Now we're going to be in Ecclesiastes chapter 9 verse 13 through 10, 20. Let me read this for you. I've also seen this example of wisdom under the sun, and it seemed great to me. There was a little city with few men in it, and a great king came against it and besieged it, building great siege works against it. But there was found in it a poor, wise man, and he, by his wisdom, delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man, but I say that wisdom is better than might, Though the poor man's wisdom is despised and his words are not heard. The words of the wise heard in quiet are better than the shouting of the ruler among fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good. Dead flies make the perfumer's ointment give off a stench. So a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor. A wise man's heart inclines him to the right, but a fool's heart to the left. Even when the fool walks on the road, he lacks sense, and he says to everyone that he's a fool. If the anger of the ruler rises against you, do not leave your place, for calmness will lay great offenses to rest." There's an evil that I've seen under the sun. As it were, an error proceeding from the ruler. Folly is set in many high places, and the rich sit in a low place. I've seen slaves on horses, and princes walking on the ground like slaves. He who digs a pit will fall into it. A serpent will bite him who breaks through a wall. He who quarries stones can be hurt by them, and he who splits logs is endangered by them. If the iron is blunt and one does not sharpen the edge, he must use more strength, but wisdom helps one to succeed. If the serpent bites before it's charmed, there's no advantage to the charmer. The words of a wise man's mouth win him favor, but the lips of a fool consume him. The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness, and the end of his talk is evil madness. A fool multiplies words, though no man knows what is to be, and who can tell him what will be after him? The toil of a fool wearies him, for he does not know his way to the city. Woe to you, O land, when your king is a child, and your princes feast in the morning. Happy are you, O land, when your king is the son of the nobility, and your princes feast at the proper time, for strength and not for drunkenness. Though sloth, through sloth the roof sinks in, and through indolence the house leaps. Bread is made for laughter, and wine gladdens life, and money answers everything. Even in your thoughts do not curse the king, nor in your bedroom curse the rich, for bird of the air will carry your voice, and some winged creature tell the matter." What on earth is this about? This is amazing. Let me relate this to you. On June 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 72 seconds into its mission, killing seven people. The investigation that followed revealed that the record low temperature in Florida the night before was probably the reason the explosion occurred. Had a disastrous impact on the O-rings in the rocket booster. Now they're large O-rings, they're about 12 feet in diameter, but they're very thin. They're relatively small compared to the size of a rocket. So those O-rings were considered safe at a temperature down to 53 degrees. The problem was, the night before the launch, Florida had record low temperatures, and the temperature at the time of the launch was 38 degrees. Everyone involved in the launch was concerned about the O-rings and about the freezing temperatures, obviously. But after several delays, it was decided that everything was probably okay, and the go-ahead was given for the launch. Now, aside from the irreplaceable lives that were lost, what a tragedy, the nation watched that happen. It's one of those moments that we look at and go, oh, I remember where I was exactly when I saw that. Total cost of the failed launch and the rescue attempts and the retrieval of all the debris was $5.5 billion. Years later, one Nassau wag was heard to say, those O-rings cost almost nothing. And the lesson was, it's the little things that get you. The little things that get you. That's our lesson for today. It's the little thing. Last time we were in Ecclesiastes, we talked about the first half of Ecclesiastes documents the utility, the emptiness of life apart from God. Indeed, in the entire book, God plays a distant, disconnected role in all of Ecclesiastes. He's acknowledged here and there, but he's not dominant. He's there, but for Solomon at this age of his life, and for those of you that aren't aware of it, late in life, Solomon began to drift away from God. He built a temple, he had wisdom, he had all this really great stuff, but even as he was building a temple, he started doing things that he was told not to do, buying horses from Egypt, marrying women outside of the nation. He built his palace right next to the temple. The palace was twice as large and twice as luxurious and ornate. So Solomon was struggling. Later on, he begins building altars to foreign gods, to pagan gods. So at this stage in his life, God is not the focus for Solomon. He's struggling. What he's focusing on is his struggles, his questions. And all this, if we understand that, all this makes Ecclesiastes hard to read. You've been reading ahead, you know what I'm talking about. Our inclination is to read this book the way we read the rest of Scripture, but we can't do that. It's wisdom literature. We have to be careful how we handle wisdom literature. The lessons and the Proverbs we see in the book don't come as the steadfast promises of the other genres of literature. So when we're looking at Ecclesiastes and Proverbs and sections of Song of Solomon and Revelation, we've got to be careful. These are lessons about how to live in a fallen world, one filled with evil and unpredictability, one that at times can seem random and unfair. And the lessons we learn here are generalities. They're mostly true, but not always. They're not eternal lessons. They're not absolute truth. They're streetwise preaching. They're ways to get by, which is exactly what the second half of Ecclesiastes is about. The first half is about the emptiness of life. The second half are ways to get through it. It tries to help us get along. It tries to make some sense out of a world without a transcendent God, a world without an eternal perspective. And the problem is it keeps on coming up empty-handed. It doesn't really have any answers. Still, it tries to come up with ways to cope with a mysterious God and with a world filled with evil and confusion. A lot we can learn from them, even as believers, even as we look at this. There are practical lessons we can learn, but there are transcendent lessons as well. So, Solomon doesn't seem to be the author of the book. Rather, we're getting Solomon's perspective on life, how he saw life from one of his descendants, another very wise man. This book was written somewhere around the 4th or 5th century. Solomon lived somewhere around the 7th century. And the linguists and the commentators have done a deep enough dive to recognize that the language used in this book and some of the references that are made to it could not possibly have happened during Solomon's lifetime. So we're looking back on Solomon's life. And the teacher wants to warn his students about the pitfalls of living in a prosperous culture. Israel is dominated by Egypt. They're under Egypt's thumb. They've been dominated by several other nations in the meantime. But the thing about this one is that everybody is prospering. There's money all over the place. There's luxuries all over the place. And the teacher wants to make sure that his students don't get subsumed by all of the glitter and all of the gold that's available to them. He doesn't want them to be taken captive by the world, overly influenced by worldliness. At this particular point, they are young men learning to depend on themselves rather than a sovereign God, and he wants to help them right themselves. Now the last two lessons deal with the questions we have about life. And the literature we have here, being wisdom literature, we've got to be careful how we take it. So the questions that we have don't necessarily have answers. And with a God who's absolutely sovereign over everything and everything that works for His glory and our good, there is an ultimate good, there is an eternal good that demands a trust in Him that can at times be challenging for all of us. And I think if you've been through any troubled times recently, you would agree. It can be at times very challenging for His children. And one of the reasons that can be challenging for us is we have a tendency to be more self-centered than God-centered. So Solomon's not there yet. He's struggling with the same issues, total trust in God. So we watch. We watch as he tries to explain things using a worldly brand of wisdom. It's good wisdom, but it's worldly. Kind of gives a nod to God's presence but never seems to get to the point of admitting our desperate need for our Father in heaven and a Savior. Not only that, it doesn't recognize our inability to fully understand Him. This is Catching the Wind, Part 12. We've got two more, I think, two more sermons in this series. Solomon continues to search for answers We're going to see three characteristics of worldly wisdom here. We'll see a wisdom that is fragile in chapter 9, verses 13 through 10, 1. A wisdom that's not foolish in chapter 10, verses 2 through 15. And a wisdom that is cautious in verses 16 through 20. Let's look at this wisdom that is fragile, starting in verse 13. I've also seen this example, the teacher says, Solomon says, of wisdom under the sun. And it seemed great to me. Now, he wants to start sharing examples of what he's been teaching, of his brand of wisdom and how it functions in this earthly realm. Verse 14, he says, there was a little city with a few men in it, and a great king came against it, besieged it, building great stageworks against it. Now, Solomon wants us to know about this city. Cities back then would be fortified by a wall. Even modest cities would be. Strong walls. If you go to Jerusalem today, you can see what those walls look like. They're massive. They're huge. They are thick. People lived inside them. That's how big they were. So without some of the sophisticated weaponry that we have today, in order to capture the city, an army would have to lay siege to it. Now, that could take months, and it would involve cutting off the water supply and cutting off the food supply. And when everyone in the city was weak and hungry and weary and ready to give up, then the invading army would build siege work. And these were huge ramps or towers. And they were designed to allow the enemy to go over the walls and not have to fight their way up them. And so they would enter the city that way. So Solomon's proverbial city, I don't think this is a real city. I think he's just trying to make a point here. So this city is under attack. Verse 15 he says, but there was found in it a poor wise man. And he, by his wisdom, delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man. And we're not told how he delivered the city. We don't know what happened. All we know is he came up with an idea that allowed this city to be preserved. He could have been, if that had happened today, he would have been celebrated. We'd have had a ticker tape parade down Fifth Avenue. There would have been podcasts and interviews and all sorts of things. But like so many other things in Solomon's day, in Solomon's life, maybe even today, the man's fame is short-lived. People don't remember him. He's forgotten. And the indication was that he was poor when all this began and remained poor after the war was over. And it's a sad reality that we all live in. Fame and riches can be incredibly short. But Solomon doesn't want us to focus in on that. He wants us to look at the lesson learned here. This is a story, listen carefully because here's the theme of the passage. This is a story that focuses on politics. Oh, he's not going to talk about politics, is he? Yes, he is. Think about it. We don't know why there was a war, but you can bet one king made some decisions that impacted another king, and now there was a whole lot of trouble for a whole lot of people. The military might of the city was unable to break the siege. They might have been sitting there for a couple of years. But one quiet, unknown man, who was wise, rose up and rescued the entire city. Whatever the king and rulers were doing, it wasn't working. This is what Solomon wants us to remember. Look at verse 16. But I say that wisdom is better than might, though the poor man's wisdom is despised and his words are not heard. Solomon says, you know, what we would say today, brains are better than brawn. Wisdom is better than political power, better than military might. But it's fragile. A lot of people don't like it. Many don't heed. We're kind of reminded of Jesus' words in Matthew 22, 14, many are called, but few are chosen. Many hear, but few are blessed. Verse 17 says, the words of the wise heard in quiet are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools. So this is a proverb for them. And it's kind of a proverb for today as well. We're constantly barraged. I mean, the amount of information we have coming at us and how fast it's coming at us is so much greater than what they had back then. They had to wait for horses and people on foot to carry news and that sort of thing. But today, we're constantly barraged with politicians and Newcasters profiling, shouting at us, pounding podiums, telling us all what to be mad at. And we see that a wise word spoken by a quiet man is better than all of them. Matter of fact, he says in verse 18, wisdom is better than weapons of war. Wisdom is powerful, more so than any weapon. We see that it can rescue a city surrounded by armies, weapons of war. It can bring hope where there's no hope. But we also see how fragile it is, because the next phrase is, but one sinner destroys much good. Now, I've got to talk to you about the word sinner here, because we're not talking about people that have offended God. Kind of, it's there, but not. Solomon's brand of worldly wisdom can be ravaged by one foolish sinner here. And the word, it's a form of sin, but in this context, it means the one who's at fault. And the idea is one bungler can mess up a whole lot of really good work. One idiot can bring it all crashing down. We've seen that today. We know this from Scripture. I mean, if you take a look at the history of Israel, King David unites the entire nation And under Solomon, it's wildly prosperous. Solomon takes over after him. When Solomon dies, his son Rehoboam takes the throne. This is in 1 Kings 12. You can look at it later on. And instead of listening to the wisdom of those who advised his father, Rehoboam takes the advice of his young friend. and loses 10 of the 12 tribes, and the kingdom is never united again. One guy acting foolishly undoes everything that's been done before. So to emphasize Solomon's point, we see this in verse 1 of chapter 10. Dead flies make the perfumer's ointment give off a stench, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor. Notice. Flies are small. They're itty bitty. But they can ruin a whole batch of perfume or ointment just by landing in it. So the perfumer has to be careful not to allow flies to come into his ointment. And the point is this. Those who are wise should be careful not to indulge in the world's foolishness. Not even a little bit. And we find out that wisdom is not foolish is her second characteristic, starting in verse two. A wise man's heart inclines him to the right, but a fool's heart to the left. I know what some of you are thinking. Stop it. Okay. These words have a totally different connotation in fourth century Israel than they do today. So in fourth century BC, when this was written, The right hand stood for power, stood for redemption, it stood for deliverance. It was a side of moral virtue, and I know some of you are still thinking the same thing, okay? It was a side of favor. And we see this in the ascension back in Luke 24, when Jesus rises up and sits at the right hand of God. It's a symbolic gesture showing Jesus' position of authority and power in heaven. Back in the time of Ecclesiastes, the left hand telegraphs weakness, moral failure, and even may symbolize a handicap. There were some sects and tribes outside of Israel that would amputate the left hand of somebody who was left-handed. In Matthew 25, Jesus said he's going to put the sheep on the right hand, the sheep are the desirable ones, and the goats at the left. The sheep are favored, the goats are condemned. This is what we're seeing here. And the point is that wisdom and folly contradict each other. And it's not just a simple contrast. They're in direct opposition to each other. Each one has the capability to cancel the other out. Fools and wise are contrary to each other, but fools have a particular problem, and we see that in verse three. Even when the fool walks on the road, and he lacks sense, and he says to everyone that he's a fool. The fool's lack of wisdom is on display. It's public. Proverbs 12 says, a prudent man conceals knowledge, but the heart of fools proclaims folly. Fool's fooliness is readily apparent to everybody around him. They see it right away. And the teacher. Goes on to give another example of what he's talking about, verse 4. If the anger of the ruler rises against you, and the word for anger here is the same as the word used for spirit, ruach. We heard it a couple of chapters ago. But in this context, it talks about a wind, a hot wind, an empty wind. Solomon's trying to describe a foolish king, one shouting and out of control, just blowing hot air. And he says, when that happens, don't let this agitate you. Stay calm. Look, do not leave your place. Don't storm away. Don't react instinctively. For calmness will lay great offenses to rest, the scripture says. Keep in mind, this is not a promise. But worldly wisdom shows us, doesn't it, that an angry response almost always generates more anger. Somehow we think if we get angry, the other person is going to go, oh, I didn't realize how right you were. I'm sorry. Ever been in an argument? Anybody ever been in an argument? I was in one many, many years ago. Kelly and I are about to have another one right now. And you know, when you're in the middle of one of these things, you just think if I talk louder and with more conviction and maybe pound my hand and everything, everybody's just going to come around in my way. I think it never works. It never works. Get into an argument online sometimes, see how that works for you. It just never works. Proverbs 15 tells us that a soft answer turns away wrath. Now, Solomon's talking about kings, leaders, politicians, blowing hot air, acting foolishly. Wisdom and a calm manner are better than bluster. They're better than all this rhetoric that floats around. But a little foolishness can derail that wisdom. And the message is we should avoid it. We should avoid being foolish along with them. The way to fight foolishness in the political arena, the wise way to fight it is to stay calm, to stay calm, not to get worked up. Wow. Then we see in verse 5, there's an evil that I've seen under the sun. as it were, an error proceeding from the ruler. Now we see that the political leaders of the day have committed a few errors in how they're handling the world around them. It's a general statement, and it can apply today. It's not specific for all politicians, but it's a very wise caution. And he explains in verse six, folly is set in many high places and the rich sit in a low place. I've seen slaves on horses and princes walking on the ground like slaves. He's trying to explain how confused the age is and how topsy-turvy everything is. This isn't the way it's supposed to be. The world can be upside down, foolish people in high places, wealthy people in low places, servants on horseback while princes walk on foot. And what he's saying is that much of the difficulty in the world stemmed from poor or foolish leadership. Things are not going to end well for those leaders. And our teacher paints a couple pictures of what it's going to look like for them. Okay, verse 8, he who digs a pit will fall into it. And a pit was designed to be a trap. The hunter would dig a hole, and then he would cover it up with brush, but he would dig several of those holes, and if he wasn't careful about where he dug the hole, he might stumble into one of his own traps. He says, a serpent will bite him who breaks through a wall. Walls were property markers. They were valuable. Snakes made their home in them. If a farmer wanted to move or repair a wall, he had to be really cautious because if he moved the wrong stone at the wrong time, the snake would come out and bite him and he'd die. Now both of these things that he's describing here, hunting and building, require some wisdom and planning. Going at them foolishly or without planning or without some level of wisdom can be deadly. Verse 9, he says, he who quarries stones is hurt by them, and he who splits logs is endangered by them. Stone can fall on you. You can drop it on your foot and break your foot. Same thing with logs, without some care, a log can easily flip over and roll over on the person who's cutting the tree and get trapped under. It says, if the iron is blunt, in verse 10, and one does not sharpen the edge, he must use more strength, but wisdom helps one to succeed. Now, these are all cautions to use wisdom in our daily lives, in particular, in our political lives. Serpent bites before it's charmed. There's no advantage to the charmer. Did you know that there are still snake charmers over in the committee? They're not careful to calm the snakes. We don't know how they work. I've never looked into it. But if they're not careful to calm that snake before they begin to handle it, the snake will bite them. And they're deadly. The teacher wants his followers to know they should be wise, not just in politics, but in daily life. Caution, planning, wisdom, they're all necessary to minimize unwanted results. And acting foolishly, acting impetuously, carelessly, or rashly, can end your career or maybe even your life. That's good, solid, earthly wisdom. It says so in verse 12. The words of a wise man's mouth win him favor, but the lips of a fool consume him. So generally, people will respect wisdom. They might not always listen to it. They might not always heed it. But most folks will have a higher regard for a wise man than a blowhard. A foolish man will get caught up in his own words, and the worst part is that he doubles down on it when someone holds him accountable. Have we ever seen that? Somebody says something that's inaccurate or a lie, and when they get called on, all of a sudden, they get stubborn. And we hear things like, oh, I didn't say that. Yes, you did. No, I didn't. Or, I didn't mean that. Or, you're wrong, not me. Verse 13 says, the beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness, and the end of his talk is evil madness. And when this person finds himself painted into a corner, tries to talk his way out of it. Verse 14, a fool multiplies words, though no man knows what it is to be, and who can tell him what will be after him. Fool's arrogant, thinks he knows everything, and really just continues to prove that he knows very little. And verse 15 says, the toil of a fool wearies him, for he does not know the way to the city. This is another idiom, another saying, that they would have understood the foolish person is working so hard at making sure that he's heard, that he doesn't know where he is or where he's going. He's out in the middle just kind of wandering around out in the wilderness. He's behaving exactly the opposite way that a wise man should behave. A wise man should observe and learn how a fool acts in order for the wise man to avoid that type of behavior. Solomon doesn't leave us hanging, he tells us how it works. And we see the third character of wisdom, that it is cautious. Now, here's where the passage kind of comes together, and this whole idea of politics rises to the surface. So listen carefully. Verse 16, woe to you, O land, when your king is a child and your princess beast in the morning. It's a picture of a political leader who's not necessarily qualified, yet finds himself in a position of great influence. And the author wants us to envision a child king, impetuous, entitled, and inept. And the rest of the leadership that is gathered around him is self-indulgent and naive. They're self-centered. They're feeding themselves and caring less about the ones they lead than taking care of themselves and getting fat off the land. This is a land of woe and trouble. And verse 17 shows us the contrast. Happy are you, O land, when your king is the son of the nobility and your princes feast at the proper time for strength and not for drunkenness. The nations whose leaders are working continuously and responsibly for the good and the welfare of the nation rather than themselves, well, that country is blessed. Without this type of leadership, lethargy and laziness begin to rise up to the surface, and even worse. Verse 18, listen. Through sloth, the roof sinks in, and through indolence, the house leaks. When the self-centered leaders indulge themselves, the country suffers, and it begins to disintegrate. And in a bit of sarcasm, Solomon seems to quote a popular drinking song of the day, Bread is made for laughter, verse 19, and wine gladdens life, and money answers everything. The teacher's saying, here's the attitude of your callous leaders. They're flippant. More bent on having a good time than taking care of you. Meanwhile, nobody's caring for the people. Folks are suffering. They might be tempted to curse the king, but we're encouraged to exercise some caution here. Verse 20, even in your thoughts, even in your thoughts, do not curse the king, nor in your bedroom curse the rich, for a bird of the air will carry your voice or some winged creature tell the matter. It is wise to use caution. And here's the bottom line, he said, be careful what you say, be careful where you say it, and be careful who you say it to. Because you never know what it might come back on. In the day of the internet, you know, I had to convince my son that the internet is forever. There's no taking it back. You put up something on your feed or some comment or something like that, and the minute somebody else forwards it, it's out of your control and it's gone. The great irony about all that is, if you realize you made a mistake and you apologize, nobody forwards that. We need to be careful how we handle ourselves. In particular, careful as Christians, we're supposed to be light and salt to the world. so easy to get wrapped up in all this other stuff that's gone. And we see these characteristics of worldly wisdom, a wisdom that's fragile. We see that incredible wisdom and skill can too easily be undone by simple, small actions. Man saves a city where the army can't, where the king can't, but no one remembers. Then you wonder why No one remembered. And you think that it just kind of maybe should have been in the background or something like that. Nobody remembers because this is my conjecture. But I think if you understand how things work, you'll know that I'm probably pretty close to being right. Because of the politicians. They all began to take credit for it. Next thing you know, the wise man's forgotten. I remember when a vice president stood up one time and said, I invented the internet. Politicians are high profile, calling attention to themselves, pandering, trying to gain support. You know, the thing about politicians, we really, really need to be careful with this. Because they all want to tell us how important we are and how they're working for us. And if you look at things very carefully, you see what's really important is getting re-elected. Maintaining their power, maintaining their influence. Not all politicians, but a lot of them. And so, they call attention to themselves, rather than the people they're here to serve. So, the politicians are trying to gain support. The poor wise man is doing what? Working for the welfare of the people. So I lands in a vat of perfume and He's small, he's almost inconsequential, but because Freumer was not careful to keep the flies away, the whole batch is ruined. Wisdom and skill we see in these stories here is fragile. Why? Because there are too many people that are foolish. There are too many people that don't have an eternal perspective on things. More concerned with the here and now than anything else. And we find the second character is a wisdom that's not foolish. And we find out that a wise man should avoid acting like a fool. In order to do that, we have to be able to recognize that type of behavior in other people. We have to know what it looks like. And since this passage has this ongoing theme of politics in it, we should be careful not to get drawn in to a lot of the bluster and a lot of the activity and the profiling that we see on the political stage today. We're in an election year. It's already gotten rancorous. It's going to get worse. We should try to be honest in our evaluation of all these people that are watching, all the ones we support, and call out foolish behavior for what it is, and not just condone it because it sounds good to us and it sounds like the same thing that we want. We should be careful not to get angry over these things. Anybody have that struggle? We've all been around enough to know that anger only begets anger, and doing what Solomon advises, staying calm, will bring peace. Now, it might not bring peace to them, but I guarantee you that if you make that commitment, it will bring peace to you, maybe those around you. All the anger never accomplished anything. How do we do this when there are so many forces working to get us agitated and worked up? Well, we exercise our third characteristic, caution. Our teacher tells his students, he tells his students to be careful. Yeah, the Egyptians are in control. They brought prosperity. And because of the prosperity, some people might be led to think that everything's good. Some may want to have their part of that prosperity. It's not unreasonable, but the people they admire, the people that are leading them, maybe even the people they aspire to be, are not working in their best interests. We're told to evaluate them realistically, evaluate them. If we read on, evaluate them according to Scripture, not on what they say, but on how they live, on what they do. And furthermore, look around you and find out what all of this, see what all of this is producing. What are the real fruits of their labors? Is there peace? Is there unity? Are people happy? Or are we living in a world of tension and distrust and anger and sometimes violence? All those lessons were for back then. As Christians, what do we do with all this? What do we make of this? Well, the first thing we need to recognize is we, those who believe in Jesus Christ, those who are regenerated, we're new creatures. Rescued from all of this morass around us by the grace of God. Rescued by the work that Jesus Christ did on the cross. See, we don't have to be part of living under the sun. Indeed, we've got to live in this world. There's no escaping it. But we don't have to contribute to the foolishness. We don't have to add to it. We should try to conduct ourselves with wisdom and caution, being careful what we say and how we say it in public, being careful what we repeat. How many of you are on Facebook? How many of you believe that if you put up a statement saying Mark Zuckerberg can't use any of my pictures, that that has some legally binding thing? That the people at Facebook are going, oh my gosh, we can't put their pictures up. Did you see this? I mean, we're constantly getting this sort of thing, aren't we? Write this down and you'll get a million dollars, or write this down and the big corporations have to bow to your will. They'll be violating the law. Somebody's going to go over there and arrest them and put them in prison. And we repeat this stuff. Somebody puts up a video. of what's going on over in Gaza. And we all go, oh, did you see this video? These atrocities and everything, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you find out the video was recorded somewhere else 10 years ago. And so we embrace these things, and we begin to distribute them and put them out. And other people get caught up, oh, I saw it on the internet. It must be true. We shouldn't be involved in that. We shouldn't be part of, oh, look what's happening. Doesn't this make you mad? Be wise about how involved we become in the foolishness going on around us. The theme that brought up in this passage was a small thing can have a huge impact on us, just like that old ring on the tragic journey of the challenger. The little things that can sway us to foolishness. The little things that can get us off course. Comment here, commentator there. A meme that shows up somewhere that looks good to us. Or maybe even an outright lie. The little things can cause us. They can cause us to lose focus on why we're here. on why the church is here. We're here to be messengers of God. We're here to be vessels of His grace, agents of mercy, reflections of His love. The environment that's just outside that door will do everything to dissuade us from that mission. Don't get caught up in it. Don't get caught up in it. Be the peacemaker that we're called to be. That takes some wisdom, doesn't it? But you know what? It doesn't take a lot. Blessed are the peacemakers. They will inherit the earth. What does this tell you about everybody else? So when we have that opportunity to respond and our emotions are running high. I mean, you know what I'm talking about. You can feel it when it's down here and that fire starts burning and burning and finally it either comes out here or on our keyboard. Just stop it down here. I'm not gonna do that. Walk away from your keyboard. Shut your mouth. I mean, I still struggle with that. Ooh, did I just say that? I still struggle with not shutting my mouth when I should be quiet. It never serves me. It never does well. It never shows the world Jesus Christ. Father, we give you thanks for a tough message. But Father, we also thank you for the Holy Spirit who would call us to examine our hearts, call us to a holy standard. And although we'll never be perfect, Father, we thank you that because the Spirit in us is our motivator, we strive for that perfection. We pray, Father, that we would walk in a manner worthy of the high and holy calling you've put on us. Now, as we gather downstairs and prepare to break bread together, we pray your blessing on those who have prepared it, those who have worked so hard to decorate, and prepare the food. We pray you bless our fellowship. We pray, Father, that as we gather, we would honor you in everything that we do. We pray a special blessing on the conversations that are sure to be had later on this afternoon, maybe even through this Pastor John here again. I hope you're blessed by the service. You can find us on the web at WBFVA.org or we're on YouTube and Facebook at WBFVA. We'd love to hear from you. If you have prayer requests, we'd love the opportunity to pray for you. You can just message us or you can email me at KUVAKAS at gmail.com. God bless. Hope to see you again.