All right, First Chronicles chapter number one this morning. Church family, I'll be honest with you, whenever I would come in my Bible reading to First Chronicles chapter one, one through nine, I did not like it, all righty? And I know that we're supposed to like all scripture, okay? So I'm telling you the fleshly side of me. So when I get to my time that I'm gonna have to read the genealogies, and I hesitate saying it that way, I plow through it. I start in chapter number one, and if I can't, I don't stop until I get to chapter number nine so I can say we made it, all righty? What we have to understand, by the way, I have had preachers say. that they stopped, and I know this sounds crazy, I wouldn't do this, but they said, I don't read from the Old Testament, I only read the New, and that's stupid, and I'm gonna tell you why it's stupid. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. Why? That the man of God, or woman of God, that the man of God may be perfect, that means complete, throughly furnished unto all good works. We need the Old Testament as much as we need the New Testament. I'll give you another reason. Jesus told Satan himself, man shall not live by bread alone, but by? Not some, not what we like, but every word. And so we need the genealogies. And you say, Pastor, what am I getting out of genealogies? What you have to do is you have to look at the scriptures as this. It's not man writing you a letter. It's God writing you one. And so God did not need filler for the scripture He did not need to put all these hard names in there so that we could help our pronunciations of people's names He didn't I'm for sure guarantee is some of these names in here. You don't want to name your children All righty, but God had a reason for giving us the genealogies and there's I think there's several reasons They're in your lesson and I'm gonna deal with one particular thing this morning But I do want to remind you about the genealogies, why they're important. Now, this morning I do want to read a few verses of Scripture to get us started and then we'll obviously look at some more. But let's look at chapter 1, verse 1. So when we read the genealogies, this is what we most of the time sound like, Adam, Sheth, Enosh, Kenan, Mehelelio, Jared, Enoch, Thuzillah, Lamech, Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Japheth, Gomer, and Magog, and Medei, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshach, and Tyrus, and the sons of Gomer, Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah, and the sons of Javan, Elisha, and Tarshish, and Kittim, and Dodonim." How many is done? All right, I'm done, all right. Now, some of you say, well, you didn't pronounce those correctly. Then you give it a try, all righty? I'm just trying to tell you that when we read the scriptures, I'm going to read those as best as I possibly can when I'm reading through my Bible. I'm going to make sure I read through them the best I can. I don't think you should skip the genealogies because you have a hard time reading them, all righty? And I want to tell you why. It's because God put them in the scripture for a reason. And if I don't even know all the reasons, I know this one thing. He's the one that wrote it, all righty? But again, can I just remind you of some things about the genealogies, okay, that are mentioned in this, again, that we can think, what is the purpose, or what is God trying to teach us? Well, I think number one, the genealogies teach us that the Messiah came from the line of David. And you think that's not very, very important, but can I just remind you, Satan tried to disrupt that line again, and again, and again. You know why? Because the prophecy says in Isaiah chapter 11, In other words, that branch would be Jesus Christ coming from the stem of Jesse, which means David, which means Jesus had to be born from the ancestral line of David. Why is that important? Well, if God could lie there, He could lie somewhere else. I just want you to understand, the genealogies are important, and the order of it all is important. You know, Satan tried to disrupt that line of David when Athaliah became queen, and she tried to destroy all the seed royal, but she missed one. You know why she missed one? Because God promised that Jesus Christ would come from that line. Satan himself tried through Herod to kill all the babies that were born in Bethlehem, all right, from age two and under. But guess what? He missed one, all right? And it's because there's prophecies that God gave, and those prophecies came through the genealogy of generationals. Number two, the genealogies teach us that there are good examples to follow. Now, I can't tell you. what the life of each and every one of these individuals, but God does tell us about some of them. I mean, when you look at the genealogies, you're going to find Abraham, Isaac, David, Adam. I mean, you follow through, you're going to find some key people in there that they were good examples for us to follow. And can I say the flip side of that? The genealogies, God didn't try to color something one way. He told us some bad examples. In fact, in your Bible there in 1 Chronicles, right across the page, chapter 2, verse number 7, and the sons of Carmi, A car, the what? Troubler of Israel, all right? Now, we call him Achan from the book of Joshua, but you look through these and you're gonna find there were some people in here, they were not the greatest of people, all right? But they were still in genealogy, so the genealogies teach us some good examples, they also teach us bad examples. The genealogies also show us that the historical accuracy of the scriptures, so-and-so begot so-and-so, so-and-so begot so-and-so, the historical accuracy. By the way, our Bible's not just historically accurate, it's scientifically accurate. These guys that want to say the earth is flat, how dumb can you be? God said a long time ago in the Bible that I'm the circle of the earth. God said it was a circle long before man figured it out. So we have the accuracy of scripture in a lot of different ways, especially here, the historical accuracy. I think the genealogies teach us that God takes an interest in people. Think about that. I quote the verse often, I say the verse, but Psalm chapter eight, verse number four, when the Bible says in verse four and five, what is man that thou art mindful of him? Think about that. Why would God think about you? But God takes an interest in people. The song that Pierce just sang, you know, it matters to the master. You know why? Because he cares about us. So the genealogies, again, are such a reminder that, yeah, we might be a small speck on this earth, but we're a big blob in the sight of God, amen? God knows what's going on in our life, all right? No accidents with him. again shows that God takes an interest in individual people. I think the genealogy also teaches spiritual truths to live by. Now, Church Family, if we were to go through the genealogies I know that there's a lot of names hard to say and sometimes those names represent a life that we don't know because God doesn't tell us much anything else about them. But there are a few glimpses of pictures, I call them snapshots in the Scriptures, of things that God wants us to know about, alright. I'm not going to go through all of them but in 1 Chronicles chapter 2 verse number 55 you're going to find the Rechabites are mentioned. Did you know that there is a whole story about the Rechabites by Jeremiah? Jeremiah calls Jonathan the son of Rechab and says, And Jonathan says, I ain't doing it. He's not using the word ain't, but anyway. He said, I'm not doing that. And he says, God uses the Rechabites as an example of obedience. And he says, children of Israel, I tell you to do something. You can't do it. But Jonathan, the son of Rechab, his father said, don't drink wine. He doesn't drink it. So he uses them as illustrations. There were definitely some glimpses or snapshots of these different people. I think another one, this one I want you to see. It's kind of interesting. Look at chapter 5, 1 Corinthians 5, look at verse 18. Now, there's not very many stories in these genealogies, but there are a few. another one of them. 1 Chronicles 5 verse 18, "'The sons of Reuben, and the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, valiant men, men able to bear buckler and sword, and to shoot with bow, and skillful in war, were four and 40,703 score.'" Four and 40,000, 444,760 that went out to war. "'And they made war with the Hagarites, with Jeter, and Nephish, and Nodab, and they were helped against them. And the Hagarites were delivered into their hand, and all that were with them, and Why? For they cried to God in the battle, and He was entreated of them because they put their trust in Him. And they took away their cattle and their camels, 50,000, and of sheep, 250,000, and of asses, 2,000, and of men, 100,000. Obviously it was less than, more than two to one. A great example of a person who puts their trust in God, the Reubenites, the Gadites, the Half-Tribe Manasseh. So there's just interesting glimpses of stories and things that we can learn about. I like that chapter number six, verse 31 through 48, it goes through all the singers. in the ministry that they had as far as being a Levite or singing and how they served their Lord through music. By the way, people ought to serve the Lord if you've got the talent. If you don't have the talent, well, you can work at it, but you ought to use your talents for the Lord. Amen? Out of all this, I don't know, you probably already know, but if I was to pick a story out of these genealogies, the one I'm gonna pick is gonna be Jabez. And to be honest, when I first got this, got this lesson, I told myself, I'm not gonna, I told myself, I don't think I'm gonna teach on Jabez, because really that's personal to me, and I think it's important, but I wanted to find something else. And Church, I mean, I could go through several stories this morning, but I just, in the last, these next 15, 20 minutes, I wanna talk to you about Jabez's prayer for just a moment. Can I just tell you that I feel like that we as independent Baptists have shunned away from the Jabez prayer because the non-denominational people have picked it up. All right? What's your treatment? What are we going to do? There are people who use portions of Scripture. Are we going to shun every portion of Scripture because some denomination uses it? How many remember the craze that it was where people used to have those bracelets they wore? What would Jesus do? Remember that craze? I mean everybody had it on their t-shirts and they were wearing it on their wrist. independent Baptist said, Oh, man alive we can't do that. Well, what are we not supposed to do? Not supposed to do what Jesus does? I think we are supposed to do what Jesus does. It's crazy. So, I think for some reason, I think that because of the association of different denominations or whatever they have looked at these verses and they teach these verses that I think as a Baptist we say, Oh, we shouldn't do that. You can't just associate Scripture because somebody else's uses that Scripture. Can I tell you there's denominations that I would not agree with but they're right on salvation and wrong on everything else. So what am I not saved? I'm just trying to say that I think these two verses are very important. So would you turn to 1 Chronicles chapter 4, let's look at the two verses together this morning. 1 Chronicles chapter 4, look at verse 9 and 10. Jabez, Jabez the word Jabez means sorrowful or sorrow. And Jabez was more honorable than his brethren. Only two verses we have verse 9 and 10, And his mother called his name Jabez, because I bear him with sorrow. And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, First of all, O that thou wouldest bless me indeed. Second, and enlarge my coast. Third, and that thine hand might be with me. Fourth, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me." And I want you to read the last phrase of verse 10 with me together, you ready? And God granted him that which he requested. Now I don't know about you, but when I saw that years ago, and by the way, I don't know that I've ever heard a message that inspired me or encouraged me concerning this. I don't even know how long I've been praying the Jehovah's Prayer, I have no idea. You know as well as I do, if you've been a member here very long, I believe very strongly in the model prayer, and I believe very strongly in the J-Best prayer. Every day of my life, and there's very few things I can say every day of my life, but every day of my life I'm going to start the day with praying the model prayer and the J-Best prayer, because I believe that those are prayers that God has given us. You know, it's like the disciples coming to Jesus. Jesus, teach us to pray. Well, what are the disciples asking Jesus to pray? They've been around Him. Because I'm just telling you as Christians, sometimes we don't know what to say. I know when I was younger, too, the same way. The preacher would always get up, read your Bible, pray, read your Bible, pray, read your Bible, pray. And I'm thinking to myself, okay. So then I go and I try to pray, and I spend two minutes in a quote-unquote prayer closet, and I'm thinking, this is lasting forever, and I say everything that comes to my mind, and I'm done. Then I start repeating the two minutes that I just got in. And it makes more sense to me why the disciples came to Jesus, Jesus, would you please do what John did and teach us to pray? interesting the model prayer is mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5 and 6, or Matthew 5, I'm sorry Matthew 6. It's mentioned in the model, it's mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount. And the only other place the model prayer is mentioned is when the disciples asked Jesus, teach us to pray. And He used this as the same prayer. Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Now, church, you know, and I'm not teaching them how to pray, it's not recitation. The Catholics do that, all right? It's praying the topics of that prayer so I don't have to think about what I'm going to pray for. So when I get up this morning, Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, I'm going to start by praying, God, I want to just thank you for who you are and what you do in my life. I don't deserve it. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for showing me mercy, not give me what I deserve. Thank you for grace, give me more than I deserve. Thank you that you are not just a friend, you're my friend. A friend that's to get closer than a brother, a friend that loved at all times and a friend that laid down his life. Thank you for peace and joy and help and strength. Thank you for my family. Thank you for ministry. Thank you for good health. What's the model prayer? The model prayer is not our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. The model prayer is giving us what to pray. And you break down the model prayer and that's not the message this morning. You can do that. I feel the same way thinking about the Jabez prayer. I think a person needs to pray for themself before they pray for anybody else. Intercessory prayers should never take place before one pass personal prayer. Personal prayer is the model prayer and the Jabez prayer. The Jabez prayer is a little bit different. After I get into praying the model prayer every day, the next thing I pray is I pray the Jabez prayer. I don't repeat it, I don't recite it, but I pray the topics of the Jabez prayer. prayer was answered. All we know about Jabez is he prayed this prayer and God answered his prayer. So, what was his prayer? Are you ready this morning? I know this is so elementary, but it's what the Lord has for us this morning. Jabez says this, the very first thing, he says four things, "'Bless me indeed, enlarge my coast, that Thine hand might be with me, that Thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me.'" There's four topics in the Jabez prayer. And the Jabez prayer is personal as well as the Jabez prayer is seemingly selfish because of all the personal pronouns in there. indeed. Enlarge my coast, that thine hand might be with me." All the personal pronouns, this is something for us. So, I pray. So, the first part, he says, Jabeb's prayer was, he says, bless me indeed. Indeed meaning surely. Bless me. The word bless means graciousness, kindness. It's where we get the word benefit or dessert, amen. Anybody like dessert? I like dessert. Last night we got an eating supper and my wife says, Dear, I don't think we have much here for dessert unless you want those chocolate-covered raisins in there. And I said, Dear, dessert is overrated. We don't need any sugar for dessert. I was joking. And everybody at the table knew I was joking. The meal is not done without something sweet, all right? I know what you're thinking. You're going to die early, but you're going to die too. And you're going to die healthy, and I'm going to die unhealthy, but we're both dying. I'm just letting you know, all right? So I like dessert. So I went in there and she said, you're going to get something anyway for dessert. I didn't say a word, but I was, and I did. So when God says, he says Jabez prayer, he says, bless me indeed, you're asking for dessert. You're asking God to show kindness, the word blessed, to show kindness to you. Now I do it in a couple of different areas. You can do it any way you want. I asked the Lord to bless me physically. I asked the Lord that would you please help me physically, help me to keep the excess weight off, and I've got tons of it right now. And I said, Lord, would you please bless me physically? Would you please help me to lose weight? Would you please help me take care of the temple that you've given me? Would you please help me to take care of what you've given me? All right, bless me indeed physically. I asked the Lord to bless me financially. Now I've done this for years. I don't repeat a prayer, but I pray. I say, Lord, would you please bless me financially? I ask you to please supply for this, this, and this. In some cases I thank Him for how He has supplied. But I ask Him, would you please supply for me financially? I ask the Lord, third of all, I ask the Lord, would you please bless me spiritually? Would you show kindness to me? Would you open up the Scriptures to me? Would you help me be a Spirit-filled Christian? Would you help me spiritually be what I'm supposed to be? I'm not as a pastor, but as a Christian. Bless me indeed. Second one. Not only did I ask the Lord to bless me indeed, I asked the Lord to enlarge my coast. The word coast means fence, territory, boundary. So you know what you should be doing? Now, by the way, for years I said, Lord, would you please enlarge my coast, okay? Now I ask the Lord, would you please give me wisdom and desire and strength to be able for the enlargement? Because he got enlarging it so quickly, I said, okay, I'm not ready for this. So enlarge my coast means to enlarge, to give me more court territory. Now I'm just going to tell you what I pray, you pray whatever you want, because obviously it's a guide. What's the model prayer? It gives us an example of how to pray. I think the J-Biz prayer is the same way. Bless me indeed, enlarge my coast. So I ask the Lord, God, would you please enlarge my coast? Would you give me more fence, more territory, more influence? And then I ask for certain areas. Lord, would you please enlarge my coast when it comes to missions? Would you please show us, our church, what missionaries we should support? Would you give us more missionaries to support? Would you enlarge our coast so we might be able to get the gospel farther out? Enlarge my coast, missions, material. Now this is me, this is not you, but I ask the Lord every day of my life, God, would you please help me to continue to write? I'm writing a new book now, right now, Proverbs. My wife is actually close, somewhat close, to finishing the final proof on New Testament Bible story snapshots. Took me three years or two years to write. And so I just started another book. But I want to influence people long after I'm dead. You didn't say anything about me dying. But long after I'm dead. I want to print it. I want something in print. That's what we have mercy to. I want that stuff to go out. I want to influence people. So enlarge my coast, materials, missions, materials, men. I asked the Lord that he'd help the college, that God, the people that he brings here, that God would give them every class period and when they're in ministry, give them what they need. Help me to influence them. Enlarge my coast as far as influencing people. That's my family as well as you, by the way. Missions, materials, men, media. I know that sounds crazy. I don't have it in front of me here, but I think we just crossed, I think, Josh is not in Houston class. I'm pretty sure I saw, I think we just crossed 100,000 listens from Sermon Audio of people who listen to the messages from this church. To me, I asked the Lord, Lord, would you please give me the message for the people here, as well as every other person that might listen to that message somewhere else? I can't tell you, some of my audio is kind of interesting because it shows you every state that somebody listens to it and every country that somebody listens to one of our messages. It's really amazing. Enlarge my coast, missions, men, media, materials. I want God to let me to be able to influence more people. And by the way, church family, it's not just a pastor thing, it's a Christian thing. You're breathing. You have children. You have people that you work with. You have ministries. You should still want to influence people. and then that thy hand might be with me. All right, now we might not like this one very much, okay? But I find in scripture there's four things that God puts his hand on, all right? And as far as an example of God's hand, I think God gives his hand when it comes to direction. In other words, when we have our kids, when they're younger, and I want you to stay with me, hold my hand. We were directing them. That's a hand of direction. I think that God has a hand of protection where he puts his hand around somebody and he protects them. And I ask God, would you please protect me from sin, from harm? Help me, protect me today. That's Jabez prayer. I don't like the next one, and so I'm careful how I pray it, okay? The next thing I see in the scripture is that God uses his hand for his correction, whether you like it or not, that's what it is. So I asked the Lord, Lord, if you have to correct me, help me be wise enough to accept it. Help me not to despise it. I never say, God, would you please correct me. I don't say, give me a swat. I don't do that. I think the last one is God puts his hand upon a person as far as power. God puts his hand upon a person for ministry or to be used. That's the spirit of God. But God puts his hand on a person. So the J-Bearer's prayer, bless me indeed and enlarge my coast that thine hand might be with me. That thou wouldest keep me from evil. Keep me from evil that may not grieve me. I don't know if you know this or not or if you've ever felt this way before, but have you ever done something wrong and it bothered you? I think that's where the grieve is. I think it's just like, this morning I struggled in my mind. I was at McDonald's this morning preparing for the message and there was a fellow across from me, and I think he was transient, but a fellow was across from me. You know, when I'm preparing for the message, I try not to, I don't really talk to people. I just study and prepare, but that person was crossing me and I just, in my mind, I want to help people. I decided I was going to, I wanted to get him something to eat when I left. I was going to give him something to eat. And I've got earbuds in and the whole time I'm studying, he's cussing on the phone with somebody and just using the Lord's name in vain. It just, it was really irritating me. So I just asked the Lord, I said, Lord, I don't mind, I'll buy whatever you want me to do and give him a track or however you want me to do it, but let me know. And when I got to my car, I don't want to grieve the Holy Spirit of God. To be honest, I didn't buy him anything. After spending 30 minutes and all he could do is use foul language, I just, I didn't want to. And I just asked the Lord, what am I supposed to do? I said, God, I'm willing to. I was almost, I don't want to be grieved. I didn't want to pull out of that parking lot and find out, okay, you know, it doesn't matter. I wanted you to help him anyway, because I have gone through the grieving process of not doing what the Holy Spirit tells me to do, and then I'm grieved about it. And I can't go back and change something that I should have done. Okay, so sometimes sin in our life, it does that. You know, we say something we shouldn't have said. We do something we wish we wouldn't have done. Aren't you glad for 1 John 1, 9? If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to what? I don't live grieved. You know why I don't live grieved? I don't live grieved because of 1 John 1.9. But can I just tell you that when I sin, I still have that grieving. So I believe the last part of this verse, that that would just keep me from evil. The word keep means to guard or protect. Keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me. I don't want to live the Christian life grieved. I want to live the Christian life knowing I did what the Lord wanted me to do. All of us are human and all of us have sinned. And sometimes we use that as a justification. thankful for forgiveness, but I don't like being grieved. You know in our lives there are three types of sins in the Scriptures. There is that first of all the sin of ignorance, doing things wrong that we don't really know. As we grow in our faith we figure out, oh I guess I shouldn't be doing that. The second type of sin is secret sins. These all come from Psalm chapter 19. Secret sins are those sins that we do that we don't want anybody else to know about because we know that they are wrong. Third type of sin mentioned there is presumptuous sins. It means proud or arrogant. It means I'm going to do them. I don't care what anybody else thinks. I'm going to live my life the way I want to live. No one's going to tell me what to do. I don't think the grieving comes from presumptuous sins. Because by the way, when you get to that place where you're committing presumptuous sins, God kills people for presumptuous sinning. I really think it's more the secret sin. that grieving. Sins of ignorance? Oh, I didn't know it was wrong, but when I find out, I want to change. But secret sins are those things, man, my flesh, I really enjoy doing this, but the problem is, as soon as I do it, oh, I feel so bad for doing it. That's what he's talking about. So, I don't know if you pray the Jabez prayer. I'd encourage you to do so. But this morning when I got up, I promised you, every day of my life, since I know that he did it for Jabez, he'll do it for me. Father, bless me indeed, enlarge my coast, that Thine hand might be with me, that Thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me. It's just part of your personal prayer, that's all it is. I would encourage you to start praying the Jabez prayer. Isn't it amazing, in the genealogies, God purposely said two verses about a fellow named Jabez. And what do we know about him? God answered his prayer.