GREATEST OF ALL TIME | Week 7 | Sermon

I wonder I'm curious. Were any of you like I was as a kid? I had an absolute messy disaster of a room. Was anybody like that? Or the parents in here, do you have kids that have messy disasters of a room? Okay, maybe more and more hands are like that. I honestly love a disaster of a room. I'm from Oklahoma,

and what we're known for is tornadoes. And my parents did not know that there was gonna be a tornado happening in my room every night. Like, there was always stuff all over the floor. And I kinda liked it because when you have a messy room, you have a system.

You know where everything is at all times, even though it's below three t shirts and inside of two different books. Like, you know where everything is even with the dirty room. I liked it, but you know who really didn't like it? My mom.

So she'd walk past my room all the time and be like, hey, Hunter, you need to clean your room. So I'd start cleaning my room, but for someone who kinda liked a messy room, I didn't really clean my room. I would put my t shirts under my bed, and I'd put, like, my guitar and my video games in my closet, and I'd find these books, and I'd, like, put them behind my dresser somehow,

and then my floor would look clean, but it really wasn't clean. But then my mom would walk in, and she'd be like, oh, you cleaned your room. And I'm like, yes, she thinks it's clean. But moms have a superpower, and that superpower is to find anything at any time by any means necessary.

And so she started just opening up my closet, and I was like, no.

And then she'd like look under my bed and find all my clothes, and then she'd like look behind the dresser and be like, you're eighty five pounds. How did you move this dresser? And I don't know how it happened, it just happened. She would always end up finding every little spot. I put every little thing where it wasn't supposed to go. So usually, that meant I got grounded and lost something. And she would always tell me why, though.

And what she would always tell me is, Hunter, it's really not about what you did. It's more about how you did it. And what I didn't realize at that time, what she was communicating to me, is that the motivation behind my action really did matter.

I didn't do this to I didn't clean my room to honor my mom or to obey her in any way. I did it because I wanted to make my life a little easier. And in turn, I made my life a little harder because she comes in and finds all the stuff that I did wrong.

The reason I bring this up today is because I think you and I sometimes are like a little kid who doesn't want to clean his room. And we find ourselves in situations where our wants and our needs and our desires is what's driving us more than the right thing that we know we're supposed to do.

What Jesus is gonna bring up today and what I struggled with as a kid is this one little word that finds itself really sneakily within each and every one of our lives, and that word is pride.

Here's what pride does. It's the big idea for today, and if you don't take anything else, I hope you get this. The big idea is that pride does the right thing for the wrong reason.

Now, pride can do the wrong thing for the wrong reason, too, and I'm sure you've been a culprit of that and have had that happen to you. But today, in Jesus' words, he's really gonna focus in on doing the right thing for the wrong reason. But before we talk about pride, I wanna make sure we're on the same page when I talk about that word. What I'm not talking about today is the pride that you feel in others.

When I was little, I have a little brother, and when he was about three or four years old, I wanted to teach him how to catch a football because Oklahoma is known for our tornadoes

and our football. So I wanted to make sure if he aspired to be a football player, he at least knew how to catch a football. So I was throwing the ball to him, and he really wasn't really getting it. He's kinda more like,

it just really wasn't working out, so I was like, hey, you need to take your hands and make a diamond, and when I throw it, it's gonna hit the diamond, and you're gonna catch it. So throw after throw after throw, he's kind of missing it, but that throw, when I throw it and he catches it, we got hype. We were like, let's go. Like, he did it. I'm like, dude, you're gonna make the league. And then he decided to never play. But at least I taught him how to play or catch

a football. And in that moment, I was so proud of him. That's good pride. Good pride is when we have pride towards others. Bad pride is when we have it towards ourself. The pride we're really going to be talking about today is a self obsession over our own desires and wants.

Jesus brings this up in Matthew chapter six, verses one through four. Verse one says this, watch out. Don't do your good deeds publicly to be admired by others, for you will lose the reward

from your father in heaven. When you give to someone in need, don't do as the hypocrites do, blowing trumpets in the synagogues and streets to call attention to their acts of charity. I tell you the truth, they have received all the reward they will ever get.

But when you give to someone in need, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Give your gifts in private, and your father, who sees everything, will reward you. Here is Jesus' big point in this passage. It is possible for people who love Jesus to do good things for the wrong reason.

At the beginning of Matthew chapter five, Jesus starts this Sermon on the Mountain. If you've been here for the last few weeks, you know this. But in Matthew chapter five, he's saying things like, you've heard it said this, but I say this. And what Jesus is doing is really kinda turning the tables

on the audience at this time. He ends Matthew chapter five with this verse. So what we just read, this is the verse that comes right before Jesus's watch out. Matthew five verse 48. He says, But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect. This is gonna be really important for us to grasp today.

But now, when you hear be perfect like God is perfect, that sounds pretty crazy. How can people like you and me be perfect like God is perfect? Because when you and I think of perfection, we think of things like, I don't know, maybe this beautiful diamond

or this dream job or this dream car or this dream vacation or this dream house. We think of things that are almost unattainable. That's perfection. But when Jesus says perfection,

when he uses the word perfect, he uses the Greek word telios, which actually means having reached its end and to be complete. Now that is attainable. To reach an end is almost like to cross a finish line. That is attainable.

So let me illustrate it this way. I know you've been wondering what's been in this box this entire time, so let me show you. What do you think this is? Spyglass? You would be right. Now for the other people, now do you know what this is?

Yeah. There's a little bit more familiarity with this version of it. I brought this to our weekend team as we was preparing this message, and I said that this was a pirate's telescope, which they kindly told me that's what children call it. So today,

this is called a spyglass. Now, let me tell you why I have this up here. A spyglass and how it is made is to take light in, and the glass and the mirrors inside of it, what it does is it takes the light and it bends it so you can see something far away. So what I can do is I can look back and I can see

the guy on his phone not paying attention, and I can continue my message. But this is how Jesus sees perfection. The only problem with this is that it doesn't work when it's closed. There's not enough light that can go through it. To be used by God, you and I start here.

In order to be used by Him, though, we need to be stretched and made uncomfortable and be asked to do things that maybe we wouldn't have done on our own so that we reach our end. The reason that Jesus says, Watch out, is because you and I don't like that. We like to stay

like this, which is why Jesus says another word in Matthew six two that's important, where he says the word hypocrite. Hypocrite means actor. And for us, we understand what an actor is, and Jesus is using it to portray this group of people called the Pharisees.

So why does Jesus use the word perfect and hypocrite just two sentences apart? Because on our way to perfection, we tend to only want people to see how perfect we look, not who's actually perfecting us. Now here's the deal. You understand this because you can see it. But if this is perfection, you can't be this and this

at the same time. You either have to be one or the other. The big deal in this is that our pride will only ever care about how we look. Jesus cares about where we end.

Where today do we focus most about how we look? Social media. That is where we post the right thing to look a certain way. We want to have a certain image on social media.

And for those of you who know social media, it hasn't been around for very long. But for those of you who were there when it started, you probably remember things like Friendster and MySpace, right?

Around 2004, this thing called Facebook came out, and really the only people using it at the time were college students and above. In 2012 and 2013, though, Instagram comes out and accesses everyone.

So middle schoolers have it, high schoolers have it, young adults have it, college students, adults, and everyone else gets access to Instagram. So social media has now made its way into the hands of almost every American in the world, and it takes off.

Now from then on, never in our society have we had more points of communication and connection with each other. But the data shows that even though we have all of these points of communication and connection, never has our society been so isolated and disconnected. Why is that?

Because what social media does is it takes our pride, and it amplifies it. And it actually makes us focus more on ourself than others. Our team pulled together some graphs just to see what has our society

turned into in the last twenty years when it comes to mental health and the outworkings of that. So I've got two graphs to show you. The first graph has three lines. The red line tracks the levels of depression within girls, the green is the average, and the blue is the lines of depression in boys. If you look,

the up and to the right on each line starts around 2012 and 2013. The second graph has two other lines, which indicate the levels of self harm and suicide in our society. The blue line is self harm, and the red line is suicide. The quick and fast up and to the right is starting around 2012 and 2013.

Now, what I am not saying is that social media is the main reason we see these spikes in data. And if you have been affected by this, I want you to know that my heart breaks for you, and I am really sorry.

I do believe there are other factors at play within this data, but what I am saying is that maybe the self obsession and pride culture that we have created, focusing on our wants and our needs, really isn't helping.

We live in a culture of self love and self care and self worth, but this data shows us that it's not actually improving ourself. It's actually hurting us. Pride has become so normal that it's accepted and celebrated, but it only will leave us hurting and broken. Pride is destroying us from the inside out through things

like social media. Now, I believe you can have a healthy relationship with social media, but for those of us who do not, it can be hurtful. And Jesus knows that our pride will hurt us. And this is why he brings up this other passage in Matthew chapter five, because the Pharisees were so

prideful. Look at what he says in Matthew five twenty. He says, but I warn you, unless your righteousness is better than the righteousness of the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. See, Jesus doesn't just want us to be prideful because it looks bad.

He doesn't just want us to be prideful because it will hurt us. He doesn't want us to be prideful because it will separate us from Him forever. And pride is not a new thing. Pride is not a word that just happened within the last twenty or thirty years. Pride has been around since before even the creation

of the earth. And Jesus has seen this play out firsthand through this angel whose name was Lucifer, or as you know him to be, Satan.

He gets so prideful that he actually gets kicked out of heaven because he says this to God. In Isaiah 14 thirteen-fourteen, he says this, For you said to yourself, I will ascend to heaven and set my throne above God's stars. I will preside on the mountain of the gods,

far away in the North. I will climb in the highest heavens, and I will be like the most high God. I will. I will. I will. Only focused on himself. And friends, here's the harsh and scary reality. We We are most like Satan when we are most prideful. And I don't think that's company that you want to keep.

So if we want to reach perfection, if we want to reach the end, which is singing, Holy, holy, holy is the lamb upon the throne, if we wanna get there, we have to know what makes us feel like we wanna stay here.

There's three indicators that Jesus pulls out in Matthew chapter six that I want us to see. There's three symptoms. The first one is this, you live for applause. The second is you only do good to be seen as good. And the third, you feel accepted through attention.

To understand how these play out in a real life scenario, we're gonna go back in time, almost to the beginning of time, in Genesis chapter four, between two brothers named Cain

and Abel. Cain and Abel were the sons of the first two humans ever created named Adam and Eve. And Adam and Eve, they raised Abel to be a shepherd. And then they raised Cain to be a really successful chicken finger restaurant owner. Just kidding, he was a gardener.

But one of the cool things that Cain and Abel did with what they were able to bring up from their professions is there was a certain time of year where harvest came, and in the abundance that harvest brought to them, they actually offered God part of their abundance. And in scripture, it's not clear that these

guys were instructed to do this by God. It seems like just from the overwhelming feeling of love and adoration for God that they did this. So this time of year comes around when they bring their offering willingly to God. And that's where we pick up our story in Genesis chapter four, verse three.

When it was time for the harvest, Cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord. Abel also brought a gift, the best portions of the firstborn lambs from his flock. The Lord accepted Abel and his gift, but he did not accept Cain and his gift.

Now, in the next few verses, we're gonna see these three symptoms of pride come to life through Cain. So God did not accept Cain in his gift, and this made Cain very angry. If Cain would have offered this with the right heart, he probably would have responded like, God, what did I do? How can I make this right?

But he didn't, and he got angry. So what he was doing is he actually wanted God's applause, not for God to be applauded. So that's our first one. And then he looks dejected, which is the opposite of feeling accepted. He didn't get the attention he wanted, so he feels

dejected. There's our second one. Verse six, Why are you so angry? The Lord asked Cain. Why do you look so dejected? You will be accepted if you do what is right.

So what God is communicating to us is that in this offering that Cain gave, he didn't do it in the right way. So what did he do? He did the right thing for the wrong reason and only did a good thing to be seen as good. God continues, But if you refuse to do what is right, then watch out.

Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you, but you must subdue it and be its master. One day, Cain told his brother, let's go hang out in the field. And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Afterward, the Lord asked Cain, where is your brother? Where is Abel?

I don't know, Cain responded. Am I my brother's guardian? Which is a wild thing to say to God. But the Lord said, what have you done?

Listen, your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are cursed and banished from the ground, which has swallowed your brother's blood. No longer will the ground yield good crops for you, no matter how hard you work. From now on, you will be a homeless wanderer on the earth.

What happened to this guy who used to give his offering with good intentions, and now he's here. Friends, this is what the inner working of pride will do in your life. Pride will come into your life, and it doesn't matter how hard you work, how much money you make,

what you bring to the table, if it's done in pride, it will never be enough. Pride gets Satan kicked out of heaven, and pride gets Cain to be rejected by God, leading him to kill his own brother and then cast away from his family.

You see, pride is not just bad because it makes you look bad, makes you feel bad. Pride is bad because it's sinful. And look at what God said about sin in Genesis chapter, in verses seven and eight. Says, you will be accepted if you do what? What is right. But if you refuse to do what is right, then watch out.

Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you, but you must subdue it and be its master. Do you notice the language there? It says, Watch out, which is the same thing that Jesus says. You and I have to watch out for the sin of pride because the sin of pride is really sneaky.

Because the sin of pride is only identifiable by you and God. And it will sneak up on you and begin to control you. I don't know if you've figured it out yet, but Satan's pretty good at his job.

He's not gonna come at you in moments where you are, like, high on life. He's gonna come at you in moments where you're vulnerable,

where you are least expecting it. He's not gonna wake you up in the morning and put, like, that blowy thing out front of the car dealerships and be like, hey, you wanna be tempted today and fall into sin? Like, no. He's gonna come at you in the moments where you least expect it. He's waiting. He's eager to control you.

And friends, if we let the sin of pride control our lives, we will do things that we never thought we would do. And you'll even do the right thing for the wrong reason. And you'll end up places like Cain, where he did something he never thought he would do.

And he and now he's going somewhere where he never thought he would be. He's gonna be there longer than he ever wanted to stay, and it cost him way more than he ever would have wanted to pay. Pride will only ever get you rejected by God, and it will take everything from you. It's a trap,

and it's a trap from the pit of hell, and we cannot fall for it. So how do we not fall into the trap of pride and do what's right? How do you and I become acceptable with our gifts and who we are? Well, thankfully, because of Jesus, there's always a solution to the sins in our life,

even the sin of pride. There are three symptoms of pride, and there's also three solutions

to pride. So if you're a solution oriented person, this part's for you. The first solution to pride is to search your soul. Jesus says in Matthew six:one, Watch out. Don't do your good deeds publicly to be admired by others, for you will what? Lose the reward from your Father

in heaven. This right here is Jesus bringing up what is your intentions. So let me ask you. When you do something good for someone else, are you doing it out of the good of your heart or because you hope they do something good for you back? Husbands and wives, when you do something good for your spouse,

are you doing it because you love them, or are you doing it because you hope you get something in return? Parents, when you do something good for your kids, are you doing it out of the love that you have for them, or are you doing it so that they're quiet on the way home from church?

What about when you give your money? Are you hoping that you're celebrated for it, or are you doing it to see what God does with it? Or what about when you serve? Are you serving just so we can recognize you and applaud you? Or are you serving so that the kingdom of God gets better? Or what about when you come to church

On Saturday or Sunday, when you attend this service, are you hoping that the worship team serves you in a certain way where it like they play your favorite song? And then the pastor comes up, and he gives you the word, and that's enough for you to not read your bible during the week. Or

are you coming so that rock point gets better every weekend? What is the intention behind your actions? Because you can do a good thing for the wrong reason, and it will not be accepted by God. So what is your intention? Because Cain believed in God.

And scholars say that Satan was the worship leader in heaven. So you can believe in him and worship him. Do good things and give good gifts. But if you do it with the wrong intention, it will not be accepted. Pride does the right thing for the wrong reason.

And I think each and every one of us wanna be accepted by God. I don't think anyone woke up this morning and was like, you know what? I'm gonna be rejected by God today. No one does that. We all wanna be on God's good side. Pride can never be there. But you know what can? Humility.

And humility is doing the right thing for the right reason. So if you want to check your intentions and see if you're doing good things and if you're doing them for the right reason, here's a really good passage for you. It was written by King David, and it's in Psalm one thirty nine. It says this, Search me, oh God, and know my heart.

Test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life. Now this is a dangerous prayer, so I don't recommend praying it unless you want God to get up in your business and start messing some furniture around in your mind and in your heart.

Because praying, search me, know me, test me, point out anything in me, and lead me is giving God a lot of agency to operate in your life. But isn't that exactly what we're called to do?

So when it comes to our actions, we are called to search our soul and have God lead our life so that at the end of this, we look like this and not a prideful person that only cares about how pretty they look. As we are being stretched and as we are being made uncomfortable, those things that we have to do are good deeds,

and God wants us to do them. So as we do good deeds, we have to the second solution is to do good

to be good. Jesus says this in Matthew six two, when you give to someone in need, don't do as the hypocrites do, blowing trumpets in the synagogues and streets to call attention to their acts of charity. I tell you the truth, they have received all the reward they will ever get.

We talked about hypocrites being actors, and actors today put out movies and TV shows that we can watch and, what, See. And what pride will do is out of the good deeds is actually out of sin so people can see us and please ourselves, not out of humility to please God. So how do we do good to be good?

Well, James, the half brother of Jesus, writes this in his letter to the church in James chapter four. And I would add some commentary to this, but James is gonna slap you in the face enough, so I'm just gonna read it. In verse one, what is causing the quarrels and fights among you?

Don't they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don't have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can't get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them.

Yet you don't have what you want because you don't ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don't get it because your motives are all wrong. You want only what will give you pleasure. You adulterers,

don't you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again. If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. Verse five, let it sink. Do you think the scriptures have no meaning?

They say that God is passionate, that the spirit he's placed within us should be faithful to him. And he gives grace generously. As the scriptures say, God opposes the proud, but what? Gives grace to the humble. So how do we do good and be good? So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners. Be done with it. Purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world. My friends, a life of pride will only ever care about what the world thinks about you. A life fully submitted to God in humility

only ever cares about how God sees you. You cannot live in both worlds. You cannot be on your way to perfection and riddled with pride. And honestly, as I read Matthew six, as you've heard this in the last, you know, twenty, thirty minutes, this is difficult.

Trying to live this out is really hard. And I've read this before, and I've struggled with it, especially today in a culture where there's so much celebrity

and even just like minor celebrity with just like little influencers on Instagram. Like, it's genuinely tough to think and live in this state where we're at with pride and celebrity, even as a pastor. There's pastors that have millions of followers on Instagram that have crazy a ton of influence,

and the pride in me almost looks at them. And it's like, how could they ever do this just to be good and not to be seen? This seems really hard to live out. And honestly, I didn't even know if it could be until I met a man three years ago that proved me wrong.

Raise your hand if you've ever heard of the old pastor Vern Wiggers. Awesome. Nobody, because he's my grandpa-in-law. But he was in full time ministry for sixty five years, and we just celebrated him and his wife's sixty fifth wedding anniversary. It's incredible. He just turned 89 years old.

He's a wonderful man. I have a picture of to show you guys. This is him doing part of the ceremony at Carly and I's wedding. He's a joyful man. He always has a smile on his face. He loves to tell jokes and stories. He's awesome. He started off as a rural pastor in the '50s in Oregon.

And as a pastor in the rural '50s in Oregon, you're not breaking the bank, let's say. You guys get to come into this church that was built by contractors and your generosity, and that's awesome. And that's incredible. Vern had to build his church by himself. I'm gonna show you some pictures.

He literally took these pictures as he was building it. So from day one, Homie was building his church with his hands.

Now he gets this whole thing built that takes days and weeks and months, and he finally gets it built, and he teaches his first sermon. And little did he know that being a pastor meant a little bit more than just being a preacher. Because in rural Oregon, when a plumbing issue happens

or a farming issue happens or an engineering issue happens, you don't call the professionals, you call the pastor. So he was getting calls all the time like, hey, I've got can you help me with these chickens? And he's like, yeah, can help you with the chickens.

He's getting calls about this plumbing issue, like we're having a drain problem, and he'd literally go over and he'd fix it. And he would do all these little odd jobs in and out because all he thought about being a pastor was just being good and being faithful with the people that he's given him. Now today,

you can almost be a pastor just by being a preacher. And the only part about that is that you're seen. And I think sometimes we get wrapped up, and you might get wrapped up, and just being seen so much that that makes you feel like you're being good.

Here's the deal. Vern was a pastor for sixty five years, and this passage is tough to teach. So I was like, hey, can you help me out? Can you give me some commentary? Because I need some help with this. And I want to let you know, you've never heard his name, but most of the words in this sermon came from him,

an 89 year old man who pastored for sixty five years, who built this first church with his own hands because he has lived his life to be good, not to be seen. You know, it's really cool. When we get to heaven one day

and we get to walk through the gates and get to see this glorious splendor of what God has created, I believe we're gonna walk past some cribs. And there's gonna be some mansions there, and it's gonna be dope. It's gonna be awesome. You know who's gonna live in those mansions? It's gonna be the Wernwiggers.

The men and women who lived their entire life full of obedience just to be good. The people that you've never heard of. The people with blue check marks by their name, they don't need them. They've already got it. And I wonder how many of you

might end up with a mansion in heaven because you decided today, it doesn't matter if I'm seen. It matters if I'm good. Because at the end of this race, when we become perfect and be like him, the reward is not to be seen in front of all of these people. The reward is to be given well done, good and faithful servant.

So if you wanna live a life like that, if you wanna be a Vern Wiggers, I've got a verse for you, and this verse has been wrecking me lately. It's first Thessalonians four eleven. It says this, Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business, working with your hands, just as we instructed you before.

Part of doing good to be good is our third solution to pride, which is do good in private.

Jesus finishes the passage like this in Matthew six. Says, but when you give to someone in need, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Give your gifts in private, and your father who sees everything will reward you. Now friends, this is where the rubber meets the road.

This is where you and I have to change because our natural instinct is to put on display our good deeds and do our sin in private. Our natural tendency is to want people to see, look at all the good I'm doing. Never find out about what I do in my own time.

Because our sin, if it's in private, no one knows about it and no one sees it, so it's no big deal. Right? That's why you delete your search history after you look at things you're not supposed to.

That's why you don't fully confess to your friends when you're actually sending because if they knew the whole truth, they'd see me a whole lot different.

And I know you're doing it in private, you think it's no one else is being hurt because you're just trying to cope and get through the day. That's why you're looking at this site and having one too many because it's so hard to get through and stop the pain. And I know because you think you're doing it in private, no one is getting hurt. But friends, there is someone getting hurt and it's you.

I know you think that in their moments of privacy, when you're doing things you're not supposed to, the only one who's there is you. But friends, that's just not true. There is always someone with you in private, and his name is Jesus. And Jesus sees the deepest hurts that you have, and he wants to take them.

He sees the things that you hate about yourself, and he still wants to be with you. He sees the parts of you that you could get rid of, and he loves them. He craves to know you.

There was nothing you could do to kick him down the curb. He is here and here to stay. You can't get rid of him. He's always with you, and he knows everything about you. He knows the number of hairs that are on your head. He was there when you were formed in your mother's womb. He is here

and he took the cross and he came down from heaven and died to death and even knowing you were messy.

He knew this wasn't gonna be easy. He knew you were gonna be prideful. He knew that you were gonna have a hard time opening up to him. But still, he came down and died to death so that you might get to know him. But some of us won't come to Him because we think all He's gonna do is like, get better, get better, get better. But do you really think someone would take a cross just to reprimand you?

Don't you think He would do it to come and love you and bring you back in? He knows the deepest parts of you. He knows the lies that you think are too strong. He knows your addiction that you think is too powerful.

What he wants to do is take them, and he wants to bring you close. Because with God, he is never changing. He is all knowing. He is all powerful. He is ever present. He has always been, and he always will be.

He never changes. But if we want to get to know him on this level, but be perfect like he is perfect, the ever changing God needs a now changing us. We have to change. And for you and me, what that means is to switch our paradigm

from exposing our good deeds and doing our sin in private. Friends, what you and I have to do is we have to lay down it.

Going do

to if other people see it, that's that's cool, but that's not the point. So here's the takeaway. If you're someone who likes practical takeaways, here it is. I want you to do something good for someone this week and tell no one about it. I want you to do something good for someone who can do nothing good for you back

and tell no one about it. Because, my friends, how vain of a life would it be for you to display all of your good deeds in front of man and for them to recognize you, but at the end of the day, lose your soul?

Do good to be good, and do good in private. Rely on the fact that God sees you. He sees your deepest pains. He sees your deepest hurts, and He will also see your good deeds, and He will also celebrate you. There is a reward in heaven that for those of us who want to achieve this perfection, it's going to take some stretching.

It's going to take some uncomfortability. It's going to take doing some good deeds and not getting recognition for it. But here's the deal. What it does is it takes our pride, throws it away, and we get to be with Jesus.

Pride does the right thing for the wrong reason. What Jesus is asking you to do is start doing the right thing for the right reason, which is doing your good in private for his eyes and his eyes only. Would you pray with me? Jesus, thank you for this time. Thank you

for showing us what it looks like to be a good and faithful servant. Coming down not to be seen by the world, but coming down to be good so that we might be able to be with you. God, I ask that we would be able to follow in your footsteps. Help us find someone this week that we can be good towards

so that we might be able to impact their life and know that you saw it because your eyes are the ones that matter most. Amen. Thanks for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way.

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