A.
Murray, Humility, Chapter
6
Highlighted=quote from book
Recap
God Created us to show
& share His goodness
Pride interferes w/ the
blessings God wants to give us & empower us to give to others
Pride comes from the
devil, entered the world at the fall
We must be restored to
full humility to regain the connection to the full blessedness God offers
Jesus is the source of
restored humility, we get it from and through Him.
Jesus is the model of
that fruitful humility; he was perfectly yielded to the Father & the Spirit
We therefore need to
prayerfully study Jesus’ life & strive to follow His examples.
We also looked at Jesus’
teachings & saw that:
Humility
brings blessing/effectiveness
Humility is manifested in meekness before
God & service to others
We
also learned from the lives & teachings of Jesus’ disciples that:
We can’t defeat pride on our own
The Holy Spirit will give us what we lack
We need to engage in serious prayer to get those
things from the Holy Spirit
Our
humility—our malleability before God—is best measured/displayed by how we
interact with others
our love to God will be measured by our
everyday intercourse with men and the love it displays
humility towards men will be the only
sufficient proof that our humility before God is real
Humility before God is nothing if not
proved in humility before men.
What does that look like, what does it involve?
Ask
for participant input
Murray cites several scriptures to describe that
humility:
Romans 12:10
Be devoted to one another in love. Honor
one another above yourselves.
Romans
12:16
Live
together in peace with each other. Do not be proud, but make friends with those who seem unimportant. Do not think how smart you are.
1
Corinthians 13:4
Love
endures with patience and serenity, love is kind and
thoughtful
Galatians
5:13
make it your habit to serve one another.
Ephesians
4:2
Be
completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.
Ephesians
5:21
Place yourselves under each other’s authority out of respect for Christ.
Philippians
2:3-7
3 Nothing is to be done out of jealousy or vanity; instead, out of humility of mind everyone should give
preference to others, 4 everyone pursuing not selfish interests but those of others. 5
Make your own the mind of Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God
something to be grasped.7 But he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave…
Colossians
3:12-13
2 As the chosen of God, then, the
holy people whom he loves, you are to be
clothed in heartfelt compassion, in generosity and humility, gentleness and
patience.13 Bear with one another; forgive each other if one of you has a
complaint against another. The Lord has forgiven you; now you must do the same.
What do
the highlighted phrases tell us about what is involved in true, human-to-human,
humility?
A.
Murray, Humility, Chapter 5,
The humble man seeks at all times to
act up to the rule, "In honor preferring
one another; Servants one of another; Each counting others better than
himself Subjecting yourselves one to another."
divine humility--the nothingness that
makes room for God to prove His power.
humility which counts itself nothing,
which rejoices in becoming and being counted the least, and only seeks, like Jesus, to be the servant,
the helper and comforter of others, even the lowest and unworthiest.
Two of Jesus parables also address that. Let’s dig
into them & see what they say.
Matthew
25:31-40
31 'When the Son of man
comes in his glory, escorted by all the angels, then he will take his seat on his throne of glory. 32 All nations will be assembled before him and he will separate people one from another as the shepherd separates
sheep from goats. 33 He will place the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left.
34 Then the King will say to those on his right hand, "Come, you
whom my Father has blessed, take as your heritage the kingdom prepared for you
since the foundation
of the world.
Humility resulted in exaltation 35
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I
was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you made me welcome, 36
lacking clothes and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you
came to see me."
Acts of humility in that they required the persons
doing them to deviate from their normal plans/role to help others
Subordination of
self to deliver God’s goodness=humility
37 Then the upright will say to him in reply, "Lord, when did we see you hungry
and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger
and make you welcome, lacking clothes and clothe you? 39
When did we find you sick or in prison and go to see you?" 40
And the King will answer, "In truth I tell you, in so far
as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me."
Humility towards man =humility towards God
Luke 10:30-37
…Jesus
said, 'A man
was once on his way down from Jerusalem
to Jericho
and fell into the hands of bandits; they stripped him, beat him and then made
off, leaving him half dead. 31 Now a
priest
happened to be travelling down the same road, but when he saw the man, he
passed by on the other side. 32 In the same way a Levite who came to the place saw him, and passed by on the other
side.
Folks of high status, with important roles to play in executing
God’s plan for delivering His goodness
Their preoccupation w/ those roles and lack of openness to the other
means of service God placed before them—the opposite of humility—resulted in
their being less effective than they could have been
Still effective,
but not as effective as they could have been
And receiving less
reward than they could have
33 But a
Samaritan traveler who came on him was moved with compassion when he saw
him. 34
He went up to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them. He
then lifted him onto his own mount and took him to an inn and looked after him.
35
Next day, he took out two denarii and handed them to the innkeeper and said,
"Look after him, and on my way back I will
make good
any extra expense you have."
Low status, but his openness to delivering God’s mercy—the
essence of humility—made him highly effective
36 Which of these three, do you think, proved
himself a neighbor to the man
who fell into the bandits' hands?'
37 He replied, 'The one who showed pity towards
him.'
Summary
of Chapter 6
Humility towards God requires Humility towards our fellow man
Humility towards our fellow man involves:
Subordinating our
desires/emotions to others’
Active, going out of our
way, service
Great blessing to others
& divine reward to us
No comments:
Post a Comment