Ecclesiastes 7:1-14

Good morning, friends. I have one friend here and it makes me very happy, so thank you.

And while you're finding that, let me say two things, please. First of all, we have next Sunday at noon in an informational meeting about our student ministry trip to Ecuador in August. So if you have a student who might have interest in it, or just come and hear what's going to happen. That's in the activity room at noon next Sunday. And we're taking, God willing, 15 to 20 students, plus some parents and student workers down to Ecuador to work with the ministry down there for discipleship in the morning, evangelism in the afternoon. And then they'll have one day to tour the city of Quito. So please, please take advantage of that next Sunday at noon in the activity room. Also, of course, next Sunday night, 6:00 PM. Lots of great stuff is going to be announced. The elders regarding where we're headed as a church and some of the decisions that have been made.

Last thing to say before we look at this chapter is we are deeply committed here at FCBC to the Bible. And because we are, we're also deeply committed to the sanctity of life. We're very convinced that life begins at conception and that every child pre born, post born, every child, every human has great value and great value before God and therefore great value to us. Next Sunday, Amen. Thank you so much from someone there. Next Sunday, I saw I lied. I lied. Next

Saturday is the March for Life annual March for Life that goes from Julia Davis Park up to the Capitol building, and we're encouraging you to join us in that. We're going to meet at Julia Davis Park and we're going to rally around Benj Foreman, whom I'm going to embarrass and make him stand up. Here he is welcome. Benj is the tallest man in the Treasure Valley. And if you can't find Benj at Julia Davis Park, you need to get some glasses. So at 12:45, find Benj and the FCBC group will walk together down to the Capitol building for some speeches and some encouragement and some time of prayer about the sanctity of human life. That's next Saturday afternoon.

Ecclesiastes 7 today. We're going to look at verses 1 to 14. Starting at verse one this format in Ecclesiastes changes a little bit right here. Because we've been in some long discussions and more prose kind of writing, and now

Coheleth has shifted into a proverb. In fact, he has 13 proverbs in 14 verses. And this is more like the book of Proverbs. So if you've not been here,

is what the author of this book calls himself. Most likely Solomon. Coheleth means a gatherer of people, someone who gathers people to to give wisdom

to them. And so Coheleth is now shifting over to some proverbs. Here is what he says, Chapter 7.

“A good name is better than good ointment.”

“The day of one's death is better than the day of one's birth. It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, because that is the end of every man, and the living takes it to heart.”

“Sorrow is better than laughter. For when the face is I'm sorry, when the face is sad, the heart may be happy.”

(The word happy can also mean better. When the face is sad. The heart can also be better.” And in this context that seems to be a better translation.)

“The mind of the wise is in the House of mourning, while the mind of fools is in the House of pleasure. “

 “It's better to listen to the rebuke of a wise man than for one to listen to the song of fools.”

 “For as the cackling of thorn bush under a pot so is the laughter of a fool, and this too is vanity.”

“For oppression makes a wise man mad, and a bribe corrupts the heart.”

“The end of a matter is better than its beginning. Patience of spirit is better than haughtiness of spirit.”

“Do not be eager in your heart to be angry, for anger resides in the bosom of fools.”

”Do not say why is it that the former days were better than these days? For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.”

“Wisdom is good along with an inheritance, is good and an advantage to those who see the sun.“

“For wisdom is protection, just as money is protection. But the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the lives of its possessors.”

 “Consider the work of God. For who is able to straighten what he has bent.”

“In the day of prosperity be happy, but in the day of adversity, consider God made the One as well as the other, so that man will not discover anything that will come after him.”

Let me pray, friends. Father, we need your guidance as we think about these proverbs together. I pray we'd have your clarity. I pray we'd understand.

And beyond that, I pray that we would be people who respond. We submit our minds, our emotions, and our will to you and therefore to your book. And so please guide us as we think together about these proverbs this morning,

in Christ's name, Amen.

Friends, I'm going to start today with a quiz. Please don't be anxious. It will not affect your final grade, but it's a true and false quiz. Just answer in your own mind. Don't get into arguments with people around you.

True or False: I can control my life

I said just in your mind.

I can control most of my life. I can control the lives of others. I can control the important things of life. I can control the outcome of sporting events and hunting trips. I can control my pet. I can make life work with wisdom and money. I need to get better at controlling my life.

Now I'm going to suggest to you, I'll break the rule and say I think those are all false. I don't think we can control any of that stuff. And I think you know that you cannot control the outcome of a sporting event. You can't control the

the way your spouse or your kid behaves. You don't have ultimate control on very much in life. I think we have a thin control of ourselves when we're helped by the Holy Spirit. Outside of that, there's a lot that's out of control.

Now we know we can't control everything. But what we know and what we do can be very different things. So today we're going to be talking about this question of what? What is it that I do control? And since I don't control the world, what should I do? How should I act?

Here's some options. Escapism. I'll just bury myself in my chosen activity. Wisdom. I will do everything right. Money. I will make money and I will use money to buy my way out of trouble. Patience. I'm just going to endure whatever life throws at me. I am just going to buck up. I'm going to be a person who's angry. I'll just power up on people and everything to just fix it.

I know what I'll do. I'll turn to nostalgia. I'll turn to the good old days before America went in the ditch and before my life went in the ditch and before, before we had these kinds of issues going on, before social media. I'll just go back to the good old days. All right, I'll turn to.

Self-sufficiency. I'm a go to guy. If you need three points, you get the basketball to me because I'm going to make stuff work. These are some of the ways I can turn in light of the fact that I can't control anything.

But Coheleth says to us, listen, there's better ways to go about this. Admit that we don't control life or the world. Admit that we don't control a whole bunch of stuff. But there's better ways to go about this. And even though there's better ways to go about it, they're all ultimately deficient. There is no way to go about life. Including wisdom, including money. Including power that absolutely controls things.

So you have an outline in your bulletin, which I'd encourage you

to look at if you are an outlined sort of a person, which obviously I am because I put them in there. But the outline follows with what we're doing today.

First, we learn a great deal more at a funeral than we do at a birth. (vv 1-6)

●     A great deal more at a funeral than we do at a birth. So he begins at verse one by saying a good name or integrity. (v1)

Is much better than images being continually put together. Now, friends, there's nothing wrong with being put together or being beautiful. There's nothing wrong with having an attractive image at all. Unless I'm committed to my image above the substance of my life, because God's massive issue for us is always substance, who am I? Who am I in my heart? Romans 8:29 His critical goal for us that we be conformed to the image of His son. God wants me to be mature and if I have to be sick to get there, if I have to be poor to get there, if I have to get in a car wreck to get there, whatever has to happen, he doesn't delight in it. He has huge compassion for us, but he's willing to watch it. God is committed most of all to me growing up. And then he says. On this issue, we are people who really need to be committed to character above advancements. And the truth is, sometimes we come out of a situation with only our integrity. And if we come out of our situation with our integrity, we have one. If you come away from the dividing up of your parents' will, and you didn't get your dad's classic Mustang, you didn't get the house, you didn't get the money, you didn't get anything, but you brought out your integrity, you won.

 Any situation that I come out of with my integrity intact is a situation in which I have one. So Coheleth says to us, listen. Please consider learning so much more at a funeral. Then when you are at a maternity ward. How many of you have been to how many have never been to a funeral? Couple, couple mostly, mostly young people have never been to a funeral. You've been to funerals and you have an opportunity at a funeral to learn a great deal. When you go to the birth of a child, when you go to a maternity ward, it's joy, it's happiness, especially if it's in your family. And it's just a blessing. Everyone crowding around to get a look at this baby and saying what a beautiful child it is. A great, great happiness. It's a pure gift. That's why we're involved with March for Life, because human life is such an amazing gift, but birth is all about. Potential. It's not about fulfillment, because this little child that you just went and looked at could grow up to be an Olympian or a senator or or a biochemist or or a pastor or a teacher or an engineer or all manner of good stuff. Social worker. There's all manner of good stuff that a person could grow up to be a laborer who loves God intensely and brings ridiculous dignity. To their job and blesses the people around them. That's the potential. But they could also grow up to be a drug dealer. Who knows? How do we know it's only potential at the maternity ward, but at the funeral, we're not talking about potential. We're talking about fulfillment. We're talking about life lessons.

I have learned so much more looking at a coffin than I do looking at a cradle. Because when I go to a funeral of a friend everything comes into focus, everything is sober and clear, and I am intensely thinking about my own death. When there's a casket on this platform or an urn, everything is sobered up for us. Death has a way of grabbing us by the shoulders and saying pay attention, listen up. How are you living now? I've been to a lot of funerals, friends I've had. I've learned a lot of things about a lot of people, even if I was only performing at the funeral. Know the person and you learn stuff that is just like really, you got to the end of your life and that's what they're saying about you.

That you just loved rum and coke? Is that your epitaph? He loved rum and coke.

Or you go to a funeral and someone says when she was 40, she gave her kidney to her neighbor and you're sitting there thinking “to a neighbor”. I mean, I'd give a kidney to my wife, my kids, my grandkids, my childhood friend, but to a neighbor, she was that sacrificial, that generous, that took that big risk to give a kidney to a neighbor. And you're sitting there in the chair thinking to yourself, OK, well, am I sacrificial? Am I generous? What's going on in me? I'm a person who needs to reflect on life because my goodness, she gave a kidney to a neighbor. We learned so much more at a funeral. We

have to ask, what kind of person should I be?

Kathy and I are in a reading club at Ambrose School. And last Thursday a woman shared that her brother had moved to Thailand. He'd become a Buddhist. He had died in Thailand and she couldn't go to the funeral, but one of one of his friends was there and went to the funeral and they live streamed the funeral back to her in the Treasure Valley. She's in the Treasure Valley watching her brother's funeral in Chiang Mai. And it's a Buddhist ceremony

and there's about 5 robed Buddhist monks there and stuff that she doesn't understand because she doesn't speak the language. And her brother's body, which she can't see, is in a wooden casket on the platform. And then when it all ends, these five monks take the casket and turn it end ways and roll it from the platform straight into the incinerator and close the door and fire it up. She watches this casket with her brother's body in it go into the incinerator. And her friend went outside and took a video of the smoke coming out of the chimney.

What do you say? It's over. That's the end. His race is run, it's complete. And if I'm paying attention, I learned a great deal as at a funeral, because I'm circumspect.

David Gibson wrote. “Life is limited by death. Your life won't go on forever. Death is an evangelist. It is a preacher with a very simple message. Death has an invitation to us. He wants to teach us about the day of our coming. Death can be a friend to us in advance of the very limitation of death introduced into our life.” You can instruct us about life. Think of this as deaths helping hand. I can learn something by going to a funeral. If I go to the funeral of a person who didn't trust Christ, it's beyond bitter. I've been to them. It's beyond bitter.

It's just pure depressing. But if you go to the funeral of a person who trusted

Christ, it's fulfillment. Their race is won. They've crossed the finish line, they've completed the course, they're in eternity, they're experiencing wonderful joy. There's this cloud of witnesses welcoming and the marathon is over. You

learn a lot more at a funeral than you do at a maternity ward.

●     “When my face is sad, my heart may be better.” (vv 3)

How does sadness make my heart better? Well, I think the answer is that I can learn a lot of things when I'm sad. Now I can learn bad things like. I'm a bad person, or God doesn't love me, or God's given up on me or God's punishing me. I can learn bad things, like I've got to control life, but I can also learn really good things, like I need to cast myself on God. God is my refuge. I need to turn to Him in the midst of every kind of struggle. And so when my face is sad, my heart can learn some really, really good things.

Sadness is not fun, but it's good. Exercise is not fun, but it's good. Dental work is not fun, but it's good. Funerals are not fun, but they're good. There's a lot of hard, sad stuff that's extremely good for us. And we need to say to ourselves, have I taken the opportunity as I'm in this sadness or in this funeral? Have I taken the opportunity to reflect, to confess, to repent, to pull back to God as my refuge? Sometimes when my face is sad, it can be very

good for my heart.

●    Realism with reflection is a great deal better (v 4)

He says realism with reflection is a great deal better than escapism. Escapism, you might say in your head, OK, well, escapism is, you know, “Partay, I'm going to go drink myself under the table. I'm going to eat myself stupid. I'm

going to make an idiot of myself down at whatever place.” That's escapism. But it's also when I watch TV every night, all night long. I sit in my chair, I eat my dinner in my lap. I fall asleep. Whatever, PM. And then I get up and wander to bed. I'm just staring at flickering blue pixels while I drool on myself. And I'm just, I'm not thinking, I'm not engaged, I'm not growing, I'm not learning. Or I can do it with video games. I can do it with all manner of things. Years ago, I had a neighbor, they had a baby and his company gave him three months of maternity leave. And I said to him, what are you going to do for three months? “What a gift, he said. I'm going to sit on my couch for 90 straight days and play video games.” I'm thinking Oh my goodness Oh my goodness I could go for 90 straight days with nothing to do. I promise you it wouldn't be video games but I can escape into stuff and escapism is a very smooth straight road. that ends in a mind numbing desert.

It's easy to go down the road, you just don't want to end where it ends. So there's sort of three approaches to life here. One of them is the Eeyore approach. I'm pessimistic about everything and depressed about everything. One is the Pollyanna approach, “I'm excited and optimistic about everything.” And one of them is realism, a clear eyed honesty about everything. I don't think I Wise rebuke is better than foolish singing, laughing, cackling (v 5) need to tell you which one's the best out of those 3.

●    Wise rebuke is better than foolish singing, laughing and cackling.

You know, cackling is just kind of the epitome of  “you've lost it”. You've been to a restaurant. There's this group of friends in the corner. They've been drinking a bit too much. There's joking, laughing, cackling, snorting. And then the longer it goes on, the more they get lubricated, the louder it gets. And with every new round of drinks, the decibel level goes up and they're just making idiots of themselves and everybody in the restaurant is saying, you know, why don't you leave?

But they do it all evening long and they go home and in the morning they wake up, they have a headache and their wallet is empty and they have a bunch of regrets about what they said and did. I don't think it's hard to convince you that this is a bad way to go. It's a terrible way to go. But he says it would be better to have the rebuke of a wise person, to have a wise person come and say to you, you know, you when you said this, it caused whatever.

Now, the rebuke of a fool is kind of an emotional nuisance, you know?

A rebuke of a fool. But if a wise person comes and says to me, Dave,

XY or Z, it's a gift. It's happened to me many times. It stings and it helps.

It stings and it helps when a wise person comes to me and says, hey here's something you need to reflect on. And the way to benefit from it is to learn a skill called listening. With curiosity.

Listening with curiosity. We usually listen with hurt, listen with I'm angry, listen with. Here's my rebuttal. Here's what I'm going to say if they ever stop talking. Listen with defensiveness. Listen to why you're wrong. But if I could listen with curiosity and say, what is their perspective and why do they feel that way? And what might I learn? It is a wonderful skill and the rebuke of a wise person can help us.

Second, some ways of living are better than others, but every way has limitations. (vv. 7-14)

Some ways of living are better than others, but every way has limitations. Nothing ultimately controls life. There's no way of living, no amount of money that I can possibly fix life with.

●    Money and power are not worth the price of integrity. (v7)

I can grease the skids with a little money, but it's not worth my integrity. There's a saying that says, you know. Every man has his price and we like to

say, well, every man except me has his price. What's your price? Would you sacrifice your integrity and gain $6 by telling the waiter no? My daughter's 9, She's not ten. Would you sacrifice your integrity by keeping $60.00 of excess change that you got from a distracted clerk or a distracted teller? How about padding an expense account for 600 bucks? How about filing a false insurance claim for 6000 bucks? How about falsifying a business contract for 600,000 bucks?

What's your price? Jesus didn't have a price. There was a large amount of money that could buy him. Could Dave Gibson be bought for $6 billion? Well, I certainly hope not. And I predict not because I don't even know how much that is. That's an unimaginable amount of money to me. Wise rebuke is better than foolish singing, laughing, cackling (v 5) Gee, I don't even know what is that? What is your price? Or would you be willing to hold on to your integrity in every situation?

●    Patience is virtue, but it is not a panacea. (v8)

 It is a virtue, but it doesn't fix anything. Patience and grit are clearly wonderful virtues. There's so many situations in life where patience is great and extremely good. Now there are situations when I should cut my losses and run. And just say, OK, this is good money after bad. This is good time after bad. I'm not going to be an idiot about this, but I am convinced that there are so many more situations in which we need to grit our teeth and keep at it, keep walking into the wind. Stick with it. It's a massive, massive virtue. It's in short supply in America.

When I was 12 or 13, I got a job. A lawn job in Denver and I didn't have

a car. My dad drove me to the job. I got there. There's an old woman and

her mother who has advertised for the job. They have two huge dogs. It's not a lawn job. It is a pickup after two massive dogs. And they haven't

picked up since before the Ice Age. I mean, it was a mess. And I go in there and I work all day in this filthy thing and then my dad picks me up. They pay me like a buck and a quarter.

My dad picks me up and we're driving away. And I said to my dad, hey dad, those women are very unkind to me. And it's a filthy job and I'm not going to do that anymore. And my father turned to me and said, excuse me.

Didn't you say you were going to take this job for the summer? Well, guess what I did all summer? I learned a little perseverance and a little grit because of my father who said, no, you're not bailing on this thing. You said you would do it. You're going to do this for these people. And we need to be people with perseverance and grit.

Now, listen, friends, let me give you a pointed example. There's good reasons to leave a church, like if leadership immorality or bad theology or horrible

practices or I mean there's good reasons to leave. But there's also reasons that are not good. Like, you know, it's messy and I'm tired of the mess. I'm just, I'm done. I'm going to find some place where it's calm. Well, good luck on that one.

 First of all #1 But you know, sometimes friends, life is messy. I just deal with the mess. Life is messy in every area, my garage, my HOA, my job, my church, my family. Every life is messy. I just deal with the mess. I've just become a person of perseverance and grit and says no, I'm not going to cut and run. This is not about theology or bad behavior.

●    Anger is a very low-leverage tactic. It is a bondage. It is the trait of fools. (v9)

Anger is pandemic in America in my opinion. Go on YouTube and write in people losing it. No, don't do that. You don't want to see it. I mean there, it's amazing. It's amazing how much people resort to anger. I once had a mentor who said our basic approach to life is I want what I want when I want it and if you will help me get it, good. But if you won't help me get it, I will run over you. We're just so willful about stuff and we're given to anger. We're given to what's called powering up. I'm going to be a hot head and get my way.

James 1:19 and 20.”Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God.”

I'm not doing God's work when I have lost it. Proverbs 19:19, “A man of great anger will bear the penalty.” Listen to the second-half. “For if you rescue him, you will only have to do it again.”

I can power up and get my way, usually I can power up and get compliance. But what I've also done is I've eroded trust, I've dishonored God, I have harmed a person, and I have impacted behavior but not character. It's a terrible tactic for making life work. And Coheleth says it is just worthless.

●    Nostalgia is foolish and you want something other than “the old days” V10)

“Say not, not, “Why were the former days better than these? For it is not from wisdom that you ask.” (v 10) This one to me. Of a whole, the whole paragraph was the most interesting verse 10. Nostalgia is foolish and you want something other than the good old days.

It is so easy in our lives to say, you know, I remember, I remember in the 60s or the 80s or 2020, 2015 or whatever. I remember how good life was before COVID or whatever. I remember how good life was before social media and you just start going to escapism. It was better back then. Let me ask you a question. Was it better? Was God more faithful back then? Did God love you

more? Were you in God's will then but not now? Can he only help you back then and not here? Has God changed somehow between back then and here?

Somehow life has gotten worse. I think when I ache for the good old days, I'm actually belittling God. I think He wants me to be connected in the present. He doesn't want me aching for what was back there. Both David Gibson and CS Lewis have an amazing comment on nostalgia and I'm going to read both of them to you and they were very eye opening to me.

David Gibson says nostalgia is a form of escapism by taking a vacation in the past instead of grappling with the present or looking in faith to the future. CS Lewis said only children and emotionally immature think that what they are longing for is actually what they are longing for. When you mature, you realize that nostalgia plays a kind of trick on you. It intensifies your emotions.

When you grow up, you realize that if you could go back to that same beautiful hillside on a warm summer day, it might be nice, it might be lovely, but it would also be ordinary in some ways, and simply going back to it would not generate that intensity of feeling. The beauty we felt in some hillside or book or music was not in them. It only came through them. And we are longing for whatever came through them, not for what they themselves were. So friends. Beauty and peace and joy and and and security, all of these things that we long for might have, we might have felt more of that back then, but those

are also all available now because these things reside in God. They don't reside in a beautiful hillside back then. They don't reside in a beautiful period in your life when everything was good. They reside in God himself and not in those things. The longing for beauty and joy is not pulling your heart into the past.

It's pulling you into the future. Into heaven.

The things you want, the things I want, the beauty, the joy, the peace, the security, the positive relationships, the lack of sin, that's not back there. That's up here. We're being pulled to heaven, Norm Geisler said. This is not the best world, but it is the best way to the best world. And when we have persevered, persevered through this world, we will so deeply love and appreciate the next

World versus 11:12. Wisdom and inheritance are good. But they're limited.

You can't inherit enough money to buy your way out of trouble. Now if you inherit a trainload of money and your sewer pipe breaks and the guy looks at it and says it's going to be 28,000 to dig this hole and put it in a new sewer line.

And you say that's no problem at all. In fact, I'll give you double that if you'll do it by Monday. Hey, money can do that. Money can do that. But you can't take $1,000,000 to your spouse and say, darling, I'm sorry, I committed adultery. Will you please forgive me and please forget it ever happened. You can't do that with 1,000,000 bucks. There's things you can't fix with 1,000,000 bucks. Now that can be fixed. I've seen it fixed many times. I've seen the race of God work powerfully in. Case situations. It can be fixed and it's in God’s heart to fix it.

But you can't do it with money. You can't do it with power. You need something else. You know, Steve Jobs died at 56. His net worth was between $7 and $10 billion. And that money could not fix his health. There's stuff and money and inheritance cannot fix it. There's stuff that wisdom can't fix. Now listen, friends, it's certainly better than being foolish, but it can't fix everything. Coheleth is a big fan of wisdom. The Bible is a big fan of wisdom. God is a big fan of wisdom. It's better to be wise than to be foolish. But we can't fix everything with wisdom. Sometimes we do the absolute wise and right thing.

And we put ourselves in harm's way even though we did the right thing.

It's a very famous incident off the coast of Alaska in 1958. There were two fishing vessels, commercial fishing vessels, maybe 4050 feet long. And they were in a horrible storm in the Gulf of Alaska. And they made a run for this little Bay called Latoya Bay. You can look it up. Latoya Bay is a very protected bay with a narrow mouth. And once you get in there, it's a beautiful place.

They made a run for that bay and they got in that bay and they anchored up overnight. Perfectly calm water out in the Gulf. It is dangerous and storming.

In the middle of the night, Latoya Bay suffered a 7.8 earthquake. It put 300 million cubic feet of rock into the bay in a flash. It created a tidal wave. Now listen to this, the tidal wave, largest one ever recorded in human history, that was 17120 feet high. That's 300 feet taller than the antenna on the Empire State Building.

It sank both ships. It wiped out a huge amount of forest. It killed five of the seven people on those two ships. And how two people lived through that is unbelievable to me. Their ship rode up in a flash, higher than the Empire State Building, and then it came down and saying they did the wise thing, you should go on the Bay when it's going crazy out there in the Gulf. And they died. It's better to be wise than to be foolish, but life cannot be controlled by my personal wisdom. I want to live wisely, but I have to trust God. God is a trustable being. Wisdom doesn't fix everything. Verse 13. Life has some awkward bends that we need to endure. There's awkward things that happen

and we need to endure what they are without being able to fix them. He doesn't mean you know, he says God.

Bent some things. It doesn't mean that God ruined him, deformed him. This

is not like me scraping a post with my Fender and bending it in. This is like things that are difficult to deal with. There are some things that are fixed, some things that are difficult to deal with. Some things are just awkward, like you run into somebody who left your church at the ski slope. God, with his sense of humor, has you right on the same lift with him. If you know he's got to deal with it. You know you got to come home and save your wife. I lost my wedding ring on a hunting trip. You got to call your parents and tell them I'm leaving the denomination you raised me in. I mean, there's some awkward stuff in life and you have to just deal with them, and keep moving forward.

Ecc5:14,”The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the

Lord. There's days of prosperity. There's days of struggle. Since you were sitting here today, I'm going to predict. That is your ability to get through days of struggle so far. You've never died.

Now when you do die, it's going to get a lot better, but so far, even in the days of struggle, it's a lot better. Core ideas, some of the ways of living are better than others, but none of them completely control life. None of them completely control life. We have to turn ourselves to God, trust Christ and pursue Him. Live wisely, endure the awkward and the painful when, despite my best efforts, it goes out of control. Don't double down on control. Double down on Christ. The smartest sheep are the ones closest to the shepherd. They're not the ones with the most power and wisdom and money. They're the ones closest to the shepherd. Let me pray for us, friends. We're very grateful, God, for your goodness in speaking to us in your book. I pray for each one of us that we would reflect on your book. We would think about our own lives and choices. We would honor you by submitting to you and to your teaching. Thank you

for your kindness to us. We pray these things in Christ's name, Amen.