "You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool," have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? If, however, you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, "you shall love your neighbor as yourself," you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors."

We never know who we are dealing with. That's why Hebrews 13:2 tells us "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it."

The third reason this verse is very important for us is because of what it has to say to a particular group in our church our youth. I want to focus here because our junior and senior highs face a temptation that becomes very intense in the teenage years. The desire is to look cool. The temptation is to avoid anyone or anything. like parents, that has the potential to take away from the individual's coolness quotient. This means that there is a particularly high price for our young people to pay if they are going to be obedient to what God's word says here.

The Greek word that is translated "associate" with the humble is sunapagomenoi. This is made up two words: apago which means "led away" even to a place of execution and sun which means "with". Paul is saying that as Christians we need to be willing to be "led away with the humble." This means that we need to be willing to be put in the same category with the humble.

Teenagers, this means that you need to be willing to hang out with geeks, nerds, and all the various other sub-species of teenagers even if you fear that talking to them might cause us you to be seen as one of them. You need to take this risk not only at church but on the campus of Moorpark High School or wereever yu attend. I believe that this is especially true of our youth deacons. In fact, if they aren't willing to give up some of their cool and be seen with all of God's people from the church even on campus or at a football game they have no business being Deacons. I'm not telling you something I haven't already told them.

Soren Kirkegaard once said that Jesus does two things when he sees a crowd. The first is to disperse it and isolate each individual one-on-one with Himself. Having done that, the second thing He does is to reintroduce all of those individuals to each other as brothers and sisters, making a crowd into a community.

That is what Jesus is doing with us -- with all of us -- without exception. So let us put away our conceit. Let us be of the same mind toward each other; don't focus on the intellectual high stuff or the social status high stuff or the popularity high stuff, but be willing to be taken away with -- lumped in with -- the humble -- whoever the humble are in our lives, our schools, our work, our church.