This recording is from Christ Kingdom Church in Avalon Park, Orlando. Visit us online at ChristKingdom.org for our calendar driving directions and more audio recordings. That is a paraphrase of Judges Chapter 1 and 2 of God's Holy Inspired Word. It is written out in its entirety and you're bold to insert there if you want to go back and look at that later on there. But it gives you a picture there thanks to the archers for reading that of us this morning of exactly what was happening here. You know, the reason why I chose to do and start now a series this fall on the Book of Judges was because of the very theme of the Book of Judges, which has repeated several places in the very last verse. In fact, if you have your Bible and you want to turn to, you don't have to, but to turn to Chapter 21, verse 25, the very last verse, sends it all over again and sums it all up and says this. And says, in those days, there was no king in Israel because everyone did what was right in his own eyes. And that phrase appears several times throughout this entire book. And this book is about teaching that and revealing that. And when I thought about that, I thought, you know, if there is another generation that is in need of a king, not like England, it's on the king of the human heart, that's in need of a righteous king. It is this generation. It is especially this generation in my own country that I'm a part of. That does things. And what's the wording? Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Is there a better example of that than even here today, when people make choices, make decisions, live their lives, based on basically whatever seems right in their own eyes? The parallels between the time of judges, but that was written. And the parallel between our time now seemed incredibly similar and incredibly relevant. So as we're going to look at this book in the fall here, and probably one that you haven't spent a whole lot of time in, because it's not one of the more popular books, the Old Testament. But nevertheless, it's one that has some very profound messages for us. As you already heard read here and summarized through this morning, historically, this was the time where the Israelites had gotten. This was the time that Moses, if you remember, led the Israelites out of bondage from Egypt. They'd already crossed the Red Sea. They'd already had come all the way up to the borders of coming into the Promised Land. They got it said he would give, and don't forget that the Promised Land represented. It wasn't just, oh, the new place to live, it represented back during these days, land meant and represented a place of safety. Good land meant a place where you could have food and you could eat and you could survive. The Promised Land meant ultimately satisfaction and blessings of life. It meant the fulfillment of their deepest dreams and greatest dreams. That's what the Promised Land meant to them. Well, they had already come to the Point of the Promised Land, had begun to come in. If you remember, and the people doubted God, and they had wandered for 40 years in the desert, where God let that first generation die off, he said, you know, I'm not going to give the promise to you. But I'm going to give it to your children. Those children save a few, like Joshua and Caleb, who had believed God, they're now at the place, and they're coming in, and they're taking possession of land. After a 40-year wait, that's where Judges is picking up on. They're about to experience the blessings of God, but as we're going to see in what happens through here, those blessings are going to be experienced and met with barriers, barriers that they bring upon themselves. Now, when you think about it, I want you to thank for this warning here, as we're going to look at these barriers, that there are barriers right now that are keeping you from experiencing the blessings that you want to have in life as well, too. Because every single one of us here wants that. Every single talk show you see on TV is ultimately about saying, how do you get the best out of life? Most of the books you're going to pick up and buy in your Barnes and Noble wherever else are about, how to somehow improve your life and help you find the American dream. Fix the problem, get better, but find whatever you want to call it. You get someone up to say, find blessing, find fulfillment. Well, I was looking at an article that was talking about the top 10 barriers of fulfilling dreams. This just written recently for our day and age. Look at what our thought of the top 10 barriers to fulfilling dreams for us living here today. Then we'll look at what it was for Judges. Number 10 was this, fear of making the wrong decision. Number 9 was not knowing what you would love to do. Number 8, self-doubt. Number 7 was comparing and despairing. Maybe somebody else had what you wanted and you didn't feel like you could get it. Number 6, financial obligations and fear poverty. Number 5, shoulds from family and society. These hidden unspoken expectations. Number 4, isolation and lack of support. And if you just had a little help, you could get it. Number 3, fear of failure. Number 2, fear of change and success. Kind of ironic, fear of success. That's number 2. And number 1, time. Not taking the time. Finding the time to make getting your blessing happen. Finding your dreams fulfilled happen. Now that's what somebody here, a living our day and age, says, looking at it just from a society perspective. The living here in the United States of America in 2008. Let's look at what God would say. Let's see what God says, the one who created life, the one who created us, the one who holds the world and controlled by his hands. Let's see what he says about it because you know what? There's something missing from this top 10 list. Anybody catch it? What's missing from this top 10 list? Anybody? Not a trick question. What's missing from this top 10 list? Yeah, this is first word was fine. God. God appears nowhere in this top 10 list. God does appear in the judge's top 10 list. And this book, God, is at the central of all of this. As we look at this, here this morning, be reminded of that as we come to this. And let's look at the barriers that God says. Because you know what? If you're trying to fix barriers that aren't the real barriers, you might have a little bit of success, a little bit of promising results. But until you hit the real barriers, the barriers that you know what God says, are the ones that are really standing in the way of you living and experiencing a fulfilled life. Until you hit the real ones, the ones that are the real problem, you're not going to experience that. And please notice that God wants you to. God wants you to have that. And you know what? God wants you to have it more than you want to have it. He wants it more than you want it for you. If you're following along your outline, and you're bolting there on the screen, the blessing barrier, the first one is of doubt. The blessing barrier of doubt. Now let me compare this with my own personal story a little bit here. The years back, and some of you know this story, all too well. But I had a plumbing barrier at my house, okay? Somewhere along the way, you know, in my swiftness and lack of carefulness, I had been working in my yard, and I had done something that it realized had a significant impact. I'll tell you about that in a second. But where I discovered this first hand was the day I got a call of distress in my house saying, Scott, the toilet is backing up. You know, and that's not when you have four bathrooms and you have eight people in the house, that's not an uncommon thing to hear through the course of the week. So I thought, all right, no big deal. Where's my handy dandy plumber? I mean my plunger. We'll take care of this. And so sure enough, I go in there and I start taking care of the problem like only a man can. All right. The only problem was I was taking care of the problem. I started hearing this bubbling, girdling sound just around the corner from me in the tub. And as I was plunging with all that force, I was getting rid of stuff but it was coming up. It was just coming into the bathtub. And I thought, you know, this is not a good sign. This is never what you want in your plumbing repairs is to simply move the problem to another part of the house. Not what you want. And as I began to realize, as I began to try to figure out what was going on, I thought, this is a pretty big plumbing problem. Bigger than I've seen before. So I went up to lows or home depot whatever it was and got one of those snakes. You know, I had to decide what length I need. You know, was I going to do the six foot length snake for the toilet, you know, or like the 12 foot or something? Well, being the kind of guy I was, I went for the 12 foot. We're going to do this job right, all right? So me and my 12 foot snake there, which I had never used before, we got working on that. And I thought, man, I'm following the directions on this, I'm doing whatever else. And it's not clearing up the clog. Whatever this clog is, whatever the problem is, it is deeper than 12 feet into my piping. And that was a problem, that was reason for concern. What did you say? Whenever your problem is more than 12 feet deep into your piping. And as I begin to continue to work on things, I thought, man, maybe the issues in another toilet, you know, somewhere else in the house, I could not figure this out. But as I told you, it really began in my yard. Because there was a day, months earlier, as I thought back to it, where I had been knowing the yard. And I don't even notice that you're in that every single one of your houses, I believe, if it's like mine, has a little outlet that comes up in your yard that has a cap on it. That's basically your access from the plumbing from your house to the street. Some of you discovered that? Well, I had come by, and I had nipped off the top one time, because my mower was low, or whatever the case was. And that top had broken off. Well, you know, I thought, well, you know, it doesn't seem to be causing any problems. You know, for weeks and months, nothing had been problematic about it. But apparently, part of the top of that, which is just a piece of PVC, had fallen down into the pipe. And even though, you know, was it causing real issues, at some point or another, that piece of PVC had turned. And it had created a clog in my outgoing plumbing from my house to the street. So as you can see, I was having an issue. I was having a plumbing barrier that, looking back now, I realized where it really began. And every barrier has a beginning. The initial barrier to experience God's blessing, the initial one is doubt. It usually begins with doubt. And it did for the Israelites as they're moving into the Promised Land. It began with doubt. Let me tell you what kind of doubts they had. The doubt for this. Is God all powerful? Is he all powerful? Meaning, can I really depend on him? That was one doubt they had. I'll tell you why I know that in a second. But the second doubt they had, which was similar to it, is God all loving? Can I trust him? Is he all powerful? Powerful. And secondly, is he all loving? Can I trust him? Because you know what? It's not just good enough for God to be powerful. If God could help, if he won't. You've got to have both. God's got to be powerful enough to help. But he's also got to be willing to help all at the same time. And how do we know this? Because according to this text here, as we look and we read on this, the Israelites had come to a point where they were told to come in and take the land. People, as you heard read, to get the inhabitants out of the land, one, because this was God's form of judgment on the Canaanites and the people that were possessing the land, they had been living in rebellion so he gets God for all the time at this point. And God was wanting to get them out. Secondly, God did not want his people to come in and be exposed to foreign worship of other gods. God knew that his people would be tempted if that was the case. So God said, hey, you've got to get them out of there. You've got to get rid of them. You've got to wipe out the inhabitants of the land. Notice what happens in Joshua 1, verse 19. We're told, because the first part of Judges 1 is like going good. They're wiping things out, they're taking possession of the land. It is going good till we get to verse 19, where it says the Lord was with the men of Judah. So far so good. They took possession of the hill country. Still pretty good, but they were unable to drive to people from the plains because they had iron chariots. And notice here, it doesn't tell us they tried to and they were defeated because of the iron chariots. In fact, if you were to go back in the book before this Joshua chapter 11, God had specifically just maybe months or years earlier delivered them from a group of people that had chariots without any problem. But somewhere apparently along the way they came in as they were moving through, they thought, you know what? This is going to be a tough one. I got iron chariots. Oh yeah, yeah, I know God had just recently helped us through the same situation, but it was enough to create a sense of doubt. Would God be powerful enough again? Did He get lucky last time? Is this time going to be different? Or what if He's powerful enough, but He really just doesn't want to? Can we trust Him? And for whatever reason, upon this conquest, it stopped. Doubt, doubt jumped in, and they hesitated. And then begin to entertain the possibilities that God isn't strong enough or possibly that God wouldn't deliver them, even if He was strong enough. And doubt enters into their heart and to their mind. Doubting God's power is always a blessing barrier. Doubting God's love is always a blessing barrier as well. Well, that's how it was with Israelites. Let's advance it up to 2008. How is it with us? The people of God now. How is it with us, the church? Is God strong enough to deliver you from life circumstances? I mean, what do you think? Do you think something about that? You probably wouldn't be here at church if you didn't have some interest or in God. Maybe a firm belief in God. You wouldn't be here probably if you didn't have at least some interest. Is God powerful enough? Is He powerful enough to deliver you from the circumstances of life circumstances like loneliness, financial woes, broken relationships, illness or disease, a job search, challenges at school, failing marriage, persisting singleness, you name it. Life circumstances throws a lot at us. And either right now today, you honestly believe He's strong enough and He's willing. Are you doubt it? Is He strong enough or is He willing if He is strong enough? See, we're not a whole lot different. Then the Israelites have just a few thousand years ago. Are we? Doubt God's power in any of these areas that we've just talked about and you're erecting a barrier to experiencing the blessings of God. Forget the top ten lists that you can read about in the articles here. God says, you know what? Here's where it begins. Here's number one. It's not taking time for yourself. It's doubting me. It's doubting me. That's where it begins here right now. What not just life circumstances? What about is God strong enough to deliver you from your greatest enemy? You know, our greatest enemy is not an external enemy according to God. It's an internal enemy, isn't it? I mean, you think of one of the greatest external enemies there might have been that this world has faced. It all Hitler maybe? And I promise you and you probably don't disagree with this. That that enemy began as an inward enemy. Something happened in the heart, didn't it? Evade all Hitler? Somewhere as he was growing up or became an adult. Something was desperately wrong, wouldn't you say? There's an inward enemy that God says that is far greater than any outward enemy you could possibly imagine. Bigger than the Canaanites with Iron Cherry. It's God says, you know what? You've got enemies like this, greed, hate. Maybe one you don't notice so much need for control. That's killing people everywhere. Jealousy, sexual morality, need for approval. Well, that's just as deadly. Bitterness, unforgivingness, lust. You see, if you doubt God's power to deliver you from any of these inward enemies, then you're erecting a barrier to experiencing God's blessing. And it begins with doubt. A few weeks ago, I was, you know the guy, I'll call him Chris, doesn't go to our church or anything, but we were talking and he was sharing with me his struggle. He struggled with the deep, hard sin. He was struggling with his sin of homosexuality and he said, you know what? Even though I follow God and I believe her God about a year ago, I just gave up. I just thought I am too tired. And I just gave up. You see, Chris at some point decided that you know what? It's a lot easier to feed my doubt than it is to feed my faith. And he gave up. He entertained doubt and a barrier was erected in his life of a barrier against blessing, God's blessing in his life. Doubt enters in when we question God's power or God's love to deliver us. And let me ask you, where do you doubt him this morning? Where do you specifically doubt his power and love for you this morning? Because wherever that is, you've begun or you already have erected a barrier to blessing. Well, the barrier of doubt is just where it begins. It usually always leads to the second barrier. And the second barrier is this. The blessing barrier of partial obedience. Partial obedience. Let me go back to my plumbing barrier, okay, at my house. You thought that was a short story and it was over? No, it's not. Because remember, I didn't realize all this was happening along the way. Somewhere between when that piece of the PVC pipe dropped down into my, whatever you call that, you know, sewer pipe going from my house out, over time, other barriers mounted up. You can use your imagination, right? You know, whatever was passing down that pipe in its entirety, and when you have small children, you have no idea what that could include. Okay. That was mounting up and this barrier was growing. This barrier was getting bigger. This barrier was getting stronger. And I'm talking this happened over months. This was not just a few weeks. Slowly but surely, it grew. And the barrier of doubt lead to an additional barrier of partial obedience. It always grows and it that always manifests itself that way. God's full blessing only comes with full obedience. You see, if you want the most out of life, if you want the blessings that God created you to have in this life here, all right, it comes from full obedience to him in his word through Jesus Christ. If you want to have a maximum life, the God promises to offer, you know, it only happened through full obedience to him. Partial obedience produces partial blessing. You limited. Let's look at Israel here. Israel. Tribe after tribe, you know, after that very first verse I read, continues to doubt God on that. In fact, if I look back on the text there, chapter 1, if you just look down, verse 27, and going. But Manasseh did not drive out the people. You go down, verse 29, nor did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites, verse 30. Neither did Zebulan drive out the Canaanites, verse 31. Nor did Asher drive out those living and so on and so on. They all followed suit. They all began to say, you know what? Let's just partially obey God. Let's just do some of it. Somewhere along the way, the doubt led and it fed partial obedience. And here's where the ration happens. And see if this doesn't ring a bell for you. It did for me as I was thinking about this. It became optional in their mind that they fully obey. It was optional that they needed a fully drive out the inhabitants of the land. You know, instead of that being absolutely crucial, it became optional. The important thing they thought probably is that we're at least possessing the land. We're in control of the land. We're in charge. What did they go on to do? They go on and they make these people their labor force. Eh, that's not too bad. In fact, they probably looked a little bit smart. It's like, hey, why are we wiping all these people out? Either destroying them completely or kicking them out of the land? Because they could work for us. That sounded like a good idea. And they went for it and they followed it. But you know what? It was partial obedience. Oh yeah, they went in to possess the land, but they didn't go in and do it the way God told them to. It was the rationalization that stemmed from doubt on that. Again, another doubt. Was God really serious when he said, do it this way? Or was it just a general suggestion and as long as we did just bits and pieces and parts of it would be fine? I mean, think about how we are with God's word. You know, there are parts of it that we like and we'll talk about, but there's parts of it that we just kind of want to avoid. Because they're a little bit too personal. God says, you know what? You got my entire word or you got none of it. You can't pick the pieces you want. It's not a loose leaf book on purpose. It's a whole book. Partial obedience is always a blessing barrier. You know, an amazing thing happened. Did you catch this as you were hearing the paraphrase read? An amazing thing happened during the story. What happened after their partial obedience? Just according to what we heard. It's very important you get this. Pretty much nothing. The immediate results of their partial obedience didn't really change much at all initially. Did you understand the principle in that? So many times we make choices on things and we might make a choice to partially obey God in the area and what happens right away? Nothing. It didn't seem like it was a big deal. There wasn't any big problem that happened. There wasn't a hail that was pouring down on heaven or lightning striking nearby my house. My circumstances in life really didn't go that bad when I partially obeyed God. Well, it doesn't mean it's not extremely dangerous. It doesn't mean that there's still not something that's happening that God realizes that's beginning. That's oftentimes not easy to stop. Maybe similar to the undiscovered lie when it's perpetuated. It seems relatively harmless at first. I mean, lung cancer, after all, is not contracted after a cigarette or two. Using drugs one time doesn't turn you into a drug addict. Hey, a little pornography may seem to spice up marriage at first. Can you see the kind of rationalization that we have that will meet experience? Like the Israelites, the immediate results initially wasn't a big deal. It still doesn't mean that there's not something still very dangerously that's being let loose. But even though it's not biting you the day of partial disobedience, it will come back and it will control and it will dominate you. Days, weeks, months later. Only God knows exactly how long it will take. But partial obedience always begins to quench the blessings of God in your life. Always. It's always a blessing barrier. So think about this personally for you. It's one thing to talk about the Israelites and how stupid they were. Okay? But you know what? Sometimes we're just as stupid. Think about this for a second. God says his greatest commandment is to love him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. That's the most important thing. But when you could choose to compartmentalize God in your life, when you choose to say, all right, I've got a God slot. Let me tell you, the God that fits into your God slot is not the God of the Bible because he's too big. When he comes into your heart and life, he doesn't fit in the slot. You can't squeeze them in. And whatever you think is squeezed into your God slot is a different God. How about relying on the Holy Spirit's power as we're commanded to versus really relying on our own self-dependence, our own ability? The Bible tells us to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Jesus Christ. Make it serve God. But you will often think our private thoughts are free to roam wherever we like. As long as nobody else knows about them. What about God's view of marriage? God's view of marriage is radically different than the world's view of marriage. And God's view of marriage is not so popular because it does talk about ahead of a household who lays down his life for his family. It does talk about another member of the household who respects and serves. Not popular things. What about God's view of finances? God says, you know what, I own everything. And all that you have is mine because I created the world. I created you. That's not a popular viewpoint as opposed to what we have often here today. Or how about loving your neighbor as yourself versus loving yourself with your neighbor? Oh, there's a lot of people in the world who look like they're loving their neighbor as herself, but they're really loving themselves through their neighbor. What's the difference? You're motive. And why you do it? And are you doing it to look good for others? You're doing it to make yourself feel good or you're doing it because it's really still all about you and what they can give you or you're doing it because you know what? They're made an image of God. And because I'm here and I exist and I live and my greatest joy is serving others. That comes from loving God by your heart still on the street. You can't obey the second command unless you're being the first commandment. As we look at it, where are we being partially obedient? Because partial obedience will always be a blessing barrier. Well, it's not until we experience the blessing barrier of doubt. It's not until we experience the blessing barrier of partial obedience that we really begin to experience this third one. This third one is the blessing barrier of consequence of sin. You know, this is when we begin to really realize, oh my goodness, something's going wrong. And that was the case for me with my little plumbing barrier, okay? Not so long ago. Because you see, at this point, you know, I had gotten such a clog. There was such a barrier in my piping here. And all my plunging, all it did was build up an immense amount of pressure in my piping system, but I was intent on fixing this myself. I'm going to go and fix this problem. So I went out there because I knew, hey, you know, when I had broken off that top of that PVC pipe thing, I was smart enough to buy a new one. I had bought a new cap. I screwed it on tight. And I knew where it was in the yard. You know, I had a pullback and grass to find it. And I thought, you know what? If the problem is here, I'm going to fix it. So sure enough, I go out there, just me and myself. And I start taking off that screwing off that cap there, you know, being really confident here now that, hey, what guy? All right, it's going to go to this extent and fix this plumbing part. You know, problem, I thought, yeah, this should be written up somewhere. I'm on that. And it was almost when I got the last little bit of screwing that part off there but I thought this is really getting a little bit too easy because now pressure was helping me. And before I got that last little groove off that thing, that popped off there and I had an explosion, okay, at my feet. The kind you never want to have ever happened in your life. And now my barrier, which had been hidden and been unexposed to the world around me and all this things got really, really bad, my barrier was completely exposed and completely all over me. And I mean that in a very literal sense of that. Okay, it was not the happiest day of my life. And then I thought I need to get in a shower and I thought my shower is not going to work. And again, another not happy conclusion there. But the consequence is sin. I get to a point and there comes a point it does where it gets exposed. Where you begin to realize what is going on and what's happening. And I need to tell you this here because as I thought about this, I think we really need to think about this. This is generally the time, our day and age, our culture, especially us in the church. We begin to blame God and go, God, what kind of, what are you doing? My family is falling apart. My marriage is falling apart. You know, I'm unhappy in my job and whatever else. And we begin to gripe and complain. But we never often think about the doubt that led up to this. We don't want to acknowledge the fact that we've been partially obedient when God has commanded to give us very specific things that we are to do is to be people who are holy. But we get to a point where we can't hide it anymore, the barrier. It's honest as much as my problem was that day, years ago, with that. You see, we're told here in chapter two of this section that there was a curse that came. Remember we talked about it being partial blessing? Well, if you get partial blessing, what's the other part? You want to think the other part's neutral, right? Okay, if I, partial obedience, I get partial blessing, the other part's going to be neutral, right? No. God doesn't have neutral. You're either experiencing his blessings or you are experiencing the result of disobedience. What's the Old Testament refers to as cursing? And we don't like to use that word, that's kind of strong, but that's the reality of it. You're either experiencing the fruit of obedience to God and seeing God's power working your midst in your life or you're experiencing the opposite of that, the curses that come from that. There is no neutral on that. And that was going to be true for the people here. After two, God made it very clear what was going to happen after this with the people. He goes on, and he says, beginning there in chapter 1, the angel of the Lord, went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said, I brought you up out of Egypt, and I led you into the land that I swore to give you your forefathers. I said, I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall make a covenant with the people of this land, but you shall break down their altars. Yet you have disobeyed me. Why have you done this? Now, therefore, I tell you, I will not drive them out from before you. They will be thorns in your sides, and their gods will be a snare to you. He goes on later and he talks about not just that there, but you're going to experience greater temptation as resulted of as well, too. There was not a neutrality in this. When you are experiencing partial blessings, the other part that comes with it are partial curses that come from that. We experience the consequence of our sins. And then we have the audacity to shake our fist at God and go, why God? And I do it, too. This entire rest of the book of Judges goes on, and God begins to raise up a judge. And we're going to look at him. Some of you heard of Gideon, Samson, the most famous one, Deborah, because God knew his people needed a leader to follow, to deliver him through that time. But you know what? Every single judge is we're going to read about fall short. Every single judge is going to come along and do okay for a while. Lead the people well. They're going to see victory over their enemies, but then they're going to turn away from God again. Because ultimately there needed to be a righteous king of their heart. Let me wrap up with just a few concluding thoughts here about how to break the blessing barrier. Because you know what? Every single one of us are experiencing to some degree or another, a barrier to experiencing the light that God wants us to have. And by the way, this is not prosperity, gospel, of saying God wants you to be rich beyond your imagination. If you mean your bank account, God does want you to know the riches of heaven in life here today. Whether things like love, joy, peace, and patience, and kindness, which how many millionaires today don't ever have, and are still looking for. Oh, God wants you to be rich, but it's with the righteousness of his kingdom of his heaven. Let me ask you this, will you turn doubt to belief this morning? If the problem all began with doubt in the first place it did for the Israelites, it does for us today turn doubt to belief. And that's a choice you have to make today. And a very real choice. If doubt is where the barrier was the barrier to blessing, then belief will become the first step in breaking down that barrier for us. I told you the story about Chris. Well, Rob, his real name, said I could use his story. Rob was also a guy that was struggling with homosexuality. Rob came to a place to see the power of God at work in his life. Let me just read to you a quote from Rob. He said, I was down my knees crying out. And as I said, yes, Lord, yes, Lord, I begin to stand. And as I was standing, it felt like stuff was falling off of me. For the first time I felt whole. See, I've met now a beautiful woman. We've been married. I'm actually loving someone with all my heart. And daily learning to love her the way the Lord would have me to. For God has delivered me. I've seen my family come to know the Lord. And I'm leaning for those that I ran with in the world to be saved and set free. Just a part of his story. God is setting and delivering people from their enemies. God is setting people free. Step one, though, is belief taking the place of doubt. Do you doubt God's presence in your life? Do you doubt God's power in your life this morning? Are you doubting God's expert opinion? Does God really know what he's saying? What he's talking about? Do you doubt God's goodness? Do you doubt God's forgiveness for whatever sin haunts you this morning? Do you doubt God's hope that there really is freedom? The second way to break the blessing barrier is to turn partial obedience into full obedience. Turn partial obedience into full obedience. Ask him to show you where this is led. Whatever doubt that has stemmed up inside of you. Ask him to show you where is that led to partial obedience, God? Show me where I can fully obey you. You're going to have about a good chunk of time during our communion time here this morning to do something. Ask him how to show you where that is, where you're being only partially obedient to what he's told you to do. Repent from that, said, all right, God, I'm going to quit trying to do it on my own terms. And I'm going to do it the way your word says. The third way, not just turned doubt to belief and turned partial obedience into full obedience, but instead of experiencing the consequence of sin, begin to experience the fruit of the Holy Spirit. And you won't do that until you turn doubt to belief. Do that until you want to experience that until you turn partial obedience into full obedience. But it will happen because God promises that it will. You know, my dumb plumbing story, and it really is a dumb story, and please don't ever take that technique and fix your plumbing problem on that. But it was interesting when Orange County got there by finally called to come out there on the scene. You know, this is really your responsibility. You're really the one that should be paying for this because they came in and they tore up the ground. They took out this whole piece of piping, the thing that was in there, they put in a whole new cap, and then they had all the equipment to do it. But they say, no, we're just going to do this for free. You know, we just won't report this in as we should. Ah, the feeling of grace, the feeling of mercy, a wonderful thing. Trust the king in his grace that has come to reign in your heart through Jesus Christ. Turn to his mercy, turn to his grace because he will deliver you. Let's pray. God, as we come to you in your word this morning, thought I pray that you would come and remind us of our need to be set free from the reign and the power of sin. And God can realize, help us realize that you have done that through your work on the cross through Jesus Christ. And as we study judges in these weeks and months ahead, God reminds us that you have sent a king to reign in our hearts to come and set us free. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.