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.'

Jesus said to him, 'Go, and do the same yourself.' Jesus ratifies—exalts—the the humble person

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

Another Insight from Composting: Multiple Fruits

Another thing I learned from my recent work on our compost pile is how God uses one act of service to produce multiple types of fruit.  I had to move our pile because an Eagle Scout candidate is building us more permanent compost bins. They are going to be where our existing pile was located, so that pile had to be moved. It needed done, I did it for that reason, and it was accomplished. A very concrete good came from that.

But that’s not all that came from it. The things I observed and thought about as I was doing that task were the seeds for the last several posts. Those will hopefully bear spiritual fruit, fruit different in kind from the material goal I was working towards.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by that; examples of that dynamic are found throughout the Gospels. Consider the folks who brought their crippled friend to Jesus (Matthew 9:1-8; Mark 2:1-12; Luke 5:17-26). Or consider the centurion who asked Jesus to heal his servant (Matthew 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-10). They sought to accomplish specific acts of service, and they did so, but they also accomplished far, far, more. Their actions became the means for millions to learn about God, something that dwarfs those specific tasks.

OK, so what do we do with that? How do we respond to that dynamic? At least three things come to mind.

The first is obvious: get to work for God and His people. That will not only accomplish  specific things done that need done, it will also give God the chance to show us something that we or someone else needs to know. So get busy.

The second is to ask the Holy Spirit to open you to His instruction as you work. Chances are He will not only show you something beyond the immediate, but He will also help you do a better job at whatever you are doing.

The third is to give the Spirit your undivided attention. I often listen to music or the radio as I work in the garden, but the other day I felt prompted to forgo that. That allowed me to better listen, and good things resulted.

Another Insight from Composting:

Beyond the Dramatic

Our most recent batch of compost is done “cooking” and is now “curing.” That is far less dramatic. Cooking involves shredding, turning, and heightened temperatures. During curing the compost sits undisturbed at ambient temperature while earthworms and a new set of microbes take over. Their actions are individually mundane, but they have powerful cumulative effects. They increase the relative amount of nitrogen in compost and give it greater disease suppressing qualities, significantly increasing its utility.

We see similar patterns in how many folks grow in Christ. The initial stages of their walk can involve dramatic upheavals from their previous lives. God allows/takes them through tough stuff in order to change their pre-salvation natures, much like shredding and heating change leaves, coffee grounds, and other materials into compost. See generally Hebrews 12:1-13,  this, and this.  

But then things calm down. Once we have been changed by those relatively few transformative events, we are expected to deal with many, more regularly occurring, challenges. Those come from actually living out scriptural principles in the details of our ordinary, day-to-day, lives. Those are things like responding gracefully to annoying circumstances, delivering God’s love in mundane circumstances, working diligently at the details of whatever vocation or particular projects He’s called us to, recognizing and overcoming various temptations. Regularly meeting those less dramatic, but far more frequent, challenges builds habits and delivers results that make us far more effective for Christ. Maybe that dynamic underlies what He was talking about when He noted that faithfulness in little things results in greater impact. See generally, Matthew 25:14-23.  

That’s not to say that everyone’s growth in Christ follows that pattern or that we’ll never face further major and transformative events later in our Christian lives. But there seem to be enough parallels to what enough folks go through to make it worth considering.