Blessed to be here. What an encouragement. Look, we just got through the Easter season, and we just

heard about Jesus, of course, and Palm Sunday riding into Jerusalem and singing Hosanna,

you know, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And what a powerful picture. The religious

rulers, however, had a different take on that. They basically said, look,

teacher, rebuke your disciples. Isn't that a lot like the culture we live in right now?

You know, there is an offense about who Jesus is. It's all about who he is. The controversy was then

and is now, just who is Jesus. And there's a hostile world to this truth.

There's many cults. There's isms, philosophies. They all lightly esteem the name of Jesus.

And Jesus spent a lot of time pouring into his disciples. The Bible says essentially preparing them for what was going to come.

He'd tell them, look, you know, you're going to stand before kings, you're going to be persecuted,

you're going to go through this and that, and this is our heritage in this world because this world

is not our home. And sad, the church, that forgets that, when they think about Christianity being

just about making you feel

better and being a better person here and making your life happier here in this life.

That's a byproduct of the real thing that God is interested in because he's made us for eternity.

You know, he gave us the golden rule, due unto others as you would have, as you'd have them do unto you.

But we have to remember, we live in a world with a different golden rule.

That is, he who has the gold rules.

And that's the mentality of this world, because whether it's sizing you up with your beauty,

which is often the first thing you see, sizing you up with your intelligence, sizing you up with your strength, sizing you up with your beauty, which is often the first thing you see, sizing you up with

your intelligence, sizing you up with your strength, sizing you up with your wealth.

This is how you are measured.

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