Okay, so we're at article 26 on the church. Just a reminder, mom made banana nut bread in there and it is incredible. I know, I want everybody to be satisfied and happy and enjoy it. I had a sample. I had a sample at one something. I apologize. See, I was, I humble myself. So, so we're talking about the, the, the, the church and, and, uh, just the function, the consistency of the church and the things about the church. And, you know, as we talked about just a few minutes ago, we haven't put on a recording or anything, but you know, we were dealing with a church that had come to me and, and talk to me about, you know, maybe come in fellowship and then they, begin looking into what we believe and teach, and they say, oh, we're not like that, and I had to address that. But guys, we have to hold to foundational, fundamental doctrine. We have to hold, I mean, the church isn't just everybody's opinion, and whatever opinion sticks to the wall best is the one that we hold to. Okay? It's not just, I like it done this way, I like it done that way, so that's what we're going to do it. It is what saith the Lord. You know, thus saith the Lord. This is how we do things. There is grace and leeway. I mean, there's the concept of the normative principle of worship versus a regulative principle, where people will go back and they say, well, only those things that God has commanded in the Old Testament are what we're to use for worship. And then they structure it based upon their likes and their wants. You know, the primitive Baptists, for example, they don't use any instrumentation, from what I understand. And then there's another group that says, well, only use the piano. And there's another group that says, well, we can use a piano and a guitar. And then there's another group that says, if you use a piano and a guitar, you're not a Christian. All these different things are all based on the whims of people. So the regular principle has to be balanced out with a biblical principle of true heartfelt worship. Heart worship. Because if it's not from the heart, it's a waste of time. You know, that high church liturgy where we sit and, oh, all right, you know, and you think you're doing something for God, you're not. We have to be people that want to to be in worship from the heart. We can't be monitored and controlled. In our hearts, I mean, think about it, our kids, even us. We get fidgety and crazy and do all this stuff and we're just like, we want to go out and we want to do things. And then when we get stifled and controlled, we got to sit there. It's like, there was a. There was a cartoon one time, I remember watching it, this teacher has all the kids in the room, and there's this little Johnny, he's sitting there, and he keeps jumping up, and he keeps jumping up, and she goes over, and you sit down, and you sit down, and you sit down, and she finally takes him out, and corporal punishment time, she smacks him on the tush with the paddle, and she spanks him, and the principal is correcting him and stuff, and goes in, and he sits back down, and he sits there, and she says, now you don't move, and he goes, while I'm standing up in my heart, it's the heart. We can control action all day long, but what we have to be concerned about in the church is the heart. What is it about us that's different from the world? Has there been a heart change? And that's the important thing. So when we're looking at all of this, we've seen that there's this teaching that the church is supposed to be made up of the purest churches in heaven are subject to a mixture of uh... to mixture and error and number three it says and some have degenerated so far that they cease to be churches and they can become synagogues of satan nevertheless christ has always had even up until the end of time will have a kingdom in this world made up of those who believe in him and make professions of faith in his name Now, here's the question. Does that saying that there are going to be wheat and tares and the true wheat never sin? But that's a drawn out implication that you can look at when you're saying this. There's an idea that, well, there's going to be sinners in the church, but those pure and true ones aren't sinners, they don't sin. And we've got to be careful and not draw that implication. There are people that have. So we've got to be careful not to draw that. So let's look at point number four. By the way, there's ten points on this one teaching. There's a lot to it. There's a lot of things to consider about the Church. The Lord Jesus Christ is the head of the Church. In Him, by the appointment of the Father, is vested in a supreme and sovereign manner all power for the calling, institution, order, and government of the Church. So I want to read Colossians 1 18. Let's just go ahead and read these three. It's 1 18 Matthew 18 18 through 20 and then Ephesians 4 11 through 12 if we just want to read that in succession Colossians 1 18 and he is the head of the body the church who is the beginning the firstborn from the dead that in all things he might have the preeminent Clearly I say unto you, whosoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. And whatsoever ye shall lose the earth and shall be loosed in heaven, again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything, that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am, I in the name of them. Ephesians 4, 11-12 and he gave some apostles and some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. Now, we recognize church structure here, right? I mean, it's laid out through this. Christ, our Lord, is talking to us about church discipline, about discipline in the body of Christ. It starts out at the simplest and the smallest way necessary. Hey, brother, did you know that this was a sin? We're going to talk about it today, okay? We're going to talk about it a little bit. Next week, we're actually going to talk about the doctrine of sin, or the next time we're together. But think about it. Brother, did you know that that was a sin? I had no clue. I am so sorry. Okay. I just want you to know, you know, that's been something that's been bothering me all my life. I've done this, you know, just this, I don't want to, but even as a Christian, I just do this stuff over again. I tell you what, how about you and I come together and I try to help you with this situation. Every single time you feel like you're going to do this thing or you see this thing happening, would you be willing to maybe give me a call or let's talk about it, you know, to find out what triggers this thing or whatever? Absolutely, absolutely. Man, that's what godly discipline starts at, education. We come to somebody and say, hey, did you know this is a sin? You didn't know? Well, let's talk about it. This is what the scripture says about it. But that's church leadership. That's authority. That's each one of us having that same authority as a ground-level Christian in the body of Christ. We go to one another. And what does it say here? I'm jumping to Matthew just for a moment. Verily I say unto you, whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. And whatsoever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Do you know that people teach that as binding and Satan, binding and loosing Satan? That's not what it's talking about. That has nothing to do with that. Vaughty Baucum loves to say it. If you are the person binding Satan, quit letting him loose. You know? I mean, whoever it is, that guy that's in charge of this thing of binding Satan, he needs to stop letting him loose. That's not what it's talking about. It's talking about someone who is in rebellious sin and will not repent, and you bring them under the binding discipline of the body of Christ. It says, whoever, whatever, whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. This person's inactive rebellion against God through his sin You aren't the one accusing him, attacking him, and addressing him. You're doing it on the behalf of Almighty God. Now, maybe you're in error, or maybe the whole body of Christ here is just seeing things wrong. It's possible, I guess, that they're just seeing things wrong, and they're not actually under church discipline, because what you're trying to hold them to is not actually discipline. I'll give you an example. I'm at a church here in our area, and I start teaching through the book of 1 Peter. And as I'm teaching through 1 Peter, the very first sermon I'm talking about is the Diaspora and coming out with Nero and all this stuff. And Peter talks about the elect of God, and I start just addressing the issue of election. And just because it's there, and as I'm going through, I address the issue. One sermon, and I address the issue. After it was over with, one of the head deacons comes running up, jumps up on top of the platform, grabs my arm, pulls his fist back, and he's ready to punch me. How dare you talk about that election stuff? You're saying that my son's going to hell. And he's just angry, and I had to talk to him for more than an hour. Diane and the kids walked outside and got in the car and they're sitting there just waiting and praying because This is going on well, lo and behold we get them talking and Maybe the next day or the day after I get a phone call Well, we need to talk to you as the church council. We've decided we're not going to excommunicate you But we need to talk about your sin My sin was talking about the scriptural biblical teachings on election and predestination, stuff like that, from the book. Now, was I in sin? But they thought I was. They wanted to hold me to some kind of church discipline until I sat with them and I went through the scriptures and I showed them all the different places it talks about election and the fact that not one single person has ever done anything to in the service of God who was not called out in scripture to serve God. Every single person in the scripture was called out to serve God. You know, Paul being the prime example of that. Going to go murder Christians and God says, hey, if you don't mind, would you please come with me? I'm gonna make you blind for a little bit if you don't mind. That's not what he did. He knocked him off the horse and said, who are you to attack me? Immediately. Calls him out and chews him. So anyway, this matter of church discipline here is you have bound somebody under their discipline before Almighty God, and God in heaven agrees with you. That's a discipline because you started out at the lowest level, and you worked your way through, and that person has never come to repentance. You know, Gary, if you don't mind me using it, you're in sin, and I come talking to you, and you say, hey, look, I don't think I'm wrong. And I say, hey, I can't use you because you're white. Hey, come here, come here, come over here. This is what's going on. Just we didn't talk about it, just because the scripture tells us as quietly as possible. This is what's going on. What do you think? This is what I'm saying. Maybe I'm wrong. What do you think? And you say, brother, according to the scripture, this is the, the, the, the, the, and I'm sorry, I tell you, I love you, but I agree you're insane. I'm not going to have anybody telling me what to do. Then we got to take it to the next level. Then we take it to the next level. because you refuse to repent. See, it's not an issue of you've offended me. It's an issue of there was sin that has sinned against God, and we now have to address this because we need you to be in a right relationship with God. Not primarily us, but with God, right? This is the church discipline issue, and that is the authority that we're supposed to be under, and we can't do it any other way. We can't. We simply cannot. Because when we try to do it our own humanistic ways, what happens? We see people getting kicked out of churches for everything under the sun. We get people being brought into discipline. And he was like an associate pastor of a church. I'm not even sure what community he was in. I don't know either. But he was reformed. And they kicked him out because he was reformed. Yet another story. Do you know that you cannot be excommunicated from a church without church discipline properly done? If somebody murders somebody, you go, oh, that's so terrible, kick them out of church. No, no, no, wait a minute. Wait a minute, what was the circumstances? How'd this all happen, whatnot? Let's bring somebody back into a relationship. Let's get them back right with God. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't. What's the difference between that lying and murder and hate and all this other stuff when we say, oh, that's such a big issue, that's terrible, and it is. Don't get me wrong, it is. The taking of a life is wicked and terrible. Diane, how many times did we count since yesterday it's unreal we were we were talking about the el paso and then um a town 30 miles from where i grew up there was a shooting of a 16 year old there was a town in virginia yesterday and at 1 a.m this morning we made in ohio another national less than 24 hour period yes and those are just the ones we heard about i probably only heard about those two because the one was near where i grew up and the one was near here But what's interesting too is the same kind of self-hacker thing happened when he was saying, and you never hear it because it's so common in Chicago, 11 people shot. That's just commonplace there. But think about it, the world has no remedy. Do you know we do? If we bring people under the truth of the Word of God and show them and teach them and talk to them, explain to them, and God works in their hearts about the glories of God, about the salvation that they may be under, the conviction of sin, and we work on people about these things, a true brother in Christ, and I'm not justifying any murder, what I'm saying is that anytime somebody sins, we go to them lovingly, calling them to be in right relationship with God. Right? Because their sin is primarily against God. We have the solution. You want to talk about racism? We can stop it. Love your enemies and do good to those who mistreat you. Okay? Forgive as you've been forgiven. That'll end racism. Oh, somebody did something wrong to me. Okay, forgive them. Love them. Forgive them. Don't hold a grudge. Right? That's found in the church, and it's not being taught in the church. Colossians 1.18. Why do we do these things? Because Christ is the head of the church. Do you know what He did so that He could forgive you of your sin? Somebody give me an idea. What did He do? Oh, I love you. I love you. He's not there right now, is he? But I want to tell you what the Bible says more than that. You know what he did so he could forgive you of your sin? He predestined before the foundation of the world that he was going to make a world that was absolutely perfect with absolutely, impossibly perfect people from Adam and Eve. You guys have heard me talk about this. It is impossible for any of creation to be equal to God. They did not have perfection, though they had holiness. But once they were given the opportunity to either sin or not, they sinned willfully. They wanted to. All of creation wanted to. Every bit of creation wanted to, because it's not holy as God is holy. And God's purpose before he created anything was to save souls. Yeah, they can't even look at him. They can't even look at God. They're sitting there going, I wonder what he looks like. I'm going to look and I'm going to destroy it. I'm going to undo it. And we get to walk up before them. The Bible tells us we can go boldly before the throne of grace because we are in Christ. Not amazing? Isaiah chapter 6. No, that came from the word of God. That came from Isaiah chapter 6. I just repeated what God said. But what's amazing is they cover their face, they cover their feet, and then they obediently, instantly do everything that God says without hesitation. because they're creatures. It's holy ground. They cover themselves because... Think about this. Christ is the head of the body, the church. We follow Him as our example. From the very beginning, the firstborn from the dead, think about what that means. Who is the beginning, the firstborn of the dead? It's talking about the beginning of all life, all creation. He is the very preeminent firstborn. He was the whole culmination of everything, the thought of everything. It was all for his glory. Every bit of it was done so that we and everyone would magnify God. Exalt Christ, giving him the name above every other name. So that at His name, by the way, if you're not doing it now, you will, every knee should bow. Every knee should bow. Every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God. That's our call. We're the church and we get to tell people, humble yourself, submit to Almighty God. And oh, by the way, if you're humbly submitting, when somebody points out that you've got a sin issue, you're not going to rebel. you're gonna say, you're right, and I need to correct it. Will you help me? Will you love me enough to help me fight through this thing? And it might take a long time. Two weeks max. And we're all perfect in what, six months? No, think about it. It can take a long time. Because sin pervades. We live in a world of hate. The darkness is starting to close in. Spiritual darkness is closing in everywhere. The churches are losing the message. They're losing the gospel. They're losing forgiveness. The thing that's not taught in this world, look on any single news station. Is there ever a discussion about forgiveness? Never. There's all kinds of talk about wickedness, and they can't define what it is. but they and they know that they stand against it they hate it but wickedness is to them just their enemies because everybody's good they don't want to talk about forgiveness because we have a message no one else has Ephesians and he gave some To be apostles, we don't have any apostles today. Let's clarify that and make sure it's known. Everybody that says they're an apostle is a liar. They are not called out by God. An apostle, what, okay, Mark, what is it that defines what an apostle is? One that has personally seen Christ and been sent by him as an ambassador. They said they have to have seen Christ personally. That's why when Paul says he's on the road to Damascus, he was one born out of due time. He saw Jesus Christ and was sent. He was commissioned out. By the way, that's also why Paul was the 13th disciple to replace the 12th disciple who was lost his bishopry. And when Peter, before the Holy Spirit had sealed him, before the Holy Spirit was laid upon him, when Peter called out Matthew to be a disciple, was it Matthew? Matthias. Matthias, to be a disciple. No, he was not a disciple. He was doing his own will, not God's will. He cast lots to find out who would be. The problem is God cast his lot right on Paul's face, right on Paul's head, knocked him to the ground and said, this is going to be my apostle. So we have apostles, and we are to hold to the apostles' doctrines. We don't escape them, we don't go past them, we don't move around them, we don't shift them, we don't change them. We look at them, we study to show ourselves approved, and we disciple one another in the apostles' doctrines. We need to know doctrine. That's why I talk all the time about doctrine. I try to find doctrine in the Word of God, and as I'm teaching, everything is about doctrine so we understand what thus saith the Lord. Some prophets. In one sense, we know, in one sense, a prophet is one sent by God to proclaim His Word as he's been divinely given the Word of God. In the Old and New Testament, we see those. Today, a pastor would be considered a prophet in only the sense that he's speaking forth the revealed Word of God in the 66 books of the Bible. But I'm not a prophet in any sense of my own, because God has not spoken to me, and He will not speak to me in the way He did with those others. Because He sent the Holy Spirit to Egypt. Exactly. And also, just wait one second, I'll let you have it in a second. and also because he sealed it in Christ and those apostles that he divinely sent like Mark said to proclaim his truth and we hold to those doctrines not the doctrine of some man saying oh God told me in a vision in private. Go ahead. Aren't apostles the ones who are in the desert and they're like white souls? Some of them weren't. You know, John was a prophet, and he was camel hair and locusts and honey. So today when people call themselves prophets, they're lying. That's what I thought. Apostles and prophets. If anybody says that, as soon as they say that, yes ma'am? Well, the Bible actually tells us at the end times that we'll be given certain visions and understanding, but that's at the last days, but that's different. You're referring to the doctrine of revelation, which is found in the book of Revelation, which insists that the book of revealed word is closed with that book. That's right. And so foretelling doesn't happen anymore. Foretelling is in some way a prophetic office, but foretelling can only happen from the word that he's given. to call yourself a prophet when that word is given to all of us. And that's why I would have a hard time. Anybody that's told me I'm a prophet, I'm going to tell them that I'm not. Now, let's go further. Some... I think that people in these... Joseph Smith, I guess. No, you're right, though. Brigham Young actually wrote extra. These pastors that are in the... WordFaith, Health, Wealth, Prosperity stuff. well he's uh what do you call it holy roller what do you call that that they are calling themselves prophets yeah of course yeah because they want to exercise authority over churches and provinces and regions and they say like paul they could go out and exercise authority they can do that they hear real word from god yeah well they believe god talks to them yeah yeah But let's look. When I say when God talks to me, it's the Holy Spirit talking to my heart. Yeah, and that's the impression that the Lord leaves upon you. Let's go ahead and quickly look at some of this, though. He gave apostles and some prophets and some evangelists. By the way, there is an official office of evangelist, okay? That's the person that is called to do that. But we are all called to do the work of an evangelist. That doesn't mean that any one of us is given a pass. God, Jesus Christ, was the chief evangelist. He called out 70 to be evangelists and told them to go out in the communities, and He gave them the authority to be His evangelists. Then He calls out 500. Then He called out all of us when He says, go into all the world and proclaim the gospel. That's the evangelistic call. That's the gospel call that we are to proclaim to everyone, to do the work of an evangelist. That's for everybody, okay? There are churches that hold this. Well, we have a pastor who's the outreach pastor, the evangelist pastor, and every time what it means is, this person's in charge of going out and being the witness for us because we're not going to do it. That's what it means every single time. I've never seen one case where they're actually, somebody says, okay, we're going to train the entire church in the biblical gospel proclamation, and we're going to go out and do it. Everybody says, well, that's not for me. I can do it at home. I can do it over here at this one little place. I can do it with my friends, but I'm not called to do this thing. I'm not comfortable. Nobody's comfortable. I can't remember. Her name is escaping me at the moment. um, the lady we met at First Baptist, the elderly woman, who just, she was constantly buying gospel tracts from you. It was, it was so neat to see it dawn on her that even as an 80-some year old woman, Mrs. Wagner, Evelyn. Yes, Evelyn Wagner. Oh, wow. She, it dawned on her, she's like 85 years old or something like that, and if she's still living, she's 95 going on 100, and She, it was neat to see that light bulb come on and realize that I'm 85 years old and I'm called to tell about the good news. And she desperately, I think every weekend, she was like, can I buy some more stuff? Yeah, she handled it, I was pretty sure. And you know, at first it was, I have these children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren that need to know about Jesus, but it also became, I make McDonald's and I'm handing them out to the whole restaurant. But telling everybody she saw and it was just like, it was such a neat testimony because so many people are like, well, I can't go out and go to the racetrack and do this stuff. It's like, you don't have to, you have to do it where you're at. And she did it wherever she went and it was just the neatest, you know, to watch her heart for her children, her grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and just to see that light bulb come on, it's my responsibility to tell everybody that I'm in combat with. It's not that with somebody that I... I guess that's the example I saw of somebody that truly died. That's what it was about. That's the saddest. That's the saddest. There was a lady at the pharmacy to go to, and I was giving her tracts, And she said, oh, thank you, kid. My son was saved because of the doctor. And then she asked me, and I gave her some of the million dollar bills the other day. And she goes, yeah, well, my son, he gave some out, or he was going to give some out. And so I said, well, here, here's some more. And I said, I'm not even sure how old her son is. But anyway, she told me, she said, have you ever encountered that? And I said, well, not. Not too often. I said, a lot of times you get tracks and it's, you know, it's not really telling a story about the guy in Australia, you know, where he gave out all those tracks. He never knew anybody that was saved. And I said, you don't do that. And I said, you know, rarely do you hear somebody saved from our gospel track. But, you know, I said, you hear people giving, appreciating it a whole lot. But I said, most of the time, I said, we give them out racetracks. I said, these people you never see again. You know, you're handing them out. Paul lists about two dozen different things that the Holy Spirit can supernaturally gift His people with, and does consistently supernaturally gift His people with. But it's possible to have the gifting and not the office. It's possible to have the office and not the gifting. For the Great Commission, Christ has given every Christian the commission, therefore the office of evangelism. It's a little bit example of the difference in Paul and Barnabas. Because Paul did most of the speaking. Paul was gifted as an evangelist, but Barnabas always supported his work when he could. Barnabas didn't do most of the talking because he was not gifted, but he still had the office, so he served in that capacity. All Christians must serve as evangelists, but some are supernaturally gifted to know where to put it, how to put it, and God uses them in a special way to get it out there. We talked about those two. I love using that example as well, and here's why. When Paul was proclaiming the gospel, Barnabas would have been that guy walking around talking to people and encouraging them, because he was a minister of encouragement. That's what they called him, right? That encouragement, that consolation. And he would go around and say, do you understand what he's saying? You know, that's one thing about when we go out and share the gospel as the body of Christ you hear one person open-air preaching and proclaiming the truth as as you know, God would impress them and they they learn to do that with with not perfection with but with direction and and to see all these other people walking around and And just looking for somebody and saying, hey, do you understand what he's saying? What do you think about what he's saying? What do you think? And they get to have that little conversation on the side as the gospel is being proclaimed. You know, so that's the work of the evangelist, the office and the responsibility of evangelists. But then it goes on and says this and some pastors and teachers. you know, there is an office of pastoral oversight, there's a pastoral office of teaching. There are many people that teach that that's unbiblical, that being a pastor in church is unbiblical, and they try to claim that we're all co-equals, and so while that's the case, nobody has any pastoral claim to teaching and preaching, but I'm going, wait a minute, look what it says in verse 12. Read that out loud, somebody. verse 12 down there at the bottom and he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints of the work in the ministry for the edifying of the body of the Christ the purpose of all of this for the perfecting of the saints. Paul said that he rejoiced because it was his labor, his mission, to present every man complete, perfect before God, before Christ, in Christ. Okay? To teach and to bring everybody to a proper, accurate, sound understanding Not that they're absolutely perfect, you know, morally and all this other stuff, but that they have the right teaching. That falls to the pastors and the teachers. It falls to the pastors as a primary responsibility, because you're not to have many that are teaching over you, because they undergo the weightier judgment. Because we are responsible to teach those things which accord with sound doctrine, to teach the apostles' doctrine, and As teachers, you're responsible. Now, think about this. When I preach, I talked to men about this the other day, when I preach or when a pastor preaches, it's the responsibility of the men in the room to focus on what's being said, knowing that everything else that's going on may be distracting. You're to focus on what's being said, what's being done, because these are the words of God, the teachings of God, and you're supposed to focus upon these things, study them, learn them, so that you can teach it throughout the week. That's your purpose. It's not to say, you know, hey, Wyatt, do you have this down pat? Okay, let's go to the next thing. It's, we are to teach. We are teachers. And we bring that doctrine down to a level where maybe it's too high. You know, like, you know, there's times when I preach and I teach and people say, man, that was so over my head. OK, did you learn anything? Can you take it? And throughout the week, can you pull it apart and look at what that what scriptures I used and and understand what's being said? Maybe it is too much in that one hour. But can you take it apart for seven days and chew on it? And grow with it. get the nutrients and the nourishment out of it. As teachers, that's our job. We listen to the elders and the teachers in the church, and then as teaching ministers under maybe a small group study or whatever type of study, we say, you know what, we're learning about eschatology, end times eschatology, we're talking about, you know, pneumatology, all these different things. We're learning about all these different things. Pneumatology, we're talking about the spirit, the work of the spirit, okay? We're learning about the Trinity. We're learning about the, you know, forgiveness, for example. We're talking about that. The doctrines of sin, the doctrine of justification, righteousness, all these things. And that way, we can disseminate that down so that the entire church unified I won't say unitarily, but unified comes to the same doctrinal beliefs. We don't start there, and we recognize that people aren't always there. But that's the beauty of a church, that it's truly trying to function as a whole under Christ. Because what we do is we forget personalities. We say, what does the Lord say? And how can each one of us be responsible to mentor and teach those that are under us? And you know what happens? Nobody bucks up and says, but I didn't get the glory today. We see that in churches all over the place. Somebody says, well, what about me? What about me? What about my position? Well, I don't have a position. Okay, maybe I'm the pastor. But I don't have a position. I have a responsibility. You have a responsibility. Each one of us in this room are teachers gifted by God to teach what we've been taught. We also have a responsibility to teach as best we can, all week, what we've been learning. Maybe weeks on end, what we've been learning. You know, we kind of had these discussions around homeschool. When kids go through the material too fast, they don't attain it. And I remember some of the studies. Kristen had a class years ago about how to study. She had a whole semester on said skills, how to study, types of learning, et cetera. But they were telling them, you need to be exposed to a concept and review it, sometimes but it just kind of hits home, that whole thought of, if I hear it once on Sunday and never look at it again, am I going to retain what I heard on Sunday? I've heard it once. In school, in college, I'd cram for an exam. If you'd asked me a question an hour later, I probably could have made an answer. You know what Paul Washer calls it? Paul Washer calls it expository listening. Now think about it. If you're sitting here writing down what is being taught, you know, I'm not saying everybody has to write it all down, but somebody needs to. You're writing down those verses and the concepts, and then you say, how does this apply? And you learn to apply it to your week. Forgiveness, for example. There was an issue this morning where I had to ask for forgiveness. Gracie had to ask for forgiveness. I had to humble myself and say, forgive me. I did something I shouldn't have done, and Gracie did something she shouldn't have done, and Wyatt was perfect. Diane was perfect. But we had to come together and remember that we're sinners saved by grace, and that we need to forgive one another, and be quick to forgive, the Bible says, and slow to anger. You know how hard that is inside of a body, of a family? Sometimes it gets really hard, right? But see, that's what we do at the church. We encourage one another through that sound teaching. Now, we need to finish. We're at 42 minutes, but I just want to encourage us as we're talking about this. In sound teaching, there's sound discipleship. There's long suffering. As long as we see the direction, we're happy. We start seeing that nobody's perfect. Nobody's got everything down pat. You know, we're not automatons. We're not robots. We're growing in progression under submission to the one who is the head of the church, right? Let's do that. Let's do that. I tell you what, I enjoyed this day, didn't you? Let's pray. Lord, thank you so much for our time. Thank you for letting us be together. God, thank you for your church. The world is absolutely in a rage. And only the body of Christ, only your word, spirit-dwelled, spirit-empowered men, women, and even children of God have an answer, have the truth, have the answer. Lord, let us be salt and light. Let us learn to love one another, submit to one another, forgive one another, hold each other accountable with godliness, with grace, and let us be the body of Christ you call us to be. In a few weeks, Lord, we're going to ask you to give us a strong witness and save everybody that hears the messages of the gospel proclaimed. And we're going to believe, Lord, that you're going to save, that you're mighty to save, Lord. All those whom you've called to yourself, you will not let your word return to you void. And we trust you, Lord. We thank you, Lord, for this day in Christ. Amen.