(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

In Isaiah chapter 1, if you want to look down at verse number 14, the Bible says, Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. They are a trouble unto me. I am weary to bear them. And when you spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea, when you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. Wash you and make you clean. Put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes. Cease to do evil. Learn to do well. Seek judgment. Relieve the oppressed. Judge the fatherless. Plead for the widow. Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land. But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. What we see in this passage is the people, the children of Israel, they're going through the motions with their religion. They're holding their new moons and their feasts, but God's saying, I'm weary with what you're doing. You're wearing me out because you're not getting the point at all. You're just you're just going through these motions, going through these steps. He said, when you spread forth your hands, I'm gonna hide my eyes from you. I don't even want to see you going through these motions and having this really religious event going on and raising your hands in prayer and worship. He says, I'm gonna hide my eyes from you. Why? Because your hands are full of blood. You're going through all these motions and you're just, it's not that they're just a bunch of sinners, but they're just doing, they're off in wickedness. He says, wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do well, and now he's saying, look, stop doing bad, stop doing wrong, and start doing what's right. The Bible says elsewhere, you know, that obedience is better than sacrifice. God's not as impressed with the fact that you show up to church and you make these great prayers and you, oh, I've sacrificed my time or I've given this big money offering in the offering, but he's not impressed with that if you're just living in disobedience. He'd rather just have you obey him and just do what he asks you to do than to give some big gift. And these people, yeah, they're having their feasts and they're bringing their sacrifices, but they're not having respect unto God's commandments and God's laws. So what he says here, he says, come now, let us reason together. Just think about this. Let's reason this out, okay? Just sit down and shut up and think about this and we'll reason together about this. Because God is a reasonable God. God wants us to understand the things that God does. It's not just on a whim. It's not just like God's some, you know, weird being that's just whatever, you know, whatever I want to do. God's all-powerful, but there's always reasoning and there's good reason behind it. God is a logical God. Come now, let's reason together. He says, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If you be willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land. But if you refuse and rebel, you should be devoured with the sword, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. Let's reason about it. Let's think about this for a minute. You could either be willing and obedient and just have things going well for you and be blessed or you could just be disobedient and rebel and refuse and have all kinds of cursing and stuff. Which one do you want to choose? This is God reasoning with the children of Israel. This is something that we're trying to do. As I mentioned already, we want to reason with people and it's something that we have to be able to do is be able to reason and not be duped and not try to dupe people either. We need to learn how to give good arguments. We need to learn how to be smart about this and to be able to take your faith and take the Word of God and handle it with integrity and with honesty. So many people are so sick of religious people coming to their door trying to talk to them and just yanking verses out of context and trying to throw it at them because they're totally just expecting you to be ignorant of God's Word and have no clue what the Bible is talking about so they could just tell you whatever they want to tell you. And that's not the way that anybody ought to be and that's not the way that we're going to be in this church. And I don't care if you have the right doctrine. You still ought not to mishandle the Word of God just to feel like you you want to just add so much more evidence to somebody on whatever it is you're trying to teach them. Don't take verses out of context. Don't do it. It's going to hurt your testimony. You may think, oh man, but here's this verse and it's going to preach so well and man and I could really drive this point home. But it's not what it's talking about at all. Don't use it. Be honest when you handle the scripture because you will end up doing more damage to your testimony if that person then finds out like they read it later and go, that's not what this is talking about at all. You don't want to have that happen. Even if what you're saying what you're trying to teach is right or true, don't go there. You don't need to. If something's true, if something's right, you don't need to add on to it. You don't need to come up with different ways that aren't right and use different scriptures that aren't really saying that to prove it. If something's true, you should have enough other scriptures to use to prove it that are clear and that are saying exactly what you're trying to teach.