True Apostolicity - Part 3 — Art Katz

Thank you, Lord, for this occasion. May it be richly redeemed. May you have an opportunity to bear your heart, gracious God, and speak to our own. Let this be more than something informational. Let it be a word that performs a work in us who hear it.

Thank you, gracious God, for your precious watch care and love, your seriousness toward us as sons. May we respond appropriately. Thank you now, Lord. Bless this and perform all your will in it. We'll thank you and praise you.

In Jesus' name. Amen. I've been on one theme, true apostolicity. You say, why don't you just say true apostle? Because apostolicity is more than apostle. Apostle is at the heart of it, but it goes far beyond what the apostle is.

The Church's Character Must Reflect True Apostolicity

It's because his significance is so great. Because what he is affects the church that bears the name apostolic. What a man is as an apostle is what the church ought itself to be in its character and activity.

Understand that? If the apostle is false, what of the church that bears the same name? If the apostle is spurious, what of the church that is spurious? So we have a tremendous responsibility to understand and to maintain true apostolicity.

Because it is the last resort. If we have toyed with things charismatic or New Testament-ish, and made of that a kind of merchandise and games playing, that's sad enough. But if we do the same with this, there's no further recourse.

This is it. And this is my great dread, that that possibility exists and is already in process of fulfillment. We know that the church in Revelation is complemented because it discerns those who say that they are apostles and are not.

So evidently this is going to be an end time factor. So if there are those that say that they are apostles and they are not, what of churches who say they are apostolic and are not? I have in my heart this morning just to share a little episode or a little segment out of the life of a chief apostle, namely Paul, in 1 Thessalonians.

He brings something from his life, from his character, from his activity that gives us an insight into that which truly apostolic is. Beginning of that chapter, 1 Thessalonians, Paul, so vain is in sympathy to the church of the Thessalonians, in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace.

We give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers, constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the presence of God our Father.

Knowing, brethren, beloved by God, his choice of you, for our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit, and with full conviction, just as you know what kind of men we prove to be among you for your sake, you also became imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much tribulation with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia.

For the word of the Lord had sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything, for they themselves report about us what kind of a reception we had with you and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, that is, Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come.

Amen. I don't know of any book that is more susceptible to being misread than the Bible. You just had a perfect example. I don't know what a true reading would be, but you didn't get it. There's such a tendency to gloss over the word of God as if we're reading Gone With the Wind and miss the mighty portent of all that is written there.

Just to give you an idea of what I mean, I'll start from the end of that chapter and work backward, looking at the last two verses. For they themselves report about us what kind of a reception we had with you and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God.

Turning from Greek Idolatry to the Living God

Imagine speaking that so blithely and not recognizing what an enormous wrench that constituted. What did it mean for a pagan people, Greeks, in all that is intrinsic in the Greek mentality, with all of their panoply of gods and mythologies, to turn from that to the living God?

The word wrench is hardly sufficient. I wish I could give you a sound effect. The enormous power that it took to turn men from idols to the living God, from their whole assortment of gods and their mythologies so dear to the Greek heart, from their rationality, from their love of reason, from all that is celebrated in being Greek to that which is Hebrew.

If you don't understand that, you're going to miss Paul and you're going to miss what being apostolic means, what the power is that turns men from things that are dead to things that are alive, from things pagan to things holy, from things humanistic to things Hebraic.

You turn to God from idols to serve, not just merely acknowledge, but serve a living God. And Paul is very careful about his use of words. He's not one who is given to flattery. He's incisive, he's sharp, his words mean what they say.

These men did not just merely acknowledge a new deity, they served him. And as a matter of fact, if that acknowledgment is not expressed in serving him, it's not acknowledgment. Remember what Elijah said to his own people.

How long will you hold between two opinions? If God be God, serve him or follow him, not merely acknowledge him. So Elijah had an apostolic heart. He understood what the issues of truth are and would not be satisfied with anything less.

That's the marvel of this Thessalonian church. They turned from idols to serve the living God. Why? Because of the reception that we had with you. Everything rested on the acceptance of a single man who came bearing an ideology wholly offensive and opposed to all that can be understood as Greek reckoning and mentality.

I don't know if you know how formidable a thing it is to bear the message of the gospel, how foolish a thing it is, how loathsome a thing it is, how contrary to reason and to all that men celebrate as rational and good.

Why God could not have gone overboard more to find something more calculated to offend human sensibility and intellect than the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's why Paul speaks of the mystery of the gospel.

And one of the reasons that we don't have this kind of acceptance and our preaching of it does not result in this kind of consequence is that for us it is not this kind of a mystery. It's hash. It's over easy with bacon.

It's commonplace. We've lived with it for so long. We've grown up with it. The mystery has not touched us. We've not been offended by it. I marvel that you haven't. It was a struggle for me as a Jew coming out of a Greek background when I was first confronted by the gospel.

It was powerfully offensive to everything to which I had given my mind and heart and loyalty and had celebrated as value for 35 years. Rightly has a German theologian said that true faith begins where the atheist thinks it ought to end.

Namely at the cross of Christ. That pitiful wreck that hung limply on the cross whatever you think of chick comics. The one thing I really appreciate about his artfulness is his ability to depict the crucified Christ.

You ever seen it? It looks like a shredded man. I mean just a pitiful spectacle of something so bludgeoned and whipped and beaten out of shape that he has no form nor comeliness that we should desire him.

And when you think that that's God hanging on the cross and that's the heart of the theology of the faith you want to run out and shriek. Why didn't God give us something more intellectually reasonable to present to men?

I remember on a train from Prague, Czechoslovakia to my next destination in that land I was in the wrong compartment. And I was irritated because there were people smoking in that compartment and there was a Swedish woman with a little spoiled brat who was making a ruckus and a noise which I didn't like.

In fact I looked at him and we broke into a little conversation she spoke English. She probably was not married part of the avant-garde, the advanced generation that is so characteristic of Scandinavia that now looks upon marriage as a kind of inconvenience in a piece of paper very emancipated.

I said, I suppose you think that he's the hope of Sweden. Why yes, she said. I made it clear that I did not agree with her. And just as I was looking for the exit to my right side, sitting on the same seat with me I noticed a couple that had been quiet I think they had spoken a word or two in English and I turned to them and I said you're Jewish, aren't you?

And they gulped and said yes, how did you know? It's only that the faintest semblance of Jewry left in Czechoslovakia probably less than four or five thousand well I just knew. And we got into a conversation she was a professor of I don't know what Eastern languages at Uppsala University in Sweden and he was a professor of mathematics in his own country and a celebrated scientist.

In a word, they were the finest that the world can produce in terms of that which is prestigious and estimable. They were intellectual, they had it all together they were progressive and modern and suave and smooth and all the kinds of things that men drool to be and are not because if anybody can be it, it's a Jew.

They invented it. And so we got into a conversation and they naturally wanted to know what I was about and where I was traveling and what I was doing and I said something about Jewish mothers who are now lamenting about their son the evangelist who used to pride themselves on their son the doctor their son the lawyer now having to contend with a new phenomenon their son the evangelist and that I was in full time Christian service and I began to share something of my testimony how I myself came out of a left-wing radical Marxist background and passed through various disillusionments as my idols crumbled and how in the time of deepest crisis and anguish of heart as a hitchhiker who took a year's leave of absence from the teaching profession when all of my world had fallen about me how I was apprehended by a God whom I was not seeking it was a very impressive, powerful, supernatural testimony and when I finished this guy just kind of yawned and he had already told me that he had been spared from death in the Holocaust because he had been secreted away in a Catholic order and had grown up as a Catholic and therefore he said he had the broadest exposure to Christianity and he knew the New Testament well and then he turned to me when I finished my testimony and said, well, he said, that's all right for you but I don't believe in God.

When he said that a chill came over me. I don't have a word to describe what was expressed in that moment. It was the spirit of the world speaking in all of its wisdom and rationality and superiority and smugness and self-assurance.

But I don't believe in God. And when that wave passed over me with the power and the assurance of that statement the unction and the anointing of it, if you will I never felt more pitiful. I never felt more weak, more beggarly more inadequate, more foolish.

I felt like some, what shall I say some bent, crumpled piece of thing next to this resplendent figure who had all the marbles and all I had was this pitiful, bare gospel. The foolishness of the gospel pitted against the esteem and the prestige and all of the force and invective of the world in its celebrated rationality.

I never felt the gospel to be more foolish than in that moment. I think it's for that reason that God has wisely said to the Jew first because that's the hardest test when you can with power and authority in full conviction of the spirit bring the gospel to this impervious and hard and self-opinionated and assured people and impress them and break through and bring them to the place of repentance and turning.

You will have known what Paul celebrated. I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation. Many of us have not learned that because we've not had the occasion to see or to test the power of the gospel we started with the soft touches the bum groveling in his own vomit in the gutter rather than the supremely successful man of the world who has no need of our Christ.

I recognize as a teacher if I didn't start with the toughest problem in the class but I chose the second echelon of problems I would be harassed all the year long by the guys with whom I was afraid to tackle.

You know what I'm talking about? I'm talking about those characters in the back of the room who grimace and make faces and wisecracks and that they are as big as you and if not bigger and you're afraid to take them on.

You're afraid to test your authority before the entire class lest you fail and be made a laughing stock. So the easiest course is to sort of just not see them and pick on the second echelon that you can handle.

But you'll never have order for the rest of the year. That's why God says to the Jew first. I'm saying things I didn't even plan to say. And we have never come into the authority which is intrinsic to true apostolicity because we have not obeyed the order of God to the Jew first.

And in that confrontation if ever you felt weak if ever you recognized despairingly how shameful a thing the gospel is. How absurd, how ridiculous how ludicrous that you're going to tell men that that was very God on the cross who had come down from heaven and lay aside as a deity to be born in the form of man and to live for 30 years in obscurity.

And that somehow to believe that and the blood that was shed is a purgative for our sins that somehow is esteemed in the Father's sight. And that there's a faith by which you can acknowledge and believe these things that constitute salvation and much more that has got to be patent and colossal absurdity.

Imagine Paul coming and the weakness that he was both physically and in every way just as weak as I feel this morning. I felt great until I came into this room. I felt so great as a matter of fact this morning that for the first time since my return from three months of overseas very arduous and demanding I did my daily dozen.

I did my 42, usually 50 sit-ups but the phone rhymed and my other kinds of bends and jerks and things like that. That's how good I felt that I could afford this morning for the first time to limber up a little bit.

But the moment I came into the room came the sack. My inspiration dissipated away completely. I almost forgot what the text was from which I was planning to speak. And when it was time for me to get up I got up with that weariness of like a man taking his final walk to the guillotine.

I think somehow that that is also intrinsic in that which is apostolic that somehow the truest and the deepest and the richest ministry that brings life is always born out of weakness. And I must imagine that Paul in his first coming to Thessalonica came in that condition as I believe he came everywhere in weakness not knowing and to be confronted by men steeped in their Greek civilization and culture to turn them from idols to serve a living and a true God must have been an accomplishment of enormous consequence of great demonstration of power and authority as he himself says for the gospel did not come to you in word only but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.

The Gospel Comes in Power, the Holy Spirit, and Full Conviction

Somehow I just love to play on that last phrase and let it lay like wine on the tongue. Don't be too quick to suck that down with full conviction enough that this saying was popular where you are when you grew up as a kid.

But in Brooklyn where we played stickball it's a little game where you use a broom handle and a spalding ball or a tennis ball. We had the phrase a miss is as good as a mile. You know that? Powerful swing can result in just a little bleep and a little pop-up or a little foul dribbling off somewhere if it misses so much as by a little it's only bye-bye baby if it's right on crack!

It's that ultimate connection something true through and through that is unspeakably joyous. It's real, it's the full thing crack! You don't have to watch you know it's going just a sound. It's a full connection with full conviction.

I'll tell you it had to be full conviction with these Greeks or it would have been a dismal flop. Not only the failure of time expended and energy expended but it might have been the end of Paul. I don't know how amenable these pagans were to some pitiful Hebrew coming along and speaking his wretched gospel.

I don't know that they just would have taken him by the scruff of the neck and kicked him out of town or really done a job on him for daring to presume upon them with this foolishness. I remember speaking at City College in New York 85 Jewish and the first gospel outreach in the history of that school connected to the whole New York University system.

The Jews were there. I mean they were the audience bristling with such an indignation. And I remember the one guy I think it was the rabbi of the Hillel organization at the school standing up with such a trembling of rage saying how dare you come with a Gentile Bible and seek to persuade us of these medieval old wives myths if you want to shrivel.

That would be an occasion. If you've not had these experiences I commend them. Paul took the risk of having Greeks respond to him very much in the same way. And I don't know that they would treat him with the politeness of even allowing him to be escorted out of town.

They might just about have mobbed him and fallen upon him with their teeth and gnashed upon him and done him in. That's the risk one always takes in confronting pagans with something that is totally offensive and contradicts in every point in particular that which they esteem and value and count as wise which if they were to receive it completely contradicts and invalidates all to which they had given their life till that moment.

That's why my mother has her fingers in her ears and doesn't want to hear and doesn't want to acknowledge and doesn't want to have to consider at the age of 75 a gospel which if it is true means that all that she has done and all that she has been about and all that she has celebrated all to which she has given her energy in these years that she has counted as good in Jewish culture in Israel.

And all that is estimable was false a delusion and a misspent life. It's an enormous wrench to go from idols to the living God and serve him. And the key to that wrench was Paul himself. For they themselves report about us what kind of a reception we had with you and how you turn to God from idols to serve a living and true God and to wait for his son from heaven whom he raised from the dead.

That is Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. What a mouthful do you realize that there is a whole and total theology in that one verse. Do you realize that these Greeks not just accepted the issue of immediate salvation but they took the totality of a whole Christian mindset and perspective including the eschatology of end time things of that which is to come as one whole thing and received it lock, stock and barrel things which we have not yet totally received to which we have only faintly condescended with a nod they received with depth and truth.

You know why? Because they received it from him who had such entry who delivers us from the wrath to come. They understood the judgment of God which was imminent. We haven't yet understood it because perhaps we have not had the advantage of such an apostolic penetration that comes in full conviction and not in word only.

Ok, ready for the punchline? It's in the fifth verse. For our gospel and what a gospel it is total including the judgment which is to come so absent from the consciousness not only of our present church but even its leaders.

For our gospel did not come to you in word only but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. Just as you know what kind of men will prove to be among you for your sake I'll tell you at the sound of that we need all to come out of our seats and go right down crashing upon our faces.

If there's a heart of the mystery of apostolicity I think we are very close to it here. To be an apostle is not one as I have hinted who has a briefcase full of clever things who has scoured the scriptures and has taken to himself the concepts and the teachings and the statements of the apostles of the early generation and has internalized them and now knows how to bring them out on what seems to be the appropriate occasion.

What an apostle is in the last analysis is a certain kind of man. I don't want to in any way give the impression that I'm disparaging what an apostle teaches. I greatly celebrate and esteem it. But what I want to say is that the teaching is the expression of what the man himself is.

He's the message he both demonstrates as well as proclaims. And in this verse Paul in his mindless and unselfconscious way sets before us the heart and the genius of that which is apostolic which needs to be true not only of apostolic men but apostolic churches with full conviction.

Just as you know what kind of men we prove to be among you. The full conviction is in exact proportion to what kind of men we prove to be among you. No more and no less. You guys with me? Or you feel as weak as I do?

As sagging as I do. This is rich stuff. I hope it's not falling to the ground. The power of conviction is in exact proportion to the quality of the character of the man who brings it. That's the apostolic prescription if I had to sum it up in a formula just as you know in exact proportion as we were.

The kind of men among you no more and no less. It was as full in power in speaking as we were. Full in apostolic character no more and no less. I marvel when I look down upon the audiences. I don't mean look down in any derisive way.

But when I survey the men before whom I find myself speaking in the course of something like a three month journey from which I've just returned men whose shoelaces I am not worthy to untie. I mean men of God.

Men who have lustrous records of service to God 30, 40 sometimes 50 years of ministry. Men in East Germany who are fathers of the faith apostolic figures themselves giants. Men who have been imprisoned for their faith who have suffered for their faith are sitting listening to me.

What's my qualification. Where's my diploma. How dare I presume to be a mouthpiece for God before such men as these. I have need to hear from them. And yet they listen not with just a patience and a tolerance that you would expect of men of stature but avidly taking to heart all that is being spoken.

And we had the great pleasure in this trip not just seeing men receive the word in a way that we have we don't see it in our American experience but transact it that it becomes event and history. I am not ashamed to say that a lot of what God performed on this recent trip in places like East Germany and France was historic.

In fact my continual prayer before God as I would come into a minister's conference where such men are going to be assembled is that the Lord would give them nothing less than that which is appropriate and becoming to all that has preceded it in the history of the church in that country so that if in East Germany what is going to come forth out of us in those days is going to be exactly in keeping in the same quality and stature and kind as that which was communicated by God through Luther.

Receiving and Examining the Word in a Historic Ministry Event

And the remarkable thing is that it becomes that some of those messages and things were so devastating. In one occasion the ministry ended on Saturday it was like four days or so long on Sunday. Rather than this man himself preaching he took both services as an occasion for the entire congregation to examine the word that they had received what has God been saying to us in these four days.

We don't need to laud it over now with yet another message of our own and have a quick opportunity to regain our own prestige among you to show you that we have an ability in God equal to the brother who is just with us.

But putting aside all such vain consideration hearing that God has so solemnly and deeply addressed us and that we are in so critical a place in this land. And in this time what do we understand God to be saying by what we have heard to our brother.

And so the two services on Sunday were for an assessment of the word. All of the elders were called up to give their impression of what they thought God to be saying. And then the whole balance of the week was a further examination of that word and its implication and the upshot was that God set in order and performed something by which the pastor there was removed from that church and brought yet to another city in a more significant place in my estimation where he did not want to be which compelled the men who had only been elders of a more nominal kind to rise in a more apostolic responsibility.

And you can actually just feel and hear the meshing of gears and the setting of things in place as something historic was actually worked as an event by the word which came forth in a critical situation one of the most important men in the country coming to it without any knowledge of what was to be spoken and just watching the unfolding of God day by day and message by message critical word walking on eggshells holding your breath lest any word be misspent or off.

Or even the tone and the manner by which the word was being communicated. You can understand why Paul said who is sufficient for these things. Who is sufficient for this character that gives a man such entry.

What kind of a reception we had with you. Just as you know what kind of men we were with you. He's appealing to them. He's saying you know what kind of men we were. You know. And yet you know what the amazing thing is.

There's not the faintest smidgen of a man blowing his own horn. There's not an iota of egotism in anything that was read here or anything that I expressed to you about my own experience as far as I know my own heart and spirit.

And that is an apostolic distinctive. There's a quality of selflessness. I use the word mindlessness but it's likely to be misconstrued as being. What I mean is that there's a complete absent of self-consciousness about one's own self in God that was characteristic of Jesus who was the high priest.

And the apostle of our confession was absent in Paul though he often begins his epistles by describing himself as an apostle called elect of God. And it's absent here as you know what manner of men I was with you.

Not a smidgen of egotism. Not any kind of inflatedness or puffing up just setting forth what is factual and true. Reminding them and reminding us of what apostolic character is. What manner of men lest we think that it's a matter of just having the briefcase full of appropriate things.

The concepts. I admire Paul for the man that he is the full orb and glorious man that he is. Just as you know what kind of men we prove to be among you. For your sake. Dun dun dun. That's the motive for it all.

Not for our sake. Not to impress you not to show ourselves off. Not that we should receive adulation from you or that you should celebrate us. The whole motive for our being and for our speaking is for your sake.

That's an apostolic distinctive. That's true selflessness. And it occurs again and again and again in the writings of Paul. I plan to show it again tonight in yet another text. You also became imitators of us and the Lord.

Can you choke on that one? That he can put the two together in one phrase. You became imitators of us. And the Lord is to be imitators of. But one thing only because to imitate us is to imitate the Lord.

Because what we are is what the Lord himself is in his resurrection life made manifest through us. Imagine a whole church being able to say that to say to the world imitate us. Because if you imitate us you're imitating God.

You want to know what God is like? See us. You want to know what God's character is? Sample ours. That's an apostolic church. It's not some groovy bunch of hot shots who have found a yet more scintillating vocabulary than that which is charismatic and have gone to an advanced level of concepts.

It's a stature. It's a quality of being. It's a character of life. Imitate us and the Lord. I'll tell you this is either the most heinous presumption or such a glorious statement of what is true apostolicity that you want to drown on your own drool.

It's a statement and a model that God sets before us. The question has come up already a couple of times in these days. Are you trying to say that Paul is the only model? Wouldn't be bad if he were. There may be other expressions of what apostolicity is or what an apostle is.

Peter was certainly different from Paul in the manner and expression and John and so on. They each had distinct manner of expressing themselves. But I think intrinsically and inherently and centrally they all shared this kind of character.

God was so enwrapped in them. And it's evident that this kind of masterpiece as any kind of masterpiece is not to be formed in a day. It takes time guys. That's just what I'm trying to say. But it may take less time if we consciously desire such a thing as this.

I think we get in the way with our false ambitions with wanting somehow to appropriate the vocabulary to handle the concepts to be wheelers and dealers and think ourselves apostolic because we can move with a certain degree of facility in the phraseology.

Far better off if you shut your mouth and made no presumption and submitted yourself to the hand of God for the dealings of God and the trials of God and the workings of God that we might come to this in fact and in truth I'll tell you when Paul came to the Thessalonians they saw something.

There was a phenomenon that came to them an awesome thing. Not only one who proclaimed one who demonstrated there was a quality to his life that suggested what the high priest and the apostle of our confession is.

They saw the gospel as well as heard it. And that continues on in the second chapter. I'll take the time to read all of the verses but from the fourth verse. But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel so we speak not as pleasing men but God who examines our hearts.

For we never came with flattering speech as you know nor with a pretext for greed God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from men either from you or from others. Even though as apostles of Christ we might have asserted our authority.

But we prove to be gentle among you as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. Having thus a fond affection for you. We were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel but also our own lives.

Because you have become very dear to us for you. Recall brethren our labor and hardship. How working night and day so as not to be a burden to any of you. We proclaim to you the gospel of God. You are a witness.

And so is God. How devoutly and uprightly and blamelessly we behave toward you believers just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father with his own children so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

And for this reason we also constantly thank God that when you receive from us the word of God's message you accepted it not as a word of men but for what it really is the word of God which also performs its work in you who believes.

I'll tell you that that one segment of scripture deserves an entire convocation's attention. It's so beautiful because it's mindless. Because it's so unselfconscious because it's so unpremeditated because it's not a man putting his best foot forward and making a statement for himself.

He's just reviewing with them what they know to be true in their experience with him from the beginning. And because he does that we have a textbook. We have a statement of what is the quintessence the definitive elements of true apostolicity all the more because it's unselfconscious and it deserves our attention just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel.

Apostolic Character: Selflessness, Reverence, and Blamelessness

Do you have that sacred sense? To be entrusted with the gospel? Holy, holy, holy. That this is not some cheapy thing given to us that we might have something wherewith to witness to the opposite sex. I remember how something in me churned and my hackles rose with that Jesus movement or the Jesus people phenomenon of guys saved who still had their hair down their shoulders bare feet affecting some kind of an impersonation of Christ whose whole ministry it seemed to me was to bring the gospel over which they were so excited to the opposite sex accompanied with hugs and all the rest.

Nothing of the apostolic reverence for the gospel as the mystery of the gospel as Paul himself saw it. And if we don't have this kind of respect and this kind of reverence do you think God is going to entrust us with it?

The very phraseology of Paul entrusted with the gospel approved of God. So we speak. And you don't dare speak except you've come to that kind of reverence. And maybe it takes being brought down into the dust on the road to Damascus to understand the power and the glory of it.