That ends a kind of salutation.
Then he launches into the epistle with verse
5.
For this cause left I thee in Crete,
that thou should set in order the things
that are wanting and ordain elders in every
city, as I had appointed thee.
Now I want to clean up two or
three things here before we begin with verse
5.
To Titus my known son, after the common
faith, so on.
Paul says to Titus my known son, and
I didn't want to skip that, but I
just wanted to call attention to something.
I always assume the intelligence of my audiences.
And I want to mention something here, the
problem of the Bible teacher.
The problem of the preacher who preaches from
the Bible and preaches the Bible, he faces
a problem always.
And I think that most of us fail
here, and I think that's the reason we
are so very dull as a rule.
The problem is how to deal with the
obvious.
Now in the scriptures there are many things
that are obvious.
And I would say that a large percentage,
if not practically all, false doctrines come out
of inability to know what to do with
the obvious.
Laboring the obvious is what makes a teacher
dull.
If you listen to a sermon sometime here
or anywhere else, and you say to yourself
now, that was true, all right.
I can't deny it was true, but it
didn't do me any good and it was
dull.
What was happening was that the speaker, this
one or some other one who might be
in this pulpit, was laboring the obvious.
That is, he was explaining that which needed
no explanation.
And was assuming that he must laboriously run
over ground already cultivated, and do over again
that which had already been done.
That's what Paul found wrong with the Hebrews,
or whoever wrote the book of Hebrews.
I usually say Paul.
When he wrote to them and said, leaving
the doctrines, the foundational doctrines, the elementary teachings,
let us go on unto perfection, laying on
of hands, baptism, and so on.
He said, let's go on.
Well, the reason we don't make better progress
is that so many simply go over and
over that which everybody already knows.
Dr. A.
B.
Simpson never taught divine healing to a congregation.
He taught broader things to a congregation, and
then he said, now if anybody's interested in
being prayed for, if you're sick, come out
Friday afternoon.
And he talked to a narrower crowd, and
could advance and go on.
It was the same with the Salvation Army.
When they were preaching, they preached to the
crowds.
Then they said, now we'll have a holiness
meeting.
And that was a narrower crowd, and then
they talked about a holy life, and how
to attain a holy life.
This was for those who were prepared for
it.
Well, that is at least one way to
get out of the dilemma here.
Because if we labor the obvious, we go
over the same ground, and we fall under
the sharp attack of the apostle, who tells
us that we are to go on unto
perfection.
And then, if we avoid the obvious, we
take for granted that because we know it,
everybody else does, then we leave gaps in
the knowledge of some people.
Some preachers, in order that there might be
no gaps, go over the same thing over
and over and over again.
I have often said, I trust with some
charity and kindness, that I don't need to
listen to the average preacher, because if he
tells me he's sick, I'll tell you what
he's going to say.
I won't know his illustrations, but outside of
that, I'll know what he's going to say,
because he'll go over the same familiar ground
again, laboring the obvious.
Now, I brought that up, because Paul says,
to Titus, mine own son.
And somebody says, now wait a minute, what
did the man mean here?
Jesus said, call no man father.
And if Titus was Paul's son, then Titus
would have to call Paul father.
And we could get ourselves all mixed up
in the obvious, but it only means this,
my friends.
Paul was using a figure of speech, and
as he wrote this, I could see a
smile coming on his face.
He wasn't using the word, mine own son,
in the sense that David did, when he
said, my son, my son Absalom.
Absolutely born of David, David's own life.
He didn't mean it in the sense that
the Bible says, Abraham begot Isaac, and Isaac
begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Dan, Levi.
He didn't mean it in that sense.
I'm laboring the obvious here, for a moment,
to show you how it's done.
And to help you to see, when you're
reading your Bible, don't get stuck behind a
little tree.
There are plenty of big ones, so to
get out from behind the little ones.
This is an awfully little one, because all
Paul meant here was, through the power of
the gospel, I brought about the new birth
of Titus, ergo, Titus is my boy.
He meant it about the same sense that
the president, when he got off the plane,
and Nixon came to meet him, put his
arms around him, and said, he's my boy.
Well, a little, a little closer than that,
but not much more.
It was just Paul saying, you're my boy,
Titus.
I won you to the Lord, through the
power of the word.
I planted the word in your heart, and
the Holy Ghost brought about your conversion, your
birth.
So I'm your father.
But there was nothing biological meant by it
here, and nothing even theological.
So there is how to labor the obvious,
but it's also how not to avoid it,
so people don't know what we mean.
Then another matter says, after the common faith.
Now, what do we mean by the common
faith?
A young Christian might wonder about that, and
assuming that there are new Christians, and I
know there are, who wonder what the common
faith means, because that word common is not
always a good word.
It is a word that has many definitions.
And what do we mean by the common
faith?
Well, we talk about common bread, and it's
said to let Jesus into the common hall,
and they talk about death, which is common
to all.
Paul talks about common temptation, and we read
about a common drunk, or hear about a
common drunk, or a common scold.
We say that's a common sight.
Then, of course, this is the age of
the common people, Mr. Roosevelt said.
So the word common there doesn't always mean,
it means the opposite of excellent.
It means the opposite of elite.
It means the multitude, the hoi polloi, the
crowd, when it's used, of course, of people.
And yet, Paul turns around and uses it
of the faith of our fathers.
Why would he put the adjective common back
of the word faith, meaning the gospel faith,
the Christian faith?
I say a young Christian might wonder about
that, but that's nothing again, and you don't
want to get lost again behind the obvious
here, because the Bible talks about common faith
and common salvation.
And, of course, it means one of two
things always.
It means shared by everybody.
It used to be in the small towns,
and I think there are in England still,
places they call the commons.
Not belonging to anybody, but belonging to everybody
commonly.
Communally, we would say, if it wasn't that
communists have cursed that word.
But there's something shared by everybody.
You walk down the street, it's a common
sidewalk.
You go to the park, it's common for
everybody.
That's one meaning of the word.
And the other meaning is open to everybody.
So it says our common salvation.
Jude refers to common salvation, open to everybody.
It's not esoteric.
When I was a kid, there boarded at
our house a young fellow about my age,
a year older maybe, who was very proud
of the fact that he belonged to what
he called an esoteric religion.
He ate certain things and didn't eat other
certain things.
He belonged to the esoteric.
Well, esoteric, of course, means hidden and belonging
to or discovered by only a few.
Exoteric means the opposite.
It means common, open to everybody.
And Paul said, or Jude said, the common
salvation is not esoteric, belonging to a few
who have been initiated into it, but it's
open to everybody.
Let whosoever will come and take of the
water of life freely.
And when Paul said, my son, after the
common faith, he meant a salvation that was
shared by everybody, open to everybody.
And then it means this too, shared by
the speaker and the hearer.
Let me explain it like this.
Suppose that a man and his wife had
a little child and the little child, after
staying around long enough to get all woven
into the emotional heart strings of their, its
parents, died.
Well, those parents would say, we share a
common grief.
He belongs to you and me, he would
say to his wife.
That's a common grief we share, a common
grief.
If later they had another happy little one
that lived, they'd say, this is our common
joy.
Nobody else would share it.
Even though their friends would congratulate them in
the birth of the new baby or sorrow
with them in the death of one, still
nobody knows that grief except the parents.
They shared a common grief.
Now that's what Paul meant.
After the common faith, a faith shared by
the speaker and the hearer, by the writer
and the reader, by the apostle and his
son after the common faith, Paul.
Now that's what that means.
Then he says, grace, mercy, and peace.
Now I'm deliberately going to skip that because
that would be laboring the obvious too greatly.
Now he said, for this cause left I
thee in Crete.
And I told you at the beginning that
Crete was one, I think I told you
that Crete was the third largest island in
the Mediterranean.
I think I told you that the first
message that I gave here when we were
talking about Crete.
But I've looked this up on maps and
I find that Crete is not the third
largest.
It is one of the five large islands,
Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Crete, and I think maybe
one other.
Cyprus, that's right.
I might know our brother down there would
know about it.
And those are the five large islands and
Crete, as I could figure it, is not
the largest but one of the five largest.
Now what there was about this Greek island
that made it of significance was its population.
From all I can gather from commentators and
dictionaries and encyclopedias, you wonder what I do
brother?
I dig stuff out for you that you've
too busy to dig out.
And then tell it to you in five
minutes and you say, well that's not, that's
not, I got much to do.
Well it's not giving in five minutes but
it takes two or three hours to find
out things.
So I find that Crete was inhabited by
a rather wild mixture of races and religions
and philosophies.
There were a lot of Jews there and
it was supposed to be the birthplace of
Bacchus.
You've heard the word bacchanalian meaning wild drunken
orgies and that's the kind of religion they
had there.
Old Bacchus they said was born there on
that island, Crete, and their religion sort of
centered around Bacchus.
And of course there was drunkenness and all
kinds of immoralities that went with the religion
they had.
Then there were Jews who held rather closely
to the Jewish religion and then when the
Christians came, of course, they pulled loose both
from the orgies of the bacchanalian Greek worshippers
of false gods and from the Jews.
And there were many of them I understand,
large numbers of Christians when Paul got there.
And Titus and Paul were traveling together just
as two preachers now might start out or
two missionaries.
Two missionaries might start out together.
This man and his wife might start out
somewhere.
Well, that's the way they were doing.
And Paul, when he saw the situation in
Crete, he left his young friend there and
said, now Titus, I haven't time to stay
here and organize, but this place is a
mess.
You got to organize.
I don't know what the slang word was
for what was wrong with them there.
Dr. R.
Brown says it's status quo.
He said the preacher kept referring to the
status quo in the church and somebody asked
him what that word meant.
He said it's Latin for the mess we
were in.
And this mess he was in, the status
quo in Crete among the Christians was very
bad.
And Paul said that you stay Titus and
I'll go on.
You say stay and set it in order.
There were, said somebody, plenty of Christian life,
but no Christian organization.
Some persons despise organization and they quote this
passage where two or three are gathered together
in my name.
There am I in the midst of them.
And they say, now there you have your
church.
That's your typical church and all churches should
take that for a standard.
A few people gathered together in the name
of Christ.
Well, they're right that far, but have you
noticed that their idea is no authority, no
order, no form, no obedience, just freedom and
fellowship and the quality and joy.
It is a sort of ideal state which
they think up, but never has been realized.
The scriptures teach quite otherwise.
The scriptures teach not that there is that
a church consists alone of a group of
people, two or three or more met together.
Two or three, Jesus said in the name
of Christ without order, organization, obedience, authority.
The Bible teaches something else all together.
Now Israel was organized thoroughly.
If you read your old Testament, you will
see that nothing was left to people.
God organized it from the top and he
organized it, cleared down to the last Kohithite
to carry on his shoulder.
The accoutrements of the temple.
And then those first disciples that gathered around
Jesus had some kind of organization because they
did have a treasure.
They say that if there were three Americans
cast up on a desert Island, one would
take a stick and call the other two
to order and they would have a meeting
and they would elect a president, vice president
and secretary.
And if there were four, a treasure.
But you find that Judas was the treasure.
He turned out bad, but he was tempted
more than the others were.
And he wasn't probably a born again man
ever, so he turned out bad, but they
did have a treasure.
Somebody kept the bag.
And then act six, do you notice what
happens as soon as it ceases to be
two or three and becomes more?
And in those days when the number of
the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring
of the Grecian Jews against the Hebrews, the
Grecian Christians.
That is, they were Jews, uh, proselytes, I
understand, and had, and were from, uh, from
other countries and were in Jerusalem.
Then there were the Hebrew Christians blown in
the bottle, real Hebrews that were Hebrews of
the land.
They spoke one language and the Grecians might've
spoken almost anything, uh, from whatever land they
came, they would speak that language, but they
were all Christians and the disciples multiplied and
there arose a murmuring.
Then the twelve called the multitude of the
disciples under them, not two or three, but
the multitude.
You see, the problem came from numbers.
Always remember that lots of people want a
tiny little church with only a few and
they say, oh, it's so much better.
But always remember the proverb that says where
no oxen are, the stall is clean, but
much increase comes from the ox.
What do you mean by that?
They mean that if you just want a
clean barn, don't have any oxen.
But if you want your farm to grow
and you want to have much fruit, much
increase, you're going to have to have oxen.
And if you're going to have to have
oxen, you're going to have to keep cleaning
out the stables and looking after the oxen.
If all you want is a nice, clean
barn, why you will have no fruit, no
vegetables, no grain.
And otherwise that has been said, you can't
make an omelet without breaking an egg.
And here you, if you're going to reach
a lot of people, you're going to have
to take the problem that comes with having
more people.
So they had to face it out.
And the 12 called the multitude of the
disciples under them and said, it isn't reason
that we should leave the word of God
and serve tables.
Therefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven
men of honest report, full of the Holy
Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over
the business.
They didn't go off and say, pick you
out seven men.
They said, pick them out.
You know them better than we are people
better than we do find the best people
possible and we'll appoint them, but we'll give
ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry
of the word.
Now, uh, they set them, they picked out
seven of them and it names them whom
they set before the apostles.
And when they had prayed, they laid their
hands on them.
So you see, there was organization in the
sixth chapter of acts.
As long as there were two or three
gathered together in the name of the Lord,
there'd be no reason for organization.
But as soon as the multitude or the
number of the disciples increased, then there had
to come some sort of organization.
Then the pastoral epistles, Titus, first Timothy and
second Timothy deal with, with organization, order, obedience
and authority in the church.
And then there's first Peter says, the elders
among you, I exhort feed the flock of
God, which is among you taking the oversight
thereof, not by constraint, but willingly not for
filthy lucre, but have already mine.
Neither is being lords over God's heritage, but
being in samples to the flock.
Well, that's about all there is to it
this time, except that Paul said, thou should
ordain elders as I appointed.
Now I want to ask a question.
If these elders were selected by the congregation,
approved by Titus and appointed by the elders,
or appointed by the apostle.
And I wonder where all that democracy is
we hear so much about.
Now we're set up here as a democratic
church.
We're not quite Baptistic, but we're close to
it.
But we, you know, I think you can
democratize yourself to death.
You go back to the old Testament and
you find that when the Lord wanted to
lead the children of Israel out of Egypt,
he selected one man and he worked through
that man.
And when he wanted to lead them into
the land, he selected another man.
When he wanted to lead them back from
Babylon, he selected two men and all down
the years, it's been the same.
It seems to be inherent in crowds that
they can't hear God speak.
A man has to get alone and pay
the price for listening.
Then when he hears God speak, he goes
to the people and tells them and they
hear God speak through him.
That seems to be the order.
That's the biblical order.
And I'll stand up to anybody on that.
That's why I can't go along with my
good friends, the Plymouth brethren.
I admire them.
I learned from them and yet I can't
go along with them on their refusal to
acknowledge pastors and so on.
Now, here was the order.
Paul at the top, Titus beneath him, the
elders still further down on the totem pole.
That seemed to be God's order.
Now, what do I gather from all this?
Well, I'll give you seven.
I'm a good, good fundamentalist.
I'll give you seven points here now, just
briefly given to you in quick, that I
learned from the Apostle Epistles, from Titus, and
from this that Paul says, I set the
left in creed that thou mightest set in
order things that are wanting and ordain elders
as I've appointed.
Here's what I, what I gather from this,
these seven points, that wherever there is corporate
action, there must be organization.
Wherever there is corporate action, there must be
organization.
Otherwise, there can be no order and where
there is no order, there can only be
chaos and waste motion.
So that any group, any group of Christians
that are meeting together, if they're going to
function as a church in the body of
Christ, they've got to have some sort of
organization.
The great proof of this lies in the
12th chapter of 1st Corinthians, where Paul likens
the church to the body, and the body's
organized.
If it isn't organized, then you have these
dear poor people.
They wouldn't thank me for pitting them, but
you can't help but pity them.
I have a friend, I'm not going to
name his name, but he's one of the
most learned fellows I ever saw.
He teaches advanced Greek in the college, but
he is, what do they call it, can't
control himself, he's spastic, and he simply goes
all the pieces.
He has to be fed, he has to
have his clothes put on him, he can
hardly hold a book, he's just all over
the place, can't even control his face.
He smiles, but he smiles and goes all
awry.
He's a brilliant fellow, a brilliant fellow.
I've watched him now for the last 15
years or more, growing, and he sits before
a class, and he teaches brilliantly, but he's
a spastic.
Well, a body that isn't organized is like
that.
It would go all the pieces.
It has to be organized.
Your brain has to tell your nerves what
to tell your muscles, and your muscles have
to have the cooperation of the joints, and
the whole thing has to work together.
So the Church of Christ must be, if
it's going to work, it's going to have
to be organized.
Our problem comes when we organize after they're
dead.
I find that the more organization, usually it's
an indication of lack of spirituality.
A certain amount of organization is necessary to
control life, but when life goes out, then
we try to make up by organization what
we lack in life.
That happens in churches.
Well, that's one thing.
Wherever there's corporate action, there must be organization.
Two, to be a true New Testament church,
there must be offices, authority, and obedience.
And if we're not ready and willing as
Christians to admit this, then we're going to
have to walk right out of the New
Testament, because that's what it teaches.
Three, ordination is a New Testament doctrine.
You know, good men can say things that
they never should have said.
I remember that Charles Haddon Spurgeon, though he
was a Baptist all his life, somebody said
to him, Mr. Spurgeon, have you ever been
ordained?
And he gave this classic reply.
No, he said.
Nobody's ever laid his empty hands on my
empty head.
And that was quoted all over the world.
Moody said something about the same, and he
never was ordained.
The result was laymanism took over.
And we see it today in its crassness
and rawness throughout the whole evangelical church.
But in spite of a quip some fellow
might make in a weak moment, ordination is
a New Testament doctrine.
And so whoever rejects that also rejects the
scripture, because the scripture very clearly teaches it.
Select you out from among you seven men
of good report.
They know who they were, but they didn't
function until the apostles laid their hands on
them and prayed for them and ordained them
to their specific ministry.
Now, the fourth thing is that God gives
no dictatorial powers, power to any man, to
a church.
He gives no man dictatorial authority over church.
He gives him a position, and he gives
him a certain spiritual authority there, which if
the church is a church of God, they
will recognize, but he gives him no right
to call all the shots and to rule
everybody's life and to stand up and dictate.
Absolutely not.
Peter, you'll remember, I read to you there
that he said, neither as being lords over
God's heritage, but being in samples to the
flock.
They are to be shepherds to lead the
flock, not sergeants to command the flock.
There's a difference there, and the good leaders
are those who lead us, not those who
command us.
Then the fifth is that a pastor is
not a hired man.
That ought to be remembered also by churches.
There are boards.
I never was unfortunate enough to ever have
to deal with any of them, and it's
certainly not true of any we've ever had
here, but they imagine the pastor is a
hired man.
I remember in Canada, there was a church,
one of our great alliance churches, and they
had there one of the senators, I believe,
or a member of parliament anyway.
He was a member of the church, and
they had a military officer who was in
charge of the orchestra, and it was pretty
big stuff, you know.
So they invited a pastor, and the pastor
wanted to know who was chairman of the
board.
They said, that's not any of your affair,
reverend.
He said, you come and preach, and we'll
run the church.
In other words, you're a hired man.
We hire you to come, then we'll run
the church.
No, that isn't the way it is.
A pastor isn't a hired man, neither is
he a dictator.
He's one of the crowd ordained of God
to take a certain leadership, and the flock
follows him as he follows the Lord, but
never think of him as a hired man,
to be hired and fired at the dictation
of some board member who had a bad
day at the office, and who, when he
comes to the meeting, isn't feeling well.
Then there is the sixth point.
Too much democracy isn't good for religion.
We need desperately, desperately lead the right, need
the right kind of leadership now.
We need it in the Christian church.
We're getting a certain leadership, but it's not
the leadership of the Holy Ghost.
It's, it's a lay leadership in the direction
of all sorts of organizations, and all sorts
of new schemes and methodology, as we say,
or as they say, and the result is
that there's, it's, we've democratized ourselves to death.
Nobody's willing to stand out, and we, we
want men who will go along with the
crowd.
Then seventh is that the right order, gifts
and offices and democracy and cooperation, that's the
right order.
Gifts in the church, which are recognized by
the people, offices, ordination, those gifted men ordained
to offices in the church, and then the
democracy, meaning that the people are there, and
they have a voice, and they're God's sheep,
and they have a voice, and, and they
have a say, and they help to select
those who are to set things in order,
but they, they do not finally select that
man.
You're not, you're not an elder by election.
Keep that in mind, Brent, that you cannot
become an order, an elder by election.
You can only become an elder by ordination,
and if the great God Almighty doesn't ordain
a man, he's not an elder, no matter
how often he may be elected.
So a position in a church ought to
be a position of ordination.
Presbyterian church, they ordain elders, and they do
it in certain other groups, and I believe
in, and we have something close to it
when we call those elected down and pray
over them at the end of our annual
meeting.
Rather ragged, maybe, but at least it's a
reach, a stretching out in the right direction.
Just, just count the votes and see who
gets in.
Never.
I get awfully weary of this town hall
method of conducting the church.
It isn't good, my reverend.
We mustn't forget that the spirit runs his
church, and we mustn't forget that the spirit
has historically always worked through men whose ear
he could get.
You say, does this put other men, common
men down?
No.
It only means this, that the working man,
the professional man, the laboring man must work,
and he does, and by having funds, he's
able to carry on the work of the
Lord financially, home and abroad, but it also
limits the amount of time that he can
give to any spiritual, specifically spiritual activities.
So the Lord picks out certain men who
can give time.
Jonathan Edwards spent 13 hours a day in
his study, in prayer, and in Bible searching,
and in writing.
In order to get exercise, he had his
desk built up level with him here, so
that he could walk along his desk, pick
out his books, and do his writing standing
up, in order that he might not sit
down and spread out, and get the diseases
that they say are the result of a
sedentary occupation.
I've always smiled about that.
That means sitting down, but Edwards wouldn't do
that.
He stood up and walked along his desk,
and wrote his great world-shaking books, and
got his great world-shaking sermons.
Well, that's it then.
Democracy, yes.
There is some democracy in the church.
Pure democracy, no.
Leadership, yes.
Dictatorship, no.
Fellowship, yes.
Cooperation, certainly.
Order, got to be.
Organization, there must be.
Now, all that is here.
It's all implied here, and Titus, the rest
of Titus, the two Timothys, as well as
1 Corinthians, and the practice in the book
of Acts, all bears out what I've said
this morning.
But it's wonderful, wonderful to work together, and
have everybody working, and doing his job, and
operating, and nobody angry, nobody mad, nobody jealous.
Everybody willing to do it, not by constraint,
but willingly.
Wonderful.
The teachers, and officers in the Sunday school,
and in the choir, on up to the
teachers, and others.
To work together like that, that's wonderful.
And where the Spirit of God is, I
doubt whether there's any likelihood at all of
any difficulty.
It's only when carnality gets in.
But he said, what do you believe in,
Mr. Tozer?
Do you believe in the Episcopal form of
government?
Do you believe in the Presbyterian form of
government?
Do you believe in the Baptistic form of
government?
You know what?
Dr. Samuel Johnson once said something, and I
think it was one of the wisest, most
penetrating observations ever made by an uninspired man.
They were sitting around there, as they did,
you know, Burke, and Samuel Johnson, and Goldsmith,
and the rest of them, discussing everything, heaven
and earth.
There was nothing too high nor too low
for them to discuss.
They didn't sit around, make clips, and tell
jokes the way men do now.
They discussed learned things.
And they were discussing forms of government.
And Dr. Johnson settled it, and for me,
he settled it for all time.
He said, Sirs, I have observed that it
makes little difference what form of government prevails
in a country.
The people will be happy if only the
rulers be just men.
Put a good man in charge, and everybody
will be happy, I don't care what they
call it, a democracy, an oligarchy, or a
monarchy.
If he's a good man, everybody will be
happy.
The problem is a personality problem.
It's getting the right man in there.
Get the right man in.
And if you get the right person leading
you, it'll be all right.
Right man in Washington.
I wouldn't want to see the country organized
a new organization.
I don't think we need a new organization
from the top down in Washington.
I simply think we need a more selective
crowd up there in Washington.
Get good men like the Lincoln we celebrate,
whose birthday we celebrated last week.
Get good men in, everybody will be happy.
Sirs, I've observed that it matters little what
form of government prevails in a country.
The people will be happy if only the
rulers be just men.
So if the Holy Ghost controls in the
teaching, in the preaching, in the leadership, what
little there is, if he controls, the people
will be a happy, worshipful, good-natured people,
there'd be no trouble.
But get the wrong man in.
Get a dictator, or a lazy tramp, or
somebody who wants to lord it over God's
heritage, you've got trouble no matter what form
of government you got.
Well that's Titus for this morning.
We'll go on into Titus, and I promise
you that's a mighty rich mind.
Amen.