Sermon Transcript:

We have spent the past several months working our way passage by passage through this letter of 1 Peter. Peter is writing to believers who are encountering increasing opposition and difficulty because of their faith in Jesus. Peter is writing to strengthen and encourage believers as we wait for the return of our king. He reminds us that it should not be a surprise that we face adversity in the world. This is not our home, we are citizens of another kingdom. He reminds us that as believers in Jesus we are chosen by God, loved by God, and we are guarded by his power through faith until we receive an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.

He has emphasized that the proper response to the difficulties we face is to live quiet and holy of faith focused on blessing others. Rather than use the methods of this world, we must trust God, be submissive to rightful authority, be peaceable to our neighbors, and share the hope within us. All who suffer for Christ will be blessed and God actually uses suffering for our good, to purify us and make us more like Jesus.

As we come to our passage this morning, Peter gives us a principle that guides us in every aspect of our walk with Christ. He says, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble and that is our main idea this morning,

God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

When we get to this section, Peter directly addresses the leaders of the church. We saw a few weeks ago that one of the assumptions running throughout this letter is that we are to live the life of faith together. He pauses here to give advice to those who are shepherding the congregation. He says, 

1 So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: 2 shepherd the flock of God that is among you, …

Peter exhorts them. To exhort means to urge strongly, to encourage with enthusiasm. He is saying, I really really want you guys to shepherd the flock. Have you ever had someone, usually a boss, come and tell you to do something and they have no concept of what accomplishing that thing really involves? Nothing is ever impossible for the people who don’t have to do it, right?

Well Peter isn’t like that. He doesn’t just give theoretical advice. He reminds them that he too is a fellow elder. He knows what it is he is asking of them. He walks the same path and his hope is in the same glory that is to come with them as a fellow sinner saved by grace and blessed to be called a pastor of God’s people.

We know he is talking to pastors and not just to older believers because in verse 3 he refers to those “in your charge”. It would have been rare in these congregations for anyone to have been raised in the faith, so those who were mature and tested were going to be older men. In this case, the categories overlap somewhat but I believe he is speaking to those who will give an account for others.

He urges them to shepherd the flock. He urges them to guide, protect, and feed the sheep. He is telling them what Jesus told him, if you love Jesus, feed his sheep. Notice this isn’t done from a distance. He says do this for those among you. Be together with them and help them and love them. Keep the wolves away. Keep them from wandering off. Keep them healthy and safe. Here is how. By

exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; 3 not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. 4 And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.

Good elders don’t serve because it's their job but because they love the people of God. They don’t do it to get wealthy or to exercise power but because Jesus Christ has gifted them and called them to help others. It isn’t an accident that Peter especially calls on leaders in this context of encouraging God’s people in suffering and adversity. The leaders will be prime targets because they are examples to others. Good pastoring is especially necessary in times of adversity.

See how he anchors their motivation in the joy they will have when Jesus returns. When the great shepherd comes they will receive a crown of glory. If they seek the glory to come rather than glory now, they will be blessed and the church will be strengthened. The key characteristic necessary for this is humility. 

Too often congregations look for pastors who are the best teachers or preachers or those with lots of credentials or connections. But friends, while those things can be helpful, what is most important is a man who relentlessly points people to Jesus because he trusts in the promises of God.

A gifted pastor who is too proud is spiritually dangerous. It is far better to have men of meager talents who know they have nothing better to offer people than Jesus. Peter calls the leaders to be men who are content to preach the word, die and be forgotten because the reward they seek is in heaven.

Having laid this foundation Peter shifts his attention to the less experienced believers saying, 

 5 Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

He says we are to clothe ourselves with humility toward one another. That means that humility should cover us. It means we are not presentable to others apart from humility. It means we don’t leave the house without putting on humility. Seek humility in such a way that when people look at you that is what they see because you are covered in it.

This is important because

“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

As believers in Jesus we have been reconciled with God and that is the most precious treasure we possess. Our being brought to God was purchased with a tremendous price and a price that we did not pay but that was paid for us. Having been justified by grace, how could we possibly want to live like those whom God opposes? The strongest language of judgment in the Bible is directed at the proud and the most beautiful blessings are promised to those who are humble.

We cannot claim to love God and persist in a desire to do what he hates. Peter says pride is opposed to grace, they are on opposite sides. The proud cannot receive grace because before we can receive grace we must humble ourselves and recognize we are undeserving of God’s blessings. Grace shows us that apart from Jesus we have no hope so pride is inconsistent with saving faith.

Pride is a form of rebellion against God because it claims an excellency and glory that belongs to God alone while ignoring the reality of our weakness. In other words, pride is a form of spiritual blindness. It was pride that turned Satan from an angel to a devil. It was pride that led Adam and Eve to trade paradise for forbidden fruit. It was pride that led you and I to reject God’s law and to put ourselves at the center of our universe so we could pursue our own desires instead of what is right.

Every one of us has done that and the Bible calls that sin. God is holy and just and he will judge sin. There comes a day when every single sin is accounted for and the price must be paid. Since every sin involves rejecting God as king, every sin is rebellion and the consequences for trying to push God off his throne are rightfully severe. Sin is a prideful rejection of God and the punishment is eternity separated from his grace and blessings. The Bible calls this hell and it is a deserved eternity of regret and anguish.

If we are judged based on how we have lived that is what every one of us will get. But God is not only perfect in justice, he is perfect in mercy and in an act of astonishing grace Jesus came from heaven to earth to make a way for rebellious sinners like us to be saved and restored to fellowship with God. Jesus lived a perfect life of love and humility, without any sin. 

Then amazingly, he offered his own life as a substitute for the sinful lives of anyone who will humble themselves and accept him as their lord and savior. He gave his life for ours. On the cross Jesus absorbed the full wrath of God against the sins of all those who will believe. He died and was buried and then three days later he rose again. The price was paid. The sin was removed and his righteousness and his rewards are shared to all those who are united to him in faith.

That means no matter what your sins have been, right now, you can place your trust in Jesus as your savior and there will no longer be anything between you and God. If you believe, your sins are forgiven. If you trust Christ, the price is paid for you. All your guilt and all your shame will be washed away under that blood. Repent and believe and God will look upon you with the same pleasure he takes in Jesus.

This is the greatest offer in the universe. The only thing keeping anyone from doing this is pride. Proud people do not think they need forgiveness from God because their pride has blinded them to their true condition. Proud people think they can bargain with God or explain their sins away. How foolish is it to think that God, who knows all things and has all power,would go to such lengths to save sinners if we could do it ourselves?

Among the first works of grace is to open our eyes to our wretchedness and to the reality that our only hope is Jesus. We cannot be saved without humility because to be saved we must first admit that we are not worthy of salvation and helpless to obtain it. We must confess that we bring nothing worthy of God. To be saved we have to first admit that we are even too weak to be in charge of our own lives. The world tells us to follow our heart. God says your heart cannot be trusted, follow me.

We sometimes think of the mature christians around us as strong men and women of faith but this is a misunderstanding. Maturing in faith is not a building up of ourselves, it is a deepening understanding of our weakness so that we cling ever more firmly to Jesus. The strength of a mature believer is like the strength of an exhausted drowning man clutching a life preserver that has been thrown to him because he knows if he lets go he will die. That is the way a mature believer clings to the cross. It is not their strength that brings them close to the lord, but knowledge of their weakness.

Our whole walk as believers is an unfolding of two types of understanding. The first is a growing understanding of our weakness and the second is a growing understanding of God’s greatness. Christian joy and peace come from knowing how awesome God is and that a God like that knows our every failing and yet he loves us still.

Peter calls attention to this issue of pride and humility in a letter about perseverance because that is often where the spiritual battle rages the fiercest. People often focus on outward, easily visible sins but often those sins are merely the fruit of deeper “root” sins that lead us down destructive pathways. Pride is one of those root sins that produce all sorts of rotten fruit.

The dangerous thing about pride is that it is much harder to address than those outward behaviors. Often pride hides itself so well that we cannot even perceive it in our own heart. Pride is an insidious sin that can actually cloak itself in seemingly good things. The puritan preacher Henry Smith rightly said,

“When the devil cannot keep us from good works, then he will work hard to make us proud of them.” 

Our enemy is crafty and we have to be careful that we do not deceive ourselves because there are so many ways that he can appeal to our pride. Let me give you an example. We believe in the power of God’s word and that the spirit works with the word to transform us. As a result, we focus heavily on teaching the Bible. We want people to love God’s word.

Satan knows this and so if he cannot keep us from being in the word, he will attack us by using our desire for it to appeal to our pride. If a growth in knowledge leads us to be puffed up and arrogant then he makes our knowledge useless. Pride is proof that we do not understand the doctrine regardless of how many facts we might know. We can fool ourselves into thinking that study itself is growth but the evidence the Bible gives for growing in truth is not being able to explain sophisticated theology, it is humility and love. It is like the difference between learning music theory and playing an instrument. They are related but are not the same thing.

The flesh exalts itself but when the growth comes from the Spirit working with the word the result is that we become more like Jesus. That means yes, we grow deeper in knowledge of the truth, but we also grow deeper in our love and compassion for others. We will use our knowledge to build up rather than to tear down.

Whenever we are tempted to look down on someone else there are at least four things we should consider. First, nearly always I know there have been times where I have been worse than they are. I have said or done things far more dishonoring to God than whatever sin of theirs catches my attention.

Second, I cannot see their heart or motivation and so it is very possible that I may still be very much worse off spiritually than they are even though I am seeing them in a moment of weakness. It may be that their heart is more right with the Lord than my own.

Third, even if my maturity and growth is beyond theirs, that would be a gift of grace from the same savior whose sacrifice is offered to them. There is nothing I can claim of any spiritual value that comes from me. How can I be proud when I have no righteousness of my own but stand only in the righteousness given to me only because God had mercy on me. 

Finally, I do not know the plan of God and so it is very possible that in time, by God’s grace, that person may far exceed me in knowledge, godliness, or usefulness to our lord. Our thought should never be to dismiss or tear down, but to build up. Let us not forget that God delights in using the weak things of the world to confound the wise.

Pastor John Newton, who wrote the words to the hymn Amazing Grace said,

“Whoever is truly humbled — will not be easily angry, nor harsh or critical of others. He will be compassionate and tender to the infirmities of his fellow-sinners, knowing that if there is a difference — it is grace alone which has made it! He knows that he has the seeds of every evil in his own heart. And under all trials and afflictions — he will look to the hand of the Lord, and lay his mouth in the dust, acknowledging that he suffers much less than his iniquities have deserved.”

From a practical standpoint how do we pursue this? That is a very important question. The danger of preaching a sermon like this is that you leave thinking that you need to try harder and be more disciplined to be humble or that you need to work harder to do these things. That, however, will not produce humility, in fact, it is likely to lead either to exhaustion or pride.

How would you do it anyway? You think, “I am going to try really hard this next week to be more humble.” It is a bit arrogant to think you could do that isn’t it? But let’s say you do and then you get to the end of the week and you think “wow, I’ve been really humble this week… well I was up until just then.” Right? Do you see the problem? When we focus on what “we” are doing then our thoughts turn to ourselves, which is the opposite of humility. 

Pride ultimately boils down not so much to if we think highly of ourselves, but if we are the center of our thoughts rather than God. Again, the two often go together but they are not the same thing. It is possible to be proud of how humble you are, if you know what I mean. 

We cannot obtain humility through our fleshly effort. It is a fruit of the Spirit. It is a grace that comes from our union with Christ through faith. Therefore, if we want to pursue humility and avoid pride we do it the same way we pursue every other grace and fight any other sin. Not by focusing on the sin itself, but by focusing on Christ.

In the same way that the stars vanish when the sun appears, so too our glory, and that of the world and everything in it, fade into nothing when we are bathed in the light of love of God in Jesus Christ. 

James 4:5–8 says,

5 Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? 6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you…

The answer to pride is not work but the grace that God has given us in Jesus Christ. James says the way to be weaned from the world and to grow in humility is to draw near to God. Submit all the details of our lives to the sovereign God, trusting him for how it turns out. Resisting the temptations of the devil by placing our focus on God and resting in his grace. Humility in our hearts is not our achievement, it is God’s. 

The gospel leads us to humility because it shows us that we do not need to make ourselves bigger. We have received unimaginable blessings not because of our credentials or knowledge but because of Jesus. The cross reminds us that all the things that make us proud: money, knowledge, power, physical ability or attractiveness, our best works all amount to nothing important before God.

The cross reminds us that we not only need to repent of our sins but we also need to repent of our self-sufficiency. Good works done in pride are the greatest sins. All the things that puff us up; knowledge, money, power, physical strength or attractiveness. These are all gifts given to us by God to be used for his glory. We don’t deserve them. We have them because of his love for us. If you want to battle pride, serve others. Submit yourself to the discipleship of someone else and seek to disciple someone you can bless.

The resurrection reminds us that this world is passing away and a better world is coming and our greatest blessings will be found there. That exposes the foolishness of being satisfied with anything less than what God has for us. It exposes the other idols that cause us to strive in our pride. Why do we spend so much energy and time pursuing pleasure, approval, and control if we know this world is passing away and all we have in the next come from Jesus? The resurrection proves God can be trusted. We do not need to be great to get the best blessings, we get them because we are loved by a great God.

The more our attention is on desiring to please God because of the great love he has shown us the less we will feel the need to impress other sinners. We won’t need to try and work things into conversations so people think we are smart or sophisticated. We won’t need to have nice things so people think we are successful or important. We will be less sensitive and less easily offended when things don’t go our way because our attention will be increasingly on our relationship with Christ.

The more we see through Jesus how faithful and loving and trustworthy God is the more peace we will have with him being on the throne instead of us. The more firmly convinced we are that he loves us and that he keeps his promises, the less we will be tempted to prefer our strength to his. The more we are captivated by his beauty and glory, the more our desire will be for him to receive the credit he alone deserves. 

In other words, humility comes from being satisfied with the superiority of Jesus Christ. Listen to what the apostle Paul says in Philippians 3:8–9,

8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith

Paul is more satisfied with the superiority of knowing Jesus and being included in what Jesus gives than anything in himself or the world. Godly humility comes from recognizing that Jesus is better.

Is anyone knowledgeable and wise? Jesus is infinitely superior. Is anyone strong and powerful? Jesus is infinitely more so. Does anyone do great works? Jesus has perfection. Are any of us filled with the gifts of grace? Jesus is infinitely superior in love and mercy and grace! 

You get the idea. Jesus is surpassing in his glory and in every good thing. He is one with the Father and through faith we become united to him. Therefore our greatest blessings are to be found in him. If we have faith we already possess the best of everything because we have Christ. We don’t need to try and become humble through our own efforts. All that is required to defeat pride and grow in humility is for us to consider who we are and who Jesus Christ is.

I want to finish this morning with the words of one theologian who I think captured it well when he said,

“If pride is the self-centered disposition to determine one’s own reality, to be god of one’s own life, to say in every act and word, “My will be done,” then humility cannot be merely the ability to forget one's self (that is, to be self-uncentered) or even less the ability to be self-pitying, which is really just pride in reverse; rather, humility is the ability to find one's center in the God whose overwhelming loveliness and glory are able to dethrone us from the usurped lordship of our own darkened hearts. Humility is spiritual sanity. Its constant refrain is, "God is God and I am not."