Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Today on The Daily Platform, evangelist Steve Pettit is continuing a study series called Wisdom from Above, which is a study in the book of James.
I'd like to ask you to take your Bibles this morning and turn with me to the book of James, James chapter four. Booker T. Washington was a renowned Christian African American educator and was an outstanding example of humility. He became the first president of Tuskegee Institute, which went on to be Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama in 1881, just 16 years after the end of the Civil War. One afternoon, President Washington was walking through an exclusive section of town and he was stopped suddenly by a wealthy white woman. Not knowing the famous Mr. Washington by sight, she asked if he would like to earn a few dollars by chopping wood for her. Because he had no pressing business at the moment, President Washington smiled, rolled up his sleeves, and proceeded to do the humble chore that she had requested.
When he was finished, he carried the logs into the house and stacked them by the fireplace. A little girl recognized him and later revealed his identity to this lady. Well, the next morning the embarrassed woman went to see President Washington in his office at the Institute and apologized profusely. And then he replied, It's perfectly all right, madam.
Occasionally, I enjoy a little manual labor. Besides, it's always a delight to do something for a friend. She shook his hand warmly and assured him that his gracious and meek attitude had endeared him to her and to his work. And it was not long afterward that she showed her admiration by persuading some wealthy acquaintances to join her in donating thousands of dollars to Tuskegee Institute.
And Booker T. Washington went on to be the leader in the African American community in the United States of America between 1890 and 1915. I believe it is a truth that God delights to honor people who are truly humble. Proverbs 15, 33 says that humility comes before honor. This morning as we look at James chapter four, we see the author leading us to a place of grace, divine empowerment, enablement to overcome our own sinful hearts. But this grace is conditional. It is conditioned on you choosing to be humble.
So what do we read in James chapter four in verse six? It says, God resisted the proud, but he giveth grace unto the humble. The question this morning is what is actually required in being humble?
I mean, it's a word that we use, but how is it that we actually be humble? This morning, I want to speak to you on the theme of humility and action. Notice what James says in verse seven. He says, submit yourselves therefore.
Therefore is the beginning of 10 practical commands, or you could say 10 practical steps towards being a humble person. And these steps are seen beginning in verse seven. And I want you to just note for your own self, if you take notes or mark your Bible, notice what he says beginning in verse seven, these commands, you can see them yourselves.
He's like a sergeant barking out an order. Verse seven, submit yourselves therefore to God. Number two, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Number three, draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you. Number four, cleanse your hands, you sinners. Number five, and purify your hearts, you double minded. Six, seven and eight, be afflicted and mourn and weep.
Number nine, let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to heaviness. And then number 10, humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and he shall lift you up. This is James declaration of what it means to be a humble person in God's sight. This is humility in action.
This morning, we're going to look at only two of these commands, the first one and the last one, almost as if they are bookends. They both introduce and summarize the overall truth of humility in action. And then next week, we'll look at the rest of the commands that simply further explain humility in more detail. So two simple action steps and being a humble person before God. Number one, the first thing he says is submit yourselves therefore to God.
The primary action in receiving God's grace begins with a submission to God. The Greek word for submit is a military term. It means literally to rank under. It describes a soldier who enlists into the military. He swears allegiance to the country. And then he subordinates himself to the authority of his commanding officer. Now we have a few in our student body who are in the United States military.
And of course, they understand very fully what this means. I went to a military school. I went to the Citadel. My freshman year, I was placed into a company.
Oh, nice picture. I like that. I have all kinds of feelings come in my heart. You're placed into a company. You're given a rank. You're a private. You know what a private is?
It's like the lowest level, okay? I was put in a company, D company, Delta company. I was given a squad corporal, a sophomore. His name was David Compton from Summerville, South Carolina. David stood about this tall and he had a mouth about that big.
I spent a lot of time staring at his tonsils as he was yelling at me about my failures. I had a platoon sergeant, a platoon leader, a company commander. I was given three answers.
And there's the only three answers you can use your freshman year. The answers were sir, yes sir, sir, no sir, and sir, no excuse sir. So if somebody asked me, why did you not do this, and I suddenly began to give an excuse, then they would chew me out because my answer was sir, no excuse sir. What does it mean to submit? It means to take the orders and the directives of someone else. So to whom are we to submit? James says, submit yourselves therefore to God.
What does this mean? It means I will do what God wants me to do. I will be what God wants me to be. I will go where God wants me to go. I will say what God wants me to say. I will have what God wants me to have.
I will live where God wants me to live. That is the first step in humbling yourself before God. By the way, should not God expect us to submit to him?
I mean think about it. Is not all creation totally submitted to God? All that God has made? Colossians 1 16, all things were created by him and for him. Hebrews chapter 2 says, God put everything in subjection under the feet of Jesus. And as he put everything in subjection to Jesus, he left nothing outside his control. Everything is Christ. All is his, including us. In fact, as Paul says in Romans chapter 8, that all of creation is currently submitted to a curse.
As it waits with confident expectation that one day the earth will be liberated from its bondage of decay and death and it will enter into the glorious freedom of a new heaven and a new earth. The earth right now is in submission to God. Should not we be submitted to God? Was Christ not completely submitted to his father?
At the age of 12 years old, Jesus said to his own parents, I must be about my father's business. In John 6 38, Jesus said, I came down from heaven not to do mine own will but the will of him that sent me. Should we not be in submission to God if Christ, his own son, was in submission? And then Paul tells us that the church is to be submitted to Christ. For in Colossians he says, Jesus is the head of the body of the church. And then in Ephesians he says, the church is in subjection unto Christ. Should not God expect out of us where we are completely and totally surrendered to him and submitted to do his will? That my friend is the first step towards humility. So how do you know you're submitted to God? Well a couple of ways. Number one, by asking the question, is every area of your life surrendered to God's control?
Every area of your life. There's an interesting story in 1 Kings 20. When Ben-Haddad came to conquer King Ahab in Samaria. And Ben-Haddad said to King Ahab, your silver and your gold are mine.
Your best wives and children also are mine. And listen to the words that came out of Ahab's own mouth. 1 Kings 20 verse 4, And the king of Israel answered and said, My Lord, O king, according to thy saying, I am thine and all that I have.
Ahab completely surrendered himself to Ben-Haddad. So let me ask you a question. Have you said to Jesus, I am thine and all that I have? I would have to say for me personally, that came over a process of about a year. Of my sophomore year of college where I'd been saved my freshman year and I got into my sophomore year and I began to grow spiritually and got into the Bible and was faithful to church and began to share my faith, develop and nurture good Christian friendships. And I remember as I went through that year, God at one point after another just kept asking me the question, will you give me this? And will you give me this?
And will you give me this? I remember one of the questions I was asked my sophomore year of college, now this is a state college, was by a Christian friend. He said, do you listen to rock music? I went, duh. I said, what else am I going to listen to? And he says, have you given it to God?
You know, he didn't take a baseball bat and pound me in the head. He just asked me, did you give it to God? And I couldn't get away from that and I remember struggling God, can I give this to you? Can you have this? And so finally I came to the place, I said, Lord, all that I have is thine.
I give you my listening choices. And over time I changed. You know why? Because grace comes to those that submit themselves to God. What is grace?
It's the dynamic power to do that which I would never do by myself. Do you know why some of you really don't have the power to live for God? It's because you haven't said to the Lord, all that I have is thine. You can't even change.
Why? Because you can't change until you first of all submit to God. All that I have is thine, my whole life. Have you given God your whole life?
Your future, your friendships, your finances, your future job, where you're going to live, your health, your dreams, your hopes, your plans, your ambitions, your relationships. Have you given them all to God? Can you say, whom do I have in heaven but thee?
And there's none upon earth I desire besides thee. Have you given God everything? I could say that as I came through the summer of 1976 between my sophomore and junior year of college that I really came to that place where I believed that I'd given God everything and nothing in my hands I was holding on to.
It was all the Lord's. How do you know that you're totally submitted to God? I think there's a second way and that is are you living in submission to the earthly authority that God has placed over you? The measure of your submission is seen in your relationship to authority and this is very clear because we see it in Jesus. Jesus was described as living in submission to his parents, Luke 2 51, and he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. Now think of the sheer humility of God's son being in submission to his own sinful parents. I mean do you think he found any inconsistencies in their lives?
Do you think they made any mistakes at all or misunderstandings? And yet what we find is we find that he was in submission. Do you know what? To submit yourself to authority is an act of humility. It is a choice. So have you settled the matter of obedience or let me put it this way, have you settled the matter of humbling yourself to be submissive to authority? Do you accept the restrictions that authority places under you? Are you constantly pushing back? When you're corrected do you receive it or do you react to it?
Do you look for the inconsistencies of leaders as an excuse or do you understand the inconsistencies in your own life as an opportunity to grow in grace? Because it truly is a humbling thing to submit yourselves to God and this is the way in which you get grace. Submit yourselves therefore to God.
But then there's a second command and that's the last one, the other end of these 10 commands. And notice what he says in verse 10, he says, humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and he shall lift you up. The second command is to humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord. Arthur Bennett has edited a wonderful collection of Puritan prayers called the Valley of Vision.
If you don't have the book I would encourage you to purchase it. It's one that I've used over the years for my own personal prayer time and just working through these beautiful poems. And in the introductory prayer by the same title, the Valley of Vision, he writes this little poem. Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up. That to be low is to be high. That the broken heart is the healed heart. That the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit. That the repenting soul is the victorious soul. That to have nothing is to possess all. That to bear the cross is to wear the crown. That to give is to receive. That the valley is the place of vision.
The last command is directed to all of us as individuals. And the way we respond to God, submit yourselves therefore to God, humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord. What does it mean to be humble? It literally means to go down. It means to lie prostrate at the feet of a sovereign king.
You've seen pictures of that. As people come to see the king and they bow before him. What is humility?
It is a sense of absolute unworthiness and the presence of the only one who is absolutely worthy. So we go through the Bible and what do we see in Isaiah and Job and Joshua and Peter and John? When they all came into the presence of the Lord, they went down before him. To be humble in the sight of the Lord is to go low. Now let's apply that to what James is writing in his letter. Because in James chapter one and verse two, what does he tell Christians to do when you fall into various trials? What does he command us to do?
He commands us to rejoice. Is that natural? No. Is that the way you feel?
No. Nobody rejoices naturally. But it is a command. It's an act of faith. It is a humbling of yourself to God and say, God, I believe you're in control of my life. Therefore I'm going to rejoice in your control. And then he says, knowing this, the trying of your faith is working patience. What have I done? I've submitted myself to God.
Lord, I'm letting you develop my life. And then he says, let patience have her perfect work, her maturing work. What does that mean? It means to surrender yourself, to humble yourself and let God use the trial to change you. And what do you do in that situation? You pray for wisdom. How do you get wisdom? You have to go through trials.
How do you go through a trial? By submission in humility. Is this not what Jesus did? As he humbled himself before his heavenly father and was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. But let me also say humility is a sense of absolute dependence on someone else.
It's an absolute dependence on another because your life has been brought into a low place. That is, God is breaking you over your pride, your own self-efforts, your own abilities, and God is bringing you to a place of dependence. And what does he say to us if we humble ourselves?
Humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord. And what is his promise? What will he do? You think he's going to leave you there?
No. Christ went to the cross, was put into the tomb. But what happened?
He came out of the grave alive. What does God promise to do? He promises to raise you up. He promises to lift you on high. So we go through experiences that bring us low, circumstances, situations. And what do you do? Instead of fighting it, you embrace it as a position of dependence or humility before God.
You look to God to raise you up. Between my, well, at the end of my junior year of college, I, as I mentioned, at my school, the Citadel, when I was there, at the end of your, at the end of each year, the school posts what a person's rank is going to be the next year. So at the end of the year, they post it for the following fall. We call those rank sheets.
And the rank sheets were about to come out. It was the end of my junior year. It would have been what you would be your senior year. And as a senior, you can only be one of two things. Either you are an officer or you're a private. So you're a senior officer or you're a senior private. My sophomore year, I was a corporal. My junior year, I was a sergeant. I didn't really know what my rank was going to be. I thought I would be at least a lieutenant. Well, the rank sheets came out and my name wasn't on the list.
What that means is, if you're not on the list, you're a private. So my senior year, I was a senior private. And I was crushed.
Fact is, my friends kind of gathered around me and they were shocked and some protested. And I went back to my room and I remember clearly as if it's happening right now. And I remember reading and thinking through 1 Peter 5. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon him for he cares for you. The God of all grace who have called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that you have suffered a while, make you perfect, establish strength and settle you. To him be glory and dominion forever and ever.
Amen. And I remember surrendering to God and saying, God, I give you this. And I remember the battle of my heart. I wanted to fight it. I said, Lord, it's yours.
And I can honestly say God gave me a peace from his grace. Probably 30 minutes later, I get a phone call from my room. It's from one of our military officers at the school. He says, is this cadet Pettit? I said, yes, sir. He said, there is a mistake in the rank sheets and you are now the regimental athletic officer. Then he hung up. What?
It's like, really? I went from a private to a captain. I was on the regimental commander's staff. He's a colonel.
It's the highest ranking staff on campus. It put me in a position my senior year to be able to have an influence over the entire Corps of Cadets because I prayed, my roommate and I and one other guy, we're the only ones that prayed for meals. I prayed the gospel almost every other day. Dear Lord, thank you for this food because in Jesus Christ we are alive. This is what we would do. We would pray the gospel over and over and over.
And it put us in a place of influence. It was for his glory, not my own. May I ask you a question?
Are you willing to embrace a low place that God will give you grace? What is it? A disappointment? A rejection? A failure? A misrepresentation?
A criticism? A misunderstanding? Somebody has forgotten you.
Somebody has overlooked you. Somebody mistreated you. Something that you're living with that is such an irritation. A health problem. A sickness. A financial pressure and stress. Perhaps a tragedy that has led you, that has come into your life.
All of these circumstances are things that bring us low and they are opportunities. And that is that as we humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord, what will he do? He will lift us up. Andrew Murray was a well-known pastor and a writer from South Africa. He lived from 1828 to 1917. He was 31 years into ministry when a tragedy came into his life where he became ill and he lost his voice for two years. And during those years of silence, God led him to a deeper humility and a love for God.
In his life, Murray authored 240 books on various aspects of the Christian life. And one of his most famous books was simply entitled Humility. I read the book years ago scared to death to read it because I didn't want to be humble. It's not like I wrote the book Humility and how I attained it. But at the end of the book, his last chapter is entitled A Prayer for Humility and he urges Christians to seek humility. For one month, he urges you to pray that God would make known to you in your heart every form and degree of pride and that he would awaken in you the deepest depth and truth of humility.
I think that would be a great prayer for all of us to pray for the next month. Lord, help me see where I'm proud and Lord, grant me grace to choose to be humble. You see, humility in action is humbling ourselves before God, trusting him to lift us up. Father, you've seen the hundreds of hands that have been lifted and Lord, we bow before you in humble confession of our sin of pride. Father, help us to embrace low places. Help us, Lord, to be surrendered in our hearts and wills to you that you would be glorified in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue the study in the book of James from Bob Jones University Chapel Services in Greenville, South Carolina.
