Well, if it wasn't obvious to some of you, we did a little update up here behind me on the platform and on the video. I'm probably kind of floating against the black background. That's the idea. It just kind of pops a little better. But we're appreciative to those who watch online, whether it's some of you that kind of, you know, say I missed something and I want to check back in and hear did he really say that?

I probably did. Also, for those of you who just watch online from maybe locally or from out of the area, welcome. We're glad you're here. And part of this service is somewhat of a digital disciple. And so we're praying for you as well.

Let us know in the comments or by reaching out to us through a messenger, how we can pray for you and help you in your discipleship path closer to Jesus Christ. We're going to look in our scripture and we've been going through this series on It's All About Jesus. That's the name of this entire series that we started a few months ago. And we're going through until the end of July, I believe, next year. And each unit, we break it up into different units.

There's nine different units. And the unit that we are on right now is called Kings and Prophets. And it was looking in the Old Testament during a specific time over 4 to 500 year period where the nation of Israel had kings. Before that they had leaders called judges. They went through different phases in the history of the Jewish people.

But at this time they were going through a time where there were kings that were leading the nation. And then the nation actually had kind of a civil split where they were the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. They based that on different tribes of Israel. And. And they had a little quarrel with one of the kings and they didn't like him.

So they said, we're out of here. The kings and prophets is this time where the kings were leading? But there were prophets that were ministering or administering the word of God. They were speaking both about the current times, about the future. And they would also.

What's the phrase people use today? They speak truth to power. I actually hate that phrase because the way people use it sometimes is kind of dumb. They don't know what they're talking about. But in this case what they were doing was they were telling the king when they got it wrong, when that king had left like the word of God and had started leading in his own strength and his own ideas.

And whenever a King was to be placed on the throne, they would be anointed, usually by a prophet. Now, sometimes it didn't work that way because sometimes somebody, like, murdered their predecessor and said, I'm the king. Now, a couple weeks ago, we talked about a king named Jehu and. And Jehu was. He was actually anointed by God to do just that.

There was an evil, wicked king named Ahab. And God said, I've had enough of Ahab and his family. He's not going to have any of his sons on the throne. His dynasty is coming to an end. He and his wicked wife Jezebel have been leading my people astray for many, many years.

And I'm done with that. And so sometimes we live in an evil period where it seems like our leaders don't listen to us. Even though we allegedly elected them to, they still don't listen. And we say, well, this is why we elected you, or, these are the things we wanted you to do. And they don't seem to pay attention to that.

And they just keep doing whatever they wanted. And we say, in a country like ours, we say, what about that we the people thing? The government of the people, by the people, for the people. And so it gets frustrating sometimes when we say, we the people want this. And the leaders that we elect say, now we're doing this other thing anyway.

And those of us who have faith in God are sitting there saying, that is contrary to my belief in the word of God, is contrary to how we want to see people living. And so it feels, as a Christian, so many times like the place that we live, that's supposed to be one nation under God. And yet so many times it seems like we're so far from God and we cry out and say, lord, do something. Clearly, I can't. I don't have the ability, the power, the authority to change this.

So, Lord, would you do something? And it seems like that goes a long time before something ever happens. And in those times, we kind of wonder, like, God, what are you doing? God, where are you in this? Will you please put an end to the evil?

And yet it seems like it goes on so long. But God is saying, working on my time. And so we continue imploring God, we continue talking to him and saying, lord, work to make this a holy land yet again. Work to make this place full of people that honor you and live for you, that are. That are loving others and serving others and not getting into these fights and arguments over every little thing, but that people are looking out for each Other, loving other and caring for one another.

And so what the prophets were doing during this time was for every king, they always had at least one prophet. That was kind of like almost their own personal profit, sometimes against their will. For an evil king, especially like Ahab, he had this time where Elijah came up to him after he had done something particularly despicable. That's like a good word tangle there. Particularly despicable.

Anyway, you try saying that. So anyway, he was standing there after this had happened, after his wife had killed a man so that he could steal his property. I know no government would ever do stuff like that these days or call it imminent domain and just tell you it's for the good of the people. I know they would never do that today, but he did it back then. And then Elijah shows up and he's like, hey, how's it going?

And the king says, ah, you found me, O my enemy. He did not like when the prophet would come to him because it was always after he had committed an act of evil. And the prophet would come up to him and say, God's not happy about this. Now there's many people that will tell their government, their elected officials that, that we aren't happy or that God isn't happy. I don't like that.

Okay, cool. I guess I'll stand on this side, a little bit away from that speaker.

So God would tell them that he wasn't happy with what they were doing. And then he would give the leaders the recommended course of action to walk in the ways of God. Most of the time, the kings didn't do that, but sometimes they did. King David, for instance, that we looked at a few weeks ago, was a man who sinned. He got it wrong many times.

And yet when a prophet came and spoke to him, a prophet named Nathan, Nathan came up to him and said, david, this is not how God wants you to live. This is not how he wants you to be the king. And David repented of what he had done and corrected his ways, and he went back to following God. So he's known as a man after God's own heart. And folks, that should be something that we aspire to be a man or woman, that is chasing after the heart of God.

So the first thing a king was supposed to do when he was crowned king or anointed to be the king was he was to sit down with somebody that was well versed in the law of God. That was the books that Moses had written, the first five books in your Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, And Deuteronomy. And that king was supposed to, with his own pen or quill or whatever they use, he was to write down his own personal copy of the word of God, the first five books of the Bible. He was to write that down and then spend time meditating on that. Now, it's interesting to me, especially as a pastor, because so many times I get caught up doing things, you know, like a project here or whatever it is that has to be taken care of.

And so many times I say, how much time did I spend just marinating, dwelling within the word of God, and how much did I get spent focused on managing and on operating and on ministering to others? And so many times it seems like that takes a back seat. Every time that a king ignored the word of God, the people suffered. And so there was this one time where they were actually there was a new king. And he said, hey, you know what?

The temple has been misused and abused for a long time. Let's do a renovation project on the temple, on the house of God. Now, they didn't have, like, all these different churches all over the place like we have now. They had one central temple in Jerusalem, and that temple had been used for idolatry. They were bringing different idols in.

They had these statues of horses that were supposed to be in reference to, like, an Egyptian God. I think they were bowing down to the sun and the moon and the stars. And they had objects of worship of those things in the temple of God. And of all the things that belonged in that temple, there was one thing that for sure should have been there. None of those should have.

And it was the prominence of the word of God. They couldn't even find it. So as they're doing this renovation project, they found, like, a closet or someplace, and they found a scroll. They called it a book, but it's a scroll. And that scroll contained the scriptures.

And so this man that was cleaning it up found it, and he went to this scribe, and the scribe goes to the priest, and the priest goes to the king, and he says, we found a book. He says, okay. And I got a lot of them. No, we should read this one. He starts reading it, and the king starts weeping.

He tears his robes and repents. And he says, we the people have sinned. Like, he wasn't even aware of the things that he was supposed to do because nobody had been proclaiming the word. So just when we think that there's nothing we can do against the powers that are in authority over us, that are evil and wicked, and, and we feel like there's nothing we can do. There is something we can do.

We stand firm on the Word of God. We that are following Christ need to study the Word of God. You don't get enough just listening to me for a few minutes a week. You need to be in the Word of God yourself. And I promise you, you will enjoy it.

Maybe not on the first day or the first minute, but you keep reading, you'll be like, wow, that's in here. That's in God's scriptures. If you've been here for a few weeks and you've been following along, we've covered some of those stories where you're like, that's pretty crazy. I had no idea that was in there. And so the kings would be leading and some were good and some were bad.

And it kind of goes up and down for a long time. And the prophets would continue ministering to them and through this time. And then some of the prophets were big and well known. And they have books in our Bible that they wrote the words. And some of it was word for word what God spoke to them.

And some of it was just the message that they had on their heart that they shared with the people. And as they would do that, it would be written down and then preserved for the people to continue learning from over time. And for us today, God did not write this book directly to you, but he did write it for you. And he has preserved it for hundreds and thousands of years for you to be able to learn from it and to listen to His Holy Spirit speaking to you as you read it. And so this flat two dimensional thing with white pages and black letters comes alive.

It becomes living and active in your life. And so if you don't have that relationship with the Word of God, if you haven't experienced that, then I encourage you and I will help you do that. In fact, if you need one of these sermon companions that we have printed, we can always print more. And if I haven't followed through on that, like I promised somebody recently, like I printed three and they got grabbed, so I'll print more. I can always print more.

That's why we did it in house, rather than like going to a publishing company and paying them a bunch of money to print it. So in that sermon guide, in the first few pages, there's a annual Bible reading thing where you can read through the whole Bible in one year. And so you can just kind of use that as a guide for helping you do that. And you can start any time on It. And so if you miss a day, that's fine.

You just say, like, okay, you know, I just continue on and make it a habit as much as you can and allow the word of God to dwell richly in your heart. So God was speaking through these prophets, and the last one that he spoke through that wrote down what God was saying was this prophet named Malachi. Now, I believe Malachi ministered in Jerusalem during the time between Nehemiah chapter 12 and chapter 13. We went through a Nehemiah series quite a few months ago now, but it was one of my favorites. I really enjoyed it.

And in that series, Nehemiah had been leading the people, but he had to go back to serve the king of Babylon as the cup bearer. And while he was gone, a lot of the religious reforms that he had put into place fell by the wayside. People stopped obeying the word of God during that time, and they started falling into several different sins. And I believe. And I believe that because I've read what some scholars have said, and they're smarter than me, and I just said, yeah, that actually fits.

That makes sense. So that's why I believe it. But anyway, Malachi ministered during that time when Nehemiah had gone back to Babylon. And then later, we don't know if it was months or years later, he came back to Jerusalem, found all this stuff going on, and he's like, why are we doing this? Like, I put a few years of my labor and efforts into making sure that we stayed on the straight and narrow, and now you guys are doing this wicked stuff.

And he actually goes a little bit crazy at the end of it. He says, God, I really tried my best. I punched some of them. I pulled the hair out of the men's beards, and I cursed him. Like, what?

I don't know that I would be able to say, God, I really tried. You know, I cursed some of these people out for you, God, I did it for you. He's like, that wasn't what I wanted you to do, though, son. You know? But anyway, so Nehemiah is like, I did my best.

I don't know why that's doing that. All right, well, anyway, I guess I moved the speaker somewhat during. During our renovation, and it wants to hum on me. I'll fix it later. So.

So anyway, you mess with the smallest little things. You try to check through it before service starts, and there's always going to be some little thing you can't quite plan for. So we'll get it for next. Next week. I'M going to watch this.

I'm just going to move there. Look at that. Or I could put it here so I don't go farther that way. How about that? Anyway, God spoke through Malachi, and he was talking to the people of God, who had just prior to this, not long before, gotten really serious about their faith in God, about worshiping God, about living how God wanted them to live.

They had just rebuilt the temple that had been destructed. They rebuilt the walls of the city of Jerusalem and put the gates on so the city was secure, so that the temple was protected, so that the people could come and worship God freely. And yet the people had voluntarily chosen not to do that. And so Malachi ministers during this time. I want to read you the last chapter.

It's just a few verses. And in Malachi, chapter four, verses one through six, that's all there is to it. I'm going to read that. It's the summary of the. Of Malachi, his little message.

And it's also the last voice of a prophet until the New Testament. For 400 years, God didn't have another prophet speaking to the people. There was things going on in the life and history of the Israelites, but he wasn't speaking through a prophet. So let me read this with you. For indeed the day is coming is burning like a furnace, and all the arrogant evildoers will be chaff.

The coming day will burn them up, says the Lord, who rules over all. It will not leave even a root or branch. But for you who respect my name, the sun of vindication will rise with healing in its wings, and you will leap about like calves released from the stall. You will trample on the wicked, for they will be like ashes under the soles of your feet. On the day which I am preparing, says the Lord, who rules over all.

Remember the law of my servant Moses, to whom at Horeb I gave rules and regulations for all of Israel to obey. Look, I will send you Elijah the prophet, before the great and terrible day of the Lord arrives. He will encourage fathers and their children to return to me so that I will not come and strike the earth with judgment. Now, in Malachi's day, the people were doing some things that God wasn't happy about. They were bringing blemished sacrifices in to offer them on God's altar.

Now, the reason that that's bad is you have these animals that you're going to bring for a sacrifice, and yet you decide, you know what I'm going to promise. I'm going to set One aside, like here, this lamb, as I'm raising it up, this is going to be my sacrificial offering. But as it grows up and it's perfect and cared for, you realize that its value is a little higher than. Than this one that was born with a bum leg or some kind of other deformity. And so you're like, you know what?

Nobody's going to notice if I just kind of at the last moment, do a little switcheroo and grab the blemished one and offer it to God. It's just one animal. He shouldn't care, Right? And so they were making these bargains with themselves, saying, and if you found your buddy doing it, you're like, well, I better not call him out, because I'm doing the same thing. And so everybody just went along with this cheapened way of offering a sacrifice to.

So on the outward, it looks like you're obeying the law of God and his will, but really on the inward, your heart is terribly diseased. And then what they were doing was the priesthood itself was profaned. In other words, the priests went along with it. The priests were to be the ones that were the mediator between God and the people. And instead what they did was they said, you know what?

I'm not even going to bother trying to. Trying to, like, you know, lead these people to the heart of God. I'm just going to let them continue doing the evil and wickedness of which they're already doing. The sanctuary of God, the temple that had been rebuilt was becoming desecrated already. They were bringing not only false worship in there of their sacrifices and offerings that they brought, but they were coming into it not with a heart focused on God, but with this heart that said, how much can I just take from God?

Like, I'm coming here just so that I can only receive and not offer anything back up to him. Does any of this sound familiar in our day that we are tempted to do these things sometimes? They also had a thing that God really lays into him. Like, I'm being polite when I say they had empty offering baskets. God told them.

He says, you guys are robbing me now. You think, how can I rob God? And that's exactly what the people said. He's like, you robbed me in your tithes and offerings. You're not bringing them to the house of God to cover what the ministry that goes on there.

And so he had a problem with that. He says men were divorcing their wives. And it's like, yeah, I know that Happens all the time today. But what he was saying was, he's like. He's like, you guys are just saying, you know what?

I think I found a better situation over here, so I'm going to leave this wife behind and go grab this one. It wasn't like, hey, men are having, like, marriage issues and all these things. And so we're going to. You know, we tried counseling, and it didn't work. So we.

No, they had so little value on the sanctity of marriage that they just said, I can just leave this one and go to this one and then go to that one and everything's fine. And God said, I'm tired of that. In fact, he says, I hate divorce. And I know I speak to a room of a lot of people that I know personally your stories, and many of you have experienced that. And I know many times that it's painful.

And it wasn't even your, like, your doing, your fault. For some of you, it was done to you. My heart goes out to you because I know God wants more than that. And yet I also know that in the midst of that, there's healing, there's wholeness that God offers, even in a situation that you've been through like that. I just heard one of my friends that I've known for a few years, I just saw on Facebook that they got a divorce.

And I was like, why? You know, like, what was going on? You know, you've been married all these years, you have your kids, and it just broke my heart. And it breaks the heart of God so much, because his desire is that the union that a husband and wife have is. Is one that reflects the union within the Trinity of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And so it breaks God's heart when that separates, and yet he can bring healing within those situations. And so my prayers are with you that God would work in your lives for those of you who have had that terrible thing that happened. What the people were doing and Malachi calls out is they were taking something that was good and calling it evil. They were taking something that was evil and calling it good. I'm not going to point out a list of those things, but I see a ton of that going on in our world and especially in our country today.

There's many things that are absolute, downright wicked and evil, but people do these, like, spiritual somersaults trying to defend it. They'll go to no end. And they go to these extreme lengths to just say, you know what? Historically, biblically, this is wrong. But you Know what we're going to say.

It's right, and here's why. And if you argue with us, we'll put some label on you, tell you that you're not really somebody that has the love of Christ in you, because Jesus is love, and he just loves everyone. Yes, he does. He even loves you. And that's not that easy, is it?

I mean, look at yourself. Look at your life. Look at the things that only you know about. Sometimes when I look at myself, I'm like, I don't even know how I got anybody to marry me. You know?

Like, my child tells me every day that she loves me, and she means it. I'm like, but you know me, like, as well as just about anybody else. How can you do that? God knows you better than anybody, knows you better than you know yourself, and he loves you. And so if you.

If anybody ever tells you you don't have the love of Christ in you, maybe not fully, but maybe, just maybe, they're trying to mask their sin and try to accuse you of something so that their evil can be looked at as good.

One of the things Malachi tells the people was that they would come to the altar of God. Now we have these benches up here we call an altar, but theirs are different. They actually had, like, a stone altar where sacrifices were offering. And the pleasing aroma of the smoke of that. Well, it was a barbecue.

It was like a righteous barbecue, right? And this righteous barbecue, this meat that you're offering up to God, that the aroma of that was pleasing, pleasing to him. And I can tell you that that is one of the best smells. I even had this vegan friend, and that was difficult in and of itself, because if we just wanted to eat, it was like, that was a chore, you know? You can't even find anywhere.

I was like, one time, there's a group of us, and we were gonna go somewhere, and we're like, well, we got to eat. And this friend Julie is like, well, you know, I got to be somewhere I can eat. We're like, where even is that? You know? Like, there's a field over here, grass in it.

I don't know. Is that good enough for you? And we ended up. I said, like, how about Zaxby's? They got like, I don't eat a ton of salads, but I like a salad at Zaxby's.

And you can get one without, like, chicken or any meat on it. You should be pretty happy with that. She's like, nah, not Zaxby's. What do you want, you know, like, how can we ever make you happy or gain, like, weight? You know, like, she was 90 pounds.

Anyway. I really feel like if she'd had a barbecue, it would have helped. But, you know, the thing is, she enjoyed the smell of barbecue. Like, she's like, yeah, I like the way it smells. I just don't eat it.

I don't like, you know, the thought of an animal giving his life for me like that. I'm like, okay, that's fine. So anyway, I didn't try to change her vegan ways. It was just really difficult. But even she loved the smell of barbecue, and God loved it, too, as people were offering their sacrifices before God.

But, you know, he can have. He can have, like, a sniff test to tell you whether your sacrifice was genuinely from the heart or just out of obligation to God. And people were giving out of obligation. And then what they would do is, he says they were flooding his altar with their tears. Picture it like there's coals on the altar to roast these animals over these sacrifices.

And he's almost saying, like, you're crying so much as putting out the fire. You're putting on a show of tears, as if that really is, like, something that I care about. And that's not what I care about. I care about what's going on in your heart, not what's going on on your outward appearance. And so this is everything that's going on.

And Malachi concludes that God is going to, in the future, point, set everything right. He's going to take all of this stuff, and he's going to set it all right? And he's going to make a distinction between the evildoers and the people who have a righteous heart. And he's going to heal the men or the rifts that are between generations. He's going to mend that rift between the generations.

So what Malachi calls them to do is to have a renewed commitment in obedience to the law of God that Moses had given them. And he also says that there will be a coming day where he will send the prophet Elijah to come and declare the coming of God's hope. Now, Elijah was, like, probably one of the most famous prophets they ever had, and he had already lived and ministered and died. He's gone. He didn't mean Elijah's gonna come back to life.

What he was talking about was somebody would come with the powerful spirit of Elijah, the force behind Elijah. He would come with that and that he would be the one that would work to start setting things Right, by calling out the wickedness in the people, calling them to repent, baptizing them into this new way of life. And then the most important thing that that man would do is point out the Messiah was here. The Messiah was the hope of Israel. He's the one that through him, all of Israel would receive their salvation.

Later in the Gospels, we see that John the Baptist is the man through whom that comes true. He's the one that dressed like Elijah. He ate weird things, living in the wilderness, like Elijah had done for a while. And all the people came out to him to hear the word of the Lord. And so God fulfilled that promise 400 years later, after Malachi had prophesied it.

But I wanted to hone in on one phrase, one phrase in this is early on, verse two. And it's this phrase that it says, you'll go about leaping like calves and leaping like calves. There's a fun picture here. They're cute. Calves are cute.

I mean, they are just adorable. Like, if you don't love calves when you see one, it's like, here's the thing, you can drive past a field. We have a lot of fields that still have cattle here in Florida, but one at a time, they're kind of getting sold off. And then they build these housing monstrosities. And anyway, I like the country, you know, and they're just eating it all up, and that is what it is.

But you drive past one of these fields, and when the calves are young, they just kind of hop and gallop, and they just look like they're enjoying life. Some of us have forgotten how to do that, it seems. Life is full. Life is busy. Life has responsibilities.

Life has tragedies. Life has illnesses, debts, broken cars, you name it. It's got all these things, and you go through it and you just don't have that leaping around joy anymore. Even if you physically can't, like, you can still have that in your heart. Right?

Right, Joyce? Amen.

Spiritually, some of us.

Spiritually, some of us are limping around like an old heifer rather than leaping like a calf. I didn't say physically. I'm not making that. I'm not getting into that. I talking, spiritually speaking.

You ever see it at the old heifer in the group, out in the field, just slowly.

I know joints hurt, backs are old. Can't see as good as you once did. All the stuff that comes along with age, you can still spiritually be young and young at heart. You can still have this vitality of your spirit, spiritual Life, the joy of your salvation that God has given you and so many of us. I see it, like, weekly, whatever you look like your spiritual posture is this.

Look what God's done for you, for you. Let some of that out here. See, here's the thing. Like Jesus. Jesus talked about people that would be persecuted for their faith.

You know, like when people hated Christians so much that they were so absolutely, like, just like, outwardly visibly Christian, everybody knew that they were Christian. And there were people persecuting Christians for their faith, and they were putting them to death, they were locking them up, executing them, torturing them. Jesus said, you're going to be persecuted as Christians. Leap for joy, for the opportunity for that. Whoa.

That hit me in a way, as I was studying for this message, that it never hit me before. I mean, I've heard about enduring suffering. It talks about that in the word of God. It talks about, you know, being glad that you were recognized as a Christian so that if they're going to persecute somebody, they would pick you because you obviously look like Christ in the way that you live and love and serve. But Jesus says, leap for joy, even for your persecution.

And then there's. There's times. I mean, there's. There's like some other places in The Old Testament, for instance, Isaiah 35, 6, Psalm 29. 6, and Psalm 114, 4, that echo these things that say, you know, I.

You need to leap for joy in the salvation that God has given you. There was a man in the Book of Acts, chapter three, verse eight, where he's asking. He's a beggar, he's a crippled man, and he's begging for a handout of money. And he meets Peter and John, two of Jesus disciples. And Jesus has died, rose again, and ascended into heaven, sent his Holy Spirit to empower the believers.

And so now there's two of these believers, Peter and John, some of Jesus main two guys. John was called the disciple that Jesus loved. Now, he loved all of them. But he had a special bond with John. And Peter was the one whose mouth was shaped like his foot.

He always was sticking his foot in his mouth, saying something he shouldn't have said. And I get that. I've been there plenty of times. I don't think yet today too much. I was bordering on it with the heifer thing, if you guys misunderstood that.

So I didn't go there. But the thing is, Peter and John have this radical change in them when they get filled with the Holy Spirit, when they get filled with the Holy Spirit, he's leading them to the temple to pray. It's the Jewish. Is one of the Jewish times of prayer. And they go out there to pray.

And as they are gathered, there are going to gather there. There's this man asking for a handout. He's asking for money. He's a beggar. That's all he can do.

And Peter goes like the old cartoon where he's like, look at me, you know, and he just pulls his pocket out like, I got nothing. I pull my other one out, but there's a microphone in it, and I don't want to throw it on the ground. So he says, look at me. I'm empty pockets. I got nothing for you.

In other words, he's like, I'm a minister of Jesus Christ. I'm broke anyway. That's. Never mind. He says, I can't give you money.

I got something way better. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. The man stood to his feet. First time he's done this. He has no idea what walking is like.

And then you know what the first thing he does is? He jumps. He doesn't just, like, try out his legs like a. Like a fawn stepping up for the first time, or like a calf trying to get his legs together and feel how it works. He starts leaping.

He's like, I want to walk, like, to the most extreme possible. Oh, come on, guys. Get it in you. This is great. He says.

He says, like, I'm able to walk now. In the name of Jesus, I want to leap. I'm worried that some of us have forgotten how to leap. Not only that, but, I mean, like, you got saved. You're following Jesus, but you followed him in a place where a lot of people spiritually are like this.

And your idea of what it means to follow Jesus Christ is like, all right, so I give a little bit of money, I serve a little bit. I show up on Sundays most of the time, and that's it. Okay? And occasionally, if God tells me to stop doing something and calls it a sin, I stop doing that. All right?

That's what it means to be a Christian. How boring. How absolutely. Like. Like, we're selling the Gospel of Jesus short when we do that.

I have this thing that I like to say sometimes when somebody likes. Does something kind of dumb, I'll go, jesus didn't die for that. And it's this joke that I make, like, because to me, it's like, you know, jesus didn't die for you to be messing life up all over the place. And it's kind of a joke that I make. But honestly, Jesus didn't die for you to be this boring humdumb.

So. So, you know, just kind of lumbering along, you know, I'm gonna make it to heaven. Praise God. Jesus saved me. Swear it's getting farther this way.

Okay.

Jesus died for you to give you new life. He died for you so that you could have abundant life. And some of you have received that and said, okay, put it on the shelf.

I'll take the Jesus down off the shelf a little bit when I need him. I won't share the joy of my salvation with anyone. I'll just kind of be like, yeah, okay. Limping along, lumbering along on your journey to heaven. When God said, I want you to leap like calves for joy.

Amen. So I got a couple little suggestions for how to do that because it's difficult for some of us if we've been stuck in a rut for a long time. You ever been stuck in a rut? Anybody like to go off roading? I've off roaded in front wheel drive cars, rear wheel drive cars, two wheel drive trucks.

I got one of them stuck once, a four wheel drive truck. I got it stuck coming down a hill. Can you imagine how dumb that is? There was this rut and I decided I wanted to get out of it. And instead what I did was I got sideways and the sides of the trail went up like this and I got two wheels, one high over here and one high over here.

And so the only four wheel drive really, unless you have locking axles, is just two wheel drive. It just turns a front axle and a rear axle. And now I've got two axles off the ground, basically just spinning. Now to show you how embarrassing this was, this is probably around 2001 or so. And there was these vehicles people were buying then called a Kia.

They still buy them now, but it was stupid back then to buy one. I mean seriously, like. And if anybody had one back then and you're like, that's kind of insulting. I had this saying. I used to say, friends don't let friends buy ikea.

I had a friend whose mom had Ikea and I said something one time about that. I made that comment. She's like, hey, I have ikea. I was like, okay, cool. And I went on like, I didn't even apologize.

I was like, I stand by what I said. A few months later and I'm not celebrating this, but it's still kind of funny to me. Her car Killed itself. Like she didn't crash anything. She didn't like get hit by anything.

The engine didn't even blow up. The car committed self murder. It shredded the tire. The tire tread ripped the liner of the wheel out. And guess where they put the computer for the whole car was right in there.

Ripped it and the wiring harness right out of the car. It ended itself. That's why it's called Kia Killed in Action Kia. So anyway, here I am on this hill. I can't even back down the hill.

I'm in the middle of no place and I'm like, great, how am I getting out of here? I don't even have a shovel. I'm a terrible off roader. And a Kia sportage saw me. They're down the hill and I'm like, I'll take it.

Come on up. And they come up the hill. I had this real heavy duty rope. We hooked it up to their car into mine. And that got my truck pulled down in the middle, pulled me out of there.

Oh boy.

I was really stuck. Not even in a rut on that one. I was outside the rut so far and I needed somebody to pull me out of it. Some of you have been stuck in a rut. I hope it's not a key of that rescues you from that.

But whatever it is, you know, like you got to get pulled out of that rut somehow. Here's some of the ways you can do that. Get some excitement in your life. Start with Thanksgiving. It's a good week for that.

I don't just mean Thanksgiving day or Thanksgiving lunch next door. I mean having thankfulness in your life. Having like not only giving thanks to God in times of prayer daily. By the way, your prayer should start out with that. When you're having.

Maybe you have a. I'll call it a ritual prayer time. I don't mean an empty ritual. I mean you say, I definitely set this time aside for God every day. I have other time with him throughout the day. But I set aside some time specifically to touch base with God.

Maybe it's in the morning, maybe it's the middle of the day, end of day, whatever it is. In your daily ritual prayer time, say God, thank you. And you'll be amazed when you start thanking God for everything. Your requests get less and less and less because you realize he's already given you so much. He's giving you more than you ever could have dreamed or imagined.

So spend time thanking God. Spend time in Thanksgiving with God. And the more and more you do that the better it is. And then add witnessing, tell others about what God's done for you, witness about your faith in God and what he has done in your life. And then one other way I can say that you can add that joy back, spiritually speaking, besides Thanksgiving.

Witnessing and sharing your faith with others is to give and to serve. When you do those things, it focuses your heart on what God has done for you. And the overflow of that is to give to others and to serve others as you do those things. There's a whole lot more you can do. I just wanted to give you a few little like bite sized things to say.

How can I put this to work? How can I begin this journey of like spiritual leaping? I pray that every time you drive past a cow pasture, and I know there's less and less around here, but you're going to go past one and I pray that there's a little calf that just takes a little leapy step and the God uses that tree. Mind you, that he didn't want us to be these boring Christians that are worthless in the world, but to have the infinite value of your salvation on full display for others so that they would say, what is it that makes you tick? What is it that makes you have this joy about you?

And you say it's the presence of the Spirit of God. And because he has saved me, I have this joy within me. The world begins changing when people see the joy that we have in our salvation and they turn to Christ because of the witness that you have. I'm going to wrap up our message with that today. God, we just thank you so much for the life that you've given us.

We thank you for the joy of our salvation and for those of us who may have gotten bogged down for a long time with the pressures and pains of life. God, I just ask that you would restore the joy of our salvation. Like King David said after he had sinned and repented and come back. He said, lord, restore to me the joy of my salvation, for it is against you and you, O Lord, that I have sinned. May we have that spirit within us that cries out for more of you.

May we focus on what you have already done for us by giving thanks. May we share what you have done with us by sharing that witness verbally and just within our demeanor.

Help us as we give, as we serve. However it is that we do those things, Lord, may your spirit just embody us as we do that so that you are serving through our hands and feet. Lord, we just thank you for this day. We thank you for the food that's been provided for those who have, who have had, have cooked it, provided it, bought it, prepared it. We thank you for that.

Lord, we thank you for the way that you provide for each of us in different measures and in different amounts. But it's always just what we need, just when we need it. And so we thank you for that, God, as we go and share a meal with one another and for those that are guests that have been invited, God, we're so thankful and grateful to be in their presence. We've even invited people off the sidewalk to just this morning, we pray they would show up and share a meal with us. Lord, we thank you for the opportunity to share in the blessings you have given us with others.

Now speak to each of us today. We ask in Christ's name. Amen. May you go in the grace and peace and provision of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, enjoying the joy of your salvation. Amen.

If you're joining us online but you have never attended in person, let us know that you're watching by leaving a comment. And please give us a thumbs up on the video. If there's any way we can pray for you, or if you would like to know a little bit more about this church or relationship with Jesus, text us at 833-339-7926 and be sure to check out our website at cfnfamily.org thanks for watching. We pray that God blesses you this week.