Verse 19 Proverbs 16 19 better
it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly Then to divide
the spoil with the proud an humble spirit It's not an humble attitude,
it's not an humble Humble words or anything like that. It's more
than that an humble spirit and An humble spirit is not something
you do, it's something you are. Have you ever heard somebody
saying things that they think an humble person would say, but
they're bragging while they're saying it, they're really bragging? Saying self-deprecating things
is not an humble spirit. A humble spirit's a gift from
God. It's something we do not possess. Nobody possesses by
nature. And this proverb, of course,
is completely foreign to the way that this world thinks and
operates. It's all about the spoil in this
world. In our text, it's not so much
about the spoil. It's about who you are before
God. Spiritually speaking, the spoil
is popularity, it's acceptance, the acceptance of this world,
the wealth of this world, numbers of people, status. If you preach or believe a message,
that exalts man and ties God's hands, you'll be well received
in this world. And you'll be rewarded for it. But the cost is your soul. Hence the word better. Better. It doesn't say anything in our
text about the lowly dividing any spoil. But they do. It's just not the spoil that
this world has to give. Matthew 5, 2, you're familiar
with this passage, but let's look at it together. Matthew
5. And verse 2. The Lord opened his mouth and
taught them, saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn,
for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, those of a lowly disposition,
humble, obedient, They shall inherit the earth. There's the
spoils for those Whom God approves Blessed are the They which do
hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled So an
humble spirit And again if you have if you
are an humble spirit and then humility is going to permeate
everything that you say, everything that you do. But what we need
to remember here is before God, there's never been but one. That's
true of everything we look at here. I wanna be, I wanna have
an humble spirit, I wanna be. Humble person because that's
better it it's better But the truth is Every good virtue that there
is Is only fulfilled in Christ Christ
Humbled himself and became of no reputation Took upon him the
form of a servant became obedient unto death, even the death of
the cross, the most humiliating death. Imagine how much more
could you humiliate a person than to strip them and nail them
to a cross up in the air for everyone to see. And they heaped
the further humiliation upon him of mocking him and spitting
on him and beating him. But that was him doing that.
It was them as far as the sin is concerned. But that was Him.
He said, nobody takes my life from me. I give it of myself. That was Him
doing something for us. And so Christ is our humility
before God, our obedience, our vowing. But also Christ in us
causes an humble spirit. gives us an humble spirit. The
fruit of the spirit, the fruit of the flesh is pride. But let's
talk about an humble spirit that he gives to his people. And first of all, it's one that
holds its hand up to God, not to me. We get what we need from God. And by his grace, we know that. And that's implied in our text
and in dividing the spoils, you know, it's get all you can and
can't all you get, dog eat dog. The victory goes to the bold
or whatever they say, the proud or whatever. Not in God's kingdom,
it's not that way. In the book of Genesis chapter
14, verse 21, Abraham and the king of Sodom were cohorts together
in the war of the kings. You'll
remember something about that. But listen to what the king of
Sodom said unto Abram, give me the persons, I'll take slaves
here, And you take all the goods to yourself. They had defeated
these kings and there was a lot of spoil involved. But Abraham
said to the king of Sodom, I have lift up my hand unto the Lord,
the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth. He owns
everything. I lift up my hand to him that I will, and I've,
that I will not take from a thread even to a shoelatch it, and that
I will not take anything that is thine, lest thou shouldest
say, I have made Abraham rich. In other words, the only one
getting any glory here is gonna be God. By his grace, the glory
is gonna be his. I get what I get from him, not
from you, not from anybody else. So here is by God's grace, a
man who knows that his status in life is not about getting
all that he can get. If that was it, he would have
taken what he could get. It's about the glory of God. That takes some bowing. That
takes some humility. An humble spirit is one that
gives God all the glory in all of life. We can't look at a sunset or
a sunrise without seeing something of God's glory in it. The heavens
declare the glory of God. The firmament showeth his handiwork. What does seeing a sunset and
acknowledging it as the handiwork of God and worshiping him have
to do with humility? Well, that'd be a good thing
to think about the next time you're sitting down with a cup
of coffee watching the sun come up. Here we are by nature. Romans
121, because that when they knew God, everybody knows that God's
God. Not savingly, not by faith, but
they know in their heads. You can't hate somebody you don't
know something about. They glorified him not as God,
neither were thankful. Neither were thankful. but became vain in their imaginations
and their foolish heart was darkened, professing themselves to be wise,
they became fools. And then verse 28 of that same
context, and even as they did not like to retain God in their
knowledge, they didn't like to acknowledge that somebody is
on the throne in heaven and somebody gave them life and gives them
breath and gives them everything they have, they don't wanna think
about that. They don't wanna look at it that way. God gave
them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are
not convenient. Being filled with all unrighteousness,
fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy,
murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whispers, back biters, haters
of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient
to parents. A lot of times it starts there,
doesn't it? All of that is disobedience to
God. Sin is against God, all of it,
all of it. Without understanding covenant
breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful, knowing
the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are
worthy of death. Isn't that interesting? They know that God is on the
throne, and they know it's sin before God, but they not only
do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. They divide
the spoils together, don't they, of their evil in this world. To glorify God as God, again, that's not just something
a believer does when he thinks about it. It's who a believer
is. The general walk of a believer's
life is to glorify God. It's just God has done that in
us. It's God which worketh in us both to will and to do of
his good pleasure. We don't do anything sinless.
We don't do anything meritorious. In other words, that gains favor
or the acceptance of God. Why would we want to, except
to honor him? But we have a perfect righteousness
in Christ. Why would we want to add to that,
is what I'm saying. Why would we want to try to add
to perfection when we know that's a fool's game? But it's a way, is what I'm trying
to say. Humility is a way that permeates all that a believer
does. Listen to this for an example
Matthew 6 1 take heed that you do not your arms before men to
be seen of them Otherwise you have no reward of your father
which is in heaven You don't do it for a reward But the truth
of the matter is do you want what this world will give you?
Or do you want what God can give you? Therefore, when thou doest thine
alms, don't sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the
synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men.
Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But when thou doest
alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, that
thine alms may be in secret. And thy father which seeth in
secret himself shall reward thee openly. Now that's an example
of Your way of life, and this is not just talking about when
you put money in the treasury, as it's called in the scripture.
It's not just about that. This is a principle that anytime
you do anything for anybody, especially for God, if there's
any way to do it without anybody knowing about it, do it that
way. I've known a few people like
that. where I used to attend worship in Texas, things would
just happen. And everybody's like, who did
that? I knew who did it. But it wasn't because they told
me. It wasn't because they sounded
a trumpet. Not only glorify God with your
living, Remember it said of that widow with the two months, you
put in all of her living. Not only worship God with your
living, but do it in a way that glorifies him. That's the humble spirit. I don't need men, people to recognize
me for the one that accomplished something. By God's grace, that's
tough, isn't it? That's hard to do. It's hard
to do something, and when I say good, I don't mean meritorious.
Again, I mean relatively good. It's relatively good to worship
this morning rather than not worship this morning. You see
what I mean? But our worship is full of sin.
But when we do something good, it's hard to shut up about it,
isn't it? Well, it kind of sounds like
life and death, though, doesn't it, in the scripture? It kind of sounds like the whole
point of it. When it says you will receive no reward from God,
if you do that, kind of sounds real important. And again, it's not just about
giving money, everything you do, do it for Him. Do it for
Him. Even when you're doing it for
somebody in this world, do it for Him. Do that for Him. and in such a way that nobody
knows but you and God, if that's at all possible. There's a whole
lot that can be done that way. Think about it. There's a whole
lot of things that can be done without anybody knowing about
it. Do those things first. And I'm preaching to myself,
of course. An humble spirit is one that gives God all the glory
and salvation. If you give man the glory and
salvation, there'll be a reward for that in this world. He'll
be popular and counted a wonderful spiritual, oh, he's so spiritual
and so godly, you know. But again, the cost is too much,
it's staggering. An humble spirit knows who God
is. When it comes down to it, that's really what an humble
spirit is, isn't it? It's somebody that knows who
God is. I'm telling you right now, the only thing that will
bring you down, the only thing that's gonna bring you down and
me down and break our proud hearts is seeing God, hearing from God,
knowing God. Nothing else is gonna do it. He just reveals himself and gives
us an humble spirit in doing so. We see our true condition
before him too. When that happens, you're not
going to see you until you see God. Job said, now man, I seeth thee
and I abhor myself. That's how that happens. We see our true condition before
him, hopeless and helpless in our sins, so defiled and depraved
that hell is a foregone conclusion. It's not about I know I've done
some bad things, it's I am a bad thing. I am a horrible thing. And I ought to go to hell, and
yet I've got to have Christ. That's the thing. Now, when you
see him and you see yourself, you know. You ought to go to
hell, but at the same time. And when you know that hell is
what you deserve, and yet you've seen the Lord Jesus Christ, the
altogether lovely son of God. And you've got to have him. There's
just one response to that. Think about that. What are you
going to do when you know you agree with God? Putting me in
hell is the right thing, and yet, there's the pearl of great price,
and I got to have it if it costs me everything, I've got to have
it. Got to have him. You know what you do when those
two things become reality to you? You beg for mercy. That's
what you do. You beg for mercy. You can't
say, Lord, I'll do better, because now you know better than that. By His grace, you know better.
There are only two kinds of people in this world. There are those
who brag and there are those who beg. Are you a mercy beggar before
God? Every day we need His mercy, don't we? Every day. Somebody told me one time, you
don't have to beg God for mercy. He likes to show mercy. Those two things are not mutually
exclusive. He delights to show mercy to
who? Beggars. He don't show mercy to proud
people. Not and leave them that way. Oh boy. There's much more to
say about this, but in closing, to acknowledge that Christ Saved
and this is just so simple it is so elementary People talk
about the deep doctrine. You know they have to write big
old thick books on it And I've read some of them, and I love
I enjoyed him learned a lot from him, but listen. This is not
complicated To acknowledge that the Lord Jesus Christ simply
saved everyone he came to say That's not complicated is it
When that gets complicated is when you try to make it reconcile
with your preconceived thoughts that are wrong. It's not gonna
work. It's not gonna work that way.
But when you just simply are able to acknowledge that salvation
is a person and what he did for me, that's an humble spirit. I'm uncondemnable before God
because it's Christ that died. I need no other argument. I need
no other plea. It is enough that Jesus died
and that he died for me. Let's pray.