It was back in high school, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation introduced a new kind of ticket. And some of you might know this, and hopefully not first-hand knowledge, but the ticket was ProLine. And that was an appeal to people that knew their sports, or thought they knew their sports. All you had to do was pick between three and six winners, and you could win big. Well, I remember in high school I worked at Taco Bell and a number of my friends, they thought, hey, this is great news because, you know, the regular lottery tickets, they're just way too chancy. But here, all you have to do is pick between three and six winners. All you have to do is know enough about your sports and you can pick the right winners. And after all, we're geniuses when it comes to professional sports. So a bunch of my friends went out and they started buying these tickets. And they found fairly quickly that it wasn't quite as easy as they supposed it might have been to pick the winners and to get the winnings that they desired. But I remember one time in particular, because I would always tell these guys, listen, this is a waste of time, waste of money, you're really not going to win what you think you're going to win. Oh no, no, we know sports. Well, I remember at one point, a couple of my friends went out and even more people bought tickets this time. And so I was kind of, I wonder what's going on. Even people that would not have normally bought a ProLine ticket went out and bought one this time, some of my friends at work. And so I wondered, what's going on this time? And again, I gave them my spiel, it's a waste of time, waste of money, you're not going to win like you thought you would. You're going to win. And they said, oh no, it's different this time. And they explained to me that what happened this time was that ProLine had actually put on one of the tickets a sporting event that had already happened. So all they had to do was pick the winner of a game that had already happened. And they thought, you know, there's one. All I have to do is pick two more. Surely I'm going to win. Their knowledge about that sporting event that had already happened gave them courage, right, to buy the ticket. And even people that would not have normally bought the ticket went out and bought the ticket because they thought, I have better odds now. They got this one wrong, this game is in the past, I just have to pick two more winners. And so they went out and bought it. Their knowledge then of what had happened, their knowledge of those events, gave them courage to go out and buy that ticket. How often that's the case in our lives. Maybe not with pro-line tickets, But when we know something, or think we know something, it influences the way that we live our lives. Knowledge inspires action. For example, there's a reason, students, why toward the end of the year, or toward about the three-quarter point of the year, the teachers are going to come to you and say, listen, okay, Right now, if you continue on the path that you're on, you're going to fail this course and have to take it over again. That knowledge should inspire you to put forth more effort, right? That's the point. Knowledge inspires action. But it's not always negative knowledge that inspires action. Positive knowledge inspires our action as well. We think about if we know something good about someone. I'll give you one example. My dad, some of you have met him, my dad can have a very stern countenance, but he's actually a very kind man. But some people don't see beyond the stern countenance. So I'll give you an example of somebody not seeing beyond the stern countenance and thinking they knew my dad, how that influenced them, and then others who knew what my dad was really like, how that really influenced them. First example. There was a child that was in detention. And the detention was being served in my dad's classroom. This child was a youngster, because the school was grade kindergarten through 12, and I think he was maybe in second grade or something. Anyways, this child had to use the bathroom. He had to use the bathroom really badly. And as the time of detention continued, he had to use the bathroom more and more and more. That's kind of the way things go. He sat there until, unfortunately, he did not have to go anymore. And afterward, people asked him, why didn't you just talk to Mr. Bartz and ask him if you could go to the washroom? And he said, oh, no. I'm too afraid of him. He would yell at me. See, my dad had a stern countenance, so this kid thought, oh, I better not do that. On the other hand, there were people who got to know my dad and knew my dad as merciful and kind. And there were times that people would reach out to my dad and ask him for help because they knew his character, because they knew what he was really like. It inspired them to act. And I remember a few times, one time in particular where where people were asking us help to move, they cut down a tree on their property and they wanted to get rid of the wood, so they asked my dad and myself to move the wood. My dad did. It was advantageous to them and it was advantageous to us because we had a fireplace, but they asked him knowing that he would help. They knew his character. As we come to the Book of Judges, over and over again we're reminded that God is the hero of the book of Judges. I've told you this before. God is the hero of Scripture, not us. Every single human hero that we look at in the pages of Scripture falls so far short of God and His greatness. As we come through this book, we see that Judges reveals to us what God is like. It reveals to us a God that is in control. We think, for example, all the way back to the beginning of the book, in Judges chapter 1, the children of Israel ask the Lord, who's going to go up against the Canaanites? And the Lord says, Judah shall go up, chapter 1, verse 2. Indeed, I have delivered the land into his hand. God's the one in control. When Israel does not obey God completely and drive out all of the inhabitants, God says, this is my judgment. The people will stay in the land and they will remain there. There will be a test to you. At every point we see God in control. Nowhere do we see God scrambling and saying, Oh dear, I didn't expect that to happen. God is the one in control. There's a theological term for that we call God's sovereignty. We see it even in this passage before us. God is the one in our passage that causes the children of Israel to be delivered into captivity, delivered over to Cushan Rishave. And God is the one who delivers them out of the hand of Kushan Rishithane. At every point, God is in control. God is in control. God's not just in control in the book of Judges. God's not in control just in the pages of Scripture. God is in control right now in every single one of our lives. But there's another truth that's true of us and the children of Israel. God is in control in our lives, but we are also in the presence of our enemies. Israel had not fully obeyed God the way that they were to. The way that they were commanded to. They left pockets of people here and pockets of people there. Their world then, that land that God had promised to them, should have been free from those adversaries, those other nations. But as Mike read earlier, the children of Israel dwelled amongst the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hittites, and the Jebusites. All of the iths were there because Israel had not fully obeyed God. They allowed the world to stay among them. And as a result, over time, that world came to influence them. Now, in our lives, the world is around us, the ungodly influences are around us, maybe not because of the same reasons as Israel. Sometimes it could be. Sometimes there are influences in our lives because we have not taken the means that God has given to us and made war against those sins to drive them out. But sometimes it's just a matter that we live in a world that is not our home. One day it will be. One day God is going to completely remake this world. One day God is going to make all things new. And what a day that will be. But right now, we live in the midst of a world system that is not in favor of our walking with God. So here's these truths. that are at work in our lives as the Israelites. One, God is sovereign. Two, we live in the midst of our enemies. We live in the presence of our enemies. And this world, as we know, is trying to conform us to its image. With a world trying to conform us to its image, in light of the fact that we serve the sovereign God of history, how do we respond? How do we respond to the truth that we are walking with our sovereign God in the presence of our enemies? How should we live? How should our knowledge that God is in control and the knowledge that this world is not our home, we are in the presence of a world system that is not favorable to us and to God, how should that influence us? There are three things that this text reinforces for us. If I am to answer this question, how do we live with a sovereign God in the presence of our enemies, I say these three things. First, walk faithfully. Walk faithfully. Look with me at chapter 3, verses 5 to 7. Thus the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And they took their daughters to be their wives. And gave their daughters to their sons, and they served their gods. Back in Deuteronomy chapter 7, God specifically said, when you get to this land, not only do you drive these people out, but you don't make covenants with them. You don't marry with them. And you don't let your sons and daughters marry them. Don't do it. And on top of all of that, God said, you don't even dare serve their gods. I'm the God that brought you out of Egypt. But look what's happened. A generation after the elders that served the Lord rises up And where do they go? They go there. It doesn't take very long. Verse 7, So the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD. They forgot the LORD their God, and they served the Baals and the Asherahs. The incomplete obedience of the previous generation and the sinfulness of that current generation brought the children of Israel to a place where they are doing evil in the sight of the Lord and they are forgetting God. Two things, doing evil forgetting God. Those nations around them were doing their best to make Israel be like them. Do you understand what I'm saying here? These nations, the Canaanites, were not content to have the people of God be the people of God. They were not content to have the people of God remain distinct separated from them, worshipping God alone. And what happens is they end up doing evil and worshipping evil. You think about their worship. They turn from the sovereign God of the universe They turn from the God who has the power and the right to do as He wills, and the God who exercises that power and right to do as He wills, the only God who is worthy of worship, they turn from that God to worship Baal and Asherah. This was a horrible thing. Baal was the Canaanite storm god. Some people thought of it as the God of the heavens. And Asherah was kind of his female companion. Now the Canaanite religion, the religion of this area, basically was a religion of immorality. If you want Baal on your side, if you want Baal to send down rain and have good fortune for your crops and for your herds, what you have to do then is you have to engage in Baal worship in the temple. Well, what's that all about? Well, basically, Baal worship involved singing some crazy songs and visiting temple prostitutes. So that's what their worship was. Imagine that. Husband tells his wife, I'm going to church. Wife gets jealous. because the husband is going to worship in this ungodly, immoral way. And they thought, we do all the right things, we engage in this evil. They didn't think of it as evil, because at this point they're calling good evil and evil good. But they say, hey, we do this and we're going to be favored. Can we stop for a minute and think about this? They're worshiping this immoral, God that some backward society has made up in the midst of their confusion, superstition, and lust. And they're trading the God who made all of those things, who made the very world, who controls the weather, they're trading that God for this crazy, tribal, immoral religion. See, the world of the Israelites' day was trying to conform it to its worship patterns. And the world of Israel's day was trying to conform it to its patterns of life. And the world tries to do that to us today. How do we respond when we walk with a sovereign God, but we live in the presence of our enemies? We walk faithfully. Because God is worthy. We're going to trade honesty and integrity and faithfulness to God for conformity to the world? That's a really stupid trade. But doesn't the world, the world has such a pull on us. Anybody here ever have a friend that moved away even for a short time and they moved to an area where they had a different accent? Anybody ever have that? Have a friend move from maybe your area and move to an area where they spoke the same language but had a different accent? I had a friend that moved to one of the southern states and it was not but three months until all of a sudden she picks up the southern drawl. How are y'all? Who am I talking to, you know? We're so easily influenced. And the world so easily influences us. And if we are not aware, and if we are not on guard, the world will conform us to its image. But it's a horrible trade. It's a terrible trade. Now, I've done some dumb things in my life. Some embarrassing things in my life. I'm about to tell you about one of them. I hope you don't think too much less of me. At Northland. I think it was my senior year. Final year at Northland Bible College. A student comes in the second semester. new student, second semester. And he moves into the dorms right across from me, the dorm room right across from me. So I thought, you know, I'm going to be a good neighbor. And I go over and I introduce myself. Hi, I'm Jesse. Live right across the hall. Can I help you? Oh, I'm Jim. Good to meet you. Yeah, sure. Let me, you can help me unload these boxes. So we're bringing boxes up from his truck down in the lower level. We're in And he's unpacking things and at one point, you know how you're with someone and there's something that they want you to take note of? Maybe if you've been unpacking with someone and something important they pull out, there's usually a little bit more flourish to the way they pull it out. Well, Jim pulls out this picture and kind of clears his throat all at once and puts it on the desk. So, you know, obviously it's something that he wanted us to take note of. I look over and I see Jim in this picture with someone else. These are the next words out of my mouth and this. True. Oh, is that your brother? And he said, no, that's my girlfriend. That was a very, very bad situation. Oh yes, of course, of course. Yeah, I didn't look at it very closely. Okay, what's my reason for telling you that story? If I were to trade my love for Sarah, for love for Jim's ex-girlfriend. Would that be a wise trade? No, it wouldn't. It would not be a wise trade. Trading the love of a beautiful, wonderful woman for someone that I mistook for a man. Not a good trade at all. What Israel did And what we do when we trade worship of God for worship of the gods of this world is something even more stupid than that. We trade worship of the one who is altogether lovely for something that is ugly and won't satisfy. And you're like, oh, I don't worship any gods of this world. I don't have any statues in my house. What about the gods of prosperity? and entertainment, and ease, and approval, and self? What about those worldviews that we're constantly bombarded with through the television and radio? Do we come to bow down to those worldviews instead of God? Are we remaining faithful to God? See, the world is constantly trying to get us to conform to its walk and its worship. It's constantly trying to make us like it. And some of you, it's happening. Some of you are being conformed right now. There's some language that I hear, even here at church, that is not edifying. is not glorifying to God. I don't want my kids to hear it, and I don't want my kids to repeat it. But more important than that, I don't want you conformed to the image of the world. I don't want you trading what God has to say about speech and honor and glorifying Him for whatever values you think you've imbibed from the world. That's not a good trade. And there are countless other areas where the world seeks to make inroads into our life and seeks to conform us into its image. Walk faithfully. God is worthy. You compare all these other things that are trying to get your attention and trying to conform you. Compare those things to God, and there is no comparison. Think about it this way, if this helps you, okay? Imagine in a time of war, a soldier starts taking, let's say a captain, starts taking orders from a private instead of a five-star general. That just doesn't even make sense. But we do that sort of thing. Who's more worthy of honor, the general or the private? Well, the general's more worthy of honor. He's paid his dues. He's made his way up in the ranks. He's the one that gets the honor, not the private. We have a tendency to do the same thing. We trade, turn from God's glory and God's honor, and we give that honor to something and someone and some system that doesn't deserve it. So how do we live knowing that God is sovereign, but knowing that we are in the presence of our enemies, in the presence of a world system that's trying to conform us? First of all, we walk faithfully, but second, We trust continually. We trust continually. So Israel has fallen into disobedience. By verse 7 of chapter 3, Israel has fallen into disobedience. Does that mean, then, that God is lost? It's like, oh, you know, I did my best, Israel is disobedient now, oh well. No. The Bible says that God gets angry. And by the way, if your theology doesn't have room for an angry God, get back in the Bible, because it's a whole lot better to get your view of God from the Bible than from public opinion. That's one of the ways in which the world is trying to conform us to its image. God gets angry, and God sells them into the hand of Kushan Rishabh. God sells them into the hand of Kushan Rishithane. In other words, the author of Judges puts the responsibility on God. Now, Kushan Rishithane was not some pure, kind individual, as honest and obedient before the Lord as anyone, and all of a sudden God took this person who only wanted to serve and trust Him, and turned him around to do evil. God worked through what kind of a person Cushan Rishithame was. By the way, Cushan Rishithame, king of Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia means between the rivers, or the double rivers. The double rivers, we're talking about the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. So from your perspective, if you're looking at a map of your Bible, here's Israel, and way over here is the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They kind of flow down and join together. That's Mesopotamia. So Mesopotamia means double rivers or between the rivers. And Kushan Rishatan means doubly evil person. So in other words, this person is the doubly wicked person from the double rivers that's come to oppress them. So God is not taking some pure, kind, gentle individual who's filled with the fruits of the Spirit and making him into something he wasn't. Kushan Rishathame is he comes over from between the rivers to plunder and oppress God's people, has every intention of doing evil. But behind that is God's purpose at work. God is sovereign. when these difficult times come. In fact, in this case, they've come from His hand. God's in control when those times come. God's in control when the times of deliverance come, because if you look down at verse 9, when the children of Israel cried out to the Lord, by the way, that crying out to the Lord is not crying out in repentance, it's just crying out because of pain, and saying, Lord, get me out of this mess. that I got myself into, that they wouldn't admit that. The Lord raised up a deliverer. So God's the one who's in control in the difficult times, and God's the one who's in control in times of deliverance. And God's the one who's in control during the times of peace, the 40 years of peace that come after Othniel chases Kushan Rishabam away. God's in control at all times, that's my point. God's always in control. Always. And we, in our theology, in our official view of God, would say, oh yeah, we believe that. I mean, we believe God's always in control. That's us. We're Bible people. We believe what the Bible says and God's always in control. We believe it here sometimes, but not here. You see, God has his purposes in every single event of this passage. In the difficult times, the times of oppression, and the times of deliverance, God has his purpose. The same thing is true in your life. You think about the difficult times here. God bringing Kushan Risha thing. Seems really harsh. God's angry, it's mean. God didn't really mean to do that, right? Because from our perspective, we get angry, we do things we don't mean to do. But God's not us. When God gets angry and does things, He means to do them, and He has a purpose for them, and they're good things. God doesn't just fly off the handle and do stupid things. When God gets angry, He does things that are wise and right and good. So what's the wise and right and good thing that God does in allowing Cusha and Rishatham to come and oppress His people? Israel, at this point, is becoming more and more like the world around it. Had Israel continued marrying into the wicked nations around them, Had Israel continued allowing its sons and daughters to marry into those wicked nations, that were supposed to be destroyed and driven out, had Israel continued down that path of walk and worship that they were on, it would not have been much longer before there wasn't an Israel at all. Do you understand what I'm saying? They were on the path to being obliterated. Not because of a foreign nation coming, but because their disobedience was causing them to lose all distinction. God brought that oppression so that there would be a clear distinction between the nations around and his people. When Kushan Rishithame came and began oppressing, Kushan Rishithame was oppressing God's people. Persecution is better than absorption. Affliction is better than assimilation. Enmity from the world can save our identity. And sometimes God does that in our life. Because we're walking so close to the world we're about to become like that. God brings persecution to keep us separate and distinct from that world so that we do not become the world. God has his purpose and deliverance. God is the one who's delivering in this passage. These people are not repenting. It's not because God looks down and He sees them repenting and says, because they've repented, I'll deliver them. What you see happening here again and again and again in Judges is the people get tired of being oppressed. They get in pain. And they say, Lord, fix our situation. There's not repentance. One of the clues to that, embedded in this passage, is in verse 11, after Othniel has come and delivered them by the Spirit of the Lord, after he's done that, the scripture says, so the land had rest for 40 years. In other words, God inspires the writer of Judges not to say the people of God had rest for 40 years, but the land had rest. God's people were still in turmoil, because they still were not walking after God as they ought to have been. God has His purpose in the difficult times that come into your life, and God has His purpose when He comes and delivers you. Even in this passage, God's deliverance of His people through Othniel points us to the great Deliverer that's coming. As great a Deliverer as Othniel was, he's nothing compared to Jesus Christ. who is THE deliverer, not just from an oppressive king, but from Satan and sin. God has His purpose at every point. God is sovereign at all times. He's always in control. He has a purpose for everything. Listen, God does not wake up one morning, look out over the parapets of heaven and say, I did not expect that. When you elected that person, I had no idea that he was going to do that. When I gave you that leader, when I gave you that kid, I had no idea they were going to act that way. God doesn't do that. That's not God. If that's your conception of God, it needs to change. Because that's not the God of Scripture. God's in control at all times. And we sing, trust and obey, trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus, until the kids get defiant. And then somehow the trust and obey bit flies out the window. Because we doubt that God knows what He's doing at that point. Trust and obey, trust and obey, until family members get on our case. God, what are you doing? If only you had my insight, Lord, things would be so much better. The way we kind of talk sometimes. Trust and obey until we get fired. Trust and obey until our friend betrays us. Trust and obey until the circumstances of life don't line up the way that we want them to. And then all of a sudden, Lord, what are you doing? What's wrong with you? God is sovereign at all times. Trust Him. He is at work in your life for good. Are you His child? He's at work in your life for good. There is no circumstance that comes into your life that God doesn't know about, that God has not ordained in one way or another, God is in control. So as we live with this sovereign God in the midst of our enemies, we walk faithfully and we trust continually. But I want to mention one more thing here. Not only do we walk faithfully and trust continually, but we act courageously. Look at Othmiel here. We look at here in verse 9, when the children of Israel cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for the children of Israel, who delivered them, Othmiel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him, he judged Israel, he went out to war, and the Lord delivered Cushan Rishithim, king of Mesopotamia, into his hand. And his hand prevailed over Cushan Rishithim. We have been introduced to Othniel already. If you're reading through the book of Judges, you actually hear about Othniel in chapter 1. That Othniel was a man who was a man of courage. He went up into the mountains, and he fought against the enemies of God's people, and he defeated them. It's one thing to go into the mountains and fight some, even if they are pretty strong, to fight some tribes that are in the area. It's quite another thing to go out to war against a king who has influence as big as Kushan Rishabhains. Kushan Rishabhain was from that area between the rivers. So we're talking at least, at least 500 kilometers away from where we are in this story. In other words, Kushan Rishathim, who's the king of Mesopotamia, has an empire that stretches all the way across the desert into Israel. That's a powerful king. That area of Mesopotamia would later be known as Assyria. So this is the beginning of an empire that even later is going to be called Babylon. This is no minor foe. And here's Othniel, who is leading a relatively small nation in a relatively obscure part of the world, and he rides out and he fights against this great king, and drives him out. Now you put yourself in Othniel's position, and God says, okay, I'm going to give you power by my spirit, and you're going to go and you're going to fight against Cushan Rishithan. You might be wondering, Lord, are you sure about this? Because this guy's a king of an empire, and I'm just... I'm not even king of my own people. I'm just judge here in this area, in this little part of the world. Are you sure, Lord, that I'd go and fight against him? The fact that God was with Othniel, The fact that God's Spirit was empowering Othniel gave Othniel the courage to go out and fight against Kushan Rishithane. You see, when we know God, and we really believe He's sovereign, we will attempt great things for that God. If your view of God is a God that, well, you know, He does His best, but, you know, He has to deal with the cards He's dealt with, you're not going to be inspired to attempt great things for that God. But if you serve a God who works all things after the counsel of His will, that He's glorified in every effort and action that we put forth for the glory of His name, we are motivated to do great things. whether or not we know the specific details of what he's going to do with our efforts. I want you to take a look with me at 1st Samuel chapter 14 because we see this picture of what I'm talking about here. Another picture of someone empowered by his knowledge of God's greatness influencing him to do great things, attempt great things for God. This is found on page 325 of your Pew Bible if you're looking in that. 1 Samuel 14 and let me just paint the picture for you. One day I'd like to preach a whole message on this but we'll just give you the contours of it for now. At this time in Israel's history the Philistines are oppressing. We're at a time in Israel's history where none of the Israelites have weapons. They've been confiscated by the Philistines. If they're going to go to war, they're going to have to use farming implements. And you might say, well, that sounds OK to me because I've seen some of those great big sickles. You put one of those great big scythes in someone's hand, that could do a lot of damage. Oh, forgot to tell you the second part. The Philistines also have the monopoly on sharpening the farming implements. So if you want to get your sickle sharpened, you have to go to the Philistines to get it sharpened. A whole bunch of Israelites get a whole bunch of farming implements sharpened all at once, the Philistines are going to be suspicious. So, the Philistines are oppressing Israel. Nobody in Israel has weapons except maybe King Saul and Jonathan. Maybe. They gather together, the Israelites gather together, Saul is sitting under a tree, really not leading the people, and Jonathan says to his armor-bearer, let's go over to Philistine's garrison. He didn't tell his armor-bearer what he had in mind. We're going to take off, we're going to go over to Philistine's garrison. So the garrison, the Philistines had a garrison on top of this hill. And there were two sides of the hill. One side means steep and the other one means slippery. So neither one of those are particularly easy to climb up. Once you get to the top of either one of those hills, there was a path that led between the rocks that went to the Philistines' garrison. So Jonathan and his armor bearer climb up Jonathan says, though, before they go up and fight against this garrison, just two people, Jonathan says, in verse six, come, let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised. It may be that the Lord will work for us. He didn't know what was going to happen. He didn't know if he was going to live. He didn't know if he was going to die. But look at what he says next. For nothing restrains the Lord from saving by many or by few." He says, we serve a great God. Let's the two of us go attack this garrison. And they go, Jonathan and his armor bearer, attack the garrison, and the scripture tells us that they kill 20 people. That's pretty good for two people, right? But that's not going to defeat the Philistines. He killed 20 of the Philistines, that's only going to make the Philistines angry, and the rest of them are going to come flying out of their fort, and from all their other forts, and come and destroy you. But the scripture says that when they had done that, the Lord caused an earthquake to come, and caused confusion to fall on the Philistines. And all of a sudden, the Philistines started fighting one another. The rest of the Israelites saw what was happening. They came, joined the battle, chased the Philistines. At the end of the day, people could have gotten up and said, hey, Jonathan and his armor bearer, they won the victory. But that wouldn't have been true. They did a pretty amazing thing. They killed 20 people, just the two of them. They inspired the rest of Israel to action, but they didn't defeat the Philistines. At the end of the day, as the scripture gives its own description of what happened that day, in verse 23, it says, so the Lord saved Israel that day. What was it that inspired Jonathan to go and attempt this great thing for God? He says, we serve a great God. God doesn't need a huge number to accomplish His plan and purpose. We're here. If we want to count numbers, two weeks ago, We probably had 15 or 20 more people here. We might be tempted to despair. We might be tempted to say, oh dear, look at how few people we have. But let me remind you that God is sovereign. He doesn't need a huge crowd. He doesn't need a huge army to accomplish his plan and purpose. Now we have a tendency, we say, oh yes, God's sovereign, God's in control. But do we really believe that? Because I think if we really believed that, we'd try more for God. We would attempt more for God. We'd be a lot more courageous for God if we really believed that. See, what happens is We start thinking about our small numbers or our weakness and our frailty, and we're not really thinking much about God at all. We're not really thinking much about His greatness and His sovereignty and His power at all. We're thinking about us, not Him. How do we live? In light of the fact that God is sovereign and the fact that we are in the midst of our enemies, we live with courage. God's in control. You give your life to God. You attempt great things for God. And you may lose your life. That's not fine print. That's all over. You might lose your life. But God works all things together for good. I've given the illustration before of the five missionaries that went down to Ecuador. trying to reach the Akka or the Warone people there. They lost their lives. Was it a waste? Is God sleeping on the job? No. No. Because today there is a tribe that worships Jesus Christ because there were people that were willing to attempt great things because God himself is great. Is that your God? If the Lord is God, if Jehovah is our God, we serve the same God. Let's do great things, not because we're so great and powerful, but because He is. Let's attempt great things for God and expect great things from Him. I conclude with this. General Thomas Stonewall Jackson was a general in the Civil War. He fought for the South. I don't agree with all the things that South was fighting for and believing in at that time. I don't think Jackson did either. Jackson was ahead of his time as far as people of that era. Jackson actually had established a place for black people to learn both the scriptures and reading. He was longing, by all accounts, for a time when slavery would end. But that's not my point of the story. Jackson was a man of God who believed very firmly in the sovereignty of God. The first great battle of the Civil War was the Battle of First Manassas. During that battle, General Jackson stood urging and encouraging his troops to fight. After the battle, in the midst of all of the carnage and horrors of war, one of his aides asked him, how could you stand so courageously in the midst of this hail of bullets? How could you just stand there and continue leading the troops? And this was his reply. My religion teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the day of my death. I need not concern myself with it. But to always be ready whenever that day may overtake me. That is the way all men should live. Then all would be equally brave. God's sovereign. He's in control. Let us act courageously for our God. He saved us. We look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross. We look to Him. We follow Him. We follow Him in difficulty. We follow Him in good times and bad. We follow Him at all times faithfully, trusting, courageously. He's in control. Do you believe that? Will you live that this week?