Something with a decorative pineapple on it and the words “Hey Ya’ll” across the front.
Or maybe a personalized one with your family’s name like “Welcome to the Griswolds”.
Or maybe one that’s a little more instructive that says, “Unless you have tacos, girl scout cookies or my Amazon package, please go away”.
Or one that says, “Doorbell is broken, please yell ‘Ding Dong’ really loud.”
Or maybe you don’t have a doormat, but when you get home one of your kids is waiting at the door and says, “Welcome home dad. Mom is in the kitchen crying. The toilet in the hall bathroom is stopped up. The dog threw up on the rug in the dining room. And Steve Urkel, Eddie Haskel, Kimmy Gibbler and Ernest T. Bass are going on vacation with us tomorrow.”
Regardless of what kind of doormat mat you have, you are always opening the door and welcoming someone or something into your heart and mind and attitude.
So, what is the greatest thing you can welcome into your heart and mind and attitude?
What is greater than tacos and girl scout cookies and packages from Amazon?
And no exaggeration here, what is the greatest thing you can open the door to right now that can change your day today and change your life forever?
Let’s find out – listen to James 1, verse 21…
21 Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness,
I have a friend of mine who’s a chicken farmer.
When you enter the door on the side of their house the first room you come to on the right is the chicken room.
If I remember right, it has a washing machine and a shower – and when he comes home from the farm that’s where he leaves the farm – that’s where he leaves his clothes and his shoes with all the dirt and grime and mud and strong smells of the chicken farm.
He puts aside all the filthiness of the farm – he doesn’t take it through the whole house.
James says put aside all filthiness and wickedness.
Part of what it means to be a Christian is that we aren’t supposed to wear the clothes of sin all over the house or all over the church or all over the community or all over social media.
So, what kind of filthiness and wickedness are we talking about?
The Bible is a kind and gracious book that decade after decade and century after century keeps standing out with truth that stands up to the test of time.
According to the Bible, here’s a basic list of things we should put aside – things we need to leave in the chicken room…
Disobedience
Greed
Hate
Jealousy
Murder
Arguing
Complaining
Lying
Gossip
Backstabbing
Pride
Boasting
That list works with any time in history.
Put things like that aside.
And how much of it should we put aside?
50%?
75%?
Maybe a little more on Sunday than Friday?
No, James said we should put all of it aside.
We should have an attitude that desires to work at putting all of our sin aside.
And why should we have an attitude like that?
Because Jesus loved us and gave himself up for us.
Our motivation is not our parents or our boss or our pastor or even the law of the land.
Our motivation is that Jesus came from heaven to earth to make a way for your sin – not in part but the whole – to be nailed to the cross and for you to bear it no more.
When you get saved you need to have a chicken room.
You need to always be putting sin aside.
Yes, the old phrase is true – once saved, always saved.
But you have to be once saved.
And one of the ways you know that you are once saved is that you keep going to the chicken room.
You keep putting aside filthiness and wickedness.
Listen to those things again…
Disobedience
Greed
Hate
Jealousy
Murder
Arguing
Complaining
Lying
Gossiping
Backstabbing
Pride
Boasting
Put those aside.
Imagine going into the shower of your chicken room and it’s covered with mold and mildew.
And you take some mold and mildew cleaner and spray it all over the place except for one spot.
And you look at that one spot and say, “Oh, I’m not going to spray anything on that little blob of mildew right there. I kind of like the design. It almost looks like a baby Yoda.”
No – you are going to spray that cleaner on all of that mildew in the shower.
Sin does not make pretty designs
Sin is full of lies
Sin desires to kill your soul
Someone said it’s like a Civil War general telling his troops just before a battle…
“Men, our only concern is the enemy’s bayonets.”
“Don’t worry about their cannons or their rifles.”
“Just worry about the knives on the end of their guns.”
That would be foolish.
Likewise, it would be foolish for us to only pick a few pet sins to deal with in our lives.
We have to go to the chicken room all of the time – we have to always be putting aside all of our sin – putting it aside and taking it off.
And what should we put on instead?
Listen to what James says next…
21 in humility receive the word implanted,
What does it mean to receive the word implanted?
It means to be really, really quick to listen to and believe and embrace and enjoy and apply the truth of the Bible.
Don’t resist it
Don’t push back from it
And don’t just receive it on Sundays – engage with God’s truth all the time.
From a Bible reading
From a devotional book
From a Bible Study
From a sermon
From a hymn
From a praise song
From a choir song
From a refrigerator magnet
Wherever you hear God’s truth – receive it – and keep receiving it!
Put it on and keep putting it on!
As Christians, the Word of God is like spiritual oxygen for our souls.
We must keep breathing it in over and over again.
I saw something this week that said without deep doses of the truth of the Bible we are all vulnerable to getting deeply wrapped up in the attitudes of the world.
Now, this isn’t a guilt trip, this is a grace trip.
Do a quick little timetable of yesterday.
How much of God’s Word got in your mind yesterday?
For instance, I’m going to guess that some of us spent more time on social media yesterday than we did reading the Bible yesterday.
And I’m going to guess that some of us spent more time running errands or fishing or pontoon boating or watching TV or playing golf or doing yardwork or baking lasagna or grilling steaks than we did listening to sermons or podcasts about God yesterday.
Again, this is not a guilt trip saying that you have to sit at home all day long reading your Bible at the table with nothing more than a crust of bread and a glass of water and then off to bed.
No, this is a grace trip to say that hours of talk radio and hours of TV and hours of social media and hours of hobbies and hours of shopping will not help your marriage or help your parenting or help your attitude toward your life or life in this country or life in this world the way the gospel will help you.
This is a grace trip to say that the everlasting truth of the good and great news that God is God and there is no other and that he sent his only Son to redeem and rescue and save from the wrath to come can and will have a deep and lasting impact on you today.
The truth of God will change you – so, put it on.
And how are we supposed to put it on?
How are we supposed to breathe in the Bible like oxygen?
James says with humility.
C.S. Lewis said this about meeting a humble person…
C.S. Lewis
…all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.
Jesus had a cousin named John.
When Jesus was about 30 years old, this is what John said about his cousin…
John 3:30
He must increase, but I must decrease.
In the life of a Christian, humility thinks much of Christ and little of self.
And that is the same attitude we must bring to the Bible.
Imagine being in a car accident and you are seriously injured, and you can’t get out of the car.
But when the firemen and paramedics arrive to help, you shout…
“Get away!”
“Unplug those jaws of life!”
“I don’t need your stinking help!”
That sounds crazy, doesn’t it?
Yet, that is how many professing Christians approach the Bible.
They don’t mind the interesting stories of the Old Testament.
They don’t mind the neat stories about Jesus in the Gospels.
Church-going folks especially like for the preacher to give some heavy-hitting sermons about Heaven and Hell and God and country.
But many of those same folks don’t want to hear any preaching that tells them they have to change how they are living.
Online or in person, during a sermon or during a Bible study, reading your Bible in the morning or listening to a devotional podcast – your heart needs to be teachable.
For the good of your life and for the good of the people around you, you need to have a heart that receives God’s Word with a humble attitude.
And listen, that’s not always easy.
When it comes to the Bible, sometimes it might feel like you are enjoying a fantastic slice of cinnamon roll apple pie with a scoop of salted caramel ice cream.
Other times it might feel like you are having a root canal in a county that outlawed numbing medicine.
But keep receiving truth!
Don’t resent it – receive it and embrace it and keep embracing it.
And embrace it with humility.
How do you do that?
Someone said to receive God’s Word with humility means that you accept it and you don’t argue with it and you don’t twist it to fit your politics or your opinions.
In other words, you say to the words of the Bible…
“Hey ya’ll!”
“Welcome!”
“Come on in – so glad you’re here!”
To receive the truth of God means that…
You are willing to listen to God
You are inclined to listen to God
You are enthusiastic about listening to God
And why do we need to read and listen to the Bible with that kind of enthusiasm?
Listen to the last thing James says…
21 in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls.
The Word of God reveals to a person’s heart the truth about the cross and the truth that Jesus Christ is the only real way, the only real truth and the only real life.
In other words, in telling you the truth about Jesus, the Word of God can save you from the everlasting horror and terror of Hell.
And then after you have been saved, the Word of God can save your soul from the daily chokehold of sin.
How?
By showing your heart over and over the truth that Jesus loved you and gave himself up for you.
In the hardest moments of life, the truth of the Bible…
Saves you
Protects you
Keeps you alive
There are so many things in life that seem to constantly wage war on our souls, but the Bible is designed by God to help us win those wars by finding and knowing and following Jesus.
William Farley was 22 when he became a Christian – his soul was saved.
His dad loved him, but his dad was not a Christian, so, he could not turn to him for spiritual help.
Another man who was a Christian reached out to him after he got saved and invested in him and helped love and follow God.
I graciously ask the men listening, do you have a William in your life?
Is there someone you know that you could help love and follow God?
It’s a good thing to teach someone how to fish or hunt or play golf or build a deck – but the truest definition of a man is someone who loves and follows God and helps others love and follow God.
William learned a lot from that man that poured into him.
William’s older now – he has 5 children and 22 grandchildren.
He shared this advice about what true humility looks like in the life of any father who desires to be great…
William Farley
Genuine faith and sincerity will manifest itself when a man is willing to admit that he is wrong.
William Farley
Many think humble people are weak and passive. The truth is the exact opposite. Humility is a byproduct of great faith, and faith always acts. This means it initiates! C.S. Lewis suggested that masculinity is the willingness to initiate. God is the great initiator. He initiated creation, redemption, and our salvation. In the same way, spiritual fathers initiate.
Fathers and grandfathers, are you initiating?
Do you initiate conversations about God?
Do you initiate activities that serve God?
Do you initiate attitudes that honor God?
A good, godly father knows how to use a chicken room – he works at putting aside sin – and with humility he welcomes the word of God in his life.
Fathers and grandfathers, do you welcome like that?
Maybe Father’s Day is an awkward day for you because of your relationship or lack of relationship with your dad.
Do you have a passive father?
Do you have a dictator father?
Do you have an absent father?
Calley was working as a cashier and the woman in line said to her, “You must’ve had a military dad.”
Calley replied, “No ma’am.”
The lady said, “But you’re so polite.”
Calley said, “I’ve actually never met my father, ma’am.”
The conversation ended.
Calley Sivils
The word father has always been a difficult word for me to grasp. When I hear it, I don’t recall any memories; I don’t see a face; I don’t know a voice to associate with it. I don’t connect with it at all.
But Calley is a follower of Jesus – her soul was saved.
She is still impacted by the reality of an absent father, but with humility she keeps receiving God’s truth.
So, she has a different view of Father’s Day and all the other days.
Calley Sivils
My father has not been present, but my heavenly Father is omnipresent.
What does it mean that God is omnipresent?
Joe Rigney
God exists everywhere and everywhen. He is eternal and omnipresent. And not only is he present everywhere, he is everywhere pursuing us. He is the hunter, the king, the husband, approaching us at an infinite speed.
Fathers, grandfathers, and anyone else who is listening to my voice – with grace and mercy and rescue and salvation and love God is approaching you at an infinite speed.
So, for the good of your soul, put out your welcome mat for God.
so do you have a nice welcome mat at your house? Got a nice welcome back, Got maybe one that sits in front of the front door and it's got like a little pineapple on it and it has the words, hey, y'all, you know, right there on the front or maybe you have a different kind of doormat, Maybe it's one that has, you know, something about your family, you know, you know, welcome to the Griswald house, you know, there are on the front matt or, or maybe you have something that's a little more instructive, you know, your, your mat in front of the door says, unless you have tacos unless you have Girl Scout cookies or my amazon package, please leave. You know, maybe maybe that's what your mat says or maybe your doorbell doesn't work, so you're matt says doorbell doesn't work, Please say ding dong. Really, really loud. Yeah, maybe that's it. Or maybe you don't have a welcome mat. Maybe at the end of the day you open up the door and one of your kids are standing there and he says, welcome home, dad, mom's in the kitchen on the floor, crying the toilet is backed up, the dog threw up on the dining room table rug and Eddie Haskell is going with us this week on vacation. So come on, dad is going to be great, It's going to be great regardless of what kind of welcome that you have. We are always welcoming things into our hearts and into our minds, constantly, always welcoming things into our hearts and our minds. So what is the greatest thing you can welcome into your heart and your mind? What's the greatest thing that you can welcome? Greater than Taco is greater than Girl Scout cookies? Greater than your amazon package? What is this thing that with no exaggeration that if you will welcome this into your heart and your mind, it will actually change your life today and change your life forever? What kind of welcoming is that? Let's see if we can find out looking at James, Chapter 1: verse 21. James writes this, therefore putting aside all filthy nous and all that remains of wickedness. I have a friend of mine who's a chicken farmer, and when you go into the side of their house, the first room you come to on the right is the chicken room. If I remember right, it has a washing machine, uh and then it has a shower, It's kind of a little bathroom with the washing machine in there. And and that's where when he comes in at the end of the day or whenever he comes back from the farm, That's where the chicken clothes go. That's where the chicken shoes go, because if you've never been in a chicken house, it smells really, really, really bad and it gets all over your clothes. So that chicken room is where he comes to put aside the chicken clothes and the chicken smell. He doesn't take that through the whole house as christians, we need a chicken room, that's what we need. We need to be putting aside the filthy nous of sin, putting it away from us. Part of what it means to be a christian is that we put aside the filthy nous, we put aside the wickets, we put aside our sin, we don't take it with us. All over the house are all over the church, are all over work or all over school are all over the community. The whole idea is that we're putting it aside that every day, all day we are going to the chicken room now, what kind of filthy nous is he talking about? What kind of filthy nous and wickedness that would be putting off to the side? Because truthfully, if we're honest, hey, we're at church this morning, we're not filthy wicked people, you know, So we don't think of filthy nous and wickedness and anything that has anything to do with us. So how would the bible describe this concept of things we need to put away? What do they look like? Well, here's just a kind of a basic list of things that we see in scripture. Disobedience, Greed, hate jealousy, murder, arguing, complaining, lying, gossip, backstabbing pride and boasting. Those are things we should put away any time in history, not just in 2021, any time in history, that list works. Those are things we should be putting away, we should be putting aside. And how much, how much of those things should we be putting aside? 50%, maybe a little more on Sunday than we do on Friday. James says we should be putting all of it aside, but not a portion that we should have an attitude that's always desiring to put these things aside, to put filthy nous aside, to put wickedness aside. And why should we have an attitude like that? Why should we want to put things like that aside? But we should want to because jesus loved us and gave himself up for us. See our motivation doesn't need to be our parents, our teachers are pastors or or even the law of the land. Our motivation needs to be that we have seen and known that jesus came from heaven to earth to make a way to take our sin, not part of it, but the whole of it to take our sin away so that we will bear it no more. That's our motivation. Our motivation is when we get saved, we love to have a chicken room. We long to have a chicken. We want to put aside the filthy this, we want to put aside the wickedness. We don't want to hang on to those things. We want to be changed. We want to be different. You know that old phrase once saved, Always saved. And that's true, but you have to be once saved. And one of the ways you know that you've been once saved is you go to the chicken room. One of the ways you know that you've been once saved as you are putting aside sin, not perfectly because none of us are perfect, but you're engaged, you're engaged in putting aside sin. You're you're working at putting aside since you're working at putting assad, taking it off and again, What kind of things are we talking about? I think it's good for us to hear him again. I'm just going to go through one more time. Just see have you had any of this? How about let's just really hurt our feelings. Have any of these things come from your mouth in the last hour? You know that means why you've been at church. So yeah, I'm kind of hurting our feelings here, but at least the last hour. But how would you say the last last two days? Disobedience, greed, hate jealousy, murder, arguing, complaining, lying, gossiping, backstabbing pride and boasting, Put them aside. That's what we're called to do, to put them aside. And if we don't, it's just strange as believers. It's just strange. I mean, imagine you go to your chicken room and you go to that shower and you look in and it's just full of mildew and mold. I mean just all over the place. So you grab some mold and mildew spray cleaner and you go in there and you spray it all over the place. Except this one spot, this one spot of mold at that black moldy mildew is sitting right there. You're like, you know what, I'm not going to spray it on that spot. It's kind of got a little design. It looks like a little baby Yoda right there. I think I'm just going to leave that right on the shower. I'm not going to do anything to that. No, we're going to spray it all over the place. We're not going to just spray parts, we're going to spray it everywhere. We're not going to think that a design of mildew, it's cute. Listen, here's what we desperately need to remember. Sin makes no cute designs in your life. Sin is not something that is true. It's full of lies and sins. Desire is to kill your soul. So the notion of not putting it aside, the notion of keeping it, The notion of saying it's no big deal is foreign to our souls because part of what it means to be in christ is that we would do the opposite. Somebody put it this way. It's kind of like a civil war general and he gets his troops together right before they go into battle. He said, I'm in, when you go into battle today, don't worry about the cannons and the rifles. I want you to focus today on the enemy's bayonets. I want you to focus on those knobs on the end of their guns. That's all you need to focus on. Forget the bullets, forget the rifles, forget the candidates. You just focus on the knives. That's foolish. But likewise, it's foolish for us as believers to know their sin in our life, to see their sin in our life to either ignore it or pick out the easy sins to deal with. We need to spray the cleaner everywhere. The call on our lives is to go into the chicken room all the time to put it aside to take it off. Take the filthy, this, take the wickedness, take the boasting and bragging and the arguing and the complaining and the anger and the fear and the worry and everything and just take it off. Don't hang on to it. So if we take that off, what are we supposed to put on? James tells us 1st 21 and humility received the word in planet. We put on the word. Now we do some interchange in here. The word of God, the truth of God, the bible, we're going to use all of that together. So the bible, the Word of God, the truth of God. That's what we should be implanting in us because we have received it. What does that mean? Here's what it means. Very simply. It means when you hear something of the truth of God, when you hear something from the bible, you are quick to listen, quick to embrace it, quick to enjoy it and quick to apply the reality is we're sometimes quick to resist it. Were quick to to push it away. Were quick to have nothing to do with it or were quick to maybe only listen to it on Sundays, but not just sunday any day. If you are reading your bible, if you're reading a devotional book, if you're listening to a sermon, if you're listening to a podcast about God, if you hear him or you hear a praise song or you hear a choir song or you see something from the bible on a refrigerator magnet wherever you see God's truth here, it receive that. Listen to it, read it, embrace it, don't push away, take it on, put it on, let it be part of who you are as christians. The word of God is like spiritual oxygen for us. We have to breathe it in over and over and over again. We can't push away from it. I saw something this past week that said that this aspect of breathing in some deep doses of God's word is so important because if we don't have deep doses of God's truth going into us, we will get caught up. We will be vulnerable to be taken over by the mindsets of the world. It's true for all of us if we don't have a lot of God's truth in our minds, we will be taken away by whatever we are welcoming in at that moment. Now we're going to go a little bit of a Grace trip for just a second. Not a guilt trip but a grace trip. Okay, so let's just look at yesterday. Okay let's just let's just do saturday now. I'm going to guess that yesterday there are some of us that spent more time on social media than we did reading our bibles. Okay. Alright. Grace trip not guilt trip. Stay with me. All right. And I'm imagining that yesterday there's a lot of us that we spent more time gardening or doing yard work or pontoon boating or fishing or hunting or playing golf or or baking lasagna or grilling steaks or watching tv or whatever. We were doing more than we were listening to sermons or listening to podcast about God. Okay, again, Grace ship not guilt trip. So what we're not saying is that from now on you have to sit at the table all day long, reading the bible and then a crust of bread, a glass of water and off to bed. Ok. That's not what we're saying. But here's what we are saying according to the truth of God's grace and according to the truth of God's word, it's this the hours of talk radio and hours of Tv and hours of social media and hours of hobbies and hours of anything else that you put in that blank will not help your marriage will not help your parenting will not help your attitude about your life or your attitude about this country or your attitude about the world or your attitude about the church, the way that the Gospel will help you. In fact most of those other things will pull you away from God in some way shape or form doesn't mean they're all evil. It just means that there is a great propensity for anything that's not truly about God. To pull us away from God. That's why we memorize scripture. It's why we memorize songs that we sing about God because we may find ourselves in the moment where we don't have the big family bible. And so we listen to talk radio and we listened to the T. V. And we read the newspaper. We scroll through social media as people who have the Gospel meaning that the Gospel cancels out anything that says to us. Be afraid that the Gospel cancels out anything that says to us be angry because the Gospel keeps being good news news, good news, good news, good news, much. Good news do you have in your life? Right. And how much bad news do we have in our lives? Right. We're good news. People are bad news, people are we people that enjoy the beauty of the Gospel? Do we see and understand and know that God is the everlasting God, He is God and he is God alone and he has sent his only son to rescue and redeem you. That news will help you. That news will change your life. Put on that news. Put on that news, Put on that news and we have to do it over and over again. We need deep doses of the truth of God because it's only the truth of God that will change us. So we put it all and how are we supposed to put it on? Well, James says, you're supposed to put it on with humility. We're supposed to breathe in the truth of the bible, breathing in like it was oxygen. We're supposed to breathe it in with humility. So what is humility? C. S. Lewis said a great little small paragraph about what it would mean to bump into someone who has humility in their life. A humble person. I love this. All you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him, it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility. He will not be thinking about himself at all. So do we seem like intelligent chaps and Chipettes? No. The female equivalent. We'll go with that more. It's does anybody ever see that at us? Do they see in us that when we talk to them that they know that we're interested in what they're saying, we're interested in what's going on with them? Are we do we just vomit up everything going on in our mind and everything we saw on social media? Everything we're afraid of, worried about are angry about. Do people see the good news in us? Are we giving ourselves deep doses of good news so that we can help our own hearts, but we can help the hearts of others as well. Are we receiving God's truth with humility? How do we go about doing that? Well, Jesus had a cousin named john And when Jesus was about 30 years old, cousin John said this about Jesus, John Chapter three verse 30 he must increase, but I must decrease. See in the life of a christian, we're supposed to be thanking much of christ because you're thinking a lot about christ, you know the old, the old phrase, well, you know, he's so heavenly minded, he's no earthly good. Can I just say ain't none of us ever been guilty of that? Not for a millisecond, We're never heavenly minded enough ever. So we're supposed to be thinking of christ, not thinking of self, but here's the math. It's fantastic. The more you think of christ, guess what? Self gets everything it needs. It's amazing math. As jesus increases. We don't feel like we're decreasing. We feel like we're getting everything that we possibly could need. We're receiving and receiving and receiving and it's good for us and it makes a difference in the world. That's the attitude we have to bring to the bible. It's the same attitude we bring to the truth of God's word, a attitude of humility that receives and receives and receives. Imagine you're in a an automobile accident and you're hurt bad enough that you can't get out of the car and the paramedics and the impacts and the firemen, they all show up and they show up, they get up next to the car to help you when you go, ah go away, unplugged those jaws of life. I don't need your stinking help. Gone, I got this. That'd be foolish. Right? And yet that is a very similar approach that many as professing christians. We do this sometimes we approach God's word that way we really do. We say stay away. Sure. We like some, you know, sermons that we hear on some of these fantastic old testament stories we we like some of the neat loving stories about jesus, from the gospels. And there's a lot of folks boy they love and the preacher will do a little hellfire and brimstone, a little God and country sermon. Oh yeah, we like those. But we don't always like when the sermon or the bible study or the bible verse or the devotion says something to us that says that we have to change that. Our attitude at home has to change that attitude at church. Has to change their attitude about the country, has to change their attitude at work or at school has to change that. We have to do something different. We have to say something different. We don't like those sermons. It's okay, let's just be honest, if we're honest, we usually like our ears tickled a lot more than we like our hearts punched and yet it's the heart punch. Yes. Best before us. It's that reminder of, of putting aside that reminder that God is there to rescue us when we can't get out of the car own ladder in person. Whether you're listening to a sermon or, or sitting in a bible study or reading your bible yourself or, or doing a devotional book or, or listening to a podcast about God. You know, one maybe like make your own headlines. It appears monday through friday on amazon podcast or as a little pitch, you can find it anywhere you want Elizabeth, wherever you're hearing God's truth, wherever you're listening to God's truth, receive it with humility. Put it on, take it on, let it be a part of who you are. And look, I'll be honest. That's not always easy, is it? It's not sometimes engaging with the truth of God. It's like you're, you know, eating a slice of cinnamon roll apple pie with a scoop of salted caramel ice cream on the side boy, it just feels good. Yeah. Come on God, I love that man, I'm encouraged. This was great. And then other times engaging with the word of God, engaging with the truth of God. It feels like you're getting a root canal in a county that outlawed numbing medicine, right? They don't feel good. It hurts. But regardless of whether it hurts or whether it feels sweet, receive it, receive it, receive it, take it on, embrace it, keep embracing it, keep putting it on. Someone said, receiving God's word with humility is not a difficult thing, but it could be broken down. This simply receiving God's word. With humility means not arguing with it. It means not rejecting it. It definitely means not taking it and twisting it to fit your politics or your view of a pandemic. Are your opinion about anything else on the globe? You take God's word as it is, You receive it, you embrace it. In other words, what you do is when you hear the truth of the bible, you say, hey, y'all come on in. When you hear these words of truth from God's book, you say, hey, y'all come on in, welcome. I'm so glad you're here to receive God's word. To receive his truth. With humility means that you are willing to listen to God. You're inclined to listen to God and you're enthusiastic about listening to God. Why should you be enthusiastic about listening to God? James tells us because that's part of verse 21. And humility received the word implanted, which is able to save your souls. The Word of God. The truth of God, the bible reveals to a person the truth about the cross of jesus reveals the truth that Jesus rescues and redeems and saves. In other words, the truth of the bible tells us about jesus. And when we hear about jesus, we hear the greatest news that exist anywhere. We hear that Jesus is the only way and the only truth and the only life, and we hear that we can have life through him. We hear there is a way to escape the terror of hell, to escape being separated from God forever. And there's a way to be right with God. And there's a way to be with jesus. There's a way to be saved. There's a way for our souls to be saved. And when your soul is saved, one of the first things you do is you set up a chicken room, that's what you do. You you begin putting aside, putting aside, you learn the habit of putting aside and the beauty is once you've been saved, it's not just that God saved your soul once, but he keeps saving you every day from the chokehold of sin in your life. And how does he do that? Because he keeps reminding you through his word that jesus loved you and gave himself up for? Yeah and over and over again, you hear this truth that jesus saved you, that the word of God tells you that if you will believe in it, cling to it, that it will keep saving you keep protecting you. In a sense, it will keep you alive because you'll keep those deep doses coming in. We have deep doses of lots of stuff coming into our lives. We really do and I promise I'm not trying to give any of us a guilt trip about sitting down and studying our bibles for 10 hours, but really, really, really our attitudes are being driven by the news, driven by social media, driven by the radio, driven by our opinion. And the reality is we're discouraged people for the gospel's good news, the Gospels, Greatness, the Gospels, grand and glorious news that we should be putting on. We should be taking deep doses in. That's why it's great news. That's why God has done that. Do you know how many things are happening in your life right now? This morning that you can't even see that are at war against your soul. Lots of things. Things we can't see but see. God designed the bible. He designed his truth to help us fight those wars, and part of the way we do that is we're reminded of what it means to love and follow God. We receive his word with humility and his word helps. It's what it does. William Farley became a Christian when he was 22 years old. His soul was saved when he was 22. His dad loved him but his dad was not a christian so he couldn't turn to his dad for spiritual help. But there was another man, a believing man that that after he got saved, took him under his wing, invested in him helped him love and follow God. And so I would just ask this is I guess for men and women. But do you have a William in your life? Is there someone that you could be helping love and follow God? If you're over 75 you are not done. And if you say that it's sin. Mhm. You're the most important people in the life of our church because you had the gospel for a long time and you have the beauty and the glory of God. Please invest it. Please don't say your time is done. We need you. If you're 25 or 35 and you've been a Christian for six months or two years or 10 years or 15 years. Is there William in your life? Is there somebody you know at work or school in your neighborhood, somebody that you could help come alongside God? We've baptized a lot of people in the last two years at this church and a lot of them have been under the age of 25. Have you sought them out? Have you come along and encouraged them or have you thought, well, that's the pastor's job. See the church will never be healthy if everything's the pastor's job to the church is healthy. When we all say, Hey, where's my William? Where's where's my way? So this man poured into William's life and Williams older now, He's got five grown kids and 22 grandchildren, bluff. This is his advice on humility and trying to be a great father. He said this genuine faith and sincerity will manifest itself when a man is willing to admit that he is wrong. That's a picture of true greatness as a father and as a man, he goes on to say this. Many think humble people are weak and passive. The truth is the exact opposite humility is a byproduct of great faith, and faith always acts. It always acts. This means it initiates. And he would quote C. S. Lewis. C. S. Lewis suggested that masculinity is the willingness to initiate men. Masculinity is the willingness to initiate. So if you're passive, you're missing masculinity. Masculinity is the willingness to initiate. And then he says, this God is the great initiator. He initiated creation redemption and our salvation. And in the same way spiritual fathers initiate, We initiate. So fathers grandfathers, how are we doing it, initiate? Do you initiate conversations about God? Do you initiate acts of service for God? Do you initiate attitudes that honor God? Do you initiate? Are you initiating a godly father nose that the way to lead is to receive God's word with humility, To welcome God's word with humility, to go to the chicken room all the time and to put on the truth of God. So fathers, Grandfathers, how are we doing it? Welcoming the truth of God into our lives? Maybe Father's Day is an awkward day for you. Maybe Father's Day is one of those days that you have a strange relationship with your dad, or you didn't have a relationship with your dad? Or maybe your dad is no longer with us And maybe you had or have a passive father or a dictator father. Or maybe you have an apathetic father or maybe you have an absence. Fine Callie was working as a cashier and she was there at her cashier monitor and a woman came through the line. She said, you know what honey? She said, I bet your dad was in the military. She said no ma'am. She goes well I just can't believe that because you are so nice and so polite. You just seem like you come from a military family kelly said, well actually man, I've never met my father and the woman didn't respond. The conversation kind of ended, kelly said this the word father has always been a difficult word for me to grasp when I hear it. I don't recall any memories. I don't see a face. I don't know a voice to associate with it. I don't connect with it at all. But she's a follower of jesus, her soul has been saved. So although Callie is still impacted by the reality of having an absent father, she and humility keeps receiving God's truth over and over again. So her attitude has completely changed. This is what she said. My father has not been present, but my heavenly father is omnipresent Nascar. What does it mean that God is omni present. Heard a great definition, it goes like this. God exists everywhere and every win everywhere and every win. He is eternal and omni present. And not only is he present everywhere, he is everywhere pursuing us. He is the hunter, the king, the husband approaching us at an infinite speed, infinite speed. Fathers grandfathers anybody else who can hear my voice with grace and mercy and rescue and love and Salvation. God is pursuing you with infinite speed, suck for the good of your soul, for the good of your soul. Put out your welcome, forgot. Welcome. Yeah, today.
