Humility, Merited Favor, and Defeating Satan - Jason Willis

Lesson Transcript

Silence! So today we're going to be discussing conquering desires that lead to death. Now, it's important as we go through this that you keep in mind I'm not talking about all desires. We're not talking about the desire for brotherly love, or the desire for righteousness, or the desire for holiness. We're talking about wicked, self-centered desires that we need to conquer in our lives. "Where do wars and fights come from among you?" Paul's right there.

I love the way that God is able to take a huge and daunting topic, something as devastating as war, and just cut right to the heart of it. I picture him saying, "Hey James, I'm about to tell you something really cool." "What is it, Lord?" "I'm about to tell you where war comes from." You're going to want to write this down. "Where do wars and fights come from among you?

Do they not come from your desires for pleasure, that war in your members, you lust and you do not have, you murder and covet and cannot obtain?" Think about how he used these words: desires for pleasure, that war in your members. It's like you have your desires create an internal war. You lust, but you cannot have, and you covet, but you cannot obtain. You fight and war, yet you do not have. Why? Because you don't ask. You ask and you do not receive. Why?

Because you ask a miss that you may spend it on your own pleasures. You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. God says, "Look, you exist for your own pleasure. You destroy yourselves. You eat each other alive, pursuing your desire for pleasure. Do you not understand that this makes you my enemy?

Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, 'The Spirit who dwells in us yearns,' jealously?" Here God tells us that the root cause of war itself is your desire for pleasure. Well, as Anabaptists, what does this have to do with us? Are we not non-resistant? And this is true. As Christians, we are not to participate in the wars of this world, but there is another war going on. It is a spiritual war. And in this war, not only are we called to participate, it goes even further than this.

We are called in this war, this spiritual war, we are called to be high-ranking officers. Let's go back to James 1 and see what he has to say about this war. "Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am tempted by God,' for God can't be tempted by evil, nor does he himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death." Look back at this verse with me.

"But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by what? His own desires." What comes first, the temptation or the desire? The desire or the enticing? The desire is what comes first. Here you are, you have your desire, and the devil comes along and he tempts you. And then when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin. Now this word conceived, it means to be made pregnant.

So here you have the idea that it starts off with your own desires, and the devil comes and he tempts you, and he makes your desire pregnant, and it conceives into sin. If anything would make me want to sin, it's that thought right there. And sin, when it is full grown, it brings forth death. So God tells us that in the same way that desire is the root cause of war, desire is also the root cause of our sin. And this is both good news and bad news for us.

The bad news is that your sin is your fault, and the devil is not to blame. No one gets to heaven and says, "God, my hands are clean. I was tempted by the devil. Nothing's on me, God. I was tempted." No. That would be good news for us. It's not like that though. But the good news is this: you cannot be tempted beyond your own desires. Let me explain what I mean by this. The devil cannot tempt me. He cannot tempt me to eat mayonnaise. It's nasty, disgusting, foul stuff. I pray for all of you who like it.

You could take a perfectly good Philly cheesesteak sandwich, gooey, sautéed, beautifully buttered, and just slather that stuff on and run it. Masterpiece destroyed. Potato chips, on the other hand, this is something I desire. I desire potato chips. I can be Thanksgiving stuffed. I mean, "Oh, why did I eat so much?" And walk by a bag of open potato chips and think, "Maybe there's still room." Now, how does this equate to sin? So let's say I'm at work and I walk into the break room, and I've been working all day.

I'm hungry. No one's around, and I see a big old family-sized bag of potato chips wide open on the table. They don't belong to me, but I desire potato chips. Now I have a problem on my hands. "Eat one. You know you want a potato chip." "No one's going to know, Jason. Nobody's going to know. He's always walking around the office. I need to lose weight. I need to lose weight. You're doing him a favor.

Eat some potato chips." On the other hand, if I walked into that same break room and all that was on the table was a bowl of potato salad, the devil would throw up his hands, "I got nothing to work with here." Why? Because you cannot be tempted beyond your own desire. Sin and war begins with desire. Desire, sin. Desire, war. Your desire, your fault. You will be held accountable for your desires, and we'll see that here in just a little bit. What if it were possible to have control over even your desires?

And that is what this message is going to be all about today. How do we conquer the desires that make us the enemy of God? Clement of Alexandria said, "The human ideal of self-restraint," I mean that which is set forth by the Greek philosophers, "teaches that one should fight desire and not be subservient to it as to bring it into practical effect. But our ideal is not to experience desires at all.

Our aim is not that while a man feels desire, that he should get the better of it, but that he should be continent, even respecting desire itself. This chastity cannot be attained in any other way except by God's grace." And that was why it is said, "Ask and it shall be given to you." This grace was received even by Moses, though clothed in a needy body. So for 40 days, he felt neither thirst nor hunger.

Just as it is better to be in good health than for a sick man to talk about health, so to be light is better than to discuss light, and true chastity is better than what is taught by the philosophers. Where there is light, there is no darkness.

But where there is inward desire, even if it goes no further than desire and is inactive so far as bodily action is concerned, union takes place in thought with the object of that desire, although that object is not present." Now, I know probably 95% of you that, "What did he just say?" I know that the early Christians can be tough, but this one I read it, and there are some golden nuggets in this one, so we're going to look at this one line by line. Follow me here.

"The human ideal of self-restraint," I mean that which is set forth by the Greek philosophers. Greek philosophers is the world in what he's saying here. "Teaches that one should fight desire and not be subservient to it so as to bring it to practical effect." So the world says desire is going to come, and we fight it. We don't bring it into practical effect. But our ideal, the Christian ideal, is not to experience desire at all.

Our aim is not that while a man feels desire, that he should get the better of it, but that he should be continent, even respecting desire itself. Now, this word continent, it's not really a word that we use in today's language. Look it up online. It means the continent of North America, South America. I was like, "That can't be what he's talking about." The other definition said, "To be able to control your bowel movements." I knew that was not it either.

Then at the bottom, there was a little button that said, "Outdated usage." I found it very useful in studying the early Christians. And I found this, "Exercising self-restraint, especially sexually." So what he says is our aim as Christians is not that while we feel desire, that we should win the battle over it, but that we should be exercising self-restraint even over the desire itself. So here we have the idea that we can bring our own desires into subjection. How?

He continues, "This chastity cannot be attained in any other way except by God's grace." How do we do it? Through God's grace. That is why it was said, "Ask and it shall be given to you." This grace was received even by Moses, though clothed in a needy body, so that 40 days he neither felt thirst nor hunger. I'd never heard the story. When I went back and read it in the Old Testament, I personally, I didn't read anything about him not experiencing thirst or hunger. I read that he didn't eat or drink anything.

I don't know if maybe Clement had some oral tradition or something that we're unfamiliar with, or maybe he's just wrong about it. But whether this is true or not, I think what Clement is getting at here is that this grace of God is so powerful that it can conquer even our most carnal and basic desires. Don't eat for 40 days. What will happen? You will be hungry. But not if God wants you to not be hungry. His grace is sufficient. Just as it is better to be in good health than for a sick man to talk about health.

So you got two men. One man over here is sick as a dog. Or this man's healthy. This man's sick as a dog. It's better to be this man than to be this guy over here just talking about being healthy. So to be light is better to discuss light. In the same way, it's better to be the healthy man than to just talk about it. It's better to be light than to just discuss it. And this true chastity is better than what is taught by the philosophers.

Having control over your own desires, continent over your own desires, is better than what the world teaches us. Where there is light, there is no darkness. But where there is inward desire, even if it goes no further than desire, and it's inactive so far as the bodily action is concerned. So when the desire comes, even if you do nothing about it, you take no action on your desire. A union takes place in your thought with the object of that desire, although that object is not present.

So when you have desires and you allow those desires to reside in your mind, your thoughts, they go out and they make sinful union with the object of your desire, even if you do nothing with your body. You take no action. And Jesus tells us the same thing, but I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Think about this. The desire to have a woman precedes. It comes before the action of looking lustfully. What comes first?

The desire or the lustful look? It is the desire that comes first. If you did not have the desire for that woman, you would never have looked with lust. Take two men, one of them with the desire to sexually possess a woman, even if it violates the law of God. The second man who does not have this desire within him, set before them both a beautiful woman. The one will have to fight the temptation to lust, while the other will not. The second will only see the created value of that woman. Desire comes first.

Desire is the root of war, and desire is the root of sin. And once again, your desire is your fault. Mine's my fault. But our aim as Christians is not to experience desire at all. So how do we achieve this? He tells us, "This chastity cannot be attained in any other way except by God's grace." So the next logical question is, how do we get this grace? And that is what we're going to talk about in the rest of this message. How do we get the grace that allows us to have control even over our own desires?

There's a couple of steps to it. In this message, we're only going to get to step one. And step one reminds me a lot of a story. I was living with my cousin for six months, locked in COVID style. And he had some car issues, and he was devastated. "Ah, Jason, it's going to cost so much money." I was like, "Well, you know, keep your head up. Maybe it's not as bad as you think." A few hours later, he comes and he's like, "Oh, I can do it. I just watched a YouTube video. It's so easy.

You take the part off, you do this thing, you put the part back on. I mean, well, I don't know what I was worried about." And then three, four days later, I'm waiting, and he's still not fixed his car. I'm thinking, "Well, I thought it was easy." Six, seven, eight days. I was like, "What's up, Steve? I mean, like, you're going to fix your car? You haven't gone anywhere. You keep borrowing my car." And he said, "Well, you know, it is easy. Fixing the part that's broken is easy. It's only like two steps.

But the whole process is three steps." He said, "The problem is step one, remove the engine." And just like changing, removing an engine is hard, what I am about to talk about is just as hard. It hurts. It is difficult. It's painful. It takes serious discipline. I'm not in any way trying to throw this out there like, "Oh, yeah, this is easy." This is what we're talking about is challenge. How do we get this grace? Step one, remove engine. Humble yourself. 2 Corinthians.

Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don't believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the good news. They don't understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God. So here we read God with a capital G is telling us that Satan, the god with the lowercase g, is the god of this world. Now, the best that I understand this, this is one that I've barely started to scratch the surface on. It intrigues me greatly.

But the best that I can tell, God creates heaven and earth, and he creates man, and he gives dominion and rulership of the earth to man. And interwoven into the fabric of reality, he interweaves three principles. Number one, man is not a free agent. Man must have a master. Number two, man is free to choose who his master is going to be. And number three, man is a slave to the one who he obeys. Man elects his master through obedience. So in the garden, Satan tempts man, and man chooses to obey Satan.

And somehow through this transaction, somehow dominion of the earth is handed over to Satan. Or at least that's the best that I understand it. Whether I'm right or wrong, it says right here, Satan is the god of this world. What does it have to do with humility? Humility is agonizingly painful in a world that is ruled by Satan. Philippians 2, "Jesus Christ, who being in the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.

Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very form of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man. He humbled himself." How? "By becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross." So you have the god of creation. By him and in him and through him were all things made. And the god of creation steps into his creation, puts on man into a world ruled by Satan, and humbles himself. And this is what it looks like.

This is what God looks like when he humbles himself in Satan's world. And it is no different than us. "If anyone would come after me," Jesus says, "let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." The good news is that this is not the end of the story. The passage continues. He humbled himself, became obedient to death. Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place, no higher than that, and gave him the name that is above every name. Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess.

And as we speak right now, his enemies, the ones who put him on that cross, are being made a footstool for his feet. So how does this apply to us? Very quickly, we're going to look at seven passages about humility. I want you to pay close attention to the promises made to those who are willing to humble ourselves. I also want you to notice that when man humbles himself, God treats us the exact same way he treated the Son of Man when the Son of Man humbled himself. But he gives a greater grace.

Therefore, it says, "God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble." Humble yourself before the presence of the Lord, and he will exalt you. There's that word. Therefore, humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you at the proper time. Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted. My people who are called by my name, humble themselves, and they pray, and they seek my face, and they turn from their wicked ways.

Then I will hear them from heaven. I will forgive their sins, and I will heal their lands. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Whoever then humbles himself as a child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Humble yourself in the presence of the Lord, and he will exalt you. In just these seven passages, because you have humbled yourself before the Lord, he has exalted you five times. He's healed your land.

He's forgiven your sins, and he has pronounced you the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Have you ever thought about that? I picture it. We're in heaven, right? We've been there for like 19 trillion years. A little bit. And a trumpet sounds, and assemblies called. Every creature in heaven must be there. And there's a big cliff. And at the bottom of the cliff is the masses of everybody. Ten thousands upon ten thousands upon ten thousands. All of us are there.

And God stands up on the cliff, and he says, "William Shiley, step forward." Me. William's eyes get big. So as he walks to the front, the crowd starts to part. It's like Moses through the Red Sea. And he gets up to the base of the cliff, and two angels meet him down there, and they bring him up. And God turns William around to face all of the inhabitants of heaven. And he says, "Behold my son, William, the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." The crowd goes wild because he humbled himself.

The last thing is heard from heaven. Exalted five times, heals your land, forgives your sins, pronounces you the greatest of kingdom in heaven, and you are heard from heaven. Now, this one's my favorite, I say. I picture this: God orchestrating all of creation. The bugs are crawling, and the birds are singing, and volcanoes are erupting, and tornadoes are happening, and it's lightning, and it's thundering, and there's babies that are crying, and rivers are raging, and the sun's billowing through the universe.

All the planets at hundreds of thousands of miles an hour were going through space, and God cries out, "Silence!" The archangel says, "What is it, Lord?" And he says, "Shh. Don't you hear? Gillen is praying. I hear you, son. Yes, I'll do that for you. I love you too, buddy. Proud of you." It's amazing that our prayers make it into heaven. It doesn't say that when you humble yourself, God comes down and listens to you. He says, "When you humble yourself, your prayers make it there." That's amazing to me.

I picture someone coming to Gillen and saying, "Hey, Gillen, you saved? You going to heaven?" "Well, yeah, I think so. I'm on the narrow path. I keep this trajectory. That's where I'm headed. I mean, my prayers are already up there hanging out with God." Seven passages: exalted, healed, forgiven, pronounced, and heard. All because you humbled yourself. No matter how painful or difficult this may be, humility, it is a worthy pursuit. So now we're going to look at five ways of humbling yourself.

Number one is to confess your sins. Confess your trespasses to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. I can tell you through personal experience, it is so much easier to confess your sins to God than it is to confess your sins to your brother. Sin. Five seconds later, "Oh, God, I can't believe it. I'm so sorry, God. Please." It would take days of agonizing. "Ah, I got to tell my brothers what I did. We made a pact.

We weren't going to sin. We were going to win together. We were going to lose together, and I lost for us all." It is so much easier to confess to God than it is to confess to man. And he tells us, "Humble yourself and confess your sins to your brother." Why? Because when a righteous man prays, it does something. It avails much. Number two is fast. Now, I'm not going to speak much on this one because I'm not good at it at all. That's small windows of success in my life. But Finney, he had a great message.

If you look it up online, I'll put the link in the video below or below the video if you happen to be online. Fasting to harness heaven's power. And he goes through the Bible, and he lays out a very detailed explanation of how fasting is humbling yourself. We've got just a couple of snippets here. Let's listen to what he has to say. Fasting is one of the main ways God has appointed for us to humble ourselves. Okay? So I think you should write that down.

Fasting is one of the main ways God has appointed for us to humble ourselves. Okay? It's not the only way, but it's one of the main ways that God has appointed. I'm going to show that to you in a little bit. 1 Peter 5:5-6 says this: "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time." Okay? Famous passage, right? We know this. God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time. I want you to see the logic in 1 Peter 5. Did you notice what he says? He says, "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God." So this is one of the many passages where, depending on how you understand grace, you'll be confused or not confused by it. So a lot of people think you can't do anything to get grace. It's just unmerited.

It's just purely God's gift, and nothing that you do will incur God's grace. Well, this is an obvious place where you see that not taught. It says, "God gives grace to the humble. Therefore, humble yourselves." So if you humble yourselves, Peter is saying you will receive God's grace, right? There are places where grace means unmerited favor, but not here in 1 Peter 5. This is something where it's at least something that we can direct with humility. Hermes said, "Every prayer should be accompanied with humility.

Fast, therefore, and you will obtain from the Lord what you plead." This next quote is from Hermes, and I didn't put the whole quote on here. He's talking to someone, and he's saying, "Listen, I know you're fasting, and you're talking about fasting, but I want to tell you what a real true fast is. But I will teach you what is a full and acceptable fast to the Lord. Do no evil in your life, and serve the Lord with a pure heart. Keep his commandments, walk in his precepts, and let no evil desire arise in your heart.

Let no evil desire even exist. We can't let it arise in our heart." The third way to humble yourself is to submit to all authority. Romans 13, "Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God." And it gets even more difficult for us.

It's one thing to have to submit to the governing authorities, but in 1 Peter, he says, "Servants be submissive to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle ones, but also to the ones that are harsh." So not only are we called to be submissive to our governing authorities, we're to be called to be submissive even if we're treated harshly. They don't even have to be gentle with us. And we're still called to humble ourselves and submit.

The fourth way, become a slave, Mark 10, "And whoever of you desires to be first shall be a slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to serve, but to serve and to give his life for a ransom for many." It says, "We're to be a slave of all." There, I'm not exactly sure what word, but it doesn't even say servant. It says, "We're to be a slave." We're not even to belong to us. We belong to everybody else. And the fifth way to humble yourself is to become your own slave master.

Now, I know this may sound a little contradictory. You got to be a slave and a slave master. Follow me here, though. In 1 Corinthians, "Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? So run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now, they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for one that is imperishable. Therefore, I do not run like someone running aimlessly.

I do not fight like a boxer beating at the air, but I discipline my body, and I bring it into subjection, lest after I had preached to others, I myself should become disqualified." Now, this word, discipline, in the Greek, I'm not even going to try to pronounce it. It means to strike under the eye, and that's not even a term that we use in today's language, but it means I bruise, I treat severely, I discipline by hardship, I molest, I annoy, I harass, I worry, and I exhaust.

So in this verse, he says, let's insert them there. I bruise my body. I treat severely my body. I discipline by hardship my body. I molest my body. And we don't use that word in the same way he's using it today either. The way he's using it is to pester or harass in an aggressive or persistent manner. So he says, "I pester and harass my body in an aggressive and persistent manner. I annoy my body. I harass my body. I worry my body.

I exhaust my body." All of these are ways of saying, "I discipline my body." And the passage continues, "I discipline my body, and I bring it into subjection." This word, subjection, again, I'm not going to try to pronounce it. It means to enslave or to subdue, to bring into subjection, to enslave, to treat as a slave. So how do I run like I'm actually going to win the prize? I discipline my body, and I bring it into subjection. I treat it as a slave. I subdue it.

Humility calls for you to be the slave of all with only one exception. You are to be the slave of all, but you are to be the slave master of only one, and that is your own flesh. You are to be above your flesh, and everybody else is to be above you. Your flesh, you, the rest of humanity. Why is this so? Because the spirit and flesh are at war. You can be non-resistant outwardly all you want, but your spirit and your flesh, they are going to be at war.

But I say, "Walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of your flesh, for the desires of your flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh, for these two oppose each other." Now, the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, sensuality, idolatry, enmity, jealousy, fits of rage, fits of anger, rivalries, dissension, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like this.

But the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires. The spirit and the flesh are at war. You're not singing kumbaya and having fellowship meals with your flesh. Your flesh hates what the spirit loves, and it loves what the spirit hates. Therefore, my brothers, let us run this race like we are actually going to win the prize. Let us beat our bodies.

Let us bring them into submission, lest after we have preached to others, we should become disqualified ourselves. In closing, it starts with desire. Desire plus temptation equals sin and death. First, you start with your desires. The devil comes and impregnates your desires with his temptation. That conceives sin, and when sin is born and full-grown, it brings forth death. Resist the devil, and the devil will flee. This is just a simple promise. It's given to us. It's in the Bible.

Resist the devil, the devil will flee. To submit to God is to resist the devil. So here you are with your desires. The devil comes along and tempts you: touch, taste, lust, indulge, and God says, "No, don't." In that moment, when you submit to God, you are resisting the devil. To submit to God is to resist the devil. Resist the devil, and the devil will flee. Therefore, submit to God, and the devil will flee. To humble yourself is to submit to God.

When you are a slave to all, and you love your enemies, and you bring your body into subjection, and you confess your sins, and you fast, when you think of others as being more important than you are, when you humble yourself, you are submitting to God. To submit to God is to resist the devil. Therefore, humble yourself, and the devil will flee. I hope you can see how all these are connected. In this part right here, this is the key for us: humility. This is the lynchpin. This is our point of contact.

This is where our rubber meets the road: humility. We are told over and over, "Humble yourself. Humble yourself. Humble yourself." It is something that we have power over. It is something that we choose to do. Humility is our point of contact. It is painful, but it comes with a great reward. What is that reward? God gives grace to the humble. God says, "When you humble yourself, an exchange takes place. You humble yourself, and I'll give you grace." Praise God.

Through the power of grace, through the power of the grace of God, our desires themselves can be subdued. They can be brought into subjection. They can be quenched. They can be extinguished. Remember, desires were this whole problem begins. And through the grace of God, we can subdue our desires. And how do we get that grace? We humble ourselves. What do you do? Humble yourself. What do you get? Grace. What do you do with that grace? Subdue your desires. What does the devil do? Please. This is what you do.

This is what you get. This is what you do with what you get. This is what the devil does. Why? Because when I humble myself, and then through the grace of God, bring my own desires into subjection, the devil is reduced. The devil is reduced. All he has left on me is to show up and try to tempt me to eat mayonnaise. Why? Because you can't be tempted beyond your own desires. Well, how do we subdue our desires? With the grace of God. How do we get this grace? Step one, remove engine. Humble yourself.

How else do we get this grace? Step two. And that's for our next message. Any comments or concerns? Yeah, that was a great message. Your emphasis on humility was super. And there's this wrong concept out there that even with Jesus on the cross, that God humbled him, and I believe that Jesus humbled himself. And that's exactly why we're supposed to do it too. Thanks, Connor. I was just thinking about what you were talking about. You said about how our desires are what Satan uses to tempt us.

And I remember a comment that John Dee made. Now, he made it in regard to something a little bit different, but he said that Satan has no capital of his own. He's always borrowing. That's good. And it's the same way with this. He has no capital of his own. He takes something that we already had there, and he plays with it. Thank you. I really appreciate your message, Jason. It takes desire to hold another level of the avenue or the steps to actually conquer it. And I really appreciated that.

The one thing that kind of left out, your whole thing of discipline, and all these definitions of discipline in your body until it was all done, I think it looked like it was really beat up and not too much left of it. But I had a thought about that. You look at someone who trains, like an athlete who trains and brings his body in subjection to conquer whatever he wants to run. It's a double thing there. It comes under discipline, and yet there's a beautiful thing that comes out of it.

And I think it's the same way. We bring our body, our flesh, into subjection, and yes, it is beat up, but there is a beautiful thing, and it does look like Christ, the humble Christ, who is exalted. And so it's a beautiful thing that takes place. It's not just a beat-up body necessarily, a beat-up flesh necessarily. I mean, the athletes, they go through all that, bring their bodies into subjection so that they can be in the Olympics. I mean, they come out strong men. Exactly.

And that is what you see in Christ, and that's what you see in early Anabaptists, early Christians, the genuine people of the kingdom. It's a very beautiful thing when you see a man that is genuinely humble. And I always said there's nothing like an old man who is grumpy and selfish and all that versus one who is humble and has grace in his life. It's massively different, the result of that. And I think that's our desire. But we have to do that stuff to get there. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody.

Yes, sir. I'm not sure who Hermes was. Was he a philosopher? He was one of the early church fathers. Early Christian? Okay. I'm not familiar with it. But I don't follow his quote that you put up there. I'm quite lenient with it. Don't do this. Don't do this. Don't do this. To me, that kind of makes if I'm able to do that, then I'm kind of a perfect man. But overall, message-wise here, I thought it was lovely. Thank you. I think not getting what Hermes was getting at.

Yeah, I think the best thing to do, I mean, it is hard to hear, do no evil, let no evil desires arise in your heart. We can't be perfect, and we're not going to achieve sinless lives. But this second right now, in this instant right now, I'm pretty sure I'm not sinning. I might be sinning somehow. I might not be loving God with all my heart, but this second right now, I know I'm not sinning, to my knowledge. And life is just a series of one second after one second after one second.

So it is daunting when you look at things like that and say, "Let no evil desires rise in your heart. Do no evil," and to think of your whole life and, "How am I going to do that?" But to this moment, what's important is this moment, and then in a second, you'll have another moment. And if we stay in the moment, then I believe it's much more achievable than what our imaginations think. But of course, we are not going to be perfect. We'll fall. I love the practicality of the message.

And I think it's going to make it easier if we keep it in our head the fast, knowing that that's part of this whole process.

And then when we hear someone that needs help, and the first thing that comes in our mind is like, "Well, I plan to do this, and I want him to relax," and whatever it is, I think it's going to be easier to just say, "Okay, that person is more." If we can keep that idea in our mind, we can make people more important to us and kind of be a slave to them in a sense and loving them and knowing that we're going to be exalted and that this isn't, I don't know. Amen. Just to have the practicality to it. Thank you.

Thank you all very much. I wanted to say thank you. If you were hoping I wouldn't schedule you to speak very often, you just shot yourself in the foot. We were all blessed by your message. Thank you very much.