Amos 6

In this sermon from Amos 6, Pastor Josh Turansky explores why God says, ‘I loathe Jacob’s pride,’ and how that word speaks directly into life in Baltimore today. Walking through the text, he shows how Israel’s pride took the form of complacent ease, insulated luxury, and practical atheism—using God’s gifts to hide from God’s heart. Then he contrasts biblical pride with a healthy, gospel-shaped self‑image as ‘blessable image-bearing covenant partners.’ Finally, he points us to the alternative God desires: humble, grieving dependence—people who are grieved over the ruin around them, who boast in the Lord rather than their own strength, and who follow the pattern of Christ’s self‑emptying humility.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We are in Amos chapter 6. This is week five out of seven in the book of Amos. And one of the things that we've seen about the book of Amos is that Amos is a prophet sent to a city to be able to Ocean. What are you doing, Ocean? Sent to the nation of Israel to say, listen, God cares about the poor and the vulnerable in society. You do not get to just be rich and sit back and be disconnected from care for the vulnerable, right? And so some of us are the vulnerable, and we're like, yeah, God, get them. Thank you for caring about us. Some of us, we have a position of comfort in our lives. And we're seeing from the text that God says, listen, I've blessed you so that you can be a blessing to others. I've given you stuff so that you can be generous with that stuff to others. So that you can stand up for the weak. It's not just, this isn't just a money thing, this is a society thing, as we saw last week, where there's justice that needs to be carried out for the vulnerable. Sometimes you just need to stand up for those who are fragile and are in a weak place. So Amos is going for it, and we're going to see this morning, again, through chapter six, I want to just focus in on this one characteristic of pride that was one of the root issues for the nation of Israel. I put this in front of you every week, but I'm going to do it again. You are a blessable, image-bearing covenant partner following Jesus according to the new covenant. That's what the Bible says in Genesis chapter 1 about how you're designed. You're blessable. You are a container that can receive the blessings of God. You are an image-bearer. That means that just like when you have an idol that represents like a Buddha or it represents a pagan God, when God designed you, he created you to be his image on the earth. That's why idolatry and having idols are wrong, is because you are the representation of God on the earth. And the last thing is that you're a covenant partner with him. You're designed, we use the word friendship oftentimes, but it's more than just friendship. You're designed to be a covenant partner with God. Over and over again, God is at work making covenants with his people, holding them accountable within the framework of a covenant, a covenantal relationship. And so as we go through chapter six, we're going to be asking this question: what does the Holy Spirit have to say to us from Amos as those blessable image-bearing covenant partners? I just want to put one verse from chapter six in front of you, right to start with. It says this I loathe Jacob's prize, pride. What does it mean to loathe something? What? To hate it, to not like it, to detest, that's right. That's right. What are some things that you loathe in your life? Let's from some foods. Peanut butter, okay, there you go. Everybody to them has their own thing, right? What's another thing that you loathe? Raisins. What else? Sin. You don't like okra? I love that slimy part about the okra. Yeah, oh yeah, that's good. You either love it or hate it. You either love it or hate it. But do you see what do you see what Amos says on God's behalf? I loathe Jacob's pride. Maybe you hate okra, okay? Maybe you're an okra hater, but God is a pride hater. And we're gonna see throughout this chapter three different ways in which this has ramifications. So would you pray with me for a second? Bow your heads. Let's ask God to speak to us. God, as we look into Amos 6, we want to quiet our hearts before you, not to hear the preacher, but to hear your spirit. We want to have open hearts to the spiritual work you want to do in us. And you accomplish that through your word, your spirit in your word. Lord, let it go to work in our hearts now. And we just open up our hearts. We want to have soft hearts before you. Even we we want to have this stance like a runner, getting ready to get shot out of the starting gate, just ready to obey, that we're ready to run in obedience this week with whatever you show us. And so here we are, God. We're ready to listen. In Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so let's talk a little bit about pride. Some of us, when it comes to our careers, our career pride, it maybe sound something like this. I made it out. I did this by my hustle. It might be a neighborhood pride that you have in your life, some neighborhood pride where it's like, look, I'm not like that block over there. It may be a religious or a moral pride where you're like, well, we're the ones who stayed. We're the ones that care. We're not like those corrupt people over there. Pride can pop up in our hearts in all kinds of ways. In Baltimore, pride often gets a pat on the back. We celebrate the grind, the survival, the toughness, the success story. We're proud of our schools sometimes, our churches, our neighborhoods, our activism, our politics. Our pride can sometimes feel normal and appropriate, sometimes even necessary to survive. And there's a rightness about it and there's a wrongness. And so what I want to do this morning is I want to surface the idea of what is good pride and what's bad pride. And what was the bad pride in Amos' day? Israel's pride, Israel's pride is this complacent, insulated self-confidence that forgot about God. That's what their pride looked like. Complacent, insulated self-confidence that forgot about God. And that's what God is going after using Amos. What I want to do is walk through this text in three sections. But before we do that, let me just lay out for you biblical pride versus a healthy self-image. I'll give you a couple of simple definitions. Pride in Scripture, the pride that's bad, is a heart posture of independence from God. Living as if life, security, success, and righteousness come from where? From self rather than from the Lord. You got it? You got it? Okay. So over and over again we see this. What we're trying, what God is addressing is this sense of independence from Him rather than a dependence on Him. And another way that we could say it is pride shows up as a self-sufficiency, self-exaltation, indifference to others, suffering. We see all different kinds. One of the common things that people think of when they hear pride is they think of the word arrogance. They kind of put the two together. Arrogance is kind of your chest is puffed out, you think you're the stuff, right? You just think you got it. You're the best thing on the block. And that's pride. But it's that's not the only thing about pride. It is also this self-sufficiency of like, look, I don't need any help. I don't need any input, right? You ever been around people that are not teachable? The reason they're not teachable is because they're proud. It can also be an indifference. Have you ever been around people who are just like, yeah, that's their issue? Like, I don't care. Right? That indifference is rooted in a heart of pride. You see, pride gets us both to a place of arrogance, but it also gets us to a place of indifference and independence where we just think, I got it. Don't touch me. And God hates that attitude. One more, one more definition. And this is the opposite. A healthy self-image is different. It's receiving one's worth as a gift from God, created in his image, redeemed in Christ, which produces humility and dependence, not swagger. That's what God has for you. Remember, what are you? You're a blessable, image-bearing, covenant partner. That's a healthy, robust self-image. That's not saying you're a piece of dust. That's not saying that you're a piece of garbage. No, that's saying that you're blessable. You bear the image of God. He's designed you to be a covenant partner with him. But it is not somebody that's independent, arrogant, puffing out their chest, indifferent to the suffering of those around them. You see, pride says, I'm enough in myself for myself. Faith says, I'm a blessable image-bearing covenant partner. Let's look through the text here, and I'm going to give you what pride as false security looks like in verses 1 through 3. Amos says this woe to those who were at ease in Zion and then and to those who feel secure on the hill of Samaria. So these are cities in Israel. And do you notice he uses the word woe, but not like woe, but no, warning, woe. This is, remember, in the Bible, this is a weird word. It's the same one that goes on to the propane canister at the gas station that says, warning, no smoking right here. Whoa, if you smoke here, you're gonna get blown up. Okay? That's what this word means. Woe, warning to those who are at ease. They have a false sense of security. But notice who it is: it's the notable people in there in this first of nations, those of the house of Israel, the host those in the house of Israel come to. Cross over to Kalnell and see, go from there to the great Hamath, then go down to Gath of the Philistines. So if you live if you were there listening to Amos and he's prophesying to you, he's naming, just like we would say, there's Delaware and there's Pennsylvania and there's West Virginia and there is Virginia, and he's naming surrounding regions, here he's saying, I want you to go to the surrounding regions, and I want you to ask this question. Are you better than these kingdoms? Well, that's a good question to ask if you're arrogant. Right? If you're a person that is arrogant, you're always looking around at the people around you, and you're like, oh no, I'm not like them. Surely I deserve the special treatment, right? That's the arrogant heart. I deserve to be treated better than all the people from Pennsylvania and all the people from Delaware and all those West Virginia. Have you ever been to West Virginia? I certainly deserve to be treated better than them. God tells them, hey, go, go, why don't you go around, check it out? Are you really better? Are you more special? Because here's the thing. Here's the thing. God has treated them special. And so he's saying, look at what you've received. Are you really deserving all of that? Do you really deserve to be treated in the special way that God has treated you?

SPEAKER_00 13:57

No. No, you shouldn't be.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Wait, wait, wait. I hear someone yelling in the back. What was the question? The peanut gallery's talking again. Here's the next question. Is their territory larger than yours? Like, are they bigger? Are they better? Verse three. You dismiss any thought of the evil day, and you bring a reign of violence. In other words, these people have a false sense of security. They think, they think they're special in their pride, and they're just sitting back doing life. The leaders look at the cities that have already fallen and they assume, hey, we're better than them. Judgment surely is not going to touch us. This comparative pride is we are not as bad as those people. Listen to me. Listen to me. It is healthy for you to go and look at yourself in the morning and to say that I am not special, but I am loved by God. That's humility. God didn't die on the cross for your sins because you want a beauty pageant. Or because you got a 4.0 GPA. Or because you got that awesome job, or because you live in that neighborhood, or because your skin is a particular color. No. We are rebellious humans in rebellion to God. We are recipients of his love, not a people that are going to somehow escape judgment. For some of us, false security looks like thinking our neighborhood, our job, our government contract, our connections will shield us from collapse. That kind of thing, oh, that's never going to happen to me. It only happens over there. That's exactly what Israel thought. They were looking at the other cities that were coming, had already come under judgment, and they were thinking they were going to escape. And so pride takes the form of a false sense of security. The second thing that we see, verses four through six, pride as luxurious self-indulgence. Luxurious self-indulgence. Let me read to you some of these verses here. They lie on beds inlaid with ivory, sprawled out on their couches, and dine on lambs from the flock and calves from the stall. They're living it up in their day. They improvise songs to the sound of the harp. They invent their own musical instruments like David. They drink wine by the bowlful. By the bowlful. They anoint themselves with their finest oil. But do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph. Again, these are people that are living in luxurious self-indulgence. These are the people who their neighbors are suffering. God's not opposed to you having a birthday party, having fun in life, having a nice house or nice. He's not opposed to that. What he's opposed to is that you make some money. And then you take that, and all you want to do is take care of you. And you're going to totally turn a blind eye to the societal brokenness that's occurring. For some, this means using our comfort, our entertainment, our food, our travel, our savings to insulate ourselves from the pain of the city. We can stream shows, scroll in our on our feeds of social media, and never really grieve the ruin of Joseph's that are five blocks away. In other words, well, some of you know my personal story. That I, before I came to Baltimore to plant Haven City Church, I lived in Southern California. Have any of you ever seen any TV shows about Southern California? It reminds me a lot of that whole idea of just kind of like doing life and just disengaging from society and being like completely ignorant of the suffering of people just right close by. People getting their jet skis, and can I get a bigger house? And can I get a uh can I lift my truck just a little bit higher than my neighbor? Can I just get and we what do we we call that? Like cat keeping up with the Joneses, right? That now there's a lot of good people in Southern California, but there's a culture there that's described as this luxurious self-indulgence where you may sit with somebody, and I I wish I could I had a relationship with some of these people where I could just say, wait, have you ever thought about the fact that you're getting paid more than 99.9% of the world, not so that you can be self-indulgent, but so that you can be radically generous? Have you ever thought that maybe you're so blessed and you had an amazing family and an amazing education and an amazing job so that you can be a blessing to others and not just buy the next shiny toy? Now, we're blessed as a church that we're not super rich. Not many of us are wealthy. And I like that about our church. I don't think we're really struggling a whole lot with luxurious self-indulgence. And if you are, if you're one of the few, that's God's word to you this morning. Take heed, take, take care to the things that God's entrusted to you. And here he just says, but you don't grieve. Sometimes the first step when you're a blessed person, materially blessed, is to just let into your heart the suffering of others. And God will guide you. And what does it mean for you with your resources, your opportunities, and relationships to be generous? He'll guide you. But what God wanted for the nation of Israel was that they would just, would you just start by grieving over the condition of the vulnerable? The last section here, verses 8 through 13, says this. Well, it's pride as a practical atheism. Practical atheism is this idea that in functionally you live as if God isn't real. Now, you may not have made a determination that God isn't real, but functionally you do your life as if God were not real. Here's what this looked like for them. The Lord God has sworn by himself, this is the declaration of the Lord, the God of armies I loathe Jacob's pride, and I hate his citadels or his palaces, so I will hand over the city. And everything in it. God's warning, this is what I'm going to do. And if there are ten men left in one house, they will die. That's devastating, devastating. And close, a close relative and burner will remove his corpse from the house. He will call to someone in the inner recesses of the house, any more with you? That person will reply, No, there's no nobody else here. None that he will say. Silence, because of the Lord's name, must not be invoked. For the Lord commands, the large house will be smashed to pieces, and the small house to rubble. Do horses gallop on the cliffs? Does anyone plow over there with the oxen? Yet you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood. We saw that exact same statement in the previous chapter. So he says there's going to be this judgment that occurs on the land. There's going to be this just devastating household. You know, imagine if all the men in just one family unit were wiped out. How devastating would that be? And there's this question that uh is being asked: have you turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood? Verse 13. You have rejoiced over low debar, and say, didn't we capture Carnum for ourselves by our own strength? Do you see that statement? Who says that? Somebody that's proud or somebody that's humble? Proud, right? Because why do we why do we know that's a proud statement? Because they're saying, we did it, we captured this place by our own strength. We did it. They're taking credit on their own. Before we go to verse 14, let me just kind of put some of these ideas together. These people are rejoicing in their achievements. Haven't we done it by our own strength? And then they're twisting justice into a poison, and they're treating God's law lightly. Here's what we mean when we say this is a practical atheism. Practical atheism can be activism or ministry or business that is functionally godless. You can do this next week and say and believe in your heart that you're a Christian, but you can do this next week as if you did not believe in God. You can say things like, hey, didn't we build this by our own strength? We can put Christian language about around it, but Amos would then say to us, listen, this is pride dressed up in religious clothes. You're designed to do this week, Sunday, May 27th, Monday, May, 17th, May the 18th, and so on through this week. You're designed to do this week in partnership with God. Do you remember when God made the garden? And you get into the second poem about creation in Genesis 2. There's this fascinating statement that says that the ground had not yet begun to grow. The plants had not yet begun to come up out of the ground. And then there's a reason given for why was there no plants growing? If you looked at that field, you'd be like, why is there nothing growing? And the writer says to us, there's two reasons. One, because the human had not yet cultivated the ground. And the second reason is because God had not yet caused it to rain on the field. That is what God intended in your life. He's got a watering work that he does, but he's made you this blessable image-bearing covenant partner that goes and cultivates the ground. So if you're going into this next week and you're gonna just sit on your couch, scroll through your social media feed, binge watch Netflix, and be like, why isn't anything growing? It's because you're supposed to cultivate the ground. You're a partner with God. But some of you, you're looking at your garden, your metaphorical garden, and it's like, what is that weed doing there? That weed's the size of a tree. What in the world is that thing growing over there for? Your life's a mess. Your garden is nothing to be proud of. Again, the cultivating that you're doing, it's not in partnership with God. You may you may have a life where you look at your life as a garden and it's just like, ooh, that is a bad looking garden. That's a bad looking garden. And you just need to know that you're designed to work with God. He wants to partner with you to make it a beautiful garden. And when it grows, and all of a sudden you get that beautiful rose coming up in the middle of that garden, and you're like, look at that, my life's changing. Look at this incredible thing that's going on. You don't go and say, you don't go and say to that thing, look at, man, that rose, we did it. We did it by our own strength. No, that's not, that's not what we are supposed to do, right? Instead, we say, Thank you, God. Thank you for what you're causing to grow up in my life. Thank you for the fruit that you're bringing up in my life. You see, the the capturing the cities, the victories. God designed the nation of Israel. When God called the nation of Israel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, brought them out of Egypt, He wanted them to be a victorious people. He wants you to be a victorious people. He wants you to go into this week and he wants you to trample on the head of the enemy. You are dropped into a middle of a cosmic battle. Satan is at war against the good work and the order that God wants in the cosmos. And he's put you as his image bearer in the middle of that war. And you're gonna have some victories this week. I'm praying you do. But when you do, when you're when you are victorious, when you're victorious, you're not saying this. No. No. God's doing, there's some amazing stories in this church. People that have been coming, they began their relationship, they entered into that covenant relationship with Jesus. They opened up their heart to him. God's changing their life. Things are changing in their life. But what a tragedy it would be to see the changes that are occurring and to say, wow, I did it by my own strength. That's the error. That's the error. You see, if we go through the Bible, what we see cover to cover is that God hates pride. What was the word Amos used for it? Loathe. He loathes our pride. Hey, look at this. Look at Proverbs 6, 16 and 17. The Lord hates six things. In fact, seven are detestable to them. And you know what's not on the list? Okra. Here it is. Here's the first, here's the first few. Look, he hates arrogant eyes. Man, we got a problem in our culture. Sometimes we got like, whether it's like your career at work, you got people at work who are just like arrogant. They treat the people around them with arrogant eyes. You go to the opposite. You got thug life, right? Anybody know what thug life is? We got some arrogant eyes in thug life. I follow some of them on Instagram. I know what those arrogant eyes look like. And God hates that. He despises that. He also hates a lying tongue and hands that shed innocent blood. Imagine when God looks at Baltimore, there's some things he hates, huh? Yeah. Yeah, there are. He doesn't stop though there. If we go to Romans, I mean Proverbs 16, 5, it says, everyone with a proud heart is detestable to the Lord. Be assured, he will not go unpunished. No kidding, right? It is a heavy verse. If you've got pride in your heart, it is detestable to God. Because what do we say pride is? Pride is this independence from God. It's saying, God, I got it. But you're designed, you are designed to be a partner with God. So if you're doing life independent from Him, He's just like, that's not how you're created. Have you ever seen somebody use a tool? And I'm trying to think of like a practical example. I feel like I see this on social media sometimes where someone, I know.

unknown 32:52

Three students.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

Okay. Yeah, three students would be a great idea. There was this one dad that said to his friend, he's like, Man, my son has been practicing the guitar for three years. The friend said, Wow, he must be getting really good with the whole thing. And the dad said, Well, not really. It was just last week that he realized he's not supposed to blow it. Yeah.

unknown 33:24

Pride is to the devil because the Holy Ghost is to the devil.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, pride is to the devil. Well, the Holy Ghost, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Because the devil is the devil because he was arrogant. It was the fundamental first step. The devil's, if you want to write a manual on how to be the devil, the first baby step, step one, arrogant. Be proud. And so when we're proud, when we're proud, we're taking that satanic baby step. Yeah, Josh.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

No.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

Not with what I was just talking about. Remember, if you go back, if you go back, what what there is, so Paul writes a letter to the church in Corinth, and he says, I'm proud of you. So he's using the same word, but that's not an independence from God. He's like, I'm rejoicing in the good thing that God has done. Okay? So the pride that God's coming against that's detestable is the life lived independent from God. You're designed to be cooperating with him. Instead, a person lives independent, self-sufficient. It's a good question because we are taught to have a healthy self-image, to have good self-esteem, right? What God wants, if you have a healthy self-esteem, the most healthy, robust self-esteem that you could have would be one that is perfectly connected with what God says about you. Not an inflated, not an unrealistic expectation about yourself, but you're tied in with what is exactly true about you because God says it about you. You don't think of yourself more highly than you ought to, but you think truthfully. So that you don't go around life as an Eeyore. You know Eeyore from um Winnie the Pooh? Yeah, that's not humility. God's not asking you for it to be an Eeyore. He's asking for you to believe what is true that He says about you. Which means you can't do it by yourself. He's got to accomplish it through you. You're absolutely designed to be dependent upon him. You're absolutely designed to care about the people around you. You're absolutely designed to not have haughty eyes and arrogant look, but to have a lowly look about you. In James 4, 6, this is in the New Testament, it says that God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. In football, when a when a um running back makes uh breaks through the uh the defensive line, and he's making a run for a touchdown, and there's somebody on his heels that's trying to catch up, and that runner puts his arm out like this. What do we call that? A stiff arm, right? He stiff armed him. Right? If you are a person that is proud, this is my version, God is gonna stiff arm you. If you are a person that is arrogant and proud, God is resisting you in your life. So if you're looking around your life and it's a mess, you might want to go back to this idea here because Garden might be straight up stiff arming you. Now you're designed to be a blessable, image-bearing covenant partner. He doesn't want your life to be a wreck. He wants you to be blessed. But if you're walking in pride, he has to resist you. Yeah, Jude, what's up? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think disobedience at the at the heart of willful disobedience is a pride. You know? Because it's not being dependent upon God. It's instead like, nope, I know what's wrong. I know what God says, but I think my way is better.

unknown 37:53

We have detectors of those who are determined.

SPEAKER_01 37:56

Yeah. Oh, okay. So you're saying this people we spend time with, if we decide, look, that person, the way they're living their life, is um a disaster. Their garden is a mess. They're rebelling against God, and I'm not going to spend time with them. We could be seen as proud. And in fact, you may make that decision and come across as proud. But I think that we want to have that conversation, not with proud, like, hey, I'm better than you, but instead have the conversation from humility. Because what what did Amos say? He says, grieve over that person's disobedience, right? That was his language. You ought to be in this place where you're deeply grieving over what they're doing wrong. Well, we need to wrap up. Yes, go for it. A what? Leviathan, yes. He's that in Job that's all I know the Leviathan is in all over Job. Yeah. Like a dragon. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, that's awesome. So the the alternative is humility. Instead of being a person of pride, we want to be a people of humility. And um, so let me just walk you through um just a couple of verses on humility in closing. Israel, instead of being humble, it was at ease instead of awake, confident in fortresses instead of confidence in God, they're absorbed in luxury instead of grieving over the ruin of Joseph, and they're boasting in their strength instead of boasting in the Lord. They should have grieved. They should have been grieved intercessors, not numb consumers. They should have been grieved intercessors and not numb consumers. Second, dependent worshipers. That's what that's the place which we should be operating from is dependent worshipers, not self-reliant achievers. And there should be marking our life a Christ-like humility as the ultimate, ultimate pattern. I don't have time to go through Philippians 2 all the way to through an eight, but let me just read to you just this attitude of Jesus. Jesus humbled himself, became obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. That's that's what we're called to is to be a people who are walking in Christ-like humility. To find the balance, Joshua, like you're saying, is like what's the middle ground? Jesus, if there's a middle ground, or like the perfect definition, the perfect definition is embodied in Jesus. Because who could who who deserves to be proud? More than anybody else? Jesus. And yet, what did he do? He humbled himself and became obedient to death. What that tells me is that it's safe to go low. Your culture may tell you, the culture may tell you you're gonna get walked all over, you're gonna get ruined if you go low. If you go humble, oh you can't go humble, that's too costly. No. What is the what did Jesus do? He humbled himself. The King of Kings humbled himself and died on a cross and won the day. And so, yeah, as you're sorting through pride and humility in your own life, you've got this North Star in Jesus. Did you just go back to what did it look like in the person of Jesus? Let me close with this. They should have received God's gifts as fuel to participate in God's heart, especially his grief over sin and his compassion for the broken. That's what God's going after here. That's what he wants in our life. He wants you wherever you're at. Look, if you're in a tough place, God's given you a gift in that your circumstances have brought you to that place of dependency upon God. It's not like you have to stretch really hard to be independent, like to be dependent. Like you're there. You're already humbled by your circumstances. That's a good thing. God wants to work in your life from that place. What I want to do is, so we've we've talked through this. I want you to just bow your heads for a second. Bow your heads. And I want you to just be quiet for just a second before the Lord. If you're hearing something from Amos that's just reminding you this is what it means to be like Jesus, to be that image bearing covenant partner. If you're hearing something about humility, I just want you to agree with God, not with me. But just tell him, God, I'm ready. I'm ready to walk in humility, in dependence upon you. I'm ready to put away that haughty, that haughty look, the arrogant eyes. I just want to walk with you, God, this week. I don't want to be a functional atheist. I don't want to live as if you're not real, God. I want to live dependent upon you. If you've never given your life to Jesus, and you're at church, maybe for first or second, third time, you're hearing about the love of God, you just need to know that Jesus died on the cross for your sins so that you could be brought back into that fellowship with him. So that you could be a friend of God. Your sin had to be dealt with on the cross. And the door is open to you to just receive his work in your life. So your first conversation with him is that first step, just like Satan's first step was pride, your first step towards God is humility. And I just want to encourage you, in your own heart, you need to pray and just talk to him out of a place of humility, saying, God, I need you. I accept your son, Jesus. I'm ready to turn my life over to you. If you're doing that, if you're telling God that for the first time, let me know. I'll help you understand how to grow as a follower of Jesus, what the next steps look like. We'll walk with you in your relationship with Jesus. But that's the beginning. It's that place of humility. Lord, thank you for welcoming us into your family. As we started in humility, we want to keep going in that posture of humility. Help us to honor you as we take that low seat, that lowly place. Lord, we love you and we thank you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.