Well, good morning, Valley View. It’s great to be back with you after being gone last week, I think. I was visiting my son in Colorado. I think he tried to kill me last week hiking on the various high mountain passes and it almost worked. But I’m back, I made it. He does love me, I think. I’m pretty sure. He’s a great kid. It was great to get time away with him. One thing that was interesting on my journey back, we landed the airport. It’s late at night, you know, it’s probably 9 p.m., which is very late to me. And the airport’s a ghost town at that point. Except when I get past security, there’s hundreds of people there not to greet me. I thought it was y’all at first, then it wasn’t. They were all dressed up in like, patriotic characters. There was like George Washington and Paul Revere. I thought, what in the world is going on? And they were there. And of course not everyone was. But there was also just a number of American flags and signs that were there to welcome back and Honor Flight. I don’t know if you’re familiar with those. That’s where the government flies a group of people, veterans to go visit Washington, D.C., see all the sights, the memorials, especially those who have been through wars. My grandfather did that. He was a World War Two veteran. He went on one of those. The thing I loved about that was I love. I always loved seeing a great display of patriotism. It just swells. Something up within you could be all the flags on display. It could be any time you do the national anthem. You know, that’s the one time everyone kind of gets still and quiet at a ballgame. The national anthem is played. That’s probably one song that is always a go to going to stir me up emotionally just a little bit. Something about patriotism building up pride in your country. And I love that. America, for the most part, has a real strong sense of patriotism, patriotism, and pride. One thing I’ve noticed, it’s really interesting. It’s not just America. You go to any other country. They’re crazy about their country too. I’ve spent time in Rwanda, which is this tiny little country in the middle of Africa, overpopulated, very poor. And they’re nuts about their country. They love it. Flags everywhere. Anyone who’s from there, they’re going to talk about how great their country is. We lived in Fiji, in the South Pacific, pick any little tiny island nation all throughout the South Pacific. They are crazy about the country. They love their culture, their heritage. You’re going to see patriotism on display. And that one thing I’ve seen is that patriotism kind of works across the gamut. And I think here’s why. And we’re going to see it in today’s passage as well. There is a unity in our shared story. There’s something about a shared story that binds us together. It could be the shared story of the past. It could be the present. It could be what’s coming. And I think Paul is going to emphasize that today in our passage in Philippians. Kobe set it up last week talking about the unity we have in Christ. But Paul’s going to emphasize it even more today and talk about how we need to be living it out. But it’s rooted in the shared story we have in Christ. So turn to Philippians chapter two. We’ve wrapped up chapter one. We’re moving into chapter two, and Philippians chapter two is going to draw this out. In fact, we’re going to see three aspects of our unity in Philippians chapter two, verses one through 11, or the section we’re going to cover. If you have a church Bible, I think that’s on page 921. Those church Bibles are out in the lobby. You can grab one any time. Those are free for you. We want you in God’s Word, reading God’s Word, studying God’s Word. And I hope as we’re going through the book of Philippians, look, you can see if you have your Bible open, Philippians is like three pages in your Bible. It’s not much. You can read that every week, multiple times, get saturated in the book of Philippians. Get familiar with it. Get to know it. We’re going to be in the book of Philippians up until Christmas, basically, and this is a great opportunity to get to know God’s Word, one section of God’s Word really well. We’re going to see three aspects of unity in Philippians chapter two. And we’re going to start by just reading the first four verses of chapter two. As we set up the very first aspect of unity. So here we go, chapter two, verse one. So if there is any encouragement in Christ, comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to your own interest, but also to the interest of others. Thank you, Isaac, for setting us up to look at some of these verses today. There’s a reason why those verses were chosen as our memory verse for the month. We’ll talk about that in a minute as we unpack these. The first aspect of our unity that Paul is going to talk about here is that our unity is to be lived out and active in the present. That’s the first blank in your outline there. Our unity is to be revealed, shown, lived out in the present. And he’s going to highlight three ways that is here. Now, before we unpack those three ways, it’s important to highlight that this is unpacking a previous verse. You know, we have chapter numbers and verse numbers that we reference. But keep in mind this was just a letter written. Initially Paul wrote a letter. He didn’t add chapter numbers in first numbers as he went. You don’t do that when you write a letter. And so sometimes an idea that starts at chapter two, verse one began earlier and Colby began us in chapter one, verse 27. Looking at this idea only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ. How does our life appear to be worthy of the gospel of Christ? How do we display the gospel of Christ to the world? Part of is that we live out unity in the present. And in verse one, the first way he says, the first thing we are to do and how we live out our unity in the present, is that we reflect. We are called to reflect on our life in Christ. Look back at verse one because it begins the second word here with a very important word. So if there is any encouragement in Christ and in fact, in the original language, that word if appears with each of those phrases, if any comfort from love, if any participation in the spirit, if any affection and sympathy. And he uses the word if not, he’s not asking, does that occur? We can use it that way. But it can also mean, since okay, since there is encouragement in Christ, he knows these things are true there. He’s reminding them this is true of you. Since there is consolation or comfort in love, since there is fellowship, participation in the spirit, since there is affection and compassion among you. Now, why is it important that he reminds them of that? One of the things we often take for granted is how much has been given to us in our lives. Just about anything. The road I drove in on the water delivered to my house the power lines when I was born, I didn’t. I had no part in creating any of that. That was all already there for me. The government was already in place. That provides a peaceful setting for me to live in. Industries were in place on and on and on. We could list 100 million things that were already in place that you had nothing to do with, that were given to you. Paul is emphasizing the spiritual reality of that. Now, I know we all have different spiritual heritages and backgrounds, but if you’re here in church, there is a spiritual heritage that has been created here that none of us really, except maybe 1 or 2 that were here near the beginning. We’re probably down to just one none of us had anything to do with. That’s a legacy that’s been handed down to us. When I walk in in the morning, I see the cornerstones on a couple of the buildings that are dated years before I was even born. We had nothing to do with that. That’s been handed down to us, and it is really healthy spiritually for us to pause occasionally and remind ourselves of that. Thank you God. I had nothing to do with my parents coming to know Christ and staying together and staying married. I had nothing to do with their parents coming to no Christ, staying together, stay married, handing that down. Not everybody has that. I know, but something has been handed to you, and we need to walk in the reality of the gratitude of that. There is so much power in pausing and reflecting, because the enemy wants you to be completely ed up with all the things that are wrong in your life, in this world. And there’s plenty to focus on. Any one just turn on anything and you’ll be reminded of all the things that are wrong with everything. This world wants you to be completely discontent. The enemy wants you to be so frustrated and anxious and angry and disappointed. We’ve got to be intentional, to reflect. If we want to live active in the present, in unity, we’ve got to reflect on that shared unity that shared heritage that we all share right now and give thanks for it. There’s so much power in that. So that’s the first step. Reflect. Second, though, if these things are true, since these things are true, what are we called to do? Reflect but then connect. Be intentional to connect with one another. That’s how we move towards unity. We move towards one another. Look back at verse two. Since these things are true, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. I love how Paul starts this section complete my joy. It makes it sound like his joy is incomplete, that somehow he is depending on them to have any kind of joy in life. And that’s not a good place to be if if my joy in life completely depends on your spiritual growth. If only if you’re happy, am I happy? That’s a tough that’s a tough place to be. People who live that way are usually miserable. It’s hard to find happiness that way. What do you mean? Here is complete my joy because circumstantially, he is not dependent on his circumstances for his joy. We know that Paul is in prison, probably in Rome, many have said, probably chained to his guards on either side of him. That doesn’t sound like any fun to me. That’s not how I want to live. It would be hard to find joy in those circumstances. Paul’s circumstances they don’t determine his joy. Instead, he is saying, I’m going to find joy in the fruit of my labor spiritually, and I know that Christ is at work in your lives, so keep getting after it, keep growing in him, and he’s going to find great delight in that complete fill up is another way to translate that fill up my joy. It’s already there, but man, keep filling it up and has you pursue Christ in all that you do. But he’s encouraging them to continue in this unity. Connect with one another. If you look back at verse two, here’s how he does this. First he says to focus on the way you think by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord, and of one mind. The focus here is on a unity, a connectedness in the way we think. In fact, that phrase that’s translated full accord, some will translate like that of the same spirit, that phrase, even sometimes we might. A language we might use that has probably has a similar sentiment. You might describe someone as a soul mate, someone you feel so deeply connected with that you feel like you’re on the same page about everything. You know, what they’re going to say before they say, you know what they’re going to do before you. They even do it. You can look at their face and tell what they’re thinking. There’s a deep connection, of course, that happens hopefully in relationships at times. That also happens in great musical bands. You see, you know that they know automatically what that person’s going to play. They’re synced up. They just know what’s going to happen. They know the next note. They know the change. They know the key change is about to hit and it just seems seamless. They just seem so together and unified or a great sports team. You’ve seen that the point guard knows what the power forward is going to be before he even starts to move. The ball is already moving that way. He hits it, it catches. It’s like they just know there’s a synergy there that happens. And Paul is saying that’s how we need to be. We need to have that kind of unity of mind, of heart, of love, of care, of concern, of connection. We feel it when someone else in the body is suffering. Have this mind among yourselves. There should be a deep connection. Part of the challenge, though, is we need to connect. How do we get there is verse three. Verse three says, have this mind, sorry. Verse three says do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves first. Or as we progress, we connect. How do we connect? Number three respect. We’ve got to grow in our respect, concern, love for one another. And the first step here is to not be about selfish ambition. That’s the phrase do nothing from selfish ambition. This is in direct contrast to chapter one, verse 17, which we looked at a few weeks ago, where he’s talking about some people who preach the gospel out of selfish ambition for their own benefit. And that’s true. People do that. People get up on stage on churches every week, and their motives are not pure ethic. Look, by the way, do any of us always have pure motives? I mean, I’m constantly question was of where was my heart true in that interaction? Was it pure in that? Lord, I hope it was. Please expose it if it wasn’t. But there are many who intentionally get up, preach the gospel out of selfish ambition, for their own benefit, for their own glory. But he says that’s not what you’re called to do. If you want to pursue unity, if you want to pursue respecting one another instead. The contrast he gives here, not with selfish ambition. Verse three, but in humility. And this is so important because unity can’t occur without humility. That’s why Pastor Kevin years ago was always talking about unity and humility. Unity and humility over and over and over again. If I can’t humble myself, there’s no chance of us moving forward in unity. If I can’t say, you know, maybe I was wrong about that. Maybe there’s another way. Let me at least consider your idea about this. Then there’s no chance of moving forward. If my ways the only way. The right way. There’s no other option. We can’t move towards unity. That’s why humility is so important. I’ve got to be able to take a step back and just ask God, what do you want me to see in this? In fact, he describes this a little more. What does humility mean? Count others more significant than yourselves. Now this is a this can be a tricky section to unpack. Okay, count consider regard. It’s not a math term. It’s a mental term. Understand others to be more significant than yourselves. This doesn’t mean that somehow I look at other people and I go, I am meaningless and worthless compared to them. There’s so much more significant in their essence in being that I have no significance. That’s not what this is referring to. One way to translate it might be something like count them as having a higher rank than you. So last night we had a wedding in here. The Puckett’s daughter Audrey and her new husband, Devin Dixon. They got married last night and Devin is finishing up ROTC at u eval. He’s going to start as a second lieutenant in January. And when Devin walks in the room as a second lieutenant and there’s a major or a colonel or a general, his first thought isn’t, I’m such a worthless piece of trash because I’m just a lowly second lieutenant. No, no, no. But his first thought is, I better give them honor and respect because of their rank. Because they are higher ranked. That is his immediate assumption. He’s not sizing up, going well, you know what? I’m really a little better than these guys. I’m stronger than them in some ways. I mean, that dude’s a general. Really? Come on. No no, no. Count others as higher rank as more significant. And the beauty of this is most of us, when we walk in a room, we’re doing the we’re doing the opposite. Okay, who can I put down to feel better about myself? Who I’m sizing up? Where do I stand? Who can I go and get good feels from? Who cannot? Who do I need to avoid? Look, some of that’s healthy. I get that. But when you walk in the room, starting from a place of humility, count others more significant than yourself. And then now what does that mean? Let each of you look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. I heard a powerful story of this this week. How do I, in my mindset, think about the interest of others more than myself from a place of health? How do I do that? There’s this MMA fighter, UFC fighter Jorge Saint-Pierre. He’s retired now. He’s considered one of the best. One thing that fascinated me about him is he said that before every fight, he would pray for his opponent. Now, I’m sure we’re all going. I can think of some great prayers. I would pray for my opponent. Right. Which leg should snap in half? Before we start? There’s all kinds of prayers we can pray. That’s not how he prayed his prayer, first and foremost was a prayer of thanks for them. Thank you for them. Thank you for the hard work they put in to prepare for today. That made me better. If they weren’t given their all, I wouldn’t give my all. I wouldn’t be my best without them, I wouldn’t be who I am. Thank you for this opponent, this guy who wants to tear my head off. Thank you for him. Next, he would give thanks not only for that, but he would also pray for their health. It’s funny, he said. I love all the training, but I actually hate the fighting. Like, okay, I know plenty of people that hate their job. That makes sense. I love all the training, hate the fighting, and I don’t want to see them hurt to a place where they can’t continue in life. So God, would you protect them in the midst of this? And then he would pray this, and this is mind blowing, and let the thing that needs to happen happen. He knew that not every win was good for him, and he won a lot. By the way. But sometimes we learn more through a loss than a win, and none of us are wise enough to know what we need. And I heard him share that. And I thought, what in the world? I’ve got no category for that. Have I ever prayed for an enemy like that, for an opponent like that? In fact, I think right now I don’t want to hear any names right now. Think right now of a person who is opposed to you right now. Someone it could be someone at work that you know every day you show up, they want nothing better than for you to be gone or to see you fail. Could be someone at school who is desperate to just see you fall on your face and laugh. Could be someone at church, not this church. Someone at another church. Probably. It could be someone in your family who is opposed to you. When is the last time you stopped and prayed for them? But that’s a struggle of mine as well. When was the last time you prayed God? Would you help them to flourish? Would you help them? That’s what I mean by pray. Pray the right way for them. I’m sure we’ve prayed some of the other ways for them. There’s a lot of Psalms I love to look up and pray for some who are my opponents. When is the last time you prayed? Help them to flourish. Thank you for them. Thank you for the way you’ve used them in my life. And by the way, I’m not excusing the fact that many have sinned against us and done great evils against us. I’m not saying that’s okay, but you see what he’s saying here? I walk into a room, I think, what can I get out of this moment? What do I need? Instead of what do others need? How can I serve them? How can even my opponent be pointed toward Christ in the way I act and respect them? So this is a high calling. How do we pursue unity? We do it in the present. Every action we take says something about our beliefs. Do we believe that Christ can unify us or not? I hope the answer is yes, yes I do, but it happens in the present. Now. Second, our unity is lived out in the present. That’s the first aspect of our unity, but the second is the reality that it is rooted in the past. It’s lived out in the present, but it is deeply rooted in the past shared story we have together. When I saw George Washington and Paul Revere that has shaped our American story, the stories of each of them I cannot tell, and I, the Redcoats are coming. We have all these stories we share over and over again, and the story of Christ is what shapes our present unity today, rooted in the past. Look at verse five with me have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. What we’re going to see in verses five through eight and Paul does this so well, Scripture does this so well when Scripture gives commands, it’s never followed by because I said so. But, by the way, that works great actually doesn’t even work great for a two year old. We can do that when someone is little and not really thinking for themselves. But there comes a point, and we’ve all experienced this in our spiritual life where because I said so doesn’t work anymore. I need more than that. That’s not enough. And Paul, when he gives commands and we saw this in the book of Ephesians, the first half was be, here’s who you are in Christ. Here’s the truth of your identity, your position in him because of who you are now. Do we don’t do to gain our position? We do because of who we are in Christ. We don’t earn our salvation by what we do. We are saved in him. And because of that, we act out of the overflow of that. And so when Paul says, be unified. And here’s how, now he’s going to tell us why. Here’s why we saw it. Verse five, have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus. The reason why we can humble ourselves, not pursue selfish ambition? No, there’s more significance is because that’s what Jesus did. He was our model. He was our example in this regard. And this is so countercultural today, but especially then this, this goes against all just natural human inclinations. Every one of us has to fight against the inclination to just take things under control ourselves. In fact, there’s some difficult concepts in here because this is one of the richest sections in Scripture on Jesus and his humanity and divinity together. So look back at some of these phrases here, because I want to talk about a couple of these, which are hard. Verse six, it says, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God to be grasped. Now some people see that word form of God and they say, see, look, he was only in the form of God. He wasn’t actually God. Well, that can’t be true, because if you look at the rest of the verse, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. It says that form of God, whatever that meant, he was equal with God. That’s the blank in your notes form equals equality, whatever it meant in this context, in this verse, he’s saying he didn’t count being with God equal with God before he came to earth. There’s a fancy word for that. When he became incarnate, the incarnation of Christ. That’s an easy word to remember. If you’ve ever been to Chipotle and ordered carne asada carnitas flesh before he put on flesh became incarnate. Just a fancy word. Before he became human, he was in heaven, in the state of glory, completely separate from us. And it says here he didn’t consider that something to be grasped, something to be held on to, something to be used only for himself. But something he willingly gave up, in fact, looked at how it describes this. He didn’t count something to be grasped. Verse seven, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and emptied here doesn’t mean he didn’t become not God. I said that right. He stayed. God. But just as we count others as higher ranked, he counted himself lower ranked. He emptied himself. He became low. And you’ve seen these movies, war movies where someone has made a poor choice, disobeyed a command, and they come up and rip off the rank, rip off their badge, they are made low. You no longer of any significance. But the powerful part with Jesus is no one else did that to him. He did it himself. I will make myself low. No one else could have made him low. He chose to, and I think probably the best picture of this is in John 13. We’ve studied that when we studied the book of John. Just a quick summary. That’s when Jesus, sitting at the table with the disciples leading up to his death, he steps away from the table. He takes off his outer garment, lays aside his outer garment. He kneels before them, takes on the position of a servant, makes himself low, and he washes their feet, which we don’t have a category for. How humiliating that would have been to them. Peter even said, don’t you dare touch my feet, don’t you dare! And Jesus said, no, no, no, you do not understand who I am. This is the picture he paints for who he is and who we’re called to follow. And by the way, there is no worse example to hold up to a Roman citizen than Jesus. Especially in Philippi. We talked a lot about this last week. They were all about titles and importance were a Roman colony. Look how special we are for full of extra Roman citizens. We’re more important than all the other cities that were conquered by Rome. We’re special, and we’re going to pile up our titles about how great we are. And you want to hold up Jesus the servant, the one of low rank, the one who lowered himself. You want to hold him up as special? Listen, we’ve got to be very careful to not try to change the message of the gospel to fit the culture. There are friends of yours who you feel are this close to coming to Christ. And if this message of the gospel was just a little different, maybe they’d come to know him well. They wouldn’t come to know him. If you change the message, they come to know a false gospel at that point. Look, I know try to connect with people, try to be relevant. I’m not saying that, but we don’t change the message of Scripture. We don’t change the message of the cross to try to appeal to the culture. They didn’t work then. Paul didn’t do it. It wouldn’t work. Now listen. At that time, there was nothing worse than crucifixion in the minds of us, in the minds of the eyes, of the people, which is it’s hard to get our minds around how tragic it would have been to them for us. When we talk about the crucifixion, if you’ve ever heard a message on the crucifixion on a Sunday morning at Easter, usually it goes into a great or a movie about the crucifixion. It goes into great detail about all the horror, the pain, how horrendous of a torture device it was. You’ll hear things like this was the worst form of torture ever invented, which, you know, I mean, I don’t I’m not tested them all. I have no idea. But you’ll hear people say all the focus is on the pain. And by the way, it would have been horrendously painful. But why do we only talk about the pain? It’s because Americans hate pain. We do all we can to avoid pain. You give me 30s of loneliness. I got to pick up something to distract me from the pain of being lonely. Or if some pain occurs in my life, I’ve got to take some pills quickly to avoid the pain. And we’re all trying to numb ourselves from potential pain. We hate pain. There’s nothing worse that could happen to you than pain. But to a Roman. Yeah, the pain was there, but it was way worse. Was the shame, the humiliation. If you ended up on a cross, your family may never recover from the shame of that event because they cared so much about what other people think about them. In fact, even in your notes, I’ve put a quote from Cicero. He was a famous, Roman official. Roman orator. He said it this way. Be far away. He’s speaking of crucifixion. Be far away not only from the body of a Roman citizen, but even from his thoughts, his eyes, his ears. We don’t even want to talk about it. We don’t want to think about it. We don’t want to see it. We look away in the midst of it. It was even against the law for a Roman citizen to be crucified. The shame of it was too great for them to endure. And Jesus is the one that Paul is saying. He is the one we follow. He endured the shame. And because he endured the shame, you don’t have to. Yeah. Now our unity is rooted in the past. Our unity is rooted in what he did. But he didn’t stay there. He didn’t stay dead. He didn’t stay on the cross. But our unity is also secured. Our hope is secured in the future. We have a future story we look forward to as well. Part of why we are here is because we know there will be a greater day than today, and today may be one of the greatest days of your life, but you know, it pales in comparison to what awaits you. Look at verses nine through 11. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. I love this section. It’s so powerful. It’s calling us to praise him, to exalt his name. You know, in the Old Testament, the name of Jesus spoke to his character, his essence. We use that the same way today. He’s got a great name. We don’t just mean we like the way it sounds. We mean someone of great strength, of great character, a great person, which is really powerful. You know, I’ve not talked about this much yet. We’re a whole chapter into Philippians. But if you remember in first Peter, first Peter just had Old Testament quote after Old Testament quote after Old Testament quote. Peter would say, as it said in Isaiah, as it says, as it says, Philippians doesn’t have any direct Old Testament quotes. Now, none of them show up that way to different audiences. Probably the nature of this letter, Philippians is also one of the most encouraging, comforting letters. Paul’s got a different agenda here. I’m not just heaping on verses of proof on you. However, he does hint at Old Testament. In fact, if you turn to the book of Isaiah, if you have a church Bible, tell you what page that’s on Isaiah is on page 567. This is an inference to a passage in the Old Testament. Isaiah 42. Or 45, whichever you prefer. Thank you. Julie. Isaiah 45. And you can have just a few words that give an inference to an entire passage. We do this all the time. If I just say two words for score, what do you say? Two words. Okay. That’s enough. You don’t have to call the whole thing. Homeschoolers unite. Right? Four score. If I say I have a dream. Yeah, I mean, come on, there are words. Just a couple of words strung together in our language that you immediately go. I know what you’re talking about. I know you’re pulling on a whole huge tradition. And here every knee will bow, every tongue will confess. Isaiah 45. Look at verse 22. And you’ll see this here. And this is important in terms of why Paul can make the claim that Jesus was equal with God. Isaiah 4522. I’m getting there. Be patient 4522. Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth. For I am God, and there is no other. This is God speaking by myself. I have sworn he doesn’t have to swear on anything else. He’s the greatest authority by myself. I have sworn from my mouth has gone out. Righteousness a word that shall not return. And there he says to me, every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall swear allegiance. Only God can demand that kind of allegiance. Only God demands. Only God is the one that we should bow the need to and confess how great he is. And so you see here there will be a day, as he says in chapter two, verse nine, there will be a day when every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. And so here’s what I want to plead with you today. There will be a day when everyone will bow. Everyone will confess. But we don’t have to wait till then. You don’t have to be forced to confess that he is Lord. You don’t have to be forced to bow to him. You can willingly do that every day of your life. Bow before him. Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you at the proper time. And listen. I really want to lay it on heavy today with a plea for you to not wait. Don’t play around anymore about your faith. Don’t wait another day. You’re not guaranteed another day. We saw that very publicly with Charlie Kirk. You’re not guaranteed more moments with your very young children. It won’t last forever. It’s not a game. Your spiritual life. It’s not a game that we just fiddle around with and tack on to the other side of your life. If you truly believe, and I want you to do a little self-reflection here, if you truly believe that there’s nothing more important in your life than your spiritual growth and relationship with God, if you truly believe that. Here’s one of mine I ask you to do today, I’m going to I’m going to call you to a point of commitment. This will be uncomfortable for many of us. That’s okay. It’s okay to be uncomfortable. We’re uncomfortable every day at work. I’m uncomfortable every day. When I drive the car, somebody cuts me off. Life can be uncomfortable. It’s okay. I want to call us to make a commitment today. A fresh commitment. And I was on the fence about doing this because I’m going to call you to commit to being at church every day for the next four weeks, every Sunday. You don’t have to be here every day, every Sunday for the next four weeks. And I get it. You already have some commitments. Look, I was gone last week, okay, I get it. It’s okay. But to the best of your ability. What? I’m trying to appeal to is the reality that since Covid, there’s just been this, I don’t know, complacency in the church. It used to be that it was a commitment. And now we’ll just see if I have time. I’ll figure it out. It’s an option now. And by the way, attending church isn’t everything in your spiritual growth. If you have a better plan, I’d love to hear it. Most people who are just skipping out on church aren’t following some greater plan for their spiritual growth. Maybe you are. It’s possible. If you don’t have a better plan, then come. Make it a commitment. These next four weeks, all of October, the first Sunday in November, I’m going to be here. I’m going to do the best that I can to be here. Yes, I committed to this other thing. I’m going to see if I can move it around or not. But I’m not just going to go. Yeah. Oh, you know, I think we’ll just stay home today a little tired. I stayed up late last night. Will you commit today? Here’s what I ask you to do in just a second. If you will commit to the next four Sundays. To be here to the best of your ability. If you already had your anniversary vacation planned and you’re going to be gone, I get it. That’s fine. I’m going to ask you to stand. And also, if you’re online at home watching and I know some people can’t be here. It’s okay physically. Can’t I get that? But I’m talking to the person who goes to. We’ll see a lot easier to just stay home and watch it. I get that. So here’s what I’m going to do. If you’ll commit to the next four weeks to the best of your ability, and put a stake in the ground today in your spiritual growth, will you stand now with me? Now, if you stood and look. If you didn’t stand. I get it. I know some are from out of town and all that. If you stood. Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to talk to someone about that after the service, especially if you’ve been the complacent person and you know it. And I don’t have anybody in mind. I’m not. If I glanced at you, I wasn’t thinking about you. Okay? I want you to go to that person, someone, and say, listen, hold me accountable to this. I’m going to be here next week. I want you to check on me. Would you call me this week? This is important to me. I can’t do this alone. We’re not called to do this alone. If you hadn’t. Stan, go ahead and stand. Let’s stand the rest of us together. Because this verse, verses nine through 11. Do you remember what it said? Every what knee will bow and every what? We don’t have to wait to bow the knee and confess the tongue. Here’s what we’re going to do now. We’re going to do this collectively. I’m going to ask everyone if you’re able. Once Isaac starts leading us in this song to kneel where you are and I’m going to kneel down front. And if you feel comfortable, if you want to come down front and kneel, we’re going to kneel and confess as we sing the song. We don’t have to wait to a future day to kneel and confess. We can do it now. Every day can be about humbling yourself before him. Every knee here bowed. Every tongue. Confess that Jesus is Lord Isaac. Will you please lead us in that? Come join me if you want. As we kneel down front.