Right? It can get pretty discouraging, can't it? You can kind of come to the place of just saying for your own emotional well-being, you can almost check out and say, well, Nothing we can do here. Otherwise, it would just totally consume you. And believe it or not, the Apostle Paul is going to face some of the same discouragement here in our text this morning, but what I want to focus on is we're going to look at the discouragement and the things that are there, but I want to focus on and make a point about God's response to Paul here at the end of our text. Let me give you a little background if you don't mind, and if you do mind, I'm probably going to do it anyway. But Paul had been trying to appease the church at Jerusalem. He had come back up to Jerusalem. You know, the Holy Spirit had kind of warned him what was going to happen. He had had some prophecy also given to him, saying that there was going to be problems when he went, but he went anyway. I'm not gonna argue whether Paul was in or out of the will of God. I think he was still in the will of God for going anyway. But when he came up to Jerusalem, the church there had told him there are some accusations against him that he was telling the Gentile believers that the law of Moses wasn't necessary. Now, do realize this acts as a transitional book, right? We are going from a couple thousand years, right, or 3,500 years maybe, of law, I'd have to add that up again. But we're going from a long time of law into this life in Christ Jesus and their Messiah. And there's obviously some holdovers and things that way. But there was some contention there that Paul was bringing up problems with these Gentile believers. And one of the things they thought would appease the Jews in Jerusalem would be if Paul would take these four young men that have made a vow to God that he would take them into the temple, and the Jews would see that, okay, Paul isn't just throwing out everything that they think is of God, and it would help the cause of the gospel, no doubt. And so, Paul did that. He tried to appease this church of Jerusalem, and he went into the temple with these four men, and it didn't help at all, right? He tried to appease the church and he ends up trying to appease these Jews that are in the church. And while he got into the temple there, there are some Jews that were from Asia there at Ephesus who had seen Paul and they knew Paul over there. Well, they saw him in the temple and they said, hey, that's that guy that was bringing Greeks into the synagogue at Ephesus and defiling it and defiling the synagogue. So of course the religious leaders are, You know, they blow up, they're mad, they take Paul, they drag him out of there, and they take him outside the temple, outside the city wall there, and they're proceeding to stone and kill him. And thankfully, word got back, you know, you got the fortress of Antonia there on that, I believe it's the northwest corner of the Temple Mount, where that fortress used to be, and no doubt they maybe saw down and could hear the tumult that was going on, A bunch of soldiers ran down, and they got Paul, and they dragged him out of there just before they could kill him, and they took him away, all right? And so, as they're taking him into the fortress of Antonia, Paul says, hold on a minute. They're going up the stairs. I want to speak to them. And they said, do you speak Greek, right? And he's like, well, let me talk to him. And the Bible says he begins to talk to them in Acts chapter 22, I believe it is. And towards the end of it, he begins to talk to them in the Hebrew tongue. So when he begins to speak to them in their own language, all of a sudden they stopped and were quiet. And they're like, oh, this guy speaks Hebrew. And so they're listening to him. And what does Paul do? He goes through his whole testimony of how he came to Christ. And no doubt, the rapt attention they must have had, it seems, I don't know that that is what is here in the text, that they were just glued to him, but no doubt they were listening and they led him all the way to the end of his testimony and all the way to the end of his coming to Christ. And everything was going somewhat good until, until he mentions that Jesus called him to the Gentiles. And you know what happened then. Boom! I mean they went nuts. And they dragged him up into the fortress of Antonia and he got away. And so because of all this, the chief captain of the Romans decide to try Paul by scourging. Now, the whole process of scourging was like the old movies when they get you into the dark room and they put the bright light on you and make you tell the truth. Well, this was their version of a bright light. A lot more painful. Right? They would start the scourging process and get you to fess up, right, whatever you had done. And the quicker you fessed up, I mean, the less likely you're going to get beat half to death in your life. And so while they're getting him tied up to whatever they're tying him up to, right, they're getting his arms tied up and he goes, is it legal to beat a Roman citizen? That's all he had to say. And they went, uh-oh. Hold on a minute, we'll be right back. You know, and he's waiting, tied up, waiting. And they come back, and they left him locked up in that fortress of Antonia overnight. And they figured, we're going to set up a meeting in the morning, right? And can I tell you, this meeting went about like how the last meeting in the White House just went. every day is like, get the popcorn. No, I got it. Yeah. They took the bands off of Paul and they brought them to the council. And this council was the council of Sanhedrin. It comprised of 70 of them. Some people believe they got that number 70 off of those 70 men that Moses had appointed. Plus one makes, with the high priest, makes 71. I don't, I mean, I think that sounds good to me. But within this council, the real big thing here is that within this council were two different sects. There was the Pharisees and then there is the Sanhedrin. The Pharisees were the separatists. They were the conservatives. They were the wild-eyed fundamentalists, okay? And then the Sadducees were the liberals, okay? The Pharisees believed in the resurrection. They believed in angels. The Sadducees believed in neither of the two. And so this was the Jewish Supreme Court made up of liberals and conservatives. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? And so, when the Romans took over this part of the world, you've got to realize that what they removed from the Sanhedrin was the authority to put anybody to death. Only Rome had that authority. and they would have seen this 20 years earlier with the crucifixion of Jesus. They had to get the Romans to do the crucifixion. And so here Paul is standing before his accusers, he is going to address the council, and he opens up in verse one of 23, chapter 23, verse one, and says, men, men and brethren. Now it is possible in chapter 22 in verse 1, he does say, men, brethren, and fathers, hear you my defense, which I now make unto you. And so this was on his way up to the fortress when he stopped to talk to all of those that were wanting to stone him and that big group that had gathered together. But in this setting here, with just the Sanhedrin, he doesn't say fathers. It's kind of interesting to me. A little side note there. Why didn't he say that? I don't know. Possibly, as many surmised, Paul was a Sanhedrin. on the Council of the Sanhedrin. He put himself on the same level as them and didn't acknowledge any of them as his father, but only men and brethren. Impossible? I don't know, but it's interesting. He goes on in this council here and he says, I have lived in all good conscience before God unto this day. Now I want you to think about that real quick. We're gonna do a little bit of a background lesson here, a little bit of teaching. But if you think about that, he said, I've lived in all good conscience unto this day. Well, where was he right now? Well, he's saved. He's born again. What was he before this day? He was lost. And what was he doing when he was lost? Killing Christians. Seeing to it that Stephen was stoned. Good conscience? How is that good conscience? But he says, he's emphatic here, I have lived in all good conscience. Can I tell you the conscience is a good goad, but it's not necessarily a good guide. Why? Because you can train your conscience. No, the conscience is a good thing and we can sin against our conscience, absolutely. But sometimes we learn that some of the things that we thought were the right thing to do, we are believing they were right, we can do them in a good conscience, right, and they can be wrong. I had somebody some years ago we were dealing with back in the old building dealing with on baptism and they had said, but I got baptized in this church of Christ but I felt so good. How can that be so wrong? I said, well, you had a good conscience towards God and God knew your heart but it still wasn't right. They still don't have the authority to baptize. Right? Okay, they don't. That's another lesson, but they don't, okay? And I said, but, you know, now that you know the truth, you need to follow God. Do we not remember Apollos? When he was preaching a coming Messiah, and Aquila and Priscilla brought him aside and showed him more perfectly the way of God? He didn't know. His conscience was clean. But when he came out of that, what did he do? He went out preaching Christ, that he had come and died and risen again. Alright? And so we see the conscience is a good goad, but it's not necessarily a good guide. It can be trained. And so when Paul was persecuting the church, he really believed he was doing what was the will of God. But he was wrong. And I believe, most likely, I remember it was like this in my own life, the first time you experience the conviction of the Spirit of God, you wondered, what was that? I remember sitting in a summer camp at 17 years old, right, got invited to the summer camp with this church, and I heard the preaching. I had never heard preaching like that before, right, out of Philippians all week, and man, it was rah, all week. And man, something was going on inside. By the end of the week, I'm holding on, right, girl next to me says, you need to go forward. No, I'm fine, right. I didn't know what was going on, you know. You know what I did? I went home and got rid of bad stuff. threw away bad stuff, quit bad stuff, went to church, did all the good stuff, but I didn't know what the Holy Spirit was doing to me. This was the drawing of the Spirit of God that was going on, and it took 10 years for me, right, because of my own pride and arrogance to finally repent before God and have faith, repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Listen, I have no problem with things, I don't know, he didn't say this, but maybe possibly Paul was like, what is going on? He begins to fight against her, but he still says here, it was all in good conscience, 1 Timothy 1.13, who was before a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious, but I obtained mercy, Paul said, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. So even our conscience needs to be grounded in the Word of God. A little side note here. Our conscience needs to be grounded in the Word of God. Everybody's born with a conscience and a sense of right and wrong. It's one of those two natural areas of revelation that we have that we know there's a God. It's our conscience and creation. We know there's a God, but our right may be wrong, right? And it needs to be trained according to the Word of God. And so this is how Paul begins. I have in good conscience Have they had a good conscience? And so for some reason though the high priest decides he needs to smack his mouth. Right? Obviously he didn't think what he was doing, preaching to the Gentiles, was something to have a good conscience over. Maybe he didn't like that. Good conscience, going out to Gentiles, bringing them into the synagogue, trying to bring them to God, smack them in the mouth. And it's interesting, Paul rebukes him. He calls him a whited wall. I don't know if you know this, but in in Israel when they would bury, especially up in the little crags in the caves, up in the little mountainous areas, they would bury bodies and they would paint the stones in front of them, right, they would paint them white so they would know to stay out of them because you defile yourself to touch bones of the dead and so they didn't want anybody by accident getting into these tombs and touching bones and they got to go have a cleansing process, so they'd paint them white, right? And Jesus even said, you know, the outside is painted white, but within are dead man's bones, right? And so they understood this. And this is what Paul's calling the high priest. You look really good on the outside, but actually your outside, hold on, is a warning to those that are around you that in you is nothing but deadness and dead bones. You have nothing to offer in your religion. You have nothing to help. And boy, smack him in the mouth. They said, you don't talk to the high priest like this. It's fascinating though. Did you see what Paul did? Oh, I didn't know you were the high priest. It's not right for me to speak evil against authority and dignity. Dignitaries. Interesting, wasn't it? Paul backed down. He realized he was wrong for speaking evil. The Bible tells us to speak evil of no man. You know, so often we have facts that come to us that we don't know if they're true or not and we start yapping away. Boy, the Holy Spirit says, yeah, careful. You don't know that. Even if it's true, is that really the best thing to do? I don't know if your flesh is like mine. I don't know if anybody has done that. Am I the only one? Why do I do this? So this is all the introductions and the niceties. Now we're all out of the way now. And so Paul begins. He's a brilliant mind, Paul is. He's an absolutely brilliant mind. His knowledge of the Sanhedrin is going to be used to his advantage. If you'll notice here what he does, Jews are known for having many opinions. Our Jewish tour guide in 2019 said this, if you have two Jews, you'll have three opinions. I don't think that's just among the Jews, though. See, the Pharisees, remember, they're the conservatives. They're the separatists. They're the ones who believe in the resurrection and angels. The Sadducees are the liberals. They're the power-hungry. They were the rich. Now, none of this is, you know, just because they're rich doesn't mean that this is why. But they didn't believe in the resurrection nor in angels or anything like that. So Paul is gonna capitalize on the division. Oh, he's sly. He's sly as a fox. Look at verse 6. But when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other part Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Men, brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of a Pharisee, of the hope of the resurrection of the dead I am called into question. He just got half of them to get on his side. Yeah, I love it. My father was a Pharisee, he says. And here's the distinction becomes, I mean, just absolutely becomes a distraction. So the Pharisees are like, well, I don't see any problem with him. And the Sadducees of course, well, yeah, there is a problem with him. And so there's a fight gets going among the council of the Sanhedrin. And so Paul was able to divert attention from himself. and reopen the wound between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Look at verse 8. For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit, but the Pharisees confess both. And there arose a great cry in the scribes that were of the Pharisees' part, and strove, saying, We find no evil in this man. But if a spirit or an angel hath spoken to him, let us not fight against God. Oh, I think that's kind of interesting. Let me stop there real quick. Remember, Paul has given his testimony that Jesus stopped him along the way to Damascus and spoke audibly, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks. Isn't that interesting? Hey, listen, if they're going to confess that God speaks to people by angels or a spirit, they're gonna have to do something, deal something with the fact that Jesus rose from the dead 20 years earlier. Why? Because Paul said, he spoke to me on the road to Damascus. But I'm sure they didn't spend too much time thinking about that. Maybe they did, right? But so here's this division, and then another riot breaks out. This is, watch, this is the religious religious cancel culture of its day. This is Antifa. This is BLM and Antifa mad at each other and that eventually happens. So look at verse 10, Paul's caught in the middle of this. And when there arose a great dissension, the chief captain, fearing Paul should be pulled in pieces of them, commanded the soldiers to go down and to take him by force among them and to bring him to the castle. Bring him to the castle. So Paul is in the middle. They bring him back up to the fortress of Antonia. Watch, he's faced his accusers, he has divided his antagonists, he's put division among them, but something's going to happen in this fortress of Antonia this night. He's going back up again tonight, that night, and something's going to happen. While he's sleeping that night, Jesus shows up in verse 11. And that night following, verse 11, the Lord stood by him. and said, Be of good cheer, Paul, for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome. Do you notice the words of Jesus there? Be of good cheer. Be of good cheer. Does Jesus have idle words? I've already exposed myself in Sunday school this morning, I have lots of idle words. We talked about this, Jesus has no idle words. Why did he say, be of good cheer? Is it possible that Paul wasn't feeling too cheerful? This ain't rocket science, is it? Pretty simple. Paul was discouraged, no doubt. Maybe he was sad and discouraged. You say, why? Why would he have been this way? Well, because he had some things he was trying to accomplish here. First thing he wanted to accomplish was he wanted to minister to the church at Jerusalem. Listen to Romans chapter 15, verse 25 and 26. But now I go unto Jerusalem to minister unto the saints, for it hath pleased them of Macedonia and of Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem. Hey, he just wanted to go be a blessing to the saints at Jerusalem, but he kind of got a, I don't know, kind of a poor reception and really kind of some bad advice. And he just wanted to go be a blessing to them. So he had some things he wanted to accomplish. Turn, if you would, to Romans. We're gonna look at three or four verses here in Romans, because one of the second things that the apostle Paul no doubt wanted to accomplish was he wanted to see Israel accept the Lord Jesus Christ. He wanted Israel to be saved. Look at Romans 9, one through three. Let me tell you this before we go on. Romans 9 through 11, I believe, I believe is parenthetical. Paul has chapters one through 12. I mean, one through eight, we have the gospel. Nine through 11, you have a parenthesis that deals with Israel. And then 12 on deals with the living out of the gospel on a day-to-day basis, right? And so here's nine through 11. Listen to these verses through these three chapters, each one of these chapters. I say then the truth, Romans 9 verse one. I say then the truth in Christ, I lie not. My conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost. that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow, continual sorrow. Do you see that? In my heart, for I wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, but the Jews in the temple falsely accused him and wanted nothing to do with Jesus. Do you see that? that I myself were cursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the flesh." Did Paul mean he wanted to go to hell? I don't know. But I know this, whatever he meant by that, he was saying the Holy Spirit is my witness. God knows my heart. I would sacrifice myself to the nth degree if my brethren would just come to Christ. Good reminder for us, huh? I wonder if we have that heart sometimes. Well, why? I mean, come on, we get discouraged after a while and we can walk away from it. But it never left Paul. He had some things he wanted to accomplish. One last time to go to Jerusalem. One last time maybe to stand and to speak and to preach the wonderful riches of Christ. And he's sitting in a prison this night. They've rejected Him again. Romans chapter 10 and verse 1, the apostle Paul said, Brethren, my heart's desire and my prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved That's all he wanted, to see his brethren come to Christ. Romans chapter 11, 13 and 14. For I speak to you Gentiles, and as much as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office, if by any means I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, Israelites, and might save some of them. I mean, listen, it's no doubt some of what the Apostle Paul wanted when he went to Israel, when he went to Jerusalem this time. No doubt he just wanted to be a blessing to the church. No doubt he just wanted to see his kinsmen after the flesh. He wanted to see Israel come and accept the Messiah. And he wanted to see them get saved. But I think thirdly what he wanted to do, maybe he just wanted to live a quiet and peaceable life before the government. You know from this point on, Paul's not going to see much freedom anymore. The rest of his ministry, he'll be a short time out of prison in Rome and then he'll go back in house arrest, he'll be released back again, but pretty much the rest of his ministry is going to be confined to four walls somewhere. 1 Timothy 2 and verse 1 he tells Timothy, I exhort therefore that first of all supplications and prayers and intercessions and giving of thanks be made for all men, listen, for kings and for them that are in authority. Why do we pray for our president? Why do you pray for those in authority, the ones you like, the ones you don't like? Why should you still be, hey, why should you still be crying out to God that Joseph Biden gets saved? Yeah, why? Because pretty soon it's gonna be too late for him. But notice this, you know why? That we may live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable, he says, in the sight of God our Savior. I think Paul just wanted to live a peaceable life. But the Sanhedrin made sure he was removed legally. And here he is once again sitting in a cell, essentially not accomplishing anything that he intended to accomplish. We've got a few minutes here. And I want to ask you today, is anything really different in our own life as a child of God? We see the life of the Apostle Paul, a child of God. He's one of our brothers, Brother Paul. You can call him Brother Paul. It's okay. Yeah. Is there much difference in our life than was in His life? Kind of like the church at Jerusalem. Do you know we have churches with even the name and the tag on them, independent, let's say even independent fundamental Baptists, that have so acclimated themselves to the world, they just weren't left alone. churches who once defended a King James Bible, churches who once preached and practiced ecclesiastical separation, personal separation and sanctification, personal sanctification and holiness. I saw a post of a young man that I've known that was very close to us and had this post of how blessed he was by some Presbyterian event that he went through while he's the assistant pastor of an independent Baptist church. It's discouraging. Do you know how much was poured into this young man of other people? And trained up. I don't know if you know this or not, but baptizing babies isn't in the church that Jesus started. It's not. This is why we believe in ecclesiastical separation. Do you love those people? Yeah. Do they have a heart for God? Some of them do. Yeah. Are they wrong? Yep. Absolutely. I'll skip over 2 Corinthians 6, 17. That one's a little too rough on personal separation. Okay, I know, I can tell. You want me to read it, to quote it to you? Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, right? Sayeth the Lord. Touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you unto myself. Fellowship. Churches used to be active in soul winning. They used to be full on Sunday morning and Sunday night and Wednesday night and special events and prayer meeting and all these things. What a great attendance we had for prayer meeting yesterday morning. Wasn't that a blessing? Yeah. But listen, it can get discouraging, can't it? Some of y'all that are older and you've been around, I'm not going to throw years out there, but longer than I have, and you've seen the drift, and you've seen the change. It's discouraging, doesn't it? Here's another one, like the religious crowd in Jerusalem. We've got our religious crowd today, you know. When you preach the Word of God, you'd think they would rejoice. You'd think they would love truth. You'd be like, wow, that is great. But you know what they do? They label you a radical. I had a cousin of mine say about another cousin, they said something the other day about being a legalist. And you just take the Bible literally, like you apply it literally. Well, how else would you apply it? unless you want to be the arbiter of truth. And I don't know if you have watched your own life, right, and your own struggles. I don't want to be the arbiter of truth because I get a lot wrong. Ask my wife. Yep, see, I've got a witness back there. So you try to, unless you try to preach truth, you try to live truth, you try to, these people that supposedly love God, they supposedly love the Word of God, they supposedly want the things of God, but you show them the things of God, oh, you're just a radical. Oh, you're just one of those fundamentalist kooks. You're just a wild, you're just wild-eyed, you always gotta be against everything. Do you have any joy in your life? Well, actually, I got a lot of joy in my life, thank you. Very much. You're a Bible thumper. I was up in Canada working in the GC's trailer, the general contractor's trailer, doing something, and something came up, you know, about the things of God, just some little comment, and he goes, oh, yeah, yeah, you're one of those Bible thumpers, huh? Eh? Yeah. Eh? I'm like, Bible thumper? Okay, whatever. I don't even have a Bible in my hand right now. No. How many get tired of this one, legalist? You're such a legalist. Could you please define the term? I don't think you know what that means. And that's kind of low-hanging fruit anyway. You're just throwing out legalists. Who wants to argue? Anyway. I'm just telling you. We have our own religious crowd today that doesn't want truth. No, they have their power structure, they have their life, they have everything in order, but to challenge them according to the Word of God, to say, that might not be right, they go, no, I don't like that. And then all of a sudden you're the enemy. It gets discouraging. It gets discouraging. I had a pastor tell me, he went to a new church, and he said, I don't know, I just assumed everybody liked the things of God like I did. He's in an independent Baptist church, right? He said, I just assumed everybody in the church would just love the things of God like I do, and be excited about services, and be excited about preaching, and be excited about singing, and be excited about outreach, and like, they're not. Yep. Do we dare get on government? Yeah. Is anybody in here old enough to remember COVID? You remember? Yeah. Yeah. We weren't the friends of the government. No. Yeah. We just wanted to preach the Bible. We just want to give people hope. You know, people were terrified of death. People were terrified of what was going to happen after they died. They're terrified of getting sick and dying with COVID. They were absolutely terrified. You know, we have the answer for them. We just want to give them the Bible. We just want to give the truth of the word of God. And the government's like, no, we want to control you. Okay, well, you're a pretty bad taskmaster. And actually, now we're finding out, now we're finding out, which we knew all along, You weren't really good with all the money you had. You still weren't good with that. I mean, giving you more, you would have messed that up too. Yeah. One of the greatest things, listen, one of the greatest things that ever happened in our country is when they shut down the government. I tell you, it's a good day. It is a good day. We just wanted to reach the lost world of the gospel of Jesus Christ. You know, it's funny, it's like years ago, you know, our leaders used to kind of understand this, that when somebody came to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, they saved the government a lot of money. They saved them from, listen, they quit drinking, they quit cheating, they quit blowing their mind with drugs, and they would keep a job, they would pay their taxes, they would stay out of prison. You would think the government would go, oh, please, keep preaching, because it just makes everything better. But no, they say, no, we want them. No, we want to control. No, you need to be quiet. You need to stop preaching. Listen, you know, society gets better when the society is full of born-again, Bible-believing Christians. It gets better. It absolutely does. But what I'm saying this morning is it gets discouraging after a while. It can get discouraging serving God. It can get discouraging having your heart broken over and over again. It can get discouraging preaching message after message with no results. It can get discouraging witnessing to your friends and your spouse or your parents or your children year after year after year after year. It can get discouraging at times. But you see what else Jesus told Paul? He said be of good cheer, Paul. There's that little colon right there. We're going to get the reason why now. For as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome. Already gave the title away, the Brother Davidson, so he's already there. Oh, it was more than 10 minutes ago. You forgot, right? What's going on? What is Jesus telling the apostle Paul here? Well, Paul was discouraged. Watch. But he wasn't done. How did Jesus cheer him up? You're going to go and preach the gospel of Rome also. I'm not done with you. There's still service coming. You're still serving, right? You still have something to do. I love this. I'm going to switch this. We'll go back to the noisy one. I might be discouraged over this, but I'm not done. I'm not done. We've got a few minutes left. You discouraged this morning? Obviously the Apostle Paul was. What about you? Are you discouraged? Do you have family that's still not coming to Christ? Do you have a spouse that still wants nothing to do with the Lord? Are you watching people that you respected walk away from a close walk with the Lord? Walk away from personal sanctification for an easier lifestyle? That's what a lot of this is. Sure, it's easy to live like the world. Easiest thing there is. Jesus didn't call us to easy. He called us to holiness and to walk like Him. So it's too hard. Well, not if you have the indwelling Spirit of God. It's not. Maybe the direction of our country got you down. Like, man, I've been down with that ever since I started voting. Maybe the behavior of Christians, so-called Christians, they've saddened you. Please don't miss this. Just as Jesus came beside Paul, I love that, that Jesus came beside him, right? The Lord stood by him. I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. And the depths of his despair and his discouragement and his sadness, Jesus hadn't gone anywhere. And he decided to speak up a little. It was bad enough he had to speak up. He said, cheer up, Paul, cheer up. I tell you, the Lord is standing by you this morning. He hasn't left. You know what He tells you this morning? Cheer up. Cheer up. Why? Because you're not done. Do you believe prayer changes things? So as long as you're alive, you can still have access to the throne of God. Amen? Actually, how many remember that photograph, the still image of JFK and JFK Jr. under the desk? Was it JFK Jr.? Yeah, I think it was, or whichever. In the little opening, he's playing under the desk, and you've seen images of that and other presidents and their children just waltzing around the Oval Office. Do you know we can't do that? You and I can't do that. We'd have to get an appointment. We'd have to have somebody come in with us. And here this little kid just running around like he owns the place. Why? Because his dad's the president. That's awesome. Do you realize when we go in the presence of our father, we go in the presence of him as a child and he our father. That's awesome. You're not done. If you're breathing air, cheer up, you can still pray. Cheer up, you still have a work to do. Cheer up, there's still hope in the future, right? He says, where will I go from here? What am I gonna do? I'm in a prison, what's going on? And Jesus told Paul exactly what he was gonna do next. You're going to Rome, okay? That's kinda hoping to go to Spain. Well, you're going to Rome. Maybe he made a little time in Spain, but he went to Rome. Can I tell you, when the time's right, he'll tell you what's next. He'll let you know. What do you do in the meantime? Well, just keep doing what's in front of you to do. Cheer up. See, Paul is discouraged. It was okay to be discouraged. It was alright. Jesus didn't rebuke him. He didn't say, how could you? Where is your faith? I can't believe I saved you. He didn't say that. Aren't you thankful we have a tender and a compassionate Savior? He was discouraged, but he wasn't done. Listen, you don't have to give up just because others have. We're watching it all over the place. People are just giving up on God. They're going to the world, they're looking like the world, they're acting like the world with all of their newfound freedom and they're loving their freedom, but I tell you what, you don't want to get caught up in the world because when judgment comes on the world, as Israel saw many times, they got caught right up in the judgment with them. We don't quit praying. You know what's wonderful? Somebody may make it plain, I don't want anything to do with your God. You may go to your neighbor and peep one word and they go, back in their house, right brother? And they don't want nothing to hear about God. But you know what they can't stop? Your prayers. You know what they can't stop? God's love for them that He will continue to pursue them till their last breath. And you can pray to that end and intercede for them on that end. So don't give up just because others have. Don't stop praying because somebody said, I don't want to hear it anymore. Don't quit preaching the gospel just because there's been a little bit of persecution from the people around you, from government. Don't give up just because you're sitting in your own cell and the future looks like bleak and looks nothing like you expected it to look like. If you're alive today, God is not done with you. He's not done. So don't be discouraged. Don't be discouraged. The future is bright. Why is it so bright? Because our future is Jesus. The light of the world. And it's bright. It's good. Our Father, thank you this morning. We're watching our nation crumble today. We're watching those who name the name of Christ and no doubt, many of them are born again, but we're watching their lifestyle and watching them walk away from you. Watching them leave the faith life and choose the sight life. And Lord, as you know, we get discouraged over time. And I'm thankful for the reminder here this morning of all of the things you could have recorded in your word. By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, you chose to write this event down. And you want us to know, just as you want everybody to know who has read this passage, and we look at it again this morning, that there's no need to be discouraged this morning. You were by us and you still have a job for us. And I'll thank you for that. It's amazing to see what was accomplished by the Apostle Paul when he went to Rome. And it wasn't his freedom. It was even in a cell there that much was accomplished that we are still gleaning from this very day. And though we may not see what you do with our life in the future, we can be confident of this and be encouraged in this this morning, that what we allow you to do through our life will continue on even when we are no longer on this planet. What hope that is, and we thank you for it. We pray that you just do a good work today, in Jesus' name, amen. Why don't we stand this morning The piano is going to play, and however the Lord has spoken to you this morning, there are those that are praying, and maybe you just need to get along with the Lord this morning, and just thank Him, and let Him know that you're just going to continue on. You might need to tell Him, God, I'm a little discouraged today, a little discouraged about how people have responded, how things have gone in life, where I'm at, and I just want to thank You today that You're not done with me. There's still plenty to do. However the Lord has spoken to you, respond to Him today. Respond to Him. One of the keys of the Apostle Paul's life was he was right where the Lord wanted him, with a heart and a desire for obedience. Are you right where the Lord wants you? looked at Sunday school this morning and the death to flesh, death to the self. Have you died to self?