17 Why those who Mourn are Blessed (Matthew 5:4)

Krisan Marotta: Good morning, you're listening to Wednesday in the Word, my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. I'm Krisan Marotta. This is the 17th talk in our series on the Gospel of Matthew. Today we'll be studying Matthew 5.4, continuing in the Beatitudes. Lecture notes, which contain an outline of the main points and links to everything mentioned in the talk are on the website. You can find those notes by going to wednesdayintheword.com slash Matthew 1 7, or just click on the link below the podcast. On my website, wednesdayintheword.com, you can find all previous episodes in this series and many other series. Thanks so much for joining me today. We are in the Gospel of Matthew. We're still in chapter 5. Last week we started the Beatitudes portion of the Sermon on the Mount. And let me just review briefly how I'm approaching this sermon and the Beatitudes in particular. Throughout church history, believers have found it difficult to agree on exactly what this sermon means and how we ought to apply it to our lives. There are a variety of approaches to this section of Matthew and a variety of ways of thinking about it. I'm giving you the approach that makes the most sense to me, but as always, I am no one from nowhere and my opinion carries no authority with anyone. I am simply one student of the Bible telling other students what I've learned and trying to teach you how I learned it in the process. My approach is based on three main convictions. First, on how we approach the Sermon on the Mount in general. This is a very important talk given by Jesus at a time when he was very popular. I think Jesus is setting out in this sermon to show his disciples the issues they're going to face if they want to be children of God. And he is contrasting his teaching with the teaching that they have heard from the Pharisees. I also think Luke 6 is the same sermon given in a shorter version, and therefore we can use Luke to understand Matthew and vice versa. Second, on how we approach the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels, I think we must always be aware of two points. One is that Jesus speaks cryptically, he makes concise, provocative statements that we have to think about if we're to understand them. And second, he makes strong categorical black and white statements that ultimately reflect the end of a process of struggle, growth, and maturity. And my third and last major conviction is I have argued that Jesus is describing people of faith in the Beatitudes. Jesus does not use the term here. He doesn't use the language we typically use when we define the gospel, but I think he is describing the destiny of those who will inherit a place in the kingdom of God, in other words, those who have saving faith. And I have argued that the Beatitudes say four things about people of faith. First, such people are fortunate or blessed. They are in a highly desirable situation because they are in God's favor. That's what it means to be blessed. Second, each beatitude gives a reason why such people are fortunate, and the basic reason is the glorious future promised from God. It is their future destiny that makes them fortunate now. Third, only these people have this glorious future. In other words, the beatitudes are exclusive. Only those who have these qualities will inherit the kingdom of God, and these are qualities that define saving faith. And then fourth, the beatitudes are surprising or ironic. At first glance, the qualities that gain you the kingdom of heaven do not appear to be desirable at all, and yet these people who have these qualities are fortunate or blessed. So only those people with these qualities are fortunate because only they have a glorious future in the kingdom of heaven, and these are people with saving faith. If you have any questions about that or those convictions, I encourage you to go back and listen to the two introductory podcasts to the Sermon on the Mount, and that's where I go into each of those in great detail. Last week we looked at the first beatitude, and I argued that Jesus is saying only those who know in their spirits that they are poor, that is, only those who know that true riches are to be found in the kingdom of God, only those people stand to inherit that kingdom. Or we might say, as strange as it may seem, those who are in the seemingly undesirable situation of being poor in spirit, of knowing in their hearts that nothing in this world can give them what they truly need, they are the ones who are actually in a highly desirable situation because they and they alone will inherit a glorious future from God. They will find true riches as citizens of the kingdom of God. Now let's turn to the second beatitude. This is in Matthew five four. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. As we talked about in an earlier podcast, to be blessed is the opposite of being cursed. To be blessed is to be a person to whom good things are coming because I am in God's favor and God is on my side. Because I am in his favor, good things are coming my way, and things are going to turn out well for me in the end. And Jesus is saying in these beatitudes, if you really understood the situation, you would be crazy not to want to be one of these people. The people who have these qualities are incredibly well off. They are in God's favor and good things are coming their way. And again, in this beatitude, we see that Jesus' statement is somewhat counterintuitive. It's surprising. We don't typically think of mourning as a good thing. To be in a state of mourning is something we normally wish to avoid at all costs. Mourning happens because of loss and suffering. Why would we want to be people who mourn? Well, first let's look at the reason. As with all the beatitudes, Jesus gives us the reason why those who mourn are blessed and he tells us they shall be comforted. And I would argue that in this case, the future aspect of this beatitude is really important. Jesus is saying something much more profound than, well, if you happen to be sad today, take heart, because your sadness will not last forever. Eventually your sadness is going to end and you'll be comforted. I think he's saying those who mourn in this life will be comforted in the next life when the kingdom of God comes. I've reached this conclusion for two reasons. First, I think it fits best in the overall context of the Beatitudes. I think all of the Beatitudes are very future facing. And as we run through the reasons, we see theirs is the kingdom of heaven, they shall inherit the earth, they shall see God, they shall be called sons of God. Those are the ones that are most obviously future focused, but look at the others. Those who hunger for righteousness and holiness will be satisfied, the merciful shall receive mercy. Scripture tells us something about when those things will happen, and it is in the kingdom of God. And then look at the conclusion. The overall summary statement is in Matthew 5.12. He says, Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. I think those clues point us to the fact that Jesus is not making a general kind of proverb. This is not the kind of thing like all's well that ends well. This is not a general kind of proverb that sadness is temporary because God will make you feel better at some point. Instead, I think he's saying those who mourn in this life will be comforted in the next life when the kingdom comes. The second reason I have for seeing this as very future facing is when you compare this statement to the similar one in Luke six. And you'll recall that I argued that we should see the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and the Sermon on the Plain in Luke as essentially the same body of teaching. If they aren't the exact same event, they are at least drawing on the same body of teaching, and I suspect Jesus gave that teaching more than once as he traveled around. Luke tells us this in Luke six twenty one. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. And then in six twenty five, woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Notice that Luke adds the word now, blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. This is a kind of classic inversion statement, and we find these repeatedly in Scripture. You're probably familiar with them. Those who are last will be first, those who are first will be last. Those who are low now will be high and exalted. And those who are exalted now will be brought low, and so forth. We see these kinds of statements repeatedly in Scripture, and they all have this same idea that some are ex now, but they will be the opposite of X later, because the day is coming when the kingdom of God is established, when the day of the Lord arrives or when the Messiah arrives, those positions will be reversed. And I think that's what we're seeing here in Luke. This is the state of things now, but one day when the kingdom of God comes, we're going to see a reversal or an inversion. Those who weep now will be laughing then, and those who are laughing now will be weeping then. So I think Luke is more obviously future facing, and because I think these are the same sermons, I think that is more evidence that Matthew is future facing. So now we come to the big question, what does it mean to mourn? It doesn't sound like mourning is something we want to be. The parallel in Luke is a good place to start. Luke gives us the detail that there are two kinds of people, those who laugh now and those who mourn now. And Luke tells us that laughing now is not a good thing and weeping now is a good thing. So that's really our first clue, but we still need to think about it. Let me remind you of my two core convictions about the teaching of Jesus. One is that Jesus speaks cryptically, he makes concise provocative statements that we have to stop and think about to understand, and I think that's our situation here. Jesus does not explain what kind of mourning he's talking about. Is it any kind of mourning? Is he talking about the kind of mourning I feel when a grandparent dies? Is he talking only about the loss of people? What if my cat runs away and I mourn that loss? Does that count? What if I break a treasured possession and I mourn for its loss? Is that a good thing? Is Jesus blessing all kinds of feelings of loss and saying, yes, those are right and proper? He doesn't explain himself and we have to think about it to figure out his meaning. And then my second conviction is that he makes these strong categorical black and white statements that ultimately reflect the end of a process of growth and maturity. This sure sounds like one of those strong black and white categorical statements. So how do we fill in the gap? This is where we want to bring in the rest of what we know about the teaching of Jesus. What sort of things does Jesus typically talk about? What sort of things do the rest of the Beatitudes talk about? What else do we find in the rest of Scripture? And notice where we're looking. The temptation here for all of us Bible teachers is to take the word mourn and run with it. And we can come up with all kinds of moving and memorable stories and analogies that have to do with mourning. We can make up a mnemonic about the characteristics of mourning that all begin with the same letter. We can look to pop culture and come up with examples from movies and songs that everyone will be familiar with and that will move their emotions and grab their attention about mourning. We could go to psychology and sociology and find out all about mourning from a counseling perspective. And all of that you will find in sermons. All of those things may have their place, but that's not our goal. Our goal is not to take everything we know about mourning and pour it into this passage. Our goal is to discover what did Jesus mean? What was he talking about? And to do that, we want to start our investigation with Scripture. We want to ask, what sort of teaching does Jesus typically talk about? What sort of things do the rest of the Beatitudes talk about? And what else do we find about mourning or do we find this language elsewhere in Scripture and what's the point there? Well, I think one of the most helpful passages for sorting this out comes from the book of James. As I've studied James over the years, I've come to the conclusion that James as a person, as an author, is highly influenced by the teaching of Jesus. And in particular, I think he's influenced by the Sermon on the Mount. So I want to take you to James 4, and as I read it, notice that several themes in James echo the themes we are finding in the Beatitudes, and one in particular I want to comment on. I'm going to read James chapter four verses one through ten, but what I'm primarily interested in is what is in verses nine and ten. So this is James four ten. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says He yearns jealously over the spirit that He has made to dwell in us? But He gives more grace, therefore it says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double minded. And then pay attention to this, James says in nine and ten, be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. Let me give you a little bit of background on this letter. James addressed his letter to the twelve tribes of the dispersion. The dispersion refers to the historical scattering of the Jews all around the Mediterranean that followed the martyrdom of Stephen. James was very involved in Jewish Christian ministry. He was the leader of the Jerusalem Church. The ministry to the Gentiles is something he hears about when the apostle Paul comes to town. The Gentiles are not his flock. James knows the teaching of Jesus very well. James was the half brother of Jesus. They grew up together, and James is steeped in the teaching of Jesus and is applying his understanding to these Jewish Christians who are scattered all around outside of Jerusalem. This letter is one of the earliest applications of the gospel we have. And primarily I think James is writing to people who claim to be believers, but their lives do not seem to reflect what faith is all about. Look at how he describes them in this section. They're quarreling, they indulge their pleasure, they murder and covet, they are friends with the world rather than God. They are sinners and they're double minded. James tells them what he wants them to do, let me read James four, seven through ten again. Submit yourselves therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will exalt you. four ten that humble yourselves before the Lord and He will exalt you, I think is a kind of summary statement for this section. In general what he wants them to do is humble themselves before the Lord so that the Lord will exalt them later. And included in this section is this language in four nine about mourn and weep and let your laughter be turned to mourning. Now that sounds very similar to our beatitude. So he's talking to a people and he's saying right now they're laughing, they're content. They sort of like the people that they are, they like the struggle to gain power and prestige, they like the life they're living, but what they need to do is mourn. In reality, they have nothing to laugh over, their hearts are evil. All those things they have fought so hard to gain, they're going to end up losing. All kinds of things that they're currently unhappy about, in reality they should be mourning over. We might say they are laughing now because they are rich in spirit. That is, in their hearts, in their spirits, they think they're rich. They think they have it all and they've got it made because they have what the world has to offer. They are friends with the world. Instead, James is urging them, you should be mourning because what you have is only counterfeit idols. In reality, they have nothing. They are missing out on the most important thing of all, a place in the kingdom of heaven. Everything they're counting on now is going to fail them and burn in the end. What they need to do is mourn. They need to admit that their riches are cheap counterfeit idols, that they are in fact evil and rebellious, and that they need a new heart. They have a very big problem with sin that they cannot solve, and one day they will stand as sinful people before a holy God, and God is not going to be laughing. They need to wake up and recognize their true state and weep over it, mourn for it and seek the mercy of God. Now notice that there is a great flavor of repentance to this language. They need to do an about face, they need to turn 180 degrees, they need to stop laughing and start weeping, they need to stop rejoicing and start mourning. In other words, they need to repent. We also see this kind of language in Paul in his letter to the Corinthians. This is first Corinthians five verses one and two. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife. And you are arrogant. Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. The situation in Corinth is that the church is aware of an act of immorality among them, and their reaction to it is that they have become arrogant. And Paul's calling them on that. He's saying it's bad enough that there's this person openly practicing a sexually immoral situation among you, and even worse, it's a kind that is not tolerated even among the pagans, for a man has his father's wife, and if that's not bad enough, you guys are arrogant about it when you should be mourning over it. Now, briefly, what I think is going on here, his father's wife, I think, probably refers to his stepmother, not his biological mother. We don't know the specific situation. It could be that the man is having an affair with his stepmother while his father is still alive, or it could be that he married his stepmother after his father's death. Either relationship would be prohibited by Leviticus eighteen. Whatever the exact situation, the arrogance is that they think they have a better understanding of sexuality than Paul, the apostles, and the prophets. The Corinthians think, oh, they are those naive people who get hung up on those old fashioned concepts like monogamy and adultery and incest. But we Corinthians, we are sophisticated. We have the sophistication to really understand because we're enlightened. We tolerate these kinds of new open relationships, and we wear it as a badge of honor because look how cool and sophisticated we are. And Paul's saying, you ought to be mourning that situation, not arrogant about it. The thing that they are pointing to with arrogant satisfaction is the very thing they should be pointing to and mourning. So we see from these two examples that mourning is an appropriate emotional response to our sinfulness. Or to put it another way, mourning is the appropriate emotional response to recognizing that you are poor in spirit. When you realize that your life is not what it should be, that you are not the kind of person that you should be, the appropriate response is to weep over it and mourn over it. There are a lot of aspects to that. We can't solve the problem of evil in the world and we mourn over that. We can't stop people from committing evil against us and we mourn over that. We can't conquer death and we mourn that. We can't change the futility and the corruption of the world and we mourn that. But most of all, the biblical emphasis as what we saw in James is that we mourn over our own evil hearts. Mourning is the first step to repentance. We come to understand how far we are from what we ought to be. We see how incapable we are of making ourselves holy and righteous or kind and compassionate. And we see how far we are from loving God and our neighbor as we should. How should we respond to that? We should mourn. To be poor in spirit is to acknowledge the truth of my sinfulness. To mourn is to feel the weight of how big a problem that is and long to be freed from it. Now let me remind you of my second conviction about the teaching of Jesus that he makes these categorical either or black and white statements that ultimately reflect the end of a process of struggle, growth, and maturity. Just as being poor in spirit is not a kind of rule that we must follow, neither is mourning a rule that we must follow. Instead, Jesus is talking about that process we enter into as we grow in saving faith. Through the Beatitudes, I think Jesus is describing what I would call saving faith. If you've listened to much of my teaching, you've heard me describe saving faith as having four aspects or four core convictions. Now, those convictions are not spelled out in Scripture the way I spell them out. Rather, my four convictions are a summary of the themes about faith that I see taught in Scripture. And one of the primary places I see those themes is here in the Beatitudes. I've defined saving faith as having these four aspects. A genuine desire for holiness in and of itself. In other words, what am I wanting or desiring to be saved from? Well, part of saving faith is that I want to be saved from my sin and I want to be made holy. Second, saving faith includes a genuine understanding that left to myself, I am not capable of making myself holy. I am a slave to sin, I am trapped in my sinfulness, and I am unable to solve that problem with my own resources. Third, a genuine understanding that God owes me nothing, and I am totally unworthy of any gift from God. I cannot earn his favor, I cannot merit salvation, and there's nothing I can do that requires him to save me. And then fourth, saving faith is a firm trust that God, because of the work of Jesus Christ, both intends to and will in fact make me holy, save me from my sin in the age to come. Now we talked last week about how the person who is poor in spirit recognizes their sinfulness. They recognize that they are unworthy and that God owes them nothing. They realize deep inside that they are in fact morally bankrupt before a holy God. Mourning takes that to the next step. When I mourn or grieve over my sin, I am recognizing that I am not capable of solving the problem of my sin and I am longing to be made holy. When I mourn over my sin, I recognize that God is not required to save me, and I can do nothing to earn his forgiveness or grace. I not only admit my sin, I long for it to be changed. I feel the weight of the problem. Rather than becoming arrogant or proud over my sin, I grieve over it and I wish it were not so, precisely because I have learned to love the life and the holiness that God offers. The more we recognize our sinfulness and the more we long for holiness, then the more we will feel this appropriate mourning or grief over our lack and our sin. God takes us through the trials of this life to teach us that we are morally broken, and the more we realize that we cannot change or conquer futility, evil or death in ourselves or in the world, the more we come to admit and acknowledge that, the more we feel this appropriate sadness. To be poor in spirit is to see reality and acknowledge I don't have what it takes to make life rich. To mourn is to have an appropriate emotional response over the fact that I am poor in spirit, and those are the first steps of repentance. There are many times we might be tempted to laugh inappropriately, to think, oh, we've got it all together, and to just excuse our behavior as cool or justified or normal or hey, at least better than that other guy. We laugh because we think we're making life work and we think we've got it made. But as God opens our eyes and gives us saving faith, we come to recognize the reality of our selfishness and we mourn. Now you might think that we would mourn less as we grow in faith and maturity. You might think that as we start out as young believers and we have our eyes opened, we begin mourning and repenting, but then God begins his sanctifying work in us and we start growing in faith and gain a little maturity, and as we grow, we have less to mourn over because we've gained some ground toward maturity. And we might think that mourning tapers off as we grow and learn. That doesn't fit with my experience, and it doesn't really fit with the experience of any other believer I know. In fact, it seems to me, if anything, the reverse is true. The more I grow in wisdom and maturity and understanding, the more clear it becomes to me how futile and corrupt life is. And the more wisdom I gain, the more it becomes clear to me how deeply sinful I am. As I grow, then the more I mourn because I realize the problem is deeper than I thought. There's a sense in which mourning is not for the immature, mourning is for the mature. What Jesus is saying then I think is that those who mourn will be comforted. The day is coming when God will solve that problem of sin and selfishness and death and corruption and futility. The day is coming when God, through his Messiah, will finally fully solve the problem of sin, death, and corruption. All that stuff we mourn over now is going to be done away with one day. God's will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. God will finally grant us complete freedom from the presence, the penalty, and the power of sin. And we will be the kind of people we long to be at last. We will be free from all the brokenness we mourn over now. We will be the kind of people who love God with all our hearts and love our neighbors as ourselves. Every one of God's children will be worthy and clean and holy, and the heavens and the earth will be made new and free from death, corruption, and futility. We will be comforted because the very thing we're mourning over now will be no more than. The prophet Isaiah describes it this way. This is in Isaiah eleven. I'm going to read you one through nine. Jesse was the father of King David. In the previous chapter, in talking about the coming judgment of God, Isaiah said, God would cut down the thickets of the forest. Now Isaiah proclaims that from one of those tree stumps, from the line of David, there will come a new king, and we know that to be the Messiah. And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord, he shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, the calf and the lion and the fatted calf together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the whole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And then skipping down to twelve one and two he concludes You will say in that day, I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away that you might comfort me. Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. Now there's a lot we could talk about in Isaiah, but just notice that the comfort here that he's proclaiming is that God has set aside his anger and become their salvation. The very problem that we mourn over will be solved. Rather than receiving judgment and condemnation, we will receive mercy and comfort because God will save us from our sins. So to summarize, let me paraphrase the two beatitudes we've seen so far. Some people are poor in spirit, that is, they see and admit in their hearts that they are not the kind of people they should be. They're morally broken and they cannot fix the problem of their sinfulness and they cannot defeat death. Those who are in this seemingly undesirable situation of knowing that they're spiritually bankrupt are actually fortunate because they and they alone will inherit the true riches found in the kingdom of heaven. Likewise, some people mourn. They have a very appropriate sadness because they have recognized that they are poor in spirit, because they admit that they are broken and sinful people, and they no longer want to be broken sinful people, they mourn. Those who are in this seemingly undesirable situation of grieving over their sinfulness are actually fortunate because they and they alone will have their sorrow comforted when the Messiah comes to bring life and righteousness to the world. The Messiah will solve the very problem they mourn over now and save them from their sins. Now there's one more irony I want you to notice. There is both mourning and hope here. There is both poverty and riches. We mourn today, but we have a great hope for tomorrow, and we can rejoice in that hope. We have a place in the kingdom of heaven. The problem of our sin in one sense has already been solved on the cross, and we are merely waiting for it to be fully realized. unknown: R. Krisan Marotta: C. Sproull put it this way, he defined hope as faith looking forward. Jesus is not saying that Christians need to be gloomy, depressed types like Eor walking around professing how bad things are. Rather we can rejoice in our destiny. Yes, things are dark now, but the light of day is coming. We have an unshakable confidence that one day, as Isaiah says, we will rejoice. Let me read Isaiah twelve one through six. You will say in that day, I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away that you might comfort me. Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation, and you will say in that day, give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim that his name is exalted. Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously. Let this be made known in all the earth. Shout and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. There is a very real sense in which even though we're mourning now, we can shout and sing for joy, for great in our midst is the Holy One of Israel. Or to put it another way, those who have saving faith will be granted a place in the kingdom of heaven. Remember, saving faith is a desire for holiness in and of itself, an understanding that I am not capable of making myself holy, in other words, that I am poor in spirit and I long for the life of God. I recognize how sinful I am and how I am unable to solve that problem alone, and I long for the life of God. Saving faith includes a genuine understanding that God owes me nothing and I am not worthy of His grace or mercy. Or to put it another way, I mourn over my current sinful state, and I hope and count on the grace of God. And then finally, saving faith is a firm trust that God both intends to and will in fact forgive my sins and make me holy in the age to come because of the blood of Jesus Christ. Or as Isaiah says, You will say in that day, I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, that you might comfort me. Behold, God is my salvation, and I will trust and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. Thank you for listening to Winston the Word, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also seeks to show you how to figure that out. You can hear all previous episodes in this series by going to WinstandTheWord.com, and you can find other series there as well. My website is ad-free and spam free. There is only podcast and Bible study resources. If you want to thank me, please subscribe to the podcast, join the mailing list, if you have a moment, please leave a positive rating or review wherever you listen to your podcast. And most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you find it.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Chrisson Morata, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.