Luke chapter 22, we've been going through the book of Luke now for a long, long time and we're nearing the end and it's, to me, it's just more exciting as we near the end of Luke because we're approaching the cross and I just, I appreciate the gospel of Luke so much more than I did before I started preaching through it. and you handle each word individually. I mean, you have to, to prepare for a sermon, and you just, it's so much greater depth than you get just reading quickly through a book of the Bible. So I urge you, as you read through the Bible, stop every once in a while and just take note of what's there. Savor each word, every word that proceedeth out from the mouth of God. vacation. Uh-oh, here it comes. We were watching at Kootenai Falls up near the Canadian border in Montana. In fact, just to give you a quick overview, the way we went, we flew from Little Rock to Dallas and then got delayed, storms down in Fort Worth, and so we were delayed overnight in Dallas before we got to northwestern Montana where we were staying. and went up to Glacier National Park, and then to Kootenai Falls, and we were watching some kayakers on the river there at the falls. A lot of rapids and waterfalls, and those kayakers, they're dropping off of those waterfalls, and you think, man, it's gonna kill them. And so they're doing this kayaking and we're filming them, you know, as they go down the river. And so we saw some really neat stuff while we were there. And watching those kayakers crashing through those raging rapids of those rivers was, it was fantastic. I think if I was young, I might try that, you know, I'd probably kill myself if I tried it now. But we're watching these guys, they know what they're doing. And they're coming down these rapids and they know, or paddle, it's got a paddle on each end and they're fighting those rapids trying to keep their kayak in the right direction and sometimes they're going backwards, sometimes they're going forward and once in a while they get in the crossfire of that rapids and one of them flipped over upside down because he didn't handle the chaos of the rapids properly, and he turned upside down. I thought, uh-oh, he's a goner. But those things are balanced such that they'll flip back up, and he pops up like a jack-in-the-box, and he got away. But I'm sure he didn't mean to do that. The other guys all handle it properly. They're fighting like fighting honeybees or something, man. They're paddling that thing real fast trying to get the kayak going in the right direction. Sometimes they'd float over into a slow spot where the rapids are actually causing the current to flow upstream. And so you think, man, he's going up the river in those rapids. And then suddenly he'll maneuver a little bit and back over in the rapids and zoom, there he goes back downstream again. And so sometimes in life we get in some rapids And you don't know what to do. And like Brother Lloyd was teaching this morning, you make a wrong stroke with the oar or you make a wrong thought or decision when you're in the chaos of life and you get turned upside down. Your whole world gets turned upside down. And you may think, what was I thinking? And so if you've ever been in the middle of disturbing events or situations that are chaotic, And you made some decisions that you think when you get out, you think, boy, I don't think I did that the right way. And you know what they say, hindsight. We learn from those mistakes, but boy, we don't want to repeat them, do we? Troublesome times and in everyday life, We find ourselves sometimes in troublesome circumstances and we're gonna see this in the text this morning, how Jesus was in the midst of a bunch of chaos and how he handled himself. We're gonna see, he just come out of the garden in our last message. He just come out of the garden, or he's still in the garden of Gethsemane. They just come out of their private prayer meeting, Jesus and some of his disciples. They're met by a mob led by Judas. And this is the beginning of a series of events that leads him into those kangaroo courts that are gonna mockingly find him guilty and condemn him to the cross. And we're gonna see the turbulence around him is mighty. And yet Jesus handles it. in a spectacular way. He doeth all things well. In the following verses, we're gonna see how Jesus reacted to the chaos and maybe learn some lessons that will help us, are you listening? To help us to react properly, scripturally, when we find ourselves in chaos. Judas and the mob shows up in the garden in chapter 22 of Luke, verse 47. Let's read it. Verse 47, and while he yet spake, behold a multitude, and he that was called Judas, one of the 12, went before them and drew near unto Jesus to kiss him. But Jesus said unto him, Judas, betrayest thou the son of man with a kiss? When they which were about him saw what would follow, they said unto him, Lord, shall we smite with the sword? And one of them, it was Peter, and one of them tells us in the book of John, the same account, parallel account, it was Peter. Strange that Peter would do something absurd and quick like this. Shall we smite with the sword? And one of them smote the servant of the high priest and cut off his right ear. And Jesus answered and said, suffer ye thus far. And he touched his ear and healed him. And Jesus said unto the chief priests and captains of the temple and the elders which were come to him, do you come out as against a thief with swords and staves? When I was daily with you in the temple, you stretched forth no hands against me, but this is your hour and the power of darkness. Father, we pray that you'd bless us this morning as we look into the word of God and Lord, see what you have for us. And Lord, there's so many things that you could show us from this, but our little minds are just not capable of taking it all in at once. And so Lord, I pray you'd help us just to take in this one thought from this passage this morning. Lord, help us to understand how Jesus handled the situation and finding calm in the chaos. Bless us to that end, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen. having a private prayer meeting with his disciples and here comes Judas. He shows up leading the mob because as we found out earlier, he has agreed with the mob for a little bit of money. He's gonna betray Jesus and so he shows up leading the mob and he comes up to Jesus and as was their tradition, their custom of the time, they gave a kiss of recognition and reverence. I'm glad we just shake hands here. Some of you wouldn't wanna kiss. And so he's interrupted in the midst of the quietness of that garden. Can you imagine the prayer meeting that Jesus had with these disciples in the garden of Gethsemane, these big, huge olive trees all around, and they're out there kind of camping out at night, and they've had this quiet time where they've had this prayer time, and then Jesus talks to the disciples about the fact that they've been sleeping instead of praying, and while he's standing there talking to them, Judas shows up, with the mob who's coming after Jesus, and he gives Jesus this kiss to signify to the mob, this is the man, this is Jesus, this is the one you're looking for. And Jesus, knowing all this ahead of time, that it's gonna happen, he knew that Jesus would be, Jesus knew he'd be betrayed by Judas. And yet Jesus was not afraid to come to that place. He knew ahead of time that this chaos was gonna swirl about him and Jesus could have escaped before it ever happened. Being omniscient, he knew. And yet he went. There's places I don't wanna go because I know what might happen when I get there. But Jesus, knowing that it was gonna end at the cross, went right there to the very place. He knew the chaos that was about to happen, and yet he was calm. And that's what I want us to see today. You know, betrayal by friends. Jesus knew Judas was coming with that mob, and he knew that Judas was one of his 12 chosen disciples. And betrayal can throw anybody into a tizzy when it happens by a friend. but Jesus was calm. He had enough calm to stand still and face Judas and the mob, calmness, in the midst of that chaos. The disciples were, they were uncertain about everything that Jesus had said. He's told them over and over again, but you know, they were Baptists and they didn't listen. They just didn't soak it all in. And so Peter has already boasted about it. Remember in the last message, Peter said, well, I'll tell you this, Lord, no matter what happens, I'm sticking with you to the very end. I'll go to jail or I'll go to death for you. Well, now Judas, or Peter rather, has got to stand good against his boasting and so he pulls out a sword. It tells us in John, in that account, that Peter pulls out the sword that they had talked about just a little bit earlier And he whacks off the right ear of a servant. Poor servant, he's just one of the servants. He's not even one of the big shots. And so Peter chops off his ear. And Jesus says, put up your sword, Peter. And he gets Malchus' ear and sticks it back on. Most of the guys around there, most of them probably didn't even know what was happening. But Jesus, in the midst of the chaos, he's calm enough to take that ear and stick it back on the head of Malchus and heal it. Jesus knows he's headed for the cross. They're about to try him. They're about to mock him. They're about to treat him very cruelly and torture him. And yet he's got time and sanity enough to stop and heal that servant. Well, the hypocritical mob which could have arrested Jesus in the temple all that week. Jesus had been in the temple preaching every day, but you know why they didn't arrest him in the temple? Because they were afraid of the crowds. Many of the crowds at least knew Jesus was a prophet from God, and they wouldn't have gone along at that time, they wouldn't have gone along with the arrest and trials of Jesus during the week, and the Pharisees knew that. come under the guise of darkness. It's probably 2 a.m. when they hit the garden because we know the timeline that follows of the trials before daylight and Jesus being on the cross by nine o'clock that morning and so forth and so we can kind of tell, must have been somewhere around two o'clock in the morning when they come to arrest Jesus. and they come in darkness. Did you ever notice that sinful activity sure does love to happen during darkness? You notice anything about the protests and so forth? I'm talking about the destructive things that's happened in our nation in recent times. They don't do it in the daytime, they come out at night. Sin loves darkness. That's why parents need to be very aware of where your kids are. They probably don't need to be out in the darkness. I want you to notice how Jesus handled the chaos. Now here's what we're gonna be looking for today. I hope that we can get a grasp on the fact that, and this dovetails into what Brother Lloyd was talking about, what was I thinking? I want to bring out the point in this text that we need to be aware of what we're thinking at any given moment. And have you ever noticed that in the chaos and the frenzy of certain events, things are just tumultuous. And when things are going crazy, you tend to make bad decisions. Isn't that true? Under the stress of the moment, you feel like you've got to decide something right now. And when we're pressed for a decision, so that's why car salesmen, sorry car salesmen, I used to be one so I can say this. Car salesmen and real estate, let me just include all salesmen, insurance salesmen, car salesmen, vacuum cleaner salesmen, they want you to decide right now because this deal won't be here tomorrow, you've got to do it today. You know that, right? Now some salesmen are not that way. And salespeople make the world go round a lot of times. We need them, and a lot of them do a good job, and a lot of them are honest. But some of them that are unscrupulous like to push you into a frenzy of chaos and make you decide something right now when you hadn't had time to think it through, pray about it, or you've not established a pattern, a habit in your life that you know what you're gonna do ahead of time. And so I want us to see how Jesus reacted during this chaos. The mob shows up, Judas shows up, everything goes haywire, and he knows what's coming at the cross. and yet how calmly he faced it. Notice this brief outline. Number one, Jesus showed calmness instead of overreacting. You ever notice how people overreact sometimes? If they're caught in a stressful situation or a chaotic situation, a troublesome situation, everything's swirling about and some people overreact. They're just going crazy. Well, the Bible shows us here that Jesus didn't react in a rash, an emotional behavior, but he acted scripturally. Remember that, Jesus acted scripturally. The Bible warns us in Proverbs 3.25, be not afraid of sudden fear. Something rushes upon you And if you react emotionally, boy, it could be worse than the chaos that rushed you into the decision in the first place. Peter acted emotionally at this time. He jerked out his sword. Jesus didn't tell him to do this. Peter just did it. He just yanked out his sword and chopped off Malchus's ear. Well, Jesus was a little more calm. He put Malchus's ear back on. That'd be kind of weird, wouldn't it, standing around? Somebody just yanks out a knife and chops your ear off? Jesus reacted in calmness. Get this word, calmness, instead of fear or emotion or radical decision. Number two, calmness. Jesus acted in calmness instead of overthinking. He could have said, well, boy, this changes the whole game. I've got to do something different now. Jesus didn't overthink things. Jesus had prayed just previous to this about the Father's will. Remember that? When you're in the Garden of Gethsemane and Jesus said, Lord, if there's a way for this cup to pass by me, boy, I sure would like to avoid this. And he said, but nevertheless, thy will, not mine. In his humanity, he dreaded the, nastiness of taking on the sins of the world. But he said, nevertheless, thy will, not mine. See, when you think things through ahead of time and you're determined to do the will of God, then when this chaos rushes upon you, you've already got your plan and you don't have to rethink it. you already know what you're gonna do. Think through, mister, when that woman flashes her eyelids at you and tells you how handsome you are, and you're married. You think it through, and you know, instead of saying, well, thank you, no, you say, back away, lady, I'm married. You've already thought it through. You know how to handle that. Or you see in the checkout line at Walmart, somebody drops a $100 bill as they're digging in their pocket. And they're right there in front of you, but they don't notice it. You can reach down and put it in your pocket, and you're $100 richer monetarily, but not morally. Or you can take that $100 bill and say, ma'am, I'm sorry. Looks like you dropped something here. If you think that through ahead of time, then you don't have to try to figure out what you're gonna do. In that moment of chaos, in that moment of frenzy, in that rapidness of the moment, you already know what you're gonna do. Jesus had already prayed and said, not my will, Father, but thine be done. He knew what he was gonna do. And he didn't overthink the thing. I like the old saying, I've heard preachers say this for years in sermons. I don't remember who said it originally. Never doubt in darkness what the Lord has shown me in the light. Remember what Peter had said earlier? I'll never deny you, Lord. And then what did he do? When he got by the devil's fire and this young maiden said, hey, he's one of Jesus' crowd, Peter said, not me, I don't know the man. He just said a few hours earlier, I'll never deny you, Lord, but then in the emotion of the moment, He failed. Have we ever done that? When emotion rushes upon you, when the chaos swirls around you, you make decisions. If you haven't thought it through, and you haven't determined what you'll do, and you're not determined to do the will of God and act scripturally, you may make some bad decisions. I made decisions, I said, boy, I wish I'd have thought that through better. Yeah. Jesus had determined his course of action, that he's going to the cross and nobody's gonna stop him. He's going to the cross for sinners like you and me. And he's not gonna be deterred by the chaos around him. Number three, calmness. Jesus acted in calmness instead of overworking. Now he could have worked his actions and he could have manipulated things. He had power. He could have said, I'm bringing down 12 legions of angels. I'm wiping you guys out. He didn't overwork his actions or his mouth. You don't see him saying a lot here. You ever overwork your mouth? You know, sometimes we need to, I like what one guy said, I can't remember who it was, some famous guy, I can't give him credit, but I think it was some football coach. Never miss a good opportunity to shut up. I like that, don't you? That's good. Never miss a good opportunity to just shut up. Sometimes I've grasped and groped for words and blurted them out finally, and then I think, I should have just looked dumb instead of sounding dumb. Yeah. You can keep your mouth closed and let everybody think you're a fool, or you can open your mouth and remove all doubt. Jesus did only what was necessary during this chaos He didn't want to do anything to distract from his path to the cross. As wicked and as evil as the chaos around him might be, he was headed for the cross and nothing was gonna stop him, not the chaos. He's thinking clearly and we need to think clearly. Chaos can overcome us. and cause us to react in an unbiblical way. I'm talking about when everything around us is going haywire, we need to just stop and say, wait, let me think. Are you slow sometimes to think on your feet? That's one of the reasons I didn't want to be a preacher, because I've never been quick to think on my feet. That's why I make a lot of notes. If I write it down in the calmness ahead of time, then in the hurriedness of the delivery of the message, if I'll stick to the notes, I'll be more accurate in what I say. It's when I go off script, I become like Joe Biden. Sorry, Joe, I didn't, I don't know how that happened. I just went off script. Not sorry. Jesus knew what would happen because the divine nature dwelling within him. We can't know the future like Jesus did and does. We can't know that. We're not deity. So, since we don't know the future, how do we prepare to make right decisions amidst the chaos? Let me give you, I'm just gonna read these off and you can jot them down if you want to or forget about it and just go ahead and make crazy decisions. Number one, think about the possibilities and how you ought to respond. Think about the responsibility if faced with a certain action, like the woman flashing her eyebrows, flashing her eyes, not her eyebrows, eyelashes. If she's flashing her eyebrows, you really better watch out. You love it when I mess up, don't you? Rehearse the possible outcomes. Rehearse the possible outcomes. If I react this way during this situation, what could be the outcome? Base your responses on scripture. when you decide to respond, you know, instead of just blurting out something or doing something rash, making a decision that you're gonna regret later, think about how you ought to respond, think about how you want it to turn out, and then base it on biblical principle. Number four, put these concerns on your prayer list. Oh, if we'd only pray about things, I mean, pray about it. Write these things down. Here's where we ought to spend most of our time, thinking about these things, meditating on it, looking for scripture for it, and praying about it. Where do you fail most often? What kind of circumstances? Is it something at work? Like Brother Lloyd said in the Sunday school lesson, leading a group of people and they came to him and wanted to give him an idea, and some of them were good ideas and they were aggravated because he wouldn't make a decision on the spot. If that's where the pressure usually comes, then make yourself a rule like he did. I'm not gonna decide right now. I'm gonna think this through and pray about it. When the salesman says, you've gotta buy this right now, or the deal will be gone, That's a pretty good time to back away. Say, you know, I appreciate you helping me, but I'm gonna pray about this. But the deal might be gone. Then it's the Lord's will that it be gone. Don't make a rash decision. Be not afraid of sudden fear. because if you have a tendency to think not well on your feet, make yourself a rule. I'm gonna pray about this. I'm gonna put it on my prayer list. I'm gonna pray about it. I'm gonna ask the Lord to give me a proper scriptural response when this does happen. And if you know ahead of time, we're not divine like Jesus and we can't know what the future brings, but we can look at some possibilities and we can determine how we will react. Young lady, when that guy proposes to you and says, I want to marry you, and you say, but you don't go to church. He said, well, I'll start going after we get married. Yeah, sure you will. Some of us heard that story before. Focus on the areas where you're most often likely to fail. Think through that scenario. Rehearse it in your mind. This is how I'm gonna react if this is presented to me. And then when the chaos comes, you can calmly say, I know how to handle this. I've already discussed this with God, and the Holy Spirit's already led me in the direction I want to go, and I need to go, and then you won't be as likely to fail. We won't have perfection in our decisions, but we'll do a lot better Let me give you a brand new quote. I thought this one up on my own. You'll be impressed. A muddled, meandering mind can result in a raging river of regret. So we better think it through. How do we apply this to our life? Thank God Jesus responded properly in our text here today. Seems like one great lesson we can learn from that we ought to learn how to respond properly. We were in the airport, DFW, yes, Dallas-Fort Worth, we were in the airport yesterday, in the gate area, waiting for time to board the plane, and there's a mama there that's got a crying baby, I mean, this baby, it wasn't just having a fit, it was probably sick, probably had an earache or something, my wife said. She knows babies. She said, you know, I was getting kind of irritated, this baby's just crying, crying, crying, crying, crying, and everybody in that gate area, you know, is on edge, and this baby's just crying, crying. And I said something to my wife, she said, that baby's not having a fit, that baby's sick. Probably got an earache or something. And so, for about an hour, that baby cried nonstop. Everybody's on edge. We board the plane. Here comes that mama with that baby crying, yeah. I told my wife, I said, I hope they don't sit in front of us or behind us. And we got on the plane, we're seated, and fortunately that mom and that baby's about six or seven seats in front of us, but that baby's still crying. I mean, it's loud enough. It's not just a soft cry. I mean, that baby's crying nonstop. And the whole plane was immersed in the shrieks of that baby. And I had my handy dandy earbuds that go to my phone and had noise canceling feature on them. And so I'm a little bit irritated. I pull out those noise canceling earbuds and I tell my wife, I'm gonna put these in if you need to talk to me, tap me on the shoulder or something, because I'm not gonna hear anything. So I put those in, turned on some bluegrass gospel music, and put on the noise-canceling feature, and turned the music up loud, and almost drowned that baby out. Boy, just a few shrieks were bleeding through, but I pretty well had the baby drowned out. So I'm sitting there in my calm and peaceful bliss, You know, everybody on here probably doesn't have noise-canceling headphones or something. And that mama, she's probably as frustrated as anybody else and embarrassed. And the baby's probably hurting. And instead of being selfishly immersed behind my earbuds, maybe I should pray. And so we're on the plane. That baby's still crying for over an hour now. And so instead of just sitting there and stewing, I began to pray for that baby and for that mama. And about 30 seconds into my prayer, the baby hadn't stopped crying. And I said, Lord, this ain't working. But you know what? After about a minute and a half, that baby quieted down and just a few whimpers here and there. And after two or three minutes, that baby went to sleep. I'm glad I didn't just sit and stew instead of praying. Now, I'd like to take credit for that prayer, but I think there were 100 other people on that plane praying as hard as I was. I'm just saying, in the midst of chaos, there's ways that we can handle things that are more scriptural than others. We think them through. When we were flying out, Again, at Little Rock. Little Rock's an unlucky place. Don't ever go there. We're in the airport at Little Rock. We were booked on a flight headed for Dallas-Fort Worth and then on to Bozeman, Montana. But sitting in Little Rock waiting for our flight, the flight or the gate attendant comes on the intercom and says, this flight's been delayed because of storms in Dallas-Fort Worth area. And we're going to be delayed at least an hour. And we thought, man, that's going to make it really close to catch our connecting flight to get out of Dallas to Bozeman, where we're supposed to spend. We got a motel already reserved in Bozeman for the night. And so here we are thinking, man, we're going to have to run. When we hit the ground in Dallas, we're going to have to run to that next gate. Pretty soon, they come back on the intercom, and it's been delayed longer. And here's the expected time. Well, we'd have to go backwards in time to get there in time to catch our connecting flight now. which ain't gonna happen. And so, a little bit irritating, you know, we're gonna end up spending the night in Dallas instead of Bozeman, get a new motel, have to rent a car and all of that, cancel the other, so a little bit irritating. We noticed over by the gate agent, this other woman who was really perturbed, She goes to the gate agent, and she begins to rail on the gate agent, and it's going on and on and on, and there's a string of people waiting to speak to the gate agent behind her, probably 50 or 100 people behind her, and she's holding them all up, and she goes on five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. She keeps on, and she just has a meltdown. She's weeping and wailing and just throwing a fit. I don't know if she expected that gate agent to change the weather or what. It was like, I felt sorry for the gate agent. She's not running that airline. She's not controlling the weather. But here's this woman giving her a rough time. And there's chaos swirling about. And she wept and wailed. You know, that'd be kind of like the impossibility of accomplishing anything by her fit-throwing would be kind of like a visitor in our church asking one of the members to please make that preacher preach a short sermon. Kind of an impossibility, you know? And so, when we get bent out of shape about things that can't be changed, are you listening? Have you ever been bent out of shape about something that you can't change and nobody else can change? We're wasting our time becoming a victim of the chaos about us. Jesus is in the garden. He's headed for the cross and he's determined that nothing will stop him from the cross. Nothing's gonna change that. So why not just be calm? That's what Jesus did. This is the will of the Father that He go to the cross to die for your sins and mine. And Jesus is not going to be caught up in an emotional frenzy about something that can't be changed. This was determined before the foundation of the world that He would go to the cross to die for our sins. It can't be changed. And when something happens in your world, in my world, and it can't be changed, we can fret and stew and have a nervous breakdown, but that ain't gonna help anything. Being calm, like Jesus, at least will preserve your sanity. One more story from our vacation. I know you want it. By the way, after services, if you want, we have 2,000 pictures we can show you from our vacation. We call these our eternal pictures because there's no end to them. You know, like the pictures you have of your grandchildren. You're supposed to laugh right there. Motel, we stayed in in Bozeman just before we flew back from the vacation when it was over. We opened the door to the motel room and it was near the airport. Rooms are at a premium there. Not only are they expensive, you don't have a choice a lot of times. I mean, you've got to book them ahead of time or you don't get a room. We had ours booked ahead of time. We opened the door to go in the room and it smelled a little raunchy. I mean, it looked okay, but it just had that smell where you'd rather not be. Well, we said, you know, we've already got it booked and probably nothing else available. They're not gonna do anything for us, so we can endure this for one night. And we went out and ate and come back. When we went to bed, I guess I drew the short straw where I laid, when I laid my head on my pillow, right next to my bed, the stench of vomit was there. Okay, it's close to midnight. There's no other rooms to be had in Bozeman, Montana. We're flying out the next morning. I could have woke everybody up and said, look, we're not staying here anymore. Where are we going to stay? In a tent? Sleep under a bridge? So instead of waking everybody up, I turned over and tried to get my nose as far away from that side of the bed as I could. I don't know if it was on the floor or on the mattress or what. We found out that there had been a drunken brawl in there the night before and they punched a hole in the sheetrock and got kicked out of the motel and so forth. So, I mean, I'm laying there. I can't go to sleep because this stench is strong. I'm not a complainer. but I laid there and in my mind, you know how you got this conversation going on in your head all the time? You do it too. You're laying there thinking what you're gonna say. When I get down there to that desk in the morning, I'm gonna tell that, I'm not even gonna talk to the woman at the desk, I'm asking for the manager and I'm gonna have a Karen fit, not my Karen. I am gonna tell her that stench in there was so rotten we couldn't sleep and I was gonna tell her what for. And I laid there a while and thought through everything I wanted to say. Somewhere during the night, I fell asleep. When I got up the next morning, I told the rest of the family, I want to talk to the manager down there and tell them they don't need to rent this room out to anybody else until they do some cleaning somehow. And so I went down and they had a breakfast, so I ate a little bit of breakfast watching for a time when there was nobody else around the desk. I didn't want to make a big scene like the lady at the airport. So I was going to be at least courteous enough not to have a crowd of people around listening. And so when I noticed that the desk was clear and this one person was left there, I went in there and spoke to her. But I decided, you know, Lord kind of twisted my ear a little bit and told me, you better not talk that way to her. And so I went, I made up my mind, I'm going to be nice. I know it's hard for somebody like me, but I can be nice if I have to. And so I talked to her, and I said, ma'am, I just wanted to catch you at a time when you weren't real busy and there weren't other customers around. And I said, you know, that room has a stanchion in it, and I know you didn't have any other rooms, and we couldn't do anything else. We decided to endure it. But I said, you know, I really need to talk to your manager, because there needs to be something done to that room. to clean that stink up in there. And she said, we'll get somebody in there to clean it for you right away. I said, no, you don't understand. We're not staying tonight. We're flying out. But I just don't think it'd be right for you to rent this room out. Some other poor family goes in there and they have to endure what we did all night. I said, I'm not a complainer, but I'm just trying to help you out. I said, I know you get reviews. When things don't go well and the reviews on the internet can damage your business and if you get people coming in there and they have to put up with that, they're going to give you some bad reviews and I don't want you to suffer that. I'm just telling you. Well, we got a phone call by the end of the day. She was a housekeeper herself. They didn't have enough help to run the desk. and the manager wouldn't be back in till tomorrow. Well, she phone called later. She phone called the manager and we got a phone call back before the end of the day. They refunded our full amount of money we paid for the room that night because I was nice to her. Now, if I went down there and railed on her like I originally thought I would and got caught up in the emotion of the moment and made her really mad, she'd probably do everything she could to keep me from being happy about the situation. I'm just saying, if we handle the chaos in the right way, not only will it please the Father, it'll probably bring better results to us. Calmness in the chaos. Finding calmness in the chaos. Moments of chaos will come. and that's when the devil's gonna try to manipulate you into doing something you shouldn't do and something you shouldn't decide. Jesus could have said to that mob, I'm calling down a bunch of angels and wipe you guys out. He could have said to Malchus, I'm glad he chopped your ear off and I may have him to chop your other ear off. But he didn't do that. He could have said, Judas, you dirty lowdown snake, But you know, if you read in the other gospels, you know what he called Judas when he came to him to give him a kiss? He called him friend. That's our Jesus. He could have had a meltdown fit and wiped them all out. He could have said, Father, I'm done with them. I'm coming home. Let them all go to hell where they belong. But he didn't. Because of his love and his compassion and his mercy and his grace, that's why he could go to the cross and as he bled and just before he died, he said, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Only Jesus could do that, but we could learn some lessons from him about how to react in chaotic times. There's nothing meritorious nor impressive about having a fit. And we learn from Jesus how to be a gentleman, a real human being. That's what you and I need. If you can choose to give in to the flesh in a moment of chaos, you can choose not to give in to the flesh in a moment of chaos. Christian, are you irritable towards your friends, family, and people you love? Are you irritable? Do you speak hatefully? We could learn a thing or two from Jesus. Do you choose to vent over things you can't change? Or do you choose to be calm and just pray? Are you saved? Or do you just choose to reject the compassion of our Lord Jesus who died on that cross for you? If you're not saved, He still loves you and He'll still save you. If you'll trust Him as your Savior in your heart, believe that He died on the cross for you to forgive your sins and in your heart say yes to Jesus. Let's pray. Our Father, we're grateful for the example we see from our Lord and Savior and how we are instructed by your word. I pray right now that if there are Christians under the sound of my voice who make desperate and degrading decisions in moments of chaos and strife and frenzy, I pray that you'd help them to become quiet and calm and speak to themselves about how they ought to act scripturally and to pray and say, Lord, lead me. in the right way in this situation. Help us to rehearse how we ought to act when we're tempted to do wrong. Lord, I pray for Christians who are irritable, mean-spirited and sarcastic, negative, complaining. I pray that you'd instruct us, Lord, how to be of a sweet spirit. Help us to be kind and compassionate as is our Lord Jesus. I pray for those who are not saved. I wish them no harm. I wish they'd know how to be saved and I wish they would submit to you as Lord of their life. I pray they'd look up to you and say, Lord, I'm a sinner. I know I don't deserve heaven. but I know you died on the cross to forgive my sins. You paid for them, Lord, and now I want to accept you. I want to accept that payment. I believe on you. I trust you to take me to heaven when I die. Bless those decisions, Lord. I pray that there's people in this room who need to make decisions right now that say yes to you. Lord, they know what it is. I don't. made some horrible decisions in this area. Help me to prepare for the future and not make the same decisions again. Help me to try to straighten out the wrong ones I have made. Lord, I pray you'd bless us as a church, as a people. Lord, we love you and thank you for all your great blessings on us as a church and as individuals. Lord, I pray you'd bless us today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.