The Most Important Thing You Will Do

Good morning to each one. Welcome here. It's good to have you all here.

It's good to be here. So, welcome as we look into the Word of God. We have, well, let's put it this way.

Last summer, I spent a good share of the summer preparing five messages for Bible school that was going to happen in November. And as I was preparing those messages, I think I was asked a time or two to come up here and preach and so I had to put those aside and, you know, prepare a message and then get back to those messages that we were trying to prepare. As I was preparing, it was going through my mind, I wonder if I will ever share these messages I'm preparing for Pennsylvania, share them here in Hulsey.

It kind of was in the back of my mind. I didn't know. I had the notes.

I had the preparation. I thought, well, maybe. I was always kind of self-conscious when I thought about doing that because when I was asked to share the, you know, in Bible school, I knew this is a fresh group of people that have never heard me preach before, at least most of them.

A few of them had, but most of them had not. And so, I could share some of the things I've shared with you. I could work those into those sermons and come up with something that I thought God wanted them to hear.

And so, bringing those same sermons back here to Oregon then, I said, I know these people have heard these things before, but I would like to do that. When I was asked to share here in February 18, it is today, right in the middle of tax season, this idea came up again. I said, well, maybe I should start here in Hulsey sharing the same series of messages that I did back in Pennsylvania.

And so, we'll see how God leads. This morning, we're going to share the first one that I shared back there. And Lord willing, we'll share the other four as well.

But I say Lord willing because I want to be open to God leading in a different direction. But that's what we're going to do. Maybe some of you wondered.

You who do hear me preach here in Hulsey, maybe you say, well, of all the things you've ever shared here in Hulsey, if you have a chance to go share with a hundred and some young people, what would it be that you've shared here that you think is the most important? What would you take back there? You can't share everything. There's not near enough time in five days. So, what would you pick? Maybe you're wondering that.

Maybe this next five sermons that I'll share, maybe it'll be an answer to that question, what would I share? So, we're going to go through, we're going to have an introduction here and at least end the first message and we'll see how God leads in the future. So again, it was five different messages. So by way of introduction, I'd like just to share that an event that happened around 3,000 years ago, about the time Solomon would have been king of Israel, there was an earth-shaking event that happened halfway around the world from where Solomon was king.

And it's something you won't read about in the Bible. You won't read about it in too many history books, maybe a few science books. But this was an eruption of a volcano called Sand Mountain.

And this volcano, when it erupted, it landed on a river that the blockage of that lava landing on the river created a lake, a lake that's around 140 acres in size. And some of you have been to it. You've been to it the same time that I have been to it.

It's called Clear Lake. It's right up here in the mountains. And 142 acre lake, it's called Clear Lake for a reason.

The water is crystal clear. Some people have said you can see 100 feet through that water, maybe even up to 200 feet of visibility. Well, this lake is, like I say, it's a beautiful lake.

There's a trail that goes all the way around the lake. And we went up there, we took a hike around this trail. And at one end of this lake, we came to a bridge.

And I'll just draw a little illustration here. This lake is like this, and there's a bridge here at this end of the lake. And a mighty torrent of water is pouring out of that lake.

It's called the McKenzie River. 40,000 or so gallons every second is pouring out underneath that bridge and rushing down the mountain 90 miles away until it joins up with the Willamette River. And that's right close to the city of Eugene.

This river, McKenzie River, is the source of, I believe, most of the drinking water for the people in Eugene and Springfield in that area. And so here we are, we're hiking on this trail around, all the way around Clear Lake. And so we got to this bridge, we saw this mighty water rushing out of there, and so we keep on hiking around the lake.

And we're looking, well, if this lake is overflowing, where's the water coming from? And we keep going, keep going, we don't see it, we don't see it. Way over on this end is a tiny little trickle, little bit of water coming in. Well, there's no way that could produce that.

Eventually the lake's going to run out of water. So we keep walking, we get all the way around, and we realize that was all we had seen. A tiny trickle of water coming in one side, a huge torrent of water going out the other side.

How is that possible? We look up in the sky, it's not raining, clear blue sky. We wonder how is this possible? Until we talk to the scientists who have studied this lake. And they tell us that it doesn't come from this little stream, it doesn't come from above, through rain.

It comes from springs that are pushing up underneath that lake. And they keep on pushing, and they keep on pushing, and it's filtering up through that lava. That's why the water is so clear, is because it's been filtered for, I don't know how many feet it has to push up through the lava to get to the lake.

But it's crystal clear water, very good water for drinking, and that's the source 90 miles away for the drinking water for the city of Eugene. So let's bring this into our spiritual lives. There's a word in the Bible called grace that it mentions over and over again.

The Bible says about believers, great grace was upon them all. Paul tells his people at the beginning of almost every letter, if not every letter, may grace and peace be multiplied to you. He wishes his readers grace and peace.

Jesus was said to be full of grace and truth. So Jesus was full to overflowing. Just like Clear Lake overflowed into the McKenzie River, Jesus was overflowing with grace and he blessed the people around him.

And God wants us to be overflowing with grace. Another verse says, let your speech be always with grace. My son pointed this out to me soon after he started courting.

I don't think it meant exactly what he thought it meant or he wished it meant, but still a good verse. Let your speech, when you talk, let it always be with grace. So what's the definition of grace? Two words I would like to point out.

Divine favor and divine influence. Divine favor and divine influence. Some people have given other definitions.

They've said, you know, it's God's work on man's behalf. We could call it spiritual prosperity. We could call that grace.

We could also maybe broaden it just a little bit just to say the blessing of the Lord. That's grace. When it comes from God, it's God's blessing and these could all broadly be called the grace of God.

Now there's a passage in Psalm 1 that talks about a certain kind of individual, a particular person who sits at the right place, he stands at the right place, but it says his delight is in the law of the Lord. And at the end of the chapter it says, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. That's an amazing statement about this individual, whoever he is.

Whatsoever he does is going to prosper. We say, well, how many of us want that? We want to be prosperous. Do we want to be prosperous? And I think we would say, well, yeah, we do.

Well, there's even a picture later on in Psalms. Psalm 128, a picture of the grace of God or the blessing of the Lord. Listen to this picture of blessing.

Blessed is everyone that feareth the Lord, that walketh in his ways. For thou shalt eat the labor of thine hands. Happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.

Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house. Thy children like olive plants around thy table. Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the Lord.

The Lord shall bless thee out of Zion, and thou shalt see the good of Jerusalem all the days of thy life. Yea, thou shalt see thy children's children, and peace upon Israel. What an amazing picture here in Psalm 128 of the blessing of the Lord.

A man sitting there around the table with his wife and the children. So there's a picture of relationships that are doing well. There's a picture of a marriage that's doing well.

The grace is upon the children. They are doing well. It must be that this man maybe either had a business or a job that he was working at, and it was going well for him because it says you'll eat the labor of your hands.

Maybe even his church life was going well because it says there's peace there. Peace upon Israel. And so this beautiful picture of grace.

And I'm going to ask you the same question I ask those young people. How many of you want the grace of God in your life? Raise your hand. Can I see a raise of hands? Okay, thank you.

The blessing of the Lord, the grace of God, you want that grace. After reading Psalm 128, who wouldn't want the grace of God on your life? But now I want to show you another picture of God's grace from the Bible. And this is a picture of a man who experienced Psalm 128.

He was sitting with his wife around the table. He had ten children. His business was doing very well.

His family was doing very well. He was known to be a man full of the blessing of the Lord. His name was Job.

But you know one day things changed, and suddenly Job didn't have a lot of the things he had before. His camels got stolen, his sheep got burned up, the other animals were gone. All of a sudden all his wealth was gone down the road or up in smoke.

And then his children all died in a windstorm. And then his health was gone through those boils. Disaster after disaster struck Job's life.

But through all that we see God's grace upon Job's life. He said, the Lord has given, the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

That is a man full of grace who can say that at that time of life. Shall we receive good from God? Shall we not also receive evil? I know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand the latter day upon this earth. Those were the words that Job said out of his mouth at times of great trial, great problems.

And so if I would ask you again, how many of you want the grace of God in your life after seeing the story of Job? You don't have to raise your hand, but think about that. Do you still want God's grace upon your life? Do you want to be like Job? Well what if those things are going to happen to you? Do you want to be like Job? Do you want to be able to say the things that Job said? You see, grace filled lives do not mean easy lives. A blessing of God sometimes means not just financial prosperity or health prosperity or relationship prosperities.

It might mean the power to go through adversity and come through like gold, like the Bible says. Here's another picture of God's grace. The man Jacob in the book of Genesis.

His business was a success. Somehow God's blessing was upon Jacob in a powerful way. He went to work for Laban, his employer.

And Laban wasn't a particularly good guy. He said, hey, I'll take advantage of Jacob. He says, I'll get as much free work out of him as I can in exchange for my daughters.

And he did. But God still blessed Jacob. Eventually Jacob had his own little farm.

And God started blessing that farm. And at first Jacob was getting the spotted ones and all the animals became spotted. And so they went to Jacob.

So they changed their wages. You get the solid colored ones. Well, they all became... God was just blessing Jacob over and over again in spite of everything Laban could do to cheat him.

Jacob was receiving the blessing of God. An amazing story. Jacob had a little boy named Joseph.

Joseph said, I want the blessing of God in my life too. And so he said, I want to be like daddy. I want to do what daddy did.

I want to experience the blessing of God like my dad did and do what my dad says. So he grew up to be a good boy. But what did he get in exchange for his goodness? Joseph got enemies from his brothers.

They became jealous of him. They sold him into slavery. Wait a minute.

This blessing isn't going so well, Joseph might have thought. But you know what happened? When he was in slavery there in Egypt, his master was Potiphar. And Potiphar's house began to prosper under Joseph's direction even as a slave.

So okay, well maybe this isn't going to go so bad after all. But then he gets falsely accused and sent to prison. Lord, what's happening? I thought I was going to be like my dad.

My dad was under the blessing of your hand. Can't I have my dad's blessing? But no. There he sits in jail.

But then God began to prosper that jail and everything under Joseph's hand again started to prosper. The blessing of God was on him. And it didn't go like he wanted.

He wanted to be released from prison sooner. He wanted the butler to go tell Pharaoh, hey get me out of here. He didn't do it.

He forgot. And it just seemed like one adversity after another. But eventually, we know how that turned out.

Joseph eventually was released from prison. He was put into second command in the country. The story turned.

God has ways of doing that. We know people today. We know people who have the joy of the Lord in their life.

Maybe they, you know, maybe there's things about them that don't seem particularly impressive. Maybe they don't have a lot of money. Maybe relationships are not what they wish they would be.

And yet joy comes out of them. They're overflowing with the grace of God. And so, like I say, grace-filled life doesn't mean an easy life.

But even when things are hard, you can live a life full of the grace of God. So again, let me ask the question. Again, don't raise your hands, but do you want the grace of God in your life? Do you want the blessing of God? I can tell you here this morning God wants to give it to you.

That's His desire for you. He wants to bless you. He wants to fill you with His grace.

And here's the other thing. Others are depending on you to have it. There's people down in Eugene, 90 miles away from Clear Lake, who are depending on the water from Clear Lake to get there and still be relatively clear so they can use it for drinking water.

People are depending on you to have the grace of God flowing through your life as well. Are you going to allow the grace to flow through you? I hope you want that grace to flow through you no matter what circumstance in life that you are in. So you could ask, well, what is the source of this grace? What do I need to do? I need to make, what do I need to do to get, to have this grace flow through me? Well, the source is God.

It's not you. You can't produce this grace yourself. You need to get it from the source and the source is God.

So then why don't all believers have this grace? Why do we see people who, as we look at their lives, we see some believers who seem to have this grace but then others who seem not to have the grace. You look at their lives and they're struggling with sin. They don't have victory over sin.

You look at their lives and maybe even you'd say the grace of God is not on their businesses. They make promises to their customers and their employees and they don't keep those promises. They borrow money and they don't pay it back.

The grace of God doesn't seem to be happening in their businesses and maybe in other or whatever God has, you know, whatever lot in life that they have. Maybe there's other things that just seem to, no matter how much they try, they just always have this tale of woe about how things are not going right for them. They don't seem to have God's grace upon them.

Why the difference? Why some believers over here that seem to have that grace and other believers over here who by their own testimony say, nothing goes right for me. Why are there two different kinds? Both of them would say, I believe in the same God, the same Jesus, maybe even members of the same church sometimes, but one is a channel of grace and one isn't. What's the difference? The answer is there are channels of grace, windows of grace that God has given us that need to be opened.

And God is giving us today keys and say, go take those keys, stick them into the lock in the window and turn the key. And God says, I'm not going to do it for you. I'm giving you the key, multiple keys, and you need to be the one to go turn it.

And that's what we're going to talk about for these next five messages. What are some of these keys that God has given us? What are some of these windows that God wants to open and pour grace into your lives, pour grace into our lives? He's put those things in our power and He wants to pour through us a McKinsey River full of grace to bless you and to bless the world around you. So we're going to talk about five different of these channels, five different of the five different windows over the next five or so messages and ask ourselves, am I using the keys that God has given me? Am I turning the key in the window? Am I allowing God's grace to pour into me the ones that He wants to do? So that's the introduction.

We're 25 minutes into this. We're going to start by looking at the first window that God wants to open. But before we do that, I wonder if you would just bow with me for prayer.

Lord, we come to you in the name of Jesus and we are grateful to you for bringing us here. We are grateful to you for your grace, your blessing. We are grateful to you, Lord, that you have put in our hands the keys to open the window, open the doors of grace to flow into us, to touch us, to change us, to make us more and more into your image and to bless not only us but people around us who depend on us to be these channels that you want us to be.

So Lord, I pray that you would guide us and direct us this morning. Just open up our eyes, the eyes of our understanding. We ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen. The title of this first message that I have is the most important thing you will ever do. The most important thing that you will ever do.

Years ago, I was sitting and visiting with a friend of mine. I've told this story before. Some of you remember.

Some of you forgot. Some of you weren't here. I'll tell it again.

As I sat in this fellowship meal with a friend of mine on those folding chairs in a gymnasium eating our lunch or maybe waiting on our lunch. I don't remember which it was. But we were just talking about things that life, you know, things that we go through in life.

He gave me this advice. He was probably a generation older than I was. And he just said this.

He said, Roger, I can't give you the answers to everything you need to do in every single situation with all the details that you need. I can't tell you what the answer is to all of those situations. But I can tell you there's one thing you can always do in every situation that will always get God's attention.

One thing that will always get God on your side. One thing, he didn't say these words, but will always open the grace of God to you. And so my question immediately is, what is that thing? What do you think that thing was that he said? Now, if you know, don't say, but let's talk about this a little bit.

What was that one thing that he said? We could talk about a lot of things that we could do that will open God's grace, that will get God's blessing, that will get us on God's side. But what did he say? What did he say the most important thing was? So let me give you a hint. If you want to turn in your Bibles, in fact, it might be good if you would.

But some of you know this by memory. It's 1 Peter 5. 1 Peter 5, verses 5 and 6. Now before, as you're turning there, I'm just going to give you a sentence and I want you to complete it. What's the word that goes in the blank? God gives grace to the humble.

Thank you. God gives grace to the humble. And so I wonder this morning, how many of you would say, I'm humble? Do we have any raise of hands? I'm a humble person.

Okay. Everybody's looking around. Nobody's volunteering.

Okay. Well, if you would be, God would give you grace. That's what it says.

Okay. And I'm kind of glad you didn't. That seems a little bit out of place to raise your hand and say, Hey guys, I'm humble.

All right. All right. Let's talk about somebody else.

Instead of talking about yourself, let's talk about somebody else who was humble. Who was the, let's use a different word than humble. Another word that's closely related is the word meek.

Who was the meekest man that ever lived according to the Bible? Moses. How old was Moses when he was the meekest man who ever lived? According to Numbers 12 verse three. Anybody know how old he was? 80 years old.

Okay. 80 years old when the Bible says he was the meekest man. We can read some of his life before that and it doesn't seem like he was the meekest man or the humblest man that ever lived before that.

But by age 80 he was. So how many of you are willing to wait till you're 80 to have the grace of God? How many of you are willing to wait till you're 80 to get to this point where you're humble and so now you can have the grace of God flowing through you? Well, that's how long it took. Moses, how long is it going to take you? What's it going to take to get you to that point where you're humble? Well, I've got some good news to you if you don't want to wait.

You say, I need the grace of God before that. The good news is that there are various parts of speech in the English language. What are you giving us? English? Yes, sort of I'm giving you an English lesson.

Actually I think most of you already know this but if you have your Bibles open to 1 Peter chapter 5, I want to read two verses and I want to ask for your help here because here in 1 Peter 5 verses 5 and 6 there are three parts of speech that we say in the English language. We have nouns, we have adjectives and let's stop there for just a moment and we're going to read this. Actually there's one more I'm going to put up here, verb.

And I'd like you to tell me which words these are. So for those students in school, those teachers, we have these three words. They all start with the letter H and we have one of each.

We have a noun, we have an adjective and we have a verb in these two verses. So you listen, let's read it. Likewise ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder.

Yea, all of you be subject one to another and be clothed with humility for God resisteth the proud and give us grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore unto the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time. Now, you're listening, what's the noun? It starts with the letter H. Humility.

I might get corrected here and that's okay if I do. But I'm going to say the noun is the humility and what's the word humble? I think there's another word that's implied here. Humble, God gives grace to the humble people.

If you would say it that way, that's going to be our adjective. Okay, so now we have a noun up there and we have an adjective. Humility and humble.

Moses, by the time he was 80, he had humility. Moses, by the time he was 80, he was rightly called humble or meek. But we don't want to wait until we're 80.

Are we out of luck? The good news is there's another word up there and it's a verb. What's the verb? Humble. Humble yourselves.

These are both the same word so the word humble can be either an adjective or it can be a verb. And I'll just put here humble yourselves so that you know what we're talking about here. And so this verb is a very good news thing because you see when it's an action, a verb, that means you don't have to wait.

You can start right now today. You can start today to humble yourselves even if you can't rightfully say I have humility. Even if you can't rightfully say I am a humble person.

You can still start today to humble yourself. And that was the answer. We were sitting there on those folding chairs in that fellowship meal that my preacher friend said to me.

He said, Roger, there's one thing you can always do in every situation you get yourself into and that is humble yourself. It doesn't matter where you're at in life. It doesn't matter how big of a mess you've made of things.

You can always humble yourselves. Whatever you do, if you humble yourself, it will be the way to get God on your side. God fighting for you.

God giving you His grace. So and he goes on to say this. He says an interesting tidbit.

He says the best example that we have in the Bible is in 2 Chronicles chapter 33 the story of King Manasseh. King Manasseh was the most wicked king that the country of Judah ever had. And he reigned a long time.

Fifty-five years he reigned. We think a country leader can do a lot of damage in four years or eight years. But what about fifty-five years if you're going to be the king for that long and give yourself over to wickedness, how much damage do you think you can do? Well whatever damage you can do, King Manasseh did it.

He was wicked. Eventually God brought judgment upon him and he took him into captivity. And there in captivity King Manasseh did the verb.

I suppose he was miles and miles away from the noun or the adjective. But he decided he's going to do the action at the bottom there and he humbled himself. And it's amazing what happened.

God took King Manasseh out of captivity, put him back into Jerusalem, put him back in the throne, in the kingship and Manasseh spent the rest of his life trying to undo the harm that he had done for the first number of years of his kingship. Getting rid of the idolatry, getting rid of the witchcraft, doing away with all these evil practices. An amazing turnaround and it all started with this one action.

He humbled himself and he did it thoroughly. And I think that's the key. He did it thoroughly.

And so I suppose if the most important thing I could accomplish this morning it would be simply this, to convince you to be willing to humble yourself. Am I willing to live my life in a way that humbles myself, that I humble myself in every situation I get myself into. Every circumstance that comes up I'm going to humble myself.

I say it's the most important but it's not the only thing that we want to accomplish. That's the most important. To encourage you to make that decision I will always humble myself.

The second most important thing is to talk about what does that even mean to humble ourselves. You might say, yes I want to do that. I want to take that key, key number one, and I want to put it in the window and turn the lock.

I want to let that grace pour into my life. I want to humble myself and I want to start today. I don't want to wait until I'm 80.

I don't want to wait until I'm a year down the road. I want to start today to use that key. I hope we can all say, I hope you can all say, I hope a decision has already been made.

Yes, I will do that. But then the next question comes, well, I want to do it. Yep, I've decided.

I'm going to do it. But now how do I do it? What does it even mean to humble myself? How do I do that? And the answer to that question is going to be a long time in answering. It's going to be a lifetime in answering what does it mean to humble yourself.

But I'm going to give you a few clues here. A few examples of what it means to humble yourself as opposed to the opposite. Okay, so let's start with, let's start with this one.

Confession is a way to humble yourself. Confessing rather than concealing. In Proverbs it says, he that covereth his sins shall not prosper, but whoso confesseth and forsaketh shall have mercy.

And that's grace. You shall have mercy. Mercy is part of this package of grace that God wants to give you.

Whoso concealeth or covereth his sin shall not prosper, but whoso confesseth and forsaketh shall have mercy. So confession rather than concealing. That's one way.

Here's another way. Honesty rather than secrecy. Very closely related to the first one.

Honesty rather than secrecy. Another one. Forgiveness rather than bitterness.

Has anyone ever wronged you? Has anyone ever done you wrong? Has anyone ever hurt you? Forgive rather than hold that as a grudge. Here's another one. Acceptance rather than resistance.

Are there circumstances in your life right now that you wish were different? You have a choice. I can accept it or I can resist it. Accepting is a way of humbling yourself.

Let me be more specific. Acceptance of unfulfilled desires. I suppose everyone here has a desire in your life.

Some kind of desire that you have. I wish things, this is something I would really like to do, so I wish things were different right now, but I sure hope it's different in the future. I have a desire.

God may say sometimes to wait on that desire. You have this desire. It's not fulfilled right now, but wait.

It's coming. Be patient. That may be God's answer.

It takes humbling yourself to accept that wait. God may also say, no, not only is that desire not being fulfilled now, but it will never be fulfilled. Are you okay with that? If that's God's choice for you to have that desire never fulfilled, is that something that you can bow your heart and say, God, I accept that.

That's hard, but that's where grace comes. That's a way to humble yourself and say, God, if that's your choice for me, I accept it. Here's another one.

Apologize rather than defend yourself. You can make excuses for something that happened or you can just give an apology. There's different ways to give an apology.

You can say, I'm sorry I did this, period, or I'm sorry I did this and then put a little word but there. I'm sorry I did this, but, and then give some kind of reason why you did it. There's qualifications we can do.

I would encourage you just learn to say, I'm sorry, without the but and then the next clause. It's more powerful that way. Here's a little story that I picked up.

It wasn't long before I headed east for this. I was just reading this magazine. It's called, a little story, The Day My Dad Became My Hero.

When I was a girl, less than five years old, my aunts, uncles, and cousins from a neighboring state came to visit. With all of us packed into a mobile home, there was plenty of noise and activity to go around. Most of the cousins gathered in my small bedroom to play.

All at once, a skirmish broke out that brought the parents on the run. What happened? Who was involved? Even though I denied any involvement, my dad felt sure I was part of the trouble and he marched me off for punishment. After my punishment, I still maintained my innocence.

At last, dad believed me. What happened next is something I will never forget. Instead of trying to save face, dad humbly apologized for having punished me.

He seemed to grow before my very eyes. He was the adult, I was the child, but he was man enough to apologize. Dad and I have a warm, loving relationship and I believe his apology had a big impact on the kinship we enjoy today.

May God bless every father who is big enough to make amends. Apologizing rather than defending yourself. In Matthew chapter 5 it says, first be reconciled.

Conflicts happen. Conflicts between husband and wife. Conflicts between people.

We need to humble ourselves when those things happen. Maybe between parents and children. Maybe between brothers in a church.

Maybe even between government authorities and us sometimes. There are all kinds of conflicts that can happen. So, what's the answer? Humble yourself.

How much do I need to humble myself? Well, if there's a conflict, maybe I need to decide how much is my fault and how much is the other person's fault. I decide, okay, well it's 60% my fault and 40% the other person's. I'll humble myself 60% as long as they agree to humble themselves 40%.

We'll make a deal. Is that the way to do it? It usually doesn't work that way. Not very well.

First of all, it's pretty hard to identify that percentage that we just came up with. That 50-50, 60-40, whatever it is. It almost is never 50-50.

Almost always one person's more at fault than the other. And it's almost never 100% and 0%. When there's a conflict, almost always there's a little bit of blame to pass around.

But you know, the solution, the only solution is really for one of those two parties to start by saying, I'm going to humble myself 100%. That's usually the beginning of true reconciliation. The willingness to be the bad guy.

But what happens? God pours out grace. So of all these ways that we have to humble ourselves, we have honesty rather than secrecy. We have confession rather than hiding.

We have forgiveness rather than bitterness. Acceptance rather than resistance. Apologizing rather than defending.

What's the essence of it? If we were to sum it all up in one thing, what would that be? How could we define what it means to humble ourselves? There's a little phrase, talking about Moses, Hebrews chapter 11, that I thought did a pretty good job of what it means to humble yourself. It's simply this, Moses chose to suffer. He chose rather to suffer than to enjoy.

Anyway, choosing to suffer, I think, is the essence of humbling yourself in just about, if not every circumstance. I'm choosing to take the pain when I could try to flee the pain. There's maybe some exceptions.

I just haven't thought of them. That's possible. But Moses chose to suffer and when we choose to suffer, we choose to put ourselves down rather than lift ourselves up.

That's where God's grace. And then it says, what does it say in 2 Peter? It says that God may exalt you, that He may exalt you in due time. That's His heart for us.

I shared with the students there at Bible School a story that I've shared here before. Most of you have heard it. It was the time I got a billboard call from an Amish man named Delbert.

He told me about the fact that he was in a car wreck just 11 weeks earlier and in this car, he had hired the driver. He had his two children. They had a head-on collision.

Everyone was killed but himself. The driver, they made connection later. And I thought, well, Delbert's probably calling me to get prayer, comfort, something after going through such a tragedy.

No, he was calling to get help. How can I witness to this driver that killed me or killed my children? And it was quite an amazing story. So we talked, Delbert and I, and he was still recovering 11 weeks later.

But it was quite a story. I passed that on to the rest of the phone team. And one of the phone team members, he sent me a link to an article.

He said, maybe you could share this article with Delbert and he could share it with this truck driver. It was an article called The Freedom of Forgiveness Received. And it was written by a man named Joel in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Joel's now a pastor in his late 40s. But 30 years ago, he was a 17-year-old boy who was speeding, showing off in a car, just got his license through the Pennsylvania roads, tried to pass an Amish buggy, didn't see the turn signal. He hit it broadside.

Ended up killing the wife of the man who was in there. They were five days into their honeymoon, this Amish boy, this Amish young woman. And five days into their honeymoon, they got hit by Joel.

Joel was told by his father at age 17, you need to go apologize. You need to make a, you need to, you know, as weak as it is, you need to go say, I'm sorry. You need to face what you did.

And he did. He went, he met this man. His name was Aaron, this Amish man.

And he was amazed at the forgiveness he received in response. They even became friends. Later, Joel got married, invited Aaron to his wedding.

Aaron got married, remarried after his wife passed away, invited Joel to his wedding. And he just tells the story of that forgiveness that had been received. One of Joel's testimonies, this man who's now a pastor there in Pennsylvania, he said, I've had difficult things happen after that in my life.

But he says, you know, after receiving that forgiveness from Aaron, I never had a struggle forgiving other people when they did things to me. It never was a temptation to hold a grudge anymore. I thought, you know, that's a beautiful picture of you and I. If we realize our sin against God and His forgiveness toward us, it should be easy to forgive others.

And when we don't forgive others, it might be a sign that we don't realize our own liability to God that He's forgiven us of. And so, beautiful story. I don't have time to go through the whole detail of that, but it's something I'd be glad to share with you, the written form of that if you would like.

Another caller, Joey, back in July, earlier, about, what, 10 months, 9 months ago, he called and 28 years old, hey, I saw your billboard. I wonder if you could convince me that God is real. Well, what kind of request is that? No, I don't know that I can, Joey, but tell me why you ask.

Well, he says, I'm suffering from depression. Really, what, why? What's the source of the depression? He says, I've had a rough life. He says, I was molested as a teenager, as a child, he said.

I've had conflict with my dad. My dad's a pastor, but he's not a good Christian. He's not a true Christian.

He's a hypocrite. He's selfish. He doesn't humble.

He won't humble himself. He says, I've had conflict with my dad. I've got conflict in my marriage.

I've been married for 7 years to my wife. She's successful. I'm not.

She's a nurse. She's got a good job. I try to start businesses.

They don't go very well. He says, my business is failing. He says, I go to church, but I have disagreements with my church.

He says, he doesn't want to leave the church he's at, but he just doesn't agree with them on things and life is just really spiraling out of control for him and now he's got this depression and he doesn't know what to do and wants to know if I can convince him that God is real. I said, Joey, here's a question for you. It's kind of a tough question, but suppose there was some bad news that you didn't know about.

Maybe you had cancer. You don't know you have cancer, but you go to a doctor and the doctor examines you and takes blood tests and all that and he knows the bad news. You don't know it yet.

Would you want that doctor to tell you the bad news? Well, yeah. Yeah, I would want the doctor to tell me. I said, okay, Joey, well, I'll tell you what some of the bad news is here.

I said, and I do it in hopes that it will help you. I said, I talked to a lot of people that say they have depression and I said, I don't know what the percentage is, but it's a pretty high percentage. I would guess maybe around 90% of the people who have depression also have unforgiveness in their lives.

I'm not going to say it's 100%, Joey. I mean, there's people that go through chemical things, physical things, there's things that happen in their lives and those are maybe the source of their depression and it's not necessarily unforgiveness, but I said way more often than not, it is. There's a connection.

Way more often than not, anytime I hear that somebody has depression, they also have unforgiveness. So I said, Joey, is that possible that you have unforgiveness in your life? He says, immediately, he admitted, yes, I do. I know I do.

I said, well, Joey, tell me, who's your biggest source of unforgiveness? You mentioned this child molester. You mentioned your dad. You mentioned your wife.

Which one do you have the hardest time with forgiveness story? He said, very clearly, my dad. He says, I just have a hard time forgiving my dad for who he is and what he's done and his hypocrisy. He says, do I have to forgive my dad if he doesn't repent? You know, God doesn't forgive us if we don't repent, so why do I need to forgive my dad if he doesn't repent? I said, Joey, you know, there's a big difference between you and God.

God can take vengeance. That's His to do. You can't.

You don't have a right to go take vengeance on anyone, including your dad, but God does. He's God. He's in a totally different position than you are, Joey, and God calls us to forgive freely.

He calls us to not hold these grudges because when you do hold a grudge, there's really nothing you can do about it. You're just doing more damage to yourself than you're doing to other people, and I told Joey, you know, if you really want to know if your forgiveness is real, here's two things you need to check. Number one, there's two bridges you need to cross.

Number one is the bridge of repentance. Repentance is admitting your own sin, not just looking at the other person's sin and asking, am I going to forgive him or not, but looking at your own sin. You see, unforgiveness itself is a sin, and you need to repent of your sin.

That's a bridge you need to cross for your forgiveness to be real, genuine. There's another bridge you need to cross to know that it's genuine. It's a bridge of gratefulness.

Gratefulness. You need to become a grateful person. When you can honestly think about your past with gratefulness, then you'll know you're free.

You need to be grateful toward your father. You need to be grateful toward your wife. Well, what is there to be grateful for? Well, think of something, Joey.

Tell me this, has your father, did he provide for you growing up? Oh, yeah, yeah. He was always a good provider, fed us, clothed us, gave us a house. Well, be thankful for that.

Is your dad and your mom, are they still married to you? Oh, yeah. Yeah, they're still married together. Well, that's something to be grateful for.

Many children can't say that about their parents, that they're still together. Be grateful for that. What about toward your wife? What about toward God? How many things do you have to be grateful for? When your thoughts are going the grateful route rather than the pain route, you'll know you've turned a corner.

You're truly free. I get calls on the billboard lines, you know, quite often, every day that I'm on. And one question, even if I don't articulate this question, one question always comes into my mind, what kind of a person is this? What kind of a caller is this? Is this man going to humble himself or not? And you know, that's also the question God's asking about you and me.

Are we going to humble ourselves or not? Especially when trials, pain, failure come into your lives, but also when successes come. What about things are going really well? Are you going to humble yourself or not? And God is waiting. He wants to pour out this barrel full of grace into your life.

If and when you do humble yourself, just like clear lake is being poured. There's all this fresh water coming in, this clean water, and it's blessing other people. God wants to do that to you.

He wants to bless others through you. Another exercise, it would be interesting. Go read the books of the kings, 1st and 2nd Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings, 1st and 2nd Chronicles.

One king after another. And you know what? It's a very interesting exercise. Just ask one question.

Did they humble themselves or not? And often the answer is both. They did for a while, and then they didn't. Or once in a while, like Manasseh, you have someone who didn't for a while, and then he did.

Did he humble himself or not? One of the most sad verses in the Bible is the verse that says, Solomon loved the Lord. You say, that's a sad verse? It's sad because we know the end of the story. You can read up to the end of his life, and Solomon fell away from the Lord.

It's so sad to look back and see what an amazing story the first part of Solomon's life was. He loved the Lord with all his heart, but then later fell away. That is a warning to each one of us.

If you want to take another walk, go down here to one of these graveyards between here and Harrisburg, or any other graveyard around, and just take a walk through that graveyard, and you'll see these gravestones, you'll see names, you'll see dates, dates of their death, dates of their birth usually, maybe a little quote from something. One question, did that person humble himself or not in life? And that's another way of asking, was he saved or unsaved? Was his name in the book of life or not? Either they humbled themselves or they didn't, and that is determining about where they are today. And you know, I told the young people at Bible school that today at Bible school, this week at Bible school, you're going to have opportunities to humble yourself.

I'll tell you here in Halsey, we're going to have opportunities to humble ourselves. We're going to have memories of something I need to apologize for. We'll have, you know, memory of something that someone else did to me that I need to humble myself over.

These things aren't easy. They go against what I want to do. But every time you do it, you'll be flinging open that window and letting God pour the grace into your life, turning the key in the window, letting God open it up.

And it's something we do consistently. You know, it's something you need to do all the way. It's like a person who is going to go skydiving, you know, they put the parachute on their back and they jump out the airplane.

If they try to grab a wing on the way down, it's not going to turn out very well. They got to get away from the plane in order for the parachute to do its work. Same thing with humbling yourself.

You need to do it completely. Get away from all the props. Make no demands, no expectations.

Otherwise, if you have expectations, you're going to be disappointed. But if you have no expectations, God, I'm just going to trust you to do your way, your work in your way, in your time. I'm going to be patient and continue to humble myself until you act.

One last story. George Matheson, he was a successful, I think he was studying to be a lawyer perhaps, some kind of trade, some kind of profession, I believe. He was, everything was going well, his schooling.

He was engaged to be married and then he was diagnosed with blindness. He went to his girlfriend and said, I'm going to go blind, it looks like the doctors tell me. Well, she could not handle this.

She said, there's no way I can be married to a blind man for the rest of my life. So she broke off the engagement. He was heartbroken.

He was heartbroken, he went home, but he chose to accept that pain rather than get bitter about it. And he went on to live in spite of his blindness, a life of incredible fruitfulness. He would preach sermons, he would write books, he was doing teaching.

In fact, Queen Victoria, Queen of England, she even heard about a sermon that he did on Job and she had that sermon published. She even invited him to come and preach in one of her castles, but he never did get married. George Matheson went on to live this single life.

He had a caretaker, his sister, one day she got engaged and got married. And of course, this was bringing back memories in his own mind. What would it be like? What if it was me getting married today instead of my sister getting married? And, you know, remembering that heartbreak that he had had years earlier.

Well, on the eve of his sister's wedding, he sat down, he wrote this song. He said it just came flowing out of me. He said it took maybe five minutes to write this song.

You know this song, I'll read it. Oh, love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee. I give thee back the life I owe, that in thine ocean depths its flow may richer, fuller be.

Oh, joy that seekest me through pain, I cannot close my heart to thee. I trace the rainbow through the rain, and feel the promise is not vain, that morn shall tearless be. Oh, cross that lifteth up my head, I dare not ask to fly from thee.

I lay in dust, life's glory dead, and from the ground there blossoms red, life that shall endless be. Let's bow for prayer. Father, we come to you in the name of Jesus and we pray that you would come and pour your grace into our lives.

Thank you that you have given us windows of grace, channels of grace, keys to open up that grace into our lives, and I pray that you would help us to exercise those things today. Help us to know what you would have us to do, to help us know specifically how you would have us to humble ourselves this morning, today, this week, and the rest of this year, and the rest of our lives, so that we could be true channels to bless not only ourselves, but those around us. Bless us, Lord, guide us, and keep us.

In Jesus' name, Amen.