Welcome to SuccessfulSavior.org, the ministry of Harmony Primitive Baptist Church in Donaldson, Arkansas. This is Elder Neal Phelan, Jr. preaching in our regular Sunday morning service. If you have your Bibles, I want to turn to the second chapter of the Epistle of the Philippians. This is one of the Apostle Paul's prison epistles. He wrote this from prison. And what I want to read you this morning is one of my favorite passages in all the Bible. I believe it's a very beautiful passage. If you were to try to think of all the beautiful language that we have read In poetry or anywhere else in literature This is a just a beautiful passage of scripture that the Apostle writes, and I'm going to begin reading in verse 5 Let this mind be in you Which was also in Christ Jesus? Who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God? but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and and was made in the likeness of men. And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name, that the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth. and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Now I believe there's coming a day that that's gonna happen. Every knee will bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is the King of kings and Lord of lords. But here's a great encouragement for us this morning that we should do that now. that we should honor the Lord Jesus Christ in our lives. And so this morning, my theme is going to be living a Christ-like life. We talk a lot about being Christians. So if we're a Christian, then we should, to the best of our ability, try to live a life that would have the same attributes as Jesus Christ. Now, as I'm standing before you this morning, I'm not telling you that you are going to live a sinless life, nor that I am or nor that I have. But certainly that's not an excuse for us to say, well, since I can't live a sinless life, then I'm not going to try to even do any better, or to be like the person of Jesus Christ. So if we're talking about being Christ-like, how would you describe that? What does that look like to the world if they were looking at us? What are the attributes that you would say would describe a Christ-like walk in life? Well, I've read to you a passage of Scripture this morning that has a lot of those attributes in it. Now, it's not every one of them. There's a lot about Jesus Christ that's not in these passages of Scripture. As a matter of fact, if we were to try to talk everything about Jesus Christ, we'd have to be here for quite a while. But this morning, I want to look at this passage of Scripture and to examine our own selves in light of this verse that we've just read to you, these verses we've read to you this morning, and consider a Christ-like life. So first thing I want you to notice is the Apostle said, let this mind be in you. Let this mind be in you. Being Christ-like is a mindset. It's something that is right here, begins right here. You've got to be thinking about it. It's something that we have to consider every day in our lives. I mean, we're thinking about things all the time. Our mind's continually running and circling and thinking about one thing or another. But here we find that the Apostle is encouraging us in the Philippian church to have a mind to be thinking about Jesus Christ, who he is, and what he was. And we find this theme several places in the scripture. In Ephesians 4.22, here's the apostle writing to the church at Ephesus, and he's telling them the same thing. He said that you put off concerning the former conversation, the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lust, and we heard about that this morning with our heart, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind. of your mind. Sometimes we're really not thinking, are we? We're not thinking the things we ought to be thinking about. Sometimes we ask the person this question, are you thinking? Are you thinking? So the apostle is encouraging us here in another place that we are to be renewed in the spirit of our mind. In other words, this needs to go on daily. It's a metamorphosis in our own personal lives that we're renewing ourselves every day. We're taking another examination of who we are. What we did yesterday or the day before or last week or last year in our life were to be renewing these thoughts in our mind and renewing our own self, which is true. Sometimes we think, well, we're just in a stagnant life. We are living as we always live every day, every moment. Well, that's not true. You know, if we're Christ-like, then we're trying to renew ourselves daily to be more like Him. A few weeks ago, I preached over in the book of Revelation about the church at Laodicea. And the Laodicean church, the apostle, or Jesus, encouraged them to get some eye salve that they could see themselves as they are. They saw themselves as perfect and in need of nothing. But Jesus said, you're in need of a lot of things as a church. And I encouraged you on that day, and that caused me to start thinking about it. So how do I see myself? Do I see myself the same way that God sees me? Do I see myself the same way that Jesus Christ sees me? Or do I just see myself the way that I want to see me? See, many times in our experience, we see ourselves the way we want to see ourselves. We're pretty well perfect. And there's really not much that we really need to change in our own personal lives. But I can tell you there's not a person here this morning, including myself, that doesn't need to make some changes in our life. We need to renew the spirit of our mind, and we need to be thinking about some things that we can change in our life. If I were to ask you this morning, is there something that you need to change in your life, what would that be? Somebody might say, well, I need to change my bank account. Well, there may be some things like that that you do need to change. But we're talking about spiritual things this morning. Let this kind of mind be in you, not the carnal mind. But we need to be thinking about some things that we can change spiritually in our personal walk with Jesus Christ. Peter put it like this in 1 Peter 1.13. Wherefore, gird up the loins of your mind, Be sober and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lust in your ignorance, but as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation, because it is written, be ye holy, for I am holy. That's a pretty large order, isn't it? But you know what? It is something that God gives us. Be ye holy, for I am holy. That's not something we just wipe off the page and say, well, you know what? I can't be holy. Yeah, you can. You can be holy, or I can tell you that, and so can I. This is a call for a change. This is a call for us to be better people in our personal walk, to make a good examination, of our own selves. So being Christ-like, first of all, is something up here. It's something we gotta think about. It's a mindset. So let's look at some of these things of Jesus Christ as we read this passage. One of the first things it tells us about him is he made himself of no reputation. No reputation. That's quite contrary to the deceitful heart, isn't it? Our cardinal nature is that we want a reputation. We want to be something. We want to be somebody. We want to be well known, well respected. And I believe we should be respected as God's people in that regard. But being no reputation, if you look up the word no reputation is one word from the Greek and it means to make empty. It means to obey or neutralize, neutralize that carnal spirit, to obey ourselves, to be no reputation. It's contrary to our natural thinking and we look all over the world today and a lot of people think they're nobody if they don't have a reputation. You know, you gotta be somebody or you're nobody, right? If you're not the biggest and the best, you're nobody. I mean, you may be exactly what you're supposed to be, but you're not happy with that because you're not somebody. You know, Jesus Christ never was trying to be somebody. He was just trying to be who He was. Right? That's the best thing you can be and I can be. Just be what God made you. Most people who become somebody, a lot of people who become somebody did it because they weren't trying to be somebody. They were just being themselves and they became somebody. That's the best kind of people. But you see it in sports. Everybody wants to be the best basketball player. They want their name on television. You see it in American Idol, the film industry, magazines, models. They want to be the most beautiful. And even in everyday life, you see people who want to be, they want to kill the biggest deer. I'm gonna kill the biggest deer, I'll be somebody. I wanna catch the biggest fish. Out on the golf course, it's very prevalent out there, I'm playing golf and a lot of these guys I play golf with, I mean, they're really, there's a lot of pride on the golf course, I'll tell you what. And so I'm out there, I'm playing golf and somebody hit one out of bounds and well, He found the ball, but it really wasn't his ball, but it didn't go out of bounds because he wants that score to look good at the end of the day. They want to be somebody at the end of the day. At the end of the day, they're all sitting around talking about what they did, and my score was this, my score was this. I had three birdies, and they're just talking about they want to be somebody. They want to be somebody. Some of them, I'm talking about some of my friends on the golf course. I hope they don't hear this message. It is so apparent though when you get to looking at it. And so at the end of the day, you know, just the score they write down is really not the score they had. Let me just put it like that. But you know, there's a thing about everybody wants a reputation. And this is, you know, that's part of pride is that we want to be somebody. You know, we even see it in preachers. I've seen it in preachers. I mean, I have to admit, you know, sometimes you want to preach a good sermon. You want everybody to walk away and say, that guy really preached a good sermon. No, that's not what you want people to say. I want people to say, I had an experience with Jesus Christ. You know, I got something from the Word of God. Something caused me to, be humble to feel closer to the Lord or something like that. But I hear preachers all the time wanting to, they want to preach the biggest, best sermon. That's some of the things you have at some of the larger meetings. Comes down to a preaching contest. Preachers are all wanting to preach the best sermon so that when people leave they can say, that brother really preached a big sermon. We find even the apostles themselves wanted to have a reputation. It was at the night of the Lord's Supper when Jesus Christ was going to be crucified the next morning. And he was telling the apostles what was going to happen to him. I think it went in one ear and out the other. They did not hear he was saying that I'm going to be crucified. But they got into an argument over which one was going to be the greatest in the new kingdom. They wanted a reputation of being the greatest in the kingdom. I love the spirit of John the Baptist when we read about him. Jesus said he was a great man. And towards the latter part of his life, he pointed to the person of Jesus Christ. And he said, he must increase and I must decrease. Well, that's the way it is here in this church. You've got a new pastor. He needs to increase, I need to decrease. That's my place. We have to learn who we are and what we're supposed to do in all personal calling. We don't want a reputation. We want Jesus Christ to have the reputation. So Jesus Christ made himself of no reputation. That is a very Christly attribute in our own personal walk. We have to be careful because we find ourselves wanting to be something that is not pleasing to the Lord. Well, the next thing we read about Jesus Christ in this passage of scripture that's very important to every one of us. He made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant. A servant. A servant is a very Christly attribute. Somebody might say, well, Jesus Christ was King of kings and Lord of lords. How can a king be a servant? Because he chose to be a servant. He was a willing servant. That was what he wanted to do before the world was ever spoken into existence. Jesus Christ entered into a covenant with the Father and the Holy Ghost and said, I will serve. I will go into the world and I will become flesh and I will suffer for the sins of those that the Father gives me, the elect family of God. My friends, this morning, if you are one of God's children, you've been served, well served, by the King of kings and Lord of lords upon the cross of Calvary, when He died to pay for your sins. He was a willing servant who loved His Father. If you look up the word servant in the Greek, it means a voluntary slave. We're supposed to be voluntary slaves. of Jesus Christ. If you look in the Old Testament, you'll find that there were servants in the Old Testament that served their masters. After seven years of service, they could go free. But there were some, they made a law for some, that if they loved their master, then they could make a choice and become a willing servant. And they would take an awl and bore it through the ear and put a earring in the ear and that earring meant that this person loved their master and they wanted to serve him for the rest of their life and they became a willing servant to the master. And that's what you and I should be to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Anybody that's in the military or that's ever served in the military is a servant. We've got some people in the military today. They have volunteered to serve our country. My father was a servant in the military. He was in the Air Force. He flew B-17. He flew 35 missions over Germany. He was a pilot. He was a willing servant for our country. Why did he do that? Because he loved our country. And he was willing to give his life for our country. That's what a servant is. A servant is a loving person. A person that loves and is willing to serve other people. Mothers are servants. Mothers love their children. And they want to serve their children. They want to take care of their children. They want to feed their children. They want to clothe their children. They work to clothe and care for their children. Children should understand that. They serve their husbands. Husbands should serve their wives and their children, their families. But we, as Christ's servants, should be willing to serve Him in His house. After all, did He not serve us upon the cross? Is it a small thing that the Lord would ask us to serve Him in His church? to do whatever we can to see that the church prospers for the next generation, that there'll be a light in the very dark world. We are soldiers of Jesus Christ. We are serving. We're willing soldiers of Jesus Christ to serve Him, to spend our time and our effort in His kingdom and for His service. See, that's a Christlike attribute. When you serve the Lord Jesus Christ in His house, You're exemplifying the person of Jesus Christ. We're not going to do anything we're not called to do. We're not here to make a reputation. We're just here to fulfill whatever God has called us. Ministers of the gospel. We're servants. Jesus said, let he that is greatest of all, greatest of you, become your servant. We become your servant. We serve in the fact that we would preach to you. We would feed the flock of God. We would study the Word of God. We would spend our time that we can give you something from the Word of God. We try to encourage to. We try to counsel. Bury your dead. Marry your children. Those are all sacrificial acts and works of service that the ministers do. But we are all to serve one another. The Apostle Paul encourages every one of us to humble ourselves and to serve one another in God's house. Now in our lives, we're all going to be serving something. or someone. We can serve mammon or money. I know people that spent their whole life serving money. All they did all their life was try to be rich. And then when they died, they carried nothing with them. As I think Dan mentioned last Sunday, you never see a hearse, you know, carrying money behind it. A lot of times we serve whatever sport we like. People serve sports. They serve this. They serve that. In the meantime, we're just serving ourselves. What is it I want to do every day? But you know, a servant doesn't think of himself all the time, do they? If we're servants, then we're thinking of somebody other than our own personal self. And that's part of the problem with a lot is it's self. We're serving our own self. And that is not rewarding. I think a lot of people are depressed today because they've never served anybody but their own self. They've never cared for another person. They've never tried to help another person. It's all about their own self. And if we spend our lives just serving our own selves, we've got a very empty life. It's very empty. That's right. It's not fulfilling. And at the end of our days, there's nothing that we can look back on and say, you know, I think I have done something good in this life. I've made a mark. I've done something right for the Lord Jesus Christ. When they got over to the land of Canaan, Joshua asked this question. It seems unto you, and if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom you will serve. Were the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood or the gods of the Amorites, and whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." You know, that's in a lot of people's houses. I see it on some placards they have when you enter their front door. They're not ashamed of the Lord Jesus Christ. Are you ashamed of the Lord Jesus Christ this morning? When you pray, do you say, in Jesus' name I pray, Do people, your friends, know that you are a Christian? Do you let people know with that awl in your ear that you are His servant? See, that's just a figure, that awl in the ear is just a figure of our outward life. That other people know that we love the Lord Jesus Christ and that we serve Him. At the cross, He was our servant. He became obedient unto death, even. to the death of the cross. He was an obedient servant to the Father for what he came to do. I mean, why would we not want to be his servant? If we think about everything he's done for us, why would we not want to bore that hole in our ear and wear that earring to let people know that we are a willing servant? Well, the next thing we find about Jesus Christ And being found in fashion as a man, that's quite a statement right there. The king of kings and lord of lords was found in fashion as a man. That'd be like me becoming a dog. Are you getting the picture? Getting the picture? He humbled himself. Humility. We find humility in the person of Jesus Christ. That's another Christ-like attribute. Humility. The word humble, if you look it up, it means a condition of the heart. It's a good condition. Now we can have some bad heart conditions. Dan talked to you about the heart this morning of man, it's deceitful, it's wicked above all things who can know it. Heart's a hard thing to know. It is a hard thing to know. Did you ever think about it? Is my heart deceiving me? The heart? The heart? Humility is a condition of the heart. It means to depress, humiliate, abase, and bring low. Whoa. People that do that are sick, aren't they? Those are sick people. No. Jesus said, I will leave in the midst of thee a poor and afflicted people, and they shall trust in the name of the Lord. I was recently doing an online Bible study with the church. They read the book I wrote, Six Words Satan Hates. And so they've been reading that book as a Bible study in their church, and they wanted to have an online Bible study with me, and I said, okay. So they were going through the book with me and I was really humbled myself by what they said about the book. They got a real blessing out of it. But one young person there made this comment. He said, as I was reading that book and you were talking about Job and how that he was going through the trial and how he afflicted himself and he was very humble about it. He said, it made me realize that we are living in a society today that people don't want anybody to know that they're suffering. And that's true. If you're not happy all the time, if you're not just on cloud nine, and having a good time, a big party all the time, people think there's something wrong with you. You might even think there's something wrong with yourself when it's the Lord that's working in your heart and humbling you. If you're a child of God, you're going to be depressed from time to time. That's right. You're going to feel your sin. You're going to be sorrowful for it. You're going to see this world for what it is. It's a despicable place. It is. It's a fallen world. Never going to have world peace. We got a bunch of sinners living down here. How can you get it's hard to have peace in sometimes in your own home. You got two sinners living together husband and wife. Let's start at home. Okay. Let's get all the kids straight. Okay, let's make them all walk the walk and talk. Then we'll work on the world. All right. Now we David was humbled many times in his life, and he talked about walking through the valley of the shadow of death. David talked about living in the tents of Keter. Those are black tents, just sitting in that black tent. He talked about times that his bed wasn't long enough, he couldn't sleep at night. You know, David went through trials in his life. The reason I'm telling you that is because the Lord has a way of humbling us, doesn't He? Humility is something that we should work on in our own lives, but the Lord can humble us. But did you know that you can humble yourself? James said, humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and he shall lift you up. Humble yourself. Somebody might say, well, you know, I really haven't wanted to be doing that. I've been wanting to lift myself up. I've been wanting to make myself happy. I think I'll watch another Netflix tonight and make myself happy. No, I'm gonna get my Spotify music on. I'm gonna turn it on and I'm gonna make myself happy. I'm going to the mall. I'm gonna buy something and make myself happy. Or a party. Well, the Bible doesn't tell you to do any of that. It says, humble yourself. Did you know there's more peace and humility than there is in pride? You'll find a greater peace in your own personal life in humility. Humble yourself in the sight of God. Peter says in 1 Peter 5 and 6, Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time. Humble yourself. You know, I was reading through Proverbs recently and it was talking about pride. and humility. Did you know that an humble person is the only person that can really be taught the Word of God? Now you can teach them math and physics and things like that, a prideful person. But a person that's gonna learn from the Word of God or from the pulpit must be an humble person. Because they can be taught. In Proverbs 9 and 8 it says, Let me back up to seven. He that reproveth a scorner, that's a prideful person, giveth to himself a shame, and he that rebuketh a wicked man, giveth to himself a blot. Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee. Rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee. A lot of times you reprove people in God's house, and they become angry with you because they're full of themselves and pride. but an humble person receives it as the word of God and sees the change that they need to make in their own personal walk. Give instruction to a wise man and he will be yet wiser. Teach a just man and he will increase in learning. Proverbs 17 and 10, I'll give you one more. A reproof entereth more into a wise man than a hundred stripes into a fool. An humble man can be taught, he can be reproved, and he can be rebuked. So we're encouraged to humble ourselves. Humility is the opposite of pride. Even though Jesus Christ was God, He was humble. Isn't that an amazing thing? Humility also carries with it the thought of somebody that's meek. You know, Jesus was meek, but that doesn't mean that he was Mr. Pliable, since he was meek riding upon the foal of a colt. Remember meekness? Jesus Christ was meek. The word meek means power under control. Somebody possessing all power in heaven and earth was down here, yet humble and meek. I mean, you think about a jet plane. We were flying the other day across the skies, and I thought, what if this thing had no control? Where would we go? But you see, it's under control, so you can accomplish a lot. Even in our own personal lives, we may have a lot of power, or a lot of ranking or a lot of whatever. But if it's not under control, then nothing is accomplished. Jesus Christ accomplished a great deal. He was power under control. Let me give you another one here. I have two more. The next thing that we read about Jesus Christ is that he gave his life. He lived a sacrificial life. Now this is another attribute of Christ that many times in our own personal lives that we don't think about. We're going to sacrifice something. Sacrifice. I don't want to sacrifice anything. I don't want to have to get out of my comfort zone. I don't want to give anything up. I've got. I want to live my life like I want to. We were talking this morning on the way to church about a golf event, and Marilyn said, well, why are you not in that event? And I said, well, it's today, it's Sunday. I'm going to church. It's a sacrifice. No, it's not. I'd rather be here than playing golf. You see, it's really not a sacrifice. It just depends upon where your heart is. It's really not a sacrifice to a mother to take care of their children. It's where her heart is. That's what she wants to do, isn't it? to love her children, to care for those kids, grandkids. But it is a sacrifice, because she could be out on the Riviera, or down at the lake, or somewhere else. You see, the way this thing, sacrifice, works, it has to do with this heart thing, it's our love for the things that we want to be doing. In Romans 12 and 1, the apostle says, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God. That's a pretty, he's begging by the mercies of God. that you present your bodies a living sacrifice unto God, which is your reasonable service. He's talking about being in God's house on Sunday morning, by the way, in case we need an interpreter. Present your bodies. Somebody might say, well, you know, I send a little check every now and then. You know, God would rather have you than your money. People somehow, they're kind of like Walmart. They throw some money out there and have an advertisement and do something for some people to make themselves look good. God says, I'm calling upon you to make this sacrifice. I made one for you, now what about you? My love for you was something that I did willingly as a servant and I wanted to. You didn't even ask me to do it. You weren't even there when I did it. But how does that affect you this morning? To present your body, a living sacrifice unto God, which is your reasonable service. Suppose that Jesus Christ, upon the cross, just gave a little money up there and didn't present his own body, a living sacrifice. Where would you be today? Just toss a little money out there. You'd still be in your sins. He suffered. He gave his body a willing sacrifice. The word sacrifice is mentioned 29 times in the New Testament. It's a pretty amazing thing. It's when we offer something to God or some act of service for somebody else that is of value. Did you know that some people will never be baptized and join the church because they don't want to make a sacrifice? Right. That's right. They don't want to be committed. Right. They're selfish. Self-centered, full of pride, all the opposite things of Jesus Christ. Sacrifice has a mind for others as opposed to being self-centered. The things that we give to the Lord when we make an offering You bring and you put something in the plate up here, again, in case you don't understand. That's a sacrifice, isn't it? They brought sacrifices to the temple to offer to God. They brought their lambs. They brought their heifers. Something that was of value to them that they could have used to buy something else. They gave willingly, you guys, and they might have said, well, you know, he's just gonna burn it up on that altar. You know, we can think of all kinds of reasons not to sacrifice, can't we? Those priests are gonna take that lamb, and they're just gonna burn it up on the altar. Why would I, I'm not gonna take that up there. I'm gonna go to the store and get me a new gun, or a new fishing pole, or a new purse, or a new car. But you see, sacrifice means that we're doing something willingly in the service of God for Him, for everything that He has done for us. I mean, after all, how did you get that sheep anyway? God gave it to you. None of us would have anything this morning if God didn't give it to us. Somebody was asking the question one time when the preacher was talking about giving at the church. And they said, well, what part is God's and what part is mine? What part should I give to God? And the preacher gave the right answer. It's all God's. That's right. We don't own anything. Anything you've got today, you got it by the blessing of God. Amen. You might say, well, I work to get that. Well, I'll tell you something. There's some people that haven't had the ability to work. That's right. There are some people that don't have a mind enough to be able to hold down a job. But you do. Because God gave it to you. We need to start thinking about where our blessings come from. As we give to the Lord, our giving should be sacrificial. It means that we should have to do without something that we could have otherwise had. What would you do without the Internet? or cable TV. I mentioned the other day that some people pay more to see American Idol than they do to come to God's house. To have a subscription to Dish, or DirecTV, or to Hulu, or to whatever else is out there. Isn't that something that people would give more to that than they would to God? The people that are corrupting America They're giving more money to that than they are to the service of the Lord to bring to His house. What kind of people have we become? No, you're not going to do without that. Nobody's going to do without that. Of course, nobody knows what you really give at the church. But God does. Our giving should be sacrificial. It should be cheerful. God loveth a cheerful giver. And it should be consistent. Paul said on the first day of the week. If you're not presenting your body a living sacrifice unto God, if you're not in His house, how could you be sacrificing or even making an offering unto God? Dan talked about being covetous. I think that's the reason some people don't come to church. They don't want to have to give anything to the service of the Lord. Every person that forsakes God's house is a covetous person. I don't mind saying that from the pulpit because it's true. Church is going on over there. I've heard people say, I love the church. My spirit's over there with the church. They're not supporting the church. It wouldn't be here if you left it up to them, if everybody did that. But they're covetous. They got money for cruises, and they got money to go on all this other stuff. To them, that's more important to them than God and His house. Jesus asked the Pharisees about some things. And he said, let the unrighteous mammon receive you into everlasting habitation. In other words, let that money get you to heaven. It's not going to. I think there's some people that think they're going to heaven, but they're not. They're not. Let this mind be in you. One other thing, and this is my last one this morning, Jesus Christ did give himself an offering. But all through his life while he was here, he went about doing good, didn't he? He cared for other people. That's a part of being Christ-like, is having a caring heart towards other people. Jesus Christ went about doing good, he healed the sick, the lame, those that couldn't speak, Those that had diseases that the doctors couldn't cure, he raised the dead. He went about doing good. He cared for other people. When Lazarus died, he went to the home of Mary and Martha. And it's said the shortest verse in the Bible tells the most about Jesus Christ. Jesus wept. He had a genuine care for sinners. That's an amazing thing, Jesus wept. What about you this morning? Have you ever helped anybody else? Have you ever helped a struggling mother? Have you ever helped someone that didn't have a mother or father? The homeless? The Bible encourages to help the homeless, the widows. There's a lot of organizations around us that you can, I'm not gonna say which ones to give to, but I'm just saying there are places, if you're thinking, if this mind is in you, If you're thinking about somebody other than our own selves, then we're going to look around, and we're going to find some other people that we can help. You might say, well, the church gives some things. Well, Jesus didn't just say the church should do it. We're to do those things personally. The story that Jesus Christ gave of the Good Samaritan, and by the way, he was telling the Jews about it, And the Jews felt like the Samaritans were not godly people. But he said there was a Samaritan and he was telling the story about the man that had been overtaken with thieves and wounded and the good Samaritan, and the Pharisees came by, the Jews came by and they ignored the man. But the Samaritan came by and put him on his donkey and carried him to a place and gave money to take care of him. And he said, which one of these men is a good Samaritan? love the most. Which one is a picture of a godly Christ-like person, basically is what he's saying. And they said, well, I suppose the Samaritan was. I suppose. The Samaritan took care of the person that came across him in his path. You don't have to go out and look for somebody. You can. But I believe that most of the time, in our personal experience, that God will bring people into our lives that we will come across that we can help. You might say, well, you know, I help my children, and I help my grandchildren. Well, you should. But see, this goes beyond that. You're really just helping yourself when you do that. We're supposed to help other people around us to be Christ-like. Have you ever helped anybody? Ever given anybody any money? Ever given anybody any food? I'm not telling you to help everybody on the street corner. I'm not telling you to enable people that have a problem with drugs and alcohol. I'm talking about people that you really know. I would hate to say that I left planet Earth and I never helped another person. What a sad testimony that would be for any of us. Let this mind be in you. which was also in Christ Jesus. Let us think about being more like the person of Jesus Christ. I appreciate your attention. Amen. A little food for thought in that sermon, I would say, and several things struck a chord with me. You made the comment that people might say, I love the church and aren't there. I'm there in spirit, right? You might hear people who are trying to take that angle on it. Well, apply that to parenting. I love my children. I'm never there. I'm there in spirit. And I truly love my children and how they develop is very important to me. But you're never there. Right? Nobody would think that's a reasonable approach. But you get into the domain of religion and people start saying, Well, I guess you could say something like that. If you applied it to golf, I love golf. Golf is very important to me. But you never played golf ever. You never showed up. You never Worked hard, never went to the driving range. It would be hard to sustain the idea that golf was really important to you because there must be a whole bunch of other things that were way more important. See, if you apply some of these ideas just in other areas of your life, you would never accept them, but yet people import them into religion and everybody steps back. Well, I guess that's true. You can worship God on a bass boat. Well, I don't doubt that that's true, by the way. You can worship God on a bass boat. But you're supposed to be forsaking not the assembling of yourselves together also, right? So Sunday morning is not the time. So that was, I love that observation. You made mention of the young person who says we live in a world where you're not supposed to let people know you're suffering, right? There was a deodorant commercial years ago that said, never let them see you sweat. You remember that one? I don't remember what the deodorant was, but I remember that quote. It's like, don't let them see the bad side of what's going on. Don't let them see that. Never let them see you sweat. Well, I guess today it's more like never let them see you suffer. And you see that sort of image, the fake image out there in social media. A lot of what you see on social media is not really true. I was talking to Trent and Darby down in the basement, and we're friends on Facebook, and I had never met Darby, but I had seen her face on Facebook, and the way I had seen her was because they were dating and they had a picture of them next to the Eiffel Tower. So that image is kind of in my mind. So I recognized her immediately, and I suppose they were there. I'm not doubting you were there. But I saw a story the other day that was exposing Instagram influencers. And they were showing all these pictures of people taking pictures of themselves in all these exotic locations. And they were pointing out that a lot of these people are not even in those locations. They put a backdrop behind them and make it look like, you know, like they would take a picture and it would be the Eiffel Tower and then it would be Big Ben and then they would be in, they'd just be all over the world, right? And they're showing these pictures. And then you find out that the pictures aren't even real. They don't want people to know they're just sitting in an apartment somewhere trying to live a normal life, trying to scrape together an existence. They got to make everybody think they're having this fabulous life because they don't want anybody to know that they're suffering, right? That's kind of the world that gets put out there. We live in a world where it's not valuable to admit, you know, I have a life that has some suffering in it. And you live in a world that doesn't preach Christ-likeness. You don't see the world going out there saying, you need to cultivate humility in your life. You need to think about serving others. You need to think about sacrifice. You need to think about being someone of no reputation. You don't put fake Instagram pictures of yourself on top of the Empire State Building if you're thinking, I want to be someone of no reputation. You're trying to build a reputation that's not even true. We're not called upon to be any of those things. were called upon to be holy. And this is one of the verses that Brother Sonny put before you. As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance. See, there's that carnal heart, right? That's the follow your heart piece. The deceitful and wicked and unknowable heart of Jeremiah 17.9, that's the part you're supposed to be trying to push yourself away from. and not following that and conforming yourself to that. Be obedient and it says, but as he which hath called you is holy, Be ye holy in all manner of conversation because it is written, be ye holy for I am holy. Holiness means being set apart. And there's two ways that the Bible talks about it. The first is positionally and legally. Before the throne of divine justice, you stand perfectly holy before God. That's what Christ did on your behalf. He has made you perfectly holy from the standpoint of eternal judgment. But the Bible speaks about holiness in another way, and that's in the ethical and practical sense, which is how are you living your life? Are you living as an obedient disciple of Christ? Pursuing holiness in that sense in your ethic, in your day-to-day practice? Or are you not? And we are not only legally and positionally holy, We are called upon in the Bible to be obedient disciples of Christ and to be holy because God is holy. Thank you for listening to SuccessfulSavior.org, the ministry of Harmony Primitive Baptist Church. This has been Elder Neal Phelan, Jr. preaching from one of our regular meetings. Come and join us as we worship God in the simplicity of Christ every Sunday morning at 416 North Hall Street in Donaldson, Arkansas. At Harmony, we don't have many things that are so common in the religion of our day, but we do have a successful Savior. We invite you to come and see.