Dream Destiny Thingy

All right, let's pray. Lord, keep us steadfast in your word. Curb those who bite us with your sword, who would rob the kingdom from your son and bring to naught all that he has done. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, we're working our way.

Through the book of Exodus still. We just got started, actually. Just got started. Last week, we took a look, a beginning look at the book, Exodus chapter three, and we drilled in hard on the name of God.

Did you all remember God's name revealed to Moses in the burning bush? I am, I am. Now, a little bit of a note here. The implications that this has regarding who Christ is are quite important, but this also has very strong implications regarding some of the false teachings running around the visible church today.

Let me give you an example. Have any of you heard of Joel Osteen? Mike, he's indignant that he's heard of Joel Osteen, okay? Joel Osteen has a book, and the name of the book is The Power of I Am. With a Christian book named The Power of I Am, what would you assume the book is about?

Jesus. It's not. Joel Osteen's book is about, and I'm not making this up, is literally about you making declarative statements. It's The Power of I Am, and you're talking about you. So he teaches you how to basically look in the mirror, and I'm not making this up, look in the mirror and say, I am the head.

I am not the tail. I am strong. I am powerful. I am wise. I wanna look in the mirror and say, I am skinny. So, yeah, it's in a sense, be your own God. And it's important to note that Joel Osteen teaches a brand of, or a variety of a doctrine known as the Word of Faith heresy.

The Word of Faith heresy teaches that your words create reality. So are you struggling financially? Let me pick on a real-world scenario. Roger, how was the farming season this year for?

Terrific.

Right, right.

So let's just say, maybe you didn't have the outcome you were hoping. Probably not.

No, okay.

Yeah, it was a little bit tough weather-wise. I do remember the storm that came through that caused our basement to flood. That was loads of fun. But here's the deal. In the Word of Faith heresy, what they would literally say is, and I'm not making this up, the reason why you didn't have a good harvest this year is because you didn't decree and declare the positive outcome.

By waking up every morning and saying, I decree and declare that the harvest this year is going to be 200-fold. It's gonna be off the chain. And continue to decree and declare these things. So you're at fault because you did not exercise your faith or use your faith to get a positive outcome.

Are you sick? Well, the reason you're sick is because, well, you didn't decree and declare. And whatever you do in the Word of Faith heresy, if you start getting sick, don't ever say, I'm feeling sick.

Because if you say, I'm feeling sick, don't, your words create reality. Now you're gonna have a rough go of it.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, here's their thinking. God created the universe and the world and everything in it in six days. And how did He do it?

By His Word.

Let there be light, and there was light. Let the earth produce vegetation, and there was vegetation. And since we're made in the image of God, well, we can do the same thing. Cat, you, hold on one second.

Cat has been trying to form a question. The self-fulfilling prophecy, it's all based upon your words. And so here's the problem. You'll notice that Joel Osteen's concepts regarding the power of I am don't point us to Jesus.

They point us to me. In fact, are you all familiar with Kenneth Copeland? Have you ever seen him on the television? Kenneth Copeland has a very famous statement where he says, when I read in the Bible where Jesus says, I am, I say, I am too.

Oh yeah, that's a direct quote.

Yes, it's the power of positive thinking on steroids, and it's a false doctrine.

Now, I want you to think about.

The implications of this teaching. We've buried a few people here at Kongsvinger since I've arrived. I fully expect that if the Lord tarries, and if I continue to breathe and stay at Kongsvinger for years to come, there'll be more funerals.

I can tell you this, having been there while people are dying, that it's not a pretty thing. Oftentimes, a person who is on their deathbed is fearful. And long before I came to Kongsvinger, I was serving as a Sunday school teacher at a church in San Juan Capistrano, California.

One of the guys in our class, he was on his deathbed, and I went to visit him. And I went to visit him, and he literally said to me, Chris, I don't want to die. And then he said to me, I must be getting what I deserve.

And at that point, I spent quite a bit of time saying to him, yes, well, the scripture does say that the wages of sin is death, but you are in Christ. Christ has bled and died for your sin. Salvation is not a work.

So the person who believes that their words create reality, oh, a power of positive thinking, I gotta do all this kind of stuff, when the inevitable happens, I don't know if you've noticed this, the death rate is still 100%, anyone notice that?

That when the inevitable happens and you start slouching towards your grave, if you believe that your words can create reality, what does that end up doing to your faith? I must not have enough faith.

You remember Tammy Faye Baker?

What?

Pink hair head?

Okay.

Tammy Faye Baker, she was the wife of Jim Baker, the whole praise the Lord scandal and all that kind of stuff. He went to prison, and you know.

Praise the Lord he went to prison.

Yeah, praise the Lord he went to prison, right? He's back on the air now, by the way, selling prepper supplies, big buckets of survival food, which I'm sure, there's nothing like spending the last few years of the planet with constipation, but did I say that out loud?

Yes, I did. But anyway, do y 'all remember what Tammy Faye died of? Cancer. She believed in the word of faith heresy herself. She wouldn't call it heresy, but she believed this was what the scriptures taught.

So she got terminal cancer, and her body, and cancer's a terrible disease. It literally eats you from the inside. She went from being a normal human being to looking like a survivor of Auschwitz. I mean, she was down to skin and bones.

And literally, in the days just before she died, she was still claiming and decreeing her miracle. I'm not sure if she did or not. That part, I don't know. But I do know with certainty, because I heard one of her very last interviews before she died.

And she did that kind of via Skype or something like that. And you can see, I mean, she was absolutely skeletal. She was still believing for her miracle. Jan Crouch recently died, too, yeah. So here's the thing.

This word of faith heresy is bad, bad news. And so the idea is that we need to focus on the I am of scripture is God, and Jesus, like we pointed out last week, is the I am. When we talk about the I am in relation to scripture as Christians and doctrine, you're not the I am.

Jesus is. And I am is not something that you decree and declare about yourself. I am is something you believe about who Jesus is, because that reveals his divinity. Does that make sense? So it's important that we make that note.

Now, today as we look at Exodus 3, there's another bad doctrine that sounds,.

Well, so.

Innocent, harmless, but isn't. It is the doctrine I call the dream destiny thingy doctrine. The dream destiny thingy doctrine. Or you may have heard of it as the purpose-driven life. Or you also may have heard of it as, remember the four spiritual laws?

That little pamphlet, Bill Bright? God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. I want you to think about the implications of this. And here's how the teaching generally goes. The reason you need to become a Christian is because, well, you're suffering from purposelessness.

Well, Steve, you've been suffering. Even after you've been baptized, you're still suffering from purposelessness. But that's a different story. And so the idea here is that the way the evangelistic call goes is something like this.

If you want to find out why God puts you here on the earth, well, God has a unique and specific purpose for you that he has to reveal to you. But the first step is you need to make Jesus your Lord and Savior.

And then after that, you need to learn how to hear the voice of God. And that doesn't involve actually reading anything, okay? Hearing the voice of God is likened to, God is out there broadcasting on some kind of spiritual radio station.

And you need to learn how to tune your heart so that you can pick up the signals. And once you, so you're doing this with the spiritual rabbit ears, right? And once you can finally start to hear the signals, God is going to then speak to you and reveal to you what your purpose is.

I wish I was making this up. Yes, I like demotivational posters. Well, yeah, and they're Christians too. So here's kind of the gist of it then. And this then frames this belief that somehow God is going to supernaturally reveal to you your specific and individual unique destiny or purpose.

And believe me, it's huge. I mean, if you knew what God wanted to do with you, oh, you'd be blown away. And the way you know that it has to be from God is because when you first begin to realize.

What you were really called to do,.

It's so big, so ginormous, that there's no way you can pull it off in the flesh. It would take only the help of Jesus. And that's the proof that you know that you're actually discovering what your purpose is.

I wish I was making this up, but this is really a lot of what makes up a lot of preaching today and a lot of radio ministry on Christian radio.

Yeah, right.

Now, the reason I'm talking about this is because here in this passage in Exodus 3 would be, well, the place you would go to. And let me explain how this idea about what the purpose of Christianity is, how it impacts how you read the scripture.

So if you have to discover your unique purpose, well, what we find in the Bible are a bunch of people who discovered their unique purpose and the trials and the tribulations they went through in order to fulfill their dream destiny.

And so what happens is is that you read the scriptures in such a way where, well, the difficulties that Abraham had in fulfilling his dream destiny, well, you look for those same kind of difficulties in your life in fulfilling your dream destiny.

And then what happens is you end up reading yourself into the scripture and make yourself the hero of all the stories. It's a weird thing that goes on there. Now, this is not to say that scripture doesn't teach that God has prepared good works in advance for us to do.

And I have to make this distinction. There's a huge distinction between the good works that we're called to as Christians and this dream destiny thingy doctrine. The dream destiny thingy doctrine really strokes your ego, makes you feel like, well, finally, you have stepped onto the scene of history.

The world will never be the same. And the dream destiny thingy doctrine literally teaches that the job of the church is to make a difference rather than make disciples. That's a very important distinction.

But what are the good works that we're called to as Christians? And now I want you to think about the course of your lifetime. I'll pick on myself for a second here. Now, I'm older than some people in this church now.

Thankfully, we have some new faces here, right? But in the course of my lifetime, well, I went to preschool, kindergarten, grade school, junior high, awful, terrible thing. Junior high should be outlawed.

Then I survived high school. That's the best way I can put it. And then went to college. So I was a son, I was a student, and then I became a husband, I became a father, I became a Sunday school teacher, I worked in the corporate world, I was an employer, employee, I was a manager, I was a supervisor, I became an employer, and now I'm a pastor.

Oh, that's right, the most important one, two summers in a row, Jungle Cruise captain at Disneyland.

That's right.

Okay.

You have not lived, you have not lived until you have an entire boat full of people get in and you're saying things like, welcome aboard the world famous Jungle Cruise. My name is Chris, I'll be your captain skipper for the next five exciting days and six romantic nights.

Now everyone turn around and wave to the people on the dock. That's the last time you'll ever see them again. So you haven't lived until you've done that. I've tried to burn them all so that there will be no blackmail available.

No, no, no, Jungle Cruise captains were like, you know, a jungly kind of, I've, I look like Dr. Livingston, you know. Anyway, so here's the thing. In the course of my lifetime, I've been in a lot of vocations, some longer than others.

Which of these things can I point to and say, aha, that was the one thing I was really made for.

None of them.

The reality is, is that all of the good works I did in each and every one of these vocations are exactly the good works that Christ prepared in advance for me to do. And this is where we gotta start thinking about good works on the level that scripture reveals them.

Over and again, Christianity goes off the rails when you think the good work that you've gotta do is something ginormous. Well, good works, that's like going on the mission field. Now, going on the mission field is a good work.

Not a lot of call to do that. Doing a good work, oh, that means being a pastor and learning how to pray really good prayers. Now, being a pastor and learning how to pray, that's, those are good works.

But the thing is, is that our good works are always done in vocation. So when we read the book of Ephesians and we get to the good works section of it, after Paul so clearly explains that we are saved by grace through faith, it is not of ourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one may boast.

And we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus.

For good works.

What are the good works that we're to do?

Are you ready?

Husbands, love your wives as Christ has loved the church. Wives, submit to your husband. I understand that's an S word. Okay, I get it. Wives, submit to your husbands. Children, obey your parents. Slaves, obey your masters.

In other words, here's what a good work looks like. I've used this before and I'll keep using it. If you have infant children, they need to be fed, burped, and have their diapers changed every single one of those actions is a good work.

Precious in the eyes of Christ. Vacuuming up vomit off your carpet at two in the morning. We've all done this. Buckets, Janet, that's not true. Never, you've never, oh, you're lucky.

All right, okay.

Yeah, yeah.

I am so happy for that company named Bissell. So just saying. So the idea is our good works are done in our different vocations. So when somebody, as a Christian, works for, well, the Grand Forks trash collection company, and they drive the truck, and they go by your house, and they stick that little claw out, it goes up, you know, and dumps it out, right?

Is that person doing a good work? You bet your bippy they are. That's right. Have you seen what New York City looks like during a trash strike?

Right?

Okay.

These are our good works. In fact, I want you to think about this. I actually mentioned this at the KLCW Women's Bible Study this past weekend. Have you ever stopped to think how many people it takes who are working really hard in order for bananas to be on sale over at Hugo's?

Think about the number of people involved, okay? From the guy who has the plantation, and the workers who harvest the bananas, who bring them to a distribution center, put them on container ships, or put them on an airplane and fly them over here.

Think of all the work and logistics involved just in that. All right, from the pilot, the hours of training required to become a pilot, the people who built the airplane, the people who built the ship.

Then you think of the construction workers who put together the distribution facility where all these things go, and all of the employees involved in that. And then the guy who drives the semi truck, who they loaded it on his truck, and he then delivered it to your grocery store.

And then the people at the grocery store had to go and take it off the pallets or whatever, and bring it out onto the floor. They had to figure out the pricing. And then you got the people who are cleaning the floors at Hugo's, who are managing the employees, paying the payroll, and then all the way to the lady who's checking you out, and the guy who's putting everything in the bags.

Can you number the number of people responsible for just bringing you bananas?

Right.

And they sell it to you at 89 cents a pound. Don't give me the exact price. I'm just, that's a guesstimate.

Okay.

And you take it for granted, because you just go to Hugo's and voila, bananas. And now multiply that by how many different products are available in the grocery store, and all of the work that goes involved in that, and ask yourself, are all of these people doing good works so that my bodily needs are met so that I can eat and not die?

Answer, yes. Now imagine if all of the people responsible in the banana supply chain decided that this is just below them. God's promised them some dream destiny thing. He said that they can go and make a difference in the world.

And the whole banana supply chain goes off finding their purpose. We'd have no bananas.

Huh?

No bananas. Go bananas?

Yeah.

Yes, we have no bananas.

Yeah.

Galatians 6 .9. Yeah, Galatians 6 .9, out of context, says, let us not grow weary in doing good for in due season. We will reap if we do not give up. Well, Galatians is the book to go to that teaches us we're not saved by our works.

We're saved totally by grace through faith. This is the epistle that says that if salvation was by works, then Christ died for no reason. So taking it out of context, yeah, you're gonna create a real problem there.

And here's the thing, you gotta remember, we all have the law written on our hearts. This is what we call the doctrine of the opinio legis. This is the opinion of the law written in our hearts. We proclivitate towards the law, and we basically think that, well, that's how things are made right with God.

I'm a sinner. I gotta make things right with God, so I gotta sin less or do good things to get on God's good side, and then he'll give me salvation. Doesn't work that way. So the understanding then is that true Christian sanctification does not deny that we reap eternal life, or that there's a sense in which God rewards good works, but it's not in the sense that we've earned salvation through them, or that somehow blessings and curses kind of hang on all of that stuff.

Good things happen to bad people, and have you ever heard the question, why do bad things happen to good people? There's no such thing as a good person. Let's kind of get that worked out here, okay? And so the idea here is that specifically when you read the Psalms over and over again, you hear these Psalms where the writer says, why are the wicked prospering?

Why are the wicked prospering? And it's, you know, we'll get this in next week's Old Testament text, but why is it that the wicked prosper, and it seems like the righteous, there's no benefit in being righteous.

The reason why the wicked are prospering is because the wicked live for me, myself, and I. Everything they do is designed to make their lives better. Christians, not so much. We look at serving our neighbors.

That was all preface, kind of concept here. So we're gonna look now at Exodus chapter three, and its implications regarding the dream destiny thingy. And here's the thing. Moses is another one of these really major pillar patriarchs in the Old Testament.

Joseph was, Abraham was, Isaac and Jacob were, now we're in Moses, and we've noted that Moses in the early part of his career is a lot, there's a lot of typology pointing to Christ. He's a savior figure, if you would.

Watch what happens. So we're gonna start at verse one for our context. Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led his flock to the west side of the wilderness, came to Horeb, the mountain of God, and the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush.

He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned. And when Yahweh, again, the name of God, the Tetragrammaton, L-O-R-D, that's Yahweh, when Yahweh saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush.

We now know who's talking. Moses, Moses, he said, here I am. Then he said, do not come near. Take your sandals off your feet for the place in which you are standing is holy ground. And he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.

Moses hid his face. He was afraid to look at God. That's wisdom right there, right? So then Yahweh said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt. I've heard their cry because of their taskmasters.

I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians. I think this is typologically pointing to the incarnation of Christ. Notice the come down language. And ultimately, who has come down from heaven to save us from our taskmaster, the devil himself?

Christ has, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate. So I've come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and everybody said the uptights and the ballet tights as well.

You always have, I get a lot of mileage out of that joke.

Okay.

Now behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me. I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppressed them. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.

But Moses said to God, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt? Doesn't Moses understand? This is the moment. He is hearing the actual voice of God. Clearly he's done whatever is necessary to tune into the God channel on the spiritual frequency.

God is now speaking to him and saying, Moses, I'm now going to reveal your dream destiny. And Moses is sitting there with bated breath. Okay, what is it, God? And God reveals and he says, do you have a plan B?

Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt? I love this response. But I will be with you. Well, that's assuring. Thanks, God. I mean, that's kind of his attitude, is it not?

I will be with you. This shall be the sign for you that I have sent you. When you brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain. Then Moses said to God, okay, God, if I come to the people of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you.

And they asked me, what is his name? What shall I say to them? God said to Moses, I am who I am. He said to Moses, say to the people of Israel, I am sent me to you. God also said to Moses, say to this people of Israel, the Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has sent me to you.

This is my name forever. Thus, I am to be remembered throughout all generations. And this is where we spent all of last week, looking at the New Testament, where Jesus refers to himself as the I am. And then God says, go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, the Lord, Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has appeared to me saying, I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt.

And I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Who's doing the delivering, by the way?

God is.

God's doing the delivering. Who cares about them and their oppression and their slavery and their burdens and their toil?

God does.

Then he says, they will listen to your voice and you and the elders of Israel shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him, and this is gonna be an important thing. I will not use in this context, just Lord.

We have to use Yahweh's name. It comes into play very specifically as we get into the plagues. They're not to say the Lord said, the text says, Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews has met with us and now please let us go a three days journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to Yahweh, our God.

That's how Pharaoh would have heard it. Not the Lord, Adonai in Hebrew. He would have heard it, Yahweh, the name Yahweh. Then God says this, I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand.

So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it. And after that, he will let you go. And I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. And when you go, they shall not go empty, but each woman shall ask of her neighbor and any woman who lives in her house for silver and gold and jewelry and for clothing, you shall put them on your sons and your daughters.

So shall you plunder the Egyptians. God's got this all figured out how it's gonna go down. Now, another important bad doctrine I have to mention. There is within charismatic circles, this doctrine that keeps kind of cycling around.

And the doctrine goes like this, and you'll hear so-called prophets or prophetess to say, thus declares the Lord, the time of the transfer of wealth of the nations is now upon us. God is going to give you favor and you're going to plunder the pagans and God's gonna transfer their wealth into your bank account.

And everyone said, amen.

And they actually base it on this.

Here, we've got an example.

God said, God's gonna give you favor and you're gonna leave Egypt and having plundered all of Egypt. So if you ever hear any preacher, teacher, anybody's talking about the forthcoming transfer of wealth from the wicked to the righteous, here's the problem.

I've talked about this before, worth reiterating. This is a descriptive text. This is not a prescriptive text. Just because the children of Israel plundered Egypt on their way out does not mean that there's some forthcoming transfer of wealth and you should expect big checks arriving in your bank account tomorrow.

It's not saying that. This is talking about what happened back then. There's no promise from God that your bank account's gonna get really big because the pagans, he's gonna transfer their wealth from them to you.

In fact, you should think of it this way. If you keep looking in the mailbox every day for that check from Donald Trump, you're gonna be very disappointed for many days to come. But Mark, when you see those Trump checks arriving, let us know, okay?

Yeah. Okay, yes. No, that's word of faith heresy. Your words create reality. Now, I want you to think about the tyranny that this puts you under. So there you are, you're sick. You're not feeling well.

Maybe you have a cold or a flu. And your words apparently create reality. So you can't say, humbly, pray this prayer. Lord Jesus, I am not feeling well. I am sick. Would you please have mercy on me and heal me?

Notice the word of faith heresy forbids you from praying that prayer because your words create reality. If you affirm that you have this and this is real, then it becomes real. They will say the symptoms are a lie from the devil.

You have to believe God that you're healed. And so you gotta decree and declare that. And so it prevents you from actually doing the thing that we're supposed to do. Pray to God and say, Lord, have mercy on me.

Please heal me. It creates a tyranny of the happy, a tyranny of the positive. Y 'all remember that television program, The Stepford Wives, where everything was perfect. There was the white picket fences.

All of the lawns were manicured. And the children always said, yes, sir, and no, sir, and yes, ma 'am, and no, ma 'am. And everybody just looked cute as a button. And that's the outside facade. And then when you learn what's behind the facade, it's just bleh.

That creates a tyranny of the nonsensical. We're not called to deny reality. I'm sick, Lord. I need help. Would you heal me? That's a good prayer. Or another one, like the psalmist. How long, oh Lord, will you forget me?

All right, read Psalm 13.

Read the Psalms.

They're pretty blunt. David was not a word of faith guy. He kind of called it like it was.

Yeah.

Yes. Yeah.

Right.

Another kind of silly way of talking is, Lord, I decree a hedge of protection around somebody. Okay, I'm not sure what the security value is of a hedge. Okay, apparently these hedges can stop just about anything.

Right.

Exactly. Right.

And so here's the thing. The word of faith heresy ultimately cuts you off from real Christian prayer. Real Christian prayer, you see a neighbor in need or you're in need and you come to God and you humbly ask for mercy.

A good prayer is Kyrie eleison, Lord have mercy. I've gotta find a way to reintroduce this church to the Kyrie, the Kyrie. It's actually part of the ancient liturgy. In peace let us pray to the Lord, Lord have mercy.

For the peace of the whole world, for the wellbeing of the church of God and for the unity of all, let us pray to the Lord. Lord have mercy for this holy house and for all who offer here their worship and praise.

Let us pray to the Lord, Lord have mercy. Yeah, we need to reintroduce the Kyrie here. We need to bring that back. That is a great prayer. And the church has been praying that. We have instances of the Kyrie going all the way back to like the second century.

This thing is old. This is how the church prays. All right, so we're a little off topic here. Let's try, oh, what, yes?

Yeah, yeah.

I just read of George Washington's crossing of the river and I too am gonna cross the river and I'm gonna destroy the Hessians in my life. You know, it doesn't work that way, yeah. Yes, sir.

Yeah, hair, yeah, flip it, flip it, yeah. Yeah, that's right.

And I'm pretty convinced you're gonna have more hair when you're resurrected. Yeah, I am so hoping for like that 28-inch waist again and the six-pack abs thing, oh. I just don't wanna have to take a nap every afternoon,.

Never, I'm just joking.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right.

And we should do our best in this life but it's not have our best life now or be more powerful than everyone else or everyone else, right?

Well, let me ask you, I mean, just a straight up question. I'll ask it to everybody here. The sermon today, all of that discourse, did Jesus lead us to expect that things are going to be a rose garden between his ascension and his return for us Christians?

What did he make it sound like? It's gonna get awful. Yeah, we're gonna go through hell. In case you haven't figured it out, we are currently traveling through the valley of the shadow of death and Christ's rod and staff comforts us.

God's word is a lamp to our feet and we get, it literally just literally gives us the next step, period. We're on the narrow trail. It's a treacherous thing. Did Jesus make it sound like being a Christian is really easy, really awesome?