All right, so we're gonna get to, actually we're gonna cover two names of God today, Jehovah Rapha and Jehovah Sid Canu. And it's interesting because I don't really wanna spend a whole lot of time on Jehovah Rapha because really what makes Jehovah Rapha a reality is Jehovah Sid Canu. And Jehovah-Rapha means the Lord heals. And the expression Jehovah-Sidkenu, and that suffix there, enu, is a possessive meaning our. Like it's like in French where they put neutre on any kind of a word that makes it, you know, like Notre Dame, that's our lady, you know, neutre check, which would be, you know, your check or, you know, our check, you know, so it's the idea, whatever it is. So it's the idea of that, so that ainu at the end of the word, means it's possessive, meaning it's our, also makes it a plural word, which is kind of interesting too. And so showing his plurality. So this whole idea that we have a Lord who is our righteousness, not just, he could have just said Jehovah Sidki, which is righteous. But he didn't say that. He said, Sitkenu, which is possessive. He does the same thing with the word God. El is the word for God. Elohenu is our God, also plural. which is interesting. So it's a fascinating kind of thing when you start looking at this. By the way, we're going to talk about this a lot on Sunday when we teach you how to use the Blue Letter Bible, because all this stuff is in there, believe it or not. This isn't because I speak Hebrew. It's because I know how to read the Blue Letter Bible, really. Yeah. What time is that class? That's 9 o'clock here, Sunday morning. So yeah, so we're going to do that. That's kind of an interesting little twist before we get back into Isaiah. I thought it would just be a nice interlude. We're halfway through Isaiah and we're gonna do a little interlude there for next week. So, yeah, I remind everybody for that Sunday at nine o'clock. But this idea that God is our righteousness. Now, it's interesting because the only place in scripture that this is used is in Jeremiah. It's used in Jeremiah 23, I think it is, and Jeremiah, 33, I think, is where the other one is. And what's interesting about, yeah, 23 and 33. And what's interesting about that is that it is the exact same expression. Not only does he say, the Lord our righteousness, but he says that, well, here, we'll read it. Just go to Jeremiah 23. This probably isn't as good as either one of them. Let's turn that air conditioning down a little bit. I'm sweating. And in verse six, it says, in his days, Judah will be saved. Israel will dwell securely. This is the name by which he will be called the Lord, our righteousness. and that's Jehovah Sidkenu. And that exact same expression is used in Jeremiah 33. In Jeremiah 33, he says, in his days, Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will dwell securely. And this is the name by which she will be called, which is interesting, the Lord our righteousness. So it's just an interesting expression, the Lord our righteousness. And when we look at that and also connect it to Jehovah Rapha, which is the Lord our healer or the Lord who heals is actually what that says. We get a picture of what this is all about because this idea that righteousness, this is really kind of an interesting word. Sidku, which is the root of that word in Hebrew also means straight. So when they're talking about linear things, You know, the edge of this table is straight. They would say that's Sidku. Okay, so that's the idea behind that. And what's fascinating to me is that when we talk about things that are straight, what's the opposite of things that are straight? Things that are crooked, exactly, okay? And so there's nothing worse than if you're building something than having a crooked wall, right? I mean, it really is awful. I mean, we had an old house that we lived in back in Fort Lauderdale, and this thing had the most crooked walls. Just every single wall in that house was crooked. I don't think they popped any lines. I don't think they cared. They just threw the sucker up. And that can happen, I guess, with concrete block walls or whatever. I don't know. That's what I've been told. But you can fur this stuff out and make it straight. But they didn't. They chose just to go right up against it. And boom, we don't care. And so we had one wall that was like maybe it was 20 feet long. And then on the other side, it was 19.6. Really? You know, this is like, you know, and so the problem with that particular house was everything was hard in that house because nothing was straight. So anytime you wanted to do something, it was like everything was crooked and it was really a challenge. And the fact of the matter is, is that when things are straight, when things are solid, when they're correct, It's easy to measure. It's easy to work with. It's what it's all about. The problem is that people are naturally crooked. We are naturally screwed up. It's just the way we're built, unfortunately. And, you know, and as a result, this idea that sin, you know, when you read the book of Romans, it's pretty obvious that, you know, what he talks about there is, you notice, how sin just has taken on, you know, its own identity within people. And we ignore sin, we ignore crookedness, and we work around it. just like I did with that house. We worked around the crookedness. We didn't fix the crookedness, which I thought was interesting. I thought about it after we moved from that house. Why didn't one day we just get up there and just tear it? Well, it dawned on me. Well, you fix this crooked wall. Well, then you got to fix the other crooked wall. And it was like forever chasing your tail, trying to fix all the crookedness. And that's exactly what we are with sin. is sin is this thing, which once you try to fix one thing, well, then that impacts another thing. And then it's just like, it's like this domino effect. And the neat thing is, is that God is not that way. God is always plumb. God is always straight. God is Sid, and he is our righteousness, Sid Canaan. And that's, to me, one of the really, really interesting expressions in Scripture, is that He is our righteousness. In other words, He knows we're crooked. He knows that we are not capable of doing stuff correctly naturally. It is not our natural state. Our natural state is to do things which are inappropriate, not appropriate. It's just unfortunate, but that's the way it is. That is the natural course of man. And the problem is, is that we try to work with our crookedness. So the best we can do is subdue it. And we don't, but unfortunately there are people out there that just live a life of crookedness. The guy that shot and killed his son is a man that is a perfect example of a person that just, when I read that, when I read that, my original, my first thought and probably most prominent thought was, this is a man who allowed sin without any temperance to just permeate everything. So he just made decisions, he didn't care. he shoot people he would you know he would rob people he would do whatever he did with that read i mean that's what he's all about i mean the man who is not only up for uncharges of of shooting killing uh... his son but he's also uh... orlando says i'm talking about but but he said he's got all sorts of charges against him it's like it's like a litany man this guy's you know crazy and that's where you look at it but unfortunately he's not really he's he is the natural state of man without any interruption without any temperament, tempering. I think that's the right word. Yeah, tempering. There's no, you know, so, but most people don't go that crazy route. Most people temper their crookedness. But unfortunately, there but by the grace of God, go I. We are all capable of doing most bizarre stuff And we don't realize that God is our righteousness. God is the one who's sitting there going, look, just look to me and I'll give you direction. I will give you righteousness. Because here's the bottom line. Righteousness is better. Straight is better than crooked. It just is. Straight is good. Crooked is not. And it's just incredible to me that we see this. I was listening to a report while I was in France. It was just interesting. I was on my phone. I didn't watch TV one time when I was over there. And I was on my phone and I saw this report by this doctor. And he said something that really was incredible. He was talking about the Holocaust. And he said the incidence of suicide amongst people that were in the Holocaust, that were actually in jail, that were in these concentration camps, the incidence of suicide in concentration camps was almost zero. Almost zero. Now these are people that knew they were headed to destruction, knew that that was where they were, but none of them killed themselves. And he said, when he first started doing this analysis, he thought maybe the records were wrong and then he realized the Germans are the ones keeping the records, they don't make mistakes like that. And he said, these people weren't committing suicide. Yet today, the single largest cause of death amongst people under the age of 25 is suicide. And it ain't even close. They had nothing. These people that are killing themselves today have everything. But what are they lacking? And he said something that was just so powerful. This was not a religious guy. This was a secular psychologist just analyzing the data. And he said it's very simple. They had something to live for. The Jewish people who were in those concentration camps had something to live for. In their minds, they were like, no, we are not going to subdue to these people. We are not going to go down that road. We are going to fight. We are going to do whatever we have to. Obviously, not much they could do to get out of it. They didn't have weapons and so forth, but they were saying, no, we are not going to give them the benefit of us committing suicide. That was just like what he basically concluded. Yet when everybody has privilege, we lose meaning. And when we lose meaning, it's because we don't see things as being good. We don't see things as being right. We don't see things as being righteous. We don't see things as being straight. And when everything is basically all messed up, that's when people do this kind of stuff. And I understand when I read about suicide, I was just reading last night, there was another, she was about 47 or 48 years old, the girl that sang the songs in Mulan committed suicide, 48 years old. And I was asking, my original thought was why? And her sister said, you know, she just, you know, this girl had everything. She had money. She had fame. She had all sorts of, why? And her sister said, she just didn't see any meaning in her life. Why do we commit suicide? It's, it's, it's an amazing thing. It's because we don't understand that the Lord is our righteousness. And so we get frustrated with this idea that I'm not capable of doing what I want to do. And we fight that and we just don't want to fight it anymore. And that's when people start doing crazy stuff. And so we come back to this thought. And Dr. Evans wrote something in his book that just got my attention. He said, the more you depart from God, the more you invite decline and devolution, it's like de-evolution, it's an interesting word, devolution into your life, succumbing to the culture over scripture. Succumbing to the culture over scripture. And it made me think, I wrote down a couple of things after I saw that, I wrote down that absolute truth or relative truth, question mark. Do we believe in absolute truth or do we believe in relative truth? Most people I do not believe believe in absolute truth. They believe in relative truth. They believe in truth that works for me. You hear people say that all the time. It's my truth, right, my truth. And what I'm saying is, no, if it's your truth, if it's truth, then it's my truth too. No, no, this is my truth. That's relative truth. What happened to absolute truth? Well, see, that's the problem that we're facing in our society. If you have a man see himself as a woman, that's his truth. Right. That's his truth. And he want everybody to believe his truth. Right. But the truth is he's a man. And that's absolute truth. And that's what we deal with in our culture now. Right. You know, people have strayed away, whether they're in the church or out of the church, they have strayed away from absolute truth. And God is absolute. Yeah. Yeah. And that to me is really powerful. Yes, sir. I just keep thinking all the way from when you started, you know, our society. I'm sorry. Jim, louder. I can't hear you. All the way from when you started this morning, I just kept thinking our society, When you say we're crooked and we don't harness ourselves or whatever, what is a person's measuring stick? Like what is crooked and straight? So the measuring stick, and I've been in a relationship with people like this. And this is before I woke up. I said, what did you say? You woke? Did I say anything wrong? No, no, no, no. It was good. It was good. I woke up. Yeah, hello. I was born and raised Catholic, but I didn't really wake up until I was 15, like seven years ago. But I understood. I knew Jesus was supposed to be the measure. Right. Up here, I knew it. Yeah. And it's just amazing. What someone's definition of what is normal today, to your point, what's wrong with our society, what's normal is what they see in society. So our society is getting crazier and crazier. So what is considered normal is crazier and crazier. Because they're looking at relative truth. What's happening around me, relatively, is what they're saying, is what I'm going to follow, or that. So it's interesting you said that, because one of the things that obviously we do in the U.S. is we use the old British system of feet, yards, and we measure stuff. And of course, basically the rest of the world, they use meters and, you know, and the metric system. And my daughter actually asked me a question, I'm trying to find this verse that talks about that, that idea of the measuring stick that, I can't find it right now, but she asked me, she said, well, dad, why do we use yards and inches and stuff like that and the rest of the world uses, meters and, you know, kilometers instead of miles and, you know, stuff like that. It just doesn't make any sense to me. And the answer, I don't know what the answer to that is, other than the fact that that's just the way we do it, you know, and so forth and, you know, no one ever, you know, we just have never converted in this country from our own stubbornness. I think that's probably as much as it is from anything else. But what I thought was interesting was when I started thinking about it, you gotta have a measuring stick. You gotta have something that everybody agrees on. That's the point. Gotta have something that everybody agrees on. And the problem is is that We have one system where we all agree on yards and feet and miles. And then we have another system that's all meters and kilometers and so forth. And the problem is that once you start going down this road of which system do you use, do you use this one or that one, you can't mix them up. It's one of the things I realized when we were over in France and Greece and so on, is you can't mix them up. You can't be thinking in miles when everything's in kilometers. You just can't do it. You, you, you, it's, it's really hard to, I mean, it's just virtually impossible to do. You know, you're driving a car and the speedometer is in kilometers. It's not miles per hour. It's, you know, you just got to deal with that, that issue, you know? So when you're going down the highway and it says you're doing 130, it's a major kind of adjustment in your brain. Okay. And, uh, you know, yet that's 78 miles an hour and that wouldn't necessarily be that big of a deal. And so I had some time, so I started doing this thing of how do you convert all this stuff? I had all these formulas going on in my brain on how to convert the temperature and how to convert kilometers into miles or miles into kilometers and all this other kind of craziness. And I thought to myself, that's what we do when we get away from God's truth. So we start going, okay, well, this is that, but this is the way I want to do it. And then we got to kind of work around that. Yeah. you know, as far as like, truth and fact and fiction. The disturbing trend that I'm seeing in society now, that I think is a real shift, because we can all point, you know, we've got decades of all kinds of sin and mistakes, all kinds of evil. But what I'm noticing now is when, so I'll talk about the media, when someone who's prominent in the media is caught in a misstep. You know why? I think we're getting into a mode in society where people just don't care. I caught so and so in a line. Oh, well, let's get to the bottom of this. People don't really care as long as their needs are being met. So what we've basically done now is we've really thrown truth out the window. We really have. And I was watching an interview about Elon Musk you know, he was talking about AI when I think it was heard in Texas. And, you know, I don't know about Elon Musk's faith. But, you know, they talked about a lot of different things, about an hour and a half interview, if you want to try to find it. But he was saying, you know, we're, you know, nefarious folk are teaching AI to lie. So the truth is just going to be There isn't a chair sitting there. There's no chair there. That's my truth. And now we study the most absolute perfect truth. And I just see the division getting wider and wider and wider. But in the script here, I'm going to go back to, I guess it's always been wine. You read that in Jeremiah 23. And God hold those people that teaches his people accountable. That's correct. For what is truth. That's correct. And that's why he said, woe unto you shepherds, because you're not doing your job. And because you're not doing your job, this whole thing is wrong. Well, not... I just, let me just, and then I want you to finish that thought. What's interesting is, is that not only did he condemn those guys, but then he said, if you go to verse three, He says, so because y'all are not teaching correctly, then I'm just going to do it myself. Yes. That's where Jeremiah came in. Yeah. Where are you? In Jeremiah 23. Oh. And that's the point he's making. Because the leader is not doing right. And here's the problem. When we are misguided by the leader, and we following people instead of following God, that's the problem. That is a problem. Because we are following the shepherds. But if the shepherd is misleading the people, what is our standard? Or who should we be watching? And that's why it's so dangerous for us to follow an individual instead of following God. When we get caught up in individualism, or we've caught up in leaders who claim, quote unquote, speaks for God, and they're speaking, case in point, SBA, they're allowing women to be preachers, and there's such a divide in denomination right now. I mean, in all of it, AME, all of it, there's such a division on women preachers and being gay pastors and all this other stuff. And when we follow those type of leaders, and God said, no, follow me. Because that was Jesus' biggest thing to me. When he called every last one of those disciples and apostles, he said, follow me. No one else but me. And I think that's the problem with what we're doing in our society and in our culture. We're not following God. We follow personality. Do you think we've exalted people too much? Yes, absolutely. Not enough just humble servants? That's why we vote, white folk vote, forgive me, white folk vote for Republican and black folk vote for Democrat. None of them is following him. Right. The majority evangelical vote Democrat, I mean Republican. And the majority of, what's the word I'm calling, thinking about when you say it? Orthodox black folk, they vote Democrat. Right. Wow. Because we allow people to pull us apart instead of following him. And that's the problem with this era. And just like Israel, we're going to be just like them. And here's the tragedy. So there's a series of articles that were just published in the New York Times. The first one was in April, and the last one was last month. A series of five articles. And by this gal, she is a person that has no religious affiliation. She says it right in the very first article. She said, look, I have no religious affiliation. My parents were Jewish, but they didn't give us any direction religiously at all. My husband was raised in an Episcopal home, but he didn't have any religious. We have no religion going on in our family. And she was thinking, what do I want to do with my child? She has a young child. Do I want to give her religious training? That's how this article came about. And she said in the article, and the very first one too was really powerful, was she started looking around. And she realized that almost everybody she knew was a-religious. A-religious. Not un-religious. A-religious, and there's a difference. Un-religious means that you have made a choice to walk away from ... I'm not sure if you're talking or it's the audience. Yeah, it's me. I'm sorry, I walked away from the microphone. What's happening is that ... What she said was that most of her friends are A-religious, not un-religious. Areligious means they have no religion. They are without religion. It's not even something they think about. Unreligious people are people that have chosen to leave religion. That's what that actually means. And she said the vast majority of people she knows in her little world are areligious. And so she wanted to look into this. And so she just started doing some examining and she started doing some research. And it was fascinating what she found out. She found out, for example, that in the United States of America, that in the last 10 years, we have averaged 5,000 church closures a year. Did you know that? That's 50,000 churches have closed in the last 10 years. More than probably have closed prior to that in the history of the country. We have more church closures. And most of these churches that are closing are churches that are traditional churches. That was what she was pointing out. And by the way, it's not limited to just churches. It's congregations, Jewish congregations. It's all sorts of different things. And it's happening mostly within the cities, but also outside of the city, rural areas. Rural areas, it was not uncommon for there to be two or three or four churches in a rural area. And those little churches have all just gone away. and they're abandoned buildings now. In Europe, you are hard-pressed to find anybody that even thinks about religion. It's fascinating. What they have is they have a very big affinity for large Catholic churches. So, for example, when we're in Le Havre, there's this amazing Catholic church there called St. Joseph's that is, for all intents and purposes, a landmark, and everybody goes there to visit, but no one goes to church. This is really interesting. So you go in to St. Joseph's, you can go in there 24-7 almost. You can go in there and you can pray or whatever, but when they do services, when they do Mass, No one's there. There's more people on the visitation deal to St. Joseph's than there are people that actually go to the church to actually do religion. Everybody understand where I'm coming from? Okay, so the point is that we have allowed ourselves, as he points out in his book, Dr. Evans points out in his book, the more we depart from God, the more we invite decline. And it is a de-evolution, a devolution. That's that word, again. That devolution is a really interesting word. Evolution is the idea that things are getting better, but devolution is the idea that things are just progressively getting worse. By the way, they both effectively have, you can make a good argument for both of them, is the point. I'm not here to talk about evolution or whatever. That's not my point. My point is that we are seeing things devolve at the same time as we see things going up in a different direction. What are we seeing right now? Basically, we see people getting angry. We see kids out there shooting people. We see all sorts of craziness. We see anger as being our solution. And anger is not going to solve anything. All it's going to do is devolve things. That's what anger does. It devolves things. And so we read about this, you know, this situation that was just going on in Paris when I was there. You know, where this kid gets shot. Should have never gotten shot, obviously. I mean, that's a fact. He should never have gotten shot. I mean, you watch the video. It's pretty obvious. The kid should have never gotten shot. And that's just the truth. But the truth is also, but then everybody should have just said, okay, let's deal with this. But no, what they do is they start going in and destroying their own businesses and other people in the community. And they don't realize that what they're doing is they're just taking and they're allowing everything to devolve. And that's the challenge. And it's because all of this stuff has gotten away from absolute truth. That's my point. When you allow yourself to get away from absolute truth, then you do whatever you gotta do to make your point, because you don't have any other truth. And so we start going in and starting to destroy the local businesses, and we start stealing from people, and we start burning cars, and we start doing all this craziness and so forth. And one guy gets killed, and 2,300 people got arrested. 2,300 people have been arrested. And that doesn't include the ones that let go. It's just absolutely amazing to me. So my point of this whole entire thing is we need a God who is our righteousness. We need a God who is our healer. So we need a Jehovah-Rapha, we need a Jehovah-Sidkenu, we need a God who is bigger than all this nonsense. That's the point. And when we have a God who is bigger than that, then we can experience what Jesus talked about was, you know, blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. Blessed are those that hunger and thirst after righteousness. Man, I want to tell you something. I ran that, I was thinking about that yesterday, most of the day, actually. Do I hunger and do I thirst after righteousness? I mean, is that real? I mean, look, I ate yesterday three times. I can't tell you how many times I drank something out of that, you know, water bottle or, you know, had a glass of, you know, coffee or a cup of coffee or whatever. I mean, I had two or three cups of coffee yesterday, at least three or four of those bottles of water. That's how I quenched my thirst. But did I quench my thirst with righteousness? When I ate, I ate my food. I had a great dinner last night. It was a tremendous dinner last night. It was incredible. And I was thinking as I was eating that, do I hunger after righteousness the same way I'm hungry after this food? Do I consider the seasoning and so forth of righteousness. Do I, do I, you know, like I, like if you eat, if you ever eat food that just doesn't have any salt, that doesn't have any flavor, doesn't have any, right? It's just kind of like, eh, right? I'll tell you what, we, We had some French fries with our dinner last night that were incredible, that my wife made in an air fryer, and they were just unbelievable. Seasoned to perfection, just incredible. And I'm sitting, I'm eating these things, I'm like, man, I could eat these forever. And then I thought to myself, do I hunger and thirst after righteousness the way I'm hungering after these French fries? Do I savor righteousness the way I'm savoring the seasoning, whatever seasonings you put on that thing? It was insane. But it was unbelievable. And I'm sitting here, and what was really interesting was there was not a French fry left. She made a lot of them, too. It wasn't just you. Oh, no. There wasn't a French fry left. My daughter's over there wanting to have a, can I get a couple more of those French fries? Everybody was just into that food. And so all of a sudden, I'm sitting here going, Do we hunger and thirst after righteousness the same way we do after something that's just really good to eat? The beauty in that, Don, what you're saying, because that's been my prayer lately, and I think it goes to your point where you said about the Holocaust, they shall be filled. That's what he said. If you hunger and thirst after righteousness, I'm going to fear you. Yeah. That's the hope that the Jews had in the Holocaust. Yep. It's hope. Yep. And when a person is without hope, they don't care about committing suicide. That's correct. That's why they didn't kill themselves. Because they had hope. Yeah. And for us who hunger and thirst after God's righteousness, he said, listen, I'm going to plant a seed of hope in you that's going to spring up into eternal life. Yeah. So when we hunger after that, God promised, it's a promise. I'm gonna fill your hunger and your thirst. And that's our hope. So yeah, I get what you're saying when you're saying hunger and thirst, and that's my prayer, Lord, I'm gonna hunger after you. I'm gonna thirst after you, and God promised me, if you do this, I promise you, I'll fill you up. Now, he didn't say it's overnight. That, too, is a process. Mm-hmm, yeah. The other thing that's interesting is that to satisfy hunger, you gotta do it all the time. Yes. You gotta eat all the time. To satisfy hunger, you have to eat all the time. You can't just gorge yourself. That doesn't satisfy hunger. Amen. Correct. It's really interesting. You know, Diana, I didn't mean to interrupt you, No, no, no, you're good. You know, there's so much clutter that goes on in the world that distracts me. And the example I'm going to give is that the last time you were off, I took the time to go to, I think it was Daniel and Ezekiel. This time, I was in the Gathering and I finished up Isaiah. The reason I'm talking about the clutter is I constantly tell myself, you know what? Between you and Steve, you should always be in the Word. Take some time. And I think it was like, how much time do we spend in the Word? How much time in the day do we spend time with God other than my morning meditation and stuff like that? And it was like, I'm sitting on the couch with Paula watching TV going like, I should probably be over here reading the Bible. But I'm getting distracted with the world and all this stuff. But then the other times, in the quietness, I have, because I'm undisciplined. So I had to discipline myself to go like, you know, you really need to develop. And then when I started reading it, and even though I highlight things that catch my attention, I'm going like, well, I can't wait until you teach this so I can get them full understanding of it, you know what I'm saying? But my whole point is to take that time to be in the Lord is because of all the distractions, you know, that, but it just reminded me this time off that, you know what, it was really evident to me like, JR, this is the time where you could just say, you know what, you don't need to do this, you know, take a break. Well, I don't know if there's really any days off When it comes to seeking the Lord. Well, and I think that's why Jesus uses the expression hunger and thirst, right? Because the truth is, did you take any days off eating and drinking? Have you ever? Have any of us? I mean, I'm being honest. I'm not saying this critically. I'm saying this is just the reality. You take a couple of days off from eating and drinking and it's an incredible mind trip. My wife has had this bariatric surgery and so she has a very small stomach now and she can't eat a lot. It's just a reality. She just can't physically eat a lot because she's got a smaller stomach than certainly I do. But she has to eat a lot of times. She has to eat more frequently than I do. It's just a reality. Now, that's not a mental thing, by the way. That's an actual fact. Because that's just the way her body is now built. She has to eat four, five, or six times a day. where I could probably eat two or three times a day and be fine, just be fine. But neither one of us can eat zero times, because if you eat zero times, well then, you know, you start going into starvation. Your body starts eating itself up. And I believe that's what happens with us spiritually, is we start cannibalizing our spiritual makeup, because we don't feed it. We're not going to the Word. We're not praying. We're not involved in fellowship. All the different things that are necessary to have a relationship with God can be tied up in three things. It can be tied up in studying the Word, prayer, and fellowship. Those are the three primary things that every single believer needs to be doing because that's where we get our food. That's where we get it from. So this idea of hunger and thirsting, but what he's saying there is Jesus didn't say just hunger and thirst for the Bible, no. He didn't say hunger and thirst for prayer. He didn't say that. He said hunger and thirst for righteousness. What's righteousness? Knowing God. Because God is righteous. He is righteousness. He is our righteousness. He is Sid Canu. our righteousness. And so I keep coming back to this, and I'm reminded of a verse, and I'm going to end on this. Go ahead, Stevie. I think righteousness is being morally right or justifiable. That's what that definition Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot. I really do. I think that's really good definition. Yeah, I like that a lot. Thank you, Stephen. That's good. But I want you to read this verse. Go to 2 Corinthians. Go to the 5th chapter. Now, 2 Corinthians chapter 5 happens to be like one of my favorite chapters in the entire Bible. Because in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, he starts off, it really starts off at the end of chapter 4, where it says that our momentary, you know, don't lose heart because of your momentary, I like that, momentary and light affliction. We forget, affliction is never permanent. Do you ever think about that? It's always momentary. Affliction is only, you're going through it, it's gonna end. It's gonna come to an end. and so forth, but don't lose heart is the whole point of this. And then he gets into this whole thing about the fact that we seek those things which are not seen, not those things which are seen, because the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are unseen are eternal. So that's how he starts this off. And then he says that we have this temporary tent, and it's this Bible, this whole idea of we have this body that we're in, we are not a permanent, resting place for our soul. And then he talks about being absent of the bodies, present with the Lord. But then he says this, he says, but we are new creations in Christ Jesus. We are new creations. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. And then he says that we have become ministers of reconciliation. Because we're new creatures, we are now ministers and ambassadors of God, ambassadors of reconciliation. And he says, and he ends this thing in verse 20 and 21, he says this. He says, therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ as though God were entreating through us. Did you hear that? As if God were, entreating means to speak, to preach. So he's saying, as though God were preaching or speaking through us. It's a pretty powerful statement. And it goes on. He says, and we beg you on behalf of the Lord Christ, as the Lord Jesus, be reconciled. This is interesting. He doesn't say reconciled to one another. He already dealt with that. How about you got to get reconciled to God? What is reconcile? Well, if you understand the word reconciliation from an accounting standpoint, if you're reconciling your books, what does that mean? Exactly. They're equal. They're balanced. They're straight. Everybody get that? I don't know about y'all, but I still reconcile my checkbook every month. And if my checkbook is off, even by a penny, I'm looking for it. I'm just, that's just the way I am. Not because I need the penny, but because I don't like the error. Do you understand what I'm saying? And I'm not just going to go in there and just change it to, you know, 17 cents. I'm just not going to do it. What did I screw up? I just, I gotta get this reconciled. I gotta, I gotta get reconciled. And, and so, so my point is, my point of this is, is that God is saying, get reconciled to me. Find out where you're off. That's what reconciliation is all about. It's finding out where you're off. It's like, oh, I made an addition mistake, or I made a subtraction mistake, or I wrote it down wrong, or, you know, it was 17 cents, but really I wrote down 16 cents. Whatever it was. But get it right is basically what it's saying. Get it right. Reconciliation is getting it right. All right, so listen to what he says. He says, we beg you, therefore, on behalf of Jesus, on behalf of the Lord Jesus, be reconciled to God, be straight with God. He made him who knew no sin, that's what gets us unreconciled to sin, right? That's what we said, that's where we started this thing. He made him who knew no sin, sin for us or on our behalf, so that we might become, listen to this, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. The Lord our righteousness. So this idea that we can become new creations, that we can become new people, that we can have a new relationship with Him is built on reconciliation. It's built on getting it straight. It's built on righteousness. And when that happens, when we get reconciled with God, when we allow ourselves to be equal, not off, no debits, no credits, just connected, perfectly connected. When that happens, that's the righteousness of God in us. And when that happens, when the righteousness of God is in us, we now have that ability now to start hungering after righteousness. Because until you've experienced Really good steak. You'll never eat, look, I gotta tell you guys a quick story. When I was a kid, my mother, God bless her, was the absolute worst cook on the entire planet. She could cook certain things, like she could boil macaroni really well. She made, literally, she made the best sauce though, I have to admit, she did make the best sauce. But beyond that, She would make us steak. She would buy chuck steak. Now the reason she bought chuck steak is because it was the least expensive steak so she could get more of it. That was her theory. We get more of the cheap steak than less of the good steak because this way we can feed six people. That was her thinking. And she would take this chuck steak, big old platter of chuck steak. Have you ever seen a chuck steak? Yeah, they're pretty thin and long and big and stuff. So she would take this chuck steak, she would not put any seasoning on it because she didn't believe that was necessary. And so she put it in the broiler of the oven and she would broil it until it was black. Then she would take it out, she would flip it over and she would broil it again until it was now black on both sides. And it was like leather. So for years, and I am not exaggerating, I mean years, neither of my brothers or me ever ate meat. Beef, that is. We ate other beef, chicken, you know, stuff. But we never ate beef. Why? Because we remembered that experience of that was what we viewed beef. Beef was the worst thing in the world. And I remember I was probably in my 30s. I went to a conference and they were serving filet mignon. And it was filet mignon and some kind of turf, you know, surf and turf thing. You know, whatever, whatever that is. It was, I don't know, prawns or something. I have no idea. Doesn't matter. And they were serving it. And it was no other option. It was either that or go hungry. And I hadn't eaten all day. I was starving. And I remember saying to my wife, oh man, they're giving us beef, man, can I get something else? And she's like, just eat it, shut up, you know. And I'm like, nah, man, I hate beef, you know that. She said, well, you never eat it, how would you know if you hate it? I said, because I know, I've had it. She said, well, why don't you just taste this beef, one bite. If you don't like it, I'll give you my prawns or whatever, and I'll just, you know, that'll be it. Well, I took one bite of this filet mignon, I'm like, what was I thinking? I mean, what was I thinking? I'm like, what? My mother, and I remember, I'm telling you, the next morning I got up and the first thing I did is I called my mother. And I said, hey mom, have you ever had filet mignon? And she said, of course I've had filet mignon. I said, well, how come you never gave it to us as kids? And she just was like, she didn't understand what I was even talking about. But you see, the point is, is that once you understand what real righteousness is all about, it's like eating a filet mignon after you've been eating burnt chuck steak. And there is no comparison, folks. John, let me just say this. The traumatization of your youth prevented you from being safe. Absolutely. And that's what we have to get to in our walk with God. Yeah, exactly. And sometimes we have trauma in our past So here's what's really good. I never realized I had that trauma in my past until I ate the filet mignon. I didn't remember up until now I do of course because I've told the story a hundred times, but But prior to that I didn't realize why I hated steak Why not steak beef I wouldn't eat beef I wouldn't eat hamburger I wouldn't eat nothing Beef, I was not, no, I don't do beef. And I never knew why, till I ate the filet mignon. And then all of a sudden, it was like this light bulb went off in my brain. Oh my gosh, it's because I never had it cooked like this, man. And so here's the problem. The problem is that most people have had righteousness presented to them, and it's been like a burnt steak. They've had God presented to them. It's been like a burnt steak. Yeah, man, this is awful. This is the worst. That's the point I'm making. And when you really come into a knowledge of Him, when you come into a real relationship with Him, I mean a real relationship, I ain't talking about just book study or knowledge of Him. I'm talking about when you come into a relationship with Him, It is something that you will never, ever, ever, never, never, ever forget. And it's something that will make you hunger for him more. Your hunger, even when you backslide. And he's, like you said, so often, you said, I know you messed up, but come on. Because he's always telling us to come on. And if you really want him, and that's the thing I love about him, you can mess up. And you done taught this over and over again. God always said, I know you done messed up, but if you can forgive yourself, come on. Yeah. And he's always picking us up. Yeah. No matter how low we go. And one of the things I love is years ago, someone said to me, you know, the beauty of God is that he does not judge us based on our worst day. He does not. No, he doesn't judge us on either one. The fact of the matter is, is that God doesn't care about your great successes, nor does He care about your great failures. All He cares about is you. And that's the difference. So He doesn't judge you based upon your great successes, your world record, because your world record is going to get broken. Whatever that world record is, it's going to get broken. But He also doesn't judge you based upon your worst day. He does not judge that guy that shot that boy, in that car for that worst moment that he just had in his entire life where he did something completely stupid. And by the way, I'm sure he realizes, man, did I screw up. I got a testimony for that. Go ahead. Yeah, we'll do it, whatever. You know, I told you about my grandson. I almost attempted to kill somebody, and God's sharing with you the testimony. But God spoke to me and said, you need to forgive that man that shot yourself. And I said, what? So that's just how I am. He said, you wouldn't forgive them if you forgot your son, so mercy. And I said, what? And then he gave me a scripture. He spoke this scripture to me. You remember the unjust servant how he came to his Lord and asked the Lord to forgive him of a debt that he knew he could not pay him. And that Lord, he forgave him and he had compassion on him. And he went out not more than 10 minutes later and saw somebody that owed him such a small amount. And he told them to grab him, put him in prison. And the servant that saw that went to tell his Lord. And he said, bring that servant back to me. He reminded him, did I not show compassion? and mercy on your grandson, that you need to show him, even though I allowed him to take his life, show mercy and compassion on him. And the Lord said, do you trust me? And I said, yes, Lord. And that's the testimony he just gave me a couple weeks ago. That's awesome. That is a great way to end. Pray for us. Father, we thank you for what our ears have heard and what our heart has received. I pray for every man here, my God, that you would bless them, that you would create that hunger and thirst in all of our spirit, that we may seek your face, and that we may acknowledge your spirit in our lives, that we may walk in ways that will be pleasing to you. I pray, Father, that you would just keep us focused and keep us humble. and keep us always hungry and thirsty after Christ, because the Lord said you will feel like that. I pray that if any sick among us, Lord, God, that you would heal. If any sick in the family, I pray that you would also touch. It's in your name I thank you, Jesus.