Humility, Submission and Contentment — Zac Poonen

Building the Body of Christ Through Fellowship

Is about building fellowship in the body of Christ. We are thinking of our human body as an example of how the body of Christ is built. And that's why the Lord has used the expression the body. Many of you meet in local churches that you attend.

And you need to ask yourself, is that church at least working towards becoming a body? Or is it just perpetually a congregation centered around one man who runs the show? And very often in many churches it's he and his son or somebody who runs the show in many places.

Is that a body? What about all the people who sit there? I mean, there are many parts of our body which don't have a gift as spectacular as, say, the eyes or the tongue. But they're very necessary. And even if a small part of your body is injured, it affects the whole body.

Even if you get a cut on a hand, it's not that the rest of the body ignores it. The whole body is concerned about it. If there's an infection, sometimes the whole body is lying in bed because there's an infection in one small part.

Or one little bone is broken and the whole body is affected. This is how the body of Christ should be. Turn with me to 1 Corinthians and chapter 12. You see, this is a chapter where the first half deals with the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

And the second half deals with the body. They go together. Unfortunately, in many churches there's a lot of emphasis on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It is very necessary. I began to seek the gifts of the Holy Spirit when I was 23 years old, two years after my baptism.

I especially prayed that God would give me the gift of prophecy. Prophecy means to speak to people, to encourage and build up, build them up. And that's how God gave it to me. If you don't have it, it's probably because you're not seeking it.

God doesn't give a gift to people who don't value it. Or maybe you didn't receive it because you're seeking it for your own honor, to promote yourself. And God doesn't give a gift to people who want to promote themselves.

See, everything in this body, every part of this body is interested in the plans that the brain has. The brain is the head of the body. And if your aim is to submit to Jesus Christ in every area and to promote Christ and that He should be exalted, I want to tell you something.

There's no limit to what God can do through you, however weak you may be. In 1 Corinthians 12, it speaks about a body where no one can say to another, I don't need you. Listen to this. Or no one should feel inferior, saying, oh, I don't have a gift, so I'm useless.

Just listen to this, verse 14. The body is not one member, but many. And if the foot should say, He first deals with those who have a feeling of inferiority. And I have noticed in Christianity, there are a lot of people, and I'm sure there are a lot of people sitting here, who feel very inferior because they don't have a spectacular gift, or they're not always prominent, they're not up in the pulpit.

So they feel inferior to others. And when you feel inferior to others, you withdraw, and you don't do anything. So it's first speaking to such people, the Holy Spirit. If the foot, see the foot is way down at the bottom and mostly covered up, in our case, covered up with shoes and socks, nobody sees our feet.

And it's the lowest part of the body. And we can think of believers who are the lowest in terms of gift. The context here is gifts, not value to God. Is your foot not valuable to you? And you wouldn't be able to move around without your feet.

Every other part of your body can be good. And if you don't have feet, how will you move? It may be the lowest part of your body, it's very important. It's one of the things that the Lord teaches us in the body of Christ.

There are some people whom you may despise as not so smart and not so clever, not as gifted as you, but they're very valuable. And the body will not move without them. So if the foot says, Oh, I'm not a hand.

You know, I'm not doing spectacular things like eating, taking the food from the plate and all that. And therefore, I'm not a part of the body, verse 15. Is it because of that it's not a part of the body?

Part of the ear says, I'm not an eye. An eye is so important. You can see and guide people where to go. My ear doesn't do any guidance. So I can't, I'm not, I wish I were an eye. You know, sometimes there are people whose gift is such they wish they had somebody else's gift.

This is the year saying, I wish I wish I were an eye. Do you ever envy another person's gift? When you look at a person with a very spectacular gift, particularly preaching, do you say, Boy, I wish I could preach like that.

Why do you wish that you preach like that? Just ask yourself. It's probably not to build up the body. It's probably for you to get some honor yourself, that you can be honored and you can stand up there and be a prominent person and respected.

God doesn't give gifts to such people. There are people with gifts who have abused it. You know how the devil became the devil? You know, the devil has got amazing supernatural gifts. Look at all the things he does through witchcraft.

Witchcraft is a hundred percent of Satan. And a lot of black magic. So Satan, it shows what tremendous power he has. Not greater than God, not greater than Christ. And there's no power of Satan that the church cannot rebuke and bind.

But he does have power. And the question is, who gave him that power? He didn't manufacture it himself. He's a created being. Don't ever forget that Satan is a created being. He has power, but the power was given him by God.

And then the question comes to us, why didn't God take away those gifts when he fell away? See, he was created as the highest of the angels. I don't have time to show you those verses. When you get time, you read two chapters, Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28.

Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, you'll read about Satan. Both of them in the middle of that chapter, you'll see about Satan. He was the highest of the angels, created by God long before Adam was created. And he was the one who led the angels in the worship of God.

And after a while, he began to think, why should they worship God? I'd like people to worship me. I'd like to be someone who's like God. And even though he was the highest, in his heart came a pride because of his, you read that in Ezekiel 28, he was proud because he was the most beautiful of all of God's creation.

He was the cleverest. He had three things more than everybody else. Beauty, wisdom, and position. And when you have beauty more than others, or you have cleverness, intelligence more than others, or you have a position in society or in the church more than others, you are in great danger.

I'm not saying you should give it up. You don't have to make yourself ugly or give up your position or you can't give up your intelligence. But you don't have to give them up. But you have to humbly recognize, these are not something I manufactured.

Did you manufacture your beauty? Did you manufacture your intelligence? Even if your position, if you worked hard to attain that position, you could have been born as a retarded, mentally challenged child.

What position would you have then? It's because of God's grace and goodness to you that you have beauty, intelligence, and position. And Satan, we don't know his original name. We think it is Lucifer, but that's not really.

His name is not mentioned anywhere in Scripture, by the way. Lucifer is just a Latin expression in Isaiah 14. But we don't know his name. But whatever it is, God doesn't want us to know what his name was before.

So let's call him Lucifer. He became proud as soon as pride came into his heart. He gathered other angels who were also having the same spirit. There were a few. And Revelation 12, it says one third of the angels, there were millions and millions of angels God had created.

And one third of them, you read that in Revelation 12, the dragon pulled down one third of the stars. There's a picture of the angels in heaven, the devil pulled down with him. He wasn't the devil then.

He was the head of the angels. He gathered these people in a sort of rebellion against God and said, I want to be like God. I want to go up. That is how sin came in this universe. Remember, Jesus Christ came to restore what was ruined by the devil.

1 John 3, verse 8 says, He came to destroy the works of the devil. And we need to understand how the devil became the devil if we are to cooperate with Jesus in destroying the works of the devil. Because the church today, it says the gates of hell will not prevail against the church.

So we need to understand how Satan operates if the local body must function properly. If you're building a local body in your locality, even if it's a small group, you need to know how to overcome Satan.

And one of the techniques of warfare is to know what are the strategies of the enemy. What are the strong points of the enemy? What are the weak points of the enemy? Well, here are the strong points of the enemy.

Pride, Rebellion, and Discontent as Satan’s Strategies

Pride. Number one is pride. Pride came into the heart of an angel. And in a moment, he became the devil. And I want to say to you, when pride comes into your heart, no matter how gifted you are, in one moment, you can be like the devil.

It doesn't take you long. It doesn't take you six months. In one moment, he lost the presence of God. And he was cast out along with all the other demons, all the other angels who now are the demons. And they are forever rejected by God.

And the Bible says, God created hell for these angels. You read that in Matthew 25. Hell was created for these angels. And in Revelation chapter 20, you read that finally the devil and all these demons will be cast into hell.

There was no hell in the beginning when God created the heaven and earth. In Genesis 1 .1, it says heaven and earth. There was no hell. When did hell come? Between verse one and two of Genesis, you read the angel fell.

It's not mentioned in Genesis because Bible is written for man. So the history of the fall of the angels is in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. The reason I'm mentioning that is because the church is the body of Christ to fulfill the ministry of Christ.

And one ministry of Christ in 1 John 3 .8 is called the son of man, son of God was manifest to destroy the works of the devil. He came to destroy the works of the devil. He defeated Satan on the cross.

That's why we are not afraid of Satan. That's why any believer whose conscience is clear and who believes that Jesus defeated Satan on the cross can cast out a demon. And the reason why sometimes God doesn't give that grace to some believers is because if they cast out a demon, they become so proud of it that they destroy themselves and become like the devil themselves.

So to save them from becoming like the devil, he doesn't give them that ability. But if you can remain humble, any believer can cast out a demon. But casting out a demon is not the main thing. I was telling you yesterday how the devil does a lot of confusion.

And with two are united together, they can bind the activities of Satan. So we need to understand how Satan operates. He, he's proud. And the other thing you see in Satan was a spirit of rebellion against authority.

So pride is one. Rebellion against authority is the other thing we see that made that angel into a devil. Why am I saying this? Because these are the strong points of Satan. Pride, rebellion against authority.

He, God was the only authority above him and he said, No, I'm not going to submit. And the third thing was discontent. Pride, rebellion against authority and discontent. Discontent means I'm not satisfied with the position God has given me.

Now he was the, he was the highest person in the universe. And you think if there was anybody who should be satisfied, it's him. But even though he had the highest position in the universe, he was not satisfied.

So why am I mentioning these three things? Pride, rebellion against authority and discontent. Jesus came down to earth to destroy the works of the devil. So he did the opposite of these. The devil wanted to go up.

Jesus came down. You know how Jesus came down? Turn with me to Philippians chapter two. Every member in the body is important. I showed you that from 1 Corinthians 12. Don't ever compare yourself with somebody else.

Think, Oh, I'm inferior. First of all, let me show you this verse in case you don't remember it. I told you 1 John 3 .8. You must know that very, very clearly that the son of God was manifested to destroy the works of the devil.

That's very, very important for you to remember that verse. There were two reasons why the son of God was manifested. One is 1 John 3 .5 to take away our sins. And the other is to destroy the works of the devil.

So I told you these three things that the devil's characteristics of pride. Don't ever forget them. Pride, rebellion against authority and discontent. Wherever you see that, you see that in a home, you see that in a church, you see that in society.

It is Satan. Okay, let's look at how Jesus overcame this. First of all, pride. Philippians and chapter two, we read verse five, have this attitude in yourself, which was in Christ Jesus. Now see how he overcame this.

Though he was existed in the form of God, he was God, the second person of the Trinity from all eternity. There was no need for him to come down to this earth. He could have said this wretched human race rebelled against us.

Let's just destroy them and finish with them. That's not the spirit of Christ. He doesn't give up on anybody. You know, it says he does not blow out the smoking wax. He doesn't break the bruised reed.

He fixes it. A broken reed. He says, I don't want to break it. I'll fix it. And the fire that is dying out. He says, let me blow it up to a flame. That's the spirit of Christ. And you see somebody slipping up and I say, I don't want him to fall down.

Let me lift him up. That's the spirit of Christ. So he came down and it says, though he was God, he humbled himself and became a man. Step one. God to man. Do you know what a tremendous step down that is?

I mean, if you became a dog in order to help other dogs, that itself would be a great thing. But this is much more than God becoming a man. Can you think of that? Sometimes we don't think of how wonderful that is.

To come right down to this level to help us. To become like a worm. Imagine a man becoming a worm in order to help other worms. Would you do that? Would you love a worm so much because you see some other worms irritating that or some other animal irritating that worm?

And you say, I've got to go down and help that worm. I find that snake is troubling that worm. So I'll just become a worm to help that worm. I don't think any of us have that type of love. That's a little picture of how God became man.

And you know, I need to emphasize that because sometimes we forget it. We think so much of ourselves and we think so little of Jesus becoming like us. We just take it for granted. Of course, he became like us.

God became man. That itself was more than enough. Now remember, this is the opposite of the devil. The devil was a created being who wanted to be like God. And Jesus overcame that by becoming man. God becoming man.

The opposite of a created being want to be like God. You overcome Satan by having the opposite qualities of what he has. So his quality is pride. You cannot overcome him if you don't humble yourself. The reason why so many believers are defeated by Christ in their life, in their family life, and in their church is because they have the same quality as the devil.

They're proud. If you're proud, just forget about fighting the devil. Just go and do something else. The devil will overpower you completely because you've got the same quality as him. The only person the devil is scared of is not the one who knows the Bible.

You think he was scared of the Pharisees? They knew the Bible cover to cover. He was not scared of them. Jesus knew the Bible cover to cover, but he had a humility. That's why the devil was scared of him.

Everywhere Jesus went, the devils were all stirred up. Oh, he's come here. He's come here. You know, you got to be like that. I took that challenge. I say, Lord, I want to be like you. That if I go somewhere, all the devil should be stirred up and say, oh, he's coming here.

He's coming here. Be careful. He's the devil scared of you. If he's not, I want to say this very respectfully. You're a useless Christian. You're useless to God. If the devil's not scared of you because you've got the same quality as him.

Proud. How many Christians there are who are proud of their ability or their accomplishments or their gifts? It's a grief to God. They're on the side of the enemy. Imagine saying you belong to Jesus Christ and fighting on the side of the enemy.

That's what it means to be proud. Jesus humbled himself and became a man. Second step. As a man, verse 7, he became a slave. Now becoming a man itself, supposing he had come as a king, God became the emperor of the earth.

That itself would have been a tremendous step down. But that was not enough. He came to earth and he became not a servant. It says a slave. Von servant means, do you know the difference between a servant and a slave?

We don't have slaves nowadays. But in the olden days, there were slaves. Slaves were sold in the market. Just like you sell chairs and furniture. You go to a store and you buy a table or a chair. And in the olden days, you'd go to a store and you buy a slave.

Now you don't, you can do anything with that chair if you like. You bring that chair home. You can paint it black or blue or yellow or break it or destroy it or throw it away. You could treat a slave like that.

You don't pay anything to your chair every month for sitting on it. It's free. You don't pay anything to a slave. We haven't understood this. There is still slavery in some parts of the world. But that's what a slave is.

It's different from a servant. A servant can work nine to five, collect his wages and go home. But not a slave. A slave is like property that's yours forever. If you kill a slave, nobody questions you.

That's not murder. It's like if you break your chair at home, nobody's going to question you. This was the right of a slave. And Jesus became a slave, not a servant, a slave. He became a man. So that's humility.

Then he became a slave, which is a further step of humility. Because he was determined to destroy the works of the devil, remember? The exact opposite of the devil. As much as the devil wanted to go up, Jesus came down.

And the third step. Now you think slave is the lowest. Hang on. There's something even lower than a slave. And that is a criminal. The Romans did not crucify their slaves. They crucified criminals. He said, you criminal, you're worse than a slave.

You don't deserve to even live. We won't just kill you. We'll put you on a cross and make you a display to the rest of the world to see what a wicked, useless, good-for-nothing person you are. And Jesus said, I'll take that place.

So see the steps. God became man, man became a slave, became a criminal. Humility, humility, humility. That's why you probably heard me say, if you heard my messages, there are three secrets to the Christian life.

You want to write them down? Humility, humility. What's the third one? It's all here in Philippians 2. God became man, man became a slave and slave and the criminal. If you have understood this, I tell you the devil will have no power over you.

He'll no power over your home, if you're the head of your home. And if you're an elder in a church, you'll have no power over your church. I have learned the secret of the secret. I learned it from Jesus.

And so the question comes, how can I always remain in humility? It's very easy to be humble when you're a three-month-old child. All of us, once upon a time, we were three-month-old children. You had no problem with pride then.

Even if somebody came to you and said, oh, what a lovely baby you are. He didn't puff you up. You were just the same. Isn't that wonderful that somebody admires you so much and he doesn't puff you up?

But as you grow older, somebody says something good about you, he puffs you up immediately. That's why Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like little children. Primary quality. Children are not very strong and capable.

That's not the primary quality of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus, why did he pick up a child? A child is so humble, it doesn't have high thoughts about itself. It's a primary quality of the kingdom of heaven.

Who are the most like the kingdom of heaven here? The youngest children, the babies. If there's a baby here, that's the closest to the kingdom of heaven in this room. And whoever is humble like that baby, even if you're 50 years old, you are the closest to the kingdom of heaven.

And never forget that. Everything else is of the kingdom of the devil, of the world. And this is the reason why the devil gets so much power in our life and in our church and in our home. Because we allow something of that same quality within us.

Okay, we can think more about that later. What's the second thing I mentioned? Do you remember? I forgot. Rebellion against authority. Satan said, I'm not going to submit to God. That's the second characteristic of Satan.

And if you've got anything of that in you, the devil's got power over you. Because that's his quality. Jesus submitted, which is the opposite of rebellion, is submission. And let me show you that in Luke's gospel chapter 2.

Jesus’ Submission to Authority

Why am I mentioning all this? Because, let's ask ourselves, why is the church called the body of Jesus Christ? Which was the first body of Christ? That's the one that was born in the stable in Bethlehem.

That's the first body of Christ. And for 33 and a half years, that body lived on earth and manifested the nature of God. Blessed people. Never ran after money. Never ran after honor. Kept itself sexually pure.

This is Jesus. Served others. Did God's will. Denied himself every day. And whatever the price, decided to obey God. This is the first body of Christ. And at the end of 33 and a half years, he looked up to heaven and said, Father, I finished my course.

Now I'm coming up to heaven. And I'm going to send the Holy Spirit in a few days, 40 days later, or 50 days after his resurrection. And I'm going to baptize or immerse 120 people and forge them into a body, which will be the new body of Christ on earth.

So just like that body was born in Bethlehem in a stable, in an upper room in Jerusalem, another body was born, the body of Christ, a spiritual body. Today Christ has got two bodies. One is a physical body up there in heaven.

And the other is a spiritual body, which began on the day of Pentecost and which has continued through the centuries. And if you are meeting with other believers in your locality, whether you know it or not, you are seeking to be an expression of the body of Christ, exactly like that first body that was born in Bethlehem 2 ,000 years ago and that lived in Nazareth and went around doing good, anointed with the Holy Spirit.

You're supposed to be following in those footsteps. If you're not following in those footsteps, you're a failure. You're not functioning as a body of Christ. You're functioning as a lone individual with a lot of characteristics of Satan inside you, but claiming to be a Christian.

We have to destroy the works of the devil in our own heart first before we can destroy it around us. How can you secretly have fellowship with Satan? So the second is rebellion against authority. In Luke chapter two, we read about Jesus.

When he was 12 years old, he was in the temple discussing with the scholars there. And when his earthly parents, Joseph and Mary found him, he went back with them. And it says in verse 51, Luke 2, 51, he went down with Joseph and Mary and came to Nazareth.

He was 12 years old and he continued in subjection to them till the age of 30. I think Joseph died sometime during that period, but he was continuing in subjection to his earthly parents. Joseph was not really his father.

God was his father. Mary was actually his mother. So he submitted to Joseph and Mary. Why? Now this is a very, very important question all of us must understand. Did he submit to them because they were better than him?

No, he was much better than them. Did he submit to them because they were wiser than him? No, he was wiser than them. Did he submit to them because they knew more of the Bible than him? No, he knew more of the Bible than them at the age of 12.

In what way were Joseph and Mary superior to Jesus Christ at the age of 12? The answer, in no way. Then why did he submit? Only one reason. His father said, submit to them. You know, we feel I can only submit to somebody who is superior to me.

That's the spirit of the devil. Did you know that? Why does the Bible tell us to submit to authority? Even if that authority is pretty dumb. Now in your, for example, some people work in an office where their boss is a bit dumb.

He's not as clever as you are. But why do you submit to him? Because otherwise you lose your job, you lose your money. Now Jesus was not doing it because he was going to lose any money. He submitted to inferior authority.

Very important to understand this. He submitted to inferior authority because that's father told him to. Fine. And it involved self-denial to submit to such authority. It's not easy. If the authority tells you to do what you like to do, that's, there's no submission there.

You know, you tell your children, come on, eat that chocolate. It's not much of a problem for that child to submit there. But you tell your child to do something which he doesn't want to do. That's why you test its submission.

And I've used an example to illustrate the submission of Jesus when he was 12 years old. Picture Jesus, like other children of the age of 12, playing together with a bat and a ball, something which is the equivalent of baseball over there in those days, whatever it was called.

In India, we call it cricket. I don't know what they call it in Nazareth in the first century, but all games are with a bat and a ball. And here Jesus is playing around with others. And your time for fielding is over and here comes time for you to bat.

And it's time for Jesus' turn to bat. And at that moment, his mom calls him from the house and says, Hey, Jesus, come here. I've got some work for you. What do most children say at that time? Wait, mom, just five minutes, which means 45 minutes.

I'll come. You know what Jesus did? He was, it was his turn to bat. He dropped his bat and went and all the other boys must have teased him, Hey, you're mama's boy, where are you running away? But he went and his mom said, I want you to go to the well and get some water for me, for my cooking.

He went. Do you think that was easy? You think that's easy for a 12 year old boy? You try that with your 12 year old. That is submission, to do what one wants to do something else. But because there's an authority God has placed over me, in his case, his mother, he said, okay, I'll go.

And when he goes to the well, he doesn't bring half a bucket of water. He waits till the bucket is, you know, you pull the bucket up from the well and pour it and pull it again and pour it and fill up the bucket and bring it back.

Every work that Jesus did was a finished work. When he sat on the cross saying it is finished, that was a principle that applied to his entire life. It is finished. He never did a half finished job in his life.

If his mom told him to bring a bucket of water, he'd bring a full bucket of water. If his mom told him to sweep the room, he'd sweep every corner of it. If he is a carpenter, when he was 20 years old, had to make a table for somebody, it wouldn't be sort of shaking on its legs.

It would be really a good table. He wouldn't cheat on the type of wood he used. Submission. All people who don't understand this principle can never overcome Satan. I'm just trying to tell you why Satan has such power over the lives of so many believers.

I never want to have, I never want Satan to have any power over my life. I want Jesus Christ to have complete power over my life. I'm sure all of you want to, but if you want to, this is the price you have to pay.

First, humility. Go down, down, down, down, take the lowest place. Like Jesus, the last day of his earthly life, what was he doing? He was not chairman or director of some company. You know what he was in the last day of his life?

The washer of people's feet. How many of you would like that title? That after many years of serving God, you finally get the title washer of people's feet. That's not what people are looking for in Christendom today.

They want to be senior pastor, chief pastor, what all titles, reverend, right reverend, wrong reverend, all types of titles. Doctor, reverend, doctor. Who wants to be washer of people's feet? No wonder such reverends and right reverends don't have power over Satan.

Satan just sits and laughs at the whole lot of them. Pastor, senior pastor, he doesn't care for any of them. The one he's scared of is the one who's washing people's feet, whose only interest in life is to go down below others, to serve others and do everything he does in that spirit.

That's what the Lord has shown me. What the Lord has shown me is when you preach to people, be a wash, be one who washes their feet. Don't preach to impress people. Many years ago, when I was a young preacher, my 20s, the Lord asked me, do you want to impress people or do you want to help them?

I said, Lord, I want to help them. And the Lord said, stop trying to impress them. Because I was young and I was trying to impress people with my preaching. And the Lord said, stop it. I said, okay, Lord.

It was a battle, because whenever you preach, you want to impress. Every young preacher wants to impress. And I had to fight it. I've had to fight it for years and say, Lord, I will not try to impress anybody.

I'm not interested in that. I want to help people. Those of you who preach God's word, take this advice. Your life and your ministry will be completely different. You'll deliver people from the power of Satan.

Submit to God's authority. Jesus, everything he did was a finished work. So he submitted to authority. And when the Father allowed him to be humiliated by others, he submitted to the authority of the Father.

He wouldn't rebel against that. When people spat on him, why didn't he threaten them and say, hey, you know, one day I'm going to come and judge you fellas. It says, when he suffered, he did not threaten.

He had the power to threaten, but he wouldn't threaten. Read this verse in 1 Peter chapter 2. I'm telling you how to function as the body of Christ that can overcome the power of Satan. 1 Peter chapter 2.

Follow the example of the first body of Christ. Beautiful example. 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 21. Christ suffered for us, leaving you an example to follow in his steps. 1 Peter 2, 21. Leaving you, who are now the earthly body of Christ, an example to follow in his steps.