 Amen. So this sermon is not about video games, so if you thought this was about video games you're going to be sorely disappointed. So I almost preached this sermon on Wednesday night when we were talking about Judges 14, but I never really want to take a chapter in the Bible and just kind of rabbit trail into something and not actually get through what the chapter is telling us. So I preached through Judges 14 and we're going to talk about this story a little bit separately and separately this morning. So the title of the sermon as you saw in the bulletin is Game Stop. So something very interesting happened this week in the last couple of weeks and I want to discuss it in the light of the Bible. Now remember, what we do here is especially on Wednesday nights we study through a chapter in the Bible. We look at a story in the Bible and then we apply doctrine to that story in the Bible. So it's not like we're just reading a story and just listening to whatever happens in that story in the Bible. We're actually applying Bible doctrine to things that actually happen and some things happen are good, some things happen are bad. We have to like shine the light of the Bible on even the history that the Bible puts forth to understand what that means for us. So with that in mind, you know, we need to do the same things with the things that we're seeing in the world around us. Okay, so you can have a lot of biblical knowledge in your life. You can know the Bible in your life very well, but if you have no idea what's going on around you, you know, you could fall into some snares and some traps in your life if you don't understand what's happening around you. That's why, you know, it's good to read other books other than just the Bible, because look, the Bible shows you the worldview that you should have, but if you don't know what's happening in the world, well, you're missing a piece. Okay, so you need to know history and things that have happened and things that are happening in the present day, which look, there is so much information out there. We are flooded with information, true information, false information, all kinds of information. But this story is such an interesting story that I felt that it was good to shine the light of the Bible on this story so we can, no matter what comes out of it, no matter what happens, because I think that this story is going to be very relevant, it seems like this year is going to kind of be sort of like this story. So this will be the theme of this year. Now, let me give you an introduction before I get into what actually happened, but let me say this. So you don't, you know, take what I'm going to say the wrong way, because I preach certain sermons where I'm like, I know people are going to take this the wrong way and run too far in the wrong direction with it, and I always try to stop that, but let me just give this caveat before I get into the sermon is this, I'm not against being rich. The Bible is not against being rich. Many men in the Bible, you know, David, Abraham, Joseph, you know, Daniel, many, many great men of the Bible were very wealthy people. Okay, so that's just a caveat before I get into the story. So let's look at the GameStop saga in light of the Bible this morning. So a fascinating event took place, you know, this week, and we're going to look at the story, we're going to shine the Bible on it. Okay, so the story is this. Okay, what happened is this. What is GameStop, first of all? GameStop is a retail store that sells video game equipment. They sell video games, they sell used video game consoles. I've never been in the store one time ever. Truth, I mean, honestly, right? I mean, they're usually in shopping malls, by the way. It's described from an article this way. GameStop Corporation operates as a multi-channel video game, consumer electronics, and collectibles retail in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe. The company sells new and pre-owned video game platforms, accessories, including controllers, gaming headsets, virtual reality products, memory cards, and games. They were founded in 1996, and they're basically based, the only place I've ever seen one is in a mall. They're based largely out of malls. Okay, now, how's retail been going in the last few years? You know, because of online, everything, Amazon, eBay, whatever, all these different things. Retail in general was dying, and then, with the coronavirus thing starting last year, basically, corona killed it dead. I mean, you could largely say. So, especially a store like GameStop, where what they sell can easily be sold online, can easily be shipped by companies like Amazon at small things, and then a lot of these video games, apparently, they're not selling the DVDs anymore. They're just files. You can just download everything online. So look, the point is, is that with this company, things were not looking good. Things were not looking good for the future because of the way things were going. So, for the last six months, their stock price was trading around $12 a share. Okay, and what happened, because of the items I just listed, retail, coronavirus, all these different things, beginning in 2021, at the beginning of this year, GameStop found itself as one of the most shorted stocks on the New York Stock Exchange. Meaning, you say, what is the shorted stock? A shorted stock is where people, they don't buy the stock to hope that it gains in price and hope that the company does better. They actually, it's a position companies take on a company hoping that it will fail or that the price will go down. Now, this is a very common thing that big hedge funds and big companies and big investors do. It's the opposite of basically betting or taking a stock out on something hoping it will appreciate in value. Basically, they borrow shares, they immediately sell those shares and then with the agreement that they will buy them back at a later date. The idea is that at that later date, it will be a much lower price and they will make tons of money. And they always do this, okay? This stock shorting is highly leveraged, meaning they can take out a lot of money for not putting a lot of money in. And the game stock shorted to a tune of 130% of the actually publicly traded shares on the market, okay? Now, if you want to know how that works, I can explain that later when we're sitting around in the circle of shares tonight. But basically, big players, hedge funds, big investors, they do this all the time. They short these stocks. And then what they do, here's the game. What they do is they short a stock or they short a company. Then they go on the news. They go on the Fox business. They go on, you know, Jim Kramer, whatever his crazy show is called. I can't even remember. They go on all these shows where they have their friends and the people that they know that have influence in the media and websites and, you know, articles in financial magazines, the Wall Street Journal. And they talk bad about the company and they say the company is going to fail and all this. Look, it's a beautiful little game that they play here. They even get the CEOs of certain big, you know, financial institutions to say that, you know, whatever talking head they can find, they get and they cause a panic sell of the company, of the stock. So it's basically a self-fulfilling prophecy. The stock price drops and they make tons of money on their short. That's the game. Okay? It's a way that they manipulate the opinions of the public, which is you and me. Okay? So what happened here and the reason that this is such a funny story in many ways is intersocial media. Intersocial media. Basically, a bunch of punks on social media found out that this was going on with GameStop and they just started spreading this all over, you know, Twitter and Reddit and all these different social media sites and they're like, hey, let's go and buy, you know, GameStop and we'll drive up the price. So you have all these hedge funds with billions of dollars on the line shorting the stock. All these, you know, basically millennials go out and buy $100 worth of GameStop and they drive the price up and what happens is it crosses what's called a short squeeze because now these hedge funds have to buy the stock back at a much higher price. Now, billions of dollars have been lost in the last two weeks, three weeks and because they caused a spike in price and what happens is as these hedge funds go out and they rebuy this stock, it just rockets the price even more because there's no, you know, there's high demand, you know, supply and demand, there's high demand, there's no supply, there's no supply of the stock so the price just rises, okay? So that's what happened. Basically what you had happen here and then what happened is that, you know, the powers that be basically saw that this was happening and they shut down trading on all these different trading platforms. Like a ton of them. You couldn't even trade the stock. You couldn't buy the stock anymore because the powers that be shut them down, okay? So basically they were trying to limit the damage to, you know, these platforms, you know, these brokers were trying to limit the damage to these big hedge funds and these big investors, okay? So they basically stopped the little guys from being able to keep doing what they were doing. Now, I mean, these platforms and these brokerage firms are going to be sued. Some of them probably out of existence, you know, rightly so, okay? But what you basically had happen here not to confuse the issue was a bunch of little people jumping into a game with the big fish and they took down the big fish. I mean, it's a true David versus Goliath of the financial world and it was actually, it was kind of neat to see. But there's a lot of things that we need to kind of look at and say, okay, what does this really mean for us as Christians, okay? It's a neat story for many reasons, but what can we learn from it? What can we take from it? And the first thing is this, turn to Ephesians chapter six. This is the reason I like it so much. This is the main reason that I like the story so much is because, number one, it exposes the major corruption in the financial system. I mean, every now and then, every now and then in the financial system, in the political system, because by the way, it's all the same. It's all the same methodology, okay? Every now and then there's a moment where the veil comes down and you can see Ephesians chapter six. And that's what's beautiful about this situation. Look at Ephesians chapter six and verse number 12. It's basically the same problem as modern politics. Only certain people are allowed to game the system. There's an established order and when you step outside that order, you will be crushed. I mean, that's the bird of the Democrats and the Republicans. There's an establishment within those two parties that has both parties on board. That's the bird. And if you step outside that establishment, they will destroy you. Totally. Look at Ephesians chapter six and verse number 12. The financial world's no different because look, these powers, this spiritual darkness is the same. No matter what the mechanics or what the system is. Ephesians 6-12, where we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in where? In high places. Okay? So look, every now and then, this gets exposed. You see, there are certain people that are allowed to step outside the rules and it's not you. Which is another main point of this sermon. It's not you that's allowed to step outside those rules. And look, I don't want it to be me. I don't want it to be me. So keep in mind that, keep in mind, with this social media exercise that happened, nothing illegal was done. Okay? Nothing illegal was done there. And look, I'm not talking about when I'm bringing up Ephesians 6-12 here and I'm talking about this spiritual wickedness that we're going to talk about in a minute. I'm not talking about the Rothschilds. I'm not talking about the Bilderberger group. I'm not talking about the Council on Foreign Relations. I'm talking about what we actually saw here. Okay? So look, I'm just simply talking about wickedness that exists in high places. That's what I'm talking about. And every now and then that beast rears its head and we can see it. And it's the coolest thing when it happens, I think, because it proves the Bible right. So look, some sort of influence was used to get major trading platforms. Think about this. Major trading platforms, like, I'm not even going to list the names, but major trading platforms, they make money by people buying stocks. They make money by multiple transactions. They were making good money on this situation. I mean, but something happened where they were influenced to stop themselves from even making money. Now, do you think that they really lost money over that? No. There was big things behind the scenes that caused that to stop because they were limiting losses. What they were doing is they were limiting losses to the established order. They were limiting losses to the Ephesians 6-12 is what they were doing. And you know, there's the wickedness. There's the wickedness. How can you say that it's wicked? Turn to Leviticus 19. Because they will crush anything and anyone that gets in their way. And now, let me ask you this. Is that how you can operate? Is that how you can operate as a Christian? Leviticus 19, look at verse number 11. The Bible says, you shall not steal. Whoa, that's pretty extreme. How about this one? Neither deal falsely. Neither lie one to another. Look, when you play these games, short-selling and then manipulating the media to manipulate unknowing people to just follow your lead, look, you're dealing falsely. You're dealing falsely. And here's the thing, just because it's not illegal doesn't mean it's moral. So, legality, I mean, look, it would be beautiful. Here's what would happen. If legality and morality were the same thing, we would have a biblical society. But legality and morality are not the same today. So we need to recognize when they're different. And this is something that's different. Manipulating people is not different. Samson's wife, she manipulated him. She manipulated him to tell him the answer to the riddle. Why did she manipulate him? Because people were concerned about money. Because people were concerned about, you know, having to pay large sums of money. It's very similar. That's why manipulation happens. And one of the reasons, so look, but here's the big wicked one. So manipulation is dealing falsely. Here's the big wicked one right here. When it doesn't go their way, when small people outside the establishment start succeeding at their own game, by the way, of manipulation, they stop the game. That is dealing falsely. That is dealing falsely. It's a game that these punks on Reddit were not allowed to win. That's what they don't understand. And the beauty of this situation is it exposed the whole thing. It exposed the whole thing. So what can we take away? What can we take away? While interesting and fascinating, what does this mean for us? The first lesson I want to give you this morning, it goes back to Judges chapter 14. And we talked about this a little bit on Wednesday night, but it deserves more time. The first part I want you to understand this, because I know we're going to talk about this. I know that there's smart people in this church that like to talk about different interesting things. We love talking about different things in this world and all these different things that are happening. But here's the thing. The first lesson that we need to learn here in Proverbs chapter 13, is that we should take no part in it. You say why? I'm going to explain to you why. We should take, while it's interesting to watch what's happening, it's interesting to see what it means for the future, for maybe even your own financial future, the first thing I want to point out to you and please listen to me, take no part in this. You say why? Look at Proverbs chapter 13. A lot of people are jumping into this, are jumping on this bandwagon. Look, I've seen this a million times. They're jumping on this bandwagon. They're going to try to make a quick buck out of this deal. They're like, oh, we've got, if I would have invested, if I would have invested, you know, $100 or $1,000, it'd be $50,000 now. That, look, get rid of that thinking. Take no part in this. Why? Because the Bible says in Proverbs 13, 11, it says this, Raise your hand if you want your wealth diminished. But he that gathereth by labor shall increase. This is a major theme in the Bible right here. Circle this, highlight it, whatever you have to do, this is why you'll hear this from people like if I would have, oh, the stock has gone up 1,000%, 1,500%, and if I just would have done this, this, and this, so then they'll make decisions going forward on that. Here's the thing, this is gambling, plain and simple. This is gambling, plain and simple. You just aren't in a casino in this case. But it's gambling. And look, there's no specific Bible verse calling out gambling. That says gambling's wrong. But guess what? There's plenty of Bible verses showing you the dangers of gambling. And not only the dangers, but what will actually happen to you if you gamble. Okay, so look, judge is 14. I mean, don't we see some dangers there? I mean, we see relationship troubles. Samson ruined his marriage. We see murder. We see anger leading to murder out of all this. I mean, look, if somebody wanted to throw money into this cause as just a, you know, just to lose it, just to see this happen, hey, I really, you know, that's not really that big of a deal to meet. Even though you are still, you know, participating in that manipulation just on the other side of things. You know, I mean, manipulating people's not good, no matter who's doing it, folks. So look, but look, here's the thing. The Bible says that you must get your money from labor. The Bible says that's where we need, so here's a rule of thumb. If you're not getting your money from producing a product or a service that somebody wants or needs that's pretty much the rule of thumb right there. That you have to produce you yourself have to produce a product or a service or both that is that somebody needs and would like to pay money for. That's biblical. That's labor. Otherwise, it's a big no-no in the Bible. It's pretty simple when you look at it that way. And look, here's another thing. Here's another thing. I'm not against investing in the stock market. I'm not against choosing a company that you think will do well you know, a mutual fund with a lot of companies that's much better and parking some savings there. I'm not against that. Because here's the thing. If you work hard, here's what's going to happen to you if you listen to what this church preaches if you work hard and you're consistent over time what's that word? Dilligent over time. Sooner or later you're going to have a couple of nickels to rub together. You're like, I don't have two nickels to rub together. Well, I mean but here's the thing. Sooner or later and you're responsible you're a good steward of what the Lord has blessed you with. Sooner or later you're going to have some savings. I mean, you got to put it somewhere. You got to put it somewhere. And you do this for years you're going to have something. But here's the thing. I like to put it somewhere like I kind of base it on biblical view. I like to put it somewhere I believe in. Where am I going to put my savings? Somewhere I believe in. Somewhere I trust. That's where you should put you know what? Because here's the thing if I put it somewhere I trust here's my methodology and here's why it works out with the Bible. If I put my savings somewhere I trust, I don't have to worry about it. I don't even think about it. I don't even, you know, I'm not obsessing over it. We'll get to that in a minute. But the thing is you don't just spread it around to places you believe. You know, I don't believe in banks so I don't really put it there. But look, this trading and things that people are doing and playing games like this it leads us to the it leads us to the first biblical lesson that I want to mention here on gambling and that's this wealth gotten by vanity should be wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished. You know what that means? It means you're going to lose all your money. That's the first thing. The Bible is just warning you here. It's saying hey if you're wealth gotten by vanity that you didn't labor for it's saying if you're just getting wealth that way it's like you're going to lose all your money. It's like don't do it. I mean don't say the Bible didn't tell you. I mean my dad used to say it this way, easy come easy go. You know, easy come easy go. You know, but if you work for something then you're going to you're going to appreciate it. You're going to protect it. You're going to be a good steward of it. Turn to Proverbs 21 Labor for your money the Bible says Labor for your money be a good steward save it. Proverbs 21-20 there's a treasure to be desired and oil in the dwelling of the wise. But a foolish man spendeth it up. You say I labor for all my money but you're a fool. You spend it all. If you spend it all if you can't budget and not spend everything the Bible calls you a fool. So save it. Put it somewhere safe. You know, investing it somewhere that you trust is okay. And what you trust may not be the same thing as what I trust. It's just it's an individual belief thing. Do not gamble it away. So the conclusion of the first point on gambling is this well this is a neat story. This is a neat story. It's kind of cool, you know, that people have been manipulating things for years got manipulated. I mean, I mean there's some poetic justice there. But manipulating markets is not biblical. It's a casino on both sides. It doesn't matter who's doing it. Look, folks I don't know how all this is going to play out but I know this. A lot of people are going to lose a lot of money over this. A lot of people on both sides are going to lose a lot of money like this. Turn to Matthew chapter 6. This is the second lesson we can learn from this. The second lesson. There's no Bible verses saying don't do not gamble. But here's the second lesson on gambling right here. Look at Matthew chapter 6. And this is the worst one. You say what could be worse than losing all my money? What could be worse than saving up hundreds of thousands of dollars over a 40 year career and losing it all? What could be worse than that? The Bible says this. No man can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon. The worst thing is this. It will steal your heart from the Lord. Gambling and getting involved in these types of trading situations it will kill your spiritual life. It will kill it dead. And notice the language in Matthew 6.24. It doesn't say you're going to be diminished. Your spiritual life will be diminished. It's like you're going to take the Lord and you're just going to care less about him. It says no. It's going to kill it. All you're going to care about is that. I mean this is the most serious consequences. Save money. Save money. Don't spend it all. Invest in something you trust and then forget about it. Don't give it a thought. Move on. The thing about this stuff a stock that increases 1500% in a few days is it can rocket itself into the ground just as fast. And then tell me how spiritual you're going to feel. Then tell me how much you're going to just want to come to church and want to love the Lord and all this. Look you're going to have your heart will be in that stuff. I know people I know people personally who have lost millions in hours. Not in a casino. Stuff like this. So look at it. Interesting. Neat. Go nowhere near it. I mean these people you can leverage incredible amounts of money what does that mean? That means you could have $10,000 and you could get into things like this where you could leverage $100,000 $200,000 and you could lose it all just like that. And then you go home and you tell your wife how was work. Well I got on this website well is it work and yeah we have two mortgages now. I mean this is like suicide stuff. You hear about stock brokers jumping out windows this is how it happens because they lose everything they lose lifetimes in hours in seconds. I mean I can't even imagine but here's a thing what's more important what's more important I mean money or somebody's life I guarantee you people will commit suicide over this whole thing people will end up committing suicide over this whole thing because when you have people losing billions of dollars people might even get murdered over this who knows I mean we're talking billions with a B billions of dollars what's more important money or somebody's life their soul the first point the first overall point of what I'm trying to get to you get through to you today with this gamestop situation and look the gamestop thing I can prophesy the future of the 2021 the gamestop is going to just be one thing it's going to be another one and another one and another one because now you know social media is on to this and everybody knows they can game everything and look but this is not something that we should be involved in because why? because you'll lose everything and you'll lose your heart to the Lord so look I mean look and let's remember that too let's remember that too and we're talking about different things in the church whether it be businesses or business ideas like these are all great things and I love discussing all these things but let's always keep our mind focused on the ball and the ball is Jesus Christ and let's we can never let these things you know become an obsession to us so it's cool to watch this stuff and know what's going on I get it but stay watching from a distance is what I'm telling you the second point is this the social media crowd first of all I had a revelation on social media this week and I'm not going to tell you what it is because it's the sermon maybe series in itself but the gamestop thing and we'll focus more on this maybe in a sermon later but look this is we need to be careful turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 6 here's one thing I will say on the social media aspect of what has happened here we need to be careful look at 2 Corinthians chapter 6 in verse number 14 and here's what's happening with the media by the way you know I worked in the power generation industry for many many years and what's happening in the power generation industry is used to have these big centralized power plants the power plant I worked at in North Dakota it powered almost the entire state of Minnesota all by itself big centralized power plants big machines big generators what's happening in the power generation industry is it's becoming a network of distributed power it's not centralized it's distributed meaning you're starting to see everyone have solar panels on their house you're starting to see small wind farms you're starting to see small gas turbines you're starting to see all these centralized small generators you're not seeing that they're shutting down the big generators now that's another issue but what you're seeing here is the same model happening with media we're used to these these big media sites the big three Fox news CNN MSNBC or whatever what's happening is the news media and like for good reason because the news media has gotten so biased and so fake and so just untrue I mean when you actually know about a situation and then you actually read about it in the media it's completely false it's completely false so what's happening is you're starting to see the information flow the media break out into all these different areas from social media to just blogs people's blogs that are you find somebody maybe that blogs on issues that you're like yeah this guy's right most of the time so people get a lot of their information there from all these social media sites like reddit and twitter and all these different things I'm not recommending any of these social media sites but what you're seeing is a distributed network a centralized network going to a distributed network of individuals but I want to warn you on something because look at 2nd Corinthians chapter 6 in verse number 14 I want to warn you about just information that you're getting from really anywhere ok and that's this 2nd Corinthians 614 the bible says be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness and what communion hath light with darkness look you have to be careful on all these even these distributed networks of social media especially in situations like this you say why especially with situations that maybe you don't fully understand you say why because here's why because you'll be led down dark roads and I'm going to explain to you what this is talking about here but an example with this situation and this is another super interesting thing about it an example with this game stop situation and probably many situations going forward this year is you're seeing this yoking up of socialists and libertarians it's weird I mean you have people like Ted Cruz agreeing with like Alexandria you know whatever Cortez I mean just a communist and a conservative libertarian and they agree and you're like whoa what's going on here it's a strange situation but the point is you got to be careful who you yoke up with because look the libertarian agrees because they think that all individuals should have the same rights and opportunities as anybody else they're libertarians okay and the socialists they agree because they just hate anybody that's rich they just hate anybody that is successful they hate anybody that has more than somebody else so look you know getting into some of these blogs and these things that are following all this you're going to be yoked up with unbelievers you got to be careful that you don't get you know drag down some dark paths because socialism communism these types of things there's lots of other organizations that will draw you down that same path those are dark paths those are wicked roads turn to daniel chapter 2 turn to daniel chapter 2 so I mean the christian could be watching this and being like how are these head fund managers and all this and they've been manipulating everything and yeah all rich people are bad whoa see how easy that was anybody that you know has made any kind of money in the stock market is bad see how easy that was to just peg that needle too far and end up down a dark road look you know daniel was rich look at daniel chapter 2 and verse number 48 after he after god gives him the interpretation of nebuchadnezzar's dream this is what the bible says in verse 48 of course before this daniel just goes nothing but credit to god just god did it all it wasn't me nothing to do with me it was glory to god verse 48 then the king made daniel a great man and gave him many great gifts and made him ruler over the whole province of babelon and the chief of the governors over the wise men of babelon daniel was number 2 man in the entire empire the persian empire came in he became the same way with them I mean the guy had whatever wealth he wanted but you know what here's the thing the dangers look the dangers of being rich is the same as the matthew chapter 6 of gambling look first of all there's two ways of being rich being dangerous for you and that's in a positive way by gambling and always wanting more and being obsessed with it that's the first way is in that positive way or in a negative way by being envious of those that do have more than you so there's two ways there's two ways that being rich or the idea of riches can hurt you and look you can end up going either way here you have to be careful because just because somebody is rich daniel was rich the great men look the great men of the bible but here's the thing the great men of the bible while they may have been rich it was like a secondary thing it was like an afterthought I mean the point of this story in daniel chapter 2 or in daniel itself is not that daniel had money or not that daniel had power it was who daniel was it was what daniel did for the lord the fact that abraham had all kinds of cattle I mean that was just a fact it was just something but it's what they did for the lord that was the story in the bible so look turn to first Timothy chapter 6 I hope you're all successful I hope your businesses thrive but you know what if you're not mature enough to understand what I'm telling you I hope that it doesn't if you're not mature enough to be someone that can prosper and not give your heart over the money and not stop serving the lord because you end up you know with riches then I hope you don't get those riches but look in the right way what you have or what you have saved or what you have in the whatever investments that you have should be an afterthought to your life what you do for the lord should be the story but the bible is warning us that it will steal that from you that there's very much danger there look at first Timothy chapter 6 and look at verse number 9 the bible says and a lot of people read this wrong a lot of people read this verse wrong but they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and hurtful us which drown men in destruction and perdition so that I mean a lot of people will read that and be like yeah you know rich people you know they're just gonna fall into a snare that's not what it says it says those that it doesn't mean will be like they're gonna be rich it means they want to be rich it means they're willing they're will they're will you gotta think king James you know language here folks it says but they that will be rich it's saying they that have the desire to be rich are gonna fall into a temptation and a snare it doesn't say anybody who ever has any money is gonna fall into this I mean I hope you all are the type of people that you know what you could just end up being very successful because you know you work hard and you're doing what the Bible says and all this and God blesses your life greatly and you take those things and you put them aside and you use them for the Lord and you use them for your family and you use them to get your family serving the Lord whatever you use all these blessings but look it says if your desire in your life is to be rich you're done so look I mean it's possible the danger the danger of this distributed media network is that you're gonna that you could yoke up with people that have both of these bad sides of riches you could yoke up with people that are on these websites you gotta try it here the next one's gonna be this one and this one and this one and you know look you could just just give your heart away to the Lord just give your heart away to the Lord if you yoke up with those people and then and then you know you're just gonna lose all your money so you're gonna yoke up with those people you're gonna give away your heart to the Lord and you're gonna lose everything you have have a nice family life after that after you just lose everything for you know going to a casino on the computer at your house or or you could yoke up with a bunch of people on these websites and you could just be like yeah you know anybody with money we need to just make them all die or whatever because look those are the two sides of this coin so be careful be careful on this social media stuff that you're not look you know who you should be yoked up with you know who you should be yoked up with your church you know who you should be yoked up with your church I mean these are the people right here that you should be yoked up with and then look and then you're gonna be yoked correctly and you're not gonna fall into these types of things so you know I mean it's my job to I love conversations like we always have you gotta come early and especially stay late if you want the good stuff around here but I love that stuff but we just gotta make careful sure that we're looking at these things through the right light so number one what did we learn don't get involved don't get involved your wealth will be gone your heart will leave the Lord I mean look that I mean can you imagine but don't think don't think that if if you get involved in something like that and your wealth is gone and your heart leaves the Lord don't think that that won't be seriously obvious to everybody because I mean you know you can see people's heart and the second thing is just be careful to not yoke up with unbelievers it's okay to see what's going on it's okay to watch what's happening and bounce around because we're all yoked up together that's what's awesome as we can see all this crazy stuff going on and we come to the people we're yoked with we're like how should we be viewing this and this and this and this and this and we have a proper Biblical perspective of what's happening isn't that great isn't that great that you have a place to come where you can come and you can have a Biblical world view of what's happening where in the world so we want to know what's happening we want to know what's going on but you know what especially in this case it reminds me of Mark 13 where the last verse in Mark 13 is what watch watch let's just watch we're yoked up together and we're learning from this and we take the headlight of the Bible when we shine it across and we know what's good and we know what's bad and we know what we should be doing and what we shouldn't be doing and we know why people are doing what they're doing that's another thing nobody understands why people do what they do but we do but we understand it's such a great story for so many different reasons but the greatest part of the story is that we have the Bible we have brothers and sisters that we're in fellowship with and we can see the truth of it all that's what's great about it okay let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer