Please open your Bibles tonight to the book of Philippians. Philippians chapter 4. I appreciate being with you. It's my pleasure to be here. Your pastor has been a friend to me over the past few years. I have another friend here I haven't seen in a long time. How are you brother? He was one of the first pastors to sort of befriend us when we began deputation to plant church out west. The last time I saw him we were quail hunting together. Yeah, and I got all the quail and took them home and ate them, amen. So Philippians chapter four. Ms. Stringer, do you realize how difficult it is to preach after your testimony? I feel like the Apostle Paulette just happened here. Praise God, what a testimony, amen. Wow. Sometimes you, You go somewhere to preach and you think, well, the Lord's, he sent me over trying to help those folks. And you get there and you think, well, Lord, you sent me here to be helped. Let's just pray and go home. And that's sort of how I feel, amen. Let's just thank God for the good things he's done and go home. But brother, pastor wants us to go on into the word tonight. And so we're gonna do that. Philippians chapter number four, I want you to go there. Before we get started, I wanna tell you that the message that I'm gonna preach tonight is what I'm gonna refer to as a preventative medicine type message. Are you with me? Which means this, I wouldn't preach this message tonight if I knew it already addressed something currently taking place in the church. BECAUSE I'M GONNA PREACH ON THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AND HOW IT RELATES TO WORLD MISSIONS. WE CAN'T GET LOST PEOPLE SAVED AROUND THE WORLD IF THE LORD'S PEOPLE IN CHURCHES LIKE THIS DON'T SAY ON THE SAME PAGE. AND THIS UNITY IS A KILLER OF WORLD MISSIONS. Now I'm going to depart from those statements and probably not come back to those until I end the message. So just stay with me along those lines. But how many of you had the flu shot this year? Would you raise your hand if you had the flu shot? Did you take that because you had the flu? Or because you didn't want to get the flu? You did it because you didn't want to get the flu and you did anyways. No? WE TAKE CERTAIN MEDICATIONS BECAUSE WE DON'T WANT TO GET SICK. AND WE DON'T WANT SICK CHURCHES THAT CAN'T BE FRUITFUL IN WORLD MISSIONS. AND YET THESE KINDS OF CHURCHES DOT THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE BECAUSE WE HAVE THINGS THAT WE NEED TO BE CURED OF. DISUNITY BEING ONE OF THOSE THINGS. AND YOU SAY, BROTHER TRACY, OUR CHURCH HAS GREAT UNITY. THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT. The whole point of the message is not an issue in the church tonight. The whole point is what will be going on in the church three years from now. Five years from now. Preventative medicine. Trying to stop something before it ever even happens and gets in somebody's mind that it could ever be a possibility. So what I'm doing is I wanna try to preach a message that you'll remember. Now this is frustrating for a preacher because he often can't remember what he preached. I preached a message on the scapegoat on a Wednesday night about six months ago, and I wanted to preach it again up in Maryland, and I couldn't remember it. I thought, I'm worse than my church people. I can't remember what I preached. How do I get on now? So how will you remember what we say here tonight, and it have any impact over the next 5, 10, and 15 years of the life of this church? We're going to vote on it. Tonight, I'm calling us into a business meeting. Can I do that? How do I do it? It's done. All right. We're in a business meeting. We're gonna make an official vote. All in favor of never forgetting this message until you need to remember, say amen. Anybody opposed? If you were, you really would never forget it, right? Because it would be right in here on you. Now, if you've got your Bibles open, I want you to look there in Chapter 4. I'm gonna be preaching from Chapter 2, but I want you to go to Chapter 4 to get us started. Chapter 1, Paul says, I'm praying for you. Chapter 2, the mind of Christ. Chapter 3, beware of dogs. There's plenty of them. Chapter 4, thank you for the support. But right in the middle of those things, he says here in chapter four in verse one, therefore my brethren, dearly beloved, and longed for, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved. Do you think he loved these people? He had invested his life in these people. Look at verse two. I beseech you Odius. Now I've got to put a disclaimer right here. When I get to preach on this sometimes I start calling this person Eutychus. So tonight you Odius and Eutychus are the same person. And beseech Syntyche that they be of the same mind in the Lord. Now what's the implication? The implication is they are not of the same mind of the Lord. Now, we don't know the trouble or to what degree the trouble is, but I wanna do a little illustration here to try to get a point. Hey, young man, would you help me with this? Would you straighten that end of that rope out and help me get it pulled out here? Try to get it straight. I asked the pastor for a rope and he gave me a mess. I believe we've got her. Now these two ladies in this church at the church at Philippi didn't have the same mindset. And often when you have two ladies, Lord forbid, amen. Now listen, this is dangerous ground preacher. It's all right to preach to the junior age kids, amen. It's all right to preach to the teenagers because they don't tithe yet. Huh? But you don't preach hard against the senior saints because they do tithe. And you don't mess with the church ladies. Right? Help me now ladies. But I tell you, if you get two of them at odds, it's trouble in a church. Lord, help us. All right, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna say these two ladies were having an issue, but we don't know what it is. I don't believe it was a doctrinal issue, because Paul doesn't address any doctrinal issues. Like in Galatia, he addressed doctrinal issues. I don't believe it was an ethical issue or anything like that. If you bullet on down it seems to me about all you have left is a personal issue. Has there ever been a church in the history of America where two ladies had a personal issue? Pretty safe. What happens in a church like this one when Syntyche and Euodious get upset at each other? Huh? They start to recruit. Right? Do we have any deacons in here tonight? Any deacons? Brother, are you a deacon? Do you have a good sense of humor? Would you help me? Now listen, I'm calling on volunteers. I'm not having any mercy tonight. All right. Now brother, I'm assuming this is a great church man. Right? He's not tonight. He is a sorry, low down, good for nothing deacon that's married to Yodius. Now, Yodius is not gonna come get the rope. She didn't like to be seen. So she sends her husband to do it for her. Hey man, I know it when I hear it, don't you preacher? All right, now on this side over here is who? Senteke, I should have called him Jill and Becky or something. All right, you got that tight? Are you on staff? I started asking if he'd tie, but that's private. Would you sit down? Anybody over here that's on staff? Brother Gamble, you on staff here? Would you come up here? We got a deacon on one end of the rope, and Syntyche has got a staff member on her side, right? When this happens, people begin to pick sides, right? You work with the choir? I do. Anybody sing in the choir right in here? You sing in the choir? Would you come up here? That's my daughter. Your daughter? You go over there on that side. There ain't no way a kid's gonna help their dad in a fight. Get a hold of the rope. Yeah, if you're gonna be involved, you gotta participate. Is anybody on your side in this church? Surely somebody would be. Anybody else in the choir? You are? Are you kin to him? You're kin to him? Okay. Come on up here. You get on the rope right here, all right? All right. Now, who's the church secretary? Is she here? Bless her heart. She don't want none of this mess, does she? What's your role in the church? Huh? You in the choir? Well, go over there and join the choir. That begins to pair up. What do you do in this church? You in the choir? Who's not in the choir? Brother, what do you do in this outfit? Nothing? Well, sometimes people who won't do anything else will fight, so come on. Right? All right, go ahead. You go ahead and parry up there. Now then, start taking the slack out of the rope. Those are gonna struggle now, right? When two people in a church are not of the same mind, a struggle starts. Now watch this. Go ahead. You know what we have on this thing now? Tension. Tension. And the more tension you get in a local body, the less it can do for missions. Huh? Right? For the sake of the illustration now, let's assume we're already done preaching. You all go all the way over on that end. Go ahead. I took it easy on you. No, go on that end. Now, instead of fighting on two sides and not having the same mindset, Ms. Stringer, where are you, sister? Would you come and help me? I hate to do this to the Apostle Paulette. I might as well go all in. Now, instead of having two sides dividing the church fighting, why don't we put a godly missionary on this end? Instead of her holding it, we're gonna secure her with it. Right, sister? No, under your arms. I'm not holding you hostage. Now get a hold of him. Now, would you turn this way, sister, if you don't mind me taking him by the shoulders? Let's just let her go back down to the field where she was at, knowing that somebody's holding the ropes. Right? You can't do that if you're divided. You're pulling and tugging and fighting the wrong enemy for the wrong reasons. So, in the end, in a minute, we're gonna say this, instead of using this rope for the right reason, you may sit down, thank you very much, please don't hold this against me. Instead of fighting and tugging and pulling against each other, we want to use the rope for the right reason. Now, I didn't do this, and I should have brought a bunch of children up here and put them on opposite sides, because some children learn more about what not to be a Christian in church than to be a Christian. Y'all can be seated. Brother Gamble, would you take up that rope for us? All right. I think your mind's in the right place now. Go with me to Philippians chapter 2 and verse 1. If it wasn't a doctrinal issue and it wasn't a moral issue, like what's addressed in Corinthians, and it wasn't an ethical issue, And it wasn't an operational issue, which is what we like to fight about now mostly, about how to do things. And it was a personal issue. You just have to wonder what it could have been. Maybe we'll come back a little bit to that. Look with me in chapter two and verse one. I'm gonna walk through this passage with you with the Lord's help. And then, Try to bring things back to our rope here in a minute. Can we pray together? Lord, I pray that you'll help us for a minute in this text. And Holy Spirit, in the next few minutes, I pray that you'll give us something that you own for a long time. And Lord, we ask these things in Jesus' name, amen. Preventative medicine in chapter two, I truly believe, was given so that when they got to chapter four, they would already have established the cure before they pointed out the disease. Imagine this, you're the pastor of the church at Philippi, and you get a courier, and he hands you the epistle to the church at Philippi. We've had it for years, churches have had it 2,000 years. But he got it that day. It was brand new and he had one of them. And he held it in his hands and he began to read it. Chapter 1, I'm praying for you. Who would want the Apostle Paul to be praying for them? Chapter 2, The Mind of Christ. Man, it is so high and so lofty, it's unbelievable. Chapter 3, Beware of Dogs. Okay. I'm a pastor, I'm gonna take care of my flock, I'm gonna guard them. Chapter 4, he's sitting here in his study at home, in the privacy, and he says, if there therefore be any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, excuse me, I'm reading chapter 4. I get to chapter 2 and it says, I beseech Jodas, and I beseech Syntyche, the Abyss, and he thinks, oh, oh. He's named these two ladies by name. Can you imagine being called out for eternity in the Word of God? Wow. There's a lot of reasons to want to be in the Bible and this ain't one of them. And can you imagine being the pastor who walked into that little church on that day and got up with this epistle which was to be read in the churches? And he began to read chapter 1. Chapter 2, oh yeah. Chapter 3, got to be careful. Chapter 4, and Sinti and Eutychus sitting in the church. He might have said, it's very difficult to address personal matters publicly. I assume that if it was so bad that the Holy Ghost called them out for all eternity, IT WAS ABOUT TO BE A LOT OF TROUBLE. SO THE CURE IN VERSE 2 GOES LIKE THIS. WE HAVE IN VERSE 1 THE BASIS OF UNITY. LOOK AT THIS WITH ME. HERE'S HOW CHURCH PEOPLE CAN GET ALONG WITH ONE ANOTHER IF THERE BE THEREFORE ANY CONSOLATION IN CHRIST. Paraklesis, it's the same word we get the comforter from. If God has ever come to your side and assisted you and helped you, you have something in common with the person sitting beside of you. Every Christian has got to have God all the time. And every one of us has been in a place where we needed the Lord to help us and speak to us and be a blessing to us and lift us up. And so does the person sitting beside of you. He says, of any comfort of love. It means to strengthen, to cheer, or to enliven. Especially it's talking about the use of words. God ever speak to your heart As Baptists, we're more often likely to say, God convicted me. Does God ever say nice things to you? Has God ever said to you, I love you? He did on Calvary. Has God ever said to you, good job? Sometimes the Lord says good things, encouraging things. The Holy Ghost speaks to us, right? Lifts us up and encourages and blesses us. And guess what? He does that for the person sitting right beside of you the same way. Then he says, if any fellowship of the spirit. It's talking about the partnership we have as Christian people and we know this, that is a partnership in the gospel. I think about a team of people who are in those rowboats that they race. They do that down on the Tennessee River in Knoxville. And you have a number of men or women on each side of that boat, and they have those big long oars, and they're paddling. And if only one of them is out of sync, what happens to it? It begins to circle. Do you want a tabernacle Baptist church that can only make circles? Because even just one person out of sync is going the wrong way. Your pastor is your under shepherd. God is using him to say, all right, you in this seat, you in this seat, you in this seat, you in this seat, listen now, stroke, stroke, stroke. And just one person who says, I'll stroke when I want to. I'll stroke how I want to. Gets that boat in a circle. That's not a partnership. But what you have to have to be fully effective in world missions is everybody on the same team pulling in the same direction. Then he says, if any bowels and mercies, and of course, in the New Testament era, you're talking about the seat of the emotions. If I were to pick on these people down here, which I hate to do, I would go find one of these young men right here and ask him if he was sweet on any of these girls beside of him. Right? Listen, in our culture, when I found out a boy likes girls, I'm like, praise God. Years ago in a Baptist church, we found out a boy liked a girl, we go, that's all he thinks about is girls. Now we find out a boy likes a girl, we're like, hallelujah. He likes girls. And we're glad. But if this young fellow over here, he liked a girl beside of him, he was gonna write her a note. In the New Testament era, he would write sweet words and kind words and complimentary words, and at the end of it, he'd say, I love you with all of my bowels. And she would go, aw, that's sweet. Because the seed of the emotions is there. Let me ask you something. How much do you relate and love your fellow church people? Are they in your heart? Do they mean anything to you? Does the person sitting beside you and the hurts and the hard times and the difficulties they have matter to you? Well, I can tell you this, they matter to God. And if Syntyche and Euodias had thought more about each other than they had thought about themselves, they'd had the same mind. The basis of our unity is simple. It's the Holy Spirit in us. Listen, unity is not supposed to be based on our hobbies. Right? It's not supposed to be based on our preferences. It's not supposed to be based on our personalities. There will always be somebody at your church that you get along with easier than others. But that doesn't exempt the fact you're supposed to get along with everybody. And I don't mean toleration. What we're talking about is love. The basis of our unity is this, Christ died for our sins. The Holy Ghost moved inside of our bodies. And that love of Christ and that feeling of the Spirit gives us a unity that exists nowhere else in the world. That's the basis of it. Now look at the description of unity. This is what a church would be like in verse two if it was totally unified. Are y'all paying attention here? All right, just wanna make sure he's with me. Look here at verse two. I love these four words, fulfill you my joy. You know, there's nothing wrong with a church wanting to have a happy pastor. Huh? If your pastor can think of you and smile, you're doing it right. If your pastor thinks of you and goes, Lord, help me. You're doing it wrong. Fulfill you my joy that you be like minded. A unified church thinks the same way. It's not that we're robots. It's not that we have to have the same personality. It's not that we have to all be alike. It's not that we can't have our own unique opinions. But when the rubber meets the road and we're dealing with something important, we get the mind of God on it and we go together. We think alike. When the pastor meets with the deacons, it ought to be a blessing. Huh? When this church has a business meeting, it ought to be a joy. You shouldn't have to pray that God won't send any visitors on the night you have a business meeting. Having the same love. That's a mutual love, one for another. Now I want you to fill in the blank on this. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye want another. Now we're good about preaching that we should love sinners, and we should. BUT WHEN A CONFUSED WORLD GOES LOOKING FOR THE TRUTH, AND THERE'S BUDDHISM, AND THERE'S HINDUISM, AND THERE'S THIS ISM, AND THAT ISM, AND I THOUGHT ABOUT OUR PRECIOUS SISTER'S VIDEO, AND HOW MUCH LIKE THE HEATHEN AMERICA IS BECOMING. LITERALLY. SOME OF THE PICTURES WE SAW TONIGHT WOULD HAVE SHOCKED AMERICANS BEFORE. WE'D HAVE SAT THERE AND LOOKED AT THE PEOPLE IN THOSE PICTURES, OH NO, IT DON'T SHOCK US ANYMORE BECAUSE WE WERE AT THE MALL THIS MORNING. We look very much like the heathen now, act like the heathen, dress like the heathen, believe like the heathen. In a church, what gives the heathen outside the walls of this church the understanding that they're dealing with the disciples of Jesus Christ and not a fraud is not only your love to them, but especially your love to one another. You will never convince a lost man that you love him if he knows you don't love each other. Lost man ought to visit this church and look around and say, I don't know what all is going on here, but I can tell you this, there's a group of people that care about each other. They stick with each other like glue. They stand for each other. They have each other's backs. Each other's lives matter to them. Their kids are important to each other. Right? That's a unified church. Then he says, being of one accord of one mind. It's just a restatement of what I've already preached. That's a description of what it means to be unified and I would illustrate it with a symphony orchestra. Over here you have guys with fiddles and over here guys with banjos. Right? When I went to Bible college, man, I was straight out of East Tennessee. Brother Gamble can tell you. And I heard a boy play what he called a violin. His name was Rosas. And I said, Brother Rosas, what's the difference between a fiddle and a violin? And he said, talent. I was surprised that he had that much humility that a fiddle player was so talented. In an orchestra, there are multiple instruments, but they should all be playing the same song. to the same tune under the leadership of the same head. That's beautiful music in the ear of God. Now look in verse number three. Here are hindrances to unity. And here I want you to think about guys running a race. If a man's gonna run around a track, I've got a kid in our church that's very athletic, he runs track and he runs cross country. We were talking about this the other day. You could take the fastest person in the world and put some hurdles in front of them and the track time is always going to go down. Are you not impressed with the people who run hurdles? It amazes me. Any of us could go out and run around the track. Some faster, some slower. But I could not run hurdles under any circumstance. Maybe if you put ladders on both sides. Or escalators. Maybe if you'd let me stop and just like swing across or roll under it. Dude, I'm not doing hurdles. My daughter's friend. Just friends. Asked me if my daughter was doing a 5k the other day. He said, preacher, he said, are you going to run the 5k? I said, son. I said, if you see me running, you had better get because something mean is coming. I especially am not doing hurdles. But we constantly put hurdles in front of each other in the church. And the devil constantly wants hurdles in front of us. And these are the hurdles right here. Look with me in verse three. Let nothing be done through strife. Strife is contention, but it's a certain kind of contention. Are you listening? It's contention for superiority. Isn't this a beautiful piano? Y'all awake? It's a beautiful piano. There are some talented people in this church who play this thing. Amen. Thank the Lord for them. If I knew you by name, I wouldn't use this illustration tonight. But for the sake of illustration, let's assume that Syntyche plays the piano. But she's not a pianist, she is the pianist. And has been for 30 years. Sunday morning she shall play and Sunday night she shall play and Wednesday she shall play and if an a pianist not a the pianist if an a pianist comes and joins your church she can only play if and when the pianist is on vacation Because the pianist is most important. Is there ever any trouble among musicians in a church? Never, never, never, never. Listen folks, musicians sometimes can be emotional people and we're glad. Because I want to see them happy when they sing, don't you? But you can't have strife among pianists. If Eodius can play, why can't she play? Look back with me now, strife, vainglory, it's empty pride. But in lowliness of mind, let each esteem other better themselves. There's a hurdle. When I esteem myself greater than the person in the seat beside of me, there's gonna be problems. Especially if they esteem themselves higher than the person in the seat beside of them. Sounds like a preacher's fellowship. Look, not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. This is the only kind of godly nosiness that's allowed in a church. When you will mind somebody else's business for their good, but when you mind other people's business for their harm, it's gonna be a roadblock. Now look with me at verse seven. Now I'm going to make a confession here. It's very difficult for me with my limited vocabulary and illustrative abilities to be able to preach this text. This is such theology that it is very difficult for me to be able to draw out here what I'd like to do. But let me try TO GO THROUGH IT WITH YOU. THIS IS THE AVENUE TO UNITY. THIS IS HOW YOU TAKE A SYNTACHY AND A YODIUS AND YOU BRING THEM BACK TOGETHER. THIS IS THE MIND OF CHRIST. WHAT IF GOD SAID I'M GOING TO LET YOU LOOK INSIDE OF MY BRAIN, INSIDE OF MY MIND. I WANT YOU TO KNOW HOW I THINK. WELL HE HAS. AND HE'S PUT IT IN WRITING. THIS IS THE MIND OF CHRIST. IT SAYS THIS, WHO BEING IN THE FORM OF GOD, THOUGHT IT NOT ROBBERY TO BE EQUAL WITH GOD. JESUS IS GOD. BUT IT WASN'T SO IMPORTANT FOR HIM TO HOLD ON TO CERTAIN THINGS THAT HE WOULD BE WILLING FOR US TO DIE FOR THOSE THINGS. Look with me here at verse seven. But made himself of no reputation. Now, theologians call this the kenosis. Preacher, the best I can do with it is say this. This is when Christ emptied himself in order to be able to die for us. Now, if you could go way back into eternity past before time, and you could listen into a conversation, if you allow me to explain it that way, within the Godhead. And how do you explain that? How do you have one God in three persons? Can anybody explain that to me tonight? Can anybody help me with the Trinity? I believe it, but how do I explain it? one God in three persons co-equal. The Father is God, Jesus is God, the Holy Ghost is God. Y'all believe that in this church? Yet there is one God. And within the Godhead there was a determination made that the Son of God would be the one that emptied Himself of something. What was it? The best I can do is say this, He didn't let go of anything that caused Him to be less than God. But what He didn't have on earth that He did have in glory was His Shekinah glory. He laid it aside. How could I illustrate what it must have been like to behold God? And what have the angels seen? And what will we see in the future when we're like Christ? And what Christ must have done when He stepped from the throne and derobed Himself of that which He rightfully deserved, the Shekinah glory. And took upon Himself human flesh. Look at that text. It's incredible. It says this, but made himself of no reputation, and oh how we like to have reputations, and took upon himself the form of a servant, not the kind of glory of God that fell in the temple, or the kind that Moses could only see the back parts of, or the kind that happened at the transfiguration, but a servant. And I think of our precious Lord Jesus Christ when he washed the disciples' feet. And I studied that passage and found out that in the home of a Jewish family, the lowest of the low person within that family had to do the foot washing when a visitor came. And if that family had slaves, the lowest person among the slaves washed the feet. And when Christ girded himself and said, I will wash your feet, he was saying, I will take the place of the lowest person in society. I will be the person that does what nobody else wants to do. That's God doing that. That's God who set aside the Shekinah visible glory, put off his robes and took upon himself human flesh. We think being a human is wonderful. To God, that is a demotion. And yet he took that human flesh and went beyond the human flesh and served us. Literally, the hands of God on human feet. The passage then says this, and was made in the likeness of men. Being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. And so if you can see Christ, disrobing himself, selflessness, and if you can see Christ washing the feet, servant, and if you can see Christ bloody upon Calvary, you have sacrifice. And those three things are the epitome of the mind of Christ. Selflessness and service and sacrifice. We saw it on a movie tonight. Now what does that have to do with missions? All right, I want you to imagine this with me. Imagine a young couple in your church and they're in a conference like this and God speaks to their heart and they surrender to serve the Lord in missions. We trace back a few years in their life and we find out the young man was part of a church family here that came in and he had good parents and he was raised well and went to your school and so forth. And this so often happens. His wife was from a very difficult family out in the community and she was picked up, y'all run buses? She was picked up on the bus route. My wife's family was brought to Christ through the bus route. I've heard that many times among preacher's wives. This young lady gets saved on the bus route. Young man gets saved in children's church. They grow up here. God calls them. They go off to Bible college. They study in ministry. They sacrifice to do that. They start deputation. That's not an easy process. They raise their support, and they go off to a mission field like our sister was on. I spent a little time down in the Suriname with Brother Darrell Champlin, very similar to our sisters, and let's say they're there. And they're on the rivers of Suriname. They begin to labor and to work and to serve the Lord, and they're there a couple years. Now they've got a kid or two. But back home, those people who are supposed to be holding the ropes have got distracted. One day the missionary gets the mail. It doesn't come very often. It comes about once a month. It comes by boat. He goes down on the shore, gets the mail, walks back to the house, sets it down, and opens it up. And in that letter is what I call, you know what a dear John letter is? It's a dear missionary letter. You know how they always read? If you've ever got any, they read like this. Dear missionary, after much prayer, and fasting, and consternation, our church, regretfully, in the will of God, must drop your support. He's in a foreign land. What's a little bit to you is a whole lot to him. And it's not about a dollar sign, friends. It's about knowing there's another church not praying. You think our sister didn't want somebody praying for her when she was in that village? Here's what the letter ought to say. Dear missionary, two women in our church got in the flesh. One of them was the pianist. The other was a pianist. And they fought so drastically that the deacons divided. The husbands divided. The ladies divided. The children's church divided. Right? People got so mad that they quit giving. I'm not gonna give ours too much trouble there. You're the trouble. And you're mad at everybody else. Huh? Right? And so the pastor, he gets the figures and he looks at what's been given to faith promise and what's not been given to faith promise and decisions have to be made. You can't send what you don't have. I told you preventative medicine. Listen to me. Here's my question and we're going to give an invitation. What's so important to you that you would let one soul die and go to hell for?