Synoptics Section 282-283

Yeah, I know.

We may have to find some other topics for a little while. All right.

We press on. Not overly quickly, because there's this big hill to get over here in a little while.

But Section 282, the Great Commandment, we've actually already looked at it before,

Section 182. So I will only briefly go over it now so as to maintain the context primarily in the

Book of Matthew, because we have, especially in Matthew's account, the context we just had in Section 281, the question about the

Resurrection. So you have the Thaddeuses, and then in Matthew 22, it's the

Pharisees. So you have two of the major groups being dealt with, and Matthew continues that context.

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Thaddeuses, they came together.

And then you'll notice that's 2234, and then in 2241, now while the

Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question. And so Matthew has a little bit more of a running context in the sense of the different groups that are opposing

Jesus. And then in 283, you have, in 281, 282, it's those groups coming to Jesus, posing their best questions.

And in 283, Jesus turns that around. He goes after them. And after the question about Psalm 110,

Matthew has, and no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

Now, of course, this is Passion Week already, so in that sense.

So it's not like, you know, for the next three years nobody asked him a question. But it was the end of that conflict.

And at the end of that, you then have Matthew 23, and that is a long extended condemnation of the

Jewish leaders, which comes after the last of the interactions. The interactions have shown on the one side they gave their best, and Jesus answered their questions.

And then when he asked them, they could not answer his questions. And so when you get to the lengthy and strongly worded condemnation of the

Pharisees, there is a lot of background to it. And, of course, it's these very texts that have become such an embarrassment in modern

New Testament studies. Everything post -World War II is just hypersensitive to anything that could be interpreted as anti -Semitic, anti -Jewish.

Because the Holocaust, and especially in German theology, there is, and whether you like it or not, in Europe and in many other places it is

Germans, German higher critical schools, etc., etc.,

that take the lead. They have often taken the lead right off the cliff, theologically speaking.

But for some reason people forget that and continue on. But there is a tremendous hypersensitivity.

You all remember, well maybe you don't, but it happened to be on, I clicked the

TV on when I was at a Red Roof Inn in Santa Fe on my way back from Colorado.

And I was dragging my stuff in and I clicked it on and it was on the Passion film. And so I watched a few minutes of it and I knew basically where it was.

And so I was watching to see again the fact that when they had the trial and the

Jews said, His blood be upon us and upon our children, that was the big controversy back when this came out, if you recall.

There were Jewish groups saying this is going to reignite anti -Jewish sentiment and la la la la la.

And so what they did is in the final cut, if you recall, it was all done in Aramaic.

And then they would provide subtitling in English. But at that point they cut out the subtitling.

So it's still there in Aramaic, it's just not there in the subtitling. And that's how they tried to get around that particular issue.

But there's all these texts, especially like Matthew 23, the entirety of the chapter, which is a long section of woes pronounced upon the

Jewish leadership. And it's not, I think, just happenstance that you have in 22 the conflict, the one -on -one conflict in public, ends with their inability to answer the key question as to the identity of who the

Messiah would be from Psalm 110, when Psalm 110 becomes, we've seen in the study of Hebrews, how central that is.

The Lord said to my Lord, sit at our hands so the enemies may have footstool for your feet. Which you see quoted in Matthew 22, 44.

And Jesus answers, how does David call him Lord? If he's merely a descendant of David, how does he call him

Lord? They don't have an answer, there's a refutation, and then that goes into the woes upon the

Jewish leaders, which then concludes in Matthew 23, in that section about Jerusalem, Jerusalem, off what

I've gathered your children together, but you would not. And so it's the Jewish leaders, they've been staying in the purpose of God, and now

God's judgment comes, and what's the next chapter in Matthew 24? In Matthew, but Matthew 24.

And not one stone will be left upon another in the destruction of Jerusalem. So, you clearly have a development of a theme in Matthew's Gospel at this point, as to what he is focusing upon.

And this also raises a question as to the dating, once again, of the

Gospels. One of the big, big, big, big, big issues that is going on,

I know, for example, next week, somebody, there's a groundswell of support to try to get me to do it via phone, but I don't think it's going to happen, but Bart Ehrman is going to be on the

Unbelievable Radio program in London, and he's going to be discussing his book,

Forged. It's just come out, and I can guarantee you that book has already been placed on at least 500 required reading lists across the nation, in colleges, community colleges, universities.

I can just guarantee it. And so that means there's going to be all these people that are going to be reading about how a large portion, not all, but a large portion of the

New Testament is a forgery. It's written by someone who didn't actually write it. And you may recall,

I don't know, a year, year and a half ago or so, we did a study one day where I went through the arguments against the pastoral epistles, 1st, 2nd

Timothy, and Titus. And we went through the arguments that are used against those having been written by Paul.

Bart Ehrman, for example, only believes we have seven genuine Pauline letters, and all the rest of them are forgeries.

And we went through all the reasons for this, and we pointed out that it's whatever you determine, how you start will determine how you finish.

So when it comes to these issues, if you, you know,

Ehrman starts with these seven, so you create a database out of them, and then you compare them with the others, we'll see how different they are.

But people point out, if you take any one out of that database, recreate that database and put that one over here, now this one's different.

Now this one isn't Pauline. So Romans, yeah, Paul wrote Romans. If you take Romans out, create your database out of the resultant six, then compare it with Romans, now

Romans is not written by Paul, on the very same basis as you had concluded the other ones were written by Paul.

So it all just depends on where you start, as to how you're going to come to a conclusion on all these things.

And so one of the issues that comes up is the dating of these documents.

And so your standard presentation that you're going to hear, in most theological seminaries, as well as universities, is, and I know that those of you who were here, how long ago?

Eight? Eight years ago? Eight years ago. Coming up to the ninth anniversary.

And I know everybody who was here nine years ago remembers exactly what I said about this.

I know that this is, you're sitting here, you could mouth everything I'm about to say, right,

Rick? You know, right? Nine years is but a drop in the bucket.

Especially when you're as old as Rick. So, anyway. Hey, I'm not that far behind.

But we did, when we introduced this study, have some discussion about the dating of the

Gospels, because that's important as to how they relate to one another. And we talked about the various theories, and what you'll normally hear from a

Bart Ehrman would be that Mark's the earliest, and then Matthew and Luke edit

Mark, and then John is the last. And John may or may not have even known about the other

Gospels. And date -wise, he will put them earliest, in the late 70s, early 80s,

Matthew and Luke into the 80s and 90s, and John at the end of the first century or the beginning of the second century.

So none of them are, just, for Ehrman, you are not a critical scholar, you are not to be taken seriously, you should not even be listened to, if you do not take those perspectives.

You're just a loon, a fundamentalist goofball, and you should just be ignored because you're a moron.

Now, because of that then, these are not eyewitnesses, and if you take this perspective, and these are all written post -AD 70, these are all written after the destruction of Jerusalem.

And that, of course, will determine how you interpret them as well, especially when you get into Matthew 24, and what's going on there.

And so from their perspective, though it's placed as prophecy what's coming, it's just a big lie.

You're pretending that you're prophesying, you're pretending as if this was written before that, at least, not necessarily written before that, but Jesus said these things.

And so what you're doing is you're putting into Jesus' mouth prophetic words that you already know what the outcome is.

So, because, you have to do that, because what's the assumption of the world view? There isn't such thing as prophecy. Nobody knows what the future's going to hold.

And so they have to put them that way just to explain these things. So, this leads to an interesting aspect that we'll get into more when we look at Matthew 24, and that is one of the biggest conundrums and difficulties that we still have today in the interpretation of these texts is, for example, in Matthew 24, most people would recognize that a portion of Matthew 24 is fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem.

But the big question is, is there anything that goes beyond that? Is there a dividing line where, okay, this material up to here is in the destruction of Jerusalem, but this material is still yet future beyond that?

And there's big arguments about all that. One of the reasons there's big arguments is, there's certain things that are spoken in the words of Jesus that are difficult to understand how they could have been fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem alone.

And if this generation will see all these things, it just doesn't make sense that if, in fact, these are later writers putting these words into Jesus' mouth after the events of the destruction of Jerusalem, described the destruction of Jerusalem, they didn't do a very good job at it.

In other words, why would someone writing post -AD 70 put words in Jesus' mouth that were not obviously fulfilled in AD 70, if that's what you want people to know?

And so it raises the question about the dating of these things and why the assumption is made that they're as late as they are by so many people today.

Now, of course, us backwoods fundamentalist texts go, you know, there's no reason to, just on the face of it, consider these texts to be guilty until proven innocent, which is basically how modern scholarship works.

They're guilty until proven innocent. They're parables. The people are lying to us through their teeth.

If these are, in fact, disciples of Jesus, or in the case of Mark, first -generation disciple of Jesus, possibly giving us

Peter's view, as was a popular view in the early church, then it would make sense that they would record what

Jesus said for us. And the fact that there are certain things in this upcoming discourse that are not easy for us would flow from the fact that that's what

Jesus said, not that this is some later generation trying to make up a story to substantiate the

Christian understanding of the relationship between Jews and Christians, which is how most people take it today. Now, personally,

I would put Mark in the 40s. If it is the first,

I don't know that it is. We've talked about this. I don't know that Mark is the first.

The early church thought Matthew was, which is why Matthew is put where Matthew is. And that would make sense because who is

Matthew obviously writing for? He's writing for the Jews. And after 1870, that would be, you know, sort of writing a book today for the fans of the

Winnipeg Jets. In case you haven't noticed, they're not around anymore. In fact, I think we ended up inheriting that not -so -overly -good team.

So, you know, why would you write a book today for the fans of the Winnipeg Jets? Because there are no Winnipeg Jets anymore.

So, if you are writing a book specifically for the Jews, it would seem to me to make sense that Matthew would be written prior to the destruction of Jerusalem.

And, in fact, there have been those who have argued for a pre -AD 70 date for the entirety of the

New Testament, including John. That's pretty unusual. Even amongst conservatives, John is normally considered to be post -AD 70, but there are those who have argued for a pre -AD 70 date for the entirety of the

New Testament. They are in the minority today, but it has been argued.

We don't know that Mark goes first. I personally think that it is less problematic to assume that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are drawing from the same oral tradition, and hence their parallels, than it is that there is an absolute documentary reliance between each of these

Gospels. However, Luke says, what does he say in Luke chapter 1? I use written sources.

Other people have compiled the stories of Jesus. I interviewed people.

I have carefully examined these things. He just straight says, I've done my homework, basically. So, I wouldn't have any problem if Luke had

Mark, or if Luke had Mark and Matthew, for all that matters, because he straight up says, that's how

I did it. That's not an issue. But, it's unfortunate that today, one particular theory has become so predominant, that basically, you're not even allowed to question it.

You're not even allowed to think about other things without being dismissed as a bit of a kook or a loon. That is the

Mark and Priority Hypothesis. It was interesting, a few years ago, I read an article where they decide to let a computer take a shot at it.

There's a lot of this stuff coming out. Again, I just saw one last week. An article came out that they're using computers to determine, in the

Old Testament, the J -E -D -P theory, the Yahweth, the Eloist, Deuteronomous, Priestly sources, and just cutting, especially the

Pentateuch, up into just ribbons. I can just see a lot of people going, wow, well, if a computer did that, it must be right.

Yeah, okay, have you used Google recently? Yes, sir? That's the whole point.

I mean, you have to tell the computer, make your decisions based upon these parameters.

And, what parameters are put in? What's the starting assumption? But, the problem is, people don't think of it that way.

They have this odd idea that, well, they're computer programmers, they're scientists, they'd be perfectly unbiased.

We chuckle at that, but let's face it. Polls show us that the American populace is a bit naive about these things.

And so, you've got all this stuff. There was a computer study that looked at Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and determined that Luke was the original source of both

Matthew and Mark. Well, that's not what the other church thought. It's not a real popular thing today.

But, again, it all depends on what you start with. It all depends on what your starting assumptions are. And, unfortunately, in 98 % of what's being published today, even coming out of seminaries, the assumption starts with an anti -supernaturalistic bias.

The one idea that can never be put into the computer at the start is that there's a harmonious way of understanding all these texts together.

No, no, no. That's the one thing that just is not even allowed into the discussion.

So, that's why I've said to you many times, one of the most spiritually dangerous places in the world is a

Christian bookstore. You really should, just in your mind, see coiled rattlesnakes on both shelves as you walk down the aisles, because, especially when you go into the commentary section, there's just so much there that comes from a completely foreign perspective.

Just keep those things in mind. And, as we look at this material in the synoptics, that's going to keep coming up over and over and over again.

So, with all that in mind, that's all just background stuff that hopefully will be of use to us as we press forward here.

The discussion of the greatest commandment here in Matthew 22, we covered it in 182, back with,

I believe it was Luke chapter 10. It's not unheard of that there would have been multiple times when this question was asked, because it was a question that was prevalent amongst the

Jews. What is the greatest commandment? If you have 630 some odd of them, there's going to be some arguments as to which one is most important.

And, Matthew places this particular one. This was a lawyer.

Luke has the same thing. A lawyer stood up to test him. But, it's placed in the context of the

Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees with his response about the woman and the seven brothers.

And so, he rises to test him, teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law? And, once again, the idea was let's drag him into some sectarian battle where we can pigeonhole him and so on and so forth.

And, Jesus' response, of course, is to quote from the Shema. You shall love the

Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. The second is like it.

You shall love your neighbors yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

Now, again, this was not the first time this had been said. By God's grace, there had been men and women amongst the people of Israel who had understood these things, who had read the

Old Testament Scriptures, and had heard what they said, and had understood. I'm sure

Simeon and Anna would have understood these things, and so on and so forth.

There's no reason to think that everything Jesus said was absolutely unique because he himself said, you know, on these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

If you've read the law and the prophets, what I'm speaking is in perfect harmony with that. And, as the Messiah, he would speak in perfect harmony with those things.

And, the irony was, of course, that this is part of the Shema. Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Elohim, Yahweh our

God, here with Israel. The Lord is our God. The Lord is one. And, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.

This is part of the daily prayers. This was not an overly difficult question, shall we say.

It had only become complicated because of the imbalance in the view of the law that had entered into Phariseeism.

Well, into all of Judaism at the time, but especially seen within the Pharisees. And, by answering the way that he did,

Jesus provided the perfect antidote to legalism. Because, legalism always ends up creating a focus upon the details of the law rather than the motivations of the law.

And, the legalist loses focus upon his own inability to keep the law and, hence, the necessity of God's grace and mercy.

In the Old Testament, loving kindness, covenant faithfulness. And, that focus shifts over from the mercy and grace of God to my fulfillment of the commands of God.

And, it inevitably results in the attitude we saw in the

Pharisee, the publican. And, I thank you God that I am not like this disgusting sinner that is standing behind me that I really wish didn't have access to this clean, holy place that only

I and a few of my friends should really have access to in the first place. And, so, the response, it's interesting, if you look at your synoptic, once again, we have one of these situations that we've observed it before, but let's observe it again.

When Matthew and Mark tell the same story, Mark being much shorter than Matthew, normally tells it with more words.

He gives a fuller account. And, so, you note that while the answer is interesting in Mark, he gives the

Shema. Notice the first is, Here is the Lord our

God and the Lord is one and you shall have the Lord your God. So, he gives the full Shema in Mark 12, 29, including that first portion, the proclamation of monotheism, that's not found in Matthew or Luke.

And, then, you have a response from the person who's asked the question in Mark 12 beginning in verse 32.

And, the scribe said to him, You are right, teacher, you have truly said that he is one and there is no other

God but he. And, to love him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.

And, when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, You are not far from the kingdom of God. And, after that, no one dared to ask him any questions.

And, you have, in Luke, he said to him, You have answered right, do this and you will live.

Similar to the answer to the rich young ruler as well. And, so, you have this entire summary statement, a demonstration in Mark, that there were those who had the right answers.

They had the right doctrinal understanding of these things.

And, Jesus' response was, You are not far from the kingdom of God. Now, notice he didn't say you are smack dab in the middle of it either.

But, he said, you are not far from it. In other words, you have the right foundation, but there is always that 18 inch leap from the cranium to the heart as far as internalizing these things and understanding these things.

And, so, now, we look at that and we go, Okay, there is

Mark again. Mark likes to give the fuller accounts.

The standard view that makes these dependent upon one another would say, Ah, you see,

Matthew didn't include this for Matthew's own purposes. And, what would those purposes be?

Well, because Matthew doesn't want to say anything nice about the Jews. He is just about to start

Matthew chapter 23. And, so, he just wants to paint the Jews in all negative light.

And, therefore, a recording where the scribe would say something truthful wouldn't fit in his purposes.

See how by determining your starting point and by implicitly being willing at every turn to accuse the writer of dishonesty, alteration of historical facts just simply to fit your...

I mean, you end up with a really nasty view, especially Matthew. I mean, Matthew is just not a worthy guy.

It makes me wonder why these guys do New Testament scholarship because they end up having to come up with,

These aren't nice people. These are nasty people. Now, what we've seen is that Matthew telescopes all the time because he's putting a whole lot more in.

I mean, he's only in chapter 22. He's got six more chapters. Mark's in chapter 12.

He's only got three and a half, four chapters depending on how long you want to count chapter 16. And they just have different priorities as to what they are going to include in what they've already included up to this point and how long they want their book to be.

And so I really get a little bit nervous when

I hear modern folks that are basically doing the Karnak the

Magnificent thing with the New Testament. You know, wasn't it

Karnak? Was that who it was? Was it Karnak? I'm sorry? Yeah, Johnny Curtis.

Karnak, you know, he would put the envelope to his head and then he'd open it up and it would be the backwards question type thing.

And that's what New Testament scholars are doing. Matthew's motivation for editing

Mark because he was an anti -Jewish picket. That's what they're doing.

And they get paid big bucks to do that. Well, alright, so not really big bucks. But they get paid.

They get paid to do it. And they get to write their books and go on speaking tours. And that's how it works.

So I get nervous with that. How do you... I don't find that we're overly good at figuring out people's motivations who are still alive.

And we get worse with people who recently died. And you go back 2 ,000 years and I really think there comes a point where you just, you know...

Unless you just got overwhelming evidence, you might just want to go... Don't really know what his motivations were there.

But that's it. So, anyhow. So after this, no one...

There's... Mark, then, does not include...

Mark says no one asks him... He says no one asks him a question after the last question was asked of him.

But Matthew makes note of that after Jesus' question of them. And what is that question?

Well, we won't... I don't know that we'll cover all of it. We might cover it. Section 283. And that is...

Now, while the Pharisees were gathered together, Matthew 22, Jesus asked them a question, saying,

What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he? Now, again, just to make sure we all understand,

Christos is the Greek term for anointed. It's the translation of Mashiach in the Hebrew. The anointed one.

What do you think of the anointed one? Whose son is he? And they said to him, the son of David.

So they very clearly knew their own Scriptures as to the lineage of the Messiah as prophesied in the

Scriptures. He said to them, How is it then that David, inspired by the

Spirit, calls him Kurios, Lord, saying,

The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, so I put thy enemies under thy feet. If David thus calls him

Lord, how is he his son? And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

So, we're probably familiar with this particular text and familiar with the discussions surrounding it.

If you have a synoptic, this isn't going to really give you a lot of the background information, but you probably have a reference to Psalm 110.

And I'm going to go to it here because we need to understand what the background is.

We looked at it in our Hebrew study, but I'm sure most of us separate our

Hebrew study out from our Bible study in here anyway, so we might want to look at it. If any of you heard the debate that I did with Sir Anthony Buzzard in London, or if you saw the debate that Michael Brown and I did against Buzzard and another fellow on the

Jewish Voice broadcast last summer, you know that this particular text came up, that this is one of the most important texts for all sorts of different groups, for all sorts of different reasons.

It's extremely important in the book of Hebrews, but it's also extremely important in regards to the person of Christ.

And what you have in the Hebrew is

Naum Yahweh La 'adoni. And so you have two terms,

Yahweh, and I don't think...

Yeah, here this would not be a New Testament thing, though it would sort of be nice.

In most of your English Bibles, if you look at Psalm 110, it will say,

The Lord, and that will be in all capitals, but with a different font size.

The Lord said to my Lord, right here at my right hand.

And so there will be a difference. Is that what you... You have that? Everybody in your

Bible? Okay. That is the English Bible translator's way. As you know,

O -R -D in caps, G -O -D in caps. If you have

Lord like this, and then G -O -D in caps, that's also telling you that Yahweh is used there with Adonai.

Otherwise, you'd have Lord, Lord. Yahweh is normally rendered in English as Lord.

I wish it wasn't. At the Jewish tradition, you do offend a

Jewish person if you say Yahweh. Sorry. I'm sorry if you're offended.

I mean, if you're... Okay, if I'm in a Jewish bookstore talking to a Jewish person, then

I'll be careful about that. But I don't think it's something we should do, yes.

They don't pronounce the divine name. So, for example, my

Hebrew... Well, he wasn't actually my Hebrew professor, but one of my professors at Grand Canyon told me a story long ago that he had been invited into the synagogue at one point and was actually asked to read because he had studied

Hebrew. And he forgot where he was and he pronounced the Tetragrammaton.

Even in the printed edition of the Biblia Hebraica Stucartensia or the Hebrew edition of the

Old Testament, they will put the vowels for Adonai under the consonants for Yahweh to make sure that it's sort of like a red flag.

Do not pronounce this. They'll either say Adonai or they will say

Hashem, the name. But they will not say Yahweh because they consider it too holy. Now, that's a...

As far as I understand, that is a more medieval Jewish tradition. I don't think that it would have been a tradition even at the time of the writing of the

New Testament. And so, I really wish that English Bibles would not hide the divine name but would actually render it.

I think it appears four times in the King James. You actually do see it in Hallelujah.

Hallel, to praise. Yah is the beginning of Yahweh. So, you sort of do have it there.

But it appears 6 ,000 some odd times in the

Old Testament. And I think that it's...

Yeah, you can identify it because of this. But I just don't buy into it.

So, in... Yes? What do you mean the first Lord?

Right, in Psalm 110. Yahweh. Yes, uh -huh. Yes, yes.

Adonai. I'm not sure what you're asking.

Right? This one's

Adonai. Yes.

Oh, yeah. Adonai is a standard word for God. In fact... In Isaiah 6,

I saw Adonai sitting upon the throne.

Then he's identified later as Yahweh. So, Adonai can be just another word for Yahweh.

Well, yes. Well, see, the fact of the matter is if we're talking about the identification of Jesus as Yahweh, there are numerous places where that happens.

But there are also numerous places where the Father is identified as Yahweh in distinction from the

Son. This is one of them. The other one is in Isaiah 53 when it says,

Yahweh caused our iniquities to fall upon Him. Not upon Himself, but upon the

Messiah. So... Because he's...

Yeah, because he's just narrating... He's narrating the statement of Yahweh to the

Messiah. He's already established with the Jews whose Son is He? He's the Son of David. They understood

Psalm 110 messianically as well. So, what he's pointing out is that David refers to the

Messiah as His Lord, which is a term of superiority. So, how can the

Messiah be superior to David if He's actually David's Son, His offspring?

And what he's pointing out then is that they don't have an appropriately high view of the nature of the

Messiah. That's why they couldn't answer the question. And so, he could have said...

I suppose he could have... It's just not what Psalm 110 said. To change Psalm 110 would be to change the argument.

So, I'm not really sure how to answer that one. But, anyway, there's much more to be said here because I haven't thrown you the argument from Anthony Buzzard yet about this.

And I want to. You will be the only Reformed Baptist in the world that know how to respond to Anthony Buzzard's question.

But that's what you get for being here for Sunday School with me. Isn't that wonderful? That and bow ties. What more could you ask?

So, we'll continue on in the great notes there. We will need to finish up 283 next time around.

And I hope that I will still be thinking clearly next week at this point in time.

But then the week after that, I'm two weeks worth of preaching, too. So, you're stuck with me for a while.

I actually don't leave again until the second weekend of September. But then I disappear for like all of October.

Going down under, doing at least two debates down there. One with the Oneness Pentecostal, one with the Muslim. Hey, let's mix them all together.

Pentecostals, Muslims, hey, let's all do it in the same week while we're jet -lagged. It'll be great.

Anyways, let's close with a prayer. Our Lord, once again, we do thank you for this great gift you've given to us in your word.

We would ask that you would help us to understand, Lord, that we would remember, and Lord, that you would cause us to grow in our faithfulness to our