Phil Beach Jr. emphasizes the importance of understanding the human heart's sinful nature and the tendency to blame external circumstances for our actions. He explains that true wisdom and instruction come from recognizing our inherent sinfulness and the need for Christ's redemptive power in our lives. The sermon encourages both adults and children to take responsibility for their actions rather than shifting blame, highlighting that the root of our problems lies within our hearts. By acknowledging our sin and seeking God's grace, we can experience true transformation and live in accordance with His will. Ultimately, the message calls for a deeper relationship with God to overcome the sinful tendencies that lead to blame and conflict.

Verses 1 through 9, the Proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel. To know wisdom and instruction, to perceive the words of understanding, to receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity, to give subtly to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion. A wise man will hear and will increase learning, and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels. To understand a proverb and the interpretation, the words of the wise and their dark sayings. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother. For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck. Verses 1 through 9 in the book of Proverbs chapter 1 describe to us qualities that God longs for you and I to possess. Let's just read a few of these qualities. Wisdom, instruction, understanding, judgment, justice, equity, the fear of the Lord. These are qualities that you and I are to continually abound in. Now, in order to practically apply these qualities to what we want to speak about today, we're going to narrow these specific qualities that of course are found in the Word of God. You will gain all of these things by learning the Word of God and by becoming acquainted with the Lord Jesus Christ. But in order for us to apply this particular portion of Scripture to our specific teaching this morning, we want to narrow down these qualities in light of understanding who we are and who God is in light of our daily walk with Him. Now, there's various different ways that you can relate these specific qualities. You can have wisdom and prudence in regard to planting a garden, putting your plants in the right place so that according to one gentleman that was talking to me, they are exposed to the north sun, tomato plants. I don't know if that's true or not, but the gentleman next to us said that tomato plants need the north sun. Now, I don't know, but you see there's a way of doing everything. There's a wise way, a shrewd way, then there's a foolish way and an indiscreet way of doing things. So, these Scriptures, verses 1-9, can apply to all areas of our life, but we're going to narrow the application of these Scriptures down to understanding ourselves and understanding why we do what we do. Now, children, this gets back to what I had mentioned this morning, how I wanted to share with you a little bit about how we help our girls, Christina, Rebecca, and Sarah, to understand why they do what they do. So, we want to encourage the adults and the children to listen carefully, and we're going to try and dovetail all of this together. And, of course, this is just a continuation of what we ministered on Wednesday night. You who have the handouts that we passed out and you who got them Wednesday, you can see there that we have two trees and two different types of fruit that are growing from these two trees. Now, these two trees in those handouts represent the state of the heart when Christ is not Lord and King versus the state of the heart when Christ becomes Lord and King. We described on Wednesday evening that the fundamental problem with humanity is not that something bad happened to them and consequently they have become bad or evil, but rather they were born in sin. These things seem to be very fundamental and very elementary to the Christian faith, to the beliefs of the Christian, but we believe that in this day that we're living in, as it says in the book of Jude, I'm just going to read it, you don't have to turn to it. Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ and the brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God, that is set aside by God. We've described many times that the word sanctify means to set aside. We illustrated, I believe several months ago, that you can, in a sense, you can sanctify a tape recorder. Just like in the Old Testament there were articles that were sanctified to God. To be sanctified doesn't mean that you have to necessarily be sanctifying something that's alive. You can sanctify a tape recorder and this is how you sanctify a tape recorder. You can take that tape recorder and set it aside and say, this tape recorder will be used for no other purpose but gospel music. And as long as you have committed yourself to setting that tape recorder aside, it is considered to be sanctified. It is a sanctified tape recorder. So consequently, when the Scripture speaks of we are sanctified, it is suggesting both God's act and our act. God has set us aside through Jesus Christ and has chosen us for Himself. That is, He wants you and I to be vessels that are explicitly and exclusively reserved to express His will. When God sanctifies something, He's setting it aside for His own purpose. So when the Scripture says to you who are sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Christ Jesus, that's what it's talking about. That's why God gives us the Holy Spirit. He gives us the Holy Spirit in order to set us aside for His purpose so that He can realize through us His will. He can see through us the working of His will in our life. Verse 3, Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you and exhort you, now listen carefully, that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. Now another translation says that you may earnestly contend for the faith that was once and for all delivered unto the saints. The idea there is that once the message of the Gospel was proclaimed by the Lord Jesus Christ, confirmed by the Holy Spirit, testified by God, preached by the Apostles, that was the end of the Gospel. There's no new Gospel that's coming forth today. There's no new revelation that's coming forth today. And Jude here exhorted the Christian believers that they would earnestly contend for the faith. Now let me break that down into practical terms in relation again to what we are referring to today. If we were to take this Scripture and interpret it in light of what we're preaching about today and teaching, we would say, I want to exhort you and encourage you to earnestly contend for the biblical conviction regarding man that he is evil and corrupt and the problems that are within human beings are directly the result of sin. Now the reason why I would emphasize that is because there is presently a philosophy that is controlling this entire world and is beginning to infiltrate the ranks of Christendom that suggests that you and I are really not that bad. And that we are what we are because things have happened to us rather than we are born sinners. Now we mentioned Wednesday night, Mark chapter 7, that Jesus said that within the heart of man, and I want to point out this, this is laying the foundation for our teaching this morning for the children and for the adults. Children and adults, if you want to be, particularly adults, if you want to be effective and faithful before God in the rearing of your children, it is expedient that you understand these basic biblical principles. Did you know that children are longing to understand themselves? There is an identity crisis in the world today. People don't know who they are. So what they do is they go to a secular demon-inspired concept of who they are and everything revolves around self and self-centeredness and there's no relationship to who they are regarding what the Bible says. Children want to know why they're like they are. And beloved, we have the resources right here. We have the privilege of being able to sit down and talk to our four and five-year-olds and say the reason why you're so angry is because your heart is full of sin. You know that today counselors say don't tell your children that they're bad. Don't tell them that they're sinners. It's going to hurt their self-image. Beloved, if you don't tell your children are sinners, you're lying to them. You're lying to them. It's not going to hurt a child to know that they're a sinner because what you do is you tell them that they are sinners and then you tell them about the Redeemer's love who died for their sins. We need to tell our children these things, see? You need to tell them with gentleness and with love and with care and you need to tell them with tears in your eyes. That's why they do what they do. That's why you do what you do. It's not because of the environment that you're in. It's because you're in sin. And sin, even sin lurks within the Christian. God has delivered us from the dominion and consequence of sin, which is death and hell and separation, but He hasn't delivered us from the presence. The old man, the flesh is still there and his desires are corrupt as ever. So Jude says, I want to beseech you to earnestly contend for the faith that was once and for all delivered. Beloved, may we earnestly contend to believe the Bible when we want to develop an idea about who we are, when we want to develop an idea about why we do what we do, when we want to develop an idea about why our children behave the way they do. The Bible answers all of these questions. And not only does the Bible answer all of these questions, but the Bible provides a marvelous solution to these problems. And of course, that solution is the Lord Jesus Christ. So, Mark 7, verse 20. We're just sort of backtracking a little bit, and we're going to dovetail right in to what we want to minister on this morning. And we will not, with the help of God's grace, keep you too long. Mark 7, verse 20. And he said, that which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. Now, let's understand right here now, what is Jesus talking about in this story? He's talking about the Pharisees who were criticizing the disciples because they didn't wash themselves before they ate. And because Jesus was God, and he was so wise, he was able to use this simple illustration in order to teach a profound spiritual truth. That by the way, this profound spiritual truth that we're looking at, way up in the New Testament in Mark chapter 7, is the same profound spiritual truth that we see back in Genesis chapter 3. Isn't that interesting? So Jesus is touching on something here that was touched on way, way back in Genesis chapter 3. Now, this is the most essential, the most important, the most fundamental truth that you and I as Christians need to remember, re-remember, continue to remember, continue to read, and guard ourselves so that the philosophies of this world do not begin to seduce our thinking so that we begin to neglect this truth. Because I promise you that wherever you turn in this ungodly world, you will find a philosophy, you will find a form of teaching that will completely contradict the Bible's stand on the state of man. And it is imperative that we remember this because this is what determines the effectiveness of a person's understanding of themself and God. Now watch this. Jesus is talking about outside and inside, external and internal. Watch what he says. That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. So therefore, I suggest to you this morning that it is not an external circumstance, force, happening, occurring, occurrence in your life that defiles you. It doesn't defile you. Jesus is saying it's from within the heart that defiles the man. Now, we're going to touch on something this morning and it's going to go right into our homes. It's going to go right into our very being. And I'm going to use the word. And we're going to show examples in the Bible. The word blame. Blame. Here's what blame does. Ready? Blame does this. I refuse to believe that I am what I am because I am a sinner and my heart is full of wickedness. I rather choose to believe it's because something else. Now, there is a pattern that is so embedded within the human heart that it snares Christians regularly. And listen, when you are ensnared with the pattern of blaming other people for what you are, here's what happens. Number one, you deceive yourself. Number two, you learn to justify your actions. And number three, you go on and on and on and on in a most miserable state. Do you remember what Adam said when God said, what did you do? What did he say? It's the woman's fault. And then God said, all right Eve, what did you do? What did she say? The nature of sin, the nature of sin attempts to take attention off of itself and put it on something else. Now, watch this. That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, wow, from within. Now, some of us would have us believe that these things don't really exist. That they're fig mutants of our imagination. Beloved, beware. From within, out of the where? Out of the heart of men proceed. Now, watch this. Evil thoughts. Let's just stop there for a moment. Okay. You're A. Someone else is B. And someone else is C. This is you. Okay. Now, watch this. B is conversing with C. And somehow you find out that B is talking to C and C is talking to B about you. And it's not very kind. And then all of a sudden, you are plagued with evil thoughts about B and about C. And you become enraged over what you found out B was saying to you and C was, or B and C were talking about you. You became enraged. And you were plagued with evil thoughts. Now, let's say that through the course of time, somehow you were made to know. Maybe by the word of God or the work of the Holy Spirit, or maybe a sermon was preached, or possibly even in your quiet time, you began to discover that you have these terrible evil thoughts about B and C. Now, what you do with that revelation is going to determine whether or not evil thoughts continue to reign or whether or not evil thoughts are overcome in your life. But here's what you have to be careful of. Why, why, why do you have evil thoughts all of a sudden? Why do you have evil thoughts in your mind? Now, here's 99.9% of the time, this is what someone's going to say. I have evil thoughts in my heart because someone. See? And then we start saying, well, because B and C were talking about me. And I have the right to have evil thoughts. And hey, don't you think you would have thought the same thing if you found out that they were talking about you? And hey, by the way, I'm telling you the things they were saying were not true and it was lies. Do you see what's happening? You see what's happening? Is evil thoughts, is this a sin? Where does this sin lurk within the heart of man? Did B and C create those evil thoughts or were those evil thoughts, according to the word of God, there all along? They were there all along. It's just that God in his providence permitted B and C to be talking about you and permitted you to somehow hear them. Not so that you can get on your wagon of blame and become their judge and begin to say how terrible they are. He did it so you could see how terrible you are. Why are you justified in thinking evil about someone else? Just because they're speaking evil of you. Is that being a follower of God? Is that being like Jesus? Did God reward us according to our iniquities? Did God save us because of our love and kindness toward him? No. It says why we were yet sinners. In other words, B and C becomes you and I. And here we are blaspheming God who becomes A. But rather than God having evil thoughts in his heart toward us, which he can't because there's no sin in him, he rather than trying to find a reason to condemn us, he died for us in spite of our sin. That's what the Lord wants to do in our life. Develop that kind of an ability to react toward things that are happening to us rather than to allow the sin to surface and control us. Now, this is a very simple illustration, but the point is profound and we can't forget it. Now, you go right down the list here. You go right down the list here. Evil thoughts, adulteries. There's a big one. Yeah, but you don't understand why that happened. She did this or he did this. And I mean, I was set up for it. Are you taking responsibility for the sin that's in your heart? Are you playing the shift game? You shift the blame from where it belongs in your own heart to some external force. Do you see, can you see, beloved, how deeply embedded this principle is within our hearts and within our natures? And can you also see how this can affect us in a most harmful way? Now, remember the opening scripture, Proverbs chapter one, wisdom, discretion, understanding. I read that because I wanted you to see that it's God's will for us to have wisdom and understanding and prudence and discretion. But most importantly, it's God's will for it to begin to blossom in our area of relationship with God and with each other. I suggest that if our relationships with God and each other could revolve around biblical truth and could be in Christ, all of the other things would take care of themselves. God would work them out. Now, we've got fornication. We've got murder. Now, murder is hatred. Now, I'm not disannoying literal murder, but hatred is murder, not committed in a physical way. Now, hatred is another big thing. Someone hurts you, someone does you wrong, and you feel hatred rising up. And immediately what happens is rather than taking responsibility for that hatred and understanding it in light of the Bible, we begin to become victims of the philosophy of this world. And we say, well, I hate because this and this and this. So I'm not taking responsibility for my hatred because I believe that I have the right to hate rather than identifying hatred as one of the deadly sins that lurk within my heart. Now, do you see why God is sovereign over our circumstances as children of God? What is he doing? God is allowing these things to happen in our life in order to give us understanding of who we are so that we can become recipients of the grace of God. God understands and knows what each circumstance, each person, and each pressure is going to reveal about yourself. And as long as the Christian is living his life without understanding that God is sovereignly working in our lives in order to give us knowledge about ourself so that we can more fully have truth on the inward parts and that we can more fully become a recipient of the grace of God and be transformed. If we don't look at things in that light, but we're always looking at things in the light of blame and you did this to me and I'm a victim of this circumstance or that circumstance, we'll never be able to experience the blessed victory that God intended for us to experience. It's so liberating to just accept what you are. It's so liberating to just simply say, oh my God, me. And then guess what happens when your soul is free from the blame? You begin to be able to pray for all those who have done things that weren't right to you rather than try and find a reason not to deal with your own sin because of them. That's when the scripture comes to pass. Love your enemies, pray for them, do good to them. And you become so free to become a recipient of the grace of God. Theft, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from where? Come from within. Now watch this, and defile the man. Now, we described, well, let me give you one more scripture, Ephesians, Ephesians. Ephesians chapter four, verse 20, well, let's begin in verse number 17, Ephesians 4, 17. Now watch this. This I say, therefore, in testifying the Lord that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart, who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanliness and greediness. But ye have not so learned with Christ. If so be that ye have heard him and have been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus. Listen to this. That ye put off concerning the former conversation or the former way of life. That word conversation means way of life. The old man which is corrupt according to what? The deceitful lusts. The old man, the flesh, the sin nature, doesn't matter how you say it, it all means the same. Old man, flesh, sin nature, the new international version refers to the flesh as the sin nature. This is the corrupt old man that lurks within every one of us. The old man. It says he is corrupt. Now, here's why the old man is corrupt because look what the old man is full of. We just read it in Mark chapter 7. He is full of all of those perverted, distorted, self-centered, self-serving, self-concentrating desires. Therefore, the old man that lurks within us is the reason why we are indeed so brought into captivity. But that's only true as sinners. But now as Christians, we have a new man that has been planted within us by the good word of God. And that's the secret. Okay, now that we laid this brief foundation, I want to bring your attention up here. Please, children and adults, I want to bring your attention up here and I want you to see this is a color rendition of that chart that you have been given. And this is what we made for our children. Let me just move this back a little bit here. This is what we made for our children. And I suggest every parent that is here, I suggest that you prioritize raising your children because you will be very thankful in years to come. Now, this is a very simple illustration. Throughout the day, through various different situations, at various different times, sounds like the book of Hebrews, huh? God who at sundry times and in diverse manners. Throughout the day, there are conflicts within our family. And normally, the conflicts, and I'm speaking from a perspective of children versus adults and interaction, interaction. Throughout the day, there's times of conflict and usually those conflicts arise when either a child is told what to do and doesn't want to do it or a child has their heart set on doing something and for some unseen, unforeseen reason, the child is not able to do what the heart was set on doing. Normally, these are the two settings. Now, when the child is confronted with these two settings, there's various different things that can happen. First of all, there's screaming and yelling that can occur. The second outward expression could be fit-throwing. Next could be complaining or arguing. For example, a simple command would be mom and dad would possibly look at the child and say, I would like for you to please go upstairs and make your bed at this time. And then there is an immediate rebellion. There is an immediate outburst. There's possibly there's a little screaming or yelling. There's a little bit of fit-throwing. Now, the general way that Christians handle this is the wrong way. Generally, when the child begins to manifest a wrong attitude, the parent will feel justified in manifesting a wrong attitude in order to deal with the attitude. That does not work. If you throw wood on a fire, what happens? The fire gets brighter. Listen, you do not fight flesh with flesh. Flesh with flesh is not the way that we cope with our domestic difficulties, if I might use that word, domestic difficulties. What we have been incorporating in our family and have found it to be very advantageous, and I am seeing a remarkable change and improvement in my daughters in incredible fashions and ways, and it really makes my heart happy. And that's why I wanted to share with you these wonderful truths from God's Word so that you can incorporate them in your family. What we normally do is whenever there's a crisis of any kind within the heart of our children, we try and stop what we're doing. Here's what we don't do. Number one, we don't become insensitive to the crisis. Don't become insensitive to the crisis. Number two, don't react to the crisis in a fleshly way. Now, listen, I'm talking about the children now versus adults, but you need to incorporate this into your relationships too as husbands and wives, and even possibly employee, employer, cousins, in-laws. I don't know what your setting is, but don't be insensitive. And number two, don't react in the flesh. I mean, if someone starts complaining, don't start complaining back. If someone is yelling, don't start yelling. Ask God to help you. In Christ, respond properly to the external situation that's occurring, because I'll tell you right now, you're going to respond in two ways. You're either going to respond in Christ by drawing your response from His disposition and His nature, which is gentle and kind. It's firm, but it's gentle. It's kind. It's understanding. It's not fleshly. It's based on truth. It's rational, not irrational. Or you're going to respond by yielding to the old man. Because remember, the old man will always respond. I tell you, the old man's predictable. He's not unpredictable. He is predictable. If the old man is in a fight, he's going to fight back. If the old man is confronted with a situation where he has to choose between right and wrong, he'll always choose wrong. Flesh is flesh. So the secret of the Christian is not to yield to the old man, but to yield to Christ. So the crisis is, the child is erupting, is throwing a fit, one of these various different things. Number one, you can't be insensitive. Number two, you can't react in a fleshly way. And number three, now this is the most important, you can't, what I call you can't make a Band-Aid discipline. That means you can't just make it look like you're disciplining your child. You've got to get to the heart of the matter. The book of Proverbs says, train up a child in the way that he shall go. And when he is old, he will not depart. The word train there implies teaching, instruction, admonition. It implies weeping with your child, praying with your child, talking with your child, helping your child to understand who she or he is according to the word of God. So those three points you want to remember. The first thing that we do is we, first of all, identify the problem. And we do not identify the problem as saying, it's me or it's your mother. Or it's that unforeseen circumstance that has come in your life that's preventing you from having your own way. That's not the problem. We identify the problem. The problem is what? Mark chapter seven. The problem is sin within. Okay, that's where we get right here. Do you know why, Christina or Rebecca? And we're even starting to do it with Sarah. Do you know why you're complaining right now? Yes, because I don't want to and I don't think it's fair. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not why you're complaining. It's not why you're complaining, because you're angry. But that's not the real reason why now. The real reason is not because you're angry. The reason why is because in the heart there is sin. And the ultimate expression of that sin is having its way. That sin is expressing itself because you have determined in your heart, rather than obey Christ and to obey God and to find the grace to submit to that authority, you have determined in your heart that you're going to yield to the sin that lurks within. Listen, the flesh never wants to obey. Don't ever think one day you're going to wake up and your flesh will be sanctified. The old man is not sanctified. The blood forgives sins, but the old man is crucified. The old man must be crucified. That is, he must be rendered inoperative through the power of Christ. So what we do is we identify where the problem is. The problem is the heart. Determined to have your way. That's the root of pride. Determined to have your way. And what we do is we help our children to see that this was the very thing that caused man to sin. This is the very reason why Adam and Eve sinned, because they were determined to do things their way. But this is why Jesus, and if you believe your child's a Christian, and we believe that our oldest child is a Christian, and of course, the two are a little young yet, but God is working with them and bringing them to the point of acknowledging their sinfulness before God. But we say, and now that you're a Christian, now that you're a Christian, this sin that's inside of you, this rebellion and this old man that wants to do it his way, this sin now that's inside of you doesn't have to dominate you. You don't have to be in that miserable state, young lady. You can call upon the name of the Lord, but you have to humble yourself. And then we offer to pray. We offer to pray. What for? Here's the ultimate reason why we pray. Not to change the old man. The old man isn't going to be changed. The old man has to be crucified. We change in order to redirect her desire. Her desire before we pray is, I'm going to do what the old man wants to do. The purpose of prayer is to redirect that desire so that rather than determined to do her way, she says, wow, I guess I'm going to yield myself to Christ, and I'm going to do it God's way. So that's why we pray. And 99% of the time through prayer and teaching and bringing it, we boys bring it. This is in the same place, right in our living room. And whether they're upstairs or in the kitchen, they know what's going to happen. They start to fuss and wait, wait, wait, let's stop. What's happening right now? We have to go to the sign. We have to go to the sign, say, you better believe we do. Go into the sign, sit down right on the floor and start looking. Now this is discipline. Not this idea where you stop that complaining. You stop that arguing. You argue one more time and I'm going to... You've got to teach. You've got to instruct. You've got to help them to understand why they're doing it. Now that doesn't mean that you don't spank and you don't discipline. Because if they don't reason with this and they continue, that's when you can take it a step further, spank them and punish them. But you don't spank and punish a child without giving them the understanding of why they're doing what they're doing. Because that's not what true discipline and true spanking is all about. Now you have your illustration there, where now what happens when the will is broken? And rather than being in allegiance to the desires of the old man, rather than being in allegiance with the old man, the will is broken and yields itself to the indwelling Christ and to the power of the Holy Spirit. We are given the power at that time when we tune in and tap into Christ, who is our new life, who is the resource and power of being able to do what's right. We're given the power then to yield to authority, to accept what mommy and daddy says, or to accept the fact that we can't go... Two different things. So consequently, this is how we understand. And Norman, where did you put the folder? So consequently, after there is a developing of meekness within the heart, meekness is realizing that God is in total control of our life and accepting our situation without complaining, anger, fit-throwing, or arguing. As the disposition of meekness is developed, then what happens is we go from step two, and we go to step three, and we start bearing good fruit. We start bearing good fruit. Now notice that the good fruit, and this is on your illustration, notice the good fruit is because we've tapped into Christ. See, Christ dwells in us by faith if you're a believer. And in Christ, we are able to find the power to do what's right. He gives us that power. See, and then rather than complaining and arguing and grumbling, what do we have? Goodness and faithfulness and joy and peace. And here it is, beloved, biblically, here it is, biblically, who we are, why we do what we do, and God's remedy to our problems. See, this is why we need so much of Jesus and to love his word. Now, what happens in this state? Number one, we don't accept responsibility for what we are. Number two, we blame something or someone. And number three, we continue in that wayward state. We use the one illustration and we're going to close now. Adam and Eve, they were in this state and they blamed someone else for what they were. Do you remember the children of Israel? Exodus chapter 16. The children of Israel blamed Moses because they were grumbling and complaining. Could you imagine it? Here's what the children of Israel did. Moses, we're so miserable. We're so miserable. We're so angry. We're so mad. We're going to go back to Egypt. And it's all because of you. And here you and your big idea saying, oh, I'm going to lead Israel out of Egypt and I'm going to bring them into. Thanks, Moses. Thanks a whole lot for making our life miserable. What was Israel doing? They weren't taking responsibility for who they were. They weren't humbling themselves before God. They weren't acknowledging before God that these tests only did one thing and that showed the wretchedness of their human heart. Instead, they were blaming Moses. They were blaming Pharaoh. They were blaming God. They were blaming the circumstances. I mean, if God didn't let us go three days without water, we wouldn't be thirsty. It's God's fault. There's the pattern. When we're not willing to accept what God says about our human heart, it's full of sin, we will blame someone for what we are rather than accept it. There's Adam and Eve and there's Israel. Now, here's one example of someone who didn't do this. Do you remember David and Bathsheba? King David committed adultery with Bathsheba. And Nathaniel the prophet came. Nathan was Nathan. That's right. Nathaniel was under the fig tree. Nathan the prophet came, gave him a little story and said, David, you're the man. Oh, but Nathan, you don't understand. It really wasn't my fault. Let me tell you why. When I was on top of my house and I glanced, did you know that I didn't really tell anyone this, but did you know that Bathsheba sort of suggested that she wanted me to see her? See, blame. Or I wasn't feeling good. Whatever the excuse is. What did David do? I have sinned. You're right. I've sinned against God and I humble myself. I take responsibility for my sin. I will not blame the circumstance. I will not blame the person. I will not blame anything. I sinned against God. My sin was exposed. But I thank You, Lord, that You're a merciful God and I'll come to You for mercy and forgiveness. Ah, how beautiful. How marvelous. So beloved, this morning I want to encourage you as we close, the human heart is wicked and wretched, but greater is He that's in you than he that's in the world. And as we stay close to God and we stay humble and remember the conflict with the Christian is who are you going to obey? Who are you going to choose to obey? You're going to obey the dictates of sin that lurk within your flesh or the lovely dictates of Christ's life and love that also live in your spirit. Christ dwells in your spirit. And though the flesh is corrupt, yet Christ is greater than the flesh and can always give you power to yield to Him rather than the wicked pride of flesh. And you can always be a victorious overcomer. It's just a matter of coming before God and saying, Lord, have mercy upon me. I'm going to ask Sister Colette if she would play the piano and let's just sing that beautiful song, Jesus be the Lord of all the kingdoms of my heart. Jesus be the Lord. Jesus be the Lord.