Man, all right, so we're starting a new series. We're gonna focus here this evening in Luke chapter two. Of course, the Christmas story, the birth of Jesus in Luke chapter two. And what we're gonna focus on this evening, well, first of all, the series is gonna be, we're gonna go through some topics about the Christmas story and just talk about the actual biblical details of these topics, these subjects of the Christmas story in this series. Clear up a lot of maybe pop culture things that have been thrown into the Christmas story through whether it be cartoons or stories or fiction or whatever it is, a lot of secular influences have unfortunately been put into the story of Christmas. So we're just gonna step through a few topics about the Christmas story and shore up what the Bible actually says and what that means for us. And this evening, the topic that we're gonna talk about is gonna be in Luke chapter two and it's the topic that is the shepherds in the Christmas story. So we're gonna talk about the shepherds this evening. I like, we're starting with the shepherds because I used to be a shepherd. I used to raise sheep. So the shepherd's not that that really has anything to do with the story, but the shepherds this evening are going to be the topic of our first sermon in this series. So look down at Luke chapter two in verse number eight. So we see that Jesus has been born in Luke chapter two. Of course, the savior of the world has finally come to earth. In Luke chapter two, look down at verse number eight and we see the introduction of the shepherds in the Christmas story. And they were in the same country, shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. So the first thing I wanna point out here, so what I wanna do is I just wanna point out a lot of details about the shepherds in the Bible and just point out some details that the Bible says that maybe we've kind of got some different ideas in our heads over the years. But the first thing I wanna point out is that the shepherds were close to Jesus. They were close to, they were in the same country, the Bible says, they were abiding in a field in the same country. So they were very close to the birthplace of Jesus. So that's different from other people that we will see in the Bible that come to visit Jesus at a later time, okay? So they were close. They were, what would you say? They were local to the situation here. Look at verse number nine. And then, so you have these shepherds, they're watching their sheep at night. And you know, here, I mean, you're watching the sheep at night by the way, because whenever sheep are killed by anything, it's always at night. You know, you always wake up in the morning and then they're dead. Something killed them in the night. So these guys are watching over their flocks in the fields. They're literally out in the fields with the sheep in the evening, okay? Now I had dogs that did that. They would be out in the fields with the sheep. We also had a llama that was out in the, just lived with the sheep. You say a llama. Yeah, llamas protect sheep. Did you know that? I mean, a llama, we had this llama. This isn't part of the Christmas story, okay? But we had a llama and her name was Rose and she was just the nicest llama in the world. But here's the thing about llamas. Llamas hate dogs. Llamas are just, they just naturally have an instinct to hate canines. So we had a problem with coyotes, coyotes, I guess they would say, in California. And the llama, she thought she was a sheep. You say you only get one llama. So the llamas don't know that they're different. They just live with the sheep. They think they're a sheep, but they hate dogs and they're huge and they have these big hooks for, what do you want, for hooves. And they're really good at defending. They literally get up and fight a dog, okay? So we had animals that lived out with the sheep and protected the sheep at night. But these guys were literally out in the field at night when this happened, okay? So they're out there, they're protecting the sheep, they're being good shepherds. So they're close, they're local, they're out with the sheep. Look at verse nine. And then this happens. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them and the glory of the Lord shone round about them and they were sore afraid. So look, I mean, the glory of the Lord, we saw this from the darkness series, but look, there was some light involved here. There was definitely something that they could see. This was quite a scene and it got their attention. Verse 10. And the angel said unto them, Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior, which is Christ the Lord. So here the angel, go back to verse number four. Here the angel tells them where Jesus is. He tells them where the savior is located. Look at verse four. The Bible says, And Joseph also went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth into Judea unto the city of David. So Joseph was from Nazareth. He came out of Nazareth and he went to Bethlehem. He went to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem. So that's how we know that the city of David they're talking about here is actually Bethlehem. So why is that important? Well, it's important because in the Old Testament, the city of David is referenced like 40 some times and it's always talking about Jerusalem. Turn to second Samuel chapter five. So we see the city of David in the Old Testament is a different place than what the city of David is called in the New Testament. But they clear it up for us in verse number four where they say unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem because he was of the house of the lineage of David. And we'll see why that's important in a little bit as well. So the Old Testament refers to Jerusalem. Look at second Samuel chapter five in verse number six. The Bible says, and the king and his men went to Jerusalem under the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land which spake unto David saying, except thou cannot take away the blind and the lame and shall not come hither, thinking David cannot come in hither. Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion the same is the city of David. So I mean this, it's called the city of David, David's city in the Old Testament because it was the capital of David's kingdom. But it's called the city of David to the angel for a different reason and we'll see why in a little bit. In the New Testament, turn to first Samuel chapter 16. In the New Testament, it's always referring to Bethlehem which is where David was born. And that is important in the Christmas story and in the story of Jesus and Jesus being born there because Jesus was from where? Jesus was from the line of David. So Jesus was the everlasting king that fulfills the promise of God to David that his king would reign forever. And in first Samuel chapter 16, look at verse number one. This is when Samuel is gonna go anoint a new king after Saul has lost the kingdom and the Lord said unto Samuel, how long will thou mourn for Saul? Seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel. We've talked about this in the last few weeks. Fill thine horn with oil and go and I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite for I've provided me a king among his sons. And Samuel said, how can I go?  And the Lord said, take an heifer with thee and say I am come to sacrifice to the Lord and call Jesse to the sacrifice and I will show thee what thou shalt do and thou shalt anoint unto me him who I name unto thee. And Samuel did that which the Lord spake and came to Bethlehem and the elders of the town trembled at his coming and said, comeest thou peacefully? So we see here that Bethlehem, so the city of David in the Old Testament is many times talking about just David's city that he ruled from, but David was truly from, his family was from, he was born in Bethlehem. Okay, now look, there's not a lot of coincidences in the Bible. All right, so when you see connections like this, there's always a reason for it. Turn to Micah chapter five. Now look, back to the story, they knew who this was. They knew who this was. The people in Israel, they knew that there was a Messiah coming. Think about it this way, compare it this way.  You know, maybe not everybody believed the Bible or maybe not everybody had the right gospel, but just imagine a nation where everyone just had a general knowledge of the Bible. We used to have that, we don't have that anymore. Okay, I mean, the Bible used to be taught in schools, the Bible used to be just kind of common knowledge. Kids would learn to read from using the Bible. There used to be a general knowledge, I'm talking like 100 plus years ago in this country, but there used to be a general knowledge of the Bible. That's what existed in Israel. Everybody in Israel, even the shepherds, they knew that there was a Messiah coming. And not only did they know that there was a Messiah coming, but they knew that he would be born in Bethlehem. You say how? Turn to Micah chapter five, are you there? Look at verse number two. Because it was a prophecy in the Old Testament that the Messiah, the Christ would come from Bethlehem. And it makes sense since David was from Bethlehem. It kind of bring, think of it this way, it just brings the prophecy of David's kingdom lasting forever. It kind of brings it back home. You think it kind of brings it full circle. Look at verse two of Micah chapter five. But thou, Bethlehem Ephrata, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of these shall he come forth unto me, that is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from old, from everlasting. Now who else could that be? Who is from everlasting? There's only, look, there's only one person in the history of the entire world that could fit that description. And that is the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Nobody else could claim to be the Messiah because nobody else fits that description. I mean, it's just one more prophecy, but that's a big one that, you know, he's gonna come from Bethlehem. So it can't just be any person that's from Bethlehem. It has to be the person that's from everlasting.  I mean, Jesus was, he always existed. He was never created. So the angel is telling them, look, he's telling them all these things that they already know, but the angel is telling them, hey, it's happened, it's happened, it's here. All these things this angel is telling them, these things are fulfilled is what the angel is telling these shepherds.  Turn to Matthew chapter 16. Turn to Matthew chapter 16.  But the shepherds clearly knew, I'm showing you that they clearly knew these prophecies of the Messiah, that there was a Messiah coming, first of all, that there was a Christ, he was to be from everlasting, he was gonna be the Son of God. They knew all these details. They knew all these details of what was coming and they even knew down to the details of where he would be from. But turn to Matthew chapter 16. And even when Jesus was preaching, there was plenty of people that knew who he was, that knew exactly who he was.  Look at Matthew 16 and verse number 15. So here Jesus is talking to the disciples and he's saying to them, he literally says to Peter, he says, he saith unto them, but whom ye say that I am? Because he asked Peter, he says, hey, who does everybody say that I am?  But look, he says unto them, but whom do ye say? He's like, who do you think that I am? Is what he says to Peter. And Simon Peter answered and said, now look, these next two verses, I mean, I don't know how much clearer you could get than this. And Simon Peter answered and said, thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. So he clears it up right there saying, you're the Christ, and that means you're the son of the living God. Okay, and Jesus said to them, okay, what? Yeah, whoa, whoa, whoa. Now look what he says. He says, and Jesus answered and said unto them, blessed art thou, Simon, Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.  So Jesus right there, he admits that he's the Christ, the son of the living God. Go back to verse number 12 of Luke chapter two. And now, now the angel gives more detail, and this is really where we can infer that the angel is telling them to go find the child, to go and visit Jesus. Look at verse number 12, and this shall be a sign unto you. He shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger. So they're giving a little detail about where to find the child. Look, there's probably not a lot of babies in barns. So the angel's telling them, go look for the child. It's in Bethlehem, you already knew that, but it's gonna be lying in a manger in a barn, basically is what the angel tells them. In verse 13, and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, verse 14, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will towards men. So look, there was not just one angel here. That's another thing, there was not just one angel. There was not just two angels. So a multitude means a large number. So there was a large number of the heavenly host. Many, many angels showed up here and were praising God and saying glory to God on the highest and on earth peace, good will towards men. So just imagine this scene that these guys were seeing.  Look at verse 15. And it came to pass as the angels were gone away from them into heaven that the shepherd said unto one another, let us now go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which has come to pass which the Lord hath made known unto us. Verse 16, don't miss this. And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, so first of all in verse number 16, whatever happened they immediately moved on this situation. They immediately left where they were at and they went and they found Jesus. With haste means they went quickly. They found him right away. They were not far away. Okay, they were not far away. They were local. They saw the one angel talk to them. They saw the multitude of angels, the large number of angels and they got up and they went right away. Okay, and look at verse 17. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad. Just underline that in your Bible right there. They made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. So what was the saying that was told them? The saying that was told them was that this is the Savior, that this is the Christ. Okay, look at verse 21. So they went, well first of all go back to verse 16. They made known abroad, so what did they do? The first thing that they did was they went and they told everybody. They went and they told everybody don't miss that point. Verse 21, in the shepherd's return, I'll just read verse 20, the shepherd's return glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen as it was told unto them. And when the eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called Jesus and was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb. So this is another point that is proved in verse number 21 that the shepherds, unlike other people, so you see nativity scenes out there, right? Nativity scenes are confusing because the shepherds were the only ones that were there right away. They were there right away. And we know that from verse 21 where it says they were there before Jesus was even circumcised on the eighth day. So they were there literally after the immediate birth of Christ, they were there right away. And they were the only ones that were there right away. So when you see these manger scenes everywhere in people's yards and all this kind of stuff, look, it's not where there's just tons of people. First of all, we don't know how many shepherds there were. We know that there were more than one because there were shepherds, there was probably several, but they were the only ones that were there that visited and when they saw what the angel told them the first thing that they did was they went and they told everybody about it. Okay, so I think that there was probably more than two. There was probably several because what was the point? It was kind of like so they could get the word out. Okay, so they could go out and they could tell you. So it makes sense that they were there right away. It makes sense that they were there to get that word out, to get this knowledge out. And look, this knowledge later on we'll find out in further sermons and further studies into the Christmas story in this series, but this knowledge getting out later on causes trouble. It causes trouble, but there's no indication that they were there with any other people. It was the shepherds first. So the nativity scenes with all the kings and the wise men and all this stuff around the manger scene and all this, it's not true. It was just the shepherds. It was just the shepherds that were there. The cartoons with the talking donkey and the camel that were there, it's not real. It was just the shepherds. Okay, so what can we learn? So you say, this is just a few verses. These guys were told to go and see Jesus. What can we learn from that? Well, the first thing I want to point out and I've kind of given it away is why the shepherds? Why this story in the Bible? Why do we have these shepherds? I mean they're men of, I mean they're shepherds, they're men of average status. They're men, you know, regular people. And they're told to go see Jesus. Turn to Matthew chapter 10. Turn to Matthew chapter 10. You know, we see this pattern. This is a pattern, the pattern that starts out with Jesus at rate at his birth. I want to show you that this pattern starts out at the birth of Christ and this pattern has not ended today. And I want to explain that to you and look at Matthew chapter 10. We see this pattern repeat itself again in Matthew chapter 10. Look at verse number five. These 12, Jesus sent forth and commanded them saying, go not into the way of the Gentiles and into any cities of the Samaritans entry ye not but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and as you go preach saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. What is he telling the disciples here? He's telling the disciples, he's saying, hey, go tell everybody that I'm here. Go tell everybody that the Messiah's here. Go tell everybody in Israel that Christ is here now. You've been waiting for this Messiah. You've been waiting for this person from the lineage of David. Go tell everybody that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Tell them that I'm here. That's exactly what the shepherds were supposed to do. They were supposed to, they were commanded to go see Jesus and then they went and they made it known. That's why I think there was probably more than two. There's probably a bunch of these guys because the idea was to get the word out. There was no social media. There was no Facebook. There was no Twitter. There was none of this stuff. It was just, it was word of mouth. That's how they got things out. I mean, maybe we should operate that way today. Maybe we get more truth out there. But look, I mean, thank God that there wasn't any of this stuff back then.  But look, as God needed the shepherds to get the word out, as God, as Jesus used the disciples to get the word out, guess what? We're to do the same today. So that same model applies to us today. We're to get the word out. And that's why we go out soul winning. It's the same exact model. So look, we can identify personally with the shepherds because we have the same mission as the shepherds. You say the shepherds, they never really even thought about them. But we have the exact same mission as them to get the word out, to go tell people about the Messiah, to tell people about Jesus, to tell people about what that means for their life. That's us. So we have the same mission. What else can we learn from them? Here's something else, turn back to verse number eight of Luke chapter two. Turn back to verse number eight of Luke chapter two. Here's something else that we can learn from the, so we see that their main mission is to get the word out, was to go and see the Messiah and go out and tell everybody, make it known to everybody, look at verse eight. And there were in the same country, the shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. So when it comes to Christ and following him, there won't find, you won't find anything in the Bible that says this. There's the second point, they left everything. They left everything to go do what they were supposed to do. You won't find anything in the Bible that says, hey, go serve Jesus unless you have this going on. You won't find anything like that. Turn to Luke chapter 14. As a matter of fact, the Bible is extreme in the opposite direction. And I'm gonna show you how extreme it is in the opposite direction. Turn to Luke chapter 14. When it comes to following Christ and doing what we're supposed to do, the Bible says everything is to be forsaken, everything. Look at Luke 14 and verse 16. Then he said unto him, a certain man made a great supper and bade many. And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that we're bid and come, for all things are now ready. And they with all, with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of good ground and I must needs go and see it. I pray thee have me excused. I love this parable because it gives so many specific examples of excuses that people use to not serve the Lord or not come to the supper, not do what they're supposed to do. And they all made excuse. The first one was land. And another said, verse 19, I have bought five yoke of oxen and I go to prove them and I pray, pray thee have me excused. The second one was work. And another said, I've married a wife and therefore cannot come, family. So that servant came and showed his Lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, go out quickly into the streets and the lanes of the city and bring in hither the poor, the maimed and the halt and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou commanded and there is room. And the Lord said unto the servant, go out into the highways and the hedges and compel them to come in that my house may be filled. For I say unto you that none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper. And there went a great multitudes with him and he turned and said unto them, if any man come to me and hate not his father and his mother and his wife and his children and brethren and sisters, there's the family again. Yay, and his own life also. Now we get even more extreme now. So now we have land. We have work. We have family and even your own life isn't even an excuse. Like this is pretty extreme for Sunday night. But this is what the Bible says. This is what the Bible says. And whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you intending to build a tower, sit it down not first and count at the cost? Whether you have sufficient to build it. Look at verse 33. So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsakeeth not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. Look, nobody understands this. Nobody understands this. I don't care how many times you've read it. Nobody, I mean, that's why many didn't follow him. When you read the gospels, that's why many people turned away. Many people came to him and they're like, hey, we want to follow you. He's like, are you sure? And he lists all these things? They're like, yeah, we're good. Look, it's the same today. It's no different. There's plenty of reasons people have. Turn to Luke chapter nine. Turn to Luke chapter nine. Turn to Luke chapter nine, look at verse 57. I think this is just another example. And it came to pass that as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whither, soever thou go. Now this is a literal story. Somebody literally coming up to Jesus and saying, I'll follow you anywhere. And Jesus said unto him, foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the son of man have not where to lay his head. He said, I don't even have a place to sleep. You sure? And he said unto another, follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go home and bury my father, to go bury my father. And Jesus said unto him, let the dead bury their dead. That's a harsh one. But Jesus said it. That's why I like that Jesus said it. There's really no way to misinterpret that.  And he's like, let the dead bury the dead. He's like, it's time to go forward in your life and worry about the living. But go thou and preach the kingdom of God. Another also said, Lord, I will follow thee, but let me first go. I mean, doesn't that make sense, by the way? You think it's emotionally cold, but doesn't that make sense?   And then you have all these people that Jesus sees because he's looking at it from the eyes of God. I mean, just think of the eyes that he's looking at compared to us.  None of them are saved. He's like, what are you doing even thinking about that stuff? He's like, look at all these people that need the gospel preached to them, that need the kingdom of God preached to them. I mean, it makes sense when you think about it through the eyes of God. Verse 61, and another also said, Lord, I'll follow thee, but first let me go bid them farewell, I mean, that was even a dumber one. He's like, I just wanna go back home and say goodbye to everybody. And Jesus said unto him, no man, having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God. Look, these are lessons that we need to learn. The serious language here that Jesus uses, that's how he looks at us too. Do you not understand that? That's how he looks at us too. When you say, you know, look, that, look this, this is what it takes to follow Jesus. It doesn't mean, it doesn't mean that you'll have nothing in your life. It just means that you have to be willing to forsake it all. And look, very few are. I'm here to report to you tonight, very few are. Now, in comparison to these people, like the shepherds, the disciples, I mean, think about these guys. They literally drop their nets. They're literally fishing with their dad and they literally just drop everything and follow him. I mean, straight way, that means right away. They dropped everything to follow Jesus. You think about the shepherds. They just left the sheep there. They just left them and they went right away. I mean, this is not really required in the environment that we live in today. But there may be things that you have to leave behind if you are going to serve Jesus.  You're like, I don't know. I don't see it costing me anything. You're probably not gonna do anything great. You're probably just gonna tow the line.  I mean, what does that mean? I mean, to the world that means, and I used to think this. I used to think that that meant becoming some big, powerful business owner or some big, powerful person in a company. That's what I used to think that meant.  If you wanna do something great for the Lord that saved you with your life, it's gonna cost you something. And you have to be willing. I mean, it's gonna cost you something in the area of friends, of family. Well, friends doesn't really even apply. Forget that. I misspoke there, because you're gonna have other friends, real friends. But look, it's gonna cost you in the area of family, of possessions, of land. But compared to, I mean, compared to the extremes that we see in Jesus' time, I don't really see anyone that's quite there.  I mean, who knows? That could happen to us as well. That could, I mean, I'm not gonna make any predictions after this year on what could possibly happen in the coming years. But look, here's the way you have to handle this. If you say, yes, I do wanna do something great with my life, but you have to compartmentalize the things that are the worldly things around you. You kinda just have to put them in a bucket and just appreciate them while you have them. You have to appreciate them as blessings. And then you just hammer down on this Christian life. And if it costs you something over here, it's like whatever.  I can have a decent life right now and serve the Lord. I can live in a house right now and serve the Lord. I mean, I'm not suffering right now and I can serve the Lord, but it might not always be that way. And you have to have those things compartmentalized and just be willing to just let it all go.  I mean, there may be a point where those things, those nice things become difficult or impossible, but you just keep that hand on the plow is what you're supposed to do. So here's the last point I wanna make. Turn back at verse number nine of Luke chapter two. Look back at verse number nine of Luke chapter two. Look what the Bible says here. And don't miss this. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them and the glory of the Lord shown round about them. And look at the last part and it says, and they were sore afraid. Look, sore afraid means they were extremely afraid. They were scared. Look, they were afraid of these angels that came from heaven. They were terrified. So afraid means like there's a reason that word's in there. They were really scared. Okay, they were, look, they were moved, they were moved to go, at least partially, they were moved to go on fear. And let me tell you something, that's another thing that we can take from the shepherds. There is nothing wrong with being moved in your life by the fear of the Lord. By the literal fear of the Lord. Look, here's the thing. You don't need a Jesus high to go out and do something for the Lord. You don't need an emotional feeling to go out and make changes in your life and do something and push in that Christian direction that you know you should go. But you should be moved by fear of the Lord. You should be moved by that, especially you in this room. Because guess what? You all know what to do. That's the downside of you is you all know what to do. And you should be moved by the fear of the Lord. And look, you know what to do and being moved by the fear of the Lord, there's nothing wrong with that. Look, my wife and I were just talking about this the other night. And we kind of reminisce back every now and then. But look, let me tell you something, like moving from North Dakota to California, there was more to it than a seven minute testimonial video. Than a seven minute testimonial that I gave at the Red Hot Preaching Conference in 2017. You know, there was more to that story than that. I mean, I would love to stand up here and say that I knew the right thing to do and I just did it and I never had any doubts and we just went forward with our Christian life. And I mean, I remember like halfway through the transition of selling everything on the farm and getting rid of equipment and animals and all these different things.  And we would take this walk every night.  Cause I mean, I was like, I thought I was going insane for a few weeks there. But I was, I told my wife, I said, you know what, it'd be a lot easier if we didn't know what was true. And I don't think I really meant that, but it was just things are really hard on the worldly side, getting rid of things, making the changes, all those things that Jesus talked about, land, family, work, all those things. And I told my wife is like, as far as all those things went, it'd just be a lot easier. It'd be a lot easier, you know, for the land in my life. It'd be a lot easier for the family in my life. It'd be a lot easier for the career in my life if I just didn't know the truth. If I never find, I mean, of course I don't mean that, but you see what I'm saying is just that, I mean, I would like to say that I just went forward and just, I mean, obviously we kept doing the things that we needed to do when we finished that task, but it was not easy. It was not easy. My wife said, and my wife said, she said this back then, and she said it two nights ago, and I hadn't heard her say it for several years, but she said, she said, you know what? I was afraid of what God would do if we didn't go. And she was, and I was too. We were moved by the fear of God. Look, you all will never know. You all will never know the details of that story. After I gave that testimony in 2017, and you all will never know because I'll never tell you all the details. That's why you'll never know. But after I gave that testimony in 2017, I had half a dozen or more people come up to me and tell me why they couldn't do this. They wanted to do the same thing, but they couldn't because of X, Y, and Z.   After everything that I had just recently gone through, and they came up, and I mean, everything, and it was the exact same, it's funny. It's funny because it's the exact same things that the Bible said specifically. Those were the same issues that I had. I can't believe that I built a career like this. And I'm gonna leave, I'm gonna start over. I can't believe, look at all the land. It could all be mine. Look at all, look at everything. Look at the business that I built with these hands, and I sat on the hill one night, and I looked down at everything I built. I went through all those three things. But I just, it was the fear of the Lord. It was the fear of the Lord. Craziest and best thing I've ever done. But I'm not gonna stand up here and say that, oh, we just, I made a decision, I just did it. No, because look, it's hard to do those things. It's hard to get over those things. That's why Jesus brought it up. That's why Jesus brought it up again and again and again. Look, I get it. It's tough, it's why you need to hear it again and again and again. And look, I get it. I get it when all those people came up to me and I get it, not everyone's gonna do what they're supposed to do. Not everyone's gonna do what they're supposed to do, but you'll never do anything great.  That's right. Yes, you will do what it takes because here's the funny thing. It's not that you don't know what you're supposed to do. It's that you won't do it. But look, I mean, I understand, I don't get upset at people that I see that should be doing something that I'm getting okay with it.  I'm gonna tell you the truth. If you wanna know more, you can ask me, but look, that wasn't who the shepherds were. The shepherds went and they dropped everything and they were afraid of God and they went. It's a simple but thorough story. They did what they were supposed to do. You're not gonna see that.  You're not gonna see that they were terrified, that they were so afraid of the angels and they feared the Lord. Like fear like they're afraid of the Lord. You're not gonna see that in the Little Shepherd Boy book or the donkey that carried Mary.  Look, they were moved by fear and they moved. That's the story and God used them to tell them to tell the world to make it known, the Bible says, about Jesus, about the Savior. It's the exact same model that we are to do today. So thus, we must understand that if we want to be used by God in the, I mean, look, if we wanna be this tool that God can use in the maximum efficiency, we must be able to move like they moved. To do what it takes like they did what it takes. And like the disciples did what it takes. No matter what, it's the same model, folks. It applies directly to us, directly. They were there to get the word out. They were there to tell the word, to get the word of mouth spreading about the best thing that's ever happened. I mean, think about and think about these men and this task that they had and how important it was. The most significant event for mankind in the history of the world, they were used to tell the message, these shepherds. So are we. It's the same. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.


What's up everybody, Jason here for jaspyscasebrace.com. This helps sell out NT baseball, page team number 40 guys, where we're doing a random number block here for 17 teams guys in this break, almost more than half the week.  So a little over maybe $11 a team potentially to get big hits. So there's the teams there. Of course this is a zero number break, you get a number randomized from zero through nine. If there's any hits for 17 of these teams, we'll distribute them via the zero number break. We'll go by the first number on the left side of the zero number dash. And there's your examples there in the bio or the item page I should say. There's a dice roll, there's the customer names and the numbers. Let's click dice roll and it is a six and a four, ten times. Good luck. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Ten times, ten. Eric down at Ed. Now this is the 17 teams. So again, that team's list right there is just to show the sorting team what teams are in the R&B. It doesn't mean if you match up with them, that's what you get. You get a piece of all of these teams. Now ten times zero, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Ten times ten, ten. One down at seven. So Eric, you have spot one. The only one of ones would be yours for these 17 teams. Jeremy Porter with six, Joel with two, Craig with five, James L with four, Carter with eight, Jason K with nine, Steve Herrick with three, and any and all redemption spot zero would be yours, Steve. And then Ed with seven, very nice. So of course you're guys, now I'm going to just take this off so we can quickly alphabetize it. We'll border it up and coming up next in a separate video, we'll do the break itself guys. Good luck. Appreciate it guys. Thanks.


This is Mises Weekends with your host Jeff Deist. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome once again to Mises Weekends. Happy August to all of you. And I'd like to begin by congratulating a great friend of the Mises Institute, Glenn Jacobs, who won his election earlier this week as mayor of Knox County, Tennessee. So we're thrilled to see that. I'd also like to give a plug for our upcoming guest next weekend, who is Safideen Amos. He is the author of the book, The Bitcoin Standard, which is being touted by people like Caitlyn Long. There are a lot of shady people in the crypto industry. There are a lot of people writing Bitcoin books. This book is different. He comes at it from an Austrian perspective and he is building quite a name for himself in the process. Our show this weekend features our great friend, Judge Andrew Napolitano, and a talk he recently gave at our Mises University event. This talk is about the Declaration of Independence, not about the Constitution, which was basically a usurpation and a coup of the Articles of Confederation. The Declaration of Independence, by contrast, is a libertarian document. It is full of natural law tradition and we can still learn from it. Judge Napolitano talks about the relentless attack on those natural law traditions throughout the 20th century, and you might be very interested in his remarks on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in the process. So stay tuned for a great talk from Judge Andrew Napolitano at his Scorching Best and have a great weekend. I wanna talk to you tonight about some basic principles that underlie the Constitution and that underlie the Declaration of Independence and then we'll take some time for Q and A. If you've signed up for the class that I'm going to teach, it is on the Constitution and the formerly free market. But essentially, we are going to examine in a very rapid fashion, although you know this already, because if you signed up for the class, I know you did the readings, it wasn't that much. It was maybe about 350 pages, which is a weak worth of reading as Dean Mendenhall can tell you in any fine law school. But we are going to address the areas of the Constitution which the courts have used to authorize congressional interference with free market activities. They are the commerce clause, the spending power, the taxing power and the contracts clause. And we will do this in more detail in that class. The last of those classes on Friday, I like to call a constitutional free for all where I allow the students in the class and encourage them after having listened to me for a week and tired of the sound of my voice to throw any kind of question they want about the Constitution, whether we have covered it in the class or not. The study of constitutional laws, five credits. So it's about five hours per week in the classroom. There's about 140 to 150, depending upon how the class is put together, Supreme Court opinions that you need to master. These are cases that in theory every lawyer knows. Many lawyers forget them unless you practice this on a regular basis. So what I'll be doing in that class is a very small version of the basic course in the Constitution geared towards interference with the free market. So we'll start with a couple of things. Now, this is not me. That is not short for my name. That is the non-aggression principle. This is the natural law tradition. This is usually circled. P is for positivism. I'll go through these with you in a minute. This is the Declaration of Independence. The amendments were interested in in nine and 10 to the Constitution, which is down here. So we start with a couple of basic principles. One is that the Declaration of Independence embraces the natural law tradition. The natural law tradition teaches that our rights come from our humanity, not from the government. It teaches that we can, by the exercise of reason, discern right from wrong and acquire knowledge that will lead us to the truth without any assistance from the government. So when Jefferson wanted to underscore this in this in the Declaration of Independence, he used a phrase with which we are all familiar which every one of you knows. All men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, and among these is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. By calling rights inalienable, he was sending a message which was embraced by everybody else that signed the Declaration of Independence, that the country would be wedded to the natural law tradition at its birth. Nobody really disputes that, although the disputes would come later on just 11 years later when it came time to write the Constitution. But nobody can really dispute the fact that the Declaration of Independence embraces the natural law. Now you might say, well, he said, endowed by their creator. Suppose I don't believe in a creator. The question is, did Jefferson believe in the creator? He once said, my own mind is my own God, yet he did write endowed by our creator. I have argued to our friends that do not believe in a creator, that you can still accept the concept of the natural law tradition, because we are the highest thinking beings on the planet, and by exercising our thought process, by exercising our reason, we almost always end up in the same place, discerning right from wrong, exercising the rights that we all believe in. This, of course, would come into play after we fought the revolution. I'll just tell you two stories that precede the Declaration of Independence and arguably push us toward the revolution. And one involves the Stamp Act, which was a means inactive of the British Parliament to collect revenue in the United States, in the colonies. I emphasize in the colonies, because they did this in Great Britain that would have been a revolution there before there was even a revolution here. The Stamp Act required that every piece of paper that the colonists had in their homes, every book, every pamphlet, every letter, every financial document, every legal document, have the King's stamp on it. It wasn't a stamp as we know it now, it was closer to what you would have if you had an old-fashioned ink pad and you stamped the ink pad on it and you could only get that done at a British vendor's office in the colonies and you paid the vendor for it. So that's how the revenue went back to Great Britain. Question, how did the King and the Parliament 3,000 miles away know if you had stamps on every piece of paper in your house? Answer, the Ritz of Assistance Act. This piece of legislation permitted British agents to appear before, see if this rings a bell, a secret court in London. And the secret court, which only heard the government side, issued what's known as a general warrant. And a general warrant is a piece of paper signed by a judge of the court, which says, search where you want and seize what you find. So it wouldn't be uncommon for a colonist to hear a knock on the door, and it was a very polite British soldier or other government agent handing you the general warrant behind which a slew of British soldiers rushed into your house ostensibly looking for the stamps. Of course, they might help themselves to booze if you couldn't prove that you had paid a tax on it. They might help themselves to furniture if they thought it came from the islands and you couldn't prove that you had paid the King his tax on the furniture. They might even help themselves to the house and kick you out, which is why we have the Third Amendment that prohibits the quartering of troops. Well, some very bright students from a school called the College of New Jersey now called Princeton did some math and figured out that it cost the King more to enforce this tax than was generated in monies collected. Now that's a head scratcher.   What government would enact a tax that cost more to enforce it than was collected? Unless the purpose of the tax was not to generate money. Unless the purpose of the tax was to remind the colonists that the King was still their King and he through his agents could set foot into their homes and cross their threshold without any suspicion or probable cause or evidence of crime, but just on the basis of a general warrant. The Stamp Act, of course, was rescinded a year later. It was one of the intolerable acts. The Ritz of Assistance Act stayed into existence. The secret court kept meeting until the King was overthrown in 1776. Okay, we fought a revolution, we won the revolution, we wrote a constitution. The constitution is written in Philadelphia in 1787 in secret. We know about a lot of the secrets today because little Jimmy Madison was the scrivener. I say little, Jimmy was four foot eight.  Little Jimmy, a graduate of the College of New Jersey. I don't know if he was one of the students that did the math that undid the Stamp Act. Little Jimmy kept all the notes on the constitution because everything was in secret. And little Jimmy was such a great scrivener that many of his notes actually became the constitution itself. So the most authoritative source on the original understanding of the constitution, a theory now called originalism, are the notes of Madison as well as some of the things that he said afterwards. In fact, not only did he write the constitution, that doesn't stand for Bill O'Reilly, that stands for Bill of Rights. He was the chair of the committee that wrote the Bill of Rights. Imagine that one person wrote the constitution and wrote the Bill of Rights. So his words are often called upon, his writings are often called upon to interpret the document. We have his writings today. We didn't get the writings until after he died because he not only did they meet in secret, very few of them took notes. Some of the others did. His notes were the most complete, but he made sure that nobody saw them until after he died. So one of the great first arguments they had there is, are we sticking to this? You know, we're running a government now. Do we really believe that these rights are natural? Well, if they're natural, they can't be taken away by the executive or the legislative legislature, they can only be taken away if the possessor of the right waves them by violating somebody else's rights. If I rob a bank, I have violated the rights of the owner of the bank and the depositors in the bank, so I give up my rights. I personally have given them up, but the legislature can't declare ahead of time Judge Napolitana was about to rob a bank, so we will enact legislation to take his rights away because that branch of the government can't take rights away. Do we really wanna stick with this natural law stuff that Jefferson wrote in the declaration when we're writing a constitution? So there is this argument between the natural law tradition and its arch enemy, positivism. Positivism teaches that the law is whatever the law giver says it is, as long as it was enacted pursuant to procedures that have been set down, as long as it's reduced to writing and as long as it's been ratified, accepted by whoever is in a position of authority. So if the law giver says there's no freedom of speech, is there freedom of speech? Well, that depends upon which theory you accept. The opening lines of the First Amendment, Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. I could ask what's the most important word in that line. It's a trick question. Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. The most important word is the one that you would think is the least important, the, the freedom of speech is Madisonian for, we recognize its pre-existence. We recognize that it existed before the government did. So therefore it didn't come from the government, it must have come from within us. So think of the Bill of Rights. These are what we call negative rights. They don't grant rights. They recognize the pre-existence of the rights and they negate if the Constitution is being followed, the ability of the government to interfere them, interfere with them. So the First Amendment, Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, doesn't say Congress shall grant freedom of speech. It says Congress shall not interfere with it. So all of these rights in all of the First Ten Amendments will get to nine and 10 in a minute, which are really added to make sure that this natural law tradition is still followed. All of these rights represent the natural human yearnings that we all have. You're right to think as you wish. I'm going down the amendments. I'm not gonna do all of them. We'll do all of them in the class that I'll be teaching later this week. You're right to think as you wish, to say what you think, to publish what you say. You're right to develop your own personality. I've told O'Reilly a hundred times you better be grateful that that's a natural right. You're right to worship or not to worship. You're right to associate or not to associate. You're right to defend yourself, which of course is not the right to shoot deer. It's the right to shoot at tyrants. If they take over the government and we have to drive them away, we have to secede just as we seceded from Great Britain. You're right to stay in your house without the government's troops coming in, the Third Amendment and the quintessential American right in the fourth, the right to be left alone, which of course today we call privacy. The fourth is the most unique one because it says the people, doesn't say the citizens, it says the people shall not be interfered with in their persons, houses, papers and effects, persons, houses, papers and effects, except by a warrant signed by a judge based on probable cause. Probable cause means probable cause of crime. It doesn't mean probable cause that you're talking to a book agent in Florence, a real case in which the NSA was listening to a conversation in Italian. They thought they were hearing a terrorist. They were just hearing a guy in New York trying to buy a book from the book agent in Florence. When the case came to court, the judge said, well, there's no prosecution here. They didn't come after you for anything you said. Therefore, there's no violation of the Fourth Amendment. Who wrote that opinion? See if you've heard of this guy, about which more later. I don't have any fingerprints left because my fingers have gotten burned so much in the past 10 days over this nomination. Another story for another time. Back to the Fourth Amendment. Not only does the Fourth Amendment say only judges can issue warrants, not only does the Fourth Amendment say they can only issue it by probable cause, not only does the Fourth Amendment say the probable cause must be asserted to the judges under oath, but it says that the search warrant must specifically describe the person or place to be searched or thing to be seized, eradicating forever the concept of general warrants which had been visited upon the colonists to enforce the Stamp Act. This was at least the theory of the amendments. The rest of the amendments deal with speedy trial and the right to confront the evidence against you and the right to have a lawyer. Until we get to nine and 10, nine was little Jimmy's way of really reminding everybody about that. Natural law tradition. Nine says that the rights enumerated in this document shall not be construed to be all the rights and the government shall not interfere with other rights retained by the people. An obvious reflection of the existence of other rights too numerous to tick off in the first eight. The 10th, of course, which thanks be to God, has enjoyed a bit of a revival in the past couple of years is the one that says whatever we gave to the federal government it has and whatever we didn't give to the federal government are rights retained by the states or the people. Again, a recognition of the existence of something that people have that didn't come from the government and that was not transferred away when the Constitution came into existence.  This is the essence of why we are here. I have given you history. The non-aggression principle stands for the proposition that all human behavior is lawful and moral unless it interferes with somebody else's rights unless it is aggression against somebody else. So if Putin takes over Crimea is that aggression against the United States? It is not. If somebody is standing in a street corner saying, Napolitano is a fraud, don't listen to anything he says is that aggression against me? It is not. From this stems much of the economic and philosophical views incorporated in all of this basically standing for the principle that what's yours is yours and what's mine is mine and I have to leave you alone and you have to leave me alone and I can do what I want until I interfere by aggression. Now, aggression could be force or it could be fraud. Because fraud is an act of aggression without using force, using stealth and trickery to interfere with somebody's rights as opposed to violence. The counterpart to this natural law tradition is what Jefferson said is the basis for government and that is the consent of the governed. Jefferson argued in the Declaration of Independence that these two principles are rights come from our humanity and no government is lawful without the consent of the governed with the two most radical ideas he had ever articulated. If you wanna read Jefferson Unleashed, I suggest reading his letters back and forth to his former enemy, John Adams. I say former enemy, they hated each other. Adams was a big government guy, a federalist, Jefferson was an anti-federalist. When Jefferson was Adams's vice president, they didn't speak. Didn't speak. What do you remember how people got elected in those days? Everybody ran for president. Whoever finished first became president. Whoever finished second became vice president. Okay, Hillary, can you cover that funeral for me next week? Well, they really didn't speak. And Adams, of course, got carried away with Jefferson's relationship to the French. Jefferson had been the ambassador to France during the blessed Articles of Confederation days. And then when George Washington became president, Jefferson was his secretary of state. But when Adams became president now, so it's eight years into the country, he's only president for four years, Jefferson's the veep. There spreads through the land something inconceivable, at least inconceivable before last Sunday. What's today, Monday? Inconceivable before yesterday. And this inconceivable thing is fear of the French. We know how good they are at playing soccer, but this was fear that the French were going to do to John Adams what they did to Louis XVI, cut his head off. And that because Jefferson had spent all that time in Paris and was friends with all these radical crazies who believed in human rights, the same thing might happen here. So in order to address this fear, the Congress enacted and President Adams signed into law, the Alien and Sedition Acts.  I'll tell you about the worst in a minute because it brings us back to our friend. So the Alien and Sedition Acts says, we're a new country, we're looking for people. If you come here, if you farm five acres and you do it for a year, you're automatically a citizen. We don't care where you come from, we don't care about your health, we don't care about your money, we don't care about the color of your skin. Unless you're French. If you're French, you have to wait 14 years before you become a citizen. Oh, and by the way, this is not only to you newcomers, but it's to the people that are here already, particularly Jefferson's friends. Anybody who uses words that will portray the government or the president or the Congress untruthfully shall be subject to prosecution and confinement in a federal institution for two years. Okay, so here's a head scratcher. How did the same generation, in some cases, the same human beings who wrote, Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. When they get into power, abridge the freedom of speech. A congressman, that's one of my historical heroes, by the name of Matthew Lyons, the Ron Paul of his day, represented Vermont and decided he would challenge this statute and he would challenge it to the president's face. Now, President Adams suffered from something that a lot of middle-aged men suffer from, an ever-expanding waistline. And in order to cover that waistline, Mrs. Adams sewed purple robes for him. And he didn't like the way he looked wearing just purple, so he asked her to put gold epulets on the shoulders. Adams, who was about as wide as he was tall at this point in his life, he would eventually lose a lot of weight, could be seen trudging through the beginnings of Washington, D.C., and the mud and the muck surrounded by an entourage, but it looked like just a purple mound walking through the streets. Confronted by congressman Lyons, who said, good morning, your pomposity. So Adams didn't like it and nobody liked it, but they didn't pay any mind to him. He's a crazy libertarian from Vermont. Why would we even listen to him? By the way, the reason that congressman Lyons did not insult the president on the floor of the house, where he was a member, is because of the speech and debate clause, which insulates members of congress from being prosecuted or sued because of words uttered in speech and debate on the floor of the house. So he knew he had to do it in some other context. About a week later, he brought the press with him and found the purple mound and Mrs. Adams walking through the street and he said, good morning, your rotundity. And for that, they finally had him. I mean, they hated him to begin with, but they finally had him. He's prosecuted and convicted. Everybody thought the prosecution was a joke, but it was serious. They prosecuted him in Boston, even though the words were articulated in Washington. It's very interesting because one of the complaints against George III in the Declaration of Independence is he has taken us to far away places to try us before foreign juries where we are unknown. So again, the very people that signed the Declaration of Independence when they came into power under the Constitution began to do some of the things that they complained about with the King. Congressman Lyons in jail did something that might be familiar to some of you. If you are from Chicago, Boston, New Orleans or Hudson County, New Jersey, you're familiar with this phenomenon. Congressman Lyons ran for reelection from his jail cell. And he won. And he couldn't wait to get back, there's no newspapers, he probably didn't even know the date. He couldn't wait to get back to Washington DC to confront the Purple Mound when in the place of the Purple Mound was the Reed Thins, Tolles, Slender, Ravenhaired, Thomas Jefferson in the White House who proceeded to pardon Congressman Lyons. He also pardoned the other seven people who had been prosecuted under this act and returned to the Congressman and his family the 480 acres of land that the federal government had seized because Congressman Lyons insulted the president's waste line. One more story, then we'll try and put this all together and then we'll do the Q and A. I love Madison, I really do, but I gotta tell you this one. So it's the War of 1812. Either the British tried to take us back or we tried to take Canada from them. It's unclear how this started, but it's devastating. They burnt the White House, they burnt the Capitol building for a while, it looked like they were routing us. We had no army, we just had militia. Washington was dead, there wasn't a great military leader to defend the country. And basically the war was a series of small skirmishes between British platoons of about 50 or 60 and however many militia could be mustered up amongst the country folk. So in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, a platoon of about 50 or 60 British soldiers marches into town, sort of takes over the town and captures six men, it assumes they're members of the militia and announces they're gonna be hanged at dawn. The militia invades the encampment and captures about five soldiers that announced they're gonna be hanged at dawn. The mayor of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, John Hodges, a very famous name in constitutional history, can't allow this to happen and decides to do the following. Unarmed and unaccompanied, he walks in the middle of the British encampment, finds the captain and says, I'm going to return your soldiers to you if you return our townsfolk to me. The captain says, done. The prisoners are exchanged, the British leave. The war is over, two months later. There's a tumultuous parade. Mayor Hodges is the grand marshal of the parade. The federal judges are there, the state judges are there, the prosecutors are there, the sheriffs are there, every public official is there, everybody in the town is there. The mayor is introduced by the one federal judge in Maryland, the mayor gives an unbelievable speech. He's the hero of the moment. Now I don't think this could possibly happen to me here at the Mises Institute, what happened to the mayor after he finished speaking. He leaves the podium, he steps down two steps and two strangers approach him. One of them puts shackles onto his wrists and the other hands him a piece of paper. They were agents of the justice department. He was being arrested for treason, providing aid and comfort to the enemy in wartime by returning the British soldiers to their platoon. Okay, so there's a trial. The judge that introduced him at the parade is the one presiding over the trial. Everybody in the trial knew him. There's no evidence presented. The prosecutor stands up and said, you know what, we are federal prosecutors, we're doing what we've been instructed to do and under the constitution, he did literally provide aid and comfort to the enemy in wartime. That's the government's case. The defense stands up and says, everybody in this room, including these good gentlemen of the jury, there were no ladies on the jury at that time, a major defect in our thinking, but I was since corrected.  Then the judge says, now I've never said this when charging a jury. All right, so we have reserved a room for you in the tavern across the street. After dinner and after you finish the tavern keeper's best ale, we want you to deliberate on this case. Four person raises the answer. We don't have to deliberate. We already know the answer. Have you deliberated already? No. Have you taken a vote? No. But I know as the four person what this verdict is. What is it? The verdict is not guilty. This is the first example that's recorded in the case books of jury nullification.  All right, to bring it back to this. The Justice Department has had a rule since day one that because treason is the rare federal crime for which the defendant if convicted can be executed where the defendant has not caused a death by his own hands that all trees and prosecutions have to be personally approved by the President of the United States. You know, what left wing Pinko positivist creep was the President of the United States in 1812? Little Jimmy who wrote the Constitution and wrote the Bill of Rights. Okay, so now we have to ask ourselves some questions. And the questions are, is this for real? Does the government really believe in the natural law tradition? Is this for real? Has anybody really consented to the government? But do you know anybody that's consented to the Constitution? I mean, do you consent to the Constitution by voting suppose you don't vote? Do you consent to the government? If the people you voted for are not in the government? Do you consent to the government by walking on the sidewalk? If the government really believes that our laws are natural, then how could we have the Patriot Act which permits federal agents to write their own search warrants for getting the requirement that only judges can issue search warrants under the Fourth Amendment? I can tell you stories about the Patriot Act, but not only does it permit federal agents to write their own search warrants, so FBI Agent A writes a search warrant authorizing FBI Agent B that's got to be at least two of these characters involved in this, and then B can serve the search warrant. And when they serve the search warrant, they say, by the way, you can't tell anybody that we serve this on you. That's another violation. You can't tell anybody. The government's going to enforce silence? What about Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech? What young lawyer was the scrivener when they were putting together the Patriot Act? There he is. Now you know why I was willing to get my fingers burned by pointing this out 10 days ago. Well, we'll see where that goes. Maybe Rand Paul can persuade Mike Lee and one or two others that this really is a danger to our existence. But I'm fascinated with are our rights truly natural and does, has anybody ever consented to the government? Has anybody consented to the form of government that we had, that we have? Or is it just a myth? I mean, Lou has pointed out in one of his brilliant essays that a lot of people in the government, not Ron Paul, but almost everybody else suffers from something called libido dominandi. Now don't get any bad thoughts, not that kind of libido. This is the lust to dominate. This is original sin if you're a theist. And we must really labor against putting people in the government who have this lust to dominate. Even little Jimmy who wrote all this stuff let the lust to dominate. And consent to the government reminds me that not only as Avon Mises said is government simply the negation of liberty, which of course reflects this since human beings are the repository of liberty. By the way in 1776, which Jefferson wrote this, the idea that human beings were the repository of natural rights was alien, certainly alien to those in the government. Towards the third fought a war so that those ideas would not spread. But the consent of the government brings the other problem with government. First problem is libido dominandi. And the other is my view that government is essentially a myth. It is based upon mythology. Make believe the king is divine. Make believe he can do no wrong. Make believe the voice of the people is the voice of God. Make believe that the people have a voice. Make believe that the representatives of the people actually do represent the people. Make believe that the old men are created equal. Make believe that they're not. And when we accept these myths, what do we end up with? We end up with those who in the name of all of this will curtail our freedoms. I have often argued particularly to young people in audiences like this that freedom comes from the human heart. We'll know it when it's there but the heart is a muscle that requires exercise. And freedom requires exercise. At some point you'll know when and how to exercise that freedom. Well, I expect that when I reach the end of my days I will die in my bed surrounded by those who love me faithful to first principles. But some of you might not have that liberty. Some of you might die faithful to first principles in a government prison. And some of you might die faithful to first principles in a government town square to the sound of the government's trumpets blaring. When the time comes you'll know what to do because freedom lies in the human heart. But it must do more than lie there. Thank you my friends and God bless you. Subscribe to Mises Weekends via iTunes U, Stitcher and SoundCloud or listen on Mises.org and YouTube.


Well, hello, it's Bridget. Welcome to Sunday Morning Coffee with Bridget. Today's topic is WTF. Oh, and it's not the WTF you might think of, but it certainly could apply in this case. This is what the feeling, what the feeling.  We all feel, feel, feel with our heart space and mostly what we are feeling at times is overwhelm. Our heart cup is overflowing and not in a good way. It says though we have been constantly battered by high winds and heavy rains and we are just tired. The energy of our emotions and our feelings aren't even able to be separated into one identifying factor or marker or peace to pull out for understanding. At times, the feelings can be so much that they become numbing. Do you understand what this state is that I'm talking about this numbing state where there's so much that you're not even sure how you feel? I want you to understand that during those times, there's nothing wrong with you. During those times when you feel this way, these ways that one of the dominant feelings might come out assessments rather that, oh, I'm lonely or, oh, I'm depressed or, oh, I'm disconnected. All of these things could be true. But the reality is that these are just labels that are used to describe this feeling state where you have overfelt and overfelt and overfelt for so, so long. A barrage of feelings, of anger, of frustration, of discontent, of unhappiness, of turbulence, of conflict, of energy mixed in with opportunities for learning and growth and change. We can make sense with our mind of feelings. In fact, we often do when we work through the psychology of things. This is a good thing. This is a very, can be a very helpful thing to make sense with the mind of the feelings. Yet, at the same time, we must realize that the feelings on their own, the feelings, the multiple different colored feelings, vibrations that we feel, the conflicted feelings, I feel this way and I feel that way that seem totally opposite. All of these feelings, they be long in their own right. They have earned space in your energy field. And they deserve a platform to have a voice. These individual feelings deserve their own individual attention. In fact, one by one, as they come forward in request to be heard, that is the easiest, most effective way to work with them, to allow them so often they simply need to be voiced. And that releases the tension or the pressure of the feeling the overwhelm starts to subside. And then you have felt you have allowed an emotion without judgment of the mind without the need to fix it from the mind without the need for assessment from the mind without the need to connect the patterns connect the dots and understand if there's a bigger issue going on here. Of course, there's a bigger issue going on here. You are living life. What the feeling gives you a perhaps a new way to acknowledge the step by step, the being in the moment, true power connection of emotion, of understanding that the energy of these feelings, they matter. Because the way you feel matters. And right now, you might have so many feelings that they're mixing together. Have you ever painted something and looked at your water cup over time, regardless of if you're using those pretty pastel pinks or those vibrant blues or that gorgeous sunshine yellow, your water cup turns a muddy, mucky brown variations of this muddy, mucky brown. And that's exactly what's happening in your feelings at your heart. They're meshing together. And they're turning a muddy, mucky brown, regardless of what you are actually expressing to the world, what you're able to function in your roles and your relationships and your life and your job and your marriage and your in your parenthood, etc. What's left in your water bowl, your water cup is the muddy, mucky brown. You deserve a nice clean cup of water, don't you? Yes, you do. So let us allow emotion to be not identified or labeled, but to be its own thing. Let it have some space and room in one way. You can do that. When you have these what the feelings moments is to just breathe, breathe into the space, create the expand. Yeah, I know. You're probably thinking, Oh, yeah, great. Thanks, Bridget. That's real, innovative breathe. The point is of the breath is to create an imagery of your heart opening up your chest, literally drawing in that air and expands it out and creates a platform of room energetically. So breath actually air element creates room, it creates space, and that's what's needed for each of these feelings to be having some space to move about. They're not necessarily coming in to have give you a message, some big insights, you can change your life. The feelings are just there as a part of life, a sensory energy as an empathic being, which you are clearly. It is not designed to distract you or numb you or overpower you feeling is designed to give you additional, additional ways to express and understand yourself to be in the most important relationship of your life, which is the relationship with you, you as a human being and as an energy being as a spiritual being. And this heart space, this emotional place needs a lot of room. It needs to be like a huge gymnasium where your feelings can express and move without judgment, without beer of judgment without the mind having to make them better deciding if they're right or wrong or good or bad. There's no room for that here. You just need to breathe open the space to let the energy of the emotions be expressed as individual energy. Just try this. Just try this awareness. Just touch your heart and open it up, breathe in to the chest and let there be room for your individual feelings without judgment. Let them have freedom. This is the freedom that you want. This is the free energy, the free spirit energy, the desire that you have to just be yourself. It's right here and allowing your emotions to just be known and be present and have a place to express. If you want to cry, you can cry. If you're at work and you want to cry, go in the bathroom and cry. Cry. Get it out. Let it express. There are so many ways that our emotions are expressed and can be expressed and channeled into art, into writing, into journaling, into singing, into movement, into activity. There's so many ways. Just allowing them to be there without having to suppress them or push them away or categorize them and stuff them in a drawer for some someday, some time. Go away. Just go away. Yeah, that's not going to work very well long term. That's not a good plan. You hoarder. Emotional feelings hoarder. I can say all these things because this is exactly what I wrestle with myself. I have struggled just because I'm a psychic and an intuitive coach. Doesn't mean I don't have struggled with these things as well. Very, very much so in the past few weeks, it's been like that. And sometimes it's worse than others. And that's just the way it is. When we have not allowed ourselves to have our emotions and our feelings without comparison to other peoples without somebody else needs more somebody else has it worse than I am. I should be grateful. I should be. I'm not sick. I'm not this. I'm not that I'm lucky. So therefore I don't feel luck has nothing to do with feelings. Personal circumstance or situation has nothing to do with your true feelings. Your feelings are your feelings no matter what they are. It doesn't have anything to do with the outside circumstances of the world. And you should feel this way or you should feel that way.  And you can do that. Don't worry by you letting yourself have your individual feeling and space for your feeling. You're not going to lose your mind.  There's always negotiation in decision making and such and all of the processes of life. It's all integrated. But these feelings, yeah, they matter. It'll go a long way for you to let your individual feelings be be known. Let them be known.  And then you will see that the intensity of the overall feeling of overwhelm will definitely subside. It'll soften. And I want that for you. I do. This is Bridget. Thank you so much for listening to Sunday morning coffee with Bridget. I look forward staying connected with you on Facebook at Bridget inspired on Instagram at Bridget inspired on YouTube at above life channel and on my vlogging channel, fairy grasshopper on YouTube.


Welcome back. All right. So what we're going to do is we're going to focus on getting this exported to Unity so we can use it in our scattering tool. Okay, and we're going to create all that scattering tool stuff.  Okay, so let's take a look at how to do that. So I'm going to jump into the final geometry node, and I'm just going to plop down an object merge node. So I'm going to say get grass clump like so. And I'm going to import the transform into this object, and we are going to go and get the out grass clump. So that's a null node that I added right here. All right. Cool. So let's go back into our final here. So now I have my LOD zero. Okay, so I'm going to just drop down a null node for that. So this is my first LOD. So we'll just call this LOD zero like so. And then what I want to do is drop down a poly reduce node. All right, just because I want to remove some some edges or some points from this. And I'm just going to set this to something like 50 for now. It'll be kind of aggressive with it. You can set it to, you know, whatever percentage you like. And I'm going to set the second one to 25. We'll just really get it down there. So you can see we have very, very little geometry. And if you actually want to check your poly counts, you can just middle mouse click. You can see we have 105 polygons for that grass clump 210 for that grass clump. And then we have 420 for that particular grass clump. All right, so with that, all I need to do now is just do an alt click and drag to copy my null node there. And you can see it names it appropriately for me, which is awesome. Okay, so let's just do that. And there we go. So now we've got our final network output. After all that, we just boiled it down to three null nodes like so. But this is all procedural. So when we make the HDA for this, we can go and create as many grass clumps as we want. Okay, so now I want to export this. All right, so let's talk about exporting this stuff. Okay, so in order to get this out of Houdini and into Unity, I'm going to create three geometry nodes here. And I'm going to call this grass clump. LOD, so it needs to be capitalized. The naming here is very important. All right, so LOD needs to have this underscore LOD right after it. Okay, and then we're going to name this grass clump LOD 1 and then grass clump LOD 2. This way Unity will pick up that suffix there and will automatically attach the LOD group to it and automatically attach all the mesh renders to your LOD group. Okay, so let's do an object merge. All right, and I'm going to transform it into this object and I'm going to go and get LOD 0. So we just need LOD 0. Cool. So I can just copy this now, hit U on the keyboard to jump up and out of my node and then just jump into LOD 1 and I'll just swap the name there. There we go. So we get LOD 1 and we'll do the same here for LOD 2. Awesome. So now we have all of our LODs. All right, and keep in mind we're at the OBJ level. So we're at the top route. This is going to become our HDA and I just created a couple of lights here and that was done through the shelf up here. I just created skylight. All right, so you can just make a net box around this and just call it lights if you want and just compress it down into an object or into a net box. There we go. Okay, so yeah, so this is going to become an HDA. All right, and so at this top route level we'll basically be able to create, you know, as many variations of grass clumps as we see fit and they'll just get passed into these nodes here. And so what we want to do is we want to bundle this up into a subnet. So to do that I'm going to select them all and hit Shift C on the keyboard. All right, I'm just going to give this a name of grass clump 01. All right, so that's our grass clump right there. So now what we want to do is we want to export this out to Unity. Okay, so I'm going to select it. I'm going to come up here and say Export Filmbox. And what I want to do is I want to go to my Unity project here. So I'm going to hit the Home folder, which is the Documents folder. Go to IndiePixel and into my Unity project here. And then I want to go to my Art folder, Objects, Environment, Grasses, and I'm going to save that grass clump right there as an FBX file. Cool. And then what I need to do is I need to select the node that I want to export. And in this case I want to select that grass clump 01 because it has all of our LODs underneath. Okay, so I'm going to hit Accept Pattern and we want to make sure that we have this create root for subnet turned off. All right, this will allow us to create that LOD group. Okay, and with that, let's just hit Export and let's jump over into Unity and see what we see. So I'm going to click and drag this out into my scene. And voila, you can see that we have all of the LODs all set up for us. So we didn't have to go through that process. The cool thing about this too is you can automate all this. So each time now that we go and create a different variation, we can just go and add a number two to this. Basically, come back up here and do another export. And you can also just automate that with Python as well. So you can just do another export, rename that, and you basically have another variation. That's all set up. It's all textured. It's using the same texture sheet. We have LODs for it. So really smooth process to get a lot of variations very quickly using Houdini. All right. Cool. So what I want to do is I want to assign the material to this. So let's go into the actual imported object here. I'm going to go to the Materials tab right here. And you can see that we have our principal shader. Now, that's fine and all. We can go and remap it with the material that we created earlier. All right, so I can click and drag this there. Hit Apply. And you can see now we have our grass texture. Well, you know, just being organized and clean, I'm actually going to rename this. So let's do that. So I'm going to rename that here. So I'm going to go and delete that. Let's go back into Houdini over here. And what we need to do is go into our grass clump here and go into our grass clump node. We need to go into our grass card. And we need to dive into the shop net, into our mat net. And we just need to rename this. So this is going to be called our grass clump mat, like so. Cool. So now it'll export out of Houdini appropriately. Come with a better name than just principal shader one. All right, just makes it more professional. Okay, so now all I need to do is just select that node and go and hit export and everything's fine. So I'm going to hit export again. We'll come into unity over here. And now if we take a look at our materials, we actually delete that there. And it looks like I didn't get any of the meshes, which is odd. And that is because we go grass clump one. I accidentally named it incorrectly. So there we go. So now we're all set up at export. Let's go back to unity. And there we go. So now we have grass clump mat for the material name. So I could just go and assign that there, like so. And we'll click and drag and drop it into the scene. And voila, we have a grass clump that has LEDs all automatically attached to the material created and all this was done procedurally using Houdini. So with that, let's move on to the next step and actually get a tool created using the Houdini engine. So I have the Houdini engine here installed already.  Okay, so we're going to take a look at that here in the next few videos. Thanks so much.


Wife of Legosi gave no doctor Bidyukesawun Walu, gave this reminder during her visit to schools. She went round to sensitize students on the health of sexual and gender-based violence. Plus, if Africa's Legosi correspondent love Ekukwedo Kun was there and now reports. Doctor Ibidyukesawun Lufres visited Dolphin Senior Secondary School at Saviour Street on Legosi Ireland. Thereafter, Ajay Comprehensive High School at Sabu Yaba Legosi State. Her message was simple. No means no. Say no to rape.  It's not allowed at all in Legosi. There are some countries out there in the world that when they say no is no. No means no. Repeat after me. No means no. I don't want to come to your house. My no is no. I don't want to trade myself because I need to get marks. No means no. Adiola Johnson was a facilitator. She told the students to take in the event of a rape incident. If a teacher harassing you, there are numbers here you can call. Report to the principal. And let's see how many of us out of the community, where the lecture was eventually sucked. It happened to teachers in secondary schools. Sexual and gender-based violence cuts across both the male and the female. It's not only the female that are being abused and harassed. Even some boys and women are being harassed out there. Some men in their houses, their wife harassed them. It wasn't one-sided. The moment afforded the students the opportunity to find answers to some issues bordering their minds. What if the teacher is threatening you that he lies to ourselves with you because he wants to give you a mark. And he's threatening that if you told anybody all reports to the principal, it's going to suck, show you. Whether he says if we fail you or not, let that teacher face Nigerian police. How many of us are afraid of the Nigerian police? Report, there are numbers you can call in this book. Please report that teacher. The visit was in fordrence of the ongoing annual 16 days of activism against sexual and gender-based violence as declared by the United Nations. With the theme, orange the world and violence against women now. From Lagos, love yu kuku yu duku, for Plus TV Africa. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.