Intro: The Lense of Humility

We are 4 weeks into our series “Light It Up”, taking a journey through Romans 12 to see how we can live out the gospel and light up the darkness with the power of Jesus inside of us! Today we are gonna take a roundabout look at Romans 12:3

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. —Romans 12:3

This verse acts as a sort of topic sentence or “thesis statement” for the following verses. Our pastor Jeff is going to get into those verses in the coming weeks but it can help us to understand for today that those following verses are about our gifts and using them as one body for the Kingdom of God. Romans 12:3 is meant to be a lense to view those verses through!

So what is it saying? Great question lol! Paul seems to be encouraging the early church in Rome that, because of the grace given to him by God, all believers should not be overly proud or “think highly” of themselves. Instead, Christ-followers should view themselves and their gifts/abilities/place in the body carefully, according and through the active faith that God has given them. In other words, because God has supplied us with the gifts, faith, and grace, we need to view our lives and what we do with them through the lense of HUMILITY!

The Older Brother: What Not to Do!

So, complete transparency with you all, I was not looking forward to talking about this. Why? BEACAUSE I STRUGGLE WITH HUMILITY! I would hazard a guess that most people in fact struggle with humility. So to help me illustrate what humility looks like and doesn’t look like, we are going to look at a very familiar story in scripture: the parable of the Prodigal Son.

Here is a quick recap of the story: A father has two sons and the younger one asks for his inheritance ahead of time. This would have been a major insult to the father because by asking for his inheritance early, the younger brother would have bypassed the older brother who was the rightful heir and communicated to his father, “I want you to go ahead and die so that I can get want belongs to you.” The younger brother then squanders all his inheritance on “wild living” and ends up poor and starving, resorting to eating what pigs eat just to stay alive, which again would be a major no-no for a Jewish person. He plans to go back to his father, beg his forgiveness, and ask to be made a servant so that he would have a roof over his head and food to eat. But while still some distance away, his father runs to him, embraces him, forgives him and accepts him back into the family and is made a son and heir again. And the father holds celebration for all because the younger brother was lost but now found.

Now that is the part most people tend to focus on because it’s such a great picture of our sin and the overwhelming nature of God’s love, mercy, and grace! But it’s the older brother’s story that is central to us today. Here’s what happened:

“Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.’ But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’ And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.” —Luke 15: 25-32

The older brother is out in the fields working, which might be confused as a sign of his hardwork and loyality to his father, but as we will see in a moment it is just a symbol of the purposeful distance between the two. He learns of the party and refuses to come in, forcing the father to come out and plead with him to come back, WHICH MIRRORS WHAT THE FATHER DID WITH THE YOUNGER BROTHER!!! The older brother is angry and bligerant with his father, won’t even claim the younger brother, throughs all his years of “faithful” service in his face. He does not care for the father’s love or for the rescue of his brother. His only concern is, “Look what I’VE done for you, what about MY sacrifices, what about MY hardwork, haven’t I done enough, what about MY party, what about MY reward, WHAT ABOUT ME???”

“What about me?”

Rick Warren started his book “Purpose Driven Life” with a phrase that has stuck with me and stepped on my toes for many, many years: “It’s Not About You.” The older brother is me. I make so much in my life about myself; my relationships, my job, my conversations, my own abilities. Many people do, even if they aren’t aware of it. How can I better myself, what will I get out of it, how can I make my life more comfortable, how can I succeed more for my family? Me me me.

There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to excel or better yourself. There is nothing with hard work or earning good rewards or having a positive image of yourself. The problem lies in all of that AND forgetting other people. Paul fully acknowledges that we have been given grace, faith, blessings, gifts and that they are good things BECAUSE THEY CAME FROM GOD. That they spring out of his good, pleasing and perfect will for us, which he talks about in Romans 12:2.

But the will of God wasn’t just to bless us, it is also that we would bless others. That we would fight and love and help and be apart of redeeming the broken and the lost. The least of these, the people mentioned in Matthew 5 (look it up!), the downtrodden, the oppressed, the lonely, the burdened. Paul says the way to look at our blessings, our rights, our freedoms, our responsibilities, is to look not only to our interests but the interests of others as well. In humility, consider what God has blessed us with and bless someone else.

Paul has another conversation about spiritual gifts and blessings with the church at Corinth in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14. They struggled with this concept of humility, with how to properly see themselves and their blessings and how to live out their faith. So smack dab in the middle of chapters 12 and 14, we find chapter 13. This is what it says:

And I will show you a still more excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. —1 Corinthians 13: 1-8

Did you catch that? The most excellent way to use our gifts and blessings and freedoms and rights and abilities is through love. And what is love like? It doesn’t envy what others have, it doesn’t boast of its own gifts, its not prideful or rude, or hateful or hold grudges, IT DOESN’T INSIST ON ITS OWN WAY. Love always looks out for the interest of others, it always seeks to fight for truth and protect and build up and help others without any want for itself. Because God is love, Jesus is love, and Jesus lived in humility. Therefore, love expresses itself in humility.

Friends, if our faith and our lives do not flow from and find their foundation in this, then we are living out our faith wrong. We need God to remind us of this. I NEED GOD TO REMIND ME OF THIS. Daily. Know that you all are loved very much!