53 What Jesus Taught the 12 Before Their First Mission Trip (Matthew 9:35-10:8)

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today is the 53rd talk in our series on the Gospel of Matthew, and we will be studying chapter 9, verse 35, to chapter 10, verse 8. The lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below this podcast, and you can find them by going directly to wednesdayintheword.com slash Matthew 53. I am so glad you joined us today. We are beginning a new section in the Gospel of Matthew. Just to refresh your memory about where we are, Matthew presents the life of Jesus in a two-part structure. Part one is his ministry in Galilee, and then part two is the journey to Jerusalem, which of course culminates with his death and resurrection. Within this two-part structure, there are five places where Matthew records a major teaching of Jesus, and these are usually called the five discourses. We are about to start the second of those discourses today. I think Matthew has intentionally presented these five bodies of teaching and he's linked each one thematically. Each discourse ends with very similar language. He says something like, And when Jesus finished these words. And this phrase becomes a kind of a marker that says thus ends the lesson. Today's podcast is going to be mostly introductory material. We'll start getting into the real content of the second discourse in the next podcast. Today let's start with Matthew chapter nine verses thirty five through thirty seven. And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few, therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. And then right after these verses, Jesus gives the twelve some instructions and sends them out to minister on his behalf. And when we get into chapter ten, that contains his instructions to them. These verses here in 35 through 38 are the transition between the miracle stories we've been looking at and the discourse that is coming up. So as the transition, these verses review what Jesus has been doing in the previous chapters. He has been teaching and healing all kinds of diseases, as we saw in the Sermon on the Mount, and then chapters eight and nine. Then Matthew tells us that as Jesus was traveling around, he saw many needy and helpless people. So he comments to his disciples that they should pray that God would send more workers into the harvest. That is, they should pray that God would send more people who would go out and proclaim the gospel. And as we'll see in chapter 10, Jesus follows this up by sending his twelve disciples out to do just that. First he says, pray for that to happen, and then he says, basically, now you're going to do it. Well, Matthew 935 ought to sound familiar. Let me read that again. And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. And that should remind you that in chapter four, right before Matthew gave us the Sermon on the Mount, he said this, this is Matthew 4.23. And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. Matthew four twenty three is virtually identical to Matthew nine twenty-five. The earlier version in chapter four says throughout all Galilee, and the later version in chapter nine says throughout all the cities and villages. Now before chapter four, Matthew gave us mostly introductory material. He concluded that material and was about to give his first discourse. So 423 introduced the transition to that first discourse and the teaching ministry of Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount in chapters five through seven is an example of the kind of thing that Jesus was teaching in his early ministry. Then in chapters eight and nine, Matthew gave us examples of the kinds of miracles Jesus was performing, and now he concludes this section with the same summary that he used back in chapter four. So it acts as a kind of bookend and prepares us for the fact that Matthew is now moving on to something new. Then in 936 we see that this traveling ministry has provoked a response in Jesus. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. As Jesus traveled around teaching and healing, he saw that the people were distressed and dispirited, they were troubled and cast down like sheep without a shepherd. In a few more verses, Jesus is going to refer to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And this imagery is fairly easy to understand. Sheep need a shepherd. The shepherd feeds the sheep by leading them to the right pasture. The shepherd protects them from predators. The shepherd keeps them from wandering off from the fold, which is the place of safety. Without a shepherd, sheep can easily end up hungry, lost, and the victim of predators. Metaphorically speaking, the same thing happens spiritually to people without a shepherd. Without someone to point us in the right direction and protect us from the things that will destroy us, we are lost. This imagery about a sheep without a shepherd has a rich background in the Old Testament. It comes up frequently in the prophets and the Psalms. The Jews of Jesus' day would have been familiar with this imagery. I'll give you just a couple of examples and I'll put a more complete list in the lecture notes. This is Isaiah fifty three six. All we, like sheep, have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. This is perhaps the most famous passage using this imagery. Mankind is pictured as sheep who have gotten lost, we've turned from the Lord into sin, corruption, and rebellion, but the suffering servant gives his life as an offering for us. Then Jeremiah 50, verse six. My people have been lost, their shepherds have led them astray, turning them away on the mountains. From mountain to hill they have gone, they have forgotten their fold. Here the sheep are lost because their shepherds have misled them. Instead of leading them to the safety of the fold, they turn to them away into the mountains, and they wander the hills rather than grazing in the pasture in the safety of their fold. Another example is Ezekiel thirty-four, which is a long discussion of this same theme. It also condemns the bad shepherds of Israel. The sheep are scattered because the shepherds have not protected them, and then God says this in Ezekiel thirty four, twenty-three and twenty-four, and I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them, he shall feed them and be their shepherd, and I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the Lord, I have spoken. So in Ezekiel thirty four we see the shepherds of Israel have been bad shepherds, they've led the people astray, but one day God is going to give them a true shepherd, a descendant of David, who will truly feed them and protect them. This gives us a perspective or a window into what the people are experiencing. It's not just that times are hard, it's that they are spiritually lost. Like lost sheep, they have gone astray. They are spiritually and morally lost. They've lost sight of the hope of Israel and the promises of God. Jesus sees all this and he feels compassion for them. They are lost in a way that only he, the true shepherd, can remedy. He has come to proclaim the good news that is the solution to their troubles and sorrows. And out of this compassion Jesus turns and speaks to his disciples. This is 937 and 38. Then he said to the disciples, The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Working for the harvest is a metaphor for the sort of thing Jesus has been doing so far. He has been traveling from town to town, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and calling people to believe and repent. He's encouraging his disciples to pray that God will send more workers to proclaim the same message, which turns out to be a meaningful thing to pray for because Jesus is going to send the twelve out to be those workers. And that's exactly what happens next. Matthew 10 1, and he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal every disease and every affliction. Now Matthew specifically tells us that Jesus summoned his twelve disciples, suggesting that his earlier comments at the end of chapter 9 were to his larger following of disciples. We know that a larger group followed him, but here he summons the twelve, and this discourse is addressed to them. In Luke, we see Jesus sending out his disciples twice. The first time he sends out the twelve, that's recorded in Luke 9, which is also the event Matthew's about to relate here. The second time he sends out 70 disciples, which we find in Luke 10. That means there must have been at least 70 people who followed him around as his disciples, but in this first event, Jesus sends only the twelve. Now we want to pay attention to the first verse of chapter 10. And here's where the structure of Matthew's gospel becomes important. In 423, Matthew tells us that Jesus was going throughout Galilee, teaching and proclaiming the gospel and healing all kinds of diseases. Then we have the Sermon on the Mount. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew tells us that Jesus was teaching as one who had authority. Then Matthew gives us these stories of the miraculous healings that Jesus did, which testify to the fact that Jesus has authority. And he tells us specifically through these stories that Jesus has authority from God over disease, over demons, over nature, and even over death. Then we have this statement in 935, which repeats what we saw in chapter 4, that Jesus was traveling around proclaiming the gospel and healing every kind of disease and affliction. And then in 10.1 he says, and he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal every disease and every affliction. Matthew just spent two chapters telling us that Jesus has this kind of authority. And now he points out Jesus gave that authority to his twelve apostles. So he repeats this language that we saw in 423 and again in 935, that Jesus was healing with every kind of disease and affliction, and he applies it now here in 10.1 to the 12. Matthew uses the exact same language to describe what Jesus did when he explains the authority of the 12. He has been very clear that Jesus has extended his authority to the 12 apostles. God gave that authority to Jesus, and now we learn that Jesus has the authority to grant that similar kind of authority to others. So Jesus says, pray that God would send workers. Those workers need to go out and do the exact same kind of thing that Jesus has been doing, proclaiming the gospel and healing every kind of disease and affliction, and that's what the twelve are being sent out to do, and Jesus grants them his authority to do so. Next, Matthew tells us who the twelve are. This is Matthew 10, verses two through four. The names of the twelve apostles are these. Matthew, Mark, and Luke each have a list of the twelve, and there is also a list in Acts minus Judas. I want to make a few brief observations about the lists. The four lists have certain patterns. I'm not sure if there's any significance to the patterns or not. Perhaps they were just a help in memorization. I don't know if there's any significance beyond that, but it's interesting. Each list can be divided into three groups of four. Each group has the same four apostles in it in all the lists, and each group starts with the same apostle. But within the group, the order of the remaining three names varies. So group one is Peter, Andrew, James, and John. Peter is always first, but Andrew, James, and John vary in order. Matthew groups them by brothers. Peter and Andrew are brothers, James and John are brothers. In two of the lists, Andrew comes last, and that might be because Jesus sometimes singled out Peter, James, and John and did things with only the three of them. Peter, James, and John are known as the inner circle. Group two is Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, and Matthew. In this group, Philip always comes first, but the order of the other three varies. Group three is James, son of Alpheus, Thaddeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas who betrayed him. In this group, James, the son of Alpheus, is always first, and Judas Iscariot is always last. You'll notice that Matthew has paired the apostles in his list. He says Peter and Andrew, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, and so on. Why did he pair them? Well, Mark tells us that Jesus sent the twelve out in pairs, so perhaps these pairings represent who went out on this journey together. We know nothing about some of the apostles on the list, at least from New Testament sources. We only know that Matthew was a tax collector because Matthew tells us so in his Gospel. Most people think that Bartholomew is another name for Nathaniel that we read about in the Gospel of John, but John's mentions provide all the information we know about him. Thaddeus is also called Judas, the son of James, and we know very little about him. And James, the son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot are never mentioned in the New Testament outside of these lists. The twelve are a very important group in the ministry of Jesus. It's likely that the number twelve was a deliberate choice to echo the twelve tribes of Israel. Later on in Matthew, we're going to read this. This is Matthew 19, 28. Jesus said to them, Truly I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. So that's a very deliberate equation between the twelve apostles and the twelve tribes of Israel. Clearly, Jesus has given them a very important role in his earthly ministry. On several occasions, he speaks only to the twelve, apart from any of the crowds or any of the other disciples. For example, we'll find this in Matthew 20, 17 through 19. And as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside, and on the way he said to them, See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day. So here we see Jesus explains only to the twelve what's going to happen when he enters Jerusalem, but of course they don't get it at first. Matthew records three different times that Jesus tells them what's going to happen in Jerusalem, but either they don't understand him or they don't want to believe it. And of course, the other great example of the importance of the twelve is that they are the ones who are with him in the upper room on the night he is arrested. And they will go on to carry on his ministry after he leaves, after the resurrection. Here we meet them as a group for the first time. Jesus gathers the twelve and sends them out to minister on his behalf. They are going to represent him. They're going to preach what he has been preaching and heal as he has been healing. Now Matthew 10 5 begins the second of the five discourses in Matthew. As I mentioned, five times Jesus records a major body of teaching by Jesus. The first one we saw was the Sermon on the Mount. And here we find the second one. These are the instructions that Jesus gives to the twelve before he sends them out on this journey. We're not going to get very far into the discourse today. And before we start, I want to set the stage for something we're going to find in it. When we talked about the Sermon on the Mount, we noted that neither Mark nor Luke record exactly the same body of teaching as Matthew does. And I remind you of that because when we come to the second discourse, we face a similar kind of issue. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell the same story of Jesus gathering the twelve and sending them out. And much of the language in Matthew 10 is also found in Mark and Luke. But some of the language in Matthew is found elsewhere in Mark and Luke. For example, Luke records two sendings, first the sending of the twelve, and then the sending of the 70, which most likely included the twelve. Some of the language of Matthew's sending of the twelve is found in Luke's sending of the seventy. What Matthew includes in the sending of the twelve, then Luke has split between sending the twelve and sending the seventy. We're going to find this again with the Olivet Discourse, which is the last and the fifth discourse in Matthew. Matthew, Mark, and Luke have roughly the same Olivet discourse, but some of the sayings that Mark and Luke put into the Olivet Discourse, Matthew has included here in this discourse of the sending of the twelve. Specifically, Jesus talks about how after he is gone, his disciples will have to speak before rulers and governors. And we're going to talk more about that when we get there. But what are we to make of this? The fact that we find these instructions in different places in the different Gospels. Well, scholars put all this together in several ways. One plausible way is that there were a couple of sendings, and Matthew uses this first occasion when Jesus sends only the twelve to collect together all the various instructions Jesus gave into one place. Matthew seems to have pulled things together from several different instructions and different sendings and put them all here. And I think that is quite likely. Another option is that Jesus repeated himself, that he gave the same or similar instructions to different groups. In different times and different sendings. That's also likely, and it makes a lot of sense. Another option is that because Matthew was an eyewitness, Matthew could have a personal recollection that Mark and Luke don't have. Mark and Luke wrote their gospels after interviewing eyewitnesses, but Matthew was an eyewitness. He was there, he knows firsthand, so he has more detail than they do. Jesus could have given overlapping instructions on different occasions, and Matthew's giving us exactly what he said on this occasion. If you study Matthew's gospel, I think it becomes clear that Matthew is an organizer. There's nothing untruthful about that. He prefers to group the stories and the teachings together by theme rather than by timeline. He wants to emphasize certain points, and so he gathers together events and discourses which illustrate the theme he's trying to teach. Given that, it seems very likely to me that Matthew brought these teachings together to have one discourse that represents all the various teachings of Jesus when he was sending out his disciples on various occasions. And that's a perfectly acceptable thing for an author to do. All right, let's jump in a little bit into the discourse. This is Matthew ten verses five through eight. These twelve Jesus sent out instructing them, go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and proclaim as you go, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without pain, give without pay. Jesus starts by telling them to go first to the house of Israel, not to go to the Gentiles. Now we know that Jesus doesn't have anything against the Gentiles. We have already seen him commend the faith of the Gentile centurion. Jesus said in that section that the centurion and many other Gentiles would feast in the kingdom of God even while many Jews were cast out. And in this very discourse, Jesus says that one day the apostles will be giving testimony before Gentile rulers. But on this trip, he wants them to go exclusively to Jewish territory. Jesus wants the Jews to be the focus of this particular ministry outreach. And Matthew knows very well that the gospel is going to end with Jesus sending the apostles to preach to all nations. But for now, Jesus wants them to confront the Jews with the fulfillment of the promises that God has made them. I think Matthew wants us to reflect on and compare the instructions Jesus gives now to the ones that he gives after the resurrection. After the resurrection, the ministry clearly expands to the whole world, but for now it's focused on the Jews. And what are they to do on this journey, on this ministry? He says, and proclaim as you go, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without pain, give without pay. In other words, they are to do exactly what Jesus has been doing. The very first thing Matthew told us about Jesus and his ministry was that Jesus said, Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Now he is sending the twelve out with that same message. Likewise, Matthew has just given us examples of each of the items on this list heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. Each of those things happened in the stories we just read about in chapters eight and nine. Jesus did them, and now the twelve are going to go out and do the same thing. Well that raises an interesting question in my mind. At this point, what do the twelve know about the kingdom of heaven? Presumably they know the basic message from the Old Testament. God is going to establish his righteous rule over all creation. This righteous rule will be brought about by the Messiah who will rule for God. The Messiah is the king of Israel who is descended from David. They know that when the kingdom comes the righteous dead will rise and live forever, and through the Messiah all the promises made to Israel and the world will be fulfilled. And they know that the kingdom is at hand because the king of that kingdom, the Messiah, has come. Well, this is big news. God promised David that his throne would be eternal, but that's about a thousand years in the past. His throne was destroyed by the Babylonians and has not been occupied since. After the Babylonians, the children of Israel were ruled by the Persians, the Greeks, and now the Romans. One of the repeated refrains in the Old Testament is, How long, O Lord? When is this going to end? When will the promises be fulfilled? Psalm 89 is this beautiful poetic recounting of the promises to David and the faithfulness of God. But then there's this turning point where the psalmist says, But now you have cast off and rejected and are full of wrath. How long, O Lord, will you hide yourself forever? And then the psalmist asks, When are you going to do what you promised to do? And all of this would be familiar to the Jews of Jesus' day. For someone to come along and say, You know that Messiah? He's here. All those questions we've been asking about how long and when will you fulfill the promises? Well, the answer is now. The Messiah is here. That would be truly momentous news. But did the disciples understand any more than that? Well, the Gospel of John shows us that at least some of the disciples understood from the beginning that Jesus was the Messiah, but they don't really know how the plan is going to unfold. Each of the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, have the same key turning point, but we haven't reached that yet. That turning point is when Jesus asks his disciples, Who do you think I am? And Peter replies, You're the Christ. In other words, you're the Messiah, the Son of the living God, and Jesus says, That's right. Up until that point, Jesus is not as clear about who he is. He demonstrates it by his actions. He's claimed to have the authority of God. He calls himself the Son of Man, but it's not until after Peter's confession that he becomes specific and detailed. At this point, they can testify to what they have heard from Jesus. They can testify to what they have seen Jesus do in healing and casting out demons, and they can back up their claims by performing some of the same miracles. One of Matthew's goals throughout this gospel, at least in my opinion, is to show the way that Jesus changed expectations about the kingdom. There's a lot of that in Matthew as we see him challenge and rebuke the teaching of the Pharisees. The Sermon on the Mount says a lot about who will enter the kingdom of heaven and makes clear it is not what the Pharisees have been teaching. Jesus has said that many Gentiles will enter the kingdom of heaven, which would have been a surprising idea to the Jews of the day. Later on, Jesus is going to start teaching in parables about the kingdom of God, and those parables also contain a lot of surprises. But of course, the biggest surprise of all is that Jesus, the Messiah, is going to go away first. He is not yet here to stay. The kingdom will come in its fullness only when he returns. And I suspect the twelve do not yet fully understand that part. I suspect that the miracles that they do will speak more loudly than the teaching they do. They can demonstrate through the miracles that God is on the move, that God is with this man Jesus as they repeat his message. But do they know all the ins and outs about what's going to happen with the cross and the resurrection and when the kingdom of God is coming? I suspect they probably don't know that yet. Jesus also says, you received without pay and give without pay. Basically, he instructs them not to charge people for what they're doing. And we're going to talk more about that in the next podcast. I think that little phrase goes more with the next section, and we're going to develop it next week. So to conclude, let's ask the question, why should we care about these instructions? This is kind of like going to the Broadway play and seeing the understudies. We've already got the message straight from the star himself in the Sermon on the Mount. Why do we care about this stuff that he's telling the twelve? Plus, he's sending the twelve to the Jews. I suspect most of you listening are Gentiles. I'm a Gentile, so we might ask, what can this possibly have to do with us today? If we had been living back then, we would most likely have been living in a Gentile territory and might not even know anything unusual was happening in Israel. The promises of the kingdom were made to the children of Abraham and the gospel was proclaimed to them first, and the reaction of the Jewish people to this ministry is a very important part of the story. But in another sense, we Gentiles are hovering in the background. Jesus is taking an important first step toward passing his ministry over to the twelve. They don't know it yet, but ultimately Jesus is going to leave and send the twelve out into the world to speak for him. They are being sent out as apostles to speak and act for him, and this is a kind of dress rehearsal. He's sending them out while he's still around, but ultimately he knows that he is going back to his father and they are going to have to carry the torch. You and I know about Jesus today because of the work of the apostles. Jesus never wrote anything down. We know about him through his representatives and the people that they taught. This story in chapter 10 is about the first time that they take on that task. We can see the broader implications of the story in the way Matthew tells us. We'll see more clearly as we go along through the instruction. Jesus starts with the immediate ministry to the Jews, but then he begins to look ahead to the time when they will speak before Gentiles. Matthew seems to understand this initial sending of the twelve as the first step toward their ultimate global mission, even though right now they're to stay in Jewish territory, and we Gentiles will be included in that global mission. Let me make one final comment on this that struck me. Remember how this section started? Back in 936, when he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Jesus is like a farmer looking out over a field. He recognizes that the plants are ready to be harvested, but he needs people to go out and bring in the crop. I think he means that God, the Lord of the harvest, has prepared the hearts of many people to respond to the gospel so that when they hear it, they will enter the kingdom of heaven. But workers are needed to bring in that harvest. Workers are needed to go out and proclaim that gospel so that people can respond to it. And Jesus is sending out the twelve because he has compassion for these lost sheep. But what is the compassionate thing that they're going to do? They will be doing compassionate works of miraculous healings. That's certainly true. But as we've seen, these miracles are also important as signs and symbols. I think the most compassionate thing they're going to do is proclaim the truth. People need to hear this message. It is the door to true restoration. It is their teaching, their proclamation of the gospel that is the act of true compassion. In the Gospel of Mark, we see another occasion where Jesus feels compassion. This is Mark 634. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things. So here Mark tells us Jesus felt compassion for the people. They were like sheep without a shepherd. So what did he do? He taught them. He explained many things to them. What did these sheep without a shepherd need? They needed to be led to understanding. They needed to know what was truly important. They needed to know about the promises of God, about the need for repentance and where to find hope. They needed someone to help them see what is truly important and true. It seems to me that that is our great motivation to minister, to evangelize, to study the Bible, to teach, and encourage our friends and neighbors. If you listen all the way to the end of the podcast, you've heard me say, tell a friend what you learned. Well, that's not a throwaway publicity line. I mean it. We can't make other people believe. We can't soften their hearts or open their eyes. That's the job of the Holy Spirit. But we can do them the great kindness of sharing our understanding and pointing them to the truth. We can set their feet on the firm foundation of Scripture by lovingly, compassionately proclaiming the truth. I often use the analogy of a journey through the wilderness. It makes all the difference in the world whether we are lost in the wilderness or whether we are traveling through the wilderness to some desirable goal. Think of what a gift it is to learn that you are no longer lost in the wilderness. Instead, you are traveling toward a glorious kingdom. Think of how you would thank and praise the person who set you on the right path. Think of how blessed you would feel by the kindness they showed you in pointing you in the right direction. All of us have the opportunity to do that for each other. We can all encourage each other by reminding each other what is true. We have that opportunity every day. You don't have to be a professional minister or a pastor. You don't have to work for a nonprofit. You don't have to be a professional teacher. Those of us who understand the gospel have been given a great gift. It's a gift we can freely and joyfully share with others who are still lost in the wilderness, or with others who've hit a bump in the road and need a hand to help them get up. And that's what we see in this passage. The disciples have the opportunity to extend the compassion of Jesus to others by bringing them the good news that they themselves have come to understand. Now you and I are not Jesus. We are students of Jesus. We cannot claim to have all the answers like he did. We're not apostles, we can't claim to have inspired understanding like they did, but we can explain to others what we think the Bible says. We can encourage each other with its truths as we understand them. We can remind each other of the great and central truths of the Bible as we understand them, and in so doing, we can extend the compassion of Jesus to other people just like the apostles did. That is, we can pass on to others as best we can the truth of the gospel. That's a great gift that we can give to each other. Finding some clarity and understanding in the midst of the turmoil of life is a great gift from God, and it's one of the gifts that God allows us to participate in giving. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure that out. You can hear all previous episodes in this series on my website, wednesdayintheword.com. There is no charge, there's no spam, and there are no ads. It's all free to help you improve your study skills and understanding of scripture. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please subscribe, leave a positive rating wherever you listen, and most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. You can find more of Reggie's music and all of his CDs at heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.