06 What James Means by ‘Faith Without Works Is Dead’ (James 2:14-20)

Speaker: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word. Today is everywhere two thousand twelve. Our passage is changed two, verses eight through seventeen, and our teacher is Krisan Marotta. You can find more talks in this series on our website at wednesdayintheword.com. Speaker 1: Well, good morning. Just a reminder, I'm breaking chapter two a little differently than your workbook. Uh we will be in chap in verses 14 through 20 today, and then we're gonna finish next week with 21 through 26. So you can just keep doing the homework as it is in the notebook. It's a little probably less confusing than trying to adjust. But I'll be doing 14 through 20 today. How many of you are familiar with the story of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte? Oh good, because this is a spoiler alert. If you haven't read the book or seen one of the mini movie versions, I'm gonna spoil part of the story for you, so you might want to, you know, cover your ears or fast forward through the tape if you're listening. But there's one scene, in fact, this is my favorite scene in the book. Jane finds out that she cannot marry the man she loves, and he begs her to live with him anyway and just pretend to be his wife. And though she's deeply in love with him, she refuses, and this is the speech she gives. She says, Laws and principles are not for such times as when there are not temptations. They are for such moments as this. When body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigor, stringent are they, and violent they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth, so I have always believed, and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane, quite insane, with my veins running fire and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations are all I have at this hour to stand by. There I plant my foot. So she's talking about I've always believed in a certain morality and things that are that I believe are true and I've embraced them my whole life, and now when it matters, can I just ignore them and cast them aside? And if my individu if at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? I think that's precisely the theme of the whole book. And it's the theme of James too, because what he's talking about is if I ignore the gospel and what it claims to be true, precisely at the time it makes a difference, then what is my faith worth? So let me just review where we are in the book. If remember in chapter one, James told us to consider it joy when we face trials, because trials will test our faith, and this process of testing our faith will result in maturity and wisdom, and it will make us into the kind of people we ought to be. So he ended chapter one with the encouragement to live out the gospel and live what we claim to believe, to embrace the truth, and he gave us these two paths: testing, which produces endurance, which produces life, and sinful desires, which produce sin, which produces death. So you can pick one or the other, our response should be to hear the truth and receive it. And in chapter two, he begins to apply that. Now, I don't a lot of well not a lot, many scholars think that James is a collection of wisdom sayings and that they're kind of no organized or very loosely organized. And I don't ascribe to that theory. I think there is a strong theme running through it, and that in chapter two he's applying what he taught us in chapter one. So so far in chapter two, he's argued that if we believe the gospel, we should show no partiality based on external factors. So I the gospel calls me to think differently about what who and what is valuable. So riches don't make you valuable, earthly riches don't, but inheritance in the kingdom of God does. And I should live as if that's true, and it affects how I treat the rich and the poor. It also makes me ask, what's my view of myself? Who do I think I am? Who who am I who am I to judge who's worthy or not? So the world says, well, be they're these poor people and insignificant people, they lack social status, and they have nothing to offer me, they have nothing to help me get ahead in life, so I should ignore them, they're not the right crowd to hang with. And the gospel tells me differently that all of us are unworthy, that any good place I have in this world or in the kingdom of God is a gift of God, and I have it because He is merciful in kind. So when someone sins against me, it confronts me with the question, what about my sin? How can I judge them that does not also judge myself? So I should show no partiality, not play favorites based on external factors, because we're all in the same boat, we all need the same Savior and the same Lord. So now we're continuing that theme, we're continuing the application of chapter one, and we come to what the real problem passage of the book. This is the passage where it looks like James and Paul disagree. And I hope I've prepared you enough with the context so that by the time you did your homework, which I'm sure you all did, that the resolution is obvious. So James and Paul appear to contradict each other because they're using the exact same vocabulary. They're both talking about faith and works and justification. But they are used, though they are using the same language, they are using it in very different contexts and addressing very different problems. So in Galatians, Paul was addressing the question of the theology raised by the Judaizers. Must I keep the law in order to be saved? Do my outward acts of obedience to the law gain me favor with God? And Paul strongly asserts, no, that your outward acts of obedience will not bring you into a right relationship with God. You can't earn your salvation by keeping the law. James is answering a different question. He's saying, now that we have this relationship with God, so after we've come to faith, will works necessarily follow? And he is saying, yes, because real saving faith makes a difference. He's clarifying, I think, what it means to be saved by faith alone. He's saying, you're correct, we're saved by faith alone, but let's make sure you understand what that really means. And let's make sure you know the difference between a claim to faith or pseudo-faith and real saving faith. And he's been arguing strongly that faith is not just an idle claim or an empty claim, but it actually makes a difference. So before we get to the details, let me just review the structure of the chapter, and I've put it on both boards, so uh hopefully you can see one of them. He's to answer that, he's gonna raise the statement in 214. What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? So that's the question he's gonna answer, and then he's gonna give four examples through the rest of the chapters. So in 15 through 17, he's gonna talk about how we treat poorly dressed, hungry Christians. In 18 through 20, he's gonna talk about demons who have correct theology. In 21 through 24, he's gonna talk about Abraham, and in 25 through 26, he's gonna talk about Rahab. Now, he very helpfully concludes each illustration with a summary statement. So at the end of each example, he kind of concludes, and here's what you should learn with them from this, and you'll find those in verse 17, verse 20, verse 24, and 26. And also notice that two illustrations are negative, so they show us what faith is not, and two illustrations are positive, they show us what faith is. And then in each pair, one is toward, one is horizontal and one is vertical. So one is focused on how we treat other people, and the other is focused on how we treat God, and then uh he alternates them. So the first, the hungry Christians, and the last, Rahab, or how we treat our fellow believers, the middle two, the demons with correct theology, and Abraham show us how we respond to God. So that's kind of the little the where he's going with this. And we're gonna look at the first two examples this week, and we're gonna look at the second two examples next week. Okay. So let's dive in. I'm so excited. This is like I've been waiting for this section. So look we're gonna start with 14 through 17. What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to him, Go in peace and be warmed and filled, without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. Okay, so let's remember the context. The far context is trials test the genuineness of our faith. So the far context is what was he raised in chapter one, and he's told us that trials are a very practical way of connecting our faith and our works. So what I believe, I will be called to live out. God will put me in situations where I have a choice to make, and that choice should reveal what I believe to be true. And he's already told us at the end of chapter one that social status should not make a difference in the way we treat people because it makes no difference to God. What matters is our character and our inheritance in the kingdom of heaven. So if I truly believe the gospel, it should change how I treat rich and poor people because who do I think really is in control of my life? Do I have to, do I trust that God's in control of my life, or do I have to kind of butter up the rich believers to get or rich unbelievers to get them to quit bothering me? So who's really taking care of you? Now, remember the immediate context is what we looked at last week, verses 12 and 13, that mercy triumphs over judgment. So he talked about, so speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy, mercy triumphs over judgment. So remember, he called us to live as if we believed the gospel. So the gospel is this law of liberty. It's a law in the sense that I ought to respond to it, but it's a law of liberty in that it sets me free. The power of the gospel is that God has forgiven us, redeemed us, and justified us, and given us the Holy Spirit so that he can change us from the inside out. We are now free both from our guilt and from the tyranny of sin, so that we are free to respond in grateful obedience. Unlike the Mosaic Law, which we talked about in Galatians, which was designed to drive us to our need for a savior. So the Mosaic Law was this tutor or this drill sergeant that set the standard for me so that I could see I couldn't make it, and then hopefully encouraged me to run to my Savior. So that's the immediate context. So we have this law that brings freedom that sets us free, and that raises the question in 2.14, what good is it if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? Okay, so let's make sure we know what he is not asking. He's not asking the question, what use is it if a person says he has faith and still sins on occasion? Okay, that's not the question. So the question is not, will I ever sin again after believing the gospel? It is not if I claim to have faith, will I still get angry, will I still lie occasionally, will I still show myself to be a sinner on occasion? If that's the question, we're all in trouble. Because that question has been answered. We will. The answer is yes, you will sin occasionally, you will sin again. So the question is not what use is it if you claim to have faith and you still make mistakes. The question is if I claim to have faith and the overall pattern and character and direction of my life does not change, it it continues to contradict the gospel. What good is that? So if I claim to have faith and nothing in my heart, nothing in my life, nothing in my attitudes or my values or the way I view sin or the way I treat others, if none of that changes, is that faith? And James is going to say, no, it's not. Because the gospel is this law of liberty that sets us free, and it ought to produce this grateful response of obedience. Okay, so let's look at how he supports that. His first example is in 15 through 17. If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, Go in peace and be warmed and filled, without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. So we've already seen that James is concerned with how we treat the rich and the poor, uh, especially poor believers in our midst, but his argument is more complex than what use is faith if it doesn't feed the poor? I mean, that would be easy. We could all go out and find some way to fill in our to make some room in our schedules to feed a poor person, but that would not justify us. So notice the hypothetical he's setting up. He's making an analogy, and you can tell that because he says, so also. There's the clue that he's making a comparison. So we have to figure out what the comparison is. So in verse 15, he says, a brother or sister is poorly clothed or lacking daily food. Now it's possible that he means some you know transient panhandler that you see once on a street corner and never see again. But I think the fact that he's using brother or sister means this is a fellow believer. Probably someone you know who sits next to you in church. So I think the situation he's referring to is not a poorly dressed person that you pass on the street and know nothing about, but here's a member of your community, someone you you know, someone you may sit next to in church each week, whom God has put in your life and you have regular contact with. So you know their character, you know their circumstances, and you have a real opportunity to help. So he's setting up a situation where you have both the knowledge and the means to help. The need, the basic clothing and daily food, that Greek word refers for clothing refers to a lack of an outer garment. So the idea is not that he's naked, but he has no coat. It's cold and he doesn't have enough clothes, or she doesn't have enough clothes to keep warm. So this is not an outrageous request. This is not a needy person that requires, you know, a reorganization of the national economy and an overhaul of the welfare state. You know, this is not, you know, ongoing life support. This need does not require the moon. This is something that a meal and a hand-me-down clothing could could fulfill. So you could solve this problem with a sandwich and a sweatshirt. So this is not a need that's out of reach for most people. So the example he's proposing is not have you made a good faith effort to solve the problems of the poor in your area. The example is more like this. This is my best analogy. Suppose you say, I'm a great neighbor, I love my neighbors, uh, we have the best neighborhood in the city, and we know each other, and there's a snowstorm, and your next door neighbor comes home from a trip, and they pull into their driveway at midnight, their kids are asleep in the van, and they find out their house has no electricity and it's freezing inside. It's barely above freezing. They have no food in the kitchen because they've been away, their cell phone battery's dead because they've been traveling, and all the hotels are booked because there's some big event at the university. So they come to your door with their sleeping kids in their arms and say, Can we sleep here for the night? Now, you claim that you're a great neighbor and you know these people, and everyone would help each other out. Given that claim, are you going to shut the door in their face? And if you do, if you say, Oh, go sleep in your car and be warm, what good is that? That's the situation he's proposing. What kind of person would ignore the easiest of needs of someone you know and someone who whose need you you have the ability to meet and the knowledge to meet? So that's the the comparison. He's saying, how can you claim to have faith if you fail to act in the easiest of situations? So he's not suggesting a new standard of righteousness by which we all ought to judge ourselves. He's not saying if in your lifetime you're never given the chance to help the poor in your area, you'd better worry about your salvation. He's not making those claims. He's not saying that faith ought to be concerned about with poverty above every other problem in the world. He's he could just as easily have said, if a husband claims to love his wife but he never listens to her, he neglects her, and he treats her with disrespect, what good is that love? It's that kind of comparison. Or what if or he could have said, if a boss promises to give you a raise and treat you fairly, but when payday comes he skipped town, what good is that promise? The point of his analogy is not poverty and how believers ought to respond to poverty. The point of his analogy is the disconnect between what I say and what I do. So his note, his concluding statement, even so, faith if it has no works is dead, being by itself. So he's asking what kind of faith is that? Faith is dead, and dead, I think, in this context means inert or useless or inactive. So he's saying, not only does this kind of faith make no difference on the outside, it makes no difference on the inside either. It's dead, it's inert, it's inactive. So the contrast is between someone, not someone who has faith and someone who has works, but the kind of faith that makes no difference, i.e. has works, and the kind of faith that does make a difference, that does have works. So he's saying the kind of faith that makes no difference, that is, does not have works, is useless. It will not save you on the day of judgment. So faith that makes no difference on the outside or the inside is no faith at all. So if I say I'm so see the analogy. If I'm talking to someone who's in need of warmth and food, who's perhaps my friend, and I say, be warm and be filled and walk away, what good are my words? Just so, if I claim to have faith and it makes no difference in how I act or what I do or say, then what good is that faith? That's the analogy. My actions reveal what I claim to be true, and the disconnect is between what I say and what I do. Okay, so let's go to a second illustration. Verse 18, but someone will say, You have faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? So notice he starts, but someone will say, So he's raising an objection. He's saying, okay, but someone will look at this in illustration and say and raise this point, you have faith and I have works, show me your faith apart from works, and I will show you my faith by my works. So most people think the objection ends with, you have faith and I have works, and James' answer begins with, show me your faith apart from your works. Now there's no punctuation in the original text, but that's pretty accepted from the context. So let's make sure we understand the objection. And I think it's this. I think the objection is, okay, wait, James, we're not all the same. We express our faith differently. So what if my faith looks different than yours? How can you say I don't have it? So one person might live out their faith one way, and another person may live out their faith in another way. Can't we both still have faith? So you have faith, I have works. Couldn't one person be distinguished by faith and another by her lifestyle and both her true religion? So couldn't one person be distinguished for humility and another for integrity and another for discernment and another for prayer and another for charity? So they all look different on the outside, but couldn't they all have faith? What about that? And here's James' answer. Faith and work are not two independent things that can exist separately. So they are linked, they go together. And I think his point is you can't perform any good works unless God has given you faith. So if God has redeemed you and given you faith, then your values and attitudes will change such that your actions will change. So it's not possible for someone to perform true selfless acts of good works without God first having redeemed them. So it's not possible to have genuine saving faith without your heart changing and your life changing. So if you see charity or prayer or service or discernment or whatever distinguishes that particular believer, that's part of God's gift of faith. So show me a case where a sinner left to himself or herself without the grace of God did these things. I think that's his point. Show me your faith without works. Show me where that could be possible. Show me where someone could do something truly good on the outside without having first been given faith. Because it may be a good deed, it may be helping the poor, but if it's not motivated by a love for God and your creator, then it's not truly good. It may be motivated by selfishness or wanting to look good to your fellow believers or something else. It's not truly good. So the Bible teaches us we're all trapped in bondage to sin and left to ourselves. We would have no good works. Good works are part of the gift God gives to us. So again, let's make sure we know what He's not saying. He's not saying, okay, show me your faith. I just fed a poor person, so I'm covered, you know, so I'm good, but we What have you done lately? That that is not what he's saying. He's not saying um that we have to prove our faith. He's saying, I know what this is what faith and works looks like. Show me the person who has genuine saving faith and still consistently lives a sinful lifestyle. It's contradictory on face value. So if I say I hate ice cream and I eat a gallon of it every day, you would say, you don't really hate ice cream. And I don't, by the way. So but you could question what do your words mean, and that's the kind of thing he's proposing. If a husband says he loves you and treats you like dirt, what kind of love is that? How can you call that real love? So the answer he expects is that's no faith at all. So look at how he he uh bears that out. 19 and 20. You believe that God is one, you do well, the demons also believe and shudder, but are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless? So he's saying, you can have correct theology, but theology alone does not represent a change of heart. So the reference is uh you believe that God is one as a reference to the Shema. It's here, O Israel, the Lord your God. The Lord our God, the Lord is one. It's from Deuteronomy 6.4, and it was recited twice daily by Jews, Orthodox Jews. It immediately precedes the commandment to love God with all your heart. So this is kind of fundamental theology. The first step of spiritual enlightenment is to believe that there is a God and you are not it. That's the first thing we all have to realize. The next step is to respond by loving God with all your heart. So he's saying, you may have correct theology, that's great, but doesn't make a difference in your life. As Milton said, it's a good thing to possess an accurate theology, but it is unsatisfactory unless that good theology also possesses us. And that's what James is saying. And remember, he's probably addressing people who take pride in their theology. They've been raised with the law, they've been raised in orthodoxy, and he's saying believing that God is one and that he exists is not enough. So it's possible to fill your head with knowledge of the Bible, but not let that knowledge have any effect in your heart. There's a a liberal commentator that I actually read a lot, and he will say these things like, Well, if this text were actually true and written by the original author, and then he goes on to make these amazing insights in the text into the text and what it means, and then he goes, but we know that's not true. And he goes on. And I'm like, how can you have that great insight and not believe it? And yet it's it's almost universal when he writes these commentaries on passages. He doesn't believe it, but he can see that it's there. And that's the kind of situation James is talking to. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking, well, I know all this important stuff about the Bible, or the translation I use is the best of all, or my Bible teacher is the best, or my discipleship group is the best, or I know more, I study more, I understand more, and get all puffed up with knowledge and pride in my own understanding. And James is saying, knowledge for knowledge's sake is worthless. If knowledge does not lead you to humility and wisdom and understanding, then it's pointless. It ought to produce gratitude and humility and loving the Lord your God with all your heart, not pride. So it's dangerous to know about God and have no inclination to obey him, the demons being the case in point. They have no illusions about who God is or the nature of his character or how he's acted in history. They see him with complete clarity and they hate what they see. And I think his point there is knowledge alone is worthless. If belief in the one true God calls me to react and repent, it should call me to reevaluate myself and lead me to Christ because I have not lived as I ought to live. So James is saying, truth about God can be believed without costing me anything. The demons could all pass a theological test on who God is and what he's done in history, but so what? They have it has not led them to bow their knee to God. So they have not changed their path. And James is saying, true faith is not just this theological abstraction or theological test, it changes me. So very similar to the point in um in the first example. And then he concludes, do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? So that's his summary statement, that if it makes no difference, it's not the real thing. If it doesn't change me, if it doesn't lead me to humility and uh a humble heart before my creator, then it's useful it's useless, and it bridges to the next section. So let's let me just review his first two negative examples. The first one I call invisible faith. So when I fail to respond to a reasonable request and an obvious need from a fellow believer who's perhaps even my friend, that's invisible faith. That that is something I claim to believe, but it has made no difference in my life. The second one is barren orthodoxy. I may have all the right beliefs, but I fail to respond to them. So faith is more than knowing the right answers on a theological quiz, it submits to those beliefs as true. Okay, let me take a few minutes then to ask okay, how do we respond to this? So James has been hitting this theme over and over. How should we apply this to our lives? Martin Luther used an illustration of a drunk on a horse, and he says, so you have this drunk man who's trying to get home, and he tries to get on his horse, so he climbs up and he falls off, and he gets all frustrated, and he gets back on the horse and he falls off on the other side, and he keeps falling off on one way or the other. And I think that's how we can respond. We can fall off the horse on either side. There are two ways we can go wrong in applying this passage to our life, and it's like falling off the horse on one side or the other, and we want to stay on the horse. So I'm gonna give you the two negatives. Here's the ways we don't want to respond to it. One is self-righteousness. So it's very easy to say, to respond to James and go, whoa, look how well I'm doing. And I have to I start looking for evidence of faith in my life, and I find it and I get puffed up and prideful about it. And that's that's one side of the horse we want to avoid. So we don't understand the gospel if we don't understand the depth of evil in our souls. And if you're paying attention, you can find evidence in your life that you're still sinful. And if you don't think that's true, just ask your friends. I'm sure they'll help you with it. So it you know, I don't really it doesn't really matter who you are or how long you've been a believer, if you're wise, you will see evidence probably daily that you're still sinful. So if I ever start believing that I've got it all together, then I have a big problem because my only hope is that God is going to be merciful to me to remove my guilt because of the blood of Christ. And I have no right to look at a prostitute and say, well, wow, I'm better than her, or look at, you know, someone who's in financial trouble and say, Whoa, I'm not there, I'm doing a great job, or someone who's been divorced or whatever, and say, look how much better I'm doing than she is. That's I have fallen off the wrong s one side of the horse. So if I look at someone who's struggling with a temptation that I'm not struggling with at the moment, and say, Look how well I'm doing, I have responded wrong. The gospel tells me I have the same problem. I may not have the same outward problem, but I have the same inward problem. Okay, so one side of the horse is self-righteousness, the other side of the horse is despair. So just as I can look for evidence of faith and growth in my life and see how much I've found, I can also look and go, whoa, I don't see any at all. And respond with despair. So saying, I'm not making it. I I am just, I'm not there yet, and woe is me. And remember what James has told us. Life will confront you with the challenges where your faith will be tested, and you will have a chance to live it out. That you can guarantee, that will happen. Sometimes you will fail that test and you will learn from it, and sometimes you will not fail that test and you will learn from it. The promise of the gospel is you will learn from it. Suffering has a point, it has a reason, it's teaching you something, you will learn. The promise is not you will never sin again, and the promise is not that others will never sin against you. That will happen. So the the other side of the horse is despair. Life may require you to admit that you're a sinner in a particular situation, not just in theory, and that's always painful, because it's a lot easier to admit that I'm flawed in theory than to admit I actually said something really thoughtless to you, and I need to repent and apologize. That's much harder. So there are times when we have to admit I'm the one at fault, I'm the one who did wrong, and you humbly acknowledge it and ask for forgiveness. Or life can require you to forgive someone who's hurt you deeply, to say yes, we are both sinners, we are both in needs of God's mercy. That hurt a lot, but the gospel tells me we're both sinful, we both uh need the grace of God, and the proper response here is to show you the same forgiveness I received. And then it can go further that life can require you to give of your resources to help someone in needs, and it may feel like your resources are wearing thin. God may ask you to do that, to live like your wealth and your resources will not save you and present you with an opportunity to say, I'm counting on God, not my wealth, and share what you have. So we want to be careful we don't take from James the idea that because faith should be lived out in my life, I have to start judging myself on how well I'm living it out. And then either responding to that judgment with self-righteousness or despair. And even worse, we don't want to start saying it's my responsibility to judge how well you're living it out, and judge you accordingly. So we dare not start comparing and grading ourselves, saying, Well, you know, you're not you're not doing so hot in this struggle. That's not our place. James has promised us in this in chapter one that the evidence will come. So consider it joy when you encounter trials because they will test and prove your faith. If you don't see evidence of that faith yet, then ask God and he will generously give it to you. So I think he tells us we will see evidence of faith, but I think implied is we will also see evidence of our sin. And the call is to trust God that he knows what he's doing and he will get me where he wants me to go on the timetable he wants me to get there. So if my sister's on a quicker path or a slower path, so be it. It's not my place to judge. So the danger I think is falling either into despair or into self-righteousness. And we see evidence of God producing this strong, mature faith in our lives, and I start thinking God must be pleased with me, I've crossed the line, I'm in trouble, I'm slipping into self-righteousness. Or worse, if I start judging you and saying, you need to show more evidence, let me show you how you're failing, then I'm in trouble. On the other hand, if I see more evidence in your life than I do in mine, and I start envying you and growing angry with God over what he's given you that he hasn't given me, that's not my place either. So James says, any evidence of faith in our life is a gift of God, we can trust him to work it out. So we can I can trust him to work out your salvation and mine. Our only hope is the cross of Christ. So the evidence will come, rest assured. That's the good news, the evidence will come. The bad news is it comes through suffering. So there's only one test, one question on the final, but you're not gonna like it. So that's the promise. I can rejoice in the evidence that I see as a gift from God, and that I have faith, but I dare not get prideful about it or um judgmental about it. So stay on the horse. Don't fall into self righteousness, don't fall into despair. But remember the promise is God will get you there. Trials will come, God will change you through them, and they He will change you on His timetable. Oh good. We have lots of time for questions, so let me pray for us and um I'll give you a chance to respond.