Amen. Thank you so much, Pastor, for the wonderful time together. Thank you, young people, for your attendance. It's been good, wonderful. It's been good for our youth group. We have a handful of teenagers here with us. Many had to work and couldn't come, but we've got a handful that did get to come, and I appreciate that so very much. The infamous Titus Bailey that I was talking about in my message last night, he's here in the building today. And so the offering should go up, amen, amen, and having him here with us. And we sure are glad to bring our youth group here. I appreciate Brother Williams. Let me just say this about this meeting. I love the way it's moderated. I love the way it's organized. I love the spirit of the church. I appreciate the music so very much. And I don't have to preach here next year or the year after that, but I think I want to make this an annual event for our young people. Preacher, I want our young people to come back and be good for all of us pastors to take that in consideration and put that on our calendar and make this a part of our days for the future. I appreciate the good liberty to preach last night. God really spoke to my heart about the message and I was following him as best as I could and I appreciate the leadership he gave me and the fellowship of the church and the liberty that we had in the pulpit last night. Would I be overstretching to ask you to go back to Ecclesiastes today? I want you to do that with me, if you would please. Since some of y'all don't know what I preached on last night, I'm just going to re-preach it again this morning. Ecclesiastes chapter 10 instead, and not really hooking in as much into the topic that we had last night, but through prayer in the course of the evening and in the morning. I feel led to go to this subject matter. It's a topical subject. Much of the subject matter of Ecclesiastes is topical in nature. And so I want you to turn with me to chapter 10. I'm just going to let you be seated this morning. I want you to turn with me to chapter number 10. We'll pray to open the message here in just a moment. Ecclesiastes chapter 10, and let's look together at verse number 10. Ecclesiastes 10 and verse number 10. If you have your place there, say amen. If the iron be blunt, and he do not wet the edge, then must he put to more strength. But wisdom is profitable to direct. I want to preach for just a little while this morning on dullness. Let's go to God in a word of prayer. Father, I pray that you'd use us this morning. Empty me of self and I pray that you'd help me to be mindful of the Holy Spirit, His direction for this message, His direction for this service. Speak to us. Speak through us. Speak in us. I ask, Lord, that you'd use the Word of God. It's not my education or my tenure or charisma or personality that matters where I stand. I pray that the Word of God would have preeminence in the hearts of these young people as it's preached this morning. We'll thank you for that. In the name that is above every name, in Jesus' name, amen and amen. Verse number 10, reading it one more time, just to gather a greater appreciation of what Solomon is saying here. King Solomon said in verse number 10, if the iron be blunt and he do not wet the edge, then must he put to more strength. But wisdom is profitable to direct. The Word of God addresses a real problem in all of our lives in verse number 10, and I think it's metaphorical as King Solomon is speaking to us about dullness here. I think that he's talking more about life than he is about the tools that we use in daily life. When we use a tool often, that tool has the potential of becoming dull. And Solomon taps into that understanding in verse number 10. The Hebrew mind is a working mind. And when Solomon wrote the Ecclesiastes, it was written for Hebrews to understand and appreciate. And the Hebrew mind appreciates a well-maintained tool. As a matter of fact, over and over again in the Old Testament and in fact in the New Testament, we are reminded of our responsibility to tend to the tools that God puts into our hands. Jesus likened the kingdom of God to a plow. Over and over again, knives and axes and things of that nature are brought into the loop of our understanding to illustrate the lives that we live. In preparation for this message some weeks ago, I was reminded of the words of 1 Samuel 13 19-21 where I came across a list of six tools that the Jews used in daily life. Now there was no smith found. They were in Babylonian captivity during this. There was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel for the Philistines said... I said Babylonian, Philistine captivity. For the Philistines said, lest the Hebrews make them swords or spears. But all the Israelites went down to the Philistines to sharpen..." Listen to this. "...every man his shear, and his colter, and his axe, and his matic. Yet they had a file for the matics, and for the colters, and for the forks, and the axes, and to sharpen the goads." Six tools that are listed there that due to the process of use and due to repeated use, they can become dull. In the shadow of Ecclesiastes chapter 10 and verse number 10, where we read this morning, if the iron be blunt, he do not whip the edge, then must he put forth more strength. But wisdom is profitable to direct. That's the message that Solomon has in mind. When I read from verse number 10, I see four principles of that little proverb that I'd like to bring to your attention for the next two and a half to three hours. It should be finished by then. You'll notice with me in this one little verse there's four things. There's dullness, there's duty, there's duress, and there's direction. Now you'll notice with me there's dullness in this passage. And the way Solomon describes that is with the word blunt. He says that the iron has become blunt. He begins, in fact, in verse number 10, "'If the iron be blunt,' no matter how hard you swing an axe, no matter how feverishly you run a knife across a surface you intend to cut, when the edge is dull, progress will always become hindered. I almost this morning asked for all the young men to bring their pocket knives to the platform. I almost did that, and I still really am tempted to do that this morning, but I'll be guilty of covetousness if I do that, and so I'm going to let you keep your pocket knife in your pocket, but I have mine here this morning. It's a knife that was given to me. It's my Sunday knife. It's kind of thin, not really made for for day-to-day work. It's a bench-made knife, several hundred dollars. Somebody gave it to me for my birthday there at the church, and I like this knife, and don't come messing with me or I'll cut you three ways, amen. So don't mess with me and my knife, but I have dulled that knife through the process of use, and I've had this knife get so dull I couldn't even cut a fishing twine with it. You have to take time to sharpen that knife once it's become, I got all the young men's attention now, amen. Once it's become dull, you have to take the time to sharpen it because dullness really, to be honest with you, is part of all of our lives. When you're used and you're used and you're used over and over again, dullness is going to become part of your life. I've had chainsaws that got so dull that I couldn't cut through a one inch branch with them. I've had lawnmower blades that got so dull around a landscaping business when I pastored down in South Georgia. I've had lawnmower blades on those Kubota mowers get so dull that all it did was just combed over the grass. It couldn't even cut through a blade of grass. You know why? Because it didn't get sharpened. There's dullness in this proverb. But then you'll notice there's not only dullness in this proverb, there's duty. Solomon says in the middle of verse number 10, "...he do not wet the edge, then must he put forth or put to more strength." Wet, W-H-E-T, an old English word in our King James Bible. If you don't take the time to sharpen, that's what the word means. Any working man carries a whetstone in his truck or somewhere where he starts the day or ends the week He has a whetstone there for the sharpening of His tools. And when you're cutting something, anything that demands a cutting edge, you must learn to stop. Y'all getting this now? You must learn to stop in the middle of all that you've got to do and pay attention to the edge. It may be lost. I don't care what you're cutting. After a while, your cutting edge will be lost. Whether you're cutting grass, or whether you're cutting brush, or whether you're felling trees, or even if you're just cutting hair, that instrument that you use for cutting, no matter how small the object is that you may be trimming back, that instrument will, after many, many times of use, become dull. That leads us to the middle of verse number 10, and I'm getting to my message as quickly as I can. That leads us to the middle of verse number 10. There's not only dullness in this passage and beauty in this passage, but then you'll notice Solomon leads us to the obvious conclusion, and that is duress. He says in verse number 10, "...then must he put to more strength." Do you see that? He must put to more strength. There's a demand for performance when you get dull. There's a demand for effort being made in the flesh when you get dull. You see, when dullness is not dealt with through duty, it brings with it duress. Everything gets harder when the edge is dull. You're going to have to swing harder. You're going to have to deliver more blows because now you're not fighting the tree that you're felling, you're fighting the dullness of the axe that has no edge. Your acts can actually labor against you if you let it get too dull. Neighbor, I'm not just talking about this as a preacher. I've experienced these things in my life. You let things get too dull and the obvious conclusion is you're going to have to work that tool much, much harder to get out of it what you would have gotten out of it when it was sharp. The end result of all of this is in verse number 10, and Solomon tells us in verse number 10 that there's not only dullness and duty and duress, but you'll notice with me the sum total of it all is direction. Verse number 10, he said, wisdom is profitable to direct. That's right. Wisdom is the whetstone of our lives. No one spoke more wisdom in all of the Scriptures than Solomon spoke. And you can reach a place in your life that you get dull. New converts don't have a problem with this. Folks that have just freshly joined the church, they don't have a problem with this. But those of us that have been around for a while, carrying the same Bible, picking up the same songbook, sitting in the same pew, listening to the same pastor, fellowshipping in the same youth group, year after year after year, you find yourself becoming complacent. You lose your edge. And when we get dull, we have to spend some time getting that back. Time in prayer, time in the Word, time in church. I thank God for the burden of Brother Williamson to give us all a good shot in the arm for these two days to wake us up back to the reality of how truly blessed we are to have a youth group, how blessed we are to have a church, how blessed we are to have a preaching pastor. These kind of meetings, we need these kind of meetings. I'm all in. I'm all in. I want to see this go forward. Amen. For the glory of God, because it brings an edge back to my life. You'll notice that Solomon uses the word iron in verse number 10. There's strength in that. In the iron itself there's strength. The problem is not because the strength is not there. The problem is that the woodsman, he didn't take time to maximize that strength for use. You see, dullness is not a problem with a new convert. We've had a number of about 15 people saved recently. We baptized a bunch of people in our church. And that comes in seasons. You know how that is. It doesn't happen every Sunday, but we're just in a season of reaping in our church, and I thank God for that. And man, those new converts, they sit there on the pew, and man, they'll stop me before I even get to the pulpit. And those old mossy-backed members is mad half the time. They'll stop you before you get to the pulpit to tell you that light bulb's been out for two weeks up there. Somebody needs to do something about that. I noticed the advertising sign down there's got a piece of paint flaking off of it. Somebody needs to do something about that. I ain't making this stuff up for him. But I'm telling you, those new converts will stop me on the way to the pulpit and say, Preacher, what you got for us today? We've come hungry. We've come ready to hear something. Show me something from the Word of God, Preacher. That's somebody that's still got an edge on their life. They haven't lost their first love, amen. They're right where they need to be spiritually. They're right where they need to be fervently serving the Lord. Dullness becomes the problem of the one that over time has been used. That's what makes a dull axe. The more you use it, the more dull it gets. And you know what dulls an axe? Doing the same thing. Y'all getting this now? Doing the same thing over and over and over and over again. That's what dulls us. We sing the same songs with no effect. We have the same preachers with no effect, we have the same pew to sit in, where God changed our lives but now seems ineffective, the same altar call, the same invitation songs, the same Bible, the same preacher, the same auditorium, and we've gotten to the place where, you know, I was reading the other day, man, I'm gonna meddle in some stuff, I'm trying to stay, I was reading the other day that the average teenager views over 300 advertisements a day. Now, when I was a teenager, that would just be going up and down the road or seeing a commercial on television. But now, Facebook and social media, the advertisements that come across our mind that tell us you're not satisfied with that Chevrolet truck, you need to buy a Ford truck. Let's go ahead and sing Just As I Am right now for all the Chevrolet buyers. You don't need that kind of cigarette, you need this kind of cigarette. I thought I'd get more amens out of that too, amen. Right? Don't eat at McDonald's, go to Wendy's. Don't buy this kind of makeup, buy that kind of makeup. You know, once somebody Googles something on your phone, it starts coming up in my, I know, why do I get all these makeup advertisements on my phone? Amen. Y'all ain't helping me. Advertisements. Constantly. Our mind is bombarded with advertisements. Things that are jockeying for our attention. Things that are working to take our attention away from what is most important. I've spent a great deal of time talking people out of quitting. Matter of fact, a lot of my ministry has been talking people out of not getting out, but staying with it. And most of the time they want to get out, it's because of dullness. I want to look at three things just very briefly this morning. I'll make them very short. I want to look at three things. Dullness will discourage you. Dullness will damage you. And dullness will deceive you. Those three thoughts are very simple right here in verse number 10. Number one, dullness will discourage you. Dullness is a potential killer. Over and over again, we find examples of men and women in the Bible that serve the Lord with fervor, with passion, with zeal, but they did it so long and they did it so often that we find them becoming very casual in the way that they serve. One principle example of that is David. It was a time when the kings were to go forth to war and David did not go. Another principle example of that is Samson. He got so used to the power. He got so used to the strength. He got so used to the presence of God and the Spirit coming upon him and then one day he got something on him that he found out he couldn't shake that off like he shook off everything else. Samson. Powerful! I mean different! Special! Different than everybody else. And one day, he got dull. Oh, y'all listen to me this morning? You'll not get as much done when you're dull. That's discouraging. When you used to knock down ten trees in a day and now you can only knock down four or five, but you're working the same hours, discouragement will come. You know, you're getting dull when it's hard to go to church. You're getting dull when you got a Sunday school lesson to prepare for and you wait until Saturday night at 10 o'clock to get it together. You're getting dull when you have no sense of burden for the song that you're singing. You're getting dull. You understand. Y'all know exactly what I'm talking about this morning. I remember, man, if I start going back down memory lane, I'll be here too long, but I remember when I first got saved, I was 17 years old, I was in a youth camp, very much like what we're dealing with today, very much like what we're experiencing today. I was in a youth camp on a Tuesday morning when the Lord moved into my heart and changed my life. and man, my pastor preached to me and preached sin out of my life and I'll never forget Brother Williamson coming in that first Sunday, I don't know, about six, seven months after I got saved, I come in that Sunday morning and my pastor said to me, he said, one of our ushers is home with a flu, do you mind taking up an offering for us today? And man, I'm telling you, the joy that comes down in my heart, I think about it right now, it still breaks my heart. When I think about the joy that comes down in my heart, that the man of God would come to me and say, you carry this offering plea, and you serve God's people, You collect that tithe from God's people. I'll never forget the first time the preacher asked me to pray over an offering. I'll never forget when the choir leader come to me and said, would you join the choir? We need a bass singer in the choir. Would you join the choir? I'll never forget those days and the joy that swept over my life of knowing that I was right where God wanted me and I was happy. Listen, I would rather just be a doorkeeper in the house of our God I was just happy to do anything that the preacher asked me to do. Y'all listening? How long has it been since you had that kind of fervency and passion for the house of God? Did you know that three times in the Bible the word dull is used? Of the three times the word dull is used in the Scripture, it's always used of dull of hearing. In Matthew 13 and verse number 15, this is what Jesus said, "'For the people's heart is waxed gross, their ears are dull of hearing.'" We read that again in Acts chapter number 28 and verse number 27, "'For the heart of this people is waxed gross, their ears are dull hearing it comes to us last in Hebrews 5 and verse number 11 of whom we have many things to say and hard to be uttered seeing ye are dull of hearing did you hear that we have heard it oh my we've heard it and we've heard it and we've heard it and we've heard it and we've gotten to the place we've heard it so much that it's created dullness You remember a time when the things of God meant something to you? It was more than just having to be woke up on Sunday morning. You were already up with your Bible and a prayer in your heart. You're ready to go to the house of God. David said, I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord. Did you hear that? David was happy before he even got to church. David was glad about even just, he knew it was the Lord's day and it was time to go to church. He said, I was glad when they said, let's go to the house of the Lord. It wasn't just being there, he was just happy prospect of being in church. But it's not that way with you anymore. You've gotten dull. And dullness will not only discourage you, dullness will damage you. Neighbor, any working man in this congregation will tell you cutting with a dull knife is a very dangerous thing. We had a lady in our church who had to go to the emergency room. Sister Ann had to go to the emergency room just this week because she was cutting something with a knife. It was a dull knife and she ran that knife all the way through her fingers into her leg trying to cut something with a dull knife. She had to go get stitches in her leg. You'll lay your hands open with a dull knife. You'll blister your hands with a dull knife. Every day that you do not deal with your dullness, it's going to get worse and worse and worse, and you're going to find yourself weary in the work of God. You're going to find yourself laboring more than you were before, and you'll find yourself disinterested. and it won't go away until you take the third step, and I'm closing my message. It will not only damage you, and it will not only discourage you, but it will deceive you. When you get dull, you may think you're fooling everybody around you, but you're not fooling anybody who's spiritual. You can easily read it in a person's life. Every pastor, and I'm preaching to some of them today, and thank God for those that are here. Brother Williamson, every pastor can see it when somebody starts getting cold. that coldness. They move their seed in the church. They don't go out to eat with the folks they used to go out to eat with in the church. They don't have those kind words for the preacher about his message like they used to. You get used to people being fervent and being like an empty sponge just soaking up everything from a service and then you can see that coldness begin to come over their life. You can see it in young people. I remind you of 2 Kings 6 1-7. How could I leave this out? If I left this out, I'd fail you in what I was preaching on today. In 2 Kings 6 1-7, we read about a school for the prophets. The school of the prophets was made by the man of God, Elijah, the prophet of God. The Bible tells us that the sons of the prophets took a task on of building a place for them to study under Elijah, the man of God. And as one of those young men was cutting a tree, felling a tree, the Bible tells us the axe head slung off into the water and he lost it. He lost his edge. In verse number 5 of that chapter, as one was felling a beam, the axe head fell into the water and he cried and said, Last master, for it was borrowed. And the man of God said to him in verse number six of that chapter, where fell it? And he showed him the place and he cut down a stick and he cast it in thither and the iron did swim. Now don't ever let no liberal tell you that he just went fishing around with a stick in that water until he found that ax. He said, no sir, the Bible said the iron swam. It swam around in that water. I believe that. I'm just dumb enough to believe what my Bible says, amen. There are only two options that you have once you've lost your edge, like that young man lost his edge. There's only two options that you have. Number one, you can try carrying on without it. The work will be harder. You'll do the same amount of work and accomplish much, much less. And I can tell you this, if you go to try to fell in a beam, if you go trying to fell a tree with nothing but an axe handle in your hand, you're gonna be loud, but you ain't gonna get much done. Y'all listening? Or you can go back to where you lost it. That's right. Man, I feel that in my heart. You can go back to the place where you lost it. You can get to the man of God and say to the man of God, it fell right here. This is where it is. And you can go to the man of God and say, I've got to have somebody to help me get my edge back. I've got to have somebody that'll help me get the axe head back. And a lot of times we try to cover up our dullness by swinging harder and making more noise. You know why drums make so much noise? Because they're hollow inside. And we can try to make more and more noise and appear to be more and more spiritual. We complain more and more about the work. We bellyache about having to do what we've always done. And it's obvious to those that are around us, we have lost our edge. I've been to youth camps. I got saved in a youth camp. I've been preaching youth camps for 25 years. And I've been to youth camps where teenagers get some things right with God in that meeting. I mean, get some things right with God and get an edge on their life. And then they get in the church van to go home. And they're dull before they even get off the church van home. Some of you will go home to parents that don't support what your pastor believes. Some of you will go home to parents that don't have the same vision this church has. Some of you will go home to a youth group that's not hot and on fire. You'll go back to a coldness. You'll go back to a dryness. You'll go back to a church that isn't dedicated as this church may be. Not everybody, not all, not all, but maybe some. And you'll go back to that. And when you get home, you could stay sharp for the glory of God, but you find yourself immediately becoming dull. immediately becoming dull. You know what people who work with tools have come to learn? You're going to have to take some time to get that sharpness back every single day. Every single day. You better get that book out and you better put your nose in that book and find a place to kneel down and pray and ask God to put the fire back in your heart and put the edge back on your soul. If you don't, you'll wear yourself out. you wear yourself out. And I fear. that the reason why we have so much turnover in our youth groups is because of the attrition that comes along with dullness. Dullness. You're looking for something new, you're looking for something to satisfy, just like we talked about last night, and that is in the same context of what I'm preaching on this morning. Looking for something to fulfill us, looking for something to satisfy us, and come to find out all the time the problem was me. Fella got up one morning. I gotta close my message. I've run myself out of time here. Fella got up one morning and was getting ready to go to work and he decided to go into the bedroom over there and eat himself a breakfast sandwich and he made it with Lindberger cheese. Have you ever smelled that stuff? It's like running over a skunk. God, that stuff is, oh man, you talk about awful. Well, he ate this sandwich and he had a big old bushy mustache and some of that Lindberger cheese got lodged up in his mustache right there. He went to work that day and when he walked up among all of those that were clocking in there at the clock in spot, he said, man, one of y'all stink. Which one of y'all didn't take a shower this morning? He went to break through the course of the morning. He went to break later in that morning and he sat down in the break room and he looked at all of those around him and he said, something stinks in here. Then he went home that afternoon and he got out of the car and he walked into the house and he sat down in the chair and he said to his wife, he said, man, something stinks in this living room. Woman, why don't you do something about this? This house stinks. Then he went to bed that night and come to find out he had a big old piece of Lindberger cheese shoved up in his mustache and come to find out it wasn't everybody else who stunk, it was him. Y'all ain't helping me this morning. It was him the whole time. And I wonder sometimes the criticism, amen, amen. Every pastor in this church knows what I'm talking about. The criticism, the lack of commitment, the coldness, I wonder if it's just because we've lost our edge. Let's stand together. Father, we do thank you for the day and how you've blessed us to be with these, our friends, and to deepen our friendships. We thank you for these folks that have paid the price for this meeting to be a success. We pray that you give the pastor the desire of his heart, and we ask, Lord, that you have your will, that you have your way. Fill the preacher that is to come with the Spirit of God as he preaches, and we'll thank you for all that you do for us, through us, and in us. In Jesus' name.