Welcome to our lesson, our fourth lesson on Psalm 4. And I've entitled it, What is the Goal of Your Faith? And we'll be finishing out the psalm looking at verses six through eight. But first, let us look at two slides from the previous lesson to fixate our minds to focus our minds actually on what is the goal of the psalm? What is David trying to tell himself as well as tell us? And more importantly, since these are inspired, what is God trying to tell you through this psalm? Because when you come right down to it, when you read the Bible, it is about you. That's why you're reading the Bible. What can I learn? If you're reading it out of curiosity, if you're reading it out of a historical perspective, you're getting nothing out of it. Now, I'm not like Barth saying that, well, if it moves you, then it's the word of God to you. I don't want to fall into that fallacy. That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that when you come to the scriptures, you're looking for something. And the Holy Spirit is trying to teach you something through the scriptures. That's his major tool. If you don't come to the Bible, Holy Spirit doesn't have much to use to teach you. Life experiences by themselves are worthless. They lead to hopelessness, helplessness, fear, and entrench you in your sin, which is degradation and violence. In other words, they harden your heart. If that's all you have to go by are life experiences, you have nothing that's gonna help your faith. You have to come to the word of God to understand the why of your life experiences. So if you're one of those people, I'm sad to say it's majority of those who call themselves Christians Who don't come to the Bible much? It's complex it's contradictory it's confusing Well, it's all those things because you don't come to the Bible much yeah, you don't try to learn it It's like any other discipline You have to study it. It's different from every other discipline in the fact that your major mentor is the writer of the scripture. You want to know how to interpret the scriptures? You go to the original author, which in this case, Holy Spirit. And he will teach you the original intent. Now we tend to confuse that and conflate that as we go along. And we have to be careful as students of the scripture that we don't do that. But since we see us through an enigma while we're in these bodies of flesh, we always miss that mark. There's never any true, absolute knowledge of the scripture. We're just torn apart by the tossing winds of doctrine. Because Satan is the master of words. Sinful master of words. And we are often confused by them. So when we talked about in our last lesson, Meditation reveals one's heart. What do you think on? Now, you may not use the word meditation, but your mind is working constantly. Even when you're sleeping, it's working. In fact, those things that you have fixated your mind on, well, that's forming the foundation of your prayers. Well, I don't pray often. No, you don't consciously pray often. But what you have fixated your mind on, that forms the foundation of what you're asking for, whether you phrase it in a prayer to God or not. Remember, prayer is nothing more than talking to God. It's communication. You're just talking to God. These formal set-piece prayers in the scriptures are there for our example. They're not there for us to repeat ad infinitum, like some magic incantation that God is going, oh, they said the right words with the right motion, with the right fervor. All right, they're learning. I can answer that prayer now. Only we do it in King James ish Because it has the same effect And yet we tend to miss this point That we don't know what's going on. We don't know what's going on. We don't know what's going on. We don't know what's going on We don't know what's going on. We don't know what's going on. We don't know what's going on. We don't know what's going on. We don't know what's going on Communication that's meaningful comes from the depths. It comes from your anguish. It comes from your fears. It comes from your joys. It doesn't come from the cold, dead intellect. Now, you need intellect. I'm not saying reasoning is wrong, because reasoning is what controls the emotions and keeps them from running amok. But if you're praying strictly for mental act, well, that's just as bad. You need that emotional component. You need them both. They both have to be at work. Whereas the Zazek keeps the emotions in check, keeps them focused, the emotions energize the intellect. They give it power, they give it fervor. They give it intensity. And it's especially important that we understand the right intensity. Anger is the wrong intensity. And of course, we went into some detail on this because Paul says, In the English, anyway, be angry, sin not. Well, that's not really what Paul is saying in the Greek, nor is that what David is writing in the Hebrew. He's not saying it's okay to be angry. In fact, you have a command to be angry. Just don't sin while you're being angry. Now, the imperative is on don't sin. Well, if you could be angry and not sin, I want to know your secret. Well, I have righteous anger. Yeah, well, God's infinite. I don't think he needs you in your righteous indignation. Well, how about Christ? Yep. Went in and cleansed the temple. Yep, he was definitely angry. God right there Could you and I going to do that and not be sinning? No, we'd have we're better than this. We're better than you and and and We'd be sinning I Don't think there's a moment that you can be angry and not sin And trust me I have a lot of experience with anger. None of it good. And over the years it has calmed down a lot. But it's a human condition. It's a sin condition. Because we want to condemn others. We want that control. We want to be able to stand up and self-justify ourselves and see I am right. You guys attacked me for no reason. God has vindicated me. Well, that's not how it works. That's how sin works. But that's not how God works. It should be vindicating God. And isn't that what Christ was doing when he said, my father's house? There's nobody else who can make that statement. And meditation. reveals your heart by what you meditate on, by what you're thinking on. Remember, you're always in a state of worship. There's never a time you're not worshiping. Well, I only worship when I go to church on Sunday, when I sit in that pew, listen to that for an hour and a half, and listen to whatever they are, trying to stay awake. No, that's not worship. That definitely isn't worship. You're in a state of worship when always it is the source from which you make decisions, all decisions. It is. Your source of values of right and wrong. Now, the loss that source is always sin. The Christian. The struggle for the Christian is to be focused on the scriptures and turning the other cheek. I don't want to turn the other cheek. I want to be justified. I want to march in there like Joe with my offenses on my shoulder and slam them down and say, I am justified. Kneel But that's sin Yeah, that is absolutely the wrong attitude And Christ is our example in this he was a humble slave to the father About what commands us to be to refrain from anger and reject wrath and because God will judge. And the pathway to humility, or Hebel, is recognizing and meditating on your sins, your wrongs. How did you offend others? How did you meditate upon and ponder upon that which is not right? Why did you not go to the Bible for answers? And then I want us to look one more time on the organization of this Psalm. As we finish it up, I want us to reflect back on what we brought out near the beginning of our study here. is that this psalm has an organization. It's a story, it has a message. You had the prologue, the father hears prayers and will answer based on his righteousness. And then in the first stanza, sinners seek to turn one's righteousness in God into shame, but God preserves those he saved. Stanza two. Inclination is self-vindication. That's what we want to do. And that is what we cannot do because it's not about us. That's sin. In sin, it's always about you. And in your conflicts, it's always about coveting. We are to be silent and offer the right sacrifices of a broken and contrite heart. That's repentance and humility. Not to answer evil with evil. Stanza three, which is what we're covering today along with the epilogue, is the fifth column movement questions. And we'd have you question God. God gives spiritual peace while many look to material bounty, which passes away. And finally, the epilogue, we rest in the Father, which is peace and safety, now and in eternity. Not so much for sinners. Why are they restless? Why are they constantly agitating? Because they have fear. They're looking for some security against God and his judgment by which they can justify their sin, and there is none, because the only rock that stands before the judgment of the Father is that rock that is cut out without hands, which is Christ. If you're gonna build your house on the rock, it has to be built solely on Christ. Anything else is like sand. That sand looks hard. You walk on the beach, near the water line, and that sand is hard. It's compacted. But as waves come in and you're standing there, they erode the sand underneath your feet, and if you're not careful, you're gonna fall face first in that water. That's building your house on anything but Christ. But if you're building your house on Christ without the Bible, it's like Building with stones and no mortar what's gonna hold stones together? What's gonna hold the bricks there? You just push and they all come to tumbling down That's why you need the scriptures they are the mortar That hold the parts together And that's, of course, being taught by the Spirit of God, because the Holy Spirit is what holds the whole body together. It's a connective tissue of the whole body of Christ. And I want us to remember that David wrote this because of the result of Absalom's rebellion, but it's reprioritizing David, refocusing his thoughts, his attention. The Lord gave his kingdom to David, who greatly abused his authority. Thus, the Lord removed David from being king, humbling him publicly and privately. Now, we need to think about comparing David to Saul. Saul didn't do anything near as despicable as what David did. There is no place in scripture that we can point to where David took another man's wife and had that man murdered by the state. Nowhere. When Christians sin, they sin terribly. And when those lost people that are exposed to Christianity and rejected, they are the worst of the worst. There is no fear of God before their eyes. David did the unspeakable. And as a theocratic king, he was operating in the authority of God. He was making God his partner in sin in the eyes of the people. And so God says, OK. Here's my pronouncement upon you. Since this is what you have done, here are the consequences from those who are watching you and learning from you and being very afraid of you. If you can do that to someone who is absolutely trustworthy and unquestionably loyal, what are you going to do to me who's now thinking, I'm afraid of you? What is going to prevent you from removing me, eliminating me, when you want something that I have? Remember, Ahab did this a couple of generations down the road here in Northern Kingdom of Israel. Yet, for what Saul did, God removed him and his family, his posterity. So when he says David's a man after my own heart, that's not because David instinctively was a good guy. That's because God was gonna take David and make him through the Hagizo process a man after his own heart. and then it's going to be down the road and it's going to be the same for every one of us. That is the result, the final result of the new covenant. That was the promise God was holding out to them in the Old Testament. Saul is the picture of the believer with one foot in the world and one foot in the temple and not really studying the scriptures and being taught of others and being surrounded by advisors who are giving him advice, but not based on scripture. He's not looking to God as the source of his faith. He lives in fear. You cannot eliminate fear by just eliminating fear. That's psychology. That comes out of the pit of hell and it doesn't work. So the Holy Spirit teaching David the true priorities of a spiritual relationship with God. That is what we're seeing in these early Psalms here. Reprioritizing We all should be doing this. We all should be looking at ourselves from time to time and saying, why am I doing this? Why do I believe? Why do I come to the scriptures? What am I expecting my faith to accomplish? And is it doing that? this self-reflection, we should be constantly thinking about it. Because now David is, now we don't know if David wrote the psalm while the rebellion was still going on, he was writing for his life, or if The rebellion was over, Absalom was dead, David's back in Jerusalem. And he's thinking, pondering. All that has happened. See, David's error is that he chose Satan's goals rather than Christ's goals. The sinner and the immature judge their faith by their control. Stop control of others, which fails. It always fails. Because Satan will never, ever, ever let you have independent control. You have control only insofar as it serves his goals. And when he has no need of you anymore, he throws you in the trash can. Now, if you question this, go look at the great influencers throughout history, especially since the Renaissance, the artists, the musicians, look at their lives, all tragic, almost all of them tragic, confused, desperate people, tragic lives. Because once their message was out and their usefulness was done, Satan just deserted them. Leonardo da Vinci died in despair and anger. He should have, according to the mythology, understood his greatness and died in the great hope that all was going to be great, based on his direction and guidance. That's not how it happened. Because when you die without Christ, You die in hopelessness and despair and fear. Or you're ignorant. See, Christ and the mature in Christ seek a relationship beyond materialism that will not pass away. Well, materialism will pass away. They look for a city to come. And this is evidenced by the hope, the joy, the peace they experience being secure in the Father. Because that which they hope for is beyond corruption. See, anything you grasp for in this life is corruptible. Christ said this in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. You cannot serve God and mammon. And we're going to come to that. And why gain these treasures were moth and rust us corrupt. And thieves can break through and steal. Because that's what happens. Now, whom do you serve? And this is embodied in the question here. And let's go read our verses in Psalm. There are many who say, who will show us some good? Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord. You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound. In peace, I will both lie down and sleep. For you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety. Who will show us some good? We go to the Wednesday night prayer meetings. What are we praying for? Who will show us some good? Lord, pay my bills. Lord, pay my car payment. Lord, remove my opposition to work. Lord, remove my opposition in life. Lord, pray for the president. Lord, make the country great again. Lord, give us stuff. And more stuff. Oh, and we need more stuff. No. That does not work. Let's go to Matthew 6. That's right in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. And Christ has been talking here since verse 19. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is there, your heart will be also. and down to verse 24, no one. Now let's think about that phrase right there. No one. That includes everybody. Excludes nobody. You think you're special. You're lying to yourself. No one can serve two masters. A wife will either serve her husband or serve her kids or look to serve someone else. She can't do all three. The husband will serve his wife or his children or his job or others, but not all four. Whom do you serve? Look yourself in the mirror and with this verse in mind and be deadly honest with yourself. Whom are you serving? Because you don't do that. People don't do this. They're not getting serious about their faith. This is just fire insurance so I can go on living happy and free and then just say, oh God, forgive me. How'd that work for David? Oh God, forgive me that I murdered a man, took his wife because she was cute. How's that working? Well, David got the kingdom back. Yeah, he got the kingdom back, but he lost his family. He was never secure again. And the advice he gave Solomon was despicable advice. Kill off all my enemies. I didn't kill them off because they were helping me. I want you to kill them off for me. It was despicable advice. We need to make sure we stay focused in the reality of the scriptures. Well, I can balance husband or wife and children and job. Yeah, you can balance your time, but not your loyalty. No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. Well, I know to my kids, I don't hate my husband or my wife. Yeah, you do. You have robbed them of their position. of love that was, you pledged to give to them, you have given to others. This is the sin. Man and woman, man had pledged himself to woman. Man had pledged himself to God. And then man, worshipped himself in sin. And what was the first thing he did when confronted by God? Threw the woman under the bus. It's her fault. She tricked me. God says, no, nobody tricked you. She was tricked, but you weren't. You're just lying now. And she could say, well, Satan tricked me. That's true. Doesn't justify you. You're still sinning. They didn't even ask Satan because Satan's already condemned. What was the point of asking him? But it shows us. Whom do you serve? Man ended up serving himself. Woman ended up serving herself. And guess what? No one can serve two masters. And so you always serve yourself. This is the very heart of sin. Now, of course, Christ here is saying you cannot serve God and mammon. Mammon is not just money. We're not making this an economic issue. Christ didn't make this an economic issue. He was talking about you cannot serve both God and everything else that encompasses the world, the cosmos. You know, when you're saying the world in there, it's a Greek word, cosmos, so you have to get the meaning from the context. And in this context, it's everything outside of Christ. But we cannot confuse this with the call to asceticism. Well, I'll just be like the Catholics in the medieval period, the monks and the nuns and go live in the caves and see, I'll be bad, better. like Francis of Assisi. No, you'd just be just as dead a sinner, only you wouldn't have enjoyed life. Aestheticism, as Christ clearly taught, doesn't work. In fact, he said, if you cannot handle what you can see, you can't handle what you can't see. Well, if I give everything up, then concentrate on spiritual stuff, then I'll be good. Well, Christ says, no, that doesn't work that way. And Paul hammers this home in Colossians chapter two, that all you're doing is pandering to the flesh and making it stronger. In other words, you're not accomplishing what you think you're accomplishing. You're actually destroying yourself. And James tells us that this is where Christians fail at. Actually, this is where everybody fails at, but the lost. They're immersed in it. War. You can be great. You can have glory. You can have honor. You can have, well, he can have it. I don't want to fight war because I don't want to die and get hacked up. Yeah, it's nasty stuff. So I'll cheer on you so you can go do it for me. But James 4, 1 through 4 says, the wars, the strife, the conflicts, where do they come from? coverslessness, sin, because coverslessness is the foundation of all sin. I want. So the proper perspective keeps the mammon from controlling you as you learn humility, desiring peace with God through Christ's Hagiazo process. Romans 5, three through five, explains why do we have the troubles? Why do we have the trials? Why must I go through this stuff? We rejoice in our sufferings, in our slipses, that's tribulations. Knowing that tribulations produce Hypomene. Endurance. An endurance that produces character, which produces hope in God, because hope does not put us to shame, it drives us to God. In humility and repentance. Because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. I don't want to disabuse you as you're singing these modern songs of how much you love God and God should be grateful that you love him and you're proud to tell the world you love God because you're great. That's not how love works. We don't love. The only reason we love is God pours love into us and we're just reflecting that back to him. People tend to get very confused about this. And they get confused because they don't read the scriptures correctly. Because we're still grasping after all this. So David went from having every one satisfied. Everyone he wanted. to appreciating having his needs met, from palace to a tent on the run, just as before he became king." And I says, remember the good old days? We're going to bring them back. Remember when you ran from Saul and you lived in caves and lived in fear of your life? Welcome to today. When you sin, God allows that which you greatly fear to come upon you. Because Satan hates you. I don't think people really understand hate. I'm not sure that people can really, on their own, effectively hate another. But Satan literally hates us. Mankind in general, because we were going to take his place. He was going to serve us. And he wasn't happy with that. And he especially does not hate believers because they are proving him wrong just by being saved. He hates you. So that thing that you greatly fear comes back to you when you sin. God takes you right back to that pathway. He says, you want to sin? There you go. Oh, you didn't like that. That's why you got saved. That was the motivator that opened your eyes and made you cry out, Abba, Father, save me. I repent. Then you got complacent. Well, here you go. Go back there again. See how much you like that. But we tend to ignore this. Now the phraseology, lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord. This comes out of number 626. And this is Moses, as he was speaking to Aaron and his sons, saying, thus you shall bless the people of Israel. You shall say to them, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. So shall he put my name upon the people of Israel and I shall bless them. What's getting David shows that he's been reading the scriptures. He knows them. Now, these are the scriptures does not mean you don't sin. I mean, you come back. It means. that you begin to realize how much you need God, Christ, the Spirit. You begin learning humility in the repentance because you have failed to do it on your own. So here are these people saying, Who will show us of good? Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord. Give us stuff." See, they're misusing it. And David is quoting them. He's not saying this is him. He's quoting them. See, if God loved us, he'd give us stuff. He'd give us control. He'd give us the great moral majority, and we'd be in control, and we would pass the right laws, and we would go marching into the future of peace and prosperity and, I said, that's post-millennialism. Well, when Christ comes, see, we're going to live in this great millennial kingdom of our own making and Christ comes, we're going to give it to him. Say, see what we did? Aren't we great? No. That's not how that works. That's not humility. That's why post-millennialism fails. It constantly fails. It's making a resurgence, but it started a great defeat at the beginning of the 20th century. It just stayed dead. See? By saying this, I think that the people would have attributed this back to Moses and back to the priesthood, and they would have understood the despicableness of Saul. Saul did something that David did not do. Saul had all the priests murdered in Nab. Had them all wiped out. David was relearning that God desires a humbled, repentant soul who looked to Him. Since David accepted discipline, he proved he was of God. He proved that God was working through him. But even greater than that, it proved that God was faithful to his covenant with David, a covenant he did not make with Saul. With Saul, it was always fear. I have to eliminate David. He's my competition. I'm fixated on David. I'm fixated on David. I'm fixated on David. He should have been fixated on Saul and Saul's sin and say, I have sinned. God, you have taken the kingdom away from my family. I have sinned. Lord, teach us to live in humility. Teach us to live in meekness. Teach us to live in your way. Those words never fell out of Saul's mouth. Christ lived humbly during his first advent, and Christ tempted him often, yet he did not sin. See all those displays in Matthew 4, the three temptations of Christ. Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life. That's why the three of them. We're all about Christ being God. If you're God, turn these stones into bread. If you're the son of God, throw yourself off the cliff. He'll catch it. Hmm. But if you want glory, you're stuck in this body. I know it's a terrible thing. But if you want glory, you could have control of this mud ball here. Every kingdom will be yours. Just worship me. Now, if you know logic, you understand what's going on here. You could have every kingdom. under my control." In other words, you'll have no control at all. You'll be subject to me. Christ says, no, I don't think so. That's not how this works. I'm God. You rebuild and I'm not going to reward you for it. You see, this is the indicative of parents. The kid rebels, and the parents say, okay, it's okay. You can have control of your life and your family, and we'll make you feel great and wanted and wonderful, and we'll confront you how you really make and source your own problems, you know that, don't you? And you'll like me, and I'll kind of like you, and then you'll be cursing me throughout all eternity, but I won't hear you. See, Christ looked ahead to the goal of securing salvation, of honoring his father. What's our goal? What are we looking ahead toward? It should be in the epilogue, that of peace. David. the writer, Christ, who's really truly the subject of this poem, this psalm, and the believer, because we are hidden Christ, he's our example and we can learn from this, rest because of peace in God through Christ. We have peace with God. Romans 5, we have peace with God. Not because we do, but because he does and did. Christ reconciled us. When we were still sinners, Christ died for us. That's why Arminianism fails. All you have to do is think about this in light of scripture, and it fails. Material possessions and lust for control do not satisfy. Because you always want more. And you're always insecure because moth and rust corrupts and people steal. We're out. We're taken. Everything material is transitory. Nothing removes the fear that remains because of coming judgment. And you go die. And it all gets left behind. And the only thing that follows you is your works, your words, your thoughts, your deeds. They do follow you. Those are those books that are opened up. And the only reason the saved are saved is because God wrote their names down in the book of life before They were created. Ephesians 1. God rejects the proud. This flows through the scripture, as David discovered. Those who humble themselves in Christ draw near to God, who draws near to you. James is writing this. After James describes where do wars and fightings come, They come from you. Now if you want to stop this, humble yourself to God. You want to know how to stop wars? Humble yourself to God. You want to understand how to stop marital conflicts? How to stop family conflicts? Humble yourselves to God. Think on your sins. Think on what you did to others. Think on what you need to repent from. This is only given lip service in evangelical circles. It used to be taught. It kind of got lost. So really, as a song draws to a close, we need to understand that it's not about the stuff. It's about the spiritual. Sin is not about stuff. Sin is about the love of possession of stuff and control. See, too many people want to make this into an economic discussion. It's not about economics. You're not terrible because you're rich. And you're not wonderful because you're poor. Because I'm telling you, if that was the case, we'd all be flocking down to the projects, down to the slums, and walking among the desperately poor, seeing the great and goodness that's inherent in them. Yeah, that'll last you about 60 seconds when you get tar beat out of you, and you get robbed, and you get raped, and you get carjacked, or you get shot. Remember defund the police last year? Remember the rioting? Remember Chad? And the murders that were committed and see the rising violent crime in these major cities because we got compassion on the poor and we're not going to prosecute them so they can do whatever they want. That's just nonsense. Because everybody is culpable because of their love of possessions, their love of control. In fact, these people are kept desperately poor because of somebody else's love for control. Let's go to First Corinthians. Let's go to First Timothy. After six verse 10 for the love of money is a root of all evil. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierce themselves with many pangs. The love of money. You know what another word for this is? Cautiousness. The root of all idolatry, the root of all sin. The qualities of those who love the world is scoffing. Or sarcasm is what we would say today. and because it subverts those who seek Christ. It makes them like themselves disciples of hell. So, Isaiah 29 verse 20. Well, the ruthless shall come to nothing, and the scoffers cease, and all who watch to do evil shall be cut off. Who by a word make a man out to be an offender, and lay a snare for him who reproves in the gate with an empty plea, and turn aside him who is in the right? This is the qualities of those who love the world. They tear down, scoffing. Oh, you know this today is critical theory. It masquerades as a scientism, as an intellectual discipline, making it right. But it's not right because the Bible had condemned it thousands of years ago. It's just part of human sinfulness. Why don't you watch comedies? Well, First of all, for the last 40 years, 50 years, they've been vulgar. They've been disgusting. We're supposed to, as Christians, to be getting out of that. So we have Christian comedy now, which is still tearing down others. It's still scoffing and sarcasm. We're just not doing it to the same degree as the world. But we're still doing it as the world. And its aim is to subvert those who seek Christ. That's what the lost do. Where's the moral majority today? And all those. You're going to say Christ said and Christ in the Bible this, and you get scoffed at. You get laughed out of the room. You get torn down. They start poking at your sins and your character flaws. I have many. I'm not trying to hide that. I'm trying not to give voice to them, but I got them. I got lots. I say, I get reminded all the time. You have teenage kids, you get reminded of your flaws a lot. But that doesn't hide their flaws, that doesn't justify their flaws. That's Romans 2, 1 through 4, 1 through 5, where you point out those whom you believe whose sins are worse than yours, though you're doing the same thing. which by definition makes you guilty. You're literally revealing your own guilt by saying, Lord, they're worse than I am. Hurt them. Leave me alone. See, the goal of discipline and meditation is more fruit of the spirit, even as the world seeks to subvert or remove you. So when we meditate, it's to grow in the spirit, which means to grow in humility. It means to be more like Abel. Now, I don't want to dissuade you from the truth here, but Abel got killed by Cain. the strong one, given of God, at least from his mom's perspective. Here was a son whose mom said, you're going to be great. You're going to be wonderful. God said, you're going to be the one to kick Satan's butt and free us, and you're going to be lord over everybody. He said, I like that idea. I get to be boss. It sounds an awful lot like somebody else in scripture, like Satan. And God says, no, that's not how it's working. So I'm not going to choose you. I'm going to choose your brother there. Oh, you killed him. So even as we become more humble, the world hates us even more. The world seeks to destroy us even more. Because when we come to the end of the Beatitudes, in Matthew 5, starting in verse 2. When we come to their end, Christ closes them with this, blessed are you when others hate you and persecute you and defame you falsely. On my sake, rejoice. If everybody hates you, Everybody's rejoicing that they're better than you, smarter than you, more wonderful than you, less sinful than you. You're to rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you." Wow. That probably was not your goal. That was not the Jews' goal. Their goal was control over everybody. And Christ said, that's not why I picked you. You were the least of the least of the least, so that you could go out and be slaves to the world. taking my message forth, saving people. And yet Christ condemned them, saying, yeah, you go out and save others-ish. You go out and proselyte them and make them twice a child of hell as you yourselves are. That's not of God. That's not why you were picked. In Hebrews 11, starting in verse 32. And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, and Samson, and Japheth, of David, and Samuel, and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, and stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, and put foreign armies to flight. Yeah, I want to be like them. Want to be like David? We're studying while David became great-ish. It wasn't because he was strong. It was because he had power. It wasn't because he had control. Because we saw what he did when he had those. It was when he became humble. Samson had power when he became humble. Women received back their dead by resurrection. And there were a couple who did. Most not. But here's where we need to focus. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release so that they might rise again to a better life. Are you willing to be tortured for your faith? Others suffered mocking and flogging and chains and imprisonment, stoned, sawn in two, killed with a sword. Went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated, whom the world was not worthy, wandering about in deserts and mountains and dens and caves of the earth. Wow. How would you like to run in fear of your life because of your belief in Christ? And you're sitting here saying, Lord, let your face shine upon me. Give me grain, give me wine, pay my bills. God says, I'll show you some bill paying here. Those times are coming back. Are you going to be able to stand for what is right? Are you going to be able to choose Christ if it means that you can't buy food? It means that you will not be able to live in your house. If it means you're going to be driven out of that society and you're not going to be given the access to digital currency that you need to buy and sell and stuff. Are you still going to choose Christ? Are you still going to choose Christ when your children turn you in? meditate on this prepare your minds for this because we can't do this except in the power of christ these are things that are coming we tend to to want to think that the old testament or the bible were just stories and and That happened back then, but that's not today. Today, we're smarter and we're better and we can sway others to do right. We're following a false dream. This world is not redeemable. It was never meant to be redeemable. Only individuals are redeemable. But they're not going to be redeemable if we live like they do. They will never see the difference. Remember Manasseh, 50 years of doing these very things to believers. Putting Isaiah on a hollow tree and sawing him in half. according to the Talmud. Ezekiel, speaking against idolatry, was killed by a Jew who got offended because he wanted his idols. Why? Didn't turn out good for Ezekiel, did it? Not if you're measuring from this life, but if you're measuring From the next life, yeah, it turned out very well for him. Not so good for the other ones. How's it gonna turn out for you? Where's your focus? What are you meditating on? What are you thinking on? What is guiding your thoughts and decisions? I plead with you. And I know the struggle. We all do because Christ did it. He knew the struggle and he can help us through that struggle. Thank you.