Friend or Foe? - James 4:4-7

A message by Tyler Sanborn on James 4:4-7

South Valley Student Ministry is a ministry of Compass Bible Church South Valley located in Kuna, ID. 

For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley, please visit compassbiblesv.org.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We're still in James, so please turn your Bibles to James chapter 4. We're going to be in verses 4 through 7 this evening. And as you're turning there, I'd like to draw your attention to a term that is that is bitter, that stings, and this term is betrayal. It has to do with disloyalty. In betrayal, there's damaged connections, broken unions or broken friendships. And the opposite of disloyal is, of course, loyal. Giving or showing firm and constant support or allegiance to a person or an institution or a cause. And if you're thinking, well, what does allegiance mean? Loyalty or commitment to a person, to an individual, to a group, to a cause. Now, when we think about this word betrayal, we think about maybe spies or treason or faithlessness. Our text is going to draw our attention to a kind of betrayal that has to do with a marriage relationship. With a marriage relationship. But that's not where I'm going to start right now. I'd like to draw your attention to one of my favorite movies as a child in the year 1994. I was five years old. I was five years old, and my parents took me to watch the number one selling movie of the entire year. Of the entire year. Now, why was this movie my favorite movie? Why was it the best selling, the most popular, the most successful movie of that year? Well, you might say it's a storyline, you might say it's the score, you might say it's the vocal songs. No matter how you sliced it, this movie didn't miss. And if your Disney trivia is strong, you would know that this is a top 10 Disney movie of all time. The Lion King. The Lion King is the movie that I am speaking about, and I'd like to zoom in on a specific moment of, you guessed it, of betrayal. And if you're rewinding the tape in your mind, you're reflecting, you're thinking, lions everywhere. Lions are everywhere. The whole story's built around lions. It's the Lion King. And specifically, we have Simba, we have Scar, and we have Mufasa now. Skar Mufasa. Mufasa. Say it again, say it again, say it again. Yeah. Mufasa and Scar are brothers, and Simba is is the is the prince, if you will. He's next to be king after his father. Now, there's this wicked plot that Scar devises. He's going to betray his own brother to take his brother's throne. The plan is, let's get these hyena fellows around and scare these wildebeests into the gorge. I'm gonna leave Simba there, tell him that dad has a surprise for him. All the while, all the while, this is not true. And Scar's intent is to kill both Simba and Mufasa, leaving him the only one to be king. And the last words that Scar says to his brother, Mufasa puts Simba up on a dead tree in the middle of this gorge, and Mufasa's climbing the hillside, trying to get up and out of the gorge, and he's calling out to his brother, help me, brother, help me, help me. And Scar digs his claws into his brother's hands, piercing them, and he says, This long live the king, and flings him down into the gorge. Betrayal. Betrayal between brothers. His actions betrayed his words. With his words, he would say, Yeah, I support you, brother. You're the king, you're the leader. You got this. But in his heart, he he wanted nothing to do with the words that he was saying. So in our text today, James is gonna draw our attention to spiritual betrayal, specifically adultery. And we're gonna be talking about this relationship between a husband and a wife and how God, through James, is gonna make this connection between the people of Israel and specifically Christians in this letter, and spiritual adultery. He takes sin very seriously, God does, and even allows, even allows for a covenant to be broken between two married people. This is how serious this sin is. Even among Christians, God allows for divorce to be okay, approved of, if adultery has taken place. That's how serious adultery is. That's how serious this is. Let's take our eyes to the text now. Let's take our eyes to James chapter 4, starting in verse 4. You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us? But he gives more grace. Therefore, it says, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. He will flee from you. This is this is intense. This is serious. James is getting in someone's face and pointing his finger in their chest. Do you know what you're doing? Do you know what you're doing? Making friends with these people around you that don't honor me? And you're welcoming them then into your homes? You're adopting their practices. Don't you know what's going on? And this word, this word enmity is a very strong word. The state or feeling of being actively opposed, or listen to this, hostile to someone or something. James is saying, if you're friends with the world, you're in hot, you're you're in hostility, you're being hostile towards God. You're being hostile towards him, you're an enemy of him. You have these certain intents in you that you don't really see what's going on. It's opposed to God. You're against him when you're befriending the world. This is intense. James is speaking primarily to believers, but in any church context, like we were talking about last week, there's a blend. There's a mixture of believers and unbelievers, mostly believers, but he's appealing and drawing his attention to the people that are born again in Jerusalem. He's calling out to these believers and saying, Stop. You don't know what you're doing. You don't know. You don't know what you're doing. Now, adultery did occur in the early church, and it still occurs in the church today. We're not condoning it, we're not approving of it, but we're talking about it because it's in the text today. James is speaking about people who are throwing themselves in harm's way, befriending the world. And he's calling them adulterous people. Adulterous people. Now, that the act of adultery is a physical interaction. It is a betrayal of trust, a betrayal of faithfulness within a marriage. We see adultery spoken about in the Ten Commandments, and God is completely and utterly against adultery. He hates it. He hates it. And throughout the Old Testament, the people of Israel are called an adulterous people. Why? God has called his people out of Exodus. He has saved them from slavery. He has said, I will be your God and you will be my people. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to love you. We're in this together. I'm not going after any other people. I'm not saying the Egyptians are my people, the Canaanites are my people, the uh the uh the Philistines are my people. No. He's not saying any of these people are his people. Only one people, just the people of Israel. God is loyal, he is faithful. The people of Israel are adopting worship and false gods. They're making gods for themselves. Moses goes up the mountain on Mount Sinai, he comes down, and they are worshiping a golden calf. They left Israel, they left Egypt, rather. The people of Israel left Egypt, but there were still some like lingering Egyptian practices still with them. Egypt had a multitude of gods. They worshiped all kinds of different deities. And the people of Israel, from Abram onward, God announces himself and says, I am who I am. I am the one true God. I am the only God. Any other gods that are out there, I know not one. And God is passionate about the love and affection that he has with his people and vice versa. He doesn't want this blending to happen. He doesn't want to be one of the gods that are worshipped. He is the only God. He wants faithfulness from his people. And James is saying, you guys, you guys are being adulterous. You guys are blending in. You guys are bringing in the practices of Egypt. You're bringing in the practices from the surrounding nations. And your passions are a problem. The way that you are trying to find comfort, the way that you're trying to find love and affection, and the different ways that you're trying to feel fulfilled outside of me, God is a jealous God. And that's not a bad thing. We think about ourselves, we like to say, oh, don't be jelly. Don't be a hater. None of that. No. When we think about jealousy in the context of human beings, you and I, we think that's typically like our bad. That's a sinful thing. If we're being jealous, don't be jealous. But when God is speaking about the jealousy that he has for his people, that's a completely different thing. In Exodus chapter 20, verses 5 and 6, God tells his people, You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God. Does God have any flaws, any sin, any imperfections? No, he says, I'm a jealous God. That's what Yahweh is saying to his people. I'm a jealous God. And you might be thinking, bow down to who? Who is the them? Who is what's going on? Verses three and four of the previous verses are talking about false gods. The false gods that were left behind in Egypt. James is nodding back to Moses and the Ten Commandments. They're in the wilderness. They're out of slavery, but they're still tempted. There's still memories of the old days that they're that they're latching on to. And as a Christian today, as a Christian today, we're not immune from that same temptation. If you are a Christian today, if you have the Spirit of God dwelling within you, there's still the tendrils, if you will, if you're thinking about like an octopus or a sea creature, there's still the tendrils that might try to still grap and wrap onto you and pull you back. The temptation is still there to turn back. It's there more often than we're willing to admit. But you might be in a situation right now where you're even thinking, like, relationships, different gods, like what is Tyler talking about? You might be in a situation now where you are currently assessing the friendships and the relationships that you have. Are they approving? Is God gonna approve of them or not? That that reminds me to my my middle school and high school days. I most of my friends would say, I believe in God. I know, yeah, I know that his way is better than my way. I know that we're here, we're not a product of evolution, but it just takes one one friendship, one relationship, one crack for the enemy to have his way. 1 Corinthians 15, 33 says, Don't be deceived. Bad company ruins good morals. The power of one person, one individual to corrupt you, to ruin your relationship, to get in between you and God is very much a reality. It just takes one one crack, one leak in a ship to sink the whole thing. Over time. Over time, the water flows in, it's sinking a little bit lower into the water. Water keeps flowing in, it's still sinking, still sinking, still sinking. Before you know it, you're looking for the life raft, you're looking for the life jacket. You're no longer floating, you're treading water. Don't be deceived. Bad company corrupts, ruins good morals. Have you ever thought about your relationships? Have you ever assessed them? Good or bad? Friendship, friendship with the friend down the street. Is he is he more of a positive influence in my life, pointing me to God, or is he is he distracting me, pulling me away from God? Is she gonna point me to the truth, or is she gonna try to try to spread gossip and try to make me believe something else is going on? I want to encourage you, take take an assessment, take an evaluation of what's going on in your relationship. God is jealous. It's important to do this because God is jealous over your affections. He is jealous. Let's write this down for point number one. Seek no friendship with the world. Seek none. Solomon, as you know, the wisest man ever, in all of his wisdom, he didn't see it to be a great distraction or great danger to welcome in the religions, the practices, the passions of the surrounding nations. He had a wild amount of wives, a wild amount. And with each one that that he married, a little bit, a little bit more water, a little bit more water, a little bit more water, a little bit more water, and all of a sudden his life was upside down. His life was upside down. He was creating altars in high places to worship false gods, to please his wives. A dangerous and destructive situation that he found himself in. God drew his people out from Egypt so that way they can sacrifice and worship to him. Not the other gods of Egypt, but him alone. He said in Exodus 6, 6 through 8, this is Moses, say therefore to the people of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God. And you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give Abraham to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord. God's made his promises. They forgot who God is. Now, if you if you think about what it would take to boil a frog, if you had some kind of weird desire to eat a frog, you wouldn't boil the water first and then go find a frog and just like drop them in, that frog would be out of there real quick. It would immediately sense the danger and try to swim and leap out of there. But if you put a frog in its normal temperature water and then just turn on the flame real low, and then maybe five to ten minutes later, turn up a little more, and then ten minutes later up a little more and a little more and a little more. And all of a sudden, that frog is so comfortable in that spa that now he's being cooked in it. That's the danger of making friendship with the world. Do you want to get cooked by the world? No. Do you want to get cooked by the world? You don't want to get yeah, that that phrase, don't get cooked. He got he got cooked. That was unintentional. Um there's a real serious danger though, in all seriousness. The little compromises that you make over time, over time, over time, over time, that stack can be so tall that you will be buried under it. Don't be foolish. Don't make friends with the world. Don't be making friends, adopting the practices of friends that would not be honoring the Lord. Run from it. Run away. Even believers can be tempted to fall in this kind of temptation. You might been walking with the Lord for a long time. But there's still this temptation to fall into self-centeredness. This temptation to make allegiances and alliances with people that are opposed to God for your benefit. It might be in the workplace, it might be to gain favor by friends, by people in the workplace, by people in your neighborhood, people in your HOA, people that are that you compete with. Don't do it. Don't. Absolutely not. Now, for this for the believer, the genuine believer that does fall into this temptation, there's hope for you. If you are saved and you do fall into this temptation, the grace that God has given you, that has saved you, is not depleted. It's not all gone. Just like this water bottle that my man here is drinking, that's not a representation of God's grace. This is a never-ending fount of living water that you're tapped into if you're a believer. If you know the Lord, if you know the Lord, you can turn on that faucet and his mercy and his grace just keep on flowing. They just keep going. You're never going to pour out enough water to deplete God's grace and mercy in your life. You just won't. Because he's an eternal God and because he is always good all the time, like you can't exhaust him. You can't outwork him. You can't out give the giver. So when you were thinking about the ways that that you struggle, the way that you're tempted, every time that you're tempted, God is waiting there, believer. God is waiting there for you to say, God, I just confessed to you I sinned again. Please forgive me. The grace that and the mercy that God gives you is available to you. I hope you see that. God gives more grace. And this isn't this isn't an invitation to like, hey, keep sinning just to see how much grace God has for you. No. This isn't this this is a temptation, like, well, if I make, if I make bad decisions, make bad friendships, like, well, God's just gonna forgive me anyway. This is like the lie that you could start believing in your own head. Well, God's just gonna forgive me anyway. So, like, what's what's the point of doing the right thing? God's just gonna forgive me. Like, uh, saying that thing, thinking these things, looking at these things, joking in these ways. Ah, God's, you know, I know it's I know it's not the best, but God's gonna forgive me. No, don't keep sinning that that just because you think that God's gonna continue to forgive you. You might be deceiving yourself. You might. God has purchased you, Christian, with his blood. And this covenant, this covenant that God has made through his blood is unwavering. He's faithful to the end. If he's true, if you're truly God's child, he will continue to refine you and refine you and refine you and refine you to the day that you see him face to face. That's his promise to you. No one can snatch you out of God's hand if you are truly his child. He's his love, his faithfulness is unhindered. He will not withdraw from you. The good work that he started in salvation, he will continue to the end. God is faithful. He willingly took the cross to die, to suffer, to serve, to love. He did this so that people would no longer be slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness. He gives grace for every situation. He doesn't save us just to leave us where we are. And let us just figure it out from there. No, he's continuing to pour out his favor on us. Grace, you could chop it up this way. Unmerited favor. We didn't earn it. Unmerit. Think about merit badges. Like I was talking about my friend, my Boy Scout, my Eagle Scout friend in high school. He would do different things to earn different awards. We don't get salvation as a Christian by how good you are, by how well you obey your parents, by the diligence and faithfulness that you show God, as if you're going to seek his approval. No, you're his enemy to begin with. God has enmity with you because you're following before Christ. If this is you, you are following the Prince of the power of the air. You are an enemy of God before he saves you. You're against him. And God's grace that we don't deserve at salvation, he saves his enemy. He saves those who are actively against him. Actively against him. Unmerited favor. He shows you. He blesses you. He loves you when you don't deserve it. There's nothing that you did to earn it. And that grace continues on. This benevolent, all-loving, all-powerful, all-kind God is good in all of his ways. In all of his ways. I was talking about this relationship between grace and sin earlier. We don't go about sinning, just anticipating God's forgiveness. That's wrong. We don't need to do that. But in every temptation, in every situation that you might be tempted to sin, God has provided a way for escape in every situation. That is a grace of God. That is a grace of God. Let's write this down for point number two. Depend on God's grace for rescue. Depend on God's grace for rescue. Over the course of your life, you're going to be tempted to worship, to bow down to in different ways, not physically, but in your heart to be worshiping other things other than God. You might be tempted. You might even fall into being becoming a friend in certain ways to the world. Confess that to God. Confess when you when you step off the path, and God will forgive you. God is jealous. He wants you to follow him, to love him with everything that you have. And the life that we live, the motivations, the things that we choose to do, because he has saved his people, he wants us to go in a direction that is best for us, that would bring him honor and bring him glory. God is going to give us grace along the way to please him, to overcome temptation. But guys, it's important to think about this. If you have this attitude about you that you're like, oh, I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing pretty good. I'm obeying like 80%, like B minus Christian, better than those Christians over there. If you're thinking, if you're looking at yourself and you're like, huh, I'm doing all right. I'm doing pretty good. Danger, you're about to fall flat on your face. Watch out. You've heard this said probably by your parents, your grandparents. Pride comes before the what? Before the fall. If you think you're doing all right in your own strength and you're not depending humbly on the Lord Jesus Christ and on his spirit to please him, you're gonna fail. You're gonna fall flat on your face. And there's no there's no uh there's no doubt here as we look. God opposes the proud, but he gives what? He gives grace to the humble. God, I'm so weak, I can't do this on my own. I need you. God, all I can think about is sinful things. God, help purify my mind. All I help me think about the things that will be pleasing to you. I can't get out of my own way. I can't. God, I need your help. Bring me friends that are gonna point me in the right direction. I hope that's a prayer of yours. God, help me find some friends that are gonna help me grow in my relationship with you. God, will you show me something in your word today? Help me to love your word even more today than I did yesterday. God, humble me. Help me to expose my weaknesses. Pray that to God. Expose the areas of sinfulness in my life. God, help me to be a humble person. I want to please you. God, I want to be in line to receive your grace, but I need to be humble. If there's any any fragment of pride in your life where you think that you got it, you're in the danger zone. God is against you. God opposes the proud, but gives grace. He gives grace to the humble. Proverbs 3, 34 says this. We don't do it for the blessings. That's that's an outcome of pursuing God, of being humble. I hope you're not in this game like I just want to be humble because then I get more and more and more good stuff. And it's all for me. Yes. I get more grace. Yeah, stack it up, Lord. Stack it up, stack it up, stack it up. Give it to me. Gimme, gimme.

unknown 28:13

No.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

None of that. None of that. Humbly follow the Savior. His way is best. He's gonna lead you through tough times. He's gonna lead you through them. If you read Psalm 23, I would just encourage you to read that day after day. Read Psalm 23 and pray through Psalm 23. Help help God. God, help me to be humble as I read Psalm 23. It's gonna help you not to be having this entitlementality. God, all I have in you is all that I need. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Wherever season you are, you can look at God's faithfulness like I'm here for a reason. God is with me. He's gonna make you lie down. As long as you're dependent on him in humility, he's gonna put you exactly where you need to be in green pastures. He's gonna lead you by still waters. He's gonna restore you day after day after day after day after day. When you're feeling weary, he's gonna give you enough to get through. He's faithful. Be humble. Humble yourself before God, and his grace will continue to flow. Let's write this down for point number three. Submit to God in humility. Rank yourself under him and say, God, like I don't got it on my own. I can't do it. I need you. I need you to help me get through this day. In the easiest and best days and the most challenging of days, that should be your refrain. That should be the thing that you call out to God for day after day after day. God, I need you. God, without you, I'm lost. God is terrifying out there. I need you to protect me. God, help me not to sin. Lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil. If you're struggling with temptation, you should be praying, God, help me to identify the areas that I'm prone to being tempted and help me run from them. Help me to sprint in the opposite direction. The safest and most powerful place for the Christian to be is found submitted to Christ in humility. It's not going to be about how smart you are. It's not going to be how talented you are. It's not going to be about what kind of connections you have, what kind of relationship or skills that you have, what gifts you've been given. It's going to be about like all I have is Christ. All I have is what I need in Jesus. He's giving me, He's given me everything that I could possibly need, and He proved it. How did He prove it? He died to save you. That's the proof. He's going to give you everything that you need to live a life that pleases him. And it's in this book. Humble yourself and read it. God, show me show me which way I should go. I'm lost without you. I can't figure this out on my own. I don't know what job I'm going to take after I graduate. I don't know what people ask you, so what do you want to do with your life? Well, I don't know. God, help me to see what kind of strengths and skills I have. God, point me in the right direction. Put some people in my path. Help me to make some good connections. God, I want to submit to you. I don't want to sin. Help me to resist the enemy. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. That's for our next sermon after Easter. But that's a great reminder for us. If you feel like God is distant from you, if you feel like you're like, I don't know what I'm not feeling it. Draw near to him. He's waiting to talk to you. He wants to talk to you. Are you going to listen to him? Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Stand firm in the scriptures. Stand firm. Resist the enemy. Say, no, not today. I have a new master, Satan. I'm no longer yours. I no longer serve you. Get going. I have the Spirit of God living inside of me. I have a new master. The Good Shepherd. He loves me. You hated me. That's what you could tell the tempter. You hated me. God loves me. You led me into sin and sin and sin and destruction. I was on a death march to hell, but God saved me, and now I'm His. God leads me into paths of righteousness for His name's sake. Aim to please the Savior. Humble yourself and every day aim to please the Savior. That's your aim. How can I honor you today? How can I say, not my desires, not my pursuits, not my passions, not the things that would serve myself. I serve my Savior. I serve the risen Lamb. That should be the call of your heart. You wake up, there's a lot going on today. I'm probably going to get overwhelmed. I'm probably going to have to do some things I don't want to do. God, help me to submit to my parents. God help me to just say yes with joy. Help me to see beyond what would immediately please me. Help me to see what you're doing in the long term, making me more into the image of Christ. God, my parents are trying to sharpen me and prepare me for a life that is dangerous, that is a spiritual battlefield. See your parents as tools that God is using to prepare you for to be the man or the woman that you are going to be that's going to please the Lord. These small group leaders, they care a lot about you. They wouldn't be here. They wouldn't be here on a Sunday evening. Most of these people are waking up wildly early before the sun is up to be at church, to make it all happen. We're a church in a box. We load up trailers and we unpack them, we just back and forth, back and forth. Load, unload, load, unload, load, unload. They do it with joy. You should see them in the mornings. You should see them. They care about you. They want you to honor Christ. Here's the call to action this evening. Submit to God in humility and find joy in doing so. Remind yourself the things that you're going to face in life, the hard things, the spiritual battles. Submit them to God. God, I need your help. We sung about it. God, the battle belongs to you. Every fear I lay at your feet. I have a lot of things that I don't have answers to. It makes me worry sometimes. I'm choosing anxiety. I'm choosing worry. I'm choosing to say, uh, I don't know. I don't know how you're going to be faithful this time, God. I don't know how you're going to come through. I don't know. I don't know how you're going to provide friends for me. All my friends are up north. How are God? What are you going to do for me, God? No, that's not the attitude. God, I trust you. I trust you to continually provide for my every need. For your every need. Every temptation, everything that comes to your mind that you would be, you'd be tempted or persuaded to not trust God in. Remember the cross. Remember the lengths that Christ took to purchase his own with his blood. Remember the cross. We're looking to Good Friday this week. We're looking to resurrection Sunday. All the sin and temptation that you guys are facing that you will cave into this week, Jesus can say, I've been there, I've done that, I understand, it's hard. And he perfectly, flawlessly lived a life that was pleasing to his father in heaven. He did not sin once. Every moment of his life, he was pleasing his father. He was tempted in every single way that you were tempted and will be tempted and are being tempted now. In every way he did not sin. You might know this. You're like, Tyler, I know, I know. Think about it. We fall into temptation on a daily basis. In our mind, in our hearts. We do. We have a Savior that is a flawless, a perfect sacrifice. He laid his life down to purchase you. We have no needs if we trust in him fully. He meets our every need. Every need to flee, temptation, he has provided for you. Think about Joseph. You think about like strength and courage. He's fleeing from Potiphar's wife. Hey, come and come and sleep with me. Come and sleep with me. What? No, I'm out of here. Gone. Bye. Soon, he's out. Every God has provided, has provided and will provide every way of escape for you. Every way of escape. Are you willing to submit to him and say, like, I know I have these desires, these urges, these passions in me, but your way is better, and I see the exit. I see the exit signs. I know which way to go. God help me to make a choice that is going to please you and not myself. God has a plan for you. Be humble. If you're not, God's against you. Don't be proud. Don't be thinking, mom and dad, you are so wildly wrong. It's unbelievable. Proud heart, God's against you. Debate me, I dare you. God's against you. Your parents are trying to show you the way of the Savior. Your small group leaders are trying to draw your attention to the faithfulness and goodness of God. I pray that you see that. I pray that you see God working through the people that He has placed instrumentally into your life. Submit to God, humble yourself, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Be firm. Stand firm in your faith. You might be young in your faith. You might not have a faith. And you might be thinking, like, well, I keep losing. Well, God, you need the Spirit of God in you. You need to be born again so that way you can resist the devil. Because if you don't have the Spirit of God in you, of course you're going to keep falling into temptation. There's no doubt you will. There's no doubt. We need God's spirit. You need to be born again. If not, you're going to continue to struggle with the passions that are at war within you. You're going to continue to make friends with the world, and you're going to continue to fail to please God. If today you're thinking about, like, man, I don't know how to please God. Well, you might start with the saying, God, I want to know you. Help me to understand you. Help me to believe what you're saying is true. All this talk about following God, submitting God, doing good works, being wise, your mouth is afire, all these things. Your tongue is afire. All these things. Like, yeah, it's starting to make sense. God, help me to believe this. Give me a firm conviction that is unshakable. Help me to believe that what this Bible says is true about you. God, help me to have faith to believe that you died for me. Start there. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, you are so good. You're so kind to us. You're so patient with us. God help us to be humble people. God, whatever it takes, should expose our pride so that it could be just eradicated from our lives. God, help these students to see their need for Christ. Help them to see the faithfulness and love of the Saviors. We look to Good Friday and Easter services. God, help them to see your faithfulness. The great lengths that you took to purchase your sons and daughters with your blood. Help them to see that. God, help them to see how jealous that you you are for them, for them to be your own. Help them to see your grace day by day. Help them to say no to the pursuits that this world would offer that lead to destruction. We trust you to do that, God. We can't convince them. I can't convince them, but your your word is active and it can. So God, through your Spirit, help help them to see your kindness, help them to see your faithfulness. Help them to see the beauty of the gospel this evening. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.