If you got your Bibles ready, let's turn to the Gospel according to 1 Chronicles. The Gospel according to 1 Chronicles, you'll find that in your Bible and as soon as you find it, say amen. Y'all found it already, y'all are quick. I had it marked and I barely found it in that amount of time. Let's stand together then in honor of the reading of the precious word of God. 1 Chronicles chapter number four. I'm going to be up front with you. I do not know that I will be able to preach everything that I have here. I just, I don't know if I can get it all out, but I have learned over the years, a good preacher ought to know when he's done and just quit. when he's done. And my baby brother taught me that good preaching's like a slab of bologna. You ought to be able to just cut it off anywhere and be good, amen? So I don't know if we'll get through all this tonight, but we'll get something from the Lord tonight. I know this is what the Lord has, because I wrestled all day with it, and this is what the Lord has us preach tonight. You got your Bible open to 1 Chronicles 4? You love the word of God tonight? And it's been a joy. That singing is like nanner pudding. Take a whole lot of that to make me sick. A whole lot. Praise the Lord. 1 Chronicles chapter 4 and verse number 1. The Bible says, The sons of Judah, Phares, Hezron, and Carmi, and Hur, and Shobal. That's our text for tonight. You may be seated. The sons of Judah. Phares, Hezron, and Carmi, and Hur, and Shobal. And I think tonight what we'll do is we will just, we'll do what we've done every night. We're gonna take a verse and we're gonna dissect it. We're just gonna go through this scripture and preach what God has in His Word. God's Word is sufficient. to get the job done. And I don't know about you, but a lot of years in my life, I set out to read through my Bible and never had trouble getting through Genesis. It's pretty exciting, to be honest with you. Start with nothing, bang, everything, and then stuff starts happening right off the bat. Snakes show up, talk you out of dinner. Talk you into breaking your diet, get in trouble. Yeah. We'd all be in trouble if breaking our diet got us kicked out, amen? And none of us would do. Preachers, I broke my diet so many ways this week. We found new ways to break my diet last night at the children's home, Brother Brown. Let's look at the scripture tonight and see what God has for us in his word. Many times I've started out in Genesis, do pretty good. Exodus, pretty exciting, to be honest with you. Leviticus. falling back a little bit on my Bible reading in Leviticus. Then I get under conviction and catch up a couple of days a week, you know, to have those catch-up days. And then numbers. And that's where all the begatting happened. Begat, begat, begat, you know, it's like, whoa. Man, and I can't pronounce some of the words in between the begats. Only word I know is begat. And I got to where when I got to numbers, the way I make it through numbers is just if you need a hint, if you've been stuck there for a couple of years, the hint is Alexander Scorby. Get Alexander Scorby and just turn him on when you're in numbers. He'll pronounce them, you act like you read them, and you read the begats out loud. Begat, begat, begat, begat. And sometimes we think. Those passages are not important. And all of that is very, very important to your Bible study. We get lost in those genealogies and we get to where we rush through them and sometimes we overlook what God has in His Word for us. In tonight's text, we're gonna go word by word through the text. I do not know if we'll get everything out Don't know if I'll make it to the end of the verse. If I don't, you'll have to pay me to come back sometime and finish. But I wanna look at this. In fact, we're gonna lift our title, if we can, from the first phrase. So let's look at the first phrase together. In 1 Chronicles chapter four, we read the sons of Judah. This gives us the context, by the way, for our text, because we are in the genealogies here, and so the context for chapter four is that we're looking at the sons of Judah. And so let's extract a title from that if we can. We gotta have a title to have a good sermonic construction and usually we start with that and the guys in the back are waiting for it. And I usually repeat my title two or three times because many times I get the CD from the church where I preach and I don't recognize my own sermon title. What I see in this text is the sons of Judas. So we're looking at the offspring of Judah. We're looking at the product of Judah. That word Judah is the word praise. There's a great message as to how that name even came into existence. I won't preach it tonight, but it's worth studying why his mother named him praise. It is the ending word. for the international word hallelujah is literally hallel-yudah. Hallel-yudah. It means praise the Lord. And so that word yudah, Judah, is the word for praise. So what we're looking at tonight in this verse is the offspring of praise or the product of praise. If I could title it something, if I could title it something. Let's make sure they hear me. I would title it this, Praise Changes Things. I grew up hearing that phrase, but I grew up hearing it like this, prayer changes things. And by the way, it does. Somebody say amen. I had the honor of pastoring. My first pastor, it was Dr. Ray K. Stewart's first pastor. He pastored a great church in Boiling Springs, South Carolina for many years, a great man of God. My first church was his first church, and I'm a history nut. I'm a history teacher by trade. My first degree is in history and I love that. I love history. I'm passionate about it. I double majored in English because they make you do that. And so don't hold my grammar against me tonight, but I love history. And so I was digging around for the history of that church. And one day I was cleaning out the pulpit and it had not been cleaned out since 1967, I'm pretty sure. And I found a little sign in the back that was underneath a bunch of stuff. And it was a little metal sign that big. And it literally said, prayer changes things. And I took that sign and I placed it where I would always see it. I glued it down on the edge of the lip so I'd always see it as I approached the pulpit. Prayer changes things. But I have learned down through the years that it is important for God's people to know that while prayer does change things and this doesn't take away from that at all, it is important to know that praise changes things. It is very important for us to know that. I was in cemetery, told y'all about that last night. They called it seminary, but I'm pretty sure they're trying to kill me. And while I was there, they were having a classroom argument. And they were downplaying the role of music and worship and praise in the service. And I walked away from there thinking that music and that part of the service is just something you had to get through so you could get to the preaching. And I believe it does set the stage for the preaching and I believe that it should. But I want you to know something, your praise changes things. Praise has a product. So we're gonna look tonight at the product of praise, the sons of Judah. The first son that we find in our text is the son named Phares. Phares is obviously a Hebrew name. I think all these are gonna be Hebrew names. I don't think I need to say that. But the names in the Bible have meaning and the meanings are important. In fact, we find many times that the names play a very important role in the narrative and the story of the Bible. And so just as Judah means praise, we find out that Phares' name has a meaning. In fact, Phares' name means simply this. It means bursting forth. To burst forth, Phares. When I think about it, I think about where I pastored in Rural Retreat, Virginia. I had a deacon there that was a farmer. They had a large family and for a cash crop, to bring in cash to the family, they had nine children and they all worked the farms. They had three different farms. They had a dairy farm that they operated. They also had a a crop farm, they raised crops to feed the dairy cattle. And then they also had livestock farm where they raised beef cattle and they raised sheep and goats and they took them to the auction. And this family was very innovative. His families used to be like this, very, very innovative. They got tired of paying auctioneer fees. And so they took one of their sons, John, and they sent him to auctioneer school. And he became a licensed auctioneer. In fact, he became the auctioneer at the local stockyards. And when they went to sell their stock, they didn't have to pay the auctioneer fee. Pretty smart. And their daughter was the youngest nurse to ever receive an RN degree in the state of Virginia. She went to a Christian school, graduated early, went into medical school, graduated early from RN medical school and became the youngest nurse certified in the state of Virginia. They set her up with a business there in town of Virginia Home Health and Hospice Care. She married a young man who was a builder. And so they sent him to contractor school. And when they wanted something built, they had their own contractor. When they needed their blood pressure taken, they had their own nurse. And when they went to auction, they had their own auctioneer. I won't tell you that their one son went to raising meth. I'm not sure if that was a family plan or not. They had a son. He's my age. His name is Mark. And for a cash crop to bring cash in the family, he was a well driller. And they bought two big old massive well drilling rigs, $400,000 each, and one water truck. And they would set up a well and they would drill down in the ground looking for water. And they had a water truck there that has to keep that bit cool while it's drilling through various layers of rock and debris. And then what they would do is they'd take the other well drilling rig and they would, while he's drilling, they would set it up somewhere else. I have a CDL, and so sometimes Brother Sam would call me and say, hey, you want to go help me move a rig today? And I said, man, that sounds a whole lot more fun than dealing with Baptist people's problems. And so I'd put on jeans and work boots, and he'd pick me up in his old work truck. And Brother Sam, he had a Bible that stayed up in the dash of that truck. It was that thick, swelled up in the sun. And man, he taught Bible. He'd say, get that Bible over there. He taught Bible the whole way, Brother Kiefer. I got an education in prophecy. That man, he'd be driving and he'd say, turn over there to the book of Ezekiel and read that right there now. Now go to Revelation 12 and read that and look how that ties in with Daniel 9 and I'm over there going. Became good friends with them and I would help set up rigs from time to time when they needed me. One day he called me in the morning. He said, I want you to come, Brother Jason. He said, I want you to see something neat. And I loaded up with him and he picked me up and drove me over to this valley over in Bland County, Virginia, over in the mountains where Brother Sheffy's ministry primarily was located. He drove me up in this valley and we pulled up and the rig was sitting there. There was nobody working the rig. In fact, the water truck was gone. He said, you notice something? And I said, no. And he said, look closer. And I looked and I said, y'all left the water on. He said, hold on, there's no water. Water was coming out of the hole where the well drill sat. I said, what do you mean? He said, I said, you left the water on. He said, no, look around. There's no water truck. I got to look, there's no water truck there. I said, what's this? He said, we struck an artesian well yesterday. I knew you'd want to see it. An artesian well is a pocket of pressurized water under the earth, usually about 100 feet or more. And usually it is a spring or river that is flowing and there is great pressure on it. And when you puncture that, not only do you get good water out of the well, it forces itself up through the water pipe and it shoots out. He said, the last rod is in there. They have 20 foot rods. He said, we're gonna pull the last rod out. But Jason, I just want you to be here when we do. They pulled that last rod out, and when they did, that water comes shooting out about a foot and a half out of the ground, just shooting out steady. He said, we gotta cap that. He said, this farmer has notified a water bottling company, and they're gonna come set up here, and they're gonna bottle this water out of this artesian well, just shooting out. I said, how much water is down there, Brother Sam? He said, there's more than they'll ever need. shooting them by the ground. Can I tell you that one of the products of praise is what I like to call the publicity of praise. And what I mean by that is one of the sons of praise is phares, which means to burst forth. And here's what I mean by that. It's one of those unusual things where when you do this, you get more of it. And when you have praise, it begats praise. And more of it. The Bible talks about it like this. The Bible says it like this. From the abundance of the heart. Can y'all finish that for me? The mouth. What's on the inside is going to come outside. And if there's an abundance, it's gonna burst out. Can I say this to you tonight? I believe it's important. I believe we need a revival of praise. Now I've been in your church and I can tell y'all like having church. And I can tell y'all like having good singing. And y'all even back up the singers a little bit with an amen now and then. One or two hallelujahs, I saw some uplifted hands. But I just want to tell you tonight that praise doesn't have to stay in here. We ought to have praise out there because it ought to be so in us that it is trying to get out of us. When I first took Rural Retreat, I was a young, young man and I was fired up and excited. And we did not have a youth pastor at that time. They had just, the youth pastor had went on to pastor somewhere else. And so I was filling in, I was pastoring and being the youth pastor and I was young. I thought that was so much fun. And I thought we're going to have this awesome outing that they did when I was a teenager. And so we went over to the church after Sunday night and we had pizza and whatnot and the other, and then we're gonna have some games. And so now I pastored a redneck church and y'all seem like really sophisticated high class people around here. But in the mountains of Southwest Virginia, there's a bunch of rednecks. And I will tell you something about rednecks. The rednecks are proud of it. They're not a bit ashamed of it. And them redneck boys are proud of being redneck boys, but the only people more proud to be redneck than the boys was the girls. They love to compete, boys against girls. And so I had them all set up. I put out two eight-foot tables side by side, and I had my teenagers lined up on the other side. I had boys on this table, girls on this table. And I put in front of them, each one of them teenagers, I put a little cup about that big. And then I came along and I poured water in all them cups and teenagers standing there looking. And I said, we're gonna compete boys against the girls. Who's gonna win, the boys or the girls? The boys were like, we're gonna win. And the girls were like, we're gonna win. I mean, it was just like that. And I poured that water in those little cups. And then I pulled out something those kids had never seen in their life. Alka-Seltzer. Little white tablets. How many of y'all know teenagers have no idea what Alka-Seltzer is? or what Alka-Seltzer is for. They've never had to take one in the middle of the night just so they could get another hour's sleep. They don't know. I put those little tablets out there and I said, here's the competition. They're looking at me like, what are we gonna do? I said, here's the competition. I said, what you're gonna do is you're gonna take that water, you're gonna put it in your mouth, you're gonna hold it there. Don't swallow it. You're gonna take that tablet and when I count down three, two, one, you're gonna put the tablet in your mouth, close your mouth, you're gonna hold it there. Don't swallow it. I don't know if they had fun or not, but I had a wonderful time. They put that water in their mouth. I got water in my mouth. I got water in my mouth. Who's going in? The boys are going, oh, the boys, you know. I said, all right, take your tablet. They're all holding their tablet. They have no idea what's coming. They put that tablet in their mouth. One of them burped out their nose and it shot, white foamy sound. When that happened, the boy standing next to him saw it happen, he went. When he did that, it was like a domino effect. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I miscalculated. Cause I was standing on the other side of an eight foot table, but it's only four foot this way. I was covered in Alka-Seltzer and teenager spit. You know what happened? Oh, it's so funny. There was a girl on the end. I'll call her name out just for the record. Jesse, Jesse was standing on the end and she went like this when it started, she went, I backed away for that one, honey. I knew what was coming after that. She went, and everybody's watching her. And she goes. Do you know what happened to those young people? What was on the inside got bigger than the outside, and it could not stay in. It had to get out. And can I tell you this? If you've got Jesus on the inside doing a work in your life, and you get full of grace, and you get full of truth, and you get full of faith, and you'll get full of joy and love, and God won't have to beg you to give him praise. It will come out on its own. And our praise needs to be public. Our praise needs to be public. And I'm telling you right now, I'm telling you it's hurting us in this lost and dying world that God's people look like a bunch of mules who've been chewing on sour briars. God's people ought to be the happiest people in the world. We ought to be full of joy, unspeakable, and full of glory. And if we're full of it, it will come out. That's the publicity of praise. Let's look at the second name. The sons of Judah, Phares and Hezron. Is Hezron next? Is Hezron next? I like this one. Man, this is where I get hung up though. If you thought that was long. This is where I get hung up. Hezron is a unique word. And they named the son of Judah, named him Hezron. It literally means surrounded by walls. It can be translated in English as the word courtyard. A courtyard. I didn't grow up with a courtyard. But one day I got a hotel room at the Courtyard by Marriott. and I found out what a courtyard was. They build that hotel around a big area where they got waterfalls and trees and all kinds of stuff and big high, you go in there and you look straight up, it's amazing. A courtyard surrounded by walls. I believe this son of Judah shows us a picture of the protection of praise. that when we live in a world of praise, where we're giving God the glory of our lives, and we're constantly living in a place of giving God the glory, and giving Him the praise, and giving Him the honor, and when people say, man, boy, you sure are talented, instead of going, I sure am, we say, hey, it's all God, if it wasn't for Him, I wouldn't have anything. And there's something about that, that God says, I think I'll just, mark me a little spot around that fella. and make sure I take care of him and keep my eye on him and watch him. I was pastor in that little church, that little country church and I'm now pastor, right? I've been an associate pastor all these years and I'm now the pastor. Man, I was so excited. Let's go on our first foreign missions trip. I was so excited to go on our first foreign missions trip. And I was nervous about it. I'm the pastor. I'm the leader of the church, but I know that I don't know what I'm doing. And so I contacted my uncle who pastored in Chattanooga. He's on several mission boards as a member advisory board and makes mission trips all over the world. And I called him. I said, man, we're going to go to Mrs. Tripp. Where do you think we should go? He told me a great place to go there. He'd been serving and working with this missionaries down in Honduras. And he said, this is a great place to go. They know how to handle the trips. They can deal with everything. And so I put together this mission trip. I got my people all excited. Man, we're raising money for stuff. We're doing all kinds of things, putting together packets to take with us. We're so excited about it. And then we come down to packing. And I'll never forget, I called him and I said, you got any advice on packing? And he said, yes. He said, I got some advice for you. He said, you better pack enough in your carry-on that in case your suitcase gets lost, you will still be able to have a couple of changes of clothes to wear, put enough in there to do that. So I took my little carry-on bag and man, I packed that thing and I was so excited and y'all probably aren't very excitable like me, but I get so excited. I packed that carry-on 14 times. it. I said that don't look right. I can't get everything in. I unpacked it. Packed it again. Unpacked it. Packed it again. Unpacked it. This carry-on bag was a bag that I'd been carrying to the gym for years as I would take my kids to school. I'd drop them off school and I'd swing by the gym. I'd do a full workout, whatnot and the other, you know, and then get a shower, get dressed for the day and go out on visiting. And this was the bag I carried every day. And I had In fact, I called him and said, I can't get everything in here. He said, let me tell you what to do. He said, man, take your clothes and roll them up tight. They won't be as wrinkled. When you get there, you can shake them out. And man, he had all this great advice. And man, I had rolled everything up and tight and packed it and finally got it just right. And I was like, man. And then my wife said, you forgot this and this. I had to unpack it again. packed it again. We load up all of our luggage and because we live so far from everywhere, it was a two and a half hour drive to the Charlotte airport. So our flight is at five in the morning. They told us we had to be there early. So I'm at the, we're loading stuff in the van at one 30 in the morning. We get in the car and we're driving and we go up over fancy gap mountain, beautiful, early in the morning, about 2.30 in the morning, we're crossing over Fancy Gap Mountain, headed down off that side into the North Carolina area, and we're headed to the airport. And just as we're going up there, I don't know why, but I just said, hey, guys, I said, you know, we're gonna be serving together this week. It'd probably be good if you were prepared. When we go to these churches, you may have to give your testimony, you may need to sing a song. I don't know what they're gonna do. And you know, it'd probably be good for all of us to hear each other's testimony. And it got sweet in that church, man. I mean, the Holy Ghost God just... It got sweet. People bragging on the Lord and what God's done in their life, and pinching themselves, going, I can't believe I'm going on a missions trip. I used to be a mission field all by myself. Now we're going on a missions trip, and I'm telling you, we're crying. I'm like, you know, manning up over here. I mean, it was on. And then we started singing Amazing Grace and Blessed Assurance. And I mean, nine acres of heaven came down in that van as we're crossing over Fancy Gap Mountain. We cruised in, we get there and we go and the airport's not even open yet. We're the only people in there standing around our bags waiting for somebody to show up. We got there too early. And then about that time, they started opening things up and we got everything in them. And we got everything turned over and we got our carry-ons. And I said, y'all go in the front, I'm the pastor. I'm gonna lead y'all. Y'all go ahead of me and I'll bring up the rear. We're in line for security. Now, I don't wanna offend anybody, but I don't wear pink and I don't wear purple. It's just a thing. I ain't mad at anybody that does. But I don't. I'm not, bless God, I just don't. Never have, don't plan to. My wife will probably put me in pink at my funeral. This is probably what's gonna happen. She said, I've been wanting you to wear this tie. I know this is what's gonna happen. They sent us these shirts from Mission Board. And you know what they said? They said, you gotta wear these, because when you get in Honduras, they know us, and this has our logo on it, and it's gonna get you right through security. I said, that's awesome. Open the box, purple shirts. Now, I am not exactly skinny. So I end up in like this extra, extra, extra large shirt. Now the problem with that is, they don't make them my height, they just make them my girth. I put this shirt on, I look like Barney the dinosaur. I'm supposed to be the fearless leader, pastor, wearing a bright purple shirt. But I had got over that. I got over it, sort of, still a little bitter about it. We're standing in line, and I'm so excited. I'm thinking like, all the jokes you're not supposed to tell, you know, when you're in line at security. You know, I'm thinking, and I'm like, Jason, keep your mouth shut, be good. And everybody's bags go through security, and I put my bag on, it goes through, people put their bags on behind mine. I get to the other side of this x-ray machine, and my bag stops, and I'm worried about time. And my bag stops. And I see the security person lean in and look at this, into this machine and looked around, leaned in and looked again, looked around. I thought, oh my goodness, the person behind me has got some, you know, probably a three ounce bottle of water they're not supposed to have or something, you know, something's going on. My bag's stuck in there and I can't go. And everybody's over there waiting on me. They got all their bags. They got their shoes back on, their belts back on, you know, their toupees back on, whatever. I'm standing there waiting. And then I saw the machine reverse, and my bag went back in the tunnel. And I'm like, oh, great. We're going to be here forever. I don't know what they've got, but they've got to check it out again. Then my bag spit back out. I said, oh, they're going to let me go. Guy reached the bag, pulls over. He says, is this your bag? I said, that's my bag. He said, wonderful. He bragged on. I said, yes, wonderful. He said, step right over here. I said, we need to talk to you. I said, you need to talk to me? He said, we need to talk to you. He said, what do you got in this bag? I said, clothes? He said, we need to take a look at this bag. He said, you've got a knife in this bag. Well, my daddy raised me that if you have your pants on, you have a pocket knife. My daddy raised me like, the answer was, do you have a knife? I got my pants on, don't I? That's how I was raised. And so I was, I thought I've left a pocket knife in one of those pair of pants. Oh my goodness. All the times I've packed this bag, I've left a pocket knife. I said, well, maybe there's a, maybe there's a case peanut in there or something. He said, uh-uh, buddy. He said, it's a big knife. I said, what? Ain't no big knife in there. I've packed that bag 42,000 times. There's no knife in that bag. Oh, I was bold then. I was like, if it ain't a pocket knife, I know there's nothing in there. I said, help yourself. He said, oh no, we're waiting for the FBI. They showed up, three of them. Two guys wearing BDU pants, a black shirt, FBI across it, had a chain around his neck with a big badge, and one guy in a trench coat. And the guy in the trench coat come up behind me and said, spread your legs. I went like this. He put his foot behind, he's standing behind me, put his foot between my legs. He's standing there. The other guy, I said, I got nothing to hide. He said, we're going to find out. He starts pulling out my clothes, shaking out my pants. I was okay with that. Then he pulled my underwear out. Y'all are not nice. I was like, ooh. The purple shirt is not nearly as embarrassing as the purple underwear. Pulls it out there, and I'm like, what? And the deeper he gets, the more confident I'm getting. And I'm like, oh, yeah. What a bunch of idiots, you know. That's what I'm thinking. Government workers, for sure. When he gets done, the bag is empty. The bag is empty. I'm like, uh-huh. And about that time, this guy takes this little rod, and it goes out that long. And he goes down in that bag. And he found out something about that bag. I didn't know. I've been carrying it for years. It has a false bottom in it. It has a little tray that helps the bag go square. He flips that tray up. I still can't see, but I didn't know it was there. I said, huh. My confidence went down a little bit. He reached in that bag, and he pulled out a knife that just kept coming. It was a boot knife. And it was aluminum boot knife with a plastic sheath made to go in your boot with a quick release so that you can mash the quick release on the knife and sling the sheath in the face of your opponent. It is the perfect hijacking tool if they've ever invented one. When that knife came out, Brother Joe, all the blood drained down into my toenails. I lost my own breath. And immediately I thought this, I'm not kidding you, I was scared to death. Immediately I thought, I'm going to jail. And I've only been pastor of this church for six months. They're probably not going to spring my bail. I mean, how do you call your deacons and be like, I need you to come down here and bail me out? I thought my wife is going to absolutely be terrified when I call her and tell her I'm in jail. And those people are leaderless. They don't know the contacts. They don't know anything. And when, listen, when that knife came out and the blood drained down, I could hear the ladies in my group cry. I'm not kidding you. Sister Heather and Sister Sue and, I can't remember who, oh, Sister Rachel. I heard them go, oh. And they started crying. And they're a good little ways off. And I thought, I'm going to jail today. Now, I know I'm not going to jail forever, but this is bad. And I probably won't be able to travel ever again on an airplane. And all of my arrogance and all my confidence is right at the bottom. And this guy, I had my passport and I got my driver's license. One guy's calling my passport and the other guy's calling my driver's license in. This other guy is calling for a measuring device. He said, I believe we got an illegal length blade. They're calling for a measuring device. And I'm standing there and I started praying. I said, now God, you got to do something. I'm in trouble. And what I'm about to tell you is the truth, and I can give you names to contact, because this is hard to believe. I didn't realize it, but the gentleman behind me in the trench coat disappeared. And I'm standing there, and this guy's calling him out. You know, he's calling him, like, Daniel, D-A-N-I-E-L. You know, and he's calling all that in. The other guy's calling him out. And in just a few minutes, this guy gets back over my shoulder, and he leans in, and he goes, fellas, we're done here. Turn the knife over to TSA. It's a civil matter, we're done. And I forget the one guy said, I haven't got anything back on his passport yet. And he said, I said, we're done. The other guy said, I haven't heard anything back on his driver's license either. And he said, I told you, it's a civil matter, turn it over. And the guy said, we haven't even measured this knife yet to find out. He said, I'm convinced it's illegal ink. And he said, we're done, hand it over to TSA. Those three guys did not look happy. They thought they was gonna have a bust. They walked away, and the guy, I turned to look at the guy, and he says, are you really their pastor? I said, uh-huh. He said, God is my witness, don't shoot the messenger. He said, well, I'd expect that from a deacon, but not from a pastor. I said, what? He said, you're going to be okay, and I'll be praying for you. And he walked away. Now, the story's not over. That ain't even the wow part. This old boy, they handed that knife back to this kid. He's wearing like a, you know, a blazer that says TSA. You know, he got hired like three months ago. And he's standing there looking at me like Barney Fife. And the guy said, paperwork. He goes, we got to do paperwork, sir. And he literally says to me, he says to me, he says, sir, would you like for us to mail this knife back to you? Or could we use it tonight for a demonstration of what we have found? I said, I haven't seen that knife in four years. I never want to see it again. He said, really? That's cool. Then he said, this is a violation to cross that line with a knife right over there. And he said, you may receive a large fine from the government. Can I tell you this? If they tell you, you may receive a large fine from the government, you will receive a large fine from the government, but it's a whole lot better than going to jail. I packed all my stuff back up, underwear and all. I grabbed my bag and I go to my people And Brother Russell, he's about six foot four, big old guy, businessman, sharp. He laughed. He said, did you know that was in there? I said, well, you're not as smart as I thought you were. We're walking away. He says, Sue, tell him what the guy said. We're walking away. Sister Sue says, preacher, That man in the trench coat came over and said, that guy in that purple shirt with y'all, they were all in purple shirts. A purple shirt saved my life. He said, that fellow in the purple shirt with y'all. And she said, he's our pastor. He said, you can believe this or not. He said, but at 2.30 this morning, I was in my prayer closet. And he said, it was as though the Lord just whispered to me, and I don't believe in audible voice stuff. He said, it was as if the Lord whispered to me, I got some people coming, you take care of them for me. I got to calculating, preacher. 230 is about the same time we was crossing Fancy Gap, praising God and singing Amazing Grace. While we were praising, God was protecting. Now that is a under-told story. It's way better than that, but I don't have time. I'm just here to tell you, praise God. Give Him the praise. God can put a courtyard around you and protect you. I don't know what we've got time for. Maybe one more. Do we have time? I don't know. That took way too long. The rest of my stories aren't, oh my goodness. Lord have mercy. I stopped the clock, it's embarrassing me. I want you to look at Carmi. Look at Carmi real quick. The reason I end up, this whole message comes out of, I was pastoring their rural retreat. I'm driving up the back roads in the middle of nowhere, and I came across a sign for a Baptist church that was built in the 1700s. And it was called Carmi Baptist Church. And I thought, that's a weird name. What's karma? What's that even mean? And then I went to find out and found it was in the Bible. That's how I end up with this message. And so I looked it up and the word karma means of the garden. It means of the garden. If I close my Bible, will y'all feel better about the time? It means of the garden. And then I got to think about that and I said, well, that's the produce of praise. Here's what I found in the Christian life, that if you'll praise God, he'll hang your branches heavy with the produce. Carmi was a fruitful place. It was a fruitful garden. It was a place where you planted things and they came up and they produced and the branches hung heavy. It was a fruitful and a productive place. You remember me talking about being in the seminary and them arguing about all that? I'll never forget, they were arguing that people don't get saved from singing it and praising. And listen, I'm a strong proponent that God ordained the preaching of the Word of God for the gospel. I'm a big fan of that, but I'm gonna tell you this. And that day they were arguing in seminary and they were downplaying praise and the importance of praise. And I'm afraid that's happened to a lot of our sister churches. They're dead as a hammer, dry as cracker juice, and the altars stay empty. Because God's not getting the praise. I gotta finish, but I gotta tell you this, so I gotta finish. But they were arguing about that and arguing about that, and I'm sitting there as just a student. The teacher's the one pushing it, and everybody's agreeing, they're arguing and talking about it. And finally, God just put a verse on my heart, and I held my hand up like that. And my professor, he didn't like me, because I believe the Bible. And you'll get that sometimes. And he said, well, it looks like Brother McNeese has something that he would like to contribute to the class. I said, not really, I said, but I do believe this. I believe that Psalm 40 said, David said, I waited patiently for the Lord. He inclined unto me and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and he set my feet upon a rock and established my goings. He hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God, many times. shall see it and fear and shall trust in the Lord. I'm here to tell you tonight, church, you keep on praising and God will keep sending product and produce and people will come to know the God that you've come to love and praise. I am 42 minutes, I'm 43 seconds in. Can I give you the other, I won't preach them. I won't preach them, I'll give them to you. He ain't gonna bring me back after this, so I gotta finish. We done did the publicity of praise. We've looked at the protection of praise and we looked at the produce of praise. And there's her. Her, it's a simple word. It just means white. It just means white. That is the purity of praise. I'm gonna tell you something. If you go out and you're gonna praise God in the public, they'll help you keep clean. The reason some of y'all are able to live as dirty as you do is nobody down at your job knows you're a Christian. And the reason you're not able to live as dirty as you do is because you're not bragging on the Lord. And if you brag on the Lord, they won't let you get away with nothing down there. I was just a teenage boy, 14 years old. My dad dropped me off at a landscaping place and said, work him to death. If you think I'm kidding, that's paying three and a quarter. $3.25 an hour, he dropped me off at 14 years old and said, work him to death. Now, I did find out down there that working for dad was harder than working for anybody I ever met. But I, amen, Brother Smith, amen. And I admit, I'm 14 years old. Dropped me off at a landscaping company. Prisoners, guys out of jail working down there. Wicked crowd down there. We're out installing, putting out 18 pallets of sod a day and planting junipers in the ground. Do you know it wasn't one week they started calling me preacher man? 14 years old on the job, they called me preacher man. You know why? It wasn't because I was preaching at them. It's because when I got to working after a while, I wasn't even thinking, I got to singing. And it tore them old boys' nerves clean out of the frame. But you know something, I found out you can't get mad and throw a shovel unless they say, hey, he doesn't act like that, preacher man. But I'll tell you something much more important. Praise is an offering to God. The fruit of our lips, Hebrews says. An offering to God, the fruit of our lips. Can I tell you about praise? Praise is an offering. You know what the Bible says? The Bible says you're gonna bring your offering and you have aught against your brother, or your brother has aught against you, he says leave your offering there and you go get things right with your brother. I'm gonna tell you, the one brother we better never have aught with is our elder brother, the Lord Jesus. See, if you're gonna live in the praise life, It'll make you live a purified life. All right, I didn't preach that, did I? I just talked about it, okay? No illustration, don't move on. Where are we at? Showball, oh man. Yeah, I'm never coming back. I might as well finish. You know what showball means? I love this. This is a little word study. Showball means overflowing. You don't got bursting forth over there. You got produce. This is overflowing, but it's very interesting because when you look it up in your, you can look it up in your Strongs. You don't have to go deep into the Spiros Zodiates. You can just look it up in your Strongs. It means overflowing in parenthesis. It says, like the train of a woman's dress. It is indicative of the flowing train of a wedding dress. Now our trains have gotten shorter and shorter these days, but in those days, Well, can I tell y'all this? The dress is a great indicator of... There was a television show on not long ago. If I wasn't against TV, I was after that show came on. It was called Say Yes. Some of y'all seen that show, didn't you? Do you know what I learned from that television show? Say yes to the dress. It was where these brides go with their mama and their wedding party, and they're gonna pick out a dress for the wedding. Do you know what I found out? Every one of them sit in the car before they go in, and mama says, now don't forget, dad said you could only spend so much money. Oh yes, mama, I remember, it was only so much. Now I gotta tell y'all, they had a budget bigger than my whole wedding cost. But what happens inevitably on this show is they go in and the lady brings out a few dresses in that price range and they all make the girl look fat. The one that makes her look good is at least double the ones that she could afford. And so she picks up the phone and she says, Daddy, I love you, daddy. You're the best daddy I ever had. Daddy, daddy, this is your little girl, daddy. And I need to stress, daddy, it's the only one. The others make me cry. This one makes me smile, daddy. Do you want me to cry or do you want me to smile, daddy? You know, and you can see daddy on the other end melting like a snow cone in July. And inevitably, they blow the budget every time. So you see, Shobol is telling us about the prosperity of praise. Now, I'm not talking about a get rich quick kind of, I'm not talking about Benny Hinn and all that stuff, no, no, no. But I'm gonna tell you right now, we are rich in the riches that we have in Christ Jesus. By the way, by the way, can I tell you this? is never an indicator of how rich the girl is. It's an indicator of how rich the daddy is. Y'all ain't helping me tonight. When they fling that door open, and that girl steps out, and everybody goes, ooh, look at that dress. It'll have none to do with what she did. It has to do with what her father did. I need me somebody tonight because I'm gonna tell you this, thank God, when you live in the world of praise, you have access to the riches of His grace and His mercy, and I'm gonna tell you that you've got coming everything God has available for His children. Rich in the goodness of God. You know what she did? You know what she did right? Y'all taking notes up here on this? Do you know what she did right? She praised the Father. And He opened up what He had. Daddy, I love you. Daddy, you're the best dad. I got four kids, but I got one who figured it out. And I mean, from a little age, she'd come run down the hallway, Daddy, Daddy, when I come home, I love you, Daddy, wrap me up, climb up in my lap. Let me tell you something, when she turned 18, she didn't forget about that. She'd see me reach back there and go, what do you need, sweetheart? And at 18, she could still do it. Daddy, you're the best daddy in the world. Whatever you need, sweetheart. You just might be surprised what God has in store for the children who'll praise Him. I'm not talking about a get-rich-quick scene. Don't walk out here and say, Brother Jason's preaching a prosperity gospel. No, no, I'm talking about the riches we have in the Father are available. Too many of us are living in defeat. We ought to be living in victory. Victory is ours. He paid for it. And we're living in defeat. We need a revival of praise.