(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.) Actually, you know what, for sake of time, let's just go to Hebrews chapter 4. Go to Hebrews chapter 4. I'll read for you from Jeremiah. Go to Hebrews 4. It says in Jeremiah chapter 11 verse 20, but O Lord of hosts, thou that judges righteously, that triest the rains and heart, let me see thy vengeance on them, for unto thee have I revealed my cause. And then in Jeremiah 20 verse 11 it says, but the Lord is with me as a mighty terrible one, therefore my persecutors shall stumble, and they shall not prevail, they shall be greatly ashamed, for they shall not prosper, their everlasting confusion shall never be forgotten. O Lord of hosts, that triest the righteous, and seest the rains and the heart, let me see thy vengeance on them, for unto thee have I opened my cause. Sing unto the Lord, praise ye the Lord, for he hath delivered the soul of the poor from the hand of the evildoers. Think about the confidence that it takes for these men of God to say, Lord, you know what's in my heart. You search the rains and the hearts. I've made known unto you my cause. I've opened my cause unto you. You know me, Lord, so Lord, please bless me and destroy my enemies, because you know what's inside. Folks, that'd take a lot of confidence to say that. You better be legit if you're going to say that. And not just in a superficial way in your mind where you're kind of kidding yourself or telling yourself how great you are, sort of like the Pharisee that says, oh yeah, I'm a pretty good guy, I give tithes of all that I possess, I fast twice a week, I'm not like this publican. But you know what, I'll bet you deep down that guy knew that he's rotten. Somewhere inside him and God goes beyond just, oh, I think I'll put money in the offering plate in the brain. He goes to the heart and gets the motivation behind that. And he goes into the rains and sees how you really feel on the most visceral level even your self-conscious, the most gut feelings. He reads that. I mean, you think it's cool that God reads your mind. That's child's play. He doesn't just read your mind, he reads your heart, and then he reads even your guts, which is even deeper than that. Go to Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12, for the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Not just the thoughts, even the intents of the heart, neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight, but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Make no mistake, my friend. God knows you through and through, not even just that he can read your mind like it's coming up as text on his screen or something of your internal dialogue. No, no, no, no. He's dissecting your kidney, for crying out loud. He sees right through you. There's no way to fool God. You might be able to fool your parents, you might be able to fool your friends, you might be able to fool the church, but you know what? God sees right through you and he knows what's going on in your heart. Do you really love him? Do you really fear him? Do you really delight in him? What are your emotions toward him? God knows these things. Everything is naked and open to him, even on levels that we can't even understand besides just a mental level, even deeper than that. Let me put it to you this way. He knows us better than we know ourselves because like I said, we, we trick ourselves. The heart is deceitful and we think we know ourselves, but we don't know ourselves like he knows us. You know, have you ever had to explain to someone why they're doing something and they don't even understand why they're doing it and you're like, well, no, this is why you're doing this because sometimes people don't even understand themselves, but God understands us to the core and even beyond the core to the reigns. Psalm 16 and if you would, you, you go to Psalm 149. This is a really important concept I want to show you about the reigns. Psalm 16 verse seven says this, I will bless the Lord who had given me counsel and I want me to pay close attention to this phrase. My reigns also instruct me in the night seasons. Now stop and think about this. My reigns also instruct me in the night seasons. How do your reigns instruct you in the night seasons? What are the reigns? I mean, I guess according to the modern versions, it's just, well, my mind instructs me in the night season or my brain instructs me. Did you have something that you wanted to add? Well that's, that's super interesting. I didn't even know that. So what he just shared was that basically cortisol and melatonin are connected to the kidneys, waking you up and, and putting you to sleep at night and waking up some of those hormones are actually connected to the kidneys. I didn't even understand that, you know, scientific or anatomical aspect of it. So that's another thing where the Bible is ahead of its time, you know, making these kind of connections. That's pretty cool. Thank you for that. But, but here's the thing about it is that our reigns instruct us in the night season. When I think of the night season, when I think about being in bed at night, you know, that's when you're really just by yourself and most vulnerable and you're asleep and you're by yourself and you're alone. Look if you would at Psalm 149 verse 4 it says, for the Lord taketh pleasure in his people. He will beautify the meek with salvation. Let the saints be joyful in glory. Watch this. Let them sing aloud upon their beds. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth and a two edged sword in their hand. So here he talks about, you know, singing praises to God in your bed and then he talked about your reigns instructing you in the night season. Obviously there's a physical component that your reigns literally physically come into play in your sleep cycle, but what's the spiritual meaning? Here's what I took from this when I put it together with Psalm 149 with Psalm 16 about the reigns instructing me in the night season is that the emotional experiences that bring us closer to God are typically done in private, not a public display. I believe he's talking about delighting in the Lord when you're all by yourself, having feelings toward the Lord when you're by yourself, when you're alone, praising God on your bed. That's not public. There's not some webcam set up where you, okay, I'm streaming to everyone from my bed. This is me praising God, although I'm sure somebody does that in our bizarre society that we live in. You know what this talk about being in bed. It's like when the Bible says, when thou pray is, you know, enter into thy closet and when I shut thy door, pray to thy father, which is in secret. You know, the bed is representing privacy. The bed is represent. You're alone at night. You slip into your subconscious as well because think about all the things you dream about and you're like, what in the world? I wasn't thinking about that. Well, apparently you were. That came straight from the raids, buddy. You know, you're thinking about all these wild things. It's obviously, it came from somewhere and so at night in bed we're alone, we're by ourselves, we're not putting on a show and the emotional experiences that bring us closer to God happened in private, not public. Here's why I bring this up is because today a lot of times Baptists would shy away from ever talking about anything emotional or any kind of an emotional experience because of the fact that the Pentecostals have kind of poisoned that well. Where you've got the holy rollers, you know, coming to church, falling on the ground, barking like a dog, laughing hysterically, rolling in the aisles and then you actually know these people in real life and know that they're not reading their Bible, they're not living for God, but they show up and have these really wild experiences and they're crying and laughing and I grew up, I remember just even in high school, seeing fellow teenagers come down the aisle at a public service, get up out of their seat, come to the altar, have an emotional experience and nothing changed in that person. The next day they were the same way that they were before. You didn't see them actually serious about the things of God. So I think a lot of people they react to those things and just basically say, you know, well nuts to emotions, it's all about fact and our brains and about logic and rational thinking and it's all about, you know, just faith in what God said in his word. And look, amen to that, that it ought to be, our walk with God ought to be based on what the Bible says in black and white, it ought to be logical, it ought to be rational, it ought to make sense, okay, but there is an emotional component to the Christian life that we don't want to overlook. We don't want to let other people who've abused it ruin it for us. So because someone has abused it, where they basically in public they cry and laugh and get all wild in public, putting on a show for other people and they've abused this, we don't want to think that there's no emotional component to Christianity. Then another thing is that sometimes people will base their beliefs on emotion. Like you'll show them what the Bible says, like you show them, it's right here in black and white and here's what they'll say, well, I know what I felt. You know, I've had the Mormons tell me that, I show them scripture and they say, well it doesn't matter what you show me in the Bible because I know what I felt. Now look, I'm not going to base my faith on emotions. I'm not going to just go with my gut on what the right doctrine is if the Bible says something different. You know, we ought to make sure that what we believe and preach jives with scripture. Not just, well this feels right or this doesn't feel right. Well, I don't care if it feels right. If it's in the Bible, I'm going to believe it and it's my feeler that's broken, not the Bible that's broken. Does everybody understand what I'm saying? So here's the thing, I don't believe that emotional experiences should be the basis of our faith. How do I know that I'm saved? Is it because I had an emotional experience? No. Because there are a lot of people who had emotional experiences that aren't saved and a lot of people that are saved that aren't very emotional or didn't have a lot of emotional experiences. I don't know I'm saved because of an emotional experience. I know that I'm saved because of what God has promised in His word. Because I believe the promise of God, I have faith in His word. That's how I know I'm saved. And I don't base my doctrines. I don't say, well, you know, I'm going to reject that doctrine because it just doesn't feel right. I mean, sometimes those feelings mean something and if something doesn't feel right, it should maybe prompt us to do further study. You know, if I hear something, I'm like, this doesn't feel right. Let me search the scripture. And then sometimes it turns out it wasn't right. And I go, oh, that's why it didn't feel right. But other times something doesn't feel right. But then I study it and the Bible's confirming it, confirming it, confirming it. My feeler was broken because my reigns were messed up. Because your reigns aren't perfect and my reigns aren't perfect. God wouldn't even be searching the reigns if they were all perfect. He's searching them because there are problems there. There are right things and there are wrong things to be found, otherwise there'd be no point in doing a test. Testing the reigns, proving the reigns would be meaningless if they're all dialed in. If you can just go with your gut every time, why is God even searching the thing? He can just stamp approved on everybody's gut. No, he's got to try the reigns and the guts because sometimes the gut can be wrong. So don't base your salvation on feelings. Don't base your doctrine on feelings. But let me tell you something. Once you already know what you believe, once you're saved, hey, we ought to have a lot of feelings toward Christ. Something wrong with our heart if we're cold toward the things of God or cold toward the Word of God. If we don't have emotion toward the Lord, we need to work on that because I can't even count how many spiritual mountaintops I've touched by myself reading the Word of God in the night seasons, not publicly putting on a show for other people. Does everybody see the difference? So are emotions the basis of our faith? No. Emotions are the icing on the cake. But let me tell you something, I don't want to eat cake with no icing. I don't want to eat icing with no cake. You know, my wife makes schnitzel and when she makes schnitzel, you know, the best part of the schnitzel is the breading on the outside of the meat. That's the best part. And you know, you like that piece of schnitzel that's got a lot of breading on it. The breading is the part that tastes the best. But here's the thing, when she runs out of pork to put into the breading, then she takes all the additional breading and just fries it by itself with no meat in it. And it creates like this decoy. It's this betrayal where you bite into it and it's just bread all the way through. Now even though the breading is the best part, it's no good without the meat in it. Does everybody understand? You don't want it, but if you had no breading, now if I had to choose, what would I have? Just the breading or just the meat? You know, you're going to go with just the meat. You know, if you had to choose on a corn dog, you know, let me bring it down to your level. Since you guys aren't eating schnitzel. Hey, if you had to choose a corn, and I love corn dogs by the way, and my wife makes homemade corn dogs too. If you had to choose on a corn dog, would you rather have a corn dog that's just the breading on a stick? Or would you rather have just a hot dog on a stick with no breading? Hey, if I had to choose, I'd take the hot dog. Amen? Who's with me on that? Okay. But the breading is kind of the best part. You want the breading. The breading is what takes it to a whole new level. So think about this. The hot dog is the word of God, the knowledge of God, and the Bible talks a lot about knowledge. Talks a lot about knowing, scripture, reading, knowing, learning, understanding. Look up those words in the Bible. You're going to find them a lot. Even more than the reins. You're going to find those a lot. So look, the doctrine, the knowledge, the cognition is the hot dog, and the emotional experience is the cornbread on the outside of the hot dog. Does everybody understand? So that's what's going on here. So we don't want to just say, well, no cornbread for you. Or no breading on the meat, you know, it's just all about the meat. Folks, we do want to feel deeply when it comes to the things of God. And God wants us to feel deeply. And in fact, the deep feelings that we have sometimes can even say more about us than what we think consciously. And so God, yes, he searches our mind. Yes, he searches our heart. He also searches our reins. And what are the reins? They're the seat of feelings and emotions that are located in our abdomen, metaphorically speaking.