Hearers and Doers

My name is Drew Chapman and I'm glad to see you all this morning. I serve as a senior pastor here at First Baptist and we are glad that you have gathered with us this morning. As we have come at really the beginning of a new series, as we ended a series last week in the life of our church, it was a five week series kind of a vision and our strategy as a church. And we said as a strategy that's we believe that God has given us a vision over the next four years, a 2030 dream of where we're headed, but how are we going to do it? Like what is that going to look like? What is going to be sort of the basic rhythms of our church and the life of our church? And so this is our strategy. And so if you notice, it's worship and gather. We want to worship Jesus Monday through Saturday individually, but then we want to gather on Sunday collectively to worship him together. So we want to worship, but also gather together. But we also want to connect and belong. We got to be near God's people. We want to fellowship with God's people. And so we need to be near other believers, but we want to belong as well. We need to be known about other believers and we need other believers to know us as well. The now is a perfect example of this. Like this is not it. This is just a part in the journey of your walk with Jesus that you need to connect and you need to belong to other believers that you need to have others help you live this out. And that is our hope is that it's not just an event, but that we're moving people along to connect and to belong in the life of our church. And also to serve and to influence. Serve is about stewardship and influence is about impact as we serve and as we, as we steward what God has given to us, the gifts that he's given to us for the sake of others, for the building up of others and the common good, that we read in his word. We also got increases our impact and our influence through that. And that trickles out and overflows outside the walls of this church. If our faith only stays in this building, it is worthless. We have to live this out and we need to lead others to do the same. And that is the last part of the strategy that we are to call to live this every day. That this faith is affecting and it's shaping our decisions and our conversations. It's shaping how we live each and every day. But then we're also leading others to do the same. And as we lead others to do the same, notice this, that we come back to, we teach them to worship and gather. We teach them that they need to connect them along. We teach them that there's gifts that they have that God's given to them to serve and to steward and to use to influence others and as teach them to live and to lead as Jesus did. And so as I wrapped up the sermon last week, I talked about that the goal is spiritual maturity. The goal is to grow in our relationship with Jesus and to become more and more like Jesus that we can look back on our life. If we are walking with Jesus, it does not matter how old we are. What matters is how long have we been walking with Jesus? And if I've been walking with Jesus for 40 years, I should have growth and maturity in my life more so than with somebody that is walking with Jesus for a couple months. And so can we look back over our lives and can we see that maturity happening? And so I gave us eight lives, sorry four live and four lead, but eight outcomes, eight marks of maturity that we want to be progressing toward because maturity is not about perfection. It's not about ever getting to some place where we have arrived and we can no longer know Jesus in any more capacity. That is not the truth at all. The truth is that we aren't going to be perfect but we are progressing in that direction that we can look back over our lives and see growth in these areas. And so we want to live dependent. We're lying on God's word for strength and truth and direction each and every day. We want to live joyful that we're choosing joy through the spirit regardless of our circumstances. We want to live connected building deep accountable relationships within Biblical community. We want to live scent, engaging people locally and globally with the gospel. But we also want to lead visibly. We want to model Christ through our actions and our attitudes and our words. We want to lead humbly serving others first and leading with the teachable heart. We want to lead generously giving time and talent and resources to bless others. And we want to lead somebody investing in others to help them grow in Christ. This is the idea that it is about multiplication, that we are reproducing this faith that we have in the lives of others, helping them take steps with Jesus. And these eight marks of maturity, these eight outcomes that we're talking about, these are not random things that we pulled out of thin air, things that we made up. These are things that Jesus modeled and things that Jesus taught as he was on this earth, things that he taught to his followers. And so as we talk about how are we progressing, we want to make sure that we're progressing all in the same direction, that these are the things that we want to see ourselves growing in as a church individually and collectively. And no better place do you see these in the life of Jesus or being taught than on the sermon on the mount. And that's where we're going to be for the next several weeks, where you're going to be studying the sermon on the mount. And we're going to go into these live and these lead outcomes in more depth and more detail as we continue to progress in them. And though if you're not familiar with church or the sermon on the mount or maybe you've heard about the sermon on the mount and you've just never been, you've been afraid to ask, why is it called the sermon on the mount? Well Matthew 5-1 tells us this, Jesus seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain. This is why it's called the sermon on the mount because he was on a mountain, okay? And when he sat down, his disciples came to him. What's important about the sermon on the mount is that Jesus is teaching in Galilee, he is not teaching in Jerusalem. Jerusalem would have been like the religious capital at the time, but Jesus is not in the religious capital. He's not like kind of in the religious center. He's out away. He's in Galilee and Matthew 415, it's called Galilee of the Gentiles, right? That's not like a good name. That was kind of looked down upon, but this is intentional by Jesus. The Jesus is not in the palace and he's not in the temple. He's out on a mountain in Galilee and he's not talking to the religious elite. He's talking to ordinary fishermen. He's talking to ordinary tax collectors. He's not talking at this moment. He's not calling the religious establishment to himself. It starts with fishermen and tax collectors and it starts in Galilee. And we also learned from Matthew 5.1 that Jesus is with his disciples, that he's on a mountain and it says as he sat down, his disciples came to him and the disciples can feel like a churchy word. I heard that word a lot growing up and I was just too afraid to ask what it meant. I was like, I don't use that word in my everyday language, but disciples sometimes, so disciples to help us understand this a little bit. You may hear me say the Greek or in the Greek and that's I'm not trying to impress you because I'm not really that smart. What I'm trying to help you understand is that it hasn't always been written in English, that the New Testament was in Greek at one time and it was translated into English and there's some words that just don't translate and the idea of disciple might not make a whole lot of sense to us, but in the Greek it's mathatase and it means learner or student. And I think that we can like we can track with that. We know what a student is and we know what a learner is and over the years the word apprentice has actually gained a lot more traction because a apprentice means it kind of student or learner like you could still be this is just a head thing, but at apprentice this idea that you're training for something, you're preparing to go into do this yourself. And so that's what Jesus, that's who Jesus is with and this idea of disciples and a teacher is not unique to Jesus either. This is pretty common of Jesus's day is that he would have a teacher or a rabbi and you would have disciples or students or learners and so you would have these students and these learners following the rabbi, following the teacher around and they would sit down like Jesus is doing, he'd sit down and they would come to the teacher or the rabbi and they would learn from him. Jesus is different though because in this day it was highly competitive all right to be with a rabbi or a teacher. To be honest, parents would do whatever it took to get their kid in the right group with the right teacher with the right rabbi. It was highly competitive. They would search out the most renowned teacher the one with the best reputation, the smartest, the one that had the deepest knowledge of the scriptures. Parents would even pay money to kind of secure a spot with the best rabbi or the best teacher. Y'all there were helicopter parents back then. This is not like some new thing where parents are trying to orchestrate their kids' lives. It was happening even then. It was highly competitive but followers, Jesus' disciples and his students. This is what makes Jesus radically different and this is why it caused so much commotion because you didn't pay Jesus to follow him and you didn't go and seek him out. He sought you out. He went to his followers and he called them and said, "You come and you follow me." See in the regular relationship the followers were saying, "Can I follow you? Can I learn from you? Can I be part of your group?" Jesus said, "I want you to come follow me. I want you to come be part of my group." And Jesus is not calling the religious elite. He is not calling the most intelligent. He's not calling the wealthiest. The guys that Jesus is calling, they're not making the travel team. You know what I'm saying? They're not. That's who he's calling. He's calling. He's walking by the sea and he sees a fisherman and he says, "You come and follow me." He walks by a tax booth and he sees a tax collector in that booth and he says, "Hey, you come and follow me." These are ordinary kind of marginalized individuals in society. and Jesus is choosing them and saying you come and you follow me. So he's not sitting down with overachievers who earn their way into his master class or anything like that. These are people that Jesus called, chose, and invited into a personal relationship with him. And that matters because that changes how we view the sermon on the mount. Jesus is not teaching impossible standards for people to come and try to prove themselves worthy enough to follow this Jesus. Jesus is telling those individuals that he has chosen and called out what life in the kingdom looks like and what does it look like to truly live out this faith? What does it truly look like to lead others to do the same? In this moment and in this greatest sermon ever, he's teaching his followers about formation. He's teaching his followers about what it looks like to live and to lead like him. And that's important and that's what we're going to be doing over these next weeks. And I want to start this morning though with the end in mind because I think we have an advantage here this morning. If we're in real time and we're sitting on the mountain with Jesus and he's delivering the greatest sermon that's ever been preached, he ends it with some words that I think we could benefit from in the front end of this and ask this question every time we gather together. It should be a question we're asking each and every day as we worship Jesus individually. And here's the question that Jesus will ask them at the end. What are you going to do with what you just heard? What are you going to do with what I just said and what you just heard? This is the question that Jesus is asking them in the end. And so Matthew chapter 7 verse 24 through 27, Jesus says this. Everyone then, this is Jesus speaking, everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on the house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. But then everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell and great was the fall of it. Jesus is helping us understand in these words. Again, I think we can benefit from asking this question this morning, what will you do with what you heard? And we could ask that every Sunday we gather together and we could ask that every morning we get up and we get into the word and we hear God's word and we say, what will you do now with what you just heard? Because Jesus is telling us that there's one sermon he is preaching, but he's preaching it to two builders. He's preaching one sermon, but it's to two builders. And we know from the text that it's his disciples that are with him, but we also know that the crowds are listening to the crowd follow Jesus everywhere that he went. They were so curious about him. They were curious about the miracles he was doing. They were curious about the teachings he was teaching. And again, I just told you, they were curious. This guy is calling out his followers. They're not going to him and choosing him. He's choosing them. This is all upside down and backwards. He is so interesting that the crowd is always there. And Jesus tells him this. He says, everyone who hears these words of mine. This is not insider information. God is so loving and he's so kind. He is not wishing to hide things. This isn't some meeting that was happening where God is trying to conceal it from everybody. Jesus says, everyone who hears these words of mine. Jesus's words right now is for everyone. Even though his disciples are sitting there listening, he's saying everyone who hears. Now this would have been shocking because the kingdom of God was thought to be for the Jewish people only. The kingdom of God was thought to be for only those that could trace their family tree back to Abraham. Like if you were born Jewish and you could trace your family tree back to Abraham, you were in. If you couldn't, you were out. It was really that simple. But Jesus says, everyone. Everyone who hears, everyone who responds, everyone who obeys, and that is good news for us here this morning because how many of us listening right now can trace your family tree back to Abraham. Listen, this is good news for every one of us. Jesus says, everyone who hears, everyone who responds and everyone who obeys. This means you and it means no matter your background, it means no matter your ethnicity, your race, no matter how far you feel from God, no matter how many mistakes you believe that you made, everyone who hears these words of mine. Man that gets their attention. This is a call for everyone that the kingdom of God is open to anyone who will hear and anyone who will obey because Jesus is talking about two builders. One of them hears God's word, one of them hears these words and he goes and he does them. The other one hears them and he does not do them. And so it's not just to hear the words of God. It is to go and to do what you just heard. There's two builders in this story. And I think that we need to hear that this morning. It is for everyone, but not everyone will respond. And here's the reality. We try to make following Jesus sometimes like three options that we following Jesus or we're not following Jesus or we're somewhere in the middle. We're kind of following Jesus. We're sort of following him. We obey sometimes. Sometimes we don't. We're kind of right in the middle. And Jesus is clear in this message. There are only two builders. You either hear his words and you go do them or you hear them and you don't go do them. There's only two builders. There's one sermon, but two builders. There's one message and two foundations. Jesus says everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And then Jesus says everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. Following Jesus is about obedience. It is about information, but it's got to be more than just information. It's got to be about formation as well. See, information is just data and it can just be facts and really information can just focus on the head. And we can gain it pretty quickly like I could read a book. I could listen to a podcast. I could search something. There's lots I could do. I could watch the docu series and I could gain information pretty quickly. And I could gain it pretty passively too. I don't have to participate a whole lot. I can just gain it. And really information, the measure of how much information you know, I mean, that's that's the measure of is what did you know, like that's kind of how we measure information a lot of times. And so it's got to be more about information and it's got to be about formation as well. And when I graduated seminary, they had somebody come in to talk to us about, hey, here's some options for you now that you've graduated, you're an alumni. That means you can audit any class that you want to. And just to be honest, I'm telling you, I'm not very smart. And I was like, I don't know what it means to audit a class. And so I reached out to the register's office, humbled myself and said, hey, what does that mean? They told us that we could audit any class that we want to this. Oh, yeah, that's great. It's something that we offer. You can sign up for any class that you want to now. And you can take it. It means you can show up when you want to. You can kind of listen to the, you can listen to what the professor says. And here's the best part about it. You don't have to do any of the assignments. You can pick and choose if you want to, but you don't have to. And I was like, man, that sounds really great. So I can show up for the lecture. I can get the information, but I don't have to do any of the assignments. That sounds incredible. I think this is what Jesus is saying about those that build their life on the sand. It's the foundation is those that want to come to Jesus and audit his class. They just want to hear about it. They want to hear the cool things. The information about Jesus. They want to gain knowledge about Jesus. They want to learn more about him, but it is not forming them. It is not changing them. It's not shaping their decisions. It's not shaping their calendar. It's not shaping their relationships. Nothing is changing in their lives. They're just gaining more information. That's what it looks like to audit. But Jesus is talking about two foundations. It's one message, but it's two foundations. That there's those that hear this message and they build their life and they go do it and they build their life on the rock. There's those that hear the message and they don't go do it and they build their life on the sand. Formation. It's not that we don't need the information, but formation focuses not on the head, but it focuses on the heart and it focuses on our hands. This is what we do with what we've just heard. And look, it's gained over time. There's no way to speed up. There's no way to speed up spiritual formation. There's no way to speed up and to get more and more mature. I wish there was. I wish we could go on Amazon, put it in the cart and order it and we would have it, but there's just isn't a way to do it. It's gained over time. It's not gained quickly. It's gained slowly over time. It's what the Apostle Paul meant in Philippians when he said, he that began a good work in you will be faithful to carry it to completion to the end to Christ Jesus, the day of Christ Jesus. What that means for us this morning church, formation and following Jesus Christ. Christ is for the rest of our earthly lives. There will not come a point where we are just got to that we're like, now it's just about my kids and their formation. Now it's just about my friends and their formation. Now it's just about my coworkers and their formation. We are always learning more and more about our God. We are always growing into the likeness of his son, John 173, for this is eternal life, that they would know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have set. Yes, that is about getting into the kingdom, but that is also what's gonna happen for the rest of all eternity, is that we are going to be knowing our God. We will never get to a place where we know everything there is to know about him. If we could, he would cease to be God. This is what it means by formation. And look, Jesus, and this is what James also meant. Jesus is half brother. When James wrote this in his letter, do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves, but do what it says. See, the crowds are listening and there's no doubt, like Jesus encountered some groups of people over his time, and there's no doubt that he's always directly or indirectly sort of challenging their view and challenging their teachings and things like that. And there's three groups of people. There's the scribes, there's the Pharisees, and there's the Sadducees. We don't know if they're there. They might be in the crowd. They were always pretty close to where Jesus was, trying to check out what he was doing and what he was teaching, and if that, you know, again, I didn't know who these were, and if you're not sure who the scribes or the Pharisees or the Sadducees are, the scribes are the biblical scholars. They knew everything there was to know about the Bible. They spent their lives copying scripture, memorizing scripture, and teaching scripture. Like on Thursday night, if there's a Bible trivia happening in the area, the scribes are gonna win it every time. Don't even show up, go find something else to do. That's who the scribes were. But then there were the Pharisees, they were the rule keepers, and they were really devout. I mean, they looked like some of the most devout people, and they were serious about their faith, but they didn't just know what the Bible said. They also made up more rules to try to protect themselves for not breaking the rules that they thought that they might break in the first place, and so they made up more rules and more laws. And they were really devout, and by that, I mean, they fasted twice a week. They prayed in public, we see that in the scriptures. They tied 10% of everything that they had, even the spices in the cabinet, they gave 10% of that away. They looked like the most devout people around. And then the Sadducees, where they were religious elite, think of them as the wealthy, politically connected, and influential religious leaders. They controlled the temple, had relationships with Roman authorities, they held positions of power, so they were the insiders and had influence. It scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees, and every one of these three groups had one thing in common. They knew the Bible. They knew the scriptures. They, in this room, there's nobody in this room that has more biblical knowledge than this crew had, or these groups had, but here's what it wasn't forming them. It wasn't transforming them. They could quote it and debate it, and they could teach it, but it wasn't making them people of love. They were not becoming more and more people of love. They could not look back over their lives a year later and say, "Did I, am I more loving toward people now? Am I more loving of the things of God now?" Those things weren't happening in their lives. All that Bible knowledge, and yet they were harsh, judgmental, power of hungry, and self-righteous. They knew the scriptures in their heads, but the scriptures, this Bible information, had not transformed their hearts and their hands. This is what Jesus is talking about. It's what the Apostle Paul was talking about in 1 Corinthians 8.1 when he says, "We know we all possess a knowledge, but this is what knowledge does. Sometimes if we're not careful, knowledge puffs up the Apostle Paul says, but he says, "Love builds up." Describes the Pharisees and the Sadducees had all the information, but it was not forming them into people who loved God more and loved people more. And that's the foolish builder, guys. We can know all the right things. We can say all the right words. We can do all the religious activities, but if it's not actually changing us into people of love, if we're not growing in our love for God and we're not growing in our love for other people, we need to question which foundation are we on? We need to question, are we on the rock or are we on the sand? One message and two foundations, and I know some of, like right now, some of us are struggling. Like you're tuned in, but you're struggling because I'm using the word do so much. And you're like, you've got an email already, like you're typing it, and then the subject says, let me tell you about legalism. And here's what I want you to hear. You cannot earn your salvation. Grace is the root of salvation. You or I, we cannot obey our way into the kingdom of God. This is what the Apostle Paul, in Ephesians 2, said, it is by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God. It is the gift, not a result of works, not a result of your obedience, not a result of anything that you've done, it is a gift from God. Why? Because if you could do it, you would brag about it, and you would boast about it. And so absolutely, grace is the root of our salvation. Hear that clearly this morning. But Jesus is clear, grace is the root, but obedience is the fruit of our salvation. There should be a fruit. There should be something in our lives that says we do believe what we are reading. We do believe these words, like we are acting as if God is telling us the truth. See, legalism gets that backwards, and legalism is out of fear. It's out of fear of God. We're doing these things because we're trying to earn, and we're fearful of our God, but grace at the root, we love God, and it's out of love for God. This is why Jesus said this, in John 14, 15, "If you love me, you will obey my commandments." This is why Augustine, one of the early church fathers, said this, "Without God, we cannot. "Without us, God will not." And look, if you're sitting there right now, and you hear messages this one, or you're hearing that, and you're thinking, "Man, I just can't obey perfectly. "Look, that's a good place to be." Because you're taking it seriously, and you're wrestling with it, and you're struggling with it, Paul says, "Work out your salvation "with fear and trembling." Like, we should listen to these words and go, "Man, like God, am I doing that? "God, I want to look at my life. "I want to make sure my life is lining up "with the one that is built on the rock, "that he is hearing what you're saying, "and that he is doing what you're saying." If you're sitting there and you're questioning that, that is a good place to be. If you're sitting there and you think to yourself, I can do whatever I want to do because grace covers all of it, you don't understand what Jesus, you don't understand the cost that he paid for you. And so don't mix up, don't hear what I'm not saying. It is grace is the root, but obedience is the fruit. There should be evidence in our lives, because Jesus says there's one sermon and two builders, there's one message, and there's two foundations, it's either the rock or it's sand. It's either Jesus or something else. And then he says there's one storm and there's two outcomes. All right, there's one storm and there's two outcomes. The storm is coming for everyone. Jesus says trials, temptations, suffering, death. And when it comes, the doer's house doesn't fall. Jesus says it's built on the rock. But the one who heard only and didn't do what Jesus has said, fell with a great crash. The temptations, the sufferings. Listen, they don't expose the foundation. I mean, they don't build our foundation. It's the storm. Jesus is not telling us that the storm in that moment is building our foundation. Jesus is telling us that when the storm comes, it will reveal the foundation that's there. It will expose the foundation that's there. That's why when kids go to college a lot of times, it's not that they go to college and somebody jacks them up with some kind of crazy teaching and all those kinds of things. It's that their life will just never really on the rock. And they get the college and the storm comes and it's exposed. It's exposed for what it is. And the same thing is true in our lives. And so it's like I would say that we would all amen and say we can live out these outcomes and we can do this together as a church and we can do it when it's easy and we can do it when it makes sense. And we can do it when it seems to be like the roadless travel. But the question is, this morning, can we still live this out? Are we still living out our faith? Are we still hearing Jesus' words and doing them even when the storm comes? That's the question this morning. Like this, we want to live dependent on God's word but can we still trust in God's word and His promise is even when the answer for what you've been praying for is no. Like you're still waiting on God to answer for Him to show up in some way. and he's just feeling silent or the answer has been no. Can you still live dependent? Can you still live joyful? Can you still live joyful when you lose your job or when you miscarry or when the diagnosis is cancer? Can you live connected even when there's conflict in your community or can you still live connected when somebody closest to you in your biblical community? Somebody that's supposed to love Jesus and supposed to love you but you feel betrayed by them. Can you still live connected? Can you live sent? Can you wake up each day and share your faith even when it costs you a friendship or even when your family makes fun of you or you get left out of the group text because of your faith? Can you still live sent? Can you lead visibly even after you lose your temper in front of your kids? Man, how hard is it to like get back up and say, "No, I'm called to lead." But man, I know I made a fool of myself or when you messed up at work or when you've messed up at school, can you still lead visibly? Can you still lead humbly when you're criticized or misunderstood? Can you lead generously when your own finances are tight? Or you just don't have the margin but somebody is need and help from you. Somebody is asking for you. In that moment, can you still lead generously? Can you lead somebody when that person you've been investing in and pouring so many hours in walks away or just denies the faith altogether? Can you still lead somebody? See the storms and the trials, the sufferings and the temptations, they just expose the foundation. They don't build the foundation. They're just exposing what's already there. And look, I think we would all agree about this is that storms don't ask permission, do they? Like, have you ever been on Lake Tuscaloosa on a storm rolled in or have you ever been down on the coast when a storm rolls in, you've been on the beach or something, a storm just calms. It doesn't ask permission, it doesn't wait for you to get ready, it doesn't wait for you to prepare, it just calms. Y'all, this, and this happened in my life. Like, these verses to me, God used these in a really powerful way in my life to reveal and expose my foundation. About 23 years ago, my parents came to me and said, "Drew, we're getting a divorce." And you wanna know in that moment, in that moment, I was exposed for what my foundation was. That was a storm that did not ask permission in my life. That was a storm that came into my life and it rocked my foundation to the core. And my foundation was not built on Jesus Christ. I was exposed in that moment, it was sand. It was built on so many other things and because it was built on so many other things besides Jesus Christ, I spent the next three years of my life. Hearding people, making decisions that embarrassed me, embarrassed my family because my foundation was shifting sand. And by God's grace, he drew me to himself and by God's grace, he brought me through that and by God's grace, he saved me after that. By God's grace, he used that to bring me to the end of myself and to call me out and to say, "Come and follow me." And I think there's some in here that know that what I'm talking about and that can relate to what I'm talking about that storms don't ask permission and they don't build the foundation. They just expose what's really there and they just expose what you're really putting your faith and what you're really putting your hope in. This is what Jesus is trying to help us understand. One sermon, two builders, one message, two foundations, one storm and two outcomes. Storm comes and the one on the rock lasts. The storm comes and the one on the sand, it falls and it fells with a great crash. And my life fell over the next three years with a great crash. So I think the question this morning that we need to ask ourself is, what are we going to do with what we just heard? I think we need to ask ourselves that. But I think an even better question based on these verses is this, which builder are you? Like which builder are you? There's only two, we got to make sure we understand that. That there's only two, there's no middle ground, there's no gray area, there's no sort of kind of maybe. No, you're either following Jesus, built your life on him, the rock or you're not and you're building your life on something else. We got to ask ourself the question, what builder am I? I said this morning, I want to give us some next steps, alright, some things to go do, alright, based on what we've just heard. And then we're going to have a time to respond. First step is this, if you have not taken that health assessment, please take it. This will help us gain clarity, it helps you gain clarity. Again, it's not a test, it's just an assessment, where are we in our life with Jesus? Number two, the formation step. Maybe you took that assessment and you know you're like, I need to work, I know I need to work on growing in generosity, leading in generosity. And so I'm gonna have somebody hold me accountable. I need to grow in living dependent and I need to make sure I'm looking, I'm going to God's word before I go to my phone each morning or whatever. And so you want somebody to hold you accountable. That's the formation step. And then the face step, alright, here's the face step. Commit to being here for this entire series on the Sermon on the Mount. 15 weeks, that's why it's called the face step. Look, I know there's gonna be late ball games, alright? I know people are gonna get sick. I know that there's gonna be things that come up, there's gonna be responsibilities and commitments, but commit to be here. Let's hear what Jesus has to say through the greatest sermon that's ever been preached. What does He have to say to us in this moment? And how are we gonna respond? How are we gonna continue to progress into the things of Jesus? - Thank you for joining us today. My name is Drew Chapman on the senior pastor here at First Baptist. And look, we would love the privilege and the honor to get to pray for you. And so you can email us any prayer request at [email protected]. And look, if you've ever considered supporting our ministry, we would love to continue to reach more people. And so you could give to the work of the ministry here at First Baptist as well. And then lastly, if you are ever in Tuscalusa or you live in Tuscalusa, we would love to have you in person with us. Join us any Sunday morning. You are invited to come worship with us here at First Baptist.