What is the Word of Life?

Speaker: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word, serious Bible study applied to real life. Today is Wednesday, September 11, 2013. Our passage is 1 John 1, verses 1 through 4, and our teacher is Krisan Marotta. This is the first message in our series on the book of 1 John. You can find more talks in this series on our website at wednesdayintheword.com. Speaker 1: I'd like to read theological debates. I know that's kind of strange, but it's so much easier these days. There's all kinds of blogs and discussions going on online. And I was following this debate in our denomination, and I found a particularly insightful blog post that I and I thought it was so great I forwarded it to a friend of mine, and part of his response, he said, the blogger's not going to have any influence in the debate because he wasn't widely known and he didn't have the right degree from the right university. And at first I was stunned. I thought, uh how could you judge him like that? Because I thought this young man had uncovered really the heart of the debate and he made some really insightful points. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought my friend was right. Because in today's culture, we're value evaluated on our pedigree, um, not whether our argument is biblical or insightful. And particularly in Charlottesville, where the God of Charlottesville seems to be how many degrees you can pile up after your name, um, and that's what counts, not so much what you say but who you are. And it's not just education, you know, it also bleeds over into appearance, charisma, entertainment value. So if a beautiful person shares their opinion, we take heed. And if they're an academic, we listen, and then if they have these great soundbite zingers, so much the better. But if the not so beautiful or the boring or the uneducated deliver a thought, we tend to ignore it. And it's become a visual world. So, you know, with Facebook, Pinterest, tweets, it's usually the person who win who wins the debate is the one who looks the best and delivers the best soundbite, not the one who's necessarily right. And I think that bleeds over into the church so that we start looking for preachers and teachers who will tell us stories, make us laugh, and tickle our ears with poetry and platitudes. And I heard this recently, I thought this was a really great description. They said church has changed from a battleship to a cruise ship. So now we think of church as a cruise ship, and we're worried about who's gonna feed me and what's the entertainment and where's what's the recreation, and all our concern is is about food and entertainment, as opposed to a battleship where the focus was serving, working side by side, working shoulder to shoulder, supporting people and fighting through the task of um whatever God puts in front of us. And I thought that was a really insightful comment, that we've shifted our impression of church from a cruise from a battleship to a cruise ship. And then while I was thinking about this, I found a blog post, this was on Christianity Today, and I can put a link to it on the website if you want to read the whole article. But they noted that youth-focused Christianity is sidelining the gifts of older women. And the author was Sarah Bessie, and she was doing research for a book on women in the church, and she asked people to write in their stories, and she said, this is a quote from our article, one theme emerged that I didn't expect. Women in the middle of their lives who felt invisible and ignored by the church, the same way they feel invisible or ignored in our culture. In a sea of artful hipsters and energetic young people with self-promotion apparently ingrained into their DNA, they feel invisible and overlooked. One woman told me about how she led worship at her church for years, but when a new young pastor was hired, he wanted a cooler band to get more young people in the door. First thing to go, older women. Then she says, No one wants to see a middle-aged woman on stage, she wrote candidly. And so she was replaced by young women in their late teens and early twenties. Which, and it goes on to talk about being invisible, how you just we're a youth-oriented culture. So all that raises the question, who do you listen to? Who's the authority? What voice speaks to you? So of all the competing voices out there, how do you know which one's right, which one you should listen to, and which ones carry more weight? And that's gonna be a theme of first John. A lot of what we're gonna be talking about is how do you know what's right and what's wrong, and how do you know who to listen to and who not to listen to. And John is very concerned about that. Who do you listen to and why? And he's gonna teach us how to think critically about the truth and challenge us, I think, on how far we've slipped down this slope of valuing style over substance. All right, so let me give you some background to the letter. John wrote his gospel around 85 A.D., and this letter was probably written around 90 A.D., it was one of the last of the New Testament letters. John, of course, the author is the Apostle John. He was one of the twelve apostles who heard the gospel directly from Jesus, and he was given a special calling to proclaim it. Further, he was one of the inner circle, the group that was closest to Jesus. He's probably an old man at the time he's writing this letter, most likely writing from Ephesus, and he's most likely the last surviving apostle at this point. Um, and he's one of the last of the generation who were eyewitnesses to Jesus' earthly life and ministry. They're all beginning, this is 90 AD, so if Jesus was speaking around 30 A.D., that generation is beginning to pass away. And what's happened is heresies are becoming rampant in the church. So the apostles, for the most part, have been martyred. The generation who were eyewitnesses are dying off, and the next generation, instead of hearing the message from an apostle or one directly sent by an apostle, they're now hearing it from their fathers, or you know, one step removed. And several different groups are arising and they're saying, okay, we have the straight scoop. That stuff you heard from the apostles, they didn't get it, but we've got what Jesus actually taught. And so John learns that all these false messages are being taught in the name of Jesus, and he responds, he says, Wait a minute, we're how do you recognize the true gospel from the false gospel and he's going to set the record straight? So the false teachers are claiming we're the ones who know what Jesus actually taught, unlike that older generation in the church that's teaching you, we're the ones that know, listen to us, and there's all these heresies cropping up, and it's very confusing. So the younger generation is facing the question that I just raised, who do I listen to? How do I know what to believe? If I've got all these people claiming they have the corner on the truth, how do I know which one is right? And who, which group has the authority to say, this group is right, this group is wrong? Well, the Apostle John has that authority. In fact, he has uniquely unchallenged credentials to settle that debate because he was an eyewitness to Jesus' earthly ministry. He was a close associate to Jesus, and he was given the authority to speak and write for him. So he's the one that's going to set the record straight, and that's what he's writing to do. Now the letter's not a typical New Testament letter in that it doesn't follow the format of most letters. Only this letter and the letter to Hebrews begin without identifying the author and without uh either by name or by title and without a kind of introductory greeting. There's lots and lots of external evidence that John is in fact the author. I'm not going to review all that for you, but just about any commentary you find will have a detailed discussion on how we know the Apostle John is in fact the author of this book. So you can look that up if you're interested. This letter was not sent to a single church or a single geographic region, like most of the New Testament letters. Rather, it was intended to be sent to all the churches, to be widely distributed. So a church would receive this letter, they'd make a copy of it, and then they'd send the original on to another church, and then that church would make a copy of it, and they'd send it on, and the process kept repeating, and that's basically how most of the letters got circulated. But John isn't writing like to the Romans or to the Ephesians or Galatians or Region. He intends this letter to go far afield. He's also not very specific about who his opponents are. So the false teachers could be the Pharisees, they could be the Jewish legalists, they could be duphists or Gnostics, we're going to talk about them, or some combination of all of them. He's going to give us clues through the letter what they're teaching and what some of their false claims are, but he doesn't specifically name them. And I don't think that's his purpose. Instead, he's clarifying the truth. So I don't think he intends to be specific about what the false teachers are teaching, but rather to say generally, here's how you can recognize a true gospel from a false gospel, kind of regardless of the specifics of the false teaching. So, unlike Galatians, for instance, where Paul has a specific group that he's challenging, and he's very specific about what they're teaching, and his goal is to write against that group, John is writing more generically, and he's saying, here's how you recognize true teachers from false teachers. Here's how you recognize the true gospel. And he's going to give us big broad strokes on how to recognize it. And I'm going to summarize, at least these are the ones I think a great way to summarize, these three broad strokes that he's going to set straight. So the first one is that the apostles are wrong. That one's going to come clearly through the gospels. The false teachers are saying, no, no, what the apostles are teaching, that isn't the real gospel. We're the ones that have the right gospel. So either directly or indirectly, they're claiming the apostles are wrong. And as a corollary to that, they're claiming we're the ones that are right. We are the group. Our group is the one that knows what Jesus actually taught. So we've got the straight scoop, you don't. So they are still claiming affinity with Christianity and with the God of the Bible, but they're saying we're the ones who know what Jesus actually said. And then the third thing is they're denying that Jesus was the Messiah. And that's going to come up a lot. They're going to either claim Jesus never said he was the Messiah or he said it, but he was wrong. So with that in mind, if you look at page six in your handout, it looks like this. Um I've summarized for you the main forms of heresy that were uh in existence at the time John was writing this letter. For those of you who are listening on the podcast, there'll be a link to this on the website. And I'm not going to read through this right now. You can review them at your leisure. It's something you might want to familiarize yourself with because it's very helpful in a lot of other books you might study in the New Testament. And you kind of want to keep them in mind as we go through the book, because I find it it's really helpful to know these are the claims that were going on in John's time and how he applied the principles he's giving us to these heresies, then it helps us apply them to the heresies of our day. So Gnosticism is probably the primary one that he was having to deal with, and that's got the most space in here. So if you have questions about that, next week you can ask me. But I'll leave that to I'm not going to read it to you. You can read it for yourself. Okay, so let's look at the first four verses of chapter one. So John 1, verses 1 through 4. I've given you the New American Standard version in your workbook. If you have a favorite version you like, feel free to use it. But that's in the book, it's New American Standard. So verses 1 through 4. What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the Word of Life. And the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaimed to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us. What we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. These things we write so that our joy may be made complete. Okay, the main point of this section is John is saying, This is the message. This is the authoritative message. This is the voice you should listen to of all those competing voices. So verses one through four, he begins with this relative clause that he interrupts himself and then he never quite finishes the sentence. But notice the first verse, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have looked at and touched, all of which is concerning the word of life. This is what we taught you, this is what we proclaimed to you. And these clauses move from the abstract to the tangible. So what was from the beginning, now, as good Bible study students, the first thing we would go is, what beginning? Is that creation? Is that the beginning of my Christian life? Is that the incarnation? What is he talking about? And I think the context is going to make clear the beginning of Jesus' ministry. So the original message that Jesus taught, because that's what he's going to go on to talk about in these verses, that this is the message that came originally from Jesus, the pure, genuine gospel. But notice chronologies is not enough. He said we heard it directly from Jesus. But hearing it's not enough. We've also seen it, and even seeing it is not enough. He goes on to say, We've touched it. And all of that is to pile on the point of this is the voice you should listen to. We have this authoritative, conclusive, tangible, verifiable evidence that this is the message. The word touched here is um it means to grope or to feel after. It has the idea, it's used like of a blind man who's searching in the dark or who is like touching your faces or examining it closely. It's not like a brushing momentary contact. It means to to really search something out. And then he uses two different words for see and look, which get the idea of in to see intelligently or to grasp the meaning of, not just to glance at, but to see and understand. So John Stopp summarizes it this way in his commentary. In other words, he's not introducing an innovation or afterthought, but proclaiming the unchanged original content of the gospel against novel forms of doctrine. And what is the gospel about? It's about the word of light. Now it's easy to confuse that phrase with the prologue to John's Gospel, and I want to suggest that they're different. There are a lot of similarities, but there's a one big difference that we need to make sure we grasp. The gospel goes on to emphasize word, but notice that in this letter he goes on to emphasize life. He picks that up twice in verse 2. Life was manifested, and we have seen and proclaimed to you the eternal life which was with the Father. So he's saying this is the message of life, or this is the revelation of how to gain life. In other words, what we heard from the beginning of Jesus' ministry about the way to obtain life. And what does he mean by life? Eternal life is literally life of the age of ages. It's the life in the final age or the age to come. So this idea of if you divide all of cosmic history up into segments, there will be the age of ages, the final age, the very last one. So it's not eternal as an everlasting, although that's also probably true that it will be the longest and unending age. But the emphasis on it's the final age, it's the age to come. The age that will be ushered in by the second coming of Christ, in which there will be a new heavens, new earth, death, tears, and sorrow and sin will all be ended. Everything will be made right and perfect. So this is the age where we will be free of sin, free from death, free from evil and corruption and futility and all its forms. And he's saying, Jesus came into the world to teach us about this kind of life and how to gain it, what it's like and who's going to attain it. So the message of the gospel is about the revelation of life, how we gain eternal life and what it is. And then in verse 2, the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaimed to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us. So this kind of a he breaks up, it's kind of a parentheses grammatically, and he's saying, This is how the message was revealed. It was revealed to us by Jesus. We saw it, we're eyewitnesses, we proclaim it. And testify and proclaim are interesting. They both imply authority, but they're different kinds. So testify is the authority of experience. This is a word you would use of a witness in a courtroom who has seen and lived through it. So they um they are testifying because they have firsthand knowledge, so it's the knowledge of experience. Proclaim is authority of commission. Someone can proclaim something if they have been given a special calling to proclaim it. So to testify, the apostles had to have seen and heard and touched and been with Jesus, but to proclaim it, they were commissioned by him, given a special calling to say, now teach what you have what you learned, what you heard. So in both cases, the source of the message is Christ Himself, and they have two kinds of authority, experience and calling. And he's saying all of that is to wrap up saying, We're the ones who were specifically commissioned and called by Jesus Himself, and we proclaimed this message to you. This is the original message, and you can trust him. This debate's going on about who do you listen to, and John is saying, This is it. This is the original teaching of Jesus. I was there, I saw it, I heard it, I touched it, I saw the signs and miracles, I heard the words of Jesus directly, I stood by him, and he specifically commissioned me to teach it. Okay, and then three and four, what we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us. Indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. These things we write so that our joy may be made complete. So in three and four, he's saying, We, and I think that we as apostles proclaim what we saw and heard from Jesus so that you might believe, so that you might believe and be saved. The goal of the proclamation is fellowship and joy. Now, fellowship is one of those Christian words that we throw around, and it typically means having a share in something with someone. And so you share in something with someone else, and then the context is fills in what you share and who you share it with. And most often in the New Testament, it's used of I have a share in the gospel with other believers. So we have this common participation in the grace of God, the salvation of Christ, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit with other believers. And the idea behind this, I think all he means here by saying that you may have this fellowship is that you may be saved, that you would see and understand the truth, that you would know the original message of the gospel, and then you would share that understanding that with us so that you would be saved. And our joy would be complete because you uh you have learned and seen and understood. So we would share in the gospel with you. And notice he uses the full title for Jesus, his son, Jesus Christ, might be his first kind of opening salvo against the heresies that are of his day. So this was the Son of God, Jesus the Messiah, and we're going to talk about what that title means later on. But all of this is to make the point, who do you listen to? Listen to us. Listen to the apostles. So when we're bombarded with all this conflicting information of, you know, these million different voices where one says X and one says Y and one says Z, how do you know who to listen to? John's saying, this is the voice to listen to, the voice of the Apostles, this is the message. And I find this comforting because we live in a world of a thousand voices. You know, you we are so connected today. You can't it's almost hard to disconnect you can't escape it. You know, you can be constantly updated with tweets and and status updates and podcasts and email and alerts and broadcasts, and I bet the minute we on, most of you are gonna go check your phones the minute we we get out of here to see what you missed. So we have all these voices coming at us, and the question is, how do you know which voice can you should listen to? Which voice carries authority? Which voice has the words of life? And John says, Let me speak into that confusion, you can listen to my voice. It's the apostolic voice that carries authority. We're the ones who were the eyewitnesses, we're the ones who have first hand personal experience with the message, and we were specifically commissioned by Jesus to teach it. And he's going to spend the rest of the letter telling us how to recognize the apostolic voice from those that are false. So he's going to give us characteristics of it, he's going to give us ways to, a big in big kind of broad strokes, how to recognize the voice that is in harmony with the apostles and the voice that isn't. And just to give you a preview, he's going to teach us to recognize truth by its substance and its source. And its substance is grace. That is the free unmerited favor of God because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And its source is divine revelation. The message that came from Jesus to the apostles and has been passed down to us. So source and substance. So but we're gonna that will all unfold as we go through this letter. Let me close with some application. So you're thinking, okay, so what? I kind of knew that. You know, if you've hung around the church a while, we kind of know that scriptures are authority, and yes, the apostles wrote scripture, and so okay, ho. Well, there's one thing I think that means that we might not have thought about, and I want to make the bold claim that Jesus did not come in the world to teach us how to do life here and now. He came to teach us about the life to come. And I think I'm getting that from John saying, what we've looked at, this message that we heard, it concerns the word of life and the how you gain eternal life. So he tells us the gospel is about the word of life and it's how to gain life in the age to come, not how to be spiritually successful right now, not how to be prosperous right now. The message is by and large how to how to get into the kingdom of heaven, into the next age. So it's not some like quasi-Marxist idea that we create a utopian society on earth, but that we are looking for a hope that is to come. And there's a large segment of modern Christianity that claims that Jesus came to make this life better. And it seems to swing through the church like a pendulum every few years. It goes by many names. Uh, it used to be called Victorious Christian Living. Some of you are probably familiar with that term if you're old enough. Um, it swung through, I think in the 70s, it was the term abundant was the catchphrase. Everybody kept talking about abundant life and abundant living. Um it came through again with the prayer of Jabez. Most of you probably remember that phenomenon. And it seems to swing through the church kind of periodically, and all of it, the underlying thing that it shares is that the gospel is about how to make my life here and now better, how to make my life now the best this life has to offer. And I think what we're gonna see in John is his focus is not how do I make today better, but am I gonna have life in the age of ages? Am I gonna make it there or not? And he's not alone. The rest of the New Testament makes the same claim that the gospel is about the life to come. So Paul in Romans talks about it's the hope that's set before us. And he says if we had it, we wouldn't have to hope for it. We hope for it because we don't have it yet. And that no matter how good we make this life, it's not going to hold a candle to what's coming. And of course, it's not the New Testament. You can read uh the rest of the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes, for example, where the overwhelming message of the Bible is of course you're not completely happy right now. Of course you're not fulfilled, of course there's a measure of futility and tragedy, and this life will have troubles and trials and tribulations. There's a life in this age is futile in this in a sense because it is marred by evil and corruption. And even if we manage to tame that evil down to its barest minimum, it's still gonna be there. It's never gonna completely go away until the age to come. But the good news of the gospel is you have a place for you, secured by the blood of Christ, when God's gonna solve that problem. And I think that gives us a lot of comfort and security because there's a sense in which I can wait because I know that despite my circumstances, this is the process that's going to get me to that life, and that is so valuable and so worth having that everything we endure now is is a pittance in comparison. So, now the the kind of here and now gospel folks would object to me and they'd say, Okay, but Jesus spends an awful lot of time teaching us how we should treat others. And if the gospel's all about the age to come, then why does Jesus spend so much time teaching us how to love one another, how to care for the poor, how not to fawn over the rich, how to be fair and forgiving and humble. And if, you know, why does he spend so much time teaching about that? And I would say, yes, Jesus does that. He spends a lot of time teaching us how to treat others and how we live our life here and now and tomorrow. I mean, just for those of you who are here with our James study two years ago, we talked about that a lot. The gospel makes a difference in how we live our lives here and now. And if I make a claim to believe in the gospel, it ought to change me at some fundamental level so that what I value changes, what I want changes, what I hope for changes, the choices I make change. So I'm not denying any of that. But I think the fundamental message of the gospel is that change comes about only when I have been freed from my sin by the blood of Christ. And there's only one way to be freed by sin, and that's trust him in Jesus. So it's not that I have to go out and prove myself and make myself worthy by loving others or caring for the poor or work out my salvation on my own shoulders, but that once God has saved me, healed my heart of stone, given me a heart that loves him and is soft, frees me from that bondage to sin, then my attitude changes, including how I treat the poor, how I love others, humility, forgiveness, and all that stuff. So I would say, yes, that's a part of the gospel, but it results from being changed. It's not not a goal we work for uh to either gain God's favor or something along those lines. Well then then the next objective objection usually is, okay, if the message of the gospel is about this pie in the sky, you know, otherworldly age to come, then why can't I just be a brat now? You know? You have given me free license to be totally concerned with myself, to ignore the poor, to ignore all the the life's needs around me, and not be concerned with anybody but myself. Why can't I just be completely self-centered and making sure I understand the words of life that I'm done, right? And I can ignore everyone else. And um you'll notice Paul faces that objection actually, both in Romans and Galatians. He writes to it. And there is a sense that we can read the teachings of Jesus from the perspective that he was this like socialist who came into the world to teach us how to live life here and now and to do human relationships better, how to share and share alike and love one another in the best sense. And I would say there's a sense in which that is true. He did teach us how to love one another in the best sense, but there is a sense in which it was not. And I would say rather than his primary focus being how we do human relationships better, his primary focus is how I do me better in the sense of gaining eternal life. And one of the ways I do me better is I'm not self-centered. I'm other self-centered. So if I'm narcissistic, if I'm self-centered, if I'm completely, you know, impervious to how I'm treating others or affecting others, then I'm not doing me right. I'm not the person God intended me to be. I'm not the kind of person God wants because He created us to be uh self-sacrificing, other focused, giving kind of people. Now, granted, I'm a complete failure at that. That's why I need the gospel. We're not none of us get there on our own, but we get there as God begins that prog process of changing us. Now, how does that make a difference? So I'm kids like, oh, isn't that just kind of theory and don't we just want to study the Bible? This is how where I think it makes a difference. So suppose that I run across a starving poor peer person and I give her enough food and money to eat for a week, and she's happy for a week and she's fed, and then the next week she starves to death. Have I failed or not? That's where it makes a difference. If ge if you think Jesus came to teach us how to do life here and now, then I have failed because I didn't make a difference. That person starved. I didn't make anything better. Sure, I made it might have better for a week, but in the long term my efforts were useless because it didn't make a big difference. I didn't I failed to do what I could have done in some way. But if you think Jesus came to teach us how to gain eternal life, and part of gaining eternal life is becoming holy or becoming conformed to the image of Christ, then I have not failed. Yes, the person starved and that's a tragedy. But on the other hand, left to myself, I am the type of person that would walk on by. If we're honest with ourselves, where all of us ha are deep down are like, oh, I don't want to let go of my hard-earned money and share it with somebody else. What about me? So left to myself, I'm the kind of person that would never help anyone. But if I overcame that selfishness through the power of the Holy Spirit long enough to be generous and compassionate, then I was the kind of person God intended me to be. And that's not failure, that's success. So you see the difference? My goal is not to build a utopian society, my goal is to be conformed to the image of Christ. So to be becoming holy. And I don't know about you, but as a new believer, before I figured that out, I was just tortured by the impossibility of the task before us. I mean, I'd look around at the world and you look at the overwhelming problems, you know, nationally, globally, we're always on the brink of war, the horrible persecutions and martyrdoms and things that are going on, and then you just have to walk down the street and see what's happening in your neighborhoods or these or the cities, and you think, how can I even make a dent? And even if all the believers everywhere acted in perfect love for an int for a week or even a day, we aren't gonna change the world into what it ought to be. I mean, look at just how far the world has gone and how overwhelming the change is that has to happen. And that that kind of perspective it leads to despair. But I think what John's gonna say is you don't need to despair because saving the world is not your job. That's God's job. So you're not out to make a utopian society. You're out to faithfully respond to God, to act with love and integrity and respect and forgiveness in whatever circumstances he's put you in, and to stand firm and be strong in the faith. You don't have to reform the world, you just have to live your life in light of the truth that Jesus revealed, and you can leave the rest up to God. Now, I I don't know about you, but I find that that very comforting. Now, remember everything we learned from James two years ago. Faith ought to make a difference. If I claim to have faith and nothing about my life ever changes, my values, my choices, my actions, my speech, if nothing ever changes in any way, we should question the genuineness of our faith. But we have to remember where that change comes from. It comes from God changing our hearts. It comes from the inside out. And John's going to add balance to that, saying, yes, your life will change, but your goal is not to save the world. That's God's job. God's job. Our job is to just live that quiet, ordinary life of faith, trusting Him, serving where He places us, making a difference where we can in whatever ways we can, and trusting Him to make us more and more into people who love and are compassionate and generous. I'm going to stop there. I will pray for us, and then just in case I forget, next week we will go on with verses 5 through 10. So page 11 and then page 13 has the questions for that. So let me pray for us, and then I'm going to turn you back over to Libya. I don't think we'll take time for questions today, but normally I would give you time to respond and ask questions. If you have great questions, you can ask me uh later, but just I I don't want to run over the nursery on the first day. They'll kill me if I do. So let me pray first and I'll give you back to Living. Father, thank you that you are a God who loves us and that you did come into the world to teach us how to gain life and how to find life in you and fellowship with you. We thank you for the fact that we can be here openly studying and learning your word. And I just pray that you would be writing these words on our heart. You would make it real to us, not theology or head knowledge, but the kind of thing that penetrates our deepest understanding and knowledge of you. And that if anything is wrong or heresy or confusing or incomplete, that you would blow it that away and let your truth remain. In Jesus' name. Amen. Speaker: Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word. For notes and study questions related to this message, please visit our website, Wednesdayintheword.com. We hope you'll join us again.