Humility – 8

Humility – 8

Subject – Humility and Faith

John 5:39-44 (NLT2)
³⁹  “You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me!
⁴⁰  Yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life.
⁴¹  “Your approval means nothing to me,
⁴²  because I know you don’t have God’s love within you.
⁴³  For I have come to you in my Father’s name, and you have rejected me. Yet if others come in their own name, you gladly welcome them.
⁴⁴  No wonder you can’t believe! For you gladly honor each other, but you don’t care about the honor that comes from the one who alone is God. 

--Imagine with you are in a mall and there are displayed in shop windows expensive and beautiful things you would love to have. 

--What if someone told you to just reach out and take them, you would respond, “I can’t because of the thick glass window that separates them from me.”

--In the same way we see great and precious promises in the Word of God like perfect peace, amazing love, joy unspeakable, abiding communion with God, and unmeasurable fruitfulness. Power.

--We see it in the Word and we hear it preached about but there is something that hinders us from being able to obtain them. God’s promises are yes and amen…they are free. What’s the deal?

--What hinders us from the blessings are our pride and lack of faith. Jesus reveals to us in our text today that it is indeed pride that makes faith impossible.

--Jesus…No wonder you can’t believe! For you gladly honor each other, but you don’t care about the honor that comes from the one who alone is God. 

--Pride and faith are at major odds with each other. Also, I hope we are learning that faith and humility are at their core one. We can’t have true faith without having true humility.

--We can have strong intellectual convictions and have an assurance of truth while pride is still in our hearts. But, it makes living faith, which has power with God, impossible.

1. What Faith Is.

Hebrews 11:1 (NKJV) ¹ Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 

Andrew Murray – Faith, is it not a confession of helplessness, the surrender to God that waits to let Him work? Is it not in itself the most humbling thing there can be—the acceptance of our place as dependents who can claim, or get, or do nothing but what grace bestows?

--Humility is simply the heart that prepares the soul for living in trust. Pride assures that we cannot possess the things of the Kingdom. Why? It refuses to allow God to be Who He is. 

--Faith and humility are the means by which we can perceive and apprehend what heaven has to offer and its blessings. Faith seeks the glory that comes when God is all.

1 Corinthians 10:31 (NKJV) ³¹ Therefore, whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

--As long as we seek and take glory from one another (our text), as long as our pride causes us to seek praise, as we hunger for honor from men, we will never receive the glory that comes from God.

--Pride renders faith impossible. When we understand our salvation comes from the humility of Christ as He submitted to the cross, it should make us want to participate in His humility.

2. Humility and Faith.

--As you study the Word of God you can see how humility and faith are allied together. Jesus always took notice when He saw this combination.  Let’s look first at the Centurion.

Matthew 8:5-10&13 (NKJV)
⁵  Now when Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, pleading with Him,
⁶  saying, "Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, dreadfully tormented."
⁷  And Jesus said to him, "I will come and heal him."
⁸  The centurion answered and said, "Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof. But only speak a word, and my servant will be healed.
⁹  For I also am a man under authority, having soldiers under me. And I say to this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and to another, 'Come,' and he comes; and to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it."
¹⁰  When Jesus heard it, He marveled, and said to those who followed, "Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel!
¹³  Then Jesus said to the centurion, "Go your way; and as you have believed, so let it be done for you." And his servant was healed that same hour.

--Can you see it? It is humility that brings a person to be nothing before God and it is humility that removes every hindrance to faith. It also removes the fear so we can trust Him completely.

--This Centurion was a man of authority but he was also a man of love and compassion. Many times those in authority are too full of themselves to care about others.

--This Centurion, we are told, had built a synagogue for the Jewish people, and he obviously cared about the lowliest in his house. He could have had the servant replaced. But he cared.

--Faith and humility, made him come to Jesus on a mission. He probably heard about the leper who was healed in this same chapter.

--Love, humility, faith, and compassion make you come to Jesus pleading. When was the last time you pleaded with Jesus for someone? "Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, dreadfully tormented." 

--Please don’t miss this, Jesus quickly recognized the heart of the man coming to Him, humble, broken, desperate, pleading. “I will come and heal him." 

--Absolute humility must be the core disposition of every prayer and every approach to God, as well as, every relationship with our fellow man. 

--The Centurion comes with love and humility but as he is commended by Jesus, he is recognized for his great faith. When humility and faith get married, miracles are born.

--We try so hard to work up our faith trying to receive from God what our petition is. We travel here and there, we sing louder, we sing more, we scream, we shout…we need to change our course.

James 4:8&10 (NIV) ⁸ Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
¹⁰ Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
--The cross for Jesus, His death, and the grave of which Jesus humbled Himself, all were His path to the glory and presence of God. It’s our path too if we can comprehend it.

Murray – Let humility be our one desire and fervent prayer. Let us gladly accept whatever humbles us before God or men—this alone is the path to the glory of God. 

3. Humility and Crumbs.

Matthew 15:22-28 (NIV)
²²  A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession."
²³  Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us."
²⁴  He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel."
²⁵  The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said.
²⁶  He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."
²⁷  "Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."
²⁸  Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour. 

--Notice the humility that brings this Canaanite woman to be nothing before Jesus, which in turn, removes what would hinder her faith to trust Him completely. Fear and doubt are gone. 

--Notice she was an outsider, a Gentile, a mother who was desperate enough to humble herself before this Jewish Messiah…her humility made her believe she had nothing to lose.

--The wonderful disciples are such an example of the church and how we react to those who are outsiders. Our lack of humility screams to the world, we have no answer…go away.

--We forget we have the same resource this lady had…Jesus. The difference, she came desperate and pleading and we just give up so easily because of our lack of humility and faith. 

--Jesus, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel." A test. Of course! How often are we tested and we fail because of our lack of humility and faith. She cries, Lord help!

--The test continues, Jesus tries to draw out of us that which would cause us to believe and receive. Humility and faith. "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."

--We would have given up for sure because we have not learned that humility before Jesus is the elbow that knocks the crumbs on the floor.

--"Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." A Canaanite woman, an outsider found the answer to God’s heart and miracles.

--Faith and humility mixed with a few crumbs from the Master’s table changed her life, her daughter’s life, and the whole situation.

--It’s not over until God says it’s over. Maybe it’s not that the situation is too hard but just maybe our approach to God is not right. Faith and humility mixed with a few crumbs.

Matthew 15:22&25-28 (NIV)
²²  A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession."
²⁵  The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said.
²⁶  He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."
²⁷  "Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."
²⁸  Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour.