Unexpected Criticism | Plot Twist - Week 3 | May 31, 2026

Case File 3: Detective's Log
The rain was coming down hard on the neon-lit streets, washing away the surface dirt but leaving the grit behind. Most people like their Jesus sanitized - a polite, passive character who never pushes back, living like a clean caricature who wouldn't dare rock the boat. But if you take a magnifying glass to the case files, the truth gets heavy. In Case File 3 of our Plot Twist investigation, Pastor Geoff Eckart blows the dust off Matthew 23, where Christ goes completely nuclear on the religious elite. It’s a classic setup: leaders flashing their shiny spiritual badges on the outside while running a crooked racket on the inside. From back-alley compartmentalization to clean cups hiding dirty secrets, Jesus lays out the "Seven Woes" like a rap sheet. But the real twist lands right at the end of the interrogation. This case isn't about pinning the crime on the guy down the street; it forces you to look straight into the mirror and face the primary suspect staring back. True transformation isn't a cheap cosmetic fix to clean up your reputation - it’s a total surrender of the inner life before the clock runs out.

 
Jesus constantly surprised people through the way He healed, taught, confronted, and walked away from expectations, revealing a purpose far bigger than anyone anticipated. In Plot Twist, we’ll step into six unexpected moments from His life to discover what His actions revealed about His mission and the heart of the Kingdom of God - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeuJOy7iJXjV1GmdVy671hLfNjdDy-ZqA

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Daybreak | May 31, 2026
Plot Twist | Week 3
Unexpected Criticism | Geoff Eckart

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00:00:17 – Opening
00:01:55 – The Art of the Plot Twist: Why We Love the Unexpected
00:04:49 – General Conference Update
00:06:25 – Daybreak's Annual Church Membership Meeting
00:07:18 – Summer Challenge: The 90-Day Bible Listening Tour
00:08:24 – Primary Text: Sitting in Moses’ Seat (Matthew 23)
00:10:00 – Defining the Seven Woes
00:10:47 – Woe 1: Spiritual Obstruction & the Vibes We Pass to Our Kids
00:13:54 – Woe 2 & 3: Spiritual Misdirection & Compartmentalizing Our Faith
00:19:09 – The Viral Live-Stream Failure: Becoming a Stumbling Block
00:20:44 – Woe 4 & 5: Spiritual Misproportion & Cleaning the Outside of the Cup
00:25:26 – Woe 6 & 7: Whitewashed Tombs & Total Spiritual Rejection
00:29:30 – The Greatest Cause of Atheism
00:31:27 – Life Application: Looking in the Mirror & Changing Through Surrender
00:34:03 – Closing Prayer of Surrender

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Scripture Referenced:
Matthew 23.1-36

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#DaybreakChurch #GeoffEckart #PlotTwist #Jesus

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Well, good morning, Dave Braheck. How are you guys doing today? Oh man, so good to see you beautiful people here gathered in the house. I love the house personally. Just love the house. Matter of fact, I'm building a new house. But it is me, your lead pastor, Reverend and Chaplain Geoffrey Eckhart. And I sure do love Indiana. I love Indiana sports. Go pacers. And today, for plot twist, I'm gonna be preaching to you beautiful people about how Moses walked on water. And that comes from Moses chapter 30, verse 62.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Are you the are you the professor from Back to the Future? That is not what I look like. Is this what I look like? I'm the Reverend. Listen. Sorry. I said maybe one day you can preach here, but not today. Plot twist, I am preaching today. But nice try.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

All right. Well, guess what, daybreak? I'm gonna go hop on my Suzuki 5000 and I'm gonna go blast off to the house through the jungle. Goodbye.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Alright. Young staff, what are you gonna do? Good morning. It is I. It's good to see you. Glad you're here. Glad you're here in the house. I just said what he said. And on Daybreak Live, and I'm so happy to be with you today. And I can't wait to share. And we're talking about plot twists. Now I want to ask you how many of you love a good plot twist in a movie? Raise your hand, me too. I'm wondering if you may have seen this. This is to me like the best plot twist of all time. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? How many people here saw this live? A few of us. Okay, let's watch. Here it is. Spoiler alert.

unknown 2:17

I am the father of all.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Whoa, I remember seeing that for the first time. I was a child. My mind just blew apart when I saw that. I was not expecting that. But good plot twisted movies. How about this movie here? Maybe you've seen Sixth Sense. I think it's probably the best plot twist, honestly, in any movie. Or this one right here. Psycho. I'm not going to ask if anybody saw this live because that was a long time ago. That's maybe like the OG of plot twisted movies. And then maybe we always think of plot twists as like thrillers, but there's also comedies. This one here, how many of you have seen Dirty Rotten Scoundrels? An old movie, a classic, very funny. I love that movie. One more, a little more recent, Knives Out. Any Knives Out fans here? That's got a nice little like a who-done it kind of plot twist there. But this whole idea of plot twist is taking a deeper look at something. Because here's the thing: when we think about Jesus, if we just look on the surface what we see or think about, and what the world on the surface level, when they think about Jesus, just might think of this nice, polite person. But if you go deeper, it's not this sterilized caricature of Mr. Rogers. It's something different. And what we've talked about in this series so far, Rachel kicked us off with Jesus healing someone and then telling them not to tell anyone, which seems kind of strange. That was a plot to us. And last week, Ethan, our youth pastor, you did such a great job. Didn't Ethan and Rachel? They did such a great job. I just love those guys. And Ethan talked about this conversation where this woman comes up and pleads for Jesus' help, but he says no. He refuses to help her. It was a plot to us. So there is a deeper side to Jesus, and if we want to pursue him, if we want to understand what our faith is all about, if you're exploring faith about Jesus, or if you're on the journey already, the thing is, the more we know about Jesus, the more we can understand how the life is meant that we were supposed to live. And that's what we're going to do today. And I can't wait to get there. I do have a quick thing to say, though. Last week we were at our general conference for our denomination. We're part of the Wesleyan Church. Many of you know that. You may not know. I'm really proud of our denomination. I love my denomination. We are steeped and birthed out of some very unique circumstances. What started our denomination, actually, was our stand against slavery here in America. That's a pretty cool way to start a movement. We just felt the injustice of slavery was wrong. And people, early on in our movement, at the risk of their own lives and reputations, sacrificed themselves to start what we're a part of today called the Westlean Church. They're also one of the first churches to recognize women as equal in leadership. Now there are different views on that. I'm not going to debate that with you, but that's my view on scripture. And if you're around daybreak, you know that that's who we are, but that's a part of our church. And that that doesn't just go back to the Western church. It actually goes back way back to the early roots of our faith. But I celebrate today with you that my wife, Erin, she was elected to the general board of the Wesleyan Church this last week, which is amazing. So I told people this week there there's 24 people from all the country that were voting this. And I tell people, and I really mean this, that if you were to compare leader to leader, I honestly believe my wife could outlead me, and she does. She's shaking her head, but I would I would say that honestly. So I'm really proud of you. And and we we just had a great time connecting with our denomination last week, and I'm really proud of her. And this week on Wednesday, we've got a membership meeting. We do this once a year. If you're here in person, you got a handout today. Now, you may not be a member here, and you may think, well, why do I need to be a member? I can just come here. Yeah, of course, you can. But we're going to be talking about some really pivotal things. This will be a historic moment this Wednesday. We're talking about the future of our property. Members will be voting on that. We meet once a year. It's kind of a family meeting, and I bring everyone up to speed on things happening in the church, and we make some decisions. We'll be voting on our elders. That's this Wednesday 7th. So if you're a member, I want to make sure you're here. If you're not a member, you're welcome to sit in and join and watch. And I want to invite you and encourage you. If daybreak is your church, you should be a member here. And uh I'll just leave it at that. And I want to just say one more thing. This is kind of off the cuff. I was thinking about this, but over the summer, so tomorrow is June 1st. And students, how many students do we have here in the building? And how many of you are already out of school? And how many of you have a few agonizing days left? Okay, parents, are you ready for this? Because it's about to happen. And um, so tomorrow, June 1st, I'm gonna go on this journey, and I'm just gonna invite you to go with me. And I'm gonna put it up on social media tomorrow, but a listening tour of the Bible in 90 days. You know, if you listen to the Bible about an hour a day, you can listen to the Bible all summer. So we're gonna post on our Facebook page tomorrow a listening tour for the Bible. And a lot of you, you're mowing the grass, you're doing your thing, you're driving, you're listening to something. Why not listen to the Bible an hour and we can go through the whole Bible this summer? So if you're interested in that, just check out the Facebook page or if you're not on social media, and then find someone who is and get it, and let's do it together. How's that sound? Does it sound good? All right, let's do it. Okay. So that brings us to Matthew 23, what we're gonna look at today. And I want to tell you that Jesus here, this is really one of the more astonishing sections of Scripture. There are four books in the Bible that kind of recount the life and teachings of Jesus. We refer to them as the gospels. There's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew is, he was uh writing really to the Jewish audience, and he was inspired by God to write these words and to recount the life of Jesus. And we get something really unique here, and there's a lot of insider language because of his audience that he had in mind. So we're gonna do our best to follow along, but I just want to warn you ahead of time. This is one of the more difficult things to hear that Jesus has to say, and you'll find no other passage in the Bible like this one. So listen to what he has to say here. It says, Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, the law and the teachers of the law and the Pharisees, they sit in Moses' seat. And so you must be careful to do everything they tell you. Okay, sounds good so far. But do not do what they do because they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and they put them on other people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. Wow, that's pretty direct, isn't it? It's pretty direct what Jesus has to say. And what Jesus is going to say here in the next few verses is what's known as the seven woes. Now, the word woe is a really unique word. This was written originally in the Greek language, and this word woe is ooh. Say that with me? Uai. Sounds like a Hawaiian little town, nice little place to visit. So this word, it's really hard for us to maybe understand, but it's a word of sorrow. It's a word of judgment, it's a word of warning. It's Jesus saying, Listen, you need to be careful. There is something coming your way. It was a warning given with some sternness to it, but also uh a heart of love saying, Watch yourselves. Jesus here gives us seven woes. And here's the first one: Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites, you shut the door on the kingdom of heaven in people's faces, and you yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. He's talking here about spiritual obstruction. Jesus here is saying, You're keeping people from getting to me. People are trying to get to truth, but you're all of your religion. Now, the teachers of the law, they kept all the rules. I mean, they would put us to shame. They probably had what's known as our Old Testament memorized. There were only maybe about 6,000 of these people, teachers of the law. They were very elite in terms of their religious knowledge and background and training. And so they they knew all the answers. But here, Jesus just hits them directly between the eyes and says, You are keeping people, your rules and your regulations. And I want to speak to parents here for a minute. You know, we me and Ariana, we we met with a young couple in our church this week. They're about ready to get married, and they ask us for some advice. And um we sat down with them and they said, How do you pass on faith to the next generation as a parent? And Arianna had a really great response to that. She said, I think one of the most important things is if you love the church, that will speak loudly and clearly to your kids. You know, some of us maybe as parents, I want I want you to think about maybe what you might project to your kids. Like, oh, we have to go to church today. Do I do I really want to do that? Do I need to give to the church? Do I do I need to live this certain way? And I'm gonna tell you, it's crazy, but you see that come through. Like we're kind of reliving our early days of parenthood because we have a little grandson, he's about a year and a half, and he's repeating everything that he hears right now. It's crazy what they pick up, isn't it? Your kids are picking up the vibes you're giving them about faith. Are you keeping your kids? Are you spiritually obstructing your family? Be careful. Because it's easy to do. For the rest of us, maybe not as parents, but are are we living our lives in a way that is invitational to faith? Or does it just seem like a drudgery? Do we want to keep it to ourselves? Or are we just willing to tell the world, did they see it through our face, through our eyes at work, students at school, at home, in our neighborhoods, is is faith just coming through in a winsome way, or do we look like we're kind of maybe baptized in prune juice, you know, where we're just kind of sour. Because that's what Jesus is talking about here. Be careful about spiritual obstruction. Then he goes on to the next one. He says, This woe to you teachers, the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are. Whoa. I mean, that is intense. Spiritual misdirection. What are we leading people towards? Jesus here is saying to the teachers of the law, you're all about the rules, you're all about doing the right things, but that's not what this is about. This isn't about following all the rules. Now, rules are important, laws are important. Jesus reiterates something given to God's people many years before him, the Ten Commandments. Those aren't suggestions, those are commandments. We are meant to live a certain way. And Jesus here is saying, listen, all those things matter, but what are you leading them towards? Are you leading them towards religion or are you leading them towards a relationship? See, they had the religion part, but they missed the relationship. My question for you is what do you have? If you're a native person to this area of West Michigan, which was pointed out by my predecessor here, I am not. I'm a Hoosier, but I've lived here long enough. And if you've been maybe immersed in this part of West Michigan that's maybe a more traditional religious place, there's a lot of good to that. But there's also a lot of baggage. You got to be careful. Spirit, what are we leading people towards? Then he goes on with another woe here. He says, Woe to you, blind guides. If any you say, if anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing. But if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, it is bound by that oath. You blind fools, which is greater, the gold or the temple that makes the gold sacred? You also say, if anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing, but anyone who swears by the gift on the altar is bound by that oath. You blind men, which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? Therefore, anyone who swears by the altar swears by it and everything on it. Anyone who swears by the temple swears by it, and the one who dwells on it. If anyone swears by heaven, swears by God's throne and by the one who sits on it. Now, man, he really gets in the weeds there, but you need to understand it in this particular context, and Matthew knew that the original audience would understand this, that the teachers of the law had all these, it was almost like a contract. They had fine print to the way that they lived. They knew all the legalese of religion. And if they made an oath or a promise, they could say, Well, I'll promise to do that, and I'm gonna promise by this certain thing that he mentions here, mentions some different examples, the the temple or the gold on the temple. And depending on what words they used, depended it also related to how significant their oath was. In other words, there are certain things they could say and certain words they could use in their promise that could get them out of an oath that they made. And they justified this spiritually, they justified this with their faith. They said, Well, this is the way I said it, almost like a lawyer. You know, a lawyer can know the exact way to say it to where it can be maybe interpreted different ways. So you can wiggle your way out of something, and they were masters at doing this. But what they were doing was they were compartmentalizing their lives. They're saying, Well, I can still be in faith and do this, but it's okay here. They they kind of tended to separate the the sacred and the secular. And that makes me think that for all of us here, as we as we leave settings like this and we go out into the real world, as we go back to work, students, as you go back to school, as you're doing your thing, would you act in church the way you do everywhere else, like at work? Would you say the same things? Would you use the same language around your pastor that you would your colleague at work or your classmate at school? Because we can compartmentalize our lives. You can say, well, I'll do this here, but I won't do that here. When we start to compartmentalize, we start to minimize the impact that faith has on us and the people around us. Because here's the reality: if you're a follower of Jesus, you're not coming to church here today, you are the church. So the church goes everywhere you go. You take daybreak with you everywhere you go. Did you know that? You take your faith, you take Jesus more than anything. You take Jesus everywhere you go in the world because you are the church. We are the sent ones. We're gathered here now, but we are meant to go, and we're not meant to compartmentalize our lives. There is a video that went viral just within the last few days. A pastor was doing a live stream and something went wrong and it got caught, and because it was live streamed, man, it got picked up. Want you to watch it.

SPEAKER_02 19:11

What is that?

SPEAKER_00 19:13

The water that got spotted.

SPEAKER_02 19:14

Yeah, a large glass of water from our live stream. This is like a kid size, free sample size. I'm sorry. I'm an adult. Bring out an adult size. Okay? You're messing the whole video up. There are a lot of people watching. Okay, just delete that part. You get back up by 30 seconds. Okay, well, that's an example of how certain people can be a stumbling block to other people and cause them to sin. Like she caused me to sin and become angry because she didn't get the water right. So that's something you want to avoid being a stumbling block to others. So that was a good example. Um now I'm off. Can we just let's just restart? People are gonna restart. If you want to join the next live stream, please join. We're gonna start over.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

That's a pastor, by the way, and he's blaming her for his sin.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Ooh, that's rough. Be careful when you're live streaming. Man, that's rough. She brought him a small glass of water instead of a big one. Now it's easy to pick on situations like that. It's easy to pick. I don't know that guy. I'm glad I don't, by the way, but um it's easy to pick on other people, but man, that's what happens when we compartmentalize our lives and our sin, is we just end up getting caught somewhere. And Jesus here is warning them against that. Now, let's go to the next one. He says, Woe to you teachers of the law and you Pharisees, you hypocrites. You get a tenth of your spices, your mint, your dill, your cumin. And you have neglected the more important matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former. You blind guides, you strain out a gnat, but you swallow a camel. Again, he's talking about spiritual misproportion. He's saying, you take the he mentions these certain spices. Again, this is insider language. Let me give you just a picture of what's happening here. So back then they would tithe one-tenth. We still do that today. God calls us to give one-tenth of our income to God as an act of worship, and it's used to spread the kingdom of God. And so people would say, Yeah, I got my crops here, and so, you know, my big stuff, I definitely give 10%. But Jesus here is saying, Here's what you teachers of the law do. I see you. You take your mint, you take your dill, you take your cumin. These are these were little household plants. These weren't like big crops. These were these are small little batches of plants that a lot of people would have in their house. They would use it for their things. He would say, now you take those small things and you give a tenth of that. That's how meticulous you are with keeping the rules. And you you focus on those little things, but you're missing the bigger picture. Now that would be that would be similar to us today, like if you tie. Than if you give a tenth of your income at your job. But let's say you sell something on Facebook Marketplace, or let's say you sell something on eBay and it's just kind of a little hobby thing, and maybe you make 20 bucks. The teachers of law would say, Well, if I made $20, I'm going to make sure I take a tenth of that, $2, and I'm going to give that to the church because that's what I'm supposed to do. They were meticulous about all the little things, but then they missed the bigger issues. And Jesus here is saying, you take things and you make them, you put them way out of proportion. Now, what's that mean? Well, maybe faith is an important part of your life. And you say you love God, and I'm not going to be the judge of that. But let's say your heart is filled with bitterness or unforgiveness. Is there someone in your life you can't stand the thought of even thinking about them? Maybe someone hurts you and you've harbored bitterness in your heart. And we can easily say to ourselves, well, I come to church, Jeff, I tithe, I read my Bible, I do all the things I'm supposed to do, and those are all great things. You should be doing those things. But Jesus has a lot of very strong things to say about forgiveness. In fact, he kind of hinges our salvation upon it in a couple different times that we see in the Gospels. We got to be careful that we can follow the little things. Man, we miss the big things. Jesus here is warning them: be careful. He goes on to say this: Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites, you clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they were full of greed, self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside will also be clean. Again, more kind of insider language here, but Jesus here is speaking to a culture where cleanliness, where spiritual cleaning, where certain things would have to be washed or prepared in a certain way for worship experiences, for personal experiences. You'd have to go through this water purification process. It was very common. And Jesus here is saying, you love having the outside all looking together. You project a great game, but inside you got a dirty life. There's a habit no one knows about. And it's it's causing your insides to rot. It's dirt, it's filth. And everything looks great on the outside. But the inside, it's a different story. We got to be careful about spiritual projection. He goes on. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. He is speaking straight to their spiritual condition. You notice he keeps using this word hypocrites. It's used six times. It's the word that helps us understand it's someone who's an actor. In other words, a better way of thinking about they're a pretender. Jesus is saying, you're pretending here. You're pretending that everything's okay. You're pretending that you're this great righteous person. And man, when we see videos like that, for probably most everyone, it's disgusting to watch that. It's disgusting to see it. And Jesus here is putting it on full display. The title of our message today is When Jesus Embarrassed People on Purpose. I mean, Jesus is going nuclear on these guys. He is not holding back. I mean, this is brutal. He's saying you're hypocrites, you're pretending. But it's not real. Wow, whitewash tombs. It doesn't get more direct than that. And he says, Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You build tombs for the prophets and you decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, Well, if we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets. So you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murder the prophets. Go ahead then and complete what your ancestors started. Wow. You snakes, you brood of vipers, how will you escape being condemned to hell? Therefore I'm sending your prophets and sages and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify, others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that have been shed on earth, and the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zachariah, of Barekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I tell you, all this will come on this generation. I mean, he just finishes it with guns blazing here, in complete spiritual rejection. The teachers of the law, they grew up inheriting this faith, these practices. But what began to happen was they were so focused, like we said, on the little things, on the external experiences, they were all about the rules and not about the relationship, and they began to go off course so much so that anyone who spoke any truth, they would literally put them to death, the prophets, the people that spoke about truth and justice, but they didn't want to hear it. And Jesus here saying, This is about ready to come to its fulfillment, finish what your ancestors started, he's speaking there of himself. You're rejecting not only the prophets, but God who is among you. And it's easy to miss. Sometimes I've asked this question: if Jesus were to walk into this church right now, would we know who he is? Or would he be so opposite of everything that we believe because we've been focused on the wrong things? I shudder when I think of that question. I think, would I recognize God in my presence? God among us. Do we see God in the everyday, in the ordinary? We've got to be so careful in this world. He uses the word hypocrisy. There is a quote that's so powerful by Brendan Manning. He says, This the greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, but they walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle. And that is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable. Boy, those are poignant words to consider. I'll tell you, you know, when you think about what we've heard today, what do we do with this? We see what Jesus did when he looked at the teachers of the law. And I will tell you this in our world today, it's easy to spot the hypocrisy, isn't it? It's easy to say, well, this person's wrong and that person's wrong, and I disagree with them, and I don't think they're right, and I just don't agree. This morning, as I was praying and thinking about our time, I was thinking about all the churches I drove by to get here, just in a few short minutes. There's a lot of churches around here, there's a lot of churches in the world, and a lot of churches might say, well, they're doing it wrong and they're doing it wrong. I want you to know from this pulpit, you're not going to hear that. Because we got to do the best we can. Some of you maybe fill your time listening to other teachings from other people, and that's great, and I hope that you do. There's so much good information out there. But let me just warn you if you find someone that's teaching from Scripture or in the name of God, and all they're doing is pointing out the hypocrisy, and that's their only message. My warning to you is to be careful. Because that's the easiest thing in the world to do is to point out the hypocrisy. A healthy way to understand hypocrisy is to look at yourself first. We went through the Why series a couple months ago. Some of you were a part of that. We went through the book of Job. And one of the things that God just stuck into my heart that I think about almost every day is that last message was called, Why does God allow evil in the world? And we talked about the different kinds of world that God could have made. He could have made a world where there wasn't any choice, therefore there couldn't be any evil, but then we'd all be robots, and he could have made a world where evil was just immediately forgiven. So if something terrible happened to a friend of yours, God would just simply erase that and take all the penalty away. And I want you to imagine the evil that would escalate in a world like that where you could just do anything you want without any consequences. But another world, was a world where he didn't allow evil to exist when it happened, which means we wouldn't be here. And I'll tell you what God implanted within my heart was when I think about evil in the world, my default setting up until that moment in that series was to think about everyone else. What is this person doing? What is this person doing? What is this person teaching? How is this person living? And you know what the Holy Spirit said to me? Jeff, are you looking in the mirror? How much evil have you caused in the world? Have you ever considered that question? The choices that you've made. My admonishment to you is when you think of evil and hypocrisy, think of yourselves first. Think of your life, how God can improve you. We don't change by trying harder. We actually change by surrendering more. That's the good news. You don't have to fix yourself. God can do that if your heart's willing to surrender to Him. And so today, my admonishment to you is when you consider your life, consider how God can change you first. It's a great prayer to pray. I want to pray that prayer with you right now. Would you bow your heads with me? Father, these this is an unusual message. It's an unusual passage. It's truly a twist on what we're used to thinking about when we think about you. But Father, we know that you care about hypocrisy, you care about evil, you care about sin, you care about the things that are causing so much destruction in the world. And so would you speak to our hearts today? Would we be the first to look in the mirror and consider our lives and the things that we need to allow you to do within us? Father, thank you for your truth, even though maybe it was much more direct today. Father, that we would hear it and we would indeed truly be changed. In Jesus' name. Amen. You glad you're in church today. Want to tell you, we're joking around Tori. He's one of our savings. He's been working out with me the last couple years, on and off. And I'll tell you, I had the hardest workout he's ever put me through this week, and I'm still sore, but I'm gonna tell you something. What we heard today is a little bit like that. You might walk away a little sore today, but our role is to go be the church in this world that people want to see. That's my charge to you today. And go be the church that inspires people to see Jesus. You are dismissed.