So we continue our look at the practical living out, the practical application of those who have been brought to see and understand the doctrine that has gone before concerning justification by faith, concerning the great salvation that we have in Christ, and what is our reasonable service now, as we saw there in chapter 12. What is the way that we should live? We've seen the way that we should interact with one another, with government officials, with the public in general, and now as we have entered into chapter 14, we see once more those relationships that are particularly involved within the realm of believers and brethren. And we already discovered the fact that Paul is addressing matters here that would have certainly been major issues during the first century when he was writing this letter concerning how they were to deal with one another in matters of liberty, in matters of non-essentials, peripheral things, whether it be meat offered to idols, or as he's going to deal with in the verses we're going to pick up on today, particular holy days and so forth that some might want to observe, things that have nothing to do with one's ultimate relationship with the Lord but are matters of liberty of conscience for the believer. They are brethren. They are believers, but they differ in these areas, and you're not to set them at naught, you're not to judge them, you're not to criticize them, as long as they don't make it something that's mandatory or they try to apply it to salvation, right? Like the whole Jewish circumcision thing, when the Judaizers would come in and say, in order to be saved, now you Gentiles need to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses. That was a Jesus plus, and I always call it the damnable plus. And people today still continue to add pluses to Jesus. That's never going to stop. It's never going to relent because Satan hates the gospel, the pure gospel of Jesus Christ. Because it is his waterloo. It is where his head was crushed on Calvary's cross. And so he'll do anything he can to contaminate it, to pervert it, to warp it, to turn it into just much more dead religion. We've got enough dead religion as it is, right? So, let's continue looking at chapter 14, and I'm going to back up to verse 1 to get us down to verse 5 where we left off last Lord's Day. And he says, "...him that is weak in the faith receive you, but not to doubtful disputes or disputations." So, you receive Him, you bring Him, but you do not allow that person who is weak, who is maybe young in the faith, who still has a tender conscience toward matters of liberty, and is troubled by these things. You receive them, you take them in, you seek to help them grow, you seek to further them in their understanding of the Word of God and the grace of God, but you do not allow them to come in and be a point of contention. and to start wanting to fuss and argue and debate these matters, and allow Satan to use it as a wedge of division. He says, you don't receive that. So you receive them in graciously, but there's boundaries set. You don't let them start going off and starting trouble with these various things that trouble them personally. For one believeth that he may eat all things, another who is weak eats herbs. Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not, and let not him that eateth not judge him that eateth, for God hath received him. And that is the crucial point. God hath received him. They're both brethren. So because this person is eating meat that he's bought in the marketplace that was originally offered to an idol, and this weaker brother says, oh, that was offered to an idol, you shouldn't be eating that. But the stronger brother says, an idol is nothing, there is but one God. And I'm giving thanks for this, and therefore it is sanctified. In other words, it is made holy unto the Lord. And so, let not the weaker brother despise the one who eats, but conversely, don't let the strong brother look down on the weak brother that has not come up to speed yet in that area. Remember, we're all on this path and there are some farther along than others. And there's a patience and a long-suffering and a forbearing with one another. Remember that we have nothing that we have not received. So never get to feeling like you are of somebody as far as, I know so much, I'm so spiritual. If any man thinks he knows anything, he knows nothing at all as he ought to know it. Remember we looked at that verse? So we're always to be in a state of humility because humility is truly who we are. I am a recipient of God's grace physically and spiritually every day of my life. every day of my life. I am here by grace, and everything I have is by grace. And so, verse 4, he asks a question. Who art thou that judges another man's servants? Remember, God has received them. They're both the Lord's servants. He's not your servant. She's not your servant. She's the Lord's servant. He's the Lord's servant. You're setting yourself up as a judge. Now once more, I'm going to keep making this clear. These are not fundamentals of the faith we're talking about here. We must be clear and rigid in a sense as far as fundamentals of the faith. We're talking about peripheral things. We're talking about non-essentials. And there's a matter of liberty there where people are going to have different opinions on things and you don't ostracize them or cast them out or speak in a matter of disdain them in some way and say, well, you are lesser somehow because of this. What's more, that's Satan's strategy to divide and conquer. The Lord brings a unity. Sin and Satan at the very beginning blew everything apart, as I've said before. He separated us from God. He separated us from one another and strife and warfare and hatred came in, right? And that's exactly what Satan is always trying to sew in a church body is Contention. Contentiousness. How many times have we talked about the Corinthian church and Paul had to correct them? I'm a Paul. I'm a Paulist. You know, I'm of Cephas. I'm of Peter. I'm of Christ. And even that Christ was a Christ of contention. Well, my group's better than your group, and we're more spiritual than you are, and my leader has more authority than your leader, and my leader is a better speaker than your leader, and on and on it goes. And like I said, it's like a bunch of kids on the playground saying, my dad's stronger than your dad, Just kids and bigger bodies. That's all it is. As long as we're in the flesh, as long as we are tabernacling in these bodies, you're going to have to deal with those problems with people. Where you have people, you have problems. Everybody says, Amen. Other people are problems. No, no, no. It's like that old thing, you know, when you're pointing at somebody, you got four fingers pointing back at yourself. That's part of being humble, is to realize, but by the grace of God, there go I. My biggest enemy, folks, let's be honest, is not Satan. My biggest enemy is the one I look at in the mirror every day. Satan's not omnipresent. He's a creature. He can't be everywhere at the same time. We give him far too much credit, if I can use the word credit, or we charge him with more than he's guilty of. But our own flesh is contrary to the ways of the Lord and is self-centered. So who are you that judges another man's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Yes, he shall be holding up, for God is able to make him stand. You remember we went over to Jude in closing last week, where Jude speaks of the fact that God is able to keep you from falling. You're saved by grace, you're kept by grace. He who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Right? Philippians. So this is God's faithfulness in view here. God will hold him up. God will keep him standing. God is the one who has called him into His service. Be careful when you start biting and devouring one another, lest you be consumed one of another. We read that in another place, right? Now why do such things as this have to be addressed in pretty much every epistle in the New Testament? Because where you've got people, you've got problems. Where you've got people that have not yet been glorified, you've got the flesh, you've got the presence of sin. And it's always seeking to exert itself. Well, I think Well, I'm convinced... Wait a minute, I thought there was one head. And there's your head speaking. You're a member under that head. That's where the unity comes from, right? I am crucified with Christ, as was quoted this morning. It's no longer I that live, Christ that liveth in me. itself out of the way. Now that's a daily mortifying. Daily you must put to death that monster called the flesh that I've said before is like an old horror movie because you kill it and every day it keeps coming back to life. You have to stab it again and stab it again and stab it again. Paul says I die how often? Daily. I beat my body to keep it in subjection. The figurative language there of keeping it beat down. You can't just say, now stay down there, flesh. Stay down. Don't come up. It's an imagery of violence to keep it down. Because it's always right there, ready to take the reins. You don't have to think it over. It's your natural default. Going back again to what Sister Helen said years ago, it is not natural to be a Christian. It's natural to be your fallen self. And so there is that effort, there is that discipline to remind yourself, even as we studied this morning from Romans 8, to remind yourself who you are, whose you are, and how you got there. Your identity, your position. And that's what has the effect of killing the flesh. And so that takes concerted effort. You don't just wake up with a feeling. And sometimes the way you feel is diametrically opposed to what God says about you. Now what are you going to believe? Feelings or the Word of God? Feelings come and feelings go and feelings are deceiving, right? My grounds for believing are the Word of God. Verse 5, here's where we pick up today. One man esteems one day above another, another esteems every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord. He that regardeth not the day to the Lord, he doth not regard it. He that eats, eats to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks. He that eats not, to the Lord he eats not. And he gives God thanks. Back to the first principle again. Everything we do is koram Deo. It is before the face of God. Whether we eat, whether we regard a day, whatever we do in life, we are doing it before the eyes of God. We're doing it before the Lord. And he will go on to say this, no one lives to themselves. It is truly before God. God sees it all. It is all done before Him, whether good or ill. And when he's talking about these matters, these non-essential matters, he's saying there are people that regard days. There are people that have holy days. In particular, maybe we could apply this to the Jewish believers among them. Maybe some of them are still keeping feast days and various things that were very important under the Old Covenant. That's fine. As long as they don't say, you've got to keep this to be saved. Then they've crossed the line. Or you got to do it because I'm doing it. Or you're not as good a Christian as I am. That's where they cross the line. But if someone wants to set aside a day, esteem a day, for instance, Tom might say, I'm going to set aside Tuesday as a particular day of reading the Word, of prayer, of devotion. I'm going to do that each week. That's fine. You're not to criticize me about that and say, well, he's some kind of legalist or something. He set aside this day on Tuesday. But if I say, now you've got to set aside Tuesday and do what I'm doing, then I've crossed the line. What's more, these are matters of non-essentials. These are matters that are on the periphery of Christian life. So, and then he tells us here what is the final arbiter. What's the final arbiter in these matters of personal conscience? the person's persuasion of mind. This is left to your persuasion of mind. If you want to observe Passover, that's fine, as long as you don't make it an essential for salvation, or even an essential for sanctification. If you don't keep Passover, you're not properly obeying the Lord. You're being a disobedient Christian. Then you've crossed the line. But if you want to keep Passover because it's a special time of remembrance, seeing Christ in the Passover and so forth, I can't criticize that. But you do not make it a rule for all believers. Do we see that? That's what's going on back here. I already mentioned Galatians, but that's what's he having to deal with in Rome as well, is these Judaizers, these Jews that have become believers in Yeshua, in Christ, in the Messiah, in Jesus of Nazareth, that He is the Messiah that was promised. They have become believers in Him, but they don't immediately jettison all that stuff from the old. Read Acts 21 where Paul comes up there and James is saying, you see, brother, how many Jews there are that believe and they are all zealous of the law. So they believed in Christ, but they didn't cut the string, the apron strings with what they had known for generations. Think about that, how hard that would have been to do that. And that's fine if they want to keep observing those things personally, but what they were doing, they didn't stop there. They were bringing them in and saying, you've got to do this to be right with God. And Paul said, uh-uh. That's a non-negotiable. There is no plus with Jesus. All these shadows and types. If you want to remember Jesus and teach lessons about Jesus through these shadows and types, you can. But we don't place shadows up next to the person. We have the person. We have the fulfillment of all these things that were foreshadowed. Look at Romans 14 and verse 23. Romans 14 and verse 23 in this chapter. And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, that is, damned in his own conscience, condemned. He that doubteth is damned of eat, because he eateth not of faith, for whatsoever is not of faith is sin. That is what he's talking about here. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. Because if you're not, and that's what he's talking about in regards to the weaker brother, that weaker brother sees you eating this meat offered to idols, And he's troubled by that. But hey, I saw Brother Joe eating that meat. And it's... I don't think we should do that. But, well, he did it, so I'm going to do it. And then he starts thinking about it. And his mind is defiled and he's guilty. And once, like I said last week, once that guilt and that damnation in your mind, that condemnation comes into your mind, what has it done to that weaker brother? It has paralyzed him in a sense. It has robbed the joy. It has robbed his assurance. I've disobeyed God. I've been unfaithful to the Lord. I've partaken of this meat that was offered to an idol. I wonder if he loves me anymore. You see, all those thoughts. So you're setting him up for a fall. You've got to be mindful of others rather than just yourself. Like I said last week, we don't come into this with the attitude, well he just needs to grow up. He just needs to learn better. No, you need to esteem others better than yourself. You need to condescend to men of low estate. Again, remembering the pit from which you were dug and the rock from which you were hewn before we become haughty in our spiritual maturity. There are people at all different levels in their walk, all different places along the pathway. And the main thing here is, if you can't do it in faith, don't do it. It's not worth having a damned mind, a condemned mind. Whatsoever is not of faith is sin to the mind. Whether God condemns it or not, your mind is condemning it as sin. And it has its effect. Do you see that? The mind is the battlefield. The mind is what he spoke about there in chapter 12 when we started this practical section of this letter. Being renewed in your mind. The mind is what Satan approached in the garden with Eve. It's always the mind is the hill that must be taken. Once you get the mind, you've got the person. So what are we letting into our minds? What are we doing that defile the mind, affect the mind, discourage the mind? All these things are so radically important. And once more, when we see other believers, our greatest concern should be, with a servant heart, How can I help them prosper in the growing and the grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ and not see them tripped up or stumble some way? And I surely don't want to be the one that causes them to stumble because of my liberty that I put myself and my liberty ahead of them. Well, I've got a right to eat that meat, like I said, and I really love that meat and I'm going to eat it. Whether he sees it and whether it bothers him or not. See, that's the old nature. That's what the flesh would respond with. Self. Self. What did we see last week? Paul said, if meat causes my brother to be offended, I will eat no more meat while the world stands. In other words, I will sacrifice my own appetites, my own desires, my own preferences to see that, brother, prosper in the faith and grow and mature. That's counter. That's counter to the way we think. That's counter to what the world preaches to us. That's counter to what our society preaches to us. It's all about you, you, you, you, you. You deserve this. You deserve that. You deserve the other. Self-esteem. So when that person, as I said, would be in the wrong in these matters of liberty is if he tried to mandate it for someone else. Let's go to Colossians chapter 2. Colossians chapter 2. As I said, he's having to deal with these things in pretty much every epistle. All these areas that he's writing to, in some form or another, you have these pluses being brought in. You have these additions being brought in. Man, as someone said in the past, is incurably religious. And he doesn't like God's plan. He says, well, you know, we need to nail some things on that. We need to put an addition on the back of the house. Because that's just, that's too simple. That's too simple there. And we need to put some man works in there. And he doesn't make it more beautiful, he makes it ugly. He mars it. And anytime you add anything to the gospel of Christ, you know what you end up doing? You end up eclipsing Christ. Because we by nature will gravitate toward things we can do. Now you can see that in your own life, you can see it in the history of the church, you can see it in the way people think and what they practice and the various traditions that come in. We want something tangible that we can do, that we can feel to give us assurance. I walked down an aisle, I filled out a card, I prayed a prayer, I got baptized, I did this, I did that. You ask people, are you a Christian? Oh yeah, I was baptized when I was 10 years old. Now I ask you if you're a Christian. As my dad used to say, you get baptized until you shrivel up like a prune and die and go to hell. You've not been born of the Spirit. But we trust in all these outward things that we do. We trust in outward signs instead of inward realities. God is always saying, the heart, the heart, the heart. What did the Jews get caught up in again? Outward circumcision. All the way back in Deuteronomy, what did the Lord say? Your heart must be circumcised. That falls by the wayside. We're good with God. We've been outwardly circumcised. We're Jews. Paul says, no you're not. Romans 2. He is not a Jew which is one outwardly. Circumcision is in the heart. That is so hard for us to get. Colossians. Let's consider Colossians. Chapter 2, verse 16. He says, let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days, particularly Jewish flavor in that, new moons, you find that back there in the Old Testament too, various periods of time that were set aside as special, various holy days, the various Sabbath days, plural, there's more than one Sabbath day, there was high holy days, there were various Sabbath days. And Paul says, let no one judge you in that. Let no one condemn you in that because you're not doing that or observing that. Verse 17, Which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ. Those were shadows. And I've said this before and it's kind of humorous, but it's tragic at the same time that someone would come in the door and the sun's shining and you fall down and start trying to hug their shadow and leave them standing there. That's how foolish this would be. Christ has fulfilled all these things. Christ has brought you into the relationship of full-grown sons. join heirs with himself. And you say, well, you know, I'd actually rather be up back here as a child under bondage, if you don't mind. And what an onlooker should say is, man, you're insane. There's something desperately wrong with you mentally. Now I want to go back here to the shadows. I see the substance has come and the person has come and he said when he died on the cross it is finished. I want to go back under condemnation and try to work out my own righteousness that way. Would they be coming with the white jacket, the men in the white coats, as they used to say? Right? Spiritually, that's insanity. But that is exactly what people are tempted to do, and they try to add that. Now, a lot of people are more subtle than that and more crafty. They don't say, throw Jesus away and go whole hog into self-righteousness. They just say, I need a little Jesus righteousness, and I need a little of my own righteousness, and then it'll be right. Like we heard this morning, it's 99% Jesus, but 1% is left up to me. Then you've overthrown a few things in Scripture. You've overthrown grace, because if there's any works at all involved in it, then grace cannot have any mixture with it, or it's not grace. And also you have overthrown the verse that says there's no boasting in His presence. Now if it's not all of grace from beginning to end, you cannot deny me boasting. Because I did the right thing and Joe didn't. Even if it was just a decision I made. There's no way that you can overthrow boasting. Because God says there will be none in His presence. Verse 7. Do all to the glory of God. do all to the glory of God. This is for every one of us today as well as it was for the Roman believers here in the first century, in the first century that Paul is writing this in. For none of us liveth to himself, no man dies to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord. Whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Whether we live therefore or die, we are the Lord. Isn't that wonderful? Whether you are living or whether you die, if you're a child of God, if you're a Christian, if you're a believer, if you're born from above, you are the Lord's. Romans 8, death cannot separate us from the love of God, life cannot separate us from the love of God. Whether you live or die, you are the Lord's. Paul says in another place that his desire was to depart and be with Christ, which is far better, but it's more needful for me to abide, to go on living. And his desire also, he says, was that his life or his death would magnify the Lord. Whatever it is, we are wholly thine. We are wholly His. I am His and He is mine. My Beloved is mine. That's peace. So what is Paul laboring here? The unity and peace of the body. It's not about you and your personal wants, to the exclusion or to the abuse of others. We're all one. We're all living before the face of God. It's all about the fact that we're all His and we're going to Him. We're His in this life and we're His in death. We are a purchased possession, we're not our own, we're bought with a price, and on and on. So many different ways we can express this because that's the way the Word expresses it. Verse 9, for to this end Christ both died and rose and revived that He might be Lord both of the dead and the living. Remember Jesus talking to those religious rulers during his earthly ministry, the Sadducees who denied that there was a resurrection. Do you remember that? And one of the ways that he refutes their false teaching and their false belief is, and I'm paraphrasing, but don't you recall God over there saying, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? And then Jesus goes on to say, God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. In other words, what's he telling the Sadducees? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are still alive. I am presently the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, hundreds of years after they physically died. They're still alive, is what he's telling these Sadducees who denied spirits and the resurrection and so forth. And the way he overthrows their argument is by quoting God's Word. So we do all to the glory of God. As believers, they and we must understand that we live and die unto God, not man. Not ourselves, not others. Though it's not about us serving self, we're to serve God. And when we serve others who are believers, who are we serving? We're serving Christ. Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of one of these, you have done it unto me. Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? I'm not persecuting you, Jesus. I'm persecuting these followers of yours. Well, then you're persecuting me. One body. One new man. We are bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh, it tells us in Ephesians. You can't get any closer than that. And so when you persecute a child of God, when you treat a child of God wrong, when you put a stumbling block in the way of a child of God, you're doing that to Christ. Makes it a little more serious, doesn't it? Makes it a little more weighty. How we treat one another is the way we're treating Christ. They are brethren. They may not have the great intellect that you have spiritually, but they are brethren. They may not be as far along as you are, but they are brethren. They might be babes, but they are brethren. The Lord died for them. He shed His precious blood to redeem them. and you're setting them aside. Now that's serious. Look with me to Luke chapter 20. I'll be closing here in just a moment. Luke chapter 20. This is the verse I just paraphrased, and so let's read it word for word according to the way Jesus spoke it to these religious leaders. I just want to read verses 37 and 38, because I left out some of this in my paraphrasing from memory. Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush. So see, going back, this is the experience of Moses at the burning bush. And when the Lord speaks to him, when he calleth the Lord, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, for He is not a God of the dead, but of the living, for all live unto Him. Same thing Paul said, we all live unto Him. And we die unto Him. We all live unto Him and we die unto Him. So His people live before Him in this life and in the life to come. So where is the ultimate accountability that must be kept in mind? Unto God. That's the ultimate accountability. So it's not just about my interactions with fellow believers and being concerned how they react. or what they think about it, ultimately my accountability is to the one whom I'm living before his face. So you always got to look beyond the horizontal and be reminded of the vertical relationship. Once more, stating the example of David after he'd committed those terrible sins of Bathsheba and Uriah, and he said in his confession, against thee and thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. Lord, you saw everything I did. I did it before your face with a high hand. And God could have justly killed him at that point. So the ultimate accountability is unto the Lord. Two passages I want to look at and we will close this morning. John chapter 14. John chapter 14. In verse 19, "...Yet a little while, and the world sees me no more, but you see me. Because I live, you shall live also." Now, we see Him because He has given us sight, and part of that seeing Him is what reveals to us that He is seeing us. This is discernment. This is spiritual understanding. We see Him. He doesn't say you're going to see me physically as you have when I've walked with you in my earthly ministry, but you're going to see me. You're going to discern me. Verse 20, At that day you shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you. He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loves Me. And he that loveth Me shall be loved to My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him." What's more, we know it's not physically. Manifest, He reveals Himself to us. And so this is what is happening here with the Lord. He bought us. We are His. He has graciously given us His Spirit. He manifests Himself unto us and reveals to us that you are mine. You are one of my sheep. I laid down my life for you. As Paul says, He loved me and gave Himself for me. He never got over that. That was amazing to Him. He knew what He was. He was a persecutor of the church. He was one who gave His consent and His voice and His vote when they were put to death. Christ loved me and gave Himself for me. Life-altering. Acts 17. Paul teaching, preaching in Athens, Mars Hill, among these philosophers, the worldly wise. Remember, he's seen their statue there, their shrine to the unknown God. They didn't want to leave out one. Again, man is incurably religious. Athens was full of idols, and America is full of idols today. And we need to hear about the unknown God today. You know that? Because there are many Jesuses and there are many gods that are spoken about, but they're not the Holy God and the Holy Jesus of Scripture. They're Jesus that suit you, and that suits your lifestyle, and say, don't worry about it, it's okay. You'll go to heaven when you die, you know, it's all of grace, you know. Doesn't matter how you live. Well, someone who has experienced saving grace and experienced the love of God and understood that He loved me and gave Himself for me will be saying, Lord, what would You have me to do? What is pleasing in Your sight? You want to please the one who loves You. So it's not that which is going against the grain. It is because of a new nature. You are overwhelmed with the fact that God sent forth His Son, His perfect Son, His Son that always did that which was pleasing in His sight, His beloved Son, and crushed Him to death to save a sinner. If that's not overwhelming, I might as well close this up. There's nothing else to say. Religion doesn't overwhelm me. Religion gives me a bunch of rules and ceremonies and rituals, everything else, but it cannot ever give me a clear conscience. I've never done enough. I've never thought perfectly, spoken perfectly, or acted perfectly, and that's what's required to enter into God's heaven. unless an alien righteousness is given to you, the righteousness of One who did all those things perfectly, the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you believe on Him today? Acts 17, 28. Paul says concerning God, the Creator of all things, and this is how he is approaching these Athenians, these Greeks. They don't have the Old Testament Scriptures. He can't start talking about the Law and Moses and the Prophets and Genesis and all the rest. He goes back to creation itself. He is the Creator. And He even says this, for in Him we live and move and have our being, as certain also of your own poets have said, for we are also His offspring. We are His creation. We are His physical creation. Now everybody is not a child of God. You're a child of God by virtue of the new birth. But we are all, we could say, His offspring. We are His creation. No thing living is here without His sovereign will. and His power to create it. And it's interesting that Paul says, you know, your own poets understood the need for a Creator. Aristotle, again, understood the need for an unmoved mover, a non-contingent being that made all these contingent things. But Paul says, in Him we live. In Him we move, compared to these gods that don't move. What's he saying? Your gods have less ability than you have. That doesn't make sense. In Him we live, we move, and have our being. our very self-consciousness, our very ability to be animated and move about. We can't even live, we can't move, we can't have any being without God. Who is the one that's keeping you alive right now in these seconds that it takes me to say this? Who has your breath in His hand? Daniel told Belshazzar, remember that? As Babylon was getting ready to fall to the Medes and the Persians, he said, you've given no glory to the one who holds your breath in his hand. You've worshipped the gods of silver and gold and stone and wood. Belshazzar died that night. God closed his hand. So every breath we take, is saying, grace, grace, grace, grace. And men and women use that breath, as I've said before, to curse the name of God. To use His name as a cuss word. To use His name as a byword. You know how merciful and long-suffering God is? He doesn't immediately strike them dead. Because justice would be served. So in closing today, brothers and sisters, let us all remember that we are here as servants of the Most High God. We don't live unto ourselves. He has bought us. We are here for His glory and honor. And when we are serving others, we are honoring Him. When we are serving other members in the body, we are honoring Him. When we are loving them, when we are seeking their furtherance, when we are seeking and desirous and interceding for them in prayer, to see them grow in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ, to see them strengthen with His might in the inner man, we are honoring God. And He is seeing this. And so we have a privilege. If we're looking on it as a grievous responsibility, we're still walking in the flesh. Our hearts have not been captured by the love of God. That's just a fact. Our hearts have not been captured by the love of God if I see His calling as being grievous and against the grain. So what does that call us to? Back to Lord, create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me. Let's pray. Father, thank You for giving us this day. Thank You that we have this opportunity to worship You, for You are altogether lovely and worthy. We are yours. We are your servants. We are not our own. We are those that a king died for. And not just any king. The king of all the universe. The king of kings and Lord of lords. laid down His life for us, and we serve under the yoke of love. And love is what moves us and motivates us, Lord, or we are not motivated rightly. And we need to repent of that. Father, we want You to be magnified. We want people to see the Lord Jesus Christ in this lost and dying nation. Father, as we heard this morning, turn us and we shall be turned. Jeremiah prayed after that we were turned, we repented. But Lord, You must move first. You must turn us. Man will never turn himself. He will continue to stubbornly rebel even until he falls out from the hell, unless You apprehend them. So Father, we pray for Your power to go forth and indeed for You to bring reviving in our land And reviving must begin with us. But the churches have become full of worldliness and foolishness. And so we pray and ask all this in Jesus' name and for His sake, Amen.