But anyway, now I'd encourage you to turn with me in your Bibles to Genesis as we continue through the book of Genesis, and specifically we are in Genesis 26. This is the only chapter that really focuses on the life of Isaac. As I noted last time, he is the patriarch who gets the least lineage in the book of Genesis, but an important patriarch nonetheless. And I hope that as we look at this chapter, we will learn some important lessons for life as Christians. There's a very important lesson being taught within this chapter. I'm actually gonna be looking at Genesis 26, verses 12 through 33, not 35. We'll be talking about that and some principles for marriage in choosing a spouse that are very important. And we'll discuss that next week. But before we come to the word of God, let's go to the God who gave us this word and let's ask for his blessing. Sovereign Lord, we do ask now that you would be with us and that you would be the light of our minds. Help me to preach. Help me to open up your word and to share it. Remind me, O Lord, constantly that these are the words of life. They're your word, Lord, and we're meant to give them as your messengers to your people, your little lambs. so that they might have direction for life, that they might know the way of salvation. I pray, Lord, that as we read this, therefore, we would take to heart the message that's in it, and that we would learn important life lessons and apply them, that these wouldn't be merely lessons from an ancient book given to people a long time ago who have nothing to do with us, but rather that we would see this as your message to us, living and powerful in the present age. And we pray all these things in Jesus' holy name, amen. Genesis chapter 26, and I'll be beginning with verse 12 and reading through 33. This is the word of the Lord. Then Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold, and the Lord blessed him. The man began to prosper and continued prospering until he became very prosperous, for he had possessions of flocks and possessions of herds and a great number of servants. So the Philistines envied him. Now the Philistines had stopped up all the wells which his father's servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, and they had filled them with earth. And Abimelech said to Isaac, go away from us, for you are much mightier than we. Then Isaac departed from there and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar and dwelt there. And Isaac dug again the wells of water which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father. For the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham. He called them by the names which his father had called them. Also Isaac's servants dug in the valley and found a well of running water there. But the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac's herdsmen, saying, the water is ours. So he called the name of the well Esek, because they quarreled with him. Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over that one also. So he called its name Sitna. And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name Rehoboth, because he said, for now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land. And he went up from there to Beersheba. And the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not fear, for I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants for my servant Abraham's sake. So he built an altar there and called on the name of the Lord. And he pitched his tent there. And there Isaac's servants dug a well. Then Abimelech came to him from Gerar with Achazath, one of his friends, and Phicol, the commander of his army. And Isaac said to them, why have you come to me since you hate me and have sent me away from you? But they said, we have certainly seen the Lord is with you. So we said, let there now be an oath between us, between you and us, and let us make a covenant with you that you will do us no harm since we have not touched you and since we have done nothing to you but good and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the Lord. So he made them a feast, and they ate and drank. Then they arose early in the morning and swore an oath with one another. And Isaac sent them away, and they departed from him in peace. It came to pass the same day that Isaac's servants came and told him about the well which they had dug and said to him, we have found water. So they called it Sheba. Therefore the name of the city is Beersheba to this day. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. I know that many of you know that I was at one time, prior to being regenerate, I was a barman in a pub in Scotland. The pub actually was part of a hotel in St. Andrews. And prior to being elevated to the high status of barman, which I was terrible at incidentally, I can't count, and making change on the fly with hundreds of people handing you money was just a terrible idea. But Prior to that time, there was something I was a little better at that I had to work in in order to move on to being a barman, and that was being a busboy. I was the guy who cleaned off all the plates and then washed them and then put them away. And one of the men that I worked with as a busboy was considerably older than me, and it should have been an alarm. I knew nothing about anything at that point in time. I'd just started in college. But it should have occurred to me that it was a little odd that a grown man with a wife and children was working in an entry-level job as a busboy. But he was. This was a man who had a reputation, I learned, that he would fight over almost anything. Everything was a point of honor to him. And incidentally, just a piece of advice, with the Scots, they don't get loud when they're angry, as a general rule. They get quiet. So if a Scotsman turns to you and says something like, You calling me a liar, pal? That's when your blood should run cold, okay? Generally speaking, when they're happy, they're loud. When they're unhappy, they get quiet. And they get deliberate in what they're seeing. And you can understand them perfectly at that point in time. But anyway, this guy was very, very, prideful. I didn't recognize that at the time, but he had a reputation for never taking a slight gladly or happily, and he never seemed to learn. Well, one day I showed up at work, and the son of the owner of the hotel had a black eye. And my fellow busboy, it seemed, was out of a job. He had been told something he didn't like and had responded with his fists. And apparently that was the pattern that this man had set. He set for his life. He went from lower job to lower job. and was gradually working his way down the rungs. That quarrelsome spirit, that inability to stomach anything that he considered a slight, that pridefulness, was actually ruining his life. But he would not see it. Now, I wish In my life, that was the only person that I'd ever met who had that kind of quality, the inability to turn the other cheek. But unfortunately, I have met millennia of people who have exactly the same quality. I have met pastors who cannot stay at a congregation for more than a year or so, simply because they constantly are picking quarrels with the session and the congregation members, and they move on from place to place. I have met many people who can't stay married for any period of time because they inevitably end up fighting horribly with whatever spouse comes into their life. Again and again these people, out of pride and out of an ability to, as I said, turn the other cheek, end up causing dissension division and it destroys them and the people around them often. Well, in the life of Isaac, we see all these opportunities for quarrels and dissension and fighting. Isaac, we remember, had moved at this point in time to the coastal area around Gerar. Now Gerar, you'll remember, was an area that was inhabited by the Philistines, a Phoenician people. His father Abraham had dwelt among them for a time as well. and he had entered into a covenant because they had seen the way that God had blessed Abraham. He'd entered into a covenant with the king of Gerar, the Abimelech at that point in time, and his leader, the Phycol. We believe that those were titles that they were given rather than being their actual names. We see Abimelech and Phycol again in this chapter, but we shouldn't think it's the same person because 90 years have passed between the original covenant that was made. So this was clearly a title. But Abimelech, in this case, is not happy with what's going on, and his people are not happy with what's going on. Well, what's happening? Well, Isaac has been blessed greatly, despite the fact that, you remember, Isaac had told a whopping lie in the same way that Abraham had told a lie. He had lied and said that his wife was, in fact, his sister, and the king of Gerar at that time had rebuked him, saying somebody could have taken your wife And it would have been adulterous, obviously, and the Lord would have punished him for that. In that we see Isaac's tendency to follow in the evil train of his father. Last week I reminded us that our kids tend to become who we are. not who we want them to be, and our bad habits are things that they will pick up as well, so therefore we need to be very careful about what we teach our children, what we display to them. In any event, he was obviously fearful that they would kill him, so while he was not so fearful that he wouldn't dwell anywhere near them, He was afraid that they might have killed him and taken his wife, so he resorted to the same kind of deception. But that wasn't what irritated the Philistines, really. What irritated the Philistines was the fact that he had done so well, despite the decision that Isaac had made to lie rather than trust God to keep him safe in the midst of his enemies. God had kept the covenant that he had made with Abraham and then remade with Isaac. and Isaac began to prosper abundantly. He reaps, we're told, a hundredfold harvest. Also, this indicates that he is becoming more settled in the land. Nomads tend to be shepherds. In other words, they have large flocks. In the case of Abraham and Isaac, it was sheep and goats, but they don't tend to plant things because they're never in an area for long enough. In this case, he does plant And he reaps this abundant, this amazing hundredfold harvest. And the people of the land see it. They can't help but notice the way that the Lord is blessing his crops and his herds. And they are upset about it. His herds and his flocks are continuing to grow. and he has more and more men under his authority. Now you will read servant there, while happily it's not the word abed, which literally means slave, it is very likely that these were people who were either purchased by Isaac or who were born into his household from people who were purchased by him, as we will note that at the time, The norm was that you had servants who did not receive wages. They were part of your household. What we need to remember is that Isaac's household was more than just a simple farming family as we might imagine it. It was almost the equivalent of an ancient agribusiness at this point. He has lots of people who are tending his flocks, lots of people who are planting his crops and so on. He literally had hundreds of servants, and they were beginning to worry that these people were strong enough, if they combined together, to actually overthrow them, take their land away by force, take away their city. So they're fearful of them. They're also probably grumbling at this point, almost certainly grumbling, about this foreigner and his huge herds and how they were drinking up all of their water and eating up all of their forage, all of the crops in the area. And apparently these Philistines, they no longer felt bound by the covenant that they had made with Abraham now that he was dead. And so what do they say to them? They say, go away. Leave us. Get out of here. We don't want you living near us, living near our city any longer. So Isaac does that. He does not, however, move far away. He moves from the plain to the valley, to a place where it would be more difficult to farm and so on. But they began to make it clear to him they wanted him far, far away. How did they make that clear to him? They made it clear by stopping up the wells. Now, most, and it was amazing when I realized this, most Americans have not actually seen a working well. You may have seen a hand pump someplace, but most people have not seen a well that is actively being put to use. And yet, brothers and sisters, something that we don't realize is that the majority of the world's inhabitants are either dependent upon an open water source, like a river or a lake, and that is an awful place to get your water, incidentally, because often The people living in that area will also, their herds will go down and drink from it. They will wash in it and so on. And so the chances of getting sick from that water are very high. A well is a wonderful commodity, and it's still dependent upon in many places in the world. In fact, there are actually a lot of ministries. Their ministry is to go to the villages throughout the world in places like Africa and Asia, throughout that area, and to actually dig working wells and then put in a water pump. And for the first time, these people actually have access to clean water where they live. And this is really a life-saving event. When we talk about the things that people die of, We often speak of heart disease and cancer, but the leading killer, for instance, of children in Africa is diarrhea, if you can believe it. Most children who die in their infancy die from intestinal parasites that they take in by drinking infected water. And so it is a real problem. Well, wells were something that were absolutely necessary for any farming community. Without it, your animals would die of thirst. Without it, you could not do emergency irrigation of your crops when it wasn't raining. And you will remember that Abraham's servant had known that he would find the women of the city of Nahor by simply going to the well. In the morning they had that ritual. Their entire life is structured in the morning you go get water, and then in the evening you go get water. And so there were always these two trips to the well they would make. And around the world, again, that is something that billions of people do on a daily basis. And so a well is a center of life. Well, what they were doing is they were throwing rocks into the well and dirt into the wells to choke them up so that you would not be able to get water out of them, you would not be able to water your flocks. And clearly, by choking these wells that Abraham had dug and therefore were the inheritance of Isaac, the Philistines were waging a cold war against Isaac. They weren't yet, they hadn't come to blows, they weren't fighting and killing each other, but clearly they wanted him out of the area. Go away from us. No, go further away from us. Get out of the entire area. Isaac would not, though. What does he do? Well, he doesn't confront them and fight to take the wells back, although he probably could have. He digs new wells. He puts new labor into this. And then, after he digs these new wells, the Philistines are not done. They say, that water is ours. Now, I'm pretty sure they were not saying, well, you understand, Isaac, the aquifer that all these wells draw from, that's part of our ancient aquifer and our water sources. No, they were saying that the land that you're digging the wells on is our inheritance. Those, therefore, are our wells. That's our water. Go away. Now, when that happened, at that point, Isaac has two choices. He can get his dander up, and he can go, how dare you? And then confront them, come to blows, and then fight a war, the War of the Wells, over these wells that they have. Or he can give in, and he can move on. And he does that, but he makes note of what's happened. He gives the wells names. And interestingly enough, the places, often many of the places in the Middle East, were actually named after the wells. Whenever you see the word beer in front of something, it tends to be indicating that this is the name of a place that was named for its well. So first, the first well is Essek, which means contention. The next one is Sitna, which means strife. And finally, finally, they move away far enough from the Philistines that it's just not worth their while. He's reached the point at which they're like, okay, he's far enough out of the area that we'll let him live in that particular area. And then he calls the next well that they dig, Rehoboth. And Rehoboth literally means wide places or rooming. And Isaac sees this as a sign that the Lord had made room for them and that they would not have to contend any longer. One of the things that we need to remember is that in oral communities, as opposed to communities where everything is written down, The names that people and places are given are meant to bring to mind particular things, to remind them of things. This was intended to be a reminder that the Lord had kept his covenant with Isaac, that the Lord had made room for them in the land. And Isaac knows who is the one who is blessing him. It's not the Philistines. Ultimately, it is the Lord. Now, this practice of giving names that mean things, I wish we still did that. There are a few events or occasions where we will give names to things that are meant to remind us of something. So for instance, when it came to choosing a name, and there was actually a point when we started the church plant here, what are we going to call the church plant? And the name that immediately came to me was Providence. Now, I was thinking in terms of when I say Providence, I'm going to go ahead and read, in defining Providence, the wonderful definition that is given to us in the last and the greatest of the great dictionaries, which was Webster's 1828 dictionary, which is probably the most Christian dictionary that was ever written. Incidentally, there are enough words in Webster's that we never needed to add anything to them. Maybe in the technological age, you know, microchip and stuff like that, but You know, if we just stuck with Webster's, we would have been fine, moving on, but we had to be smarter. Anyway, Webster defines providence this way. He says, in theology, the care and superintendence which God exercises over his creatures, he that acknowledges a creation and denies a providence involves himself in a palpable contradiction. For the same power which caused a thing to exist is necessary to continue its existence. Some persons admit a general providence, but deny a particular providence, not considering that a general providence consists of particulars. A belief in divine providence is a source of great consolation to good men. By divine providence is often understood God himself. When the decision was made to call the church providence, We did so because we wanted to be reminded constantly that this place exists because of God, that he was the one who established it, and that if we were going to prosper, if we were going to be able to establish a church in the first place in this community, a reformed church, and I, you know, from the very beginning, I understood the planning of a reformed church in this area, which is swarming, let's face it, with Baptist Churches, it was like introducing a Brussels sprout into a cotton candy community. It was something very, very different. So if it was going to prosper, if it was going to succeed, if it was going to hold on, it would only be by God's providence. And God providentially did that. It was a reminder to us. So Isaac does this, he gives the wells names and then the places are named after the wells to remind them constantly of the covenant keeping God. Now, I hope you notice that Isaac has a different spirit from the people of the world, the people amongst whom he dwelt as a stranger in a foreign land. He was being mistreated. But note this, he does not repay their evil with evil. He does not provoke a war, even when he could have justified that. Here I am constantly expending my resources to dig wells. I dig a well. I'm only digging in the places where my father originally dug wells, where we knew we could find water. These were places that we'd open up. What happens? They steal our well. So we say, okay, you slighted us once. We'll go over here. We dig another well. And what do they do? They come back and claim that one as well. That's enough. We've had it. We're going to war. Now, had he gone to war, even if he had prevailed, he would have made himself a stench in the land. They would have gone from being immigrants and guests, essentially, to being a malignant force within the midst of the land, and somebody probably who the towns would gradually gather themselves against. Certainly, when Isaac and his family came into your area, it would not have been something that was welcome in any sense. But in this note, he is following the same line of advice that Jesus would later give Jesus a descendant of Isaac. but the greater descendant would say, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. That's Matthew 3.5. And then Christ gives us fuller and very difficult to stomach instructions in Matthew 5 and the rest of the chapter. In Matthew 5.38 he says this, you have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him too. Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you. Do not turn away. You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies. Bless those who curse you. Do good to those who hate you and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you that you may be sons of your father in heaven. For he makes his son rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. Now, it is not in the nature of the natural man, man in his fallen estate to obey those instructions. It is our, I mean, I know most of the guys understand this. Growing up, if somebody said something about you or your family or your mama, you were supposed to react. You were immediately supposed to respond with your fists. And if you didn't, you were a weakling. You were a coward. You were disgraceful. But brothers, unfortunately, a lot of men carry that well beyond childhood. If anybody slights you, you don't take it for a second. Nobody, nobody can say a thing to you that you think is an insult. And as a result, without even realizing it, you gradually become unteachable, angry, and unpleasant to deal with. And your family can tell you. They'll sometimes try to tell you. And then how do you react? You become angry. You're whipped to, how dare you? How dare you tell me? Blah, blah, blah. And that's literally how you hear people. All they are is insulting. All they are is attacking you. And so you respond with evil. You take what you perceive as evil and you respond with evil. Isaac doesn't do that. Now, the Lord had provided, and the Lord once again appears as he appeared to Abraham, and he reinforces the covenant. One of the mainstays we're gonna see in the theology of Genesis, and indeed the theology of the entire Bible, is this idea of covenant. God makes covenants, promises, with his people, and he never breaks them. And the covenant isn't just with the individual. It's not the case that God says, I will be the God of Abraham, but not of his children. We learned today that baptism, we believe, is something that's supposed to be given to the children of believers because they, too, are inheritors of the covenant promises. Now, if they choose to take those promises that have been given to them, that inheritance, then it will go well with them. If they refuse the inheritance that's given to them, then they will be turncoats. They will be people who have rejected the covenant and all of the wonderful things that it promises. But nonetheless, God intends to include our families in his covenant promises. And he comes to Isaac and he reinforces that again and again. We're going to see God appearing to Abraham, appearing to Isaac, appearing to Jacob, and gradually always reinforcing this idea that he is the covenant-keeping God, that he's made a covenant with them. And obviously from this line will come the blessing to the nations, going all the way back to Genesis 12. That covenant runs all the way to Christ. So God makes or reinforces his covenant with Isaac that night. And then it leads to another covenant, another blessing that the Lord gives. Because Isaac had not gone to war with Abimelech and the people of Gerar. They come to him. They've seen the way that the Lord has blessed him, just as he blessed Abraham. They see also that he is a man of peace, a man whom they can speak to, a man whom they can negotiate with. And they know that the Lord is with him and that the Lord is protecting him. And so they desire to enter into a covenant with him so that there would be peace between the two sides to forestall the possibility of war. And here's a reinforcing of that idea in Proverbs 16.7. When a man's ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. This is something that should mark the Christian, that they are people of peace. That it's very difficult to get into a quarrel with them, not very easy. One of the reasons why there is so much hideous argument, hideous dissension, hideous strife and division within our nation is because there's so little genuine Christianity, so little peace. And we've gone back to the way of the natural man. Instead of the line of Seth being peacemakers within the midst, now the line of Cain is prevailing. And when we have a problem, we pick up a rock and hit each other in the head. That is, brothers and sisters, the way that the devil wants us to go in division. But that's not the way Isaac went. And it produced not only peace, notice this, you had the vertical, peace with God, peace with his creator, but then also that led to peace on the horizontal level. If you want peace in this world, You will never get it without first having peace with your creator. If you're at war with your God and expect to be at peace with your fellow man, that is a vain hope. The Bible reinforces that again and again. But if you have peace with God, it will be very difficult for you to have quarrels with your fellow man, except in the cases of persecution. And even there, the turning of the cheek should be prevailing. Well, on the same day that he enters into this covenant with Abimelech and Phicol and this friend, Ahazot, who came along, his servants find water. And again, there's a well called Sheba, or seven. It refers to the sevenfold oath that Abraham made with Abimelech. And there's a reinforcing of that particular covenant agreement. So it becomes well of the oath, Beer Sheba. I want to give you just really one large application. And it's hard, it's very hard. And it's this, we are to be people of peace. We are to be the meek who inherit the earth. We are to be people who turn the other cheek. Brothers and sisters, if we are following Christ, we need to be people who not only, this is the hard part. I know, When somebody does something good to us, we instinctively understand it is our duty to do something good back. If we take good from somebody and we respond with evil, everybody sees that that's wrong. There's an injustice taking place. But that's not what Christ specifically called you to. He called you to a much higher standard than that, didn't he? Not render good to those who do good to you. He said, render good to those who do evil to you. He didn't say, bless your friends alone. He said, bless your enemies and pray for those who despitefully use you. In Romans 12, 17 through 21, we read this, and this is Paul speaking to us. Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath. For it is written, vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord. Therefore, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink. For in so doing, you will heap coals of fire on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil by good. We are supposed to be people who are leading those who hate us into the Christian faith. Paul was among those people. He was somebody who despitefully used the people in the church. He hated them. He persecuted them. He threw them in prison. He voted to have them stoned to death in many cases. And yet he became a Christian and eventually the greatest of apostles. I hated Christ and his people, but do you know what? And this amazed me in my heart of hearts. They didn't hate me back. The people I hated hated me as a general rule, but not the Christians. I remember an old lady, I had just done about the worst thing that you could possibly do to her. I had insulted her and her faith and so on in the most horrible, horrible way. And she said to me, oh, child, Christ can forgive even this. I laughed nervously. I didn't know what to do. But the response took me aback. Why would anybody do that? Why would anybody be sweet and kind and helpful and loving to somebody who had just done something that normally I deserve. I actually deserved to be beaten to within an inch of my life, to be punched, to be kicked, That was what I deserved. And instead she responded with love. Where did that love come from? It came, brothers and sisters, from a changed heart and a desire to emulate her savior. Peter reminds us in 1st Peter 2 21 he says for to this you were called because Christ also suffered for us leaving us an example that you should follow his steps who committed no sin nor was deceit found in his mouth who when he was reviled did not revile in return when he suffered he did not threatened, but committed himself to him who judges righteously, who himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness, by whose stripes you were healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls." Now, if anybody deserved to be treated well, to be given absolute respect, it was our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And yet nobody was more ill-treated than our Savior. God came and dwelt amongst his people. Emmanuel, God with us, came to earth. And what did we do? We mocked him, we humiliated him, we scourged him, and then we killed him in the most brutal way that we could think of. It would have been righteous for God to have responded by destroying us utterly and sending us all to hell for eternity. But that was the very means, that emptying of himself, that humbling of himself that is greater than anyone can conceive of. It was through that means that you and I were saved. And so when we are so prideful that we say, well, I cannot possibly bear this light. He has insulted me. I must get my own back. I must become like a Mel Gibson movie and get revenge, ha ha, at the end. When we say that, how foolish are we? And more importantly, how un-Christlike are we? Nothing, brothers and sisters, is more unchrist-like than revenging yourself. Now Paul doesn't say, well, you need to be a bunch of milquetoast weenies and get used to the fact that the world's a nasty place and that nothing's ever gonna be right, nya-nya-nya-nya. He doesn't say anything like that. Although some people interpret it that way. Now, do you realize how much strength it takes to bear an insult and allow it to simply pass over you? It's much easier to get angry and to think that people are insulting you and respond in that way. That's not strength. Strength is the ability to swallow your pride, to empty yourself of pride, to no longer think of yourself more highly than you ought to. and then to strive to live peaceably with all men. That is hard. In fact, it's impossible for the natural man. It's something that only the Christian can truly do. And that's what you're called to. Because just like Isaac, you're strangers. You're sojourners and pilgrims in this land. You're passing through. And we should try as hard as we can to live with the people of this world and encourage them to come on the pilgrimage with us, to bring them along. And so when our enemies are persecuting us, it does not mean that we should persecute back. Now, that does not mean that you cannot defend yourself and your family from a maniac who's trying to kill you. That's not what the word says. You must obey the Sixth Commandment and do all that you can to preserve your life and that of others righteously. But it does mean that we should not be a people of anger, of grudges, of swift temper. Instead, we should be slow to speak, quick to listen, and above all, brothers and sisters, slow to anger. And remember, a grudge, it doesn't hurt your enemy. There's a great truth that's not in the Bible, but it's true nonetheless. Having a grudge is like swallowing poison and hoping it kills someone else. All it does is poison you. And I have seen people who have nurtured grudges like cancer, and they don't realize how it eats them up within. Don't let that be the case with you. Love others, forgive readily, and do all that you can to live peaceably with others, following the example of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who, in order to redeem us when we were yet enemies and rebels, and had done everything that we could to spit upon and mock God, nevertheless, loved us so much that he was willing to die for us. That's humility. That's the ultimate loss of pride. May we all lose our pride in ourselves, and may our boasting be in Jesus Christ. Let's go before him now. God, our Father, I pray, Lord, that if there are any who are struggling this day with pride and anger, that they would have done with it, that this would be the day when they strive to instead follow your example, to not repay evil with evil, and certainly not to repay good with evil, but instead to do good to all men, to look for ways to bless those who despitefully use us, who hate us, and who pour out their opprobrium on us. May it be the case that we are a good example of what Christlikeness looks like, that we are so winsome that even the enemies, O Lord of the faith, are drawn in, that they see the difference, that they can't fight against it, and because of your work in their hearts, they become Christians. May that be the case.