Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 10:25-42
Take your Bible out, find the Gospel of Luke. Chapter 10, Luke chapter 10, there's an outline in the bulletin. If you'd like to follow along, Luke chapter 10, we're going to jump right in this morning. I'm going to give you the big idea of this passage. It's very simple. It's based off of Luke 19, 10, which we've talked about every week in our study of Luke but this is the big idea, Jesus sought you and He saved you so that you would love Him supremely and that you would serve others selflessly. He sought you and saved you, straight out of Luke 19, 10, the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost and He did it so that you would love Him supremely and that you would serve others selflessly. You know, I'm afraid that a lot of Americans miss this idea and I'm afraid that a lot of Americans have the mindset or the assumption or the understanding that Jesus came, yes, and He was a real person and He was a good man and He died on a cross for our sins in some sense. But I think that what most folks think Jesus wants in response is for us to merely invite Him into our life. You need to pray and invite Jesus into your heart. That means a lot of different things to a lot of different people and I'm not even sure exactly what it means to you. It's not a biblical phrase and it's not the best way of describing what Jesus wants from you for your life but a lot of people just sort of have that idea. You know, Jesus came, He's a good guy, He died on the cross for me and He wants me to invite Him into my life and that's just sort of this vague notion of I'm going to say a few words, I'm going to pray a prayer and then nothing really is going to change in my life but I will be able to say that I have now invited Him into my life. I think there's a lot of other people in the United States who operate with the assumption that Jesus wants from us some sort of ritual, some sort of religious ceremonial something, whether that may be some sort of confession or some sort of penance or whether that may be some sort of baptism or communion or the Lord's Supper or whatever, there's a lot of different ideas floating in the air but some people just think, you know, Jesus was a real person, He died on the cross and what He wants from me in my life is just to go through the steps of ritual. So that idea is out there. Other people just have the idea that Jesus was a real good guy and He died on the cross for us, whatever that might mean in their minds I'm not sure but they believed that, they would affirm that and then they would say, you know, I think what Jesus wants for me is just to kind of show up every now and then and by show up they mean come here, come into a room like this on a Sunday morning and to sit through, listen to the sermon, maybe you take notes, maybe you don't, maybe you sing along, maybe you don't but hey, I put in an appearance, I'm here, isn't that pretty much what God wants from me? And then you read the Gospel of Luke as we have been studying it and you realize that He doesn't want you to merely invite Him into your life. He doesn't want you to merely go through some sort of ritual or ceremony. He doesn't want you to just show up and make an appearance every now and then. What He wants, we see clearly in this passage as we've seen throughout Luke, is that Jesus wants you to love Him more than anything else in this world and He wants you to serve other people selflessly. So let's look at the passage, Luke chapter 10 beginning in verse 25, "Behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, 'Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?' He said to Him, 'What is written in the law? How do you read it?' And He answered, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.' And He said to Him, 'You've answered correctly, do this and you'll live.' But He, desiring to justify Himself, said to Jesus, 'Who is my neighbor?' Jesus replied, 'A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. He fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.' Now by chance a priest was going down that road and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And he knew likewise a Levite when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day, he took out two Daenerai and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take care of him. Whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.' Which of the three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? He said, 'The one who showed him mercy.' And Jesus said, 'You go and do likewise.' Now as they went on the way, Jesus entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house and she had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving and she went up to him and said, 'Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.' But the Lord answered her, 'Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion which will not be taken from her.' This is the word of God. Let's pray. Father, we live in a time and a place where people are confused about what it means to follow Jesus. And so we pray that as we look at your word, you would give us clarity, you would remove the scales from our eyes, the blinders from our eyes that we would see truth in your word this morning that by your grace and with your help we would apply it to our lives and respond in a way that honors Jesus Christ and we pray in his name, amen. And when you're interpreting the Bible, context is always important, especially when you're looking at a passage that you're familiar with and my guess is most of you are familiar with this passage. Context is really, really important and let me tell you what I mean. Mr. Harrington, put a picture of my wife up on the screen. That's my wife. That's my wife. Nine months pregnant, ready to not be pregnant. Put the next picture up. This is a better picture. This is my wife in Ecuador at right on the equator. We went on a mission trip to Ecuador and I took a picture there at the equator. So my wife is brook. She's sitting right over here. She's blushing right now because I put these pictures up. What if I told you that last night I looked at my wife and said the words, 'You're an idiot.' Christian would laugh. You are an idiot. You have a couple options. One option would be to jump to conclusions and say, 'Our pastor's a jerk and we need a new pastor.' Today, you could just assume that I was looking at her, talking to her, talking about her, angry with her. You don't know the tone that I used. You don't know the situation. But you could just assume that I was being a really mean husband. But then what if I told you that I was talking to my wife last night and I was telling her about a conversation I had with somebody else earlier in the day? And in that conversation I had with Chris Ray. Chris Ray looked at me and he told me, 'You're an idiot.' And then I told my wife, 'This is what Chris Ray said to me.' He said, 'You're an idiot.' Well, that's a completely different statement, right? Totally different. What if I had watched a movie the night before? Got on Netflix, watched a movie, and Brooke fell asleep. She always falls asleep in movies, so she didn't make it to the end and she wakes up the next day and says, 'How did it end? How did I end?' And I say, 'Oh, it was great. The good guy and the bad guy. They had this face off and the good guy finally looked at him and the good guy looked at the bad guy and said, 'You're an idiot.' And then he took him out and the good guy won in the end. Well, that's totally different. I still said the words to my wife, 'You are an idiot.' But you say, 'Well, but that means something completely different.' It means something different because you've got to know the context. Before you jump to conclusions in any of these scenarios, what you probably ought to do is look at my face and see if I have a black eye. And if I look good, you probably ought to assume the best and not the worst and say, 'Hey, he's not black and blue. There's something that maybe would help us understand that statement or those words better.' Now, listen, we just read the parable of the Good Samaritan. My guess is that most of you know this story. A lot of you could stand up and you could, without even reading it, without even having looked at it, you could stand up here and you could tell the whole room, this is what happens in the story, the parable of the Good Samaritan. You could make that plain to us. A lot of you, even if you don't know the story and wouldn't feel comfortable standing up and giving the details, you would say, 'I kind of know what a Good Samaritan is.' A Good Samaritan is someone who stops and helps somebody. So we all come to this story with this sort of understanding of what a Good Samaritan is. That's a dangerous thing. When you come to a story in the Bible, convince that you already know what it's about and why it was told. Because here's my hunch. I bet nine out of ten of you guys, at the least, probably more than that. But I bet nine out of ten of you could say, if I gave you a pop test before church, this is the story of the Good Samaritan, you could answer the questions. And then if the last question, a bonus question was, why did Jesus tell that story in the first place? You would say, 'Well, would you be able to tell me there was a lawyer and this is what the lawyer said and this is the back and forth and this is who the lawyers are? Would you know all that or would you just know the story? I hope you know the story, but I also hope you know the context of the story. We're going to talk about the story this morning, but we're also going to talk about the context. And then there's the verses we read in verse 38 down to 42, story of Martha and Mary. Not quite as well known as the parable of the Good Samaritan, but a lot of you probably know this story. You know that Martha was the one working in the kitchen. Mary was the one sitting at Jesus' feet and they had this sort of sisterly tiff and argument. Jesus stepped in the middle and said some really wise things. You know that, you know the gist of it. But do you know that it is only told in the gospel of Luke that it probably did not happen at this point in the timeline of the story and that Luke dropped it into this spot right after the parable of the Good Samaritan on purpose? Probably not. And when you step back and you say, "Well, why did Luke choose to insert this story right here after the Good Samaritan?" Two stories only told in Luke. Luke's the only gospel writer to tell us these two stories. And he puts them together for a reason. Then you step back and say, "Huh, maybe that's important. Maybe the context matters and will help me understand what God is trying to say to me through Luke." So our approach is really, really simple. We're going to talk about the context of this story of the Good Samaritan, the back and forth between Jesus and the Lawyer. You understand that's the real story here. It's not just Jesus talking about a Samaritan, it's Jesus talking to a lawyer. That's what's actually happening. Then we'll talk about Jesus talking to Martha and then we'll sum it up and apply it to our lives. So first of all, the Lawyer in Jesus, the Lawyer in Jesus, chapter 10, verse 25 to 37. First of all, you need to understand that this guy is not a lawyer like we think of Lawyer today. When you and I read the word Lawyer, we immediately think of maybe our favorite sort of Matlock show or Dateline, NBC and the Lawyer's arguing back and forth or whatever law, legal program you like, you look at that and you say, "Oh yeah, I know what a Lawyer is," a defense attorney or a prosecuting attorney or somebody who, this is a different kind of Lawyer. When Luke says this guy is a Lawyer, what would maybe be more accurate for us to understand is that he's a seminary graduate. He's a guy who went to school to study the Law, not some sort of secular law, but God's Law, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the Torah, the Law of God. He went and he had some sort of formal training in learning about studying God's Law. Here's something else you need to know. He doesn't like Jesus. You need to know that. I did a search this week and I searched for Lawyer and Lawyer's. Every time Luke mentions a Lawyer, it's negative. It's not that kind of Lawyer, I already told you that. Every time he mentions a Lawyer, it's negative. These guys are enemies of Jesus. They don't want to learn anything from Jesus. All the Lawyer's want to do in the Gospel of Luke is trick Jesus, trap Jesus and embarrass Jesus. That's it. You need to know that when this man comes to Jesus and he has a question, verse 25, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" He really doesn't want to hear the answer. He's really not interested in what Jesus has to say other than the fact that he wants to trap him, trick him and make him look stupid. You can jot down in the margin of your notes, Luke 7, 30, and you can read what Luke says about the Pharisees and the Lawyer. He says they rejected the purposes of God in their life. They had already made their minds up about Jesus. They didn't like him. They wanted to make him look like a fool. They wanted to trick him and trap him. Here's the last thing you need to know about the Lawyer. The Lawyer comes to Jesus with an assumption. We'll see that he refuses to let go of. And here's his assumption. Are you ready? He assumes that he needs to do something to receive eternal life. Look at the question that he asks, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" He's talking out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand, he knows he needs to inherit it, that it has to come from God, but fundamentally what he's focused on is himself and what he needs to do for God to receive eternal life. His focus is not on God and his grace and his mercy and his goodness and his promises. His focus is certainly, as we'll see, not on other people. His focus is completely on himself and he says to Jesus, "Listen, will you just tell me what I need to do to inherit eternal life? Tell me what to do." You understand, this is the opposite of Luke 19-10, right? We talk about Luke 19-10 every week. The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. Salvation comes because of what Jesus the Son of Man did for us, not because of what we do for Him, completely different religious systems. Jesus is preaching, "I have come to seek you and save you." The lawyer is preaching, "I'm going to do it and I'm going to work my way in." So he comes to Jesus and he wants to know, "What do I need to do to go to heaven?" Jesus knows he's his enemy. He knows that the lawyers and the Pharisees have rejected the purposes of God in their lives. He knows that this man only wants to win an argument or to make Jesus look foolish. So Jesus does something he did from time to time. He answers a question with a question and he does it in a way, honestly, that sort of is flattering to this lawyer because the lawyer thinks he's an expert in what? The law. So Jesus says, "Well, what does the law say? You're the expert. What does it say? How do you read it?" Give the lawyer a little bit of credit at this point, he gives a fantastic answer. He says, quoting Deuteronomy 6.5, "Love God." And then he quotes Leviticus 19.18 and he says, "Love your neighbor." That's pretty much the gist of it. Love God and love your neighbor. It's a summary of the 10 commandments, commandments one to four, how you love God, five to ten, how you love your neighbor. It's a great answer. Here's how good the answer is. It's the exact same answer Jesus gave at a different time when a lawyer asked him the question. You can jot down and read later, Matthew 22, 37, Matthew 22, 37. This time the tables are turned. The lawyer comes to Jesus and he says, "You summarize the law." And guess what? This says exactly what this lawyer says. Same answer, love God more than anything else and love your neighbor as yourself. Quick time out, the guy comes to Jesus and he says, "What do I need to do?" And Jesus responds with this great question, "What does the Bible say?" I hope that question is part of your life. Doesn't matter if you're a parent or a child or both or a grandparent or a grandchild. Doesn't matter if you're an owner of a company or an employee at a company, it doesn't matter if you're a stay-at-home mom or you work out in the oil field. I hope that that question is part of your vocabulary, that it comes out of your mouth from time to time. What does the Bible say? I hope you ask other people that question when you talk to them, "What does the Bible say?" You know, I can remember growing up, my granddad, my mom's dad, asking me that question a lot. We would talk about different things and he would say, "I don't know Shorty, he called me Shorty. I don't know Shorty, what's the Bible say? What's the Bible say?" You know, as a kid growing up when I was little, I was convinced that he always knew the answer to that question. He probably didn't. He probably knew a lot of them, but there were probably times he just threw the question out there and listen, he's asking the right question. You want to talk about it? You want to debate it? You want to think about it? You ought to ask yourself, "What does the Bible say?" What does the Bible say? Parents. Ask your kids that question. Grandparents. Ask your kids that question. Ask your co-workers. You're sharing the gospel with them. Ask them to read it and say, "What does it say? How do you read it?" I hope that this is part of your vocabulary and Jesus says to the lawyer, "What does the Bible say?" Love God. Love your neighbor. And Jesus responds by basically saying, "You got it. Do it." You may hear that and you may say, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. Is Jesus telling the lawyer he's right to think that he needs to do something to go to heaven? Is Jesus now, forget Luke 19-10, now he's preaching salvation by works?" No. Jesus believes the lawyer's answer more than the lawyer believes his answer. And what he's saying is you nailed it. Love God more than anything else. That means you need to trust his promises, you need to hope in his grace, you need to rest in his faithfulness. Love God more than anything else. And then let that love for God overflow and love to your neighbor. You do that and you have nailed it. Problem for the lawyer is that he gave the right answer, but he really didn't believe the right answer. But he really thought is he needed to do something for God. Look at verse 29, "Desiring to justify himself." You know, for a guy who was an expert on the law, he gave one really good answer, but he missed a really important passage in the law, Genesis 15-6, that says Abraham believed God and God justified Abraham. Abraham didn't do anything to be justified, God did it for him. Abraham didn't work for it and pile up a big pile or a big resume that was impressive to God. He just simply believed God and God counted it to him as righteousness. He justified him. And what's the lawyer say? He apparently missed that verse. He says, "Well, I want to justify myself. I want to make myself right in God's sight. During to justify himself," he said to Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" And Jesus tells a story, the parable of the Good Samaritan. I think most of you are familiar with it. You know the fact that this road between Jerusalem and Jericho was a dangerous road. It's dangerous for a couple of reasons. One reason was geography. Put a picture up. That's what it looks like today. Looks like parts of West Texas, to be honest with you. It's not a very hospitable landscape. Here's maybe what it looked like if you take the paved road out. It's out in the middle of nowhere. And the elevation changes about 3,600 feet between Jerusalem up high and Jericho down low. So you're going through the mountains. And depending on which way you're going, you're either going downhill pretty steep or uphill pretty steep. It's about a 20-mile road. So physically the geography was rough, but it was also dangerous. You know, you've heard the stories, you've heard people explain it because of bandits and thieves and robbers. A few hundred years after Jesus told this story, a Christian named Jerome called this road the bloody road. It's bloody for a reason. People die on this road. People are murdered on this road. And when you know that, you understand that the man traveling the road alone is a fool for traveling alone. You shouldn't travel any road in the ancient world alone. You should go in a group, but especially not a road called the bloody road. And there he is all by himself, asking for trouble, inviting somebody wicked to do something wicked to him. And you've heard the sermons, you know that the Levite and the priest were wrong not to stop. They should have stopped. You say, well, why didn't they stop? I don't know. Jesus doesn't tell us. Maybe they didn't want to become ceremonially unclean by helping a man that looked like he was dead. Maybe they didn't want to be bothered. Maybe they had somewhere to be. Maybe they were late. Maybe they just didn't give a flip. But for whatever reason, they don't stop and they were wrong not to stop. You also know, if you've heard sermons on this passage, that the Samaritans were the enemies of the Jews. They hated each other. The only way I can approximate the hatred between the Samaritans and the Jews is to say that if Jesus told the story today to us, the hero would not be a Samaritan. The hero would be an Isis member. A member of Boko Haram, a member of the Taliban. You pick Al-Qaeda, your favorite terrorist organization, whatever. That's who Jesus would make to be the hero because those are our mortal sworn enemies. And Jesus sets this Samaritan up to be the hero of the story. And if you've heard a good sermon on it, you understand that Jesus is doing more than answering the man's question in his attempt to justify himself. Because what is the question, who is my neighbor? And Jesus is talking about that. Who is your neighbor? But he's also talking about how you ought to serve and when you ought to serve. You ought to sacrificially serve others when they have brought trouble on themselves, when they should have known better. We don't get to just wash our hands and say, "Well, you're a fool. This is all your own doing. You got into this mess. You get out of this mess." That's not the picture painted here. Jesus says, "You serve other people even when it is an inconvenience to you, an inconvenience to your calendar or an inconvenience to your pocketbook." Because the Samaritan stopped. He gave this man his time and he gave him his money. Jesus expects us to serve to help others in the exact same way. And then Jesus comes back to the real question, "Who is my neighbor?" I'm going to justify myself. Let me try to narrow this down. Who is my neighbor? And this is where you see the heart of the Lawyer crystal clear. Jesus looks at the guy and he says, "Which one of the three is the neighbor?" It is multiple choice, A, the priest, B, the Levite, C, the Samaritan. All he has to say in the Greek language, in the original language is one word, Samaritan. It's all he has to say. He won't even say the word. Instead of using one word, he uses six words, six in the Greek. It's actually six in the English as well. And what he says is, "You can almost see him doing it with his teeth clenched in his jaw tight, the one who showed him mercy." All you had to say was Samaritan. He won't even say it. He's not interested in the answer that Jesus has to give to him. And then we read about Martha and Mary. This story is shorter, it's much more simpler, much more basic, not as many moving parts here. This is the first time in the Gospels we meet Mary and Martha. Later we read in John 11 that they have a brother named Lazarus who has died and Jesus goes and you know the story, he brings Lazarus back to life. But this is the first time we meet them, and this is the only place we read this story. And it starts off like this, Jesus goes to visit their home. Read about that in verse 38, "Martha welcomed Jesus into her house." Thumbs up, Martha, that's a good idea. Jesus comes over, "Welcome him into your house." You get verse 40, "Martha was distracted with much serving." Now you know how the story ends, but pretend like you don't. Pretend you just read the story of the Good Samaritan, where Jesus hammers home to this guy in a very dramatic way, you need to sacrificially serve other people. You must love others. Then you read the next story in the Gospel of Luke and you read, "Oh, here's a lady named Martha, sacrificially serving others." That's what Jesus wants us to do. She's going to be the hero of the story. Jesus is going to give her a gold star. He's going to tell Martha to get up out of the kitchen and you need to go help your sister. And Martha knows that's what ought to be coming. You feel for Martha? She comes to Jesus and she says, "Would you please tell my sister to get up and to go wash the dishes?" And Jesus looks at her and he says, verse 42, "My paraphrase, Mary is doing what's more important." No, I will not give her KP, kitchen patrol. No, she's going to stay right there because she has chosen what is better. You say, "Wait a minute, I thought the whole previous story was about sacrificially serving other people." Martha is doing exactly that and now Jesus says there's something better than that. Here's the problem. Martha had two issues that she's struggling with. One is that she wanted to be recognized as the servant. That's why she went out of her way to go talk to Jesus and to point out the fact, "Hey, I'm doing this all by myself." Everyone knew she was doing it all by herself but she wanted to make sure everyone knew she was doing it all by herself. And the second thing is that Martha has found her identity and what she can do for Jesus and not what Jesus can do for her. I want to do this. This is what I'm offering. This is how I find value in meaning. This is where I find my place. And Jesus says very gently to this lady, "Mary has chosen what's better." I'm not going to take it away from her and reading between the lines what he's saying to Martha is, "You need to put down the dish towel and you need to come recognize that something of supreme value is in the living." You're missing it. You're missing it. Here's how we sum it up. Really, really simple. It's on the back of your outline. Jesus is telling the lawyer that his love for God is incomplete until that love overflows in selfless service. His love for God is incomplete until it overflows in selfless service. The reality is that some of us are lawyers. We're only concerned about ourselves and we're only concerned about a one-way ticket to heaven. Jesus is inviting us, those of us who are lawyers, to open our eyes to the people around us and embrace the joy, not the misery, but the joy of selflessly serving other people. And you come to the end of this and you put it in the context of Luke and you realize, this is what Jesus did for us. He didn't come to be served, but he came to serve. He didn't come to see what we could do for him, but he came to seek us and to save us. He became a servant. And he sets this example for us and he's saying to the lawyer, listen, you don't love God nearly as much as you think you do until you start serving other people the way you ought to. There's a gaping hole in your relationship with God and that gaping hole needs to be filled with you serving other people. And what Jesus is really saying to this guy, and listen, he got it, Jesus is saying, if you're going to pretend like you're going to be pious enough and love God enough that you don't have to worry about the second commandment that you just told me, Leviticus 1918, love your neighbor as yourself, you're going to do enough to justify yourself, be pious enough before God that you don't have to worry about that. You have totally missed not only the second commandment, but the first. You missed it. Through 1910, the son of man did this for us, he selflessly served us by coming to seek us and to save us. That's for the lawyers, what about for Martha's? Jesus is telling Martha that her selfless service is incomplete until that service flows out, flows out of a relationship with him. And the reality is that some of us are Martha, we're doers. We're only concerned about being recognized as a servant. You understand the importance of that word recognized? It's really not about the service, it's really not about the other person, it's certainly not about God, it's about you. It looks like it's about other people because you're doing for them, doing for them, doing for them, but what you really want is the recognition, the pat on the back, the credit. And Jesus is inviting Martha's to open our eyes to the opportunity before us and to find our identity in him, to find our value in what he has done for us, not in what we can do for him. Look, you look at these two stories, two stories only found in Luke, side by side for a reason. When you think about Jesus and the lawyer and you think about Jesus and Martha, and really the lawyer and Martha had the exact same problem. It looked very, very different, but it was the exact same problem. The lawyer comes and he's not so much concerned with anybody else but himself in a one way ticket to heaven and what he can do to get there. Martha on the other hand, has God in human flesh sitting in her living room and all she cares about is serving and being recognized for the service, getting the credit, getting the help, and making those who don't do what she does look bad, especially in comparison to her. What she's saying is, "I'm going to do something." The lawyer says, "What do I need to do?" Martha says, "I'm doing." And they both completely missed Luke 1910. The son of man did not come so you could do anything for him. The son of man came to seek and to save the lost. He came to liberate the lawyer from this idea that he needs to do something to earn the favor of God. And he came to liberate Martha's from the idea that doing and serving is now their identity and their value. And yes, he wants the Martha's to serve, but he wants them to find their identity in Christ. And so most of us fall on one end of the spectrum, maybe a little more like the lawyer, maybe a little more like Martha, maybe you see yourself in both of them. And the takeaway from this passage is that Jesus came and he sought you and he saved you. Not so you just pray a prayer, not so you just show up at church every now and then, not so you just go through some sort of religious ritual, not so that you could be like the lawyer and have a checklist of what you need to do to earn your way in, not so you could be like Martha and accumulate all this apparently selfless service that's really about you. But he came to seek you and to save you so that you would be free, free to love him more than anything else in this world, and free to serve other people selflessly, not selfishly where it's all about you, but selflessly. Between 1910, the son of man came to seek and save the lost, let me pray for you. Father, we're grateful that you are patient and we know that we are slow to learn. Father, there is something deep inside of us that wants to justify ourselves. There's something deep inside of us that wants to be recognized for our humility, which is so ironic and so ridiculous. Father, we want to find our identity in Christ alone. We want to stop coming to you with a list of spiritual accomplishments to earn eternal life and we just want to rejoice in the fact that the son of man came to seek us and to save us, and that we are now free to love you with our hearts, our minds, our soul, our strength, with everything that we are and everything that we have, and we're free to serve others without connecting our identity or our value to that service. Just simply following your example, Father, as your people, as the church gathered together this morning, we want to respond in a way that would honor you. Father, we ask that you would send your spirit to apply these truths to our hearts, convict us where we need to be convicted, encourage us and build us up where we need to be encouraged and built up, and Father, may our worship be acceptable in your sight. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Stand. We're going to sing. [BLANK_AUDIO]