Trade Up Sermon #3: The Simpleton and The Mocker --- various Proverbs Dr. Matt Cassidy --- June 18, 2017 [Prayer] God, we are Your chosen people because You chose us. We responded to the grace that was offered to us and now You call us beloved. Lord, I d ask that You d open our hearts and minds to what we could learn from the wisdom of Solomon today. I d ask that You bless our kids as they go off to camp tomorrow morning; that Your Spirit would go before them and speak to the depths of their souls about how they are loved by You, maybe even in the uniqueness of how they re made; that they might apply Your grace in a particular way in their lives; that they would understand their purpose in life. Lord, I d ask that You would instill in us a desire to pursue wisdom and to live wisely for Your glory. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Please have a seat. Happy Father s Day. If you re new to Grace, every year now for twenty-eight years I ve gotten a really hideous, ugly tie on Father s Day and I have to wear it to work because I work on Sundays. I had forgotten this year that this was Father s Day and so I had to completely --- I can show you on the first couple of rows --- see these post-it notes? --- I have rewritten my sermon so as to include all the bad illustrations being used about my children. Because I m trying to teach them something. I m trying to teach them that I m the boss. They can give me this ugly tie and then I can come back after them with a microphone and a recording going. All right, here we go. So this is today s teaching time. In 1 Kings chapter 3 an astonishing story is told, one of the most astonishing in all of human history. The new king, Solomon, has just become that king, and he s a young man. And he goes to sleep and God himself visits King Solomon in his dream. And God says, Solomon, whatever you want from me, I will give that to you. And Solomon responds, Oh, God Almighty, You have been so kind to my father David. You have made him king and now Your kindness is upon me, his son Solomon, to make me king over Your chosen TradeUp.#3.cassidy 1
people, this great nation. And You have asked me to rule over them. And there are more of them then there is dust on the earth. And so I desire this. I desire discernment so that I might govern Your great people. I want wisdom. 1 Kings 3:12 I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. God likes that prayer request. Look how He responds. This is God speaking now, God Almighty: And I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart so that there never will have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be anyone like you. Solomon is the wisest man that has ever lived up until that first Christmas morning. When Jesus was born He takes the crown. He s the new king and the wisest one ever. But this guy, this Solomon --- and he wrote a book on wisdom, on wise living, and it s called Proverbs. And that s what we re doing. We re studying that this summer. It s called Trade Up. We re calling it Trade Up because we want everyone to trade up to a better way of living, to enjoy the teachings of him. And we ve broken it up into different personality profiles. We want everyone to get one of those cards. If you didn t the last couple of weeks, you can pick those up at the tables. You can see that the cards are so well made they come right out of the bulletins, so if you see one on the ground, could you pick one up and bring it the table? That s one of the ways you can study Proverbs is to look at these various personalities that you see. As we study these Proverbs together, here s the point: you don t have to make all the mistakes yourself. When you read Proverbs and live by the Proverbs, it s like we found a shortcut for successful living. I mean, sometimes it feels like we re cheating because we can get there faster and better and cheaper and easier. And whatever our superficial values might be, it almost appeals to those so that we can live a wise life. So we re going through Proverbs together. Who doesn t want to live that way? Now last week --- we re still doing a review --- we looked at the two biggest general personalities that we re looking at for the whole book of Proverbs --- overarching personality types. One was called the wise guy, and we re coming up with hand signs for these guys because TradeUp.#3.cassidy 2
Solomon wrote them to be memorable, so we have these people that look like this and the hand sign for a wise guy is like this [finger aside nose] because in the movie called The Sting, they re wise guys and they do this. And the wise person loves and pursues wisdom and will pay whatever it costs for wisdom, because you don t pay for wisdom --- you pay for foolishness. And wisdom is better than gold, has a better return than silver. That s the hero of our series, the wise guy. And over here that we looked at last week was the fool. Again, it s an umbrella term. There are a lot of different types of fools we look at, and two of them today. But the fool, he goes like this: [brushing away with one hand]. Right? Let s do that together. And he says, Yeah, right. And he s saying, Yeah, right because somebody s trying to give him some good advice and he s saying, Yeah, right, I don t need that. Because I know everything already. I know how everything works, it s pretty simple, and I can do that. Yeah, right --- the fool. Now in the context of the fool, the umbrella term for the fool, we re going to look at two extremes. Everyone else is going to fall in between them. One extreme is going to fall over here closest to the wise person and that person s going to be called the simpleton, or the simple, or the naïve. And there s nothing especially wrong with that person, he just lacks wisdom and knowledge. And then the other extreme over here is going to be called the mocker or the scoffer, and he or she is to be feared. That s what we re going to look at. Proverbs 1:22 How long, you simpletons, will you insist on being simpleminded? How long will you mockers relish your mocking? How long will you fools hate knowledge? Now you can see that the two extremes are encapsulated in a verse early on in the Book of Proverbs. Verse 22 of chapter 1. It says, How long, you simpletons, will you insist on being simple-minded? How long will you mockers relish in your mocking? How long will you fools hate knowledge? TradeUp.#3.cassidy 3
So what is he saying? He s saying you don t have to stay simple. I mean, how long do you want to stay down there in the mud? You don t have to keep being a mocker. You can trade up. You can move on. You can learn from the wisdom of Solomon. That s how he s appealing to us. And that s why we re going to learn this. Maybe we ll have something to learn in our lives today. Let s look at these personalities. The Simpleton The first one, the simpleton. In a word, it means naïve. In Hebrew it s often translated as gullible. The actual concrete meaning --- it means open or wide. Now everybody is simple, all children and young people are simple --- they re naïve about life because they haven t lived much of life. The rest of us --- we re simple by definition of the things that we haven t experienced. If we re new to a type of job or a stage of life, we re simple in that area. And when you look at the concrete definition of what it means to be simple, that open, wide, it helps to actually describe the life of a simple person. Just think --- open wide. Whenever have you heard open wide? A little kid sitting in a high chair, applesauce --- Here comes the applesauce, open wide! And the child eats the applesauce, no harm done. It s good. And it s Father s Day and dad s in charge and he puts the child on the ground and he s running around and he finds an old Cheerio on the ground --- Open wide! The dad s thinking, You know what? That s a pretty good looking Cheerio. It doesn t look over a month old, so sure. Then this child goes over to the cat food bowl. But I ate cat food when I was twelve, so open wide. Then he goes to the cat litter box. Uh oh, open wide. No discernment. No discernment in a child that keeps saying open wide. What is true for the mouth of a young child is true for the soul of a naïve person. You don t just choose any friends. You don t just open wide. Better for you to be lonely. You can t afford to be naïve or simple about who you would date --- open wide. It would be better that you stay home that night. You don t just choose a job because it pays well --- open wide. It would be better that you stopped and seriously considered the way God made you and what you should be doing. So you see, you can t afford to be naïve. One of the passages says that it can lead to death. Your simple ways can lead to death. Now the hand sign for the simpleton is going to be our hand on our crown here with our open wide big eyes, because we re naïve and we say, I did TradeUp.#3.cassidy 4
not know that. Okay, let s do that together. Put your hand up here and say, I did not know that. And the caricature is a zombie because apparently, from what people tell me, zombies have zombie brains --- they don t have much in them. If I had to do this card over again, I would probably pick Pinocchio. Pinocchio would be perfect because the real Pinocchio book --- not the Disney version of it --- it was required reading at our house when you were in sixth and ninth grade. Because Pinocchio was I did not know that. He had no discernment in the decisions that he made. And that s the essential trait of a naïve person or a simpleton. Proverbs 14:15 Only simpletons believe everything they re told! The prudent carefully consider their steps. Look what it says in verse 14:15: Only simpletons believe everything they re told! The prudent carefully consider their steps. So for the simpleton there s no weighted average in getting advice and that s why Pinocchio is such a great example of a simpleton. He didn t know TradeUp.#3.cassidy 5
a scoundrel from the love of his father. I d highly recommend the book --- really --- whatever age you are. Read that book along with the Proverbs series and you ll appreciate how he learned the hard way over and over again. And the simpleton --- how could he know in some respects? Because he s new at it. Again, he s the fool that s closest to the wise person. He has a lot to learn. One of the first outings when my daughter was driving --- Carey --- her car overheated on the side of the road in the heat of August, mind you, and then she called me and said, Hey, Dad, can you come get me? The car s broken. And I said, Where are you, honey? And she said, Well, the street sign says Capital of Texas Highway. So I m driving up and down Capital of Texas Highway for about thirty minutes, I don t know, most of the loop, and now I ve got my head hanging out the window like I m calling for a lost dog: Carey, where are you? So I finally call her: Carey, what does the sign say again? And she said, Capital of Texas Highway. I said, Read me the whole sign. And she said, Next exit, Capital of Texas Highway. I did not know that. The first time my son took a trip to Leander he got it mixed up with that rhyming word Llano. And we were out of the state and we kept trying to figure out where he went and he just kept driving until he ran out of gas in Llano and had to borrow five dollars of gas from the person working at the gas station. And he said, I didn t know to check my gas gauge or know that cities are spelled differently for a reason. When we went to pick up my younger daughter s car --- the first time she s ever driven it --- and I told her, Look, left turns are the most dangerous thing you ll ever do in your life. So let s be super careful about left turns because you turn into oncoming traffic. Right at the bottom of our street she turns left while a car is screaming down the hill. And I literally went like this, thinking it was going to hit me. And what did she say? Oh, yeah, I think you told me, but I didn t know that today. So now she does. Those are stories in our family of simpletons learning how to live. Great news, everybody, great news. Since we are all simple, there is ease changing a simpleton. It s the easiest fool to change. TradeUp.#3.cassidy 6
Proverbs 19:25 Flog a mocker, and the simple will learn prudence; rebuke a discerning man, and he will gain knowledge. Look at Proverbs 19:25: Flog a mocker --- that s the next person we ll study --- Flog a mocker and the simple will learn prudence; rebuke a discerning man, and he will gain knowledge. So it says the simple learn from watching a mocker get beaten. In other words, you look down the road that you would be on and you see where it ends watching other people s consequences. So if you re simple in some area or your child is simple in some area and they re pursuing something like greed or selfish ambition or vanity or popularity, you find somebody on that road and say, Look down the road. Watch that mocker get flailed with decisions and consequences. Those are bills you can t pay. Now learn from that. You don t have to go to the dead end street all the way down. You don t have to hit rock bottom. You can let other people hit rock bottom and learn from that. And see, listen, we do this regularly, even in our education system. By definition a teenager is a simpleton in adult living. They re almost adults and so they re new to adult decisions and they re new to adult consequences. And so we try to get out in front of them with some of these decisions and say, Okay, look, let s look down the road and see where this leads. TradeUp.#3.cassidy 7
So many of us in high school and some of your children have had the experience where two weeks before prom or whatever the school brings a totaled car and puts it right there where the kids eat. And they bring in a HazMat team and they cut somebody loose out of that and they reenact what it s like to show up to a scene when some prom kid is driving drunk. Because teenagers are naïve and they think, You know what, I can probably do that. And how do you train them? You say, You know what? You go down that road and you say, You don t have to be naïve anymore. You don t have to be simple. You can be prudent. Sometimes young ladies think, You know, it d be cute if I had a little baby. That d be kind of fun. And so for years --- I don t know if they re still doing it --- they used to make you carry a bag of flour around for the whole semester. That s not fun --- No, that s the point. Babies aren t fun --- they re work. Because they re trying to show the consequences of what a person is doing and the simple can gain wisdom from that. Our three children --- I don t know where they came from, honestly, they re so different. Our firstborn, Ryan, he was extremely impulsive --- I don t know where he got that, that s for sure --- and he learned things by going this way. Our second born, our daughter, she was extremely stubborn in a lot of ways and she learned things the hard way that way. Our third born since the day she could hold a crayon just kind of took notes. I don t have to go there. She s had it pretty easy, honestly, because she just watched. Proverbs 9:6 Leave your simple ways and you will live; walk in the way of understanding. Leave your simple ways behind, and begin to live; learn to use good judgment. The greatest need for the simple is pretty obvious --- Leave your simple ways and you ll live and walk in the way of understanding. You don t have to stay simple. Here s another translation that helps: Leave your simple ways behind. Begin to live. Learn to use good judgment. TradeUp.#3.cassidy 8
At Grace we call that intentional living. A lot of this whole church is structured around this idea of intentional living. People say they don t know what they don t know. You can know what you don t know. You can. Not every corner is blind. You can know what you don t know by looking down the road. And so we believe in intentional living, we believe in intentional personality development. Every ten years or so you have to be prepared for psychological adjustments and recalibrations, intellectual challenges, spiritual recalibration as well. And you have to look after your body in a different way. Do you want to live simply? Leave your simple ways and be prudent instead. Know that happens every ten years or so. There s relational intentional development. In marriage, for example. You ve never been married before? You don t know what you don t know? I ll tell you what you don t know. Go to premarital counseling. First time you ve ever been a mother or a father? You go to Square One. First time with teenagers? Join our class for parenting teenagers. First time you ve ever been midlife in your marriage? You know what, it s the second-highest level of divorce. Why don t you go to that class and find out what you could know. Look down the road and see where it leads. You don t have to make all the mistakes. There s an intentional spiritual development we all need to be working on, because every single one of us has a unique way that we are made, a very special way that we were raised, and experiences positive or negative that make us a certain type of person. So you have to have intentionality, premeditation, as to what passages will be best to reprogram you, to brainwash you, to be conformed the image of Christ, to be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you can live a life that s full of wisdom and so that you can leave your simple ways. The point is: don t be simple --- get wisdom. That s the advice to all the simple. You don t have to stay simple. Let me put it another way. The wise person knows where he or she is simple and seeks wisdom so he or she doesn t have to make those mistakes to get wisdom. The Mocker That s the simpleton. That s so many of us in so many areas. The other one over here --- remember? The mocker. This is the mocker. Be afraid. Be very afraid of the mocker. Sometimes he s called the scoffer. Sometimes in our culture it s the narcissist. And this person has great power. TradeUp.#3.cassidy 9
My first experience with a mocker was this. I had a blind date when I was in college and blind is probably not the best word --- it was a dumb date. It was a really dumb date to be on. Together we were walking down the drag and right around 26th and Guadalupe --- if you re a Longhorn, you know that 7-Eleven right there across the street from Jack-in-the-Box. I mean, everybody s been there a couple of times. Anyway, so we re walking across that parking lot --and the reason I bring that up is because next to the 7-Eleven is a bar called Raul s. Now Raul s was the first punk rock band, not in Austin, but maybe in all of Texas. It changed the city. And if you don t know much about punk rock, it s an interesting style of genre of music. I went there once and the Urinals were playing. These are the types of people that go. And it was the only genre of music where I felt like I could dance appropriately because punk rock music is so bad and it s played so loudly the dancing is called slamming. You just want to slam into other people and slam into the walls. And I felt like I could do that. Finally, there was a dance I could do. This was another day, though. I wasn t there for that. I was just cutting across the parking lot. And these were the people hanging outside of Raul s. And my date starts picking a fight with four of the guys and their two dates. And she s not just complaining about their appearance and TradeUp.#3.cassidy 10
all that stuff to me, she s saying it out loud to them. Well, as you can see by first impressions of how they look, they probably would enjoy a little violence to cap off their evening. And so they re starting to circle us and give some stuff back, and then she says to me, Well, are you going to defend my honor? I said, You do not have any honor. Who picks a fight with six people? And look, I m a little person. And what you ve done, I m on their side. Now it s seven against one. It was a very short date. But it was a very long night. But here s what I want you to grasp. Mockers are destined for disaster and they want to bring other people with them. Mockers and scoffers want to destroy harmony and take as many people down with them as possible. Proverbs 21:24 Mockers are proud and haughty; they act with boundless arrogance. Here are their essential traits --- this is the way they live their lives. Mockers are proud and haughty and they act with boundless arrogance. Now don t be fooled by their style, because there are angry, loud, pushy mockers, but there are also vain and extremely manipulative mockers. They re still going to get their way and they re always right. They cannot change because they re always right. And if you re always right, why would you possibly change? They despise wisdom. They make fun of people who try to bring it their way. The hand sign for the mocker is this. [Both fists raised above the head.] That s why we have that picture there. And here s the story for that. The fourth commandment is to rest on the Sabbath. It s that sacred, say where you re supposed to take life easy and enjoy the blessings of God. And it s quite clear in the older Testament that this is a day where there is no work allowed. So specific does Moses get into a description of this is he says no kindling can be gathered on this day because no fires can be lit on the Sabbath --- because that s a working thing. And so here comes Numbers chapter 15 where a man is out on the Sabbath collecting firewood to start a fire. And the point of the whole chapter, Number 15, what s the theme of that chapter? They re trying to describe the difference between unintentional sin and intentional, deliberate sin. And their example for deliberate sin is this man on the Sabbath collecting firewood. Why would you do that? You can t have a fire and collecting it is work. That s two strikes. So the literal translation TradeUp.#3.cassidy 11
for deliberate sin, premeditated sin, is high-handed sin. So he s shaking his fist at God. He s defiant. If this weren t the hand sign for the mocker it would be this or this [hands behind the back as is being arrested]. They re going to end up in jail because of violence or embezzlement or something, because you know what? Laws don t apply to them, because they re right in everything that they do. Proverbs 29:8 Mockers set a city aflame, but wise men turn away anger. They have power, friends. Look at the essential trait here. The mockers set a city aflame; they burn it down. But the wise men turn away anger. Mockers destroy businesses, they erupt families, they splinter neighborhoods, they split churches. That s what I want you to hear today. They have power, unusual power to destroy harmony and peace. They love chaos and they want to bring as many people down as possible. Again, do not be deceived. They re not always proud and angry, they re also sweet, vain, and manipulative. Proverbs 22:10 Throw out the mocker, and fighting goes, too. Quarrels and insults will disappear. So you can imagine the advice for all of us dealing with mockers is this passage up here, 22:10. You ve got to get out of there; you ve got to drive them away. Throw out the mocker and the fighting goes away, too. The quarrels and the insults, they will suddenly disappear. And that will show you the power of the mocker, the scoffer, this narcissist. Because all it takes is one or two in a family, on a business team, or in a church or a neighborhood. And once they leave --- what just happened? Evil and disagreements just disappear and now all of a sudden there s laughter and trust and is reinstated. I ll bet some of you have experiences with this. I ll bet some of you as an adult or a child has seen the power of physical bully on a playground. A play-ground. There s supposed to be a lot of laughter. If you go to a playground and you don t hear children laughing, there s a mocker on that playground. And if a school teacher knows what s happening, she or he would jump in TradeUp.#3.cassidy 12
there and pull that mocker out, and then guess what happens? The rest of the children realize it s safe and now they can play, and then harmony and laughter break out. Some of you have had experiences personally and some of you have had it with your daughters. It seems to happen with junior high girls. This tribe of young ladies are all friends, but they re tearing each other apart all the time. A discerning mother might be able to see there s a mocker on that tribe and we take her out and watch how everybody else coalesces. Watch out how they are able to share. Watch out how they can enjoy each other. Because it s the power of the mocker, of the scoffer. They like to destroy peace, harmony, the symphony of life. This is probably the biggest, most notorious lesson I ve learned in the last ten years, is the power of this mocker. It starts with this --- you guys know how much I love how grace transforms. I love the power of grace, I don t think there s anything as powerful as grace, the grace of God. You get this forgiveness of Jesus Christ that comes through His death and resurrection, and you get the gift of the Holy Spirit in your life and there s nothing that God can t do. And so grace transforms is a giant value for me. And what I was naïve to a few years ago was that pride is stronger than grace. I just didn t think it could happen. We had on a ministry team a mocker, a scoffer, a narcissist, and when I realized what was happening I thought, This is going to be an awesome story of grace transforming. Watch what God does in this guy s life when grace gets in there, because grace can do anything. And so we assigned this person two different mentors so that they could confront him on his pride and his stubbornness and his inability to admit that he d done wrong. And on two occasions I confronted him very specifically about what he should have done, what he didn t, and all the things in between, literally, at a restaurant on a napkin. I drew a dot here --- this is what you were supposed to do, this is what you did, everything between is the carnage you caused. I looked at him, he looked at me. I looked back at him, he looked back at me and I just said, Just repent. I said, This is an easy place to repent. Just repent and then you can see the magic happen. Nothing. And that was the day the music died. I felt like I was an eleven-year-old boy and I just found out Kryptonite could kill Superman. I didn t think anything could stand up to the power of grace and grace transforming. So I went to the leaders meeting and I just said, I give up. Pride is stronger than grace. He s on a business trip and we re going to pray that when he comes back he repents and joins TradeUp.#3.cassidy 13
Celebrate Discovery because he knows he s in over his head, or we get that scoffer out of here. And he came back and the Lord led him to leave and join another ministry. And I thought, You know what? Whatever gets this guy out of this town. And then he left and he went into another ministry and burned it down. And then he left there --- somebody got wise. And he went to another ministry and do you know what he did there? He burned it down. Because that s what scoffers do. That s what mockers are good for. You ve got to get them out. Look what it says. How do you change a mocker? No verse. There is nothing in the older Testament that even gives you a clue about changing a mocker, because a mocker can t be changed. And there is some hope in the New Testament, but know this. You cannot change another mocker. The Bible says, Get them out. You can tiptoe around them if you have to live with them, but you can t change them. You just be afraid of the power of their destruction. Now, if you are a mocker there is a small bit of hope for you. So let me ask you a question. Has anyone ever said to you that you are a scoffer or a mocker or a narcissist? Has anybody ever said that to you? Not to get you back, but because they wanted you to understand something about yourself that you didn t want to hear? And I ll bet they were yelling or at least raising their voice. I want you to understand that you can t use that as something that wasn t true. You end up yelling or raising your voice at scoffers, mockers, and narcissists because it s so hard to get through. So if a person that didn t have much to lose by saying that said that to you, you stop right here today. Because it might be true. Very few people throw that around that don t mean it. And pride is stronger than grace. And your pride could be what s causing all the denial. Listen, this is just a formula that s in the Bible. And it s as sure as physics. Repentance precedes revival. You can t be changed by God s grace unless you repent. Pride is the door that locks the spirit of God s power out of your life. And so if it s true --- if you are a mocker, a scoffer, a narcissist --- you can be changed by God s grace, but you re going to have to learn three things, and you can t learn it on your own. You need to hear the prayer that we prayed for our friend, and that is that you have got to come back and join Celebrate Recovery or a twelve-step program. And here s why. Because you have to learn how to say I was wrong. I didn t make a mistake, no, I was wrong. I caused this much injury to you and let me explain what that must have felt like to you. I m going to get out of my soul and into yours. Let me explain what that must have meant to TradeUp.#3.cassidy 14
you. And then, third, I will do whatever I can to take responsibility for that. Those three statements are the antithesis of the mocker. And you can t do that on your own. And so you need to join a group. It doesn t have to Celebrate Recovery. There are twelve-step programs for this sort of thing, for selfishly ambitious people, for narcissists, for control freaks, whatever you want to call this personality type that you might be accused of. I m telling you that this is your only hope. You need a team of people to help you understand what those three things mean. I am sorry. This is the injury. This is me taking responsibility. The other reason twelve-step programs are such a phenomenal opportunity for you in this context is because all twelve steps are attacking this ego idolatry that s happening in your life. You are addicted to yourself. And addiction groups are really good at finding those things and hitting them a lot. Also, they flush out entitlements that you feel like you deserve because you re special. And when you re in a room full of people that have been down your road, they call you out on your manipulation. The only hope for a mocker changing is for a mocker repenting. So maybe today is that day for you. While I m up on this kind of upbeat feel here, you will never get well. You don t get better. You just learn to walk with a limp. You ll fight the ego idolatry your whole life and then you ll die. But there are a lot of saints that walk with a limp. One that comes to mind is Jacob, who had his name changed after his hip was replaced, and his name is now Israel. You ve probably heard of the country? It s named after him. Hemingway said this in A Farewell to Arms: life breaks every person and people are stronger where the break is or they re killed. The world breaks every person and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break, it kills. If you don t break, you die. So here s my appeal to the narcissist, the mocker, the scoffer. There s a whole new life for you out there and it starts with you today. It s repent. See what God has for you. See the power of grace transforming. TradeUp.#3.cassidy 15
Conclusion Let me review our whole time together. This guy is a simpleton and he says, I did not know that. And the Bible says, Leave your simple ways. Trade up. Become wise. And the scoffer ---- Solomon is all his wisdom says this --- if there s one around you, put him out. And if you re one, get on your knees. A lot of wisdom in this book. Let s pray that we might live that wisdom, okay? [Prayer] Lord Jesus, I d ask that again, Your Spirit would cause us to want to trade up, that we would want to live a wise life. And Lord, I d ask that the people here today that might be that mocker, they d be penetrated to the quick, that You d be knocking on that door as loud as you can without kicking it in, and they would desire so much more to life --- intimacy in relationships, simplistic joys, happiness and laughter, life not being about them, selfforgetfulness, all those things that come by being in the image of Your Son. Lord, I d ask that repentance would come their way. Lord, this week I d ask that you would help us see where we re simple, that we might see and learn the easy way. I pray this in Jesus name. Amen. TradeUp.#3.cassidy 16