Dear Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your son, Jesus Christ, who's come and died on the cross for our sins, who was buried and rose again on the third day. We just ask that as we think about this text, as we think about the description of man's foolishness, and as we look at your word, may you help us understand how to become wise like your son Jesus, and as your spirit works on us, as your word works on us, that we would make those wise decisions that you call us to make. We're just so very thankful for today. We're thankful for everything that you've given us in your son's name, amen. So there's been several studies done on the power of influence. So for example, in the early 1950s, there was a man who decided to do a test and what would happen is you would have a group of people and they would be given a test and they're all sitting in a room, and they would all purposely answer the wrong question, and then somebody else would come in who knew the right answer, but because the group was saying, no, this is the right answer, they answered the wrong answer because of the influence of the group around them. Interestingly enough, in the 60s, some demented soul decided to do another study. He decided to get an actor who was pretending like they were being electrocuted. And he would call students to come in and say, every time I tell you to turn up the electrocution or the power going to this person, do it. And as they're hearing the person being electrocuted and screaming in pain, the professor said, turn up the voltage. And the person turned up the voltage. And they said, keep on turning up the voltage. And they keep on turning up. And the people are screaming. Nothing was happening. No one was hurt. The takeaway was, You, it's easy to be influenced by somebody who claims to have power to tell you to do something that you know is morally wrong. Just a couple years ago, MIT did another study where they, I don't know why they did this, but they put in Twitter a whole bunch of false stories to see how many people would retweet the stories and how many people would like the stories. And at the same time, they also put in a true story. Guess what happened? 70% of people retreated the false story opposed to the true story. And what they found was if you get a large group of people to start doing something, other people will go along with that. Regardless of what they think, regardless of how they feel, there is this power of influence. Now, we all realize that we are surrounded by foolish people. And what I mean by foolish people are those who reject God's word, those who reject God's wisdom. We're surrounded by them. They're our neighbors. They're in our family. They're in our government. They're working at the store. They're our fellow employees. They might even work for you. We're surrounded by fools. And we like to think that we're giving more influence, that we're more influential for them than they are towards us. However, it is more likely that we are influenced by fools more than we influence fools. Now, for the next couple weeks, we're gonna be diving into the strange and dangerous world of the fool in Proverbs chapter 25, the first 12 verses. And this is known as the Book of Fools, and it gives a really detailed description of a fool and how dangerous a fool is. However, I want to remind us of this truth. You are easily influenced by foolishness. I'm easily influenced by foolishness. And so, since we're surrounded by fools, they pose a humongous threat to us. And we should look at this text as a case study to say, OK, that's what a fool looks like. This is some of the characteristics of a fool. In fact, it's even going to talk about how we confront a fool. And so we should take a hard look at this text and go, what areas of my life do some of these things seep in? Because it's easier for them to influence me than for me to influence them. Now, this doesn't mean that greater is them on the outside than he that's on the inside of us. That's not true at all. We know that God is a strong man. He's not influenced by anyone, nor does he change truth. But we're not talking about the eternal truth of God. We're talking about we as believers who struggle every day to walk by the power of the Spirit, and that it's easy for us to give into the power of the flesh. And we often give into the power of the flesh, and we often give into the power of the flesh because of the temptation of those around us. This is what we're talking about. That influence of fools and how they easily influence us. This also doesn't mean that if we share the gospel with a fool, that God can't work on their heart and move in their heart to make them more like Jesus, to give them rebirth. That this isn't saying that God can't change them. But we need to realize they influence us quite a bit. So this morning we're gonna look at the actions of a fool. How they act. And it's our hope that we don't act a fool. That we don't act like a fool. So go with me to Proverbs chapter 25. And go with me to verse 28. As we dive into this dangerous, problematic world of the fool. Notice what Proverbs 25 verse 28 says. It says a man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. Here's the first problem of the fool and the action of a fool is that they lack self-control. And notice the imagery of a broken wall and what we're gonna see is that This leads to this uncontrollable slavery. So notice what it says. It says, a man without self-control, literally, it's a man with a hot liver who can't cool off his liver. That's a literal translation. I like that translation. It doesn't help us very much, but it is fun. It literally is a man who cannot control himself. It's a man who's given to his passions. It means that there's nothing, there's no stopgap, that he's totally given to his desires, totally given to emotion, right? He is, he's hot-headed, hot-spirited. He just does what he thinks he needs to do right at this moment, doesn't think about repercussions, right? And a person like this is very foolish. We've seen a fool described like this before, and so this is a foolish person. And notice how Solomon characterizes this one, who's without control. He's like a city broken into. and left without walls. So it speaks of a conquered city. It speaks of somebody who's been conquered by an invading army and that they were able to breach the defenses, meaning that this person may have even had defenses to stop enemies. But they're already broken into. Because he acts without thinking, he's destroyed his walls. And there's already been a conquering enemy coming in. Meaning this person's already conquered. It's not if you lack self-control, there's the potential of being conquered. No, the image is already somebody who's conquered and someone who's already exploited. This is a person already given to something. Already given, why? Well, what would stop this person who lacks self-control from not already being under bondage to his sin already? Yesterday we were talking as men in John chapter eight. We discussed that subject where Jesus was saying to the Jews, anyone who sins is a slave to sin. And we were talking about that slavery, how that's forced. There's no freedom. You are obligated to do the will of another. And there's no escape from that. And we were all born slaves. This slavery where we were, someone else was our master telling us what to do. And we couldn't escape that. There's no way that we could emancipate ourselves. There's no amount of good works that we can do to emancipate ourselves. In fact, it would seem like any idea other than the godly solution is furthering that slavery. And often when we think about somebody like this who lacks self-control, our minds go to the automatic worst person that we know that lacks self-control. We think of the person that is completely given to, like substance abuse or something else. Friends, somebody can lack self-control and look like a really good citizen. In fact, there's even people that I've known that lack self-control and are incredibly disciplined. We must remember that true self-control comes from the power of the Holy Spirit of those who've already placed their faith in Jesus Christ and has the power of the Holy Spirit working on us. That's one of the fruit of the Holy Spirit, self-control. That means that this is something that only the Holy Spirit can produce in us. Just because their lack of self-control doesn't look like what we think it looks like doesn't mean that they're not given to things without being able to stop it. They're already conquered. This is a fool, a fool's already conquered. He's already exploited by his desires. Is it possible for a believer to walk by the power of the flesh? Of course. And is it possible for a believer to give in to numerous desires and passions without thinking about the repercussions, not yielding to the power of the Spirit? Of course. Now for us, this might look a little bit different than a non-believer, but is it possible for us to be weighed down by sin, allowing sin to act like it's our master telling us what to do and the flesh telling us what to do? Of course. This is one of those areas that we have to make sure that we're looking at our wall, take this picture for a moment, that we are like a city and we have this wall protecting us. How often do you go around that wall to go, where's the weak point in this wall that can be easily exploited, right? And then notice what happens. Not only are they broken into, but then they're left without a wall. This is incredibly dangerous in the ancient world. Today we don't really live in cities with walls because our modern weaponry makes walls nothing, right? And so they've abandoned this idea of fortresses. But in the ancient world, when people were attacking you with swords and bows and arrows, a big strong wall was a great deterrent. Imagine if a city comes in, tears down the walls. then leaves no walls. You are left open to every kind of enemy, every kind of problem. You cannot protect yourself at all. You are left without any protection. You are easily exploited by the next enemy, by the next thing. Man, we as believers, we need to realize that it's easy for us to be influenced Easy for us to walk fleshly, easy to walk in a way that's not pleasing to the Lord Jesus Christ. It's easy for us to go around knocking down our own walls so that our flesh can come in. And we as believers, we normally say that we have three enemies with which we fight, right? So the first would be Satan and his angels and his minions. Of course, there's temptation from them. Satan is called the god of this world, right? The prince, the power of this air. And he's working in the world. And so there's lots of things that are going on, lots of beliefs, lots of movements, lots of stuff that's coming from this This invisible enemy that's trying to get us distracted, right? Leave ourself open for easy exploitation. Satan's doing this. The next one may be the world around us, right? Those people who are born of Satan, as it were, and these people are constantly tempting us and influencing us. Man, we need to be careful of that. But I would say maybe the greatest enemy is ourselves. We are our own worst enemy, and we desire these things. It's not like we're sitting inside of a castle saying, I don't want that particular enemy to come in. It's like we want that enemy, but we realize how dangerous that enemy is. And so there's a part of us that's desiring that enemy to come in. It's like us watching watching the armies of Greece walk inside of the Trojan horse, we see them, and then we see them wheel the horse up going, we know that there's soldiers in there, we know Achilles is in there, he's gonna kill us all, but man, that's a pretty horse, let's let him come in anyways. It's opening up yourself, and that's our problem, and the only way that we can combat that is with the word, spending time in the word, and walking by the power of the spirit, right? One of the things that we need to be is we need to be vigilant. We need to strengthen ourself and we do that through the word. So we all know those areas with which we are given to passions, right? We all have them and we could all say them out loud and we all would go, yep, we already know. You as a believer should be going around going, where's my areas of weakness? How am I strengthening those areas of weakness so that I can live a life that's pleasing and honoring to the Lord? But this is the first thing about a fool, and this is how they influence us. They teach us how to live without control, and we go, I kinda like living without control until we're then given over to the sin. That's the first problem. Notice the next verse, 26.1. Like snow in summer or rain in harvest, so honor is not fitting for a fool. Here's the second problem, fools lack honor, and they can lead to destruction, right? So think of this image for a moment, like snow in summer. I come from a land where it snows in the summer, in Wyoming. I remember one time, Fourth of July, going outside in my shorts and it's snowing. And you're just like, what is happening to this world? It's snowing in summer. It didn't ruin any of our plans. We kind of thought it was kind of funny. It actually didn't even feel cold. That may be the fact that we're living in Wyoming. And we're never cold in Wyoming. So I've seen it. But I can imagine snow in summer can do a lot of damage, right? Just this little snow thing that happened this past week. It burst one of the fittings on one of the fixtures outside at the parsonage, and we had water spraying everywhere outside. I couldn't fix it, so I had to call Bob. And Bob came over, and he couldn't fix it, so he stole some stuff from the church, and we finally put a Band-Aid on it. But cold destroys, right? Cold destroys. Cold weather destroys. Snow freezes things. Imagine things in the summer where you're not ready for the winter, and all of a sudden, winter comes. That's destructive. Or think of this, rain in the harvest. Now, we live in the land of rain. We have lots of rain. But in some parts of the world, when you have too much water for those crops, that's a bad thing. You could kill something with too much water, right? And so this is bad stuff. This is really bad. It's cold in the summer. It's raining during the harvest time. It's not supposed to do these things, and it doesn't. It's bad. It's destructive. It causes huge chaos. Imagine an entire community that loses all of its harvest and all of its food because of too much rain. Or imagine crops that are damaged or people that are hurt because of cold weather when they're not expecting cold weather. That's damaging, that hurts. And so just like that, just like that, so too if you honor a fool, it's not fitting, it's not appropriate, it's not right, it's not a good thing, this is a bad thing. So the question is, what does it mean to honor here? To honor somebody is to give somebody a position, to give somebody a name, to speak well of somebody, but it's much more than that. It's like giving somebody responsibility. So you know somebody's a fool and you give them a responsibility, you give them some sort of, privileged position inside of a community. And if you do that, it's not appropriate. Solomon's saying that's not appropriate to do. It's not appropriate to give somebody a responsibility that's a known fool. Now, we're not just talking about somebody who's not smart, somebody who just does stuff without thinking. We're talking about a fool in a biblical sense. Those who deny God's word, those who deny his truth, those who rebel, right? That's what we're talking about. So you give somebody that, that's not right. It's not fitting. And that can have devastating consequences on a society, on a community, on a town, in a household. That can destroy everything. Why? Well, think about what we've learned over this long study of the Book of Proverbs of a fool. A fool is one who's outwardly rebellious towards God. So if he's given authority in a community or she's given authority in a community, what will happen? All of their decisions and all their policies will be towards rebellion towards God. Not we need to submit to God, but rebellion. Think about this. They are full of self-righteousness. That's not good. Somebody who rejects God, rebels against God, but thinks that they're righteous. How can you talk to a person like that? Or think about this. Not only that, but everything they say, they're full of foolishness. They're willing to attempt all of their sinful behavior. In the back of their mind, they're even thinking that sin is a laughing matter. And because they have no fear of God, the very first thing we learned about a fool, they easily turn into tyrants. That's the worst case scenario. You have a tyrant who thinks they're right, self-righteous, constantly rebelling against God, constantly telling you to rebel against God, and is willing to do whatever because they have no moral scruples. That's the worst case scenario that could happen. Now, we as believers don't honor fools, right? We don't give honor to fools. Of course we do. We do this all the time. We're willing to worship any type of hero that agrees with us. That's what Facebook is. That's what Twitter is. It is hero worship on a grand scale that we think doesn't really affect us or other people around us. We do this all the time. We honor heroes that shouldn't be honored. We do something else. Sometimes we are really quick to associate with a person that we shouldn't. Notice what Paul advises Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter five. 1 Timothy chapter five. Just notice what is said in verse 22. It says, do not be hasty in laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure. You see that? You see that? Laying on of hands means to accept, to call faithful, to associate with, and Paul says be careful because you can associate with somebody really quickly. And when you say, this is now somebody that I'm in association with, guess what? It's possible you may share in their sins if you quickly associate with them. This is something serious, right? So a fool doesn't deserve to be honored, but they desire honor. They desire this cheap type of honor, and we as believers can sometimes fuel this. So we need to be careful. We need to be so careful not to honor fools. We need to be so careful to not do things that are not honorable, not above reproach, and act like a fool. Or if we get a little bit of power or influence to not start acting like a fool when we get it. I've seen that happen numerous times. Somebody's a pretty even keel person, you give them a little bit of power and they turn into this crazy person. And you're like, where did this guy come from? That happens all the time. You get a little taste of power and it goes to your head and that's a dangerous thing. We should be careful who we associate with. Careful not to honor those who are not worthy of honor. There's a third problem. This is a doozy. Notice the next one, verse two. It says, like a sparrow in its flitting and like a swallow in its flying, a curse that is causeless does not alight. That's really poetic, by the way, just the way that that's put. I think that may be one of the most poetic proverbs that we've seen so far. The question is, what does it mean, like a sparrow flitting? What is that? That's like a literally just like aimlessly flying in the air. I don't know if you've ever seen that. There's quite a few birds that are out here in this pasture and you just watch them and you're like, these things are just flying around. They have nowhere to go. They're just flying around in the air. Go home, birds. Stop leaving all of your mess on my car. Please stop. Go home. Stop just flitting around. That's what they're doing. They're just flying around. It looks aimless, right? We know it's probably not. But that's what it appears to us. They're just flying around. And then a swallow just flies here, there, here, there, here, there. Go home, swallow. Stop leaving your mess on my car. Doesn't matter. Flying here, flying there, right? And you just go, just go somewhere. Stay somewhere. Be content. but the birds are constantly flying around. It seems foolish to us, right? Seems aimless, doesn't really accomplish much. This is like a causeless curse. Now, when we think of this word curse, we might think of somebody who's cursing, saying a negative statement against you, invoking God's judgment, right? inappropriate to do these types of things in polite company. And we may think of that, or we may think of somebody who claims a curse on you, but in the ancient world, a curse was something different than on our modern world. This was somebody calling to their gods, or even calling upon Yahweh himself, and doing a certain ritual to bring down a curse on you. And people take this stuff serious. My own family, on my mom's side, they do stuff. And you go, that's the weirdest reaction to things. But they believe that people have cursed our family. So there's certain things around my grandmother's farm that you may find that stops a curse, because she's superstitious. People have superstitions to stop bad luck, to stop curses. That's the type of sense, that somebody just gives a curse, a curse from one of their gods. It's meaningless, it's absolutely meaningless, but they do this. And it's possible for someone in the ancient world who is given to superstition will hear a curse saying, oh no, such and such has cursed me by their god. I better stop what I'm doing because this is a bad deal. Or we've even seen this with the Pharisees, where they claim judgment against Jesus, calling condemnation from God himself upon Jesus, which is hilarious because Jesus is God. It's a meaningless curse. It's a meaningless judgment. It's a meaningless damnation. But people say this to get people to stop. It's a way of controlling people. So this is a person who is willing to throw out curses without thinking. That's what he's talking about. It's like a bird flying aimlessly is like a person who will curse someone, willing to do all of this stuff to bring somebody down, to control somebody else, without thinking about it. They just use it, they just use it. It just rolls off their tongue. It's meaningless. In fact, notice how meaningless it is because a curse that is causeless, without thinking, does not alight. That's another poetic word. You know what that word means? Doesn't come home. doesn't sit anywhere, it doesn't establish itself, so it means it's meaningless. So somebody who is willing to throw out this without thinking, guess what, that curse doesn't matter. It's not real, it's not true. Now a fool who believes in superstition, believes in false theology, to them a curse is very much real. In their mind it is very real. But in the mind of the wise who know God and know his word, What is it if somebody comes up to you and says, I curse you in the name of Shiva? There's no such thing as a Shiva. You could curse me all you want on the power of Shiva, but I know he's not real. As I was thinking about this text, I was, reminded over and over again from the New Testament how the Apostle Paul teaches us to be careful on what we think about the world around us. It is easy, it is easy for us to believe speculations, conspiracies, think about things, be superstitious. Greg talked about it this morning, that somebody may even come to you and say the most nonsensical thing in the most eloquent way and convince you of the most nonsensical thing. That happens all the time. And so Paul constantly warns the church to be on guard against superstition, not to be a fool and believe lies and myths. Let me just show you a couple. Go with me first to Colossians chapter two. I don't want to steal Greg's thunder here. I know he's going through the book of Colossians each Sunday morning. I encourage all of you guys to come out to that. It's a great study, great time in the Word, great time thinking about what Paul says to the church in Colossae. But just notice what he says here in verse 6. He says, therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him. So as you received him, walk by faith, right, and notice that you're rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you've been taught abounding in thanksgiving. So that's how you're supposed to continue. That's how a Christian's supposed to walk, by faith, knowing that I'm rooted and built up in Christ, knowing that I'm grounded in him, knowing that I'm taught the truth through Christ, through the apostles, through the church, through his word, and that results in this great thanksgiving. But then notice the next verse. Literally, watch out. See to it that no one takes you captive. By what? By philosophy and empty deceit according to human traditions, according to the elementary spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. Now why would he give that advice? Because it happens, and we're easily susceptible to this. Right? I can listen to a philosopher and say, well, that guy sounds really smart. He's probably right. Notice somewhere else. Go with me to 1 Timothy 1. Notice what he says in verse 3. Now, Timothy, think of Timothy, right? Timothy, this is like, this is Paul's boy, right? I mean, this guy spent time with Paul. I mean, he was taught by Paul. He saw lots of stuff that we see in the book of Acts. Timothy, he's a preacher, right? This is a strong leader, right? This is the one that Paul entrusts with important messages, right? He considers Timothy to be a man of God. This is a great man of God, great teacher, right? From an early age until he's old, everybody has good things to say about Timothy. Strong believer, right? Notice what Paul says to this strong believer. Verse three, as I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor devote themselves to myth and endless genealogies, which promote speculation rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. The aim of our teaching is that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussions, desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions. He goes on to tell Timothy, hey, do not get involved in meaningless discussions with these people. Notice what these people do. Man, they're devoted themselves to myths and endless genealogies and all these different doctrines. This is what they do. They do this. Why? To pull people away from Jesus. To sit here and say that there's people not that, somebody would be that evil to believe a lie and then try to propagate that lie even in the church? Of course they do. Why wouldn't they? False teachers cannot build anything on their own. They're like parasites. They already need a healthy church to attach onto. And that's the only way that they can get people. They can't convince anyone who doesn't believe into what they believe. They can only take somebody and deconstruct. That's what these people are doing. They're swerving and they want people to wander away. He gets so serious, he knows what Paul says to Titus, right, in Titus chapter one. Notice what he says in verse 10, speaking of false teachers. He says, for there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. They must be silenced. Why? Since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain that which they ought not to teach. One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons. This testimony is true. Therefore, rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith, not devoting themselves to Jewish myths or the commands of people who turn away from the truth. To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. But both their minds and their consciences are defiled. They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work. You see, a fool doesn't care about the truth. The fool is willing to listen to anything, believe anything other than what God's word has to say. And so what's to stop a fool who has a defiled conscience, who's detestable, who's disobedient, who rejects God's word, what's to stop them from making empty threats, empty curses? I don't know if you ever had to deal with a false teacher. I've had the, Unfortunate privilege to deal with some. You know how many times I've been told that I'm going to hell from what I'm teaching? What I'm teaching you right now, and you believing this, you're going to hell, and God doesn't like this, and God's going to curse our church because we're preaching a gospel by grace. You know what I do? I walk away. I don't care. It doesn't bother me. I know the truth. They're not going to scare me by some empty threat that God's now against us because I'm preaching what he says in his word. Only a fool would be concerned. Only a fool who doesn't know God's word would shake. Only a fool would make such a crazy, outlandish critique of somebody who's trying to understand God's word and teaching God's word. See, that's what fools do. They don't care. They don't care. That's the problem with a fool. They have no sense. And so therefore, they're given to this uncontrollable superstition. So as we look at this and we start to jump into this crazy world of the fools, this crazy, problematic, dangerous, we understand we can easily be influenced by them. We easily can be led astray into foolishness. And so us knowing them, knowing, okay, these people, they lack self-discipline, knowing these people, okay, They lack any sense of honor. I shouldn't listen to them, consider them any type of authority. These people lack any biblical knowledge. So they're willing to throw out superstition. I go, okay, I'm not gonna listen to them. And it becomes easier for us to go, I'm not gonna listen to them, I'm gonna stay firmly rooted in God's word. This morning, I heard a story about a young man named Peter. He was supposedly a well-known person in his town, known for his intelligence, known for his ability to think critically. He was admired by many people inside of his community. He had one flaw, though. He had terrible friends, and they were foolish. They were impulsive, but Peter loved them all the same. And one day, his friends convinced him to jump off a cliff into a lake Now, everyone knew that this lake was barely a lake, very, very shallow, and to jump off of any cliff into this lake was incredibly dangerous, but his foolish friends convinced him. Smart Peter, intelligent Peter, critical thinking Peter. They convinced him, no man, you'll be okay. We've done this numerous times. They of course were lying, but Peter took their word and he jumped off and became a paraplegic. Because he listened to his bad friends, his foolish friends. That happens to us. We do that. We listen. So what should be the advice for us moving forward? Here's the advice I think that we can pull away from this text. Number one, we need to realize how easy it is for us to act fleshly. It's incredibly easy. Incredibly easy. We can slip into that without even thinking about it. It's easy. That's an important thing to remember. It's easy for me to act foolish. Therefore, I need to be all the more vigilant. That's the second piece of advice. I need to be all the more vigilant. Because it's easy for it to creep in, I need to be watching. I need to be alert. I need to be awake to what's going on around me. There's people that want me to be foolish. There's enemies that want me to be foolish. There's a part of me that wants to be foolish. I know that. And then the third piece of advice is to remember who you are. You are a son of the living God. You are a daughter of the living God. You are co-heirs with Christ. You are going to co-reign with Christ. That's who you are. No one can take that away from you. That's who you are by birthright, spiritual birth. Realize that since you are in Christ, You now are no longer under the power of that foolishness. You now have the indwelling Holy Spirit, and you have God's Word. Yield to the power of the Spirit. Yield to the Word. Walk by the power of the Spirit. Say yes to what is right and no to what is wrong. That's the solution, spending time in the Word, spending time with God. So, may the Lord give us both the will and the ability to do all that we've heard today. Let's go ahead and let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for your love, for your mercy, and for your grace. We thank you for everything that you've blessed us with. We thank you for this text as a good reminder not to act foolishly, not to be influenced by fools, but rather be influenced by your word, be empowered by your spirit. We just thank you for this opportunity we had this morning to fellowship with one another, spend time with one another. So we just ask that as we And this one part of today, and we move into the next part, that we would be mindful of our own sinfulness, mindful of our own proclivities, and mindful of who we are in your son, and that your spirit would help us say yes to what is right. We just are so very thankful for everything you've given us in your son's name, amen.