Little things make a big difference. Let's talk about it on this edition of key writing. Math with Steve Brown and this is key life, a program designed to get you home with freedom, joy and faithfulness to Christ. Now get your Bible and let's study together. Thanks Mike. If you have your Bible open to the book of Obadiah as we continue with our Old Testament survey, we're up to this very small book. And a little bit later, starting tomorrow probably, certainly next week, I'm going to look at some of these verses in Obadiah. There are only 21 of them. That's the entire book. You can miss it if you're not careful and this is a gem of a little book. But it deals primarily with the Edamites, their destruction, their judgment and the raising up the resurrection of the people of God, the ancient covenant people of God, Israel. And I gave you a history lesson. We traced the Edamites from Abraham right on down to Herod and we saw how the Edamites were a problem from the very beginning. We saw Esaw and Jacob. Esaw is another word for Edam, by the way, and he was the forefather of a great nation and that great nation, until they were destroyed as a nation, did nothing but caused problems for God's people. Now, I gave you the details of that historical study. I'm not going to do that today. But I want you to look at some conclusions we can draw from the historical lesson of the Edamites. We saw first that the root of bitterness is a lot more important and dangerous than most people suppose. Man, I've been a pastor for a lot of years and I've buried more people than I can remember. Some of them didn't like me, but I stood by their graves. No, that's beneath what a Christian ought to say. But I did. I had a whole lot of funerals. People are always saying to me, I'm going to show you the real side of life. No, you're not. I've seen more of the real side of life in a week than most people see in a lifetime. I've buried more babies and stood beside more deathbeds and let me tell you something else. I've mediated between more family fights than you can possibly imagine. I've seen people fight over the casket. One side on one side and the other on the other side and the middle of the grave side service yelling at each other at the top of their lungs. You don't want to say you guys don't do this. Money is not that important. It doesn't matter. You're going to die and this is going to affect your children. And then your children are going to be better and it's going to affect their children. You've got to fix it. That's why Jesus said so much to say about forgiveness. That's important within families. It's with those people you haven't spoken to in a long time. Fix it because it has ripples that will cause all kinds of problems. And then I want to draw another conclusion. This is a new one. I want you to see at least one of the complicated pieces of the plan of God in the connection between Jesus and He saw. When you step back and we look more at detail tomorrow but when you step back and you look at history it is amazing how the little pieces start fitting together. I love this study history because sometimes it's breathtaking. You ever wonder what would happen if Henry VIII didn't want the divorce? Listen, he was cool. He was called the defender of the faith by the Pope. I mean he was a godly man. And then he decided maybe because he had a lost problem. He wanted to stay married to the woman and that proceeded to the disruption of the church to the founding of the English Reformation that affects us today. What if John Husk in 15th century had never read Wycliffe or Wycliffe? What if Wycliffe had never received teaching position at Oxford? What if Napoleon had decided I'm staying away from Russia? I've got all these lands and all these peoples. I don't need. What if Wellington had decided to be a school master for which he had been trained instead of becoming a history leader? Voltaire said that history is a bag of tricks played on the dead but it's not. History is made up of little events and little decisions that have very important implications and God is putting the little pieces together. Iraq is not an accident. 9-11 is not an accident. The little things that you see happening in politics, those are not accidents. History is his story and you have to wait around for a long time maybe from heaven to see the pieces come together. And God being glorified. You think about that. Well, did you vote yesterday? I should have said something to you yesterday but I forgot. If you voted you get 3-3 cents. No, it's a joke. I can't forgive you. Only one person can do that but take the day off. I mean you did a really good thing. And if you didn't vote, may know I'm not going to do that but you should have right down for your prayer list and your areas of confession and repentance that you didn't vote. You've got to vote and if you didn't vote and you're complaining may God have mercy on your soul. Is this dumb or what? It's already over. I mean this isn't time to preach a sermon on voting. That's because I felt guilty about not talking about it yesterday. Let me tell you something really good we're going to do. And if you haven't heard about it you just, I am so pleased with this. I can't tell you. We've got a pooped pastures conference January 23rd through 25th in Orlando, Florida. And if you've got a tired pastor he needs to come. And if you are a tired pastor you need to come. And you say well I'm a woman and I'm a pastor and you left me out. No, I mean you too. We're going to come together. Now these are real pastors who got dirt under their fingernails who are doing a really amazing job. And we've gotten such good rates on the hotels during the season. We just want to do this. This is so cool. And it's called the pooped pastures conference. Peculiar people are going to be doing drama, buddy green, from Nashville is the God's Folk singer. Bluegrass is going to be singing. Dan Allander is going to be here from Portland, Tom Wood from Atlanta. Steve Childers from all over the world in planting churches. I'm going to be doing, it's going to be a soft place for pastors. We're not going to teach you how to be better. You've got as good as you're going to get. We're not going to teach you how to have a bigger church. God doesn't care if you have a bigger church. We're not going to teach you how to change the world. You're having trouble keeping your little flock together. I know. I've been there and we're going to give you a soft place where you can be with people like you. And it'll change your life as we talk about God's grace to the pastor. It's the pooped pastures conference. You'll let us know. We'll send you a brochure. Or you can go to our website, that's www.keylife.org and you can get some information there. You can call us 1-800-keylife-24 hours a day. We'll send you a brochure. You're going to write key life, post office box 5,000. Make one Florida 32794. He liked Canada, post office box 32150, Cambridge, Ontario, N3H5N3. Or you can email us at Steve at keylife.org. All right, let's get to some of these questions. I said I'd say more about this and I will today. Why are so many people offended by the grace of God? I think I maybe said this last week, but they used to bother me all the time. I didn't understand. I didn't understand. I mean, that is such a wonderful, good news item. But let me tell you something. You can't hear it unless you hear the bad news and I think that's what ticks people off. Do you know what I really, really like? I really, really like self-righteousness. I mean, at Pharisees drive me up the wall. Legalist. I get so mad at me. People that hurt the people of God take away their joy and their happiness. Now I'm making a point here, but it's not the point you think. I just love telling you that. Because I love self-righteousness. And as long as I'm self-righteous and I don't care what area about my theology, about my life, about my hating self-righteous people, about anything. As long as I do that, then grace is offensive to me because grace always runs downhill. So I think you've got to know your bad before you know how much God loves you. And in the sense that you know that you're a sinner and continue to be, then you understand grace. And in so far as you can't accept that about yourself, then you get ticked when somebody starts talking about grace and you start calling it anti-nomeanism or cheap grace or whatever variety of things that people want to say so. Go read the Puritans. They are so wonderful. Their confessions are so incredibly detailed and so scary that I blush sometimes when I read the Puritans. But their understanding and joy and laughter in the face of God's grace is something that is plain incredible. This is from New Jersey. Does it matter to whom we pray God the Father, Jesus the Son of Holy Spirit? No, I really don't. I feel more comfortable praying to the Father. But you know if there's no jealousy in the Trinity, I'm not going to make some big doctrine about how you do it. But if you look at the patterns of prayer in the Bible, they're directed to God the Father. So I feel more comfortable doing that kind of prayer to the Father. But if you should pray to Jesus or to the Holy Spirit, lightning bolt isn't going to come out of heaven and you're not going to get sizzled and God still loves you and you can, and it's okay. This is from Florida. Does God get angry at believers? No, I don't think He does. And I think that's the central problem of our obsessiveness. We are sure that God is angry at believers. I've been criticized recently and very heavily and probably rightly so. I've been in churches and I said, God's not angry at you. Why don't you get that through your head? And then one guy walked out and came to me and said, you know, you can't say that. They're pagans in there. And I thought, well, the problem is, you know, we present a God who is so wrath, although they'll never go anywhere near him. So maybe it was a mistake that had a good side to it, but I listen to what my friends say. He wouldn't want to be my friend, but I'm being his friend. I listen to what he said and I decided that I'm going to say it differently. God, if you're a believer, he's not angry at you. And if you're a pagan and you're listening to this broadcast for some kind of weird reason, let me say, if you'll go to him on the basis of the cross, he won't be angry if you leave him. How's that for you, theologically orthodox, a pipe coach? No, I do think the criticism is right. I got to get out of here before it gets worse. Listen, when your writer called, be sure and give us the call letters of this great station, where you hear the broadcast key life. And oh, yes, key life is a list of supported production of key life network.