Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not
count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied
himself by taking the form of a servant.
Being the being born in the likeliness of men and being
found in human form, he humbled Himself by becoming obedient to
the point of death. Holy Spirit, help me even death
on the cross. Therefore God has highly exalted
him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so the
name of Jesus. Every knee should bow in heaven,
on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord and to glory of God the Father.
I want to begin by talking about one of the best movies ever.
My wife and I recently watched through all of the Indiana Jones
movies. Anybody.
Yeah. OK.
I hear some. I hear some chatter out there.
And we were watching through Indiana Jones Three.
I think it's the Last Crusade. And as always, Indy finds
himself in some temple that has some obstacles, and he has to
pass three tests in order to reach the Holy Grail.
Pretty cool. Now, the first Test is something
called the Breath of God. It's this like mysterious fog
that kills you if you don't know what you're doing.
And knowing that failure means certain death, Indy only has one
clue. And the clue is only the
penitent man shall pass. Kind of interesting, right?
And so they're trying to figure out this clue.
The clock is ticking. He's walking into this fog.
He's knows that he could die at any moment.
And he's trying to figure out this Riddle that only the
penitent man shall pass, only the minute penitent man shall
pass. And then he says, in this final
moment, the penitent man is humble before God.
And they says, the penitent man kneels before God and he kneels
at just the right moment. These giant like circular saw
blades go right over his head, right?
And it's this crazy moment where he rolls out of the way because
he dropped to his knees in humility.
He nearly misses, nearly misses these saw blades, which I don't
know how they got those in an ancient temple, but that's
beside the point, right? And he escaped death by a
whisker. And this moment is like this,
this great moment of cinematic flair, you know?
But it also has a profound message.
You see, Indiana Jones stumbles across an important truth that's
at the heart of the Bible, which is that following Jesus starts
with humility. It starts with being willing to
go to your knees in penitence, which is like another word for
being repentant, humble, aware of our sins.
See, the more we grow in revelation of God, the more we
find ourselves dropping to our knees in worship.
The only way through the tunnels and the twists of our lives is
through humility. I don't know if you've noticed,
but in my opinion, humility is not a not a trait that we widely
see in our culture. By and large, it's not normally
celebrated in our culture. In fact, I think it's becoming
less and less of a virtue in our culture.
We see success equals celebrity, success equals influence,
gaining attention or notoriety or maybe even advancing in your
field, right. In the corporate world, for
instance, often times the goal is to outperform the person next
to you to climb the corporate ladder.
Maybe you've heard or to be smarter, to be more marketable.
Like think about the the just the, the, the corporate resume.
You're trying to put on paper how awesome you are so that
people will will hire you. Isn't that an interesting
concept? And again, there's nothing like
necessarily all wrong with that or all bad with that.
But it's it's interesting that our culture seems to value power
over humility. Take a look at our our world
leaders today. Like even in the last 10 years,
would we say that our world leaders are marked by meekness
and by humility, right. As if that's a virtue.
Most people would say probably not.
We just don't see it as much anymore.
So the question for us today is how can you and I, as Christ
followers learn to grow in humility?
And how can we grow in humility without getting stuck in the
cycles of like shame and self defeat and oh, everyone else is
better than me and I'm I'm no good.
What does godly humility actually look like?
Well, today we are continuing in our sermon series.
It's called Wisdom in the Desert.
And so for the 40 days leading up to Easter, we've been
practicing what's called Lent in church history.
In the sermon series is a look at some of the desert fathers
and mothers. Those, this was this radical
group of Christians in the in the 3rd and 4th century.
And they went off into the desert, literally out of the
city, out of the hustle in order to find God and do spiritual
warfare. And part of what we see with
these desert fathers and mothers is that their their lives were
marked by obscurity and by humility.
They lived lives of secrecy out in the desert as best as they
could. There's this one quote by a man
named Anthony the Great, and he writes this.
He says, I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the
world. And I said, groaning, what can
get through from such snares? Then I heard a voice saying to
me, humility. That sounds very similar to the
Indiana Jones quote, Right, Right.
The penitent man shall pass. Basically Saint Anthony, he's
looking around at the world and he's saying, man, it seems like
the devil's just laid so many traps, so many different
distractions, so many different vices, so many things that catch
our attention and draw our focus away from God.
He, he's almost groaning. He's saying how can anyone
survive? How can anyone get through all
of these snares that are out there?
And he says, I heard a voice, It's through humility.
It's the way of Jesus. There's another famous man, his
name was the Apostle Paul, and he wrote most of the new or a
lot of the New Testament. And he also went on a journey
not only to the deserts of Arabia, but we see throughout
Scripture that Paul actually went on a journey of humility.
You see, Paul initially was a religious leader.
He had the pedigree, he had the notoriety, he was on the up and
up. But then he met Jesus Christ and
he gave his life over to Jesus. And it's interesting when you
when you read Paul's words over the course of time, it seems as
if his attitude about himself changes.
For instance, he writes early on that he calls himself the least
of all the apostles. OK, then a few years later he
calls himself the least of all the Saints.
So he goes from like being the least of like the apostles, just
kind of like a good thing. But then he says, no, no, no,
I'm, I'm the least of all the Saints.
Couple years later he says I'm the chief of all sinners, right?
Like it doesn't get lower than that, right?
So isn't that interesting that even with the apostle Paul, we
see him progressively becoming more and more humble, at least
apparently in the way that he describes himself.
He was on a journey towards Christlikeness and he wrote
about humility to this church in a city called Philippi, which is
where we get the New Testament book Philippians.
Does that make sense? So Paul's writing to a group of
people in Philippi, the Philippians.
And that's where we're going to be today if you want to turn
there. OK, Philippians is in the New
Testament. So maybe three 3/4 of the way
through your Bibles, if you want to find that short little book,
take a take a moment to find that.
We always encourage physical Bibles.
If you're able to bring, it'll be on the screens as well.
If you don't have them today, we just try and get away from our
phones as much as we can because they're distracting and
addicting, right? And so we encourage that.
But Philippians chapter 2, if you can find that Philippians
chapter 2, verse 5, the city of Philippi was founded by a man
named Philip the Second of Macedon.
He was this kind of great king like ruler who swept into the
aid of the city. It helped that that city was
flush with gold and silver. So he was glad to kind of jump
in and help and he named the city after himself.
But what we see here in Philippians 2 is Paul's calling
people to live out in humility. And what this section of
Scripture is specifically in six through 11, it's called the
Christ hymn. This is likely, this is what
have likely been like a worship song or a hymn that would have
circulated the early church, some scholars believe as early
as 30 to 40 AD. And what's remarkable is that
even though this is really, really early, really close to
the death and resurrection of Jesus, we see there's a really
well formed and robust Christology.
In other words, they had a really accurate and thorough
picture of who Christ was even at an early time.
This is important for things like apologetics and defending
the faith. We see that they have a fully
formed picture of who God was and who Jesus was before even
time and how he came to earth. And we'll read it here in verse
5. Paul writes this in your
relationships with one another have the same mindset as Christ
Jesus, who being in the very nature God did not consider
equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.
So Paul is speaking to the group in Philippi, speaking to the
Philippians and saying in with your attitudes with one another.
Show humility. Well, what kind of humility?
The kind of humility that Christ himself showed us.
It's interesting here that we see that Jesus says did not
consider equality with God something to be used to his own
advantage. Other translations say he did
not consider equality with God something to be grasped.
In the Greek this is idea of something to be like snatched or
something to be taken to be used to his own advantage.
In other words, even though Jesus was equal with God the
Father, he did not use it for his own advantage.
Some scholars call back to Adam and Eve because in Genesis
chapter 3 we see that God had previously previously made all
things good in the garden. But then the deceiver Satan
comes in and he tries to tempt Adam and Eve to disobey God.
And what is the line that he tells them?
Satan looks at this couple and he says you will be like God.
That's the temptation, you will be like God.
And So what does it say? It says they took the apple.
They took something that wasn't theirs.
Isn't it interesting that even we have terms when it comes to
taking power? We say that someone, we maybe
say someone took control or they seized power.
There's grabbing language when it comes to power.
What we see here is that Adam and Eve wanted to be like God.
They're like, there's something missing.
There's something in me that I don't have.
I want to be like God. And So what do they do?
They take. What we see here with Jesus is
that even though he had equality with God, he refused to take it
for his own advantage. Does that make sense?
We see his humility being lived out here.
So what does Jesus do instead? Rather than seizing power for
himself? Verse 7, it says rather he made
himself nothing. By taking the very nature of a
servant being made in human likeness and being found in
appearance as a man, He humbled himself.
Wow. Jesus was willing to humble
himself. This is the idea found in the
Greek called canosis. It's the idea of empty emptying,
emptying himself out or pouring himself out for others.
Can you imagine just a moment? Let's let's pause for just a
moment. Imagine that you're Jesus before
the creation of the universe. So you're hanging out with the
Father, you're hanging out the Holy Spirit and you're like, all
right, how are we going to map this whole universe out?
Well, let's have some like quantum theory in here.
Let's invent some physics there. Let's figure out how this whole
gravity thing and this the whole dark matter is going to work.
Oh, lights going to be pretty important.
Let's figure out how light will will interact with everything.
Oh, here, let's create this earth and the perfect placement
in the universe. So imagine you're in that that
realm. You have all power, all
authority. You're inventing things like
gravity and black holes, and then you come down to become a
baby. Imagine that.
Yeah, I like that is unfathomable to me.
The descent from going to on high, creating all of the
universe, to coming way down to becoming an infant.
You see, Jesus was tempted in every way, like us as human
beings. So that thing that you're going
through right now, that sin that you're tempted with, that
struggle, Scripture says that Jesus knows what it's like.
Jesus experienced everything from from being hot in the
desert to being cold at night. I would imagine he went from
everything from exhaustion to indigestion, right?
Like he was fully human and he was fully God.
And when Jesus was in the wilderness, Satan tempted him
with power and control, just like Adam and Eve.
He said, I'm going to give you all the kingdoms of the world.
If you just, you know, you know, just bow down and worship me.
Jesus refused. Why?
Because Jesus was called by God to take a different route to
glory. This is what it says in verse
28. By becoming obedient to death,
even death on a cross. You see, Jesus was being
obedient to the Father's will that He should come and live a
perfect life for you and for me. He was being obedient to the
Father, not by grasping power in the kingdoms of this world that
were offered to Him, but He was obedient to the Father by taking
the low road to the cross. Jesus was willing to die for you
and for me, and he did it to take your sins upon himself.
All the wrongdoing you've ever done, all the shame you've ever
felt, all the death you ever experienced, Jesus was willing
to take that upon himself in his own body, on the cross for you
because he loved you that much. And by doing that, he glorified
the Father out of perfect obedience.
This is the story of the Kingdom.
This is the story of Jesus. You see, the first Adam failed
to obey God by taking the power in order to be like him.
But Jesus obeyed God not by taking equality, but by being
willing to be lowered on a cross.
Adam tried to elevate up, but Jesus lowered down.
In other words, the first Adam grasped for power, the second
Adam laid it down. That's the story of Jesus.
There was this popular activity. I imagine it was probably
popular in like the 50s, sixties, 70s.
It was called limbo. Does anyone know what limbo is
where you grab a bar and you try and get under the bar, right?
Any, any older folks? Was this popular in like the
50s, sixties? OK, they're all raising their
hand. I like to imagine this like
groovy disco party where people are doing the limbo.
I don't know if that's ever happened, but I like to picture
it right? And there's this kind of,
there's this kind of chant that goes along with limbo.
How low can you go? Stay with me.
How low can you go one more time?
How low can you go? You're with me.
And the idea is that the person who can go the lowest is the
winner. This is like the world record
holder, by the way, with Limbo. You should go watch videos of
her. It is striking the way she can
move across that. And that it is, it's a bit
uncomfortable, quite quite honestly.
But my point in bringing this up is to say, when it comes to
limbo, the person who can go the lowest is actually the winner.
Does that make sense? The person who's willing to
lower themselves as much as they can is the person who is
elevated to greatness. And Jesus was willing to go
lower than any of us have ever seen.
Jesus went from equality to emptying to embodying.
Jesus went as low as you can possibly go.
Jesus was willing to go lower. Jesus Christ was the in the very
nature. He was the very nature of God,
the same essence, but he was willing to go lower.
He did not consider equality with God something to be used
lower. He made himself nothing lower by
taking on the very nature of a servant lower.
He was made in human likeness as an appearance of a man.
Lower, by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross,
Jesus was willing to go lower. He went as low as you can go.
Nobody, nobody has descended further than Jesus himself.
He went from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows.
He went from the the the spiritual realm and the
heavenlies hovering over all of the universe in the beginning of
time. And you came all the way down
and what to wear to the realm of the dead in the ground.
That is how far Jesus was willing to come for us.
That is how far love was willing to travel for you and for me.
There's this moment in the gospels where James and John are
wanting power and so their their mom gets involved.
Maybe you're familiar with the story and.
The mom is looking after her boy.
She see that sees that this Jesus is on the on the rise.
We he they believe that this Jesus is bringing in a new
Kingdom. And so mom is is looking after
her son. She wants the best for them.
She wants to know that they're going to be taken care of.
And so she approaches Jesus and she says, grant one of these two
sons of mine that they may sit on your right and the other at
your left in the Kingdom. She wants greatness for her sons
if there's going to be a cost. And the sons, James and John,
they're, they're looking at Jesus and they're saying, hey,
can we be great too? We want to be great.
It's a question we all want, question we all ask.
Jesus looks at there was a request for greatness and it
responds with a pretty simple question.
He says, I see it. I see that you want greatness.
I see that you want to be elevated.
But can you drink the cup? Can you drink the cup?
The cup throughout Scripture was was one's divinely appointed
destiny either for great blessing or for great curse.
And here when Jesus is talking about the cup, what he's talking
about is the is the cross, the fact that he was divinely
appointed to go and suffer and die for humanity.
And so when, when you know, James and John are hearing this,
there may be thinking of like David and Goliath, they're
thinking, yeah, I'm ready to go to war for you, Jesus.
I'm ready to take on the bad guy and, and, and receive success
and acclaim and notoriety. And what they didn't understand
is that the cup that Jesus was destined for was the cross.
It was the cup of being a servant, the cup of being a
slave. You see, the Kingdom values are
inverted with the ways of the world.
In the Kingdom, the way up is down.
In the Kingdom, the way up is actually by going lower.
Matthew 2028. The Son of Man did not come to
be served, but to serve in some way or another, in some facet of
our lives or another. We all want to be great.
I think especially as men, we want to achieve and we want to
be seen and we want to be known and, and it's, it's, it's kind
of a universal thing for all of us, I think.
And we go about it many ways. Maybe we try to gain followers
or achieve at work or even just like trying to maximize your
life, right? I'm going to be the fittest I
can possibly be. I'm going to improve my mental
health. I'm going to do all the things
and live my best life. And again, that's not all bad,
but it's how we're actually going about and how we're trying
to achieve greatness. So for for you and for me, it's,
it's not that you want to be great or you want to be an
achiever, you want to have notoriety.
But the question that we must ask is, am I willing to drink
the cup? Am I really willing to go where
Jesus went? Am I willing to follow his
model, His descent, even to the place of the cross?
Following Jesus always costs us something.
There is always a cost to discipleship.
And every single day we have to just be willing to ask ourself,
am I really willing to follow Jesus there?
Am I really willing to give it up?
Man, I feel like 95% of the Christian life is just learning
how to surrender. Just more and more and more
learning how to surrender. You take something on, you give
it. You get a little something in
life. Life throws you some some
blessing and it's just learning how to surrender it back down at
the feet of Jesus. This is not easy, but it's
necessary. Are you willing to drink the
cup? When we see here in Philippians
2 with this Christ hymn, see that we see that Jesus was
willing to be emptied so that he could be exalted.
Verse 9. Philippians 2.
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the
name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every
knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, in
every tongue acknowledged that Jesus Christ is Lord to the
glory of God the Father. Paul uses the language that he
exalted him to the highest place in the Greek.
It's almost as if Paul is saying that that God super exalted
Jesus to the highest place. What we see in this trajectory
of Jesus that we see his descent and we see his exaltation with
Jesus, nobody has descended lower and nobody has ascended
higher. We worship a humble God.
For most world religions out there, those two words, a humble
God, those are an oxymoron. Those are a contradiction.
Those two things do not go side by side.
Those two words next to each other do not compete A compute a
humble God. It's only in Jesus Christ that
we see the perfect model of obedience to the Father by being
willing to be humbled so that God can do the exalting.
It's interesting here that the city of Philippi was named after
Philip the Second because the exact same year that Philip the
Second named the city Philippi, he had a son.
Do you want to know who that son was?
Alexander the Great, And he lived in that same region.
Isn't it interesting that this, this great king had a great son
in the city called Philippi, the city with greatness in the name.
And yet Paul is looking at the group of people living in the
city with greatness all around them, and he's saying have the
same mindset as Christ. Lower.
The call to the Philippians is
the call to you and me today. We have to be willing to go
lower just like Jesus. So how can we do this in our
age? How can we live this out and our
culture where everything is about achievement and greatness
and influence and followers, how do we actually model the
humility of Christ in our day-to-day life in a world where
it just seems impossible at times?
I want to give you really three really, really quick things as
we begin to conclude #1 is that humility is cultivated first and
foremost from identity. You can write that down.
Humility is cultivated from identity.
I believe part of the problem with Adam and Eve is that they
had an identity crisis. They said, wait, wait, wait.
We're we're not like God. There's something more that is
missing in ourselves. And Satan knew that.
They came in and he came in with that deception and said, you'll
be like God. You can be like him.
They had an identity crisis because what it says in Genesis,
what they didn't realize or what they failed to remember was that
when God made man and woman, it says that they made them.
He made them in His own image. In other words, He made them in
the Imago day. You see, what Adam and Eve
failed to realize is that they already were like God.
They didn't need anything else because God had already made
them with intrinsic worth. He made them in perfect
relationship. Their identity was meant to be
rooted in Him. They had a crisis of identity
and so their their temptation is our temptation.
They tried to take and they tried to grab and it LED them to
disobedience. You see, if we don't know who we
are, we will always try to measure up to others.
If we don't have a strong sense of self in Christ, we will
always try to elevate ourselves and try and find our place in
the world. We will always be lost.
And when Jesus started his ministry, there was these words
spoken over him, where God the Father during the baptism said,
this is my Son with whom I am well pleased.
And these words of identity were spoken over Jesus and they
propelled him into ministry. You see, Jesus never had a
confidence issue. Jesus never had an identity
issue. Why?
Because he knew the words that the Father had spoken over him.
This is my son with whom I'm well pleased.
Jesus never had the crisis of of identities and we have them in
excess. Would you agree?
I, I don't know about you, but I have confidence issues all the
time. I feel insecure all the time.
There's this phrase going around called, I think it's called male
fragility. You ever heard that phrase?
I, I don't exactly know what it means, but whatever it is, I
think I got it OK. I think it has something to do
with ego and trying to puff yourself up and trying to, you
know, have this sort of overconfidence, right?
I'm pretty sure I've got it. Men, you probably got it too.
And whatever the version of female fragility is, ladies, you
probably have it too. The reality is this, we're all
insecure to some degree or another.
We all lack confidence. We all try to puff ourselves up.
We're all trying to seek our place in this world.
And for so many of us, I think we swing from the two extremes.
We swing from the extreme of insecurity and feeling down on
ourselves and feeling worthless. Or we swing to the other extreme
of just this false sense of self in this overconfidence.
And as I've got it all together and I need to puff myself up and
rather than swinging back and forth between these two, what if
instead we were rooted and established in our loving
identity in Christ Jesus? What if instead we could hear
the Father's voice speaking over us that he is pleased with us?
What if we could step into our identity that we are more than
conquerors in Christ, That we are Co heirs with Jesus, That we
are fully known and fully loved by our Heavenly Father.
There are so many times even in this last week where I made
mistakes and I made the same mistake twice and it was
embarrassing and I had to humble myself.
And I just had this thought of like what is wrong with me?
Why can't I seem to get it figured out?
And then these moments where I'm tempted to just go into
insecurity, God reminds me of my identity.
Louis had this line in Mere Christianity.
He says that do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man,
I'm just going to actually read it over here.
He says do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man, he
will be what most people call humble nowadays.
He will not be thinking about humility.
He will not be thinking about himself at all.
In other words, humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's
just thinking of yourself less. So many people get this wrong.
They think, oh, I need to be humble.
So I'm just need to kind of live in this place of insecurity and
fear and not thinking too highly of myself.
But rather humility is just not thinking of yourself as much.
Otherwise, we just have a false humility #2 humility is living a
cruciform lifestyle. By cruciform I just mean like a
cross shaped lifestyle. This is a lifestyle marked by
self sacrifice and self-service to others.
The emphasis in Philippians 2 is the cross and Jesus being
obedient to his call. You see, the cross isn't just
the way to life. The cross is a way of life.
The cross is a, is a lifestyle for you and for me to sacrifice
ourselves more and more for others.
Tim Keller wrote a book by the name of the freedom of self
forgetfulness. And it's pretty rare that like
just the title of a book could change your life if you lived it
out right. This is one of them, the freedom
of self forgetfulness. And he has this incredible line,
super convicting for me. He says true gospel humility
means I stop connecting every experience and every
conversation with myself. Anyone else do that?
Every experience, every conversation, I somehow find a
way to bring it back to me. The point is this gospel
humility is a willing death to self absorption.
It's a willing death to self preoccupation.
It's a willing death to ego. How many of us would agree that
our culture desperately needs a death to ego?
Our leaders desperately need a death to ego.
And so we pray for them. We pray for them eagerly, that
there would be a spirit of humility for whoever's in the
president now to whoever's next, to whoever's next, we pray for
them. The goal is an influence.
The goal is resemblance to Jesus.
The goal is to become like him together.
Finally, as I wrap up, I'm going to invite the team back,
forward. Finally, Humility is magnifying
God becoming more and more aware of His Holiness to realize where
and who we are. Humility is being made aware of
our brokenness and our sinfulness and our need of
Jesus, and then thrusting ourselves into His arms and into
His love. You see, humility is not just
about us stooping down and lowering ourselves to a level of
insecurity, but rather it's standing at our full height and
realizing that God is even taller.
He's even greater. He is magnificent and he is
above all things. It's standing on our full height
with arms raised high and realizing God, you are so much
bigger than I could ever be, knowing our proper place that he
is God and we are not. And so as we conclude, I just
want to ask you, where are you tempted to self promote?
Where are you tempted, whether it's on LinkedIn, Instagram,
your dating app, your family, your friend group, whatever it
may be, your school, where are you tempted to elevate yourself
and how can you choose instead to honor others above yourself?
Romans 12/10 says be devoted to one another and love, honor one
another above yourselves. There are so many times as a
pastor with the spotlight and the stage and planting a church
where, you know, I get all these Pats on the backs and
congratulations and all of that. And there's a temptation in that
sometimes to, to, to allow my press clippings to go to my
head. Sometimes there's temptations to
allow my ego to, to, to go off and running.
But the humble reality is this. I'd be nothing without the grace
of God. This church wouldn't exist
without the people humbly serving day in and day out, the
people who are coming and setting up and tearing down
every single week, the people who are preparing communion
today and greeting people and people who are pouring out hours
and hours and hours. And so I just want to take a
moment to honour you all. I love this church and I love
seeing how you guys serve and I love seeing how you pour out for
the Kingdom. And it's humbling for me.
And it's, it's such a privilege to see that this is about a
Kingdom. And I honor you guys in that.
So we have a few practices for you.
These are invitations. These are not, you know, do them
or else you're a bad Christian or anything like that, OK?
They're just some invitations so that we can practice and
cultivate a life of humility #1 is maybe you just want to spend
some time in God's presence and allow Him to to show you all
those areas of brokenness and sinfulness and and allow His
love to meet you in those areas. Maybe for you it's asking the
simple question, where am I working to gain the approval of
others and just spending some time with God in that question.
Maybe this week you want to choose to embrace the mundane as
meaningful. Maybe this week as you're, you
know, dealing with your third blowout and your kids diaper, or
you know that the house is a mess again, or the dishes are
piling up, find meaning in those mundane activities.
Allow those activities to just humble you.
Find contentment in them. And thank God and realize that
even Jesus came to serve. So as you serve your families
and as you serve your children, as you serve whoever, find
contentment, find meaning in that mundane entity.
Maybe for you it's as practical as choosing a bad parking spot
instead of the best parking spot, or cleaning a toilet
without being noticed, right? Finding some way to serve in
obscurity, serve in secrecy. Or finally, maybe you want to
choose to associate with the lowly, spending time and
offering yourself to someone who advances your cause in no way
whatsoever, but you choose to just be with them anyway and
love them. Realizing that they are made in
the image of God too, and they have something to teach you and
offer you as well. And if you do all these things,
don't go tell people about it. Forget it.
Enjoy the humility and worship God.
So church, how low can you go? We need to remember that winning
is actually lowering and that the way up is down.