SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm not Pastor Byron. I am Pastor Jared. And it is wonderful and amazing to be here with you this morning. I am so thankful for this church and for this worship team. My goodness, such beautiful worship. Let's give them a hand. I know we don't, you know, we're not praising them, we're praising God through them. Amen. But I am so thankful for them and just everything that goes on behind the scenes to bring a spirit of worship to this church. Let's take our Bibles, turn to 1 Samuel chapter 16. 1 Samuel chapter 16. I am Pastor Jared, if it's your first time here, and I am uh it is good to have you this morning. Welcome to Lake Church. For those of you that's not your first time, it's still good to have you too. We are thankful that you're here with us this morning. We're gonna continue our study in the life of David. We're looking at the life of David, studying the life of David. And when I say that, it's not completely accurate because what we're doing is we're not really studying the life of David. We're studying the heart of God. Right? We're studying the heart of God. David was a man after God's own heart, and we're really studying the heart that was within David, the heart that he pursued, the heart that he was after. We're studying the heart of God that was in David. And Michelangelo, I heard a story recently, somebody asked Michelangelo, the great sculpture. They asked him, How did he make such a great sculpture of David? And his response was he simply removed everything that wasn't David. And we're here this morning. Our goal is to not be like David, but our goal should be to be like Jesus. And our prayer should be that God would remove anything that doesn't look like Jesus. And it starts with the heart, right? Can y'all dim these lights just a little bit? I'd like to see y'all a little bit this morning. All right. All right, that's better. It starts with the heart. The heart of the matter is a matter of the heart. And we turn to 1 Samuel chapter 16, and we're gonna read it here in just a second, but we see this is the chapter where God chooses and anoints the next king. He rejected King Saul as we looked in the last few weeks because of the pride in his heart, and he is raising up another king, King David. And he's gonna anoint King David. But what we see in this chapter is more than God just choosing a king, he's choosing a heart. He's choosing a heart. And that's important for us because it shows us the heart that God chooses. And that's what I want to preach on this morning. The heart that God chooses. This heart that God chose was not based off of appearance. It wasn't based off of ability, it wasn't based off accolades, it was based solely on one thing, what God saw in the heart of David. Now let's look at chapter 16, verse number one, and we're gonna read through it a little bit this morning. The Bible says the Lord said to Samuel, How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons. And let's stop right there for a second. We see Samuel here is grieved and he's stressing out and he's worried and he's fretting because Saul was demoted. And he's like, okay, what are we gonna do now? We're back to square one. But while Samuel was grieving yesterday, God was preparing tomorrow. And he says, How long are you gonna stress out and how long are you gonna worry? And how long are you gonna, you know, grieve over the past? He said, I have something better. And I just want to highlight that this morning that some that may God may be asking you the same thing. How long are you gonna grieve over something that's no longer my will? How long are you gonna grieve and and worry and stress about something from the past? God says, I have something better for you. He tells Samuel, stop worrying. I have it completely under control. And you're panicking, but God never panics. He is in complete control. And he tells him, Get up, get your horn full of oil, and go. I have another king prepared for you. As God was sitting Saul down, he was raising David up, which is important to us because we need to remember that God is in complete control. And when it looks like things are falling out of place to God, they are really falling into place. There may be something going on in your life right now, and you can't, you feel like you can't get over it. God is asking you the same thing that he's asking Samuel. How long? How long are you gonna let that hold you back? How long are you gonna keep wallowing in that that pity and that worry and that fear and that uncertainty? How long? It's time, he's telling Samuel just like he's telling you, it's time to get up and go forward. I have something better. Now that's not the message, but I could preach a sermon on that. Amen. That's something we need to hear once in a while. And we see God's providence through this whole thing. You know, Samuel is like, you know, uh, okay, Saul is demoted, Saul fell because of pride. Now what's gonna happen? Listen, God was not up in heaven wringing his hands and scratching his head, trying to figure out a plan B. Right? He already knew from the beginning. Before a star was cast in the sky, God knew that David was gonna be king. This was not an accident, this was an appointment. This was not a plan B. This was the plan from the very beginning. How do we know that? Because I think it's significant that he said, go to Jesse the Bethlehemite. Now, who is here? Raise your hand if you were here for the study of Ruth. Y'all remember me? Y'all don't listen to me, do you? Like the study of Ruth. We did a study on Ruth. We did a study on Ruth. And Ruth was a Moabite girl who fell in love with a wealthy Jewish man and they settled. Where did they settle at? Bethlehem. We're gonna have to go back through this. They settled in Bethlehem, right? Boaz was from Bethlehem. They got married in Bethlehem, they had a son named Obed. Obed had a son named Jesse, and Jesse had eight sons, the youngest of which was David. They were living in Bethlehem. Why is that important? Because you go all the way to Jesus. He came from Jesse, from David, the line of David, right? He's the son of David. Why is that important? Because it shows us that God is in complete control and he has a plan from the beginning. And he says, Go anoint a son of Jesse. And look at verse number, where we at, verse number two. And Samuel said, How can I go? If Saul hears that he will kill me, and the Lord said, Take a heifer with you and say, I have come to sacrifice to the Lord, and invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do, and you shall anoint for me him whom I declare to you. Samuel did what the Lord commanded and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling and said, Do you come peaceably? Now I want to stop right there. Why do you think they were scared of Samuel coming into town? Well, I think if you remember, chapter 15, he just got done hacking up a man in pieces. Remember that?

unknown 7:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Yeah, that's something you don't hear uh too much about in churches. Samuel, the prophet, killed King Agag, the Amalekite, uh, and he hacked him in pieces. All right? So you could kind of figure out why they were a little tense about Samuel walking in the town. You know, he demanded respect. I just thought that was funny. And verse number five, and he said, peaceably, he said, peaceably, I come to you to sacrifice to the Lord. Consecrate yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice. And he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice. Verse number six, when they came, he looked on Eliab, David, uh Jesse's oldest son, and thought, Surely the Lord's anointed is before him. But the Lord said to Samuel, Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. You think he would have, you know, learned a lesson from Saul, right? He was head and shoulders above everybody else, but God rejected him. For the Lord sees, look at this, for the Lord sees not as man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the what? The heart. Put a pin in that, we're gonna come back to it. Then Jesse called Abinadab and made him pass before Samuel, and he said, Neither has the Lord chosen this one. Then Jesse made Shama pass by, and he said, Neither has the Lord chosen this one. And Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, The Lord has not chosen these. The Lord has not chosen these. So we see seven of Jesse's sons walk by Samuel, and God says, No, no, no, no. They all go through God's CT scan, and they all one at a time have the same diagnosis. Heart problem. Heart problem. Heart problem. Samuel's like, he looks at Eliab, he looks like a king. I mean, he probably has the charisma of a king, he has a big smile like a king, he's probably big and strong like a king, he's tall, the Bible says. But God rejected him. Just like he rejected Saul. He rejected Abinadab, he rejected Shama, he rejected all the others, which shows us something very important this morning. God refuses or God chooses what the world refuses, and God refuses what the world chooses. God is not impressed with what impresses the world. And what impresses the world, you know, God is not impressed by that. He is interested in the heart. He's looking at the heart. I mean, if you take Eliab and you take David and they both had the same job interview, and you set each one of them down, they would they would promote Eliab, hire Eliab, and they would probably overlook David. Which shows us something very important that we need to remember. God is not impressed with the outward. And isn't it something that we are so infatuated with the external and the appearance? I mean, it's all about the appearance. And I'm going to give you a challenging question. I'm not going to take a poll in here this morning, but ask yourself how many of us cared more about the outside of us than the inside this morning? How many of us spent more time fixing our hair or you know, figuring out what we were going to wear, or you know, all this stuff, and not focused on the inside, which is what God is really interested in. He's searching, he's seeking, he's choosing the heart. And look, God's not impressed with what impresses us. He's not impressed with talent, and he's not impressed with a smooth talker. He's not impressed with our intellect, our intellect, he's not impressed with our appearance. He is interested in our hearts. And we can fool everybody else, but we cannot fool God. Right? So we see here, uh, I don't I don't know if I have this on the screen, but let's read verse number 11. He says in verse number 11, and Samuel said to Jesse, Are all the young man men here? And he said, There remains yet the youngest, and there he is keeping the sheep. And Samuel said to Jesse, Send and bring him, for we will not sit down till he comes. Now, what do we see in this verse? David was not even invited to the king's lineup. Ain't that something? The next king of Israel was not even invited. And Jesse did not even call David by name. You know, Samuel's in a situation here. He's like, God, I know God told me that the next king is coming from Jesse, one of his sons. Here's all his sons, and God said, No, what's going on? He's like, Hold on, something ain't adding up here. This math is not mathing right. And he asked Samuel, he saw, he asked uh Jesse, Samuel says, Is this all your sons? And then it hit Jesse. Oh yeah. The youngest is tending to the sheep. We have any parents or grandparents here that, you know, sometimes you struggle with your kids' names. Sometimes you got to go down the line, you know. If you got a bunch of kids, you got a bunch of grandkids, you're like, you know, so and so. So I had my grandmother, uh, she passed away now, but she used to do that all the time. Like, she's got some grandkids, and she's got kids, and she would go, when she would try to address me, she would go, Arlen, Brandon, Jeff, Jared, she finally get to me. I was the youngest. Anybody here the youngest? Your name always gets forgotten, right? It always gets messed up. Jesse's like, oh, that's right, David. You know, he's the youngest. He's he's he some people believe, you know, scholars say that he was probably in between 10 and 15, maybe 16 years old. He was young, he was he was an outcast. Uh the Bible says in verse number 12 that uh he was ruddy, which means that word ruddy, it means red. Now, some people believe he had red hair. I don't know, it'd be kind of strange for a Jewish person to have red hair. Uh, some people believe he was red from the from the uh the sun being out with the sheep. The Bible says he had bright eyes, he had a sparkle in his eyes, he was good looking. So he he had the looks, but God was not interested in the looks. He saw something deeper when he looked at David. The one that everyone overlooked, the one that his brothers overlooked him, his neighbors probably didn't know his name, his father didn't even call him by name, he overlooked him, but God did not overlook the one that the world overlooked. He wasn't overlooking him based off of his appearance. And listen, God, God is not choosing us based off our appearance, he's choosing us based off our character. And what did God see in David that was so special? What did God see in David's heart? Well, with with Saul, he saw pride, and with David, he saw humility. Humility. God does not choose us based off of our ability, but based off of our humility. Humility is the requirement for being used and being chosen by God. He chose David based off of his humility. And look. God didn't choose David because he was gonna be a future giant killer. He chose David and made him a future giant killer. He didn't choose David because he was the smartest and he was the best and he was he was. Look, I'll say it this way: God didn't choose David because he was great. David was great because God chose him. And God chose him because when he looked within David, he saw humility. And it's it's comforting and it's convicting that God will choose us based off something that all of us can have. Right? Let's let that sink in for a second. God doesn't choose us based off just how good looking we are. Somebody should say, Amen, right there. I'm looking around Lake Church. Some of y'all fellas should be thankful he don't choose us for our looks. I'm just joking. I'm just kidding. We got some fine-looking fellows in here this morning. Y'all handsome. But God doesn't choose you based off your looks. He chooses you based off your heart. He chooses you based off your humility. He uses the ones that are completely dependent upon him. Humility is just seeing God for how great he is and seeing us for how small we are, right? It's realizing our need for God, it's surrendering our heart to God, it's giving our life to God. It's not lifting ourselves up and saying, uh, you know, getting all the attention upon ourselves. Andrew Murray said humility is the place of entire dependence upon God. I heard somebody once say that God will never feel somebody that's already full of themselves. He will never make you great if you're already great in your own eyes. David looked at himself. He didn't think of himself, he had a heart humble before God. What was David doing? He was tending to the sheep. He was tending to the sheep. He was a shepherd, a humble, lowly position. And I want us to look at two evidences. All right, I'm gonna give you two this morning, and we're gonna come back next week and have a few more. Two evidences of humility that we see in the heart of David. Now, the last few weeks we looked at the red flags of pride, all right? But I want to uh today and next week I want us to look at the evidences of humility that we saw in David. And the first is this humility is faithful in the ordinary. Amen. Humility is faithful in the ordinary. A humble heart is faithful in the place where it is called. It's humble, it's serving, it's faithful where it's called. And it's it's it's very important and significant that before God trusted David with a kingdom, he trusted him with sheep. Before he called him to lead people, he called him to lead sheep. Before he trusted him with a palace, he trusted him in the pasture. Before he trusted him with a crown, he trusted him with a staff. And there's a very important principle behind that, that if God cannot trust you in the small, he will not promote you to things greater. He won't be able to trust you with things greater. Right? And let me just say this nothing is small if God has called you to it. There's no, there's nothing you can do for God that is small if God, the king of the universe, has placed you in that place. God called David at this point of his life, in this season, he was a shepherd and he took that job seriously, so seriously that he did not even go to, you know, he wasn't even concerned about being king. And that's why God made him king. He wasn't concerned about the spotlight and the attention, and he wasn't campaigning for positions or titles. He was just focusing on being faithful for what God had called him to in that moment, fulfilling his chores and his duties. He wasn't trying to climb the ladder and reach some higher level and calling. He wasn't complaining about where he was at. He was just simply day by day being faithful. And church, listen, sometimes being faithful is not fancy. Sometimes it's mundane. Sometimes it's just grinding it out. Sometimes it may look boring, but God sees consistent, trustworthy faithfulness as you serve Him, as you live for Him. And let me say this: look, look. It's not about just being faithful, it's about who you're being faithful to. Because we can all be faithful, but sometimes we're faithful in bad things. It's about being faithful to God. We can be faithful and not be. Sometimes we can be faithfully unfaithful to God. Right? It's about being faithful to God, faithful in seeking Him and growing closer to Him, faithful in attending church and being plugged in, faithful in serving, faithful in giving, faithful in praying, being a faithful member, being a faithful father and husband and mother and wife, being faithful with wherever God has called you, being faithful with your job. It doesn't just span the church world. This goes into your everyday life. Just being faithful, showing up. Being faithful. David pursued faithfulness, not promotion. That's why God blessed him and promoted him and chose him and used him in a great way. He was being faithful in the small, the ordinary, the mundane. He was taking care of sheep. And if God couldn't trust him to take care of sheep, you think God's gonna trust him to take care of a nation? We have got to be faithful with where God's called us. Some people, you know, say, well, I just don't know, you know, God's not using me. Where are you being faithful where you're called right now? Are you being faithful with where he has you at in this season, in this moment? You have to be faithful in the small things. David embraced the assignment that God had already given him day by day. David woke up every day just constant. Mundane. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't exciting. It wasn't glamorous. He was just a shepherd, shepherding sheep, but he was faithful with where God had called him to be. He wasn't chasing a throne. He was caring for the sheep. Now I want to stop before we can move on. We have some faithful members in this church, and I'm thankful for you. Like, we have a lot of faithful members. And when I say faithful, I mean you just show up and do what needs to be done. You serve where God's called you. Some of you are like just getting in this, and you're like, what can I do? How can I serve? God sees that. And I see that. And I'm thankful for that. But a question we have to constantly ask ourselves is this if everybody was as faithful as me, would that be good or would that be bad? If every member of this church was like me, as faithful as I am, your presence, your attendance, your serving, your giving, would that be good or bad? Would that cause the church to become weaker or stronger? And I believe that you can write it down, you can mark it down. God always blesses faithfulness. He will always bless your faithfulness. And then collectively, as a church, as we are faithful, He will continually bless our faithfulness. He will bless Lake Church because of your faithfulness. And he has already. I mean, look at what look at what God has done in this church already. He blesses faithfulness. But here's the thing, church. We shouldn't be faithful in our mind. We shouldn't be saying, okay, I'm going to be faithful so eventually God will promote me. All right? We're missing it if we have that mentality. We should be faithful to God because God has been faithful to us. Say amen if God's been faithful to you. God has been faithful to us, more faithful than we could ever deserve. And we should want to be faithful to Him. And number two, we see an evidence of humility. We see humility serves in the shadows. Humility serves in the shadows. A humble heart serves without needing the spotlight. By the way, this spotlight is getting kind of hot. You don't want to be in the spotlight. I'm about to start sweating up here. Don't hug me after church. I might smell bad. Serves in the shadows, not the spotlight. Serves without needing the recognition and the attention and the glory and the praise. Just serves every day, serves in their calling that God has called them to. You know, it's so significant that what was David doing when God called him? What was he doing? Shepherding. He was serving. He was actively serving when God anointed him as king. They had to go get him from serving where he was called to serve. He wasn't sitting around being lazy and idle and not doing nothing and saying, I wish I had something to do. I wish I no, God had called him. He wasn't saying, I wish I had something greater. He was actively serving where God had called him to serve in that moment. And that's when he called him to something greater. And you see that constantly throughout the Word of God. You see God not calling the lazy, but calling the ones that are already serving. I mean, you look at Moses, he was, he was tending the sheep in the backside of the desert when God called him to be the leader of Israel. He called him by the burning bush. You look at Elisha, he was plowing a field. You look at uh Gideon, he was beating out the wheat, right? You look at the disciples, Peter, James, John, Andrew, they were mending their nets. They were actively serving when God met them and called them. Which is so significant. You know, you some people, I've been in, I've been in ministry over, you know, long enough. I'll just say that. So many people are looking to be leaders when God is looking for servants. And what I'm looking at and what God is looking at for the next leaders are who are the greatest servants. Who are faithful and who are humbly serving where God has called them to serve, not looking for attention and needing praise and the glory. David was shepherding sheep. It's not an admirable position. It stinks, it's unpleasant, it's not pretty. He didn't get applause. The sheep didn't say, good job, David. People didn't say, David, you're such a great shepherd. They wasn't posting about David and saying, wow, David, look at him on social media and saying, David's such a great shepherd. He was just every day serving in menial positions, in the ordinary, in the mundane, where God had called him. He was serving God, and that's where God chooses his leaders. The greatest leaders are actually the greatest servants. Right? You know what I mean? Look at Jesus. He was the greatest leader that this world has ever seen, but he served. A servant, a servant is not a pretty position. Right? It's not something that's glamorous, just like being a shepherd. So many people are looking to be leaders when God is looking for servants. So many people, and I'm not saying anybody in here, I'm just saying, like I said, over my span of ministry, I've seen so many people want the stage, but not the towel. They want the spotlight, they want the attention, but they don't want to serve in the behind the scenes. And if your hand, look, a servant, his hand will fit a broom.

unknown 28:37

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

He's not too. David wasn't too good to be a shepherd. And I just already have it in my mind, like if a person's too good to sweep a floor, they're not good enough to preach a sermon. If they're too good to hold a plunger, they can't hold a pulpit. Over the years, I've plunged many toilets in the church. I'm not saying that to say, you know, no, I'm just being honest. Like, I'm not too good to serve, and any leader should not be too good to serve. To get in the trenches, to get their hands dirty. A servant also must have the right attitude to serve. Because you can do the right thing for the wrong reasons. And here's two very important things that we must remember as servants: the who and the why. Everybody say who and why? The who. Who are we serving? We're serving Jesus. We're serve- ultimately, yeah, we serve each other. The body of Christ serves each other, but ultimately we are serving Jesus. And the why is because he gave his life for us. We love him because he first loved us. We serve him out of love. Right? The who and the why. We serve not for the attention, we serve because he is the King of kings and he's called us to serve him. And that should change your entire energy about serving. It should cause us to serve with dedication and with preparation, with diligence, and with heart and with the right motives and with the right attitude and with the right passion. Look, if you're not serving, looking at the who, sometimes we'll fall into serving out of obligation instead of adoration. We'll serve based off of performance and not a passion for Jesus. We'll serve because we have to instead of that we get to. And that one little word, swap, is very important. It's not that we have to serve, it's that we get to serve King Jesus, right? We get to come to Lake Church and serve, or, you know, with your family. You don't have to serve, you get to serve your family. You get to serve along other members of Lake Church. And a servant, a servant's attitude, you know, it's a powerful thing when you have a church full of servants. Because a church full of servants, they're not focused on their own way and doing things their own, you know, their own way. They are just focused on serving Jesus together for the mission of reaching people with the gospel. Lake Church exists to bring true freedom of Christ to everyone. That is our goal. We're serving Jesus to reach the world. And it's not that we have to, it's that we get to, and when we have an opportunity to serve, even if it's not for attention, and even if nobody even knows it, we we we should jump at the opportunity. By the way, we're gonna have to move some chairs out after service. It was a good place to interject that, wasn't it? We got some chairs, fellas. Some of y'all want to hang back. You get to serve. You don't have to. You get to. You get to. What does that mean? You get to serve Jesus by helping this church get ready for BBS tonight. We have to remember the who and we have to remember the why. We get to serve. And serving requires sacrifice. Sacrificing your time, your energy, your your efforts, your your you know, your preferences, your opinions, your desires. Serving requires sacrifice. A servant doesn't have to have things their own way. That's a boss, right? We are called to be servants, and servants work well with other servants. And what I love about this church is that we have so many great servants that work together. I mean, this week, look what we y'all did. I didn't do it. Y'all did, I can't take credit for it. I wasn't here. But y'all did it behind the scenes. I don't even know who I was here, but God does. He sees that. And that's all that matters. We have so many servants here serving behind the scenes that don't need the attention or the recognition. Some of it I see, and some of it I don't see, and some of it God sees. Listen, there's people here that are working behind the scenes, and I see your faithfulness and I see your service. And this church is blessed because of your servant's heart. People working with the kids, teaching, planning, organizing, preparing the building. Things like putting the pens in the back of the chairs, you know, it's it's the menial things. Taking sometimes I'll come to church and somebody's fixing something that I didn't even know was broken. The little things. God sees all of that. And he blesses, he will bless that. And he is pleased with that. And it's amazing for me to be a part of leading a church with so many servants. The more you serve, I'll end with this thought. We can have our uh song of invitation. The more you serve, listen, the more Jesus is revealed in your life. And I know it gets hard sometimes and you feel like giving up, and you feel like, you know, I just can't keep doing this. But the more you serve, the more you reveal Jesus. And I'm not just talking about at church, I'm talking about at home, I'm talking about everyday life. The more you give yourself to others, the more Jesus is revealed to others through you. I think of a story about a man named D.L. Moody. He was a great pastor, preacher, evangelist of the 1800s. And DL Moody, uh, he some of y'all might have heard of Moody Bible Institute. Like he was a pretty big deal back in the day. Uh he was a great man of God. DL Moody was hosting a conference in Massachusetts, and he was having some Europeans, pastors, and visitors coming to this conference, and he was hosting this conference. He had them all come and stay at this hotel, and at this time, in their in their culture, what they were used to was they would put their shoes outside of the hotel room, and the the the the people that worked at the hotel would clean their shoes. So this was his visitors, not DL Moody, but his visitors. They put their shoes out expecting someone to clean them. And D.L. Moody asked some of his students and people that worked for him, he's like, hey, can y'all shine these shoes? They're expecting these shoes to be shined. D'O Moody waited, nobody, nobody went. Everybody thought that was too, they were too good to shine shoes. So in the middle of the night, D'L Moody, this world-renowned pastor, preacher, evangelist, went. He, by the way, he used to be a shoe shiner. He didn't forget where he came from, just like David didn't forget where he came from. He went, he gathered up all these shoes of these men that he invited to this conference. He took them in his hotel room and he shined each one of their shoes and put them back out by their door. And the only reason people know that story is because one of D'L Moody's friends walked in the hotel room. He was like, What are you doing? D'AL Moody was not too good to shine shoes. Which is convicting, but not as convicting as our Savior was not too good to wash feet. And the more you humble yourself, the more you reveal Jesus to people, to the world. The more humility in your heart, the more people can see Jesus through your life. And we see that with David, he was a man after God's own heart. He humbled himself, he had a humble heart, and we see David the shepherd pointing to the better shepherd. I mean, you look at, you look at the life of David, he typifies, he foreshadows, he points forward to Jesus. David was overlooked by his family, just like Jesus was overlooked by his family. The Bible says he came to his own and his own received him not. David, born in Bethlehem, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. David was a shepherd who became king. Jesus was a shepherd who was also king. David was anointed by God. Jesus Christ, the word Christ actually means the anointed one. David was a servant that wasn't focused on promoting himself. The Bible says in Philippians 2, Jesus made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant. David wasn't too good to do the menial tasks. Jesus washed the disciples' feet. I'll give you one more, and there's a lot of them. David risked his life to save his sheep from a lion. Jesus gave his life to save his sheep from the roaring lion that seeks whom he may devour. Why was David great? Because his humility revealed the heart of God. God used him not because he was great, but because of his humility. And the question is this morning: what does God see in your heart? Not on our outward appearance. The Lord looks upon the heart. What does he see in our heart? The Bible says that if you exalt yourself, he will humble you. If you humble yourself, he will exalt you. And you say, you know, ask that question, what is in my heart? And if you see pride within your heart, you say, what do you do about it? I'll give it to you. Simple. And then we'll look more at it. But look, you look to Jesus. You see God for how great He is. You worship Him for His holiness and His beauty. How do you look? You can't manufacture humility. You can't make yourself humble, right? But when you look at how great Jesus is and what He did for you, how He gave His life for you, and how He is the Son of God, the King of Kings, came and died on a cross. When you spend some time looking at the cross, humility will be developed in your heart. When you grow in your relationship with Jesus, humility will replace pride. When you pray that prayer in Psalms 139, search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. See if there's any wicked way in me. See if there's any pride in me and lead me in the way everlasting. God will answer that and he will expose the pride. He will reveal sin and pride and ego and different things that are holding you back from revealing Jesus to this world. And you repent and you turn from it and you run to the cross. Look to Jesus. Look to Jesus. For he is worthy. Amen.