PT-2 "Humility" (Eph. 4:2)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/23/2019 9:48 AM

My Worship Time                                                                                  Focus: PT-2 “Humility”



Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Ephesians 4:2



            Message of the verses:  “2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love,”



            We have been talking about humility in our last SD, and humility is the most foundational Christian virtue.  There is no way that we can please God without humility, and in the same way the Lord Jesus Christ could have not pleased His Father without being humble as we looked at when we looked at the verses in Philippians.  “Emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and…humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross’ (Phil. 2:7-8).



            The following is a very interesting quote from John MacArthur’s commentary on Ephesians as he writes about humility:  “Yet humility is terribly elusive, because if focused on too much it will turn into pride, its very opposite.  Humility is a virtue to be highly sought but never claimed, because once claimed it is forfeited.  Only Jesus Christ, as the perfectly obedient Son, could justifiably claim humility for Himself.  ‘Take My yoke upon you,’ He said, ‘for I am gentle and humble in heart’ (Matt. 11:29).  He came to earth as God’s Son, yet was born in a stable, raised in a peasant family, never owned property except the garments on His back, and was buried in a borrowed tomb.  At any time He could have exercised His divine rights, prerogatives, and glory, but in obedience and humility He refused to do so because it would have been to go outside His Father’s will.  If the Lord of glory walked in humility while He was on earth, how much more are His imperfect followers to do so?  ‘The one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked’ (1 John 2:6).”

            As we look around the world today we do not see a lot of humility, even in the church, and I suppose that one of the reasons is that pride, the opposite of humility, is a part of our old nature.  The first sin ever committed was pride as seen in the 14^th chapter of Isaiah where he writes about the fall of Lucifer, who became Satan.  In that chapter we see five “I wills” as Lucifer states “12 “How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, You who have weakened the nations! 13 “But you said in your heart, ’I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north. 14 ’I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’ 15 “Nevertheless you will be thrust down to Sheol, To the recesses of the pit (Isaiah 14:12-15).  Notice what the Lord says will happen to Lucifer because of his pride as seen in verse fifteen.

            As stated earlier that the church has its fair share of being prideful, that is not being humble, and one of the reasons that this is could be that far too many times the church goes after the things of the world.  God has much to say about both pride and humility in His Word, and I suppose that we can find many of them in the book of Proverbs, along with the OT prophets. 

            We will talk more about humility in our next few Spiritual Diaries, but as I close this section today I want to talk about something that I heard on a sermon on this section of Ephesians spoken by John MacArthur.  He stated that he had some students over to his house one day and one of them asked when did he overcome pride.  What he said afterwards helps put things into perspective in our battle against this sin of pride.  He stated that this will be an ongoing battle, perhaps this is one of the reasons that we as believers need to put on the Spiritual Armor each day, and perhaps this is a reason why we are to keep short lists with God, asking Him to search our hearts so that His Spirit can find sinful things that we have committed, and then confess them to the Lord.  The statement that MacArthur made about this being a battle actually encouraged me as I believe that our obedient life, our walk with the Lord is and always will be a battle until we shed this earthly body we live in and are transported to heaven.

Quotation for Today:  “Fear knocked, faith answered, no one was there.”

We will look at the verse that goes along with this quote in our next SD.

2/23/2019 10:24 AM