Madness in their hearts. Let us read from Jeremiah 17, starting in verse 5. Jeremiah 17, from verse 5 to 10. Thus says the Lord, Cursed is the man who trusts in man, who makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the Lord. For he shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when good comes, but shall inhabit the harsh places in the wilderness, in a salt land which is not inhabited. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose hope is in the Lord. For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, which spreads out its roots by the river, and will not fear when heat comes. But its leaf will be green, and will not be anxious in the year of drought. For I, the Lord, search the heart. I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings. I'm a good person. How many times do you hear that? There is madness and wickedness in the heart. Jesus said, no one is good except God alone. When we evaluate ourselves in the light of God's 10 commands, recognizing that our Lord Jesus is the standard, it's no good comparing yourself to some bad person down the street. You know, well, I'm better than that person. He's not the standard. Jesus is the standard. No one should deceive themselves by claiming, I'm a very good person. 1 John 1 verse 8 says, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we say that we have not sinned, we make God a liar, and his word is not in us. That's 1 John 1 verse 10. And so Ecclesiastes 9 verse 3, where we get our title from, says, truly the hearts of the son of men are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts. We are living in a time of madness. Our Lord Jesus said in Mark chapter 7, verse 21 to 22, for from within, out of the heart of men, proceeds evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, thefts, murders, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, and evil eye, blasphemy, pride, and foolishness. There's a whole lot of lies of our age that we've got to confront. Man is good by nature, but he is corrupted by society. That's one of the lies. Actually, it's man's depravity which is corrupting society. It's not so much society is corrupting good people, it's that evil people are corrupting any society. Every man possesses an innate moral goodness. In fact, that's why the Indian culture's got this idea of putting hands together and bowing to you, because they're bowing to the God within you. That we all somehow have some kind of deity in us. Like Shirley MacLaine standing by the ocean, raising her hand, saying, I am God. Well, no, she's not. Happiness is the measure and the goal of our lives. There's another lie. Happiness is not the goal of Allah. God's word should be God's will, God's work, God's worship, even God's warfare. That is the measure and the goal of Allah. Only fools restrain their desires. It can't be bad if it feels so good. You heard that one? Actually, it is only a fool who gives in to selfish desires, which are fueled by pride or greed or lust. He who trusts in his own heart is a fool. Whoever walks wisely will be delivered. That's Proverbs 28 verse 26. When you hear this, follow your heart. How many times, how many Disney movies have follow your heart? Well, Proverbs 28 verse 26 says, he who trusts in his own heart is a fool. And then you get people saying everything is relative. In fact, Einstein would disagree with that. He came up with the theory of relativity, but then people tried to move it to morals. He said, no, relativity is referring to science. It's not referring to morals. And so don't try and misquote Einstein on that one. There is objective truth. There is objective reality. Without the God of the Bible who has a mind and a rational, logical, intelligent design, you wouldn't get intelligent design nature. So if you look at DNA, if you look at how a plant can reproduce and everything that's just logical, or even the fact that our own body can heal itself, even a cracked rib heals within six weeks naturally without any outside intervention. Just God's made things like that. Everything is not relative. God is rational. God is logical. And that's why intelligent design is seen in his creation. All you need is love. But what do you mean by love? The Beatles might have made up that song. People might have tapped their feet to it and sung along. But emotion and sentiment is what most people mean by love. And that's not enough. Biblical love is unselfish giving. It is integrity and duty and doing the right thing and loving God and loving our neighbor and doing to others what you want to be done unto. And true love is measured by sacrifice. And Jesus, again, is the standard. He showed us how much He loved us by what He sacrificed. And greater love has no one in this than that He sacrificed His life, gave up His life for another. Only material and economic change can produce a social change. Now that's Marxism. It's not true. Only regenerate lives, transformed by God's Holy Spirit, and seen in transformed hearts and transformed minds, only that can change society for the good. So material and economic change can do something good, but it certainly isn't going to change hearts. Only God's grace and God's word can change hearts. The greatest fault is to be aware of no fault. When Professor Martin Luther was asked which pope had caused him the most grief, and he had lived through a lot of popes. Many popes died while he was... I think he lived through the reign of about ten popes. Which pope caused him the most grief? Martin Luther answered, Pope self. That inner schweinhund that sits on the throne of your heart, which should only be reserved for God himself. So he said, in fact, no one had given him more grief than his own selfish nature had given him more grief than all the popes in Rome. The inner fine one crawls onto a throne that belongs to Christ alone. David Livingston, in his journals, expressed his frustration that even when he is busy with the best of works, with what he thought were the best of motives, he was deeply concerned, he said, that he had mixed motives. And when Charles Spurgeon was asked which of his 5,600 members of the Tabernacle, a Baptist Tabernacle, Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, which of his members had given him the most grief? And he said, Charles Spurgeon. And I said, do you have a member here called Charles Spurgeon? He said, yes, I refer to myself. He said, no member here has given me more grief than I've given myself. And the fact is, we are our own worst enemy. I think every single person can look at a mirror and say, I am my own worst enemy. On the other extreme though, you've got the claim, I cannot change. How many times do you hear people say that? I cannot change. But the Persecutor Church Saul of Tarsus, he became the missionary of the Church of the Apostle Paul. He went from being a persecutor to being an evangelist. So Saul changed, and Bernard Nathanson, if you've seen the film Roe v. Wade, it's all around Bernard Nathanson's perspective. He was the head of the National Abortion Rights Action League, and he was an avid abortionist. He was responsible for the abortions of tens of thousands of babies. Yet he became a pro-life activist. He was converted to Christ. He produced the film The Silent Scream, which has got to be one of the more traumatic films I've ever seen. I've shown it many a time, but I've watched it only once. When I screen it on other occasions, I've walked out because it's just too traumatic. But that's Bernard Nathanson. He went from being pro-abort to being pro-life and dramatic change. And we could also mention the man who wrote Amazing Grace. John Newton was once a slave trader, or at least a captain of a slave ship, and he later became a great anti-slavery activist. Take Abbie Johnson. Some might have read her book, Unplanned, or seen the film Unplanned. Abbie Johnson, once a planned, parented, abortion clerk, director. winner of the award for leading the most successful Planned Parenthood clinic in the whole of America, and she became a pro-life activist, and a bit shocking that she was able to be a member of a local Presbyterian church while she was a pro-abortion director. When she was converted and became a pro-life activist, the church leaders told her to leave. She'd bring the church into disrepute. That you don't get from the film, you get that from a book. And the book's always better, obviously. That's where it is. But to think that a church is willing to have a pro-abortion Planned Parenthood director in a church, but not a pro-life activist. Something's radically wrong there. Well, before my conversion, I was a shy, introverted quiet person who was actually completely selfish, wouldn't, didn't want to get involved in anything, just a bookworm, wouldn't interact with people, and so on. Well, after my conversion, I was an Arminian, Antinomian. I mean, Arminian means, you know, actually is God. Antinomian, the law of God doesn't apply. It's a dispensationist that God in different ways is saving people through the different ages. I was a rapture fever, end times enthusiast. I was also a pacifist, and I was so convinced we were living in the last days. I was against getting married. I was against having children. Forget about grandchildren. And I was also... Christians should not get involved in politics or political matters, and also... very much convinced that we shouldn't get involved in any of the long-term matters like education. I saw no need for theological training and so on. So obviously, God changed and transformed me continuously over the years because I'm the opposite of all those things now. And, yeah, post-millennial reform. There was a time that I was anti-reformed, anti-Calvinist. I'd be saying, you know, some people become evangelists, other people become Calvinists, and my idea were they were the opposite. And, you know, you're wasting your time if you're having children, because, you know, why waste your time with a few worldly children when you can be involved in snatching souls from the fire? To me, my whole way of thinking of what was important changed dramatically when I became Reformed, and so we can all change. Everyone can change. If Bernard Nathanson and Abby Johnson can change, all of us can change. Then you get those who claim, God can never forgive me. But church history is full of the details of enemies of the gospel, persecutors of church even, who became converted, frightful criminals who have changed. I mean, even Anthony Stander will give you his story of how he was He was a robber, a bank robber, armed robber. He was a pagan, a savage, as he said, and he got converted, in prison even. There's many examples of people who have become trophies of grace at very unpromising beginnings. So this, God can never forgive me, is completely wrong as well. Isaiah 1 verse 18. Come now and let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your skins be as scarlet, yet they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be like wool. But you get people who say, but God cannot change me. You want to bet? Yes, God can change us. Titus 2 verse 11, for the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly. righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from every lawless work and purify for himself his own special people, zealous for good works. That's Titus 2, 11-14. And then you get this expression that's become like wildfire throughout the West, very American, I'm done. How many times do you hear, I am done? Now this, it's incredible how many people and how many subjects can claim I'm done. And no, actually God is the only one who can say when it's finished. And he can tell when you're done and when you're dismissed and when you're free to go. Nobody may excuse themselves from the presence of a king or queen. That prerogative is up to the monarch. Well, how much more so for the king of kings and lord of lords? He's the only one who can say when our duty is done, when our work is finished, when we're dismissed, when we're free to go. And then you get these things that are only going to get worse and worse. They say, borrow money from a pessimist. You won't expect it back. But yes, there's so many pessimists out there. And it's not true. There have been extremely bad times in history. And then there have been dramatic turning points. For example, 1517, when Dr. Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, the situation was very dire and extremely dull, and you wouldn't have thought there's a possibility. You just think Europe would come through the bubonic plague, one-third of the population wiped out through lice from rats that came from China, and all the disasters and the Turkish forces just conquered Constantinople and they're taking Southeastern Europe. And there's so many bad things that could happen. There were the Turks besieging Vienna in a very hot land. Things are only going to get worse and worse, they say. But the Reformation happened, and the Reformation unleashed forces of faith and freedom never before seen in the world. Productivity, prosperity, standards of living, nations were transformed. The scientific revolutions, the Industrial Revolution, now we're in the Information Age, all of that grew out of the Protestant Reformation. And then there were the great revivals of 1859, 1860, even in South Africa, which transformed Western civilization. And now we're just living through the Trump mega-revolution, Make America Great Again, this backlash against the woke, LGBTQ, CRT, insanity. And that's another example of how a reversal of fortunes can take place in very short order, very quickly. It's amazing how quickly things can turn around on a whole range of things. It wasn't that long ago, and we were in 70-something genders. Now we're back to two genders. A whole lot of revolution of common sense has happened. And yes, the leftists are crying right now, but it's about time. They've been frustrating the rest of us for a long time. And then you've got these people who say, it's impossible. We cannot win. And with that kind of attitude, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think you can or you can't, you're right. If you think you can, you can. If you think you can't, you can't. And if you think you can win, you can definitely, because attitude is everything. A defeatist and negative attitude will inevitably lead to disaster. So unfortunately, in many cases, we are able to make ourselves losers or succeeders and victors by our attitude. Consider the facts of history. Against all odds, just a few hundred knights of Malta, the Knights of St. John, defeated over 40,000 jihadists who were besieging the little island of Malta in 1565. Against all odds, the knights of Europe, the Christians of Europe, defeated this phenomenal army of Muslim Turks who were at the gates of Vienna, besieging Vienna in 1683. In our own lifetime, we've seen how the Tutsi David defeated the Hutu Goliath in Rwanda during the Rwandan Holocaust. They ended the genocidal campaign in 1994. That was not something you could predict. At the time, it looked all doom and gloom, and yet there were changes. In my own lifetime, I've seen decisive victories against communism, the conclusion of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall. If you'd ever seen the Berlin Wall during those dark days, you wouldn't have imagined it would come down. I was convinced the Berlin Wall would be up for my lifetime. It wouldn't come down until Jesus came back. And when Brother Andrew came past us and spoke about the seven-year Jericho Prayer March, we got to pray for seven years. focused prayer to bring down the Berlin Wall, to open up the Iron Curtain, to open up Eastern Europe to the Gospel, pray for the fall of the Soviet Union, ending of persecution in Eastern Europe. We thought, this is a bridge too far, this is just not possible. You know, Brother Andrew's lost his marbles. But we saw it happen. The Soviets seemed to be the unbeatable foe, but they were beaten. And we've seen the opening up of Eastern Europe and Russia to the Gospel. Now there's vastly more Christians in church. in Russia every Sunday than there would be in Great Britain and France and Germany combined. So, so much for we can't win or we can't beat them or that can't change. And then, when I started my work up into Sudan, I was told by the head of the Sudan Interior Mission, SIM, in Kenya, You can't work in Sudan. I said, explain to me why it's impossible. He said, with a human being you can reason, but not with the South Sudanese. The head of Sudan, Terry Mission, you cannot work in Sudan. These people don't reason, you can't talk with them, you can't work with them. Well, we proved him wrong, and South Sudan is today a free and independent country. The people said it was impossible. Even the man who today is the president of South Sudan, Sylva Kierkegaard, he argued with me as recently as 2002, it's impossible. It's a good idea, but it's not possible. They will never redraw the map. The Berlin Conference map has been accepted as revealed gospel truth by the African Union. The African Union will not accept any redrawing of the map. Well, if you make it happen, they'll have to accept it. And we fought for it. And on the July, 9th of July, 2011, Seldon McKeir became the first president of an independent South Sudan. So there's a lot of examples of victory over globalism. Just in recent years, we saw how the Brexit voting against the EU globalist agenda, the media in Britain was against it, the government in Britain was against it, the opposition was against it, but the voters in Britain still voted Brexit, even though they were going against all the tide, all the media against it, which is why a lot of social media essentially came in afterwards because the Brexit revolution and the Trump revolution were launched mainly by social media. You know, Facebook didn't start social media because they wanted you to be able to share the gospel or to spread the truth or to launch political movements. It was for you to share a picture of your coffee or your lunch or something that you're having at some coffee shop down the road. And, you know, you meant to share trivial things, not something important and life-changing. And so censorship came in, they de-platformed millions, they shadow banned hordes of stuff. In fact, as Mark Zuckerberg admitted, they actually deleted 8 million posts just in 2020. So there was a backlash, but now there's been a counter-backlash. And then remember the Boers. Just 464 fortreckers, against all odds, defeated the unbeatable Zulu. 10,000 Zulus at the Battle of Blood River in 16 December 1838. Nobody could have anticipated that or predicted it, and yet the Davids beat Goliath. And remember Majuba. Who would have expected a few Boer farmers in Transvaal to beat the British Empire? But they did. Battle of Madjuba, the Transvaal defeated the Red Coats of the British Empire in 1881. These things happen. We've seen how communism was defeated in Russia and Eastern Europe, and we will go on to see how Islam and the New World Order are defeated as well. Psalm 2, verse 8, Messianic Psalm. Ask of me, and I will give you the nation's free inheritance, the ends of the earth for your possession. And that's a Messianic Psalm. Our Lord's prayers will be answered. He will take the nations. Psalm 22 declares, all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord. All the families and nations will worship before you. For the kingdom is the Lord's and he will rule over the nations. that will come about. In his days, the righteous shall flourish. He shall have dominion from sea to sea. To the ends of the earth, all his enemies will lick the dust. All kings will fall down before him. All nations shall serve him. These prophecies of Psalm 72 inspired the great term, Jesus shall reign, by Isaac Watts. Zechariah 4 verse 6 makes clear, not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord. For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Hebrews 2.14 makes it clear. The day will come when the earth will be 100% covered with the glory of the Lord, knowledge of the Lord. And the seas are pretty much 100% covered with water. So we read in Romans 8, verse 37, in all these things we are more than conquerors to him who loves us. Therefore, submit to God, resist the devil, he will flee from you. James 4 verse 7. If we submit to God and we resist the devil, he will flee from us. Every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Because greater is he who is in you than him who is in the world. But some people say, and I've heard this many a time, some people will never change, so don't even try to share the gospel with them. And this includes, there's no way you can win Muslims to Christ. But Muslims are coming to Christ. And we've seen Muslims coming to Christ. And in Sudan, even an entire battalion of Muslim forces came over and joined the South. We want to become Christians. We want to fight for the South. Make no mistake, everyone can be converted. No one is unreachable. And I remember meeting Pastor Musa. He was once a Zampu, Zimbabwe African People's Union terrorist. He was trained in the Soviet Union, trained at Patrician Mumbai University in Moscow. And Musa had been sent to an evangelist tent in Harare Township, outside Salisbury, to kill the evangelist. And he had a team that had grenades and machine guns all ready. The evangelist must have preached exceptionally well that night, because Musa was so captured by it, he didn't give the order, and his men came to him afterwards confused, and he was confused himself as to why he hadn't given the order. And so he told them to see him again tomorrow, and he went and he spoke to the evangelist, he got converted, gave him life to Christ that night. I was told, when you preach, preach like a dying man to dying men. Preach like it's the last chance you've got to preach, or the last chance your heroes have to hear the gospel. And that's a good piece of advice, and I think that that evangelist must have done it that night. So there I was meeting Pastor Musa. He had been imprisoned by Mugabe after communists took over there. Now he is living in Germany, and he's working for the International Society for Human Rights. We were in a hotel in Frankfurt, and we were going through a buffet, and I said, don't you want some meat? He says, no, it reminds me of when I used to eat people. And that's sort of a bit sobering. I was having supper with a cannibal, or ex-cannibal. But Pastor Musa wrote a testimony from communism to Christ. I don't know if we've still got that on our system, but I'd love to find it. From Communism to Christ, a good testimony. We actually had that printed for a while, just reading Moose's testimony. You can't say that some people are unreachable. You just don't know who's unreachable. Kwasi Samantul Mission was built upon the conversions of witch doctors and terrorists and murderers and gangsters, drug dealers converted by the power of the gospel, and still today. And when you meet some of these people, hard to imagine. Remember one big mama who was singing in the choir, huge smile, and she apparently had to hire a full truck to take all the things she's stolen back into restitution to people she's stolen from. And, you know, hard to believe, but people can get converted, the most unlikely candidates. You wouldn't imagine what the trophies of grace could be later. And Anthony said, you know, we wouldn't want to have known him before he was converted. And he said he asked Christine sometimes, what is wrong with you that you'd marry me? Why would you marry someone with my kind of background? You know, he would never have tolerated his daughters marrying someone like him. But we can't imagine how much God changes some people. We've met some people where they would have been very horrible people before the grace of God hit them. And for that matter, my wife said to me that, you know, I shouldn't be allowed to interact with human beings. She said, you should only, you should be confined to working with animals. And she said, you're a dinosaur who's brought up in Rhodesia. She said, you're a social retard when I met you. And not very charitable things. But then she said, you know, I've gotten civilized. Now I've learned never to walk from there. bathroom to the kitchen without carrying things that need to go into the wash, and learn to pick up dishes on the way through, and put pillows the right way around, and make sure the zip's on the inside, not facing outwards. And I've been civilized and trained, and it just shows anything can happen. Well, within weeks of my conversion, I was being led to do things I didn't think was possible. Because we set free to serve Christ. The amount of people who say, I cannot make a difference. And I was one of those who thought of my conversion. Why has God bothered to convert me? What good could I possibly do? I don't know anything about the Bible. There's no way I could do public speaking. I'm not able to contribute anything to God's kingdom. It's a waste of time to convert me. I can't make any impact for the Lord. But on the night I was converted, the challenge was, This is what Christ did for you. What have you ever done for Him? And I went forward knowing I'd done absolutely nothing for God. I was an ungrateful, hell-deserving wretch. But on the 3rd of April, 1977, I confessed my sins to the Lord. My first sin was that I'd never given thanks to the Lord for anything. that I've never had a grateful heart for anything he'd done for me or for my family. And here my parents had survived the Second World War, bombings, my mother had gone through a thousand bomber raids of Berlin. The fact that she is alive was extraordinary. The fact that my father survived all the battles in North Africa. And I'd never thank God for a thing, even the fact that my mother had been told she must abort me because we'd been taking thalidomide tablets. And so at this Princeton Poly Hospital just up the road, which was then called St. Joseph's, the gynecologist says you must have an abortion, which was legal at that moment because people were panic-stricken over the deformed characters born with thalidomide tablets, which was the miracle drug that got rid of morning sickness. Just had a few side effects like no arms, no legs, no eyes in many of the babies born. So, in the revulsion against this deformities that were coming in, they not only made it legalized, they actually recommended abortions in the case of any parent who'd been taking thalidomide. Well, within weeks of my conversion, I was running a Sunday school, a class, Scriptinian Holiday Mission in Somerset West. Within months, I was taking the Bible class at school, at church, the team Bible class, and then running the church's book table, involved in mass liturgy distribution, putting up posters on every lamppost in Forest Drive and Pines, advertising evangelistic rallies. and getting into every home in Pines to put a Gospel of John into the home, and inviting people to evangelistic rallies, the very same place where I was converted. And then the first missionary who came past our church, Francis Grimm of Hospital Christian Fellowship, I ran forward, joined his mission, and It wasn't long after that that I was called to do my military service, enlisted in South African infantry, and then had the opportunity to start a Bible study and prayer fellowship. So things just flowed. You know, what could I possibly do for God's kingdom? Well, I didn't need to worry about that. If you're available, God is able. We don't need to be able, we just need to be available. We don't need to be successful, we just need to be faithful. God will look after the results. Duty is ours, the result's in God's hands. Well, after it followed crossing borders into Mozambique, and the Golan, and the Congo, and Zambia, and Zimbabwe, and all these other places, from Rwanda, to Sudan, to Nigeria, and all over Eastern Europe. And the excuses we come up with, we can be very creative with our excuses. Like Moses saying, Lord, please send by someone else. I'm not eloquent, and I've never become eloquent since you spoke to me. And rather send my brother. Here am I, Lord, send Aaron. Yet, how many things can change? We've had so many ministry opportunities. I calculated a while ago that I've done 18,000 meetings since my conversion. Bible studies, evangelistic meetings, full-mount preachers, church services, conferences, seminars, but 42 years, 38 countries, 18,000 meetings, and yet I was complaining at my conversion, there's nothing I can possibly do. Now there are those who declare, I'm too young for God to use. But David, a shepherd boy, was the youngest of the least, and yet God raised him up to be king of Israel. Jeremiah protested, our Lord God, behold, I cannot speak for I am but a youth. But the Lord said to him, do not say I am a youth, for you shall go to all that I send you to, and whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of their faces, for I will be with you to deliver you, says the Lord. So Jeremiah chapter one, right at the beginning. Jeremiah was young. Timothy was also someone who thought he was too young. So in 1 Timothy 4 verse 12, the apostle Paul declared, let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word. in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, and in purity. And the apostle John and the evangelist John Mark and many others were considered very young when they started their work. There are some of the youth that God used in a dramatic way. Esther, who rose to be queen of Persia. Ruth, Mary, these are examples of young maidens whom God used in powerful ways. And at the beginning of our mission, many declared I was too young. And I felt like the youngest, and one day I looked back and suddenly realized, actually, I'm one of the oldest here now. But that's another mind shift. You get people who say, I'm too young for the Lord's work, and then you get people who say, I'm too old. But Moses was 80 years old when God called him in the burning bush and used him to lead his people out of Egypt. But Moses said to God, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt? And Moses answered, but suppose they will not believe me or listen to my voice. Suppose they say the Lord has not appeared to you. And Moses said to the Lord, oh Lord, I'm not eloquent, neither before nor since you've spoken to your servants. I'm slow of speech, I'm slow of tongue. That's a very eloquent way of saying I'm not eloquent. So the Lord said to him, who has made man's mouth? Who has made the mute and the deaf, the seeing or the blind? Have not I the Lord, now therefore go, and I'll be with your mouth and teach you what to say. The script says God was angry when Moses kept making excuses. Maybe Moses thought he was being humble, but God was not impressed when Moses gave excuses not to obey God. Caleb, in his 80s, could say, give me that mountain. Now, sure, it's not easy going up mountains. We struggle in our 60s, but Caleb in his 80s, give me the mountain. Not asking the easy tasks in a plane, he wanted the difficult assignments. Not satisfied with easy tasks, he wanted the tougher challenge. Frederick Bedecker was only converted to Christ when he was in his 40s. Yet he packed the second half of his life with such strenuous journeys to evangelize Russia that would have depleted the energies of people half his age. We've seen mysteries like Dr. Fritz's house. Reverend Bill Bathman, Earl O'Stegan, Brother Andrew, working well into the 80s, and we can add George River, many great men of God working well into the 80s, proclaiming the gospel, serving, teaching, evangelizing, getting on the streets. When Bill Bathman was in his 70s, he undertook an Africa Overland Mission, driving 8,000 kilometers from Cape Town across all the country of Africa to Sudan to deliver the vehicle and supplies to the Christians there, and to leave the vehicle there, he flew back out. And now we need to recognize all of these lies of our age, which we should never believe. They're just excuses for disobedience. Lord, I'm too old. Lord, I'm too young. No one can change me, and so on and so forth. God can never forgive my sins. These are just excuses for disobedience. You're never too old, you're never too young to make a difference or to be used of God. You can change, and God can forgive you. And God can change you, and God can use you for his kingdom and for his glory. And the Bible continually warns us, lest Satan take advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices. 2 Corinthians 2.11. So we read in the scriptures, 2 Corinthians 11, 3, And we read in 2 Corinthians 4, verse 4, That is why we are to put on the whole armor of God the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, the sword of the spirit, feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, all put on with prayer, and to stand against the evildoers. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places. And the Lord says in Jeremiah 17 verse 5, Cursed is the man who trusts in man. Cursed is he who makes flesh a strength, whose heart departs the Lord. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose hope is in the Lord. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. We shouldn't allow any of the lies of the world or of our own hearts or minds to enable us to talk away God's commands or his call, or in any way try and follow our heart or follow the lies and deceptions of the world or of our own soul and mind. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. We don't trust in the heart, we trust in the Lord. Proverbs 28 verse 26, He who trusts in his own heart as a fool, whoever walks wisely will be delivered. So we've got to reject the madness of this age, the madness of this world, and the deceitfulness of our own hearts and souls.