Well, good morning again. Man, I don't know if I should have been singing there now. I feel like I lost my voice a little bit. Well, just bear with me. Today we're going to be looking at what is a often ignored, a kind of controversial book of the Bible. You'll see why in a second, Song of Solomon. might be called the Song of Songs in your Bible. But before I begin with that, I have to do what I promised. So sometimes, either before or after the service, my, I'll just say my nephew because that's what I call him all the time. will either draw a picture or write a note for me and just give me a lot of encouragement and stuff. And so one time he did a few months ago, and he said, this is for you to read the next time you stand and talk to everybody. But I do that every week, at least when I'm giving announcements. So I said, well, the next time I preach, I will give this message to everyone." This is what he wanted the whole church to know. And I think it's a very important message. And for someone to be six years old and understand this is just great. So, if you see the little note here, you need water, food, God, love, and Jesus. The love Nathan part was for me. But the rest of the note was for everyone here. for a six year old to be able to say you just need the basics of life to get by as long as you have Christ. He may not fully understood the complexities of what he said, but that simple message is what we should live by daily. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Our gracious God, we just want to thank you that we have a time where we can open up your word and see what you have for us, see what you have spoken to us. I just pray, God, that you would use me to communicate your word and that you will prepare all of our hearts and minds to receive it and to live it out. And I pray this in Christ's name. Amen. So we're going to be looking today at the Song of Solomon. We're going to be looking at Chapter 2. There are a few things that I want to say about this book first. Well first it comes right after Ecclesiastes and those of you who were here last week when Pastor Dave finished preaching through Ecclesiastes I think he did 27 sermons, is that right? 27 sermons throughout the book and those of you who know were here last week we ended with an overview explanation and then Pastor Dave actually reading through the entire book and And so, you know, I mentioned too, I think it was great that I probably would just read through the Song of Solomon and we'll consider it couples counseling. But I'm not going to do that, but it does come, it's in the same family, the same genre of books. It's poetry, it's wisdom literature. There's a few ideas on who wrote the book and what the book is about. Some people would say it's a compilation of songs These poems or love songs that many people wrote and some wise person Could have even been Solomon took them and compiled them together and said these all sound similar They follow a similar theme, so I'm just going to put them together in one collection there are people who think that This is a book depicting the love between God and Israel There are others, and this is a very common view, who believe that this is showing the love between Christ and his church. And there are still others, and I hold to this last view, that this is a book that shows the love between Solomon and his bride, because that's what it says. It is considered the song of Solomon, or the song of songs. And once you are able to read through it, you'll see that it's one message. It shows this love between Solomon and this unnamed woman that we know. She's known mainly as the Shulamite. We get to see their courtship, their what we would call dating phase. We get to see their actual wedding and their wedding night. And many of you who have heard some of the compliments given from the Song of Solomon. Many of them come from either the wedding ceremony or the wedding night when they see each other. And it shows their actual marriage and walking in their marriage. It would seem that this is a based on the language of the book, that this was his first marriage. So if you remember, he ended up with 700 wives and, I believe, 300 concubines. So this seems like this was his first. And when you look through the language of the book, not recommending that to him. I see a couple people nodding their heads and stuff that you don't want 700 wives. You don't see people, oh, wow, Solomon. Nope, nope, we're not doing that here. One of the other things that makes it a little bit difficult when you're reading through the book is figuring out who the speaker is. Because there are multiple speakers. Sometimes it's Solomon. Sometimes it's a Shulamite woman. Sometimes it's the daughters of Jerusalem. And sometimes you'll even find that it's relatives of the Shulamite woman. There's one popular verse where her brothers are talking about how to handle their sister as she comes into maturity. And they say, if she has been pure, this is what we'll do. And if she has not been pure, this is how we'll have to handle her and treat her. And so you have many different speakers. And even in our passage, if you turn to chapter 2 in the Song of Solomon, you'll see that there may be some ambiguity even in the text that we're going to look at today. So the first nine verses, verses one through nine, the Shulamite woman is speaking. And if you look in particular at verse one, she says, I am the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valleys. Now those two descriptions may sound a little common because many times they're spoken of of Jesus. And that comes from the idea that this book represents Christ and his bride. And so, you know, I grew up not a Christian, but I heard that Jesus is the lily and the valley, and he's the rose of Sharon. But she's actually, this is a Shulamite woman speaking here. Those sentiments may still apply to Christ, but here she's talking about herself. And she goes through verse 9 speaking. Then in verse 10, she's still speaking, but she's quoting Solomon. And so from verses 10 to 13, we actually get to see the words of Solomon spoken through the woman quoting. And he's basically saying to her there, winter has passed and now the spring is coming. You know, the weather is changing, we look and all the flowers are blooming, all of the beauty of nature is coming out. Come out to me, let's go for a walk. And then in verse 14, Solomon speaking directly and He's he's asking her to come out. He asked to see her form. He asked to hear her voice He said her voice is sweet and her form is lovely and then we get to the verse that we are Going to kind of focus on verse 15 And it's a little bit unsure who's speaking. Although it looks like there's I think more evidence that says that it's a woman speaking here and But it says, verse 15, catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that are ruining the vineyards while our vineyards are in blossom. And then the woman is speaking in verses 16 and 17. And so you can see just there, there's this switching back and forth that happens pretty abruptly. And also, because of the mutual declarations of love and even physical intimacy on both parts, It's hard to know just because someone is talking about a physical attraction, it doesn't mean it's the man looking at the woman. Sometimes it's the woman looking at Solomon. And so just by saying, oh, it's a physical attraction, must be the man, because men are all about the visual. And it doesn't apply here, because they both express their physical love, their physical attraction to each other throughout the book. And so it is a beautiful picture, and I kind of joked earlier about it being couples therapy, but it is a beautiful picture of how this love is displayed between a man and a woman through them meeting, through them becoming husband and wife, and through them living out a married life. And we can get much instruction from this here. I will say, I'm not going to say how I know this, but if you tell your wife, quoting from chapter 4 verse 2, your teeth are like a flock of newly shorn ewes, which have come up from their washing, all of which bear twins, and not one among them has lost her young. It really doesn't do much. You're talking to a woman in 2021 and you tell her that, it doesn't really help that much. Although I heard if you do quote chapter 4 verse 1, your hair is like a flock of goats that have descended from Mount Gilead, then you may get somewhere. You may impress her with that. I won't say who told us that because they may get embarrassed, but they are in this church. But we get to see a beautiful picture of love between a man and a woman. And we even get to see how they handle disagreement, if you look later on in the chapter after they're married. So it's definitely a beautiful picture of what God has ordained, marriage. So I do believe that it could be the woman speaking She spoke in chapter one, and if you just look there, chapter one, verse six, she's talking about her own vineyard. She says, do not stare at me because I'm swarthy. I like that word. It just means dark or black. For the sun has burnt me. My mother's sons were angry with me. They made me caretaker of the vineyards, but I have not taken care of my own vineyard. And so Her speaking there about not being able to take care of her own vineyard. She had to take care of the family vineyard. It could show that Solomon heard her say this and felt that she needed extra prod, extra push to take care of the vineyards because she failed to take care of her own. So verse 15 in our text, chapter 2, verse 15, it could be Solomon saying, catch the little foxes. You know what happened the last time with your own vineyards. So make sure you do this. It's important. Or it could be the woman being so aware of the dangers of not caring for a vineyard that she yells out to Solomon, take care of the little foxes. Catch the little foxes. Do it now. It's important. I know what happened when I was younger, and I was forced to take care of the family vineyard so much I couldn't take care of mine. And also, this seems to be a line in a popular song of vineyard dressers, that they would sing this song to warn about the real dangers of not properly caring for a vineyard. But also, they use this line figuratively to talk about the dangers of not taking care of things early in life. And I think, as we see here, and we think about foxes, other places in the Bible talk about foxes and mention foxes here. But they're seen as being sly, and slick, and deceptive, and destructive. And one of the things about foxes, in fact, this word actually in Hebrew, it refers, it's translated foxes, it refers to animals that burrow. And sometimes in the Bible it's translated jackals, more often it's translated foxes. But sometimes it's used of jackals as well, animals that burrow into the ground. And so by their burrowing and by them nibbling on the vines and actually eating the young grapes before they fully matured, they can streak havoc on a vineyard. And that's what happened. We see that in Ezekiel 13, 4, and you don't have to turn there. Ezekiel 13, 4, in that chapter, God is speaking through Ezekiel about the prophets, the false prophets in Israel at the time. And he says in Ezekiel 13, 4, oh Israel, your prophets have been like foxes among ruins. The prophets who were supposed to care for and educate in the word of God and speak on behalf of God to the people who are instead taking advantage of them, like scavengers coming after a dead animal. In Luke 13, 32, Jesus is talking and he says about Herod, it says Luke 13, 32. And he said to them, go tell that fox, behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow. And the third day I reached my goal. And so Jesus calls Herod a fox. And even just thinking about the destruction of foxes, if you remember when Solomon lost his Philistine wife, The way that he got back at them was he caught 300 foxes. I don't know how one man caught 300 foxes. I probably said Solomon, Samson. Samson, when he was trying to get back to the Philistines, he caught 300 foxes. He tied two of them together by their tail and he stuck a torch in between them and then set them loose and they went and they burned the whole city. And so foxes are always depicted in the Bible as not just destructive, but they're sly and they're sneaky. Foxes travel around at night and it's hard to find them. I remember, I think it was last year, you know, pretty much everybody was inside over the summer. And all of the wildlife, you know, I live in the boonies, so all of the wildlife that came out would come day and night. And there were all these fox sightings in our neighborhood. And it was very difficult to find them. And sometimes I would walk around the neighborhood at night. And I saw one, one time, and took my phone out, took a picture of it, and it was blurry. It just moved so fast and it was hard to catch. It was hard to even see. The only way I was able to see it was because its eyes lit up from the streetlights shining on them. So foxes are seen as sneaky. They're seen as things that oftentimes go undetected. They're small. They're actually kind of cute. I mean, they're canines. They look like dogs. They're probably cuter than some of the dogs you guys have at home. Foxes are little cute animals, but they're very destructive. And that's the point here. And that's why it's brought out in this way. And I think we can clearly see the spiritual application here of the danger that these foxes cause. And there are many things, I think, in the Christian life that are small, that seem harmless, may even be cute. But they cause destruction. And there are two main reasons for the destruction. The first is volume. A lot of a little thing can still hurt. And you can talk to anybody who's had, you know, insect bites, anyone who goes out and they get, you know, some people, mosquitoes seem to be attracted to them. And the mosquito bite is a small thing. You don't even feel it when it's happening. But go out and have a hundred mosquitoes land on you and bite you at different times, you feel it. And you certainly feel it after. And so sometimes just the amount of attacks or the amount of attackers can be so much that it overwhelms and causes destruction in that way. And another thing that can happen, a second reason for the destruction is growth. Things that are little don't always stay little. And when they're little, we have an easier time in handling them. But when they grow, sometimes they're just overwhelming. The attacks can grow in number, but they can grow in intensity and strength. And so we have to catch the foxes while we can. We have to catch them while they're still little. And when we think about our lives, and we think about sin, and we think about how sin comes in, many times sin sneaks in. Many times we don't even detect it. Or we don't even really want to address it. But what does the text tell us here? In using this illustration of people caring for a vineyard, what do we define about dealing with our sin and caring for our own vineyards? What's the first thing we should do? Well, we should recognize that they're dangerous no matter how little they are. And look at the way the text describes it. It says, catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that are ruining the vineyards. Saying it the first time would have been enough, the foxes. Doesn't matter the size, get rid of the foxes. But the emphasis here is placed on them being little and destructive. And many times we want to give a particular mindset or habit or behavior a pass because it seems so small relative to what we would classify as the larger sins. And it's so small, it's not a big deal. As a matter of fact, it might even be cute. It might even be profitable. Who knows? A lustful look can happen. But it's not adultery. It's no big deal. I just looked. I just glanced. And it's their fault for feeling uncomfortable with the way that I looked at them, or the way that I brushed their shoulder, or the words that I said being overly complimentary. It's their fault. It's not a big deal. Get over it. Stop being so sensitive. You should take it as a compliment anyway. I mean, all these things are the things that are said. But then, of course, Jesus in Matthew chapter 5 tells us that if you look at someone and you look with lust, you've already committed adultery. If you look with the purpose of lusting, you've committed adultery in your heart. And so the small things that seem small to us, we realize that one, we're using the wrong standards. That when we're talking about sin, don't misunderstand what I'm going to say, but there's no such thing as small. It's either an affront to God or it's not. It's either an offense to God or it's not. It's either something that Jesus Christ died on a cross for or it's not. It's sin. No matter how small it is, no matter how socially acceptable it is, it's sin. And we must deal with it like that. A social media insult versus murder. I didn't do anything serious. I wasn't even in their face. I'm just on a keyboard. I'm just making a random post on Facebook, a random tweet that I liked or retweeted, and they're getting bent out of shape. And we don't see the sin. We want to give it a pass. I didn't hurt them. I didn't punch them. I didn't murder them. Oftentimes, though, we won't even detect the sin because we're so busy looking for the larger ones. And we determine the larger ones by usually two things that will take causes to deal with a sin and say, this is large. First, it will have to be problematic to many people, and particularly many people that we respect. If it's one or two people, we'll just say, ah, they're soft. They're a snowflake. They don't know how to handle how tough I'm being right now. This is not a big deal. It's not offensive. I was able to say this and do this 20 years ago. What's the big deal? Stop being so politically correct. And we go on and on and on. You're just being too sensitive. And so it doesn't become problematic to us unless a lot of people are offended or We respect the people who are offended. Because even if a lot of people are offended, let's be real, we'll just put them in the category. They're all liberal. They're just all a bunch of weird snowflakes. They're just all conservative Trump supporters. Whatever. They don't know. We just blow them off. I can insult them. I can say what I want about them. I can take a, oh, a preacher said that? What? They're just woke. They're just ultra-conservative, right-wing. They're just, and this is what we do, they're just. He's just, she's just. And now we remove the fact that they were created in the image of God from the equation. And we say, I can be offensive. I can be what the Bible says I shouldn't be because I don't have much respect for that person. But then when someone we respect or someone who's in our camp takes offense, then we may say, oh, wait, maybe I am doing something. Maybe I do have to look at this. OK, maybe I should talk about this. That's one way that we try to deal with sin. Another way that sin will actually jump up and we say we should deal with it is if we're embarrassed by it. If we're outed and we don't like it. Many times I get to see parents who are OK with a certain behavior in private. But when a child does it in public, in front of others, and they're embarrassed, then they want to react. Then they want to get angry. And the child is confused. I do this all the time at home. I say this. I talk with this tone in my voice all the time. And you're fine with it. Now, all of a sudden, because other people are around, it's bad, it's terrible, and whatever punishment you usually dole out is doled out to the child at that time. And it's similar with us. We think certain behaviors, certain sin is okay, it's fine, until it gets exposed and other people see it. And then we want to start cleaning up. And we'll see how deadly that is in a second. And this is a huge problem in American Christianity. And one of the reasons why is because we live in a country where many other things in society that were considered wrong, especially just going back a few decades, kind of agreed with the Bible on a lot of things. You know, a lot of things that were considered wrong in society were wrong because people knew that the Bible was the Word. Even if they didn't follow it, there are people who knew that. I mean, there's the image you get in your head of the person who is carrying liquor down the street and they walk by a church and all of a sudden they hide it. Even if no one's in the church, it doesn't have to be on Sunday. Or there's certain things you just don't do around Christians. I mean, I remember going to, you know, people having barbecues in their backyard, and when I show up, they hide the liquor. You know, just because I'm a Christian and I'm a minister, and they say, oh, no, oh. revs here right now. You can't have that here." And I've literally heard that and, you know, seen people say, we got to hide this, we got to do this. It's okay, it's acceptable, but when we're getting to a Christian environment or around Christian people, then it's not acceptable. And that's just being hypocritical. But in America, it's been easy to develop that because even people who don't know Christ would have this kind of moral code and kind of a loose understanding of what's right and what's wrong. And a lot of things they say could kind of line up with the Bible, even if they don't know it. It's easy to look at drinking or smoking or premarital sex or homosexuality or at one time women who are showing more than their ankle and see those things and say they're wrong. I think these are wrong. Not because the Bible says them, but because they're either illegal or they're considered unethical in society. And that would drive a lot of our thinking about the behaviors that we need to check and the foxes that we need to get rid of and catch, rather than the Word of God. Now, I think everyone can admit, it's becoming harder and harder to look at society and to get our moral cues from society. Now, we never should have. But many of us have to admit we did. We got our cues from society on how to behave, and then we came to the Bible and said, oh, hmm, wow, how convenient, it matches. Wow, I should obey the government. Oh, wow, Romans 13 is in here. But you believed it before you came to the Bible. Because that's what society pushed us to believe. Society said, these are the things that are normal. This is how you treat people. This is how you respect their property. These are the things you do. Now, those things, it's becoming more difficult to hear that from society and find that in the Bible. And so now we're being pushed, which may be a blessing, we're being pushed to go back to the Word of God and return to what God has said. How do we know what's an actual fox and what's just a dog that's out and it's not going to do any damage? How can we tell the difference if we don't go to the Word of God and have our consciences fed and built up by God's Word? That's the only way that we're going to know. We're not going to turn on news. We're not going to listen to our favorite commentator and figure out what God wants us to do. Now, if we want to really become fox hunters, then we have to be able to go to the Word of God constantly, searching the Scriptures for everything, and at the same time asking God to search our hearts. Because just on our own, we're going to be faulty, if I'm just trying to determine what's right and what's wrong. But here's one thing that we do a lot. And Jesus brought this up. It's such a beautiful picture. It ties in perfectly. And I want you to turn to Matthew chapter 7. In Matthew 7, this is probably maybe the passage that has the second most popular verse among unbelievers in Matthew 7, which says, don't judge. And that's what they latch on to, don't judge. Or they say, what's worse, only God can judge me. Trust me, you'd rather have my judgment than the judgment of a holy God. So Matthew chapter 7, we're actually going to start at verse 3. Just read verses 3 through 5. And it says, Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye, and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite! first take the log out of your own eye, then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. Now I want you to notice two things from that text. The first is that we are great at detecting little sins when they are part of another's character. You want somebody to find a fox? Put them in someone else's vineyard. As soon as we go into another person's vineyard, we see every fox imaginable. We see foxes that may not even be there. and we just imagine things are foxes that they aren't. And the second thing that we see is that the little sins need to be dealt with. He didn't say, hey, you have a log in your eye, forget about the speck, take care of the log and let's go home. He said, no, the speck has to be dealt with. The little sins have to be dealt with. But don't be a hypocrite and ignore your logs. One thing about the speck, it got me thinking of myself. My eyes are very, very, very sensitive. And for some reason, God gave me sensitive eyes and very long eyelashes. And I used to go several times a day with my eyelashes breaking off and going into my eye. And my eyes are so sensitive that I can't even have water into my eye or they start burning. So imagine someone who can't put anything in their eye with something in their eye and can't flush it out. How irritating it is. And I would just have to struggle. And I would try to put a drop of water on my finger and have just a piece of water touch the... I would do all this stuff just to avoid having to touch my eye or trying to flush it out with water, having it burn. But the piece of hair would get so painful and so irritating. And I knew eventually if I kept closing my eyelid over it and rubbing and rubbing, it's going to do actual damage to the soft, sensitive flesh that's in part of the eye. And so I would have to take it out. I would have to remove it. And that's how we have to be. with little foxes, with specks in the eye, whatever the illustration is that we're thinking about our sin, we have to remove these small things because they can cause irritation, they can cause pain, and they will do damage. Not just to us, but to others around us as well. So the first thing that we're told to do is to recognize that the foxes are dangerous no matter how little they are. But the second thing that our text says, which is actually the first, is to catch them. So it specifies that these little foxes should be caught. There's other ways to deal with them and other pests, vermin, other animals besides catching. But it specifies catching here. And this is important because this isn't our typical, normal reaction. We would rather shoo them away. We would rather hide them for a more convenient time. We would rather keep our sin and hold on to it, but be seen by others as holy. You know, we would rather be able to yell and scream or use profanity with our wife and our children, but then come to church and sing God's praises, rather than actually deal with what's in our heart that caused those things to flow out of it. And God says, no, deal with the heart. Deal with those little foxes. Catch them. Don't just shoo them away and say, now it's time for me to go to church. Put it on his face. Now it's time for me to go to work and pretend like I'm a holy person and place my Bible on my desk while I know I was looking at pornography last night. That's not what God is calling for. In fact, in the book of Amos, we're not going to turn there, he actually told Israel, I don't even want to hear your songs. I don't want to hear from you. I don't want your sacrifices because you are not doing right in the land. And so if you're not going to live a life that exalts Christ, Christ doesn't want you playing dress-up. Christ doesn't need people putting on a mask, which is truly what a hypocrite is. It's someone who has something underneath them and they put a mask on. And that is not what we are to be. We are to deal with little sins with as much vigor and as much strength and as much hatred as they deal with the larger ones and as we hate the ones in other people. We are to deal with our own and clean up our own vineyard. The Hebrew word here for catch, it literally means to seize or to grasp something. And it's actually used in Genesis 25 in talking about the birth of Jacob and Esau and saying that Jacob grabbed onto Esau's hill and latched onto it and wouldn't let it go. And that picture, that's how we are to be with our sin. That's how we are to be with these foxes. We catch them. We don't shoo them away. We don't just try to put some repellent. We want them to be identified. We want to see them so we can catch them and deal with them and not have them return. You know, I work with someone and he loves all kinds of animals, insects, anything. And he has gone around to a lot of people and said, if you see a bug or something in your office, come get me. Come get me. I'll take it and I'll bring it outside and I'll let it go and give it a little kiss before I send it off. And I'm like, what? Just, oh, it's a spider. OK, I know what to do with it. Just, mm, just, you know how you get mad, like a buzz flying by your ear, a bug just buzzing in your ear? And you get angry, and you finally catch it. And it's like, mm, you get that little foot twist, too? It's like, you're going to feel this, man. That's what I want to do to these things. But he says, no, let's take him, and let's catch him, and let's put him out. Many times, that's what we do without sin. is we want to take, no, no, no, no, don't crush it, stop reading that verse, stop preaching that, no, no, no, I want to take my sin, come here little fox, it's okay, he didn't mean to hurt you, just go off and I'll come pick you up later when it's a more convenient time. No, God says to deal with your sin, to catch it, get rid of the logs out of your eyes, get rid of the specks out of your eye, catch these little foxes before they do serious damage. And I've said many, many times to anyone who's willing to listen, if you say you are struggling with a sin, then first I'm going to call you out because most of us don't struggle with sin. We love our sin and we coddle our sin. We don't struggle with it. Struggle is a fight. Struggle is I'm trying to put this thing to death. And it's coming back. It keeps coming back. And I'm going to keep going at it. That's the struggle. A struggle is not walking hand in hand, side by side. But if we're truly struggling with our sin, we should be experts in it. We should be experts in everything the Word of God has to say about our sin. We should know the Bible inside and out when it deals with whatever. We have a problem with anger and our temper. I should know everything the Bible says about it. So in my prayers, I'm praying God's word back to him. And I'm asking God to search my heart to show me more. And I'm asking people to hold me accountable in my anger. And all of my meditation and all of my everything should be about attacking this sin. Even in my rejoicing and knowing that I ultimately will have victory over this, I should be focused on this sin and putting it to death. And little sins, these little foxes, one of the things it calls us to do as well is to blame things on personality. And we say, I'm just made that way. I'm just a hot-blooded Italian. I'm just, I'm from the hood. I'm just like this. Can't do anything about it. I grew up with nine siblings and I had to be aggressive. I had to be tough. Sorry if it comes off cold and mean to you. I don't have to check my heart because it's just part of how God made me. It's just who I am. I don't need to change. And God calls us and tells us in 2 Corinthians 5 that we are new creatures. We are a new creation. Like the old has been put away. All things have been made new. We are to put off our sin. We are to put on righteousness. In the scripture reading that was read today, we saw that. There are sins we are to put off, and there are character qualities and traits that we are to put on. If we were to look at Galatians 5, and, you know, we're going through even in our young adult ministry, we're looking at the fruit of the Spirit, and it's taken a long time to get there, because we decided to go through the whole book of Galatians. And right before you get to the fruit of the Spirit, which is beautiful and wonderful, you get to the works of the flesh. You get three verses of all of these things that you should not be doing and should not be a part of your character. And that if it is part of your practice, then Paul says, you will not inherit the kingdom. But after he tells you to put off all those things, then he says, but this is what the fruit of the Spirit should be. This is what should be cultivated in your life daily. It's not just a nice little song you sing and you say, oh, I know all nine of them. I probably can't now because I didn't grow up in Sunday school. I probably can't do it. But a lot of people can just name them and sing them. But are you living them? Are you cultivating them in your life? Are you using those things to drive out the sin, to catch the little foxes, to put that sin to death? And here's a couple of little foxes that the Bible mentions. And remember, some of these things that will remain small, some of the things will grow and we'll see a progression. And the first one we see here is lust. And if you turn to James chapter 1, James chapter 1, starting at verse 13, and we'll see this progression play out that starts with lust. I want you to see what James is saying even here when we look at verse 13. There are people who are getting tempted, and because we serve a God who is sovereign, they will say, well, it's God's fault. It's God's fault that I was tempted. It's God's fault that I sinned, because God put this thing, this tempting thing in front of me. And so because God did that, God is the reason why I sinned. We don't have time to go fully into it. But James says in verse 13 of chapter one, let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God for God cannot be tempted by evil. And he himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. So note the progression here. And James says, no, this is where your sin really comes from. He says, first you are carried away or drawn away by lust. So the first thing you do is you give it your attention. And this is the very moment that you need to catch the little fox. As soon as you give it your attention, as soon as it draws your gaze, as soon as your thoughts start to move in that direction of this little sin, whatever it is, and lust here is just any type of desire for something that is unprofitable and ungodly, and the way we go after it. And he says, you're first carried away by it. You give it your attention. You begin to look at it. And you start to think about it. Then the next thing, you're enticed by your own lust. And here, this means that you are taken with bait. And so this is just like we saw in the Garden of Eden when the serpent was speaking to Eve. There was a bait, and she looked, and what? She started thinking about what he said, and then she saw that the fruit was good for food. And then she decided to eat it. She knew what it would do for her, or she assumed what it would do for her, and then she saw, okay, this is good, I can take it, I can eat it, and then she ate. And she completely just, at that point, was disregarding everything that God told her. And many times we want to blame Eve. Or we say, I don't know if I would have done that. Come on now, you can have any fruit from any tree except that one, and she had to go to that one. Thanks, Eve. And we do that as if we don't follow that same progression every day of our lives. And James here is saying there are steps, and you can catch it. You can still, when you're enticed, you're taken by this bait comes, and you've seen how that works. A mouse trap or anything, you put something that's enticing in it, and then the mouse goes over and gets it, and there you go. Or if it's a glue trap, that's supposed to be more humane. You know, the trap usually has something in it that's enticing, that looks good, and that makes you forget about the potential danger. And so, if you take care of the sin when it's little, although it still may look enticing, we still have power over it. We still can catch it. maybe a little bigger, maybe a little harder. If we didn't catch it when we were carried away or drawn away, when we gave it a first glance, then when we see the bait, we could recognize what the bait is. But if we don't, then lust conceives. And the language here takes on the sense of pregnancy, of conception, pregnancy, and birth. And so it gives the picture of our will, just giving itself over to the lust. And they come together and they conceive. And what is born is sin. And so we see this progression, how it started off as this little fox. It started off as just something that caught our eye, caught our attention. And obviously this can be in our thoughts as well. It's not just physical. Then we were enticed by it. We were taken by the bait. We were captured by this thing that baited us. Then we gave our will over to it and we conceived with lust, sin. And then sin will grow in power and when it is finished, when it is complete, it brings death. And there are some things in this world where this progression leads to physical death. There are some things in this world where even for a believer, while not leading to an ultimate spiritual death, can lead to a death of many opportunities, can lead to the death of your ability to witness to somebody, can lead to the death of things that God has put before you to do. I mean, how many people have, as Paul said, become shipwrecked in their faith? How many people have given themselves over to sin? Not just thinking of pastors and pulpits, and I have sinned. And you know, people know that. Many people are too young to know who said that or why. But when we're crying out and we see that, that's the only time people think, oh man, that sin really ruined their life. Because they were a preacher. They were a pastor. And they got caught in sin. They got exposed. But so many of us have marriages ruined. have even opportunities taken, have children who no longer respect our walk with God because they saw the hypocrisy. They saw how we were in Christian settings and they knew how we were at home when all of the Christian eyes were off of them. And they saw that. Many pastor's kids deal with that as well. In particular, they see how pastors have to be on and how we have to communicate with people and have to be this way. And as soon as we get in the car, many people will just kind of take it off. Now I can be myself. Fortunately here, I would at least say about the other three elders, hopefully people would think it's true about me, but that I don't see that. And I wouldn't be here saying that just because they're sitting here looking at me. But I don't think we have that here where we see a pulpit face or a church face and then a kind of everyday life face. We see that in people who aren't in a pulpit, with people who aren't in full-time ministry. We see it in our own lives, how easily this destruction could come. And we could still be going to heaven, but just not be doing all the things that God has called us to do, because we blew those opportunities, or because we no longer have the respect of someone, and our witness has just been tainted and ruined. We see another thing, anger and bitterness. So turn to Ephesians chapter 4. And this is actually part of what was read for you earlier today. Ephesians chapter 4, we're going to look at verse 26 and 27. So Ephesians 4, 26 and 27 says, Be angry and yet do not sin. And do not let the sun go down on your anger. And do not give the devil an opportunity. And we don't have the time to go into the ideas of righteous anger versus unrighteous anger. Fortunately, we actually, if you go online, Pastor Bobby has preached through all of Ephesians. And so you can read or listen to a full sermon on that. But we do see a couple of things here that's related to a text in Song of Solomon. So no matter the cause of our anger, we must do our best to deal with it. Whether it's considered righteous anger, we get angry because somebody offended God, or we get angry because the country is moving in a direction that's making more things legal that the Bible says are unrighteous. Whatever it is, if that's our anger, or our anger is just because someone hit our car, or our child spilled a bowl of cereal, or anything in between, the response should be the same. We need to deal with it. in a way that does not lead to sin. Romans 12, 17 to 21 says, never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay. The Lord says, but if your enemy is hungry, feed him. And if he is thirsty, give him a drink. For in doing so, you will heap burning coals on his head. Verse 21, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Our response to anger should not be anger. Our response to anger, the initial feeling of anger that overtakes us. Sometimes it's difficult to control. In the moment, we get angry. That's the emotion that stirs up. But our response to that should not be to continue in anger. Our response to that initial emotion is subjected to everything that the Word of God says about anger and how we interact with each other. Another thing that we see here is that our unresolved anger gives the devil an opportunity. And one of the things that the Bible says, one of these opportunities is to sow seeds of bitterness into our hearts. And Hebrews 12, 14 and 15 instructs us to pursue peace with all men and a sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble. And by it, many be defiled. There are many of us who are walking around with bitterness in our hearts because we didn't deal with the anger when it was a semi-little fox. We didn't catch it. We let it grow. We let it become bigger. We let it do more damage. We let it dig holes all through our vineyards. And now we have this bitterness in us that's making it impossible for us to serve or impossible for us to enjoy the relationships that God has given us. We need to repent of this bitterness. We need to attack anger and bitterness in the same way we do with all sin, with prayer, with study, with meditation, with counsel, real counsel. And I say that because many of us see counsel as there's someone else who's angry about the same thing. Let's go together and talk about how angry we are about it. Now, in the last two years, with all the controversial things going on in this country, how many of us have gone to people that we know feel the same way about us, whether it be the administration, whether it be about public health guidelines, whether it be about interpersonal relationships, whether it be about whether things are systemic or not, whatever it is. We go to somebody who agrees with us and we say, can you believe what they just did? Can you believe that law they just enacted? Can you believe what this person just said? Can you believe this thing happened? How many times do we hear a message in church and say, can you believe that? Can you believe the pastor actually said that? Can you believe they believe that? How many times do we do that and we say, oh, this is just counsel. We're going to pray about it later. So this gossip is holy somehow. And then the bitterness just stirs up because now we feel vindicated in how we feel. Now we think that talking to another Christian who also has the same problem with anger about the same issue or the same person means that God has ordained this anger and the bitterness and all of the ungodly things that flow out of it. But we see here, we could go to book after book in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, we're getting instruction on how to live with each other as a body. And constantly we're being told to forgive, to put aside differences. Think about in Philippians chapter 4. And you don't have to turn there. But there are two ladies in the church who don't get along. And Paul doesn't say why they don't get along. So most likely it wasn't a theological issue, because he probably would have said, this is the answer. You guys are a little confused about this theological issue, about this point about Christ, and I'm going to clear that up so there's no more confusion. But he doesn't. He says, All the things he's talking about, he says, all right, you need to tell them to get along. Ian and Natalie, y'all gotta straighten up whatever is going on. Y'all just need to get along. I mean, that's not what you would do in the middle of a sermon or the middle of an apostolic message that you're writing to someone. But it's in the Word of God that you guys have to get along, even if it's just some personal thing. Even if the one woman's child hit the other woman's child and didn't say, I'm sorry. And that caused a big, big commotion, which actually happened in one of the churches I was in before. And could happen here as well, very easily, because we're human and we're subject to sin. And the Bible teaches us how to get over that. Constantly we're being told that holding on to anger or to bitterness is sinful. So when you look for counsel, don't look for counsel to just say, let's sit and talk about why this thing is wrong. why this thing is evil. Let's talk about how bad this person is, how wicked this person is. Talk about these morons. Let's talk about these libtards. Let's talk about these ultra-right wingers and every other thing that we throw out at people. Let's just get together and talk about that and then we'll feel vindicated. Another thing is speech. Now I want us to turn to James chapter 3. And one thing you'll notice about each of these passages is that, I mean, they can be sermons or sermon series on their own, that God has so much to say to us about this. So our speech in James chapter three, let's start at verse three. And look at what he says about the tongue. Now, if we put the bits into the horse's mouths so that they will obey us, we direct their entire body as well. Look at the ships also. Though they are so great and are driven by strong winds, are still directed by a very small rudder, wherever the inclination of the pilot desires. Verse 5. So also the tongue is a small part of the body, yet it boasts of great things. See how great a force is set aflame by such a small fire? And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity. The tongue is set among our members, as that which defiles the entire body and sets on fire the course of our life and is set on fire by hell. Verse 7, for every species of beasts and birds of reptiles and creatures in the sea is tamed and has been tamed by the human race. But no one can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil and full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father and with it we curse men who have been made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be this way." And so we see James says, even though the tongue is small, it has great power. It cannot be tamed. We cannot tame our tongue on our own. But we're not on our own. We constantly boast that and sing that and pray about having power in us. The same power, according to Paul praying in Ephesians, that raised Christ from the dead is in you and I right now. That same power, that resurrection power, that can tame the tongue. And that's the only thing that can tame the tongue. Because if you were to remove the tongue from the body, you still have the thoughts. So the only thing that can tame the tongue is the power of God in us. And we need to yield to it. We need to be ready to catch these little foxes. There are some other things that are seen as small, and we'll just kind of look at those briefly. I want to come to a close soon. Turn to Proverbs chapter 6. And while you're turning to Proverbs chapter 6, I'm going to read verse 12, but I want you to see other verses in there. So Proverbs chapter 6, verse 12 says, a worthless person, a wicked man, is the one who walks with a perverse mouth. just again the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament, whether it's Solomon speaking, Paul, James, or Apollos, or whoever wrote Hebrews. Constantly the Word of God is directing us to take care of these little things and don't let them grow to the point where they overtake our lives. So Proverbs chapter 6 verses 9 through 11 says, How long will you lie down, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep? a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, your poverty will come in like a vagabond and your need like an armed man. And so we're stopping there. So again, you see, now we're talking about laziness. Something that can be small, just a one-time thing. This isn't saying you shouldn't take naps. I can't. I wish I could take a nap. But anything less than four hours, it makes me feel worse. So I just can't nap. I just sleep. But there are people who are like, yeah, I nap for 25 minutes. I feel great now, ready to take on the world. I envy you. But Solomon is saying here, your laziness will overtake you. It may seem little now, just a little rest here, a little sleep there, a little bit of slumber, a little bit of leisure here, and it becomes the main thing in your life. And you can't even get things done. You can't even work for the kingdom, partially because you're just too lazy. Now, obviously, we have to be careful here because a little bit of rest for somebody may be a lot of rest for someone else. And it doesn't dictate the amount of hours we should sleep. It doesn't dictate how many vacation days we need. It doesn't dictate how many ministries we should serve in to be seen as useful for a church. None of that is spoken here. So don't go to other people and be like, a little bit of slumber. I see you over there. You didn't come to Bible study this week. A little bit of sleep. No, don't go around doing that. But make sure we are examining our hearts to know if we are working for God. And that even means working out of jobs. Because the Bible teaches that when we work for our employer, we're really working for Christ. And that same attitude of having excellency in all that we do. should permeate every part of who we are, even if we're just doing something at home or we're doing something that the world doesn't value. It's something that God values. You don't have to be in a corporate office to do work that God is pleased by. You don't have to be in a pulpit to do service that God is pleased by. And we need to make sure that we understand that, that every work that has been assigned to us has been given by God and we need to apply ourselves to it fully and excellently. Foolishness. We don't have time to fully go into that, but look at Ecclesiastes chapter 10, verse 1. And fortunately, we just heard a sermon about that recently. But Ecclesiastes 10.1, if you're in the Song of Solomon, just flip back a few pages. Ecclesiastes 10.1 says, dead flies make a perfumer's oil stink. So a little foolishness is weightier than wisdom and honor. And how many times can we see that it's true? We have something that's beautiful, that's pristine, that's pure. And it only takes very little of an impurity to ruin it. I don't know why, but I consider myself to be a very neat eater. But Sherri-Ann can tell you that whenever I'm eating something and I have a light colored shirt on, for whatever reason, my mind is just like, Pick the marinara sauce, whatever it is, just something that's dark or something that has oil and just eat it. And it always finds its way on my shirt. I will eat hunched over like this. Mouth is nowhere and somehow something will touch me. Something will fall in a row and hit my shirt. Only when it's light colored though. But it's ruined. The little tiny little drop of oil, little piece of a sauce here just ruins the entire shirt. I'm like, all right, it's done. Just throw it in the garbage. Use it for rags. You know, it's just, it's ruined. You can think the same thing about water. You don't want to drink water and then someone takes something that you consider impure or nasty and takes one drop and put it in the glass. It's ruined. The same way, of course, if you have a perfume. A dead fly would ruin a perfume no matter how beautiful it smells. You're not going to apply it to yourself. And even thinking about our character. You can have great service 30, 40 years and be known for one thing. Imagine if Pastor Bobby came up here now and just stabbed me. That's the only thing you remember. How long have you been a pastor? 37 years? 41? 41 years, almost as long as I've been born. Right? Man, wow. I was probably in diapers when you saw it. But if he came up and attacked me, that's the only thing you would remember. 41 years and you would just remember he attacked one of his elders in the pulpit. I can't believe this. That's all you would think about. You wouldn't think about him marrying you. You wouldn't even remember him coming to the hospital to see you. You wouldn't think about him doing a funeral of your loved one. You would remember that act. even many who were faithful in service in other ways, and they could preach to God faithfully, and they do one thing, and their whole ministry is ruined. Many times in a marriage, you can have a faithful marriage, but be unfaithful in one thing, and that hurts much more than all of the days, weeks, years, decades of faithfulness. And so we want to take care of the little foxes, whether it's laziness or foolishness or pride, or speech, or anger. And in Galatians 5.9 and 1 Corinthians 5.6, we're told that a little leaven leavens a whole lump of dough. And so rather than name a particular sin, it's any sin. Any sin that you can think of, any sin that you can imagine, even if there's not a passage in a Bible that shows its progression from little to destructive. is the sin that we need to avoid. If it's a sin, we need to be putting it to death. If there's a fox in our vineyard, we need to catch it. That's it. It will cause destruction no matter how little it is. And the thing about foxes is that they tend to work alone, or they tend to travel alone. So they're not like jackals and other animals that travel in packs. Foxes tend to travel alone. Now, they'll all be in a vineyard together, but they're not part of a pack together. And so, while we're working on one sin, while we're trying to catch one fox, we're not going to catch the alpha fox of the pack and drive the rest away. We have to deal with all of our sin. That's why I think it's just so beautiful the illustration uses a fox. And if this was a song that they sang to try to keep them in line in their behavior, I think we should as well. I think every day we should be looking for little foxes, trying to remove these little foxes and catch them. And just as I'm about to take my seat, 1 Corinthians, we're not going to turn there, 1 Corinthians 6.12 says, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. Brethren, it's not just sin. There are things in our lives that are not profitable. Even though God doesn't say, don't do this thing, there's no verse that explicitly says that, they're just not profitable for us as believers in our walk with Christ. And we can turn to Hebrews 12, one. Hebrews 12, I'm gonna read verse one. So turn to Hebrews 12. And verse one says, sorry, that's the last verse. Hebrews 12 one says, therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Again, it is not just sin. We see we're told here to lay aside the sin which so easily entangles us. If you're trying to run a race, and you're engaging with something that is entangling you, it is impossible to run. You're not going to be able to run. Just imagine having your feet and your legs tied up with something. The best you can do is shuffle along. How many Olympians are going to win their race shuffling along? We don't want to walk our race that way. We want to be able to move as fast as we can without being tied up in sin. But it also says, lay aside every encumbrance or every weight, everything that's going to weigh us down, hold us back, make it more difficult for us to walk this race, possibly injure us, change our gait. We need to remove it from our lives. And so we have to be diligent, not just the things that are outright called sin in the Bible, but anything that is unprofitable, anything that is a weight, work to remove it. In Ecclesiastes 12, 13, don't turn there, we're told to fear God and keep his commandments. And in Hebrews 12, 2, we're given another formula on how to live a life that honors God, especially if we're going to be catching foxes for the rest of our lives. And it says in Hebrews 12, 2, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him Endured the cross despising the shame has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God Calvary I know I may have made it seem Difficult Because it is but we have God We can fix our eyes on Jesus the author and perfecter finisher of our faith I am begging you all to do that today, to look to Christ, to ask God to show you your sin, to show the things that are hidden, to protect you from things that you might otherwise walk into, to help you when catching the foxes, to turn the lights on in your vineyards, to bring people into your life, situations, circumstances that were exposed to sin so we can get rid of it. that we'll have people that we could walk along with. And we won't be doing this alone. God's giving us a body. He's given us other people who love us and will pour into you and will walk with you. Don't neglect that. Don't neglect coming together. Don't neglect fellowship. Don't neglect the people God has put in your life. All of us here, we are accountable to each other. We're part of the same body. When one part of your body hurts, the body is in pain and the body is in dysfunction. So it's all of our jobs to make sure that we're not walking around with a dysfunctional body. And so I'm challenging all of you to look into your own hearts and be ready to receive others as they're searching their hearts. And we all should be going out on fox hunts. Every night, just think about that. Every night we're going out in someone's vineyard, and we're going to catch some foxes. I'm not going to judge you for the amount of foxes you have, or the way your fox looks. It doesn't look as pretty as mine, because mine's acceptable in society, and yours isn't, so your fox looks uglier than mine. We're going to catch them all. And so I just pray that will be what we are focused on, and that will be what drives us, and that will be what unites us as a body. Let's go before God in prayer. Our gracious God, we thank you that your word gives us instruction on how to please you. We thank you God that you've given us the power to overcome sin and that we know that Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith will keep us encouraged, keep us strengthened, connects us with each other. We all are filled with the Holy Spirit and I pray God that you will constantly show us our sin And Lord, keep us encouraged as we're fighting our sin. Lord, keep us encouraged. The more things that we see that are not like you help us to not be discouraged. Help us to be encouraged and knowing that you are bringing us closer to the image of Christ, that you are working things out. and sanctifying us, and that our future in heaven with you will be completely free from sin, and that we will be glorified, that we will no longer have to put up with these foxes. We will no longer have logs or specks or anything in our eyes, that we will be perfect and sinless. But until that day, give us the fire, give us the fight to constantly engage in this lifelong fox hunt. And we ask these things in Christ's name and for his sake. Amen.