Synoptic Gospels: 276-277

Big Band-Aid. Tennis elbow. You've been playing tennis left-handed? Yeah. I have a couple of those bands myself. I've never seen you with one. You must be getting up into my age range. Somewhere in the New Testament.

Let's see here. Probably between Matthew and John, I would say. I've gone synoptic on you. That's what I have as well. We have withered the fig tree. The fig tree is toast. We have the question about authority.

The Synoptic Gospel Section and the Temple Authority Question

Section 276 in the blue book. Brother Ray is not here to do our normal book distribution activity. We'll get Brother David to do that for us. If you need synoptic gospel, we don't have a huge crowd here this morning.

So we should be able to have enough. Section 276. Which is Matthew 21, Mark 11, and Luke 20. It is thrown in for the fun of it.

We'll look at Mark.

Beginning at verse 27 of chapter 11. And they came again to Jerusalem. And as he was walking in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came to him. And they said to him, by what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?

Jesus said to them, I will ask you a question. Answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Was the baptism of John from heaven or from men? Answer me. And they argued with one another.

If we say from heaven, he will say, why then did you not believe him? But shall we say from men? They were afraid of the people, for all held that John was a real prophet. So they answered Jesus, we do not know.

And Jesus said to them, neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. Now, I found the dynamics of Jesus' interaction with the Jewish leaders, especially at this point in time, rather fascinating.

When you think about what the context is, remember that Jesus has cleansed the temple, and I guess I should mention I wasn't aware of this, but it was pointed out to me a couple days ago, or sometime this past week, I think, that John Gill and some others actually believed there were two cleansings of the temple in this one week.

So they see Matthew and Mark as narrating two different cleansings. I didn't take it that way. I don't know too many people who do, but John Gill did, so I thought I'd mention that in passing if you want to make note of it.

I don't actually think that that solves much of the chronological question regarding Matthew and Mark, but you still have the fig tree issue, so it seems rather artificial to me, but mention it in passing if you find that to be interesting.

I noticed that Gleason Archer dismissed it as almost an absurdity. It does seem extremely... See, all it does is it raises another question. Why does Matthew only mention one of the two, and Mark only mentions one of the two, when there's two on two different days?

It makes far more sense to me that Matthew is telescoping, because we've already found Matthew doing it before. It's just his way. To all of a sudden say, oh, well, there's actually two cleansings. That would make three cleansings in total.

So you've got one in John early on, and now you've got two the last week. It seems to be an unnecessary complication of things. Since that was mentioned to me, I thought I'd mention it, since we had dealt with that over the past few weeks.

Certainly,.

We know, in light of what John tells us, for example,.

That.

You have already the plotting going on. Because of what has happened with Lazarus, for example, even Lazarus' life is in danger. That makes me wonder, why would you want to try to kill a guy that has already risen from the dead?

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. It does make you go, hmm. The point is that there is a very... Jesus knows the hearts of men, and He knows what these men are intending. I think that's behind this kind of rhetorical response, this kind of response that Jesus gives here.

Because, look, when someone comes up to you and asks you a question... I've been in these situations before, out in Mesa or Salt Lake or something like that. Somebody comes up, and I already know this guy, or I've already heard him in another conversation.

I know he's not really serious. He's not really going to listen to what I have to say, or anything like that. I don't necessarily respond to that person the same way that I would respond to someone when I don't know if they're being serious.

I have to take the chance that I'm wasting my time, in other words, and go ahead and answer difficult questions, even if it's going to take a lot of time. I may end up, at the end of it, discovering that they really weren't being serious anyways.

You can just tell, the Jews come up to him. The chief priests, scribes, and elders came to him. Clearly, what's in the background is the cleansing of the temple. They say, by what authority are you doing these things?

Obviously, they took this as a direct affront to their authority. I mean, they're basically the ones in charge of the temple. They've been allowing this to happen. He comes along and drives everybody out and says, my father's house will be a house of prayer.

There is an implicit, and rather overt, actually, rebuke of themselves as not being zealous enough for God's house, etc., etc. There has to be some level of authority. He is overriding their authority.

Or, at the very least, saying that they should have used their authority to do this. The question of authority comes up, and we just hear that, and we hear Jesus' response. We've got to step back and hear it in the context in which it was first uttered.

It was dangerous to claim authority in Jerusalem at this time. It was dangerous. We know from the Gospels that there had been those who had claimed to be a Messiah. They had gathered followers around them, and they had gone out into the wilderness, and maybe had attacked a few Roman soldiers here, there, and everywhere.

Because remember, this was not the central part of the world as far as the Romans were concerned. It was the armpit of the world as far as the Romans were concerned. It really was. They did not keep huge numbers of troops quartered in this part of the world.

When the rebellion finally does break out in AD 67 -68,.

It's two years.

Before Titus and the Roman legions break through the walls of Jerusalem. Because they've got to come there. They weren't there to begin with. They had to travel there, and it's not like... How long did it take us to build up for a desert storm?

And we're flying everybody in. Can you imagine how long it would have taken if they had to walk? We'd still be building up for a desert storm. Things were different back then, obviously. It took time for entire armies to move, and it was expensive.

And look, how much tax revenue are you going to get out of these Galilean fishermen? There's a subsistence level of living in most of these areas. And so there's just no reason to have some big army billeted up in the mountains someplace with nothing to do.

The Roman Senate and Emperor had plenty of things for those armies to be doing, other than putting down armed rebellions of Jews in Israel. So there weren't huge numbers of Roman soldiers there. But there were some.

But they were small enough that if you got a big enough group, you could overwhelm them. And so there had been false messiahs that had gone out and claimed to be the messiah, and all those things, and gathered followers.

And the Romans eventually had to get enough people in to go out and wipe them out. And they would wipe them out, and then they'd crucify all their followers on the roads leading into Jerusalem. And you'd have these dead and dying bodies hanging in the road for a long time.

Just a reminder, this is what happens when you fight against Rome. So, especially at this time before the Passover. This is Passover week. What's the week before Passover? What would happen is, Jerusalem's population.

Would explode.

Far more people than would normally be there.

During a normal week, I've heard huge numbers.

I've heard huge numbers. I've heard well into the hundreds of thousands during Passover. Well, look at Pentecost. You have people from North Africa, Egypt, all over the world. Paul wanted to return from being far, far away as well.

So, I've heard huge estimates as to how much larger the population would be during that time. It's one thing to keep an eye on things when you've got a fairly small, stable population. You sort of know who's who.

You get that many number of people in there, especially with all different languages they're speaking. And I can see why the Roman governor would be a little bit on the nervous side. This is a time for zealots to be stirring stuff up, and the relative proportion of Roman soldier to population goes way, way, way, way, way down in times like that.

And so, there would be nervousness on the part of the Roman authorities. And they'd be keeping an extra special eye out. And so, this question, by what authority are you doing these things? Yeah, there's the spiritual authority of the temple and all the rest of that stuff.

But there's more to it than that. There were political overtones. There were political overtones throughout the New Testament in regards to you're supposed to say Jesus is Lord, but Kaiser Kuria, Caesar is Lord, was something you were supposed to say later on when you offered the pinch of incense upon the altar.

The fact of the matter is, Christianity impacts how you view the world, and how you view how the world should be run. And so, there was a second element to things here. When the question is asked, by what authority are you doing these things?

Or who gave you this authority to do them? Jesus has answered this question a million times before. I mean, in John, even in Matthew, you've got the Father has sent the Son. The Father knows the Son. The Son knows the Father.

He's answered this question before. They are looking for a kind of answer they can use as an accusation. And Jesus knows this. He's been dealing with this for years now. I mean, we don't exactly know how long the ministry of Christ is.

The standard, normal estimate is three years. But there are some who actually try to cram it into one. There are some that say it was two. Three is about the longest. And all that's based on, well, how many Passovers are mentioned, and the chronology and stuff like that.

But it's interesting, none of the Gospel writers say, well, it lasted from this day to this day. That's not something that they find to be relevant enough to record for us.

However long.

It's been, Jesus has been experiencing the resistance of these leaders, and he knows what lies behind their question. And so his answer is not a non-answer, because a non-answer is what you get out of almost any politician today.

When you ask them a question that they know is going to be unpopular to answer, and so they do everything under the sun to not give you an answer, Jesus had already answered this question, over and over and over again.

In John chapter 10, they'd pick up stones to stone him when he gave them the answer to this question. And so what he does is he gives an answer that exposes their hypocrisy. It exposes their double standards.

And I'm not going to say that, oh, I studied this text and came up with this methodology for my debates, but it just comes out in debates all the time, exposing people in regards to the double standards that they utilize.

And the question is, and I love how Mark portrays it, that he asks them a question, and you can just see him going, hold on a second. And they all get together and, oh, if you say this, then he's going to say that.

If you say this, then he's going to say that. Can you just see them all gathered around together? It says they argued with one another. Luke says they discussed with one another, but both Mark and Matthew have, they argued with one another.

Well, if we say it's from heaven, then he will say, why didn't you believe him? But if we say it's from man, we're afraid of the multitude, for I'll hold the John as a prophet. And so this is going on, and what is Jesus doing during this time?

You know, I'd like to have a, sometimes I'd like to see a video of these things, you know, because we read it, and we're sort of focused upon these things, but it'd be sort of fun to sort of, I don't know, I just think about these things, it's sort of odd, but, you know, what's Jesus doing?

What's the crowd doing? You know, so you've got three components here. You've got Jesus and the disciples, and you've got the Jewish leaders, and then you've got the crowd. Now, the crowd has to be listening, or the Jewish leaders wouldn't be concerned about what they said.

And so they're sitting there, and, you know, is Jesus going like this? You know, is he looking, John, Peter, Peter, John, you know, are the disciples, you know, what are the disciples doing during this?

Especially since some of them had been John's disciples themselves. We don't know, but what I love is the politically correct answer they come up with. So they answer Jesus, I mean, come on! Not exactly a postmodern response.

You know, the postmodernists would have said, well, if you feel he was, you know, if it makes you feel good to think that he was, but we can't say for sure, you know, because we're postmodernists. No, they weren't postmodernists, so they didn't give that kind of response.

But what was the reaction of the crowd? Here are our leaders. Here are the men that we look up to for guidance and direction. The answer is to ask them a simple question. Was John a prophet of God or not?

Was he sent from God or not? We don't know. How is that even really an answer? Because you couldn't be neutral about this prophet. They certainly hadn't embraced him. We don't know. And so Jesus Jesus' response is not, well, I'm going to keep it a secret.

I'm not going to tell you who sent me. No, he's already answered the question. His point is you don't have a basis or a grounding to even ask me this question. You are so hypocritical. Your question is filled with hypocrisy.

I've now exposed your hypocrisy. There's no reason to even try to talk with you any longer. And that's what eventually, remember this is Matthew 21, and that means it's not too long. We've got some teaching and some commandments, things like that, and then we hit, in only a few pages, ten pages actually, section 284, and that's Matthew chapter 23.

And Matthew chapter 23 is the judgment of the scribes and Pharisees. Woe to you whitewashed walls, sepulchers filled with dead men's bones. I mean, I would say undoubtedly the strongest language in the Gospels.

The strongest language in the Gospels that is used in the condemnation of the Jewish leaders. And so that's coming, and so Jesus' response is, neither will I tell you about what authority I do these things, really is an answer because they won't answer him and they know by what authority he's doing these things.

He talked about his father. Yes, we're in 276. Actually, we just finished 276. Because he goes on in 277 with a parable found only in Matthew. This is a Matthean parable, and evidently he turns to the crowd, which has just heard this non-answer from the Jewish leaders, and he says, what do you think?

A man had two sons, and he went to the first and said, son, go and work in the vineyard today. And he answered, I will not. But afterward he repented and went. And he went to the second and said the same, and he answered, I go, sir, but did not go.

Which of the two did the will of his father? They said, the first. Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him.

The tax collectors and the harlots believed him, and even when you saw it, you did not afterward repent and believe him. So, notice, if you're looking at section 277, that there's a Mark column, and it's blank.

We've seen this over and over again. Mark focuses primarily upon the actions and words of Jesus. Rarely does he include the teachings part. And so, here you have a real good example of a single incident noted by Mark and Matthew.

They're pretty much identical. Mark's a little bit longer in giving the actual incident in 276. He uses a few more words. But then Matthew gives the parable. He gives the story element that goes along with it, and Mark does not, which I find very interesting.

Now, this is a.

Straightforward.

Application. Now, Mark actually ends at 33, and then he will start summarizing some of the parables that Jesus gives there during Passion Week, beginning in Mark chapter 12. He began to speak to them in parables.

And he does talk about vineyard and things like that, but this specific one about John, he does not record. Now, of course, each of the Gospel writers had to choose what they were and were not going to include of a large amount of material.

So, he puts them on the hot seat. What do you think? He's asking them for their expert opinion, and they were used to getting that. That's why they liked doing what they did, is that people would come to them and they would say, Rabbi, Rabbi, such and so, such and so, and what do you think?

And if you've seen Fiddler on the Roof, you know, if you haven't seen Fiddler on the Roof, you need to see Fiddler on the Roof just for New Testament background, okay? I mean, you know, because, well, okay, not New Testament background, but it really does do a good job at certain things, especially how the rabbi functions in the community.

And, you know, people would just come to the rabbi. Rabbi, Rabbi, what about this? What about that? And he would sort of try to draw from all of the traditions and come up with a wise answer. And so, Jesus says, what do you think?

So, rabbis, a man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, son, go and work in the vineyard today. And he answered, I will not. But afterward, he repented and went. And he went to the second and said the same.

And he answered, I go, sir, but did not go. Which of the two did the will of the Father? Well, you know, it's not a real difficult question. One went, though he initially refused. He repented. The other was a hypocrite.

Oh, yes, daddy, I'll go right away. But he never went. Did you go yet? Oh, I'm on my way. You know, this is a kind of non-obedience that is very, very standard in our day on the part of young people.

Oh, yes, yes, yes. I will do this. I will do that. And, you know, two days later, it still hasn't gotten done. And the question is not so difficult. Well, they did not give the right answer. They said the first.

Yes, the first did the will of the Father. The will of the Father was that he go to the vineyard. That he go and work in the vineyard. And one went. One did not. But the outward show of each one was different.

One was just honest and said, I will not. But then there was repentance followed by obedience. One said, I will. But there was never any obedience. So that's even a worse form of rebellion. So Jesus' application is brutal and straightforward and just must have made these men seethe.

Because when he says, truly, truly, I say to you, the publicans, the tax collectors and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. They they thought they were the kingdom of God. They thought they were the very essence of the kingdom of God.

They thought they had a handle on what the kingdom of God was. And they were the very picture of it. And when the Messianic kingdom came, they were going to be the first ones there. I mean, they were just so faithful to God and to his law.

And they had the phylacteries. And they did the prayers. And they gave the money to the temple. And Luke 16, the Pharisees standing there going, I'm glad I'm not like the publicans standing behind me.

And was very, very happy about the things that he did. And it is this presentation, by the way, of the self-righteous Pharisee that we need to be careful. There is a specific group being lampooned here.

There's a specific group being exposed here. And yes, they were the Jewish leaders of the day. But never forget that they had been around when Jesus was a child. And when Mary and Joseph brought the babe to the temple, there was a Simeon and there was an Anna.

Now, they didn't bring the children to the scribes and the Pharisees. They didn't bring the child to the scribes and the Pharisees. But there were those who were still righteous people in that day. And so, our tendency is just when it says the Jews, it's just all Jews.

Everybody. Well, obviously, God has always had His remnant. And we need to recognize that. But the same time, ever since World War II, especially in European theology, and it's become no less the case over here in large swaths of New Testament theology, Matthew is especially considered to be an embarrassing anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish book that is responsible for the Holocaust and the Crusades and everything else.

And is looked down upon by the high-brow scholars of our world for things like this. You cannot rightly identify the religious hypocrisy of the Jewish leadership of the first century without therefore making yourself accountable for what people do with that and twist out of that for centuries to come.

You all know what happened when the Passion of the Christ film came out many years ago, before its director and producer went completely insane.

And you know that there was this.

Big stench, this big stink about the trial scene where the Jews say, His blood be upon us and upon our children. Well, it was a direct quote out of Matthew. And you may recall what happened. There was such an objection to it that the studio was going to get in trouble and there were going to be theaters that weren't going to show it and all the rest of the stuff.

And so remember what he did, what Mel Gibson did, is he didn't take it out, but remember what the language of the movie was. The whole movie was in Aramaic. And it was all subtitled. And so what they did is they took the subtitle out.

Now, I don't speak Aramaic, but Aramaic is very close to Hebrew and I can understand enough of it to know what's being said. And certainly when it's a biblical text, there's no question identifying it.

And it was still there. You can hear them saying it, but whereas there has been subtitling all along, all of a sudden the subtitling disappeared. And so only if you can listen to Aramaic and figure out what's being said, did you know that it was there.

But at least he kept it in. But that's just an example of the kind of attitude that exists in the academy today, especially about the Gospel of Matthew. It is considered to be an embarrassment because of its honest representation of the hypocrisy of the Jewish leaders, the religious hypocrisy.

I mean, Matthew chapter 23, oh, it's just the kind, warm Jesus with the blonde hair who carries little lambs in his arms would never be like that. I mean, you know, of course little lambs generally wouldn't stay in your arms very long either, but anyway, we can't have a Jesus like that.

And so they're very embarrassed about it. And they don't want us thinking about it. But you just have to understand, I say to you, the tax collectors and the harlots going to the kingdom of God before you,.

Wow, that's.

What can you say? That's about as straightforward as you can get. And the tax collectors and harlots were considered to be the lowest dregs of society. The tax collectors were traitors to the Jewish people.

They worked for the Romans. That was the publican of Luke 16. I mean, you know from Luke 16 what Pharisees thought of tax collectors and publicans. And so to say, yeah, that guy's going to heaven before you.

He's going in the kingdom of God before you is to point out the fact that he wasn't saying that what they were doing was right. Jesus was not saying that being a harlot's a good thing. But when there's repentance, when they recognize what they're doing is evil, there's forgiveness.

There's no forgiveness for people who can't see that what they're doing is evil. That's the whole nature of what the unpardonable sin is. Unpardonable sin is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. What does the Holy Spirit do?

The Holy Spirit brings conviction of sin. If you think that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is actually the ministry of devils, then you are very safe from something called conviction of sin. And that's why it's unforgivable is because you'll never ask for forgiveness.

That's what makes it unforgivable. So here you've got, and by the way, who committed the unpardonable sin? Religious people. It's something only religious people do. It's being blinded by the light. You have so much light that you start calling that which is white, black, and black, white.

And so Jesus is very straightforward. He pins them to the wall and says, John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him. But the tax collectors and harlots believed him and even when you saw it, you did not afterward repent and believe him.

So he called for your repentance. You refused. So what they're doing is wrong. They're the first son, but they afterward repented and did what was right. You, on the other hand, you claim to always do what God tells you to do.

I mean, you keep all 613 laws just so you claim. But the reality is, you don't know what repentance is because you are so focused upon your law keeping that you don't realize the real attitude of your heart.

And so they could not help but have just been absolutely furious with this kind of thing. Their answer set them up. We don't know. And in Matthew, Jesus doesn't just let the, we don't know, go by. He doesn't in Mark either because Mark 12, he began to speak them parallels and parables, parables, parables, parables, parables, not the same thing actually.

Parabale means to cast something next to something. It's a story cast next to a truth to illustrate it. So parallel parables are actually fairly close. But anyway, he does start going after them in Mark chapter 12.

But here is a very pointed application. Now, we've got to admit that part of us goes when we hear the tax collectors and the harlots going to the kingdom of God before you, there's part of us that goes right?

I mean, there's part of us like, yeah, you know, it's the same thing, you know, when you see justice being done in a, you know, at the end of a Rambo movie, you know, the terrible, horrible, nasty guy, whether he's from Burma or Vietnam or Afghanistan or wherever it's from, I don't know.

You know, he's going to get his when Rambo takes him out, right? You know, and so you're like, because he's done all these terrible, horrible things. He's been torturing innocent people and all this stuff.

And so justice is going to be done and Rambo is going to do it, you know? And so you see something like that and you see these hypocrites and there's part of us that goes, but then there's another part of us that winces.

And I'm not exactly sure where that comes from. Maybe part of it is just cultural because it's awful straightforward and maybe it's just that there's way too much estrogen in our drinking water now or something.

I don't know. Maybe we're just becoming very soft and fluffy. I don't know. But we've seen people that act like this. We don't like it. I mean, I can certainly think of some good Independent Fundamentalist Baptist King James Only friends of mine.

Well, they wouldn't call themselves friends of mine, but acquaintances of mine that talk like this about everybody. They talk like this about their postman. They talk like this about the pimple-faced kid behind the counter at McDonald's.

Everybody is, you know, the wrath of God is being called down upon everybody. And, you know, you look at that and you just wince when you see these types of folks, the Terry Joneses, you know, that are off burning Qurans and stuff and.

Just the way they do it.

There isn't any... At least when Jesus does it, He does it as the sinless Son of God and He has absolute grounds for so doing. But we hear this and sometimes it's like, and so we're of two minds. Part of us is like, yeah, and part of us is like, and it's hard because always in the back of our mind we're going, yeah, you sure are going to offend a lot of people saying that, you know, offending people.

That's, in our society, the worst possible thing you can do. Well, something tells me Jesus was not overly concerned about that. I mean, unnecessary offense, that's a different issue. But Jesus has absolutely no concern.

Whatsoever about the.

Cultural mandate of our day, which is thou shalt not offend anyone, ever, about anything, especially in religion. Unless they're a Christian, then you can offend them all you want, which is how Hollywood handles things.

And, you know, we think about this. I guess I have just about enough time to mention this. I posted a video from a friend of mine, David Wood, yesterday or the day before yesterday, and he was commenting on what has happened since the burning of that Quran.

And I don't know about you, I've been shocked. I wasn't shocked by the rampages in Pakistan and Afghanistan. I wasn't shocked about that. I wasn't shocked by the fact there are far more Qurans burned in all of the fires started by Muslims protesting the burning of the Quran than have been burned by Terry Jones.

Because you've got to realize, in a Muslim business, you always have to have a Quran in... it's sort of a talisman. And so when they burned shops, they were burning Qurans. So many more Qurans were burned by Muslims in response to the burning of one Quran by Terry Jones.

It's just brilliant. Yeah, it's good. Man, rationality out the window. That was amazing, obviously. But what concerned me was the language of our own government. Most of you know that about a year and a half, two years ago, a church sent a number of New Testaments over to a soldier in Afghanistan, in Pashto, the language of the people there.

And when word got out, the army seized them, and you know what the army did with them? They took copies of the Christian Scriptures, were burned by the United States military in Afghanistan. Because you don't want to offend anybody.

And then you've got all of our leaders. President Obama, Secretary Clinton, generals, and all of them refer to the Quran as what? The Holy Quran. The Holy Quran. Over and over. We respect the Holy Quran.

Burn the Christian Scriptures, the Holy Quran. And there are lengthy, published instructions as to, at Gitmo, which I thought was closed. No, it's not yet. But anyways, at Gitmo, when you go into a prisoner's cell, you have to put on gloves, not just to protect yourself, which they do in any prison situation, but you have to put on gloves before you touch their Quran.

And the soldiers are to handle it like a fine piece of art, and show it reverence. There is no such instruction about a Bible. Then again, I doubt there are too many people at Gitmo that have a Bible, for some odd, strange reason.

But nothing like that. Nothing like that at all. And it just strikes me as this massive double standard, and that we have already in essence begun to embrace the same type of what's called dimitude that exists all across England today.

There are entire towns in England that will not allow Christmas decorations now, because of fear of offending Muslims. And you just go, the cultural mandate to not offend in matters of religion is not evenly and appropriately applied to everybody, in any way, shape, or form.

No one could possibly argue that it is. That's what we're facing today. Every time I schedule something, I am supposed to be debating in the East London Mosque next April, a year from now. The East London Mosque is the largest mosque in London.

And I can guarantee you, I will be a very small minority amongst a lot of long-road men with beards like this. So, Brother Callaghan, you might be finishing off the synoptic studies sometime starting in April of next year.

Actually, I just need to get it done before then, so that at least, well, he went out having finished the synoptic study. That's a good thing.

But, you know,.

How long will I be able to do that? Will I even be able to do that next year? I don't know. I could end up getting kicked out of Heathrow. Even though they invited you, you're on the wrong side of that argument.

Who knows? I don't know. We will find out. But anyhow, we will pick up with the parable of the wicked husbandman, in section 278, the next time we get together. And let's close our time with a word of prayer.

Indeed, our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the boldness of our Saviour in speaking the truth. We ask that you would give us an appropriate boldness as well, one that is based upon wisdom, a recognition of our own sinfulness, that we might not be pandering to our own sinful desires, but like the sinless Son of God, we would always have your glory in mind as we speak to anyone.