I'd like us to turn to the book of Isaiah and the 48th chapter from which I want to read to you the first 11 verses. Isaiah chapter 48 verses 1 through 11. Hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel. and who came from the waters of Judah, who swear by the name of the Lord and confess the God of Israel, but not in truth or right. For they call themselves after the holy city and stay themselves on the God of Israel, the Lord of hosts is his name. The former things I declared of old, they went out from my mouth and I announced them. Then suddenly I did them, and they came to pass. Because I know that you are obstinate, and your neck is an iron sinew, and your forehead brass, I declared them to you from of old. Before they came to pass, I announced them to you, lest you should say, my idol did them, my carved image and my metal image commanded them. You have heard. Now see all this. And will you not declare it? From this time forth I announce to you new things, hidden things that you have not known. They are created now, not long ago. Before today you have never heard of them, lest you should say, behold, I knew them. You have never heard, you have never known. From of old your ear has not been opened. For I knew that you would surely deal treacherously, and that from before birth you were called a rebel. For my name's sake I defer my anger. For the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off. Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver. I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake I do it. For how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another. Well, we're thinking in these studies on the topic of humility. We began by considering the problem of pride that is a problem in all of our lives. And then we thought about what humility is and how humility looks in the Lord Jesus Christ. We thought about the way we are to be humble before the God who made us and who has redeemed us through his son. We thought about how humility is to be displayed before others in our relationships with those around us. And last time we were thinking about how we then develop this humility so that we can be humble in the presence of others and before our God. And we thought about humility by the renewal of our minds, the way that the Word of God being stored up in our hearts and affecting the way that we think should influence the way that we live our lives in humility. This evening we're going to be thinking about humility by providence, by which I mean that the Lord God in his providences in our lives uses those providences to develop humility in us. The next time we will be thinking about humility by discipline, that is by us putting into practice the things that we know concerning humility and the methods by which it may be developed. So it is the self-discipline that we need in order not to let the things that we've learned slip away, but to cling to them and to apply them to our lives. And then we'll finish up with a concluding session in which we look at the relationship between humility and honour. And as we think about humility this evening and we think about God's providences in our lives and his purpose through those providences to bring us to humility, we realize that God's providences teach us all manner of different things. We know that God sovereignly controls the events of our lives to accomplish his purposes in our lives and his purpose ultimately is to conform us to the image of his son. And he, we're told by Paul in Romans, works all things for our good. And the good that he has in mind is our likeness to the Lord Jesus Christ, that we should be like him, that we should be like him in holiness, that we should be like him in love, that we should be like him in compassion, that we should be like him in persevering service of our God. And that we should be like him then in humility. And this is where our focus is this evening, that we should be like our Saviour in humility. And God designs his providences in our lives to conform us to the likeness of his Son in humility. And God's providence is like a refining fire, that refining fire of which Isaiah spoke in Isaiah 48, which I just read to you. Behold, I have refined you, the Lord says to Israel, but not as silver. I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, God says. For how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another. And you know that's what happens. When we allow pride into our lives and we neglect practicing humility, we take glory to ourselves, glory that ought to belong to the living God. And he does not give his glory to another. And in the lives of his children, he desires that all glory should be given to him. and he desires that we should live lives of humility that recognize our own insignificance before him. Our own significance by nature, we are creatures and he is the creator. And our insignificance in terms of our morality, that we are sinners and he is holy. We are to be law keepers whereas he is the law giver. And God then desires to refine us. He takes us through the furnace of affliction, among other things, in order to bring about humility in our lives, that we should be clothed in humility. He separates the dross of pride from our lives and he purifies the grace of humility within us. And so as we look at this subject this evening of the development of humility through the providences of God, I'm once again indebted to Wayne Mack and his book on humility, a forgotten virtue. And Wayne Mack makes six points in that book concerning God's providences in developing humility in us. And I'm using those six points this evening. And the first of those points is that God uses hard experiences to humble us. God uses hard experiences to humble us. He places us in situations that are beyond our control. He sets us in circumstances that bring us to our knees before him. in the realization that we're not able to find a way through. We're not able to surmount the obstacles. We're not able to overcome the problems. We need him. We need his help. We need his wisdom. We need his strength. We need his sustaining grace. in our lives to bring us through these hard and difficult times. And in this way God shows us who we are and how insignificant we are. He teaches us to depend upon him. I think one of the great examples of the way that God brings hard experiences into our lives in order to produce in us the fruit of humility would be in the experience of Israel, the whole nation of Israel and therefore the individuals who make up the nation of Israel. And we think about the times that they spent wandering in the wilderness because of their disobedience and their failure to trust God and to enter into the promised land, believing that he would overcome their enemies and give them that land as an inheritance. And in Deuteronomy, in chapter 8, we read these words in verses 2 through 5. And you shall remember the whole way the Lord your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and led you hunger. and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Your clothing did not wear out on you, and your foot did not swell these forty years. Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you. And so this was the experience of Israel. They rebelled against God. They puffed themselves up as wiser than God. They complained about the circumstances that God had brought them to. And all through all of this, the Lord was humbling them. The Lord was showing them that they were weak. that they were needy, that they were dependent, that they needed Him, that they couldn't solve their problems, they couldn't overcome their circumstances. And through it all they were being humbled, they were being taught by God their need of God. And God does that then in our lives. He brings into our lives hard experiences to remind us of who we are, so that we don't become complacent in our lives, so that we don't think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, of our abilities, of our skills and so forth, in a sinful way, but that we would depend upon him, that we would call out to him, cry out to him for mercy and for his help. I want to give you another example, not this time from the Bible, but an example from church history. An example from the life of William Carey. Now, William Carey was a pioneer missionary. He went to India in 1793 and he continued to serve the Lord there until 1834. And after more than 18 years in India, much of which time he had spent in language study and in translation work, a fire destroyed a huge amount of his material. It destroyed manuscripts that he was working on. It destroyed scriptures and grammars and dictionaries that he was compiling. It destroyed the lead type fonts that were going to be used for printing these various documents in different languages. And Thompson, one of Carey's colleagues, wrote of that time, he said, the scene was indeed affecting. The long printing office reduced to a mere shell. The yard covered with burned paper. Carey walked with me over the smoking ruins. The tears stood in his eyes. In one night, he said, the labours of years are consumed. How unsearchable are the divine ways! I had lately brought some things to the utmost perfection I could, and contemplated the mission with perhaps too much self-congratulation. The Lord has laid me low, that I may look more simply to him. Thompson continues, I saw the ground strewn with half-consumed paper on which the words of life would soon have been printed. The metal under our feet amidst the ruins was melted into misshapen lumps, the sad remains of types consecrated to the service of the sanctuary. A few hours ago, all was full of promise. Now, all is rubbish and smoke. And those words of Carey, they hit us, don't they? That he had worked so hard and brought things to the utmost perfection that he could. but contemplated the mission perhaps with too much self-congratulation. The Lord has laid me low that I may look more simply to him. That's where God wants us to look. Each day of our lives he wants us to look to him. to look independence to him, to acknowledge him in our lives, in the success of our endeavours, in a job well done, in being able to come home at the end of the day and know that we have worked hard and we have worked hard for his glory, not our own praise and honour. And this then was Carey's experience brought through, these hard experiences, learning the lesson of humility, learning what it is to be brought low, that he might look more simply to the God who was his creator and his redeemer and the one whom he served. and to acknowledge the Lord in all his activities, in all his works. And so God works through circumstances in our lives, through his providences that he brings, those hard experiences that humble us before him and help us to lean upon him and not be self-confident. and to look too much to our own abilities. Now God not only uses hard experiences to humble us, but secondly, God uses other godly people to humble us. He uses other godly people to humble us. We can think about the accomplishments of other people. I think about William Carey. You think about the amazing work that he accomplished, and obviously a gifted man, incredibly intelligent, and had an ability with languages. But there was more to it than that. William Carey's own testimony was that he was a plodder. He simply plodded. He just kept on going. And when I think about Carey and all that he accomplished just by plodding, it puts my own life to shame. And we can think of heroes of the faith from the past and what they accomplished in their lives. And it humbles us as we consider that. But also, when we see the way that they responded to their circumstances, we've just considered William Carey. And I wonder what would I have done had I stood in the midst of that burnt out ruin with all of the all of the burnt paper and the melted type fonts at my feet. And I don't think that I would have responded like Carey responded. I don't think I would have seen so clearly the Lord's hand and my own sin and the lesson that he would We see the way that the godly people have responded and we need to learn from them. In 1 Corinthians 4, verses 8 through 16, Paul writes to the people in Corinth, the church there, who was proud and arrogant in what they had, in what they had learned, in where they had come. And he says, already you have all you want. Already you have become rich. Without us, you have become kings. And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you. For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honour, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labour, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless. when persecuted we endure, when slandered we entreat, we have become and are still like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things. I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel, I urge you then, be imitators of me. Paul is drawing a contrast here in this passage between the guides that they are following, the guides that are suggesting that Paul has missed the mark, he's lost his way, and that they can advance well beyond Paul in their attainments and in their standing. And so they think that they have become wise and that Paul is a fool. They think that they have become elevated in the kingdom of God and Paul is just an outcast and homeless and persecuted and so forth. And Paul is saying, you know, you haven't many fathers. but I was a father to you. It was through the ministry of the Gospel that I preached that you came to know the Lord Jesus Christ and put your faith in Him. I led you into the kingdom of the Son of God and I have treated you then with love and with patience and I have served you with care because you were my children, spiritually. And you are to be imitators of me then, not looking after these super apostles that they thought there were who far advanced the apostle Paul. And these are people who have been criticising Paul. They've been questioning Paul and his leadership. And yet he responds as a father with patience. He urges them with perseverance. He admonishes them as his children. He doesn't lord it over them. but he deals with them with tenderness and yet firmness because he wants them to learn to submit to the Lord and to bow down to him and to honour him in his life. And so through, even though the apostle has been ill-treated, he deals with them in love and in humility. to quote again from church history and I'm quoting here from Wayne Mack who sees in Jonathan Edwards a great example that the Lord has given in order to teach to teach humility through the godly example of this man. He says, another influence was a biography of Jonathan Edwards, one of the most brilliant, learned, and gifted men America has ever known. We know him as the man who preached the message, sinners in the hands of an angry God, when a large group of people were brought under conviction and professed faith in Christ. We know him as the man whom God used in an unusual way during the great awakening of the 18th century. We know him as the man who wrote numerous theological and practical books that are still being printed and studied today. Yes, we know many of these outstanding accomplishments of Jonathan Edwards. But we don't know nearly as much about the fact that for many years Edwards was the subject of nasty warranted criticism, opposition, false rumours and slander. What we don't know or think about Neely as much is the fact that he was hated intensely by many, who did everything they could to destroy him and his family. What we don't know is the way he was mistreated in the city and church in which this gifted, competent, dedicated, humble man laboured and ministered. We are often not aware of the fact that after many years of sacrificial service to the church in Northampton, Massachusetts, he was voted out of the church and asked to leave. The truth is that after many years of faithful service, the people rejected him and indicated that he and his ministry were not acceptable to them anymore. In fact, it would seem that many in the church and town hadn't liked him for most of the time he was there. What we don't know is that Edwards did not respond in kind to his enemies. What we don't know is the way he continued to show compassion and kindness to those who reviled him and said all manner of evil against him. What we don't know about is his exemplary humility, which was as remarkable as his brilliance and giftedness. The biography of Jonathan Edwards has been a tremendous challenge to me. Wayne Mack says, in that it has caused me to recognise how much I lack the kind of humility that he demonstrated. And Edwards expresses in his own words part of the motivation to responding with humility to these circumstances. He says, how far less are the greatest afflictions that we meet with in this world than we deserve. how far less are the greatest afflictions that we meet with in this world than we deserve. And that for him included the afflictions of false rumors and slander and criticism and opposition and votes that went against him and a ministry misrepresented. He endured it all in humility. And this is the way that God uses the lives and examples of godly men and women. He uses them to convict us of our own failures in these areas, of our own shortcomings in these areas when we read their lives in the scriptures or in church history and we observe the way that they responded and we think about ourselves and how petty we can be and how defensive we can become. And it humbles us that we are not more like them and that we are not more like the Lord Jesus Christ who endured the hostility of men in order to bring us to salvation, in order to take upon us the penalty for the sin of our own pride and arrogance, for the sin of our own complaints. and unhappiness with God. And Jesus bore it all upon the cross that we might be reconciled to God, that we might be brought into fellowship with our God, that we might honour and glorify our God. Let us learn from these what it is to be humble and let us clothe ourselves with such humility. Now in the third place, God produces humility in us by allowing others to rebuke and criticize us. So we've just thought a little about the example of others and the godly response of godly men to those circumstances. But God also uses others to rebuke and to criticise us so that we are humbled by their response to our sin and our shortcomings and our failures to give God glory and honour and praise and so forth. In Proverbs 9, verses 7 to 9, the compiler writes, whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse. And he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury. Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you. Reprove a wise man, and he will love you. give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser, teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning. You see, those in whom the Spirit of God is working are teachable. Those in whom the Spirit of God is working will take to heart criticism and rebukes. They will treasure those comments as coming from the Lord for their good. That is humility. And that produces humility in our lives. When others come to us and they point out our sin to us, perhaps we knew about the sin, but we weren't willing to acknowledge the sin. But their confrontation of us causes us to have to acknowledge that sin. Perhaps we were ignorant of the sin. We were unaware that what we were doing, how we were behaving, the choice of language that we were using, that this was wrong and sinful. and undermine our witness and our testimony to God's work in our lives. And in our ignorance, we continue, but someone comes along and they point out what is wrong in our lives. And if the Spirit of God is working in us, then he will humble us through this and show us our sin and we will respond with gratitude to the Lord. We will increase in learning and we will be still wiser and we will love those who have taken courage to speak to us and to speak words of rebuke or gentle criticism into our lives. Paul writes in Philippians chapter 3 verses 12 through 17 Not that I have already obtained or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way. And if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true what we have attained. Brothers, join in imitating me and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. Here's the great Apostle Paul, with all of his knowledge, all of his understanding, all of his dedication to the service of Christ, all of his zeal for the glory of God. And he says, I have not yet obtained. I am not perfect. And he is calling us to that same attitude. He says, imitate me. Keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. Follow my example of recognising there is still sin in your life. There is still much that needs to be purged. The fires of God's affliction still need to come into your life. And so allow the Lord to rebuke you, to criticise you through those around you who hold up to you the mirror. that shows your sin and your shortcomings and be ready to press forward, to strive for what lies ahead and not to be content with a mediocre holiness in which some sins have been put off but others are coddled and loved and embraced and kept. God produces humility in us by allowing others to rebuke and criticise us. And God also, fourthly, allows other people to misunderstand and misrepresent us. We've touched on this in terms of Paul's experience in Corinth, and we've touched on it in terms of Jonathan Edwards' experience in Northampton, Massachusetts. In 2 Corinthians chapter 12 verses 14 through 19, so his letter later than the passage that I read to you earlier, he says there, here for the third time I am ready to come to you. And I will not be a burden, for I seek not what is yours, but you. For children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but parents for their children. I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. If I love you more, am I to be loved less? But, granting that I myself did not burden you, I was crafty, you say, and got the better of you by deceit. Did I take advantage of you, though any of those whom I sent to you? I urged Titus to go, and sent the brother with him. Did Titus take advantage of you? Did we not act in the same spirit? Did we not take the same steps? Have you been thinking all along that we have been defending ourselves to you? It is in the sight of God that we have been speaking, in Christ, and all for your up-building, beloved. So we see in this passage that again Paul is being misrepresented. His life, his witness, his work has been twisted as though his work has been in opposition to the church in Corinth rather than for them. Paul says, I am like a parent to you. I am ready to spend and be spent for your souls. You say you've been crafty. You yourself may not have been a burden to us, but you've sent others to us, and they've been a burden to us. And Paul says, have they really? When Titus came to you, did he not come in the same spirit as I did, and in taking the same steps as I did? Have we been deceitful and tricked you and been crafty in abusing you? No, we've done everything that we've done in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for your up-building. God allowed the Corinthian Christians to misrepresent Paul in the most basic and best, putting the best interpretation on it, we would say that they'd misunderstood Paul. Well, whether they misunderstood him or misrepresented him, either way, Paul was being presented in the wrong way. But that kind of treatment, mistreatment, misrepresentation, misunderstanding of our lives, it comes to us from time to time and God uses it to humble us. In that passage, Paul is speaking about the circumstances that the Corinthians have brought him through, but God has brought him through circumstances too. And God has brought him through the circumstance of having a thorn in the flesh. We don't know what that thorn in the flesh was, but God brought a thorn in the flesh into his life. And this passage that I've just quoted to you comes after that, immediately after that description of the thorn in the flesh and God's call for Paul to endure. And Wayne Mack wonders whether the thorn in the flesh in part had to do with the way that he was being misrepresented, with the reaction of to his work, questioning his motives and his work among them, even as the Corinthians were doing here. And that would certainly be a thorn. That would prick and prod and irritate. And it has done in the lives of many ministers of the gospel who have been misunderstood and misrepresented. but it is to humble us that God allows these things to happen, to gain a right view of our own lives. They don't live for our glory, they're to live for the glory of God. They're not to live for our praise and our honor, they're to live for the honor and praise of God. And when we are misunderstood and misrepresented, it is God's way of reminding us that we are nothing really, and he is everything. And we're not to be concerned about what others, what they think about us, we're to be concerned about what he thinks about us. We want to hear his voice saying, well done, good and faithful servant. We want to do our work for the praise of God, to be rewarded by him, not simply to be men-pleasers, to be rewarded with the praises of those around us. And so God allows these things to come into our lives that we might be humbled. And then fifthly, God uses our own sin, our failure, to humble us. God uses our own sin. We think of King David, a man after God's own heart. We think about the way that he lived his life, how he honoured the Lord, how he glorified God, how thrilled he was when the Ark came to Jerusalem and he could set it up in a tabernacle there. What joy he had at the thought of a temple being built for the Lord. He couldn't understand how it was right that he should have a cedar palace and the Lord still dwell in a tent as it were. We think about all of those good aspects of David and his trust in the Lord and his service for the Lord, but we always remember too his sad rebellion against the Lord and his sin, particularly with Bathsheba and his murder of her husband, Uriah. Oh, what a tragedy that was in the life of such a good man, we would say. And yet, it happened. And David wrote that 51st Psalm as a result. And you know, you think about David writing that Psalm. And he wrote out that psalm, he poured out his heart before the Lord, have mercy on me, oh God. According to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin. And he wrote that psalm. And then he may have thought, well, that's over, that horrible, horrible episode in my life, it's over, it's behind me. And then he inscribed at the head of that psalm, to the choir master, let this Let this psalm be sung by Israel. Let this psalm be sung in the tabernacle of our God. Let this psalm be sung in the temple. And David would go, and from time to time, he would hear the priest or the head of the Levite sing us. call for this psalm to be sung. And he would hear these words chanted by the Levites and they would bring back to his memory the sin that he had committed. God uses our sin and the memory of our sin to humble us. Yes, he forgives us our sin and he cleanses us from all of our unrighteousness. He removes it from us as far as the East is from the West and we need to remind ourselves of that. We must never allow the guilt of sins forgiven by God to be resurrected in our own minds so that the guilt of those sins weigh upon us. That must never be allowed if we have repented of them before the Lord and confessed them to our God and he has forgiven us. But it is not necessarily a bad thing for us to remember that we have sinned. and that at times we have sinned grossly, that it might keep us humble before our God and remind us that even in times when things were well, we were not far from falling into sin, even as David was. And so it creates in us a watchfulness, an earnestness to resist temptation, to watch out for circumstances in which we might fall into sin, to be on our guard, to watch and to pray. For God uses our own sin and our failure to humble And sixthly and finally, God allows satanic opposition in order to humble us. He uses satanic opposition in order to humble us. We know the testimony of Job, don't we? We know the story of Job. You can't forget those opening two chapters of the book of Job. all the chapters that follow that describe the outcome of those first two chapters. We see there how God allowed Satan to oppose Job, to come against Job. God allowed it. And God allows him to work still. I've already mentioned from 2 Corinthians and from the 12th chapter how Paul was criticised by the disciples in Corinth and how early in the 12th chapter he spoke about that thorn in his flesh that God had given to him. Paul says, he uses these words, to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations I received from God, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. God put a thorn in the flesh and this thorn in his flesh was a messenger of Satan. God allows satanic opposition in order to humble us. God uses all kinds of circumstances in our lives in order to humble us. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose. And his purpose is to make us like the Lord Jesus Christ, to conform us to the image of his Son. God uses all of these means. He uses the hard experiences to humble us. He uses other people to humble us. He uses the rebukes and the criticisms of others to humble us. He uses their misunderstandings and their misrepresentations of us to humble us. He uses our own sin and our failure to humble us. He even uses satanic opposition in order to humble us. And so in God's providence, humility is developed in our lives. In this sense, we're not We're not active in seeking to clothe ourselves in humility, but rather the Lord, in his grace, through various circumstances, is clothing us in humility. He is working humility in us. He is developing humility in us. But of course humility is the response to the circumstances of God, to the providences of God. And so to that extent we are active in these circumstances. What are we doing with the difficult circumstances, the hard experiences, the criticism and rebuke, the misunderstanding and misrepresentation, the memory of past sins? Well, what are we doing with these things? Are we responding to them with complaining and murmuring and questioning of God and his wisdom and his grace and love? Or are we acknowledging his hand at work in our lives? Working for our good through these circumstances so that we might be conformed to the image of his Son. May the Lord help us in this and to see his hand at work. Let's bow together in prayer. Our Father, we do ask that you would help us, help us to understand your ways, help us to see your hand at work in the circumstances of our lives. Help us not to respond with complaining, but to search out the lessons that you were teaching us through these experiences, through the example of others. through their cautious rebuke or their unkind criticism, help us to see even in the opposition of the evil one and our own sin, the opportunity to become more humble, to respond with a right attitude to you, honouring and praising you, while refusing to glorify ourselves. We pray, our Father, that you would work in us to clothe us in humility for your glory. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.