What a joy, and I know that's my go-to line, but very thankful. Very thankful to be here today and to fellowship with you all. One quick thing before we get going, because there's been some problems hearing, can you hear me? Am I pretty good right now? Okay. And thank you, team. We're always grateful for what our technical team does up there. Of course, making the live broadcast something that is doable. Every week, this team puts on a production that ends up going out onto the internet in real time, so that's quite a marvel and quite a little work that a group of young people have taken up as their ministry, and they're serving the Lord's people in that. One thing I wanted to mention before we dig in, too, is another plug for the membership class. If you just wanna show up December 1st, we meet down in that wing, probably because we're having so much fun that it would be too loud for all the other groups. Probably not true, but certainly we enjoy, I would call it a really good, not a lecture-type class, but a discussion. A lot of... talk where we go over material that has been, we've had it here at Berean for years, we have a church membership booklet guide that has a lot of information, it's excellent, and we talk through those issues and we get feedback from you, it's a little bit of a Socratic method in some ways. You know, we want to know where you're at. But we have several who have signed up, and I just want to put that plug out there. Even if you're just looking to explore a little bit and say, well, maybe I'm interested, but maybe not. I don't know. Well, this would be a good opportunity to look into that, and we'd love to have you there. Looking forward to it very much. Having said that, let's, if we would, transition here with a segue back into the scripture this morning. If you would open your Bibles with me to the book of 3 John, We will be looking at verses nine through 12 today from this little tiny epistle packed at the very end of the New Testament called Third John. So if you would follow with me as I read from the New King James Translation. I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to have preeminence among them, does not receive us. Therefore, if I come, I will call to mind his deeds, which he does, prating against us with malicious words, and not content with that. He himself does not receive the brethren, and forbids those who wish to, putting them out of the church. Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. He who does good is of God, but he who does evil has not seen God. Demetrius has a good testimony from all, and from the truth itself, and we also bear witness, and you know that our testimony is true. This is the word of the Lord. Let's briefly pray together. Our Father, thank you. As we commend this service to you, we take hold of this section from your word, and we trust that we'll see in it that you are the one who is preeminent in all things, but you ought to be preeminent in our lives. We pray, Lord, that you would reign in grace in our lives, that we would serve you and seek to serve you and learn from those who did not. We give you praise, we give you glory, in Jesus' name, amen. We saw this in Colossians. Notice the text that we just read in 3 John uses this word preeminence. It's talking about a character who will be introduced to in a few minutes named Diotrephes. And Diotrephes loved preeminence. But we've seen that word before, and we saw it in Colossians when we were unfolding how excellent Christ is, how he's above all. He is truly the only one in the whole universe of anything that is there. He's the only one that's preeminent. In fact, in Colossians 118, we read that he is the head of the body of the church. He's the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. in all things he may have preeminence. Now the word used in Colossians is the same root idea as what is spoken of when we dig into this passage and we see a man who's consumed with being first, being the chief, being large, being in charge. And as we unpack this today, hopefully what we'll be able to see is that what we need to be is we need to be individuals where Christ is first in our lives, where Christ rules and He reigns, then we really don't have a problem at all. If Christ is the Lord of your life, if you're living in a righteous way, seeking to serve Him, you're not going to have the problem of being accused like a diatrophist. By the way, I was talking to the men before we came in here, This passage is not against any individuals. One theologian, A.T. Robertson, he's a commentator. He writes these analytical commentaries on the Greek. He's really in-depth. He had a little note in his commentary and he said, when he was very young, he wrote an article on this passage. And before he knew it, 25 deacons came and they submitted rebuttals and they thought he was accusing them of being This person, okay? So it's a very sensitive issue. We don't want to just point fingers and say, you're a diatrophies. This is not what we want to do. There may be a spirit of this that's within us. We want to rule. And it may be a self-seeking spirit where the Lord has to rule in our life and reign in our life. So we can't ignore it. This is the beauty of expository preaching. It's here. We're there, we gotta deal with it. So we're not gonna avoid this passage, we're gonna walk through it and try to explain it to the best we can. Now, the goal of the believer is to live for Christ. Paul says this, He said, I've been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. The life that I now live, my life, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave his life for me. If you are a believer, if God has brought new life into your heart, you've turned by faith, you've repented and turned to him. He's rebirthed you, he's born you again, he's justified you, he's adopted you, he's sanctifying you, then Christ is your life. Paul also said in another passage, he said, and he, Christ, died for all that those who live may no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake was dead and raised. So this is the way it is. Young people, old people, When we are a believer in Christ, we live our lives to please Him. That's what we do. Now, tying this into a Thanksgiving sermon is, actually it's not that hard, really, because here's the problem. The problem is that In individual-like diatrophies, which we're gonna see, he ends up suppressing good things that God's people want to do. He quenches the holy spirit. Did you know what thanksgiving is linked to intrinsically? It's goodness. We read that in Psalm 136. It was our opening call to worship. Give thanks to the Lord for he is good. It's God's goodness that causes us to be thankful. Thanksgiving doesn't make a whole lot of sense without God, does it? It's like, if you think about it, it's like, well, I'm thankful that this person did this for me. It only goes so far. I'm thankful because of the goodness of God, right? It's like intrinsically tied to it. It's one of those beautiful holidays that we could come up with, because you can't really, when you say to somebody, I'm so thankful, or I'm blessed, who are you talking about? God blessed you, right? There's no other intermediate there. It doesn't make any sense. But what does happen sometimes is when someone seeks not the good, which this individual does, he ends up putting pressure on others who are doing what's right, and inadvertently he crushes that spirit that you often have when you've got a very jovial environment where you're just thankful and you're serving the Lord and you're seeking to do the good. It can be stifling and quenching of the goodness. This is a product of man when he seeks preeminence over others. When man seeks preeminence. So we're gonna go into this textual idea today, how that when we put Christ first, then we're not putting self first. And when we put him first, there's great joy and there's great rejoicing. The Lord's work is being done. When we selfishly put ourselves first, what we end up doing is we end up stifling the Lord's work. That's what happens. The true work of God is stifled. So, digging back into the text, look at verse nine, because here we start with John. John starts out and he says, I wrote to the church, but, diatrophies. I wrote to the church, and we get John's heart here. He puts Christ first in everything, right? John, when he's writing this little epistle, he starts out in the book, just a few verses up, and he says, I rejoiced greatly when brethren came and testified of the truth that's in you. just as you walk in the truth. John was rejoicing. People were walking in the truth. He had joy in it. Verse four of this little book says, I have no greater joy. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in the truth. John has great joy. He has rejoicing. That's the heart of Thanksgiving, isn't it, really? There's joy in what God is doing, what he's done, how good he is, who he is. John, seeks to write to this little church, he does it, no doubt, out of just the sincerity of his heart. He wants to spread the truth, he wants to bless them. John puts Christ first in his life, he's an example of that. He's writing, he's doing what he can to care for God's people. By the way, when we put the Lord first in our life, it results in care for others, and love for others. When truth is saturating your life, it comes out in the grace of love. That is, you can't take that out. You can't have somebody who says, ah, that's part of that fruit, I just don't want, you've got the other ones, I just don't quite have the love. No, you've gotta have it together, it goes together as a package. Last week, we saw that truth produced virtue. Remember Gaius? He had this virtue of faithfulness. He was faithful to the Lord. When we're in the Word, God's truth produces a faithfulness. It produced faithfulness to a standard. Gaius wanted to bless people in a manner worthy of God. He wanted to bless them in such a way that they were worthy. We saw last week that the truth helped us to understand who the servants of God were. They were servants who took nothing from the Gentiles, and they went forth in the name of Christ. So we recognize who we want to bless, and then we also noted last week that there was a reward that was mentioned, and how that when we have this love for others and care for others, we share in the reward of the works that they do and the ministry that they do. When you bless somebody in the name of Jesus Christ, you send them on their way doing the work of God, you share in that reward. We noted that passage in Matthew's gospel at the end where there's a point in time where there'll be people who say to the Lord as he sits on a throne, and this is a judgment of the sheep and the goats, And they say, Lord, what have we done? And he'll say, what you did to the least of those, my brethren, you did to me. Jesus mentions, by the way, when he's on that throne, that they had done many things to bless him personally. And what they did is they ministered to others, and in that process, they were indirectly blessing Jesus, and there's a reward for that. So putting Christ first, this is what John does. He's writing to the church, but, Diotrephes. What does he do? Look here, it says in verse nine, it says, but Diotrephes, who loves to have preeminence among them, does not receive us. Putting Christ first draws out and sometimes helps identify and even attracts attacks from selfishness. John always doing his writing, he wants to bless the Lord's people, but Diotrephes, this individual in this particular church, A fleshly-minded individual will not receive them. John is shut out. Does that make sense, even? I mean, John is an apostle, right? He's one of the 12. He's part of that foundation of the church itself. And here's an individual in some church who's pushing John away and says, I'm not gonna receive you. His authority isn't received. The fact is the apostles were really given this commission. The commission of the apostles really became to doctrinalize the church. They became the writers and their crew, the evangelists that worked with them, of the New Testament. The authors of the New Testament were the apostles and a few evangelists who supported them. John is shut out. This diatrophies pulls out a trump card and says, no, you can't come here. You're not going to be a part of it. This is the idea here of preeminence. It's a word that means to love, to be first. It's philoproteo. You know, you can hear that word proto, which is first, and love, which is philo, the brotherly love. The desire to be first, or the desire to be the chief. The word preeminence has the idea of desiring to be first. It conveys the idea that someone who is selfish, self-centered, and self-seeking. It suggests a self-promoting demagogue who served no one, but wanted all to serve only him. Diotrephes' actions contradict what Jesus taught in the New Testament. We go back to that story, and I've mentioned this before, where, I think I used the term Mrs. Zebedee, some call her Salome, in Matthew's Gospel. This is kind of embarrassing to even tell this story, but it's in the Gospel. Mrs. Zebedee, Salome, takes James and John, comes before Jesus, kneels down, And what does she ask? Well, she says, grant that these, my two sons of mine, may sit one at your right hand and the other at your left hand in your kingdom. So what's he asking? Well, they're thinking of a physical reign right then, right? This kingdom, they haven't shifted yet in their mindset that the kingdom of God was more than just the physical. So she brings her two boys. Do you think the other disciples like that? Not at all, in fact it says, and when they heard it, they were greatly displeased. I'd be mad, right? What are you guys doing? You got your mom to come here and do this for you? I'd probably be unmerciful, ragging on them. They were upset, right? Jesus called them to himself, so he called his disciples. They were not pleased with one another. He says, you know, the rulers of the Gentiles lured it over them. and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you. But whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave. He goes deep down, the word slave. He's talking the lowest level in the society that was. Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and give his life a ransom for many. Obviously, what was happening in Diatrophes' life was not complying with what God is doing in the life of a believer. When we want to serve more, we want to minister to people, we have to realize it's not about a human conquest. It's not about a domination, it's not building an empire. The more you serve, the more you will be like Christ and girt your waist and wash the feet of the brethren. That's what happens. We have a lot of pride built in us. We do, I do. This could be me telling our leaders, it's not about you, but maybe it's about me, the problem. James in his little epistle says, where envy and strife and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. Proverbs even reiterates this. James, of course, is like the New Testament Proverbs, but back in the Old Testament, Proverbs 18.1 says, a man who isolates himself, seeks his own desires, he rages against all wise judgment. Of course, we read that passage in Matthew, when the Son come, he came to be served, or not to be served, but to serve. Let me read one more. 2 Timothy says this, but know this, that in the last days perilous times will come. Men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, noting lovers of themselves. The identity of one who seeks preeminence seems to be that they must be in charge, must have their way, likes to be front and center, cannot share in ministry. Anything that is a threat, this person attacks. You'll see this. Anything that's not within their control gets attacked, and often things that are good get quenched and set aside. good things that God is doing get stifled. One pastor told me a story that at a church he was at, there was a deacon who told him as he was coming in to be the pastor, the deacon set him aside and said, you know what, listen, been a lot of pastors who've come and gone. And he said, most of them were right. But there's this deacon, who is basically an immovable object who gets his way. Just giving you that warning. Well, you know, what kind of an ominous warning is that? It does happen. It's not, we're not, again, we're not calling out deacons or elders, right? That's not what we're doing here. In the church, this behavior is destructive. As holidays come up, we realize that selfishness doesn't just permeate the church, it permeates families, too, right? As I've talked this week with individuals going to see family, you know, and interacting with people from work and in the community, sometimes there are destructive individuals within families that are controlling in a way that they have to have everything under their thumb, right? In a selfish way. I think direction is not the problem here. Leading in a gracious servant-like way is not the problem. Having to control everything, that is a problem. Do you know you can't do that? There's only one person who's in control of everything. And guess what? He doesn't share with us. He's not gonna share it. He's got control, he is in control. There's a point where we trust him, right? He's not sharing in that glory. So we see as the passage rolls on, look at verse 10. It says, therefore, if I come, I will call to mind his deeds. We're talking about diatrophies here. Which he does, he prates against us with malicious words, and not content with that, he himself does not receive the brethren. He forbids those who wish to, putting them out of the church. So putting Christ first means standing for and aiding those affected and afflicted. Here's what John does, he says, when I come, talking to Gaius, I'm going to bring this up. I'm going to remind you of this. What will this look like? What will John do? The aged apostle's not afraid of diatrophies. We shouldn't be afraid. I know sometimes it can be overwhelming, especially when somebody has authority in a church setting, and they can seemingly impact your life with a negative testimony. You can imagine, that's what Diatrophes probably did. If you leave, you've got a label on you, or I'm gonna excommunicate you to put a label on you. This is the type of man he was. It was a consuming power. The aged apostle wasn't afraid. He had the Lord. He knew this, right? Do you know, just like when Matthew was teaching us this morning about Paul, Matthew did an anthology all through Acts, like this is what Paul suffered, all right? You know that John doesn't write as much as Paul. We don't hear about John and the Acts as much. But history has anecdotal testimony of John that's really interesting. Diatrophes was probably not his greatest enemy. An early church writer by the name of Irenaeus wrote about a man named Cyrinthus, who it's said was a first century heretic who opposed the apostle's doctrine. He was an early advocate of agnostic beliefs. He denied the full deity of Christ. He taught that Jesus was a mere man upon whom the Christ Spirit descended at his baptism and then left at his crucifixion. Sorenthes also distorted the doctrine of creation, claiming it was a work of an ignorant, inferior deity rather than the true God. John, by the way, he works against that, right? In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God. all things were made by him, right? It's like John, as he's writing his gospel and his epistles, is directly confronting these ideas. Reading on. These teachings pose a significant threat to the early church, and the apostle John is remembered in the church for his bold stance against such heresies. Here's the loving apostle John. Don't mistake kindness for weakness, right? There's a man who said that to me one time, Jim, don't let people do that. Be kind, but don't be weak. It's said, the story recorded by Irenaeus, is that in Ephesus, where John was supposedly ministering, we have record of that, John supposedly was pastoring, or being an elder in the church of Ephesus, and then reaching out to all these churches in Asia Minor, in lieu of Paul and Peter's absence in their later life. John reportedly went into a public bathhouse where Serentis was inside and it is said that he exclaimed, let us flee, lest this bathhouse fall down, for Serentis, the enemy of the truth, is within. Bold reaction shows his uncompromising zeal for the truth of the gospel. He not only refused any association with Sorrentis, but publicly denounced him. John was, we call him the apostle of love, but I wonder, I wonder, maybe that's a misnomer. Maybe it's truth and love, right? Truth and love. He was not weak in his kindness. As we continue on in verse 10, we read about these signs of one who opposed Christ. The signs of putting self first instead of Christ first are evident here. Look at Diotrephes in his life, look at verse 10. What does he do? First thing it says, he prates against us. Prating against, do you use that word very often? Maybe that's not the word in the, oh yeah, it's in the New King James, he prates. It's a word for what I would call unguarded talk. It has a sense of bubbling talk that's not thought through. The idea of useless empty jabber. Remember, this guy is pretty clever. So when he's using his unguided jabber, he's trying to create dissatisfaction with anyone who disagrees with him. These are words he's just not necessarily throwing out there because he doesn't have a plan. He's trying to destroy somebody else. This is the heart of malicious talk and the destructive nature of words. And by the way, not only words that we say, words that we post on social media, words that we text, A lot of misunderstandings happen because of texting. I don't know about you, but your boss sends you a note in Teams, and it's like, how do I read that? Have you ever had that problem? And it's like, well, I don't know what they mean by that. And you start maybe thinking different. But words can be used maliciously. And that's the second part. He says, not only do they pray, but they pray with malicious words, bad words. Evil words, false words, probably misinformation and disinformation. It's amazing what our words can do, the destruction that we can cause by the things that we say. The tongue is a world of iniquity. It can light everything on fire, just like that. But not only that, notice a text that says, I will call to mind his deeds, he prates against us with malicious words, and not content with that, middle of verse 10. He wasn't content just to say things. This individual had to do things. Not satisfying with just venting his private feelings, some persons like this have to talk against others and then take action to injure them. He rejected the brethren. We see that in the text. He ends up not receiving the brethren, probably the ones who were coming in from the outside. Remember, that's the context here. John's saying, hey, we ought to serve the Lord. And if we can help those who are brothers and sisters in Christ, send them on their way, support their ministries, we should do so. So this diatrophies locks those people out. And then he forbids those who are helping them from doing it. And then, what does he do? He puts them out of the church if there's a problem. He uses excommunication as a tool. If you ever hear about churches that have more people on the disciplinary role than they do, that's a problem, you know, that's a real problem. I've heard of that scenario, where there are churches, for whatever reason, they just have more people on the discipline rolls than the regular rolls. What do you do with that? There's obviously a, statistically, there's a problem, and it's probably within the church itself, okay? He doesn't receive the brethren. forbids others, excommunicates them, but most importantly, what's happening is he's quenching what is good from happening. You see, these brothers and sisters are wanting to serve the Lord, serving him out of a genuine heart, reaching out to others, embracing ministry that's more maybe global or beyond the walls, and this guy is scrunching it. He quenches the good. And we read that in the next verse. If you wanna just jump one moment with me there, look at verse 11. John says, beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. He who does good is of God, he who does evil has not seen God. Diatrophies is putting the clamps on people and somebody's gonna second guess themselves. Should I serve the Lord or not? Should I reach out to this person? You start second guessing, you're afraid. If what I do is gonna draw the ire of somebody else. You know, this has happened before. This isn't new. This is something within man that resurfaces his ugly face. Jesus was confronted in the same way. Do you remember this? There was a group of folks just watching Jesus early on in his ministry, watching for him to mess up in some way. In Mark's gospel, let me read a little snippet here. This is in chapter three, verses one through six. And he entered the synagogue again, and a man was there with a withered hand. So they watched him closely, whether he would heal him on the Sabbath day so that they might accuse him. Isn't this pathetic? Heal the man, right? His hand is withered. How can that be a bad thing? What's wrong with you? Do you ever feel like just shaking the nail, like, what is wrong with you? But they were looking for an instance where there's a problem. He knew this, right? He said to the man who had the withered hand, step forward. And he said to him, he looked around, He said, is it lawful on the Sabbath day to do good or to do evil? Evil to save life or to kill? But they kept silent. Why? Because they're selfish, right? They don't really know the king of kings. God's grace hasn't permeated their hearts. They don't know the Lord of life. When he looked around at them with anger, this is the Lord, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, he said to the man, stretch out your hand. He stretched it out, and his hand was restored as the other. Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against him how they might destroy him. Doing the good actually angers the ones who are trying to suppress it. Selfishness is like that. And this particular need for preeminence is like that. Putting Christ first means desiring that others do not catch the contagion of this need for preeminence and imitate that bad behavior. Look at verse 11 again, it says, Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. He who does good is of God, and he who does evil has not seen God. This is a practical thing, it's a moral test. We know that those who love God, the children of God, keep his commandments. His commandments aren't burdensome. This particular individual diatrophies is not showing authentic, genuine faith. He's suppressing the things that are good and promoting the things that are evil. We shouldn't be copying those types of people. That's a bad leader, okay? I know that we're in this age where we think our political climate is horrible. There's nasty grams going back and forth. Language, you know, one side is accused of, you know, you're just a hater. The other side is accused of all sorts of other words, and there's a lot going on. Did you know this is nothing new? Did you know that? If I was to read to you about an election, where one individual was accused of being a howling atheist whose presidency would lead to murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest, and then the other side who accused the other individual of being a hideous hermaphroditical character, when would you think that is occurring? What's that? The 1800 election. It was between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, okay? You know, listen, I will say this, whatever the sides are that we have, we don't parade against people with malicious words, okay? We don't call names because we think that's leading, okay? We don't dig in on either side of it. We're not in this I hate everybody who didn't vote for my guy thing, okay, whatever. We have to be very careful, right? As Christians, we have a higher calling. We're not tied to some political party. We're tied to Christ. Did you know that? We have a standard. Treating the brethren as they are worthy of God. That's the standard. Always remember that. Be careful what you hitch your wagon to. because sometimes people, and I know we all have our opinions, and I don't mind talking politics and all that, you know, privately and stuff. I like issues. My major was apologetics. It was like, that's like debate 101, you know? It's like, we like to debate. But not really, sometimes it doesn't always turn out as well. Listen, we want to imitate what is good. what is good, not what is evil. A person like Diotrephes was not doing the right thing, okay? That was not right. You know what that does? That just promotes an atmosphere where people tear each other apart. Okay, that's what Diatrophes was doing. He was preying against people with malicious words. He was excommunicating them. He was pushing them out of the church. He was trying to control, ah, this is not how we ought to live our lives. Putting Christ first means being a good example and a witness. He commends Demetrius, by the way. Look at verse 12, and we'll close with this. Demetrius, on a good note, so I was talking to Kerry on the way over, and I said, well, this is, we call this type of a sermon a polemical message. John is doing an attack, right? But, We can't always come together on the things that we're against. In fact, you can't. You can all be against something, but that doesn't unite you. What brings us together are those doctrines and those teachings that we're for. And what we are for is we put Christ above all. That's what we're for. In fact, it's kind of like the law of love in a way. If you're truly loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, you're not having a problem with some of these other things. Demetrius, it says, has a good testimony from all. And from the truth itself. And also, we bear witness, and you know that our testimony is true. Putting Christ first means being a good example and a witness. Demetrius is a good example. You hear that statement, that people are watching you. They are watching you. Just know that. How you respond, how you live your life, they are watching you. You often hear these professional football players, back in my day, there was a guy who said, I'm not a role model. You were a role model to all these boys that were watching you play, regardless of what you say. You're a role model. We use that term, a sermon in shoes. Indeed, that's true. Good testimony. Goodness triumphs here. Look at what Demetrius is doing. Instead of like Diatrophes, who's suppressing the good, Demetrius has a good testimony, right? The word's built in there. It says he's a martyr. That means you're a good testimony for the truth itself. This is true. The difference between Demetrius and Diatrophes is night and day. night and day. It's one of equipping and enabling the saints to do the Lord's work as opposed to suppressing the saints, crushing the saints, destroying the goodness of God. Sometimes we just have to get out of the way of God's work. Did you know that? We want to control some things. Our tendency is to want to maybe over control and not let the Lord's grace work. Diotrephes was trying to regulate God's grace. Guess what? Can't do that. You can't control that. We can't control those things. On the one hand, goodness is suppressed. On the other, there's joy and rejoicing, right? We can turn this back around as we come back to this initial thing with goodness. Why do we thank God? Why are we thankful? Because he's good, right? As Christians, we rejoice in good things because God is righteous, holy, he's just. We see great joy in rejoicing and following after the truth. You're trusting that the Lord is in your heart, right? That you've, when I say that, that you are one who's trusted in Christ. You've believed on Him, right? You want to be one who follows Christ in everything that you do. That's something. You have a, if you're a young person here, you don't go through your day not thinking about Christ being there, right? You talk to our older saints. The Lord is like with us all the time. Every moment of my day, I mean, I'm sure there's moments where I don't always think about him, but I desire to think of him. I desire to live for him. That's what we ought to be. Not a diatrophies. It's sad that somebody has to be an example like this in the New Testament, right? You have a name like that who's forever, I don't hear too many young children named Atrophies. Kinda goes up there with Judas and Jezebel. So, we're thankful for his word, and I'm so thankful for the Lord's people. What a blessing it is to share with you today. Let's pray. Father in heaven, you're good to us. It's very humbling when we think about how we can get in the way of your work if we're not careful when our pride steps in and our desire to be first. Lord, help us to put you first and have that true joy. Lord, you are the Lord of our life. You're the King of our hearts. Thank you for your people, their patience, and bless us as we go our way this day. In Jesus' name, amen.