Please remember that this evening we are looking at the sin of Pride and Jesus’ reparation for that sin from the cross in his quotation of Psalm 22 (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?). For just as Pride draws us away from God, on the cross Jesus himself withdrew from God so that he might bring us back to the Father. In preparation for this evening think about humility as the prerequisite for fulfilling the two great commandments – love God and love your neighbor, and of the myriad of ways in which Jesus exemplified pure humility in his incarnation, his birth, his lack of worldly wealth, his caste, his death, and his burial. And, most importantly, think about those areas in which your pride is strongest: atheism, intellectual vanity, superficiality, snobbery, vain-glory, presumptuousness, or exaggerated sensitiveness.
Dinner is at 6. The menu is a beef-vegetable soup. Discussion at 6:45. Hope to see you here.
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Luke 18:9-14
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Ephesians 2:8-9