All right, well, if you have a copy of God's word, would you please turn with me to the book of first Samuel or Samuel? We are going to be in chapter 16. I'm sorry, 15, 16, chapter 15. And we are going to read the entire chapter because it is going to set for us the context of what is happening as well as what is to come. Because there's a lot going on here. And so 1 Samuel chapter 15. So 1 Samuel chapter 15, if you are physically able to do so, there are going to be 35 verses. So I simply mentioned that because I am going to ask you to stand as we honor the reading of God's holy and written word. So 1 Samuel chapter 15 verses 1 through 35. And I pray that we would hear the Word of the Lord that is given to us this morning. 1 Samuel chapter 15, hear the Word of the Lord. Samuel also said unto Saul, The Lord sent me to anoint you to be king over his people over Israel. Now therefore hearken unto the voice of the words of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts. I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way when he came up out from Egypt. Now go and smite or strike Amalek and utterly destroy all they have and spare them not. but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. And Saul gathered the people together and numbered them and Talim, 200,000 foot men and 10,000 men of Judah. And Saul came to the city of Amalek and laid wait in the valley. And Saul said to the Kenites, go, depart. Get down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them. For you showed kindness to all the children of Israel when they came up out of Egypt. So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites. And Saul smote, or struck, the Amalekites from Havilah until thou comest to Shur, that is over against Egypt. And he took Agag, the king of the Amalekites, alive and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them, but everything that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly. Then came the word of the Lord unto Samuel, saying, It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments and it grieved Samuel and he cried unto the Lord all night and when Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning it was told Samuel saying, Saul came to Carmel and behold, he set him up a place and has gone about and passed on and has gone down to Gilgal. And Samuel came to Saul and Saul said unto him, blessed be thou of the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord. And Samuel said, what meaneth the bleeding of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen, which I hear. And Saul said, They have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and the oxen to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God, and the rest we have utterly destroyed. Then Samuel said unto Saul, Stay, and I will tell you what the Lord has said to me this night. And he said to him, Say on. And Samuel said, When you was little in your own sight, was thou not made the head of the tribes of Israel and the Lord anointed you king over Israel? And the Lord sent you on a journey and said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners and the Malachites and fight against them until they are consumed. Wherefore, then, didst thou not obey the voice of the Lord, but did fly upon the spoil and did evil in the sight of the Lord? And Saul said unto Samuel, Yes, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and have gone the way which the Lord sent me, and have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took the spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of the things which should have been utterly destroyed to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in Gilgal. And Samuel said, Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice and the hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness is his iniquity and idolatry because you have rejected the word of the Lord. He hath also rejected thee from being king. And Saul said unto Samuel, I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and thy words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. Now, therefore, I pray thee, pardon my sin and turn again with me that I may worship the Lord. And Samuel said unto Saul, I will not return with you. For you have rejected the word of the Lord and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel. And as Samuel turned about to go away, he saw laid hold of the skirt or the hem of his robe and it tore it rent. And Samuel said unto him the Lord hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee this day and hath given it to a neighbor of thine that is better than thou. And also the strength of Israel will not lie nor repent for he is not a man that he should repent. Then he said. I have sinned yet honor me now I pray you before the elders of my people and before Israel and turn again with me that I may worship the Lord thy God." So Samuel turned again after Saul and Saul worshiped the Lord. Then said Samuel, bring ye hither to me Agag the king of the Amalekites. And Agag came unto him delicately and Agag said, surely the bitterness of death is past. And Samuel said, As thy sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women. And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal. Then Samuel went to Ramah, and Saul went up to his home to Gibeah of Saul. And Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death. Nevertheless, Samuel mourned for Saul, and the Lord repented that he had made Saul king over Israel. Let's pray. Father, the Word that is set before us has some difficult language that we must bear this morning, that we must understand, that we need to grow in, that we may have a clearer understanding of who you are and what you have done. And God, what it is exactly now as a result that you have you have how we are to apply this text as difficult as it may be in places to our lives and to the church as a whole. So, Father, now may you bless us and guide us in the power of your Holy Spirit. In the name of Jesus, we ask and pray. Amen and amen. You can be seated. One of the reasons that why I greatly love expository preaching or verse by verse preaching is because it forces you to deal with things that you honestly would not deal with otherwise. I can tell you that in all of my years I have probably only heard one sermon on this text and that was not even by my pastor it was by a man maybe you've heard of him named John MacArthur. Only one time have I ever heard this passage ever preached on but expository preaching causes you forces you to go and deal with not just the nice text, right, the text that we like to deal with, the text that are nice, and you know, the John 3.16 text, you know, God so loved the world, but it's these texts that can be even more difficult. And so this morning, while we are still traveling through the book of 1 Samuel, we're going to do something a little different this morning. Not necessarily this morning, next week I will go verse by verse through the whole thing. But this morning, what I want to do is I want to preach a little bit different. I want to preach what is called an apologetic sermon, apologetic, not meaning that I need to apologize for something, but instead I want to defend the text and show you how you can and should be defending the text. Also, hopefully in doing this, if you have ever run into anyone, which I'm sure some of you have, as I have, who point to these texts and say, well, see, this is why I cannot follow the God of the Bible. You will have a resource at your fingertips that you can just simply hand them this sermon, hopefully, and we'll give you a good resource for defending what exactly we're going to be talking about this morning. So I've simply titled the sermon When Grace Runs Out, because nobody likes to think about grace running out, right? I mean, nobody. I mean, we live in grace. We die in grace, we hope at least. But honestly, unaided by biblical truth, you know what happens to us? We create gods that are in our own image and in our own likeness. And it's funny to me because I often hear people say, well, my God would certainly never do X, Y or Z to which you probably should respond more often than not. That's because the God that you worship is not the God of the Bible. You're right. Your God wouldn't. But the God of the Bible does. And so this morning, what I want us to do is not to allow ourselves to try to figure out God by our own preconceived notions or by our own feelings, by our own even revulsion, perhaps at the text of which we've read this morning. But truthfully, it's hard to figure out God when we when we're relying on our own selves, particularly when we see things like this text this morning. Right. I mean, how does this combine with the reality of John 3.16 or how does it of Jesus's own words in the gospels? How are we to approach this? Right. How do we or how are we to approach this? Right. So it's easy for us to get bogged down in what we perceive as these paradoxes. You know, quite honestly, sometimes even in the Bible as we're reading, sometimes it seems strange to us because at times it seems that God is willing to put up with certain sin. And then other times God just in just honestly he just opens up the ground and he swallows people and their whole houses and all their cattle whole and they just go down to the ground or they are they are consumed by a fire that comes from him. At other times it seems strange to us as we're reading scripture and God seems to express a willingness to answer our prayers. And then at other times it feels like we have got to be praying over and over and over and over again for what feels like forever before he ever even answers our prayer if he does. Or what about the times as we're reading Scripture and it seems as if God welcomes people into worship, joyfully so, and even those who aren't necessarily worshipping Him exactly the way He's prescribed. And yet at other times in the Bible, God just kills people on the spot for worshipping Him wrongly. I mean, so as we're looking at Scripture, how do we fit all these things together? Right. Because at times we even see where it seems like, you know, the Bible says, well, the righteous are going to be blessed. And yet it doesn't seem particularly when you get into the books of Amos and Habakkuk and some of the other prophets where God's people are not being blessed, they're being oppressed. So how do we do that? How do we deal with all this? How do we figure all this out? Well, honestly. We do have to figure this out. It would have been easy for me to stand up here this morning and just simply glide over and gloss over the reality of what our text is saying. But I would not be any better for it. Neither would you be, because you need to be able in the culture that we now exist in to defend your faith. You don't need to defend the God of the Bible. God is well able to defend himself, but you do need to be able to defend your faith. And so what I want us to do this morning is I want us to see from first Samuel 15 I want to show you some some realities for how we both adopt what the text says and embrace that and how it aids us in our ability to defend our faith. But the first thing you need to know and I need to know is this whole group of this Amalekites Israelite kind of war that has been going on. Who were they? Well, bear with me. I don't mean this to be an intellectual discussion, but you're going to have to get some knowledge here. Amalek was the grandson of Esau. We see that in Genesis chapter 36. He was a descendant directly from Esau. The Amalekites were descendants then of Esau's grandson, or of Esau as well, and they were the first to attack, after the Exodus, the nation of Israel. They attack them and were defeated by Israel as Joshua leads the army into battle as Moses with the aid of a man named Hur and Aaron lift his arms up in the air with the staff in hand and Joshua is able to handily then and the army handily able to defeat them. They were a nomadic people. They were a people who were predominantly living in the Negev, in Sinai, and throughout the territory of the tribe of Ephraim. They also lived in the valley of Jezreel in Judges 6.33. And after the victory at Rephidim, you might know it as Manasseh and Meribah, The Lord promised, as a result, to destroy them completely. Why? You've got to know what Amalek did to the nation of Israel. Even by the standards of ancient Near Eastern customs, the Amalekites committed genocide against the Israelites because what they did was they did not amass their forces and attack Israel's army. They amassed their forces and they attacked the rear of Israel's camps where the women and the children and the elderly and the disabled, the nursing mothers lived. So this was a wicked, wicked thing that Amalek did to Israel. They started killing Israelites from the most elderly to the weakest among them onward. So this wasn't just something that Israel was upset about or they were upset with Israel. They attacked the tail, the injured, the sick, the old, the women, the children, the nursing infants where they were staying. And even by ancient Near East custom, this was not something that should have been done. This was not something that should have happened when it came to declaring war. And the day of reckoning has now come for Amalek. Between three and four hundred years has now passed since that day with Moses and the attack of Amalek. And all of a sudden now we read of Saul being told By God, through Samuel, hey, Saul, I remember what Amalek did, go slaughter them all, right? Go kill them all. Go put them all under the ban, the harem, right? The ban was simply something that the harem was something that was where you would take all of an enemy and they were then dedicated and set apart for destruction. And they were, in fact, This is what happened. The Harem was declared. The Amalekites were to be completely destroyed. They were completely to be decimated by Israel. All of their valuables, all of their best cattle and everything was to be not kept. This was not for the sense of the spoils of war. But I will say this. Between three to four hundred years has passed. And during that whole time, do you know what we continue to find Amalek doing? We continue to find Amalek doing what Amalek has done since the first day, constantly raiding, killing, destroying. They constantly are opposing Israel. They are constantly destroying people, innocent lives, innocent families, innocent people. They are destroying them. They are killing them. They are taking them as slaves. They are taking them as wives. They are enslaving them, their young women, even as their own slaves, as their wives. because we have some young ears here, we'll just simply say that, as their concubines and their wives. Emelech was not a cool people, right? So these were not people that were really, really nice, and they just sort of had a bad feud between Israel and themselves. These people were wicked, and God had given them, through Israel's existence, they knew of Israel, they knew all about the customs of Israel, they knew about the God that Israel worshiped, they knew what he required of them, they knew it all. And for three to four hundred years, they existed next to Israel and they were given time to repent, to make peace, to make peace with Israel, to repent of their wickedness, to turn from their sins, to acknowledge their sin against Israel, to make peace with them, to come to Yahweh, to the God of Israel, to become followers of Yahweh by becoming part of Israel. And yet they never did. And so what do we find going on here? Well, I think we find first and foremost, something that we call the importance of understanding a war for justice. This was what was taking place here. This was a this was a war for justice that God was telling his people was time to be waged. And really, the difficulty for us who live in the modern world is because through the influence of Christianity, we have a repulsion to the idea of ethnic cleansing. We have a repulsion to this whole idea, and we see it rightly so as wicked. It should be seen as completely wicked. There is no time in any time where ethnic cleansing is okay. And let me define that for you. When I say ethnic cleansing, I mean what Merriam-Webster's Dictionary means. The expulsion, imprisonment, or killing of an ethnic minority by a dominant majority to achieve ethnic homogeny, right? So ethnic, just us, just us. I know when I was a kid, I'm dating myself, right? But I know the Bosnian, Kosovo, Croatia whole conflict there, right? was because one group decided they wanted to purge the other group. You go to, you know, Rwanda, and there's all kinds of examples like this going on. But is that what we are seeing here? Right? Because at first glance, and having talked to many, many, many, many, many, many different atheists, I know that is what they would say. Well, see, your God says that he is nothing more than a homicidal, racist bigot who wants to kill everybody. That's what they would say here. This is not something that you find just on the internet. This is real conversations I've had with real people who say things like this. But is that what is going on here? Are we seeing ethnic cleansing and genocide in the text? Well, the truthful answer is no. I will explain more later, but many atheists and even enemies of Christianity, that's what they're going to say. See, your God sanctions genocide and ethnic cleansing. See, your God, you can't tell us that it's better to live by your God's morals because look what he did. Well, the answer to that, though, is that's not what's being described here. This is why I want to spend so much time this morning discussing this. You need to be prepared. to talk about this with your co-workers and with your friends, with your non-Christian friends. You need to be prepared, right? The days are long passing when it's just enough to say, hey, that's a great question. Let me go get my pastor. You need to be able to answer these these objections yourself. And so as as we come into contact with people that are hostile to the Christian faith, we need to understand this. I think another difficulty for us in our modern day world is again the idea of the Christian concept of what is known as just war theory. just war theory is exactly that it's a just war right it is it is where one country attacks another country and they defend themselves and then they go get their friends and then they all gang up on these other countries and then they go beat them up right do we think about it see there you go right absolutely that's exactly what should be happening we we should we should rightly agree with that we should rightly believe that it is it is we should not be going on the offensive unless it is to defend those who are defenseless. And so because of that, I think there's a lot of people who see this, we see this, right, and we think, we think, man, here you go, right, this is not a defensive war, this is offensive war, and so we have trouble with that. There are some who today would tell you that, and they would simply claim that this is the primitive religion of the Hebrews, of the Israelites, and it's just barbaric, right, and does not represent Jesus and the New Testament. I've gone to two very liberal colleges or universities in the New Testament. I know that this is what they say. I've engaged with professors on this issue. Others would say, well, that's just the Old Testament, right? Some of y'all would be like, if you brought this up and said, oh, hey, preacher, we don't have to worry about that. That's just the Old Testament kind of stuff. But you still got to deal with it because it's in there, right? It's in there and people are going to want an answer for it. And some people are going to just want to explain it away by saying, well, you know, Samuel lied to Saul. I've heard this one personally. Samuel lied to Saul or Samuel misunderstood what God was saying. And so Samuel is the one to blame for the genocide. But instead of all of that, I think there are biblical solutions to what we're seeing here of God's command to Saul and to Israel to destroy the Amalekites. And let me give you let me give you a biblical solution. It's going to break down in a couple of different ways. So I hope I'm going to present this in a way that is that is easy to follow. First and foremost we need to understand how good how gracious how just and how holy God is. That's the first thing we need to understand. God is not our best buddy. He is not our best friend. He is our father. He is a brother a friend that sticks closer than a brother as Proverbs tells us. but he is our creator. He is the God who created us. He is the sovereign judge over us who has the right to exercise that judgment whenever and through whomever he so desires. He has every right to judge us. We also, I think, need to understand as a part of understanding God's goodness, his justice, his holiness and his graciousness. We need to understand that part of this revelation is him helping us understand the overarching theme of scripture. That is the storyline of redemption. That is, God is progressively revealing how he deals with sin, how he has to deal with sin in order to bring a redeemer through his nation, Israel. So I think that's the first thing we need to do. We need to understand just how good, righteous, just, and holy and gracious God is. Because the same people who generally cringe at this, not always, cringe at the idea of eternal hell. Like, well, how dare God do that? And not always, but I think I think so. And that's because we don't know how holy God is. We try to sweep things under the rug. We think, oh, God will understand. He knows me. He knows I'm weak. He knows I'm just a sinner and I'm just a sinner saved by grace. But that is to to malign the holiness of God. And as a result, God has the right to judge through whom and however he desires to judge. But let me also say this. This is not Jihad, Holy War, or the Crusades that we're talking about here in 1 Samuel 15. It's not. This is not Jihad. I've heard that. Well, this is the same thing as Islamic understanding of Jihad. No, it's not. Well, this is Holy War. No, it's not. Well, this is the same thing as the Crusades. No, it's not. To say any of that is to not understand what exactly is going on at this point, what is being described here. What is being described here is not Israel herself deciding to do this. It is God himself warring on his warring on behalf of his people through his people against his enemies. And brothers and sisters, let me say this. God can use whatever means he wants to. And I know maybe it makes it a little more comfortable for us when we think of, well, you know, God just made the ground swallow up and and just eat people. Right. Which he did. Right. And with some of those who who rebelled against Moses. Right. Or maybe we understand it when it happens with like, you know, the sin of Akin. Right. And so they all stoned him to death. Well, you know, we understand that. Or fire comes out from before the throne of the altar of God there in the tabernacle and consumes Aaron's two sons. Like, well, we understand that. We understand that. But God has every right to also accomplish his judgment through nations. Through Babylon, through Assyria, through Rome, throughout history, God has brought other nations to their knees through other nations. And he has every right to do that. As a matter of fact, Israel was told because of that, the Northern Territory was told because of their sin, Assyria was going to judge them. And many of them died as a result. And then later, Judah was told, the Southern Kingdom was told that Babylon would judge them. And they were decimated by the Babylonians. as a result of God punishing even his own people's sin and wickedness. And I think what we really see here is not ethnic cleansing, but rather is, and you say, well, you're just going to be a play on words with this, but really there is a huge difference. It's not just a play on words. We're not seeing ethnic cleansing. What we're seeing is ethical cleansing. You say, well, what do you mean by that? Well, I mean, to us who are living in the modern world, right, it's going to sound alarmingly like ethnic cleansing and genocide. But this is an act of judgment against sin. Israel didn't decide to do this. God decided to take this route through his people. God was the one that did this. God was the one who decided this. God was the one who enacts judgment here. And destruction is going to come to the Amalekites not because of their language, not because of their dress, not because of their ethnicity, not because of some other racially motivated hatred for them, But because of their own wickedness in attacking and harming Israel and doing the very same thing that they did to Israel, only to them multiplied. And God is the one that is is saying this should be done. We say, well, you know, well, well, if that's the case, I mean, why can't anybody just up today and say, well, you know, there you go. Your God is your God could say the same thing today. Well, that's to, again, misunderstand what exactly is going on in the text and how God has revealed himself throughout scripture. And you and I need to understand that the destruction of the Amalekites were not because of their language, ethnicity, anything else. It was due to their own sin and their own wickedness. In other words, their destruction is coming to them, not because they're Amalekites, but because they're sinners. Because they're sinners who have rebelled against the God of the universe. And I will say to you, this should rightly horrify us. We said, now, wait a minute. You're telling us why we should accept this and embrace this and understand this. But you're also telling us that we should we should we should be horrified at this. How can you could say that? Well, let me tell you how I can say that. I can say that because it should alarm and horrify us because God is judging sin fairly. And let me say this to you. And because while we are not Amalekites, we are sinners apart from Christ. In other words, the Amalekite destruction serves as a picture of what humanity itself deserves in their rebellion against God. And what humanity without Christ Himself as their Lord and Savior will face one day. They will face the fear of absolute judgment by God upon them on the day of judgment. When judgment comes, nothing, and I mean nothing, is left. But aren't we just playing word games, preacher? I mean, aren't you just up there playing word games with us at this point? No, no, not at all. You see, the Bible describes two types of warfare in Scripture. for the nation of Israel. First is outside of the promised land where mercy was extended and inside the promised land where mercy would not be extended and grace would not be extended. The reason for this total destruction of Israel's enemies was not based again on ethnicity or bigotry but was based upon their rebellion against God's holy law and God's holy code which they knew they knew. I would also tell you, again, because I'm not playing word games up here, this is not repeatable, okay? This is not repeatable. In other words, we can't go amass an army in the name of Jesus, and as a church, and we can't go out and just start killing infidels. That's not how any of that works. This is not repeatable. And what I mean by that is simply this. These orders were issued by God, by Jehovah, by Yahweh, to a theocratic nation, at a particular place, at a particular time. And it is not repeated. That is not what the Lord Jesus ever told us to do. We are not a theocratic nation. We are not a theocratic nation. And so we are not to repeat this. But there is application in all of this for us. You say, well, what application could there possibly be? Well, I think the application then is ultimately that Christ, who is the promised Messiah in the Old Testament, has in fact taken the sin of his people, our sin, upon himself, has paid the penalty for our sin, has absorbed the wrath of God that we rightly deserve here, and has taken it upon himself. But for those who will not bow the knee to Christ in faith, he will one day return as the conquering king, and he will mete out justice on all who refuse to take refuge in Christ. The application then for you who may be here who have never repented and placed your faith and trust in Jesus Christ is simply this. Repent and flee to Christ in faith. Take refuge in Christ through faith alone while there is time by trusting Christ for salvation alone. You're saying, well you're just trying to scare me. You should be scared of facing the wrath of God. Repent and flee to Christ. If this story sounds harsh, the warning is clear. When Jesus returns, there will be a greater judgment than the one meted out by Israel. To the Amalekites and upon the Amalekites. But I think. Puritan William Ames, I think, has the best, I think, application of all of this. And so I just want to sort of adapt some of his thoughts and give you some application before I end here. So in saying everything that I've said, right, how do we apply all of this? How do we respond? Well, I think first and foremost, we must respond with absolute awe and wonder that we, though we were completely guilty, like the Amalekites, If we are in Christ, God chose instead of justly punishing us, has given us grace. And that grace has fallen upon us because of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, and because of his death on the cross and his resurrection on the third day. There's a second way I think we need to respond, and that is simply through godly fear and trembling. One day, the nations will stand in judgment before God. And Christian, we should be working now in preaching the gospel to them, in proclaiming Christ to them, knowing the terror of the Lord, knowing the fear of the Lord, that those who are guilty of committing cosmic treason and wickedness, God has extended to them grace to the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is that God's gives a real. Extension of his grace to centers even today through the person in the work of Jesus, though we have committed cosmic treason, God extends grace to to men and women everywhere where the gospel is preached. But we should fear and tremble at the fact that the nations will one day stand. Matter of fact, Revelation 15, three to four says this great And amazing are your ways, O Lord, the Almighty, just and true are your ways, O King of the nations. Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name for you alone are holy? All nations will come and worship you for your righteous acts have been revealed. But I think there's a third way that we can respond in all of this, and that is through prayerfulness. You say, prayerfulness. I say, what do you mean by prayerfulness? Well, prayerfulness in the sense that in every action, in every thought, in everything that we do, We in every in every word that we give to our unbelieving neighbors and friends, it should be done through prayerfulness, that God would use us to reach them with the gospel, that though they deserve like we once did eternal death, God may be gracious to call them to eternal life through Christ. That calling our neighbors and our unbelieving friends to faith in Christ constantly. realizing that judgment is coming soon, and sooner rather than later. Fourthly, I think Ames is right when he says that we are to engage in biblical and spiritual warfare. And what is meant by this is, again, as the Church of Jesus Christ today, We're not facing physical enemies. Oh, I know people. You know, yes, I know that there are physical people who at times reject the, you know, seek to to stop the worship of God or or seek to outlaw the Bible and just different things like that. I get that. But ultimately, scripture for us tells us that our enemy is not a physical enemy. It is a spiritual enemy and a spiritual and with and spiritual forces in high places. And so we pray and we work for our physical enemies good by calling them to faith in Christ. Even our enemies, we cry out to them, reminding them of their need for Christ, calling them to come to Christ. Knowing that it is the spiritual forces of wickedness that are at work in this world and in the minds of the unbelievers to blind them to the truth of the gospel. So may we be faithful to walk and work for Christ. I would say lastly, then there needs to be hopeful confidence for us. If anything else this story gives us, it is the fact that this story instructs us that God is going to one day throw down his enemies. It's coming. The spiritual enemies have already been destroyed at the have already been cast down at the cross. But brothers and sisters. We need to understand that there is coming a day when all of his fiscal enemies will one day be cast down and they will bow the knee. And we need to have hopeful confidence that that day is coming and until that day occurs, we need to be faithful to call them to repentance and faith in Christ. Listen to what The martyrs cry in Revelation 6. O sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on all those who dwell on the earth? And what was God's answer? Well, God's answer in Revelation 6.10 was rest. Take your rest. Take your rest a little longer. And God spoke to those praying martyrs cries to wait with hope for their full vindication. And he cries out and he tells us still today for us to continue to take our hope and our trust in Christ as we look to him realizing realizing that the scripture is to be understood in light of who he is and our calling then is to be one of absolute resolve to trust Christ even when we don't quite know the answers to the questions that are being asked to us. Let's pray. Father, though we have dealt with this massive topic in a very short amount of time, I pray that you would help us to greater give ourselves to providing answers to those who ask us a reason for the hope that is within us. I mean, this is what you've even told us through your word to do. And so God, may we do that faithfully as we're commanded in the epistle of Peter. God, that we are to give a reason for the hope that is within us. And yet we're to do this with fear and trembling. God, realizing that it's not even within us and not even something we're capable of doing in and of ourselves. But God, help us to be prepared to give good answers to hard questions. Help us to prayerfully consider your word. and to be faithful in considering your word for your glory's sake. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.