Wisdom and Speech

[0:00] All right. Thank you, Alex. Good morning, everybody. How's everybody doing? Y'all like, you were the few that stepped out into the cold weather and said, you know what? I'm going to keep on going. Thank you for being here early on. And those of you who are listening online, I'm not cashing shade at you because you're not here, but like glad you're listening.

[0:21] If you're new, glad you're here with us. We're going through the book of James, so we're in part four. We got two weeks left this week and next week we're finishing up. And just so you know, we got a lot of scripture to get through today. So I'm going to jump right into the passage you're reading and then we're going to continue on from there. We are in James chapter three. We're going to read all of chapter three and then the first 12 verses of chapter four as well. So here we go. Ready? Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For we all stumble in many ways.

[0:55] And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. Look at the ships also. They are so large and are driven by strong winds that they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a fire is set ablaze by such a small fire. And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird of reptile and sea creature can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue.

[1:46] It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it, we bless our Lord and Father, and with it, we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.

[1:58] My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives or a grapevine produce figs?

[2:11] Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water. Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly and spiritual demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder in every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this? That your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your own passions.

[3:18] You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says? He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us, but he gives more grace. Therefore, it says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

[3:59] Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?

[4:32] This is God's word. All right. Thank you, James, once again. So, you know, before I jump into it, kind of want to point something out. He kind of puts me in the crosshairs right away from the very beginning. Nothing is less assuring when you're about to preach a text than the text telling you and warning you that, you know what, you're going to be judged for greater, with greater strictness because you are a teacher. So, if I'm up here sweating more than normal, you understand why that is happening today. But joking aside, this text begins with that sober warning because here's the thing, what you and I say, the words that come out of our mouth, our speech, it really matters. And that's not just for me because I'm a preacher and a teacher, that goes for all of us. What we say matters because words have power. They have the power to wound and to destroy.

[5:26] If you've heard any of these words directed towards you, you can relate, right? If you've heard, you're fired, or I hate you, or what's wrong with you? Why are you like that? You are a fill-in-the-blank, some pejorative. Or how about this one? Why can't you be more like dot, dot, dot?

[5:49] Those are small little phrases. Those are words that seem very insignificant, and yet they create big wounds, wounds that we carry for a long time. You know that old phrase, sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me? Yeah. Both Proverbs and James says like, yeah, that's a lie from the pit of hell. All right? Words are powerful. And James says the tongue is, it's such a small member of our body. I mean, you think about like, you know, who you are. It's like the tongue is, seems pretty insignificant, and yet that little thing, it boasts great things. Your tongue, my tongue, it's got a severe Napoleon complex. All right? It is small, but it's got power, and it wants to flex it. In verse five and six, James goes on to liken the tongue to this small little spark. It just spits these little sparks, and those little sparks, what it does, it can destroy a whole forest. It can tear down a whole forest. It says, it's not, your tongue isn't just a little unrighteous. It's not like it has a closet full of unrighteousness. It says, your tongue has got so much unrighteousness in it, it could fill the whole world. Your tongue is able to defile your whole body by the words it speaks. And then finally, it is powerful enough to destroy the entire course of life, which means it's a way of saying, it has the power to disrupt peace and harmony and introduce chaos and destruction and death. That's the destructive power that can break out at any moment. And think about this, the things that come out of our mouths, man, we say things that catch us by surprise, right? We say words that we're just like, oh, I wish I could take that back. I could wish I could somehow like stuff that back in, do a little rewind, but now it's out there, right? How many of us regret, have you regretted something we've said? Okay, it's not just me. All right, sweet. Okay.

[7:53] You know, we have those, we have those cringe moments, don't we? A few of those, some of us more than others. And you know what? Those are just the ones that we're aware of, right? I bet you our family and friends could help pile on a little bit more than just the ones we're aware of. Like, hey, you forgot about that. Remember when you said that? But there's the, what I'm getting at is this, our tongues, they're just unpredictable, which would be okay if words didn't have power, but they do.

[8:21] And that's what James is getting at. Your tongue is dangerous and it can't be trusted. Our tongue isn't like a domesticated dog. It's more like a caged tiger. And most of the time, if you go to a zoo and look at a caged tiger, it's like, it looks docile, just kind of lying around, but nobody wants to be inside the cage, do we? Because why? At any moment, that thing can switch. And it's powerful, and you know you would be in trouble. And that's the problem with our tongues. We think we have them under control most of the time. We think we got them caged. And then it flips a switch. We stick our foot in our mouths. We lose our cool and we yell and scream or we gossip and slander, which is what James picks up on in chapter four, verse 11, when he says, man, don't speak evil against one another. We tell lies with our mouths. We say something unkind. See, our tongue can quickly turn into an agent for evil.

[9:27] And that happens more than we want to admit. And the question for us is, man, why does this keep happening? How come we don't learn from the last time we stuck our foot in it or stuck our tongue in it, whatever it is? Well, our tongues deliver evil because they're fueled by evil. And here's the thing. The tongue, it really, it's an agent, it's a delivery agent and just delivers what is already in our hearts. In verse six, James says the tongue is set on fire by hell. More on that to come, but in verse 11 and 12, he explains the tongue heart connection with some helpful metaphors. He says, does a spring pour forth water, or sorry, does a spring pour forth from the same opening, both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water. James is getting to a very obvious point here. These are rhetorical questions. You know, Proverbs speaks of the heart as the wellspring of life. So what comes out of you?

[10:33] What comes out of you reveals your heart. Jesus said it this way, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And he also said, you were going to know a tree by its fruit. And James is kind of riffing off of what Jesus had said in those moments. A fig tree can't produce olives, duh. A grapevine doesn't produce figs. A salt pond can't yield fresh water. And Jesus' followers shouldn't speak destructive words. That's what James is getting at. If our mouths are mixed with blessing and cursing, it is exposing a heart problem. And we have what James earlier called double-mindedness. And that word double-mindedness, it can also mean like we have these two split souls, like we've got spiritual schizophrenia going on when we do blessing and cursing coming out of our mouths.

[11:23] And if I took you to a vineyard and said, look at all these amazing fig trees, right? As we looked at the grapevines, you would look at me and said, Jesse, you have lost your mind. That is, those are obviously not fig trees. And a heart that blesses God but curses people, it is schizophrenic. As James would say, you've lost your mind. Well, we may not have like lost our minds, but we definitely would have lost our way, the way of following Jesus. And in case you're tempted to minimize all of this, let me take you back to the end of verse 6, where James says, the tongue is set on fire by hell. So if your tongue, my tongue, is a delivery agent of what is already in our hearts, which is the source, then it follows that when we use our tongue for destruction, we are tapping into hell. Now, let me say this.

[12:18] The word he uses for hell here really reveals something, because it's a word, Gehenna, which it's a word Jesus liked to use when he talked about hell. And that word is actually a location.

[12:30] Gehenna is a location. It was a valley outside of Jerusalem. And this valley had a terrible reputation. It was considered a place of defilement. It was considered a place of abomination. And at points in Israel's history, terrible things were done there. People sacrificed their children to the god Moloch sometimes. It became, ultimately, what it turned into, it became a place where all the city's refuse, all the animal sacrifices in their entrails, their carcasses were put out there to be burned.

[13:02] Like it was a place of decay. Gehenna, this hell, was literally a non-stop dumpster fire. That's what it is. Right? And the stench of it could be smelled for miles. And James is saying that our tongue is the delivery system of that place. Which means every careless, harmful word that comes out of us shows that somewhere in our hearts, Gehenna's fires have yet to be extinguished.

[13:31] And he says to Jesus' disciples, he says, brothers, this ought not to be, but it be so. We are meant to be springs of fresh water. Our speech should bless and build and be full of life and hope and truth. Now, James isn't implying that all this is going to happen and change overnight.

[13:56] Right? Suddenly something happens, boom. All we're doing for the rest of our lives is blessing, not cursing. His encouragement for how we change, how we live this way is found in verses 13 to 18.

[14:09] And it isn't this lightning bolt from heaven. That suddenly just fixes our speech once and for all. What he says is there's a way to learn and practice. It is the way of wisdom that is from above.

[14:23] See, growing in God's wisdom is the only way our tongues can be tamed. Now, what's interesting is that James doesn't just tell us to get some wisdom. He teaches us that the wise, sorry, I really messed that up. Now, what he's teaching us here is that the wise understand something that we need to understand. We don't just go get wisdom, we got to live it out.

[14:50] And he begins with this like litmus test. He says this, who is wise and understanding among you by his good conduct, let him show his work in the meekness of wisdom. So the first thing we need to understand as disciples of Jesus, when it comes to wisdom, if we're going to practice this way of wisdom is that wisdom begins with realizing that you probably don't have it and that you need more of it. And that is what the wise do. The wise aren't those who have all the wisdom. The wise are those who seek wisdom. That is the essence of Proverbs. It's like, man, you got to go seek it out. You got to chase after it. You got to hunt it down. You got to hear it calling to you and listen and respond to it. That's what the wise do. The wise seek wisdom, but the foolish know everything already. And they make sure that everyone else knows how much they know. I was just at one of my kids' sports matches. I'm not going to say which one, but there was a dad in the bleachers with us who knew better than the rest.

[15:51] And he knew better than the coaches. And he made sure everybody was knowing, you know, how much he knew. But that's not wisdom. That is foolishness. The wise know that they don't know. So that's the first thing about wisdom is realizing that you don't have it. You need to go get it. The second thing is that your speech doesn't prove that you're wise. Your life proves that. Jesus said it this way, wisdom is known by her children. Like translation, wisdom is like parenting. You'll find out how right you were in your parenting when your kids get older, right? You want to figure out if you're wise?

[16:33] Wait and see. But James is saying this, hey, seek after wisdom and live wisely. Live wisely. Don't talk. It's not anything about talk. It's about living it. To put it another way, growing in wisdom requires practice. So what does that practice look like? Well, James, he really does the work for me.

[16:53] In verse 17, he gets into it. It's about living pure. It's about being pure. That's the wisdom that is from above, which is means being consistent, not split soul, not being spiritually schizophrenic.

[17:05] Salt water, then fresh water, then salt water, then fresh water. Blessing, cursing. And the wisdom from above is pure. It starts to gain and grow in consistency in how you live. And then it goes on to say it's also peaceable. And literally that is practicing the way of peace, doing the things that make peace and bring peace. Now, let me just say this. Peacemaking is different to peacefaking. And this is what I mean by that. Making peace doesn't deny truth and ignore injustice. It doesn't sweep it under the rug. That's peacefaking. But peacemakers, they pursue the way of peace, which part of that is being gentle in your speech, right? You can speak the truth, but speak the truth in love. Speak the truth with gentleness. Gentleness requires a patience. And that patience is a patience that can only come from above. And what that does, it makes us slow to judgment. And you know what being slow to judgment does? It makes us open to reason. When you are slow to judgment, you are being a person that is open to reason. And all of these things are what James is saying is elements of the wisdom that is from above.

[18:15] And what does he mean by being open to reason? It just means that you're teachable, right? People open to reason, they are teachable. They know they could be wrong and they may not have all the facts. You know, a lot of conflict happens because we don't bother to take time to listen to the other side. We figure out we're right. We know what's up and that is it. And we're going to hunker down in our position. But that is not being open to reason. That is not being sincere.

[18:49] That is not being impartial, as James goes on to say. So when you add all these things up, when you're thinking about the wisdom from above, you probably notice kind of a common thing that it's getting at here. The wisdom of heaven, the wisdom from above, it is heavy on humility. Heavy on humility.

[19:07] And that's really the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge, having all the right facts, that can puff you up. But wisdom tends to make you humble. And I think it's because as you grow in wisdom, as you and I grow in wisdom, what happens is we begin to know ourselves better.

[19:25] And that should humble us a lot. Because when we know ourselves better, we get more attuned to what drives us. And as we grow in wisdom, we learn to discern what our passions are. And that's what James is getting at at the beginning of verse 4 here. He talks about these passions that are at war within us. And these very passions, what they do is they produce quarrels and they produce fighting.

[19:56] In James 2, he says, You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and you quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions.

[20:13] Right? I want us to all realize this. When we read that, like, that is our factory default setting. Right? That's how we're born into this world.

[20:23] We don't learn that. That doesn't get programmed into us along the way. We start that way. And if you need evidence, go serve in kids ministry. All right? Go in those classrooms, do some observing.

[20:37] Kid wants a toy, kid takes the toy. Right? Grabbing, and then it grows into escalation. That is very normal. And then we grow up into adults, and nothing really changes except that our fighting looks a little different.

[20:51] We're not fighting over Legos anymore, are we? We want to watch our show. We want more attention or time from a spouse or a friend. We want the bigger house or the better car.

[21:01] We want that raise. We want that job position. We want more respect. We want more appreciation. Now, don't get me wrong. Some of those, none of the, like, not all of those things are bad desires, actually.

[21:13] But as Ed Welch, a Christian counselor, says, the problem is when our desires become demands. And we start to feel entitled to it. That's what coveting does.

[21:24] It grows into this level of, like, those aren't just things that I want. Those are things that I need. And when that happens, what we do is we cross over into coveting land. And there's no peace in coveting land, right?

[21:37] There's just lots of quarreling. And James makes sure that, hey, just don't shrug this off as no big deal, right? I mean, he comes out right after this, verse 4.

[21:49] You adulterous. There's an explanation there. So there might be some yelling involved by James here in his heart. You adulterous people. Whoa. Okay. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

[22:04] Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Now, we read that, and we might be thinking, James, you are just wound up a little too tight, buddy.

[22:17] But James doesn't need a timeout to cool off. He is jealous for where our affections and allegiances lie. See, we constantly lie to ourselves by saying we can love God and still live like the world lives.

[22:34] Or at least a little bit like the world. Maybe in just some ways. Especially for the passions that we really love. Right? Maybe for you that is sex outside of marriage.

[22:45] Or it could be the endless pursuit of pleasure where we move from sports to video games to March Madness to porn to hunting to boating to binging Netflix to casual dating to revelry back to video games.

[22:58] And on and on and on it goes. And then we stop and we say, oh, man, I just never have time to pray. Or it's living the American dream. We're chasing after that.

[23:09] The white picket fence. The house. The two cars. Electric, of course. The one and a half kids. The toy poodle in the Gucci bag.

[23:20] Whatever. The dream keeps changing. I'm just trying to keep up with whatever it might be. But James gives no wiggle room for any of this. And that's uncomfortable.

[23:32] Right? It makes us uncomfortable and it's supposed to. He says any friendship with the world. Any. Like .01% friendship with the world is too much.

[23:43] And what he's getting at and what he's saying is any adoption of the sins and values that this world has normalized. That stands against God and his kingdom and his righteousness and his truth.

[23:58] Any comfort and cozying up to that kind of life that the world holds out as meaningful. That is friendship with the world and that makes you an enemy of God. That's what James is saying. So either James needs to switch to decaf.

[24:13] Okay? Or we've been drinking it. We've been drinking. We've switched to a decaffeinated gospel. We like the gospel experience. But we just don't want those unwanted effects.

[24:29] Now before you start to think that God is up there in heaven in this old curmudgeon. That's throwing lightning bolts at everybody. Constantly scowling at us for not living right.

[24:42] Let's read why God cares so much about our disordered passions. Verse 5. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says he, God, yearns jealously over the spirit?

[25:00] He has made to dwell in us. God is passionate for our affections. And he wants them to be directed toward him.

[25:13] He isn't an angry judge. He is a jealous lover. That's who he is. That's what's going on here. Think about this. A wife should be upset if her husband goes around flirting with other ladies.

[25:28] God will be jealous when we flirt with the world. He will. But in his jealousy, you know what? He doesn't send us away.

[25:39] He doesn't write us a certificate of divorce. He doesn't give up on us. Because look at verse 6. The good news. He gives more grace. Friends, he is jealous over us.

[25:50] Like a jealous lover. And yet he gives more grace. Therefore, it says, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Thank goodness for the grace of God toward us.

[26:04] His jealousy over us is good and it is right. But his grace holds the relationship despite our wayward hearts. And when it says he gives more grace, it means your sin will never be greater than God's grace to forgive that sin.

[26:22] But here's the thing. That doesn't mean God's grace looks past our cheating hearts. His grace leads us into an important practice of grace.

[26:33] And I think this is part of the wisdom that is from above. The way of living toward being wise. James 4 verse 7, it says, Submit yourselves therefore to God.

[26:45] Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded.

[26:57] Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you.

[27:10] This sounds terrible. Actually, it is beautiful. Because as we grow in wisdom, we learn to submit to God and we learn to repent.

[27:22] And this is, man, this is so good for us, friends. God's grace, it doesn't excuse us from submitting to him and repenting.

[27:32] And let me just kind of define those things. Let me unpackage those two ideas of submission and repentance. First, submission. What does he mean by that? What does submission to God look like?

[27:43] It just means a yielding to him. It is not standing opposed to him in his ways and what he is calling us into and calling us to do. It is following him wholeheartedly and joyfully.

[27:56] And when we don't do that, you know what we got? We got repentance. Repentance. This is a good grace to us. Repentance is like making a U-turn in your life.

[28:08] That picture of repentance, what it is, it is you're walking this way and then you realize this is wrong, this is evil, this is sinful. And you turn your back on that sin and you begin to walk toward Jesus again.

[28:22] That is repentance. Repentance. You walk towards what is good. You walk towards this higher calling. It's a change of mind and a change of direction and a change of heart.

[28:34] And all those things, submission and repentance, that is only possible because of God's grace. They are gifts. They are not punishments. And it is through those two practices that our hearts, as James says, are cleansed and are purified.

[28:50] Gehenna's fire in our hearts gets extinguished when we do those things. The tongue is tamed and it can be used for blessing instead of cursing. We move from brackish hearts to pure water.

[29:06] Repentance. Think about this. We started with talking about the power of words. Repentance is using words in the most powerful way for our good and the good of others.

[29:19] It is a form of blessing, both ourselves and for those who we sinned against. And you know what? I want to say this. I believe God is at work restoring his gifts of repentance and submission to his church.

[29:31] Not just us. I think that's something he's doing. Because we've drifted into this overemphasis on forgiveness at the expense of repentance.

[29:42] Repentance is kind of just this thing that we've forgotten about. It's kind of sitting over on the shelf that's been collecting dust for way too long. And God's like, hey, we need to bring this back in front and center.

[29:54] We need to do that. But here's the thing. And here's why it's important. There's no real forgiveness without repentance. There is no mercy without the sinner or the offender acknowledging his wrongdoing.

[30:09] Consider Jesus and his parable of the unmerciful servant. Right? Jesus starts with talking about this man who, this master who called in one of his servants who owed him a ton of money.

[30:22] He calls to collect on that debt. Now that servant, he doesn't get there and say like, no, I don't owe you that money. You're wrong. No, no, it wasn't that much. It was just this much. What does that servant do?

[30:34] He says he acknowledges. He owes that much money. He acknowledges he can't pay the debt. And he throws himself at the mercy of that master. And what does he receive?

[30:46] He receives mercy. Now the rest of the story doesn't go well for him because he goes out and is unmerciful. But the point is, that's how it worked. And when we have a watered down, when we have a decaffeinated theology of mercy and forgiveness, what it does, it just tells us to constantly overlook the offense.

[31:06] And it doesn't call the sinner to repentance. But that fails everybody. And that isn't merciful at all. Because that's not how God's mercy works.

[31:18] The Bible is clear. The sin you know of, as Jesus' followers, the sin you are aware of, and the sin you know of is the sin that you need to repent for in order to receive his forgiveness and to step into his forgiveness and find mercy and healing for those things.

[31:35] It's good for you. There's no other way. There's no other real peace otherwise. And if we don't practice the way of peace, we shouldn't expect to live in it.

[31:47] But if we do, if we practice the wisdom that is from above, we can. James 3.18, the harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

[32:01] This sowing and reaping metaphor is meant to remind us that we won't always see the results right away. Like you sow and you wait, right?

[32:14] You wait for that harvest to come. But that harvest comes because you sow. But that's what we do. We don't give up. We sow. We don't give up the wise practice wisdom and wait with hope.

[32:29] Where God's wisdom is practiced, there will be a harvest of peace and righteousness. And when it happens, sometimes it happens in this life.

[32:40] And when it does, it is beautiful. It is beautiful to behold and it's beautiful to live in. But that is also a foretaste of the fullness to come in God's kingdom.

[32:51] So when Jesus returns, there will only be the wisdom that is from above. All the fires of Gehenna are all going to be removed from our hearts.

[33:02] It's not going to be there anymore. The tongue will be tamed. We will be springs of fresh water that only offer up praise to God, blessing him and blessing others.

[33:12] So one day, there will only be righteousness and peace until then. And let's live toward that by practicing the wisdom that is from above that James gave us today.

[33:23] As the band comes up and we look to respond. We're going to take communion in a moment. But before you come to the table, I want to offer these things to you. If you're not yet a follower of Jesus, man, this moment, this coming to communion, it doesn't make sense because this actually points to Jesus and those, and we take that in faith in him and knowing him.

[33:45] And your first step isn't to take communion. It's to come to him that this communion points to. And I want to say this. You can't extinguish the fires of hell within you.

[33:58] You can't. And without Jesus's salvation, those fires of hell within you, they are going to become your eternal reality one day. And I don't want that for you.

[34:11] And Jesus doesn't want that for you. Man, hell is a real place. And it is full of anguish. It is full of chaos. It is full of destruction. It is full of destruction. Record scratch.

[34:37] And it is for those who refuse to repent and submit to Jesus as Lord and Savior in this life. And so, man, he is jealous for you.

[34:49] If you are not yet a follower of Jesus, he yearns with jealousy over your soul, friend. He wants you to come and repent and find forgiveness in him.

[35:00] Come to him. There's going to be a prayer up on the screen. Run. Yeah. Figuratively run by saying that prayer to Jesus and you will be saved. Now, if you're here and you're already follower of Jesus, before we participate in communion that points to Jesus's death, what is God calling us to die to today?

[35:21] What is he calling us to repent of? What is the next step of surrender and submission that he is calling us to take? These are gifts of grace from God, from a good Father who's in heaven who loves us, from our King Jesus who saves us.

[35:38] And so, welcome these things. Practice these things. And I think what you're going to find and what you're going to experience is his mercy and love and his jealousy will meet you right where you're at right now.

[35:51] You can know that. So, we're going to come in a moment. Let me pray first. Let's pray together. So, Jesus, we come to you and we ask you to lead us.

[36:06] Lead us into wisdom. Lead us into your peace, into your righteousness. Humble us. Grow humility in us. Make us humble people. Make us gentle.

[36:16] Convict us and lead us into repentance for the sins that we are aware of so that we can enjoy your forgiveness.

[36:26] Amen. The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed, he took bread. When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body which is for you.

[36:37] Do this in remembrance of me. And in the same way, he also took the cup after supper saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

[36:48] Thank you, Lord, for your body that was broken for us. For your blood that was shed for us. They bring forgiveness. They bring healing.

[37:00] Heal all those things, Lord, that need to be healed. Forgive where we are repenting. Let us find mercy. Amen. So, friends, go to the table.

[37:13] Take the elements back to your seat. Just spend some time doing business with God. And then when you're ready, go ahead and take communion. Amen.