Picking up from my previous post on my Ephesians 4 series - I decided that a few paragraphs spoken about each of the virtues in verse 2 would have no life-changing impact on hearers. Everyone already knows they are supposed to be humble, gentle, patient, and forbearing. What they needed for life change was in-depth application. And so, because these virtues are important for unified life in the body of Christ and in families I decided to preach a topical message on each virtue.
In the first message, on humility, I felt good about two things.
First, as I thought about how to help people with the problem of pride, it occurred to me that Scripture suggests certain situations lead us into more temptation toward pride than others. Everyone with a sinful nature deals with pride, but I labeled the following as Rocket Fuel for Pride and used these Scriptures as examples:
1. Wealth (Ezekiel 28:5)
2. Knowledge/education (1 Corinthians 8:1)
3. Success (Psalm 140:8)
4. Good looks (Ezekiel 28:17)
5. Power (Ezekiel 28:2; 2 Chronicles 26:16)
My point was, if you have one or more of the above, you need to search your soul for the tendency to be proud. I felt this was valuable application because it helped people recognize specifically their own potential snares.
Then I noted the self-deceiving nature of pride, that our pride tends to be hidden from us because we see our pride as the expression of something else that we admire, such as strength, self-respect, self-esteem, high standards, strong will. And so, I provided a self-test to help people recognize hidden pride. Pride and humility are revealed in the following situations:
1. What are you willing to do for others? Illus: Jesus washes feet. John 13
2. Whom are you willing to spend time with? The uncool, unbeautiful, unrich? Illus: Jesus hangs out with losers and sinners, outsiders, the unimportant.
3. How do you respond to not being at the center of attention? Do you always have to be talking, or talked about?
4. How do you respond to being wronged? Being wronged is not something a healthy person will ignore or welcome; a healthy person will experience some anger and resentment when wronged, but will be under control. A proud person will respond with anger on steroids and may lose all control.
5. Can you apologize when called for? A true apology includes admitting wrongdoing. Proud people won't sincerely admit wrongdoing.
6. What do you do when someone else is open to criticism? Do you protect the person, or pile on?
7. Must you have your way? We all should advocate to do things the right way, but our pride can get all tangled up with that to where doing it our way is a matter of pride not righteousness. We are proud that we are right.
8. Do you ask God for help?
Again, my point in all this was application, helping people see the influence of pride or humility in the way they think, speak, and act. I was trying to make the truth unsettlingly specific, to shine the light on things that people on their own would not consider. This I believe is crucial to life-transforming preaching, for the human powers of self-deception and truth evasion are perhaps the one infinite power within us.
In retrospect, I see some weaknesses in this message, and I welcome your comments on how this could have been improved. First, Ephesians 4:2 names the positive virtue of humility, but I spent most of my time talking about the sin of pride. I did end the message with a positive illustration of LaDamian Tomlinson and his humility after setting the record for touchdowns, but I think more should have been said about the nature of humility.
The second major weakness is I did not relate humility to the context of Ephesians 4, specifically the theme of unity in the body of Christ.
What else do you see that could have made this a more biblical and life-changing message?
Brian Larson is editor of Preaching Today Blog and pastor of Lake Shore Church in Chicago.
Posted by Brian Larson at 2:42 PM on February 26, 2007
Comments
I am having a similar experience preaching through Titus that you are having with Ephesians 4. I took eight weeks to preach the characteristics of a spiritual leader in chapter one (topical sermons suggested by the text). These sermons were sandwiched between more expositional sermons. The problem of what to say about the topics was hard and varied from topic to topic. One alternative that worked for me on some of the topics was to actually expound a passage dealing with that topic. For example, when speaking on "not given to wine", I expounded on the last section of Proverbs 23. This approach gave variety to a series that was mentally and emotionally exhausting.
Expounding on John 13, your illustrative would have given you more than enough material to deal with pride, humility, the application within the body of Christ, a jump off points to look forward to Ephesians 5:1 which is not talking directly about humility but certainly applies. Philippians 2 would give you the same possibilities. Not that I found anything wrong with your approach but it is difficult to preach a series of topical sermons when one loves dealing with sections. By the way, after spending eleven official weeks in Titus 1, I am going to do chapters 2-3 in four weeks.
Posted by: Robert Talley on March 24, 2007