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Come unto me. I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Hear me and be blessed. I am meek and lowly. Come and trust my mind. Come, my yoke is easy, and my burdens lie. Are you disappointed, wandering here and there, dragging chains of doubt and loaded down with care? Do unholy feelings struggle in your breast? Bring your cakes to Jesus. He will give you rest. Come unto me. I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Hear me and be blessed. I am meek and lowly. Come and trust my mind. Come, my yoke is easy, and my burdens lie. Stumbling on the mountains, dark with sin and shame. Stumbling toward the pit of hell's consuming flame. By the powers of sin, deluded and oppressed. Hear the tender shepherd come to me and rest. Come unto me. I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Hear me and be blessed. I am meek and lowly. Come and trust my mind. Come, my yoke is easy, and my burdens lie. Have you by temptation often conquered Ben? Has a sense of weakness brought distress within? Christ will sanctify you if you'll claim his best. In the Holy Spirit, he will give you rest. Come unto me. I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Hear me and be blessed. I am meek and lowly. Come and trust my mind. Come, my yoke is easy, and my burdens lie. Follow along silently in your Bibles as we read the whole chapter before the sermon. Genesis chapter 49, the Bible reads, And Jacob called unto his sons and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days. Gather yourselves together and hear, ye sons of Jacob, and hearken unto Israel your father. Reuben, thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity and the excellency of power. Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel, because thou wentest up to thy father's bed. Then defileth thou it, he went up to my couch. Simeon and Levi are brethren. Instruments of cruelty are in their habitations. O my soul, come not thou into their secret, under their assembly, mine honor. Be not thou united, for in their anger they slew a man, and in their self-will they dig down a wall. Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce, and their wrath, for it was cruel. I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel. Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise. Thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies. Thy father's children shall bow down before thee. Judah is a lion's whelp from the prey. My son, thou art gone up. He stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion, who shall rouse him up. The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come, and unto him shall the gathering of the people be. Finding his foal under the vine, and his asses colt under the choice vine, he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes. His eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk. Zebulun shall dwell at the haven of the sea, and he shall be for an haven of ships, and his border shall be unto Zidane. Issachar is a strong ass couching down between two burdens, and he saw that rest was good, and the land that it was pleasant, and bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant of the tribute. Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent, by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse-heels, so that his rider shall fall backward. I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord. Gad a troop shall overcome him, but he shall overcome at the last. Out of Asher his bread shall be fat, and he shall yield royal dainties. Naphtali is a hind let loose, he giveth goodly words. Joseph is a fruitful bow, even a fruitful bow by a well, whose branches run over the wall. The archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him. But his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob. From thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel. Even by the God of thy father who shall help thee, and by the Almighty who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breasts and of the womb, the blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors under the utmost bound of the everlasting hills. They shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren. Benjamin shall raven as a wolf. In the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil. All these are the twelve tribes of Israel, and this is it that their father spake unto them, and blessed them, everyone according to his blessing he blessed them. And he charged them, and said unto them, I am to be gathered unto my people, bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite for a possession of a burying place. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife, there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and there I buried Leah. The purchase of the field and of the cave that is therein was from the children of Heth. And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people. Bless the man who found this place, and fulfilled his will, and blessed his best of our ability. Genesis chapter 49 is a really interesting chapter of the Bible, and what's interesting about chapter 49 is it has just so much content, so much instruction, a lot of prophecy. You could probably preach a whole series out of just this singular chapter, and since it's a Bible study this evening, and it's my goal to get through the entire chapter, we're not going to be able to cover everything in great detail, just because there's so much content here. But I do want to hit some of the more major points of this chapter. It says in verse number 1, it says, Now wouldn't that be nice if someone could just tell you everything that's going to happen to you? You know, just up front, this is what's going to happen to you guys. But, often really what's being described here is not necessarily what's going to happen to these individuals, but more so the tribe in general. It's really describing them and their generations after them, what's going to happen to them as a tribe, and kind of a group of people. And so it's a very interesting prophecy. It says in verse 2, Now that's an important instruction, harken unto your father, right? He says in verse 3, Now, what's interesting about Reuben, Reuben is the firstborn, and typically the firstborn is going to set the precedent for the remaining portion of the family. They're going to be the child of strength. They're going to be the good example. They're going to be the one that leads in the family name. Throughout history, when a king would have a son, his firstborn was going to be the one that sits on the throne that's going to carry forth that name. And so, being a firstborn child actually has significance, it's special, it's unique, and really Reuben had a great opportunity here to show forth the strength of Jacob, the strength of Israel, set forth a good example, and he did the exact opposite. Now, of course, being the firstborn, even though you have all this privilege, even though you have all this opportunity, you can still screw it up, and that's exactly what Reuben did, even though Reuben should essentially be the greatest of the children of Israel, even though he should have the most strength, he's going to end up being the worst of the tribes, essentially. You know, you can kind of argue, but essentially, he's just kind of disregarded and replaced because of this great sin that he did in lying with his father's concubine. Now, what's interesting about that sin, why would the firstborn be considered the strength? Why would it be considered the one that's going to probably be the most excellent? Well, if you think about it from just generally in time, the firstborn's going to get married first, right? Because they're older, they're more likely to get married first, start having children first, so just by a pure numbers perspective, the firstborn should have the most grandchildren, should grow the fastest, should have the biggest family, should be really the strength of that family. But instead of Reuben doing it the right way, he ends up committing a wicked form of fornication and really adultery by laying with his father's wife and completely ruined that opportunity to have that great big family, to end up doing things right, and he basically just ruins his entire life. Now, go back, if you went to Genesis 35, go back to Genesis 35, and what's interesting is many that are first are going to be last in the Bible, and many which are last are going to be first. Who is the last of the children of Israel? It's Benjamin. But when we read about the children of Israel entering into Egypt, Benjamin has 10 sons. Isn't that kind of interesting? He seems to have the biggest family tree already, even though he's significantly younger than Reuben and some of these other guys, and some of these other guys even have multiple wives, but we see that they're just not blessed from God. They're not bringing forth the family that God had desired for them. Why? Because he's committing a wicked type of fornication. He's doing that which is evil, and you know what? God blesses those that do things correctly. We see the children of Israel in the book of Exodus, they're going to multiply much greater than the Egyptians, even though they were very few when they started out. They're only 70 plus people, 75 people, but they end up being a great multitude, much more than the Egyptians. Why? Because they're blessed by God. We see that Benjamin, being blessed by God, ends up having more at that point in time, and we see Ephraim and Manasseh becoming two of the greatest tribes of the children of Israel, having significant numbers of people. Why? Because they had that blessing coming from Joseph, and so when you do things right, and you have the blessing of the Lord, you can become a great number and multitude when you're following God's commandments. But when you decide to try to get into the situation early, you know, you basically forsake the commandments of the Lord, you maybe commit fornication or do these wicked things, there can be severe consequences to these actions. Now in Genesis 35, this is where we read about what Reuben did. It says in verse 22, And it came to pass when Israel dwelt in that land, that Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father's concubine, and Israel heard it. Now the sons of Jacob were twelve. So according to the Bible, Reuben decides to just lie with his father's concubine, Bilhah, and of course Bilhah didn't even have great sons to start with. So in case round two with Reuben, it's not going to be a fruitful marriage, it's not going to be a blessed marriage, it's going to have a lot of problems, it's going to have a lot of issues, and because of this wicked sin, he ends up completely ruining his reputation, ruining the opportunity he had as the firstborn, and it's very similar to Esau, who basically just despised his birthright. He despised what God had given to him, and really fornication is just kind of despising your virginity. If you think about it, it's despising what God has blessed you with, what God has given you, and you're basically just throwing it away for some cheap thrill, like we see Reuben doing, and when you throw away that which is precious, which God has given you for cheap thrills, often you're going to reap what you sow. And that reaping can be very severe consequences. God killed people for fornication, God replaces people because of fornication, which is evident by Reuben, is evident by Esau, and fornication is a very wicked sin that our society as a whole has no problem with. I mean, America believes that fornication is literally fine as long as you love each other, but isn't it funny that these fornicators never seem to love each other, because they just always break up and then go lay with someone else, don't they? And in fact, statistically proven that if you commit fornication or you live with someone before you actually get married, you're more likely for divorce. So how is that even love? These people don't even know what love is. Love is choosing to do good unto people when they don't do good back to you. And what does that have to do with fornication? Fornication is a selfish act, it's just a cheap thrill, and it's never going to be satisfying, you're never going to be fully satisfied with it, you're only going to want more and more, that's why fornicators fornicate even more and more, and once you've opened the floodgate, it just gets even worse. I mean, we see Solomon not satisfied with a thousand women. I mean, if you can't be satisfied with a thousand, it doesn't matter the number. And it's because there's no satisfaction in sin. Sin will never satisfy you, fornication will never satisfy you. All you do is just reap consequences. All you do is just reap all kinds of evil and problems in the future, and you know, when we look at the children of Israel, you know, maybe they're all saved. You know, I can believe that, I can't say for certain, I would lean towards the fact that they're all saved, but just because you're saved doesn't mean that God is not going to punish you for your sins. In fact, you're more likely to get punished for your sins when you're saved than when you're unsaved in this life. In this life, we see the children of God getting severely punished, and in fact, when you read the law, God is telling them, hey, I'm giving you a blessing, but I'm also giving you a cursing. Hey, when you follow my commandments, you're going to be super blessed, but when you break them, I'm going to punish you worse than the heathen. I mean, you're going to be punished so bad, the heathen are going to look at you and laugh and scorn and say, wow, they must have turned away from their God. They must have really done bad to their God. And so it's important to follow God's commandments at an early age, at a young age, to teach your children to follow God's commandments at a young age, and not take things for granted, not allow yourself to ruin your entire life and your youth. So many people are literally ruining their lives and their youth today. They're getting hooked on drugs, they're having bastard children, they're hooking up with strangers that they don't know, they will never see again, that are only going to do them wrong, and I know so many people, even in my own personal life, that have literally permanently ruined their lives. Permanent consequences, horrible sin, horrible actions, that really, they say, what do I do now? And it's like, you're doomed. Like, I don't even know what to tell you. You're 17 and doomed. And what a horrible thing to be so young, to have so much life in you, and have to just reap constant consequences from your actions. It's something that we have to constantly drill into our children, and to teach our children, look children, it's not worth it, do it the way that God said, and you will be blessed in the latter end. Whereas if you go for the cheap thrill, you know what, you may not even enjoy the cheap thrill, it may not even be what it was cracked up to be, and you're going to have a lifetime of consequences, pain, and suffering, and you're going to think, man, was I an idiot for not listening to the Bible? Man, did I despise the Lord's commandments. Man, am I just such a fool, and so ignorant, I wish I just paid attention to what the preacher was saying, because let me tell you something, children, all the grown-ups in this room are saying amen because they know. You don't know. As a teenager, as a young adult, you are literally stupid, okay? And I say that from experience, alright? You don't know anything. But the problem is you think you know everything. You really think that you're like the smartest person in your family at 14. You know, at 15, you think you've already figured it all out, you're smarter than your parents, why? Because you can do some kind of Snapchat better than them or something, right? Because you figured out how to do a coloring app or something. Because you think you know technology, you think you have wisdom in this world, but let me tell you something, there's a lot of lies and deception out there. And your parents know better than you, your parents are wiser than you in so many areas of your life, and you need to listen to your parents and hearken unto your parents, just like he's commanding them now. But you know what? Reuben should have hearkened a long time ago. Go back to Genesis chapter 49, go back to Genesis chapter 49. And the Bible says he's unstable as water. If you think about water, water really has no boundary. Water is just basically going to succumb to the boundaries that is put around it. So you put it in a glass, it's going to basically be subject to the glass. But you know what? If it can spill out of that glass, it's just going to basically just meander to the lowest common denominator. The lowest of lows that it can possibly fall to, the smallest crack and crevice that it's going to creep into, that's where it's going to go. And that's what Reuben was like. It's someone that's unprincipled, someone that has no boundaries in their life, no basic self-awareness, no self-discipline, no purpose. He's like water in the sense that wherever he can possibly fall, he's going to fall. Whatever crack he can slip into, he's going to slip into. And you know what? This is a bad character attribute where you do not have rules for yourself. If you let every single person in your life tell you what to do, but you never make up rules for yourself, you're like Reuben, you're unstable as water. You know what? Men and women need to have rules for themselves, they need to make discipline for themselves, they need to say, you know what, I'm not going to go here, I'm not going to do this, this is where I'm going to go, these are the things that I'm going to do. Having lists, having goals, having boundaries, defining for yourself how you're going to live your life so that you're not so unstable like Reuben where you just find yourself in some crack and you can't get out of it. And you say, well how did I get in this crack? It's because you didn't have any rules for yourself. It's because you didn't have any boundaries for yourself, and you know what, it's not godly to not have rules. It's not coo- like, oh Jesus came to die on the cross so he could be free. What does that mean? Yeah, you're free from the shackles of sin, that's what that means. Meaning that you don't have to follow sin anymore, but you know how you don't follow sin? You make up rules for yourself. You say, hey I'm not going to lie anymore, hey I'm not going to steal anymore, hey I'm not going to go to the bar anymore, and be a slave to the bottle anymore, I'm not going to be a slave to liquor anymore, I'm not going to find myself in some crack in some bar somewhere, literally on crack cocaine, I'm not going to go slip into the toilet at the bar where it's so disgusting and filthy and bombing out my guts anymore, and be a slave to that, no I'm free in Christ realizing that if I put a boundary in my life saying I'm not going to the bar, I'll be free! And you know what, we should be free people today, but you know why we're not free? Because we don't make rules for ourselves. When you don't have rules, when you don't have principles, when you don't have anything guiding you, you're just like water, and you're going to allow other people to control you. You're going to let other people put boundaries around you. Why? Because they don't want you to get your wetness on them. They don't want you to come and mess them up and destroy them. So they're going to create boundaries to try and keep you off. This is the law of America. They're just trying to keep you off of them, so they have a little bit of boundary. But you know what, that's not a boundary of how to know if you're good or not. That's not a boundary of know if you're righteous or not. The laws of America are wicked. The boundaries of America are not tight like they should be. The Word of God, it should be our boundaries. It should be our vessel that keeps us safe and protects us, and we need to make that our vessel to live in, not like Reuben who's just flowing wherever. Just any friend, hey, you want to go do this? Yeah, no problem. I don't have a problem with that. Hey, Donald Trump, what do you think about Caitlyn Jenner using any bathroom that she wants? Oh, I have no problem with that. But you're unstable as water, buddy. You just flow anywhere. That's every politician. Every politician is just so unstable as water, just whatever their constituents say, oh, yeah, I got that. Yeah, I'll do that. Yeah, no problem. But they don't mean anything. They have no principles. They have no convictions. And you know what, we don't want to be like that. Step Past Baptist Church is supposed to be unmovable. What's the opposite? It's a rock. A rock is filled with boundaries. In fact, all of it, it's just boundaries. Just every edge and corner is a boundary. And you know what, a huge rock is not going to be moved easily. And that's what we're supposed to look like. That's what we're supposed to build our house on, is the rock of God's Word, something that's not moving, something that's not changing. Why? Because we've attached ourselves to God's Word. And you know what? God's Word doesn't change. I know that our world is getting filthier and more disgusting and more dark every single second, but the light of the King James Bible doesn't change. The only thing that changes is weak men who are like Reuben, who just basically are unstable as water, and they just flow in any crack that the world tells them to flow in. Hey, flow into the LGBTQ community crack? Oh, yeah, I got that. Whereas I set up a boundary and say, hey, I'm not going down that road. I'm not going to be around that. I'm not going to tolerate that filth and that smut and that abomination. You know, I don't want to have certain cracks that my children fall into either. So you know what I'm not going to do? I'm not going to let my daughters go on dates with men where they're not chaperoned. So they don't fall into some crack that they shouldn't be in. And let me tell you something. I don't care how godly you think your daughter is or how godly you think that son is. Never leave them alone. Ever. There's no reason to. You're stupid, really, if you think that you can leave a man that's attracted to a woman alone together and there's not going to be problems. I mean, you're basically denying all reality, all facts, all statistics and your own personal experience, because I guarantee if we asked you about your college days, we would all figure out what really goes on, wouldn't we? You know, we all know what happens. We all know what people are like. We all know what human nature is like. Have you read the Bible? I mean, if there's one sin that every man of God has, it's virtually that. I mean, I guess Daniel, because he had his nuts chopped off, I mean, that's literally, I mean, if you want to basically find a guy that doesn't struggle in that area, there's a real big reason why. But I guarantee your children aren't eunuchs, so I guess there's a reason for you to actually protect them from their human nature. And I'm telling you this because for some reason, people don't get it. You can get up and you can scream and yell and they're like, yeah, but my kid's different. No, they're not. Not at all. Every person is the same. I mean, look, if David's that way, if Solomon's that way, I mean, really? You think your child's more righteous and godly than the shepherd boy David, who was, you know, wrote a bunch of Psalms, is like an expert Psalmist, is expert in the Bible, is a great warrior, but you know what, he has that problem. Oh, but my son doesn't have that problem. My daughter, you know, wouldn't have that problem. You know, my daughter's not like Dinah. Look, yes she is, okay? Sorry. You know, she's going to find her sheikim, the son of Hamor, and she's going to be like, I like him. You know, he's pretty good looking. And we're going to read about it. Look what it says in verse five. Now, I can understand. You know, if someone did something to my daughter, I would want to kill them, literally. Okay? But obviously you're not supposed to, okay? And I wouldn't on the record. I'm just saying, you know, on video publicly, I didn't do it. Alright? But boy, that would be a temptation, wouldn't it? Especially if he treated her like a whore. Especially if he treated her like trash. You know, and really, you have to blame yourself a little bit, though. Why'd you even let her go out? Why'd you even let her run around with that guy? But you know, Levi and Simeon, it was okay for them to be angry. It was okay for them to say, hey, should he treat our sister like a harlot? Because they shouldn't. You know, that was a wicked thing. It was evil what they did. Even though they loved, I mean, sheikim, the son of Hamor, loved her. That's what the Bible said. So, you know, it's not like he was really trying to be super dishonorable. The Bible even says he was a pretty honorable guy, but it was still a wicked sin. It was still wrong. It was still evil. His brethren were justifiably angry. But you know, the Bible says, be angry and sin not. And people are going to do you wrong. People are going to make you mad. People are going to make you angry. And we're supposed to control that anger. We're supposed to allow the Lord to avenge us. And we're supposed to move on. And, you know, as God's people, we're supposed to be seeking for peace in all circumstances. As much as life in you. Live peaceably with all men. There does come boundaries where, yeah, even God's people need to call to arms. You know, buy a sword, protect your home, not allow criminals to attack your family. But just because someone rips you off doesn't give you the right to go and kill them. You know, just because someone takes advantage of your child doesn't mean you can kill them or do evil unto them. You know, they should have had another remedy. And because of their sin. I mean, here's the thing. It's not that Shechem didn't do wrong. He sinned, a grievous sin. And God at points in the Bible killed people for fornication. But you know what he didn't do? He didn't say, hey, Simeon, Levi, you kill them. He didn't ordain them to kill them for fornication. And they took the law into their own hands. And when you take the law into your own hands, God's going to judge you too. And their punishment is very severe as well. He says that he's going to separate them. And of course, that's exactly what we see with Levi. If you think about Levi, he gets no inheritance whatsoever. And he's literally scattered into all of the tribes of Israel. So he's literally just scattered everywhere. Doesn't get any inheritance. You know, interesting that that has to do with their sin. And what's really interesting is God uses people's real sin, real life, to illustrate spiritual truths that are going to follow them for decades, years, centuries. For literal centuries, the sin of the Father is going to carry forth in that tribe. And let me tell you something. The sins of a father can carry forth from generation to generation to generation to generation. Alcoholism, being a whoremonger, being a deadbeat dad, being lazy, whatever it is that your parents have struggled with, oftentimes you can also struggle with the exact same issue. You can become the exact same person. And so that's why it's important to not just fall victim and be water in this world, but rather rebuild yourself on the rock of Jesus Christ and be different. Not always following in the steps of your father. But we see the wicked doing this. We see the evil doing this. The Rothschilds, you know, I mean, following in father's footsteps, right? Don't we see all kinds of people following in their... The Bidens? I mean, it doesn't seem like Hunter's fallen too far from the apple tree on that one. From the cocaine tree. I mean, I don't know if it, you know, obviously it doesn't grow on trees, okay, but I'm sure Hunter thinks if it did, he would climb trees for tomorrow. But there's a point to this in the sense that we have to be careful of the decisions we make because it doesn't always only affect us. You know, with Reuben, it's like, oh, well, I don't want to screw up so that my life isn't screwed up. How about don't screw up so your children's lives aren't screwed up too? So you don't ruin your entire family and ruin your entire grandchildren and your entire, just anybody that knows you. That's why it's important to do that which is right and to always fear God, not just for your sake, for your family's sake. Think about Achan. Achan and his whole family were destroyed because of his sin. You know, and we see often in the Bible children suffering the consequences and the ramifications of the sin of a father. And I'll tell you, you know, when I thought about how I acted in my youth, I thought, man, I don't want my children to do that at all. I don't want my children to make the same mistakes as me. And so I realized I have to make changes in my life so that my children have an opportunity to not make the same mistakes that I did. But I knew that I had to be better. I had to fix and right some of my wrongs. I had to choose to do things differently. I had to make church a real priority. I have to actually sit down and teach my children the Word of God and read to them the Bible and help them memorize Scripture and help enforce to them why you follow God's commandments, why they're so important. To protect them from making just bad decisions on their own, not just kicking them out when they turn 18 and saying, Good luck, buddy. Go build a nest somewhere. Just, you know, don't do anything too bad. You know, I'm not going to kick my kids out and say, Have fun, Rum Shringa. You know? No. You know, it makes sense for your daughter to go from your house to her husband's house. It makes sense for your sons to go from your house to their wife's house. You know, it makes sense to not have this weird, awkward roommate phase to go out and just have one purse with the men of this world, the men of the city, and to just get in all kinds of problems, get in all kinds of issues. You know, one of the worst decisions I believe I ever made in my life is just going to college. And of course, what is the, like, the biggest propaganda in school today? Going to college. I mean, when you get, you're five years old and you're in school, they're already telling you, you don't want to make that decision because how are you going to get to college? How are you going to pay for college? You know, you don't want to make bad grades. What about college? I mean, they're just pumping college at the elementary school, at the junior high, at high school. You can get college credits in high school. I mean, it's just about college, college, college, college, college. And it's like you get into college and it's like, this is a joke. And now they're offering so many fake degrees today that they call college. It's just people are just ruining their lives for the future by going to college. And you say, how are they ruining their future? They're going to get a job. Well, who cares what job you have when you have herpes with it? Who cares what kind of job you have, what kind of money you're making when you have to pay alimony for the rest of your life. You have to pay child support for all the bastard children that you had. You know, or just all the hurt and the heartache and the problems, all the drug addiction, all the just wicked sin that people get into. People aren't drawing close to the Lord in their college years. Typically, they're not getting any wiser. They're really not even learning anything. Let's let's face it. I mean, people that went to, I went to college, I graduated, I got a four year degree. And you want to know how many of those those classes I took, I'm really putting into practice today? Virtually none. OK. And in fact, what I you know, I'm not I'm not proud of this, but I'll just be honest that most of our classes, everyone just cheated because it was so easy. I mean, one of our professors, it was an online class and she would send the entire test out with the answers before the test. For you to study, and then she would say, please don't use this while you take the test. The curve on the first test was 97. It was a 97 average. And she said, I think some people might have cheated. And I was like, some people are stupid. Whoever didn't get 100. What in the world? I mean, that's college for you. You know what? That is reminiscent of the real world because you look at the bankers and you look at Wall Street and all they do is cheat anyways. All the politicians and all the corporations and everything, all they do is they learn how to cheat and to steal and to fraud people and rip people off and take advantage of people. Welcome to the business world. You know, I'd rather learn a skill and actually have a skilled position and actually put in hard work and hard labor and go home and actually feel good about myself, rather than just learning how to rip people off and white collar criminal college that's basically promoted by the world. And go work for Pepsi or go work for Coke or something like that and make a bunch of advertisements that have nothing to do with a product and everything to do with an agenda. Why would I want to even do that? Business, you know, marketing. They don't even do it anymore. It's not even real anymore. I went to school and learned how banking works. And then I went and worked at a bank and none of it applied. Because all they do is they make money on overdraft fees. And it was like they didn't even tell us anything about that. They were telling me about, you know, loan reserve ratios. And then you look at your loan reserve ratios and you're like, oh, wow, we should go bankrupt tomorrow. And it's like, you know, none of these things even make any sense. And then it's like, oh, well, they get bailed out by the federal government. And then they pay the federal government lobbyists a whole bunch of money and then, you know, they line everybody's pockets and then they just repo possession. It's just like, oh, wow, this is banking? Wow, this is a cool world that we live in. Look at what it says in verse number eight. I could preach on that all night, right? Now this is a pretty cool prophecy because most of them are really negative. This one's like positive, okay? But you've got to think about the context. You know, we haven't even gone through the bad parts of the Book of Exodus yet. It's just like they're in Egypt and it's going well. It's about to get really horrible for 400 years. Then they're going to leave the Egypt. They're going to go into the wilderness for another 40 years. Then they're going to inherit the Promised Land. Then they're going to kind of basically take over all these nations. And then a lot of these prophecies are going to be fulfilled. But think about the accuracy of the Word of God that Jacob is literally prophesying what's going to happen hundreds and hundreds of years from now. And then it happens exactly like him, right? I mean, we find out Reuben just sucks. And then we figured out, you know, Simeon and Levi, they're scattered exactly like the Bible said. Then he's telling, hey, I want to let you know exactly where the Messiah is going to come from, Judah. I mean, that's a pretty epic prophecy when you think about it, when you think about what's being said. And, you know, we don't have to look in the Bible and kind of excuse things that didn't really happen. It's like, well, it says Judah here, but it didn't really happen in Judah. It was like Issachar or something. You know, the Bible just has this perfectly consistent narrative that's woven through every single chapter, every single line. And often we have the benefit of hindsight, so we kind of take these things for granted. But think about the fulfillment of these verses. Think about hearing for just hundreds of years, like Judah is where he's going to come, Judah is going to come. And then it literally happens. It's going to be like epic. It's kind of, it's incredible that it's exactly like God said, and that God can tell you beforehand what he's going to do, and then it happens too. Because often if you kind of tell somebody like, hey, tomorrow I'm going to jump out from behind this, you know, couch and surprise you, and you're going to be like, whoa! You know, if I tell you that, you might not be surprised when I actually do it, because I kind of spoiled the surprise. But God literally tells us everything is going to happen, and then it happens exactly like that. He tells the devil, like, you're going to do this and you're going to fail, and the devil's still going to do it, and he's still going to fail. Right? I mean, everything that God says comes to pass exactly like the Bible says, and this is a consistent theme where it says that the scepter is not going to depart from him. It said in verse number 10, it says, the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet. Now go here to 1 Kings chapter 2. 1 Kings chapter number 2. Some of these prophecies, when you think about them, are very incredible, because of how difficult it would be to fulfill if you were just trying to fulfill it humanly speaking. Because what he's saying is he's saying once a king is risen up in Judah, it's never going to stop until Shiloh. Now, in Israel, it does stop. Every other nation that has ever been recorded in history has had a ceasing of their kingdom. You know, we don't have the literal Babylonian kingdom anymore. We only have a spiritual Babylonian kingdom, okay? We don't have a literal Roman empire anymore. There is no more Caesar. There is no more Pharaoh. There is no more Attila the Hutt, you know, or whatever. There is no more King Edward or King whatever. I mean, all the oligarchies, all the kingdoms, all the rulers have ceased at some point in time, and many of them didn't even last very long. Only some of them were dynasties. Only some of them have lasted for a long period of time. The Bible is literally saying, hey, the kingdom of Judah is going to have a king on it all the way until Shiloh. Exactly like the Bible says. 1 Kings 2, look at verse 45. And King Solomon shall be blessed, and the throne of David shall be established before the Lord forever. So he's saying, hey, the throne of David is going to be established forever. Go to chapter 9, just flip a few pages, 1 Kings chapter 9, and look at verse number 5. The Bible says, then I will establish the throne of thy kingdom upon Israel forever, as I promised to David thy father, saying, There shall not fail thee a man upon the throne of Israel. Now David is from what tribe? Judah. And we know once David comes into the kingdom, David becomes the king of Judah. It does not depart all the way up until Jesus Christ comes. And then what happens after Jesus Christ comes and they reject him? Oh yeah, in 70 AD the Jews are wiped out and there's no longer any king on the throne of Judah ever again. There hasn't been the kingdom of Judah. It's now Israel again, right? The northern rebellious kingdom. We don't have the kingdom of Judah. How could anybody even claim to believe in the Old Testament and not believe in the New Testament fulfillment of Christ? Because without the fulfillment of Christ, you literally have broken that prophecy. If you say, hey, well Jesus wasn't the Messiah, Jesus wasn't the Shiloh to come, then okay, well where's your king in Judah? And we understand there was a slight period of where there was a break, where essentially they were subdued by the Babylonians for 70 years, but they came back. But you know what? Zebulun was the right guy. Or Zechariah. When we read in the Bible, when we read about the kings of Judah, they re-establish the throne, we read about how the kingdom of David is continuing. And then of course, Jesus Christ is of what lineage? The king of David. He's the son of David. On both his mother and his father's side. He's from that lineage. But if the Jews have been destroyed and they have no king, especially from Judah, how could you even believe these prophecies in the Bible you couldn't? The only fulfillment could have been in Jesus Christ. Go to Isaiah chapter 9. Go to Isaiah chapter number 9. Now of course, once Shiloh comes, Christ is in heaven, and the re-establishment of the kingdom of David is not going to happen until the millennial reign of Christ. But when it happens, it's never going to end. And so when God made promises, you know, some people get confused, they'll say, oh well God promised that the king, you know, Israel would last forever and be a nation forever, and so that's why we believe in 1948's fulfillment of prophecy. But wait a minute, did they re-establish the king of Judah in 1948? Number one, no. Number two, did they believe in Jesus? No. Did Jesus return? Number three, no. Because the only rightful king of Israel is Jesus. That is the only person that can be. Is the Lord Jesus Christ returning and setting up his kingdom, and once he set it up, it's forever. Verse 6 of the Bible says, For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. And peace there shall be no end upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom, to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth, even forever, the seal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. So, we know there's a child coming, there's a prophecy of a coming Messiah, he comes from Judah, and we know that's going to be the Lord Jesus Christ, and how long is he going to rule? Forever. And what's another word for ruler? Father. That's why it's called the Everlasting Father, because of his government, it's never going to end, it's never going to cease. Now, there's other things that the Bible's mentioning about this particular lion. The lion of the tribe of Judah, who is this? It's Jesus.