Welcome to The Daily Platform. Our program features sermons from to develop a passion for ministry of humility. Humility is an absolute essential for the Christian life. In 1 Peter 5 and verse 5, Peter underscores this by saying, The book of 1 Peter is about the true grace of God. We need grace to be saved. We need grace to submit and serve.
We need grace to suffer. And we need grace to shepherd God's people. There is no one excluded from the requirement of humility. In fact, in the early verses of chapter 5, Paul's addressing there how pastors, elders, shepherds are to carry out their ministry. And he says to them to do it in a certain way and to not be domineering over the flock but rather give yourself to them in love from the heart in a willing and generous ministry. And so whether we be young or whether we be older, every last one of us needs to have deeply embedded in our heart, in our experience, in our practice of life and ministry, this quality of genuine Christ-like humility.
Let's say these verses together out loud together if we could. Likewise ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another and be clothed with humility. For God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore unto the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time.
So who is it that needs humility? Well this passage, these verses open up on the person in view, to begin with here at least, is those who are in the category of younger people. Maybe it is that Peter is concerned as a man who followed Jesus Christ during his earthly ministry as a younger man and learned some very significant lessons in life about his own desperate need for humility. Alexander White in his phenomenal book Bible Characters says this of Peter, No disciple speaks so often and so much as Peter.
Our Lord speaks more often to Peter than to any other of his disciples, sometimes in blame and sometimes in praise, and no disciple is so pointedly reproved by our Lord as Peter, and no disciple ever ventures to reprove his master but Peter. You know here at at BJU we are trying very hard to train those that will be leaders for churches and leaders in all walks of life and to go out from these halls well equipped to do that. We emphasize excellence. We emphasize doing one's best.
And we certainly want to see you go out and do that. But what must accompany all of that effort is genuine Christ-like humility that stays with you for a lifetime of ministry. And as you go through your experiences on campus and even in the community, you'll probably find that you're going to face humbling, maybe even humiliating experiences all along the way. As I've interacted with BJU graduates throughout the years, I find in my own experience that our college days are unlike so many other facets and phases of life. Our college days tend to be frozen in time, and you will for a lifetime remember the lessons that God teaches you here on campus. I've been on this campus for five decades actually.
And I can walk along across the sidewalk, through buildings, in classrooms, in the dining common, and I have very many experiences that are frozen in time. Learned this lesson here and had this experience here and over here. And naturally when you're in a learning environment, there's going to be plenty of opportunity for both success and failure. But the failures can be a springboard for your learning God's help when you've been humbled and draw upon His grace to help you to do better in the future. Paul put it this way in Philippians chapter 2. He said, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man. And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. In the book of 1 Peter, there's a theme that runs throughout the book about the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow. We read in 1 Peter chapter 2 and verse 21, speaking of Christ, in the moment, in the hours of His suffering, it says, For even hereunto were ye called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow in His steps, who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth, who when He was reviled, reviled not again, when He suffered, He threatened not, but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously. Jesus Christ sets for us the perfect example of what genuine humility is all about.
It's not only needed by younger people, but it's needed by everyone. He says in our text, He says, Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility. Not only should younger people be characterized by humble submission to authority in the family, in the church, in the community, under human government, but really so should we all, regardless of our age. In fact, it should be, as we progress along the Christian life, that we grow in grace, we grow in Christ's likeness, and we become increasingly aware of our need for the Lord, our utter dependence upon Him, and we should really become aware that we, over time, lose all basis for thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. In fact, Paul would put it that way to the Romans in Romans chapter 12. For I say through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. He poses a question to the Corinthian believers in 1 Corinthians chapter 4 and verse 7. He says, Who maketh thee to differ from another? And what hast thou that thou didst not receive? Now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory as if thou hast not received it? As you move along in life, in the normal course of things, there's the possibility, if not the probability, that you will increasingly accrue to yourself, by God's grace, a measure of authority.
You'll have opportunities to have an office or to have some say so about things. We need to remember what Jesus said about authority. He said the Gentiles have a certain way of looking at authority, and that is that the person at the top is the boss and everyone underneath him serves him. But Jesus said, it shall not so be among you. The kingdom of God has a different set of values.
It has authority, and that authority is always in place and always established, but the person with that authority should view that authority not as a tool for the enslavement of others, but as a tool for the service of others. It's like the leadership pyramid gets inverted and the one who has the most authority actually has the greatest responsibility of humble, Christ-like servants. And He illustrates that in His own life. He says of Himself, for even the Son of Man did not come to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many. So we all, we all, at every stage and at every age, we need, desperately need this Christ-like humility. Well, let's look at the question then.
What are we talking about? What is humility? We're told in verse 5 again in the middle of the verse, it says that we are to be subject one to another and to be, to be clothed with humility. This word clothed refers to a servant, a slave donning on, putting on a servant's garment and attaching it or fixing it so that it does not fall off. It identified the slave as being just what he or she was, a servant. Clothing does tend to define us.
We take care under normal circumstances to put on the appropriate clothing and so it is a covering. And there's something when we reflect upon the type of characteristic or character that we should be reflecting. We should be permeated. It should be that humility pervades our being. And I wonder if it would not be a good idea when we put our clothes on in the morning to actually mentally and spiritually kind of put on that humility and be clothed with a sense of dependence upon God and service to others as we go about our day. Humility is heartfelt. It comes from within. It is a spirit of modesty, of meekness, of lowliness. Having an opinion of ourself that results in our willingly showing deference and submission and service to others.
It avoids pride and arrogance. Genuine humility is willing to endure suffering, which sometimes means misunderstanding. And that's what Christ did. Humility aspires to be like Christ and to be filled with the Spirit in useful service. We talk here a lot about discipleship. We have both discipline and discipleship and they go hand in hand together. But genuine humility is absolutely essential to the discipleship process because the disciple is a learner. He is a listener. He's one whose heart is open and he wants to experience greater knowledge and transformation that comes out of that knowledge.
True disciples are humble and eager learners. Let me share with you a story or two from my college days. I had many wonderful teachers, both men and women. I took Bible education with a social studies minor, which meant I had a broad array of classes. My favorite teacher was Dr. Richard Rupp. He taught preaching.
We called it pulpit speech. Dr. Rupp was from a Mennonite background. He became Baptist later, but he grew up in that type of Mennonite culture. Dr. Rupp, in that preaching class, he was so earnest about training serious-minded men to preach the Word of God fervently that he actually wore a black suit, a white shirt and tie that he taught in a black suit every day.
And so there was this sense, a little bit of austerity there. He was approachable, he was loving, but he was reverent and his expectations were high. And if you did not have your sermon prepared to preach in his class, you still had to preach because he said that's what's going to happen on Sunday. If you're not prepared as a pastor, you're still going to have to preach.
And so we were in a little bit of fear and trembling in that class. He preached when he taught. He was very fervent.
And those men that trained under him owe him and feel like this, a debt that they carry with them for a lifetime. And he's now with the Lord. One time we had to write sermons and so we had to have certain standards met in the sermons that we wrote and so I tried to achieve those standards. And on a particular sermon, he graded me down and he said, these elements are missing. Well, I had never done this with a college teacher and I think I never did it again. But I got up my courage and I went to his office and I appealed to Dr. Rupp. I showed him my sermon and I humbly, hopefully, showed him that those elements were there in the sermon.
And you know what? He accepted my appeal and he changed the grade. Little did I know that that conversation would be the start of a lifetime relationship with that humble teacher. I had another experience one time as a senior.
I think it was toward the end of my senior year. We were meeting with the dean of men, a number of men that helped to oversee the dormitory halls. So we would have a meeting on Monday mornings at 730 and Dr. William Liverman would meet with us and go over details and hear our concerns and the meeting wouldn't be a long meeting, but we would be on our way to breakfast after that. But one Monday morning, he said, Bruce, I want to see you after the meeting. So he called me up to where he was at the front of the room and others left. And so, there for two or three minutes, he spoke with me. I don't remember what he said exactly, but it was corrective. And it took me down a notch or two. It virtually took the wind out of my sails. Whatever he brought up to me, I was unaware of it.
But as you can tell, it's a memory that's frozen in time. Fast forward about a few months. A few months later, I graduated from college.
I was home in the summertime. I got a call from Dr. Phil Smith. Dr. Phil Smith said, you know, Dr. Richard Rupp is the new director of ministerial training and we would like to ask you to consider being his graduate assistant. That was an amazing privilege.
I immediately responded yes to that. And it just so happened that Dr. Rupp's new office would be in the same location as the conference room where Dr. Liverman had confronted me a few months prior. They turned the conference room into two offices, put a wall there, had secretaries in the outside office. Dr. Rupp was on the inside office. And I would continue to serve as Dr. Rupp's assistant for the next 14 years. And Dr. Rupp and I would spend hundreds of hours together in that room with my asking questions and Dr. Rupp mentoring me. And it's always been amazing to me that the spot on which I was humbled became the spot in which I learned so many major lessons of life from an older man of God.
And then in 1991, that office space became my office space and continued to be so for the next almost 20 years. Dr. Liverman had a little phrase he would say to the young men that were overseeing the halls and the dorm. He said, gentlemen, we need to be careful how we carve character and with what we carve. And so in my many years of ministry with ministerial students and other students and even pastors, and I would be in that office and I'd be occasionally having to correct a student and I could see as it were the shadow of Dr. Liverman there just reminding me that one time you were in this office yourself. And that one time you were corrected by an older person.
Are you with me? It's amazing providence if we'll view it rightly how God carves and shapes our character by taking us down a few notches and helping us to understand that we need to fully rely on the Lord and reflect His grace and humility. So humility. Why do we need humility?
These verses answer why we need humility. We need humility because God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. Jazwold Sanders said pride defiles everything it touches. Beauty plus pride results in vanity. Zeal plus pride makes for tyranny and cruelty. Wisdom compounded with human pride brings infidelity. In speech, pride manifests itself in criticism.
Get this. For criticism is always made from the vantage point of conscious superiority. Pride will find cause for criticism in everyone and everything.
It lauds itself and belittles its neighbor. God hates pride. These six things doth the Lord hate. Yea, seven are an abomination unto Him. First on the list of seven in Proverbs 6 is a proud look.
Pride and arrogance see do I hate. Proverbs 8 13. Everyone that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord. Proverbs 16 5.
James 4 6. God resists the proud and giveth grace unto the humble. Hopefully we hate our own pride with the same hatred with which God hates pride generally. We need humility because God opposes the proud. And also because God gives grace to the humble. Grace is the fuel of the Christian life. We cannot live this Christian life without the fuel of God's grace.
And we need humility because God has promised in verse 6, if we'll humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, He will exalt us in due time. These were suffering believers. These were believers going through very hard times. And they needed to be lifted up out of their suffering circumstances. Not exalted in pride, that would contradict the whole passage. But to be lifted up by the grace and the love of God.
You know, no one should lead who does not first follow. There is to be submission from our hearts, humble submission toward one another in the entire body of Christ. Serving one another, clothed with humility. God will have it no other way, for He resists the proud. He gives grace unto the humble. So we must all humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God.
This is a life lesson that we all need to learn. Let's say the verse together as we close this morning and we'll pray. We say together, likewise ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another and be clothed with humility. For God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore unto the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time. Lord, help us by your grace to this end to accomplish in our lives, by the Spirit of God, the quality of Christ-like humility. We'll give you the glory for it in Jesus' name. Amen. You've been listening to a sermon preached by Dr. Bruce McAllister, Vice President for Ministry at Bob Jones University.
My name is Wyatt Smith. I'm a senior here at Bob Jones University studying multimedia journalism. And I want to tell you a little about my experience here at BJU. I've been here a little over three years and I truly cannot say enough about the community here at BJU.
Whether it has been in the halls of the dorms, in my incredible society, or even in the classroom, I have always felt a very strong sense of community around me that has aided in my growth as a person and as a Christian. BJU's commitment to academic excellence has also pushed me to discover and refine the skills and talents needed to succeed in life after school, such as communication, critical thinking, and problem solving. I have truly loved my time here at BJU and I hope others will be able to share the experience I have had. If you or someone you know is interested in an experience such as mine, I would encourage you to check us out online at our website bju.edu and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at bju.edu. For any further information, please feel free to give us a call at 800-252-6363. Thanks for listening and join us next time for another sermon preached from the Bob Jones University Chapel platform.
