Matthew 3:13-17, and more

Hey, good evening, this is Truth in Love. I'm so thankful that you are joining me to share God's word together to talk about things going on in the world. I'm not the expert, I'm not the go-to person.

I see things and just like you, I wanna have a conversation about it. And I'd love for you to have that conversation with me. Tonight I'm gonna talk about things that I've been seeing in the world, just to have a conversation about it.

Like I said, I'm not the expert, I'm not the go-to person, just wanna have a conversation. Tonight, if I can pray for you, I'd love to be able to do that. Just let me know, all you have to do is type me.

You don't have to tell me what's going on. I'd love to be able to pray for you. If you're so inclined, I would appreciate it. If you would heart on whatever you're watching on, if you would give a heart comment, let me know that you're watching, so that we can use this platform to reach our community and share the word of God together and share Jesus with one another.

I get truth and love from Ephesians 4, verse 15, Paul tells us, but speaking of the truth and love, we are to grow up in all aspects, into him who is the head, even Christ. So that's been my goal is to speak truth, speak truth and love.

And we want to grow up in Christ. Hey, Deontay, I hope you're doing well. Looking forward to our time together in a couple of weeks, where we have another question and answer panel. If you'll keep that in mind, mark your calendar, we're gonna have another question and answer panel discussion, and I'm so looking forward to it.

It's gonna be a great time with Brothers in Christ. As we get started, I wanted to go back to our discussion Saturday with Dan and just bring out one more thing. It was probably clear and I know we discussed it thoroughly, but I just wanted to reiterate one thing about our discussion.

We talked about what does it mean to abide in Christ? What does that look like? Because what we're doing is we're following along a program my pastor's putting together called Multiply, Pastor Tommy Hullett.

He's putting this program together. And what he's doing, he's taking Matthew 28, where we usually talk about that's the go-to verses for the great commission. And so he's taking that and he is, he's taking a very important part of it where Jesus says, teach them to observe all that I've commanded.

And then the question therefore is, what is Jesus commanded? And that's what he's looking at and that's what we're following. We're following his program. What are the commands? What are the teachings of Jesus?

And we wanna talk about what they mean. What do they look like from a biblical standpoint? The one that we talked about Saturday was abide. What does it mean to abide in Christ? And just one last thing that I wanted to say about that was when we think about what the word abide means, one thing that comes to mind that I would assume would be a common understanding or one way that we would look at abide would be that we are enjoying the fellowship of Jesus.

We are sitting at his feet. We are spending time with him. For example, like in our personal Bible study, we spend time looking at God's word, studying God's word, meditating on God's word. We'll spend time in prayer.

We will go to church. We will sing worship songs. We'll do that at church. We'll do that in the car, wherever that may be. Maybe we view abide as in that time that we spend with Jesus, whether it be in his word or in prayer or in song.

We're having a discussion with someone else where iron is sharpening iron and we're having a discussion about scripture and what it means. But I think that's sometimes what we can think of when we think of the word abide, abiding in Christ, is spending time with him.

And physically, in the physical world, spending time with him happens in those places. But what we need to understand from scripture when it comes to abide and abiding in Christ, and Jesus in John 15 gives that example of the vine and the branches, the branch is attached to the vine, to the source, where it gets its nutrients.

And spending time, the branch spending time with the vine is being attached to the vine. So when we think about abiding in Christ, what we do in the physical world, spending time with Jesus, and the Sunday school answer is read your Bible, pray, go to church, sing, worship, do those things.

There's a detachment there where we spend time with, we live like a dualistic life. We spend time with Jesus doing those things, but then we have other areas of our life. And that's where I wanted to make sure that there was no confusion, because in the example that Jesus gives in John 15, when he's talking about abiding in him, the branch is attached to the vine.

So we are to be attached, abiding in Christ, when we're reading his word, praying, going to church, singing, worshiping, but when we are at home, we are attached to Christ. When we are at work, we are attached to Christ.

When we are at play, entertainment, wherever we are, 24 seven, if we are a branch and we are abiding in Christ, we are attached to him wherever we go. And we need to release this misconception of abiding in Christ and thinking about that Sunday school answer where we read God's word, pray, sing, worship, go to church, and then we have other areas of our life.

We are attached to Jesus everywhere we go and whatever we do. And so I just wanted to make that clarification. If you're joining me, like I said at the beginning, if I can pray for you at the end, love to be able to do that.

All you have to do is type me. I'll see that and I'd love to be able to pray for you. Give us a heart. Only, the only reason I say this is so that we can, we can use the method that the social media platforms have put together to expand our reach.

Not because I'm anyone special to listen to, but so that we can spend time together in fellowship and look at God's word and we can share Jesus with as many people in our community as possible. We want to reach our community.

We want to share Jesus. We want to expand his kingdom and let everyone know how important Jesus is, that he is the king of kings. He is reigning as king and he's gonna continue to reign until all of his enemies are put under his feet and that last enemy is gonna be death.

And so share, comment, let me know that you're watching. I really appreciate it. Before we jump into scripture, I wanted to look at one thing from what's going on in the world. I was gonna talk about it last week, but I was unable to.

And so I'm gonna touch on it tonight. I was watching, this is gonna be something similar to what we're gonna touch on in the question and answer panel. So I hope you'll join us for that. And so this is just a little taste.

And of course the other guys, they may not all see things the way that I do, but I'm just gonna share some things that I've seen. And I was watching, or I caught a glimpse of a court hearing not too long ago.

And I listened to the judge as he was giving instructions to the jury before they left the courtroom to do their deliberation. And I was listening to his spiel that he gives them, the instructions that he gives them before they left.

Now, I'm gonna say this on the forefront. I'm not in law enforcement. I'm not in law. I'm not been to law school. I'm not familiar with this setting at all. But what happened was I listened to this one judge as he gave instruction, and the words that he was saying made my ears perk up and made me want to, what he was saying sounded familiar to some spiritual religious type conversations that we're having, and ideologies that are in the world today that are infiltrating our whole society.

You wanna talk about systemic. I'm learning more about this all the time. I'm learning about what these words mean. Systemic doesn't mean systematic. Systemic means it's infiltrating every part of the whole.

That's what systemic means. And this ideology, though it accuses another ideology of doing the same thing, this ideology is infiltrating systemically our society. And when I heard his speech, his instructions to the jury, it made me think about this ideology, this conversation, this ideology that is infiltrating our society like crazy.

And it's an important conversation that we as Christians need to have. And like I said, we're gonna discuss it further in our Q &A panel coming up May 13th at 8 .30. Hope you can join us for that. So the disclaimer is I'm not an expert in law.

I'm not familiar with other times where judges give instruction. This may be a cookie cutter type instruction list that all judges give to juries. I'm not sure. I don't know. All I know is that when I heard this, it made my ears perk up and want to listen because it sounds so familiar.

So let me read to you the notes that I took down from his speech. And then I'll explain what I'm talking about and why it made my ears perk up and why I think it's relevant for this conversation. This is some of the things that he said, the judge said to the jury before they went out for deliberation.

He said, I will give you the laws. So he's gonna give them the laws, the information they need to determine the verdict. He said, your notes that you took, he said, notes are not binding on conclusions, but just an aid.

He said, use your memory and recollection. Don't use your notes. They're not binding. Use your memory and recollection. We all, and this is where it starts to get good. He said, we all have feelings, fears, assumptions, perceptions, and stereotypes.

Some biases we are aware and some we are not. Implicit, unconscious biases. We look at others and filter what they say through our own personal experiences and backgrounds. We often tend to filter people or favor, excuse me, favor people who are like ourselves or had life experiences like ours.

And then he gave an example of some of those biases that we have. Some people think that males should be the ones with careers and females should be the ones supporting and raising the family. You must reflect carefully about evidence.

Think carefully about decisions you're making. Examine it for biases. Reconsider your first impressions of people. If people in this case are different, are from different backgrounds, rich, poor, more or less educated, older, younger, gender, gender identity, race, religion, sexual orientation, would you view them and the evidence the same way?

Listen to one another, he said. Help each other to avoid bias. And then there's one I'm gonna leave to the end. He said, resist jumping to conclusions based on personal likes and dislikes. Generalizations, gut feelings, prejudices, sympathy, stereotypes and unconscious biases.

Make decisions based solely on evidence. Now that's the command here. Make decisions based solely on evidence. But then take all this other stuff into consideration. Must discuss together and carefully consider their views.

So here's a couple things that struck me about this, this instruction from a judge to the jurors before they go into liberation. They obviously spent a lot of time prior to the case, prior to the hearing, selecting the jury.

And part of that process, the goal is, you are supposed to find people that you are confident will be objective, will be unbiased, will be able to look at the evidence and make a decision based solely on the evidence and not based on bias and be able to look at it objectively.

That's the whole goal on the forefront of selecting a jury. So why go through this whole spiel of instruction telling them not to be biased but look solely at the evidence? Here's the last one, here's the last, this kind of come earlier in his speech instructions.

But I left this one out because this is kind of the hinge of where we're going with this. He said, listen to different perspectives. It may better help identify these hidden biases may have on discerning or decision-making.

Listen to different perspectives. It may better help identify hidden biases in your decision-making. So we've got to listen to other people so that we can identify our biases. But I thought I was, you chose me because I was an unbiased, objective person.

But now I have to, before I look at the evidence, I have to listen to someone else's opinion about what my biases are. I've got to listen to their views to uncover what my biases are. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Now, I completely understand where this information is coming from. We do want jurors to be unbiased. We want them to look at evidence objectively. But this was to have been done before. Why are we telling objective, unbiased people that they need to be objective and unbiased?

Because we've already made that decision about these people. Because, and then like I said, I don't know if this is new. This was unique to this judge or this is a cookie cutter type thing. This is similar to what other judges say.

I'm sure some of it probably is. But how it relates to the conversation that's going on, the ideology that is infiltrating the world right now is this, you need someone else to tell you who you are, what your biases are.

You yourself cannot make an objective, unbiased decision. You just can't do it. You must have someone else to tell you what your biases are. And that's what they are. Their truth now becomes your reality.

You have to listen to them. They can't be wrong. You have to listen to them. And that's what made my ears perk up about this. People who were supposed to be objective and unbiased already, he had to reiterate to them to listen.

Now, and this doesn't make sense. It's kind of contradictory. He's like, you must make this decision solely based on the evidence. But before you look at the evidence, you've got to discuss together other people's views and let other people tell you what your views should be.

And what your biases are. Now, I'm probably taking a little bit out of context, but it maybe was not his intention, but this is the intention of this ideology that's out here in the world. And it's infiltrating our schools.

It's in our schools right now, this woke movement, this critical theory that's being taught. It is being taught as just as evolution is being taught as reality, as true science, instead of a theory. This is being taught as this is the gospel truth, this critical theory or critical race theory or this woke movement.

It is being taught, it's in our schools and you cannot be critical of it. I'm not gonna go look at the article, but the article, the other thing that I mentioned in the heading was a week or so ago, there was a teacher at a private school and they got suspended from teaching because outside of school, I think it may have been on social media, they criticized their school because their school was teaching this woke movement, this critical theory, this critical race theory and this teacher objected to it.

Now, I'm not gonna get into whether that teacher was right or wrong for criticizing publicly on social media, their school, maybe they shouldn't have done that. My point was to bring out the fact that this is in our schools.

This is in our schools, this is in our local schools. If you're in my community, this is in our local schools. I have heard firsthand about it. It is being taught as the gospel truth that this ideology of this woke movement, this critical race theory, critical theory about other things and what they are doing is telling you what you must believe and you can't be critical about it.

They're telling you who you are, what kind of person you are, what your position in society is and you can't argue with it. Now, in this ideology, there's no reconciliation, there's no winner, there's no good outcome, there's really no goal to it that has a positive outcome.

It's all about power and it stems, its foundation is Marxism where it's a power struggle and you have oppressed versus oppressors and there's a group in society that are the oppressors and there's a group that are the oppressed and it's about power and the only objective is to switch that power.

One group has to relinquish it so the other group can be the ones that are in power and you are racist because they tell you you're racist and the other group, in this ideology, they can't be racist. Only the oppressors are the ones who are racist.

It is totally against scripture and it's totally against the Bible, totally against God, totally against Christianity and it's totally against the way God has us to live our lives it's totally against the kingdom of God and what Jesus is doing and what Jesus did.

Jesus brings true reconciliation. Those that were far off, those that were not my people are now my people and they are one, we are one body in Christ and we can go on and on about that but those are things that are going on in the world and this is important conversation that we must have and be aware of because this ideology, they are wanting to make this ideology systemic where it infiltrates every part of the whole and be the truth, be the gospel that rules our society and our world where we really need the gospel.

We need the gospel of Jesus Christ. So we'll set that aside and we will talk more about those types of things in the question and answer panel and I'll have far greater experts than myself trying to answer those questions for us.

So let's look at, if you have your Bibles and you wanna join me for a few minutes, we're gonna continue in Matthew, Matthew chapter three, we're gonna look at verses 13 through 17 and what I wanna do there is go back just a few verses to lead up to verses 13 through 17 to give us the mindset, the position, to kind of show us where John the Baptist was prior to Jesus coming to be baptized and the situation and things that were going on with John and his baptism ministry there.

So we're in John chapter three, we're gonna start in verses seven through 10. That's where we're gonna start. God's word says, but when he saw, this was John, when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come.

Therefore, bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, we have Abraham for our father. For I say to you that God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.

Now previously, in previous videos, we talked about how people were leaving Jerusalem, coming out into the wilderness. And we see the picture here, John the Baptist was in the wilderness. We see all these undertones of Israel in the wilderness and then coming out of Egypt and what was going on there.

But they were leaving, coming out of Jerusalem to find John the Baptist and be baptized by John the Baptist, hear his message, be baptized for repentance. And so also came the Sadducees and Pharisees and notice John's interaction with them.

He knows who they are, he knows their position, he knows what they're teaching. And just like their forefathers, the Pharisees and Sadducees are continuing to lead the nation of Israel, God's people, away from God himself.

And he asked them, who warned you to flee the wrath to come? He calls them a brood of vipers, are you family of snakes? And this is his interaction with these leaders, these rulers of Israel. And then you have verse nine, where he says, don't suppose or don't say that God is able, excuse me, he says, don't suppose that you can say to yourselves, we have Abraham for our father.

So they were gonna call on their heritage, their lineage to be or to, their lineage was gonna make their standing with God right. They were gonna use that as their source of righteousness was their lineage.

Because we have this lineage, we have a right relationship with God. And we're going through Hosea in our church, pastors are preaching through Hosea. And when we were looking at Hosea chapter four, verse 15, this made me think of the attitude that they have here.

Where they want to pull from this religion and their heritage and use it probably in a blaspheming way to say they have a right relationship with God. In Hosea, the nation is being condemned because of their spiritual adultery, their idolatry, they're worshiping other gods and they are being confronted with that.

And in verse 15, he says, though you Israel, so a lot of this is going to Israel. It goes to both kingdoms, but most of it is going to Israel because they're the main players here in this scenario. He says, though you Israel play the harlot, do not let Judah become guilty.

Also do not go to Gilgal or grow up to Beth Haven and don't go up there and take the oath as the Lord lives. So they use this oath as a type of religious competence that as the Lord lives, just as certain as he is alive, he is going to bless this endeavor.

He blesses where we are. We're still in good and right standing with God. So we can swear by this oath as the Lord lives. They are living however they wanted to live, but they were holding, they were using these these oaths and here in Matthew, they're using their lineage as a type of security blanket that they thought it made them right and kept them right with God.

When the Bible says that their hearts were far from him. And then you go to verses 10, 11, and 12. And the ax is already laid at the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me, he is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire and his winnowing fork is in his hand and he will thoroughly clear his threshing floor and he will gather his wheat into the barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

And what I'm wanting to do here in this introduction is to put us in the shoes of John the Baptist to remember where he is, what's going on in the situation and to remember by what we're reading, the information that John is sharing is based on things that he knows.

He knows this information about Jesus. He's saying to them that there's one that is coming that is mightier than I. This is a piece of information that he knows about the Messiah, about the one to come, that he is mightier than I.

So he knows about the Pharisees, he knows about the Sadducees, and he knows about this Messiah, and this Messiah is greater than him. And he knows something else about the Messiah. He knows that he is going to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire, and he's gonna gather up the chaff and throw it into unquenchable fire.

So he knows about the grace and he knows about the wrath, he knows about the judgment that is to come through the Messiah. And we can look back at Isaiah chapter 30, 24 through 28, and we can see where this winnowing fork and this dividing of the wheat and the chaff and the burning, but if we read the context here, we can put ourselves in the mind of John the Baptist when he's preaching this message and the knowledge that he has about this Messiah to come, about his grace and about his wrath.

He's going to bring, baptize with the Holy Spirit, but he's also going to bring, he's gonna baptize with fire. He's going to bring judgment. He's going to throw the chaff into unquenchable fire. Isaiah 30 verses 24 through 28 says, also the oxen and the donkeys which work the ground will eat salted fodder, which has been winnowed with shovel and fork.

And on every lofty mountain and on every high hill, there will be streams running with water on that day of the great slaughter when the towers fall. And the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun and the light of the sun will be seven times brighter like the light of the seven days on the day the Lord binds up the fracture of his people and heals the bruise he has inflicted.

Behold, the name of the Lord comes from a remote place. The name of the Lord comes from a remote place. Remember we talked about Jesus fulfilling a prophecy coming from Nazareth, a no-name place. Burning is his anger and dense is his smoke.

His lips are filled with indignation and his tongue is like a consuming fire. Verse 28, and his breath is like an overflowing torrent which reaches to the neck to shake the nations back and forth in a sea and to put in the jaws of the peoples, the bridle which leads to ruin.

John the Baptist knew about the Messiah. He knew about his grace, his baptism of the Holy Spirit, his forgiveness, his position that he is mightier than him and that his judgment as well, his wrath to come.

So now that leads us to our verses, verses 13 through 17. And let me read that for us. Matthew chapter three, verses 13 through 17. It says, then Jesus arrived from Galilee at the Jordan coming to John to be baptized by him.

But John tried to prevent him saying, I have need to be baptized by you. And do you come to me? But Jesus answering said to him, permitted at this time or in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all the righteousness.

Then he permitted him. And after being baptized, Jesus went up immediately from the water and behold the heavens were opened and he saw the spirit of God descending as a dove and coming upon him and behold a voice out of the heaven saying, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.

So after John's message ends in this section in Matthew, Matthew then has Jesus arriving from Galilee at the Jordan coming to John to be baptized. Now, remember, we just talked about where John was, the knowledge that John had, the message that John preached, how he communicated his interaction with the crowd, with the Pharisees and Sadducees.

We've got that context and we can remember all that information as Jesus approaches, as Jesus comes to John, because Jesus is coming to be baptized by him. Now, John, when he interacted with the Pharisees and Sadducees, remember what he called them?

You family of snakes, you brood of vipers. Who warned you from the wrath to come? So he knew their position. He knew what they were doing to the nation of Israel. He knew their religion. He knew everything about the Pharisees and Sadducees, but he has a different interaction with Jesus.

Why does he have a different interaction with Jesus? Because of his knowledge, which we just talked about in verse 11, because of his knowledge of the Messiah to come, of this Jesus, he says, he who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove his sandal.

John realized his position before this Messiah, that it was a, it put him in a position of humility. He humbled himself. And when Jesus come to be baptized, when this Messiah come to be baptized by him, John wanted to forbid it because he knew that Jesus was mightier than him.

He didn't have the same interaction with Jesus as he did the Pharisees and Sadducees. He knew Jesus as the Messiah, the anointed King, the true King of Israel had come. And he saw it as inappropriate to be baptized for him to baptize the King when Jesus's position is above that of John the Baptist.

John the Baptist knew that he needed to be baptized into him, not the other way around. So John's whole conversation, his whole interaction with Jesus was totally different than it was with anyone else, because he knew the word of God, because he knew scripture, he had this knowledge of who the Messiah was.

He was mightier than him. He was in a greater position. He was the King. He's the anointed King, the Messiah that was to come. And here he has come to be baptized. But then in verse 15, Jesus answered him.

He said, permit it at this time, for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. Now to understand that a little bit better, we wanna flip over to John. This can mean different things.

We could do a deep study on this and try to figure out all the things that it could mean. But there's one thing that we know for sure that it means, that when Jesus says we must fulfill all righteousness, the word of God came to John the Baptist.

And so the word of God must be fulfilled. And so when the word of God is fulfilled, all righteousness is being fulfilled. It is coming to pass. And so what was that interaction? What was that word of God that come to John the Baptist?

If you look in John chapter one, verses 27 through 34, this was it, starting in verse 27. It is he who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I'm not worthy to untie. These things took place in Bethany beyond the Jordan where John was baptizing.

The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. John even knew his purpose. Verse 30, this is he on behalf of whom I said, after me comes a man who is higher rank, who has a higher rank than I, for he existed before me.

And I did not recognize him, but in order that he might be manifested to Israel, I came baptizing in water. So God had sent him to be baptizing in water so that this Messiah, the one that existed before him, eternally existed, that ranks higher than John the Baptist, John the Baptist is obedient to be going and be baptizing with water so that the Messiah can be manifested or be shown to Israel.

Verse 32, and John bore witness saying, I have beheld the spirit descending as a dove out of heaven and he remained upon him. And I did not recognize him, but he who sent me, which is God, God sent him, he who sent me to baptize in water said to me, he upon whom you see the spirit descending and remaining upon him, this is the one who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.

And I have seen it and I have seen, and I have borne witness that this is the son of God. So he bears witness that the word of God was fulfilled here in his presence. What God said came to pass, it came true.

So therefore all righteousness was fulfilled when John baptized Jesus, the heavens were opened up, a voice was heard, the Holy Spirit came and descended upon him as a dove and remained. And the voice said, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.

So a couple of questions that come to my mind as I'm looking at this, we saw where John the Baptist was. We learned from what we read, we learned from his message, the information that he knew, he knew of God's word, he knew the prophecy, he knew about this Messiah to come, he knew of this Messiah's position, his rank, he knew what his purpose was, what he was going to do, he knew this information about the Messiah to come, he knew the word of God, he knew what to be looking for that God would identify this Messiah to him and he bore witness of it.

And we know his response to the crowd and to the Pharisees and to the Sadducees, those who were proclaiming things that were untrue, that were leading their people, the people of Israel away from God and what they relied upon as their religion, as their source of security instead of this Messiah to come.

He knew all these things. And so I was wondering what questions should I be asking? So first question is what is our response to who Jesus is? When we read from John, when we read from the rest of the gospel about who Jesus is, who he was, what he did, what his purpose was, how he fulfilled all the prophecies, he fulfilled his purpose, he's still fulfilling his purpose, he's gonna fulfill the rest of the prophecies, he's the king, when we learn and we understand more of who Jesus is, what is our response to Jesus?

What's gonna be our response to Jesus? Is it one of recognizing his position, that he is king and that we submit to him, we come to him in submission with repentance and faith, trusting in him alone, not just for salvation, but for his kingdom work and what he's doing.

And the other question was, what is our call to sinners? John the Baptist here was very straightforward with his truth, knowing who they were, what their teachings were, he called them a brood of vipers.

He went after these false teachers and he called them out. We may not always be in a position, we can be ready to do that, but we may not always be in a position to do that and it may not be the appropriate time to do that, but it's always the appropriate time to speak truth and we can speak truth and love.

And we don't need to shy away from helping people to see and understand that just like we are, they are sinners as well. And without Christ, without submitting to the king, coming to him in repentance and faith, they will be part of those who are in this chap who have been separated and will be burned up in unquenchable fire.

That's the truth of God's word, that's the truth of John's message, that's the truth of Jesus and who he is. So we want to come to Jesus with humility and we want to serve him and we want to come to interact with others with the truth because in an eternity in unquenchable fire is not where we want our fellow image bearers to spend their eternity.

We want them to be submissive to the king as well and live for him and be in his kingdom. The last thing that I want to touch on before we leave is in verse 17. And this is something that I'm growing in right now, this is something that I'm learning more and more about and I'm hoping that it's going to continue to grow and help me to understand who God is, who Jesus is, and the story and the picture of the whole Bible and what God has been doing from the beginning and what he's done and what he's going to continue to do because there's a big picture here and that's a consistent picture.

There's a consistent picture that is painted in scripture and it is beautiful. And I hope to share with you more and more about it if the Lord allows. And I know Dan and I, this coming Saturday, when we talk about, there's going to be a time change, we're going to be together at 1230 if the Lord allows, 1230 this Saturday around lunchtime, not at night.

At midday, we're going to be talking about the eschatology of hope, God redeeming the culture and what that looks like, being a part of this new heavens and new earth. And this, this that I want to touch on right here is just a small minute fraction of that bigger picture.

It relates to that subject that we're going to talk about Saturday. But it is part of that thread of this greater tapestry. And this is part of studying God's word. Look at the words that are used and be thinking about where these other words are used in the Bible, where these other phrases and concepts are used and how it fits in with the greater picture.