 Hey, can we take a moment and just welcome everybody online and our family over at Portage. Come on, let's put our hands together and welcome them, we love you guys. Thank you so much for being with us this weekend. How many of you brought a Bible to church or you have one at home? If you have it, hold it up in the air. Come on, I wanna see the word of God in the house of God. If you, maybe you have it on your cell phone or wherever you're following along. I wanna invite you to turn with me to James chapter three. James chapter three, this is a continuation of our series entitled Revolutionary Faith and hasn't it been good? It's been so rich. I mean, James is a book that is so practical but yet it is also so deep and it hits us right where we live. I mean, it's probably the first book in the New Testament that was written but it was written to believers who were transitioning out of Judaism and now in following this Messiah named Jesus of Nazareth, the son of the living God. And they're trying to figure it out. They're trying to figure how to live this revolutionary faith in the midst of a very challenging culture, sounds familiar to us. And so I wanna draw your attention this weekend to James chapter three, beginning in verse number 13. Here's what it says. Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above but it's earthly, it's a spiritual demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits. Excuse me, it's impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. Chapter four, verse one, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and you do not have. You murder, you covenant and you cannot obtain. So you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask or you do ask, you ask and you do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose that it is to no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us. But he gives more grace. Therefore it says God opposes the proud but he gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands you sinners and purify your heart you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom humble yourself before the Lord and he will exalt you. It's a big section there but there is just so much meat on this bone. And so this weekend I wanna share a message with you called the wisdom and the way. If you read the book of James chapter to chapter in its entirety what you'll recognize is that James spends a lot of time comparing this with that. He compares the process of the renewal of our mind with the degrading of our minds. He compares the difference between trials that God allows us to go through in order to strengthen us with temptation that the enemy strategically brings into our life to bring us down. He compares how we treat the rich and he compares how we treat the poor. And in this particular section, James three and four, we see him once again juxtaposing the wisdom of the world with the wisdom of God and the way of the world with the way of Jesus. He's comparing these things and make no mistake about it, there really is two different perspectives about what wisdom is. There's two perspectives about the way that we live our lives. And as believers, we have to make sure that we get this right. That we're walking in the wisdom that is God's wisdom and we're walking in the way that is Jesus's way. Because he asks a very pertinent question. Look at verse number four, he says, do you not know that friendship with the world is actually enmity with God? This is the most important question out of this entire section. Do you not know? Do you know whenever the Bible or the writers of the Bible ask you a question or they make a statement like do not be deceived, it's because they're about to talk about something that believers are easily deceived about or they may be ignorant of, they just don't know. Do you not know that friendship with the world is actually enmity with God? Friendship with the world. We've probably all got a lot of friends, but there are some friends that are actually closer than other friends. A lot of times what we refer to as friends are actually acquaintances. They're people that we know, we've met them, but we haven't really spent any quality time. How many of you, whether you're online or you're here or over at Portage, have a friend that you have known for a greater chunk of your life than you have not known them? Raise your hand if that's you. I've got a couple of friends like that that I've known, one of my friends, he's preached to me many times, Nate Roosh, we met on the football field or the soccer field in fourth grade and we've known each other, we've known each other's kids, our wives, our friends. I've known Nate Roosh longer than I've not known him. Those are lifelong friends and I know Jane has a couple of friends like that. You probably have friends like that and those type of friends are different than what we just casually refer to as friends. Kind of in our culture, if we like somebody, we just call them a friend. If we don't hate somebody, they're actually a friend and we've met them. It's like I call them a friend. We don't typically call people all they're an acquaintance, but there are different degrees of friendship. A real friend, a real friend is someone that we have loyalty to. Loyalty to. When Jane and I got married 28 years ago, we just celebrated our 20th anniversary in July while we were on our break and I was thinking back to 28 years ago when we got married, I had a friend who was gonna stand up with me in my wedding, but I don't know if it was two or three days, maybe four days before our wedding actually backed out. And Nate, who I just made reference to it, we've known each other since fourth grade, he was attending Bible College in Minneapolis. And so I had not asked him to be in my wedding party just because he had a lot of things that were going on and he lived in Minnesota. But when this other individual backed out of standing up with me, I talked with Nate and I told him, I said, hey, this happened. Nate rented a car on somebody else's credit card because he was a Bible Cow student. You know, and you're a Cow student, you're buying ramen noodles with borrowed money. I mean, he didn't have any money. And so he borrowed this secretary at the church that he was interning at her credit card. She rented him a car and he drove all night to get to Grand Rapids, Michigan so he could stand up in my wedding. That is loyalty. That's loyalty and that's what friendship is about. And when James is talking about friendship with the world, he's not talking about being friends with people that are in the world. Obviously, we're called to be friendly and we're called to, Jesus was called the friend of sinners. He's not saying that we've gotta hold people at an arm's length and become Amish and start our own flea market. He's literally saying, you can have friendship with people in the world, but he's talking about the loyalty of our heart. The loyalty of our allegiances. He's saying, do you not know that if you choose loyalty to the world, to the construct, to the institutions, to the systems, let me put it to you this way, to the way and to the wisdom of the world. If you are still loyal to that, even though you've now come into the kingdom because you believe that Jesus is the savior of the world, the son of God and you've come into the kingdom, but now your allegiance and your loyalty is still to the world. He says, you're putting yourself in a very, very dangerous place because now you're literally positioning yourself as an enemy of God. And then he goes on and he actually calls people who do this adulterous, adulterous generation. Here's what he's referring to when he used it because it seems like strong language to call Christians adulterouses, but you have to go all the way back to the Old Testament and here's what you recognize. When you read the Old Testament, the biggest problem that the people of God had was not God's inability to get them into the promised land or keep them in the promised land. That was easy. The most difficult challenge and obstacle that the people of Israel, the people of God in the Old Testament had, the greatest obstacle that God had to accomplishing his desire and his purpose through the people of God is they continued to go back to their old idols or they would find themselves in the promised land and they were supposed to push out all the other inhabitants, the Canaanites, the Jebusites and the, you know, the differentites. There was several different nations, the Canaanite nations that they were supposed to push out or that they were supposed to literally be a light to them. But instead what happened is they began to worship their idols and they became idolatrous. And in the Old Testament, God calls that level of idolatry adultery because God is a covenant God, marriage is a covenant and God married Israel unto himself spiritually. He stepped into a covenant and that covenant now applies to you and I as believers. We are called the bride of Christ. And when you're a bride of Christ, that means we've been married to him. And when you are married, nothing is supposed to divide that level of a covenant vow. It says when we marry people, we say, well, God has put together, let no man divide. Let, you know, leave your father and your mother and cleave unto your wife. And so when we come into faith and we believe in Jesus and we receive the gift of salvation and the gift of grace, our loyalty all shifts to him. But if we're standing over here in the house that Jesus built for his bride and we're in the kingdom, but we're continually looking over the fence at our neighbor's idols and where we came from, longing for the onions and the leaks of Egypt. If we're longing for those things and if we're operating out of a different way of thinking in a different value system, then what begins to happen is our heart drifts there and we find ourselves spiritually with our affections and our allegiances actually giving them to the world while we're living under the benefits of grace. If you've ever known somebody who's committed adultery or someone who's been the wronged individual in a marriage, there's nothing more painful that an individual can walk through than to have that level of betrayal. Well, let me tell you something about Jesus. Jesus is a great high priest because he is not unfamiliar with our infirmities and our weaknesses. And even to this moment, even to this day, he is so long suffering and so gracious with his bride, the church, because over and over and over again, we wrestle with these same issues. Do you not know that friendship with the world, God's not saying, oh, you can't have any other friends. No, he's saying, if your loyalty goes that way, you're actually turning it away from me because the world and the kingdom of God are diametrically opposed. Listen, church, there are two wisdoms and there are two ways. And this is what James is writing about at the tail end there. He says in verse 13, who is wise and understanding? Who is wise and understanding? Let me tell you something about what we've done in our culture. We think that wisdom equals knowledge. We think, well, I know a lot. Wisdom and knowledge are not the same thing. Knowledge is information. Wisdom is application. We take information that is based on revelation and we develop an understanding of application. So a generation, the reason why we need fathers and we need grandfathers in our lives is because they carry something that we don't have when we're 20 years old, that we think we have. We think, oh, I know everything and I can fact check and I can Google everything. Yeah, you've got a lot of information, but what we need is some people who've lived 40 years of life that we haven't experienced because they've got something that you can't buy with money and a college degree isn't gonna give it to you. It's called wisdom. And so he says, who is understanding? That's what wisdom is. It's understanding. And then he goes on and he says in verse number 14, if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast or be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above. Here he is. He's dividing it out. This is not the wisdom that comes from God, but it is three things. Earthly or earthy, unspiritual and demonic. What does that mean? Well, it means that there is a wisdom or a school of thought. Let me help you substitute a word in there so you'll grab ahold of what James is trying to say. Substitute the word wisdom for worldview. How you view the world. And he said, there is a wisdom of this world, the wisdom of men, a way of thinking that its origins are this. It's earthly, which means it originates and is limited to the terrestrial level. It is unspiritual, which means it doesn't take into account the reality of the spirit world. And three, it's demonic, which means it is shaped by rebellious spiritual beings who are in resistance and rebellion against God. There is a way or there is a wisdom of this world that a lot of people, it's like a river that just kind of runs through our whole world. And it's a collective construct, a worldview. It's like, oh, this is how you live your life. You wanna get ahead in your job, here's how you do it. You want a relationship, then this is how you do it. You wanna get rich, this is how you do it. Because the worldview or the wisdom of this age is a wisdom that is self-centered. And the reason why we have issues in our world is not because we're too selfless, it's because we're too selfish. And it's because we have a world construct that is all based on self. Jane and I have been watching this show, binging it on our break. I know nobody else has been doing that. We've been doing that. It's a show called Alone. Anybody heard of it? Okay, so they take these survivalists and then they put them on Vancouver Island and they give them like 10 items and they scatter them and you have to live by yourself, catch your own food, it's rains all the time and see who can last the longest. Some of these people lose like 40% of their body weight. How many of you know that's a rough diet right there? I'm all about cutting carbs, but I'm not going to Vancouver Island. But these are trained survivalists who, they get airlifted and they get dropped off in these places. Here's what's interesting to me. So many of them go out there and as they're filming themselves, because they have to film themselves in the show too. There's no film crew, it's just them. They're out there for 60, 70, 86 days by themselves. And while they're filming themselves, so many of them are like, I'm out here because I need to find myself. I need to find out who I really am. I just need to find peace within myself. I need to get in contact with my inner child and I just know that I'm on a journey and I just need some time alone to look inside myself. And here's what happens by the end of 86 days, they are sick of themselves. Here's just an example, the way of the world, the construct, the world view, what they call wisdom says, everything you need for happiness, success is inside of you already. So salvation is, get more in touch with yourself. But Jeremiah says, the heart is completely deceptive and full of evil and it's wicked. So when we look in ourselves, the wisdom of the world says we are self-contained. Why? Because we deify self, but that's not the wisdom of God. That's not the wisdom that he says is from above. The wisdom from above is heavenly, which means it transcends this world. It's spiritual, which means it's holy spiritual. It's God at work in us now that we're born again in new creations and it brings peace and righteousness. It's what Jesus called the kingdom of God. And I want you to think about this for a second. Jesus came and he was murdered by religious people. These were not secularist people that murdered Jesus. He was murdered at the hands of some of the most religiously educated people on the planet. Now the secular, you know, the Romans, they went along with it. They're just like, fine, whatever. They were trying to keep peace in Jerusalem. They had their own view of wisdom. But why did Jesus get crucified? Well, obviously it was in the foreknowledge of God, but the ultimate thing was that Jesus confronted the fact that the people of God were outwardly showing themselves to be very faithful, but internally their heart was more connected to a worldly wisdom and construct than it was to the way of God. And when he confronted that, they said, we got to get rid of you. Why did they do that? Because that's the way of the world. What do we do? We get angry, we attack, we go to war, and we kill things that disagree with us. James said it right here. You wanna know where wars come from? Where quarrels come from? Where Facebook wars come from? Where it comes from your passions. Your passions are at war within you. There is a war going on the inside of every believer. What is it? It's the Holy Spirit on the inside of you that's trying to shape you to be like Jesus and your old self that is plugged into the matrix construct of the wisdom and the way of this world. What did they do? They just got rid of Jesus. Well, what do we do with people that we don't like or disagree with? What do we do? Do we bless them? Do we turn the other cheek to them? When they ask us to go one mile, do we go two miles with them? No. Most of the time, why? It's because it's not natural. How does it become natural? It doesn't ever become natural. It only becomes dominant when it becomes supernatural. When the Holy Spirit shapes and reforms our heart. When we exchange the wisdom of this world, the way of this world for the way of Jesus. Do you know that phrase the way was actually used by Jesus to describe who he was? I am the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus did not say I am a way. Has anybody here ever read The Sermon on the Mount where Jesus said, you've heard it said that if you commit adultery, you know, it's a sin. But I say to you, if you even look lustfully upon another woman, then you've committed adultery in your heart. How many know when you read The Sermon on the Mount, it's like it goes straight to the heart. It goes right to the motivation. It goes right to the core. Now, it supersedes just the external. Cause let me tell you what we're all really good at. It's a human phenomena. We're good at performing and doing the right things externally when our heart motivation is actually turned in a different direction. Right? It's like the story of this little kid who was in a classroom and his teacher caught his attention and said, Johnny, I want you to stop talking and I want you to sit down. Cause he was standing up and he was talking to somebody. And he refused to do it. And so the teacher said, Johnny, I told you, sit down and be quiet. And then ultimately the teacher says, Johnny, if you do not sit down and close your mouth, I'm gonna send you to the principal's office. They're gonna call your parents. He sat down and the teacher walked down the aisle and said, thank you, Johnny. And Johnny looked up at her and he said, I want you to know something. I might be sitting down outside, but inside I'm standing up and screaming. That's a lot of times the posture we take. Jesus supersedes that. And he goes straight to the heart. It's about your motives. You wanna know what our motives oftentimes do. Our motives reveal to us which wisdom we're drawing from and which way we're walking in. Our motives, the fruit of our life. Jesus said, I am the way. The truth and the life. Do you know that the very first description of what Jesus was doing in the earth, this assembly of people called the church, we call it church now. But originally in Acts chapter 19, it was referred to as the way. The way. Why? It's because they were living their lives so contradictory to what the world called wisdom. They were, if you read Acts chapter two when the church was in revival in the very chapter, what were they doing? They were selling their stuff and then bringing the money to the apostles and saying, do what you need to with it. Take care of the poor. Take care of those who are in need. The rest of the world looked at and said, that's not how you get ahead. Because they were thinking out of the construct of the world. They were forgiving one another. That's not what you do. What do you do when somebody wrongs you? You take them out, baby. You go after them. No mercy. Now what did Jesus say? How many times are you supposed to forgive somebody? 70 times, seven. You do the math. It's something like you'd have to forgive somebody for the very same thing every one minute and 30 seconds. In a day. And then if they did it the next day, do it again. Who does this? The church was doing it and they were living in the midst of the world doing this. They were living like this. They were being generous. They're praying for one another. They're forgiving one another. There were Gentiles and Jews who were worshiping together. And the world stood back and looked at that and go, what is that? It's the way. What is it? The way of Jesus. Why are you living like that? Because we're not living in the way of the world anymore. What's the way of the world? The way of the world is, well, follow it up here. He said, you have all these desires on the inside of you and yet you still don't have. In other words, you don't have the things that you're living your life for. And so what do you do? In your heart, you murder one another. You're taking people out. He says, you covet and yet you cannot obtain. You fight and you quarrel. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and you do not receive. You ask wrongly so that you can spend it on your own passions. Remember, he's talking to believers here. He literally tells Christians, you're praying prayers and asking God to give you things for the wrong motives. You're doing the right thing out of the wrong motive. It's dangerous. There's two words that I think are really telling in this whole section. Number one is the word desire. It's right there in verse number two. He says, you desire. The Greek word for desire there is the word he donate, which is where we get the word hedonism. We have desires. What's the way of the world? The way of the world is constantly wanting and wanting and wanting. It says it's your desires or your pleasures. Hedonism is an attitude. It's an ism within our worldly wisdom that says live for pleasure. Everything's okay as long as you want it and it feels good and it doesn't hurt anybody else. That's called hedonism. And you know, it's nothing new. It's part of sinful, fallen culture. We live our lives for what we want. And the other thing is he says that you ask for things amiss because you've got these passions in your heart. What's that? It's consumerism. We want, we want, we want, but we're never able to get because we think that something, if we can attain things of the world, if we can get more stuff, if we can get better stuff, it's gonna satisfy something on the inside of us. All it does is create this jumbled up war that's going on the inside of us. That's the way of the world. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but if you have a smartphone or you have an Apple, or you know, Apple device or an iPhone because you're saved, if you have an Android and you're still waiting to get right with Jesus, sorry. All of the phone technology on your computers as well, there are these artificial intelligence programs that they have developed that track all of the moves that you make on social media, search engines, and they create algorithms to figure you out. And it actually creates a cycle that you don't know what begins and what ends. So the other day we were with friends and we were talking about eyeglasses and I don't know how we got on the subject, but as we were talking about eyeglasses he was talking about this place in Chicago that has really cool frames and they had ray bands that were there. But the next thing I know that, I think it was that night or the next morning on Instagram I'm getting these ads for sunglasses and for glass frames and for stores in Chicago. I'm like, hmm, how does this stuff happen? Or if you've ever searched for something and then all of a sudden ads for those types of things pop up, what they're doing is trying to predict what you want, what you're thirsty for, what you're hungry for. So then they give it to you and then they know that if you see it you're gonna want it more and it becomes the cycle. Sometimes we think, oh, how convenient it is that in social media this stuff just pops up and now I know where to go get it. But oftentimes we don't even know that we want something until we've seen it. And so we see it and we want it, then we get it and it doesn't satisfy what we thought it would. And so then we're looking for something else and we go and get it and it doesn't satisfy and on the inside of us, what's really going on? There's this war, a war of desires, a war of pleasures, a war for more. First John, John the apostle says this. He says, do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, the pride of life, it's not from the father but it's from the world. And the world is passing away with all of its desires but whoever does the will of God, whoever does the will of God abides forever. Our stuff is gonna end up in the Salvation Army. It's gonna end up on the dump of the good will. Our stuff is gonna burn up. It's gonna be out of style. How many of you still got your old jeans from four fashion statements ago and you still got them in your closet and you don't have any friends who love you enough to tell you to stop wearing them? Right? I mean, we've all got some of those things. I remember when skinny jeans came on, I'm like, number one, I'm never wearing those. Number two, whoever will. And then you see them and I'm just waiting for the moment. Somebody's not gonna get the memo that they're not in style anymore when bell bottoms come back out and those things are gonna fill up landfills. Have you ever driven by a landfill and it looks like a mountain? You know what that is? That's all the things that people were convinced of. If I get that, it's gonna make me happy. And now it's buried in the earth and it's fading away. Can I tell you what never goes away? Doing the will of God. Living in the wisdom of heaven. The world's way is self-centered. The Jesus way is self-sacrificing. The world's way worships self. The Jesus way worships Jesus. And puts him first. And we align our allegiances, all of them. Not just in lip service. All of our allegiances get pointed at Jesus. Everything I have, everything I am, everything I think. Jesus, I want the wisdom from heaven. I don't wanna be a spiritual gold digger. You know what, anybody know what that term gold digger means? Raise your hand, you're in church. Do not lie to your pastor. You know what a gold digger is. Have you ever seen like some beautiful model inner 20s married to some billionaire who's in his 90s and everybody goes gold digger? She's willing to come into a covenant marriage with someone not out of intimacy or affection, but in order to get something. I fear sometimes we've come into the kingdom to get things. And we've actually created a gospel where God is useful and we've forgotten what grace, the scandal of grace that has saved us. Okay, what do we do? How do we move out of the world? How do we move out of the way of the world, move out of the wisdom of the world into the kingdom of God? Here's what he says, humble yourself. Get low, humble yourself, submit to God. It means everything that's in your life. Say it doesn't belong to me. I don't have any rights anymore. Dead people don't have any rights. And I am crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Jesus Christ who now lives in me and the life I live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. I reckon myself dead unto sin. If it hurts, it ain't dead and it needs to die. I gotta humble myself. Jesus, I'm bringing my opinions, I'm bringing my sin, I'm bringing my desires, I'm bringing my passions and I'm submitting it because I'm getting low. I'm humbling myself. I'm saying I'm not gonna be the top of the pyramid and Jesus isn't gonna be an add-on accessory into my already good life. I am desperately in need of God's mercy and God's grace and I willingly lower myself before Him. And I humble myself and I submit to God and I'm gonna resist the devil. I'm gonna resist the devil. When the devil comes and he tempts us like it says in James chapter one, I'm gonna instead receive with meatness the implanted Word of God which is able to save my soul and I'm going to resist the temptation. And I'm gonna draw near to God. This is one of my favorite verses in the New Testament. Draw near to God, He will draw near to you. We don't even have a clue of how beautiful that is. That the God of the universe, the God who knows everything controls everything every atom in the entire universe is held together by His very Word. He called it into being in the beginning and He will be the Lord of it in the end. He knows every thought, He knows every motive, He knows every individual, He knows every hair on your head, He knows every conversation that's taking place, He knows every lie we've ever believed, every sin we've ever committed, that yet God is saying to us, here's this massive invitation. If you will draw near to me, not just with, yeah, I believe in Jesus, I believe in God, yeah, but I've got my life. If we'll draw near to Him, which draw near literally means turn ourselves in the direction and pursue. He promises if we draw near to Him with humility, if we submit to Him and we choose to say no to the devil, He promises, church, I don't know if we get this yet, He will draw near to us. Do you know how awesome that is? He will come to you, He will draw near to you, He will live in proximity to you. And then He tells us, I want you to cleanse yourself, cleanse your hands. That means the actions of things, the way that you're living your life, what you're putting your hand to, how you're putting your hand to purify your hearts, which is reject false ideology, mourn and weep. In other words, emotionally feel it and then ultimately humble yourself because what God is attracted to is humility. God is massively attracted to humility. How many of you are married, raise your hand? Or engaged, raise your hand. Or dating, raise your hand. Or hopeful to date, raise your hand. Say, well, what does that have to do with anything? It's because the person that you are married to, dating, somebody you were attracted to, you were attracted to them. Oh, they're pretty ugly, but you know what? Sure, I need a little self-tournament anyway, so just gonna go date somebody I'm not attracted to. No, the reason why you pursue them is because you're attracted to them. And when you're attracted to somebody, you'll do whatever it takes to spend time with them. You're attracted to somebody, you love them, you love being around them. Do you know what God is attracted to? Humility. When you are humble, when God conf... You don't have to try and fake God out and say, I got it all together, I figured it all out, I'm living righteous. Sometimes in our way of the world and our religious minds that we think, if I get all my stuff together, if I finally iron some things out in my life, then God will come to me, God will speak to me. No, let's say the number one thing God is attracted to is humility. If you'll just, we'll just humble ourselves. Say, God, I'm not God, you are. And I know you know everything, but I'm just, I'm submitting to you, to your word. Submitting to you, Holy Spirit. I'm resisting temptation. I'm not gonna buy, I'm not gonna let my passions be the steering wheel of my heart. I'm not gonna let my mindset and my worldview be shaped by the world around me. I'm gonna be shaped by the kingdom of God. I'm gonna be different. I'm gonna walk in the Jesus way. When we begin to do that, it says he gives grace. Grace, grace. Grace is not just the supernatural marker board eraser for all the things you've done wrong. Grace is the supernatural empowerment of the Holy Spirit for you to be able to walk in the very life that Jesus is calling you to. And he says, when we humble ourselves, he will then exalt us. The key to promotion, the key to elevation in the kingdom of God, the key to really walking in the life of God that he has for you is not puffing out our chest and convincing God of all the reasons why we deserve it. It's just simply humbling ourselves. That's not the way of the world. That's the way of Jesus. I remind you of what Philippians chapter two said about Jesus. It said, let the same mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who though being equal with God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but yet he humbled himself. God humbled himself and emptied himself and took the form of a servant and died even death upon the cross. And it was because of that humility. It's because of his willingness to obey God. It says he, in obedience to God, even to the point of death, death upon a cross. Therefore God has given him a name above every name, a name at which every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. And God has highly exalted him and given him the name above every name. His exaltation came because of his humility. Listen, it's the same way. The way into the kingdom is the same way onward into the kingdom. It's grace that God gives us when we humble ourselves. I wanna invite you wherever you're at, stand with me. I wanna invite you if you would to bow your heads. Even those of you who are at home watching online, those of you at Portage, wherever you're at, God knows, God sees. Today, my hope is even beyond my words, the Holy Spirit has spoken to your heart. Today, the wisdom of heaven is reaching out to you and that there's a hunger on the inside of you for that way to live as a follower of Jesus, to live not just by a confession or a prayer, a way of our lives. All of these things that God's included in his word for us are not there to somehow push us over the side and say, you're rotten, you're terrible, but it's to inspire us and call us higher. Tonight, the Holy Spirit's calling us higher. Today, wherever you are, the Holy Spirit is calling you higher. The way that we go higher in the kingdom is we get lower in his presence. Today, wherever you are, if you have not surrendered your life to Jesus and allowed his grace, his mercy, and his perfect sacrifice on the cross to bring forgiveness into your life, make you right before God, then today is your moment, your opportunity. Wherever you're at, if you're here or you're listening and you know in your heart of hearts, I'm not right with God, but I wanna be right with God. I wanna be saved, not by my good works, but by God's grace and mercy. Today, I wanna know that, I know that, I know that I'm right with God. The way that you do that is you believe in your heart and then you acknowledge it, physically acknowledge it. Out in public and say yes to Jesus. If you're listening within the sound of my voice today in this very room and you know you need to get your heart right with God, I just want you right now, would you just raise your hand and say, pray for me, we're gonna pray in a moment. And if you need to get your heart, you wanna get your heart right with God, I just wanna pray with you. I want you to just respond. You need to take this step and say, pray for me today, I need to get my heart right with God. Include me in this prayer. If that's you, raise it. Right where you're at, even at home, just raise it. Everybody saved on their way to heaven in this room. Then I wanna ask the second thing, how many of you as a follower of Jesus would say, there's some things in my life that have been rooted in the wisdom of the world that I need to surrender, I need to submit to God, I need to surrender them so that God's grace can come in and flood my heart. If that's you, I just want you to raise your hand wherever you're at and we're gonna pray. I'm gonna pray for his grace. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your honesty. Wherever you're at today, thank you. You can put your hands down. Lord, today we submit and whoever it is, you raise your hand, I just want you to confess this before the Lord, today I submit to you, Jesus. Lord, I wanna walk in your way. I want to make you proud. Holy Spirit, I want you to come and would you purify my heart? Would you cleanse me from the inside out? Would you teach me to walk in your way, in your wisdom so that I might be fully pleasing to you? Lord, I surrender, absolute surrender to the Lordship of Jesus. God, have your way, Holy Spirit, would you pour out grace upon grace, upon grace to those who right now are reaching out to you, wherever they're reaching out to you from? Or we don't know, but you know, God, would you respond by pouring out new grace, new empowerment to walk in the fullness of your purpose and your calling in the way of Jesus? We pray this today in the name of Jesus. Amen, and amen. Come on, is God worthy to be praised in this place? He's worthy to be praised.