Actually, you know what, for the sake of time, let's just go to Hebrews chapter 4.
Go to Hebrews chapter 4.
I'll read for you from Jeremiah.
Go to Hebrews 4.
It says in Jeremiah chapter 11 verse 20, "But, O Lord of hosts, thou that judgest righteously,
that triest the reigns in heart, let me see thy vengeance on them, for unto thee have
I revealed my cause."
And then in Jeremiah 20 verse 11, it says, "But the Lord is with me as a mighty terrible
one.
Therefore, my persecutors shall stumble, and they shall not prevail.
They shall be greatly ashamed, for they shall not prosper.
Their everlasting confusion shall never be forgotten.
But O Lord of hosts, that tryest the righteous, and seest the reigns in the heart, let me
see thy vengeance on them, for unto thee have I opened my cause."
Sing unto the Lord, "Praise ye the Lord, for he hath delivered the soul of the poor
from the hand of the evildoers."
Think about the confidence that it takes for these men of God to say, "Lord, you know what's
in my heart; you search the reins and the hearts.
I've made known unto you my cause.
I've opened my cause unto you.
You know me, Lord, so Lord, please bless me and destroy my enemies, because you know what's
inside."
Folks, that'd take a lot of confidence to say that.
You better be legit if you're going to say that, and not just in a superficial way in
your mind where you're kind of kidding yourself or telling yourself how great you are, sort
of like the Pharisee that says, "Oh, yeah, you know, I'm a pretty good guy.
I give tithes of all that I possess.
I fast twice a week.
I'm not like this publican."
But you know what?
I'll bet you deep down that guy knew that he's rotten.
Somewhere inside him, and God goes beyond just, "Oh, I think I'll put money in the offering
plate," in the brain.
He goes to the heart and gets the motivation behind that, and he goes into the reins and
sees how you really feel on the most visceral level, even in your subconscious.
The most gut feelings.
He reads that.
I mean, you think it's cool that God reads your mind.
That's child's play.
All right?
He doesn't just read your mind.
He reads your heart, and then he reads even your guts, which is even deeper than that.
Go to Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12, "For the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper
than any two-edged sword, piercing even the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of
the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."
Not just the thoughts, even the intents of the heart, "Neither is there any creature
that is not manifest in his sight, but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of
him with whom we have to do."
Make no mistake, my friend, God knows you through and through.
Not even just that he could read your mind like it's coming up as text on his screen
or something of your internal dialogue.
No, no, no, no, he's dissecting your kidney for crying out loud.
Alright, I mean, he sees right through you.
There's no way to fool God.
You might be able to fool your parents, you might be able to fool your friends, you might
be able to fool the church, but you know what, God sees right through you and he knows what's
going on in your heart.
Do you really love him?
Do you really fear him?
Do you really delight in him?
What are your emotions toward him?
God knows these things.
Everything is naked and open to him.
Even on levels that we can't even understand besides just a mental level.
Even deeper than that.
Let me put it to you this way.
He knows us better than we know ourselves.
Because like I said, we trick ourselves.
The heart is deceitful and we think we know ourselves, but we don't know ourselves like
he knows us.
You know, have you ever had to explain to someone why they're doing something and they
don't even understand why they're doing it and you're like, "Well, no.
This is why you're doing this."
Because sometimes people don't even understand themselves.
But God understands us to the core and even beyond the core, to the rains.
Psalm 16, and if you would, you go to Psalm 149.
This is a really important concept I want to show you about the rains.
Psalm 16 verse 7 says this, "I will bless the Lord who has given me counsel," and I
want you to pay close attention to this phrase, "My rains also instruct me in the night seasons."
Now, stop and think about this.
My rains also instruct me in the night seasons.
How do your rains instruct you in the night seasons?
What are the rains?
I mean, I guess according to the modern versions, it's just, "Well, my mind instructs me in
the night season," or "My brain instructs me."
Did you have something that you wanted to add?
Well, that's super interesting.
I didn't even know that.
So what he just shared was that basically cortisol and melatonin are connected to the
kidneys, waking you up and putting you to sleep at night and waking up some of those
hormones are actually connected to the kidneys.
I didn't even understand that, you know, scientific or anatomical aspect of it.
So that's another thing where the Bible's ahead of its time, you know, making these
kind of connections.
That's pretty cool.
Thank you for that.
But here's the thing about it is that our reins instruct us in the night season.
When I think of the night season, when I think about being in bed at night, you know, that's
when you're really just by yourself and most vulnerable and you're asleep and you're by
yourself and you're alone.
Look if you would at Psalm 149 verse 4, it says, "For the Lord taketh pleasure in His
people.
He will beautify the meek with salvation.
Let the saints be joyful in glory."
Watch this.
"Let them sing aloud upon their beds.
Let the high praises of God be in their mouth and a two-edged sword in their hand."
So here he talks about, you know, singing praises to God in your bed.
And then he talks about your reigns instructing you in the night season.
Obviously, there's a physical component that your reigns literally physically come into
play in your sleep cycle.
But what's the spiritual meaning?
Here's what I took from this.
When I put it together with Psalm 149, with Psalm 16 about the reigns instructing me in
the night season, is that the emotional experiences that bring us closer to God are typically
done in private, not a public display.
I believe he's talking about delighting in the Lord when you're all by yourself, having
feelings toward the Lord when you're by yourself, when you're alone, praising God on your bed.
That's not public.
There's not some webcam set up where you're, "Okay, I'm streaming to everyone from my bed.
This is me praising God," although I'm sure somebody does that in our bizarre society
that we live in.
You know what this is talking about?
Being in bed.
It's like when the Bible says, "When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou
shalt thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret," you know, the bed is representing
privacy.
The bed is representing you're alone.
At night, you slip into your subconscious as well because think about all the things
you dream about.
You're like, "What in the world?
I wasn't thinking about that."
Well, apparently you were.
That came straight from the raids, buddy.
You know, you're thinking about all these wild things.
It's obviously, it came from somewhere.
And so, at night, in bed, we're alone, we're by ourselves, we're not putting on a show,
and the emotional experiences that bring us closer to God happen in private, not public.
Here's why I bring this up, is because today, a lot of times, Baptists would shy away from
ever talking about anything emotional or any kind of an emotional experience because of
the fact that the Pentecostals have kind of poisoned that well, where you've got the holy
rollers, you know, coming to church, falling on the ground, barking like a dog, laughing
hysterically, rolling in the aisles and then you actually know these people in real life
and know that they're not reading their Bible, they're not living for God, but they show
up and have these really wild experiences and they're crying and laughing and it's just...
And I grew up, I remember just even in high school, seeing fellow teenagers come down
the aisle at a public service, get up out of their seat, come to the altar, have an emotional
experience and nothing changed in that person.
The next day they were the same way that they were before.
You didn't see them actually serious about the things of God.
So I think a lot of people, they react to those things and just basically say, you know,
well nuts to emotions.
It's all about fact and our brains and about logic and rational thinking.
And it's all about, you know, just faith in what God said in His word.
And look, amen to that.
That it ought to be, our walk with God ought to be based on what the Bible says in black
and white.
It ought to be logical.
It ought to be rational.
It ought to make sense, okay?
But there is an emotional component to the Christian life that we don't want to overlook.
We don't want to let other people who have abused it ruin it for us.
So because someone has abused it, where they basically, in public, they cry and laugh and
get all wild in public, putting on a show for other people and they've abused this,
we don't want to think that there's no emotional component to Christianity.
And another thing is that sometimes people will base their beliefs on emotion.
Like you'll show them what the Bible says, like you show them, it's right here in black
and white and here's what they'll say, "Well, I know what I felt."
You know, I've had the Mormons tell me that I show them scripture and they say, "Well,
it doesn't matter what you show me in the Bible because I know what I felt."
Now look, I'm not going to base my faith on emotions.
I'm not going to just go with my gut on what the right doctrine is if the Bible says something
different.
I want to make sure that what we believe and preach jives with scripture.
Not just, "Well, this feels right," or, "This doesn't feel right."
Well, I don't care if it feels right.
If it's in the Bible, I'm going to believe it and it's my feeler that's broken, not the
Bible that's broken.
Does everybody understand what I'm saying?
So here's the thing.
I don't believe that emotional experiences should be the basis of our faith.
How do I know that I'm saved?
Is it because I had an emotional experience?
No.
Because there are a lot of people who had emotional experiences that aren't saved.
And a lot of people that are saved that aren't very emotional or didn't have a lot of emotional
experiences.
I don't know I'm saved because of an emotional experience.
I know that I'm saved because of what God has promised in his word.
Because I believe the promise of God, I have faith in his word.
That's how I know I'm saved.
And I don't base my doctrines, I don't say, "Well, you know, I'm going to reject that
doctrine because it just doesn't feel right."
I mean, sometimes those feelings mean something and if something doesn't feel right, it should
maybe prompt us to do further study.
You know, if I hear something, I'm like, "This doesn't feel right, let me search the Scripture,"
and then sometimes it turns out it wasn't right, and I go, "Oh, that's why it didn't
feel right."
But other times something doesn't feel right, but then I study it and the Bible's confirming
it, confirming it, confirming it, my feeler was broken because my reigns were messed up
because your reigns aren't perfect and my reigns aren't perfect.
God wouldn't even be searching the reigns if they were all perfect.
He's searching them because there are problems there.
There are right things and there are wrong things to be found, otherwise there'd be no
point in doing a test.
Testing the reigns, proving the reigns would be meaningless if they're all dialed in.
If you can just go with your gut every time, why is God even searching the thing?
He can just stamp approved on everybody's gut.
No, he's got to try the reigns and the guts because sometimes the gut can be wrong.
So don't base your salvation on feelings.
Don't base your doctrine on feelings, but let me tell you something.
Once you already know what you believe, once you're saved, hey, we ought to have a lot
of feelings toward Christ.
There's something wrong with our heart if we're cold toward the things of God or cold
toward the word of God or if we don't have emotion toward the Lord.
You know, we need to work on that because I can't even count how many spiritual mountaintops
I've touched by myself reading the word of God in the night seasons, not publicly putting
on a show for other people.
Does everybody see the difference?
So are emotions the basis of our faith?
No, emotions are the icing on the cake.
But let me tell you something, I don't want to eat cake with no icing.
I don't want to eat icing with no cake.
You know, my wife makes schnitzel and when she makes schnitzel, you know, the best part
of the schnitzel is the breading on the outside of the meat.
That's the best part and you know, you like that piece of schnitzel that's got a lot of
breading on it.
The breading is the part that tastes the best.
But here's the thing, when she runs out of pork to put into the breading, then she takes
all the additional breading and just fries it by itself with no meat in it and it creates
like this decoy.
It's this betrayal where you bite into it and it's just bread all the way through.
Now even though the breading is the best part, it's no good without the meat in it.
Does everybody understand?
You don't want it, but if you had no breading, now if I had to choose, what would I have?
Just the breading or just the meat?
You know, you're going to go with just the meat.
You know, if you had to choose on a corndog, you know, let me bring it down to your level.
You guys are already eating schnitzel.
Hey, if you had to choose, and I love corndogs by the way, and my wife makes homemade corndogs
too.
If you had to choose on a corndog, would you rather have a corndog that's just the breading
on a stick or would you rather have just a hot dog on a stick with no breading?
Hey, if I had to choose, I'd take the hot dog.
Amen?
Who's with me on that?
Okay.
But the breading is kind of the best part.
You want the breading.
The breading is what takes it to a whole new level.
So think about this.
The hot dog is the word of God, the knowledge of God, and the Bible talks a lot about knowledge.
It talks a lot about knowing, scripture, reading, knowing, learning, understanding.
Look up those words in the Bible.
You're going to find them a lot.
Even more than the rains.
You're going to find those a lot.
So look, the doctrine, the knowledge, the cognition is the hot dog, and the emotional
experience is the cornbread on the outside of the hot dog.
Does everybody understand?
So that's what's going on here.
So we don't want to just say, well, no cornbread for you, or no breading on the meat.
You know, it's just all about the meat.
Folks, we do want to feel deeply when it comes to the things of God, and God wants us to
feel deeply.
And in fact, the deep feelings that we have sometimes can even say more about us than
what we think consciously.
And so God, yes, He searches our mind, yes, He searches our heart, He also searches our
reins.
And what are the reins?
They're the seat of feelings and emotions that are located in our abdomen, metaphorically
speaking.