That video was from our Peru team this summer, and the video music we put together by Danny Farmer. Danny, thank you for doing that. Take out Bible and turn to 1 Peter chapter 5, where we'll read the first seven verses in this final chapter of 1 Peter. To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder, the witness of Christ's sufferings and one who will also share in the glory to be revealed. Be shepherds under God's flock that is under your care, serving as overseers. Not because you must, but because you're willing, as God wants you to be. Not greedy for money, but eager to serve. Not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away. Young man in the same way, be submissive to those who are older. All of you close yourselves with humility toward one another because God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under God's mighty hand that he may lift you up in due time, cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. I wasn't much fun to be with this week. Last Sunday night, I checked my bank account online, and for the first time I saw red numbers. And I thought, how can this be? And as I looked at my account, I found a check that went out from our account for $11,824 to Verizon Wireless. I thought that can't be. That's fraudulent. The numbers were okay, but what I realized was there was a decimal missing. It should have been $118 in $24. The check went out as $11,824. I went to the bank for a thing Monday morning, and the lady was very helpful, and told me the problem wasn't fixed. Plus, she said, you didn't have that much money in your account. I said, no kidding. She said, well, we didn't pay it when it was presented. It's going to be okay, and I was, of course, embarrassed. I figured that Verizon Wireless would just bill me the $118 the next month, that they just double bill me and I'd strain it out then. Turned to be a tad naive. On Wednesday night, Verizon Wireless sent the same check back through again. And this time, the red numbers stayed. We had no money. None in checking. None in savings. I spent hours on the phone with the bank and with Verizon, and was told, sorry, sir, it's going to take several days to reverse this. What do you do? Couldn't go to the grocery store. How do I write my son a check for college? I thought about standing out on Thompson Bridge Road with one of those signs that says, we'll work for food. I thought it might be maybe a bad reflection on the church. It wouldn't be accurate, because it was my mistake. There was a sense of just panic and vulnerability. And weakness, and when you're stressed like that, your sins rise to the top. I wasn't very much fun to be with this week. I realized in retrospect that it was maybe a good lesson for this week's sermon on humility. You're right. I have lots to be humble about. We've been looking at the 12 steps of recovery as a way of understanding the Bible's teaching on repentance. Why are we doing this? Very simple, because you and I are in a very dangerous place today. In a very dangerous place. What I mean by that. I mean, you're in a dangerous place because you're in church. That's a dangerous place to be. It's good that you're here, but it's dangerous at the same time. Why do I say that? It's because of this starting dichotomy. Some people go to church and look better but get worse. Other people go to an AA group and look worse but get better. How do we explain that? You see, church really can be a dangerous place to be. And these 12 steps of recovery are helpful insofar as they bring out what the Bible says about repentance. Step one, we admitted we were powerless over blank and that our lives had become unmanageable. It's a step of honesty. Step two, we became to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. It's a step of hope. Step three, we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. That's faith. Step four, we made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. That's integrity. Step five, we admitted to God to ourselves into another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. That's courage. Step six, we were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. That's willingness. And step seven, we humbly ask Him to remove all of our shortcomings. That's the step of humility. Now I hope if you haven't already sensed it that you can see that these are one not one time steps. Because you and I don't have any one time sense. In fact, a friend recently in another state told me that she is currently going through the steps again. Maybe you have a friend that is in AA or another organization. You've heard them talk about going through the steps and it sometimes can even sound almost cult-like in addition to repetitive and depressing. Let me tell you what she says. She says it is so refreshing because going through the steps encourages her to look at the deeper issues in her life that drive her addiction. And surely nothing shows us of our need to repeat the process any more than this step of humility. Why do I say that? Because you and I all struggle with pride. All of us. Even if your bank account wasn't at zero or underneath zero this week, you and I all struggle with pride. C.H. Spurgeon, the greatest preacher in the English language who ever lived, said this to say about pride. You may hunt down this box and thank you have destroyed it and low your very exaltation is pride. None have more pride than those who think that they have none. You may labor against pride until you believe that your humble and the fond conceit of your humility will prove to be pride in full bloom. It imitates humility well and then is most truly pride. Pride is a sin with a thousand lives. It seems impossible to kill it. It flourishes on that which should be its poison, gloring in its shame. It is a sin with a thousand shapes. By perpetual change it escapes capture. To die to pride and self one would need to die himself. Pride was man's first sin and will be his last. Brothers and sisters for certain you and I are in danger of pride. Possibly we are even now victims of it. So one of the components of humility if pride is all around us or you may have heard the story of I've told before about Roland Hill who came down after preaching a wonderful sermon, one Sunday in his church in London England and one of his deacons came up to him and said, past your hill, that was a fantastic sermon. And Roland Hill said, you're too late. The devil already told me that. Pride is everywhere. What are the components of humility? First component certainly is just a sense of brokenness. You know how this when you hear somebody else just bragging. Maybe they're bragging on their grandchildren or on their son or their daughter or what they make or their car or their vacation. And you think he just brags so much I'd like to see him taken down a notch or two. That actually is the sense behind the Greek word which is translated humility. It literally means in Greek to level a mountain or hill. Picture a mountain or hill that's just been completely leveled by earth moving equipment. That's the sense behind the word humility. Humble people you see are people who have no no hills sticking up. This is why in Luke 3 which is quoting Isaiah 40 says, the John the Baptist mission in preparing for the way for the Messiah was every valley shall be filled up. Every mountain and hill shall be made low. He's going to be preaching about a message of repentance. Humility in one sense is a conviction when you sin. But even more than that humility is having a realistic evaluation of your condition. Humility is being weak and empty and knowing it. Pride is being weak and empty but believing otherwise. Have you ever gotten up gone to shower so forth with no specific intention to do anything wrong? You've been up two or three minutes and suddenly you had some blasphemous thought of some particular sin. What's going on? Where did that come from? The truth is when I get up every morning I am already broken. The truth is when I get up every morning I am already broken the key is whether I will admit to it or not. The key is whether I'm aware of it or not. Have you noticed when you get up in the morning your first impulse is not to read the Bible and pray. That's not your first impulse. You may be agree that you should but it's easy to skip because you aren't in touch with your desperate need. It's the same thing true on Sunday mornings in regard to Sunday school and church. Well maybe I should but I don't really feel the need this particular day. Suppose you drove a car that has a gas gauge that doesn't work. It's absolutely useless. It doesn't tell you when you're out of gas or even when you're low on gas, how would that affect you? Well it would affect you like this. You wouldn't know when to go to the gas station and in the same way the gauge of your heart every morning betrays you. Every morning it doesn't blink and stay empty when the reality is that you are. The temptation is the thing. I can run just fine on what I had in my tank yesterday. In my broken condition God wants to be my delight. Remember the story of the Lion the Witch in the Wardrobe and Edmund the little boy in the story is captured by the white witch. And what is he enticed with? He's enticed with Turkish delight and the moment it touches his lips he can't stop. He can't get enough. But the truth is the Turkish delight wasn't really what would satisfy him. When we talk about removing our shortcomings we're not talking simply about shortcomings. We're talking about God removing our idols. Remember Jesus' conversation with a woman at the well and he says to her go call your husband. And she says well I don't really have a husband. And Jesus says you've said that truly you've had seven and the man you're living with now is not even your husband. What was this woman doing? She had a spiritual thirst that she was trying to satisfy the wrong way. Her gas gauge was broken. She thought a man would fix it. There are thousands of people aren't there. Just like that all around us they think this particular person will meet my needs. This substance will fill my tank, make no mistake. If you're having an affair, if you can't stop drinking, if you're addicted to pot, relationship to porn, to gambling or to dieting, you must understand your spiritual gas gauge is broken. It doesn't tell you that you're empty. It doesn't tell you what you're really hungry for and what will really satisfy you. Isaiah 57 says for this is what the high and lofty one says he who lives forever whose name is holy. I live in a high and holy place but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. So if we're going to understand humility, we first have to understand our own brokenness. And then if we're going to understand humility we have to understand the dependence. Have you ever wondered why a good God allows trials and temptations? When you're tempted in that place in your life that you think of when you think of a place that is just unmanageable, what good purpose could there be for God allowing us to be tempted by besetting sins? Does God enjoy seeing us in contortions like an ant is contortion with a sixth grader who holds a magnifying glass in class and is using the sun to, you know, kind of, to scorch the ant and to make him shrivel and to contort is God like that. That would be sick. And that isn't God. What about my money transfer of $11,824 this week? Why would a good God allow something like that? I felt desperate. Not just about the $11,824, my thought was how many other checks now are going to bounce because of that. But the truth is this, I'm really dependent. That dependent all the time. I'm just not aware of it ordinarily. I'm dependent like that all the time. I'm just not aware of it. I ordered a golf club recently online, a great deal called and spoke to the representative and he said, will ship it out next Tuesday and you'll get an email with a federal express tracking number. No email on Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or Friday, no tracking number. Finally, the next Monday, they won't answer the phone. They won't respond to my emails and I'm getting kind of irritated. It wasn't a lot of money involved. It was about 60 bucks. I knew the credit card company would refund it but I wasn't going to get any money. But the root issue for me was that I felt like I was being taken advantage of. They were making me look foolish. Now, I didn't have reason to be irritated but I was ready to express it unrighteously. I was ready to get somebody on the phone and give him what for if I could have ever gotten them to call me back on the phone. Why does God allow that? That kind of frustration? It's just not right. You know why God allowed that for me? I thought about it. It's because I have idols. You see, I like to think of myself as being jovial and easygoing. After all, I can tell jokes and entertain people and I have lots of friends. I like to think of myself as being patient and kind and loving. It's not the truth. Never forget this. Your reactions show who you really are. Your reactions show what you are really like. You don't get anything else. Take that home with you. And don't miss this. God allows temptations and God allows addictions that reveal our sinfulness to remind us that we're weak and how much we need him because it's part of the means that God uses to humble us because humble believers are dependent followers. If you went to an AA meeting you would hear something like this. Hi, I'm Coral. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Coral. I'm Janet. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Janet. It's how people identify themselves. There's a good amount of time and meetings it's spent in hearing other people's stories. Do you know why people don't like that? If you've never gone to an AA meeting. Do you know why you just kind of recoil at the thought of that? I'll tell you why. It's because it's real. It's because there's a lot of humility involved. If you hate the thought of it, it's your own pride. It's because you don't want it to be dependent on God or anybody else. That's true. If you're a Christian, you're more than just an alcoholic. You're more than a drunk. But it's good to be reminded. And hearing other people's stories of failure and sin reminds us of our precarious plight. Our precarious plight. You didn't realize when you came to church this morning that you were in a dangerous place. You don't realize when you go to eat somewhere this afternoon you're in a dangerous place. Or when you watch TV or sit in the front of computer or go to work tomorrow. You're in a dangerous place. Hearing other people's stories and failures reminds us of our precarious plight. We forget the danger that we're in. I could fall at any moment. I know people who go to 12 step programs and say things like I have truthfully lost the desire to drink. What would that look like for you? I have lost the desire to gossip, to lust, to have affairs, to gamble, to rage, to lie, to binge on food, to starve, to drink. To shoot up drugs. I want to challenge you this morning in the way that you look at yourself. Most people look at addiction as a nuisance. If only I were free of all this. Let me tell you what you want. What you really want is to not need God at all. What you really want is to be able to go your own merry way and never need Jesus again. Does that sound like the Christian life to you? If it does, what are you smoking? You would be like the guy on welfare who wins the lottery of $100 million and doesn't even look back. He wouldn't even look back. Personal holiness goes hand in hand with personal humility and dependence. So in John 5-19, Jesus gives him this answer. I tell you the truth. The son can do nothing by himself. He can do only what he sees his father doing because whatever the father does, the son also does. Now think about the implications of that. Jesus, the eternal Son of God, the one through whom the world was made. Infinite power, authority, and glory says I can only do what I see my father doing. Jesus was perfect holiness and perfect dependence. You see, proud people are independent people. Humble people by nature are independent people. Think about reading your Bible, praying. Someone says, well, that's just part of the Christian life. All Christians should do that. It's true. But if you struggle in that area, let me ask you as we've said several Sundays now, what is the sin beneath the sin? Is it simply I just need to do it? Pick up my Bible, bang my head. What is the sin beneath the sin? Here it is. You don't think that you need it. You think that you're independent. You think that you're okay just as you are. You think that you don't need God to tell you a thing. You believe that you don't need daily guidance and strength. You think that you can live just fine on your own. Oh, really. The truth is, as my friend Johnny Long says, we're all allergic to God. We're allergic to the Bible, to the Holy Spirit, to prayer, and to grace. And the underlying truth is, when you don't want to read your Bible and pray, you have lost your sense of being a sinner. The issue isn't simply, do you read the Bible? Do you pray? The deeper issue is, are you meeting with God? Are you communing with Him? Are you getting into His presence? Are you humbled by His Word? Are you becoming more dependent? Will all be dependent on something all the time, the issue is what? Third point, fragrance. First Peter was written to Christians who were suffering under persecution at a tough time. Why would God allow that? It's because He loved them. He allowed them to suffer persecution because He was working humility in them through their circumstances and through their brokenness, God was going to release the beautiful fragrance of grace. Do you know why humility is so vital for a Christian? Here it is because truth without humility will make you into a Pharisee. Truth without humility will make you into a Pharisee. You will be unbending, unforgiving, non-listening, self-righteous. You'll be the kind of person that people will avoid. And so I ask you, in the province and sovereignty of God, what has humbled you lately? Are you humbled by your own secret desires? Are you humbled by that? One of our members this week told me about a friend who has a child with a newly discovered drug addiction. She told me I just went over to her house and I just went with her. I didn't offer her any advice. I just went with her. I couldn't have done that before. I was too full of, well, obviously you must have made some mistakes. My guess is that being there and shedding those tears was the best thing she could have ever done. My guess that that was a powerful moment admitting her own brokenness, that there was a sweet fragrance in the room with the acknowledgement of this could have been me. You know the story in Mark 14, the woman who breaks open the alabaster jar of perfume and she pours it over Jesus head, it represented her brokenness. There's a powerful fragrance when people are broken before God. Broken independence. Paul says, thanks be to God who always leads us in triumphal, procession in Christ, and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of Him. Here's a question for you. Am I broken? Am I believing the gospel every day? Am I believing right now that Jesus is my satisfaction, that Jesus is my joy, Jesus is my peace, my purpose, my hope, that Jesus Christ is the love of my life. If I am not believing that, if I am not repenting accordingly, I will be susceptible to any addictive sin and you will too. If you're not believing that Jesus is your satisfaction, your joy, your peace, your purpose, your hope, and that Jesus is the love of your life, you will be susceptible to any and every single addiction.
Jesus wants to develop humility, brokenness, dependence in you. A man that you'll never meet, but you've heard me talk about before, his name was John Van Dyke. We called him the Dutchman. He was raised in a Dutch reformed church in Holland, but moved the United States when it was 18 and got a job helping as a cook and this man ultimately became one of the most prominent chefs in Atlanta. In his late 70s God used him and used brokenness and dependence to bring him back. He was watching D. James Kennedy on TV and called in to find a church, lo and behold my church was about two miles from where he lived. And when he joined the church, he shared his testimony of faith in Christ that had been renewed and I looked at him and knowing his background I said, John, what is your only comfort in life and in death? I will never forget to look on his face and the tears that slowed down his cheeks as he choked out these words that I with body and soul both in life and in death have not my own belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. And overcome with emotion, he couldn't choke out the other words. But today, as we think of humility, brokenness, dependence, and fragrance, I want to invite you to say with me the Heidelberg Catechism. Can we go back to the first part? Next slide. You may need to widen it, Doug, because it is there. All right, I will say the first part, and then when we get here, we will say it together. What is your only confidence in life and in death that I with body and soul both in life and in death and not my own but belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ, who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins and redeemed me from all the power of the devil, and so preserves me that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head. Indeed, all things must minister to my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of everlasting life and makes me willing and ready and heart, henceforth, to live unto Him. Let's pray. Clintus, and we will be clean. Wash away our sins, Lord Jesus, and we will be wider than snow. And as you do that, create in us new humility, new brokenness, new dependence, and may there be the sweet aroma of Jesus. As people see broken dependent sinners in love with the Savior who loves us first and best and last, and how we bless you and praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.