Healing At The End Of Time

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Let's pray, we'll get started. Heavenly Father, almighty and everlasting

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God, we come before you in humble awe. You are the one true God, and there is none other like you.

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Come, we pray, and bless our hearts and our minds as we study your word. Send your Holy Spirit into our lives so that we may grow in love and grace, and that we may go forth into all the world proclaiming your gospel so that others may learn of your saving grace.

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Amen. All right, were there any questions that popped up as a result of the sermon?

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I'm kind of hoping that there was. I'm looking for a particular question that I've heard in the past as it relates to our gospel text.

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And just a reminder, it's found in the gospel of Mark chapter nine, and Jesus makes this interesting claim, the one who is not against us is for us.

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The one who is not against us is for us. Any questions crop up in your mind with that thought?

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Mikey, great question.

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That's a fantastic question. The answer is no. And so you'll note then that this is a fascinating text because Jesus is not actually referring to children.

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This is a reference back to the man who was casting out the demons and got chastised and rebuked by the disciples until they told him to knock it off.

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So Jesus is describing, whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, that's how

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God views all Christians. So this is not a reference pointing to children.

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This is an actual reference pointing to how God sees us as his little one. And so, and that would make sense because when we pray the prayer that Christ taught us to pray, we pray our

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Father who art in heaven. Well, I don't know about you guys, but I've noticed that dads can be a little bit protective of their kids, right?

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You know, years and years ago, I heard a story of a preacher talking about his relationship with his dad.

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And he remembers very distinctly that when he was a small boy, when he was a tyke prior to kindergarten, that there was a mean ornery dog that was in their neighborhood.

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And whenever this kid would go outside to play, this dog would kind of snarl and bark and kind of just harass this kid.

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And finally his father had enough and the father came out and had words with that dog, right?

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And picked up this pastor and he has fond memory of his dad picking him up and him carrying him back into the house.

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And because his dad had protected him from this dog, he said to the dog, you dog, you be quiet.

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You stop barking at me. My dad said so. It's a cute story, right?

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And so the idea here is that God is our father. So note how the paternal protective instinct of God now is coming out.

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The one who causes one of these little ones who believe in me and knows faith is the operative thing to, and again, point out the

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Greek word, skandalizo, to scandalize them, to cause them to fall away.

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It'd be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. And that's a rebuke aimed right at the head of John.

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Again, one of those awkward moments, boneheaded move on his part. And that's one of the reasons why

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I think we have nothing to fear regarding the veracity of the gospel accounts, because you'll note that the disciples, the apostles, they make no effort whatsoever to make themselves look like the smartest guys in the bunch.

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Over and again, they are just messing up right and left. And it gives me so much hope.

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Because I don't know if you noticed this, being a disciple of Jesus is, yeah, it's a, wow.

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And it's difficult and I'm the one who makes it difficult. I'm the one with the problem.

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So, all right. Oh, you might, Mark. I don't know if you've ever heard this argument.

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Yeah. And I have one in heaven, saying that, it's actually saying that you don't get your parts, but it's better.

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You know, I've. In comparison, that wouldn't be better, but no. Yeah. It's saying nothing about. Yeah, no, see, this is taking a metaphor and pushing it too hard.

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And so I've heard that argument before too, in a strange place though, kind of in liberal churches that are kind of into social justice.

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And so for them, their theology is guided by their ideology.

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And so they kind of end up in the opposite ditch of like one error.

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And so the idea then is that, you know, there are people who literally look down at and consider those with handicaps to somehow be cursed of God.

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And spending time with somebody who's in a wheelchair or whatever becomes a very awkward thing.

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And so there's one sense in which there's, you know, a number of Christians who, you know, kind of in their self -righteousness, poo -poo and put down people who have handicaps.

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You'll see this, especially like in the Word of Faith movement, where they claim that God's will is always to heal.

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And so then the reason why that person is still in the wheelchair is because they just don't have enough faith. And so the blame falls on them.

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But the opposite ditch of that, oddly enough, is kind of the social justice postmodern liberal who will sit there and say that,

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God made you beautiful the way you are. So if you have a handicap or you're missing an arm, or you know, you can't, you're blind or you're deaf, you're beautiful just the way you are.

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And when you enter heaven, you will be that way forever. Yeah, that's the opposite error. Okay, that's the opposite error.

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No, this text isn't teaching that. So this more or less is actually dealing with like,

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Jesus is talking about just how severe the consequences of causing one of his little ones to fall away is.

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David. Yeah, right.

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Right. So let's kind of unpack and work, bounce off some of the ideas that you are keying in on.

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So the person who teaches that if you just muster up enough faith, then

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God has to heal you. That's magic, that's not Christianity. And it actually causes great harm to the faith of the person who falls for that lie.

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Because now all of the onus is on them. Well, I must not have loved God enough. I must not have had enough faith.

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Therefore, the fault is with me. That's why I have this chronic disease and I'm heading towards the grave.

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Now, a little bit of a note here. I'm gonna let you in on just some plain old statistics. The death rate among Americans is still 100%.

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Just saying, okay. 100 years from today, we're all gone, we're all dead.

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If Christ doesn't return, we're all out there or scattered throughout parts of the country.

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And so we must hang on to the proper promises that we have been given.

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And the proper promises are the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. And that does not mean that God does not at times will for us to be healed.

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Sometimes he literally acts miraculously and we are to pray knowing that God in his will may actually choose to miraculously heal somebody for his glory.

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That still happens to this day. We must not deny that. But that being the case, every single prayer that a person prays for the restoration of their health is answered ultimately with yes.

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And that yes comes on the last day when Jesus returns in glory to judge the living and the dead.

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And we are called from our graves and we are given resurrection bodies, life everlasting.

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I always like to picture myself as like an eternal 18 year old. It's gonna be awesome, right?

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So be able to see my feet again. You know, can't wait to see that.

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It's been years since I've seen them. So, you know, but you kind of get the idea.

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And so there is a sense then that true faith is faith in the actual promises that God has given.

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God has not promised to heal all of us. He has not, but he does say, he does tell us to pray.

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And then you'll notice the emphasis in our epistle text then, you know, pray, confess your sins and you receive forgiveness.

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And that God may in his mercy choose to give you healing and life. But remember this, every single person that Jesus raised from the grave during his earthly ministry they died again.

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And so they are all patiently awaiting the return of Christ. And so nothing strange has befallen you when your hair turns gray and parts of your body head

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South. And, you know, it's harder to remember things and you have to wear eyeglasses.

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And every time you go to the eye doctor the prescription gets stronger and stronger and stronger. Is that just me?

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You get the idea. All of this is to be expected. The wages of sin is death. And unfortunately those wages are paid out in installment payments day by day.

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But when Christ returns, it's a whole other thing. You know, and our youth will be renewed.

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We will be resurrected, see God face to face and we will be human beings without sin in a world without end.

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This is our hope. And that's the thing. Our faith is in Christ for those promises. So, yes.

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Okay. Okay.

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That may be one way to look at it but we have cross references that expand and blow that out.

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So the context again is gonna come back to the fellow who was casting out the demons who literally had faith in Christ.

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And Jesus is giving a warning here about causing little ones who believe in me to sin. I personally do not agree with the commentators who want to focus that so narrowly that it's only on those who are weak in their faith.

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I'll say this is that, you know, as somebody who's been in the faith for a while and has suffered my share of hard knocks that when you are told that the good works that God is doing through you are evil and that you should not be doing them, and this is a lot of the type of public criticism that I receive, it actually takes a pretty heavy hit on your psyche and causes your weak to kind of wobble.

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It's like taking a punch in the face where here you are one moment rejoicing in the things that God is doing and that you have had the privilege to see

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God do through your works and your good works and efforts and then have that turned right back around and being told that you're evil, you're wicked, you should not be doing that.

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That does take a severe hit. And you know, I'll say this publicly, I don't think I've talked about it much, but one of the things

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I actually struggle with is depression and so when somebody with my weakness mentally like this gets that kind of feedback, my brain automatically without my permission chews on it and just chews on it in a circle.

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It becomes like a form of negative meditation. And so I disagree with the narrow focus on those of weak faith because understand this, the devil's game is to knock any faith out of any believer and so when we see that Christ here is calling a little one who believes in him as a term of endearment,

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I'm with the commentators and with the church fathers who look at that as a term of endearment that applies to all

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Christians. So, yeah. The sin was just causing someone to sin.

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Right, and I'm basing this then on the Greek itself and in this case,

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I'm actually in good company with some really good exegetes and some scholars. And so one of the things

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I make the point of doing before I preach a text, a gospel text, I'll translate it ahead of time. That's an important step in this.

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And I can show it to you in the Greek here. Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin.

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So here's your Greek word, skandalidze. This is a form of the verb skandalidzo and this does not have a narrow focus like harmartia.

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And so technically you can translate it as sin, but in the context to scandalize somebody is to cause them to fall away.

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And that's another perfectly good lexical definition to use in this case. And since Jesus didn't go to harmartia here, he went to skandalidzo, there's something else going on because again, the context always has to dictate how you work with the meaning of a word.

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And so understand this is that working in English requires you to know the

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Greek because working in the biblical language, bringing it into English is not just like cracking a code.

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There's nuances that you miss in English that are there in the Greek. And so emphasizing that nuance, skandalidzo is actually a little bit broader.

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It's not talking about harmartia. We're actually now talking about causing somebody to fall away, to scandalize their faith to such a degree that now their faith is wobbly and they can fall from it.

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Right, and again, context is gonna dictate that the amputation, I had a pastor years ago who quipped that welcome to the

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Sunday of the amputation, amputation Sunday. And he said that kind of tongue in cheek, but to make the bigger point is that you'll note then that Jesus isn't recommending doing, it'd be better if you did this than this, but ultimately we're saved by grace through faith.

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Therefore, cutting your hand off isn't gonna save you. And cutting your hand off, and so if your hand causes you to be scandalized, causes your faith to fall away, well, it'd be better if you cut that off.

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And so a better way to think about that is what are you using with your hands or your feet that would cause somebody to be scandalized?

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Maybe it's better to cut that off, which is calling for repentance and faith again. So, and that's another way you can work that text.

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I chose not to work it that way this time. So, yeah, yeah, that's not a bad way to think about it.

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Josh? Yeah.

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Yeah, it fits, it coincides with the Jesus is our shepherd and we are the law.

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Right, yeah. I hope you never get too old to sing that old song,

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I am Jesus' little lamb, right? You should be able to sing that as an adult, because you is. Let's say about cutting off the hand or gathering the eye out.

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Ultimately, it's the heart that's wicked. Yes. That's the cause of the sin. Yep. So, cutting off the hand isn't gonna stop the heart from sinning.

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No, and I'll tell you an awkward story. There was a church father by the name of Origen who openly writes about the fact that he struggled with, let's just say, casting lustful eyes upon women and temptations along those lines.

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And his solution to the problem, and he thought would actually work, was that he made himself a eunuch.

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And post -surgery, this was a self -inflicted surgery, it failed to have the desired result.

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He cut it in his brain. Yeah, the problem wasn't in this particular member, the problem is in his heart.

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And so, just kind of keep that in mind. Sin comes up from the heart. But this is a call back to repentance, and it's important for us to recognize the full definition of repentance.

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Repentance isn't merely remorse for transgressing God's law.

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That is a huge part of it. But, so, remorse, contrition, sorrow over your sin is part of repentance, but the second part of true repentance is actually believing that you're forgiven in Christ.

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The two must go together. And only then, from a proper understanding that our hearts have been sprinkled clean, have been made clean by the forgiveness of sins because of what

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Christ has done for us, only then are we able to actually begin to bear fruit in keeping with repentance.

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And see sin for the enemy that it is. Sin is not your friend. Sin is not my friend.

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And we should make no allowances for it because sin desires, and it's kind of a weird way to talk this way, but scripture does, but to dominate you and to enslave you over again.

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All right. All of that, great questions, by the way. There was one little, one question that didn't come up that I thought

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I was worth bringing up myself. Oh, Bruce, I didn't see your hand. What are you, things you, context, context, context.

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Yep. Yeah. I'm in context.

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I hear when it's a sin, famous news stories, but it's almost always done in the context, you know, in like,

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God is a small town sheriff who is totally okay with my completely innocuous sins.

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You, buddy, are doomed. You know, where they attach this to a particular commandment out of the temple as if that was somewhere in any of the scripture.

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And so throwing, tying that in as being scandalized in Mark, but it's almost ripped out of Matthew almost exclusively.

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Yeah, yep. The context isn't there. Yep. Three, this is not just a particular version of scandal.

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This is the umbrella. Yeah. And so here's gonna be your governing principle in your exegesis on this.

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So Mark 9 .42 is said in a particular context. It's said in the context of John saying to a fellow who actually cast out a demon, actually demons, plural.

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So this guy didn't cast one out, he cast a bunch of them out. And he cast him out in the name of Christ and he was literally scolded and rebuked and told by the disciples, you knock that off, you're not one of us.

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That's the context in that Jesus says this in. And then your second governing principle through your exegesis is watch what he says.

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Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me.

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And by saying that, what is Jesus saying about the fellow who cast out the demon? Okay.

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He's one of my little ones and he believes in me. So keeping it in context, you have to be looking for your reference then.

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So the idea is that, you know, reference is a big deal. To whom is a text referring?

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To whom is it talking about? And so over and again, the

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National Day of Prayer is coming up, right? And so everybody loves to quote that passage from the Old Testament. If my people, if they will humble themselves and pray, then

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I will hear from heaven and I will heal their land. Well, that's great. Okay. But I wouldn't go so far as to saying that American US citizens are the people of God.

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Or one of my favorite ones, Jeremiah 29, 11. I didn't even get to say it.

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I've heard that in so many wedding ceremonies. Right, right, right. You know, so Jeremiah 29, 11, which

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I'll show it to everybody else who is not like automatically just going, bleh, you know, when you do it.

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But just take a look at that. And I want to duplicate this so I don't lose my text. Okay.

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Jeremiah 29. And then everybody will be able to say it. And I'll be able to quote this from memory because this shows up so out of context all over the place.

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For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans for your welfare, not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

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See, there it is. See, God, your future's bright. It says so right there. Okay. But here's the issue, is that in English, if I'm referring to you or if I'm referring to you, is there a difference in the words?

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No. So in modern English, we don't say y 'all. We don't have the plural you.

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But here's the fun part. You read this in Hebrew and something stands out like just a big old red flag.

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For I know the plans I have for y 'all, is how the Hebrew reads. The plans

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I have for y 'all, declares the Lord. Plans for y 'all's welfare and not for evil. To give y 'all a future and a hope.

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Now the question is referent, who's the y 'all there? Because you read it in Hebrew and it's a plural you. You see what

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I'm saying? So over and again, so many mistakes are made in mishandling God's word by not paying attention to context and not paying attention to who the referent is.

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So Jeremiah 29, 11 is not a promise that God's gonna make you wealthy, healthy and just make your days hunky -dunky on planet

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Earth. This was actual promise given to the exiles of Babylon and their lives were far from hunky -dunky.

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See Esther, if you're not sure. We talk about Mordecai and guys like that.

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Or read about Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. How did things go for the

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Jews while they were in captivity in Babylon? Not so great. And yet this was a promise actually made by God through the prophet

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Jeremiah for them all. So pay attention to who the referent is.

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Does that help? Okay, very good. Okay, we're back in Exodus.

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And last week we were talking about the ordination service and sacrifices for the

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Levites to be placed into service within the tabernacle.

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And we noted all of the literally rigmarole, the blood and the guts and everything that goes along with that.

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And the very explicit and specific instructions that God had given regarding the clothes that they were to wear, what they were to be made of, what the embroidery on it was, that they had to have a plate that said, separate for God or holy for the

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Lord. All of these things. And so we note then that we kind of left off of the concept that an ordination then at the end of the day is the public placing of a human being into an actual office.

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Now, when we're talking about office here, we're not talking about an actual space. We're talking about an open office within an institution.

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And so this is one of the reasons why going then into the New Testament, we note then that those who are pastors are placed into that office by the laying on of hands.

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They're called by God into that office and then publicly placed into that office.

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And that's an important thing. So that public placing of a person into that office is in fact an ordination.

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And it doesn't change the character of the pastor. We will note this is that, there is a very large denomination headquartered in Rome that actually believes that ordination is a sacrament and it changes the actual character of the man who is ordained and changes the character of that person in such a way that he now is given the miraculous ability to change bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.

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Notice the emphasis is on the wrong syllable there. It, I assure you, your pastor is not capable of taking bread and wine and turning it into the body and blood of Christ.

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They did not teach us how to do that in seminary either. All right, it is Jesus who does this by means of his word and not the words that I speak, but the words that he spoke 2000 years ago.

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In the same way that God said to humanity at the beginning of creation, be fruitful and multiply.

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Notice how we continue to unfold generation after generation. That effective word of God is still working today as people are, well, being fruitful and multiplying.

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Same with the words of Christ, that's kind of the idea. Now, coming into Exodus 30, we're gonna get some of the finer details then of what's coming up next.

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And here's kind of an interesting thing. Have any of you ever purchased a bottle of cologne or perfume and read the fine print on the bottle?

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You'll note those fragrances are trademarked. They are protected.

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They are considered to be intellectual property that you do not have the permission of the people who own that particular ingredients, the recipe for making, they do not give you the right to manufacture that for yourself.

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That's their fragrance, right? And of course, if you've ever been to New York City or in some shady parts of Los Angeles, people will always be happy to sell you very inexpensive

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Rolexes and sell you bottles of Chanel number five for less than $5.

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Think about that for a second, okay? What we're gonna go into here, I want you to note something, that the very, very first patented trademark designer fragrances are actually found in this text.

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It's in this text and it's a weird way to think about it, but watch what God is going to say here.

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So Exodus 30 verse one, you shall make an altar on which to burn incense. You shall make it of acacia wood.

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A cubit shall be its length, a cubit its breadth, and it shall be square. Two cubits shall be its height.

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So this is literally an altar for burning incense. Its horn shall be of one piece with it.

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You shall overlay it with pure gold, its tops around its sides and its horns, and you shall make a molding of gold around it.

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And you shall make two golden rings for it under its molding on two opposite sides of it. You shall make them and they shall be holders for poles with which to carry it.

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You shall make the poles of acacia wood, overlay them with gold. You shall put it in front of the veil that is above the arc of the testimony in front of the mercy seat that is above the testimony where I meet with you.

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And Aaron shall burn fragrant incense on it. Every morning when he dresses the lamps, he shall burn it.

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And when Aaron sets up the lamps at twilight, he shall burn it, a regular incense offering before Yahweh throughout your generations.

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You shall not offer unauthorized incense on it or a burnt offering or a grain offering.

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And you shall not pour a drink offering on it. Aaron shall make atonement on its horns once a year with the blood of the sin offering of atonement.

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He shall make atonement for it once in the year throughout the generations. It is most holy to the

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Lord. Now, a little bit of a note here, okay? Incense, I don't particularly care for it, okay?

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But in some traditions, incense is part of their worship liturgy.

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And important to note here is that good incense, you know, it'll kind of leave a lasting impact in your nostrils.

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And you'll note then the worship that God established for the Israelites was a multi -sensory experience.

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It involved hearing the bleeding of sheep. It involved seeing them killed, hearing whatever that sounds like, seeing blood.

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It also involved the smell and the aroma of incense that was put on the altar, this incense altar, twice a day, morning, nine in the morning, and evening, three in the evening.

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And as the psalmist says, and if you're familiar with the Vespers service, let my prayers rise before you as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice, the psalmist says.

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And so you'll note then that incense becomes the smell and the aroma and the smoke and all of that then in the way the

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Old Testament interprets it, it's a visual symbol of the rising of the prayers of God's saints before God, a pleasing aroma before Him.

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So our prayers rise before God as incense. That's one of the major pictures of prayer in Scripture.

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So incense then oftentimes has come into particular traditions within Christianity with the idea of its linkage then to prayer.

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So it's actually quite fascinating when you consider it, so at the Old Testament roots. And then you're gonna, we'll see this later, that the incense and the anointing oil that were to be made by the perfumers, totally copyrighted, patented, and to make them and use them anywhere else resulted in your death, death penalty for trademark violators.

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We'll see that as we go. So then the Lord said to Moses, when you take the census of the people of Israel, each shall give a ransom for his life to the

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Lord when you number them, that there be no plague among them when you number them.

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Now, a little bit of a note here. When we talk about Christ's death on the cross,

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I'm gonna ask you this, is it appropriate biblically to talk about Christ's death on the cross as a substitute?

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Yes, yeah, yeah. Christ died for our sins. God made him to be sin who knew no sin so that we might be the righteousness of God.

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So it's right to talk about Christ as a substitute, suffering on our behalf.

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Is it right to talk about Christ's death on the cross as a redemption, a price paid so that we can be set free from sin?

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Yep, that's another way you can talk about it. And there's another way we can talk about it that's also biblical.

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And we should be familiar with this. Remember this, you know, it's always the Liam Neeson movies, right? You know, where he plays the father, he gets the phone call, his daughter's been, you know, been stolen.

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And you know, and somebody sends a ransom note. You want your daughter back, you're gonna have to pay this amount of money. So you're gonna note that another way in which scripture talks about Christ's death on the cross, even in Type and Shadow in the

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Old Testament, is referring to it as a ransom. Now that's one of the minor themes when it comes to it.

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But what's fascinating is that, so the answer is, well, which of them is true? The answer is yes, right?

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Is that Christ's death on the cross is this beautiful diamond and it's multifaceted.

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And scripture talks about it in many different ways. It's talked about in victorious terms.

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And so people will talk about the Christus Victor motif. It's talked about as a ransom, it's talked about as a redemption, it's talked about as a substitution, as a penal substitution.

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And all of these are biblical ways to talk about what Christ did on the cross. One of the theologians

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I read on this said that Christ's death on the cross is so deep, there's almost unlimited ways in which to plumb its depths and to start to understand the magnitude of God's grace and mercy and what

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Christ has accomplished for us. And so these are all ways to talk about this. So then here in Type and Shadow, we see an

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Old Testament Type and Shadow pointing to ransom, which is a fascinating concept, ransom.

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Somebody who's been nefariously absconded by an evil person, and then a ransom had to be paid to set them free.

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Well, each and every one of us, we had been absconded by the devil, brought into the dominion of darkness, held in bondage with the blindfold on and all this kind of stuff, right?

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And unfortunately, this is the sad part about our sinful nature. So you'll note then this multisensory experience.

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Think of it this way. How many of you remember being kids on Thanksgiving day?

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Now, you just spent how many weeks going to school, Monday through Friday?

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Wednesday is the last day of school. So what are you doing Thursday morning? You're sleeping in, right?

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And what do you smell that Thursday morning while you're in your bed?

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You're sleeping in till 10 or 11. Maybe it was just me who did that. But you're sleeping in till 10 or 11 on Thursday.

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And all of a sudden in comes the wafting smell of the turkey that's in the oven in the roast.

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And, all right. Now as adults, the older we get, we smell turkey like that.

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And you know what happens? I'm immediately taken back to my childhood. Every single time my wife pops a turkey in the oven.

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I'm not taken back to when my kids were kids. I'm taken back in my mind to when I was a kid. Or did any of you ever have like a great aunt who had a particular perfume that she wore?

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And then you run across somebody who just, you're in a crowd somewhere, maybe at church, and some lady's wearing that same perfume.

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And all of a sudden, whoa, in an instant, you can see your aunt's face.

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And you can remember the last time you saw her. Or you have all these memories come flooding back, right?

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Smell is really powerful. Really powerful. And so note,

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God forbids these particular scents, these perfumes, this incense and this anointing oil.

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He refuses to let anybody else make it, and you cannot use it at home. Which means there's only one place you can smell this, and that's at the tabernacle, and then eventually the temple.

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Which means that as you're coming into Jerusalem for one of the feast days, and maybe you're downwind from the temple, you can probably smell this from maybe a mile or two out, right?

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And all of a sudden, the smell just takes you right into all of the worship of God.

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It's very fascinating that God works through these earthly means.

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He's made us. And so many people think that being spiritual has something to do with getting away from anything that has to relate to your body.

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But note here, God is engaging all of their senses in the worship of Him.

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All of their senses are engaged. It's very, and I'm gonna use a word that has a negative connotation, but it's very carnal.

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Carnal in the sense it's very earthly. It's very bodily. And remember this,

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God made your body. God made your body.

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Christ himself took a body just like ours. And so in the worship of the one true

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God, we don't wanna get away from multisensory experiences. Multisensory experiences actually are a vital part of the worship of God.

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And I would say we get that in spades here. There's a particular smell to Kongsvinger. Have you noticed this? You can smell it and you come in the door.

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You've been away for a while. You can actually smell Kongsvinger. There's a scent to this place. Oh. Especially when

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Dave walks in. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. All right?

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And then our music is engaging our hearts, our vocals, our bodies, our ears, and what we see on the altar.

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All of this is multisensory. This is the idea here. And so there's good reason to kind of think through what are we seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching?

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All of this is part of the worship of the one true God. All right, we're gonna stop there because we'll talk next week.

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We'll start in chapter 31 next week. And we're gonna talk a little bit about the idea of serving

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God and the vocations that God has put you in. And we'll consider the implications then literally that God is going to talk about how the

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Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, has given certain men, in this particular case, filled them with the

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Spirit for the purpose of craftsmanship. I look at some of the craftsmanship, the woodworking that is in this congregation.

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I look at the crosses the cliff has made and the craftsmanship that went into them.

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It's important for us to note this, that oftentimes when we think about doing good works and somehow receiving special gifts from God, we're often limited to things that are very, very focused on somehow teaching and preaching.

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When in fact, even the ability to work in wood, the ability to work a craft and do it well, we're gonna learn here, that comes directly from God himself.

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So being great at what you do, this is actually a gift given by God, but we'll talk about that next week.