In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of humbling oneself before God. He shares a story about a woman who sought guidance from various pastors and read numerous books but still struggled with humility. The speaker suggests that instead of focusing on how to humble oneself, one should focus on the holiness and glory of God. He references the book of Revelation and highlights the significance of recognizing God's creation and redemption in order to truly humble oneself.

I saw him one time. He read through the dictionary. He read it through. Though, that explains Son of Douglas. Not all of him, but some of him. I understand most of his words. Mine will be simpler. Let's pray again. Father, we're here in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that you'd open our hearts to see you and respond accordingly. In Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen. We've had, the last three sessions, a real good presentation of pride and what to do about it. And I think very well done. I think this has been the best conference so far that I've been in. And we've been in every one. I think maybe I missed one someplace else. Not someplace else, but the last 20 some years. I'm going to also give a lot of scripture like Kim did yesterday. I guess we all did. We can look at 1 Corinthians chapter 8. Now about food sacrificed to idols. We know that we all possess knowledge. We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. True or false? True. Knowledge puffs up. Love builds up. In the book of Proverbs, knowledge and wisdom are very closely associated. Because the fear of the Lord brings knowledge, the fear of the Lord brings wisdom. But in today's society, in the culture today, is knowledge the same as wisdom? In other words, can you have people with much knowledge and no wisdom? Or if they have the wisdom, it's the wisdom that is not... The Bible speaks of two types of wisdom. The Bible speaks of two types of wisdom. One is, well they're both in, James chapter 3, verse 13. Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from heaven, but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure, then peace-loving, considered, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness. The wisdom that comes from above and the wisdom that is of the devil. And the wisdom that comes from above is shown in deeds done in humility. Deeds done in humility. Wisdom is humility. Knowledge puffs up. Knowledge puffs up. Wisdom is humility. There is a... I don't want to ramble. I wrote some notes today, which is I think a mistake. Because when I look at notes, I lose my place. But anyhow, I will take a quick glance back. There is a difference between... I just want to define that. Wisdom is humility. Knowledge puffs up. In Ephesians chapter 4, we have a statement of a state. Wisdom chapter 4, verse 2. Be completely humble. Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another enough. Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit to the bond of peace. Be completely humble. That doesn't make any sense to most of us. We can recite the word, be completely humble. How complete is that? Well, it's like God is light, there is no darkness at all. Completely humble means no pride at all. Now this doesn't say do humble. This says be humble. Do you know the difference between being and doing? How many of us are primary... Your man, I already know the answer. Raise your hand. How many of you are more doers than beers? Well, a couple. Now, most of you guys are doers. People come to me and say, what did I do? What did I do? I said, if I told you, you'd do it wrong. Even though you did it word for word for what I said. Because it wouldn't come out of what you are. Whatever you did, it wouldn't come out of what you are. And you are what you are isn't right. God is love. Then it says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. God did out of what he is. God is love and he did out of what he is. We also do out of what we are. Now, Doug hit very strongly on Manasseh last night. Manasseh was humbled by God. Actually, humiliated by God. Here's this great king who had a hook in his nose and shackles. And do you think they gave him a ride to Babylon? He walked to Babylon. He walked to Babylon. Do you think he had any time for meditation and root? Being humbled by someone else, by God, doesn't make you humble. It only makes you humiliated. And when a person is humiliated, it shows he is still proud. A humiliated person is still proud after he's been humiliated. If he was humble, and somebody else humbled him, it wouldn't bother him. Got that? If he was completely humble, and someone tried to put him down, would it humiliate him? Wouldn't bother him a bit. Wouldn't bother him a bit. If we've been humiliated, and I've been there, because somebody humbled me, in every case that I can think of, it was God. I didn't like it. I'll tell you about it later, if we still have some time. I didn't like it. I was humiliated. Well, I'll tell you one time. This is a short one. I was a new ensign on this ship, in the Korean War. And there was a problem on the ship. I don't even remember what it was. But the exec got everybody in the war room and asked for the officers to give their views on what to do with this problem. And since I had an opinion on everything, I gave my views. I was a good ensign. And this lieutenant commander looked at me and he said, Mr. Wilson, remind me to give you a division just as soon as possible. I remember that. I remember Dawson Chapman saying to me one time, I was giving him some advice. I remember we were driving up to Hollywood, San Diego, to a Billy Graham meeting. And I was giving Dawson some advice. And he said, Jim, how old are you? I said, 23. He said, you sound like it. I remember these things. There are some worse things than that, but I remember. When somebody puts you down and it bothers you, it's because you're still proud. If you're already completely humble, nobody can put you down. Nobody can do that. You want to be... Doug was talking about how Manasseh humbled himself and called upon the Lord. But he didn't do it right away. He didn't do it as soon as he got his hook in his nose. He didn't do it. Later on, after reflection, he humbled himself. He'd been humbled over here, humiliated over here, and over in Babylon someplace, he humbled himself. Being humbled by God doesn't mean that you humble yourself. You can go to hell humbled by God. If you pay attention to it and humble yourself... But that humming yourself, in this case, was repentance on Manasseh's part. But there's a humming yourself that isn't repentance. There is a humbling yourself. Jesus, did Jesus humble himself? Doug referred to it last night in Philippians 2. Did Jesus humble himself? Was he repentant in humbling himself? No. In other words, you can humble yourself from a humble position. You do it because that's what you want. So if you're completely humble, you probably have to humble yourself to get toward that completely humble. But after you're, quote, completely humble, you keep on humbling yourself. People recognize they are not to be proud, and they take a shortcut to humbling themselves, not the ones we've talked about. They take a shortcut called false humility. They want to appear humble, so they pretend humble. Do you know what I'm talking about? People don't want to appear proud, so they try to appear humble, which means what are they? Proud. False humility doesn't make it humility. In fact, it says some awful things about it in Colossians chapter 3. I think probably about verse 17 or something is in there. Colossians used to be here. I'm sorry. Colossians 2. Verse 18. Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels. Have you seen any worship of angels recently? No. Who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. He has lost connection with the head. There are lots of ways of puffing up where we don't know we're puffing up. Knowledge puffs up. In this case, false humility puffs up. And we want the appearance of humility more than we want humility. Jesus gave us all kinds of instructions. He said, there are people praying in the marketplace because they want people to know they're in prayer. He said, well, they got their attention, and that's all they're getting. They've had their reward. If you want to pray, go to the secret place where people don't even know you're praying. In fact, they might think you're not praying. They might think you're praying solitary in the closet or something else. You say, but I was praying. Why do they need to know? Oh, I know people who pray silently, but then they tell everybody they're praying in secret. But then they tell everybody they were praying in secret. What for? I knew a man who had a praying place up on a pinnacle. It was his private place of prayer, but it was visible to the whole town. It was a good-off private place, but everybody could see it. We deceive ourselves in this. We think we're obeying the Scripture, and we do everything to keep obeying it. It's just another bit of pride. I'm going to get to a how pretty soon that's toward this humility. And the hard way, of course, is having God. That's the bit-and-brattle way of getting towards humility. Let's just jump to Colossians 2. Let's just jump to Colossians 3. It was read at the beginning of the service here. Gentleness and patience. Notice the words that are connected with humility. Compassion, kindness, gentleness, patience. These are the fruit of the Spirit. What this is saying, we know there's a righteousness that man thinks he has. There's a way that seemeth right unto man. The end thereof is the way of death. Awful verse. That which seems right to man is death. Another awful verse in the book of Judges. Every man did that which is right in his own eyes. Does that sound like anything today? Every man did that which is right in his own eyes. Now that was not a compliment in the book of Judges. That was a statement of anarchy. That was a statement of no authority, no king, no absolutes. Everybody did that which is right in his own eyes. And judgment, judgment. And when they do that which is right in his own eyes, pretty soon, that which is right in his own eyes is what Doug Wilson was speaking about. Bittersweet. Sweet to bitter and bitter to sweet. Black and white switched everything. So then you come up with a judgment that you see right before the flood. It says every man's thoughts of his heart was only evil all of the time. Only evil all of the time. But did you think they thought they were only evil all of the time? No. But they were only evil all of the time. We change right to wrong and we convince ourselves. It's in a major process in this country right now on this political correctness. Son Evan Dutton. He worked for the Idaho in the daily news in the graphic arts department and the advertising manager was a woman. And he spoke one time in her hearing of the girls in the office. She blew up. They were not girls. They were women. And she was so incensed about him calling these women girls that she was going to tell the publisher. And he gave him great trouble. He said, please go ahead. I'll tell him some of the words you use. We are perfectly free to use four letter words everywhere all of the time and no judgment. But we don't dare say something like girls. She can call a girl a bitch but we can't call them girls. Everything is just switched over. We do that with this business of pride and humility. It's already been talked about in the last two days that pride becomes something good and we have a title I talked with low self-esteem is not humility. The reason it's not humility is because low self-esteem is not low self-esteem. In Romans 12 it says let no man think of himself more highly than he ought to think. God wasn't concerned about anybody thinking of himself more lowly than he ought to think. Inordinate self-esteem was God's view of the problem. And we think low self-esteem is the problem today so we're getting everybody trying to get more high self-esteem. The text says but he should think soberly about the gifts that God gave him. He should evaluate what God has given him. As Kim was talking about athletic ability where Michael Jordan couldn't be a gymnast but he could develop what God gave him. God... lost my thought. It's my age. Not my morality, my incompetence. This... Go back to the notes. I lost it. What's that? Oh, low self-esteem. That's the word I was looking for. Low self-esteem. It just disappeared. Low self-esteem. Tell me, the person who has low self-esteem, low self-love, low self-worth, whatever you want to call it, the second half of the third quarter or fourth quarter of this century, they're in words. It's a problem that everybody has. Low self-worth, low self-esteem, low self-love. The person who is in this category, about whom is that person thinking most of the time? Himself. He doesn't have low self-esteem. He's esteeming himself all of the time. Even if he's suicidal. He says, I love myself too much to live in this awful world. I'm not saying he doesn't have a problem, but it's not low self-esteem. When Jesus said, love your neighbor as you love yourself, oh, and the Christians are like, oh, you've got to love yourself first. Forget it. That was the given. That was the starting point. If this person with low self-love loved his neighbors as much as he loved himself, his neighbor would be loved to death. He'd be loved into the kingdom. These people don't have that problem. They have high self-esteem. They are focused here. Low self-esteem is not humility. It's the opposite. Humility is accepting what God has made you and praising God for what God has done in two things. Your creation and your salvation. And praising and thanking God. It's sad to say that we deceive ourselves, not just on right and wrong and following this switch over and bad being good, but we do it to ourselves in other areas. And I did it this way. Before I was a Christian, I had two contradictory things. They didn't use low self-esteem in that part of the century. They call it inferiority complex or superiority complex. I had both. I had both. My superiority complex was that I insisted on being right. I was going to be right morally. I was going to be right ethically. I was going to be right in history class, in math class. I would intrude with my rightness. When I became a Christian, I just amplified that. Now I was going to be right in doctrine and ethics and everything and baptize my rightness, sanctify my rightness. But I was still saying, I'm right. My dear wife said, what's the trouble with you, Jim? You're always right. She wasn't saying that as an alphabet. She wouldn't tell you that. She'd tell me that. Let's suppose that all of the Christians in the world, all nationalities, believed exactly the same thing in major doctrines and secondary doctrines. Every Christian believed exactly the same thing. Got that? If that's too big, let's just say right in this room. Everybody believes the same thing. But every Christian that you knew or didn't know believed exactly the same thing. How many Christians would like that? Nobody could be the most right. One of our problems is that we want to be most right. Now is that, you say, well, what do you want me to do, be the most wrong? So we make being right or most right a virtue. A virtue. It took me a long time because the only opposite of that I could think of was to be wrong. What do you want me to be? Wrong? Blessing? Do you want me to be wrong? I wanted to be right. And consequently, I was given to things called arguments, debates. And being fairly gifted in that sort of thing, I could win. Which confirmed how right I was. Did this mean that I was humble? That I was completely humble? That I had humility? No. My first major difficulty, my early Christian life, I mentioned this the other day when I was reading books, that I learned more. I memorized a lot of scripture, thought that was grubby, I had less joy. I thought, it must be that joy is inversely proportional to how much you know. But it wasn't. A lot of my rightness was sin. A lot of my worst memory was sin. Which I held on to. But in the meantime, because I knew the scriptures and I was given salvation, people were converted. And I got out of the Navy to go into Christian work because of this evangelistic, and I was assigned to the East Coast of the United States for the Officers Christian Fellowship with a specialty at all the service academies. I'd been on the staff one year. Maybe not even one year, it came out in November. No, six months. I'd been on the staff about six months and I was, got to know my boss fairly well and I could see some rough edges in my boss. And we were going to have a staff conference and I thought, well, during this weekend staff conference, I'll bring to Buck's attention some of these things in his life that are not honoring to the Lord. Well, the problem with that is he got to me first. And he told me that I was the most arrogant person that he'd remember ever being with. And that I looked at him in amazement. Where'd he get that? I'd memorized all the verses on humility. He said, Jim, I asked you to come on the staff because of your fruitfulness. But I knew we were going to have problems. But I thought the fruitfulness would be worth the trade. I was wrong. But I did ask you to come on the staff and since I asked you to come on the staff, you've got one year. But, he said, you're 29 years old. I don't know anybody this arrogant who's ever been able to change in a year. So just plan on leaving in a year. Well, the conference was in Tower House in Alexandria, Virginia. We lived just north of Washington, D.C. So, well, first I asked him for some evidence. This, I couldn't comprehend this. It just made no sense to me. In the meantime, I did have enough sense not to unload what I thought about him. I was dumb but not stupid. So anyhow, so he, he took a letter out of his pocket from an officer at Fort Devens, Massachusetts. I'd been hit in the east coast and I'd said, this guy's house. And this, after I left the house, he wrote a letter to my boss. And he said, if this man represents the Officers' Christian Union, here's my resignation from the Officers' Christian Union. That's what the letter said. Good boy. Two people have no insight. Well, he showed me some other evidence. He said, you want more? Fans for CIS 56, 55. So he was taking me to the bus station at the airport or someplace after the weekend. I said, Dick, if there's anything not honoring to the Lord in my life, would you be friendly enough to tell me? I didn't say, and don't write the fuck. I said, would you be friendly enough to tell me? And he said, thank you very much, Jim. As a matter of fact, it is. It was on me. I got to Charleston, checked in with Eric Nelson. And Eric and I are still friends. He was class of 51. He went submarines and later became a tanker skipper. Now retired in Annapolis. And I said, Eric and Clara, anything in my life not honoring to the Lord, would you be kind enough to tell me? He told me. And I kept asking. And I kept getting answers. Well, they were a little easier to take because I asked for it. Not real easy, but I asked for it. When Buck volunteered it, I wasn't. Now, one of my problems before is that people who like you build you up to your face. People who don't like you don't say anything. So you offend all kinds of people. You don't know you offended them. But the people that are psychophants or whatever you want to call it, that are loyal to you, they praise you. And the people who don't like you just talk about you. Well, I thought, well, that's part of the problem. The other problem is that people who are proud write letters that every paragraph begins with I. Simple. When I write a report to Buck, no paragraph will begin with I. The next report that was going to Buck, I couldn't physically write a paragraph or a sentence that didn't begin with I. I just couldn't do it. And I got so frustrated with it, to my knowledge, there was no other subject to the sentence. And it got so frustrating, I thought, well, so what? I'll write it that way anyhow. So, no. But I was now beginning to get suspicious that there might be some truth to this. Six months went by. We ran a wedding together. Buck was the best man. I was one of the ushers up in New Jersey. We were driving down to Annapolis from New Jersey. And I said, Buck, how am I doing? He said, Jim, I've not seen so much improvement in one person in my life in six months. He said, it's just amazing. I really haven't seen that much improvement in one man in six months of my life. But I don't think you're going to make it. Laughter Well, I did stay on the staff for four years. Five years. Maybe 18 months later, we were driving to Fort Benning, Georgia together. And we took the picturesque route. We went down to Blue Ridge Parkway. Not in a hurry. We did a lot of singing. And in this trip, he said, Jim, is there anything in my life that's not honored to the Lord? I didn't unload the list. I did mention one thing. And he received it. Now, this was 40 years ago when this took place. If there's any difference now, the problem is apparent to me. I know what is happening. Even when I said, I know what is happening, I'm hearing myself say, I know what is happening. I can hear it. It started out, now, there have been two major events since then in my life. That was in 57. Next one took place in, I won't tell you in detail, in 69. And the next one took place maybe 74. Each time, this last one in 74, I spent a year on a project. Prayed about it. Lots of endorsements. A year on it. Not community Christian ministries. But, broader. And I've been to Hawaii on this project. I've been to California on the project. I was now making a trip to Colorado, Wisconsin, New England, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut. And all on the project. And then speaking at the Army-Navy Banquet. And bringing this, getting more and more support for this project. And, got to Denver. Had to change planes. Called the general director of this work that I was doing the project with. And he said, Jim, it's off. There isn't any. Well, I still had this itinerary to make it happen. I was on the way. And boy, was I bummed. And, so I thought it was, I was on a DC-10 to Milwaukee. Just demon. Demon. All this work and prayer and support. and I was reading in the Gospel of Luke, trying to get some sort of relief somehow from this. And, I got to Luke 14. And, verse 7, When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable. When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, give this man your seat. Then humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place. So that when your host comes, he will say to you, friend, move up to a better place. Then you'll be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. For, everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. We've heard that several times. That hit me just like that. God, I know that. Why are you hitting me with it? I've heard that before. That's true. Amen. Why are you hitting me with it? I don't know. But I was hit with this. I said, well, it has to do with this. God, this isn't a matter of humbling oneself or exalting oneself. This is a matter of being right. This is not a matter of exalting oneself. This is a question of right. I'm right and they're wrong. Well, I didn't seem to get away with it. I kept reading. Luke got over to chapter 18, verse 9. To some who are confident of their own righteousness, look down on everybody else. Jesus told his people. Two men went up to the temple to pray. One a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself. God, I thank you that I'm not like other men, robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get. But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. And it hit me again. I said, God, I know that. I'm not exalting myself. I'm just being right. Well, I wasn't getting away with it. And it took, I don't know what to say, some sort of not natural twist to realize, to say that I'm exalting myself. That I was setting up this project. It was going to bring great glory to God. Then I had to begin to think, up to this time, I didn't think there was anything more important than being right. Because the opposite of right was wrong, and of course it wasn't supposed to be wrong. And then I began to think of Philippians 2, which I had memorized that passage from 5 to 11, many years before. It says, Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Now, it says, Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation. Didn't say a poor reputation. Didn't say a poor reputation, bad reputation. No reputation. I began to think, was Jesus right when he was with the Father in glory before the foundation, before the creation, before the incarnation? Was Jesus right? He couldn't have been more right. He was right, absolutely perfect in glory. There was something more important than being right. And it was humming himself. Not humming himself in repentance, but humming himself from being super right. And becoming wrong. Becoming sin for my salvation. Something more important than being right. Well, since then, it really got to me. That was in 74. There's been no major shoot down since then, but I've walked tenderly. I don't like being humiliated. Something more important than being right. I asked a while ago, would anybody like it if everybody agreed on theology? Nature and life. No. Nobody could be the most right. Why do we have denominations? Because we'd like to be exclusively right. We'd like to be a minority that's got the end truth. I don't care what the end truth is. It's not... Suppose the minority that you had in doctrine was completely true, major and minor. How are you holding it? One of the questions that I ask myself and ask other people, when you get into this doctrine, it doesn't make any difference to me anyway, if it's just sensationalism or Arminianism or Lutheranism or whatever your loyalty is. When you get into it, and have you become more like Jesus because of it? Have you become more compassionate, more humble? Are you more like Jesus because of this? Being right isn't that important. The opposite is not being wrong. Senior to that is hold it in the light of the way Jesus held it. Like I said, there are all these different things, but there's a verse in Romans 8 that says we're predestined to be conformed to the image of his dear son. Wonderful verse. How many people focus on the predestined and how many focus on being conformed to the image of his dear son? Where should the focus be regardless of what your view of predestination is? Being like Jesus. All right, now. I'll get to the major how. We've been talking about humbling ourselves, whether from repentance humbling or like Jesus humbling. There is a focus that has to be away from number one. Because you say, okay, I'm going to humble myself. How do I humble myself? All right, myself. We're told to do it. Here's how. Quit thinking in terms of you. Because it says, you humble yourself under the mighty hand of God. That is where you look at. In the sight of God. The mighty hand of God. Maybe I'd better get a look at the mighty hand of God and I won't have to dwell on how I go about it. It will happen. When I begin to view the two great works, the two great works of God. The creation of man and the redemption of man. You see the two great songs in the fourth and fifth chapters of Revelation. The people that get the view. The four living creatures. The 24 elders. A hundred million angels. Plus millions more. They're the ones that sing it. We'll sing it. We'll close here. Let's sing, if we know, Revelation 4.11 when we end here. People who see the creator and what he's done know what to do with their crowns and know what to do with their bodies. And the people who see the cross know what to do. Humming oneself is no problem at all. If we quit looking at how to humble ourselves. Before we see the holiness and the glory of God his creation and his redemption and we begin to get the view. There was a woman We'll look at those verses here in a second. But there was a woman years ago in this city who supposedly converted. She went to Bogotha. She went to the school of Christianity. She read every book in the bookstore. And she went to every pastor in town for counsel. And me, many times. One day she came to the bookstore and she said, Jim, do you have five minutes? I knew five minutes meant 35 minutes. And I really didn't have the time. And I was sort of up to here with her. And I made a nice little comment. Isn't God available? Well, anyhow. She left steamed. After she got over it, she kept coming back. One day she knocked at the front door. And Bessie told her that I'd meet her in the backyard under the apple tree. It's out there in the summertime. And I was reading Watchman Dee. What book? I don't know. But the phrase I just read when Bessie told me was two people can see the same text. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes unto the Father but by me. One person said, oh, that's wonderful. And come to the Father by Jesus Christ and be wonderfully converted. The other person said, oh, what a wonderful doctrine. I'm going to make a plaque of that and hang it on the wall. And one is saved and one just came to the doctrine. One just came to the teaching. Didn't come to the Father. Came to the sentence. I went outside. This is my fine. I just shared it with this woman. She said, how can you tell the difference? I said, well, one has love, joy, and peace. Another just has a plaque on the wall. She called me the next day. She said, I'm not a Christian. I said, I didn't think so. Then she got upset because I agreed with her. She said, I'm not going to tell you how to become a Christian. She said, why not? I said, you just go do it. You just go plug it for me. You've been doing it all your life. I'm not about to tell you. The word faith, God, they're just hollow words to you. You have no idea what they mean. No, I said, I'm not going to tell you. I said, I'll talk to you about how to become a Christian after you get a tiny view of the holiness of God. Just a smidgen view of how holy God is. And from that view of holiness, just how great your sin is in the light of that holiness. And then a little tiny view of how much God loves you in your great sin in the light of his holiness. I said, then I'll tell you. Don't talk to me until then. Months went by. One day she called me. She said, how can God, the Father, love the Son and send him to the cross? I said, you missed it. It says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. God loved the world that he gave his Son. I began to see she's open. And because she was cognitive and a doer, I thought I'd do an end run on this cognitive stuff. And I would sing to her over the telephone. Or read poetry over the telephone. Because poetry misses the brain and goes to the heart. And sing. I'd sing the deep, deep love of Jesus. I'd sing the love of God. I'd read psalms to her. And one day she was cleaning houses for a person. And she was singing, He is Lord, he is Lord, while she's vacuuming. He is Lord, he is Lord, he is risen from the dead. And he is Lord. And she was converted on the spot. She called up last week. From the west side. Fellowship. Love to talk with her. Different woman. Now the basic beginning humility is when you won't even get saved without that. Jesus said it in Matthew 18. Unless you become like little children, you'll not enter the kingdom. If you become like this child, you'll be the greatest in the kingdom. You'll humble yourself like a little child. You won't even be saved. You try to get saved in your present state, you won't make it. The beginning of repentance is some sort of concept of the holiness of God and his love for you and your great sinfulness that that holiness defines and the great love that takes care of that great sinfulness. John saw it in that fifth chapter. I want to read those two verses. And then we'll close with singing 411. I don't know there's a tune to Revelation 5. Revelation 4.9 Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor, and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say, You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power. For you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being. The next chapter opens up with a revelation that John had and it tells us of the lamb. Verse 6 Then I saw a lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. He had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. He came and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. When he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls of incense, which are the prayers of the saints, and they sang a new song. You are worthy to take the scroll and to open and see it, because you were slain and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priest to serve our God and they will reign on the earth. Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders in a loud voice they sang, Worthy is the lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise. Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea and all that is in them singing, To him who sits on the throne and to the lamb to praise and honor and glory and power forever and ever. The four living creatures said Amen and the elders fell down and worshiped. Take the eye out of the singing and put the you in the subject and begin to see his creation and his redemption and the ultimate cost and the purity and the lovingness and see your sin in the light of that and you'll have no trouble being humble. Let's thank God. Father in heaven, it's the name of the Lord Jesus Christ that we've met. We pray that we'd be focused upon you and your work and only see ourselves in that life and that we'd be part of every tongue that confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Father, if there's anybody here who does not yet know you, but has a beginning sense of your glory and holiness and love, these people will call upon you now to save them from the wrath, save them to the glory and save them to praise forever and ever. We pray this in Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.