We are beginning a new series called Closer today. And before we start, if you're new and you don't know me, I'm Dave. I'm one of the pastors here, and let me say welcome. And also welcome those who are watching online and those at our campuses at Grants Trail, Mid Rivers, and Fenton. Glad you're here. We're one church, many locations. And today we're going to be in the Book of James. We're going to be in James 4, and I'm going to focus on just a sentence and a thought, and then we're going to branch out from that to the thoughts around it, and hopefully we can get a better understanding of what it means to come close, come near to God. But before I do that, can I pray for us? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, right now I just pray that all the distractions, everything that's happened this morning, this week, this last month, this last year, God, those distractions would dissipate, and that, God, we'd be able to listen clearly to your voice, to your words in our heart, and, God, you speak to us specifically the way we need to hear you this morning. God, we give you this time, we give you permission to speak to us right now. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen. James writes these words in chapter 4, verse 8. He says, "Come near to God and he will come near to you." Simple enough, right? Come near to God, he'll come near to you. Amen. Let's go home. Some of you are like, "Yes, I'm done. Let's go." But it's not that simple. When I talk about this, I wonder, even just as I talk about being close to God, what your thoughts are. As a pastor, we meet with people on a regular basis, and there's certain themes that over the years I've picked up on that people don't feel close to God, and some of them are like this. They think that God is distant, that God has a lot to do, a lot on His plate. He's running the universe. There's billions of people. My life is insignificant and God doesn't want to be close to me. He's there. He's not mad at me. There's no emotions, but He's just distant. And I don't feel close. Other people that I meet with would say, "You know what? When I think of God drawing close, He doesn't want to be close to me because He's disappointed in who I am. He looks at me and He says, 'Really? You're doing that again? Oh, man, I thought we were better than that. I thought you had learned. Not again.'" And when we think of what God thinks about us, we think that maybe He's disappointed and He just shakes his head in disappointment. And I meet with people, and I imagine there's some here today that would even go a strong word. They would think that, "God doesn't want to draw near to them because He's disgusted with me." If you would have known what I did, the things that I looked at, the person that I've become, God doesn't want to be close to me because he's disgusted. And maybe it's something that you did this last week, or you did 30 years ago, and you just feel like God doesn't want to come close to me. And so we don't want to come close to somebody who doesn't want to come close to us, so we just leave this distance. But it can go the other way as well, right? You can say, "You know what? I need my own personal space. I'm going to stay away from God. I'm going to stay distant from him." Or you know what? We sang that song that God has good plans, and in my circumstances right now, my plans that he has for me, they do not feel good at all. I'm disappointed in God. Why hasn't he come through for me? And so we can put distance between ourselves and God, and we can say that he wants distance between us, but James says, "Come near to God, and he will come near to you." And this just isn't one verse in the Bible. This is the story of the Bible. It starts in the beginning of humanity, and some of this is going to be new to some of you and a refresher for many of us, but God created Adam and Eve, and he put them in the garden, and it was wonderful. It was plush. It was beautiful. It was full of food. We had everything provided for us. We had goodness. And that's just not remarkable enough. The great thing was is we did it with God. We were in a relationship with God. There was no shame. God walked with us. We had conversations with him. He was pleased with us. We were pleased with him. We walked in this beautiful, free relationship with God, intimate. But then sin entered the picture. The enemy, the devil, and we're going to talk about the devil today. And it's not the red horn figure that you may see around, and it's not the one that got kind of celebrated around the world, but it is real. We believe scripture says it's real. If you have questions about that, bring your questions. We're not going to dive into that. We have dove into that before, but we believe that there is an enemy. But also, there's an enemy within us. James says that it's our own evil desires. It's our own temptations. It's our own wanting to be our own boss and our own god that came to play in the garden there when Adam and Eve stepped away from their relationship with God. And notice it wasn't God stepping away from humanity. It was humanity stepping away from God. We said we can do it our own way. We didn't believe the promises of God, and we sinned. And then we hid because all of a sudden we noticed there was shame and there was guilt. And we hid away from God, stepping away. And what did God do? God came walking in the garden, said, "Adam, where are you?" And when he was calling out for Adam, it wasn't because he lost Adam. It was because he wanted a relationship, it's relationship language. "Adam, where are you? Why would you hide from me? We have had this close relationship. Why would you run away from me?" And he pulled Adam and Eve close and he said, "You know what? There are consequences for what you've done. Serious consequences. There's going to be death. There's going to be physical death, and there's spiritual death because you don't want to be connected to the God of life. So you've chosen this path. But I love you so much, and I want a relationship with you that I'm going to make a way for that to be right. I'm going to reconcile myself to you." And so then he starts that plan. He calls Abraham, and then he meets with Jacob, and he appears to Moses. And then he calls his people, the Israelites, and says, "You know what? Let's build a tabernacle so that I can dwell amongst my people." So God himself dwelt amongst his people in the tabernacle. Then later on, the Israelites built a temple where God again dwelt in the Holy of Holies. He dwelt among his people. Then you get to the New Testament, where God himself, John says that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We say Immanuel. Jesus is called Immanuel, God with us. God came back, walked amongst his people. It was a lot different than when he walked with them in the Garden of Eden. All the brokenness, how we would harm each other, how we would be divided against each other. But he ushered in the kingdom again. He brought healing, he brought hope. And then he went to the cross and died a death to pay the consequence of sin. And you may be new here, and you heard us singing about the blood, the blood, the blood, thank you for the blood. Now, they may have really weirded you out. But here's what it means. There had to be a sacrifice to pay the penalty of sin, which the consequence, as I said, was death, physical and spiritual death. And so Jesus took all of that on himself. He died a physical death, but he also died the spiritual death, took all the shame and guilt. And his bloodshed was a way to reconcile us to himself. And then he rose again, proving that he has power over our problem, death. And then Jesus sent the Holy Spirit, so now God doesn't just dwell among his people, he dwells within his people. And we are called to live out his kingdom purposes here and now. We're to usher in the kingdom. His kingdom come, his will be done on Earth, and we are his representatives. And then you go to the end of the story. Revelations 21:3. It says that God will make his dwelling place among his people. He will once again dwell among his people. There will be right. Evil will be vanquished. New heaven, new Earth. We are back to the garden, where we have this intimate relationship with God, fully all that we should imagine and could experience. So when James says, "Draw near, come close, come near to God," it's just not a new theological statement. It is the theology of the Bible, that God wants a personal relationship with you. He's come close to you because he loves you. He's been pursuing you with a love relationship since the day that you were born. He's been pursuing you. And I know when I sit with people and they say, "Well, I don't feel God's close to me. I don't know that he wants to be close to me," I said, "There's evidence that he wants to be close to you right now because you're here. You're talking to me. There's evidence that God wants to be close to you today because you're watching, you're here, you're listening." Even if you're new and you didn't even think you wanted to come, but God is pursuing you with a love relationship. And if you don't want a relationship with God, he will honor that. But I got bad news for you. He's going to keep coming after you with his love. He's going to keep drawing near to you. And we need to just emphasize this as well, that when we talk about getting close to God, we're not talking about feeling close to God. We can't confuse feeling close to God with being close to God. Because sometimes we will worship in song, and man, we're like, "I feel your presence, God." And sometimes we'll open up the Bible, and we'll read some passages, and we're like, "Oh, that was right for me. Man, I get it. I feel so close to you, God." And then we're in prayer, and it's like this great conversation between me and the God of the universe. "Oh, I feel that presence." But what happens when the next time you're singing a worship song and you don't feel that? You open up the scripture and, man, it's just dry. When you pray that prayer, and you keep praying that prayer, but it feels like it keeps hitting the ceiling. Has God moved away? No. It's not the feeling. It's the fact that God wants a close relationship with you. It's not your circumstances. James isn't commanding us to manufacture a spiritual emotion. He's saying, "Come close to God. Spend time with me. Talk to me. Listen to me. Trust me. Follow me." It's relationship language. So the question is, how do we do it, James? So if we back out a little bit, he gives a little bit of a formula here. He says, "Submit yourselves then to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you, and then come near to God and He will come near to you." Reading this and reading the details and spending some time focusing on the words matter. Details matter. I was reminded of this yesterday. So yesterday before I had to be here, and there wasn't a lot of time in between what I had to do to get here, and so I went and got some new preacher sneakers. Okay? See? New preacher sneakers. All right. Yeah. You're stretching your neck over there. Yep, there they are. All right. Now, so, when it comes to fashion, I have zero. My wife calls my fashion style frumpy, is what she calls it. Okay? And so I trust her for all those things. I was alone. I had to get some sneakers, and so I went to the outlet store here, and I took pictures of several options and she said, "Pick those." And that was good because the first four options I gave her, she did choose one, because oftentimes it takes a lot more pictures than that. So she said, "Get those," so I got these. I get to the counter, and the guy looks at them and he pulls them, makes sure I haven't put anything inside the shoes and everything, and he closed them up. He said, "Man, these shoes that you're buying, they are really comfortable. Like, you can walk around with them even when you're not playing golf." I'm like, "Wow. That is good to know. I appreciate that. I'm glad they're that comfortable." So I quickly went to my car, opened them up and like, right on the side, golf shoes. But he's right, they are super comfortable. And I won't be sliding around the stage either. Details matter when you're reading, if you read. "Submit yourselves then to God." So when I hear James say submit myself, I don't like that word, and maybe you don't like that word, to submit. Right? There's a progression here. Submit, resist, come near. And the word submit means surrender. And if you were here a couple of weeks ago when David Hawkins, Pastor David, came and talked about surrender, go back and listen to that message. But we don't like the word surrender. That means somebody else has to be in charge of our lives. If I'm going to surrender this over to them, they have to be in charge. A lot of times we prefer God to just be a consultant into our lives, and we only ask God to show up and come close when we need His advice, maybe we need His comfort, His protection, or we need His help. James isn't saying, put Him on your advisory board. He's saying surrender. Submit. He's saying take all of who you are, hand it over to God and say, "God, you're going to tell me what's right. You're going to tell me what's wrong. You're going to tell me what I need to change in my life. You get to tell me the truth. I surrender my life to you," because closeness in a relationship involves surrender. So surrendering our lives is something that we have to do in order to become close to God. And then James says, "Submit therefore to God, and then resist the devil and he will flee from you." This word resist that James uses is not a cowering, I'm afraid, I have no strength, I'm going to try to resist all I can, but there's such a weight pushing me that I can barely even withstand it. That's not the word that he uses here. His word in Greek is an opposing force. It is as if you're planting your feet. You're standing strong. You're not going to move, and it's not just because you have golf shoes on, right? You're not going to move. You're going to stand strong. But the order matters. Remember, submit therefore to God, and then resist. Because now you're standing and where you stand matters. You're standing in the victory of the God of the universe. You're standing in the power and the strength of Jesus. You're standing in forgiveness. You're standing in hope. You're standing in the promises of God. Paul says it like this in Ephesians. He says, "Put on the full armor of God so that you can resist the devil's schemes and you can stand firm." He says a couple of verses later that after you've done everything to stand, stand firm. And Peter says, "Resist then, resist him and stand firm in your faith." This is something that we can do when we're in the strength and the power of Jesus. We can stand firm. Now, this is not a feeling again. Okay? The enemy wants us to believe that this is simple, that this is an emotion. Because the enemy's schemes are to get you to move. He wants you to move away from God, move away from trust, move away from obedience, move away from truth. That's the enemy's schemes. James says, "Stand firm. Don't move." I'm standing, I'm not moving, I'm anchored to the God of the universe through Jesus Christ. And then watch what happens, the movement that happens. The devil flees. Temptation flees. The movement is for evil to move away from you and God to come close. It's how we get close to God is we surrender. We resist, we stand firm, and we get close to God. It's the standing firm. Again, you can do it when you're scared. You can do it when you feel temptation. You can do it when you have questions. You can stand firm when you experience doubt. You can stand firm when you're exhausted. It's not a feeling. Faithfulness is refusing to surrender your ground when you feel that pull. And God is moving closer and closer. The devil flees. But here's what we need to know is it takes intention. We have to be deliberate, and we live in a world where deliberate and intentional has a very short lifespan, because we live in a world where there's so much going on at once. And we've even captivated this in a term called multitasking. Right? We can multitask. I can do all things. I can have a conversation, and I can text, and I can scroll, and I can do all these things at once and still maintain a close relationship. So how many of you think you're good at multitasking? Yeah? Well, let's just see. We got a test for you. A yellow monkey named Barbara was super hungry one day. The issue was she forgot her lunch. Her friend, the purple hippo, felt bad, so she decided to share her cheesy lasagna with Barbara. The problem was they only had one fork. So Barbara went to find another fork, but could only find a spoon. Barbara and her friend laughed while they ate lunch together. All right. Who are my zeroes? Got nothing right. Oh, yeah. Look, proud. They're like, "Yeah, I got nothing right." Who got one? Who got one? One, we got a lot of ones. Twos? Twos. Threes? We got some threes. We got any fours? Fours? Fours. Right here. All right. Any other fours over there? Fours over... This is the young generation over here, man. They're multitasking geniuses. In my notes right here, it says, "Insert couples joke here." Okay? So if you are a four, look at your husband or your wife and say, "See, every time you talk while the TV's on, I hear exactly what you say." "Okay? I know what's going on." Okay? The myth is that we can multitask. That's the myth. And science goes back and says we can do tasks quickly, but we can only do one task at a time. And so we bring that same approach of multitasking into our relationship with God. We say, "I'm going to give God a few minutes while I'm driving, while I'm getting dressed, while I'm checking my phone, while I got 17 other things going on. I can multitask my relationship with God and I'm going to put it amongst all the other things." And it takes intention. It takes deliberate acts. It takes time. And what I want to say to myself and to us is that maybe we need to start single-tasking God. Maybe we need to step away from the phone, turn off the TV. Our quiet time is not while we're driving. We close the computer. We sit somewhere. We open up God's word. We give him time, not because he has a minimum time requirement, but we give him time so that we can have a close relationship, and close relationships require attention. And we sit in the quietness of the moment. We take all the tabs in our life, and we close all the tabs except for the relationship with God, and we single-task. "God, I'm here. I surrender to you. Give me the strength to resist. Let me walk in your power. Draw near to me right now. I'm drawing near to you." And the call in a fast-paced world is to stop and just single-task. And we can do this, and I encourage you, I encourage myself, as I've been preparing for this message, it's been convicting for me, too. When am I really extending my time? But you can do it personally, and you have to do it personally. You got to be quiet alone. But you can do it in community as well. Okay? We are here in community at all of our rooms. As you stand and you worship, and you sing that Jesus is King, he's my king, that is your prayer to God, and you're single-tasking. You're actually worshiping in an environment of community. But this helps us when we come together to single-task, to worship, to be in God's word together. As you're taking notes and you're listening, God is speaking to you individually so we can single-task in community. And that's why we offer our classes like we do. We want you to be able to focus on one area. If something's going wrong and you have a loss in your life, we want you to go to Grief with Hope so that you can focus on what God has for you there, for recovery, that you can see what God has for you there, that you can put out all distractions and see that God can pull you out of that and help you with that. We have the mental health core sanctuary, that we want to be a church that welcomes others and that we are a safe place for people. So the sanctuary course is to help give us knowledge and empathy in that world. Wherever you're at on the mental health spectrum, we want to have that conversation here at the church with the sanctuary course. The Abundant Conference coming up this weekend. Those are all opportunities for us to single-task. But we can start to multitask even here in community. As you're singing that worship song, you're thinking about what's going to happen next, you're all of a sudden the worries of the world, and you don't even realize the words and what you're saying. You're singing, but it's not happening at the same time. You got to pause. You got to stop. We can't multitask our relationship with God. In order to be close to him, we have to single-task. We have to submit, stand firm, come close. And then James goes to the heart of the matter. Says, "You know what's really keeping you from a close relationship with God?" He says this: "Come near to God and he will come near to you." And then he says, "Wash your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded." Wow, double-minded. That is a strong statement. He's saying something that we know. It's because of our sin that we've broken a relationship with God, and what Jesus did on the cross brings that relationship back. But it's the soberness of understanding that we are sinners, and we need to purify our hearts, our double-mindedness. The Greek word that James uses here is being divided, a divided soul, a lack of integrity. One commentator calls it the hypocrisy of the heart, that we would say, "Jesus is Lord, as long as I can have control of myself. Yes, I love you, Lord. Your will be done, as long as your will looks like my will, God." It's this double-mindedness. It's the division of the soul. We want to live in both worlds. Kimberly and I were on vacation and we walked into a bookstore, and I saw this book. In order for this story to make sense, I need to take it back to the summer. Several weeks before that, and this was years ago, but Kimberly and I took a group of teenagers on a missions trip to the Philippines. We worked with a church plant that we've been working with for a long time there, and before the trip, we had the group of students. We did all the planning and we did all the meetings, and sometime during that time, a girl in our youth group, I'm going to call her Sarah because that's her name. I'm going to call her Sarah. And she declared that she is a vegetarian now, and so all the meals that we have on this trip need to be vegetarian. Like, all right. Okay. So we do all our diligence to honor Sarah in making all the prep. Now, when you go into a foreign country, when you're on a missions trip, the default is eat what's on your plate, what they serve you, right? But we did everything we could to make sure that Sarah had a vegetarian diet, right? Even when we landed in the Philippines, we went to the store, we made sure that she had the things that she required for her diet. And then several days into the trip, it's a long day. We spent a long day. We went to a prison. We did a bunch of different things. It was emotionally exhausting, spiritually exhausting. It was just a long day. And we get back to our lodging facility, and it's dinner time, and our Filipino friends made a fantastic meal, and they grilled chicken for us. And they had enough chicken for two pieces per person, right? And so as we went through, they'd give you one piece, and they counted it out because they had who could eat chicken and who couldn't, and they gave us the one piece, and then you could go back for a second. And then I started having students come up to me say, "Dave, I've only had one piece of chicken, but there's no more chicken left." I said, "I've only had one piece of chicken. I'm going to investigate this." So I went and I looked, and the chicken was gone. And then I look around the tables and I see Sarah's plate full of bones, okay? Dry bones, okay? And Sarah had multiple pieces of chicken. I said, "Sarah, thought you were a vegetarian." She said, "But I was hungry, Dave." I'm like... And I've been wrestling with this. How can we carry two convictions at the same time? What's that look like? What is it? And that's, I'm a vegetarian, but I'm... And so Kimberly and I now are on vacation, and we walk into a bookstore. And I see this book. I see this book right here, "The Flexitarian Cookbook: Adaptable Recipes for Part-Time Vegetarians and Vegans." Okay? This is it. This is it. I didn't know that there was a part-time position, right? I thought this is it, the flexitarian. Look at, this is a fantastic... Mushroom and bean chili sin carne, right? If you're on the clock as a vegetarian or a vegan, then you make it this way. But if you're off the clock and you're punched out, then go ahead and add a pound of ground beef and bacon, okay? It's right there. It's right there. You start looking through and you're like, "Oh, pumpkin soup. That's great." But if you're off the clock, add ham hock to it right here. I'm not joking. This is real Here, don't send me the emails, okay? Don't send me the emails. Or do, I don't care. Because I don't care what you eat. Okay? I really don't care what you eat. Your diet is between you and the doctor. Okay? Let me just say that. Let's put that out there for legal purposes. But don't miss the point. We want to be flexitarian Christians. We want to be part-time. We want to live both worlds at the same time. We are double-minded. And this is what James says. He says, "Wash your hands of the sin." The thief comes, the enemy comes, to steal, kill, and destroy. Anything that he pulls you into is not going to be helpful for you. Wash your hands of that. Purify your hearts. Pick a path. Where's your heart posture? Pick a path. Don't be double-minded. Choose this way. You want to be close to God, choose this way. Put away the double-mindedness. Now here's some of the issue is that we believe that, and it's true, one, Jesus has paid the price for this, that He has forgiven us of all our sin. We're now reconciled to Him, and if we trust Him with our lives, we put 100% of our life towards Him, then yes, this is the path we've chosen. And it's the learning of moving our life away from double-mindedness. But here's what we believe and sometimes get confused is that I have to be 100% certain all the time. I can't have any questions. I can't have any doubts. I have to have it all figured out all the time to follow Jesus. In order to be close to Him, I have to have 100% of that within me. Yes, I love Jesus, but I got other things going on, so am I really close to God? God said, "Draw near to me, and I'll draw near to you." But I don't have it all figured out. I can't always give 100%. In my last job, I got to talk with and interact with ... And he was not part of this organization, just to clarify that because of last services. But anyway, Pastor Andrew Brunson spoke many times for the organization I worked for and got to interact with him. And I don't know if you know who Pastor Andrew Brunson is. Pastor Andrew Brunson was a preacher and a church planter in Turkey, a Muslim-majority country. And he was arrested, they would say for espionage, for trying to overthrow the government. But honestly, it was because he was preaching Jesus. And his penalty for this was going to be, if found guilty, was life imprisonment or death. And he's put in a Turkish prison. He's isolated from everybody else because of his belief in Jesus. And he has spent years, he spent his life following Jesus. He went to a hard country to share Jesus. He was following Jesus closely, and then this happens. And months in, he's hopeful, and there's people praying, and there's political stuff happening, and he's hoping to get out. But then one month turns into six months, turns into a year, and turns into a year and a half, and it turns into two years. And now, as he tells the story, his faith is at rock bottom. He's emotionally drained. Physically, he's skin and bones. He barely has any energy. He has emotions that are contradictory to his faith. He feels abandoned. He doesn't feel the presence of God. He's lost. He's in grief, physical pain, emotional pain. And as he's in solitary confinement, he says the only thing he could think of, the only thing he could just realize was out of all this confusion, out of not knowing if God had good plans for him, this is not good plans, God. He said, "The only thing I knew, I knew this 100%, that I love Jesus." And although it took a lot of energy, he would try to say it, not just in his mind, he would try to say, "I love Jesus," out loud. But he had a lot of confusion. He had a lot of doubt. He had a lot of questions. He did not feel close to God. And this is where his story really struck me. He said, "I knew I loved Jesus, and I had to say it out loud, but I did not have a worship for Jesus inside of me. I had a lot of doubt. I had a lot of struggle." He said that the enemy was working overtime. "I'd done all this for God, and yet He's abandoned me in this cell." He said, "But I didn't need to turn 100% that way." He said, "All I needed to do was turn 51% towards God." He said, "I didn't have 100% worship, but I knew I was supposed to, and so I'm going to give 51% of myself to worship." He said, "I remember David saying that he danced before the Lord with joy." He said, "I don't have any joy." But he said, and when he speaks, he says, "I just, skin and bones." He said, "I'm going to dance before you, God. I don't feel like it, but I'm going to. I'm going to give you 51%. I'm going to dance before you." He said, "That's all the energy I have. God, I love you. I don't understand this. But I'll give you 51%." And you take the next step. Say, "I don't know if I even trust you. I don't know if your plans are good for me. But I am going to trust you." 51% of me is going to trust you. I want to be obedient. 51% can be. I do know I love you, Jesus. 51%. That's helped me over these years. I know I love Jesus. I know that for sure. But when I have doubt and confusion, and maybe you're with me in this this morning, you're like, "I don't understand the plans that God has for me right now. What I'm in right now, I have that lost person, that person that I love is now no longer with me. But God, I can give you 51% in my grief. God, I have a lot of questions, doubt, but I can give you 51% in my doubt. God, I can give you what I have." And this is where God says, "You're coming close. You're drawing close to me. I'm going to come close to you, and I'm going to fill that gap with my grace. My grace is sufficient for you. I'm going to give you grace upon grace." Because it takes humility to say, "I don't have it all figured out." And God knows we don't. And so we have to humble ourselves and say, "God, I'm going to give you what I have. I believe, but help my unbelief." And this is why James wraps this passage in these verses here. He says, "God gives grace, more grace. This is why scripture says God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble." Then he says, "Submit yourself. Resist the devil. Flee, and he'll come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter into mourning and your joy to gloom." In other words, humble yourself. Humble yourself Humble yourself before the Lord, and He will lift you up. The pride God opposes is because we don't want to be near Him. It's not because He wants to push us away. He's still going to pursue you with a love relationship, even with pride. But he says it's the humbleness where we get the grace. We humble ourselves before a loving God. We come near to Him knowing that we don't have it all figured out. He knows you. He's not distant. He's not disappointed. He's not disgusted. He's not abandoned you. It doesn't matter about your feelings. The truth is that He wants to draw close to you. The question is, where are you at with Him? Because maybe you spent years not wanting a relationship with God or believing that He didn't want one with you. I'm here today to tell you that He does. He wants to draw close to you, and no matter what circumstances you're going through, He wants a close relationship with you. He died for you. Philippians says this, that Jesus humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Now, don't miss this, the contrast there. James says, "Humble yourself before the Lord, and he will lift you up." Humble yourself to God. And in Philippians says, God already humbled himself for you. God, the God of the universe, took on human flesh, died a humiliating death, not just physically, but spiritually, took all your shame, all your guilt upon himself. He humbled himself first. That's how much he wants a close relationship with you. If you've ever wondered whether God wants to be close to you, look to the cross. For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross. What was the joy? The joy was that we'd experience forgiveness, reconciliation with the God of the universe, restoration of our lives, kingdom purpose is happening. God wants a relationship with you. And that's why this morning I find it appropriate that we would end the service with communion. So if you have your elements, go ahead and pull those out. It was on the cross that Jesus settled it. He settled it all. And so today, there's really three people in the room. I'm going to talk to the first group. First group is, "I still don't have this figured out. I hear what you're saying, but I'm not ready to have a relationship with God." And God will honor that, but He's still going to pursue you with His love. And we are, too. Keep coming back. We get it. It's okay. If you're not there, let's walk with you on that journey. Let's answer questions. But taking communion would not serve a purpose for you today, so I just ask that you don't. And that's okay. There is no guilt and no shame. Just don't. We want to honor that, that you don't have that relationship with Him yet. The second group of people is you haven't had that relationship with God, but today you're like, "I get it. God, you died for me. I understand it. You paid the sin penalty and you rose from the dead. I believe that. I confess that with my heart. I surrender to you, God." And the act of taking communion does not do anything for you. It's just a way to remember what God did for you. It's the invitation that God asks. It's the posture of your heart that brings you into a relationship with God. But as a way to signify that, maybe this is the first day you can take communion and say, "You know what? I'm surrendering to the God of the universe, and I'm going to mark that by this communion." And if that's you, if this is your first time and you just grabbed that, "I surrender," He hears that prayer. But I would ask that if that's you today, that if that's true, then you would tell somebody, that you would come down, meet with a pastor. We'd love to walk this journey with you. And then for the rest of us, the other group, is that we know that we love Jesus. And this is a way for us to remember. It's not a ritual. It's a way for us to remember that the God of the universe wants a close relationship with us. So on the night He was betrayed, Jesus took the bread. He said, "This is my body. I'm going to give it up willingly for you because I love you so much." He said, "Take this in remembrance of me." And then He took the cup. He said, "This represents my blood." Scripture's clear that there can't be forgiveness of sin without the shedding of blood. And we do thank Jesus for the blood that was applied on our behalf, that He did save our lives through that act. And Jesus said, "Take this in remembrance of me." Our Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the gift of Jesus Christ, that you yourself would come onto this planet, that you would demonstrate your great love for us, that even though we were still sinners, you died for us, that you stepped closer to us when we stepped far away from you, God, that you continue to pursue us every day, every moment with your love. And God, as we walk out of here today, God, may we see your presence, may we see your closeness. May we not judge it by emotion, but God, may we see where you're working, where you're working in our lives, even in the deep, painful situations that some of us are going through. God, that we'd see you there clearly, that you would guide us, you'd help us live out our purpose and meaning. God, that we'd walk in your forgiveness, we'd walk in freedom, we'd walk in relationship with you, that we would draw close to you and you'd draw close to us. And the only reason we can pray these things are because of what Jesus did on the cross. We pray in the power and the name of Jesus. Amen and amen. Go this week and be close to Jesus.