Progress Through Humility

Progress Through Humility

This morning in our Scripture reading, we read from two passages of Scripture, Proverbs 14, as well as looking over in Jeremiah chapter 7, and a couple of verses that the Lord gives us there. Looking back in Proverbs 14 this morning, please turn there again with me, Proverbs chapter 14, and I want to read once again verse 12. There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness. The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways, and a good man shall be satisfied from himself. As we go into the new year, the words progress, perhaps the words productive come to mind as we think about what our desires and our prayers are for the new year.

That we will be productive Christians, and that we will make progress in our walk with the Lord. That we will not slide backwards, we will not lose ground in our walk with the Lord. We have certainly a lot of different ways that progress can be defined in our world and in the understanding of people today.

A lot of people define progress as we’ve got a growing church. We have a lot more members than we had last year. We have a bigger crowd.

That could be a definition of progress. We could say that we have a new building project. We’re doing well financially.

Our health is better, and we certainly thank the Lord. I mentioned Brother Stewart this morning. I was just thanking the Lord that as I look at him, he’s doing quite a bit better than he was last January.

We could say that of several individuals this year, and we thank the Lord for that. There may be somebody doing better financially than you were last year at this time. All those things, we could say that we’re doing better.

But we’ve got to be careful that we don’t make our feelings, our health, our finances, even what other good brethren may think of us as the standard or the measure of progress in our Christian lives. We want to be approved unto the Lord. Approved unto God is what we should be looking for in our Christian lives.

In fact, how do we know? How do we know what God thinks of our lives? Well, we need to first of all be sure that our life is lining up with what God’s Word says. If we define progress by how we feel or how others feel about us, then we’re in a troubled path. We’re very subjectively viewing progress if we’re viewing it by that metric.

But when we look in God’s Word, and we understand that the Christian walk is not one of sight, but it’s by faith, then we are on the right path to progress. We notice that we’re very familiar with Proverbs chapter 3, verses 5 and 6, where we are told we’re not to lean to our own understanding. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart.

Lean not unto thine own understanding, but in all thy ways acknowledge Him. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths. Without faith, it’s impossible to please God.

We hear a lot about that word today, don’t we? Faith, faith. Well, faith in what? Faith in the Word of God. My heart is leaning on the Word, the written Word of God.

My heart is not leaning on my own feelings, or my heart is not leaning on the opinions of others. My heart is leaning on the Word of God, the written Word of God. You can mark it down.

If you follow your own heart, and if that heart is not in line with God’s Word, it will lead you astray, it will lead you, it will deceive you. Your own heart, apart from God, will deceive you. Progress, Jeremiah told us this morning, he gave us a good definition of what backsliding is.

He said, let’s look back over there in Jeremiah chapter 7 this morning. Let’s look at those words. Jeremiah chapter 7, and let’s read the two verses again, because I want to make sure we understand verse 23 as well as verse 24.

But it’s there in verse 23, The Lord commanded them, commanded His people, Israel, saying, Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be My people. The standard that God held them to was one of obedience to His Word. Obey My word, obey My voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be My people.

And walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you. It kind of reminds us of what He told Joshua back over in Joshua chapter 1. Through Moses, we know that the Lord told Joshua that He was not to turn to the right hand, He’s not to turn to the left hand, He was to observe to do according to all that was written in the Word. And here we see, walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you.

But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels, and listen to this, and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward and not forward. There’s so many passages we could turn to in the Scriptures today to show that when a man, a people, lean to their own understanding instead of truly heeding God’s Word, they will go backward and not forward. When Samson sought a wife, and he leaned to his own understanding instead of God’s will, he ended up with the wrong wife, and he ended up with a lot of hurt and heartache, and ended up not accomplishing what God had intended for him to accomplish.

When Lot sought with his own eyes what looked good to his own eyes and followed that instead of God’s ways, then we see very clearly that he lost everything. We could go even back to the very beginning in Genesis. We see that Eve, when she forgot what God’s Word said, and instead she saw the fruit, she said, you know what, it does look good.

It looks like it will be good to partake of this fruit, because I feel that it’s going to be good. It seems like it’s going to be good. What a heartache and what a loss came as a result of that leaning to her own understanding in that matter.

And then we see that even Adam, certainly he disobeyed the Lord because he should have said, Honey, dear wife, remember what God’s Word says. We cannot disobey God’s Word. It doesn’t matter how good it looks, how popular it seems, how it smells, tastes, feels, whatever the case may be, God has told us, and we don’t really even know anything, whether it’s right or good or productive or progress or whatever word we want to put there, unless we know that God has told us, because God alone is good.

And we must follow His directions. We must follow Him. Otherwise, we will go backward and not forward.

We will go backward. It may seem for a time that we’re doing well, but in reality, we’re not doing well at all. We have to remember that we can easily deceive ourselves into thinking that all is well.

I feel like everything’s okay. Everything’s kind of going along all right. No, we cannot take that approach as Christians even as we’re going into this new year.

We have to say, Lord, what would You have me to do? What does Your Word tell me to do? We must be open to the Holy Spirit to take that Word and show us right where we are and illuminate our understanding. How would You have me to approach this new year, biblically speaking? How would You have me to approach it from a scriptural standpoint? In my life, where I am now, I’m the husband of one wife and have four children, and these children range in age from four, almost five years old, up to 11 years old. Lord, what’s Your will for me this year, scripturally speaking? There’s a lot of things we can do.

You know, you may be a widow or a widower. You may be living alone. You may have grandchildren.

You know, we’re all in different places in life. What are God’s directions for us? What is God’s Word saying to us this year? I was quoted from Fannie Crosby on, I believe that’s, no, no, I’m sorry, not Fannie Crosby. It was Frances Habergel, I believe it was.

Forgive me if I got the wrong hymn writer, but the point was that she wrote Take My Life and Let It Be, and then later on, she said, Take my silver and my gold, not a mite would I withhold. And she wrote that at an earlier age, and then later on in years, I forgot how old she was, 60, 70 years old, somewhere in there, and later on she says, this has come to me with new meaning this year. And I see that the Lord wants me to give this.

To give this to the work of the mission house. I want to donate these things. The Lord has shown me that I need to do this.

And you know, I’m probably not preaching anything that you have never heard before this morning, but we are in a different place in our lives than we were perhaps the last time we read these words of Scripture. We’re in a different year. We’re in a different position in life.

We’re not in the same place we were in 2020 or 2015 or 2010 or whatever the year was. But God’s Word is the same. And His Holy Spirit is good and will lead us in that Word for this coming year.

So, turn with me to Romans 2 if you will this morning. We’re reading Romans 2 and verse 17. Romans 2 and verse 17.

We notice that it says something important to us here. You know, Israel didn’t think themselves to be that bad because though they were backsliding, they didn’t hearken to God’s voice as Jeremiah told them that they had not done. Yet they drew near with their mouths.

They had a form of godliness. They consoled themselves with just enough religiosity or religion to make themselves feel like they were okay. But look in Romans 2. We see Paul is here speaking to such an attitude and such a heart.

In Romans 2 and verse 17, we read, Behold, thou art called a Jew and restest in the law and makest thy boast of God and knowest his will, very knowledgeable, and approvest the things that are more excellent being instructed out of the law. And listen to this. And art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law.

Thou, therefore, which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? Thou that preachest, a man should not steal. Dost thou steal? Thou that sayest, a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? Thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege? Thou that makest thy boast of the law through breaking the law, dishonest thou God? For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you as it is written, for circumcision verily profiteth if thou keep the law. But if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision.” It’s evident that the Jew typically rested in the appearance of godliness.

He rested in the appearance of progress. The appearance of religion. But not in the heart of it.

Not in the heart. Only you and I know by God’s grace, only you and I in our own individual hearts can know, am I going on with the Lord? Am I making progress with the Lord? Only between you and I. We can fool people. At least for a time, we can fool people and say, look, he looks like he’s doing real well.

That church is doing real well over there. But the problem with the Jew was they were so focused on the presentation of the image of what people thought of them, and yet they were not, the word was not mixed with faith in their hearts. They abhorred, certainly they abhorred the terrible and barbaric practices of the Gentiles.

But the very things they condemned outwardly were the realities of their inward hearts. The very realities of their inward hearts, they were full of hypocrisy, which is a form of stealing, because lying is taking or robbing the truth from those who should know the truth. Hatred, they hated.

They hated the Gentiles, frankly. They thought themselves to be superior to those that were without the Gospel, without the truth, and yet the Lord had intended for them to be a light, to be a beacon to the nations. And yet, in fact, because of their backsliding and their turning their back on God, they actually didn’t receive the One who came to save His people from their sins.

They were full of pride. Pride is actually stealing the glory that is due to God, taking it for our own, the glory for ourselves. Envy and complaining.

And we certainly read here in this passage, Thou that sayest that a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery in your private heart and life? The Lord would say, if you look upon a woman with lust, you’ve committed adultery in your heart. If you hate your brother in your heart, it’s like committing murder. You’ve omitted the weightier matters of the law, but you focused on the externals to the neglect of the reality that should be before God in your heart because He sees all things.

You cannot go forward as a nation or an individual unless you acknowledge God and obey His Word from the heart. I was talking with one of you this past week, and I won’t say the name, but it struck me as we were speaking in the conversation that you mentioned about the heart. Many people have the knowledge, but what about the heart? The heart of that knowledge.

And that’s so true. We’ve got to have the heart of the knowledge. Not just the knowledge, but it has to enter into our hearts.

Well, not only did Israel not fulfill the commandment to love their neighbor as themselves, but they failed to fulfill the commandment to love God with all of their heart. To love God with all of their heart. They did not bring glory to God.

Instead, they went backward, deceiving their own selves because they had gone about to establish their own righteousness, but not the righteousness which comes by faith. And you and I, if we sow to our selfish flesh, we’ll steal from God and rob from God that which we owe to Him and to others. We could continue to come to church and continue to maybe even open our Bibles in the morning and read through those, but it’s just the externals.

We may do a number of good things, and yet if it’s not from the heart as unto the Lord, out of gratitude and love for all that He’s done for us, if we’re not growing on with God, there’s no other option but that we’re sliding backwards. We’re sliding backwards. And it’s easier now than ever to live a double life.

It’s easier now than ever to live a double life. The devil has many forms, and I think about the digital world in which we live where we could be… And I’ve read several Christians talking about this recently. I heard pastors preaching on it.

You know, we’ve got to be careful about the Internet and the phones and the social media and all that kind of thing because we can continue to do the outward things, but if in our hearts, are we lusting after things we may see on the Internet? Are we filling up our time and allowing the Word of God to become choked in our lives? And we know what the Word of God says, but we’re not actually obeying it. We’re allowing other things to come in and choke and crowd out and squeeze out that Word, but we can go for a while and look like everything is going well on the outside, but are we really making progress? Are we making priorities priorities? Are we making God’s Word the priority of our lives, or are we putting other things before Him in our hearts?

As I mentioned in the Sunday School Hour this morning, we know the information, don’t we? We have the information. We have been taught well God’s Word, but are we living and walking in the things we’ve been taught and growing in those things? I’m saying that to myself this morning, not each one of us.

We need to consider these things as we go into the new year. Not can we pray a public prayer, but do we have a prayer life? Do we have a prayer life with the Lord? In the bulletin this morning, I’ve put some quotes in there. Take time to read those if you haven’t already, but those are very important quotes, I believe, on how we cannot make progress without prayer.

We cannot proceed and grow if we’re not giving prayer to our Christian life. We can do charitable things, actions that look good, but is it based as unto the Lord? Are we doing it as unto the Lord from the heart? I will just say this, that we can only move forward on our knees. We can only move forward on our knees.

And I know I’m not the first one to have said that. I think it was C.T. Studd, I believe he was one that made a quote like that. We have to have the spirit of the publican, not the spirit of the Pharisee.

The spirit of the publican was, God, be merciful to me! It was a great humility, a great lowliness. Lord, show me what you want me to do! Teach me, forgive me, and lead me in the way. That’s the spirit we need before God.

I read this week, and I don’t know who read it. It was just an unknown, unattributed quote, but I really liked it. It said, Humility is that precious quality that makes us feel smaller as we grow greater.

Humility is that precious quality that makes us feel smaller as we grow greater. We know that pride goes before a fall. Pride goes before a fall, but we can move forward through humble prayer and obedience to God’s Word.

Pastor Peacock often said, we cannot improve on the Word of God and prayer being the building blocks of the Christian life. You cannot improve on that. Let’s go back and look in Proverbs 14 this morning.

In Proverbs 14, where we have read from this portion of Scripture this morning, let’s return to that. In Proverbs 14, we want to look back. We read in verse 12 beginning, and we went through verse 14 this morning.

And it was there in verse 12 that we read, there is a way which we’ve been talking about which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. This is the way the world goes, isn’t it? How does the world think? The world doesn’t think biblically, doesn’t think scripturally, doesn’t think humbly. They do what’s right in their own eyes.

They’re wise in their own eyes. And they think, as long as I’m popular, as long as I feel good, as long as I have money in the bank, as long as I have good health, everything’s fine, I’m making good progress. We can’t afford to think that way as Christians, can we? We can’t afford to think that way because we’re not any longer part of the course of this world, right? We used to walk according to that way.

We cannot, we must not think the way the world thinks. We must walk by faith. We must not walk by sight.

We must not walk as Eve. We must not walk as Lot. We must not walk as these different ones we’ve mentioned this morning.

We must instead, we must instead trust in the Lord with all of our heart. And in verse 13, and I know these Proverbs can stand alone, but I think there’s a connection here. Even in laughter, verse 13, it says, the heart is sorrowful.

Whose laughter? Whose laughter? Well, I think, I think those that do that which seems right unto themselves get an enjoyment out of life to a certain extent. David described it this way. He talked about the time when their corn and their wine is increased.

In fact, in Psalm 4, one of my favorite Psalms, he said, thou has put gladness in my heart more than in the time that their corn and wine increased. In other words, everything’s going well. Remember that little song? Have you ever heard it before? Oh, what a beautiful morning.

Oh, what a beautiful day. I’ve got a beautiful, wonderful feeling. Everything’s going my way, right? Well, everything is going good, right? But as Christians, we should be making progress in our Christian lives whether or not everything’s going good and going well according to sight.

Well, this looks like a good way. No. This shows us the good way.

Here is the way. Walk ye in it. God’s Word will guide our steps and give light for our path.

We must not lean to our own understanding. The proud appear to be happy. The Bible tells us very clearly that there is no peace to the wicked.

There’s no peace. Oh, they may prosper for a time, but there’s no peace in their hearts. Joy, peace, those only come by the fruit of the Spirit to us.

They only come as we obey God’s Word and words. There is a great heaviness that comes along with pride. Even though there’s laughter, there’s great heaviness.

There’s no lightness of heart. There’s no clarity of vision. There’s no joy, really, real joy that accompanies the heart.

We might say even of the backslider, the one who is slidding backwards, they may be surrounded by many things. They may console themselves and make themselves feel good, but they know deep down in their hearts something is not right. I’m not walking with the Lord.

I’m not growing in the Lord as I should. Well, there’s a great heaviness that we see here. Even in laughter, the heart is sorrowful.

And the end of that mirth is heaviness. The backslider in heart, verse 14, shall be filled with his own ways. How true is that? Not filled with God’s grace, but filled with his own ways.

And a good man… What is a good man? What does the Bible define as a good man? The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. And he delighteth in His way. That could be said truly both ways.

The Lord delights in Him. He delights in the Lord. But the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.

Are our steps going to be ordered by the Lord and by His Word this year? Or are they going to be ordered according to what seems right unto us at any given moment? We’ve got to make the choice as we go forward. I’m not just talking about we have the memory of what God’s Word has told us, but no, are our steps actually being ordered by the Lord? Are we being directed by Him? And the only way your steps can be ordered by the Lord is you’ve got to be humble and prayerful. That’s the only way.

The Lord will not bless and order and direct the steps of a man or woman or girl who leans to their own understanding. It’s just as simple as that. You cannot have the direction of the Lord in your life.

He will not bless that. Israel complained in the wilderness. Do we see the Lord directing them in the wilderness? No, they were just going around in circles and they were wandering.

There was not any direction out there, was it? The Lord had been merciful in delivering them from Egypt, but there was no clear direction. They wandered from pillar to post. Is our new year going to be a wilderness experience?