If you're proud,
if the people around you would describe you as being proud,
you just don't need to be committed to humility,
you need to grow in fear of the Lord.
Well, one of the dominant underlying themes
of Proverbs is humility, I would say it this way,
it's a core underlying transcendent theme of Proverbs.
Although Proverbs doesn't discuss humility on every page,
it's on every page.
Because the life described in Proverbs
that the portrait of the way we are meant to live
in fear of the Lord,
that whole, that way grows in the soil of humility.
Humility is a soil in which this
rich, beautiful life of wisdom grows.
Fear of the Lord is the key to wisdom
and what does that fear about?
It's about submission, a humble sense of need,
willingness to consider and confess.
It's about God's honor,
it's about worship of him living in awe of him,
it's about a willing and joyful dependency.
I have to say it again, that that in that way,
Proverbs fits with the move of scripture.
Listen, the move of God's grace
is not moving us from dependence to independence,
but from independence to a greater, willing,
and joyful dependence on God
and the instruments that God puts in our life.
Proverbs 3:34 is one of the principle scriptures on humility
toward the scorners, he is scornful,
but to the humble, he gives favor.
That theme, that passage is repeated in James and in Peter,
as they think of the importance of humility.
Proverbs 22:4 connects humility with a fear of the Lord
and by that, we begin to understand that
fear of the Lord crushes pride.
If you're proud,
if the people around you would describe you as being proud,
you just don't need to be committed to humility,
you need to grow in fear of the Lord
because fear of the Lord and pride
don't live in the same soil, they just don't.
Why does God hate pride?
Well, I've just told you,
because a proud man is a man who lacks fear of Him.
And because he lacks fear of Him,
he doesn't worship Him as he should,
and because he doesn't worship as he should,
he doesn't submit to Him as he should
and because he doesn't submit to Him as he should,
he does not obey Him as he should
and because it doesn't obey Him as he should,
he wants his own way instead of God's way
and because of that,
his life is moving away from the Lord, away from his honor
and away from that rich experience of life
that he promises those
who will humble themselves before him.
In that way, every proverb
is an invitation to a humble life.
Now, can we talk here?
I don't know why I'm asking permission, I'm going to talk.
That's not natural for us,
it's not natural for you to be humble.
I think of parenting again,
my children have never come to me and said,
"Dad, if you could just control me more,
if you could just command me more.
If you just take greater charge over my life,
I would be so happy."
But it's natural for your child to resist that,
it's natural for your child to act like
they know things they don't know.
A child trying to learn to tie a shoe,
you'll reach down and help me slap your hand away.
He could try to make a bowl for the next century
and he never make a bowl because it doesn't know how,
but there's an instinct inside of him that says,
I don't want to be a person who needs help.
So we're confronted with this life
that God says, this is the good life, this is the rich life.
It's lived in humble recognition of my position,
my authority and your desperate need of me.
And so once again, as I've said over and over again,
you cannot read the Proverbs without running to the cross.
Because the Proverbs tells me again and again the thing
I most need to be rescued from is me
and there's grace for that rescue.