The Character Of The Evangelist

SESSION IN A SENTENCE

Humility is a chief virtue of any ambassador of God’s kingdom: modelled for us perfectly in Jesus, refined and empowered within us by the Holy Spirit to the glory of our Heavenly Father.

SESSION BACKGROUND

From the moment the angel Gabriel tells Mary she is expecting a child, humility – a central theme of the Jesus story – emerges. Mary worships God and gives thanks to him that he has been mindful of her, his servant, in her humble state. In other words, she says, ‘I’m just an ordinary girl… why would God want to use me?’

Have you ever wondered why God would use you?

Sometimes we can become self-assured in our gifts and talents, believing that God chooses to use us because of these things. God’s call is for our character, not our talent, and the character that pleases him most has humility at its centre. Mary continues in her praise by singing of how her holy God scatters the proud and lifts up the humble. As a young Jewish woman, her knowledge of the Old Testament would have supplied her everything she needed to make this claim about God with confidence. And now she was experiencing this reality for herself. God has always chosen to use the humble for his purposes in the most unexpected ways, defying the wisdom of the world and revealing his power and grace through the least likely people. The first step towards being used for great things by God is in realising our total reliance upon him.

Jesus’ birth couldn’t have taken place in more humble circumstances. The king of kings was laid in a manger – an animal feeding trough! The riches of the birth of a king were replaced with the poverty of the birth of a nobody. Our reconciliation to the creator of all things was initiated in staggering humility.

Wherever we look in scripture – whether it’s Isaiah 53, where we hear about the suffering servant of the Lord who will be pierced for our transgressions, or Jesus’ declaration about coming to serve rather than be served, or the washing of his disciples’ feet, or his submission to his Father’s will in the garden of Gethsemane, or his allowing himself to be beaten, mocked and crucified when, with a single word, he could have wiped out anyone who caused him harm – the Bible presents a portrait of a servant king who defeats the curse of human pride by the power of holy humility.

God rescues his people in the very way he intends for them to live. Pride led us to destruction, and humility will bring us back.

CATCH UP (10-20mins)

Take time to catch up with one another, sharing stories, encouragements, feedback on opportunities and anything else that would encourage the group. For smaller groups, ask each person to share one win and one struggle since the last meeting. For larger groups, select four or five people to share specific testimonies since last meeting.

PRAYER

Commit the time to the Lord and pray over any situations, positive or challenging, highlighted in the catch up time.

TEACHING (25–35 MINS)

Work through the following teaching material in your own way, either by reading it word for word, or by reworking it into your own presentation.

To paraphrase C.S. Lewis: ‘Being humble doesn’t mean thinking less of yourself, it means thinking of yourself less.’

The Bible doesn’t ask us to be self-deprecating or to have low self-esteem. You are cherished and loved by God – and called his precious child. But there is a fine line: thinking too highly of ourselves puts us in danger of the kind of pride that got humanity into the sin business in the first place. To think too little of ourselves is to reject the identity that God has bought for us, whereas to think too much of ourselves is to fail to recognise the sovereignty and kingship of God.

Pride sits at the heart of all sin. Proverbs tell us that, ‘When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom’ (Proverbs 11:2). The Bible’s wisdom literature repeatedly affirms the virtue of humility as the opposite posture of pride and celebrates the blessings that flow from it.

We live in an age of self-promotion. Can you imagine if David had slain Goliath today? The temptation for a blood-still-fresh, severed-head victory selfie would be strong! Many of us would surely welcome songs to be written about our achievements, movies to be made and titles to be bestowed, yet not once in all of David’s psalms does he mention his victory, a point to which the great evangelist D. L. Moody drew attention in a famous sermon on humility.

Today, at the first sniff of greatness we are encouraged to champion ourselves, to build our status and our platform. But God does not ask you to build a ministry or to elevate yourself to a position. He’s far more interested in your character, and how you might be elevated to his purposes through humility (Luke 14:11). Jesus took the lowly road, the position of the servant. He is the king who came not to be served but to serve (Mark 10:45). Notice what John says about Jesus immediately before the washing of his disciples’ feet:

Knowing that all things were under his power, and knowing the fullness of his identity, Jesus chose to be a servant to demonstrate the will of his Father. You may have done a Bible study on this which involved actually washing one another’s feet. Yet washing someone’s feet today doesn’t quite do justice to the full significance of what Jesus was showing his disciples. It’s hard for us to comprehend just how uncomfortable it would have made them to have their rabbi – their messiah – undertaking this duty as a mark of his humility and servant heartedness.

Think of it like this: you hear a knock at the door to find the ruling monarch of your nation on your doorstep. They proceed to come into your house, pick up your baby and begin to change its very full nappy. The stench is awful and you look on in horror as your baby’s waste makes contact with royal hands. And yet the monarch looks completely at ease with the situation, even enjoying their time with the child, in this unpleasant but necessary activity. Don’t forget that as Jesus was washing his disciples’ feet, he knew that Judas was about to betray him. He knew that Peter was going to deny him. He knew that his followers were still often prideful and weak men, and yet in his power and majesty he humbled himself before them, setting an example for them to follow. Not merely were they to wash each other’s feet, but they were to become humble servants in all things.

There’s a well-known anecdote about Charles Spurgeon, who, upon seeing one of his preaching students step up to the pulpit with a little too much arrogant swagger only to come down afterwards crestfallen at how badly the sermon had gone, supposedly remarked: ‘If you’d gone up the way you came down, you might have come down the way you went up.’

No matter the grandeur of our calling, the impressiveness of our gifting, the size of our opportunity, or the reputation of our ministry, we are powerless to save anyone. The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), but the wages of humility is life (Proverbs 22:4). Through the humble suffering servant who took our place on the cross, we can now place our trust in him and take up our own cross by humbly dying to our old prideful existence. We can move from death to life. Humility is not merely a virtue, it is the only Appropriate response we can make to Jesus when we recognize he is Lord.

Humility in evangelism does not mean that we pander to people, water down the gospel, or back off from sharing the truth where it might cause offence. The gospel is often an offensive message to hardened hearts. Equally, boldness in evangelism does not mean that we ram the gospel down people’s throats with little consideration of how we might help them to truly understand the hope we carry. Humility in evangelism means at least the following four things.

1. HUMBLY SERVE THE LORD – Our primary responsibility and desire should be to serve God, however challenging, uncomfortable or costly it may be. Are we willing to put on the nature of a servant and be obedient to our master?
2. HUMBLY EMPTY YOURSELF – Humility involves emptying ourselves so that we can be filled with the Holy Spirit. This is a humble act in itself, but when we invite the Spirit to take up residence in our lives, we move from being committed to humility to being empowered for it.
3. HUMBLY ACCEPT HIS WORD – Humble yourself before God’s Word. Learn to read it well and accept it on its own terms, not forcing it to say what you want it to say to suit your needs. Humbly seek to hear God’s truth, no matter how challenging it may prove to your preconceived or culture-shaped ideas. Discovering God’s truth and applying his wisdom requires humility.
4. HUMBLY SERVE THE LOST – Proclamation is essential, but we must also love those to whom we proclaim. We must serve those in need. As we aim to love people well we must listen to them well. If all we ever do is speak at them, then we are likely to miss important connection points between the gospel and their lives and minimize the possibility of a meaningful relationship with them.

By honouring God, making space for his Spirit to work in us, and building upon the truth of his Word we can be effective servants into the world – who meet practical needs, listen well to people (a massively neglected area of evangelism), and faithfully proclaim the Jesus story. If we want to be fruitful in our evangelism, our starting posture must be humility before the Lord. D.L. Moody put it this way in his sermon on humility:

DISCUSSION (15 MINS)

1. Are there areas of your life in which you struggle with humility?
2. Is there an inherent conflict between sharing the gospel with boldness and sharing it with humility?
3. How can we lovingly address a lack of humility, or the presence of false humility, in others?

APPLICATION (5 MINS)

Think carefully about how you could serve and bless those around you in an unexpected and costly way. Does your church or ministry employ a cleaner? Tell them to take the day off to spend with their family or in spiritual retreat and do their tasks for them. Be the first to make tea or coffee in the office each day. Tip your waiter generously after a meal and write them a note expressing the love of God to them… Be creative and be intentional.

On the one hand, none of these things could capture the full effect of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet, but on the other, neither should they simply be so-called ‘random acts of kindness’. These are the intentional actions of thoughtful, loving and humble people who see opportunities all around to bless others in ways that point back to the suffering servant. We don’t do these things to win favour with God or look good in front of others (maybe think twice before shouting about the things you do on social media). We do them both as a way in which we can learn to grow in humility, and as a natural product of the humility that God is growing in us.

PRAYER

Give thanks for the humility of Christ and his example of servant-heartedness. Ask God to help you see yourself as he sees you, and that you might grow in humility and wisdom daily. Pray for each other, that you would be bold and humble in your proclamation of the gospel.

ACCOUNTABILITY (15 MINS)

Invite anyone who struggles with pride to acknowledge this – which is admittedly a hard thing for a prideful person to do – and pray with and for them, that God would help you all grow in humility and develop servant hearts.

Complete accountability forms, share in pairs or smaller groups and pray for one another.