Welcome to Beyond Sunday, a ministry of the preaching ministry here at LEMC. My name is Joseph Penner. I'm the associate pastor here at LEMC, and I'm joined by our discipleship pastor, Jonah Chitty. How are you doing today? I've got the giggles. Got the giggles, Joe. When do you go by Joseph? And then, then, then you switch and go to by Joe. I noticed. It's funny you say that because I've noticed that the last couple weeks.
So for anybody who's coming to our church, you know that I introduced myself as the associate pastor in both services. I've noticed the last couple weeks in one service I'll say Joe and then the next one I'll say Joseph. So you're more relaxed in the first service and the second service you're more on, more on like more formal. Maybe I I wouldn't know which one I say which in I just sort of noticed my I'm like wow, I said it different this. Interesting.
It is interesting. Like I my name, I just say Jonah. I don't have AI, don't have a short, I could say Joe. Have you ever been called Joe? No, never. Interesting. I've been called Joner. Joner. My grandpa called me Joner and I and I would correct him every time I like, no, it's Jonah. And he would be, like, laughing and say Joner. And then he would, he had, he had all dentures and he would just, like, shove his teeth out
of his mouth. I'm unlocking a childhood memory as we're talking right now, which is a little weird. Yeah. What? That was kind of par for the course for this podcast, so. Yeah, that's fitting at Christmas time. Oh man, he would, he would take him out, throw him in the glass and like while we're sitting there, it's like, oh, okay, that happened. Whatever. Dentures are weird man. Yeah, that is super. Not as much of a thing anymore, but. Right. Well, yeah, I I prefer Joe,
honestly. I just feel like it's. That's a good segue back to the name. Tell me the. Original question, I prefer Joe just because I feel like it's more casual and I'm totally fine with that. Joe is great. Yeah, I would say Joe, you are casual business cash is what I think when I think Joe and he's going to be wearing a polo shirt or maybe AT shirt, but mostly a polo shirt and some khakis maybe pair just you just look business cash.
Business cash. So yeah, Joe makes more sense to me. Yeah, well, Merry Christmas, everybody. We Merry Christmas. Recording this on Monday December the 23rd, 2 days before Christmas. Christmas, Adam. Christmas what? Adam, my kids. I don't know, I think maybe I made the joke once before and they just latched on today as Christmas. Adam, because Adam came before Eve.
Oh, that's funny. And they carry it on to the absurd, like, you know, yesterday was creation, like whatever part of creation it was. And they go by all the way anyway. Yeah, ridiculous, ridiculous children. Ridiculous. Anywho. It's Christmas, Adam. It's Christmas. That's just we we call it Christmas Eve Eve. Oh, that's that's even. I don't know if that's also weird. I agree. But yeah, eve eve anyway. Anyway, you preached a sermon this last. Let's just get to the heart of
the matter. Nobody came here for all of that. I. Think they probably just come here for that and they put up with the other stuff maybe. Yeah, you preached this last Sunday and you finally, you closed out our sermon series through the book of First Corinthians, and you got the last sermon. So how did it feel to be the closer? I don't know, it was, it was kind of fun to like just like that.
I, I just typed, I typed this in my notes and I was like, after you read the text, that's it. It's over there. It is the final, the final chapter in First Corinthians. I don't know, it felt good. Did it feel good listening? Yeah. And finishing it out and like, I'm looking forward to the next series, learning from the Old Testament. Really excited about that. So I think there's part of that. But then, yeah, we had a lot to learn from the last chapter. Absolutely.
I always find it so incredible. Like this section, it's like Paul is closing the letter and it, like you said, it's sort of administrative. He's sort of tithing up loose ends and giving some, some last minute exhortation on his way out. But it's really interesting. Like you read those passages and sometimes you're like, OK, you know, sometimes you just breeze through it. Like we're done the instruction, we're done the heavy hitting stuff. And now here's just like, Oh.
Here comes a dozen names I can't. Find out exactly make sure you say hi to this person, welcome this person and you're just sort of like, OK, whatever. This is just the ending of the letter, right? And you don't really pay all that much attention, but will you slow? Like you sort of you encouraged us to slow down and and to really see what was there. It's amazing how much is still there so. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm always I'm always
surprised about the names. Like, I don't know, for me, it's like it does a few things, but like for one, like what? What is it about these people that makes like makes him commendable? So that was obviously that was the last point, Like Paul's commending someone for something. It's OK to do that. I think in our culture, sometimes it's hard to give praise or maybe you feel bad about giving praise, but it's OK to do it and you should. I think it's right and good to
do that. And based on this text, I think it's biblical that we should be doing that. But like, so like, what is it about these people that made them like, so like outstanding that they're mentioned. It isn't always mentioned. Outstanding people. He mentions this guy named Dimas in another letter. He was like somebody to abandon the faith by name, which is kind
of crazy. Like, not even the guy who was messing around with his mom or stepmom or whatever in this text, his father's wife gotten mentioned by name, but Dimas did. Yeah. So that tells you something, too, about what Paul says in the very last part about cursed being on someone who doesn't love the Lord. Yeah, maybe he has someone like that in mind. Who's who maybe, like, fooled everybody into thinking that they were Christian and then all of a sudden turns out they're not.
And so. But the names are always something that stand out. So like. But So what did they do? That's commendable. The other thing is like, this is a real person writing this letter. That's something else to think about too. This is very personal side of the letters. And so like in Romans, he gives us like the long list of people. He does it here and he does it
in other places too. It's just like, but thinking about Paul as a person, I think is the is something that makes it real to me. Yeah. So, well, and it sets forth an interesting principle that that we will, we, we do apply in our lives as well, which is recommending good people and, and then not telling, not recommending other people, right?
Like if someone comes out to me, I, I've had this happen to me where someone says, Hey, you know, I listen to, you know, this preacher and I'm like, I don't know that you should be listening to that preacher, right? You know, and, and there's other times where you're like, oh, I, I listen to this preacher or I went out for a coffee with this guy. I'm like, yeah, that is absolutely a guy that you should be like spending time with because there's such an encouragement and such a
blessing. And I think we as believers need to be doing that. If if there's somebody that we know is a a false teacher or a teacher that preaches a false gospel or we know is skeptical, then we ought to be warning people about them, right? And if there's people that we absolutely would recommend and we should be recommending them. Yeah, that's a really good point.
I hadn't thought about this, but like when you were talking about that, it just made me think maybe we should be recommending people more than we should be discouraging people to go to for the false. That's right. So like, because that's the that's the easiest thing for us to do is to mark and avoid people and to like bash on them. But like the the other thing is better. I think Paul's giving a good example of that.
I mean, he could have bashed any number of those in in Corinth church or in the surrounding area saying, you know, avoid those people. But he like picked up on and says, so maybe, yeah, it's really good to think about. Like, you're right, though, we should be looking at people to command and also but we should be warning people too. So, but yeah, I think that's that's an interesting thing. You just really made me like, now I'm spiraling in thoughts.
Sorry. Yeah. The title of my sermon was living with conviction or living convictionally. I don't know if it's the Canadian keyboard or what, but convictionally is always misspelled. Like spell check doesn't spell it. And I look it up and it's like not a word. I know it's a weird adverb. So I don't know. I so I had to change it because the OCD part of me on my paper wouldn't let me keep the red line and I wasn't ready to put learn this word.
So living with conviction was the name of the sermon. And yeah, my points, I felt like they, they flowed pretty much from the text was the first point was planned purposefully. Paul's talking about it's administrative. It is what it is, right? It is an administrative portion of the letter, which can be boring, like if you're not looking for what's there, you know what I mean?
Like you said earlier, it's like you're tempted to read through it quickly get get done with it. This is an easy chapter today. If you, if you bump up against like these chapters in your reading plan, we're going to hit some when we go to Nehemiah. There's like full sections. I listened to that this morning as I was getting ready for work. I, I just, it's an hour long on
normal speed. If so, if you can listen to the whole book in an hour, which is really cool to do it every day, but like there's like a long list of names. A few times. And his descendants and Joe and his descendants and Joseph and his descendants. So those are things that you're tempted just like to skip over or to read through really quickly and not pay attention.
But I think there's things that are there, and maybe we'll have to do a lot of homework, you know, maybe that requires us to think about like, what is it about these people? Anyway, yeah, because just so people know that we have mentioned this to some people, I don't do we mentioned it on the podcast, but we are going into the book of Nehemiah next. And so that's where that's where we'll be starting on January 5th
and. So I don't know if we've mentioned it, maybe we did mention it once here. I know we've talked to several people about it, right. There's no surprise. We're going to Nehemiah. I mean, unless, unless, unless we get like a curveball thrown to us, which would be fine. But right now all all plans are first sermon in in January would be in Nehemiah 1, right? But you bring up that that it is a good principle to be thinking about because you're right, we can look at certain passages and
want to quickly pass them over. But I remember one of the encouraging things that, like our professors told us, is that you constantly have to be asking yourself, we we believe that the scriptures are inspired. Yeah, the whole thing, the whole. Thing is inspired by God, which means that the Holy Spirit in his wisdom decided that that was important to include in your Bible. And so you need to be asking yourself the question why?
Why would the Holy Spirit choose to include this in Scripture and at least ask yourself the question And genealogy's, you know, sometimes they're harder. But even in the even in Matthew's genealogy, like coming up to Christ, like, you know, maybe you don't know all the people, but you recognize some things in there like Rahab, right? And David and you're like, oh man, God works through sinful people to bring about the Messiah. And so there's something to learn there about about those
sorts of things. But I think sometimes we can be maybe fascinated too much with like, well, why didn't God tell us this? Why didn't God give us more information about this? That's not the right question to be asking. The right question to be asking. Because why did he say this? Why did he say what he did say?
And so we need to be faithful to try to understand and and consider it important that God did include certain things in the Bible. Like, like for instance, in First Corinthians 16, he says, you know, first I want to travel through Macedonia for I'm going to travel through Macedonia, which is super weird worthy. I don't know. I don't know if it's just the English translation doesn't get it right, but I know in the Greek it's mentioned twice as well. It's like, those are kind of
weird, like things. It's it shows the personal side of the letter, right. This is like, like, hey, by the way, I'm going to Macedonia. Just like he's like, yeah, just so you know, that's where I'm going. And so I headed there first. So don't like, freak out. Relax. That's the kind of the tone I felt like when I was reading through. It's like, OK, it's cool, everything's fine.
I'm on my way to you, but I'm going to go to Macedonia because I'm going to Macedonia. So, but yeah, it is what it is. We got it. But I think like the I've used the illustration of the glass bottom boat, you just have to slow down and you don't, you don't know what you're missing if you just blaze through. And I think that's the, if anything, if I learned anything in seminary, like that's what hit the most. Like I learned that I read the
Bible way too fast. I read the Bible like I'm reading whatever, like something somebody else wrote or newspaper. And that's just not the way that we need to be reading Holy Scripture. And so, yeah, it's a good point to make. So he's going through, he's planning all these things, but he's got, he's got purpose in mind. He's got meaning everything he's doing has a purpose.
And one of them, he's wanting to stay there for a little while longer in Ephesus because there's this wide door of effective ministry that's happening, but it's, it's being vehemently opposed, like to the point of death. And then I moved on to after that, after I talked to that a while, I moved on to like how Paul brings out this, this these 5 commands. And I at my point was living principled lives, living under convictions like you.
It's hard to, to like, to be alert, to stand firm in the faith, to be courageous, to be strong if you don't really know what it is that you're standing on, right. And so like be stand firm in the faith is, is the central part of that. And so like he's, he's giving 5 quick commands. He's saying to do all this in love, which it really is. This, this like these two sentences are like a summary of the whole, of the whole letter. I think your, your last verse of, of 15 is the, the final like
exhortation. In my, in my view, that should have been where the, the letter ended. And I think that's where it, I think that's really where his argument stopped, like, like, you know, because it's broken up in all these different sections. You can, you can see arguing for marriage and relationships here. He's arguing for this year and he's doing this and the end of 15 is where the text stopped. That's where he stops his argument. Now he's getting to all this stuff, but he's not like done
teaching. And that's what, that's something we need to remember about these chapters is like, there's still stuff to get. And I think we've, we've hammered on that enough. And then the last point was about serving others. And then he he gives these list of people and we've already sort of talked about that a little bit, but like he served Timothy. He served Timothy very well. That was something to emulate from Paul's personality.
And Paul's character is that by by commending Timothy to the Corinthian church, knowing that Apollo's wasn't going to be there and Timothy was most likely coming before that. I think that's, that's Paul serving his son in the faith. Like he's he's as an act of service. You can trust him just like you trust me, is what he's saying. He's trustworthy teacher, not just like don't just take care of him because he's like my, you know, he's my protege.
No, no, no, listen to him. Like he's doing the same work I'm doing. And so I think that was a good like just, it's just a good reminder, you know, and then and then all the different things, like the Stephanus's household is somebody to to copy. And then all these three guys were there. They delivered the letter and and they had done something to Paul, like like in his heart, right? Like just being there, the ministry of presence. We've talked about that.
I don't know if we've talked about on this podcast, but you and I have talked about it a lot. Sometimes just being there with brothers in Christ or sister, you know, brothers and sisters, you're just being there spending time with each other. That's a ministry in itself, you know, encouraging somebody that you don't have to be on with all the time. And it seems like that was kind of what he was, what he was experiencing with these guys.
And so, yeah, that was that was pretty much the sermon. Well, you just even like the Ministry of presence. I, I know I, I shared this with you last week. I think it was I remember talking with somebody, an older, wiser mentor and I was telling you how it just it really struck me that the whole time I was sharing he how like focused and intent and intently he looked at me like in my eyes and I just said to you, I said I felt so heard by him just looking so intently at. Me.
I'm looking at you right now. We're we're like looking we're locked right now. But I just it was amazing to me like it it. I felt so heard and I just. I know eye contact is harder for some people than it is for others. It's getting more and more hard. There's we can talk about that for. Right. Well, I'm just, I'm, I'm trying to teach some of my kids are better than others.
And there's one in particular that I constantly have to remind, look in people's eyes when you talk to them because it means something. It values something. And I, I, I want to be like this guy was to me. And I, I try to do that in conversations. Maybe people think I'm being creepy or weird. I I think you're being creepy and weird right now. No, I'm kidding. Well, so, and again, I, I had AI had a professor who sort of fleshed us out a little bit.
And he says, if, if you just stared at each other constantly for like 30 minutes straight, that would start to get weird, right? Like so naturally in conversation when you're looking. Just glance away you. Glance away every, you know, 5 to 10 seconds or whatever. But anyway, my point with that was being, being a close enough friend to someone that you can look into their eyes as they're talking into like feel and like hear them and to show them that you're focused.
And we've talked about this too, where it's like our kids, you know, like kids when they're little and, you know, sometimes we're distracted with our phones or whatever and, and they sort of recognize that you're not listening to me because you're not looking at me, right? And sometimes, you know, your kids will grab your face, turn your face towards them and say, Dad, look in my eyes. And we recognize that human connection that comes with eye contact.
And so like you said, to be there for people and, and to hear them and to just support them just to be a listening ear, right? It doesn't always have to be like you don't have to have all the answers. Yeah. And then honestly, you almost never have to have the answer, right? Like I was talking to somebody recently about about like this,
and he was talking. He's like, yeah, I was just sitting with this guy who's been going through some stuff and like, he laid out the whole argument like he was, he was like, passionate, like, this is wrong, you know, like, and then like 30 seconds went by and he just, like, did the whole devil's advocate. Well, you know, but I need to really be doing this, yadda, yadda, yadda, because this is what it's supposed to be doing. Sometimes just being there for
somebody is what matters. Most of the time it is. Most of the time it is. People will be able to, if they're a Christian, the Holy Spirit's going to work in them. And you just being an encouragement by being there is something like if Job's friends had just kept their mouth shut the whole time, it probably been way better than what they said, right? Right, it's very.
True. So, but yeah, the, the sermon, like I told you earlier in the week that I was a little nervous about that sermon because it came so fast and I don't know, maybe there's a like a combination of reasons for it to come so fast to me and so quick. But I was done writing on Wednesday, which is it never happens. You know, we had some scheduling changes too in the week. So we didn't have our normal Tuesday meeting, which gave me more time on Tuesday than I would have had.
But like I worked Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and I'm like, I'm done. Normally it takes at least till Thursday, sometimes into Friday. So I was nervous about about it, but I feel like, I feel like it came together and you know, hopefully the Lord used it. Hopefully so anyway.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I know in the first point, like you're like your first point planned purposefully again, talking about Paul, talking about what he wants to do. He, he wants to spend time with the Corinthians. He wants to, he doesn't just want to pass through, right? Like, right. And that's why that's part of the reason for his delay, right? He's, he knows he has other things to do and he probably could just go and do a quick visit, but he doesn't want that,
right? He wants to stay there for a time because he loves them. He wants to pastor them. He wants to encourage them, and he wants to be encouraged by them, and he wants to give them time. But he's also sensing, like right now, there was an open door for ministry. Even though there was many adversaries, There was, you know, there was a lot of conflict. There were people who were
opposing him. I didn't realize how long he'd spent in Ephesus. You know, it says in the text 2 years, but more it was longer than that because he was teaching up until that point. Then it said he preached and taught another two years. Which is to me is like he stayed in Ephesus a long time, right? Like, he stayed there a long time and he wasn't in jail there. Like, you know, maybe he was part of the time, but right, he stayed, he stayed in Ephesus for a long time.
Well, it was because of that open door, right? Exactly. And you, you sort of shared part of that story going back to Acts chapter 19. And you had said so. So because of the preaching that Paul was doing, a lot of these people had come to faith and they burned their books and you had done.
We did them after church. I didn't do the math before, but like we were, we were talking afterwards and I, I looked it up and I looked up like the like the total dollar amount, it says 30,000 pieces of silver is what they said it the total value was right. And so I like, OK, Google, what is the, you know, the current value, whatever that would have been in X 19? These people had burned their books. Burned their books and this is the total accumulated value would have been $6 million.
Unbelievable. $6 million worth of goods that they just like they burn and destroyed because of the heart change. And obviously that's going to cause an uproar in town. Like that's a huge, like blow to the industry, specifically the names of silversmith who calls up all the trouble, like start up the riot and Paul has to retreat and like basically be arrested as a Roman citizen. So he's protected by Rome. And, and it's such a crazy story.
I didn't get to that part of the end, but like, there's he's got to be protected by Rome, which is insane to think about. But yeah, anyway, it's a good story, $6 million, that's a lot. Yeah, and the, and the thing that came to my mind is like, well, what, what in our day would sort of help us to understand this a bit better. I, I sort of use the greenhouse industry as an example. I, I don't know that it actually
equates right. But I just thought like, you know, what if through the preaching of the gospel, you know, take this analogy just to its full extent. Through the preaching of the gospel, all these all, everybody working at a greenhouse all of a sudden came to came to faith and they were ready to like leave their jobs. And all the greenhouse industry just sort of failed, right. Like that the greenhouse industry is, is providing a ton of, of work for people in our area.
So it's like here is that that's sort of what's going on here with this false God, these false deities that like they're providing work and income for these people who are making idols and making gods. And it causes such an uproar that it sort of throws the whole city into an uproar. And Paul recognizes there's an open door here. Like the Lord is working and are you gonna he, he just was like I'm gonna continue to work here because of this open door here
even though like you. Said I may die, yeah. Yeah, he he might have died. You know he would. His life was in danger and they were ready to kill him because they were taking away their business. And the Corinthian church should be like celebrating the fact that he wants to stay, I think. I think that's kind of where he's getting at. He's like, look, I've got so much to work here. That's so good. There's so much good happening here. I can't come to you right now. I want to.
Which is interesting because the the Corinthian church was struggling, right? Like you see from this letter that it's like, oh man. But Paul is sort of like when you talk about, we talk about theological triage, but you talk about like making a hard decision, right? Do I go like, they this church has the gospel, they have the truth, they're struggling with it and they need a lot of help. But here is like people who are living in darkness. And so what's, what's the greater 'cause, right?
And so he chooses to stay in Ephesus. He chooses to stay, but he sends someone. I think that's something to think about, too. He does choose to stay in Ephesus to work a little longer up until Pentecost. So he's not staying a long time. He's he's got plans to leave. But he he said, he says Timothy's coming, right? Yeah, you know, he says if Timothy comes, but I I really believe he thought he he felt like Timothy was on his way and then he says Apollo says he's
coming too. He's just not ready yet. So just you're going to be OK. Like here's some instruction for now. The 16 chapter letter. What I wouldn't be chapters for them, but just be one wrong 1 long run on sentence all in caps Greek is weird, but but yeah, so here it is. You know, if you guys will do this in the meantime, you're going to be OK. You can get to the point where it, when, when we get there, we'll be able to like really knock some of this stuff out.
But I, I really think he wanted to come to them, but this wide door was open. He wants to come because he loves them. And I think that's the, that's the thing that that we need to remember is like, that was such a hard letter. Like there's not much like like positive encouragement, like I don't understand why people like there's churches back home that just name their church First Baptist Church or for the current Corinth Baptist Church
or something like that. And you know what I'm like, why would you do that? Like, you know, it's like, no, let's not, let's not name our church Corinth because that's not somebody that we want to emulate, right? But the thing that Paul wants, he's like he said all these hard things. He wants to go and demonstrate, Hey, I really do love you. Like it's hard, man. We know emails and texts does not. It doesn't convey love. Like you know what I mean?
Like you tone doesn't come across, not at all. And so I think he really wants to go. He just can't right now because there's so much, there's so much exciting stuff happening where he's at. He just can't drag himself away just yet. Right. So and so your point in that point was, you know, Paul is willing to stay in this really hard place because of the open door that the Lord had given. Yeah, there were many adversaries.
There were many who opposed him. And you sort of begin to flip it and turn it into application for us. And you ask the question, are you willing to stay in difficult circumstances because of what the Lord is doing? Yeah. And I thought that was really interesting. And I just guess just want to ask more about that. Like, how could, how could people apply that more, that principle more to their lives? Because we tend to think, if I'm doing the Lord's will, then
wouldn't good things come? Yeah. Would good things happen? Wouldn't you know, wouldn't it be smooth sailing? The first like example that comes to mind is like, I don't know, maybe you're in still at home. You're you're young, in your late teens, maybe early 20s, but you're still at home.
You've just come to faith and you're living in a household that's not like it's not Christian, maybe a Christian name, but not really Christian. You come to faith and then your sister or brother does too, but they're like 1512. They can't leave. So I would say the best thing to do in that case, there's there's a wide door of effective ministry and, and you're ministering and discipling your sibling. You should stay. You should probably think about staying for at least a little
longer. And even though maybe there might be some opposition, maybe you've gone to a church that's different than what you're you grew up in. Now you're going to a different church and you're getting opposition. I just could. This is like a real world thing, right? This happens. Your, your sibling is there. They're saved now if you leave them there, that's going to be hard for them. So being there, that's one
thing. Other real world examples, it's that nothing's popping to my head right now other than missionaries on the mission field. That's a that's a very like a lot of times you just think there's so much good here, but there's like I've heard stories of like there are people coming to faith like like really like one after another, sort of like what Paul's talking about.
This is when like in Brazil and like missionaries are going there and on the way, like witch doctors are like doing incantations, like to try to keep them from coming. And like, that's just like strong opposition, like a witch doctor in a community in like in the, in the, in the Bush in Brazil is it is they are the person in charge. They can make life just like horrible for families who live in that community. And if you know you're but ministry is there, people are coming to faith.
And what happens if the if the witch doctor gets saved, you know, that's that's amazing too. So anyway, yeah, I just think like it's sometimes, sometimes ministry is hard, but there's good things happening. Yeah. Like I think we've all experienced that in some at some level, right, You know? Well, the example like you sort of mentioned going to a different church, I think I mean, I've spoken to a number of people in our church who've done
exactly that. You know, when you leave, you know, a traditional church and you come to this church, a lot of times there's like families that, you know, if maybe it's for a season of time, they don't want anything to do with you, right, right. And that's opposition that you're facing and you have a conviction, you have a conviction, you know, to go to a certain church, to grow in your faith, to, to be fed and to go to a healthy church.
And, and when you make that change, it's like you face a lot of opposition, right? And I, I think it's just helpful for people to know that a lot of times when we're doing the right thing, you may have to suffer for that. You know, it may not always be, but you may have to suffer for that. Like you think of, like there's countless stories in the Old Testament of that, right? Like Joseph suffers for doing what is right. And you know, and many other people do, but I think that's an
important principle to know. It doesn't just because you're following the Lord doesn't mean it's going to be smooth sailing. It doesn't mean everything's going to go well. You're going to face hardship, you're going to face criticism. The Lord wants to stop the good work that's happening, right? And, and Satan is going to be at work. He's going to be did I say the Lord is going to? No, OK. The Lord The Lord is working. Maybe, I don't know. Satan is trying to stop that.
He's fighting against you. He's fighting against your family. He's he's active and he's at work and you know, we can't be haphazard walking around. We need to know that when there's difficulty, we need to lean into the Lord. We need to, we need to call on him and we need to trust that he's going to carry us through. Would you say you you need to feed your love for the Lord? You you would like a feed like an auger? In a BBQ grill. Sorry, I did it myself.
Jonas said it's a very constant second service. In the second service, Jonas said Some of it a BBQ grill, which and then you said Joe, I just said BBQ grill, which for people, maybe people don't know exactly what was going on there, but you, you coming from. It's just a grill. It's a grill. You call it a grill. I would never put the the barbecue on the front. Maybe there are is a food group, right? Maybe there are purists here in Canada, but generally speaking,
we call it a BBQ. Yeah, the the physical thing that cooks your food, we call it a BBQ. Yeah, you call. You call the propane cylinders BBQ tanks. I'm like. Is there a barbecue in there? And so we have this ongoing debate and I'm always trying to Canadianize you. It's getting there. I was very amused that you call it a BBQ grill. Well, the fact that The funny thing to me was that I that I caught it in my head and I said, Joe, I just said BBQ grill from the pulpit, which was a little
bit. Weird. That's funny. That's fine. I find myself now saying American things. Yeah, like you say, you did say this in your sermon, and I have. I have caught myself saying it. You might can. Oh, do I say that? Yeah, you might can go to the store and and find some BBQ sauce. You might can. You might can that's true. That's that's not just American, that's probably just like southern redneck. You might can yeah, you might could say that a wide door for effective ministry doesn't mean
an easy street, right. Like I wrote, I think that was like I said I'd, and this is true. Like I don't know why I did that. Like I don't know why I'm hedging. This is true. I in the sermon, I said that this has been something on my mind for the last like 6-7 years. And it has been, it's like this verse has come up like since before I started seminary.
And and then like I was looking in my notes in Logos, you know, if you write a note or whatever and Logos Bible software, like it'll pop up, it'll have like a little note card on what you highlighted. If you've written a note for it. And it said that's exactly what it says, like an, an open door for ministry. It doesn't mean an easy street because there's going to be people. Satan wants to oppose us. He doesn't want the Lord's name to be made great. He doesn't.
And and that's the that's the point there. I think Paul says I got to fight this a little longer. Well, and you and yeah, you did say that, like you said, Satan is trying to ruin your testimony because then when he ruins your testimony, he ruins the the Lord's witness, right? He ruins his name. He's sort of dragging the Lord's name through the dirt. And I thought that was a really helpful way of thinking through that.
Yeah. And then we don't that that was part of the second point when I can't when I brought that up because I was talking about like staying awake. Like I think like like be alert or be watchful. I don't know what what version is what, but in in the CSB it's be alert. It literally means stay awake. Like be awake. Like just don't go to sleep. Don't don't like don't rest, don't sit on your hands. You don't have time for that. We are not in the. We just don't have the time for that.
Well, that's and that's a really interesting perspective because you use the you use the story of Joshua in the Old Testament and the reason Moses encouraged him to be strong and courageous. The reason even the Lord encourages him in the beginning of the book of Joshua to be strong and courageous is because there's a war coming. There's a lot of hard work to do. Like you can't just sit on your
hands and be exactlyable. And I feel like so much in our life we're, if we're being honest, like we're, we're being sort of, I'm trying to, I can't think of the word. We're being coddled like our our world is teaching us to be comfortable. We're being brainwashed to think that life is all about comfort and ease and everything going well and we're buying into. It. Yeah, 100%. And we're buying into it, and we think that everything should just go easy and everything
should be nice. And here Paul is like, be watchful, be strong, stand firm, like be on guard. Like you don't have the luxury of just sitting around like the enemy has a plan, the enemy has a strategy. And we're just walking around like we've talked about this in recent podcasts. We're just walking around aimlessly, like our head in the clouds or in our phone, and we're just oblivious to what's going on. And we're not recognizing the spiritual battle that's going on. Yeah, exactly.
It's that that ESV and ESV almost every other English translation says act like men, and I think that's that's true like, but the CSPI don't know why they chose to be courageous other than it's that fancy word for a word that's only used once in the New Testament. Right. I'm not going to say it you want.
To say it so bad. I want to mispronounce it though, so I'm not going to. There's a word that describes a word that's only used one time in the New Testament, but it's used a lot of times in the Old Testament. That's why I went back to Joshua and Deuteronomy because it literally means like act like men prepared for battle. That's what he's getting at. He's like, and that's why I also, I think I also referenced Ephesians 6 and the standing.
He's not expecting us to fight. That's the thing we got to remember too. He's be prepared to defend, to stand firm, and then he's going to do the work. And that's the same thing in salvation, like when we talk about giving the gospel, it's not, it's not necessarily an advancement, right? Like the Lord, the Holy Spirit's the only one that can change a person's heart. It requires us to, to do something right. We, we, we recognize that, that we have to give the gospel
verbally. We have to do that. That's part of it. And, and when we receive it, we have to accept it in some way. The Lord, Lord gives us the gift of that faith. I think that's the way I view it. Some people view that they make the choice, which whatever, that's fine, whatever. We, we would all agree that the Lord has to do something. And that's the, the idea of like armor is defense, all right? Like you're putting on armor to defend yourself.
The armor is the word of God so that you can defend. He's going to do the work he's done. He fights the battles and like looking back to the story of Joshua, when they go in, who fights the battles? Joshua didn't fight the battle of Jericho. They just marched around the city 7 times, you know, like what, what is the Lord did that right? He's the one who fought the battle. So that's kind of the point. Like stand firm. Just stand. Don't sit.
It doesn't mean sit. It means like, stand ready. Be courageous. The Lord's got this all, all throughout Scripture. When, when, when there's a battle and the Lord's on your side, he's the one who fights it and wins. And that's, that's proven out in Revelation as well. Like in one breath, the whole fight's over. So anyway, yeah, that was the five commands in the second point. It's, I thought I was going to camp there longer than I did, but I don't think you have to, right?
Paul didn't. It's very self. Yeah, exactly straightforward. But then doing everything in love, you know, And that's sort of the tail. Going back to 13, right? Yeah. And that's sort of the end of those those 5 commands there in verse 13. Let all that you do be done in love. And I liked how you talked about
you. You shared a quote and essentially it was like, you know, love doesn't mean love doesn't mean you're, you know, ooey gooey and you let everything slide, But it also doesn't mean that like, you know, you're overly hard, right? Love is love is this thing where we're willing to speak the truth, but we do it with grace. And I love that balance of of those two things, right? Like if you have, if you have too much grace, then you you allow people to like willfully sin, right?
We need, we need truth to be able to call out. Yeah, you allow them to not not just willfully, but think it's OK, right. Like, like you not calling out sin for sin, like what it is, is one of the most unloving things we can do, right? It's I really believe that. It's like, no, we need to know what's going on, what we're doing wrong, that according to Scripture, this is wrong.
Not according to my tradition, not according to what I think I need to know that it's truly sin, right when I call it out. But like we were doing them like the we're not, we're not loving them. It's not just a disservice. I almost said we're doing a disservice. No, you're not loving them. Right, right. Exactly. But but too much, you know, too much pointing at other people's sin. It's like then we become the hypocrite in Matthew Chapter 7.
It's like, you know, how do you notice the speck in your brother's eye and you don't notice the log in your own eye, right. So we need to be recognizing sin in our own lives first, dealing with sin in our own lives, and then helping others, you know, and that there's the thing, the interesting thing about that passage, Matthew Chapter 7, is that he doesn't say don't take the speck out of your brother's eye. He simply says you need to be dealing with sin first in your own life, right?
And then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. And we talked about that earlier in First Corinthians as well. Oh yeah, you're supposed to judge each other. Yeah, you're supposed to judge each other. This is a pretty like, it sounds bad to say it that way, but it is true. But we are supposed to be judging each other because Paul's point is like, do you judge those outside the church?
No, you don't. That's not they're not holding themselves up to the the standard of the word of God. And even in Matthew Chapter 7, it says the same thing. Don't give to dogs what is holy and don't throw your pearls before pigs. And I think. Swine. Swine. And I think in the context, I think, I think what Jesus is saying is you are to be judging each other. You're to be dealing with sin in your own life. You're to be dealing with sin in each other's lives, but you may
not do that. You may not do that to like people who are outside the faith. And I, I don't think what he's saying is that you should never share the gospel and show people that their their need for a safety because of their sin. But I think what he's saying is you going up to, to doing that to people who don't follow Christ, who don't believe in the word of God. They're just going to reject you. You know, they're going to, they're going to trample it.
They don't consider the value and then they're going to turn to attack you. It's like when you face people who are hostile to the gospel, hostile to the Bible there, there's there's no wisdom in just continuing to shove it in their face when they don't appreciate that's right and they don't value it. And so these are family matters. These are things that we are supposed to be dealing with in
the church. And you're right, it is unloving to to just to not tell someone that they're sinning. We need to be doing that. Yeah. That that there is like a balance. Exactly what you said, though, like recognizing, and I think that might be that might be part of it is like, you recognize, Hey, I'm not perfect. I deal with, I deal with this or I deal with this thing or I deal with something else that's equally as bad in my own life. You know, being honest and being
vulnerable. That is what's missing in our culture, man. We are, we are so afraid. So we're terrified of being vulnerable with each other. I know I am like I'm terrified of it, right? Be exposed as a whatever, a liar, whatever, you know, like a hypocrite. But we have to be, in order for us to be genuine with each other, we have to be, we have to be able to be vulnerable with each other. And that comes down to the serving Part 2 at the end. Like we need to serve each other.
The only way to serve each other is like to be willing to do the lowest job, like be willing to do the lowest thing. So, yeah. So that wrapped it up, man. Yeah. It's so it was, it was a long term and I think I don't know how long it is because. I don't either. We haven't uploaded it yet. It was good. It was good. And I, and I think I was glad that you ended on that, that serving note. Right. Like, I think, I think that's an important principle.
You know, like we ought to be willing to serve others. Devote devote your lives to serve others. Yeah. Because I think so often it it because we're self-serving, because we're always looking out for our own interests. We need to be willing to surrender for others and I, I think Jesus, I mean, we're finishing the year in our Bible reading plan in the book of Matthew and Jesus says that very thing, right.
If anyone wants to be first among you, if anybody wants to be, you know your serve to be your leader, then you ought to be servant, right? You ought to be willing to serve one another. And I think that's just such a wonderfully helpful principle. And I think so many times we're selfish and we're looking for ways to be served. And, and this is what other people should be doing for me.
And, you know, coming to church with this perspective of like, I'm a consumer and I'm, I'm, I'm maybe judging the entertainment value or whatever. And it's like, that's not why we come to church. We don't come to, I was saying this to some of the other day. I'm like, nobody's coming to church because it's like, oh, those musicians are so good. It's like, no, we're not, we're not professionals. We, we're trying to do a good job. We're trying to strive for excellence.
We're, we're trying to do the best that we can, but we come together because it's, it's so powerful and it's so encouraging to worship together, right? And to lift our voices to the Lord together. That's right. That's why we come together. And, you know, don't come to be served. Don't come to be a taker, but come to be a giver. Find ways to serve other people. I would say that's the same thing with like the teaching too. Like the sermons are not like our goal is not to entertain you.
It's not a Ted talk. I'm honestly, my goal is not even to like make you feel good about yourself, right? Like I hope you're leave encouraged, right? But maybe that comes back to the last thing. Part of the letter is like the goal in the goal in preaching is not, is not to make you feel better about yourself. The goal is, is to strengthen you and like you talk about working out a lot like in, in the disciplines that it takes to work out like when you leave a workout, sometimes you don't
feel very good, right, right. But you get stronger because you've, you've, your muscles have gone through some torture almost at times, right? Like you get strong, you, you come out of it stronger the next day, two days later, you're stronger. Our sermons, like I've been to a lot of different churches and heard a lot of sermons and like, sometimes it's just like, oh, it's a Ted Talk, you know, it's just like, oh, here's something interesting about the Bible.
Or, or maybe it's just like, it's just, I don't want to ruffle any feathers. So I'm just going to kind of just kind of go and it's just going to be like just a warm soup, right? Chicken soup for the soul. And that's not good either, right? Like I, I that's, I think the goal of like all our preaching should be just like exhortation. Yeah, here like exposing sin for what it is. It as long as it's in the text, go for it. And then just like stand on the truth. And I think that's what Paul's
getting at the very end. He cannot fathom the fact that there is a person a sing any any person in the church who doesn't love the Lord. How, why, why would you do it? Why would you subject yourself to to like being beat up every Sunday, right? That's when I just got out of my mouth. It's like, I mean, we're not beating people up and it's not all fire and brimstone, right. But but like, like being exposed to this, like, what's the point? Why? Why?
If you don't believe it, if you're not, if you don't love the Lord then. And he's just so he cannot, they can't say it calmly. That's what that quote was. That Leon Morris quote is just like he cannot understand how anybody. And so just as a curse be on you, like you're basically living a lie. Yeah. And so, yeah, it's hard. But the my plea there at the end was come to faith, like, you don't have to have it all figured out, like. Right. Like, like I think we were
talking. I don't remember who I was talking to yesterday. Oh, yeah. It was you and your wife. We're talking about salvation. Like, like coming to faith early in life where, yeah, I had faith, but it's different now. Like, as I'm growing, my faith is stronger now. I understand it more clearly. Like when you get saved, I think about the cross.
The cross, we always think like the cross is something that's here, I'm holding my hand up in front of me and like that and then you walk away from it like this is my salvation event. And like a lot of people think, OK, there's salvation back there and now I'm walking towards heaven. But I think we got it wrong. I think like I think the cross is out front and we see it very dimly. Like like if I were to take my glasses off and it'd be super blurry and I see it, I understand it, right?
I understand what it means. It means that Christ died for my sins, but as I'm, as I'm walking ever closer with him, I'm walking closer and closer to I understand more and more what his sacrifice means and the cross becomes more and more clear. And like, I think that's the, the picture is like that. No, conversion is the starting point. The cross isn't the starting point. The cross is what you're always
have in front of you. It is what we need to be looking at. We need to always be looking at what Christ did for us, how he saved us, how my sin is like just detestable to him and and really just like understanding it more and more draws us closer and closer to him. So like, you don't have to have it all figured out. That's the goal. Like the point you, you do have to have some faith. Yeah.
And faith isn't easy, right? Like to not believe honestly is it requires more faith, but faith isn't easy. And so we just need to like, that's my encouragement for those who are sitting out there, those who are listening right now, believe, like ask the Holy Spirit to open your eyes and so that you can believe, just need a shred of faith and then Lord can do something like a great work. Yeah. And I think that's such a good
encouragement. You know, if anybody, you know, we are running a baptism class soon. And yeah, and maybe you feel like you do believe, but maybe you think it's too simple or maybe you think that, you know, you maybe you don't understand it quite the way you should. What you're it the the faith, our Christian faith is a lifetime right of our eyes being opened.
You know, I, I remember hearing a a pastor who's been preaching the Bible for 50 years say every time I open the Bible and read a passage that I've read countless times, I learned something I didn't learn before. And that's the work of the Holy Spirit. It is slowly unveiling himself to you. You're never going to get it all. And so if you have faith, like take a step, you know, take a step of faith to put your faith in the Lord. Take a step, right?
And if you have that faith and you believe that what Christ has done for you on the cross, then tell tell someone about it and start to look at the fruit of your life over the next few months and pursue the Lord. And you know, if there's fruit in your life and you believe that you're a Christian, then get baptized and take that step. It's the starting.
Point, right, It's something like I think we talked about this before too, is like they think they have to like you have to get they have to be perfect or they have to get clean, right? They have to get clean before they can be baptized. No, the baptism is like telling everybody that you just took a bath, right? You're. Clean, you're right. You're a Christian, you don't have to clean yourself up.
The Lord's going to do that cleaning, and it's going to take a lifetime to get all the sin off of you. Well, and that's a good reminder for believers too, right? Like you talk about, you know, your starting point, but you're always looking forward to the cross. We never outgrow our need for the gospel. So for the believers out there, don't read your Bible and pray because they're checkmarks on your To Do List. They're pointing you to a God who wants to be known.
Like I had someone met for coffee with somebody today and they were talking about, you know, in the book of James where it's like draw near to God and he will draw near to you. And I just remembered that like when we read and when we pray and when we do the spiritual disciplines, it's not about the disciplines in of in of themselves.
It's who they're pointing us to. It's about a relationship with a living God. And so draw near to that God and he will draw near to you and, and draw near to the person and the work of Christ and seek to, to know God, not just to know more about the Bible, not just to have knowledge, but like you said, constantly coming to Christ, constantly be reminded
that I need his forgiveness. I need, you know, the application of his blood on the his sacrifice on the cross for me so that I can walk in holiness and righteousness. But we're never going to be good enough but pursue the disciplines to pursue God, not just discipline and of itself. Yeah, exactly. I mean, don't, it's not less than discipline, right? You need to have the discipline. But yeah, it is because we, we are so privileged. We get to like to experience God.
We have the opportunity to do it every single day. Yeah. Whether we're free to do it or not, we can do it. Yeah, it's great. All right, I got one question for you. Oh. Yeah, all right. Think back. Just putting you on the spot. We've been in First Corinthians since like forever. We're done now. What was your, what's your favorite section or chapter? Maybe you preached or you heard preached or whatever. What was your favorite? My favorite that is really putting me.
On the IT was a divorce and remarriage, right? That was Oh my goodness, no, that was hard. That was a hard, that was a really hard passage, man. I don't know. That's a really good question. Feel like they were all really, really good. Like Paul's emphasis on Christ. I mean, at the beginning of the letter, you know, Paul emphasizing like you shouldn't be looking to like one leader over the other. Like, oh, I follow Paul. I follow Apollos. I follow how? How?
How we're so prone to that? Yeah, and it's it's so easy to to pick sides and and it's not about any of the leaders. It's about Christ. You know, I that, that was, that really struck me at the beginning of the letter. And then even Paul's emphasis on, you know, like I preach Christ crucified. It's not about like a big fancy thing. It's like I have a very simple message and I tell it everywhere I go. And so I think his resolve, like his conviction to, to live and
do ministry a specific way. I think at the beginning of the letter, probably, I mean the beginning of the letter, man. I mean we could go, we could go back and preach the 1st 4 chapters and I would love. That honestly felt like looking back we may not have given the 1st 4 chapters the justice for. Real. Yeah, I. Agree. Oh, they were really good.
I'm trying to think I feed the, the feed your love for the Lord sermon probably is one that has has impacted me more than any other sermon in the series and any other sermon in a long time. Because the, that first of all, the illustration was like, I mean, it's really good. Like you're feeding your love for the Lord. And then like in my example, like with my smoker, he had jammed, right?
Like it jammed up with bad stuff, like I was feeding it bad pellets and it caused this jam that now and now my smoker has never been right since. And it's sad to me, but the the illustration clicked with me. It's like, yeah, feed your love for the Lord with godly things Like what we're just talking about those disciplines and those things that you do, the prayer, fasting, Bible reading, all the different disciplines, like talking about the Lord with others.
Yeah, that to me that I think that was probably my favorite portion of the preaching for sure. Yeah, Yeah. It was like it challenged all of us, right. I remember as pastors, we talked about it many times over the course of the last few months and just, man, it was a it's a challenging book, you know? Yeah. So you at the beginning, you pick it and you're like, this is going to be great. And you started getting into it and you're like, what did we?
Do you picked it? I'll say I'll say you came up to us in a pastor's meeting one time. We were in the middle of reading First Corinthians in the Bible reading plan and you were really fired up about First Corinthians and you're like, let's just let's just read it. Let's let's, let's, let's do this one. Let's do first Corinthians, let's do first Corinthians. We're all like, OK, that sounds good, That sounds good.
And I'm like, it's going to like take, you're going to have to put like First Corinthians Chapter 7 up on a whiteboard so we can like draw all these like weird lines from this part, this argument here, like in order to understand it. And that was the hardest sermon for you. But yeah, anyway, I mean, I had the hard, I think I had hard text too, like the sexual immorality ones. The the the middle part was hard. Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Those are some hard, some hard chapters.
Chapter 8 was hard. Yeah, Jake had hard ones too. Oh. Jake had Jake had the one with head coverings, didn't he? That was hard. No, that was, that was me too, Yeah. I forgot about that. But yeah, it was, I mean, there's a lot of hard stuff, but I think that's a really good thing about preaching through books of the Bible.
It forces you to hit on things that you know, you might not always, you might not choose passages like that to preach on, but when you go through books of the Bible, it forces you to to talk about hard things at times. And all of us are committed to to saying hard things if we need to, right, because they're in the Bible again, we're going back full circle to like the beginning of our conversation, right?
The the Lord and his wisdom has chosen and his sovereignty and his wisdom has chosen to include those things in Scripture. And so we want to be faithful to teach on them when we can. And so we, we're falling, we, we are going to get things wrong at times. We're not always going to be right, but our commitment is to to do the best that we can with the knowledge and the wisdom that we have to be faithful to
the text as as much as we can. I think if like if I had to like describe us and our desire, our conviction, if you will, our conviction is to preach the word of God. And that would be with song, that would be with Bible studies, that would be with sermons. Any other thing we do our our conviction is to put the word of God in front of you so that you can learn from it, but ultimately the so that you can know God. Yeah, I mean that that would be our conviction.
I think absolutely. If I had to like summarize it in one like our conviction is to to make the word of God the primary thing because we ultimately get to know him through it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so that's my final word on 1st Corinthians. That's your final word. I don't have anything I like today other than I'll do is have something we're running. We were overtime, but it's fine. You mentioned how comfortable we are, like how like prone and how
like basically we're lazy. Like we've been, we've bought into this like idea of comfort. We need to make ourselves comfortable all the time. There's a book called the comfort crisis. It is not a Christian book. I'm just trying to preface that like there's but the principles in that are really good. It's it's time to break us out of our comfort zones. And like I've been on this like digital detox type of idea, thinking about like how can I minimalize digital things in my life?
Like looking at my phone screen noticed Ezra this morning as I was working. He was talking to me, but he was not looking at me. He was sitting at the at the bar and my little offices in another room in the kitchen. He's realized now that he can talk to me and not look at me. And that's I'm teaching how he's 2 years old man. I'm staring at a screen for work.
Obviously I'm doing something, but at the same time, like I need to like break when he wants my attention, give him some attention so that he knows I'm involved. But so, yeah, the comfort crisis, it's a really interesting book. It's sort of made me think I need to probably like ride my bike to work. He doesn't say that. I'm just trying to think how can I make myself uncomfortable, right? At least for a part of a time, just to like to like to feel
alive, you know what I mean? Because like we're, I don't, I don't have to be comfortable all the time, right? So that's what I like. I don't know if you have anything I'm putting on the spot. Now during winter time, riding a bike to work would be really uncomfortable. Yeah, but it's only three miles. You know, you can do anything. Honestly. It's not not. I'm not going to die unless I get hit by a car. I could get hit by a car in summer. You know what I mean?
Like the cold's not going to kill me in 3 miles. It's not. So let's just just just be real. I could put on layers and I'm going to walk into your office, which is like 97 degrees. So I'm going to warm myself up. It's not that. It's not that warm. It is warm. I like, I like, I like the warmth. No, I, I don't have anything that I've, that I've been reading this week, but I having conversations with people about technology. I think that is something that I'll, I'll hide on too.
I think it's just, it's such a, it's such a crisis. It is a crisis in our day technology and just how much we depend on it and how much we we feed ourselves with it, you know. Specifically the smartphone and tablets and all that stuff. And time after time, you know, I talk to people and they just, they recognize how much time they spend on it and how much they waste. And, and almost everybody is, is talking about that like, Oh yeah, I spend too much time on my phone.
Yeah, I spend too much on my phone. I need to, I need to be cutting that back and it, and it hinders me from doing other things I want to be doing. It does. And so I guess 1 encouragement I'll give. I gave this a word of encouragement to another brother, just that as you're thinking through that, maybe maybe people are thinking through the new year, what you want to change. I would encourage you and I to, to be thinking of what you're
going to replace it with. Yeah, you don't, don't just take something away and then have an empty hole because you're going to fill it with something, right. I I know I've heard people say, you know, well, I, I got rid of my social media and then I started going on YouTube all the time. Then I got rid of my YouTube and then I started watching Netflix all the time. It's like you're going to fill it with something.
You need to be deciding what you're going to fill it with and, you know, whether that's the Bible and pray or prayer or, you know, reading the Scripture to your kids or, you know, whatever you're going to fill it with. Maybe it's a really good book, right?
Even wanting to read, fill that void with something else and create new habits and new disciplines in your life so that you know you're not just, you know, being brainwashed by the world to be on your phone more and more because their job is to keep you glued to your phone for as long as possible. Yes, they're really like, like they're hiring the hiring the smartest people in the world not to solve the world's problems, but to keep you looking at advertising.
It's crazy. And I could you can go down a conspiracy theory on that, but it's true. It is. Yeah. So if you don't have this feature on your phones turned on, turn on screen time feature on Apples and then like the Androids have it too. And then track it for a week and you'll be surprised how much you look at that little glass rectangle in your pocket. And then another word of encouragement I would say is just leave the phone in the car.
If you're going in for coffee with someone, make eye contact with them, be seen, be heard. Let them know that you love them and care about them. Their your phone conversation can wait. It really can. Like even dire emergencies can wait 15-30 minutes. Like it really can. They're going to call somebody else if they don't get you, you know what I mean? So, yeah, yeah, that's that's really good. So we won't have an episode next week. That's what we said, no. Episode next week.
Yeah, we're going to take off next week, I think. All the holidays and everything. Yeah, and we'll be back better than ever after the first of the year. Yeah, maybe better than ever. I don't know. Maybe, yeah. So Merry Christmas to everybody. Yeah, happy Boxing Day. Happy, happy. We were talking about talking about Boxing Day. What? What even is Boxing Day? I don't know, but yeah, have Merry Christmas.
I hope you all enjoy a lot of wonderful time together with your families, with friends, with people you love. I know it's a wonderful time of year to to catch up with folks and family members and stuff like that. So praying that the Lord blesses you all with a wonderful season. And yeah, Jonah, do you want to close this up here? Yeah, Father, thank you so much for for this podcast thing, for the opportunity to have one more place to encourage people, to
encourage each other. I know that Joe and I have enjoyed it. And Lord, we thank you. We recognize this as a gift from you to be able to do this. And so, Lord, I pray for our church as we go into the holiday season that we would remember that that you are the most important thing that we could ever do with our time. Spending time with you is the most important thing. So, Lord, I pray that you would help us remember that, help us to give the gospel to our families as we gather with them
over the next few days. And, and we're thinking about the future. Help us to plan, but help us to hold our plans loosely and help us to remember that giving you glory and glorifying you is all satisfying. And pray these things in Jesus name, Amen. Amen.