In his sermon, 'Set for a Fall,' Peter Allison discusses the profound themes of Jesus' final discourse with His disciples, highlighting the betrayal by one of the twelve, which Jesus announced during the Passover meal. The sermon delves into the theological complexities of God's sovereignty and human free will, explaining that while God ordains everything, including Judas' betrayal, individuals remain fully responsible for their actions. Allison emphasizes the pervasive nature of pride among the disciples, which leads to disputes about greatness and provides a foothold for Satan. He contrasts this with the model of humility exemplified by Jesus, who served others and submitted wholly to God's will. The sermon underscores the importance of humility in the Christian life, as it allows believers to empty themselves, make room for God's grace, and strengthen their faith. Allison concludes by urging believers to embrace humility and recognize their need for God's grace as the path to true spiritual strength and transformation.

Please turn to Luke chapter 22. We'll read beginning at verse 14. No, that's not right. I want to read beginning at verse 21. Luke 22 verse 21.

Luke 22 verse 21, But behold the hand of my betrayer is with me on the table, And truly the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed. Then they began to question among themselves which of them it was who would do this thing. Now there was also a dispute among them as to which of them should be considered the greatest. And he said to them, the kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those who exercise authority over them are called benefactors, but not so among you. On the contrary, he who is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he who governs as he who serves.

For who is greater, he who sits at the table or he who serves? Is it not he who sits at the table? Yet I am among you as one who serves. But you are those who have continued with me in my trials. And I bestow upon you a kingdom just as my father bestowed one upon me that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel and the Lord said Simon Simon indeed Satan has asked for you that he may sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith should not fail, and when you have returned to me, strengthen your brethren." But he said to him, Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death.

And then he said, I tell you, Peter, the rooster shall not crow this day before you will deny three times that you know me. May Jehovah equip us to understand the way of His precepts so we shall meditate on His wonderful works. Heavenly Father, as we continue to worship, We ask especially and particularly for your Holy Spirit to illumine our eyes, that we may behold wonderful things out of your Word. We ask that your word may come to us with much conviction. We ask that you would sanctify my sinful lips, that they may proclaim the riches of your grace in Jesus Christ.

Amen. While we resume this morning this discussion of this extended discourse that Jesus had with His disciples in that upper room in Jerusalem around their celebration of the Passover. This is where He washes their feet. This is where He prays His high priestly prayer for them. This is where there is this extended time of teaching as they reclined around this table.

Remember all of John 14-17, All that teaching that John records there and that prayer, that's all happening in this time, in this evening, in the upper room. And we pick up this morning after Jesus has instituted the Lord's Supper. He makes a very startling announcement. Somebody within this very group of 12 disciples, this intimate group that has been following Jesus these past three and a half years. These are His own disciples.

These are the ones who have walked with Him, who have, as He says, been through trials with Him. They've shared in all that He's experienced, much of what He's experienced. And Jesus says that one of these people would betray him. His departure, he said, would be as it had been determined. His departure I will go as has been determined.

But woe to that man by whom he is betrayed. Two things are tied together in one sentence here. Jesus is saying that his departure is determined. His betrayal by Judas has been determined before him, before the foundation of the world. God ordained it.

God ordained the action of Satan to enter him. Yes, Satan had to have God's permission, because God is sovereign. There is nothing that happens apart from God's permission. There is nothing that happens that God does not ordain. And even that sovereignty even extends over Satan.

If it didn't, God wouldn't be sovereign. Because that's what it means for God to be sovereign. To reign over all the earth, to order all things for His own glory. And the Scriptures are filled from Genesis to Revelation with declarations of the sovereignty of God, of His rule, of His reign over everything. Even the choices of men and what Satan does is ordained by God.

How can God ordain the choice that someone will make in the future? If that how how can God ordain a free and voluntary choice of someone? Well, how could God lay the foundation of the earth? How did he stretch out the heavens? How does he form the spirit of man within us?

We don't know any of those things either, do we? This natural creation. We don't know the foundation of the earth, what it rests upon. We can talk a lot about it. We may be able to describe forces associated with it, but ultimately we don't know how it's done.

As one lady said, it's just turtles all the way down. This is an expression of ignorance. We don't know how God laid the foundation of the earth. Our smartest physicists don't know either. We don't know how He stretched out the heavens.

We don't even know where they end. We can't even count the stars, let alone know any of them, let alone visit them. We don't know how God puts the breath of life into us. He took Adam, formed dirt, and breathed into that dirt the breath of life. We can't do that.

We have no idea how he did that. We can break all the molecules apart and look at all the proteins and we can look at how they work together and we can be amazed, but we can't put life into them. We can't. Not our smartest scientists can't put life into dirt. We don't know.

And we don't understand how God can ordain from before the foundation of the world. The voluntary, the free and voluntary actions of people. We know though that He does. The Bible tells us so. Maybe I can give you a little analogy.

It's a really bad analogy in many ways. I most hesitate to use it, but I think it maybe helps in one thing and that is it's an example of how even we can do something can can can build something that can make decisions that we don't even understand. IBM is famous for having made a computer that can play chess against the greatest grand masters of this earth and beat them. None of the people that built that computer could have played that game of chess, not even collectively could have played that game of chess under the rules of chess, current rules of chess, and beaten the grandmaster. But this computer they built did.

That computer, in other words, is not just doing what they told it to do. It's not like they're in some other room telling the computer what to do and how to move. The computer is making choices. Choices that they couldn't make themselves. And it is winning.

So it must be making good choices. Or at least better choices than the opponent that is playing. And yet, it's something that is made and something that you might say is determined beforehand because it's simply following the code that's been programmed into it. Now I say that's a bad example in many ways because we're not computers. Our choices are not mechanistically determined by external things.

We, as God has created us as free, to have a free will, to be able to freely and voluntarily make choices That are unconstrained by anything outside of ourselves And yet those choices that we voluntarily make are utterly and completely ordained by God. He controls them. Just like He laid the foundation of the earth. Just like He stretched out the heavens. And just like He forms the spirit of man within us.

And so even though God has determined, foreordained this betrayal by Judas, Judas is 100% responsible for his heinous sin. Because it was his voluntary choice. And that's why Jesus says, Woe to that man by whom he is betrayed. He will bear the full consequences because of that heinous sin, because He is the one who is 100% responsible for it. He wasn't acting under compulsion that is contrary to His will.

He wanted to do what He did. He freely chose to do it, as we all freely choose to sin when we sin. The mark of regeneration is that our very desires are changed. That God changes our nature, changes us and what we want. He Doesn't change our nature in the sense of changing our humanity, but he changes our nature in the sense of he changes our desires.

Our wills are renewed. And where we once desired these things, we no longer desire to do them. And that we cannot change. And that's why our will is in bondage to our sinful desires. Until God sets it free.

Judas will pay the just punishment for his sin, suffering the wrath of God for all eternity in hell. You see, Judas is 100% responsible for his sin Because he has an obligation as a as somebody that God created to give an account of his actions And God is not responsible for his sin Judas is responsible for his sin 100% Not God Because God is not the author of sin. God has ordained this without being the author of the sin. You see, how can that be? Well the Bible says so, one, there is no darkness in God at all.

God is light and in him is no darkness. James tells us, Let no one say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he himself tempt anyone. We are tempted when we are drawn astray by our own lust, by our own desires. And lust when it is conceived brings forth sin and sin brings forth death. See God cannot be tempted by sin.

Sin is what is contrary to God's will. It is to act contrary to how God commands us to act. Sin to act to sin is to act contrary to what God desires us to do and what he's commanded us to do. Either it's to act contrary to what God desires us to do, either by an act of commission or an act of omission. And so God is never tempted to do what is contrary to his desire to do.

So God is not tempted, ever tempted in that way to sin. And he never tempts anyone. He never seeks to induce any man to disobey. We are tempted by our own desires to do so, by our own sinful desires. Those desires to do wrong are themselves sin.

And we are tempted by our sinful desires. And that desire gives birth to an act. And that act brings forth death. You see the morality, whether it's right or wrong, the morality of an action is rooted in the moral character of the person doing the willing. It's in the will.

That's where the sin is. God never desires to do anything contrary to his will. We don't either. We don't desire to do anything contrary. We only desire to do what our will wants us to do, but thankfully God has given us consciences and not every evil desire works its way out into words and deeds.

We can also say that God is never unjust in the things that He ordains to happen. You see, if a man orders somebody or pays somebody to go commit a murder, he's responsible for that because he is causing an injustice. But when God ordains an action, God is never unjust in what he ordains to happen. If God ordained Judas to assassinate Jesus, that would be a sin. Well, let me use a different, say if God, if God ordains a Mafia assassin to assassinate somebody, a person, That is a murder on the part of the assassin, because that person doesn't belong to them.

And God has said, don't kill them. That's somebody made in my image. But is God just in taking a life of a sinner? Yes, he is. And so when God ordains an assassination of a sinner, and we are all sinners, it's no injustice to that sinner for them to be killed.

It's no injustice on God's part because the wages of sin is death. And so it is simply a just action on God's part. He is free to do as He chooses. When a saint, when a person dies in their sleep at 103, they died because they were a sinner, And the wages of sin is death. And God was not unjust in taking the life of that person in their sleep.

It's no injustice to God. You see, so what is just and right of a sovereign God who made all things and who sustains all things, who owns all things, may not be proper for us. And so God is not the author of sin ever. So this revelation that someone at the table to back up to where we started this morning, this revelation that someone at the table would betray Jesus caused great alarm among the disciples. And they all began asking at once the same thing, Is it I?

Am I the one that's going to betray you? And to keep up appearances and to keep anybody from suspecting him, Judas also asked, Matthew tells us, is it I? So apparently the disciples didn't suspect it was Judas. They didn't realize it. He was a, by all intents and purposes, he was just as upright and.

Righteous as anyone else. Well, this discussion about who it was that would betrayed Jesus. Leads to an argument. Among the disciples about who would be the greatest. And this has long been a fascination of the disciples.

This has long been their weakness. It's happened many times. Luke records a similar argument in chapter 9 before Jesus began his final journey toward Jerusalem. And at one point, remember James and John had put their mother up to coming to Jesus and asking for her sons to be able to sit at his right hand and his left hand in glory in his kingdom. Now we could say that these desires arose from a complete misunderstanding of what the kingdom of God would look like.

They thought they were still expecting this earthly kingdom, not understanding that Jesus' kingdom was a kingdom of heaven, and not an earthly kingdom. It's in the earth but it's not of the earth And so they were all vying for the highest seat of glory and what they were envisioning would be a throne of gold somewhere in Jerusalem. And so yet again, as he has in the past, Jesus teaches them that the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven is not like the Gentile kingdom, for whom greatness is measured as an exercise of authority. Whoever has the most authority over the greatest number of people or has the biggest authority over the biggest budget is the greatest. That's the Gentile culture.

That's our corporate culture. That's our culture in general. But Jesus said the exact opposite, that the greatest was a servant. For who is greater, he who sits at the table or he who serves? Is it not he who sits at the table?

That's the greater one. And yet Jesus said, I am among you as one who serves. This brothers and sisters, this debate we all recognize as pride. James says, if I have bitter envy and self-seeking In my heart, that does not descend from above. It is earthly, sensual, and demonic.

It's earthly, it's sensual, It's demonic. It's not just a little thing. It's a demonic thing. That word self-seeking is the word erytheia in Greek. And it means electioneering.

That word literally means electioneering. What's electioneering is self-promotion. That's what every... It's called electioneering because that's what politicians do around the time of elections. They self-promote.

Well, they want to do it in culturally acceptable ways, but it's all about self-promotion. James says it's demonic, so we shouldn't be surprised that a government that is built by people who are the best self-promoters, shouldn't be overrun with demons. It is, self-promotion is the exact opposite of humility. You see, James is very clearly connecting this self-seeking with the demonic. Where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there, James says, but the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle.

It's willing to yield. Willing to yield. Willing to yield to others, to let them have their way about something. And that's not just that who's going to walk first down the aisle or go first in the door, but even significant things. It's the opposite of pride, being willing to yield.

Humility is full of mercy and good fruits. It's without partiality and without hypocrisy. The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. Where do wars and fights come from, James asks? James says that wars come from the desires for my pleasure that war in me.

That's where wars come from. That's where fights come from. This is where this debate, this argument came from. The desire for their own way, the desire for their own pleasure, for their own glory. See this debate, and James is the only one, or Luke is the only one that talks about this debate right at this point.

This debate brings out the pride of the disciples. And we know that pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. You see this pride gives Satan a foot a legal foothold, a basis, a legal basis to ask God for permission to enter them. This section is in like I said is not in the other gospels. Luke is the only one that records it because Luke, of all the gospel writers, pays the most attention to this aspect of spiritual warfare.

He's the one that gives extended teaching about the demonic and demons and Satan's kingdom. Now, I'd like to point something out that unless you have a King James version or you're reading the Greek, you would miss it. And that is, Jesus says to Peter, Simon, Simon, indeed Satan has asked for you that he may sift you as wheat. Satan has asked for you that he may sift you as wheat. That repetition of Peter's name Simon Simon is a sign of endearment.

It's a way of saying, it's a way of showing Jesus had great love and compassion for Peter. He's not saying this in anger. He's saying it out of compassion. Sorrow for Peter. Simon, Simon.

Indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you that your faith should not fail." And then he says, "...and when you have returned to me, strengthen your brethren." Now that never quite made sense. Why, If Peter's the one who's going to fall, why would he be the one that's supposed to go strengthen the brethren? Wouldn't it be the others who didn't fall in the way Peter did and deny Christ? Wouldn't they be the ones to come alongside him?

Wouldn't Jesus say to them, well, when Peter returns, make sure you come alongside him and comfort him and help him, strengthen him. That's what he tells the Corinthian church to do with the man who was put under church discipline after he repented. Well, here's the thing that is unless you have a King James, that is easy to miss. St. Tim has asked for you is the plural.

You plural. Satan had asked for the disciples. It was the disciples. As a group. That had this pride and self seeking and are arguing among themselves fighting about who would be the greatest, and in so doing, they gave a legal foothold to Satan to come to them.

Satan has asked for you, plural. He's telling this to Peter, that Satan had asked for the disciples, that He may sift them as wheat." But Jesus says, "'But I have prayed for you.'" He said that that's in the singular. Jesus is telling us to Peter, Satan has asked for the disciples, but I have prayed for you that your faith should not fail, and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren." Now, it's completely different. Now Peter is being charged with strengthening his brethren after his fall and his restoration. Satan has asked permission to sift the disciples.

When you sift wheat, you throw it up in the air, and the chaff is blown away. It's shaken. It's bounced around. You shake it around so that the chaff blows away. And the little dirt falls through, and the wheat is saved.

But It's a shaking process. Right? And when you shake something, you find out what's in it. If when we get bumped, disturbed, what's in us? What spills out of us, what comes out of our mouth in those moments isn't the result of the disturbance, it's the result of what was in us.

And Satan has asked permission to sift these disciples. Now why would God allow it? Well, He can allow it to test us. He can allow us to show our own inability and our own weakness in and of ourselves. But pride also gives this legal foothold.

It Gives a right to Satan to come into our life. Remember God resists the proud. God resists the proud. Where there is pride, God is resisting us. And he can often do that through Satan himself.

He resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Therefore, James says, therefore Submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. And he connects this pride with Satan, and he connects resisting the devil with humility. Humble yourself. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

And Peter does tell us the same thing in 1 Peter 5. Now this shows us a couple of things. If these disciples, These people who have walked with Christ have this kind of pride. It shows us that we can be very active and zealous Christians and still lack humility. The disciples have forsaken everything to follow Jesus.

They'd gone out street preaching, taking nothing with them, just trusting the Lord to provide for their needs as they're out living among the people to whom they are preaching. They came back rejoicing that they were able to heal the sick and cast out demons. They had converts. But they also had pride. And they didn't know it.

You see, one of the most deadly aspects of pride is its blinding ability. Pride blinds me from seeing that I have pride, though it may be obvious to everyone around me. Pride blinds me to seeing that I have pride. You can be a foreign missionary. You can be a successful evangelist.

You can be a great teacher and still lack humility. The disciples were all those things. In fact, being a great teacher, being a great successful evangelist can be a temptation to pride in itself because a great teacher knows more than other people. A great evangelist has more success than other people do. They know more.

And it's very easy to think more highly of ourselves than we do of others if we know more than others, isn't it? That's why the Bible says knowledge can puff up, success can puff up because it becomes a temptation to us to think that we are better than someone else. So how can we think more highly of other people than we do of ourselves if we know more than somebody else? That's an objective fact. You might know more than someone else.

How do you think more highly of them? Because that's what we're called to do. Think more highly of one another than we do of ourselves. Well, it's when we realize that there is nothing in us that's good, that's ours. If there is anything good in us, if there is any good work in us, it's Christ's work in us.

It's Him. It's not us. If we know something more, it's because Christ has taught us. If we've been given some grace and some measure, it's because Christ has given it to us. Remember Paul was given a thorn in the flesh to keep him from pride because he'd been given great mysteries, great revelation that he wasn't even allowed to tell.

Couldn't be spoken, but he'd seen it. And He was given this thorn in the flesh to buffet him, a messenger from Satan to buffet him. And his first response is to pray to God to remove it. His second response, right, is to pray to God to remove it. And what was God's answer?

No, no. My grace is sufficient for you. My grace is sufficient for you. And Paul then could say, I therefore most gladly boast in my infirmities. Why is he boasting in his infirmities?

Because they are the means for the grace of God to be poured out in him. My strength, God said to him, is made perfect in your weakness. And so Paul says, then I'm going to boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. And so I take pleasure in infirmities, in approaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

External teaching and personal striving, you see, are wholly unable to overcome pride. If it were, then these disciples would be some of the most humble people because they had just spent three and a half years listening to Jesus' teaching and walking with Him. And Jesus is the epitome of humility. They saw His example. Jesus was their servant.

He says, I am among you as a servant. He's the one who washed their feet. He was the one who instructed them and taught them. They heard his teaching. Teaching like Mark records, whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant and whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all for even the Son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many they heard that teaching they said yes we believe it but it didn't take their pride away.

Their pride still caused fights among themselves about who would be the greatest and who would be able to would be able to have the place of honor. Pride belongs to us, to our nature as sinners. That is really the essence of sin what was Satan's fall because he desired to be as God and that's be this pride is behind every every sin that we commit is a desire for ourselves to be promoted, for ourselves to be well thought of. But it comes in many different ways. It's in our very nature.

And you see, for humility to come, it has to be ours in the same way. It has to be our very self, our very nature. And that can only come by the indwelling of Christ in His humility. Sometimes we attempt humility by condemning ourselves strongly and putting ourselves down. We think that if we put ourselves down first and if we condemn ourselves strongly, that then we're humble and then other people won't have to point out our sins.

And so we may be tempted to condemn ourselves or to dwell upon our sin or to but but that's not a humble spirit. Kindness, compassion, meekness, forbearance are as far off as ever before. Focusing on ourselves, even if it's self-loathing and self-condemnation of our sin, can never deliver us from the pride. God commands us to humble ourselves. And when we respond with a serious attempt to listen and to obey, then God does reward.

Yes, he rewards. He rewards, he rewarded me with a painful discovery. I found I had a shocking amount of pride. Yes, a real hesitancy to consider myself nothing and a willingness to let others consider me as nothing as well. I discovered another weakness to all my efforts, even in prayers to God for help to destroy the hideous monster of pride.

You see, humility is simply a person's consent and desire to let God be everything, to surrender to his purposes, to empty ourselves of everything and to let others consider us nothing as well. See it isn't our sin that humbles us in that sense, It's grace. It's grace. Grace demolishes sin. And the greater our experience of grace, the more intense will be our awareness that we're sinners.

See, and the humility that He imparts to us is not to make us think about our sin more, but to practice sin less. Humility has less to do with sin than with holiness and blessing. It is about moving ourselves out of the way so that God can be our all in all. See, when God is everything, then ourself is nothing. Only humility leads to the cross.

And only the cross can perfect humility. Humility and death to self are the two ways of describing the same thing. Humility causes us to die to ourselves. There is a really strong connection between faith and humility. You see, faith is the channel through which the grace of God is received.

We are saved by grace through faith. Faith is that channel by which we apprehend the grace of God. All of His graces. And when we're full of ourselves, there's no room for anything more to fill us. We can have a pipe coming into us, but if we're full, that pipe can't bring anything.

And that's why there's this close connection to faith and humility. Humility is an emptying of ourselves, a willingness to be nothing so that Christ can be the all in all. A willingness for everybody else to see us as nothing. See, clinging to a scrap of pride, even in secret, even in the thoughts of our heart, strengthens our flesh and remember flesh cannot, Jesus said, flesh cannot inherit the kingdom or receive any kingdom blessings. When Jesus commended people for having great faith.

Remember those two examples? It was people who had humility. Remember there was a centurion and Jesus was going to His house to heal one of His servants And before he got there, the centurion said to him, I am not... He sent somebody to say to Jesus, I am not worthy for you to come into my home. Just speak the word and my servant will be healed.

And he acknowledged Jesus' authority. Jesus had authority over everything, and Jesus is amazed. What did he say? I haven't seen faith like this in all of Israel. Or there was that Gentile woman who threw herself at Jesus' feet.

And what did Jesus tell her? She asked for healing. And what did Jesus tell her? I can't give the food meant for the children to the dogs. No.

A proud person would get angry being told. When they come humbly, you come humbly to somebody, you bow at their feet, and you ask them for a favor that they can give you, and they say, well, I can't give that to you. It wouldn't be right for me to take what's to children's and give it to Docs. But she didn't become angry. She didn't get upset.

She didn't run away and say, he offended me. She said, yes, Lord, But even the dogs get the crumbs that fall from the table. And Jesus answered that woman, He said, your faith, your faith is great. Humility that brings us to the point of being nothing before God and nothing before one another removes every obstacle to faith. See we think of humility in terms of our sin.

We think that we are humbled by our sin, and by our faults, by our mistakes, by our failings. And so we want to equate humility as not being boastful, not walking around, patting ourselves on the back, telling everybody, look at us how great we are. But this can't really be humility, thinking of our sin and thinking of it negatively. Jesus was sinless. He is the model of humility.

He's the one that we're told to emulate. To be like him. And what motivated his humility? Was it self-flagellation over his sins? He didn't have any sins.

What motivated his humility was joy. It was for the joy that was set before him, He despised the cross and endured the shame. He humbled himself for the joy that was set before him. His humility was motivated by a joy. Joy, both as the Son of God in heaven and as the Son of man on earth, he took the place of complete submission.

He gave God the honor and the glory that that is due to him. The scriptures say he obediently humbled himself. And because of this, God raised him up to heights of heaven to glory just look at what Jesus taught how he modeled this humility of emptying himself of being seen being willing to be seen as nothing, being willing to hang naked on the cross for the joy of emptying himself and allowing God to fill him. John 5 19, Jesus answered and said to them, Most assuredly, I say to you, the son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the father do. He went around saying, I can do nothing, nothing.

But what I see the father do for whatever he does, the son does in like manner. John 530. I can of myself do nothing. This is Jesus, the son of God. Present at creation, emptied himself.

I can do nothing myself as I hear. I judge and my judgment is righteous because I do not seek my own will, but the will of my father who sent me. That's humility. John 638 For I have come down from heaven not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent me. John 7 16, Jesus answered them and said, My doctrine is not mine, but it is him who sent me.

John 8 28, Jesus said, When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I can do nothing of myself, but as my Father taught me, I speak these things." Everything Jesus said, I speak, my Father taught me. He took no credit. He emptied himself that God might fill him. Jesus said to them, If God were your father, you would love me. For I proceeded forth and came from God, nor have I come of myself, but He sent me.

John 8.50 And I do not seek my own glory. There is one who seeks and judges. John 14 10, do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? The words that I speak to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does the works. John 14 24, He who does not love me does not keep my words, and the words which you hear is not mine, but the fathers who sent me.

You see, Jesus is the perfect example of this humility. Both as God, Son of God in heaven, Son of man on earth, and the Son of man, both in heaven and on earth, as the Son of God and the Son of man He took the place of complete submission. He gave God the honor and the glory He emptied himself he humbled himself Therefore God has highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name. That is the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue should confess that Jesus is God to the glory of the Father. You see, when we see humility as something far greater than just being humbled for our sin, then we see it as beginning to take part in the life of Jesus and to empty ourselves of everything that Christ may fill us.

The absence of humility is really the reason why God doesn't work in us. Salvation is union with and delight in and participation in the humility of Jesus. Andrew Murray has Andrew Murray has a book on humility and I highly recommend it to you. He a number of It's worth reading. It's worth reading every week.

He says, embrace what humbles you. Look on every frustration as a tool to humble you. Take full advantage of every opportunity to humble yourself before others so you can stay humble before God. You know, it doesn't mean anything if we use words of great humility before God, but we're not humbled before one another. That belies the true pride within us.

God can reveal Christ in you only through the mighty strengthening of his spirit. Christ will be truly formed in you as a servant, in his form as a servant. He will fill your heart. God will honor each deliberate choice you make to humble yourself, accepting it as a sacrifice and using it to clear the way for his son to reveal himself in you. The path of humility leads to the death of self life.

Let us not forget, he says, that the deepest humility, the highest holiness, is the deepest humility. Let us be glad to boast in our own weaknesses, which is just like Paul did, about anything that can humble us and keep us low. Andrew Murray says, except with gratitude, everything that God allows in, from inside or outside, from friend or enemy, by seemingly natural means or by miraculous ones, to remind me of my need of humbling and to help me in it. Believe that humility Indeed is the mother of all godly character and our most important duty to God and the best safeguard for our heart Set your heart on it Because it is the source of blessing God's promise is sure and that's the promise that He gave to His disciples. It's that the humble, the humble will be honored.

The highest honor for any man or woman is to be a vessel and to receive, to enjoy, and to reflect the glory of God. And we can only be that vessel if we are emptied of ourselves. Andrew Murray says, make his glory priority number one as you humble yourself And He will make your glory His priority, as He perfects your humility. Let us pray. Almighty Heavenly Father, we acknowledge how easy it is for us to chafe at the trials, at the afflictions, at the put-downs, at the wrongs, at the distresses that come to us, the ones we deserve, let alone the ones that we do not.

Yet Lord, help us to glory and to boast in these things that would humble us, enable us, empty us, that we might be filled with you. With you. We thank you for your example. We ask that you would Give to us your grace to humble ourselves before your mighty hand, that in due time you may exalt us. Indeed you have.

We have died with you, been crucified with you, and buried and risen and ascended into heaven and seated with you in the heavenlies. You have even said that we will reign with you and do reign with you. And so Lord we pray that we might be moved by this joy and not by our pride to humble ourselves. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.