This is a message from Dr. Michael Youssef, Bible teacher, on leading the way.

Our prayer is that it will encourage you in your walk of faith.

And if you'd like to learn more about Dr. Youssef and the ministry of leading the way,

the place to start is l-tw.org.

Human nature, the way it is, we have perfected excuses to an art form. I know Adam and Eve started it in the

garden, but we have perfected it. I think it was Corey Tim Boom who said, the blood of Jesus never cleanses an excuse. You see, that is why the

scripture repeatedly says, if we confess, he forgives. If we confess, he forgives. People make all

sorts of excuses as to why they cannot come to worship or why they can't serve and why they can't give and why

they can't commit to anything and why is this and why is that.

In the last message, we began to look at how the Lord is speaking to our generation

through the ancient prophet Haggai.

After several hundred years of God sending his people prophet after prophet after prophet and challenging them to stop compromising

and stop worshipping Yahweh one day and bail for the rest of the week. And finally, God had enough. And he said to them that I'm

going to send you into an exile. I'm going to send you for 70 years out of your country. And sure enough,

Nebekid Nasser of Babylon came and he ravished Jerusalem, destroyed it, and took hundreds of thousands

of people, captives in Babylon.

But God also promised through the prophet Jeremiah that 70 years from that time, he's going to

bring them back, he's going to bring the faithful back to the heart of worship, that he's going to

bring them back to Jerusalem, the city of God. And right on schedule,

God fulfilled his promise. And the way he fulfilled this promise was absolutely the most unlikely

way. He used a pagan king by the name of Cyrus. And Cyrus issued a decree, and he said that all of the Jews who

want to go back to Jerusalem, they are allowed to go back. And out of the hundreds of thousands

...