coming right on us. But we're in Ephesians 4. For those of you who knew, we do what's called expository preaching here. It's where we take a book of the Bible and we go through it a verse at a time. And I try to use the Bible to interpret the Bible. I think that's what God has meant for us to do for our congregation as a church to go through God's word together. We read it together. We study it together. We discuss it together and so a lot of times our church service, not a lot of times, I'd say every time, our church service isn't over when I say amen and you're dismissed. It continues as we fellowship in the hall. Here together, just getting to know one another, encouraging and edifying and using our gifts. The church is the assembly of the believers together so that we can use the gifts that he's given us to encourage the saints and the faith. Ephesians four, he's been giving us instructions. He started out pretty broad. And now we're getting to the point where he's narrowing it down, not only for the rest of this chapter, but in chapter five and chapter six as well, which will start again around January. But he's gone from kind of like the generic behavior of the church, or basically family rules. Our family always kind of had rules, this is how we expect you to behave. He's kind of told us that, he wants us to have unity, he wants us to love one another. So now he's getting to what he expects of us as individuals. It's not only as a church as a whole, but us as individuals, how he wants us to behave. In verse 14, he says he wants us to not remain children. Of chapter four, it's chapter four, verse 14. He says don't remain children. He wants us to grow up. You know, we've gone from the broad, hey, here's what we do, one faith, one baptism, one, all those things, to now, like, here's what I'm expecting of you. Grow up. He wants us to develop and not stay a child, have a childlike faith, but it should be one that grows and deepens. All of a sudden, like, all those stories you've learned in Sunday school, you know, like, what's Moses and Joseph and all these different things have to do together, it starts making sense. You're like, oh, I get it, it goes deeper. There's a picture there. He wants us to study God's word. He wants to know basic doctrine, what you believe and why you believe it. If you know what you believe and why you believe it, that gives you a confidence to witness, to stand up. You're not just like, well, the preacher said, that might work for a little while. But I hope you dig into it deeper. And that's probably why I'm here. At one point in time, I'm like, how do I know what he's saying is true? And I went and investigated him, and he was, it was true. And we have a history behind that that we can study and see. So we should know basic doctrine. And it says in verse 14 also, because there's gonna be false teachers. There's gonna be false and fake deceiving media. That there is going to be an attack on us. There's gonna be an attack on what is truth. So we need to know what's real so we can know what's a lie. And so if we know it, if we know our doctrine and we have been studying, we have been reading, we have been faithful in God's word, it can't damage us or it can't weaken our faith. It's not gonna get us out of left field like, oh no, what am I believing is a lie? Like no, we'll know the things, we'll know at least the basic tenets of our faith so that we're not rocked and we're not shaken by it. Because scripture tells us that there's a big lie coming upon the world. And you're like, man, we already live in a world of big lies. Yeah, we do. But there's a big lie that is coming. Matthew and Mark warn us about it. And they say that there's gonna be false wonders. There's gonna be false signs. There's gonna be something that seems miraculous, that someone's gonna say they're deity and they are not. And I mean, these false signs, these false wonders are so good that Jesus has to say that, except my kids have been studying and that they know God's word, It's not possible for them to be deceived. So he's counting on us. He's counting on us to know what we believe and why we believe it. Because he says, you can't deceive my chosen ones. They've been studied, they've been in the word, they've been in seasonality, they've been studying these things. It's not possible. So Jesus is counting on us, not being children, but being seasoned believers who are grounded in the faith, who know what we believe and why we believe it. If you're like I don't know what I believe, well I believe it's the time to study. That's why we gather. That's why we have Sunday school. That's why we can ask questions. On Wednesdays you can raise your hand. On Sunday nights during the Sunday school lessons you can raise your hand. You discuss, you talk. That's what I'm here for. I'm available for that. To talk and to grow and to go into these things. And we'll have private Bible study. I love those. To be able to go in and be excited about God's word to do it. We can't be deceived because we've read the Bible. So at least start there, read the Bible, listen to the Bible. I introduced you to an app, through the Word app. It's a good one to go through. Nine or 10 minutes every day that you can go through, or maybe 15 minutes, to get it in while you're driving somewhere. We're not gonna be deceived because we've studied it. We're not gonna be deceived because we know doctrine, we have these things. And it says we have to know it, and we have to be on top of our A game, it says, because they're gonna use slight. Kind of like the sleight of hand, you know, like, hey, I'm gonna make this disappear. You know, they're gonna use sleight of hand. They're gonna use cunning craftiness, you know, way better than I can. And they will lie in wait to deceive. It's like, it's gonna be trapped, it's gonna be in that way. And some have kind of, like, wondered, like, wonder what it'll be. One of the major theories that's kind of going on right now is that people think that they're gonna dig something out of the desert that's going to change the way we see the world. It'll be fake, and it won't be real. And so that's why we have to know what it is that we believe and why we believe it. But they're gonna try to do that, because we know that the world is gonna have a shift where it'll go to a one-world religion and a one-world government, and something's gonna draw it there, and people are trying to imagine what that might be. Others think it might arrive from space, you know. It's not like they're trying to push us really hard to believe in extraterrestrial life now, is it? I mean, we're having, this is our second round of Senate hearings or something like that where they've been talking about disclosure about non-human organics that are flying non-Earth-based vehicles and stuff, and so they're, it's called the soft cells, they're getting us used to it for something, a big reveal, and so will your faith be rocked by that? What it is, or do you have a, I answer a line for that, and so I've tried to address that in several messages. Others even think it might just be a knee-jerk reaction, you know, as maybe as it seems like the world is rushing towards World War III, that there's maybe some stark thing or something that comes up where we're like, oh, let's avoid that, and so we surrender, and that when we use that as a way of deception to give up who we are and what we are for the hope of peace, And that one makes me nervous because according to many of the experts we are in the early stages of World War III right now. If we are looking back in history we will be like well you know this thing that was going on and this launch of the first time we used intercontinental ballistic missiles and this is the first time we did this with the Sabre Island going on and that led to this conflict. When these things happen as we look back at World War II and other wars it starts with things like this. So we could be right there. So if it is and it does launch into World War III are you ready for that? Are we ready for that? I would say, no, none of us are ready to cling to hope, to know what is going on. It's like, God, I don't understand how this is going on. What do you want me to do in the moment of this? We have God's word to go to. Is your faith secure? Because you need to have your faith secure because the hard days are coming, so we need to have something that we can run back to. Do you have answers for war or why war might happen or how God might be allowing this? Those are things that we look at and we investigate and we talk about. We're not shy to talk about those things in this church. We will address them. We'll see what it is. and some of it could be just because God's law of suffering and judgment is coming upon a fallen world. So we need to work on those things now. We need to strengthen our faith now, all the time, every day. We need to take the opportunity. We need to study as if the time is short, because it might be, and generally, the older you get, the more you realize time is short, life is short. Chapter five tells us, I'm sneaking ahead, but it tells us towards the end there that we need to redeem the time for the days are evil. We need not to be cruising and coasting along anymore. We need to be understanding that time is valuable and we need to redeem it for what counts and for what matters and to take it and see it as the value that it is as this is the time that we try to win men. So we are to study. and we're to have well reasons for the answers for the hope that lies within us from the word of God. How are we to give those answers then when we get them for hard questions? Because usually our answer is going to be different than what the world thinks and what the world says and what the world's been told. And if they come to you, what's the Bible say about that? And you have to then say something that's contradictory to everything they've been saying. How are we to do it? Because we're right. Because God's word's right. God knows. God is outside of time. He can tell the end from the beginning. He is laying things out for us. And so we can study to know that. But verse 15 tells us. Ephesians 4 verse 15. But speaking the truth in love may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ. So we're gonna be speaking the truth in love. Love's gotta be the gas that our car runs on. And it's almost, as a pastor in 2024, to stand up and talk about just love in general. Satan's done such an attack on love and what love is and what love means for a Christian. And we have the world telling us what it's supposed to be for us to love and how we're supposed to show love and how it's supposed to be accepting and all-inclusive and all these different things. And it is, but it's twisted a little bit. But I think of this, he's meaning it here in this context, like we're talking about verse two of chapter four, he's like, it's love empowered meekness. Meekness is strength under control. That we're to use love as the motivation for why we're amic and why we don't lash out and why we don't think. It's love powered long-suffering because we love that we are long-suffering towards our brethren, let alone the lost and dying world that we're trying to reach them. We're to have patience powered by love. That we're supposed to be trying to have a well-reasoned answer and not trying to win an argument but win the person, as I've said before. That our forbearance should be, and motivate, and be motivated by, and show love. You know, you can endure a lot if you love somebody. We always even have that saying, right? It's like, you know, you can look at a couple together and you can be like, oh, she might be a little toxic for you, or however that might be, but how do we excuse it? Like, oh, he's just blinded by love, right? Because he's in love. He doesn't see all the bad things that might become of that relationship, or all the warning signs in that way. And that's kind of a good example of how it should be. If you love someone, we overlook some things. We don't see it, we have the patience. Love kind of softens us in that way, and it should, but it's also to be our strength, and that's the balance of a Christian. It is to make us a little softer to somebody else, but also to give us a strength, but a motivation to stay at it, not give up and just wash our hands off with trying to reason to somebody, that friend that you're talking to for the umpteenth time that just doesn't seem to get it or whatever. Paul says it's supposed to be like better than gas in the car, I guess. He uses the example of, because he didn't have a car. He uses the example of blood in our veins. He says Christ is the head. He ends in verse 15 with that, which Christ is the head. So he's the head over the body, and he uses this example in other letters as well. But it's the blood in our veins that joins our parts together, that gives us life, that animates us, that makes us move and that makes us work. Verse 16, from who the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which in every joint supplyeth, according to the effectual working of the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love." That is a mouthful. What he's saying here is it's like love is the blood that's making all of our joints and all of our parts of our body, you know, the hands and the head and all that work together. Love is what supplies the movement. as our body, as our body of believers. And so, it's, and again, it's not a mamby-pamby love. It is a real, deep, true love for our fellow man. That's what he's calling on here. Someone told you how to be saved. Do you not love everyone else enough to be able to tell them? The old saying was with the Indians, you know, they're like, what do you think of Christianity? And this Indian said, he goes, I think they're the most cruel people that ever lived. And they're like, why would you say that? They say they have the words of eternal life, but they tell so little of us. They tell so few. And that's cruel. We say we have the words of life, we don't share it? Man, we wanna be trying to reach them. That's where Mahatma Gandhi, he said, they said, what is the problem in India? Why is Christianity not spreading in India? And he had one word answer. He goes, you wanna know why Christianity's not spreading in India? Christians, you know? because they thought our love was fake, or that we were trying to win them and just show them to be wrong. You know, that, where'd you been to Cal? Stupid! You know, that's not gonna win them. And so we need to have some love motivation for a fellow man, for that soul that's going to spend eternity. Our heart feels different than we did before we came to know Christ as Savior. Our perspective should change. Everything changes. We are now a new creature. Verse 17 says, their mind. is we're not to walk as others. Walk means life. So our minds or our very thoughts are now different as a Christian. Because this is what makes someone a Christian. A Christian isn't somebody who goes to church. A Christian isn't somebody who's born to Christians. A Christian isn't somebody who just lives in America or a Christian nation. A Christian is someone who realized at one point in time in their life that they were a sinner. that they'd use like the Ten Commandments to open their eyes and they saw that, wait a minute, lying is a sin? I've told lies. Lust for someone I'm not married to is the same as adultery in God's eyes? I've done that. Disobedient to your parents is the sin of rebellion and he says rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft. I rebel against my parents. Coveting after something that's not yours? especially if it's someone's wife or husband or their things, the Bible says. The want monster, to hate someone without cause. We start looking at these 10 different things that we go through, we start seeing that I've not put God first all the time, I've not always honored God's day and given it back into Him. I have used God's name in vain, I've said His name as a swear word. I didn't mean to, it's just culture has equipped me that I said OMG or Jesus' name in a wrong way. Then all of a sudden, once you understood that you were guilty and you understood the wages of sin is death or hell, that that was your destiny, that should make you nervous. It should make you real nervous. Because hell is a real place and justice is what God meets out. And so you come to an understanding that you are a sinner, how do you get out of it? So you start grasping around. I remember I was talking to a guy in Indianapolis once, I said, What has God done to rescue you? Are you guilty? By that I am guilty. What has God done? I can just remember his eyes. His eyes were frantic. He was looking around. He was desperate. He understood he was destined for hell. He was like, well, can I be good? I'm like, no, no, that doesn't work. That's like bribing a judge. Well, judge, you know, yeah, I didn't do all those things, but I'll just be good from now on. That doesn't let you off the hook. You know, that didn't get you. You did those things, that's who you are. That wouldn't be a good judge. That would be a corrupt judge. Like if you're like, oh, I'll just give you some money or I'll help your kids. That's corrupt judging. God is not a corrupt judge. I just remember his looking around in the panic in his eyes. Then he finally looked at me and he said, what about Jesus? I'm like, what about Jesus? He goes, didn't he, didn't he, didn't he die for me? I go, okay. That's what that was. Jesus Christ, the God of heaven, came down as a baby, lived a sinless life so that he could offer up a perfect sacrifice, a perfect life in our place. To take the wrath of God upon himself, that's what the cross is. God pouring out his wrath upon his son as if it was me hanging there, as if it was you hanging there. And he satisfies his wrath of his son to the point where Jesus finally says, Tetelestai, the debt is paid in full, it is finished. He dies. And it says in Isaiah that, please the father to bruise the son. But three days later, he rose again victorious, showing that the payment was satisfying, that the payment had been made, that the sins had been paid for. If we now repent, see ourselves as a sinner, and trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ, we can be born again, we can be saved. That's how we become Christians. One at a time. One individual at a time, realizing that they're a sinner in need of a Savior, and crying out for Jesus Christ to rescue them. Help me! Save me! I need rescued! I'm dying on the way to hell! Jesus Christ does that and the Bible says he will not turn anyone away. He will not turn anyone away And so Jesus Christ is how we get there He's how we have salvation. Now without a heart transplant, God doesn't mend a lost heart. He gives you a new heart. He takes out that heart of stone and he gives you a heart of flesh. Intercede and see them and want to and try to reach them and find ways to reach them. Spend money to try to reach them. Spend time trying to reach them because I was on my way to hell but someone took the time lessons that were taught to me. All those things playing an integral part. Someone made a movie that I saw that made me understand that I didn't even have to die, that God could come back in me to the point where I needed a savior. And I cried out, and he saved me. He saved me, he changed me. It's so radical that we call it being born again. No, we don't, Jesus did. In John 3, he talks about, it's like, you must be born again. It's not vain. That's what verse 17 says, that we don't walk in vanity of their minds. It's not vain or empty, it's not futile. We now have purpose in our life, we now have a goal. We have a leader. We have someone that we're following. None of us have sinless perfectionism. None of us are right. None of us are the perfect picture of Christ on earth. But we are trying just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We're striving. Our mind or our life, our goals are more like Micah 6, which says we are to be motivated by love behind all those things. To do that, to fulfill the great commission comes into play for us. All of a sudden, something I never thought about becomes something that comes to the forefront of my mind. To go forth preaching the gospel to every creature so that they might know, so that they might come to eternity in our mind. It's not something that we think about like, one day I'll die, I guess it'll all work out. It's something that we think about often. I had a coworker once say, you think about death a lot. Like, yeah, I'm gonna be dead a lot longer than I live. And so I do think about death a lot. I want to make sure I'm prepared for it. I'm like sure I'm right. I don't want to get down on my deathbed and sit there like, I wish I would have done something. I'm going to live with eternity in mind. Song of Solomon tells us that, that we have eternity in our hearts. Everyone knows that we want to live forever. I want to live right with him. I want to live a life that's pleasing unto him. It's supposed to motivate us. The only thing is to try to tell them how they know unless they have a preacher. So he counts on testimony one-on-one. Things weren't clear or defined, and you didn't understand or see it from the life of God through the ignorance or loss. That's why we should read darkened when we were, our understanding was darkened. Trying to remember where things are, but you don't walk with confidence, do you? You have a vague understanding that there's a couch there, until your big toe finds it, and it gives you an outline of what might be there, and we're grasping around, trying to move through the house, trying to get there, not to wake up everybody else. That's how we were moving through this light. There's kind of hints of things that might be, But once you come to the saving knowledge of Him, this lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path, we're able to walk and to follow after Him. We were alienated, it said, having our understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart. We were alienated. We were separated from God. We didn't think about things He thought about. We didn't talk with Him. We wouldn't have conversations that rubbed off that influenced us, you know, because who you hang out with influences you. You know, who you listen to on the radio influences you. What songs you listen to influence you. And so all those things do. And so do you hang out with God? Before you didn't, but now that you do, it begins to influence you. You begin to have a concern for the lost. And so we didn't see or appreciate him very much. Occasionally there might be a sunrise or a sunset that would strike you and you'd have to stop and look at it and go, man, that's beautiful. Wish I had someone to thank for it. Or something, you know, at least something, you'd be like, mm, yeah, I wanna take a picture. Ah, it doesn't do it justice. I wanna paint something. Eh, not quite right. You know, but it's His. Maybe you're in some valley one time and you see it, it's just beautiful the way the fog's laying, the sunbeams are coming through, and you're taking our newborn baby, you're staring at her little fingers and playing with her toes. Every once in a while you get a hint. But mostly on our own, we think of ourselves. We think about our wants, our desires, and we're not thankful and we're not grateful. We're ignorant of eternity. We're ignorant of its importance. We're ignorant of understanding that we're in a spiritual battle. And part of that battle is to keep you ignorant, so that you don't know or understand or get motivated or move to do something for the Lord's sake. You know, there is a war raging on around us, and we can live through it blind and not ever see it. But God wakes us up to that, and we understand things are now our battle. But when you're lost, you're unable to see. We only saw the here and the now. We could only grasp the present at best and maybe plan for retirement, you would hope. We only saw life as it was playing out in the moment here on this earth. And that is it. And I got to get as much in. I need to have a bucket list. I'm going to try to get these things off the bucket list. I'm going to try to work, work, work, work, work, go on vacation, get as much life in one or two weeks a year, work, work, work, work, work, do that until I'm dead and hopefully retirement. They don't play it out in Europe. They'll train you that once you become old enough to retire, that you're a worthless eater and you should kill yourself. Look at, well, you don't have to go to Europe anymore. Look at Canada. You know, but look at Netherlands, Denmark. Yeah, they have euthanasia laws where it's like, you just now have been a drain on society. And yet, I was told I was working a lot so I can enjoy my retirement and have it. And they're like, no, you should just kill yourself. Leave something for the young kids who are working and being profitable to society. They have parks where they can just go in there. They go every morning and pick up the dead. to be able to kill themselves, because they finally got to that old age, and they're gonna say goodbye, and they're going to do it, and we live in a day and age like that, but no, they didn't see the point. They thought this was only it. There's more, and God can use your life. Think of the Indians, how much they respected the elders, the wisdom and the things that they'd seen and that they knew. And we don't. I think we miss out. That's why I love our fellowship, with the older and the younger, mixing in and talking that know one another and can do it. Because there's wisdom in that, there's guidance in that, there's a love and a depth of understanding in that that's supposed to be there, that we're supposed to have as a culture, especially as Christians. Verse 19, he says, who, being past feeling, have given themselves over unto lasciviousness to work all uncleanliness with greediness, and so, As we saw in chapter two, where it said that we lived according to this world under the prince and the power of the air. We're under the devil's control, basically. And when we were lost, we lived that way. We lived a sensual life. It says that it was impure here. Dirty in thoughts and motivation was selfish. What's gonna satisfy me? Who's gonna satisfy me? What do I wanna do? take care of me, I deserve it, right? Just do it. All those things, all those slogans become playing out in our mind and it moves you and it motivates you and it becomes your driving force and that next car, that next thing, and I saw it on Instagram and they're living the good life and I want to have that and maybe I should do all those things. We were greedy for more money, more cars, more houses, whatever it might be, to consume upon our own lusts, it says. Verse 20 goes on and says, but you have not so learned of Christ. That's not how he lived. That's not what he's teaching us to do. That's not the goal, that's not the standards, that's not the course of this world that chapter two, verse two said. It is different, verse 21. If so be that you have heard of him, you have been taught by him. As the truth is in Jesus. So Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. That you put off concerning the former conversation, the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts. And be renewed in the spirit of your mind. and that you put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. Wherefore, putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor. For we are the members one for another." So see, the old man is dead. That's why this has been compared to Lazarus here coming out of the tomb. We've got to cut off those grave clothes. We are living differently. We want to be free. We want to be able to move and walk around. He came out hopping when Jesus called him out. So we want to be able to put off that old man, that old stinking dead man and put on the new man that has been made into life with new blood and new energy and new goal and new purpose. We are supposed to be doing that. Putting away all lying. We speak truth. Verse 25, with our neighbor and with one another. Verse 26, be angry and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath. Be angry? Did he really just say that, be angry? Yeah, but he juxtaposes it with sin not. There are things we should be angry over. There are things that should upset us, that move us, that motivate us. Injustice should aggravate us, should make us angry. Evilness that is rewarded, calling good evil and evil good, should upset us. Child abuse and children being tortured in ways that, too much to get into, should make us angry. Cruelty, for cruelty's sake, should make us angry. Murder. But I fear, we see it so often, we see it so much, it doesn't give us the outrage that it should. It still starts creeping into Johnson County and coming on down onto Marion County and getting here closer. Where's the respect for life? Oh, yeah, abortion. Should make us angry. The most safest place the baby should be is in its mother's womb. Wickedness, cheating, slander, on and on and on. There's so many things that should make us angry, but sin not. That's why when you hear like a shooting at an abortion clinic, I'm like, wasn't a Christian. We are outraged by it. We'll stand in protest. They can throw us in jail for that, but we don't go in killing somebody. We are angry, but we sin not. God has given us the rules. We've seen them in Romans other places. It's kind of like he ties our hands, like, oh, you gotta do it, and you gotta do it right, and you gotta do it righteously, and you gotta do it in a way that gives me glory. But you be angry, and you're here to stop, oh, you're up to abhor evil, but you do it in the most upright and righteous way where God is glorified no matter what you do and how you do it. I'm like, God, that is hard. He's like, I didn't call you for easy. I called you to do it my way. And that's what we're here to do. So, we're to be angry, but we're not to sin. And he says, here, make sure the sun does not go down upon your wrath. We are to live a life of self-control, not just reaction and reactionary. Christianity is not easy. But anger is one of those things that can be a stronghold for the devil. Verse 27 says, neither give place to the devil. He says, oh, you want to give a stronghold for the devil to get a hand on it and have a hold on? You be angry. And you fester in it. And you stay in it. He will grow it. And he will feed it. And he will magnify it. And he will blow it out of proportion to the part where it becomes all-consuming for you. And the worst ones, especially for a Christian, the worst ones will be the ones that seem justified. They slighted me. They hurt me. They were in the wrong. And you really were hurt, and you really were grieved, and you really have a right to be angry. The devil's like, yeah, give me that all day long. I'll divide a church. I'll split a Sunday school. I'll drive a family apart. I'll do whatever I can. I'll try to take all that. And so Satan will cause you to harbor it and he will let it build. He will see it as a conspiracy and anytime you see two people talking together, they're talking about that, they're conspiring against me and all of a sudden that alienates you and keeps you away and takes you away. Now you can justify your actions and your reactions in your own mind if all these things get left unchecked instead of just maybe letting it pass. We have that kind of strength in us, right? He's told us in the first three chapters of Ephesians the kind of strength that we have. Maybe some things we should just overlook. Man, maybe they had a bad day. Maybe they didn't mean it in that light. And if it's big enough that it's like, maybe it wasn't, maybe it was on purpose. He tells us, he's given us Matthew 18. You go to the person and ask him, hey, you offended me in that. Oh, I'm sorry. and you have a chance to reconcile. If that doesn't get it, take somebody else with you. Hey, you know, I've tried to talk to you and try to reconcile, you're still being a jerk. And they try to work on it together, and if it gets really bad, you bring it before the whole church, and we try to weigh it all out. Not taking our troubles outside, but keeping it inside, with the whole point, done with love, trying to rejoin and restore a fellowship that was once there. If not, man, the devil can use it. I mean, you can take all their answers and all their perspectives, and you can twist it in your mind, and you can, next thing you know, you find yourself on a barn roof in Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting at someone that they've told you is the problem, and everything in your life that is against you, and you're trying to kill a candidate. That's how it grows, that's how it festers, by being fed, and the devil's trying to do it on a grand scale, and continue to do so. So Christians, we don't do that. We're not to harbor. We are called to hire. We are called to a purpose. We have a job to do. We have a reputation to build, and Jesus' reputation to defend and uphold, because they see us and they know us who we are, and how you behave and how you act reflects on Him. You want something to motivate you, that one motivates me the most. Think I'm a jerk, I don't care. Think, oh, you're gonna look at me and think Jesus is a jerk? That bothers me. That bothers me enough to move and die to self a little bit more. So maybe that should bother you. It's like the town that had trouble with everybody speeding in this corner and they could not get it to quit. There were accidents, there were deaths, they put statistics out. You gotta slow down in this corner. People just would not slow down in this corner. And so they come up with the bright idea to put chickens in the corner and let them free range. Oh, nobody wanted to kill a chicken, so they all slowed down. You know, sometimes it takes something radical. Sometimes it takes something different. We need to have that kind of kindness and love to think that I don't want to harm or hurt you. Verse 28, let him that stole steal no more. Paul has a whole thing where he lists all the things that Christians once were. And it's a shocking list. He says, if you made your living by stealing, by thievery, don't do it anymore. but rather let him labor, working with his hands, that thing which is good that he may have to give to him that need it. He says, oh, not only do you work, God will make sure he'll bless and reward your work. Not enough for you to get by with, but give you a little bit extra. Why can't you do that extra? He says, you should be able to help somebody else. Help somebody else. buy them a meal, help them out, pay a bill, do whatever, do something to be able to encourage them. God says, that's why. Why did I give you your job? Why did I give you a job that you have extra? Is it all just for you and the retirement here on this earth? We are to plan, we are to take care of ourselves, but he says we're also supposed to help others. And God says, I can take and magnify that too. I can make sure that you're taken care of. If you're taking care of mine, I'll keep that faucet open. We'll keep it flowing in that way. Verse 29, Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying and to the minister of grace and to the hearers, discarding our mouths. Be careful, little mouths, what you say. Sometimes those children's songs are good for the adults. Be careful, because the Father up above is lurking down in love. So be careful, little mouth, what you say. Your little tongue, all those things. Verse 30, and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby you are sealed into the day of redemption. The Holy Spirit is a person. He's not an it. and you can only grieve someone who loves you. You can only grieve someone who loves you. If they don't care, they don't care. You can only grieve someone if they care. I wanted to give you this great gift, but you've done something where I can't, and now I grieve because I wanted to show up. I'm like, that's the Holy Spirit. I have so much for you. I have so many things I could give you. I have so much places we could go, things we could do. I want to infill you. I want to work through you. But man, you keep grieving me, and suddenly back, we're trying to just fight to get back on the path again. Let's not grieve Him. He wants to show us, to give a gift. He wants to show wonders through us. He wants to do all that, but we grieve Him. And that blocks Him from being able to bestow those gifts upon us. Verse 31, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice. He's like, again, bitterness will grow. Wrath will grow, anger will grow, clamor, evil speaking, put it away. We're to watch our mouths and how we talk and how we communicate, building and edifying, encouraging one another. Verse 32, and be you kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you. I don't know about you, but I've been forgiven much. So I should show a little grace to others. It's been given to me, I should give it to others. It's been shown to me, I should show it to others. I should emulate Him. Father, forgive Him. He didn't know what He did. So maybe when people harm me, Father, forgive them. They didn't know. Give me strength. Help me not to harbor that. And the best advice I've ever was given and I found to be true is like if someone's injured you or someone has harmed you or there's someone that's consuming your thoughts and you can't get away from it from what they've done and you think they're speaking about you or maybe they are speaking about you and they are slandering you and they're trashing your name and your testimony, they're saying all these things, how do you confront that? Pray for them. Pray for them. Because the devil's doing all that to try to aggravate you. But if you pray for them, and you lift them up, the devil will finally quit bringing them up to you. Because he doesn't want you praying for him. He doesn't want you blessing them. He doesn't want you asking on their behalf. He wants you hating them, despising them, doing his work. We're not to do his work. We're to do the Father's work. And we're to be intercessors. We're to be peacemakers. And so you pray for them, Satan will quit bringing them up in your mind. You'll quit seeing it. He'll give you new eyes to see. It's worked in my life. I can tell you it's worked in others too. And so that was a great thing to have. And so we have been forgiven much. And so we are to be ones who go around trying to reconcile and show others forgiveness. If you have not tasted that forgiveness, today would be a great day to repent and trust in Him. We have ones who are gonna come and share their testimony and take that next step of faith of obedience and saying that I am His and I want people to know it. Today would be a great day to honor that and say, that was the day I understood. That was the day I decided to do that too, or the day that I decided I needed Christ as my Savior. Because Camden will be testifying to that, and I just pray we pray for him as we do this ceremony, but I pray also that you'd search your heart. If you need Jesus Christ as your Savior, today would be the day. And I think that we take these things, this is a hard lesson, we're gonna take a break now as we go through Advent, and we'll come back to chapter five and chapter six with a brief review. I think he's given us enough to try to do over the next couple of months, right? To try to live like this, to motivate us, to push us to try to be like him and try to implement this in our life. If you have questions about it, ask me, but take some time and study and read it and see how you can implement it in your own heart. Now, let's close.