58 Why Your Response to Christians Shows Your Response to God (Matthew 10:40-42)

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 58th talk in my series on the Gospel of Matthew, and we will be studying Matthew chapter 10, verses 40 through 42. Lecture notes, which are the handout I would give you if I was teaching you in person, are on the link below this podcast, or you can find them by going directly to wednesdayintheword.com slash Matthew 5.8. Glad to have you along. We are looking at the instructions that Jesus gave to the 12 the first time he sent them out to preach to the cities of Israel. This is in Matthew chapter 10. It's the second of five discourses or sermons that Matthew records, and today we're going to finish it. Jesus has been healing people of all kinds of diseases and proclaiming the kingdom of heaven is near, and that's what he charges the twelve to do. Matthew has described Jesus as having the authority to do these things, and now Jesus gives the twelve disciples authority to do the same things. And this is the beginning of the process by which the twelve become his apostles. This journey is an important first step in their training to become his representatives when he leaves after the resurrection. He tells them not to take provisions and not to charge for their preaching so that they will be dependent on the people in the towns where they preach. And if they face hostility in a town, they're to leave it. As we've talked about, Jesus sets up a kind of test for both the twelve and the people of Israel. The people of Israel must decide how they're going to respond to the message of Jesus. And the twelve have to decide to be faithful even when the people reject them. Ultimately, we know that they will also be speaking before Gentiles, but on this journey they are to remain in the cities of Israel. Jesus has warned them to expect rejection, to expect persecution, and yet he reminds them their fate is in God's hands. Even if their human enemies kill them, God has the power to grant them eternal life. If they're faithful to God, then they will find life in the kingdom of God. But if they are more afraid of their enemies than they are of God, and they deny Jesus out of that fear, then they will lose the favor of God and their place in His kingdom. Jesus has warned them this is not going to be a victory tour. His message does not bring peace but a sword. It's divisive because it requires people to choose to follow him or reject him. And that choice will split and divide even the closest human relationships. Now after all those warnings, which we've seen throughout chapter 10, Jesus ends this talk with the possible positive reaction to his message. Let's look at Matthew ten verses forty through forty two. Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. The one who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward, and the one who receives a righteous person, because he is a righteous person, will receive a righteous person's reward. And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water, because he is a disciple, truly I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward. Before we look at the overall point of this section, I'd like to talk about some of the words and the phrases that Jesus uses. First, Jesus says, whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. What does it mean to receive someone in this context? In modern English, we think of receiving as a passive concept. It doesn't take any action or choice to receive something. If I get a text that tells me I have received a package, I didn't do anything. The package was delivered and I received it and then it came to my front door. But in the Bible, receiving often refers to a deliberate choice. To receive someone is to accept them or welcome them. To receive the apostles is to make the conscious choice, to listen to what they're saying and to heed what they say. At the core of the gospel is a call to choose to respond to God and his messengers. And this word receive is one of the words used to capture that response. We are supposed to receive God's messengers. We are supposed to receive the gospel. That is, we choose to accept and embrace it. Let me give you a couple of examples. We saw this one earlier in the same sermon. This is Matthew 10 14. And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town. Notice there, receive is in parallel with listening to your words. The idea is if anyone chooses not to listen to you. Here's another one. When he explains the parable of the sower and the seed, Jesus says this in Luke 8 13. He's speaking about the metaphorical seed. And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy, but these have no root. They believe for a while and in time of testing fall away. So that seed that falls on the rock is compared to people who initially listen to and embrace the gospel, but then reject it when following Jesus becomes too costly. And one more, this is Luke eighteen, sixteen and seventeen. But Jesus called them to him, saying, Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. Here again this word receive captures the idea of choosing to embrace the gospel. The children of God are the ones who make the choice to receive Him, to accept Jesus as the Messiah and believe He is the Messiah. So to receive is to make the crucial choice to accept, welcome, or embrace. In our passage, Jesus says, Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. And I would paraphrase it something like this: whoever welcomes you and chooses to listen to you welcomes and chooses to listen to me as well. The one who opens his heart to you has opened his heart to me as well as the God who sent me. And this is going to be an important concept for the twelve. They're going to be on the front lines, experiencing how people receive them and their message. They're proclaiming the truth from God, and how people choose to respond to them is not only personally important for the danger they might be in, but they are to understand that there is even something more important at stake. How people respond to them, the apostles, indicates how they respond to God. Now we face that same question today. We confront the writings of the apostles in Scripture, and it confronts us with the choice of how we will receive them. Are we going to believe their testimony? Believe what they said they saw and did and their words about Jesus or not? Second, Jesus speaks of receiving a prophet because he is a prophet in 1041. Or your translation might have receive a prophet in the name of a prophet. What does that mean? To act in someone's name is not a common expression today, but we do have one similar expression in English. If you watch the old police shows, you might see the police knock on someone's door and say, Open up in the name of the law. The police officers are not coming in their own names. They are coming as representatives of the law or the state. If I knock on your door and say, open up, it's me, you might choose to ignore me and go back to what you're doing. I don't have any right to require you to open the door. But when the police come and say open up in the name of the law, they are claiming to be a representative of the law. When the police demand that you open the door, you need to think about them as representatives of the state. They're not coming as Joe Smoe. They're coming as someone who is authorized to maintain justice. So if I receive a prophet in the name of a prophet, I'm receiving that prophet, I'm welcoming and embracing him and accepting him because of his role and authority as a prophet. I might not find the individual impressive as a person or charismatic as an individual, but I acknowledge the prophet's role as a representative of God, and therefore I welcome him. I accept that this prophet is a representative of God. He is coming in the name of God, and I listen to him because of that. It's important to me that this speaker is a prophet, and I grant him the authority of that role, and I think that role is a big deal. Well, this is a big concept in our little section. How is it that you see the messengers of Jesus? These people present you with a choice. The twelve are not speaking for themselves. They didn't make up some new philosophical system or fad religion. They are being sent by Jesus. They are proclaiming his message, they are speaking in his name. How people respond to them reflects how people respond to the one who sent them because they come in his name. All right, the third concept in this section, Jesus talks about rewards. And let's talk about what he means by rewards here. When we think of rewards, we often think of a prize or something we've earned. For example, in a fairy tale, if I go on a quest to find the golden chalice to rid the kingdom of an evil dragon, the king might reward me because I have done such a brave and noble thing. That is not the flavor of rewards in the Bible. I have never found a context yet in the Bible that speaks of someone doing such a great and mighty feat for God, that God rewards them for their heroism because he's so grateful for what they accomplished. That's just not in there. However, many people think that there are rewards that are an extra added bonus that God gives believers in addition to salvation. And some people treat the Bible as if it were a catalog of gifts and rewards that you can get if you just figure out the rules, the tips, and the tricks. When they see this word reward in the Bible, they assume it's something extra above and beyond salvation that God hands out. And some people approach the Bible looking for how do I get the good stuff? How do I make my life better now and get the big rewards in heaven later? And so they approach scripture looking to figure out how to get the crown of life, the crown of righteousness, the runner's crown, and so forth. It's almost like being in scouts and trying to get the various merit badges. Well, I don't believe the Bible ever teaches that there are rewards in heaven above and beyond salvation. I have a separate podcast series where I go into that, and I'll put a link to that in the lecture notes if you're interested. But for now, let me just say I don't think the Bible teaches that there are any extra rewards above and beyond salvation. Now it is right to think of God as someone who rewards. We have this famous passage in Hebrews 11, 6, and without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. It is true that God has a reward to give. We seek God because we need him to be our God. We seek God because He is our creator and we need Him to forgive us and restore us to life and godliness. The reward that we're looking for is a desired outcome. We want to be rescued on the day of judgment. We long to be freed from our sins and made holy. We long to have our guilt forgiven. The reward we look for in seeking God is the desired outcome that we will be forgiven and enter into the kingdom of heaven. And God does reward those who seek Him. You will not be disappointed, He will keep His promises. You will not be sorry if you seek God, because in the end His response will be everything you hope it will be. And that response is the reward of being forgiven and granted a place in His kingdom, and that's what Jesus has in mind here. Earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, we saw Jesus criticize the hypocrites as praying only to be admired by other men. Jesus said they have their reward in full. They have the desired outcome of their prayers, which is that other people see them as pious and hold them in high esteem. In their prayers, they were not looking for a desired outcome from God. They were looking for a desired outcome from their peers, and that is their reward. And of course, remember the hypocrites stand in contrast to the poor in spirit, the merciful, and so forth, who were looking to God for a desired outcome, that is forgiveness and a place in his kingdom. The concept of rewards is this idea that as followers of Jesus we have a hope and an expectation that God will respond to us favorably. That's the reward for embracing the gospel. Now, in our passage, as I said, I think the reward Jesus has in mind is eternal life in the kingdom of God. That's the desirable response that we are seeking from God. The twelve are being sent out to call people to repent so that they might find a place in the coming kingdom of God. They are to turn to God, admit they are sinners, repent, seek His mercy, and their reward will be a place in the kingdom of God. It's not that we have earned this place or proven ourselves worthy through some kind of great quest. It is a gift that God gives us. It is a reward in the sense that it is the desired outcome of our hope and repentance. This concept is important to the twelve being sent out because it shows them what's at stake in their message. Jesus is linking how people respond to him and his apostles to how God is going to respond to them. They are about to go out and call people to repent, and there's a lot at stake in how those listening respond. Okay, the penultimate concept that I want to discuss is why he calls the twelve little ones. Why does he say that? What's this phrase about? Later in Matthew there is a similar passage, and I think it's helpful to look at that. It comes from the fourth discourse in Matthew, which is found in chapter 18. This is eighteen one through six. At that time the disciples came to Jesus saying, Who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. Well, you can see there's similar language here about receiving a child in my name. We also see the issue of how others are going to respond to those who have humbled themselves like children. And notice that Matthew clarifies this is a metaphor. Jesus is not saying children as children are superior in some way. Rather, whoever humbles himself like this child. He's not literally talking about children, he's using the child as a model of something. The child represents something we need to become. We need to turn and become like children. We need to convert and change direction to start running toward God instead of away from Him and humble ourselves like children. Well, generally speaking, children recognize that they need their parents. They are dependent on their parents for survival. They're dependent on their parents for teaching them and for giving them the good things in life. They seek, respect, and depend on their parents, and in the same way, we need to seek, respect, and depend on God. We need to abandon our proud autonomy before God and humbly cast ourselves on His mercy. We'll look at that passage more when we get to it, but when Jesus calls his disciples children or little ones, I think this kind of humble dependency is what he has in mind. The disciples must admit their humble dependency and abandon their pride. On this journey, the apostles are not going out as high powered, impressive, elite leaders and scholars with all kinds of pedigrees and letters after their names. They are Galilean fishermen and ordinary citizens. They are relatively unknown ordinary people who have humbly submitted themselves to God and to Jesus, and they're going out to proclaim a very important message. So they are little ones in the sense that they are humble, ordinary people who trust Jesus. And then finally, let's review this concept of righteousness. He talks about those who receive a righteous man. Now we talked about this concept back in the Beatitudes when we looked at Matthew 5.6, but let me just review it briefly. In biblical terms, the question, Am I righteous, can have at least three different meanings. When I ask the question, Am I righteous? I can be asking, Am I forgiven before God or am I condemned? And in those contexts, a synonym for righteous is justification. Am I justified before God or not? Our sin is not just a tragedy, it's wrong. We have broken God's laws and stand guilty and condemned before Him. We owe a debt to justice that must be paid. Because we are not good, we justly and rightly fall under the condemnation of our just and holy God. But the good news of the gospel is that God created a way to pay our debt to justice through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And when our debt to justice is paid, we are justified. In that sense, the righteous are those who have had their sins forgiven. The second thing you can mean when you say, Am I righteous? I could be asking, Am I morally perfect or am I morally corrupt? And in some contexts, that's how this word is used. A synonym in these contexts would be holy or holiness. Am I holy or am I sinful? In this sense, a righteous person is anyone who is accepted by God by virtue of having a perfect moral character. And of course, Jesus is the only human being who has ever earned the favor of God because of his moral character. None of the rest of us are righteous in the sense of being completely holy. We are all sinners. You could say we are righteous sinners because we are both justified sinners and born again sinners, but we are not holy sinners. Third, when I ask am I righteous, I could be asking, does my heart respond to the truths of God? Am I spiritually blind or am I hard hearted? The antonym for this is wicked, and we see this kind of usage frequently in the Psalms, which contrasts the way of the wicked and the way of the righteous. The question in view is having a spirit that is in the right. We have repented, we are truly contrite and humble about our sinfulness, we have turned to God and are seeking his grace and mercy. And in other words, we are poor in spirit, we mourn over our sins and so forth. A synonym for this person would be a person of faith or a person who is born again. And in this sense, the righteous are those whose hearts are rightly oriented toward God. And in this context, we're looking at in Matthew, I think that's the sense Matthew means here. Whoever chooses to accept a person who is open to God. All right, we've talked about receiving, receiving in someone's name, we've talked about rewards and why Jesus would call his disciples little ones, and we've talked about what he means by righteous. Let me read the passage again and we'll see if we can put it all together. Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. The one who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward, and the one who receives a righteous person because he is a righteous person, will receive a righteous person's reward. And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward. Let me give you my paraphrase. Those who open their hearts to you, my twelve disciples, are also opening their hearts to me, Jesus. And those who open their hearts to me, Jesus, are also opening their hearts to the God who sent me. Those who welcome a prophet because they are glad he is a prophet, will receive from God the same good inheritance that the prophet himself receives. Those who welcome other people who are open to God, because they are glad those people are open to God, will receive from God the same good inheritance that those who are open to God receive. And those who are kind to one of my seemingly insignificant disciples, even with so simple an act as giving a cup of cold water, because they are glad he is my disciple, I'm telling you the truth, they will certainly gain the same good inheritance from God. Hopefully that makes sense. I think there are two important ideas in this little section. The first important idea is how you respond to the apostles is how you respond to Jesus. And the second idea is how you respond to Jesus is how you respond to God, and both of these ideas are captured in 1040. Let me take them in turn. Those who embrace the message of the twelve embrace the message of Jesus. Now Jesus is assuming that the apostles accurately represent him. It's not just because of who they are, it's because by the grace of God they have been given a clear understanding and the authority to represent Jesus. If they decided to go out and make up their own gospel, that might make them really popular. For example, people are always more attracted to a health and wealth gospel. Believe in Jesus and you'll be fabulously wealthy and never have a day of trouble in your life. That may be an appealing gospel, but it's not the actual gospel. With that kind of gospel, people might receive them well, but that's not the message Jesus gave them. And that wouldn't mean that these people who received them are also receiving Jesus because Jesus didn't teach a health and wealth gospel. Implicit in what Jesus is saying is the expectation that the disciples will accurately and clearly represent what he teaches. When that's true, when the disciples or the apostles accurately represent Jesus, then the response of those listening to them says a lot about how they would respond to Jesus. Jesus is teaching the disciples how significant and important their message is. They are proclaiming something that calls people to make a choice that's going to determine their eternal destiny. That's why Jesus tells them other people's rewards, other people's eternal destiny depends on how they respond to the people of God. Jesus gives two examples. First, how they receive a prophet, and second, how they receive a righteous person. A prophet is one who proclaims the word of God because God has given him a message to proclaim and authorized him to proclaim it. The individual prophet has his own hope in God. He hopes to be granted mercy and forgiveness and to receive a place in God's kingdom. He's looking for the same mercy that he is proclaiming to others. That's the reward he's hoping for. If I welcome and embrace a prophet precisely because I believe he is sent from God, that means that I take his authority and his word seriously. I welcome him and embrace him because I believe he can tell me about this God I seek. My response to the prophet, then, reflects my response to God. So I will receive the same mercy and forgiveness as the prophet because we both have this same humble attitude toward God. Likewise, he who receives a righteous man receives the same reward. Again, I understand the righteous man to be one who has repented before God and is humbly seeking God rather than rejecting him. The righteous man is not a prophet sent with a message. He's just another individual who believes what God has promised and is seeking God. If I welcome and embrace a righteous person precisely because he or she is seeking God, that means I take his or her faith seriously and their repentance seriously. I see these people as kindred spirits, people who are also humbly seeking God and his promises. So my response to other believers, other people who are seeking God, reflects my own response to God, and I will receive the same mercy and restoration because I have the same humble, repentant attitude toward God that I am admiring and appreciating in others. I think he gives these two examples because the point he is driving toward is this third statement in 1042. And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward. He talked about receiving a prophet, he's talked about receiving a righteous person, and now the question is, how do you respond to one of the disciples of Jesus? Well, a disciple is a student or a learner, someone who has chosen to follow and learn from Jesus. If I open my heart to a disciple of Jesus precisely because he is a disciple of Jesus, it shows that I too want to be a disciple of Jesus. My response to the disciples represents my response to God and his Messiah. I receive the same reward, the same mercy and forgiveness because I have the same repentant heart and I show it by welcoming the disciples of Jesus who also have that heart. Well, all of this shows the disciples the importance of their mission. They're going out to represent Jesus and God to the people. In doing so, they're going to confront the people with a choice, and that choice has eternal significance. This is the central principle of our relationship with God. God very rarely steps into history and speaks directly to people. Very few people have a relationship with God like Moses or Elijah or Isaiah, where God spoke to them directly and answered their questions. Comparatively few people sat at the feet of Jesus or even heard him teach. Of those people who heard him teach, only twelve were chosen to be his apostles and learn in great detail from him. The rest of us have a relationship with God because other people have told us about him. God has spoken to the world through prophets, through apostles, and his son, Jesus Christ. And we relate to God by learning what he told people like Isaiah and Ezekiel and Jeremiah and Matthew, Peter, and Paul. Jesus is telling the twelve, they have a role like the prophets. They are standing in the place of Jesus. How people respond to the apostles is how they will respond to Jesus. And in this context, I think Jesus clearly has the twelve in mind as he sends them out to speak for him. But I do think we can extend that teaching to us. The twelve are not with us anymore, but there is still a sense in which every disciple of Jesus stands in his place and represents him. Now we don't represent him with the same authority that the apostles had, but there is still a sense in which we represent him. We proclaim what we have learned in the scripture. We teach others what it takes to enter the kingdom of God. We explain the need for repentance and the importance of turning toward God. We talk about the counterfeit idols of this world and where to find true life, all things that Jesus has taught us through his apostles. If a person welcomes you precisely because you follow Jesus, that says a lot about how they respond to God. This is a major theme in the New Testament that we reveal what we think of Jesus and his message by how we respond to his people. Jesus and Paul both talk about this idea a lot. According to Jesus, my reward, my eternal destiny, is revealed by how I respond to his apostles. But it doesn't stop there. Jesus also tells us how we respond to Jesus, reveals how we respond to God. And this is also a big topic in the New Testament. We could go to a number of verses, especially in the Gospel of John, that point out this connection. Paul makes this same point at the end of Colossians chapter one. Paul paints a very strong picture of who Jesus is. In short, he says, all that we can know of God is seen in Jesus, and everything is under Jesus' authority. We were lost, we had no hope, and yet God gave us a place in his kingdom because of what Christ did on the cross. Without Jesus, we have no standing before God. Without Jesus, we have no hope. Jesus is everything. It's not true that Jesus gave us one piece of the puzzle, and then other prophets, other religions have a piece of the puzzle too, and we have to go to all these other philosophies and faiths to get the whole big picture and fill in the whole puzzle. Paul claims in Colossians 1 that everything we can know of God, person, character, authority, plans, everything we need to know about God is manifest to us in Jesus Christ. This man, Jesus, is the place where I learn about God. He is the one and only one who reveals God's plan and God's purposes. Jesus is God in a way that I can deal with, I can understand and grasp. When we look at Jesus, we see the God we need to know. Which makes the point, you cannot seek God and avoid Jesus Christ. There is nowhere else to go. You can look high, you can look low. Eventually you're going to have to deal with Jesus because all of God is found in Jesus. There's no other part of creation where I can find God. There's not a single thing to know about God that is important to know that is outside of Jesus. And likewise, Jesus has the authority to speak to every intimate creation, including you and me. Whether you're a Christian or not, you are under the authority of Jesus Christ. There isn't anyone else to deal with. No matter what path you take, sooner or later you will confront Jesus. There won't be a vote, there's not going to be an election, there's no majority rule, it's all going to come down to how you respond to Jesus. One of the great tensions that we find in the Gospels is that the religious leaders of the day claimed to love God, but they hated Jesus. Jesus violated the Sabbath, Jesus ate with sinners, Jesus made these outrageous claims about having the authority to forgive sins. Jesus called the Pharisees hypocrites and whitewashed tombs. He said they have their reward in full because all they are seeking was the approval of men. So the Pharisees would say Jesus is not a reflection of God in his character. They think someone sent by God would look a lot more like them. The Pharisees think that they can reject Jesus and maintain their claim to love God. And Jesus is saying that's not possible. Jesus is a perfect reflection and representation of God. If you don't like what Jesus is doing and saying, it's because you don't understand God. You can't say I really love God, but I'm not so crazy about Jesus, because that means you don't really know God. The progression Jesus describes here is profoundly important. He who receives the disciples of Jesus receives Jesus, and he who receives Jesus receives God. The disciples are reflection of Jesus, who is a reflection of the Father. So one last point. I think this passage tells us that there are three important intermediaries between us and God. And by intermediary, I'm talking about this picture we've just been looking at. My response to an intermediary reveals my response to God. The first and most important intermediary is Jesus. We cannot claim to love God and reject Jesus like the Pharisees did. Jesus is a perfect reflection of God and his character, his teaching, his actions show us who God is, and how we respond to Jesus shows us how we respond to God. The second class of intermediaries are the prophets and the apostles. God chose a few select human beings throughout history to proclaim his message, and how we respond to them shows how we respond to God. We can't say, you know, I love Jesus, but I reject everything that Paul wrote. That's not an option. The New Testament and this passage do not give us that option. Acts tells us how Jesus chose Paul to be an apostle just like the other apostles. Paul makes the claim that he is an apostle just like the others, and that he was taught by Jesus. How I respond to the gospel proclaimed by Paul shows how I respond to Jesus because Jesus gave Paul the gospel he proclaimed. And the third cause of intermediaries are other followers of Jesus. People like you and me who seek to be taught by Jesus and to learn from the scriptures. You can't say, oh, I really love God, but I hate people who love Jesus. They're just weird. They just think so differently, they act differently, and they they expect me not to be selfish. That's not an option. If we hate people who genuinely love and seek to follow Jesus, that says something about our own hearts. We need to look at other followers of Jesus and think, those are my people. They want what I want. They're running the same journey of faith with me, and we're going to spend eternity together. Other believers are the people who have answered the big questions of life the same way I have. What am I counting on? Who am I going to trust? Where will I find life and forgiveness? Now I'm not denying that there are many people who claim to follow Jesus, but in fact they don't. They follow him in name only. If I find myself having a problem with them, it doesn't mean I have a problem with Jesus. I'm talking about genuine followers of Jesus who represent him reasonably well. Now I'm not saying you have to be best friends with every other believer on the planet, but on some level, we have to recognize that we share the same hope, the same mercy, and the same faith. We agree on the most important issues of this life, even if our personalities don't mesh. In other places, Jesus talks about other ways our faith works itself out, like how we respond to our enemies, but here he tells us three things that reveal our faith. When we open our hearts to Jesus, when we open them to his prophets and apostles, and when we open them to his people, we are in fact opening our hearts to God. 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 find all previous episodes in this series on my website, wednesdayintheword.com. There is no charge, no spam, and no ads. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please subscribe, leave a positive rating or review wherever you listen, but most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. My theme music is graciously provided by my friend and favorite musician, Reggie Coates. You can listen to all of his music and find 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.