The Church of Me

What if the greatest threat to the church isn't false teaching but putting ourselves first?

In one the shortest books of the Bible, the Apostle John introduces us to a man named Diotrephes. We don't know much about him, but one sentence says a lot about him: he loved to be first. That desire didn't just affect him, it damaged relationships, divided the church, and pushed people away from Christ.

In this message from 3 John 9-11, Pastor Jason Barnett explores how pride quietly turns the Church of Christ into the Church of Me. We'll discover why the real issue isn't simply church leadership, but the throne of the human heart. When self sits on the throne, Jesus becomes a tool, the church becomes a means, and people become obstacles.

Whether you've been hurt by church conflict, struggle with pride, or simply want to keep Jesus at the center of your life, this message offers both honest truth and the hope of the gospel.

Jesus didn't come to build our kingdoms, He came to invite us to into His.

Linkoln shares his story on why he started coming to Ravenna Church of the Nazarene and shares why you should consider doing the same.

Ravenna Church of the Nazarene
530 Main Street, Ravenna, KY 40472

Transcript

Pastor Jason 0:00

Jesus doesn't compete for first place in his church. He already on it. I'm Pastor Jason Barnett, and this is the First Pastor of my podcast. Welcome to the Dirt Pastor M podcast. I'm Pastor Jason Martin, aka the Dirt Path Pastor, and I am glad you're here today. But let me ask you a question. Have you ever been hurt by someone in the church who seemed more interested in protecting their position than pointing people to Jesus? Or maybe you've caught yourself wanting things your way a little more than Christ's way. Well, this sermon is for both of us. A tiny letter tucked near the end of the New Testament. The Apostle John introduced us to a man named Diotrophes. And we don't know much about him, but we know enough to recognize him. And his greatest problem wasn't bad theology, it was that he loved being first. And if we're not careful, that same temptation can quietly take root in our hearts. Today we're going to ask one simple but searching question Who sits on the throne? Because when Jesus is first, the church becomes a place of welcome, grace, and life. But when self takes its place, everything begins to revolve around us. So whether you're driving down the road, sitting on your porch, or taking a walk, I'm thankful you you're even inviting me along for a little while. And let's open God's word together and discover what it means to move from the Church of Me to the Church of Jesus. As you're turning there, um I want you to imagine for a second that you're scrolling through Facebook or TikTok. And as you're doing that, as you're doing your scrolling, you come across your own obituary.

unknown 3:00

Right?

Pastor Jason 3:00

You come across your own obituary as you're scrolling through. And the obituary is telling the world that you're dead. But there's a problem with that, right? You're not dead because you're scrolling through Facebook and TikTok and you found it. So someone's made a mistake somewhere. I don't know if you know this or not, but that's actually happened before. Now it didn't happen, you know, I'm sure it's happened on Facebook and TikTok too, but it hasn't happened. This story I'm gonna tell you didn't happen back when Facebook and TikTok exist, because social media during this time period was the newspaper. If you wanted to find out what's happening in the world in your town and the local gossip, even my hometown newspaper was called the Daily Reporter. We called it the Daily Distorted because you didn't know what was true, what was not. But the newspaper, right? That was the old school social media. Well, back there was a man by the name of Alfred Nobel, who lived back in the late 1800s. And he uh he had he was unfortunate he had that happen to him. Someone posted his obituary, and he was alive to read it. Now, if you may recognize that name, Alfred Nobel, a little bit, if not for who the person is, but for that last part, that word Nobel, right? As in the Nobel Prize. But before during this time period, Alfred Nobel was not known for those prizes because those prizes didn't exist yet. Does anybody know what Alfred Nobel was known for? Dynamite, that's right. He was a Swedish chemist, and he invented dynamite. Now, when he invented the dynamite, right, his his goal for inventing that was he saw the conditions that the miners were enduring, he saw the how dangerous construction was. He thought with this invention of dynamite, it's actually gonna make construction and mining a lot safer.

unknown 5:06

Right?

Pastor Jason 5:07

And that was his objective. And not only safer, it make it more efficient, right? A little bit of dynamite goes a lot faster than a guy with a pickaxe and a shovel. So he that was his objective. But we all know that's not what happened, is it? The world government saw that, and they're like, ah, you know, that's that's that's good for something else. Let's take that and convert it into military weaponry and watch how efficient it becomes in wartime. So nations did that. They took the dynamite he invented for good reasons, and they took it and they used it for unintended reasons. And that's what actually Nobel became known for. He became known for a guy that invented dynamite that was an instrument of war that killed people. So fast forward he in 1888 he gets this newspaper with his obituary in it. And when he reads the obituary, it doesn't say Alfred Nobel died, it says the merchant of death has died. Yeah, it wasn't his it wasn't his intended purpose to make Guyanite to kill people, but he certainly benefited from the fact that people were buying it. He made his wealth and fortune off the dynamite. But when he read that, when he read that note, when he read his own obituary, it stopped him. Can you imagine that though? Reading that in a newspaper about yourself? That's how people saw you? Yeah, he knew his intentions, but he also knew others found different uses from his intentions. And so it shook him. Because for the first time, Nobel saw himself through someone else's eyes. And it forced him to answer a question that every one of us must eventually face, and that's how will I be remembered? And it doesn't matter whether you're 18 or 80, that question eventually finds its way to all of us. We wonder, will my life matter? How will people remember me? Now, again, in his verses we're gonna look at that, Apostle John, he's gonna give us a picture of a man who could kind of be a mirror for us. In just a few verses, John's gonna summarize this man's life. And as we read it, we should all ask ourselves if the Holy Spirit were to summarize our life in one sentence, what would he say? So we're gonna look at 3 John today, and there's no chapters in 3 John, so we're gonna look at verses 9 through 11. So if your your 3 John has more than one chapter, I would ask questions of your Bible publisher. Okay. So 3 John chapter 9, reading verses 9 through 11. It says, I wrote something to the church, but Diotrophes, who likes to put himself first, doesn't welcome us. Because of this, if I come, I will bring up what he has done, making unjustified and wicked accusations against us. And as if that were not enough, he not only refuses to welcome the brothers and sisters, but stops those who wants to do so and even throws them out of the church. Dear friend, don't imitate what is bad, but what is good. Whoever practices what is good belongs to God. And whoever practices what is bad has not seen God. This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Alright, so again, 3 John is a letter written by the Apostle John. This is the same Apostle John who wrote 1 and 2 John, it's the same Apostle John who wrote the book of Revelation, it's the same Apostle John who wrote the Gospel of John. So he John was a busy writer, but not early in his life, because he wrote the Gospel of John much later than the other Gospels. Not sure where that fits in the writing of the letters, but anyway. This particular letter is a personal message from John to a guy named Gaius. And in this letter, he's kind of praising Gaius because Gaius is doing a really good job of showing hospitality. And as he's talking about Gaius, he kind of talks about a couple other people too. And there's another, so Gaius is a person, he's like, you should imitate Gaius. That's a person we should look up to as believers. And at the end of this letter, he's going to talk about a guy by the name of Demetrius. Demetrius is another guy that we should, as Christians, look to imitate. Because John tells Gaius, hey, imitate Gaius. Or he tells Gaius, don't I hold him, he stopped. John tells Gaius to imitate Demetrius, right? Because he's a good example of what it means to live out Christian hospitality. But in between those two, John stops and talks about a guy by the name of Diotrophes. And your Bible might have a headline above those verses, because I know my not my common English Bible, but my new English translation has one. And it's simply labeled Diotrophys the troublemaker. That's his name, and that according to that that that book or that leverage in the Bible. Well, our passage is warning, is a warning centered on diotrophies. And now we're not warned about diotrophies because he's a false teacher. John makes no mention of the doctrine he's teaching or the things that he's saying. Right? It's not focused on that. This isn't a doctrinal issue that's at play here. He's not talking about a guy who doesn't know the answers. This is something entirely different. And while false doctrines and false teachers are dangerous to the church, there's something else that's dangerous, and oftentimes more so dangerous. And Diotrephes is going to kind of show us that. So here we're looking at these verses here. So in verse 9, it begins with I write something or I wrote something to the church, but Diotrophes, who lifes it with himself first, doesn't welcome us. That might be hard for us to believe. But John is the apostle of Jesus Christ, right? He's one of Jesus' closest disciples, right? Like there's the 12, and then there within the 12, there were the three, right? Peter, James, and John. Peter, James, and John got to experience some things that the other disciples did not. Like the Mount of Transfiguration, as one example. And the apostles have authority, right? And so like when they write letters to the church, it's like if you know that Dr. Wyatt, RDS, writes something to us. It's important. We should pay attention to it. But more so because this is this is John, who was right there with Jesus. But John right, it says John writes a letter intending it for the church, and it doesn't make it to the church because Diotrophes gets in the way. Doesn't say how he got in the way, doesn't say why he got in the way, just says, Well, I wrote you this letter, but Diotris Diotrophes, who loves to be first, wouldn't welcome us. Now we know this, we don't know much about Diotropes, and we don't know much about Gaius either or Demetrius, other than what John tells us here. But we know we can know this. Diotrophes, he is somewhat of importance in that church that John is writing to. He is someone of significant influence and responsibility. And notice what John doesn't say. He doesn't say that Diotropes is first, but he says that Diotropes likes to be first. Now, in this culture, in this time period, which really isn't that much different than ours, in this honor and shame culture, it was all about if you if you want to be important and invalued, you then you had to portray that you were important and valued. It's all about your reputation, it was all about competing with other people to show that you were smarter, stronger, faster, whatever it was. It was a competition. And so the atrophies is very much a product of his culture. But here he's brought that element into the church. And so rather than the church focused on what it should be focused on, the atrophies is focused on himself. Matter of fact, in his in his place of church leadership, he is competing for a spot that doesn't belong to him. He's trying, it says he's trying, he loves to be first. He's trying to be first in a place where he was never meant to be first. And so that's a problem. So verse, so that's verse nine. Verse nine introduces us to this guy. And because the atrophies is all about himself, we see the impact of his influence on the church, right? And it's a shipwreck. So John, an apostle, tries to send a letter, and he doesn't just not, he doesn't just block the letter, he doesn't welcome John's missionary team, which may have included John himself. He's like, You can't come here, this is my church. It tells us he rejects apostolic authority. Not only that, it says he doesn't show hospitality and he prevents others from doing that. Right? When other people show up to church and then other those people are trying to welcome them in, they're like, no, they can't come here. And if they those people try to defend it, they threw them out of the church. That'd be like if David was standing at the back door and Tracy was trying to come in, they'd be like, Tracy, you can't come in here. Your wife's a cub stand, you gotta go somewhere else. And then if if Patty tried to defend Sarah and Tracy, and then David looked at him and be like, get out, you can't come here if you're gonna defend them. That's what's going on. Okay, let me clarify. That's what's going on in the past. That's not what's going on in our church, okay? There's no beef with a secret beef between David and going behind the scenes here, okay? This is just hypotheticals. Now, again, to be honest, if I again if this let's say if I was your pastor, I came, I kicked you out of our church. You just be like, okay, either you wouldn't, you would make a choice to either not go to church or you would just drive down River Drive here, pick one of the other 15 churches on the between here and out of town, right? There's there's other churches you could go to. Well, during this time period, each city probably only had one church. And it wasn't a big building like this one with a big sign that says Rab Naz. Well it says Riven Church of Nazarene down here in the corner, right? They didn't have the big sign. If you put a big sign, the government would find you, the Jews would find you and burn it down. Matter of fact, the first public church building that's recorded wasn't built to the 290, yeah, the year 290. That's when they got the actual first official church building, like we know church buildings. Up until that point, churches met in houses. There are about 20 to 40 people gathering together to meet in a house. That meant when people gathered to worship, like the host, whoever was the owner of the house or the host of the house, that they put people up for the night. They took care of the people that came into the church. So it says the atrophies kicked people out for showing hospitality. He kicked him out of the church, the only church that was around for probably 20, 30 miles. They didn't have any place else to go worship. You were cut off from the Christian community. And that was all because of this fruit of Diotrophies' life, right? And the fruit of Diotrophy's life is because he had this attitude of love, I love to be first. I love to be the most important. I love to be at the front of the line. I I love for it to be all about me. And John's gonna tell Gaius and us, he says, Don't imitate what is bad but what is good. Whoever practices what is good belongs to God. Whoever practices what is bad has not seen God. So notice in that verse 11, John is talking about the atrophies as an example, but notice he doesn't name theotropies there. He just simply says, Gaius, tree's known by its fruit. If you want to be known as someone that that belongs to God and loves God, then you're gonna do good things. That means you're gonna show hospitality to anybody who comes to this building. When you receive a letter from the apostles, you're going to read the letter. Not because we're the apostles, but because you love Jesus. We love hearing what God wants to say. But if you do what's bad, that's a fruit of something else. And if your fruit is bad, then you don't belong to God. Now again, we don't know much about Diocrates, Gaius, or except for again what's in these verses. But I'll be honest, I think Diocrates is someone we've all met and drink before. Alright? Yes, you don't like I'm not the home danger, okay? But we've all met those people, alright, where it's like we're here to worship Jesus, but it's not for them, it's not about Jesus. You see, Gaia B's big problem is he he put himself on the throne. He put himself as the center of the tension of the church. Again, all dependent on him is all because of him and all those things. And again, we've met people like that, they are more interested in their church of me than the church of Christ. And then when self sits on the throne, when self is allowed to run the church, Jesus becomes a tool, and the church becomes a means. And then that also means if Jesus becomes a tool and the church is the means, then that means people become an obstacle. So in order to keep your spot of to be first at the center of the church, that means you have to run off any person that comes along that's a threat to what you what your church represents. That's what Diotrephes was doing. Again, I don't think he I don't think I don't think he was that was that maybe necessarily his attention. Probably not even what he thought about himself, but that when John is reading this situation, that's what John sees. He sees somebody who instead of bringing Jesus at the center of the church has put himself at the center of the church. John doesn't say anything about his doctrine, right? There's no doctrinal critique, and we know John will correct doctrine. He does that in the other two letters. He's correcting doctrine of the Gnostics in those two. But here in John, 3rd John, he's not doing that. He's he's addressing hospitality, he's addressing who's at the center of the church. Again, diantrophy is with faithful in attendance. He haven't been there every Sunday. If you're gonna trust me, if you're gonna try and stand at the door and guard date people, who comes in and who doesn't. You better be there every Sunday, because I'm one Sunday or another that I wanted to be under. He was faithful. You could probably win the San Sunday school class and answer all the questions this morning. But here's the thing about the autrophies. Jesus only mattered to him when it supported his agenda. He wasn't following Jesus, he was using Jesus. He wasn't following Jesus and helping others get to the church. He was using Jesus, treating the church as his own personal. This is my pedestal, this is where I'm important. What you need. The church was his kingdom, it was a fortress for his protection, a church of me. And anyone who objected was removed. But here's the thing about the church. The church is not supposed to be a fortress. There's no protective gates to keep people out. Because it's not a fortress. The church is a field hospital for the sick, the broken, and the dying. The church is it's supposed to be focused on search and rescue, not self-preservation. It's the church of Jesus Christ, not the church of me. See, the temptation for us is to be like the Otrepans and try and make it about us. We talk about Jesus dying on the cross, our focus a lot of times is on the fact that he died on the cross for me. And that's important, that's true. But Jesus died on the cross to save everyone. That's a bigger picture. His blood isn't sufficient for just you. That's important that it is. He can flush out any saying that you have, but it's sufficient not just for you, not just for me, but for every single person that's willing to come and be cleansed. When our practices, preferences matter more than anything else. When it matters more that we get to keep things away we can't always have them. Because we're comfortable with that, because we like it better. When that becomes our focus, then it stops being the church of Jesus and it starts becoming the church of me. I've said this to you a hundred times. I love contemporary songs, I love the hymns. I can actually care less what we sing in the service. Not because I don't think music, I think that music's important. I think music matters. I think Davies sometimes can preach a sermon that I can't preach. I think Mel and Sarah do that too. At the end of the day, that's what it's about for me. It's about who in this pew is gonna hear Jesus better and clearer today because of the way we sing, not about what it sounds like. Same with if it goes about I'm coming to church because I'm gonna I'm gonna look good and I want to look fancy. I definitely don't look that today. Thanks, Fidel. That's making the church about me. I could care less. You know why I wear a shooting tie? It's not so I look good, it's because people can look at me and say, oh, that's the pastor. Otherwise, I wouldn't have worn this jacket today because it looks ridiculous with this Spider-Man's room. What we do is instead of it being a funeral house, we can turn the church into a fortress. And again, that fortress is used to protect our traditions and the things that matter most to us. What matters most to Jesus is people. When my reputation matters more than truth, their ministry or ministry becomes mine, right? No one else can have it. That is evidence of I love to be first. I'm gonna pick on Nina. I've been picking on everybody, I'm gonna pick on Nina a little bit. Naya does a fantastic job teaching the adult class on for Sunday school, right? I don't think I think that all wait, I don't think that's a reflection on you. But we should be raising somebody up behind Nina. Yes, it's her class, she teaches it right now, but in the end, it's Jesus' class. And I'm sure she doesn't want to do it forever. Not that she said otherwise, but I'm just using as an example. We should be raising up somebody behind her. But sometimes what that happens is we get so afraid of raising up somebody else. Well, it's like if I raise them up, what does that mean for me? You know what's scary? I'm raising up my own wife to be a preacher. She's good. I taught her everything I know, and she still does the opposite, that's better. I can't be sinsy at this point and say, hey, you can't preach her because I'm afraid you're a brother, but it's not about that. It's I think if you can help them hear Jesus because you say it differently than I do, by all means I'm getting out of the way. In fact, when I grew up on Sunday, there were when I was in the youth group, there were 10 of us called to ministry. And our lead pastor just turned the service over to us on Sunday nights. And he would rotate us through on Sunday nights on who gotta preach. Because he, the Lord knows he didn't want to prepare another sermon for that day. Well, I kill myself when I don't have to. I got these young guys that need an opportunity. So he read that's how he raised us. He didn't help us a whole lot either. I told him I was called to preach, he said, All right, this is the date you're preaching on. That was it. No pointers, no, he's like, don't figure it out. Now, when I went to him with questions, he answered the questions. That's how it racing me up. That's what we gotta be, Bill. We can get so protective of our ministry, the way we're doing things. That instead of it being the church of me, or the church of Jesus becomes the church of me. That lecture, we just had our first youth group event out at Sarah and Tracy's, right? Trying to relaunch switchpoint in the team ministry. And then there's five of them, and those five teams out of there, the very the thing I told them is this is not my youth group. I'm almost 40 years old, I'm not in the youth group anymore. This is your youth group. I'm here to teach you about Jesus and help you along the way. But your youth group will grow as you grow. That's raising people up. That's saying, instead of saying, This is the church of me, this is the church of Jesus. See, the issue really isn't about wanting to be first. It's because wanting to be first reveals something else about us. When our desire is trying to be better than everybody else, when our desire is trying to be first place in everything, what we're what it actually reveals about our heart is who sits on the throne. Right? Who sits on the throne of our heart? If it's self sitting on the throne of our heart, then that's the tree that that's the tree that our life is built on. That's the tree that's that's what our roots are based in. It's based on self. When our put Jesus on the throne, it's different. Because when we have a tree based on ourselves and we're seated on the throne, we're gonna we are not good on our own. We're all born in sin, born simple. We sin, and then we live in a world that's simple. We're really good at it. What we're not good at is producing good. Any good that we produce while we're living in sin is not because of us, because of God's grace at work in us. God's blessing us, even though we haven't earned it or deserved it. So if we try to base our Christian life and even how we worship God and how we come to church based on us, if it's rooted in us, all it's going to produce is bad fruit. But if we take ourselves off the throne, we put Jesus on the throne where he belongs. We put Jesus in that first place, when we put him at the center, that produces something else in us. Both in us personally and in us collectively as a church. You see, Jesus is everything Diotropes was not.

unknown 31:27

Right?

Pastor Jason 31:27

Diotrophes love to be first. Our call to worship verse said today that Jesus was the first of all things, right? Jesus was there at the beginning. Jesus has every right to claim crown and power and glory, but what does Jesus do? Jesus humbled himself. Diotrophes, he pushed people away. What did Jesus do? Jesus pulled people in and welcomed the sinners. Diotrophes was trying to protect his position. Jesus laid down his life. Forgive positions, Jesus, like you can take my life, take it, let it be. That could almost be a song. This is not a competition who's first. I'm not trying to be the best pastor in the history of your church. That's not my objective. I'm sure I'm pretty low on that list. But I don't care. Because it's not about that, it's about Jesus. Right? The competition for who is first in the church was settled at the cross. The church is built around the crucified and risen Christ. And a healthy church is not one with the best music, it's not one with the most money or the greatest programs. The healthiest church is one where Jesus is first. When Jesus is first, that makes it healthy. So kind of cycling back to the beginning, and hopefully y'all still remember the story from the beginning to Albert Nobel, right? So we're still remembering your create. Okay, good. I don't want to. Alright. Think about asking yourself this. If your obituary was published tomorrow, what would it say? Would it be focused on your career and your accomplishments? Would it be focused on all the ways that you did good things? Or would it be focused on your opinions or things like that? Or will our lives point people to Jesus? Or which way you say you know what? That person loved Jesus so much. That's one of my favorite parts. Is getting to see when I come across those lines where it says this person loved Jesus. This person was a member of that church. So again, that newspaper that talked about in the beginning, that that published the wrong obituary. I didn't tell you this, but the obituary that they were supposed to publish was for Albert DeMill's brother. His brother's the one that died, that they posted about him. So he reads that he reads that that news article, that obituary by himself that calls him the merchant of death. And even though his intention wasn't to make money off all those things, he did. And this shook him up. This shook him to the point. He's like, I don't want to be remembered as somebody that helped destroy human life. I don't want to be known as somebody that was known for being selfish and in it for me and letting the rest of the world burn because of me. So when he before he died, Albert Nobel donated all of his money, most of his fortune, to establishing the Nobel Prizes. Because he wanted to celebrate what people did with their lives. How their lives contributed to the rest of the world, how they made people's lives better, or inspired them, or encouraged them. And so now when we hear that word, that last name of Nobel, we don't think about this guy that made dynamite. We just had to pause and think about that one for a minute. Only Tracy wanted the answer out. They don't we don't think about too much. You know what we think about when we think about Albert Nobel, we hear that word Nobel. We think about the people who have fought for peace, who have done things in the name of protecting human life. We think about people who contributed amazing things to science. We might think about that one episode of the Big Bang Theory. We might think about all these other things of good things that people have done to contribute to the world. We don't think about that merchant of death. You know why? Because Albert Nobel decided I don't want my story to be about the merchant of death. I want it to be about how my life was used to impact somebody else's life. And we as a church, we have something greater. We have something greater than Albert Nobel's money. We have something better than just little awards, right? What we have is we have the good news of Jesus Christ. And Jesus isn't just interested in reshaping our legacy. What Jesus can do is come in and give us a new heart. I told you our heart is broken and messed up, right? And we gotta take self off the throne and put Jesus on it. That's what Jesus does. He comes in and he takes our old heart that's made of stone, and he replaces it with a heart breathed of the life of God, of a heart born of the Spirit. That's how he changes us. And in that heart, Jesus on the throne of it. So if you recognize a little diotrophysian yourself, confess it to Jesus. Have you been more concerned about your own influence in your own kingdom than Jesus in his kingdom? Confess it to Jesus. I'm up at the end of August. It'll mark eight years for the Dirt Past Sermon Podcast. Anyone know what the Dirt Past Sermon Podcast is? Some of you do, some you don't. Well every week I I preach these sermons and I go put them on the line on this podcast. I don't do it because I'm trying to be famous or trying to put someone I do because Jesus told me I want to try and reach one more person. Find one more person using this. When I first started, I was uh church much smaller than us, actually. I was like, God, why do you want me to do this for me? Okay, I'll trust you. Now here I am getting ready to enter the eighth year of it. At about 10,000 downloads. From about 1,400 different cities. In 128 different countries. Not about me. I'm not excited about it for me. I could care less. I'm excited that Jesus was heard someplace else that I've never been before. Somebody might have been saved. I'm never gonna hear the story. Jesus did. Seriously, Jesus is standing at the door of the church of me. And he's not there to paint the walls. He's not interested in fixing it up or painting it or redoing the carpet. He's not interested in moving the furniture or updating the music. Jesus at the church of me. You know what Jesus is doing? He's standing at the front door and he's holding a sign. You know what the sign says? Closed. He's here to come and close the church of me. Because he already has a church. He already has a church and it belongs to him. And it's not it's not church built on pride, it's not church built on personalities, it's not even birth built on the Burger King slogan. It's built on his blood. On his blood that was shed on the cross, and it's built on the life he gave so people like me and you can be made new. So right now, Jesus is here to ask each one of us a question. Who is first? You or him? Here's the thing. Because if if I have to be first, that's my go-to. If I have to be first, Jesus isn't. Jesus is here this morning to close the church of me and build his church. How will you respond? Friend, before we move on and wrap up this show, I want to leave you with a question from today's passage. And I can't answer it for you, you have to answer it for yourself. And it's who has first placed? Not who should have first placed, not who used to have first placed. Right now, if you answer honestly, who sits on the throne of your heart? As we've talked about diotrophes, maybe the Holy Spirit has quietly whispered, there's a little bit of him in you. Perhaps you've been protecting your own kingdom, instead of building Christ. Maybe you've been holding too tightly to your preferences, your reputation, your comfort or your control. The good news is that Jesus doesn't come to shame you. He comes to set you free. Today, you can close the church of me. You don't have to keep living as though everything revolves around you. You don't have to carry the burden of sitting on a throne you were never created to occupy. Jesus already has a church, and he invites you to be a part of it. Not by earning your place, but by trusting him, the one who gave his life for you. So whoever you are, I want I want to encourage you to pray honestly. Confess to whatever the Holy Spirit has brought to your mind and ask Jesus to take his rightful place again. Surrender your heart, your home, your ministry, your plans, everything to him. Let's pray together. Lord, you alone are worthy of first place. Forgive us for the times we've tried to sit on a throne that belongs only to you. Forgive us for making life about our kingdom instead of yours. Where pride has taken root, replace it with humility. Where selfishness has grown, teach us to love. And where we've been protecting ourselves instead of serving others, reshape our hearts. Thank you for being the kind of king who didn't cling to power but humbled yourself, who welcomed sinners and laid down your life on the cross so that we could be made new. Today we surrender the church of me. Rule in our hearts, ruin our homes, rule in our churches. May everything we do point people not to us, but to you. We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen. While today's message encouraged you, challenged you, would you do me a favor? Share this episode with a friend. Share it with a family member, coworker, someone in your church. You never know how God might use one simple chair to encourage someone who needs to hear that Jesus belongs on the throne. If you haven't already, I'd love for you to subscribe to the Nerd Pastor and Podcast. That way you'll never miss a new episode as we continue walking through God's word together. If you'd like to go a step further, would you consider supporting the podcast? 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And remember this as you go into your week work, work week, or the week, whatever. Jesus never asks you to build your own kingdom. He simply invites you to follow him as the king. And the more we let him have first place, the more freedom, joy, and purpose we discovered. Until next time, grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus. Thank you for listening to this episode of the podcast.