01 Who is the Holy Spirit and Why is He so Important?

Krisan Marotta: Thank you for joining me today for Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Ahead on today's podcast, we're going to be looking at John chapter 3, verses 1 through 8. This is the first talk in my series called Who is the Holy Spirit? The lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below the podcast, or you can find them on the website at wednesdayintheword.com slash Holy Spirit 1. That's the number one. Let's get started. The world is getting to be a very dark and scary place. It seems that everything has become a partisan issue and everywhere you look, folks are depressed and angry. People no longer seem to know how to relate to someone with whom they disagree. Social media has become a tool to wreck people's lives for one misstatement. What used to be wrong is right and vice versa, and traditional Christian theology is now seen as hate speech, and that's not even looking at national or international threats like terrorism, wars, economic collapse, corruption, and pandemics. We are in desperate need of help. At a very basic level, we have alienated ourselves from God, and if God does not help us, we are lost. We need God to have mercy on us. Nationally, we desperately need a revival, and personally we need God in His mercy to reach out to us and save us. Can we count on Him to do that? Can we count on Him to give us what we need? Well in Luke eleven, Jesus speaks some of the most encouraging words in the Bible. This is Luke eleven verses nine and ten. So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. These are three situations we're all very familiar with. I've asked a question and I'm waiting for an answer. I'm seeking something and wondering if I'll find it. I've knocked on a door and I'm standing waiting for it to open. There's a goal. I want somebody to respond, but maybe there won't be a response. Maybe I'll seek but I'll never find. Maybe I'll wait and never get an answer and maybe the door will stay shut. Jesus is telling us that's not the way it is with God. Those who ask get, those who seek find, and those who knock find the door opened. Now we want to keep this in context. These verses follow the Lord's prayer. The context is a cry for God's kingdom to come and a plea for mercy and forgiveness and for God to save us from sin. I would argue that these verses do not promise that we will get whatever we want from God, but they do promise that God will bring about His kingdom and will solve our greatest need, which is the problem of sin and evil. People who come to God seeking deliverance, seeking salvation and forgiveness are not going to be turned away. It's not a question of having to twist God's arm or convince him to act or trying to be good enough to earn a response from him. He is already convinced. He's already promised to act. To save us was God's idea, to bless us was his idea, to deliver us was his idea, to send his son to die in our place and pay the price for our sins was all his doing. We can have confidence that God will surely hear our cries. Jesus goes on in this same passage, this is Luke eleven, eleven through thirteen. Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish, he will not give him a snake instead of fish, will he? Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father? And there I want to stop. Jesus is comparing our earthly fathers with our heavenly father, and in this world, when a son asks his father for something to eat, the father says yes. Most earthly parents are eager to give good things to their children. As a parent, and especially as a grandparent, I have found this to be true. The moment my children were born, I wanted to protect them and do good by them. Now I know that I'm a miserable sinner, I am selfish through and through, and yet my children and now my grandchildren inspire this great desire to love and protect them and shower them with good gifts. And that's Jesus' point. If we earthly parents, as corrupt and selfish as we are, want to give good things to our children, how much more then will our heavenly father, who is holy and good, respond positively to our requests? Most of us recognize that if my son came to me and said, Mom, can you lend me some money so I can buy heroin? I would say no, I'm not going to help him hurt himself. My love for my children ensures that I will give him the things he needs. Food is clearly a basic need, as in these fish and eggs examples. Food is something he needs to survive. Why would I withhold that from him? There's not much chance that I would turn my child away when he asks for something he needs to survive. That's the situation we're in with God. We are sinners facing judgment. We desperately need mercy, grace, and forgiveness to survive. Our loving Father will not withhold it. We have no assurance that he will give us anything we want, but we have complete assurance that he will give us what we need. Now think about how Jesus could have finished that sentence. He could have said, How much more will our heavenly Father give us mercy? Well that would be a pretty great answer. Or he could have said, How much more will God give us eternal life? Again, that would be an incredible gift. Or he could have said, How much more will God give us faith and forgiveness or righteousness? All of those would have been wonderful ways for him to conclude that sentence. But notice how Jesus concludes What is it that is so important that it is analogous to food for basic survival? What is the thing that will make this kind of life possible? What does Jesus say? Luke eleven thirteen. If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? Does that surprise you? It did me. Here are some of the most encouraging words that Jesus ever spoke Ask and you shall receive, knock and the door will be opened. You can count on the fact that God will answer when you cry out to him for faith and forgiveness, and how will he answer? He will give you the Holy Spirit. That suggests that the Holy Spirit plays some crucial role in what God is doing for us. Now here in this passage, Jesus doesn't explain how that works out, but he does suggest that giving us the Holy Spirit is a very important and significant thing for God to do. Let me remind you of another passage. Abraham is the patriarch of our faith as well as the Jewish faith. God made a covenant with Abraham and said that through Abraham all the nations of the world would be blessed. Now the word nations is the word that becomes Gentiles later on. So the Jews are the tribe of people physically descended from Abraham and his son Isaac. The Gentiles are the nations, they're all the other tribes of people who were not physically descended from Abraham and Isaac. And God planned from the beginning that he would bless not just the Jews, but all the nations of the world through Abraham. In Genesis three, Paul connects this blessing promised to Abraham with the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is Galatians three, eight and nine. The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, All the nations will be blessed in you. So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer. Paul says as believers, we inherit the blessing God promised to give to the nations through Abraham. And this is a really big deal in scripture. Then in Galatians ten through thirteen, Paul says that Christ died to redeem us from the curse of the law, and what was his goal in dying to redeem us from the curse of the law? Why did Jesus have to die to redeem us? Note carefully what Paul says next. This is Galatians three verse fourteen. He died in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we would receive and here I'll pause again. What did Paul say? What is it that we will receive because of Christ's death? He's been arguing Jesus died so that the blessing of Abraham might come to us Gentiles. God promised that he would bless all the nations through Abraham, and the death of Jesus is the means by which this blessing comes about. And what is the outcome? What do we get as a result of receiving the blessing of Abraham? Again, think of all the things Paul might have said. I would expect him to say faith. Jesus died so that we might have faith like Abraham had faith. That would be pretty significant. Paul might have said so that we might receive eternal life and become citizens in the kingdom of heaven. That would also be pretty great. But this is what Paul said. He died so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. Once again, we see this really striking idea. What is the blessing that God wants to give us? The Holy Spirit. Both Jesus and Paul seem to be giving an extraordinary importance to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is this great gift that God will not refuse to give his children. The Holy Spirit is the promised blessing that comes to the nations through Christ. That suggests to me that we ought to want to learn a lot more about the Holy Spirit. Why would the Holy Spirit be something that I want and need? Well that's the question we're going to explore in this series. We're going to look at what Scripture says about the Holy Spirit with the goal of understanding who He is and why receiving the Spirit is such a big deal. We're going to be looking at various passages in both testaments, and I do mean passages. We're not going to look at random verses here and there. We'll be looking at passages from both the Old and the New Testament in their contexts. Now we aren't going to look at every single passage that mentions the Spirit. Rather we're going to look at the passages which I think are most significant to understanding who the Holy Spirit is. I should say right up front, I am not an expert in this field, but I will tell you where my studies have taken me so far. My goal, which hopefully I will accomplish, is to build an understanding of the Holy Spirit from the bottom up, passage by passage, bit by bit, trying to understand the picture that Scripture paints. This approach has some implications for things we're going to talk about and things we're not going to talk about. I'm going to warn you right up front, I am not going to answer all your questions because I'm not approaching the passages with the goal of answering a specific question. For example, you might be very curious about the nature of the Holy Spirit and the ins and outs of the Trinity. How does he fit into the Trinity? How does he relate to the Father and the Son? How do all the metaphysics of that work out? Well I can tell you right now I'm not going to answer that question. In fact, I'm not going to talk about the Trinity at all in this series because as I study these passages, they have very little to say on the topic. From my limited and good for nothing perspective, everything we say about the Trinity we are deriving from glimpses and extrapolating from passages. And that's fine, that's an okay thing to do, that's part of deriving doctrine. But the passages themselves seem to make different points. The nature of the Trinity is just not a question the authors of Scripture set out to answer. They seem to have a different agenda, in my opinion, and so that is what I'm going to focus on. As I understand it, the Bible concentrates almost exclusively on what the Spirit does. So that's what we're going to talk about. When the Holy Spirit comes up in a passage, he is almost always doing something in the world. Scripture says almost nothing about who He is. And because that's what Scripture emphasizes, that's what I'm going to emphasize in this series. Now, again, it's not wrong to try to answer the questions we have about the Trinity, but that's a different concern. That's a study we might undertake later, and it's not the scope of this study. You can always ask me questions or contact me through the website, but I may not be able to answer questions about the Trinity because at this point I haven't really studied it other than the Orthodox views, which seemed fine to me. So I'm going to emphasize what the Bible emphasizes, and that is the work of the Holy Spirit. Some of the passages we'll look at are passages I've taught on before in various series, and some of them will be new. This will be a tour of the primary passages that I think give us the clearest picture of who the Holy Spirit is and what he does. So to get us started, today I want to introduce certain themes that are going to come up throughout this series, and we're going to do that by looking at John 3. This is perhaps the passage everyone thinks about when they start thinking about the Holy Spirit. And as we go through this series, we're going to see a couple of themes come up over and over again. And I want to start by introducing these themes to you right off the bat. Now I'm not going to talk about every last detail in this passage. Again, I'm going to focus on it to get the context, the main thought, and then look at what it teaches us about the Holy Spirit. So we're in the Gospel of John. We're in chapter three. Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, who is one of the Pharisees. Let me read the whole passage and then we'll go back and look at the sections. So I'm going to read John chapter three verses one through eight. Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him. Jesus answered him, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? Jesus answered, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes, so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. So Jesus is talking to a man named Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a Pharisee. The Pharisees were an organized group of Jews who were very intent on keeping the Mosaic Law. They believed that if every Jew would keep the law for one day, then the Messiah would come. So they were very intent on keeping the minutiae of the law of Moses, on promoting obedience to the law and teaching others to keep the law so that they could hasten the coming of the Messiah, and they formed this brotherhood or group to teach each other the law and to hold each other accountable for keeping the law. John also describes Nicodemus as a ruler of the Jews. This means that he's a member of the Sanhedrin. At this time the nation of Israel was under Roman rule. The Sanhedrin was kind of like their supreme court for religious affairs, and it was led by the high priest. Most of the rabbis who were members of the Sanhedrin were also Pharisees. Now the Jews got special treatment from Rome. When Rome conquered a pantheistic nation, the Romans typically either assimilated their gods into the Roman pantheon, or they saw their new religion as a threat and they just disallowed it. So they'd forbid the conquered nation to worship their gods. But the Jews were such a recalcitrant and stubborn lot that the Romans found it more politically expedient to let them continue to practice their religion rather than trying to stamp it out or forcing them to worship the Roman pantheon. The Jews had a special dispensation from Rome. Instead of sacrificing to Caesar, they were required to make a daily offering to their god on behalf of Caesar. That was their compromise with Rome. So the Sanhedrin still had some power over the nation of Israel even though it was under Roman rule. They were the like the Supreme Court over all religious affairs and disputes. Nicodemus then is a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin and he comes to Jesus by night. As you might imagine, Jesus was not very popular with the ruling class of Israel. He made them incredibly nervous. John will tell us later in his gospel that they end up crucifying Jesus because they don't want Rome to come and take away their power, at least that's part of their motive. They had such a good deal going under Rome they didn't want to lose it. And Jesus was a threat who might bring the anger of Rome down on them. Nicodemus seems to be an exception. He is responding positively to Jesus and appears to be a believer when we meet him later in the gospel. After Jesus is crucified, Nicodemus is one of the people that brings spices to anoint the body of Jesus. But for now, he comes to Jesus by night because he wants to come in secret. He doesn't want the other Pharisees to know that he's interested in what this Jesus fellow has to say. Nicodemus seems to have a fledgling faith here. He says you must be from God because no one can do these things that you're doing unless God is with him. And that's interesting to us because we'll see as we go through this series, one of the things the Holy Spirit does is authenticate and verify the message of Jesus and his apostles through miraculous signs. And here we see Nicodemus has recognized that. Let's look again at verses three through six. Jesus answered him, Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? Jesus answered, Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water in the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Now from this passage I want to concentrate on this phrase born again, or as some translate it, born from above. And notice that three times Jesus restates this same idea with different phrases. In three three he says born again. In three five he says born of water in the spirit. In three six, he contrasts that which is born of the flesh with that which is born of the spirit, and he concludes in three eight, so it is with everyone who is born of the spirit. Now most every scholar agrees that when he says born of the spirit here he means the Holy Spirit. And he contrasts this idea of being born of the flesh with being born of the spirit. And I understand him to be saying that which is given birth to by flesh is flesh, that which is given birth to by spirit is spirit. And I think the way to think about this metaphor is not to connect it so much with the physical. Drama of being born, but to think about the issue of birthright. Unless you have a birthright, you have no place in the kingdom of God. And what is the birthright that gives you a place in the kingdom of God? It's not the birthright that you, Nicodemus, think it is. It's not being born Jewish and keeping the law. It's a different one. You must be born from above, not of Jewish parents. Now I should comment, I understand this phrase in three five, born of the water and the spirit to be one idea, not two ideas. I don't think Jesus is saying unless you're born once in water and then a second time in spirit. Rather he's saying unless you're born once of water and spirit. This is a linguistic tool called a hindiides, and we use this all the time. We say things like I'm sick and tired of rain. We don't mean that we're both physically ill and physically tired. We're expressing one idea. Or we might say, take it nice and easy. I'll do that when I'm good and ready, or that contract is null and void. In each of those cases, we're using two adjectives to describe one idea, and I think that's what Jesus is doing here when he says you have to be born of water and spirit. I think that's a reference to the baptism of John. This conversation takes place not long after the ministry of John the Baptist. John the Baptist has been appealing to the Jews to repent and to be baptized in water as a symbol of that repentance. What's remarkable about John the Baptist is that Jews would baptize Gentiles who converted to Judaism, but there was no ritual in place to baptize Jews, at least not before John the Baptist. So their baptism with water symbolizes their forgiveness and entrance into fully being the people of God. So this born of water and spirit is a reference back to that birthright that comes from having repented of your sins and sought the mercy of God by the power of the Spirit. The most obvious and visible sign that the Holy Spirit has been at work in someone is repentance, and that is what water baptism symbolizes. So this repentance that water baptism symbolizes has come about by the inward transforming work of the Holy Spirit. It's that change, that transformation of the Holy Spirit that's essential. In 3.60 says that which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of spirit is spirit. So the idea here is in our initial birth we are given birth to by flesh. Our mother and father are made of flesh and blood, and we are made of flesh and blood. We have the same sort of natural fleshly experience our parents had, and this fleshly inheritance we get from our birth parents is corrupt. We are sinful, we are trapped in our sins, we are not what we should be. Unless the Spirit of God intervenes, we will continue to have this same natural, human, sinful, fleshly existence that we inherit from our parents. But some are born from above by the Spirit. So in this metaphor, it is as if the Spirit of God has given birth to us. We have a new birthright. We have a new kind of existence. And like our physical birth, this new existence reflects the spiritual nature of our spiritual parent, the Holy Spirit. We have a new kind of spiritual life. This new birthright, this new spiritual kind of life is essential to getting into the kingdom of heaven. Jesus says we cannot enter the kingdom of God without having been born from above by the Spirit. Now a Pharisee like Nicodemus would understand the seriousness of what Jesus is saying. Nicodemus had this hope that he would be resurrected to eternal life in the kingdom of God ruled over by the Messiah. The Jews looked forward to the day when the Messiah, the coming Davidic king, would rule over them in righteousness. Now Nicodemus may have thought that the Messianic rule would start as a political reality that would get rid of the Roman rule, but I think Jesus has in mind what we would call eternal life. The kingdom of God is a political reality, but it comes about when Jesus is installed as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and every last person recognizes him as such. So it's going to come about when Jesus returns, vanquishes his enemies, rights every wrong, and establishes God's righteous rule over his righteous people. The kingdom of God is the new age when Jesus defeats death and his people are granted eternal life. And now Jesus is telling Nicodemus that he has no hope of entering into that eternal life ruled over by the Messiah unless he's born from above, unless he has the spiritual rebirth that Jesus is talking about. He has to be born of the spirit as well as born of the flesh. Or as we might say today, if we don't receive a new birth by the Spirit of God, we will not be saved. We have to be given a new birthright by the Holy Spirit working in us. So finally, let's look at this analogy between the spirit and the wind. In John three, seven and eight, do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit. As in Hebrew, the Greek word for wind and the Greek word for spirit are the same word. The word is pneuma in Greek, and he says basically the pneuma blows where it wishes and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from, so it is with everyone who's born of the pneuma. So it's a very kind of rich play on words. Now think about your experience with wind. You sit outside and there's no sound or movement, everything is still and quiet, and all of a sudden you hear a rushing sound and all the tree branches begin to sway and dance. You can't see the wind, but you can see the branches swaying. You can't see what's making the sound, but you can hear it. You can't see what's making the branches move, you can't control it, but you can feel the wind. You can't stop it, you can't make it go where you want. We don't even know when the next gust is coming. We don't know where it's coming from or why it came in the first place. We can't analyze or quantify or control the wind. But we experience the changes it makes and we see the results. You know the wind is there because you experience the effects of it. You see the branches moving, you feel it on your face, you feel your hair moving. And I think that's what's essential to his analogy. The wind is invisible to us, it's out of our control, but we experience its effects, and that's how we know it's there. So his analogy is between the wind and the spirit, which are the same word in Greek, and he says the Spirit of God at work in a person's life is like the wind. You can't control it, you can't organize it, you don't know when it's going to happen. The Holy Spirit will do what he wishes. You can't see the Holy Spirit. He's invisible by nature, but you can see the results of him having been there. As you observe the life of a person born of the spirit, you see those metaphorical branches moving and the leaves start swaying. That is, you see the effects of the spiritual rebirth through the changes that come about in the person's life. Now that's worth stopping and thinking about because in our culture we are enamored with the idea that we can make anything happen if only we learn the steps. Just teach me the technique and I can do anything. Give me a paint by number and I'll paint like Rembrandt. That's our mentality. Tell me the steps, I'll get it done. I think our Christian culture is full of that attitude today, and I imagine it was prevalent among the Pharisees like Nicodemus. Just explain to me exactly what the law means and I'll keep it. Watch me. So we have these seminars on how to grow our faith, how to evangelize more, what are effective steps to a better prayer life, three steps to being generous, how to do spiritual disciplines to improve your life. It strikes me that American Christians today are always asking the question, how do we do this right? But if I understand what Jesus is saying, Christianity is not done by technique. We don't bring it about, we don't cause it. It's the work of the Spirit of God. If I explain the gospel to my neighbor and she shrugs it off, it's not a given that I did something wrong. If I hold a Bible study and only five people come, that's not necessarily a sign of failure. If I have a prodigal child, it doesn't necessarily mean I failed. The Spirit blows where he wills and works in his way and in his time. Our job is to be faithful and leave the results to God and his spirit. Jesus is saying, This is the work of the Spirit. The Spirit is the one who transforms you. The Spirit is the one who blows through your life as He wishes. He's the one that will change you such that you now have an inheritance or a birthright in the kingdom of God. You might be able to fake keeping the law, fake being righteous and holy in obedience. You can fake it for a while, but real lasting change in your life comes about because of the Holy Spirit. The transformation that counts comes from the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. Any transformation that comes about by techniques of your own effort is temporal and external. We don't get to control the Spirit. We can't manipulate him into transforming us. It's not like his hands are tied and he can't help us until we pray the right prayer and he's standing there with his big treasure chest of blessings saying, Oh, if only she'd pray, then I could dole these blessings out. That's not how it works. He's like the wind that will blow when and where he wants to bring about whatever changes he wants to bring about in order to implement the plans and the purposes of God. Now think about how this addresses Nicodemus. He's confused and he's frightened by the words of Jesus. Because if being born Jewish as a descendant of Abraham and making a good faith effort to keep the law, if that's not good enough, then how can anyone be saved? How can anyone be born again? Nicodemus must have thought, Jesus, you're not telling me anything I can do, and if I can't do anything, how in the world will I ever be born again? And Jesus is answering him, it's not up to your efforts. It's a gift of God. God is giving you his spirit as a gift of grace. This rebirth thing is not something that you can physically do, and it's not something you can physically see, and it's not something you can physically control. It's like the wind. You can't control the wind. The wind blows where it wills. You don't see the wind, but you know it's there by the changes that take place. Well, the same is true of people. You can't see when a person is born again, but you know that spiritual rebirth has happened because you start to see changes in that person's life. It's invisible, but there's an effect. Something has changed. Now in this passage, Jesus doesn't spell out the nature of those changes. As he goes on, he does tell us something about the changes, and we'll talk about those as we go through this series. But for now, note that the Spirit accomplishes change or transformation in the person who has a place in the kingdom of God. Here then are the first two themes that we'll continue to see in this series. First, the Holy Spirit is God's invisible agent of change. Through the Holy Spirit, God intervenes in creation to change things and to make his creation the way he wants it to be. We saw that in this passage. You're born of flesh and you will continue as flesh unless something changes. Without intervention, you will eat, sleep, breathe, and sin, and in the end you will be rejected by God. That's our trajectory unless something changes. That change comes about through God sending His Spirit to make the change, to transform us, and Jesus describes this as being born from above or being born of the Spirit. By themselves, trees don't move, they just sit there. But when the invisible wind comes, we hear the rustling and we see the branches swaying. And the Spirit is like the wind in the trees. He acts and there's a change we can see, there's an effect. As we go through these passages, we're going to see the Holy Spirit intervening in creation to accomplish or bring about God's purposes. So He is God's agent of change, the one who makes things different. He intervenes for God to accomplish God's purpose. And then second, perhaps the most crucial change the Holy Spirit brings about is the inner transformation of believers. Without this inner transformation, this inner work of the Spirit, we cannot be saved. And that theme is going to come up over and over again. If we're going to be different, if we're going to be changed from the kind of people who naturally are hostile and rebellious to God into the kind of people who want to love and follow God, we have to have the Holy Spirit. He is the one who brings about that change. And we're going to be talking about that a lot more as we go through this series. So for now, we need to know that the Holy Spirit is God's agent of change, and one of his most crucial works is the inner transformation of the hearts of believers. And without that change, we cannot be saved. You've been listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. My mission is to explain not only what a passage means, but how we figure it out. Please take a moment and subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. You'll also find hundreds of episodes on my website so you can browse for any topic or passage you're interested in. Heartfame Music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates of HeartFeltmusic.org. I invite you to check out its other music. Thanks for listening today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I hope you'll join me again at Wednesday in the Word.