Isaiah VII: A Word For The Humble
Sermon Review
16 December 2001
Isaiah 66:1-2

The Christian is called to walk by faith and not by sight 2 Cor.5:7. Faith means being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see Heb.11:1. This is not always easy because we are not continually conscious of the reality of God and his presence.

A Fantasy
Imagine for a moment walking into a Museum regaled with dynamic shifting scenes on the walls, each extolling and communicating in an emphatic, incontrovertible, palpable and overwhelming way, the divine attributes of God - his immensity, closeness, holiness, knowledge, power, wisdom, love. Each of these scenes contributing to an overall unwavering conviction of God and his reality that has pre-eminence over every other conscious influence and thought. As one wanders from room to room, we could not but be overcome with an utter and complete conviction of Biblical truth and God.

Imagine now that this museum is actually your mind and the interior walls of your conscious awareness is what are draped with these dynamic, vivid, radiating realities, banishing doubts with dismissive ease and total success. As one went about one's life these inescapable and completely overwhelming illuminations would power absolute conviction and a corresponding resolute Christian lifestyle and service without flaw, microscopic defection, or nano-deviation. The awesome realities of God would be such powerful and constant experiences that complacency and competing interests could not even be countenanced.

How It Really Is:
Yes, sounds great, but now let's get back to the real world, the one in which we walk by faith and not by sight. The real interior world of our hearts and minds has a mix of wall hangings, doesn't it? A combination of art and message that inspire both belief and doubt. Our 'walls' are covered with images and impressions that sometimes overpower with vividness and life, for better or for worse, and at other times are dull, vague, even dead, cold and uninspiring. It seems that God does not decorate the interior of our minds with a constant overwhelming display of images and communications stimulating utter conviction and devotion without deviation. Instead He begins a process of etching truths in our minds and replacing old distorted or deceitful images - through us reading his word, engaging in prayer, interacting in fellowship, and other cooperative efforts on our part eg. Rom.12:1,2; 2Pet.1:3-11 etc. Through the Holy Spirit he encourages, persuades, enlightens and aids this process. He is with us in our struggles to believe and to grasp and comprehend his truth within ourselves. He works in our experience by using creation, individual circumstances, and others to believe and live in light of these truths. In all of this he calls us to walk by faith and not by sight, and in his own way continues to stimulate that same faith within us, as we work out in practice what he works in us for his good pleasure Phil.2:12,13.

Faith, Pride, Humility:
Because this cooperative process requires our input and is affected by our life experiences, it means that some truths will be harder for some individuals to accept by faith than others. This obviously means that, depending on the individual, it will be variously easier or harder for some truths to become vivid messages inspiring conviction and faith. However there is one truth that is particularly hard for most people to accept by faith and embrace. That is the fundamental importance of personal humility on the one hand, and God's distaste for arrogance and pride on the other. It is a truth that requires constant reminding for it to have any worthwhile power in our lives. It is also a truth that is fundamental to seeking God for new hearts and fresh starts.

Someone once said, 'Nothing's as hard to do gracefully as getting down off our high horse'. Yet, in order to deal with God, whether gracefully or not, that is what we have to do. God is opposed to the proud but gracious to the humble Jas.4:6. Pride - that attitude which puffs up and makes one feel superior or better than others, is abhorrent to God. It too easily fuels the tendency to view and treat others as lesser beings on the basis of intelligence, skin colour, gender, looks, competencies, education, position in society, wealth and material possessions etc. It also makes one feel above God, or in a unique position of being exempt from many of the areas of obedience that other lesser mortals have to abide by. This kind of attitude is condemned in Scripture, and is spawned by this world and sourced within our sinful nature Mark.7:22,23; 1John.2:16. Arrogance, conceit and pride is so abhorrent and dangerous to Christian living and ministry, and humility so necessary for it, that God allowed Satan to afflict Paul so he wouldn't become puffed up from his visionary experiences given by God! 2Cor.12:7-10. The word humble in the N.T. means 'lowly or 'cast down', and is viewed as a positive quality. Jesus described himself as 'humble' Matt.11:28. His incarnation is viewed as 'humbling himself to the point of death' Phil.2. To be humble means to not be egotistical, self-centred, vain or petty. It means to not operate on an inflated sense of one's own worth, but seeing others as highly valued and treat them accordingly. The outcome is that God will be near the broken hearted and crushed in spirit Ps. 34:17,18. He will revive the humble person Isaiah 57:15. He looks for people to be humble with each other and to voluntarily humble themselves under his hand 1Pet.5:5,6. And the worthiness of our call to himself is to be shown in gentleness and humility Eph.4:1,2.

God Has The Right To Be Proud:
In the reading this morning (Isaiah.66:1,2) we see that God has every right and every opportunity to be proud and arrogant. He is a king whose throne is heaven and rules over earth. He has made all things and no one can build a satisfactory house or resting place for him. Yet he is not proud and arrogant, vain or conceited. He allows himself to be misunderstood and cursed. He puts up with competitors that are not worthy of even being considered as competitors eg. things he has created Rom.1:18ff. etc. He allowed his own son, the exemplar of humility, to humble himself to the point of a cross Phil.2:1ff. God is not proud, and so as the only one who has a right to be so, he condemns all who illegitimately do so. In light of who God is and what he has done for us, we have every reason to be humble, but not every intention of being so. This is where our faith must come in. We must use our faith to accept the reality of our humble position before God and His rightful position over us.

Fearing God:
In Prov.1:7 we are told that the 'fear of God is the beginning of wisdom'. Australians, by and large, then are not wise. We do not like authority and therefore are very poor candidates to either fear God or humble ourselves before him. It seems that our convict beginnings play very well into the defects of our sin nature. The greek word for fear ('Phobos') is used in two important ways in the New Testament. Firstly it refers to the kind of impulse to flee or freeze that a scare or dread or terror gives 1Cor.2:3; Heb.2:15. Secondly, it refers to a reverential fear that prompts a strong concern to please and obey God and to come to him for grace to help please him, as a son or daughter would come to their father Acts.9:31; Rom.8:15. It is this kind of fear which is the beginning of wisdom. Our indictment is not how much we fear him, but how 'underwhelmed' we are by him, and how little concern we have to really please him. If we accept what the Scriptures say about God then we cannot help but dread and wish to flee from his presence at first. But also find inspired in us the desire to please him and relate to him as a son or a daughter. If we want to be humble before God, then we need a healthy fear of God, which is an amalgam of both dread and desire, for this will produce humility.

Conclusion:
God in his grace introduces us to a process that can place undeniably powerful paintings on the walls of our minds - messages and images, impressions and experiences, that over time will inspire great conviction about who he is and where we stand before him. Sometimes he gives us power encounters to hasten and deepen the effect. But we cannot just hang about waiting for these transforming encounters. 'We have not because we ask not' James 4:2. Lets not wait until life falls apart for us like those in the Transformation videos. We need to walk by faith and do what we can to embrace the truth that God revives the humble but opposes the proud. If you are able to accept this, then please come before him this afternoon with a sense of humility, to remove complacency concerning him, to seek his grace to renew our hearts and reprioritise our lives. We need to keep in mind that pride will threaten to stop us doing this. But we must battle this with our faith and be honest with him. If God chooses to transform us with a power encounters along the way, so be it. If not, so be it. But If we humble ourselves before the mighty hand of God, the promise is that in due time he will lift us up 1Pet.5:6; 2Chron.7:14. Faith, the fear of God, humility and honesty is the way forward with God to acquire new hearts and fresh starts.

Blessings

 

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