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Galatians chapter 6, we are finishing the book of Galatians, and in chapter number 5, we had kind of finished by talking about the importance of not walking in the flesh, but walking in the Spirit. That was kind of the whole latter portion. If you look back at chapter 5, look at verse 16, This I say then, walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. If you skip down to verse 25, If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vainglory, provoking one another, envying one another. So in this latter portion of Galatians, the Apostle Paul is trying to bring up to this church the importance of not being fleshly minded, carnally minded, but rather being spiritual and walking in the Spirit. And of course, this is very important for this church because this church has been mixed up on the Gospel. This church has allowed people to come in and basically teach a lot of false doctrine. So obviously, this church is not a spiritual juggernaut. This church has not been really walking in the Spirit. They've been walking in the flesh quite a bit, and he's trying to kind of make it clear to these people that they need to also walk in the Spirit. And of course, that's important because if you think about the situation that they're in, this church has slipped into really bad heresy, and they've had some serious problems. And of course, he wants them to get that doctrine right. But here's the reality, if you get that doctrine right, but then you stay carnal, what's going to happen? You're going to go right back to where you were, and you're going to go back into heresy and all manner of different kinds of sins. It even said in verse 20, chapter 5, it said idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variants, emulations, rasterized, seditions, notice this, heresies. So a heresy is a work of the flesh, and of course, by not being spiritual, it allows you to get into more and more heresy. And so it's important to be spiritual so that you don't fall into all kinds of weird heresies, and your church goes into a bad direction. And even just you as a person, you go into a bad direction, because frankly speaking, you could go to a church that's thriving, but you yourself are backsliding and becoming more carnal and having serious issues. Vice versa could be true, you could be going to a church that the church is kind of going downhill like a Sardis, Baptist church, but you are still reading your Bible, you're still going soul winning, you're still walking in the spirit, and you could be personally thriving even though your church is just like destroying itself. So it's important for us to be spiritual for ourselves, but then also as a whole, we want everybody in the church to be kind of striving for this, so the church goes in the right direction as well. And that's kind of where we kind of tie into chapter number six, is he's still continuing this thought of the importance of being spiritual, walking in the spirit, not just fulfilling the lusts of the flesh, and he says in verse one, Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. So it's kind of interesting that he brings this up in this book of the Bible, because if you think about it, they're really overtaken in a fault, but he wasn't really doing it in the spirit of meekness. Now you have to understand that everything is contextual, and of course, what is the point of this verse? Let's slow down and just kind of think about this verse for a moment. If someone's overtaken in a fault, you if you're spiritual, you would restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself. What does considering thyself mean? It's basically if you were in that position, how would you want to be treated? Now keep your finger, go to Matthew chapter number seven, Matthew chapter number seven. And look at verse number one, the Bible says, Judge not, that ye be not judged, for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged. And with what measure ye meet, it shall be measured to you again. So according to the Bible, however you treat people, God is often going to cause that same treatment to be had for you as well. So if you're kind of just a jerk towards people, if you're really harsh with people, you should almost expect that God's going to put people in your life that are going to judge you harshly, and are going to be rude to you, and kind of treat you in the same manner. And this is where you get the carnal ideas of things like karma, which of course karma is not a biblical concept, it's not biblical doctrine, it's not what the Bible teaches, but it's basically a perverted form of what the Bible teaches that you're going to reap what you sow, and that if you treat people harshly, you should almost expect that God's going to cause that kind of same thing to happen to you. And if you rip people off, then God may cause you to get ripped off, and often, in fact, when you read the Bible, punishment seemed to be the exact punishment that the wicked person caused on other people. So just like Pharaoh was throwing baby boys into the river, him and his whole army get thrown into the river. And just like Haman prepared a gallo for Mordecai, he gets hung on his own gallows. And just like the presidents lie about Daniel and have him thrown in the lion's den, well then they get thrown in the lion's den with their whole family. And so often God will cause whatever evil you suppose on others, however you treat other people, God will often treat you. There's a parable that Jesus Christ tells of a man who can't pay his debt, and he asks his master to forgive him, and he can't pay, and so he ends up forgiving him. But then his underservant owes him just some nominal amount of money, and he does the same thing to him, says like, I can't pay, but the Bible says that he grabbed him by the throat, and he says that you have to pay all of the oas, and then he threw him in the prison. So then whenever the king hears about it, what does he do? He takes that servant and throws him in the prison, because he's like, hey, if you're going to judge that way, then I'll judge you the same way. And the parable is to illustrate that God is that king, and we're the first servant, and that God already forgave us so much more than we could ever have possibly been able to pay back, so we shouldn't then treat our fellow servant with such a small nominal debt in such a harsh way, because then God might end up treating us in the same way, and God might treat us harshly if we're going to do the same thing. So this is a very biblical concept, that if I see a brother overtaken in a fault, I want to restore him in the spirit of meekness, considering myself, in the sense that I should put myself in his position and say, if I did what he did, how would I want people to treat me? If I lied or stole or made a mistake or I did some bad sin, how would I want other people to treat me? And that's essentially how you should test your reaction to other people. Now, if we put this in proper context then, there would be times where I would want someone to treat me harshly, right? What would be that context? How about 1 Corinthians 5, a church discipline issue? That should be dealt with harshly, according to the Bible. And I wouldn't say, well, just because it's me, you should treat me nice or look the other way. I would say, hey, I should get that same treatment. You know, when it comes to capital offense punishments, I say, hey, let's all have the same playing board, you know, murder, death penalty, you know, adultery, death penalty, right? All the other perverted gross things, death penalty, I don't have any problem with equally enforcing that law across the board. I wouldn't say, well, look the other way it was me. It's like, hey, the apostle Paul said this, if I've done something worthy of death, I refuse not to die. So the apostle Paul is not saying, hey, don't deal with me harshly in that situation. He's just saying, hey, I'm willing to be judged in that manner. And so the same would be the context of Galatians of, hey, if I'm off on the gospel, please rebuke me until I get that right. You know, deal with me harshly until I get that right. But generally speaking, you know, you don't show up at church one time, you say a crossword, you don't treat your spouse the best, you have a bad day, you have a bad mood, you do something off, you know, you got to think like, what would it be like if I did that and how would I want people to treat me and that's how you should treat other people. Giving them grace, giving them mercy, having a meek and a humble spirit and not thinking like, well, I would never do that or I didn't do that or whatever, you know, whatever kind of attitude you might initially think of like, well, how dare that person treat me that way or how dare that person say this or how dare they send that sin or, you know, whatever the context is of the situation, there could be a lot of times where you look down upon people for having faults. Oh, well, you know, you should have worked harder, you know, you shouldn't be lazy on the job or you shouldn't have married that person. You know, that could be a thought that a lot of people have where they say like, well, if you had married like me, you wouldn't have that problem, you know. And of course, I could have that thought because I have the greatest wife in the world. So I could just think like, well, that's your problem, you know. You didn't marry well, right? But that's not the right type of attitude because, you know, I could have been you and I could have married your spouse or I could have had your parents or I could have had your job or I could have, you know, whatever and it's not fair to just always judge people so harshly because if that's your attitude, expect it to come back to you. This is why, you know, I always try to think about this. I always try to think like I want to be really gracious and kind to everybody because I want God to treat me that way, you know, when I make a mistake or I have an off day or I am negligent in my duties or whatever the problem is, I want God to treat me in a certain way and so that is the type of attitude that the apostle Paul is trying to express here. Now, what is meekness in general? I felt like we should go to a few verses here because it's kind of a hard word to understand. Go to Matthew chapter 11. I think sometimes meekness is looked at as being inferior or maybe it's almost as a negative connotation in the sense of that you're being too soft. Like here's words that people sometimes associate with being meek, soft or weak but that is not what the Bible teaches when it comes to meekness. Now Moses was considered the meekest man on the face of the earth at his time and it wasn't a negative thing. It was actually a praise of the Lord. God's like commending Moses on being one of the meekest men on the earth. So what is meekness? Look at Matthew chapter 11 verse 29. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me for I am meek and lowly in heart. Now of course this is the Lord Jesus Christ talking about himself. So of course meek could never have a negative characteristic because Jesus Christ describes himself as being meek. And of course Moses being meek is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ being meek. And we as men and women should both be meek. Of course we read in 1 Peter chapter number 3 when it talks about the role of a woman, it talks about her being a meek and quiet spirit. And I think that some women would think like oh man well you know that's just putting down women or saying that women need to be inferior or women have to be weak and soft and their opinions can't be heard. Now let me ask this question. Was Jesus someone they would say is soft, weak, and his opinion couldn't be heard? Yet he said he was meek, didn't he? Okay so maybe your understanding of meek is just wrong. Okay and of course the world doesn't ever understand the Bible so don't let them tell you what the Bible means or what meekness is. You know let's let the Bible tell us what meekness is. And I think in this verse it gives you kind of a synonym here, lowly. What is lowly? Lowly is looking or having a low view of oneself. So what would be the synonym of lowly? Humble. Okay having humility. Not thinking that you're better than other people. Having a low opinion of yourself. Not thinking that you are more important or a greater value or anything of other people but rather lowering yourself so as to elevate other people. And of course the Lord Jesus Christ is the lowliest of all men considering the fact that he's God and he lowered himself down unto a unassuming servant. You know he was in the form of a servant. Nobody even knew who he was. And it's like how much lower could he even have gone? It's not really any possible for him to go any lower. And that was to elevate our importance. You think about it like obviously the whole essence of the gospel is about Jesus. We don't want to take away from that. But the gospel is also about us. Because it's for God so loved the world. It's about how much he loves us and showing kind of our value and our importance to God. God loved us so much he was willing to sacrifice his son. That's a pretty high price tag if you think about it. I mean that price tag is the ultimate price tag. Saying God is willing to pay the ultimate price for you. What does that mean? That's God lowering himself to elevate our importance and our value. And I mean constantly biblical authors are saying things like what is man that thou art mindful of him. You know we're just dust. We're like nothing. And for whatever reason God holds us in great value and great esteem and God loved us so much to be willing to sacrifice his son. And Jesus obviously it's not a competition here. We can't compete with the Lord Jesus Christ in value. We can't compete with the Lord Jesus Christ in any category. Intellect, wisdom, value, importance. I mean he just he's a hundred percent we're zero percent in every category. Yet he was willing to lower himself to elevate us. So if Jesus is willing to do that how much more should we have the same attitude towards other people? I mean we're not even the Lord Jesus we don't have to humble ourselves as much as Jesus did to elevate the importance of humanity. So then how much more should we be willing to lower ourselves on a daily basis to then elevate the importance of other people? And that's the essence of being me. So what is it what is Moses how is Moses being me? He really doesn't think of himself as like well I'm Moses. I'm the leader here. I'm the great one. You know I'm the savior of you guys. He thinks of himself is not any more important than the little child that they took out of Egypt. Okay. Caring about every single person thinking every person has great value loving the individual you know communism teaches the exact opposite of this where individuals are meaningless just all about the whole and the leadership whereas you know the Bible teaches it's all about the individual and how much God cares about every single individual and every single person has value and that there's not this just collateral damage that is taught with all kinds of wicked satanic agendas. Now I want to go to one more place go to Ephesians chapter number four and let's see another place here that kind of describes this but I want you to get the right idea of me because it's mentioned a lot of times in the Bible and most of the time it's mentioned in the Bible it's not going to give you a definition. You know the Bible says blessed are the meek but that doesn't tell you what that means that just simply saying blessed are people that are meek but it's like well what is that mean it's blessed people that are humbled blessed people that are lowly in their own mind that aren't assuming that there's some great one Ephesians chapter number four look at verse two with all lowliness and meekness with long suffering for burying one another in love so the Bible is telling us to walk in a certain way and of course walking in the spirit is the essence here too and it's saying with all what lowliness and meekness why they're always seem to be coupled because they're kind of the same essence and what is meekness it's lowliness go to Titus chapter three I want to go to one more place Titus chapter number three and so one aspect of meekness is lowliness humility another aspect of meekness though which I'm not turning to every place but you study this in the Bible it's kind of tied with the word gentle okay and I'll show you one of these references Titus chapter three verse two to speak evil of no man to be no brawlers but gentle showing all meekness unto all men so he's telling you to be gentle and then he's explaining that as doing what showing all meekness so again that's kind of giving you another definition of what someone who's meek is is they are humble and they're gentle so think about the context that we have here if you go back to Galatians chapter number six you screw up what is the what kind of attitude would you want someone to have towards you when you screwed up for them to be humble and gentle with you isn't that a great attitude I mean if you screw up don't you want your parents or mom and dad to be like hey it's okay and we all make mistakes or do you just want the rod you know it's just like of course we like the gentleness we like the the fact that it's not just like how did you screw that up no one would ever screw that up I would never do that or you know I remember from my childhood and of course you know no parent is perfect my father was a very good father I love him but he wasn't always the the the the most gentle okay when it came to screw ups and I remember when I would screw something up I mean he would berate me as if no one on the planet could ever make that mistake and that he would never make that mistake and and the thing that was frustrating is he was probably right about that that he wasn't gonna make that mistake but it just didn't still it doesn't feel as nice as it could have because I remember especially when I was studying for the SAT he would ask me questions I get one wrong he's like how did you get that wrong you should never get that one wrong and I was like what do you think you know every single one of these questions you could get all of them right he's like yes and I was like okay so then I just start testing and he got them all right of course and I'm like you know okay well but but at the same time it's like a know-it-all doesn't make you feel better when you screw up okay it's like hey at my age would he have gotten them all right though you know that's a different question right if he had had my education you know would he have gotten them all right so it's it's it's not necessarily fair to make that kind of a comparison and the same could be with Christianity sometimes you've been a Christian for 10 years and someone's been a Christian for five months and they make a mistake and you're like how could you make that mistake and of course you would never make that mistake having been a Christian as long as you have now but what if you had been a five-month-old Christian could you have done that made that mistake not understood something and of course we always just want to have a spirit of meekness we want to be humble and we want to be gentle towards people we don't always be harsh and rude now of course you know there's a time to use sternness there's a time to rebuke you know and they have their places that are clearly outlined in Scripture right but our first response are just what we should just basically default to is just always being meek being gentle being of a humble opinion trying to approach people softly and trying to give them the benefit of the doubt but then you know of course there gets a point where eventually there's a different attitude right a man that is an heretic after the first and second ammunition reject but what should have gotten the first two times meekness he should have gotten gentleness he should have gotten you know basically the benefit of the doubt to start go back and go into Galatians chapter number six so I just wanted to take a second because that's a really famous verse and of course it finishes that fought off with saying let lest thou also be tempted he's basically just trying to say hey deal with this guy harshly because what happens when you make that mistake later you know you don't want people to then come and read you like you read them you know if someone at your work makes a minor mistake and you convince the boss to fire them like well you better never make that mistake you know you say some four-letter word that everybody gets upset about and you pretend like it's the biggest deal in the world you better never say that word you know I treat I give people a lot of gentleness on that you know what what a hypocrite I would be if every time someone in this church had ever custom my presence I'd like ripe them out or something or chewed them out or been like a jerk to them then think if I ever made that mistake how they would treat me but I guarantee there's plenty of people in this room I'm not going to point to you okay I'm not gonna put you out in the room there's plenty of people in this room that I've heard all kinds of choice language and strong language and interesting things coming out of their mouth and I don't remember a single time where I got really mad at them rebuked them or even cared frankly speaking so you know of course you want to be consistent in your daily life you know however you are you want to always be consistent they want to make sure you're not creating these hypocritical standards where you're judging everybody else really harshly but you're not really always internalizing that thinking about it yourself first you know another good way to judge things what if it was your best friend you know you all in here have friends that you're closer with in church than others as people in here you like more than others I get it and it's like if someone does something mean to you at church or something you didn't like it's like will substitute your best friend and then tell me how you treated them you know then then say like how you would have acted about it how you would have responded what you would have done and that's often a good way to just kind of judge how you should respond to people in general look at verse 2 bear you one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ of course you know the Bible is constantly trying to get us to stop walking our flesh wants to just constantly be prideful rip on people never have to do any kind of work I mean your your flesh is lazy your flesh wants to come to church and do nothing he wants in fact they didn't want to come to church let's be honest okay number one you want to be here number two it's like your flesh just wants to take a nap and eat have fun and all that kind of stuff you're not here to bear someone also you know there could be a person that's at church that you avoid and you say what do you mean well you know they're kind of needy and you just want to avoid them because you don't want to be burdened with their life you don't want to hear about well they've got issues or they have problems or you know they may ask you for something or whatever and it's like you almost try to avoid that person not because they're a bad person not because they've shown weird red flags okay avoid that person I'm saying because they're just a needy person and I remember there was someone like this at one of the churches not this one but another church they talked to me one time about this how they were needy and they were asking the leadership for rides to church because they just they were having a hard time or whatever and basically the church just like the leader is Adam Fanon okay he made up a lie about the person to convince the whole church they should be thrown out just so you had to stop helping them and it's like what kind of you know what kind of a jerk does that where they just basically make up lies or rumors about me and look that's bad but I'll tell you that happens with a lot of people a lot of people they have some of their life it's a little needy they have a little issue with so they'll just kind of like run with some gossip about that person or just kind of believe something about that person so as to be like well I don't have to help them now or I don't have to be their friend or I don't have to talk nice to them or I don't have to do whatever you know what if we all have that attitude then no one would ever get helped because obviously the person with burdens is not the greatest person to hang out with it's like who's the greatest person to hang out with the person is going to take your burdens not give them right you want to go with the guy that's richer than you so he'll buy your meal you don't want to take the guy that's poorer than you so you have to buy his meal right you don't want to go and and hang out with the person that's going to be needy or need stuff from you you want to go hang out the person that's going to give you stuff and that's going to be kind to you and like you know give you all this benefit and so if your flesh had its way it would just always gravitate towards the people that are just always giving and kind and helping you and whatever whereas as a Christian spirit we should say you know what I'm willing to even seek out and help those that have burdens in the church find the people that aren't the most fun to help or Mark the most fun to deal with and actually come alongside them and help them you know when someone goes through a tragedy or goes through something difficult that's way less fun than when they go through something exciting and encouraging and you know there's more temptation want to call the other person and say hey I heard you had a baby it's great this is fun you know I heard that you got a promotion this is fun as opposed to the guy that lost his job or the guy that you know they had a problem with their family or they have a lost one or whatever the issue is you know what we as spiritual people need to say you know what this person go through a hard time let's talk to them let's help bear their burden let's not just go to church to see what I can get out of it but rather let's see where I can find a burden that could pick up and you say well that's not fun yeah it's not fun to take burdens no one likes taking burdens you know didn't like taking burden of Jesus because it says that he despised you know the shame he didn't it didn't say like he loved the shame but you know he took your shame and he put it on him and you know you could even take the shame of other people sometimes people are in a shameful situation right you know there could be a person that's down on their luck miss you know doesn't have money doesn't have goods or doesn't have friends or doesn't have whatever and you can basically take that shame away from them and put it on yourself right the person that doesn't have any friends you become their friend you take away some of that shame don't you you know that person can't buy whatever or have whatever isn't gonna go to lunch or whatever you take them to lunch it's like you're you're helping take some of their shame you're taking some of their burden and of course that may not be the most fun you know what we're not here to have fun sorry the Buster bubble it's a Wednesday night okay you have fun on Sunday morning we're here to serve God ultimately and if you're gonna serve it's work and if you're gonna work it's not fun okay as Elon Musk put it you have to stop working from home and you actually show up in the building and actually get to work okay and you know what there's some truth to that doctrine okay in the sense that you know work should be work it shouldn't be a party it shouldn't be that you show up whenever you want and get mimosas and just eat on the company dime like all these weird Twitter employees no wonder that that company was going under it's like they're spending more money than they're bringing in I guess from the government the government bribes or whatever maybe is evening out I don't know but it's just you know the Christianity thrives on servants it does not thrive on takers okay and so we need more people that are willing to bear one of the birds verse three for a man think himself to be something when he is nothing he deceives himself I like it he doesn't deceive anybody else just deceives himself okay verse four but let every man prove his own work and then shall he ever joy seeing himself alone and not in another forever man shall bear his own burden you know someone who might think himself to be something when he's nothing is Joe Biden but you know he only is deceiving himself if that were true because no one likes Biden I mean his own party hates him you can tell but they wouldn't say it out loud just because they want to hurt themselves but there's plenty of people that think they're great when they're absolutely nothing when they're actually just a nothing burger and of course this is really important that we don't have this view what's the opposite of meekness this view who had this view Haman think himself to be something when he's nothing you know of course he comes into the king and the Kings like hey what should be done of the man whom the king delighted the honor who would he want to honor more than me and it's like probably anyone but I'm just kidding obviously Mordecai okay and so we never want to have this opinion of ourselves of where I'm just the greatest I'm something you know this is this is what most teenagers in our country are struggling with right now why because social media and the internet and tick-tock and Instagram and YouTube and all these dumb platforms have convinced so many youth that there's something when they're absolutely nothing and so many kids today all they want to be is just tick-tock famous or they just want to be YouTube famous or they want to be a professional video game player because they think they're so good at video games and they really aren't even good at video I've had a family member tell me that God told them that he wants them to be a professional video game player and I'm like dude I probably could beat you and I don't even play like this is dumb even if you were great I would still tell you no you know even if you could be tick-tock famous it will destroy you because you'll still think you're something when you're still nothing in fact especially the tick-tock app they promote stupidity on purpose so for you to become something you have to first prove they're absolutely nothing even they become something and you're still nothing you're only deceiving yourself and it's a fool's errand because most of the people that are at the top of these lists have already gotten there if you really want to understand social media it's not much different than all of the multi-level marketing schemes and scams that exist and and what I mean by that is all of there's all these companies that made a lot of people rich as far as like you have salad master and you have Mary Kay and you have I don't know what was the jet was the leggings one there's some like weird leggings one it was like Lulu lemon Lulu Mon I don't know what it's called Lulu something Lulu I don't care nobody cares there is like something Lulu that was like these like jagging leggings things or something that came out and I mean it was like super popular for a while but you know what happens to all of them they eventually get just they're just worthless after a while I mean there's maybe like I think Mary Kay still going there's some that have kind of whether the test of time but most of these they just go up in flames eventually why because it's a scam any product that people really want you don't have to have a scheme in order to sell it to people they're going to buy it ok so of course in order to have a scheme or some kind of a gimmick to get people to buy things it's because the product doesn't really have that much value so of course this is how social media has worked in the sense that all of the people that got in on YouTube or Twitter or Instagram or any of these apps at the very beginning they are the ones that start in these pyramid schemes and they're the ones that scale the top the new people are almost never going to get in on this and everyone's just chasing after all of those top premium spots but they're already pretty much locked in and you're never going to get there and of course because YouTube is video and there's so much industry there was a lot of people that could still get in late that kind of road that way but it's because their industry had a void like there was there's like people that kept figuring out new industries that can get really popular like there'd be a carpentry channel or there would be some guy that's showing tools off or some guy that's showing trucks off or whatever but at this point almost every industry has been so saturated that it's like if you decide well I'm going to create a YouTube channel for cars it's like well 30 already exists and they're way better than you it's like well I want to do stupid prank videos already exists well I want to do sports videos already exists I mean it's like everything that you could possibly even imagine on these social media companies is pretty much already existed there's not going to be very much novelty to them anymore and so all the people chasing after that YouTube fame will never get it never ever get it just like all the people that see like oh well this person in Lulu whatever and Mary Kay or whatever they made so much money yeah because they were one of the first people to get in it's kind of like Bitcoin Bitcoin is the same way Bitcoin is a scam okay folks I've said it from like years ago and I'm still saying it now here's the thing of course if you had been one of the first people to buy Bitcoin you would be a multimillionaire I mean you have so much money just like any of these topics if you've been the first person in these leggings thing or the first person Mary Kay or salad mass or whatever and you got that pyramid scheme going essential oils okay it's like there's nothing special about essential oils folks okay it's lemon juice it's it's it's like there's nothing great it's like these are just normal spices that have always existed it's not like you invented a new spice or a new flavor or a new it's like yeah they never thought of lavender before folks okay well it cures cancer it's like really does it it's like these people are just saying anything to sell you stuff and then all kinds of women will just buy all this junk or whatever because we live in a consumerism type society but the person that's going to win is the first mover and all of these categories and our youth just thinks that they are going to become famous and rich by getting in on these pyramid schemes but they're not they're never going to get there and it's coming from the same essence here of when you think you're someone special and you think there's something unique about you but there's not and let's be honest most of these YouTube personalities okay they are not special PewDiePie is not special Mr. Beast is not special okay in fact I'll even say this a lot of not all a lot of the most famous singers in the world are not special you could honestly take thousands and thousands of women and make them the next Lady Gaga or make them the next whatever the only thing that makes them special is they have no soul and they're a literal whore that will do anything for money that is the only reason they're even in the position that they're in they're not even good at singing because honestly a lot of people are way better singers than them but they're just not a soulless whore so they're not willing to get into that position like a lot of these celebrities will but you know there are some of course musicians and stuff that are just genuinely talented but most of that was in the 80s and 90s and stuff the musicians of today are like they're not even they're like talentless a lot of them are terrible and you want to know if someone's good or not listen to their life versus their album and then you'll know if the person's actually talented or not and that's why I don't even like listening to musicians that can't sing live because they're just talentless and it's just junk and it's just garbage or whatever it's like if this guy sounds anywhere close to his live then he's usually you know his album and live are pretty similar you can tell that person's pretty talented okay and they're genuinely talented people you know you could listen to someone like Alicia Keys she is actually like genuinely talented you could listen to her sing live and it sounds good some of these other girls like Lady Gaga and some of these others they can't sing now I might just because she's not black obviously black girls can sing okay we get that alright and you know the white girls it's like I don't know maybe a handful of them right but it's just they think that there's something when they're actually nothing and of course as soon as they become not useful Hollywood will just trash them and they'll turn into nothing you know there's actresses that are literally the worst actress ever but they thought they were something and now they're just trash Winona Ryder I mean this chick is just trash okay terrible actress she's not even pretty it was like she just somehow fell into this role because she's a soulless whore okay mind you and so because she got to that fame level she thought she was something that she's stealing or whatever and then she gets trashed and nobody puts on her movie again it's just sad sack life for her this is what every one of us could fall into this trap every one of those could think well I'm just so much more unique or so much more special than everybody else when you're really not anything special and you end up just deceiving yourself and you end up destroying yourself we need to have a lowly humble opinion of ourselves where we don't think we're better than everyone else but we don't think I'm irreplaceable or any of this kind of junk but rather always elevating everybody else in her life you know this happens in marriages where people will sit here and think like I could have so much better spouses you know oh I just married so down you know if I were single I could just have anybody that I want or I could I could totally upgrade or something like that and it's usually a lie because you've been having those thoughts proves you're a terrible spouse number one and most of the time if you try to go out there it's a it's a jungle folks okay you're not gonna upgrade you know I've known ton of some people that have divorced and remarried I'm never thinking like wow what an upgrade buddy you know usually you're like you're with that and it's like yeah because the markets bad you know it's kind of like the mortgage market right now it's like you got that interest rate it's like yeah you're screwed you know it's just like that and we need to have an opinion though where we are lowly and humble and say you know what I married up oh you know I could I'm just such an asset to this church I could go to some other church that'd be a huge asset you know and it's like well since you left the church got better interesting you mr. asset you and let's show how much you're doing for these other churches or you know people just always have this high view of themselves are usually just trashy people okay and we don't want to have that type of an opinion or we think that we're better than we are you know why don't we just go ahead and prove ourselves you know it says let me improve his own work meaning if you're gonna be really harsh judge the only person you should be like that with is you it doesn't say your spouse doesn't say your children says you you know what it's easy to pick on everyone else but you should pick on yourself and you should prove yourself and you say am I doing right am I right with God am I the best person that I can possibly be you know you're always this makes me mad especially talk about marriage is it's like almost every person and I'm putting myself in this category okay almost every one of us right now if your spouse were to die or you got divorced would all work on yourself to improve to try and get a new spouse like you'd probably try to work out more or groom yourself more or dress prettier or dress more handsome or or you would try to like improve yourself and if you ever went on a date again you would be way sweeter kinder and pull out all the stops for that new heartthrob than you would for your current spouse right now and you know that I'm saying is right and you know what it's trash because we should all have the attitude of you know what I should date my spouse as hard as I would date the heartthrob I had in junior high you know Brad Pitt or whatever I always use him because sorry I don't know any new people or whatever David Beckham or whatever is the new guy okay who's the heartthrob don't tell me you know as as guys I don't know I don't know whatever it was that girl or that guy that you were like man I would pull out all the stops for this person or whatever you know who's stopping you from treating your spouse like that now who's stopping you from you know working out now or improving now or being sweet to them now or taking them on awesome dates now or doing whatever you know to improve now you know why don't you prove yourself now and say like hey maybe I could be a better spouse and of course people that are having marriage problems of course they think that if they had a different person their marriage would go better no you would just be a better person because you'd be trying harder so it's like why don't you start trying harder and then come back to me and say what's going on you know it's like why don't you try a hundred percent why don't you try like this is the hardest you could possibly try towards your relationship and then come back to me and say like hey this is how my marriage is going whatever because usually people aren't even trying at all or they're just being a terrible spouse or they're not dating their spouse and again I believe you should date your spouse you shouldn't just be married your spouse you should date them you should treat them with a lot of you know love and compassion and of course you know think about this with God you know God is constantly measuring us you know why don't you constantly look at yourself through God's eyes and say like would you be pleased with you if you were God today if you're a God today and you looked at you and you judge you're like am I pleased with you know your performance of Bible reading today am I pleased with your performance of memorization today am I pleased with how many songs of praise you sang to me today what songs did you sing today hopefully it wasn't Lady Gaga you know what it how much did you pray to me today how much you know how enthusiastic were you about church or did you commit any sins today you know so like you know what did you do today and then look at it like hey how would God look at you today this is a great way to live your life you know it's a terrible way to live your life oh this guy's a jerk and this guy's bad stop worrying about other people because you know what you're gonna stand before Jesus one day and what everyone else did has no impact on that conversation nothing zero the only thing that will matter is what you did today and what you did yesterday and what you will do tomorrow your life and notice how the Bible says this in verse five for every man shall bear his own burden you are going to bear your burden this is also why it's important to also learn and grow every day because if you don't you're going to become dumb and an idiot because you constantly forget things so you know what you need to constantly be reading learning studying growing pushing yourself to be a better person hey if you're in a deadbeat job get a new job life's too short you know if you're not getting skill if you're not getting if you're not going forward you're going backwards and you need to constantly be pushing yourself and pressing yourself hey you ladies keep learning and reading and studying you know the homeschool moms you have the most important job here you know you're training the next generation you know you should not be taking homeschool lightly you should be doing homeschool 100 and you know why because you're going to bear the burden of dumb kids if you don't and you know what coming to my church will not make your kids smart your kids can be dumb as rocks by coming to this church because you didn't teach them anything because frankly speaking i mean a lot of the learning is reading the bible yourself following along if they can't even read you're not even teaching them how to write you're not even teaching them how to have discipline and self-control and to think about things you know we try to question some of our older kids about church like hey what was talked about what was learned what did you hear you know making sure they're engaging it's not just like i like cars you know when can i watch the tablet again you know because some parents will literally just let their kids watch tv until they're 18 and that was their education system and the tv was bad when i was a kid it's so much worse now i mean almost every commercial every time i get a glimpse of what's going on tv it's always like a drag queen or something on the screen and it's like it's like football and then they have a drag queen commercial i'm thinking like what how are they targeting this demographic like straight dudes that like football are now into drag queens i'm thinking like what's going on under the on the daytime tv shows or you know what are the commercials for the other shows you know what do they show the commercial for the actual faggot shows i'm thinking like i don't even know what their commercials are like if the football has drag queens you know it's gross i mean i think what didn't the jacksonville jaguars or some team like hire a literal tranny to be their cheerleader or something like that this year i mean it's just and you're going to let your kids just sit there and soak all that in just soak whatever the jews want to teach them you know jews good oh white people bad oh jews are white forget about that jews are white people bad it's like oh okay you know it's just that propaganda just eight hours a day ten hours a day just like oh i want to be a tik tok star huh that they're never going to get there look that's what the next generation's like it's it's real scary you know because they're going to still have to deliver you goods i mean have you noticed that customer service went down it's because they're just like this customer wanted their food right oh how dare them let's make a tik tok video and shame them it's like and and then they think hey i got a hundred thousand views on my video i'm so cool but they don't realize that 10 years from now they're still going to be stupid and have a dumb job and no food and no money and no one likes them and they're ugly and old because let me tell you something about every young person they get old and ugly you notice that the tik tok videos aren't old grandma's shaking their rear end it's the young chicks and you know what happens when they get old they're going to die in the nursing home alone or in fact they might just get the assisted suicide that canada's offering them or whatever why because you're going to bear your own burden and all these women that are just whores having no kids just shaking their body parts on tik tok you know what they're going to reap a whirlwind when they get older oh what kind of men are they attracting not fundamental badness and the men out there are terrible too lazy jerks that don't want to work for anything they don't want to earn anything you know our country is going into the toilet and you can go down there with them if you don't try hard it's really easy to go with the stream you know it's hard to go against the stream and you need to fight it every day because you're going to bear that burden verse six let him that has taught in the word communicate on him that teaches and all good things i don't have time for this point but if you if you study the word communicate it means to give or share okay and i can show you a ton of verses on this but you look it up yourself but communicate is is it often uh even in reference to money specifically now it doesn't have to be money but that's basically what it's saying so it's saying hey if you got taught the word of god you should be willing to pay money under the guy that taught you that thing and of course the bible constantly teaches this in romans and other places that ministers should live of the gospel that you shouldn't muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn the minister should be paid that there's nothing wrong and of course you know people will get mad at pastors for being paid shows that their carnal because if you were spiritual why would you want to stop feeding the guy that's giving you the spiritual food because you can't get that anywhere you know there's there's a limited quantity of suppliers of spiritual food and and spiritual men that are willing to do the spiritual tasks so it's like why would i want to shut that valve off and then when we go into levels of importance what's more important than the ministers of god i mean in the old testament god didn't set them up on a welfare system he set them on the hey you eat steak every meal system i mean living pretty high on the hog quote unquote of course they didn't have any real possessions but they lived a nice life they lived a comfortable life they lived of their own work they were worthy of their meat they were worthy of their hire and of course you know our church we believe in paying staff if if we can you know it doesn't have to happen we're not i'm not you know even if i couldn't be paid i'm still gonna preach and i'm still gonna do what i have to do but of course there's nothing wrong with it and i don't want the activities and the spiritual maturity of our church to decline by forcing you know more labor than has to be i mean the apostles made it clear that it wasn't meat for them to serve tables they should be actually ministering the people in the word of god more than they should be ministering the physical food i can go out and make money i know how to make money it's not hard to make money but you know what it's hard to actually find people that are willing to minister spiritual things and so it's a fool it's a fool that says you know what i'm mad at pastors being paid you know what i i think that pastors across this country are probably being underpaid at least the good ones you know the bible says that that you're supposed to pay him double honor you know especially if he's doing a good job and so i believe that pastors should be making you know double what the average salary is of men in their area but you know i'm not saying that i get paid that i don't but i think that they're worthy of that and i think that other churches should be worthy of that now you know joel osteen's getting like a hundred honor that's not legit okay but i wouldn't get mad at a guy for getting paid double honor because that's what the bible says okay and i think that they should and there's nothing wrong with that and we should never be a church that has a problem with pastors for getting paid we should have a problem where pastors teaching lies we should have a problem with pastors being carnal we should have a problem with pastors using the nib but you know what i'm not mad at pastors for getting paid well you know that that's a that's a bad heart that basically doesn't like the things of god verse seven be not deceived god is not mocked for whatsoever man so that should also reap of course you know i i've kind of just been hammering that point but here's the verse that just really proves it i mean you're going to reap it look at verse eight for he that soweth to his flesh shall the flesh reap corruption but he that soweth to the spirit shall the spirit reap live everlasting look whatever you gain in this life fleshly speaking you're eventually going to lose you gain all those muscles eventually you're going to die it's going to be meaningless you know you you i'm not saying don't work out i work out okay i like working out but i'm saying i i'm gonna it's gonna corrupt eventually i'm gonna have to see corruption on that you know i make a lot of money it's eventually gonna corrupt i'm eventually gonna lose out on that you buy a new car it eventually loses the new car smell which is a sad day okay because the greatest day in a in a new car is the new car smell okay but then it's gone and it's gone right if you have kids it doesn't last very long okay this is a sad day for me all right i'll get over it but you know of course everything eventually decays and corrupts as far as fleshly speaking you buy a new house it starts getting worse and worse right you have kids in there and it gets worse and worse right some people know what i'm saying whatever it is that you get eventually where's wait that new car that new jacket the new shirt the new house the new whatever the new wife she gets older you know it's like they have that chart where it shows like women find men attractive at what age and it's like it kind of goes up and it's like as they get older they think like more older men are attractive and for men it's just a flat line just like the same age it's just like sorry but you know what i i'm not saying that i don't love my wife just as much as before because i love her more but what i am saying is that everything sees corruption folks okay we don't all just look the exact same and act the exact same forever things eventually so so if you're just chasing that one thing you know i guarantee the girls that brad pitt used to pull aren't the same as now they're probably a lot better looking you know jennifer anston was better looking than angelina jolie okay amen all right sorry i just had to put that out there i'm just saying like you know eventually you can't reap all the same benefits and so if you're just sewing to the flesh you're going to eventually just lose but the spiritual things that you are constantly sewing towards you're going to reap them forever and all of eternity every reward that you laid up up to this point you're going to have an all-vaternity for forever you're never going to lose it you know that would that's great what a great investment program that you never lose your investment every investment program here is like a scam it's crypto just ask them about that all right now let's keep reading it says in verse nine and let us not be weary in well doing for in due season we shall reap if we think not look you're going to eventually get the things that you've worked hard for but it sometimes takes time it takes patience you know i think that our church and i i said this privately to dylan i said i think that our church has been sewing a lot for the last three years and we're going to actually start reaping some of that and and i'm really excited about that but you know it takes some time it takes some patience and it may not happen right now i just i'm i kind of personally believe that our church is going to start reaping a lot of the good things that we've been selling and you know frankly i think that our church has been reaping a lot of good things you know i think as a pastor if i preach a lot of good sermons and if i'm doing a good job then i'm going to start reaping a congregation of you know better people you know a better church and things like that and i'm just saying like personally speaking this church is way different than it was three years ago and i mean that in a good way a very good way you know there's a lot of things like that you know you're going to eventually reap your children you're not going to see the dividends right away but you keep sewing and investing in those children and eventually you're going to start reaping a lot of good things in that children and so you know you have to realize that some good things take a lot of time you have to kind of wait and then eventually you're going to reap but notice he's saying don't be weary and well doing don't stop doing good thinking that you're not going to reap you will reap eventually what you sow you know you learn a lot you're going to eventually reap from that education you know i worked on a job doing software development and i'll tell you what the first four years were rough i was very underpaid very overworked not appreciated and it was a hard four years and i i kind of was like thinking like man i don't know this gig is worth it but then i hit a point where it was just like all reaping from then out from then on and it was just like wow this is great you know my i went from a point in my salary where my salary increased more than double you know like overnight and then it just kept increasing and just kept increasing it was just like in the software world and it was just like wow this is a this is great i'm finally reaping a lot of what i saw but i just so really hard for four years you know and that was just that wasn't fun that wasn't a fun period i didn't like that period as much but i learned a lot i grew and that's how there's a lot of careers a lot of careers you have to sew for a really long time before you start really reaping in that particular career that's why it's also not very good to just constantly bounce like if you just bounce from job to job career career you know you won't ever see any reap you won't ever have that big reaping that you could have if you just stay plugged in on the thing you're dedicated for and you're working hard towards then you could eventually reap and don't be weary and well doing just like joseph joseph had to sew for a long time but then when he reaped it was just like i mean he never had to reap again i mean now he's at the top of the food chain there's nowhere else to go i mean he's not going to become pharaoh but he literally is at the top of the food chain because he's sewed so faithfully and so diligently over over time and that's what we have to do we have to just constantly you know you might think that you're being underappreciated by man but god will not allow that to happen so like there could be this tendency or this idea of like well i don't want to work hard for this boss because this boss isn't appreciating me but i'll tell you what god god will make sure you get taken care of regardless of what man does you know god could replace your boss god gets you a new job your boss could die all manner of things could happen or frankly speaking maybe you don't even need what you think that you want and god will give you everything you need anyways you'll be blessed in other ways but what i will say is this never stop doing good or working really hard because i guarantee you will reap that's what the bible guarantees okay don't take my word for it take god's word for it verse 10 as we therefore have opportunity as we have therefore opportunity let us do good in all men especially unto them who are the household of faith so of course we should bless the poor and especially those of the house of god you see how large a letter i've written unto you with my own hand i always think it's funny that glace is like one of the shortest books of the bible but an apostle paul's like this is a large letter yeah so i guess everything's kind of relative but in my mind that means this is a large letter so that means to me that a lot of letters written at this time were not as lengthy as the books that we have in the bible people are probably writing very short one-page type letters and sending them all the time and so this is a unique sized letter and of course that the bible is unique you know you really think that people at the time of christ are writing just like the gospel of of mark or like the acts according to the apostles they're just writing that it's like humanly speaking people aren't doing those kind of things very few people are even writing anything you know you have obviously you have great writers of the past you have people like shakespeare and stuff that wrote tons of different things but you know write a letter a letter is different than just a play that you're going to actually use this is just a single document that you're talking to somebody for so he wrote out a pretty lengthy letter here and he's saying he did it personally with his own hand also this is unique that a lot of times you know he would speak and have someone else write it this you know helps you understand that most of the bible was not written by the actual speaker and and again i i like that i like the fact that it wasn't by the original speaker because it even just shows how god wrote the bible because god didn't need just it wasn't like just some man just went alone in a closet and just produced a text like joseph smith they just by himself is just gonna write some i think he maybe had a transcriber but uh you know just a few people or one person just going off and like oh here's the bible or something it's like all these different men are all in coordination working together through the spirit of god because think about this not only would you if you're speaking the word of god you have someone writing it down like what if someone said hey god has a message and i need you to write it down and he started saying something weird you would stop writing you know what i mean like if he just started saying like you know and i'm the prophet of all the prophets and i get all the wives and i get all the gold and he's the guy's like um are you sure this is this is it i mean think about kind of the the check and balance that exists there of you have so this is a unique one but most of the bible generally speaking is you know multiple men or men writing about other men and of course by having that many hands in the pot shows that this is a divine work because if it was a human error or human work people would would catch all the weird stuff and the junk just like we see in the quran just like we see in the book of mormon or the book of moron as they you know it says moron in there so that's what i call it but the bible is is just it's infallible i mean it's just it's the work of god and we see that the apostle paul even if he wrote this letter with his own hand he was still inspired by the holy ghost verse 12 and as many i'm sorry as many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh they constrain you to be circumcised only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of christ for neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law but desire to have you circumcised they may glory in your flesh so of course it's saying people that preach repent of your sins didn't actually repent of their sins but they just want to have a big church of people like that to brag about how great a minister they are it's like oh look at all these people following me and of course it's always about a following and it's all about their subscribers and it's all about building a big you know me university that's why a lot of these false prophets have big followings because it's always about them and you know that's what i really like about pastor stephen anderson is he's so charismatic and such a gifted preacher and has so many talents that if he wanted to build an empire he could like i personally believe if pastor anderson had been a little selfish and just every time he preached said like hey just come here don't just go to the best church in the area don't go there come here and hey let's build a university and hey send all your students here and hey just everybody you know he could probably run a giant multi-thousand-person church if you really wanted to but you know what he's more about christ and sending out other men and getting all these different churches i mean you look at all the new ivy churches that exist you gather all the people from all these churches i mean we're talking about thousands of people here okay whereas you know you could be like paul chapel and you could just say hey i've got this fancy building with a fancy university let's just get everybody to come to me and everybody come to west coast baptist bible college and let's suck in all the youth and all the kids and have our own beautiful facility and it's just kind of becoming like a cult of personality and i'm not against building a big church don't hear me wrong you know what i'm not saying that i wouldn't hope that our church runs thousands or tons of people please you know if god wants that let's do it we need to run five people let's do it whatever god's will is go for it you know what i don't want to build a big church at the detriment of christ i don't want to i don't want to like make other churches worse to make us better you know we should be willing to make other churches better for the cause of christ even if it's at our own detriment you know taking our best talent and sending them somewhere else you know like is it really advantageous for this church to take duncan and send him to pure words no duncan's a huge asset duncan does great song leading i mean our song leading took a dip because we lost duncan you know our soul winning took a dip because we lost duncan you know is the better urbanic no i'm just kidding we we have all these we you know we've had people that are really great that could that wanted to move here you know brother tannerfer wanted to move here and i'm like no stay there and be a blessing to the oklahoma city church or whatever you know we could just we could just suck in as many of the good people and all the talent and look i'm not against good people coming here i would love for more good people to come we need more good people but at the same time like if i'm taking a good person from another church that's really good i don't really like that you know if i'm taking them out of a crappy church that's not going to use them well or they're moving out from the boondocks then yeah get into church you know get here right away you know what we should be willing to share our assets and resources with other churches to help them grow and help build them up and not just try to suck in all the stuff for ourselves and build ourselves and it's not about us it's not about me you know god willing pure words or the oklahoma city church would be bigger and better churches than us you know there's nothing wrong with what you know another church thriving better than us you know we and of course i i think that we should all strive to be the best church that we can be and grow and reach more people but we should always put christ first and of course we should put the individual first too you know i would never want to make a decision that's going to impact your spiritual life worse from my benefit you know it's better for you and it's better for me i believe in the long run to make sure that your best interests are in heart and to make sure that the best spiritual decisions for you are being made and you know i always try to tell people you know i want people to go to the best church for them and to get plugged in and to be spiritual now of course for a lot of people that is this church so you know get in this church and get plugged in and start doing that you know if there was hypothetically a better option for someone i'm like get there and do it you know we want ever i mean this would be the attitude what if there was a great church on the other side of town that you live close to that's even better than ours i would be selfish to say come to mind you know it's like get to the better church you know go wherever but at the same time the vice versa should be true too that if our church is better for you spiritually and you live close to this other church i should want you not because i'm being selfish because i want what's best for you spiritually and admittedly obviously the reason why this church even exists is because i believe that otherwise i would just shut down and we'll all go join the greatest church in this area let's all go join so-and-so's church but it's hard for me to find a lot of great churches that are going to preach the whole bible i mean what church is willing to preach the whole bible in this area what church is like really emphasizing soul winning right now what church you know believes a lot of the doctrines that we believe you know it's hard to find i mean it's it's that's why i even wanted to start a church it's because i know there's a lot of people that want to serve god and want to be more spiritual in their lives and i think that's the reason why we're here you know the false prophets they just want you for selfish ambition that's what the bible teaches verse 14 but god forbid that i should glory saving the cross over lord jesus christ by whom the world is crucified unto me and i am the world so he's saying you know what a lot of people do is they will judge their church on carnal means like my church is better than yours because i have more members or my church is better than you because we have more baptisms or we have uh you know we have all we have these altar calls we're getting people saved in every service and of course what's the point of an altar call i personally believe it's only for pride because if i genuinely cared about someone's salvation i would not leave it up to them just raising their hand after the service because anybody anybody that's ever tested one of these people knows that like 90 plus percent of the time they didn't get saved and i'm only saying that because i've seen it i've experienced it we've gone to foreign countries where you preach the whole gospel as clear as you could possibly preach it you have hundreds of kids raise their hand and pray with you and then you go afterwards and i kid you not i never found a single one that was actually saved after that i'm not saying it didn't happen i'm saying you would have hundreds and then you walk up to them and test them on what they just heard and what they just said that they believe and they didn't get it and they didn't understand it and of course you know this is happening in these modern churches today and of course what they're doing is they're getting the same people saved every week but they tell everybody close your eyes and bow your head and it's like i see that hand and it doesn't matter to that minister that's the same hand every single week and it's like if that person actually cared they would just make sure to test every person in their church to make sure they're safe you know i pretty much know everybody in here already and the people that i don't know either me or one of my ushers or somebody we go up to them right away after the service i'm like hey what do you believe about salvation why because we actually care you know what isn't caring is just let strangers come in here and just raise their hand after the service and not talk to them not make sure they're saved and just let them go back on their merry way and then i can just brag i had 10 hands raised in their altar call and then they glory in that they glory in all these different things they glory about well my church is running a thousand my church is running five thousand my church is running whatever you know people could brag about a church like ours you know we're much larger than the average independent fundamental baptist church and we're definitely larger than even just regular church i mean the average size of the church is like 75. i mean we have over 200 people on our active roster you know i could get up here and be like oh we're so much bigger you know we have friends and other people that have smaller churches you know what a kind of what a what a braggart if i got up and said my church is better than this church because we have more people in it or because we had more baptisms or whatever the whatever the the carnal metric and the apostle paul is saying hey the only thing i should be glorying in is the cross of our lord jesus christ you know not making it about all these carnal metrics and all these measurement tools and thinking that you're so much better you know the only thing i have the glory in is what christ did for me because i'm just a sinner saved by grace just like everybody else and you know we don't really know how god's gonna judge things and how he's gonna measure unto people because if the poor widow women can throw in two mites and have given more than all of the other people that gave then why would i think a church running thousands is gonna be that pastor is gonna be more greatly rewarded than the pastor of two people that he pastored faithfully oh well you know yeah your church is small it's in a strip mall who cares that it's in a strip mall who cares about the building who cares about the number of the people you know we should have spiritual goggles and at the end of the day we realize i'm not gonna glory about myself at all i'm gonna only glory in the lord jesus christ so you know what we as steadfast baptist church i love being part of steadfast baptist church i'm pleased that i go to steadfast baptist church you know i don't want to glory in it and think that i'm better than other christians because i go there or glory in and act like well i'm the pastor of steadfast baptist you know what i glory in the lord jesus christ and that i'm saved for in christ jesus neither circumcision avail anything nor uncircumcision but a new creature and as many as walk according this rule peace be on them and mercy and upon the israel of god from henceforth let no man trouble me for i bear in my body the marks of the lord jesus brethren the grace of our lord jesus christ be with your spirit amen so he's saying hey all of you that are saved here i'm gonna bless y'all okay he didn't bless everyone did you notice that and as many as walk according this rule peace be on them that's shade on the people that are not doing that okay fyi and he's saying hey and on the israel of god uh i'm gonna bless all the people that are saved in your church and are doing what i said not just carte blanche everyone and he's just like you know what he glories in his infirmities if you think about it constantly in the bible because he's saying hey you know what i bear the marks of the lord jesus saying like if there was anything to brag about it would be the fact that i have stripes not the fact that how many people i have in the room or how big a church or how much money i have or whatever it's like the only glory because he glories in second corinthians 11 like a fool and he's saying like the only thing to really brag about is all the persecution you know and it's funny to me that all the churches that want to brag they never brag about persecution but you know what who has a lot of persecution this church but let me say this it would be a fool for us to brag about it it'd be a fool for us to glory in it it'd be a fool for us to get up and say we're better than other people look at all of our persecution it's true it's not like it's not true we should realize that it's true we shouldn't have a high view of ourselves we should have a low view of ourselves and say you know what praise god that we suffer for the cause of christ praise god for the marks that i bear in my body you know let's glory in christ because christ has the ultimate marks in his body and you know mine are nothing in comparison to his and we should never try to lift ourselves up because god will knock us down let's close in prayer thank you heavenly father so much for this this great book of the bible thank you for giving us so much instruction wisdom thank you for giving us the opportunity to follow in your son's example who is the ultimate picture of humility the ultimate picture of meekness the ultimate picture of lowliness i pray that we would have the same mind in ourselves that we would love our brethren as ourselves that we would judge ourselves harshly and we would be meek and gentle into others that whatever problems we have that we'd be willing to work on ourselves and we would be also willing to bear one another's burdens we realize that ultimately we're going to reap what we sow and i pray that we constantly be mindful of that so that we walk in the spirit and that we would not be selfish in our lives in jesus name we pray amen