June 8, 2025 | A Humble Legacy
A Humble Legacy | Proverbs Part 15
Proverbs 11:2 - When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom.
Proverbs 15:25 - The Lord tears down the house of the proud but maintains the widow’s boundaries.
Proverbs 25:6-7 - Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great, for it is better to be told, “Come up here,” than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.
Proverbs 27:2 - Let another praise you, and not your own mouth.
Proverbs 28:26 - Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.
Proverbs 3:5 - Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
Proverbs 16:18 - Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
Proverbs 10:6-7 - Blessings are on the head of the righteous; the memory of the righteous is a blessing.
Proverbs 12:3 - No one is established by wickedness, but the root of the righteous will never be moved.
Proverbs 12:7 - The wicked are overthrown and are no more, but the house of the righteous will stand.
Proverbs 13:22 - A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children.
Proverbs 14:11 - The house of the wicked will be destroyed, but the tent of the upright will flourish.
Proverbs 15:33 - The fear of the Lord is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor.
Proverbs 18:12 - Before destruction a man's heart is haughty, but humility comes before honor.
Proverbs 29:23 - One’s pride will bring him low, but he who is lowly in spirit will obtain honor.
Proverbs 20:6-7 - Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find? The righteous who walks in his integrity—blessed are his children after him.
This sermon, A Humble Legacy, explores the biblical wisdom found in Proverbs regarding pride and humility. Drawing from various verses, Jed Gillis highlights that pride is destructive, leading to disgrace, while humility fosters wisdom, honor, and stability. Pride manifests as self-glorification, contending with God’s supremacy, and self-reliance, all of which God actively opposes. Gillis emphasizes that humility is not self-loathing or lack of confidence but a sober recognition of one’s dependence on God. A godly legacy is rooted more in who you are—righteous and rightly related to God—than in what you build. Proverbs teaches that integrity guards your legacy, ensuring that your impact aligns with God’s purposes. The sermon encourages seeking to leave a godly legacy through humility, worship, and faithful service, motivated by God’s promise to honor those who walk humbly before Him.
Transcript of A Humble Legacy | Proverbs Part 15
As we continue in Proverbs, there's some pretty famous statements like pride goes before destruction. Or as is echoed both in Proverbs and later in the Bible, God gives grace to the humble, but he resists the proud. What sounds like pride and humility are are a pretty important issue for us to consider, don't you think?
Though we also have statements like this: lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. We're told you should want to make a difference for Christ, to to have an impact. We're told, don't waste your life.
So how do we live out? On one side people say, don't be proud. Pride leads to destruction. And on the other side, don't waste your life. Live a life that matters. How do we guard, in other words, against pride on the one hand and complacency on the other hand. As we look through Proverbs, we're gonna find both the pattern of the condemnation of pride, the recognition of how it harms us, and then we'll also find over and over the teacher in Proverbs holds before you the fact that you should want to leave a Godly legacy.
Pride Humiliates Us, Humility Honors Us
So let's begin in Proverbs chapter 11.
First we'll look at pride overall, and in Proverbs 11, chapter two or verse two, sorry, we, it says, when pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom.
We find this principle pride humiliates us. Humility honors us throughout scripture. That's what we find as as a pattern.
And our world is full of examples, don't we? We love this. When we see our entertainment stories, we see books, we see movies, the stories we love, the villains are always arrogant and we like to see them lose. You know, it's funny, we, we watch a guy who's arrogant and we think, well, he's over the top. But when we examine ourselves, sometimes we find taste of that same pride. In fact, I'd say we always find at least a taste of that same pride.
We all love a good underdog story. It's baked into us. We've said throughout Proverbs, these patterns are of wisdom. They're just patterns God's put in his world. You don't have to like them. They're just there. One of the patterns is that when we see arrogance, we think, I kind of hope one day they get taken down a notch.
That's just one of the patterns, and it's stated here as a proverb that when pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom. Now there it could just sound like, well, this just happens if you're proud. Things just happen to you. It ends badly for you.
But actually it's more than that. God is involved in this process. We see that in the, the verse I quoted earlier. God resists the proud. He doesn't just say, if you're proud, bad things just happen to you. It says, God resists the proud. Or if you turn over a few chapters to chapter 15 and verse 25, the Lord tears down the house of the proud, but he maintains the widow's boundaries.
Aren't you glad God cares? Not just for the proud, not just for the, the group that looks like they have it all together or they have the status, but he takes the widows who were among the most vulnerable people in that society. He says, you try to oppress a widow. You try to take boundaries, usually referred to like their land, what they own, you try to take that land, God says, I will be the one who fights for her. And the proud tries to maintain their own house. And God says, I will tear, tear it down.
That's because the, the proud person here thinks I built this house. It belongs to me. It's mine. I can do what I want to. And in fact, this house makes me look good. And God says, I will tear that house down.
It's a little different, but when Amanda said earlier, she's talking about this widow that we're able to help. We're able to help because God provided and God did that. He cares about the widow's boundaries. Even when they're washed away by the flood, God still cares about the weakest, most vulnerable V vulnerable people in our world.
Why is Pride Such a Big Deal?
So why is it such a big deal? I mean, these are strong words, right? We just think about the almighty creator God. He's gonna tear down the house of the proud. Yeah, that should, that should shock us more than it probably does. Or we hear God resists the proud, not God looks at the proud and thinks, well, maybe I'll deal with them one day. God actively opposes pride. The Almighty God we sang about who hung the stars in the sky. Like if he opposes something, what could possibly defeat him? Nothing.
So why is it such a big deal? And I want to point, we'll use Proverbs a couple different times to say what is pride. You could give some answers for that. You probably have some ideas. I want to take just a couple things and point you to three specific aspects of pride.
Pride Glorifies Self
The first is found over in Chapter 25. Verse six and seven says, don't put yourself forward in the King's presence or stand in the place of the great for it is better to be told come up here than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.
In other words, don't glorify yourself. That's one of the things Pride does. Pride is self glorifying, and it's so baked into our society, our celebrities, generally speaking, not all of them, but generally speaking, they like to glorify themselves. Our whole influencer social media world is kind of built on saying, Hey, look at me. You should pay attention. Think of Muhammad Ali. I'm the greatest. He just said out loud what many of us think.
Pride is inherently self glorifying. It's insisting that I receive praise, and if that sounds like, oh no, I would never do that. Okay, let's put it in a little maybe harder terms for us, pride is insisting that people give me the credit I deserve. Like, they didn't seem to appreciate me, like I think I should be appreciated.
Well, we lean towards self glorification. Notice though, in chapter 25 that I just read, the teacher here doesn't tell you that receiving honor is bad. If you look again at verse six and seven, he says, don't put yourself forward in the King's presence. Don't glorify yourself. Don't go into this noble and be like, I get the honorable place next to you.
But he doesn't say the honor's bad. In fact, he goes on to say, it's better to be told come up here than to be put lower in the presence of a noble. He's not against receiving honor, he's against self honor. He's against insisting that I get the honor, but he's not against receiving it.
We could go to chapter 27 and see the same thing. Verse two, let another person praise you and not your own mouth. A stranger and not your own lips. He doesn't say, if somebody starts to praise you, you've gotta stop them. Right? He doesn't. Sometimes I think we think like that. Like if somebody comes and says anything good to you, it's like, oh, no, no, no. It's don't say anything to me about it. It's all God. Of course, it's all God. Sure. But he doesn't say, don't accept or receive praise. He says, don't lift yourself up. Pride is self glorification.
Pride Contends with God for Supremacy
And that means the second thing, pride is this definition. I, um, there's a man named CJ Mahaney wrote a book on humility. It's a really great small book on humility. If you want a book that you'd say, I can read this in an hour and get a lot of really good things, and then you'll want to go back and think about it for a lot more than an hour. It's a great book on humility. CJ Mahaney, his. Definition of pride is that pride is contending with God for supremacy.
That's just another way of saying pride is refusing to acknowledge your dependence on God. Pride is when I say something like, let me rephrase that. I don't say it, but when I think it or imply it, I think something like, I know better than God does what needs to happen in my situation. That's really just me saying, I wanna sit on his throne. I'm contending with God. I'm fighting against his kingship, saying, Jed should be king.
It can show up in some subtle ways. It might show up in bitter anger. You say, I deserve better than the treatment I've been getting. What are you really saying? You're saying, God, the way you've worked out these relationships is not best. My way is better.
And the quietness in the room tells me you feel about that like I do, which is ouch, I do think that sometimes. It can show up like self pity. It could show up like, think about this. If you have such a high view of yourself that when you fail, you think, oh, I should never have failed like that. That's actually pride. We're all human and we do fail. And when I say I, I, I have such a high view of myself, I should never have messed up like that. That's not my low view of myself. That's my pride.
Pride Puts Your Trust in Yourself
Pride is always fighting against God for supremacy. Pride is always glorifying myself. The third thing, pride is trusting self. In Proverbs 28, 1 more chapter over verse 26. Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered. Or we could go back to Proverbs three and, and famous verses, trust in the Lord with all your heart. And lean not to your own understanding. Don't trust in yourself.
One of the most subtle ways I think that we have pride is we come to God's word and we think that our mind is somehow more trustworthy than his wisdom. I can rely on my common sense more than I can rely on what God said. That's just trusting self. That's just pride.
We think God says he cares for his children, but we trust ourselves so much that we say, I can take care of myself better than God can. It's just trusting self.
Sometimes people will say a little tongue in cheek, uh, when I see God, I'm gonna give him a, a piece of my mind. No, you're not. Actually, when people see God, they fall on their face. Or when I see God, I'll tell 'em a thing or two about how to run his universe.
We never word it like that. It always feels like it makes so much sense because we are so tempted to glorify or praise ourselves. We're so tempted to contend with God for his spot on the throne, or just trust ourselves. C. S Lewis said, pride is the complete anti-God state of mind. So the state of mind, that's just directly against God, wherever that is, it's pride.
This is why pride is such a big deal. This is why when it says God will tear down the house of the proud, he is actively opposed to the pride, proud person. Because it is claiming trying to rob God of his glory and claim it for myself. It's trying to trust myself instead of God, it's trying to sit on his throne instead of him.
Pride Breaks You
So turn to chapter 16. And if I asked you for a proverb about pride, this is probably the first one many of us would think of in verse 18. Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor than to divide the spoil with the proud.
This is interesting, this word for destruction. I think we often think of it in, in an absolute sense, there's pride and then we're gonna be utterly decimated and destroyed now that there's a truth to that pattern. The word for destruction here is, is also used to talk about breaking a bone. It's that kind of breaking pride goes before breaking.
That does mean sometimes the ultimate sense. Think of our stories. We've got a super proud villain and he's finally completely crushed and destroyed. Sure, that fits the same pattern, but it also means this, when our self glorifying dreams, our destroyed that hurts. It's a breaking.
But it's good. It's good for my self glorifying dreams to be broken.
When our self trusting, when we spend all our effort to put this image of who we are, and I trust in myself to craft this image exactly right when that is shattered. It hurts. But God is in it.
He's telling you the pattern is when you have pride. Yes, that leads to breaking and pain and sometimes that's not the utter destruction. That's your pride, that God breaks you and it hurts, but then he is in it and he is bringing out of that something wonderful.
I was reminded, thinking about this of a few years ago, uh, the, the worst experience preaching that I've ever had, and I could tell you what day it was, and it was because I was trusting in myself.
I didn't know it at the time. Took me a little bit to figure that out. It's the only time in my life I've ever stood up here and halfway through the sermon I'm thinking, I wish I wasn't here. Some of you might have thought that halfway through some of my sermons, that's a different story, but I thought I wish I were anywhere else right now. And it hurt.
My wife could tell you that Sunday afternoon was not fun for me. Neither was a good bit of that week.
But I was trusting in myself. It hurt, but I'd say now I look back and say, God was in that. God was doing something good and I will often, I did just a minute ago when Isaias was praying. I will often be somewhere over here getting ready to preach and I say, God, don't let me do that again. Don't let me depend on myself again. Because pride leads to destruction. It can hurt.
If you turn to God in it, it is good for it to hurt. It is good for myself glorifying to be shattered. It's good for my self trust to be seen as shaky and not worth trusting because then I go to the only one who is worth trusting.
False Forms of Humility
Pride's a big deal because it's against God in every way. So you might say, well if, if I need to guard against pride now what do I do? Well, before we talk about that, I wanted to suggest a couple forms of false humility, because I think sometimes I know this, Satan is so clever, he'll be happy to have you think, yeah, I hate pride. I'm gonna fight it. As long as you don't fight it by humbling yourself, he's fine.
One, Self-Loathing
There's false forms of humility. Number one would be a form of despair or self-loathing. The opposite of pride is not hating yourself. That's the kind of attitude that says, I'm just awful. I don't deserve anything good anyway. Or I should have done better in this situation or that situation. So I'm just gonna hide. I'm gonna escape. I'm gonna numb myself.
We're really just saying I have such a high view of myself that I should never have made these mistakes. That's not humility.
Romans 12, Paul says, don't think more highly of yourself than you ought to think. But think with sober judgment. He doesn't say, make sure you think you're absolutely awful in everything, right? He says, think with sober judgment. And then the rest of the chapter says, you have some pretty amazing gifts. So use 'em.
If I give into the kind of pride that leads to despair and self-loathing, I don't go use my gifts. I hide in a corner. That's not humility. Humility is bowing before God. That's not rejection or hatred of self. That's false humility.
Two, Lack of Confidence
A second kind of false humility would be a lack of confidence or a belief you can't do anything well.
We're all wired that way sometimes. If you've walked with God for a long time, you think, I know. I don't wanna be proud. Somebody comes up and says, Hey, what you said was really helpful to me spiritually. And we can think, oh me, really? Oh, I'm not. I'm not very good. And then we just don't step into encouraging the next person.
No, God has given you gifts. Use them. Use them with confidence.
Three, Lack of Motivation to be Used by God
A third kind of false humility would be a, a vague desire for God to work without motivation for me to be part of it.
I wanna explain what I mean. I tried to think of how to clearly say it. I think it's hard for us to wrestle through the idea, but I want you to hear what it could sound like if I were to say, God, I'm so grateful that you work in your church. You've promised to build your church, and I would love for you to do it around Knoxville in America, around the world. This kind of vague, big picture. God, do your work. That's good.
What if the other person comes and says. God, I want you to build your church. I want you to reach people with a gospel, and I want you to do it through me.
We might hear that and think that the first guy's more humble than the second, and I would say, I don't necessarily think so. Yes, God, build your church than the big picture, but God, I wanna be part of it. Use me to spread the gospel, use me to encourage other people. I want to be part of doing all those things. It's not proud to want God to work through you.
And sometimes by false humility we think that it is. I want God to work, but it doesn't have to be through me. It doesn't have to be, but you should want him to. That's not pride. Paul didn't talk like this, right? Paul in Roman says, I make it my ambition to preach the gospel where Jesus has never been named.
He doesn't say, Jesus, I sure hope you spread it out there somewhere. You don't need to do it through me. That's fine. He says, Jesus is gonna do his work, but I wanna be part of it. Use me. He says, I work harder than all the rest, but it's not really me. It's Christ who's at work within me. Use me. I'm gonna work. But it's really Jesus.
He says things like, follow me as I follow Christ. Think about that He's, he's not just saying, work somewhere and you follow Jesus and don't look at me. No. He says, I want to be following Jesus so hard that you can follow me as I follow Jesus. That's not pride. It's not pride to want God to work through you and it's not pride to be glad that he did work through you.
Some of you have walked with God for decades and there are people you could point back and say, God worked through me to help that person, and it's not pride for you to be happy about that. In fact, I would say it's probably pride if you weren't. It's good to be glad that God works through you.
Should We Want to Leave a Legacy?
That leads us to then, so if, if pride is contending with God for supremacy and there's these false humilities, these things that can feel humble to us that that aren't, then the question is, should we want to leave a legacy? Should we want to leave an impact? Should we care about that at all?
Legacy is More About Who You Are than What You Build
Let's look at a few Proverbs here, chapter 10. First statement about your, I will use the word legacy. You could say impact. Your legacy is more about who you are than what you build. Your legacy is more about who you are than what you build.
Proverbs 10, verse six says, blessings are on the head of the righteous, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence. The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot. If he doesn't tell you anything about what this righteous person accomplishes in their life, that's not the point.
What he tells you is they're rightly related to God, they're righteous. Your legacy is more about who you are. It's more about your relationship to God, not about what you accomplish or what you build.
In chapter 12, we see the same theme. Verse three, no one is established by wickedness, but the root of the righteous will never be moved. Or verse seven, the wicked are overthrown and are no more, but the house of the righteous will stand.
See in all of these examples, he says, the important thing is are you rightly related to God. That's the part of your legacy that matters more than what you build, more than what you accomplish.
But notice the way he reasons. Take chapter 12, verse three, for example. He tells you no one is established by wickedness, but the root of righteous will never be moved. You're supposed to hear that and think, I want to never be moved. Right? You're supposed to hear it and think that's a good thing. I should want that in my life.
Verse seven, the house of the righteous will stand. You're not supposed to think. Well, it doesn't matter to me if my house stands or not. That would be false humility. You read this and you say, God says the house of the righteous will stand. I want to leave an impact. I want to leave a legacy. I want my house to stand. I want my root to not be moved.
This is just one of God's patterns in creations. If you pursue a right relationship with him, he promises there is a good godly legacy, an impact that's left behind. And by the way, you leave a legacy no matter what. You leave an impact no matter what the choice isn't. Do I leave one or not? The choice is what legacy do I leave?
Notice all these examples. He doesn't give you a third category. He says, here's the righteous, here's the wicked. He doesn't say, here's the people who didn't care about leaving a legacy. You leave an impact. No matter what, and it's primarily about who you are or your relationship to God, not about what you build and accomplish.
Legacy Includes What You Leave Behind
But it also includes what you build or accomplish or your impact. In Chapter 13 verse 22, A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, but the sinner's wealth is laid up for the righteous. Now the inheritance, a good man can leave is far more than money. I. But it includes money because we see the second half of the verse says, the sinner's wealth is transferred to righteous.
So your inheritance, your money, your things that you accomplish, your reputation, all of this is part of what you leave, part of what you give, part of the impact you have on others.
And the Book of Proverbs doesn't tell you. You shouldn't want to have an impact. You shouldn't want to leave any of that stuff. No, it holds before you. This is good. Now, here's God's pattern for how you can leave a good legacy.
Chapter 14, verse 11. The house of the wicked will be destroyed, but the tent of the upright will flourish. I love that contrast. The house that looks all established. That looks like wealth and luxury. The house of the wicked is not going to last, but the tent that looks more temporary, the tent of the upright is actually going to flourish.
So your legacy is more about who you are, you're related to God, but it also includes what kind of impact do you leave, what do you accomplish? Those are good things to pursue.
Legacy Should Motivate You
I am gonna make a statement that might sound a little controversial, and then I'm gonna show you why I say it. You should be motivated by a desire for legacy or honor. I didn't say solely motivated by that, but you should be motivated by it.
I wanna show you three verses. Proverbs 15, verse 33. The fear of the Lord is instruction and wisdom and humility comes before honor.
Go to chapter 18 verse 12. Before destruction, a man's heart is haughty, but humility comes before honor.
Or chapter 29, verse 23. One's pride will bring him low, but he who is lowly in spirit will obtain honor.
Maybe this makes you uncomfortable because you say, wait, I'm not supposed to glorify myself, right? So I'm not supposed to pursue honor. You're not supposed to glorify yourself, but that doesn't mean you're not supposed to desire honor.
If you read those three verses. Do you think God intends for you to read them and say, well, I'm sure don't want any honor. Let's go somewhere else. No. He wants you to say, I do want honor. How do I get it? God's pattern is always humility before honor. We see it in Jesus, the cross before the crown. That's God's pattern.
Man named Ray Orland wrote this paragraph about honor and humility. He said, everybody wants to be, wants to write the next mega hit. Everybody wants to be successful. Nobody wants to be a zero. For a person created in the image of God to be a zero is unbearable and God himself wants to honor us.
I'll pause. He doesn't wanna honor you by putting you on his throne, but he does want to honor his people. Orland continues. Here is the climax of his gospel in Romans eight. Those whom he justified, he also glorified.
That is not our proud overreaching. That is the grace of God. Believer, God is not out to make you mediocre. God is out to make you spectacularly glorious, but he does it through humility.
You should be motivated by honor, but not by lifting yourself up to get it. By pursuing humility and trusting the God whose grace is so great that he doesn't leave you mediocre.
So that one day you hear words of immense honor. Well done, good and faithful servant.
Legacy is Guarded by Your Integrity
In Proverbs 20. Your integrity guards your legacy.
If you say, I wanna leave an impact, how do I do that? 20 verse six. Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find the righteous, who walks in his integrity. Blessed are his children after him. Integrity is the idea of wholeness. It's when your mind and your will and your emotions are all part of, of a whole headed in the same direction.
It's when who you are in front of people matches who you are away from people. It's the kind of peace of wholeness that you get with that when you're the same person with your wife, your kids, your family, your coworkers, your neighbors, your church family, because your whole. You love God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And so you are, you're one.
I thought of a specific example. Several years ago when my mom passed away, I remember one of the things that struck me, and I had never thought about it while she was alive, but I thought it was really easy to know what mom wanted us to do. She wanted us to carry on by loving God and loving each other.
Why was it so easy to know that? To know, here's how I honor my mom By loving God and loving family, especially because she had the integrity that her whole life was about loving God and loving people and loving family, her integrity guarded that legacy. So it wasn't confusing for us to come along and say, how do we live like she wanted us to live? She left an impact because her integrity was seen.
That's the greatest impact you can leave, that you're wholeheartedly for the king of the universe, your savior. We should desire to live such a life of integrity that everybody who comes after us says, I know what they were about.
How Do We Guard Against Pride?
So as we conclude, I wanna say quickly, how do we guard against pride? If you want to have a legacy and an impact, how do we guard against pride?
Example 1: Breaking Perfume on Jesus's Feet
I'll draw your mind to two New Testament stories, and you could go back and look at them. Right before Jesus was betrayed, he's sitting at a table and a woman comes in and breaks a flask of expensive perfume, pours it out on him.
And some around said, what a waste this could have been spent for the poor. Jesus praises her. This is from Matthew 26. He praises her for her worship, and then he says, truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.
Can you imagine hearing that? Jesus says everywhere this is told, people are gonna know this woman did this. Now, when I read that, I don't think I'm supposed to say I'm too humble to want that to be me. I think we're supposed to say, God, let me pour out extravagant worship, and if people see it. And they praise you, and they say, look at that person worshiping. Look at how much they love Jesus. Look at how much they love Jesus. That is an awesome legacy to leave. We should want that.
Example 2: The Servants and the Talents
So we want to guard against praise. Leave a pride, leave a legacy of worship, not a legacy of self praise.
Or the story of the talents in Matthew 25, 3 servants. And. One's given five talents and one gives him two and one's given one. The one who has five goes out and uses it wisely, and he ends up getting five more. The one who has two uses that wisely. He gives two more. The other one doesn't trust that the master will come back and reward. He doesn't seek to leave any impact. He doesn't seek to accomplish anything.
And when the master comes back, the first with five who wisely stewarded took the gifts given and used it well, the master says, well done, good and faithful servant. He receives honor. The one who had two, same thing, well done, good and faithful servant. He receives honor.
The one who had one, who didn't do anything with the gifts he was given, didn't trust the master would reward. He doesn't receive honor. In fact, he receives the opposite. He receives destruction.
So for you individually, seek to leave a godly legacy. Avoiding pride by leaving a legacy of worship, not self praise. Leaving trust in God, in the master who will return, not trust in self, and recognizing that everything you have is a gift from him that you manage. It's not mine to begin with.
For us individually, we should want the honor that God will give, but it comes through humility.
For us as a body, what a beautiful picture of VBS, the legacy that's represented there, the impact that's represented there. It is good for us to celebrate that. It's good for us to celebrate that. We had some VBS helpers who were 12 years old. Who are starting to do that now, and we had some VBS helpers who are a whole lot more than 12 years old, and some of them have been working VBS since before I was born. What a legacy.
That's good. We should celebrate the impact of VBS, of Awana, a Berean Christian school, of all the different things that God has done. Through his people here at 2329 Prosser Road and whatever the address was before that too.
Here's a picture of impact and it's not pride for us to celebrate where God works through us.
What a picture of missions at Berean. If you don't know the history. There is an incredible legacy of people who have given faithfully to mission, who have served on the mission field, and others now who came out from Berean Bible Church who are serving, what a great legacy. And if you wanna know more about that, there's a lot of people here who will tell you about it.
It's good for us to look at that and say, I want the honor God gives to his people. I want to leave an impact for him by serving humbly. It's good for us to say, God, I want your kingdom to go forward in Knoxville with every church that preaches the gospel in this city. I want your kingdom to go forward. I want it to flourish.
It's also good for us to say, God, I want you to do it in me and here. It's good for us to be committed to and invested in God's work where you are and in your life.
God Never Loves You for Your Legacy
I want to end this way. Here's the good news, because you could hear all that and some of you might say, and my legacy's got a lot of bad stuff in it. Sure. The good news is that God never loves you for your legacy.
You're never doing this to earn God's love.
God loves you in spite of your failures and gives you the honor He honors you with the honor he's prepared for you. That's Ephesians two 10. We are his workmanship and God doesn't make mediocre workmanship. We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
The good news is that we don't defeat our pride and then come to Jesus. You could never do it. Instead, you come to Jesus saying, Jesus, I'm proud, but I want to be humble like you Use me. Help me. The best way to find humility is to come to Jesus and let your heart be melted by his beautiful undeserved grace.
And if you humble yourself, if you seek to worship Jesus and manage the gifts he's given, steward, the gifts he's given. Well, if that's the legacy you pursue, God promises that he will honor you.
After humility comes honor. If you want to not waste your life, trust everything on God's promise that says, if I pursue him, my life is not wasted. I will hear God's honor, risk, everything about your life on God's promises, and he will be true to you. I invite you to close your eyes, just respond to God in prayer, and then we'll close.