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Acts 20:24-32
24 But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. 25 And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again. 26 Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, 27 for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. 28 Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God,1 which he obtained with his own blood.2 29 I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; 30 and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. 31 Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears. 32 And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Before before we preach, I wanted us to take time to go through the Lord's prayer. There's a copy of it in your worship guide. And it's easy when you go through the Lord's prayer, especially if you grew up saying it, whatever tradition you come from. You could just kind of fly by the words. And so I'm gonna lead us during the lord's prayer, and I'm just gonna go through line by line and pause after each line to let you just think about it, to meditate on it and to pray these things to the Lord.
Jeffrey Heine:So if you would pray with me, there's, there's no other place you need to be. There's nothing you need to do. You just need to be here before the presence of God. Our father, who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name.
Jeffrey Heine:Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread. And forgive us of our trespasses.
Jeffrey Heine:As we forgive those who have trespassed against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom. For thine is the power. And for thine is the glory.
Jeffrey Heine:Forever and ever. And all God's people said, amen. I'd like you to turn in your bibles to the book of Acts. This is our last message in our series through Acts. Acts 20, and I'll begin reading in verse 24.
Jeffrey Heine:And I think the text is also in your worship guide. Listen carefully for this is the word of the Lord. But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself. If only I may finish my course in the ministry I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of god. And now behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again.
Jeffrey Heine:Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all of you. For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, To care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them.
Jeffrey Heine:Therefore, be alert. Remembering that, for 3 years I did not cease night or day to admonish everyone with tears. And now, I commend you to God and to the word of his grace. Which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. I coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel.
Jeffrey Heine:You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who are with me. Of all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way, we must help the weak and remember the words of our Lord Jesus, how he himself said, it is more blessed to give than to receive. And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. And there was much weeping on the part of all. And they embraced Paul and kissed him, being sorrowful most of all, because of the word he had spoken that they would not see his face again.
Jeffrey Heine:They accompanied him to the ship. Pray with me. Lord, we are in desperate need of your spirit to give us understanding. And Lord, more than understanding because even if, if we could actually understand what's being said here, the power to obey it is beyond us. So we need your spirit to help us to understand and then to obey.
Jeffrey Heine:We need your spirit to make Jesus known to us, real to us. And we ask that that would happen in this moment through the reading and the teaching of your word. Lord, give us keen minds and open ears to hear your truth. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:Amen. For those of you who are somewhat new to redeemer, the things that we're gonna be looking at tonight will likely be new to you as well. But if you've been here a while, this will certainly be familiar to you. I actually preached this for the second message ever at Redeemer, when we were still meeting in the living room of our house. And the reason I wanted to talk through these things back then is because this is foundational for who we are as a church.
Jeffrey Heine:It's foundational for who we want to be as a church. It is certainly the undergirding for my preaching. Every time I preach, I'm thinking about these things. I think it's right that we would end the book of Acts highlighting, this gospel of grace. This is what Redeemer believes.
Jeffrey Heine:We believe that personal change, personal transformation happens through a better understanding of the gospel. It doesn't happen through behavior modification. It doesn't happen just through, doubling up on your efforts, trying to be a better person, turning over a new leaf. That's not what brings about transformation. The only thing that brings about real transformation is the gospel because it gets after the heart, and it changes the heart.
Jeffrey Heine:And so it's it's really crucial for us to understand this, as we, hear us say, you know, you should become a Christian. What they hear is behavior modification. They They think, okay, what you're asking me to do is become a better person. You're asking me to, you know, to quit smoking, to, to quit drinking, to quit cursing, and you're asking me to start going to church and, and and to, to give to the church. Turn over a new leaf.
Jeffrey Heine:That's what they hear when we say, you should become a Christian. And that is not at all what we mean. That's not what the gospel is. We see the gospel here in acts 20. Paul is saying his final goodbye to the church at Ephesus.
Jeffrey Heine:He's gathered the elders of the church together for a very brief meeting before he goes off to Jerusalem where he will be arrested, and he'll be in prison pretty much for the rest of acts. We looked at this in detail a couple of weeks ago, but I want us to really kinda hone in on verse 32. Look at verse 32 again. It says, and now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and give you to give you the inheritance among all those who were sanctified. So in his final words to, to the elders at Ephesus, he could have commended them to so many things, but he only commends them to 1.
Jeffrey Heine:He says, I commend you to the word of his grace, or that's the gospel. He commends them to the gospel. It's, this is the same thing as the gospel of God's grace that he mentioned earlier in verse 24 when he says this, But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself. If only I may finish my course in the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. So Paul says his whole life, he considers nothing if he could do this one thing, and that's to testify to the gospel of God's grace.
Jeffrey Heine:And now to these Ephesian elders, he's saying, I commend you to the word of his grace. You need to hold fast to the gospel. And so, verse 32 here really is the undergirding of my preaching. Because as a pastor, I want to I want to build you up, and I want to give you the inheritance among those who are sanctified. So I want to build you up.
Jeffrey Heine:I want to give you an inheritance. I want you to be sanctified. That is my longing for us as a church. And it says, in order for me to do that, I need to commend it to you the word of grace. I want you to remember here just something you kind of forget that Paul is talking to Christians.
Jeffrey Heine:He's talking to people who've been saved for a while. These are leaders in the church. But he's saying, you know what? You don't just start with the gospel, and then move on to something else, And that's how you grow. He says, You don't.
Jeffrey Heine:And when I preach to you, I don't preach to you the gospel just to save you. Like, alright. You're gonna get saved, and now we can move on, and I can, you know, kind of preach self esteem. I I can preach how you can become better people. I can I can do all that stuff?
Jeffrey Heine:No. Because I'm going to preach the gospel to to save you and the gospel to sanctify you. You never outgrow the gospel. Well, let's look at how the gospel does this. How, how can the gospel make us more holy?
Jeffrey Heine:How can I give us an inheritance and sanctify us, build us up? 2 people have been very helpful to me in getting a greater understanding of the gospel, Jonathan Edwards and Tim Keller, especially concerning this right here. Jonathan Edwards wrote a book called the, it's called Common Virtue. It's the nature of common virtue. So some of you write that down.
Jeffrey Heine:I almost want to say don't bother. It's an impossible to read book. I remember somebody told me that and said, here's a book. It's it's really good. It's impossible to read.
Jeffrey Heine:And I was like, I I spend a lot of time trying to read impossible books. And so I got it and tried to read through it, and it is ridiculously hard, for even somebody who who reads theology all of the time. And so what I needed was to, to hear a bunch of Tim Keller lectures on this book that really kind of opened it up for me so I could go back and and then can go through it. But he wrote a book called the nature of common virtue. And in this book, Jonathan Edwards said that there are 2 kinds of moral behavior.
Jeffrey Heine:2 forms of it. There's a common virtue, and then there is a true virtue. Common virtue and true virtue. So let me just kind of break these down. Common virtue is the most common kind.
Jeffrey Heine:That's why it's called common virtue. And it's when we act virtuous, or we act moral because of fear and pride. Fear and pride is what drives us to be moral people. And let me give an example of this. And we could look at being honest, which is a good, it's a virtuous thing.
Jeffrey Heine:We should be honest. Now, Edwards would say that the majority of people are honest because of fear and pride. That's what drives them to be honest. So let's look at fear. If, imagine if you were a business owner and and you feel this temptation to lie to the IRS so you could get more money.
Jeffrey Heine:But but fear says, Well, if I lie to the IRS and they catch me, that's going to be it for the business. I'll likely be thrown in jail, so there's no way I'm going to lie. I've got to be honest as I do my taxes. And so fear drives you to honesty. Or if you're a religious person, fear drives you to be honest because you think, you know what, liars go to hell.
Jeffrey Heine:Alright? And, and, and God will judge me if I lie and I don't want to go to hell. So I'm not going to lie. And so fear drives you to not lie. Pride can also be a motivator.
Jeffrey Heine:Pride because you don't want to be like those, those awful people who lie. Those liars, they're beneath you. You are not like them. And you look down on them. And so fear and pride can drive you to be a actually a very moral honest person.
Jeffrey Heine:However, if that's what drives you, you haven't done anything to change the fundamental flaw in your heart. The cause of all your sin, which is your self centeredness. You've done nothing to change that. Martin Luther, he would say that the problem of the the human heart is what he would call the curvature of the soul Is that we're always thinking back on ourselves. It's this radical self centeredness is the root of all the evil there, and common virtue does not get rid of that.
Jeffrey Heine:A matter of fact, when fear and pride are your motivating factors, you were actually feeding self centeredness in your heart. You're feeding it because the reason you you you want to be moral, you want to be honest, is so that you will look good. So that nothing bad will happen to you. All you're thinking about is yourself and you're actually fueling your own self centeredness in your morality. Makes sense?
Jeffrey Heine:This is good. This is kind of deep stuff here. Let me give you another example. Let's look at adultery. Alright, how does fear keep you from having an affair?
Jeffrey Heine:Well, I can tell you personally how fear would keep me from having an affair. My wife would kill me. She would kill me. My my children would be so disappointed with me. Being here in the religious south with all those values, I would be shunned.
Jeffrey Heine:I I would be I would go to the grocery store. Christians would probably shun me, and so it would just be a nightmare. Fear. There's no way I'm going to have an affair. How does pride motivate me to not have an affair?
Jeffrey Heine:It's because I don't want to be like those adulterers. I want to be able to look down on them, feel superior to them. I'm not like them. So fear and pride drive me to not commit adultery. But notice once again how self centered it all is.
Jeffrey Heine:I don't want to commit adultery because I don't want what would happen to me there. It's self preservation. I want people to think highly of me. I want my wife to love me. It's radically self centered.
Jeffrey Heine:My heart is still evil. And so that's common virtue. And and Jonathan Edwards in no way puts that down. He says, Society needs common virtue. If you don't have common virtue, could you imagine just what the world would look like?
Jeffrey Heine:It'd be total chaos. It'd be completely immoral. We need common virtue. However, it's not enough. It's not enough because it doesn't change the heart.
Jeffrey Heine:And if the reason we are moral is because we are a prideful or fearful people, Edward says, watch out because that will backfire on you. Says, the very emotions of fear and pride that keep you from sinning are actually going to other times lead you straight into sin itself. Let me give you an example. Once again, let's look at lying. Let's say your boss gives you some remedial task.
Jeffrey Heine:You don't want to do it. You know, it's a stupid task. Probably won't even notice. Then he asked you about it. Well, fear, your response to fear is you're going to think, Woah gosh, if my boss finds out I didn't do this, he's going to kill me.
Jeffrey Heine:He's going to fire me. So it's worth lying here. Yes, I did it. Fear drives you to do that. Pride can drive you to lie because maybe at that moment you think, well, if I tell him I did it, he's gonna think highly of me.
Jeffrey Heine:Or if somebody else did it, I could claim that that's my work and then he'll really think a lot of me. And so fear and pride, at sometimes they can keep you from lying. Other times, fear and pride can actually make you lie. Because your heart's unchanged. You're just as self centered as you were before.
Jeffrey Heine:And this is why, and you see this over and over again, good moral people who've been a part of church their whole life, they they do something like embezzle money or have an affair, and they're shocked and they're like, that's just not who I am. That's I mean, that's not me. I don't know how this happened. And the reality is, that is exactly who you are. Because when you were moral, it was out of your own self interest And then, then, when you became immoral, it was also because of your own self interest.
Jeffrey Heine:Your heart has always been self centered. So yes, you have always been this way. It's just now manifesting itself in a different form. Your problem is your heart, and you've never addressed that issue. So let's go to true virtue.
Jeffrey Heine:True virtue is when you come to be a virtuous or a moral person for God's sake, not for your sake. There's no self centeredness here. True virtue comes only from a greater understanding of the gospel because it's only the gospel that destroys fear and destroys pride. Only the gospel. Let me give you, let me let me give you some examples here.
Jeffrey Heine:Flush this out a little bit more. This is how it destroys fear. We'll start with pride. This is how it destroys pride. When you understand the gospel, in no way can you think you're a good person.
Jeffrey Heine:You can't ever look and say, I'm better than that person. I'm better than that person. No, you're on the same boat. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So it levels the playing field.
Jeffrey Heine:Actually, you realize the more you understand the gospel, just how sinful you are. You're a wretch. So it destroys pride. But then it destroys fear. Because they think, Oh my gosh.
Jeffrey Heine:Now that I'm a wretch, I'll never be accepted. Of course, I'm going to be rejected. Of course, I'm going to be punished. But then the cross, the cross says, no. Christ has taken on all of that.
Jeffrey Heine:He's taken on our sin. He's taken on our shame. And so, even though we are worse than we ever thought, now we are more accepted than we ever thought possible. And so we get rid of fear and we've gotten rid of pride. And now God begins changing the heart.
Jeffrey Heine:Now, unless you understand this, and I realize this is heavy stuff a lot. This is new to a lot of you here. Unless you understand this, there's a great danger that you're gonna go out and be very moral people, but it's gonna be nothing more than behavior modification. Just you trying to be really good people. And you're going to be actually self centered in the midst of all of it.
Jeffrey Heine:Let me give you an illustration that comes from Charles Spurgeon. It's actually in Prodigal God by Tim Keller, who actually doesn't cite Charles Spurgeon. But it comes from Charles Spurgeon. He gave this example about a farmer. He said there was a very poor farmer, and as he's doing his crops, he came out with the perfect carrot.
Jeffrey Heine:It was this enormous, perfect carrot, and he instantly wants to take it to the king. And so, he goes to the king, and he says, King, I've got this perfect carrot, and I just want to give it to you. I've never seen a carrot like this. I've I'll probably never grow another one like it. And I just want to give it to you as a gift.
Jeffrey Heine:And the king takes it and he thanks him, and he looks into his eyes and he, he discerns his heart. And as this farmer's turning away, he says, hold, hold on one second. Because before you go, you know, I've got a field right next to yours that I own and I'm giving it to you. It's yours. Grow a bunch more carrots.
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, and the farmer was thrilled. He's so excited. Yes. And then, and then he goes off. Well, inside the King's court, there was a nobleman there who was watching the whole thing and he thought, my gosh, if the farmer got an entire field for a carrot, I wonder what I'd get for a horse.
Jeffrey Heine:And so the next day with, with great fanfare, he walks in and before the king, with this beautiful black stallion. He says, King, this is the stallion of all stallions. There is no equal to it, and I am giving it to you. And the king took it and he goes, Thank you. And he looked at the man and he discerned his heart, and he let the man walk away.
Jeffrey Heine:The man's walking away really slowly, like, just kind of looking back waiting. And the king stops him and says, hey, you know what? Yesterday, the farmer gave me a carrot, but you were just giving yourself a horse. Now, you had the same moral actions, but the heart was completely different. One was totally self centered.
Jeffrey Heine:The person's heart was not changed at all. And only the gospel destroys that. If you don't understand this, a lot of you are gonna go, we we do a lot of outreach here at the church. I want us to do a lot of outreach in the church. It's one of the reasons we started this church.
Jeffrey Heine:But there's a possibility that you might go out there and feed the poor, but you're actually feeding yourself. You might go out there and clothe the poor, but you're actually clothing yourself. It's all about you, because the gospel doesn't change your heart. And all you're doing in all these things is nurturing your own self centeredness and becoming evermore the elder brother and the prodigal son. Elizabeth Elliot tells a similar story.
Jeffrey Heine:She says that, Jesus is with the disciples. By the way, this is not in your Bible. This is a, fictional parable here. Okay? Don't go looking for it.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus is with all of his disciples and he says, hey, I want all of you to pick up a rock and come follow me. And so all the disciples are like, you know, picking up rocks. And Peter is like, I'm just gonna get this little pebble, and he kind of puts it in his pocket, follows Jesus. So when it comes lunchtime, Jesus says, everybody get out the rock. And they get out the rock, and Jesus kind of waves his hand, and the rock becomes bread.
Jeffrey Heine:And everybody's got this huge loaf, and there's Peter with this little teeny roll. And so he kind of puts it in, and he is still hungry. Next morning, Jesus says, I want everybody to get a rock and come follow me. And so this time, Peter's like, alright. He gets like a boulder, and he is carrying this thing all day.
Jeffrey Heine:And finally, it's time for lunch here and Jesus says, okay. I want you all to take your rocks and throw them in the water over there. So they do. And that's it. And Peter is just looking so disappointed.
Jeffrey Heine:And Jesus looks at him and goes, Peter, who exactly were you carrying the rock for? Same actions as all the other disciples, but the heart was radically self centered for Peter. We need this heart transformation. The gospel breaks it down. Only the gospel of grace destroys your self centeredness and can build you up.
Jeffrey Heine:And I love that language of building you up. Because it's the foundation on which we build our entire identity. And what a wonderful place to rest. I'm gonna somewhat put, my wife on the spot. I talked to her before about this.
Jeffrey Heine:Don't don't worry. I'm not like instantly on the spot, but if she would come on up here, I thought instead of me giving an example that I'll get Lauren to come up and give an example about ways we have seen this at work in our life.
Speaker 2:Hey, y'all. Well, my whole life, I've really thought of myself as an organized person who has it together, and I, growing up I can hear my parents saying a lot, if you want something done right, do it yourself. And that's just kind of been my mantra, and it's not good. It is true. If you really just want something done right, do it yourself.
Speaker 2:But, anyway, I'm a very organized person, and I have prided myself in that. The amount of paper that comes to our house, I'm always on top of it. I try not to have stacks of clutter. Everything has a place. I'm organized.
Speaker 2:I file things for the church, for all of our children. I mean, everything for taxes. We have to save every receipt. Anyway, I just I do a good job. I'll just say that.
Speaker 2:And so, the past couple weeks though, especially, I'd say, during Lent, I thought the Lord has really just sort of started stripping me, of this. And in just really bizarre ways, like our Visa bill. I always I take care of all of our finances and pay, you know, everything on time, and I just did not pay it. I mean, I didn't pay it. And there's a big fine, and I got in trouble, and I called Visa and said, this is I don't do this.
Speaker 2:And they're like, what's true, missus Brooks? You've never missed a payment. You know? And 16 years of marriage, and I just felt horrible about it. And then a couple weeks ago, I misplaced 2 Delta vouchers for tickets that Delta just gave us at the counter, so it wasn't like it was they really had a record of it.
Speaker 2:It was just, we flew stand by, and so they gave us vouchers, but I couldn't find them. And I thought, I just it ate me up inside, not knowing where I could find them. And, and then, last week and this is gonna sound crazy to y'all, but bear with me. And, so last week, somebody from church came by our house, and because I'm a responsible person, they said, here's the money that we took up from when we had our last common meal, from Taziki's. It was $325 of cash.
Speaker 2:And I said, here, you take it, and take it to church, because we keep cash, so we can pay our police officer, who watches our parking lot while we're here. And so I said, keep the cash, There's no point in depositing it, and then we have to get out cash every week. So I said, Okay, I'll take it and bring it back to church. Well, y'all, I don't know what happened to that money. Like, I cannot find it.
Speaker 2:And, I didn't realize, I just didn't think about it anymore. I didn't realize until last Sunday night after church, there was no cash to pay the officer. And I just could not it was eating me up inside. And so after a beautiful Easter, and I think last week was my favorite Easter I've ever had in my whole life. It was so sweet, it was so rich.
Speaker 2:I went home, I put the children to bed, and I spent hours just looking through our house and going through trash cans and through the attic and through the basement and through every drawer, and I could not find it. And like, the more I looked, then like almost the crazier I got. That's the best way I can describe it. And, I was so angry with Joel because he was just sitting, like, trying to relax. I mean, Sundays are so stressful for him and he just wants to veg.
Speaker 2:But he was just sitting there. And I really wanted to make him I wanted to incite him to act. And so then I just may have said things that may or may not have been kind, and slamming doors and drawers, and I could not find this money. I could not even think what I did with it. It was just the craziest thing, and it just made me angrier and angrier.
Speaker 2:And as I was doing this, I was thinking, this is not who I am. I don't a lot worse things have happened, and I don't respond this way. And and it was really bad. I mean, just the way that my heart the the reaction I had, and just it was really sad to me. And never did find money.
Speaker 2:There's no happy ending to the story in
Jeffrey Heine:case you
Speaker 2:all are waiting for that. But, it really bothered me the way that I reacted to this. That was the most troubling, I guess. And the next day, I just went for a run, and just asked the Lord just to show me why am I why did it bother me so much? Because I knew it wasn't a, like, a sin issue.
Speaker 2:Like, I didn't steal the money or suddenly I don't have a new dress that's $325 on, you know, that I'm wearing. I mean, I knew I knew that nobody in the church would, you know, like, I don't know, throw me out or something. But I just wondered, why did I react the way that I did? And so I was always just running, and thinking, and praying, and ask the Lord, just show me the sin behind why I reacted the way I did. And, I really felt like he was just sort of showed me that it was my pride.
Speaker 2:And that's the fact that I've always prided myself on doing a good job, and being responsible, and being that person you can trust with whatever it is you need to do. And, I really found, find my identity in those things. And, so, I was really grateful. I think, $325 is really probably not very much to have to, spend, which I wrote a check, by the way, to redeem her for the disease mail. But I mean, I feel like in a way, it's really such a cheap lesson.
Speaker 2:Like, I'm so thankful that the Lord would expose that in my heart, and show me that is who I am. But, by the grace of God, I do not have to find my identity in that. I'm not supposed to. He he has saved me from that. He is thank you.
Speaker 2:Don't trust me with anything. I'm I'm worthless. And that's fine. That's great. I don't I don't wanna be I don't wanna take pride in that anymore.
Speaker 2:So
Jeffrey Heine:Thank you.
Speaker 2:That's your illustration.
Jeffrey Heine:Yes. You did. Thank you. And I would say that as Lauren was, having these emotions, and I already knew kind of what I was going to be preaching on this week. I'm thinking, okay, there's pride.
Jeffrey Heine:Pride is the reason she's always been responsible, she's always been kind of that together person. And then I could see fear because she would say things like, this is how churches are ruined, you know, you lose money and people think you embezzled it all. And, and, and so you could see fear there as well. And so it's like fear and pride, great examples. And then as this is going on, I'm just getting ticked because I just had the best Easter service I think we've ever had.
Jeffrey Heine:And I just wanted to just enjoy this, and and Lauren was was beside herself, and it just kept building, and it just kept building, and I kept getting angrier and angrier. And I've never done this in my life. I stormed out of the house, slammed the door and said, I'm out of here. So after Easter last Sunday, wonderful service, your pastor completely lost his temper, slammed the door and left. And I went to my office here and, and just hung out.
Jeffrey Heine:I was like, boy, this is fun. You know, I thought, well, you know, I'll look for the money. Maybe it's here or something like that. And, and it was also the next morning as I'm thinking about these things, I'm like, you know what? Same thing.
Jeffrey Heine:Basically it's idolatry is what it is that I've always prided myself on this. I'm the one who could go into chaos and I can make it orderly. I've done that my whole life. Throw me into the most chaotic situation, I will bring order to it. People come to me with their problems, I can fix it.
Jeffrey Heine:You know, I could I could show them just the right verse, you know, all this. And I'm thinking, okay, so I'm the one who fixes people and fixes situations and all of them before me was a woman I could not fix. I could not. And it drove me crazy because I thought, I'm the one who does this. I've got the power to do this.
Jeffrey Heine:Just like like, God has nothing to do with it. It was all me. And it was so prideful, such, it, and so it just killed me. That, that was, that was an idol. And we were talking about this later.
Jeffrey Heine:We're like, you know, we both, we are building our lives on, on these idols and idols turn on you and they demand sacrifices. And we were paying those sacrifices. And so we have had to just really talk about this in prayers like, you know what? The gospel needs to kill fear and pride in us. Because sometimes that's gonna make us really moral people.
Jeffrey Heine:Sometimes it's gonna make us insanely crazy sinful people. Only the gospel changes us. And so I hope you can see that fleshed out. That's what I want for us as a church is for the gospel to be the motive motivating factor in why we do what we do. If y'all would pray with me.
Jeffrey Heine:Lord Jesus, we never outgrow the need for the gospel of grace. Never. There's so many times in scripture where Paul could have just imposed on our will and just said, do this, do this, do this. But instead he always pointed, look at Jesus and how he who is rich became poor. And that's why you give.
Jeffrey Heine:Or for for marriages, those marriages why you're in trouble. Look. Look to Jesus. Look to Jesus and his sacrifice. Husbands, sacrifice for your wives.
Jeffrey Heine:All the scripture points us to the gospel because it's the only thing that changes our hearts. Jesus, right now through your spirit, would you impress on us your word of grace and may it build us up. We pray this in the name of Jesus, our present and our future King. Amen.