[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 05:00 p.m. Or Wednesdays at 07:00 p.m. If you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison church, you can find us
[email protected] dot. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: So, to begin, I want to address a couple things. First off, I purchased this shirt deliberately, and I selected it to wear tonight deliberately. Okay? It makes me feel good.
Secondly, I literally have been talking all day, have been on my feet all day. And so if tonight's class is, you know, I don't know, slow or it doesn't go well, I just. And I mean this sincerely, please, please blame Robert, okay?
He's not here, and I don't know, it's his fault. Okay?
So anyway, wanted to get those things out of the way. I actually wanted to. Something popped up on my phone the other day and.
Wow. Okay, there we go. I was able to get it back. This was something that was published on April 12. So just a few days ago, and I want to go back to something I talked about a few weeks ago, which is anxiety.
And this article came up that says, the title of it is, if you're interested in it, and if you type this into Google, it will take you right to this article.
It says, church attendance slump caused mental health crisis. Harvard professor suggests. And there's this Harvard professor named Tyler van DER Weil. And he had done a study where he was looking at mental health data. And so I wanted to read a couple of excerpts from that, which was, I think, very, very interesting. It says, the quote from the study is.
Extrapolations from the nurses health study data suggest that about 40% of the increasing suicide rate in the United States from 1999 to 2014 might be attributed to declines in attendance at religious services during this period. Another study suggested declining attendance from 1991 to 2019 accounted for 28% of the increase in depression among adolescents. Okay. And that was one quote. Further down in the study. It says, a major 2022 systematic review in the Journal of the American Medical association documented 215 studies, each with sample sizes over 1000 participants, using longitudinal data to evaluate the relationship between religion and health. The evidence from meta analyses, large longitudinal studies, including from Harvard's own nurses health study and handbooks providing more extensive documentation, suggests that weekly religious service attendance is longitudinally associated with lower mortality risk, lower depression, less suicide, better cardiovascular disease survival, better health behaviors, and greater marital stability, happiness and purpose in life. It's a rather long article, didn't want to go into all of it, but it is interesting. They go on to point out, for those of you who are mathematicians, this shows only a correlation. It would be an inverse correlation, but it only shows correlation, not causation. But I did think it was very, very interesting. And there are some other professors and psychologists that comment in the study. One of them is a gentleman by the name of Jonathan Haidt. If you are ever around me, you hear me quote him some, he's somebody that I actually have read one of his books and it's really, really interesting. So I just thought it was interesting. And like I said, it popped up on my phone this week. And since I had talked about anxiety a few weeks ago, I just thought I would bring that up. Any, any thoughts on that before we move on?
Okay, so I want to go back now. We're going to be in Matthew, chapter 13, and my goal tonight is to get us the rest of the way through chapter 13. We may go into chapter 14, chapter 13. We'll be finishing out the parables that are in chapter 13. And basically chapter 14, the first part of it that I might be able to get to tonight talks about the death of John the Baptist. So last week we went over, let's see, we had the start about the parables. We talked about what the word parable means. Does anybody remember that? I want to do a little bit of review. Does anybody remember what parable means, what to cast alongside?
I also want to take a detour here. I meant to say this as well. Last week when we were done, I mentioned, you know, I thanked everyone for saying nice things to us at the end of class. And last week, without any explanation, I dismissed class. Siegfried stood up, he looked at me and said nice things and turned and walked from the room.
And it took me a minute, but I was like, that man held that joke. He's smiling. Somebody write that down. I may have actually gotten a chuckle. Wow. If class tanks tonight, at least I got Zigfried to smile. Yeah.
[00:06:21] Speaker C: Siegfried often says to me, I do not say good job. I say good execution.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: This is where I need.
[00:06:38] Speaker D: When I refer to what you do, execution comes to mind. Because, Chris.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: I've lost. I've lost.
Wow.
Can we do another prayer? I don't know. Something.
What was I even talking about?
I said, what does parable mean? And it's to lay alongside, right? Or to set beside.
We talked about that in the first part of the chapter, and then we talked about the different parables. We actually jumped around a little bit. We started with the sower and then the parable about the weeds, and we jumped down to where those were explained. And we did talk about, as well, sort of a theme that Robert and I had talked about, which is so many times in scripture, when Jesus is asked a question, how does he respond with a question? Right? And we talked about that. We talked about that a lot over the last couple of weeks and why that is effective.
Last week, again, I want to hit on, and I know Craig had the scripture reference for the power of the word. And I definitely want to say, again, one of the points I want to make from last. Last week or remake from last week week is, you know, let's not deny the power of the word, right. When we are asked difficult questions or we're in difficult situations, opening the word or maybe not even answering, but just saying, you know, here, here, read this.
It's so, so powerful. Okay?
And finally, I want to add something in as well.
This. And this is not a joke. It may sound like a joke, but more and more, as I teach classes now, classes, I'm not talking about sermons, okay? But as I teach classes, I do try to minimize the amount of PowerPoint that I do, okay? Because I want the class to be less a presentation, more a discussion, that sort of thing. And I want to encourage all you guys that a lot of people in here are teachers, okay? As you're doing your teaching, if you're not careful, okay, you can use your PowerPoint as a crutch and not actually be teaching. And I'll be honest, Barry Smith was the one that worked with me a lot on that. He taught me that. So, again, all that just goes back to what I'm trying to say is, don't always be worried about, you know, the slick, polished presentation, especially in personal evangelism. Let the word speak for itself, and let the word have power. Okay? And again, Brendan, if you weren't in here, I wouldn't address it, but that is not a shot at what our ministers do with the presentations and the screens. That is not what I'm doing. I was talking about. He's.
He's leaving. He's leaving. All right.
So, yes, this is not. And that's a very good point. And I also think, you know, thank you for saying that, David, because so many times when, you know, when we are trying to evangelize, that's what we'll do, right? Is we'll go to preaching. And having a preacher in here, those are different things. You agree, Brandon?
So they're very different things. Okay. So then we went through those parables, and I believe the last one that we looked at, I mentioned very briefly the mustard seed and the yeast. Does anybody remember kind of what I finished out, what I took away from the mustard seed and the yeast, did we not? Okay, I'm getting strange looks. So we will go back and we will do the mustard seed in the yeast. Okay. So.
And we're. There is a reason I'm doing this. At the end of the class, I want to, want to talk about something else that I took away from this progression. So last week we did talk about the weeds among the wheat. And then starting in verse 31, and I'll go ahead and, and read these next two parables and then I'll ask you guys for your thoughts.
So verse 31. Starting in verse 31, he presented another parable to them, saying, the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which a person took and sowed in his field.
And this is smaller than all the other seeds, but when it is fully grown, it is larger than the garden plants and becomes a tree so that the birds of the sky come and nest in its branches.
He spoke another parable to them. The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three seder of flower until it was all leavened. So what do you guys take away from those parables?
What's the moral, let's say, of those, those parables, Christianity is going to start.
[00:12:06] Speaker E: Small, but as we keep working on it and we evangelize or, you know, create more people, tell more people about the gospels, then that's, that's what's going to give the increase. There's going to be more of us.
[00:12:20] Speaker B: Absolutely. Any other thoughts there?
[00:12:23] Speaker D: If you happen in the first century, yes, starting in Jerusalem, but by 60 ad was past Rome in that direction, probably every other direction.
Okay, Craig, when you think about the statement, straight is the way narrows the path and few there be that find it.
To me, this is as much about the strength and the enduring nature of the church as it is the size, the physical size. And I have a series of. I have a couple of audio files that Doctor Kenny Barfield did over at the church where I grew up in Killin. And he basically talks about the history of the church all the way from current day all the way back to the first century and shows evidence of the existence of the church all the way through that. And you can't really say that about, you know, a lot of the things that you can go up and down the road here and find that that doesn't, that there's not a trace directly back to that. So the enduring nature of the church being that's the tree that's there for years and years and years is, to me, interesting.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: I agree with, with all that. Absolutely. Any other thoughts?
Okay, I will tell you. And this is one of the things I'm going to get to at the end here. I began to see a pattern in what, in these parables that Jesus is teaching. What did he start off with? He started off with sow, then he hits the weeds, and now he's talking about a plant that's growing. Now, the next parable is the leaven, right?
Personally, I think it's, both of those parables have essentially the same meaning. And we'll get to that toward the end.
Now, when it hit verse 34 and 35 again, and verse 34 and 35 say all these things, Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables and he did not speak anything to them without a parable. This was so that what was spoken through the prophet would be fulfilled. I will open my mouth in parables. I will procra, proclaim things hidden since the foundation of the world. Now, I read those two verses out because, do you remember when we started the study of Matthew? What was important to Matthew? Or what did matthew do a lot of in his book? You guys remember we said he did more of this in Matthew than the other gospels combined.
Does anybody remember Old Testament references? So this was again a callback to the Old Testament in explicitly saying, okay, this is why that happened and this is in fulfillment of prophecy.
So now, last week we did do the explanation of the weeds. So it said, you remember he spoke that to the crowd. And then we said, it said he left the crowd and he went in the house and the disciples came to him and asked him what it meant. He explained it. I'm not going to go over that again. And then we get to a parable of the hidden treasure and the costly pearl. That's going to be verses 44 through 46. Would somebody read those, those three verses?
[00:16:15] Speaker D: The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again. And from joy over it, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field again. The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: Okay. Just like I did with the last parable. I'll give it to you guys.
What's the meaning of this parable? And something that we talked. I don't know that we said this in the class, but Robert and I talked about it.
A lot of these parables can have multiple meanings. Okay? They really can. And so when I'm asking, I'm not in my mind, I don't have a. This is the set answer.
But what do these two. What do you think these two mean?
[00:17:06] Speaker D: Well, I'm going to jump to the pearl, because I don't know how many times I read that. You just.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:11] Speaker D: The kingdom of heaven is very valuable treasure and then cost of pearl. But in that one, the kingdom of heaven is doing the searching. The church is doing the searching.
We are the pearls.
That's the way I look at that, is the kingdom of heaven is looking for people of great value, or maybe all people have great value, but we're the pearls that are sought after.
[00:17:40] Speaker B: I've never thought of that that way.
But as I read it, I definitely.
Yeah, absolutely. Any other thoughts there?
[00:17:51] Speaker D: Yeah, there's an interesting proverb. It says. It says, 25 and two. It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, and the glory of kings to investigate or search them out. And it does seem that it was never meant that we would just be strolling through life doing our own thing. We'd trip over the lodging like, oh, there's Jesus. You know, this is a treasure. And it's. It seems to be that he didn't even want the wisest people who thought they were wise anyway, to see these things.
[00:18:36] Speaker B: I agree completely.
And, you know, that. That makes me think back to, we said this a couple of weeks ago, and then I had a conversation with somebody, may have been somebody in this room. I don't remember who it was, but we were talking again about how people come to know the truth. And I think, you know, for much of my life, rather naively, the way I thought of it, it's, you know, me working with somebody and, you know, kind of pulling them along. But what we actually see, and if you were the person I was talking to, give me a nod. I don't remember who said it but somebody said, you know, there's always. Anytime people are searching for the truth, there's always an aspect of time, you know, that there's gotta be presentation of the truth, and it's gotta sink in. And I think a lot of times when we are trying to sow seed and when we are trying to evangelize, we get caught up in the end, and we need to realize that there is a journey to that, and part of that journey is time. Okay, any other thoughts on those two parables?
[00:19:45] Speaker C: I found that it was interesting that just kind of covered both bases in this regard with the treasure being hidden in the field. It's what we would consider an accidental find. He finds it by accident. And then in 45, like you mentioned, the merchant that's in search of the pine pearl. So no matter which way you come to know the truth, the importance is that both came to the realization that it required everything that they had. They sold everything that they had to get that treasure.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: That's absolutely fantastic, both of those. Thank you all so, so much for pointing. Pointing those out.
[00:20:27] Speaker E: Out.
[00:20:27] Speaker B: Any other thoughts there?
[00:20:30] Speaker E: I think taking what Mark said and understand that there was something good enough to obtain that great prize, Jesus gave up a lot for us, and the Bible talks about how he's constantly seeking us out. So I think there's a correlation there with the fact that God gave of his own son, and he's constantly seeking us out.
[00:20:54] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, something that I know Amanda and I actually talk about a lot is, and I don't know if this is a contemporary thing or if I'm showing my age here or not, but, you know, you. I remember some commercial, you know, you can have everything, and Amanda and I always talk, you know. No, everything has a cost.
Everything you do, every opportunity you take, you know, there's going to be a cost for that. And I think that's a. That's a very valid point. Sometimes the cost is extreme. You know, it's an extreme cost. And interestingly. Well, and again, we'll talk about it as we finish out the lesson tonight. What does it say in verse 46?
What did the merchant who was seeking, what did he give up to get the pearl?
Everything.
He gave it all up for. For that. Excellent points. Excellent points. Any others?
Okay, I'm going to move on to the dragnet. I'll read this one.
And this is verses 47 through 50.
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. And when it was filled, they pulled it up on the beach, and they sat down and gathered the good fish into containers. But the bad they threw away.
So it will be at the end of the age, the angels will come forth and remove the wicked from among the righteous, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Does this parable sound familiar? Does it sound a little bit like the one previous. Right. The one about. About the weeds. Right. And again, it's one that's talking about the end times.
Okay. So this is the point I was wanting to get into tonight and where I've got maybe a little, little bit different take on this chapter. As I studied for this class, verse 51, Jesus asked a question, and he says, have you understood all these things? And they said, yes. Okay. Now, as I read that, I do not know why, but this time, as I studied the. All these things really stuck in my mind, and I really started thinking about, what does he mean about all these things? And I went back and I read the chapter again. And so what I took away from this is that this entire chapter. And this is just my opinion. Okay? This may be totally off base, and if I'm off base, somebody jump in here. But as I read it, he has laid out, in my opinion, he has kind of laid out a christian walk. Right? What did he start with? What's he tell them? What are you going to be doing?
You're going to be going and sowing, right? So you're going to be. You're going to be teaching people. Okay. So, interestingly, verse, another point I took away. As I study, verse 23 says, let me see if I can get to it. Verse 23 says, it's talking about the good soil.
It says, the one who hears the word and understand it understands it. Who indeed, bears fruit and produces some 100, some 60, and some 30 times as much. Okay. So again, he's talking about the sowers and then how they produce fruit. It brings to my mind something that I used to. There was a Bible teacher when I was in college that used to say, you can't go to heaven alone. You gotta take somebody with you. And I always liked, liked that saying, but. So we start with their sowing.
Then the very next.
The very next parable we look at is the weeds, which is very similar to the net. Do you guys kind of remember what I said a couple of weeks ago, what I took away from the one about the weeds?
So we sow who reaps who?
That is an excellent answer. I like the way you said that. He said, not us. So I think acceptable answers there would be the Lord Jesus, the angels, depending on how you look at the parable. But what I said last week and what I take away from this is, again, he started and he says, you're to go. So then the very next parable, he says, now, don't you worry about the weeds that are in among. Don't you worry about that. I've got that right. This is what I take. Dave's paraphrase again. If I'm wrong, please jump in. And he says, I'm gonna. I'm gonna.
I'm gonna take care of that. I'll take care of separating the good and the bad. In the end, I'll take care of that.
And then the very next parable is what, the mustard and the yeast? And you know what I take away from that? He says, y'all do a little bit, and I'll do the rest. Okay, so we're going to do a little bit. He's going to provide the increase.
And then we go to the two parables about treasure. And what I take away from that is he says, and it's going to cost you, some of you. It may cost you extra everything. Okay? So I feel like I'm not taking this from a commentary or anything. It's just my own reading of it. I feel like this is a narrative. So he had had these different parables that he's giving out, and each one of those parables has one or more meanings. But in the end, when he's asking, do you understand all this? You know? And I skipped one parable because I feel like it's kind of back in there with the weeds. It's also interesting to me, and I couldn't quite get my head around how it fits. But he does the treasure part, and again, he says, it may cost you everything. And then he goes back to the reaping. Right. He goes back to, you know, there's going to be a separation. The good and the evil are going to be separated, and the bad will be thrown away. So that was what I took away from that entire chapter, and that will take us all the way through chapter 13 down to verse 51. Any questions or comments about the giving up everything?
[00:28:17] Speaker D: I think that's just where he's saying it's something that you have to give up everything and go get it. Because if you keep anything for yourself, then you're not. You're not going to be able to afford.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:28:32] Speaker D: To become a Christian.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Any other comments? Yeah. Bran, another tie in.
[00:28:39] Speaker C: Just as you were talking, when he says, do you understand these things?
In keeping with that narrative, Jesus began with a story that they could connect with on an earthly level, but then he goes back and quotes Isaiah and says, hey, there's gonna be some people.
[00:28:58] Speaker B: Who are gonna hear the words I'm.
[00:28:59] Speaker C: Saying, but they're not gonna catch it.
So to me, like, he sort of tells them that, and now they know to look for something deeper.
And so as he continues on these other things, and I love how you address that as a sense of, like, a christian life, almost.
So you gotta. You gotta understand that I do the work. You gotta understand I'm the one who judges. You really have one role, and it's not to distinguish between any of those kinds of souls. It's everything and everybody, but then ultimately it's worth the effort. That, to me, is one of the biggest things that jumps out of it. So he's looking at them, asking them if they understand. He's saying, do you care? Capture what is being expected of you? I always think back to when Jesus says, no servant is greater than his master. And what he means by that is, if I suffer, you'll suffer too. There's cost involved, but it's worth everything to me. That's an awesome.
That whole chapter is amazing.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for that. Thank you very, very much for that. And I agree completely with everything you were saying there. So I want to talk just briefly, and then we'll have to finish up.
Does Christianity cost us anything today?
This was not something I planned to do. Just.
Does it.
[00:30:29] Speaker E: Supposed to?
[00:30:31] Speaker B: It's supposed to. Okay. Why do you say that?
[00:30:36] Speaker E: I think that. Well, that's like, most of what this is saying, right?
[00:30:39] Speaker B: Like, that's a great answer, by the way. That is a great answer.
[00:30:44] Speaker E: If you don't give up everything, I mean, and you don't have some sort of cost that you're laying everything that you're supposed to give up down of who you are, you're not going to be able to be fully filled with, you know.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:58] Speaker E: And be who you're supposed to be.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I think. I think that's. That's very, very true. Any other thoughts there about the cost?
[00:31:07] Speaker D: Luke 1426. Jesus is talking. Starting in verse 27, he says, whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. So the fact that you have to bear something indicates a cost. And then he goes on verse 28 and says, for which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count whether he has enough to complete.
[00:31:29] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Let me ask a different question. Let me change gears on you.
Do we expect it to cost us anything in today's society? Do we expect it to cost us anything?
[00:31:51] Speaker D: There's different versions of it.
Personal sacrifice, where we're giving up maybe a selfish desire, what we want for our lives. What do you consider?
Am I being, like, physically persecuted or might be. I don't think we've ever really seen that here in America. So there's an element of that that we haven't had to deal with. But maybe that time will come and that will be something we do have to consider.
[00:32:18] Speaker B: So let me throw something else else out, and hopefully, because I feel like I see some people who want to say something, but maybe they're concerned to. I'm going to take the stance that, no, we don't expect it to cost anything. Anybody got a thought there?
[00:32:38] Speaker C: I think we've made it very easy for it not to cost us anything. We boil it down sometimes to Sunday and we're going and to. That's really our only responsibility as christians.
And I'm not saying that. That's not what I'm trying to say is that we just, I feel like we've simplified Christianity to the point where we have, you know, maybe not let it permeate as much of our lives or let it cost as much as we should. We don't give as much of our time. We have too many things, things that kind of eat up at our time when we have a problem, you know, allowing Jesus to really fill us up because we're so full of ourselves and our time and the things that we do.
[00:33:26] Speaker B: I think that's a very good answer. Any other thoughts there, Larry?
[00:33:31] Speaker D: That kind of takes us back to Matthew six, when Jesus is talking about being concerned about what we'll eat, what we're doing, where, and all those things. And he ends up saying, seek first the king and his righteousness. And in our case, where we're not having to make daily sacrifices, a lot of times it's easy to slip that first into second or third or fourth or whatever.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:01] Speaker D: If you look at Luke 1231, I love this. I love that reference because Luke 1231 is the companion sermon to the one in Matthew six.
And it says, if I can find it here, Jesus is doing the speaking here. And in comparison to what he says in Matthew six about speaking first the kingdom of God, if you read the english standard translation of Luke 1231, it says, instead, seek his kingdom. It's not a priority. It is a replacement. Right? So you talk about costing everything.
That translation of it says you're replacing what you want with what Jesus wants.
[00:34:44] Speaker B: I think we have one more comment, and I'm going to have to move on. Siegfried, I don't have a scripture right.
[00:34:51] Speaker D: Now, but when I hear, thank God we live in a country where we can worship without fear of persecution. To me, that is not a good statement. Why hey doesn't come?
[00:35:05] Speaker E: It's easy.
[00:35:05] Speaker D: There is a persecution. We're being persecuted. We take it for granted, or we just, we don't realize the persecution.
We don't realize the struggle, the cost and everything. Whenever we take something for granted, we will lose it to the guys. I say, about the freedom, hey, man, you took it for granted, right? You lost it. You need to understand the cost, the value, how precious. But when we say, you know, hey, without fear of persecution, if you don't think there's persecution, you don't understand.
But the other, the other side of that coin is that cost is not just persecution. Cost is giving up yourself for the other person, taking time that you could go do something for yourself and giving.
[00:35:50] Speaker B: It to the other person.
[00:35:51] Speaker D: There's cost. There's, call it positive cost if you want. You know that you have to lay aside something for somebody else.
[00:36:00] Speaker B: Yes. And I think you are both right.
[00:36:05] Speaker D: My point is not cost and persecution.
[00:36:07] Speaker B: Right.
[00:36:08] Speaker D: I'm saying persecution. When we have that attitude, right. Trivialize or we don't realize that's cost. I didn't really address that type of cost.
[00:36:21] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. So I appreciate the comments. I would love to keep doing this, but I do want to finish out the rest of the chapter. So, verse 52, just very quickly, when I read verse 52, I stopped, because something about it made me stop. I said. And it says, and Jesus said to them, therefore, every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a head of household who brings out of his treasure new things and old. And for, like, a couple minutes, I was like, what does that mean? And it hit me. What did the scribes have? They were literally transcribing the old law. So they knew the old law. And then he's saying, the ones of those that understand, right, they're bringing treasure out of the old, and they understand the new. So that's what that was. Verse 53 through 57. There was a phrase there. It's talked. It talks about where he's gone back to Nazareth, and he is there, and he's teaching and they're not happy with him. It's kind of interesting to me. It says they took offense at him. And when you look at what he was doing in verse 53 to verse 56, why would that be offensive? Okay. That's the question I had.
And then it was also interesting to me. Verse 58, it says in the translation I'm looking at, which I believe is the new american standard. It says, yes, I'm. New american standard. It says. Let me get back to it. He did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief. And in mark six five, this same story, it's interesting to me that it says he could not do miracles because of their unbelief. And I've heard that taught that was, I'm going to say, a restriction. That was a restriction on his power because they didn't believe. Okay. I don't know that I have a complete theory on that or a complete, you know, lesson on that.
[00:38:34] Speaker D: Willing to trust him or to come up and ask him about it.
I don't think that guy can do that. So why should I go up and make a fool of myself?
[00:38:42] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good point. Good point.
So with that particular scripture, I was going to leave it with you guys. We didn't have time. But it is interesting to me. Verse 55, it lists out Jesus brothers.
It's interesting to me because if you're familiar with catholic doctrine, they believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary.
And I'm not exactly sure how they get around that. I was going to have Bart and Julie perhaps talk a little bit about that, but I'm guessing they would probably say those are his half brothers.
Well, they would have been Joseph's children, not of Mary. Yeah. Yeah, they. But, yeah, that's right. They believe there was another. Another marriage that was. Was not mentioned. So anyway, that was the second bell. Thank you all for your attention tonight. Robert should be back next week, and please ridicule him.
