51 Why Jesus called Death Sleeping (Matthew 9:18-26)

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. This is the 51st talk in my series on the Gospel of Matthew. Today we're going to be looking at Matthew chapter 9, verses 19 through 26. Lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below this podcast, and you can also go directly to them by going to wednesdayintheword.com slash Matthew 5.1. Thanks so much for joining me today. While we are continuing our study in Matthew's Gospel today, we are still in chapters 8 and 9. Most of the stories that we've seen so far in these chapters have been about the miracles Jesus performed, and these miracles prove his authority and testify to the fact that he is the Messiah. The passage we're looking at today, Matthew 9, verses 18 through 26, contain healing stories of two women, the daughter of Jairus and the woman who was bleeding. In the last podcast, we looked at the account of the woman with the perpetual bleeding. That story interrupts the story of Jairus and his daughter, and we're going to look at that story today. Mark and Luke give us a few more details for these stories, and I'm going to bring those details in so we can fill in some of the gaps, but we'll be primarily in Matthew. Let me read Matthew 9 18 through 26. While he was saying these things to them, behold, a ruler came in and knelt before him, saying, My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her and she will live. And Jesus rose and followed him with his disciples. And behold, a woman who had suffered from a discharge of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, for she said to herself, If I only touch his garment I will be made well. Jesus turned and seeing her, he said, Take heart, daughter, your faith has made you well, and instantly the woman was made well. And when Jesus came to the ruler's house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, Go away, for the girl is not dead, but sleeping, and they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl arose. And the report of this went through all that district. Well, Matthew gives us a rather simplified version of this story. He omits many of the details that we find in Mark and Luke. From them we learn that this man's name was Gyrus, and the sequence of events is a bit more complicated than what Matthew gives us. Let me start with that sequence of events. Before the healing of the woman and before the news comes that his daughter has died, Gyrus approaches Jesus with his request. This is Mark chapter five, verses twenty one through twenty four. And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him and he was beside the sea. Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Gyrus by name, and seeing him he fell at his feet, and implored him earnestly, saying, My little daughter is at the point of death, come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live. And he went with him, and a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. Now Mark places the story after the healing of the demoniac. Jesus has returned to the northwestern side of the lake, and there he finds a crowd waiting for him. In the crowd are two people who are seeking his help. One of them is the woman with the bleeding, and we looked at that in the last podcast. The other is Gyrus, who is an important leader. The word used to describe him is synagogue official, and that's a term for the person who was responsible for the supervision of the synagogue building and the arrangement of its services. This person typically had very high social status and it was a high station. His daughter is dying and he's desperate. He seeks Jesus and abandoning his pride, he falls at Jesus' feet. It must have amazed the crowd to see one of their leaders and their nobles falling at the feet of a carpenter from Nazareth in the same way that a devout Jew might entreat Yahweh at the temple. Apparently this girl's condition is so critical that Mark doesn't record any verbal response from Jesus. They simply take off like an ambulance on a rescue mission. But then there is an interruption. This story is interrupted by the account of the woman with the hemorrhage who touched Jesus in hopes of being healed. And Mark tells us that after Jesus heals the woman, the news comes to the ruler that his daughter has died. So Mark 535 begins, while Jesus was still speaking, that is, while he was still speaking to the woman in the story that we looked at last week. And then Mark goes on, this is starting in five thirty five. While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler's house some who said, Your daughter is dead, why trouble the teacher anymore? But over hearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, Do not fear, only believe. And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John, the brother of James. News now comes that the girl has died while Jesus has delayed talking to this woman. And then Jesus encourages the ruler to believe and not fear, and he takes off with only Peter, James, and John, leaving the crowd behind. Matthew concludes the story this way, and when Jesus came to the ruler's house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, Go away for the girl is not dead, but sleeping, and they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl arose, and the report of this went through all that district. Matthew tells us they came to Gyrus' house, they find the mourners wailing in the front room. Jesus rebukes them, they laugh at him, he puts them outside, and then he raises the girl from the dead. Mark tells us a little more detail about what happened in the house, this is Mark five thirty eight. They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. And when he had entered he said to them, Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead, but sleeping. And they laughed at him, but he put them all outside and took the child's father and mother and those who are with him, and went in where the child was. Taking her by the hand he said to her, Talitha Kum, which means little girl, I say to you, arise. And immediately the girl got up and began walking, for she was twelve years of age, and they were immediately overcome with amazement, and he strictly charged them that no one should know this and told them to give her something to eat. The common detail that Matthew, Mark, and Luke include is the rebuke of the mourners. In Matthew nine twenty four he said, Go away for the girl is not dead but sleeping, and they laughed at him. Mark five thirty nine, and when he had entered he said to them, Why are you making a commotion? And weeping, the child is not dead but sleeping. And then Luke eight fifty two, and all were weeping and mourning for her, but he said, Do not weep, for she is not dead but sleeping. Now notice that when Jesus rebukes the mourners, he has not yet seen the girl. He has just come into the house, he has walked in the door and found the mourners in the first room. Apparently the girl is in a separate bedroom because we're told in Mark 5.40 that he goes into the room where the girl was. At the point then when he speaks to the mourners, he has not yet laid eyes on the girl. So what are we to make of his statement that she is not dead but sleeping? Is this part of his divine knowledge? Does this negate the miracle because the girl was really still alive, as some have suggested, and that the miracle is he knew that without laying eyes on her? I think the girl is really dead. I think Jesus is making a bigger point about death here. I think he knows the child is dead. He's not lying with this statement, he's not misinformed. He's making a point about death and the way we ought to think about death. And I'm going to spend some more time on that later. The question, why are you weeping, why are you making a fuss, and the rebuke, go away for the girl is not dead but sleeping, those statements are aimed at the mourners, not the other people in the story. He does not address those statements to his disciples, nor are they addressed to the grieving family. We know a little bit about the death rituals of the time. The writings of the rabbis tell us that when somebody died, even the poorest of families must hire two flute players and one professional wailing woman. This was the expected custom or tradition. In that culture, there were no telephones, there was no email, there's no way of getting the word out, and professional mourners served that role. When someone died, professional mourners would gather and a wail would start. And these people had probably been standing by since this was a prominent man in the community and his daughter had apparently been sick for a while. As soon as she died, they would have started playing their instruments, crying aloud, throwing dust in the air and tearing their clothes, and others in the family were expected to wail along with the mourners. The house would be filled with sadness and the loud rituals of grief, and thus word would begin to spread through the community that the child had died. That's part of how the community was informed. The role of the mourners was to communicate to the village that someone had died. They were to insist that everyone acknowledge the facts, death has won again, the final enemy has claimed another victim, and this little girl's life was lost. They all have to bow before the reality of death. But Jesus challenges the mourners. We first see this tension when some of the men from among the mourners at the house come to Jairus and say very matter-of-factly to him, Your daughter is dead, why bother the teacher anymore? So they come and they say, Let's face the terrible reality. There's nothing left for this rabbi to do. We've lost all hope. The battle's over, we've lost. Leave behind the rabbi, leave his religious instruction. Maybe Jesus would have had something to say or to do when there was still reason to hope, but there's no reason to hope anymore. The child is dead. Why bother Jesus? There is nothing he can do now. That's the point they're making. Jesus then turns to the heartbroken father and says, Don't give up, don't despair, rather believe. So the mourners are saying the battle is over, death has won again. And Jesus says, The battle is not over, there is still hope. Yes, the child has died, but death is not going to win. The issue he's challenging here is their view of death. And Jesus is about to prove that he has authority even over death. Death is not the enemy, which no one can defeat. God has power over death, and he has given that authority and power to Jesus. If God does not want someone to remain dead, they will not remain dead. Now let me clarify the issue here is not grief. Jesus is not challenging their grief. He's not challenging the response of sadness. Grief in the face of a death or a loss is always appropriate. The sorrow, the confusion, that numbness of heart and mind. None of the emotions that go with losing someone you love are in view when Jesus challenges the professional mourners. He's not challenging their grief, he's challenging their view of death. In 1 Thessalonians 4.13, Paul writes, but we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. Paul is making, I think, a very similar, if not the same, point about death. The statement he makes there is not don't grieve. His point is don't grieve hopelessly. Remember, Jesus cried at the tomb of Lazarus. He wept outside the tomb, even knowing that Lazarus would be given life again for some years to follow. He cried for the hurt and destruction that death causes among us. He wept for the loneliness that people experience when a beloved one is taken. We all grieve when someone dies. The calling for Christians is not to not somehow grieve, the calling is to not grieve hopelessly, but to believe. The challenge of faith is to acknowledge our hurt, but not give way to despair or hopelessness. To try to flesh this out, I'd like to look at the actions of Jesus in this story from two different vantage points. One is the tenderness with which he cares for the family, and the other is the severity with which he treats or rebukes the mourners. And I think both of those actions, the way he reacts to these people, show us something important. First, let's consider the kindness of the Lord to the family involved. Jesus was very tender with this father who has just heard that his child had died. You can imagine the father's heart must have sunk like a stone. He'd hoped that Jesus would get there before the child died, and now it's too late. They were rushing on their way to help this child when Jesus stopped and had this way too long conversation, at least from Jairus' point of view, with the woman who had touched him. I mean, think about that weight. That must have been agonizing for this father. You know how when you're late and you're rushing off to get somewhere and you stop at a red light and it just seems to go on forever and ever because you know you're late and you're just sitting there going, come on, come on, come on, change, change. It must have been that kind of feeling amplified a thousand percent. And think about what it must have been like for Jairus as he stands there while Jesus talks to this woman who touched him. Jesus seeks her out and then she tells him this whole long story, twelve years of grief she's gone through. The father must have been beside himself, and now it's too late. Jesus waited too long. Every second mattered, and they frittered them away on someone else. From Gyrus's perspective, those precious moments were wasted on some poor outcast woman who had nothing and would be nothing, and here he was an important man. He serves God through tending the synagogue. He has one child, he wants to give something back. This child is just at the brink of adulthood, she has her whole life ahead of her, and Jesus is wasting his time on this woman while his beautiful only daughter, who is just beginning her adult life, is about to lose it. How could Jairus see any miracle to believe in? He doesn't see a storm on the sea suddenly stop raging. He doesn't see the demons and the pigs drowning themselves in the sea, he doesn't see the leper suddenly become clean or the paralytic walking. He doesn't even feel the physical healing of the woman with the bleeding. At this point, all he's got is the word of the Lord. How could he trust a Lord who delayed so long he could no longer be of any use? How could he trust a Lord who said, wait a minute, I have this other matter to attend to, which must have felt to him something like get in line and take a number? And that's about how it must have looked to Jairus. And now Jesus offers him this word, trust me, this is not the end of the story. Jesus speaks very tenderly to the Father. Mark tells us that he says, Do not fear, only believe. Don't give way to despair. Trust me. Then Jesus makes the crowd stay behind, and he goes forward only with Girus, Peter, James, and John. And I think that's also an act of compassion. First, they can move faster in smaller numbers, and that's going to shorten the father's agony and waiting, and they will get to the house quicker, and this matter will be resolved. But it also removes the witnesses to his grief and his suffering. As an important leader of the community, people in the crowd must have known him, and they would all want to come up and speak to him now, pat him on the shoulder, give him a hug, express their sympathy, and so forth. But at this particular moment, with this particular father, that is not what he needs. So Jesus cuts all that off and makes the crowd stay behind. When he gets to the house, Matthew tells us only that Jesus put the crowd outside, went in and took the curl by the hand, and she rose. Mark tells us more, let's go back to Mark. This is 540, and they laughed at him, but he put them, that's the mourners, all outside and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where their child was. Taking her by the hand he said to her, Talitha Kum, which means little girl, I say to you, arise. And immediately the girl got up and began walking, for she was twelve years of age, and they were immediately overcome with amazement, and he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat. It's interesting to compare the raising of Lazarus in the Gospel of John with this story. The raising of Lazarus was a very public event, and in some ways it's the focal point of John's gospel. Well, with this story, we learn that Lazarus was not the only time Jesus raised someone from the dead. This is very early in his ministry, and it's very private. Only the family and a few of the twelve are present. We see the kindness and the gentleness of the Lord in the room where the little girl lay on her bed deceased. He takes her by the hand. Now touching a dead body would have rendered him unclean, but he ignores all the laws of ritual cleanness, and of course he knows this body is not going to stay dead for long. Then he uses this wonderful phrase in Aramaic, which would have been the language of the household and of the common people, not the language of commerce in the wider world, but it was the language most often spoken day to day. As Peter must have told this story to Mark and it was recalled by the disciples, they couldn't help but repeat this phrase that Jesus uses, perhaps because it was so touching. I'm not sure exactly how to pronounce it. It's something like Talitha Kum, and it means dear little girl, get up. Now commentators have made some wonderful observations about this phrase. The child had probably heard this phrase, little girl get up, scores and scores of time in her life. When she was learning to walk as a toddler, stumbling and falling to the ground, her parents would reach down and say, Dear little girl, get up, as they helped her up. As a youngster, if she wanted to stay behind in bed when it was past time to get up, her parents might lovingly say, Dear little girl, get up. People who loved her would have used this phrase often in her daily life. And when Jesus touched her and spoke these words to her, they were the tender words that someone who cared for her would say and that she would have heard throughout her life. Notice he does nothing else. There's no theatrics, there's no incantations, neither he nor the parents perform any rituals. It's not even recorded that he prayed. He speaks only a word like the storm, like the demons, like The woman with the bleeding, he speaks only a word, and it is so. But this enemy is death. From our perspective, death is the final enemy, the one foe over which we cannot triumph. We have our medicines, we have our fitness rituals, we have our anti-aging creams and diets. We watch our cholesterol and our blood pressure, and we assess all our risk factors and we adjust our life accordingly, taking our vitamins and so forth, because we know there is an enemy approaching over which we have no control, and it's an enemy we cannot beat. Yet Jesus merely speaks a word, and that enemy has no power. The last observation I want to make about Jesus' tender care for these parents and this family is that he's sensitive enough to ask that she be given something to eat. The child has probably been sick for some time, and during that time, probably had not been eating regularly or getting much nourishment, and she would have needed something to eat. But you can imagine, in the amazement of the miracle and all the reaction, almost shock and overwhelming joy, the fact that she needed to eat might have been overlooked. Also, she's probably going to be besieged by questions and well-wishers as the larger community and the larger family circle find out what's happened, and that might remove the chance for her to eat. So Jesus reminds them to take care of her physical needs before the flood of well-wishers descends upon the family. Everyone else was so shocked by what happened they probably wouldn't have thought about it, but the Lord stayed focused on her needs. Jesus knows that death is not the final victor, but he treats those struggling with death with the greatest compassion and tenderness. Now, Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record that Jesus says the girl is not dead, but sleeping. Occasionally, people interpret this story as Jesus is saying that the child didn't really die. She was just in a deep, coma-like state that appeared to be death, or some kind of state that the family would have mistakenly believed was death. And they argue that was the miracle that Jesus knew that's what was really going on. I don't think that's what's happening here. I think the little girl was dead. I don't think she was in a deep coma, which Jesus was the only one who knew. I think she was dead. The word slumber or sleep is used to refer to people who have died many, many times in the Bible. We just read it in 1 Thessalonians 4.13 earlier. It's also used of Lazarus in John 11, where he had been dead for three days. Rather, I think Jesus is saying you should think of her death as a kind of sleep because through God I have the power to awaken her. You think that death is the one unbeatable, unstoppable enemy, the one problem that no one can solve. But God has authority even over death, and as his Messiah, I, Jesus, have authority over death. We'll talk more about that in a minute, but let's look at the other ministry of Jesus in this text, and that is his challenge to the mourners. I don't think he had any particular grievance with them as individuals, but he is denying the role they play in the story. Their role as mourners was to say, give up, get over it, face the facts, death has won again, death always wins, and there is no hope. So they were advocating a kind of acceptance that says there's no reason to appeal to God or those who teach in his name because no one can do anything about death. It's time for us to do the hard work of grieving. And that's the view of death that Jesus is challenging. In that sense, Jesus refused them, he ignores them, and they ridicule him and then he throws them out. He refuses to let the mourners make the point that death will always win, and we need to accept it and get over it. The end of the story is not death. The final enemy is not the champion. For those who believe in Jesus, death is not ultimately going to win, and we have hope. Why weep and wail when we can trust God? One day God will send his Messiah back to fully, finally, and completely conquer sin and death. Death is not going to win. The writer of Hebrews makes an interesting point about the fear of death. This is in Hebrews two, fourteen and fifteen. Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, and he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. When we think there's no reason to hope, then we live in fear of the end. We live in fear as a kind of lifelong slavery. We become willing to do anything, to listen to any kind of lie or foolishness that will numb the fear of death or put that fear off for another day. That fear can destroy and overwhelm our present, and as the Hebrews says, it makes for a kind of lifelong slavery because we live in fear of it. But Jesus said, Don't be afraid, believe. Back in the Sermon on the Mount, we talked about this concept in chapter six, when Jesus encourages us to be anxious for nothing. There, Jesus warned of the danger of letting our worries about the cares of this world distract us and blind us to what's truly important. Our physical needs can go from being a legitimate concern to being a distracting and overwhelming fear. As we talked about then, it's not that we shouldn't try to put food on the table or save for retirement, but we cannot let those concerns distract us from the true solution to our true problem, which is the hope of the gospel solving our sinfulness. Well, the same thing is true about a fear of death. Just like our concern for the physical needs of this life, we can't let the fear of death grow into a worry that dulls our minds and consumes our entire focus and makes us forget the promises of God. The appropriate response in the face of all those worries is to remember the goodness and the promises of God. The danger lies in letting those concerns overwhelm us and become our focus. Jesus has authority over death and he is on our side. We don't have to fear what's before us. Nothing can happen to us that is outside God's control. And if we are people of saving faith, poor in spirit, mourning our sin, hungering for righteousness, as we talked about in the Beatitudes, then the kingdom of God is ours. Instead of living in fear, we can live in confidence because of the hope that is set before us. As Matthew has been summarizing in this letter, Jesus came teaching the message, repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. The goal of Christ's work is to give God's people life and godliness. First, Christ had to pay the price for our sins through his life, death, and resurrection, but his work is not done. He still has to come back to fully establish his rule over the new creation. Jesus is coming to finish the job and we need to take heart and believe. When Jesus says she's not dead, she's only sleeping, I think that has implications for how we should think about death. The fact that we now understand that we are sinful and God is holy, the fact that we now understand that we can be freed from slavery to sin by trusting in the blood of Jesus Christ, the fact that we want to be freed from our sin and that we repent of our sins all means that we will strive to live a different sort of life than we lived as pagans before we understood. And when we understand all that, death should no longer command fear or power over us because we follow a Savior with authority over death. God has promised to solve our problems as human beings through his Messiah, Jesus Christ. But the real problems are not the temporal problems of this earthly life. The biggest problem is the fact that we are sinners and God is holy. One day we will stand before Him as criminals, stand before a judge who has the authority to hand out a death sentence. We are sinful, we do not love God as we should, and we do not love our neighbors as we should. That has made the world a corrupt and terrible place filled with death and tragedy. But worse than that, we will be judged by God and destroyed. We are corrupted and stained by sin, and we will not survive his judgment because we are guilty. But the promise of the gospel is that there is a way to escape that judgment. There is a way to find grace and mercy when God judges. And that way is through trusting in the blood of God's Messiah, Jesus Christ. Again, Jesus has proved that he is the Messiah, this time by showing he has authority even over death. And because of Jesus, we will find forgiveness, and then God will make us into the kind of people who fully love him and our neighbors as we should, and we will find life. Life will finally be everything it was meant to be. That's the problem, and that's the solution. Once we recognize that the point of this life is to give us a strong, mature, saving faith such that we can be forgiven and saved on the day of judgment, that gives us perspective on our daily lives and on death. It gives us a clue what we are to learn through the sufferings of today. It gives us a perspective on how to react when we are treated unfairly. It gives us a window on what we should value and what things are eternal and what things are temporal and puts all the cares of this world in perspective, even death. If the point of everything is to be forgiven and healed of our sin, that tells us what the point of our lives today is. What we need more than anything else is to find life through forgiveness and to find fulfillment through righteousness. Today is about believing those promises and longing for that life and righteousness. Our lives will reflect the fact that we have set our hope on life and righteousness. We will live like people who long to be holy. We will be people who see our primary goal as sharing the goodness of God and being like Him. That's the end of our journey. We will still struggle with sin in this life, but the course, the destination, the goal of our life has been set if we have come to faith in Jesus. We will face death, but we will face it with hope. In an eternal sense, for believers, death is only a long sleep. One of the subplots in Walt Disney's version of Peter Pan is of Captain Hook and the crocodile. At some point in his life, Captain Hook's hand was bitten off by a crocodile, and the crocodile liked the taste of it so much that he spent the rest of his life pursuing Captain Hook, wanting to eat the rest of him. But the crocodile had also swallowed an alarm clock, and he made a ticking noise wherever he went. At various points in the story, Captain Hook would hear the ticking noise and it terrifies him. He would run away scared, he would lose his bearings because the ticking noise always meant that the crocodile was nearby and that the crocodile was about to destroy his life. Well, that's the way the fear of death sometimes operates on us. Something reminds us that the crocodile is going to eat us someday, metaphorically speaking, and we act foolishly. Instead of being firm and steady and confident in the Lord, we find ourselves willing to rush headlong into foolishness. Jesus' word to the Father is also a wonderful word to us. Don't be afraid, just believe. There's a champion fighting for us who is greater than the enemy who wants to destroy us. Jesus has authority over death. No one can stay dead if he commands it. He uses this word sleep to make the point that death is not the final victor. A day is coming when the dead will awaken and everything will be made new. And Jesus was urging his people who love him to believe that he would triumph even over death. Now we grieve now because everyone must grieve over the tragedy of death, but we grieve with hope. We can be filled with confidence that Jesus has authority over death. As further proof, Jesus gave his life for us and God raised him from the dead. Life wins and death loses, and that changes everything. Not only about the people we love who have died, because we know we'll be with them again, but how we live our own life today. Let me remind you what we saw in Matthew chapter six in the section about do not be anxious about your life and which of you can add a single hour to his life by worrying. Remember the main point of that section was summed up in Matthew six thirty three, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. If we understand that true riches are to be found in the coming kingdom of God, how should we think about the concerns of this world and how should we think about death? How should we relate to our physical needs in this world? How should we think about death and those we love who have died? Our priority should be on seeking his kingdom and his righteousness. The thing that we want most, the thing we have our hearts set on, the thing that matters most to us is finding eternal life in the kingdom of God. We hunger and thirst for his holiness more than anything else. Our job now is to believe his promises, to live a life of faith, live as Jesus told us to live in the Sermon on the Mount. Seek to be reconciled to God, seek to repent of your sins, seek to love God and your neighbor, seek to be received by Jesus into his kingdom. That should be the primary focus of our lives. Now, in the midst of that, we are people with physical needs who will face death one day. But we remember who God is. God knows that we need food and clothing. God has the days of our lives in his hand. Nothing can happen to us that is outside of his control, and we are to strive not to worry and not to let fear preoccupy us or overwhelm our faith. The point is to have our minds fixed fully on who God is and what he has promised. We can count on God to sustain us until the day that He decides our life on this earth is done. So to summarize, don't let concern or fear of death rule your life such that you're a slave to it. Don't let the fear of the future cause you to forget the goodness and the promises of God. In a very real sense, death is only a kind of sleep. The bottom line is that we should make the most important things our priority. Seek to be received into the kingdom of God. Seek to live a faithful life pursuing his righteousness and remember that he cares for us and he has not forgotten that we have needs. One day God will call us home, and then one day he will turn to his son, Jesus, who is sitting at his right hand in glory and say, It's time, bring our people home. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word. This is the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure that out. You can hear all the episodes in this series on my website, wednesdayintheword.com. There is no charge, no spam, and no ads. It's all free to help you improve your study skills and understanding of scripture. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please subscribe to the podcast, leave a positive rating or review wherever you listen, but most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and why you learned it. Thank you to Reggie Coates for the use of his beautiful song Tenacious. You can find more of Reggie's music at heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.