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learn from this episode in the tribe of Asher where they get right with God in the days of Hezekiah. Well, the most important thing that we'll learn is the importance of being humble with regard to getting right with God, okay? Anytime we get right with God, it's gonna take some humility because by very definition getting right with God is to admit that we're wrong with God. You know, we've got a problem. We've been doing something wrong. We made a mistake. We need to change. And today, unfortunately, we live in a society that's very much like that northern kingdom of Israel today. Why? Because we live in a society that mocks and scoffs at the things of God and is filled with pride and is more interested in being American, is more interested in being right and just doing what their parents have done or just following the crowd or whatever than actually doing what's right and getting right with God. And as a nation today, unfortunately, our culture is being de-Christianized. And so in the past, being American in the past, you know, would have probably meant that you have respect for the things of God or that you worship the Lord because in history our country has been a Christian nation. Now, not necessarily the leadership. People would point to, you know, founding fathers that were wicked or something or something wrong with this founding father or that founding father or that our government did wrong things back then. But I'm talking about the people of the country, not necessarily always the leadership, but the people of our country have historically been Christian. America has been a Christian nation where the vast majority of people, whether saved or unsaved, would have claimed the name of Christ, would have respected the Bible, and it was a part of the culture in America that we would have known the Bible. People knew the stories of the Bible. They would have known who Samson is. They're gonna know about Noah's Ark. They're gonna know who Moses is. They're gonna know the basic disciples, Peter, James, John. But today, my friend, we're living in a day where people don't even know who those people are. You know, they could name all their Disney characters. They could name the Marvel comic characters. They could name your DC comic characters and superheroes, but they couldn't tell you who Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are today. And I'm telling you, I talk to people all the time. I'll go out soul winning, and I'll be talking to somebody about the gospel, and maybe they're having trouble understanding something. And so, you know, I want to bring in a Bible story and kind of illustrate them. I'll be like, well, you know, are you familiar with Adam and Eve? No. Like, huh? Okay, you know, you'd be talking along. Well, you know the story about Jonah and the whale? Who? Oh, that Pinocchio getting swallowed by a whale? No, no, I'm talking about Jonah getting swallowed by a whale. They're like, no. You know, Samson? You familiar with Samson? No. I'm telling you today, children, teenagers, and even young adults are completely unfamiliar with these stories, but it was not so in the past. You know, I read a chronicle of my family history on my mom's side that went back about 150 years, and in that chronicle, this branch of the family at this time was not even going to church. They weren't Christians. They probably weren't even saved, you know, let alone living a Christian life, but yet in this chronicle, it talked about them reading the Bible and telling Bible stories, and they didn't even go to church. It was just like, they're Americans. It was just kind of part of our culture, who we were as a nation. Even up through the 1960s and 70s, it was still that way, okay? It's only very recently that our country is being de-Christianized, where that stuff is being removed from the culture, and where now to be an American is no longer to be Christian. I remember my grandpa went soul winning, you know, 50-some years ago. He knocked on a woman's door and said, are you a Christian? She said, well, I'm not a cannibal, you know, and to her, those are the two choices. You know, you're a Christian or a cannibal. You're a Christian or a savage. Like, what did she mean by that? She basically meant, well, isn't everybody? Why? Because in the culture, virtually everybody would have identified as Christian, whether they're actually saved or believe the Bible or not, they would have identified that way. Now, more and more, even in the last 16 years of pastoring, I knock on people's doors, and more and more, you ask someone, are you a Christian? They say, no, and more and more people are even hostile toward Christianity. They're not Christian. They don't claim the name of Christ. They don't know anything about the Bible. They don't know the stories. They don't know the teachings of the Bible, and they want nothing to do with it, because our country, our nation, is being de-Christianized, even though historically we've been Christian, and that's kind of similar to the northern kingdom of Israel. You know, historically, these people do go back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They do go back to Saul and David and Solomon, who were all three men who believed in and worshiped the Lord. But now, they're at a time in their history where they've been de-Christianized, you know, and obviously they weren't Christian because the Old Testament, but I'm obviously relating it to today, right? They've been de-Old Testamentized, but you know, they've been de-Christianized would be how we would look at it today, right? And so we can relate to a lot of this, and we could see that the northern kingdom of Israel has a lot in common with our country today, and today we have people that mock and scoff at the preaching of God's Word. You know, somebody gets up and calls America to repentance and preaches out against the wickedness and the vile things that are going on, and they basically end up like your pastor. Pastor Jonathan Shelley, right? They end up getting lambasted, mocked, hated, you know, just googling your church, or looking up your church on YouTube. You know, there's all this junk that comes up of people just attacking and hating on the church, and you know what? They are filled with pride. They're scorners. They're scoffers. They're mockers at the things of God, okay? And that's what we see in this day, where they laughed them to scorn and mocked people who are preaching the Word of God. You know, I used to say that Pastor Shelley was probably the second most hated preacher of the new IFB, but I can't say that anymore because he's the number one most hated preacher of the new IFB. Way more people hate him than hate me. You know, I'm starting to feel popular. You know, I'm starting to feel beloved compared to him because, man, he has been attacked hard. You know, you need to pray for him and support him because he is standing up for God and the Bible in a time when it's not popular to do so, and when he will be attacked and laughed and scorned and mocked by the wicked, but why does he keep preaching? Why continue to serve God? Because you're doing it for those divers of Asher that are gonna humble themselves and get right with God, and that makes it all worthwhile, those few people that you can reach, and so today in America, if we as individuals are going to be right with God, we've got to humble ourselves and realize, hey, we don't have it all right as a nation, okay? We have drifted from God. We have become wicked. You know, we need to be different than the people around us in 2022 because our country's going a wrong direction, and that was hard for these people to do. You know, they had to admit, hey, the northern kingdom of Israel is wrong. We need to get right with God.