The Mountain and the Garden — Gary Wilkerson

You may be seated. Thank you for coming to church tonight. Glad you're here. How y 'all doing? You seem like you're enthusiastic. I want to talk to you tonight about the Sermon on the Mount. That is not actually, by the way, if you've ever read Matthew chapter 5, we call it the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus didn't actually introduce the sermon by saying, tonight my message is entitled, The Sermon on the Mount. It just was called that later. Why? Anybody know? It has something to do with where he preached it.

It was on a, you all are, you all are with me already, I can tell. You know, Sermon on the Mount. I'm going to give you the cliff notes. You remember the cliff notes for those of you who were like me, didn't like school and you didn't want to read the whole book.

My first book I ever read in school was called Contiki, about a guy who got on a boat and went across the ocean. And it was about a 300 page book. So I bought the cliff notes, which was about 16 pages.

Jesus Invites Every Kind of Person Into His Kingdom

And I did a whole book report on Contiki without ever reading the book. Let me give you the cliff notes about my sermon today. Jesus went up onto a mountaintop and he said, anyone can come with me. Poor, rich, black, white, young, old, broken hearted, sick, demoniacs, Pharisees, anyone can come to the mountaintop with me, where I will proclaim to you my kingdom of peace and joy and love, a contrary kingdom to what he was experiencing with Herod.

You remember Herod tried to kill all of his friends when Jesus was just born in Bethlehem. And then he went away to Egypt because of the persecution of Herod. Then came back later and Herod's son was now the king and killed Jesus' cousin, John the Baptist.

So Jesus and the Herods didn't have a great reputation of being kin brothers, kinship brothers. They had a lot of conflict between them. And Jesus always in his ministry was contrasting his kingdom, the kingdom of love and grace and peace and kindness, contrasting that with the worldly kingdom, the kingdom of Rome, the kingdom of Herod.

So that's the cliff notes. And thanks for coming. Glad you're here with us tonight. Hope you enjoyed the message. Shortest message you've ever heard. No, we're going to go a long time here tonight. We're not going to go short.

But before I do, let me introduce my wife of 45, something like that, 46 years, Kelly Wilkerson. Thank you, Kelly. We have four children, 10 grandchildren, and now one more on the way. That's number 11.

They keep popping out. I tell you, they're coming left and right. And we started trying to save college funds for all our grandkids. That went out the door after number four. We just don't do that anymore.

Hey, since I'm in grandpa mode, some of our kids are moving from Colorado to Pennsylvania. And so they're living with us for a month. And they're four grandkids. So I'm in grandpa mode. So let me tell you, can I tell you a grandpa joke just before I get started?

I almost never tell jokes. But let me tell you one grandpa joke. A guy, he sat down and said to the bartender, give me something to eat. Was it a panda? A what? A panda. Good. I told this joke once before, and I gave the wrong animal, and it made no sense to anybody.

So a panda walks into a bar and says, give me something to eat. The bartender gives him some food. And all of a sudden, he takes out a gun and just starts shooting it up into the roof. Boom, boom, boom, boom.

And then he just gets up and leaves. And as he's leaving, the bartender says, hey, panda, why did you come here and just eat and then shoot and then leave? He goes, look me up. I'm famous. I'm in encyclopedias.

I'm in dictionaries. I'm online. Look me up. And so the guy goes online, looks it up, and says, pandas, eats, shoots, and leaves. Some of you are not getting it. Would you turn to the person next to you and explain the joke to them?

A panda eats, eats, shoots, which is a plant, and then he leaves the bar. Now you know what the last month of my life has been like, just with four grandkids on the way. Pastor Tim, Cindy, thanks for letting us be here tonight with you.

We love you guys. Ever since we started working together in Detroit, even before that when we were little kids, I remember riding a three-speed silver Schwinn bicycle with a slick tire, a banana seat, a high-rise handlebars, and they called it a sissy bar.

That's probably not a real good name to use in our culture today, but it had a sissy bar, which was like a backrest on it, and we had clothespins. We put baseball cards on to make the spokes of the wheels sound like an engine.

And anybody over 60 here is looking at me like, yeah, we used to do that all the time. So we would ride bicycles and have some fun together. Tim's older cousin and I in Long Island, we would go riding.

And ever since that time, we've just been kindred brothers and loving that. And I love what God's doing here at Times Square Church. It's really been—it's real precious and powerful. I was here at the very first service, the opening service, and had a chance to be here in this pulpit many times, and just to see what God is doing in what you might call the third generation of pastoral leadership, brilliant stuff.

So let's pray and ask God to show us what it means to be invited to the mountaintop and experiencing the kingdom with Him. Jesus, we thank you for life, and I pray that my words would be a word of encouragement.

I pray that my message would not be one trying to impress, but it would be trying to love, trying to love people, and show them that they are loved, and show them God's love, and show them the power of your love.

The Sermon on the Mount Begins With Blessing

I pray for grace to preach truth with life. In Jesus' name, amen, and amen. Amen. So Matthew chapter 5, if you turn there, Matthew chapter 5, I think we have it on the screen up here, Matthew chapter 5.

And I just want to start with verse 1. It says, now when Jesus saw the crowds, He went up on the mountaintop, and He sat down, and His disciples came to Him. Then the next thing we see here is in verse 2, and He began to teach them.

And in verse 3, He said, blessed. I want to stop there for just a moment. Blessed. So the first thing Jesus says on this mountaintop message that He has for His friends, His co-workers, and the people that He loved and were ministering to, was that He was going to speak a blessing into their life.

Now I'm sure Pastor Tim knows this from his ministerial education, and I just want to…there's this thing called the principle of the first mention. The principle of…you may have heard of this before. The word blessed that Jesus talked about is first mentioned in Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis chapter 1. So we're going to look at the Scriptures here as well, starting in verse 24 of the first chapter of Genesis. And God said, let the land produce living creatures according to their kind and their livestock.

The creatures that move along the ground and the wild animals, each according to its kind. And so it was. And God made wild animals according to their kind, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground…let me read that one more time…all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds.

And God saw that it was good. All these animals that God created, He was saying they were good. So there was fish and birds and even snakes in the garden. And all of these things that God created, the first thing He says about them is that they are good.

Even the ones that crawl on the ground, even the lizards and the serpents were originally in that garden state were all called good. So God created, now here's the next thing that happens in verse 27.

So God created mankind in His own image. So God's now doing something a little bit different, isn't He? The other ones, it doesn't say they were created in His image. They were good and it was beautiful.

The Garden of Eden was an incredible place. I would have loved to vacation there. It would have been amazing. And so God's got all these animals there and He's calling all of them good. But now there's one who stands out as different, a different kind.

All the other ones were created in their own kind. This one is created in God's kind, a very different animal if you will. And it says, God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God. He created them male and female.

He created them. And here's Matthew 5 now, except this is the first time this word blessed is mentioned. God blessed them. God blessed them. All the animals were good. The horses were good. The giraffes were good.

The elephants were good. The fish were good. The birds were good. But there's no indication of God stopping and saying, I'm here to bless you. I'm speaking a blessing into your life. He blessed them. Here's what He blessed them with.

He gave them a blessing. Here's what the blessing is. Be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish and the sea and the birds of the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.

The Serpent, Jealousy, and the Fall

There was a snake in the garden. You remember that guy? He moved on the ground. And early indications are that he was good, right? How many of you know that Satan before he fell was a good being? Many of us say Satan was a fallen angel, a good angel.

Historians and grammaticans and Hebrew scholars tell us that's actually not the right way to look at Satan. He really was a fallen angel. He was a seraphim, which is different than an angel. An angel, we have these pictures of like, you know, cherubs.

You ever heard of a cherub? They ride on a cloud and they shoot little bow and arrows at people to help them fall in love. That's kind of the picture of cherubs. And then seraphim are like, who knows what a seraphim is?

It's just like, but it's very interesting what the seraphim are, is the cherubs and the seraphim are always described having wings. Isaiah has a vision of the seraphim and it says, and they covered two, they covered here and then the two, they covered the midsection and two, they covered their feet.

And so, but there's no indication in scripture that angels have wings. Every time an angel appears, everybody thinks they're men at first, except they're maybe a little bit bigger or a little bit shinier, but they don't have wings.

But the cherubim and the seraphim have wings. A seraphim in Hebrew is from the seraph, the singular of the plural seraphim is the singular for a creature that is called a fiery one or in its most root terms, the Hebrew word there is a fiery serpent.

That's why sometimes you read these really bizarre stories in scriptures. Have you ever read where Moses and some of the people began to disobey God? And when they disobeyed God, snakes came out and began to bite them.

The word therefore snakes is seraphim, became to bite them. And then God told Moses, put a seraphim, put this God created being that has six wings, had had the appearance of a serpent and put it up on top of a cross.

And then whoever looks upon that serpent will be healed. I remember the first time I read that story. Does that make you scratch your head? I was like, well, why in the world would God put a serpent on the cross and have people look at the serpent?

You know, the serpent is the devil, not originally. Lucifer, the devil, Satan was originally a glorious seraphim. This is talked about in Ezekiel, I believe it's the 28th chapter where he talks about this fall that this man had.

He was in a glorious height and he fell, this being, this seraphim fell because of something that was going on. But apparently, again, if you look back at some of the scholars that are writing about this stuff, it's phenomenal to me.

And that's probably because I'm a Bible geek or a Bible nerd, if you will. And some of you are looking at me like, oh my gosh, why did pastor Tim invite a Bible geek to come to our church service here on Tuesday night and bore us with information about angels and seraphim and cherubim?

But it really is going to make sense. And now you're really wondering, wait, didn't you say you were going to be talking about the sermon on the mount? This does not sound like the sermon on the mount.

Why didn't you call it the sermon at the garden of Eden? Well, it's going to make sense, I think, in a little bit. I hope it would be better than the jokes that I tell. This would come together a little bit better.

So, some of those who study Hebrew literature, and particularly back in this early time period where it was an oral culture, where they began to, they would tell stories first before it was ever actually written down.

And when it first got written down, they would tell stories about these stories. And so the garden of Eden stories had all these things that were written by, sometimes they were written by rabbis or other Hebrew writers, and they would begin to describe what was happening in these stories.

It'd be similar to us, you know, some people say like, oh, you don't want to read that early ancient literature. We just want to read the Bible. Well, then my question is, do we read commentaries about the Bible?

Or do you read a devotional about the Bible? Those are helps. And sometimes we skip over the early writers and only use ones that were written like in the 1950s beyond. And so I begin to try to study these folks.

And I see here, one of the things that many of them are saying, and some of them even now recently come up with some really good scholarship to suggest to us, some of these questions I've had since I was a little boy about what happened.

Like, do you ever ask these weird questions? Like, were the angels created before man and women? Or were they created all when God created the heavens and the earth? Were they created at one time? And when did the fall take place?

Did it take place a long time ago? And then if it took place a long time ago, and then he created earth after the fall, and Satan was already, you know, a third of them had fallen from heaven and were cast down.

And well, why would God create a beautiful good earth and then allow a third of the fallen angels and cherubim and seraphim who had followed Satan into his witchcraft, really, what it was to be planted on the earth at that time?

And so all of this kind of confused me. And I'm reading some stuff recently. And this is just a thought I have. And maybe also, if you don't mind me sharing this with you, it's something that I think is intriguing about Genesis chapter one here.

It says that those things that were creeping on the ground, and some of them were called serpents or seraphim. And the seraphim had a physical form, but was also almost like an angelic or a supernatural or a spiritual being created, not with a human body, but different.

And so here's Adam and Eve, and they're good. And then there's already before him on the earth, days before this, they were created, and they're on earth, and they're good. And then all of a sudden, this serpent hears God say to them that they're good.

Oh, I'm good. And doesn't that feel good to be good? God called me good. And then all of a sudden, the next day, this naked man appears, and a naked woman appears called Adam and Eve. And God says to them something different, not just that you're good, but you're in My own image, and I've created you, and now I've blessed you.

And the serpent or the seraphim is thinking to himself, I didn't hear Him bless me like that. And then the seraphim hears these next words, be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it.

Wow, why isn't He giving me that power? Why don't I have that kind of authority? Is there something not so good about me? Why do you pass me by and pick on others instead of this glorious seraphim that I am here in the garden?

Then it goes on and it says, rule over the fish. And the seraphim's thinking to himself, at least in my imagination, yeah, those fish need ruled over, but I probably should have that job. And then it says, and over the sea and the birds, over the sky, and over every creature that moves, what's in this next part, right?

You hear where I'm going? Every other thing that moves on the ground. That moves on the ground. And now all of a sudden this seraphim who has the appearance of like wings, and he's different looking than we think of him.

He's not originally here in the garden, a snake crawling on the ground, because we're going to read about what happens right after he gets cursed, right? His legs and his wings get removed and he's crawling then on the ground.

So something's happening in his heart here. He's saying, this person you just created, this Adam and Eve, they're going to govern over me. They're going to rule me, a glorious being that I am, the connection I've had with heaven.

And now I'm seeing what he's doing on earth and I despise it. I hate it. I'm angry at this. I'm jealous over this other created being. You may be thinking this is a weird Bible nerdy story, but it can relate to us as well, can't it?

When others get exalted, when others get chosen, I'm an employer as well as a pastor and a minister, and I've had to hire some people that took over for, like kind of passed over somebody that maybe on the corporate ladder, so to speak, would have been next in line, but their gifting and their calling wasn't exactly the way that would be suited for that role.

So I chose somebody else to come in, and now that person who came in was their supervisor. That's a hard thing to face. It's like, what's wrong with me? And who is this person? And what's going on in this situation?

And so this is a little bit of how we might understand how this serpent would have felt in the garden. And because of this jealousy and this rage and this anger, he's mad at God and he's mad at these who are selected maybe to a seemingly higher place than him.

And so what does he do? He goes to deceive them. Is God really good? Did God really say, why don't you partake of the fruit that he told you not to partake of? He wants to get the higher being to fall beneath him.

He wants to bring down those who God has given a position of authority and goodness and glory to be used by God, not just to rule over the serpents and the fish and the birds, but to bless them, to multiply them, to create a glorious expansion of the garden that God put in the middle of the earth.

And he should have just said, hey, I'm here for you. I'll walk with you in this thing. Now, if you're asking the question like a lot of skeptics ask, preacher, are you really saying that a snake talked to Adam and Eve in the garden?

Maybe not. But I certainly believe a seraphim could talk to him. Because a seraphim was a created being that could communicate. They talked to God. They were in what scriptures in Psalm 86 talks about a divine council where God is sitting on his throne and there are angels and there are seraphim and cherubim around him.

And it's called a divine council. And so certainly they could communicate. Now he's down here on earth and he's communicating with Adam and Eve because of this jealousy strikes in his heart. And some of the rabbis that study this stuff in the first century, excuse me, and right after these things were written, suggest to us that the fall not only of man came in the garden of Eden, but the fall of Lucifer, of Satan, of this seraphim.

When he saw God choosing somebody else over him, his jealousy and anger and rage became the part of the fall. How do we know that? Because he was somehow walking around, somehow had wings. And then we see Jesus, excuse me, that God curses him.

Remember when Adam and Eve, after they sinned, there's going to be pain and childbirth. And Adam's going to have to work in the... I caught that one. Amen. How many of you sisters can say amen to the pain and childbirth?

Amen. How many of you guys can say thank the Lord? Anyway, I'm getting way off subject here. I just caught that. Anyway, back to the subject matter here. The, where was I? Oh, yeah. So he got, they got cursed and so did the seraphim.

It says, and he spoke to the seraphim and said to them, you're going to now crawl on your belly in the dust of the ground. So some suggest that that was the actual fall, not only of Adam and Eve, but the fall of Lucifer and Satan.

It came all in this garden, opportunity for greatness. And instead of that, these, these petty jealousies and these doubts, the Satan's doubts of God, the seraphim's doubts of God and Adam and Eve's confusion and temptation for these things.

And it just caused chaos in the garden. They all got kicked out of the garden. And the whole thing started because the one that, listen to this carefully, the one that was there first, it's, it's my job.

The one who wants to be the head and not the tail, the one who wants credit, the one who wants glory. When someone else comes along, the first one calls me, you're just a newcomer. You're, you're, you're just a late bloomer.

You're, you're, you just, you're just a new kid on the block. And now you're going to get all the glory and credit. And there's, there's incredible stories throughout Scripture of the one who's there first getting angry with the one who came second.

The Firstborn Principle and God’s Generous Blessing

The Bible's full of it. Do you understand what I'm talking about? Wait, nod your head at me if you understand what I'm talking about. Good, thank you. So there's all these stories of, of, of the first and the last.

Jesus even talked about that, the first and the last. And, and Jesus talked a lot about this, but even before Jesus in the Old Testament, incredible stories time after time of the, the blessing bypassing the first one and going to the second one.

Are you, are you following me here at all? The, the, the idea here is, is found in what's called the firstborn. Have you ever heard of the firstborn? The firstborn is a principle in the Old Testament, and the principle in the Old Testament is the firstborn will get a double portion.

The firstborn will sort of rule, almost like Adam and Eve. They're going to rule and reign. So, so the seraphim's thinking, I was born before him. Why aren't I ruling and reigning? And then Adam and Eve comes along late and he gets to be the one who's ruling and reigning.

And all of a sudden this theme is carried throughout the whole Hebrew Bible. And, and we see this, that, that the, the, the God has said that the older one's going to be the, the double blessing. The older one's going to be the one who gets the, the, the, the, the first blessing on their life.

Why, why was that? In ancient times, they were a nomadic people, oftentimes, or they were farming or shepherding. And so the, the father, knowing that he had a, a firstborn son is, is kind of finally thrilled, like, okay, prodigy, we have help.

I have somebody to help me. I have someone to tend the crops, or I have someone to help feed the sheep. I have someone who next generation can keep this family industry going. And so there was this joy over the firstborn.

And then the second one would come along and get half the blessing that the first one, you still follow me. I'm going through a lot of stuff here tonight. Thank you for your kindness. And so, so the firstborns there, it's the older brother that always got the, the, the double portion, the blessing and the leadership of the family, the household to protect the family, to help them grow, to help them encourage.

And then they would pass them inheritances down to the ones who came along. Secondly, how many of you are firstborn here? Let me see your hand if you're a firstborn. Okay. I was a firstborn son. How many of you are a younger son or daughter?

Then let's see your hand. Okay. How many of you have, like, how many of you older ones have regrets of how you treated your brothers and sisters? Anybody? Okay. I know Tim's a younger brother. Paulie, his brother.

I know Paulie. I'm sure he must have messed with your head. I mean, he just, if there's any psychological problems in your pastor, it comes from his older brother, Paulie. All right. And I can say that with love for Paulie because I'm an older brother.

And, and much of my repentance over the years has been, I can't believe I'm so sorry, Lord, that I treated my little brother that way. I neglected him. I ignored him. When my mom and dad said, go let your brother come with you.

I would go like, okay, but you have to walk 10 steps behind me. It was just, I would call him names. I would push him down in the dirt. One time I had him sit down. I said, sit down here. You're going to like it.

It was in the ant hill of fire ants. And he started like, ah, ah. Just, I mean, I just feel so terrible about being the older brother. But, but for some reason, God had designed this thing, maybe because of the culture of the day, designed this thing so the firstborn would, would get that.

But then all of a sudden he started seeing this thing in humanity, dominion, power, dominance, authority, unkindness, taking more. Oh, you gave me a double portion, but I'm going to take from my little siblings even more.

I'm going to, I'm going to rule and I'm going to reign. And that, and that became almost the predominant way cultures were born. We see this in the story of Cain and Abel. Remember Cain and Abel? Cain was the older one, should have got the double portion of the inheritance.

But there's something God recognizes in his spirit. And so he brings an offering to the Lord and it's, it's kind of a half-hearted offering. His little brother brings the, it's called the first fruits of his flocks.

So he's, he's honoring God for what God honors is giving the best of your first things. And so he gives that and God says, oh, I look, I look pleasantly upon that offering, but not so much on Cain's offering.

Cain had the same spirit then that the seraphim had in the garden. Who is this God to tell me my offering's not as good as my little brother? And he gets angry at his brother. And if you know the story, what does he do?

He absolutely no, he kills him. And so, so the problem with that story is God told Cain after his offering was not as acceptable as his little brother's was, why are you so angry? And why is your face down?

Because I can give you just as much a blessing. The actual Hebrew word there's, I can exalt you too. Just like your brother. What's that saying to us is that, that God, it's not a zero sum game with God.

It's not as if he has like a hundred talents to give away and he's already given 90 away to your big brother. So he only leaves you 10. It's a zero sum game. If he has 90 for your brother, he could give you a hundred percent because he has mathematically this impossible, to us mathematically, it doesn't make sense, but to God he's, he has more to give than we have the ability to even receive all that he could give to us.

So, so you never need to be jealous. You never need to look at somebody else and say, why are they promoted over me? And let that anger and that rage and that downcast face come into your life. And this is a biblical thing real quickly.

Nahor was, does anybody know who Nahor's older, younger brother was? Abram. Oh, is it? It's up there. Sorry. I was going, man, these people are really smart. They're like, oh, I know. I've known that since I was six years old.

That's Abram. Abram was, Abram, Nahor's older brother, but who got selected? It's not up in the notes there. Okay. So you have to, you have to guess this one yourself. Who, who got selected? Abram later became, and Abram, Abram means father of children.

And, and then God changes it to Abraham, father of multitudes. That, that's a weird thing for a guy who has no children, right? I can just picture God walking up to Abram and say, Abram, what's your name?

My name's Abram. You know what Abram means? Abram says, yeah, my name is father of many, but the problem is I don't have any kids. Okay. Well, let me change your name. Abram goes, that's good. I'm glad you're changing my name because I don't have any kids.

And then he goes, okay, your name is Abraham. Abram goes, Abraham means father of nations of multitudes. And God said, that's exactly what I'm going to do for you. Change. I'm going to change your name.

Even before you see any evidence of it at all, I'm going to bless you because I have this unlimited blessing. Jacob and Esau, remember that story? How many of you have ever read the story of Jacob and Esau?

Jacob somehow, I don't know the whole story here. It's really weird. But Jacob is a surplanner. He wants the blessing for himself. He wants the double portion. And I don't know how a baby in the womb can know that, but maybe something supernatural was going on in their mother's womb.

And so Esau's coming out first. And what does Jacob do? And that's not in the notes. Good job. We're really tracking it. He grabs his heel to pull him down and say, I'm going to be first. There are some things mysterious in the womb going on that's almost like a seraphim evil spirit on him or something to say, I'm going to pull this one down and ascend myself.

The problem with that was, and it didn't work. So he came out second. And so he thought, oh shoot, I didn't get the blessing. The problem with that, if he would have pulled Esau down and got out first in this whole story, the second one from God gets the blessing and not the first.

So Esau would have got the blessing over Jacob if Jacob would have pulled him down. And what that says to me is when you wrestle yourself into a position of power and authority over other people, when you try to finagle to get what you want, when you're not patient, we're not willing to wait on God and you're just, you're being destructive and you're gossiping and you're, and you're, and you're diminishing other people so you can feel exalted.

You're just going to wound yourself. You're just going to put yourself in the place. David said, it's the pit they dug for me they fall into. And that, and that's why God is warning us here to let me do with you as I will.

And I have enough blessing for the younger son who seems to be the outcast and the second and only gets half the blessing and is overlooked. I have, I have such blessing for them, but older brothers, I have enough blessing for you as well.

And so there's Aaron and Moses. Aaron was Moses's older brother, but Moses gets picked. Jesus kind of carries on this theme. Workers who come late to the field end up making as much money as those who came to the field early.

And people get angry at this kingdom principle. Why? It's unfair. I'm the older brother. I'm supposed to get the inheritance. I'm the stronger. I'm the wiser. I'm the more clever. I'm the more articulate.

I'm the more educated. I'm the guy who should ascend to the throne. And God says, I'll choose somebody else. But in giving them a blessing, don't, if you remember, I think this story is best told by Jesus in the prodigal son.

The Prodigal Son and the Elder Brother

The younger son goes away, and he falls into sin. He doesn't deserve anything, any kind of blessing. And yet he comes back, and the father throws him this lavish party. And the older brother, remember the story?

He does the same thing the seraphim did, the same thing that Cain did. He gets angry. I've been with you my whole life, working hard for you. And the father, what does the father say? Well, sorry, I'm giving the younger son the blessing.

Nothing left over for you. He says, no, everything I have is yours. See, God is not a zero-sum God. He can do anything for everybody. So Jesus is basically saying, all of you latecomers, all of you non-inheritors, all of you who are little, all of you who are lesser.

Remember James the lesser? He was called lesser because he was a younger brother. And some of you feel like James the lesser, or some of you feel like some of these things we're talking about here, that you're not called, that you're not gifted, that you're not the one who's been blessed.

And what God said to Cain was, be careful because sin is crouching at your door. In the Hebrew there, sin is a croucher at your door. So it's not like sin is the entity that's crouching. You know what the Hebrew says?

Sin is a croucher. It's like a serpent. It's trying to get you. It's this fallen creature that's trying to get you to fall. And so God warns Cain, don't let this thing, this croucher, get a hold of you, this envy, this jealousy, this comparativeness, this competition, this viewing yourself more than others.

And you know, does anybody in this room ever see that in your heart sometimes? Man, I have seen it. You're applauding your own sin. That's interesting. I've seen it in my own life. I'm on social media and stuff, and I noticed maybe three, four months ago, I started kind of seeing like, hey, you know, my numbers have grown from, you know, five people following me to seven.

I'm really woo-hoo. You know, it's a little different than that. So I kind of started looking at that, and then I would see like some younger men in our ministry, and they would be on social media and really go, man, how do they have like five times as many people following them?