Book of Psalms - Psa. 25, vv. 8-15

Psalm 25: God’s Goodness, Uprightness, and His Teaching

All right, we're going to be in Psalm chapter 25 and we're going to pick up in verse 8, which is where we left off last time, I believe. Let's see here. We've been following David's prayer and he's been talking to the Lord about how merciful and kind he is.

He asks the Lord not to remember his transgressions nor the sins of his youth. Remember, we talked last time about the importance of remembrance and how it's a weapon or a plow to tame the mind. And y 'all remember that?

Y 'all recall some of that? We talked about some of the Hebrew behind the word remember. I did do that last time, yes? I want to make sure I'm not getting confused with Wednesday night because I think we had some overlap.

Good, okay. So we saw also that there was a parallel going on with Nehemiah and how he was asking the Lord. There were four different remembrances that he asked the Lord for. There were actually other remembrances too.

There were just four regarding him. There are other remembrances where he asks the Lord to remember his enemies. Today, we're going to pick up where we left off last time. Last time, we kind of concluded with the fact that God remembers his people because he is good and upright.

But we're going to see that there is something else that happens because God is good and he is upright. In verse 8, it says, good and upright is the Lord. Therefore, will he teach sinners in the way? I think the therefore is an interesting word here because it's like an if-then statement.

Like if goodness and uprightness are present, then something follows. Here, it says good and upright is the Lord. And so what follows because of that goodness and because of that uprightness is that teaching will follow.

Teaching will follow. And my question to you is why? Why does teaching follow goodness and uprightness? And if teaching follows goodness and uprightness, what will be taught? Any thoughts? Right. Okay, so if something is good, if something appears to be worthwhile, and it's done in such a manner that it improves something, it improves the world around it, it stands to reason that that's worth duplicating, right?

It stands to reason that that's actually something that's worth the time and effort that's required to learn. Like in other words, have you ever watched something either online or on TV? I think online, you might be scrolling through Facebook or something and somebody has a video pop up and they're working on something that's artistic.

Or back in the day, it was flipping through channels and Bob Ross came on, right? He's up there painting the clouds and stuff. You see someone doing something that creates beauty, right? And it's like, wow, look at that.

That's really cool. I don't know if this happens to you guys, but to me, I don't just sit and go, wow, that's cool. I almost kind of study it like, wow, how is he doing that? You know, how is it possible that you take this stick and you put it in some paint and you do some motions with it and all of a sudden it looks like a realistic cloud?

Or you get these little paintbrush strokes that by themselves just look like little strokes of paint, but you stick them on a canvas underneath the clouds and now it looks like grass, right? And there's design to it, there's order, there's a method to the madness of moving that thing around and all of a sudden there's something beautiful in front of you.

Have you ever done that where you're watching and you go, wow, how do you do that? Sometimes I'll rewind and go, I have to see that again. And what that is is that it's something good and that creates a learning environment almost.

It's like a result of goodness is either a curiosity of how it happened or at least an appreciation that it did happen and it causes people to go, I need to see that again. And something can be learned almost always when there's goodness.

Uprightness, also known as righteousness, that has a similar effect, but it's not always readily apparent. So you have someone who is of upstanding moral character and at first they may seem inconsequential to the people around them, but hold their feet to the fire and something happens.

Their character is shown and people around them see that something, maybe something terrible happened to them, but they're handling it in a way that they themselves think, I could never be like that. And people begin to watch.

I remember we have a friend who's worked with us who went through a very devastating divorce. His wife told him that he loved Jesus too much, if you can imagine. And that was very sad because he thought that that was something they had in common.

And I know there's two sides to every story. There's probably, and he would tell you, there's probably things he could have done differently. But when that divorce occurred, it kind of put him in the spotlight because all of a sudden you see what's going on in his life and you watch how's he handle it.

And a lot of really wonderful character traits started to be displayed about this person. And it really, it was inspirational to me and to Katie and to people around us to watch him go through this. We hated it for him, but there was learning that was going on in his own life as he processed the thing that was going on.

But there was learning that was going on in our lives as we processed his handling of the situation. And he did, he handled it in a very good way. He drew closer to God, even though that was the reason he was losing his spouse.

He drew closer to God through the process. And so this goodness or this uprightness caused learning. So when in verse eight, it says, good and upright is the Lord. It's like the very nature or essence of God is goodness.

It's uprightness. And that will cause learning to occur. But you can't just learn without a teacher. And therefore, because God is good and because God is righteous, if learning is going to occur, it's always a transfer of knowledge from the one who understands how to do something, Bob Ross with his painting, right?

To the one who doesn't know how to do something. And so if you're really good at something and people take note and they begin to appreciate what you're doing, a natural process just comes out of people, typically, a businessman.

You built a multimillion dollar business. People are like, wow, how'd you do that? And he's not just going to be like, well, I'm cool. Most of the time, he's going to start saying, well, here's what I learned and here's who taught me and here's what I learned not to do.

And here's what I learned to do. And so what's cool is that in this scripture, we see that God is very much similar in this respect. Because he's good, because he's upright and really he's the only source thereof, there has to be a teaching that occurs.

And it says, therefore, because he's good, because he's upright, he will teach sinners in the way. It's almost like it's unavoidable. People are going to come to him. Why are they going to come to him?

Because he's going to draw them. That's part of his goodness and his uprightness. They're not going to do it in and of themselves, but he's going to cause people to take note of what he's doing and he's going to cause them to go, how'd you do that?

What is it that you're doing? How can you possibly live as long as you did on earth and not sin one single time? I still ponder that like, I can't go a whole day sometimes, it seems like. And yet every single moment of every single day for approximately 33 years, not a single sin.

That's worth taking note of. It's worth asking him about. And guess what? He'll teach you about it. And that's what today's lesson is really kind of about, is that he's here to teach us. And that's what David is asking for.

He's asking to be taught. He's asked for God to not remember his past transgressions and to start showing him the way. You'll remember last week we talked about, I think it was verse, let me scroll up here, verses four and five, where it says, show me thy ways, O Lord, teach me thy paths, lead me in thy truth and teach me.

And we talked about how there's different types of learning going on there. There's the demonstration. We talked about the free throw, right? You show someone how to shoot a free throw. And then there's the conveying of how you did it, the teaching part, where you say, okay, here's everything that you saw that you didn't know you saw.

You explain it to them. And then there's a co-laboring, right? And then you shoot the free throw and you shoot it with me. And that's how David is asking the Lord to teach him, is show me, teach me, and lead me.

And he comes right back to teach me again because there's always a recap too. So it's a really beautiful progression of teaching there. And now he's talking about the fact that God is going to teach because he's good and he's upright.

He's just going to do it. The word for goodness has three Hebrew letters. It is tet, vuv, and bet. And each letter means something in and of itself. Tet is basket, vuv is a nail, and bet is house. And so the word goodness is composed of basket, nails, house.

Think of the picture that makes in your head. What would a basket of nails for a house be for? Repair, right? It'd be for securing. It'd be for strengthening. It'd be for improving. And goodness is precisely that.

It's supposed to bring repair. It's supposed to bring improvement. Those same letters can literally mean surrounding a secured family. And so when there's goodness presence, there's protection. There's surrounding.

There's security, which is not quite the same as protection. It's similar because you have protection which surrounds. Security is establishment, right? Like it's not just protection from outside problems.

It's protection from inside problems. Like it's like being balanced. In martial arts, you have the belt, right? The belt, the white belt, yellow belt, green belt, that kind of thing. And the belt is always considered the point of balance.

Like if you're going to try to throw somebody off balance, you're going to try and get their belt off kilter. I find it interesting that in the armor of God, we have the belt of truth. Because truth establishes.

What did Mr. Brown just say a minute ago? Like there's going to be truth taught for goodness and uprightness. The word for upright is yasar, which means to fashion, form, or frame. So you have a basket of nails for a house and you're going to go frame it.

Isn't that neat? Like that's what God is doing because he is good and he is upright. He's the master builder. And that master builder is going to convey how to improve your life, how to mimic goodness, how to mimic uprightness.

And he starts with, there's a certain type of person that receives this kind of instruction, which we'll see in verse 9. What kind of person will receive this instruction? Verse 9, Psalm 25. The meek, what is meekness?

A calm strength. I love the way you said that, Pop. Calm strength. Any other answers? Humble. Yeah, it's often translated as humble. What I really love about this concept of meekness, which is also sometimes translated as gentleness, is gentleness is something that many people misunderstand.

I'll bring up martial arts again. I was in Shaolin Jiu-Jitsu growing up. And the very words Jiu and Jitsu mean something. Jiu is soft or gentle. And Jitsu is art or science. Put them together, it means, you would think, soft and gentle art and science.

But it's actually a form of self-defense without the use of a weapon. And you wouldn't think of martial arts as being soft or gentle. But a true martial artist understands that by being soft or gentle, you actually gain an advantage in the martial arts.

If you hit something that's rigid, it's going to hurt, right? If you hit a board that is rigid, it very well may break. But try hitting a board that is still green being recently caught or cut. It's just not going to break very easily at all.

So soft actually allows you to absorb blows. So you learn to take a blow by becoming soft to the blow. You learn to breathe in a way that when someone punches you, you absorb the blow. You don't just tense up and let it hit you.

You absorb it. So it's very important, this concept of gentleness. Now, at the same time, what do you think of when it comes to martial arts? What comes to mind? Fighting, right? Aggressiveness, strength, endurance.

These are the thoughts that most people have when it comes to martial arts. But to be someone who can take a blow, you have to be soft. Now, in order to take that blow and to be soft, guess what you have to do?

You have to condition a lot. You have to be well-conditioned, which means you actually have to be very strong. And the reality is gentleness takes a lot of strength. Meekness takes a lot of strength.

You cannot be meek without strength. But guess what? You have no strength. In and of yourself, you've got none. So it's going to require an outside source to help you gain the strength. Now, in martial arts, that's very true as well, because if you go and try and train yourself, you can reach a level of strength that may serve you to some degree in life.

But until you get someone training you and pushing you far beyond what you thought you ever could, you'll never be as strong as you need to be to absorb the blows that may come your way. So you have to have a teacher.

Praise the Lord. He's our teacher. What kind of blows are we going to receive in this life? Sometimes physical, sometimes much more damaging, mental, emotional, spiritual blows. And we have to learn to be soft with great strength.

How does that work? Well, recognizing that the strength doesn't come from us, it comes from the Lord. We don't stand in our own strength and try to resist, but rather we be like Esther, and we point to the enemy and say, Hey, King, there's the bad guy.

Let that outside source of strength take care of it for you. Jordan Peterson, who has gained a lot of notoriety recently, he's a psychologist. I saw a really funny meme about him because the Christian culture wants so badly to say, That guy's a Christian.

But he himself has said, I'm not really fully ready to give myself over to that. And the funny meme was it was a video of some movie where there's this monk type guy who's yelling at someone saying, Say Jesus Christ is Lord.

Say it. Say Jesus Christ is Lord. And it's like how Christians feel about Jordan Peterson. It's really funny. But he has a lot of great wisdom that is derived from Scripture. And he'll tell you it's derived from Scripture.

In fact, one of the things that he encourages young men to do is, the way he puts it is become a monster, but then learn to control it. And what he means by that is there is a big difference between goodness and weakness.

We tend to think that weakness is good because you're not causing rifts, you're not doing anything to cause trouble or make trouble. And we mistake that for being good because no trouble is coming from the person.

But just because you are incapable of causing much trouble because you are a coward or you're a weak person, that doesn't make you good. He says what makes you good, at least as far as he can tell, from the human viewpoint, of course, being someone who may not understand who the Lord is, is that you have the capability to do great harm, but you control it, which shows character.

And that character shows that you have strength in gentleness. So this concept of meek, where the Lord is going to teach those type of people, it denotes what type of people we are called to be. If we know the Lord, we're called to be people of great strength, great capability.

But recognizing that the strength doesn't come from us. The strength comes from Him, and we are soft or moldable in His hands. If you try to do pottery, you can't mold something into its form. You can't frame it, you can't form it unless it's got some water to it.

You put some water on the clay and it becomes soft. And that soft clay all of a sudden can be formed. What a beautiful picture, if you think about it. Because water, we know from Scripture, is often a picture of God's Word.

So if you understand God's Word, it can begin to mold you. It can begin to soften you to God's ways. Understand His Word, you can understand His ways, and you can begin to be formed or molded to His goodness and His uprightness.

But you've got to be soft for that. And it takes great strength and discipline to make yourself go to the Word. One of my favorite things that I have heard this year came from Matt and his dad. They were talking about how sometimes you get in a situation in your life where you may be spiritually sick.

And just like a physically sick person can't really fight off sickness unless they force-feed themselves food. You might not have the appetite for it, but your body needs the food so that it can begin to fight off the sickness.

Same thing's true with God's Word. If you don't force-feed God's Word for a little while, even though you may not feel like reading it, if you'll force-feed it a little bit, it will give you the nourishment you need to begin fighting off the sickness.

And eventually, guess what you get back? Your appetite. Eventually you get where all of a sudden you want that Word a little bit more. I think it's awesome. It's like my favorite thing I've learned this year.

I've never thought of it that way. And it was some conversation that Matt and David had at breakfast or something between the two of them, and Matt shared it with me. I was like, whoa, that's so good.

So, we should be soft. How do we become soft? We get in God's Word, and it will give us strength. So we will have the capability to be strong, but control our strength. And that is the type of person God will guide in judgment.

If you think about what judgment is, it requires a certain type of strength. First you have to have a positional strength to be the one to judge, right? You go to the court, not just anybody gets to judge you, right?

It's the judge who gets to judge you. But then that judge needs to have some kind of mental strength to know how to judge and how to judge rightly. Solomon understood this. This is why Solomon said, I know not how to judge this thy people, but a child.

I don't know how to go out or how to come in. Give me wisdom that I may judge this thy people. He understood that wisdom was a type of strength that he needed now that he had the position of judge. So the meek he will guide in judgment, and the meek will he teach his way.

Judgment is supposed to be passed by a righteous judge. Therefore, the idea of him guiding us in judgment is the idea of him guiding us in righteousness. And goodness is a correct way to live. It's the result of an inner righteousness.

So it's interesting that in verse 9 there's these two things that we're told he's going to teach the meek in, right? He's going to guide the meek in judgment, and he's going to teach the meek his way.

What's the purpose of that? Well, judgment is the way you comprehend the situation and determine to act in a situation. That's your judgment. That all happens before you actually do the acts. And then the way is the good works that should result from the righteous judgment.

So there's an inner working going on here. There's an external working going on here. Isaiah says, this is Isaiah 26 .3, Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee.

So there's this inner thing that happens to the meek, right? They have this idea or this concept of peace in their lives. It happens because of a connection with the Lord. We get that connection through his word and through prayer.

And so we have this inner connection with the Lord. It should manifest as outer goodness that others will see. Verse 10, All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth, unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies.

All right. There's mercy and there's truth awaiting those who keep his covenant. Here's my question. What is his covenant? Who in here wants mercy and truth? Raise your hand if you want mercy and truth.

I certainly do, right? I want mercy for when I mess up. I want to know what the truth is so that I don't mess up again. Right? So I want, just like David's asking, I want you to forget my past transgressions and the sins of my youth, and I want you to guide me from here on out so that I'm walking in truth and I don't have to worry about messing up anymore.

So we want that. How do we get it? It's pretty simple. Just got to keep his covenant and his testimonies. But how do we do it unless we know what those are? So what's his covenant? What do you guys think?

And we've been talking about the inner man, been talking about his external deeds.

Is it the old covenant or the new covenant?

That's a great question. We are reading in the Old Testament here. But keep in mind that the old covenant points to the new. Right? It's a picture of the new. Yes, the Abrahamic covenant, which is grace.

The covenant, and here's what's really cool about the way this verse is written. It makes a distinction between covenant and testimonies. Does anyone know what testimonies is? Yeah. Well, I mean, if you want to be grammatically correct about it, does anybody know what testimonies are?

I was homeschooled, Pop. If you do a word study on it, the definition of it is like the laws. It has to do with the law. And so what we have here is we have a distinction made between grace and the law.

What is the Abrahamic covenant? It's grace. What's it look like? He'll never leave us nor forsake us. He has loved us unconditionally from the foundation of the world. He died for us before the world was made.

He has freed us from the penalty of sin. He's broken its bond on us, and he's paid its wages. That's his covenant. It's pretty one-sided. It's really quite lopsided if you think about it. Now, Jesus took on the part that we're supposed to do, which is pictured by the testimonies.

And he said, if they break that, guess what? I'll pay the price, which he did, of course, right? And so he paid the price on the cross and has paid for every sin we have ever committed or ever will commit.

And that is a really good thought to think. If you can think about that every day, that Jesus will pay for every sin you've ever committed and that he would pay for every sin you do commit. Couple that thought with what is the price, and you might just be moved not to sin as much.

Someone who is his should be moved to sin less. Someone who wants the salvation side of God and not the sanctification side. They don't want the discipleship side. They might say, oh, I'm good. I've got my fire insurance.

He's going to pay for all my sins, so let's live it up. And there are some in this world that truly think that way. Doesn't sound like you really have a love for the Lord, does it? But we know that his people do love him and that we love him because he first loved us.

The testimonies are God's laws. The fact that the distinction is made between those who keep his covenant and those who keep his testimonies shows that you really don't have any part in the salvation process in and of yourself.

The testimonies, the laws that we keep, come as a result of the covenant that he keeps. You go, okay, but Dave, it says here that all the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant.

So we've got to keep his covenant. So next question, now that we know what his covenant is and we know what his testimonies are, how do we keep them? What does it mean to keep them? Yes, sir. Okay, yes, sir.

Okay, so specifically talking about the word of God there, right? Write it upon your doorposts. Make it like frontlets between your eyes, things of that nature. Okay, remembering what he's done for you, obviously that's great on the heels of what we talked about last week, which is there is an importance in remembrance and it's to help switch the mind onto good things and off of bad things.

That's a good thought, too. Any other answers?

Yes, sir. The word of the keeper means enemy to protect. So it could mean, because obviously you can't keep the testimonies, and the first verse says keep his covenant and his testimony. You can't keep the testimony.

The truth is you didn't keep the covenant, Jesus did. All you can do is protect it.

That's exactly what I'm getting at, because we talked about Jesus being the one who fulfilled the Abrahamic covenant. He took on our part. That's the part that we tend to forget. We tend to look at it as it's a covenant between us and Jesus.

Like Jesus said, I'm going to save you from your sins, and because we think it's between us and Jesus, it makes us think, he's going to save me from my sins if I do X, Y, Z. But that's not how the Abrahamic covenant went, because Abraham was put to sleep.

The Abrahamic covenant went like this. The Father said, I'm going to forgive all these sins. I'm not going to remember any of them. I'm going to be a God to these people, and they will be my people. And Jesus said, all right, now I'm going to be Abraham here for a sec, and when he doesn't make it right, when he doesn't keep his side of the bargain, I'll be the one that pays the price so that the covenant is kept.

And it's still in behalf of him. It's still in behalf of the people, so the covenant isn't between us and him. The covenant is between him and the Father. We just get to be beneficiaries of it. So for us to keep the covenant, one, we've got to believe the covenant.

We have to understand that that's how it works. It's not us, it's him. All the glory goes to him. Yes, sir. I like that. David, in case you couldn't hear online, don't you think that someone who understands this concept, that it wasn't between us and Jesus, it was between Jesus and the Father, and we were like Abraham, asleep on the side and just receiving the benefits, doesn't that, by its very nature, if you understand and believe this, make you, by definition, someone who is meek?

To some degree, I would say, absolutely. Now, could we cultivate that meekness? Sure. But if that's your starting point, that's a great starting point because you recognize it's not your strength but his.

And so the testimonies of God, they are the laws. They're the result of the covenant. But the covenant was made between Jesus and the Father. The laws were kept by Jesus. And so the ones that get taught are the ones who are keeping the covenant and keeping the laws.

Only one man's ever done that. Jesus. So the only way you're ever going to be able to be taught by God is to be connected to him. You have to be connected to Jesus. Otherwise, you will not be taught of God because he's the only one who God will truly teach in that respect.

He will teach you by being connected to his Son. But you see it throughout all of Jesus' life. He is the one talking with us. He is God with us. And the Father is just downloading information to his Son.

I wish I had thought to put this in here, but there's a scripture where Jesus is talking with a group of people. And practically mid-sentence, he stops and thanks the Father for revealing something to him.

It's like while he's transferring information to us, he's also simultaneously downloading information from the Father. So cool. That's how it works.

Yes? It's hard to walk in that covenant and follow the teacher if you don't watch where he's going. Absolutely. You have to see where you're going.

You got to know where he's going to walk and follow him and to show me, teach me, lead me, right? You've got to have your eyes open. You've got to be watching and following. I think the fact that the distinction is made between covenants and testimonies should be proof enough that we are saved by the works of Christ and not by our own works.

Verse 11, For thy name's sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great. Now, David right there has just admitted he didn't keep the testimonies. Right? So he says, for thy name's sake. And this, Spurgeon says, is a plea that is never failing.

When you plea for the Lord to do something for himself, for his own name's sake, it will never fail because he will always do something for his own name's sake. Who is the father's name's sake? The son.

Do this for the son. Do it for me, but not really for me. Do it for your son, and he's going to take care of me. See, David said something interesting a minute ago. He said, like, keeping the testimonies can also be translated as protecting.

Right? And we do have a responsibility of protecting, and protecting what truth is by rightly dividing the truth, but also protecting the testimony of the truth or our own personal testimony from our own personal sin.

So we have a duty to him for the uprightness, for the goodness, to match that because when we take on the name Christian, we too are a namesake. We are a joint heir with Christ. So while the father does something for his namesake, the son, we get the benefit of that as well because we too are namesakes.

And so our responsibility after the salvation is to closely match the namesake. It's to closely match the son so that now we are not bringing harm to the covenant or the testimonies for the outside people looking in.

Verse 12, or you might say it like this for verse 11, because it's the work of Christ, it's His name that's on the line. It's not Dave Huber's name that's on the line. It's not my reputation so much that's on the line.

From the human viewpoint, sure, yeah, you'd say, well, Dave can ruin his reputation with sin. But what am I really doing when the world looks at an apostate and they say, look, this person claimed to be Christian once, and look now how they're living.

What does that do? It brings shame on his name. And it's the Lord's name that's on the line here because it's all the Lord's work. So we have a responsibility to do the very best we can and then we'd be like, David, when we mess up, and say, please pardon my past transgressions and then just guide me some more.

Make me better at it so I don't mess up again next time. David says, what man is he that feareth the Lord? Him shall he teach in the way that he shall choose. Seems like a weird way to write something.

What kind of person fears God? What do you think? The one that is found by God, right? You only fear the Lord if you're found by him. Otherwise, you don't even know the Lord for fearing him. In Proverbs, the fear of the Lord is the hatred of evil.

Think about what that means. If you hate evil, you will walk uprightly. You will have goodness coming out of your hands and your feet, right? Like the things you do will be good, but it starts with a fear of the Lord.

Him shall he teach the way, the type that fear the Lord, the type that is meek, the type that is moldable in his hands, one that is in his word so that he's soft. It's interesting that it says that he shall choose.

Who's it talking about that he shall choose? Who's doing the choosing? Jesus is doing the choosing. Well, yeah, the Father gave Jesus. That's true. And to be most accurate, I think we should say it that way.

But also, there you have the, what do you call it, the predeterminate counsel, or they work together for that to be done. But it is a love gift from the Father, and the Son gets to be a part in that choosing.

He gets to choose his bride. It's one of the things that David has talked about in the past, which I think is really great, is that man wants so badly to say, I get to choose my wife, but they think that Jesus doesn't get to choose his.

He has to save everyone, and that's not the way it works. Those who are pliable in his hands, those who are soft because of his word, those who are taught in his way, and who remember his word, they will, their soul shall dwell at ease.

That's verse 13. His soul shall dwell at ease. That recalls back to that Isaiah passage, thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee. His soul shall dwell at ease, and his seed shall inherit the earth.

So now we have a perpetual benefit that comes from that, something that extends beyond our own benefit. If I'm pliable in my Savior's hands, if I will follow his word, it's not just going to change me.

It's not just going to form me and frame me with the bucket of nails or the basket of nails for the house. It's going to frame those who come after me, like my kids. By doing that, there's a benefit that my kids get to receive from that.

All right, and this is the last thing we're going to do today is verse 14, for sake of time. The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him, and he will show them his covenant. All right, so here's my question.

What's the secret of the Lord? Some of y 'all are sitting there thinking, I need to fear him more so that I can find out. So you touch on a couple of things there. One, you touch on the salvation relationship, but then also you touch on a way that Jesus taught something.

You touch on a methodology, right? He taught in parables so that some wouldn't understand the relationship. You see what's happening there? Like, you have people in your life that you are close to, and you know their ways.

You can know their ways before, in some sense, before they actually just tell you, because you know them so well, you know what's going to happen. Katie and I will go to the movies. I will grab one of my jackets, even though I don't need it, because I know when we get to the movies, she's going to get cold, right?