How do you Evangelize in the restrictive culture of Babylon?

In today's episode, we explore how the "culture of Babylon" tries to keep us from reproducing ourselves as Christians.  Implicit in the text was how Daniel and his three friends were made into eunuchs.  (I'm pretty sure you've never heard about that in Sunday school class.)  What does that mean figuratively and spiritually for us as believers?  

How can we influence others for Christ in such restrictive, punitive environments?

[I also share briefly about the Blue Letter Bible.  You can go online and check out the website or download the app into your phone.  It's free and contains so many Bible study helps and resources.  You can upgrade your Bible study by easily looking into the Greek and Hebrew words of any verse.  I can honestly say that going into the original languages has revolutionized my Bible study.  I highly encourage learning how to use the Blue Letter Bible website and/or app or something like it.]  

If you want a helpful video on how to use some of the resources in the Blue Letter Bible, please watch the video in the link below.  It's short so it's not overwhelming.   

Blue Letter Bible:  https://www.blueletterbible.org/

How to use the Blue Letter Bible:  https://youtu.be/t99KqPdfYro?si=ymC648cAuLiY1u1q

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to the Bible Mind Podcast, where we seek to have the mind of Christ and to see things from God's perspective.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Hi everyone, Theophilus here. We're going back to our study in Daniel chapter 1, and today I'm gonna focus on what it means to evangelize as a Christian, because in the passage it talks about how Nebuchadnezzar captured these Israelites and brought them back to Babylon with him. Daniel and his three friends, they became eunuchs. This will be an interesting subject because if you don't know what a eunuch is, a eunuch is somebody who has been um through some sort of means back then, they were made to be incapable of having children. Let's just put it that way. And so you can see a parallel between being a eunuch and also being a Christian that doesn't reproduce. So that's kind of the central point of what we're talking about today, but we're gonna be talking about other points as well, because there are other points in this passage. And I only returned just, I think, two episodes ago because we had an intro episode, My Return, uh, after a long absence, and how I was changing the format of this podcast. I think I'm gonna have somewhat shorter episodes, but more focused, centered around a central idea. I tend to make connections in a lot of different ways. And so I'm going to try to hem in the connections so that we can get just a just kind of a solid walk through those passages around a central idea. And last week we talked about how the book of Daniel did not happen in a vacuum. There's a context surrounding the book of Daniel, and we looked at Jeremiah 25, and basically Jeremiah for more than 20 years had been warning uh Judah and Jerusalem about invasion because they were already worshiping other gods, disobeying God, rebelling against him, and God just kept waking him up in the morning, sending him out, warning the people, but they would not listen. So Jeremiah wasn't the only prophet, but um it didn't matter who God had sent out, the people weren't listening, and that's how we got to the point of Daniel chapter one when Nebuchadnezzar invades Judah Jerusalem and takes it over and just brings people back to Babylon as captives. So we're gonna start today's episode in just a couple minutes. I just want to bring up two things. One, I want to encourage you, if you haven't already, download some sort of Bible app into your cell phone. Um, my preference is Blue Letter Bible app. Ever since I've had this podcast, I've always gone to Blue Letter Bible app. I I think it's just such a good tool. It's free. You can look into the original languages of the Bible passages, they make it really user-friendly. Um, they're all different kinds of translations. I mean, I prefer the King James version, and this is one of those episodes where we're gonna focus in on what the King James says. So I just, you know, in that way I feel like it's it could be more precise with the wording. And there are just so many resources with the Blue Letter Bible app. I think I'm going to mention that in the show notes and also maybe put in a link for a YouTube video to describe how to use the Blue Letter Bible app. Because if you're not really familiar, it yeah, there's a slight learning curve and it's gonna take a little bit of time, but you you can get it. Um my other encouragement to you is when you're doing Bible study, um, and this is what I used to do a long time ago for many, many years, but I'm gonna return back to it because we're in the age of tech right now, so it's like we can copy and paste and put it in a notes app, that type of thing. But I used to have, yeah, a physical Bible. I'd underline, I'd write notes on the margins, um, you know, highlight, and then I would have a notebook and I would write down the verses that I liked or that were especially meaningful for me. Then I would write down notes, or I would write down what I thought it meant. So that was kind of like the beginning of my interpretive journey where I was just like practicing every day that these are the things that were highlighted to me in the passage, and I just want to emphasize them for myself, meditate on them, um, kind of amplify what I saw in those passages. So those are the two things that I would encourage you to do, and there might be other suggestions in future episodes, but I would say those are major. And so if um that's something that interests you, then that would be awesome. So if you want to see what we did with Daniel chapter one, please go to the episode before this one, um, because there was a lot to say. It says, and this is the new King James version, uh, and the Lord gave Jehoiakim or Jehoiakim, King of Judah, into his hand with some of the articles of the house of God, which he carried into the land of Shinar, to the house of his God, and he brought the articles into the treasure house of his God. If you think about it, this is a pretty significant thing because the priests in the temple and all the different helpers in the temple, I mean, all the articles of the temple were so holy. So everything was done in a proper manner. Um, I'm sure they were cleaned often, um, they were sanctified. God, as far as temple worship, he had a very strict prescription on how they were supposed to do things. And so these temple vessels, the things that they use for the work of the temple, they were extremely important. And now they're in the house of another nation's God, Little G. This is something that I'm sure God does not like, but yet he allowed it to happen because he wanted so much for his own people to wake up. So even the precious things of God, the things that um we would consider so valuable, you know, they're mocked by the things of the world, uh, fallen leaders, then kind of bring shame to the house of God. These things do happen and God allows for them. Um, God does care about his name. In a certain verse, it says that he cares about his name more than he cares about the word. And that is like huge because this is God's character, this is God's holiness. We went over how in Jeremiah chapter 25, Jeremiah basically shares how he's been sharing God's word for 23 years to the people of Judah and Jerusalem. And so this is a long time. When we go back to Jeremiah 7, I just want to highlight a certain well, I'm gonna read two verses. It says, starting from verse 3, going into four. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place. Verse 4, do not trust in these lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. In other words, they felt like they were safe because the temple of the Lord was in that location. So God so cared about his temple and this temple worship that he would not allow enemies to invade his temple. And Jeremiah was like, No, that that's not the case. You know, I mean, God loves his name, he loves um his temple, he wants you to worship him in spirit and in truth. But if you continue to disobey God, then he will allow his temple to be ransacked. There have been instances in the recent past where that's been the case. It's not only the church that has been broken up and dispersed, and you know, people damaged in their faith, but also different ministries and what those ministries stood for, whether it be apologetics, things like prophecy, there was like shame brought to the name of Jesus and those ministries because of the disobedience of certain leaders. And one thing that God has really impressed upon me recently is there was this statement a long time ago, I heard it, and I don't know if I'm saying it correctly, but it goes like this to the people without mixture, I will give the spirit without measure. That's just been in my heart because we can compare ourselves to other Christians or even compare ourselves to the world, and we might appear better than they are. You know, well, we're doing much better, and that makes my life good. I'm fine with God. But that's not always the case because we're not really comparing ourselves to other people, including Christians. We're comparing ourselves to Jesus, and Jesus is perfect, but also we are kind of running a race against ourselves. Like, okay, I was here yesterday, where am I today? And I had a discussion with somebody recently about what it means to backslide. Well, my backsliding may be different from your backsliding because you don't exactly know where I was before. I might sound great on this podcast episode because I'm talking about God's word and I'm, you know, encouraging everybody to read it and to be holy and to walk with him. But if I was in a different place, you know, say five years ago, and from that time I have fallen or I have backslidden, I've gone down, then I have backslidden. And it doesn't mean that we have to be perfect, nobody's saying that. God's not asking for that, but his meaning of perfect in the Bible is we are growing, we are moving forward, and eventually we're gonna mature. Okay, we're gonna be fully grown into the person that he's wanting us to be. I just want to encourage you with this that God meets you where you're at, and wherever you are, there's always room for repentance, okay, because we're not perfect yet. As we repent, God gives us the grace or the power, right? His power, his holy spirit, his resources to live a holy life. And when we repent, basically we're saying, God, I can't do this on my own. I need to rely on you. I need to rely on your grace. I need your grace to make the right decisions here, to move away from this place of what I'm doing. And I want to have as the goal of my heart to be a person without mixture. Because it doesn't matter what the percentages are, right? If I was like, say, 75-25, I would be much better if I was 80-20. But that 20% is still a mixture in my life. It could come across in many different ways. I could be somebody who I'm sharing this podcast with you all, but when I speak to my friends, maybe I might gossip about somebody, or there's this person that really did me wrong. And so I'm constantly bringing up that person's name, and like I can't believe they did that. It could be anything. And, you know, trust me, in my life, it has been a little bit of this or that, and I recognize that there's mixture in my heart, there's mixture in my life, and I need to work on it. And so if you can just reflect upon your own life, because this is something that we talked about in my intro podcast episode about my return, we are gonna have application points throughout these podcast episodes so that this can be relevant to your life, because I think this is relevant to everybody's life, but also we want to apply the word, we want to be a doer of the word and not just a hearer. And so if you think about your own life, are there places where there is a mixture? And if so, what can you do to come back to God in those areas? But the point of the message in verse 2, though, is that God's name has been um brought to shame in a sense. He's been mischaracterized among the nations, especially the nation of Babylon, because now the Babylonian people think that their God is stronger than uh the God of Israel, the God of Judah and Jerusalem, which is absolutely not the case, but God allowed it to happen. And we know from Jeremiah 25 that there will be a 70-year period of time when they will be in Babylon. And God wants them to pray for the well-being, pray for the good of those people that they're living amidst. God is gonna do something, which we can see from the book of Daniel that he has done. And now we're gonna go to Daniel chapter 1, verse 3. Okay, I'm gonna read the New King James Version first, because I just want to show you the precision of the King James Version and some of these verses and passages, because that's really key. Because, like when you're reading the Bible, uh, we're not always looking at the original Greek or Hebrew, right? So we we're not thinking about that, but we're just reading the English words that we see in our Bible. But if certain words are not there because the translator felt like, well, they're gonna use this word instead of that word, then it may not highlight a connection for us. It may not highlight something that we can trace and we can kind of link to other verses. So that's why I like the King James Version. Now, the new King James Version of verse 3 reads this way Then the king instructed Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs, to bring some of the children of Israel and some of the king's descendants and some of the nobles. Okay, that sounds great. Now I'm gonna go to the King James Version, and it says, And the king spake unto Ashpanaz, the master of his eunuchs, that he should bring certain of the children of Israel and of the king's seed and of the princes. And I just want to focus on seed, because that is such a critical word throughout the history of Israel. Okay, as you recall back in Genesis chapter three, uh, there was the fall of mankind. Adam and Eve were put in a perfect environment. God said, Please do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and they ate of it and then they fell. But God had a rescue plan already in mind before he even created them. He knew that they were gonna do this. So now they need to be redeemed. And so what did he say? This is really key to understand this, okay? Because this happened way at the beginning in Genesis 3 15, and I'm still reading from the King James Version, but just know that most of the time I read the New King James Version, but here it says, And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. This is at the point where God is speaking to the serpent who beguiled, who deceived Eve into taking the fruit. And so now there's his seed and her seed. And one of her seed will rise up someday and bruise his head. And we know who that is. That's Jesus. Okay. Ever since this point in time, the enemy has always wanted to know who this person was, trying to trace through the lineage, trying to find out who is this person, because I need to get them at an early stage so that I can destroy them before they destroy me. I have to reach this person, I have to find them. And so you see the enemy looking through the lineage of this seed. I mean, first when they had Cain and Abel, Abel was the righteous one. Cain was the one that cared more about himself or did things his own way instead of God's prescribed way. And so the enemy recognized that. And so what happened? Cain killed Abel. Let's get rid of the good seed because he may be the person who's going to bruise my head, right? Cain was not gonna go in the right direction. So eventually Seth came into the picture, another son of Adam and Eve, and basically God used the line of Seth to now continue on that process. There have been times like that throughout Israel's history. And I want to bring up um one other thing in the future. Okay, Jacob will have his sons, they will be the patriarchs of Israel. At the end of his life, before he dies, he gives a prophecy to each of his sons. And a significant prophecy that he gave Judah was that the scepter, the scepter will not depart from him. Okay, so that basically is saying that one of his descendants will rule. He didn't know that at the time. Okay. And earlier in this story, he had three sons. So the first son married this woman, died, second son, um, yeah, you have to read the story, but second son died, and this woman was kind of left bereft without a husband, without a child. And so basically, Judah said, I'm gonna promise you my third son when he grows up because he was still young. And so she was like, I'm gonna wait. And when he was of age, Judah never gave the son to this woman as a husband. Probably because he only had one left, and he was like, I don't want to lose my third and last son. This story in particular, you can find in Genesis 38, and it's the story of Judah and Tamar. Tamar is the daughter-in-law. So after a while, you know, Tamar's like, This isn't the right thing to do because I need to have a child so that this lineage can go on. She ended up deceiving Judah. You have to read the story, but she dressed herself as a prostitute, slept with him, and then became impregnated by him. And then um, when the full term came, she had twins, Perez and Zara. Okay, that sounds really quite strange, but God used that because he knew that it was gonna be through Judah that we were gonna eventually have the Messiah. There are many other instances like that where God outwits the enemy, right? The enemy is still, he's trying to find out, like, I'm gonna trace this seed, I'm gonna figure this out. But God is constantly outwitting him. And one of the major ones is you see that Rahab, the prostitute in Jericho, when Jericho fell, you know, Rahab Rahab and her family were rescued by the Israelites because Rahab believed in the in the words that she heard, right? She heard the report of the Lord, like, oh my gosh, there's this people group with a God who parted the Red Sea, and their God destroyed Pharaoh's army. She believed that report so much so that she had faith to say, please, when you come into this city and you conquer it, I I want my family and me to be saved. And she was saved out of that. Eventually she had Boaz, the one who married Ruth, and all of these people are in the lineage of Jesus Christ, the unlikely ones. Let's put it that way. Why? Because the enemy's out to hunt down the seed, but God's like, No, you are never gonna find out how this is working through the process, where the seed will be and how it's gonna go all the way through. Until we finally come to Jesus Christ. All that to say, these Israelites from Judah and Jerusalem, they were captured, they were brought to Babylon. It's very interesting to me that the master of the eunuchs was in charge of them. Okay. It doesn't literally say they became eunuchs, but we can conjecture that they became eunuchs. In other words, they were made to where they could not reproduce. I want you to consider that this is the literal thing that happened in history, but what is the figurative parallel? What's happening here? Okay, we are in Babylon right now. And as Christians, we've come into a time where it's very difficult to share our faith. In our workplaces, we can't really stand for our faith. And I work at a school, and there's really no way that I can share the gospel freely with kids. Maybe my coworker, sure. I could start talking about Jesus. I can ask them life questions, what's going on. I could be there to share God's love. And I can do that with the kids too, but I'm not going to be able to share the gospel with them. Babylon has made it very, very difficult for any believer to share their faith, to share the gospel. And if we take it further, if you share the gospel and somebody is truly listening and they receive benefit from it, they recognize that Jesus is Lord, they accept Christ, they turn their life around. Basically, you have reproduced yourself in another person, right? But Daniel and his three friends and others who were brought to Babylon as captives, we could probably assume that many of them, working in the palace, especially, that they were made to be eunuchs. Like you can work in the palace. We're going to utilize every good thing that you have, your intelligence, your skills, your uh character, your work ethic. We're going to utilize all of these good things that you bring to the table, but you're not going to be able to reproduce. And that's part of the cultural history of those times. Um, certain officials and oftentimes high-level officials, if you look at the word eunuch in the original Hebrew, it talks about being castrated. So that really is kind of the essence of that word. But over time, it's also been interpreted or defined as an official. So it could be official that is castrated, like the ones that were in charge of harems, but it could be an official. I don't know that for sure. I have my doubts because there is the law of first mention. Like when that particular Hebrew word was first used, it was used in the context of Joseph when he was in Potiphar's house. Potiphar was an official, right, to Pharaoh. But if you look in the Hebrew under that word official, it's the same word that they use for eunuch. And we know what happened with Potiphar's wife, who constantly sexually harassed Joseph, trying to get him to sleep with her every day. I kind of wonder, I'm like, because sometimes they got married. No, they couldn't have kids. But when you're castrated, and I look this up because I tend to do that, I have a mind that just wants to know about many things. But I looked this up, your libido is definitely lowered when you're castrated. You may still be able to do the act, but you're definitely not going to reproduce. For that reason, Potiphar could have been married and still a eunuch. Some people believe that. Okay, but what is our takeaway here? In Babylon, and we'll find this out later on in next week's episode, Daniel and his friends were under the strict curriculum where they were going to be taught everything concerning Babylon. And even though Babylon allowed for certain things, like maybe they were able to walk out their customs, their religion in smaller ways, uh in alternative ways, whatever, you were not going to reproduce yourself in that cultural context. You were not going to convert the Babylonians to the Hebrew religion. Now we see that parallel in America. We see that parallel in other countries in the Western civilization. We may be Christians and we want to share the faith with other people, but Babylon uh will make it very, very difficult, almost impossible to share in certain contexts. They will mock you, they will um make it hard for you to stand for your faith and certain decision making. So Babylon has already basically said as a Christian, you are not going to reproduce. So what can we do about that? And that's my central point for verse three is like we want to share the gospel, we want to share our faith, we want to share God's love, we want to be an influence in our workplace, salt and light, but Babylon does not want us to do that. Babylon is restricting us in various ways from doing that. So, what could we possibly do? And I want you to just reflect upon your own life and uh your own work environment, the places that you go to, the people that you see uh who are unbelievers. What could you do to continue to reach out to them? Now, even in this strict environment in Babylon, we see that Daniel and his three friends, they were highly influential. They even changed the direction of Nebuchadnezzar and his beliefs through a series of events. And we'll see that in different parts of the book of Daniel. I mean, they stood on their faith, they did not deviate from it. When there was a decree saying that you cannot pray to any other God other than Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel continued his practice, and I want to call it a holy habit of praying three times a day, morning, noon, and night. He did not stop doing what God wanted him to do. And also when at the beginning in Daniel chapter one, you can continue to read all the way to the end of the chapter, because I tend to like focus on verses sometimes, but you see the whole context where they were going to be fed, because they're government officials, they were going to be fed at the king's table. And we're talking, you know, like the best food possible because he's the king, right? You know, Rabbi Filet Mignon, maybe lobster tails. I mean, I'm just kind of the modern equivalent of maybe what they were eating. They did not want to violate God's dietary laws from what they've already been taught. So they said, you know, no, we're going to eat like, you know, a mixture of porridge and vegetables and drink water. And then I want you to test us after 10 days and see if we're not healthier looking than the rest. And they were. At every turn, regardless of what Babylon was doing, Daniel and his three friends continued to obey God. I would say that's number one. Okay, you're learning about God. Um, we're all still learning about I don't care if you're 80 years old and you came to Christ when you were a six-year-old. Everybody's still learning about God and still walking with God. So wherever you're at, whatever you have received as the truth, according to God's word, I would just continue to walk in obedience. I mean, that's number one. And you know what that looks like in your work context. One thing that comes to mind in Daniel chapter one is Daniel and his three friends, they were seen by Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar like interviewed them, met them. He found them to be ten times better than the rest in his kingdom. That says something. It says something about work ethic. It says something about having a spirit of excellence. I think that that's a reflection of obeying God. You know, we do unto the Lord in our workplaces, but you know, we're not men pleasers, we're not um eye pleasers, like only when our boss's eye is on us, that's when we're doing our best work. But we are being a good employee, no matter what. We're we're honest, we're um punctual, we're consistent, we focus on our work when we're supposed to be focused on our work. We're not taking company material home without asking. It could be anything, but that witness is so crucial because people are watching, okay? And so other things that we might think about, and this um podcast episode is might be longer, but that's okay. Uh, because I have room in my time limit to do this. I would say two, I would be praying to God. What else can I do? One thing that Daniel did is he prayed. He prayed morning, noon, and night. And it's said that he lasted so long across um the time of the Babylonian Empire, but um into the next one as well. I mean, we can kind of see the secret of his power a lot was probably prayer. Now, I I just want that to sink in, okay? Because like we can accomplish a lot through prayer, sometimes more than our own actions. For some, prayer is a first resort, for others, it's the last resort. Like, I've tried to do everything in my own strength. I tried to um talk to this person, I've tried to make these things happen, they didn't happen, so now I'm gonna pray. Well, Daniel consistently prayed all the time, and that is something that we can do that nobody can stop us from doing. You know, we may not be praying publicly, we may not like, you know, announce it to anybody, and we're not really supposed to because God sees us in our secret place. But prayer is huge. And I would say another thing that just people can be thinking about is there are certain times in our lives where we have the crossroads, right? We have the the crux where we come to a point where we can turn to the right or the left. We have this decision to make. Are we gonna stand in our faith or are we gonna give in to fear? Are we gonna do what God has told us to do? Or are we gonna do what the enemy wants us to do because he's intimidating us and he's pressuring us to do this? Or other people, we care about what they think, so we're gonna do this instead. What are you going to decide? Now, Daniel and his three friends, they came to those points, right? Um, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, there was the fiery furnace. Are you gonna bow down and worship this gold statue, or are you gonna say no? God doesn't always give us those critical times because our life would just be wall to wall like stress, right? Crises. But there are moments in our life, there are those circumstances in our life that give us those critical decision points. And when that happens, what are we gonna decide to do? I want to choose God. It's not always easy, things could happen in the book of Daniel. These are very extreme examples, but through their faithfulness to God in standing on their faith, they were able to even influence Nebuchadnezzar, which was amazing. You know, it's like God used Daniel and his three friends to open Nebuchadnezzar's eyes so that he can see that the God of Daniel, the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abandigo, is the God above every other name, above every other thing that is called God. That God is the real God. And that's ultimately what we want to do in our lives of faithfulness. Do we always make the right decision? And probably not. Sometimes we do give into our fear. Will things always turn out that way where somebody is gonna turn to Christ? Maybe, maybe not. I mean, we could lose our job, we could lose our friend because they don't want to hear that from us. We could, you know, offend a family member. There are different things that can happen. Uh, they could be good, they could be bad, but regardless, it really doesn't matter from our standpoint because if we commit, and I feel like this is probably one of those big foundational application points. If we commit to God, as you give me the grace and strength, I will obey you. I will obey you in the little things, and I will obey you in the big things when those crisis points happen. So I think that this is good for today. I just want to encourage you that you can do this, okay? Because uh all the different things that are happening in your life, uh this is boot camp, and certain things will happen in the future, but we need to be prepared for them. The more you can obey God in the little things, the more you'll be able to obey God in the big things. The more you'll be able to be honest in the big things, if you're honest in the little things. Uh, when there isn't that much pressure, there isn't that much persecution right now, you're willing to live a life of faithfulness and truth according to God's word, then when the hard times come, you'll be able to continue to do that. We are practicing right now the people that we're gonna become. So I encourage you to start today. I'd like to briefly pray for us right now. God, thank you so much for the example of Daniel and his three friends. Help us to learn from their example because we do want to influence people, even though we are in the midst of Babylon right now. Wherever we live in the Western civilization, or no matter what country we live in, Babylon, that culture, that spirit is spreading. It's making it very difficult to share the gospel, to live for you. But God, I pray, Father, that like Daniel and his three friends, we would stand on our faith, we would be obedient no matter where we find ourselves. God, that we would trust you, that even in those very difficult situations, if we do what is right, if we obey you, if we do what you're asking us to do, then you will get all the glory. You will be able to work out your purposes, that you will reach out to people and touch their hearts with your truth. And that's ultimately what we want is your fame, your glory. We want you to fulfill your will and purpose because we know that you are good, and God, that you wish for none to perish, but will all to come to repentance, even somebody like Nebuchadnezzar. So, God, I just pray, Father, that we would trust you, that prayer would be a first resort, that you know, in our own way that we can emulate what Daniel did, he made it a holy habit to pray every day, three times a day. And we may not pray three times a day, but we are making it a holy habit to pray. God, that was the secret of his wisdom in so many ways. That was the secret of his longevity in his workplace, in his whole life. And so, God, I pray, Father, that we would be led by you. You would teach us how to pray, and that you would pour out your spirit of grace and supplication. God, just give us that unction to pray always. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Thank you, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen.