(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Amen, tonight I am continuing to talk about Paul's third missionary journey and if you remember last time we talked about the young man that had fallen out of the window and so forth and the apostle Paul is on his way back to Jerusalem. That's where the third and final missionary journey is going to end, back at Jerusalem and in his zeal to get to Jerusalem he decides to bypass Ephesus, which is kind of ironic because he just wants to get to Jerusalem so badly even though the Jews are totally unreceptive to his preaching whereas in Ephesus he had some of his greatest success of his entire ministry and it was just a huge success and great things that happened there. So what's funny is that in this chapter as he bypasses Ephesus on the way home when he comes to the town of Miletus, which is close to Ephesus, then Ephesus actually comes to him. They're really eager to see him so as he's passing by they end up traveling to Ephesus to meet him there. We have this great sermon at the end of chapter 20 that's filled with all kinds of practical teachings that we can all apply to ourselves. As Paul gives the final pieces of advice to these Ephesian elders obviously there's a lot for us to take away here as well. It says in verse number 17 and from Miletus, chapter 20 verse 17, he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church and when they were come to him he said unto them, Ye know from the first day that I came into Asia after what manner I have been with you at all seasons serving the Lord with all humility of mine and many tears and temptations which befell me by the lying weight of the Jews. So here we see some of the greatness of the apostle Paul is his consistency. He says look, you know how I have been with you at all seasons, right? The Bible says in 1 Timothy of course the apostle Paul is talking to his protégé in the ministry Timothy, sorry 2 Timothy chapter 4, he says, preach the word, be instant in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. We as servants of Christ we need to be consistent in season out of season. Why is this so important? Well number one is that it's a lot easier to serve God when you're just in the habit of serving God and you just never get out of the habit of serving God. The problem is that when you stop doing something for a period of time you end up just kind of not getting back into it and I'm sure you can relate to that in your personal life or in your professional life. When I'm working on a project I always want to see it through to the end because it seems like if I walk away from it for a few days or a few weeks then I'm just kind of out of that project and it's hard to get back into it. You know when it comes to exercise you'll be running or lifting weights or something, you get out of it for a week or two and it's just so hard to get back into it whereas it's pretty easy to just stay with that habit once it's there. We need to get that way with our Bible reading where Bible reading is just a habit, it's just something we do. Going to church is just automatic. Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night we just get in the car and go. It's not even a question, it's a routine. That's what we need. Those kind of habits are extremely helpful in the Christian life whereas when you decide to take a break you run the risk of just completely getting out of it and I'm sure you can think of lots of practical examples in your own life even of just non-spiritual activities where you took a break and just never quite got back into it. Unfinished projects lying around the house or what have you. And here's the thing about that, a lot of churches when we talk about the consistency of the apostle Paul at all seasons, some churches will cancel certain activities for a season like they'll say, well we're not going to have any soul winning in the winter because it's too cold or we're not going to have any soul winning in the summer because it's too hot. You know I can pretty much guarantee you that the church that's canceling soul winning for the winter or canceling soul winning for the summer can pretty much guarantee you that in the spring and the fall they're not doing much soul winning either. Because if the people were super into soul winning they'd just keep going year round. They wouldn't just be looking for an excuse to quit doing it for three months. Now I understand that the climate can sometimes be extreme and sometimes soul winning needs to be adjusted or maybe we would do less soul winning or something like that. But you don't want to quit altogether because you're going to have trouble getting started again. And I bet you there are a lot of people in this room who have gone through phases where they were soul winning consistently and then they went through phases where they got out of it and then they found themselves, oh it's been three months, well five months because you're just out of the habit. And so we want to strive toward consistency in our Christian lives that we're consistently reading our Bibles, praying, going to church, going soul winning, doing the things that we're supposed to be doing. It's so easy to find excuses not to do these things. But when you skip soul winning once, skip it twice, skip it three times, next thing you know three months go by without soul winning. And so we want to be consistent. That's the first reason. But the second reason why consistency is so important is that it's these little things that just add up over time of just consistently going out soul winning and just winning one person to Christ here and then a few weeks later winning another person to Christ there, a few more weeks, you win someone, you know, and just it adds up. And you know it might not even seem like a lot until you multiply that over years or you multiply that over decades. You know you're just reading your Bible for 15 minutes a day, right? Maybe it's not a huge amount of Bible reading, right? Sit down, spend 15 minutes in the Word of God. But if you're an average reader and you do that consistently, well then you've read through the entire Bible cover to cover in a year, something that I would venture to guess probably 99% of saved Christians have never done in their entire life. Okay. What am I basing that on? Where's my data? I don't have any data. I don't have any sources to cite. But I've been a Christian for decades and I've been around church and I've been around Christian and here's just a wild shot in the dark, 99% of saved Christians have never read the Bible cover to cover and probably never will. And it's a shame. I know that because I've known Christians that have been saved for decades that have not read the Bible cover to cover, all the time. You know in our church it's kind of normal for people to read the Bible cover to cover. People in our church, I'm not going to ask for a raise of hands. If I asked for a raise of hands, way more than half of the building would put up their hand that they've read the Bible cover to cover. People would be raising their hand that they've read it five times, ten times. But that's because this is an extraordinary church. If we went to the average Baptist church, the average evangelical church, those numbers would be pretty low. That's my opinion. That's my anecdotal experience from being a Christian for the last 35 plus years and traveling all over the world and going to churches all over America and all over the world. I'm telling you, most people haven't read the Bible cover to cover. And yet, just that little amount, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, can get you there. But you've got to be consistent, right? If you're just doing it once a week, well, you know, now it's going to take you seven years to get through it. And it's a lot harder, here's what I find, it's harder to be consistent with something like that once a week than daily. Daily habits are the easiest habits to maintain. You know, it's something that you just do every day. Reading the Bible should be daily. You know, obviously some things are more weekly or a couple times a week like church attendance or something like that. But you've got to be consistent in the Christian life or you're going to fall out like Eutychus or you're just going to miss out on the opportunity to accomplish something big. Big things are accomplished one little step at a time, right? The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And so he says, I've been with you after this manner at all seasons serving the Lord with all humility of mind and with many tears and temptations which befell me by the lying and weight of the Jews. And so, you remember in Ephesus and elsewhere, the Jews were the major force that persecuted the apostle Paul. Throughout the book of Acts, most persecution is coming from the Jews. And so, the Jews are lying in wait for him. They're trying to trap him. They're putting him through all kinds of difficult situations. He's getting arrested or attacked over here. And these trials and tribulations, what he calls here temptations, which is another word for trials or testings, these things I think also contributed to his humility of mind, right? Because he had humility of mind, tears, and temptations, which befell me by the lying and weight of the Jews. So, the temptations are the direct result of the Jews persecuting him, right? They're putting him through trials, putting him through temptations, testings, tribulations. That's a direct result. Then obviously that leads to tears, right? You're crying about the stuff you're going through. You're crying because, you know, you're miserable. But then, even getting one step further removed, you've got the humility of mind that comes from going through hard times in your life. You know, I promise you that if I, I know that, as the Apostle Paul said, I know that in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. And I'll tell you right now that if I had gone through life with everything going well for me, everything handed to me on a silver platter, if I would have gone through my school career just acing every class and just being a star athlete and, you know, being on the team and being the MVP and best looking and all the girls are all, you know, giggling and whispering over here about how cool I am or something like that. You know, if that would have been me, I guarantee you, I'd be a rotten person and I would not be serving God right now. I'd be some prideful, egotistical jerk. God allows us to struggle and go through difficult things, pains, suffering, trials, tribulations, tears, to keep us humble so we don't become egotistical, prideful, full of ourselves. You know, at the time, there were so many things that I wished I could have changed about my life when I was in elementary school, junior high, high school, or as a young adult, young married man, a young parent. There were just so many problems that I dealt with. You know, just constant problems and just everything's always hard and you're just wondering, you know, when am I going to catch a break? But looking back, I thank God for all of it and I wouldn't change any of it because of the fact that it kept me from getting prideful. It kept me humble. You know, if you never have any financial problems, you're just going to think, oh, people who don't have money are just stupid or maybe they're just lazy. You know, I mean, as long as you work hard and you're smart, you're always going to have plenty of money. Well, you know what? I've been through some financial problems. I don't talk that way. I don't feel that way. Okay? You know, you go through life just disdaining other people when you just have it all put together. God will allow us to go through these trials and tribulations and to cry those tears that we might be humble, which is super important for our Christian development. You say, well, I don't want to go through all these temptations and pain and suffering. Well, here's a little life hack. Then be humble and God won't have to do as much stuff to humble you. You know, but look, we've all had maybe physical infirmities, physical defects, maybe defects in our appearance, defects in the way our brain works, defects athletically, defects socially. But you know what? These things are there to keep us humble. The Apostle Paul is a great man of God. He has abundance of revelations from God. That's why God had to give him the thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet him so that he would not be exalted above measure, so that he would not get too grandiose or full of himself. And we're the same way, but if you want to go through less temptations, be more humble. And then God won't have to humble you because you're already humble. Whosoever humbled themselves shall be exalted, but he that exalted himself shall be abased. And so he says in verse 20, how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have showed you and have taught you publicly and from house to house. Now, I love what he says here at the beginning of verse 20. I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you. This is in the context of the lying in weight of the Jews. Okay, so Paul is being persecuted. Paul is being attacked for what he teaches and preaches, yet he holds back nothing. He doesn't respond to persecution by saying, hey, I'm under a lot of attack right now, time to tone down the message a little bit, time to sugarcoat the message, maybe make the message a little bit more Jew friendly so that I don't get persecuted by the Jews. That's not his response. He doesn't hold back anything that's profitable. Whatever he knows, whatever he's learned from the spirit of God, he's going to deliver to the people. He's going to teach. He's not going to hold back. No. And there are a lot of pastors today who have all kinds of wonderful insights from the word of God that they're not preaching simply because they know that they're not popular. They know that they're going to get them in trouble or that they're going to get them banned from YouTube or banned from whatever the social media platform. And look, I understand that if there's a sermon that you know is going to get banned from YouTube, you know, upload it to a better site like rumble or something, but still preach it from the housetops. Don't you dare stop preaching the word of God. And forget the stupid internet. What about the people that are in your congregation physically there in the building? They need to hear everything. And obviously that's paramount, but at the same time, I don't think it's right to like, Hey, we're going to turn off the cameras for all the hot sermons. Now, man, put in extra cameras for the hot sermons and let's put those things all over the internet because we should be preaching it from the housetops. Obviously the people that are physically here, you know, this is obviously the most important group in my opinion, the people who have actually come and assembled with God's people at the house of God. But you know what? Let's not forget about the internet either, because there are people out there that need to hear the word of God. We can reach new people. People can be saved, you know? And I wonder how many people go to hell because pastors are just hiding it under a bushel instead of preaching it from the housetops. And you know what's on the housetop today? Here's what's on the housetop. A cable internet coming into the house, right? An electrical wire coming into the house, a radio antenna, a TV antenna, you know, a satellite dish coming. That's what's on the rooftop of the house. Okay. And that's, we need to be preaching it from the housetops. What does that mean? Preaching from the housetops? It means loudly so that lots of people can hear it. And the internet is our tool to do that in the 21st century. And so he says, I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you. You know, if there's something that I learned from the Bible, I need to share that with you and not say, well, people can't handle it. Well, you know what? Ready or not, here it comes. It doesn't matter whether you can handle it. If it's profitable, if it's from the Bible, it's getting preached. And he says, but I've showed you. I've showed you and have taught you. And then notice the two styles of teaching here, publicly and from house to house. Now, what does he mean by publicly? I believe that what he means by publicly is basically public church services or public meeting places, public preaching events, public engagements, right? He says, I've taught you publicly and from house to house. Now, obviously our church services are public in the sense that basically people just walk in off the street and sit down and come to church. They find it on the internet, they show up, they attend church. It's open to the public. Okay. Our church services are also public in the sense that they're being broadcast live over the airwaves of the internet and all kinds of social media platforms. Right? That makes the preaching public as well. So I am teaching publicly right now. Okay. Also, if we were to say, have a preaching event somewhere, you know, we're in another country or something and we rent out some kind of a hall or something and say, Hey, we're going to have this preaching event on Friday night at this time. And we invite everybody and that, you know, that's teaching publicly. House to house is obviously more personal, right? Because if, if I go to someone's house, if you go to someone's house, then you're topping, talking to people pretty much one-on-one and you're giving people the gospel, right? I've taught you publicly and I've taught you from house to house. Now you could say that he's going around and giving each of the members individual home Bible studies or something like that. But rather if we get the context of going house to house in the rest of the New Testament, you'll see that this is an evangelism thing. You know, because for example, in acts five 42, which I believe is in decals on the door over there on the window over there, it says that daily in the temple and in every house, they cease not to teach and preach Jesus Christ. So if they're teaching and preaching Jesus Christ in every house, then we're not talking about just going and visiting the members. Talking about just going to every house and just going up and down the highways and hedges, preaching the gospel, getting people saved. Obviously evangelism is important, preaching the gospel house to house. Now, why do we preach the gospel from house to house? Why not just go to a park and just walk up to people at the park and give the gospel, or why not just walk up to people at other places where people just kind of hang out or just walk down the street, catch people that are walking around and, and give the gospel that way, or why not go to a, you know, a university campus and just say, walk around at the university and give the gospel to the students at the university campus or, you know, wherever the case may be. Well, here's the thing. There's, there's no, there's no problem with doing any of those things. Obviously walking up to strangers and giving them the gospel is a great thing to do. I've had people walk up to me at the gym and, and share the gospel with me. And you know, I rejoice that they were trying to get me saved, but I was already saved. And I've had people walk up to me at various other places and, and, and, you know, seek to evangelize me. People from our church, myself included, have done this style of evangelism. You know, typically when we go to other countries, this is what we'll do in a lot of cases. Like for example, when we were in Cyprus, we found that the older generation was just really unreceptive and that the young people were really receptive. So instead of going door to door, we did some door to door, but we found that it was a lot more effective to just go to the boardwalks and just to the shopping areas and the, the areas of, of downtown and so forth, and just walk up to young people that are just hanging out, guys standing outside of a restaurant, smoking a cigarette or something, and just walk up and give them the gospel. We had more success that way. I'm not against those methods. I think those are good methods. Why is that not our method here at Faithful Word Baptist Church? And why is that not what we organize and emphasize here? Of course, our individual members do those things and we praise the Lord that they're due and we're glad, we're glad that they do. Why house to house for us? Here's why, because we have a church of about 400 people, okay? And out of those 400 people, hundreds of them literally are involved in soul winning. And so here's the thing about that is that let's say we said, Hey, we're going to go to the parks and do soul winning or, Hey, we're going to go to whatever the public venue and do soul winning. And 200 of us are going and doing that. Here's what we're going to find. We're going to keep talking to the same people over and over again. The same people who hang out at that park are going to get talked to like 20, 30 times the same people who go to that shopping area or who go to that recreation area, they're going to get talked to 30 times. Meanwhile, 90 some percent of the people are never getting talked to. And then just the same people who hang out at those particular places are going to get talked to way too many times. Everybody understand what I'm saying? Now on a one off mission strip, this isn't, this doesn't matter. You're going to message when we were in a mission trip in Cyprus, there were like four of us soul winning. We're only there for a week and a half. Well, four people in a week and a half, we're not running the risk of giving someone the gospel too many times and bugging them and Hey, I've already been hit up by 25 you're the 25th person to try to give me the gospel. And we didn't really have an agenda of giving the gospel to every single person in Cyprus because it's impossible with four people in a week and a half. Whereas in Phoenix, Arizona, we have this soul winning force of literally hundreds of people. And so we want to systematically give the gospel to every person in Phoenix. We're not trying to give the gospel to the same person 15 times, and then this person never gets the gospel. The going door to door, the purpose of it, the value of it is the fact that it is systematic and it allows us to actually get to every single person. And so, yeah, we ended up going to a lot of unreceptive doors. We end up talking to a lot of people that aren't interested, but who cares? It's worth it when you get to the person that is interested. And this way we know we're giving everybody a chance. And here's the thing that way when individuals or small groups of guys do decide to go soul winning over here on this campus or over here at this part, you know, it's, it's not already too saturated. It's a nice thing for them. It's, it's, it's, it's wide open for them because the majority of our soul winning force is focusing on the doors. Okay. And this keeps us from being on top of each other and, and repeating too much because let's face it, we actually can knock every door in Phoenix. We actually can knock every door in the entire state of Arizona. We're doing it. Look at the map over there, shaded orange. I mean, that map represents literally about 3 million people plus on that big rectangular map, because those are the most populated parts of Phoenix that are on that map and look how it's almost totally shaded in now that represents of course about 18 and a half years of, of soul winning. Okay. So it took a long time to get there, but we're doing it, we're getting there. And I mean, look, you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The lion's share of it is already done. Okay. And then now we're hitting counties, we're hitting full counties throughout the state. We've only finished one small county, but several of the other counties are more than half done from a, from a population perspective. And so therefore, you know, we actually do have a plan to systematically get it done. Now, if we're just going into a country of millions of people and we're going to be there for two weeks and we got 30 guys, you know, we might have better success just walking up and down the boardwalks and walking up and down the, the, the shopping areas or whatever, and just talking to people. So I'm, I'm definitely not against that. It's just that house to house makes more sense when you have a large force of soul winning and you want to be systematic. So I hope that that helps you understand that. He said, I've taught you publicly and from house to house. Here's what I believe. Here's what I do not believe that publicly means because a lot of people will take this scripture and try to use it to justify what is known as street preaching and what they mean by this is basically yelling at no one in particular on a street corner. Okay, here's the problem with this approach. Okay, first of all, it's not biblical. People will try to claim it's biblical to try to take verses like this and so forth, but literally the Bible specifically says of Jesus Christ. And you'll hear people say all the time, Jesus was a street preacher. This is false. The Bible literally says his voice shall not be heard in the streets. So how's he a street preacher? If it literally says his voice, he shall not strive nor cry. Neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reach shall not break and smoking flax shall he not quench till he sent forth judgment under victory and in his name shall the Gentiles trust. Please explain to me how Jesus is a street preacher. If his voice is not heard in the streets, if no man is hearing his voice in the streets, Jesus Christ is consistently preaching to an audience 100% of the time that he's preaching. Sometimes that audience is one person. Sometimes that audience is a couple of people. Sometimes that audience is a group that gathers to hear him in the temple. Jesus preached in public places to an audience. Now look, I've been in churches where they held preaching services in a park and they had 30, 40, 50 people gathered listening to preaching in a park and strangers would walk up and listen. Amen. Praise the Lord. Here's the problem is this thing of just going and just yelling on a street car. And what's funny is that sometimes they'll literally preach to cars that are driving by. I mean, somebody posted the funniest video of this guy talking about preaching to these cars and we preached to this many cars and it shows the guy he's literally preaching and he's not kidding. It's not a joke. I mean, we thought it was a joke, but cars are the windows are up and he's preaching to the cars. It's absurd. Now I remember when I was in Bible college, I was given an assignment to preach in all these various locations and one of the components of the assignment was to do street preaching three times. So I have done street preaching exactly three times in my life to fulfill this assignment. Now one of the assignments was to preach in a bar and I refused to do it and just took a zero on that assignment because I told the teacher, I said, well, I've never been to a bar in my life and I'm not going to start going now. So there you go. But anyway, I, I went and, and, uh, did street preaching in Chicago and I was like, you know what? I don't want, I don't want to do this. I don't like this. I'm just doing this because I'm, cause I'm not going to do the bar. So I'm already taking a zero on that. You know, I've already zeroed my Yahtzee. I don't want to just get too many zeros here. And so basically I was like, okay, I'm going to just do this street preaching, whatever. And so I was like, you know what? I'm at least going to go find groups of people though. Cause I'm not, I'm not just preaching to cars or no one in particular. And so I went to these places where people were waiting for like a train or something. It's been a while, but it was in Chicago and people were waiting for trains. There's kind of a group of people there waiting. And so I just walked up, pulled out my Bible and just start preaching the gospel to this crowd of people as I'm preaching this crowd of people. And I did this three different times, three similar locations. You know, people are just like trying not to make eye contact. Everybody's just really awkward and just got, you know, and this is before the smartphone was ubiquitous. And so therefore, because people don't have a smartphone, cause nowadays everybody just would have been like this and then it would have been fine. They would have all just been ignoring me, like just, you know, headphones, you know, but this is kind of before the smartphone was everywhere. You know, smartphones were really rare. In fact, now that I think about it, I don't know if anybody had a smartphone. Yeah, they didn't have a smartphone cause this is like, it's like 2004 or something, right? This is, this is 20 years ago. So no, no smart, it was the, you know, I mean, I guess they could have played that little snake game on the Nokia brick phone or whatever, but anyway, you know, or the little tennis game, you know, pong, they could have played that on their Nokia. But anyway, so, so everybody's just kind of like shifting and kind of like, doesn't know where to look, doesn't know where to do with their hands because it was just so awkward. So then I finished street preaching, nobody's making eye contact, nobody's listening. We're talking like 15 people or something on average. Then I walk up to one of the people that was standing there that looked like a nice person that was standing there the whole time I was preaching and I went, I preached a whole gospel, like 10 minutes or whatever. And I walk up to this person and I said, Hey, uh, were you listening to me as I was just preaching? Like, did you understand what I was just preaching? And they said, no, I, I don't know what you were talking about. And then I just said, well, you know, can I just show you from the Bible real quick, how you can know for sure you'd go to heaven? And this person says, sure. And then I proceeded to win this person, the Lord one-on-one. And I'm just thinking, you know, I could have just skipped a step, a really awkward, weird step, and really just walked up to this person, started a conversation and given them the gospel in the first place. And so what was with that other little circus that I did? Well, I was just trying to pass my preaching class. That's what that was. And so it's not effective. It isn't effective. My friend, number one, even the practitioners of this will, will, will tell you that they rarely get people saved doing it number one. So it's just not effective. Number two, sometimes it's just downright annoying and can almost just give Christ a bad name with just the obnoxious, annoying nature of it. Because it's just kind of wrong time, wrong place, awkward preaching that's going on a lot of times. And number three, here's the big one. Every single time, every single time I've personally run into it because look, I've run into street preachers in Tempe. I've run into him in Phoenix. Who's physically in the real life been around street preachers, right? Hey, 100% of the time it was the wrong gospel 100% of the time. Now look, I, I guarantee you that there are saved people preaching the right gospel, doing street preaching. I'm not saying that there aren't. Okay. They they'd be better off soul winning. They'd be better off door to door, you know, doing something that actually works or walking up to people and talking to one-on-one. I know that there are saved street preachers out there preaching the right gospel, but let's face it, my friend. The vast majority are preaching a false gospel, 99%. And that's why 100% of my personal experiences with street preaching have all been heretical. It's always a turn or burn message that tells you to stop sinning and thou shalt be saved. Be willing to stop sinning and thou shalt be saved. That is the kind of garbage that is being preached the vast majority of the time. And I guarantee you that the people who raised their hands would probably testify to the same thing that they hear all this kind of turn or burn type of thing. And you know, and when they say turn or burn, they don't mean turn to Christ or burn. They mean turn from your sinful life and you know, turn over a new leaf and live a good life and do works to be saved. It's virtually always a wrong gospel. Okay. And so when the Bible says, I've taught you publicly, don't think that, Oh, publicly that means screaming in public. His voice is not heard in the streets publicly. He simply means that you're preaching in a public place. You're preaching to the public. You're preaching openly to an audience. What's wrong with street preaching? There's no audience. That's what's wrong with it. It's not, you never find an example. Show me, please show me the Bible. Someone preaching with no audience. Just, just yelling at people walking by and there's no one listening. No one's locked in and paying attention. If you actually read the stories of the old Testament prophets or new Testament preachers, they're always preaching to a group of people that are interested. And by the way, I don't want to preach to people that aren't interested. You know what the Bible says? Give not that which is Holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine. You know, he that hath an ear, let him hear. Why would I want to talk to somebody who's not interested? I'm constantly losing my voice, right? I lost my voice a couple times last week. I lost my voice after the morning service this morning. I'm probably going to be losing my voice by the end of the evening service. I only have so much voice. I'm not, you know, if I was a video game character, I have like a little bar of voice that burns down, you know, and I have to eat a mushroom or something to get it to go back up. And here's the thing about that is that I'm not going to waste my, my HP or VP or whatever on somebody who doesn't care. I want to preach to somebody who's actually listening, not interested in yelling at cars. Okay. Cars shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the Bible says here, top publicly, that's, this is just saying a public church service, you know, a public evangelistic meeting, you know, there are all kinds of ways to preach publicly besides so-called street preaching. Street preaching seems to be just kind of a macho, chest pounding, grandstanding. And typically the street preachers that I've heard from, they're constantly bragging about, Oh yeah, we go, you know, we preach in bars and we preach at casinos and we preach at the queer pride parade and you know, we do all this stuff and it's just like this macho grants it, you know, I put it somewhere between like cow tipping and an eating contest, you know, as far as like how spiritual it is. But the Bible said, let, let's get off that though, move on here, you know, uh, testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. Now again, let me just stop here for a moment and say repentance toward God. Does this say repenting of all your sins in order to be saved? And look, if you have to repent of all your sins to be saved, then none of you were saved because there is not a person in this room who is repented of all their sins. Well, you just have to be willing to turn from all your sins. Really? Cause that's not what the Bible says. The Bible says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. When the Bible talks about repentance with respect to salvation, it's turning from a false God to the true God. It's turning from a false religion to the true religion. It's turning from idols to the living and true God. It's turning from trusting in your works to trusting in what Christ did for us on the cross. It's turning from unbelief to belief. It's changing your mind about who Christ is or what the gospel is. It's a change of mind. It is not cleaning up your life because that would be a work based salvation. Well, it's not cleaning up your lives, just being willing to clean up your, and then they say, well, you have to be so willing that you will do it. You know, you, well, you just gotta be willing to do it. And I always just wonder like, well, which sins do you have to repent of? Which sins you have to repent? Well, it's, it's the one that you're thinking about right now. Whichever one you're thinking about right now, that's the one that's I've literally, I didn't make that up. I wish I could take credit for that piece of comedy gold, but no, I didn't make that up. That's real. Okay. You know, it's that one you're thinking about right now. That's the one you got to give up, you know, but what's funny about this is it's hypocritical because the guys who are preaching this, they have sins that they're not willing to give up. They're not willing to give up. Ho-hos and Twinkies. Even though their body's a temple of the holy ghost. But it's like, oh, you know, you, you gotta be willing to turn from these things, you know, I always ask these people, is it a sin not to tithe? Is it a sin not to tithe? Okay. So you have to be willing to start tithing to get saved. I mean, if you're not willing to start tithing, how can you be saved? You're robbing God. So, I mean, why don't we start selling indulgences now? You're being a sinner, you're being a sinner, you're being a sinner. Buy your ticket into heaven, 10% of your income and you can be saved. Now that's silly and ridiculous, but it's no more ridiculous than saying you have to stop smoking cigarettes to be saved. Right? I mean, that's what, what is that? You know, it says that 500 pound man tells you, you got to quit smoking cigarettes because your body's a temple. Okay. Define irony. Bless God when I got saved, I got all the way saved and I never craved a cigarette ever again. That's not true. You're a liar. You're a liar. Everybody who quits smoking still wants another one. You think people just quit smoking and just never want another one just because, because Jesus, that is a lie because you know what? We still have the flesh. We still have a sinful nature. We still have those cravings and they, you know, bless God. When I got saved, I got delivered from cigarette. Why didn't you get delivered from McDonald's? Because virtually all of these guys are obese telling you, and look, I'm not against the obese. If you're obese, I love you, but you know what? I love you if you smoke cigarettes too. Right? I mean, I mean, or do we hate people that smoke cigarettes? No. Look, I believe that it's wrong to smoke cigarettes. I also believe it's wrong to be morbidly obese. I also believe that it's wrong to destroy yourself in any way because technically we should be caring for the temple of God that he's given us and being good stewards of our health and our bodies. But look, I'm not condemning people who smoke cigarettes or eat a bunch of junk food or do other unhealthy things. Because guess what? I got my own sins and so do you, and I'm not better than you and you're not better than me. We're all, we've all sinned and come short of the glory of God, not appear to condemn anyone. I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of getting up and saying, well, you have to quit your sin, but my sin's okay, right? I'm addicted to Kool-Aid, but you're not allowed to be addicted to chewing tobacco. I'm addicted to Coca-Cola and Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew, and that's why I'm obese, but you're not allowed to be addicted to whatever. What, you know what I'm saying? Like at the end of the day, we're all human. We all have our sins. We all could pick each other apart or pick ourselves apart or whatever. At the end of the day, Christ will save us just as we are. If we believe in him, if we put our faith in him, if we trust in what he did on the cross, not if we're like, doggone it, I'm done with the Kool-Aid. That's not going to do it. Say, well, you're just being stupid. You're just being ridiculous. And you're comparing things that are so different. Yeah, except that, you know what? At other times in history, people thought it was fine to smoke and they thought it was fine to chew tobacco and they thought it was fine to do things. I mean, you know, the, the, the famous Baptist preacher that was the most popular Baptist preacher in London, England in his day, Charles Haddon Spurgeon smoked. What about that? You know, well, did he repent of that? You know, folks, the bottom line is everybody is a sinner. Everybody's got their little blind spot. Everybody's got their little pet sin. Everybody's got their problems and we should all be striving to repent of our sins every day. We should all be striving to live for Christ and do better and get sin out of our life every day. We should strive every day to be better Christians and better people. But at the end of the day, that's not how we get to heaven. We don't get to heaven by being better or trying to be better. We get to heaven because Jesus already died for us and was buried and rose again and we have our faith in his blood. So this whole thing of, well, repent of your sins to be saved is junk. Well, how dare you? That's what all these preachers, I don't care. I don't care if every single, you know, preacher in the world is preaching this. I don't care. It's not true. It's not what the Bible says and it's not logical. It doesn't make any sense. So I don't care how many people are saying it. It's not biblical. It's also absurd because to turn around and what, so it's funny. It's a, oh yeah, it's not works at all. It's all faith. So now you just need to stop sinning. Oh, is that all? Why didn't you tell me before? It was so easy. All I have to do is just stop sending. Great. When do I start? Here's, it's impossible to stop sending. You're going to stop sending when you're dead. You're going to stop sending when you get to heaven. You're going to stop sending at the rapture. You are not going to be sinless. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And the truth is not as the apostle Paul struggled with sin. According to Romans chapter seven, you know, did he not repent hard enough or whatever? It's wrong, my friend. Repentance toward God simply means turning toward God and putting your faith in Christ. Turning to God from idols, turning to God from Judaism, turning to God from Hinduism, turning to God from Islam, turning to God from false gods, turning to Christ from your own works, righteousness, and putting your faith in what he did on the cross. Not this turnover, a new leaf, self reformation gospel. And of course they try to Polish the apple and make it sound like it's not a workspace salvation, but at the end of the day, that's what it ends up being. You know, you have to do, you have to be, you have to change, you have to stop this and start this and whatever. And it's always a selective list. It's never the stuff that they're guilty of. You know, here's one. I think it's a sin not to evangelize. I think not evangelizing is a sin because to him that know what to do good and do with it, not to him, it is sin. You got a bunch of Christians who never evangelize, who go a year without telling someone the gospel of Jesus Christ and how to be saved. They'll go 12 months like that, but they've repented of their sins. Well, that's funny how they didn't repent of that one, you know, and, and, and by the way, they're usually super prideful and they didn't rep, repented that because they're so much better than everyone else, right? Like they're going to heaven because they've turned from so many sins. Whereas these people that are sinful, they can't go. You know, it always kind of blows my mind when people begrudge a sinful person for going to heaven. Like you'll hear people say, well, if he's going to heaven, I don't want to go. Right. You'll hear that. Well, if that person's going to heaven, then I don't want to go to heaven. You know what? I don't care who's gone. I still want to go because I don't want to go to the other place. You know, I don't pick the worst person. If, if, if I get to heaven and God's like, Hey, turns out, you know, this horrible person that you said was going to hell, turns out they are, they are saved and going to heaven. I'm just gonna be like, great. I, you know, maybe I don't want my mansion to be next door to theirs, but at the same time, you know what? I want everybody to go to heaven. As far as I'm concerned, my worst enemy, people that I just despise, if they end up going to heaven, I'm just going to be like, great, cool. Praise God. Like why would I begrudge someone else going to heaven? You know, and at the end of the day, if God forgives them, you know, I'm just going to say, well, you know, God forgave me too. Amen. Now look, the reality though, is that most people are not going to heaven unfortunately, because most people don't believe in Jesus. But at the end of the day, this attitude that says, well, you know, if these people are going to heaven, then that's not fair, you know, that's a weird attitude and you know what? It's the attitude of a person who thinks that they're better than other people and is self-righteous in their own eyes. And it makes you wonder, you know, has this person humbled themselves and admitted that they're a sinner and fully trusted Christ as their savior, or are they hanging onto their own righteousness? We all are imperfect. All of us, you know, some sins are really outward and obvious. Other sins are not outward and obvious, but I don't care who it is. Me, you, him, her look around wherever you want. Don't make it weird, but look around, you know, and guess what? Everybody's a sinner. Everybody's got something that they need to fix about their life. Everybody's got something that they need to deal with. That's reality. That's the true story. And when you get these preachers getting up, acting like they don't have any sins and acting like, Oh, you're still struggling with sin. That's cause you're not saved. You got to give up that one sin. That's the big one for you. What the, so the Bible says here, repentance toward God and faith and our and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. These are not two dramatically different steps. These are just two ways of kind of describing the same thing. Hey, you got to turn to God. Hey, you got to put your faith in Christ. You know, it's not, it's not like, you know, well first you got to repent toward God. That means stop saying what, like, where does it say repent from sin? Repent toward God. What does repent mean to turn, turn toward God, put your faith in Christ. Nothing else to see here, folks. And by the way, uh, if you're curious about other verses in the book of Acts, I did an entire sermon called repentance in the book of Acts, where I preached through every mention of the word repent in the book of Acts and showed that these people are twisting scripture that try to teach this self reformation gospel. But the Bible says here in verse 22, now behold, I go bound in the spirit under Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there, save that save is an old way of saying accept, right? So you're saying like, you know, except this is what I do know. Uh, save that the holy ghost witness it than every city saying that bonds and afflictions by me saying, I don't know what's going to happen, but I just know that everywhere I go, the spirit of God is laying it on people's hearts to tell me that if I go to Jerusalem, I am going to be bound and afflicted. I don't know the details, but that's what I'm hearing. But none of these things move me neither count on my life, dear unto myself so that I might finish my course with joy and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus to testify the gospel of the grace of God. And by the way, the apostle Paul is also an imperfect person. Okay. Now look on the one hand and the, by the way, the characters in the Bible are very complex because they're real people. They're not like the cartoon type characters of the Quran that are either just 100% good or 100% bad. That's not real life. Okay. Real characters, real people have good and bad qualities. We all have strengths, weaknesses, pros and cons. And so what we see here is that the apostle Paul on the one hand is being very bold and brave by saying, none of these things move me. I mean, countless inspirational sermons have been preached. None of these things move me. Amen. And those are good sermons. Neither count on my life, dear unto myself. This is admirable. It's an admirable attitude to have in general, being willing to serve Christ, whatever the cost being steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, finishing the course, finishing the ministry that he's received the Lord Jesus, except that if we actually look at the reality of the apostle Paul's situation, the ministry that he received from God, what did Jesus actually say to him? What did Jesus literally actually say to the apostle Paul? I will send you far from hence unto the Gentiles. That's what Jesus said. Jesus never said, Hey, be sure to hang out in Jerusalem as much as possible and preach to as many Jews as you can. There's nothing like that in the Bible. He said, I'm going to send you far hence to preach to the Gentiles. And so his courage is admirable. His steadfast commitment to the gospel and wanting to finish his course is all good and godly and admirable. But Paul's obsession and fixation upon preaching to Jews and preaching in Jerusalem is not the instruction that he was given from God. And that's why in every city he goes, spirit-filled people are telling him don't go to Jerusalem. And yet he goes anywhere. Does this make Paul a bad person? No, it just makes him human. We all do irrational things. We all make poor decisions at times. And God ends up using the apostle Paul's irrational decision here, ultimately for his honor and glory. Just like when Joseph's brethren sold him into slavery, you know, they were doing the wrong thing, yet God used it for good. So just because God takes a situation and uses it for good and turns it into something great does not mean that it was God's perfect will or God's plan A, right? Because otherwise, see, I can look back at my life and see how things ultimately work together for good in my life. But that doesn't mean I'm going to look back and say, oh, everything I did was right. You know, even this thing I did that was stupid, you know, yeah, I was supposed to do that. No, you weren't supposed to do that. It's just that God turned it into something good. It doesn't mean that it was right when you did it. You know, for example, when I was about 12 years old, my parents became disillusioned because of the fact that we were in an independent fundamental Baptist church and the church ended up having a big church split. And we were struggling to find a new fundamental church. It was before the internet. It was a little bit tougher to find. You're going through the yellow pages. You're making calls. You're visiting churches. And my parents, you know, they got frustrated and they threw up their hands and just said, you know what? Maybe we're just crazy. Maybe we're just wrong. You know, and it's sort of like when David just kind of threw up his hands and said, hey, one day, Saul's going to catch me. I'm just going to the Philistines. And so my parents, they sort of just threw up their hands and said, you know what? We're going to the Philistines. And so when I was around 12, we ended up going to just kind of a liberal Baptist church. It was still conservative by the world's standards, but for us it was liberal because it was like the NIV kind of rock and roll type church. And we went there and we spent about five years in churches like that. You know, when I was 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, we spent like five years in these liberal churches. And of course we suffered spiritually. We were not as godly or spiritual during that phase as we were before or after, because obviously when you're never hearing any hard preaching, when you're in these watered down soft soap type churches, your walk with God suffers, right? But ultimately I could look back on spending five years in those liberal churches and say, you know what? That was really good for me because it kind of showed me what the liberal churches are like so that I realized that they literally have nothing positive to offer because I've already been there, done that, seen it. And now I'm kind of an expert on the NIV's deviations from the King James because I sat in an NIV church for five years with a King James in my lap. And so I became super familiar with the differences and things like that. Is that a positive thing that I'm kind of immune to that siren song of the liberal church? Like, ooh, maybe they have the way. We already went to the land of the Philistines and we checked it out and it's garbage. I have zero interest in the kind of liberal, neo-evangelical, seeker-sensitive type of religion. Been there, done that, seen it, not interested. So God used that in my life to inoculate me from that garbage and to show me in a dramatic way just how lame the NIV is because I had to just listen to so much lameness and I just kind of know how lame the preaching is at liberal churches. And so I got something out of it, but does that mean that it was right for my parents to take me there or that it was right for us to go there? Obviously we should have kept looking. We should have stayed with the fundamental Baptist churches and just not given up. And I'm not criticizing my parents at all. I had wonderful Christian parents that were constantly making sacrifices to drive us all the way across town to get us to the best church. And they were constantly making sacrifices to put us in the best Christian school or get us across town to the best church. They were constantly doing what they felt was best for our family spiritually. I'm not faulting them at all, but obviously they're human. We're all human. We've all made mistakes. And so the point is, yeah, I could look for all the good things and how God ultimately used that to make me a preacher that could preach against that stuff effectively since I've been there and I'm preaching from experience, not from theory. But yet that doesn't mean that it was right for us to do that. Just like it wasn't right for them to sell Joseph into slavery. Just like it wasn't right for Paul to be obsessed and fixated on preaching to the Jews when God is sending him somewhere else. Now at the end of the day, the what of God's will is more important than the where of God's will. And we should never fixate on geography. Don't get fixated on geography. Think more about what you're doing than where you're doing it. You can serve God anywhere. It doesn't have to be a specific location, okay? And so focus on doing the right thing. Don't just, I've got to be at this location. I've got to be at this place no matter what. But you know, we all get sometimes those kind of monomaniacal irrational ideas stuck in our head and we get stubborn. And I have no doubt that that's what's going on with the apostle Paul here. I think if you study scripture, because a lot of preachers will try to justify everything Paul does and acts like, no, no, no, he's supposed to be going to, he's supposed to shave his head. He's supposed to do an animal sacrifice. No, he's not supposed to do an animal sacrifice. Jesus already died on the cross, buddy. It was stupid. But there are always people that are going to try to justify everything that Paul did. You know, Quran style Bible interpretation where the hero can do no wrong, right? Saturday morning cartoon style Bible exegesis where the heroes can do no wrong and the villains can do no right, okay? This is a wrong way to look at the world. It's not biblical either. But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself so that I might finish my course with joy and the ministry which I've received of the Lord Jesus to testify the gospel of the grace of God. Inspirational words from the apostle Paul, wonderful words, words that deserve to be preached, but that doesn't change the fact that he is misapplying his own message here because it's so funny to me also and I'm going to end on this point because I'm out of time, but it always is kind of funny to me when people will talk about things that they did by faith, but it's something that God never told them to do. Well, I'm just doing this on faith and it's like there's no instruction to do that, but I'm doing it by faith. What does that even mean? Faith must have an object, right? If I'm going to say I did this by faith, that will faith in what? Faith in the word of God. You know, by faith, Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. Why? Because Abel is following instructions. Cain is given an instruction and he disobeys the instruction. God gives Cain a second chance to get it right and yet Cain refuses to follow the instruction. Faith is following the instruction that God has given. It's not just saying like, well, I'm just going to step out in faith and do what I want to do and I'm living by faith because I'm doing what I want. You know, you can't really say you're doing it by faith unless there's an object of the faith which would be like an instruction from God, a mandate from God, some kind of a verse in the Bible or something like that. And so a lot of people will just be ready to die on some hill that God never even told them to die on. A place that God never sent them. Does everybody understand what I'm saying? So here's the thing. I am willing to die on certain hills. I'm willing to die for Jesus Christ, but you know what? I'm not willing to die for my own little personal project that has nothing to do with the Bible. I'm only willing to die for something that God has commanded me that I have to do. You know, if I were in a certain place and I just said, you know what? I'm just going to preach in Phoenix until the bitter end. You know, let me just be honest with you. Let me tell you this. If the persecution got so bad in Phoenix that I'm going to be killed for preaching the Bible, I will go somewhere else. I'm just telling you that right now. I'm not just going to be like, oh, I'm staying no matter what. Just go ahead and shoot. You know what? Look, you know, I'm out of here. When they persecute you in the city, flee into another. But that being said, I am supremely confident that I will live in Phoenix for the rest of my life and preach the word of God here until the bitter end. Why? Because Phoenix isn't going anywhere. The United States isn't going anywhere. That's my opinion. That's my belief, okay? Now, obviously during an election year, everybody always believes that the sky is falling, right? You know, you listen to the debate or you listen to what people are saying. And it's the same thing we heard in 2020. Same thing we heard in 2016. Same thing we heard in 2012. And this is what it is. If the other guy gets elected, we're doomed. America's over. America's finished. Now look, I usually take zero interest in politics. I didn't even know that that debate happened until a few days after it happened. But you know what? I was in a weird mood and so I decided to actually watch the thing. And boy, was it a doozy. And look, my friend, you know, as long as you don't take it too seriously, it was hilarious. It was just an hour and a half of comedy gold. I mean, I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. I was in stitches. I was, but you know, one of the things that stood out was, you know, the familiar rhetoric of America's gone if this guy gets elected. Like it's the end of America. I'm pretty sure both of them said something like that. Like if he gets elected, we're done. But you know what? You know what I remember? I remember people saying, if Obama gets elected, kiss America goodbye. If Obama gets a second term, kiss America goodbye. If Biden gets elected, kiss it goodbye. I mean, have we heard this before? Isn't it amazing how we're still here? And you know what? I'm sorry, but I don't, obviously in general, the world is getting worse and worse. I get that. And evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse. In general, the world is going to get worse until Christ returns. I believe that. I am premillennial. Okay. But that being said, you know, it does, it's not just a bobsled to hell, my friend. It is, it has its ups and downs. It ebbs and flows. And let me tell you this, some things have gotten better in the last 20 years in America. I mean, you know, Roe versus Wade was overturned. That was cool. You know, and I look, I've lived in Arizona for 18 and a half years. The laws have consistently gotten better. Like almost every year, there's some new law to get excited about of how they're giving us more freedom in Arizona. I mean, I could get up and just list for you over the last five years, five wonderful new laws that were passed that are just making it better, just getting better, getting better. I think it's because God's blessing God's people for doing so much soul winning in Arizona. I mean, if you knock every door in a state, God's got to throw you a bone and give you some cool laws. Hey man, it's only fair. You'd think, right? Hey man, we're, we're knocking the doors of millions of people and God's blessing us. And we're, we're living in a nice place. And so the point is that some things are getting better. Some things are better than they used to be. Some things are worse than they used to be. There's an ebb and a flow. Do not get caught up in this apocalyptic, the sky is falling mode that people are just constantly in. You know, yes, Christ may return in our lifetime. Even so, come Lord Jesus. We would all love for Christ to return in our lifetime. We would all love for that to happen, but at the same time, you know what? He might not return in our lifetime, right? So therefore we don't need to just have this always apocalyptic attitude that just, it's over, man. I mean, this is it, this election. They're just trying to get everybody hyped up about the election cause they're politicians. They're trying to energize their people to go out and vote. That's why it's just like, you know, Hey, this it's going to be over. If he gets like, look, if either Trump or Biden gets elected, America will continue. And you know what? I don't even care because look, here's the thing. Obviously one of them is going to be better for the economy than the other. But here's the thing. If the economy is bad, that just makes more people get saved. When the economy is bad, the soul winning, it goes great. I remember the great recession back in oh seven and oh eight and everything. Well, the soul winning was fantastic. I mean, we're, you know, that's good, right? And you know what? We were, we all made it. We all survived and we got a ton of people saved. You know what? You know what? If the economy is good, we can all just enjoy a good economy. That'll be cool too. If the economy is bad, we'll get more people saved because people will be more humble. Who cares at the end of the day, the sun's going to come up in the morning. I'm going to read my Bible. I'm going to enjoy my relationship with Christ. I'm going to enjoy my relationship with my family. I'm going to enjoy my church family. I'm going to enjoy serving God. I don't care what happens out there in the open. America's going to be gone. Look, I firmly believe, and look, I'm not claiming to be authoritative on this. I'm not saying I'm clairvoyant. I'm not being prophetic right now. I'm just, I'm just telling you my opinion. My opinion is that I'm going to live to be a hundred years old and America is going to be fine 58 years from now. When I'm a hundred years old, America is still going to be fine. That's my opinion. Now, most people probably disagree with me because they're, they're so plugged into all this, uh, doom and gloom. I think America's, I think 50 years from now, America is still going to be fine. Now I'm sure there'll be more fags and weirdos walking down the street. And we can all puke about that, but at the same time though, we're still going to be here and serving God and preaching and still winning. We just might puke in our mouth a little bit, a little bit more than we do now with all the weirdness. But even that stuff kind of goes back and forth. Because my friend, it's gotten so weird now that I think it's even getting too weird even for secular people now. Because it's getting so gross. It's getting so weird. I think that that agenda might move a little backward at some point because it might, when it gets too faggedy, even unsaved people that are just halfway normal are going to be like, whoa, they're tiger. You know, let's slow down this train. Ultimately, I understand that the trajectory is downward. I get it, but there can be little periods of revival. Like look at Judah's trajectory was downward. You know, after Manasseh, they were for sure going to get destroyed. God promised they were getting destroyed, but yet you get a little revival under Josiah. Hey, why don't we just live that Josiah life and go to the grave serving God in the land of Goshen and we'll be just fine. Don't get sucked into all of the doom and gloom all the time. Because of the fact that, you know, it's probably going to be fine. That being said, if it did just get horrible, I would leave and go somewhere else because I'm not married to any particular geography. Now it would take a lot to drag me away from Phoenix because number one, Phoenix is the best place to live in the world. And number two, Phoenix is the best place to live in the world. And also number three is that, you know, I just don't think it's good for pastors or people in general to just be constantly bouncing around. That's why I pastored the same church for 18 and a half years. And I would like to pastor the same church for the rest of my life because I don't think it's good. There's something to be said for staying in one place. Okay. But the reason number four is that Arizona is just objectively superior to everywhere else. And I think that's a great place to end the sermon. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Lord, we thank you so much for this great teaching from the apostle Paul. Even though he's human, Lord, he has some wonderful, practical advice. Obviously he is a greater man than I will ever be, Lord. And so thank you for the apostle Paul's wonderful example, but Lord help us to learn both from the things he did right and even the mistakes that he made, Lord. And please help all of us to stay focused on spiritual things and stay consistent and serving you. And in Jesus name, we pray. Amen.