Amen. We're back to Hebrews 13 and approaching closer and closer to the end of this long journey we've been on. But I pray, again, a profitable journey. As we come to today's text, there's going to be speaking about profitability in our text for today. So we need to think through this a little bit today. But as we do so, we've talked about how we're called to an unshakable kingdom. And in fact, we had a hymn earlier we talked about at times when we feel shaken that we remember to rely on the Lord. And our kingdom cannot be shaken, and what a glorious truth that is. And as we work our way through that we recognize that chapter 13 explains that to us, or exposes, develops the idea there of what it means to be in the unshakeable kingdom. What does that kingdom look like? What is its ethos? What characterizes the kingdom? And we talked about love, an associative love, a love in which we are connected, we associate with one another, we love one another. And we've talked about how throughout this letter that love is shown as a love in which we're committed to each other. So that the author can say earlier, do not neglect the fellowship of the saints. Well, why in the context of this letter would they do that? It's getting dangerous to show up to worship services. Go anyway. Show up anyway. Be identified with the people of God anyway. We're not having as much hospitality as we once did. Why? It's getting dangerous. I don't want to be associated with these traveling preachers. Welcome them in anyway. It's part of the body of Christ. and be recognized along with the people of God. And that's part of what it means to be in the kingdom, in this unshakeable kingdom. So that was one of the first points that was dealt with. And also that He didn't leave us without order, right? It's an orderly kingdom. It's a kingdom that has a pattern, if you will, or hierarchy. Obviously our king at the top. As we're working on our bylaws, we have something in there about the church structure, and it says, finally, we belong to Jesus Christ, right? He is our King. And again, we want to remember that. There is a hierarchy that starts with Him as our Lord and King. And so that's been a point of this text, not to forget what we've been taught, the examples that have been set for us, that we should follow after those things. Whose faith we follow is how the author put it. Then again, we'll come back to that point again today, obviously, when you think about the subject we just read about. But then over the last two weeks, we've been inside the grace of this kingdom. The grace. Nobody can barge in the door of this kingdom. Nobody can demand a place in this kingdom. In fact, in our lesson this morning in Sunday School in Colossians, what does it say? It is God who has qualified us for this kingdom. We didn't qualify ourselves. We don't qualify on our own, but God has qualified us and called us into this kingdom. In fact, has translated us out of the kingdom of darkness into the king of his own beloved son, into the kingdom of his own beloved son. So again, grace is at the heart of everything we've looked at. In fact, last week we pretty much just preached the gospel, thinking about how a return to the Old Testament sacrifices and system would avail you nothing. because it's all of grace. And even all of that was pointing to our need of grace, that nothing can be done in terms of works of us, in terms of availing before God for righteousness. And so again, we recognize that it is of grace that we have a place in this kingdom and a place at the Lord's table. What a blessing that is to think about. And so we're given a hope and so forth. All this is part and parcel with what this author is talking about. Now, as we come to today's text, we're going to see that we were talking last week very specifically about the fact that you can't offer sacrifices, right? There's no sacrifice that you can offer that avails before God in terms of justification. That's the reason it doesn't make any sense to go back, right? Because those sacrifices didn't avail even back then. But they certainly have no availing power now. since they never did then. And therefore, there is no sacrifice that you can do to offer that adds anything to what Christ has already done for you in terms of justification. But he says, don't let that allow you to think that there is nothing God desires of his people by faith. He desires that we do offer sacrifices in terms of the manner of our living, living out a life that is fitting before him. And so what are the things that he says that he desires from us? Well you see last week he says, therefore by Him, through Jesus, only through Jesus is our worship acceptable anyway, through Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God that is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name. Praise and thanksgiving. God wants praise and thanksgiving continually from us. If you remember just this morning in Sunday school, it talked about bearing patiently and with long-suffering with joy. That qualifier changes everything. We're talking in our Sunday school class this morning, I can have patience sometimes, it's a grumbling patience. I wish they'd hurry up, wish whatever it is. It's not what we're told to do, right? We're told to bear patiently with joy, with joy. Again, rejoicing, thankful, always recognizing the blessings that we have and living a life of thanksgiving unto our God. And then it's not just that, but also he says, and not to forget to do good and to share with others. We mentioned last week this is basically what Jesus said are the greatest two commandments, right? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind. This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all of the law and the prophets. You don't go back to Moses to fulfill the law and the prophets. You realize Jesus did it for you. And then you think about how we are to live, empowered by the Holy Spirit, this life of sanctification to which we are called. Not to earn merit before God, that's been done in Christ. But because as people who are redeemed by Christ, a people who realize it is fitting to live our lives as a living sacrifice unto Christ's glory, then we realize this is how we are called to live. Now, the verse we're going to look at today is in that same pericope. It's not separated in the original text. And so we could have dealt with it last week, but I thought it deserved its own week here, because it's an important thing to think about. What are the ways that we obey, or that we offer a pleasing sacrifice to God? Thanksgiving, praise, loving others as ourselves, and obeying the church structure. Now, as we come to this text today, I want to read it again. I want to read it in light of those other verses, and then we will look at it. So it says here, Therefore, by Him, let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name. But do not forget to do good and to share, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. Obey those who rule over you and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls as those who must give an account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you." If we look at this text today, I want us to think about three simple points. First of all, a call for gospel order. Second of all, a call to gospel listening. And third, a call to profitable ministry. So I want to begin with this first point, which is a call to gospel order. We want to recognize here that at the heart of this claim is that there is structure to the church. There is structure to the kingdom that God has ordained. There is a structure. And that's just the reality of it. That really shouldn't surprise us because the Bible tells us God is a God of order. We should not expect that His church would be disorder or that His kingdom would be disorder. Right? We should expect there to be order. And so again we need to recognize this. And it again begins with our, all of us as church members recognizing that structure and obeying it. It uses words here that we are uncomfortable with in our modern society of freedom and me-centeredness. which is obey and submit. Those are not easy words for any of us. In fact, as we often think, well, it's easy for the preacher to say, right? He's on the other end of the equation. But that's really not true. Because first of all, this text reminds me that I have to submit. and that I will give an account one day, and we'll come back to that a little later. But there's a reality we all serve, right? We all must serve someone. Actually, I think no less a theologian than Bob Dylan wrote a song called, You Gonna Serve Somebody, right? And that's just the reality. That was in his Christian phase, I guess. But anyway, but it's true. We're all going to serve someone. And in the structure of the church, God has ordained order. And we are called to recognize that and that it's important that we do that. Now this word, hageomai, that is used here, doesn't mean those who rule. It doesn't mean elders specifically. It's not the word that's used here like Presbuteros. But what it does mean is those who lead or rule. And that word is an interesting word because while it says rule or have charge over you, it gives the picture of those who lead you out. And again, I think anybody recognizing this could say, well, this could mean just leaders of the church, elders and deacons, no problem there. But the picture of leading out as a shepherd is clearly one of the terms given for elders, right? Pastors, poymen. These are the shepherds of the church. And so clearly in mind here, I've not seen any commentator that didn't see that this is what's being referred to here. So again, the idea, although I have no problem with the idea that in their proper sphere, then deacons should be revered and held in esteem and obeyed. This is important for us to recognize. He's thinking about this. He's sitting here talking about this group that needs to be listened to, needs to be obeyed, needs to be submitted to. And he refers to them as those who rule over you. But notice for a moment how he describes them. He describes them as those who watch out for your souls. Those who watch out for your souls. Now, as we might think about that for a moment, we would recognize that that is the specific calling of elders, of presbyters, of bishops, episkopos, those who oversee, rule over. That's the literal definition of the term in the Greek. And so what he's saying is for those who have been given this spiritual charge to watch over you, you need to listen to them. Now again, these messages are not easy for preachers to preach because they do seem a little self-serving. But it's here in God's Word. If I'm going to be faithful to God's Word, I've got to preach everything that's in here. And this is in here. And it says this. Now, what is the picture here again of shepherding? Well, we see it right here. They watch out for your soul. They keep watch over you. They keep watch over you. Many commentators noted that that language is common to shepherds. those who watch over their flocks. In fact, one of the most famous passages in all the scripture that we read every Christmas says that the shepherds were in the field keeping watch over their flocks by night. So again, it's a picture here again of shepherds, of those who are given charge, given watch over the flock of God. And I want you to think for a moment about the importance of that role. because the reality of that role is that it is a protective role. It's an instructive role. Yes, you're trying to teach the sheep to stay together and what to watch out for and that sort of thing, but it's also a protective role. A shepherd, a good shepherd would lay down his life for the flock he was in charge of. I think some experts said that one time, right? Jesus Christ himself. He said the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. He doesn't run. He fights. He fights for his sheep. He stands and he stands guard before the sheep and puts himself between the sheep and danger. And that's just the reality of what we're called to be. It's not an easy job in that sense. Now, it may be easy a lot of the time, but there'll come times where danger comes and your elders better be the first ones in line for the battle. They better be. And they better not run, right? That's the point. They better not run. In fact, Jesus said the one who runs in the moment of trouble is a hireling. He's no shepherd at all. I would ask us to think about how we have designated our pastorates over the last hundred years as employees, directly violating the Word of God. directly violating God's Word because God said you're not to be an employee. You are not to be a hireling. If my motivation is simply to get a paycheck, I don't deserve to be up here. The Bible also has instructions about those things as well. We realize we can't speak of everything this morning. But we realize the importance of this, that Jesus said that we are to be those who stand in the battle lines, defend the flock, preach the truth, in season, out of season. That is a primary ministry of the preacher, is to proclaim God's Word when it's comfortable and when it's not comfortable, when it stings and when it's comforting. Because God's Word is what we need to guard us, to guard us. So my friends, as you think about this, He must oversee the souls of those that are put under His keep. He watches out for them. And again, we can think for a moment, well again, that's fanciful language, you know, how risky is it? Well, for me, it's not been too risky. I mean, honestly, it's just, you know, you've got to stand on some hard truths sometimes. But the reality is, throughout the 2,000 years of church history, it's been very risky for pastors. It has cost them a great deal. And my friends, sometimes it probably is good that trouble comes because you see what metal your pastor's made of, right? If he's in it for the money, he's gonna hit the highway, right? He's gonna leave. If he's in it for the glory of God and for the good of the church, then he'll remain. And so my friends, we see here some of these things that are important to wrestle with, but it's also in our world today. All around the world, we have brothers who are in the ministry as pastors all over this world who are risking their lives doing what we're doing here this morning. They're gathering in basements or in workplaces where nobody knows that they're at and they are gathering to proclaim the Word of God and they are doing it at great risk. The pastor, but also the members. It's not just we have a question if the pastor will stand in a day like that. Will the church members stand in a day like that? But what we know from all over the world is the first person rounded up and arrested is usually the elders, right? They're the first ones. Deacons next, teachers next, and you just work your way down that flow chart until you get down to the common members, and they're going to be rounded up eventually too. In China, we see it. Right? Whenever you hear about trouble, the first people arrested are the pastors in the non-state churches. They get rounded up, arrested. Whenever you hear about some purge in North Korea, we hear through the wire, it's always they're looking for the church leaders. They're happy to kill anybody in North Korea, but the pastors are their chief concern, right? And we see this all over the world, all over the world. So what I'm asking today is not just to think about our own church here, but to think about the church here. to think about pastors all over this world and the fact that they do watch out, oftentimes at great cost. If you're a pastor in a house church in Iran, or if you're a pastor in some underground church in somewhere like Pakistan or something, you're not doing it for money. You're probably not getting paid at all. You're not doing it for prestige. Who holds you in esteem? The five or six people that are in your congregation? In most churches in America, you're not really doing it for pay or prestige. I guess there's some churches where people are clearly doing it for pay and prestige, making millions of dollars, having yachts and all this sort of thing. But they kind of make their motivations clear to all of us, don't they? But again, as we look at this, we recognize that for most pastors, for the biblical pastor, he's in it for the glory of God and for the good of the church. As we think about this, we realize there's been a lot done wrong in our churches in terms of the structure. And we've seen, we've talked about in our own Baptist tradition of the last century where somehow we went from elders to deacons being like a CEO board, or I guess a board of directors, and the pastor being a hired position that answers to them. Clearly not biblical. And we see other situations where the pastor waits for the business meeting to find out what he's allowed to do and not allowed to do, and these sorts of things. None of these models are from the Scriptures. None of them are from the Scriptures. And so we recognize that our Baptists, I believe, I've not made this secret at all, I think our Baptist fathers got this right. And they would say something like this, you could read that in Keech, you could read that in Cox, you could read that in any of the early Baptist fathers, something worded very much like that. Very much like that. And I think they observed that in the early church, and again through the years things went a little bit awry, but I think we see that structure in the scriptures. This is the very thing Benjamin Keech is talking about as we put books out on our table. which we've tried to do for education purposes, right, to read and think about these things. Are we doing it the right way? Have we done it the right way? And Benjamin Keech in that little book called The Glory of the True Church is setting out what makes a beautiful or glorious church, local church, what makes it glorious or beautiful? And I think very much that's the question of today's text. How do you have a profitable ministry, a beautiful ministry, a ministry that is for God's glory and the good of the church? How do we all gain from this experience? And our author says there is a way and we need to think about it and think rightly about it and that at the heart of it is proper leadership. You may remember that we talked about that hospitality phase. We said if there's a guy in the front yard with a machete with blood all over it, you're not obligated by that command to welcome him into your house, right? You're allowed to lock the door and call the police. Likewise, we see all the time abusive pastors. Pastors are in it for money, for fame. We saw unfortunately this week in I think Middle Tennessee, a pastor who committed suicide after he got arrested for abusing a child. I mean, these things happen. The Scriptures is not saying that you owe submission to such a leader, obedience to such a leader. Obviously, those people have shown themselves to be more wolves than shepherds. And Paul told us in Acts 20, to be wary. He said to the Ephesian elders, after I leave, ravenous wolves will come. My friends, that's not atypical. If we're not preparing ourselves for the wolves coming in, with doctrine that we need to know to stand against and refute, we're not preparing as the Lord told us to prepare. And again, who are the front line? Who are the vanguard of that? It's your shepherds. It's your elders. It's those who are supposed to be the ones to recognize error and say, no, no, not here, not here. And so again, we need to recognize this and to think through this and realize that to have the beautiful church, we need to hear what the scriptures say about church structure. And again, we would just point out that any basic understanding or writing about what an elder is would say that there are several things an elder does. We've talked about this many times on discussions of elders. Elders, let me just go through those three terms used in the scripture for elders, right? So presbuteros, the elders, they're the idea of those who are senior, those who take the leading position, who watch over, have some measure of authority. Episkopos, bishop, what does that mean? Overseer or ruler, that's where this very idea is coming from. Those who oversee the church and its body. And then lastly, poymen, shepherds, those who lead the sheep, guard the sheep, feed the sheep, and are willing to lay down their life to defend the sheep. So all that is implicit in what we're talking about there. And then deacons have a noble ministry as well of service under the Lord's Church. And so my friends, they're both needed because they're both given to us in Scripture. And so we need to recognize that. And I just want to point out again, because it needs to be said, that it makes the point that the people that you're asked to submit to are those who themselves submit to the Lord. Again, the examples we gave earlier of these pastors that you should be able to tell pretty quickly are not sound pastors. They're not submitting to the Lord. And so again, you're not called in those situations to submit to them. But if you have a pastor that you know is serving the Lord, then this is what the text says. That brings me to my second point, because it's an important point implicit in this text, and I think we'll see this, that there is a call to gospel listening. Because we might walk through this text and say, wait a minute, there's no evidence of rowdy, riotous behavior going on in this church. There's nothing at all said about this. I mean, maybe the worst charges are they've neglected attending, they're no longer being as hospitable to Christian visitors, they're not identifying with the people of God in the town square, but there's no rioting going on. There's no complete chaos in the church, it would seem. So in what way is he telling them to submit? I think immediately we recognize that there's an endorsement of these leaders in this text. There's an endorsement that these must be good leaders or the author wouldn't be saying, the divinely inspired author would not be saying to obey them and to be submissive to them. These people are getting, if you will, the apostolic check mark, right? They're okay. They're okay. You need to listen to them and submit to them. And you wonder, well, what is it that they're not doing? What are they not submitting to? What are they not listening to? What are they not obeying? And I think if we'd had to think for a moment, it's probably the content of this letter. It's probably that they've been the ones on the front line teaching and preaching to these people saying, you can't go back. You can't go back to Moses. You can't go back to the synagogue. You can't go back to Sinai. You can't go back to any of that stuff. You need to listen. Your mortal soul is endangered by what you're doing. And they're not listening. For whatever reason, they're not listening. They're withdrawing. I'm sure the pastor's saying, you need to be in church. You know, we don't often think about this, but, you know, it is a call of God's people to be in church. Do not neglect the gathering of the saints. It is the call for us to be in church. It might be that they're withdrawing from fellowship, and the pastor's saying, hey, listen, as church members, you need to be here. You need to be here. And they say, I hear you, pastor, but we're not coming. Well, that's a lack of obedience, isn't it? I mean, that's just the reality of it. That's a lack of obedience. That's a lack of proper submission. But again, there's nothing here in the text that leads you to think there's anything out of sorts here. They're asking the things that elders should be asking. They're doing the things that elders should be doing. And in some way they're not listening. And so my friends, they need to listen to the gospel ministry. They need to listen to the gospel ministry. And I'll say this, this is at the feet of preachers too, because too many preachers don't preach the gospel and don't preach the Word of God. It's a two-way street here, right? Both sides need to be doing what they're called to do. The preacher needs to be preaching the gospel and defending the sheep, and the sheep need to be listening. and need to stay as part of the flock in that sense. And so as you think about it here, there's an important message of this. Why are they doing it? Why are they teaching it? Are they trying to manipulate you with the gospel? Trying to manipulate you for your good? This message of grace, of the free gift of God that's given to you in Jesus Christ? No. My friends, again, if you have a reason to believe they have an ulterior motive or there's something wrong, then that's good reason. But again, what he's saying here is these are people who are preaching the word to you and you're not listening. And as you think about this, it's called to listen. If we return to that pericope idea here, this is one of the things that pleases God. Who ordained the structure of the church? Wasn't me. Wasn't you. In fact, whenever we've been the ones to do it, we've messed it up. In fact, I think that book we put out on deacons every once in a while is in the rotation, you know. John Owens goes hard after the Catholic Church for redefining what deacons are. He's like, they have no right to do that. God ordained what deacons are. That could just as easily be written to Southern Baptists over the last 100 years. Corrupted what deacons are to their own image. My friends, pastors, elders corrupted into the image that we wanted rather than what God gave to us. Entertainment supervisors, you know, let's have a three ring circus and I'll be the person to lead it and we'll get by our own wisdom where we want to go. My friends, none of that's in the Scriptures. And so we need to recognize here that it's important to look to God's Word and to listen to God's Word, both the congregation and the leaders. We need to be listening to God's Word, hearing what it says, and then trying our best by God's grace to lead the church there. All right, so I want to go to our final point now, which is a call to profitable ministry. Because this is really, I believe, at the heart of this. It's the entire reasoning that he gives. You think, well, be submissive, obey those who have rule over you, those who are watching out for you. Let them do it with joy and not with grief. And you think, well, yeah, that'd be profitable to them. That's the reason to do it. It's profitable for our pastor. But actually that's not the argument given in the text. The argument in the text is it's profitable for you. It's for your good, right? It's for what is good for you to be in this situation. Does it make it easier for your pastor? Of course it does. Of course it does. Does it make it easier for your deacon? If everything is in the proper order and done in the right way, yes. Does it make it better for everyone in the church? I think the argument here is yes. That's the point that Keech is getting at in the glory of the true church. If a church can be designed, right, by God's grace and brilliance, the design he's given us, if it can be built around that and all the church members enter in with proper motives. Now, we all know we're human beings, right? We're all human beings. It's never gonna be perfect, but the closer we can get to that, the more glorious it will be. The closer we'll be to something like heaven on earth, so to speak, right, loosely speaking. And what does that look like? That looks like leaders who are leading where they believe God wants them to lead. Believing that they are serving the church, trying their best to serve the church and to serve the Lord. both elders and deacons. And that means all those other things that we have in our churches, organizations, and if you have committees or you have office or whatever it is, those things all in their proper place and structure so that the church is functioning well. And that goes back to what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians about our gifts, right? That each of us are bringing our gifts to bear, not for our glory. And by the way, all of us can be guilty of this, of wanting to use our gifts in such a way that it brings glory to me, and I get preeminence. And that's a fault pastors can have, and that's a fault church members can have. And my friends, we can recognize it in other people, we just can't recognize it in ourselves. We can see when people are trying to put themselves out in front. But we can't see it in ourselves and so we have to be humble and pray to the Lord for help in identifying these things and recognizing that there is a problem here in the churches if we're not careful. I've said for many years that this church has been a blessed church. And we are thankful that we have good members here and so forth, but it's something that we have to be on guard against. We have to think about. We always have to be watching out for or very quickly we can sink into the model that we see in 1 Corinthians because that is the problem at the heart of 1 Corinthians. It's of being self-centered. Spurgeon, I saw this quote this week, speaking of this very verse, said this, but as to making themselves the servants of others for Christ's sake, or watching over others for their good, and being content to be made of no reputation in order that other people might be lifted up, they do not go in for that sort of thing. Clearly, they have not learned obedience." This is the entire point of what Paul says of Jesus. Which one of us is more glorious than Jesus or more worthy of esteem or honor than Jesus? And yet Jesus, as Paul says, being in the very form of God, made himself of no reputation. Took on the appearance, the role of a bondservant. Became obedient to death, even the death of the cross. This is kind of the entire point of the feet washing scene, right, in the Gospel of John. At first Peter's like, I will not let you wash my feet, Lord. Jesus said, if you don't let me wash your feet, you have no part or lot with me. And then he instructs him to wash one another's feet. And some churches take that very literally and we have feet washing services or whatever. But I think the point is really more about application, isn't it? About if the Lord humbled himself to serve us, which one of us can't humble ourselves to serve one another? That's the point here. And a church that will be glorious is a church that doesn't stand on privilege, doesn't stand on all these sorts of things, but comes together as a people looking to serve the Lord. And to give ourselves to one another, all these gifts that we have, to one another for each other's good. That's what Paul says, given to each for the benefit of all. Far too often we think given to me for my benefit, my praise, my acclamation, my uplifting, wrong. That's sinfulness. That's just the opposite of why it's given to you. It's given to you that you may serve others and build them up. And if ever, and this is a great test, we're thinking me, me, me, me, me, you're wrong, right? You know right there you're wrong. You're wrong. We need to be thinking about us, us, us as a body. And so my friends, as we think about this, it's important to work through this. What kind of church will we be? We're right now working on the bylaws. We've got a documents committee that's working on the bylaws. part of this in the very things that we're talking about. We recognize that as a church, and I think we've joked about this, but it's literally true, bought our bylaws from Broadman, you know, in the 1960s. We're thinking through what should a church look like? What is a biblical church? How is it structured? We've talked about this for a long time. What kind of church will we be? What kind of church will we be? Will it be a church that is a church that's biblical, elders and deacons? A church in which the church members are involved and giving of themselves for the good of the body. What's beautiful is if we can get out of our own way, right, and that's always a problem with human beings, but if we can get out of our own way, you won't even think about structure anymore because it all just flows and works and everybody's giving and everybody's loving one another and it can be a glorious thing. And where you read in church history of those sorts of things happening, it's amazing. We don't have time to go into all this today, but one day I think we ought to have a class on revivals historically. Martin Lloyd-Jones wrote an awesome book on revivals. And when you see revivals happen, and oftentimes people think revivals are awakenings. I think there's a distinction there. Awakenings are when the gospel goes out to people who are not in the church. And there is evangelism, and we've seen those things happen. They're often called revivals. But even in those, it starts in the Lord's church. Something happens. Something happens. And people get out of their own way by the grace of God. And they begin to love one another and commit to one another and want to be involved in the church and be a part of it. And they want to use their gifts for the good of the church. And amazing things start happening. And oftentimes preachers, you'll notice the preachers are trying to attribute it to themselves because they'll say, I don't understand. I didn't do anything differently. Yeah, because you're not the one doing it, right? You know, they would say, well, I preach this, I mean, in the Scottish, or the Welsh revival, they would say, the preacher said, we preach the same messages, the same length, the same content, you know, everything was the same, the same hymns. But the impact was different, right? The impact was different. People, hearts were broken and stirred. People suddenly felt like, what can I do for Christ's cause and his church? not as some means of earning God's grace, but as a means of thanking God and living before God rightly. And these churches that would oftentimes be empty would suddenly be full again, and communities won to Christ. The results of these things are amazing. They can't be manufactured. You know, we've seen, I think, too often people trying to manufacture revival. And when that happens, it doesn't live long, doesn't last long. The effects are not very impressive. But when God moves, nations change, cities change, people change, lives change to the glory of God. That's what I want to see. And I can't do that. Y'all know the Babylon Bee. I remember one of the earliest ones I ever saw, the Babylon Bee. It said, Baptist deacons mad when Holy Spirit messes up their plans for revival. And it could just as easily be true of Baptist preachers, right? We know that. We need to be careful. We need to realize revival is in God's territory. But God can revive a church and give us a glorious, beautiful church. Amen.