Humble Might

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Genesis 11:27-32

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Well I feel like every chance we get to rehearse Hebrew names it sounds better and better and that certainly was the case just now.
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It seems that every time we've approached a genealogy I've not been quite sure how to handle it and what
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I've tried to do is just pull out different emphases or different ways of looking at the larger purpose, the larger structure.
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Sometimes by looking at the contrast within the genealogy, sometimes by looking at the place of the genealogy within the flow of the larger narrative, sometimes just looking at certain figures or events within the genealogy and so we remember the
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Sethites and the Cainites and seeing that contrast between the lineage. We remember the table of nations and really highlighting
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God's providence and seeing how his hand is over all the details, all of the people groups and all the complexity of every individual life therein and this morning we come to some genealogies at the end of chapter 11 as well and for the past two weeks we've been considering Babel, the city of mud and slime, the city of man.
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We've been considering Babel not just here in Genesis 11 but Babel as it continues throughout the biblical storyline as it becomes the ultimate city as it were,
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Babylon, the sort of symbol of the city of man in Scripture and thus we find it in Revelation at the very end.
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It's symbolic and so whatever city, whatever empire, wherever we have these fallen traits embodied in the efforts of man we have the spirit of Babel alive and well and so we see these areas in our own day of individual freedom, of government tyranny, of family stability.
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We see that we're living in the plains of Shinar under the thumb of a new Babel, of a new regime in the city of man, a new addition of that kind of fallen activity.
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We live in a civilization that's seeking to build their own tower of control trying to manage the fall as we've seen and the contrast of Babel as we saw last week also unfolds in Scripture.
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It takes a while to get there. We're just about to step into the quest toward that city but we find this counter to Babel, this counter city and it's not the city of man, it's the city of God, it's
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Zion and so there's this tension, this combat, this unfolding drama between the city of man and the city of God, the kingdom of man's efforts that are against the
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Creator and the kingdom of the Creator, the kingdom of God and so we enter after this week and we'll be reading,
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Lord willing, reading next week the next section in Genesis that we'll be considering together. We're beginning the patriarchal narratives and we're beginning with Abraham, the
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Abrahamic narrative and with Abraham we begin this quest of a man who by faith looks for a city whose builder and maker is
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God. That's the unfolding storyline. That's the foil to Babel. So what do we do with the rest of Genesis 11?
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Genesis 11 has taken us from Babel down through the line of Shem, this promised line that God is going to work through and that line even narrows down into the genealogy of Terah and so we pick up in verse 27 and following the genealogy of Terah.
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Terah begot Abram, Nahor and Haran. Haran begot Lot and Haran died before his father
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Terah in his native land in Ur of the Chaldeans. Then Abram and Nahor took wives.
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The name of Abram's wife was Sarai and the name of Nahor's wife Milcah and the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah and the father of Iscah.
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But Sarai was barren. She had no child. And Terah took his son Abram and his grandson
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Lot, the son of Haran and his daughter -in -law Sarai, his son Abram's wife and they went out with them from Ur of the
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Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan. And they came to Haran and dwelt there.
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So the days of Terah were 205 years and we haven't seen this in a while. Terah died.
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We're used to that refrain in the genealogies, aren't we? Terah died in Haran. Now notice the contrast between how
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Genesis 11 began and how it concludes. We began with Babel, right?
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The great mighty empire that was strung by Nimrod, the tyrannical, dominating, dehumanizing, counter -creative activity of man.
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This is sinful man's priority. Counter -creation, managing life without reference to God, trying to contain the effects of the fall and actually turn the curses into a blessing for their own strength, for their own purpose.
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And so what does God do? In other words, in light of how Genesis 11 begins, the great city of man, the rebellion of man, the counter -creational activity of man, how does
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God respond to that? How is God unfolding his promise of redemption in time?
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How does he counter the countering? How does he bring about the fulfillment of a promise he made back in Genesis 3 verse 15?
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How does he move toward a promised seed that is going to crush the serpent's head in this serpentine kingdom that appears in Babel?
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Is he going to build a massive city of stone, a tower of his own? Is he going to raise up mighty
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Nephilim? Is he going to send down legions of angels in shining silver armor to basically scatter all his enemies across the earth?
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No. We have the answer right in front of us in Genesis 11. How is God going to counter? How is
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God going to respond? What is the answer to the might and the power that trembles the earth under the shadow of Babel?
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It's this faithful, careful, patient, purposed generation after generation through the line of Shem, through the line of Terah, and a man named
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Abram. Exalted father, that's what his name means, which must have been a wound whenever his name was mentioned.
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This is the manner in which God is demonstrating his wisdom against the wisdom of man, isn't it?
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This is the way in which God shows his patience, his sovereign grace, and we see this time and again.
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God's answer to the massive empire of Babel is what? A barren couple migrating out of their homeland to a land called
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Canaan. That's God's answer to Babel. That's God's answer to the might of man being organized and trying to dominate the earth after their own image for their own purposes.
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God's answer to that is a barren couple wandering to a land they have not known.
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God's answer to the cruel dominance of Pharaoh is what? A mighty army, a mighty military movement, sappers and infiltrators, a sort of underground rebellion in the midst of Egypt by night, overthrowing their overlords and kind of taking the reins of power.
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No. What's God's response to the evil empire of Egypt? It's a mumbling shepherd who's afraid to even speak.
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Can't Aaron speak for me? That's God's answer. What's God's answer to the ravages of a idolatrous king,
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King Ahab, who's causing all of Israel to go astray in their worship of Yahweh?
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What's God's answer? Is it to send a mighty army to to rush the throne and behead
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Ahab and establish righteousness? No, it's a prophet who has to hide in a cave and he has to be fed by ravens.
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Do you get a theme here? Do you see a theme here? What do you think God's answer is for his church, his kingdom, his way in the world today?
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God's answer to the debauchery of Roman imperialism is sparse pockets of believers whose names have largely been forgotten, mostly widows, slaves.
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And that's his answer. The answer to the war of the cosmos is love your wives, raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the
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Lord. Treat your masters well, masters treat your servants well. Do this all with reference to Christ.
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Love your brother, love the church, love the kingdom. This is God's answer.
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This is God's waging of warfare. Do you notice a theme here? This is all because God's full and final answer to the cosmic bondage and defiling ruin of the fall.
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His ultimate yes and amen to the promise of Genesis 315 is a helpless infant born in a manger in Bethlehem, a town of less than 200 people.
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And only those who saw the signs, the shepherds that were watching by night, the wise men that saw an astrological phenomenon and began to travel toward it.
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They were the only ones that could behold the glory of what God was doing. It was hidden from everyone else's eyes. People in Bethlehem didn't even know what was going on.
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In the weakness of the flesh, God was countering the counter creation under the shadow and the trembling might of the kingdom of man, the city of man.
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God was countering through weakness, through a wisdom that overthrows the wisdom of the world, a kingdom that does not operate like the kingdoms of the world.
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And the point is this weakness is God's way. Weakness is
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God's way. Now we have to be very careful to understand what we mean by that.
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Certainly we do not mean that the omnipotent God is weak. No, the all powerful
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God is all powerful. When we say weakness is God's way, we mean his strength in our weakness is his way.
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His strength working through our weakness is his way. And this is a pattern that unfolds throughout scripture.
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Weakness is God's way. We see this in our own lives as believers, don't we? We see that there's a certain way in which he empowers his people by his spirit.
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He strengthens us in a way that he receives the glory. He receives the thankfulness.
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He receives the joy and the celebration that begins to bear fruit in all these untold ways.
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We do not grow as Christians by having one or two powerful zaps per year.
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All right, that would not, you know, oh, one of these days I'm just waiting for that holy zap and I can get up to that next level of sanctification in my life.
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That's not how God works at all, is it? You look back in your own life if you've been a Christian for any length of time and you see, no, it's been through weakness that his strength has been formed in you, hasn't it?
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His way is weakness. His way is showing his strength, showing that he cares for you.
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He doesn't burden you more than you can handle, although it always feels that he's done that. He carries out this patient growth in your life in the same way he carries out this gracious, patient growth in his purposes throughout the world.
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He does it patiently. He does it with a certain humility in the world.
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The kingdoms of men don't see it. They always boast and laugh. They're always plotting vain things.
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He works so subtly in such a weak way through his people that the kingdom man can't even see it.
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And they laugh to their own ruin. They laugh until their empire collapses and they are no more.
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Weakness has always been God's way. When I look at the end of chapter 11 in light of God's promise being fulfilled through Shem's line,
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I can see this weakness. We have to read between the lines, but you can see that though this is the line of blessing, it's also a line of brokenness, isn't it?
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We don't even know the whole story. We only have a few details here, but we can see that this line of blessing has brokenness.
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Haran died before his father, Terah, and his native land. That's brokenness.
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That's a father burying his son. Is that what caused them to leave
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Ur of the Chaldeans? The name of Nahor's wife,
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Milka, the daughter of Haran. The marriage here likely speaks to just how deprived they were, how desperate they were.
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There had to be some sort of covering in marriage and provision just to have offspring. Sarai was barren.
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She had no child. Barrenness in the ancient Near Eastern world was like a death sentence. Give me children lest I die is the cry.
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She must have felt cursed by God. Do you think Sarai thought that God's blessing was upon her?
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As she's barren with her husband and her family, they've buried Terah's son, Abram's brother, and they're moving, they're migrating to a land perhaps driven out of righteous zeal.
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They can't stand to be where they were anymore. Perhaps they're being persecuted. We don't know why they're being migrated out.
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But there's brokenness here. Weakness is God's way. We're going to see that a lot as we start working through the patriarchal narratives.
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Weakness is God's way because God shows his power, not ours. God shows his wisdom, not ours.
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God shows his patience and his goodness and his glory, his unchanging character.
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When he blesses, his blessing is irrevocable. When he gives a gift, that gift is irrevocable.
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This is how God shows himself. When he purposes to bless, he blesses. He blesses.
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We're going to see that a lot in Abraham's life. What does he say in Zechariah 4, 6?
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Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord.
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Not by might, not by power, not by your strength, not by your strategies, not by your wisdom, but by my wisdom.
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And my wisdom in you is foolishness to the Greeks, a stumbling block to the
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Jews. This is how my wisdom looks to the world. My wisdom looks weak. And you are weak.
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And yet when it's perfected in you, you were made strong. Weakness is
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God's way. We've already seen this in Babel, haven't we? The contrast from Zephaniah 3, the Lord says,
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I will give to the people purified lips, right? Not strange tongues, but holy tongues, purified lips.
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And they'll call on the name of the Lord to serve him shoulder to shoulder. And I will remove from your midst your proud exalting ones.
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You'll never again be prideful on my holy mountain, on my city Zion. I will leave among you a humble, a lowly people.
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They will take refuge in the name of the Lord. You see, he confounds the wisdom of the wise.
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And so Jesus says, the meek will inherit the earth. The question is then, to what extent do we embody the spirit of Babel?
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To what extent in our own lives, to what extent as a church do we imbibe consciously or unconsciously this attitude that we are doing things by our own strength?
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We are getting more organized and more strategic. We are moving forward in a way that's leading us outside of dependence upon God, outside of a continual recognition of our helpless and weakest state before him.
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It's motivated by arrogance. It's motivated by comfort, motivated and fueled by pride.
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This attitude of establishing an independence from God for the sake of our own purposes, our own drives, ambitions, and sins that lead us away from God.
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And often they're so blinding that we don't even know how far we've gone. We want to control every aspect of our life.
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And we pretend we can make room for God, but he will not share his throne. He will not share his glory.
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There's a spirit of Babel. And we don't realize we're inviting that contrast. The spirit of Babel, in other words, is ultimately, at the end of the day, flesh.
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That's what the spirit of Babel is. The spirit of Babel is flesh. And those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh.
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But those who live according to the spirit, the things of the spirit. To be carnally minded is death.
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To be spiritually minded is life and peace. Romans 8, 5 and 6. The flesh, as Paul uses it here, is really opposition to Christ, opposition to the spirit of the
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Lord, opposition to Jesus having lordship over our lives. You see, this is what
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Babel's all about. You will not control us. You will not tell us how we must live upon your creation.
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We will carve out our own image, our own way, our own path and destiny. That's what the flesh is in Romans 8.
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It's opposition to Christ's lordship. The flesh is what a person is in Romans 8 apart from Christ.
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The flesh is what a person is apart from the spirit. Remove Christ and all that's left of a person is what
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Paul would call flesh. And the problem that he's addressing is
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Christians who so readily and easily live according to the flesh and not according to the spirit.
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And they sow to the flesh and not to the spirit. So they reap from the flesh and not from the spirit.
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And the flesh is warring against the spirit. And the spirit is warring against the flesh.
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And we're thinking in the flesh and sowing to the flesh whenever we think this is the way I make changes in my life.
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This is the way as a church we'll make changes at the present time. We can find strength somewhere within our wisdom, somewhere within our strategies, somewhere within our best foot forward, moving forward, seizing destiny.
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This is all thinking according to the flesh. The Christian can understand with real understanding what
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Paul says in Romans 7 .18. I know that in me, that is in my flesh, nothing good dwells.
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And there is a spirit of fleshliness alive and kicking in the church in the
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West today. There is nothing good in the flesh. It is the spirit,
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Jesus says in John 6 .63, who gives life. The spirit gives life. The flesh profits nothing.
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We think the flesh profits much. The good that I would do,
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I don't do. The evil I would not want to do, I'm doing. That's the flesh.
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There's plenty of Babel gospel to go around convincing us that we should depend on our own strength and abilities.
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We should cultivate them, look for what's being blessed and being made fruitful. There's well -respected authors that are writing in this vein.
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Let's not talk about blessing and make excuses for our shortcomings. Let's talk about fruitfulness, that our metric for God's blessing or success is our fruitfulness.
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And that's a very fancy way of infiltrating the gospel of Babel into our ministry, into our lives as Christians.
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We end up looking to our own strength, our own abilities as metrics of fruitfulness. We're no longer walking as sinners in need of a savior.
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We're no longer walking in weakness, having his strength perfecting us. So the idea is trusting your abilities, develop them, walk according to your wisdom, and just keep trusting in Christ as you do that.
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And we're saying, no, that's the spirit of Babel, alive and well in the church.
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You cannot have confidence in Christ and confidence in the flesh at the same time.
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That's what Paul is making the point of in Romans 8. These things war against each other.
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There must be a choice. There must be a separation. There must be a turning away and a turning to.
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You're either walking in your flesh or walking according to the spirit.
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Now, this is the point. Weakness is God's way. Particularly God's strength in our weakness is
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God's way. God has chosen the weak things of the world. First Corinthians one to put to shame the things which are mighty, the base things of the world, the things which are despised.
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God has chosen the things which are not to bring to nothing the things that are that no flesh should glory in his presence.
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Do you get the idea from most of the Christianity you see that there is no flesh glorying in his presence, but of him you are in Christ Jesus who became for us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption that as it is written, he who glories, let him glory in the
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Lord. Paul is correcting this factionalism in Corinth where they're rallying around these mighty men of God.
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And I think we ought to be fair. These mighty men of God aren't trying to be mighty men of God.
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It's just the nature of man to celebrity culture 2000 years ago. And so they have all of these fans that are rallying around them and they're so excited and I'm a
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Paul and I'm of a Paulist and I'm of Peter and Paul says, thank God I didn't baptize any of you.
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This is just flesh. You came and you wanted me to take my spot and preach with the best of them and gain a following.
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And I came, I preached nothing but Christ and him crucified. And he unpacks what that gospel looks like.
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It's confounding that kind of wisdom. It's a theology of the cross, not a theology of glory.
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And so today we have the same dynamics of the flesh. Paul would have to correct us in the same way.
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We look at first Corinthians one and we say they should have known better. Paul would come to us and say, you should know better.
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We disguise it more carefully, but we have the same dynamics that play. If we're not glorying in our own flesh, we're glorying in the flesh of others.
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But the point is that we're glorying in flesh. And yet God is moving through weakness.
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He's using the things that are debased, the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty.
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He's using the broken family of Abram to put to shame the builders of Babel. Why does he do this?
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That no flesh should glory in his presence. Weakness is God's way. His strength in our weakness is his way.
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Christians, therefore, do not trust in princes. Christians do not depend on their own arm of strength.
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Christians put no confidence in the flesh. This is zero sum. This is all or nothing. We either are stripping away
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God's grace and the community of the Spirit, or we're stripping away our efforts, our flesh, our boasting, our confidence.
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If you don't track what I'm saying, read Galatians. Paul's addressing the same issue in Galatians. Did you start out so well and now you're so easily deceived?
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Who's bewitched you? You think you entered into the Christian life by a sovereign act of God's grace, by a powerful movement of God's Spirit, and now you're actually manipulating and controlling
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God's grace in your life? You're earning it by the things you're avoiding and doing. You're becoming more holy by your own efforts.
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Could you be so foolish? If you entered into salvation by the sovereign monergistic power of God's grace, why would you continue in it any differently?
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The beginning of Christianity is the realization that we're blind and poor and naked and diseased and we have no claim, no ability to help.
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We are all that paralyzed man. We are all that valley of dry bones.
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Can they live? Surely you know, Lord. And he breathes upon them by his
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Spirit, not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit, says the
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Lord. Weakness is his way. And so Christians are not these titans, these
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Olympians of the evangel. We're clattering bones that have been regrouped by the
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Spirit. Weakness is God's way. Unless we abandon confidence in ourselves, confidence in the flesh, confidence in our wonderfully robust parachurch ministries, confidence in the big names that have the best gifts and we rally behind them in worse ways than 1st
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Corinthians 1. Unless we abandon that confidence, we will not lay hold of all that Christ has given.
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No flesh shall glory in his presence. Brothers and sisters, we can toil and labor and turn over many new leaves, make many changes in our own strength, have many hopes and exciting movements and trajectories throughout the year.
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And we can run and we can labor. But it's all in vain. It's all in vain where there's confidence in the flesh.
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We're building up a wall of sand. And as soon as we throw it up, it comes tumbling down. Why is that?
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Because Christ says, apart from me, you can do nothing. Apart from me, you can do nothing.
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And so as the great Puritan Robert Trill said, wisdom outside of Christ is damning folly.
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Righteousness outside of Christ is guilt. Sanctification outside of Christ is filth.
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Redemption outside of Christ is bondage. Do you see? Christ is the very center of anything and everything that a
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Christian is called to weakness. His strength in our weakness is his way.
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This means there's no place for presumption in the Christian life. Do you want to know a modern picture that maybe cuts close to home for us?
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A modern picture of the spirit of Babel? James chapter four. He's addressing brothers and sisters in the church.
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Come now. You say today, tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and we will spend a year there and we will trade and make a profit.
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Yet you don't know what tomorrow will bring. That seems very innocent to us.
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Don't we exchange comments like James 413 all the time? Hey, how's it going?
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Pretty good. This week I'm going to do this and next year we will do this and we will go to this place and we will do that.
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And I rarely as I talk like that, I rarely hear hear the rebuke. You don't know what tomorrow will bring.
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You may remember from the first chapter of James that there's there's a sin he's exposing in the church and he calls it the pride of life, the pride of life.
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And he says there's a worldliness that is at enmity with God. Worldliness, pride of life.
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These things being at enmity with God. That is the the incarnation as it were of the spirit of Babel.
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And James is connecting this root of worldliness with presumption. Presumption.
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See how subtle confidence in the flesh is. It's just being presumptuous. You're already thinking like a
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Babelian or a Babelite, whichever that would be. Just to be presumptuous.
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Those who order their lives after their own desires, after their own sinful affections with no reference to God, those who feed their minds and entertain their hopes with carnal goals, with proud hopes, wanting to collect trophies of life without reference to God.
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James is rebuking them, saying you're being presumptuous. The spirit of Babel is alive and well in you.
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You don't know what tomorrow will bring. You're not in control in this situation. Notice this refrain, we will, we will, we will.
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That sounds a lot like Babel, doesn't it? Let us, let us, let us. We're going to do this.
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And there's no reference to God. In fact, there's reference away from God. And so to take that into application today, it's so easy for us to say the right things and say we believe the right things and live the wrong way.
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We can inadvertently compartmentalize God in our day -to -day affairs because we're just being presumptuous at the least.
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That just planning something without reference to God is being dangerously close to the spirit of Babel.
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Tonight I use Lord willing as a token phrase, but actually register that when you say it.
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Like Lord willing because I could die tonight. So Lord willing,
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I hope to do this tomorrow. We get sucked into the secular atmosphere in a way that we compartmentalize
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God from our day -to -day activities, our day -to -day affairs. He only has any reference to those spiritual activities we do in the morning, at night, on a
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Sunday, maybe on a Thursday. And then we put him back in that little compartment so we can carry on with our grand projects, ambitions without reference to him.
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Get through the slog of the week, live our lives as though every component of our life that isn't explicitly
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Christian really doesn't have any reference to him. Something I have to get through to get back on to the spiritual.
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No, no, no. That's the spirit of Babel. James is reminding us that compartmentalizing
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God in our day -to -day affairs, planning presumptuously our days and our years with inward thoughts of worldly gain puts us at enmity with God because that's worldliness.
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Worldliness is at enmity with God. And Paul says, many walk as enemies of the cross of Christ.
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How much more do you need enmity spelled out enemies of the cross?
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The cross is the ultimate symbol of the weakness, the weakness,
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God's way of weakness. The fullest expression of that is the cross.
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He dies on the cross. It's the ultimate act of weakness.
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And yet it's the ultimate act of might. Many walk as enemies to that way of living.
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They walk as enemies to the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction. Why? What does it look like for someone to be an enemy of the cross?
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Well, their God is their belly. They glory in their shame. They set their minds on earthly things.
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That's what James is addressing in James 4. They set their minds on earthly things. Do you see the staining root, this
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Babel -like pride? It's subtle just in being presumptuous about your time and what you're hoping to accomplish.
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Doing that without reference to God, losing perspective of God, losing reverence for God and how you're composing your days, how you're planning your life and your resources.
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Remember the carnal mind is at enmity with God. Carnal heart, as Thomas Manton says, carnal hearts are for carnal projects.
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If you're only thinking in a fleshly way, if your ambitions and your activities and the way you use your resources are mostly carnal, could it be that you have a carnal heart?
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So how do you respond to this kind of attitude? How can you put to death the spirit of Babel? What's so interesting to me that James' response is really the point
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I'm trying to make about the way that God works, that he works through weakness, that weakness is his way.
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Because he says, what is your life? It's so interesting, isn't it?
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He doesn't say, stop doing that. Don't do that. Stay Lord willing and mean it.
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And then that's, you know, and God be with you. Amen. It's really interesting. How do you respond to this situation,
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James? What wisdom? This is a wisdom letter, really. This is wisdom. What wisdom would you impart?
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How do you respond to the spirit of Babel? He takes a big step back and he says, what is your life?
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You're planning all these things, you have all these hopes. You're hoping this goes through and this lines up and this happens and this is produced and your account looks like this and your savings looks like that.
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What is your life? What is your life? You are a mist.
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You are a vapor that appears for a little time and then it vanishes. Do you notice that James' answer to the spirit of Babel in James 4 is by showing weakness.
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You're just a vapor. What is your life? He looks at how transitory life is in light of God, in light of God's eternity, in light of our fragility as creatures, in light of our
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Godward dependence. He's trying to expose just the arrogance of even being presumptuous.
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Who are you? What is your life? What kind of control do you think you have? You're a vapor.
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Why are you here? What are you here for? You're not here long. Clearly, he's referencing
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Psalm 39. He's echoing this great language of life as a vapor and he's using
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Psalm 39 because Psalm 39 is showing that contrast with wealth.
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And so David says, Oh Lord, make me know my end. What is the measure of my days?
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Let me know how fleeting I am. Behold, you have made my days a few hand breaths.
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My lifetime is nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands like a mere breath.
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Surely a man goes about as a shadow. Surely for nothing they're in turmoil. Man keeps up wealth and doesn't know who will gather.
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All that effort, all that planning, all that activity, and then you die and where it goes, you won't know.
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Who receives it and who uses it and how they use it. It's beyond you. You lived out your midst.
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Do you notice the wisdom here? What is David praying for? If you could boil
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Psalm 39 forward and following down to a one line prayer, one sentence prayer, what is
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David asking the Lord to do? Think of David's context, right?
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There's a lot that could fill this man after God's own heart with a heart for the world, a heart for Babel, a heart to have a bigger kingdom and a bigger way and more impressive might and more lasting monuments.
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And so he says, and this is what James is trying to say, be like David. Your life is a vapor.
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Ask the Lord to show you how fleeting your life is. Ask the Lord to show you and make your end known.
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David essentially is praying to boil it all down. Lord, humble me, humble me.
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Remember some weeks back we read Ozymandias, that poem about this great king who said, you know, tremble before me, right?
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Wherever you go, you're going to see my statues and they're just broken pieces of stone in a wasteland, in a desert.
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David is keenly aware of that. He's saying, humble me. Don't let me be like that fool
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Ozymandias. Humble me. Let me know my end. Let me know the greatest ambitions
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I have eventually become dust before you, that only your work, only your kingdom is everlasting.
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So humble me. Let me know my end. Put me in perspective, Lord. What will prevent
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David from becoming a Cainite, or a Nimrod, or a Pharaoh, or an Nebuchadnezzar?
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Humility. Humility. You know, we're surprised the
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Lord judges David when he takes the census of Israel. Isn't that just kind of good government?
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You want to know who's in your realm? You want to be able to allocate resources effectively? Call for, you know, military assistance as needed?
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You kind of need to know who your people are. I mean, is a census really something so bad? In light of this prayer it is,
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David's saying, humble me. Don't let me depend on my arm of strength. Don't let my pride and my ambition take me away from your presence,
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Lord. No wonder it was a great sin for him to take this census and say, let me test my strength, when he should have known that his strength was in the
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Lord. The Lord was his shield. The Lord was his strong tower. And so David here, he's praying,
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Lord, humble me. Let me know my end. My life is a vapor before you. Help me orient my life toward your eternity.
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Let me show that the best of my ambitions are fleeting and foolish. Remind me, as Augustine would pray, you made me for yourself, and I'm restless until I find rest in you.
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I'm vulnerable until I find security in you. I'm hopeless until my hope is fixed upon you.
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So then, brothers and sisters, the spirit of Babel is alive and well when we lose this perspective of God's unending, unchanging presence, and how that unending, unchanging presence makes our life here a little vapor, just a little vapor.
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It orients everything. If we would not put our confidence in the flesh, let us remember that the
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Lord has numbered our days, that he knows that number, and we do not.
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We're drawn to depend upon the Lord when we firmly believe that our life is a vapor.
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When we see the proof of that every day, we see how fleeting our bodily capability is, how fleeting our mental capacity is.
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That's something I'm beginning to mourn a lot. We see how fleeting our hopes and ambitions were.
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Things we thought we would have in place by now are light years away. We've given up on them. We just realized the wisdom of the preacher.
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Vanity. All is vanity. I've seen toil and labor.
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I've seen everything that's under the sun. It's all vanity. It's all vanity. Jesus is the one who has scattered untold galaxies throughout the cosmos, arranging every molecule of the firmament, commanding every cell that composes our bodies, sitting enthroned above creation, sovereign over every trivial detail of our day -to -day experience, numbering the hairs of our heads.
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He's moving in a mysterious way. In light of all of that control, at his constant disposal, he adopts to use weakness as his way.
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Our weakness. So here we are observing
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God moving in a mysterious way, so mysterious that it's almost indiscernible, so mysterious, so hidden from our eyes that we're often discouraged and we're often lamenting.
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We're so discouraged that we can't do the big efforts, the big actions, the big movements that can really make some progress, cut some new ground, make a dent in the city of man.
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We don't want to do what Genesis 11 says God does. We don't want to just focus on moving our family toward Canaan and trying to worship
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Yahweh because he's called us. And to raise my son to be a man after God's own heart and for him to raise a family that will love the
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Lord God with all their mind and heart and soul and strength and to feel the weakness of that because I can't do that.
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I can't do that. I can't do that. How am I going to get anyone else to do that? And I'm reminded that God has called me to certain responsibilities, to certain accountability.
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He's gifted me and given me things, each one of us here. And it's not that we're going to be these titans, these supernatural superheroes that are going to make a conquest of the city of man.
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It's rather going to be through weakness because that's how Christ came. And no servant is greater than his master.
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And so Christ comes and he's not comely in a way that people are drawn to him.
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He's despised, rejected, a man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief. His message is sometimes heard, sometimes marveled at, often rejected and despised.
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He's called a blasphemer, a drunkard, a wine bibber. They make fun of him.
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Oh, yeah, we know about your family situation. You're a bastard child. That's what it is.
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That's all the talk that stayed with him his whole life, his whole ministry. He sees the multitudes that come to him because their stomachs are hungry and they're willing to watch the miracles and hear the teaching.
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And you can think in his humanity how encouraging that must have been. And the temptation to just keep going with that, to just keep raising up this movement in Israel.
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Maybe we can do it this way. And then to watch them all turn away as soon as he starts talking about the need for them to actually consume him.
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As soon as he starts intimating about his ultimate mission, the cross, they all flee. And he turns broken to his disciples and he says, are you going to leave to shattered weakness, having to trust the father in light of that weakness, not seeing things come to fruition, not seeing pilot tremble or even know his name, not seeing any inroads for the kingdom outside of pockets of resistance.
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And it seems like he's never the one with power as far as the world is concerned. Seems he's quite weak.
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And that's his way because weakness is the way.
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And so Paul says in second Corinthians 12, lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations of foreign in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffered me.
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Lest I'd be exalted above measure concerning this thing. I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me.
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And he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in weakness.
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Therefore, most gladly, I'll rather boast to my infirmities, but the power of Christ may rest upon me.
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Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproach, in need and persecution and distress for Christ's sake.
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For when I'm weak, then I am strong. This is the logic of God's kingdom at work in the world.
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As Christians, we rally around the figures that have the most promise, the most power, the most appeal.
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These will be the men, our Titans, our answer to the Philistines, our answer to Goliath.
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These will be the men that make a dent in the kingdom of man. So we rally around them and we're always discouraged because it seems like they're always confounded.
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It always seems like we're routed and we lose heart, just like the Israelites lost heart when their champion was mocking them day by day and they're just in their tents sulking.
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That's Christianity in a nutshell, because we don't understand the ministry of Christ.
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We don't understand what God has been doing in Genesis 11, what he always does when he unfolds his purposes in the world.
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He does it in a way that it's so obviously his wisdom confounding the wise, his power working through the weakness of his people, through broken people and broken families.
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When we're weak, brothers and sisters, that's when we're strong. When we're on our knees crying, when we're repenting, when we're being humbled and we can barely speak, when we realize that God really is in the heavens and my life really is disdained failure and I just feel so weak and ineffective.
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That's when I'm strong. That's the logic of the gospel. It's when
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I think I'm doing well and I think I'm being effective and look what God is doing. I think we can really start to take territory.
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Beware if you think you're standing. That's you at your weakest. This is the maximum for the
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Christian life. This is a blueprint for how God works. His strength is made perfect in our weakness.
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Weakness is God's way because his strength is made perfect in weakness. He wants to show his power and his wisdom and his might and his glory.
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So he calls weak people in the midst of their weakness to walk as best they can in their weakness.
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And he showers glory and blessing all around them. Think, think in your Christian life, the times that you've been pivotally blessed by brothers and sisters.
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Most of those times have been when those other brothers or sisters have been weak. It's when you've seen them in their weakness.
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It's when they've been transparent or honest. So you're seeing fruit grow out of some misery in their life.
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It's when they've been made weak that God made you strong even through them. This is his way.
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Jesus stands as it were over the cliffs and he watches disciples rowing in the night and being battered by the waves.
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And it's all they can think about is the next wave and getting through the next wave and getting through the next wave, getting through the next headline, getting through the next election cycle.
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And he's watching over this and he's interceding and he's praying. And we've lost sight of the fact that our master is watching our masters in control at his command.
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These seas will turn into a mirror, into a pane of glass. We lose sight of that.
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Consider how Jesus had to trust in the weakness of God's way and live by faith, not by sight under the shadow of a
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Roman babble. He had to remain conscious of his father's perfect control, even when there was no horizontal human symbol or sense at all of his father being in control.
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When there was every temptation to unleash the power and do what we're always trying to do.
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Consider how Jesus trusted that in the small mundane acts, in the words, in the blessings, in those private miracles, in those little parables that he was effectively countering and ruining the machinations in the world.
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This was how he was advancing his kingdom into the world. It never looked like a kingdom and it didn't look like an advance.
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Consider how Jesus taught us to pray our father who are in heaven. Just just that daily prayer, this prayer that Jesus prayed again and again in his ministry.
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He's calibrating his whole life, his whole mission toward the fact that my father is in heaven.
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My father is in control. My father is in control. I'm on earth.
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My thoughts are limited. My perceptions are blinded. I'm naive. I'm clouded. I'm often easily discouraged.
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I don't realize the bigger picture, but you God, you're on high, you're in heaven. And therefore, however weak
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I feel today, however weak my obedience has been, however weak my effectiveness seems to be, Lord, you give growth.
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You're sitting on high. You'll use me in my weakness. I'm coming to you as a weak man.
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Use me in my weakness. Make your strength perfect in me. You see, this is the
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Christian life. This is the Christian life. It's not waiting to approach God when we're strong again.
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It's not waiting to clean ourselves up so we have a good reputation again. Being made weak.
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It's being honest with our weakness. Let Babel tower up to the sky.
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Fix your eyes on his promise. Wait upon the name of the Lord. What has he given you to do?
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Lift your marriage up to him. Raise your children unto him. Trust that the weak work that he has put before you is work that he's going to make fruitful.
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It seems like weak work. A conversation in the break room, sitting down with a stranger to pray.
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It seems like weak work, just going through the motions sometimes. And yet this is the work that he's called us to and he's promised to bless it and make it fruitful.
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We do not look at the things which are seen. We look to that which is unseen. The things that are seen are temporary.
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The things which are not seen are eternal. We have confidence in the flesh because we're only looking at things that are seen.
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We're forgetting the fact that God works through weakness. Weakness is his way. And so brothers and sisters, what of these
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Babel builders? What of the spirit of Babel? What of the year 2021 and the reincarnation of that and all of their power, all of their boasting, all of their arrogance, all of their abominations?
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What of them? The desire of the wicked will perish. Psalm 112. Let them build.
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Their desire will perish. Be careful that you're not taking treasure from them, that moss will eat and rust will destroy.
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Store up for yourself treasure in heaven. Look to that which is not seen. Brothers and sisters, remember what
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Jesus taught about the seed that was sown among thorns. These are the ones sown among thorns.
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They're the ones who hear the word. But the cares of this world, the worldliness that is enmity with God, the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, desire for other things, enter in, choke the word, it becomes unfruitful.
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So how do you sever the roots of worldliness? How do you sever this spirit of Babel in the
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Christian life? 1 Peter 5, 6. Humble yourselves. Pray Psalm 39, 4 and following.
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I'm a vapor, Lord. My life is a vapor. I busy myself with things that don't matter.
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My ambitions are in things that are going to be destroyed. It's all vanity. And yet they're the things that consume my imagination and my thoughts.
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I get excited about them. Lord, Lord, make me know my end. It's a vapor.
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It's vanity. Humble me, Lord. Humble me. Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God.
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Weakness, our weakness, his strength, our weakness, humble yourself, his strength under the mighty hand of God.
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Notice that Peter doesn't say this passively. He doesn't say, let yourself be humbled as though this is going to be something that happens to you.
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It's very important. This is an active verb. Humble yourself. Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God.
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Spurgeon said, many people have often been humbled and yet they have not become humble. That's the difference right there.
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It's one thing to be humbled. It's another thing to humble yourself. What is your life?
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What is your life? Consider the trials you faced and the situations you're facing.
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Even now, have these things made you more humble? We should repent of pride because weakness is
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God's way. And he goes on to say, God resists the proud. He gives grace to the humble.
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Is there a lack of grace in your life? Humble yourself. Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God.
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God resists the proud. He gives grace to the humble. He resists the spirit of Babel.
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He gives grace to the publican. He gives grace to the sinner who's weak and knows it and approaches
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God in light of it, lives out his life in light of it. He gives grace. Luke 1411, whoever exalts himself will be humbled.
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He who humbles himself will be exalted. You notice these are all active verbs.
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Humble yourself. If you humble yourself, you will be exalted. Easy to say, hard to do, but you have to put it into practice.
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And remember, as you humble yourself, as you're made weak, as you're made transparent, as you're brought to the reality of this vapor of life and all the foolish attachments that have encircled it, as you're reduced to really what you are before God and you're just weak, that you've humbled yourself under a mighty hand.
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And because God loves to give grace to the humble, that mighty hand picks you up and uses you in your weakness.
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This is the way God works. He will not work with grace,
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Reformation, Bible church. If we're putting our confidence in our abilities and our strengths and virtues in our flesh, if we're glorying or forming factions or rallying or being proud of it, he will not work with us.
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We have to humble ourselves under his mighty hand, be made weak so that he can use us.
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Thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy. I dwell in the high and holy place with him who has a contrite and humble spirit to revive the spirit of the humble, to revive the heart of the contrite.
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We've been praying for revival lately. Do you want a revival? Isaiah 57. He revives the spirit of the humble.
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He brings revival to the contrite. May the Lord help us to avoid the spirit of Babel.
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May the Lord help us to ponder the wisdom of James and ask that question of ourselves. Even today, what is my vapor of a life?
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What is it? What is it about? What's the summary statement? What's the trajectory of it?
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Let us be those who humble ourselves where others boast. Thus says the Lord, let not the wise man boast in his wisdom.
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Let not the mighty man boast in his mind. Let not the rich man boast in his rich and let him who boasts boast in this that he knows me and understands me that I am the
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Lord. And so we humble ourselves into the mighty hand of this God.
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And in that humility, we trust him. We know that our weakness is going to be his way. So we look to him and we run to him and we lean on him and we live through him and we live for him.
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And then we answer his call, whatever that call might be. It's going to be those things that seem weak to us that he calls us to.
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It's easy to go build a tower in the name of Christ. It's hard to love your wife as Christ loved the church. Easy to go start a very successful women's mission.
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It's hard to nurture your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. It's the weak things that God uses.
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I'm reminded that weakness is his way. And so the Jesus that we run to, the
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Jesus that we lean on, the Jesus that we live for, the Jesus that we live through is a humble
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Savior. He's a humble Lord. He's meek and he's gentle and he's lowly.
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No wonder he wants us to be humble and to humble ourselves to be more like him. Come to me, all you who labor, heavy laden, all you babble builders.
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Come to me. I'll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Learn from me. I'm gentle.
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I'm lowly. You'll find rest for your souls. My yoke is easy. My burden is light.
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It's the year 2021. The shadow of Babel stretching long over the land. The land is trembling and shuddering under the might of fallen man.
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But in a humble living room or at the kitchen table around waffles or in the break room at work for 15 minutes, weakness is
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God's way. Weakness is God's way. And so we pray with faith.
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We celebrate with joy. We live with wonder. We have thanksgiving and thankfulness in our hearts. And with such weak things, with such stumbling words and oblivious effects,
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God is advancing his kingdom through his people, doing the weak things that he called them to do so that he gets the glory and his power and his wisdom are shown.
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This is the wisdom of God in the most profound way. These weak things bring down the tower of the city of man.
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It's his wisdom, brothers and sisters, as we close. It's his wisdom. It's his delight.
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He delights. He delights to empower humble and weak
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Christians. He delights in it. He delights in it. He delights to bless those who humble themselves.
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He's eager to pour out grace on those who humble themselves. He delights to give the whole earth to the meek.
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Talk about a reward. I'm not just going to give you a promotion because you're meek. I'm going to give you the earth because you're meek.
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You're meek. I'm going to let you inherit the earth. This is how excited I am at the humility of my people.
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It's his good pleasure to give a kingdom, an everlasting kingdom to a needy, weak, grumbling flock that in the midst of that weakness is nevertheless faithfully seeking it, faithfully seeking it.
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Isn't that what Jesus said? And I'll close with this. Luke 12. He said to his disciples, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life.
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Don't be anxious about your little vapor, your little passing mist as you pray for the Lord to make you know your end.
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Don't be anxious about it. Instead, seek his kingdom. All these things will be added to you. Fear not, little flock.
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Fear not, weaklings. Fear not, needy ones. It's your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
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You don't take it. You receive it. It's given to you in your weakness as a fearful, needy flock.
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This is the wisdom of God working through weakness. Amen. Let's pray.
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Father, we thank you that this is your way. What an encouragement, Lord. What a blessing. To know that you don't call us to be mighty warriors,
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Lord, of our own avail, of our own devising, Lord, of our own design.
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But you make us mighty in our weakness. When we come to you,
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Lord, humbled because of our sinfulness, when we come to you, Lord, needy for a
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Savior, when we come to you heartbroken and heart sick because your love has continued to flow toward us and you have not been the
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Lord of our lives lately, Lord, that in these very moments of weakness, we are made mighty and valiant, that you send us forth as conquering ones when we're humbled and when we're weak,
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Lord, not when we think we're strong or standing, not when we're doing things in our strength or by our flesh.
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Help us, Lord, to be humble then as individuals, as the saints here, as this church,
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Lord, let us be humbled so that we can be used of you, so we can be mighty for you, Lord. We know that pride is the sin behind all sin.
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We know that the evil one who's a murderer from the beginning was a murderer because of his pride, his arrogance.
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Oh, what an evil, demonic sin is pride, Lord. Purge it from us.
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Let us be humble and meek and lowly as our Savior was. Let us walk by faith and not by sight as he did.
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Let us look to the small things, the passing encounters rather than the towering buildings and projects of the city of man, the things that seem to have so much power and effectiveness.
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Let us not shake or tremble before them in a moment. Let us not be discouraged in our hearts. Let us remember that you are perfectly forming and unfolding your plan, that weakness is your way, and though Babel seems tall in its time, you're unfolding an everlasting covenant, an everlasting purpose through a broken family that's wandering.
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Perhaps, Lord, there's some of us here who feel like broken families wandering. We feel weak, ineffectual, outside of what you're really doing in the world.
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Let us repent of that mindset, Lord. We're at the very center of it. And if that weakness makes us run toward you and cling to you, repent to you that we might draw closer to you, that we indeed are the very means of your kingdom's advance in this world,
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Lord. Let us seek your kingdom first. Let us consider and weigh our life as a vapor. Help us,
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Lord. Help us, we pray, not to be caught up with the ways of man, not to put confidence in the flesh, not to have that subtle presumption or pride of life or stains of worldliness which puts us at enmity with you.
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Help us, Lord. Help my brothers and sisters here. Humble us, Lord, that we might humble ourselves.