Christless Christianity Q&A

Christless Christianity, Gospel Preaching, and the Need to Keep Learning

Our Father in heaven, Lord, we thank you for all the blessings that are ours in Christ Jesus as we think about our own lives, what we've done, what we've failed to do, the many ways in which we have tried your patience, how we've done what we've known to be wrong, and when we've failed to do what we knew was right.

Father, we are sinners, and we thank you for Christ Jesus, who lived the perfect and righteous life that we ought to have lived, died for our sins, and then rose gloriously on the third day. Father, we thank you that in time you caused us to believe in him.

We thank you even for men like Michael Horton today who would proclaim the gospel, who would teach us to always preach Christ and him crucified, and to put him forth not only for salvation but also for sanctification, teaching us not to rely on our own goodness for anything.

Father, I pray that as we talk this morning that the men would be edified, that you would be glorified, that your son would be front and center. Father, we pray for these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, good leaders are always prepared.

That makes me an absolute failure because honestly, I was telling Brian before he got here, I'm like, okay, where are we on this? Because I'm looking and I'm going, I think we did all these questions.

And, you know, true confession, before we went to the Midwest, I was like, I thought I was set. I came back and I'm like, I've got Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Sunday, and I'm like, I'm done. And then I come in here this morning and I'm like, so let's open our Bibles for a moment to Revelation.

So the true confession is I'm totally unprepared for this morning. Let's go to Revelation chapter 18. Because I thought it was interesting, you know, why is it good to go on vacation? Well, sometimes it's good to go on vacation because of the church that you go into.

What's that? It comes really, really close. Okay, Revelation chapter 18, beginning in verse 9. And the kings of the earth who committed sexual immorality and lived in luxury with her will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning, her being Babylon.

They will stand far off in fear of her torment and say, Alas, alas, you great city, you mighty city Babylon. For in a single hour your judgment has come. And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her since no one buys their cargo anymore.

Cargo of gold, silver, jewels, pearls, fine linen, purple cloth, silk, scarlet cloth, all kinds of scented wool, all kinds of articles of ivory, all kinds of articles of costly wood, bronze, iron, marble, cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, oil, fine flour, wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots and slaves, that is, human souls.

The fruit for which your soul longed has gone from you, and all your delicacies and your splendors are lost to you, never to be found again. The merchants of these wares who gain wealth from her will stand far off in fear of her torment, weeping and mourning aloud.

Alas, alas, for the great city that was clothed in fine linen, in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold, with jewels and with pearls. For in a single hour all this wealth has been laid waste, and all shipmasters and seafaring men, sailors and all whose trade is on the sea, stood far off and cried out as they saw the smoke of her burning.

What city was like the great city? And they threw dust on their heads and they wept and mourned, crying out, alas, alas, for the great city, where all who had ships at sea grew rich by her wealth. And in a single hour she has been laid waste.

Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, for God has given judgment for you against her. Okay? That was the text that we had when we went to this church. Keeping in mind, I mean, it's interesting to me, you know, when we talk about things like the Bible Belt, we think about the South.

There are churches all over the place. Well, in the Midwest, there are kind of churches all over the place too. One of the denominations is that the Christian church is all over the place. The Christian church is not Christian.

You know, like the Lutheran church is not Lutheran. But we went to a church that is, let me see if I can remember the denomination. It has reformed in it. It's not the Doug Wilson branch of things. But it's a, I'd have to look it up.

And it's in a little town. When I say little, it's probably like 20 ,000, 25 ,000, which makes it a metropolis compared to Janet's hometown of 2 ,000. So we drove the half hour, we went to this church, and it was probably about half the size, well, less than half the size of BBC.

The people were basically friendly enough and everything. So what was interesting is a couple of things. One is it was high church, and by that I mean, have you been, or can you even imagine, I don't know, it's been a long time since we've done this.

Can you imagine an Old Testament reading that was reader response? You know what that is? And so they had, he divided the church into two sections, and he had one side do one part and the other part, but he would read and then they would talk and talk and talk and talk, and so we were doing this whole thing.

I thought, oh, this is fine, New Testament reading, Old Testament reading, kind of this confession of sin, all these things. We sang songs, they had two different hymnals, because they had one that was older and one that was a little bit newer.

And one thing I thought was interesting, because it's a very, like I said, pretty high church place, we sang, what's the BBC anthem? Wonderful Grace of Jesus. And I thought, okay, this is very interesting.

At a marginally slower tempo, just a little bit slower so that you could actually breathe, which I found rather refreshing, actually. And you're just out of breath. But he gets to this sermon, and by the way, he basically announced, without saying he had 30 minutes, that he had 30 minutes, because it was almost like a countdown clock and stuff.

Whether the Sermon Preached the Gospel

Now, when you read that passage, can you see any way in which you might preach the Gospel? So, I mean, you know, I'm just going to, I want you guys to think like preachers for a minute. And if you're looking at a section of Scripture, and it closes with something that gives you an opportunity to preach the Gospel, then what do you do?

And I was like, you know, he mentioned Jesus a few times. There was a lot of talk of judgment, and a lot of talk about relying on riches and wealth, and, you know, all these kind of things, because that's kind of what the passage is about.

But I wish I brought his outline this morning, but it was like, you know, judgment, judgment, judgment, because that's kind of how it breaks down, three parts, right? So he had variations on this judgment.

But, you know, we laughed, because we do this a lot. I don't know, do you guys do this with your wives? As you're going home, do you just go, so what did you think? You know, what was the message? Kind of break it down a little bit.

You know, what were the strong points? What did Mike chomp? Oh, no, no, wait. You know, in other words, what were the good points? What were the weak points? You know, that kind of thing. And so we leave, and I was like, so what did you think?

And she, you know, was kind of talking about the strong points, and I go, you know, did he preach the gospel? She was like, we came really close. He will next week, and I just thought, and you know, it's funny to me, because I don't know exactly how to put it this way, but it was like you guys were all in high school.

Most of you made it to high school. And you know, like when they do a high school game, when they're introducing all the players or having the players come out, you know, the cheerleaders might like line the little thing, and they run between the cheerleaders, and you know, like the captain will be at the end, and they high five the captain or whatever, you know, however they do it.

So somehow or another, we all get funneled, and we're not out in the lobby yet, but we all get funneled to where the pastor is standing. And so we walk by, and so we shake hands with the pastor, right?

Now you would think, I don't know, I would think that if you're in Podunk, Iowa, which is where we were, actually there is a Podunk, Iowa. We weren't in Podunk, Iowa. This town, though, let's see if you've ever heard of this, Oskaloosa.

How many of you have been to Oskaloosa, Iowa? And that's what I mean. I mean, this is like, you know, middle of nowhere, although it is on the way to Pella, and it actually is the Windows place. I mean, it's like, because we went there, did we go there Sunday afternoon?

Yeah, I think we went there Sunday afternoon, and we just kind of drove through it. Everything's shut down. This is just Iowa. Everything's shut down, but, you know, you could see the massive Pella plant and all that.

But anyway, so we funnel up here, and we say hi to the pastor. He doesn't say, oh, where are you guys from? He'll say, oh, how'd you find us? None of that stuff, and I'm like, interesting. They didn't do anything to kind of, like, there was no welcome packet.

There was no, like, registration. There was, like, nothing, and I just thought, it's pretty old. You know, and it was interesting to me because it had a good mix, you know, and you look around, too, because you could wind up going to a church where everybody is, you know, where Keith walks in, and he goes, oh, I'm feeling like a spring chicken today.

What's that? He's probably my age, so, you know, old. Yeah. And I just thought, this is just a bizarre thing, but more than anything, I just thought, would you mind giving us the gospel? You know, if it wouldn't be too much trouble.

I mean, after all the things that they did, you know, the confession of sin, you know, dah, dah, dah, all the things that lead into, like, a high church and all these kind of things, and then to go to this passage and ultimately not preach the gospel, I just thought it was very, very peculiar.

So, yeah, Brian. I would say it was missing. Like, if you're looking for good news, like, how do I get forgiven of my sins, or how can I be assured that I have eternity in heaven, I think it was missing.

And I think you're onto something. You know, it was like, you people already know the gospel. Okay? Excuse me. But, I mean, just by virtue of the fact that you have visitors, and I'm sure, you know, I'm sure we're not the only visitors they ever see, but you would think, okay, if I have anybody in the church who's new, I'm not going to assume that we're all up to speed on this.

I want to make sure and preach Christ and Him crucified. I mean, this might be the only time that these people hear the gospel. It might be the last time that they hear the gospel. Or they might just be looking for a place that preaches the gospel, so don't I want to make sure that I give them the gospel?

And I just thought, and he just ultimately whiffed. Well, let me... Yeah, go ahead, Jonathan. Yeah, you know, I thought about... I think I saw the program. I mean, I thought about dropping him an email, but what I wouldn't do is, hi, we were there.

You didn't preach the gospel. How could you? And I know that's not what you're suggesting. You know, I do think that there's a... I mean, there's part of me that wants to just engage with him, but I don't think I'd probably get too far, because I think, you know, you just kind of get stuck in this rut.

I did find it interesting, though, along the same lines of what you're asking, they're actually on the local radio. And I go, hmm. Again, if you're going to be broadcasting, I mean, we listened to the Machen sermons, you know, and it was very Christ-centered, very, you know, not every week had exactly the gospel in it, but certainly a lot of references to sin, salvation, et cetera.

And I'm just like, I just kind of wonder what sort of response you get from that, and I don't really know. You know, there are a lot of churches there, but they're like Roman Catholic, or, I mean, there was a Christian denomination, there was an evangelical, you know, broadly evangelical.

Because, you know, when I say it's 20 ,000, you know, the other thing is, and you guys can imagine this, there are a ton of farms, you know. A ton of farms. So, you know, as you're driving, I mean, you just pass all this farmland and everything, so all those farms have people, so it's not like everybody just lives within the confines of the town or the city.

They also live on the outskirts. So, yeah, there were a lot of churches, Catholic, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, another thing that was interesting about the church is however our church may look to other people, I mean, I don't look at it and go, this is a perfect representation of Worcester because we're not that, you know, multicultural, but I don't look at it and go, okay, this is a perfect reflection of West Boylston either because West Boylston is basically as white as you can get, right?

So we're in a town there in Oskaloosa that's very, very white, and the church was very, very white. I mean, everybody, you know, lots of, given the size of the church, which was probably, like I said, I think I said probably about 125 people there, it was a lot of young, a lot of kids too, a lot of young families, and they did children's church right there.

I mean, not children's church. What do they call that when they bring all the kids up? Yeah, okay, children's sermon. So I was half like when you read children's sermon in the bulletin, what do you think?

I mean, because I'm not really used to it, I just kind of thought, oh, man, I hope some 10-year-old isn't going to get up there and, like, give me a sermon, right? And instead he's got, he brings the kids up, and this kind of goes with the book.

He brings the kids up. He's got, like, 12 kids, let's say. 12, why did I pick that number? I don't know. Probably about 10 or 12 kids, and they're all just sitting down, and he's talking to them, but he's talking to them, and we can all kind of hear, right?

And what do you think he said to them? I mean, if you want to instruct kids on Christianity, I mean, keeping in mind that I'm sure they're probably infant baptizing church, how would you teach these kids?

What would you tell them? La, la, la. Okay. An object lesson, something to catch their attention, and then followed up with a clear gospel message. So I listened to him, and he starts talking about, because, you know, here we've got these cities and stuff, he's kind of prefacing his message, and he's talking about, you know, far off cities and lands and stuff like that, mentions one of the missionaries that they support, and he says, you know what those missionaries do?

And the kids are like, tell people about Jesus? And he goes, that's right. And he goes, so you know what you should do? Tell people about Jesus? That's right. Okay, now. You would think that, right? What do you think?

How do you tell them about that? And it was just like, okay, that's good. Yep, tell people about, I mean, I'm shortening everything up, it was probably like, but it was still only six or seven minutes.

And ultimately the message was, tell people about Jesus. Well, I'm like, so, you know, did he focus on any particular aspect about who Jesus is? No. So, okay. So tell people about Jesus. Is that law or gospel?

It sounds like, it sounds like gospel. So it kind of sounds like, glossable. Right? Doesn't it? But the reality was, it was 100 law. Because if you don't say, you know, like, I mean, it would have been marvelous if you would have said, you know what, kids, you're sinners.

You know what that means? And one of the kids, you know, yeah, that means we don't do what we're supposed to do. Great. Love it. But there was nothing like that. You know? Okay, what's another definition of sin?

You know, somebody else might say, well, we do the things that we're not supposed to do. Great. Love it. You know, some kid might say, well, you know, my dad was talking about it last night. It means to miss the mark.

To fall short of God's glory. Did you hear that? You know, I mean, there was nothing like, where I, instead it was just kind of like, it's like he woke up that morning and thought, okay, I got to do children's church.

You know, I'll just have, we'll just talk about telling people about Jesus. Okay. All right. I mean, they're a confessional church, I think. But there was nothing really gospel-centered about that. And the whole thing, I just thought, okay, they're on the verge, they could be very much a Christ-centered, gospel-centered church, but they're on the verge of this.

Right? Because it's like, we have, we believe the gospel, but we don't really proclaim the gospel. And that's the problem. You've got to hand it off. You know, this is 2 Timothy 2, 2. You know, we have to hand it off to the next generation so that they can hand it off to the next generation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Which isn't an exact quote, but it's close enough. Because you have to entrust it to faithful men who will then entrust it to faithful men, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I think that's a great question.

I mean, you know, while you were saying that... Well, no, because I did come up with an answer. I go, just imagine, I'm going to go on vacation again to Iowa. And I go, you know what? Let's go to that same church.

Ask to do the preaching. Well, yeah. So it's roughly the same thing. And as we're leaving, I just get the pastor. And I say, sir, we would see Christ. And he'd be like, what? I thought I... That is a good question.

What are some of the ways that you think we can do that? I mean, anybody have any thoughts on that? How do we encourage other churches, in other words, to preach the gospel?

Asking Better Questions and Using Catechism

Podcast. Okay. You need to ask tougher questions and not accept weak answers. Because when a weak answer is given, it reveals assumed Christ Jesus. And so we're supposed to correct, right? And train disciples.

Okay.

So what I hear you saying, Brian, is that I should have used some restraints that I learned on the sheriff's department and torture him until he can... No. Catechism. That's why catechism is so good. Because you're just asking questions.

We can fault you for asking questions. Asking questions is good. And, you know, I mean, it might've been, it might've been a little awkward in the reception line, only because there's people behind me.

Well, time and place. Yeah. So, I mean, it wouldn't be wrong. And maybe I should just, you know, maybe, you know, Holy Spirit's convicting me through you guys to just write him a note. And, you know, I, the problem is, I'm probably trying to think to myself, how can I write this note without lying?

Thank you for your hospitality. Okay. There was no hospitality. It was a joy to meet so many people. Well, it was nice, you know, and I could tell people were, the funny thing though, is when you see like little kids opening the door and being nice to you and stuff like that, that's good.

It's good to be good. And it's nice to be nice. But that only gets me so far. And, you know, I, I, I just think it, it wouldn't be wrong if, maybe if I was a, a little lady who kind of had lost some of her reserve.

And I would just say at the, at the reception line, sir, we would see Christ, you know, just give us the gospel, gives that two by four of the gospel right between the eyes. Because there was, there, there wasn't that, you know, there was no solution for sin.

And that, and that's ultimately a problem. And Jonathan, go ahead. And, and you know what, because there was a certain intensity to my search. That's a good point. You know, maybe this is an off week or whatever.

So there was a certain intensity in my church or church search. And, you know, what do you, because, you know, what Janet said beforehand was, you know, we could go to her brother's church. Her brother's church is like an hour away.

Cause we were going to go see Gary. Anyway, Gary lost his wife here a couple of years ago. We like to go see Gary. The problem with going to see you're going to Gary's church was Gary's church is, um, super broadly evangelical.

And I mean, like lots of, lots of law, no gospel and, you know, six ways to be a better husband or whatever, you know, every week, that kind of stuff. So I said, well, let's just see if we can actually go and worship the Lord somewhere.

Um, so I started looking around and, you know, around it. It's interesting because if you just, you know, what are the typical things you do to find a church? You go to the master's seminary website. Well, there's nobody, this is kind of sad.

There's not one graduate of the master's seminary in Iowa. Nowhere. What's that? Yeah. But, but I mean, it, it, and it's interesting because I'm like, I go, I said to my wife, I go, well, you know, we're only three hours away from Omaha.

Uh, we could just go here, Pat. Uh, you know, that's a pretty good drive though. I mean, if there was any reason to make that drive, I guess we, we maybe could have, but, uh, so, um, you look around, you know, you go to the different church finders, whether it's nine marks or, you know, whatever, um, founders.

I mean, I, I did all the usual tricks and I'm like, okay. So then I just started looking for denominations and, you know, different things. And, and what, what, what is the name of this denomination? Uh, what's that?

So there it is. Yeah. And so, and I went and I looked at the confession of faith. It wasn't bad, you know, and, and everything. And I actually did go to the website of the church and I pulled up one of his sermons and I just like went to the middle of it and I listened for like 10 minutes and I go, it was biblical.

I, I just thought, um, I hope he's not always this kind of monotone and, you know, not very exciting, but he was. And I also thought it was interesting that when you walk in, they give you, um, I, I should have brought this, you know, an ad, an outline of the sermon, the three points that he's going to make.

And I thought, well, these aren't really bad points, but again, they were like warnings or, or, you know, statements of judgment or whatever. And I just thought, Okay. I mean, judgment, judgment, judgment.

And especially like, um, you said, John, the last verse, you know, in the judgment there, you could definitely go into a gospel message. But I think, you know, if you think about it this way, well, here, here was something he did.

Let's think about a 30 minute message. Okay. What should be, what do you think? What are your goals besides giving the gospel? What are your goals? If you only have 30 minutes and it's like a hard stop, like, I don't know, like people are going to get up.

I mean, if you've ever been in a church like this, where if you get to like, let's say 1045 or whatever it is on Sunday morning, or what, what time? Oh, I guess it'd be 1145, you know, 1145 people are going to stand up and walk out.

You ever been in a place like that where people are just like, yeah. Okay. Thanks pastor. We're out of here. I, well, I've seen that. Okay. Um, where people are just like, yeah, you know, we like our church to end it.

So let's say you have 30 minutes and let's say, um, let's just assume that during that 30 minutes you want to give the gospel. What else do you want to do in that 30 minutes? What would be your goal if you're the pastor, Brian?

Okay. Expose it. Let's just hang, hang there for a minute. Why do you expose the text? Because that's your job. Okay. That's your job. And what do you ultimately want when you say expose the text? What do you mean?

Okay. Get out of the way. So the crisis proclaimed. Yes. Preaching for a verdict. Okay. Let me ask you this. I'll, I'll ask the question. When you say exposing the text, when you say preaching Christ, you know, and all these other things is my goal is your goal.

As you get up and you assume the pulpit is your goal to think, okay, I've got revelation 18 versus nine to 20 this morning. Do you want people to leave there that morning thinking, I know something more about revelation 18 versus nine to 20.

Okay. Now, if you only have half an hour to do that. Okay. And how many of you guys have preached before? Just any kind of sermon. Okay. You know that what half an hour is a long time. Half an hour is a short period of time.

I mean, I would be like my, my intro better be like,.

Yeah. One point message. So what does that, what does that, what would that make you think in your mind? What do you not want to do? Waste time, go off on tangents. What would be a tangent that would be dangerous?

If you've got half an hour to do personal experience, personal application, what else? News events, which there was a little bit of that. I mean, not like I would expect in some of the Bible says, you know, used to go to where it was like, okay, everybody put down your Bible for a moment.

Let's open the LA times and I'm not really exaggerating. Okay. So what would be another tangent that might suck up a lot of time? Okay. Application. Yes. Four different views. Those are deadly, but I had something else in mind and that would be cross references.

Okay. Cross references can really be helpful in some cases, but in other cases, you know, they can just be time sinks. And especially if you go to, and I really wish I brought my outline here this morning, but if you, if you go to another place and you just kind of park there and it doesn't really help illuminate revelation 18, right.

You know, maybe, maybe for example, you know, you go, well, look at how it talks about ships. Let's go and look at Jonah, how Jonah was on a ship. And you're just like, dude, are you out of your mind?

What happened? You know? And it wasn't that bad, but there were, there were some old Testament references. He used like three or four and some of them were rather lengthy. You know, in my mind, this, this is, I mean, this is like a hazard, you know, I, I'll just give an illustration because I can do that and, you know, waste time with it.

But, you know, Jonathan probably knows, you know, more about mathematics and a number of things than most of us do because it's his livelihood. So let's say, you know, I'm up here talking about, you know, formulations and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Well, he's sitting there as a professional, right? Evaluating it and just going, yeah, I wouldn't say that. Nah, that's dopey, you know? So I'm not really going to call myself a professional preacher, but I am trained, whether that makes me a professional or not.

So I sit there and I listen. And when he goes to these cross references in my mind, what's going on? I hear tick, tick, tick, because I'm just like, dude, you're telling us you're running out of time and you just read us 15 verses and another.

And now you're going to actually talk about those 15 verses. What are you doing? The clock's ticking. You're running out. We're not going to, we're going to leave here today. We're not going to know anything about revelation.

18. Absolutely nothing. And guess what? We didn't. And you know, here's, here's something. If you're preaching, what's another thing that you want to do? Big picture. You're preaching sequentially through the book of revelation.

Well, what's the book of revelation about Jesus Christ? Okay. It's a revelation of Jesus. And by the way, so I saw somebody put this, you know, the book of somebody put this on their Facebook page. The book of revelations is not in the canon.

So, and I thought, okay, we've got the revelation of Jesus Christ. So it seems like your sermon should, should show us something about Christ. Right. And I'm like, okay, as I'm leaving, I'm going, did I learn anything about revelation 18?

Maybe. Did I learn anything about Jesus? Absolutely not. Did I hear the gospel? Close, but no cigar. So, you know, I left there going, I could probably join this church, but if I did, I'd probably want to say, you know, can I preach next week?

Would you mind if I just gave this a shot here? Bad, you know, if you're going to walk through a passage like this, make sure you do. And if there is some kind of time limit, and I don't, you know, I don't pretend to understand that.

And, and maybe, and maybe that's it. But even so, you know, then what would I do? I would, I would say, well, boy, I, I, if I had to gear my sermon to, to, to make it half an hour, because I didn't have an editor, because, you know, when, you know, sometimes sermons here on Sunday morning wind up being the no code show.

And so what has to happen? Have to edit stuff out. And I'm like, okay, that would be fine. You know, instead of like, it's a five or six minute introduction, you know, then maybe it winds up being, when it gets edited, it's 30 seconds or it's 45 seconds or something, but you've got to explain the text.

If you don't explain the text, then, you know, you're going to go from Revelation 18 to Revelation 19. And you're just going to keep going through the book. And at the end of the entire book of Revelation, people are going to go, there's a, there's a lot of judgment in that book.

It's a weird book. Yeah. Because, because you're really not, you're really not explaining things as you go. And by the way, one of the, why do you suppose I would not really care to preach Revelation, the book of Revelation?

Why is it incredibly hard? Well, it depends on your point of view, right? Keith, Keith's got it right. You have to go back to the foundations, meaning what? If you don't have almost an encyclopedic understanding of the Old Testament, you're almost sure to get revelation wrong.

So I, I mean, I just find it. It's not like I would say, Oh, I would never, ever, ever preach through revelation because that would be sinful. But what I would say is revelation would not be my first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth, you know, choice, because I just look at it and go, it's going to be so much work.

And I'm not, um, you know, I, I would not want to come in and say, you know, things like I used to hear, like, well, obviously the, uh, grasshoppers are helicopters, you know, and, and this is the UN or this is, you know, whatever.

I mean, I'm just like, I, I, I can't, I can't do that. I mean, I think, you know, it's interesting because you know what the reformers would teach like Luther, when he was teaching through revelation, more of his concept of the book was, you know, basically Roman Catholicism against, against the truth, right?

It's so that it's all this spiritual warfare stuff and the oppression of the Catholic church. And why do you suppose that would be? Because that's the world he's living in. And I'm like, so really, when you think about it, there isn't that much difference between the Catholic church and the Roman Catholic church.

Between what he does and what some, you know, what some people do today. But, you know, again, if you just think, what's my goal when I preach through passage? And you guys now, you know, anytime I'm preaching, you'll go, okay, did Steve help us understand this passage?

You know, did he waste a lot of time with cross? Now, by the way, are cross-references bad? Okay, what would be a good time to use a cross-reference? What is cross-reference? Okay, when it supports what you're reading in the first place, you know, here's a good example.

If you're teaching through the book of Colossians, what do you think a good cross-reference is? What's that? Psalms. Maybe, you know, depending on the exact passage, I mean, when it talks about, maybe in Colossians 1 where it's talking about Jesus, but overall, here's my point.

There are a lot of similarities between Colossians and what book? Not Philippians. If we keep going through the epistles, eventually we'll get there. The answer is, the answer is Ephesians. And why, how can I say that?

Because it's true is the correct answer. Colossians 1 and 2 are about what? Okay, the supremacy of Jesus Christ. And in fact, we could say they're about doctrine, the truths about God. Ephesians 1, 2, and 3 are about doctrine.

They're about Jesus Christ. They're about, and his work. I mean, we, you know, we look at Ephesians 1. So, and then Ephesians 4, 5, and 6 are. Okay. And Colossians 3 and 4 are. And, and if we look at, you know, a lot of the things are very similar, you know, husbands and wives and children, and, you know, just different in chapters 3 and 4.

You know, and sometimes they explain things that Ephesians leaves out or leaves kind of undefined or vice versa. Right. They kind of expand. So, I mean, they're often helpful in developing one or the other.

Okay. Those are, that's a good example of cross references. Other examples are where it's virtually demanded by the text. In fact, I think what he did, and I know he went to Daniel in one part, and I wonder why he did that.

I mean, he just, yeah, but I, yeah, but I think there was something else that he did. And, and, you know, I'm not saying it was bad, but it was just, again, it was too long. When you know that you only have, you know, X amount of time, you've really got to sort of focus on it.

And it seems impossible for God has given you judgment over it. I, I don't, I don't remember exactly what, what the thing was. I mean, you know, frankly, I, when, you know, I, and I do apologize for canceling last week, because boy, that would have been a disaster since I couldn't talk or anything else.

But, and, and hadn't done my work. The, when I, when I came back, I was fine for a couple of days. And then I, I started getting this little cough. And by Sunday evening, two weeks ago, I could tell I was sick.