The word that I desire to speak
with the Lord's help to you this morning is in verse 6 of Psalm
138. It is on the front page of your
hymn sheets but highlighted in the reading. Though the Lord
be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly, but the proud
he knoweth afar off. And we have the example of that
in the prayer of the two in the temple, and the summary of the
Lord at the end of that, that every one that exalteth himself
shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. And right from the time of the
Fall, man has always sought to exalt himself up above God and
above his fellow men. Pride is one of the chief sins
that lies at the root of many, many other sins, and when it
gets into a church or a fellowship, then It causes tremendous trouble
and tremendous sorrow. The apostles knew what it was
to have those in their assemblies like that. Dryophrenies, who
would not accept the brethren, who cast them out. Those that
thought themselves to be somewhat and despised others. And we have
this running right through. The Word is part of our fallen
and corrupt nature, and as the Lord's people we should be very
aware of that, that if there's anything that holds back the
blessing of the Lord and causes sorrow in assembly, it is pride. How many times I have heard when
there's been trouble in Zion, that a little bit of humility
would go so far to remedy that situation. And when we know and
feel it in our own heart, we know our need of grace and need
of help from the Lord to overcome this. Our Lord had a message
to the disciples and we would marvel at that the disciples
should even come to our Lord in this way. In Matthew 18, we
have the disciples and they're asking the Lord, who is the greatest? in the kingdom of heaven. And
there was a time that they were disputing among themselves who
should be the greatest. And our Lord called a little
child unto him, set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily
I say unto you, Except ye be converted and become as little
children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of God. Whosoever therefore shall humble
himself as this little child the same is greatest in the kingdom
of heaven." And what a message, what a lesson the Lord has for
us and for the disciples in that way. We think of what the definition
of humble is, or to have humility, it is to have a low estimate
of one's importance. Instead of thinking High thoughts
of ourselves, it is thinking low thoughts of ourselves, not
exalting ourselves. Our Lord spoke of those that
were called to a feast and that they were, instead of to immediately
go to the highest room, And then have the host of the feast come
and say, no, that place is for someone else. You go and then
take the lowest room with shame. It's better to take the lowest
room. And the host come to you and
say, friend, come up higher and give you a higher place. direction
that James gives in his epistles when he writes to the brethren
if I can turn to it in the epistle of James and in James chapter
4 he says but he giveth more grace wherefore he saith God
resisteth the proud and giveth grace unto the humble what a
incentive to flee from a proud spirit and to seek humility. And so we have the exhortation
then that follows in verse 10. Humble yourselves in the sight
of God and He shall lift you up. Speak not evil one of another
brethren. He that speak evil of his brother
And judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth
the law. But if thou judgest the law,
thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge. And so James sets
forth that humble and that low path. Peter also in his epistle,
his first epistle, And chapter 5, he says in verses 5 and 6,
that likewise ye younger, after speaking to the elder, submit
yourselves unto the elder, Yea, all of you, and this includes
us all, all of you, be subject one to another and be clothed
with humility, for God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to
the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under
the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time,
casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you. And we have this clear direction
in Scripture then of the need of humility, the danger of pride. Now when the Lord works with
His people, then He has those means that He uses to humble
them. Some of the Lord's dear children,
because of the means that the Lord uses to humble them, Sometimes
they misinterpret it. They feel that the Lord is against
them. They get very discouraged and
very low. But what the Lord means is that
they do get low in their own esteem, but not cast away their
confidence. Realize that the Lord is humbling
them. The Lord is bringing them to
a place not to cast them away as he does the proud but to embrace
them to bless them and so we read to the children of israel
in deuteronomy chapter 8 where the lord gives the reason why
they went through the wilderness and he says there to be a verse
is quite familiar to to many of you in verse 2 chapter 8 And
thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee
these forty years in the wilderness, and notice this very first thing
that he says, and you dear friends, you'll be able to look back,
some of you, a lot longer than forty years, and it may be there
are things that even pain you now as you think back of what
you've done, what you've said, how the Lord has dealt with you,
and it's been a painful recollection of how you've been humbled, sometimes
humiliated, brought to really see what you are before God,
ashamed of your own words, your own actions. But it is 40 years
in the wilderness to humble thee, and to prove thee to know what
was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments
or no. And he humbled thee, and suffered
thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna which thou knewest
not. Now this is one of the ways that
the Lord does humble His people. He brings them to be utterly
dependent upon Him. If we are walking in pride, we
like to think that we are strong in ourselves. We are not dependent
on other people. We are the master, not the slave. We are the one that looks after
others and not the one that is dependent on others. It's a very humble path to realize
that actually, if another withdrew from us their support, their
help, then We would not continue. And here were the children of
God in Israel in the wilderness. They knew they were dependent
upon that manna from heaven. If the Lord did not give them
the manna, they wouldn't have any food. They were dependent
upon the Lord for the water that came out of the rock and the
water the Lord provided for them through that journey. And so
when the Lord would humble us, He brings us to feel our dependence
upon Him. No man can keep alive his own
soul. And it's a humbling thing to
feel how low we get sometimes, how despondent, how far off from
the Lord. And we may cry unto the Lord,
Lord, revive my soul, bring me nigh again. Or to feel our propensity
to sin and say with the Apostle Paul, that the good that I would
I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do. O wretched man
that I am! How humbling it is for the Apostle
to feel so wretched he cannot even control his own base and
an evil nature. He needs the Lord to do that.
Who shall deliver me? I thank God through Jesus Christ,
my Lord. And so we have later on in Deuteronomy
8 there in verse 16 that the Lord that led them through that
terrible wilderness, the fiery serpents, the scorpions, the
drought where there was no water, who fed thee in the wilderness
with manna which thy fathers knew not, that he might humble
thee. And notice this, dear friends,
and many of you are in your latter end, your latter days, with us
each. There's more years behind me
than there is in front. It must naturally be so. And
with each of you, too, you're coming to a latter end. But the
blessing of the humbling through the way, and those things that
you may have learned before ever you came into the pilgrim home,
it is that he might prove thee to do thee good at thy latter
end. And it is a blessed thing to
look back over your life and say, Lord, The frame, the spirit
that Thou hast given me through Thy teaching through life, is
holding me in good stead here in the home. Now I'm dependent
on others to help me to go to the toilet, to help me feed,
to help me to get up out of bed, and it's a hard thing to be so
dependent. But if through our life the Lord
has taught us the grace of humility, and then to realize that in all
things it is the way to be exalted and blessed by the Lord, a humble
and low path, and if there are those that are finding this very
difficult now, may the word before us this morning be a help to
you, a help to instead of resisting it and fighting against it, as
our old nature will, to seek that admonition, to humble ourselves
in the situation, the path that we are walking in. So it may
be that the Lord has given us then to really be dependent on
one another. Our greatest example, of course,
is our Lord Jesus Christ himself. In the epistle of Paul to the
Philippians in chapter 2, he sets forth the path of our Lord. He says of his people, Let nothing
be done through strife or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind, Let
each esteem other better than themselves. Let every man look
not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things
of others. Let this mind be in you, which
was also in Christ Jesus. And he then sets forth in this
passage how our Lord brought himself lower and lower, who
made himself of no reputation, took upon him the form of a servant,
was made in the likeness of men, found in fashion as a man, he
humbled himself, he became obedient unto death, even the death of
the cross. All of this humbling, brought
down and down by he that in our text was, though the Lord is
high, high in the heavens, what a position, that He humbled Himself
from that high position, that exalted position, wherefore God
also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is
above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should
bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and things under
the earth. beautiful word that every tongue
should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the
Father and so in our text though the Lord be high And the Lord
was high before he humbled himself, when he humbled himself and is
obedient unto death. And the Lord his Father blessed
him, and he is now highly exalted, a name above every name. And
yet we read this, yet hath he respect unto the lowly. A lowly
the Lord knows them. But the proud he knoweth afar
off. We don't want to be known afar
off, do we? We want to be brought nigh. And
the way to be brought nigh is a humble way. And sometimes the
way and the means the Lord uses is a very humiliating and humbling
way. There are things that we could
easily mistake and not see the Lord's hand in it. and rise up
against men, but may we hear the rod and be humbled and lay
low before the Lord, that he may exalt us and bring us nigh
and bless us. It's a good word. May the Lord
be pleased to grant you that humility and that fellowship
and union, one with another there in the home, and that he bless
you through this word this morning. Amen.