Because of Jesus, Part 2.

Steve Gentry

[0:00] Alright, go ahead and have a seat. Welcome to Village Church. If this is your first time [0:04] here, my name is Steve. I’m one of the pastors here at Village Church. As always, I’m thankful [0:10] to see each and every one of you here this morning. This is the day that the Lord has [0:16] made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. [0:21] We’ve been talking about humility from Philippians chapter 2. It’s interesting about humility [0:27] is that most of us think that we’re humble. No one wants to admit that they’re prideful,

[0:35] but you are, and you are the most prideful person you know. And the key is, you can [0:41] never say, I am a humble person, because it’s in that moment that you’ve found pride. You [0:49] can only hope to say, I am pursuing humility. And humility is this difficult thing, because [0:57] most of the ways that we try to seek humility or promote humility in our lives, it doesn’t [1:04] really help us land where humility is actually found, because we can’t do it apart from [1:11] Jesus. We can’t do it apart from who he is. So the command to humility is really difficult,

[1:19] because all of our practices seek to really make us look good. But true humility shows [1:27] the worth of Jesus in your life. [1:30] The apostle Paul in verses 1 through 4 of Philippians 2, he tells us this incredible [1:36] hard command. He says, be of one mind with other followers of Jesus. And then he says, [1:43] consider others as more significant than yourself. Good luck. He says, reject selfish ambition. [1:54] He says, look not only to your own interests, look to the interests of others. And so now

[2:00] we’re like, okay, that’s tough. Now how do I do that? And he doesn’t tell us. Because [2:08] every time we hear obey, and if it’s something that we struggle in, we’re very quick to [2:15] say, man, I don’t know how to do that. But then our then response is, how do I do that? [2:21] Give me one or two points on how I can apply that to my life. And the apostle Paul doesn’t [2:27] do that. He says, reject selfish ambition. Pursue humility. Count others more significant [2:34] than yourself. Consider the interests of others and not just your own interests. And

[2:38] then he just spends six verses saying, isn’t Jesus good? We say, well, yeah. But how do [2:47] I be humble? But it’s our pride that keeps us from understanding that Paul is not going [2:54] to call us to a course of action for humility. Because if he gave us a course of action, [3:02] it would do nothing more than to stoke the flames of your pride. Because then you could [3:09] say, look at the humility I have built. But instead the apostle Paul says, God doesn’t [3:16] give us a course of action to pursue humility with. God gives us a course of faith upon

[3:23] which humility will be built by God. And so after he tells us all of these amazing things [3:30] about humility, he doesn’t give us any way to actually build it, but instead he gives [3:37] us a Jesus to live in awe of. In the original created earth, when we actually saw perfection, [3:47] we saw people actually being satisfied by God, when we see people reject the authority [3:54] of God, what they’re actually rejecting is humility. Because God made Adam and Eve, he [4:00] has this perfect relationship with them. They experience his love in a way that we

[4:05] haven’t really experienced it, because it was this perfect unity between man and God. [4:09] And when sin entered, that unity was broken. But what the command of God was, it was not [4:14] just a simple, don’t do this. It was a…