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🎵Music🎵 You You You You You You You You You You 96 God leads us along 96 God leads us along And shady green pastures so red So rich and so sweet God leads his dear children along Where the water's cold flow Bays the weary one's feet God leads his dear children along Some through the water Some through the flood Some through the fire But all through the blood Some through great sorrow But God gives a song In the night season And all the day long Sometimes on the mount Where the sun shines so bright God leads his dear children along Sometimes in the valley In darkest of night God leads his dear children along Some through the water Some through the flood Some through the fire But all through the blood Some through great sorrow But God gives a song In the night season And all the day long Though sorrows befall us And Satan opposed God leads his dear children along Through grace we can conquer Defeat all our foes God leads his dear children along Some through the water Some through the flood Some through the fire But all through the blood Some through great sorrow But God gives a song In the night season And all the day long Away from the mire And away from the clay God leads his dear children along Away up in glory Eternity's day God leads his dear children along Some through the water Some through the flood Some through the fire But all through the blood Some through great sorrow But God gives a song In the night season And all the day long Great singing, brother Stephen. You open us in a word of prayer. Good, God. Thank you so much for the opportunity to worship again in your house, Lord. I pray that you would bless our fellowship and bless the preaching tonight. And thanks for loving us and taking care of us, Lord. Jesus, you've been great. Amen. Amen. Our next song is song number 97, one page over. 97, I need thee every hour. I need thee every hour On the first I need thee every hour Most gracious, Lord No tender voice like mine Can peace afford I need thee Oh, I need thee Every hour I need thee Oh, bless me now, my Savior I come to thee I need thee every hour Stay thou nearby Temptations lose their power When thou art nigh I need thee Oh, I need thee Every hour I need thee Oh, bless me now, my Savior I come to thee I need thee every hour Enjoy your pain Come quickly and abide For life is made I need thee Oh, I need thee Every hour I need thee Oh, bless me now, my Savior I come to thee On the last I need thee every hour Most holy one Oh, make me thine in deep Thou blessed Son I need thee Oh, I need thee Every hour I need thee Oh, bless me now, my Savior I come to thee Love our announcements. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to Striepe Foundation Baptist Church. Let's take our bulletins and go through the announcements. We need a bulletin. We have two left. They go to the highest bidder. Anybody need one? Just raise your hand if you need one. Anybody besides kids? Kids are reprobate concerning these things. On our front cover, we have our verse of the week. It says, He is the rock. His work is perfect. For all His ways are judgment, a God of truth. And without iniquity, just and right is He. Deuteronomy 32, verse 4. Great passage scripture there. On our inside page there, we have our service times. 10 30 a.m. for our Sunday service and Sunday evening service. 3 30 p.m. Thursday, Bible study, 6 30 p.m. We're in 1 Chronicles, chapter 7. We're going to finish up the chapter this evening. And our soul wanting times, our list of below, we had soul wanting today. We had two salvations. So praise the Lord for that. And if you look down, you can see the praise report. The salvations, baptisms, we had a baptism. Joe got baptized back there. That's Joe. So because he got baptized, he's now the newest member of our church. So make sure that you congratulate him and shake his hand if you didn't get a chance to do that on Sunday. And so congratulations, Joe. And then on our event side there, we have multiple events to look forward to here. The sixth anniversary of our church plant up in Canada is this coming weekend. We have Brother Justin Zong preaching tomorrow night at 7. I think it's at 7 p.m. Pretty sure it's 7 p.m. It could be 6 30. But if you're looking to just put some extra preaching in your diet, you might want to check it out. So Brother Justin is going to be preaching a sermon. And then there will be a soul wanting marathon. I don't know if it's a soul wanting marathon, but there's a soul wanting time on Saturday, a barbecue. So if he wanted to do a last minute plan to get up to Canada, it would definitely be a good time. And then I'll be preaching there on Sunday. And I'll be preaching also in Seattle, but mark out the 18th. I'm not going to be preaching that day. But the 29th, I'm going to be up there for a p.m. service only. And Spokane will be Friday night, the 20th, which is next Friday. Not this Friday, but next Friday. And then I'll be in Yakima on the 25th, which is a Wednesday. September 28th, we're having a soul wanting marathon. It's the fifth Saturday. So I kind of made the announcement that every fifth Saturday, which is every quarter basically, we'll be having a soul wanting marathon someplace. And I think that we kind of came up with St. John's. Was that kind of the purported area that we're going to be going to? So we'll have to find a place where we can break for lunch. And I know there's a Dairy Queen there, but I don't know if that Dairy Queen can handle our stuff. They might be overrun and quit. But we'll try to figure something out that we can go to that's fairly close. But we're going to have some maps. We're going to go to St. John's. We'll probably have to meet. I'm not sure we're going to meet either. We might have to meet someplace at a coffee shop. We'll try to find someplace we can all meet up. And if you can't make it to the whole thing, just show up at halftime. So we'll hit it like we do our normal times. We'll have a meetup spot for the coffee and some kind of bagels or some kind of breakfast-y type thing. And then a lunch and then a couple more hours, and we'll be done. So I'll be in the St. John's area. So it is in Portland, just right across the I-5 bridge. And it's been pretty receptive for us in the past, and we're going to hit some places that we haven't hit before. So that's pretty exciting. And hopefully it will be a nice weekend, and we can maybe hit some walker buyers. That's good to just get some kids that might be walking by and give them the gospel, right, or just anybody walking by. All right. And then September 29th, we're going to have our next men's preaching night. So if you're a man and you want to preach and you've got a King James Bible, which you should, and you're willing to wear a tie for that night, I'd like you to get in there and preach. That'll be the 29th. October 5th and 6th is our family and friends weekend. We're going to have Pastor Jimenez here visiting with us for the weekend, and he's going to be going to the pumpkin patch also with his family, and we're going to enjoy some time at the pumpkin patch like we do every year. We should have the sign-ups up pretty soon. And do you want to do that, Jude? All right. Can you get that up and then make sure there's a space for two years old and younger so there will be two different times to choose from. It's going to be 11 or 12 on Saturday, and then Pastor Jimenez will be preaching for us on Sunday night so that way you Sunday morning onlys have a good reason to come on Sunday evening. So looking forward to that. And then October 27th, we're going to be having a super soul winning Saturday, so that's different than the soul winning marathon even though the time is kind of similar that we'll be going out. But it will be a noon meetup. So what we're doing is instead of having a Saturday soul winning time, we're going to have just a once a month soul winning where we go out for four hours. And if you can't make the full four hours, I understand, especially if you have a family, kids just aren't really built for going out for four hours straight, and some adults aren't either. I understand that. But if you want to show up for maybe even just for the second half of that or whatever, and obviously you're welcome to take a break in the middle, eat a sammy, slurp down some food or some coffee and then keep going, whatever you want to do. But we're going to call that the super soul winning Saturdays, and that will be just once a month. It's usually going to be around the end of the month. And then October 31st, we're going to have a chili and cornbread potluck before church on Thursday and a game night. So that will last until about six o'clock. We'll clean up. We'll have church. And if anybody wants to stay and hang out afterwards, you're more than welcome to do that. And that'll be, like I said, before church on Thursday. It's not a contest or a competition, but still do your best. And we can have like everybody gets a trophy or something like that if you want. But I just know how competitive you guys are. And now as far as the beans and the meat, the chili, all that stuff, we're not in Texas, so fear not. Neither be dismayed. You can have beans in your chili if you want. But I do like the beanless chili. I like both. We'll have to see what happens in the service afterwards. If there's a lot of people running to the restroom or something, we might have to just like discontinue the beans the next time or something. I don't know. But it'll be a good time. And notice I put cornbread there. So it's not right. It's ungodly. It's dug up out of hell to not have cornbread with chili. So I'm not saying if you bring chili, you have to bring cornbread also. But I'm saying if there's chili here, there must be cornbread brought too. I think that that was the manna in heaven. That's just my theory. Or from heaven. That might be heresy. Yeah, you're right. So, okay. Other things coming up. The Faith Award missions conference November 6th through 10th. And then Dr. Phil Stringer preaching for us on the 15th of December. And all the other stuff about being family integrated. You all know that. And let's see, the tithes and offerings that came in for August are down at the bottom of the page. Paul didn't get happy birthday sent to him, so we're going to sing. Is he not here? That little jerk. Where's he at? Alright, we sang Happy Anniversary to Timo and Alejandro though. We'll have to give Paul birthday spanking since he missed twice. Now he gets to spanking instead of being sing to. Alright, that's all I have for announcements. Go ahead and sing another song and we'll receive the offering after that. Next song is song number 100. Day by day, song number 100. Day by day, 100 on the first. Day by day and with each passing moment Strength I find to meet my trials here Trusting in my father's wise bestowment I've no cause for worry or for fear He whose heart is kind beyond all measure Gives unto each day what he deems best Lovingly it's part of pain and pleasure Mingling toil with peace and rest Every day the Lord himself is near me With a special mercy for each hour All my cares he faint would bear and cheer me He whose name is counselor and power The protection of his child and treasure Is a charge that on himself he laid As thy days, thy strength shall be in measure This the pledge to me he made Help me then in every tribulation So to trust thy promises, O Lord That I lose not faith, sweet consolation Offered me within thy whole word Help me, Lord, when toil and trouble meeting Heir to take as from a father's hand One by one the days the moment's fleeting Till I reach the promised land Great singing. We'll have our ushers come forth to receive the offering. Brother Jesse, will you pray for the offering? Lord, we thank you for all that gathered here this evening. We ask that you bless this service, bless pastor who preaches to us, and bless this offering, bless those who gift and give us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you. Thank you. Chapter 7, 1 Chronicles 7. As is our custom, we'll read the entire chapter of 1 Chronicles 7. Would you please read along with me silently as we start in verse 1. Now the sons of Issachar were Tola and Puah, Jashub and Shimron four. And the sons of Tola, Uzi and Rephiah and Jeriel and Jamai and Jibsam and Shemuel, heads of their father's house, two-weight of Tola. They were valiant men of might in their generations, whose numbers was in the days of David two and twenty thousand and six hundred. And the sons of Uzi, Israel and the sons of Israel, Michael and Obadiah and Joel, Isaiah, five, all of them chief men. And with them by their generations, after the house of their fathers, were bands of soldiers for war, six and thirty thousand men, for they had many wives and sons. And their brethren among all the families of Issachar were valiant men of might, reckoned in all their genealogies four score and seven thousand. The sons of Benjamin, Bella and Bekair, Jediel and Jediel three. And the sons of Bella, Esbon and Uzi and Uziel and Jerimoth and Idi, five, heads of the house of their fathers, mighty men of valor, and were reckoned by their genealogies twenty and two thousand and thirty and four. And the sons of Bekair, Zemirah and Joash and Eliezer and Elioani and Omri and Jerimoth and Abiah and Anathoth and Alamet. These are the sons of Bekair. And the number of them after their genealogy by their generations, heads of the house of their fathers, mighty men of valor, was twenty thousand and two hundred. The sons also of Jediel, Bilhan and the sons of Bilhan, Jeush, and Benjamin and Ehud and Genaa and Zethan and Tarshish and Ahish-Azhar. All these the sons of Jediel by the heads of their fathers, mighty men of valor, were seventeen thousand and two hundred soldiers, fit to go out for war and battle. Shupim also and Hupim, the children of Ir and Hushim, the sons of Ahir. The sons of Naftali, Jaziel and Guni and Jezer and Shalum, the sons of Bilhah. The sons of Manasseh, Ashriel, whom she bear, but his concubine, the Eremitis, bear Makir, the father of Gilead. And Makir took to wife the sister of Hupim and Shupim, whose sister's name was Ma'akah. And the name of the second was Zelophehad. And Zelophehad had daughters, and Ma'akah, the wife of Makir, bear a son, and she called his name Peresh. And the name of his brother was Sheresh, and his sons were Ulam and Racham. And the sons of Ulam, Bedan, these were the sons of Gilead, the sons of Makir, the son of Manasseh. And his sister, Hamolacheth, bear Eshod and Abiezer and Mahala. And the sons of Shemitah were Ahian and Shechem and Lykhi and Ania. And the sons of Ephraim, Sheuthala and Berid his son, and Tahath his son, and Allada his son, and Tahath his son, and Zabad his son, and Sheuthala his son, and Ezer and Eliad, whom the men of Gath that were born in that land slew, because they came down to take away their cattle. And Ephraim their father mourned many days, and his brethren came to comfort him. And when he went in to his wife, she conceived and bear a son, and he called his name Beriah, because it went evil with his house. And his daughter was Shera, who built Beth-horon, the nether and the upper, and Uzin-shera. And Rephah was his son, also Resheph, and Telah his son, and Tahan his son, La'adan his son, Ammihud his son, Elishamah his son, Non his son, Jehoshua his son. And their possessions and habitations were Bethel in the towns thereof, and eastward Naaran, and westward Gezer with the towns thereof, Shechem also in the towns thereof, unto Gaza in the towns thereof. And by the borders of the children of Manasseh, Bethsheon and her towns, Ta'anach and her towns, Megiddo and her towns, Dor and her towns, in these dwelt the children of Joseph the son of Israel, the sons of Asher, Imnah and Isua and Ishuai and Beriah, and Sarah their sister, and the sons of Beriah, Heber and Malkiel who was the father of Beersavith, and Heber begat Japheth, and Shomer and Hotham and Shuah their sister, and the sons of Japheth, Pasach and Bimhal and Ashvath, these are the children of Japheth, and the sons of Shomer, Ahi and Rocha and Jehuba and Aram, and the sons of his brother Helam, Zophah and Imnah and Shelech and Amal, the sons of Zophah, Suah and Honefer and Shual and Beri and Imrah, Bezer and Hod and Shama and Shilcha and Ithran and Be'erah, and the sons of Jethur, Jefuneh and Pispa and Ara, and the sons of Ullah, Ara and Haniel and Rezia, all these were the children of Asher, heads of their father's house, choice and mighty men of valor, chief of the princes, and the number throughout the genealogy of them that were apt to the war and to battle was twenty and six thousand men. Brother Robert, would you pray for us? Amen. All right. Well, it's been a while since we've been in First Chronicles, but we are going to pick back up. I didn't get to finish the chapter before I left to England. I kind of got stuck in Issachar. So, also, I went to Neftali. There was one verse about him, so there wasn't really a whole lot to talk about with him. And really, when you get to Asher, there's a little bit about him at the very end, but he really doesn't factor in very much. Some of these tribes, of course, they're the sons of Jacob and they're of the tribes of Israel, but some of them don't really factor in a whole lot. Of course, Benjamin factors in a lot, Judah, and some of the other tribes. But we're going to go through Benjamin, Manasseh, Ephraim, and Asher tonight and finish off this chapter here. So, we're going to start with Benjamin tonight in verse number six, and it says, verse number six, the sons of Benjamin, Bella, and Boettcher, and Jediel, three. And the sons of Bella, Esbon, Uzi, and Uziel, and Jerimoth, and Eri, five. Heads of the house of their fathers, mighty men of valor, and were reckoned by their genealogies twenty and two thousand and thirty and four. So, the descendants of Benjamin, the sons of Benjamin, there's one thing that you can say about the sons of Benjamin is that they had a lot of great warriors in their ranks. And even when you have them protecting the Sodomites later on when their whole tribe is almost wiped out, it takes all the rest of the tribes to do that. All of them combined together to beat them. And even when they first come against them, it seemed like it's going to be a massacre, but the children of Benjamin actually beat back their forces pretty handily in the first battles, and they think, well, is this really God? Does God really want us to come up and defeat them? And he does, but I think the lesson learned in that battle is that when brethren fight, that there's going to be casualties on both sides. And so it's just an ugly thing. When you think about it, they're representing, like we are the Israel of God in the New Testament, so they, in the Old Testament, they're brethren, not just brothers as in the twelve sons of Israel, but their tribes are brethren as in the people of God. So when brethren fight, and just like in modern day when Christians fight, then it's ugly, it can get public, and then it can get to where there's casualties happening on both sides, and it's just not a good thing. So, but here you have these mighty men, it says they're mighty men of valor, and this chapter really kind of encapsulates and shows us that there's some pretty mighty warriors in a lot of these tribes. And it kind of highlights these different sayings about their different troops, mighty men of valor. And when the Bible uses the term mighty men of valor, it's talking about that they are great warriors, they're courageous in battle. But just because someone's a mighty man of valor doesn't always mean that they're good guys. Sometimes when it says that they're mighty men of valor, yeah, they might be brave, they might be great warriors, they might be well skilled in the art of battle, but it doesn't mean that they're good guys. So we'll get to that here in just a few minutes, but look at verse eight, well actually it's just given off these names, but yeah, look at verse eight, it says, And the sons of Becher, Zemirah, and Joash, and Eleazar, and Eleoniah, and Omri, and Jerimoth, and Abia, and Anathoth. Now Anathoth, that's the place, a city is named after him, and if you remember, Jeremiah's hometown, that's the name of his hometown, where he is actually from, is Anathoth, and then all of the relatives that lived there wanted to kill him. But anyway, that's just something that my memory banks pulled up, and it says, And Alometh, all these are the sons of Becher, and the number of them, after their genealogy, by their generations, heads of the house of their fathers, mighty men of valor, was twenty thousand and two hundred. And the sons of Jedahiel, Bilhon, and the sons of Bilhon, Jeush, and Benjamin, and Ehud, and Chenana, and Zethin, and Tharshish, and Ahasuer. And so when you see that name, Ehud, Ehud should spark your memory to the book of Judges. Now let's go ahead and turn to the book of Judges, and we'll see the story of Ehud, because he was a left-handed man, and he was one that God raised up to be the savior for the children of Israel during the time when the Moabites were ruling over them. Look at Judges 3, 15, the Bible says, A man left-handed, and by him the children of Israel sent a present unto Eglon, the king of Moab. Now this isn't the kind of present that you actually want to receive, though. It says, So that's about eighteen inches is the length of a cubit in that time, and it says, And he did girt it under his raiment upon his right thigh. So most people, when they're looking for weapons, they're checking, you know, people for weapons, they're going to look for something, some kind of hidden thing on the opposite side, because most people are right-handed. So this is a pretty clever thing that he's doing here, because they're not looking for something where someone's going to reach for something with the left hand. And it says, And he brought the present unto Eglon, king of Moab, and Eglon was a very fat man. And when he had made an end to offer the present, he sent away the people that bear the present, but he himself turned again from the quarries that were by Gilgal and said, I have a secret errand unto thee, O king, who said, Keep silence. And all that stood by him went out from him. And Ehud came unto him, and he was sitting in a summer parlor, which he had for himself alone. And Ehud said, I have a message from God unto thee. And he arose out of his seat. This is pretty gangster for him to say, actually. He's like, I have a message from God for thee. And he had put forth his left hand and took the dagger from his right thigh and thrust it into his belly. So that's the message from God. You're dead, buddy. And the haft also went in after the blade, and the fat closed upon the blade, so that he could not draw the dagger out of his belly, and the dirt came out. So this is a very interesting little set of words here. So the first thing I want to kind of point your attention to is that the word of God is called the two-edged sword, right? It's sharper than any two-edged sword. So he says, I have a message from God to you, and he makes this dagger that's got two edges to it. So right there you have the similarities of, I got a word from God from you, and it's actually a real dagger, a real two-edged sword. And it's so sharp that when he sticks it into his gut, it just completely goes all the way into his gut. And so if the haft goes in, the haft is like the bottom part of the sword, right, where you hold onto it. So his hand had to go into the gut also. Like he stabbed, it was so sharp he stabbed him. You know, it's an 18-inch dagger that goes all the way in with the haft, and his hand is probably in there too. So he can't even pull the sword out because his hand is in his belly, his fat belly, and he just has to let it go, right? So like, you probably wouldn't see necessarily a bunch of blood because, you know, it's just like the fat, he's so fat that the fat just encloses over the top of it. And then it says, and the dirt came out. Now, the dirt, you know, most people don't have dirt inside them. So what it's actually talking about is excrement or doo-doo for the kids out there. I don't want to get too nasty out here, but he stabbed him and then like the dagger went down and the doo-doo came out, right? So that's what it's talking about. I'm trying to keep it PG here. So then Ehud went forth through the porch. So like he stabbed him and then the guy, he's just dead, right? And so he's in his summer parlor. Ehud went forth through the porch and shut the doors of the parlor upon him and locked them. Then when he was gone, his servants came and when they saw that behold the doors of the parlor were locked, they said, surely he covereth his feet in his summer chamber. So this is another euphemism and they probably smelled what came out, the dirt that came out. And so they probably think, you know, he's going number two, okay? Surely he covereth his feet. So like, you know, when you're going to the bathroom, guys, they cover their feet with their pants, right? So anyway, that's what's happening here. And it says, and they tarried till they were ashamed. You can always get some good potty talk. Potty talk's always going to get laughs out of the kids, for sure. And it says, and they tarried till they were ashamed. And behold, he opened the doors of the parlor. Therefore they took a key and opened them. And behold, their Lord was fallen down dead on the earth. And Ehud escaped while they tarried and passed beyond the quarries and escaped to Saraiath. And it came to pass when he was come that he blew a trumpet in the Mount Ephraim, excuse me, and the children of Israel went down with him from the mount and he before them. And he said unto them, follow after me, for the Lord had delivered your enemies, the Moabites, into your hand. And they went down after him and took the fords of Jordan toward Moab and suffered not a man to pass over. And they slew of Moab at that time, about 10,000 men, all lusty and all men of valor, and their escape not a man. So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel and the land had rest four score years. So that man, just standing up at the right time and being that judge of Israel for them, that great victory lasted them 80 years. So during the time of the judges, there would be these guys that, you know, the Israel would start messing up and worshiping idols or worshiping Baal. And then the children of Israel would be getting persecuted and afflicted for what they did for the sin that they were committing. And then God, then they would turn to the Lord because of their affliction and then God would hear their cries and he would send someone to save them. So that's kind of like a repeating theme in the book of Judges and really pretty much all through the Bible. But it's interesting how they would call them a savior in the book of Judges. So that's one of the great men of Benjamin that rose up in the time of the judges. Now back to our text in 1 Chronicles 7-11, it says, So you see how it keeps repeating these terms when it's talking about the children of Benjamin fit to go out to war and battle. And it says, So, of course, there's tons of other famous men in Benjamin, of the tribes of Benjamin, but we'll probably go through more of that when we hit Saul's genealogy next week. But also, I was talking about how the tribe of Benjamin almost went extinct because of the fact that they were protecting the Sodomites. People want to just say how God's just okay with Sodomy now and we should just let them come into church and we should try to minister to them and all these things. And the wicked things that they do, God is just not okay with. And he's not okay with them being part of the congregation, he's not okay with them being in society at all. And so they commit this great crime where they basically rape this woman that's a priest concubine and they kill her in the process. And it's told to all the different tribes of Israel and they want justice and so they go to the tribes of Benjamin and say, give these men up so that we can put them to death. And so this is kind of where we're at. Let's turn to Judges chapter 20. And this is a significant story in the history of the children of Benjamin. It's actually a major point in the Bible when it concerns Benjamin because they really become a smaller tribe because they're so small that like, I think I was talking about last week in the dancing sermon where at some point they have to go catch their brides because nobody will give their wives to them because they promise not to give their daughters to be wives to their sons. So Judges 20 verse 11 says, and this is again a case where the valiant mighty men are not good. So we saw a case where the valiant men are doing good and doing right but here's where they're not doing good. So Judges 20 verse 11, of course way deeper into the book of Judges says in verse 11, So all the men of Israel were gathered against the city, knit together as one man. So you've got all the other 11 tribes against one tribe. And the tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribes of Benjamin saying, What wickedness is this that is done among you? Now therefore deliver us the men, the children of Belial. So when the Bible uses the term the children of Belial, it's talking about people that are reprobates. It's talking about the sons of the devil is what it's saying. And it says, and they're sodomites. The Bible says they're sodomites. So when it's saying they're children of Belial, it's saying, hey, these people are reprobates. They're sodomite reprobates, okay? And it says, which are in Gibeah, that we may put them to death and put away evil from Israel. But the children of Benjamin would not hearken to the voice of their brethren, the children of Israel. But the children of Benjamin gathered themselves together out of the cities into Gibeah to go out to battle against the children of Israel. And this is what you see in modern day Christianity where there's churches like this church here and other churches like it that are trying to take a stand against this wicked stuff. And then you've got other churches saying that we're evil because we're preaching against it. We're evil because we take a stand against it. And in reality, they're the ones that are wicked. Who is God siding with in this story? When the children of Israel, they ask God, should we go up and fight against our brother? And God says yes. And so when we fight this battle and other Christians come against us, God does want us to fight this battle. And if other Christians come up against us, does he want us to fight the battle against them? Yes, he does. So when they start coming with all this fruitcake message and saying how we're not unloving or that we're unloving and we're hateful and all this other stuff, it's like, hey, no, you're the one that's wrong. The Bible is right and what God says is right. And it says in verse 15, And the children of Benjamin were numbered at that time out of the city's twenty and six thousand men that drew sword besides the inhabitants of Gibeah, which were numbered seven hundred chosen men. So the problem with choosing family over what's right in God's eyes, you know, this is a case where family is fighting family right here. And so you have a problem when you're choosing your family over what's right in God's eyes, right? Because, you know, people say, well, blood's thicker than water. And look, that's true with a lot of people. That is a true saying. But when it comes to God, God is supposed to be number one. And so if someone in your family is saying, hey, you're supposed to love me more than you love all other things, it's like, no, no, no, you're wrong about that. And so when they were fighting with Benjamin, they're like, no, God's law is above what you're saying to us. You want to protect these freaks? You're wrong. And so what they're doing is right in God's eyes and if they wouldn't have done that which was right, then God would have tried to destroy the whole nation. So whether it's in churches or in friendships, in choosing sides over family squabbles or whatever, choosing right is always the right thing to do. Choosing what's right according to the Bible is always the right thing to do. That's what you stand upon is the word of God. It doesn't matter what someone's opinion is. It doesn't matter what the issue is. You stand on the word of God, not on the side of your friend or not on the side of your family member or whatever the pastor of the church says because pastors will say a lot of different things. But if they're not preaching what this book says, then they're wrong. If they're not standing on the word of God, then they're wrong. If they say that the Old Testament doesn't apply to us at all anymore, they're wrong because it does still apply. It applies in the moral law. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable to us for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be perfect and thoroughly furnished unto all good works, right? So look, all scripture means the whole thing. And maybe not everything still applies to us directly as far as some of the dietary laws and those types of things but everything still can apply to us in spiritual things. But there are things that do specifically still apply. If someone murders somebody else and in cold blood they premeditated, that is still the death penalty today in God's eyes. That's the right thing to do. Now of course, we're not the ones that carry out those sentences. It's supposed to be the government. We can't control what the government does. We can advocate for those things but it doesn't mean that they're gonna do it. So verse 16 says, among all this people there were 700 chosen men left handed. So talk about the Benjamites here. Everyone could sling stones at an hairbreadth and not miss. So a hairbreadth is what? It's like the width of a hair, right? So there were chosen men left handed and could sling stones. So they're throwing these stones and they could throw it with a hairbreadth and not miss. So we're talking about some really accurate stone throwers here. And the men of Israel besides Benjamin were numbered 400,000 men that drew sword. All these were men of war. So what's the spiritual application to this? Well, what ends up happening is they destroy the children of Benjamin eventually. And what's the application? We'll never side with God's enemies for any reason. Especially God hating Sodomites and people that hate the Lord. We should never side with people that hate God. If someone is trying to attack our churches and they're a Sodomite, we should never side with them for any reason. Because you already know that if they're attacking our church that they're wrong instantly when they're a Sodomite. There's nothing right about them. They hate our church, they hate our God and so they have no redeeming quality whatsoever. Nothing that they're doing is wholesome. They don't really love our kids. They don't really love the women in our church. And this is how they always try to attack all the time. We care about the kids. We care about the women. We want the women to be free at this church like you're just our slaves or something here. This is what they act like. And then they want to take pictures of them outside when they come and protest our church and stuff. They're freaks. And we should have nothing to do with them whatsoever and we should never side with them for any reason. Should we love those and help those that hate the Lord? No, not for any reason. And nothing makes me more angry than saved believers that put pastors and Christians down in favor of God hating reprobates and sodomites. Nothing makes me more angry than that because it's like even if you don't agree with us on the topic, how are you gonna choose someone that you know hates God over someone that is saved? Even if you think that we're just wrong about that issue, we're still saved. We're still saved and so if we are wrong about that, which we're not, but even if we were wrong about it, you're still gonna pick someone that hates God? What's wrong with you? That just tells me that they're not men of truth. So another lesson we can learn here when it's talking about being fit for the war. Well what does that mean exactly? Well if you apply that to our spiritual lives here in 2024, we're not going out to literal war where we're fighting with weapons of steel and things like that. So what does that mean? Well you know pray it up. Well we always go out and we pray before we go out soloing. What about fit to go out for war? Well how about having a Bible in your hand? There's churches where they'll just walk out with cards and they don't even carry a Bible with them or they'll just carry half a Bible or whatever. You should have a Bible. It should be marked up. It should have verses. You should have memorized verses. That's fit to go out for war, right? How you gonna go to war if you don't even have your sword? How you gonna go to war if you don't know how to present the warfare? How are you gonna put your battle in a ray if you don't know how to use the weapons of your warfare? You gotta have your battle in a ray and have sin in check in your life and if you haven't confessed your sins before God in a while maybe you should do that. Or how about putting on the whole armor of God? God commands us to, you know, if we want to be able to fend off the enemy that we should have the whole armor on, right? That includes those gospel shoes, right? We should have boldness. We should pray for boldness. We should be fearless and again have that two-edged sword, that dagger ready to go. Prepared. We should be prepared, ready, trained of the right mindset when we go out. And look, even today I still go through times when I'm like, you know, when you go to a door you feel a little uneasy and like I've been doing this a long time. Like there's no reason why I should feel that way and I just feel like when I feel that way that's the enemy trying to make me feel that way and then that's what makes me like I don't really want to do this but I'm gonna do it anyway and that's when you have to push through and like change your mindset because I feel like that's when something great is gonna happen when you're out soul winning but fit can also mean that you need to be physically ready. We need to be able to be physically ready to get out there because let's just face it soul winning is a physical challenge sometimes and yesterday we were in Seattle and Seattle has a lot more hills than it does here and so it can be a little bit more challenging. We're in these two cul-de-sacs and like it's my turn and suddenly we've hit all these steep driveways and flights of stairs and I'm just like and then there's just like we turn around this bend and there's like it says all deliveries in the back and I'm thinking oh this is like a big driveway to the house right here and it's like no it's another house down at the bottom of this canyon or something down here. So me and Sean walk down there. He's kind of my partner where we're with him and we're with Alex too. Alex stands at the top of the hill. He's like marking out cards. He's putting the right dates on. Where are you Alex? Oh he's over there. He's a smart guy. I was just like Alex get down here but you know you just and I was huffing and puffing when I got to the back of the top of that hill and I was like praying that the next door didn't answer because I was out of breath but I should have been doing that. That was wrong. But you know it does help to be ready to fit and ready to go because you never know when you're gonna be in the hill territory right? You're gonna be where the iron chariots are in the hills or whatever. But you know I mean some of it does have to do with physicality when we're out there. I mean it does help to be able to have enough stamina to go out and go for an hour or two or three out soloing so eating some healthy food and getting some regular exercise is probably a good idea. And then if you have physical ailments rest up. I mean people get injured so but rest up but always have the mindset that you're gonna get back and fit and ready to go back to war if possible because I always talk about the shelf life. You do have a shelf life in this life and there's gonna come a day when you might not be able to get out and go soloing so you never know when it's gonna be your last time out soloing and the older you get the more ailments you get, the more your back starts hurting, the more your legs start, your knees are getting bad and it's just take the time to do it when you have the time and be fit and ready for the war. So and then now let's look at Manasseh in chapter seven verse 14 the Bible says the sons of Manasseh, Asheriel whom she bare but his concubine the Arimitis which Mecher the father of Gilead. So the Arimitis, so Arim was one of the sons of Shem which they settled in the area where the Armenians are. So the Armenians claim that Arim is their father and Armenia is a really ancient place and they claim that that's where Noah's Ark landed and they're like the descendants of, they are the descendants of Noah if they're the descendants of Shem, right, because Shem and so when people say we're anti-Shemites or anti-Semites, I don't have anything against Armenians so anyway but it says the concubine the Arimitis so I mean the sons of Manasseh, so there's some intermixing here of different people here but like they're still in the same family and really it doesn't matter. Like Josh, there's certain, we've already gone through some of this where there's people that were Kenites that were just led into the tribe and they were counted as one of the children of Israel. It didn't really matter. It was that they inherited in the tribe not because of their bloodline but because that's where their lot fell. So in Genesis, you don't have to turn there but Genesis chapter 10, 21 says, unto Shem also the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth the elder, even to him were children born, the children of Shem, Elam and Asur, are Faxed, Lud, and Aram, and the children of Aram, Uz, and Ho, and Gethur, and Mash. So in verse 15, and Mature took to wife the sister of Hopham and Shepham whose sister's name was Makah and the name of the second was Zelophahad and Zelophahad had daughters. So now you'll probably remember that from the book of Numbers where the daughters of Zelophahad, he didn't have any sons and this controversy came about where they didn't have an inheritance and so they're asking if they can get an inheritance because their dad didn't have any sons. So go ahead and turn over to Numbers chapter 27. People will say, well, the Christian religion or the God of the Bible doesn't care about women and that women are looked down upon and it's really funny because Jesus, the first person that he appeared to when he rose from the dead was Mary Magdalene. He loved Mary Magdalene. He loved Mary of Bethany. He loved all those women. They took care of him. Mary of Bethany wiped Jesus' feet with her tears and anointed him with oil. They took care of him. Do you think he didn't love them? Of course he loved them. But people get this weird idea that God just didn't love women. Of course he loves women. Of course he loves females. I mean, that's just bizarre. Just because God has things a certain way doesn't mean he doesn't care for women. He just has different rules for men and women and people just have such a hard time with that and if people just accept the rules that they're in, they would be a lot better off and have a lot more of a joyous life. You see the women in the Bible, they're just so happy when they can finally have a child when they've been barren. That's what they strove for. They weren't striving so they could go get a job at Taco Bell or something or go have a nursing job somewhere. They could finally get free and wear a pair of pants at some job where they're serving other people. That's not what you see in the Bible of the godly women. They were striving to what? To want to have children and want to please their husbands and stuff like that. It's not like what you see today. There's a great big brainwashing going on in our world today and it's against the patriarchy. The patriarchy is the father and the son. The son saved us. God sent the son into the world to save us and it's not the mother and the daughter, it's the father and the son. Whether you like that or not, it's just the truth. He didn't just come to save men, he came to save women too. It doesn't matter but that's just what the Bible says. It shouldn't upset anybody. But look at Numbers chapter 27 verse one. The Bible says, Then came the daughters of Zelophehad, the son of Hephir, the son of Gilead, the son of Makar, the son of Manasseh, of the families of Manasseh, the son of Joseph, and these are the names of the daughters, Malah, Noah, Hagla, Milka, and Tirzah. And they stood before Moses and before Eleazar the priest and before the princes and all the congregation and the doors of the tabernacle of the congregation saying, our fathers died in the wilderness or excuse me, our father died in the wilderness and he was not in the company of them that gathered themselves together against the Lord in the company of Korah but died in his own sin and had no sons. Why should the name of our father be done away from among his family because he hath no son? Give unto us therefore a possession among the brethren of our father. And Moses brought their cause before the Lord and the Lord spake unto Moses saying, the daughters of Zelophehad speak right. Thou shalt surely give them a possession of inheritance among their father's brethren and thou shalt cause the inheritance of their father to pass unto them. And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel saying, if a man die and have no son then shall you cause his inheritance to pass unto his daughter. And if he have no daughter then ye shall give his inheritance unto his brethren and if he have no brethren he shall give his inheritance unto his father's brethren and if his father have no brethren will give his inheritance unto his kinsmen that is next to him of his family, and he shall possess it, and it shall be unto the children of Israel a statute of judgment as the Lord commanded Moses. So, God doesn't want women to just go without. You know, he said no, they speak right. They do, they should have a possession. They shouldn't just have their father's name go out. And so, it's not like God is just unfair and doesn't want women to have things, but look, the message of the Bible, though, is that the Son inherits, and it's a picture of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, inheriting all things, and then he shares all those things with all of us. Is that so bad? Oh, the patriarchy's so bad! No, the patriarchy is so good, because the Son inherits, the Son of God inherits all things and shares it all with us. That's good! We inherit with Jesus Christ. Women and men. We all inherit with Christ. The patriarchy, good. Feminism, bad. Feminism, ugly. Feminism, weird. Look at verse 16 back in our text. Sorry, that was the feminism break there. And, Micah, the wife, verse 16, the wife of Micah bare a son and called his name Peresh and the name of his brother was Sheresh, and his sons were Ulam and Rekim. And the sons of Ulam, Bedon, these were the sons of Gilead, the son of Makor, the son of Manasseh. And his sister Hamalokith bare Ishad and Ebiezer and Mahala, and the sons of Shemaedah were Ahian and Shechem and Lyki, Lyki, sorry, Lyki, Lyki. Looked like Lyki, it's like a Hawaiian name or something. And I am. All right, so, who are the famous men? We don't really have time to get to them, but there's a judge of Manasseh who was Jair. And they judged in Judges chapter 10, verse three through five if you want to write those down to look at them later. He judged for 22 years. And then of course you have the most famous of the judges of Manasseh, which was Gideon. We don't have time to go through all that either, but I wish we did because it's a great story. But Gideon was also a great man of God. And that's found in Judges chapter six, verse 11 through 16 where God just straight out calls him as he's threshing wheat, the least of his house, and says, and calls him a mighty man of valor. So, and he hadn't even done anything yet. But God just knows what his character is. He knows what he's gonna be like. And calls him a mighty man of valor. So anyway, so Manasseh also had a unique inheritance where they have an inheritance on the east side of Jordan and they have an inheritance on the west side of Jordan. They have two spots because their tribe is so big. Because remember the blessing of Jacob was what? That Joseph would be a fruitful bow, right? And so the two biggest tribes are Ephraim and Manasseh. And so Ephraim inherited a lot of space and so did Manasseh. So that's their blessing, but in the end, Ephraim really just kind of went off the rails and so did Manasseh. But anyway, so some application here to finish off Manasseh. Again, women are loved and just as important to God as men are. And the picture again of inheriting as the only begotten son the first born son is an important picture in the Bible. That's why it's stressed so much the first born son gets the double portion and so on and so forth. But today there's this big movement to rip the patriarchy out. There's this big movement to rip the patriarchy out. Root and stem. And to just totally feminize men, give them the bird leg pants, tell them to skip leg day, drink soy milk until you grow boobs, all this other stuff and support feminism. That's a bunch of trash. We need to have men that look manly. Cut your hair guys, pair your nails, look manly. Don't put fingernail polish on. You look like a queer, okay? All these guys. I see like NFL players like painting their fingernails. You look like a faggot. What is wrong with you? Growing your hair long. You look like a woman. Is that what the goal is? You're trying to look like a woman? Why? It's just sick. Why would you want to look like a chick when you're a man? And this is the soy milk that's being passed around the families today, and it's not acceptable. And look, it's not acceptable in God's house. That's why there's rules about it in the Bible. And look, telling girls that they can beat up guys and making all these movies where women are actually beating guys up in the movies is not helping women at all. As a matter of fact, it's getting them beat up. Like you don't want women to get beat up? Well then, I mean just, I see videos, unfortunately, of women stalking these guys at school and just walking up and like, you know these guys don't want to hit them. It's obvious. It's obvious they don't want to hit them. But then they're just like finally the girl will throw a punch and hit this guy and then he smacks her back. And then they're just horrified that he hit her back. Don't hit guys. Are you stupid? This isn't a Marvel movie. Look, She-Ra, you're not tougher than guys. If you hit a guy, look, I don't agree with men hitting women but I also don't agree with women hitting men. Keep your hands to yourself. And if you think that you're just gonna walk up to some hair-legged guy and you're gonna beat him up in some stupid movie, you're wrong about that. That's right. If you just take one smack to the face, you're gonna find out real quick you're not even close to as strong as a man is. These movies are not helping you, Wakanda forever. It's not gonna, look, Wakanda's gonna be knocked down on the ground, whatever. You're not as tough as a man. These movies are not helping you at all. So quit, I mean, quit with the whole these women can beat up men in these movies it's just ridiculous. It's not true, it's never gonna happen. If a woman accidentally beats up a guy in real life, it was a fluke. Or the woman was just abnormally strong for her size, the exception proves the rule. And the guy was super weak. Abnormally weak and small, also the exception to the rule. All right? And not aggressive, maybe he's been skipping late day and sipping soy milk his whole life or something. That's the only way that's happening. But look, feminism is a failed attempt to try to take hold, and look, yeah, the corporations can try to make it so, and they can strip all the men of the CEO positions, and look, you know what, it's a failed attempt when the city of Portland brings in all these women to try to take over the management jobs of construction jobs, and they've never dug with the shovel in their whole life. They've never even come out to the construction sites. They don't even know what they're looking at. They just wear a white hat and come out and walk around with a notebook in their hand. They have no clue what they're doing. They're counting beans. And then they wanna tell men how to do their job that have been doing it for 25 and 30 years. Are you kidding me? This is why the trades are failing. This is why this world is failing, because people are denying reality in all realms. You have to call that person a woman. No, I don't. No, but that's what she identifies. I don't care. I'm never gonna call that thing a woman. I'm never gonna call that thing a man. It's not happening. I might call it a they then, because they're possessed by many devils, but I'm not gonna call that thing a man or a woman. It's a freak. It's not happening. Anyway, brethren, let's go on. To the descendants of Ephraim. Verse 20. And the sons of Ephraim, Shuthala and Barad, his son, and Teyhath, his son, and Elada, his son, and Teyhath, his son. And Zabad, his son, and Shuthala, his son, and Ezer, and Eliad, whom the men of Gath that were born in that land slew because they came down to take away their cattle. And Ephraim, their father, mourned many days, and his brethren came to comfort him. So this is just like telling a story, a specific story about Ephraim himself, about losing some of his sons to the men of Gath. Now the men of Gath are what? That's where Goliath was from, right? So I mean, these guys are probably a lot tougher than his sons in reality. Maybe they were giants, but that's because that's where the giants were from, is from that place. It's where the Philistines are from. And so he's upset about this, and says that when he went to his wife and she conceived and bare his son, he called the name, his name Bariah, because it went evil in his house. Now, you're like, why is he telling this story? And I think it's, you know, it does go evil in his house, but what's interesting though, is that later on here in a couple little generations, there's the vengeance comes. Because, well I'll show you where it's at here. Let's keep going. And his daughter was Shireh, who built Beth Horan and the nether and the upper, and Uz and Shireh, and Rephah was his son, and Resheph and Teilah his son, and Tehan his son, and Leiden his son, and Amahud his son, and Elishama his son, and Non his son, Jehoshua his son. So, Nun, or Non, this is Nun, the father of Jehoshua, this is Joshua. So, you know, he was, thought it was going bad for his family, but, you know, just a few kids down there, some grandkids later, is Joshua the son of Nun born. And Joshua goes in and conquers all these places and hangs their kings on trees. So, which of course he does picture the Lord Jesus Christ, he's probably the greatest man ever born of Ephraim, and he's a great man of God, he helps Moses, and he basically is the understudy of Moses and then takes the children of Israel into the Promised Land. It says their possessions and their habitations were Bethel, which of course means the house of God, and the towns thereof, and eastward Naren, and the westward Gezer, and the towns thereof Shechem, also in the towns thereof, and unto Geza, and the towns thereof. So, that word Gezer, that's what people call each other, that's what you call a man in England. Like, if someone says that guy's a proper geezer, then that's a good thing. Here in America, if you call someone a geezer, you might be getting your teeth knocked out, right? And usually the term geezer in America is talking about an old geezer. Nobody ever says, like, hey, geezer, what's up? It's like, hey, you old geezer, what do you think you're doing? Or, you know, which is disrespectful, but it usually means like an angry old, mean old man or something, right? But really, the word is, in England, it's like a proper, not a proper term, but it's just like, you know, it's a good thing to call somebody. And if you call someone a proper geezer, then that's an extra special blessing to be called a proper geezer. Just, it has nothing to do with the sermon, but like, I like that word, geezer. Anyway, so I'll let you know a little bit of English history there. So, and so then it says, unto Geza, and the towns thereof, or Gaza. Gaza is still a place in Israel that's being bombarded and the people being slaughtered by the Israelis to this day. But that's, Gaza is where, you know, the Philistines lived all those years ago, and so Israel still thinks that they live there. That's kind of what they treat them like now. Now they're calling them, you know, what do they call them now, Brother Shawn? They call the, what do they call the Palestinians now? Amalek, yeah, they call them Amalek, even though Amalek's been destroyed forever. But anyway, let's go to verse 29. It says, in the borders of the children of Manasseh, Beth, Sheehan, and her towns, Tanak and her towns, Megiddo and her towns, which is where the Battle of Armageddon's gonna take place, and Dor, her towns, and these dwelt, the children of Joseph, the son of Israel. So, and it kind of makes sense that the picture would come through Joseph of Christ, to me. Because even though Joseph didn't prevail, he wasn't the tribe that was chosen, he still was the best out of all the sons of Jacob, without a doubt, and he was blessed as in how many children he had. He was, the blessing of children came through Joseph's tribe and it was split in two, or whatever. But it does make sense that Joshua, who pictures Christ in the Old Testament, you know, he goes, Moses, because Moses is the law, Joshua pictures the New Testament and coming into the Promised Land. So it does kind of make sense to me that he would pick someone from Ephraim to be that picture of Christ, and even call him the same name. Because Joshua is the name of Jesus. It's just, it's transliterated into Greek, you know, in Greek it's Jesus, or Jesus, or whatever. And in English it's Jesus, okay, excuse me. In English it's Jesus, in Greek it's Jesus, and in Spanish it's Jesus, right? So, but yeah, there's no shh sound in Greek, so that's why it doesn't sound like that. I've already explained that before, but anyway. So, but it's interesting how, if you've ever been reading the Bible and you just see that even in the Old Testament that like, when his name is called, like right here it says his name is, in verse 27 it's Jehoshua, see how it's spelled? But there's also other spellings of it, where it's just Joshua, and then there's Oshaiah, without the H, or without the J. And then there's Jeshua, J-E-S-H-U-A. So I'm not sure why it's spelled like, maybe it's the Aramaic and the Hebrew or whatever, but like sometimes it's just, I mean, I don't really understand why it's that way, I didn't really look it up, but it's just something worth note. And Ice Cube's real name is Oshaiah, just so you know. I don't know why I said that, but it's just true. So, and then what's Joshua's name mean, what does Jesus' name mean? Well it means savior, or deliverer. And so I said earlier that Joshua, you know it's interesting, Jesus is hung on a cross, he's hanged on a tree, and made a curse for us, and Joshua in the Old Testament, he took kings and hung them on trees. Like if you read through the book of Joshua, he does it several times, where he just, he goes, he captures their king, he hangs them on a tree until even, and then he takes them down and he buries them. So I don't know, just the reverse picture I guess, but interesting nonetheless. So there's another king that, or judge that ruled, in Judges 12, his name was Abdon, and he ruled I think for eight years, or something like that. Anyway, let's move on to the last one, we'll be done. This is gonna be quick, it's going to be the descendants of Asher. I'm just gonna kinda just read the first two verses, verse 30, the sons of Asher, Imnah, Ishua, or Isua, and Ishua, and Beriah, and Sarah, their sister. And the sons of Beriah, Heber, and Malkiel, who is the father of Berzavith. And then I'm just gonna kinda skip through to verse number 40. It's just mentioning all these different names, and then it says, all these were the children of Asher, heads of their father's house, choice and mighty men of valor, chief of the princes, and the number throughout the genealogy of them that were apt to the war and to battle was 26,000 men. 26,000 men. So, now it says apt, which means what? Able to war. You know, in the Bible it says that someone wants to be a pastor, they need to be apt to teach. So, able to teach is what that means. So, I guess an application for us is that when we're, you know, as soldiers of Christ, of course our warfare is a spiritual warfare, and it's probably good for us to be able to teach. Even when we're out sowing, which is probably gonna be the most teaching time that you usually get, unless you preach sermons behind the pulpit, you could probably get to teach behind the pulpit also, but when you're outdoors, you know, sometimes we're there to minister to people. You know, it's probably very, it's probably something that you realize when you're there that maybe this person, you know, this person's already saved, but maybe they have some kind of issue that they're dealing with and you can help them with it. You know, I feel like that, you know, and yeah, we're trying to get to the people to get to their doors, but sometimes there's those people that like, you know, they're going through a hard time, and you can just kind of give them some kind of a teaching of comfort or some kind of a word of comfort. I think that that's good to do. You know, and maybe they never will come to our church, but maybe that thing that you gave them at the door is something that they needed to hear from another Christian. You know, that's filled with the Spirit. And who's ever kind of been to a door and you're just like, you knew that you were there to just kind of help them with something, yeah. I mean, that happens all the time, doesn't it? So, it's good to know your Bible so that you can help people with things. Even if it's just out in public, it doesn't even have to be out solely. You can just be, you know, maybe it's a family member that's going through a hard time or just whatever. A friend of yours that's going through a hard time, and you can just, you know, give them something from the Bible. You know, because we want to get our family members saved, but sometimes you can just kind of impart some kind of spiritual wisdom to that person. That maybe, yeah, they're not saved, they're not going to maybe completely get it, but they know that you reached out and tried to help them with something that might resonate with them. Because if it's the Word of God, it's still faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. And maybe that little nugget of truth that you gave them can like plant the seed in their heart that may grow, and they remember what you said to them, and it, you know, it might germinate into something, you know, later on that they get saved from. So what is, again, what is the ultimate takeaway from this chapter? Well, there's many generations of the past, and, you know, again, we're getting tiny glimpses of these people's past lives, and I've shown you things from, you know, some of these judges and, you know, Joshua, who's, you know, I didn't even really get to touch much on Joshua, just out of time, but Joshua was a great man of God. I mean, it'd be nice to just kind of go through a series and maybe even just go through the book of Joshua and just go through all of his great battles that he helped lead, and he was just, you know, he was there for Moses, he was never really, you don't really see him doing much wrong. Like a lot of Bible characters, you see them doing something wrong. But the only thing he ever really does that I would even consider like a slip-up in his character at all is where he's like, my Lord Moses forbid them. Like he tries to stop, you know, try to get Moses to get onto people that are preaching outside the camp. And then he says, envious thou for my sake. So like, that's the only reproof that Moses ever gives Joshua that I can see. Well, and God tells him to get up off the ground when he's praying, when he's already told them not to make, you know, he didn't go to God when he should have with the Gibeonites or whatever, but anyhow, that's about it. But there's just so many great things you can say about these guys, but there's just many great things of people in the past, but we're just getting the glimpse of them. There's great battles for every generation, and in our generation, it's just a really corrupt time in this world's history. We can't trust anything that's in the news at all. Like anything that's being said, you can guarantee it's pretty much lies. And you know, people are trying to suck us into all these politics that aren't gonna help us at all. It's not really gonna help. You can vote for whatever you want, but the only thing that's gonna make this world a better place is the church. The church house, not the White House. And I don't know, I mean, we just, we need to keep fighting and keep our eyes on what's important instead of just trying to focus on stuff that doesn't matter. And just expect treachery to happen in our lives. It's gonna happen. People are gonna betray us, you know, and it's like I don't wanna be totally negative because there's a lot of great things that happen in our life, too. Life is a blessing. You know, God gave us the gift of life to live it to the fullest, but there are a lot of things that happen that are negative, but there's also a lot of things that happen that are positive, like when your children are born and your children are being raised and there's a lot of great victories that we have in our lives. Salvation's a great victory and just getting people saved and seeing the joy in their eyes when they trust Christ as their savior and reading truths in the Bible that change your life or just things that you find out that are true in the Bible and you're just like, man, that's so great. Like, I love that. So there's many great blessings in our lives, so not everything's negative, and I know that sometimes preaching can be negative, but it needs to be negative sometimes, like two-thirds of the time. So reprove, rebuke, exhort, right? But let's remember the exhortation also, and we might see hard times, but we're gonna see harder times. I'm sure we're gonna see harder times, but we've never really seen the hardest times. We've never seen disease. We've never seen real war. We've never seen real persecution, but we do need to be ready for it. So that's why I preach about stuff like this, because a lot of churches, well, we're just gonna get taken out of here any minute. By the end of this sermon, we could all be gone. Like, it's eight o'clock. Jesus could be back in 30 seconds. It's like, no, he can't, but he is coming back. That we can count on. We can't set our watch to it, because no man knows the day or hour, but we do know he's coming back, and that we can take comfort in. He's gone to prepare a place for us, and he will come again. He said he would. You know what? I believe him. Just as much as I believe in my salvation, just as much as I believe everything in the Bible's true, I believe that he's coming back again, and he says it's gonna be after the tribulation. The son of perdition's gonna be revealed first. But he is gonna come back, and you know what? We might have to go through some hard times, but you know what? We better just be prepared for it, and if the times don't come in our time, then whew, but I don't wanna be like Hezekiah. Well, hopefully it happens in my kids' times, or hopefully it happens in my grandkids' times. I don't wanna feel like that either, but it's gonna come at somebody's time, and we just need to be ready for it. That's the type of preaching that we need, not that we're gonna be whisked away on a flowery pillow of ease, like the song says, while others sail through bloody seas, right? But we must be ready. We need to have our arrows and quivers full of warriors. We need to have the hearts of our children and ready when the Lord calls his banners home, when he says, hey, it's time to fight, it's time to get it on, because look, we're always in a battle, but like, really, he's gonna fight the battle for us. When he actually really calls us home and we're all on our white horses, just kind of watching him do everything, which is gonna be really cool, by the way, he just is gonna do everything. That's gonna be the cool part. He's gonna call the banners, and we're just gonna be like, they're on our horses. Snowball, and whatever your horse's name is. Don't make fun of my horse's name. He's gonna be big. He's gonna be bigger than your horse. Trust me. Shawn's horse is gonna be bigger than your horse. Belvedere, see? People are coming up with names. You gotta come up with them. Anyway, let's pray. Lord, thank you so much for this great chapter in the Bible. We pray that you would just help us. The Lord, always be ready. Have our battle in array. Lord, be ready, be apt to the war, and Lord, just be fit for the war. Pray, Lord, that you'd help us to stop and smell the roses also and enjoy our lives. And Lord, it's not just about only fighting, but Lord, just help us to be ready for the fight when it comes to us, and Lord, that we wouldn't shrink away from the things of God and the bloody parts of the battle, but Lord, do help us to enjoy our lives as Christians here and not to just have this attitude that everything's always bad all the time. Help us to enjoy our lives, but also, Lord, to be ready. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Jesus never fails. One second. 101, Jesus never fails. On the first. Earthly friends may prove untrue, doubts and fears assail, One still loves and cares for you, One who will not fail. Jesus never fails, Jesus never fails, Heaven and earth may pass away, but Jesus never fails. Though the sky be dark and drear, Fierce and strong the gale, Just remember he is near, And he will not fail. Jesus never fails, Jesus never fails, Heaven and earth may pass away, but Jesus never fails. In life's dark and bitter hour, Love will still avail. Trust his everlasting power, Jesus will not fail. Jesus never fails, Jesus never fails, Heaven and earth may pass away, but Jesus never fails.