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to keep the way of the tree of life. Brother Mo, would you pray for us? Thank you, Lord, for this day. I pray that we may ask that you come to the tree as the Holy Spirit, as we come to the tree of life right now. Pray that we all have hearts to receive the message and to apply the message and here's to goodness. In Jesus' name, I pray. All right, amen. Genesis chapter three, we're gonna get into that here in a moment, but what I wanna do is I just wanna explain what I'm preaching about this morning. Now, the title of my sermon is called Illuminating Gaslighting. Illuminating Gaslighting. I'm like, what in the heck are you talking about? I'm not talking about lighting gas doves, all right? I'm talking about shedding the light of the word of God on this concept that's become very popular today, this phrase, which is called gaslighting. And it's a form of manipulation. And so I figured what better way to introduce the subject than to read the main story in the Bible of the master manipulator, the devil or Satan himself. Now, gaslighting, like I said, it's a form of manipulation and I'm just gonna give you the background of it here real quick. Why do they call it gaslighting? And I've been hearing that term a lot lately. In fact, somebody took it upon themselves to write a very long dissertation on why I'm a gaslighter and proceeded to send me a video, which is all about me, in the email. Now, I read about two sentences and I just deleted it along with the rest of the emails that we get. But I was like, okay, I gotta look into this and figure out what is it? Why are people perceiving us as gaslighting? And it just goes back to telling the truth, right? The truth is not in season today if you haven't noticed. And so the way to sidestep that, the easy way to get around that is to be like, well, he's a jerk or he's a cult leader or he's a gaslighter, he's manipulating. Look, we don't manipulate anybody around here. I preach the Bible and you can either believe it or not. The choice is yours. It's that simple, okay? Cult leaders, they don't give you that option. You get brought into the cult and you ain't getting out. Here, we've got a bell. If you want to leave, you wanna ring that bell because you can't handle hardcore truth, then ring it and leave. And I will never follow up with you. I will not harass you. It's all good. It's only when people get on social media and start to attack our church members and attack me that we're gonna come after you, okay? And you know what? Rightfully so, we're gonna defend the truth. We have a mandate in the Bible that allows us very clearly to defend truth and that is exactly what we're gonna do. But the term gaslight, actually, believe it or not, when I looked into this, it comes from a movie, okay? And this movie came out in 1944 and it's a, I watched about 45 minutes of it and that's all I could handle because believe it or not, even back then, there was innuendos and stuff and I don't know if it, it's because I haven't watched TV in like, I don't know, I think 2013 was like the last time I ever sat down and literally watched a television show. And I'm watching this thing and I'm like, wow, you can even see the devil at work with their innuendos and unsavory things, even back then. But anyways, this movie is about a husband who is manipulating his wife, right? And what he's doing is he's hiding things from her. So what he'll do in the movie is he'll take something off the wall and then it'll cut to him and his wife and he'll be like, why is my picture gone? And she's just like, I didn't take it, you know? And he's basically accusing her of doing it and you know, there's little things like that that he keeps doing to his wife and what that does is it causes her to question her own sanity, it causes her to question her own cognitive ability and before you know it, she start actually, she starts to actually believe that she's going crazy, that she's going insane. And so I just, I copied and pasted from Wikipedia a little summary about the movie because I didn't watch the whole thing. I'm just gonna read it to you here real quick. So it says, background, Gaslight. The 1944 film starring Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, not Boyer, but Boyer, and Angela Lansbury. Now, if you're familiar with, what is that show called? Murder, She Wrote? Zach, read your lips today. Murder, She Wrote. That was when we were kids, right? Yeah, anyways, I'm sure you've heard of it, but she was in the film as a young nanny inside the film. It says, tells the story of a woman whose husband slowly manipulates her into believing she is going insane in order to cover up his own illegal behavior, okay? So when somebody is accusing you or accusing somebody that you know of gaslighting, this is what they're saying, that you're up to no good, you're trying to cover your own illegal behavior because of just, you know, master manipulation. You wanna cover it up, and so what you do is you start to accuse the other person of doing the same things that you're doing. So it says, in order to cover up his own illegal behavior, the husband repeatedly told his wife lies, hid things from her, refused to explain the dimming of the gas-fueled light fixture in the room. And that's a very popular scene that comes up throughout the movie there. Like, she'll be just looking at the gaslight, right? It takes place in England, and it'll start to go out, and then she's like, well, what's going on there? You know, did we not pay the gas bill? And come to find out that the husband's actually just manipulating her whole reality to make her question that, right? And he's like, you're crazy, the gaslight's not going off. And so that's basically how this term came to be. So it goes on to say, told her she was delusional when she said she had heard noises from the attic and restricted her contacts with others. Through his manipulation, she began to question her own sanity, memory, perception, and judgment. So that is what gaslighting does. It's designed to cause you to question what you believe, to question what you're thinking, to question your own reality, and to basically control you. That's the whole idea, okay? That's what most cult leaders do. That's what Jim Jones did to his people. And I'm gonna tell you right now, that's what a lot of politicians are doing to the people in this country, okay? This is what the media in this country is doing to people too, and I'm gonna get into that. Now this here, I wanted to bring this up not only because it's the background of how we got the term gaslighting, but it's a story of, there's several ways that people get gaslit, right? It's oftentimes within relationships like this, husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, things of that nature, okay? But it doesn't just apply to a relationship, it can also be applied on a society level. And like I said, the media has a big part of that. And with that being said, I've got this article here that I'm gonna read for you, and like I said, we're gonna get into the Bible here momentarily, but I like to give things that illustrate or explain, draw a picture of what I'm talking about here. Now, today, obviously in our society, we have this coronavirus stuff going on. I'm not denying that the virus is real, okay? But I am questioning, and most of us are questioning the mandates that are about this thing, right? For example, I stopped at a gas station, it was off of Meridian Road in Victory, right? And they're famous for their chicken wings, I guess, or their little breaded chicken. But I was walking into the store to take a break, get something to eat. And I look at the sign on the door, right? It says, no shoes, no shirt, no service, right? They have that right to make that law. You know, if you don't have your shoes on, they can tell you to leave. If you don't have your shirt on, they can tell you to leave. But it said, you know, masks are recommended. And I thought that was cool, right? Because they're not like trying to force you. Now, shirt and shoes, you should be dressed properly and be modest. I agree with that, right? But you know, I just, I respected that sign. But what I don't respect is when the government or the health department comes down here and says, hey, you have to do this. We are making you put this mask on. We are making you social distance. We want to control you. And right, and then when we question that, when we bring that up, they make us feel like we're going crazy. Like we're insane. Like we're not trusting the science. Like we're not trusting the studies, okay? That is gaslighting. I'm gonna show you that here in a minute. And by the way, you know what? I just don't trust the same people that push abortion and sodomy on society with my health. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but you know what? I just don't trust those types of people, okay? I don't trust them at all. Now, if that sign on that store would have said, you know, no shoes, no mask, or you know, no service, whatever. You know, if I really want their business, then fine, I'll put it on, right? But don't tell me that I have to do that because that is not right. Now, going back to what I was saying here about, oh, well, you don't trust the science. You don't trust the studies. You don't, blah, blah, blah, right? Well, guess what? I'm going to read for you a scientific study today, and we're gonna see what it has to say about all of this, and you're gonna see the gaslighting in this, so just bear with me, okay? Now, this was taken from the American Institute for Economic Research, okay? This is not a joke. This is not a theory. This is fact. The study that I'm reading you really happened, and it happened very, very recently. And so the title of this article, it says, "'Even a Military Enforced Quarantine "'Cannot Stop the Virus' Study Reveals," okay? It goes on to say this. The New England Journal of Medicine has published a study that goes to the heart of the issue of lockdowns. The question has always been whether and to what extent a lockdown, however extreme, is capable of suppressing the virus. Again, you read the Levitical Laws, right? You read Leviticus 14 about the different skin issues and leprosy, right? We're not talking about skin issues. We're not talking about leprosy. You know, if you got a skin issue, I would go to the Bible before I would go to a doctor or before anything, right? Because that wisdom is in the Word of God. And you know, I agree with quarantining people for that. But you know what? There's people in the Bible that have fevers, and you know what? They weren't quarantined, okay? Now, I get it. You know, these things are contagious. But the question is, forcing lockdowns on people, is that working? What does the science say? That's what this article is about. So it goes on to say, you know, talking about the different nations, pretty much the whole world is on board with doing this stuff. Obviously, some nations are more extreme than others. It goes on to say, the American Institute for Economic Research has long highlighted studies that go in the face of, you know, modern cultural, what does it say? Modern cultural beliefs. Let's see here, this print is very small, but I had to have it that way. Okay, so they did this study where they took over 3,000 US active duty Marines, okay? And they divided them up into two groups. Now, I'm gonna read this for you. It says, to test further might seem impossible, but for whatever reason, governments all over the world, including the US, are still under the impression that they can affect viral transmissions through the range of non-pharmaceutical interventions, or NPIs, like mandatory masks, forced human separation, stay-at-home orders, bans on gatherings, businesses, school closures, and extreme travel restrictions. Nothing like this has been tried on the scale and the world of human history. So one might suppose that policy makers have some basis for their confidence that these measures accomplish something. And I agree with that, right? I mean, if the whole world's doing this and pushing this on people, you would expect there to be some concrete evidence, like the sky is blue, right? You know, we need to stay home, we need to do all of these things. These things actually work, okay? It goes on to say this, a study conducted by the School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in cooperation with the Naval Medical Research Center sought to test the whole idea of lockdowns. In May of 2020, 3,143 new recruits in the United States Marines were given the option to participate in a study of extreme quarantining, along with extreme antivirus measures or not, right? So like I said, they took these group of people and half of them, they're gonna say they forced like these extremely rigorous quarantine rules on them. They separate them, and I'll read that stuff for you here in a minute. And then the others, they just kind of let do their normal daily routines. No masks and no testing. It goes on to say this. Let's see, the study was called CHARM, which stands for COVID-19 Health Action Response for Marines. Other recruits asked a total of 1,848 young people agreed to be guinea pigs in this experiment, which included weekly QPCR testing and blood sampling for IGC antibody assessment. In addition, the CHARM study, volunteers who did test positively on the day of enrollment, day zero, or on day seven or day 14 were separated from their roommates and were placed in isolation, okay? So that's how that works. It says all recruits were double layered cloth masks at all times, indoors and outdoors, except when sleeping, eating, they practiced social distancing of at least six feet, were not allowed to leave campus, did not have access to personal electronics and other items that might contribute to surface transmission and routinely wash their hands. They slept in double occupancy rooms with sinks, ate in shared dining facilities and shared bathrooms. All recruits cleaned the rooms daily, sanitized bathrooms after each use with bleach wipes and ate pre-plated meals in a dining hall that was cleaned with bleach after each platoon had eaten. Most instruction and exercises were conducted outdoors. All movement of recruits was supervised and unidirectional flow was implemented with designated building entry and exit points to minimize contact among persons. All recruits, regardless of participation in the study, underwent daily temperature and symptom screenings. Six instructors who were assigned to each platoon worked in eight hour shifts and enforced the quarantine measures. And if you know anything about the military, especially the Marines, when they say they're gonna do something, there is no, there ain't no going back, man. They're gonna force this like, I mean, to a T. So right now they've got these people following all the social distancing, the mask wearing, the hand washing. Look, I'm not against hand washing and being sanitary, okay? We cleaned this building pretty well and you don't have to worry about it. So I don't want anybody to get the wrong idea like I'm against this, like it doesn't work, right? I'm just highlighting for you what they did in this study. So let's see, it goes on to say basically, just talking about how the instructors, basically they forced this thing to go through. Now there's no business, there's no church, there's no organization, there's no Fred Meyer, there's no Walmart, Costco, that has this strict of standards today, okay? So that is very important to keep in mind. So it goes on to say, what were the results? Incredibly, 2% of the charm recruits still contracted the virus, even if all but one remained asymptomatic. Our study showed that in a group of predominantly young male military recruits, approximately 2% became positive for SARS-CoV-2 as determined by the QPCR assessment during a two week strictly enforced quarantine. So how does this compare to the control group that was not tested and not isolated in the case of positive cases? So keep in mind here, they did not just test these people with the Q-tip to your brain, okay? They actually took blood samples and did detailed analysis of these people's bodies. And so the quarantine group, after 14 days, doing the cleaning, the testing, the isolating, all of that stuff, out of 1,848 people, 51 of them actually came down with the virus. Out of the non-quarantine group, only 26 got it. So think about that, okay? Now here's where the gaslighting is gonna come in. The question I have is how did the media react to the study? Do they even know about it? And the answer is overwhelmingly yes. All media outlets know about this study and they've all reported on it. And I'm gonna read for you what they've said. Here's what CNN said. CNN said, COVID-19 cases or asymptomatic studies show, it says this, military, I'm sorry, many military COVID-19 cases or asymptomatic studies show. And that is all they said regarding the study. So when this study was released, it said here's our findings, here's what happened. CNN comes out and says many military COVID-19 cases or asymptomatic studies show because they realize that most people aren't gonna actually go and dig around for the real science that they proclaim is running the driving force behind the decisions that our politicians are administering. SciTech Daily, right? This is just science, man. You're science, I follow science. No, you follow science falsely so-called. Okay, here's what they had to say. Asymptomatic COVID-19 transmission revealed through study of 2,000 Marine recruits. So they just keep flashing that asymptomatic thing, asymptomatic thing, asymptomatic thing. ABC, broad study of Marine recruits shows limits of COVID-19 symptom screening. And that's it. That is it. It goes on to see one more, I'll read one more for you. The US Navy, they came out, you know, they always got their battle with Marines, but they came out and said this, COVID-19 study findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine. That's it. That is how the media outlets reacted to this study. Just a very short, quick blurb about it, and that's it. No link to it, no nothing. See, because people, right, they're questioning, hey, you know, it's really kinda hard to breathe in these masks. People are like, wait a minute, our government supports people like Bill Gates and these other eugenicists that wanna actually kill people, right? You guys know that, right? That our politicians support people that actually wanna destroy the population. Just the fact that the Georgia Guidestones are allowed to stand in this country should tell you something, and it should cause you to question things. Okay, so people are kinda waking up, they're like, wait a minute. So our government, who supports abortion, which is murder, supports sodomy, which is murder. Sodomites are murderers, filled with all unrighteousness, the Bible says. Our politicians, to a hilt, follow and support these types of people and these types of laws, and they are causing iniquity to abound. But yet, now they all of a sudden say, no, we care about you. And I even hear some people say, well, no, they just care about themselves, so that's why they're trying to force these things on us. Well, they don't follow these rules themselves. They're constantly being photographed in large gatherings and stuff, okay? It's about control. A lot of governors, a lot of mayors, just about every Democrat, the socialist commie people want control. It's no different than the king of Sodom in Genesis, what was it, 13, who said, hey, Abraham, keep the goods to thyself, just give me the people. That sums these people up. They want the people, they want control. And so people, like I said, they're questioning things, right? And the media's got a gaslight. They gotta say, no, you're crazy, you're just overthinking, you're just overlooking, you need to trust that. We are the professionals, you'll look to us for election results, you'll look to us for medical and scientific advice, we will take care of you, we tell you how to think, right? The reason why they're able to pull this off is through the technique of manipulation, or what is known as gaslighting. Now, keep this story here in the back of your mind, because as I go through this sermon this morning, you're gonna see all the things that I talked about, I mean, in the sermon here, all of the stuff can be found in the Bible, but I wanted to read this last part of the article to you. It says, no national news story that I found, this is what the guy is basically saying, this is his commentary, he says, no national news story that I found highlighted the most important finding of all, extreme quarantine plus frequent testing and isolation among military recruits did nothing to stop the virus compared with a non-quarantine group. The study is important because the social structure of control here, it's one thing to observe no effects from national lockdowns, there are countless variables here that could be invoked as cautionary notes, demographics, population density, pre-existing immunities, degree of compliance, and so on. But with the Marine study, you have a near homogenous group based on age, health, and densities of living, and even here, you see confirmed what so many other studies have shown, lockdowns are pointless, destructive, they do not manage the disease, they crush human liberty and produce astonishing costs, and then he goes on to basically list all the things that have gone extremely south since this has gone and taken place in our society. Last little bit, it says the lockdowns keep telling us to pay attention to the science, right? Isn't that what they do, keep saying? Pay attention to the science, right? I've been messing with the commies on CBS2 and KTVB, you know, these different news outlets like Newsbreak, and I'll mess with them and I'll say, masks don't work, and just to see how they respond. And if some of you have seen me on there, I'm not looking for contention, I knew that I was gonna be writing this sermon and I wanna see what is in their minds, I wanna see how they're responding to this, right? And they'll say, so one of them was an article that Brad Little, it was an article on Brad Little, the governor of Idaho, and he said basically, hey, Idaho, we need to protect our veterans, and the best way to do that is to social distance and wear masks. And people were like, vets don't care, they suck, and blah, blah, blah. And so I got on there, I said, you know what? You know, I'm a vet, and I took nuclear, biological, chemical warfare classes, and you know what they always told us? They said, you know what, if the Afghans or the Middle Easterners, they wanna come over and drop a biological bomb or release a virus on our society, they said, even that our masks that we have with the filters, they said, they're not going to save you. In fact, they said, you know what NBC stands for? It stands for nobody cares because if something happens like a nuke goes off, you can kiss your butt goodbye. And I believe them. I mean, these are the experts, these are the people that are trained in nuclear, biological, chemical warfare. I mean, this is what they do, this is their field. And so a cloth mask, okay, it might slow the spread a little bit, so if I'm talking to you, and I've got the virus, instead of you getting it in like maybe 30 seconds, maybe if I have a mask on, you'll get it in like 45 seconds, okay? So yeah, maybe it does slow the spread like that, I don't know. But, it says the lockdowns keep telling us to pay attention to the science. But anyways, I went on there and said that, right? And people were like, they were tagging me in their comments, and they were like, you know what, I trust science. I trust Dr. Fauci, I'm not gonna trust some stupid bum vet like you. You're stolen valor. Look, I'm not glorifying the military, I'm not stolen valor. I can show you my DD-214. I can show you my NBC books that I still have, okay? But I started asking these commies, I'm like, okay, well, show me the science then, right? And they just cut and paste things that Fauci says, or they cut and paste these things from, so I went on to the American Journal of Medical Association's website or whatever, and I found something that said the mask didn't work. Copied it and I shared it, and they just flipped out. To this day, they're still sending me little messages which I thought was funny. But basically, they don't wanna point to this study. They don't wanna point to real, this is a real scientific study here. I mean, these people follow all of that stuff to a T. Okay, and so the article goes on to say this, when the results contradicted their pro-compulsion narrative they pretend that the studies do not exist and barrel ahead with the scary plans to disable all social functioning in the presence of a virus. And then it goes on to say that lockdowns are not science, they never have been, and they are an experiment in social, political top-down management that is without precedent in the cost of life and human liberty, okay? I'm not gonna launch a big fight against masks. If you, you know, the store, like I said, if they want, say you have to wear a mask, come in here, whatever, okay? I'm not gonna die. You know, you're not gonna die wearing it. The real battle is with souls, right? We wanna preach the word of God. That's where we hang out with. But to illustrate the point of gaslighting, I mean, this whole, you know, you better wear a mask, or if you don't wear a mask and I see you out in town, you just killed 5,000 people, like we've been accused of. Right, how many sodomites have messaged me in the last month and in fact, one got me yesterday, you know? You know, because your people aren't out wearing masks, you've killed thousands of people. Right, somebody left us a review on our Facebook page. This church is killing, they keep trying to kill my friend. Don't you think if that was true, I'd be in jail right now? It's like, well, I don't get it. Do all of us have the virus? And here's gaslighting. I read this about Brad Little. He said, okay, we're going back to stage two, guys, okay? And here's what this means. It's like a modified stage two, whatever. And he says, it's not, he's like, guys, it's not the public schools. It's not Costco, it's not the stores. It's the small gatherings. This is a small gathering. Your Thanksgiving dinner's a small gathering. And here's another example of gaslighting. How about you go over to Oregon? We gotta lock it down. I think they just went into another lockdown. Is that right? They just went into another lockdown, okay? But what did they just legalize? Small amounts of hardcore drugs. You wanna snort a couple lines of Coke? You wanna pump heroin into your backside? No problem. And then when the people are like, wait a second here. This is like kindergarten stuff here, don't do drugs. Okay, but yet we need to go to the feet of Kate Brown, their governor, and be like, oh, save me from this virus, which has like a 99% recovery rate. How are they able to pull this off, guys? Gaslighting, manipulation, right? We need to be careful here. And look, it's not just the reprobates and the people that hate God that can gaslight. Right, you can learn this subconsciously. You can learn this through just, I mean, growing up in a family where maybe one of your parents or somebody that you know is a manipulator or a gaslighter, right? And here's the dangerous part is that most people, they don't even realize they're being gaslighted. This is why that, you know, I mean, what did Jesus tell us? That we need to be as harmless as doves and wise as serpents. We need to be privy to the techniques that Satan uses, which is manipulation, and more specifically, like what we're talking about today, gaslighting, right? So the idea of gaslighting is what? It's to cause you to question reality. It's to cause you to question truth. It's to cause you to question your perception on things. Now, keep your place in Genesis 3. We're gonna come right back to it, but real quickly, just go to Revelation chapter 20, Revelation chapter number 20. Whew. And you know, to be honest, most of us have been gaslighted at some point in our lives. I, you know, as I've studied this out, I've been thinking back in my own history, and I cannot tell you how many bosses, how many friends that I had in high school, how many people that I've, you know, just worked with in general, that have tried to gaslight me and gaslight other people, you know, try to manipulate us in so many different ways. And so the, what's the end goal? It's control. It's to control you. If they can get your mind, they've got you, right? You know, one of the most basic foundational, fundamental rules of wrestling is if you wanna control somebody, you wanna take someone down, you have to gain control of their head or their hips. You know, if you can gain control of somebody's head or their hips, you've got them. And that's exactly what a gaslighter does. It gets your head, but obviously it's mentally, right? And it gets your hips. Your hips are basically a picture of mobility, right? Restricting where you can go, setting expectations, moving them, so on and so forth, okay? Now, I just wanna give you this picture here, why this is so important here. Revelation chapter 20, looking for verse number two, it says this, and he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, verse three, and cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, now don't miss this, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled, and after that, he must be loosed a little season. Go back to Genesis three and we'll get started here, but I wanted you to see that. Who is the main culprit, the main source of deception for the nations? It's Satan, it's the devil. And you see that all the way back here into Genesis chapter number three. Now, here's the bottom line for this morning. This is the one thing that I want you to walk away with and to remember if you remember anything that I say. And it's this, gaslighting is an emotional abuse that makes you question your reality. Gaslighting is an emotional abuse that makes you question your reality, right? And you as a Bible-believing Christian, what is your reality? It's the word of God, it's what God has said, it's what God has preserved, it's what God wants us to study and take to heart every single day of our lives, right? Now, obviously, the devil, through multiple Bible versions and multiple false translations and different sections, Christianity, if you will, he sets these things up to gaslight society to make people question their reality. That is what most scholars do today, right? They say, well, this is good, but this isn't the Bible, it's a translation of the Bible, right? Isn't that what James White says? Well, that's not really the Bible, that's just a copy of the Bible. Well, what does Deuteronomy 17 say about a copy of the Bible? That is perfectly fine. What does Exodus chapter 20 say? That it's the first commandments that were penned on those stone tablets that Moses had, that those were a copy from the word of God in heaven, right, there's nothing wrong with a copy. But what the devil does today is he says, you know what? The way to destroy the righteous is what? To chop away the foundations, to break up the foundations. And he does that by making people question the validity and the truth of God's word, okay? And so the first step to defeating a gaslighter is really just learning their techniques, learning what they're up to. We need to be able to recognize these things. And this is gonna help you because, like I said, all of us have been gaslighted. I don't care what anybody says, you have been gaslighted at some point in your life. And you say, well, I'm only 10 years old. Well, that's fine, you know? You're gonna get gaslighted. You're gonna go to work, you're gonna be around people, and they're going to try to manipulate you into thinking the way that they want you to think so that they can control you, okay? And so the first step to defeating these people is to learn and how to recognize the games that they play. And you can see that here in Genesis 3. Look down at verse number one. It says this. Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. Now that should give you a clue right away. Manipulation. How do manipulators operate? How does a gaslighter operate? Very subtly. By sneaking around, right? By doing things covertly. That's what the devil's like. That's an attribute that he has. It says, and he said unto the woman, yea, hath God said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden? So what is he doing here? He's making her question truth. He's making her question reality. Yea, hath God said. You could do like a thousand part series right here. Yea, hath God said. Yea, hath God said that sodomites should be put to death? Yea, hath God said that abortion is murder? Right, this is what the devil does. This is how he operates. He makes you question the truth. Verse number two. And the woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. What should she have said? Get lost. Get lost. Get out of here. I recognize right off the bat here, you're trying to manipulate me, you're trying to make me question the truth and what God really said, what the intention really was, which is disobedience. Real quickly, look at verse number five. For God, this is what the devil says. He says, for God doth know that in the day, I'm sorry, look at verse four. And the serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die. And so he's not necessarily like doing a full out 100% total lie, but he's mixing truth and error here. He says, and the serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as God's, knowing good and evil. Right, and then you know the rest of the story. She looks and sees it as good, well, it's good for food, I'm sure I'll eat it. Right, and the Bible says her eyes are open. She's like, wow, yeah, he was right. Well, I didn't die. That's because she missed the point. You know, he's talking about a spiritual death. Now you have to be saved and all this stuff here. Now, go to Genesis chapter 29. We're gonna get started here with the first point. But gaslighting is an emotional abuse that makes you question reality. That is what we see in Genesis chapter three, the first story in the Bible about manipulation. I mean, you see it in an incidence of gaslighting, right? The devil is making humanity, making even, and notice, what does he do? He doesn't go to Adam. Why doesn't he go to Adam? Because he studies people and he saw that Eve was weaker. And he said, you know what? I can probably try her and I can probably convince her. I can probably manipulate her into not trusting what God had said. And he was right and he did it. And now here we are today. Now we have to earn our food by the sweat of our brow and the rest is history. And so the reason why I bring this up is because this is so important to understand, right? The Bible tells us that deception is gonna get worse in the last days. And don't tell me, oh, I trust Fox News. No, they're not much different than CNN and the rest of them. They're designed to funnel you down the same path as CNN and the rest of them, right? They want total control. I mean, what do you think? Anybody ever read about the Antichrist? What does the Bible say? You think he's about the truth? How is he able to convince most of the world to take his mark by doing all the groundwork now, right? I mean, the mystery of the spirit of iniquity does already work, the Bible says. He's already working these things. He's been working them for thousands of years all the way back in the garden. This is important today. You know, the Bible says that God's people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. And this is why we wind up in abusive relationships. This is why we wind up having such a difficult time at work is because God's people forgot, you know what? We need to be wise as serpents. It's not a verse that's very popular. Everybody wants to focus on being as harmless as a dove, right? I mean, seriously, don't judge. Coexist, love thy neighbor. Look, all that stuff's great and good to go. But God is the God of balance. We need to be wise as serpents. So does that mean, you know, I preached Leviticus 2013, but am I gonna go out and harm people? No. That's the government's job. Are they gonna do it? No. And so we're just gonna keep going on the best that we can. We're gonna keep preaching the word of God. We're gonna keep going out and getting people saved and making converts and doing the work of God. And then when he comes back, he'll take care of it like I told you last week. So we're gonna go on here with the first point. Genesis chapter number 29, we're gonna start in verse 20. You know the story, you guys are familiar with it. Jacob and Laban, right? Talk about manipulation. If you're familiar with the story, you're gonna see this come to pass here. Let's break the story up in verse number 20. It says this, and Jacob served seven years for Rachel. So if you remember, Jacob's looking for a wife. He sees Rachel. He's like, you know what? I love her. I wanna make her. He makes an arrangement with his father-in-law and said, well, with his, not his father-in-law, but with Laban, he's like, hey, look, you know, I'll serve seven years, right? That's the agreement. I'll serve seven years. You give me Rachel. And it says this, and they seemed unto him but a few days for the love he had to her, verse 21. And Jacob said unto Laban, give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled, that I may go in unto her. Now, hopefully we don't, yeah, their culture was different back then, right? You guys that are looking to get married, don't go up to the, say something like that, right? But anyways, verse 22, and Laban gathered together all the men of the place and made a feast. And so it seems like Laban's gonna fulfill the agreement. The agreement was, okay, Jacob, you work seven years. I will give you my daughter, Rachel, just like you asked. Verse 23, and it came to pass in the evening that he took Leah, his daughter, and brought her to him. And he went in unto her, verse 24, and Laban gave unto his daughter, Leah, Zilpha, his maid for an handmaid. And it came to pass that in the morning, behold, it was Leah, and he said to Laban, what is this thou has done unto me? Did not I serve thee for Rachel? Wherefore then hast thou beguiled me? Now, what did Eve say in the garden when God questioned her and called her on the carpet? Satan, yeah, the serpent hath what? Beguiled me, tricked me, enchanted me, used sorcery, all of that stuff, right? He gaslighted me, basically. Verse 26, and Laban said, it must not be so done in our country to give the younger before the firstborn. Now, don't you think that should have been brought up before the agreement and the contract was signed, right? I mean, how would you feel in this situation? Pretty terrible, right? Here's the point number one. Gaslighters will move the goalpost. Gaslighters will move the goalpost, okay? They will set one expectation, they'll set one agreement up, and then when you reach that, they'll move it further. Right, it's like the old cartoon where, you know, a guy puts a carrot in front of the other little donkey's face or whatever, you know, and they just keep chasing the carrot and never actually get it. That's what gaslighters do oftentimes. Think about it, that's why the verse on our bulletin is Proverbs 22, 28, which says, remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set. So look, when you agree to give somebody something, don't be like, okay, well now I'm gonna take a few steps back and actually I need you to do this, X, Y, and Z, that is wicked. Okay, that's wrong, that is not okay. What Laban did here is obviously wrong. Now did Jacob deserve it for the way he treated Esau? Of course, you know, he's a trickster himself and often manipulators get what's coming to them, okay? And we're gonna see that here as we go through the story. But point number one is that gaslighters move the goalpost. I have seen this so many times in my own life. I told you guys, you know, when I used to work at the shipyard up in Washington, and I've worked for several manipulating type people, they seem to flock to government jobs, you know, go figure, right? Now I had this one boss and he would always do this. He would say, okay guys, at two o'clock, I need X, Y, and Z to be done, okay? Here's your instructions, here's your process, here's your policy, here's everything you need to do. At two o'clock or before two o'clock, it's gotta be done. Right, I can remember this one time specifically, we were in Japan, we got all this work done, and we went and, I mean, we were working hard. We got this stuff done at like 1.45, right? And this guy's walking around the flight deck looking for us, just panicking and sweating. And he's like, I said this needed to be done at 12. And the whole crew's like, no, you said two o'clock. And he's like, no, I said 12. And we're like, well, why weren't you here at 12 looking for us then? And then he starts the gaslighting, starts making us question reality, starts making us question things. You see what I mean? Bosses are notorious for doing this, especially the older generation, I'm serious. I think a lot of the older generation, to be honest, I think they watch this Gaslight movie that I talked about because I've noticed that they do this. I don't know if they all just have the beginning stages of dementia or what, but I've noticed this, that they are notorious for doing that. And it can, as a believer, look, it can be hard, right? I mean, you have the old man, you have feelings, you have emotions. This can really cause you to get very angry, and it can cause you to become unproductive at work and bitter, right? And as believers, we don't wanna give a bad testimony. You get what I'm saying? So we need to learn how to respond to this, how to deal with this type of behavior. Another example is, I hear this from time to time, where a husband will say to his wife, you know what, I really like dinner to be ready at six o'clock, okay? And then he'll come home at 5.30. So why isn't dinner ready? And start fighting, start arguing. You know, and it's not just one time, right? There's usually, when you study these things, there's a lot of incidences like this, right? Like, that's just one example. Like, you know, the dinner thing, and then it's other things in the home, right? Like, I thought you were gonna pick me up at this time, or I thought I told you this, right? Just constantly making you question the standards. What they're doing is they're setting an expectation, and then if you actually meet that, then they wanna change the game. They wanna move the goal poles and say, well, no, no, no, it's not, you know, it's not six o'clock. It's not X, Y, and Z that needs to be done by two. It's not Rachel. It's actually this. And what are they doing while they're doing that? They're controlling you. What has Laban been doing to Jacob? He's controlling him so that he cannot leave the country. Right, so the question becomes, how do we deal that? How did Jacob deal with that? Did he take up arms? Was he like, well, let's go. No, look down at verse number 27, and here's the application. Here's how we deal with this. Fulfill her week, and we will give thee this also for the service which thou shalt serve with me at seven other years. Now, I'm, dude, I would have flipped. Jacob's a better man than I am. I don't, I can't, to be honest, I don't know what I would've done. At 19, I was saved, but I wasn't in church. I wasn't studying the Bible. I would've, I might be in prison. I don't know. It would've been bad, okay? But look at what Jacob does in verse 28. And Jacob did so and fulfilled her week, and he gave him Rachel his daughter to wife also. Now Laban's a gaslighter. He's a manipulator. But how did Jacob get what was originally the deal, the agreement, which is Rachel? I'll show you. You don't have to turn there, Matthew 541. This is what Jesus said about this subject. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Everybody get what that means? What is Jesus saying there? Well, think about it. What has Laban been saying to Jacob? Yeah, you need to come with me an extra mile, which is an extra seven years, and I need an extra seven laps out of you, Jacob. And instead of Jacob doing what I would've done, maybe what some of you guys would've, definitely what Malzer would've done. No doubt about that. Okay, he says, I'll play your game. I will fulfill another seven years and have faith that God will take care of me and that God will give me what I've asked for, what I've worked for. And God always takes care of his children. God always pays his children. He's gonna make sure that you get what you work for. The laborer is worthy of his hire. You literally do reap what you sow. And God looked down and said, you know what? I respect that decision. That's a good decision. He did not act the way that most of us want to act, the way that most of us talk how we'd act. He actually followed what I see Jesus teaching here, which is, and whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. You know, with that boss, what we learned to do that I had, how he would keep moving the goalposts. He would set a standard, he would set an expectation, he would set a landmark, and then he would move it. And we would say, okay, we'll comply. We'll just, we'll go ahead, next time we'll get better. Because he's not gonna listen. And the advice I would have to the wife, if something like that were to happen to you, I would say this, well, remember, we agreed six o'clock. I'm working on it, I'm not quite there yet. So just hang on another half hour, you're not gonna die. And I'll have your dinner. Okay? But what we did with that boss is, you know, anytime he would give us a job, not only would we write that down verbatim and then read it back to him and say, this is it, this is the deal. Because now that puts him on the spot. Okay, I'll say, okay, John, you want X, Y, and Z done by this time, right? I got it written down right here. Can you make sure this is correct? After a while, what he would do is, I don't wanna see that, you need to just listen to me, right, because he's trying to gaslight. But I would still make that attempt. And then what we would do is we would just work as hard as possible, right? He's asking us to go an extra mile, and we would go two. We would take him further than what he requested. So he wants X, Y, and Z done, well guess what? We're gonna do A, B, C, D, E, F, G, the whole alphabet. Right, he requires all this, we're gonna do all this extra stuff too. And then as we started doing that in our job, you know what, the higher ups, his bosses started to take notice. And they started saying, wow, man, this crew is really something. And you know where I learned to do that? From the Bible. So people would say, well, you know, it's just a Bible, it's all ancient book, you know, it's just designed to control people. Say what you want, but there ain't no wisdom out there like you can find inside of this book here. And this book is what has the, and look, this is all free. We don't charge for stuff at this church. This is all free. Do you know how much money that people pay weekly to learn how to deal with manipulation and gaslighters? It will blow your mind. But yeah, you could just read the Bible and study it and come to church and learn the doctrines and the commandments and the statutes, learn the people that went through these things, and guess what? You will learn how to deal with them for free and it will bring you peace, it will bring you joy, okay? So, and you know, and another thing, don't ever, turn to Romans chapter two, we're done with Genesis, turn to Romans chapter two. Don't ever let anybody make you measure your success based off of their standards, right? We have a book that's written by God, that's preserved for us by God. That is our standard. That is what we need to live up to. That is what we need to be our driving force, okay? Now, when you start being like, oh, I can't meet his expectations, you're wrong. You're failing, you're losing right off the bat. You need to go to Matthew 541 and you need to read that and you need to think, okay, how can I not live up to that person's expectations, but how can I exceed them? This is how you defeat an abusive person in the workforce. This is how you defeat an abusing spouse, is you go with them twain, you go with them double. They say, I want this, you do twice as much. And you know what? That's exactly what Jacob did. All right, so we're gonna move on here. So point number one is gaslighters move the goalposts. They take that landmark and they move it. It's a wicked thing, it's not right, but we know how to deal with it. Now, we're gonna take a look at the second thing about gaslighting that I want you to understand here. Romans chapter two, look, most of us are familiar with Romans chapter one, okay? Wicked stuff, horrible things, talking about reprobates and people who have rejected God. And then coming off of that thought there, Romans 2 one, he says, therefore, thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judges. For wherein thou judges another, thou condemnest thyself, for thou that judges doest the same things. And so if you read Romans chapter one about men who burn in lust towards one another and these sodomites and the wicked things that they do, how they're implacable, isn't it funny how they're the most judgmental and hateful people on the planet, right? I mean, look, the only people who've ever called the health department on us are sodomites. The only people who keep threatening me, seems like week after week, right, are the sodomites. You know, they hit me up yesterday. They wanted me to tell you guys hello, so I sent you guys a group message, hey, especially brother Jeff, you know, this guy, he wants to make sure, Jeff, that you know he's still upset. His feelings are still hurt, okay? And they didn't like the fact that you guys knocked on their door. In many other words, which I'm not gonna obviously repeat, okay, but I just deleted. But it's funny, these people are guilty of the most filth and the most vile things, and they'll say these things to our faces. Calls and say they wanna do the most horrific Genesis 19, Judges 19 style stuff to us in front of our women, in front of our children, and then yet accuse us on social media of judging, of being hateful. At least we're honest about our hate, right? Like if you hate God, and you hate children, then we hate you. Amen. Amen. Good. But anyways, look at verse two. But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things. There's a verse, you're gonna have a very difficult time finding preach today. But we are sure that the judge, oh wait, God's judgmental? That the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things. Read Romans one on your own time, verse three. And thinkest thou this, O man, that judges them which do such things, and do the same, that thou shall escape the judgment of God? Right, and so that's our hope. Look at verse four. Or despises thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? Here's point number two. A gaslighter will often accuse another person or a group of people of doing the exact same things that they're doing, right? Like with that movie, that gaslighting movie, the husband, he's up to all sorts of illegal activity, stealing and just all kinds of garbage, right? And what's he accusing his wife of doing? Stealing pictures, taking things off shelves, that she's not really seeing the lights go out and so on and so forth, right? This is what they do. They will often accuse you. And you know what that boss that I had, he was up to all sorts of things. Sniffing coke, seeking other women, being married, all sorts of garbage, all sorts of abominations. And to cover that up, see because when you go to a foreign country like Japan, especially if you're working for the government, those are the only people that you have to deal with. And so you tend to get closer with people, you start to find out things, you start to hear things, things start to spill out. And in order to do damage control, somebody who's up to illegal activity, somebody who's up to unsavory things, they have to manipulate. They have to control the group settings so that that stuff doesn't get back home, so that that stuff doesn't get out in the open. And this is exactly what a gas lighter will do. They'll often accuse somebody of doing the exact same things that they're doing, okay? Just something to watch out for. Turn to Matthew chapter five, Matthew chapter number five. Here's a good example I saw this week. So Pastor Thompson preached a sermon down at Faithful Word LA called Savage. He'd been planning to preach that sermon for a long time. He even told me this privately, even before the Red Hot Preaching Conference, well someone else preached a sermon called Savage and they were basically attacking all of us who went to the Red Hot Preaching Conference saying we're not filled with the Spirit and all this stuff. It's pretty funny. And in the sermon, this preacher, he's saying that we are very quick to just label people as hateful or reprobates or whatever. Well, ironically, on Facebook, I saw him post something. He posted a couple of verses out of Jude towards Pastor Thompson. Here's the problem with that. Those verses are talking about reprobates. So what he's doing is he's gaslighting people. He's gaslighting his followers. He's manipulating them. He's accusing him of basically being a reprobate, but he's doing it subtly in a way that doesn't draw attention as much. You see what I'm saying? Because they accuse us of doing that, but that's exactly what he's doing, but he's doing it very subtly. And I didn't see anybody on there and call that out and I'm not gonna get involved other than what I have to. I just thought it was interesting because that's exactly what they do. They will often accuse people of doing the same exact things that they're doing. So these guys, oh, you know, they're hateful and whatever. And then they go and make a post and say, quote, a verse, which is talking about exactly what we preach. You know, that the events of Sodom and Gomorrah are an example to us today. And that's right before Revelation. So these people that say, you know, we should have child molesters. We should have Sodomites come into the service. What about Jude? That event of God wiping those people out, that should be an example to say, hey, don't let them into your services because they can't be changed. If they could, Abraham would have found the 50, the 40, the 30, the 20, the 10, and the five that he was looking for. How many did he find righteous in Sodom and Gomorrah? Zero. Obviously just Lot. I believe Lot will say it. I believe that's very clear in the Bible, right? But aside from that, from Lot and maybe, you know, some people in his family, there was zero. And Jude just basically expounds upon that and says, hey, remember, that is an example, folks. Don't trust these people. And so we preach that because that's what's in the Bible and all of a sudden we get accused of being gaslighters, cult leaders, manipulators, so on and so forth. So point number two, a gaslighter will often accuse another person of doing the exact same things that they are guilty of doing. Now, here's how we deal with this situation in more specifically, Matthew 5, look at verse 33. This is what Jesus says. He says this, and again, again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, thou shall not forswear thyself, but shall perform unto the Lord thine oaths. Verse 34, but I say unto you, swear not at all, neither by heaven for it is God's throne, nor by the earth for it is God's footstool, neither by Jerusalem for it is the city of the great King. Verse 36, neither shalt thou swear by thy head because thou canst not make one hair white or black. So here's what he say, you know, you need to let your communication be your communication. You need to let your yes be yes and your no be no, and that's what he's gonna tell you here. Verse 37, but let your communication be, yea, yea, nay, nay, for whatsoever, don't miss this, is more than these cometh of evil. Whatsoever is more, this cometh evil. That's why when, you know, maybe you go up to these kids and you're like, hey, remember how I told you not to eat 25 cookies today? Well, there's like 25 cookies gone. There's crumbs everywhere, in your room, on your bed, in your pillow. Did you get into the cookies? No, no, no, if I did, mom, you know, and they did, they go beyond the no, right? Because they gotta paint a picture for you of what they want you to think. This is exactly what a gaslighter does. And I'm not saying the kids are gaslighted, right? You know, all of it, look, all of us are capable of gaslighting. You know, remember what Jesus said, he knew what was in the heart of men. You know, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it? We need to remember, just because we're Christians, we're saved, we're not above falling prey to this and actually committing these things. There are saved people that are capable of just manipulating people. Now, obviously, to the degree that some people do it, no, but that's a subject for another day. So here's the response, and here's all I'm trying to tell you. You know, let your, yes, yes, somebody accused you of something and you didn't do it. You know, sometimes you do have that burning desire, like, man, I'm gonna prove it. And there's nothing wrong with proving it and having the proof, but don't be like, no, I swear to God, right? Who comes to mind? Let me hear his name. Storm, right. For those of you that don't know, we had this guy come into our church last year, very, very shady character. You know, came for a Wednesday service, and, you know, he comes in here and talking all this big game, like, I'm on board with everything, and I read the Bible, I'm translating the Bible into Vietnamese, come to find out he's making his own Bible version. Like, seriously, his own Bible version. And then everybody leaves, he begins to take me to the back there and question the validity of the King James Bible. Starts to attack the Bible. We go soul-winning with him. Starts taking an extra special likening to our young children that's not natural. Start watching him in the service here. I preached a whole sermon against him the following Sunday with him sitting like right here. And, you know, I noticed during the prayer time, he's looking around for the kids. And he's going up and petting the kids. Just really odd stuff. So we decided to kick him out of church. And during that process, we're here, it was on a Thursday, you know, we're telling him he's not welcome back here. He's like, I swear to God, I'm not a child molester. I swear to God. There's no child molesters where I live in Vietnam. They don't exist. First of all, that's not true. Right, but you see what he's doing there. He's having to call upon God's throne. I swear on my mother's grave, he's doing all that stuff. And we're having to teach him, hey, that's not right, man. That is not a biblical way to talk. You're sitting here talking about how you're a great man of God, but then you're gonna say stuff like that. He's trying to manipulate us. And thank God it didn't work because this church studies the Bible, believes the Bible as it is written, the way it should be, okay? These people out there, he's a low-level example. And there are people that have this stuff down pat. There are people out there that are very good at manipulation. We need to be weary, we need to be careful. And so Jesus is just saying, hey, you and your own speech, let your yes be yes and let your no be no. What comes more of that is evil. And that's how we recognize these gaslighters, right? Now, you recognize the gaslighter at work. I'm not saying you need to go up to him and get in his face. Hey, you trying to gaslight me? Kenley, huh, what's up? No, recognize, learn the pattern, learn the games that they play and how to deal with them, right? Point number one, go with them twice, do more. It's painful, you have to sacrifice, you have to give up, but you're in a bad spot and the way out is the way Jesus said, okay? And again, Matthew 5 for point number two, right? You recognize their behavior, you recognize that what they're doing is they're accusing you of doing things that they're doing themselves. How do you respond? You know what, you just look for those traits. You know, they're always trying to go above and beyond yes or no and so on and so forth. We don't wanna be like them, we don't wanna mimic them at all. Turn to 2 Samuel 13. And this is the last story in the Bible we're gonna take a look at for point number three. So point number one is gaslighters often move the goalposts, right? They set a standard, they set an expectation. If you can achieve that, they will then move that and the whole point being control, right? They want to control. Remember when Jacob was like, hey, you know, I wanna take my family and like go back to my people. Laban didn't wanna let them go even then, did he? He's like, all right, well, I gave you Rachel, you know, you need to stay here. He's like, I've learned that God has blessed me when you're around. And so he goes and he intensifies the manipulation and so on and so forth. And point number two, gaslighters often are guilty of doing the same things and the way we respond to that is to let our yes be yes and our no be no and to just recognize that that is what they do. No, you're dealing with somebody who is probably up against a lot of wickedness in their life, okay? 2 Samuel 13. Again, very familiar passage in the Bible. This one's hard to read. This one, again, you know, not trying to toot our horn but this is one that's not preached in a lot of churches and it's a subject of rape, okay? You know, King David's son Amnon raped his sister Tamar. We're gonna take a look at some of the manipulation regarding that story here. We're not gonna dissect the whole thing but there's one point that I want you to see here. And so after this has happened, after Amnon has unfortunately raped his sister Tamar, Absalom, his other brother finds out about it. Look at verse 20. It says, and Absalom her brother said unto her, hath Amnon thy brother been with thee? Now don't miss this here. This is how Absalom responds. But hold now thy peace my sister, he is thy brother. Regard not this thing. So Tamar remained desolate and her brother Absalom's house. Verse 21. But when King David heard of all these things, he was very wroth. I mean, he was very upset, he was very angry. Look at verse 22. And Absalom spake unto his brother Amnon, neither good nor bad for Absalom hated Amnon because he had forced his sister Tamar. Now here's point number three. Gaslighters will often make light of a serious situation. Gaslighters will often make light of a serious situation. Going back to the article that I read for you in the beginning. When people start to call up into question, hey, you know, these masks in some situations are actually doing more harm. You know, all of these things, this over sanitization is actually destroying our antibodies, is actually hurting us more. When you bring these up, what do people do? They make light of it. That's what the media does. They make light of this, right? People starting to bring up voter fraud. And voter fraud's been around since the beginning of time. Okay? But it's definitely going on. It is pretty obvious if you look into that. And I'm not endorsing politicians, I'm just being honest with you. What is the media's response? Remember, the media's driven by the prince of the power of the air, the devil. Hands down, okay? If you don't know that, you need to know that. What is their response? To make light of that, right? To make us all look silly, to make us look stupid. Oh, they're just overreacting, just conspiracy theorists. Oh, the Bible thumpers, right? That is what they'll say. And that's why I say point number three. Gaslighters will often make light of a serious situation. Now, what you need to understand about the story here is that Absalom has his own agenda. Now, Absalom, it's not that he's not upset. He's pissed that this happened. He is not happy about it whatsoever, right? But what he does to his sister, he says, you know what? And hold now thy peace, my sister. He makes light of the situation. Why? So that he can carry out his own agenda. Is that correct? Is that right? Now, did Amnon deserve to die? Absolutely. But did Absalom have the right to carry it out? No, he did not. Now, go to Leviticus chapter 20, and I will show you what the law says. And it's kind of like the thing with vaccines, for example. There is hard, hard, hardcore evidence that vaccines cause injury. I believe that for, I mean, they're unclean. You have aborted fetal cells and all kinds of unclean things inside of those. And we've talked about this. The Bible even says, you can read this in Job, that you're not going to be able to get a clean thing out of an unclean. That concept is false, my friend. It does not work, right? But you bring these things up and the government makes light of it. Oh, don't worry about the Bible thumpers and the religious people. They just need to get on board. They don't love their neighbor. They don't care about society, right? They just want to control everything. No, we're just gonna wait for Jesus to come back and he's gonna control everything. And then I'm gonna love to see the look on your face at that point. But, you know, again, I'm gonna break this up because this just blows me away. Oregon, man, you know, we need to lock it down, man. We need to make sure you don't get a cold or a sniffle or a headache or a fever, all this stuff. But if you want to sniff some Coke, man, you want to chomp some meth muffins, dude, you go right on ahead, boy. It's all good, right? Making light of a serious situation. That is what they're doing. Leviticus 20, look at verse 17. Some of you thought we were going to verse 13, right? We've hit that hard. We'll come back to that in about six months. But here's what the law says about what Amnon did. This is what should have taken place. Leviticus 20, verse 17. And if a man shall take his sister, his father's daughter, or his mother's daughter, and see her nakedness, and she see his nakedness, it is a wicked thing. And they shall be cut off in the sight of their people. He hath uncovered his sister's nakedness. He shall bear his iniquity. They were supposed to be removed. They were supposed to be taken out of society. They were supposed to be killed. This is a wicked thing that Amnon did. That is what the Bible is saying here. Now go back to 2 Samuel 13, and we'll see what actually happened here, what Absalom actually did. And I just want you to see that because it's not biblical. Keep in mind here, they had this law back then. Does everybody know that? Deuteronomy 17 again said, hey, when you guys get weary, and we're talking about the Sunday nights, and you call and you beg for a king, guess what? He needs to write himself a copy of this and read it all the days of his life, right? So David should have read this. David should have gone back to this. And certainly Absalom should have known about this. They probably did, but they don't want to do it God's way. He wants to take revenge his way, because really, when you look at the story, Absalom's a master manipulator himself. And we don't have time to get into all of his manipulation. We'll do that at another date. But look at verse 23, and here's what actually happened. So we see what the law says. Let's see what actually happened here. Verse 23, and it came to pass after two full years that Absalom had sheep shearers in Baal Hazor, which is beside Ephraim, and Absalom invited all the king's sons. Verse 24, and Absalom came to the king and said, Behold now, thy servant hath sheep shearers. Let the king, I beseech thee, and his servants go with thy servant. And the king said to Absalom, nay, my son, let us not all now go, lest we be chargeable unto thee. And he pressed him, howbeit he would not go, but blessed him. Verse 26, then said Absalom, if not, I pray thee, let my brother Amnon go with us. And the king said unto him, why should he go with thee? So now David, he's got the right response. He's like, wait a minute, why would you want your brother Amnon? Maybe he's thinking within himself, have you really gotten over what happened to your sister? But David being the busy man that he is, allows this to happen. Verse 27, but Absalom pressed him, that he let Amnon and all the king's sons go with him. Verse 28, now Absalom had commanded his servants saying, mark ye now when Amnon's heart is merry with wine. And when I say unto you, smite Amnon, then kill him, fear not, have not I commanded you? Be courageous and be valiant. Verse 29, and the servants of Absalom did so, or did unto Amnon as Absalom had commanded. Then all the king's sons arose and every man got him up upon his mule and fled. Talk about manipulation. Absalom manipulated other people into murdering his own brother. Now the issue here is, okay, he deserved to die, the law says so. And the law of Leviticus was the law of the land during this time. But you know what? It was David that should have executed it. He's the king, he's the one with the authority here. Okay, not Absalom. And so you can see how he, and he didn't even do it himself. He had other people do it for him. And that's why I say, you know, Absalom is a master, master manipulator. Real quick, turn to Psalm 85, and we will be done. Psalm 85, we will be done. But gaslighters often make light of a serious situation. And that's exactly what Absalom's doing here, right? He tells Tamar, hey, don't worry about it, girl. He's your brother, just relax. And then David's kind of like thinking, well, this is kind of a serious thing. You want Amnon to go with you? And he's like, oh yes, don't worry about it. It's all good. And then what does he do? He winds up fulfilling his will, his duty, his plan. Does that through gaslighting. He is a manipulator, right? We need to watch out for that. When you have a serious concern, the goal of the gaslighter is to make you question your own sanity, just like in the movie. That's what Absalom did. No, you're crazy, Tamar. It's not that big of a, he's your brother. It's okay. When is rape okay? Never. It is not okay. It's a serious thing here. And here's what we need to do about this. You know, I'm just gonna read a verse for you out of Corinthians 13, which says this, verse six. Rejoice not in iniquity, but rejoice in the truth. No matter what the circumstances are, no matter how down and out that you're feeling, you can always rejoice in the truth. If Tamar would have pressed the issue, maybe, and went to God and just, you know, really made a bold stance to stick up for the law, to stick up for the truth, who knows? Maybe things would have been different, but she could at least rejoice in the truth. And that is always the application here. Right, just like the story. You're stuck, let's say you're stuck in a relationship, or you're stuck at work, you know, with a gaslighter. You got somebody in your own family trying to manipulate you. You can still find joy. You can still find happiness, but it's only going to be through the truth. Don't let somebody rob you of the truth, which should be your reality, which comes from the word of God, because when you do, you've given into the gaslighter and they will win, they will manipulate you, they will control you, they will have their way with you. Psalm 85, 10. Mercy and truth are met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other. You cannot remove righteousness and peace. You cannot do that, and it all stems from truth, all of it. So the idea here and the goal is to always be instant in season and out of season, to always stick up for the truth, no matter who turns against you, no matter who comes at us, no matter what they say, because you know what, there are people all over, and you know, especially in our day with social media and all of that stuff, it is very easy for people who you don't even really know to start to manipulate you and to start to make you question reality, make you question decisions that you've made, make you question choices that you made, which you got from basing off the Bible, which you've learned in church. And you need to pay attention, you need to be able to recognize these things because it's important. It can save your life, it could save your marriage, it can save your career, right? We don't want to be the people out there that are always having a bad testimony. And you know what, if we get a bad testimony by preaching the truth, then the Bible says, amen, rejoice. We don't sacrifice the truth just to make people happy. You see, that's where everybody gets it wrong. And remember this, gaslighting is an emotional abuse that makes you question reality. If you could just remember that. And remember the things that they do, right? It's not that hard. They move the goalposts, they move the expectation. They often accuse constantly, you're doing this, you're doing this, when in reality you need to understand, no, they're the ones that are doing this, they're the ones that are doing that, right? And oftentimes what do gaslighters do? They make light of serious situations. And you know, we have, I think it's a serious situation to force people to wear masks and to take vaccines, which are unclean, you know? Don't let anybody make light of that. Like I said, we need to pick and choose their battles. I'm not gonna fight the mask thing too hard. Now, if they just start coming in here and telling us that we have to in here, then I'm gonna fight it, okay? Because I don't believe in it. Show me the science that it works. And not that Fauci, false science either, right? I wanna see like the study here. That's what I wanna see, you know? That's what I wanna go to. But anyways, you get the point, right? Gaslighting is an emotional abuse. It's out there. It's not just the people that hate God that do it, right? There are people that are saved that have grown up and they've just had a rough life. And you know, they've just gotten by so long through manipulation and manipulating other people. It needs to be called out. It needs to be dealt with appropriately, okay? This is a very, very serious thing here. But praise God, we can get all the answers. You can learn how to do it. You know, somebody asks you to go one mile, you go with them too. Let your yay be yay, let your nay be nay, right? Whatever is more of that is evil. That's what Jesus said. Remember that, you know? Preach the truth. Always stick up for the truth no matter what anybody says. People start saying, oh, you're just overreacting. Oh, it's just a big deal. You know, I go through this at work a lot of times, you know, because I'm a military trained person. I highly believe in following training. I believe in following what is written. I believe in following processes. And when I see that not being done, it drives me nuts. It drives me nuts. It drives me nuts to be sent on a job with no drawings, no technical information, no nothing. And I bring this up and people are just like, don't worry about it. What do you mean don't worry about it? How else am I gonna figure this problem out? You know, it's just mind boggling to me. Oh, just try replacing this. It's like, no. I know that an engineer designed this system. I know their specifications. I know there are rules to follow. I know there's a process out there and all I'm asking for is for you to get that for me, but that's too hard for some people. And to bypass that and they'll just make light of that because they want me there because they want the money. That's an example that I have to go through on a weekly basis. All of us go through it, right? And the answer to that is to always stick up for the truth. Okay? And we just need to remember these things because look, it ain't getting any easier out there. Right? We need to make sure we're not getting gaslighted by other people. Okay, bow your heads, have a word of prayer. Thank you so much, Lord, again, for just providing so much safety through the wisdom found in your word. Just pray you'd protect us, Lord. Please help us to be, Lord, wise as serpents and harmless as doves, and to just go out and continuously get people saved and make disciples, Lord. And encourage people to follow you, Lord. Not what man says, but what you say in Jesus' name.