Turn to the book of Judges. The book of Judges Now we started this series the last two weeks ago, and this is a new study we're going to be going through verse by verse through the book of Judges. And so last week was sort of an introduction lesson to sort of explain where we were, what's the background of the book. We're coming after the conquest of Joshua. This is before the time where Israel demands a king, and this book covers a period of about 300 to 400 years. So we're going to cover a lengthy portion this morning. We're going to cover chapter 1, starting in verse 1 to chapter 2, verse 5. So let's do this. Let's begin reading. Joshua, you're not that late. We are moving things ahead. You're probably thinking, wait a second, I'm not that bad off. No, we just only sang a couple of songs this morning and we went ahead, right? The roads are getting a little bad. So we're gonna move things along quickly this morning. All right, so let's begin reading in verse number one, Judges chapter one. Now, after the death of Joshua, it came to pass that the children of Israel asked the Lord saying, Who shall be first to go up for us against the Canaanites to fight against them? The Lord said, Judah shall go up. Indeed, I have delivered the land into his hand. So Judah said to Simeon his brother, come up with me to my allotted territory, that we may fight against the Canaanites, and I will likewise go with you to your allotted territory. And Simeon went with him. Then Judah went up, and the Lord delivered the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand, and they killed 10,000 men at Bezek. And they found Adonai Bezek and Bezek and fought against him, and they defeated the Canaanites and the Perizzites. Then Adonai Bezek fled, and they pursued him and caught him and cut off his thumbs and big toes. And Adonai Bezek said, Seventy kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off used to gather scraps under my table. As I have done, so God has repaid me. Then they brought him to Jerusalem, and there he died. Now the children of Judah fought against Jerusalem and took it. They struck it with the edge of the sword and set the city on fire. And afterward the children of Judah went down to fight against the Canaanites who dwelt in the mountains, in the south and in the lowland. Then Judah went against the Canaanites who dwelt in Hebron. Now the name of Hebron was formerly Kirjath Arba. and they killed Shishai, Ahimon, and Telmai. From there, they went against the inhabitants of Debir. The name of Debir was formerly Kirjaz Sefer. And then Caleb said, whoever attacks Kirjaz Sefer and takes it to him, I will give my daughter Aqsa as a wife. And Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother, took it. So he gave him his daughter, Aqsa, as wife. Now it happened when she came to him that she urged him to ask her father for a field, and she dismounted from her donkey. And Caleb said to her, what do you wish? She said to him, Give me a blessing, since you have given me land in the south, give me also springs of water. And Caleb gave her the upper springs and the lower springs. Now the children of Canai, Moses' father-in-law went up from the city of Palms with the children of Judah into the wilderness of Judah, which lies in the south near Arad. And they went and dwelt among the people. And Judah went with his brother Simeon, and they attacked the Canaanites, who inhabited Zephath and utterly destroyed it. So the name of the city was called Hormah. Also Judah took Gaza with its territory, Ashkelon with its territory, and Ekron with its territory. So the Lord was with Judah, and they drove out the mountaineers, but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the lowland because they had chariots of iron. and they gave Hebron to Caleb, as Moses had said. Then he expelled from there the three sons of Anak. But the children of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites, who inhabited Jerusalem. So the Jebusites dwell with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this day. And the house of Joseph also went up against Bethel, and the Lord was with them. And the house of Joseph sent men to spy out Bethel. The name of the city was formerly Luz. And when the spies saw a man coming out of the city, they said to him, Please show us the entrance to the city, and we will show you mercy. And he showed them the entrance to the city, and they struck the city with the edge of the sword, but they let the man and all his family go. And the man went to the land of the Hittites, built a city, and called its name Luz, which is the name to this day. However, Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth-she-en and its villages, or Tanakh and its villages, or the inhabitants of Dor and its villages, or the inhabitants of Iblium and its villages, or the inhabitants of Megiddo and its villages, for the Canaanites were determined to dwell in that land." That's an important statement right there we'll come back to. And it came to pass, when Israel was strong, that they put the Canaanites under tribute, but did not completely drive them out. Nor did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites who dwelt in Gezer. So the Canaanites dwelt in Gezer among them. Nor did Zebulun drive out the inhabitants of Ketron, or the inhabitants of Nehalol. So the Canaanites dwelt among them, and were put under tribute. Nor did Asher drive out the inhabitants of Akko, or the inhabitants of Sidon, or Ahlab, or Ahzib, or Helba, or Athik, or Rehob. So the Asherites dwelt among the Canaanites and the inhabitants of the land, for they did not drive them out. Nor did Naphtali drive out the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh, or the inhabitants of Beth-anath, But they dwelt among the Canaanites and the inhabitants of the land. Nevertheless, the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh and Beth-anoth were put under the tribute to them. And the Amorites forced the children of Dan into the mountains, for they would not allow them to come down to the valley, and the Amorites were determined to dwell in Mount Herez. and Ai-Shalan and In-Sha'a-Lah-Bim. Yet when the strength of the house of Joseph became greater, they were put under tribute." Now the boundary of the Amorites was from the ascent to the Acribim from Silah and upward. Now watch these next five verses. All of that happened. A lot of that that's there. We're going to explain that. But now look at what happens in the next five verses. Then the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim and said, I led you up from Egypt and brought you to the land which I swore to your fathers. And I said, I will never break my covenant with you. And you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land. You shall tear down their altars, but you have not obeyed my voice. Why have you done this? Therefore I also said, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall be thorns in your side, and their God shall be a snare to you. So it was, when the angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the children of Israel, that the people lifted up their voices and wept. When they called the name of the place Bochim, and they sacrificed there to the Lord. A lot there, I know, you're like, wow, we just read, what is going on here? This sounds like a lot, and it is a lot, okay? This is sort of the intro into the Book of Judges. It's sort of, when you're watching a movie, like I just introduced the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings to Madison and the girls, and they always have that 10-minute segment at the beginning where they just sort of set you up. That's what we are in chapter one, right? And so we have to make sense of what's going on here, because this has got a really important lesson for us today. I was thinking about this the other day. I don't fly a lot. When I was a teenager, for some reason, we had friends coming in, so we'd go to airports and everything. I've flown one time, actually. It was on our honeymoon. But how many of you have been to airports where they have those, I don't even know what they're called. They're not escalators, because they're not going up. Yeah, yeah, it's like the runway. You just stand on it, and you can just go, you know, you don't even have to move. You just, it takes you on. Why do people not use that? You ever wondered, like, man, why are you walking off of this thing, okay? Just use this thing. It's awesome. You could really, like, make yourself feel like the Flash when you're on that thing, and you start jogging. Or break your neck, one. But you know what? I was thinking about that. You know the Christian life? Think about that going backwards. You ever do that? Somebody's experiencing that for the first time and so they're saying, whoa, look how fast I'm going and they stop and they say, look at, you know, going backwards on that thing. Christian life is a lot like that. Those belts that move you along but trying to walk backwards on one. Because you're not making as much progress as you would. It's sort of a slow moving process, but if you stop, Are you staying in the same spot? No. It's regressing you. And I see a parallel there in the Christian life, along with a parallel of what happened here with the children of Israel. The title of the message is, How Victory Turns to Failure, because they were on the heels of victory. They're on the end of victory, and then you see, as we progress through this chapter, how that turns to failure. I was thinking this week, as there's a lot of information coming out about Rav Zacharias, popular Christian apologist who passed away a couple years ago. And this information came out. The interesting thing about that is, is that this information actually was out when he was still alive. But yet the Christian world refused to listen to it. And here's a man who looked like he lived in such utter Christian victory. But now his life is going to carry the testimony of such failure. And we see, I think, parallels in that with this story in Judges 1. So we broke it down. I broke it down. My normal way of thinking, the way that I look at the text is just, I've got to go directly in order. But to understand this in terms of victory and failure, we are going to be sort of dividing it up, jumping from a verse to this verse. Because we have, first of all, victory covered in verses 1-18, verse 20, and verses 22-26. But we also have failure covered in the other parts. And then lastly we're going to talk about chapter 2 verses 1-5 where we see judgment. We see judgment. First, we see Judah's victories in verses 1-11. Look at verse number 1. It says, So, they have a little bit left to do. Joshua dies. Now what? God never instructed Joshua to name a successor like He did for Moses to give it to Joshua, to pass the mantle to Joshua. So now Joshua's gone, and so the understanding of this is that they used the Urim and the Thummim, the way that was outlined to them in the Old Testament law, the ceremonial law of taking a request to God. And so they did that, and then we see God's answer in verse number two. He explains to them, And the Lord said, Judah shall go up. Indeed, I have delivered the land into his hand." Judah is very important. Judah is actually God's choice for the leading of the tribes of Israel. It was Judah who was given the blessing at the death of Jacob. And think about this. It was the lion from the tribe of who? Judah. And so we see God using Judah to be the one to lead the way again. But Judah makes an alliance in verse 3. He says to Simeon, his brother, come with me to my allotted territory. Now these are the two tribes here. In fact, Judah and Simeon were actually blood brothers from the same mother with Jacob. When Joshua was Israel's leader, Wiersbe said, all the tribes work together in obeying the will of God. In the book of Judges, however, you don't find the nation working together as a unit. So it begins, and the conquest starts in verse 4. They have victory at Bezek. And you have this little story in verses 5-7 with this guy Adonai Bezek. Now, if you're familiar with this, that may signal to you this word Adonai with this term that we have for God, a name of God, Adonai. And Adonai is the name of God that represents his sovereignty as Lord. So really what this is is sort of more like a title for this person. It is the Lord of Bezek. So this is his title. He's the leader of Bezek. And they catch him and they do something very interesting to him. What do they do? They cut off his thumbs and they cut off his toes. And this was all of a military thing. This was a military way of handling this and so you couldn't carry a sword. You could not attack or wield or defend with a sword if your thumbs were cut off and you could not stand right in a defensive position in battle with your big toes cut off. But this was also an act of repayment on Adonai Bezek's part, which he says in verse number 7, This was the punishment he got. This was God's sovereignty working on this guy because this is what he used to do to everybody he conquered. and so it was repaid back to him. This is surely not an endorsement that this is how prisoners of war should be treated. This is a description of how this guy had his retribution come to him. You next see victory in Jerusalem in verse number 8. Jerusalem, this is interesting too because when you get to 1 and 2 Samuel and David's conquest, they did not keep Jerusalem. They had to go back and take Jerusalem. Now, why did they not keep Jerusalem? Well, what we're going to get to at the end of the chapter. Why? Because they did not drive out the inhabitants of the Canaanites. They did not complete the job and that's part of their failure and for that reason they come back and David and Joab have to completely retake Jerusalem again. So in verse number 9 you see victory in the south. In verse number 10 You see victory in Hebron. In verse number 11, you see victory in Debir. Then we skip over to verse number 16. Verse 16 says, Now the children of the Kenite, Moses' father-in-law, went up from the city of Palms with the children of Judah, the wilderness of Judah, which lies in the south near Arad, and they went and dwelt among the people. The Kenites were an ancient people, you can trace that back to Genesis 15, who were thought to have been nomadic metal workers. And Wiersbe talks about this area, this south, where it says in the New King James, the city of Palms. He says the city of Palms was Jericho, a deserted and condemned city. So the Kenites moved to another part of the land under the protection of the tribe of Judah. And so Jericho is a familiar, Jericho just strikes to us, right? We think of Jericho, we think of what? The classic story that songs have been about, the walls of Jericho came tumbling down. That is one of the major victories Joshua had when they came out. And so now they're going back and they are settling in this area. Alright, so next we see victories in Zephath in 17, and then in verse 18 you see victories in Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ekron. Now, I want to focus in before we move from point number 1 to point 2 in the failures, this Othniel's victory. Look at verse 12. Look at verse 12. Verse number 12. Then Caleb said, whoever attacks Keerjef Sefer and takes it, to him I will give my daughter Aksa as a wife. And Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother, took it. So he gave him his daughter Aksa as wife. Now it happened when she came to him, that she urged him to ask her father for a field, and she dismounted from her donkey. And Caleb said to her, What do you wish? So she said to him, Give me a blessing, since you have given me land in the south. Give me also springs of water. And Caleb gave her the upper springs and the lower springs. Okay, so we have this guy shows up. Now, the interesting thing is this actually is told almost word for word, the exact same story in Joshua chapter 15 verses 13 through 19. And it's reiterated here in the book of Judges and this Othniel guy, Othniel, my son's not in here. Imagine some of these names. I had trouble saying this, but imagine if your parents, be thankful they didn't name you Othniel or Oksah. Sounds like a cough, doesn't it? But Othniel is going to be a judge later, and he's one of the good judges that we'll see later. And Othniel, Caleb gives out a charge. So this is the same Caleb that went with Joshua to spy out the land, right? Caleb's now an old man, very old. and he had already had a great victory, and he calls to his men and he says, I believe it is whoever attacks Kirjath-Sefer and takes it, I will give them a prize." What is the prize? The prize is my daughter. They say, well, I hope she's pretty or else that's not such a great prize. No, I'm just joking. Sorry, that was uncalled for. But anyways, in this day and age, for Caleb to offer the hand of marriage to his daughter would have been a huge prize. Why? Because Caleb was given a massive plot of land for his victory whenever they took the land, and Joshua granted him his portion. Caleb would have been one of the wealthiest men in Israel. Whoever marries Caleb's daughter ends up with a great inheritance. So this was a huge prize. So Othniel wasted no time. Othniel said, what? Okay. Gets the sword, goes out, takes care of business. He comes back and that is what happened. Othniel marries Caleb's daughter, Oxa, and they become a union. But as it is a lot of times with young married couples and the relationship with in-laws, Axel wants something a little bit more from her dad because they were given a great big portion of land. But one of the things that they didn't have on their land was the commodity of running water. The land was almost useless without it. So, I don't know that we're not given a whole lot of what happens here. But I almost wonder if, just being married myself, I wonder if Auxa went to him and said, hey, go ask. Well, it tells us in verse number 14, she urged, now when it happened she came to him, Othniel, and she urged him to ask her father for a field. Now, Auxa asked her husband to ask her dad, his father-in-law, for a field. This is why I'm smiling because I find this humorous is what happens in the next verse. Who ends up asking the father for the field? OXA does, not OTHEO, so I almost wonder if it went like this, hey go ask dad for this field because this has got better water and this is going to serve us better and our children for the long run. I ain't asking your daddy, he's going to say no to me, but he'll say yes to you, why don't you go ask him? And she said, oh man, and she went and she asked her dad and of course, as it is a lot of times with daughters and their fathers, Father, what is it, honey? Whatever you ask, I will give it to you. Look at verse 15. She said, give me a blessing. Since you have given me land in the south, give me also springs of water. And did he hesitate? Nope. Nope, he gave it right what she wanted. It's an interesting little antidote that is in the middle of all of this going on with judges. It's victory of Othniel and his family relationship with Caleb. So then moving, we're not done with Caleb. If you go to verse 20, we have Caleb's victory. And then we have this story in verses 22 through 26 of Joseph's victory. And the house of Joseph went up against Bethel. The Lord was with them. So the house of Joseph sent me to spy out Bethel. The name of the city was formerly Luz. When the spies saw a man coming out of the city, they said to him, please show us an interest to the city and they will show you mercy. And he does it. Verse 26, the man went to the land, the Hittites built a city and its name is called Luz to this day. And so they get this victory over this area called Bethel or Luz. And we come to the end of these victories. And you could go at the beginning of this chapter and you see victory after victory after victory. But I think just the same as it is in the children of Israel, it is in our personal lives with victories. And that is this. I think I wrote it down. God receives the most glory when the victories He provides are unexplainable in human terms, but point beyond human abilities to God. See, the moment that your victories start pointing to you, therefore robbing God of His glory, He's likely to step in. What does the Bible say? I think it's in the book of Daniel. Those that lift themselves up, he is able to, I think the King James says, abase, humble, bring down. And so that is something that I think we have to be very careful of. What is something that we have been very proud about for centuries? I think as Americans, we've been very proud of a nation. I think that for many, they have exalted a nation above God. And we could be seeing the humility, the humbling of a nation because of that pride. So, we move then to failure. We have this expressed in verse 19, verse 21, and verses 27 through 36. Look at verse 19. First, you have Judah's failure. And it came to pass when the judge was dead that they reverted... Oh, I'm in chapter 2, I'm sorry. So the Lord was with Judah and they drove out the mountaineers, not from West Virginia, but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the lowland because they had chariots of iron. and then look in verse 21. But the children of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites who inhabited Jerusalem. So the Jebusites dwell with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this day. So you have Judah's failure. Weersbe said the series of defeats that follows was the first indication that Israel was no longer walking by faith and trusting God to give them victory. So Judah's failure, Benjamin's failure, verse 27 covers Manasseh's failure, and then in verses 28 through 36 you have an interesting thing. It starts to record the rest of Israel's failures. And it starts to give this thing, I think in the New King James it says that they were put under tribute. I think the ESV says that they were put under forced labor. What does this mean? It means that they kept them around and tried to use them as slaves. If anybody, listen, if anybody should have understood this was a wrong thing to do, would it not have been the children of Israel? I could go off on a lot of rabbit trails here, but I'm not going to this morning. Here is what happens, and I want to come back to this verse in verse 28 that I mentioned while we were reading it. Look at verse 28. Think about that. When they could have accomplished this, that they put the Canaanites under tribute, but did not completely drive them out. Let's see. That's not the phrase I was looking for. Oh, it was in the end of verse 27. The very end of verse 27 says, "...for the Canaanites were determined to dwell in that land." I want to draw to your attention a phrase or a sentence that was written by commentator Gary Phillips that just stopped me in my tracks. He says, "...the determination of the Canaanites to stay was greater than the determination of the Israelites to obey God." Think about that. Think about that. When you look at the way things are today, has the determination of the godless to do evil been greater than the determination of God's people to obey God? Which, can I say this? Looking at it introspectively, it should be something right there that should drive us to repent personally. I should drive, it should drive me to my knees to repent. That the determination of someone that has a godless evil cause is more determined in that than I am to obey God. Because those that are driving out those agendas are probably getting up earlier than I am. So, we see Canaanite failures in Canaan. We see failures continue to happen here. We see verse 29, Ephraim. Verse 30, Zebulun. Verse 31 and 32, Asher. Verse 33, Naphtali. Verses 34 and 35, you have this issue with Dan and Joseph and the Amorites. And this brings us to chapter 2. So, you had victory that turned to failure, which then results in what? Judgment. God's judgment. So watch what happens in chapter 2, verse number 1. The angel of the Lord is a phrase that is repeatedly used in the Old Testament. Some of you may be familiar with this. The angel of the Lord is a phrase that is repeatedly used in the Old Testament. Many commentators, many scholars are convinced that this is a reference to what we call a theophany. What is a theophany? A theophany is an Old Testament or Christophany, an Old Testament appearing of God or Jesus Christ on the earth. For an example of this would have been the story of Mechizedek, the high priest who met with Abraham. Or the instance where God came and met with Abraham before he told him he was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. These are instances of a theophany. Whenever the phrase is used, the angel of the Lord, that angel of the Lord is normally understood as being Christ. Why? Because later on, in many of those passages in the Old Testament, it refers back to them not necessarily as the angel of the Lord, but that God had said. And so it leads us to believe that this is actually God. So, with that understanding, watch what he says. God's promise. I led you up from Egypt and brought you to the land of which I swore to your fathers, and I said I will never break my covenant with you. There's his promise. What was his promise? He delivered them, he made a covenant with them, and he said he would never break the covenant with them. Then he gave them a prohibition. Next is God's prohibition. Look at verse 2. And you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of the lands. What was their one thing they could not do? Make covenants, come together with the inhabitants of those in the land. They were wicked. They were godless. That's what God had told them not to do. Not only did they make covenants with God's enemies, they also failed to break down their altars. Look at that. It says, and you shall tear down their altars. which was his command. Then Israel's disobedience. But you have not obeyed my voice. You have not obeyed my voice. Disobedience. Now, where's God's voice today? It's God's Word. And so when we disobey or we get out of line with God's Word, then where are we at? We're in the same place they were. And then he asked this question. He says, why have you done this? Why have you done this? Gary Phillips said, God's question highlights the fact that sin is never a logical choice. Think about that. Sin is never a logical choice. I was listening to somebody the other day talking on a podcast, and they were mentioning this aspect of, you know, you listen to people and they say, where you're watching on TV or something or some movie, and they've gotten to a certain point where it's gotten really bad, and then they look and they ask this question, how did I get this far? Right, you ever seen people do that? How did I get to this point? They ask that question. And of course, us on the outside, it's not really hard for us to analyze it and say, well, this is how you got there. Because when they wake up, they realize there was no logical reason for them to keep making the bad mistakes, choices, and sin that they kept on doing. Sin is never a logical choice. He asks them, why have you done this? Then we see in verse number three, God's judgment. Therefore, I also said, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall be thorns in your side. and their gods shall be a snare to you." This is very interesting. It's very important. Why? Because here we see a prime example of how God, in His sovereignty, used the wicked for a purpose on His people. Think about that. You have a lot of voices today that cry out and say there could be no possible conclusion why the wicked are winning. And here we see a prime example of how God used the wicked as judgment upon His people. And this is not the only time this happens. Verse, disobedience to God's commands does not result in freedom, but in bondage. And the interesting thing is, lastly, is their reaction. Look at their reaction. Watch this. Verse number four. So it was when the angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the children of Israel that the people lifted up their voices and what? They wept. They wept. They're crying. Even to this point, verse 5, "...then they called the name of the place Bochim, and they sacrificed there to the Lord." Bochim means sorrow, sadness, weeping. They named this place a place of sorrow. How many of you have seen somebody that gets found out in their sin, and they just look distraught, broken? How are we to discern whether that is, as 1 Corinthians teaches us, godly sorrow producing repentance, or worldly sorrow? Meaning, we say it this way in our vernacular, they're sorry they got caught. They're not sorry they did it. Their sorrow was because of the consequences of their sins and not because of the wickedness of their sins had convicted them. It was shallow and temporary sorrow that never led them to true repentance. I do want to point out one thing and then we'll move to our application, and that is this. Man's greatest victories on their own amount to failure in God's sight, and his judgment is the same. We will all be found wanting. How do we bridge that gap? Martin Luther was so convicted about this during the Reformation. How do I get from this weight of guilt on my sin and my failure from a holy God? And he was almost depressed, almost to the point of suicide, because it was such a terrible burden. And it wasn't until he discovered the idea of grace through the cross that bridged that gap that Martin Luther felt that relief. Understanding that God, in his love and in his grace, presented his son Jesus Christ on the cross to take that burden of sin, that burden of guilt, And if we simply, as it teaches us in the New Testament, repent of our sins, turn from our sins and believe on Jesus Christ that He has risen from the dead and has paid the penalty for our sins, then it is that when we can see the mercy and love and the bringing back, the reconciliation of that relationship with God. If you're here this morning and you are unsure about that, let me caution you, let me encourage you, let me urge you to repent, believe on Christ. And if you'd like to speak to somebody about that later, you see me, you can see there's plenty of people at our church here this morning that could talk to you about that. But let me finish this morning with a couple points of application and we'll be done. God has given his believers three resources for growth. His word, which is before us, the Holy Spirit within us, and the church around us. Remember the opening illustration I talked about how being on that little thing sometimes you can go forward, but if you're walking backwards on that moving, does anybody have a name for that thing? People mover, is that seriously what it's called? That is awesome. The people movers. But if you stop, you see how Israel, they weren't, at the moment they started, they changed their focus on what they wanted to do. Instead of obeying God, they stopped. And what happened when they stopped? They started moving, regressing. And it's the same way in our Christian walk. And so God's given us these resources for growth. His word, the Holy Spirit, and the church. We must take special care not to ignore these as Israel ignored God's resources of their times. Number two. God wants our successes to be so grand that they exceed human explanation and therefore point beyond us to Him. Warren Weersbe said, God would prefer to bestow the positive blessings of life that bring us enjoyment, but He doesn't hesitate to remove those blessings if our suffering will motivate us to return to Him in repentance. Let me read that again. Let that sink into you this morning. Weirsbe said, God would prefer to bestow positive blessings of life that brings us enjoyment, but he doesn't hesitate to remove those blessings if our suffering will motivate us to return to him in repentance. That is a statement that I think should caution reflection, self-reflection, looking in, examining ourselves where we are. You know, I've thought about this a lot in the past month with the recent change and then the vote. And I've wrote a lot of things down. I have some direction. I have some plans that I really would love to see done. But the thing that scares me about that is that I've been around so many ministries and preachers that get so focused on what they call their vision that that becomes the ultimate goal. And people are just a means to an end. And it becomes more about accomplishing the goals and the vision than doing and pleasing God. And so, I have a lot of areas that I would love, I mean, I got some big things that would, yeah. I'm not gonna tell you anytime soon, but I am determined that if those are just mine, then it won't happen. But if God wants it to happen, we'll move forward with it. You say, well, how do you, how does that happen? How do you make sure of that? Well, you let God fill the positions. You let God take care of the unknowns. You let God open the doors. And if nothing ever opens, don't force it to. Lastly, do not assume that you could put God on pause and resume your spiritual walk without having regressed. Do not assume that you can put God on pause and resume your spiritual walk without having regressed. Let's always strive for growth. Let's always strive for growing and self-reflection. What is an area that we can be working on in our Christian walk? I'm not talking about being under the bounds of the law and the tyranny of somebody else and what they think of you, but about growing, about growing closer to God, about you and your relationship with God, not what everybody else thinks your relationship with God is like. Some of our ladies have been coming to the small group. I've been listening to those with Mary as well, so I know what you're learning. I've been sitting there at home while Mary and I are watching it together and just saying, yes, yes, yes, because those lessons are so good. I think we've been beaten down with thinking and so concerned about what everybody else is thinking about our Christian walk that we realize we're not under the bondage of that, okay? Let's go to the Lord in prayer this morning. We won't have a closing psalm. My wife is out with the baby. Let's go to the Lord in prayer this morning and we'll be finished. Father, we thank you so much for all that you've done for us. You are such a great, wonderful, loving God, and we pray that we can glorify you in our individual lives. We pray that we will learn the lesson from these children of Israel that we see in this chapter, that we will Stay determined not to be distracted from being focused on pleasing you, on growing with you. We pray that you will be with us individually as we go about our weeks. We pray that you'll be with us as a church. We pray for those that could not be here, pray for those that exercise caution not to be here, and we pray for all of those that are here that you'll keep them safe on their way home. We pray for Adam, his family as they're ministering at another church this morning. Bless his ministry. We love you and give you praise in Jesus' name, amen.