All right, all right. Well look, won't you take your revelation that you have. If you don't have one with you, just look in the pew in front of you. You'll probably see a red Bible there. You can turn to the Older Testament book of Lamentations. Lamentations, that is where we are currently reading in our nesting with Jesus. We are up to chapter number four today. We'll wrap up Lamentations tomorrow. It is a tough, grave book. The consequences of lifting a high hand of rebellion toward the Lord. I pray the Lord to help us today as we look through it that we would glean a few things out of it that can be a help to us in the days ahead. Jeremiah is the prophet for whom God used to pin this message. And Jeremiah was a prophet in Judah for quite some time. Nearly 50 years was the extent of his ministry. He seen a lot, went through a lot. We see him referring to it in chapter number three. Let's just, we'll just start there. I'll tell you there, there's in the book, some of the greatest messages that we've ever read as far as songs that we sing. How many of y'all familiar with the song? Great is thy faithfulness comes out of. This is the root to that song. It comes from chapter number three. How many of you ever referred to God's mercies are new every Aren't you glad that every time the sun rises, there are new, fresh mercies with the Lord? It's like a fresh, new day with Him that, man, I may have fouled it up, messed it up, burned it up the day before and did my own thing, went my own way, but every single day is a fresh, new start with the Lord, and we need His mercies. Now, we'll find the context of this passage comes out of great despair. Jeremiah, that leads us into this chapter, chapter number three. It's not until about verse number 19, 20, 21, 22, that he helps us recognize that had it not been for this revelation of God's faithfulness, he would have been consumed. He would have been overwhelmed. He would have dried up and just rotten away because he had gone through so much in the journey. But because of how he viewed where he was at and what he went through, it positioned him in a place to be able to recognize that God is the one who gives us fresh mercies every day. It is by his faithfulness that we are not consumed. that we can wait upon the Lord and sit quietly before Him, even when we don't have solutions for everyday life, He is our solution, He is our hope, He is our rest, even in light of the great darkness that Jeremiah went through. And he describes all these things as if it was God who put all this upon him. And he takes that perspective because he understands that God is the one who was behind all these things and that God used him on many occasions to be not only the mouthpiece of the Lord, to proclaim what God spoke to him in the secret place or in a dark place, in a private place, But he was also the illustration that God used continually in his life of what people do to the people of God when people are not walking with God and they don't want to hear a word from him. Jeremiah took the brunt of that. The psalmist talks about it, the New Testament talks about it, that the reproaches that fell upon God have fallen upon us, that as a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, as a diligent follower of Him, if they reproach Jesus, do you not think this world we live in, the society that we live in, even the church people will not reproach the people of God who are hearing from the mouth of God, doing what God called them to do? If they reproach Christ, if they called Christ Beelzebub, they're going to call those that follow him the same exact things. You know, I don't want to necessarily be commended by a world that hates Jesus and they seem like they love me. Something won't be right with that picture, are you with me? If they hate my master, they're gonna hate the one who's following the master, right? It's just the way that it works. It's inevitable. That's how these things will hash out. Well, Jeremiah realized this. Psalm 66 refers to it in a way that I think helps explain these things to us. We've talked about them here on quite a few occasions. In one particular verse between verses 7 and verse 10 and 11 of Psalm 66, the word says, don't allow the rebellious to elevate themselves or exalt themselves. Now, you imagine, how in the world do we keep a rebellious person from elevating themselves and exalting themselves highly? That's just out of our reach. We can't do that. You can't hit a guy in the chin and keep him from elevating himself. That's not going to stop him. The scripture says that if you put a fool through a millstone, you still won't get his foolishness out of him even if you grind him up. He is what he is and the only thing that can change him is the one who can change the leper spots. Amen? the one who can change our lives and change the problem that we have from within, and that is the Lord Jesus. And by His grace, through faith, that's the only one that can make a change and a difference in someone's life. So you can't stop people from elevating themselves in pride against you. But you can, in your own mind, recognize that it's not them who's doing this to you. The hand of God is behind this, and God's using this, and I can count it all joy, not because of what this man's doing to me, or what this trial is doing to me, or what this furnace is putting me through. I can count it all joy because God's presence is with me through it. And because God's presence and favor is with me through it, God's at work changing me, not changing what I'm in, but changing me to go through what I'm in for His glory, amen? So I don't have to look at what somebody does to me in the physical world as if it necessarily came from them. I could recognize, hey, I belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is sovereign over heaven and earth. All authority has been granted and given unto him. There's not one thing on this planet that can happen to me without his permission first. You see, what we find in Lamentations is that God removed his presence off of Jerusalem and Judah. When he removed his presence off of them, he removed his protection from them. And they went from being what is described in Lamentations as the most beautiful place and the most joyful place in all the world, a place that had the attention of the world drawn upon it, Attention that they may have not liked it, but they couldn't do anything about it other than celebrate their beauty. Why? Because God's favor and hand was upon them. But when God removed it, they become a mocking, laughing stock that when people went by, they hissed at it and they mocked it and they laughed at it simply because God took his hand of protection off of them. I wanna tell you, we need God's favor, amen? We need his presence. There's nothing beautiful about a person that doesn't have the presence and favor of God upon their life. We need that. I'm telling you, we can be some ugly people without him, amen? That's just in us, it's in all of us. Psalm 66 says, don't let the rebellious exalt themselves in your own way of thinking. He goes on to say, Karen, this, that it was God who brought them through the fire. It was you who brought us through the floods. It was you who brought us through the traps. It was you who laid the net upon us. It was you who mistreated us. You just used them to do it. But you were doing it with purpose. You were doing it with intention. You were taking us from a place and you were delivering us to a place. And you brought us out to rich fulfillment, but we had to climb the mountain. We had to go through the valley. We had to go through the hard things and be mistreated by our world around us because you are refining and making a people that could bring glory to your name. So we give you the glory for it, even though it was men who put us in the trap, it was men who misused us, it was men who trapped our feet, but we see it at your hand because we see that you're bigger than what any man can be, and you're bigger than what any man can do. So in our spirit and mind, we're not gonna let them exalt themselves, even though they did it, we know you were behind it and you had a plan in it the whole time, amen? Well, this is how Jeremiah is thinking. Notice what he says in verse number one of Lamentations 3. He's just raw and honest. This is toward the end of Jeremiah's life. He has seen hardship upon hardship all at the hand of his maker, redeemer, and deliverer. He says, I am a man who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. He has led me and made me walk in darkness and not in light. Surely He has turned His hand against me time and time again throughout the day. He has aged my flesh and my skin and broken my bones. Now, this was all done at the hand of the people, but He recognized it. Who did it come from? Who was behind all this? Who was using Jeremiah in a mighty way? God was. People did the things but He's recognizing it's God who is behind it. He says in verse 5, He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and woe and has set me in dark places like the dead of long ago. Remember when they dropped Jeremiah down into the pit? down in the mire into the waste pit where it was more of a urinal, just a nasty place where he was sinking to the point that the Scriptures, even those that didn't really like Jeremiah, begin to realize that if we don't do something for him down there, he's not going to make it. He won't survive. He's not going to live. Because they wasn't feeding him, Karen. They wasn't providing him water. He's standing waist-deep, chest-deep in mire and muck and waste and he's been there for days and they're not doing anything with him. They want him dead. They don't want to hear another word he has to say. That's how they're going to shut him up. But a servant of another country went to the king and asked him, can he help him out? And he said he could, so he threw some rags down there and told him to wrap the rags around underneath his armpits and he would draw him out and pull him up out of that pit. They wanted Jeremiah silenced. They didn't want to hear another single word out of his mouth. Why? Because Jeremiah was telling them the truth. And they did not want to hear the truth. They were relying upon lies. Though the people were doing it, Jeremiah understood God's hand was upon it. Verse seven, he has hedged me in so that I cannot get out. He has made my chain heavy. Even when I cry and shout, he shuts up my prayer. He has blocked my ways with hewn stones. He has made my paths crooked. It is the prophet Jeremiah for whom God came to and told him to quit praying for this people. Y'all do know God'll do that from time to time. God told Jeremiah, if you pray another prayer for these people. You will be fighting against the very will of God. I will not hear a single prayer. It didn't matter if Abraham or Noah or Daniel or anybody else lifts up a prayer. It doesn't matter. I am not gonna hear a single prayer in regards to these people anymore. So here he is with a burden for him. He loved his people. He wanted to help them. He's wanting to pray and God told him to quit praying, to stop praying. Verse 10. He has been to me a bear lying and waiting like a lion in ambush. He has turned aside my ways and torn me in pieces. He has made me desolate. He has bent his bow and he set up as a target for the arrow. He set me up as a target for the arrow. He has caused the arrows of his quiver to pierce my loins. I have become the ridicule. Now he's getting to the point of what he's saying. I've become the ridicule of all my people. their taunting song all the day. He has filled me with bitterness and he has made me drink poison or wormwood. He has also broken my teeth with gravel and covered me with ashes and have moved my soul far from peace. I have forgotten prosperity and said, my strength and my hope have perished from the Lord. Remember my afflictions and my roaming, the wormwood and the gall. My soul still remembers and seeks within me, but this is what he says. This I recall to mind, therefore I have hope. In all of this, I still have hope. Verse 22, through the Lord's mercies, we are not consumed, because his compassion fails not. There are new, when? every morning, and great is your faithfulness. And all God's people said, the Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I hope in him. The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit alone and keep silent because God has laid it on him. Let him put his mouth in the dust, therefore may yet be hope. Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes him and be full of reproach. Oh man, what a word, understanding all that Jeremiah went through to be where he's at and how he says that it's only because of what God has promised of his faithfulness that I've been able to go through what I've gone through. There's a little note to keep when you're reading through Lamentations or the book of Jeremiah, the book of Ezekiel, and you read of the horrific harshness and the terrible things that they had to endure and go through. For an example, I believe it was in our reading today, it says that it was so severe and so bad, Aaron, that the compassionate women ate their own children. This was no joke. That a woman of compassion, instead of allowing her children to go through starvation, and go through want, and be put into slavery, to be ravished by the enemy, to be abused and misused, to show compassion on them, they would eat their own children. also to survive. That's how bad it was. Chapter 1 verse 17 says God commanded all the neighboring allies that was their friends at one time, He commanded that they be their enemy. that hears Jerusalem on her knees crying out for somebody that walked by just to comfort me, to help me, give me a piece of bread, give me something that that can sustain my life. And she's reaching up her hand with her head down, but nobody would pay them any attention. Nobody would do anything for them. Why? Because God commanded nobody could. And whether the enemy wanted to or not, the command overrode any compassion that they could have had in this despair. There's always authority in God's command. And that authority can be life or it can be death. And for Jerusalem, it was death because God made a command because of their continuous rebellion in sin. I'm telling you, this is a grave, grave word. But no matter how grave it appears, and it was and it is, it's still incomparable to the judgment and the wrath that fell on Jesus at the cross. Oh, they paid for their own sins because of the consequences of rejecting and rebelling against God himself. But God took all of our sins and placed them upon Jesus, upon the cross. And what came with that was God's wrath and God's judgment. What came with that was very similar to why we see Jesus, very similar to what we read in Lamentations here. My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? Jesus became a curse for us on the cross. Part of the curse is a veiled a veiled heart, a veiled life that you can't see, and that fell upon him, not because he was a sinner, not because he sinned, no, he was perfectly righteous on our behalf. God just poured out our judgment and our wrath and our condemnation upon him so that when we trust him, God can transfer his life to us. Man, what a wonder, amen. Now Jeremiah, this prophet who had to proclaim these words, was a man that had to, that had to be tough to go stand before these people day in and day out and proclaim a message that you know that they do not wanna hear, a message that you know they're not gonna receive, a message that you know when they hear it, all they're gonna do is mock and ridicule you, you become the scorn of the nation. But this is what God told him to do. Go over and look in Jeremiah 26. Look in Jeremiah 26. Jeremiah 26, looking about verse number one. Let's just start there. Remember this, hearing in the kingdom of God is seeing in the kingdom of God. You see when you hear. God speaks, and when God speaks, He speaks a word in us so that He can speak a word through us. God never speaks a word through us without speaking a word to us, and this is what we see happening with Jeremiah. He says in verse number one, in the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, the word came from the Lord saying, and this is what he told Jeremiah to do, Thus says the Lord, stand in the court of the Lord's house and speak to all the cities of Judah which come to worship in the Lord's house all the words that I command you to speak to them and do not diminish a word. Do not diminish a word. God sent him to the sanctuary where men gather. The greatest gathering place that it could have been in that day. And he says, when they are coming in, these are the words that I want you to share with them. And you don't diminish a single word. I brought in something that belongs to Stephanie. This is an alligator, if y'all cannot already tell by that. This was whittled out by her daddy. After he had his first heart attack, between his first and second heart attack, Stephanie's dad died at 42, 43 years old when Stephanie was about 13 years old. And when he could no longer work because of his physical condition and what he was going through, what he would do would go sit out under the trees and he would take his pocket knife out and he would take something like this and begin to whittle away with it. and he would trim away. I brought in another piece of wood in here this morning. He'd take something like this and pull out his blade or have a little whittle knife and he'd start working on it. Cutting it away. Getting all the knots and the little limbs off of it to smooth it out. And he had something in his mind that he wanted to create out of it. So he started shaving it off little by little. Now I can do that in here and make a mess, but I'm not going to do that. So he would start shaving it off to create something like this. This little alligator. Now this is a treasure for Stephanie. She keeps it over at the house. We got a little, his old guitar that my brother took and gutted and made a little shelf out of it. Still has the neck on it. And Stephanie has old pictures and old things from her dad and her mom that she keeps in that old guitar. And this is one of them. I got to thinking about it this morning as I was going over this passage of scripture and how whittling literally means to cut away or to shave away. You know, God told Jeremiah that he was not to diminish a single word that he gave him. The word diminish means to shave away, to whittle away, to cut away. The trim back. God said, no, I don't want you to trim a single word. I don't want you to shave nothing off of it, no matter how gracious or grave or generous or good it may be. I want you to proclaim it as I give it to you. Do not shave off any of it. It takes us back to the book of Exodus in chapter number 20. and also the book of Deuteronomy in chapter number 27. 20-25 in Exodus and 27-5 in Deuteronomy, God said when you build an altar, a place where people are going to come to focus in on Me, and you make that altar out of stones, very similar to when the children of Israel crossed the Jordan River. You remember when they crossed that river, how the Jordan River was stopped? and they walked across on dry ground and he told Joshua to go back and send 12 men of the 12 tribes and take 12 stones out of that river and I want you to take it to where you're going to lodge that night and build an altar there for me so that down the road when your kids ask you what are these stones, what is this altar there for, you tell them that God cut the Jordan River back at the presence of the Ark of the Covenant, the presence of God stepped into that waters, the water stopped and allowed God's people to walk through on dry ground. But he said in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 27 that when you build an altar out of the earth, when you build an altar out of the stones, he says you cannot put a tool on it. You can't put a chisel on it. You can't put anything on it. You can't cut it back. You can't get away from the rough edges on it. You gotta present it just the way it is. If you put anything on it, you're gonna defile the altar. You'll defile it. And that is the picture of what God wants to do in all of us. That when God speaks and whispers to us in private, in quiet, in the silent place that He speaks a word to us, to speak a word through us, He just wants us to tell it just the way that He gave it. Don't trim it, don't cut it back. If it's gray, tell it. If it's gracious, tell it. If it's generous, tell it. If it's good, tell it. But don't diminish it one word. Don't put your hand to it and get men focusing it on you and what you made and get their eyes off of me. That's what it all boiled down to. When you come to worship God and you get under the Word of God, it's not so that we can give attention to somebody who created something beautiful and fashioned something out of something raw and natural. No, it's something that we come to give our attention to Him. and our focus to Him, and He has a word for us, amen? And that's what He was telling Jeremiah. He said, Jeremiah, don't cut it. Don't trim it away. Don't diminish it. It's not going to be accepted. It's not going to be received. They're not going to like it. Matter of fact, if we keep reading in chapter number 26, we're going to find out that the Bible tells us that he did just that, Karen. Jeremiah spoke all the word that God gave to him. We read a little bit further. He spoke all the word that God gave to him. You know what the people did when they heard that Word? They took and they seized Him and laid hands on Him and demanded that He be killed. Why? Because the rough edges of the Word of God. I tell you, if you fall on that rough edge, it's going to cut you. And that's the whole point of the Word. You want it to cut you, amen? You want it to get to you. You want to do something. You don't want the Word. You don't want the rock to fall on you. You want to fall on the rock and be broken by it, amen? And that's what he was telling him to do. Go to the New Testament, Matthew chapter 10, Matthew chapter 10. Let me get my knife for one of these young boys, get it and cut somebody with it. Do not diminish, don't shave away, don't scrape off, don't remove, don't lessen, don't hold back, don't restrain. Matthew chapter number 10. This message is for us, this is not a message concentrated on simply the preachers of the gospel, this is for simply the preachers of the gospel and I believe that includes all disciples, amen? He says, notice this word, I'm just gonna start reading in verse number 24. Matthew 10, 24 says, a disciple, a disciple is not above his teacher, and all God's people said, nor a servant above his master. If they mistreat the master, they're gonna mistreat his servant. If they love the master, they're gonna love the master's servant. Verse 25, and when it applies to the servant, it is enough for a disciple, it's enough that a disciple be like his teacher and a servant like his master. And all God's people said, it's enough. You don't need any more, amen. You just want to be like him. If they called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more would they call those of his household? Therefore do not fear them, for there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known." If God tells us do not fear them, that means that you're going to be opposed. There's going to be some opposition, and there's going to be some ferocious opposition. Just don't fear Him. Your goal is to be like your Master and to be like your master. You're gonna have to go through some things that your master went through but notice what verse 27 says Whatever I tell you in the dark Speak in the light and whatever you hear in the ear preach on the housetops Oftentimes, dark means exactly that, dark. It's something that is not appealing, something that is not, we wanna be involved in. This is not what this is speaking, this is figurative, metaphorical language of basically saying this, what God speaks to you in private, when nobody else is around. When it's just you and Him, it's speaking of an intimacy, with Him. It's speaking of a time that you've connected to Him. You're hearing from Him. You're fellowshipping with Him. You're joined to Him. And God speaks to you. And He says, what you hear in the ear, that's that picture of what you hear Him whisper in your ear. You know, God rarely ever shouts. Y'all know that. God rarely ever shouts. There's only been a few occasions that we find in the word of God where there was a shout that got the people's attention. Normally when God speaks to his people, he normally speaks in the still, small voice. Remember Elijah the prophet who was scared to death and on the run and God sent him to that mountain? and when he was on that mountain he come out and he looked and there was this great wind that come by and it was a turbulent wind just roaring but God's voice was not in the wind and then there was a great earthquake that took place and God's voice was not in the earthquake but God whispered in the ear of Elijah the prophet Because I want to tell you folks, that's how God speaks to us. He whispers to us. He speaks calmly to us, and what he whispers in our ear, what he speaks to us. Remember, hearing is what? Seeing in the kingdom. When God speaks to us, we see things that he sees. When he speaks to us, he speaks to us so that he can speak through us. Now what we have to be careful of is trying to cut it back. trying to shave it, trying to get rid of the rough edges of it. Because I want to tell you, there's been some times God spoke, not just a word to me that I heard from somebody else, but a whisper he gave to me. It was in me, it's like, God, that's going to be hard. That's going to be tough. That's going to be a challenge. That's going to wound them. That's going to hurt them. And God says, don't diminish a word. If I speak to you in private, I spoke to you in private so you could make known what I spoke to you in private in public. And don't cut it back. Let the rough edges of the word do its work, amen. Don't apologize for it. sit back and try to help them work with it and deal with it. No. I want to tell you the Word of God is sufficient to do its own work. You and I need to be hearing from Him. This is the life of the disciple. Hearing and seeing and proclaiming and living out what God whispers to us from day to day. Amen. From day to day, you say, well, preacher, I'm not seeing anything. I don't see anything. I don't see a vision. I don't see anything. Well, if you're not seeing anything, it's because you're not hearing anything. You can't see in the kingdom unless you first hear. You gotta hear, amen. And God's not gonna shout to you again and again and again and again. No, He wants the whisper in your ear where it's just you and Him. If all you hearing, and this is the key, if all you hearing is shouting like from me, All you're getting is second hand news. That's all you're getting, is second hand news. Now, God uses second hand news, but every second hand news is to draw me closer to him so that I can hear him whispering to me again, amen? But if all I'm ever hearing is what somebody else is proclaiming to me, and all I keep hearing is shouting, it's because I'm not letting him speak to me in the quiet place, in the private place. I wanna proclaim it, amen? But I can't proclaim it unless I first hear it. And if I ain't hearing it, there's a reason I'm not hearing it. And I want to get back to hearing again, fresh and anew from the Lord that he can whisper, that he can count on what he gives me. I'm going to be faithful to go give it away as he gave it to me. I don't want to trim it off. I don't want to lessen it. I don't want to cut it back. I don't want to whittle on his word to make it more appealing and more exciting and more easy to take in. No, I want to be faithful to what he whispers and let him be who he is. Let him deal with the hearts of men and let him change lives for his glory. But this don't just apply to me, this applies to you, Amen. Y'all think God's got a word for you to give away where you go from day to day? Do you think he wants to whisper to you? Oh, there's no doubt about it. He wasn't just saying this just for these apostles. This was for all of us in the kingdom. This is about being what? A disciple, and it's enough for a disciple to be like his master. How did Jesus the master live his life? He heard the whisper of his father. And what his father gave him from day to day? That's what he said, that's what he did, and that's what we wanna do as well. What's Proverbs 16, three say? Y'all heard me say this before, one of my favorite verses, a life-transforming verse in my life. It says, commit thy works unto the Lord, and he shall establish your thoughts, your thoughts. Some translations say plans. Well, plans are made up of? That's the idea. He will establish your thoughts. So I give you a paraphrase of that. As God spoke this into me, this is what I glean and hear from it. Give your work to me. Turn it over. All of it, day by day. And I'll give you the mind you need to trust and treasure me. The mindset you'll need to walk. and work in war with me, and the mindfulness to understand that your work, all of it, is for me, is for me. Commit your works unto the Lord, and he shall establish your thoughts. Folks, we need him today more than we've ever needed him before. I need to see the way he sees. I need to hear and know the things he knows. Well, I can't have that unless he's whispering to me. That's not gonna happen unless I position myself. under His strong hand of mercy, His strong arm of grace, so that He keeps His presence and protection and favor upon my life. It's not gonna keep me from things, no, but it will deliver me through them, and that He's gonna be speaking inside of me. He's gonna be changing me, and as He speaks and changes me, He's gonna use me to have an effect on those that He sends me to. You'll be part of that, but he's also got something for you so that you can be a help to me, amen, and to other people. How many of you ever whittled away at what God gave you? How many of you ever tried to get away with, cut back the rough edges on it? That's a natural thing, right? It's natural, that's what natural, that's what the natural man, that's what our flesh would do. Well, you see, we gotta go back and just ask God. Now, we don't wanna be the offender. We don't wanna be the abrasive one. His word is abrasive enough. His word is edgy and it cuts. I don't have to do it. I'm just the messenger delivering it, amen? The more tender and more loving I am, and the more abrasive and hard His word is, the more effective it has on transforming people's lives. If I try to conceal that love, the scripture says open rebuke is better than concealed love. If you try to hide it by trying not to be open about what God's given you, you're not helping anybody. I'm not helping you, amen. We wanna be truthful because the truth will set you free. The truth that we know and apply will set us free, amen? So we don't wanna cut the edges off. We don't wanna shave it back. We don't wanna lessen the load. We wanna just give it away as God gives it. Sometimes it's gonna be overwhelmingly gracious, unbelievable gracious. Sometimes it's gonna be, overwhelmingly and unbelievable good and generous and encouraging and exhorting, but sometimes it's gonna be unbelievably grave to the point that it's gonna cause us much reproach and harm in doing what God's called us to do, amen? But is he worth it? Are they worth it? Yes. Oh, the Lamb is worthy of the sufferings, amen. People need to hear what he says and what he's done for them, no matter how offensive that may be. May God use us and may he use us moderately to do his work. Father, we thank you today. Thank you for this time that we've had. Thank you for what you're doing in each of our lives. Thank you for what you're doing in our family. Thank you for what you're doing in our church family. I thank you for each one that is here today, and I pray that we, too, will heed this word that you gave to Jeremiah of not diminishing this word, that he would proclaim it as you gave it, that your word would be a fire in us. Jeremiah got to the point, boy, we recognized that he said he wasn't gonna ever mention your name again, but he could not live that away. Your word became a fire within him that he had to release it and give it away. I pray that your word will be that fire in us, for you tell us that your word is not only a fire, but it's a hammer. And that sometimes it breaks up, sometimes it builds, sometimes it drives, sometimes it draws. And we just wanna be tender to your mercies and your ways and be faithful to what you give us. And we asking you today to speak to us so that we can hear and proclaim and see. Asking you to touch people's lives in this place today that we would make a faith decision that we're gonna seek you and we're gonna seek you first. We're gonna yield to you and yield to you first. We're gonna submit to you and come under your orders and your assignment and that we're gonna look for your mercies from day to day, morning by morning. We thank you. We praise you. And we give you glory in Jesus' name. We have a legacy to leave. Don't let it be about a lure. Don't let it be about the best bow and arrow. Let it be about God's grace. Amen. And all God's people say it. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Yeah, we can teach them how to garden, grow tomatoes, and kill deer, and catch fish, and skin bucks, but if we can't teach them the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, we have utterly failed our children and grandchildren. Amen? Amen, amen. Life is a lot more than those things, though there's nothing wrong with those things. It's just when those things are elevated above, that's when they become something wrong with them. Yes, thank you, thank you. Anybody else?