I must have taken my bottle of
water back into the office. Yeah, why don't you do that?
We've got time. You can open your Bibles back to James chapter
1. My wife is always so attentive
to have come up here before we get started and put up a fresh
bottle of water, you know, everything's ready to go. And I'm so absent-minded,
I just walk off with it. My mother used to tell me that
I'd forget my head somewhere if it wasn't attached, and she's
right. James chapter 1. Now there are
some who believe that, and they believe the gospel of God's grace,
but they do not believe that the book of James belongs in
the Bible. I'm always taken back when I
hear a believer say that. To show contempt for any portion
of the scripture is a dangerous thing. But Martin Luther said that the
book of James was an epistle of straw. I recently saw where
somebody on a Facebook page said that the book of James was baloney. Like I said, it always takes,
you know, I'm taken back when I hear that. But you know, I
do not count such people to be lost or even deficient in their
understanding of the gospel. I simply figure they do not understand
the book of James. And it's easy to understand why
people wouldn't understand it. I believe that the primary reason
that people dismiss the book of James, some people do, or
that they find it really hard to reconcile with the message
of such men as Paul, is that they don't take into account
the differences in which the various writers of Scripture
express themselves. Now, everybody here speaks English. When I came here, I spoke English. Not the same English you did.
It was English. I had a sound, and maybe I still
got some of it, I don't know. I know I have less of it than
I did then, but I had an accent. And anyone that heard me talk
would be able to tell immediately, I didn't grow up around here.
And I also had some phrases, some sayings, that were probably
unknown to you. We were to go over to England
and we'd experience the same thing, same language, but they
use it a bit differently. Now we're Gentiles. Strictly
speaking, a Gentile is anyone who's not a Jew. But in the Bible,
the word that's often translated Gentile is simply the word for
nation. It's the word ethnos. We get
our word ethnic from it. And so when it speaks of the
Gentiles, if you've looked in Greece, the nations, that's what
it says. Another word that is commonly
translated Gentile or was used to describe the Gentiles was
simply the word Greek. There were Jews and Greeks. And
the reason for this is at that time in the first century, Greek
was the universal language of commerce, like English is now. And so, you know, if you were
a Jew living in Israel, you pretty much heard Hebrew or Aramaic,
you know, or you heard people speaking Greek. One or the other. Consequently, you just kind of
called everybody from out of town, they're Greeks. And what
you meant by that, they're Gentiles. It's kind of like, you know,
the Amish. They call anybody who's not Amish, they call them
English. Why? Well, because everybody who shows
up speaks English. But we're Gentiles. And the way
that that word is used, it generally, even though it would have included,
or the scriptures would have included the Far East and all
that, generally speaking, it was talking about what we would
call Western Europe. Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles. He was the apostle to us. And
when we read Paul, he speaks pretty much like we do. He speaks
in the forms that are common to the civilization that grew
up in that area, the Greek civilization, Rome, and as it spread westward
into Spain and France and all those areas on into England and
then eventually over to here. It's called Western Civilization. And that's where Paul ministered. And God gifted him to speak in
the form and fashion that we understand. Now, Peter said,
that there are many things that Paul has written which are hard
to understand, and therefore those who are uninstructed often
twist it to their own condemnation. And I remember reading that,
Peter. I thought, no, Peter, what you write is hard for me
to understand. I understand Paul. But you see, when Peter wrote
that, he was writing to Jews. And Jews would have a bit of
a hard time understanding the way Paul communicated. He communicated
in Gentile style. Now, James, so far as I know,
he never left Israel in his entire life. He was born a Jew, raised
a Jew, and lived his entire life as a Jew. And so far as I know,
he ministered to Jews almost exclusively. And even though
he wrote this book in the Greek language, he spoke in the terms
and forms that Jews would speak in. He argued the way Jews would
argue. So when we read something like
the book of James or the book of 1 and 2 Peter or Jude, we
have to read it understanding that James sometimes uses words
in a way that Paul didn't. You see, that's another problem,
and it kind of arises from this. When we look at the scriptures,
we tend to look at them like they're a technical manual of
theology. And therefore, if we find the word saved in one place,
and then we find it in another, we tend to think they mean the
same thing. And it either leads us or to
scratch in our head. For instance, Paul said to Timothy
concerning women, she shall be saved in childbearing. And I
remember when we were going through that book in my first year of
Bible school, the visiting lecturer, he got to that scripture and
I got to respect him for this. He says, I have no idea what
that verse means. And he went on to the next one.
You know why he had no idea? And it, really, it was years
before I think I got any understanding of it. It's because you see the
word save and you immediately think eternal salvation. But
the word translated save was a common word of the day. It
meant a variety of things. It involved some kind of rescue. And so, you know, somebody could
have written in here, he that grabs ahold of the life preserver
shall be saved. Well, if we read that, we say,
well, what's that got to do with eternal salvation? Nothing. He
was talking about a different kind of salvation. And so when
James talks about faith, he means something different than when
Paul talks about faith. When James talks about works,
he's talking about something different. than Paul was talking
about when he said, faith without works is vain, being dead. Now, those of us who believe,
for by grace are you saved through faith, and that's not of yourselves,
it is the gift of God, it is not of works, lest any man should
boast. We who believe, like Paul wrote, that we are justified
by faith without the works of the law, we come over to James
and he says, can faith alone save a man? No, faith and works. And we say, wait a minute, James,
you sound like you're contradicting Paul. Well, if he meant the same
thing by faith that Paul did, he'd be contradicting Paul. If
he meant the same thing by works, but he doesn't. And you can tell
that by looking at the context. And as
I say, you approach this differently than you would Paul. And then
another problem that all of us have And I'm spending a little
time on this because this will be beneficial to you whenever
you open up the scriptures and look into them for yourself.
It can spare you some head scratching or diverting into error. Another problem that can lead
to dismissing books like James is our tendency to force every
word of scripture into our system of doctrine, our theology. We read something that does not
sit well with what we already believe, our first reaction is
to reject it. You see, theology, our theology
is simply our understanding of what the scriptures are saying. And sometimes we have misunderstood. Scripture is supposed to be the
master of our theology. Our theology is not supposed
to be the master of scripture. When we open up this book, we
read it, we ask God for grace to understand it, and we come
to it ready to submit to whatever it says. We don't reject a scripture
or a whole book of scripture. Because it seems to contradict
other things that we hold to be true. We don't alter the scriptures
to fit what we believe. We alter what we believe to fit
what the scriptures say. Now the primary message of James
is this. He is distinguishing between
what is true and what is phony. And Paul did that, the writer
of Hebrews did that, and they actually all did it on the same
terms. And so when we approach the book
of James, we approach it knowing there's not gonna be anything
in this book that contradicts anything said in the rest of
the Bible. And if it seems to contradict,
One of two things is true. We're not understanding one of
the other scriptures that seem to be in conflict. Possibly we're not understanding
either one of them. So we're either not understanding
a scripture properly or we've simply got a problem in our theology
that needs corrected. Now, Having said all that, and
I did that simply to address that sometimes the book of James
can sound like it's legalistic, but it's not. He is simply distinguishing
between that which is true and that which is phony, and that's
good for us to know. Now, we read here in verse 27,
religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless
is this. to look after orphans and widows
in their distress, and to keep oneself from being polluted by
the world. I was, I believe, well, I talked
to Drew Dietz on Friday and Wayne Boyd yesterday, and I can't remember
which conversation I mentioned this, but I said, when we approach
the word of God, the first thing we have to do is be sure we understand
the words that make it up. Now he speaks here of religion.
Now we, and I'm not saying we as opposed, like in all of English
speaking world, really it's us and that circle of churches that
we closely associate with. When we say religion, normally
what we mean is natural human religion. all we mean by it. And that could be confusing to
someone if they walked in here and heard me and we say something
like, I reject religion. Well, that's because they wouldn't
understand what I mean by religion. Well, we need to understand what
James means by religion. And it can be determined here. The first thing we need to do
is distinguish between religion and worship. Now, what is worship? Well, it's what we've gathered
here to do. Religion, as James is using this word, and we'll
define it in a minute, but as James is using this word, religion
is not what we're doing here. This is worship. And what characterizes
worship? What makes worship to be worship? Well, worship is always God-ward. Worship is always some kind of
conscious communication with God. We are thinking about him. We are praying to him. We're
singing both about and to him. We're opening up his word and
we're considering what his word has to say. Now that's worship.
Where there is no communication with God, it's not worship. Whatever
else it may be, it's not worship. Now, everybody kind of has a
form of worship, a structure in which they carry out at least
a congregational worship like this. You can worship individually
or you can worship as you come together like this. And some
are very formal in the way they worship and we try to keep things
informal here. We just want enough form that
it's not chaos and that people understand what's going on. Because
worship is not made of forms. There are people who go through
the forms of worship, but they're not worshiping. They go to their
church, and even if it's a church that tells the truth, they go
there and they sing when they're told to sing. I say we don't
have a form. We pretty well follow the same
schedule every week. But we stand up. I mean, it's quite obvious. We
stand up for the first song, we sit down, usually then somebody
reads the scripture, we sit down for the second song, stand up
for the third one. And there's a reason I organize it that way.
I have a standing up at the beginning because after you've sat a little
while, and you know, sometimes you come and you sit down, well,
it just kind of calls everybody's attention, gets the blood flowing.
And then before I start preaching, it's a good idea to stand up
and get the blood flowing again, too. You know, it's not like
there's something especially righteous or holy in standing
as opposed to sitting. But people can follow forms and
never worship. And people can worship and there
be no recognizable form to what they're doing because worship
is simply the heart. And it is a spiritual thing.
They who worship God must worship Him in spirit, from the spirit
and truth. And so we worship and worship
always involves the conscious communication between us and
God. We communicate to Him from our
hearts in praying and singing his praises. And he communicates
with us through the declaration of his word. Now that's worship. What's religion then? As James
is using the word religion. Well, religion is quite simply
what we do in response to what we believe. As he's using it here, he's describing
it, religion is how we live in light of what we say we believe. Worship, I'm sure you'll understand
what I mean by this, but worship is what we do in here, religion's
what we're doing out there, as James uses the word. Religion, excuse me, worship,
is about us communing with our God. Religion, as James is using
it, is how we present ourselves to people as believers in our Lord Jesus
Christ. And so he says, if anyone considers himself religious
and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives
himself. and his religion is worthless. Now, I looked up this word, as
I normally do, because I'm not sure, there may be other places
in the scripture where the word religion is found, that is in
English translations, I can't think of any right off, but I
looked it up and sure enough, this is the only place that this
word is used in all the Bible. And sometimes that makes it hard
to understand exactly what it means. I like to look in the
original languages and I'll look where that word appears throughout
the scriptures and you look at all the different ways it gets
used and you get a sense of the word. That's how we learned our
native language. But this is the only time, right here, that
this word appears. And they define it as, and they
say probably, referring to strict ceremonial worship. And it says,
probably comes from, and they give the root word that they
believe it was derived from. Well, I went and looked that
up. And you do find that in some other places in scriptures. And
it's really interesting, at least it was to me. The word that they
believe is the root word for this one, means to be very disturbed
and noisy about it. Sometimes it's just translated
frightened. Somebody's frightened and they scream. Well, this word that James uses,
if it's drawn from that, it makes perfect sense. The words look
very similar and make sense. He's talking about He's describing
fear-based, noisy religion. And as I was thinking about that,
I thought, boy, how much of what religious people do in their
day-to-day lives is based on fear. They're afraid. And therefore, they bind themselves
with certain duties to fulfill, expectations, laws, they wear
certain kind of clothes, they talk a certain way, they don't
go to the movies, they don't ever touch alcohol. See, that's
religion. Because this is what they're
doing out in the world in response to what they believe. And what
they believe is a legalistic religion that fills them with
fear. So they go out quaking and they order their lives according
to that belief. And when you think about screaming,
of course, there's some people, you know, they're pretty, you
know, literally noisy with their religion. But I just bring that in to this
word as simply Showy. Showy. Why? Well, if you believe
that what you're doing is how you're going to put away the
things you're afraid of, the threats that have filled you
with fear, if you believe that what you're doing is the way
you're going to escape that, then you're going to do it big. It's kind of like a guy that's
in love with a woman and he wants to win her affection. He does
extravagant demonstrations of that love. And so these people
go out and they're going to do those things that they believe
are made necessary by what they believe and they do it big. The
Pharisees did this. They had special robes they wore. There was supposed to be a fringe.
They call them robes, but really it was more like what these days
we call a poncho. But they had fringes and tassels
on the four corners and fringes along the edge because that had
significance to the Old Covenant religion. Well, the Pharisees
When they got theirs made, they made sure the fringe was very
wide and the tassels were very long. And because of what they
believed, you know, the Lord, the Lord said to them, you search
the scriptures for in them you think you have life. So what
did they do? They got made these little boxes,
you know, and put a tie around them and they tie them to their
head and these little boxes, they had little pieces of scripture
written in there. Why? Going around showing. in
a very showy way, that they are devotees to the scriptures. Now that is human religion. And generally speaking, those
whose religion, well, I don't even have to say generally speaking,
fear-based religion, is based upon false doctrine, period. Showy religion, which is very
evident on the outside, which is designed specifically to demonstrate
to other people, or maybe to make God take notice of it, that kind of religion, generally
speaking, the more there is on the outside, the less there is
on the inside. You know, I was about to say
it shouldn't be, and it's true, it shouldn't be in most circumstances,
it shouldn't be that if you were standing in the crowd, anybody
would be able to pick you out as a Christian if you're just
standing there. It would probably take getting
to know you to come to the realization that there's a difference in
what you believe and in how you act. Because pure religion, undefiled,
the religion that is acceptable and pleasing to God does not
consist in what you wear. It does not consist in carrying
the biggest Bible. I remember a guy I was in college
with, and I mean, I could tell the first time I saw him at a
distance what kind of fellow this was. Because I mean, you
know, the short, neatly cropped hair, standing tall like this,
and he had this big Bible. And he walked around campus like
that. Big Bible under his arm. And if you ran into him, how
you doing so-and-so? Oh, just praising the Lord. My
history professor, who was one of the very faithful men I had
the privilege of learning from, he was, He told me that one time
he ran into this fellow, and I can't even remember the fellow's
name, but he was, he walked by him and he said, hello, so-and-so,
how you doing? And the guy goes, oh, just praising the Lord. And
he looked at him and said, for what? And the guy was caught up short.
Why? Those were just words he was
spouting out. They meant nothing. They were showy demonstrations
based upon the fear that if he didn't act like this super Christian,
He could end up lost or miss some kind of special reward.
Now such religion as that is not acceptable to God. It is
impure. It is defiled. It is nothing
but flesh. But James goes on to say, now
religion that our Father accepts as pure and faultless, undefiled,
it's this, to look after orphans and widows in their distress,
and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. Now, we are well trained, I believe,
in worship. We know how to act here. We know what to preach and to
listen to. We look at the songs You know,
for instance, this morning we sang Grace Tis a Charming Sound.
The verses were written by some faithful men. The chorus was
written by somebody who didn't understand some very important
points of the gospel. And that's why we don't sing
it. The verses are good. So we worship, we understand
the worship thing. But there's also the religion
thing. There's the way that we act out there. And it matters. Now, as Brother
Tim James says, it matters. It doesn't count, but it matters.
These things that James is talking about, this pure and undefiled
religion, it's not, strictly speaking, an act of worship.
It's certainly not things we're doing in order to gain the favor
and blessing of God. Why? Because we believe we already
have that. We don't need to go out there
and earn blessing from God. Why? Because we believe through
Christ Jesus, we already have all spiritual blessings in the
heavenly places in Christ. Nonetheless, it matters what we do. It's important. And here's an example, he says,
here's the kind of religion that God considers to be pure and
faultless, to look after orphans and widows. Now, he didn't say, this is what
God likes. Set up a big organization of
which you are the chief executive officer and founder. That's what
it says on your website. Set up this big organization
that collects donations and feeds widows and orphans. Now, I'm
not saying that that's wrong. I'm just saying that's not what
he said. There are many organizations
that consume large amounts of money, and by what they say on
front of it, You know, you would think they were doing something
good, but if you ever investigated their books, you would find out
the greater portion of their money is spent on maintaining
the organization, not getting anything done. He's talking about religion that
God our Father accepts is pure and faultless is to do something
useful, something helpful. It's not to go out and impress
people. that you read your Bible all the time. There's nothing
wrong with praying in a restaurant, but if you're praying in the
restaurant, just so it's quite obvious that you pray, that's
not pleasing to God. That's not acceptable religion. That's just showy, noisy, probably
fear-based activity. But now, Those works of faith and labors
of love, that's what Paul calls them, works of faith. That means the things you do
that flow from what you believe. And labors of love, these are
things that you do out of a motivation of love. These things are always useful
to somebody. They're always a blessing. And if we believe, if we really
put what we claim to believe into action, we are going to
have sympathy upon those who are in distress. So much so that if we don't care
about those in distress, it does put a question mark on what we
actually believe. You know, you can say you believe
something and not really believe it. When Paul went to Jerusalem,
and he'd been preaching the gospel, but he hadn't been sent out from
those who were already the apostles of Christ. He'd been sent out
of the church in Antioch. And the message he was preaching,
some believed that he was preaching an antinomian, what's called
an antinomian message. And they were also concerned
he was preaching to the Gentiles. You see, the apostles were apostles,
but it's not like when the Holy Spirit came on them, they immediately
had a full understanding of the gospel and all its implications.
They learned too. But in order to commend himself
to the apostles, he went down to Jerusalem and he spoke with
them. And after they heard him describe
what he preached, They said, yeah, that's the gospel. That's
it. And then Paul says, they only
added that we remember the poor, which I was eager to do. You see, now I realize that with
our government's social structure and all that, it's hard to be
poor in this country. You know, I mean, you may be
poor so far as the check you get from your employment and
you may be, poor compared to your standard American way of
life. But if you don't have food to
eat and clothes to wear and a place to live in America, you're not
even trying. I mean, it could happen to you
for a short period of time, but you know what I mean. We don't have that kind
of poverty. Widows, they have their grief
to deal with, but most of them, Most of them are financially
cared for. Orphans, many of them try to
get adopted out, they got foster care, they got, you know, they're
being taken care of. And so we might set ourselves, you know, where
are the orphans and widows in distress that I'm gonna go take
care of? Well, let's just use this as an example. from which
we can draw the basic principle that pure, unadulterated, undefiled
religion consists in this, helping others. That's pretty easy, isn't it?
I don't mean it's easy to do. It's easy to understand. Help
other people. Paul says we're not supposed to live for ourselves. We've been set free, but not
so that we can use our freedom to serve our flesh, ourselves,
but rather so that we can give ourselves in service to others
as a demonstration of what the gospel is. When COVID hit over there in
India, the government required that Brother Parshu close his
orphanage. I don't understand the sense
in that. Why they thought that those boys
were gonna be any less exposed to COVID being in an orphanage,
such as he ran, as opposed to being sent back to those poverty
stricken villages he'd gotten them from. But they all had to
go back home. They say orphans aren't supposed
to have a home. Over there, an orphan doesn't mean you don't
have parents. It means you don't have parents that can take care
of you. And so he had to send them back where he got them from.
And so, what's he gonna do? And I appreciated this about
Brother Parshoot immediately. He started going out in the villages.
And he went out there with the goal of preaching the gospel,
but you know what he took with him? Food. Because you see, over there in
India, and this is what he was telling me, he said, the government
keeps saying that they're going to bring food. They're going
to help." He said, but the help never gets out to the lowest
caste. Nobody's paying attention to
them. They are truly impoverished. They were truly in distress. And he took what money he might
have otherwise used to run the orphanage, since he doesn't have
the boys there, he took that and donations that were given
to him, and he went out and he bought food. And he went into
those villages and he took that food and he did for those people
but nobody else was willing to do. And when he was done, they
were ready to listen to him preach the gospel. And the gospel that
he preached to them was perfectly consistent with the works that
he'd done for them. And we can use this in our lives
just when we go out of here. We are kind to people. We care
about them. Brother Scott Richardson once
said, people don't care what you know until they know that
you care. We don't go out and quote, win
the world for Jesus by putting on big religious displays. We demonstrate the grace of our
God by being gracious, by being merciful, by being good in the
sense that the scriptures use it. Remember, it says, all give
thanks unto the Lord for he is good and his mercy endures forever. And then it involves keeping,
it said, not being polluted by the world. You say, well, we're
already polluted, aren't we? Yes. In our flesh, we are polluted
by the world. But when we're out there, we
try not to operate on the same principles that the world does,
which as someone said, the world pretty much operates on get all
you can and can all you get. It's a life of self-service.
And self-service, selfish living, is polluted living. And it's
easy for us to get caught up in it, isn't it? Because I mean,
you know, you see what others around you have and you want
that too. And so you go after it and you
spend yourselves trying to get what you want, and you're real
careful with it, and you don't dole out much of it in help,
or don't dole out much of your energy helping anybody, why?
Because we have allowed the world to pollute us with its way of
doing things. I realize, yeah, we were once
part of the world. But we've been purified. Let
us not go back to that way. But it also means don't be polluted
by the world in the way that they worship and the way they
practice their religion. You see, all of this is based
upon self-righteousness, showy religion, you know, worship that's
full of what can be seen. You know, Paul said, even with
regard to singing, he says, sing and make melody in your hearts
to the Lord. Wait a minute, don't you have
to use your mouth to sing? The way we normally think of
it. Now, we get together and I don't, you know, there's some
of us that sing better than others, but none of us are going to be
asked to join an opera, you know. We're not polished singers. And
I enjoy listening to a good choir. I mean, a well-trained, I like
that. But you know something, when God sees people gathering
for worship, He's not counting whether or not they got this
great big choir up there that knows how to sing very well.
He's not looking whether they got a pipe organ or a guitar
or nothing at all. He's not listening to whether
the people are singing in tune. He's not listening to whether
they have a pleasant voice to listen to or sound barely different
than a croaking frog. You know what he's listening
to? He's listening to the heart. And let us not be polluted by
the world into thinking that we somehow or another improve
our worship by being able to do things better on the outside. God's not looking at the outside,
brethren. He's looking on the inside. What's going on in there?
Now, I don't know what's going on on the inside with you. And
you don't know what's going on on the inside with me. God does. And you do. That's all James
is saying. This is true religion. Be nice,
be helpful, watch out for one another, love people. That's
the religion God likes. Worship, don't use worldly frames. Now, very quickly, why is this
the kind of religion? The out there expression of our
faith, why is that the kind of religion? that pleases God, that
is acceptable to Him, is pure and faultless. Oh, it's so very
simple. It's us doing our best to act
like Him. Oh, give thanks unto the Lord
for He is good and His mercy. Did God show you mercy? When God saw you, did he pity
you and do for you what you couldn't do for yourself? Did he forgive you for your offenses
against him? Then here is the kind of religion
he likes. You go out and you have mercy
upon the people in this world. Brethren, they need it. They
need it mostly from God, But they need it from us that they
might learn about the mercy of God. Do people offend you? No question about that one, is
there? People do things to you they shouldn't do? Yep. Here's
the religion that's acceptable to God. You forgive them. Paul
said, forgive one another. God for Christ's sake has forgiven
you." Now, brethren, that's pure religion. Now, some of us might
think, boy, it'd be a whole lot easier to give some money to
the Salvation Army. You know, I'll do my religion that way. No.
Your money in that red pail at Christmas time is going to mean
nothing in the sight of God. It will not be pleasing to Him.
If it does not flow from a heart of concern for those in need,
and if it's not joined with other merciful and kind actions, why? Because that wouldn't reflect
Him. So what's pure religion? And
oh, God give us grace to do this. You know, as I was looking at
this, it was a little convicting. as the scripture should be, but
also I thought to myself, oh, that I would be like that even
more. I know that all of us do it some,
oh, let us do it more. We say we long to be like Christ.
Well, let's do our best at doing what he did for us. We can't
die for other people, but we can spend our lives for their
sake. See what I mean? See what James
means? Or we can do religion like this.
We can run around in fear of what'll happen if we don't do
it right, and we can make big showy displays. What does God want? He wants
us to act according, or he calls on us. I hate to use the word
want when it comes to God. He calls on us. to act according
to what we believe. And that means that we live as
those whose anchor is not set in this world, whose life is
not wrapped up in this world, whose joy is not found in this
world. It means we act as those who
love and who care about other people. You know, such worship
is blessed by God. Not worship, I mean such religion
is blessed by God. You know why? It will open doors
for you to tell them about the God whom you worship. If you just go out there with
a big Bible and start, you know, pounding on people verbally,
they aren't going to listen to you. But if they find you, to be gracious,
merciful, kind, generous. You know, they can't find fault
with that. And the time may come when they'll
want you to tell them about the God you worship, the God who
is kind and gracious and generous. He has been that way to us, hasn't
he? Well, let's do our best to be to others as he was to us. Well, Eric.