We're going to be in 1 Samuel
chapter 8. Now believers have one Lord,
one God, one Savior, one King. We're told that Jesus Christ
is Lord of Lords and King of Kings and we're made to know
why He is the Lord and why He is the King. He said to us, one is your master,
even Christ, and all ye are brethren. Christ is our Lord and our King. When he conquers a people, he
does it through our heart. He conquers us in the heart. He says to us, I have loved thee
with an everlasting love. Therefore with loving kindness
have I drawn thee. And this he does by his grace
and his power. He gives us a new heart by his
grace and power. If he doesn't do this, if he
does not cleanse us and give us a new heart and give us a
new nature, we will not believe him. We cannot be saved. We need
the grace of God to work powerfully in the hearts of his people.
We need him to work powerfully, gloriously in us, in us. But he's not a king like the
kings of this earth. He tells us, and it is so, his
yoke is easy and his burden is light. But that's the one thing
that this flesh cannot do, is bow to him, is submit our necks
under his light and easy yoke. We won't do it. We will not do
it. Instead, this flesh lives in
sin and rebellion against the true and living God. This flesh
strives to be like God. This flesh will not bow to the
true and living God. It doesn't matter how easy God's
burden is. It doesn't matter how light His
yoke is. We're not going to bow before
God apart from His grace and mercy. Not in this flesh we won't.
And hereafter all men will bow. All men will confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord. But this salvation of sinners
like us. It's a new and living way. A new and living way. There's
a new birth by the Spirit of God, by the grace of God, by
the gift of God that takes us from what we are and transforms
us by His Spirit, by the blood of Christ, by being born again
by the seed Christ. That's when we bow to Christ.
That's when we confess that He is our Lord and our Savior. That's when we come to Him who
is our salvation. Not coming to God plus Jesus
with our own works. That's when we come to Christ
who is all our salvation. And so long as we're in this
flesh, we're gonna see just how triumphant, how glorious, how
great a salvation our God has given unto us, because we're
gonna see the remnants of this, the sin in this flesh. We're
gonna see just how weak, how corruptible we are. And we'll
see our need of God's grace and mercy for us. And then we'll
confess. We'll confess Him that loved
me and gave Himself for me. Then we'll bow. Then we'll walk
before Him. We'll walk as servants of our
King and our Lord. Now this chapter reveals the
wickedness and the folly of this flesh. These Jews, one of the
blessings that God had given them is that he put a difference
in them from all the other nations. God made a difference in them
that he did not do for the other nations. And he said in Exodus
11 7 that ye may know how that the Lord doth put a difference
Between the Egyptians and Israel he made them to know that and
yet we see in this chapter The one thing that Israel wanted
above all else was to be just like all the other nations They
wanted to be just like others. They wanted to have their fun
and have their Be partakers of all that they had and we feel
that we know that in this flesh We have that sin nature that
we are quite familiar with We know that's what we've been delivered
from and saved from. And so they said, now make us
a king to judge us like all the nations. We want to be just like
them. And in doing so, they rejected
God as God and God as their king. They wanted to be gods themselves. They wanted to be their own kings. They rejected the true and living
God. And we see that same spirit of sin and rebellion in this
flesh. This is what our Lord has triumphed
over. We're not partners with God in
our salvation. We don't need just a little help
from the Lord. We need a complete salvation,
a complete Savior. We need all, all His blessings
in Christ, because we are undone, vile, wretched sinners who cannot
save ourselves. We are saved by the grace and
compassion of the Lord. He said, I am the Lord, I change
not, therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. It's by his
grace. It's by his mercy in Christ.
And so that's what he's making us to see. This is what he makes
his children to know. I need Christ. He makes us to
beg him for grace and mercy because we come to him as needy sinners.
We come to him because we cannot save ourselves. We see the sin
in us. We see the rebellion in us. We
need his grace. We need his compassion. So this
chapter, 1 Samuel 8, it asks the question, who is God? Who
is God? Who is your God and your King?
Is God your God and King, or are you your God? Because man
shows every day the casting off of Christ the Lord. They reject Christ all the time,
and we say foolish things and do foolish things that betray
our hope and love of the Lord. We need to hear this message,
not just the world. We need to hear this word of
grace that we would see and hunger and thirst for the righteousness
of Christ to keep us, to keep us. And, you know, it's not oftentimes
We retreat to, well, I know the doctrine of grace. I have a good
knowledge and understanding of salvation. So surely I'm a child
of God. I believe these things. But that's
not the question. Because when push comes to shove,
we see what men really think about the Lord when they don't
believe Him. And push Him aside and cast Him
aside and take things into their own hands to fix things and to
do what they think should be done. And that's what we do. by nature. Our Lord said, if
ye love me, keep my commandments. And he's not talking about the
Ten Commandments. He explained this as a new commandment
I give you, saying that ye love one another as I have loved you.
He explains this that our love will be for our God and Father
and our Savior. He gives us a new heart that
loves Him and desires Him. And we're not, we're gonna see
our sin, we see our imperfection, but we continue to see our need
of Him, of His grace and mercy and His sufficiency, His accomplished
salvation in Christ. And so, our Lord is teaching
us who our God and King is, and we're gonna see it even against
the backdrop of our own weakness. Now 1st Samuel 8 it came to pass
when Samuel was old that he made his sons judges over Israel. And as I was looking at this
I was thinking we're getting old. We're getting old, brethren,
and our bodies decline the older we get. And we see our infirmities
and our frailties and just how corrupted these bodies are. Therefore,
it's a good question. Who is your King? Who is your King? Are you the
King of your life? Are you the God and Savior of
your life? Or is Jesus Christ our King, our God and our Savior? You know, when we examine ourselves, it brings the child of God to
breathe in prayer, Lord, help me. Make me thy humble servant. Keep me, Lord. He shows us because
we see. We see what this flesh is and
we see what our Lord has saved us from by Christ and is saving
us from and shall save us from all by the blood and grace of
Christ. And so Samuel at this time is thought to be about 60
years old and that's really not very old but He had a need, and
he made his sons judges over Israel because of his age. We
know that as a judge, he would travel a pretty large circuit
through Israel to judge the people, to give them judgment where needed. And so obviously, that was wearing
on him. It was difficult for him for
whatever reason. And so he needed the help of
his sons to judge Israel. And again. We see that we're
dying, brethren. We're dying. We're going to cease
in these bodies one day and stand before the true and living God.
Who is my King? Who is my God? Lord, teach me
to number my days and show me my need of You, Lord. Keep my
heart. Keep my heart. What Samuel did
in making his sons judges over Israel I'm sure seemed appropriate
to him at that time. But this ended up being something
that was seen as a weakness in Samuel by the people. They saw
this as something that was not good in the eyes of the people,
because one, it meant that he was getting old. And his sons
proved to be not much better than Eli's sons. They weren't
much better than Eli's wicked sons. And they were more like
them than they were like like Samuel. And we're told in verse
3, his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after
lucre, which means they were gaining, they were increasing
in wealth unjustly. It's unjust gain. They weren't
doing things because they were industrious or good or right. This was unjust gain. And they
took bribes and perverted judgment. They were selling favorable judgments
to the highest bidder. And that's a horrible place to
be. for people who aren't in that
same position of power or influence and have wealth to steer things
that favor them. But that's what was happening.
And that brought the people to feel helpless, helpless. And so the people recognized
the sin in these boys, and they understood why Samuel had done
it. And it shook them. It shook them. It made them afraid. And you
can imagine how concerned any one of them would have been who
had a memory of what they saw happen to Eli's house. and what
the Lord did to Eli's house because of their sons. We're told back
in chapter two, verse 17, that the sin of the young men, these
are Eli's sons, was very great before the Lord. Why? Because
men abhorred the offering of the Lord. They hated it. They
hated going there because of what these sons of Eli would
do. And so the Lord slew them and
he destroyed the house of Eli. But we know that he had prospered
them under Samuel. He had done much good for them
by Samuel, by the word of Samuel. And he was gracious to the people,
and he delivered the people from their enemies. But Samuel was
getting old, and his sons proved to be corrupt. And maybe not
to the degree that Eli's sons were corrupt, but the people
there said, we're not going to have this again. We're not going
to do this. We saw what happened before,
and it was awful. We almost were completely destroyed. The Ichabod, the glory of the
Lord departed from us when they were here. We're not going to
have that again. And so what did they do? They
decided they were going to fix it. They were going to fix it.
They were going to put their hand to the work, and they schemed
up a way to fix things, to bring in a radical change and a radical
difference. But to do it, they were turning
to the way of the world. They themselves were turning
from the Lord to fix the problem. And you know, when I was going
over this, I was reminded of what the Spirit tells us over
in Galatians chapter five, verse 19. Paul wrote, now the works
of the flesh are manifest. This is the work of the flesh,
which are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
right? And we see this, we see this
in society today, when there's trouble at home, when there's
a breakdown in communication, people turn to the flesh. And
spouses turn to other people instead of their own spouses.
And young people turn to fornication, and people turn to all kinds
of things that are not profitable. They're works of the flesh. And
then it speaks of idolatry and witchcraft. People turn to seeking
hidden knowledge. They want to know what's going
on and figure everything out. Hatred, variance, emulations,
wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, they get to hating people. And this is your fault. And because
of you, this is now happening to me. And then they start hating
them. And they get into all kinds of problems. And they make problems. And they go out against others
in wicked ways. And beings, murders. Oftentimes
people hate people so much that they'll take their life, even
for things that seem silly. It seems silly. It's the flesh. Drunkenness, right? People turn
to alcohol and to drugs. This is what the flesh turns
to. And this is how the flesh deals
with problems. This is how the flesh fixes things. These are fleshly fixes. Revelings, where they start mocking
and jeering and just trying to humiliate others. And such like
of the witch I tell you before, as I have also told you in time
past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the
kingdom of God. And the Spirit tells us these
things not because this is how we save ourselves. This is not
how we make ourselves righteous by avoiding these things and
doing other things. The Lord tells us this because
we are the Lord's people. We're the Lord's people. We're
not in that body of Adam. That body of sin is destroyed
and we don't have that inheritance. We don't have that fear of eternal
death. We're in the covenant of grace
in Christ. In Christ. And so, we stand in
His inheritance. We are led by His Spirit. Therefore,
why be partakers of those things? That's the works of the flesh.
That's what the world does. And the law has nothing to say
against us. So don't do those things. We have no part in those
things. That's the flesh. And he goes
on saying that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Against
such there is no law. And they that are Christ's have
crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live
in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. And so there's
going to be things that come up, there's weaknesses and there's
sins in this flesh, how are you going to deal with it? Are you
going to deal with it doing what the flesh does to fix things,
or are you going to turn to the Lord? And the Lord turns His
people to Himself. And I'm sure that Samuel trained
these boys up in the way of the Lord. I am certain that he was
very careful to teach these boys the right way, he saw what happened
to Eli's sons. He saw what they did. And so
he was very careful to tell them the truth and to warn them and
to give them good instruction. And then he sent him down to
Beersheba, which is at the south side of Israel, down at the bottom
there, pretty far away from where he was. And that's when the corruption
of this flesh manifested. They turned away from the Lord. They turned away from what they
had been taught by their Father. They walked not in the ways of
the Lord. And that's what is going to manifest
in this flesh. And it shows us the need of grace. It shows us that just because
we're believers or just because our parents are believers, it
does not mean that grace is automatically transferred over to us. We all need the grace of God.
We all need to be turned from this flesh and turned to the
Lord. And providentially, we're going
to see sin and weakness in others. You're going to see it in others.
You're going to see it in me. You'll see sin and weakness in
me. You may even see it in yourself. Because that is always the hardest
to really see, to see it clearly. I mean, we know we're sinners.
We know we have an understanding of our faults, but usually that's
the hardest to see is our own sins and our own failures. and
our own faults and shortcomings and wickedness in this flesh. And so Israel saw the fault in
Samuel's sons, they saw a fault in Samuel, they pointed it out
to him, but when they turned to their flesh to fix it, that's
when they did not see their own stumbling. They didn't see their
own sin and how they were going about dealing with things. They
were turning to the flesh, and it was a great fault, because
their sin was a rejection of their God and King, of their
true God and King. They now were taking matters
into their own hands. They were now making themselves
a king, after the flesh, just like the other nations. And that's when we get in trouble. When we turn to this flesh, that's
when we forsake our own mercy. That's when we forsake the grace
of God or the mercy of God. We turn from the Lord. And Jonah,
by the Spirit, discovered this. Jonah says in Jonah 2, verse
8, they that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. And Jonah could say that. because
Jonah was taught that. And Jonah had tried. Believing a lie, he told himself,
I can get out of this. I don't want to go to Nineveh.
I don't want to go preach to the Ninevites. I don't want any
part of that. And so he thought he could deliver
himself from the hand of the Lord by fleeing Israel and going
the opposite direction of Nineveh. And then he tucked himself down
in the bottom of a ship. and didn't think God could reach
him there. But God can reach us anywhere we are. There's not
a place that we can be that the Lord is not there and able to
touch us so that we know this is of the Lord. And so from the
solitary, dark belly of the great fish, Jonah was taught, they
that trust in lying vanities forsake their own mercies. When you turn to the flesh, you're
departing from the Lord. And you're forsaking your own
mercy. And it's only by the grace of
God that we are brought to see what a fool I am. How could I
be so ignorant? Knowing the truth and knowing
what I know, how could I be so foolish to think that I can do
better than the Lord? And that I can escape Him and
show Him or do anything in the flesh. And the Lord, He humbles
us. This is why Jeremiah said, it's
of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed because His
compassions fail not. Because it's not like we don't
ever turn to the flesh. We do. We do. We do our own thing. But it's by the compassion and
grace of God that we are turned back to the Lord. And again,
we can see the faults in others, and we can point out what they've
done, but it's very hard to be honest and accurate with our
own selves. And it's by the grace of God
that we're not knocked off and sent into darkness and forgotten,
left there. It's by the grace of God. And
so until we are recovered by the grace of God, we're just
fixing things by the works of the flesh. We're just fixers. And that's how these men came
to Samuel was in the flesh. Look down at verses four and
five. Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together
and came to Samuel unto Ramah and said unto him, behold, thou
art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways. Now make us a king
to judge us like all the nations. And we can look at that and recognize
these men should have come to Samuel in a very different spirit,
but they're looking to fix things in the flesh. They already have
the solution. They already have the plan. They
already know what they want to do, and that's what they're going
to do. That's it. And I believe their
words hurt Samuel. I'm sure Samuel was hurt. I'm
sure he was caught off guard by this. He was surprised by
this. This is the first that he's hearing of these things. And he's hearing them say, you're
old, Samuel. Samuel, your sons that you gave
birth to, that you raised, that you trained, that you made to
be judges in Israel, they're rotten. You're failing, Samuel. You haven't done what you should
do. You're a failure. Now, make us a king to judge
us like all the nations. We want the good things that
we see that everybody else has. We want what they have. We're
not getting it from you, so we want a king. We want a king. And I'm sure that stung Samuel. I'm sure he was stung because
they were rejecting him. And I'm sure he began to examine
himself and look at all his actions and words and everything he said
and did And was crushed by it. Was absolutely crushed by it. And no doubt he found fault in
himself too. Because as soon as the accuser
comes, he doesn't have to make things up about us. He doesn't
have to tell lies about me. He just has to be honest. He
can just say what it is and, yeah, I did that. Yep, I thought
that. Yep, I said that. And it's true. And it's only by the grace of
God That he silences the accuser, and silences his voice in our
guilty conscience. And washes us clean in the blood
of Christ, and comforts us in Christ. Because, yeah, if we're
examining things, I'm undone, I'm a sinner. And we're all sinners,
and we need the grace of God. And so that's what we need now. What it turned out, though, is
that it really wasn't because of Samuel. That was their convenient
excuse. And we can always do that. When
you want to go into a situation and you've got an end in mind,
you can make it go that way just by the things you say and do
and what you hear or don't hear and what you say or don't say. So we can always find a reason
to justify our filthy works, always. Is God your King? Do you trust the Lord? Do you
trust the Lord? So that when we come together,
we come together as brethren. And we come trusting the Lord,
not looking for fault, not looking for a reason, but trusting that
God has brought us together. And God is our God and He's our
King and He's going to do what's right. He's going to do what's
right. And with the Lord as our King,
there's peace and rest and comfort and joy. And so either He's the
King or we're the Kings. And we gotta fix it with our
own flesh. And that's when everything gets
messed up. That's when everything gets blown
up. Now, if the issue was that, what they said it was, they could
have worked through it. If there was just some issues,
they could have worked through it if they wanted to, and probably
had a good thing. I mean, they could have asked,
Samuel, like you did when we were delivered from the Philistines,
can you pray to the Lord and keep praying? to raise up a judge
and to bless us and to give us what we're looking for, what
we want here. They could have turned to the
Lord, but they didn't. They rejected the lordship of
Christ. They rejected God as king. And this is why the scriptures
say, the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. We don't want what the people
in this world have. We don't want to be ruled by
the king of this world, the prince of the power of the air. The
scripture saith unto Pharaoh, he's a king of a great nation
at one time. And the Lord said, even for the
same purpose have I raised thee up that I might show my power
in thee and that my name might be declared throughout all the
earth. And so God's able to make an
example out of every one of us for something we've done. Lord,
please don't. Please have mercy. Please forgive
for Christ's sake and have mercy on us, Lord. That's where our
heart ought to be because any one of us could be stripped down
and our faces put in the dirt. And none of us can glory and
exalt ourselves over another because we're all sinners. We're
all sinners. Therefore hath he mercy on whom
he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth." Lord,
please don't harden our hearts. Please don't harden our hearts.
Now, verse six says, the thing displeased Samuel when they said,
give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the Lord. That's wisdom. That's what we
are to do. Turn to the Lord and lay it before
him. Because we do have faults, and
we do go through trials, and we are stripped and humbled and
brought low for all manner of reasons, for many reasons. And when it drives us to the
Lord, that's a good thing. That's a blessed thing, when
we are driven and turn to the Lord. Turn over to 2 Corinthians
4. 2 Corinthians 4, and this is Paul
writing to the church at Corinth, and they said things and did
things that really believe hurt Paul and and really
really stung Paul who loved them and cared for them and he wrote
in verse 7 he said we have this treasure in earthen vessels which
means they're weak they're fragile they break they have cracks and
holes and problems they're not perfect that the excellency of
the power may be of God and not of us We are troubled on every
side, yet not distressed. We are perplexed, but not in
despair. Persecuted, but not forsaken. Cast down, but not destroyed. Always bearing about in the body
the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might
be made manifest in our body. For we which live are always
delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus
might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh
in us, but life in you. And what the Lord is teaching
us is that any humbling, any stripping, anything that brings
us low, any thorn in the flesh is profitable to the body of
Christ. And I believe that's what Paul
is talking about when he said Christ is manifest in our body. He's manifest in the church,
in his people, that he's gathered and assembled in the church. So that through the trials and
the sufferings that we endure, it's good for us. It's good for
the body because Christ is manifested. Because the heart of the people
is turned to Christ and they want the Lord to be king. They
desire Christ to be king. We desire that Christ's presence
be here among us and that Christ teach us and give us his spirit
and fill our hearts with that love that we're to have for our
brethren. That's what we desire by the
grace of God. And so Samuel turned to the Lord
and he prayed and that's good that's good for when I am weak
then am I strong not in the flesh in Christ that's when we're strong
in Christ and so we pray Lord don't leave me to my flesh let
me not be turned to my flesh to fix it because that's when
I make a mess of things and what Israel did is it took years to
work through because Saul was appointed their king. Hosea says,
the Lord speaking there, said, I gave you a king in my wrath.
I gave you a king in my wrath. And it took time for that to
work through, at least 10 years or so, before Saul, who they
wanted for their battles, was killed. And the Lord raised up
David for them and gave them a king, which he told them he
would do in Deuteronomy, that there would come a time when
he would give them a king. But they didn't want to wait
for that. They wanted to do it their way, in their time. They
wanted what they wanted. Now, verse 7 says, And the Lord
said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people, and
all that they say unto thee. For they have not rejected thee,
but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. And so this is where we begin
to see the very heart of man. Because this is what man did
with Christ. And our Lord even brought this
up in the parable of the nobleman when the citizens of him hated
him. This is speaking of Christ. And
they hated him. And sent a message after him
saying, we will not have this man reign over us. that is the heart of the natural
man and we must be saved from the enmity and hatred that this
natural old man of flesh has for Christ and and our Lord tells
us that there's such a hatred in this flesh for the true and
living God he said ye will not come to me that you might have
life and John 540 you won't do it You won't hear them, you won't
believe them, except by the grace of God. Except by the grace of
God. Stephen said to the Jews before
they stoned him, he said, ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised
in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost, as your
fathers did, so do ye. That's me by nature. That's me. That's me and that's every one
of God's children, except were delivered by the grace of God. And we see he's our king, he's
our sovereign, he's the one, the reason why I'm here worshiping
the Lord, I wanna hear the Lord, is because of his grace and mercy.
And so in verse nine, now therefore hearken unto their voice, how
be it yet protest solemnly unto them and show them the manner
of the king that shall reign over them. And so he did, right? He went and showed how their
king's going to take everything, the best of the best of the best.
He's going to take their inheritance, because they're the ones that
are going to have to pay for it, and they're going to be spoiled of
those things. And that sounds a lot like the
prince of the power of the air, who spoils the people of God,
who takes and takes and takes, and promises us liberty, but
binds us in the fear of death and under cruel bondage. That
is what the natural man is drawn to. Now, when our Lord In closing,
when our Lord was being crucified, what was the title of His crime?
What did Pilate put over Him on the cross there? Jesus of
Nazareth, the King of the Jews. And the Jews did what? They rejected
their King. Christ was crucified because
He is the King of the Jews. And we now understand by His
grace that He had to die. This was how our Lord redeemed
us, was through his rejection and being hated and crucified
by the people. This is how our Lord wrought
salvation for all those given to him by the Lord. And we see
it. We're told in John 19, 15, they
cried out, away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate
saith unto them, shall I crucify your king? You want me to take
your king and crucify him?" And the chief priests answered, we
have no king but Caesar. Our king is like the kings of
the world." And now we see what's happening
here in 1st Samuel 8 is a picture showing us the heart of the natural
man. and how he rejects God except
by the grace of God. Are we drawn to him? We see just
how shockingly horrible this sin is that these Jews had when
they claimed to be rejecting Samuel, but in reality were rejecting
God. They were rejecting God. And
they said whatever they had to say because they were dead set
on overthrowing God as their king. And that's how we are by
nature. We'll say and do horrible things
in the name of being right and thinking that it's for the good,
the greater good. And all it is is just a picture
of the wrath, the hatred, and the enmity that this flesh has
for Christ. And if not for the grace of God,
we would never be turned. We wouldn't believe him. And
so we need this grace, brethren, to save us from sin and corruption.
And it's a reminder to us how we ever need that grace and mercy
and compassion of the Lord, lest we think more highly of ourselves
than we ought and get to fixing things in the flesh the way the
flesh likes to do it and handle it. And so pray that the Lord
give us heart of his child who loves him and cries out to him
and follows him always we see a picture for us in the dying
thief on the tree next to our Lord on the cross next to the
Lord right by the grace of God he had been mocking Christ and
by the grace of God he was made to see that Christ is the Savior
that he is the King he said Lord remember me when thou comest
into thy kingdom, thy kingdom, because he was that man's king
before he died. The Lord graciously saved him.
And so the Jews wouldn't hear, and we will not hear, except
by the grace of God. And I pray that the Lord continue
to help us, humble us if need be, that we would be always serving
Him and that our hearts would bow before Him and confess Jesus
Christ as Lord because if not for His grace, this is what we
would do ourselves. And it's only by His grace that
we're turned and forgiven and kept and restored by that grace
and mercy for Christ's sake. So I pray the Lord comfort you
with that. I know it's It's looking at their
sin and we see ourselves in it. But it's to cause us, to turn
us like Samuel, to cry out to the Lord for grace and mercy.
Always. Always.