The following message was given at Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. If you have your Bibles, let's go to Luke 17. Luke chapter 17. Luke chapter 17, and we are picking up in verse 1. We'll be reading through verse 10. This is the reading of God's Word. And he said to his disciples, stumbling blocks are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come. It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble. Pay attention to yourselves. If your brother sins, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in the day and turns to you seven times saying, I repent, you must forgive him. The apostle said to the Lord, increase our faith. And the Lord said, if you had faith, like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, be uprooted and planted in the sea. And he would obey you. Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, come at once and recline at table? Will he not rather say to him, prepare supper for me and dress properly and serve me while I eat and drink? And afterward, you will eat and drink. Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, When you have done all that you were commanded, say, we are unworthy servants. We have only done what was our duty. This is the reading of God's word. So we come to our third week in considering what have been some hard passages. Hard indeed. It has taken us a lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of heartache, let's be honest, to consider these passages where the Lord calls us to deal faithfully with sin in our midst. And so he started us out recognizing that there is sin that is severe, there is sin that is damaging, and we need to guard against being the kind of person that would put stumbling blocks into the way of a weaker disciple to cause someone not merely to sin, but to sin in a severe way that leads them from the Lord. And then from there, he calls us to look at our relationships. The truth is that when you have a church of redeemed sinners works in progress, that sin is going to happen. Sin is happening all the time. You experienced it this morning. You've dished it out this week. We are dealing with these wounds that we inflict on each other. We're dealing with these wounds inflicted upon us all the time. We wish it weren't that way, but that's the way it is. Sin will be done away with one day, but that day has not yet come. And so we still labor up under the sin that infects our ranks. And so the Lord said, this is how you will deal with sin. It's going to happen. So when it happens, when your brother, when your sister has sinned against you, you are actually commanded to go to them as a faithful brother, as a faithful sister, and rebuke them. to speak seriously to the nature of their sin, recognizing that what they've done against you, it's not about you. It is about the God whose law they have broken. And so we are called, commanded, not saying, hey, this is the best way to do it. It is the best way, but this is the way that we are commanded to do it. We go to our brothers and sisters in love, in faithfulness, and in wisdom, recognizing that not every sin should be dealt with in the same way. But we go to them with that faithful rebuke because we're not trying to get even, we're trying to bring them back. If sin is as serious as we believe it is, then we cannot leave that brother, that sister merely to languish in their sin. And so we go to them for their repentance. And Jesus said, if they repent, that is, if they change, if they change their thinking, if they change their attitude and their actions show forth that repentance, what are you to do? You must forgive them. You must forgive them. What do you do when they sin time and time and time again against you? When your heart is bleeding and you're suffering under that burden, what are you to do? You must forgive them if they will repent. And so we found that that faithful path of sin not only requires that first step that's hard enough, confronting, but the next step is even harder, and that's forgiving, releasing people from that guilt that they have incurred. And then if it wasn't hard enough, reconciling. To the extent that it's possible, the Lord said that the way you deal with sin is to go confront it, have that repentance, forgive it, and then build that relationship once more. Yeah, the damage has been done to the relationship. Of course, there was damage where there was sin, but we are called to put our hands back to the work as far as we are able to rebuilding that relationship. God does not have a category for, I'll forgive you, but we'll never be the same. We'll never have a relationship. No, that's not how he forgave us, and that is the model he gave us for forgiving others. We forgive with an eye to having that relationship back again, to building it back up. And so we see in these first passages, verses one through four, some incredibly difficult challenges. We're called to have that courage and that love to confront sin. When the sin is ours, we're called in humility to repent of that sin. When the repentance comes back to us, we're called to have that willingness to absorb the pain once more, to release them from that guilt and forgive them. And then if that all wasn't hard enough, then we are called to look around at the wreck of our relationship and say, let's try and rebuild. And if you are feeling that burden heap up upon you, then you know why the next verse has made sense. The disciples hearing the way that the Lord was leading them to say, forgive and forgive and forgive and forgive, they cry out what it is probably them recognizing, how do you do that? How do you forgive like that? That sounds impossible. Increase our faith, Lord. The good news was that the Lord gave them a sweet encouragement that we had to study to figure out what he meant. You think this is impossible? Well, good news. With just a grain of faith, the tiniest amount of faith, God is able to do the impossible through you. And so we look at this Christian life filled with the standards of God, the commands of God, and we recognize how much God has asked us to do. Not just asked us, not just suggested to us, but commanded us to do. And if you were taking it seriously, you come to a moment when you say, how do I do that? I can't do that. I am too limited. I am too weak. My sin is too great. And if you see the path he's led you on, you get to the point where you say, Lord, we need help. Help me, Lord. Help me to have the faith to do this Christian life, to keep these commandments. Like we said, it doesn't even seem like a good idea. Help me to have the faith. I don't know how I could possibly rise to this challenge. Lord, by faith, make me able to rise to this challenge. And by faith, help me to see how much you have done for me so that when my heart is cold, when my heart is struggling, when I don't feel like forgiving, I have those new stores, that grace that was poured upon me so that I can go forward and tackle impossible work by the God who enables the impossible. The Christian life is a call to the impossible that is only made possible by faith in the one who will help us, by faith in our great God. And so if you will consider your great duty before the Lord, every command he has given you and said, this is what it means to follow me. This is what it means to obey me. If you will consider those, you will see how great our duty is. And if you will take that the next step, you will see then how much we need him, how much we need to trust him. If the load is this big, you will think I only need that much faith. But if you recognize the load would crush you, You recognize, I need a lot of faith. I need a lot of help. Lord, help us. And so with this consideration of duty, this weight that we bear, the commands that we can't keep, the Lord then takes us in verses 7 through 9 to this idea of a servant's duty. a servant's duty. And this may feel out of place. You read these passages and the truth is they're not as closely woven together as others are. But as we go, I'm hoping the connection is going to emerge or at least a very good application of the truths that Jesus is giving us. He talks about a servant's duty, a slave's duty, a bond servant's duty, however you want to translate that word. And he's referencing a relationship that is common in that day. See, sometimes illustrations help us because we identify with them, and sometimes we have to do a little more work to understand them. So, not many farmers around here, when he talks about agriculture things, we have to get into those shoes. And here when he's going to talk about masters and slaves, masters and servants, we have to do a little bit of work to understand how that relationship worked back then. And so this is the basics of it. You could have guessed, but this is a, there's some strict boundaries here. There are some clear roles here. The servant served. Now here on the flip side, the master did not. The servant served the master. That is what he did. The master did not serve the servant. This relationship that we don't have so much anymore is a relationship in which that master has a total claim on the life of that servant. Has a total claim, so you can only do it so much justice with our employer-employee relationships. This is a total claim, and this is something that was widely understood, clearly understood. And so he says, after a day of working, working hard out in the field, you guys come back in, and what's going to happen? Well, what's going to happen in those days is the servant is going to keep serving. That's what was expected to happen. This is a no-brainer to anyone who is listening to this. When they first hear it, you come back in and the master's needs are the ones that are met first. And so the master, he's not going to say, hey, I've got a little extra food here. Why don't you sit down and join me? He's not going to say, hey, you worked real hard out there. Why don't you take a break? And when you're ready and you've caught your breath, you come back and then you can make dinner. No, Jesus describes what's a fairly stark relationship. Okay, we're back in. Good. Make supper. Good, take care of my needs. When my needs have been met, then you will eat. When Jesus asks the question, does the master thank the servant for doing what was commanded? See, in our hearts, we kind of murmur and it's like, of course you should say thank you, be polite, right? No, when they hear it, there's a unanimous, well, no. No, there's no thanks that you got to dole out here. The servant was just doing his duty. That was what a servant did. And by doing his duty, he did not earn special praise. You'll hear this kind of thing. You can imagine someone who does something heroic in law enforcement or in the military, and there's some sense of what duty demands. And you may see someone who says, no, no, no, it's not that big a deal. I was doing my duty. And this is the kind of sense that we have here where the servant is simply doing his duty. This is regular life for him. It is his role to serve his master. It is his role to obey. And so when he obeyed, did the master owe him anything? The answer is no. The master didn't owe him anything for simply doing what he was bound to do. And it's this illustration that takes a bit of stretching for us to get back into that the Lord really wants to drive home with us. This application of a servant's life is the application for the children of God. In verse 10, he's going to continue. So you also. And how we might fill that in, just for clarity's sake, so you also are servants. Now we don't love that. That's not how we like talking about ourselves. We don't love that as a label. Now, you are, many of you, a well-churched bunch, a well-studied bunch, and so you don't object as much. But there is a sense in us and in our culture that being a servant is not what anyone is aspiring to, and we might object. We might object simply for pride reasons. You might object because what you're familiar with is other designations for Christians that occur in the scriptures. So, beloved children of God, is that us too? It is. Ambassadors of the king, is that us too? It is. But, for whatever else we are, we remain servants. A Christian is a servant. A disciple is a servant. An ambassador is a servant because we have a master. We have a master and he's in heaven. He is the creator. We are the creation. He is the king. And we are the subject. He is the almighty ruler who possesses all authority in heaven and earth. We, we're the accountable steward operating under his authority. In every sense of the word, we belong to him. We belong to him. We belong to him by right of creation. Everything he created belongs to him and he created us. But further as a child of God, we belong to him by right of redemption. He bought every child of God and he paid a high price, a price that we have a hard time justifying when we reflect on who we are. He owns us by right of creation. He owns us by right of redemption. And so to flesh that out, We are not equals with God. Well, we say, of course we're not, but we got to hear it. We got to fight that fire in us. We are not equals with God. And so there's not a single time that he will ever need your advice. And there's not a single time when he'll need your approval. Something happens and you're thinking, God, no one ran that by me. That's okay. He doesn't need your advice. He doesn't need your approval. He is the heavenly master in every sense of that word. And we need, if we're going to follow along with the scriptures, we need a healthy dose of humility. We need a healthy dose of that ability to see who we really are, to see where we really line up, where we really stack up in this cosmic order that the Lord has created. He can do with us whatever he pleases. Amen. Amen. The servant says amen. We need humility though to follow that through because many times you will never use these words. Oh, I don't want to be a servant. But your heart will be crying out that way. I don't want to be a servant. I want to be more than a servant. I want to be upwardly mobile. I want to grow. I want to be important. Lord, I should be able to call some of the shots. Your heavenly master says, no, you shouldn't. And we look around and we say, I want to be in charge. I want to be the master of my fate, the captain of my soul. And he says, but you're not. You are not. What are we meant to be? What are we meant to do? We are meant to be humble servants of our heavenly master. That's it. And so if there's ever a time where his will conflicts with our will, you know which one we want? His. If ever our goals conflict with his goals, which one should win? His. He is the God, he is the master who has total claim over every single person in this room. Every single child of God, he owns you. Our goal as humble servants of the Lord is to embrace that. Our goal is for our submission to match that claim, that total claim that he has on us. That's not easy. Even if we say, amen, let us be servants, the humble part is when it starts to get hard. Humble servants is where it starts to get hard. The basic point of this passage is this. A servant should humbly recognize that there is nothing special to be praised when a servant obeys his master. That's your basic point. Basic point of the whole passage. And that's what servants are supposed to do. That is what you are supposed to do. It is your duty to obey your master. And why we have to hear that point, why Jesus needed to make it, is because we are so prone to do the opposite. It is so easy for us to revert to what I'm gonna call a servant's pride. that thinks we must be doing something special when we obey our master. We can see the servant's pride spring up first when we get puffed up and the only thing we have done is obey. Have you ever gotten puffed up simply for obeying your master? The obvious application here is what he just commanded us to do. Rebuke, repent, forgive, reconcile. And so he commands us to do those things. You can fairly say it is our duty to rebuke, repent, forgive, and reconcile. And the servant of God doesn't think that's easy, but the servant of God says, yes, Lord. Amen. and goes forward and obeys and seeks to keep that command. The servant's pride, though, kind of creeps up. And let's say it works, or let's just say you've been faithful. Servant's pride sort of says, man, if there were more people like me, we would have a really healthy church. When God throws down the gauntlet, I step up. That's the servant's pride. All you had to do was obey. The servant's pride wants to feel special for obeying. Let's broaden it out. The Lord commands us to pray, doesn't he? Something we all struggle with. But let's say a servant goes forward in simple faith and obeys, prays continually, just like the Lord commands. Well, servant's pride is what creeps in and says, man, the way I obey really shows how good I am. I'm a really good Christian. Look at how much I pray. God commands us to know him. God commands us to grow in our understanding of him. And so we go, and this is a church we like to learn about our Lord. We are passionate about learning about our Lord and we learn sovereign grace. And we put banners on the wall and we say, to God alone be the glory. And as we draw near, it is inspiring, it is convicting, it is so encouraging to see God's glory. And then that servant's pride creeps in and sort of thinks, it takes another kind of Christian to be able to take in all this glory. It takes a pretty glorious Christian. to see God in all his glory. A servant's pride sees all that glory and kind of reaches out and snatches some for itself. It's like we think we're special because we've seen that God is special. We're commanded to raise our kids in the fear of the Lord. Parenting is very important among us, isn't it? And so we go forward and we put our hands to this impossible task. Every day it strains us. Every day it challenges us. Did we do that right? Did we do that wrong? We labor and we labor in the word. We labor to provide godly example, godly modeling, all these things. And then if anything goes right, you know what our servant pride does? Well done. That was some nice parenting you just did there. You raise a believer and you think, I did something right. We're commanded to fight our sin. were commanded to put it to death. And so the servant says, okay, and through much sweat, blood, and tears, they fight. And at some point, maybe they have some victory. They put, they can proclaim victory to say, I used to struggle with that, but look at this track record. God has been faithful. And then the servant's pride creeps in and it just sort of says, fought a good fight back there. I fought a good fight back there. I really laid it all out there, left it all on the floor. And somehow it's become about us again. All these commands, there's not a single command that we are not capable of twisting. Our servant's pride is always ready to take our duty, to take our obedience to our heavenly master and turn it into something that makes us better. that makes us more important, that makes us special. Sure, we're a servant, but we're a special kind of servant. We're the upgrade kind of servant. We're better than your average kind of servant. You see that servant's pride creep out in the way we view other people. Any success that we have, how do you view your brother and your sister that fails in that area? So often, you know what it is? That was some difficult obedience, but I did it. I'm faithful. They're not. Calls you to prayer, and so you commit your life to prayer, and you look around and you're like, I'm spiritual, but they're not. You look at anything going right as we raise up our kids in the Lord and you say, I am what a good parent looks like. They're not. We grow up in the knowledge of the Lord. We devote ourselves to the word of the Lord. And then it's, well, I'm a knowledgeable Christian. All of them are not. That servant's pride creeps up when we want to compare. And as we look down on others, if you've got that vantage where you can look down on others, do you know the only reason you're so high? It's because you exalted yourself for the obedience that may be present in your life. You've taken that success, you've puffed yourself up and you've risen to new heights. And that's how you're able to look down on your fellow servants. But what we have to realize, we're simply doing our duty. And servant's pride is scary how easy it is for us to do. It is disturbing how quickly we twist our duty. But the master, our heavenly master, he has an antidote. for this prideful poison that spreads in our ranks. In fact, I'm going to offer you four antidotes for the servant's pride that is so easily spreading in our lives. Antidote one, consider the commands of God. Consider the commands of God. We get all puffed up because we think we're doing a good job at those commands of God. And so, yeah, let's consider what those commands really say. Let's see how we're doing. So when our master calls us to serve, when he says, you are my servant, he means completely. It's not a nine to five. It's not a nine to nine. He claims all of you. He says down to the very thinking, he claims every thought. He says you have no break time. You have no time when you're not on the clock. Every single action is ruled by his will. Every day, all day belongs to him. Is that the kind of service you're talking about? When you're feeling puffed up, is that what you're evaluating yourself on? The 24-7, I just perfectly rocked those commandments. Let's just consider the big commandments. The big and famous broad pillars of the law of God. Be holy as I am holy. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Die to self, live for Christ. How are you doing at that? How are you doing at that? Is your life just this holy billboard for the world where they look at that person and they think, he, she, they don't belong here. They belong to a kingdom above because so clearly are they living out this holy testimony of their lives. Or do you blend in a bit? Your lifestyle, is that selfishness creeping back in? Love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself is kind of hard when you're loving yourself first. Is your heart hard? toward your neighbor? Is your heart cold toward your God? Do you live a life that no one would recognize as being set apart to the Lord? Just the big commandments, not to mention the full spread of the commands of the Lord. We take them seriously for one minute. Oh man, and it's obvious how far we are falling short. We are falling badly short. And so that's why it's so absurd that when then we go and we hold up our little successes in obedience. We hold up these tiny little successes and then in the background or the backdrop of having failed the massive commandments of God and we want to feel like we're really doing something right. So we look at this and we are, we hate our neighbor. Oh, but we pray a lot. Our heart is cold toward the Lord. Oh, but we read a lot. We're selfish, but every night we do family devotionals. We are immoral, but you know what? Sometimes we invite people to church. When you put our successes next to our sins, it is embarrassing how small our successes are compared to our sins. We never, On top of that, we never do all that we're commanded. So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, you're just going to say, we are just doing our duty, we're unworthy servants. There's a big if in there. There's a big when in there. When you do all you commanded, raise your hand if you did all you were commanded recently. My boy raises his hand. Yes. Yes. Yes. Anyway, I love you, bud. We never do it. We never do it. Let's pretend that God chopped 90% of his commands. He just said, today, just do this one. We never do it. So we break his law constantly. We, we, we, with all the big things, we drop the ball massively. We never do all that we're commanded. And, and we want to feel puffed up about that. What is there to make you proud in that? Not to mention, if you want to be a law keeper, well, be a Bible law keeper, where the word will say, fail once and you failed at all. Break one law, you've broken it all. Is that the kind of arrangement we really want? The only way we get proud over our servant's obedience is when we take God's standards and we ignore them, and then we make up something that's a little closer to home. That's how you do it. If you're going to take God at his actual word, God at his actual law, there is no way for you to feel proud. If we will look at our lives under the fullness of the commands of God, there is no room for servant's pride. That was just antidote one too. Antidote number two, consider the means by which we obey God. Consider the means by which we obey God. One of the ways that servants grow proud is they reflect on their abilities. They reflect on whatever it is that they do well. And so we take things like intellect. We take things like people skills. We take things like counseling, evangelism, teaching, preaching, wisdom, whatever it is, and we say, I've got this skill, this skill, this skill. I'm not just your ordinary servant. I am a next level servant. Look at all the things that I can do. All right, first off, where did those skills come from? Where those abilities come from? Did you invent them? Before you were born, did you go before God and say, I want this one, this one, this one, I'm going to do a really good job with them? No, where did they come from? They all came from God. They're all gracious gifts of your God. But then you keep going and you ask, how are you able to make use of any of those abilities? How are you able to serve with any of those abilities that you have? See the disciples, they were called to forgive and they cried out for faith because they couldn't do it. They had to have faith. They had to rely on God in order to do this. You were called to the very same dependence. Because it's only in trusting God will you rise to His commandments. It's only in depending on the power, the strength, the ability of another that you will ever step up to these commandments. It's only by His help that anything you touch will ever flourish. First Corinthians 15.10, it goes forward and it says, but by the grace of God, Paul would say this, but by the grace of God, I am what I am. And his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them. And then, though it was not I, it was not I, but it was the grace of God that is with me. Was Paul skilled? Yeah. Was Paul experienced? Was Paul brave? Was Paul zealous? Yes, yes, yes. But what it came down to is God's grace working with him and in him. See, even your ability depends on God. And so when you see that your ability to serve God actually depends on God, there's no room for servant's pride. Anecdote number three, consider the salvation that made us servants. Consider the salvation that made us servants. Can we be prideful about being Christians? You'd like to say, you know, never, but we can. We can be proud about anything and we can certainly be proud about being a Christian. The way we do it is we forget that like Paul said, we were once children of wrath. We forget that so then we can look at the world in disgust. Oh, you people. We forget that we were dead in sins and trespasses. And what did it take for God to make us servants? He had to make corpses live. That's what it took to make you a servant. But then we look around at the world and we forget that. And we're like, guys, get your act together. We can only be prideful in our salvation if we forget our contribution to our salvation. You know what that was, right? The sin. Our sin is the reason the Son of God was nailed to the cross. That's our contribution. I want you to imagine that you're there that day on Calvary where the Savior is being crucified. Now try and pat yourself on the back for anything. As Jesus Christ dies, as he calls out as the forsaken suffering servant, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? As he gasps for breath, as he bears the wrath of God for the sins of God's people, I want you to pat yourself on the back for anything. Try it. When you consider, when you remember the price that was paid to make us servants of God, there is no room for servants' pride. Antidote four, consider the Savior who made us servants. Consider the Savior who made us servants. See, if you are tempted to think highly of yourself, If you are attempted to some exalted sense of your servanthood or whatever, look at Christ. Look at Christ. We fail at every single commandment and we do it on an incredible scale. Every single day we are failing at every commandment that comes our way. Look at Christ. He kept them all. He kept them all. He didn't have an off day. He didn't have a weakness, a breakdown. He kept every single command. If we were to keep all the commands, Jesus would say, you'd just be doing your duty. Consider the Savior who went beyond duty. Did he owe us anything? Was there anything we had done that Christ should say, yeah, I know we've had our hard times, but I know I owe you one. So I'm going to come and pay for your sins so that you can have eternal life. Did that ever happen? He didn't owe us a thing. Duty demanded nothing. He is the one who went beyond duty to pay our penalty. In grace, he went beyond duty so he could fulfill all the things that we had failed. Consider the Savior, who puts forward these pictures of earthly masters, and it grates on us a little bit because we don't like those kinds of relationships. Servant, master, master, slave, however you want to describe it. But he used this picture of earthly masters, but consider the Savior who's a very different master. Consider the Savior who was actually nothing like earthly masters. The obvious answer, is the master going to thank, is he going to serve the servant, was no. What did our Savior do? What did our master do? He is the master who serves his servants. Did not come to be served, but to serve. He is the master who said, hey, you guys are going to recline and I'll take care of you. The world scoffs at that reversal. The Son of God became incarnate to live out that reversal. Consider the Savior. If there is anything that you think about you is worthy of praise, then look at the Savior and see what true worthiness looks like. Look at the Savior and see what true greatness looks like. Consider the one who does in fact deserve praise. Once you have, once you have seen Him, your imitation worthiness, your imitation praise worthiness, it will just shrivel up and break apart. Because you have seen true greatness. In light of our glorious Savior, there is no room for servants' pride. For all these reasons, for the commands, for the abilities, for the salvation, for the Savior, there is no room for servants' pride. The quote, I think it got into your bulletin, it's J.C. Ryle. He is the wise man who knows himself. And he who knows himself will find nothing within him to make him proud. If we see ourselves clearly, there will be nothing that we will be proud about. And so, if your servant's pride is lying in tatters on the floor, you can understand what the Son of God is talking about here. One more time, verse 10. So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, which parentheses you never do, say, we are unworthy servants. We have only done what was our duty. Unworthy servants, that word unworthy, it's talking about servants who do not deserve special praise. And why not? Why isn't our servant's pride justified? It's because it is only because of God that we can serve God. Do you see that? It is only because of God that we can serve God. We don't deserve praise because all the praiseworthy stuff came from God in the first place. God doesn't owe us a thing. Because all of our accomplishments, all the things we think give us credit, he is the reason for all of the accomplishments that we have done. All of our works, flow out of his grace. All of our works flow out of our grace. Our service depends entirely on God from start to finish. Entirely on him. The cause of the salvation by which we serve, God. The source of the gifts by which we serve, it's God. His grace is the means by which we serve, and we serve Him by faith in Him who is able to do the impossible things through us that we could never do on our own. And so we ask, which part do you want credit for? Which part? Which part do you want a pat on the back for? Which part is God going to say, thank you, I could not have done it without you? Which part of our God-enabled, God-dependent, Service should bring us praise. Jesus says, when you have done all that you were commanded, you're just gonna say, we are unworthy of any special praise. And the servant of God says, amen. Amen. And in fact, every act of obedience that we are so tempted to twist into something that makes us special, every act of obedience is actually one more reason that God should be praised. Because it wouldn't have happened without him. It wouldn't have. If he left you to your own devices, it never would have happened. Every success in this walk of faith, in this Christian walk that he has placed us in, every success is by the strength which he supplies. And as Peter would say, why? So that God may be glorified in Christ Jesus. We're going to wind down here, but let's do so with a conviction. of servants who are unworthy of any praise. Child of God, have you risen to the hard work of dealing with your sin, of dealing with sin in other people's lives? Well, may God alone get all the praise. Child of God, have you been faithful in prayer? Has this been a good year for you? Has it been a good decade for you? Are you faithful in prayer? Well, may God alone be praised. Have you searched out glorious things of the Lord by faithful study, by time you've carved out that you had to sacrifice in order to get there? Well, great. May God alone get all the praise. Have you raised kids in the fear of the Lord? Have they grown up and even taken hold of the faith and gone forward as disciples in their own right? Well, may God alone be praised. Have you put to death any sin in your life? Have you tasted even the smallest taste of victory over sin? May God alone be praised. And may our servants' pride die a speedy death. As unworthy servants, our goal is to step back. so that God alone can receive the praise that God alone deserves. In our own hearts and in our own minds, let not an ounce of our praise be reserved for ourselves. When people look at us, let no one think that we are supposed to be praised. Let the master who works through feeble servants like us get all of the praise. Praise God the worthy master. Praise God, the God of grace who works in us and through us, and praise God, the God who will never owe us anything. Let's pray. Father, to you alone be the glory. We pray that you would help us to embrace our role as humble servants. Help us to step back from all the glory stealing we want to do. Lord, may our lives make much of you. May our successes make much of you. We pray that you would have the glory that you deserve and that we would be the humble, faithful servants that we are called to be. Lord, it's hard work for us. It's hard work in our pride. It's hard work in our weakness. And so we pray by your Holy Spirit this week, you would help us to be the servants you deserve. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. We hope that you were edified by this message. For additional sermons as well as information on giving to the ministry of Grace Community Church, please visit us online at gracenevada.com. That's gracenevada.com.