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So I had a lot of struggle hearing. I actually learned sign language when I was young, had speech therapy for five, six years to learn how to speak at once. I could get my hearing after multiple surgeries, but I could hear. But it was kind of like if you were talking to your 158 year old grandfather, like you needed to be in front of me and be like, hey, like I could hear. So I remember my mom, it was on a Sunday morning and she was freaking out. And she tells this story now because she couldn't find me. Because all I knew it was Sunday morning. Here's how I understood Sunday mornings. I got to go worship the king of kings. And so I knew it was early that morning and by 6:30 or so I had already. She didn't know this. I had already gone to sit in the back of the car to wait to go worship the king of kings. And she looked for me for over an hour. She had called my dad at work, he was the preacher and trying to figure out where I was. So now she was going to leave to go find me. And then she found me in the car. What are you doing? And her story is, all I said was, I'm ready to go, to go see the King. I just wish we wouldn't lose that, right, the king. Do we believe in the presence of the Holy Spirit? Yes or no? He's here. I wish as we got older we wouldn't lose that awe. May we never be too cool to lose that awe. Now I'm blessed to serve a church and I don't mean to isolate all of you guys, but it drives me crazy, people running in for one of our services, whether it doesn't matter what time it is. And they're running in, running in to try to make it on time. And they'll go like, oh, it's just, I'm sorry I was a little late or whatever. It's every week like to me get there an hour and a half early. Cause you're there to worship the king. Cause you're teaching your kids something when you run in and run out. I want to be in awe of the king. Anybody else? So let's pray for that right now. God, I want to praise you and worship you because I am in awe of you. You are the creator of the universe. You crafted the mountains and the seas and the animals and each of us. God, you. I'm in awe of you. For you divided the sea so that the people could escape from Egypt. God, you helped David defeat a giant. God, you did so much more than that. And even the exiles, I think about the people being able to come back and reestablish the temple and to represent who you were. And God, I think about the giving of your son. I think about the grace and the mercy that you offer on us. I think about how you restored people like Peter and you used people like Paul. God, I am in awe of you. I am in awe that regardless of our sin and our disparity and our brokenness and our hardship and all these different things in our life, God, you are a God of mercy and of grace. May we today, may we be overwhelmed that we know the King of Kings. Please, God, may we read your word and see the significance of it and how it can shape and even transform our lives in Christ's name. Amen. All right, we have a memory verse. You already know this. Can we stand for the memory verse? The kids I didn't know prior to this week. Maybe it's because I'm ill prepared. They were going to Ephesians 4, 2 and 3. We though are before them. Ephesians, Colossians 2, 8 through 10. Yes. And so let's read this together. Is it on the screen behind me? Okay. I could have turned around, but that would have been way too laborsome. So let's read this together. Here we go. For By Grace. Okay, so now we're going to add motions. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. You can sit down. I'm just kidding. You're going to sit down. Does anybody remember my name? No. No. Ruffle. Feather. Oh, feather. Ruffler. Feather. Ruff. Come on, Joel. Come on. I've gotten in so much trouble in the last 24 hours for asking counselors their real name. We can't tell you. But I tricked them. I was like, how old are you? We can't tell you that either. And so then I looked at one of them. I said, well, what year were you born? And they told me. I'm like. I started to question who they hire, but that's okay. Matthew, chapter 13. Let's go. We know that we're walking through some of the parables this week. And yesterday we looked at the wise and the foolish builder, Matthew, chapter seven. Today, at least this morning, we're gonna look very quickly and we are going to go quick. All right. I typically would probably preach this in a couple of weeks, if not even three messages. I will do that later in the week with one of my favorite in Luke, chapter 15. There's several there. I'll leave it at that. But Matthew chapter 13:1:9 is kind of where we're going to begin. Now, we already know that you have the parables of Jesus roughly 35 or 40ish, depends on which ones you considered to be figures of speech, et cetera. We talked about that yesterday. But then we also come to this one here. We know that every parable has one dominant theme. And at the end of the end of the day, they all teach on the kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven, kingdom of heaven, kingdom of heaven. What do they teach on? You're gonna have to get that. Okay, so they all lend in that or lean into that direction. Jesus is going to be here. I will read the text here in a moment. But just so you can understand, he's off of the sea. He's gonna come out of a house, he's going to go there. People are go be surrounding him. And like he normally often is required to do, he gets into a boat, pushes out to get away from the people so that he can address as many of them as possible. He wants to escape the crowd pressing in on him. And so he's going to get in that boat. He's going to then begin to speak with everybody. I want you to imagine though, Jesus there. And this is what you're going to see in today's parable. He's there. He pushes out a little bit from the shore. He's sitting in a boat, all the people are crowding in around him and off in a distance, he's going to see. Imagine him seeing a farmer. So remember, what's he do with parables? He uses the everyday situations in order to help them understand the kingdom of heaven and to learn about who he is. So that we model our lives after him and his principles and what he is teaching today. We would be using other things. Things like he'd be teaching about what social media does, or he'll be teaching about how to wr a jet ski. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter because he's taking everyday things that they understood in life already and he's going to be able to help teach them a powerful lesson. Remember, in most parables, this is what happens. Jesus begins with something they can understand and he moves to something that they don't understand. That's what he does. He moves from the common to the uncommon, from the simple to the profound. So he's going to move from, hey, there's a farmer. They all knew they lived in an agricultural society. They understood that simple, easy. And he's going to now teach them about something they don't know, which is a spiritual understanding on the kingdom of heaven. And I'm actually praying he does the same for us today, that he opens our eyes just a little bit more. Matthew 13:1 9. I know you just stood. Let's stand again for the reading of the Word of God. I just want to read it out to you. Matthew 13:1 9. If you don't, I'm reading from the ESV. So here we go. That same day, Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. So there he is. Great crowds gathered about him so that he got into a boat and sat down and the whole crowd stood on the beach and. And he told them many things in parables, saying, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose, they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some 60, some 30. He who has ears, let him hear. This is the word of God. You may be seated. So here we are. Very, very quickly. You already know the background. He's coming out of the house. He's going to push out. People are coming up on the beach and all around him to hear everything that he has to say. And then he's going to jump down to verse three. And he told them many things in parables, saying, a sower went out to sow. A sower went out to sow. To sow what? His seed. Right. So you can imagine them seeing that farmer off in a distance. The rows would have already been plowed and they would have been prepared to receive the seed. The farmer would have a leather pouch, if you don't know. He would have thrown that leather pouch over his shoulder, kind of at an angle, and he would take the seed out of the pouch and he would very strategically put it where he thought it should go. He would measure it out in his hand and carefully put it where it needed to be because he didn't want to waste a seed like today. We'd probably just take a bunch and just throw it out everywhere and see what would grow. That would be considered incredibly wasteful to them. And so there you see this as a picture. Now he is going to explain some of this later on In Matthew, chapter 13, 18, 23, he literally says, here's the lessons that you learned, but we're going to walk through some of this, okay? As he's giving this, he is gonna let them know. As he sowed, some seeds fell along the path and the birds came and devoured them. And he's gonna walk through the different conditions of soil. Now you really. This parable, we're gonna break it up into three sections with four types of dirt. You have sower, seed and soil. You have the sower, you have the seed, you have the soil. And then we're gonna walk through the soils. That's where we'll spend the majority of our time today. Talk about the sower, knowing that that is important. The parable doesn't really say anything about the sower, just that the sower went out. The sower is anyone who preaches the message, who's teaching other people. At first, the sower was Jesus, and then it was his followers, right? The apostles and then Paul. Now it's us. We're like a sower. And we just drop that precious seed, right? We want to throw it out wherever we can where we think the dirt, the soil, is healthy, ready to receive it. That's what we do. Anybody who proclaims, anybody who speaks about entrance into God's kingdom, that's the sower. So that's an easy one. Let's talk about the seed. What is the seed? Look at verse 19. I told you later on in Matthew, chapter 13, 18, 23, just really giving an explanation of this parable. What's the seed? When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, it says, when anyone hears the word of the kingdom. So there it is, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven. The seed is the word of the kingdom. It is the message about the fact that God is a king over a spiritual kingdom. He's inviting people to join him. How do you do that? Of course, we already know. By putting your faith in Jesus Christ. So that's the seed. Luke, chapter 8, verse 11 kind of explains something very similar in talking about the same parable. And he's adding that the seed is the word of God. He says, because the message of the kingdom is contained in the word of God, right? That's where it is. So that's the sower and the seed. Now we're going to jump into the soil. I've always loved this parable because of the simplicity of it. To me, he's going to jump in and right away we know what the first condition of the dirt is that's the path when anyone. And we're going to learn from Matthew 13:19 as it describes what it is. It says when anyone hears the message about the kingdom, does not understand it. The evil one comes, snatches away what was sown in his heart. We see that it says he literally, the birds came and ate it up, snatched it up. The birds are. Are despised by farmers. You already know that, right? What does a farmer put in their field if they don't want crows and other birds, Right? Friends, some of you may have children or grandchildren or neighbors, people you care for deeply, who seem to have just a really hard heart. I will tell you one of the greatest blessings I have in my life is every one of my children love Jesus Christ. My life is good now. Cause I'll be with them in eternity. I don't really care if they're broke. They're young, they should be. Amen. So I look at that and I go, they all love the Lord. I have some friends who. They have some children who love the Lord and others, they taught them the same way, but their hearts are just hardened. I would love to pray for you with them. Come grab me. God can redeem anyone from anything at any time. Yes. So just know that some of you are hearing this parable and you're going. It might create some emotion in you because you recognize you have a kid who might fall into this first camp to where the seed has been sown into their life, it has been thrown into their life, but they reject it. And it seems like every single time it might take root, it might take hold, that someone or something comes and snatches it up. Because maybe they got together with their own person and they just hate God and what he stands for. Because they want to live life for themself and not for anything greater. Or maybe it's the impact of a school or social media or whatever it may be. I think we neglect to see sometimes the emotion that can come from this because some of us are married to someone that might even. You might even be at a family Christian camp. And one of you, you're here to keep the peace. Not because you really want your life to be transformed. You want to keep the peace at home. Your spouse said, we're going back to family camp. You have work to do, you'd rather be there, but you're willing to this to keep the peace at home. It was normal as the sower was sowing the seed that the birds would be coming and wanting, they would literally Turn their back and the birds would come right and snatch it up. And sometimes we can feel like life is doing that to someone that we love. They were hovering, they were waiting for their opportunity. Luke records Jesus telling the same parable as I said, adding that the path had been trodden down by feet. And so it was hard because people had just ruined the condition of the soil and compacted it so much and so it could never penetrate the soil. In this story, Satan comes and snatches it up. That's one way to think about it. Satan wants to make sure that it never has a chance to take hold, to penetrate. Snatches it away through the influence of others, through the influence of false teachers. The road is a hard hearted person, stiff necked, right person, the resistant person. And if you hear the gospel and the message of Jesus, you turn your back and you walk away from simply reveals where your heart is. Your receptivity to not only the gospel message in terms of through salvation, but even your receptivity to being transformed on a continual basis is called sanctification. Your receptivity is simply a revealer of your heart condition. So that's what we see here. Another way to think about it is the basic truth of this parable that Jesus taught is that the result of hearing of the gospel always depends on the condition of the soil, the heart. So that's the path. Let's go to the next one. Rocky. The second kind of soil in verse five and six as he calls it, is rocky. And he says other fell upon rocky places where they did not have much soil. Right now what that doesn't mean is that they had stones all within the dirt, like little rocks. The way that they would till the soil is literally it would go down so far they would take out all of that rock. But limestone is all throughout that region. And so sometimes if your equipment wouldn't allow you with your oxen or whatever, your donkey or whatever they would be using, if it didn't allow the tilling of those blades to go down far enough, you wouldn't know that the limestone is there. And so it restricted the growth of your crop. In fact, sometimes it was a distraction because things would spring up really quick. They were like, oh, we're going to have the greatest crop we've ever had. And then when things became dry, those things wilted and they're like, oh no, we have one of the worst crops we've ever had because it never was allowed to have the moisture needed to really do well. So that's an understanding of the rocky soil, those large plates of limestone rock that were beneath the surface, beneath the plow. And so a farmer doing his best to plow the field, never getting down to the hard soil, wasn't even aware that it was there. And sometimes it created a lot of problems. I think about that with even leading ministries today. The depth of it, the depth of our families, the depth of our understanding. What is it? Are we allowing ourselves? Is it superficial? Or is it genuine and real? And we want to go deep and we want to make sure we're really cultivating and creating the disciples that we need to create. I mean, here's the thing that's always gotten me with the rocky soil. When Jesus came into Jerusalem for the very last time, right? So a week before his death, it's called Passover, we know this. Jesus is coming in, and people started chanting, hosanna, Hosanna. And what did they say? Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And they're swarming him and they're throwing their cloaks down and they're doing. And I mean literally thousands upon thousands of people had heard his teaching. Good example. Let's go to another one. How about when he fed the 5,000? And yes, we already know that the majority of people would have counted the men. Many said well over 10,000, if not 12 to 15,000 people who heard him in that moment, people were having their lives changed by him. But at his death, who is left? How many? You don't know? 120. How did it go from thousands of people who heard the gospel message going, let's go, Jesus, to 120. What happened to me? That's a picture of those who are like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, as long as Jesus does whatever I want, as long as he heals my friend, as long as I can physically see him do something that I can't comprehend, then I'm going to buy in. But when he stops doing what I desire him to be, that's the definition of rocky soil. It takes off initially, but because we don't have the roots that we need to have, it withers in the sun. And that. I mean, I don't know. I don't know your life story. I mean, that may be somebody that you know personally that you're praying for. It might be you at times. That's a definition there, right? Matthew 13:20 and 21. If you go down, it speaks to this. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with Joy. Yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while. And when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the Word, immediately he falls away. You learn so much about someone by how they walk through hardship and tribulation. Now, I know none of you have ever experienced hardship, right? Silly to even say it. We all have friends. The struggle that we have is that the word of God promises hardship. That's why he says things like from the Book of James. Consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds. It doesn't say, if you ever happen to have difficulty, try to stay joyful. It doesn't say that it guarantees the hardship and the difficulty. Verse 6. If you go back just to the understanding of this, it says, when the sun came up, right. The plants were scorched. They were withered because they had no root. What's the root that you have? How deep is your faith? How deep is your understanding? Just go personal on this. I know where I am in the depth of my faith in different seasons. 1. And you just have to learn this individually. This may help you. It may not. I hope it does. Of course I have seasons when I'm always in the Word of God. Why? It's my job. Like, truly it is. Right? I've got John Verlee. Where did he go? Did he skip out okay? Yeah. I was like, he's great. One of my elders skipped out on the lesson. Good for him. Our chair of elders just showed up. John Van Dyke. He's been at the camp before. It's my job. So I have to be careful also what I say right now. Because I will regret some of it if I'm not careful. But I'm always in the Word. But it is my job to walk through Scripture, to comb through it. I want so badly I could stand up here for three hours and just talk about the Word of God. And if you said, start with Genesis and go tell me the theme of the entire Bible, I'm like, let's go. Going to be the best day of my life. But I know I'm not healthy when my time in Scripture is only the Job aspect. So if you really want to hold me accountable, my wife does this. I'd rather you not. But if you wanted to ask me what I'm reading right now, that's not tied to a sermon that I have to go preach somewhere. I'm good, by the way. In this moment, I'm good. But there are seasons that all of a sudden I recognize. And what happens is that depth of My understanding, it just begins to get a little more shallow. I'm recognizing I'm doing what I need to do for my job because I was raised with crazy discipline and work ethic. Okay, but crazy work ethic and discipline is not faith. Don't confuse the two. And we can always find ourselves going into a place in which the soil isn't as deep as we once thought. That's one of the ways I know I'm not going in a direction that I really need to be diving into is I'm not spending the time in the word because I just spent, you know, hey, I spent three hours working on a sermon this morning. I'm good. No. When I'm not sharing my faith with someone lost, I have found that I am not calibrated appropriately. And that can be hard for me. Guess what I work with. I got what? Here's one of them over there. 60 or 70 employees. Guess what they are. They all work at a church, which means what's one requirement? They love Jesus. If you don't know, if you're not sure if the people at your church love Jesus, you're not hiring very well. And so I have to look. I need to look for people who do not love Jesus. Because then all of a sudden, my heart springs open. I get. Just burst. When I get to meet somebody in a grocery store last week, Perfect example, this lady, she goes, she stopped me. And I'm always a little nervous. This isn't our meijer. And I'm going through the frozen section. Why? Because frozen French fries are good to me. And so I'm going to get up. And she goes, hey, by the way, I've gone to your church some. And I just looked at her. You know when they just are like. They're just. I'm like, are you okay? She goes, my father's going to die. I said, you got to give me a little bit more. Like, tell me more. She's like, within days. So I just start praying for her. I got a message this morning. Now, she had sent an email. I hope I got the email right. So it went to my admin, and they sent it to me. She goes, it changed everything for us. Thank you so much for the prayers. It just makes you. Doesn't that make you get up? Isn't that what makes you go, let's go. Some of you are neglecting the depth of your faith, and you don't even know it because you're practicing a rhythm. You have a. This is how you do it. I'm Going to go to church. I'm going to take my kids to youth group. I'm going to do whatever you need to do, but the depth of your faith is no deeper to me. That's the Rocky Go into thorns verse 7. Others fell among the weeds or the thorns, and the weeds. Or the thorns came up and they choked them out. I hate weeds. Like, if you tell me I can do about anything if you say, hey, honey, we need a weed today. I've got a section right now in my yard. I have pulled, I have sprayed. I had a friend come over. They're like, hey, Joel, you've ever hear a Roundup? I'm like, I have used at least 27,000 gallons of Roundup, right? I wait for it to go and sell at Lowe's. I did it last week. I bought another gallon. It was half off. I'm like, okay, here we go again. I hate them because they've choked out, like, I've got hostas and some daylilies and just different things. I'm like, they've choked out everything. I'm living this right now. Others fell among the weeds or the thorns. The weeds or the thorns came up and choked them out. And the farmer would do the best they could to plow the field. We already know this. I think some of the things that one of. Let's process it like this with the thorns. There's so many deceptive things in life today. They present well, but at the end, they may choke you out. They may choke you out. So I need to relax at times, while at the same time I'm incredibly grateful for how I try to raise my kids, knowing what may be okay right now, but might be bad later. The celebrity culture that we have right now is incredibly dangerous. Is it wrong to wear a shirt that says, give me someone popular? Anybody but her. Morgan Wallen. I don't even have to know his music, but I know that that guy has to be country by the name. Yes. Okay. Like, if you told me hip hop, I'd be like, liar. So Morgan Wallen. I don't know what he's gonna start talking about at a concert. And because of the celebrity cult, right? I'm just trying to give. I'm not gonna go down this path very far, but I'm trying to give you an understanding that many of the things that are choking out the foundation for what we're trying to teach and how we're trying to live, they start in an innocent manner. And then very quickly, all of a sudden, they're Spending stupid money. If everybody would tithe as much as they spend on concert, we wouldn't know how to spend the money of the church today. PPI would be rolling, right? Because the bounty would be there. And then all of a sudden, whatever you give money to, you will give greater voice to. And so all of a sudden, you're giving a greater voice to something like a Morgan Wallen. Yes. Or a Taylor Swift. I was thinking, like, I'm so old. Like, as soon as even I said it, I went Def Leppard and Michael Jackson. Like, I'm like, right. Can we just say, praise God, that the young people today love the music from the 80s? Let's go. Right. Like, so awesome. I had one of my kids not too long. They're listening with or without you. They're like, this is good music. I'm like, that's my music. And then, of course, they went rude. They're like, they had electricity back then. So good. But the celebrity, that's just one instance. The celebrity culture is one way to process it and go, wait, what are you giving your heart to? And what are you giving voice to? Let's go back to yesterday with the wise and the foolish builders. Matthew, chapter seven. And how we're starting to understand and what's choking us out. The question you need to be asking in this is, what in your life is slowly choking you out? What is it in your life that is starting to come up and decay your marriage just a little bit? Like, you need to ask this question. I mean, one of the concerns I have for life. My wife and I speak about this all the time. Is that we don't want anything to slowly creep in. Cause once it starts, it's hard to weed it out. And we have busy lives. He runs a couple of companies, and then I've got a couple of ministries. And then I look at. We got four kids. We have one who just got married. And I'm like, this is crazy. How am I old enough? Anybody ever thought that? How am I old enough to have kids? I know I look really young. Does anybody do this? And I'm just like, wow. So we always talk, like, we often speak about how do we not become roommates? How do we keep the realization that we are bound together by a covenant before God? And so I always call her my girlfriend. And then I have to tell the church. I mean, my wife. But, like, that's us. I still sometimes will pick her up by knocking on the front door to take her out. After 25 years, you have to Work at it. Because otherwise what happens are these thorns and weeds start to come into your life. Busyness can be one of them. Thorns. What weeds do you have that need to be pulled out? You see it from Matthew 13:22 later on in the chapter where he explains it. The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word. But the worries of this life. I'm going to replace worries for this moment. But the busyness of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth chokes out the word, making it unfruitful over. Busyness is one of the greatest thorns in our life that we're unwilling to address because we actually find fulfillment. Letting others know how busy we are rather than how faithful we are. That deserves like a hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Amen. Something. Because when people go quiet, I know that it's hitting home. Some of us actually feel better. We feel we have greater value because of how busy we are rather than how faithful we are. Right. People are. Hey, how are you doing, man? I'm just busy. You ever heard this? I'm just busy. Stop. Do you ever tell people, hey, how are you doing, man? I was being faithful. No, but isn't that the goal? What is busyness your goal now? Yeah. For some of you it is. Because that's where you find fulfillment. Look how busy I am. Because we think busyness equates to what importance? One of the greatest lessons I ever learned is that none of us are very important. Second memory verse. And we would do well to teach all of our kids this. First memory verse. What was my first memory verse? John 3:16. You know what my. I still remember. You know what the second one was? My father. He was a pastor, but he believed that I would just watch his life and learn. I wish he would have spoken to me more about the way he did it, but he goes, you need to memorize this one. Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought to. That was my second. It wasn't even Romans Road. Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought to. What's important to you? You. What's choking your faith out? Now let's jump into the good soil. Verse 8 tells us there's also good soil. Others fell in the good soil and yielded a crop, and the crop, in varying degrees, a hundredfold, sixtyfold, thirtyfold. This is good ground. This is deep, soft, rich, clean soil. That's what this is. And it's going to vary from 30 fold all the way to a hundredfold because of the nutrients of the soil. Are healthy. That's what is dependent upon your crop. How good is the soil? Does it have the moisture that it needs? Is it getting the sun that it needs? But the seed falling on good soil, right, Refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop yielding 130 or 60 or 30 times what was sown. They get it. They go, wait. And the only way you can do this is because your life is just surrendered to it. You just process it and you go, this is the good soil. I hear it, I accept it, I hold it. I'm gonna take the gospel in. There's going to be genuine repentance. There's going to be a careful attention to the thorns and the rocks that are in my life so that I can grow deep and rich and nothing can choke me out. I'm going to be aware of my surroundings. It's actually a distinguishing mark of a believer. And it's all about the condition of your heart. Remember, this is like, hey, if you really want to know the kingdom of heaven, you're going to give careful consideration to this and you're going to look at the condition of your own heart to determine whether or not it's where it needs to be. Matthew 13, verse 15. It's going to force us, as we look at this chapter, to examine something that is incredibly valuable for this people's heart has grown dull, Which with their ears, they can barely hear. They have closed their eyes, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn. And I would heal them. You're in danger of so many conditions are poor soil. And here's one of the ways that you can know. Remember that first story I told you today about me sitting in the back of the car? When you lose that posture, Can we at least acknowledge there should be some danger signs popping up. When we lose a reality that we get to worship a king? This is heart posture, by the way. When you lose that, my fear is that thorns start. They're already in the dirt. Whether you see them coming out yet or not. The faith isn't as deep as it should be. And some of you have kids and they're going, dad, mom, you just need to lighten up. Anybody heard this before? What I'm going to do is I'm going to look at you and say, stay faithful. Your job is to keep as many weeds out as possible. I want to close. I don't know what is typical here. I want us to close in groups. By praying together. One of the things, I've never been here before for a week long camp. This is awesome. 1. I've recognized though that you all basically grew up together since you're in diapers is what it feels like. You all know each other. Like I saw people walking up giving hugs at the check in. Oh, I haven't seen you in a year. And I'm like, hi, I'm Joel. So what I want to do groups of six. We're going to do groups of six or seven. I hope this is okay. Ambush. If he's even here. I didn't ask for permission to do this, but if Ambush says no to prayer, he should be fired. So why don't we do this? Get together in groups of six or seven and I want you to pray very specifically. We're going to pray and I'll close this in prayer. We're going to pray that you would be aware of the condition of your heart. Some of us just ignore it. Ignorance is bliss, right? Some of you ignore it. What's the condition of your heart? And that God would take hold of it in any way that he needs to. So groups of six or seven and I'm just ask one or two of you just to start praying in that group. We can do this. Yes, let's stand up. Let's go. Groups of six or seven. Groups of six or seven and start praying together. And then I'll close us. God from. We know that from Proverbs 4. 23, that from our heart flows the spring of life. And so I'm praying that our hearts, from them would flow the springs of life, that we would be aware of the condition of our heart. Sometimes we don't think about that. We just go, hey, I'm in on Jesus, or I'm not in on Jesus. But some of us really need to be aware of the thorns that are starting to cultivate in our own lives, our own marriages, within our families, within our places of employment and our jobs, and maybe our relationships and maybe the way we handle our finances, whatever that may be. God, may our hearts be examined. You tell us to examine our hearts in First Corinthians 13 before we even jump into Scripture or to communion, rather, that we need to examine ourselves. And so may we truly examine ourselves and. And consider the things that are there to distract the things that are pulling us away from you, that are choking out our faith in a manner in which maybe we're not able to do or to even hear your voice clearly because our ears have been covered that's why you say, let him who has ears heard. May we hear clearly your truth and your power, your word, your strength. And I know that there are friends in this place, brothers and sisters in Christ. What I love about this week, knowing that these are. They love you. These are lovers of Jesus. We get to spend eternity together. That's so cool. But I know that they have family or friends, possibly that have hard hearts. And those are individuals. God, we know that you can chisel away at them and even in a moment, soften them. We pray for the family and the friends that we have that are lost, that they would have hearts that are repentant, that would turn toward you, that they would know their need of a savior and Lord. We're also praying that you would have your way with us, that we would have hearts that are ready, receptive soil to do whatever you desire. It doesn't need to be logical. I'm certain that Noah didn't go. This is going to. This is logical. Building a boat. I'm certain that Moses didn't go. This is logical. God wants to use me when I killed an Egyptian and I have to go back to Pharaoh over and over again. I'm sure that sitting under the Persian king, that Nehemiah didn't say this makes sense. I'm going to go to him and tell him I need to leave to go rebuild Jerusalem in the water wall. I'm sure it wasn't logical when Saul, on the road to Damascus, after wanting to hunt down every Christian, all of a sudden goes, wait, I'm going to surrender my life to Jesus and tell everybody in the world about him. God, we're not praying for logical. We're praying that you would have your way, Encourage these brothers, because I know you're already using them. And so I thank you that you are. And I thank you that they're leading their homes, guiding their children toward you. But may that not tempt us to turn our eyes away from something else that needs attention. We worship you. We declare your greatness. We declare we have a king and a Lord and a savior. The Creator of the universe has called us by name, and we belong to you. Praise be to God. Amen.