Well, we done reach. In the Bahamas, when you arrive somewhere, sometimes it took a lot of effort to get there. And when you got there, they used to say, we done reach. And we moved to Washington borough, I think it was two or three weeks ago. Now I can't really remember, so much has been going on. And I just wanted to take an opportunity publicly to thank those in the congregation here who have helped us. It has been a tremendous blessing. Skills, sweat, helping with the move, helping with electricity, helping with all sorts of things. And we thank you so much for that. Oh, I see, it's gonna give me the whole screen at one time. Well, now you know what my CTC is. As a child, I was somewhat hyperactive. My idea was somewhat. My parents might have had a different idea. But back then, they didn't prescribe Ritalin. They prescribed Padelin. And it seems it was necessary for me to be administered high doses of it at times. And it was even used in the school system. at that time. And I can remember one time I had the option either paddling or doing my multiplication tables many, many times, many sheets of paper at night. And I knew that the principal of that school knew how to give a paddling. So I spent hours doing my multiplication tables that night. Probably when I was eight years of age, my parents were living on a compound in Haiti. My parents were missionaries there for several years. And I can remember this pickup truck coming into the compound covered with mud. And I think it was Brother Bell. Brother Bell was kind of the missionary's missionary. To get to where he lived, you had to go through potholes that you went down in and came out of. And sometimes, if it was the rainy season, the mud would swallow the vehicles. I remember one time we tried to get there, and we never made it. We had to go back. But he comes into the compound. I'm eight years of age, and I have this water balloon. And I'm going to nail his vehicle. And my dad said, Ronald, you're not going to do that. Well, I knew my dad was going off to do some kind of ministry or something somewhere. And so as soon as I thought he left, I got my balloon out and I nailed the vehicle. Well, my dad said, when I get home, he saw me, he says, when I get home, you're going to get it. I spent probably two hours, an eight-year-old, two hours on my knees in my bedroom praying that when he came home that it wouldn't happen. And I can remember when he came home, I said, Dad, God forgave me. And believe it or not, I didn't get a paddling. My dad left me off the hook as well. Kind of interesting. Consequences. Ravi Zacharias used to say, you can choose your sin, but you can't choose the consequences. There's a lot of truth to that. And in retrospect, I think maybe he should have added in the timing of those consequences, because we know what happened there. There's an old saying that says, be sure your sins will find you out. And actually, it's in scripture. When the children of Israel were getting ready to move into Canaan, remember there were two and a half tribes on one side of the river, they wanted to stay there. Well, when Moses is addressing them, he says, you need to go in ahead to help us to conquer the land, and if you don't, be sure your sins will find you out. So that's in there. Well, when I chose this topic, consider the consequences. We should stop whenever we are tempted to sin. Whenever our mind wants to go in a certain direction, we should consider the consequences because the consequences will come. And so when I chose this topic, I had a very specific thing in mind. However, when you go to scripture, how often do you see consequences following sin? When we talk about consequences, In most circumstances, consequences refer to something negative, right? If it's a blessing, we don't call it consequences necessarily. but it's something that follows either actions, words, or thoughts. And so scripture is filled from cover to cover, or from Genesis to Revelation, if you're filling in your notes, of examples, from Adam and Eve, the whole way to the last chapter of the last book of the Bible, where it says, if you add anything to this book or take anything away from this book, the things that are decreed in this book are going to happen to you. And we see all kinds of horrible things happening in the book of Revelation with the seals and the bowls and the different judgments there. We think of Adam and Eve, what happened? Why do we die? The wages of sin is death. Follows through to today. We think of Cain. What happened when he killed Abel? He was cursed. Think of Abram or Abraham. Remember, Sarah said, hey, you're not having the son we want. Here's Hagar. We see consequences to this very day because of that decision. What about when the priest offered strange or unauthorized fire in Exodus? What happened to them? Why did the children of Israel wander 40 years in the desert? Consequences. What happened to Saul when he didn't obey God and wipe out the Amalekites like Samuel had told him to do from the voice of God? Think of David when he decided to have that adulterous affair with Bathsheba. He not only lost that baby, but he lost three more sons because of that. He lost four sons because of his decision made one night. We could go on and on. What about Ananias and Sapphira when they decided to lie against the Holy Spirit? What happens to people today? We've been going through the book of Romans here this past year. What happens to people when they deliberately repress the knowledge of the truth? when they glorify man and created things other than God. Reject God. There's consequences. Consequences always follow evil behavior. So we need to take very seriously thinking about what might happen and what will. I mean, we can't choose our consequences, can we? Now, it's interesting, there was a time in Scripture God gave David a chance to choose his consequences. Remember that? He decided he wanted to number the fighting forces that he had in the land. And even Joab, who was a bit of a corrupt military leader, said, you shouldn't do that. And then God gives him the choice. Do you want three years of this? Do you want three months of this or three days of this? And David said, well, it's better for me to fall into the hands of God than to the hands of the Philistines or my enemies. But in three days, how many people died because of that prideful act of his? 70,000 people died. Well, this morning, I'd like to look at one specific example. And I wanted to say this first, though. Let me go back. There can be bad consequences for righteous and holy behavior. Look at Jesus. What happened? Was he loved and accepted by everyone? Were the Pharisees his best friends? What was the ultimate result? What about John on Patmos? He lived the longest. The other apostles, probably most of them, if not all of them, came to a brutal end. The Apostle Paul, consequences came. And as followers of Christ, we should never be surprised when there are negative consequences that come. For some reason, this is not moving. Okay, let me go back there. What did Jesus say? If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world because of this, the world hates you." And there are other verses as well. We can go on to the next slide. So, all who would live godly lives will suffer persecution. Maybe we should ask ourselves sometimes, if everything is always going smooth in my life, am I truly living a godly life? Now, we don't go out and look for opposition. Opposition comes naturally. I'd like to focus in on one person today. And that's Hezekiah, and it's interesting, for Hezekiah, there are 11 chapters devoted to him. For some reason, this is not advancing. 2 Kings 18-20, 2 Chronicles 29-32, Isaiah 36-39, there's 11 full chapters devoted to Hezekiah. And he's kind of one of my Hebrews because he was the son of Ahaz. Was Ahaz a good king or a bad king? A bad king, a bad king. He's also the father though of Manasseh who was a horrible king, even worse yet. But the thing that I like about Hezekiah is he loved and he honored God and he obeyed his word. It tells us in scripture from the very first day The very, well, from the very first month of His reign, the very first year of His reign, He started clearing the land of all the idol worship. So He was a godly man. He began destroying. He was a man of prayer. The Assyrians had come down. Sennacherib had come down. They were going to conquer Jerusalem. They come and they give these threats. We're going to wipe you out. Now, of course, you could submit and go with us and you're going to have a nice land and submit to our forces. Hezekiah goes to Isaiah, they pray, and God answers. In one night, 185,000 Assyrian soldiers were wiped out by the angel of the Lord. And I almost have to chuckle when I read that passage, because it almost says, when they got up in the morning, they were all dead. I mean, that's my paraphrase, but it's kind of funny the way it's worded there. And then, of course, the head of the Assyrian, the king goes back, and of course, he's murdered by his sons. So he was a man of prayer. He celebrated the Passover in a big way. It tells us in Scripture that he celebrated it. There hadn't been a Passover celebrated in that way since the time of Solomon. And Solomon did everything in a big way. He brought repentance and revival to Judah. Normally, it would seem that when repentance begins in leaders, it flows into those that follow those leaders. Very hard for leaders to lead a congregation into revival and repentance without it happening in their own lives first. But that's how it was with Hezekiah. So he was incredibly blessed by God. You can read it there. But the thing is, it comes up, it tells us just how blessed he was by God. But then it goes on to say that, but Hezekiah, now I want to back up a bit here. The forces had returned, and there's always this time issue, there's the argument of time. Hezekiah came down with an illness. It refers to it as a massive boil on his back. Who knows what it was? It could have been cancer. It could have been anything. But Isaiah comes to him and says, the Lord says, you're going to die. Prepare your house. Make sure your will is in order. You're going to die. So Hezekiah, he weeps. He prays out to God. He says, I've lived a righteous life before you. And he did. He really did. And before Isaiah was even that far gone, God sends him back to say, I've heard your prayers, Hezekiah. He says, I'm going to give you 15 more years of life. And of course, Hezekiah said, well, what's the sign of that? I'd like to know. Well, should the son go forward 10 steps or come back 10 steps? This is actually the first time we see an accounting of time in a day in the Bible. Of course, Hezekiah said, well, for the son to go forward, it always goes forward. Let it go back 10 steps. And it did. And Hezekiah was healed and he was given 15 more years. Now, interestingly, we were on the mission field, this is back in the 90s, and my dad was supposed to get a surgery, I think for a hernia, and he calls me up one Sunday afternoon, he says, I don't have to have hernia surgery anymore. They found out I have terminal cancer. Wow. Do you ever have the kind of news that makes you want to just sit down? I mean, if you were alive during 9-11, you saw that not once you just wanted to sit down. It's like it took the strength out of your legs. And so I'm trying to work that through because my dad was our greatest prayer warrior. I wanted to claim, name it and claim it. I wanted to claim 15 more years for Hezekiah, 15 more years for Donald Hum. And I went and told my dad that while I visited him in the hospital. He says, but Ron, I don't wanna live 15 more years if I'm going to fall into pride like Hezekiah. He burst my bubble. But that was the noble thing, the right thing for him to say. So Hezekiah is healed, and then it goes on, it says, but Hezekiah gave no return for the benefit he received. What are we told in Psalm 103? Forget not, praise the Lord O my soul, forget not his what? Benefits. There are many benefits to believing in Christ. There are many benefits of being a child of God. And it says that he gave no return for the benefit that he had received, because his heart was proud. Therefore wrath came on him and on Judah and Jerusalem. Now fortunately, after that, he did. He did confess and humble his heart. How does that affect us? Why do I look at the account of Hezekiah? We're extremely blessed here at MBC. We're extremely blessed. We have godly leadership. We have a very nice facility with people from all ages attending and engaged in ministry. We have a congregation that gives joyfully of their finances for God's kingdom. We're very intentional in all that we do, in discipling and training others, in not tolerating gossip or slanderous remarks, in doing all that we can to help people who are trapped in sin to get out of it. We reach out in missions, whether far or near. We faithfully proclaim, the word of God is faithfully proclaimed here. This is wonderful. The list goes on. We extend help to those in need. It's beneficial, it brings glory to God. Yet in all this blessing, it's possible to allow pride to slip in. I'll just give you a little example. I won't name the fellowship, but our home church sent us out in missions many years ago. We're celebrating their 60th anniversary. And at that 60th anniversary, we were all remembering who we were, what we've done. I put my name in there too because we were part of the fellowship. Over 50% of the budget in missions of the church was given to missions about that time. Over 50% worldwide outreach. Look what we're doing. We're sending people all over the place. Well, sending money and being active in evangelism at home are two different things. We have great musicians. We have great musicians here. You know, look at what we've done. Well, shortly after that, and at that time we were having almost 1,000 every Sunday, the church was bursting at the seams. But then I think pride set in and what happened? Well, discord came. A pastor that was loved left. A couple other pastors came, finally they chose a pastor. They always had the determination that it had to be a unanimous decision. When you call a pastor, they decided they didn't have to have unanimous because they couldn't come to a unanimous decision. They called a pastor who was educated, one of the best seminaries in America. He came and soon after he came, he began berating the congregation. It went down to about 50 people. And then what happened? It dwindled, and then it disintegrated. It disintegrated. The missions outreach was greatly curtailed, and then basically all the funding was cut off. The church disbanded, now it has a different name. This isn't something that's uncommon in our day. We all could cite examples of similar situations like this. Whether it's relating to a moral fall of leaders, contention among elders, Solomon refers to it as the little foxes that come in and invade that can cause huge destruction. It's interesting in scripture when somebody wanted to get, I think it was, was it Absalom, wanted to get Joab's attention, he catches these foxes and lets them loose in Joab's fields. These little foxes burn down his fields. At one point we had, as missionaries, we had seven supporting churches that dwindled to three because things just kept falling apart. There's a huge attack on the Church of Christ in America and in the world. I should be advancing, should I not? What we need to do, though, is to consider the consequences. And what I want to emphasize here is we are not immune to being blindsided to our own sinful attitudes, actions, words, and thoughts. It is by the grace of God that we stand. Would you agree with that? By the grace of God that we stand. So let us take heed lest we too might fall. The church belongs to who? The church is the Lord's. Christ is the head of the church. We are to be clothed with Christ daily. I noticed that there's a huge Eucharist convention going on right now, 20,000 people, and there they believe that when you take the communion, you're actually taking into yourself the actual body and blood of Christ. Really? He said, remembrance, remembrance. So Christ is the head of the church. We exist for God's glory, not for our own. And just like Hezekiah, we can become so engrossed in all of God's blessings that we can be blindsided by the pride that can so subtly invade. Friends, what do I say again? CTC. Consider the consequences. We need to consider the consequences and humbly walk with God, acknowledging that all that we have and all that we are is because of Him. To God be the glory.