Proverbs 3:34

He mocks proud mockers but shows favor to the humble and oppressed.

Listening guide

“What is Luther? The teaching is not mine. Nor was I crucified for anyone … How did I, poor stinking bag of maggots that I am, come to the point where people call the children of Christ by my evil name? … I simply taught, preached, wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.”  (Martin Luther) 

the unmerciful servant

First, be _____________

be humble and get so much more than we ________________.

Discussion questions

Sermon

There was a season in my life 

  • Work things weren’t going well 

  • Wasn’t building new relationships, I was losing relationships 

  • Family struggles  

  • Productivity  

When things didn’t work out in my life, I asked a friend, mentor and advisor to help me think through some of the questions. I said, what am I doing that is making this so hard 

  • Am I depressed?  

  • What is it about my personality?  

  • What about my family background,  

These questions plagued for a few months. Eventually, He said, why are you thinking about yourself so much?  

About the same time someone much closer to me said, “You could use a boatload of humility” 

I’m still trying to figure out how right he was - . There are plenty of situations in which I am the problem. I am at least a significant part of the problem.  

He is right that thinking of yourself less and others more, that is incredibly powerful, life transforming. As far as a humble person CS Lewis made it real easy when he said, a humble person is “a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him”. When I think of people who have modeled humility, they have done incredible things.  

Martin Luther. Martin was told one time that people were calling themselves Lutherans. He said, people should call themselves Christians. Because he said,  

“What is Luther? The teaching is not mine. Nor was I crucified for anyone … How did I, poor stinking bag of maggots that I am, come to the point where people call the children of Christ by my evil name? … I simply taught, preached, wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.”  

That’s the thing, that humility does great things.  

And I’m not sure if I’m great yet, but I’m discovering how much greater humility is  

  • Al L 

  • Around Peace partners in ministry and prayer, encouragers.  

  • Michael E  

The promise: We can be great with humility 

Development  

First, you have to have humility.  

For the most part that isn’t a big deal. For example, in 1726 Benjamin Franklin realized his own moral imperfection. So he made a list of 12 virtues that he needed to pursue for good character. He made the mistake of giving it to a friend to review. His friend realized that Benjamin was quick to put other people down, quick to criticize, and short tempered. He told Benjamin to add a 13th virtue to the list – humility.  

But Jesus, the Bible does a really good job of showing us that we need humility. Jesus tells this story of the unmerciful servant, in part, to show us that we need humility.  

Here are the highlights again: 

  • A man owes his king an unmeasurable amount of money 

  • The man begs for mercy  

  • The king forgives the debt 

  • The man finds someone who owed him a small amount of money 

  • He throws the man in jail until it is paid.  

He is making a comparison for us here.  

The irreligious. You can’t control the gods. They’re fickle and wild. You have no idea what they will do for you at any moment. They may do good. They may do evil.  

So the principle becomes, it doesn’t matter what you do, you won’t get what you deserve.  

The religious world is very different. Religiosity says, these are the things to do to make God happy. Tithe. Sacrifice. Pray. Attend synagogue or church or mosque. Follow the rules and the commandments. 

The rule is, if you do good God will love you and accept you, you’ll get what you deserve.  

Only the gospel says this. God loves me and accepts me, so he will give me what I don’t deserve.  

This is what our main proverb for today says, “God mocks the mocker but gives grace to the humble.”  

This is one of the great paradoxes  

Do you want life entirely at chance? Then ignore all the rules. All the wisdom. All the commands. Maybe life will be good, maybe it won’t be.  

Do you want to get what you deserve? Then keep the rules. Play by the rules. Say to God, I tithe. I got married and then I had sex. I go to church most of the time. I use my money responsibly. I don’t drink too much. Say to God, I follow the rules, give me what I deserve.  

And maybe life will be good. Maybe it won’t.  

But do you want to get way more than what you deserve? Do you want more than you could ever ask for or imagine?  

Then be humble. Let me show how that happens.  

Proverbs says, “He mocks proud mockers  

but shows favor to the humble and oppressed.”  

Let’s start here. Pride is not about what you have. Unhealthy evil pride is about what you have in relation to what someone else has.  

And yet what is the Bible full of? God’s history is full of story after story where God says to the strong, the proud, and the ones on top, I’m putting you down and I'm going to lift up the humble and the lowly.  

In all ancient cultures, the oldest son gets all the power, and yet, at every generation, God works with the younger son. It’s Abel over Cain. It’s Isaac over Ishmael. It’s Jacob over Esau. It’s Moses over Aaron. Over and over and over again, God does that. Deliberately, obviously, to completely turn upside down the world’s understanding of greatness and power. 

In all ancient cultures and in modern cultures, the beautiful women get the powerful men, and yet, at every place, God works with Sarah over Hagar, works with Leah over Rachel, works with Tamar, works with Rahab, the prostitute, works with Hannah, the barren woman. In every single spot, God always works with the barren woman, the unwanted woman. 

God only works through the girl nobody wanted and the boy everybody has forgotten, in every generation. Why does he do that? Is it just God just has a sense of poetic justice? Or is there more here 

When this God, who had self-giving love at his very heart, came into the world, he came into the world as a poor man. He was born in a manger. He was born in a feed trough. He didn’t come to the Van Andel Center. He didn’t come to Times Square. He was born in a feed trough in an unimportant colony in the Roman Empire. A manger. See, that’s the God who’s the real God, who does things in a completely different way. If you want to find God, as the Christmas carol says … 

Seek not in courts or palaces, 

Nor royal curtains draw; 

But search the stable, see your God 

Extended on the straw. 

So he comes, and he’s born in a feed trough; he’s born into a poor family. He grows up as just a homeless person, basically, and in the end, he’s betrayed or denied or deserted by everybody, and he dies an ignominious death. Is that the way to win the world?  

You have goals, you have strategies. You have vision. Is that the way to conquer the world?  

Let's imagine someone said, “I have a goal. My long-term goal is 2,000 years from now I’d like to be the most influential and famous person who ever lived. I would like a third of all the people in the world to worship me and build their whole life around me. I would like to have many, many major civilizations completely built on my teachings.” Okay. That’s a very worthy goal. 

If that was your goal, what would your strategy be? How would you get there? How would you go about it? Would you do it the way Jesus did it? Not on your life. Would you be born in obscurity? Would you studiously avoid ever getting involved in any of the powerful political or economic or academic networks? Would you studiously avoid all that? Would you be killed tragically, when your life wasn’t even half over yet? Would you think that’s the way to become the most influential and powerful and life-changing person in the history of the world? 

No. But that’s how Jesus did it, and he makes foolish the wisdom of the world. The glory of God is to choose the lowly and humble  

Jesus Christ came and lived the life you were too weak to live and died the death you were unwilling to admit you needed to die. He came to live the life you should have lived and die the death you should have died. He came to take your punishment. He came to be your substitute. He came to do it all for you. It was a glory that could only be achieved through humility. He came in weakness so that … 

This is why the message is so good. It’s actually for everybody. It’s not just for the strong and smart. The message is it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done … It doesn’t matter whether you’ve murdered people. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve so abused yourself that your mind hardly works anymore. 

If you believe Jesus Christ has done all this for you and if you say, “Father, receive me and accept me, not because of what I have done, but because of what Jesus has done,” at that moment, in Christ, God looks at you (this is the gospel) and values you above all the gold and silver and jewels that lie beneath the earth.  

How do you get that kind of unconditional glory and regard, that kind of impervious glory and regard, that’s not based on your performance at all? 

be humble and get so much more than we deserved. 

Action 

So let's do this. Let’s be humble and get so much more than we deserved.  

Humility doesn’t mean you become small, little, and insignificant. That we actually try to become nothing. It means we know who we are. It is the great people in life who practice humility. For me, Michael E. Large, thriving business.  

This is not going to be easy to do. This is like if someone handed you a Christmas present, you unwrapped it and inside you found finger nail clippers. I would be ecstatic. I love finger nail clippers and they’re always disappearing around my house.  

If you and I take this gift of God’s gospel, what are we saying about ourselves? (example of some gift) We’re saying, I’m only beginning to realize how bad I am. I’m only beginning to realize how much help I need.  

If we’re humble we’ll get so much more than we deserved.