Divine Portrait: Moved by the Cross | Elijah Lamb

Welcome to "Divine Portrait: Moved By The Cross," a thought-provoking sermon series that dives deep into the humbling and transformative message of Christ's crucifixion. In this episode, we take a step back from our ongoing series to explore the profound impact that meditation on the cross can have on our spiritual lives.

Join us as we delve into the essence of biblical humility, examining how recognizing God's immense power and holiness can naturally humble us, and how we are invited to actively embrace humility as a reflection of Christ's sacrifice. Discover how the cross challenges us to live a life centered on love, sacrifice, and service, drawing inspiration from scripture, historical examples, and personal anecdotes.

As we journey through passages like Isaiah 53 and Philippians 2, be encouraged to contemplate the shocking humility of Jesus and how it inspires us to respond in kind. Whether you're wrestling with pride, seeking deeper humility, or longing to align your life more closely with the Gospel, this episode offers a compelling call to let the cross shape every aspect of your existence.

Tune in, stay engaged, and open your heart to the transformative power of the message of the cross. As we move toward Easter, let’s embrace this season of reflection and growth, and let the humility of Christ become the foundation of our lives.

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Transcript

 So we've been in a series called Divine Portrait.

Have you liked it?

Good.

I'm kind of doing my own little doodad and like breaking away from it, but I want to come back to it and think about it.

I'm really stoked that we've been living, that Pastor Jake has been taking us through these messages on the cross as it's revealed through the whole of scripture.

I think it's really important to not like move past this.

 I think it's important not to just be like, yeah, I get the point.

I get the whole thing.

Yes, God on the cross.

Amazing.

Can we do a relationship series now?

I'm desperately single.

I get that we want like a... No, not me though.

Bing, bing, bing.

 You know, it's easy to just, like, get used to that message and, like, feel like I want to progress beyond it.

And I think you have to go against that.

You have to actively fight against that because that's not productive.

A lot of the messages up here on Sundays for a while, even before this series, have had that theme of the shock of the cross.

Like, as you go through the narrative of Scripture, you come back and you're like, wow.

Like, if you read the Bible from beginning to end, you get to the crucifixion and it's like, what, dude?

It's like, this is the absolute last thing that I thought was going to happen.

And...

 This series has been inviting you and I to live in that, to jump into the headspace of an Old Testament prophet, finding out about the servant of the Lord, crucified for the sins of his people, about the high and lifted up one from Isaiah 53 that Pastor Jake talked about.

It's this continual invitation into that shock, into that surprise, into that amazement.

When we look at the cross, there shouldn't be a part of you that looks at the cross and just goes, yeah, that checks out, that makes sense, I'm used to that.

 It happens, but I don't want to be that way.

I want to look at the image of God on the cross and have my mind persistently blown over and over and over again.

And so I'm stoked that we've been living in this and that we've been staying on this subject as we move toward Easter.

Because it's really important to contemplate it and to live in it.

My whole thing, preaching-wise...

 The thing that I love to preach about that bleeds through every message that I'll ever preach, no matter what the subject is, is love for God.

I had an experience with Jesus several years ago.

I grew up in the church, but I lived in this sort of dry, dead, deflated, boring type of Christianity, and I couldn't get out of it.

I called myself the backsliding baby.

I tried to come up with an alliteration in the moment.

Nobody called me that.

I didn't call myself that.

But I lived in the skyrocket, like, wow, this is awesome.

I love Jesus.

 like live down here way down in the bellows of hades for a while and uh that's terrible and that's not it's not a biblical vision or conception of what the christian life is meant to be like that's just not how it's supposed to be and i was stuck there and i couldn't understand why and i had this experience with the holy spirit where i was overcome paul says in romans 5 that the holy spirit will pour out the love of the father into your heart and that happened to me in like a moment of deep heartbreak and sorrow experienced the love of god in a way for the first time i was like

 oh my gosh, that's it.

That's the thing that I've been looking for my entire life.

Like I've been in the church and I know the Bible and I even preach the word, but I had this experience with God where I went, oh, like it's the lights just came on.

I understand now.

His love is enough to satisfy me.

His love is really what I've been looking for all this time.

And then it was from there that I learned how lovely, how lovable Jesus was.

 And I could not help but respond to that.

And how much the Bible teaches that he wants me to love him.

Jesus says the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, with all your strength.

That that is what God, from the beginning of the Bible to the end until today, has been trying to draw from humanity, is this loving response back to him.

 And so I knew I wanted to cultivate that in my life.

I had that experience.

I felt that like heart racing love for Jesus, that boom, boom, boom.

I'm like, wow, I'm in love with God.

This is amazing.

And then you feel it sort of start to fizzle out.

And it's like, I'm panicking now because what the heck, it's all falling apart.

I'm backside.

I'm going back to where I used to be.

And it was like, you know what?

I need to contemplate regularly.

Like I need to live in the truth that brought me to this place.

John says in first John that we love, we love because he first loved us.

 That your ability to love God is determined by your understanding of his love for you.

It's just the way that it's going to work every single time.

And I was like, you know, what drew me to this place of love for Jesus?

Well, it was when I began to think about the cross and his sacrifice for me and what he did.

And so the habit that I picked up is that almost every day I was living in and studying and reading through slowly.

One, Isaiah 53, which Pastor Jake preached the most insane message on a few weeks ago.

It was incredible.

 And the other one is the scripture that we're going to work through today.

And as I lived in these two passages, like quietly and almost unnoticeably, my lifestyle and my feelings and my thoughts and my desires began to change and alter.

And I think that's what will happen to you if you take advantage of the season that our church is in, of this whole divine portrait moment, and you decide to consider the cross.

 And then reconsider the cross.

And then consider it again.

And then to think about it again and again and again.

And to live there.

To let yourself be struck by the power and the beauty of the cross.

That you'll be moved by it.

 You'll be genuinely, truly moved by it, whether you are prepared for that or not.

That truth will do something to you.

That's what I believe about the Word of God.

The Word of God is breathed out by God, it says in 2 Timothy.

It's a sword.

It's a sword.

It pierces and it judges our thoughts and our attitudes.

The Word of God, especially these scriptures that we're focusing on about the sacrifice of Jesus, they're especially potent.

They get to the places that nothing else can get to.

It's like magic school bus.

These scriptures shrink down, you know what I mean?

 So that's what I hope this does for you.

Okay, so let's go back a few steps now that I've wasted my entire time up here.

I want to talk about biblical humility and the way that humility springs forward from the message of Jesus Christ crucified.

I think there's two kinds of humility in the Bible.

And the first one is like pre-wired into Genesis 1.

It comes into the Bible from the very, very beginning.

 We're introduced in Genesis and through the Old Testament to this massively powerful, utterly holy God.

This God who is everything that we are not.

Everything that we cannot be.

He is not weak.

He's not imperfect.

He's not obtuse.

He's not the way that we are.

Right?

 And that's why Solomon's philosophical thesis in the book of Proverbs is Proverbs 1, verse 7.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge or the beginning of wisdom.

Solomon says, until you start here, if you don't have that down, then you don't understand reality.

Proverbs is just philosophy.

He's going and he's nerding out and he's like, here's how I think the world works and here's how I think you should live.

And he's got to begin here because he's like, if you don't have this observation down, if you don't understand that God...

 is worthy of awe and of reverence and of respect and of fear, if you don't understand that God is so utterly outside of us and so utterly different to us and so utterly not like us, if you don't get that this God is powerful and holy, he's like, every observation that you're going to make about reality from there cannot possibly be true.

This is foundational.

Solomon says, until you know your place in the world.

 You can't do knowledge.

You can't do truth.

You can't do wisdom.

And so he says, here's what puts human beings in their place.

A knowledge of who God is.

Of how powerful and how wonderful and how amazing and holy this God is.

We might call this instinctual humility.

This is not the kind of thing that usually needs to be taught.

You learn about this God, or better yet, you have an experience with this God.

And this is just sort of like the visceral reaction, this humility, that comes out of human beings.

Because we're pre-made for that.

 Throughout the scripture, as God reveals himself, oftentimes very, very tangibly to people, we see this kind of humility as a visceral reaction and reaction

 All the people of the Bible over and over and over again.

My favorite example is Isaiah.

In Isaiah chapter 6, Isaiah, he is thrown up into this vision of the throne room of God sitting on his throne.

And he sees these creatures with different animal body parts and six wings.

And they're singing, holy, holy, holy.

And it's insane.

And God is sitting on the throne.

And the train of his robe is filling the temple, which is awesome.

It's like, this is mind-blowing.

And then here's what Isaiah says.

Like, he's totally, like, doesn't know what to do with what he's seeing.

And it says, then I said, woe is me.

 I'm cooked, is what he just said, for I am ruined.

I'm ruined because I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips and because my eyes have seen the king.

 The Lord of armies.

Happens all throughout the scripture.

It's so, like you don't think of it this way, but when you read the Old Testament, every single time somebody sees God, like God comes and meets with them, they're like, oh, I'm going to die.

And God has to go, chill, you're not going to die.

Like that is a very regular exchange in the Old Testament.

It's me, yes, I'm God, don't worry, I'm not going to kill you.

You're not going to die.

But it's not like they're like, God's here to judge me.

It's like, I can't, the presence that I'm in is like, this is going to destroy me.

 I literally, I cannot be in such a powerful, mighty, holy presence.

It's all over.

It happens to Job.

Job spends his whole book basically rebuking God, and then God shows up and goes, Job, were you there, bro?

And then Job goes, oh, I shouldn't have said that.

I said a lot of stupid things, and I didn't know any better.

It happens to Moses.

 with the burning bush.

It happens to David.

David takes a census of Israel against God's wishes and then God shows up with a sword and David's like, oh, okay, I'm sorry.

And that happens.

John, the writer of the book of Revelation, sees Jesus standing before him with eyes like fire and hair like wool and he says, and I lay like a dead man, which happens to Daniel when he sees the Son of Man coming on the clouds.

He literally faints.

He faints.

You know what I mean?

This is incredible.

This is amazing.

He faints and then he faints a second time.

It's insane.

People have these experiences with the power and the holiness and the presence of God and they cannot help but to literally be humbled by it.

 They're getting humbled, right?

So that sets us up for the second kind of humility in Scripture, which is not an instinct, but it's a humility that's done out of choice.

It's done out of your own volition.

So the first kind, like I described the difference as, number one is that instinctual humility is getting humbled.

Like, you can't help that.

You got humbled, bro.

The second one is being humble, which is an act of choice.

They're two different things, but they come together.

Does that make sense?

 Paul describes the second one really epically in our central passage, Philippians chapter 2.

This is like my, I come back to this one over and over and over again.

Paul is building up in Philippians to a reference to an early Christian hymn.

So like an early Christian worship song that he includes in his letter.

Here's how he introduces it.

He says, "...do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves."

 It's insane.

Everyone should look out, not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.

I love that so much.

What an amazingly beautiful picture of what community could be like.

You look out for everybody else, and instead of you looking out for you, now you've got the whole church looking out for you.

That's a really, really great exchange.

It used to be one person on my side, and now I've got all these people on my side, and all I had to do was stop being on my own side.

It's incredible.

I love it.

It's amazing.

I'm also terrible at this.

 embarrassingly bad at this.

Man, I love me.

I am on my team.

Let me tell you that.

Let me tell you what.

I read a quote this week from this Puritan guy.

And he says that self-love is actually self-hatred.

And that no man who can't get out of his own way can get to heaven.

I was like, dang, that is really striking, very convicting language.

That when I'm on my own side, I'm actually my own worst enemy.

 When I'm trying to self-preserve, I'm actually bringing destruction into my life.

That's what pride does.

So Paul gives this amazing, beautiful picture of what humility could be like in community, but it's like nobody wants to do that.

Like, okay, Paul, that's cool.

It sounds great, but I can't trust everybody else to do that.

And also, it's too hard, so I'm not going to do that.

It's a pretty hard sell.

So obviously, Paul is really good at convincing people to do things, and he's a great arguer, and he's a

 brilliant thinker.

And so he's like, I'm going to motivate people to behave this way.

I'm not just going to tell you to do it.

I'm going to justify why you should do it because it's not an instinct.

It's not a visceral reaction.

Like I'm overcome by the mighty power of God.

And now here I am, I'm humble.

I realize I'm a human and I'm weak.

Like, no, it takes more than that.

It's a, it's a total heart disposition.

Everything has changed.

So like, where is that going to come from?

And here is what Paul grounds it in Philippians chapter three, verse five.

Paul says, you should adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus.

So like, here's what I think you should do.

Actually, let me put a spin on this.

This is the same attitude of Christ Jesus, what I'm describing.

 Aren't you Christians?

Right?

Isn't that your whole thing?

You should be like Christ.

That's what you should do.

And here's what he did.

He existed in the form of God, but did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited.

Instead, he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity.

And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even to death on a cross.

 So Paul's like, how am I going to get people to behave that way?

How am I going to get people to feel that way?

To actively make the decision to be humble.

Humility doesn't just happen to you.

You don't just wake up one day and go, oh yeah, I'm not that important to me anymore.

Pride and humility are just choices.

They're not secret sneaky things that are happening against your will behind your back.

Humble people just do things that prideful people won't do.

That's it.

If you want to become humble, you just do things that pride can't stand.

 It's very practical.

It's very practical.

Paul's inviting us into that humility by pointing us to the cross.

You know, it's the cross.

Paul's like, I want you to live this way.

And here's the only way that you're going to justify living like that.

It's if you look at what Jesus did for you.

It's if your heart is overcome with love for the crucified one.

Because you're not just responding to the apostles' commands anymore.

You're responding to the lifestyle and the sacrifice of the God that you worship.

 Augustine said in one of his earlier works that piety or religious devotion begins with fear and is perfected in love.

Paul describes this otherworldly, heavenly, impossible to attain humility.

And then he invites us.

It's the only way for us to get there is if we combine this visceral awe of God's power that just comes out of us, our recognition in the scheme of God's creation going, wow, you're so much higher and better than me.

And then you couple that with a revelation of God on the cross.

 This God that I'm, like, I'm viscerally humble before because he's so powerful and he's so mighty.

And I take a look to the, oh, it's that God that I cannot help but be humble before who's on the cross for me.

Then I go, that is compelling.

I have to, I have to respond to that.

Paul says in Romans chapter 12, verse 1, I love this scripture.

He says, therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice.

 Holy and pleasing to God.

This is your true worship.

That phrase at the end could also be translated, this is your reasonable service.

I come back to that thought a lot.

It's like Paul is saying, hey, now that we've spent these first 11 chapters of my amazing letter to you, Roman church, now that we've spent that time contemplating the merciful self-sacrifice of Jesus, here's what I want to challenge you to do.

I want you to participate in that.

I want you to give yourself as a sacrifice.

Why?

Because that's the only reasonable way that you could possibly respond to what I just told you.

 I think that way all the time.

I'm like realizing there's this like dissonance in me where I like say and confess one thing, but then my life preaches a second message.

And they're in contradiction with one another.

And so Paul is like calling us out and going, you're utterly unreasonable.

When you live in any other way besides self-sacrifice to Christ, you are being unreasonable.

You are being illogical, right?

 That cannot be the conclusion of the thing that you profess to believe.

If you say, I believe that Jesus, that while I was still a sinner, Christ died for me, Paul says in Romans 5.

If you believe that's true, then your response to then make your life about you, it doesn't work.

Those two things don't compute.

Those two things don't, they don't go together.

Right?

So Paul's just a little gentle rebuke from us.

He's going, you're illogical.

 The way that you're thinking and living doesn't make any sense.

Sorry, Paul.

Thank you.

And that's why I keep coming back to the message of the cross over and over again because I recognize and I'm willing to admit I'm irrational.

My lifestyle is irrational.

I'm all the time.

I'm a walking contradiction.

I'm a constant proof of this text over and over and over again.

I'm a proof of this, that I'm unreasonable, that I profess one thing and then I live out another entirely different thing.

 And so I have to keep on coming back and getting re-surprised by the Lamb of God slain for me.

I have to keep coming back to that over and over so that my life actually matches the message.

Because here's what I think.

I think that our humility, the humility that Paul commands us to walk in, is reciprocal to our knowledge of his humility.

That's the shocking thing about God's humility is that the gap for his humility and ours is infinitely larger than ours.

So Jesus' stepping down is infinitely larger than your stepping down.

 Jesus' choice to get on a cross is infinitely more dramatic than your choice to get on a cross.

You understand?

Like, God is stepping down from much higher than you are.

So when you humble yourself, you're stepping down from like a person who should be humble to humility.

And God is stepping down from infinite, holy, forever, perfect, like should never be humble about anything, stepping down into humility.

And not just like regular humility, like, no, no, don't make it about me.

God gets the glory.

No, no, no.

Like, I'm humbling myself to the form of a servant and I'm going to death and even a criminal's death on a cross.

Yes.

 You know, it's like our humility is like this and God's humility.

His humility cost him so much more.

And so we're invited to that.

And it's as we contemplate the length that God steps down that we go, oh, yeah, maybe I should be humble.

That's why the cross is significant.

That's why it produces the result in us.

I'm constantly going, oh, man, I actually am understanding Jesus better.

And my life is now reflecting the way that he lived.

 And here's the kicker of it all.

The whole Christian life requires humility to work.

So maybe you're like, well, I don't want to do the humble thing.

I'll get to that eventually.

I'm going to live my life for me and about me.

I'm going to be number one in my life.

Well, the Christian life doesn't work that way.

The whole thing, this whole system that God has situated, pride doesn't fit anywhere.

So, so long as we try to live in pride, the Christian life, the scheme that God has constructed will just spit you out over and over and over and over again.

 Consider the things that scripturally that we're called to.

We're called to submission to God.

Submission to God requires humility.

If you're submitting to his word, confessing it, believing it, obeying it, letting the Bible be your source of truth instead of yourself.

I would love to be a total source of objective truth deciding what I really think all the time.

And I have to submit my beliefs about myself and about the world to the Bible over and over and over and over again.

I have to submit myself to the Holy Spirit.

I have thoughts about where my life should go and the Holy Spirit often has different ones.

 And he convicts.

No, no, this is what you need to do.

And yet you actually need to change.

And I have to submit to that.

I just submit to the voice of the Holy Spirit.

The voice of God working in me, calling me to something better.

You know what else?

I have to submit to God's church.

That innately requires humility.

You know, this isn't like elementary school.

You don't have like a principle.

It's not like growing up in your house where you have parents that you are required to submit to.

No, no, no.

You could leave the church.

You could leave the church and be the sole source of authority in your life.

But God has built this church in such a way that there are human spiritual authorities that we're called to submit to.

 God doesn't have the egalitarian vision that we would love to experience.

They're just like, everybody is on the same level.

God doesn't.

It's kind of more complicated than that.

God has entrusted certain people with authority.

And biblically, you've got to submit to that.

It's all over the New Testament.

Submit to your authority.

Submit to your authority.

Submit to your authority.

It's everywhere.

Man, I could just leave the church.

You could do that.

You could just walk out of these doors and never come back, and you could be the sole authority in your life.

 If you wanted to.

But if you want to participate in the church of God, it requires humility.

To look and to go, I'm actually choosing to have authority in my life that I could otherwise resist.

Serving requires humility.

Don't you have better uses for your time to lay yourself down and to serve others?

No, it's going to take some humility for you to go, no, this is actually a great use of my time.

Generosity requires humility.

Who deserves your money more than you do?

Right?

 Why would you do that?

A humble person goes like, no, what the Lord has given me, I'm blessed to give away.

Because my life isn't about me.

Forgiveness requires humility.

Repentance and apologizing requires humility.

Relationships in general require humility if you want to do them Jesus' way.

Discipleship, leading others healthily requires humility.

All of it.

The whole thing.

The whole thing doesn't work if you won't lower yourself and shrink.

Right.

 If you won't become small in your own eyes.

If you won't do it, then none of that is going to work.

You're not going to be able to participate in any of those things.

Paul's definition of humility in Philippians is not being the most important.

You know, to be humble is to not live your life all about you.

It's the active decision to go, I'm alive and my being alive, my existence is not for me.

It's for everybody else.

 My life exists for everybody else and not for myself.

So pride, what it does is it staunchly rejects every single one of those ideas.

It cannot make room for them.

It cannot do it.

Also, this one I forgot to mention.

This probably is a bit more unexpected, but boldness requires humility.

Nobody wants to be bold about difficult things.

Nobody wants to do that.

But if your life is decidedly not about you and is instead about Christ and his glory, then you'll be willing to be bold.

In fact, you have to be bold.

 You don't have a choice.

You have to be bold.

And that's, of course, where Paul takes things in Philippians chapter 2 and verse 9.

He says, For this reason God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Paul is saying that humility leads you to a passion for the glory of Jesus.

So I come to this passage and I'm called into the question, how far am I willing to go?

 How far are you willing to go so that Jesus Christ may be glorified?

Listen to Paul's words in 1 Corinthians.

1 Corinthians 9, verse 19.

He says, although I am free from all and not anyone's slave, I have made myself a slave to everyone in order to win more people.

That's crazy.

That's an insane amount of dedication.

That's an insane way.

That's a crazy thing to say about yourself.

 There's this group of early reformers called the Moravians that predate Martin Luther by about 60 years.

And they took that scripture super literally.

In the 1700s, they began to experience a bit of like a missionary revival.

And it started with these two men who felt called to the Dutch West Indies, these two islands.

They found out that the slaves on this island had never heard the gospel before.

 know how they came to that knowledge but they found out and so they were like we got to get there we're gonna we're gonna leave our home um and we're gonna we're gonna leave the netherlands and we're gonna go or germany was i don't remember and we're gonna go we're gonna go to these islands and we're gonna live the rest of our lives there and we're gonna preach the gospel

 to this unreached people.

And they couldn't get passage to the island.

It was like a trade island.

It was just like really difficult to get to.

And so they had to like go before this court, this tribunal, and like, you know, figure out how they could go.

And they were like, how are you going to get there?

And they were like, we're going to sell ourselves as slaves so that we can be slaves among the slaves.

And there was like, the court was like super like, dude, that's totally not allowed.

But the story goes that they figured out a way and they sold themselves as slaves.

And as they sailed away from their home, never knowing if they'd ever return,

 It said that the two men looked back at their loved ones on the shore.

They lifted their hands and they shouted together, may the lamb that was slain receive the reward of his suffering.

That is literal servant willingness.

Like literally willing to sell themselves as slaves so that the gospel could spread.

Why?

Because they had a jealousy for the crucified lamb to get what he deserves.

 A passion for Jesus to get what is rightfully his, all the glory.

Every tongue confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord.

As I come to a close, one of my favorite verses in the Bible that I come back to all the time, I say that about every scripture that I mention, but it is, it's true.

Twice in the New Testament, I think this is important, that twice in the New Testament in the epistles, Proverbs chapter 3 verse 34 is referenced.

Once in James and once in Peter.

Here's how Peter uses it in 1 Peter chapter 5.

 In the same way, you who are younger, be subject or be submitted to the elders.

All of you clothe yourselves with humility towards one another because God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.

That's Proverbs 3.34.

 Is there more?

Keep going.

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your cares on him because he cares about you.

Be sober-minded.

Be alert.

Your adversary, the devil, is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour.

Resist him, firm in the faith, knowing that the same kind of sufferings are being experienced by your fellow believers throughout the world.

I love that passage.

I'm going to read the James one in a second, but Peter says...

 It builds all this up.

And then it's like, God, you cite Proverbs chapter 3, God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.

The question that immediately comes to mind for me is, what the heck does that mean?

And why does God resist the proud?

Pride in the New Testament for us is considered such a malevolent crime now because at its heart, here's what pride is.

Pride essentially looks at the cross and says, that's below me.

Or I'm above that.

Right.

 That kind of lifestyle is below me.

Taking up my cross daily, no, sorry, I'm above that kind of life.

But God was not above the cross.

The cross was not below God, you know?

God was not too good for humility.

God was not too good for servant-hearted sacrifice.

God was not too good for his death, for your life.

Why does God resist the proud?

Why?

Because pride implicitly undermines the cross.

 When I make my life about me, I am proudly proclaiming by my actions that Jesus lived the wrong way.

That's what pride means.

Jesus, you lived poorly.

I have a better idea about how I should live.

I disagree with you.

You got it wrong.

That's what pride is.

You're like, well, I've never said that.

I've never prayed that.

But that's what pride is implicitly saying through your actions.

You must think that.

 So of course God resists the proud because God laid his life down.

Because Romans 8 says he did not even spare his own son.

And when I scorn a crucified life, I'm scorning the cross of Christ.

I'm making little of Christ's sacrifice.

Oh, his sacrifice must not be worth my life laid down.

So take any of those applications of humility, submission, forgiveness.

 Servitude, if you think about yourself as above any of those things, even though Jesus did not think of himself that way, then you might find yourself being resisted by God.

Hard to say exactly how that will be applied, but God gives grace to those who humble themselves, and I'd like grace.

 And so this verse is not saying, oh, if you're prideful right now, you're going to lose your salvation and go to hell.

But it is saying you're not going to flourish.

Like spiritually, you're not going to flourish.

So long as pride reigns in your life, you will not spiritually flourish because God's going to resist your growth.

Dang, dude.

It's like obviously my heart is packed full of pride.

It's like an impossible thing to preach about because I feel like I'm the most prideful guy I've ever met.

But I have to keep going back to this truth and going, Jesus is worth it.

 My daily death.

Jesus is worth my humility over and over and over again so that I submit, so that I'm generous, so that I serve others, so that I see the face of Christ in the least likely people.

John Chrysostom said something amazing I heard this week.

He says, if you can't see Christ's face in the homeless, you'll never see his face at the altar.

And I was like, whoa, dude, that is crazy.

It's crazy.

 The second question that comes to mind for me from 1 Peter is, what in the world does pride have to do with spiritual warfare?

The reason it comes to mind is because Peter brings it up.

He says that, be a sober-minded, be alert.

Your adversary, the devil, is prowling around like a roaring lion.

And James brings up the devil as well.

In James 4, verse 7, James says, Submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

So they both, immediately after citing this verse, God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble, they both immediately go to spiritual warfare.

And I want you to pick up, this is really obvious why they're doing this.

Look at what James says.

Resist the devil.

 Where did we just hear that word?

God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.

Peter says, in 1 Peter 5, verse 9, he says, resist him, resist the devil, firm in the faith, knowing that the same kind of suffering is being experienced by your fellow believers throughout the world.

They both go to resist the devil.

So they give two options for what life could be like.

They're saying you can either be resisted by God in pride, or you can resist the devil in your humility.

There's two kinds of life.

Be resisted by God in your pride, or resist the devil in humility.

 And I think as we look at the scripture, nothing thwarts the devil like a cross.

Nothing, nothing.

Listen to Colossians chapter two, verses 13 through 15.

Paul says, and when you were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive with him and forgave us all our trespasses.

He erased the certificate of debt with its obligations that was against us and opposed to us and has taken it away by nailing it to the cross.

This is awesome.

He disarmed the rulers and authorities, Satan and his demons and disgraced them publicly.

He triumphed over them in him.

 Hebrews chapter 2 verse 14 says it even more obviously.

Now since the children have flesh and blood in common, Jesus also shared in these so that through his death, he might destroy the one holding the power of death, that is the devil.

The cross is an insane moment of victory.

Jesus claims victory in his humility over the pride of the devil.

And so if you take up your cross daily, like Jesus says to in Luke chapter 9, then the devil has no fuel for temptation in your life.

 satan generally tempts us by calling our attention away from the side of the lamb look away from jesus and look at these things to give you like a very a strong piece of imagery it's like we're standing at the foot of calvary like face to face with the cross and satan is like that guy with the arm around the shoulder no turn around look at jerusalem look at all the things that you could have look at how amazing things could be over here let me distract you with all the moving parts and everything that you could be a part of like look at all of this but here's the thing if you're up on the cross the dummy can't do that to you it doesn't work because christ crucified is in your immediate vision right

 When I was in, my wife and I went to Rome on our honeymoon, and we saw this giant door, huge dude, massive door, and it's the oldest piece of Christian wooden art in the world, super sick, and on it is this panel of Jesus and the two thieves crucified next to him, and it's the oldest depiction of that that we have in any art, which I thought was so cool, and I was nerding out about it, and she was like, eh, it's okay.

But it was amazing.

No, she thought it was cool.

She's a nerd.

Yeah.

 And so I just was thinking about that when I was like writing the sermon and considering it all.

It's like, yeah, when I'm on that, when Jesus is in the center cross and I'm on this cross here, I've got, I literally cannot get that vision out of my eyes.

You know what I'm saying?

Like that's what it means to live the crucified life is that the crucified lamb is in your immediate vision all the time.

And Satan would have to convince you instead to turn away to convince you to come down.

You know what I mean?

That's super different.

It's like, man, you're already up there.

Yeah.

 It's like, that's going to take a lot more effort.

I got to get the nails out.

It's like, this is not, just stay up there.

Here is the goal, and I'll close with this.

Galatians chapter 2, verse 20.

Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

That can't happen when my heart is full of pride.

 I want Jesus to live through me and to reign through me.

It can't happen unless I'm humble, unless I'm submitted to God, unless my life is not about me.

That's what the cross does.

That's one effect of the cross that I could think of.

I just want you to stay excited about the season of our church that we're living in.

It's coming back to the crucifixion over and over and over and over again because this is what it can do to you.

The more I contemplate this, the more I meditate on this truth, the more I'm compelled to change.