The Gift of the Knowledge of Our Unworthiness

 

 

Brethren, Do not be discouraged by what you discover when you look inside and see your many failures and unworthiness. This is hard to accept because we are taught that we are new creations in Christ, but all we can see are our filthy rags. However, the way up is the way down through the valley of the Shadow of death:

·       1 Peter 5:6–7 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.

The way to life is the way to death, dying to ourselves and any expectation the we can rely on our own goodness rather than on the righteousness of Christ alone.

·       2 Corinthians 4:8–11 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

Consequently, Christ has taught us to regard ourselves as unworthy servants:

·       Luke 17:10 So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’ ”

The Assyrians threw the worst king of Judah, Manasseh, into a dungeon where he humbled himself greatly before the Lord:

·       2 Chronicles 33:13–14, 16 He prayed to him, and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the LORD was God…And he took away the foreign gods and the idol from the house of the LORD, and all the altars that he had built on the mountain of the house of the LORD and in Jerusalem, and he threw them outside of the city. He also restored the altar of the LORD and offered on it sacrifices of peace offerings and of thanksgiving, and he commanded Judah to serve the LORD, the God of Israel.

We too need to be humbled to become the men and women God wants us to be. Jesus likened it to pruning:

·       John 15:1–2 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

King David had been pruned from an early age, the product of an illicit affair (Psalm 51:5).  Consequently, he was an outcast from his own family. God had directed the Prophet Samuel’s to go to the household of Jesus to anoint one of his sons to be the next king of Israel. However, the Lord rebuked Samuel who was about to anoint Jesse’s first son whose appearance greatly impressed him:

·       1 Samuel 16:7 But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”

Nor was God pleased with any of Jesse’s sons. Perplexed, Samuel asked if he had another son. David hadn’t even been asked to attend. He had been assigned the lowest and most dangerous job as a shepherd who had to protect the sheep from Lions. Consequently, David had no other alternative but to trust in God. Nevertheless, our Lord had chosen this unlikely shepherd boy. Why? Years later, Paul explained:

·       Acts 13:22 “And when he had removed [King Saul], he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, ‘I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.’”

David had learned that since God was for him, no lion would be able to prevail against him. Consequently, his trust was in God alone even as he faced the giant Goliath with only his sling.

I too had been everyone’s last choice. I had been so devastated by decades of depression and years of panic attacks I was sure that I could never be of use to Christ, and so too was everyone else. Yet for all of us, the pruning must continue (2 Corinthians 12:7-11).