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All right. So someone asked me, are, are you going to be speaking on your new book? Uh Yes and no. The thing about the way the Lord works is that it's kind of this echo, it's one eternal round. And so in one way, uh everything I say is kind of the same and everything anyone says is kind of the same. But no, and, and then the question is, well, why? And the answer is because I do what the Lord tells me to do. And when I had to come down here for an unrelated reason, uh I prayed and I asked him if there was anything he wanted me to speak on and he said, yes, Matthew 2323. I want you to go over what I was showing you from that the other day. And so that's why I'm here. Um I don't want anyone to get scared. These are notes I won't be referring to them much, but my phone's on airplane mode. So I need to look up scriptures with this, the text of what I'm going to say today, like I said, is Matthew 2323. And I thought maybe the best way we could start. This is just by reading it. This is the Lord speaking. He said, woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees hypocrites for he paved tithe of mint and anise and cumin and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith. These ought ye to have done and not to leave the other undone. What we're going to do tonight is we're going to go through every single piece of this. Well, I should say most every piece because my intent is not to make the case that anyone here is a pharisee or a hypocrite. If you happen to be, that's ok. But we won't, we won't touch on that tonight. Not directly, but where I want to start is, is in pulling out a bit of this that might not be super obvious. So, one of my sons, I have two sons here tonight. Uh One of them is, is quite artistically inclined. And so he likes to paint, he paints in oil, watercolor , he did the sketches, all these things. He's quite good. Um But when he sets up to paint oils, say he has a palette and there's a set of tubes of paint and because he's 14, those tubes of paint come from his parents. And uh he's got his palette and then he's got his canvas. And so one thing I, I would like us all to think about is in your walk with God. If your walk with God is painting oil paints, what's the canvas? What's the tube, the set of tubes of paint and what's on your palette? Now, the pallet portion of that, maybe we could put a lasso around that and talk about your church life and maybe a good phrase to use for this is the overtly religious stuff. The churchy stuff. Right. So, an enormous amount could be said about the churchy stuff. And in fact, that's, that's probably where all the time is spent. When you think you're doing religious things. When you think you're studying religious things is in the churchy context. Ok. But you're handed a tube of paints, a bunch of tubes of paint and let's call that what God has taught you. Maybe that's directly, maybe that's indirectly. It actually doesn't matter what's the palate, it's how you take those ideas, those beliefs and you mix them together. And if you know anything about oil paints right now, you're, you're making all these colors that don't exist in raw form in the tubes, right? Are you done? Is oil painting just squirting paint on the palette and fiddling around with it and then calling it good. No. You know, in fact, oil paint takes a long time to dry, doesn't it? And you can leave the pallet there for, for some amount of time and it's still wet. You come back to it. But what's the point? The point is what you put on the canvas, right? Do you know any famous painters whose paintings are terrible? But man are the masters of the palate? You might, I don't, she's an artist. Uh I don't, I don't think any artists are famous because of that. I know nothing about that. I can recognize famous paintings, but I can't say anything about any artist's palette game, right? Why is that? Because it's not the point now in your life, I would like you to consider the possibility that an overwhelming majority of the time and trouble that you invest into what you think of as your religious life. Your walk with God is actually just squirting tubes on a pellet. And I say just, it's absolutely vital. It is a completely necessary thing and you gotta be good at it, right? But if the paint never gets on the canvas when I was a grad student uh at BYU, at the, at the time, we had access to a supercomputer that was number three in the world. And for some reason, no one else was using it. And I'd get in trouble because I was on it all the time . I was using it for, I wasn't mining Bitcoin. I, I should have done that. I uh I was using it for my graduate project when I went to go present that and you get push back, you get uh it's a test. People push and try to poke holes in it. I was really expecting that. I'd get some kind of credit for the immense amount of work that it took to use that because it took an awful lot of extra code, extra problems happened. I, I spent tons of time uh on scheduling and, and splitting up and combining results and doing all this other nerdy stuff over what my peers were doing. But the professor didn't care, the professors just cared about the end result and it was an enormous life lesson, right? What is the end result? Why are you here? Not in this house in your body? Why are you here? Well, one huge reason you're here is so that you can better, you can learn more about how Jesus is and you can live more like him. But let's zoom into that. What's the first great commandment? Love God with? OK. And the second one, hey, how, how separable are these right? Do you? They're not, they are not. I love the, the, the definitiveness of that answer. You're absolutely right. You cannot separate these two. What part of what Jesus did during his mortal life was not serving others. I mean, every single thing about what he did, even when it seemed maybe personal to him was actually for the end state of it was for the benefit of the world, right? No holds barred, no limits. That was it, there were no constraints for the benefit of the world. The purpose was to do the greatest, good for the greatest number of people over the greatest length of time, right? That's the canvas when we attempt to take the churchy part of our life and spread it more fully over the other parts of our lives, whether in time in context or any other way we could do that. What we try to do is start mixing paint on the canvas. Do you understand what I mean by that? Oh, I want more interactions with the Lord. How can I pay more tithing? How can I spend more time studying the scriptures? How can I around here go to the temple more often, right ? How can I whatever, spend more time doing home teaching? And I know that this is not the exact overlap with this group, whatever, some of you maybe not most, but you see where I'm going with this. What when we start thinking about tithing, anise and cumin? What are spices in relation to the rest of the meal? It depends. Are we talking about curry or pizza? That's um they're garnish, right? They accentuate and expand and deepen the main event, right? It's like uh spending one on one time with your spouse versus the rest of the time with your family or something, right? I don't wanna take that too far. But if you make the point, the spice, would you like to eat a whole plate of dill or Kuman or Ennis or whatever? No, you would not want that. Right? So why do we try to do that? Is the Sabbath made for man or is man made for the Sabbath? What was Jesus trying to say with that? What's the purpose of the churchy stuff? Do you think that a Supreme God has six days plus who, who knows how many hours of rounding errors? Do you know what I mean by that? Is the whole point of life. What you do for an hour or two on Sunday or even a half hour when you first wake up or even when you're doing some churchy thing with your family or even, do you see what I'm, what I'm saying? With this, the point of all of that is to give you tools to teach you more about how Jesus is and what he would do when he's decorating a house, when he's planting a garden, when he's got five minutes between meetings with one of his kids and on and on and on and on. And when you ask someone, what would Jesus do there and why? I don't know or? Well, he doesn't care about that really? Actually, that's the whole reason we're here. It's not a side reason. It's not a secondary reason if you can't answer that question. So a lot of people uh how can I put this when you're reading in uh the book of Mormon? And you get to how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet and a bet I is preaching to know as wicked priests and he loses his mind with these people because you call yourself priests and you don't even know what that means. Do you know why he says that? Because that scripture describes the role of a priest. It's a ridiculous thing for a priest to not understand what that scripture means. Right? And so here we are kind of doing the same thing because we spend a lot of time and effort in these churchy type things, these overtly religious things. But when someone starts saying, well, let's apply that to how spouses should be, how dating should be how uh relationships between parents and kids should be or grandparents and grandkids or whatever the, or talking about work or talking about any of these other things, the view counts go down, right? Because we want the shiny religious stuff. We want the great mysteries, the great religious mysteries. But you have to use what you've been given if you want more. Now this isn't in either or going back to the verse these ought ye to have done and, and not to leave the other undone. Now , Jesus uses this phrase if you trust the translation and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith. If you're prioritizing this with this painting analogy, right, you can't make the paint mixing and end in and of itself. It's for purpose, the canvas, what gets on the canvas has to be a higher priority. It has to. So it becomes very important to understand what he was saying when he said judgment, mercy and faith. And now we get into an interesting quagmire because this is a pattern. It repeats over and over again where we hear these words that we've heard again and again for a very long time. And we think we know what they mean. But do we, or are we just sort of using, you know, paint tubes and, and pallets? So I think in going through this, I think we're going to go, uh look at faith first. So to the point, I wrote a book called True Faith. Um and, and that book has not had the effect that I had hoped it would by now, although that's not to say it won't at some later date, one way we could define faith is to have, I'm sorry to believe, feel and do what you have sufficient reason to. Now, um I won't say that I'm the only person in the world that would define it that way. Maybe other people aren't terribly um confused or surprised to hear me say, give that definition, but very few people on this planet think of faith that way. It's, it's obviously, it's used as a way to describe when you believe something without having reasons to and that's not what it means. So what's the opposite of faith? That's easy. On belief, right? But that's another word we use. And was it even me? So let's sidestep that and let me propose that another opposite of faith is sin. But now we have to define that too, right? Because what does that even mean? Well, with that, we can go to James and I, I'll give you my own version of this as sin is to do the less than the best, you know. But if you look at James 417, it says therefore to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not to him, it is sin. And I'm not saying that my statement in the scripture are the same. They're not um it's actually a sin to just do good as well. If you're defining sin on a, a gradation, anything less than what is best is less than what could be, right? So when it comes to faith, when it comes to believing, feeling, thinking and doing what you have sufficient reason to, that is not a religious, a religiously limited set of constraints is it that is universal. That means that if you and I are talking about uh I don't know, living room furniture. And Adam says this thing is the bee's knees and I'll tell you why. And I say, well, I don't think it is. And I, I I'm not saying I feel that way and he gives me those reasons and they are sufficient reasons if I have faith what am I going to say? I agree. And now if you disappeared instantly, I would say all the same things you just did to the best of my ability cause I'm persuaded that you are correct or we could hash it out. There are several possibilities here . It's kind of like billiard balls, colliding. They can go any which way, but they can't miss each other if they're going to hit each other. Right. And that's the way it works. Does this describe you as a person? Do you contend with the reasons you're given or do you ignore them or are you dishonest about them? You say? Well, that's a damn good reason that this thing is the bee's knees and I'm going to continue to disagree. We agreed to disagree. No, in this case, I would be agreeing to be a liar and Adam would have good reasons. Ok? The only true version of agreeing to disagree is walking away with lesser confidence in your original position. Both people you say, well, we've revealed that neither one of us knows as much about this as we thought. So we can just tune down the confidence and move on and wait for further information, right? This is a radically different way of living life, but we're just talking about thinking, those are just thoughts, beliefs. What about feelings? Have you wrapped your head around? How far this goes if I'm upset about something however that may be? And someone proposes reasons why that's an irrational feeling to have. And I say, well, I just don't feel good about it or however I say it. Well, guess what? That's unbelief. Who would have thought that that's fair game in religion? Well, let me ask you something. How do you think you're going to have joy in heaven over the things that are best? If you don't actually feel good about the things that are best . It is a vital piece of why we are here. Not just to learn what is best, but to learn to feel good about what is best. I will confess, I did not want to come here not to Adam's house, but I mean, Utah, I hate being in Utah. What I say is I only like being here as long as I can hold my breath. The good news is I have asthma. I've been training my whole life for this moment. All right. But it turns out that there are an awful lot of things in life that are still the right thing to do even when they feel absolutely horrifically bad and you feel better about them later, right? I fast from time to time . I do not like it. I do not like green eggs and ham. Right. I don't like it, but I do it because for my purposes, for my situation when I do it, it's the best thing I can think of doing. Right. And so we train ourselves to feel good. But we, we have to break through this idea that you're going to feel good about good things before you do them and that how you feel about it won't change over time. You're training yourself to feel good about good things. That's why we're here, right? And we could keep talking about this with things you do things you say, but faith is universal. It applies all the time in all things in all places. And we have to think about the canvas, not just the paints. Now, if you go to the extreme of the tubes of paint mentality, there are many, many people, there are easily millions and probably over a billion people on the planet today who believe that if you just sort of wish something related to God. So something about your belief that that's faith, if you just wish hard enough, that's what it's all about God has gone through all this magnificent trouble to, to create everything we know so that we can play a wishing game. And of course, it doesn't work that way and, and those kinds of people never get what they're looking for. The best they manage is a short term delusion and it always ends sooner or later, it always the bubble pops and then they're in really bad shape, really, really bad shape. Ok. So this is just one example of the following principle and I feel very confident in the following if you think that your barrier, uh the barrier between where you stand now and where you'd like to stand with. God is some far off churchy thing, some overtly religious thing. I'm here to tell you it isn't, it is something that you're probably thinking doesn't matter to him , that's probably overtly temporal. So you think, and it's right in front of your face probably every day and until you deal with that it's going to, to be like a tether tying you down to pretty close to where you are right now. So it's so easy to cordon off the the majority of our lives from God and not even know what we're doing it. That's one reason, understanding belief is so important because that's the battlefield where those ideas will change. That's, that's where those things will be pointed out to you. OK? So um as a scriptural evidence of, of the fact that uh temporal things are not off limits, you're probably familiar with DNC 2934 where it says all things unto me, the Lord is speaking, all things unto me are spiritual and not at any time. Have I given unto you a law which is temporal? That's pretty definitive, isn't it? And then the way I like to think about it is that the vast majority of reality is not a rounding error. It is as intentional as everything else. If you believe that God is all powerful, he knows all things, then it's pretty safe to assume that everything matters until proven otherwise it's not safe to go the other way. Right. I, it's like if you, you know, if you go to a bowling alley, which I guess, I don't think people do anymore, but they can set up these bumpers. Right. And for little kids and then they just wail the thing you just say to the kid, man, throw it as hard as you can and it'll bounce back and forth and hit the pins and that's what the kids focused on, right? And that's appropriate for that. But in life, the whole alley matters and actually the rest of the alley matters a lot more than whatever is happening in your little lane. So it's kind of like the opposite, but like kids at a bowling alley with the bumpers, that's what we're paying attention to. We have to open our eyes and look up right. There are many, many people on this planet that can talk all day long about that lane and the pins and like hold it this way and do this. Very, very, very, very, very few people are saying, hey, you're in a huge building and there's all this other stuff and it's really important too. And actually this is where the analogy breaks down. If you want to be a better bowler, focus on the other stuff. A lot more. Right? All right. I wanna talk through this uh story of Nicodemus visiting Jesus in John chapter three. So he comes at night and he's a member of the Sanhedrin. He's kind of a big deal and he knows that and he believes that Jesus is someone who matters at least. Right. And he comes to him with a sincere question that's really bugging him. And he has this brief interaction with, with Jesus, but he's already committed the sin of unbelief. How if you're going to lay a question on a person that is a mystery who, where you as a religious leader as, as a very high religious leader don't have the answer to it. And you're coming to someone with full expectation that they do and you go at night, you are a hypocrite who is doused in unbelief. Do you see the logical disconnect of going to Jesus at night to ask him this, this, uh this puzzle of a question? Do you think that this sort of thing is rare today? I assure you it is not, I assure you it is not. So we walk through life. You know, if you've ever climbed a rock wall, even for a tall guy, you can't just use your arms or like 1 ft. That'd be entertaining, right? You have to use the four main appendages. So if your feet are on lower holds, there's only so far you can reach. But what we try to do in approaching God is we try to just climb with 1 ft, we don't change any of the other stuff. We don't want to talk about any of the other stuff. We don't want anyone to point at any of the other stuff and shocker. We can't go very far. Right. Ok. So what does Jesus do with, with old Nicodemus? He lights him up, right. You're a teacher and leader in Israel and you don't even know this? Wait, who's this, Jesus? Because that's not the Jesus I learned about at church? You know, the warm and fuzzy one. Why would it be important to? Well, we're talking about a rock wall. Take someone down a peg. How is that the most loving thing he could do? Because what Nicodemus is asking to know he cannot understand if he thinks he is a leader in Israel and knows anything about anything because he has to let go of an awful lot to take hold of what he's searching for and that's improvement and he'd be better off. It's better. It is like if one of your kids had a dresser fall on them, but for some reason, they really enjoyed that. I don't know why they would like, they think they're superman or something and you come in, you're like, oh my goodness, you can't breathe. I better lift this off of you and they're like, you better not like, but I want to breathe but you better not touch this dresser. Well, I'm sorry, I gotta take this off of you, right? So truth is many things but some of its properties are that it's successive. There's an order to lessons that we learn, right? Each lesson builds on the previous ones. And so just how important is the stuff that we don't have that, that we know, but we don't yet do . Well, let's read Luke 1610. It says he that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also a much. There are a lot of people who get super excited when we start, I mean, we could drop some buzz phrases, right? We start talking about gathering or Z in right? Fullness of whatever, there's a bunch of whatevers we can put in the blank, right? We like that fullness want some of that, right? Whatever it is priesthood, we start talking about this. People get excited, we start talking about after school activities or cell phones with kids or um I don't know family vacations or um you know your relationship with your spouse or all these other things. And all of a sudden people are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And it reminds me. So I joined the L DS church when I was 18 and I'm 40 now. So um there were still residual talks floating around from the President Kimball era. And there's this attitude of like, I don't want the president of the church in my bedroom, right? Does that sound ring a bell for some of the folks here, maybe older times, uh prior times to now, look, here's the thing unity is achieved. We come together in Christ as we ascend and all of us have different places that we're in right now. It's not a question of, here's what all of us should be doing in all of these situations. That's not at all. What I'm saying, what I'm saying is, do you feel like standing as a witness to Christ at all times and all places applies to everything in your life or just the churchy stuff? Are you pulling the churchy stuff out and making more of it like a bio reactor or something in the rest of your life? Or are you finding out how that applies to the rest of your life? Are you using what you're learning there to learn more about Jesus , which teaches you what he would do in these other situations? Does that make sense? And it's gonna be different between people? That's not the point. It's not sameness, it's alignment in purpose, not detail. Do you understand this is critical? Are you doing the best that you can imagine? Are you even thinking what that would be in different situations and how you clean your bathroom doesn't matter now, very quickly. That can be absolutely overwhelming, right? That can be overwhelming. Yes, I mentioned prioritization and now I'll say read the new book, it's all about prioritization, right? And these pieces start coming into place and you start to understand why we're talking about things like what's in, through faith, what's in joy on purpose, right? What's in repentance? It's all connected, it's all aligned, all right. We're getting uh little bog down here. But I, I wanna go through the passage that talks about the woman at the Well, because I think it's a fantastic example of what faith really is. Now. I did a really long video on John nine, which is the man born blind. It's the same story, same principle at least. But now we're gonna do it with the woman at the well and it won't be two hours long. So don't, don't get scared. All right. So this is from John chapter four. Um and what I want you to think about here is the escalation, think about the interactions in the escalation. So at no time, does this lady make this quote unquote leap of faith? It doesn't happen in every volley. All she's doing is the reasonable thing that anyone should do in this situation. But she's doing a very different thing than most people would do. And that's the pay dirt to look at this and say yes, she's not doing anything crazy and I absolutely wouldn't even do this and I need to fix that, right? So John chapter four pick it up in verse seven there cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus saith unto her, give me to drink for his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat. Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him. How is it that thou being a Jew? Ask his drink of me which I am a woman of Samaria for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. How would most people react? Here? There's a mix of things that might happen. I mean, the fact that he was a man and she was a woman that would cause all kinds of problems. See like uh I have a boyfriend maybe today. That's what would happen, right? It's like, yeah, well, I wasn't asking, I'm not interested but can I get some of that water, please? Um So that might happen, right? Maybe a bunch of people start spreading rumors about old Jesus and this lady at the, well, that happens today, OK? Maybe she just takes off because she's like, oh, I, I don't feel safe because some guy's talking to me, right? No, she says what the problem is, what a wonderful concept gives someone the opportunity to defend what they're doing and why? So she says, why are you, why are you talking to me? Verse 10 Jesus answered and said unto her, if thou knowest the gift of God and who it is to say it to thee, give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked him and he would have given thee living water. Well, that's quite a strange thing to say, isn't it? So, so how would she react to that in the, in the, in the modern world if a normal person had this interaction? Psycho ? Right. I'm gone. Yeah. Well, this is that whole signal, the noise thing, right? Messengers from God and psychos are pretty close depending on who you ask. Right. But it's always gonna be weird. Right? But that's not the problem. So again, she gives him an opportunity to explain himself. The woman saith unto him, sir. Thou has nothing to draw with and the well is deep from whence then hast thou that living water and maybe this exposes something that's worth bringing up, you know, 99% of the time, the way we react to things is just out of laziness. It's emotionally late like we don't wanna deal with it. Right? And that generates a lot of dishonesty because we're just trying to dismiss the situation instead of dealing with it, which is one strong argument for the need for surplus. Surprises require surplus. Uh And I've talked about this in other videos. I don't know if they published yet, but uh a lot of people live check to check financially in the world today and it's getting worse and it's gonna be the case for a lot more people. But a lot of people live emotionally check to check too, don't they? Where their whole lives are, are, are based on the assumption they require things to be no harder than they are. Right. This second, if anything goes over that, you know, if you live, check to check and all of a sudden you need 100 bucks, you're in big trouble. It's like, what's 100 bucks with inflation? That's like a pack of gum. But guess what, what's an emotional $100 bill? And are you any better than that? And we look around, we say, yeah, but you know, improvement costs something. Yes. But you have to understand that, that it's definitely the case that you're going to need more than you have. And that's actually another roundabout plug for Joy on purpose. OK. Uh Where did we leave off? She asked about the water? I think so. She continues art thou greater than our father Jacob which gave us the well and drank thereof himself and his Children and his cattle. We buzz through the scriptures. We don't stop. We don't ask questions. It is significant that she is now sizing Jesus. She's not only asking him, what the heck are you talking about? You don't have anything to dip the water. What are you, what are you talking about? She's saying here's something I know about this guy Jacob and I have a sense of what he was capable of. Are you saying that you have more than him? Isn't this amazing? She, she wasn't some like random, you know, insignificant person in the world? This lady knew what was up. She had massive amounts of faith massive in the true definition of the word. This is an evidence-based lady, I guess today you would just call her based. I think that's what the, that's what all the cool kids say. Um So then Jesus goes deeper. He says that's a pun. It's a well, whosoever drink, no, no laughs. Whosoever bringeth of this water shall thirst again. But whosoever drink of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst. But the water that I shall give him shall be in him. A well of water springing up into everlasting life. Who here knows how to drive a stick shift. Cool. All right. Do you see what he's doing is shifting into higher gears. That engines going. He's aggressively increasing the rate at which he's testing her. Why? So it's basically like they're on a basketball court right under the net. He throws her the ball, she sinks it and then she takes five steps back. He passes her the ball and 10 steps back then 15 or 20. That's what's going on here now. Does she know that's what's going on here? She has no idea. Are you gonna know when it happens to you? You're not, you're not. And that's why you have to develop this as a constant element of your character because you're not gonna see it when it happens. But you will be tested. And if you sink the basket, you'll get to go again and you'll see what happens when you sink them all. Because what almost always happens. What's almost always the case is someone throws. Have you seen, they have interviews like this videos? You just watch this on the internet where someone just like dribbles a soccer ball and kicks it to a random person on the street and they go like this and they just walk right around it and sometimes you kick it and someone has some ounce of life in them still and they'll kick it back right? Or react like, like you'd expect normal people to, that's what this is like, right? So continue verse 15, the woman sayeth unto him, sir, give me this water that I thirst. Not neither come hither to draw. Is this a leap of faith? It's still not, it's still not. You know why? Because the natural thing, if someone says I've got a magic machine and, and all you have to do is wiggle your hands and you'll get $20 say like, OK, that doesn't cost me anything, right? Just for fun because I'm a weirdo. There have been times where I, I folded up $100 bill and I put it in my sock and I would say to people in, in classes and things, this is in an ethics class. We were talking about thinking and reasoning and kind of sort of the same specific idea and I would I would say something to someone like, um, I have $100 bill folded up in my sock. And if you raise your hands and do this, I'll give it to you kind of a thing. And not one person would do it and then I'd pull out the $100 bill and then they'd feel really bad. Ok. Is it weird? Yes. What does it cost you to do this? It's a little embarrassing, but it's a cost benefit question if you were this lady and some s some guy says, oh, living water, you know, it's great. Ok. Well, where is it, buddy? That's a really fair question. This isn't dangerous yet, right? Could it be? Yeah, but that's not the situation. Ok. So she, he, he, she says, you know, where's this water? All right. So Jesus shifts gears and he says, go call thy husband and come hither. Now, we know from the rest of the story that he knew she didn't have a husband. How would most people react to this one? Ok. Maybe you're crazy. Right. But we know her story and we know a little bit about the culture of the time. She'd be embarrassed. Right. She'd be embarrassed at a minimum. But does she get embarrassed? No, she just tells the truth. Fancy that I have no husband. So, here's a question. How many of you are willing to admit your faults when given the opportunity to do. So, this is a hard test, isn't it? But it's part of having faith. Why I've talked about the mountain, the mountain of the Lord. One dimension of that mountain is unsolved problems. If you pretend that all of your problems are solved, guess what's gonna happen when the Lord sends you a solution to your problem, you're not going to take it because you don't have problems. Now. It's good enough to know that solutions to problems are solutions to problems, right? That's obviously good. But it's even better than that because God uses solutions to problems to lead you higher in his mountain. All the good stuff is through that door. All the better stuff is through that door and that might be like the handhold on the rock wall. That's there, there is only one way to go higher and you have to grab that thing and lift up. You remember that scripture about I give unto man weakness. Why me to bring you to me? I don't have weakness. Well , I'm sorry, you just cut yourself off, right? So then what you leave with no option other than to do what? OK. Boom. Now, do you have a problem? Yes, I do. OK. Then come up higher. Come with me. There's good stuff up here. Trust me. All right. All right. So then he says, thou hast well said I have no husband for thou hast had five husbands and he whom thou hast hast thou hast is not thy husband in that said thou truly the woman sayeth unto him, sir. I perceive that thou art a prophet. Ok. So most people would interpret that one as a gross insult, even though it's true. It's just a fact. He wasn't making a judgment call. He was stating the truth. He didn't say that makes you a bad person and, oh, look at you or whatever, right? He said, hey, here's a set of facts that there's no possible way I could know unless I've got some supernatural connection. And did she respond by freaking out and getting all upset about whatever or pulling in all this trauma from that situation or? No? She said I perceive you are a prophet. Now again, think to John Nine, it's just the reasonable thing. If someone gives you the answer to a question that you do not know the answer to and you have asked all these people that should know and they don't know the Nicodemus and you've prayed and fasted for 15 years to know and you don't know. And some random crazy person gives you the answer. What is the only possible reasonable thing for you to say? You got something else. You've got something I don't or you're really lucky maybe the spirit to tell the truth. Yes. Skirt skirt face be on so many different. That's true. I agree. I agree. Ok. Totally reasonable response. Now he goes further, we're not gonna read it, but he says things that would, again, he starts talking about the Jews and the Samaritans super duper offensive stuff because he basically says you all don't have any clue what you're talking about. Salvations of the Jews and blah, blah, blah. Why does he do that? I'm so offended. How dare you? Right. No, she responds reasonably by saying what I'm searching for. The Messiah. When he comes, he's gonna clean up all this. Yes, you're right about us Samaritans. You're right. And when the Messiah comes, he's gonna fix it all. What door opens? When she says this? He says I am he. Do you understand that this is the only time in the gospels where Jesus says I am the Messiah. It's the only time. Ok? In the New Testament. Now Peter says you're the Messiah and he doesn't disagree. I don't disagree, Peter, right? He doesn't disagree. This is the only time where he says that. Now you could say what he was reading Isaiah and it says the Lord has anointed me and Messiah means anointed. Yeah. Every king in the old Testament was anointed. To be anointed was not a big deal. When he said I am, he, he was saying I am the deliverer is gonna set all things, right? The one you're waiting for. It's the only time you know this woman at the well, she's held up as something that is other than the ideal. She's, she's considered something other than the ideal this lady had more faith in this context than anyone else in the New Testament. This is a lesson to learn from this woman. The well, and then what does she do? She says, hold on, stay here and she runs and she gets all of her friends. Now, do you think this lady had clout in her community? Given the, the details we have about her social situation. She's less than right. Ok. Did that stop her? And she succeeded? She convinced people to listen to him. She got people to come and hear him and they would not have had the chance without her faith. Amazing. Huh? So it's time to set aside the unbelief. It's time to set aside the spiritual sluggishness. And I don't mean that in, in terms of churchy sluggishness saying you gotta look at the canvas and we have to start paying closer attention to the, the evidences that were provided with in responding appropriately , not, not over the top just appropriately because they're already flowing. They're not just being sprinkled, they're flowing. The other two are not as long uh intentionally. So a any one of these topics could, could and should be an entire book. I'm just trying to give you things that you can take and spend more time digging into on your own. But you should read through faith if you haven't and you should read it again, even if you have uh with these ideas in mind. Judgment So the, the Greek word here, I don't know how to say it, but it looks like it said crisis, but it's with a K instead of ac it means the fulfillment of the verdict of justice. So what does justice mean? Means what you deserve according to who or what according to God's laws of cause and effect. Do you remember this one from DNC 1 32 5? For all who will have a blessing at my hand, shall abide the law which was appointed for that blessing and the conditions thereof as were instituted from before the foundation of the world is the time frame given in that. It's not, it's vital to the opportunity to exercise faith, that justice not be sudden and automatic here. And now in this kingdom, there is a kingdom when it's both of those things and when that kingdom comes, all who do not live, that law will not be allowed to remain in a very real sense. The end times from now until that point is about preparing ourselves for that time. You prepare yourself for another kingdom by learning and living the law of that kingdom before it comes . That's very important to understand. When did the Israelites receive the law of the promised land in the promised land? No way before that, right? 40 years before that now, it could have been just a week or so before that if they played their cards differently, but it had to happen before because you can't enter a kingdom unless you already know and live the law of that kingdom. So it's really important to understand judgment, isn't it? Ok. So it's, it's the fulfillment of the verdict of justice. We don't have to guess what that might entail. Um Here's some scriptures very quickly. Think about Proverbs 28 5 says evil men understand not judgment but they that seek the Lord understand all things. That's quite a promise, isn't it? So how do you learn the laws of cause and effect? You seek the Lord? In revelation 19 2, we read for true and righteous are his judgments. In Jacob 413, we learn the truth is things as they really are in Ezra 915, we learn that righteousness is how God is. And so it's important to define these words that we see all the time, but we don't think about what they mean. But once you know what they mean, you substitute them into the words in the place of the words and it unlocks the lock, it's the key that unlocks the lock and then it becomes really clear how is God He's optimal with respect to reality. So if you put all this together, God is the best, you can be across eternal time frames, given things as they really were are and will be so to live the principle of judgment , you have to be the same now that happens by degrees because you will understand reality by degrees. But it underscores the need to learn about reality. When's the last time in any church you were told? Do you want to draw closer to God than learn more about reality? That's the opposite of what you hear at church, at church. You hear that doesn't matter. We're only here for a little while after this, it'll be something different. Right. Just wish really hard you'll get there. Right? Do you actually believe that you reap what you sow again? There's no time frame there but eventually and forever . Do you believe it? Do you believe in multiple scriptures? We're given the promise that God gives us what we desire lessons repeat till you learn this. They do, they do. So if you really believe that you reap what you sow and you get what you want, how would you act? Here's a brief list you would live . So as to deserve what you say you want. If I want to be a fitness model, I wouldn't be eating bags of Oreos every day because that would not be living according to what I say. I want. If I want a happy marriage, I'm not gonna treat my wife like garbage because that wouldn't be living according to what I say I want, it's very much tied to faith as a principle. This is how I get what I want. Exactly. Yes. So, so the evidence is, is the set of reasons you have to believe in a certain belief. Right. Well, the belief is the treasure map. Your beliefs are the treasure map, or we'll just call it a regular map and you get to pick where you wanna go. Now, if your maps all jacked up, you're not gonna get there. So, what do you need to do? Get a better map? One of the best ways is to find someone who's already been to the place that you're trying to go. That's faith. It's not a leap of faith. It's, if someone says, oh, you know, it's talking to Adam, I don't wanna embarrass you, but he's in Mexico not too long ago. He also has a sweet tan checks out, right? He's like, show me evidence. Well, you got a sweet tan. All right, we're, we're on our way, right? And this is the amazing thing, you know, we're, we're slightly orthogonal to where I was going with this, but we'll go with it. How often do we pay attention to people whose best offering is to say? Well, I believe that maybe if we do these things, maybe this will happen. Well, look, if that's the best you can go off of great. But if there are people who say no, I've been there, the trial of the Israelites in the wilderness was to prepare for the promised land. Was that the trial of Moses? Why not? He had already been to a better place than that? Up in the mountain. That wasn't his trial at all. But they followed him because he knew the way. Of course he was following someone else. Right. The Lord do, do you get that? It's a silly, silly thing to hang your hat on people who just are going off their best guess or something. Not on serious things. Right. Ok. So you'd live to deserve what you say you want. But you'd also think very carefully about what you want. I do this exercise with people from time to time. It's very rare because I don't really talk to people. But I say, do you believe that God can give you anything you want? And sometimes usually they'll say yes. And I say if God dropped out of heaven and he gave you a blank piece of paper or maybe a, a typewriter so you can't cheat and make it like microfiche font. And he said anything you write on this page, I will give you, what would you write on the page? You know what 100% of people have told me when I ask him this. He's a religious people. I don't know. Yes. It's sad. Then you don't believe that God will give you what you want. There's no way because you wouldn't float through life with a blank sheet unless like you had this cheat code of, I really think we're gonna find something good and I don't want to waste it yet. Right. But that's not what we're talking about. Right. Uh, I know a lot of single young people, they say I want to get married and I say, well, have you thought about who you want to get married to, like you want to get married? That's probably a really terrible idea. If that's all the detail you've got. Right. But can you write out the specifics because if you can't guess what, you're not gonna recognize that person, even if God makes them dance right across your path, you're just gonna say, well, this is some other person, maybe whatever. If you don't know what you want, what, what you want is worth, you will not pay the price required to get it. If it's worth anything, if it's worth anything, it's gonna cost something. And if you don't know at least a little of what it's worth, you're not going to pay the price required to get it. Has anyone ever become like a, a world champion bodybuilder? Just cause like one weekend I was at a gym and I figured what the heck? No. Right is anyone ever built and sold a company in five minutes? No. Has anyone ever built a happy family in a week? No. Why? Because these things cost something and I'm not saying that they're worth something. Maybe they are, maybe they're not, it's up to you. I'm not saying you should want them but valuable things cost more. You can't separate the idea of value from cost, they're intertwined. So if you don't know what it's worth, you're not gonna get it. And if you get it through mercy, which we'll get to, you're gonna lose it because you won't do what it takes to keep it because it won't be worth anything to you. And then you're gonna be very, very sad for the rest of your life because usually things like that you don't get a second chance. So you think carefully about what you want and then you'd invest the appropriate effort to find the path to what you want. Well, I want this, I'm spelling it out great now that you spelled it out and you know what it's worth to you, you can do a search on how to get it. Now, what if this search yields that it actually would take more than you're interested in doing. Is that a loss? No, it's still a win. Why? Congratulations. You just figured out you don't actually want that hooray and you're not gonna waste the rest of your life pretending to care about something you don't care about. Hooray and you can find what you actually do want. There's no loss in that path. The only loss is by pretending you're on a path that you're not on that, pretending that you want something that you don't want, pretending that you can get something in a way that, you know, you can't get it. You've already been given evidence that it's not gonna happen. Now, I wanna be a gazillionaire again. I'm not saying that's what you should want. What are you doing about it? I don't know. One day I'm gonna start a business. Oh, ok. Well, good luck buddy ain't gonna happen. Ok? And then you would relentlessly pursue that path until either you gained what you said you wanted or you realize you need new information and you go look for that instead, or you realize that's not what you want. You want something else, that's what you have to do in order to be following this principle, who would have thought, right? And so I say judgment, you're thinking like end times final day, where do I stand at the bar? This life is for you to qualify for what you will receive when you die . If you're not actively seeking for that and you don't have it written down somewhere. This is what I want. You're not gonna get it because it costs too much and you won't do what it takes to get it. And this life is where that happens. It's the only place it can happen, but that's not the only piece of this. It's not just, well, what do I want? What am I gonna do to get it? So the Lord commands us all to forgive everyone, right? So if I said it's your duty to carry out the verdict of justice with others, everyone should get a little nervous, like there's some things from history, what's about to happen, right. Not gonna go there. But if you're a history buff, you know what I'm talking about. So, no, that's not what I'm talking about. Not punitive justice, but it is absolutely the duty of every person that believes in Jesus Christ to meet out positive judgment up to the limits of their capability . The weight of this principle is something that I promise you do not fully comprehend yet. And it is so important to what you will see in your life unless you die first. But there are many in this room who will live to see why this is so utterly important. And because you're here and you're showing faith by being here, I will give you a clue where does security come from in this world. We talk about carnal security and then we have a definition of that like, oh, it must be something about and then we get real specific. But let's apply this pattern that we've been working in and maybe blur it out a little bit and think a little harder. If I have money in the bank, I might feel safe. If I have a brand new car, I might feel safer if I had a really old car. If I had, you know, it would just go down the line. That's, that's all carnal security. It's not bad to have those things. Is that what I'm trying to say there's one kind of security that's way better than that and it's justice. Ok? And everyone's like, yeah, well, do, what, what are you getting at with this? I'm not talking about your trust that God's gonna pop out of heaven and say, here's your heavenly insurance policy. I can see you're making a claim and you've been a good little boy. So here you go. Here's a block of gold, right? How was job restored at the end of his trial by God? Yeah. What are the details by who? Yes and no. All good things come from God. It's a really safe answer. It's always right. I like that. It's like when I say maybe the kids are like, can we go fishing? Maybe it's always right. It's always safe to work through his faith. He did. Was it his friends who the angel popped up? OK. Two sets of friends. So you remember his like friends air quotes that torn the shreds when he needed help, right. God laid into them. And then what did they do? So, job was seen as very much a leader in his community. He helped many, many people. He was, he people came to him for counsel, he came for, to him for help. He's extremely generous all the time with everyone. His friends were in that cluster. So what happens when all the leader types turn on their friend? What are all the other folks going to think? About him. Oh, well, the most righteous wise people think this guy is a dirtbag. Therefore, he's a dirt bag. God laid into the friends, the friends repented job sacrificed to take. Um, so that God would forgive his friends . What did his friends do? We have to put the pieces together? And the end of the story, all the people that job knew it. It was the real World version of the end of it's a wonderful life. Do you remember that when they all come? And like Annie, the maid comes and she's like, I'm saving this in case I got a husband, right? It's a really good movie. You should check it out. The real life version of that was the Book of Job. It says every man gave an earring to job. Yes, God restored Job through people. And why did they give him that? Because he deserved it. Now, we don't know the whole story. I promise you if we did so much of the good in every one of those people's lives came from job and just like in, it's a wonderful life. What he was given was the tiniest little pathetic fraction of the good he had already done for them over a lifetime. There's a drop in the bucket. This is a principle of heaven , but I, I don't want to get too much into it. Uh Yeah, we'll actually touch on that in mercy, but maybe not in a way that makes sense. All right. Uh that you could connect on your own. The greatest gift they give at that time to him. Yes. And this is ok. Now you're breaking the seal. Um No, that's a good thing. Hey, we respond to faith, right? Because that's just so um oh boy, do I wanna go there? Uh How can I, I'm trying to like skip a rock across water instead of going boom. Uh It was the greatest blessing that they could receive job, needed that, right? What other situation other than his unmerited suffering could have yielded an opportunity for people who never would have been able to help him in any way to help him. So you see, it's, it's, it's just layers and layers of love because going through that process for job without deserving it in any way, opened the gate for these people to obtain even greater blessings. The blessing of serving someone who would have otherwise been outside of their reach because he didn't need their help operations. Yeah. So how can you tell in giving and receiving if it's, if it's an unwarranted handout that's gonna hurt you or you giving that to someone else or if it's quarantine? Uh So again, the details of Joe's story we don't have in, in, in this case, but I guarantee you that every single one of those people knew just go to. It's a wonderful life on that one, right? They knew that this person could have gone anywhere and done anything. Jimmy Stewart's character. Uh, what's his name in the movie? George George Bailey? Right. He could have done anything and he wanted to do other things. But time after time he stayed there and the whole town knew why it was for other peoples, for the benefit of others. Every single time, every one of those people knew that they had a mortgage that, that Potter never would have given them. And the only reason they had it was because George Bailey was willing to have less than he could have. Otherwise he cared more about them than himself. They could figure the dollar amount of the good he had done them in their lives . You know, there's a scene where he's about to go his honeymoon and he delayed it 100 times and now he finally had a chance to go with his new wife to see all these places he had always wanted to see. He had this stack of cash that he had been saving the whole time. There's a run on the bank and he uses the money to give to people so they don't withdraw their own money. It happens again and again and again, the $5.10 dollars, whatever it was that they chucked on that table at the end as a loan, not a gift was nothing compared to what George Bailey had done for them, their whole lives. And this is a figure of Christ and all other servants of God, to much lesser extent, there is nothing you can do to repay Jesus. But we'll talk about in a minute what he asks? It was a perfect segue to mercy. Now, there is so much to say about this topic. Justice by comparison is easy justice and judgment because God is love and God cannot be expressed as anything less than what he really is. That's quite a chicken egg. It's quite a paradox in the fullest sense. Creation is the answer to the question. How can God be revealed by those? Not yet like Him, to those not yet like Him. It is a puzzle of the highest order mercy. Maybe we think of that in terms of forgive others. That's such a small little segment of what it actually is in the New Testament in Matthew 2323. The word used there, I thought I had it here is IOS but the Hebrew word is, has said and this is a topic talked about again and again and again and again, it is enormous. It's mentioned of Bajillion Times, the Old Testament. Uh The definition I would use for this or my own homespun definition of this is a phrase covenant love. It's everything when we're told God is love. This is what He is. Love could also mean 100 different things. So like we're, we're, we're in a sea of words that mean much less than what they need to, for us to get any clue what we're talking about. There are a lot of scriptures that talk about the relationship between mercy and justice. Ok. Mercy is, is the postponement of justice. In fact, I'd rather read this part because I packed it in as tightly as I could. Uh Everything that God does is based on justice and mercy is no exception. It exists within and as a consequence of justice, not outside of it or opposite to it. In fact, mercy only works because of justice. It is a very much hierarchical relationship. Here's uh a scripture to get you thinking in that direction at Psalm 6212. It says also unto thee o Lord belong mercy for thou render us to every man according to his work. That's mercy and justice in one verse, right? How can you have mercy and justice at the same time? Because they don't compete. Mercy occurs when someone else pays the price to fulfill the requirements of justice. Mercy's justice towards you paid for by the unmerited suffering of another. That's how it works every single time. That's how it works. You can't get away from it. It doesn't violate the relationship of cause and effect. It doesn't change the effects of causes. It just gives an opportunity for someone else to do the cause so that you can have the effect. And the way it works is it pauses, slows or reduces the flow of that effect. When it comes to uh punishment, it makes a window because you can't, I give, I don't give my glory to another. Glory cannot be given from one person to another. You have to become ok. So the, the opportunity is for more time or another chance. That's what mercy is all about. It's the postponement of the full effect of causes that have already occurred with an additional opportunity to do what's right or what's best? So with that in mind, what does it cost God to, to extend to us? Mercy? We know all about that, right? Supposedly, but we talk a lot about that. What we don't talk about is what it requires of us in return because mercy is a free gift in the sense that it's given to us in a sense ahead of time. We're outside of the scope of who we are and what we do. God loved us while we were yet sinners. That's the principle. But does that mean that it doesn't cost us something after that as I have loved you, love one another, abide in my love. What does it cost to stay in the stream of God's love ? It's very simple, but maybe, I don't know, maybe you haven't thought about it. Maybe you have, you have to love everyone else the same way you're aware that God loves you. It flows. So we referred to this earlier in this conversation, then we, and if you remember? So he loves us, but he doesn't want it back. He wants us to give it back by giving it to everyone else. Why? Because it's a flow like a waterfall or something. It touches the entire human race. It's a tree. There's a, there's a, a phrase that's repeated a couple of times in the scriptures where the Lord says, I want mercy, not sacrifice . This is that word mercy in the Tabernacle or later the temples. If you sacrificed an animal that was prescribed, you had to do it every once in a while or for certain situations. But when the animal is dead, it's dead. It's an event in the Old Testament mentality. Sacrifice is a thing that you do. And then it's done when Jesus says, I want mercy, not sacrifice. He s you need to continuously love all people all the time and you'll never be done. Do you know what eternal means? You'll never be done. There's no limit. It just keeps going and you think, oh my goodness, that's so much. It's overwhelming . Yes. But you're thinking about it in the wrong direction. What you give others will always be less than what the Lord gives. You always. And it's not about maxing out what you get from God. But even if it were back to faith, it's the most reasonable thing that you can do. If you believe that God is just, and he is the rational thing to do is to love every person with all of your heart might mind and strength forever. Now, do you understand why Jesus in Matthew 2323 calls mercy judgment and faith, the weightier matters because if this is all you have figured out you're doing pretty good. I'm thankful to be here today. I'm thankful to talk about these things and I hope that whatever the Lord has taught you through the spirit in being here, that you take it to heart and that you take time to dig into these things. And as he continues to unfold to you more information, I hope that you open your mind and your heart and your life, two changes that can help you overcome these barriers that that might be preventing that relationship from, from growing whatever those barriers might be for you. I strongly encourage you to think about how they might be things that would be outside of the set of what you might think would be those barriers and to start to pay more attention to the weightier matters as they apply to your daily life first yourself, as an individual. Second, if you're married with your spouse, third, if you have kids with your kids, and if you don't have those things and they might lie in the future, that's a great place to apply them too, is in the search for that in the future. But whatever your situation is to start with the relationship between you and the Lord and to go out from there because I promise you that every single time you ask the Lord, what could you do better? He will give you an answer, especially if you open your mind to him telling you things about situations that aren't religious in your mind. There is no separation and you can only go so far while you're willfully ignoring things. You know, you could do better in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Ok.