[0:00] All right, well, if you have your Bibles, you can turn, no surprise, to James chapter 1. Where else would we go? James chapter 1. And I'm glad I have extra time for this passage because of all the passages in James that would maybe sum up the entire purpose of the book, well, this would be definitely on the list.
[0:19] James chapter 1 will be in verses 19 through 25. And these are very well-known verses. They're on the back, or verse, I think it's whichever verse it is, is on the back of our sign out here as you leave.
[0:33] Right? It says, be doers of the word and not hearers only. Right? Because when you're leaving here, after you just heard a message, you can't forget about it. As you're leaving, we want to remind you that, hey, now it's time to put it into action.
[0:45] Right? You're leaving the church and you're going out into the world. So it's time to put what you've learned into action. I appreciate Zach giving us a five-minute message. That was great. We needed a good beard up here at some point today.
[0:55] So, you know, we're missing out on Trent's. So we had to get Zach up here. That was the main reason why. No, of course. He's been doing a great job. Just joined the training center. So definitely get to know him. He's an awesome guy. Also, I'd like to shout out two pretty awesome people that came to visit, my parents.
[1:09] I won't point them out specifically, but they are the two people you don't recognize and that look like me. So, but no, they're awesome. So I'm glad that they came to come hear me and come support me.
[1:22] They always have. So they're awesome. So James chapter one, we'll start in verse 19 and we'll just read 19 through 25. The Bible says, Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.
[1:37] For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Wherefore, lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.
[1:50] But be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word and not a doer, he's likened to a man beholding his natural face in a glass.
[2:02] For he beholdeth himself and goeth his way and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.
[2:21] And so James, again, he's been teaching a few things about trials, been teaching very basic principles of the Christian life that we're going to experience trials, but they are going to test our faith.
[2:34] But we can be firm in our beliefs about what the Bible says. We can be firm in trusting God because God is good and we shouldn't ever question him. But James is challenging the hearers to not just be hearers.
[2:46] He's challenging them to live out their faith. In this time, this is a very, very difficult time for Christianity. It's just the early first century and there is persecution everywhere.
[2:57] And the persecution in the next few centuries would only just be ramped up. And it is vitally important in this day and all throughout time, ever since this day, that Christians don't just claim Christ.
[3:11] We don't just preach Christ, that we don't just study and listen to Christ, but that we obey. Christ. Being a disciple of Christ means you do what he says.
[3:23] Being a disciple has action. It's not an idle thing. It is not an idle thing to be a Christian. Or at least it should not be an idle thing to be a Christian. It should involve action.
[3:34] What we believe should change our everyday lives. And so that's what James is challenging his original audience and us today is to not just say these things, to not just claim we believe these things, but to put them in the action.
[3:49] And so he starts off with the word wherefore. I like this word. Whenever I see this word, I think of putting a car into gear. Right? So James has been teaching us about trials and he's been teaching us different vital aspects of the Christian life.
[4:01] And then he says, wherefore? All right. Now, what are we going to do with this? Let's do something with it. That's just the picture that is always in my head. It says, wherefore, be swift to hear. Be swift to hear.
[4:12] That's the first thing he says. After, through all these trials, through all these temptations, throughout your doubts, excuse me, throughout your doubts, the first thing you should do, the first thing to remember is to be quick to listen.
[4:24] Be quick to hear. And he contrasts that with be slow to speak and slow to wrath. As humans, at least personally, we like to just react to things. Right? We like to just take control of the situation and just pretend that, okay, I know what to do.
[4:38] I got this. But no, James is challenging us, be swift to hear. The first thing we should do is not to just assume that we know. The first thing we should do through a trial, through any situation, is to first listen.
[4:51] To first hear. This puts us in our correct position. Right? So, in relation to God, what are we? We're his slaves.
[5:02] We're his servants. We should be submissive to God. Excuse me. And so, when we are swift to hear first, when we're swift to listen to the master first, that's us putting ourselves in our correct position.
[5:15] As submissive to God. We should be submissive to God. And we should live that out through obedience to his word. And as we live out obedience to his word, well, that fulfills God's ultimate plan for our lives.
[5:27] Which is to be conformed to the image of Christ. Right? So, first, we have to listen. We have to put ourselves under God. We have to stop just claiming to be disciples of Christ and not acting like it.
[5:38] And just stop what we're doing and listen. Excuse me. So, our posture towards God, if you want to put it like that, should be one of subjection. We should understand our place in regards to God.
[5:51] And so, that's the first thing that we ought to do. The first thing we see through this passage is that we need to receive the word. It goes on, verse 21.
[6:02] It says, The first step in submission is humbly receiving his word.
[6:18] Right? As servants, we can't obey God if we don't even know what he's commanding us to do. And so, the obvious first step is to listen to him. The obvious first step is to put away our carnal thoughts.
[6:31] To cast off the filthiness, which is what our thoughts are. The superfluity of naughtiness, which is what our desires are, naturally. We put those away and we prefer what God says.
[6:45] Right? You see, there's a transfer there. We continuously cleanse ourselves of our just old, carnal, broken way of thinking. We try to just suppress our heart, our carnal heart that just wants to sin, that wants what we want.
[7:01] And then we receive the word. It's a replacement. Right? We just, it's a transfer. We're constantly purging our life, purging our hearts, purging our minds of the sinfulness, of the filth, and replacing it with the word of God.
[7:14] And I love the word that it uses, engrafted. The engrafted word. Right? That doesn't just have the idea that it's just, like, it becomes a part of us. Right? It is engrafted within us.
[7:26] When you graft something, like a plant, it becomes one whole plant. Right? You take something else, you put it with the original plant, and it becomes one whole thing. It's not that we have maybe our church life, we have our Bible life, and then we have just our regular job life over here.
[7:43] No, we are one whole person. Right? That's what James is calling us to be. To have integrity. To have integrity means to be one whole person. To not have a life that's split up into different areas.
[7:54] But to be one whole person. To have character. So we need to cast off the superfluity of naughtiness, which is just a really fun phrase to say. Superfluity of naughtiness. And all that filthiness.
[8:06] And replace it. And fill our hearts and minds with the word of God. Which, by the way, is able to save your souls. Right? It is a powerful word. It's not just a really neat book of philosophy.
[8:18] Right? It's not just, it's not even just the best philosophy book. Right? It is so much more than that. It's not just something made up by humans. It's not just the best human thing that we have.
[8:28] It is from God. Right? It is the power of God unto salvation. It's not just the best. It is completely in its own category. Obviously, it is the best.
[8:39] But there's just nothing that compares to it. Right? There's nothing that can compare to the word of God. It is far and away better than anything that man could ever come up with. Right?
[8:49] Because what man can come up with comes from this filthiness and this superfluity of naughtiness that we need to be getting rid of. And sometimes, by accident, it seems, man comes up with some pretty good ideas. And sometimes you can listen to maybe a podcast or whatever you listen to.
[9:03] Maybe you're reading a book. And you think, oh, well, that's kind of the same thing that the Bible teaches. But this guy isn't saved. He doesn't know Christ. And you just think, well, it's just a good teaching. Right? Because the Bible, all of its teaching is perfect.
[9:15] It's all good. So any good teaching, really, that's genuinely good, somehow it really should be in the Bible. It comes from the Bible, whether they got it from that or not. That was a tangent. So we should be, yes, going back.
[9:29] Going back to the notes. I need to have a chain right here. We should intentionally pause our life and just receive. We need to stop just assuming that we know.
[9:41] A lot of times we just, we go throughout life and it's just, we're on cruise control. Right? And we don't stop and receive what God really wants us to know. Because especially, I mean, if you've grown up in a Christian home, if you are always in church, you just are always surrounding yourself with good influences, it's easy to just assume that we know what to do.
[10:01] It really is. And that's honestly just our pride. God, that's just our arrogance, thinking that we can just know what to do. But we always need to be receiving the word. It doesn't say receive the word until you're good enough.
[10:14] You know, there's a certain level, once you maybe hit 50, you're good. You know, stop receiving the word so much, you're probably fine. No, it doesn't say that. We always need to be receiving the word. Because we are never going to arrive.
[10:27] That's what Paul said. He said, you know, not that I've attained. Like, Paul didn't even think he got to the point where he didn't need the Lord. Because he didn't. And we can never. We can never get to that point.
[10:37] We are always going to need to stop, control our automatic responses, and submit ourselves to what God would have us to do. It's intentional.
[10:48] It's not going to happen on accident. You're not just going to one day find yourself listening to God more than you're listening to yourself. It doesn't happen like that. You're not going to do it by accident. You have to intentionally stop and listen.
[11:02] And this is why it says we have to, in verse 21, receive the word with meekness. Right? Because if we think that we know, then we're not going to listen to what we read. We might even read the word, but we don't really do anything with it because we don't think we need to change.
[11:19] We just pridefully assume that we're fine. So we need to come to the word with meekness. Excuse me. This is a humble realization that our way is not the best way.
[11:32] Right? And I just, I honestly, I love how simple this is. How easy it is to understand. But honestly, it's pretty hard to do. Right? In our day-to-day lives, it's just so easy to forget.
[11:44] But, I mean, that's why we try to discipline ourselves. We try to encourage to start our day with Bible reading. Right? To, right in the morning, just start the day, putting yourself in subjection to God.
[11:55] And so all day you can meditate on his word. And you can think about your place compared to him. You can think about how you are his servant. You need to live for him. Excuse me.
[12:05] God wants all of our thoughts and all of our desires to be filtered through his truth. That's his goal. Because that's how Christ lived. And God wants us to look more and more like Christ every day.
[12:19] That requires us to throw out our natural way and to accept his way. And the imagery here of this throwing out our natural way, the filth, the superfluity of naughtiness, the imagery is, well, back in the day, they didn't have plumbing.
[12:34] I'll just leave it at that. And so that stuff had to go somewhere. So they would just throw it out into the streets. Right? And so that's the imagery here is just take that filthiness, that nastiness, and just get it out of there.
[12:45] Right? It's nasty. It's gross. You don't want to have to do anything to do with it. That's the imagery we see here. Get it out. Completely cleanse our hearts and minds of it. And replace it with the word.
[12:57] Right? It's a precious resource that we have in the word. 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 says, All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.
[13:17] Right? So the word of God is profitable. Every single bit of it. It's profitable for all these things. To teach us, to help us know how to live. It is useful. And we ought to be using it.
[13:29] We ought to be filling our hearts. We're filling our lives with it. There is not a topic that isn't hit on in the Bible. Right? If you have trouble in marriage, you can learn from the Bible.
[13:42] If you're having difficult, if you have some difficult ethical question, you have a hard decision to make, you can get wisdom from the Bible. If you feel lost, without hope, right?
[13:53] You're anxious, you're depressed, you can find hope in the Bible. It has the solution to all of our problems. Because it is God's holy word. The Bible is unparalleled in its breadth and its depth of wisdom and teaching and practical counsel.
[14:08] It is without any error. It will never fail. And it cannot be proven wrong. We can read it and we can understand it. Not only that, but it understands us too.
[14:20] Hebrews 4.12 says, For the word of God is quick, it's powerful, it's sharper than any two-edged sword, it's piercing, even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and the joints of the marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
[14:35] Right? It discerns our thoughts and intents. It knows exactly what we need. It is alive. It's not changing. It is unchanging. Yet, it is still always applicable. And there is, you know, you could say shallow practical advice.
[14:49] And there is deep truths of the Bible that can help us, teach us how to navigate everyday life and guide us to the truth that we can put our faith in. So, the Bible is just, it's simply incredible.
[15:01] It is unparalleled in every way. No other book or religion or philosophy can come close to it. But sometimes we just fail to read it. Right? We just fail to read the most wonderful resource that God has given us, which is his word.
[15:15] We just, we fail to read it. And that is, shame on us. Right? That we simply fail to read the manual. We fail to read the instructions. Sometimes when we do read it, we just kind of skim over it.
[15:29] We just want to check off a box. We're just getting through it because we know we have to. Right? And that should not be how it is. We need to absorb the truth. And we need to contemplate it.
[15:40] We need to apply it. We need to meditate on it. Excuse me. This is why we read it with meekness. Again. And reading the Bible sometimes, we read it like maybe some of us men would read an Ikea furniture assembly guide.
[15:54] Right? We look at the pieces. Right? We know the pieces. We're familiar. We think, I've built a few things in my life. I think I got this. Right? Somehow that's how we treat it.
[16:05] And we just kind of start assembling it. And okay, well that screw looks like it was supposed to go there. It's probably fine. It's probably okay. We're going to be all right. And then we just go and we go. And then we have some conglomeration of wood and metal that was supposed to be a chair.
[16:19] Right? And if you sit on it, well let's just say nobody's going to sit on it. Right? Right? So that's how we treat the Bible sometimes though. Right? Because really, simply, the Bible is just, it's our field manual.
[16:30] It is our instruction manual to become like Christ. Right? Every single day we should be building our lives into an image that looks more and more like the image of Christ. And if we forget to read the manual, we forget to read the instructions, we're not going to come, we're not going to get to the final product.
[16:47] We're not going to get to the desired product. It's like trying to, I don't know, build something and then you just go off some other instruction manual and you don't reach the right thing.
[16:58] When we follow our own instruction manual, we don't build Christ. Right? We don't have the formula to build Christ. Excuse me. Ecclesiastes 8.1 says, Who is as the wise man?
[17:11] And who knoweth the interpretation of a thing? Job 38.36, Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts? Or who hath given understanding to the heart? Right? These are rhetorical questions because the answer is clearly not us.
[17:25] We have not given ourselves wisdom. We have not given ourselves instruction. None of us are wise on our own. It all comes from the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
[17:35] It's the beginning of knowledge. And so without that, without a respect to God, without a realization that he's in charge, without a realization that he's the master, well, we're never going to have wisdom.
[17:47] We're never going to find understanding. We will just be going our way, building our own weird Ikea furniture thing, and it's not going to be useful for anybody. And we're not going to be useful for anybody.
[18:00] And so the Bible, it is our instructions. The Bible is our guidelines for life to help us live a fruitful and righteous life that glorifies God. And that's the goal, right?
[18:11] To live a fruitful, righteous life that glorifies God. And to do that, we just follow the instructions. The Word has been teaching us through James that it is the answer.
[18:22] When we have a problem, when we have doubt, it is the answer. When we want to find the next step in life, the Word is the answer. The Word is truth. It's always reliable. And we, it cannot fail.
[18:33] And we can always trust it. The Bible is how God intends for us to know Him. The Bible is how God intends for us to grow more like Him. Without the Bible, if we don't come to the Bible humbly, willing to actually learn and put into place what it says, we are never going to grow close to God.
[18:53] Right? We're just not going to be more like Christ. We're not going to have a deep, meaningful relationship with God if we don't obey His Word. If we love Him, we'll obey Him.
[19:04] That's what Jesus told His disciples. And so we will fail to produce fruit if we don't follow His path. We'll feel empty. Feel far from God. We won't be blessed in our deed.
[19:15] And we'll be vulnerable to the attacks of the devil if we don't simply listen to God's instruction manual. If we don't play by the playbook, we're going to lose the game. It's pretty simple.
[19:26] A Christian without the Word is all but hopeless. Right? We have our salvation. Zach taught us tonight that we have our salvation. We don't have to worry about that. But honestly, what profit is there if we have salvation and don't act on it?
[19:41] If we have the Word but don't act on it, what profit is there? So we have to humbly receive it, humbly accept that it is the correct way. Our instruction manual is nowhere near as good as the Bible's instruction manual.
[19:55] We don't have as good of a playbook. But it doesn't stop there. Right? We have to put it into practice. We have to actually start building something. It's okay. It's one thing to understand how to build something.
[20:05] It's another thing to actually build it. Right? We can just sit there and study the IKEA manual. All day long. But that will not produce a piece of furniture. It will just produce a whole bunch of knowledge that is useless to us and useless to everybody else.
[20:20] Right? If we don't build the chair. And so if we understand the Word and constantly study it, but we don't live our lives every day based on what we learn, then it's not going to help anybody.
[20:31] It's not even going to help us all that much being fruitful, being profitable. And so that's where we find in James chapter 1, verses 22 through 25, it says, But be ye doers of the Word, not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
[20:49] That's important. Deceiving your own selves. Because when you are claiming to be a follower of Christ, but you're not really following Christ day to day, you're not letting the Bible determine your actions, then you're deceiving yourselves.
[21:05] Right? The metaphor used here in the Bible is, in verse 23, For if any be a hearer of the Word and not a doer, he's like to a man beholding his natural face in a glass.
[21:16] For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. Right? It's like a man looking into the mirror. And he just looks into the mirror, and he looks and he looks and he looks, and then he just walks away and doesn't change anything.
[21:31] Right? He looks and he looks and he looks, and he realizes he has ink spots all over his face, and his hair is messed up, and he needs to shave. But he doesn't change anything. It's just foolish. It's just, why did you even look into the mirror if you're not going to change anything based off of it?
[21:47] And so, the Bible here is referred to as a mirror, but it's not just a mirror that shows us ourself. Right? We look into the Bible, and it shows us our sin. Right? That's what the law was given to us for.
[21:59] It was a schoolmaster to bring us to the realization that we're sinners, and to bring us to the realization that we need a Savior. But it doesn't just do that. It also shows us the image of Christ.
[22:10] It's a double mirror that shows us, and it shows us the final product that we need to be like. And so, we can sit there, and we can compare, and we can contrast, and every day, we look into the mirror, and we realize, okay, this needs to change.
[22:22] I see this one thing, and it needs to change. We look at the instruction manual. We look at our piece of furniture. We think, oh, well, here's what I did wrong. And sometimes it takes a little bit of dismantling of our own piece of furniture to rebuild it into what's right.
[22:35] And so, we have to be... Thank you, Zach. We have to be... We have to be humble enough to accept that, and humble enough to put in the work to change. If we're being honest, we can kind of get by without really looking at the instructions.
[22:52] Because we kind of... We're really familiar with them. We're really, really familiar with the instructions. So, if we just kind of glance at them every once in a while, maybe we'll be fine. And honestly, if we do that, we can construct something that looks a lot like the chair that we need.
[23:08] It looks a lot like it. But if we miss a few vital parts, the chair is going to fall apart. Right? If we miss a screw here and there, the whole chair will not be able to stand on its own. And sometimes we do that with our own character.
[23:19] We think, I know enough to get by. I know enough to get by. I can skip my devotions today. I know enough to get by for today. And then, slowly but surely, it's kind of like a snowball effect of just one more day, one more day.
[23:32] One more just neglecting my Bible reading. One more time just neglecting true prayer, true repentance, true confession. And eventually, we have this product that looks very similar to the right thing.
[23:44] But if you were to test it out, it wouldn't stand. Right? There's no integrity. There's no character in our character. It's not complete character. It's not a blameless character. It's something that looks enough like the real thing to get by on just scanning inspection.
[24:01] But it wouldn't actually hold up. And so, we can't do that to ourselves. We are robbing ourselves of true satisfaction in life. Instead of just enjoying a blameless life that is blessed by God, we have to try to hide and try to cover up our things that we're hiding.
[24:18] Have to cover up areas of our life that aren't up to par, that we are clearly living in rebellion in. And that kind of life just isn't blessed. Right? It says, when we follow the instruction manual, we will be blessed in our deed.
[24:31] We really will be blessed if we just do what God says. But when we just try to do it on our own, we come up with a product that is not the same. We do not become like Christ.
[24:43] We can look like it on the outside. But really, in our own hearts, we know that we're not. We know that we're faking. We know that we're lying. And we know that we do not have integrity. That we're lacking in our character.
[24:56] We can go to church three times a week. We can read our Bible. We can even read the whole Bible in a year. We can pray through a short prayer list. We can even go to the point where we're teaching people.
[25:07] But really, we're just meandering through the Christian life in our own strength. Relying on our own wisdom. And not truly listening to the Word of God. And that is not the will of God.
[25:19] It's not the will of God. Just to hear the Word and then have a shallow faith that isn't willing to do more than the minimum expected. Right? Following Christ means we go all the way. We put 100% of our faith in it and we fully obey it.
[25:35] When we do that, that is a clear indication that we don't really want to follow God. Right? When we just cover up and we have something that looks like Jesus but it's not. Something that looks like the good Christian but it's not really.
[25:48] It shows that we don't really want to follow God. We just want to follow our own way and trick everybody else. And even deceive ourselves. It's like a, if we're talking about a mirror, it's like a circus mirror.
[26:00] That you go to at the circus and there's all these fun house mirrors that are warped and they make you look really like tall and skinny or short and wide and things like that. It's like we're looking into one of those instead of the perfect law of liberty.
[26:12] Right? And so the world offers plenty of mirrors for us to look into. Right? And sometimes we look into the mirrors that the world offers and we think, well, I'm doing a lot better than them so I must be fine.
[26:22] But then when we look into the mirror that Christ provides, the word, we realize our shortcomings. We realize all the places we need to improve. Jesus gave another illustration on the Sermon on the Mount.
[26:34] And I love all the parallels between the book of James and the Sermon on the Mount. It is interesting how many there are. Matthew 7, 24. It says, And then verse 26 is the opposite.
[26:58] Right?
[27:08] And so this is another example of hearing the word and not doing it is like building a house on the sand. And one day when the storm comes, because the rest of James chapter 1 teaches us the storms will come.
[27:20] The tests of our faith, they will come. If we have built our character, we've built our reputation, we've tried to live our lives on a foundation of sand by not really applying the word of God to our lives.
[27:34] If we've done that, when the storm comes, what happens to the house? It crashes down. It collapses. It becomes complete. All the work you put into building that house, all the trust you put in that house, it's all gone.
[27:47] It's all gone. And you have to pick up the pieces and walk over to the rock and rebuild your house on the rock by actually doing the word, actually applying the word to our hearts and lives.
[27:58] And, you know, it's never too late to stop laying more bricks on the sand. A lot of times we think, well, I've already started. I guess I might as well continue. And we just let ourselves be stuck in this deadly cycle, in this rut of just doing the minimal expected, just going through the motions of the Christian life.
[28:17] And not truly being blessed in it. And not truly being fruitful. And seeing no profit because we're just going through the motions. And when the trials come, the house is going to collapse.
[28:29] And no matter what, we're humbled. Either God humbles us because the trial comes and our house collapsed. Or we admit we humble ourselves. God resists the proud but giveth grace unto the humble.
[28:42] We'll get to that verse in James chapter 4. And so God will bless us if we just say, look, I'm going to tear down this house. I'm going to build up this house. And now what does that look like? What does it look like to start building your house on the rock?
[28:56] I don't have much time. But it's pretty easy. It's deciding that no matter what, you're going to do what the Bible says. You're going to receive it. Every single day, you're going to receive it and to listen to it and to humbly obey it like you never have before.
[29:09] That just consuming the Bible is going to be your habit. You're just always going to fill your mind with the Bible. You're just going to receive it and receive it and receive it. And always remember that I'm God's servant.
[29:20] He is the master. My way is not the right way. His way is the right way. It's a mindset change. We have to receive the word. And then if we want to break out of the cycle, we have to start putting it into action.
[29:31] We have to get accountability to do this. The Christian life is not a life that was meant to be lived alone. It really isn't. We have a church for a reason. We have men and women in the church who maybe are more spiritually mature than us, have gone before us, that we can get accountability from, that we can work with, who can disciple us, who can just help us stay accountable to God and to others.
[29:54] And so we have to put things into action or else we won't be profitable. And in the end, our house is going to collapse and we're going to be humiliated.
[30:05] And in the end, we're just not going to please God by not following his instruction manual, not looking into his mirror. It's better for us to humble ourselves and demolish our own house to rebuild it on the rock.
[30:18] It's so much better to humble ourselves instead of just waiting to be humbled by a storm that comes through. And so can I encourage you that no matter what area of your life where you feel like you may be sliding, where you may be forgetting to build your house on the rock and you're starting to move your house over to the sand, no matter where you are in the process, it's time to repent.
[30:41] It's time to confess. It's time to be honest with yourself and say, I'm not living the life God wants me to live. Today's the day. Tonight is the night. It is never too late and it is always right on time.
[30:52] Like right now is the earliest you can do it. If you, you know, I forget, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but the second best time is right now, right? That's what they say. So, you know, you shouldn't have got yourself in the situation if that's where you are and you know it in your heart.
[31:04] But the second best time to repent and to confess is right now and to just no matter what, no matter who you've hurt, no matter what consequences there are to confess and just be honest with yourself and others, no matter what consequences, it is always best to humble yourself early rather than to wait to be humbled.
[31:22] And so decide to make things right right now in this moment. You can decide that you're just, you're going to change. You're going to receive the word. You're going to do the word.
[31:33] Don't wait another day. Don't lay another brick on the foundation of sand. Humble yourself. Receive the word. And be a doer of the word. And ye shall be blessed in your deed. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this day.
[31:46] I thank you for just all that you've done today, this weekend, how many people that you've allowed us to share the gospel with, and just to help us to be a light in our community through the hunters class and through giving out the water at the event.
[32:00] Pray that you bless Brett as he's been continuing to give out the waters at that event. Pray that you continue to bless that. I also pray that you would help us, Lord. And remind us of just the power of your word.
[32:12] How it's precious. How it is just the greatest thing on earth that we could ever have. And that it will change our lives if we just read it and receive it humbly and obey it.
[32:25] Lord, help us to do that. Give us the wisdom to be able to follow you day by day. And I pray that you would bless us as we all search our own hearts and to determine the areas in which we've been failing to conform to you.
[32:40] Pray that we would submit those to you humbly and that we would commit to change. And we'd get help changing and have that accountability. It's in your name I pray.