So Hebrews 12 verse number 16, it says, "'Lest there be any fornicator or profane person as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.'" Father, we thank you and praise you, God, for all that you do. We pray that you'll watch over us, help us to serve you. Thank you, Lord, for your blessings and for your goodness. I just pray, God, that you would help us, Lord, in the service to help us to appreciate some things that maybe we do take for granted in our Christian life. Lord, that we would put a better emphasis here. Lord, we thank you, God, for all these things, and we ask it in your son Jesus' name, amen. Now, when we come to this passage, I can read for you verse 17 so you have the context of it, but we're not going to really talk about that until next week. So let me mention, it says, For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears. So the next verse is a reference to what we're going to learn tonight and how that after he messed up he wanted to fix it but it was too late because there are some damages that once done cannot be undone. And so I'll just say that up front that next week we'll be talking about some things that repentance can't fix. And so we're going into that, some good spiritual lessons from that and some good practical lessons from that as well. But what I want to look at tonight is this point concerning Esau that I started introducing this last week. This passage, as you read through it, we have been using Esau as the example in a lot of these cases just because he's the character in the context. But the way this list is laid out, the stuff about being bitter, fornicator, and so forth, and failing of the grace of God was not written in reference to Esau directly. I said, we used him as an example. He was a great example for bitterness. So we went there. He's a good example for failing of the grace of God, of having such an opportunity in front of him and then failing in it. And so we used him some. Fornication, he's not necessarily the greatest example of, so that's where we divert it from that format, and we didn't really use him as an example, we just studied what it means in the Bible. But the one thing on the list that actually is emphasized that Esau is your example is a profane person. And I say that because, again, as you notice throughout your Bible, if you pay attention to the way lists are written, many times you'll have a list of things, and then at the very end of that list, you'll have something that is separated by either a comma or a semicolon or something of that nature, and then there's a thought after it that is explaining that last thing on the list. And I gave this example last week. I still think it's the best example, so I'll give it again this week. In Colossians, when he's giving a list of sins, and he mentions the last one on the list is covetousness, there is that comma, which is idolatry. It would be easy for somebody who doesn't understand that to read that whole list and think all of that's idolatry, but when you look through the list and pay better attention to what he's saying, he's telling you that covetousness is a form of idolatry, because you begin to think that if I just had this, I would be happy, and you take the importance off of God in your life by thinking that if I had that thing, I could be happy, instead of realizing Christ is what you need. So it's very important that you learn that when you're reading the Bible, when you have a list and then at the end of the list there is some note that is added to it, separated by typically a comma, what that note is referring to is the last thing on the list. And we could do a whole study just going through and picking those. It's not easy for me to find that because word searchers don't look for that kind of thing. But there's several examples I've noticed over time, there's a few I can give off the top of my head. But in this particular instance, we see that he's referring to Esau as being a profane person, and actually the proof is in the context. Because he doesn't say, look at Esau, that he's a fornicator, and he did this and this. Don't look at Esau, he's bitter, and he did this and this. He said, look at Esau, this profane person, and then gives you an example of being a profane person. So the example he gives of why Esau is here after the list is not an example of fornication, it's not an example of bitterness, it's not an example... You could look at it as an example of failing of the grace of God, even though that's not really what he's saying. And you could really look at it as an example of the other things, but what it is very clearly an example of is what it means to be a profane person. So let me go through Esau and show you through him what a profane person looks like so we can learn what the sin of Esau is in this chapter. And that's why I say I want to make sure you get this because a lot of false doctrine actually does come from this chapter. I've heard great preachers, men who I have tremendous respect for that are not alive anymore, But I had tremendous respect for them to get up and preach an entire series about how that Esau was lost because of this verse. You don't go back to anything else from the Bible to preach that. They preach it because of the root of bitterness being in his heart and that he couldn't find a place of repentance later on in life, when in reality, what's being said in that verse has nothing to do with salvation. It's about him having something in his life that was supposed to be precious, and he sold it for nothing. And that tells you the definition of what a profane person is. Somebody who does not take serious that which is supposed to be valuable and precious, but instead treats it like it's nothing and is willing to trade it for nothing. So going back to Genesis chapter 25 and verse number 29, It says, And Jacob sawed pottage, and Esau came from the field, and he was faint. And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me. I pray thee with the same red pottage, for I am faint. Therefore was his name called Esau. Maybe don't murder her from five seconds to five seconds. I would appreciate that. And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright, and Esau said, Behold, I am at this point to die, and what profit shall this birthright do to me? And Jacob said, Swear to me this day, and he swore unto him, and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage and lentils, and he did eat and drink. And he rose up and went his way, and Esau despised his birthright." So if you don't know the story, to simplify what's going on here, Esau is a hunter, Jacob's more of a homebody. He stays at home, he cooks his soups and all that kind of stuff. And so one day, Esau has come from a long hunt and Jacob has been cooking. And when he gets home, he is starved to the point where he thinks he's about to die. He thinks he's so hungry that he's going to die. The Bible does not in any way indicate that. In fact, it emphasizes that it's his opinion. Never once does God say, he's so hungry, he's about to die, or if he was to take one more step, he would perish. He says, I'm about to perish, and what good is a birthright to me if I'm going to perish? So in reality, he was just very, very hungry. I think if he was about to die, as he says, God would indicate that within the text, and we'd have a clear understanding of that from the Bible. But instead, God emphasizes this is what he said. And when God tends to emphasize this is what He said but doesn't support what He said, there is a lot of times indication that what He said is not correct. And so in this case, that's my opinion, you don't have to agree with it, you can throw it away because it doesn't really change the passage, that Esau is at a place where he is very, very hungry he is feeling sick and weak from it. And we understand that because everybody's been there. Everybody's been in a place where you're so hungry, you're so thirsty, whatever, that your mind doesn't even work good anymore. You start to get clouded in your thoughts, or you start to feel weak, you start to feel like you're going to faint. That's what he says he feels like. And so everybody's been there at some point in their life. If not, then you've had a pretty comfortable life then, I guess. Because while I'm not the kind of person, despite what my appearance would say, who chases after food. I'm very bad about working, and when I'm busy, I forget to eat. And then sometime, like 10 o'clock at night, it's like, I didn't eat dinner, lunch, or anything today. Maybe I should go eat something. And so it's not often for me that I've been in that situation, but mostly for me, it's with water. I get times where if I start to get clouded in my head and I can't think and like the world almost gets fuzzy to me because I need to go drink some water. And if I'll go drink it, I'll get back to normal and I'll be just fine. But everybody knows some idea of what that's like. So you can understand what he's coming from. You can understand why he's desperate, why he's hungry. But nobody can actually look at this story and understand why he made the decision that he made. Because if you don't understand what is meant by a birthright, in the law all the way back in Deuteronomy 21, God set a law that the firstborn child, the firstborn son, sorry, that the firstborn son would get a double portion of the inheritance. So whatever was going to be left to those sons by their father when he died, the firstborn is going to get two times. So in this case, where Isaac only has two sons, what that means is all his stuff is going to be divided in three, and the oldest son would typically get two times of that, while the youngest would only get one time of that. So one would get two-thirds, the other would get a third, if I'm not saying it clear enough. And so that was the law that God established. And He even emphasizes it like this. He says that if a man has two wives and he loves one wife more than the other, and the firstborn son comes from the wife that he doesn't really care that much about, it's like he's writing about Jacob, I mean, if you think about it. He's saying if the firstborn son comes from that wife that he doesn't really care about, and his secondborn son comes from the wife that he just favors and loves greatly, then he's not allowed to take what should have been the birthright of the firstborn and give it to the secondborn. The firstborn gets the birthright regardless because he is the beginning of his strength, is what he says. Now, that may feel like a direct reference to Jacob because it may actually be because Jacob did that. Now, I don't know that... The Bible necessarily condemns Jacob directly for doing that, but it was something that at the very least kept it from ever happening again. And if you don't know that story... Let me give you that one as well, that back in Genesis 35 and verse 22, Ruben gives up his birthright because of the fact that Ruben goes to his father's concubine, which would be almost like a stepmother to him, and he sleeps with her. He sleeps with Bilhah, one of the two concubines, one of the two maidservants who he had children with. And when Reuben does that to Jacob, Jacob says that he forfeited his birthright, that in his mind he no longer has an inheritance amongst his children, that he loves him. He gives him a blessing at the end of his life. It's not a very good one. It's almost more of a curse than a blessing. But he does include him and think of him as his child. But he said because of what he did to him and bringing such shame and committing such a sin, that Jacob was not willing to give him the inheritance that belonged to the firstborn son, because Reuben was the first of the twelve. And Reuben normally would have been, and I always have to be careful when I use names of people here in the church, make sure nobody gets offended, but you understand what I mean. Reuben would have been the one to have inherited the extra portion. It would have been divided in 13 and he would have got two, everybody else got one, is what it would have been. And so that was the situation that was given to him, that was his lot in life, and he traded that for a moment of sin, for a moment of pleasure that costed him everything. His father no longer had any confidence in him. His father was no longer willing to count him like his oldest son, like his pride and joy, so to speak. He was no longer willing to look at him that way because he took something that was so precious, that position as being the right hand of his father, and said, I'm going to give that away because I want to go have this moment in sin. I want this moment in pleasure. And that's what you see with Reuben that he did. And actually the Bible notes to make sure we understand what happened because it tells us in Genesis 49 verse 3 and verse 4 that Reuben forfeited his birthright because of that sin. It tells us very plainly that he forfeited it. And then also it's mentioned again in 1 Chronicles 5 verse 1 and 2 that he forfeited, and it even explains to us what happened. And this is where I say that this feels like a direct reference to Jacob. He didn't just say, okay, we're not going to give Reuben a birthright, we'll give everybody else equal. He said, I'm going to take away that double portion that's supposed to be Reuben's, and I'm going to give it to Joseph's sons. So he picked these sons. He didn't even go to the next son in the list. He didn't even go to the son that God favored. I mean, you understand, as evil and wicked as Judah was, God favored Judah so much that the Messiah came through Judah. Regardless of whatever blessings and whatever Jacob thought of that son and put on that son, God chose to bless Judah so that the kings would come through Judah and the Messiah would come through Judah as a result as well. And so he chose to bypass all of that. Even Levi, the one that God's going to choose to bring his priest there, he bypasses all of that to go to Joseph. And to one degree, it almost feels natural because Joseph was by far his best son, like there's no competition between his sons and Joseph. And God chose to exalt Joseph above the others in his lifetime. But in terms of the birthright and the inheritance and the things that were supposed to come as a result of this, there was a little bit more going on than probably Jacob saw. And by taking it away and giving it to Joseph, there was probably some things that God wanted that he had to work around Jacob now as a result of that. And so I do believe that in many ways this lull probably was a reference to him because he literally took it from his son of his strength, his firstborn son, and gave it to the son of the wife he favored. Because if you don't know the story, he had two wives. He had Leah and Rachel. And Leah he did not care that much about. And again, I have to be careful about Bible names because we have Leah, Rachel, Rebecca. All of you are here tonight, but he took it away from the son of Leah, who was the wife he did not favor, to give it to the son of Rachel, the wife he did favor. He took it away from one to give it to the other. And he didn't do it necessarily based on logic or any of that, but probably in reality about the fact that he loved one son more than the rest. That's probably really all what it come down to. And so when the law was written, God put a law that could have easily just said, your firstborn son gets a double portion, that's the end, let's move on with our lives. But he specifically writes the detail that you can't take it away from him and give it to the one you like more, just because he's the child of the wife that you like more, which feels at that point a very direct reference to Jacob. So you can read into that what you want, but that's what I see from it. So I'm bringing it up to show you that there's actually two examples given to you in the Bible. In our passage, Esau is the example God uses, but there are two. I think Esau is probably used because his is much more evident and clear because he literally was told, will you sell me your birthright? And this is the cost." And he said, yeah, I'll pay that, even though it's the most absurd thing you can imagine that I'm going to trade all my birthright for a pot of beans, a bowl of beans even. I'm going to take this beans you've been cooking, and I'm going to trade away everything that my father will ever give to me in exchange for that bowl of beans. It would either have to be the greatest bowl of beans that was ever cooked in all of existence, or it was the dumbest deal that has been made, at least that I can think of in this moment. I guess it's not technically, because you had a man who traded the entire world for sin and eating a fruit, so I guess there is one worse example. But regardless of that, you understand my point I'm getting at here. It's not a logical trade in any way. It's not something that anybody in their right mind would do. Instead, what he did was take something that God had secured to him because of his birth, a right that was given to him that was precious, that was supposed to be regarded as precious, and he traded it for something that was literally worthless. I mean, it's nothing. Like, if he just went on 20 more steps, he probably could have got in the house and his mother would have fed him. I don't think he was going to faint in the few steps he had from wherever Jacob was to wherever his mother was, or at the very least wherever his father was. You know, there was food somewhere. And if you're that hungry, you can probably find something to eat on the ground that you eat before you die. You don't have to give up everything. But his logic is, what good is a birthright if I'm going to die? Like, nothing in the passage says he's going to die. It's his opinion. But what good is a birthright if I'm going to die? What good is this thing? It's not precious or sacred or important to me if I'm going to die. And the greatest indication that he was not really going to die is that God doesn't agree with him. Because I'll give you an example of the opposite. When David and his men were so hungry and so famished from running from Saul with their lives that they went into God's tabernacle and took the table of showbread and took the bread from it and they ate it, something that normally should have been a crime punishable by death, Jesus Christ Himself defends David in saying that it was okay, that God would much rather David be alive than dead. And even though He profaned the bread by eating it, He would rather David be profaned and forgiven than dead. And so Jesus defends him, God defends David and says, you know, what David did was not necessarily the nicest thing to have done, but it was understandable in that situation why he did it. In the case of Jacob, it's not understandable. There's no amount of lust that can justify trading something so precious for something so worthless. And that's the point God's making with Esau and Jacob. And I think while Reuben is probably just as good of an example and probably a more fitting example because far more men have traded precious things for what he did than what Esau ever did. Many men have traded away their families, they've traded away their lives, they've traded away everything for a moment of pleasure, a moment of lust, and a moment of sin, whereas not many have ever said that bowl of beans is so good I'm going to give everything for that. That's not so common. Like I say, the closest comparison we could draw to that is a man like Adam, who literally had every fruit in the world at his disposal, so he could eat of the fruit of every tree of the garden, and had dominion over the whole earth, and said, I'm going to trade that, and had eternal life, everything available and ready to him, but I'm going to trade that. because my wife ate this fruit, and so I need to eat it too." Now, in his case, you can make your arguments, you can make a lot of speculation. People defend him by saying that he believed that his wife, eating of the fruit, that if he didn't, that she would be lost in sin and he wouldn't be able to go with her. You can make whatever you want. The Bible doesn't really give us enough information to get to some of those conclusions people get to. I'm not going to argue with you if you believe any of them. I'm just saying the Bible doesn't give you enough information to get to most of those. So the point is that you have several examples for you in the Bible of men who had something so precious that it should have been protected with their lives, who said, I'm going to trade this for something that's not valuable, something that's not worth the trade. And they made such a great sacrifice. And while we won't get to it till next week, you also see in all their cases, there was nothing they could do to get it back. There was nothing they could do to fix it. And once the world was plunged in sin, Adam could never fix it. Only the second Adam could. Once Esau traded his right to Jacob, he could never get it back. No matter what him or his father tried to do, it was done. I mean, the truth is, God was already going to do this. If you go back before they were born, God had already made it clear that the younger would be ruler over the elder, but this wasn't the way it was necessarily supposed to happen. It was supposed to be that God was going to work this out, and you see that God was still going to bless Esau, but in a very different way. The problem is that Esau traded away something, that Esau decided that this is nothing, so much so that God says he despised his birthright. You think about that. Nowhere do we get the indication like he just hated the idea of being Isaac's son, and I despise being a son of Isaac, and I don't want to be counted as his son anymore. I'm going to give that up. That's not what's intended when he says he despised his birthright. In fact, on the contrary, we're told that he's left in bitter tears crying for many years trying to figure out, how can I fix this? How can I undo what I have done? So when God says he despised his birthright, it doesn't mean that he despised it in the sense that he hated it. Not in the sense that he didn't want to be this, but in the sense that he didn't treat it precious and valuable the way he was supposed to. And so by not treating something that was sacred as sacred, by not treating something that was precious as precious, God counts that the same as hating it, as despising it. He says, if you have something that you know that this is fragile and you treat it carelessly, that's the same thing as hating it. And if you don't understand what that means, let me use the illustration that probably everybody can get. You take a baby, you know that baby is fragile. You know that baby can be easily hurt. They're probably a lot tougher than a lot of people realize who've never had children. Like once you've had them, you realize you actually probably can bounce them off the walls and they'll survive it. You could almost dribble them as a basketball and they'll survive it. But the truth is, all jokes aside, they are fragile. I mean, there's so many things that can hurt them. Permanent damage can be done just like that. And knowing that, If you don't put special care on them, you let them play next to the street, you let them play next to the electrical outlets, you let them do all these things that are dangerous and harmful to them that will very likely kill them, and you don't put care into that? Knowing how precious, let's take it away from physical harm. Knowing how precious their souls are and how precious they are, that you have this arrow in the hand of a mighty man, and you don't put time and care into training them and pointing them in the direction they should go, and you leave it up to their mother to, oh, let the mother figure out where they're going to go. And you don't take an active, responsible role in teaching them what is right and what is wrong in their life and pointing them to Christ. God says that you despise them. Now, that doesn't mean that you want them to be destroyed. You want them to die because we see that that's not what Esau wanted. Esau didn't want for all his father's land to be burned up and his father's name to be erased from the face of the earth. Esau just didn't care about as much as he was supposed to. He didn't love it the way he was supposed to love it. And so I'm giving you an illustration that most people in this room can relate to because it hits a little closer to home when it comes to your children, when it comes to your marriage, when it comes to your family, when it comes to anything that's supposed to be precious to you. If you're not giving it the care and protection it deserves, you are profaning it. You are making it a unclean thing. You're taking something that's supposed to be holy and making it unclean. And you may not feel like you're putting it in danger, but I can tell you, I can tell you from personal experience in my own life, that when you're not giving the care to something to protect it and treat it as precious and sacred as it's supposed to be, you are in turn despising it. Because your job is not just to own it. Your job is to take care of it. When you get married, your job is not just to say, OK, I do. Let's go enjoy being married. Your job is to treat that marriage as something precious that's supposed to be worked towards. And you're supposed to put the time and energy into it. You're supposed to protect those vows that were made. You're supposed to go through all of that. And if you're not putting the care into it, you should. God says it's the same thing as hating it. That's the same thing as despising your marriage and not treating it as precious. And it's profane at that point. He said, God gives you children, the first thing he ever called a blessing upon the face of this earth was to go be fruitful and multiply to be blessed. He said he gives you something that precious and you're not going to put time and care in trying to train them up for Christ and pointing them to him. Then you may not hate them in the sense that you want to go throw them under a truck or something, but you do despise them. You don't love them as much as you think you do. And that's where you understand what love and hate and despising all that means. is that for God, love is a spectrum in this, that you have way down here on the bottom of things, hatred, and you have way up here on the top of things, love. And anytime you're going in the direction of love, you're going in the positive, God will use the term love, even if it's not a very nice form of it. I mean, God uses the word love to refer to what Amnon felt for Tamar when he took her and forced her. So God says anything going in that direction can be counted as love, but anything going away from love into the direction of hatred as being hate. So there are times where God will use the word hate when you and I wouldn't. Well, he don't really hate his child. He's just not careful enough. But God says if you're careless with your child, it's the same as hating your child. He says if you're careless with your marriage, it's the same as hating your marriage. You're careless with your Christian life and the things God's given you, it's the same as hating those things. You're careless with your Bible reading, with your church, with all that. So whatever it is in your life that should be precious that God has given you, a profane person is someone who is careless with it, and then through that carelessness, hurts it in some way. They make it dirty. They make it unclean. They spoil their marriage. They spoil their children. They spoil their Christian life. They spoil their church. Whatever it is that you have that's precious to you. I don't know what it is directly because everybody's life is different. But I can tell you that when you don't take the things that are precious that God has given you and hold on to them dearly, God says you're a profane person because you're taking something that's supposed to be treated with the utmost preciousness, as something so sacred that you would never let anything happen to it, and you're letting it out where any old thing could happen. You're leaving it for the wolves, you're leaving it for the snakes, you're leaving it for the dangers of this world to come. You're leaving it to get dirty and filthy and all this stuff. I mean, you go and buy some expensive toy for your child, and they break it, and you get upset as a parent, but yet many times we have the most precious things this world could ever offer, and we don't put care to them to take care of them and protect them with all our hearts. That's what he's trying to get us to understand what the sin of Esau was. The sin of Esau wasn't as simple as we think it is because it's a sin that's far more applicable to our lives. The truth is most people in this room don't necessarily struggle with fornication directly, maybe in your heart or something. Most of you, I'm hoping, are not failing of the grace of God, that you're not wasting the chance you have to serve God with your life. You're trying to live for Him and serve Him. Most of you, I hope, are not struggling with bitterness. I think more people are than they realize, but I hope you're not struggling with it. But almost everybody in this room is a profane person, if we're being honest with ourselves, because God has given you something in your life that's so precious you're supposed to be willing to sacrifice yourself, every bit of comfort and all your strength for it to protect it, and we've not done it. We've not fought for our marriage just the way we ought to. We've not fought for our families and our children the way we ought to. We've not worked to make sure that I'm the one. If anybody's going to tell my children about Christ, I'm going to be the first one in line to do it. If anyone's going to lead my family for Christ, I'm going to be the first one in line to make sure we're going towards Christ, we're serving him. We're not willing to put those efforts, but instead we leave the doors open when we know there's a lion seeking whom he may devour walking around us. And we let the lion come in, we let him get our family, we let him get our children, we let him get all of that. Because we know there's a roaring lion about. We know that's what our adversary the devil is. He's a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. And while the slothful man may see a lion where there is none, Those of us who are supposed to be diligent know that there's an adversary who wants to destroy your family, wants to destroy your home, and wants to destroy your marriage. We leave the windows open. We leave plenty of room for opportunity, for sin to come in and to tempt us, to make us fall, for it to get a hold of our children. We leave so many things unsupervised as it should be. And it doesn't start when they're teenagers. It starts when they're not even big enough to walk yet. From the time a child comes into this world, you already have a responsibility that you're supposed to be protecting them from a roaring lion that wants to devour them, and yet we sit back hoping that someday somebody else will tell them about Christ, somebody else will take an active role in teaching them. God says all these things in your life are precious and are to be treated as precious And you have to be the one to step up and treat it as precious. Now, I put the emphasis more on men in this sermon because I'm talking about the home as the application, and you have the first and hardest responsibility in all of that. It's on you above everybody. As a man, it's on me before it is my wife to make sure that our children are walking in the Lord and our home is following Christ. But that doesn't leave ladies being excluded. The problem I see is that far too many men are waiting on their wives to take care of the children and make sure that they're following God in all of this before they ever let themselves step up and take that responsibility. And that's why I feel that we as men need the emphasis and need to attack more. is because in reality we run the risk of being profane faster many times than what wives do. Because they understand how precious that child is and they'll work themselves to death for it. But we come in and we're busy and we've had a hard day and sometimes we forget just how precious that thing is and we're supposed to be taking care of it. Now when it comes to marriage, I think men and women are on the same ground. We're both just as guilty of letting our marriage become less important than what it's supposed to be and focusing on friends, family, work, whatever else is getting in the way. But when it comes to children, I think men tend to be the ones who are a little more guilty that we have this precious thing that we've been entrusted with, but yet we profane it by not taking the care of it we should. And it's hard words. I mean, it's really hard to be told you despise your child, or you despise your wife, or you despise whatever it is that's supposed to be important to you. But God said that by not giving the care and protection to his birthright that he was supposed to, it's the same as having despised it. Even though he didn't hate it in the sense that he wanted it destroyed, even though he didn't hate it in the sense that he would ever say anything bad about it, it's just that he wasn't willing to care for it and protect it the way he was supposed to. And God says that we're profane people if we're not willing to care for our families and stuff the way we're supposed to. Father, we thank you and praise you, God, for all that you do. I thank you, Lord, for your blessings. I pray, God, you'd help us, myself included, each and every one of us to see just how important the things you've given us in life are, that, Lord, we wouldn't waste them and we wouldn't, Lord, let them be cast as pearls before swine, but that, God, we would take the things that are precious in our lives and that, God, we would stand and fight for those things, that we would put the energy and time and the caring for them that we ought to. that, Lord, we wouldn't be such a profane person to take something as precious as a baby and just drop it and leave it to whatever happens. I pray, God, you'd help each of us to see how we do this in life and see the importance of taking a stronger stand, Lord. We thank you, God, for what you do, and we ask it in your son Jesus' name. Amen. All right, I appreciate you being here. I hope this message has been a help in some way. I encourage you to take some time to fellowship before you go.