Hidden Treasure | Part 9

are continuing this series called hidden treasure. Everybody say hidden treasure. And what we're doing in this series is we're unpacking some of the parables of Jesus. What's really interesting about the parables of Jesus is that the New Testament where his parables are recorded,

literally one third of all of the teaching that we have from Jesus as recorded in scripture come to us in the form of parables. So there's a lot here and the series has has been really fantastic

from start to a couple weeks later to finish. It's just great great stuff. And if you have a Bible with you, go to the New Testament Luke chapter 18. Luke chapter 18, you can scroll down or turn the page, whatever works for you. If you don't have a Bible accessible to you,

we're gonna have all the scriptures on the screen and you can follow along. We will leave no one behind and so while you're turning there, wanna give a shout out though. I don't know if you ever have a chance to just kind of hang out in the lobby area, but I do and I notice

a lot of kids coming in, big smiles on their faces, walking into their environments, high fiving volunteers, meeting new friends, meeting friends that they've had for a long time, having a great time. And I just want to give a shout out to everyone serving

our kids because if you're a parent of a young kid, a young child, anybody here parent of relatively young kids? As a parent, I just want to say it is nice to know my kids are safe

and that they're being cared for by caring, loving adults and they're also gonna hear about Jesus while they're here. So let's give it up for those serving in Rock Point kids. We appreciate you guys. Thank you so much for all that you do. You're awesome. Awesome.

You know, another thing I love about Rock Point is one of many is the diversity that we have here and even online and what I mean by that in diversity is the across the gamut in regard to faith. We have a lot of us who are here today that would say, I'm a follower of Jesus. I'm a passionate

follower of Christ. I'm a Christian

and then there are many of us here today and online that would say, you know, I can't really honestly say that I'm I'm a follower of Christ at this point. I'm just, I'm kind of curious. I'm checking it out. I'm not sure what, you know, the whole church thing is about. I'm not even sure what I think about god and what I believe about god and Jesus and all that kind of stuff and then there are others of us here who maybe you were invited by someone and they then they kind of bribed you. They said, hey, you go to church, if you meet me at church, I'll buy you lunch afterward

and now here's what I say to you, make sure they pay up and when you go to lunch today, get a full rack of ribs and take advantage of it as much as you can. But that's what's so cool about Rock Point is regardless of where you are on the spectrum of faith,

we're glad that you're here. We really are. And for those of us who are followers of Jesus, there's something in the in the Bible that's vividly communicated that we have experienced

when placing our trust in Him. And I wanna read it to you and and talk about it for just a moment. It's not Luke 18, you just stay there. I'm gonna read something out of the book of Ephesians in the New Testament and it'll be on the screen. So check this out. Ephesians chapter two verse eight and nine. It says, for it is by grace

you have been saved. Through faith and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of god. How many guys have heard this before? It is by grace we've been saved from the penalty of our sin. It's through faith. It is the gift of God. The gift of God.

I don't think they heard me over here. I'm gonna go over here and say it over here. It's the gift of God. And then it goes on. It says, not by works so that no one can boast. None of us can ever brag that we've ever done anything that impresses God so much that He would accept us and love us. It's His gift to us.

And what happens is that for many of us, maybe even all of us, is that when we begin this relationship with God through Christ, we have this this sense of awe and wonder. Kinda like going man, okay, this is too good to be true.

Are you telling me that God loves me just as I am? I mean, he loves he knows my story and he still loves me. He knows where I've been, what I've done, how I've treated other people and the heart he knows it all and he accepts me and he likes me. I mean, this is crazy.

And we enter into this this this journey with God that is just full of awe and wonder going, man, this is amazing. It's awesome. And then something strange begins to happen. And the only way I can try to explain it is relating it to when I was coaching soccer for six and seven year old girls. When I tried this

and it was actually we lived out here like right in this area and our two girls who are older now, but they signed up for soccer. They're fourteen months apart, so they were in the same age bracket.

And we went in to sign them up for soccer and it was kind of common as I found out later, you go in, you sign your kids up and they say, hey man, we're we're short three coaches. Would you consider coaching

your girls? They can be on your team and we need coaches. And my immediate thought was, of course not. I have no idea how to play soccer. I don't know the rules. I watch it. I admire the athleticism,

but I don't get it. To me, it's kinda like hockey on grass. I'm still trying to figure all that out. I don't know. And they're like, don't worry. We'll train you. We'll take you through a little coaching course. And so in my my sense

of shame and obligation and commingling in the moment, I'm like, alright, I'll do it. So I go to the the coaches training. An hour later, I walk out just as confused as when I walked in. But I learned something really quick when coaching six and seven year old soccer players.

One of the keys is to help them stay in their position. Because they would kind of gather

and they'd all run-in clusters after the ball. And they're all chasing each other around like this. And Ake was like, just stay in your position, we'll probably do pretty well. But invariably, in every game, a couple of things happened.

One was, when a child scored a goal, the parent would be like, that's my girl, you proud as a peacock. And they start looking over their shoulder for the UCLA talent scout going, hey, keep an eye on my prodigy. But then, inevitably, someone would ask a question

that changed the whole dynamic. Because before this, it was all about the fun. I mean kids are outdoors, enjoying the outdoors. They're making new friends,

they're getting you know, they're learning the great game of soccer, they're going out for ice cream after the game. It's awesome and it's fun, but then someone would ask, they'd say, towards the end they'd say, what's the score? And that just threw the fun right out the window.

Because someone else would say, I think it's six to five. And then the parents, we all go, alright Sally, come on let's go. We gotta score two goals. We're one down. We gotta get this and go, yeah, we're here to have fun but in addition to fun, come on man, we're here because we want to win.

And we do that in our spiritual life. We go from the sense of awe and wonder to keeping score and it changes the whole dynamic. Let me try to explain it to you by digging into our parable for today. It's in Luke 18

and it's often called the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. So let's unpack this for a few minutes. Go to Luke 18 verse nine and here's what it says. To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else,

Jesus told this parable. So here we go. Verse 10, Jesus says two men went up to the temple to pray. One a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. Now, let's pause for just a moment because I think we miss some of the impact if we don't grasp a bit of the context. Now Pharisees, if you go into church for any length of time,

Pharisees are folks that we often throw under the bus because we say, you know the Pharisees, they were all self righteous and judgmental and condescending and and all this kind of stuff and we actually see that in scripture that that's often the truth. But what we fail to see and we overlook is that Pharisees

were people that were sold out to God. They literally were like, God, all the chips are in. I believe in you fully in my whole life. Even my vocation is dedicated to your service. If anybody was one that you could say, hey, who loves God with all their heart, all of their soul, all their mind, and all their strength,

we could easily point to the Pharisees. They were zealous for their faith. They were the fanatics. They're all in. Pretty admirable. Jesus says that's the guy in this story and then he says there's a tax collector. Now the tax collector isn't someone who works for the IRS.

The tax collector in that day, in that setting was someone who was really despised, even hated. Because what happened was these folks were under the the rule of the Roman Empire. And so the Roman government will come in and recruit indigenous people, local people, and then they would send them out to gather

these exorbitant taxes and those taxes were funding their oppression. So people despised these tax collectors. They even looked at them as traitors. So Jesus says, we have the Pharisee and we have the tax collector. Let's keep going. Verse 11, Jesus says,

he says the Pharisee stood by himself and prayed, God, I thank you that I am not like other people. Robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get. Verse 13, Jesus says, but the tax collector, he stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but he beat his breast and said, have mercy on me, a sinner. Jesus says, I tell you that this man, the tax collector,

rather than the other, the Pharisee, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted. I wanna talk to you about our big idea in this conversation and that is this, beware the temptation of spiritual comparison.

Would you say that to me for a moment to say beware of the temptation. You can say that, right? Hold on. We gotta get serious, Billy. Alright, say this with me. Beware of the temptation Of spiritual comparison. Give yourself a hand. Come on. You're back with me. Come on. Come on.

Think about it for a moment. Let me show you what I mean. Let me reread a couple of these verses. It's not on the screen but it's verse 11. The Pharisee prayed, god, I thank you that I'm I'm not like other people.

You ever think that? He says, I'm not a robber, an evildoer, an adulterer. I mean, these are good things. Wouldn't you agree that it's a good thing the guy is not a thief? That's an admirable thing. He says he says, I'm not an evil doer. I'm not I'm not living this rebellious life disregarding

my maker and doing things that could hurt people around me. I'm not an evil doer. He's a morally upright individual. There's nothing wrong with that. That's a good thing.

And then he says, know, I'm not like this this tax collector and I'm not sleeping around. That's a good thing. And then he goes on, he says, yeah, he says, you know, I I fast twice a week meaning he's setting something aside, often food, Netflix,

whatever his thing was, so that he could grow closer to God through worship and prayer and all that kind of stuff. That's a good thing. Nothing wrong with that. And then he says, I tithe. I give a 10% of all that comes into my life and I redistribute it into the kingdom of God and investing in the lives of other people.

Nothing wrong with that. That's a good thing. Where's the problem? The problem isn't in what he's doing. The problem is that he's keeping score. And when we begin to keep score in our spiritual life, we start to compare ourselves to other people. And the way that we compare ourselves to other people is that we set the bar.

And when we set the bar, we often set it just a little lower than where we are. And we compare ourselves to other people. It's not that we have this this score sheet

that we're that's physical. Like we're not going to our our Evernote and typing in, man, I I went to church today and I'm tracking this whole thing or it's not like we go to the office, we push it through Slack. Like, hey, guess what I did this weekend that was spiritual. We don't do that. We just kinda keep this mental

checklist in our mind, in our heart, and just kinda this thing that we we just kinda write notes down on every now and then. When I when I first gave my life to Christ, I was part of an fast an awesome church. And and this church had church all the time. I was in church Saturday night, Sunday morning, Sunday night,

Wednesday night, and then a few things in between. And whenever the church was open,

I was there. Man, you open the doors, I'm in. Because the cool thing was was I was at that place of this awe and wonder like this is too good to be true and I was worshiping and really experiencing the presence of God. And they were teaching the Bible and I was learning a whole new way of looking at who I am and who God is and and my whole worldview

and and knowing, man, God has given me instructions on how to live in a healthy way and it was fantastic. But then I would look around and notice that my friends weren't always there when I was there. And so I'd be like, I look like, where's where's where's John? Man. Oh, you know what? I'm just more spiritual than John.

So I'd kind of write it down my little mental layout. I am a church guy. I'm so good. I'm spiritual. Got it. And then, not only was I reading my bible, but I was studying my bible.

I mean I was that kind of guy like, I'm studying it before I go to work. I'm bringing my bible with me to lunch at work. I am reading it at night. Not only was I reading it, but I'm reading like things that they call like concordances

and dictionaries and lexicons and all these weird sounding things. I was in, man. I'm studying it and I would talk about it with my friends like, I was studying Romans three and this jumped out at me. It was incredible. And then my friend would say, man, I guess I gotta start reading my Bible a little more.

You don't read your Bible a lot? Man, I am a bible guy. I'm so much more spiritual than you. Dang. And then we'd be at church and we'd be worshiping. I'd be worshiping my face off like, God Jesus, you're awesome. Loving it. And then someone be standing next to me going,

when's lunch? And I'd start thinking, maybe maybe it's not that we're different personalities, we express ourselves differently. I know what it is. He is just a heathen and I am spiritual. I am a worshiper. This is awesome. And then I'd pray. And I began to learn this beautiful art of prayer in God.

You know, putting my requests to God and opening up my heart to God and being honest before God. And then learning how to discern God's leading and his nudge on my heart to maybe do this or do that or talk to this person. And I talk to somebody say, man I was praying and I felt like God just said, hey,

do this. And then my friend would say, oh wow, man I gotta pray more. Yeah, you do man. I pray. I am. I am awesome. I am awesome man. And we make this list. Here's the problem. When we keep score and we start to compare ourselves with other people. Is instead of gazing on God's goodness, we look in the mirror

applauding our devotion to him. And that's a really dangerous place to be. The prophet Isaiah

in the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament, he describes this experience with God. This vision that he has from God and he kind of in describing it says, man I was in the in the temple and God's throne was there and there were these creatures all around worshiping.

And he says that the the train of God's robe filled the temple. And let me read a little bit more of his description. Here's what he says in Isaiah six verse three. He says, and they were calling to one another, holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is full of his glory.

At the sound of their voices, the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. And then in this moment in God's presence, here's what he begins to realize. He says in verse five, woe to me.

I am ruined for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of glory. And I think Isaiah would say in regard to our spiritual comparison, he would laugh at my temptation to set the bar being myself. Because Isaiah

has this glimpse of the glory of God and he realizes in a moment, God is very big and incredibly awesome and he's very small. Seemingly insignificant. And if Isaiah were able to stand here today at Rock Point, he'd probably say, hey guys, you're not the bar. I'm not the bar. If there even is a bar, God's the bar.

And because he's the bar, we all fall short. And what's crazy about this when we compare ourselves with others spiritually, is what Jesus said back in this parable. Because here's what happens. You heard me say it as I read it. The Pharisees says, God I thank you that I'm not like other people.

I'm not a robber. I'm not an evildoer. I'm not an adulterer. While the tax collector says, God have mercy on me a sinner. And then Jesus says, the the the the tax collector went home justified before God and the Pharisee didn't. Now think about this for a moment. The Pharisee has dedicated his life to God.

His spiritual disciplines and practices would put me to shame and maybe most of us, if not all of us. He's all in for God. He loves God with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength. And Jesus says, with all that being said, he went home

not right with God, not because of what he did, but because he was comparing himself to the other guy.

And it's the tax collector who said God, I need you. Jesus says he went home right with God. And for me being tempted to be a pharisee and play the game of spiritual comparison, that rattles me a little bit. And what it says to me, it says this, you know when it comes to our our keeping score and our our little list

that we're making mental note and spiritual comparison, not only do we crumple it up and throw it away, we totally we get rid of it completely. Wasn't that awesome?

Here's the problem. You're not gonna remember a thing I said today and you're gonna go home saying, a flame. There was a fire. That's what it was. Yeah. How was church? It was on fire, man. Well think of it for a moment. Jesus literally says, the one who's dedicated everything to me, to God, went away

not in wrong standing with God because he was comparing himself to someone else. Beware the temptation of spiritual comparison. We're all susceptible. What I wanna do is I wanna introduce you to what I call the posture of a Pharisee saved by grace.

I wanna take a quick look at this guy named Paul. Paul the apostle. Many of you are familiar with him because Paul was a guy he was the Pharisee. Not necessarily the Pharisee in this story but he was a Pharisee. He was incredibly educated, The religious elite,

very zealous for his faith, very disciplined in his spiritual practices. In fact, he was so sold out for god that he believed this resurrection of Jesus thing was a fabricated story and that those putting their faith in him were heretics. So he participated

in and supported the murdering and the killing of the followers of Jesus, of Christians. Then he had an encounter with the risen Christ and it totally changed everything about him. And he explains to us, I'm gonna read it in the book of Galatians. He explains to us the difference between a Pharisee

focused on performing for God and a human being saved by grace. Here's what he says, just let me read this to you. I'm gonna read you from the message paraphrase which is really colorful. Galatians two verse 19, Paul writes, what actually took place is this,

I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God and it didn't work. So I quit being a lawman, meaning he quit

trying to abide by all of the rules and regulations and stuff in the Old Testament. He said, I I quit being a lawman so that I could be God's man. Christ's life showed me how and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. How does he identify himself? The next verse he explains.

He says, indeed I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion. And I am no longer driven to impress God. Sounds like a man that's been set free if you ask me. He goes on,

Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not mine, but it is lived by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. And I think that if if Paul weren't a theologian and he was a mathematician, he could say the very same thing in a simple mathematical equation. And here it is. Jesus

plus anything equals nothing. Jesus plus nothing equals everything. Paul was able to look at all of his dedication to God previous to his encounter with Christ and he realizes all of that, all God put in the Old Testament was aimed at pointing me toward my need for a savior and his name is Jesus. And he realized

that for everything that he stood for in his whole life was a he stood on Jesus and nothing else was everything to him. Let me read one more verse out of Galatians where he expands on this. Galatians six verse 14, Paul writes, may I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ

through which the world's been crucified to me and I to the world. And I think it's in this this posture of a pharisee saved by grace that we see a couple things I wanna give you and me to apply to our life. And here's my first suggestion and it's kind of in a personal statement. I pursue growth but never graduate from grace.

Yes, as a follower of Christ, I'm pursuing closeness with God.

Yes, I am I am part of the church community and the community of faith and I'm worshiping my face off. And yes, I'm reading my bible and I'm even getting crazy every now and then. I'm studying my bible and I'm digging in and I'm learning what God has to say for me. I'm praying and trying to help you know, to to discern the prompting of the spirit of God in my life. I'm serving others and I'm loving my neighbor as myself. I'm investing

in the work of the kingdom of God. I'm giving sacrificially. On and on. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. All day long. I pursue growth. But I never graduate from grace. Think about this with me for a moment. In, when you're in your spiritual sweet spot, you're in the zone, you're walking out these spiritual

practices, whatever you wanna call them, and man your closeness with God is tangible. It's a fantastic place to be, isn't it? And maybe you're praying

and you're praying you're praying you're taking a few minutes before you go to work and you're pouring your heart out to God, you're thanking him for your day, you're even praying at at at lunch, you're praying you're praying in public. At the restaurant,

you're praying and thanking god for your whatever it is, think about this. Do we ever think that god is actually impressed with our prayers?

Like he goes, hey, Scott. Man, you are so sold out for me. You're praying in public at the restaurant. So I'm just gonna overwhelm you with my presence right now because you're such an awesome prayer. No. God responds because he cares and he loves us and he desires to be close to us often maybe all more than we do.

Every response that God initiates to us is an act of grace. It's an act of grace. And I'm gonna pursue him, I'm gonna pursue growth but I realize I never graduate from grace. It's grace. And then here's another thing I wanna suggest. Is that we keep our focus on the cross. We literally just set our aim, set our sights,

never lose focus of the cross.

I'm gonna take you back up a little. If you're 30 and under you might not remember this this story, but to many of us it's familiar. 07/16/1999, so just about twenty years ago. John f Kennedy junior, the son of former president JFK. He's a pop icon at this time. His wife's name is Carolyn Bessette.

And JFK gets into a small six seater airplane which he's piloting with his wife Carolyn and her sister Lauren. And they fly out of Essex County, New Jersey at 08:39PM headed towards Martha's Vineyard. Many of you now remember the story. Let me give you some detail.

John F Kennedy junior, and if you're a pilot, give me grace. I'm gonna try to explain it for the rest of us. John F Kennedy junior is rated as a non instrument rated pilot. Meaning, he's not rated to use instruments only. He has to use visual. He has to look out the window and fly visually.

And my understanding is when you fly visual only, you have to have a very clear view of the horizon. Because it's from that place where you navigate and do all your stuff. Now a instrument trained

pilot, rated pilot will look just at the instruments and be able to fly through things you you can't even see the horizon. That's our commercial pilots, military, and other folks who've progressed to that place. Well JFK is visual only at this time. He leaves Essex County, New Jersey, the weather's clear. As he gets closer to Martha's Vineyard,

the weather starts to kick up. And there's kind of like a, as I understand it, there's a white out. And when there's a white out, when you can't tell the difference between the sky and the ground

and all you see is white or if you're flying at night and let's say there's clouds and there you can't see the stars and there's no lights on the ground, towns or whatever and no reflection of the moon, it's a blackout, you quickly start to get disoriented.

And the way that I understand is, there's like a fluid in our inner ear and when we kind of tip, it adjusts and makes us kind of get our equilibrium. Well, when we can't see the horizon flying an airplane, we start to go, oh man, feel like I'm going left.

And then your ear kind of balances itself back out, and then you feel a little weird, and you feel this force pushing your bottom down the seat. You're like, well, I think I have to correct this and turn, and then all of a sudden we start to overcorrect, and it just goes crazy and I think it's what they call a graveyard spiral. You just fly the plane into the ground.

I mean, fast. I have some friends who who are pilots. One was just saying the other day, not a commercial pilot but you know, much lower than that. He said he says, Scott here's the deal. He says, he says when you're flying and you can't see the horizon, he says,

all you have are your instruments and you never trust how you feel. You do not trust your body and your senses. You focus on the instrument. And in fact, if you look up and look around too much trying to find the horizon,

you might be dead pretty fast. It's a crazy thing to think about. JFK flies into this whiteout, he can't tell what's up, what's down, he gets confused, he gets disoriented and flies the plane right into the ocean. The National Transportation Safety Board does conclude that it was spatial disorientation or vertigo.

He couldn't see up, couldn't see down, he wasn't rated for instruments only. What's our instrument as a follower of Jesus? It's the cross. And it's Christ on the cross. And what happens is when we take our eyes off Him and the cross and we start to look around and compare ourselves

with one another, we start to get spiritual vertigo. We start to go, man I'm more spiritual than you are. And here's what happens. Let's say in the white out situation,

spiritually. We're at our best. We're in our sweet spot spiritually. We are close to God and we're tempted to look around and go, man, aren't I the more spiritual one? It's at that moment we just remind ourselves, look at your instrument. Don't look around because if we do, we start to spiral down.

Stay focused on Christ. We're even in our best spiritual high. And then in those days we feel like, man, I blew it. And we're less like the Pharisee and we're more like the guy going, God forgive me a sinner. Give me your mercy.

Isn't it funny that the Pharisee sets the bar a little below them lower themselves so he's always looking down and then the guy who feels horrible, he has a bar too and he says it's way down here and I'm horrible. I'm I'm beneath the bar. The reality is there is Jesus is the bar. And in our worst moment

and we wanna look around and feel the sense of shame and look at me compared to somebody else and I'm so bad this, just look at your instrument. Focused on the cross. Focused on the cross because we never graduate from grace. We have in our house in the entryway, you walk in and

there's a whole bunch of crosses on the wall. You know the Hobby Lobby crosses? Like $50 you get a dozen crosses kind of thing. When they're on sale 50%, which is every weekend. So you got all these crosses up there and it's cool decoration. I mean I like it. But every now and then,

I walk in and I look at that and I'll think, man, cool decoration. But sometimes, it's just a reminder to me that it's not just a decoration, but for me, it's the declaration. And the declaration is my dependence on Jesus. You see, I'm gonna go home. My flight back to Sacramento today is at 04:10.

And I'm gonna be walking in the Sky Harbor and you know, kinda this is the fifth service and I've had an awesome time and it's been pretty good. Some people say, how did it go? I'm like, it seemed like it went really well. A lot of people were just really inspired, encouraged, and some folks were really compelled to draw near to God. And some people walked out not performing anymore. And it was just a great day. I'm gonna walk into Sky Harbor Airport. I'm be like proud as a peacock. Like, yeah.

Be tempted to be all arrogant like it was awesome today and I was awesome and I had pyrotechnics. There were flames going off and it was the best experience that anyone's ever had in church.

And then I'm gonna get home, walk in the door, the dog's jumping up and down wagging. Hey, I'm glad you're home. The family's like, oh, hey dad, good you know whatever. And I'm gonna look at those crosses on the wall full of my arrogance and spiritual comparison and be immediately brought back to the reality that no,

it's Jesus. Anything God chose to do today, last night, online in your heart as a result of this conversation is all about him and it's all because of him. That's it. Period.

Or if I go home and I'm like, man the first four services are really awesome. The fifth one, they didn't they looked like they just wanted to go to lunch and I don't know and I feel really bad. I think Bill's gonna call me this afternoon and say, dude, what are you doing? We expect more out of you than this. You mailed it in. Oh no, there's more in you. I'll be like, oh, I just feel horrible. Suck. Oh gosh. I'm gonna walk in the house, dog's still gonna wag his tail.

And I'm gonna look at those crosses and I'm gonna have to remind myself, it's not about you anyway. It's about Jesus. And trust me, there are a number of times I've had to do that. Go, you know, and the crazy thing is, in the times where I'm like, I really sucked.

I just it was bad. Those are the times that every now and then someone will come up to me later and say, remember that time you were here at our church and you talked about that? And I'd like, yeah, don't remind me.

They'd say, man God rattled my life that day and did something big in my life and I'm just reminded again,

it's about Him. It's not about you. It's not about me. So beware of the temptation of spiritual comparison. Let's learn from Paul the Pharisee saved by grace. We're gonna grow. We're gonna pursue growth, but we will never graduate from grace. And we're gonna keep our eyes fixed

on Christ on the cross. Let me read again to you Ephesians two where we began, and then I'm gonna pray for us. And if you're here and you're not a follower of Jesus and you're curious, you're checking things out, basically what you just heard is the message of Jesus, what it's all about.

And as I read this verse to you again, this is for you as well because when you place your faith in him, this becomes your reality as well as it is ours. Ephesians two eight nine, it says, for it is by grace that you've been saved through performance and your talents and your skills and you're going to church all the time.

Is anybody still listening? Yes. For by grace you've been saved through what? Through faith And this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. No one can boast. None of us. And if you're someone who if you're someone who's not a follower of Jesus and someone like me has ever made you feel less than

or spoke in a condescending way to you as if we were superior, may I just apologize for myself and the rest of us? When it comes to Christ, we're all equal. We're all in desperate need of him. I wanna pray for us. Let's let's pray. Father God, thank you so much for this gift. The gift God that you give us. Of your grace,

of your forgiveness, of your love. God I pray for for my friends who are followers of Jesus God. May you never let us succumb to this spiritual comparison. Help us God to to overcome this and may we do it by realizing it's by grace that we stand. It's by grace that you do anything in our lives.

We will never graduate from grace but we will keep our focus on Christ Jesus in the cross. And for my friends who aren't at that place yet Lord where they've put their faith in you, would you just use this conversation

and maybe not even let them forget about it but remind them of it throughout this next week and nudge their heart revealing your goodness and your love. And may they be compelled to have a moment with you where they simply say, God I believe in you. Forgive me a sinner. Jesus be the savior of my life.

I'm gonna live by grace and I'm gonna be in awe and wonder of who you are. And we thank you for that God. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen.