Well, good morning, folks. Great to see you out. There is a lot of, you know, there's a lot of folks on the road still. So it's going to be an interesting morning. See how things pull together. And there are also some folks who are sick. There's some sickness going around. And they, at least the ones that I know of, decided not to bless you with the sickness. So they are not going to be here today either. But we do have Michael Foster here. And even though folks are still on the way, and then some folks may not arrive for days, we want to get things rolling here. So Michael, why don't you come on up? I think folks know you. They've seen you before. All right. These are the people that take church serious. Good to be back here. So this, what I'm going to go through today, was originally a sermon. I tried to make it all Sunday school, where you know, I stop and ask you for your thoughts and questions and all that stuff and then move through, but I couldn't really figure it out. So what I'm going to do is, I'm just going to kind of work through this, and if there's any point of clarification, go ahead, just, you know, raise your hand, but then talk about it a little more towards the end of it. And I think the reason I want to do this is we've been really focusing, so we planted a church a year ago. So last time I was here, it was almost a year ago, and we're just starting that work. So we're a year into it. God has blessed it. The church is growing rapidly. We're installing elders on the 5th of December and receiving members. We've got like 30 baptisms to do in the next, I don't know, 30, 40 days. It's a lot of baptisms. So good things are happening. And I think when we did this conference also that Chris was at called County Before Country, which was all focused on Christian localism. How do you get involved in your local community? And a lot of times when people call up, they call it for strategy. Like what's your strategy for doing this or that? But really I think the success being mostly from the favor of the Lord, but also it's less about strategy and more about your mindset and how you look at the times in which God's placed you. So that's what this is really about. And that's what I want to talk about today. And then we can discuss it at the end, how it applies to Westminster or any other questions that comes to mind. But let's first ask the Lord to bless this time. Father God, we thank you for your word that is sharper than a double edged sword and cuts right to our hearts. Father, we do ask that you convict us, you would encourage us and you prepare us to live for your glory in the day to day right here wherever you place this, whether it's Battleground, Vancouver, or Cincinnati, Ohio. We ask this in the name of your son. Amen. So we're going to be in Zechariah 4 today. So it's one of the minor prophets. It is one of the five post-Zillic books in the Old Testament. The other four being Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, and Malachi. or Malachi, the Italian prophet. These books cover the initial resettlement of Judah. And as you recall, both the northern and southern kingdoms were taken into captivity. The north was captured by the Assyrian, whereas the south was captured by the Babylonians. Judah in the south was taken captive in three successive groups. And after seven years in exile, some of the Jews were allowed to return to Judah and rebuild. The post-exile return happens in three waves of people roughly over 80 years. They didn't all leave at once and they didn't all come back at once. The first company returns under the leadership of Zerubbabel and was inspired by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, and they eventually rebuild the temple. Sixty years later, the second wave returns from Babylon under the leadership of Azra. Fourteen years after that, Nehemiah leads the third group and oversees the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. And it's important to remember what the small companies of Israelites were returning to. In 2 Chronicles 36, here's the description of what happened to Judah. Therefore the Lord brought up against the king of the Chaldeans who slew their young men with the sword in the house of the sanctuary and had no compassion on young man or virgin, old man or infirm. He gave them all into his hand, all the articles of the house of God, great and small, the treasures of the house of the Lord, the treasures of the king and of his officers. He brought them all to Babylon. Then they burned the house of God and broke down the walls of Jerusalem and burned all its fortified buildings with fire and destroyed all its valuable articles." So the southern kingdom was brutally depopulated. That's one of the main things that ancient kings would do in areas. They'd depopulate it. And then they bring immigrants in to replace them. So if you're looking for tyranny, it's usually depopulating the natives and replacing them with someone else. That's a pattern in the Old Testament. And then the temple was laid to waste. All of its defenses were destroyed. All its wealth was carried away. Judah was reduced to a pile of smoldering ashes and remained that way for 70 years. In Nehemiah 1, we have this recorded. Now it happened in the month of Shislev in the 20th year while I was in Susa, the capital, that Hananiah, one of my brothers, and some of the men from Judah came. I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped and had survived the captivity and about Jerusalem. And they said to me, the remnant there in the province who survived the captivity are in great distress and reproach. In all the wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are burned with fire. When I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days. I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven. Its condition then was that of a desolate land populated by a handful of unprotected and often terrified farmers due to being surrounded by cruel enemies. It was a sad situation. Hence, Nehemiah and many like him mourned the desolation of Judah. But there was a reason to be hopeful. God himself had made a promise of restoration, Jeremiah 33. Behold, I will bring to it health and healing. I'll heal them and I'll reveal to them an abundance of peace and truth. I'll restore the fortunes of Judah and the fortunes of Israel and will rebuild them as they were at first. I'll cleanse them from all their iniquity by which they have sinned against me. And I will pardon all their iniquities by which they have sinned against me and by which they have transgressed against me. It will be to me a name of joy, praise and glory before all the nations of the earth, which will hear all the good that I do for them. And they will fear and tremble because of all the good and all the peace that I make for them for it. Thus says the Lord. Yet again, there will be heard in this place of which you say it is a waste without man, without beast. That is, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate, without man and without inhabitant, without beast, the voice of joy. and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the voice of those who say, give thanks to the Lord of hosts, for the Lord is good, for his loving kindness is everlasting, and those who bring a thank offering into the house of the Lord, For I will restore the fortunes of the land as they were at first, says the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, there will again be in this place, which is waste without man or beast, in all its cities a habitation of shepherds who rest their flocks. In the cities of the hill country, in the cities of the lowland, in the cities of Negev, in this land of Benjamin, in the environs of Jerusalem, in the cities of Judah, the flocks will again pass under the hands of the one who numbers them, says the Lord. So if you looked at the state of Judah with human eyes at that time, there was no reason to be hopeful. It was a wasteland. However, if you looked at it through the eyes of faith, with a heart that knows God keeps His promises, there was a reason to be optimistic. God said he would restore it, and he will. So that is what these post-exilic books cover. The beginning of God's faithful restoration of Judah. Zechariah, what we're going to look at today, takes place in the early years of that resettlement. They were about to lay the foundation of the temple in the first two years, but construction had stopped for 18 years due to the Samaritans frustrating their attempts. Therefore God speaks through his prophet to encourage the Jews in their labor. So here's our passage, which is Zechariah 4, 1 through 10. Then the angel who was speaking with me returned and roused me as a man who is awakened from his sleep. He said to me, what do you see? And I said, I see and behold a lampstand, all of gold, with its bowl on the top of it and its seven lamps on it with seven spouts belonging to each of the lamps which are on top of it. Also two olive trees by it, one on the right side of the bowl and one on its left side. Then I said to the angel who was speaking with me, What are these, my Lord? So the first angel who was speaking with me answered and said to me, Do you not know what these are? And I said, That's kind of funny. I don't know what these are. And the angel was like, You don't know what these are? Those little things peppered throughout scripture. I said, no, my Lord. Then he said to me, this is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel, excuse me, saying, not by might, nor my power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts. What are you, O great mountain, before Zerubbabel, who will become a plain, and he will bring forth the top stone, which shouts, grace, grace to it. Also the word of the Lord came to me, saying, the hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of his house and his hands will finish it. Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you for who has despised the day of small things? But these seven will be glad when they see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel. These are the eyes of the Lord, which range to and fro throughout the earth. So verse one through three. This is the fifth of six visions given to the prophet Zechariah. Each of these visions were designed both to comfort and stir up Jews to their work. So it is with this one. Zechariah is given a vision of a golden lampstand and two olive trees. And we know that there was a golden lampstand in the temple and that they had started to lose faith that they would ever fully rebuild the temple. So God shows him something like what would be in the heart of a completed temple. But it's more than that really. He says that there were seven spouts to the lamps on top and also there were two olive trees. So the lampstand which constantly was supplied by the abundance of its or so there was a lampstand which was being constantly supplied by abundance of oil. It was always burning. There's a reference to that also in Pilgrim's Progress, where Christian, on his travels, the way he keeps going is that the fire of the Spirit's being filled by the oil of the Lord constantly, and so the rain doesn't put it out. And then verses four through five, Zechariah doesn't understand their significance. So the angels explain that this lampstand is a symbol of God's word to Zerubbabel, not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit. Therefore, the lampstand represents God's power at work in His covenant people. And this idea, or this symbol of the lampstand comes up over and over again, both in the Old and New Testament. Revelation 1, John. Right, so it's not Revelations, right? You know that. It's just one. It's not plural. It's revealing Jesus. I hear that all the time. Have you read the book of Revelations? No, I'm not familiar with it. Is there anything like revelation? But nonetheless, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day and I heard behind me a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet saying, write in a book what you see and send it to the seven churches of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and Laodicea. Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me, and having turned, I saw seven golden lampstands. And in the middle of the lampstands, I saw one like a son of man, clothed in a robe, reaching to the feet, and girded across his chest with a golden sash. His head and his hair were white like white wool, like snow, and his eyes were like a flame of fire. His feet were like burnished bronze when it had been made to glow in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in strength." This is Jesus, right? John's giving us a vision of Jesus, and in that vision, he's in the midst of seven lampstands, which clearly represent the seven churches that he's talking about. So God dwells in his church and his spirit is the source of its power. Remember what Christ said to Peter? He said, I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not overpower the gates of hell. And if you're in this church, I assume you probably know what that means, but that means we're on the attack. Gates are defense. So we're knocking the gates down. And this is exactly what's being communicated to these discouraged Jews back in Jerusalem. These men were looking soberly at the reality of their situation. Their numbers were not large. They had no army, few friends. They were surrounded by many aggressive enemies. Their ability to protect themselves was greatly limited. And as they went down the pro and con list, the cons were winning. They were stacking up. But they forgot the greatest pro, that God is for them. And remember that great rhetorical question Paul asked in Romans 8. If God is for us, who can be against us? No one. God was for them. He was their might and power. This wouldn't be the first or last time that God delivered his people through strange ways. In Exodus, God raised up a Jewish redeemer in the very house that had ordained him to be killed along with all the other Hebrew babies. I always think of that, how odd that is. He was supposed to be killed, right, so he wouldn't topple Egypt. And he was raised in the king of Egypt's home and toppled, and God uses him to topple. That's just how the Lord does things. God then proceeds to deliver the Hebrews and destroy the Egyptians in the most fantastic ways. But God's work sometime is much more subtle, such as the case with the resettlement. Matthew Henry, who's just been my go-to commentator, him and John Calvin, read them for everything, very helpful, free online. But they were, what was that? Yeah. Yeah, good stuff, yeah. My John Calvin, I used to play fantasy football, and this is a Calvin reference for all my Calvin hating friends, which I know you're not. But my fantasy football team for years was called Flaming Servetus, because I had a bunch of Arminians that I played. It's kind of an inside joke. You lean into things sometimes. But they were brought out of Babylon, this is what Henry says, but they were brought out of Babylon in the Canaan the second time by the spirit of the Lord of hosts working upon the spirit of Cyrus and inclining him to proclaim liberty to them and working upon the spirits of the captives and inclining them to accept the liberty offered them. It was by the spirit of the Lord of hosts that the people were excited and animated to build the temple, and therefore they are said to be helped by the prophets of God, because they, as the Spirit's mouth, spoke to their hearts." Ezra 5, 2. It was by the same spirit that the heart of Darius was inclined to favor and further that good work. and that the sworn enemies of it were infatuated in their..." That can't be right. "...were frustrated," probably, "...in their counsels, so that they could not hinder it as they designed." Note, the work of God is often carried on very successfully when yet is carried on very silently and without the assistance of human force. The gospel temple is built not by might or power, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but by the spirit of the Lord of hosts, whose work on men's consciences is mighty to the pulling down of strongholds. Thus the excellency of the power is of God and not of man." So the ways of God are mysterious. Sometimes he works in a grand fashion. other times through very subtle ways. He directs everything, the course of the most powerful rivers, and the inner workings of a man's mind. He's sovereign over everything, he is for us, and that's easy to forget. I wrote this first after the election went sideways last year, and we had a lot of people that were kind of, eh, just really hardcore MAGA people, and they were all depressed. And there is reason to be sad when wicked people are enthroned, especially wicked people. Let's put it that way, okay? So that's where this is coming from, and I didn't want us to sit in the ash heap and moan, you know what I mean? It's easy to forget. It's easy to think that we are the source of power. And that's when we become hopeless, when we think of ourselves as the only solution. But when we're reminded by the Word that the work is the Lord's, then we are stirred up to work with great confidence and joy. And we know that the Lord, it's not that we are fatalists and think that God will do it apart from us. We know that God works through the means, but we know God will work through us. That gives us greater confidence, like in Acts where God says, look, I've got many people. here. Many elect and that's to motivate Paul to keep preaching the gospel because Paul knows God calls forth his elect through the preaching of the word. And so when we know that God has plans and he works all those plans out for his glory and our good, that stirs us up to work and to work hard. Verse 7, What are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become a plain, and he will bring forth the topstone with shouts of grace, grace to it. So our time is full of challenges that seem insurmountable. They seem like a great mountain, and the condition of society in the church is very discouraging. We're watching the rapid moral decline of our society. There's a crusade in our culture against biblical sexuality. Godly femininity and masculinity is constantly mocked, despised, and attacked. Marriage rates are down. Broken or single-parent homes are very common. The most wicked forms of sexual morality are being normalized in all sectors of culture, even right down to the cartoons our little kids watch. So my one daughter, Cedars, we call her Sassy sometimes, because she's sassy. Right? It's kind of annoying, but she's funny. She's like a cartoon. She doesn't even know how to walk. She, like, skips everywhere. And I asked her once to introduce herself to someone. She says, my name's Cedar Labrie, and I like unicorns and rainbow. And I was like, I wasn't trained. It's just who she is. She's like a human cartoon. Anyway, so I thought she'd like something like Princess-like. So I let her watch My Little Pony. And it was not the newest one. It was like an older one from, I don't know, 10, 15 years. And I thought it would be fine. But I was listening to the content of My Little Pony and absolutely shocked the things they were saying. It was crazy stuff. And they're definitely, so cartoons teach. They do. They did. I was born in the 80s. At the end of every G.I. Joe episode, like, no one's half the battle, right? They taught us, like, don't use too much water. You'll destroy the Amazon or something. I still, I'm still guilty when I leave the water running too long because of their manipulation. Is the ozone, is it fixed? Is that what happened? Or is there not a hole anymore? Does anyone know? Are the whales? They didn't tell us. And the whales are safe. So we won. Kids are the 80s. Nonetheless, people are taught from their youngest to view themselves as victims from the youngest age. Consequently, they refuse to take responsibility for the outcome of their decisions. They rather blame it on their dad, on society, on some vague systematic form of oppression. I've noticed this, that every group has some boogeyman, right? For feminists, it's the patriarchy. For white people, it's the zeitgeist and the Illuminati. If you're white trash, the background I come from, there's smoke-filled rooms everywhere trying to control you. If you're black, it's systematic racism. I actually kind of move in the men's movement. And the men's movement are the exact opposite of feminists. They think it's the matriarchy keeping us down. That's why we can't be men, because the women won't let us. If the women would just let us be men, we'd be men. Like, how does that work? Walk me through this one. But everyone would rather blame someone else. We've become a nation of blame shifters, pity seekers, and excuse makers. And it's no surprise that drug and alcohol abuse is exploding among all groups, but especially young women who have been taught that success is found in competing with their male peers as opposed to complimenting them. The drug and alcohol abuse rate, prescription drugs, in that group is off the chain. And it with greater freedoms and greater workplace integration all tracks with that. So like is the world is the society getting more patriarchal abusive. Is that why that's leading. Is that what's happening. You know like the whole narrative doesn't make any sense when you talk about it. It doesn't. All I know is it's bad for everybody. It's bad for men. It's bad for women. It's bad for children. It's crazy. And our government is out of control. It's constantly overspending and overreaching the metals and matters that are far outside the design of our founding documents. If you want to look at something crazy, you can look at what went down with Gaddafi, right? Because Gaddafi's a bad guy. No doubt about it. He was a dictator. But we got involved in that, and what What happened afterwards? They actually have they have slave markets in the middle of their towns where they sell children. That's what happened. So as a country, we're involved in all these things. is far beyond what we all agreed to. We live under the tyranny of an overbearing administrative nanny state, which believes that it can close businesses and churches at the whim of their governor. The governor can say, yeah, I'm a science expert. I'm an economic expert. You guys are closed. And now we're seeing the chaos that that brings when you shut down people's livelihood, when their inability Like, well, we have to save lives. Well, you know, food has been important to my life, up to this point, at least. And food costs money. And to get money, I got to do things. I have to work. Well, the government's like, we'll give you money. Like, from where? Where's the money come from? What did you do for the money? What are we going to take from these other people? Oh, the people you're allowing to work? You know, you start getting into the, the craziness of the situation. It's not good. And worse yet, we're seeing our churches and Christian leaders in Bibb and reflect all these same mentalities, but doing it under the guise of the faithfulness to God. We see churches either explicitly or implicitly bow down to the false idol of Black Lives Matter. We see them claiming, or at least at the very least implying, that having white skin somehow makes you inherently a racist oppressor. That's the one. I grew up Jewish, right? So I always think it's funny when they're like telling me all this white privilege. And I'm like, man. White privilege is not all it's cracked up to be. Let me tell you, if I had white privilege, we taped our shoes together. I mean, government peanut butter comes in this big white thing. And it does have this oil on top. You got to mix it. It is really good peanut butter. So yeah, that was a privilege to have that peanut butter. But you know all the poverty? That wasn't great. It wasn't really fun. So I grew up above a bar. That's where I grew up. It was like prostitutes in my backyard as a kid. So right privilege. It's good. We see them excuse the violence and destructive behavior of riots and somehow recast them as mostly peaceful protests by people who have the right to be angry at white Christian males. We're seeing churches even hold denominations, soften their approach to homosexuality, and have women who are more or less, if not outright, function as pastors in their congregation. PCA has churches with shepherdess, right? That sounds like a girl version of shepherd. And shepherd sure sounds like the word pastor. It sounds like girl pastors, women pastors. Isn't that? That's what they are. And so we're seeing this and I'm not going to pick on the PCA. I'm not in the PCA anymore and I love it. And I think there's a lot of good churches. This is across culture, across denominations at the moment. We're seeing churches close their doors on Sundays for months and months because the government told them that they must neglect the fellowship of the saints. And they do not have that right. I can't call a nuclear strike on any country, right? I don't have that power. Even as an ordained minister of the Lord, I can't do that. but they can't tell me when I can administer the sacraments and preach the word of God. They don't have that authority. It's not given to them by God. And so when they, I can say, hey, you should bomb Iraq. And they say, nah, we're not gonna do that. And they say, hey, you should close your church. And I say, no, no, I'm not, I'm not gonna do that. And that's exactly what we did. And that's why our church grew. And we weren't pugnacious about it. We didn't make a big deal, but you know, they should stay on their lane. Back off. We'll do what we think's right. What God requires of us. So we're seeing them get involved in this stuff. And when they finally do reopen these churches, they require that all the members play along with the facade of this pandemic. Now, Look, I have a girl in our church that was in the hospital for four weeks because she got COVID, and she's still having trouble walking, and we're supporting her and her family. Wonderful, just in her 30s, young lady, and she just has, she's got some bad lungs, got some asthma. It's been really painful for her and her husband. So does this affect some people in devastating ways? Of course it does, right? Are their bodies stacking up outside? No. No, it's a really nasty flu. That's obvious. There's no controversy, right? It's just, it's not what they say it is. It's obvious. So they're making us, churches play along with it. They operate from a posture of fear, and if you don't go along, they shame you and say you hate your neighbor. Well I think I love my neighbor by having the church open and allowing people to come worship and be a public witness to God and allowing people to feed on the word of God and sacrament. I think that's one of the best ways we can love our neighbors and that's why God commands that we keep doing it. Those are just Few of the mountains before us and I order I urge everyone not to listen to the news I don't so like the news can't what can you do on the news? So I hear me offend any QA non people. They happen to be here. I doubt they are but uh, I QAnon was like this whole like kind of conspiracy that was a mixture of true things and not true things and weird things. But they kept telling, leading up to the, first up to the election, and then up to January 6th, that trust the plan, trust the plan, right? This is all part of the plan, right? Like Trump is leading them in and they're going to have these tribunals and they're going to arrest all these people. And then a lot of my good friends that were sober-minded people started to believe this stuff. I was like, what is going on? I realized people were just kind of broken. They couldn't believe that Biden became president and all this stuff. But then when they say trust the plan, I'd say, OK. All right. If I trust the plan, how does that change my day to day? Like what new activities do I do? Well, you just got to trust the plan, man. They're going to deliver us in all this. OK, you said that. But what do I do? How do I change my behavior? Well, you don't. OK. So if I don't trust the plan, are all these things still going to happen? Well, I guess. And if I do trust the plan, these things will happen as well. Correct. How about I just don't care about the plan? How about I don't care? I'm just going to continue to do my day-to-day stuff I do anyway. It's like my mother, is this being recorded? Is it? Oh, well. My mother-in-law will always tell me, Jesus is coming back real soon because this or that thing happened across, you know, the ocean. I'm like, oh, okay. So, what should I do? Well, you should just be ready. I am. I'm ready. Like, live as Christ. The guy's gay and let's do this thing, right? And if I get raptured, I'll change my theology, you know, midair. Guess I was wrong on that one. So I think on my way up, there's going to be a lot of surprises in heaven. But I don't change anything because it doesn't matter. Most news does not matter. It's gossip. It's paparazzi, right? Recast as things you should be concerned about. They want you to be constantly alert, alert. So you don't know this if you're younger. Those alerts and tickers at the bottom, they really got going with O.J. Simpson and the case. And when he drove off in his Bronco with his buddy, that everyone learned to be alert. Now, I don't watch news unless I'm at a trade show or something. I'll turn the TV on every once in a while. It looks cartoonish, first off. It doesn't even look real. But there's alerts for everything. They constantly want you fearful, constantly want you to stick on the TV. Now why? Is it some weird satanic conspiracy? Well, there's spiritual powers behind it, but alert scared people keep watching TV and they keep clicking on websites and that's how they make money. That's like, that's the easiest explanation. And so when you watch news, it just has you worried and depressed and down about everything and it doesn't do anything for you. but maybe stocks, but if you're trading stocks on day-to-day information, you're probably a gambler and you're not going to have those stocks for long, so you won't have to worry about it, right? And if it's weather, you can just look outside, but I suppose that's the only part that I can think of that might matter. weather. But news doesn't really matter. It's just a way to keep you depressed on the whole. So there's there's my controversial take here this time. I don't watch it and I feel great. You know, I find out from other people. Did you hear? Nope. Didn't hear anything unless you tell me because I don't care. I doesn't matter to me. And so they they're constantly telling us all these things that are in front of us. Some of them are real. Some of them are fake. And it can be really discouraging to watch once great institutions be reduced to moldering piles of ashes. And the West is no doubt in a rough state, that is real. And the challenges are huge, but God can turn mountains into a plain. So that's, I'm a very optimistic person. Not because I got my head in the sand, but because I know the Lord. Right? My heart was stone, He turned it to flesh. He saved me. I've seen Him do amazing things. God can take a woman like Sarah with a dead womb and make her the mother of a nation. God can take fishermen and tax collectors and start a movement that turns the world upside down, topples Rome, in what, 150 years, 200 years? The nation of Israel and the true Israel had small beginnings, so it is with the time of restorations. They have small beginnings, and you become discouraged as you look back on former glorious times. which a lot of times when you get together with friends or relatives you find out they weren't quite as glorious as you remember them. And that's a theme that repeatedly comes up in the post-exilic books. This is from Ezra 3, listen to this. Now when the builders had laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests stood in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the Lord according to the direction of King David of Israel. They sang, praising and giving thanks to the Lord, saying, For he is good, for his lovingkindness is upon Israel forever. And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. So they're laying the foundation of the temple. Yet many of the priests and Levites and the heads of father's household, the old men who had seen the first temple, wept with a loud voice when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, while many shouted aloud for joy. So you got some weeping, some shouting for joy all at once. So that the people could not distinguish the sound of the shout of joy from the sound of the weeping of the people. For the people shout with a loud shout, and the sound was heard far away. So the young people saw a promising future. The old people grieved over what had been lost. And that's something we've got to be careful to not fall into the group that's looking backwards always. You look backwards to inform how to move forward. There's value in that, obviously. But you can't get stuck. And that's why we can't be people that whine. We've got to be people that build. Conservatives are losers. I don't know if you've noticed that. They lose at everything. They don't win elections. They don't win people's hearts. They don't win the battle on abortion. They don't win anything. And then they go online and talk about how dumb the liberals are who keep rolling them, keep beating them to nothing. And they're just a bunch of whiners. They really are on a whole. And they should build. They should actually build things. They can, too. If we have better ideas, why do we keep losing? Maybe we need to rethink some things, not the principles. But that's one thing I think should have been taught to us the last couple of years. Oh, they just stole it. You sure? You sure? Some of those things. But maybe we gave it away in a lot of ways. And you see what's true in the political, societal realm is certainly true in the church as well. So I think that's something we need to think about. Listen to Haggai 2. God says, speak now to Zerubbabel, the son of Shehotel, the governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Jehoiazek. the high priest, and to the remnant of the people, saying, who is left among you who saw the temple in its former glory? How do you see it now? Does it not seem to you like nothing in comparison?" So they finally build this temple, and it's not impressive at all. It's not very impressive, but he continues, for thus says the Lord of hosts, once more in a little while I'm going to shake the heavens and the earth, the sea also, and the dry land, I will shake all the nations and they will come with the wealth of all nations and I'll fill this house with glory says the Lord of hosts the silver is mine the gold is mine declares the Lord of hosts the latter glory of this house will be greater than the former says the Lord of the hosts and in this place I will give peace declares the Lord of hosts what if I told you he wasn't speaking about the temple the temple is gone It was destroyed, and it was definitively destroyed in 70 A.D. He's speaking about the temple of his people. In 1 Peter he says, So the destruction of the temple ended up being a good thing. It's strange how God so often moves his people forward through what appears to be failures or disasters across, of course, being the greatest example. There's many more. Think of the martyrdom of Stephen and the persecution that followed. It led to the gospel being sent out to the eventual conversion of the Apostle Paul. So we have to have spiritual eyes. We often are trying to preserve the past when God has a greater future in store for us. We struggle with this because He likes to do things His way, and His ways often are very humble, small, and unconventional. Verse 8 through 10. These are the eyes of the Lord which range to and fro throughout the earth. So it's easy to despise the day of small things. Seeds, investments, savings, weight loss, spiritual discipline, churches, denominations, the nation of the Israel, kingdom of God, they all start very small. And we often wither under seemingly insurmountable challenges and this is because we view our own power as the primary resource. If that is the case then the challenges are really insurmountable. So we all at our church kind of had a mental breakdown like six weeks ago. Like the leadership, well, some of the leaders, not me. And here's what happened, is that we went from zero to 200 people in 10 months. And we've had to move to a big building, and we got all these chairs, and we're like, this should be good for a while. And then all the chairs were full our first Sunday, and we're like, OK, in the new building. And then afterwards, we all were talking about all the different things we all have figured out logistically, right? Because we have to set up teardown. We went from in the armory, there's an armory, with the mayor and police department above us, and now we're in a gym, a CrossFit gym, which is kind of, I don't know, it's kind of cool, it's kind of manly. Though CrossFit is a way to jack up your spine forever, so you don't gut. top weight and top reps at the same time. That's the opposite of weightlifting. Anyway, so we're there and afterwards we're like this has to get fixed and that has to get fixed and we got to figure this out and who's going to do this and you know all there was a lot of balls that had been dropped theoretically but what I do one way you don't drop balls you just don't pick them up If you pick it up, that's yours, man. You're the one who decided to pick that up. That's not my fault. I didn't tell you to do that. But it was a lot of things. And what was awesome is the reason our church is growing is the favor of God. There are things we've done right. No doubt about it. We have played every hand we've been dealt right. But there's only so many ways to play a royal flush. We've been dealt very, very good hands by God. And so when that happens, when it's not your power, your genius, your strategy, your technique, but it's being faithful to the word. I thought the church was gonna be 50 people. I was like, this is gonna be easy. I could be a vocational pastor rest of my life. I'm gonna love it. And then it grows and God just blows up all my plans. I'm like, this is not easy. I don't know what I'm gonna do. But I just told them, I was like, look, we got here in the back of the favor of God. And that's how we're gonna move forward. And we're not going to change now. Every time you do something well, I think about this with Maddox a little bit sometimes, where Maddox has had a lot of success due to discipline and to the favor of God again. And you get to this level, and then these people come in like, let me tell you how you're going to get to the next level. It's not the way you got here. Why? Or it's like people, they tell me how to manage social media, and they've got like, I don't know. No one listens to them. I'm like, well, you're so good at managing social media. Why does no one care what you have to say? I'm not trying to be arrogant here, but it's like a fat weight loss coach. You know, like, what do you know? And the way we've gotten to where we're at is just the glory of God. And that's the way we're going to move forward. And that's true of every church. It's the favor of God. It's the power of God. So when God's Spirit's at work in His people to accomplish His purpose, you get confidence. There's no such thing as an insurmountable challenge. It does not exist. Therefore, we should soldier forward in faith, knowing that the battle is the Lord. and often pleases him to accomplish his will through works that have very small beginnings. So my exhortation is not to despise the day of small things in anything, any part of your life. Don't worry about the mountains. Don't whine in the ash heap, but build with joy and confidence. That's what I think a lot of Christians lack. Matter of fact, all the Christians I've seen go apostate thought about this, because if you're in the church for a while, And I mostly have leaders in mind here. You think like, man, when did he start to show his cards that he wasn't one of us? And the one thing that I've noticed with pastors that go to apostate is how many of them never had joy. It was like not a joy in the Lord, from the Lord, like a love of Jesus, the person. Christianity is more like a philosophy. It's like a system. It's cold, logical. A lot of them are really into apologetics. But then after a while, you're like, why? Why do they lack joy? I mean, it's good, not the good hell. It's good to be the child of God, right? It's good to have the Holy Spirit to lead you into all truth. And it's not just IQ, you know. It's good to have those things. That should lead to joy. and confidence. Big things have small beginnings. It's the way God works, especially in periods of restoration. It appears we're living in such a time. This is, it is a historical time. This is really crazy. If you read, this is why you should read history. You should read history so you know, like, oh, this is just normal. This happens all the time. And then you should read history because you're like, wait a second, this is not exactly normal. This doesn't happen very often. And we're in one of those weird societal switches, probably one of the bigger ones, I mean, probably since the Industrial Revolution. It seems to be that significant due to the internet and globalism and all sorts of things that you can read articles on, on some hoity-toity website somewhere, I'm sure. But it is crazy times, but we need to ask God to increase our faith and work towards this in our various churches and communities. So the strategy to review is to trust the Lord, to be humble, to have joy and confidence because the power working in and through you is God, and then that, to tie it all back together in a nice little package. That is really the core of our accounting for country stuff. People keep asking, we have people now in governmental positions that attend our church, all the way up to sheriff, local community, getting involved in zoning, all of it. And none of it's technically led by the church. We just talk about getting involved in the community. And we have all these people from the community coming to our church. And we have a person, I don't wanna say, exactly who, but a person high up in law enforcement comes to our church. And it's hilarious how it happened, because I didn't even know that's who he was. I had no clue. And it happened because someone saw something I said. And then they reached out to me months ago. And I talked to them on the phone for like 20 minutes about whatever it was. This person was going to a church with a lesbian pastor talking to me. I'm like, what? This is different. So we talk. Then months go by. He says, hey, I really want to come to your church. I'm like, it's pretty far away. It's like a 40-minute drive. Well he comes anyway and then he brings his mother and mother-in-law and then his wife and his cousins and one of those cousins is married to a guy that's high up in law enforcement. Now he comes to our church. How do you reproduce that strategy, right? How did you get that? I don't know. We preached the gospel, and we hung out with people, and we loved them, and we talked to them. And when we got onto our different committees and things we're on in our community, we just try to do what's best for the people in our community. We try to love our neighbors. I know that sounds like soft and not very edgy and cool or whatever, but that is literally what's happening. And it comes from this mindset of joy and confidence in the Lord. That's what leads you forward. That's what keeps you calm when there's a ton of balls to pick up and a few have been dropped legitimately. And so that, I think, is the attitude that we have to work from right now. Because if you have the wrong mindset, you're just going to come at things in a state of anxiety and fear and worry. And you're going to trust in your own power and you need to trust in the power of God. So that's it. Let me stop because we don't have much more time. Questions, comments, applause? Thank you, Geo. I learned years ago from a guy who looked at a lot of growth trends over time, and this applies to anything from business to church to country. is when we look back and we think about the best days, the good days, we think about the peak. And then he said, everything that went wrong in that place was going on at that point. That's so true. That's why it's a peak. That's right. So we look back and we say, oh, those were the good old days. But actually, they weren't. They were the days where everything was going bad, going to seed. You want to see the good times go back to the bottom of when you had the upturn. things. That's when the things that were good would go on. So like when you think about the Roman Empire, you think about the Zenon, you think about the emperors and all that kind of stuff, but that was a bad time. They all look back to the glory days of when Rome was a republic in a very small place and they would, all their And, you know, whatever it became of those sorts of people, those men, where do we find them now? I'm most comfortable in the day of small things. I get really uncomfortable in the day of big things. Because that's when usually the creeps are coming in. Because they see a right plum and they say, I want some of that action. And they're coming in. You've got to be super, super aware of those guys at that time. Yeah, it's a great insight. It's very helpful to me. You mentioned the county before country thing. I haven't really kept up with you much over the summer, but I know you guys had a conference. What is it? Yeah, so we put a conference together. You guys passed it. Chris was there. George Grant was there. My friend John Moody, Aaron Wren, and Matt Trewella was there, and then I obviously participated. And I just wanted to get people together that I knew enough about their life, I knew them personally, that they actually embodied their principles. Kind of, I've had my time with great thinkers. I like to be around great doers these days. And so we wanted to get those people on stage and talk about the different principles or ideas, mindsets, strategies, the whole thing that leads to getting involved in your local community. I've stopped thinking federally. I don't even think about saving America. I don't. I think in terms of Claremont County, maybe broader than that around Cincinnati and any natural relationships that God's given me, through ministry. That's where I want to exercise the most dominion. So, I remember a guy, he was deep in the abortion ministry, and his sons hate God and hate him. And he was a Christian man the whole time. He just neglected his kids to go down to abortion clinics. And no one had the guts to tell him, like, hey, you're destroying your family, you don't love children. Oh, no, but I'm going down here. But he didn't actually care for those that are closest to him. And we think that loving the loss in China is better than loving the loss in the house next door. Like, how does that work? Well, one, you need to send money or thoughts and prayers over to China, OK? Where those that live next door to you in your home, that actually requires you to do something about it. I always ask people, how many of you know your neighbor's names? And they don't. They don't know their neighbor's name. Oh, but we're praying for some kid in China, but we don't know our neighbor's names. Or I love the ones that street. I kind of heckle street preachers. I don't like them. But they'll drive down to some NFL game on the Lord's Day and then preach to these strangers they don't know. but they don't have their co-workers over for dinner or know their neighbors or, you know, do any of that stuff in their own community. And I'm like, fine, go to the football. I'm not against open air preaching. How could you be and be a Christian? But I think it's kind of easy to drive somewhere for two to three hours and talk to a bunch of strangers you don't have to see again. Yeah, a couple might spit at you and whatever, but It's actually, think of the people you have to see every day at work or at family gatherings. Those people are really hard to evangelize. And so it's just simply getting back to being involved in your local community, getting it out of your head. and actually saying, what can we do? How can we improve our swim club? How can we get some of these dumb HO, you know, these homeowner association rules that, you know, there's old people, they don't know what to do at the end of their life because they didn't have grandkids, so they create rules for home associations. Like, everyone knows that if you've been around. That's what they sit around and do. And how do we, like, get them busy and then get those stupid rules out so we all can, like, have control over our property, which we paid a lot of money and poured You know, so you get involved in that way and people end up loving you. Or like, where a stop sign should and shouldn't go. All those things matter. We're dealing with that a lot in our local community lately. And we got a bunch of people, we all worked really hard to oust a ton of people on our school board. Like we just got rid of them and replaced them with homeschooling families. That was pretty funny. Hey man, they take our money, right? We can say something. But all this stuff was kind of decentralized and through friendships and relationships. And it's been a weird coalition of people. I'm careful also not. to advertise everything we're doing, or say it's a theonomic takeover. You know, that stuff gets thrown back in your face. And I don't even know if that's actually a good description of what we're doing. So I wanted a conference that got people thinking that way and get the right people in the room. And it's been good, because I've seen my friend John Moody go on Aaron Ren's podcast. And those are two very different people. Aaron is a very urban planner guy, and very much a top-down intellectual in the way he sees culture change. Where my friend John Moody is, he trains people in homesteading, and he has, when I call him, We talk about fertilizer shortages. And when I call Aaron, we talk not about that. So we talk about crazy stuff happening in society at a very high level. Getting those two people together in the same room where they start rubbing off on each other and getting different thoughts going, I thought, that's what I wanted to do. So that's what our conference was. We had about 190 people show up. And what we did with the conference is I used our conference goer to get money from them, but not in the way they thought. I knew you have to eat. That's something you do every day. And so we're going to have lunch. And what we did is I called up the two restaurants in our town that were within walking distance and say, look, we're going to have all these people. And I'm going to tell them to come eat here. So how can we work this out so you don't hate me instead you like me? Because 100 people walking into a restaurant all at once is not fun. So we staggered people. And then we had them prep everything. And we poured a couple thousand dollars in each of those business on a Friday afternoon where they don't usually have that happen. And I didn't ask for a discount or anything. There was no fanfare to it. We just called them up and let them know it's what's about to happen. And those people like us now. Because when you, you know, help people make money and you do it in a thoughtful way, that's a blessing. These are different, like, so we even try to practice that. in our community, getting involved, being a blessing to people. If you want to get involved in government, the first place to start is just show up at your local council meetings. Almost no one shows up at all. And usually the people that do show up are kind of single issue people and a little nutty. So any reasonable minded person that shows up there and starts talking and gets involved, it's kind of like one way you can go really far in college is take interest in your professors, whatever your professor takes interest in. And you can turn papers in late and still get A's. I did it all the time. I never turned a paper in. I don't think I did. But anyhow, it's because, like, whoa, someone actually cares about what I care about. You show up in your council meetings and talk to them in a respectful way. Like, I look at some of the, I get the angry school board women, right? Those videos that are going out here, like, these are our kids and, you know, that, I get it. But that when you, once you get to that point, that means you've lost, right? You understand, like, what, you should turn that, where have you been? Like, why now? You waited until everything went to hell and you hadn't shown up. You should have been there like a year or two ago or longer. Why were you not involved? And so just actually get involved. And you can go to East River Church YouTube and watch all it free on there. I think Canon's got the files and they're going to load it up to the Canon app if you listen to that. But we had a bunch of panels too where we just kind of discussed things. It was really cool. It was a good time, I thought. I enjoyed it. I encourage you to listen to it and just think of how God's put you here, right? Colossae is not Corinth. Corinth is not Colossae. So when you listen to the same doctrine applied in those churches, it takes on a different form. But they're really dealing with very similar issues, but just different forms. So you can't reproduce what we're doing in Batavian, nor should you. You can in a substantial way, in a principal way. but not in its particular form. So I'd say listen to that. As a church, think through it. And don't make everything into a club and try to centralize everything. And make everything, a lot of it's just organic and getting out to get involved. And you'll see a powerful change. Anything else before we tie up? I have. Well, that was a mighty powerful dream you had. I recognize you, too. It's good to see you. All right. Thank you all.