It is such a joy to be together as the people of God. Lord, we don't know what you have in store for us, just like I'm sure those sisters didn't know what you had in store for them. And yet, Lord, we know that whatever you're working out in us and through us, that it's good. It's going to be glorious. that your name will be praised from it. And so, Lord, we just want to be attentive to your ear. We want to be submissive to your spirit. We desire, Lord Jesus, to honor you in the way that we live, the way that we talk, the way that we represent you to a world that doesn't know you. Lord, would you help us now to understand your word, to be able to apply it and to be able to look at it and see what you're trying to communicate to us? And we know that we can understand, Lord, what you tell us when your spirit opens up the scripture. And so I pray that you would do that for us, and Jesus, that you would be honored in all that we say, all that we do, and how we respond to your word. And I ask that, Lord, in your name, in the authority of your name, the name that's above every name, Jesus, amen. All right, I appreciate Trent being willing to read the Scriptures this morning and pray. As I look at Philippians, we're going to try to work our way through these verses. And I want you to understand that as Paul's writing this, he's writing to a group of people that he's planted the church. We've already talked about that. He's cared deeply about them and they've cared deeply for him. They have constantly sent support to him as he has been on his different missionary travels. They've sent support to him and now he's in Rome. He's a prisoner in Rome and they're, He's writing back to them to encourage them and also to kind of let them know what's going on with him. He's gonna write or let them know more later on. But he's just finished up in chapter two, the verses five through 11, speaking about Jesus. And he's talked about, let this mind, this way of thinking, this attitude, this posture of your heart be in you that was in Christ Jesus. who even though he's in the form of God, he didn't think of robbery or something to be grasped to hold on to that. But instead he, what Jesus did was he, Christ took on the flesh and he became a man and he humbled himself and he humbled himself even to the point of the death on a Roman cross. And so remember, this is written not just for the Philippians then, but it's written for you, it's written for me, it's written for every generation. that the attitude of our heart should be like Jesus. Now, you know as well as I do, if you've been a Christian for any length of time, you know that you can't be like Jesus without Jesus living in you by his spirit. We're not supposed to imitate Christ. I know that there's a wonderful book that was written and there's a lot of spiritual truth in it called The Imitation of Christ. And there are, in a sense, there's ways that we live like he did, imitation. But sometimes imitation can be only outward. Sometimes you can have something that's an imitation of something else, but it's not the real thing inside. You can have a an artist rendering of something that's like the Mona Lisa, you can have somebody paint the Mona Lisa, but it won't ever be the Mona Lisa. And actually the painting itself won't be the Mona Lisa. So there's this idea that we're supposed to have the attitude of Christ and live like Christ, but we can't live like Him without Him. You can't just pretend to be a Christian. You can't live the Christian life without Christ who is life living in you. And so sometimes that gets muddled. Sometimes we wanna be representatives of Christ and we wanna let him be seen, but we forget that we're doing a poor job if we're just trying to imitate him. Because he doesn't want us to be imitations of him. He wants to live his life in us. He wants his glory to reside in clay vessels. He wants the beauty of who he is to shine out of who we are so that people see that it's not us, it's him. Because if it's just us trying to imitate Christ, it will be a poor imitation. It won't shine anything except for our flaws. So in that previous section of of Philippians, where he's talked about this idea of Jesus humbling himself. And because of his humiliation, his willing humiliation, you know, you can be humiliated. How many of you have ever been humiliated, but you really didn't want to be humiliated? You know what I'm saying? And I think we get humiliated the most by who? Our kids when they're out in public, right? You know, They do something, it's like, I can't believe it. How many of you identify with that? Yeah. So it's one thing to be humiliated by somebody else, but when you take on an attitude of humility and willingly humble yourself, God does something in that, just like he did with Jesus. It says that therefore God has highly exalted him, lifted him up, given him a name, given him a reputation, given him an outstanding character to be seen. He has the character already, but what God does is then he lets his character be seen for who he really is. He's God. And because of that, every knee is gonna bow to Jesus. Every tongue is gonna confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God. Every tongue, I don't care where it is. And that's what Paul's saying. Now, because of that, because of who Jesus is, now he gives some instruction to the church. Therefore, my beloved, and see that therefore points back, therefore, because of what he said about Jesus. Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence. Now, Paul is saying something here about obedience. And if I go back, I'm trying to find it here. I won't find it because I'm trying to find it. Nevermind, I won't go back. As you have always obeyed, He says, not only in my presence, but now in my absence also. How many of you can remember doing things because you were in the presence of somebody else that you would have not done had they not been there? Especially I usually as children, but how many adults you would do something because somebody is there that you wouldn't normally do if they were absent or You don't do something because they're there that you wouldn't do if they were not around. How many of you would do something in secret when nobody's watching that you would absolutely not do if there was one other person that saw what you were doing? It's funny how we do or don't do things depending upon who sees. But the thing that always comes to my mind is that God always sees. That God is there all the time and he sees everything and he knows everything. He sees every, not just what we do, but he sees why we do it. You know, we're poor in one area. We're poor at judging motives. All of us judge motives. How many of you have judged motives? Your wife, your husband says something to you, or your teacher says something to you. Somebody says something, I know why you did that. I know why you said that. or you see somebody doing something that you're not even related with, and I know why they did that. We are great at reading hearts falsely. Falsely. We don't know why people do what they do. Only God does. So when Paul's talking about this thing is, you've always obeyed. When I've been present, you've always obeyed. But now that I'm not, do it even more. Do it even more. Now, I think Paul is trying to say something in these verses that we really don't see, but I think there's an underlying tone of something. And what that tone is, and let me share it with you, is that Paul is trying, I believe, to wean them off of him. What I mean by that is this. When Paul's there, they're strong. When Paul was there with them, they could ask him questions. They had like a lexicon of all that they wanted to ask. Any question, a theological question, anything they wanted to ask, a moral question. When Paul was there, they could just say, hey Paul, what do you think about? But there comes a time in every person's life where you have to cut the apron strings. You know, if you're a parent, you know what I'm talking about. Your kids are there, they can ask you a question, but there comes a time when your kids have to stand on their own. That your faith can't be their faith any longer. They have to take the faith themselves. They have to embrace the truth themselves. They have to be able to reason out with their mind and let their spirit resonate with God's spirit, that you can't do that for them. You can't make them to believe that Jesus is the Lord. You can't make them obey any longer. When they're little, you can wrestle them into obedience, but there comes a time where you can't do that. That they have to be willing to embrace Jesus for who he is as the Lord. They have to be willing to lay down their own rights because he has bought all of those rights with his death and his resurrection. And I think what Paul is trying to do in this place is he's trying to say, look, you're always obedient to me. When I've been there, you've always, but now that I'm absent, I want you to understand some things. You need to learn how to walk on your own, whether I'm there or not there, because I'm not always going to be there. Now, sometimes when Sherry and I are doing, and I've shared this with you as a congregation, a lot of times when we're doing either counseling with parents, or we're teaching on parenting. We try to bring out this aspect of the job of a parent. What's the job of a parent? Can anybody answer me besides my wife? What's the job? My daughter. What's the job of a parent? Yeah, you're in the family. That doesn't count. The job of a parent is to work yourself out of a job. Exactly. Your job as a parent is to teach your child or children what life is all about. What is God like? What are people like? What's good, what's not good? How do you make wise decisions? How do you build relationships? How do you guard those relationships? How are you faithful in your commitments? Whether it's time commitments or money commitments, Your job as a parent is to work yourself out of a job so when you are not around, when you no longer are there, your child can fully handle life without you, under God. to teach them to live under the Lordship of Jesus to where, yeah, they love you, they'll always respect you, but the fact is, if you're not there, they can go on in life under the leadership of the Holy Spirit and they can be a glory to God and they can have a fulfilling life in Christ. And I think what Paul is dealing with here is he's trying to cut the apron strings in some sense, saying, look, you're always obedient when I was there, but now I'm not there. Be obedient now. Do what you know is right. And you're going to see this in the next verse or so. So what he says, he says, now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. What he's saying is you have to learn how to work out what God has worked in your life. God has worked, now he's not talking about working for salvation. We wanna be clear on that. If you think Paul is saying, you know, you gotta do certain things to be saved. He's not saying that at all. Because he's already spoken about their salvation earlier in this book. So he's not talking about working for or working to attain your salvation. but instead work out what is already inside of you. You've received Christ. You're a new creation in Christ. Now, learn how to live that life out. And he says, learn to live it out. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Now, when I looked at that fear and trembling, what does he mean? Is he talking about being afraid of God? Is he talking about shaking, like trembling? Is that what he's talking about? I don't think it is, because if you look, actually I wrote down some words that I had read over and over again, and I wanna just read them to you just the way I read them, so you can kinda get a picture of this. It says, these two words, fear and trembling, describe the anxiety of the person who distrust his own ability. You have to hear what it's saying. It's the anxiety of a person that distrust their own ability. You know what that means? It means what Paul said in 1st Corinthians. Let's go to 1st Corinthians for just a second. 1st Corinthians chapter two. You'll see this. I'll try to explain it in depth a little bit further, but 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 3. Now, a lot of times we read things in the Scripture and we don't have the background, we don't have the sense of why he's saying what he's saying. There's a lot of times when things are said in the Scripture that are based upon something that was said earlier in the Scripture, or something that happened earlier in the Scripture. Paul is writing to Corinth in 1 Corinthians, a church that he planted, but he's just come from another place. If you looked at the book of Acts, you would see that he was in, in the book of Acts, he was in Athens, and he was at a place called Mars Hill. Okay, and all the Greek philosophers would gather at Mars Hill, and they'd share all their ideas of, you know, what's God like, and what's the universe like, and all these weird philosophies would come up, the Epicureans and the Stoics, and all the different philosophers. And Paul was there, and what he had done is he said to them, as he's passing through, the Acropolis, where all these different gods, these figures were, and where the philosophers gathered, they had a god there, they had a statue, and the name of it was To the Unknown God. Now that's To the Unknown God. Basically what they were doing is they were worshipping a deity because they didn't want to take a chance that they would miss a deity. That's the problem when you got a lot of gods, you may miss one, he might get mad at you or something. So they have this statue to the unknown God, and Paul is walking by and as he sees this, he says to the people there, he says, I see that you're all very religious. And he's talking about all the different statues and idols. And he says, well, now let me tell you about this unknown God. And he starts to preach to him, Jesus and the resurrection. And they were real open to him until he got to the resurrection. And then all of a sudden they kind of cut him off. It's like, well, we'll hear later about this guy. But Paul had been there and he had very little success when he was in Athens. Now, I don't know all that took place there. I know that there were a few converts, but not very many. And what he tried to do is he tried to reason from their vantage point as far as where they were, instead of just taking the Scripture straight to them. Following Athens, he leaves Athens and then he goes to Corinth. And when he comes to Corinth, the city of Corinth, He's come to a place where he recognizes, I'm not gonna try to persuade people with empty words, with just conversation, with philosophy. I'm not going to try in any way to persuade people by human reasoning. That's what he's come to the conclusion of, okay? And so when he later writes back to Corinth, he talks about how when he first came to them, so let's look 1 Corinthians chapter 2 verse 3. Well actually I'm going to look at verse 1 to begin with. And I brethren when I came to you and he's talking about when I earlier came to you as you know to share the gospel. I did not come with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. What Paul's saying is, look, when I came to you, I had just flat out determined I'm not gonna try to finagle you and try to persuade you. I'm just gonna preach Jesus. and let the chips fall where they may, I'm just going to preach Jesus. Jesus, Him crucified. So, and notice what it says in the very next verse. He says, and I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. You see those words? Weakness, fear, and much trembling. Now take that little definition that I gave you about fear and trembling. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. The idea of it is this, it's the same thought that Paul had when he had gone to Corinth. He was determined, I'm not gonna trust my own abilities, my own flesh, I'm not gonna trust anything except Jesus and the message of Jesus. because Jesus really he is the power of God unto salvation. So take this little sentence I wrote out. These two words describe the anxiety of a person who distrust his own ability. As long as you trust your own ability that I can do this, you will not get very far in the kingdom of God. You may be very skilled. You may have great grammar. You may have great history. You may have all kinds of education. You may be a philosophical genius. But unless there is this, if you would, this anxiety that's inside that I can't do this. When Paul got to Corinth, he realized after the experience of Athens, I cannot do this. I can't. And when you get to that place where you say, I can't, but Christ can. The one who lives in me can. And that's why Paul could say, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. But this fear and trembling, this is the idea of, it's a sense of weakness. It's a sense of inability in my own strengths. That's why when it comes to any area of life, I don't care what it is, whether it's parenting, pastoring, being a business leader, it doesn't matter. If you're a Christian, give up the idea that you're gonna accomplish it in your own strength. Now, that doesn't mean that you quit working. It doesn't mean you quit doing. It means that you do, but you do with the understanding that unless God does it in me and through me, it's not gonna get done. It won't get done. And so when Paul says these words to the Philippians, let's see it again now. He says, now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with this sense of anxiety that you don't even trust your own ability. There's a verse of scripture that many times is quoted. Usually it's quoted backwards. but pride comes before what? Some of you said a fall, some of you said destruction. It says pride comes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. So the idea of it is when I think I can, I'm in a bad place when I think I can in my own ability. When I think I can be a good parent in my own ability, because nobody understands your child like God does. When you think you can be a good businessman in your own ability, you may have skills through the roof, but guess what? God's the one who lifts up and God's the one who brings down. God can give you a success in business if you're trusting him, but guess what? He can also bring your business down even if you're trusting in him. Now that's one of those spooky things, you know? That's one of those things where, God, I'm walking with you, I'm trusting you, and I'm doing everything I know how, and why isn't this being a success? Because there's always this one little thing behind the scenes that we'll never figure out, and that is the total mind of God of what He has in store for us, what He wants to do in us and through us. And so you may be doing everything right, and you may even have a humble disposition, and you may be even taking this posture that I know I can't, and I'm trusting God to do. And then when it falls apart, what do you do? That's why I wanna encourage you to go and get Kyle Boone's message from up on the square. Get the message, listen to it, listen to it over and over again. There's more theology and truth packed into that message than you'll probably hear in 20 other messages. listen to it, and learn from it. So what Paul is saying here is very clearly, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Why? Because it's God who is at work within you. God is in you. If you're a believer, We should be shouting every time this is said. Every time we read it, we should shout. I mean with gladness. It's God that works within you, both to do will, to will and to do His good pleasure. God gives us, we have a will. We can choose to do things or not do things. But the one that puts a desire in us to do what's right, to do what's honorable, to do what's holy, is God Himself. He puts that desire. When you want to do good, when you want to do well, He put that in you. He put that. But not only did He put the desire to do good, He put something else in you. As a Christian, He put His Spirit, the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, Here's a dead body, no life in it whatsoever, and God's Spirit raised up Jesus from the dead. That same Spirit lives in you. If you're a Christian, if you're a follower of Christ, I mean I'm not talking about you You go to church. I'm not talking about, you know, I go to church faithfully. I'm talking about you gave your life to Christ. You admitted I'm lost. He's the only one who can save me. And I yield my life to him. And I, I make a decision today. I will follow him and give him my heart. If that's true of you, and I'm assuming that it is, then the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is in you. That same power that is able to accomplish what you or I can accomplish in our own strength. We cannot accomplish it in our own strength, but God. Those are the sweetest words that you can hear sometimes, but God, but God. I'm all mixed up and confused, but God has all wisdom and all authority. I can't get it done, but God can. I can't fix this relationship, but God can. And he can do it in you and through you. There's two things that happen to us in Christian life. One is we think we can when we really can't. And the other is we think we can't when we really can in God's power. The enemy tries to twist everything. He does, he tries to twist everything. The enemy tries to twist our thinking to think I'm not sufficient. Well, that's true and that's fault. You are not sufficient by yourself. But with Christ, you are sufficient as you yield your life to him. See, God wants to accomplish something in all of us. He wants to accomplish bringing forth the character, the likeness of his son in our lives. That's his goal. He's working on that. He's gonna complete what he started. He's working on producing the character of Jesus in your life as a parent, as a spouse, as a workman, as a babysitter, as a student, as a preacher. He is determined, God is determined to work out in your life the likeness of Jesus. Now the question is, how well do we cooperate with him? Because the scripture says it this way, work out your own salvation. It doesn't say sit there and just pray and say, well, God, do it. That's sometimes what it comes down to in our Christian lives. We just think, well, if I just pray, God will do it. Well, sometimes God does it when all you do is pray. But the majority of times in the scripture, if you look, the people of God are praying, but then they're doing something. They're doing what God told them to do. obedience. They never would have come into the promised land, and in the Old Testament the Jews never would have come into the promised land. Had they not stepped out into the Red Sea, they never would have come into the promised land. They never would have come into the promised land if they had just sat on the banks of the Jordan and just looked at the river and said, hmm, You know one of the most beautiful things in Scriptures, you look where the people are getting ready to go into the promised land. Now I'm assuming that most of you have Bible background. That's why it's so important to learn the Scripture, because I'll say things, and if you don't know the Scriptures, it'll just go right over your head. That's why I'm encouraging, and Pastor Bill's encouraging you this year, read through the Bible. Read through the Bible. How many of you are still doing that, by the way? Keep it up, read through it. You'll be amazed what God plants down in your heart that he'll bring back to remembrance later on that you can use in your life for his glory. But when the priest got to the Jordan River and they're getting ready to go into the promised land, they had to do something. They had to step out into the water before it dried up. Now, it's real easy for us to read those Bible stories, which are true, but it's real easy for us to read them and then say, wow, didn't they have faith? But what do you do when God tells you to step out and the water's still raging? What do you do? The point that Paul's trying to make in this is very simple. He's saying, look, you've got to work out your own salvation. And that comes through an effort. You're never going to go into your Christian life without effort. You won't. Any more than you'll become a world class bodybuilder without lifting weights. Any more than you'll become a marathon runner without getting out and running. You just won't do it. You won't become a spiritual, mature person without disciplining your life and the things that make a person spiritually mature. If you forsake the scriptures and think, well, I'll just get along with all my texts and reading my short little devotional thing, you're never going to get into the deep waters of God. That doesn't mean you don't love God. It means you will never be as productive as God wants to make you. You'll never accomplish what God has in his heart for you to accomplish unless you're willing to do what he calls you to do. Christian life has become an easy thing in our day. I just kind of breeze through life, you know, wishy-washy, not committed, not disciplined, not holding myself to a standard, whether it's in prayer, whether it's the study of the word, whether it's in sharing my faith, And the reason is because in our day, we don't wanna become legalistic. Hear me. There is a way that people can become legalistic. I do this in a legalistic way to perform. That's just plain old wrong. But if you're doing it for the sake of righteousness, because I wanna be what God has created me to be. I wanna please the heart of my father by my obedience. I want to do the things that I do, not to be seen by men and not to be held up by men or anything like that. I want to do it because the heart of my God is overjoyed with an obedient heart. The heart of my Father is made glad by my obedience. Just like God, the Spirit of God can be grieved by disobedience, the Spirit of God can be made rejoiceful by our obedience to Him. So, I'm gonna give you three things. These did not come from me, by the way. I'll give credit where credit is due is from David Jeremiah on his study in Philippians. So I'm gonna give you three things. Discipline implies three things. One is I will do my part. I will do my part. The second thing is I will depend on God. I will do my part, but then I will depend on God. And the third thing is, as Paul brings up in this passage, let's go on a little bit further. It says in verse 14, do all things without complaining and disputing. It's also the words meaning grumbling or arguing. Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless children of God, without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world. When he says do all things without complaining and disputing, Paul's gonna get later on into this letter, he's gonna bring up two people. They're ladies. I'm not picking on ladies, okay? But there are two people, Jodeas and Synthice. There are two ladies that are having problems in the church. They're not getting along well. And remember, Paul's been talking about unity, of being of one accord. He's been talking about, you know, not caring about your own things, but caring about the things of others. And so at this point, when he says, do all things without complaining and disputing or murmuring, I believe he's thinking about these two women. And he doesn't say that there, but there's obviously something going around or happening in that church where he's mentioning, stop doing this. Do what you do without this characteristic of your life. Amen. Now, I remember a long time ago, this was probably, I don't know how many years ago. Jenny was just a little girl. I remember we had dinner and we decided, you know, you're not gonna get anything given to you. You have to be willing to say it this way. May I pass you some potatoes? Would you like some meat? It's not like, give me the meat, give me the potatoes. Now, I'm going somewhere with this, okay? The idea of it was we found ourselves kind of grumbling and complaining and expecting everybody else to serve us. And it was only three of us, well four when mom came along and lived with us. But we had gotten in the habit with like, you know, we wanted others to serve us. And so what we decided to do is we're going to, we couldn't get anything. We couldn't reach for it. But somebody else had to ask us. So I would ask Jenny, honey, would you like some peas? And she would never say yes. She hated peas. If you invite Jenny over, don't fix her peas. She won't eat them, I guarantee you. Oh, you will now. No, no. She will pick them out. But how do I get to this? Well, it's the grumbling and complaining. Try that sometime in your house. Just, you know, would you like this? May I give you some of this? May I give you some of this? And nobody reaches for anything. Learn how to serve each other that way. Some of you will lose weight. Move on, baby. Okay, we better. Okay. If you look down in verse 15, he says, he says, do all these things without grumbling and complaining. In verse 15, that you may become blameless and harmless children of God. Now he's not saying you do these things so that you will become children of God. He's saying you do these things so you become blameless and harmless as children of God. There's a difference between being children of God and being blameless and harmless. Some of us as children of God have blame because we haven't learned how to walk with Christ. And we're not harmless, we're harmful in our words, in our attitudes. And so what Paul is talking about here is he says, look, Do your part, depend on God, and then learn how to be different from the world, that you may be blameless and harmless in this as children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom you shine as lights in the world. Paul's saying basically, yeah, I didn't make this short, I'm sorry. My wife knows me better than I know myself. Point three is I will be different from the world. You determine, I'm gonna be different from the world. Let me give you verses 14 and 15. Let me give you three things in verses 14 and 15. Here's what it says in verse 14. Do all things without grumbling and disputing. It's talking about cheerful living in an unhappy world. We should have cheerful living in an unhappy world. This world is very unhappy. Have you noticed that? But if anybody should be happy, cheerful, it should be the people of God who know that we have an inheritance in Christ, that we know where we're going, that we're blessed, that we have the love of God shining down upon us all the time, and the Spirit of God living within us, and Jesus who loves us as the one who cares for our souls. We should be people who are cheerful in this unhappy, unhappy world. And then that's in verse 14. And in verse 15, he says this, that you may become blameless and harmless children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. Now that word, we should be living straight in a crooked world. This world is crooked. The word that's used for crooked there, most of you know the word, but you don't know it in this context. The word that's used for crooked is skolas. Can you think of a word that has that root of it, skolos. Skoliosis, that's where you get the word skoliosis from. From this Greek word skolos, which means something that's crooked. We live in a crooked world and it's a perverted world. It's not just crooked. It's made in such a shape that it's that way and it's not going to change. That's what it means by perverted. It's crooked and it's remaining crooked. You and I will not straighten up the world. We won't fix the world. Only thing that fixes the world is one by one individuals as their hearts are given to Christ, and they begin to live out a life of productivity under the loving care of Christ. That's the only thing that straightens out hearts. That's the only thing that'll straighten out a marriage. It's the only thing that'll straighten out a government. If you have people that have hearts that have been straightened out with God, but this world is crooked. So we should be living a straight life When I say straight life, I'm not talking about, I am talking about that too, but I'm talking about a life that's consistently straight. Like a ruler, we have something that governs our life. It's easy to live a crooked life. Anybody can live a crooked life. Anybody can go their own way, do their own thing, think their own thoughts, make their own decisions, and live a crooked, Undirected life. It's just kind of wherever it goes. It's directed by feelings. It's directed by what other people want me to do. I live according to other people's expectations. We're not supposed to live crooked lives. We're supposed to live straight lives, a ruled life. And then last, it says, among whom you shine as lights in the midst of this world, this dark world. we should have a radiant living in a dark world. Now those also came from David Jeremiah. So I give honor to whom honors do. But the fact is that's what Paul's saying. He's saying you're supposed to live a certain way, holding fast the word of life so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain. In other words, I want you guys to live the way you should live so that when I get to the end of my journey, I don't look back and I see a lot of people that are just living their own way and I feel like I've wasted my life trying to teach them about Jesus. Now, to give you a feeling of what Paul's experiencing there when he says those words, imagine being a parent and you've done everything you know how to do to lead your child in a way that's right before the Lord. And now they're older. I can say this to older people. They have no desire for God. They have no want for the Lord. What does your heart feel like? Does it want to rejoice or does it feel broken? Paul's saying, I don't want to get to the end of my life with a broken heart because you guys don't live the way you're equipped to live. You're equipped. It's not like you don't have the equipment. You're equipped to. So, well, thank you for putting up with me this morning with my ramblings. I know I say that sometimes because, you know, I'll study and study and study and God doesn't give me what I think he wants to give me. He gives me something different and then I've got to figure out how to make it come together on Sunday mornings. I love preaching. I hate the process. I really do. Huh? Who said something? Yeah, I mean, I love what God does, but the getting there sometimes is, it's not fun. I'm gonna share something with you, and then we're gonna go back and eat, and all you visitors can go, and you can say, man, that's a wacky pastor. But I hope you stay around for the meal, because I think we've got more than enough food. I was gonna share this with you. the process. Never mind, I guess I'm not going to share with you because you know when you get to be my age it comes and then it goes just as quick. It does. You're not my age yet. It is a joy. Let's stand together. You know what I wanted to do this morning? I wanted to just have a bunch of questions from you guys. And my wife says, oh no, don't go there. Sometimes I enjoy that. You know, this is what I wanted to say to you. You know how, you know how locked we, how, yeah, we are locked in. We are so locked in as Christians that we think a service has to be a certain way. You have to have certain songs. You have to have a certain routine. And routine is good. Don't get me wrong. I mean, that's those are all good things. But as I look at the life of Jesus, you know what he was doing? He was just with his followers, his friends, and you know what they did? Hey Jesus, what about, or then he would say something to them. And what do you think? We don't do that, I'm so glad for the home group, when Ken's there and he leads us in the home group, he's throwing out all these questions and sometimes I think they're gotchas, but not very many of those, but he makes us think. Sometimes in services we come in, we do the thing, we go out, but we don't really ask questions. When was the last time you were able to ask a question in a service where you just said, what about this? Now, I don't have all the answers. Most of you know that, but I got a few. And if I don't have them, maybe somebody else in the congregation does. Sometimes we need to just get real and say, let's fellowship around the word of God. Let's talk about it. Let's discuss it. How does this apply to you? So that's what I was going to talk about today. And then I thought, no, I won't do that. You what? You know, we have beautiful conversations up here. You guys have no idea how much conversing we do on a Sunday morning. Let's pray. Lord, I'm gonna do what my wife said. I'm gonna quit while I'm ahead. Father, it's not joking, Lord. You know our hearts, God. You know everything about us. And you love us. That is incredible, God. You love us. Even when we're so unlovely sometimes, we can be mean, we can be unkind. And sometimes we are in a good mood and sometimes our mood is so foul that we don't even wanna be around ourselves sometimes, Lord. That's the truth, God, you know that. But your love is a stake that's in the ground that nobody can pull out. And we rally around that, Lord. We embrace you, the lover of our soul, the one who cares for us like nobody else cares for us. And we just want to grow and learn more about you. We want to become more like you, Lord, so that your glory is seen. It shines out from us as a people. It's seen by our neighbors, our friends, our family members, the people we work with, Lord, that you're seen. Jesus, you are so worthy to be seen. For other people to adore you and just be awed by who you are. So Lord, I would pray that for us as a congregation and our fellow congregations around here, Lord, other churches that love you and preach the gospel of Jesus, I pray for them, Lord, that they would find just the place that you've uniquely structured and made them for, and that the ministry that you've put in the hearts of your people, whether it's in this church or the church down the road, if as long as they're preaching Jesus out of a sincere heart, Lord, and a desire to see you honored and to live according to your word, Lord, would you bless them, bless them richly, Lord, and help us, Father. Help us as we go from here back to the back. We thank you for the food that's back there. We ask that you would bless it, give us strength from it. Help us to learn new recipes, Lord, all the things that happened during those fellowship times. But God, bless our time together, our fellowship, our words, our conversation, our encouragement with one another. Lord, so many in here, as you put on Sherry's heart earlier, So many come in with a heaviness. Lord, we pray that that burden has been lifted and lightened by the sharing of the saints with one another. And so, Lord, we say thank you for today, for the privilege of being able to come and gather to worship and to give our hearts afresh anew to you, the King of our lives. And I pray this, Father, in the name of your son, the name that's above every name that is named, Jesus the Christ, amen. Amen. Let's go eat, folks, or head out wherever. Rilla, would you grab me a Kleenex, please?