Looking at our world from a theological perspective, this is the Theology Central Podcast, making theology central. Good afternoon, everyone. It is Sunday, January the 15th, 2023. It is currently 2.44 p.m. Central Time, and I'm coming to you live from the Theology Central studio located right here in Abilene, Texas. Now, you know something went horribly wrong when you as a pastor find yourself sitting in the sanctuary, it's completely empty, you're completely alone, and you're sitting there talking to yourself. And you're sitting there talking to yourself because you can't figure out what happened. That's where I found myself this afternoon, sitting in the sanctuary of Victory Baptist Church by myself, everyone had left, the sermon was over, everyone had gone home, later pastor, see you pastor, see you tonight, boom, boom, everybody's gone. They're on their cars, they're gone, they're going to get food, they're going home, they're thinking about, I mean, they've already forgotten about the sermon, they're gone, but there I was by myself, standing in the sanctuary, sitting in the sanctuary, walking around the sanctuary, just keep going. What happened? How did that happen? How did that happen? And obviously, that's a pretty good sign that something went wrong during the sermon, and something went wrong during the sermon. It has never happened to me before. I was so just like, wait, this can't be happening. I was so taken back. that I didn't know exactly what to do. Now, for you, from your perspective, you're not gonna think it's a big deal. You probably, other people who listened to the sermon, they may not even have detected that something went wrong of any significance. You may think, oh, okay, that was a mild inconvenience. But for me, it was like, what just happened? I mean, obviously it bothered me enough that when everyone left, I was still walking around the sanctuary by myself. How did that happen? Like, how can you make sure that never happens again? I mean, like, why? And I'm sitting there, you know, arguing with myself. Well, it's your fault. Well, no, I mean, how could I have ever predicted that would have happened? And I'm just going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth with myself. I'm frustrated, I'm irritated. I'm like, that, I just wasted 53 minutes in preaching that sermon. And you know, this was a very important sermon. because it really marked the official beginning of our of our study on discernment for the bible study exercise and you messed it up yeah i mean yes you know you struck out you blew it yeah i mean it's i i i uh i can't figure out what happened so here i am now i'm not i'm not in the sanctuary anymore i'm now sitting in my study i'm alone Once again, I was talking to myself, still frustrated, still irritated. I now have a better understanding of what happened. It doesn't really matter now that I... Well, now you know what happened. Great. It doesn't change anything. But I guess it does demonstrate this very important principle. And I think this is just... I think everyone from... I think everyone in the pew needs to realize this, and everyone in the pulpit needs to realize this. When it comes to the church, There are imperfect and fallible people sitting in the pew, and there are imperfect fallible people standing behind the pulpit. And we're all sinners who are fallible trying to figure it all out. There is a imperfection is the norm within Christianity. And I know there's been lots of discussion about could artificial intelligence, would AI be a better preacher? Would artificial intelligence write better sermons? Would artificial intelligence make for better pastors? And in some ways you could say, well, absolutely, because they wouldn't make these same mistakes. They wouldn't stumble. They wouldn't mispronounce words. They wouldn't get things wrong. I don't know, would you want, in a sense, and this is just kind of my own, just thinking this through, I'm going to explain everything that happened, but I wonder, do we really want perfection preaching sermons? On some ways, I kind of want to say, well, yes, obviously. I want it to be as perfect and as accurate as it can be, but on the other hand, I think the imperfection in preaching and the imperfection in the listening is really what the church is supposed to be about. It's sinful, messy, broken people trying to figure out how to live out our faith In the one true god and trying to live out of faith that we are saved not because of what we do But because of what christ did it's never going to be perfect. It's always going to be messy and there's going to be Scandal and there's going to be sin and there's going to be failure and there's going to be You know hurt and there's going to be pain and there's going to be misunderstanding Is it that is in some ways? Am I romanticizing our failure? I'm not trying to do that, but I think it really captures the essence of what Christianity is. It's sinful people. It's imperfect people. Now that doesn't make me feel any better. Like on one hand, I can offer this kind of romanticized version, but the reality is I was greatly upset by what happened. So here we are. Here I am. I don't know where you are, wherever you may be. It's Sunday afternoon. I have to go back to that same sanctuary, stand behind that same pulpit in just a couple of hours. And then I'll be expected to once again, preach and do the best job. So I've gotta, I've gotta in a sense, forget what I've done wrong, but, and I don't even really know if I did anything wrong. It was just a weird, Set of circumstances. It's just it was just a weird thing that happened. Let me explain. All right today was the kickoff the official beginning of our six to seven week study on the subject of discernment and oh, I I was excited I Wanted to use the the sermon this morning to really kick this off I thought it was very important and I was even more excited to get to church this morning and because I wanted to share with everyone kind of the theory, the hypothesis that I came up with late last night. And if you listened to late last night, you heard me talk about Satan's discernment. And I couldn't wait to get to church because I knew that 99.9% of the people in the church wasn't listening last night. I mean, I can look at the statistics afterwards, and it'll tell me which states people are listening, which country, and there was very little in the local area. I think there may have been one or two, but I knew for the most part, nobody in the church even heard what I spoke of last night. So I was excited to get there, and I had this way in which I wanted to build it, right? I didn't want to come in and go, Here's my theory. I wanted to walk everyone into the theory so that they would discover it the same way I discovered. I wanted to lead them to it. But to lead them to it, I needed, well, a very specific thing to work correctly. I needed the Merriam-Webster dictionary to work correctly. That's what I needed. And for some weird reason, everything went horribly wrong. So here is what I want you to understand. Today was the beginning of the study on discernment. And I wanted to demonstrate that really the first example, really the first reference to discernment is found in the actions of the serpent slash Satan. So really in the Bible, the first example of discernment in action is that of Satan and what he did in regards to Eve to get her to partake of the forbidden fruit. That in a roundabout way, that's an example of discernment. It may be a negative one, but it demonstrates discernment. Now, I wanted to show this by focusing on Genesis 3, verse 1, where we read these words. Now, the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. Subtle. So I wanted to use the word subtle to demonstrate to everyone that the word subtle is very much connected to the concept of discernment. So Satan, or the serpent, we could read, now the serpent was more discerning, the serpent had more discernment than any beast of the field. Now, this discernment is not in a positive way, it's obviously, it's gonna be, well, the power of discernment is just going to be used in a negative way. In other words, Discernment, in one sense, is kind of morally neutral, right? You can either use that discernment for good or you could use that discernment for bad. And Satan is the first example of using that discernment in a negative way. That's what I wanted to demonstrate. So, I was going to look up the definition of subtle and get people there. So, I did exactly what I did last night. I grabbed my iPad, I looked up the word subtle, right? I looked up the word subtle. And if I can find it here, okay. Now the right one is showing up. This is funny. Okay. So I grabbed my iPad and I'm like, okay, subtle. All right. And I looked up Merriam-Webster. Now it's all, it's showing up perfectly every time now. All right. Let's see if I can get it to show up wrong. Okay. Now, now it's showing up right every single time. All right. Uh, let's see here. This is hilarious, but I'll explain what happened. Yeah. It's showing up perfect every time now, every single time. All right. Let's see if I can get it to. All right, here we go. Now here's the wrong one. Okay, now we finally get it to show up. All right, that's crazy. This morning, I couldn't get the right one to show up, only when I say the wrong one, a different definition that was not going to get me to where I wanted to go. So here's what happened. On Saturday night, I grabbed my iPad, I looked up the word subtle for Merriam-Webster, all right? And I was led to this. All right, subtle. Now, if you'll notice, the King James is spelled S-U-B-T-I-L, right? Now, when I typed it in last night without even realizing it, I ended up with the definition for S-U-B-T-I-L-E. S-U-B-T-I-L-E, right? So it's spelled a little bit different, which we can understand the King James obviously spells it a little bit different than other translations. In fact, if we, well, we'll look it up and how it shows up. So all of a sudden you have, in a sense, subtle S-U-B-T-I-L, or you have, let me go back to this one dictionary. How does it have, S-u-b-t-l-e So you have all these different spellings, right? So one I ended up with s-u-b-t-l-e I ended up with s-u-b-t-i-l-e and I ended up with s-u-b-t-i-l without the e So I wasn't even paying attention last night, I was just going through and like, okay, oh, here's subtle, boom, found it. All right, now, last night, this is what I found. For S-U-B-T-I-L-E, S-U-B-T-I-L-E. All right, are you ready? S-U-B-T-I-L-E. Subtle, elusive, cunning, Crafty, all right? That doesn't really get me to where I want to go, but okay. Then the next one has, in fact, the way the Merriam-Webster had it broken down last night, again for the word S-U-B-T-I-L-E, was two definitions. The first one, number one, subtle or elusive, they put those together. Number two, they had two different definitions, A and B, all right? First, cunning, crafty, and then they had this word. They had this word. Sagacious. Sagacious. Sagacious. So then when you look up sagacious, you find this, of keen and farsighted penetration and judgment discerning. So Satan, more subtle, or the serpent, more subtle, but Satan utilizing it, was utilizing the serpent, was of keen and farsighted penetration and judgment and discerning. So this helps prove definitively my thesis that Satan was the first example of discernment. He was discerning, he was sagacious, he had keen, farsighted penetration and judgment. He was able to see exactly what this was, like the idea here, he knew exactly what the fall was going to do. He was not looking at the immediate, he was looking into the distance, he had the right, in a sense, perception and discernment, knowing exactly how to get Eve from, in a sense, looking at all the trees to looking to the tree that she could not have. And then, if you go back, again, this definition for the word S-U-B-T-I-L-E was subtle, elusive, cunning, crafty, sagacious, and then, look, the very next word, discerning. So Merriam-Webster literally gave me discerning right there in the definition. And that's all I wanted to do was to demonstrate to everyone, hey, look up subtle in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, and I'm gonna show you that subtle here is connected to the word discerning. Satan was using discernment, but in a negative way. The first example we have of discernment is that of Satan using it in a negative way. And that's exactly what I did last night. It was simple, it was easy. I typed in subtle. I did not realize when I typed in subtle, because I think I spelled it like it is in the King James, S-U-B-T-I-L, that it gave me actually S-U-B-T-I-L-E. I wasn't even paying attention to the spelling. I was just looking at the definition. And I'm like, okay, that's what I'm going to do tomorrow. I'll get to church. I'll get everyone to Genesis 3. I'll say, hey, you see that word subtle? Hey, this demonstrates that Satan is the first example of discernment, and everybody would be like, wait, what? And I'd be like, let's look up the definition of subtle. Well, I looked up the definition of subtle this morning during the sermon, and guess where I ended up? For some weird reason, the dictionary, Google, because sometimes it just says, did you mean, and you're not even paying attention because you're in the middle of preaching. All of a sudden, I end up at the definition for S-U-B-T-L-E. S-U-B-T-L-E. Remember over here, I had the definition for S-U-B-T-I-L-E. All right? So, now when I looked up subtle, I'm looking at everyone going, wait, as soon as the screen popped up, I'm in the middle of my sermon and immediately my mind goes into full blown panic because I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute. This is not the same definition. It has delicate, elusive, obscure. Clever indirect having or involved keen perception now Once it said having keen perception. Well, that's very similar to discernment So I could kind of draw the connection, but I wanted to see the word discernment. It has highly skillful expert, cunningly, ingenious, artful, crafty, insidiously. It has all of these other words, but guess what word it never uses? It doesn't use the word discerning. And I'm like, what just happened? What why why just occurred how did this happen? And so it all comes down to these variations in spelling Which is just bizarre to me and I didn't even realize it right because again I have the the first definition that came up and I without even realizing was s u b t i l e Which gives me sagacious and discerning Okay, then sagacious gives me the definition of keen, farsighted penetration and judgment discerning. So now I'm connecting subtle with discerning in two different ways. So now I'm really building my case, but I'm not paying any attention that, wait a minute, that's S-U-B-T-I-L-E. I thought I was looking at S-U-B-T-I-L. Well, what, what just, I wasn't even paying attention, but some, for some weird reason last night, it just immediately took me to S U B T I L E. It didn't even, that's just where it took me. And for some weird reason this morning, it took me to S U B T L E. I'm like, what's happening? But I didn't realize, like, I never even dawned on me, check the spelling. It never even, like, there was nothing registering in my mind. And I know what you're thinking. Why would you get so confused? I'm standing there trying to preach. I'm like, I've already, I'm like five minutes ahead in my thinking, right? Because this is, I'm not even giving this much thought because this is supposed to be simple. You grab the iPad, you tell everyone to grab their mobile devices. You tell everyone to look it up. But even this morning when I asked everyone to look it up, if you'll go back and listen to the sermon, nobody came up with the other definition. They were all, I don't know how they were spelling it, but they were all coming up with basically the same thing. Because I was thinking someone would be like, no, no, no, I found the one you're looking for. Nobody, nobody. I kept, nobody could find it. And I was like, what is wrong? Because I think everyone was spelling it in a different way. Now, if we pull up the English translations of Genesis 3, verse 1, and again, I did not even realize, like, I probably, if I wasn't, if I wasn't sitting there behind a pulpit trying to preach, I don't think any of this would have occurred. But, all right, if I look, like the New International, the serpent was more crafty, so that wouldn't have helped me. The New Living Translation, the serpent was the shrewdest of the wild, and that wouldn't have helped me. The ESV, crafty. Berean Study Bible, crafty. King James, subtle. S-U-B-T-I-L. New King James, now the serpent was more cunning. New American, cunning. New American Standard 1995, crafty. New American Standard 1977, crafty. Legacy Standard, crafty. Amplified, now look here. The serpent was more crafty, subtle, S-U-B-T-L-E, S-U-B-T-L-E. Now, if I would have looked up S-U-B-T-L-E, guess what? That would have led me to the definition that was not going to help me, right? Because I didn't need the definition for S-U-B-T-L-E. I needed the definition for S-U-B-T-I-L-E. But the whole time I'm looking going, why is it giving me this definition? I need the other definition. And I knew something was wrong as soon as the screen popped up because like this one pops up, it's very simple. There's basically two definitions, number one and number two, and two has an A and a B. So there's really a total of three lines. The other one, It's like half a page long. There's probably 50 lines of things. I mean, like it's, it's, and it's completely different. And as soon as the other one came up, I'm like, what did I do wrong? What did I do wrong? What did I do wrong? And I think I kept typing it in the search engine during the sermon. I'm trying to talk, but I keep typing up going. It keeps. It keeps popping up the wrong one. And I'm like, what's happening here? What's happening? I'm going in complete panic while I'm trying to preach. I'm like, I'm just trying to come up with what do I do now? Because I wanted to demonstrate to everyone that the first example of discernment in the Bible is demonstrated by Satan. And Satan used discernment. to clearly understand not only the consequences of the fall, I think he knew exactly what was going to happen, or at least have some idea, but he clearly understood and perceived with keen insight, with keen foresight, exactly what to do to get Eve from not looking at all the trees she could have, but getting her to focus on the one she couldn't have. Then convincing her that nothing was going to happen, and then convincing her that it was a good thing to have. Very simple hypothesis, I thought was super important, I thought rather profound. but it all blew up because of this weird dictionary thing. And I've never had that happen, because I've looked up words a million times during a sermon from the Merriam-Webster dictionary. I've never had it like, wait, why is this definition so different? But I did not realize that it was S-U-B-T-I-L-E versus S-U-B-T-L-E. When I'm looking at the Bible, which is S-U-B-T-I-L, And I didn't even realize that I wasn't even actually looking. I mean, it was all utterly confusing and perplexing, and especially trying to figure out in the middle of the summer. If I'm just sitting here in my study, I would have been like, wait, what's going on? Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, different spellings, different spellings. Okay, which spelling do I need to remember? S-U-B-T-I-L-E. Remember that. And then when I look it up and someone said, well, you should have cut and pasted it in your notes. Well, in my notes, I just had other definitions of, I had definitions of discernment. I didn't even think I needed to cut and paste it for my notes because I wanted everyone else to look it up with me. See, I wanted, I wanted in a sense to walk everyone through it because I wanted everyone to go. sagacious, and I wanted them on their own screens to see the word discerning, and then they would be like, oh, subtle, discerning, they're connected. To be subtle, right, to be, in a sense, subtle, has this idea of being cunning and crafty, okay, that's Satan, but it also means to be discerning. So, Satan's discernment was on display in Genesis 3, and his discernment clearly overwhelmed and was greater than Eve's discernment. So what can we learn from what Satan did? One, so that we can protect ourselves from that kind of wrong discernment, but then we can take it and flip it, and we can use it in a right way so that we can be, in a sense, as wise as a serpent, but harmless as a dove. I thought it was a brilliant idea, and I thought it was a very important way to start our discussion on discernment, because I don't think anyone ever talks about Satan's discernment. But it all went horribly, horribly wrong. So if you want to look it up for yourself look up subtle s-u-b t-i-l-e And then you'll find the definition that I wanted everyone to see and you'll find subtle Elusive And what's even funny number one? So you look up subtle which is um, and then underneath that for number one, it's subtle, but it's spelled s-u-b t-l-e not t-i-l-e Right? And then you'll find cunning, crafty, sagacious. That's the word I wanted everyone to get to. And then right next to that is discerning. It's discerning. And discerning is to show insight and understanding. Or, and then, well, a discerning critic. That's what I want you to see. That's what I wanted to accomplish. and everything went horribly, horribly wrong. Now, I have been told by at least one person that the sermon was still good. It still got the point across. They don't think it really impacted it. I'm still utterly horrified that it went, because I've never had that happen. I mean, why would I need, I mean, why do I need to save anything? I know it because I want everyone to look it up. But what was weird is when everyone looked it up, not one person, found themselves with the definition of S-U-B-T-I-L-E. No, not one person. They all find themselves with looking at, and I don't know what popped up on their screen, but when I was doing it earlier, I was just hopping in like, I think I spelled it just like the King James had it, Genesis 3, 1. S-U-B-T-I-L, that's the way the King James has it. I think whenever I type that in like a Google search, it immediately took me this morning to S-U-B-T-L-E. Where last night, it immediately took me to S-U-B-T-I-L-E. Why on last night it took me to this one and this morning it took me to the opposite one I don't and so therefore I would say I wasn't really paying attention to the spelling. I was just like type it in google There it is. Boom, like just whichever the first one shows up Not even realizing wait a minute. These are in a sense different spellings different variations. You could say You know, are are these aren't you see are these different? Uh What's this one? Okay, well, it doesn't say here, okay. Okay, I thought maybe they showed how somehow different forms, but no, I mean, it just seems to be different spellings. And all of that led to mass confusion. See, now AI would not make that mistake. AI would not make that mistake. So that's where AI would probably be a better preacher. I made that mistake. I don't know if that's going to ruin the beginning of this Bible. I wanna do it, I wanna do over. I wanna do it over, but I can't do it over. If it was a podcast, I would have just deleted it. But if it's a sermon, I mean, I could delete it, but I mean, when am I going to, am I gonna re-preach it again? I mean, it's already preached for the people there. So like, I just have to live with it. So I thought I would turn on the microphone and at least try to explain to you what went wrong. What went wrong? I was not And we'll use this now. I'm gonna i'm gonna use my failure. I wasn't discerning enough To catch the fact that i'm looking at different spellings which have different, the dictionaries giving slightly different definitions are not giving me exactly what I need. I wasn't discerning enough to realize, wait, wait, wait, look, look, look, that's spelled differently. S-U-B-T-L-E, S-U-B, I gotta make sure I look at it, I-T-L-E. And then the King James has expelled just S-U-B-T-I-L, I believe, right? So, you've got to figure out which spelling gives you the definition that you had the night before. And I was not discerning. I did not have keen observation. I did not have keen insight to see what was happening, because guess what? I panicked. Because I was thinking, wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm supposed to be, I've got to try to now get people to that conclusion, but I'm not going to have the proof in front of me. That's not the way I preach. I don't want people to just believe me because I say so. I want them to see it for themselves. So then I had to just kind of do a lot of impromptu and add some illustrations and just really try to do what I could to save it. But that I wasn't discerning enough. And sometimes we lose our sense of discernment when we're right caught up in the moment because of either emotion or pressure or circumstances or a situation. And I think we can learn from this. I think we can learn from my mistake. What I needed to do is like, hey guys, we have a problem. I need to find out why I cannot, this literally what I should have done. Hey guys, something went wrong right here. I've got to find this definition. I need you to help me. Now, I don't know if it would have just derailed the entire sermon, that's the only problem, but I think it would have been more beneficial, maybe. I don't know. You can judge the sermon for yourself and tell me what you think, but that's what happened this morning. I wanted to demonstrate that the first example of discernment is found in Satan's actions in the garden. He was cunning, he was crafty, he was sagacious, and he was discerning. And he was able to overcome any discernment Eve may have had. Not only did he get her to focus on what she couldn't have, he got her to partake of it, got her to take that which she partook of, give to her husband, and basically throw the entire world under the curse of the fall, and all of us under the curse of original sin and depravity. But in the midst of trying to show his discernment, I demonstrated a failure to be discerning And the subtle changes in spelling of a word S-u-b-t-i-l s-u-b-t-i-l-e s-u-b-t-l-e Slight difference so in in the most ironic I mean, I mean how ironic is it how how kind of I I don't know I guess in some ways it's kind of poetic right in a kind of a twisted way Discerning is about that ability to see the obscure, right? To have that skill to see what people may miss. And right there while I'm preaching about being discerning, I'm literally missing this very small details that I'm not looking up the exact spelling of the right word. So I demonstrated in my preaching on discernment a complete lack of discernment and a complete lack of being subtle and a complete lack of being sagacious. And I did not show keen insight. I was not able to show the ability between these small variations. And those small variations will lead, even though we could still kind of get to the same conclusion, It's far easier to get to the conclusion when people can open up the dictionary, see subtle, and see discerning right there as one of the definitions. Then there's no question there's a link. I had to try to go a roundabout way. Well, the word prudent, the Hebrew word for subtle can be translated prudent. What is prudent? Okay, it's very similar to discerning and then under one of the definitions for subtle it talked about keen insight I'm like, well see that's discerning so I I was able to kind of prove it but nowhere close to the way I wanted to and Why did it all fall apart? Because I wasn't discerning I Didn't catch it. I didn't see it. I didn't observe it. I Why didn't I see it? Why didn't I observe it? Because at that very moment, all I could see was, oh, I'm messing up. Oh wait, this is, I'm embarrassed. Wait, I gotta make this work right. Wait, I've got this pressure on me. I got these people sitting here looking at me. I gotta make it work. And as a result, I failed in the area of discernment. So, in a roundabout way, the first official lesson on discernment was an example of me failing to be discerning. That's kind of ironic, isn't it? I mean, don't you think? I mean, and not to quote the song, but you get the idea, right? I mean, isn't it? I mean, and it kind of just a kind of a weird like, haha, like jokes on you. You're telling everyone about what discernment is and this ability to perceive and this ability to see even the smallest detail while you're literally missing the subtle detail that you're looking at the definition for S-U-B-T-L-E when you need to be looking at the definition for S-U-B-T-I-L-E. Am I the only one who finds that funny? I find that hilarious. I find it embarrassing, but I find it hilarious. So there you have it. I hope that made sense. I hope that got you to where we, where we need to go. It was just funny. Even in this one, I got ready to look it up. It was once again, it was only giving me the right one because it was weird. Like Google acts weird. Like sometimes you type in. you just start typing it in and it gives you that, that the definition, and it's just, it's taking you to the word, I guess it thinks you meant. And I, and I wanted it to take me to the wrong definition. And at the beginning of this, they kept sending me to the right. I'm like, don't give me the right definition. I saved that one. Give me the wrong one. And I had, I literally had to leave, um, one browser and go to another internet browser. And then finally it gave me the wrong, wrong one for our purposes. So even in trying to correct this there was a little bit of confusion there because once again until well Until I realized wait a minute. Once again at the the web browser is doing this weird thing. It's like it's it's Predicting it's it's almost like I know what you want and it's like no. No, no, that's not what I want I don't want that. I want this and and I know the The search browser is probably going, well, then learn how to spell, right? There's difference. But I think it was just assuming which spelling I wanted. And just giving me, because in many cases I was literally looking up say S-U-B-T-I-L and it was giving me S-U-B-T-L-E when I really wanted S-U-B-T-I-L-E. It's just so random and bizarre. I don't know how I found myself in that mess. Last night, there wasn't a problem. I did it live on the air with no problem. But this morning and well, even this afternoon, it kind of went a little haywire again. Imperfection. So now discerning, I can remind you if you didn't hear this morning. Um, hang on. Where did I, where did I put it? Yeah, I may, I may not have saved it this morning, but, um, Yeah, I thought I saved it this morning, but okay, here we go. Discernment. The ability to obtain sharp perceptions or to judge well. See, the ability to obtain sharp perceptions. I didn't demonstrate sharp perceptions and the spelling of the variations of spelling for subtle. The quality of being able to grasp and comprehend what is obscure. I did not see, even though it was a little bit obscure, I did not perceive it. Discernment is the ability to recognize small details accurately and tell the difference between similar things and make intelligent judgments. I did not see the difference between small things. S-U-B-T-I-L-E, S-U-B-T-L-E, S-U-B-T-I-L. Those are slight differences, variations. I did not distinguish the difference. By not distinguishing the difference, I found myself temporarily confused and unable to prove the point that I wanted to prove due to a lack of discernment. So, in the first message on discernment, I became the example of poor discernment while we were trying to learn about Satan's use of discernment that was done so well that it, well, took Eve from someone following God and obeying God to someone preoccupied with what she couldn't have to disobeying God, partaking of the fruit, and giving the fruit to her husband. All right, you can tell me what you think about all of this, email me, newsifatyahoo.com, newsifatyahoo.com, that's newsifatyahoo.com, newsifatyahoo.com. All right, I'm gonna go check the score on the football game, and then I may come back up here and do one more broadcast before I get to church. All right, thanks for listening, I hope This was helpful and I hope it clarifies everything. So if you're sitting there already emailing me going, how did you mess up this morning? What are you doing? You're pathetic. You can just stop. I'm already acknowledging that I messed up. Hopefully this clarification, what one saved me from having to read those really rude emails and number two, help give an example. of what discernment isn't, because I demonstrated a lack of this morning. Thanks for listening. God bless.