Morning, guys. Let's batten down the hashes. We're back in Ecclesiastes chapter 5, and we're talking politics. So I got a couple of smiles out of that one. I'm going to preface it with, first of all, Professor Phillips already, when he's quoting something in scripture that I'm going to quote, and it's not in the passage he's already teaching, I feel good. I feel a little bit more energized. Like, OK, I'm on safe ground up here, right? Here we are. Remember, when we're in Chapter 5, Ecclesiastes, we have to make sure, as always with Scripture, that we're not looking at a passage all by its onesie. We're taking all Scripture, and we're putting it on that passage, and we're taking it into context. So, verse 8, if you see in a province the oppression of the poor and the violation of justice and righteousness, do not be amazed at the matter. For the high official is watched by a higher, And there are yet higher ones over them. But this is gain for a land in every way, a king committed to cultivated fields. Now, follows with, he who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income. This also is vanity. We're going to stop on that for right now. Let's remember, Jesus had a great interview with Pilate. Some people would like to refer to it as the other way around. And Pilate said, you know, you don't have the power over you, the life or death. And Jesus' reply is fascinating. He says, you don't have no power over me unless it was given to you from above. You have no power. The myth of neutrality, what we're going to hit again today, is a great lie that Satan has us always on. It's are we going to trust the word of the Lord, or are we going to trust the word of man? Did God really say it? That's resonating to every culture. It resonates to every house, every institution, everything. Every authority comes from God. Romans 13, everyone must submit to the governing authorities for other authorities except from God. And those that have been instituted, that exist, have been instituted by God. All authorities, all structures, all categories, all of them come from the Lord. What man tries to do is tries to hijack those things. We want all the benefits and blessings of God. We don't want God. All right? So the end of this, David Gibson's book, Living Backwards on Ecclesiastes, is excellent because he says that what we're missing is that Solomon is working backwards. When he hits chapter 12, we affectionately refer to, in deep theological terms, as the geezer chapter. You know, before you're really old, before, you know, the almond tree blossoms and you're dragging along, you can't hear, you can't see. Like, getting up out of bed is a disaster. Even now, at 54 years old, when I've got, you know, stuff's tight, and I've got to get up, and I keep seeing athletes blowing their Achilles tendon out. And that just scares the jabbers out of me. And so I get up, and my Achilles is tight, and I'll get up and kind of shuffle along as I walk, make sure I don't push off too fast, right? There's jokes on us. We're getting older. We're going to our eternal home. That's Ecclesiastes 12, because Solomon's wrapping it up. And he says at the end of it, fear God and keep his commitments. This is a whole duty of man, not the partial one. Don't go back and get as much money as you can so you can have as many kids as you can, right, as we started with. That's not our whole goal. The whole duty of man is to fear God, keep his commandments, for God will bring every judgment, everything that we do before his bar of perfect justice. That's what we know. So, but then you go, well, if you see in a province the oppression of the poor, This translation from the ESV, a lot of theologians, Philip Riken is one of them, doesn't like the translation, but this is game for a land in every way. A king committed to cultivated fields. It sounds as if it's a blessing if we have a governor or a president that's committed to low taxes and high productivity. But it sounds like a saying that Solomon's going, OK, there's going to be tyranny and bureaucracy everywhere you go. But if you can get a Republican in there who's low taxes and pro-business, you're not too bad. But that's not the gist of this whole thing. He's actually saying, and I think the better take on it, and I'll give you the New Living Translation has it this way. I think this is a really good encapsulation. Leopold agrees with this as well. Don't be surprised if you see a poor person being oppressed by the powerful and if justice is miscarried throughout the land. That's what we start every week here with, is some type of battle between man's word and other men's words. Man's words is battling other men's words. And you want to cause some chaos? Somebody asks you what you think about something? Take your Bible out and go, well, let's see. Let's see what the word of the Lord says. Try to do that in a school, school board meeting, corporate meeting. Do that in a law office. Do that in a court. Tell the judge, well, on what authority are you saying this? Oh, they're going to get pretty bent out of shape, aren't they? They're bent out of shape. Now, if anyone's been on the bad business end of a bad legal decision, just know what Solomon's saying is, there's a higher judge watching over all of this, and there will be a perfect justice coming. And that humbles us, because that means that we're going there, too. And at the same time, we shouldn't be surprised by it. I'm going to double back to that. He says, OK, so there's injustice. And the poor get hammered. Read the Old Testament, and the poor, God has a great concern for the poor. Because the poor have the least resources and the least ability to defend themselves, the least ability to deal with things, the least ability to sue. And I like to say we live in the USA, the United States of attorneys, because the way we settle things is through law. Nobody's going outside and dueling. We're settling through law. Lawsuits flying everywhere. There was a gentleman, here comes a boxing reference. There was a gentleman that attacked Mike Tyson on a plane a couple of years ago. hit him in the back of the head. So I'm sitting in a flight. Mike Tyson's sitting quietly in front of me. And I smack him in the head, stand up, and pour water on him. Well, eventually, it's like, I don't mean to compare Mike Tyson to an animal, but it's kind of like going to the zoo and sticking your arm in the lion's cage. Well, what happens is Mike, nobody saw this coming, turns around and slugs the guy. Well, the guy's suing Mike Tyson now. He's suing him for post-traumatic stress and so forth. He was just trying to talk to him by pouring water on his head. And there was a lawyer who's taken the case. All right. All right, well, we figured this guy was in first class, so he had some means. In 1956, there was a guy named Elvis Presley who got really big. You may have heard of him. He stopped for gas going back to see Mama. Right? I mean, I gotta I started doing my thing when I started thinking about Elvis. But stopping that some dude is on the other pump, right? And he's like, you're a jerk. All these girls coming after you you're you're corrupting the American public or whatever. And Elvis is Elvis Elvis. Hey, man, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm trying to get my guys man. You know, So it's only a homesy mama. And so the guy comes over and he pushes Elvis, to which Elvis, being a young American male in the 50s, knew how to go to the body with a shot. So he countered the guy's push and dropped the guy. The guy sued, and it was in court in a couple of months. Imagine that. Speedy trial. And the judge threw it out and said, you picked a fight and you lost. Stop complaining. Right? The more America moves from the word of the Lord, the more it moves away from, yeah, we see personal responsibility, the more it moves away from real justice. It cannot adjudicate justice outside of the word of the Lord. It's not going to happen. It's going to get worse, right? If you don't think God is judging us, all of these things that the good Mr. Man stands up with and talks about is one man's word. I'm not talking about Bobby and Johnny. I'm talking about what man's word over against another man's word. When we jettison the transcendent, all-encompassing word of the Lord and authority of the Lord and his word, we have to rest on man's law. Simple as that. And the weak people are going to get abused. A lot of it. And more is coming. For every official who's under orders from higher up, matters of justice get lost in red tape and bureaucracy. Yeah. Yeah. That's absolutely right. Even the king milks the land for his own profit. And that is a better rendition of that. Even the king milks the land for his own profit. Now, I don't want to get into contemporary politics. I'm going to get into the theoretical aspect of it and theology. But the culture war is a theology war. Did God really say? Everything people say about politics, and we love doing it. Nothing is more vain. There's no subject in which mankind expresses his vanity and vacuousness better than politics. We speak of what's wrong with the world, how it's unfair. I'm not going to do this. A couple of my favorite apologists like to do this. I like to have somebody come up, and they put a chair up on one side, and I have them stand on the chair. These chairs I do not think will support a person safely. And there's probably an insurance regulation against it. And another guy on the chair. So one person represents the Christian. The other person represents the atheist. So if I was going to do that, I know who I'd have represent the atheist. I'm kidding. Mark's hiding back there. But seriously, love Mark. But is that you're standing on something. What is the atheist standing on when he says the oppression of the poor is bad? What's he standing on? What created the world? Nothing. Big bang. Why do I care? Why should I care about the poor? Why shouldn't I kill the poor? Sorry, it's a blunt statement, but why not? The principles of atheism and scientific materialism, Marxism, Darwinism, which just permeate the land. I mean, that's what you're breathing into the education system. That's what you're breathing in law. I have a saying. I like to say this in my self-defense classes. I'm teaching self-defense. I say, you know, the problem with modern language in criminal law and criminal justice and the writings of those guys out there, Gavin DeBecker, Rory Miller, really good self-defense stuff. But they're trained in contemporary anthropology. They believe that mankind is a grown-up germ, an educated ape, if you will. And so they spent a lot of time on the subject of the adrenaline dump. meaning bad guys attack good guys, and good guys are under so much stress that they don't function very well. But the word of the Lord is Lord over everything. I'm not a grown-up German. The reason the bad guy doesn't have the problem that the good guy has is because the bad guy is morally convinced that he's right. He's wrong, but he thinks he's right. The good guy, now think about this. I like to say this in classes. King David did not need post-traumatic stress counseling after he beheaded Goliath. Abraham didn't need after his surrender, and 18 men went out and just cleaned up against the kings of East in Genesis. He didn't need any counseling. He knew what he was doing was right. If you have the Lord's counsel, Joshua, how was Joshua in all of his battles with the Canaanites? He knew he was right. There you go. What happens with this is we want to hijack the Word of the Lord. We want to hijack the authority and say, God didn't really say. There's too much poverty, let me solve it. No. That's what sin is. Sin is not we get up in the middle of the night and bump into something and cuss. It may or may not be a problem for you. But if you think that's what sin is, you're sorely mistaken. Sin is the lack of the fear of the Lord. Fear of God. Fear of God is exactly what we're supposed to do, as Pastor Phillips said this morning, about why do we go through trials and look at what Peter says? Why are you surprised by the fiery trials? Why? We're living in a life of wisdom and seeking wisdom, and we're going through sufferings, we're going through trials, we're going through persecutions, and they're meant to wean us off of self-reliance to the point where we discipline ourselves the same way any athlete gets up And I've got to eat right, I've got to go for a run, I've got to do whatever. The Christian gets up and goes, what does the word of the Lord say? So this is especially in politics, where people are going to go, what do I say? What do I say? Or you get the other group, my libertarians, my favorite libertarians, like, well, both parties are corrupt. What standard are you using to judge that? Corrupt by what standard? If I think corruption, I'm using some type of standard. Is it a Marxist standard? What is it? What standard is it? Somebody says there's no such thing as an absolute moral law, which is what most of the kids are brought up to believe, is going to contradict themselves. And so that way, we could take everything in politics and every suffering and every conflict and bring it back to the cross. That's what we should be training to do, back to the cross. Here's why. Somebody says, well, If I pick the iPad thing up here and I dump it, no big deal. It's mine. I can do that. And it's just stuff. Nobody thinks a big deal about it. You probably thought it may be weird. But the iPad isn't in it, incidentally. I wouldn't do that. But if I pick up a child and dump him, oh, now we've got an issue, don't we? How is the atheist saying that? By what standard is the atheist saying it's not fair? They're being inconsistent with their principles of basically what Gabe Fleur calls moderate nihilism. That's why everyone's a moderate nihilist. Nothing really matters. So David Gibson, again, suggests all of this when looking at even the king milks the land for his own profit. He suggests a spiritual temperatures check before we get into the subject of politics and what's wrong with the world. A spiritual temperature check. Again, his book, Ecclesiastes, teaches us to live in the light of the end. So first he asks how often we go to scriptures. This is the first one. How often do we go to scriptures expecting to be surprised and to learn something? Before we engage in, you know what's wrong with the world? Which is really saying, you know what's wrong with y'all? You know what's wrong with everybody? I can fix it. I can fix it. This idea will fix it. But where did we get that from? Romans 4.3. What does the scripture say? How do I know it's wrong? So if you will, let's go to, how often do we go to be surprised? If you will, with me, if you want to, turn to 1 Samuel 8. Saul is at the end, I'm sorry, Samuel is old, he's at the end of his life. The elders of Israel come to him, they gather together, and they come to him and they say, hey, by the way, I know the Lord gave us judges, but did you notice everyone else has a king? Have you heard that in contemporary politics? No other democracy does that like America does. All the other countries have this. The question isn't, what does God say? And if you open up your Bible and say, what does the Lord say? You're going to have an interesting conversation. They're going to look at you like you were dropped in your head as a baby. And then they'll say, you can't bring Christianity into politics. That's a moral ought, guys. Watch that. That's a moral ought. They just gave you a moral commandment, and so the question is, don't get bent out of shape, don't go on to defense, ask the simple question. Where'd you hear that? Let me just help you out. The principle is that you can't do that because it's not fair because not everybody's a Christian, right? And they know something's coming. Again, they're not dumb. They're fools. The clinical definition is not like Mr. T, I just aged myself, Mr. T, you fool, you fool. That's not what the Bible says. You are morally damaged because you're truth suppressing and you become foolish and your intellect becomes damaged because you're starting from the flawed premise, not the fear of the Lord. So where'd you get that from? The premise is that it's not fair because not everyone's a Christian. Good, let's run with that principle. Well, not everybody's an atheist. There goes that principle. You cannot stand on the principles of godlessness and prove anything. The whole book of Proverbs is that don't grow up to become an educated, knowledgeable fool. Proverbs 8, 36. All who hate me love death. Wow. Do we really consider that? Everything that you believe when you don't fear the Lord runs you into destruction and conflict. No. I'll give you one quick example. One of the last things that Adolf Hitler said, right at the end of April 1945, before his unceremonious demise, was the big mistake he made, he'd been too nice. He'd been too lenient. Yeah, that was Hitler. He should have been more like Stalin. He should have been lopping heads off right away. He let too many weak people get power in Germany, and that's what cost him the war. Sin will convince us. It'll take us farther than we ever thought we'd go. It would convince us that what we're doing is correct. There is a way that seems right to a man. So here we are. So the elders get together, right? And this guy, what does the word of the Lord say about politics? Well, again, they'll say, well, you can't bring it in. They're already bringing in something. Ask them what it is. What is it? You just gave me a moral commandment. I can't talk about Christianity with politics. So what higher moral law are you appealing to? And then how do you account for that within your worldview? Be consistent. So the elders get together, and they said they want a king to judge us, all right? I know the Lord said this, but we want that. Now, everyone reading this, And the preacher, Solomon, is going to know this whole thing, hopefully. So Samuel told all the words of the Lord, because the Lord said, hey Samuel, don't get bent out of shape. Right? Don't get bent out of shape. And this is what Solomon is telling us right now. When you see all this stuff, don't get bent out of shape, Christian. Don't get into a big argument with somebody over Biden or Trump or whatever. Don't get bent out of shape. Where's Christ in this? Don't get bent out of shape. Stay focused. You're an athlete. You're the Lord's athlete. You're the Lord's warrior. You're tearing down strongholds. Tearing down strongholds and all those lofty ideas that are raising themselves up against Christ. Your weapon is the word of the Lord. All right, so he says, okay, they're not rejecting you, Samuel, they're rejecting me, so tell them that. So he says, these will be the ways of the king who will reign over you. Let's see if anyone recognizes what's happening in our own culture, right? He will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest. He's going to take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. I just jumped around a little bit. I apologize. He's going to make his implements of war and his equipment of his chariots. Verse 13, he will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the 10th of your grain, of your, how many of you guys would like to only give up a 10th, by the way, to the civil magistrate, anybody? I thought that's just so sweet, just 10%. He will take the 10th of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. You see what he's saying? They'll take, it's theirs. Several years ago, former President Obama said something about a business owner. He said, you didn't build that. Now, I would say, as a Christian, I'm going to go, yeah, that's absolutely right. The land of a rich man produced bountifully. I moved here to Greenville, and Greenville's economy has grown since my business has been here, and I've done pretty well. Praise the Lord. The land of a rich man produced bountifully. It was the Lord's doing. I worked at it, but I've also worked at stuff that's just bombed. I love marketing, because most times in marketing, people are trying to manipulate other people's emotions. But even at the best, you have no idea. They have no idea. Right now, as we're speaking, on one of my Facebook pages for my business, I put up a boxing thing from a former trainer of Muhammad Ali, that Ali had a weakness with the left hook. And there's a photo that I put with it of Muhammad Ali going down against a guy named Henry Cooper, who you've probably never heard of. Because Cooper had a good left hook and whacked Ali, and Ali got lucky getting out of that one. Anyhoo, I put, this is why I always thought that Dempsey and Marciano might beat Ali. Now that page is just a page for boxing geeks that I have on there. When I'm not doing anything productive, that's kind of what I'm doing. This is cool. Now I probably get maybe eight, nine likes out of that sometimes. Right now I'm up around 200,000. There are people at this very moment, I had to turn off my notifications, arguing. One guy is in South Africa and another guy is outside of London, and these guys hate each other. And they are bickering over Ali and Marciano, as if the fate of mankind hinges upon this subject. These two people who will never see each other, have never met one another, think about this, are arguing over long dead boxers that they've never met. Isn't it awesome? Because mankind is insufferably drawn to truth. That's what the bottom line of all of that, theologically, is what is true. That's what they keep going back with. And then, of course, they start insulting each other. And I got up here today, and I was like, wow, this thing's really blown up. And I'm sipping my coffee. And I saw the comments. I'm like, whoa, dude, you need to dial it back a bit. Well, I'm not getting into that, just so you'll know. And then I'm watching this thing pull up. And I can see the other guy comments on something else the other guy said at like two minutes later. And two minutes later, these guys are going back and forth. I'm like, what time is it in Johannesburg? Because I had to look the guy up. I'm like, this dude should be sleeping. This dude should be what? So this is what we're doing. So the idea of this world as ours leads us into this vanity of bickering over what's true and false according to our own standards. The lower officials are using whatever power they can over the people below them. And those people are trying to use whatever power they can over the people below them. But everybody's going by what authority? That's why this sets off a massive argument. It's not a mistake when we read, and every mouth will be stopped. Nobody is going to debate with Jesus Christ in the age to come. Not going to happen. So again, the spiritual temperature check. Do you read the Bible expecting to be surprised and instructed? Or do you read it to try to confirm your bias? Because none of us sitting here wrote the Bible. None of us who's been his counselor, who's given him a gift that needs to be repaid. Nobody sitting here is going to ever get this email from the Lord. What do you think about this? I'm thinking of doing X. I would love your scholarly wisdom and input. Not going to happen. So, so you'll take a tenth of your flocks and that day you'll cry out because of your king. Right there. And in that day, that's verse 18, and in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves. But the Lord will not answer you in that day. But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel. That's verse 19. They refused. There's a way that seems right to a man. They refuse. You'll cry out to me that day, and it says again in Proverbs, you simpletons, you fools, you scoffers, you mockers, come, come, wisdom beckons, come. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. That's not to say that nobody ever gets any information or gets any technical skill without the fear of the Lord. That's a blessing from the Lord to give people these talents to start with. What it means is that they make moral shipwreck of their mind and their lives, ultimately, because God is not mocked. The second thing that Gibson says, he asks, when was the last time reading scripture caused us pain? When was the last time you thought, you know, I've got to obey this. I'm not doing a very good job of it. It brought you to your knees to go, I need to obey his word. Why is this important and why is this bringing us into politics? It's because man is trying to rule other men. That's why we talk about politics. Because we want to be ruled by God. That's the context here. Man's trying to rule other men because he won't be ruled by God. We are the first fruits. Here comes Christ, the first fruit of creation, the new creation. And we're in the image of Christ now. We're no longer in Adam, we're in Christ. Well, that starts with the fear of the Lord. Now, if you think this is just Old Testament language, right in Romans 3, Paul says, there was no fear of God for their eyes. The reverent fear of the Lord, that is worshiping him and regarding him as truly awesome, is the beginning and the preeminent part of knowledge. It's a starting point in its essence. But arrogant fools despise wisdom. And they despise instruction. They despise self-discipline. You want to really run up your political numbers? Start talking about self-discipline. You need to control yourself sexually, people. They're not going to like that one. Nobody likes to hear that. The whole abortion debate is about, is the life of a child? The point is, what does the word of the Lord say? Why are people having sex out of wedlock? Well, poof. I said that a while back to somebody, man. Again, the look you get is just, they're gobsmacked. They're just, what? Do you realize you don't have any authority whatsoever to have sexual intercourse with anyone that's not your husband or wife? Tell that to an American. You have no authority. And then when you're married, you have no authority over your body. You and your wife both, yeah. That's right there in 1 Corinthians. What does the Scripture say? You want to solve a problem socially? You want social justice? Word of the Lord. You want peace in your house? Word of the Lord. You want peace in business? Word of the Lord. So, God doesn't call us to a mindless faith or a purely emotional one. Sanctification without wisdom is impossible. There's a meme I saw a while back. I accidentally put five-hour energy in my coffee instead of creamer. And I was at work before I realized I forgot my car. I love that one. It's impossible, right? That's what's funny. Sanctification without wisdom is impossible. That's why there's whole books in scripture about that. And Christ is the wisdom of God. The point of the temperature check is to send us to Christ. I'm not trying to shame us. to send us to Christ. Does the word of the Lord surprise us? And does it cause us to submit? Does it bring us as the Holy Spirit? I don't know if you've had this experience, but I was listening to two good Christians, two very mature Christians talking not too long ago. And one of them said something about his spiritual walk to the other. And in that moment, the Holy Spirit just sort of went, poke to me. I need to do that. I might. Isn't it great the way the Holy Spirit points things out? The devil will come, and he'll tell you something that's hopeless. But in Christ, in the Holy Spirit, it's always beautiful. It's always uplifting. It's about restoration, reformation, and that starts with us in the church. Because think about what Peter says, Beloved, don't be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. The sufferings, if you're poor, if your job's terrible, if you're watching people suffer and you're thinking about politics, remember what happened here in 1 Samuel 8. It's happening because man decides, I want to hijack God's civil magistrate. 1 Samuel 8, Romans 13. Who is the civil magistrate? He's the Lord's. He's the Lord's avenger. And what does man do? Let me borrow your, I know you have him as an avenger. I'd like for him to restore social justice. How are you going to do that? Well, by God's category, he is God's avenger, carrying out wrath on the wrongdoer. Crime. Who defines the crime? God. Not me. Remember, I'll define crime differently than you define crime, and we end up trying to get better lawyers. That's what we're going to do. That's what we're going to do, right? The civil master is God's avenger. We have cops driving around with serve and protect. God would say to punish. And then on the other side would say, you want to be afraid? You don't want to be afraid? I just heard somebody say this not too long ago during all the protests and the riots. Our children should not be afraid of the police. You're arguing with God because he says something vastly different. You don't want to be afraid, then do what is good. But if you do wrong, be afraid. He doesn't carry that gun, or that stick, or that taser in vain. And God's commandment is up at the Silver Messenger to make sure that you get punished for that crime because God's justice is that high. We're not messing around with Him. He's not going to go, again, what do you think I should do with the Silver Messenger? Why all this oppression and bureaucracy and pain? Because we think it's ours. Our democracy. And the Lord is sitting there going, yeah, you'll see. Repent. So Peter says, If any of you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed. So tell them about the Christ. Tell them about the Word of the Lord. You can't think without standing on the Word of the Lord, and they're going to laugh at you, scoff at you, call you names. You're blessed in that very moment. You're blessed. You don't have to yell at them. Just tell them. It's going to hit them like a ton of bricks. Tell them. But remember, if you're insulted for the name of Christ, you're blessed, because the Spirit of glory of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief. or an evildoer, or as a meddler. Think about the Holy Spirit doesn't need an editor. This is amazing. The Holy Spirit put together murderer, thief, with meddler. A meddler is getting involved. Why? The murderer and thief have power. The thief walks out, give me your money. I'd really rather not, but the gun is changing my mind. The murderer, give me your life. I'd really rather not die, but if you have a superior force, you win this argument right now. The meddler doesn't have that power, so what do they do? They use gossip, slander, backbiting. They play one person over against another person. That's the meddler. The Holy Spirit lumps them in the same category with murderers and thieves, because if they had the power, they'd use it. Don't it? That's unchristian. No meddling. No backbiting. No slander. None of that. Mind your own business. Work at your own craft. And then he says, Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. Again, we're called for obedience. For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God. We're not going to fix the nation of Washington, D.C. Don't worry about taking back Washington. Don't let God worry about that. We take back our home. We take back our church. And we have faithful preaching and faithful living and obedient living in Christ. That's the Reformation. That is the path to making America great again, if you will. If I borrow that, I'm sorry for hijacking that term. Therefore, let those who suffer according to God's will and trust their souls who are faithful, creative, well-doing, good. And if we live like that, that fans the flame of righteousness. And people are going to look at us and go, I want that. Look at that family. Look at that person. Look at that business. Look at that friendship. Look at that loyalty and love. They're going to want that wisdom. I know we're late, but I'll just finish with a quick note, of course, that the Lord said, so everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man, farsighted, practical, he's sensible, who built his house on a rock. When the rain fell and the floods and torrents came, that's what we're talking about, those rains come, that wind is blowing. And the winds blew and slammed against that house, yet it didn't fall. Because it had been founded on a rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and doesn't do them, get back to the Word. Back to the Word. We'll be like a foolish, stupid man who built his house on the sand and the rain fell and the floods and torrents came and the wind blew and slammed against that house and it fell. And great and complete was its fall. The reverent fear of the Lord is beginning of wisdom and is path of righteousness for everything we're doing. The reverent fear of the Lord, whether it be telling us something, again, that surprises us, telling us something that challenges us, and that obedient fear in grace builds us up. And it will. How did America get where it was? On the back of the reformers. And the word of the Lord shot out like a fire. And it will shoot out in your personal life, in our personal lives, in our homes, in our hearts. But it's got to be because we're reverently in awe of him. And if we don't do that, we're talking about politics. There's just too much vanity in that, guys. Anyway, I do hope this was helpful. And again, I quoted quite a bit from Leopold, David Gibson's book, Ecclesiastes, and Philip Riken has a book on Ecclesiastes that are very good. And I think that if you want to look for more information on those books, it would be great for you.