We're still in the first three verses of chapter 61. The spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord had anointed me to bring good news to the suffering and afflicted. He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted, to announce liberty to the captives and to open the eyes of the blind. He has sent me to tell those who mourn that the time of God's favor to them has come, and the day of wrath to their enemies. To all who mourn in Israel, he will give beauty for ashes, joy instead of mourning, praise instead of heaviness, for God has planted them like strong, graceful oaks of righteousness, trees of righteousness for his own glory. So we find out at the culmination of the end times, as we see just what this anointing does, and we're to proclaim, as Christ proclaimed, I told you, we're to do an imitation of Jesus Christ, go around preaching the kingdom of God is at hand. And at that at handness, spiritually, we can stare into it. We're trying to get a vision. You have to strain to get a vision. And we know without the vision, the people perish. And the vision here is that no more mourning according to the ceremonial mournings, according to the handwriting of ordinances as the way people used to do it. And I'll tell you about the way they used to do the mourning during those times because now Christ says he's going to replace that. He says that anointing. So we're teaching the people the good news, the good news of the suffering to the suffering and afflicted that we go around internally mourning. But the exterior, he says, will see, he has sent me to tell those who mourn that the time of God's favor has come in the day of wrath to their enemies. In other words, vengeance for those who are backbiting us, who are talking about us, fret not thyself because of evildoers, for they shall soon be cut off. He's in the midst of doing that right now. He's purging the earth. The day of vengeance is at hand. That time is coming. He says, I'll give you beautiful ashes because of the ritual they used to do when mourning. He says, in joy instead of a long face, instead of the grief, internally, knowing the Word of God, knowing the promises of God, We can internally, now I don't want to say like the Pentecostals or some other people. I've been to different funerals that's dancing in merriment of the people's funerals. But we don't sorrow as those without hope, for we know what's going on. A lot of the people, the funeral places they're dancing at, talking about they're in much better place. They may not be going to that much better place. They may be going down instead of up. They may not be going to the bosom of God. They may not be going into the kingdom of God. We know that at that time of judgment, but it's not we know as we study that people are not in heaven when they die looking down and staring down in us. That's a whole lot of Mythology or something people have preached or taught the spirit goes up, but until that day you're anointed with your bodies Christ meet us in the air in other words when the corruptible and all of those things But that's a whole nother teaching a whole nother rabbit trail to go down. He says Praise instead of heaviness instead of going around like you carrying a ton of bricks around and all sad We will lay those burdens up on him cast all of our cares upon Jesus Christ. We have a burden bearer. We have someone to carry those heavy loads. God had planted us as strong and gracious trees of righteousness to glorify Him. We go around strong, glorifying God. Now this is what mourning was. This is the outward things of mourning. I think a lot of things have happened the reason I say that that's dangerous if you don't mourn. One marked feature of Oriental mourning is what may be called studded publicity and careful observance of prescribed ceremonies. Genesis 23 and 2 and Job 1-20 and Job 2-12. Genesis 23 says, and Sarah died in Carja Abba, the same as Hebron in the land of Canaan. And Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. Job 1.20 says, then Job arose and ran his mantle and shaved his head and fell down upon the ground and worshipped God. Job 2.12 says, and when they lifted up their eyes afar off and knew him not, They lifted up their voice and wept, and they wringed every one his mandolin, sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven. Those all I read in your hearing were forms of mourning, doing Old Testament times at that dispensation in the oriental cultures. And you see sometimes, if you see it on televisions or something, that's how some of them still do. Now, I'm not going to read all of these notes I have. Attached to these 10 or 12, I have marginal notes that I've copied out. Those will be in your notes and outlines. And as I tell the people that are listening on Sermon Audio or some other means, that if you want a copy of the notes to follow some of the scripture, text, and things I have outlined, All you have to do is email me or get a text in me some kind of way to Bible Way Church and I'll make sure you get a copy of the notes and the outlines that I always follow. But for expediency of time I won't go over those scriptures nor repeat all of the scriptures. Among the particular forms observed following may be mentioned different forms of mourning. There was Rending of the clothes we see where people would tear their clothes or their garments when those garments in mourning and being secondly dressing in sackcloth and ashes you remember the King and none of a when Jonah came to preach to him the people Had ran their clothes and putting on sackcloth and ashes and they didn't feed animals and things It was a sign of something internally happening to them. It was a public showing. It's like baptism. I told you, baptism is actually an outward work, an outward sign, identification of something that happens internally, identification with the body of Christ. It's like a wedding ring or something. external symbol of what has happened with that individual that you are bound, that you are married. Another form of mourning was ashes and dust or earth sprinkled upon the persons because back then you had to kind of show because people didn't carry their feelings as a lot of them do today. around on their shoulders or whatever, and they needed an expression, an outlet of that grief, that sighing, that what was going on in their lives. And this symbolized a show to let everyone know what was going on internally. But now that we can internalize a whole lot spiritually, and that we have the word of God place within each and every one of us. The comfort is God's word. He's the comforter. And we, this is a part of our nature when we born again, that anointing It gives you these feelings of empathy. It gives you these feelings of missing and emptiness and all a whole lot of things that we deal with as spiritual beings that we didn't went through in the physical. But now, we don't we don't actually do all of these things in certain ways, but it's happening with us and we could identify in the body of Christ. Black or sad-colored garments was worn by a lot of people. They put on the garments of those that would be mourning or whatever without a whole lot of glitzy dress or fine ornamentation, the removal of ornaments, a neglect of person, where they wouldn't bathe, they wouldn't shave, they would neglect themselves. You know how a lot of people say, well, man, he's sure, she's sure letting herself run down after her spouse or his spouse died. After something happened to the children or whatever, it was a sign of that person was in mourning. shaving the head or plucking out the hair on the head of one, plucking out the hair of their beards. And we see this in the book of Ezra and the book of Nehemiah to show a sad condition of the external situations of what has happened in our lives. And this is a show of grief, a show of that this deeply affects me. This is the emotional or passionate issue of ours. Laying bare some parts of the body, when it says lay bare that thigh, that shoulder, laying bare some parts of the body. of the body because we know that your shame should be covered. And when you expose certain parts of the body, it shows shame, grief, or there's some external problem going on in the internal individual. There's also H, fasting or abstinence in meat and drink. Some people fast or eat. You remember David wouldn't eat? He was fasting during the time that he was trying to get through to God because of the severity of the situation that the child was going to die, and the child was in sickness and everything, and David wouldn't eat or whatever, even though God had already told him that the child was going to die. Weeping and lamenting, and that's what the whole book of Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations and that's what that book is about. The people were weeping and mourning and sad because of their spiritual and religious declension of how they had descended to the depths of being overran by the Babylonians, being overthrown in the divisions within the families. And what had happened to them were, in the political and religious situation that the state of the nation of Israel was in, they were weeping and lamenting. covering the lower part of the face and sometime the head in token of silence, 2 Samuel 15 and 30, 2 Samuel 19 and 4. These things was a token of covering the mouth or not having anything to say because at a time of sadness and grief, just as in the time when Job's three friends came to visit him, that they sat for seven long days without it even saying anything. Sometimes the best way to mourn with an individual is maybe just coming to that individual at the hospital, at home, or wherever you may be, or the field, and just give them a handshake, give them a big hug, and just set that with them. You don't have to say anything. They don't want to hear that you know how they feel because you might not know how they feel. You don't know how much they miss the individual because there's a lot of people up there jumping up singing and dancing and shouting. Yeah, they really is singing and dancing and shouting their heart because they glad they gone. They glad that individual gone. They covering it saying that they know they're in a better place or whatever, but no. So that, the outward signs and things Sometimes it's not an accurate reflection of what's going on within. So you don't know how they fear. Sometimes people don't need all your mouthing and words and everything. Sometimes the words of comfort is just your presence. Some of them had cutting of the flesh or beating of the body. And we see where God prohibits cutting of the flesh, putting marks on your body, which is tattoos and other symbols or whatever. But like I said, all this was rituals and ceremonial and outward expressions that we've long since gone past. And that's why when Christ came to unite the two together, when he united Jew or Gentile, He moved out of the way the handwriting of ordinances that was against the Gentiles, because there were some ordinances and rituals that the Jewish people were practicing And just like sacrifices, God, He says in the book of Psalms, He says in the book of Ephesians, sacrifices and burnt offerings, He hadn't required or asked of that. He told them how to do it, how to carry out the regulations and sacrifices and everything. That wasn't what God required. David told us what God required in the book of Psalms, the 51st Psalm, when he says, a broken heart and a contrite spirit, we know that this is what God likes and He won't despise. This is what's pleasing to the Lord. Broken heart and a contrite spirit. But he says, you don't desire, Barnabas, a sacrifice, else that I would give. There were no sacrifices for murdering someone. They couldn't grab hold to the horns of the altar. But you may be sorrowful and repentant and penitent about you didn't kill someone. But what happens if you committed a sin of presumption? There was no sacrifices for presumptive sin. But a broken heart and a contrite spirit, that's what God's looking at. Those are the ones that he'd come to. Those that mourn inside, he says. Those that mourn inside, because that's an effective mechanism, that's something that's happened within the individuals that care about society, that cares about other individuals, that care about the condition and the shape of things. Those are the ones God's looking at. employment of persons hard for the purpose of morning ecclesiastes twelve jeremiah nine seven eight was five sixteen matthew nine twenty three because some people as i said you you might not care about that you might not be emotional person uh... the fact of that person's absence of of going away and passing the dying hadn't said he had a whatever so In that culture, to make things look in the appropriate way, you would hire the mourning women. You'll hear about the mourning women, the women that weep and mourn someone because that's the decor of the time that someone would weep and cry. It says you could hear the people weeping and crying for Rachel had thought for the children, or for the deaf. And you see it across college campuses now, people that don't really have a vested interest in it, but looking at that the United States is not covering up and not showing, but they know the plight of their Ukraine, people in Ukraine, the plight of the people in Sudan. the plight of the Palestinians, just what's being allowed to happen, what our tax dollars are supporting, what mankind has came to. So there's a lot of people that was hired to do those things. Now akin to forgoing the usual custom for friends of passerby to join in the lamentation of a bereavement or afflicted person. Sometime a neighbor of Job's friends that came from a long distance, because we don't know what kind of associations that Job had with the neighboring people or those that wasn't his servants or whatever. But these friends came from a long way. Sometime with friends, they wait on that funeral for relatives and friends and people to come from out of town. We're such a far-flung people nowadays and we could get places quick or whatever. Some people have to come out of the country, out of state, from different places. They want to be a part of that mourning. They want to be a part of what's going on. So they said, well, look, we're not going to rush up and have the funeral. We want his brothers. This guy was his college roommate. This guy was very close to him. Her and him, her was very close. And we're going to hold it so everybody can be there. Because being at that funeral, being at that time of the passing to help mourn, it's better when someone's there. Martha and Mary said if you were here my brother wasn't wouldn't have passed or whatever but Jesus came to them at that time and it says Jesus wept for the but it wouldn't be a contradiction in his word that way because he was his word is the one that says mourn with those that mourn mourn with those that mourn. It's not a time, even though we may internally know and understand better, I would feel mighty bad jumping up, dancing over someone's casket and saying a whole lot of things while they're children. And I went to many funerals while the children of the wife that may not be religiously as strong as you, it's like eating a ham sandwich in front of a Muslim or something. You definitely offend, and Paul says, I wouldn't offend or cause my brother's conscience to be made weak. Well, while they're mourning and everything, you understand the repercussions of what's going on. You understand the end result. But you couldn't just take it upon your own self to sit down and mourn with those children who had lost their father, their mother? to their sisters or brothers. If they're not understanding, I don't need to know of your strength and how much you are, but you're not the one that the attention is on. That's why that casket is setting up front, because the focus is up on them, and we are there because our God had told us, mourn with those that mourn. Share their bereavement with them. Can you enter into another's suffering? And that's what Christ came to do. He entered in and He suffered so we would learn to enter into others' suffering and comfort others with the comfort where we are comforted. Now you can talk to someone else about, because you had this happen to you. I can't tell somebody about losing a child, but you know, I can imagine it's a pretty hard thing. I've lost a brother. I've lost a mother and a father. But I can't tell because we don't know the connection we have with one another. So we meet that person where that person is. As Paul said, to the Jews I became as a Jew, to those who was a Gentile, I became as others because so I could relate. That's why Jesus came as a man to meet us on our levels as men. He didn't come as God, he came as a man. He came as one of us. The sitting or lying posture in silence indicative of grief. You know, if you see someone sitting down in a fetal position or lying down in a fetal position and their head's in their hands and between their knees or all, you kind of come up to them and say, what's wrong? What's going on? Tell me about it. Can I help you? Is there anything I can do? You know that that's an outward expression where they might not relate to what's going on. They don't want to run around crying or whatever, but this is a posture of that person's in deep mourning. That person is deeply distraught by something. That's all in perceiving how to perceive, how to look at a situation and how should you enter into that person's life. How can you get in there? There were morning feasts and a cup of consolation, Jeremiah 16, 7, and 8. Often we have this, what we call that today, is the repass. At the repass, we meet up, and I was at Ravenhush talking about their pre-film set up and everything, and they was talking about the different rooms and things they hold their repasses in, and that's very important, that meal together. We'll see where Ezekiel was forbidden to mourn for his wife. He was forbidden to go to the repast. That was indicative of something God was doing, because people during those days, when he didn't cry when his wife was taken, when he didn't mourn, when he didn't go to the repast, that was indicative. Then they want to know, well, what's going on here? We know he loved his wife, and we know this is the conventional mode or method of doing things. What's wrong, Ezekiel? Why are you doing this? That made it stand out. You know, Ezekiel had had a whole lot of illustrations. Ezekiel was the one that God had told him to cook his food with human waste, with human dung. And he says, oh, Lord, I haven't done anything. So God allowed him to substitute cow dung instead. to cook his food, he was the one that encouraged to walk around barefooted and naked. Of course, these days, God doesn't, like I said, those rituals and things are by the wayside, but in an illustration of them going away in slavery and captivity, Ezekiel was commanded to dig a hole through the wall of his house and carry out all his belongings barefooted and naked, to walk around two or three gears like that. I think it was Ezekiel, or was it Isaiah? I think it was Ezekiel. But anyhow, as I get old, a lot of times I can't place the name, but I know it was the prophet, but it was Ezekiel who was commanded to do those things. Often, several of these modes of mourning were combined with those mournings, several different ones. You could have the repairs, you could have grief, you know, so there are different combinations of them. They didn't just do one thing. The period of mourning varied. The period of mourning varied. The ordinary time of mourning was seven days. The period of Aaron and Moses was 30 days, Numbers 20 and 29, Deuteronomy 34 and 8. For Jacob, it was 70 days in Egypt, including the 40 days during the time that he was being embalmed in Genesis 50 and 3. And seven days on arrival in Canaan, they mourned for him during that time, and they were saying about how important a man that he must have been when they brought his bones back from Egypt. With the practices above, mention Orion customs ancient and modern in great measure degree. Like I said, some modern cultures over there, some of these things are still going on, are still being done. And you'll see Arab men throwing dust on their heads and all of these things or whatever. Moses was weeping and mourning, and they mourned Aaron and Miriam's death after they, then they broke camp and moved on. And you remember at Saul's passing, that God came to Samuel and asked Samuel, how long was he gonna mourn for Saul? And to get up and go anoint David as king. See, sometime in our lives, we have to learn to move on. We have to move on. You remember Mary and Martha, they were weeping at the tomb of Jesus. You remember as the people were filled with grief and she was filled with compassion and the disciples thought, the apostles thought she was going to hurt herself or whatever when she rushed off or whatever. Sometime the people deal with grief in different ways or whatever. That's why it says an external or outward proclamation or a sign or moving in grief, it's not always the thing, you know, that we can judge by because we're not looking at signs during our time. Our daughter's generation looked for a sign and now we know the devil is a great counterfeiter in a lot of churches and places. There's a lot of dancing and crying and weeping people that want to appear spiritual. Those are the outward signs, so we have to ask God for a deeper look. Now during the time of Ezekiel, as I said, that was one of the prophets that appointed with the times right when Babylon had carried Judah away into exile and they were in captivity. The same thing was going on in Babylon as it is in the world today. But the same thing had happened with Judah, the reason they were carried away in captivity. The reason they were carried away in captivity. Ezekiel 9, 1 through 6, it says, I'll read this whole thing, and I'll come back and try to exegete some of it out for us and wait. And we'll take about 30 minutes doing that. We'll end for the day, and then I'll come back Wednesday night with another He cried also in my ears with a loud voice saying, cause them that have charge over the city to draw near, even every man with his destroying weapon in his hand. And behold, six men came from the way of the higher gate, which lie toward the north, and every man a slaughter weapon in his hand. And one man among them was clothed with linen. a writer's inkhorn by his side. And they went in and stood beside the brazen altar. And the glory of the God of Israel was gone up from the cherub, whereupon he was, to the threshold of the house. And he called to the man clothed with linen, which had the writer's inkhorn by his side, and the Lord said unto him, go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry and mourn for all of the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. In other words, throughout Baton Rouge, throughout this city, throughout the state of Louisiana, throughout the United States of America, throughout the world that God's true people are mourning and sighing for the condition the world has come to. It's seeing the ultimate depravity of man. It's seeing wars, the rumors of war. It's seeing the civil disobedience. It's seeing the breakdown of families. It's seeing hypocrisy in religion. It's seeing political injustices doing social justices. It's seeing that We are in a pathetic, pitiful, mournful state. People that are saying make America great and all of these other things really are not religious within themselves or whatever, or else they'll know this is the end. There's no going back. History, they want to form history as being cyclical, but we know that time is linear, and that time is for our sake, and that God says there is an end of man's time. He calls that the times of the Gentiles. And as we study that, some of us know it if we've studied Old Testament history and studied during Jewish teaching, it's called the times of Jacob's trouble. Now, the times of the Gentiles has already begun. There's gonna be an end of the times of the Gentiles, but it's gonna be, at that end, it's gonna be toward the timing of the great tribulation, the time of Jacob's trouble, a time that hasn't been. With the computer age, with AI, with scientific technology, I pulled up to Little Caesars the other day. My wife was, we was coming from the doctor and she was trying to make, make it there. We were right after lunch, but she said, well, let's go to the drive-in and wonder to see, do they still have the lunch special? Is it, do they still have the lunch special going on? That lunch special ends at two o'clock. After two o'clock, if you hadn't had your lunch, you're on to supper or dinner or whatever. So the lunch special ended up at two o'clock, and I pulled up to the window, and it took a few minutes, but someone came to the window. And they said, no, the lunch special is over with. And I looked and didn't say anything. I looked and didn't stare, but I was looking and talking with the cashier or whatever. And as we drove off, I said, you know that was a guy, huh? He said, yeah, I know. Well, women see much better than men, but men already can tell. It might have been, what they call it, transsexuals or trans, they may have whatever affiliation, LG. TBQ or whatever they call that, the letters and things. But the facial features was, you know, makeup and everything and earring and all of the things and they probably had over Anyhow, he looked like a girl. He could have passed for a girl and probably, you know, with his speaking and demeanor or whatever, may have had the surgery. I was trying to see was there Adam's apple there or not. You know, but looking at the hands, the fingers and things, nowadays they could go on, that's what some of the legislatures and things are fighting about. I'm not trying to get into the middle of that argument. I don't have a dog in that fight. I'm looking at the word of God. And what happens is, we would say it was an abomination. That's an abomination before God. I couldn't be offensive because I think most Christians and most religions are downright rude and offensive. If we have a stated position on a matter, we don't need to be derogatory toward the person. A lot of person calls them F names and Q names and all of kind of letters and demeaning a person, and we shouldn't demean others. We should give them all the respect that's due an individual because he's still a person. just like most Christians today, they don't understand that the President of the United States of America, you're going too far to say that he's representing the Christian community. He can't be a Christian. God had separated that position when it came into the times of the Gentiles, because when you take an oath of office, in which a lot of them do it on a Bible, You swear or you affirm to represent each and every citizen of the United States of America, no matter whether it's a gay, transsexual, or whatever they are, each individual person, you, their representative, as a lot of presidents have said, no matter whether you voted for me or not, I'm your president. I'm in this office and your rights is the most important thing. That's why I say our Supreme Court has went off the rails. See, because of religious extremists. There were ascetics and religious extremists during the time of John the Baptist. They call them ascetics. There were also Gnostics. There were all types of religion the same as it is today. So I wasn't going to be offensive. I just said thank you or whatever. I didn't address it as ma'am and they trying to say about the pronouns or whatever. I just said, okay, then thank you. I don't have to be drug into nobody else's dogfight. That's why I ask God for wisdom and knowledge and understanding how to go through these things. But God was causing this angel, this rider with the ink on, with the linen ethoid, it represented a priest. So he was marking the children of God, those that mourn and sigh, those that cried about the abominations being did in the world, in the nation, and those in the church, because we want to see him kill the hypocrites also. The lion preaches, the lion teaches, and the church members, they're talking about stringing somebody up and hanging them, doing these things to them, and they Second Amendment right. How dare you to talk, to pull a gun, talking about you carry a Bible in one hand and a gun in another hand, and that you, what about thou shall not kill? That's premeditated when you have the gun. So let's see that Jesus told Peter to put up thine sword, Peter. Now, when he went a little bit further and says, when they say, well, we have a sword, he says, one is sufficient, because there will be those in the Christian faith that live by the sword, but those also will die by the sword. So there will be others. I remember on Rachel Maddow's one time, they had a green beret. They had SEAL team members. One was for Obama, and one was against Obama. The one that was against Obama called himself a Christian. He spoke disrespectful of the president. He's a very, very, it's tough Christian nationalism, as I would say. But the one that says that he's our president, and I'm obligated to do what our president want us to do, he was very respectful. He was a SEAL team person. He apparently had killed people. He had did a lot. But those were people that were in the Army during God's time, during the Old Testament time, that wasn't doing it out of their prejudice or racial inclinations to hate other people. doing it because they didn't like the social classes, that they belonged to a particular class or organization or fraternity or something. These people were job-oriented. They was doing it because, as they say, that's the way it worked in those times. It's not how the West was won, because the West was won by brutally slaughtering a race of people and calling them savages and dispelling them and displacing them. The reason I don't watch Bonanza and those things anymore, because a lot of times Michael Parente, and there's another professor I used to know, Norm Chomsky, and Gore Vidal and some of these others that I've listened at or whatever, have given me a different insight into some of the things that are being done. That we don't mourn and sigh about in the abominations that's being done, just like what's being done over in Palestine now. They're not showing it on television. People have been desensitized anyhow. Television don't affect them. They didn't see so much murder and killing. How do they get to us all four or five or whatever they are if you like horror movies and killing and murder? You need to go to church and ask God to help you to be converted That's the evil God didn't want you to know When you sit there and watch those things you're watching things that God's trying to purge out of you. I But anyhow, God wanted these people marked, his people, those that had been circumcised of heart. He says, don't go near those that have the seal of God upon their forehead. See, because a lot of people are mourning and sighing because they're being persecuted by other Christians. People within the church, within their own family. by their spouses, by their parents, by their children, they're being misused and abused. And sometimes you have to go away and cry. Sometimes you have to mourn it. You know what? One of the things that made me feel real good today, made me feel, giving me a blessed morning, and I took a little time out this morning, was my son came over to repair our washing machine. And he brought his son over with him, two of his sons with him. And I said, well, that's good you're teaching him because that's how it was done in olden days that the father taught the son the craft of the trade that they was in. And the other younger child was in there with my wife. The baby, he's a few months old, seven, eight, nine months, 10 months old, I have him. I don't know his IV would be. I went in and played with him a while or whatever. He's a little bit too heavy for me to pick up after my surgery or whatever. But that made my wife feel so good. But it also made me feel so good for him working with his son, and that's what I like to see about the family and the next generation over there. Those are the things, so what God's people are looking at is the family unit, but you hate to see family units as it was a few months ago about this man that came and killed his fiancee. She was pregnant and then killed her two-year-old baby, threw him off of a bridge. One guy that taped it on YouTube, him stabbing his girlfriend to death. We're mourning and sighing for what's going on in a nation for you to string up razor wire, barbed wire, whatever, and even though these people are breaking the law, how can you see and put it there, make a chance that a pregnant woman would get caught, tied up in that razor wire, cut herself to death and drown? Even God says a man had to put a parapet around his house if he built a two-story home or whatever and had a parapet, in our day we'd call it a balcony, that you had to put a railing around there so wouldn't anyone fall off there. Because you're also responsible for your neighbor's safety and well-being. Where's the neighborly-like interest with one another today? See, they got to stand your ground law, and they got a whole lot of other things. Aren't you really mourning and sighing for what's coming to the world? We have to find a way. Obama repatriatized, he turned away more immigrants than any other president, but he found a logical way to do it, a rational and reasonable way to do it. They're not going to produce those. They're trying to hide political transparency. Louisiana legislatures with the government we have that they're trying to introduce where politicians can hide so they can do all kinds of shenanigans and trickery and bamboozle the people and vilify the media and the journalists and everything from doing their jobs. that's what politics have come to and there are a group of people that love to have it. God says, and my people love to have it this way. So he's marking those because we don't know them. God's angel marks these people and that's why he says, let the tares and wheat grow up together because everybody that's crying on your shoulder and mourning and out there feeding the needy and doing all these things, they're not what they say they should be. And that's what we are mourning about is look at what has happened to the church. We mourn and sigh about what happened to the church. Now, politically, the country has come a long ways into deviousness, to satanic, Satanism. That's why a lot of politicians are resigning and everything, because there's no decorum. There's no respect for one another. This is where this nation is, in sports and anything else. Jesus has to come, and we pray all the time, Lord, come quickly. Lord, come back. And those are the ones, I need you to mark those, Ezekiel. I mean, he told the writer, I need you to mark those, because those are the ones It's a spicy little bugger. He's trying to call in there. Now he's trying to leave a voicemail. I don't want to see in all this. I just want to go back to where I was. I don't want to see no message he left. who he is or what you're trying to do, but please hang up. But anyhow, so he told him to mark those. That's what we need, those marked. And to the others, he said in my hearing, go ye after him through the city and smite. Let not your eye spare, neither have pity. Slay utterly, old and young. both women and little children, and maids, which is married women, unmarried women. Little children and women, but come not near any man upon whom is the mark, and begin at my sanctuary. You started at the church, now judgment has to begin at the house of God. You cleared the church out first. That's what Jesus did when he came to the temple and found the money chain. You cleaned the church out so that the good people could come in and not follow those that's already in the church, because some of them is crooked as rattlesnakes. John said, you brutal vipers, who had warned you to flee from the wrath to come? They say, then they began at the ancient men, the older men, which was before the house of God. The others followed him, obeying God's command to go through the city and not having pity. Do not come near anyone. God knows how to keep those that are His. But doesn't that give relief to those that mourn to see that the day of vengeance, to see God's righteous wrath come upon the evil and the wicked? See, because if you read the book of Psalms, these are the things we pray to God for and petition God to do. So why should we try to halt God when he's doing these things? Because this is his righteous judgment. It's a day of vengeance, the day of our Lord. That's why he says, some of y'all that's desiring the day of the Lord shouldn't be because you're in for a rude awakening. You think you're on this side, but you're not. Those people who sighed and cried somehow found a place of safety that from the terror and what was going on, they came out of Babylon, but they didn't have to come out geographically. And that's what I mean. God knows how to end your life or remove you. He don't have to collapse a whole city or destroy a whole city, even though sometimes that's how he does it. He can send something like COVID-19. Not saying everyone that died from COVID-19 was not a child of God. What I'm saying, God uses means to his destruction. A lot of people preach and teach about the angel of the Lord killing 180,000. of the Assyrians. I don't think it was an angel, actual man angel or whatever angel, the type being, going through with a sword, killing them. As they say, they woke up and they were dead men. They died overnight from botulism or blue-eyed plague or something, because during those days they would take the cattle and the food and things around with them. They would be out there months and months and years with no refrigeration or whatever. So when they get ready to eat, they just kill a cow or whatever animal, a goat or whatever they were eating. But botulism was some sort of plague. God killed many a people with the plagues during those days. We hear of plagues. So God has means. Those that had God's mark on them, protecting them from His judgment, suffered no ill. Sighing and crying over the abominations of sins of the larger society then must be enormously important to us as we also stand on the brink of the same thing that we have to look at television, not be desensitized. Pray for some of what's going on in Ukraine. Pray for some of those in Palestine. Pray for some of those that's in the Sudan. We pray for all men because they are our brothers and sisters. Who is our neighbor? those that do the will of our Father, our brothers and sisters. God spares those who suffer inner torment due to the rising societal evils around them. What is so significant about sighing and crying over the abominable ways of life? Well, this young individual, I prayed for them. when leaving and I pray that anybody that's caught in that way of life would come and realize the difference. I pray for Rachel Mathers a lot of times because she's living an abominable lifestyle, but she's very respectful and courteous. And we should pray for those that are not like us also. So I pray for her deliverance. I pray for all men. So he says, pray even for your enemies. And see, that's what we learned. See, those people that are in religions that hate people because they're different from us, they're not our denomination, they're not with us, and let's wipe out all Muslim, and they call them ragheads and all of these things, I don't think you have to be derogatory about this. Let's remain civil in doing these things. He who offend not in word and deed is an upright and perfect man. Signed by the way of definition is Strong's number 584, and it means to groan or to mourn. It's rather interesting phrase found in Exodus 2.23-25, where it says, Now it happened in the process of time that the king of Egypt died. Then the children of Israel groaned because of their bondage, and they cried out, And their cry came up to God because of the bondage. So God heard their groaning and mourning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them, because He said, I'll hear my children when they cry to me. So they're crying and mourning because the work that they're mistreating, and that's why I say, I was talking to a young man that was my son's friend, and my son had him as best man in his wedding and everything. I was trying to talk to him. I said, well, come talk to me some other time when I have a lot of time, because it seems like you have a deep hatred and animosity of your father, and you have a problem there, an issue there. So we have to see that the bigger issue is that bondage. We have to have anointing. You can't be in the church under that kind of bondage. And they were in bondage in Egypt just like the The Pharisees and things, when Christ said that they were children of the devil, he said, what you mean we were never born in bondage? Well, they were in bondage to the Romans at that time. The Romans was ruling over them. The Roman government, Herod was over them at that time. But there are different means of bondage. A lot of us are in bondage to alcohol, tobacco, to ways of life. You could be in bondage to your spouse, to your children, anything that has you bound and serving God. That's idolatry if you put your children before God or whatever. You're bounded by your love for your children. Like I said, we have to learn the things that binds us, the cords that binds us. he said he'd come to set the captives free. So God was setting them free even though they, through their pleasure, through their self-interest, self-serving, they was in bondage to their bellies. We see that in the New Testament where we say some of the people in the church, their God was their bellies. These people wanted to return to Egypt because they remember the leeks and the cucumbers and the melons and things that they were eating. But you were sitting around pots eating them and you was in bondage. You wanted to go back in bondage just to eat? So some people are slaves. That's why I say gluttony is a sin. We could be in bondage to our appetite. God came to deliver us from all of that heaviness. He said, from heaviness. That's mournful when you have to go to a job where the boss is abusing you or it's a grudging job or whatever. You should be delivered at because with God, if you work at the calling God had called you to, you'll never work a day of your life because it's a pleasure because God gives you work to do. That was the first thing he did, he gave Adam a job. Adam was to tend and keep the garden. It's not to be laziness and slothfulness in the kingdom of God. God calls us all, we were created to do good works. So we're not, I don't know who come up with just lay around heaven all day playing harps and flutes and eating grapes out of a bowl, that's not a good picture. That's what the Sabbath dress is, that's what Sabbath is. But work really isn't work. The last job I was on, I was a salesperson, an office manager. It was hard work or whatever, but I liked it doing it. It was good going to that job. I didn't bemoan that job until toward the end. When the boss was leaving and his son was coming and changing his father's attitude toward me and his son came in and just the whole bottom dropped out. But God had made it comfortable to me and he started showing me through the book of Jeremiah it was time for me to move on and that he had another calling for me. So when he fired me, The son didn't fire me. The father said, Emerson, I don't find anything wrong with your work. You're one of the best workers I had. No problem at all. It's just that we don't agree. In other words, my son's taking over. You hurt your knees or busted and you just would be a liability to me selling the company because he sold the company a few months or so after I left there. And the son, you know, I still own a portion of the company. It's another company that bought 60% of it. But anyhow, I called my customers and things and told them that I was leaving and to make sure they take care of this, that this was done, because I didn't have any animosity. Like I say, if you have animosity and care around bitterness in you, it's not an anointing or a holy unction with God. He's not the author of confusion. And if he released burdens, I felt a whole burden released off me. It was joy. I felt a weight lifted off me. It was joy to me. He gave me beautiful ashes because it was really, I just didn't like going to work again. God is a covenant God. He remembers his covenant and acknowledge those who hear him and those who sigh among his people. because I was praying and everything, and I think that's a deliverance from God. In Exodus story, he moved to redeem them from their bondage in Egypt, making a distinction between them and the oppressors, Exodus 8.22. Exodus 11 and 7. Cry is Strong's number 602, a fairly rare word used only four times in scripture, and it also means to groan, but it has another meaning as well, to shriek. This word contains a great deal of emotional meaning. It involves a person's innermost being. You remember I told you that moaning and groaning, it comes from the depths of your being. That's why it says, with groaning the spirit can tell. And that's why the spirit prayeth with us, because sometimes you can't express words. Hannah was crying because of the way Peniel was treating her, the other woman that was the other wife of Samuel's father. And Hannah cried and cried and God heard her. And Eli thought she was drunk because she was opening her mouth and wasn't nothing coming out. But the depths of her emotion are inside, that's what I say. You ever heard somebody wailing? They talk about the wailing women or whatever. Wailing is a guttural sound that we know it sounds like this person is in deep, deep, deep, deep. I've heard animals wailing because of excruciating pain. To sigh and cry over the abominations of Israel, we have to know what sin is and what God considers abominable. Now, we will have to finish this Wednesday night. But to be able to cry over sin and what is abominable, you have to know what sin is. There's a lot of preachers committing sin and church members. Religion is in a turmoil, but not God's true church, not God's true people. But these need to be pointed out and strengthen their resolve in the true words of God and continue to preach the word to make sure they're strengthened so they wouldn't be weakened by the false prophets and the false teachers trying to have an influence on them that they're wrong. And then they give in. We see that in some of the churches in the book of Revelation. He said, I know where Satan see that, and he know who those are the synagogue of Satan and Antipas was killed in one of those churches. You have a lot of pastors and deacons and lay members that's leading the churches, that the churches are bad. Maybe it's time to get out of that church.