A few months ago, a coworker asked me what I thought were some characteristics, some character traits that make a good church member. I thought that was a really good question. I liked that question a lot. What character traits make a good church member? And he said, you can take some time. I don't have to know right now. I was like, no. I know exactly what has come to mind. It is humility and a willingness to work. In any arena, you take people that are humble and willing to work, and you can get a whole lot done. And as I was looking and continuing for the past month since that question, looking at humility and the necessity of humility in our lives as Christians, as humans, but especially within the body of Christ, the topic for tonight just kept hitting me. The humility of Christ in the life of his church. and I think on yours you've got a subtitle, Humility, It's Not About Me. We're gonna hit this, we got these three points you see there at the top, we're gonna look at the glory of God. That's gonna be most of what we look at tonight. Then we're gonna look at the glory of man, and finally, the humility of Christ and the life of his church. In the high priestly prayer, Jesus asked the Father, he said, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. So as we look back, this is gonna be kind of a survey of, very, very cherry-picked survey of the glory of the Lord, the glory of God in the Old Testament and forward. Because there is no way, one, that my brain can hold a comprehensive study of the glory of God. I know I don't have a grasp on this yet, but we're gonna see what we can go through this. But also, if we were to spend the time to look at every single verse that talks about the glory of God, we'd be here whoever's turn next time to preach on the fourth Sunday. I'm going to bow. Father, I am unworthy to approach the topic of your glory. But that is the burden on my heart tonight. Speak through me, Father, I pray. Protect me from error. Give grace, Father, for we need it. We praise you. We glorify you in Jesus' name. Amen. So as we look through Scripture, we see God's glory, two aspects of God's glory. we see God's ascribed glory. That's where we have all these commands to glorify God. That's where we attribute to God glory. And then we also have God's inherent glory, this emanating expression, this visible expression that shows up. But first, God's ascribed glory. 1 Corinthians 6.20, we're told, you were bought with a price, so glorify God in your body. 1 Peter 2.12, keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. Matthew 5.16, Jesus says, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. Psalm 86, 12. I give thanks to you, O Lord, my God, with my whole heart, and I will glorify your name forever. Romans 4, 20. No unbelief made him, Abraham, waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God. Isaiah 24, 15. Therefore, in the east, give glory to the Lord. In the coastlands or the sea, give glory to the name of the Lord, the God of Israel. And lastly, 1 Corinthians 10, 31. So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. This attributing glory to God is something that we're obviously told to do, something that we can do, something that even the Pharisees understood they were supposed to do. In John 9, after Jesus had healed the man who was born blind, if you remember, the disciples asked him, who sinned that this man was born blind? Did his parents sin? Did he sin? And Jesus said, no. This was for God's glory. And after Jesus healed him, and the Pharisees and the Jews who witnessed the healing are trying to fault Jesus, they bring the man back, I think it was the second or third time they're either confronting him or his parents, and they say, give glory to God. And then they sell him to blaspheme Jesus, so we cut the verse there, we don't need that part. But the Jews and the Pharisees, these people knew that God was worthy of glory. but they were blinded as to how God is to be glorified. We glorify God when we acknowledge his glory, when we acknowledge and believe in his worthiness to be praised, to be honored, to be worshiped. When we believe Him, when we love Him as we're commanded to, when we rejoice in what He's done for us, but not just what He's done for us, but who He is. We praise God, not just because He does good things for us. What did Satan tell God about Job? He said, He only serves you because you do all these good things for Him. God said, take it. We don't just praise God because of the good things He does for us. Because who He is, He is worthy. The catechism we're going through on our Wednesday night Faithful Family class asks, how and why did God create us? If I ask the kids to answer, they will sing it for you. And you can ask them later. But the answer is God created us, male and female, in His own image to glorify Him. This is what we were made to do, was to glorify God. Revelation 411 says, worthy are you, O Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power. For you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created. The catechism goes on to ask, how can we glorify God? If we were made to glorify God, we need to know how. We got to know how we're going to do that. The answer is by loving Him and by obeying His commands and law. We love God. But we don't stop there, that love prompts us, compels us to obedience. But then asks, what does the law of God require? If we're gonna keep his commands in law, we gotta know what the law is. Jesus answered, well, the Catechism answer is that we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and that we love our neighbor as ourselves. Which is exactly what Jesus said in Matthew 22, 35-39. A lawyer asked Him, Jesus, a question to test Him. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And He said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Because of who God is, his nature, his character, his power, he is worthy of being worshiped, worthy of being loved with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. That's every aspect of us. There's nothing that is encompassing the human existence that is outside of heart, soul, mind, or strength. Every moment of our lives. That's what God's worthy of. That's what he created us for, was that from the beginning of our existence, we would love him. But if you have spent a fraction of a second not loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, Acts 17 says that there's a day coming when God will judge you. And not just according to any standard, but the standard of his holy son's righteousness. Acts 17, 30, 31 says, "...the times of ignorance God overlooked, but now He commands..." Commands. "...all people everywhere to repent, because He has fixed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom He has appointed. And of this He has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead." In the day of judgment, those outside of Christ will receive the just punishment for their sin. They will be cast into the place of outer darkness where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth, where the worm dies not, where the fire is never quenched. Those outside of Christ experience the full weight of his wrath and justice through all eternity in hell. But Jesus says, come to me. He says, all who come to me I will in no wise cast out. He says, repent. and believe the gospel. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. I know most of those here, most of you here, I've heard your testimonies. I've seen your faith. But to those, the kids, you know, if God touches your heart, and says, come to me. If he convicts you, you're not gonna bother me if you stop and pray. Turn to God when he calls you. When we give glory to God as we're commanded to, or we are to give glory to God as we're commanded to, then he is worthy of being glorified in and by his creation. The Bible also speaks of God's inherent glory, the glory that is intrinsic to himself. Wayne Gruden said that God's glory is the outward expression of his own excellence. We can think of God's glory as the radiance of the perfection of all that he is, all of his attributes. love, mercy, grace, forbearance, forgiveness, justice, wrath, immutability, omniscience, omnipresence, wisdom, truthfulness, faithfulness, goodness, holiness, peace, righteousness, jealousy, and a whole lot more, all find their perfect expression in who God is. And that perfection radiates out as His glory. We are first introduced to the glory of God in Exodus 16. This is the first time we see the glory of the Lord appearing. Now, Exodus 16, Israel has just been out of Egypt for about 45 days. As I was reading through and read in the second month on the 15th day, I was like, that second month 15th day was like 10 days ago for us here in 2024. So think back to about January 10th. and I think it was a Wednesday, I looked it up, whatever you're doing on January 10th to now, that's how long Israel has been exiting from Egypt. This is how long they've been in the wilderness, and they're mumbling and complaining, and they're telling Moses and God, why didn't you just let us die in Egypt? And then God told Moses he had a plan to feed them. Exodus 16, 6 through 10. So Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, at evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt. And in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against the Lord. For what are we that you grumble against us? And Moses said, when the Lord gives you in the evening meat to eat and in the morning bread to the full, because the Lord has heard your grumbling that you grumble against him, "'What are we? Your grumbling is not against us, but the Lord.' Then Moses said to Aaron, "'Say to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, "'Come near before the Lord, for he has heard your grumbling.' And as soon as Moses spoke to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud." This is the cloud that's been leading them out of Egypt. This is the cloud that if it didn't move, they didn't move. When it moved, they moved. And later on, we're told that sometimes it stayed for a day, sometimes it stayed for months, sometimes it stayed longer. When this cloud moved, they moved. When it didn't, they didn't. So here is, God is about to provide the bread from heaven His glory appears visibly to show them. He says, so that you know that it is me who has brought you out. Then we jump ahead to John 6. And the crowd has been fed miraculously by Jesus. And this crowd coming asking for more tells Jesus that Moses gave them bread in the wilderness. What are you going to give us? Jesus corrects them. In John 6, 32, 33, and 35, he says, "'Truly, truly, I say to you, "'it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, "'but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. "'For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven "'and gives life to the world. "'I am the bread of life. "'Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, "'and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.'" Jesus told him it wasn't, not only was it God that provided that bread for them in the wilderness, But it was just a picture of him. It was just a foreshadowing, just a foretaste. These people who were trusting in Moses gave us bread in the wilderness. Jesus tells them, God's given you the true bread now. And they rejected it. So when God announced the manna was coming, we see the glory of the Lord appear. when God announced that the true bread was coming. Luke 2, 8 through 11. In the same region, there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them. And they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. Just as the glory of the Lord shone at the announcement of manna, just the bread from heaven. And the glory of the Lord shone to the shepherds at the announcement of the birth of the true bread from heaven. The next time we see the glory of the Lord, it's in Exodus 24 on Sinai. So God had called Moses to come up and he's going to receive the tablets of the Ten Commandments and the law. In Exodus 24, 15 through 18, Moses went up on the mountain and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the Lord dwelt on Mount Sinai and the cloud covered it six days. And on the seventh day, he called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud. Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel. Moses entered the cloud and went up on the mountain and Moses was on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights. We're actually told what happens during those 40 days and 40 nights for the next seven chapters of Exodus. We see the instructions that God gave him as to how God was to be worshipped. And then the 40 days are over and Moses comes down the mountain. And he finds the people worshipping a golden calf saying, this is Yahweh that has delivered us. This calf they just made with their own hands. And we see the punishment. You can read more of that. So after that is dealt with, in Exodus 33, God told Moses to head to Canaan. He's like, it's time to move on. And that God would send an angel to guide them, because God himself was not going to guide them anymore. Because if he did, he would kill them all. Exodus 33 2-5, I will send an angel before you and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey, but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people. When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments. For the Lord had said to Moses, Say to the people of Israel, You are a stiff-necked people. If for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you." That's heavy. But this isn't someone having a temper tantrum and saying, just get away from me, I can't stand you. This is the holy and righteous God telling people who've rejected him time and time again, saying, you are not worthy of me. They deserve to be consumed. We deserve to be consumed. But God, rich in mercy, because of the great love which he loved us. Moses comes to God and begs him, if you don't go with us, please don't send us up from here. He says, we've been waiting for the promised land for 400 years, but if you're not gonna go with us, I don't wanna go. I don't wanna go where you're not, God. And then he asked the Lord, please show me your glory. Exodus 33, 18 through 23. I'm going to read this next long section. And God said, I will make all my goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim before you my name, the Lord. And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But he said, you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live. And the Lord said, behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock while my glory passes by. I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back. My face shall not be seen. It's given down in Exodus 34. The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him, Moses, there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and on the children's children, the third and the fourth generation. And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped." The end of the chapter. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, and behold the skin of his face shone. They were afraid to come near him. But Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him. and Moses talked with them. Just seeing a fraction of a glimpse of God's glory, and Moses shined visibly such that he had to wear a veil for the next while. And I was reminded of Acts 4.13. When they, the elders and rulers and scribes and high priests, saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated common men, they were astonished and they recognized that they had been with Jesus. I pray that people can see that we have beheld the glory of God, that we have been with Jesus. The glory of the Lord appears again when the tabernacle is completed in Exodus 40. 34 and 35, then the cloud covered the tent of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it. And the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. That visible presence of God, Moses, the man that God said he'd talk to face to face in the cloud, through the cloud, Moses couldn't even enter into the tabernacle because he himself was still unworthy. Similarly, when Solomon brought in the ark to the temple. He, in 2 Chronicles 6, at the end there he prays this prayer of dedication. Then we pick up in 2 Chronicles 7. As soon as Solomon finished his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering. sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. And the priests could not enter the house of the Lord, because the glory of the Lord filled the Lord's house. When all the people of Israel saw the fire come down, and the glory of the Lord on the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the ground and on the pavement, and worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying, For He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever." The only proper response to being confronted with the glory of God is worship. It's what naturally happens. We see this over and over again. We see this in the very angels of heaven. In Isaiah 6, 1 through 5, we read, In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up. And the train of his robe filled the temple, and above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings. With two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, with two he flew. And one called to another, saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. And the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of Him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said, Woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." And similar to that, Revelation 4, 8, the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes. all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come." God's glory overwhelms, overshadows, overtakes, over everything, His creation. Psalm 19 1 tells us, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork. Psalm 57 5, Be exalted, O God, above the heavens. Let your glory be over all the earth. And I was thinking on the way here, we passed a field of cattle. And I think it was Dorothy, when she was young, about between Henry and Gideon now, about between a year and a two, She could be screaming her head off in the car. But if we saw cows, she was fine. She was excited to see cows. And thankfully, we live in the country, we see cows pretty often. And I was thinking about that and was reminded that even when we see cows, this is an expression of God's glory as creator. I grew up surrounded on three sides by a cattle field, and I loved just watching cattle roam. They're never in a hurry, hardly. And it's just, it's calming. And we see, some people like flowers. I don't care about flowers. But some people are overawed. Brother Bell's told me a few times I need to go to the place in Georgia that has the acres and acres of flowers. I'm like, yeah, sounds good. Maybe I'll take Bethany someday. And at work they'll bring in flowers. Hey, doesn't this look good? I don't know, it's a flower. Does it make me sneeze or doesn't it? That's really all I care about. But there is great beauty in God's creation. And that causes us, that's again, beauty is one of those aspects of God that when we recognize it and see that this is from God, we are glorifying Him. Last time I spoke, we went through Isaiah 40, and we're going to hit some of it again. Isaiah 40, starting in verse 9, the last three words, and then those selected passages. It says, "'Behold your God, who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance. Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are counted as dust on the scales. Behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust. Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering." Pause there. There's so much there. God says that all the water in all the world, he can cup it in his hand. He says, you think of the unlimited, as far as we can see in space, and we can't see as far as they say there is, God says it's that big. Fingertip to thumb. That's how big our known cosmos is to God. The nations that have ever existed from all time. He says it's a drop in a bucket. The cedars of Lebanon. You think of the, they were used in building David's house, they were used in building the temple for Solomon. And all the cedars that have ever existed, if you burn them all, it's not sufficient to give God the glory that he deserves. If you took all the beasts that have ever existed, it's not sufficient to appease the holy and righteous wrath of God. All the nations are as nothing before Him. They are counted by Him as less than nothing in emptiness. It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to dwell in. Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth." Glorify God. Ascribe to Him glory. Recognize God's glory and majesty and let us worship Him. That's why the songs were chosen tonight. So what does the glory of God have to do with the humility of Christ in the life of this church? John 1, 1 and 1, 14, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the father. full of grace and truth. Back to the middle of our verse that Brother Ken read for us. Philippians 2, five through eight. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, all this we've talked about so far, all of this applies to Christ. Though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, a thing to be held onto, to be, or even reached for, but emptied himself. By taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Christ humbled himself. He emptied himself and put on the glory of man, became one of us. Scripture shows us that God, through Christ, made man in his own image. And then Christ was made in the likeness, or the image, of man. So that through faith in the Son of God, we could be conformed to the image of the Son of God. Genesis 127 tells us, God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them. Philippians 2.7 says that Christ was born in the likeness of men, we just read that. Romans 8.3 goes a little bit further and says, God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. Again, Christ was not sinful, he's in the likeness of our sinful flesh. Romans 8.29, for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. All of this glory was Christ's, and he set it aside to become one of us. So what is this glory of man that Christ put on? I'm gonna have to go really fast. So the glory of man, done. All right, no. We'll hit this, we'll skip around some. Grudem again said that God's glory is the outward expression of his own excellence, So let's apply that to the glory of man as being the outward expression of our own excellence. Romans 3, 10 through 18, none is righteous, no not one, no one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave, they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood, and their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. We could look at, you just pick anybody from the Hebrews 11 roll call of faith. Abraham, who was called the friend of God, lied, was unfaithful to his wife, and tried to circumvent and take into his own hands God's promise, the fulfillment of God's promise to him. Moses, who we said God spoke to face to face, Moses never got to go into the promised land, You know, that just kind of hurts when you look at it. He spent 40 years leading these rebellious people and interceding to God for them, and he doesn't give in because when God told him to strike the rock, he goes before them and he tries to rob God of his glory by saying, here now, you rebels, shall we bring, shall we, shall we bring water to you from this rock? Was he gonna do, was him smiting the rock gonna bring water out of it? He put himself on the plane of God. David, the man after God's own heart, David is the only Old Testament saint that we're told that from the day that, we have a few times throughout the Old Testament that the Spirit rushed on somebody. But David's the only one that the Spirit rushed on him for the rest of his life. That he was Spirit-filled, if you will, for his whole life. David wrote over half the Psalms, and yet he fell. At the height of his glory, he himself lusted after a woman, took her, and killed her husband, and then hid it, and then lost a child because of it. What about us? Surely now in the 21st century, we're better than that. We're, you know, we've progressed. the words of the New Testament ring true. Ephesians 2, 1-3, You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the year, the spirit that is now at work, and the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. Romans 1, 29-31, they were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossip, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. This is who Christ, the God of heaven, left the throne of heaven and constant adoration of angels. He left that to rub elbows with this, becoming like us in all but our son, sin. The eternal God put on temporal flesh. The unlimited God was bound by human flesh. The God who sees all, all of his creation, looked out of human eyes. The eternally self-existent creator came to die in the likeness of sinful man. The creator became part of the creation for a time. So what is our response? Can we look at the glory of God and then revel in our own glory? Our response is humility, it is worship, it is that we glorify him, that we love him, that we obey him, that we walk humbly before our God. We'll see how quickly we can get through these last bit. The humility of Christ and the life of his church. Humility, it's not about me. Humility within the church. We come in and we're with a group of people who are very different from us in a lot of ways. We've come from different backgrounds. We have different ways of thinking. We have different ideas on what to wear, what worship, what songs to sing. We come with these different ideas, but we've been united as a body. And so we first submit to God in obedience. James 4.7 says, submit yourselves therefore to God And that starts with submission to him in salvation, Matthew 18, three and four. Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom. We cannot come to God for salvation saying, look what I've done. We have nothing to offer. Humility submits to and serves one another within the body. going to pick some verses here from the page. Ephesians 4, 1-3, I therefore a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. Colossians 3, 12, and 13, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 1 Peter 5, 5, likewise you who are younger be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another. For God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Let me just say that I commend Southside Church for your service and submission to one another. I don't know if you noticed, two weeks ago, I was not at the piano. I only played for Bethany's song. Two weeks ago was my birthday. I was hoping to be out of state, but the snowstorms came and suddenly my vacation time was gone and I couldn't go out of state. But I had asked Jasmine beforehand, I was like, hey, if this is what we're looking for, would you be willing to play if, when I'm gone? And if you've ever seen a deer in the headlights, she was terrified. Jasmine and I took from the same teacher years ago. We used to do recitals together, so I knew she played. but I also know it's been a while and that she was very uncomfortable with it. But she told me, because you asked, because my brother needed a break. I wanted to do that if I could. And there's so many times that I have asked someone to do something possibly outside their comfort zone. Just thinking of the guys running through my head, of the guys who step in and teach on our Wednesday night kids, families. You're not just teaching the kids, you're teaching all of us. But some of those guys, this is not their comfort zone to get in front of people and teach. But they do it, and it's a blessing. Asking people to stand at the doors. Many other things that I've asked people to do. And very rarely, someone's like, no. In fact, I can't think of a time that somebody just flat out refused. It's usually, I can't, and here's why. And that is such a blessing. Submission and service to one another looks like not insisting on my own way. It looks like giving my brothers and sisters room to disagree with me. You can be wrong, and I can too. It looks like rejoicing when a brother or sister has a conviction that differs from mine. It looks like taking time from your busy schedule to help a brother or sister. It looks like being an ear to a hurting brother or sister. and offering godly counsel. This is serving one another by pointing each other back to Christ. It looks like encouraging your brothers and sisters to be faithful. And you do this, and I am thankful for it. Lastly, humility enables unity, which propagates the gospel, or spreads forth. John 17, 21. Jesus praying again in the high priestly prayer. He's praying, and he's just said, I don't pray only for these who are with me, but for those who will believe because of their testimony, which is us. He says that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. Our unity shows forth the gospel. When we sinners can unite in Christ. It's not uniformity, it is oneness in Christ. Remember, humility says it's not about me. When those feelings get hurt, big deal. Put aside the feelings, get past that to the truth. Sometimes, Your feelings are a little too close to the sleeve. And I speak from experience. But again, we're a bunch of sinners working together. I'm bound to say something you disagree with or say it poorly. I promise you I've said it poorly. That grace that we have to give one another, that unity, it's not about me when we gather. It's not about what I want to do. I come to glorify God. And I love Romans 15.3, 14, 15 again, all of Romans, pinpointing right now, Romans 15.3 says, we can with one voice, with our differences within our unity, we can glorify God with one voice. Not smoothing over these differences, not getting rid of them, but taking these differences that God has designed in us. Again, a body. Eye does not look like a foot. If you try to use your eye like a foot, things are not going to go well. But when we use those differences that God has given us to glorify him together, we glorify him together. And it struck me way back up, probably your second page, maybe? Romans 4, I believe it was, 4.9, maybe, where it's talking about Abraham as he, I'm gonna have to find it, or I'm gonna mess it up. It said, glorified God. As he glorified God, his faith was strengthened. He didn't glorify God because his faith was strong. As he glorified God, his faith grew. So I end with those last three words of Isaiah 4 and 9. Behold your God and glorify him in your bodies. and in the body. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for your goodness, your mercy, your grace, Lord. All of these attributes we've talked about, Lord, that show themselves in perfection in you. We thank you that you show us your glory, Lord, and that we from that see that you are worthy of worship, that you are worthy of praise. I pray, Father, that we have beheld your glory, that we come away with a stronger love for you, with a stronger desire to glorify you. And Lord, as we glorify you, we ask that our faith would be strengthened. Lord, help us to glorify you in all that we do. We thank you, we love you, in Jesus' name, amen.