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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Jonathan Zirkle

Humility

I ask that you say a special prayer for me.

I've been fighting a bit of a cold, and I'm hoping that my health will hold out and my voice will hold out this morning.

The sermon I want to preach today is on humility.

I had the blessing of hearing a sermon on humility, I don't know, sometime a little bit before Christmas.

And I'll tell you that it made a huge impression on me, and I keep thinking about it over and over again, and I finally decided that this would be something that I would speak about today.

The pastor who spoke that Sabbath said this statement, and it stuck with me constantly.

Humility is the extra lesson taught in everything Jesus did.

I believe that with all my heart, and as I studied and studied, I came to agree with that.

Today's message won't be the message that he delivered, but it will be on the same subject, and I ask that you will say your prayers that I may do a good job delivering this on God's behalf, not on mine.

Please let these be your words and not my own.

Well, Those of you who know me know that I like to talk about Daniel and I usually find a way to weave it all in.

Daniel really is written for the end times.

I promise not to speak too much about Daniel today, but I would like to say this, when you think about humility, the exact opposite of humility is pride.

And Daniel has a couple of chapters, particularly about pride and how the Lord deals with it.

The 1 that I'm thinking about in particular is Daniel chapter 4, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about it, but I think it's particularly apropos for us today in the day that we live, a day of great prosperity.

You know, King Nebuchadnezzar was the greatest king of Babylon.

And he was given a dream and in that dream he saw how great he was in some respect.

I mean this is what a good government is.

And in that dream that tree was cut down and the reason why it was cut down was because of pride.

And we read in Daniel exactly when Nebuchadnezzar was cut down, it was when he walked through his palace and he said this.

Daniel 4 verse 30, the king spake and said, is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power and for the honor of my majesty, we need to be on guard against this kind of pride so that we don't fall the same way King Nebuchadnezzar did.

But if we do fall for pride, I pray that each 1 of us will have an experience like Nebuchadnezzar, where we can be humbled and can be restored.

Turn with me in your Bibles, if you will.

Let's look and see where pride first seemed to enter onto the stage.

There's a couple places we could look, but today let's look at Ezekiel chapter 28.

Here we see how pride entered heaven and the terrible, terrible things that that caused.

Ezekiel chapter 28, and I'd like to start with verse 1.

And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, say unto the prince of Tyrus, Thus saith the Lord God, because thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a God, I sit in the seat of God in the midst of the seas.

Yet thou art a man and not God, though thou set thine heart as the heart of God.

There is no secret that they can hide from thee.

With thy wisdom and with thine understanding, thou hast gotten thee riches, and hast gotten gold and silver unto thy treasures.

By thy great wisdom and by thy traffic hast thou increased thy riches, and thine heart is lifted up because of thy riches." Moving on, we'll see a little bit more of who this person really is.

Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God, every precious stone was thy covering, the sardis, topaz, and the diamond, the barrel, the onks, the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold.

The workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.

Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth, and I have set thee so.

Thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.

Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou was created, till iniquity was found in thee.

There's a couple of interesting things here.

These stones, these are the same stones that are in the breastplate of the high priest.

And this cherub, this anointing, I mean the anointed covering cherub, walked in the stones of fire.

If you study this, you will see that this is where God's throne was.

Lucifer's heart was lifted up because of his beauty.

His wisdom was corrupted by reason of his brightness.

Self-exaltation is the key to his rebellion, and it unlocks the modern theme of sanctification.

I want you to think about that term there.

Pride is the key to the rebellion and it unlocks the modern theme of sanctification.

Now how could it unlock the modern theme?

I'm going to posit, and we'll see as we go today, that the theme is this.

The opposite of pride is humility and that is the key to sanctification.

Satan declared that he had no need of the restraints of the law, that he was holy, sinless, and incapable of doing evil.

Adam and Eve were in possession of Eden, and they fell from their high and holy estate by transgression of God's law, and forfeited their right to the tree of life and to the joys of Eden." So this is all tied together, this pride thing.

You know, we think about the Garden of Eden.

And as we study out, we see in John chapter 1, we see that the Creator was Christ.

Everything was good in the garden, and I think it's instructive what was the first task of Adam.

Adam's first task was to take inventory of all the animals, to see all of the animals and to name all of the animals.

That naming, I believe, is very important because names denote character and Adam was given the power to name.

If you look in Luke chapter 3 verse 38, as you're reading along you'll see this genealogy and it's really quite remarkable.

This is Christ's genealogy, and it kind of goes backwards so that it starts with the closest to Christ, and it moves on backwards up through time, and eventually you get to Adam.

And at the very end it says, Adam, which was, it says, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.

But we know that there was the fall, and all terrible things happened.

We come, there's a way to kind of buttress this, if you go to 1 Corinthians 15 verse 45 it says, And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul, and the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.

Now, if you study that all out, you'll see that the first Adam is the Adam we were just talking about, and the last Adam is Christ.

Adam was made as the Son of God and he was made to rule this planet.

He was given dominion, but all of that changed.

Turn with me back to Genesis, let's go to chapter 3.

As I look at this, And the serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

As I look at this, I believe that there are 3 lies, 3 obvious lies.

So many times we hear and we focus in on the 1 lie, the 1 lie that you shall not surely die.

But there's 3 lies here and there may be more.

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Humility

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