God is testing and proving us, stripping us of all confidence in man and the flesh, bringing us to a place of total dependence on Him in order to prepare us for the great outpouring of Himself. God can bring you to a place where everything seems to be going wrong: sickness, death, conflicting voices, prayers seemingly unanswered, promises of God appearing to mock your petitions and tears. It is your hour of humiliation — your ordained time of testing. This text from Deuteronomy is so powerful that Jesus Himself used it against the devil during His great temptation in the wilderness see Matthew Like the children of Israel, Jesus was also hungry.
What greater humiliation could there be than to be the Son of God and be brought to a place of total dependence? As a man, Jesus learned obedience and dependence by the things He suffered, such as this crisis of hunger.
What Jesus actually was saying is this: "I am not here to please myself or to pamper my flesh. I am here to do the perfect will of My Father.
In other words He said, "I will spend all my life and all my time obeying My Father, doing His perfect will — and He will take care of me His way. Jesus knew that God only had to speak a creative word: "Hunger — be gone!
Rather, He would seek God's will first and let Him take care of the needs. Jesus was saying something very profound, to the effect of: "I have not come to ask the Father to keep His word to me; I have come that I may keep all His words! He rested in the Father's words. His cry was not, "God, keep your Word to me!
Multitudes of Christians today are what I call "bread" believers — they live on bread alone always asking God to prove His faithfulness.
They have a hunger inside and they think they know what will satisfy it. For most of my early years in ministry, I was a "bread" Christian. I had a deep hunger, driven by unexplainable need. When I thought I needed a new church, I got it!
When I needed turn-away crowds, I got them! These were all good things in themselves; but I spent years praying, "God, prove Your power! Send me money, I'm in debt! Bless me Lord! Bless my ministry! Answer my prayers! Let me prove to the world You have all power. Heal the sick to prove You're still the same today! So seldom does God find a Christian whose only goal in life is to know and to do God's will — as Jesus did —and who never says, "God, where are You?
When we stand before the judgment seat we will not be judged by how many healings we've performed, or how many demons we've cast out, or how many prayers we've seen answered, or how many great works we've accomplished. We will be judged on our dependence on and obedience to His Word and His will. In our day and age, we've become very good at "commanding" God.
We command the devil and demons; we command strongholds to fall. That is all good — but when do we cry out, "Oh God! Command me! Tell me what to do — show me how to do Your will, how to obey every word out of Your mouth". Through everything, God is saying to us, "I want to be your only supply, your only hope.
I want to be your only object of trust. You take care of my health, my family, my needs — just give me Your Word. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father " John , How much of the Word became flesh? All of it! Can you imagine the humiliating ridicule that Mary had to endure when she showed up pregnant out of wedlock? Can you imagine what she was going through two thousand years ago?
I find it interesting that out of the seven abominations that God hates the most, four of them are associated or connected with gossip. You can look that up in Proverbs 6, verse 16 through 19, but, but God says that He hates this stuff, when people lie, and when people bring division, and when people sow discord and bring wicked imagination and they make up stuff. Why does God hate this so much? And why, out of all the sins in the world, God picked these seven and four of them were associated with gossip?
Because it destroys people. It destroys relationships, it destroys reputations, it even destroys lives. Even if it is true, what business of it is yours, that you gotta go tell everybody what so-and-so done did? So why would God put us through this, then? Why would God? Because our assignment is predestined, and the predestination of the assignment requires us to go through it.
Can I preach in this place? Because humiliation takes you to predestination. Close to 50 percent of millennials now report being nones. It is estimated that 80 percent of gen-z are nones. Yet most church and ministry leaders have ignored this. For me, it started in I was a church planter. I was attending a conference where the speaker, a well-known pastor, came off as arrogant.
And his staff knew it. I found this humiliating. So do nones. They read of yet another pastor resigning over sex allegations. Or evangelists exaggerating academic credentials. Or evangelical divorce rates equal to the general population. Or 50 percent of evangelical men 20 percent of women being addicted to pornography. Or 37 percent of pastors reporting porn addiction. Or youth being slightly more promiscuous if part of a youth group rather than not being in one at all.
All of this undergirds why an increasing number of folks say they feel closer to God by not going to church. Which brings us to Covid I was recently talking to another friend about this. On a recent zoom call, pastors reported that, on average, they expect only one-third of parishioners — 33 percent — to return after the pandemic is over.
The highest percentage in any church was 41 percent. These pastors are scared. There is a great need for everyone, but especially the Christian, to develop a proper understanding of humiliation and humility. The two are often equated, which is incorrect — they are not synonymous. Mankind is a chooser and responder by creational design. Every person responds in some manner to his circumstances and thus to God, the author and giver of life Joshua ; Proverbs ; Matthew The account of the Sanhedrin in the book of Acts give us an example of people who were humiliated, but refused to humble themselves.
In Acts 5 and Acts 7, the apostles confront the Sanhedrin with the truth of Christ. They refused to believe the truth about God and themselves and as a result failed to humble themselves. Arrogantly and ignorantly, self was on the throne. They failed to re-evaluate themselves. Humiliation occurs to a person. On the other hand, humility is a whole-person response to God and to others.
The humble believer rightly evaluates himself, others, and God — and responds accordingly. Thoughts, desires, and actions are involved because man is a whole person. They are the context in which a person humbles himself or boasts in himself rather than in Christ Proverbs ; Galatians ; James ; 1 Peter
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