If you would, open your bibles to 1st Corinthians chapter 2. Tonight, we're gonna look on It's something that every person who comes and sits in a pew or a chair at a church should understand what is what is it that they should be coming prepared to hear? What is it that a preacher should be giving? And if we have time, I realize that I'm gonna go through a lot of stuff. I've heard the cardinal sin of any creature is to stir up more snakes than you can shoot, and so I possibly might do that tonight.
Joel Brooks:And if we have enough time, I'm gonna do a little q and a after the message. So if you have a question you can write that down on the side and, if we have time we're gonna get to that. It's the first Corinthians chapter 2. And when I came to you brothers, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
Joel Brooks:And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling. And my speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom but in demonstration of the spirit and of power That your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Pray with me. God, we pray that tonight we would rest on the solid rock of Jesus. That you would show us what is sinking sand.
Joel Brooks:That we cling to you. God, I pray in this moment that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord may your words remain and may it change us. I pray this in the strong name of Jesus. A number of years ago I was speaking at, some youth conference which speaking to youth is not my gifting, but for some reason I get asked from time to time to do that and so I would go.
Joel Brooks:And this conference was very similar to all the other conferences that I had spoken at, in which it was really loud, really energetic. There's a lot of a lot of lights. The stage for the band of course had you know all the multicolored lights and all the gel lights and the smoke. You know as you can see the beams coming through it and, the words on the screen of course had the video images going on all behind it. Kind just for a moment, I want you to try to remove every distraction from your mind and concentrate on Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Just for a moment, just just I want you to and he pointed out. I said, I want you to forget about the lights. I want you to forget about the the the smoke. I want you to forget about all the people around you, and I want you to just concentrate on the Lord. I'm sitting there thinking, well it's not just me and the lord.
Joel Brooks:It's me and the lord and a thousand people. And if if you didn't want me to be distracted by all the lights, why did you bring them? If you didn't want me to be distracted by the smoke, why did you bring it? Is this like a test? You know, to see how well I can concentrate in the midst of all this distraction?
Joel Brooks:You're gonna you're gonna bring these things here and then tell me not to pay attention to them? And so it just got me thinking, why are these things necessary? Are they necessary for what we would call worship? Is that what worship is supposed to look like? Where do we get those ideas that worship needed to be that?
Joel Brooks:Now if you were to go to, you know, some club on a Friday night, you're likely going to see the same thing that you see in many contemporary churches, in many contemporary worship services. You're gonna have, the the same type of performance. You're going to have people pressing up against the stage singing songs with hands raised high. And and hopefully the difference though is that in a contemporary worship service, people's thoughts and their minds are about Jesus. Hopefully, that that is the difference.
Joel Brooks:But the question is, is it okay? Is it okay that we do that? Is this how church should operate? Is it okay for the church to take what is a very effective worldly strategy and just incorporate it and then kind of throw it in Christ. Is it okay for the church simply to look how the world looks and do maybe the marketing strategies that the world does, but somehow Christianize them?
Joel Brooks:Put God as the focus. Is that alright? We're just supposed to maybe do them better than the world does them all for the glory of Jesus. And what about preaching? What is preaching supposed to look like?
Joel Brooks:You know you can turn on the TV and you can get great advice from Doctor. Phil. You can, you can go to a news station, and you can get your news from a really good anchorman. Is preaching supposed to be like that just with a Christian spin, but it's it's really just kinda help and information that I'm supposed to give to you and then tag Jesus onto it. Is is that what preaching is supposed to be?
Joel Brooks:What should it look like? What what is preaching? What is it that hopefully you prepare yourself for when you come here on a Sunday night? Now there are a lot of places that you can go to in scripture for an answer for this. I think the best place is the first four chapters of 1st Corinthians.
Joel Brooks:It's not the only place, but I think it's it's the best. It's here that the Apostle Paul clearly lays out what he has in mind when he talks about preaching. What he so clearly sees as the inherent dangers of preaching within the church. It's also here in chapter 4 verse 16 that Paul says that he urges us to be imitators of him. And he's talking to the preachers and he's talking to those who are listening to the preachers and he says, I want you to imitate me in how I do this.
Joel Brooks:So we need to understand how he does this. Now there's a lot of similarities between Corinth and modern day America, which is probably one of the reasons this is such a good passage on preaching. At this time that Paul wrote this, Corinth was a very young city. It had a population of about 500,000 which was more than Athens. It was beginning to rise in prominence above Athens during this time.
Joel Brooks:It was a port city. It was located in the Isthmus. And so it had people from all different backgrounds, all different nationalities flooding there. It was a very diverse powerful city. It was one of the few cities in the world that you could actually rise up the social ladder.
Joel Brooks:Your social status was not fixed. Everything was new. Everything was for the taking and so people became very obsessed with their social standing and how they could rise up that social ladder. And it's here, which we're gonna look at next week when we hit Acts 18. It's here that Paul establishes a church, a small church, but a growing church.
Joel Brooks:But this church is not immune to the culture that's going on in Corinth. They become obsessed with status, with their social standing. How can they rise up that social ladder and culture? Paul actually spent 18 months planting this church, which was a really long time for Paul to be in one place in the missionary journey. But apparently there was a whole lot that he had to work through before he felt comfortable enough leading.
Joel Brooks:Now when Paul came into Corinth, he had to be very careful because there was an expectation in the city as to what a public speaker should look like when they were coming to the city gates. At this time there was a group of orators they were called Sapphists, and they were the public speakers of the day. They were these self proclaimed wise men who would enter into a city with great fanfare. They would give these speeches and people were enthralled by it. You have to remember there's no TV.
Joel Brooks:Okay? I mean that's the no TV. They have to find ways to entertain themselves. And so they listen to a lot of speeches and we have so many of these speeches that survived and you can read them. But they would walk in and literally hundreds and thousands of people would come to hear these different softists as they came in to give their speeches.
Joel Brooks:They had great physiques. Many of these softest, they actually shaved all of their body hair, oiled themselves up, and once said they would shine in the sun and they would look like gods as they spoke. Well the first thing that they would do when they enter the city is they would give a prepared speech that they had carefully prepared. And they would try to wow people with their wisdom, with their rhetorical skill. They would boast about their nobility and their power.
Joel Brooks:And then after they did all of that, if they were good and if they were really, really good, they could say, alright. Y'all set the topic. Tell me what you like me to speak on. And we have all these records of of political speeches. Speak on the politics of the day.
Joel Brooks:Speak on a certain flower that grows on this hill. And instantly the sophist could just launch into this beautiful flattering language on whatever subject was brought up to him. The rewards were great if you were a good speaker. Speaker. If you were accepted into the city and not all were, actually most were not, but if you were parents paid an incredible amount of money to have these Sophists teach their children.
Joel Brooks:For their children to become disciples of them. They would go completely underneath the leadership of his sons. And and they were very competitive with one another. There was a lot of backbiting in it. It kinda gives you a little bit of hint when you hit 1st Corinthians 1, as to what the people are thinking when they're saying I follow Paul.
Joel Brooks:No. I follow Apollos. No. I follow Cetus. What are they talking about?
Joel Brooks:They're treating them like these speakers whom they have to follow and commit to. People were in awe of them. Now it is crucial, crucial to understand this kind of backdrop and the expectations these people had for Paul in order for you to understand how Paul viewed a preacher and how he came to the Corinthian people. These people were expecting someone who would wow them, show off to them, had incredible speaking ability, could persuade anyone. One that would give them a great social standing and respect among their peers.
Joel Brooks:It's one of the churches still struggle with this all the time. Why is it when an athlete becomes a Christian, he's instantly put up behind a pulpit? Because the church is like, look. See? We have important people.
Joel Brooks:They they believe this message, or if an actor becomes a Christian, you immediately throw them up. Why? Because the church is longing for some kind of social standing. Still do that. And here's the thing, when Paul went into Corinth, he could have been that Because Paul is extremely educated, very intelligent.
Joel Brooks:We saw that last week when he talked with the Areopagus, When he's talking with the the the the smartest intellectuals of the day. He can hold his own. I mean the man has already talked to rulers, he's already spoken to mobs, and he's done really well. So once again in light of just kind of that backdrop listen again to 1st Corinthians 2:1-5. When I came to you brothers, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.
Joel Brooks:For I decided to know nothing among you except except Jesus Christ and have been crucified. And I was wounded in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom. But in the demonstration of the spirit power that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. But in the power of God.
Joel Brooks:Paul says when I came to you to proclaim the truth of Jesus Christ, I came as the antisemphas. I didn't want to wow you. I didn't want to use my latest persuasive techniques to kind of trick you into believing the gospel. I didn't want to show you like my confidence and my smoothness and how I have all of this together before you. That that's not how I came.
Joel Brooks:Uh-uh. When I was with you I was scared. I shook like a leaf. He didn't use his means of persuasion here that he had at his disposal. And let me just tell you as whenever you're speaking behind a pulpit it's not that hard to manipulate.
Joel Brooks:It's not. It's not that hard to tell an emotionally charged story and get you emotionally worked up. Or to tell a funny story and to entertain you or to tell a story that will make you feel a little guilt and say, you know, it's it's not that hard to do that. These are persuasive techniques. Paul didn't use any of them and he proclaimed Christ.
Joel Brooks:He didn't want to be some preaching celebrity. Now why? In verse 5, it's the key. Did all this in order that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, worldly wisdom, but in the power of God. That their faith might not rest in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God.
Joel Brooks:Now notice Paul didn't say here that for him to come like a Sophist would have been a sin. He doesn't say that. He doesn't doesn't say it would have been a sin if I had come and I'd used all this. He didn't say that if I knew some of those highly effective, persuasive techniques that that would have been wrong. He doesn't say that.
Joel Brooks:He didn't say that that trying to wow the people would have would have been an error or against God. He's he's careful not to say that right here. But what he does say is that, I didn't want you to be moved by those things and for your faith to rest on those things. I don't want any of that. If he was a worship leader, he would say, I I don't want you to be emotionally moved because we had great lights, or we had the fog machine, or we had we had this, the the subwoofer bringing the chill bumps out to you.
Joel Brooks:I don't want you to be moved because of that. Not that that's wrong, but I didn't want you to be moved because of that. I didn't want you to when you went home and you're thinking about it to think, really? Did God meet me here? Or was it just all of this stuff?
Joel Brooks:I didn't want that to stretch. Paul says that these things can, worldly wisdom, can produce a degree of faith. They can't because faith can rest on worldly wisdom. Faith can rest on the power of God. There can use them.
Joel Brooks:But it this faith that's based on the wisdom of man will not last. Will not less. Paul feared this so much. I think this is the reason he came here in Truman because he knew you couldn't put on the show. And he knew if you did that people would be moved.
Joel Brooks:But then it would rest on his worldly wisdom and not on the cross. Now look at verse, or go back 3 3 chapters. Go to verse 1. Sorry. You're in chapter 2.
Joel Brooks:You can't go back. 3 chapters. Go to chapter 1 verse 17. I think this is when he really puts this all to a head. He brings such clarity here.
Joel Brooks:Says, for Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel and not with words eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. So relying on what Paul calls eloquent wisdom empties the cross of power. Let me tell you that is strong language that Paul sees in here, very strong. Every preacher that I know of, I'm friends with lots of preachers, every preacher I know of wants the power of God to work through their preaching. Everyone.
Joel Brooks:I've never met somebody like, you know, I'm really I just don't want the power of God at work. Or who doesn't long for that in their church. Where does that power of God come from? That's the question here. So right after verse 17 go to verse 18.
Joel Brooks:It says, For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of god. Go to verse 22. It says, for Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. A stumbling block to the Jews, folly to the weeks, but to those who are being called both Jews and Greeks. Christ, the power of God, the wisdom of God.
Joel Brooks:Now every time, every time Paul uses the phrase the power of of God in 1st Corinthians. It is anchored to the death of Jesus, the cross of Christ. Every time. Rhetoric has power. Whirling wisdom has power.
Joel Brooks:Emotional manipulation has power. Rock shows have power in them. They don't have the power of God. The power of God comes through the proclamation of Jesus Christ and him crucified. This is why the cross of Christ has to be central in all of preaching or it's just not preaching.
Joel Brooks:Jesus must always be there. If he's not, you empty the cross of its power. Paul says in, verse 2 of chapter 2, he says that he decided to know nothing among them except for Jesus Christ and him crucified. And then later, you know, he says, the reason is that their faith might rest not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. So once again, he determines to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
Joel Brooks:Why? So that he might experience the power of God. They're linked together. And what Paul is saying here gosh I have to be so careful in how I say this. You all can ask questions later.
Joel Brooks:What Paul is saying here is he's got to resist the urge from the to try and become relevant. To try to give up what is called relevant preaching. Remember when the sophist would come into town and if he was really good, he would say, okay. You wrote my speech. Now you tell me what you want me to talk about.
Joel Brooks:You guys give me the topic and I will give it to you. So Paul's alluding to here. He says, when I came to you, you're not gonna tell me what I preached to you. You're not gonna say, we need to hear this. We need to hear this.
Joel Brooks:The topic is already steps. And the topic is Jesus Christ and him crucified. There is no other topic unless it's not preaching. And so when I come to you, that's it. Don't ask me to preach on other things because the agenda is already sent.
Joel Brooks:Preaching is always to be about Jesus Christ and him crucified. It's always to be about the gospel, Which some of you, might have a question, but it's a good one. Alright. I hear you, but how does that play out? Really, how does that play out in preaching?
Joel Brooks:Because this is a preacher also to, to preach on things like sin, you know, and moral issues, marriage, giving, how we're supposed to help others live a good life. Isn't a preacher also supposed preach on those things as well? And I will answer that with a yes, but. Yes, but. You knew I had to.
Joel Brooks:I've talked about the word but so many times in our sermons and how it's such a crucial word in scripture. Yes. I'm gonna preach on those things, but Jesus is still central. The cross is still central. Let me just maybe give you some examples.
Joel Brooks:Let me let me take giving for example. As a pastor, you're supposed to tell you you're supposed to give. K? It's an all three box there. You guys, you should give.
Joel Brooks:Alright? Now, you know, there's a there's a pastor, I use that term loosely, Creflo Dollar is coming into town. I don't know if you've heard. He will be preaching at BJCC this Friday. He's pastor of I'll write it down.
Joel Brooks:The World Changer Church International has over 30,000 members. Already 7,000 tickets here in Birmingham have been sold, for him coming to speak this Friday. Health, wealth, prosperity, gospel preacher. Probably the worst of the worst. I have actually heard him say, you know, Jesus rode a donkey nobody's ridden.
Joel Brooks:You can drive a Cadillac nobody's driven. Now now he is going to ask people to give to. Make no mistake. If you were to go to the BJCC this Friday night, he's gonna say, you all need to give. Now what's the difference between me saying you guys need to give and him saying you guys need to give?
Joel Brooks:What's the motivation behind that? What's the undergirding or the foundation behind that? Let me tell you mine. Let me tell you Paul's. In 2nd Corinthians 8, Paul says to the Corinthians, I want you to excel in the grace of giving.
Joel Brooks:He said, I want you to excel in this. And in verse 9 he says, why? For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich for your sake you became poor. So that you and his poverty might become rich. Why should you give?
Joel Brooks:Because of the gospel. Look at marriage. Paul has a lot to say about marriage. What should marriage look like? How are husbands and wives supposed to act?
Joel Brooks:But look how he describes marriage in Ephesians 5. He says, Husbands, love your wives. As Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Okay? Christ crucified is the model for how we are to love our wives.
Joel Brooks:That's that's what being a good husband is about. It's about the gospel. Look at serving. We know we're supposed to serve one another in humility. Why?
Joel Brooks:Paul tells us in Philippians 2 that we're to serve one another. We're not just look after our own interests because Jesus, although he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. But he made himself nothing. And became a servant. Being born in the likeness of man and being found in human form, humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, being in death on a cross.
Joel Brooks:Why should he serve? Because Christ was crucified. When the Corinthians are fighting over communion, of all things fighting over the Lord's supper, Paul has to remind them. He says, don't you know that every time we we eat of this bread, we drink of this cup, we proclaim the Lord's death. And so he comes.
Joel Brooks:We preach Christ and him crucified every time we take up this meal. So he he's always telling the reason we do these things, the undergirding, the foundation, and the power to do these things comes in the gospel. And all good preaching should do that. Even when the preacher is addressing whatever moralistic relevant issue is there, it is always anchoring. Not just anchoring, the foundation of it and the strength of it is in the gospel.
Joel Brooks:Good preaching will not rob the cross of its power. As a preacher I I I must never depend on on talents or skill in order to move people. A church should never depend on on its ability as a church to put on a good show in order for people to be moved to worship. This is where the strength comes. That robs the cross of its power.
Joel Brooks:And so the challenge for me as a pastor and for us as a church is to believe in the power of the gospel alone. That we don't have to add to it. We don't have to kind of fluff it up. We don't have to put makeup on it. We don't have to somehow make it pretty for everybody.
Joel Brooks:We don't have to, you know, switch verbatim switch to get people in here and somehow trick them into the gospel. All we can do is be clear. This is it. Then the power of the gospel comes to work. Paul says this.
Joel Brooks:He will just stand here without what? Read some human. Romans 116. Let us not be ashamed of the gospel For it is the power of God. For salvation to everyone who believes.
Joel Brooks:Pray to the Lord. I pray for me and for our congregation that we would practice what we preach. God show us the myriad of ways that that plays out to how we operate send it with somebody, he would go and he would read the letter to the church and then afterwards the message would be like, so what questions do you have? Paul's talking all about this. So The question is, well, what part should the sermon have in the main life, the spiritual life in the believer?
Joel Brooks:It it has a very important part. Preaching, there's an element of teaching and prophecy. Both. Because my job as a pastor, for 1, I'm to be a good steward of the word. A good steward means that I'm to know the word of god and I'm to know my congregation and I'm to know what food they need.
Joel Brooks:So for what situation I I need to know what to feed them. And and so that's that's very important. And then there's a prophetic element, not always. Sometimes preaching and teaching are used interchangeably in the new testament, but it can have a prophetic moment. There are times when I'm preaching and I'm I'm looking at my notes and God says abandon that.
Joel Brooks:You need to address this. That's a prophetic moment. That's the spirit of God saying you need to do this. That is a very important to the life of the church. It doesn't replace everyday And so, yeah, I hope we're always the people with the book.
Joel Brooks:You know, I love it when I act, when I come here and I say, hey. Y'all turn to 1 Corinthians 2 and that is for the oldies' bible school. It's it's music for years. So that means it'll be bread and butter. But god puts pastors for a reason.
Joel Brooks:Anybody else? Joel? Joel?
Speaker 2:You might have said it already before and I might have missed it, but I noticed in verse 6 that it talks about
Joel Brooks:Chapter Chapter 2?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Chapter 2. The rulers of this age. And I was wondering, is that is that in reference to this office, or are they somewhere else?
Joel Brooks:Yeah. Among the mature, we do impart wisdom, although there's not a wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age. It could certainly be an allusion to that. Okay. Abs absolutely.
Joel Brooks:You know, now that I just gave you scratch the surface on kind of the softness. Read the first and second Corinthians again. Read the first Thessalonians chapter 2. He talks about he he didn't come with flattery of speech or pre text of reading. You know, you you read and you'll those things can get popping to you if you understand that.
Joel Brooks:Or especially even when you get to the latter end of 2nd Corinthians and you talk about those super apostles who came in. These people who would outrun Paul were much better in every way. Anybody else? Yeah. I I think because it's tied into like when when he says my speech and my message, what were they?
Joel Brooks:Well, they were a demonstration of the spirit and power. His time is when he was speaking the word and he's addressing Christians, so they are appealed to that. It's like, y'all came to know the lord through my preaching. And he says, I'm I'm a father to you guys. When I came, the spirit came and empowered and you came to believe.
Joel Brooks:So I think that's what he's alluding to there. It's like, now that they're getting embarrassed about it. I mean, later they will reject Paul. They reject him. And they'll say they start criticizing him more and more, you know, Paul, you're mighty with a pen, but your bodily presence escapes.
Joel Brooks:You can say that side of cranes, and he begins to lose them. Anybody else?
Speaker 3:Joe, would you say that most, like, modern evangelism is based on, emotional manipulation and that's become a real problem because it's really tricking people to feeling something that they might not necessarily actually be feeling? Or Or is that sort of what you're getting at with this message?
Joel Brooks:Well, it's not what I'm getting at. I do think that's there. And I mean, let me just go ahead and say, I don't have any church in mind when I'm preaching this. I don't. I've gone to 2 churches in 15 years.
Joel Brooks:This one and the last church I served at. So so I don't know really what's out there to decide what I'm just reading. But I do know a number of the techniques that are there would fall under like what Paul would say in 1st Thessalonians 2, deceptive. And which is something the softest for me. I hope no church I hope you haven't been involved in leadership.
Joel Brooks:Let let me just throw one out. You know, typical, hey. We're having a Super Bowl party. Oh, really? Yeah.
Joel Brooks:We're just gonna all come and watch the Super Bowl when everybody comes. It's like, hey. Before we show this Super Bowl, I've just got a quick little message for you. And it's a bait and switch. You trick people.
Joel Brooks:Now let me share the gospel. You're you're preaching under the this this false pretext here. And I do think there's a lot of that that goes on or a judgment house in which you could scare a person to Jesus. I mean, I went to a judgment house one time when I was in college, and I prayed this in the spirit twice. Like, you know, y'all can just get this word.
Joel Brooks:And so there there is that. Once again, God can use those. Faith can rest on those to some degree, but Paul, Paul is saying, alright, let's let it rest on the gospel which has lasting power. So his job was to be very clear. That when Paul, and we're living this next week, Paul's going to Corinth, it's the only time he had an axe.
Joel Brooks:He's so scared because he knows how the people want him to behave. Jesus actually has to appear to him and say, don't be scared. And I I don't think it's a scare because, like, you know, what are they gonna do to me? I think it's it's a scare that he knows he can win the crowd. He can do it.
Joel Brooks:But there's a scare, like, I can't do that. Am I am I really gonna trust the message that I have that I believe? The question is how do you think this passage encourages somebody who is weak in an area like evangelism or preaching. I think it should be great encouragement. One of the most powerful sermons I have ever heard was by it was a college student who got up and he stuttered through the whole thing, scared out of his mind to to say the words he used most of it.
Joel Brooks:And it it wasn't anything revolutionary. It wasn't some new spin. It was just very straight up in the power of God came. It's like the spirit of God, the spirit lives to glorify Jesus. So if you clearly present Jesus, the spirit of God's like, there's a great time for me to glorify Jesus and to make him known, and so he's gonna come and do that.
Joel Brooks:But sometimes you know the spirits like, alright, where's my chance? You know, Jesus isn't being clearly presented. There's so much distraction going on. So I think it's my very nominal, what we call gifting, can present Jesus. And we've looked at that, you know, the, the gospel of you and Gilead, the the power of it is not in the messenger.
Joel Brooks:You're a jar of clay holding a cross and stretching. Last question, Mark. Going back to the piece of word relevance, when is you know, how do you decipher when is an appropriate time to use anecdotes Yeah. The question is, I think, when is an appropriate time to, to use your illustrations or I know you love the art, and and things like that and and talking to an unbeliever. And and I would say, I mean, that's that's fine.
Joel Brooks:You you doing that alone is great. That's that's gonna be slightly different than preaching here. I've always heard as a preacher, I think you know, but you you don't do that, which is nothing but an endless string of illustrations. And what I feel so much in preaching I've listened to is a preacher telling you that you have to believe this, telling you that god is great, telling you these things, but never actually shows you. Never actually you know, I don't wanna be told this is important.
Joel Brooks:I don't wanna be told god is great. Show me in the text. Point to it. There is your power. There is your authority.
Joel Brooks:Not through whatever illustration you have to hold. Good questions. And y'all can ask more questions afterwards, but I wanted to stop