[SERMON] Crown or Cross? — the Humility That Changes Everything | Philippians 2

In this message from Heart o' the Lakes Church, we dive into Philippians 2 and the countercultural concept of humility. In a world that constantly tells us to climb higher, earn more, and build our own brand, Jesus modeled a completely different path — going down the ladder to serve. Through Paul's words and the example of Christ, we explore what it truly means to have the "mind of Christ": valuing others above ourselves, choosing obedience over pride, and understanding that real greatness runs through servanthood. Packed with practical, everyday examples and honest self-reflection, this message challenges us to stop chasing the crown and start carrying the cross.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Uh we are in a series now called uh Philippians, and we were last week we did Philippians 1. We talked about joy, and this week we're doing Philippians 2. But as we get into it, I want to ask some questions because we played a game today. I love games. But who likes losing? Raise your hand if you like losing. So okay. A couple people, all right. All right, so uh, well, all of you but one are losers today. So uh just so you know. So like uh who was the winner? Who was the winner today? Right there, okay. Congratulations. Who likes to win? Everybody? All right, okay. Uh yesterday we had a competition over the Huddle House. We're gonna play a trading card game. Cody won, just so you know. Uh I didn't lose, but I had the thing that's worse than loss. Does anybody know what that is? Nope, a tie. A tie. Because nobody wins and nobody loses. Both of both of them have to compromise in their unhappiness. So uh that's just the way it is. But who hates to tie? Right? Okay, so there's a lot of tying, tying is just I think it's worse than losing. I'd just rather lose. Um, but in life, we have winners and losers. It's part of our society. We are a competitive society, we compete. Uh, we have lots of sports. I don't know if you know this, but the Spurs are going to the championship game. If anybody falls basketball, who could care less about basketball? All right, that's all of us. Okay, all right. So moving on. This is football church. So, yeah. Yeah, so moving on. But when we talk about like Philippians 2, uh we have to think about like how we interact in the world, and we have to think about like the mind of Christ. Philippians 2 is really about the mind of Christ, who Christ is. And we when we look at the mind of Christ, the way that Jesus lived was different than the world at the time. And honestly, it's very different than the world of today because we don't operate always with the mind of Christ. And in our world, we have structure. We uh typically will call it the corporate ladder, right? Anyone here climb the corporate ladder? Okay, a few of you, like anybody, that means all of you are unemployed. That's great. So this is a late community, a lot of retired people. This is okay. Um if you have a job, you're climbing the corporate ladder, whether you like it or not. If you own a company, you're climbing the corporate ladder because if you own a company, your company grows, you just go higher up the ladder. Our structure in our society has a ladder much similar to the Roman society. Romans had slaves, then servants, then Romans, then veterans, then active military, then um senators, then you know, all the different people, and then there's the emperor. There is a structure in society. Our society has similar, and you're either going up the ladder or you're going down. But in we don't, nobody wants to go down the ladder. It's not like the American way is to be worse off every day than the day before, right? I want to be American and move to America so I can be poorer. Like, that is not the that's not what people strive to come to America for. And so we have this ladder system that exists in our world, in our society, and we're always pushed to go higher and higher and higher up the ladder in our jobs, in life, and society, with social media. I mean, does everyone just open up a TikTok account? Like, I hope I get zero followers. Anyone ever said that? No. Or Facebook. I know anti-TikTok people. What about Facebook? I love it when I lose friends, right? Anybody with her? So I think losing friends just makes more space for other friends. So that's what I think. So but in in life, it's one way, but the kingdom, the kingdom of God goes the other way. The kingdom of God, you go down the ladder before God raises you up the ladder. That's the difference. The mind of Christ is different. Where we think in the world, I gotta get ahead, the mind of Christ thinks I need to serve people so they can get ahead. It's different. And that's how Jesus went. Jesus actually went down the ladder. He humbled himself and then God glorified him and raised him up. And so ultimately, humility is what we're talking about today. And humility isn't thinking really less of yourself. That's what people think, oh, I just don't matter. No, we we all matter. Humility isn't thinking about you don't matter, it's really thinking about it's thinking less about yourself, right? And thinking about less often about yourself is really what it's about. So when we think about it, like I don't want to think about myself all the time. I want to try to think about how I can serve other people, how I can serve God better. Because that's the difference of humility. We get humility wrong all the time. Humility, think we have to be self-deprecating, we have to be terrible people. Oh, whoa, I'm so terrible. That's I'm humble. No, that's self-deprecation. Humility is just considering others more than yourself and thinking about yourself less often. And let's go to the Bible in Philippians 2 and we'll talk about this. In Philippians 2, remember the yellow part's yours to read out loud. It says, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourself. The Bible actually tells us how to be humble. The way that we're humble is we just value other people more, especially more than the world at large. The world at large is hey, build yourself up, take care of yourself, get the most money, have the best house, have the best retirement, build, build, build, build, build, build up the corporate ladder. What the Bible says is no, no, no. Life should be about serving others, caring about others, treating others is more significant. And so pride is the opposite humility, and pride really destroys what love builds. If you love like Christ with the mind of Christ, you're building others up. Pride actually destroys other people to raise yourself up. The Bible says in Proverbs, actually, in a lot of different places in Proverbs, it talks about pride. And let me see if you know this. Pride comes before the fall, pride becomes before destruction, the Bible says. It actually says pride become uh pride comes before a fall from grace, in another proverb. All right, and then wisdom leads to humility. That's the Bible makes it clear that we are proud, it actually leads to our downfall. And in today's modern world, you can see all the time, like on social media, on the internet, you have all these famous people, and then they they they're famous, they're known, and they do something bad. And then we all talk about how bad they were, and that you know, they were rich and they were famous. It happens in the church all the time. Pastors will get famous, and then all of a sudden they'll fall from grace because they'll get so proud and so full of themselves that they end up always just pushing to be more and more and greater and greater for themselves, and then they fall. It happens all the time. And then we're like, I don't know how I didn't see it coming, but we didn't see the multiple houses and the bigger cars and all this stuff, right? There's signs that we're really full of ourselves, but we don't pay attention. And so pride actually destroys what love is trying to build, which is relationships and building others up so that they know God. Philippians kind of continues on to tell us about this in verse 4. It says, Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interest of. It doesn't say in the Bible you can't have interest. You can have likes. We can have likes. I like playing games. Board games are my thing. So, and you can have things that you don't like. The Bible's not saying you can't enjoy your life. What it's saying is you need to look to the interest of others, other people and their interests matter. Now, I do things all the time that I don't like. I think it's just part of living life with humility that sometimes when you serve others, you care about what the people you care about care about. It's literally, this is in our culture of honor. And so I'll do things like golfing. I don't really like golfing. On a scale of one to ten, a ten being high, golf's like a two for me. So it's it's not really overly high. And it's mainly because when I'm golfing the whole time, I'm thinking of all the other things I could be doing and all the other things I could have spent that money on, like board games. So that I can play over and over again instead of one-time golfing. But I'm going golfing this week because I've had somebody from the other campus who's been saying, hey, would you go golfing? Would you go golfing? Would you go golfing? And finally, I'm like, yes, for my birthday, I will go golfing with you. It's the one thing I want to do on my birthday, but I'm gonna do it. Because ultimately, I'm building a relationship with this person, and if I want to show the value, this is the constant request, I can just say, Yeah. I could be a jerk and just be like, no, I don't go golfing, we can do my thing. Let's play a board game. Or I could just say, hey, you know, I'll go and do your thing. So now you can all invite me golfing, and I'll no, I'll say yes, right, if you ask me enough times. But but ultimately, that's what relationship, that's what caring about, what the people you care about care about. You that's why we literally have this in our culture of honor because it's about putting the interest of others above yourself. It doesn't mean that you always have to do what they want, it just means you take it into account. And I thought to myself, I looked at my schedule and I said I had no practical reason to say no to golfing, other than it was my birthday. And that I didn't think that was a good enough reason because then that's all about me. So I'm like, yeah, I can go golfing, let's do it. So um, so I'm gonna be golfing and it's gonna be great. I'm gonna love it. So I'm gonna I'm gonna kill it. It's gonna be awesome. I'm gonna be, I'm gonna, I've already I'm gonna practice this week. I'm gonna be good. But love, real love, notice is what selfishness overlooks. When you're so focused on yourself, you don't pay attention to other people's lives. You miss out, you don't understand what they like. Uh I played a card game yesterday that I I don't love. I enjoy it from time to time, but we have a lot of guys in our church that love it, so I've played it with them. And uh they know I don't really love it that much, so I remind them. Um, so yeah. But like ultimately, that's how like you you have a relationship. I even had this moment like yesterday when I was like, I don't know, I could just stay home and I could watch a show. I haven't done that in a long time. Uh or and Carver was leaving, I was like, I probably should go. I probably should go. I love these people, I should go. Like, these are conversations that you should have with yourself regularly. If you're trying to live in a way that is humble and that you raise other people up, you have to have this conversation with yourself in your head. And I do this, I'm like, I think I sit and talk to myself in my head. I'm like, I probably I don't I don't know if I should go. I should go, I don't want to go. Like, but that's the right thing to do because if I love people, I gotta care about what their interests are. That's how you have to live life. You have to start over, instead of overlooking people, you have to invest in people. Now I know it sounds probably prideful, I'm telling you these things. I'm not telling you these things to be prideful, I'm telling you these things because I have to, because I'm teaching you. That's the thing. So, but ultimately, we have to have these conversations where we understand to serve people is to understand who they are, what they like, what they enjoy, and say, what do I value more? My thing or their thing? And where is love in that? Philippians 2 continues on. And it says, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. So what Paul is saying is this this humility mindset, this mind of Christ, you gotta have this for yourself. If you want to be like Christ, you have to become a servant, you have to become humble. You've got to stop trying to climb the corporate ladder or the social ladder, and you just gotta serve people. Because Jesus didn't come to build up himself, he came to build up others. And so that they would one day know him and then make him known by going down, and then God will glorify us because this life is not the life. This is some of us live the kind of the modern American way is you only have how many lives? One life. People say all the time, well, I only got one life, so I gotta live it and enjoy it. You only got one life, right? I'm gonna buy a motorcycle. You only got one life. That's what people say. Like, you gotta have this thing. But like the truth is, if you're a Christian, you have two lives this life and the life to come. And that life lasts a lot longer. And so that little voice that in my head, it's not like it's not like the devil and the angel, it's just a voice of my internal monologue. But what I'm always thinking is I'm trying to build for the next life. And so, by valuing other people more, by serving other people more, I know that the rewards come in glory, not here. And so we have to be thinking in life that we're building toward that life, because the goal is not merely in this life to believe in Jesus. That's not the goal. Like, that is not my goal as a pastor, is not that just more people believe in Jesus. My goal as a pastor is that more people become like Jesus. That's the goal. That's why we do the things we do, that's why we have all the activities, that's why we do life together, because I hope that as we do ministry together, we are becoming more and more like Christ. Where we're all trying to go down the ladder to serve so that one day God will raise us up in glory together. That's the win. And that's the difference. There are a lot of people that exist just to tell people about Jesus. I want I want people to believe. Well, belief without change is just knowledge. Right? We know that the Bible is clear, the devil and the dominions believe, right? So, like, but they're not changed by Christ. We want to be changed by Christ to have his heart. Philippians continues on in verse 6. Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God, a thing to be grass. Jesus, he didn't come to be the king, to sit in the throne. He knew who he was, he knew he was God, right? He knew he was equal with God. He didn't come. He could have came on the planet, he could have said, like, listen, I'm here, I'm gonna be in Jerusalem, I'm gonna have a throne, I'm gonna reign the whole planet. It's gonna be mine because I'm God. It's not what he came to do, he came to serve, he came to show a different way, a way of humility that really leads to the heart of God and the mind of Christ. See, Jesus had every right to come and be the king, to stay on the throne. He did. He's already on the throne of heaven. He could have came here and just continued on, having us worship him. That's not what he did. He came to serve. Because the real love of God is a heart that serves, heart that loves. And then it says in Philippians 2 7 of him, it says, but emptying himself by taking the form of a being born in the likeness of men. Jesus came to serve. The Bible makes it clear, Paul makes it clear, Jesus came to serve. The king became a servant. He showed us the way, the example. If you want to love people more fully, you have to serve them. You have to serve them. That's what it looks like. If you want to be a better husband, be a servant to your spouse and your kids. If you want to be a better wife, be a better servant to your husband and be a better servant to your kids as a mom. If you want to be a better employee, uh, be a better servant. You want to be a better boss, serve your employees more. Like it is always like you want to be better, just serve more. You want to be a better friend, how about stop focusing on you and what you want in a friendship and focus on the other person and what they want in a friendship. It changes. Our King, Jesus Christ, came to show us the way. We go down the social ladder, we go down the corporate ladder to serve, and then God will glorify us and raise us up. So Philippians continues on to say, and being found in human form, he, Jesus, humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. There's this moment that Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane. He knows he's come to fulfill God's plan. It was known, I'm sure, well before Jesus showed up on earth. And he knew the whole time it was leading to the cross. And he gets in the Garden of Gethsemane, he says, Lord, Father, if you want to take this cup from me, I won't go through with it. But if you want me to go through with it, I'll be obedient. That is a hard prayer to pray. Knowing that the cross is only mere hours away. Beatings and torture, right? Being stabbed, having having all your open wounds, and then just throw like vinegar on you to just make you miserable. All that was coming. But Jesus was obedient to the point of death because he was called to live humbly and to serve humbly. And so for us, humility is choosing obedience when pride offers us another path. Pride would say, I'm not doing that. I'm not getting up at the cross, I'm not going to be beat. Let somebody else do it. I'm too good for that. God made me to be special. Right? Special people sit in a throne. They don't go to a cross. But that wasn't God's plan. And so humility for us is choosing obedience when pride tells us another path. And the world's always telling us to get ahead, always telling us to become more and greater and better and richer. That's what the world's telling us. Jesus is saying just become more of a servant, more of a servant, serve others, build others up. It's different. See, the cross, it was freely chosen by Jesus. He could have said no. He's God. The Bible tells us that Jesus is the creator. He's over the firstborn of creation. He was at creation and made it happen. That's what that means. He could have easily said, I'm not doing that. I'm not going to the cross. He didn't. Because he serves. Humbly. That's the power. If you want to have the mind of Christ, it changes how we live, how we interact. Philippians continues on. It says, Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. Because Jesus humbly carried out God's plan. His name is exalted above every name and will be for all eternity. That's power. You go down and serve so that God raises you up. We've been doing in my Bible study on Thursday mornings, we've been doing Ephesians, and we just talked about it in Ephesians 1 and 2. At the end of 1 and the beginning 2, where it says that Jesus is seated at the right hand of God when he ascended to glory, and then we are seated next to him at the right hand. That's power. That's when you're exalted to sit at the throne next to Christ. That's what's to come for humble servants who exalt others and build others up. See, God exalts what pride would ignore. That's God wants to exalt us up into the heavenly places. The Bible says it. Paul tells us in Philippians, he tells us in Ephesians, he tells us that there's this promise is true and it's real, it's profound. But if you are too prideful, if it's all about you, you're gonna miss out. It's gotta be about Jesus. This is gonna be a big verse. I gotta move out of the way for this one. I think it's gonna be big. Here we go. All right. Philippians continues on at the end of the section says, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and in earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. The reason Jesus came humbly is so that everybody would be able to bow and know and confess Him as Lord. The path that we need to go is we humbly serve so people see Jesus. And when they see that Jesus in you, they'll want that Jesus in you. And they'll bow before Jesus and they'll confess him as King and it'll transform them. That's the plan. That's why we serve. Now, when we we all know, we all know proud people, right? We might say that you know somebody that's really proud and boastful in life, right? You now you got a picture in your head. And we usually say those people are proud jerks. That's almost always the attached, right? Oh, yeah, he's a really proud jerk, right? We don't we don't say humble jerk. Have you ever said humble jerk? That's a really humble jerk. Anybody ever said that in life? No. And so we normally say that being proud makes someone a jerk. You don't like that person, you don't like their pride. And that's the difference between humble. When I do, I've done a lot of funerals over the last 28 years. When someone who is a very proud person dies, the funeral is not fun. I usually don't want to do it. I'm like, nah, I don't, I don't, you just get somebody else. Because people are gonna come and they're not gonna be happy, they're gonna have issues, there's gonna be tension because the person was a jerk. There's gonna be frustration, there's probably gonna be infighting between family and friends, there's probably not gonna be a lot of people show up. And you don't do an open mic where people can come up and say things because they might not say nice things, right? Or the stories won't be about the person, they'll be about something else because they really didn't like the person because the person was a jerk. Now, on the flip side, someone who lives with humility, the funeral is completely different. They didn't they didn't make life about themselves, but people usually show up in droves. And when you open a mic that allows people to talk, they tell stories and stories of life change and how that person impacted them because you speak more in volumes in your humility than you ever do in your pride. Yeah, you can get a lot of stuff in life. We live in a world that's fallen and broken. You can be a proud jerk and you can get ahead in life. But in the end, people aren't gonna show up for you, they show up for the humble people. Now, when I did this funeral a few weeks back, I have told you a couple times about Nancy Jean Patterson, uh, this person I didn't know, but she lived a very humble life. She wasn't rich and famous, she was just a good person. And her kids told me that nah, there's probably not gonna be that many people showed up. A lot of people showed up for a person who they didn't expect to have any, like, like she's outlived everybody, like no one's gonna show up. A lot of people showed up because she was a humble servant of Jesus, and people came to show up to support her family and tell them about her and what they saw. It's powerful, it's profound. If she'd have been a proud jerk at the age she was, it probably would have been like the family, just there, fighting over her stuff. It was different because that's the difference between living with humility as a servant and living as a proud person. Because the path to greatness really runs through humility. If you want to be great, you gotta be a servant, you gotta serve others. And everybody in life wants the crown. We all want to win, but nobody wants the cross. How many of you wake up every day and you're like, oh Lord, I just need to have a great day, and I need to get that promotion, or I need to get ahead, so you can get all my stuff done. And just like, I don't, my body don't my body ache. It's all about you, right? How many of you wake up every day and your prayer is, Lord, I want to be beaten for you, right? I want to be tortured for you. I want to go out and serve so much that I give everything I have, blood, sweat, and tears for you, for your glory. Anybody make that prayer every day? No, right? It's different. Because what we want is we want the prayers about making our life as easy as possible so we can get ahead when it should be, Lord, how can I serve you better? How can I carry that cross instead of go for the crown? So I'm gonna give you some practical ways that humility looks. So here's how humility looks practically in your everyday life, right? Some of these might be a little silly, but I think it gives you a practical way. Humility is saying you were right. Right? Knowing when you're wrong, saying you were right. Oh, yeah, you're right. I'm wrong there. That's humility. Recognizing, like, you don't dig your heels in. I mean, I talk to people all the time. People dig their heels in all the time when they're wrong, just because they don't want to admit they're right. How about saying you're right? How about this one? Unload the dishwasher without announcing it. Who's guilty of this? Who's guilty? Come on. You some liars in here. So I know I'm guilty of this one, times. If I if I do the dishwasher, I'm gonna dance around the house letting you know. So I'm just like, did you see what I did? And Patty is usually like, she'll tell you. She's like, Yes, I saw because I noticed, because I would put twice as many in there than you did. And so so now we have to do twice as many loads. This is a real thing, right, Patty? Yep, yeah. And I'm dancing around the kitchen just saying, Oh, I did the dishes. It's awesome. Um, so now who wants to admit you do it too? Okay, still lying, all right. So, whatever. How about this one? How about stacking the chairs after an event? That's that's humble. Here's what people normally do, because I know, because I see you. Um, end of the event's coming. You can see it's it's kind of winding down, and then you start people seeing people lean over. They lean over and like, if we get out of here quick, we won't have to stack chairs. So like I've seen it. Here's how here's what younger people do. That's you older people. Younger people, it's usually one of them grabs the phone, does this, the other one takes their phone and looks at what they said, looks at them, and goes, and they get up and leave. I know, I could, I know names. I can start calling them out. I know who you are. Been there. Now, so here's what I do because I'm a pastor, people are always watching. I I know when that time comes, I get up and I start putting tables and chairs up. Now, normally I get end up cutting a conversation about five, ten, fifteen minutes in while other people are still doing it, but like I want to be that person that serves. Now, I'm not telling you this like because I'm trying to be a prideful jerk. I'm just saying, these are the things that I have this internal monologue, which I could I could text Patty, I could be like, hey, babe, we gotta go. It's time, right? Or I could just be like, I'm I'm here to humbly serve. We're in this together. Like, how can we, if we all do it, it goes faster, right? Those are things that we do, but they're silly examples, but this is what real humility looks like lived out. Not just the big stuff, it's the everyday stuff. How about this one? Letting someone merge in traffic on a busy road, right? No, I've got this lane, right? Or how about this one? Letting someone merge in a parking structure at 11 o'clock after a really long concert when you have a drive home and you're on the fifth floor of the parking structure, and there's a million cars letting them merge. Anyone want to admit you struggle with that one? Any spouses want to sell your husband out right now? Yeah. Yeah, I've been there and you did not let them merge, right? Or this is the worst one. I I've been to some churches and uh that are really large churches. This is a problem at churches when they let out. Now we don't have merging really here on Sundays that much, but there are some churches that it becomes brutal in the parking lot after who's getting the lunch first, and that you can just watch and like somebody's just sitting there as five, six, seven, ten cars go by and nobody's letting them merge. It's like, oh, good people today, right? Uh good service. It happens. What about doing something nice without posting it on social media, right? How about this one? Yeah, I took a sandwich to the guy. You know, there's a there's a there's a guy down look on Jefferson Corner, and he's got a sign that he needs food. He's a veteran. I took him a sandwich. Somebody ought to go pray for him. Like, why do we need to know that you took him a sandwich? Like, we drive by there, we know, right? But we're in a society where oh, I gotta post that in social media, I gotta make a TikTok video about so people know how good I am, right? Let's look at me, look at him, here he is. We do it all the time. How about admitting to your kids when you're wrong? I try to work on this one and do this one, so that's that's tough, right? Or this one. How about apologizing first? Apologizing first, even when you know you didn't do anything wrong. Just because you know that that person has a pride issue and you're never gonna move forward if you don't do something to show what humility looks like. And I added this one, it's not in the list. How about this one though? This is a real life example. How about putting the grocery carts back in the grocery cart bin before you leave the store? Anybody want to say you got a problem with that? Oh, you guys, I'm telling you what. Some of you need to talk to the Lord today. So you there's you do it. So here's like this was a conversation we had for years. I'm like, I like I told Patty this year ago, I don't want to not have, I don't want someone to lose their job because the grocery cart doesn't get put back away, like it gets put back away, because the machines, because they got all these machines now. So I asked, there's a person at our church that worked at Menards whose job was putting the carts away. I said, hey, if we don't put the carts away, does that help keep your job or not? He's like, no, I get paid regardless. Put it in the receptacle. So and so, because it's easier for them to bring the little machine out and hook them all up and put it away. So we all think we're good at that. What about 12 o'clock at night when no one's looking and you're busy and you're tired, you just want to go home, and it's all the way over there, you gotta put the carts. Who takes those back? Okay, okay, okay. So that's a lot less taking them back. So, right, we all have these moments where you're humble when people aren't watching and when they are. If you're only humble when people are watching, it's a pride thing. You're actually falsely humble. Right? You're trying to look pious, but you're not really humble. It's when people aren't watching that really show and reveal if you're humble or not. That's the difference. And if you really want to be more humble in life, you've got to say, I just need to change me so that no matter what I get credit for, I'm just living to serve people like my king. And so, what does this mean for you? I think for us as a church, the surest sign that you're humble is that you're not trying to convince everyone that you are. If you've got to tell people you're humble all the time, you're not humble. Like you're not humble. The moment you say that you're humble, you're not humble. And that's that's the problem, right? If I'm just living humble, it just shows. And so you have to put other people ahead of yourself. We talked about this with joy last week. I do think the path to joy is Jesus, then others, then you. The problem is it's totally flipped. It's Yodge in society. It's you, then others, then Jesus. That's how our world works. Or just you, you, you, right? All the time. We have to flip it. If you want, if you want to glorify God, you have to put Jesus first, then you got to put other people first and exalt them and build them up, and then you. And that means you have to change how you spend your time, what you do, right? How you how you act around people. Like all of that matters if you really want to serve Jesus and be humble, if you want to have the mind of Christ. Jesus served people, regardless of their money, their monetary value, your status in life. He he served lepers and poor people just as much as he did the Pharisees and the kings. He he didn't care, he just loved and served. And so, what we have to do in life, I think that we have to trade our entitlement as a society for gratitude for other people and for Jesus. And when you have more gratitude, you have a heart of a servant, you're thankful, you're appreciative, and you serve. That's the difference. And the more you become like Jesus, the less your life really becomes about you. If your life becomes about you, your interest, your things all the time. Now the Bible is clear, you can have interest. It just your interest can't be above everybody else's all the time. That's pride. You can have interest, you can have hobbies, you can have things. But is it Jesus, then others, then you, or is it you, then others, or Jesus, or the next one? You have to think about it. And this is something I would just tell you as a as a follower of Jesus, I'm always working on this because our world pushes you, you, you all the time. Go up the ladder, go up the ladder, go up the ladder, get ahead. And so you always have to be working on this. And you always have to be self-reflecting, and you have to have daily conversations with yourself. How am I doing? Am I humble? Am I really too care too much about me and what I want right now? And then when it when you do, you have to flip it. And this can be in relationally, it can be different relationships. You could have a pride issue in one relationship and not another. And if you're only humble when people are watching, it's not really humble, it's just false piety. And so I think for all of us, this is a struggle. I think we we are humans living in 2026 America. We have a culture of pride and building ourselves up. And so I think the thing that we need to do most is we need to build Jesus up and then others and then ourselves. And if you struggle with this, just be honest, we all do. Like we all do. The best thing to do is hold each other accountable to it. All right, if you know you struggle with this, tell somebody you struggle with this and say, hey, can you hold me accountable to making life more about me? I spent 45 minutes in a conversation this week uh with somebody, and like in the entire conversation, I didn't say anything, and it was just about them the whole time. The whole time. And like I was just, I think it went on for another 45 minutes after that, too. Like it was just long. I had somebody after the first first service say, Hey, we had a conversation this week, was it me? And I was like, No, it wasn't you. But like that, if your conversations are all about you, you got a pride issue. You got a pride issue. You might think of yourself as a humble person, but how many times did you actually ask the other person how they're doing, how they're feeling, what their life's about, what their situation is? It's it's a change, right? The more you become like Jesus, the less your life becomes about you. That's powerful. It's profound, and it's the way that we become like Jesus. If you struggle with this, here's here's how I can encourage you, can help you. If you know you're struggling with the pride and humility issue, we can pray for you as a church on the back of your connection card, just right cross. That means you're struggling with your trying to achieve the crown every day when you need to be going after the cross. You need to you need to not become king, you need to become servant like Jesus. And what we'll do for you is we'll pray for you. We're not gonna bug you, we're not gonna call you, we'll just pray for you. Um, there probably should be a lot of us that say, I struggle. I struggle with humility issue in my life, because a lot of us do. And you may not today, but you might tomorrow, because that's that's the reality of it. This is something that can swing really drastically from day to day, hour to hour. You might have a few hours you're doing good with humility, and a few hours you struggle with building yourself up more than everybody else. And so we really got to tackle this together. So that's you and your struggle with the right cross on your card. But let's pray that we can be a church that's humble, as we are humble as individuals that are servants that point people back to Jesus by raising and exalting Jesus and others before ourselves. Let's let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we just pray that we can we can be a people, we can be a church. The Lord, we not only look to the cross, but we we strive to carry the cross daily in our life. We stop going after the crown, we stop falling for the trappings of society, where we just become prideful and boastful, trying to build ourselves up. But Lord, in humility, we we understand our place. It's serving you, it's serving others, and it's doing it for your glory. Lord, we just pray that we can look forward to eternity, the life to come, and we recognize that's where the crown comes. And this life, it's the cross. Serving like Christ, with a mind of Christ and a heart of Christ, and loving people. We pray we can we can build each other up, we can serve each other more, be faithful in our marriages and our homes, in our parenting, and our community, our schools, and our workplaces, and beyond, to show people what it looks like to humbly serve as Jesus Christ so that he can be known and that other people will be able to know him as well. Lord, we just pray all this and pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.