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- [00:04]
Podcast Host
Welcome to Gospel in life, many of us try to change through sheer willpower, conquering bad habits or forcing better behavior, only to find ourselves snapping back to old patterns. In today's message, Tim Keller is exploring the fruit of the Spirit, showing how real transformation isn't about moral restraint, but a heart that through Christ, is changed from the inside out.
- [00:33]
Scripture Reader
Tonight's scripture reading comes from the book of Philippians, chapter 2, verses 1 through 11. If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility. Consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature, God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing. Taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. 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, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. This is God's word.
- [02:08]
Tim Keller
This is a great passage on humility that you just had read. When we have talked in the last few months about justice and the poor, I've always sensed that even though it's important, it's what the Bible says. We have the cultural wind to our back. Do you know what I mean? The culture says great. We're really glad that you Christians are thinking about that. We're interested in that too. So you have your wind to the back. But when you get to this subject, and this subject is humility, when you get to what the Bible says about humility, we have the cultural wind in our face. Contemporary people, especially contemporary New Yorkers, stare at the biblical concept of humility the way a cow stares at a new gate. Recently a commentator on the trends in the culture said this said humility has come under attack in our society over the last few decades. Self effacement has become identified with conformity and self repression. A different ethos came to the forehead, which sociologists have called expressive individualism. Instead of being humble before God in history, now in our society, salvation is found through intimate contact with oneself and by exposing the beauty, the power, and even the divinity within. See, that's the approach of our culture. And that completely flies in the face of what this text and what the Bible says about the importance of humility. Let's notice three things. This magnificent passage. We could easily do 30 weeks of sermons on just this passage, but we won't. Instead, I'll give you a top level look at this is going to tell us about a sickness that we have, about what we would look like if we were healthy, and how to get the cure. Sickness, a picture of health and the cure. Now the sickness is find it in verse 2 and 3. Be like minded, he says, have the same love, be one in spirit and purpose. Now he's describing a unified human community. This is what we all want. We all want to live in a human community that there's no fighting and divisions, but there's love and there's oneness of spirit, oneness of mind. Okay, Instead we have bombs in Times Square and political polarization and war. And you say, but this is actually talking about the church, right? That's the point. The point is there's something wrong with the human heart. So wrong that even inside a body like the church, where everybody shares the same faith, there's constant fighting. The reason Paul's bringing this up, as you will know if you read, just read on to the end of the short letter, is there's contentions going on between a couple of key figures in the church. Churches are filled with fighting and divisions just like the rest of the world. Why? Cause there's something wrong with the heart. What is that? Well, he mentions it. He says, if you're gonna have oneness, therefore do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Now, the selfish ambition isn't a particularly illuminating phrase. It really just means the spirit of divisiveness, which is kind of what we know is the problem. But the second phrase is crucial. The reason why we do things out of selfish ambition or the reason why we have this division while we're always fighting is because of what he calls, what this translation calls vain conceit. But it's a single Greek word. Kino, doxos. Kino means to empty, kenosis, to empty oneself. And doxa means glory and honor. Respect. What does it mean to be characterized by kinadoxia? It means to be glory empty, to be hungry for honor, hungry for respect, hungry for that kind of assurance because you don't feel like you are a person of importance. This is radical cosmic insecurity. This is feeling. I don't count, I don't matter. I'm ephemeral. I'm a wave upon the sand. You know, I need assurance that I'm okay, that I'm important, that I count. You know, hungry for respect and for glory and for honor. This is the human soul. It's much better, is it not? It's much better to be hated and attacked than to be ignored. Remember at the end of the movie or the play, Amadeus, why is the agent, the aging Salieri, in a kind of living hell? Because as this composer gets old, he's not disliked, he's been forgotten. And because he's been forgotten, that's hell to be absolutely and finally dismissed and ignored. Now you see why being glory empty, feeling like I'm not important, I don't count, leads to the division. I mean, you can see it in a street gang. What are street gangs? They're filled with generally young men that do not feel in any way valued by their society and very often not valued or loved by their families. And as a result, they walk down the street and if you slight them slightly, they'll pull a gun on you. Because they're glory empty. Because they don't feel important, they fight. And you say, well, of course, that's easy to see because you know, yeah, that's them. They have low self esteem, et cetera. Yeah, I know. Except if you read history, if you just read history, you'll know that nation states have always acted the same way as street gangs. You know, just slight them slightly and they go to war. Because it's what we are corporately. It's what we are corporately. Why? Why are we this way? Well, think of what the Bible says. I don't have a better diagnosis. The Bible says we were made originally to live forever, but because we've turned away from God, now we're fading. We know we were made to never be forgotten. We were made to stand in the presence of God and get his favor. We were made to last. But because we've turned away from God, we know we're dying. We know we're fading, we know we're going to be forgotten. We don't feel real, we feel like a wave upon the sand. We feel like a moonbeam in the hand and all that. And so we desperately look to everybody we possibly can to get them to say, you're good, you're important, you're worthwhile, you know you'll never be forgotten. You're so Significant. And we just desperate. And that's why we fight. Lewis Smedes, the Christian writer, says this about pride. Because what we're talking about, this hunger for glory, is pride. And he says pride is this in the spiritual sense, is refusal to let God be God. It's to grab God's status for oneself. It's wishing to be the Creator, independent, reliant on one's own resources. And that is the greatest illusion, the delusional fantasy of all fantasies, the cosmic put on the fantasy that we can make it as our own gods, which is where everybody is. Leaves us empty at the center. Hear that? Leaves us empty at the center. Therefore, we learn to swagger. We're attacked by demons of fear and anxiety. So we bluff. We look around, and whenever we see a new person, we use people as buttresses for the shaky ego that pride created. Every time you meet a new person, you are unconsciously wondering, how can this person contribute to my need to prove that I count? Life therefore, becomes a constant battle to use people to bolster your own self. So there's the sickness, pride, which is a hunger for glory, a need for respect, a need to be assured that we're real. What would health look like then if we didn't have this? What would health look like? And the answer is intriguing. It's all summed up in the word humility. Because, see, keep on going. He says in verse 2, I want you to be unified. Verse 3A, the first part, says, and the reason you're not is because of this emptiness, this vainglory. That's what the King James Bible, which is a little better. It translates emptiness, you know, devoid of glory because of your emptiness, because of your pride. Therefore, he says starting verse 3b, in humility, consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Boy, that tells you a lot. But let's first of all look at the word humility. What is it? It's a simple Greek word that means gentle, modest, deferential. Gentle, modest, deferring to others. Outside of the New Testament, this Greek word, whenever it was used in any other kind of ancient Greek literature, was always derogatory. Because in the Greco Roman society, to be deferential and to be gentle and to be modest was the attitude of a slave. See, that old society valued strength, and they believed that actually social stability was based on fear. People had to respect you. They treated you with respect. Then society would hold together. And the only way for respect is if people feared you Gentleness and deference and modesty. Ha. That's for slaves. And yet this word in the Bible, or version of it, is used 270 times and almost always positively. You realize what a worldview revolution this was in Western culture, that humility, only Christianity comes along. Humility. If you go back and you look at the Greeks and you look at the, you know, Aristotle and Plato, you look at all their emphasis on virtues, you'll never see humility in there. And yet do you know how important humility is in the Bible? It's not just important. I want you to think of something for a second. When Jesus says, the meek, the humble will inherit the earth. When Jesus says, take my yoke upon me and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. What is he saying? Well, think about the Gospel for a second. If you come to God and say, I want to have a relationship with you, look at all my accomplishments, look what I have done, God's going to turn you away saying, you don't know who I am, you don't know who you are. You don't know what the cross of Jesus Christ means. But if you come and say, oh Lord, I repent, I need your grace, I have nothing with which to merit your favor, but I ask that you would save me for Jesus sake. That's repentance and faith. You're saved by grace. You're saved through faith. But you know what that is? That's humility. The only thing that can kill you, the only thing that can destroy you eternally is a lack of humility. You can lack almost any other thing, but not that, because that's what connects you to God. In fact, if you want to think about it, basically God's plan of salvation is to lift up the humble. He says so in Luke 1. His plan of salvation is to lift up the humble. You see how important it is? Well, what is it? What is it? Well, actually, Paul gives a pretty good top level answer. But let me. Since one of the advantages of this series has been to give people tools for self evaluation, let me take you to Jonathan Edwards. He spent a great deal of time, he was a Christian minister that spent a great deal of time thinking about spiritual growth and true Christianity. And in a couple of different places. He spends a fair amount of time treating the subject of what does the Bible say humility is? And I have summarized into four things what he says, says pride is and therefore opposed, which is opposed to humility. And there are Actually pretty good ways for me to look at my own life and to think about myself. He says pride is opposed to four things and therefore. Pardon me, pride is four things. And humility, therefore is opposed to these four things. Drivenness, scornfulness, willfulness, and self consciousness. Okay, think with me for a minute. First of all, humility is opposed to drivenness. Be careful. It is very possible to be passionate and hardworking and desiring excellence because you love the thing that you are pursuing. If you pursue excellence in art or in music, if you pursue excellence in business or education or your academic field, it might be because you actually love the field. It could be that, for example, you just love running and you love to see people run and you just love the athleticism of it. And if that's the reason why you are running and trying to run faster and faster as an athlete, if it's true that your competitiveness is a joy driven competitiveness, then you will be almost as happy if your friend breaks the record as if you do. But that's not how it usually works, is it? Because our competitiveness is not driven by joy, it's driven by an inner vacuum. This is the reason why there's a great place where C.S. lewis says in his book Mere Christianity, he says pride, real pride, gets no pleasure out of having something. Pride only gets pleasure out of having more of it than the next person. You may think you're proud of being successful or intelligent or good looking, but when surrounded by those who are equal or better than you, you lose all pleasure in those things. It's the comparison that makes you proud. It's the pleasure of being above the rest. And that's exactly right. And so, first of all, Jonathan Edwards says, here's how you can tell if you are a proud person. You're driven, you need to succeed. You're always unhappy with, you didn't do that well, you didn't do it right. You can do better. You're driven, you know, you're restless. But humility is content. Content with circumstances, content with being imperfect. Humility is the opposite of drivenness. Think about that. Secondly, humility is the opposite of scornfulness. Now, by the way, sometimes you can be sarcastic, especially about a really, really wrongful thing. And you might want to use sarcasm to maybe get your point across. But in general, as I think Edwards rightly says, he says treating others with contempt, jeering, ridiculing is always a manifestation of pride. Why? Because you're putting people down. That's the metaphor we use. You're putting people down so you can be above them. Instead, humility means treating all those who are lesser than you or opposed to you with courtesy, grace and affability. Always. So one of the ways you see pride is drivenness. Humility is the opposite of that. One of the ways you see pride is scornfulness, mocking sarcasm all the time, put downs. Humility is the opposite of that. Thirdly, humility is the opposite of willfulness. Edwards says that one of the marks of spiritual pride in churches is, he says, spiritually proud people are always absolutely sure of every point of their beliefs. A proud person cannot admit they're wrong. Proud people can't admit they're wrong. They can't take advice, they can't take correction. They don't like repenting. If they repent, it's always under duress. They're not teachable, they're not open to advice. They're not willing to change their mind. They don't listen. They're not teachable. So willfulness, so pride is opposite of drivenness, scornfulness, willfulness and self consciousness. Now think about this with me for a minute. When you and I think of proud people, we almost always think of arrogant people, but that's not the only form of pride. We think of people who are self promoters and who are bragging all the time. But that's not the only form of pride. Oh no. Because ultimately, pride, the opposite of humility is this insecurity, this need for honor, this need for glory. And that can be as much a manifestation, that can be as manifested as much through an inferiority feeling as a superiority feeling. Because if you're always down on yourself and you're always beating yourself up, or if you're afraid of compliments, you're afraid of any kind of attention, it's because you are just as painfully self aware, you're just as absorbed in thinking about yourself. You're looking at yourself and wondering, you know, how am I coming across as the person with a superiority complex? So humility is the opposite of self consciousness.
- [19:12]
Podcast Host
With Christmas just around the corner, we are inviting people to sign up for our Advent Devotional series, which you can receive daily from November 30 to December 24. The daily meditations will help you take time to think about the meaning and joy that comes from Christ's birthday. Each day of Advent, you'll receive a devotional with a meditation on a Bible passage that focuses on why Jesus came into the world to reconcile us to our Heavenly Father. We believe that during this short season, this is a great tool to help you focus on the hope, joy, peace and love we have through Christ's birth. You can sign up by visiting gospelandlife.com advent again. To sign up, go to gospelandlife.com adventure. In addition to the daily emails, you'll also receive a video message each Sunday. The weekly video message starts each week of Advent with a meditation from Tim Keller, followed by a brief discussion with Tim and Kathy talking about something they noticed in the meditation. It's our prayer that through this Advent series, you experience the hope and joy that comes from Christ's birth and that it is a source of encouragement to you this Advent season. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching.
- [20:24]
Tim Keller
Listen, let me press this a little bit on you. In the Screwtape letters, there's a devil named Screwtape. This is written by CS Lewis and he is giving advice to his junior devil nephew on how to tempt a human being, which he calls a patient. So whenever you read something you know in a sermon out of Screwtape letters, you have to kind of turn yourself upside down because the devil giving advice to another devil about you know how to tempt a human being. But listen to this. Screwtape says, I see your patient has become humble. Have you drawn attention to the fact catch him at the moment he's really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind I'm being humble and pride in his own humility will appear. Now listen to this. Abjection and self hatred can do us such good, us demons, if they keep the man concerned with himself and self. Contempt can be the starting point for a life contemptuous of all other selves and therefore a life filled with gloom, cynicism and cruelty. So let your patient think of humility not as self forgetfulness, but as a low opinion of his own talents and character. And see, that brings us to the text itself. What's so brilliant about this text is he says, I want you to have humility. Well, he describes it, what does that mean? Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Look at that. He didn't say hate yourself, don't have any interests, don't have any goals, don't have any needs. He didn't say that. Humility is what you're looking at. That's the reason why what Screwtape is saying and what C.S. lewis is saying is true. Humility is not thinking less of yourself or thinking more of yourself. It's thinking of yourself less. It's not Noticing yourself because you're not glory hungry. It's not always worried about how are you looking. It's not being down on yourself. It's not being up on yourself. It's just not talking and thinking about yourself so much. Did you hear what Screwtape said? He says self hatred is a wonderful way to. To get people to be cynical and gloomy and cruel. Because if you don't like yourself, then you're not gonna like other people and you're gonna be very cruel to them. So you see, humility is the opposite of self consciousness, self awareness. Real humility is self forgetfulness. The best way I can illustrate this is your body parts. If you go to work tomorrow and somebody comes in saying, boy, my elbows feel great, you know you're gonna say, well, the only reason anybody would ever say that is if yesterday their elbows didn't feel great. Because ordinarily if your elbows are working fine, they don't draw attention to themselves. If somebody's saying, oh man, my knees are bending so well today. I mean, when I sit down, they bend. When I stand up, they unbend. It's just incredible. Well, you got to figure it must be that the knees weren't bending. I mean, you would never even think about it unless there was something wrong. You don't think of your knees unless there's something wrong with them. You don't think of your elbows unless there's something wrong with them. Okay, now let's look at your ego, your sense of self. If you were healthy, you wouldn't even think about how you're doing, how you're looking, what people are saying about you. You wouldn't even think about it. You wouldn't be looking at yourself or your own interests. You'd be looking, see, at other things, looking at God, looking at your neighbor, looking at everybody else. And yet that's not true. You're always thinking about yourself. How are you looking? You're always getting your feelings hurt. You're always getting your. You're feeling insulted, you're feeling snubbed, you're feeling, you know, or here's a person over there that you want to like you more than really that he or she does. So you're always thinking about yourself, why there's something wrong with your ego. Just like if you're ever thinking about your elbow, there's something wrong with your elbow. We're not healthy. We're vain, glorious. We're lacking in glory. And as a result, we're not humble at all. We're filled with Drivenness, scornfulness, willfulness and self consciousness. So what's the cure? Well, I'd like to show you that this passage is giving us a top. It's sort of a top cure. I don't know. It speaks broadly, middle and practically too. It wasn't until fairly recently, as well as I've known, this passage. This is one of the most famous passages in the Bible. If you're a theological student and you're trying to learn what does the Bible teach about Christ, you study this thing word for word, almost letter for letter. I know I did, you know, a long time ago. And it's an amazing, sweeping, magnificent hymn. It's a hymn. You notice why it's laying on the page the way it is looking like it's in verse, because either Paul wrote this this way or else he was quoting somebody else's. But this, because of its lexical links, its parallelism, its rhythm, its. This is a hymn. This is a song. It's a hymn of praise to the deity of Jesus Christ, the greatness of who he is and what he's done. Now, here's what I want to ask. Here's the first question, and this is actually the first answer to the cure here. Why would Paul do this? He's talking about something very, very practical. Humility and fighting in the church. Very practical. And all of a sudden he goes into this, this sweeping theological discourse. Why? And here's the reason why. You cannot work on humility directly. It's a byproduct of something else. You can't work on it directly. Do you know what I mean by this? I mean, I've already. Do you realize that we've already gotten less and less humble as the minutes have gone by here? Don't you know why? In other words, it's impossible to work on it directly? We kind of got that from the Screwtape letters there. Real humility is not thinking about yourself, but that's what we're doing. So, for example, okay, you've got this little, you know, this little set of evaluation tools in your head now for a minute. I don't know how long they'll be there, but for a few days you might remember drivenness, scornfulness, willfulness and self consciousness. Okay, Next time you see somebody being scornful, next time you see somebody being willful, what are you gonna do? You're gonna go. Proud? Not me. I'm not going to do that. And you know, the only way you can possibly work on humility is to really lose it. You Know why? Because you can't work on humility if humility is self forgetfulness. You can only work on not appearing proud. You can only work on your own appearances, which is to destroy it. You know, humility is the shyest of virtues. Talk to humility without it going away. It just doesn't want to be there, okay? And therefore you can't work directly on humility. You mustn't try to work directly on humility. Well, then what are you supposed to do? You're supposed to look at someone else. And this isn't just theology. This is a hymn. It's written to be chanted, or to be recited, or to be sung. And what is Paul saying? Paul's saying, the way we're going to fix what is most wrong with us in our center is you've got to see Jesus. You've got to have the theology, you have to have biblical doctrine on fire in your heart. Something you praise God for, something that captures your imagination who Jesus is and what he has done. And it's doctrine on fire, theology on fire in your heart. Humility is a byproduct of wanting something more than to be humble. Because if you want to be humble, it's all about you. It's all about you. If you want to be humble, why would you want to be humble? Except, I mean, I don't want to look proud or I want to, you know, I want to be right or I want to, you know, you got to want him, you got to worship him. You got to see him. Humility is a byproduct of wanting something more than humility, wanting him first. That's the top. That's the first part of the cure. The second part of the cure, though it's not. This is not just doctrine in general. Look at what it is. It's a trajectory. In fact, somebody said that this passage of verses 5 to 11 is actually a symphony in three movements. The first movement is incarnation. Though he was God, he became human. The second motion is to atonement. Though he was human, he didn't just have a nice comfortable life, but he went to the cross. And the third movement is up, he comes down, he goes even lower. Therefore God has highly exalted him. Now what did he do? Here's what he did. This is the heart of it all, right? In the center of this passage it says, and being, it says, though in the very nature of God he did not count equality with God. Something to be grasped in verse 7, but made himself nothing. Now, do you know what that word is the Greek word kenosis. Kenosis. Does that sound familiar to you? Yes. It says he emptied himself. Though he was God, he emptied himself. And the big question that theologians have been asking for about 2,000 years is emptied himself of what? Doesn't say. It just says he emptied himself. And some people have said, oh, of course, he was God. So he emptied himself of his deity. He emptied himself of his divinity. But that's not what it says. It never says that he gave up being God. It says he started being a servant. He did not shed his divine nature, he assumed a human nature. And more than that, he became not just a king, he became a servant. And there it is. He emptied himself of his glory, not his deity. What? Yeah, listen, in heaven, if you were transported to heaven then or now, and you saw Jesus as God, his godness manifested itself through an expression of glory, his beauty, his brightness, it would just knock you down. When you see something beautiful, when you see a piece of art or a waterfall or anything that's just absolutely beautiful, even earthly things that are beautiful, you gotta adore, right? It's so glorious, it just evokes adoration. But Jesus Christ came without that. Isaiah 53 says, he had no beauty, that we should desire Him. He emptied himself of his glory. He emptied himself of his beauty. He emptied himself of that which evokes honor. And so he came, and he was lonely and he was poor, and eventually he was beaten and he was tortured and he was killed. He emptied himself of his glory. He became small, not a king at all. He became rejected. He became beatable, and he was beaten. See, he became rejectable and he was rejected. He lost all of his glory. He came out his glory. He didn't stop being God, but he emptied himself of his glory. Therefore, God has highly exalted him. Why? Why is he resurrected? Why is he up there? Because he saved us. He took our punishment upon himself. So he's redeemed the new humanity and he's leading us into the future. And so there it is. There's the trajectory. What is the trajectory? Everybody. The way up is down. The way to be truly rich is to give away. The way to rule is to serve. And the way to become infinitely happy is to not seek your own happiness, but seek the happiness of others. And the most glorious thing of all, the greatest form of glory, is to give away your glory for somebody else. And now you see the word kenosis shows up twice. And look at it. You and I are desperately trying to fill ourselves with glory, but we end up empty. But Jesus Christ, who had true glory, emptied himself so we could be full. Full. Yes. Because Jesus Christ became small, we are big in the eyes of the Father. Because Jesus Christ lost all of his glory, we are now given his righteousness and his record. This is what the gospel is, that Jesus Christ was treated the way we deserve. So now when we believe in him, we are treated as he deserves to be treated. And you know what this means? Jesus Christ looks at you and says to me, and in me you are more precious than all the jewels that lie beneath the earth. To the degree you know that and believe that, to the degree you are gripped and you are praising God and you're singing about Jesus trajectory for you, you will be able to walk that same trajectory here, because you will know the way up is down the way. To be rich is to give away. The way to be happy is not to seek your own happiness, but the happiness of others. And when you see that he did that for you, that fills you up so you're not empty anymore. And you'll be able to not have to think about yourself. And out you go. Let me give you just one, one practical thing on this. I've already told you, in a sense, you can't work on your humility, but you can work on your pride. Here's what I remember, this King James Version, the King James version of Philippians 2. 7 is he made himself of no reputation. And I remember some years ago, one of the humblest men I've ever worked with was a pastor on our staff named Dick Kaufman. He was here in the 90s. And I always wanted to know, you know, you can't say to a humble person what is the secret of your humility? Because if they answer, you'd have to go find somebody else. You know, you've ruined them right there, you know. Oh, why, thank you. Yeah, let me think about it. I guess it must be, no, you don't want that. You don't want that at all. But I do remember one day he confessed to me that there are two things that he couldn't stand, hardly. One is when he didn't do his best, and the other was when he got real sharp, unfair criticism. You know, he said, if I get good criticism, okay, if I get unfair criticism or if I feel like I didn't do my best. I said, so why does that bother you so much? He says, because there's nothing more important to me, unfortunately, than my reputation. There's nothing more important to me than my reputation. It means everything to Me, if I think anything is hurting my reputation, then I just start to fall apart. And he says, but here's what I've learned to do, and it's really helped. I meditate on Philippians 2. 7. I realize Jesus made himself of no reputation. He lost his reputation for me. And if his reputation didn't mean anything for him, if he gave it up for me, then I can give it up for him. Do you know how to do that? Is there a place in your life, is there a spot in your prayer life? Is there a place where you regularly hear Jesus say, in me, and to me you are more precious than all the jewels that lie beneath the earth. So why the heck do you care if somebody snubbed you? Why do you mind whether what you look like there? Who cares about your reputation when you know that I love you like this? Is there someplace where something like that happens in the depths of your soul? See, that's how you develop humility. Not by looking at yourself, but by looking at him. I heard a story some years ago about a young man who went into a little British town to climb the mountain right behind the town. And they all said, oh, now look, it's higher than you think and the weather is worse than you think. But he was sort of overconfident and he didn't go up with appropriate gear. And he thought he knew what he was doing. So he walked out of the mount, out of the village one morning to go up the mountain with his head held high. And several hours he came back crestfallen. He hadn't even gotten halfway up. And it was an old lady who saw him come back in and said, son, if you'd gone up the way you came down, you would have come down the way you went up. Which is another way of saying, humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and he will exalt you in due time. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this, the gift of humility, which is not something that we ever get. If we ask for it, look for it, see whether we've gotten it or not. It's a shy virtue. But we know this, that if we look at you and we look at your humility and we look at what you've done for us, and we just look at it and look at it and look at it until it catches fire in our hearts, until it moves us to tears, it's going to change us. We will not be as marked by drivenness and scornfulness and willfulness and self consciousness. So we pray that you would make us like your son who came not to be served, but to serve and give his life a ransom for many. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
- [37:37]
Podcast Host
Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel and Life podcast. We hope that today's teaching encouraged to go deeper into God's Word. You can help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it. And to find more great gospel centered content by Tim Keller, visit gospelandlife.com Today's sermon was recorded in 2010. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior Pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.