Let's go to the New Testament, Philippians chapter 2. Another great passage of Scripture. Now obviously there are passages of Scriptures that speak to our hearts more clearly than others. You know when you read about the begats, it's a little bit difficult to find something there that refreshes your soul You know that encourages you But then there are passages of scriptures like this that give you clear instruction. You have no difficulty understanding what's being said so Philippians chapter 2 and We'll start reading this evening in verse 5 Okay Philippians chapter 2, beginning in verse 5. Paul said, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus. And then he doesn't leave you wondering what that attitude is. So he says in verse six, who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped. But he emptied himself, taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men, being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death, on the cross. And you can tell, by the way, that he says that the death on the cross was the ultimate shameful way to die, the most humiliating way to die, was on the cross. Well, if there's nothing else you get from these series of messages that I have been sharing with you over the course of the past several weeks, I hope you get this idea that God hates pride. And I don't know, I guess I could go back and look and see if I've mentioned that about every message that I've brought on this particular subject, but it is so true, and I think it's something that we need to be conscious of. Again, the scripture says in Proverbs 16 verse 5, everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord. Assuredly, he will not be unpunished. So, we've been looking at the many, many different faces of pride. And it comes in a lot of different forms and we need to be aware of those forms so we can confront them. All of us are guilty of some form of pride. Some forms of pride we're more guilty than others. But the bottom line is that we're all infected with it. And the chances of any significant spiritual growth in your life, in my life, in any believer's life is going to be pretty slim if pride is still in control. God hates pride. He hates it. God has no problem with seeing our pride, unlike ourselves. God knows our pride. He sees it. He knows how to deal with it so that we'll become more Christ-like. So how does God often deal with our pride? Well, as we looked at last week, He often deals with it by breaking us. by crushing that prideful, arrogant spirit that we all have by sin nature. There's only one way you can deal with it and that's to deal with it harshly. You can't coddle pride. You know, you can't take it down easy. Pride is going to go down fighting. And so God realizes that He has to break our pride. And so He's definitely in the breaking business. And we saw that last week. And because God can see our pride better than we can, He knows how to break us. And He knows how to bring things into our lives that will break our pride. And it's going to be different for everybody. You can't compare what God is doing in somebody else's life with your life. He has a specific plan to work in your life. He knows what it's going to take to bring you down to where you need to be so that you can become more Christ-like. It's going to be painful. It's going to be harsh. It's going to be difficult. What's painful for you may not be painful for somebody else. What's painful for somebody else may not be painful for you. So God works in our lives. Individually, because He knows us. So He's going to give us our sufferings, our trials, our tribulations, difficulties, testings, sicknesses, disease, sorrow, grief, even death, if that's necessary, to show us our pride and to make it repugnant to us. Now last week we looked at Psalm 34, and we saw that yes, it is true. God does bring, God does bring tribulation to our lives, you know. You say, well does God love me? Yeah, God loves you, alright. God, does God care for me? God cares for you. He does. But he also sees the necessity of bringing things into your life as we saw in Psalm 34, events and people into your lives to make you miserable sometimes. That's necessary to the breaking of our pride and to make us repent of it. The fact is we're just stinking selfish and we're self-centered, you know, and we're self-sufficient and we're, you know, we're self-conscious. The problem with us is that sometimes we don't realize that about ourselves. It's so normal. I mean, we compare ourselves to everybody around us and they're just like us. And so, you know, we don't see any difference. So God has to show us that pride that is within us. When everybody, when it looks like it's a normal life to us, God says, wait a minute, wait a minute, there's something there in your life that I need to deal with. We're kingdom people. We're kingdom people. We're not like everybody around us. We don't live like the people who are living around us. We live by kingdom principles. And those principles have been put in the heart of every child of God. And one of the greatest principles, one of the greatest principles that God puts in our hearts, one of the greatest things God gives us as a believer is a true consciousness of the presence and reality of God. You don't have that as a lost person. God puts that in our hearts through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Now, when I'm talking about a God consciousness, folks, I'm not, you know, and I've said this before, I'm not talking about this New Age, you know, what they call a higher consciousness, you know, a cosmic consciousness. a nebulous higher state of mind. That's not what I'm talking about. A biblical consciousness of God is being conscious of our need for Christ, like living, founded on the truths of the Word of God. That's what I mean by a biblical God consciousness. The child of God has a continual awareness of the presence of Christ because he has a continual awareness of the truths of Christ as they are revealed and based and founded on the Word of God. That is a biblical-based consciousness God. And every thought we have has to be pressed through the grid of the Word of God to see whether it measures up or not. So you say, well what is that going to look like in my life? Well it's going to look like worship. Really? That's what it's going to look like. And you're talking about my daily life, preacher? I'm talking about, I'm not just talking about your Sunday life, your Sunday morning life, your Sunday night life. I'm talking about your daily life. You know, unfortunately, modern Christianity, I think, has usurped the true idea of biblical worship. They've usurped it. Christians today think, oh yeah, I worship alright. I go to the church building and I go in the church building and I sing hymns, you know, and I follow the worship leader or the worship team or whatever the case may be and I sing my worship songs and I listen to the preacher and he preaches, you know, messages to me and I pay attention to the messages, you know, and so on. Yeah, I worship, I worship, I worship every week. That's not biblical worship coming into the church building. That's not biblical. We've reduced, that's a reduction of what true worship is. And I think it's an acceptable reduction in people's lives today because they are not genuinely saved and they haven't met a holy God. They have not genuinely repented of their sins and come into contact to where they have a daily consciousness of God. And so they kind of come to church, you know, to get their consciousness renewed. They've not really met Jesus Christ. When we're saved, God invades your heart. When you're saved, God comes in and He takes over your life. He takes over the way you think. He takes over your desires. He takes over the things that you like. He takes over the things that you don't like. You enter into a relationship with God. It's not just about a Sunday morning routine. That's not the kind of worship I'm talking about. But nonetheless, that's what a lot of people talk about when they think of worshiping God. When you're a child of God, the weight of your sin and your shame is quadrupled because of the conviction of the Spirit of God. And your awareness of the presence of Jesus Christ makes you sensitive to the need to worship Him continually, always. Let me give you a couple examples of worship from the New Testament. Most of you remember that Jesus could have this amazing ability to walk on water. He had this ability to walk on water. And so one particular evening, he came to his disciples and he was walking on the water. And of course, they were in awe of seeing Jesus Christ walk on water. And Matthew, he describes the scene like this. He says, and those who were in the boat, worshipped him. Those who were in the boat worshipped him, saying, you are certainly God's son. So here they were. They weren't in a synagogue, folks. They weren't in a synagogue. They weren't in a church building, you know. They weren't on some holy ground place, you know, on the top of a mountain near to God. They were out in the middle of the Sea of Galilee. And the Bible says that they began to worship Him. They didn't have any angels. They didn't have any choirs. They began to worship Him. Why? Because they saw Him. They had a consciousness of the supremacy of His power. You remember the two Marys when they saw the resurrected Jesus Christ? They saw Christ alive after He had been crucified, been in the grave for three days and three nights. The stone was rolled away and He came out in glory. And they saw him. The Bible says they ran up and they grabbed hold of him. As a matter of fact, it says they took hold of his feet and worshipped him. You see, they begin to see Jesus Christ, in both of these examples, they begin to see Jesus Christ in a powerful way. And you say, well, you know, preacher, if I were in their sandals, if I'd have been in a boat, you know, or if I'd have been there by the tomb and I'd seen Jesus Christ, you know, come out of the tomb in his resurrected body, you know, if I'd have been there, I'd have worshipped him too. Granted, okay, granted. You know, these examples are highly sensitive in the fact that there was a great display of the power of Christ. No doubt about that, you know. But I think in the same way, at the same time, that if we really paid attention to what's going on in our lives, we would see God working in our lives in powerful ways. Now we wouldn't see Him working on the water, obviously. and we wouldn't see a literal resurrected body of Jesus Christ. But I think if we would pay attention that we would be seeing God do some extraordinary things in our life that would cause us also to bow down and worship Him. Maybe I'm off base here, but I believe there have been times in my life at least, and I believe there have been times in your life when you have seen God work in a mighty and a powerful way in your life that caused you to know that He is here and you worshipped Him. Why? You caught a sense. of this powerful, magnificent, sovereign God, and you begin to understand how insignificant, how powerless you were, and how unsovereign you, and how little control you had over anything. And worship took place. I think that's what all these, the two examples that I've shared with you, I think they have that principle in common. I think there have been times when we've all felt our inadequacy and our incompetency and our imperfections, and that's all a part of worship. And you know, when God gave Satan freedom to afflict Job's life. The Bible tells us that he responded in worship. I mean, the devil did everything he could possibly do to a man. He took his health. He took his children away from him. His wife became estranged from him. His friends left him. His livelihood was taken. He was reduced to nothing. The Bible says, then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and he fell to the ground and worshipped. And he said, naked I came from my mother's womb, naked I shall return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. That's recorded in Job chapter 1 and that's verses 20 and 21. The power, the sovereignty and the control of God over his life caused him to fall face down and to worship him. He saw who God was and like the disciples that I described to you, he saw who he was in light of who God was and that caused him to worship. You say, well, what's the one essential ingredient here in all of this? Humility. humility. In every example, the basic ingredient is humility. Worship is not possible without humility. That's not a great statement, you know. It's not an astounding statement, but it is nonetheless a true statement. And the reason I'm emphasizing that is because what most people call worship today is not worship because it doesn't have, as its basis, humility. It doesn't have humility as the foundation or as the stream or as the source of its worship. It's the spring of worship. Most people think, well, you know, we're supposed to celebrate. And we should. I'm not against celebrating the work of God in our lives. I think there are times when God does things and it causes us to rejoice. And there are times when God causes us to be happy. There's no doubt about that. And it should be a joy to come to God's house and to worship. And I'm not trying to mitigate that in any way. But at the same time, the other side of the coin is that when you look at the word worship, it has the idea of bowing down, of prostrating yourself on the ground and humbling yourself before God. That's the other side of worship too. You remember how when you were saved, and at first when you were saved, you came to a knowledge of God, and you saw how wonderful and powerful He was, and you saw, you became aware of a contempt within you for yourself and for your ability, and you sensed your foulness, and you sensed your undone-ness, and so you abandoned yourself to God. That's humility. Now at the end of that process, of course, was great joy because you realized you had eternal life and Jesus Christ has saved your soul from eternal hell. So there was a celebration as well. But it was accompanied by a deep sense of powerlessness and hopelessness and humility before the joy came. Before the joy came. Humility, you can't be saved without it. You cannot be saved without that brokenness. And then will come the celebration afterwards. So, humility does two things. It gives us a perspective of ourselves, and it gives us a perspective of God. It does both of those things. So let's first of all talk about the new perspective that we have of ourselves. And this isn't psychology. I know you can use psychological terms for these things, but we're talking about a spiritual perspective of oneself. You see, in our culture today, People have this idea, well, you know, if somebody is soft-spoken, if they're mild-mannered, you know, and they don't show any overt signs of pride, then that person's humble. Okay? Or if this, you know, if somebody is kind of laid-back, you know, and they're quiet, and, you know, speaking, and they're quiet, and their mannerism, we say, well, that person's humble. Don't mistake that. Calm exterior. Because what beats inside that commentator's heart is a sin nature. A sin nature. We fail as Christians, I think, to appreciate the deceptive nature of our sin natures. Especially pride. Sin is a powerful, powerful deceiver. And the more we are involved in sin, folks, the principle is this, the more that we are involved in sin, most of the time, the less often we're able to recognize it. It has become so familiar to us. something that we're used to, that we don't recognize that we're under its power or that we're even involved in it. That's how deceptive sin is. It destroys our ability to recognize it. It has that power. If we think that we don't have very much sin in our lives, if we don't think that we struggle with pride in our lives, I'm going to tell you it's because you've been deceived by sin. The most godly men I know and have read of in books, without exception, all of them, have basically seen themselves as woefully sinful and wicked. They have a consciousness, they have a sensitivity to sin in their lives. That's what humility results in. Secondly, I tell you, it gives you a perspective of God. It elevates your perspective of who God is. You cannot have an elevated sense of your sinfulness without an elevated sense of God and who He is. We have to have both of them. You remember the Pharisee in the temple? Jesus Christ was giving an example of the publican, the Pharisee, and he was giving an example of the blindness of sin, the power of sin. And he described the publican who was blind to his own sinfulness. Why was he blind to his own sinfulness? Because he was blind to the righteousness of God. The only way we can measure our sinfulness is if we measure it against the righteousness of God. That's part of the act. That's part of the work of humility. And that's why the world doesn't understand what true biblical humility is. Because the world doesn't have a concept or a consciousness of who God is. And therefore they cannot have a true understanding of humility or their own sinfulness. Humility doesn't have anything to do with your worth as a human being. If you're humble, you think you're worthless. That's the world's idea. It doesn't come from the Bible. Humility doesn't have anything to do with your worth as a human being. It has to do with seeing your sinful nature. It has to do with seeing your sinful condition and how susceptible you are to sin and your inability to deal with sin. and turn toward God. So where does that leave me? Where do I wind up? You wind up being 100% dependent upon God. That's where God wants you. That's where He's taking you. That's where He's showing you that's what you need. You need dependency upon Him and not upon yourself. And the greatest example of dependency upon God comes from one person. Person 9, maybe you're not expecting it to come from, but it comes from Jesus Christ. He is the greatest example of dependency upon God ever. But you say, He's the Son of God. I know. But listen to the testimony. Listen to the testimony of Jesus Christ. This is how He saw Himself. This is how He saw Himself. Okay? These are His words. He said, The Son can do nothing of Himself. John chapter 5 verse 19. I can of my own self do nothing. My judgment is just because I seek not mine own will. John 5 30. This is Jesus. He's talking about himself. He says I receive No glory from men, John 5.41. I am come not to do mine own will, John 6.38. My teaching is not mine, John 7.16. I am not come myself, John 7.28. I do nothing of myself, John 8.28. I have come not of myself, but he who sent me, John 8.42. I seek not mine own glory, John 8.50. The words I say I speak not of myself, John 14.10. The word which you hear is not mine. John 14 24. This is an example of someone who is absolutely 100% dependent upon his father. He does nothing of himself. Jesus exemplifies humility, demonstrates it for us. We are to follow his example. Follow his example. Take his words to heart. Which brings me to my last point, which is, what does that look like in daily life? What does humility and what does worship look like as a practical application? Looks like this. You serve others. A person who is truly worshiping, a person who has true brokenness, a person who has true humility, is going to be serving others. Jesus said, I didn't come to be served. I came to serve. That is worship. That is what he's describing, that little sentence there, is true humility and worship. It is the practical expression. The result of being crushed, the result of losing our selfishness, the result of our egos dying, is that it frees us to serve other people. That is the badge of worship. It takes place in the world. It doesn't take place in a church building. It takes place out there where people see you and where you work with people and where people know who and what you are. That's where worship takes place, folks. Out there. Out there. Just before Jesus Christ was crucified, He gave us one last picture of humility and worship and John describes him as getting up from the supper table and he walks over where there was a towel. And he takes off his garment, sets aside his robe, and he takes the towel and he girds himself about. And the Bible says he then takes a pitcher and pours some water into a bowl. And then he begins to go around to his disciples and he begins to wash their feet. and he begins to dry their feet with the towel that he girded himself with. He gets to the end and he explains to his disciples and he says, You call me teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, the Lord and the teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet, for I gave you an example. that you should also do as I did to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them." That's how you worship. That's how you worship. Jesus was free from self. He had given himself completely over to the work of God, and he was free to serve others. That's what it means to walk humbly. That's our example, and that's true worship. Well, I appreciate you being here tonight. I appreciate you being in God's house this evening, and I know I need to practice what I preach.