Exhortation, Fourth Sunday After Easter

For many of you, this will be your last Sunday in Moscow for a while. You have spent the past year studying the Bible, or learning music, or reading great books, or honing your rhetorical skills, or writing a thesis.

And as you did that, you may have spent the last year gradually, almost imperceptibly, puffing yourself up with your own knowledge. You may have also been gradually, almost imperceptibly, developing a contempt for everything that did not originate in Moscow, including your parents and your home church.

That is a foolish way to have spent the last nine months.

It’s foolish, first, because any contempt for other believers, particularly contempt for your parents, is sin.

It’s foolish, second, because God is bigger than Moscow. We’re very grateful for all the Lord is doing here, but there are plenty of other places in the world where God is busily at work. Go home expecting to find the same mighty God working in your home church and in your family.

It’s foolish, finally, because pride is folly. Paul tells us to be suspicious of knowledge in particular because “knowledge puffs up.” Pride is the antithesis of discipleship. As we’ll learn again in the sermon this morning, God the Son became a child for our salvation. He humbled Himself, and He calls us who follow Him to do the same.