And we will turn to the book of 1 Samuel chapter 2. 1 Samuel chapter 2. I've really enjoyed speaking on Ruth and Hannah. They are an oasis in the middle of a bunch of failure. As we've seen in the days of judges, where every man did what was right in his own eyes, the Lord raised up these two lovely ladies, and we see we're still being affected and influenced by them even to today. Then as we get into the book of 1 Samuel, we see that the Lord, we see the corruption again, and it returns. As we get into 1 Samuel 2, we see that Hannah, lived in a day of great corruption. She lived in the days when man did what was right in his own eyes. And yet I really enjoy reading chapter 2 in the sense that it talks about the graph and corruption that was in the priesthood. And yet ever so often in the verses, it shows the light and how that God hadn't given up and that God with grace was still working. And you see this in history, the days of church history. You see the days of great darkness. We even call them the dark ages. But it'll be interesting to see how many people that we will meet in heaven. that lived through those days and all the corruption, all the graft. And yet they still remembered the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, there are certain people that call themselves historians that want to think, you know, that you trace the trail of blood, the Baptist all the way back to Jesus, Jordan and John and all that. No, some of those labels just wouldn't fit all the way through. Same way with any other. There's a lot of other groups that try to do that. There was a book called The Trail of Blood. that tried to establish that at one time, but if you really get into church history, you find out that the guy really, well, let's don't, in other words, we can't trace it, but when we get to heaven, we'll see it. Because God has never left himself without a witness. And you would not have thought of that, even in this time, when you think of a Moabite woman, and then a childless, a Levite woman. And now we look and we see with this, we see the ground. Now we return back to the days of judges. We see Eli and we see how far and how deep the sin had gone. Shiloh, which had been the place of worship, now has been turned into a great, just a, just a, a den of iniquity by the lack of supervision and the lack of discipline that we see even in Eli's life. And so we look at chapter 2 and we begin reading in verse 12. Now the sons of Eli were corrupt and they did not know the Lord. Now wait a minute, he's the high priest. And they, but notice that it starts off with, they were corrupt. Now we have been introduced to Eli, his sons, Hophni and Phinehas, back in chapter one. And it tells us back there, and it says that in verse three, also their two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, the priests, were there. And when the time for Eli came to make an offering, He gave fortunes to Penelope, but we see that they mention Hophni and Phinehas because now we see that they are going to come to light. And now in that, they did not know the Lord. How sad, this man, the high priest, the one man who represented all of Israel spiritually, his kids didn't know the Lord. The one thing I tried to do as a pastor was, and I had a lot of pastors tell me, 50s and 60s and 70s, that a lot of times we try to win the world, but we lose our kids. Well, I tried my best not to lose my kids. I tried my best to be a father to my kids and not put the church first. In fact, I had a man that is nationally known, and I was taking him to the airport one time. We were talking and he was a little bit older than me. And my kids were just, I think all we had was Jonathan and Jason at the time. So that meant they were about five or six years old or maybe a little less. And he said to me, and here he was, I mean, he's got some kids that are doing all right, but he's, well, we'll just leave that alone. But he said, don't let the church raise your kids. He said, I let my ministry raise my kid and I regret it. And I never will forget that. That was some good advice. Don't let the church raise your kids. And how many times do you hear about the preacher's kids, you know, or whatever? Now, some of that and by experience we know is because people expect the preacher's kids to be whatever. So we tried to protect our kids from that or whatever. And even with that, our kids got offended several times because automatically if something happened, it was a preacher's kid's fault. We got one kid that really Resented that but there again that that happens But the praise the Lord as far as I know all four of my kids were in church today They weren't none of my three boys and a girl, but none of them want to be preachers That's fine with me as long as they want to serve the Lord and I praise the Lord for that but there again, I would hate to know that I Think of another man who has got a great ministry. I've read three or four of his books and And yet his son is one of the leading, I guess the best way to put it is anti-Christians on the internet. I mean, he's an atheist. And you go, what happened? Now that can happen to any of our sons. We know that Samuel later on, the people didn't want to follow Samuel's sons because Samuel wasn't a good father, but probably he didn't learn it very well from Eli especially. So we're not saying that good men can't have bad children. And we can't say that evil people can't have good children. It's interesting how that God works in the hearts of people. And we don't want to underestimate the power of God working in the heart of a child, because we never know what God's going to be doing in that heart. But obviously, these men now who were priests of themselves, they didn't know God and they were priests. How sad. How sad that they didn't know God. And the word there, from what I understand in the Hebrew, not only did they not know God, but they rejected God. So they were kind of those people like the man on the Internet. And the priest's custom with the people was that when any man offered a sacrifice, the priest's servant would come. Now, notice what he would put the servant up to do. And he would take that three-pronged flesh hook in his hand with the meat was boiling. And if you remember some of them, we're not going to get into it tonight, like for lack of time and plus just the interest. But these different offerings you had, you had some of the meat that was boiled. And then it was, and different portions were given to the priests and other people were offered to the Lord. It was a way of the Lord sustaining the priest as well as making the sacrifice from the people. And it was all pointing to the cross. Everything about those sacrifices had something to do with the substitution atonement of the Lord, substitutionary atonement of the Lord on the cross. And so they were in specific, explicit detail. And we see chapter after chapter of that back in Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. And so these people, if anything, they would have known how to conduct God's business and the seriousness of it all. But notice that they would thrust, they would thrust the flesh hook into the boiling water and and into the pan or kettle or cauldron or pot, and the priest would take for himself all that the flesh it would brought. That was something that was not even part of that, but so we see greed. What these, what obviously this servant was doing was grabbing a lot of the meat, then taking it and probably selling it. There was kickbacks there. There was greed. There was something where when you have several thousand people coming through and you can take some prime beef off for yourself, you think you might make a little bit of money off of it? And so we can see that, especially with tens of thousands of people coming through, you can imagine what the graph would be on those days of Passover and especially on the Day of Atonement. And then, of course, you had the thank offerings and the wave offering, all those different things. And so they would take that. And of course, with the fat, which was always to be burnt to the Lord, and it was a sweet smelling savor to the Lord. So here you had a bacon smell probably or some smell like that, that they would be, but it was offered as a offering to the Lord and they would burn the fat. But these priests would, but this man, this servant with a three-pronged hook would grab some of that. And so notice what they even went so far in verse 16. And if a man said to him that they should really burn the fat first, which was the procedure, that they may make as much as their heart desires. He would then answer and said, no, you must give it now or if not, I will take it by force. So they had their bouncers in there. They had this servant that would go around and use these people that were coming from hundreds of miles away and for scores of miles away anyway, as far as the nation of Israel, and they were taking advantage of them. You know, there's nothing new about the graph and corruption that we hear today in godly circles. It's always been there. There's always been somebody who has taken their position and used it in order for God for ungodly gain. And we see also notice in verse 17, therefore, the sin of the young men was cruel before it was great, very great before the Lord. for the men aboard the offering to the Lord." No wonder. I mean, when you see that in a church, whenever you see it in any organization, you dread even being around those type people. You definitely don't want to go to church there. But now there's faithful people that would still go, but they realize something is rotten in Denmark. Something is bad here. And so, but you can imagine these people putting up with it, and it was coming from the very top. And we see that they, that the Bible also tells us that, They were grossly immoral. We'll see that in a moment, I hope. But these whenever the women would come, they would take advantage of women as a result. And we hear that. I think of one again, a national leader whose son became. a leader after he died, and we didn't know till years later just how gross some of the things he was doing, both in greed and in immorality. How sad it is to see things like that. But notice now, in saying that, notice how God, the inspired writer, just keeps giving us light. in the tunnel, how that he shows us, but he keeps interjecting little things. So he's telling us how absolutely corrupted it is. But look in verse 11, it says that, but the child, who was Samuel, ministered to the Lord before the priest. Then you look at verse 18, and we see that he says, So he was an apprentice priest. And so here we see that young man in the middle of all this graft and corruption. We notice in verse 21 at the very end, he says, Meanwhile, the child Samuel grew before the Lord. And then you look at verse 26 and we'll be getting into just how bad it was. But notice it says in the child, Samuel grew in stature and in favor, both with the Lord and with men. That reminds us of Luke 22, 52, where the Lord Jesus grew in stature and favor with God and with man. And so we see that Samuel was that light. As the world was growing darker and darker, the Virgin Mary was holding that child in her arms that would change the world. And here we see just that light that God would never leave himself without a witness, and it will be there until he takes us home. And then in chapter three, verse one, now Samuel, the boy Samuel, ministered to the Lord before Eli. So we keep seeing that God reminds us, hey, I've still got a plan. It's getting dark. It's getting bad. Nobody knows who this kid is, but I'm going to be working through him and he's going to become one of the major people in all the Old Testament leading up to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the Lord has ways of of showing us the light at the end of the tunnel or at least the light in the tunnel. And so a lot of times all we hear is about the graph and corruption. Did you hear about that stuff that's going on over in Paris this past week? One of the most, you would never thought of, one of the most disgusting things I've ever heard, where you have these perverts getting up there with, and looking absolutely horrible, and they are going through the Lord's Supper. And it's just nothing but gross immorality parading around as religion. I mean, just, it's so sickening. And who would have ever thought that we'd get that part? But I was reading today, and I don't read a lot, especially on Sundays, but I just looked at one of the headlines on, I forget what website, but it said, there are many religious people that are defending that action. I'm going, what? Yes, we got to have tolerance. We got to have love. No, folks, that is we are getting to the point of God's judgment. We're not to accept that kind of kind of of going on. And yet and what is so bad is you got so-called spiritual leaders who are saying, hey, listen, we got to tolerate these people. No, tolerate that because God doesn't tolerate it. We've got to speak out against it. There is no way that we can say and justify anything like that going on. And so folks, I'm dead set against it. And if that's a politically incorrect, then that means, you know, whatever it is, we've gone too far. I hope so. I hope somebody turned it off. If the Lord didn't turn it off, I hope somebody else did. Yeah, but just the sickness. I mean, who would have ever thought that? And if that's going on in public, just think about what's going on behind the scenes with all the filth that would be surrounding that. And so. Yes, I mean. Oh yeah, well, there's, there again, our politicians, many of our, and it's not only one party, it's some part of people, we're wanting the big tent these days. Now there again, I'm not saying that, you know, I'm not condemning either part or whatever, but there again, it's sickening. And I won't support a missionary. I hope I don't ever win to support a missionary to do that, but at the same time, any politician, we just can't accept that. As the church, we speak out against it. It is not acceptable in the eyes of the Lord. And so here we see that poor old Eli, and this is what happened so many times, is that Eli, even though he was the priest, he was tolerant with his kids. And we see that sometimes in Christian circles. A Christian school is very difficult because here your kids are growing up in school and you hear about them getting more, there's always that problem. Because of your kids, either you're too severe on them or people think that you're too lax on them. And of course, a lot of times the kids, you know, whatever. It's one of those things where Eli was a weak man. But we see that passage there in verse 18 through 21. We're right in the middle of all this. We see that the middle of all this confusion, there was a woman who cared about her son. And you can imagine her and Elkanah just poured everything they could into that kid every time they met him. And what it must have been like to wade through all that garbage to get through their son every time they went to see him. and realize what's going on and saying, oh Lord, help. I gave him to you, but oh, you've got to be the help. You can imagine what that must've been like. But we see now as we go on in verse 18, now Eli was very old. And he heard everything his sons did to all of Israel. And now that they lay with the women who assembled at the door, as typical of men that go off into corruption. I've said this all my life. When you hear about a pastor who falls into sin, don't blame the woman, it's the man's fault. I mean, there's no reason. I mean, if a man does not take responsibility and keep himself clean and run from sin, then his position many times could take advantage of women. Or now we even hear about pedophilia and all the rest of that garbage. that happens as a result. And so we see that, excuse me, I'm having trouble with this fan over here blowing my pages. Okay, so let's see, I didn't realize it blew that much. Okay, there we go. So we see that Eli was very old and he heard about his sons. Now notice he heard about it, he knew about it. But he did nothing about it. And now that they lay with the women and assembled at the door. And so he said to them, why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all the people. Know my sons, for it is not a good report that I hear that you make the Lord's people transgress. If a man sins against another, God will judge him. But if a man sins against the Lord, who will intercede for him? Now that was all good advice, but it comes to a point where you have to say, sons, you're out of here. You cannot be ministers anymore. You cannot be a member of the church anymore. I think I've faced that a couple of times in the ministry. And I praise the Lord for godly fathers who said, I understand. I had to tell one of my main men, he's with the Lord now, but I said, you know, if so-and-so keeps going the way he's going, he's not going to be able to be a member here. And when you're talking to one of your main men in the church that you realize that that the church could really fold if you don't have men like that around. That is a and then you got four or you got kids out there on your own and you're financially wondering if you're going to make it. But you had to tell a man that you are really laying your life on the line. But I'm so glad that the men that I had in my ministry would say, you know, Pastor, I understand. But now, unfortunately, we didn't have to. Those boys straightened up, but there again, those are hard decisions. Oh man, they just rip your heart out as far as a pastor is concerned, because you don't wanna hurt your people. You don't wanna hurt the mothers and fathers. And yet you've got to say that. And then I know pastors and a dear friend of mine who he had to say that to his son. Listen, son, if you're going to do this, then you can't live here. He was an older kid at the time. He was he was an adult or getting to be an adult. But those are hard things to do. Oh, they just that's probably one of the hardest things in all the ministry. And Eli was too weak to do it. Now, listen, my sons, listen, God's not going to not going to help you if you don't. But no, he didn't take action. And as a result, all of Israel suffered for it. But then we see, as the Lord said, he said this, we see that after, we see that Samuel grew in the Lord in verse 26, but notice God even sent him a warning. And this is one of those interesting passages where God doesn't tell us who he was. And that's why always, whenever the Lord doesn't name the prophet, you always wonder why he didn't. And why did he name Elijah or whatever? But then you just see certain people in scripture that are nameless and we won't know who they are till we get to heaven. And there's so many people in church history and so many people in churches that they have done great things for God, but you'll never hear about them. And they never get the credit until they get to heaven, until we get to see them in heaven. But we've noticed then a man of God, that's all it says, we don't know who he was. Don't know what tribe, nothing. Then a man of God came to Eli and said, verse 27, thus saith the Lord, did I not clearly reveal myself to you in the house of your father when you were in Egypt in Pharaoh's house? Now notice this counsel that he's giving is counsel from the Lord. And notice how the Lord always starts asking questions and starts drawing you out. Adam, where are you? And we notice that we saw in James, do you know, do you think? And here we see this godly counsel that he's giving. Notice the questions, just a series of questions. Did I not choose you or choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest? That was Aaron, and now you are a direct descendant. To offer upon my altar the burnt incense and to wear the ephod before me. And you know how important that ephod was. And did not I give to the house of your father all the offerings of the children of Israel made by fire? You remember I supplied your needs through those offerings, and I made a way, and it was a very explicit, very detailed instructions that you were to be supported, and you were very well supported. And he says, why did you kick my sacrifice and my offering, which I commanded in my dwelling place, and honor your sons more than me? You honored your sons more than me. There's a time where the Lord says that he sends a sword to the family. And of course, there are things and unfortunately now, especially with my kids, they knew from the time that they started learning right from wrong, that as a father, there was just certain things that when they got older, they were on their own if they were going to do it. In fact, they would know that they don't even think about bringing a girl home and living in my house unless you're married. They just knew that. They never asked because they've never done it, praise the Lord, but at this time, they just knew it. And they knew my stand on certain things. If you're gonna take drugs, you're out of here. And so those are all things, but how many families and how many pastors do I know who, oh, wait a minute, but that's my kid. Yeah, remember what the prodigal son did. What did the father do? He didn't follow him. But when he was willing to come back, he was willing to meet him on the way. And so sometimes we have to let our kids, if they're gonna go that route, the main thing that we need to do is stay stable and let them bounce all over the place. But if we try to follow them, they don't have anything to come back to. But if we stick it out, then they know where we stand. Now again, those are always very difficult situations. And those are the things that just rip a heart out of any parent. And so we see that, but you loved your sons and you put them in front of me. Did he really love his sons? Because the Bible says that if you love your son or love your child, you'll chasten him. But we see that, therefore, in verse 30, the Lord God of Israel says, I said indeed that your house and the house of your father will walk before me, well, excuse me, that the house and the house of your father will walk before me forever. But now the Lord says, far be it from me, for those who honor me, I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed. Behold, the days are coming, and here's the judgment. The days are coming that I will cut off your arm. That's literally what it says. And the arm of your father's house. so that there will be not an old man in your house. In other words, I'm gonna change the priesthood. You are a direct descendant of Aaron, but I'm gonna go a different route. There's a lot of direct descendants of Aaron out there, and I'm gonna change priesthood. We know that it was gonna be Zadok later on, but we'll see that in that passage, and we don't have time to trace it, but you'll see that he says that your children are gonna that the boys, the kids growing up, are not gonna live long. They're not gonna live into old age. Now, remember what happened with Doeg de Edomite? Whenever David, he was chasing, or when David was running from Saul, and Doeg de Edomite went out and wiped out a whole tribe of priests. And guess whose they were? They were Elis. And then you think of, they were still, but the fourth, fifth generation, over a hundred years later, whenever Absalom rebelled against Israel, the priest there, and that was Zadok, chose the wrong side. And so when Solomon came along, he ended the priesthood of Eli. And so the Lord says, you're going to see a lot of death and destruction before, or your people will, but you're going to see death and destruction of your own sons. And so we see that he's in verse 32. And you will be an enemy in my dwelling place, despite all the good that God has done for Israel. And there shall be not an old man in your house forever. By the words of your sons and your grandsons and great grandsons are going to die early. But any of the men whom I did not cut off from my altar shall consume your eyes and grieve your heart. And all the descendants of your house shall die in the flower of their age. This is exactly what happened with Doeg Denomite. And this shall be a sign to you that shall come upon your two sons. Okay, you won't see any of the rest of what I've just said. You'll be dead and gone by the third and fourth generation, but you will see Hophni and Phinehas in that day, and they shall die, both of them. Then I will raise up for myself a faithful priest who shall do according to the desire of my heart and of my mind." Now, it's interesting. because we are getting into who is the faithful high priest. And you will notice that he's capitalizing this in my mind, my, the pronouns, my heart. I will build him a sure house and he shall walk before my anointed forever. Now, wait a minute, who's, when we hear anointed, remember anointed means Messiah. So he is gonna walk forever. And it shall come to pass that everyone who is left in your house shall come and bow down before him for a piece of silver and a morsel of bread. Now, of course, ultimately that's gonna be the Messiah. But he's saying that whoever remains, is going to be poor. And this goes back, and if you read Hannah's poem, she talks about these people being cut off. And she talks about the bows of the mighty are broken and how those who, that they were girded in strength and yet now they are gonna be begging bread. And she goes through this and she's even in her prophetic poem says almost the same thing as this prophet does, a little less poetically. And so she's praising God for what she's doing, and she doesn't even really know what she's talking about. And yet God used that, and now we see that he's using this, and he's reinforcing. He's reminded Samuel or Eli several times, hey, listen, you have no excuse. He says, please. And so there'll be people saying, please put me in priestly positions so that I don't go begging bread anymore. So we notice that this family is going to be destitute and God's going to raise up someone else. and how sad this is, but we see that the generational problems that are caused by weak leadership and men who are in high positions who tolerate sin in themselves or their families. Now, of course, when I say tolerate sin, don't look at me as perfect, but you understand what I'm saying, is that there are certain things that go over the line. And we see that Eli got to the point where he was weak But as kids, because of growing up around spiritual things, became hardened. And you see over in the book of Hebrews, a couple, and this really gets into the hardness of man's hearts. If you go back to, and this gets into real theological issues. When I was in college, we studied the whole idea of who hardened Pharaoh's heart. And you'll notice that Pharaoh hardened his heart, then God hardened his heart. And we noticed that he said, just like he said in Exodus chapter five, he says to Moses, I don't know your God, but he wasn't saying that I don't know of him. He was saying, I reject your God. Just like here, the children of Eli, they rejected God. And so we see that, okay, you reject God and God will start using you. He hardened his own heart first, then God starts hardening your heart to do what he wants to do in a person's heart. God will use you one way or the other. And I think of the book of Hebrews, and you can turn to it if you want, but you might just want to write it down. But there's several repeated warnings to even Hebrew Christians about turning back and so forth. But in chapter 3 of the book of Hebrews, in verse 12, he says, Beware, brethren, lest there be any of you an evil heart, an unbelief, in departing from the living God. Be careful of that. Be careful that you turn away, that you would turn away from God. Was Eli saved? It sounds like he may have been, at least he knew the things of God, but were his kids saved? One of the worst things I would hate to know is that because of my neglect, my kids will spend an eternity in hell because they didn't know God. Wouldn't that be a horrible thing? And so, especially as a pastor, especially as a man of God, how sad. But then we see over in chapter 10, and remember Hebrews is being written to Jews, to Hebrews. But in chapter 10, in verse 26, again, he talks about the hardness of the heart. He says, there remains no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful and expectation of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. And anyone who has rejected Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses." And he goes on, he talks about, be careful of this. Now, what happens, and especially even with the Jews here who turn back into sin, or turn away from the cross, What happens to their family? What happens to the kids? I think we talk about generational things. My kids are always talking about baby boomers and generation X and everything. But I grew up in a generation that we were, of course, the baby boomers. And we had everything that, I mean, we were probably the richest the most educated generation that ever came along. But did it help us? No, we just rebelled against God. And what I saw when I got in the ministry, I would talk to fellow baby boomers, and I would say, listen, you need to be in church. And they would say, I used to go to church, and my family used to make me go to church, and I'm not gonna force my kids to go to church. Guess what? Their grandkids are not in church anymore, and their kids are off in all kinds of sin and all kinds of other things. Now I'm not saying that churches, of course many churches led them into that sin. What I'm saying is the idea was that they were rejecting God. And today we have a generation of children who don't know God. I've talked to you, I've told you about whenever I see someone at McDonald's or some restaurant and they have their name tag and it says Dave on it or David, I'll say, hey, have you heard anything about Goliath? And I have seen three different times where the kid says, who's Goliath? Total biblical ignorance. They don't even know some of the most famous stories in the Bible. How sad that is. How sad it is to see people that turn away from God. They harden their heart. And you say, well, are they saved or not saved? I'll leave that to you. As I said, God is judge. Those people that one time served God and now don't serve him anymore, God hardened their heart. Now, wait a minute, who hardened whose heart? They hardened their own heart. But then God says, okay, if you're gonna go that route, when you go back to Romans chapter one, they did not want to retain God in their knowledge, therefore God gave them over. And he said three different times, he gave them over to do what they wanted to do, go ahead. And we see all the shame and debauchery that they got into in Romans chapter one. And so if you don't wanna serve God, okay, but I'll use you. I'm gonna use you to think about, you know, we think of the monsters of the 20th century. And we think of Hitler. Did God use Hitler? God used Hitler. He wasn't sitting there in heaven and saying, you know, Hitler's gonna take over the world, you know, and boy, I gotta figure out how to stop it. God knew exactly what was going on. And the nation of Israel today is a direct response to Israel's treachery to the Jews in Europe. Did God use him? Now, I don't want to get into the justification of it all, but there again, God has mysterious ways and his wonders to perform. But can God use you? And I've used that example several times. You decide you're going to reject God, go out and get on drugs and get in a car and wreck somebody and kill them. then God has used you because he says it's appointed to a man once to die. And after the judgment, I would hate to know that because of my sin, I helped God do his will with that person's life. You understand what I'm saying? And so, but the ways of God are past finding out. And even here, we see that Eli, In all of his treachery, we see the light at the tunnel. God is always raising up somebody, an unnamed prophet, a little child. Later on, he's going to raise up a teenage boy, the baby of the family. And we see it just over and over again through Scripture. We see Mary, who doesn't even have enough money to make reservations for an inn. We see all these things. And yet in the middle of that, we see that God is on his throne and God is always working behind the scenes or in the scenes to do his will. But he'll work with you or he'll work against you. But if he works against you, it's a fearful thing to fall in the hands of an angry God. And so we see that, Eli, your sin is of omission. You're not that bad. I mean, we don't hear anything that Eli did wrong. But boy, was he wrong when it came to neglect of raising his kids and tolerating sin. And as a result, we see that Israel now is gonna pay a horrible price. And we get into chapter two, they even lose the ark and Shiloh is so corrupt that God wipes it off the face of the map and that's never used again as the place of worship. So God has his ways. But aren't you glad that he has his ways and grace too, that whosoever will may come. And I want to be that light, don't you? I want to be, it doesn't matter if it's bright, but I want to be that light that somewhere, okay, the whole country's going bad, but there's a couple of people down there at Calvary Baptist Church that are wanting to serve me and I could use them. Don't you want that? We could be the light in darkness as God would use us for his glory. Let's pray. We thank you for your grace. We're living in a very corrupt time where every man is doing what is right in his own eyes. We see the corruption that is going on even in religious circles. We see very famous and very well-known spiritual leaders that are leading people horribly astray. And yet, Lord, you still use the unnamed person the unnamed Sunday school teacher, the unnamed church member, the unnamed mother or father who just serves you. And Lord, we just pray that you would use us. And Lord, may we be a light to a darkening world. May Lord, when we get to heaven, see many other bright lights, people who have served you well, and that you have said, well done, thou good and faithful servant. O Lord, keep us from falling. Keep us from turning away from you. Keep, Lord, our children from turning away from you and our grandchildren. For we pray in Jesus' name, amen.