Wake from my sleep I know your angels Have been watching over me And I give thanks to you above For your unfailing love And when I'm down This whole world's out of control The only thing that lifts me up Is your unfailing love When the storms of life run my ship aground And all my dreams go down And there you are to lift me up With your unfailing love In the shores of God I find my ship aground And all my dreams go down And there you are to lift me up With your unfailing love And I give thanks to You above for Your unwavering love. If you have your Bibles, go ahead and turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 10. Ecclesiastes chapter 10. I've got a very simple thought on my heart tonight. It's one that I have preached before along the same lines. So I've kind of hesitated even as I studied. The Lord kept bringing me back to this verse, and I would try to leave it, go in a different direction, look at other things, and the Lord kept bringing me back to the same verse. So this is what God has placed on my heart. I trust it will be a blessing to us here tonight. Just one verse. Ecclesiastes 10, verse 1. Dead flies caused the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savor. Showed us a little folly hymn that is in reputation for wisdom and honor. You know, you think about the apothecary and just give you Brad O'Neill's definition of what an apothecary is. It was a primitive pharmacist. And of course, if you went and looked up, maybe in the Hebrew text, what you find is it's one, it is a mix of compound, a mix or compound oil and ointment. So, you know, it's one, an apothecary is one, he's a spice mixer for medicinal purposes. More often than not, not exclusively, but more often than not, it was for medicinal purposes. You know, he was a maker of sweet smelling savers. He's a maker of perfumes. So, If you can imagine that, you know, we buy perfume, you ladies buy perfume or cologne, we might say, and you don't buy it because you want to stink. You buy it because you want to smell better. You want to get some attention maybe when you walk into the room. Somebody look, who's that walked in? Smells good. And so, you know, if all of a sudden it turned, It would have an adverse effect. Maybe you ladies buy fragrances for your home and you want your home to smell good. Maybe you buy apple cinnamon. People walk in your house, first thing they get when they walk in, that's what catches their attention. They smell that apple cinnamon. But can you imagine walking in one day and that stuff is turned and you walk in and it smells like vinegar? Just rancid smell and you smell that and you say, my goodness. I want you to picture that because I want you to get the reaction. The reaction you would have if you walked into your home expecting apple cinnamon and you get vinegar. Rancid. You'll turn your nose up. Maybe have to walk out of the room. Or it may be, I've got to clean my entire house. Isn't that? That smell, I've got to get that smell out of here before somebody comes along and smells that. So, immediately we would turn our nose up. So, Lord said a little folly does the same thing to those in reputation. of honor, so you think about your reputation, how someone knows you, their opinion of you, what they think. So I said, I don't care what people think about me. Well, we should. We're God's children. We should care what others think about us. Not that we change who we are because of people, but we change who we are because we are God's children. and we want to represent Him, and we want to be more like Christ. And so, when you think just a little folly has that type of reaction to your reputation, well, what is folly? Folly is a word that simply means foolishness, and really, when you search it back, what you find is that word has its origin from the same word as evil. It's where it comes from. Evil foolishness. you might say. So, just a little of that. A little evil foolishness, you know, that's going to cause your reputation to take a great blow. You know, as a child of God, we want others to see us and desire to have what we have. It won't take much to mess that up. People are watching us. I'll have it everywhere we go. When they find out that you are a Christian, when they find out you're a child of God, even when they find out that you're a member of the church here at Clear Branch that is attached to your name, and now you have that reputation about you, and it does not take much to mess that up. And it's not just your reputation at stake at that point. It's the reputation of the church as well. That's why we have church offenses. And when someone makes a church offense, we're to apologize before the church because we've done the church wrong. It's not just about me. It's just about my name. So I think about Jacob. And Jacob, his name meant trickster, subplanter, deceiver. And God changed His name. You're going to be known as someone different. I'm going to make you a great nation. You are going to represent Me. And so God changed His name to Israel. But you know, you read about the children of Israel, and there were times whenever they would go, as God would say, they went on whoring after other gods, and He would refer to them as Jacob. But whatever they were doing His will, they were walking close to Him. He referred to them as Israel, His bride, His wife. Jacob went to a place where he said, you know, I'm going to return to Bethel. And he made a vow to God that I would return to Bethel. But after years that God held up His end, so to speak, of the deal, he decided he would go down and live in a place called Shalom in Canaan. And he went there and he dwelt there and he allowed some things to start happening that he knew better. We know that because he ended up cleansing his house of those things later on. He allowed false gods to come into his home. You know, his family, they began to dress like the world and all, and he allowed those things. And later on, he said, let's do, let's change that, put on other garments, and let's get the gods out of our house. Joey allowed his daughter to go and hang out with the other girls of the land. I don't know all about those girls, but I won't tell us anything about them, but they might have been the wrong crowd that she was hanging around with. Might not have been, but Brother Mike, there was a man there that took her and took advantage of her, defiled her. And then her brothers decided to go out and exact revenge upon them. And Jacob made a statement in Genesis 34 and verse 30. He said, you have troubled me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the land. Of course, them sons said, what are we supposed to do? Just let them take advantage of our sister like that? And I look at that, Brother Allen, and I think, well, Jacob might have, he should have swept around his own door first because he was allowing some things in his home that shouldn't be there in the first place. Next thing I know, now he stinks in the nostrils of all the people of that land. A little foolishness here and there, all of a sudden his reputation, it stinks. You know, I believe here at Clear Branch, we want to be Christ-like for the most part. I know everybody here. I feel like I know you pretty intimately, maybe some more than others, but I feel like that we want to be Christ-like. And we want to have a good name among the inhabitants of the land. You know, God placed Clear Branch right here for a reason. He didn't put Clear Branch over in Brooklyn somewhere. He didn't put Clear Branch in the Dixie community or anywhere else. He put Clear Branch right here because he wanted this church right here so that we could be a blessing to the inhabitants of the land. He wants us to be a blessing to our neighbors and then, of course, to go out from there and be a blessing to the world. But he wants us to start right here to be a blessing in the community And I believe we all want that. We want to be known as godly people. When somebody sees me at the grocery store, I want them to know he is a godly person and he represents Clear Branch. And I want that to be good and not something that people turn their nose up at. But I'll tell you something, for the most part, Maybe that's our desire. We want to let our light shine. God told us that. But you know what, Brother Mike? He didn't just say, let your light shine, did He? He said, let it so shine. Can I ask you this? How much do you want your light to shine? Just a little bit? Or a lot? Brother Brad, I want to be known as a Christian, but I don't want to be known as a fanatic. I don't want people to look at me and say, I'm over much about anything. God said, let it so shine. I'm going to tell you something, you're in control of that. You're in control of your own light. God saved you. He put a light within you. And He said, you take that light and you put it on the candlestick, that no doubt being part of the church, we've placed our little light upon the candlestick. And He said, you let it so shine before others. Let that light so shine. You know, a little folly, just a little foolishness, a little evil, a little foolishness will cover that light under a bushel. A little folly will cause your reputation to stink. It doesn't take much to ruin your spiritual influence, at least your positive influence. Sometimes it can be damaged permanently. We probably all know those. We could go back and think of some that God has taken and what we call taken and put them on the shelf and don't use them anymore. But let me tell you what Jesus said about it. He said, they are salt that has lost their savor. Once salt has lost its savor, I don't believe you can get it back. So Jesus said this about it. He said, they are good for nothing to be cashed out. trodden under the foot of men." Now certainly we don't want to get there, do we? We don't want to get to a place where our reputation just cannot hold up and people, you know, as a lot, he would go out and he would speak to those sons-in-laws and he seemed like one that malked to them. Seemed foolish. So he says here, a little folly, It don't have to be big, huge things. Just little foxes spoil the vines. We're not just talking about one. I don't want to encourage anybody here to go out and wallow in the gutters of sin. Those big sins are big sins. But don't just take big sins to ruin our reputation. The small thing, something as simple as a bad attitude, can cause your reputation to stink. The movie, Facing the Giants. Church up in Georgia made the movie, Facing the Giants. Maybe some of you've watched that movie. And I love that part on that movie where the coach says, your attitude is the aroma of life. You're going to have a pretty hard time separating that from Scripture. But he goes on to say, if your attitude stinks, everything else does. Of course, then there's a comedy part where he sniffs the guy, says, how's your attitude? Maybe we need to examine ourselves. How's our attitude? How's your attitude? The aroma of the apothecary, it was for peace, for healing, for anointing. And all was lost if it had a stinking savor. It's no good. In fact, you can turn and look, and really, there is a recipe for anointing oil, Exodus chapter 3. And I've always just thought, well, you know, God used olive oil to anoint with, but there's a recipe for it. for the high priest, and this is all ceremonial. I'm not putting us under any ceremonial law here tonight. But God gave a recipe for it, and He said that it was to be crafted after the art of the apothecary. and it was to be, well, olive oil, I guess, was your base oil, and then you were to take myrrh and cinnamon and calamus and cassia. Cassia, I believe. I believe that's how you say it. It's hard to pronounce, but you take those oils and he gave the amounts. The cinnamon part he said, you know, half as much as everything else. God knew what he was doing. He gave a specific recipe because he said you're going to anoint in the congregation whenever the people come together, that's going to be the first thing that gets their attention. So if you can imagine that, they go to what we would say go to church, but they went to meet with the congregation, and they smelled that beautiful, wonderful smell. And they began to associate that with going to worship. Somebody's job was to make sure that it all smelled the way it was supposed to. Now, could you imagine you get there one morning for worship, And all that anointing oil had turned rancid. The Lord said, it's holy. And He also said, don't make anything else. Don't go and copy that recipe down and make it for yourself. He said, that's holy. Separate it to the Lord. And could you imagine going there? Been going there for some time. You've associated that smell with being there. And all of a sudden you go in and it's just rancid. I mean, it stinks. You get a chicken and there's dead flies in the ointment. There's dead flies in the oil. What do you think the reaction of the people would have been? Or God's reaction to it. For allowing it to get to that point. If we can kind of picture that then, Imagine how the world views the congregation today if they witness a little folly in us. Maybe see us one way at church and see us a different way whenever we're away from church. A little folly. Can we be perfect? No. Not this side of heaven we can't, but then again, Jesus said, Be holy even as my father which is in heaven is holy. He gave us something to shoot for, didn't he? Something to strive for. Can we strive to be blameless? Absolutely we can. If we will purpose in our heart, then we can live in a way before God that we please Him each and every day of our life. And when others see us, they see one that is blameless and trying to be what God wants them to be. And I tell you, that person shines a light. Let others see that. It brings glory to our Father which is in heaven. So, can we be perfect? No, but we can strive to be. Proverbs 20 verse 11 says this, he says, even a child is known by his doings, whether his works be pure and whether they be right. Even a child. Might think it's young, but well, you know, I plan on being a good person and I plan on doing what's right somewhere down the road. But right now I'm young and I want to do my own thing where even right now, your reputation is being made. Even a child. Can they overcome that? Absolutely they can. If they have something going on in their life and they make mistakes, look, young people are going to make mistakes, old people are going to make mistakes. We can overcome those things, but still, it does something to our reputation. And so he says, if you have a reputation for honor, a little folly can mess that up. Even the young Christians. You young people tonight, don't ruin your reputation, your influence. Let God be able to use you in a great way. Don't spend a night in foolishness. Don't be quick to speak without thinking. A lot of times it's just simply our tongue that gets us in trouble. Don't take much of that. People begin to associate us with one that says things we shouldn't say. Susan Ann, I just want to encourage you. You are a child of God. I'm a child of God. We need to act like it. You pray for me, because with all my heart, I want to honor my Savior. With all my heart, every day. I don't want to take a break. I don't want to say, okay, today is the day. I just want to do my thing. Today is the day I'm going to forget about being a Christian because I want to go and have fun and do, you know, whatever my heart's desire would be. You pray for me. Every day of my life. And let's pray one for another. Every day of our life that we can go out into the world and we can represent our Savior, our Lord, our King. We can represent Him well.