Dull Hebrews 5:6-14

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another splendid edition of Wednesday Night Live. This is Ron Crawford coming to you on this first day of July. Wow. We're at the midpoint of the year and the beginning of our seventh month, which is, of course, a fast of feasting month. I wanted to announce a bit of an adjustment to our schedule here at the church for this July 4 holiday weekend.

And for those of you who are part of this Father's Church congregation and you actually attend here every week, you've already received information concerning this, but this is a reiteration, and it's also perhaps a notification to everybody who listens from afar even though you're near in our hearts. I've asked our congregation here to offer a fast, a water only fast, from noon, Dallas time, on Friday, July 3 through noon on July 4. And in addition to Dawn sackcloth or a black colored clothing. Of course, you don't have to wear it at night. Don't run out and buy black p j's.

It's dark. Nobody will know whether you're wearing black or not anyway. But I feel like this is something that we need to offer to the Lord on behalf of our country and on behalf of our placement here in this terrio so that light in the way that God intends for it to shine forth through us will be acceptable to him. And I wasn't just looking for something to do. I don't ever call a fast just because, oh, we need to have one.

That's more a a regimen rather than a prophetic directive. So if you would like to join us in that, that's perfectly fine. We'd love that. But that's something that I felt for this particular location we needed to do. And, of course, July 4 is for Saturday.

Monica faithfully sent out the directive yesterday, and it's more of a of a point of giving thanks to the Lord and surrendering issues that might occlude his, his voice, surrendering bitterness, all the topics of for, fast of feasting principle. And so if you I know for those of you who are joining us in other other lands, that's just a regular day. Of course, I don't know in France. They may also have a holiday on that day. I would think they should have a holiday on July 5 because that's when they and The United States really pronounced a wallop on the British Empire.

So the French should be very proud of that. But and we're very grateful for the for the help. And we're now grateful for our our friends in The UK. That's another topic in in itself. So first Saturday will be going on.

I I hope our people it's a it is a holiday, the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of our country. And I know people have things that are planned for that day, but if if you would would like to, join us in that fast from the third to the fourth and certainly honor in whatever way the lord lays upon you the first Saturday commissioning, that would be great. Now those of you who tune in to our livestream, and we're very thankful for you. On Sunday, we're doing things very much differently. We are going to meet at 9AM in our sanctuary.

It'll be kind of a merging of the wisdom seekers class and our and our morning service. And at that point, we will be releasing some significant questions that we want to submit before the Lord for his direction. And then we'll be engaging in prayer for probably thirty minutes, and then we'll be sharing those words. Now here's what we're going to do. We'll livestream the opening from 09:00.

We will post the questions on that morning, that we will be considering. You can join us in prayer at that time. But here's what we're not going to do. We're not gonna keep the cameras running during our prayer time. I I don't like that.

I I know we've done variations of that in the past, but our livestream particularly goes out all over the world. And to me, Jesus said, do your prayer in the closet. And I just don't wanna I just don't wanna have our cameras live during that time. And I hope you understand that. But when we gather to submit our insights, we're not gonna broadcast that either because I can't give you a time for that.

And plus, it's kind of problematic to have people speaking and having to run the mic over to them, and I am imagining there's gonna be some long discussions. Now if you are praying on that day, and we we would love that if you did. If you have insights, you can type them up and send them to us. And I think I I haven't discussed this with anybody, but you could either send it to just send it to the to the Father's Church website. I don't wanna oblige anybody else.

So that's what we're going to do. So Sunday is going to be a day of prayer, which I think would be another necessary thing for our country and for our mission going forward. So 09:00 if you want to tune in, there'll be a posted document there that you can contemplate on your own. It's not going to be a very long opening, but we'll go to prayer and then we'll deliberate here. You know, every now and then, see, that's the difficulty that we have.

It's a good difficulty. But this is also a church. And we also have obligations to this body. And with respect to those of you who were part of this body in a long distance away, I hope you understand why I'm putting these restrictions on what we're broadcasting on Sunday. But we at sometimes, just to have have to have an address for the people who are actually here present just like you do wherever you are.

So, and then, that will be our our morning service. We're gearing up for the trip to Manaus, which is gonna be, I think it's three weeks a little over three weeks from now. We're doing a lot of work trying to coordinate the the people down there, And I I really want to express my appreciation to our brother Yuvali Garcia, who has been exemplary in representing the Saints Network and communicating with all of these different touch points of people and churches. So God bless you, Yuvali. And we'll be you'll be hearing more about this trip as the weeks go on.

And then in September, we've got the big celebration here for our fiftieth Dallas seminar. And I've listed them out. I know some of you've been trying to figure it out yourself and quibbling about it, but it really does boil down to 50 and you'll see my rationale. And it really doesn't matter because we're going to honor the fiftieth anyway, so that's it. I spent several hours, last week tabulating trips and journeys and significant moments, not all of them, but some significant moments in the Saints Network over that time from 2002 to now.

And it really took me a long time because there's so many of them. I think that you guys who are going to hear and look at the synopsis of what God has entrusted us to do over the years are going to be quite surprised. I was. It took me a long time to list them all. But we give thanks to the Lord, and I know that it's gonna be a terrific time.

So if you've not made plans to travel, to join us, please consider that. We would love for you to be here. And I think that I don't know when the seminar brochure will be released, But if you don't know the dates by now, I think they're posted on the website already. And no matter how many times we say these are the dates, we put it on the brochure from the previous one. We put it on the walls of the seminar.

We have had it up on the website. There's still, as we say in the South, bless their heart. People just always say, When is this? When is this? So, you know, one of the things I did see was that we had a couple of seminars the first week in October, and that kind of interesting.

Until we got into our routine, we had some trips in September in those early days. So it's pretty much middle of the month September, middle of the month March. So that's that's really all I've got. The Hagiaw's platform is continuing. Next week, I'll be recording a second part of Grace and Supplication, and then from there through seminar, I think we're gonna have about nine nine more new topics by the end of seminar, and hopefully some of them in the languages of Europe, French and Spanish and Portuguese.

So we'll see. God is good. Busy times, and we speak blessing over you and over this country here, The United States, that is really needing a visitation from the spirit of the Lord. Today, I want us to direct our topic, pursuit, to the book of Hebrews. Hebrews chapter five.

And we are going to begin reading at verse eight, and we're gonna talk about some things that we never taught on before. So get your pencils ready kids, because here we go. Hebrews five verse eight. Though Jesus was a son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.

Called of God, a high priest after the order of Melchizedek, of whom we have many things to say and hard to be uttered, seeing you are dull of hearing. Now I want to pause here. This is not our main topic, but I want to pause this. And the scriptures continue along this vein. Sometimes people say, oh, this is just too hard for me.

You know, pastor, know, I can't keep up. And and I I kinda get a little flustered at that because everything that we learn in the word has been inspired by the Holy Spirit. And it's just as appropriate from you for you than any of the stem winder verses that you love or the ones you have underlined in your Bible. It's all the word of God. It is all God's divine scripture.

And so when we say, I can't or don't I don't get it, what does that say about God's holy word to you? I think that from my perspective, just about everything that God reveals to us that we teach, sometimes there are zingers that come out of the blue, but we can always tie them back in to previous understandings. But it is a line upon line. And some of the I think there are perhaps three main reasons that people become flummoxed and they they don't they don't feel they can understand. Number one, it's your natural mind and you have to you have to put that under submission.

Number two, maybe you're not praying. Because remember, when you pray in the spirit, your spirit is breathing, and it is inspiring passion and understanding of the word. So we have to we have to maintain levels of praying in the spirit personally. And thirdly then is that we don't really solidify and make sure we know what has already been taught. It's kind of like the kid that comes in after he's memorized or supposedly memorized the multiplication tables, and then you go into a higher and a more advanced measure of math and they've forgotten or they didn't memorize those tables.

Well then they're they're in trouble. I mean, when I was younger, we didn't have cell phones or computers or the Internet or any of those things. We had flashcards, and we had to drill these tables into our memory, and it serves us. But that became the framework for every other measure of mathematical study that we did. And I think in similar ways, if you aren't cherishing the things that God has said and the way that he's taught, it really is level upon level.

And when God brings something new and you haven't been faithful in your homework or you haven't been faithful in prayer or you just gave up a long time ago, you're you're gonna say it's too hard. Sometimes it hits you and it stuns you because the entrance of the word shines light, and you have to adjust to it. But that doesn't mean it's too much. Now where do I go going from with this? In verse 11, what we just read, when when you say somebody is dull of hearing, man, I did a study of that term dull.

And it it's referenced in other places even from Jesus. This this word in the koine of the land was an insult. I mean, this is not some little panacea. Oh, you know, I know it's hard, but, you know, you'll understand it better. Bye bye.

He's talking about the Lord, and he's talking about Melchizedek. Now Melchizedek focused on having dominion in Salem. He focused on righteous vision. And how did he address Abraham? Possessor of heaven and earth.

The the one that was partnering with God in the jealousy of God for heaven and earth. This wasn't just standing there in some priestly garb. This was functionality for the kingdom. And this writer from the scripture says, and I say this writer because it many think it was Paul. Many think it was Apollos.

But it it's anointed and it is included in the scriptural canon and I believe worthily so. And I and I understand we we had to do several weeks of study on this in Greek class, analyzing the way Paul normally said things or those who were writing, dictating what he was saying and some of the things that are very different here. And I'm not gonna I'm not gonna bore you with this. I already have. But there are some things that I say, and I'm just using me as an example.

There's some things that I say where I kind of dumb down what I'm saying, and then there are some things that I just let it loose even though I'm not uber intelligent. I can speak technically. This is a more combination of a poetic technical type of thing. And so the argument for Paul writing this is that he addressed it to the Hebrews, and that was a term that was used to to speak the diaspora, the the the ones that were throughout wherever people of Jewish lit lineage were were located. And so he wasn't going to be talking in a more ineloquent fashion.

He recognized that there were gonna people there that were reading this that were no dummies. And so he could have adjusted the way he wrote to compensate for that under the direction of the spirit. That's neither here nor there for this discussion. My point here is that this term, hard to be uttered, that that means that the hermeneia, the the the doctrine of understanding, took some application to explain it. It it had many parts.

It had it had a synergy of many different themes coming together. And this is what a pneumatikos discussion really has to have. It's it when we first started traveling, was difficult for me to to speak the things that we were living because I knew we had to start from scratch. I didn't ridicule the people for that, but it was hard for me because I didn't want to leave the cutting edge dimension of what God had been releasing to us. And so trying to explain even the most simple topics.

Several weeks ago, I was trying to teach on the seven spirits, and it was a good teaching. We were able to put literature into the hands of the people. They were receiving it. But I thought, oh my goodness. They're wanting me in two hours to teach on the seven spirits.

So you had to go back through a lot of different doctrinal points, and it was a bringing together factors of the hermeneia or the the doctrine. That's a term in the Bible. The doctrinal pursuit. And he's saying that to really describe what Jesus did and how he became functional in the order of Melchizedek and what that really meant involved many different avenues of doctrinal understanding. And, so he says right off the top that it it is is hard to utter.

And that's the same type of thing that's that's spoken about when Paul went to paradise or when he was talking about the groanings that emanate by the spirit from within us. It's it's difficult from many levels to explain exactly what it means. It's not just thus saith the Lord, which is kind of the trumpet call of the righteous in some places or the unrighteous maybe. But then he says this hard hard to be uttered, and then he says, seeing you are dull of hearing. I could use the s word here.

I don't know if that's still verboten in some households, but that's what it meant. So he wasn't kid gloving, make it simple. I mean he's just telling him, this this is this is very deep in the spirit. It's what Jesus did. This is what the order of Melchizedek meant.

This is how it functions. So then he continues on from there. Verse 12. When for the time you ought to be teachers, which are those who would proclaim the hermeneuta, you have need that one teach you again, which be the first principles of the oracles of God. Wow.

We're gonna talk about that. You become as such one having strong need of milk and not of strong meat. Everyone that uses milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness. For he's a baby. Strong meat belongs to them that are of a full age, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

And then he goes into this. It's the same context. So we must leave the principles of the doctrine of Christ and go on under perfection. And then he lists these things that are foundational, but foundation from the standpoint of unwavering, but something you build upon and launch from. So let's say what unskillful means in verse 13.

We've talked about this in the past. This is and it goes I learned about this by being in France because they they will say, Aperol? Or at least one of our friends there in Switzerland would say, which meant you want to have something to begin. We have an aperitif, which is like an appetizer, which is where we get, you know, the app launches into appetizer. And it was supposed to be a beginning point that led to something more.

So anybody that just likes the simple and the milk is unskillful. They like having the beginnings, but they don't want to go further. There's a lot of people like that. I used to be that way. General church is still that way.

And before you say, oh, here you go on the general church again. Well, least I'm not calling them dull of hearing like the scripture does. Maybe I should just quote that first to them. But you are not that way. So I want to touch on this verse 12.

The archaic the first principles. The archaic there's archaic. So that's what's going on in the temple of the Tabernacle of testimony with the Iscarus angels. And then you have stoichion, principles of the oracles, the logion of God. Okay.

So let's just look at this. The first principles, what is indicated in where the temple of the tabernacle of testimony is, would really very much equate with what Melchizedek represented, possessor of heaven and earth. So it's the context of the divine author. But it's the next word that's kind of a stunner because this term, steutjion, was well known in the ancient Greek world, those who were scientifically minded. And there were two ways that this word was used.

The elemental, foundational understanding is that principles here, earth, air, fire, and water. That's very interesting. And then when you become skilled in that, they would use this word to describe a systematic pattern or a mode of operation, a way things should be done, a marching order. So the first part was for those ancient Greeks describing what the earth, what they deemed the earth was made of, the elemental things. And then from that maxim, from that principled measure of understanding, you orchestrate your life.

Isn't that fascinating? So what what is he saying here? He's talking about Jesus. He's talking about the order of Melchizedek. He's talking about being having an understanding of the doctrinal positions that the scriptures clearly state the deeper things of the word.

He's talking about then the people not wanting to do it. And here he says, you should be a teacher of these things because the didache, the teaching, will base its agenda and its syllabus off of the hermeneia. So somebody that is in Bible college and they're studying hermeneutics, which is how to study the scripture, how to exegete, how to compare verse with verse, doing your diligence in study, which is straight from this word, hermeneia. Then from that base, the teacher goes forth, the didache. And so at a time that you should be a didache off of these deeper things that God's been leading you through, you have need that somebody teach you again what the archae is doing and the core essence of what this earth and heaven is all about and how God's gonna move or how God wants to move according to his logion, his logos.

So what does the earth and I'm not speaking about pastor Robert's favorite group. Earth, wind, water, and fire. What do those represent for us? Well to me the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. It's where he caused us to be born.

It's where the cross paid for the Histeme. It's where Jesus came. It's where we have arterial. It's where we proskineo and pray and ask your kingdom come, your will be done. So it's our base of identity, existence, and function.

That's earth. What are we doing here? What should we be doing here? What about water? I've talked about thirst and how water really does indicate now I know you can talk about the washing of the word, but water really does indicate your commune with God and him filling you since these bodies of ours are largely consistent of water.

And how did how does then the water of the word happen? Well, hey, I knew a lot of people in my growing up and I'm not being critical, I'm really not. I'm just observant. And a lot of my observations happened when I was a kid growing up in church and that was pure observation. I didn't know enough to be critical, but I knew that two plus two ain't eight.

I would see guys that were quoting scripture, but they weren't really living it. And it would perplex me. I would see my friends, some of them in the church. Their father would be carrying a Bible, and when he'd go home, he'd be doing things that were blatantly not scripture. So the word, just quoting it or toting it, didn't did nothing in the way of washing them.

The the way the word washes you is by you communing with God and you drinking in from the fountain of the wells of salvation. You communing with him. And then when his word is made rhema and his word is indicated clearly to you what thus says the Lord, then you adjust yourself and you cease with the things that are anticlimactic to the word. So that's how the word's washed, but a washing element, but it is through commune. And I've used this before.

I'm sure others have used it. It's not enough to know the word of God. You've gotta know the God of the word. And to me, that's the water. That's the water.

It's fellowship with God and allowing him to be your sustenance and your fulfillment. What about wind? The breath of God. How God moves. The discerning of his spirit.

Recognizing what he's how he's directing, what his voice is communicating, your perspective of the spirit of God, which hovers upon this earth, how that is indicated in your life through a perspective and understanding. And then fire. Fire, of course, judgment and burning, activation of gifts. You know, when God is ready to move in his ways, his fire falls. And it it it cleanses, purifies, it destroys, it it it activates.

And so those four were not just elements of the earth. Otherwise, why would why would the scriptures indicate that this is what you should be focusing on? Does it mean you're supposed to be alchemists or those that study the good old green earth. It means that we must recognize why we're here in conjunction with what God originally created this Earth to do and to be and what our role is with him on it. So what is he saying here?

These aren't my words. This is what the scripture says. There's a time you ought to be able to enunciate the things that God has shown you, but you have need that somebody take you back to square one and remind you that we're functioning as a stilos, a pillar in the temple where the empowerment of the archae is. The first things. Jesus is the beginning.

He's the arche. So we really are partnering with him. That's the that's what this word first is. It's not protos. It's first.

Arche. And then this. This really technical scientific word in conjunction with the logjion of God. We ought to know these things. And hasn't God been teaching us a lot of new things about how we're to welcome the kingdom?

But those things are based not on some three point message we heard at a conference and got the tapes of or the CDs of or the digital format of. Let's just tell us in one two three. Let's just get three ways to get God to answer your prayers. You're not finding that simplistic dumbing down anywhere in what these scriptures are saying. These are high level terms and this term here that we're just talking about is one of the ones that people say, oh, wow.

This is a higher level. Maybe this came from Apollos. And it may have. It may have. We don't know.

It's an it's it's not signed. But one thing we do know is that it is by the spirit, and God has preserved it for us. So this is really important. And then he equates this with strong meat. And the strong meat people are mature.

They have exercised their senses to be able to discern the dimensions of God's good purpose and how it's been twisted. And then he goes, the next verse, there was no chapter break in this book. Therefore. What's it there for? I heard preachers, well, when you see therefore you ought to say what's it there for?

Leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ. And this is here you have principles just leaving the principles, the archae. The word that speaks about the elemental things was how you process and gain understanding in conjunction with and in partnering with the archae. Let us go on to perfection. These are the principles, the archae of the doctrine of Christ.

I don't know about that archae. I just like John three sixteen, brother. I just liked it. Well, do you love Christ? Did you know Christ has doctrines?

What are the doctrines of being an anointed son of the father? Because you are supposed to be Christ like. You are the body of Christ. You say you're Christian, that means Christ like. Are you a son functioning in the anointing?

Well, there are doctrines that govern the logos. The logos understanding of that governs how you're to function in that way. And it's aligned with the archaic. I'm just going point word by word here. Let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, or of faith from God, toward God, or the doctrine of baptisms, or the laying on of hands, or the resurrection of the dead, or eternal judgment.

This we will do if God permit. This we agree upon, and God is turning over. He's allowing. He's giving lead. If when God says, you build off these things.

When God grants you understanding to build off them, then you're gonna do it. Well, give me that old time religion, one my grandma used to know. Well, I'm assuming that even though I'm a grandpa now, those of you who talk about your saintly grandma, if she's in heaven today, she's learned a lot of things that she wished she had known when she was here on Earth. That's gonna happen to all of us. So this is this is amazing to me.

So this whole onus of Hebrews six is really, to me, governed by these points, and we just read them, that we need to understand the role of Christ with Melchizedek, and we are after that order. So I just mentioned earlier in this broadcast what Melchizedek did. You are supposed to be welcoming the kingdom in your terrier. You are supposed to be functioning as kings and priests in on behalf of righteous partnership with your friend, the Almighty God. You are supposed to be welcoming the jealousy of God for heaven and earth, what God intends to do.

That's in a nutshell what Melchizedek is. And then from that, he says, there there are a lot of aspects to this, and you really have to apply yourself, but you were made for this. Some have just abandoned their obligations, and the scriptures don't say anything very kind about them. Does he love them? Yeah.

But, you know, sometimes you gotta this trophy for participation is not right in in spiritual things. Jesus and the scriptures speak about you being an overcomer and a conqueror. There's no there's no crown for being third place or also ran, is there? Yeah. I remember back when I was a kid, you either won or you didn't win.

Yes. Some of the little kids would cry, I wanna do it. And what all that meant was it was an inspiration for them to do better next time. There's there's a certain regimen to that. Now God loves you.

He's not being critical of you, but us as saints, our calling and the places God is lending us to serve him and the obligations we have to train and bring up disciples in this calling throughout the world, that's not baby talk. And everything that I've read here in this scripture, and I could read more, you can read that for yourself, is talking about you accepting that dynamic role that Christ himself had to learn. Look at that. Verse eight. All even though he was a son, he learned obedience by the things that he suffered, and he strove for perfection.

Jesus did that. Well, he did it all so that I don't have to. That sounds like a Neppo baby. Yeah. Mom and dad earned all the money.

I'm just enjoying it. Got a lot of them on college campuses today who are proving with every protest they don't know they know zilch about what the truth is. I don't wanna be one of those. How about you? So I love this aspect of the arche and these principles.

And for that mindset through the Hellenistic world, all of those people knew that word meant two things, earth, air, wind, fire in the natural, and applying the the methods that have been discerned and understood into your daily walk. That's what this word meant. And so when it's used here by the Holy Spirit, it still means that. Boy, I'm I'm very grateful to have seen this by the direction of the spirit. And, you know, I I I'm it's not easy.

You know, I deal with these pastors, and some of you do too, in Brazil. And they're trying to live according to what the scriptures are indicating. They've committed their lives to it. And every week I hear from them. Well, know, these people are leaving.

These people are leaving because they've been brought up to think other things about what the church should be. And the people that I'm referencing are loving people. And I would think, who would want to leave them? Why would they want to leave these people that are going after the deeper things of God and God is obviously with them working miracles? Well, it's because of this.

The church largely has been dumbed down. Which is why when we talk about getting revelation from the Lord, some of them is because, of course, God has reserved them for this hour. But a large portion of them is just because the church, through whatever reason or another, has dumbed itself down and abandoned what the scriptures really say. It's just the truth. You know, I mentioned this on Sunday.

I referenced it briefly, but our brother Yuvali, the aforementioned Yuvali Garcia, sent me a picture of a lot of Catholic church cardinals, and they were all on their face in prayer. He sent me one couple months ago of the pope doing it. Only this time, it explained these church leaders are embracing the ancient New Testament mode of worship, and they don't want it to die. Now I'm not Catholic, and I'm not advocating papal doctrine. But I am saying that there is no way that the thing that the father searches for, proscuneo, how do you suppose that was ever lost?

And with the Shechah of the Old Testament, how do you suppose the church didn't know that? Did God reserve this understanding for now because it's a new revelation? No. It's as old as Moses. It's as old as Abraham.

It's as old as what goes on in heaven. So this revelation, which we're grateful for, which is in the word all over the place, was no real revelation. It's like an awakening. But And I could go list many examples. A lot of the things are just a resuscitation.

And for us, they're new, and for the church, they're still new. But then there are things that God has reserved for this time. It's found in the word, but the the activation of it is has been indicated by the Lord God for what is ahead and what is happening now in our day. And most of those cannot be really understood if we don't properly teach the doctrines, which we just spent thirty minutes talking about here. So don't say it's too hard.

It begins very simply. Keep praying. Listen to some of these messages. You can pause them. Study it for yourself.

Get it ingrained in you. And, you know, sometimes when we were initially writing, a lot of times people say, well, you didn't mention this. I'm not gonna imitate anybody because I've heard one person say this over and over again. You didn't mention this. You didn't mention this.

Well my objective in writing was not to go through every single representation. It was to define. And when you have in the scripture 90% of instances where the definition is very clear, God's not gonna throw a a squiggly and say, well, you know, forget about those 90%. Here's what it really means. So I would hope that when we understand a principle that we know it well enough, that when we see it existent in the scripture, immediately we apply it to what's there.

That's the objective. So I bring this to you today because we as saints are gonna be required to not only represent this, but to function in it and to teach it and then to counsel those that are being discipled in it. And I'm just telling you, I'm just speaking for myself. I'm I can't do all this because it wears you out. And then if you're doing this, just teaching it, then you're not discovering.

And my role more than anything I I know, is to hear new things that God's spirit is saying. And so if the plowman is busy reaping and then serving up flapjacks and baked beans so that everybody gets a portion, well, you're not gonna have the next field of harvest. And I'm not saying, oh, look at me. What my point is here is that we need to study to show our self approved. A workman needing not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

And on this seventh month, hey, look, we're looking at Manaus. We've got 20 people coming from North America, and we've got a team of 30 from the Brazilian churches who have been partnering with us to one degree or another. And of those 30, we have a large responsibility to be training them. And it it's it's not easy, but it's what we have to do. So I'm just putting this word forward as a an exhortation that we need to step up.

And and then another thing, I mean, I often wonder you know, teachings that are just out there are like in so many ways, they're they're like convenience store food or drive through food. It's not really nutrition packed. And, some people really like to have that because it's it's like a story. And you come away thinking, okay. Wow.

But it doesn't really do anything for you. And I I want you to realize the privilege God has given to us as saints. We don't know everything. We're constantly learning. You know, I I remember in my going back through the history of our network since 2002, somebody when I wrote that book, seven spirits, the manual of the seven spirits, apparently, it made the rounds a little bit.

And this person who came to one of our seminars gave me a book by a guy who was supposedly teaching on the seven spirits. And in the book, he says there is a new, there's a new book that's been written about the seven spirits. And in that book, it suggests that the seven spirits are seven dimensions of who God is, his personality. And he said, I don't concur with that belief. And I knew this person knew that it was a reference to us.

And then he said he he was just gonna stick with the the seven the he said that the seven spirits were the seven angels in the book of Revelation. And I thought, where in the world are you getting that? What about what Zechariah wrote? What about the other factors that speaks about the cornerstone with the seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God, the seven lamps? And you you just jettison all of that to to embrace something that I never thought anybody would come up with, that the seven spirits are the seven angels of the churches.

So study to show yourself approved. And, you know, I I remember when I was in high school I really was studying. I wanted to be a lawyer. And so my junior and senior year I took several, at that point they weren't giving college credit, but you could take college level courses and gain credits in high school, but you couldn't transfer them at that time. Now you can.

But I remember taking several courses from Pitt, University of Pittsburgh Law School, and from, a couple of other well respected law schools for their incoming students that were studying pre law. And we had debate societies and a debate team. And so you learn how to do a quick embrace of a topic, what you were going to represent. You then figured out the vulnerability of the argument that you were representing, and you also, through that understanding, were quick to pick it out if the, let's say, the prosecutor was going down that trail. And when I read that guy's I started reading some more of it, and I thought, I bless you.

I mean, I'm not mocking you, but your whole argument for what the seven spirits are is nonsense. It does not focus on the scripture. It ignores several passages that very clearly says that what you're stating here is wrong, but yet some innocent person who goes to a conference and picks that up, then, woah. Here it is. I got it.

We have an obligation when we're teaching these divine principles to do it with the due diligence of the study of the word. And if God has shown something, we try as hard as we can to explore every vestige of that in the scripture, so we don't miss anything. Not to try to disprove God, but to glean as much as we can every factor that that concept that he's bringing to us has related. We must be masters of this topic if we're going to disciple anybody. So I'm releasing this today as from the scripture and and I because it is from the scripture.

And and I know that we we still have a long way to go and for eternity we will. But I think we should eliminate from our vocabulary. It's too hard because I could tell you what this word really meant. I could say some terms. Dull of hearing is the most generic, but this was this was more like it wasn't an insult.

It was a wake up. I end with this, and some of you have already stopped listening. I remember in high school, in baseball, we won our league and everybody was celebrating. And our coach said came in and he said, well, boys, you can celebrate today, but I want you to know you're not ready for the next opponent. You look you look who we're playing in the next district level, and we we've got a lot of work to do.

And I thought, well, thanks a lot. You know? We just won. Give us a moment to to say, yay. And he did give us that moment a few hours.

The next day, we were back at practice. And I don't do you any favors for the mission God has given you by patting you on the shoulder and saying, oh, you poor pretty thing. You know, God knows what you're going through. Yeah. He wants you to go through, not hang around.

And we we've got a wonderful path ahead, and I think we need to begin to believe God that this is not an unattainable level of partnership with him. It's what he wants. And so we've we've got to do what's necessary. And I pray that this will be the case in all of our lives. Good things ahead.

God has blessed us. We're eternally thankful. But he's not finished. In fact, he's only just beginning. Now I could ask Tammy to go to the organ.

We could play that great hymn, We've Only Just Begun. It's not a hymn, but we have only just begun. And God's got great, great harvest ahead. So thank you for listening. Happy July 4.

We look forward to our prayer times together this weekend and this coming Friday we'll have power devotionals. So please be sure to avail yourself of that on the Saints Radio channel of this website. God bless, and goodbye.