You save a humble people, but your eyes are on the haughty to bring them down.
– 2 Samuel 22:28
This is one of many places in the Bible where we see a version of this reality that God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. God saves the humble and his eyes are on the haughty, the prideful, the arrogant to bring them down. And we see this so many places in Scripture.
2 Samuel 22:28 teaches the necessity of humility before God.
God is clearly saying to us on a continual basis, pray for humility, cultivate humility in your life. And humility plays out in so many different ways. There’s no way that in these couple of minutes I could summarize them all. But humility is a posture before God and others that says, ultimately God, whatever is most glorifying to you and good for others.
So humility says, I want your glory, not my own. I want your ways, not my ways. I want your plans to be accomplished, not my plans. Lord, I want your purposes to be accomplished. I want people to see you. I want people to glorify you. And so, yes, that plays out in us giving glory to God when good things happen in our lives.
But it also plays out with us saying, God, I trust that when things don’t work out the way I would plan them, that you are good and you’re wise, and your plans are not just higher, but better than my plans and wiser than my plans or my desires. You think about humility is what we need to fight against sin. Sin at the core is saying, my thoughts are better than your thoughts, oh God, or my desires or my actions. What I want to do is better than what you want me to do.
It’s humility that is at the core of holiness, and it’s pride that’s at the core of sinfulness… Of every sin, pride is at the core of that sin. And when we’re walking through hard days, what does humility say? God, I trust you. God, I honestly would not plan things this way, but I trust again, your plans are better than my plans. So I trust in you, and I’ll follow you, and I will trust you as I walk through this. Even when I don’t understand. Humility says I trust in you and all of that, just in relationship with God.
2 Samuel 22:28 reveals that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.
And then in relationship with others, to love others as ourselves, to put others’ interests above our own, to think of others before ourselves, not to be plotting to gain advantage over others, but instead to plot, to bring advantage to others. Oh, we could keep talking a long time about this, but let’s just pray.
God, we pray for humility. God, we pray for humble hearts before you, knowing that you save humble people. This is really good for us and glorifying to you, and good for others. So God, we pray for the grace you give to the humble. We pray for grace to be humble. Help us by your Spirit in us. Jesus, we praise you for your humility, and we praise you for your presence in us.
So help us, we pray, to walk in a spirit of humility in your Spirit before you, oh God. Help us to flee sin because we’re humbly trusting in you and humbly walking with you. Help us to glorify you in a John 3:30 kind of way. May you become greater in our lives today. May we become less God, we pray you’d help us to humbly love and serve and care for others to look to others’ interests above our own.
Oh God, we pray that you would make us humble, knowing that will be best for us. It will be best for others, and it’ll be best for bringing you glory. God, help us, we pray to walk humbly with you.
Prayer for the Bilala People
And oh God, we humbly intercede right now. Stand in the gap for the Bilala people of Chad—God for 280,000 Muslim men, women, and children speaking the Nava language. God, we pray for the Bilala people of Chad to be reached with the good news of the one who was in very nature God yet did not consider equality with God, something to be grasped but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness and humbled himself and became obedient to death on a cross for their salvation.
God, we pray that the humility of Jesus would spread to the Bilala people of Chad, that your salvation might spread through humble servants. Your church humbly saying, we’ll do whatever you want us to do to get the gospel, the good news of your love to them. Oh God, we pray for humility and the Great Commission, for obedience to however you want to use each of our lives for the spread of the gospel to the Bilala and thousands of other people, groups like them. We pray for humility, oh God, in Jesus’ name according to your Word, in 2 Samuel 22:28. Amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder of Radical, an organization that makes Jesus known among the nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Don’t Hold Back, and How to Read the Bible.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
