Book of Romans - Unity in the Church | Understanding Spiritual Gifts, Pt. 1 (10/03/2021)

Online Fellowship Planning and Scheduling

All right, first thing I want to say before we get started, remember how we had an online fellowship a while back? Brian Christopher led that for us and he's willing to continue to do that, but I'm thinking we should plan one.

I was looking at either Tuesday the 12th or the 19th, both are Tuesday nights. Anyone have problem with the 12th? You could be online with us and it's kind of fun. It has some Bible games, different things we do, and then maybe we have a question and answer time for Bible questions and stuff like that, and it gives our online folks a chance to visit with us.

So we need you to be on there too and put your makeup on so you can turn your picture on so we can see you. A lot of people don't do that, but why have it if we can't see each other, right? I'll have my makeup on, so make sure you have yours on.

All right, so how about the 12th? Anyone want to vote against the 12th? All right, all in favor say aye. All right. All right, Brian. If you can hear me, we're going to pick the 12th. That's a Tuesday night.

Let me see if I can make that happen here. Technology is awesome. There it is. 8 p .m. That way it's not too early for the folks on the east coast and it's not terribly late for those on the west coast, so that'll work.

All right, 8 p .m. We got it. What? Did I say it backwards? Right. No, surely not. Okay, so on the west coast, we don't want it to be like earlier than six. Is that right? So that'll work. East coast, later than nine.

No later than nine. Okay, thanks, Dave. I thought I said it right. Okay, well, we're going to get started here, and I'm excited about this. My favorite topic today in the whole Bible just happens to be right in the middle of Romans chapter 12 where we are.

I'm kidding about that a little bit, but my two daughters, Katie and Jenny, think this has always been my favorite topic, part of what we're talking about today. So I don't think it is, but they think it is.

Unity in the Church and the Measure of Faith

But it is important, and you'll see when we get to it. But basically, Romans chapter 12, I think the big idea is unity in the church. How do you have a local church where you don't have a lot of fighting going on, like arguing over the color of the carpet?

That's my favorite topic to argue about. Things like that. All right, so that's kind of the overall idea, and we've already talked about five steps to unity in the church. One of them popped up there early, didn't it?

That's funny. I don't know how that happened. So the first step was unity. Have unity by being a people of prayer, and then have unity by walking in God's will. How do you do that? You read the scripture.

That's his reveal will, and you pray, and then you just take steps, and you're walking into his will because that's called his secret will. Third step, contemplate God's awesome nature and being, and we spent a lot of time on that one, and that is one of the greatest things that we can do is when you really contemplate the things in the Bible that God says about himself, and you figure out that you can't figure him out.

My favorite one is how did he do that? How did he exist when no one made him? How is he just there? And then the worst thought is, well, what if he hadn't been able to do that? You wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be here, and there'd be no nothing.

Bad grammar, good preaching, because he invented the idea of nothingness, so you wouldn't even have that. Think about that. That's long enough. Don't think about that long. All right, and the fourth step was get unconformed to the world by getting your brain transformed because your mind is full of worldly stuff, so we had to get in the word more.

Read the Bible more, contemplate the Bible, think about it more, and have our minds changed. Of course, our new man doesn't have a problem with that, but the old man still does, right? And your brain is part of the old man, so you got to control your mind.

You got to think about what you're thinking about when you're a Christian and control it, and the best verse I know is one where it says we have the mind of Christ, so when you get a thought that you know is not from him, just pray and say, Lord, give me your mind to think about this like you would right now, and the bad thought will vanish, and you need to do that many times every day.

And then the fifth step was understand your place, your calling, and your measure of faith, and we talked about that last time, so I'm kind of expanding that fifth one a little bit, and as we expand it from the scripture, actually expands it, not me, but I'm just following the scripture.

It's going to expand that fifth idea. It'll actually bring us to a sixth thought after that, so that's kind of where we're headed. So now that fifth thought about understanding your place, it kind of has to do with this.

It talks about that the church is a body. It's like it uses the human body as example. The human body has many parts, but they're all part of the same body, and God says that's how the church is. So like you may be an eyeball, and you think you're really more important than your left toe until you hit the left toe with a hammer, and then your eyeball hurts.

Everything hurts, right? So that's kind of the concept. So what we tend to do in the church is you think your gift is more important than the other guy's gift, and that since he doesn't have what you can do, he's weaker Christian, and you start talking about him and gossiping.

I don't mean you, but in the church, especially bigger churches, gossip just goes around everywhere, and what it's about is like that guy over there just can't do what I'm doing, and this is what this chapter says.

Don't be like that. Realize that everyone is important, and they all have different gifts because God gave us all different gifts and even a different measure of faith. See that right at the bottom? This passage, if you remember from last week, and if you weren't here, you can always go out to our archives at you'll find last week's sermon, but it talks about how God gives us all a different measure of faith, and Jesus is the only one that has faith without measure.

All of us have it by measure, which means we have different amounts of faith on purpose because God gives us the faith we need to do our job, you see, and we shouldn't pick on the other person because he doesn't have that faith.

That's what the whole thing's talking about with regard to unity, so that kind of reviews that a How do we go back? All right, so verse 3, chapter 12, verse 3 is kind of where we got all that stuff. Don't think more highly of yourself than you ought, but, you know, God has dealt with every man a measure of faith, so don't get prideful and think you're higher than everybody else.

That's what God is saying, and when we get that, it leads to better unity in the church. Now, when we move on down through scripture now, verses 5 through 7, and we kind of covered part of this last week, and this is where I'm going to pick it up.

So, we being many, it's chapter 12, Romans, verse 5, we being many are one body in Christ, and everyone members one of another, so not only is it important to understand we have different gifts, but we're connected.

The Holy Spirit connects all of us to each other spiritually and to Jesus and to the Father. We're all connected all the time, and we need to keep that in mind because anytime one of us gets in the flesh and sins, it affects all of us.

It affects this local church, makes us weaker, and yet we all sin, don't we? And the Bible says that God put this treasure in earthen vessels so that he'll get the glory, so he did it that way on purpose.

He knows we're not perfect. He knows we tend to, you know, have certain problems. We all have those. They're different, too. Gifts are different, but so are the problems, right? And yet, God put us here and wants us to struggle with that.

He wants us to try to get the place where sin habits are not, we're not bound by them anymore. The Apostle Paul was the most amazing Christian to me that ever lived because he said, you know, he said, I've got these, he said, for one thing, we're not under the law, so all things are lawful for me to do.

Now, that's something the world doesn't know. The church sure doesn't know it nowadays. All churches tend toward legalism, but Paul said all things are lawful for me because I'm not under the law, but he said, yet not all things are expedient, so not all things are good for me to do, but they're all lawful, but you know what he said right after that?

He said something like this, but I won't be made captive to any of them. So think about that, like you got a sin habit. Paul said, okay, if I notice that that's a habit, I will get rid of it because I'm not going to let anything be make me a captive other than Jesus Christ.

Isn't that cool? So we're, you know, we have this freedom, but we're supposed to work on it. Well, so everything we do affects everyone else is the point there. Having them gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us.

We're all different. We have different amounts of grace. We have different amounts of faith on purpose because God made us that way. It doesn't mean we're not supposed to all be growing though. We should have more of grace like two years from now than we do now, but as far as where you sit right here today, you're right where you're supposed to be.

As brother Otis would say, you're the perfect peach, even though that peach isn't ready for harvest. The farmer says it's perfect, so you're right where you're supposed to be, but you're not where you're going to be.

All right, I think I could be a mega church preacher with little sayings like that. I need to come up with more of those and less Bible, don't you think? Yeah, that would do it. All right, so now see there where it says having them gifts differing according to the grace, whether prophecy let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith.

The Gift of Prophecy and Sign Gifts

So last time we started getting into these and we just got started right out of time, so that's where we are today. The first gift that's listed is prophecy and that requires a lot of study today because people misunderstand this all over the globe.

You can go back to 300 AD. Between 300 and 400 AD, at that point, they were pretty clear on it. Oddly enough, if you study church history, you learn lots of neat stuff. Church was clear on it and then from there until now, you went through the dark ages from there up to the 1600s, right?

It got all muddled up there because they wouldn't let people read Bibles because the Roman Catholics were in charge pretty much of the world. They didn't like people reading the Bible, so since the average man could not read the Bible, the priest just interpreted and said, well, here's what it really means.

The Jews did the same thing for 300 years before Jesus Christ was born and that's why the Jew missed their Messiah because their teachers were saying, well, you don't need the scripture, just let me tell you what I think it means.

That's called a paraphrase. Now, here's a good rabbit trail. Stick with the King James Version in English because many of the other versions are paraphrases and you don't want that and they also come from the wrong Greek.

You don't want that. I could prove it, but it took me two years to learn it and I don't have two years to prove it to you today, so just think about it, but you don't want to paraphrase. You want to know what the scripture actually says and let the Holy Spirit teach you that, not what some man thinks it means, right?

In fact, if I tell you something I think it means, you need to go check it out when you get home. You don't need to trust me. You need to check it out when you get home and the only place of authority that God has given you in this world is the Bible.

This thing right here, I know it's on your phone, but sometimes I miss this. Any of you guys ever miss this? But I'm usually using it on my phone because I can look up the Greek. I can do all that stuff in the push of a button.

A little harder work with this, but this right here is the only thing in this world is perfect. There's no other thing that's perfect. Everything's imperfect because of the fall except for that book. Now think about that.

So now we start talking about this first gift called prophecy. It's going to list seven gifts in this passage we're in. This is the first one, but first let's talk about what gifts means. This word is charisma.

How many of you think of an English word that sounds kind of like that? Charismatic. Charisma. What does charisma mean? It means you got a lot of enthusiasm and energy. How many of you know Dr. Myron Golden?

Ever heard him preach? He's kind of enthusiastic and what most people don't know is I taught him everything he knows. I was his mentor. So all that enthusiasm, it came from me actually, but that's called charisma.

The Greek word means spiritual endowment or a miraculous facility or faculty. What that means is, let me hit the button one more time, it is not referring to a natural talent or ability like you may learn how to be a really good football player or tennis player or better yet golfer.

You kind of learn that by practicing again and again and getting better at it. It's not talking about that. You might be really good at business. You might be good at sewing. You might be good at whatever, right?

It's not talking about that. These gifts are talking about something that God himself through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit literally gave you that you weren't born with. Now you were ordained to have it even in your mother's womb.

God already knew you were going to have it because he's going to give it to you, but you weren't born with it in a physical sense. It was a gift that was given to you at a point in time either at your salvation or after it and you can be given more grace your whole life as you keep growing.

You can get more spiritual gifts. The Bible even says you can pray for better gifts like you may have a gift you don't like. You can pray for a better gift, right? Now the gift that I want is prophecy.

Now you're going to laugh at that, I know, but I'll explain it as we go, but that's the gift that I think God's actually given me that gift and I like it because the Bible indicates it's the best gift.

So I'm very special to the Lord. So the rest of you have other gifts that are important. You're part of the body. You're like the toe. I'm the eyeball. No, I'm kidding. Now there's also a gift called the gift of teaching.

It's close to the gift of prophecy, brother Bill, and you have that one and slightly different. You'll see as we go as we define what these terms are in the Greek, but some of you have all kinds of different gifts.

There's seven mentioned in this passage, but this is not the only place. There are other gifts. If you take all the areas in the New Testament where it talks about gifts, put them all together, then you'd have all the gifts that God discussed, but that won't be all the gifts because he didn't discuss them all.

He just tells us about a bunch of them. Doesn't mean there's not other gifts he could give you that aren't listed in scripture, perhaps. All right, so charisma is something God gives you spiritually that you can then do better than other people can do it.

You can do it to the amount of goodness that God wants you to be able to do it. Does that make sense? But you don't criticize someone who doesn't do it as well because he has the of faith and grace God wanted him or her to have, right?

You see the point? Okay, so that's the context all this is found in. All right, now that shouldn't, no, I guess we are still reviewing a little bit. I like reviewing better than preaching. Y 'all ever figure that out?

Prophecy. That was the first one, and if you remember last time, prophecy has two distinct meanings in the Bible, and yet one Greek word. Now I know there are many forms of the word depending on how you use it, how you use the word in the grammar, but it's the same root word.

So there's one, let's just say there's just one word for it, but it can mean at least two distinctly different separate things, and the only way you can tell which one it is is by the context. Everybody know what context means?

Stuff around it, like anytime you pull out a verse and you hear preachers pull a verse out, you should read four chapters before it and four chapters after it. You should read five books before it, five books after it.

You need to find out what is the context it's found in because that's how God wrote the Bible. It's more like he wrote it more like a letter, so you can't just pull one little phrase out and not know what the person's talking about.

You might get it wrong, so we got to take everything in context. So the first definition of prophecy, and I'm putting it in the order of importance and the way it's used the most often in the New Testament.

Now if you included the Old Testament, it would obviously be a Hebrew word, so I'm just talking about the Greek word right there, prophetia. I'm talking about that Greek word. The most important use of it in the New Testament is number one, to say or to speak or to specifically to speak forth God's word.

That's why I said I like my gift. I have the gift of prophecy. God's made me able to speak about God's word. That's what the word means. Now let me ask you an honest question. In the world that we live in today, with everything you've heard about religion, all the things you see on TV, and all the different churches, and all the different weird preachers, they'll do everything from slap you in the forehead to whatever they're going to do.

What does the word prophecy just, what do you picture when you hear that word though? Does that word, like if I were to say I'm gonna, I have the gift of speaking forth God's word, and I say that, or I come over here, I say I'm a prophet.

I have the gift of prophecy. What do you picture when I say I have the gift of prophecy? I can tell you stuff God told me that he didn't tell you, right? And you couldn't possibly know it without me, right?

Isn't that what you picture? Don't you think it also includes like some, like why would you believe me if I couldn't do some miraculous stuff? Like if I say, okay, all right, Jeannie, we're online, okay, and I say I'm a prophet.

Well, you should at least come back and say, okay, prove it. Yeah, right. So, okay, I'm in Cincinnati. You're out here near, of course, kind of Texas. See that cup on your table? I'm gonna make it move from Cincinnati, and that thing gets up, moves across, and crashes into the sink.

What are you going to believe about me? No, don't say it, because I know what you'll believe. You'll believe I'm demonic. That's what she'll believe, and she'll be absolutely correct. But in the Old Testament, when we had stuff like that happening, God would give them a supernatural ability to do things.

Like Moses could cast his rod on the ground. It turns into a serpent. Now, I would never do this, but only a prophet would. He reached down and picked the snake up, turns back into a rod. That'd be the hard part for me.

Now, if I can do that, would you then think maybe if I said, hey, God told me this, you need to hear it, that you might think I'm right. So those gifts are called sign, s-i-g-h-n, sign gifts by theologians.

It's a gift that authenticates the speaker. Like if I claim to be an apostle or a prophet, God must then authenticate that by letting me do things you can't do. Does that make sense? Now, in Hebrews chapter 1 verses 1 through 3 in the New Testament, you will find that God himself, the Holy Spirit, wrote the whole Bible.

God himself said, I don't do that anymore. He said, I used to do it a four time in many manners, in many different ways. But in these last days, it implies the word but, implies that change, doesn't it?

Don't you think that's what the word but means? That change. But in the last days, hath, he's speaking through his son. That's the written word. That's the canon. That's the entire Bible, both Old and New Testament.

I got to fix my tape. It's coming on. I have spoken through his son. That's the written word of God, and that could take some time to prove, which I could do, but it's beyond the scope of today's message.

But it's referring to the written word. So in the Old Testament time, and you have to remember, Jesus lived in the Old Testament, even though that's in the New Testament. I know that's weird, but the recording of his life is in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and yet the church didn't start until Acts, until Pentecost.

So Jesus was already in heaven by then, right? So the New Testament, Jesus lived in the Old Testament. You have to remember that, all right? So there were still prophets when Jesus was alive. There were actually still prophets, and I'm talking about not this, but there's a second definition.

I guess I should go ahead and get to it, shouldn't I? To predict the future. So there's your two definitions, all right? You can only tell by the context, but let me go back one, but in the early church for about 150 years after Jesus died, went to heaven, there were still prophets in the Old Testament sense.

They could predict the future. God could reveal stuff to them that the church wouldn't have known if God hadn't. That type of prophecy still existed for roughly 150 some odd years. I can't give you an exact, we don't know the exact amount, but I can tell you by when it stopped, and I will show you that if we have time.

This is a sermon I need two hours, but we don't have it, but anyway. So it still existed. That's called a New Testament prophet. There's no difference between that and the Old Testament prophet. It's the same, and so why do you think that might be?

Well, let me ask you this. If you took the early church, say 30 years after all the apostles were dead and in heaven, they're all dead now, and now you have preachers like Polycarp, who was taught by John, but John's gone on to heaven.

Polycarp, he's a young man, he's still the preacher, but he doesn't have but one book of the New Testament. He's got the whole Old Testament, but he only has maybe the book of Colossians, and he doesn't have the rest of the New Testament yet because it hadn't been all penned.

It hadn't been all canonized. It's not all put together in one book, so he didn't have Ephesians 2, 8, 9. Who can kind of paraphrase that for me? Tell me what Ephesians 2, 8, 9 says in your own words.

All right, now if we didn't have that book in our church, how would we have that knowledge unless we have a prophetess like Mrs. Mitchell stand up and say that, which the Holy Spirit would have to give her that for her to know it.

Would you agree with me? That was called a word of knowledge. Have you ever heard that? Because there's people that think you still have that in the church. You don't. Hebrews 1, 1 through 3 says you don't have that anymore.

God used to talk because it was needed. If you don't have Galatians 2, 20, anybody know what that one says? You got those phones going, you can find it super quick. I am crucified in Christ, nevertheless I live, right?

What if you didn't know that? You wouldn't know the walk. You wouldn't know how to walk the walk. You wouldn't know that you're saved by the faith of Christ, which that verse says. You'd think it's in Christ, but it's you're saved by the faith of Christ.

The Holy Spirit gives you Jesus's faith. That's what saves you. People don't know that today because they don't read the King James. They read modern versions and they've all changed that word. It no longer says of, it says in.

But anyway, the point is you couldn't possibly know it unless someone stood up and the Holy Spirit gave them a word of knowledge and they said that verse to you. Do you understand why it was needed in the early church?

Now you go another 100 years, 150 years, all of a sudden all of these have been penned and they and scribes began to put them all together and provide Bibles to the churches and at that point the Apostle Paul says those gifts ceased.

In the scripture it says that the sign gifts ceased. Now remind me what a sign gift is. What's the purpose of a sign gift? It all verifies and authenticates the man or woman of God. If it's an Apostle, he needs to be authenticated by signs, like miraculous things he can do.

If it's a prophet that does the second kind here, the dude's claiming to tell you stuff that God didn't tell you and he knows the future, he needs to be able to, that needs to be authenticated by God or it could be demonic because demons can counterfeit anything the Holy Spirit can do.

Remember when Moses threw the rod down, what did the magicians do? Same thing, right? When he picked that snake up, turned around, what did they do? Same thing. So God had to authenticate Moses or they would say, well he's just a magician like they are.

Is that correct? So that's why those gifts exist. That's why they've always existed. That is their purpose. It's their only purpose. I can prove in so many ways. Well you don't have so much time you don't have to listen to me, but don't forget I have the gift of prophecy so I can tell forth the Word of God to you.

So you just need more time. I need more time. But you do realize that Jesus came under criticism because there was a time when he healed a person and asked him, why don't you heal all these people? Because you know what they thought?

They thought the gift of healing was to show God's compassion and heal a bunch of people. And Jesus corrected him and said, no, that's not what the gift is for. The gift is here to glorify God and God wanted me to heal him and he didn't tell me to heal any of them so I'm not going to do it and they wanted to stone him for that.

So the gifts are not a gift of compassion so people can be healed. I mean even Oral Roberts knew that when he built a hospital. You ever figure out why a dude that believes and preaches faith healing works and he builds a hospital?

Made millions of dollars off that hospital. Oh, maybe there's the answer. I'm just telling you history. I mean, right? You're saying, okay, you're getting off the mark. No, I'm really not. Now let's look, let's go back here for a second.

Look at this first definition. Speak forth God's Word. One must start with the combination of this little Greek like these Greek letters here starting with pi. That's pro. See up there in the English way to write it is pro.

Pro is the prefix on that word. Can you see that up there? That's what the little Greek word there means. And any word that starts with that and then ends up with the rest of that Greek word, the other little word it puts together, those things really have no relation.

Look in the middle where it's underlined. They have no formal or material relation to telling the future. The word prophet in Greek does not mean telling the future. In English, because of false teachers that have been here for so many centuries and they teach, well, we still have prophets and I can tell the future and I can do these miraculous things.

In our mind, when we hear that word, that's what prophet means. But to a Greek person, it does not mean that. You get what I'm saying? So to the Greek, if we hadn't used the word prophecy, we would have used a word that says, if we had a word that meant this, which we don't, well, maybe preacher is a good word.

It means a preacher. I like that word. That works. It's a person who speaks forth God's word. It's a preacher. Now that makes sense in English, doesn't it? So for definition number one, instead of calling it a prophet, you call it a preacher, but the Bible calls it a prophet and it means a preacher.

The majority of the time in the New Testament, when the word's used, the context shows that's what it's talking about. So it really doesn't have any relation to telling the future in the actual use of the Greek word.

If you go all the way back to Socrates and Plato and the earliest written Greek works, the word is used many times and it never means, it doesn't mean that. All right, so it usually means to declare openly, to make known something publicly, that's a preacher, right?

To proclaim something, that's a preacher. To make public declaration of something, that's a preacher. So it's someone who proclaims it's a speaker or a preacher, that's what the word itself means. The only way you can get the New or Old Testament, of course that's Hebrew, but even in the early days of the New Testament, when they had a prophet, that means the second one here, is the context would have to show you whether they just did something miraculous or they spoke about the future, then that word means that.

Because Greek, they don't have a different word for those two things. Does that make sense? They just have one word, it means both. So the only way you can tell is by the context. All right, so it goes on now and it says a second gift is listed.

So one of the gifts that the Holy Spirit gives in the church is the ability to preach. That's a little different than teaching. There are some usages in 1st, 2nd Timothy and Titus, where it talks about what a minister should be like, what is qualification gifts, where in the Greek it would be like in English, if we put a little dash and it's called a preacher-teacher, a preacher-teacher.

So preachers should be able to teach really well, or they shouldn't be preaching, but the preach part adds a little bit more enthusiasm. Like it's the difference between me and Bill, right? Bill teaches the Bible like a physics professor would teach physics.

Now to those of us who love physics, it's interesting. Yeah, I was just on YouTube, you know how Daniel predicted 2 ,600 years ago that in the end times knowledge would exponentially grow? I was on YouTube yesterday reminding myself how calculus works.

Well, I could do that with physics, couldn't I, Bill? And I was thinking about you the whole time I'm watching this thing on calculus. I think, well, Bill could explain this to me better than this guy's doing, and same way with physics.

But now some of you in the room, would you have found that interesting to listen to that yesterday? How many would find it interesting? Raise your hand. Three out of all the rest of us. Okay, so now how many though, if you heard Bill talking about how to break down the Bible and Greek and all this different stuff would find that interesting?

Almost everybody in the room, right? But if Bill had the gift of preaching, of prophecy, he could sing and dance while he did it, like I do. All right, like you walk, you get up and walk out in the middle of my thing.

I'm going to get up here and go, tell you what, I'm going to pluck your tail feathers because I'm going to immediately think you left because you disagree with me. That would be charisma. I'm teasing.

That's an example I saw happen once where a preacher did that and the guy found out the guy just went to the restroom. He was all behind the preacher, but he had to go to the restroom. Anyway, all right, so now let's talk about this gift.

Ministry, Teaching, and Exhortation

What if your gift is ministry? And some of you are going to say, well, I would rather have prophecy in the ministry because ministry looks like hard work. Well, you should try preaching. It's pretty hard.

Ministry, let us wait on our ministering. Are he that teaches on teaching? So now it mentions two in this one, but I just want to talk about them one at a time. So let's talk about ministry a minute. This is an English, interesting Greek word, diakonia.

Can you think of an English word that sounds like diakonia a little bit? Deacon. The whole idea of a deacon in a New Testament church comes from this word, but what's interesting, I grew up Southern Baptist.

Any of the rest of you grew up that way? Bless you, bless you. My mom. In a Southern Baptist church, who do you think runs the church? Jesus, Satan, no. Deacons, all right. And who are the deacons? In the big Southern Baptist church, who are the deacons?

Yeah, but who do they choose among themselves to be those deacons? Successful, wealthy businessmen. And how do you know they're successful? Because they're wealthy. And so they run the church. Now, does that mean those men are spiritual?

No. And you run in, it could be, it could be spiritual, but they're not necessarily. But does the Bible teach deacons are supposed to run a church? Nowhere, because the word deacon itself means an attendant.

How many have ever pulled up to, I don't know, Cheesecake Factory, my favorite place to pull up to, and says like valet parking, okay? So you hop out, you throw in the keys and say, Parker in the shade, and you walk in, right?

Just like, what was his name? Ernest, Ernest saved Christmas. You got to watch that if you hadn't seen it. So the attendant takes your car and parks, it comes back, you give him a tip. Now, does that sound like a super wealthy, powerful person who's into the deepest things about Cheesecake Factory?