Scott Moore: Welcome to the "Building Faith and Family" podcast with Steve Demme. I'm your host, Scott Moore. Thanks for joining us today. Good morning, Steve. Happy New Year. I know people won't hear this till later.

Steve: Yes. Happy New Year to you, too.

Scott: Good times.

Steve: How were all your family celebrations?

Scott: Very good and actually, a little relaxing this year, which is unusual. It was nice. How about you?

Steve: About the same. Pretty low key. I go to bed anyway, so it's no problem. I don't stay up to bang pans out in the street or anything like that. I usually sleep with the dogs because they don't like firework

Steve: Let's continue our series on rethinking or rebuilding Who God is according to scripture. This morning, when I was putting the finishing touches on this, I wa thinking about your expression “bake my noodle.”

Scott: [laughs]

Steve: I think this one will bake people's noodle. At least it's baking mine. In fact, it's impacting me the more I meditate and study these particular set of scriptures on this attribute of God. It is baking my noodle, and I can sense in my heart I'm changing as I focus on this. Let's pray.

Father, thank You for Your word that is living, and it reveals a living God. I thank You that You have revealed Yourself to us. I pray You reveal more of Yourself to us today. Give us insights into Your character and attributes perhaps we've never grasped as fully as we ought.

I pray that You help us to get a handle on this one today and not just filter throug our mind, but filter right down into our heart so that we can not only hear it but be it In Jesus' name, amen.

Scott: Amen.

Steve: Jesus said to Philip, this is John 14, where there was an interaction going back and forth between Philip and Jesus. In the eighth verse, Philip said, "Lord, show us the Father and it's enough for us."

Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long and you still do not know Me, Philip? Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father?' Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me?"

When we see Jesus, and that's probably one of the best parts of scripture, is the fact that we get to see what it was like to live with Jesus. We see Him through the eyes of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and others. As we see Jesus, we see the Father. I want to establish that right up front.

Here's the key verse, Matthew 11:29. "Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart." Another translation says, "I am gentle and humble." Now, let's just let that cook our noodle. How's that?

God in Christ, Christ in God, is gentle, humble, meek, and lowly. In those words, we know them, and we like them. I don't know anybody that doesn't like Matthew 11:29. "Take My yoke, learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you'll find rest fo your souls." Wonderful passage.

Have we really let it be assimilated right down into our core that God is gentle, humble, meek, and lowly? God and humility usually don't go in the same sentence. When we think of God, we think of the high and holy one who inhabits eternity. He's majestic. He's magnificent, and He's God. But He teaches us that He is gentle an humble.

I noticed in Matthew 21:5, which is quoting Zechariah 9:9. I'm going to read that one. "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king is coming. Righteous and having salvation is He, humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey." This is what was quoted in Matthew 21. Here comes the king. He's righteous. He possesses salvation. He's humble and mounted on a little colt.

Whoo. I tell you, just studying this and meditating on it, it does something to me because it puts into context a whole bunch of scriptures. I have about 10 more. Isaiah 57:15, "Thus says the One Who is high and lifted up, Who inhabits eternity, Whose name is holy, 'I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.'"

This is where He lives. He lives in the high and holy place, and He frequents, and visits, and lives, and dwells with the lowly, and the contrite, and the humble because that's Who He is. These are His people. We think of the king like the president or the prime minister. They walk into the room, and everybody in the room is a who's who. Everybody is the president of this, the vice president of that. These people, they have power. They have influence. You could think of the president in his cabinet o something like that. He says, "No, I am the one Who is high and lifted up, but I live with people that are lowly and contrite."

Philippians 2, "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility coun others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you not only look to his ow interests, but also to the interests of others.

"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, Who, though He was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."

This is how our Savior lived. He humbled Himself. I thought about this, and I thought, the children were attracted to Him. Children are not attracted to the powerful. They're attracted to people whose attitude is meek, and approachable, and humble.

Peter didn't have any trouble rebuking Him, so He was teachable. Now, he was wrong, but the fact that Peter even opened his mouth tells me something. That he knew that Jesus would listen to him.

Matthew 12:18, "Behold My servant whom I have chosen, My beloved, with Whom My soul is pleased. I will put My Spirit upon Him. He will proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not quarrel or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear His voice in the streets. A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not quench." Phew. He's humble. He's lowly. He's contrite. Then, of course, you start thinking about the people that followed Him. In Numbers 12:3, "The man Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth." Charlton Heston, on the movies, wasn't meek. Charlton Heston was big. He was strong. He was magnificen What scripture teaches us is that Moses was very meek. It even says the same about Paul. "His letters are weighty, but his presence is weak." He was humble amongst the people that he ministered to.

Here's what he wrote to the Thessalonians in chapter 2. "We never came with flattering speech, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed, God is witness. Nor di we seek glory from men, either from you or from others -- even though, as apostles of Christ, we might have asserted our authority -- but we proved to be gentle among you as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children."

Paul wrote incredible letters, but his presence was meek and lowly like his Savior. Moses took Egypt to their knees. The most powerful man probably in the known world, Pharaoh, was groveling before Moses, and yet Moses himself was very meek. I don't know if this is getting to you, but, boy, it's getting to me. I'm glad I have this opportunity to study this and to talk about it because I'm hoping that I'll get it. James 4:6, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." Then it goes on the next verse and says, "Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you

Doesn't mean we stop fighting. It doesn't mean that we stop warring the good wa and standing with God, and fighting the good fight of the faith. That's where wrestling is. Not against flesh and blood. Principalities and powers. Yet we need t have that balance of being humble while we're fightin

James 5:10-11, "As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophet who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remain steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful." This is who our God is. Psalm 149, "Jehovah takes pleasure in His people. He adorns the humble with salvation."

Zephaniah 2:3, "Seek Jehovah, all you humble of the land who do His just commands. Seek righteousness. Seek humility."

That's quite something to seek. Seek to be righteous. Seek to be humble. Make this our ambition, that we would be like our Savior who was meek, and lowly, and gentle, and humble. Let's seek to be like Jehovah. Let's seek to be like Jesus.

Ephesians 4, Paul again, "I, therefore, prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness." Same words. "With patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."

Whoo, it'd be nice if a lot of us in the Christian world were eager to maintain unity and walking with humility, and gentleness, and patience. Colossians 3, "Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience."

Titus 3:2, "Speak evil of no one. Avoid quarreling. Be gentle and show perfect courtesy toward all peoples."

This one is directed towards the women in the context, but it's good for all God's children. 1 Peter 3:5, "Let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious." Is your noodle cooking?

Scott: Definitely, yeah. The one that was hitting me was 1 Thessalonians 4:11. It says "Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life." Pretty much sums it up. I take comfort in that verse because everything in our culture screams, "Build yourself up. Tell the world how great you are. You've got to show everybody how good you are. Nobody else is going to toot your horn for you, so you have to do it." However God's word says, "Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life." As far as Jesus goes, as it reads in Philippians 2, "Who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage," this particular passage says. Everything Jesus did, just by the nature of descending into human form, is an act of humility.

Even if he had come with pomp and circumstance, and crowns and glory, He would still have been humbling Himself simply to become a baby or to become a human in any form.

The fact that He hung out with lepers, and prostitutes, and other sinners, and didn't have a home and know where to lay His head, and all that. You could go on for days with this and still just scratch the surface.

Steve: It's awesome to meditate on. You almost feel some of that natural stu draining out of you just as you meditate and think about Jesus being this way. Scott: Yep.

Steve: Seek humility. My father used to joke with people. He said, "I wrote a book, 'Humility and How I Conquered It.'"

Scott: Nice.

Steve: Do you remember that song, a long time ago, "Oh, Lord, it's hard to be humble when You're perfect in every way"?

Scott: I don't. What was it...?

Steve: I don't want to end on that note.

Scott: There was another one I was looking at. John the Baptist said, "He must increase, I must decrease." That, and, "Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life." It's a pretty good mission statement right there on both of those.

Steve: Yeah. Amen. I'm going to add that to my notes. Excellent. Even though I knew that God had that aspect of Himself, and it's easier to believe it about Jesus, but to think and to chew on the fact that Jesus says, "Look, if you see Me, you see My Dad. If you see My Dad, you see Me. We're the same. I am meek and humble in heart, and He is meek and humble in heart. We are both gentle, lowly..."

Phew. To think of God that way, this is what we need to be doing, meditating on Who God says He is and not Who our culture makes Him out to be or Who naturally we think He is. I think this is a perfect example of that. May God help us to draw near to Him. It's easier to draw near to God when you know that He's humble and He loves humility.

Thank you, Father, for this insight into Your character. It certainly has challenged me, and it challenges my spirit. I pray that You help me to put on, as Paul said in Colossians 3, "Put on a compassionate heart, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience." Let those be earmarks of me because they're earmarks of my Savior. In Jesus' name, amen.

Scott: Amen. That's our show for this week, folks. Thanks for joining us for the Building Faith and Family podcast with Steve Demme. If you have a question for the show, email Steve at spdemme@Gmail.com. If you have a question for me, you can reach me at scott@unsocializedmedia.com. Thanks for joining us. Have a great week.