You know, I miss working. We're talking out of the book of Isaiah, the 26th chapter, and it's a teaching on justice. Because without justice, it discourages the people that's law abiding, the people that are looking to do right, the people that want to do right. If God doesn't chasten justice, that's what the book of Habakkuk is about. When Habakkuk says, Lord, you mean to tell me you will do this or you will allow the wicked to do us this? Well, you have to be a son of God. If you're a son of God, then you see that you don't have the infinite understanding of God and that God does everything for a reason or purpose. that everything that's happening, you may not understand the motives, everything that God has or what the intent of the heart of the person was or whatever. That's why we can't be God and we can't judge people because God sometimes overlooks things or let things go, but it's not, God is not a legalist in the sense that it's not injustice But it's mercy sometimes. God allows mercy. And that's what the Pharisees and some of us are alike Pharisees. We don't have compassion. We're overlooking. We get religious or get high-minded, get such a way that we overlook justice, compassion, and mercy, and faithfulness. But mankind has a different deal. And that's why I say, if you're a son of God, you're led by the Spirit of God, and you offer able to operate through the grace of God. God leads you through His grace. So we see it says, trust in the Lord forever, for in the Lord, the fourth verse, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength. For he bringeth down them that dwell on high the lofty city he layeth it low. He layeth it low even to the ground, he bringeth it even to the dust. The foot shall thread it down, even the feet of the poor and the steps of the needy. The way of the just is of righteousness, the way of the just is. But you remember there's going to be those that are just and those that are unjust. Even in the church there's some people that are just and there's going to be some in the church that is unjust. There could be some that are righteous and some that are unrighteous. And in the book of Revelation, you don't see them turning goats into sheep. In other words, it's to the lost. The Bible is to the lost sheep of Israel. It's to those that God had given unto Christ. It's not to everybody. Everybody won't be saved. So at the end of Revelations we see, he that is unjust, let him remain unjust. He that is unrighteous, let him remain unrighteous. But such that are without, in other words, those that won't enter into the kingdom of God, because if you would working to enter into the Kingdom of God, that you were walking and being prepared for the Kingdom of God, all these weights and sins would be cast off you because you would be sanctified by God's Word. It would put justice in your heart because He gives you a new heart. that heart is after God in his likeness, in his image. That's the reason we're the sons of God. We have to mirror what who Jesus Christ is. That's why he gave us his son as an example and we're joint heirs with Christ. It goes on to say, Thou most upright doest weigh the path of the jest. He says it weighs, in other words, directs the paths. It guides us in the path. It judges us. It carries us along. It says, yea, in the way of thine judgments, O Lord, have we waited for thee. The desire of our soul is to thine name and to the remembrance of thee. We've been doing uprightness according to looking for God. We hadn't been straying or trying to stray away or whatever. What they started to realize, it was God there all the time. It wasn't their righteousness. And that's why God comes into the life of his people, and he bursts them into the family of God, he places them into the body of Christ. He gives them the gift of the Spirit. That's giving them the power and authority to become the sons of God. He's giving you what is necessary. And when he gives you this, he doesn't command or tell us to do something that we're not able to do. So we know all His commandments and His precepts. All of these statutes are just. They are right. And our delight is in doing and pleasing Him. That's where we get our strength. The joy of the Lord is by strength. And that's where I get it, in pleasing Him. That's where I get my peace from. So that's how I grow and become powerful in the Lord. That is, walking in His commandments and statutes and hiding them in my heart, meditating on them day and night, growing thereby. But we also says that what we waited on was his justice because we know those that are outside of God's law, those that are lawbreakers, those that are wicked, God will punish, justice will come, judgment will come upon those that transgress God's law. If we study and read his word, we know that God is a fair and just God. He says, With my soul have I desired thee in the night, yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early. For when thine judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness. So as we see God's Spirit in His judgments falling upon the earth, those of us that are born of God in the Spirit of God, we started to learn, we start to learn more about God. As a whole, the church gets strong, and that's why I say you should feel it and see it, the manifestations of the sons of God. And that's what the whole creation is waiting for, the appearance and the Appearance in a manifestation the showing the presence of the sons of God it makes you want to be stronger when you see others around you stronger when you see those walking in the wheel in the way in the Word of God it strengthens you. It says, let favor be shown to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness. In the land of the uprightness will he deal unjustly and will not behold the majesty of the Lord. So that's what I was talking about, national collapse and everything. With everything that's going on in this nation, and as much religious preaching is done in the word of God that's going out, Those that are unrighteous are still not doing right. They're not doing just. They're suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, and they are more conniving and more wicked than forever, so they won't learn righteousness because why? They are goats. They are children of the devil. They are tares. They can't change. It's impossible for them to change. because it wasn't given to them. They are the lost ones. That's why we have mercy on these people. God's grace has been shared abroad. The common grace of God, all men share that. All men share the common grace of God. The grace of God had appeared to all men, it says, but all men hadn't capitalized on it. They hadn't used it to their advantage. In other words, the common grace of God is not a saving salvation, it's not unto eternal life. The book of Isaiah, the 40th chapter and the 48 verses, do you not know, have you not heard the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth does not become tired or grow weary. There's no searching of his understanding. Living version reads, don't you yet understand, don't you know by now that the everliving lasting God, the creator of the farthest parts of the earth, never grows faint or weary. No one can fathom the depths of his understanding. So that's what I was telling you earlier. We don't know why God is doing what he's doing. And you can just say, well, God's not asleep. He's not weary. He hadn't given up on me. But I'm not understanding. And that's why, you know, I pray to God and I ask God, for the transforming and the renewing of my mind that he give me wisdom and knowledge and understanding because the way I used to look at this and understand it, that's the old man. Let me crucify that self. Let me not look at it that way anymore. Let me look at it from God's perspective as his son. Let me look through his lens, not the way I used to look at things. Those old ways have passed away. So, here we are. Though God's normal activity involves far more mercy than justice, we must operate with the understanding and the conviction that God owns us, that God owes us nothing. Job had to come to find out that. That God doesn't owe you an explanation of why he's doing what he's doing. He didn't owe Job an explanation. He wanted counsel with God. He wanted God to explain something to him. Do you really owe your children anything? Can they demand anything of you? As children of the people in your household, if you had a board or somebody staying with you and you did something, can they ask you this? You could tell them why you're doing something or whatever, but I don't. I have to give you a reason why I said do this or reason why I do this. I said clean up the kitchen or we have to do all these things? Well, I don't have to go through explaining about roaches. I don't have to understand about cleanliness, godliness. I don't have to explain all of those things. You don't really have to have a reason to be God. When you're God, sometime you can kill people. You can allow things to happen and you don't explain it to anyone. Nobody knows what God's doing. You'd better ask God what's going on. That's why we pray to God for his wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. That's why I read different versions to y'all, because we've heard some of these King James versions, which is strong or whatever, and that's the standard by which we go by in this church. But there are other versions sometimes, the Living, the NIV, the Amplified, or whatever. of the Philips, of the J.B. Philips, of the Ryrie. It's different Bibles. I look at the different translations or whatever. So that's why I be reading sometimes these other translations. So God, He knows exactly what is happening. If he allows a tower to fall on our heads this afternoon, we cannot complain any injustice on God's part. Remember Jesus said, well, what about those at the Tower of Siloam failed? Do you suppose all of those were guilty, or they were innocent, or the most wicked people in the world? God's running there. If a train wreck comes out and kill everybody, or those people that was escaping in that SUV the other day and the guy drove out and the truck hit it and killed it, it was 24 people in there. If a bomb go off, or if Texas was, God sent a freeze and it shut off all the power and the energy and everything in Texas, that doesn't mean that those are wicked, all wicked people or whatever. But only the religious world does that a lot of times. You remember what happened to Katrina in New Orleans or whatever? And a lot of people in the, especially the religious community, oh, they were so wicked and things, that's why it had to wash New Orleans and purge it out and do all this because of the homosexuals and this and that. you can't explain God or whatever. You can preach and teach all that and say all that, but it's just like Job's friends. You saying what you believe or whatever, and some of it may be biblical in a way, but that doesn't mean it's applicable to me. That doesn't mean it applied to my children. That doesn't mean it applied in my situation or what's happening around me. So God has to lead you and guide you in all truth. That's why it's bad to think you know it all. It's bad to sit in that perspective as being God or whatever. He has already given us so much mercy that it is beyond our understanding. So if something was to happen to me or whatever, God is just. And I tell a lot of people, if something happens to me or whatever, don't leave me plugged up to no life support or whatever. I've lived a good life. God has been wonderful to me. No complaints. And if I die today or whatever, God's good and He's still good, however I pass, however God decides to take me out, because God is sovereign and everything is His power and authority. So whatever befalls me, God is in that. God deals fairly, and that's the concept we have of God. You remember Abraham when God was about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and that he told Abraham what he was about to do in the book of Genesis, the 18th chapter, wherever it was in Genesis, 18th chapter, 23rd to 25th verses. And it says, Abraham said, will thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure, if there will be fifty righteous within the city, will thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That be far from thee to do after this man, to slay the righteous with the wicked, and that the righteous should be as wicked as the wicked. That be far from thee. Shall not the judge of the whole earth do right? See, God's justice is according to His righteousness in that what God does, God is merciful in how He deals with us, and He's just, I got my notes kinda out of order here, y'all, but you'll have to excuse me. His justice is according to His righteous character. So, In Psalms 119, 172, it defines righteousness. It's stating this, it says, all your commandments are righteousness. It says all these commandments, they reflect God's character. God's whole word is righteousness, and we know the law is just, it's right, it's pure, and it's holy. So we have nothing to say against the word of God. Those commandments reflect in writing the character of God, His nature, so that's why we want to be in the Word and abide in that Word, so that would be our nature. What God does is always consistent with who He who he is and what he is and what he has written. There's a consistency with God. He doesn't act capricious or whatever. There's a standard whereby God goes. There's a nature to God. There's knowledge in God. His righteousness is absolute purity. God is pure. He is utterly incapable of an unholy or unrighteous or unjust act. So we can never call God unrighteous, unjust, or unholy. for god to act unfairly he would simply have to be ceased to be in god that's why april and that's why i say injustice that will be enacted in your that's where i say well when they did what they did against it capital on january the sixth what they did against the constitution what they did against the nation in our political people didn't do anything about it when he got off with this wouldn't win he wasn't when he wasn't impeached, even though they voted and they indicted him, they acquitted him. So that means that there was an injustice. Now God has to act, see, because with the politicians and the religious people, your religious leaders, when they don't act and they don't do justice, then God has to act against them because they are God's representatives are they the leaders here and God holds them accountable for that. So that's why we can look at it and say, well, okay, Babylon has fallen. Now we see the nation has fallen because God has to punish this. Now we don't know when, I can't tell you when and how everything. I can just follow God. So when people do you wrong or whatever, that's how we stand strong in God. Because as a child of God, you have to pay for everything you do to me, everything you say to me, every idle word that goes against me. I don't have to defend myself. I'm God's son. Vengeance is God's. He will repay you. I don't have to pay back. So my hands are clean. You have to have clean hands. If you will live for God, you can't be the avenger of blood. David was acting as an avenger of blood. So he couldn't even build God's temple. He says, no, David, your hands are full of blood. So I don't want to be a judge and a jury and over all this. I just want to be a son of God. And I want to tell you about this. It is totally impossible for him to commit injustice. He would cease to be God if he wouldn't act justly, wouldn't he? God is fair, that's what Abraham was counting on. He said, that bigger city, Sodom and Gomorrah, I'm thinking about Baton Rouge, I'm thinking about United States, you can't just wipe the nation out, can you God? It's just people here, you can't just wipe the city out, you can't wipe them all, it's got to be one that's doing good. That's what Abraham was pleading, he says, how about 50? God said, okay, but then it wasn't 50. He bargained with God and God wants us to plead with it. Are you pleading for your family? Are you pleading and mourning for your city? Are you pleading and mourning for the nation? We'll see that those that are mourning and sighing for the nation are actually right now, it's hurtful for what's going on in the nation. If you're not mourning and signing for the nation, you're not following God. If you're full of laughter and joy and happiness, you may, during this week coming up to communion, you may examine yourself and see whether you still in the faith. If you think we on a great course, you may examine yourself. You may not be in the faith if you don't see what's coming on the world. You may not be as strong as my granddaughter. My granddaughter Madison, she's like Abraham. Abraham says the Lord of the Earth, he must deal fairly. He knew God had to deal fairly. That's why he kept doing, trying to, let me not use that terminology. They say that's slander now. But he kept asking God of bargaining, of petitioning God. And he went all the way down to 10. But then God still destroyed the city. I'll get back to that. I want to get to my granddaughter. I started telling you about my granddaughter dealing faith. I was in Walmart and she was with my wife. And me and Chris, my grandson, was together. And I was going to buy him something. I was buying him something or whatever. He used to say, I know Papa was going to buy Chris this or whatever. And I was like, Mama, she didn't buy me this or whatever. He can do what he want with his money. He can do what he want or whatever. But it wouldn't be fair, though. It's not fair. And it's something about the computer, with the computer and the time on the computer at home. With my office computer, I don't like a lot of them thing but I let one of the grandchildren use it and my wife lets the other one use her computer. And if some of the grandkids over, we got two different iPads that they use or whatever. But she wanted to be on the computer. Savannah, my other granddaughter, the older granddaughter, is there. And she was on the computer. And she said, well, this is not fair. Y'all do this, but it's really not. So even children have an idea or thought about what is fair. See, we have a mindset, all of us receive injustices from the hand of men, and we do not deal anywhere near as fairly with each other as we should. We want everything in our dealings with others to go favorably for us, for that is what we feel is fair. So some things might not seem fair, They got an illustration on here that I'm not going over today, but don't you be puzzled by it. You could ask me about it Saturday, and we'll go over it. But there's an illustration there. But here with Abraham, as I was telling you about Abraham and dealing with God, that's what Abraham was with God. Let me find out back where I was. The Wathia means, okay, so I was telling you about God does not always act with justice, sometimes He acts with mercy. God does not always act with justice, sometimes He acts with mercy. That is, what he did with Lot and his family. You remember Lot and his family. And I tell you, Abraham was pleading that would God, you know, not do everyone in Sodom and Gomorrah or whatever. But God destroyed the whole of Sodom and Gomorrah, saved Lot and his two daughters. God acted with justice against the city because it was so corrupt and so evil and so filled with sin that it even offended God's sense of what is right and God's sense of what is wrong. Whether he does it with San Francisco or some of the cities we have today, New York, Chicago, or New Orleans, or Baton Rouge, or any of the cities, sometimes God acts, and it's justice that God does this, but you say, well, you would destroy the good that there were some good people, or some morally right people, or some people that wasn't so sinful. But you remember, there's none good but God, in that, like I said, God doesn't owe us anything. If he would have taken Job's life, and that's why Job says, though he slay me, yet will I serve him, because it's God has extended mercy to all people, and it's by grace that we have eternal life. If it wasn't for the grace of God, none of us would be saved because all of us rightly are condemned to death. But he took us who were condemned to death and he made us right in his son. That's why I say we have to repent and turn from self, turn from our old man, what we was in God's work to build his character and his nature in us. That's why we have that path. He puts us with the objective. The word of God is the directive that's in our lives. And he puts us on the path, the way to Jesus Christ. He says, I'm the way, so you have to continue in God's word. That's the straight and narrow way. That's the weights and sins and the baggage that we have to leave behind. But God doesn't always do these things. It even offended God's patience about Sodom and Gomorrah. And we see the earth and that's what I say what's going on in the nation today. We would be lucky if God let us out of here. I don't know how long this nation could last. No nation in history has lasted more than 200 or 300 years or so. I think about 300 years is the Roman Empire and both empires has lasted. And how old is the United States? 200 and something years old? 1877 or whatever, we're right at the threshold. His longsuffering, and I will tell you about longsuffering. After a while, you know, people been married 40 and 50 years, and they say, well, how did they get divorced or what happened? Well, it's past explanation because it's just not one instance. It's just not one thing that caused the divorce or caused the separation. with the Amorites, the Hittites, Jebusites, you see how many hundreds of years, it was some 490 years before that promise that he brought them back because the iniquity of them wasn't full yet. The Amorites, he says, God is patient in long suffering. If you had a guest in your home or something, you might put up with him for a month, two months, might put up with him two or three years or six years. Well, you might say, you gotta go now before we kill one another. Something happened, I can't put up with you no more than this. And you praying and pleading to God or whatever for God to intervene. So it's not that the situation was ideal or whatever, but the long suffering and the forbearance, and that's why you wanna be like God, you still want God to step in. Sometime the devil will give you religious things, give you scriptures and make you feel But it wasn't the spirit of God that led you to do that. It was self. We have to watch out for vanity because they used the word Corban. They set money aside for things dedicated to God or whatever, and it was dedicated to God, so they couldn't help their fathers and mothers or whatever. And God says, well, through your traditions, you have made void the commandments of God. See, sometimes you can, that wisdom, that sensual or earthly wisdom that is devilish, it works to counterman what God, that gets you off the path. That's why I say the beaten path, the path of God, you have to be led by the Spirit, because there's a way that seemeth right to a man. A man's ways and his right eye, own eyes are right. But the end there of his death and destruction. Here talking at church or here somewhere else or whatever, you talking to somebody and this and that, that. Well, you get so full of it and they done drum you up or whatever and you go throw that person out the house and then you gotta go or whatever. I done gave you a lot of religious points or whatever and you done heard that. But did you pray over that? Did the spirit lead you there or did I persuade you? Was it the preacher or somebody manslaved you? A lot of times you listen to that man or what other people say, and that's how politicians and church go. They're not being led by the spirit of God because God's not the opt of confusion. If it results in confusion in the wrong thing, God didn't drive you to do that. Don't go do things and then say, well, I don't know anybody. That's what Job's friends was doing. They was trying to use it as a cudgel against Job. people use the word of God as a hammer towards you not knowing it's like a double-edged sword it cuts the other way too now it cuts both ways and so in injustice he wiped the city off the map so injustice just God was justified in wiping the whole city off the map But, listen at that, he was justified in destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, just like he called Israel and Judah Sodom and Gomorrah. The analogy was like, when he used the analogy and called them Sodom and Gomorrah in the book of Ezekiel, in other words, they was just like them. And that's what I'm saying. The nation is just like Israel or Judah was, and that nation collapsed. where just like Rome was, the United States is like Rome was, it collapsed. Rome collapsed from inside, and that's what I've been preaching for years, that the United States was gonna collapse from inside, interior, it wasn't gonna be an exterior enemy. But, but, here's a but, now we got to watch these big buts. But in grace and mercy, he spared Lot, his wife, and two children. So we would be just like the world. We would be just like our brothers and sisters or whatever, but by the grace and mercy of God. See, that's what counts. Well, the grace and mercy comes in. That's outside the law. You could extend grace and mercy to someone. We don't know how long this long suffering and forbearance is, but by the grace of God, you still hanging in here. God had given, he had saved a few. And what he did, out of those that Abraham was petitioning for, he saved Lot and his two children. Not his wife, though, because his wife disobeyed God. She was on the path. She was on the path, but things in her former life, her children, feeling for the daughters and children because they had other sons and daughters. So looking back on what was left behind, she disobeyed God and looked back. was turned to a pill of salt. But those that was on the path of the way noticed that they didn't do exactly as God said do, but he pleaded with God that he will allow him to go to Zoram or whatever. But notice that when he didn't do perfectly what God asked him to do, that's where he committed sin with his daughters and things. That's how Moab and Ammon got here. If he'd have went somewhere else or to that city to where God had told them to go, they wouldn't have thought that they were the only people left. Those two daughters were virgin daughters, they didn't know about the outside world. And they thought that they wasn't, that that was it, that all had been destroyed. So God spared them. And God looks over it so you don't know why someone does what they do. You don't know why incense and all these things are what can God justify God's judgment to do that. That preaching and teaching will go under the way of Balaam, the era of Balaam. You remember the three things that I told you in the doctrine of Balaam. See, Balaam had this thinking, but let me not get off the beaten path here, else I won't finish this. Thus, we as sons of God do the same thing, being led by the Spirit of God. We extend grace and mercy in certain situations. We're not as hard-hearted as a lot of other people who do things as other people do, and it's by the grace of God. Some people ought to plead and talk with God because it's God that's keeping them in stead, in the stead that they are, and I'm not Don't want to make it like she was, that I was the other day. But let me still hold that over you about this illustration. I don't want to use this illustration today. But anyhow, mercy is not injustice. Mercy is not injustice. But neither is it, hold on, hold on. Back, back. Looking at my notes wrong. Mercy is not justice. To have mercy is not justice because that person is not getting what they deserve. We're not, God doesn't give us what we deserve. I don't, never ask God, forgive me what I deserve because I deserve death. Through his mercy, that's extended to me. I have eternal life. Through his grace and mercy, he was merciful unto me, right? but neither is it injustice. Mercy is not injustice. It is not because injustice would violate righteousness. Injustice violate righteousness. If what happened in the nation, what our political leaders and our religious leaders do, if God wouldn't punish it, it wouldn't be punished, something would wipe that out. That's not righteousness. That's why what God did was he punished Jesus Christ in our stead. So it's not our righteousness, it's the righteousness of Christ that was imputed unto us, right? That's why that sacrifice had to be made. God punished sin, but he punished Jesus Christ in our stead. So God is not unjust. His righteousness is there because Christ bore my sin. That's what I'm looking at. That's why my works and what I do doesn't save me or doesn't help me. All I can do is not, I didn't feed the needy. I didn't clothe the sick. I don't have to do anything. I could be just like the thief on the cross. And I believe that thou art the son of God. He says, this day thou will be with me in paradise. I don't have to do a works. I'm not saved by works. I'm saved by, believing on Jesus Christ. He said, if you believe on Jesus Christ and have faith that he died for you, that's all you need. That's the only way. That's the truth. That's the life. That's the way. So that's the way God does it. It's through his mercy and grace. God always acts according to his holy character. which is totally righteousness. Therefore mercy, which manifest kindness and grace, does no violence to righteousness. That's why we're under grace and truth, because we're not looking at the law. We're not dealing against the law. Legally, it's a lot of things, and that's what the Pharisees was. They were legalists. and they forgot about mercy, grace, compassion, and faith. We may see non-justice in God, in other words, which is mercy, but we never see injustice in God. Non-justice is that He saves us, even though we were sinners, we are sinners saved by grace. So he didn't give us what we deserve. But that's not injustice because it doesn't violate the righteousness of God because Christ is our righteousness. He's the righteousness of God. And if we're in Christ, Christ has already been punished and thus that's why we live the way we live. We are in Christ and that's the life we live. Not by the law or no legalism. We're saved by grace and faith in Jesus Christ. Is God fair in his dealings with man? Is he? Do we see that God is fair in his dealings with man? Well, consider this. God has warned man what he is going to earn in the way of the death penalty if he sins. Didn't he warn Adam? He says, if you eat of that tree, you shall surely die. I was telling you, a lot of things that we do, we draw the death penalty for the wages of sin. It's what? It's death. So God has warned us. You've been warned. But, so we see that God is really fair in his dealings. But consider this also in Exodus 21, we are warned that striking or cursing our parents will result in death. Right? Honor thy parents. If you hurt, hit your parent or whatever, But does God does do that? People say that's in the Old Testament or whatever. We ain't under Jesus Christ, we're under grace and truth. So it's a lot of people shoot and kill their parents, right? It's a lot of things that happen. And God's not just shooting lightning bolts down here, killing them or whatever. They live to a ripe old age, some of them or whatever. Different things happen. So what happens then? He said that if you murder somebody, you're going to die. If you spill man's blood, your blood should be spilled. That's why the nation is collapsing, because we got a guy that didn't kill four or five people, and he's still on the street. We're removing the death penalty. That's deadly for a nation to remove the death penalty, because without that, there's no deterrent to sin, to killing. That's why you have so much killing in the nation. If you would give them the hot shot, If you were given that hot shot, you find that chemical that puts them to death, you're doing what God told you to do. That's for those that are under the law. But with a nation like our nation, how many people that have been on death row have been exonerated that they wasn't the ones that did it? How many people that have been hung or killed for something that people took a bribe for? This last administration, we see just how corrupt that administration was. And we see the murder of George Floyd, where this man kneels on his knee for how many minutes it was, I forgot it. I'm not trying to, but we see a murder on television globally, and the world is in shambles, and they're fighting about George Floyd. Because openly, it looked like they were gonna let this guy off, but they should have said, well, look, everybody's seeing this. This is the hot shot for you. You can save a lot of time. Don't send him in prison for the rest of his life because it takes about $60,000 to $100,000 a year to house a prisoner. And that's why a lot of the cities and the states going corrupt because somebody has to house the prisoners. With a corrupt nation like ours, they privatized the prison and that's why you have a lot of injustices because the wealthy people are making money off incarcerated people. Louisiana is the head state in the nation because they set plea deals, they don't defend the poor and needy or whatever, and corruption is abound. That's why the nation has to collapse. There's no justice in the nation. But, I digress. He said that if you kidnap somebody, you die. United States is one of the leading human trafficking nations there is. Robert Kraft was a part of this, the one that attended this massage parlor, because that's where a lot of the illegal immigrants and a lot of the human trafficking go by. But he wasn't even slapped on the wrist. But since our wealth and things do this, but God doesn't, but there's a day of judgment coming. If this doesn't, anything that grace doesn't cover, you will have to stand before God one day. And that's why I say, I can't get entangled in the world's affairs, but we can see it on television. We can notice it. We are God's witnesses. Yep, you was right, God, to destroy the nation. You was right to do this because, did I brag right? Ain't that guy right? I seen it with my own eyes. I've heard it. Nobody has to tell me about it. I'm his witness. He says, you are my witnesses. He says, if you take my name in vain, if you curse me, if you use blasphemous statements against me, you're going to die. How many times people use the name of Jesus issue? It makes you sick to hear people call Jesus' name. It makes you sick to hear some preachers using Jesus' name. And it's vanity. But God doesn't strike you down. God is bigger than that. But we see where everybody has fallen under the common grace of God. But do you, and we know as sons of God, just like I used to say, I know my mother. Mother might not get you right then or whatever, but when she look over there, I tell you, if she look over there, that made my whole day miserable or whatever, because I know she wasn't going to stop right then or whatever because she was working then or whatever. She was going to get me, though. I had consequences, repercussions coming from acting up in church. That's why I didn't do that much, you know. And I was like Joseph, you know, I was so scared of catching a whipping or whatever that the rest of the church might be being bad. But mother, get them, not me. It was them that did it, you know. Sometime God saves judgment after you die. You didn't heard that sometime you get this in the end? You might wanna get your punishment in this life. A lot of time you wanna go first, go and get me whooping nine, let me get it over with. I know I got it coming. Sometimes we can't tell God how to do it. He said, I'm gonna determine your punishment. In number 16 it says, if you disagree with God's judgment, you're going to die. If you disagree with what, that's why he told Aaron not to murmur and complain when he struck down Aaron's. children, his two sons, because it makes it look like you going against what God says and you're not in agreement with him. And you know, we can't walk with God if we don't agree with him. How can two walk together if we don't agree? You didn't got yourself out of God. See, so Adam should have stopped. Oh, you did something wrong. Now we got to wait for God here because I agree with God. I know that I can't walk with God and do what you did. False prophets died in the Old Testament, not necessarily in the New Testament. If you were a false prophet in the Old Testament, you died. I know y'all would like me to keep going down this list or whatever. It's fun going down lists like this or whatever, but we see where God's very merciful and God's very gracious to us. God has clearly made it known to the penitent, to mankind, and so if God acted fairly, Someone say no. That's why so many of our children, so many people don't even believe in God, because judgment against an evil works sometime that is not carried out. You continue to push that. You continue to do that. That's why I have to get on some of the children that come in here a lot, because if I don't stop and issue punishment or judgment there, they gonna continue on doing that. That's what Nancy Pelosi was saying about Trump with that first impeachment. They let him off then, that was brazen him to do even more arrogant stuff like he did with his last impeachment. Now, like I said, I don't know. I'm not that kind of prophet to tell you these things. The Lord hasn't told me that. But if they go out there and let him get reelected if he weren't for president, and the way people are doing that, whoa unto you, whoa unto the world. See, because he's been embraced by what the Republicans have done thus far. The penalty for some of these offenses really seems harsh to modern minds because, you know, adultery, most of these people that's whoring around in the nation, his son has divorced his wife and has five children. And he's going around with this woman that's a crackhead, a cokehead, or whatever. They're living in fornication. She's making speeches at all these different places. The Republican Party loves her, and they're living. But according to God's word, a fornicator or adulterer dies. And he divorced his wife, so by her going with him, that makes her an adulterer and him an adulterer. That should get the death penalty. Do you know that adultery was punishable by death? That's why they brought the woman caught in adultery to Jesus. She received Jesus' grace and mercy. But did he tell her to keep doing this? He said, sin no more unless you receive a worse penalty. See, so we know we should turn from those and repent from that kind of stuff. But does God kill? adulterous and fornicators. So many people are running around with their wives and husbands. That's the normal thing. The majority of the mega churches and everything don't preach on that because most of the parents and things don't teach on that because they are husbands and wives and so-called Christians that let boys or let men or women stay with their unmarried daughters or husbands saying, well, they're engaged or this and that, but they're not married. So you participate in their fornication. None of my children have ever stayed in my home with their boyfriends or girlfriends sleeping in the same bed or the room. You allowing fornication under your roof, you do those things. You allowing fornication in your life and in your nation and in your city when you participate in those things. But is God acting fairly or is the grace of God, the common grace of God, extended to all people? but there is a day of judgment. So, the death of false prophets or any of this happening. Now, but there's no corresponding list of this because, I'll go over that about tithes and offerings in just a second. This makes people with a misleading closed to, you know, those people that say they're not under the law, they're not under the Old Testament. And in this very church, people used to talk about me for preaching out of the Old Testament. But those people are illiterate, stupid, foolish, ignorant. Why do I say that? I was a Pentecostal. Did I say I was a Pentecostal? What is Pentecostal? Oneness, right? So I did study and everything, but do you know what the Pentecostals say? There's but one God and His name is Jesus. I believe in the triune God. God the Father, God the Holy Ghost, and God the Holy Spirit. but we see the oneness in the Old Testament. That's the same God of the New Testament. The God of the Old Testament, that's Jesus we're talking about. God had made that same Jesus both Lord and Savior. There's no name above the name of Jesus. At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow. So don't come tell me, oh, we like this new long life, nice Jesus. He's so forgiving and he just loves everybody. And he's so mushy with his long hair and his blonde looking blue eyes and everything. And he's not to curse. He's not against sin. And we can just live any kind of old way. Oh, let me see what my scripture say. In the book of Malachi 3.6 it says, Jesus I change not. Does God say I change not? That's the reason the children of Israel aren't destroyed. Does Hebrews 13 and 8 say that Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever? He doesn't change. God says He changes not. Tell me this, doesn't the book of Isaiah say there's but one God and one Lord? Jesus Christ is that same God you have to stand for. Jesus Christ is that same God that you running around here talking about that little cute, meek, mild Jesus. You have to give account if you take that blood, that precious blood that he spilled, and you don't do something with it, and you use his name and say, I'm a child of God, okay? plagiarizing that and saying that in those false professions. You will be beat with many more stripes. You will be worthy of much more because you use his name in vain. Now is God a false minister? Is he a false prophet? Matthew 23 and 23 says Woe to you self-righteous scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, for you give a tenth, a tithe, a mensch, a deal, and coming, focusing on the mighty matters of law. You tithe all these churches, big, beautiful churches, and the Catholics and all that, billions of dollars, the most wealthy church in the world. Billions. They have their own country. They're their own country. They have their own banks and their own law. Billions of dollars. Also, the Catholics got $10 billion of TP. I mean, was it $10 million? I think it was $10 million. In other words, they got a loan to help pay for their stuff at the church, but they're operating in excess of billions of dollars. But they was at the hog trough. All those people was talking about pork spending and all this. All of the wealthy people that got these PP loans that are talking about small businesses or whatever, some of them were shamed into giving it back. but that's how corrupt this government is. You tell me don't fall, but I digress. He says, and you have neglected to waiter you the more important moral and spiritual provisions of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness. But these are the primary things you ought to have done without neglecting the others. Yeah, you should pay your tithes and offer. Christ preaches that. You'll suffer if you don't pay your tithes off. It's commanded in the Old Testament and the New Testament. And it killed Ananias and Sapphira by lying about it in the New Testament. But it's commanded in the Old Testament. And he said, y'all robbed God. So, is Christ a false minister? People are being taught today that tithing is a thing done away with, that that was in the Old Testament. Does God show anywhere in Scripture, beginning in Genesis, that he has used any other system than tithing to finance his work? Jesus, the very head of the church, had a golden opportunity to state emphatically that the tithing law had been changed. But he did not know such things. instead he said very carefully as the word is saying it that's why I quoted that scripture to you in the Amplifier and it's in every version and what it says in the King James Version he says listen he says carefully the determining amount of time how they would determine that they was paying it off of a very seasoning in the deal the coming and all these things but what he says this you ought not to have left undone. In other words, yeah, you should have did this. He could have say, well, that's not devoted. But he says, this you should not have left undone, didn't he? So he didn't tell them not to. That's what they should have did. Why is mercy so weighty, though? He says, you forgot about the weightier matters of the law. Those who teach grace only apart from the law do not even see a need for mercy, since to them, grace cancels any need for mercy. But their definition, by their definition, mercy is automatic once they are saved. In theory, they can breeze through a happy, happy, joy, joy life filled with no eternal consequences. They can just sin, sin, sin. Shall we continue in sin then, that grace shall abound? God forbid. So they keep saying, you can live any kind of way. You don't have to do this, we don't have to do that. We're not under the law, we're under grace. That's some bad teaching. That's why I said, beware of the doctrine of the Pharisees. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. So, judgment, mercy, and faith can be paraphrased to make them easier to understand. Judgment means being fair and even-handed in judgment. That's what Madison was talking about. You can do it, but it wouldn't be fair. In other words, judgment, as children and everybody else would understand it, it means being fair and even-handed in judgment. And that's what we see in this nation. That's what Black Lives Matter is saying. They're saying if those were black people or Hispanic people attacking the nation's capital, that the National Guard and the Army would have been in there killing them in five minutes. They're saying that's what happened when the President of the United States wanted to walk over to this church to hold up the Bible to say he loved Jesus, that they came in with tear gas and all this stuff to clear out all the peaceful demonstrators that wasn't rioting or whatever, but it wasn't the same judgment, was it? So that's why they say this is a bad nation, because judgment is not handed out the same way. There are more different people that are not receiving an even-handed judgment in this nation. This is the last one. Mercy means being compassionate and kind in action. So that's why sometimes God has to bring judgment on people because they have a habit of taking advantage of their sisters or brothers or different people because they're merciful, they're compassionate. You know, they're Christians and you treat them any kind of way, but you know, God puts an end to it and it's going to hurt you to lose your brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, friends, anybody. It hurts you to see. That's why it says, those that mourn and sigh for the nation. And I'm not a sadist or anything. I don't like to see things happening to people. But I know God's judgment does come. I know my hands is free because I pray for those that are my enemies, those that mistreat me, those that do these things for me. I pray for them and all this because my father's in heaven. Please, he's gonna guard me, he's very protective of me. And what you do unto me, he says, what you do to the least of these, you've done unto me. Faith means being loyal to God and keeping his laws, that's why I say, We need to be faithful. We need to be faithful to keep God's laws. They are written on our hearts. His spirit convicts us of sin. The Holy Spirit convinces us of sin. If we don't follow those that are in the wrong way or under the wrong teachers, we won't quench the spirit. We won't grieve the spirit. And there are many rewards that come from not quenching and grieving the spirit. Justice is more accurate the modern translation of judgment. Faith might be better rendered faithfulness or trust. Thus Jesus is speaking about justice, compassion, and faithfulness or loyalty. Weightier, the word weightier means more important or central or more decisive. That's why I say he gives us a directive when we become sons of God, he puts us on the path. So what's more important? Compassion, mercy, and faithfulness. Those other things that are under the law, these we will do. Paul says in the book of Hebrews, these we will do. He says, laying aside the laying on of hands, baptism, and all these things. If you go into the grace of God, that power and authority, you'll see that all that lines up with the whole word of God. It lays right concurrent to it. Thus, The intent of God's law is to produce justice, compassion, and kindness and loyalty to God. Sometimes I watch the show Criminal Intent, and that's why I say the intent of the law was to produce these things, but the law was weak through the flesh. It was weak through the flesh. Of course, the major thing that will be produced in a right relationship with God and men and character will be built. if you have a relationship with God and men. That's why you have to be compassionate, loving, and merciful. A character will be built. The Pharisees were guilty of a massive distortion of God's will or what could even be called God's pleasure, and in zeal to be correct, they corrupted those they were leading. And that's what happened with this nation. It has corrupted the people they're leading. Our political leaders have corrupted the people. Our religious leaders have corrupted the people. Heavenly Father, as we come before you this