If you will, you can pass the cups to the aisle and the brothers will come by and grab those for you. Thank you, brothers. I just want to continue encouraging you to spend the time, you know, each month before that the Lord's Supper comes up in just reflecting on those things and what importance they play in a healthy biblical church and how important they are to us. Many of you, I know I have, we've come out of churches where there's no real significance to any of those things and the Christian life was so-called basically just superficial.  You've got your life that you lived during the week and then you show up on Sunday and you're Christian for a couple hours and just meaningless, but the Lord has called us to much more than that and so the Supper has great significance for the Christian and for his church. Alright, our sermon title this morning is a Heart for Confrontation. A Heart for Confrontation. And our passage is in 1 Timothy chapter 5 verses 1 and 2 we'll begin looking at today. A Heart for Confrontation from 1 Timothy chapter 5 verses 1 and 2 and here Paul says to Timothy beginning in verse 1, do not rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father. Younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters with all purity. And it's interesting to think about that title for a moment. A Heart for Confrontation. Usually when you think of confrontation, you don't think of a heart for it. You think of avoiding it or something that's negative. The Bible is very clear that there is a time and a place for confrontation and we need to understand not only what that time and place is, we've got to have the right heart about it. There's a specific way in which we're to do that. We are to confront our brothers and sisters when there's a need to confront them and there are often needs in the body. For that we'll begin looking at that example and that command today. Now the purpose of Paul's writing to Timothy is we've been working through this letter to Timothy. There was a main purpose for the letter that we came across and that's where Paul says to Timothy that he's writing so that we should know how we are to conduct ourselves in the household of God which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. Ultimately that's the purpose for the letter. We need to know how we're to conduct ourselves. Now as Paul has been instructing Timothy, he's spent the last couple of paragraphs that we've gone through on Timothy's own personal life, Timothy's own personal character and Timothy's own ministry, the way that his ministry is to look and remember that flows down to us by way of application for the personal ministry that we are to have. The personal life is a Christian that we are to live and so he moves on now from Timothy's personal life and Timothy's personal ministry to now how do we interrelate in a very practical way with other people in the church? How do we do it? And in this we're going to see several different aspects, several different categories. As we get into verse 1 and 2 here beginning in chapter 5, we're going to look broadly at various ages and genders. How do you interrelate to or relate to older men, older women, younger men, younger women? How are we to do that? Then he moves on in verses 3 to 16 with Howard to relate to widows. That's going to have important application for us as well. Then he's going to address how we relate to elders in verses 17 to 25 slaves in chapter 6 verses 1 and 2 and then false teachers and their followers in chapter 6 verses 3 through 10. Now the instruction that he gives here beginning in verses 1 and 2 are necessary for the pastor. The pastor's got to understand how to do this. Here Pastor Timothy, a very difficult assignment in Ephesus needs to know how he's going to relate to people in his church and there are tough situations he has to address. But if we want to be a church healthy, that is biblical, that is thriving, that is pure, that is fervent and zealously following the Lord Jesus Christ we ourselves have to know how to do this and this is something that we must do. We all have to learn how to handle confrontation and it needs to be done with the right heart. We have to learn how to invest in one another's lives. And listen, this is largely abandoned in the professing church today but it's something the Lord commands us to do and we need to be serious about doing this if we want a church to be blessed by God. We need to have a right heart for confrontation. We must be willing to invest in each other's lives.  If most people with a consumer mindset they want to slip in a little bit late and avoid everybody and then slip out a little early so they avoid everybody. They don't want anybody knowing their business and so they're just anonymous in the church. It's like going to a movie theater where you don't know anyone else you get a good show, maybe eat some popcorn and then you go home and that's what has degenerated into the modern church today. No man, no woman in the Lord's church is to be an island. We were saved into a community. We're saved into a brotherhood, a sisterhood, if you will, and we're to be together in this work of seeing that the body is matured. Seeing that Christians are grown up into the stature, the fullness of Christ. And I mean this in the best possible way but in light of that, listen, we've got to be in each other's business. That's what the Lord would command. That's what Scripture teaches. We're not to be anonymous. We're not to be islands. We're not to be lone rangers. We're saved into a community. There's points that we're going to explore from these first two verses. If we want the right heart for confrontation number one, we need to have a heart for obedience to the Lord's commands. Right heart for obedience. Secondly, we need to have a heart for wisdom. We need to understand that these things need to be done in wisdom. We need to get wisdom from the Lord with how to do that. We need to take that to heart and do these things correctly. And then thirdly, we're to have a heart for our family. And the Lord uses family terms throughout this paragraph and we'll look at those. So the first point here is we need to have a heart for obedience. A heart for obedience. We get that from verse one where Paul says in Timothy do not rebuke an older man, do not rebuke him but exhort him and exhort him as a father. So we have two commands represented by two verbs in this first verse. You have do not rebuke that's a command and then you have exhort and that's a command. If we're to have a right heart for confronting sin in the body of Christ, we need to have a heart to obey the Lord in these two commands. That's not, it's easier said than done. Because exhorting someone or confronting someone in sin, it's a really easy thing to do, right? No, it's not an easy thing to do. It's a very hard thing to do. You've got to go to someone and you've got to talk to them about their sin. Not easy to do, but this is a command. This is a command. This is not a suggestion. It's a command from the Lord. And if we want a healthy, thriving, holy living, fervent, zealous, obedient church, this is something we've got to come to grips with. We need a heart here to obey. These commands do not rebuke and then the command to exhort come in the context here of confronting an older man in his sin. How easy is that? Not easy at all in the beginning. This is something we have to learn how to do. And it also necessitates that we have a right heart in doing it and it necessitates a heart that's like, alright Lord, you've commanded that I do it. And so as difficult as it may be, I'm committing myself to your word. I'm commending myself to what you are having me do here and I'm going to obey. I'm going to do this. At first blush now, as we look at this, do not rebuke but exhort. It sounds a little like a contradiction because there are other passages. If you know your Bible, there are other passages in scripture which specifically say that we are to rebuke. Speaking of elders, right here in 1st Timothy in chapter 5 verse 20, Paul says this. He says, those who are sinning rebuke them. Rebuke them in the presence of all that the rest also may fear. Of the elders' task in Titus chapter 1 verse 13, Paul says, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. He says, this testimony is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith. And Paul tells Timothy later in 2nd Timothy chapter 4 verse 2 he says, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and teaching. So we've got several passages and there are others commanding us to rebuke. But here in chapter 5 verse 1 he says, don't rebuke. So where's the difficulty here? Where's the rub? Paul says, there's a different circumstance in mind here. He has a different context in mind. And the reason there's a different context is because he uses a different word. Now it's not obvious in the English, but it's there in the Greek. Here in chapter 5 verse 1, Paul uses a word that he only uses here. He uses it nowhere else.  Hopox legamanon. It only appears once in the New Testament. It doesn't appear anywhere else, okay? And this is this word is epi meaning upon and plakesace meaning to strike. Epi plakesace. The word being used here is different from those other examples of rebuke in Scripture in that it means to strike or to inflict a blow. It's speaking here of a verbal assault. It carries a sense of violence and violence with your tongue. So what Paul is saying to Timothy is listen, don't verbally assault an older man but exhort him as a father. Don't tongue lash someone older than you. You're to be respectful and you're to treat them with respect. You're to exhort them as a father. And so that's where this differs. It is metaphorically used for someone who is beating up someone else verbally abusing someone with their speech. Now maybe you've been in a church where that's happened to you. I was speaking with a guy earlier in the week that happened to him in a church where the leadership of the church verbally the leader verbally abusive raked him over the coals. How many of you have known someone maybe you yourself have been in a relationship before that has been verbally abusive. You have to go home to verbal abuse every day.  Here Paul is telling Timothy to be careful that this doesn't happen in the church. We're not to verbally abuse one another. We're not to verbally violently assault one another with our words. In this sense don't rebuke them in that way. It's interesting that this word when we look at chapter 3 and the character of an elder in verse 3 it uses a very similar word when it says that an elder is not to be given to violence. That word for violence is a similar word. We're not to be violent with our speech toward one another. Are there times in the church where you need to rebuke? Yes. But does that mean that you're going to verbally assault them? Absolutely not. Does it mean here that when it says do not rebuke an older man, do not verbally assault an older man? What does that mean that it's okay to verbally assault an older woman? No. It means you can verbally assault your mother-in-law. No. No verbal assaults. It's not a verbal assault to an older man. It's not a verbal assault to an older woman. It's not a verbal assault to a younger man or a younger woman either. It carries through the whole phrase. We're not to beat each other up with how we talk to one another. We're to be patient. We're to be loving. We're to be kind. We're to be gentle, the Bible says. Here you don't tongue lash people in the church. Older man there. Same word used for elder where we get the office of elder, but here it just means someone older than you. Alright? Someone older than you. We're not to verbally assault a sinning older man. Okay? Now, the command carries through the entire phrase, the entire sentence.  You exhort them. So, the first command that we're looking at here from verse 1 is basically this. Don't abuse your leadership. Don't abuse that brother for whom Christ died. You don't verbally assault them. You're not to be verbally abusive. Additionally, it also carries here the sense of disrespect. You're not to be disrespectful. When it says don't rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father, the manner in which that you're to talk to an older man is to be respectful. How would you speak to your father? How should you speak to your father? You speak to your father with respect. Honor your father and your mother, right? You're to treat them with respect. So, it carries here also the sense of don't disrespect them. This comes on the heels of Paul's exhortation to Timothy not to let anyone look down on his youth. In the same way that Timothy is not to allow these elders to look down on him because of his youth, he's not to look down on them with his authority. He's to be loving in this, to show respect, to show deference. Take care with how you speak to people, with how you correct them, how you confront them. Cannot be abusive. You can, with your words, cause to stumble that one for whom Christ died. If you verbally lash out or assault someone verbally in correcting or rebuking or exhorting, you can cause them to stumble. You can get in the way of Christ. You can get in the way of the Holy Spirit and the work in that person by having them focus on your attack versus having them focus on the true solution to their problem, which is the work of the Holy Spirit. Abusive authoritarianism is often accompanied by or uses to get results, fear. Not fear in the person, but fear is a weapon. Fear is a tool to gain a response. Authoritarianism used as a way to get a response out of you. It's often accompanied by pride in the person who's doing it. It's done because they are insecure or because they are defensive and they feel as though they need to be in control. It is a patented lack of trust in the Holy Spirit who is the one who will get the results. It doesn't matter ultimately. It doesn't matter what you say, how you say it, what you do, or how you're going to do it. You don't get the results. The Lord uses you as a means to accomplish His ends and He gets the results and He gets the glory. So if you come to a situation where you're going to confront someone and you think that you're going to manufacture results by being heavy handed, you're thinking unbiblically, you're in sin. You're not to confront someone that way. It's the guy that comes in his pride and says, do it because I said so.  That's not the way that we're to treat one another in the church. It produces, this manner of doing things, this abusive authoritarianism produces fake superficial results based on intimidation, based on a fear of man. It's not based on a fear of the Lord and a desire to please the Lord out of a loving heart. That's nothing to do with that. And as a result, it produces cold dead heartless religion. It will produce joyless and hopeless so called Christians. It will produce dead orthodoxy. It doesn't give way to the spirit of God and so it's not going to produce holiness. The Bible says, James 1 verse 19 and 20, So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear slow to speak and slow to wrath. For the wrath of man expressed often in this abusive authoritarianism does not produce the righteousness of God. And in your heavy handed, authoritarian, abusive, verbal, tongue lashing of another person, you can actually get in the way of the Holy Spirit and in your pride wreck the life of that person that you're trying to help. So you say we can't in our anger and pride produce the righteousness of God.  He will use your loving appeal to produce the right results and he gets the glory for that. You have the potential you think about it this way in your verbally abusive assault against someone else creating not a convert of Christ, creating an entirely different convert altogether, a convert of Satan and you may do that for good if you're not careful turning them away from Christ. This is a foolish and sinful approach to leadership. It's a foolish and sinful approach to dealing with people. We've got to learn from it. This is often fueled by pride. There's many examples of this in Scripture. Many examples but I want us to look at one. Turn with me to 1 Kings chapter 12. Here's an example of someone in his pride trying to control the situation not giving heed to the spirit of God and that trying to control things himself in an effort to be manipulative in an effort to get superficial results gives way to his pride, gives way to this abusive authoritarianism and he just makes a mess of things. 1 Kings chapter 12 beginning in verse 1. This is a story of Rehoboam. Rehoboam comes on the scene after Solomon and he makes some really foolish decisions with respect to leadership and we need to learn from this. In 1 Kings chapter 12 look at verse 1. It says here that Rehoboam went to Shechem for all Israel had gone to Shechem to make him king and so it happened when Jeroboam the son of Nebat heard it he was still in Egypt for he had fled from the presence of King Solomon and had been dwelling in Egypt that they sent and called him then Jeroboam and the whole assembly of Israel came and spoke to Rehoboam saying your father made our yoke heavy now therefore lighten the burdensome service of your father and his heavy yoke which he put on us and we will serve you. So Solomon had a heavy yoke taxes on the people. So they're coming to Rehoboam who's now becoming king. They're saying to Rehoboam listen can you lighten the load. If you lighten the load we're going to serve you. You're going to gain the favor the love the loyalty of your people. You'll just lighten the taxes a little bit give us a little bit of a break here. These were elders making this request very likely those that were of the same age as Solomon who is Rehoboam's father and had served Solomon when Solomon was king right. So they're making a reasonable request here and their request is wise. Had Rehoboam followed their wisdom and had complied with their request there would have been peace in Israel but what does Rehoboam do? Let's read on. Verse 5. So he said to them depart from me for three days and then come back to me and the people departed from me. Then King Rehoboam consulted the elders who stood before his father Solomon while he still lived and said how do you advise me to answer these people? So they spoke to him saying if you will be a servant to these people today and will serve them and answer them and speak good words to them then they will be your servants forever. Now you win more flies with honey right. So what it is you speak to them kindly respectfully lovingly with their best interest at heart and you win loyalty forever. This is the same instruction to Timothy. Don't speak to them in a verbally abusive way. You exhort them as a father with respect, with love, with care, with concern, not with a verbal tongue lashing. Now think about it for a moment. Rehoboam was about 41 years old when this happened. So he's not a young man. He's just completely foolish. He's 41 years old. But these men that he's talking to are older than he is and Rehoboam didn't make a rash decision here. He took three days to consider what he was about to do. Foolish. Look what he does. Verse 8. But he rejected the advice which the elders had given him and consulted the young men who had grown up with him, his peers, who stood before him. And he said to them, what advice do you give? How should we answer this people who have spoken to me saying, lighten the yoke which your father put on us. Then the young man who had grown up with him spoke to him saying, this seems typical of a lot of young men who often fall victim and pray to pride.   In other words, you thought the taxes were heavy before. You're going to see my power in my severity and Rehoboam here is going to fuel his pride. Verse 11. Now, whereas my father put a heavy yoke on you, I will add to your yoke. My father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scourges. You want to make a scourge? You take a whip and you add pieces of metal and bone to it. It was a wicked whip. This is Rehoboam and his pride in his authoritarian abusive leadership. And now if he had gone the other direction, it would have been peace. But in an effort to control or in an effort to fuel his pride, in an effort to manipulate to get his own way or whatever the case may be here, he takes this authoritative and abusive stance. Look at verse 12. So Jeroboam, all the people came to Rehoboam the third day as the king had directed saying come back to me the third day. Verse 13. Then the king answered the people roughly. Why? Why the necessity to answer them roughly? Again, this is just more pride, more control, more exercising of your own authority. It's wickedly unbiblical. It's sinful. We're not to answer roughly. We're to exhort the older man as a father. The older woman as a mother. This is just another example of this. He answered them roughly and he rejected the advice which the elders had given him. Verse 14. And he spoke to them according to the advice of the young men saying my father made your yoke heavy but I'll add to your yoke. My father chastised you with whips but I will chastise you with scourges. And so the king did not listen to the people. That's interesting here, this turn of phrase here at the end of this clause. Listen to this. He didn't listen to the people for the turn of events was from the Lord that he might fulfill his word. Now God is not the author of evil but God uses even evil, even the sins of Rehoboam here to accomplish his ends. The Lord had said that he was going to judge Israel. He's going to judge Judah and here he uses the wickedness of Rehoboam to do just that. This is again, it's an example of abusive authoritarianism and we're not to respond to people that way. We're to be careful with how we interact with one another. Now there's a lot that can go wrong here, right? You set out as a maybe a young Christian and you want to be faithful to the Lord. You want to obey the Lord's commands and you say, you know what? I've got to get serious about doing this. I need to be faithful to the Lord in this and Lord lays an opportunity before you. Someone you know, maybe a brother or sister that you're close to and they're in sin. What is your responsibility to them? The scripture clearly says multiple places that you are to exhort them. You're to be faithful to the Lord here and so maybe this fear of doing things wrong or this fear of how do I speak to them? How am I to do this without sinning, without causing them to sin? Does that give you an excuse to shrink back and not do it at all? No. You've got to plunge in. It's how the Lord will grow you. How the Lord will mature you in doing this very thing and in doing this very thing he grows and matures and purifies and sanctifies the church. It's something that is necessary to do. We are to exhort one another.  They're not to be verbally assaulted, but they are to be ministered to. So there's a second command here. We're not to rebuke, that's the first command, but we are to exhort. That's the second command. It's split by a very strong contrasting word for but, a la in the Greek. It's a very strong contrast. Not to do the one at all but make sure that you're doing this over here. We're to exhort. And although there is a wrong way to do this, that we must avoid, we must confront sin in the body of Christ. And there's a necessity for this that backs up this command. There's a necessity for the purity of the church. For the sanctity of the church. For the testimony of the church to the world. How effective is the testimony of a church, a sinning church to the world? I'm not going down there. The church is full of hypocrites, right? Or every time a pastor falls into immorality. Or when you've got wicked hypocrites that attend that church and people know like when that guy goes to that church I'm never going to go to that church. I've seen the way that guy lives. It's a wicked, terrible testimony. So for the holiness and for the testimony of Christ's church we must do this. There's also another necessity that backs up that command. And it's a necessity for us to love and care for our brothers and sisters. Let me give you an example of this. Turn to Hebrews chapter 2. Hebrews chapter 2 If you love your brother. If you love your sister then you care about where they will spend eternity. You care about how closely and how fervently and how faithfully they follow the Lord. You care if they begin to withdraw themselves or if they begin to fall away. It's like caring for your own son or your own daughter. I care about what happens with my daughters. I'm concerned about what happens with my wife. We're to be concerned for one another in the church. Here in Hebrews chapter 2 let's begin to set this up. We have a responsibility because souls hang in the balance. There must be accountability in the church and you are your brother's keeper. We see that here established in the letter to the Hebrews. Look at chapter 2. Look beginning at verse 1 He says here, therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard lest we drift away. For if the word spoken through angels proves steadfast and every transgression and disobedience received a just reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? In other words we need to give heed to what we hear so that we can persevere to the end and be saved. Not neglecting this salvation that the Lord has provided. Flip the page and we see the outworking of that in chapter 3 beginning in verse 12. Chapter 3 beginning in verse 12 we're here. The Bible says beware brethren lest there be in you. That'd be one thing if it said that but it's any of you. He's not just speaking to you personally. We have responsibility for any of us. Beware brethren lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief and departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily while it is called today lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. That word there for exhort is our same word that we're looking at in 1 Timothy chapter 5 verse 1. We're to exhort. And we're to exhort daily and we must do this. This is another command. It says in verse 14, 4 we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end. And so what is the reason? What's the necessity that backs up the command that we are to exhort one another? The very real possibility that there are those who will fall away from the faith. We saw it in 1 Timothy when Paul charged Timothy there were some teaching divergent doctrines making shipwreck of people's faith. And so Timothy was charged with going in and stopping that nonsense because people were falling away. They were realizing. And so we looked at that passage on apostasy. Here this same warning holds true. We must as Christians persevere to the end to be saved. Now aside from the vast majority of what gets taught in modern evangelicalism today that you can profess Christ with your lips and then if you depart the Lord three years from now and you're still a Christian it's not what the Bible teaches. If you fall away from Christ it means you were never saved to begin with. I heard this story and I know you know exactly what I'm talking about. There's a book called Eternal Security where it said that becoming a Christian and making a profession of faith is a lot like getting a tattoo. If you walk into the tattoo parlor, get your tattoo, walk out the doors and say you know what that was the stupidest thing I've ever done. Doesn't matter you got the tattoo. It's done right?  I'm going to be an atheist. Too bad. You made the profession.  Is that what the Bible teaches? No.  Here it is if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end so it is then incumbent upon us faith and death, eternity and heaven or hell hang in the balance and it is necessary that we persevere to the end holding our confidence in Christ. This letter was written because the Hebrews here in the dispersion were considering going back going back to Judaism under great persecution. We can't go back. We are not of those who shrink back to perdition. We are those that press forward to the saving of the soul and we are responsible to one another in that we are your brother's keeper. So when you notice someone who is trailing off or withdrawing themselves or pulling back from faith in Christ it's necessary. We've got to go after them. We've got to exhort them. There's a manner in which we do it that's important but it must be done. Go on to chapter 4. Look at chapter 4 verse 1. Chapter 4 it says therefore since a promise remains of entering his rest let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. Listen for our brothers and sisters.  Hang in there. Many of you may have been in a position before in your own Christian experience where you felt like throwing in the towel. Listen throwing in the towel is no choice at all. There is no choice. You follow Christ. You throw in the towel.  We have to get involved in each other's lives and if you've been here for any length of time you've seen those that have begun to withdraw. They've begun to turn back to their sin. They're not holding their confidence firm to the end and maybe you've gone to them too late and there are many who are not here and that should grieve us as soon as it seems that someone is departing the faith.   We're to exhort one another. We're to care for one another. We're to make sure this doesn't happen. It's necessary in the body of Christ to do this work and you have to have a heart that wants to obey the Lord in this because people's souls hang in the balance. We've got to be faithful. Look at verse 11 chapter 7. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience. We don't want anyone to fall. Flip the page to chapter 6. Chapter 6 and look down at verse 9. Chapter 6 verse 9 here he says, but beloved we're confident of better things concerning you. Yes, things that accompany salvation though we speak in this manner for God is not unjust to forget your work and your labor of love which you have shown toward his name in that you have ministered to the saints. Our labor in the Lord is not in vain and the Lord remembers your labor of love. Your labor in exhorting your labor for the saints to see them strengthened. He remembers that and that is shown toward his name in that we ministered to the saints and do minister it says there. Look over another page chapter 10 look down at verse 23 chapter 10 verse 23 it says, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering. This is called the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. It is not enough to say the doctrine of eternal security. Eternal security is a portion of the perseverance of the saints. The doctrine that encompasses all of this is the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. We're to hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful and let us consider one another in this to stir up love and good works not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as a matter of some but exhorting one another and so much the more as you see the day approaching it is incumbent upon us to do this. Look at Hebrews chapter 12 and this more is exhortation. This is our responsibility to the body of Christ verse 12 says this therefore strengthen the hands which hang down and the feeble knees and make straight paths for your feet so that what is lame may not be dislocated but rather be healed pursue peace with all people and holiness without which no one will see the Lord looking carefully. That's what we're talking about here looking carefully watching out for one another lest any one fall short of the grace of God lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble and by this many become defiled lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau who for one morsel of food sold his birthright. We're to look out for one another we're to watch carefully. This was a reality for Timothy in Ephesus Ephesus was a difficult assignment and Timothy was going to have to confront those in sin. It was tough in chapter 1 verse 3 back in 1 Timothy. Timothy was commanded to approach older men elders in the church and charge them to stop teaching divergent doctrines stop teaching false teaching. So how do you then censure an older man without communicating disrespect or without communicating an abusive authoritarianism if you're in Timothy's shoes or in our shoes. How do you do that? Well you do what verse 1 goes on to say you exhort them it means to call along to your side. It has a semantic range meaning anything from comfort to encouragement to correction to reproof has a wide semantic range to encourage them. You're to correct them. You're to appeal to them. You're to call them to your side. Again this paricaleo here in verse 1 is a present tense active verb which means that it's ongoing it's consistent it's a way of life. Galatians 6 verse 1 says this brethren if a man is overtaken in any trespass you who are spiritual restore such a one in the spirit of gentleness considering yourself lest you also be tempted to bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ right heart for confronting sin then is not a violent verbal attack but the right heart for confronting sin is a loving restorative redemptive patient gentle forgiving strengthening corrective respectful confrontation. That's the way we're to do it. It's exhort calling them to your side. Now put yourself in Timothy's shoes. This is something we all have a responsibility to do. Timothy is reasonably young and he's been somewhat faint hearted. Now imagine you in the situation of having to address an older man in a sin. Would that make you think you might be faint hearted in that situation? It's not easy to do. It's a learned skill, something we have to be ready to do so that we learn how to do it. He's been commanded to set an example. He's been commanded to make sure that his progress is evident to all. His leadership to this point could be characterized possibly as timid. There was conflict raging in the church at Ephesus. Things were becoming unraveled. Ephesus was coming apart at the seams and Timothy was going to have to step in deal with false teachers. There were women who were devotees of the false teachers who were being led away by various lusts. He was going to have to deal with that. He was going to have to say some hard things and do some hard things and rebuke and resurrection were absolutely going to be necessary. But he could not give into his timidity or his fear in this. You, Christian, cannot give into a spirit of fear or timidity in this. You must do it. Very quickly, let me give you one example. Go to Ezekiel chapter 2 with me. Let's take some exhortation here from the Lord himself on this. We must do this and be thankful in this to this point that you don't have the assignment that Timothy had in Ephesus and you don't have the assignment that Ezekiel here had in Israel. And then take exhortation from the Lord on what to do about it here beginning chapter 2 verse 1. So God said here, He said to me, to Ezekiel, son of man, stand on your feet and I'll speak to you. Then the Spirit entered me when He spoke to me and He sent me on my feet and I heard Him who spoke to me and He said to me, son of man, I am sending you to the children of Israel. How would you like this assignment? To a rebellious nation that is rebelled against me, they and their fathers have transgressed against me to this very day for they are impudent and stubborn children and I am sending you to them and you shall say to them thus says the Lord God as for them whether they hear or whether they refuse for they are a rebellious house yet they will know that a prophet has been among them.  Praise the Lord. But whether they hear you or not, whether they're going to listen to you or not, you have a job to do. You must exhort.   Listen, they may be rebellious or they may not be they may receive your words or they may not you're not to fear them do the work that God has given you to do whether they receive it or not and you're not to be rebellious as they are you're to do what the Lord has asked you to do this is a job that we've got and we have to do this faithfully and well because this is so important to the soul of that person and so important to the health and vitality of the Lord's church James 5 19 this is why it's so important James says this brethren if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone turns him back let him know he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins in this lives are at stake the church is serious business this is not a weekend deal the church is made up of people who have never dying souls and we need to care for one another in this if you're here today and you're a Christian pleading with you I am pleading with you on the authority from God's word and for our own benefit for the benefit of Christ church which he purchased with his own blood be faithful to the Lord and exhorting your brother if you see people trailing off go after them you see people sinning get that corrected if you yourself are sinning receive exhortation with humility it's for the good of this church for the good of the body for the good of that person soul for your own good and for the good of God's name if you're here today and you're not a Christian what in the world are you doing there is judgment that hangs over your head we come to you now and exhort and plead with you be reconciled to God or you will face an eternal torment and eternal judgment against your sin aren't you sick and tired of the life that you're living turn to Christ and listen when Christ forgives you of your sin washes you clean he adopts you into his body and he puts you in a family of people that care for and love and tend to your soul you're not alone in this the Lord will wash you and cleanse you and care for you says Ezekiel like a baby for your eternal good if you persist in your sin in life for yourself you will die and face the judgment and fury of Almighty God be reconciled be justified turn from your sin and put your faith in Christ people my brothers and sisters I love you and I love this church we've got to be faithful to the Lord in this don't give up on going to your brother going to your sister don't be slack in approaching and exhorting and loving and holding accountable we have to have accountability Lord has blessed that here amen if you've been here you've seen beautiful fruit come from brother loving brother and just going and addressing sin don't stop don't give up on that work and in that there's great blessing, great faithfulness to the Lord and the Lord will continue to give us fruit amen Father in heaven God we love you Lord and we thank you so much for this instruction is so practical and God thank you for that thank you for the the fruit that we've seen as a result of that in this church and God I pray that we just continue to be faithful in these things I love my brothers and sisters and I care about what happens to them and I know they care about what happens to me and we are our brother's keeper and we see that clearly from your word help us to be faithful in these things to honor you Lord but also for the good of their soul so help us as we apply these truths I pray that we'd be convicted by this God I pray that we'd be shamed Lord when we don't faithfully obey you in this but that Lord you would continue to bless you continue to bear fruit as a result of the faithfulness of your people in this and that you would be honored that Christ would be exalted and that when we get to heaven we'd be there together and we love you Lord and thank you for this time of worship I pray that you'd be pleased with it in Jesus name Amen


All of us have had those days when life seems extremely overwhelming. Every once in a while, I do fall into a pattern where I feel stunted creatively and mentally. Hi guys, my name is Shachi and welcome to another video. I have been managing a business and a startup for the last two years. Though this is exciting, but a lot of times I am working alone either at home or in the office. In such situations, it is very easy to fall into a slump, especially when things are not that great. So every once in a while, I find myself in a rut. I am not motivated and this hampers my productivity. Whether you have your own business or a professional career, I am sure you would have faced days when the week seems to just drag on and you cannot get any work done. Don't worry, I have you covered. In this video, I will share with you tips and tricks to help you get out of any rut. And in FYI, none of these involve pampering yourself or reading inspirational Tumblr quotes. A few months ago, I read an article which said, If you are stuck mentally, move physically, and I find this to be so true. There is something about going for a run, lifting some weights or even dancing to your favorite song, which seems to make your brain work a little bit more. So whenever I was in a rut, I would watch television or cozy up in bed, but that just made me feel lazier. Now whenever I feel that I am not able to get any work done, I try and get some more exercise, even if it is just going for a walk around my office space. This is one gem of a trick and seems to work every time, especially on those days when you want to throw everything into the dustbin and just give up. On such days, I try and stick to my basic routine, which could be as simple as getting up on time, getting a workout, eating healthy food and showing up at the office. So just sticking to these basic tasks makes me feel better. So if you are having one of those days, then just show up. Even if you are going about your day in the most robotic manner, taking off these basic things off your list will create a positive feedback loop and keep you going. A lot of times just being in the same environment with the same people can make you feel bored and uninspired. So it would be a good idea to change your workspace. If you work alone, then try stepping out of your home and work out of a cafe or a friend's home. Co-working spaces are also a great way to work. I personally love working out of co-working spaces. It is such a great way to meet and interact new people and see the amazing work that they are putting in. If you already work at your office, then try and sit in a new place. And if that is also not possible, then just change the things on your desk. Just changing the arrangement of things around you can bring in new energy and new inspiration. Whenever I feel that I am in a rut and not able to get any work done, I find it very helpful to write it in my journal and just let it all on paper. You guys know I am all about journaling, but I find it extremely useful to understand the issue and to get to the core of it. So figure out what is your personal therapy. It could be journaling, meditation or talking to a friend. It would also be a good idea to get yourself a coach or a professional mentor with whom you can discuss your goals and who could help you to stay on track and stay committed to them. So guys, these were my tips for getting out of a rut. I really hope they help you out. If you have faced a similar situation, then please comment below and let me know what you did to get out of it. If you would like to work with me and would like me to help you out in figuring out your goals and staying committed to them, then I will leave a link for that in the description box below. If you liked this video, do give it a thumbs up and subscribe so that you don't miss out on any content. I will see you in the next video. Till then, take care and bye.


What is going on everybody? It's Stas here. Welcome back to another video. So in this video, we're going to be talking about the top couple of stocks and ETFs that I'm watching for the second week of December in 2018. So for those of you guys that are new to my channel, my name is Stas, and I make videos dealing with swing trading, day trading, long-term investing, and my personal philosophies and strategies when it comes down to investing and trading in the stock market. So for those of you guys that want to learn more about that, feel free to drop a like, leave a comment, and subscribe, and follow me on Instagram, as well as on Twitter, and join our Discord and Group chat, as well as our Facebook group. All of those are linked down below in the description box. And if you guys want to be in contact with me and about 320 other investors and traders, join that Discord and Group chat guys. We're talking about trading, we're talking about investing stocks, news, strategies on a day-to-day basis. So if you guys want to be in the community on that platform, again, I highly suggest you join that. And again, all those are linked down below in the description box. So today, guys, like I said, I want to talk about some ETFs and some stocks that I'm watching for this upcoming week. And for those of you guys that have been paying attention to the markets, you should know that we've been in an absolute slaughter over the past couple of trading days. The Dow Jones, the S&P 500, and the NASDAQ have been having ridiculous swings.  And it rebounded, like, a total of 1500 points in a matter of one day.  So before we do talk about some stocks, ETFs, let's just take a look at what the overall indexes are telling us in terms of the technical analysis. And let me just quickly clear this drawing set so we can get a better understanding with some fresh trend lines that I'm going to draw out for you guys right here. So for those of you guys that have been following my content for a while, you know that I talk about the overall markets in the beginning of every single trading update video, so we can get a better understanding of my thinking throughout trading. And you know, I like seeing the direction of the overall market before deciding what I'm going to be trading because, you know, a lot of people know this already, a lot of people do the same thing. But, you know, I trade a bunch of market ETFs that rely on what direction the market is pushing to, you know, really just decide what those ETFs are going to be doing. So for those of you guys that don't know what I'm saying is that, you know, I trade ETFs that go up in price when the markets are going up in price. And I'm also trading ETFs that go up in price when the markets are going down in price. This is a very good way to make money both ways in terms of when the markets are going up in price and when the markets are going down in price. But before we do talk about those particular ETFs, let's just take a look at what does Dow Jones Index is telling us. So we can very clearly draw out a support here at about $24,500. And this is a support level that we've been talking about over the past couple of weeks in terms of the Dow. And, you know, the S&P has a very similar support level, right? It's been holding above this particular support at $26.30. And what that is telling us, guys, is that the markets are holding above that certain level, right? It may seem very obvious, but the fact that the markets, the Dow, the S&P have not broken below these critical support levels is a very good sign. But if we take a look at these points right here in terms of the Dow Jones, we notice that it's making lower highs. The high here at $27,000, next high at about $26,200. The next high is at about $25,800. So the lower highs is signifying that the Dow is downtrending in price. But the reason that it's not fully downtrending in price quite yet is because we haven't made a lower low here due to the fact that we've been holding above that support level. So this is why I think that support level at $25,000 or $24,500 is super important and a very critical level for the Dow Jones, because let me tell you why. If we do break below here this upcoming week, we're going to be heading it heavier into the correction territory, right? But if we don't break here, right? And we bounce back up here, that's going to be a good sign that the Dow Jones is slowly recovering and we'll test the resistance at the top of this channel, which may be around $25,500 at that point. And we've been talking about this over the past couple of videos, guys. Once the Dow Jones, if the Dow Jones does break below here, that's not a very good sign. And that's just the continuation of the correction that we've been in since early October. So S&P 500 guys, very similar, like I said, we're holding that support here. And we're trading more in a horizontal pattern as compared to the Dow Jones, because we saw the Dow Jones that's making lower highs. This one's really been not really making lower highs. It did make a lower high here from this previous at about $29.30. But since this high, we've been able to pretty much come back up to it the past three times, right? $28.20. We topped here at about $28.00, a little bit shy of that high, but it was in the same vicinity, the same ballpark as the previous high at about $28.20. So let me just quickly clear this very quickly for you guys. I don't know why it's doing that. But where is it? Clear drawing set. And we can see this is more of a horizontal channel than the Dow Jones. So like I mentioned, I've been talking about this in the Discord chat. I don't see it impossible for us to have a bounce back day, maybe tomorrow and Tuesday, before we do end up heading back down in price. Because I do think there's a lot of more uncertainty and there's obviously a ton of uncertainty in the markets. There's a lot of doubts in the markets and stock market investors do not like doubts and uncertainties, which is why I personally think the market's going to continue to push down. But I think, guys, we're going to have possibly a bounce back day tomorrow and the day after, potentially, because we've sold off pretty heavily in terms of the overall markets in the past couple of days. So watch out for that bounce back. And again, as always, just keep an eye on the futures, keep an eye on stocks, pre-market hours, what is going on, that's going to really show you and paint a picture of what could potentially happen that day. So NASDAQ guys had a very bad day, pretty much. We popped above the 180 simple moving average. We got a glimpse of relief in terms of the NASDAQ. But again, we had a terrible day this past Friday and the entire past week. And we shot back down, broke below that 180 SMA. And we tried to bounce up above it again, but we got rejected. And now we're pretty much breaking this little support here that we do have at about 6640. And all things are showing that, all signs are showing that the NASDAQ is continuing this downtrending pattern. It's making lower highs. It's making lower lows. And the next stop in my personal opinion, guys, next support, we got to keep an eye on for this NASDAQ is at about $6,500. So if we do have another bad red day, a bad couple of red days this upcoming week, that is going to push the NASDAQ down below that level. And it's going to continue the lower low pattern, lower high pattern that it's been on over the past couple of weeks. So now that we got a better idea of what's going on in the overall stock market in terms of the three major indexes, the Dow, the NASDAQ and the S&P, I'm going to talk about some ETFs, mostly ETFs, guys, because again, I'm not really trading stocks right now, swing trading stocks. I am looking at potentially day trading them. But I found more success trading ETFs over the past two months since we've been in this correction territory. So let's just talk a little bit about some ETFs today, guys, and see what I personally see potential in. So natural gas is at a very interesting point right now, in my personal opinion, based off of these technicals. So we're in a wedge pattern right here. We had a good report which pushed up this natural gas future all the way up to the top of this resistance line right here. And we're slowly seeing a red candlestick starting to form under this resistance point. So what this is telling me is that this could potentially be either A, a breakout spot for the natural gas futures, which will push it out of this channel, which would be a very bullish move, or two, B, this could be a rejection point for natural gas, which would end up pushing it down here, and it would continue this pattern of lower highs. And if that ends up happening, guys, we're going to be trading D gas ticker symbol DG AZ and D gas guys, obviously it went through that reverse split, it's been getting hammered over the past couple of weeks. But I do see some potential bounce back, you know, potential in this ETF, if we are able to get rejected at the top of that channel, in terms of natural gas. And again, if we break out of this, very bullish move, in my opinion, and that's going to be a very good sign for you guys, and you know, if we can draw out a couple of resistance points here for you guys, we're pretty much at one at about 155 right now, if we're able to break out of that, next one would be at around 175, following about $190. So there is room for you guys to run if we are able to break out of the top of that wedge in terms of these, you know, these natural gas futures. So D gas and U gas, just like every single week, guys, these are at the top of my list for this upcoming week. And another pair of ETFs that I've been trading a bunch, actually, have been gush and drip. And for those of you guys that don't know, these are, you know, oil based ETFs, and they trade based upon XOP and XOP is an oil ETF. And whenever this one's going up in price, you know, gush is going up in price, but whenever XOP is going down in price, drip is going up in price. So we noticed the big sell off in XOP this past week, which was very good for drip drip had a ridiculous day this past Friday, I traded it I made about 67% on one trade with drip, I actually traded gush as well ended up taking a 1% loss into that in that ETF before putting my money into drip and making that 7%. But, you know, judging off this chart here on XOP, we noticed that it got rejected here at the 50 SMA, which was very good for drip and it pushed down in price here and we noticed that it's making lower highs making lower lows. So the fact that it's getting rejected by this 50 SMA is a very good sign for drip. And what I'm going to be paying attention to you guys to see what I want to play in terms of either gush or drip this upcoming week, as I want to see if it's able to continue this pattern. And if it's able to make a lower low here guys potentially back down to around the 30 range, right, we could end up playing gush on a bounce back play from down here at around $30 back up to that 50 simple moving average resistance. So keep an eye on this guys, very, very important. So based off these technicals, I do believe drip does have some more potential maybe back up to 1275, which was a resistance point in the past due to the pattern being here a little bit above this low at about $30.77. So if this continues the pattern, we might break below here, break this little support at around $30 and 77 cents, which again would be great for drip. And then at that point guys, if we do see a little bit of a curl back up, the 50 simple moving average will be a resistance point which in turn will be able to play gush on that bounce back play. So let me show you guys what drips looking like very quickly here. You know, we are at about $12. We pulled back bounce on the 50 SMA at about $10. That's where I ended up calling it out on Friday. And we see the resistance here like I said a little bit earlier at about 1275. So I do see potential from about maybe $12 back up to here before we do pull back and potentially play gush on that little bounce back play. So guys, I'm mainly focusing on drip and gush, you guys and D gas in terms of these inverse ETFs for this upcoming week. Another one that had a pretty solid day was Jnug. And Jnug is one that I called out about a couple of videos ago, and this one was up about 60 cents, 8% this past week. And what do we notice, not this past week on Friday, but what do we notice on Jnug's chart? We notice that it's at a resistance point at the 180 SMA, which has been a strong resistance in the past. So the fact that we are here, guys, opens my eyes up to the inverse to Jnug, which is JDST. And, you know, if we do get rejected here, guys, which is very possible since again, it's been a resistance in the past, and the RSI levels are showing that it's overbought, I think JDST will end up being a phenomenal play this upcoming week, at least for a little bounce back, maybe from this support at about 68 back up to potentially like $74, which does offer about a 10%, I would say 9%, 10% potential for profit. So for those of you guys that don't know, JDST and Jnug, they're gold-based ETFs, and they trade based upon slash GC. So if slash GC is continuing this bullish shine that it's showing, it's obviously going to be good for Jnug. But we do expect a pullback because again, we don't want to see a stock ETF commodity future, whatever we're watching, continuously pushing up without a pullback. The whole idea is to continuously trade the uptrend and sell at the top, or at least try to, and then play the inverse on the pullback. So that's the strategy I'm pretty much coming in with here with these gold futures and these gold-based ETFs. I would love to see potentially a pullback back to around this level at around $12.30 because that's a previous resistance, which is now in new support. So based off the technicals, guys, that would really make sense and would be a very good opportunity in my personal opinion for JDST. So gold futures, natural gas futures, all those ETFs as well as the oil ETFs, GUSH and DRIP are the main combos that I'm watching heading into Monday, Tuesday, this whole entire week pretty much.  And we talked about this, it got bought out, well it didn't get bought out, but I think 45%, I think Altria bought 45% of the company for about $2.2 billion. I talked about this on Friday, it was all over the news, very solid acquisition by Altria in my personal opinion and a very good sign for the marijuana industry as a whole. So this could potentially send Cron even possibly back up the highs of about $15. But what do we notice here, guys, is Cron actually shot up to $14.50 pre-market hours and it had a solid pullback. So that opened up a pretty solid margin of profit. And in my opinion, guys, if we're able to hold above this previous resistance at about $11, possibly $12, that could become a new support level, meaning that we could potentially get in here at a better buy point and ride it back up to previous resistances at that point being around $14. So I'm watching Cron very closely, guys. Again, it's all over the news, there's a ton of hype behind this one right now. And when there's a ton of hype in the stock market, it tends to shoot up individual stocks up 40%, 50%, 60%. That's exactly what ended up happening to Cron, guys. It was literally up 45% at one point from the previous day once that news got announced. And grabbing some of that profit is very attainable in my personal opinion. We just have to keep an eye on it, wait for the opportunity to open to us, and be very, very smart about the trade. So obviously, guys, I'm going to be watching the other marketing TFs like TVIX, TQQQ, these are all ones that I watch every single day. And in the state of the market that we're currently in, these are very smart to keep an eye on and potentially play in my personal opinion. So if the markets are showing another heavy sell-off tomorrow, pre-market hours, I'm probably going to be trading TVIX because this one does go up in price when the markets are selling off. But if we do see a potential bounce back up this week, which again, I think is very possible due to the big sell-off that we've had, TQQQ does show potential for maybe around this level, the support that we're at around the $40 range back up to the $180 simple moving average at around $50, which could be a very solid trade in my personal opinion. But from the technicals, guys, based off what we're looking at here, TQQ could push down to maybe the high 30s if it continues this lower low pattern. But again, this is all going to be based on what the market is showing. If the markets are down, let's say the Dow's down to 300 points, pre-market hours tomorrow, it could be a good opportunity to potentially hop into this one. For the bounce back play, if you do think it could shoot back up to the $180 simple moving average or hop into TVIX for a quick little day trade, that's what I'm personally going to be doing tomorrow. So just to sum things up, guys, you guys, DGAS, JDST, JNUG, DRIP, and GUSH are all in pretty favorable situations to trade right now based off of the technicals. In my personal opinion, I'm going to be watching them very closely as well as TVIX, TQQQ, SQQQ, QQQ, these are all market ETFs that play based on what the market is doing, whether it's up or down, you can make money trading these ETFs. And obviously, guys, if we do have a strong bounce back tomorrow in the markets, I'm going to be looking to potentially day trade some large cap stocks like Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Google, all of these ones that have been getting hit and crushed over the past couple of weeks. So I hope you guys enjoyed this video. If you did, feel free to drop a like, leave a comment, subscribe, follow me on Instagram and Twitter, and join our Discord group as well as our Facebook group. All of those are linked down below in the description box. I'll catch you guys in the next video. Have a great rest of your weekend. Peace out.


Uncommon Valor was a common virtue. Those who were the words of Admiral Chester Nimitz, as he remarked 75 years ago to describe the United States Marine Corps' victory on the island of Iwo Jima, for 36 days they battled for every inch of that hallowed soil against a hidden and desperate enemy from the volcanic sand beaches to the heights of Mount Sarabachi, where they raised the flag of our nation for the world to see. And you've held it aloft ever since. Since your inception on this day in 1775, you have been America's force in readiness, prepared for every climb and place. From the past heroes enshrined here at the National Museum of the United States Marine Corps to the men and women standing the watch today, the unbroken line lives on in each of you. As we transform our force to meet the demands of the 21st century, I am confident that you will continue to lead the way for our nation and for our world. Each of you who served today must innovate and redefine what it means to be warriors from the sea tomorrow, surrounded at all times by the strength and spirit of yesterday. The technology and tactics may change, but the need for principled leadership under fire will always remain a constant. That's why on this 245th birthday of the United States Marine Corps, I am announcing that the next expeditionary sea-based vessel that will deploy Marines of the future will be named for a Marine hero of the past, a leader who truly embodied our core values of honor, courage and commitment. To honor the remarkable Vietnam generation, ESB-6 will be named USS John Canley. Gunnery Sergeant Canley led his men through the battle of Ways City, going above and beyond the call of duty as he carried wounded Marines to safety and drove the enemy from a fortified position. His courageous actions resulted in the award of the Medal of Honor, as well as the enduring gratitude of our entire nation. Sergeant Major Canley continues to serve his community and our Marine family today, exemplifying all that has made our service strong and our nation thrive for our first 245 years. It takes a special person to assume leadership in the face of chaos. It takes character to put yourself into harm's way for your fellow warriors. It takes professionalism to remember your training and execute without rushing or faltering under fire. In short, it takes a Marine. So to all who have ever worn the uniform of the United States Marine Corps, all the families who've served alongside and all who carry the honor today, happy birthday and thank you for your service. Semper Fi.


Often named as one of the ugliest buildings in Dublin, the Fibsbury Shopping Centre is getting a makeover. New apartments that are expected to accommodate 340 students are set to be developed in Fibsbury as part of the 50 million euro redevelopment of the 1960s Shopping Centre. This scheme was approved by the council this month and was welcomed by DCU Student Union. Yeah, new shop accommodation is always welcome in Fibsbury so close, it's fantastic for us, but the only thing I'd worry about is the pricing of it. I'm looking to prepare it for the military that is for students but it's 249 euro a week so what I'd be worried about is would it be priced for a reasonable amount for a student or would it be overpriced? The price of student accommodation, however, is a concern. Seen as recent developments have rooms in Dublin costing a minimum of 249 euro a week. It's absolutely not fair, from my experience of renting, I'm really, really struggling especially at times like Christmas when everything is so much more expensive given my presence in all this. But I think the sad fact of it is that if you go to college in Dublin, Dublin is just an expensive place to live anyway, not just for students, for anyone buying a renting. So yeah, I mean, I think unfortunately just living in the capital is always going to be a bit more expensive. I'm looking since I still live at home but I have to commute to college daily and I find that expensive so I can't imagine how people are affording to live away from home because they have to pay for the food and everything as well. My man pays for all that for me. I know I wouldn't be able to afford it anyway. Definitely way too expensive. Even now with all the new accommodation centres popping up they're extortionate still so even though there's more and more becoming available it's still out of the reach of a lot of people and it's definitely taken advantage of students as well because they know that they're desperate for accommodation and would do anything to be near their college. So even though there's more now and it seems like they could do more for it, I mean they could do more in terms of pricing and making it more affordable in general. Although many of the local people here are excited and supportive of the idea of the development, some of them are concerned that the arrival of more students will also result in the arrival of more fast-food restaurants, especially when there's already an abundance of them here in Pubsborough. Rachel Martin, DCU TV News.


I'm Lawrence Baldwin and this presentation is on extreme IP back tracing, test, test, okay. I sat through two presentations here earlier and was in the back and couldn't really hear well. Is this a good volume of voice to be able to hear me? All right, good. I'm the developer and operator of the MyNet Watchman distributed intrusion detection system and I collect firewall events from about 1,200, 1,300 firewalls around the world and try to make some sense of it. And back trace addresses when we detect, when people have been compromised and try to send them notifications. So I probably back trace about somewhere around 25,000 to 30,000 IP addresses a day and try to figure out who the heck owns them. And the rationale for putting this presentation together is to try to impart some of that knowledge, bring visibility to the fact that this process is non-trivial and maybe encourage people to do more with their firewall logs as well. Okay, so a lot of these events that show up in your firewall logs, your IDS logs, it's non-trivial tracing some of these IP addresses back to their owner. A lot of times if you do a who is look up, you end up with nothing more than ISP. And really what we're hoping to do is that a lot of these systems that people are using to attack other people are not their own systems sitting on their own home DSL line. They've broken into someone else's machine and they're launching attacks from these machines that they're controlling. And we have plenty of those machines out there, Code Red, Mimba. Based on that, there's two ways really to improve the overall security of the internet. One goal is reducing the total number of compromised hosts. And the other being to minimize the amount of time that a system remains compromised. And so we have to protect ourselves. We need to let people know, people who have been broken into. We need to let them know, hey, we're seeing this in our logs.  What we really have to realize is that probably about 95% of the scanning activity that you might be seeing in your logs is coming from a hacker directly, but rather it's really just another victim that's been compromised with something. So it's almost like these pervs are a cry for help rather than something that's intentionally hostile. This quote here is taken from an article written shortly after the February 2000 DDS tax. Authorities pursuing the attack just say the servers they use belong to users that had no idea that their resources were being used to launch attacks. So here's a pretty interesting trace. This was a MyNet Watchman incident. The machine was compromised by the Microsoft, despite it weren't. When we backtraced the IP, it led over to the ripe server and you see the net name is GAN. That's the central reason of GAN RF. And if you see the first notified contact is SAM at GAN.ru. So we go over to GAN.ru and run this page through a translator. This is the Nuclear Regulatory Agency of Russia. So pretty nice to know that they are infected. As far as an update on this, the machine was actually notified weeks and weeks ago. And as of last week, they were still attacking people. So I don't know what kind of response they're planning, but hopefully they do something soon. Okay, so we're going to start by talking about some of the different tools you can use to backtrace the latest in places that information shows up. We're going to start with the first thing you want to do when you're actually tracing something back is actually validate the source IP. Before you go off and spend a whole lot of time trying to figure out who owns an address, it's a really good idea to validate where that actual traffic came from. Just because a packet has a source IP address that could be from an address base halfway across the world, there's nothing to stop that packet from having been generated locally by somebody spoofing addresses or some kind of misconfiguration problem or whatnot. So it's certainly a good idea to use either a packet analyzer or router debug commands to actually validate that the packet is actually coming in physically from some remote physical interface. Also, when trying to analyze firewall events in a broadcast network kind of topology such as a cable modem network, it's entirely possible that you'll receive bleed-through traffic that's sourced from addresses that are actually your neighbors on the same cable segment, whether they're using private addresses or maybe even being misconfigured with valid public addresses from other places around the world. So one of the next steps you can take is to eliminate some potential bad IP addresses. In RFC 1812, they mentioned the Martian addresses. I was looking around to find a consistent definition of what the actual Martian addresses were. These are actually great from the RFC. Some people might argue that Wink Local and some of the other IANA-reserved stuff are belonging to this group, but the examples here are directly from the RFC. You've got the broadcast, the back multicast and limited broadcast addresses. An interesting quote from RFC is below, a router should not forward any packet that has an invalid IP source address. I can't tell you the number of times I've had people asking me, why is IP address <IP_ADDRESS> attacking me? So you can also exclude private addresses, 10 dot space, 172.16 through 31, 192.168. There's a class A, B and C, slash 12 slash 16. This was a pretty interesting who is record. Actually, this is from Korea. They actually published a who is record. If you look at the IP address range, it's for private IP address space. And this came up on a discussion on the NAN address. And someone said, where is it? So it's done an APNIC registration for RFC 1918 private space. Perhaps they're suggesting that spammers or perhaps all of Korea be assigned private address space, which are fortunately non-routable. So I mentioned this a couple slides back, but you can also pretty much exclude anything that comes from the IANA address. It's really doubtful with the attacking rule. These are some of the reserved addresses. If you do look up for IANA at the who is servers at hand, you'll get this list. And this is just the list continued. You do have to be a little careful about just dismissing reserved addresses because those are, of course, subject to change. I know I have been considering a specific address range as being reserved in my database, and then six months later, some new reservation allocations have been given out. So addresses that were previously invalid as source addresses are now invalid. So you've got to be sure to check these IPs on a somewhat frequent basis. You should definitely look for stuff that looks fake. <IP_ADDRESS> probably isn't attacking you. We also have some examples from MaxVision's white hats document on NNAP decoy addresses. Sometimes they show up in the trace. People try to be really stealthy, and you see a trace that has <IP_ADDRESS> as the source IP, and then you see another packet from 24.24.24. And then you see something from a public address that's totally different. They're like, huh, which address you're using there, buddy? So you can do a limited amount of spoof detection on the addresses. It gets really difficult to detect spoofing because the ultimate way where you receive the packet is somewhere near the edge of the network. And Bob Morris wrote in his TCP IP weaknesses in the 4.2 BSD UNX TCP IP software. This is back in 1985. He describes the weakness, which is basically anybody can fill in the source address, whatever source address they want, similar to snail mail. If you don't have access, physical access to the network, there's really not an easy way to validate whether or not an address that appears to be attacking you is real or not. However, there are some, and these are not extremely reliable, but at least some basic techniques that you can do that might give you some information to decide whether or not an address is spoofed.  So here's a technique. It's based on one of the passive fingerprinting techniques and it's fingerprinting techniques, which actually looks at the TTL value. And so when you receive a packet and you check what the TTL is at the point that you received it, there's default TTLs for most addresses. And based on that and the count at where you received it, you can do some deduction as to what type of machine was attacking you, but also perhaps find out if there was a spoofed address. By trace routing back to that IP, you'll have some idea of the number of hops that it actually takes to get to you from that IP. Asymmetric routing may add a few hops in between, but they should be fairly standard. And so if you subtract the final TTL from the original TTL and then do some guessing as to what kind of arrest sent the packet, you can give, it's not totally reliable, but it can give you an idea whether the packet was really spoofed or not. I mean, if you receive a packet and the implied decrement in TTL implies that that host is like 10 hops away, but when you trace route to that IP, it's like 40 hops away. I'd say there's probably a pretty good chance that that was a spoofed address. And I don't know if anyone here was in the X-Probe 2 talk, but there's actually a list of what the default starting TTL values are for a lot of the major offerings. Oh, I didn't realize you did it to me. Let's put that in. Now this was actually taken. I looked around for the default TTLs all over the place, and there was this one link on Google that unfortunately was down. So this is from the cache page. I haven't verified all of these, but I have looked into the windows and the Linux TTLs. And in the slides on the CD-ON, there's actually some details about how you can change your default TTL to be whatever you want it to be. So here's an example of where this type of spoof detection breaks down. You'll notice at hop 10, we jump into 10 dot space, and then at hop 11, we jump into 172 dot space, and then the trace disappears after that. So we really have no idea exactly how many hops away this particular address is. Another way to validate whether or not an IP address is real is to perform well validation on it by looking at BGP route tables. And there's a couple of sites listed here that will basically let you punch in an IP address and it will come back and tell you what the active route entries are for that address. This is like a really, I've only just started doing this, playing with this, but it's really a powerful concept. Almost every other source of backtracing information is stale and old information. Whereas, you know, BGP route information is about one of the few sort of active and real-time information. And I can't tell you the number of times when I've taken an address that I have some suspicion about whether or not it's been spoofed or not, plug it into BGP route tables and it comes back network not even in table. So we have an example of that here. Yeah, here's just a quick spoof example. This is a lookup again for <IP_ADDRESS> and, of course, no match. And then here's the results of the looking loss. No routes for this IP address, so it's pretty accurate that it's probably spoofed. Of course, the sooner you do this, the more accurate the information is too. So the tune backtrace, there's a couple of tools that are pretty standard tools for doing backtracing. One of them is NSLOOKUP, of course. If you just have an IP address, you want to find out what the reverse DNS name is. Under that, you can query for started authority, MX records, things like that that can give you more information about the domain itself. Here's an example, a simple example. For example, NSLOOKUP, we set the type to pointer, looking at the full address in the name space. And then we look for the SLA for the full address in the name space, and, of course, it doesn't find it. So we dropped off the last octet and looked for the started authority on this class C address. And here it is, located at rr.com. One thing that, in the early stages that I was using this technique, I was actually recursively backing up to even the class B level to do these SLA lookups. And I can assure you that's not a very good idea, because you have tons of different ISPs within the same class B address. So you really don't want to go further than going to a class C level, and even that can be touch and go if you're dealing with an address space that's been very finely distributed across multiple providers. Another one of the standard backtracing tools is, of course, the Whois databases. I do my first lookups at Aaron, because it'll tell you if it's not in their registry in that point here at one of the other mix, if it is. A lot of times the data that you get back, though, from the Whois service is totally bogus or totally out of date. Here you have some of the advanced query syntax. Some of these are kind of fun to play with, doing full lookups and net lookups. You can actually do a net lookup on a class B, and it will give you every network in the database that is within that class B. One of the things I wanted to emphasize from the previous slide is very often people will see the email contact address listed in an Aaron record and start shooting email at that person. It's really not a good idea as typically the contact record knows the person who maintains the IP address allocation space, not a person who deals with security issues. So about the only case where you'd want to use that information is if you see a net block that's extremely small, like a class C or below, then it might be safe to try to contact that person directly. If it's a large ISP, you don't want to be sending email to the Aaron contact information. You just want to take the domain portion of that contact address, and then as we get into later, try to figure out what mailboxes to use and that sort of thing. So we talked about this. Okay, so here's an example. If you work the contact email is at hotmail.com, which is pretty useful. And the phone number is pretty good. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-0. So obviously not much is going to be able to get through to any of these numbers. This record really emphasizes the whole problem with who is in that, yes, you can look up Aaron records and find out netblock information. But very often those netblock records don't tell you anything about the domain that is responsible for that address space, because it's sure in hotmail.com.  But doing that in an automated fashion is almost impossible. It requires almost manually reviewing these records and making those associations between IP address and domain names. Okay, so moving on, we have the intermediate bad trace category, some more advanced tools as you move further in the tracing. Recursive who is, if the record isn't in Aaron, it would point you at RIP or APNIC who in turn would point you to one of the national registers. So by doing recursive lookups you can narrow down who actually owns the space. And you can actually cross-check what you find in the IP-based who is records with domain-based who is queries. There are several places to do that. I like the geek tools proxy a lot. And I just recently stumbled on the youwhois.com. So I'm not so sure about the reliability of it, so the universal who is sounds pretty nice. Yeah, cross-checking is very critical because one of my pet peeves about IP who is information is there's absolutely no ramifications whatsoever when somebody allows that information to go stale and out of date, which is the reason why it's so out of date. I mean, I see records constantly where the last update time was like 1994 or earlier. As with domain who is information, there's real ramifications if you don't put a valid email address in there. You're not going to get notifications about your domain name expiring and you could lose your domain. So very often the domain contact information will actually have much more timely information than what's in the IP who is record. So once you have a domain that you might be pulled out of IP who is, look it up in the domain who is to validate the contact, see if the contact information is as good or possibly more up to date. This is an interesting example from a document. I've been getting a ton of spam encouraging me to buy my .us domain name. And Newstar, the people who administer the .us namespace, this is an interesting quote. On the current administrative practices, the US top of the domain only has no central database that can in turn create a central who is. It doesn't in place for DOEs to provision database information of the central registry. Even if DOEs wish to provide new who is information to the ESTLD administrator, that capability is currently nonexistent. So we're really not doing anything to fix the problem of being able to trace these events back to an actual owner or administrator of an IP. Once you actually have extracted out a domain name that you believe is responsible, your next step in trying to actually make physical contact is to figure out an actual email box to send it to. And we have the abuse.net site, which is sort of a de facto registry of abuse email addresses. And you can just basically punch in any domain and it will try to pop back and tell you what mailbox, whether or not it's an abuse app, mailbox security app, or postmaster app, whatever it is. And I think now he's up to about, I think he's got about 140,000 domains in there. This site is more meant for dealing with spam-related issues, but in large majority of cases the spam mailbox is essentially the same as any kind of security-related mailbox. Okay, moving along, we have some more advanced techniques, which first one is, if the who is query doesn't give you the right domain, you can try searching on Google or putting in parts of the information that you got back from who is. Try adding parts of the actual address, the city, the state. Here's a neat example, something that you don't see all the time. Here's, if you look at the address space for two of these, for each of these records, they're two different records for the exact same space. So it's kind of tough to tell who owns this. I would that quote sounds a little bit more specific. So here's the full record for iWave Corporation. Again, the contact is at Hotmail. Not really helping us out. So, we do a Google search on iWave, adding some address information in there, Vienna, Virginia. And lo and behold, the third link down and shows us www.iWave.com. And of course, surfing to that website, you'll notice in the bottom right-hand corner, we actually have a real email box, not at Hotmail. One of the other advanced tools that you can use is R, who is, or Phil, who is. When I first read through the spec on R, who is, I got extremely excited. I was like, you know, great, here's this much more specific tool of getting down at who owns address space. Because, you know, very often, when you do a straight who is lookup, it's just going to resolve to the service provider and not to the actual end company. And unfortunately, trying to contact a company through a service provider is pretty much a brick wall. You can pretty much be guaranteed that you're not going to have any communication for like weeks at a time. So R, who is, is basically a mechanism for ISPs to create more granular databases. Unfortunately, only a handful of service providers have implemented their own R, who is servers. Here's just a quick example. This is actually from Geek Tools. I know it's a little bit hard to read. But this is just one that, you know, when you do a lookup at it, it will give you back, you know, a record for Exodus and then say, you know, for further information, you can visit the R, who is server at Exodus. So the nice thing about the Geek Tools proxy is it gives you both records to automatically go out and pull down the R, who is record and give it to you. So this is this is the domain record based on what we pulled out of this slide here. This is the domain record. We get hostmaster at PMI, PMimgilling.com which is nice. This illustrates why people should use for their contacts. If Jigler leaves the company you don't want his email again as the contact in your information. A nice generic hostmaster at your company is great to use because whoever takes over as the next hostmaster can receive that email. So there's other databases besides who is there's the routing industry on all records. I list the RFC number there if you're interested. The routing industry is similar to the BGP routes except it's still and a lot older information that sometimes you can find that it's a goal. Here is a successful trace that we actually were able to pull out information with RR. The culprit in this case was clicknetwork. Unfortunately if we thought IP through his records were out of date the route records tend to be more magnitude out of date so it isn't always helpful resource but it's just another possible source to try. Here's what's actually returned by the routing registry hostmaster at clicknetwork.com So then we move into some of the more extreme techniques. You have an IP address that doesn't do any harm to the RFC reports that got offered out to the world and perhaps there's a banner there that you can read that will tell you who administers the machine and the question. I've actually found a surprisingly high percentage of compromised servers are also running mail servers. I'd say it almost seems like almost as high as 25%. Unfortunately although including a mail banner I'd say probably only about 60% of people actually follow that standard so it's not always effective. Here's an example this particular machine had 433 and so looking at the SSL certificate you can see on the subject line that's highlighted at latimes.com here we're getting some clear as to who might be running this machine and you can get this to pop up just by doing a surfing ACTBS surf right to the IP address that's attacking you. Then this SSL certificate pops up and here's an example where we may have gone too far trying to trace something back. You'll notice that the range for this record is actually almost 4 addresses wide 4 IP addresses wide so here's the record that's returned by the RIPE server so we try connecting it to the machine and it's got FTP and we're running the FTP so I want to have it correct the ultra secure real FTP so we didn't find anything there but trying some of the other IP addresses in the range there's a web server on one of the other addresses and there it is click that key click that key to see last t-test of it to me so here's the domain record for portaladventus.com and we do get a webmaster at portaladventus.com as an email address here so there's times when you trace these back and through whatever or whatever reason you still have no answer as to who might run this machine so you can always kind of move out a little bit and take a step back and find out who runs the autonomous autonomous system but my objective is always to try to get the that trace to be as specific as possible so we can make direct contact with whoever is actually responsible for the system and Jason said when that's not possible and you want to at least get a message to someone you can use the autonomous system information in general only a larger or midstream ISP is going to have BGP Autonomous System numbers so you're not going to really be able to get extremely specific in many cases but at least gives you an avenue to go somewhere so here's an AS example this is a BGP and I pick up on an IP address and I've circled the terminating AS record or the terminating AS number 6197 and this is the same command that we used previously where we got the no network found when the network is actually valuable the output will look like this so here's the full record from then on the autonomous system 6197 the contact here this is a great example of useful not useful information I actually consulted for Bell South for a number of years in their early days and when I saw this record I was dumbfounded that the contact person was listed working at Siemens and I was pretty sure there was no logical relationship between Siemens and Bell South or then Bell South occasionally buys a phone switch from Siemens and so I had kind of I had actually just punted on this assumed that it was some kind of error and unbelievably about four months later I was standing on a train platform having come from a meeting and there was a guy standing next to me holding the same envelope that I had so I assumed he had been at the same meeting I had some time to spare so I went up and chatted with him and we started talking and a few minutes into it I found out he works for Siemens and I was like, wait a minute, I need to talk to you so this is like the real example of extreme backtracing I had to hunt a guy down to a train platform and this is another good example of the breakdown in problems with the Aaron records what essentially happened was he did originally work for Bell South and when the AS number was registered he used his contact handle several years later he left the company and went to work for Siemens and he began allocating address space assigning it to his handle main well there's no mechanism to say all these addresses that I used to administer I don't work for that company anymore so remove those references from me so we're sitting here having a person who doesn't even work for the company anymore still being a contact contact person so that's what happened in this case it would have been much nicer if they had a real-based account here where originally like he said he had his email address at Bell South he updated his personal record to show that he was working at Siemens and here we have an implied relationship between Siemens and Bell South which really doesn't exist so here's another extreme technique you can use if net bias is enabled on a machine send them a win-pot message using that send I haven't quite figured a technique to actually make this be successful I've probably sent about a hundred of these and I've never had the person contact me but I have a feeling if the message was crafted in an intriguing way such as this is the Microsoft Security Management Center in Washington please call us immediately with this phone number that might work this is one of my favorite backtraces it's amazing how people are willing to name their machines things that give away a tremendous amount of information here we did an NBT stat to get a iteration of the machine names and the workgroup name is called a Ducci underscore Dorf, I thought it was Doofus at first but as I was Dorf I happened to also do a trace route to that address and could sort of see from the trace route that it looked like given the CHI that was probably in the Chicago area and then just do a Google search for Ducci Dorf in Chicago and bam, law firm of a Ducci Dorf in Blackenship and a bunch of other names so there's an example where just this little tiny piece of information if it's unique enough you know, not like John Smith and you've got a little bit of information you can actually trace that back to a machine name now the sad part of the story is I called up this company just to give him a heads up got the secretary and said I need to talk to your security manager or your MIS manager and she's like who? We don't have one so I was like okay let me talk to your managing partner and I get Mr. Blankenship on the phone and it's really nicely explained to him not trying to sell anything and his response was like okay thanks, have a nice day so here's the we've actually done a little bit of cross-checking of the domain record with what we found and the responsible domain to be ADLMD.com so sometimes no matter what you do there's nothing you can find out about an address so you find out what is the most directly upstream address from the one you're looking to trace and see where that leads sometimes it's only the service provider but you never know it's really important to get as close as possible here's a trace that there's a record that comes back from right showing that this address space is registered to ADLMD.com but the notify contact has a totally different domain that's tacked at ADLMD.net so whenever you see disparate information like that, the people who really want to contact are in a com pool so you do an MS looking for mail exchange records for in a com pool and as you can see there are none no address records available for them either so here's a trace route to the IP trace 22 is the IP but hop 22 is the end of the trace hop 21 is the next IP just above it so we try looking at that for more information and we find that it's registered to TACTA.net which TACTA corresponds with the other address that we found so it looks like this is about as close as we're going to be able to get as TACTA.net so conclusion it's surprising how many corporations have a isolationist view of the internet and they're very concerned about protecting themselves on the inside, very hard firewall crunchy exterior sometimes they actually deploy stuff within their networks but back when Code Red and Nimbus and other worms were hitting you'd see in the red logs direct evidence of all these machines that were compromised and most companies really they don't make their money tracing these back and letting them know they're broken into so they really don't do it and as a result you have a tremendous number already broken into machines just waiting for someone to grab control of them, import them, DDoS somebody unfortunately machines that are port scanning you today could be DDoS in you tomorrow trying to back trace them so you do read your logs I hope there are services that can help you do it Lawrence's site, my net watchman is excellent DShield is very similar if you don't like the idea of sending your logs outside of your network you think that that might be insecure somehow then there are solutions you can deploy internally to swatch log century so that's that's our presentation do we have any questions what's that? the presentation all the slides are on the CD and if you look at the notes view I apologize but the notes view is totally screwed up my PowerPoint skills are only this big so I have on my website Jason.net that's J-A-E-S-O-N .net if you go to that site it will take you into a place where you can actually download the latest and greatest presentation with all the notes fixed on it