(This transcript was generated by AI. Apologies for any inacuracies)

If you have your Bibles with you, turn to Philippians chapter one.

We're going to camp out in this letter to the church in Philippi today because they were struggling with some issues.

They were facing some issues they needed a tissue for.

Issues that look a lot like our issues in the American church today.

The church in Philippi was facing persecution.

They were facing a threat of false teachers.

They were facing dissension.

They were facing factions inside of the church.

Persecution.

We're persecuted here in America today.

Some persecuted by the world.

But what's worse is sometimes that persecution comes from within the church.

There's false teachers and you ain't got to look too far on TV or online to find them.

There's plenty of them.

They're kind of easy to pick out, but they're not the greatest danger to God's church.

The greatest danger to God's church is fake Christians.

People who say a certain thing and honor him with their lips, but their hearts are far from him.

They love him when it benefits them or when they need something, but when it comes time to change them, oh, they don't get so involved then.

It's not so exciting.

Being a Christian isn't always joy and lifting hands.

It's lifting hands, knowing what you've been delivered from.

That's why we raise our hands here.

That's why we clap our hands here.

Not because we hope the person next to us sees us and thinks we're holy.

Tracking, it's easy to be Christian on the net, but what about in the streets?

Factions, division and judgment.

Sometimes we're so busy judging each other and judging different churches and the way that things spread out because everybody loves their church and that's a really, really good thing.

It should be.

However, there are a lot of churches that are all God's churches.

Can I talk to you for just a second and see my wife?

She went to a non-denominational church.

I want to be clear with you.

This here is not a non-denominational church.

This is a multi-denominational church.

We got some Pentecostals, we got some Baptists, we got some Methodists, we got some Presbyterians.

We got all of them here because we found out that we had something in common, but her family grew up Pentecostal.

They get down on Sunday morning.

I grew up Southern Baptist.

We do not.

We stand there with the hymn and we don't get out of beat.

We sing off key, but not out of beat.

Now my grandfather, he was from the church of God.

He would think that we need to get it together in here.

Ain't nobody running and jumping and passing out.

I don't know how they did all that, but this is a little bit different.

But sometimes what happens when we're walking with Christ is that we get a little excited about the things that we're doing instead of the things that he's doing.

And we get a little bit of this, this really ugly word called pride.

We start to get that feeling in our chest that makes us want to puff it up a little bit, you know, set our shoulders back a little bit.

It's called pride.

Let me tell you a little something about pride.

Pride was the first thing that ever happened in the universe.

Pride is the same sin that has Satan shoot like lightning to the earth.

It was the same sin that cast him out and it's the same sin dividing God's church today.

It's the same sin that's keeping people from living out their God-given purpose because they have pride instead of humility.

Pride.

Pride usually comes in some different ways.

Everybody's got some idea about how the church should run and some things that they ought to do, but a lot of people don't get in the game.

You know, I played football my whole life.

Nobody knows the game of football better than a 40, 50 year old guy who's watched it his whole life and never played a single snap.

Tell you the truth.

Nobody knows the game better.

They could coach every team better than any of these coaches that are paying millions and millions of dollars to do it because they watch it on NBC.

Sometimes it's like that.

I want to say sometimes the thought that you just had that is like, man, our church should have one of these that came from God and he designed you to do it.

Not for you to tell us to do it, but for you to do it.

You get up, you do something.

Don't start judging other people because they ain't getting it done when you were the one called to get it done.

Does that make sense?

Y'all with me so far?

Pride is the work of the devil and the devil is a liar church.

He's a liar.

He'll tell you, you deserve things that you don't deserve.

He'll tell you that God is withholding things from you that he's not.

That's what happened in the garden.

That's how this whole thing got started.

See, lied to Eve said, surely you won't die.

You'll be like God.

She'd be like the thing that she loved, the man that she loved, but God wasn't holding anything back.

But I'm going to tell you this, because I've learned a few things.

And what I've learned is the Bible is the Bible and it says what it says, and it is not open to interpretation, period.

It was written to a certain people at a certain time.

When you read it, you ought to think about the type of reading that you're writing, that you're reading.

Like when you're reading an epistle, don't read that the same way you would a Psalm.

That's not going to make sense.

There is descriptive texts.

There are prescriptive texts.

You should learn a little bit about what you're reading.

However, it's not open to interpretation, but the spirit of God will not be limited.

The spirit might say 50 different things to you in your lifetime from the same verse, because you were ready to hear it at that time.

And that's what he needed you to do.

And God has called each one of us specifically for a specific purpose.

And yours might not look like mine.

I might not even agree with the way that God's taking you there, but I don't know your journey.

So I leave you with this with all of these different churches and all of these things that we get so excited because church, we get stuck on stupid a lot.

That's the truth.

Slap your neighbor.

Say, don't get stuck on stupid.

If God told you to wear dresses all the time, baby, wear dresses all the time.

If God told you to have a beard, maybe have a beard all the time.

If God told you to buy a Dodge, buy a Dodge.

If God told you to buy a Ford, no, He didn't.

I'm joking.

I'm joking.

Some four drivers in here, but the thing about it is I want to be recognized by who my father is.

Not by all this other stupid stuff.

Not by all these things that don't amount to a hill of beans when you add them all up together.

And you can take all that knowledge and all those stuff.

And if you added a dollar to it, you might buy a cup of coffee.

I want to sound like him.

It makes me think about Peter.

Y'all remember Peter?

Oh, ear cutting off Peter.

Oh Peter, Jesus denying.

Only one stepped out of the boat, Peter though.

I get Peter, man.

Me and Peter get along because I'm not saying that I'm an emotional brother, but maybe I am.

But Peter, you remember when Peter denied him?

You remember the third time that he denied him?

I heard a pastor, he kind of put it this way.

I never thought about it like this.

It changed my thought process on it.

The third time Peter denied him, the way they came to him and they said, you sound like him.

Your accent gives you away.

Now, what did Peter have to do to convince him?

He had to start cussing.

He had to start cussing and swearing so that he sounded more like them so that they would think that he wasn't with Jesus.

And I started thinking, man, do I sound like him all the time?

No, I don't.

Especially when I'm trying to change the oil in a Toyota that you've got to take the entire thing apart to get to the oil pan.

I don't know if God maybe makes a concession there, but I want to sound like him.

I want to look like him.

I want to walk like him.

I want to talk like him.

I want to leave the scent of him in every building that I walked through.

I want what people know about me is to be the, that dude loves Jesus.

Because the hope of the world is not based on some great thought process.

It's not based on good preaching.

It's not based on awesome worship.

Only hope that we have the only future.

It's not a tycoon turned politician, folks.

It's got a name and his name is the name above all names.

The name that every knee would bow for.

And it's Jesus Christ.

He's the only thing that will ever save you.

But if you will turn to chapter one and Philippians verse 15 is where we're going to start to be sure.

Some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill.

These preach out of love knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel.

The others proclaim proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely thinking that they will cause me trouble in my imprisonment.

What does it matter?

Only that in every way, whether from false motives are true, Christ is proclaimed.

And in this, I rejoice.

I don't care what your motive is.

I care that you speak his name.

I don't care if God told you this or that, or all these different things.

Listen, I'm not saying that there's not right and wrong.

I'm not saying that faith is subjective.

I'm not saying that the Bible is a positively isn't.

But what I am saying is that the main thing, keeping the main thing is the main thing.

And it's Jesus.

It's always been Jesus.

God taught me a little bit about this when I first got into seminary because I was getting all these new downloads.

And I decided to use this phrase that I love to use about myself.

I'm sola scriptura.

That means the Bible alone.

And that is how I believe.

That is my thought process.

That's how I preach.

All of those things, the Bible as it is to people as they are.

And that's it.

I'll try to speak the truth with your students.

It's a funky time.

And so parents ask me questions like, well, Hey, how do you deal with this whole transgender, transgender thing?

Like when those questions come up, how do you deal with homosexuality?

When those questions come up and I'll tell you the same thing I tell them, I tell them the truth.

I tell them the truth that God's word says.

But when I first got into this, I started looking at the way that other folks believe.

And I got real high and mighty for a second.

I got a little prideful.

I started thinking that I thought better than other people.

I was educated.

Now I had some thought processes that made, you know, made some sense and it was a little bit better.

And so God got me into FCA.

Y'all know what FCA is?

Fellowship of Christian athletes.

That's right.

We go, we try to get every coach and every athlete.

Some of them are athletes, some of main athletes.

Some of them just want to get out of class on Tuesday.

I don't care why they're there as long as they come here about Jesus.

But we go every Tuesday down in the middle school and talk with them.

But I had to go to a luncheon that was most of the youth pastors in the area.

From every denomination, we went down to Mission Barbecue, which they had me there.

They could have just stopped right there, say less.

I'm going half a yard bird, come on somebody that'll set your day right.

If you're having a bad day right now, stop by Mission Barbecue, get the yard bird.

You're going to feel better after it.

But all these other denominations and I'm listening to all of them and I'm like, well, there's the Baptist, there's the Presbyterian.

There's all these different folks.

And I've only heard the audible voice of God a couple of times.

He said, they're all mine.

They're all mine.

And we started talking about how we got our call.

And it turns out God uses the same ringtone with all of us.

We all kind of get the same one.

And I'm like, that is crazy.

It's crazy how that works.

Some of them become dear friends.

And I'm so glad that I've got people that rally around me that help me.

And I want to tell you this because I believe in giving credit where credit is due.

This message and where we're moving to right now came from Tasha.

God used her to speak to me and she does it a lot.

And sometimes she does it in ways that I wish weren't that way, but I'm kidding.

But I'm grateful.

I'm grateful that I've got a woman that loves me enough and loves Jesus more than me to say something to me when I need to have something said to me.

You know what I mean?

She don't tuck it in her back pocket.

Pride, dissension, keeping the main thing.

The main thing is the answer to it.

Judgment is a funny thing because we get off track and it happens with all of us.

We get off track and sometimes our perfect attendance record at church gets into our head and sometimes all of the places that we're serving or participating in, it gets into our head and we start to look at other people a little bit differently.

Like, well, my sins were bad, but my, you know, like Rob's, Rob's sins.

Sometimes we forget where we came from church.

I want to break this down really quick.

I preach a message of substitution.

See, God himself, Jesus is God, to be clear.

God himself stepped down off a throne of glory, put on an earth suit, came to earth, lived a perfect life, and died a brutal death on a cross.

The Bible says that he was beaten so badly he was unrecognizable.

Every one of the lashes he took, I threw.

Every ounce of blood he shed should have been my blood.

See, God had to treat Jesus like he had lived my life, like he'd done the things I'd done, said the things I said, thought the things I thought, acted the way I've acted, so that, everybody say so that, he could treat me like I lived Jesus's life.

Like all I'd ever done is healed the sick and made the lame walk and loved everybody.

And no matter what I was feeling, served them, served them.

Pride comes from the devil and he's a liar.

Pride is the work of hell and it's been leading people straight to it for thousands of years.

The answer to it though, if you'll turn to Philippians 1 verse 21, look what the Bible says, for me to live as Christ and to die as gain.

Now, if I live in this flesh, this means fruitful work for me.

And I don't know which I should choose.

Fruitful work.

Fruitful work means to serve.

See, everybody's got different gifts.

Your gift mix is different than mine.

I'm so glad people are gifted with an administration because I'm terrible at it.

I'm glad that some people are gifted with different things and all of the, you know, Ms. Pat, she is wonderful at serving food and that is a necessary part of this because y'all would be grumpy 15 minutes into this message.

But we're all called to be ministers.

You and you and you and you and you, you know what the word minister means?

Servants.

Servants.

Let me tell you why I'm a servant.

It's not because I hope to get some kudos or I get some gold stars when I get to heaven.

Sometimes it gets preached that way.

I'm a servant because I was filthy rags.

That's who I was.

I was filthy.

I was tarnished and the only thing that I deserved was death.

Now listen, this isn't a beat you up message, but I want to be clear with you when your thought process is that now every morning you wake up, it's a gift.

Every breath you breathe becomes a gift.

Every hug that you enjoy becomes a gift.

Every time I get to sit down with my wife and my kids at dinner and eat a meal, whether it's good or not, it's a gift to me because I didn't deserve it.

But when we live our lives like we don't deserve things and we ain't owed anything, man, change starts to happen.

You want to see heaven open, wide open, get on your knees, start serving.

I want to be really, really clear, really, really clear because we're not saved by any works.

Nothing you can do will gain you heaven.

There is one way.

He says, I am the way, the truth, and the life that is Jesus Christ.

He is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords.

He's the only one and none of the works that you're going to do after you accept that into your heart are going to save you.

We're going to get you a special part of heaven, but that is the response to what he's done for me.

Cause when you're saved, you've truly taken that into your heart.

It's not just praying some prayer people.

It's not just saying, Lord, I quit and I want to, I want to live for you.

It's believing it in your heart.

John 3 16 says that he, whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

That word believe when you break it down.

That doesn't mean that I believe he was a man that lived a couple thousand years ago that I believe that he died for my sins.

It means I sit down in it.

I'll wrap everything in my life around that fact, that truth, facts, and truth.

Aren't always the same thing.

That's a weird concept.

Facts and truth aren't always the same thing because you were saved for a purpose.

You were brought out of the darkness and put into the wonderful light for a purpose.

See facts and truth.

Aren't always the same thing.

The facts were that she had stage four cancer.

She had two weeks to live.

That was a medical fact, but Jesus is the truth.

And he said, I'm not done with her yet.

I got a few more years in her.

I want her to wake up every day and know that every morning is a gift for me.

Every sunrise is something special.

Every sunrise came from my hand to her because I love her.

But church, it is for you too.

Whether you have that going on in your life and that struggle or not.

And here's our response.

Jesus says in Matthew chapter five, that even your enemies, you should serve.

The same substitution is at play here.

Even people that are really, really, really hard to like.

Anybody got somebody that's really, really hard to like in their life?

I got a few.

I'm trying.

Really, really trying.

Really, really, really trying.

I like you from over here.

No.

Here's what he's taught me about it, because he's also taught me that anybody that is tough in my life, that will slap in the middle of my life.

So here's the answer.

Start praying for them.

It is so hard to stay disliking somebody and angry with somebody if you just start praying for them continuously.

Listen to me.

If you'll start praying today, and you'll continually pray for that person in your life that you really, and I'm not saying pray like, Lord, please don't let them get hit by a bus today, ish.

Please don't let their car break down, ish.

But pray that God would bless their life in a tremendous way that they would see that there's still a God in heaven, there's still a God in Israel, there's still a God that sits on high and looks low and bless their babies and their babies' babies.

God, fill their house with blessings.

They'll start to see your heart change.

Because God doesn't ask you to do anything that he won't do something in you with, period.

But that substitution, serving creates humility.

Humility destroys pride, which is good.

Here, sorry, I did the same thing.

I wrote it down on the bottom.

Philippians chapter two, verse three.

He says, do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, consider others as more important than yourselves.

Everyone should look not to their own interest, but to the interest of others.

Here's the application.

Start serving, not tomorrow, not Monday, not on the first of the year as your New Year's resolution.

Start this afternoon.

Don't forget what I'm saying to you while you're at Hoskins with flounder in your mouth.

Start today, and I want you to start in some specific places.

Here's my application.

I keep a list of priorities.

Prioritize relationships, because ministry can become a mistress if you don't.

Because when you're here, you preach a good message, people are all high-fiving you, they love you and all that stuff.

But when I come home, I might've still left my sock.

My sock still might've missed the basket.

You know what I mean?

Number one is my relationship with God.

That comes before anything else.

Before I get my butt out of the bed in the morning, I don't do anything till I talk to him, period.

Before I sit down to eat, I talk to him.

When I'm driving down the road, I talk to him.

Number two is that woman.

I was called to that ministry before I was called to any other ministry.

I want you church to start serving your spouses.

Men, I'm gonna talk to y'all for a second.

Start serving your wife.

You're called by the living God to be the head of your household.

The head of a household isn't somebody that yells and gripes and fusses and tells everybody what to do.

The head must be the servant of everybody under that roof.

Start serving your wife like she's Jesus.

Start loving her like she's the church, like she is Christ.

I'm not saying to put your wife on some pedestal, but what I will say is it'll change her life.

It is really hard to gripe at a man who's washing dishes.

You know what I mean?

She is not gonna fuss at you while you're vacuuming.

You won't hear her if she does.

You're all laughing, but I am so for real right now.

I love mowing my grass.

It's a wonderful thing.

Is this an hour and a half where no one says my name?

There's no baby, baby, baby, baby, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, Pastor Jared, Pastor Jared, Pastor Jared, Pastor Jared.

It's, I got a little push motor to make it longer, server, and I mean really server though.

Don't serve her expecting her to notice every time.

Don't serve her expecting to hear something about it later on or expecting to get a little extra sugar or something because you did it.

Start serving her not because of anything you might gain, but because it glorifies your father because God said to do it, love her with everything and you put her over every other relationship you have.

Period.

Above your kids.

Love your wife more than you love your children.

That's a tough concept.

That's not what the culture tells us.

The culture says it's kids first all the time.

Let me tell you something about your kids.

I love my children my whole soul.

They are going to leave you.

Some of us will cry a little bit.

I can't believe they're gone.

Some of us will be like, yes.

You're still going to be stuck with her.

Now wives, don't get too hot and mighty here.

I'm coming at you too.

Wives, start serving your husband.

And I mean really serving him, loving him and respecting him as though he was the Christ in your house.

Treat him like the man you want him to be, not the man that you wish he wasn't.

Stop trying to be his mother and be his wife.

You feel me?

And listen, listen, we know all the stuff that you do for us.

Some of us.

It might not be all of us here because you tell us all the time.

We know.

We know how many loads of laundry you did this week.

We know how many times you washed the dishes this week.

We know because you told us 47 times this morning.

But what if you just did it out of the goodness?

What if you just did it because you want to build that man?

And how does it get like this for us?

And this is why we got a 60% divorce rate, because the culture has told us we're supposed to badmouth our spouses and all that.

Listen, I'm going to tell you for 30 days, 30 days, don't you say a negative word about that man.

Don't you say a negative word about that woman.

You say nothing but highest praises to everybody and watch your heart change.

You'll start seeing what you're looking for.

It's kind of like when you buy a new car and then suddenly you see that car on every lane of the highway.

They didn't flood the market.

Not everybody's got a Ford Raptor now.

They all got Broncos, but not Raptors, but you started seeing what you were looking for.

You'll start seeing that, value that relationship.

Number three, serve your children.

Serve them consistently like you are building the next generation of God's church and the generation that might be the generation that really changes things.

Start loving them like that and loving them doesn't mean that I give them everything and I do everything for them because my job as their dad is to teach them how to get out and how to be somebody.

My job is to teach my sons how to change the oil so they ain't got to call somebody to come do it every time they need something done.

My job is to teach my daughter to be the kind of wife that her mother is.

We ain't perfect.

Not in my house.

I don't know about y'all's, but we sure ain't perfect in mine, but what we are is a bunch of people who are trying to love each other in a powerful way.

We're trying to be there for each other.

My wife serves me.

I serve her.

Sometimes I fall short.

Sometimes she...

I'm just kidding.

She never does.

But it changes your heart, church, and it's not out of any vain conceit.

It's not that she owes me anything, and I'll be clear with that.

Your wife doesn't owe you anything.

Your husband also doesn't owe you anything.

Every moment that you get with him is a gift.

Stop giving your boss more of your love than you give them.

Stop giving your boss more respect than you give your spouse, because I leave you on this note, on this part.

There's two days on a grave, a beginning and an end.

I can't decide to do one of them.

I get to handcraft my dash now.

That part I do get something on.

If you died tomorrow, have you given them your flowers?

If you died tomorrow, your boss will not mourn you.

He'll replace you, but she will.

She might never be the same again.

She'll be stuck for months, years, thinking about the first time you kissed, the first time you held hands when you asked her to marry you, the first time you found out you were pregnant with the first baby, all of those little moments that were precious.

And it's funny how it takes tragedy sometimes for us to see how important the important things really are.

Church, I came to tell you today to start giving people flowers while they're here.

You're serving the people around you, impacting the people around you.

Don't treat the person at Circle K checking you out of your gas station better than you treat your baby, the woman you swore to God and everybody above you that you'd love and cherish for the rest of your life.

Then get involved in the church.

You want to see your faith acted out?

Get involved in the church.

And I'm going to start to close here.

If you'll turn to Philippians chapter two, verses six through 11, who existing in the form of God, talking about Jesus here, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited.

Instead, he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity.

And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

For this reason, God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

The creation that you are was to reflect his love.

That's why you were made, to permeate the world with the presence of a loving God.

God is not the author of love.

He's not the creator of love.

God is love.

All I want is to sound like him.

I want to speak to people the way that he would.

I want to touch people's lives the way that he did.

I want to be like my father.

Church, will you put your faith to work this week, not next week, not in a few months when things settle down at work?

Will you do it now?

Will you surrender and say, not me living anymore, but Christ in me?

It doesn't matter what I want or my feelings, I'm going to put other people's needs and what they want above my own.

I'm going to start to serve.

I'm going to serve in my home.

I'm going to serve in the church.

I'm going to serve in the community.

I'm going to be a shining light in the world.

Will you make that decision now?

Let me pray for you.

Father, thank you so much for this day.

Thank you for the opportunity to be in your house and speak with your children, Lord.

God, I ask that you would bless every person in here, every prayer request, spoken or unspoken, that they would see you move in a powerful way in their life.

And God, if there's one here that doesn't know you and is just exploring the claims of Christ, that today would be the day they put their trust in you, that they say, I don't want to live my life the way I've been living my life.

I want to feel the freedom and the forgiveness of Christ.

And I want to give the rest of my life to you.

Father, we love you.

We praise you.

I ask that you would bless everyone with application this week.

In Jesus' name, and all God's children said, Amen.