And we're glad you're here tonight. Welcome, everybody, to church. I trust you've come looking for a blessing and asking God to do something in your heart tonight. All right, take your Bibles tonight and find, if you will, Psalm 51. Psalm 51 in your Bible as a starting point tonight. Psalm 51. I want to speak to you tonight on a particular topic. I trust it will be an encouragement to you. Good evening, Mr. Giselle. How are we doing? Alright? Amen. You said well? That's a deep subject. Alright. Psalm 51. I want to give you a word tonight from scripture, and we're going to find this word. We're going to look at four times it's mentioned. Now it's mentioned more than four times, this word, but we want to look at four particular times at one word. And the word we're going to look at tonight is the word behold. And I want to present to us tonight four beholds, four beholds in scripture and see how they'll help us and what they say to us. In Psalm 51, we read a few verses and then we'll get to the word itself. Verse one, have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquities, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, and thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, thou desires truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden parts thou shall make me to know wisdom. Father, bless the time, bless the hour now, and speak to our hearts through your word. We thank for those who are able to be here tonight, bless those who work the nursery, and bless and encourage them in their labor. In all things, may Christ be honored and glorified. In his name we pray, amen. When we see the word behold in our Bible, the word behold is a word of introduction. And it indicates that what is about to follow is an important statement. So anytime you see that word, behold, in your Bible, you are to pay close attention to what is being said next because it's important. So this word is an attention grabber, so to speak, and it's letting you know, again, what is important. Now, Psalm 51 is a very important psalm in your Bible for many reasons. As we study scripture, we know about the sin of King David. We know David himself had committed a gross and horrible sin of adultery. He took another man's wife. And that relationship with Bathsheba brought forth a child. And so the adulterous relationship caused her to be carrying this child. And next thing we know, David, trying to hide his sin and cover it up, brought Bathsheba's husband home from the battlefield for the sole purpose of trying to get him to go home to be with his wife and have him believe that the child that she was carrying would be his because he hadn't been home he'd been off to war and there's no way that this child could be his and so the husband would realize and everybody would realize that Bathsheba had been unfaithful and then the question would be well who has she been unfaithful And so David brings Uriah home from the battlefield, but Uriah is an honorable man, a good man, and he refuses to go home to his wife, saying, how can I go home to my house and be comfortable in my own house while the men of Israel are out on the battlefields and sleeping on the ground and fighting this war? I refuse to go home. And David time after time tried to get him to go home, and Uriah never would. And we know that David eventually gives orders, writes them down, seals them, gives them to Uriah, and tells Uriah, when you get to the battlefield, give this to the general. And the orders contain, basically, Uriah's death orders. Where, when they go to battle, they're to make sure that Uriah is put at the hottest part of the battle. Then the army is to withdraw, leave Uriah there, and let him get killed. And, sadly, that's what happens. David ends up murdering a friend of his, a man who loved him, and a man who would give his life for the king, and David had done this horrible act. Well, we know the story that God sends the preacher to the house, a preacher by the name of Nathan, and Nathan exposes David's sin to him and says, thou art the man, you are guilty of this horrible sin. So David, this great psalmist, the great king of Israel, the man after God's own heart, the man who once killed the giant and done so many wonderful things, is confronted with his evil sin. And David immediately falls on his face and confesses his sin and his guilt. And instead of trying to blame everybody, and blame the woman, and blame this one, he accepts full responsibility for everything that has happened. Psalm 51 is David's prayer of confession after that sin. And so when we read this sin, we read this psalm, we read it with the mindset of what David had done. and the evil that he had committed. Especially where he says, Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness, and according to the multitude of Thy tender mercies. Blot out what? My transgressions. Notice verse number three, four, I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me, and against thee, and only thee have I sinned. David is confessing, again, his sin. and blaming himself, which shows us again why David was such a good man in many respects, because he was not blaming others. He knew he was guilty, and he was asking God for mercy for what he had done. And the behold we want to look at tonight is found in verse number five, where it says, Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. The behold we have here is the behold that takes our pride away. Takes our pride away. Man, it can be a very prideful creature. Nothing wrong with being proud of a child being born or somebody's great accomplishments. My son, my daughter graduated with honors. We're proud of them. That's one thing. But this is the pride that lifts up self. This is the pride that makes us arrogant. This is the pride that forgets who God is. It's the same pride that when Nebuchadnezzar had built the city of Babylon, he walked out onto the terraces and said, this is Babylon that I, built. And God said, who built it? And God struck him with madness for seven years. It's the same pride that when they cried out at King Herod and said, he has the voice of a God, and Herod accepted all that praise that God struck Herod and killed him that day. Be careful of pride, my friend, that exalts us up and lifts us up beyond God. The Bible makes it very clear in Scripture that, Behold, we were shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Now that phrase does not mean that David's mother did something sinful when he was conceived. What it means, as David is saying here, that I was We're all born with a sinful nature. There's not one of us that does not have a sinful nature. We have it within us to do sinful things. We have to be taught to tell the truth. We have to be taught how to share. We have to be taught how not to do bad things. All the opposite comes natural to us. We lie by nature, we'll steal by nature, we'll cheat by nature. It all just comes natural to us. We're sinful. And here the scripture tells us, Behold, I was shaped in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. It's the sin that reminds us of exactly who we are. This is the behold that lets us know who we are. That I have nothing to be prideful about. that I am nothing but basically a bag of dust and sinful dust at that. The Bible lets us know again that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Now again, we may compare ourselves to somebody else and say, boy, I'm a decent person, but understand as we think about how how rotten people can be. Just recently I was dealing with a friend of mine who was the victim of some rotten things, absolute greed, and he was explaining to me all that happened to him, and I stood there in disbelief thinking that it's impossible that somebody could absolutely be so greedy, and that they're trying to take everything, everything away from him. They have more than you could ever hope to imagine. More money than they could ever spend in their life, or in two lives, and yet they're trying to take what somebody else has. Give you an illustration. Imagine if you had a million acres of beautiful farm and pasture land and somebody came by and said, can I dip my cup in your spring of water and just have a sip of water? And they were denied because they were afraid of losing eight ounces of water out of the millions that flow through their property and that type of greed, the Ebenezer Scrooge type greed that clings and grabs for everything. As my friend was explaining, I said, man, my mind is blown. I've known these people. I can't believe that they are like this, yet I can see it, and I know it, and I understand it, because I've been to their home, and I see all that they have, and yet it's never enough. And I think about that, and I was pondering that the other day, and I thought, you know, that's not my nature, so to speak. God bless you. Help yourself. You wanna drink a water? Go ahead, you need five bucks? Sure, maybe 10. Would 10 do you good? But if I was raised differently, and I was brought up differently, maybe I could be that way. Maybe I could have that same clingy greed flowing through my bones if I was not careful. Why are they like that? Well, my friend, it's sin running amok in us. It's letting us know just how bad we are. And we ought to be careful, ever so careful. I have nothing to be prideful about, because I know that within me is the seed. If fed, if nourished, if watered, that same greed could grow up within me. The same sin that men suffer from, that they do terrible acts, lies within my nature, because I have a sinful nature. You have a sinful nature. And the only reason we may not be like that is, thank God, because we met Jesus Christ, and we were saved by His grace, and filled with His compassion, and we have His likeness within us, and we have His spirit within us that teaches us to be different from that, and changes us from being so corrupt, and evil, and greedy, and miserable. Again, I've known people worth millions, and yet, They never gave a dime to help anybody. Never gave a dime to help anybody else. And don't think of mocking them people until you yourself have reached into your own pocket and pulled out a dollar to truly help somebody that truly has a need that you can bless and help them with. So we have here the behold of King David. Behold that takes my pride away. David is letting us know, and we should know, again, I am but a sinful person. I have nothing to be prideful of. And we know that the Bible says that a haughty spirit comes before a fool, and pride comes before a fool. We know what pride can do to us when it creeps into us and we lift ourselves up. You know, back when 9-11 happened so many years ago, Walmart came out with a bumper sticker, and the bumper sticker was the, maybe you remember this, the power of pride. We're to take pride in our country. Now I'm proud to be an American, but my friend, there's no power in pride. The Bible says that the proud shall be humbled, the proud shall be brought low, and destruction will come to the prideful person. what God will do to them. God gives grace to the humble. He exalts the humble. But he brings down the prideful person. I would like you to go in your Bible to John's Gospel, chapter number one, as we give you a second behold here tonight. John's Gospel. So we see that we are shaping in iniquity. We see the sin that we're guilty of. We know that we all have within us to lie, to cheat and steal. We all know that it was in us. When I was a young man in high school, my friends got into gambling, they got into card playing, and they were going to the racetrack, and they were doing all things. We learned to pitch pennies. You say, what's pitching pennies? Never mind, it's not important. But we learned to, we got into all kinds of things, and gambling vices. Let me tell you, as I was sitting there one day playing in the backyard at the table, probably a sophomore in high school, we're sitting in my backyard, we're playing for quarters and playing poker in the backyard. My father rolled up the back window, he looked out the window, saw us playing poker, and I thought, what in the world is my father gonna do? Is he gonna scream at me? Is he gonna yell at me? What's my father gonna say when he sees us doing this? Now again, at this point in time, my father was not a saved man, and my father, was a man who lived a life without Christ and done a lot of things in his life. And so I knew my father gambled a lot. My mom said dad gambled and did a lot of shady things while he was in the service during World War II. So I knew Dad had done a lot of things. My mother used to say Dad was in the black market during World War II. I didn't understand what that meant. But Dad, again, was doing some shady things. My dad looked out the window. He looked at us. I looked up. I put my head back down. I said, oh no, is he going to come out here screaming and cursing and yelling at me? And he said, boys, it's a dangerous habit. And closed the window. That's all he said. We continued playing. I'll let you know that within me, as I was sitting there and as I was winning, I can feel a tug. I can feel being drawn in to the gambling world. I can feel the pull of it on me. That this is good. This is giving me excitement. The idea of winning and it's sucking me in to it. We even went, other friends of mine were heavily into the races, and they go to the Meadowlands all the time, back when the horses used to run there. And I would go, but not participate. But we'd go there and watch those things, and I could feel the pull of that vice upon me. And it's only by the grace of God that I came to my senses and said, you know, I don't wanna do this anymore. I can feel it pulling me in, and I don't want to get pulled in, because I know that if you get pulled into these things, it's awfully hard to get back out. So let me stop now, while the feeling is just ever so light, before it really grabs hold of you and jerks you in. If you ever pay attention, every five seconds on the radio and TV and at the ball games, they are enticing you to gamble. Download this app. Download this app. Download the lottery app. And everything. Gamble, gamble, gamble, gamble, gamble, gamble. And they go on with all these elaborate commercials, and at the end they say, if you... Suffering from a gambling problem, please call 1-800, and they say it very low and mumble and almost like you can't hear it, but they say that to ease their guilty conscience, just like they glorify drinking. Drinking is wonderful, have a good time, it's a good time, and if you're suffering from a problem, drink responsibly. There's no such thing as drinking responsibly, by the way. You get drunk, you get buzzed, you get high when you drink. My point is, is that we need to realize that as having a sinful nature within us, that if we feed that particular nature, that beast, that sin grows stronger. And before we know it, it controls us and we do not control it. So again, that behold that we saw there is the behold that lets us know who we are, so that we do not become prideful. In John's Gospel, chapter number 1, John the Baptist is speaking, and he says in verse number 29, which taketh away the sins of the world." I like this behold. This is a good behold. This is the behold that takes my sin away. We have the behold that takes my pride away, but this is the behold that takes my sin away, as we are introduced here in John's Gospel to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Lamb of God. And my friend, what we need, what all mankind needs, is to have our sin removed from us. Back in 2000, Renee and I went out on a Saturday night. It was celebrating our anniversary in June. We went out to eat. We went to a Mexican restaurant we found up in Rutherford. We tried it for the first time. I got a three-cheese burrito for the first time in my life, and I said, it's pretty good. I like it. Came to church the next day. Went out to eat after church Sunday night. I said, I'm not feeling too good. My stomach's bothering me. Something's wrong. Went home all night and was just in pain all night long. Woke up the next day, really didn't sleep, but I got up the next day, said, man, my stomach is killing. Went down to the store, got some medicine. I said, I think it's that burrito. I think it's that three cheese burrito's doing a number on me here. Just pain, I'm in pain here. And so I said, it's just awful pain. I don't know what it is. My mom said, you need to go to the doctor. Something's wrong. Go to the doctor." So I called up the doctor. They said, come in right away. I went to the doctor. He examined me for five minutes. West Hudson Hospital was open at the time, and it should still be open if it wasn't for corporate greed. It should still be running a hospital up there. And he said, Matt, I've called the emergency room. They're waiting for you. You need to go there right now. Don't go home, go right to the emergency room. I called my wife, this is before cell phones, I said, yeah, call your wife, tell her you're going to the emergency room. I said, I'm going to the emergency room. What's wrong? She said, just go to the emergency room, they're waiting for you there. I went to the emergency room, they brought me in, did an ultrasound, they said, your appendix is going bad. your appendix is going bad, we gotta do surgery on you." And at first they couldn't find my appendix, they're going, usually over here, but they're going, my appendix ended up being in the middle. I know I'm Polish, but at least I thought maybe my organs would be in the right place, but apparently my appendix was over here, and so they went in and they operated on me and took my appendix out, and apparently my appendix was slightly leaking. And I spent a week in the hospital, they were pumping me with antibiotics, trying to, get the infection out of my system, which could have killed me. I could have died back then if my appendix had ruptured and poisoned my body. I could have died back then, and my wife would be a rich widow today. They worked on me. They got that thing out of there and took my appendix out. I got on the scale. I lost 10 pounds at the hospital. I told the doctor, I said, listen, is there any other parts I don't need? This is a good weight loss program. Maybe I lose 10, 20 pounds here. Who needs Herbalife when you just get organs removed, amen? You lose weight this way. As we have our bookends here at the Herbalife clubs now. My point in all of that, my friend, is there was something inside of me that was going to kill me. There was something inside of me that was dangerous and going wrong within me. And by the way, I couldn't eat Mexican food for at least two years because that cheese burrito and everything else was working on me. So every time I got sick, I tasted that burrito, which I love burritos, by the way, but it just so affected my mind. It took me two years to get back into a Mexican restaurant and get right with the world. My friend, all of us, as we let us know, have sin within us. We have a sin nature. And what you and I need is for that sin to be removed from us. We need that sin to be taken out of us. And the only way sin can be removed and taken from off of our record is through the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world. And he's the Lamb of God, which is an Old Testament reference. And every Jewish person who was standing there and heard John the Baptist clearly understood what John meant as they all looked over as Jesus was approaching. And they understood that in the Bible, it was lambs that were sacrificed. It was lambs that were slaughtered. It was the lamb's blood that was placed upon the the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant, and blood needs to be shed, and that blood needs to come from a Lamb. And Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God. He'll go to Calvary's cross, He'll die on Calvary's cross, and shed His blood as the Lamb of God. Why? to remove our sins. This is the behold that takes my sin away. I thank God for the behold here. Again, this word of introduction that indicates something very important, which is the fact that my sins can be removed from me. I have a friend of mine. You may know him. He was a pastor here in New Jersey, Pastor Frank Cuso. Pastor Frank Cuso, I ask your prayers for him. We visited him while he was in Hawaii. We stayed at his house in Hawaii. And when we were leaving, he said, I'm going for some tests tomorrow. I'm not feeling well. And so they're going to do some tests on me. They're going to put a scope in me and look around, see what they can find. And I just found out yesterday that they found a tumor just at the beginning of his upper intestine. It's a four-inch tumor. that they believe to be cancerous. And they're going to go in on October 8th, poke three holes in his belly, and go in there and remove and cut out that section of intestine. And hopefully that's all they see, and there's nothing else in his system. What happens if he does not have that removed? Well, my friend, that thing will spread and kill him, and he will die. What happens if you and I do not have sin removed from us? According to the Bible, behold, The soul that sinneth, it shall die. We'll be separated from God. So we need to have this sin removed from us. And Christ is the one. Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God that takes our sin away. And when we know Him, when we come to faith in Christ, not only does He take our sin away, but He gives us a new nature. I want you to look at a third behold in our Bible tonight. Look at Matthew's Gospel. chapter number six. Matthew's gospel, chapter number six. Now Jesus is giving the sermon on the mount here. Only Jesus preaches sermons where we get sermons from his sermons. And a million sermons have been preached about this one sermon. And then here he gives us the cure for anxiety. Now, I'm not trying to be mean, cruel, or unkind. I'm just letting you know my ignorance. But years ago, when I first became pastor, we had a Wednesday night prayer meeting, and a man sat there. He said, Pastor, pray for me. I'm having anxiety attacks. I said, I'll write that down. I said, what is an anxiety attack? He said, well, it's like a panic attack. I said, well, what's a panic attack? I don't know. I'm not making fun. I'm just letting you know I didn't know what these things were. He goes, well, that's where you get real anxious. I'm like, well, why are you getting anxious? What's causing you to be? Nothing, I just get these anxiety attacks come upon me. And again, I'm not being cruel, I just didn't understand it, because I'd never heard of it before. But what's causing you to be anxious? What are you worried about? Nothing, but I just get anxious. But why? I don't know, it just happens. Well, what causes it? I don't know. It's never happened to me. I've never had a panic attack. If I've had a panic attack, it's because something was happening in my life. If I got anxious, it's because something was happening in my life. It just never happened out of the clear blue, where I got anxious over nothing. Again, I'm not saying people shouldn't have. They do have them, but I'm letting you know there's a cure for that. There's a solution for that. And it doesn't come in a bottle. It doesn't come in a pill. It's found in Scripture. He says here that in verse 24, Matthew 6, 24. Mammon is money or possessions. Therefore I say unto you, notice this now, take no thought for your life what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink. Nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on? Is not the life more than meat, and the body more than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, for how they grow, they toil, and neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, and the word wherefore is a word there that You need to consider all that has been said because of what I have just said. If God so clothed the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast in the oven, shall he not much clothe you, O ye of little faith? Wherefore, take no thought, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Take, therefore, no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. It's not, my friend, you don't have to be worrying about tomorrow. Get through today. God will get you through today. And when you wake up tomorrow, God will be there to greet you to get you through that day. Don't be panicking about next month, next year, or what's gonna happen. God will be there when that time shows up. Just get through today because you're not promised tomorrow anyway. Now I want you to see in Scripture here we have a behold in verse number 26. I want you to know we have a behold here that takes my cares away. We have a behold that takes my pride away. We have a behold that takes my sins away. And here we have a behold that takes my cares away. Where I am not to be suffering from an anxiety attack because I know that God cares for me. We sang the song tonight, He whose heart is kind beyond all measure, gives unto each day what deems best. God cares for us. And one of my favorite lines in that song states how God assumes the responsibility for our care. God is the one who's shouldering that. He didn't pawn it off to an angel or some government institution. But God says, I want you to know that I am going to be caring for you. Have you ever had somebody do something for you? Like, I really don't like this guy. I wish we could get somebody else. And then you get the other person. Now I can relax a little bit because I know this guy is doing it. Because, you know, this person is all right and they know what's going on. They can fix the problem. In life, we have to realize that when we're saved and we know Jesus Christ as our Savior, we may get panicked like the disciples in that boat. Master, don't you care we perish? What are you guys, crazy? You think I don't care? Of course I care. Relax, peace, be still, and calms the oceans. When we have Christ, he removes these cares from us because he is one watching over us. He is the one taking care of these things. It doesn't mean we sit there and don't do anything in life, but it is letting us know that at the end of the day, God will take care of his own. It is King David who uttered the phrase, as an old man I have been young, and now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. God has promised to care for his children. And while we may go through dark times, and we may go through difficult times, God tells us not to panic, but that he's there with us, and he'll watch over us and be with us. So we have the behold that takes my cares away. We are to take no thought for tomorrow. If we put God first, and verse 33 is the key to all of this chapter, that if you want not to be anxious, you're not to want to suffer from the panic attacks, well my friend, put God first in your life. Put him first in all things. Have him get top priority, and God says, if you put me first, I want you to know you're going to have clothes on your back, you'll have a roof over your head, and you'll have food in the refrigerator. I'll take care of you. I'll make sure you have all those things. Just put me first, and just watch what I can do. We saw Elijah. taken and placed by the riverside. And God said, I'm gonna send the ravens to feed you here. And God sent those ravens, which is a miracle, by the way, because a raven is a thieving creature. It is a highly trained thief. It's been known to open backpacks, to grab a zipper and open a zipper and go into people's backpacks and steal the food out of them. And when we think of God using the ravens, God not only has those ravens grab somebody's food. Hopefully it was King Ahab. I always like to think they went into the kitchen of King Ahab's palace and grabbed something off the table. I hope that's the case. And flew back and dropped it in Elijah's lap. By the way, the fact that they gave it to Elijah lets you know God controls the birds. That bird is a thief for itself. And so God used that thieving raven to drop the food in Elijah's lap every single day while God had him by the riverside. When the river dried up, God sent him over to a widow woman, the poorest in town, and God allowed a widow woman to care for him there. Why? Because Elijah learned to put God first, and God took care of Elijah in the strangest of circumstances. We have the behold that takes our cares away. Now let me give you one more tonight in Revelation chapter number 22 to encourage us in all of these things. Revelation chapter number 22. Now Revelation can be a dark book, it can be a scary book. There's a lot of frightening things going on here. But when you're standing behind God, you're not afraid because you know these things can't touch you. Revelation chapter number 22, four simple words. Verse number seven, behold, I come quickly. Blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of this prophecy of this book. Here we have the behold that takes me away. We have the Behold that takes my pride away. We have the Behold that takes my sin away. And we have the Behold that takes my cares away. But my friend, here we have the Behold that takes me away. And I want you to know that the Bible says someday the Lord Jesus Christ is going to return. And when He does, it's going to be quick. We should be caught up in the twinkling of an eye. Now what is the twinkling of an eye? The twinkling of an eye is the speed at which light goes into your eye and reflects and you see whatever it is there. That's pretty fast. Now I know they've measured that thing out and there's a time for that. I'm sure it's a millis, millis, millis of a second. So when Jesus says, behold, I come quickly, it's in the twinkling of an eye. It's going to be very quickly. It's not like, here he comes. He's on his way. I see him. Any minute, he'll be here now. No, it's quick. Behold, I come quickly. My friends, someday, we're all gonna go home when the Lord Jesus Christ returns. There's three things that will happen when Jesus Christ returns. First of all, we see that the saints will go home. We know that the dead in Christ shall rise first. Those who have died and are placed in their graves, no matter where they are on planet Earth, we know that someday they'll go first in this split second of an action. We know that the saved will go home. Those who are alive and remain shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. And a third thing that will happen is all the unsaved will be left behind. If we do not know Christ as our Savior, we've never been saved. We're going to be left behind. Terrible thing to be left behind when something happens. Maybe you've missed a boat. Maybe you've missed a train. Maybe you've missed a car. Maybe you've missed an airplane. They've taken off. They're gone. You're left behind. I saw a video the other day of a guy somewhere on vacation, I think somewhere in the Caribbean, and he's running. on the dock. And somebody from a boat was filming him as he was running along the dock. And he was screaming and waving. And as this big giant cruise ship was pulling away. It was probably 30, 40 yards from the dock. It was pulling away. And he ran up. And he's standing on the dock. And he, he dropped his bags and his gifts. And he's holding his head. The ship was leaving. It was going away. And he, and people were watching him. And, and nothing the ship can do. It was pulling away. only to realize as people from the ship on the other side of the dock were yelling and screaming at him, his friends were like, dude, that's not your ship. Your ship is still here. You're running after the wrong boat. And he turned and looked and realized his friends were all laughing and cracking up at him, as he stood there on the dock with thousands of people watching him panic, only to realize that the boat that he needed was still there. I felt bad for that guy, because I thought, well, what would I do if I was that guy? What would I do if my ship had just pulled out of port, and I'm stuck there in the Caribbean for another week? I said, well, it might be pretty good, but also could be very expensive if I don't have a credit card or something to help me fund this trip. Well, my friend, someday Jesus is going to come and He's going to take us away. And if we don't know Him, we've never been saved, we've never trusted Him as Savior, well, my friend, we're going to be left, you're going to be left behind. You're going to be left here to go through the tribulation. So we have these four beholds in our scripture. Kind of an encouraging thought tonight. Again, how we have a behold that someday He will come for us. He will take us away to take us home. And we rejoice in that. So again, what has God done for us? Well, again, He's taken our pride away. We have nothing to be prideful about. He is taking our sins away. He's taking our cares away and casting them upon Himself. We're told to cast our cares upon Him. Why? Because He cares for us. And someday he's going to come and take us away. Let's stand together for prayer. Father, we do thank you for your goodness and mercy. We thank you that we can be here this night. I pray, Lord, you just bless the hour now and move and have your perfect will and way in this invitation. If anybody doesn't know Jesus, let this be the night. Bless our time, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.