Proverbs 12:15 (ESV) The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice.

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1 Dartmouth Bible Notes Notes from the Pulpit Ministry of Dartmouth Bible Church Series: Summer17 Elder Suggested Topics Lesson 4 Scripture: 2 nd Cor. 12:7, etc. Speaker: Rev. Neil C. Damgaard, Th.M., D.Min. Date: August 13 th, 2017 Humility 2 nd Corinthians 12:1 10 (ESV) 1I must go on boasting. Though there is nothing to be gained by it, I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. 2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. 3 And I know that this man was caught up into paradise whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows 4 and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. 5 On behalf of this man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses 6 though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth; but I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. 7 So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. 9 But he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. Introduction I wonder if you have a favorite virtue? Would you, as the most important quality as a follower of Jesus to have, vote for purity, single-minded Kingdom vision, generosity, total orthodoxy, compassion, faithfulness/dependability, dignity, self-awareness, crisp and clear masculinity, invincible femininity, self-respect, mercy, courage, or humility? The Bible has a great deal to say about humility, and those who have it. The Bible both tells us to BE humble/to GET humble/to HUMBLE OURSELVES, AND it describes innumerable instances where someone was humble or endured something which made them humble. Proverbs 12:15 (ESV) The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice. Micah 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

2 Luke 14:11 For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Romans 12:3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. James 4:10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. 1 st Peter 5:6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you Typically we look at humility from the standpoint of You need to be this thing. You need to become this thing. That is a battle we often fight pride, entitlement, competition And some of you want a message that beats you up about this, basically, saying we are not this--we need to become this. But I believe a church whose focus becomes so often scolding people, berating them, frequently telling them that they don t make the grade or always setting the bar just out of reach, misrepresents grace, misrepresents Jesus, steals a church s joy and invites a toxin into church life that demotivates, and intensifies shame. Somehow, that is not healthy and that is not real New Testament teaching. Today, I want to consider this, not from the You Need to Do These Twelve Things, and look at it from the perspective Here are Examples Of Humility and this is the fourth in a series of messages envisioned by the elders of this church this summer. By the way, back in March, I did a message (the Sixth Reliable Sign of True Spirituality), on humility. Jonathan Edwards said that if you see this, you can be pretty sure the Lord is truly working in a person s life. Humility can come from all kinds of circumstances. Here are five that I thought of Defeat/demotion It s hard to feel too cocky when you re just taken a defeat or been demoted in some way. o At the end of October in 1968 J.E.B.Stuart High School defeated my high school on a Friday night football contest It was my high school s first loss after 35 straight wins, over four seasons. The entire town in which I lived and grew up plunged into a deep depression. Vietnam was in its worst year, my parents were ravaged by a desperate joint-alcoholism, I had to endure Mr. Bugin in chemistry but nothing knocked the wind out of us like that defeat. We were perennial champions in the D.C. area but we were humbled that night. 2

3 o What better example of demotion in the New Testament can you imagine than that of John the Baptist? It is true that he himself predicted that Jesus must increase and I must decrease (John 3:30) but his own diminishment was harsh and depressing, calling two of his disciples to him, sent them to the Lord, saying Are you the one who is to come or shall we look for another? (Luke 7:19) Illness/weakening especially in some seriously medical way. Pain has an automatic way of humbling us. o Christine Vaughan is the most dramatic story I have heard in years. o In Luke 8:43-48 is one of the most touching stories in the whole Bible, to me The woman was not only living with an ongoing medical condition she was also perpetually unclean from a ceremonial standpoint, making her essentially outcast. Discovery you learn of a plot against you and you are stunned to learn that someone might actually have it in for you, or perhaps an amazing revelation comes to your mind (as with Paul in our passage) and somehow it places your life in a bigger perspective and it can be very humbling. Loss One day you have; the next day you are without. It is bewildering. It s hard to be cocky, self-sure or arrogant when you are in shock. Loss brings an automatic humility, at least until you get your bearings. o Paul Theriault, Rita Cadieux, Kathy Kearley are all very hard losses that our people have sustained in recent times. When we lose someone we really care about, the void in our lives really give us cause to evaluate how important we are o Loss of health by accident or by disease, sometimes despite being the most health conscious person around! Financial loss for whatever reason, will usually humble a person. o Loss by reason of conflict is particularly humbling I recently spoke with a pastor who was best friends with another pastor. The second lone, so the first one perceived, got appointed inappropriately to a church in which the first one had worked for a while and hoped to find a permanent job. I asked the first one, Is the other guy still your best friend? No he said, and he was sad. Misunderstanding It can be very humbling to find out that you are NOT the world s most precise communicator! And someone took something you said in completely the wrong way. This is especially true of pastors who make their living in communication. And if someone misunderstands what you are saying, it really can knock you down a few notches. o Two very close friends lost a working partnership they had crafted, after an almost brother-like relationship of many years, in one year. It threw them both into deep depression. I knew both of these men and brothers in Christ. I watched with much sadness from a distance. Eventually their friendship was repaired. Forgiveness happened. And each was clearly humbled by the experience of serious misunderstanding 3

4 The classic passage on humility in the New Testament, without actually using the word humility would be, to my mind, our reading today from 2 nd Corinthians 12:1-10 and specifically verse 7: So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Paul does a couple of things here at the end of Second Corinthians. First, he speaks of a hypothetical person who was caught up to the third heaven. ἁρπαγέντα τὸν τοιοῦτον ἕως τρίτου οὐρανοῦ. harpagenta ton toiouton h eos tritou ouranou snatched the-dude #3 heaven This guy was snatched up to the third heaven. Virtually no scholars (that I am aware of) think this is not Paul, himself although here he speaks of the person in the third person. But I think he is talking about himself having had this experience. He saw incredible things. He heard incredible things-- heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter (vs. 4). And as part of this package, Paul was given a thorn in the flesh and it didn t go away and even though Paul seriously asked God to make this thorn in the flesh disappear, in God s plan, it did no b)t. We are not sure what was this thorn in the flesh. Scholars speculate that it was a vision malady, or something gastro-intestinal disorder but simply, he does not say. But whatever it was he didn t like it and wanted to be healed. SO the deal was: You get to spend a little time in heaven early. The downside is a) you don t get to talk about it and b) Satan is going to mess with you and you re not going to be able to easily shake it off. In essence: it will humble you that is ultimately GOOD because I don t want you to get all conceited and full of yourself because of what you got to see It almost seems to me that when we endure a serious difficulty, that we did not sign up for, as a Christian, it has a long-term good effect. You understand what someone else might be going through a little better. You find compassion a little easier since you yourself need some. You don t seem to take yourself quite so seriously. You learn that you are neither invincible nor indestructible. 4

5 When I got to know Paul Methia, who was an incredible track star 1 when he was younger. He had found the Lord and was one of the most well-known area Christians in the 1980s. He led a Bible study at Buttonwood warming house that at peak drew 300 people. He hosted a television show called The Upper Room but by the time I met him (in the mid 1990s) he had suffered a heart attack and a debilitating stroke that hobbled him with physical weakening. He was still struggling with anger that all this had happened to him but his faith was intact and he was trusting the Lord. He was wiser and he would have said, God has used this to humble me. Humility is a thing you can work on, be mindful of NOT being arrogant or too self-confident or braggy. You are aware of situations that will trigger pride or defensiveness and you work to combat them. But generally things are going to come along that as you absorb them, the Lord will burn down any prideful selffocus. He will use the thorn in the flesh (and it might be painful) to crank you back to a more accurate view of yourself. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, that God s power is made perfect in weakness. As we get (or learn) weakness, He gets through. We feel some of His power. We re amazed that God might use us even though we re weak, even if we are out of answers, even if we are under assault. He said that God s grace would be enough. He says in fact, that he would boast about his weaknesses! He managed to get over HAVING weaknesses and came to be humble enough to say, OK, looks like I m going to keep them I better roll with how to deal with them and trust God to use me anyway. He was OK with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. That is the place when the power of Christ is most evident and God gets the glory if something good does happen. He concludes with this amazing line: when I am weak, then I am strong. So let s value being humble. Let s bear with one another when we are struggling. Let s pray with one another through weaknesses and let s learn a Christlike humility as we go along. Come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our God, our Maker. Come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our God, our Maker. For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand, just the sheep of His hand. 1 The winter of Paul died in 2002 at 69. He attended DBC in the late 1990s. 5

6 And for those of you who want a checklist of steps to develop humility, here is one from Janet Chismar from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association 2 : Routinely confess your sin to God (Luke 18:9-14). All of us sin and fall short of the glory of God. However, too few of us have a routine practice of rigorous self-honesty examination. Weekly, even daily, review of our hearts and behaviors, coupled with confession to God, is an essential practice of humility. Acknowledge your sin to others (James 3:2, James 5:16). Humility before God is not complete unless there is also humility before man. A true test of our willingness to humble ourselves is willingness to share with others the weaknesses we confess to God. Wisdom, however, dictates that we do so with others that we trust. Take wrong patiently (1 Peter 3:8-17). When something is unjust we want to react and rectify it. However, patiently responding to the unjust accusations and actions of others demonstrates our strength of godly character and provides an opportunity to put on humility. Actively submit to authority the good and the bad (1 Peter 2:18). Our culture does not value submission; rather it promotes individualism. How purposely and actively do you work on submission to those whom God has placed as authorities in your life? Doing so is a good way to humble yourself. Receive correction and feedback from others graciously (Proverbs 10:17, 12:1). In the Phoenix area, a local East valley pastor was noted for graciously receiving any negative feedback or correction offered. He would simply say thank you for caring enough to share that with me, I will pray about it and get back to you. Look for the kernel of truth in what people offer you, even if it comes from a dubious source. Always pray, Lord, what are you trying to show me through this? Accept a lowly place (Proverbs 25:6,7). If you find yourself wanting to sit at the head table, wanting others to recognize your contribution or become offended when others are honored or chosen, then pride is present. Purpose to support others being recognized, rather than you. Accept and look for the lowly place; it is the place of humility. Purposely associate with people of lower state than you (Luke 7:36-39). Jesus was derided by the Pharisees for socializing with the poor and those of lowly state. Our culture is very status conscious and people naturally want to socialize upward. Resist the temptation of being partial to those with status or wealth. Choose to serve others (Philippians 1:1, 2 Corinthians 4:5, Matthew 23:11). When we serve others, we are serving God s purposes in their lives. Doing so reduces our focus on ourselves and builds the Kingdom of God. When serving another costs us nothing, we should question whether it is really servanthood Be quick to forgive (Matthew 18: 21-35). Forgiveness is possibly one of the greatest acts of humility we can do. To forgive is to acknowledge a wrong that has been done us and also to further release our right of repayment for the wrong. Forgiveness is denial of self. Forgiveness is not insisting on our way and our justice. Cultivate a grateful heart (1 Thessalonians 5:18). The more we develop an attitude of gratitude for the gift of salvation and life He has given us, the more true our perspective of self. A grateful heart is a humble heart. Purpose to speak well of others (Ephesians 4:31-32). Saying negative things about others puts them one down and us one up. Speaking well of others edifies them and builds them up. Make sure, however, that what you say is not intended as flattery. Treat pride as a condition that always necessitates embracing the cross (Luke 9:23). It is our nature to be proud and it is God s nature in us that brings humility. Committing to a lifestyle of daily dying to ourselves and living through Him is the foundation for true humility