"Free to be Humble" Ephesians 4: 1-3; Matthew 11: 25-30

The sermon series continues reflecting on how the resurrection free us to be....humble this week.

1. I keep singing to myself the song, "O Lord it's hard to be humble"

2. I am reminded of Jack Stofer the chair of the committee that called me to serve First Presbyterian Church, Mt. Sterling, KY.  I don't think I ever saw him in anything but khaki work pants and a khaki work shirt, except of course on Sundays when he would roll into church in some old suit.

    a. He didn't have much money.  Loved to farm and raise cattle and was still doing it late in his life, even when he knew he would not make much money, but he loved to work with the earth and watch lambs grow.

   b.  He had a beat up old car that seemed to be held together by the rust; the car seldom got out of second grear as he wandered aroudn town and out to his farm.

   c.  One week at church we tried the idea of having people announce prayer concerns, and one of the women announced he was having prostate surgery, and I thought he was going to die right there on the second row of church.

   d. He gave at least a dollar every week in the offering plate in case some child was wathcing him -- he wanted ot make sure kids knew that giving back to God was important.

   e.  When he picked me up from the airport in his wife's car, not quite as beat-up, but still not a car anyone I know would aspire to own, we went to lunch, then he announced that he usually napped after lunch so it was proably best if he didn't drive.  The other woman didn't want to drive, so there I was driving his car, wondering what I had gotten myself into with this committee.

   f.  he raised palnts from the seeds, then would bring a few to our house, plant them, and then water them,take care of them, and then celebrate the wonderful tomatoes Leslie grew.

   f.  You would hardly notice him in a crowd; he'd been born and baptized in the same church; he could get fit in with any group in the church because he had no pretensions and had no concern excpet for the church, its ministry and its members.  No ego.

    g.  If Leslie and I had had a son, his name would have had Jack in in somewhere.

   h. When he died, Leslie and went back for his funeral and the minister's text was Jesus calling Peter the rock and which the church was built, and the minister's sermon was about what it was like to have Jack, the rock of the church, die.

3.  The book of Numbers describes Moses as the most humble man on earth (Numbers 12:3).