Do you know what you're asking for?

This weeks biblestudy sees us look at the million pound question posed by Jesus disciples James and John. This one question caused such strife between the rest of Jesus followers and the boys, yet Jesus decided to give deep insight into what was to come, but also the conditions to ask, and how to judge if you’re ready. 

“Are you able to drink from the cup that I drink from and be baptised with the baptism to which I will be baptised?” He was setting out the parameters to which development and elevation comes. It’s the unseen hidden cost, and the hidden consequence of such a mission that is missed by natural eyes. 

In this study we delve into the why of James and John and also look at the response of Jesus, and then reflect on ourselves and examine the process, influence and intention to which we go to God and ask him for stuff. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Hello everybody and welcome to Rumor Reloaded with me, Sean Williams. It is an honor and a privilege to have you all sat in with me again. Um also we've just finished our Job series, which was it felt like a little minute, right? Like I enjoyed it because obviously I was researching and studying and delivering it, but took some weeks. Took some weeks, but never fear, don't worry, we have got ourselves a new topic that we're going to be jumping into. Also, please don't forget to like, subscribe, share. This is not a vanity project. This is about us being able to provide you and present you with information, lessons, and teachings that you should be able to take into your personal time and then use it. And it should also aid not only your own personal study but your spiritual development and relationship, giving you insights in different ways and perspectives and perceptions to the word of God. So they just open it up just a little bit more for you to see sometimes maybe in corners that we don't and in spaces that sometimes aren't readily familiar to us because the reality is it's like anything, every great relationship it grows and it evolves over what? Time, experience, and interaction. Okay? Every great relationship grows over time, experience, and interaction. So today I want you to come with me to the book of Saint Matthew, chapter 20, verses 1 to 28. We're also gonna pop into the book of Saint Luke. Um the topic of today's Bible study is do you know what you're asking for? Do you know what you're asking for? Now, this might seem quite simplistic on the face of it, but there is a much deeper um understanding and meaning to the question behind the topic of the Bible study. Especially in this time in society, in life, in the world, um many of us are delving for a deeper connection and interaction with the Holy Spirit. And in our prayer time, um a lot of us will find ourselves asking God, interceding, beseeching him for certain things that's happening. It may be something we need personally in our job, in our personal space, in our interactions or relationships. It could be something that's medically based, it could be something that's happening within you, something that could be happening to someone in your family, someone that you're close to. Um, it could be something that you want to transact in your business world, a an opportunity, a promotion, or you might be asking God, save my job. Please don't let HR get rid of me. Um, we are consistently asking God for things, which isn't a bad thing. Why? Because he's our heavenly father, and the Bible says, because don't forget, Jesus said, If a son would ask his father for bread, would he give him a stone? Obviously, he asked him, said, Would he give him a scorpion for other things? And Jesus' point was that well, then if you law, who let's face it, you're evil, you know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more than your heavenly father, which is obviously completely correct. Jesus said it, why would it not be? However, what I think we miss um a lot of the time, especially for those of us that are coming up in our spiritual walking relationship, and also some of us who have been within our spiritual walking relationship so long that sometimes we take the depth of our relationship for granted. Now, within society and human culture, we look at the word taken for granted and we immediately give it a negative connotation or context. Why? Because we will generally associate a person that's feeling or thinks they're being taken for granted as a person that is a not getting the appreciation they deserve, b that people just expect them to be there without getting any type of reciprocity in terms of thanks or anything like that. Three, that they're a person who is not valued. Okay? Now, the reality of taking a person for granted actually means that one, you can rely on them in season and out of season. Two, they are so valued you don't have to think about them, right? When the rain starts to pour and you hear it pit a pattern on the roof, you don't sit and think, oh my lord, the roof is about to cave in, Jesus. You don't because you're like, well, no, the reason I have a roof on my house is because the roof is meant to protect the house from the weathering outside. So you take your roof for granted until what you start seeing some leakage coming down your wall, right? Or you start hearing some weird noises in the loft, and then all of a sudden, the thing that has always been reliable, silently reliable, not needing any type of great fanfare, or you don't have a party for your roof, do you? You don't celebrate the roof. Oh my gosh, the roof kept the rain out. Because, well, when I bought the house, the roof was supposed to keep the rain out. So that is actually the basis of taking something for granted, that it's so reliable that quite frankly, you can just forget about it, right? And sometimes this is what we do in our spiritual walk and relationship that we see God as such an amazing, reliable person, right, in our life that sometimes He gets the very least of the most that he deserves. I'm gonna say that one more time. We can sometimes take God for granted to the place, right? And we don't mean to, because we just went through the elements of what to take something for granted means. That it's so reliable, it's so consistent that you just switch off from it, you go, oh, that's all right, it will just be. And sometimes this is how we deal with God. That He's so reliant, He's so reliable, He's so consistent, he's so good. Oh, that's alright, he knows how I feel about him. And then yet we find ourselves consistently taking, taking, taking, taking, taking. And that is not the fundamental balance of good relationship. Because great relationship must be what? It must be reciprocal. Reciprocity has to be within it, right? So the the the plan of salvation or the the the agreement is I gave my life for you, give your heart to me. That's not hard, but yet some of us find ourselves it's a bit of a tug of war because when I have to give you my heart, that means I have to give you my will and my emotion, and sometimes I just want to be the way I want to be, God. That's what we say, like, God, I just want to freak out. He's like, but you don't have to because I'm in control of everything, so why are you freaking out when I've sorted everything? Okay, you're freaking out because you want to freak out, because that allows you the expression of your emotionality within your soul, which isn't a bad thing, because feelings are accurate to what is happening in the moment. But what your spirit does, your spirit settles your soul and your feelings and go, you're temporal, okay, you're reacting right now. I'm here to respond. Okay. So, what we find in this particular scripture in the book of Matthew, chapter 20, verses 1 to 28, we're gonna do a little bit of reading. Um, we see two of Jesus' closest allies, okay, his disciples, and it was two of what I call the inner circle. As you read through the Gospels, and don't forget that the Gospels is almost like it's a diary of Jesus about the life and times of Jesus specifically. If you want to know what Jesus said whilst he was on earth, the gospels are the best place to look. Why? Because they're written in that really cool color red where you sit and go, Well, actually, Jesus said this. Um, and at this time, we're looking at in the book of Matthew, chapter 20, and I'm gonna give you a little bit of background of what's happening. Jesus is getting close to the home straight. Okay, if Jesus' life was like the 400-meter race, we're now in the last hundred meters. He he has been telling everybody what he's here to do, he's been trying to prepare his disciples for what's to come, but they've been caught up in the fanfare because don't forget Jesus is out here raising people from the dead, he is he is healing sicknesses and diseases that people did not think he was gonna heal, and also we have this geopolitical situation happening in Jerusalem, right? The Jews are occupied by the Romans because the Romans are the government that has taken over the world, and the Romans are like, listen, you Jews are a couple of misdemeanors away from it getting real techy for you lot, okay? And the Jews obviously have this promise and they have the law. Now we know that the law was given by God to Moses as a covenant between God and the Jewish people about how they would live, how they would behave, how they would act. But in between, obviously, the period of the law being given and Jesus coming, there were prophets that spoke about what Jesus was gonna do. So you've got a massive proportion of your Orthodox Jews that are basically looking at Jesus and going, Well, if you're the Messiah, you're the guy that's gonna free us from Rome. So you've got Jesus coming, God manifesting flesh, doing amazing things, and you've got these different ideas and perspectives about what they think he should be doing, right? And in the center of all of that, you've got Jesus and his 12 disciples, and then you've got the nine, which obviously are what I call the general board, and then you've got the executive board, which is the three, and the three we know to be are Peter, James, and John. These are the three that when Jesus went into the Garden of Gethsemane to pray before he went to the cross, he said to Peter, James, and John, he was like, Listen, the nine, you just stay on the outside here, you three, come with me. Now, it's normal when you're attached and associated to something as big and as influential and as as powerful as Jesus' ministry, that you are going to feel things on a natural human level that will cause you to potentially act in a way that you normally wouldn't. Why? Because we're humans and we were built to interact with the world around us. Now, where we may have leaned more so into a space where we are maybe too externally sensitive. Let me explain that. So you are connected to the world around you through your five senses. Your five senses give you information that help you assimilate what's going on in the environment and the world that's happening around you. Okay, your soul gives you self-consciousness and your spirit gives you God consciousness. What these disciples in this moment were more so leaning into was their natural self, their physical self that connects them to the world around them, and their self-conscious, their soul, right? Their mind, their will, and emotion. They were really fusing these together, which is why we get to what we're gonna see in the book of St. Matthew, chapter 20, and it was their spirit that was the most subdued because had they really been invested in the spiritual vision, they would have understood and discerned. Discerning means to see past what isn't readily visual for you to see. Okay, so discernment would almost be like me looking into this camera, but me seeing what's happening in your home. That's discernment, your ability to see what's not readily available to see. Had they been more up on their spiritual development, one would almost guarantee that the question this asked wouldn't have got asked. Anyway, I've done enough talking. Let's jump into this scripture. So the book of Matthew, chapter 20, we're gonna start at verse 1. I'm gonna get all the way to 28, I know, I know. But I'll explain along the way so you'll enjoy it, don't worry. And it starts off with the parable of the workers in the vineyard. So Jesus is using parables um as a natural means to explain very deep and complex spiritual mysteries because the reality was these natural people couldn't even take the fact that he was God manifesting flesh. So it's like, well, if I start talking to you about heavenly stuff, you can't even you can't even accept what you can see. So how on earth are you gonna understand what you can't? So this is where he he jumps into it, and it says, For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. A vineyard is like a massive field, so anybody that's kind of watching this, you know when you're on the motorway and you see those big acres of land, right? That is the equivalent to a vineyard, right? Just where it's a large mass of ground or space where you grow something, and then obviously with vineyards, it's connected more so to you know winemaking, a little bit of winemaking, grapes, and so forth. All right, and he says he agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard. About nine in the morning, he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, You also, yeah, yeah, you lot, come and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right. So they went, free money, who wouldn't? Um, then he said he went out again about noon, and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. So he saw some other people's like, yo, you man, you're not doing nothing. Come come over. I've got some work for you, right? Come over it. And they went. Um, and about five in the afternoon, he went out and found others standing around. He asked them, Why have you been standing here all day doing nothing? Verse 7, because no one has hired us, they answered. He said to them, I'll tell you what, then, if no one's hired you, you lot, go work in my my vineyard. When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first. So I want you to understand this. Jesus or the the landowner has gone out, hired a couple men in the morning, like, yeah, yeah, you, you, and you, go do some work in my field. Went out at midday. Yeah, you man over there, come here, go work in my field, went back out at 3 and 5. This man has got a lot of time on his hands. Said, yeah, yeah, you man there, go work in my field. Here's where the kicker comes. If you've been working from 9 a.m. and you get a guy who came in at 5 p.m., right? And your work day is 9 until 6. You're gonna feel some type of way potentially about the guy that came in an hour before the end of the day getting the exact same pay as you who was in there from 9 a.m. Okay, but this is exactly what was happening, okay. And Jesus, he made it even worse because he said he told the landowner, listen here, dude, pay those that came last first and pay those that came first last. Problematic. Verse 9 The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. I don't see anything wrong with this myself. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble. I don't think it's a bad thing against landowners, and they were like, These who were hired last worked only one hour, they said, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day. But he answered them and he says, I am not being unfair to you, my friend. Didn't you agree to work for a Daenerys? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Then he says as the landowner, Don't I have the right to do what I want with my money? Or are you envious because I am generous? And then he said, So the last will be first, and the first will be last. Okay? Then Jesus moves on to start now adding clues about what's going to happen when he goes into Jerusalem, even though he's told his disciples he understands that these guys are not getting it. Now, Jesus was going up to Jerusalem on the way, he took the twelve aside, those are his disciples, and he said to them, We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. Imagine, right? You're hanging out with Superman, and Superman's like, yo, I'm about to have a fight, and I'm gonna lose this fight. And not only am I gonna lose this fight, I'm gonna lose bad.

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I'm gonna lose really, really, really bad.

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Okay. But after he tells you how bad he's gonna lose, he adds the caveat, but on the third day, he will be raised to life. Now, when you've seen Superman win and win and win and win and win and win some more, the last thing you're expecting is for him to go, I'm gonna lose this one. Because your mind can't calibrate the fact that the person you've seen win is about to lose, which meant that their hearing completely turned off. Why? Because it was no longer about Jesus but themself. Don't worry, I'm gonna make this make sense. If this was about Jesus, the first question they would have asked would have been, Lord, why on earth are you gonna die? Why would you die? They would be concerned with him. They would have listened to everything he says, whoa, whoa, wait there. What do you mean on the third day you're gonna get up? What is this? But they were so connected to what their relationship to Jesus did for them. They couldn't hear it. They'd only hear the part that did not make that made well that made sense to them. Crucified, flogged, mocked. That's all they can hear. Their mind could not compute beyond that. Because if it could, they would have also remembered. He keeps talking about this three-day period. And he keeps saying that someone's gonna get up after three days. These are very subtle clues to where the conviction and the belief within their salvation was. Why? Because one person can't tell you a whole thing, but yet the only part you hear is half. The only reason you're gonna listen to the first half and maybe ignore the second half is if to you the first half is the only bit that makes sense to you. Right? Jesus isn't not telling them that he's gonna be raised again. He is telling them that he's gonna be raised again, but they cannot see beyond what they don't understand. So in their mind, they're like, people getting up from the dead? No. Impossible. And especially if you've lost. How are you gonna get up from the dead if you've lost? Okay, then here it comes, verse 20. Then the mother of Zebedee's sons. Okay? Now, the mother of Zebedee's sons is well, her sons are James and John. We understand that James and John are a part of the inner circle of Jesus' council. His his his disciples, okay? And their parents are believers, they believe in who Jesus is, they believe that he's the Messiah, and like any good mother, and here's a funny thing, and I want to give you a little caveat here. Mark also speaks about this interaction, okay? And I love Mark's account of what happens with this, but I trust Matthews a little bit more. Let me make this make sense. I'm not sitting here and pitting books of the Bible against each other. The reason why I trust Matthews a little bit more is because we know Matthew was an accountant, okay? Now, accountants allegedly, allegedly, they usually make things disappear, they don't use Add things allegedly, okay? So to me, if Mark leaves out James and John's mother and Matthew doesn't, I believe that Matthew saw something that maybe Mark didn't that made it relevant to be like, oh no, no, no, no, no, James and John didn't just run up to Jesus and be like, Hey, can we sit here, please? The mum had a little something to do with it, and we all know those mothers that want their children to be in certain positions, and they're like, You better go and ask him to be here, okay? Let me take it to let me take you there. Verse 20 Um of Matthew chapter 20, it says, Then the mother of Zebody's sons came to Jesus with her sons. Imagine she drags him, you two come over here. We're gonna ask him, and she pulls him over, and then realizing who Jesus is, she kneels down and she asked a favor of him. Imagine going to God for a favor and be like, sorry, Lord, could we? Can I just have a little word? Jesus, like, woman, I'm preparing to die. What on earth could you want? Right? She goes, and this is what Jesus said. He asked, he goes, what is it you want? Okay, he asked. She said, Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit, okay? Check this at your right hand, and the other at your left in your kingdom. Okay, not now. When Jesus is working out and he's trying to get to the reason as to why he's here. She's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, talk about that. When you come in your kingdom, and all of the glory, I think James and John should uh one should sit on your right, and one should sit on your left. Now imagine she didn't say, Lord, let them stand with you on your right, okay? Or Lord, let them stand with you on your left, or Lord, let them be around. She was very, very specific about what she was asking for, which tells you what? That there was an element of ambition that was tied up within the request. Right? How do we know this? Because in verse 22, the first thing Jesus says is you don't know what you're asking. That statement is so powerful. Because he's saying, on the face of what you think you see, you want the connectivity to the visuality of the glory that you think you see. But yet you do not understand the consequence of management that lives in the intangible world of what you can't see. He just tried to give them a clue to the access point to be considered to be a what's the word I'm looking for? To be an extension of the kingdom, right? Jesus just said to his disciples that when we get to Jerusalem, I'm going to be mocked, flogged, and crucified. Had James and John's mother, had even James and John been listening to what Jesus was saying, they would have been like, right there. Mocked, flogged, and crucified. And yet you two are asking to sit in prominent positions based on what? Ambition and pride. Sometimes the things that you are asking God for have not come from the pure spring of your heart. But sometimes, like the same way we put chlorine in swimming pools to purify it, because obviously people can sometimes be a little nasty, and you need the water to be fresh and clean enough for multiple use. That's what the word of God does, that's what our prayer life is supposed to do. It's meant to be the spiritual chlorine that goes into the processes, the river flows of our heart and our mind to purify it. Why? Because had they understood what they were asking, they would have realized that there was ambition attached to what they were asking. How do we know there was ambition attached to what they were asking? Because Jesus said, You don't know what you're asking. He said, Are you able to drink from this cup? In fact, let me get to let me get to um what he said to her in verse 22. He says, You don't know what you're asking. Jesus said to them. They answered, Jokers. Jesus said to them, You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. He said, These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father. Jesus was saying, You are asking something of me that I don't have the power to give. There are things that we sometimes go to God about and we ask. And sometimes the requests we go to God with in prayer, God is sitting there, he's going, I can do it. You don't have the capacity to manage it. And it hurts his heart because there is no good thing that he wants to withhold from us. But in those moments, he understands that we're not going to him because we trust him for who he is. We're going to him because we we we trust, we trust in what he is. And if he is God, then he should be able to give me every single thing that I want. And that's not relationship. Any relationship that is built upon a yes, a consistent 24-7 yes is not relationship at all. Every year you go through four seasons, you don't just live in spring and sunshine. And to be in a relationship where everything is a yes is to convince yourself that you are living in a perpetual state of spring and summer, and that is a lie. For every single year you have been for, you've gone through four seasons. You have a season of spring where everything is born and it's it's it's exciting and there is hope attached to it. Then you have summer where it blooms and it's winning and it looks great, and then autumn comes. Autumn is the preparation for winter. Autumn is where you're supposed to reduce, but because most of us don't manage time, we're trying to carry on in autumn what we started late in summer. Which means that when we get to winter, we're clashing with process and time because you should have been spending the season before preparing for everything to reduce, to sleep, to die. And there's nothing worse than trying to resuscitate something that no longer has life. So here, Peter and John, James and John even, they miss the point of the relationship. The things that they were asking was already purposed, proposed, and planned. Jesus had already said that the disciples that they would judge the nations. He said they would judge the tribes of Israel. He'd already given them positions of prominence. That is sometimes the toxic taste of ambition. Lucifer went through it in heaven one of two of the most executive and highest position holders. And yet he stopped looking at what he'd become or what he'd he'd he stopped looking at what he'd been made and started to dream and conceive about what he could become and missed the point that everything that he was was by nature of a creator that had an intention for him. You can't have a better intention for you than what God does. The created cannot know the mind or cannot better the mind of the creator because you are built within the boundaries and the limitations of his desire and plan for you, and God has so much planned for you. And we often miss that we're the ones curtailing the plan because we're trying to veer off left into this avenue of ambition based on visuality, but yet everything that you see was made from what you don't see. This very table that this iPad is sitting on. I'm telling you, there was a person that was standing somewhere and thought, do you know what? I'd love for something to put something on, and in their mind, in the intangible space, they see this flat surface, like what the flat surface needs to be raised from the floor, so it's going to need some legs, and then all of a sudden, through in their mind's eye, which they you can't see a person's mind's eye, they build the plan that allows them to put it onto something external, and from the external thing that came from the intrinsic thing, all of a sudden now we can make plans. James and John missed that the training for the position that they were asking for was already in process. Sometimes we allow people that aren't in our process to come in and influence us to the negative. Do I think James and John's mum was bad? Absolutely not. She was amazing. She encouraged her boys to follow Christ. But ambition got in there. And instead of them turning to them, I'm gonna let mum, I love you, right? And we completely understand why you're telling us to do what you're telling us, but we heard this Sermon on the Mount, and and and Jesus said some stuff that was deep. He told us who was gonna inherit the earth, he told us who would see God, he told us how we should be to our enemies, he told us how we should be for those that are afflicted. He said that we are the soul of the earth. He also said that if we ask, it shall be given, if we seek, it will be found, if we not, the door will be open. He's told us that we have relationship with God beyond visuality. But ambition has this way of unpicking and undoing everything that was. Now, what's beautiful about this scripture is some verses later we actually see the visual depiction of what the request James and John were asking for would look like. Okay, and if you will, I want you to turn with me very quickly to the book of Matthew, chapter 27. Actually, we're not, we're gonna go to Luke. I think I I like what Luke's got what Luke says about it. We're gonna go to Luke 23, and I'm gonna take you to verse 43. Um we're gonna start in verse 38. In fact, let me start from 36. The soldiers also came up and mocked him. Remember in uh Matthew chapter 20, Jesus was going, listen, when I go to Jerusalem, they're gonna mock me, flog me, kill me, right? Um, and it says that in verse 7 that the soldiers came up and they mocked him, they offered him wine vinegar. Imagine you're in that kind of situation, someone's offering you something that bitter, like ugh. If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself. Verse 38. There was a written notice above him which read, This is the king of the Jews. This is completely in line with what Jesus told his disciples were gonna do, that they were gonna mock him. Um, verse 39. One of the criminals, because if you remember that there were two criminals that were hung either side of Jesus and he lay in the middle, one of the criminals who hung there, imagine you can hurl insults at God. You're in you're in a terrible position. You are about to fall into eternal darkness, and instead of realizing who is next to you, you decide, well, if I'm going down, I might as well not take you down with me because you can't take God down, but I'm gonna tell you what I really think. Okay, and he says to him, Aren't you the Messiah? Save yourself and us. I would have been like, You talking to me? Right? Verse 40, and this is where it's D. But the other criminal rebuked him. That means he said, Shut your mouth. He rebuked him, right? And he says, Don't you fear God? He said, Since you are under the same sentence, he said, We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong. Then he said, Jesus.

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Right?

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So he's just finished telling his brethren about himself, right? Then he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. This was the spirit that Jesus wanted Peter, not Peter, he wanted James and John to have. This right here was the spirit he wanted James and John to have. You see, this criminal was he understood his position and he understood who he was next to. He understood that for what he had done, he was serving his sentence justly for the deeds he committed. But he understood he was next to a man that was going through something he shouldn't have been going through because what he did did not deserve what he was being punished for. And even in his understanding and perception that Jesus was the Son of God, he sat and he said to him, He wasn't like Jesus, make sure you he just said, Lord, remember me. You know that remember me, what's wrapped up in it? He's saying that I'm not important enough to demand of you. But if in in some small space, in if in some small moment it comes back to your recollection, do you know what there was a person that asked me something, and what I loved about what this criminal said, he said, Lord, when you come in your kingdom, and you see that was the key because Jesus had always preached of a kingdom, a kingdom that couldn't be seen, but he wanted to bring, that he was reflecting and hear this criminal who, unlike James and John, had not spent every single minute of every single hour that they could with Jesus. As the door of time was closing, he managed to slip on through, and yet he made no demands of Jesus. He said, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And Jesus' response was amazing. In verse 43, Jesus answered him and said, Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise. Now, some of you are sitting there going, Wait there? How can someone that's been doing all that evil all of a sudden get into the kingdom? I'm glad you asked. Do you remember at the beginning of our Bible study when we were looking at Matthew chapter 20, that Jesus taught a parable? Remember what we said about parables? Parables were Jesus' simplistic form of teaching complex spiritual mysteries. Do you remember Jesus spoke about the landowner? And the landowner went out at 9 a.m. and midday, and he he got workers in and he said, Right, I'm gonna pay you one denaris. And throughout the day, he got others in, and you remember he got the guys in at 5 p.m., right? And he was like, right, here's your daeneris. And he said to the foreman, that's the guy that's in charge of it, the project manager, if you will. He goes, I'll tell you what, pay the guys that came last first. And you remember the guys that were first got a little bit annoyed? This is that playing out in real time. Imagine those that had been with Jesus longest were in a place where they were asking for positions of power. And yet those that had been within the shortest showed greater perception and insight to be like, Lord, I can make no demands of you. All I ask is that you remember me. You see, the plan of salvation isn't a time sheet. Your spiritual relationship with God is not a sticker book that you fill up to go day one, sticker, day two. That's great. If you're celebrating 25 years, 30 years, 40 years, five years with your spiritual personal walk with Christ, amazing. But there is no difference to God, to you who has walked with him for 35 years and the person has worked with him for 35 seconds or 35 minutes, or to the unbeliever that is about to give his heart. Because he said, Well, if it's my vineyard, I get to set the rules. And as far as God is concerned, whilst he can, he will leave the door open for as long as he can to get as many of his beloved creation into the place that means that they will never be separated from him. Let's pray. Father, thank you for today. Thank you for love, joy, and peace. Thank you for moments that we don't understand because that's where you do your best work. Thank you because, God, you love each and every one of us the same. And it is faith, God, that pleases you. That man that hung on the cross, it was faith that pleased you and caused you to tell him that he'd be in paradise with you, God. Why? Because he wasn't looking at the visuality of death and crucifixion and scary things and moments. He was able to see beyond this world and see beyond his natural eyesight and understand that he was standing, laying, hanging next to the Messiah, that he was standing next to God manifesting flesh, and God so much to the point where his only request was, remember me. God, I ask you to remember us today. Lord, everybody that is watching this Bible study, everybody's interacting with, I pray, Lord, that the seeds of this word will grow in their heart and be planted on good ground. And let this even be a moment where someone decides to give their life to you. That in their heart they believe and with their mouth they confess. We thank you for all things. Bless everybody that comes under the sound of my voice. Let your word be illuminated in their heart and their mind. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Guys, thank you so much for hanging out with us. We will see you next time. Peace.