The Laborers' Podcast- Pleasure

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Dan and Tyler host this week. The Pleasures of Man, of GOD, and Our Need for a New Heart

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Good evening, everybody. This is the Laborer's Podcast. This is the collaborative effort or work of the
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Truth and Love Network. Tonight, we have myself, Dan, the third string quarterback over here, hosting in the absence of both
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Robert and Claude. We have Tyler, who is representing the Bread of the Word podcast, Andy down on the bottom right, representing the
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God -Centered Theology podcast, and John, who is a pastor at Real Life Community Church in Iron Station, North Carolina.
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It's good to see everybody here tonight. Tonight, we're going to talk about pleasure, especially from the book of Ecclesiastes.
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Tyler, you kind of put this together. You're going through Ecclesiastes on your podcast.
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So, why don't you give us a little bit of background, why you picked this topic, where you got it from, all the pertinent background information to kind of put us on the right track.
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I'd love to. So, Bread of the Word as a podcast ultimately exists to go verse by verse through the
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Bible to look at how it applies to where we're living now, how God has revealed himself to his people, to his church.
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And I found myself led to do Ecclesiastes at just looking at the books that we're afraid to read sometimes, that we're kind of intimidated by, but at the same time we're hungry for, that we want to hear that he's taught and explained.
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And so, I set out to start going verse by verse through Ecclesiastes probably about two months ago.
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And I came to chapter two, and there's a lot of good nuggets in chapter two.
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It's challenging at times. It's hard sometimes. This is not a clean cut, everything is to be taken literally, necessarily passage.
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But Solomon is providing a very deep prodding look at life under the sun and the good things of life under the sun and the things that are not so great.
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The spots where life is great and the spots where life makes no sense. And when we come to chapter two, he's talking about pleasure.
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And I think as we look at our culture today, that's something we're still talking about is pleasure, is happiness.
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Everybody wants to be happy. We want to feel good. We want this and that and all this. And oftentimes, we find ourselves looking for all the same things as Solomon, asking the same questions to Solomon.
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I believe that the questions we're asking were asked by Solomon and answered by the word of God.
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Sure. So, I guess we'll kind of open it up here. We'll start going through our list of things we want to talk about tonight.
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We're going to start off by asking the question, what does Solomon here in Ecclesiastes 2 mean by pleasure?
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And if we can contrast that or compare it either way with our modern definition of what pleasure means.
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So, does anybody want to volunteer to go first or am I going to pick on someone? I'll do it.
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All right, John, take us away. Man, I knew he was going to do that. Only one on here who don't know how to speak
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Hebrew or Greek. So, you're all right. I assume we're starting in two and two.
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So, I'm going to link the laughter with it. I said of laughter, it is mad and the pleasure, what use is it?
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I searched my heart, how to cheer my body with wine, my heart still guiding me with wisdom and how to lay a hold of folly till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life.
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And just in that verse, I've always looked at it in terms of, I've always looked at Ecclesiastes like it's a difficult book.
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I see what is either the ravings of a genius or a cynical genius at times.
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And I think some of the things he's talking about is the same principle that we say whenever there's things like there's pleasure and sin for a season.
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Does that make sense? He says the laughter is mad and a pleasure, what use is it?
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And in the end, he continues down to call all these things vain and vanity. So, I think that in this term, the way he's using pleasure is going to be in a fleshly or in some ways, maybe even a sinful nature.
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What's your take on it, Dan? I think he's describing things, well, he describes one, two, three, four, about five things here.
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He talks about laughter, wine, building or construction projects, wealth.
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And he says down there at the bottom of towards verse 11, that he kept his wisdom about them the whole time.
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So, he's talking about things that can bring physical pleasure or a sense of satisfaction.
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And I think that that's kind of how we define pleasure today. Although I think he's trying to get at it from a little different angle is he may define whether it's good or bad differently than our culture would at large.
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Does your version have at the end of 11, nothing to be gained under the sun? I'm reading the
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ESV here. Yeah, I've got the NASB. It says, and there was no profit under the sun.
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So, yeah, or it says, behold, vanity and striving after the wind.
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Is this to say that it's whatever this pleasure that he's talking about, even if it is attainable, it doesn't last.
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Does that make sense to then? That's the way I've always seen it.
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I have a hard time. I have a hard time with this book a lot. Thank you, Tyler. Yeah, it's kind of hollow, kind of on its own.
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Well, I'll tell you where. So, some years ago, I had to preach when I was going to Emmanuel Community Christian College.
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They would make us preach from a portion of scripture every week that we didn't get to choose.
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I would have never preached out of the book of Ecclesiastes. But I had to preach out of Ecclesiastes a couple of times.
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And I've got a series, nearly a complete set right here on my bookshelf of a man named
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J. Vernon McGee. Don't even know who he is. I don't know. I knew where I got the books when there was a gift to me.
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And I thought, let's see what J. Vernon McGee thinks about Solomon. And his take on Ecclesiastes was that you see how
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Solomon's life with all these wives and concubines that he had that were from different religions, how they had affected some of the way that he even spoke.
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I don't know that's J. Vernon McGee's take on Solomon. And he referred to him more than one time as cynical in this book.
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I don't know if that's the way that I would classify it, but I do see, especially when you get into the chapter three, that there's a kind of a cadence to the very first part of chapter three that almost does seem reminiscent of some kind of Eastern theology or Eastern ideology,
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I should say. You see what I'm talking about? Sort of cyclical? Yeah, almost.
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I don't want to say yin and yang, but I mean, almost like some kind of hands from both ends back and forth, time to plant, time to pluck up, time to kill, time to heal, time to break down, time to build up.
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And some of these things, when you look at it, you think that's not necessarily a time to love, or not necessarily a time to hate anybody, but it's written in there as if it is.
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So I don't know how much of Ecclesiastes and Solomon's way of thinking was altered by the people that were in his life, but I think that the people that you are going through life with will offer the way that you look at some things, sometimes negatively.
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Sure. Sometimes positively. So I really wish you'd have picked on Andy.
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I wish, man. He wanted me to get picked on first, did he?
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I wouldn't even look at the screen. I know he's going to pick somebody else. I saw the cup going up to your mouth, so I had to do something.
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I tell you, I should have done something like, I'm losing internet connection or something.
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You just got to sit really still and make it look like you're frozen. Do the thing Robert does? Yeah. If he's watching right now, he's going to get you for that one.
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No, my wife would walk behind me or something. Oh, then you'd be giving away.
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Yeah, that'd be terrible. Freeze with the fan on. Well, I'll jump in on this one.
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Ecclesiastes is a wonderful book. I love reading it and studying it. As I was telling
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Tyler before we got started, it's very humbling. To me, it really is sort of the anthem or the sheer textbook on the differences between a
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God -centered theology and a God -centered worldview and a man -centered theology and a man -centered worldview. Because he never once says in the book of Ecclesiastes that if one is
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God -centered and seeking after God and looking to do things for God, if they attain any wealth or wisdom or things of that nature in seeking
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God's glory, that it's grasping after wind, it's striving after wind. When you look at the overall context, when he talks about, for example, if you back up chapter 1, verse 14, where he says,
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I've seen everything that is done under the sun and behold, all is vanity, vanity or empty, vapor, striving after wind.
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You could translate that grasping after wind. It's really a silly thing when you think about it, but if somebody were to go outside in a very high windstorm and they're trying to grab the wind or hug the wind or somehow capture the wind as something you could actually hold or possess, it's what he says all throughout the book is what man's efforts to have his pleasure, to have it his way, is like.
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So when you get to chapter 2 here and he says, come now, I will test you with pleasure, enjoy yourself, but behold, this is also vanity.
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It's in that same context of the pursuit of pleasure from from man's own purposes is grasping after wind.
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It's, it's waste, it's waste, it's effortless because, excuse me, it's not effortless, it's a wasted effort because pleasure itself and joy and pleasure, something that's beautiful, something that's good to look at, something that would be good to have, wisdom, all these things are not evil in and of themselves.
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It's what you're doing with them. Why are you seeking to attain them? Why are you using them? What's the chief end of your desire to have and to attain these things?
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And so I see it all throughout that if your goal for pleasure, if your goal for joy, if your goal for attaining things is for your own purposes, and when you understand the differences between the worldview that is dominant right now, that we're just a cosmic accident, we're random bags of gas and air, and we're just somehow came to be.
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For me, there's no reason to live at that point because what's the point? I mean, all this horrible stuff that happens to you and you're just going to die one day anyway, but if all there is is now, why wouldn't you go after these things?
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And that sort of me is the thing, the pleasure he's talking about that's empty, that's worthless is the pleasure of man for his own purposes.
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Yeah, absolutely. It's almost like you look at each one of these things, we'll try out laughter.
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Laughter is a good thing. We've been laughing it up already. Wine is a good thing. You go to the
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Lord's table and you receive the grace of God through the sacrament, beautiful thing. Building stuff is wonderful.
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They built the temple, Christ is building his kingdom. Wealth is not a bad thing when used properly.
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All these things, it's a matter of where you're anchored at. These things in and of themselves are fleeting and hollow.
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Tyler, you had a question on here that I'm curious about, I'd like to hear your thoughts on. Does the background of Solomon show us the error of seeking after empty pleasures?
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Well, with that, let me refer to a passage from Deuteronomy, which
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I find very on point. It was written quite some time before Solomon, but this is regarding God promising to appoint a king over Israel.
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In Deuteronomy 17, verse 14, he says, when you have entered the land the Lord your
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God is giving you and have taken possession of it and are living there, you may say, I want to have a king over me like all of the nations around me.
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In that event, you must appoint as king the one whom the Lord your God will choose, and he must be one of your kinsmen.
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This king you appoint over you, you are forbidden to appoint a foreigner over you who is not your kinsman.
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However, he is not to acquire many horses for himself or have the people return to Egypt to obtain more horses, and as much as the
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Lord has told you never to go back that way again. And likewise, he is not to acquire many wives for himself so that his heart will not turn away, and he is not to acquire expensive quantities of silver and gold.
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When he has come to occupy the throne of his kingdom, he is to write a copy of this Torah for himself in a scroll from the one of the priests that they use.
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It is to remain with him, and he is to read in it every day as long as he lives so that he will learn to fear the
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Lord his God and keep all the commandments of this Torah and these laws and obey them so that he will not think he is better than his kinsmen, so that he will not turn aside either to the right or to the left from the commandments.
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In this way, he will prolong his own reign and that of his children in Israel. And when we juxtapose that passage about not acquiring many horses and not acquiring much gold and meditating on the law constantly with this list we have in Ecclesiastes of what he's done,
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I've acquired this. I had more sheep than anyone in Jerusalem, and I had all these servants and all of this and all of that.
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We have this, this, A, he's in direct violation with what God has decreed a king to be, and two, it's demonstrating a heart content here that's problematic, that we are looking at someone who is trying to fill this this void with other things, that he's taken what
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God has made, he's made about him. He's taken all of these good things that God has made, such as gold and silver and sheep, and he's made it all about Solomon.
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He's made himself a little god on his throne, and all these things exist for his own pleasure, for his own glory.
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I think we have to take that into account when we read Ecclesiastes, that we are reading the account of someone who got, we are reading the account of someone who at some point had to come to terms with the fact that he is not the center of the universe, and that the world does not exist solely for his pleasure.
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I want to jump in on that one. That's a great point, because when you look at chapter one of Ecclesiastes, verse 18, he talks about how in much wisdom there's vexation of spirit.
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He who increases knowledge increases sorrow. I would venture to say, I don't know that I'd go as far as to say narcissist, but I would,
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I think it's very clear that Solomon dealt with arrogance a lot, and if you think about people that are very wise, very smart, very talented, especially in the arena of emotional intelligence, knowing how to act, which strings to pull, how to assess situations, and just all those things, the high temptation that those people have is one of arrogance and thinking that they've achieved what they've done and not
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God, and so Solomon, if you were to read through this book and let that be your background, because the question's about Solomon's background, understanding who he was and what he struggled with, these pages of Ecclesiastes make so much more sense.
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I get it. That's a guy that would struggle with that, and he struggles with it throughout the whole book. He's saying, I'm trying and doing all these things, and I get down to chapter 12, the end of the book, he says, the end of all things is this.
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Just obey God. Stop doing it for yourself. You're wasting your time. I feel like Solomon's saying, take it from a guy who's smarter than everybody else in the room and knew it and could prove it by everything
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I accumulated, and I'm the best king ever, and I'm telling you it was all worthless because I did it for all reasons.
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So his background, I think if it was anyone else other than Solomon that writes this book, it doesn't hit us the same way.
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You know what I mean? I get what you're, absolutely. I've heard it said by one author about Augustine from the 300s that he's like an aged bishop who's handed us a map of all those roads disappointed, and I think that also fits with Ecclesiastes, that these are all the roads that Solomon has taken to try and make himself validated, to try and fill this sinful void within himself with what ultimately can only be satisfied by Christ, by the fullness of Christ.
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So I want to add to that. I think you're right on the money. Like I said, I do not care just when it comes to studying the book of Ecclesiastes and even the
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Song of Solomon, the whole book, I just went through them both in my devotion. I think it was about a week ago,
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I finished up Song of Solomon, and I was like, you know what, Lord, in my prayer time, I said this is evidence that man did not write this book.
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We would have left some of this out. We've left a lot of this out. But anyway, I digress. I think if you were to look at the opposite of an intelligent man, and also a very intelligent man, but a man whose intelligence and his life goal was centered on the personal work of Christ, I think you see that in brother
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Paul. And then you see the opposite of this in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Every time I read the book of Ecclesiastes, I think about 1
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Corinthians chapter 15 all the time. And it's because you read in Ecclesiastes, I said at the end, to fear
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God and keep his commandments or keep the law is a whole duty of man. It's like, that's all you've got, right?
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The whole duty of man is to love God, keep holding to man. You look at 1
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Corinthians 15 and 19. If in Christ have hope, well, get 18, sorry.
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Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we're of all people most to be pitied.
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In the book of, in King James Version, I think it says, if I have hope, if being in Christ, I have hope in this world only, of all men most miserable.
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I think that's the way the King James puts it. I don't have it right in front of me. And then you get on over to,
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I lost my place. I think it's 30, 32, maybe. Is that right?
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What do I gain? I speak in human, speaking, I fought with the beast of Ephesus.
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If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. His hope being on the resurrection.
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Paul's hope that kept him, kept him pursuing after the Lord and kept him.
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I won't say kept him in the faith because I think that'd be an error in my thinking or it would be taken wrong.
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Everything Paul does, he seems to weigh it out against eternity. This is just a, this momentary light affliction is, is not worthy to be compared to the glory that shall be revealed in us.
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Everything Paul seemed to go through, he seems to go through it is eyes fixed on how that's weighted with eternity to come.
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And you see an absence of that with Solomon. You see a total absence of that with Solomon all together where it's just like, it's all
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I got. I got a thousand brawling wives. I'm living in a thousand corners on the roof. I have no place to be tonight because who in the world wants that many women to have to argue with at one time?
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And can you say amen? Say oh me, I'm just telling you. That's, that's what
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I always think about when I'm reading Ecclesiastes. I think what a hope we have in Christ and Solomon for all his intelligence has missed this, this very evident truth.
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This is something David got all the time in his psalms. When you read his psalms, his hope of continually being on the resurrection and continually being on the
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Messiah to come. Anyway, I'll take a break.
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Thank you. So we've been talking about what it means for pleasure to be hollow, for it to be vanity, grasping at the wind, like trying to climb up a sand rope or something to that nature.
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So what would give it some substance? What would give those, those things, the things that he tried to find pleasure in, what would give us, we hit on it a little bit, but I'd like to hit on a little bit more and then talk about how that, how we approach pleasure and the things of this world.
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How, how does, how does our approach show us an inside of our own hearts?
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So number, number, cause I said a bunch there. So number one, how can we find what, what makes the things of this world not hollow?
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Like in what way can we experience the world around us and it not be vanity or chasing the wind?
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And I think we all brought up that Christ needs to be at the center.
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He's what gives people meaning. He's what gives substance to the world because he is the creator.
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So can we expand on that and then show how that reflects or shows or exposes our own hearts when we examine ourselves against those things, you know, how we interact with the world around us.
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One of the simple ways to think about it, it would be the way I instruct my daughter. One of the
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I've heard my entire life is you can be whatever you want to be, grow up, be whoever, be whatever you want to be.
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Doesn't matter what it is. You pursue it and you work hard. It'll somehow come.
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We hear all these just Christian and non -Christian cliches that just drive me off the wall.
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And I've, if I hear one more person that professes to be a Christian, use the word karma, I may have a
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Scanners movie type head explosion because I'm just sick of hearing it. But they say, you know, grow up, be wherever you want to be.
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I have started to adopt a different way of approaching it that I believe is God -centered.
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I say, Hannah, you need to find out as quickly as you can in life why
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God created you, the purposes for which he created you, what he wants you to pursue, because you'll save yourself a lot of heartache because not in every way.
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And I think we need to be careful when we start comparing ourselves to biblical characters, because they are who they are and you are who you are, but they will see similarities.
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And to some degree, I can see some of myself in Solomon because the first full decade of my adult working life,
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I was pursuing my own thing. I was wanting to be a food line store manager by this time, director of operations by this time.
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I had it all mapped out and probably somewhere around the age of 34, I was going to be retired. Well, I'm 39 and I'm still working.
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So that didn't go well, but it was based on the false idea that I could be anything
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I want to be. And that pursuit of pleasure, that pursuit based on desires in my own heart, which getting to your question, was that tells about our desires in our heart was selfish.
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I wanted to make money. I wanted to be important. I wanted to be all these things.
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And it was pride involved. A lot of different sins involved. And as Dan and all of us have hit on, all of those things in and of themselves are not necessarily evil by themselves.
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There's a lot of Christians that have a lot of money. And I'm thankful for those Christians because God uses them to fund things that we need funded.
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Having notoriety isn't necessarily a bad thing. God does raise up some Christians and puts them in a public place to be quote unquote famous.
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I prefer my little background behind the scenes kind of life. But what changed was to make this more extreme long story short, when
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I realized that I need to be pursuing what God created before, all of a sudden the pleasures
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I found in life and the things I enjoyed, I enjoyed on a totally different level because I was pursuing them from the correct starting point.
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And I think that's what a lot of what Solomon is getting at. If your starting point is incorrect, you're never going to end up at the right destination because you didn't start from the right place.
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Right. That's good. That's good. All I can. Romans 11 speaks to this a little bit, just building off of what
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Andy was saying. Romans 11 33 says, Oh, the depths of the riches and the wisdom and knowledge of God, how inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable are his ways for who has known the mind of the
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Lord who has, who has been his counselor or who has given him anything and made him pay it back for from him and through him and to him are all things to him be glory forever.
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Amen. That ultimately everything is his says in Psalms that the earth is the
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Lord's and everything in it. Then that there's a common phrase in the old
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Testament, everything on the earth, under the earth and above the earth. We're talking about the whole scope of creation that everything is made by God and for God.
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And so for us to truly enjoy what these things are, it's to recognize from whence they came to truly have a concept of what is pleasure, who made pleasure, who made joy, and does it reflect the
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God who made it? God made, God is a God of pleasure. When we read in Ephesians about the pleasures of God, God takes pleasure in what he does.
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It says in Psalm 115, that our God is in the heavens and does as he pleases.
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So when we take pleasure in things, there's an element of it reflecting that we are made in God's image because God is a
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God of joy, a God who takes pleasure in what he does. And we can abuse that, absolutely. But when things are balanced, when things are centered right, we take joy in a way that is reflective of the
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God that we serve. That makes sense. It does. I was thinking about,
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Brother Andy was saying, if you've ever worked for a large company and I've had the benefit of working for large companies, there's something that they tell you almost immediately when they give you your plot number or your badge
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ID number or whatever. You're just a number. And if you were going to, by Thursday, they'd have somebody by Monday fill your spot, and he would be able to do exactly what you're doing.
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And while that's true, and it is a little cynical, but it's 100 % true.
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You're not unique in the fact you're the person who can do your job most of the time. I would say that there's probably very few people in the world who have that.
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So if you were looking at it from Solomon's point of view and trying to build it, he felt, I'm sure, that he was uniquely qualified, and indeed he was so, to be the king of Israel.
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At the same time, he wound up dividing the king by the policies that he instituted the kingdom into two different kingdoms, right?
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Solomon was the last king over the United Israel before the Babylonian exile, and if I'm not mistaken, it was some of his policies that initially caused the division because of the financial strain that he put on them.
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And again, I always think of 1 Corinthians when I'm reading that. And when I look at 1 Corinthians chapter 3, we'll start in 10.
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According to the grace of God given to me like a skilled master builder, I lay a foundation. If someone else is building upon it, let each one take care how he builds upon it, for no one can lay a foundation other than what is laid, which is
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Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man's or each one's work will become manifest, for the day will disclose it because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one of us has done.
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Obviously, things like stone and gold wouldn't burn up, but wood and straw would burn up.
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And I think about Brother Ray Comfort, I don't know if any of y 'all watch any of Brother Ray Comfort's work, but I enjoy it. He says that his hobbies that he likes are always ones that bear fruit.
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He doesn't like hobbies that don't bear fruit. So he raises chickens because they lay eggs, and he likes trees because he can eat apples and oranges or whatever grows in San Diego off of maybe coconuts,
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I don't really know. And his life bears that out. He is continually sharing the gospel because he wants his life to bear fruit.
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And when I heard him say that one time, I thought, wow, if you lived your days with the thought about eternity, the way
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Paul seems to weigh that out, then the foundation that you continually lay your work on, you would choose something that wouldn't be as easily burned up and things that might not pay off as fast as like maybe some of the things that Solomon was looking to pay off.
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Because oftentimes we think about things that are successful, things that we see in our own lifetime, but this is not about us.
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As Brother Tyler said, this is about Jesus, right? So our lives, our lifetime in the eyes of the
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Lord is less than a breath. James would say it's here, you know, it's a vapor that's gone in the morning.
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The sun gets up high in the sky, it's going to burn it off. So maybe the things that we lay, we never see the fruit come of them.
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And if Solomon was looking for fruit or looking for some kind of return on his life, then he would have been fishing in an empty pond.
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So is there, would you say, is there a type of pleasure that is worth focusing on?
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Absolutely. And if so, could you get kind of practical for us and just like point at something?
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He who wins souls is wise. There you go. If you're going to find pleasure in something, you ought to find pleasure in seeing the fruit of the church grow.
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You ought to see Christians be manifest. You do everything you can do to see what Jesus has told you to do. And in doing so, I think you find an eternal way to glory even in here and the world to come.
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Jesus said that nobody has given up anything that I haven't rewarded him in this life and in the life to come.
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That's what he told Peter and them whenever they were talking about having left their families to follow him. So I do think that there's pleasures in serving the
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Lord, but they're definitely not going to be carnal. They're not going to be things like some of the things that Solomon was talking about, and it's not going to be like chasing the wind because you've got the evidence of scripture to back up that you're in the right standing.
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There you go. Somebody needs to talk to Claude about leaving us that organ. Somebody needs to talk to Claude about leaving us that organ when he goes away.
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We need to play some organ on top of that. Goodness gracious. I would take it one step further in that the man -centered understanding of pleasure is striving after wind.
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It's so insane in my mind. I really ought to get my wife to record me next time we have a windstorm, me out there trying to grab the wind and be like, this is
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Ecclesiastes! This is Ecclesiastes! Because the opposite of that, and Tyler started to hit on this,
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I think one of your questions was talking about the pleasures of God. Sometimes the greatest reward that I've had and the greatest pleasure that I've had in working hard for the
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Lord or doing something that is obedient to God is simply the pleasure of knowing that my father is pleased with me.
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Somebody get my guitar. I say this because immediately when
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I saw the Ecclesiastes, anytime anybody mentions Ecclesiastes, my mind immediately goes to Ecclesiastes 12, verse 13.
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He has said all this stuff about what he's done. He says, okay, you want the, as I'm a lifelong wrestling fan, as Stone Cold Steve Austin has always said, that's the bottom line because Stone Cold said so.
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I never hear those on a podcast. Hey, this is a reformed podcast.
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I just referenced Stone Cold Steve Austin. If that doesn't get, if that doesn't get me kicked off, what will?
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But Solomon's bottom line, what is the bottom line? Well, and it's because Solomon said so.
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He knows who better to tell us. He says the end of the matter, all has been heard.
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Nothing else can be said. Fear God, keep his commandments. That's where he starts.
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That's where Proverbs starts. Proverbs 1, 7, I believe the beginning of knowledge is the fear of the Lord, something along them lines.
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Fear God, keep his commandments, obey him. Why? For this is the whole duty of man.
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That's the whole purpose why man exists, not for you. And I'm, just in case you're not aware, most of my preaching, if I start preaching is to myself.
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So yeah, I'm preaching to myself here. That's, that's your purpose, Andy. Not for you, for God. Why? For God will bring every deed into judgment.
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There, there's something to be said for the pleasure that we experience when as a child of God, we think
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I obeyed Christ today. My father is pleased with me. I was a rebellious enemy of God.
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There's no neutral worldviews as Dr. White and many others say all the time in apologetics ministry.
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There's no neutral worldviews. You are either for God or against God. You're either, either in rebellion or you're a child of God.
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And to think that as a child of God, I didn't make myself that. God adopted me and I'm pleasing to my father when
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I obey him. That's enough. That's enough.
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Just a little tidbit on that passage that Andy just quoted with the, the whole duty of man.
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When we look at the Hebrew, it literally says, this is the all of man or the whole of man.
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This is what makes him whole. The complete fear of God and obey
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God. This is what completes him. All right,
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Tyler, I got a question for you. This ain't even on your feet, so don't even look at it.
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And you may not be able to answer, but if somebody else can, by all means do.
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There's a concept brought out by John Piper called Christian hedonism. Are you familiar with it?
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I am. Yes. Go. What do you think about it?
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So in a nutshell, um, the idea of pagan hedonism was this notion of trying to find the most, the most amount of pleasure that we can obtain in his life.
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And so he had this, this formula of, of drink and sex and money and all this stuff and trying to be perpetually happy.
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But what's the, the pagans found is that you get bored, that there becomes a point where it's too much and you, you, uh, that reward center in your brain just kind of shuts off.
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And so what John Piper had toted with what he called a Christian hedonism was noting that we are designed to seek pleasure, that there is something innate in us that looks to take pleasure in things and recognize that the greatest pleasure is in abiding in Christ, that we are designed to take, to find joy in God, to rest in God and let him be our joy, to align what gives us joy with what gives
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God joy. I'm sure you can, he probably fleshes that out much in much greater detail, but, um, simply put from what
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I recall from reading Desiring God is that we are to take joy in what gives
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God glory. So we are to be satisfied in what glorifies God. Does anybody else want to comment on that?
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I never read the whole, all of the book. Sure. All right. So what, what sort of, uh, what sort of, uh, snares or issues might arise if we go about our life thinking in terms of pleasure first, instead of thinking in terms, we think
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I'm going to seek pleasure, but I'm going to seek pleasure in God. Instead of thinking I'm going to seek after God and pleasure then will be added unto me, you know, seek first the kingdom of God and his rights and all these things will be added unto you.
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What happens if we try to seek after God in his kingdom, but we do so through the mode of seeking pleasure in God, you know, we put the cart before the horse.
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I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Well, that potentially makes God to be almost like a drug, almost like he's the new high.
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He's the new way that I get my kicks. And there, as, as we've established, there's a place for pleasure.
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There's a place to enjoy things and to have joy. But that dopamine thing in our brain was never meant to run constantly.
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As a matter of fact, some psych psychologists and people that study the brain have our concern that the way we're lighting that up so much these days, that there could come a point where we actually burn out that dopamine center of our brain and can't feel anything.
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It's not meant to be continuous. There's supposed to be boredom and things that are difficult.
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And yes, there is ample room for snares in this notion of seeking God for pleasure rather than seeking
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God and pleasure is a by -product of abiding in Christ. So when we cease to abide in Christ for Christ and cease and begin to abiding
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Christ for what Christ can give me, which by definition is also, I guess, the prosperity
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God in a nutshell. Well, in a sense, what happens when the pleasure doesn't come as God's still, still a focus as he's still satisfactory for you.
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How does that play a new depression? How does that play into mental health issues when the clouds get dark and you don't desire
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God, but you continue to seek him anyway, because God is God.
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Did any of y 'all happen to listen to the sermon that Claude recommended called 10 Shackles and I think that if you'll listen to it, he touches on this.
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This is just another type of secular humanism that weasels its way into the church. The thought that even in sharing the gospel is that, you know,
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I just don't want to see my fellow man go to hell. That's the wrong reason to share the gospel.
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The right reason to share the gospel is that I might be able to see much made of Christ cross. I might be able to see
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God glorified through the salvation of sinners, as opposed to, I just don't want to see people go to hell because I love them.
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That would almost be like, well, you love them more than God loves them then. You know what I'm saying? The same type of problem
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I think you run into whenever you think about seeking God for pleasure or seeking pleasure by way of, even if you're seeking pleasure by way of trying to follow
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God's laws and his attributes or whatever it's Solomon was talking about, you put the cart before the horse, you wind up not going anywhere.
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Well, I want to take Dan's, when he started to phrase the question, the original form of what he said was, if you take pleasure and put that as the starting point or the end goal, that's what
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I'm pursuing. Instead of understanding, I may derive pleasure from pursuing the glory of God.
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What I would say is if your pleasure is your starting point, your end goal, what you've done, if you're doing it through even a somewhat
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Christian context, you've created an idol. Pleasure has become your idol.
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As Tyler said, it's become your drug or fill in the blank with whatever, however you want to phrase that.
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We have to remember that one of the biggest things about God that is ignored in a lot of Christian circles is that he is a
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God of law. He has his law. He has his decree. He has his prescriptive will.
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He has things that he has told us. One of the things that is very clear throughout scripture is that he is
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God and there is no other. You start with that. That's the whole essence.
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It's not a cliche for me. It's not just a ... I don't say this to say that other people that have titles for their ministry are using them in a bad way.
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I think everybody has meaning behind their title and everything. For me, the meaning behind God -centered theology is because that's been one of my biggest failures in life.
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I started ... I didn't really know what I would end up at, but I've come to that point of using that term a lot when
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I talk and preach God -centered theology, God -centered theology. The reason for that is
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I've come to realize because that was my biggest failure. I had so many other things that had my attention and my focus.
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When you re -center and start and begin with God and what he has said, not what man thinks, not what feels good, not what is pleasurable, but who is
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God and what has he said and how can I be rightly related to him and bring him glory, then and only then does a real, genuine, something that can actually be grasped as opposed to striving after win, type of pleasure and joy become a reality in your life.
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I would answer if you're ... and then in the church context, prosperity gospel or whatever it is, if pleasure is a goal, you've created an idol.
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Yep. Amen. Yeah. How are some of these ways that we can smash those idols, take some practical steps to make sure that while we strive to obey the law, we're not trying to seek our pleasure from obedience law, which seems a lot like what the
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Pharisees were doing. They thought, no, I'm so high and mighty because I'm better at doing rule following than you are.
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Or the other fellows who said, well, I'm going to go out and sin as much as I can because the grace of God is going to cover me.
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So I'm going to seek pleasure in that way. What are some real practical ways we can go out there and smash those idols in ourself, make sure that God is our focus.
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So that way our true pleasure that we can derive from things is derived that right way by first seeking
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God and then finding our satisfaction in Him and Him alone.
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I can definitely speak to this in very simple terms. To me, there's two very practical ways.
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One's a very easy, short way to either correct or know if you're heading in the right direction.
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The other one takes more time. Number one, the easy thing is if there is a specific command, specific prescription, something where, because we know the word of God was never meant,
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God never meant to be 100 % clear on every possible thing we could encounter, but it is clear on everything that we need to know.
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So if scripture is abundantly clear in a particular area or if there's a specific command and you're not following it, you need to repent and get that right immediately.
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You don't need to wait. God says, don't do this. Stop doing it. If God says you need to be doing this and you're doing something else, stop.
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That's not very hard. The second part does take more time because with me, it took a lot of time.
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If you're pursuing something, like for me, nothing wrong being the CEO of Food Lion.
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Somebody out there right now is the CEO of Food Lion, and they didn't start that way. Nothing wrong if you're at a job and it's a secular job and you want to move up the ladder, make more money, pursue greater things in life.
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Maybe you started out like I did growing up in a single wide trailer and now I'm blessed enough to have a wonderful house to live in.
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I don't feel bad about the house I live in or if I have a good car to drive, but you've got to take time and because checking your motives and understanding motives is at the heart of what the question is being asked.
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What's the practical way to know if you're on this right path or not? It may take time for you to really look at yourself and ask yourselves in a prayerful way,
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God, show me sinful motives. Is this really what you want me to do in life?
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Do you want me to pursue that race? Do you want me to pursue this other job? Do you want me to do this, that, or whatever?
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And what I usually tell people is the way to know is are you truly fulfilled? Are you fulfilled in a sense that you're bringing
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God glory and that fulfillment is a derivative of that? Or I'm fulfilled in this, therefore
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God must be approving of it. Well, for a long time, I felt really good at Food Lion, but God wasn't approving.
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So, and I'll kind of cut off here because I don't want to go too long on this. I could, you could have a whole sermon on this, but the second part of this being that it sometimes it may take you time.
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And this is where the scriptural advice of the, in the, if somebody knows the reference, they can shout it out.
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But the being surrounded by a wise counsel, being surrounded by an abundance of wise counselors is a good thing.
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Yeah. Because they're going to see things in your life that you may not see. And I know for me, it took the right group of men to say,
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Andy, you need to tighten up a little bit, son. You're, you're, you're off the wrong, the wrong path here.
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I know you think you're doing good, but you're really not. And it may take that. So that, that, that would be my two -step thing.
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Just to summarize one, if you're clearly in violation of scripture, you don't need counsel for that.
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Just stop, fix it, repent, get right, get it right. And then the other side, if you're on a lifelong journey of one way, you're going to have to really look at your motives and stuff.
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I really love how you added that part about wisdom and a multitude of counselors.
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And I was going to say that this is, to me, this is one of the clearest reasons why it is important that a person is a part of a local church body that knows him and can hold him accountable because we both know, well, we all know that even if we have what we think are the best of intentions, when somebody else checks you, if you're going to be submissive to godly counsel, as you should be, you're going to take a step back.
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And if the very least, you're going to have to defend why you're doing it. And it makes you think about your motives. That's a good thing.
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That is a very good thing. And I think that that is one of the biggest reasons why men ought to be active in church.
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And if they have a men's group, I think you ought to be active in your men's group and do exactly like brother
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Andy was saying. If you see another man and his motives are questionable, if you love him, ask him and be, you know,
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I mean, that's the hard thing because he might get mad at you in the short term. I mean, we're men, we're subject to be angry, but if you really love him, that's what you'll do.
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You'll sit him aside and you'll say, well, Andy is being the CEO of food line, work your soul to gain the whole world.
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And of course we know that it's not, but in the moment you might have lost sight of the big picture.
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I know exactly where you're coming from. Yeah. What would you be? All right.
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If, if what, everything that you had went away, if, if you're not okay with it all going away, it could be that you're deriving a pleasure from something.
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I mean, you know, hold it out with open hand, be glad that you have it. Be glad that God gave it to you.
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Enjoy it as long as you have it, but hold it with an open hand, knowing that the one who gave to you can also take it away.
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So Tyler, I'm talking about all this about pleasure and doing stuff right or doing it wrong.
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Finding the substance of Christ and deriving our pleasure from finding that true substance or a vanity when climbing up a sand rope.
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Let me ask you this. Are you perfect at that? No, I am not perfect.
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How about you, John? No. How about you, Andy? I'll get my wife on here.
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She'll tell you. So this brings us to our last question.
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I'll let somebody just take it away. How does this lead us back to the gospel?
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How does the cross have a bearing upon this? And then would somebody, whoever's answering just at the end, would you share that gospel, that good news, that speaks to this issue as we kind of pull it all together?
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I'll give a very quick answer and then I'll step back so the other two gentlemen can finish us off.
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When you were just talking, Dan, it brought to mind, and I don't know the reference off the top of my head, but when
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Jesus is talking to the rich young ruler and he's got all his possessions and he says, you know, go and sell, because you were saying, you know, what if all of it was gone?
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He says, hey, go sell all your stuff. And people have said, well, oh, see, you got to do this. No, what
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Jesus was saying is like, look, I know your heart and you worship this stuff more than you do God.
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And so to me, there's that gospel issue that's involved with the subject of pleasure, because some people grasp onto that stuff so tightly, they just will not let it go because it's here now and they think it's something they can have.
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And really it's just wind. So you've got to understand that anything you have,
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I say this often, everything that we have, everything that we are is by the grace of God. So it follows that everything that we have, everything we are should be
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God -centered. And to me, that's where the gospel is central there. Amen.
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I feel like I've said enough, Brother Tyler. Why don't you go ahead and send it off with a solid gospel message.
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All right. So what we've been talking about has bearing on the content of our hearts, because the content of our hearts is not good.
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The Bible tells us that we are dead in sin, that we are shapen in iniquities, that ultimately we are consumed with the wrong things.
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From birth, we want the wrong things. We chase after the wrong things. We do it in the wrong way. We do it with the wrong intentions, the wrong methods.
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We are, as Andy said, we are in a state of rebellion to God. We do not want what
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God has. We want what we want. And the Bible says that we need a new heart.
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And the way that that is provided for us is not by anything we do, not by us checking off this list of things that we can acquire, like Solomon attempted to do, but found it only left him feeling empty.
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It didn't provide anything of substance. And so God provided in his perfect wisdom, he provided the one thing that could make us whole.
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And he provided his own son, Christ Jesus, who is fully God, truly
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God and truly man, in perfect union. And he lived that perfect life that none of us could live, that perfect life that was not stained by selfishness or rebellion to God, that delighted in God's law day and night.
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And he lived that perfect life for 33 years. And then he died an undeserved death as a criminal.
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And the weight of that sin, of that rebellion that should have been poured out on us, that penalty that we all deserve, he endured instead.
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And he satisfied that justice that should have been upon us. And he died a human death.
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He experienced a human death. But because he's God, he was raised from the dead, showing that he had power and authority over life and death.
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And he offers the door now. He offers this gift of new life and a new heart to everyone that would have him, to everyone that would repent of their sins, to turn away from their sins and believe that Christ is, that Jesus is
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Christ, that he is the son of God in power as revealed by the resurrection from the dead. And that everyone that believes in him will not die that death and suffer the wrath of God that should be on us, but shall have life in Christ and will be united to him.
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And we implore you today to be reconciled to God, to repent and believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, that he died for sin and that he raises dead sinners to new life.
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Beautiful. Amen. Amen. John, would you close us in prayer, please? Absolutely. Father, we come to you in Jesus' name.
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Lord, I'm so very thankful for the cross. I'm so very thankful for the resurrection, Lord. Lord, it's what we put our hope in,
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God. God, I ask that you, that you make much out of your cross through this podcast, that you be with everybody who listens and watches or that by your power and through your grace, you begin to show those who need salvation the way of salvation.
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God, please bless them. Please bless the men that are on here. Bless their families. Keep them by your perfect will.
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It's in Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Thank you, guys. So, everyone out there, if you're single, get married.
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If you're married, have children. If you have children, go back. Wait a second. That's not our tagline.
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One job. Jesus is King. So, go live in the victory of Christ.