of 2nd Kings tonight. 2nd Kings chapter number 7. Amen. 2nd Kings chapter number 7. I'm going to start there in verse number 1 and read a couple verses and then we'll preach tonight and ask for God's help and God's grace. And so 2nd Kings 7. If you found it, say amen. I'll know you're there. Amen. Not hard to find tonight right there. in the Old Testament. This is what the Bible says. Then Elisha said, Hear ye the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord, Tomorrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel in the gate of Samaria. Then the Lord, on whose hand the king leaned, answered the man of God, and said, Behold, if the Lord would make windows in heaven, might this thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof. And there were four leprous men entering at the gate, and they said one to another, Why sit we here until we die? If we say we will enter into the city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there. And if we sit still here, we die also. Now therefore come, and let us fall unto the host of the Syrians. And if they save us alive, we shall live. And if they kill us, we shall but die. Now we're going to take our text out of verse number three. where it says, they gave that little phrase, they said, why sit we here until we die? Why sit we here until we die? And that's what we're gonna preach on, that's the title of the message. Why sit we here until we die? Let's pray. Father, I pray you bless the word tonight. Pray the Holy Ghost of God will be upon it and pray that you'd speak to all of our hearts as children of God, people who know you as Lord and Savior. And if by chance there's one here tonight who doesn't know you as Lord and Savior, that today might be the day of salvation for them. Let the Holy Ghost of God speak, work, and move, and have your will and way. And Father, we'll thank you for what you're going to do. Guide my heart and lips. And Father, I ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. We preach on this thought tonight of why sit we here until we die. Now this is a great Old Testament story of God's mercy, God's grace, and God's deliverance. To get the context of the setting, Israel is under siege of the Assyrian army and there's a famine in the city. And there's no food. The bread is spent. People are dying of everything you can possibly picture of. And then you have these lepers that are outside the gate. This is a great story of God's mercy, of God's grace, and God's deliverance. And these four lepers, of course, are a picture of lost sinners in the Bible. Leprosy is a picture of sin. And those who have it are a picture of those who are dying from sin. dying from sin. And if you'll notice, if I could get my words out tonight, these lepers, in a way of introduction, they're outside the city. They're outside the city and they're looking in. And again, that's how a sinner is without Jesus Christ. They're on the outside, and they're looking in. They're as lost as they could possibly be. Ephesians 2.12 says this, that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. That's what a sinner is without Jesus Christ. They're without God, they're having no hope in the world, they're dying and they're going to hell. They're on the outside looking in. Some guys wandered by the church the other night, and of course they were going to hop over the fence, and I said, hey guys, what's the deal? I said, you can't hop over the fence. And they said, oh man, we are so tired. And we had these heavy packs on their back, probably filled with drugs if I had to guess, heavy packs on their back. And they're saying, all we want to do, we're trying to get to Kimberley, we're trying to get to Kimberley, trying to get to Kimberley, and they hopped up on drugs. And I thought to myself, well, you ain't climbing over that fence. That fence is worth more than you are. I'm just kidding now. Souls of men are worth more than a fence. But I said, you're not jumping over that fence. You see all those slats we've been replacing we fix? That's where someone jumped over the fence and broke it off. It just made a cedar. And I said, so I don't want you to hop over the fence. And boy, they were discouraged. They put their heads down, mumbled a few things, probably cussing me under their breath. And I said, hey, jump in the car and I'll give you a ride around the block. And they walked around the car like I didn't even talk to them. So I put the window down and said, hey guys, you say you're tired and weary, you're looking for a shortcut, jump in the car and I'll ride you to the Kimberley, right? And I'll give you a little shortcut. And I said, I'm the pastor of Fellowship Baptist Church, of course. I had my suit on, I'm going over to the visitation, and they're looking at me with scorn. You so-and-so hypocrite. That's how they're looking at me. You can tell when people are looking that way. And I said, listen, I'm the pastor of Fellowship Baptist Church. I'm not mean and hateful. Get in the car. I'll give you a ride around the corner. No problem. But you know, when a sinner looks at a child of God, they don't know what to think. Because they're on the outside looking in. And they're without God, and they're miserable, and they're lost, and they're undone, and they can't begin to understand who and what we are. Now, I should have been a little afraid to let them get in the car. But I think they were more afraid to get in the car. They might have thought I was a police officer because I pulled up in the black expedition. They probably thought that's what I was. This guy's fooling me. Is he taking me to the police? Where's he taking me? And I said, no, come on guys. Get in. I'll ride you down there. And of course I rode them down there. And do you think they went to the Kimberly? No, of course not. They went over to the gas station to make their little deal over there. They met some people on the street corner. I'm thinking, you know, no kidding, no kidding, okay? What kind of fool do you take me for? I pay attention to everything. But anyway, I had a laugh. I thought, you know, this is how lost sinners are. And boy, they're doing their best, and they're just as miserable as they can possibly be, and they can't figure out why they're so miserable. These lepers, they're outside the gate, and they're just so miserable. They got leprosy, they're dying, and leprosy was such a horrible thing for people to have, and that's how it is with Sin is such a horrible thing to not know Christ as your personal Savior. Isaiah 59 says this, Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, neither is it heavy that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you that He will not hear you. Your hands are defiled with blood, your fingers with iniquity, and your lips have spoken lies, your tongue have muttered perverseness. None called for justice, nor any pleaded for truth. They trust in man who speak lies, they conceive mischief, bring forth iniquity, and so on and so on and so on. That's how it is when people are without God. And the problem, you know, it's amazing. They have a problem with us. We don't have a problem. We love them. We want them to know the Lord is their Savior. But they have a problem with us because they're the ones that are on the outside. They're on the outside. These men are on the outside. And again, They're outside the city. They're condemned. Leprosy. They're a horrible, terrible disease that people have where you rot from the inside out. And your extremities rot off. Your ears rot off. Your fingers rot off. Your limbs rot off. And just, you're a walking dead man when you have leprosy. And they have that. There's no feeling. A putrefying smell. Bodies covered with sores and pus, if you could just imagine it. And again, that's the picture of a sinner without Jesus Christ. Paul went on to say this, concerning them, it says, And you have be quickened who were dead in trespass and sins, wherein time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also we have had our conversation in times past, and the lust of our flesh fulfilling the desires of the flesh. of the mind and were by nature the children of wrath even as others. Now if you want to picture what a person with leprosy in their final stages were, you might think of these shows they got on TV today, The Walking Dead. and all the zombie stuff. That gives you a little picture of what people in their final state of leprosy, what they look like and what they had. And you can imagine their situation here. No one wants them in the city. Why are they outside the gate? They can't go in there. They're lepers. They're unclean. They're dying already. They sure don't want that plague in the city. So they're without. They're without. And then in verse 3 and 4 they come to their selves. Well, this is a picture of someone coming to Jesus Christ. Isn't it good when people come to themselves and their situations, and their dying, desperate situations? These men in their dying, desperate situation, they come to themselves, and in verse number four they say, If we will enter into the city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there. And if we sit still here, we die also. Now therefore come, and let us follow the hosts of the Syrians. If they save us alive, we shall live, and if they kill us, we shall Now let me tell you something. That's a pretty desperate place to be in because the Syrians don't take prisoners. There's no prisoners for these Syrian people. They said, if they save us, that's a stretch. Because if you surrender them, you're going to be killed instantly. And how much more someone who's got a deadly plague like leprosy upon their life? And so in verse, they make this decision in verse number 4 and notice verses 5 to 7 what happens. And they rose up in the twilight to go into the camp of the Syrians and when they were come to the most part of the camp of Syria, behold, there was no man there. For the Lord had made the host of the Syrians to come, Syrians, to hear the noise of chariots and the noise of horses, even the noise of a great host. And they said one another, Lo, the kings of Israel have hired against us the kings of the Hittite, the kings of the Egyptians, to come unto us. Wherefore they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their tents and their horses and their asses, even the camp as it was, and fled for their life." Boy, that's an amazing thing. I mean, these guys said we've got nothing to lose. They're just going to kill us anyway. Let's go and see what happens. So they go out there, and this is where we start the message tonight, in verse number 8. In verse number 8, they become the undeserving recipients of God's mercy. Can I tell you tonight, there's no one in this room who deserves God's mercy. We are the undeserving recipients of God's mercy. Look what verse 8 says, and when those lepers came to the uttermost part of the camp, they went into one tent and did eat and drink. The whole city is starving to death. And what are these guys doing? They go into the tent and they're eating and drinking. They got the plague. They're walking dead men. But they find something to eat. They're the undeserving recipients of God's mercy. It says, "...and carried thence silver and gold and raiment, and went and hid it, and came again into another tent, and carried thence also, and went and hid it." Now you think about this for a minute. There are a work of God's grace. The work of God's grace. God is doing something miraculously in these dead men's lives. He's doing something here. Now, again, do we all deserve to die? It's not the wages of sin is death. The wages of sin is death, and God is sparing them. God is sparing them. I mean, God made all the Assyrians run away, and God is sparing them. I mean, what a blessing that God's pouring upon them. They deserve to die. The wages of sin is death, but thank God, the gift of God's eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. James 1.15 says, When lust is conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and sin which is finished bringeth forth death. We understand all that. Brother Ron used Ephesians 2.8.9 this morning, "...for by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves is the gift of God, not of works as any man should boast." Titus 2.5 says, "...not by works or rites we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us by the washing and regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost." You talk about a work of grace, they come here and God makes them all run away so these guys can have something to eat. You know, when you take a step toward God, you know what God does? He takes a step toward you. If I haven't learned anything else in life, when you take a step toward God, God takes a step toward you. And God's grace, my goodness, is greater than anything that we could possibly imagine or think of tonight. People are so afraid of God, so afraid of the person who loves them the most, and if they would just take a step towards God, how things would change in their life. These guys are just hoping that the Syrians won't run them through. And they get there and find out, look, hey, there's food, there's drink, there's gold and silver. What does every man want in this world? He wants food and drink and gold and silver, right? And they got it. Instantly they're enriched. What happens to a sinner when they believe on Jesus Christ? Are they not instantly enriched, hallelujah? Are they not instantly satisfied with the good things that come from God? Boy, if people could figure that out, why things go wrong in their life, if they could get down to the house of God and stay there, boy, things would be so different from them. Could you imagine if they'd walked up to the camp and said, oh, the Syrians aren't here, we're leaving. What sense would that have made? You came out to the camp, now go on in. You know, we have people, a dear lady came this morning, she came in, she sat here for a few minutes, got a phone call, and then she left. You know what she needed to do? She made her way here, she should have at least turned her phone off. She might have got some help this morning, amen. I mean, can you imagine the Syrians, I mean, these lepers, they go there and they say, oh, they're not here, nobody's home, let's leave. No, they went on in and received what God had prepared for them. And God did prepare it for them. You know, the undeserving recipients of God's mercy, it was a work of grace. It was a fulfilling of the Word of God. Verse number 1, Elisha tells the people, this time tomorrow shall fine fire be sold for a shekel and two measure barley for a shekel in the gate of Samaria. The Lord, the King's servant, the King's Lord, he can't believe it. He says, if God opened the windows of heaven, that couldn't happen. And what did Elisha say? God's going to do just that, but you're not going to eat any of it. And of course he didn't. We'll read the rest of the story, but who did eat it? The lepers. Four lepers. And they got more than anybody. You talk about being undeserving recipients. I doubt they'd heard the word of Elisha. But my goodness, thank God for the word of God. Hey, thank God for the sweetest word I ever heard was, I forgive. Hallelujah. That sentence then was passed away so that I could live. And I like the part where he told about a mansion he would give. But the sweetest words I ever heard were, I forgive. Hallelujah for that. And these lepers are getting in on it. Thank God the Word of God is quick and powerful, right? God's made some powerful promises. That if we would simply believe His Word, God would open the windows of heaven. You tell these young people all the time, hey, quit pulling the windows of heaven closed, man, open the windows of heaven. Make some changes in your life, get some things straightened out, push that windows of heaven open so the blessings get out of the spout where the glory comes out, hallelujah. And see if God won't do something for you. When Peter was in prison, the angel opened the door and said, Now, go proclaim the words of this life. That's what Peter did. He went out and preached. I mean, the Bible does say, How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in whom they have not heard? How shall they hear without a preacher? Then the Bible says, So then faith come by hearing, hear by the word of God. What do we do? We preach it, we proclaim it, we practice it, so people will know the truth. These lepers. They experience the work of grace, the word of God being filled, and the wonder of God's glory. Can you imagine having more than you ever could possibly imagine? There's more food in this tent than they probably had in six months. But you know, that's what salvation is like. The riches of God's glory, when you come to Jesus Christ, everything changes. Therefore, if any man be in crises, a new creature, old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new." That Saturday morning when I got saved, my life was changed completely. And for being out with the devils on Friday night, getting saved Saturday morning, and then Sunday morning singing onward Christian soldiers and bringing in the sheaves. You talk about a radical change. That's a radical change. And then from then on out, experiencing the goodness and the mercy of God. My life has been a testimony of the undeserving recipient of God's mercy. the things that God has allowed me to experience and poured down in my life because of faith in Jesus Christ. I've experienced things that were just would have never been possible any other way. The Bible says Ephesians 3 29 to him that's able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us. You want to do some you want to do some you want to see and experience and do some miraculous things? Get with the program and serve Jesus Christ. And can I tell you something? The younger you are, the further God will take you. All you teenagers here this morning, if you could get with the program, and I mean really get with the program, and be serious, and give your life to Jesus Christ. Do your best in school. Obey your parents to the very best you possibly can. Act like a human being. Treat the people that you come in contact with school with love and mercy and grace. And practice, practice real Christianity and you'd be amazed where God will take you one day. I never dreamed I'd travel around the world and see different things. Never dreamed that would ever happen. But God opened doors. As soon as I surrendered to preach, I got saved when I was 17, called to preach when I was 18. And right away, God began to open doors. And I began to get to do things that I would have never done otherwise. I remember going to the first preacher's conference, the national conference. We were Southern Baptists. Went to the national conference in Columbus, Ohio. The preacher and assistant pastor said, hey, God's called you to preach, you ought to go to this. I said, really? He said, yeah, it costs such and such dollars. Well, you know I didn't have such and such dollars. Listen, I didn't have such and such dollars. I barely had a job, right? And he said, we want you to go. You want to go?" I said, yeah, I want to go. He said, we're going to pay your way and we're going to take you. And man, I went up there and I want to tell you, there must have been in that place, there must have been 5, 6, 7, 8 thousand preachers there. And they began to sing out of that hymnal. And if you've ever heard that many preachers gather together singing at the top of their lungs, I want to tell you it was something I've never heard before in my life, and I haven't heard it since because I've never been in that big a congregation with that many preachers. And they lifted up their voices, and man, the top of that place about come off. And I thought, honestly, I thought, man, I mean, I expected that moment Jesus Christ to come. It was that euphoric. It was. And I thought, glory to God, I've never been anything like this in my life. And then they had prayer, 24 hours a day, somebody praying. And the preachers broke up and they would go and pray an hour. And we got to pray at 3 o'clock in the morning. We drove over to the auditorium, we prayed at 3 o'clock in the morning, and the preachers were all there. And you remember, I'm just 18 years old, and man, this was such a wonderful thing to be a part of. But I'd never been a part of that if I hadn't given my heart and life to Jesus Christ and was trying to be serious about it. I'd have never got to travel to different countries. Never got to see things in the world. Never got to travel over to America and see different things and be a part of things. You say, what happens? Man, when you give your heart and life to Jesus Christ, man, you see some things. And you see some exciting things. You see things you'd never see or experience in any other walk of life. See, that's the wonders of God's mercy and God's grace. And you can imagine these four lepers, as they go in there, and they say, look, food! Man, look at that! There's lambs, and there's sheep, and there's goats, and they're just feasting, filling their mouths up. And look at that, there's gold, and silver, and ruby, and they're filling their pockets. When they were absolutely completely as poor as they could possibly be 30 minutes before that. And now they're rich men. You talk about the undeserving recipients of God's mercy. Boy, God blessed them. Look at verse 9. Then they realize they begin to realize the urgent responsibility to proclaim God's message. Look at verse 9. Then said they one to another, we do not well. This day is a day of good tidings. If we hold our peace, and we hold our peace, if we tarry till the morning light, some mischief will come upon us. Now therefore come, that we may go and tell the king's household." You know, when God's blessed you so much, you know the one thing you want to do? You want to tell somebody. Amen. You want to tell somebody. You know, I'm always leery when someone says they got saved and they don't want to tell anyone about it. I'm thinking, wait a minute, if you won the lottery, you won, I mean, you won 150 million dollars, you'd be telling everybody, wouldn't you? Well, when you get saved, you got something better than the lottery. I mean, you got your name written down in the Lamb's Book of Life and you're going to heaven when you die. There's something wrong when people don't want to tell. These guys say, we do not well. Hey, we hold our peace. Something's wrong. We gotta tell. We gotta go tell what God's done for us. You know, God does something for you. We're not keeping a secret. No, no, no. You tell everybody. Share it with everyone. Spread the good news. Give your testimony. Hey, when it's time for testimony, there should be no hesitation. People should stand and say, God has been good to me. What has God done? Man, God has been good to me. He's been good to me. He saved me. He keeps me. Hallelujah. I still got my job. There's food on the table. My car's running. Hallelujah. My kids are still alive. Right? That's something to be happy about. God's blessed us. We've got a lot to testify about. How God provides for us and takes care of us and sees that, hey, you know, the simple little things. We were driving down the road just the other day and Marko saw her in the car and, you know, the lady, man, she wasn't even looking. Here she comes. He said, what do you do? I, man, I hit the brakes and I swerved the car and swerved it back and you know, right? I didn't run, I could have ran into her. I said, thank God, I didn't want to run into her. You know, I'm not one of these guys driving around looking for a check, right? I didn't want to run into her. Now I could have, we were in the expedition, I could have ran over her, right? Her little, her, you know, her little Honda, whatever it was, I could have ran over that little thing and knocked her into the next week. I said, look, see, now see Marcos, everybody makes mistakes, but thank God we didn't have an accident. Right? We didn't have an accident. Thank God we didn't have it. You know, I'm sure not going to cuss her. I'm sure not going to blow my horn. I'm sure not going to act like an idiot. Everybody makes mistakes. But the thing is, God blesses us daily with little things we don't even think about. How He preserves us and keeps us safe from things we don't even know are going to happen. And God's still keeping us safe. Thank God that He is. And we ought to, hey, there ought to be some enthusiasm and some energy to tell somebody what God has done for you. Remember the maniac of Gadar? What did he want to do right away? He wanted to go and be with Jesus. God had cast out the devils. He wanted to go with them. And Jesus said, no, go home and tell your friends what great things God has done for you. You know what you guys ought to go? You ought to go to school and tell everybody, hey, what a great day you had in the house of God. Now, it's hard to do that if you didn't have a great day in the house of God. If you didn't want to be here to start with, it's hard to go tell everybody how great it was, right? I get that. I understand that. But see, right there is the spiritual problem that so many of our young people have. You are here because you have to be here because someone's making you come. Now, that's not everybody. That's not all the teenagers, but that's some of them. Right? But you know what? How great it is when no one's making you come and you want to be here. And then you can go to school and tell everybody how great it was because you want to be here. Right? And hey, the lepers, they said, you know what? This is so great. We can't keep this to ourselves. We got to tell somebody. And what did they do? That's exactly what they did. They went and told somebody. Amen. That's what we're going to do this week. Go tell somebody about Jesus Christ. Hallelujah. Amen. You can't contain it when God does something. And we are stewards of God's message. We're supposed to expand it, bear the expense of it, and have enthusiasm to spread it. And we have the opportunity. You realize it's the Christmas season and you have no better opportunity to spread the gospel during this time of the year. Spread the message of Jesus Christ. So what do they do? What do they do? Verse number 10, So they came and called unto the port of the city, and they told him, saying, We came to the camp of the Syrians. And, behold, there was no man there, neither voice of man, but horses tied, and asses tied, and tents as they were. And he called to the porters, and they took to the king's house within. Now, in verse number 12, they experienced the unusual results of God's miracles. Now, here it is. Look what it says. And the king arose in the night and said unto his servants, I will now show you what the Syrians have done unto us. Now, the king's no great Christian, is he? No. They know that we be hungry. Therefore they have gone out of the camp to hide themselves in the field, saying, When they come out of the city, we shall catch them alive and get into the city. And one of his servants, thank God, has a little common sense, answered and said, Let some take, I pray thee, five of the horses that remain which are left in the city. And behold, they are as all the multitude of Israel that are left in the city. I say that they are even as the multitude of Israelites that are consumed. And let us send and see. And they took therefore two trade horses, and the king sent after the host of the Syrians, saying, Go and see. And they went after them unto Jordan, and lo, all the way was full of garments and vessels, which the Syrians had cast away in their haste. And the messengers returned and told the king." Now, if the king had had any sense, he'd have believed what Elisha told him in verse number 1. He said, Tomorrow food is going to be so abundant in this city that it's going to be cheap as dirt tomorrow. Some people just can't ever get it. Say, hey, if you get your life straightened out with Jesus Christ, you're gonna be so happy. Well, I can't believe that. Why not? Why not? Why can't you believe that? Notice what it says, and the people went out and spoiled the tents of the Syrians. So a measure of fine flour was sold for a shekel, and two measure of barley for a shekel, according to the word of the Lord. Now you think about that for a minute. According to the word of the Lord. God had made the enemy. The enemy fled. The enemy had fled. You know, what does that tell you? Does God fight our battles? Can God make the enemy run away? God can make the enemy run away. We know the enemy most times is greater than we are. It's true. The enemies of God are greater than we are individually. But they are not greater than Jesus Christ. I mean, Caleb, there's no way an 85-year-old man could whip all the giants in Canaan land, in Canaan. But I'm telling you, when he went up the mountain, they ran down the other side because God was fighting for him. And when God's fighting for you, let me tell you something, you experience these miracles of God's power and God's grace and what God can do for you. We've been talking about David on Wednesday nights and how David fought Goliath and what God did for David. Because he believed in God and believed that God was able. He told the giant, hey, you come to me with a sword and a shield and a spear, but I come to you in the name of the God of Israel, of the Lord of hosts whom you've defied. And this day the Lord is going to give you into my hand. And God did. When you start out serving God, let me tell you, you're looking at giants all the time. And you're looking at mountains. But God, but God is able to take you through those things. So when they went out there right away, they found that the enemy had fled. Because God is greater than the enemy. You know, and God always used the least likely things. Four stinking lepers, and they're stinking lepers. They stink the high heaven and they're dying. And God uses them to get the victory. Can I tell you something? God is going to use the most unlikely things in your life to show you His greatness. It's not going to be your greatness, it's going to be God's greatness. The enemy fled, the multitude was what? Fed. They were fed. Verse 16, man, the food is flowing. What were they doing prior to that? When you look back in chapter number 6, they're starving, but they were doing more than starving. You look back in chapter number 6, notice what they're doing. Samaria's besieged in verse 24. There's a great famine in Samaria, and Asa's head is being sold for fourscore eighty pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cap of dove's dung, bird poop, is being sold for five pieces of silver. Can you imagine people, they're buying bird poop and eating it for five pieces of silver? And as the king of Israel was passed by upon the wall, there cried a woman unto him, saying, Help my lord, O king. And he said, If the lord do not help thee, whence shall I help thee? Out of the barn floor, out of the winepress. And the king said unto her, What ale art thee? And she answered, Though this woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow. So he boiled my son, and did eat him. And I said unto her, On the next day give thy son, that we may eat him. And she hath hid her son." They're eating their own children is what's going on in the city. They're eating bird poop and they're eating donkey heads. At a premium. And the very next day, man, it's milk and honey. It's amazing how God can change things in your life. When you turn your life over to Jesus Christ. I love Isaiah 55. Isaiah the prophet as he speaks and this is what he says in Isaiah 55 verse 1. What did he say? Incline your ear and come unto me, and hear, and your soul shall live, and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. What did Jesus say? I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth in me shall never thirst. You get on the right road with Jesus Christ and your whole life will be different. And God will meet your spiritual needs, but I tell you one other thing, He will meet your physical needs. I've never done without anything. God's always met my physical needs. I may not have had abundance in the cupboards, or abundance in the bank, or abundance anywhere else, but bless God, there was enough there when we needed it. Because God was taking care of us. My brother Joe and my sister Barbara were talking one day, and I said, man, we were talking about how it was when we were young. I said, we're young. We ain't young anymore. We were young. Kids were small. You know, I remember Rebecca and Sarah were small. And this is God's honest truth. I am not lying to you. We had $10 a week to spend on groceries. Is that the truth, Ms. Lisa? That is the truth. $10 a week to spend on groceries in 1982. And we had two babies in diapers and formula. You said, how in the world did you possibly make it? It was all God. It had to be God. We were talking about this. Barbara, I don't know how we made it. And she said, you know how you made it. And I said, well, I do. She said, yeah, God was taking care of you. And he did take care of us. We could have never made it if God wasn't in it. But God was in it. You know what was so great about that time in our life? We learned in that time of our life that God was able. And God was able. We saw some miraculous things in our life during that time period. When we were in Trinidad, my goodness, when all the churches said, we'll double your support next month. And we didn't have no money. And God was able. And God, one day, this is the God's honest truth, we hardly had nothing. It was one of them months when, hey, there wasn't nothing. I mean, if we had $50 or $100, that's all it was. And I said, well, we always prayed and said, it'll be all right, we'll survive. We didn't make any phone calls, we didn't do anything. This crazy guy come by, I had given him rides before he came by and he says, hey preacher, let's go, give me a ride out the road real quick. I said, okay, I'll give him a ride out to the road. Rode out to the road, he bought me a case of Pepsi. Man, I love Pepsi. Case of Pepsi, bought me some snacks, bought me some stuff and said, now let's go back in. And he got back in and he tuned up the car while we sat and ate it. I'm telling you, God is able. The other neighbors came by and brought us a chicken, a hot chicken. They just killed it. And I said, Lord, thank you for showing yourself so strong. Went down to the post office box, and lo and behold, there was two or three hundred dollars check in there. And I said, glory to God, God is able. And God knew we had that need before we knew we needed it, because it took three weeks for the mail to get there. Don't tell me God's not able. That was a great time of learning in our life, seeing God supply our every need. Unusual results of God's miracles. They're experiencing it. The city was freed. The city was freed. And God's blessings were poured out. These four lepers, All they did was they said, why sit we here until we die? We're dying, we're desperate, and we need to make a decision to do something. And they did. You see, people gotta be tired of their sin before they ever turn to Jesus Christ. They gotta be tired of mediocrity, tired of not having the blessing, and make a decision to do something about it. If you're lost without Christ, do something about it. If you're backslid, do something about it. If you're inactive and uninvolved, do something about it. Why sit we here until we die? Why sit and dry up and wait for the wind to blow you away when you can do something for Jesus Christ? Everybody can do something. Everybody should do something. Because when you do something, God begins to work. They said, why sit we here till we die? We're going to do something. We're not going to the city. We're going to do something else. and my almighty God supply and take care of everything, not only for them, but for everyone around them. You know, it's amazing when one person gets their life straightened out with Jesus Christ, how that affects everybody else. One parent who says, I'm gonna live for Jesus Christ, how that affects the whole family. One child in the home that says, hey, I'm going to do something for Jesus Christ, I'm going to be real, how that affects the whole family. One Christian in the workplace can affect the whole workplace. One Christian in the complex can affect the whole complex. One Christian in the town or in the neighborhood, in the city, can affect the whole city. That's right, one kid in the school can affect the whole school. One kid really get on fire for Jesus Christ. I don't know about you, but that's a great lesson in the Bible.