Christ's Object Lessons - Chapter 21: A Great Gulf Fixed

Pastor David Asscherick is joined by Brent Lane to discuss Chapter 21 of Ellen White's Christ's Object Lessons, which examines the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. David and Brent explore how Ellen White unpacks this complex parable, revealing that it is not fundamentally about wealth versus poverty, but about stewardship of the resources and privileges God has entrusted to us—both temporal and spiritual. They discuss how Jesus purposefully used exaggerated, cartoonish elements to subvert a common folklore genre of His day, ultimately pointing His hearers back to Moses and the prophets rather than miraculous messages from beyond the grave. The conversation emphasizes that in this life, we decide our eternal destiny, and that character and converts are the only riches we take with us into eternity. David and Brent also examine the parable's specific application to the Jewish nation, who had been entrusted with the riches of Torah and the prophetic writings, and how this same principle applies to Christians today who have been given the gospel. The episode concludes with a powerful reminder that the suffering of separation from God has already been endured by Christ on our behalf, and that we are called to be faithful stewards who relieve suffering in the world around us.

Guest: Brent Lane
Scripture References: Luke 16:19-31
Covers: Chapter 21: A Great Gulf Fixed
Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifLVHFBQvjc
Light Bearers

Transcript

Greeting and Announcements

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey everybody, welcome to With DA, and in this case, D A and B L. Brent Lane in the house. Glad to be here. Glad to be anywhere today. That's exactly right. Minnesota in the house.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

That's right. Northern Minnesota. Yep. Peter way out here. Flew in today. We flew in today from Minneapolis. We actually we drove uh to southern Minnesota a day early because we're trying to beat a snowstorm out of northern Minnesota, which creeped into southern Minnesota. So it was a it was a harrowing drive into Minneapolis about an hour today, but so and bad roads. And bad yeah, very bad roads. So you live in Minnesota, so you would know a like you know what bad roads are. How bad were these roads? Uh the worst that I've driven on in many years. Really? Absolutely, yeah. Scary? Um we didn't have a scary event, but there's the potential was there. Like you're in the zone. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, in I was telling Sarah, we've we've kind of gotten to the point where we don't always have to drive on these roads anymore. So I kind of get used saying, Let's time go out today. Yeah. But when you've got something you've got to do, you got a flight to catch. You've got to get on the road. So, but praise God.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

We uh He made it. We are super glad that Brent is here. He and his lovely wife Sarah, who's in just the other room. She'll be with us tomorrow night, by the way. Uh, flew in just today. We had an amazing uh we had a great lunch. Fantastic lunch lunch. How was it? We went up to a vegan cafe here in Denver, downtown Denver, called Watercourse Foods. And uh then what else? Oh, we went to a little grocery store, a little shopping. Went on a walk, and uh then I took a bath. Did you take a shower? I took a shower. I was trying to get the travel off of me, you know, by touching everything. Travel's a funny thing. It makes you feel kind of melting yourself. No, yeah. Even if it's a short flight. Bruh. Easy flight, but okay. From Minneapolis, did you fly? Yeah. So Minneapolis straight here. Straight here. That's great. Easy, easy. All right. So this is Brett. He is a with DA. Brett, how long have you been doing you and Sarah the with DAs?

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Um I've been since day one. Uh all the way back to you with DA? Yeah, for I can't remember how. I I was following you, obviously, at the time. And um so hey, yeah, that sounds fun. So I've been uh and Sarah, she's come along through some of them and gone back and done some of the other caught up. Yep, yep. So it's yeah, this has been fantastic experiences, those of you on come on.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

And Brent is normally he's a regular, right? You're normally on the other side. So this is what it looks like on this side.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Yeah. No, it's fantastic. I you know, I'm not quite as uh I I'll I'll chime in occasionally, but I I uh I have a hard time with the uh the texting fingers and thing and processing at the same time. But I enjoy watching it. I enjoy I enjoy the conversation that takes place uh with all of you on there. So good.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Yeah, it's fantastic. One of the things that's been a real joy this time around is to have these like regular with DAers on. Because when I first started it, it was like, oh, I just want to get some of my friends in. And then now I've made so many great friends like yourself through the with DA community and tours and other things that it's been great to have Kylie and Tanya and Deb, and now you and tomorrow Sarah. And I love that.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Well, and I gotta tell you, feedback, just watching these feeds go by on these nights. People are loving it. That we talked to two nights ago, Callie. I don't know Callie, are you on tonight? Callie Hamm from Minnesota. She was saying the same thing. It's just so neat to kind of have part of it. She's called it the family. It's exactly right. I gotta tell you about Callie. I think she's also an original veteran. Veteran, but um so she's the girl's dean at Maplewood Academy. Oh, doing that fantastic job. We just love having her in there. That is great. That's our Academy in Minnesota. Is the local academy there in Minnesota? I was there 30 years ago. One of my deans was her dad, Dean Ann. Also, it's kind of a neat uh So it's like a generational. Yeah, she was uh she was an elementary kid running around at that time, and while she's there ministering to those girls. And Sarah have children. Speaking of academies, you have children. Do you have kids at Maplewood right now? We've got sophomore in Maplewood right now, two at Union College, and we've got an eighth grader that will be headed to Maplewood next year. Headed there. Okay, so you've got walk us through. You got boy. Uh boy. Yep, boy, girl, boy, boy. Oh, so just the single girl. Just the Oh, yeah, I guess I knew that. The only granddaughter on both sides of our family. So four kids. Yep. Congratulations. Yep, they're fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Uh, and you've been happily married to your bride, Sarah, 30 years? Coming up on 30. Yeah, 1996.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

So that'll be 30. Yeah. The year I was baptized. That's right. We we were married May 26th, so just before that I was baptized June 6th.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Okay, great to have Brett here, everybody. Welcome to those of you that are tuning in on YouTube. And uh my voice, as you can tell, is back to almost normal. I'd say it's about an eight out of ten. Uh, my brain, not yet normal. We're still working on that. Voice. Well, working on the brain all of it. Um, we've had an amazing day today, a great day. We're looking forward to spending tomorrow together as well. And then, of course, we'll be here tomorrow night. Uh Sarah will be at Are we at chapter 21 tonight? Uh, you know, my my old school does not have chapter number one chapter 21. Chapter 21 tonight. A great gulf fixed. Yep. And as you would be aware, there are only 29 chapters in the book. So we're on the latter third here. Yeah. And it feels like this has gone by. I don't know how it feels to you, Brett, but it feels to me like this has gone by fast.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Uh yeah, it's it's gone by fast, but everyone has just been packed. I feel it's very sorry. As usual. And you've got notes here. I've got notes. That's that's how my mind has to work. Otherwise, the mind would go blind. No, I totally get it.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

When uh when Deb was here, she had pages and pages and pages of notes. And uh it looks like you've got a few in your oh, it's looked very well organized. Uh we'll see. Is this sort of an insight into your personality here? Is this how we do things?

SPEAKER_00 6:04

I would say so, yeah. I have to like things organized. I like them organized because it helps keep my brain organized that way. Otherwise you're just all otherwise the brain goes to mush. So let's put it that way.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Well, we do not want your brain. No, no, no. This is we were just talking about it just moments before we turned on uh the cameras. Uh this is an intense parable.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Yeah, it's it's an interesting parable. Very much so. There's a there's a lot, there's a lot there and a lot not there that some people think is theirs. Right, right. And it's some people think it's not even a parable. True. Yeah. I mean, it's a story that, from my understanding, was floating around.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

Yeah, we're gonna talk about that. We're gonna talk about that for sure. But it's here's a question I have for you. So, so Brett, you're gonna be here tonight and tomorrow. Did you and your wife have to do some jockeying? Uh about what? Or did you just put the proverbial foot down and say, I want the rich man in Lazarus?

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Here's all the jockeying went. I want to hear it. You see this with my notes. Okay. So um I looked ahead to the chapters and I started reading them, and I just told her, I'm gonna do this one. Part of it was because of the parable. Part of it I thought, you know what, I'd like to just go first and get that out of the way. Yeah, yeah. In terms of, you know, she she's a lot more low-key than I. So I thought, you know, this will be fun to take care of it. And are you nervous at all? Oh, although I'm I'm always slightly nervous if I if I do things like preach or whatnot, but you also like the shirt. Yeah, everything hot. Yeah, thank you. I didn't mean to even change, but uh, like I say, it looks right. Showered, I thought I was both threshold. It pops. Well, thank you. But I'm not really nervous. Oh, not a lot. No. Just conversation. And you've been a follower of Jesus. You were raised in a Christian context. I was. Uh absolutely. Fifth fifth generation Adventist. That doesn't always tell you the Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

You you know, I get Jesus. It's like saying you're a fifth generation Baptist or a Methodist, or it's like, yeah, but are you a follower of Jesus? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Yes. That yes, wonderful home. That, you know, I I grew up knowing Jesus and and and the right character of Jesus. Same best. So I, you know, I shouldn't have asked for anything more in terms of that. So thank you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

And uh another question I was gonna ask you there. Oh, so you wanted this parable.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Uh of the three that that we were looking at, I was like, yeah, this one looks fun. And it is fun. It is fun.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

Okay, we are glad that you are all here. We're gonna start with prayer. Welcome everybody. We are super glad. I see people uh signing in here, making various comments. Okay, let's get started. Uh Brett, if you don't mind, why don't you have prayer for us and we'll get right into Luke chapter 16? The parable of the rich man in Lazarus. We're in chapter 21 of Christ's Sobject Lessons and our month-long study through the parables of Jesus. And I think it's called A Great Gulf Fixed. Yeah. Yep. Is that it? A great gulf fixed.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

So, Brett, if you'd lead us in prayer, that'd be amazing.

Prayer

SPEAKER_00 9:03

All right, absolutely. Let's bow our heads. Father in heaven, what a journey this has been. And we just thank you that your presence is with us here tonight, not only in this room, with David and myself, but also we're just in all the living rooms and bedrooms. Amen. For those on Instagram live and those who will be joining us on YouTube later, your spirit is leading and guiding. And as we open this chapter, Lord, we just pray that as we look at this parable of Christ, we would again contemplate with some seriousness on our own eternal destiny. Amen. And the eternal destiny of our friends and neighbors. So we just thank you, we praise you, and we look forward to this time together. In your name we pray, Lord. Amen.

Discussion

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Amen. All right, beautiful prayer.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Okay, so we're gonna um this is such an important parable because it's unique in many regards. It's a little complex. I mean, I would say, without question, up to this point, it has been it's the most complex of all the parables that we've studied up to this point. I mean, there's a lot going on here. There's a lot going on. So we're gonna read through, uh, we're gonna read through the parable in two translations. You've got the NIV. So we're in Luke chapter 16, and we're gonna pick it up in verse 19. Luke chapter 16, beginning of verse 19, and Brett, just read right down to the end of the chapter, and then I'll do the same in Wright's translation.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Okay. The rich man and Lazarus. There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. The time came when the beggar died, and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, Father Abraham, have pity on me, and sent Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire. But Abraham replied, Some remember that in your lifetime you received your good things. Well, Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us. He answered, Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father's house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment. Abraham replied, They have Moses and the prophets, let them listen to them. No, Father Abraham, he said. But if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent. He said to them, If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced, even if someone rises from the dead.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

And that's just how it ends. And then it is just right into chapter 17. Right. I mean, one of the most remarkable things about this parable that just jumps out to me is that it ends with no further commentary from Luke or Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

That's it. Hanging in the air. It's just hanging there. And uh then, of course, you get into chapter 17, and the the kind of pregnancy of it, you're like, what happened then?

SPEAKER_00 12:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Right. What did people say? What did Jesus say? What does Luke think about this? And it's just And that's the point, isn't it? It's it's hanging there for us. Very much so. Yeah. It is clearly purposeful on Luke's part to just leave that there, and we'll get into that when we talk about what is the point. What is going on in this parabola? I mean, there are so many moving parts. Yeah. There's a lot going on here. A tremendous amount. Okay. Now let me read it from uh Wright's translation. I haven't read it yet, so I'm excited to see the similarities and the differences. Beginning of verse 19, there was once a winch a rich man, said Jesus, who was dressed in purple and fine linen and feasted in splendor every day. A poor man named Lazarus, who was covered with sores, lay outside his gate. He longed to feed himself with the scraps that fell from the rich man's table. Even the daubs came and licked his sores. In due course the poor man died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. And he being tormented in Hades, and he was being tormented in Hades, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, and Lazarus in his bosom. Father Abraham, he called out, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue. I'm in agony in this fire. My child, replied Abraham. Remember that in your life you received good things, and in the same way Lazarus received evil. Now he is comforted here, and you were tormented. Besides that, there is a great chasm standing between us. People who want to cross over from here to you can't do so, nor can anyone get across from the far side to us. Please then, father, he said, send him to my father's house. I've got five brothers. Let him tell them about it, so that they don't come into this torture chamber. They've got Moses and the prophets, replied Abraham. Let them listen to them. No, no, Father Abraham, he replied. But if someone went to them from the dead, they would repent. If they don't listen to Moses and the prophets, came the reply. Neither would they be convinced, even if someone rose from the dead. Okay, all right. Where do you start? Yeah. And this is like one of those meals where it's like, where am I where do we start here? So we read it through. That's a good start. How about this? Let's start here, Brett. Any preliminary, any things you just want to say right at the outset? It can be none, it can be three, it can be four, just in your mind, kind of for it might be helpful for us to sort of set the table before we dig into this feast, and then I'll see if I have some preliminary remarks as well.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

So when I read when I read the parable, uh, I tried, I tried to kind of read it as if I were reading it for the first time. Obviously, I've come across it many times before, and we know and we know things. We read things that we that we think we already know when we read a parable. So you try to get so I had to suspend your familiarity. Try to look at it a little bit fresh in a sense. So words that were coming to my mind is I is I looked at how Jesus was treated in the situation. One was satire. There's almost the the story is almost it's almost a caricature. It's almost uh, you know, the the the dipping a tip of a finger to to to right. It's like, okay, is this is he for real with this? And and again, well, there's some history of that. Um with a lot of kind of exaggerative, almost absurd elements. Right, right, right. It's like a cartoon in its cartoonish, cartoonish was yeah, was what I thought. Another word is subver subversion. And we've talked about this before. Very yeah, uh, Jesus is taking um what we've you know, what might have been a known story, and he's kind of twisting it a little for his purposes, and it's um it's what he's done in a lot of these teachings, which is um people start hearing and say, Oh yeah, we know this, we know this, and all of a sudden sharp turn. Yeah, yeah, on in the gut.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Re-purposing something that was kind of in common circulation.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Yes. I mean, it's a great psychological very much so to do that because you get people are moving, they're moving with you, and then all of a sudden that that that that U-turn or whatever you want to call it, just it's unexpected. It has a more dynamic effect. Yeah, absolutely. Um I I felt there was a lot of connection to the second chapter of last night in terms of stewardship. But it goes far beyond just stewardship. Yeah. It's in terms of earthly riches. The stewardship goes far deeper than that. Which I think we'll get into as well.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

So Okay, that's really good. So you tried to kind of read it, get a feel for it as fresh as you could, even though you've been exposed to it many times before. It's there's a lot of exaggerative elements. Cartoonish is a great word. And it's clearly Jesus is using an idea, and you've may mentioned this flight a couple times, and I'll come back to this, that these kinds of stories were in circulation in the days of Jesus. They were actually quite common in the days of Jesus. And by these kinds of stories we mean that we should just you'll want to take this down in your notes here. There's only two features of the story of the rich man of Lazarus that are very important and were not uncommon tales or sort of uh a part of the folklore of Jesus' day and of the surrounding cultures. Number one is uh the idea of these unexpected reversals of fortune.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

Yeah, I found a lot of that. I I heard the word that kept coming to me, I mean the reverse of for exchange, exchange. Right. And that verse is even there's a verse from Mark that's quoted in the center of the chapter. What will a man give in exchange for his life? And so it came in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Okay, so you get this like reversal of expectation. Like, oh, I didn't see that coming. And those stories, especially having to do with the wealthy and the poor, people that were favorably situated in this life and unfavorably situated, and then this reversal of expectation or of fortune. In other words, Jesus didn't invent this genre of tale. It's kind of half parable, half-folk tale. Yeah. And so that's number one. And then the second feature is not just the unexpected reversal of fortune, but the idea that a messenger, there's a message from beyond the grave. And there's even a lot of movies today that have kind of tapped into this idea that somebody dies, they go either permanently or preliminarily to the nether world, to the other side. They either see something, they experience something, they have a conversation, and then they come back, and the purpose is to try and improve the way that those that are not yet in that condition, that haven't yet died, that they are the way they live. Yeah. And this is another uh, again, a genre that de Jesus didn't invent, this idea that a message from the other side, and there was a lot of anxiety in the days of Jesus about a couple things. We've already talked about the economic disparity between the wealthy and the poor.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

And there was a spiritual element to that too. Yeah. Blessed of God. Yeah, exactly right. Yeah, exactly right. And so Jesus playing on that on there.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

Yeah. Yeah. And so and then the sense of justice, right? Like how is this fair? How is this right? And you can imagine uh common people would have appreciated stories like this that was kind of where the rich person gets their come up and it's like, yay, we love an underdog story. People, even today, if you think about I mean, maybe not with you, Brent, but in certain circles, and in certain circles that I sometimes find myself in, uh, people are just instinctively, reflexively critical of wealthy people. Right. Whether without without a background, even though we're not sure. It's assumed, and she actually talks about this in the chat. She makes a very good point about it. Um it's just assumed that if you're wealthy, you are a bad person. You've done something corrupt. How could you possibly have amassed that much money? Which we know is not true. Which is not true. But the point is, is that in our day and age, with you know, there's this middle class and there's, you know, education and people have a better understanding of the world around them. But in Jesus' day, the world could have just felt so totally unfair. Yeah. That a story like this and a genre of story like this, these kind of folklore s tales and stories of reversal of fortune and how the the seemingly fortunately situated gets their comeuppance, and then the message comes back from the grave, hey, you should reform too, or a similar thing will happen to you. All of this makes a lot of sense in Jesus' day, and then it makes a lot of sense, and this is your great point, that Jesus would use this strategically to seemingly be telling a familiar genre of story only to switch. Right, exactly. And by the way, Jesus does something extremely extremely subversive, and we'll get to that at the very end. And I'll be interested to see if it comes up in your we haven't discussed any of this up to this point, maybe very briefly before we turn the cameras on, but like one minute before. Um by the way, let me just recommend an excellent resource. I'm just gonna rec I'll reference it probably a couple times tonight. Here's an amazing book that you should have in your library. And the book is called The Geography of Hell. I don't have a physical copy, I apologize. It's called The Geography of Hell in the Teachings of Jesus. Write that down. The Geography of Hell in the Teachings of Jesus. The subtitle is Gehenna Hades, The Abyss, The Outer Darkness, Whether Is Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth. You don't need to remember the subtitle, of course, but The Geography of Hell and the Teaching of Jesus. And it's written by a Greek theologian. His name is Kim, first name Kim, K-A-M. Last name, not easy to pronounce. I'm gonna try here. I think it's pronounced Papeoanu. Papeoanu. And uh I'll quickly spell it for you here. P A P A I O A N N O U. Definitely Greek. It's Greek. Pape Pape Oanu. And I've read the book a number of times, and I've read this chapter a number of times, and it's an outstanding resource. And he goes in there and actually looks, right, really interestingly. In fact, let me just show you this. He actually goes in and identifies that this there is a culture and context here in which these stories are being told. Let me just see if I can find it to you here. He says we can therefore safely conclude that when the parable of the rich man in Lazarus is told, the audience is probably familiar with accounts of a reversal of fortune after death or of revelations from the dead, which circulated widely, crossing linguistic and cultural barriers.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

You know, I I came across one resource that I don't know I think in some of the apocryphal writings, there's a story very similar to this told, except in that telling of it, the the the rich man was um a tax collector. Interesting. Who gets his comeuppance, and the poor man was a poor teacher or a scholar around that one. Yep. Yeah. Which uh, you know, so that they kind of spun it to their exact sensibilities in certain regards.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

I think um the author here, again, Kim Pape Pape Onu, he identifies not less than eight stories that are similar in certain regards, but dissimilar in others, and he makes the point that that Jesus is grabbing onto a genre of story and then repurposing it to his own ends. We've got to find out what those ends are here as we go through the parable. But there's not like an exact story that Jesus has grabbed. There's no immediate predecessor, but there's kind of a genre of stories, and Jesus grabs elements of them. And again, these were stories that were circulating, as he says here, widely crossing linguistic and cultural barriers. And this helps us to understand why there are certain elements in the story that we kind of go, scratch our head like what's that?

SPEAKER_00 23:59

Seems out of left field for Jesus. Exactly. You could even another word that had come to my mind trying to read it out of out of my own context was you can get very confused very quickly. Yeah. With some other elements of hell and and things of that nature. Yeah, exactly right. It's not able to have. Um I'll read something a little bit later.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

Um, I've got a lot I could say here, but I'll come back to that in a little bit. Okay, so that's the context. Now let's go to Christ's Object Lessons, which is our secondary textbook. Uh we're obviously the Bible's our primary textbook, but we're going through Christ's Object Lessons printed by Ellen White, published in 1900. An amazing book. Yeah, had you read it before?

SPEAKER_00 24:40

Uh just just as a resource, bits and pieces and chapters here and there. I read it. I had not read it through. I used to be. It's really great.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

It's fantastic. It is such a good book. I love it in partnership or in in harmony with Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing and the Desire of Ages and Steps to Christ. Like they all just work together to form this amazing picture. Uh in fact, I'll tell you a cute little story. The other day, Violet was reading one of these books, and I was she was in bed reading, and I was in the bathtub as I often am. And uh she said, When I'm reading this, she just she just announced this to me. She said, When I'm reading this book, I feel like I'm listening to you talk. And I was like, that might be the greatest compliment I'll ever receive. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. She's like, This reminds me of you. And I was like, Well, I have read these books and the Bible a lot. She's like, I feel like I'm listening to you talk. I read this in your voice. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, Thank the Lord. Jesus. No, that's that's not. Okay, so let's uh let's read here. Uh why don't we just read a little bit? We probably can't go through everything, but there's quite a number of things we're gonna have to tack down. And I'm so glad you're here, Brett. Thank you for coming, by the way. Absolutely. And if I move a little too fast, just reel me back and make all the points that you want to make, and then we'll try to tie a nice bow on what is a complicated parable. Yeah. A lot going on, as you said. Come out the other side and see, see if we've landed in a place that makes a lot of sense. And not just it makes sense to the first century here, but what about to us in 2026? What do we do with this? Right. If we're not doing something with it, then it's just yeah, right. Then it's just like curiosity. Yeah. Okay, so why don't you start reading uh paragraph one 308?

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Okay. In the parable of the rich man in Lazarus, Christ shows that in this life, men decide their eternal destiny. I mean, that's it right there. Right. And I think that, you know, that was the first thing. It's like she's just come right to the place she often does. Right. It's like, okay, here's her thesis right here. We know we're we know what we're getting on the rest of the way. During probationary time, the grace of God is offered to every soul. But if men waste their opportunities in self-pleasing, they cut themselves off from everlasting life. No after probation will be granted them. By their own choice, they have fixed an impassable gulf between them and their God. Got it.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

Okay, great. So she lets us know right here in the first paragraph what this is going to be about. Absolutely. And the language there of probationary time, Eller White does use that phrase. I think it must have been in kind of circulation in a day, because we don't use this much today. You won't probably hear people talking about probationary time and the sermons that you're hearing or you're listening to sermons online. But the idea was this life. Yeah. Right. That's her point. Her point is that after you die, there's not like an additional life that you get where it's like, hey, here's your second chance.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Or the left behind rapture.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

Exactly. It's the same, it's the same concept in a sense, which is, well, there'll be another opportunity. It's another shot. You're gonna get another shot. It's like, no, it's permanent. There's a great gulf fixed. Today's the day. Today's the day. And make your decision. And she uses in that open tense there that language of decide your eternal destiny. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so so that's what that's we already kind of have an interpretive idea here of interpretive principle. That is the great gulf. The gulf is there's a fixity after death. Something is fixed, something is fastened into reality itself, and the opportunity and the time. The choice has been made. The time to make the decisions about where you want to go, what you want to do, what you want your legacy and your future to be, the time to make those decisions is now. Yes. Right? Don't be putting this off, don't be procrastinating or postponing. Your eternal destiny is at stake. Okay, let me read the uh second paragraph then. This parable draws a contrast between the rich who have not made God their dependence and the poor who have made God their dependence. Price shows that the time is coming when the position of the two classes will be reversed. That's an important word you want to underline that word. Reversed, like reversal of fortune, reversal of expectation. Those who are poor in this world's goods, yet who trust in God and are patient in suffering, will one day be exalted above those who now hold the highest positions the world can give, but who have not surrendered their life to God. I got a couple things I want to say in this paragraph, but the first thing is that she is not talking about, and even commentators that that speak on this parable, and not everybody believes it's a parable, but we certainly are gonna suggest that it is a parable. It's outside of the scope of this talk to identify all the reasons why it's a parable. So we're just gonna say that one thing that's kind of interesting here, and commentators have noted this, is that this is not an unqualified rejection of people that are rich and an unqualified endorsement of people that are poor. She makes that point. She qualifies their dependence. Exactly. The contrast between the rich who have not made God their dependence and the poor who have made God their dependence. Of course, it's not the case that all rich people have not, and all poor people have. So this is not really, even fundamentally, a parable about wealth versus poverty, the haves versus the have-nots. It's a parable about how these different positions in life can can create a context and a propensity to self-reliance for looking to God for hope when this life is hard and hopeless.

SPEAKER_00 30:14

Right. The parable seems to be about. And uh again, you know, just going back to the the the whole rich-poor thing again is many were often if you if you were well to do, if you were, oh well, God has shown his blessing upon them. And right. And so, yeah, I I agree wholeheartedly. It's not financial wealth that is determinative of salvation. So really saying not, oh, the ritual I'll be turned one way and the exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Yeah. She she's very careful to qualify here, and she's gonna make it even clearer still later in the in the chapter that that this is not just about the ri the poor with large and the wealthy with large. There's qualifications here. It's about stewarding what we have. Exactly. Yeah. And beyond earthly riches. Okay, so then in the next paragraph, she actually starts telling the parable which we've already read. Let's jump down to the rich man did not belong. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

The rich man did not belong in the class represented by the unjust judge, who openly declared his disregard for God and man, previous parable. Yep. He claimed to be a son of Abraham. He did not treat the beggar with violence or require him to go away because the sight of him was disagreeable. He was tolerant. He was tolerant. And here's the line tibbled my funny bone. Yeah. If the poor loathsome specimen of humanity could be comforted by beholding him as he entered his gates, the rich man was willing that he should remain. I thought that was hilarious. I thought it was funny too. Like I can just imagine walking in thinking, what a service I'm doing to this poor banger that she can gaze upon me. Yeah, it's uh finish the paragraph here. But he was selfishly indifferent to the needs of his suffering brother. There you go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Yeah. The idea there that, like, well, he doesn't really have anything, not even food, and the dogs are licking his sores, but I'm sure it brings him great joy to see me, you know, with my big, sumptuous meal and my belly and my purple clothes walking in and out of my gated mansion. Um it must encourage him.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

Right, right, right. I'm faring s as the King James says, faring sumptuously. Exactly. It's like having Thanksgiving every day of the year. Exactly. Yeah, but sorry, nothing for you out at the gate.

SPEAKER_01 32:20

But he's kind of like telling himself a story, and the story that he's telling himself probably to appease his conscience is, well, this is probably an encouragement to him. Right. Yeah. Not everybody has it as bad as he does.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

Yeah. The effort we will go to or the lengths we'll go to to deceive ourselves. Rationalize. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 32:43

There's even a little bit of I detect a hint here of what we might call celebrity culture. Yeah. Where like we even today, we have the magazines and the paparazzi follow around, whether it's the movie star, the sports star, or whoever it might be. And they're living a life that you and I are not living. Right. And we're, I think, supposed to admire and envy the life they're living. And I suppose this is why people pay attention, the magazines, people, TMZ, or whatever. Now, I know you're perfectly happy to live in northern Minnesota on the lake. Keep me in the woods. Exactly. Like we don't desire that life, but there is kind of a sense in which there's this kind of implicit cultural notion that these people have arrived and we admire them almost in that idolatrous sense, like, oh, to live the life they're living. And it's like, yeah, no.

SPEAKER_00 33:34

And they may not even be loving the life they're living. Exactly right. They think they're supposed to. Yeah. Like have you have seen I guess is this it?

SPEAKER_01 33:41

Have you ever seen that fascinating little interview? It's a clip that has gone viral at various times. Jim Carrey, a comedian, actor from like 10 years ago, talking about how being rich is the worst thing, being poor uh famous is the worst thing. You don't want it, nobody wants it, everybody's miserable. Have you seen that? I think I think I have. It's quite a revealing clip. It's almost like a moment of like celebrity sobriety, and he's just telling the truth about living under the continual gaze and scrutiny and expectation and agents. And are you on the way up or are you on the way down? Are you yesterday's news or are you today's soup of the day? And there is a sense in which the wealthy have many things that you and I might not have, but they also have problems and anxieties that we don't want. Absolutely. The pressures of, like you say, maintaining maintaining the image and your agents and all that. But the point is, is that I got a little bit of that celebrity culture here from the like this great line here. If the poor and loathsome specimen of her handity could be comforted by beholding him as he entered his gate, as he was seen in People magazine, as he was on TMZ, as he was on some television, it's like the rich man was willing that he should remain. He tolerates him. Right. You're fine. Doing him a favor about it. Exactly. Walking by him. I loved the next section. Yeah. There were no hospitals in which the sick might be cared for. And we forget that hospitals are a fairly modern idea. There were laser houses and sick houses. But hospitals as a place where people went, not just a place to die, but a place to try and get well, is a fairly modern idea, like in the last several centuries. And it was largely Christians that were responsible for the creation and the proliferation of hospitals all around the world, beginning first in Europe and then eventually missionary outposts. And even today, like you have Limitheran hospitals and Adventist hospitals and Catholic hospitals and Baptist hospitals and Jewish hospitals. A lot of hospitals are directly tied to religious organizations or ideas. But in the days of Jesus, there was not a hospital. In the same way that there wasn't a social welfare program. It was like you hoped that you had somebody to take care of you, a husband, sons, children. I mean, really, children were your social security, your life insurance policy, right? And if not, then you could go strategically position yourself outside of the home of a wealthy person in hope to be noticed and that they might take pity on you. And that's exactly the context here. There were no hospitals in which the sick might be cared for. The suffering and needy were brought to the notice of those to whom the Lord had entrusted wealth. That's a big word there to me, entrusted. Entrusted. It comes up a lot on this. I'm so glad you noted that. Entrusted, write that down. I don't know if you do this, friend, but what I do is when I'm going through, you can see my list here. I write down words that jump out to me, words that might end up being my kind of word. And I've got here entrusted, interest, responsibility, eternity, Abraham, suffering, chasm, gulf. These are just some of the words of us I read it over and over again. I'm like, that's circulate. That word is circulating, it's coming out. I I throw it down there. So thank you for pointing that out. A warrior had entrusted wealth that they might receive help and sympathy. Thus it was with the beggar and the rich man. Lazarus was in great need of help, for he was without friends, home, money, or food. I mean, that's not you, that's not me. Right? Even as we're looking at the you know, glitterati of the day and the and the celebrities of the day, we we at least have food to eat a delicious meal of the day. So this is a very different situation. If he was allowed to remain in this condition day after day, while the wealthy nobleman had every one of supply, the one who was abundantly able to relieve the sufferings of his fellow creature lived to himself as many live today. Okay, what do you want?

SPEAKER_00 37:28

Well what I s yeah, what what was coming through in these paragraphs to me was again this really this idea of stewardship. And often when we talk about stewardship, we think of financial resources. But I I I, you know, of course, then we know also there's the stewardship of one's time, there's a stewardship of one's talent. Yes. There's the stewardship of the earth, which is God's creation. But in a sense, here in this story, we're being faced with the fact that part of God's creation is this man Lazarus. Correct. And he is not bears the image of God. He bears the Imago Day, he's he's bearing the image of God, and and and the rich man is not stewarding, he's been entrusted, and he's not stewarding part of creation. Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:05

Yes. It reminds me of probably just quickly flipping back. Remember this from yesterday? Because yesterday's paragraph, uh chapter, rather, was also about stewardship. Right. And she makes this great point. Let me just read this here on page 302. Uh, this is page 256 of the original. The situation of the poor, the orphan, the widowed, the suffering, and the afflicted was brought to this rich man's attention. Uh-huh. There were many places in which to bestow his goods. He could easily have relieved himself of a portion, not all, but a portion of his abundance, and many homes would have been freed from want. Many who were hungry would have been fed, many naked clothed. Excuse me, many hearts made glad, many prayers from red and clothing answered, and a melody of praise would have ascended to heaven. In this case, you get this very strong one-to-one-ness in this parable. There's a wealthy man. There's only only two characters in the parable, you get Abraham a little bit later, but you've got the angels, I suppose. But you have you have the rich man and Lazarus. And the idea here is like you can't do anything to help this one guy here that bears the image of God that's at your gate, that you're practically stepping over to go on the way to your religious, various religious or or social meetings.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

I just saw Deb put something in there that I thought was interesting. She she noted the fact that that that the rich man allows him to stay out at the gate. Hmm. As a pro almost, as it were. So people would walk by thinking, no, he must be he must be helping care for this man who sits at his gate, and yet he just walks by him, and yet, you know, they're they're walk he's walking by him every day, probably 20 feet between them, and yet the gulf is already there. Yeah. But the chasm, he's already created the chasm very good as he walks by him every day.

SPEAKER_01 39:52

And we should add, thank you for that, thank you for that, Deb. We should add here that Jesus purposefully uses, as we've already said, kind of provocative, exaggerative language here that's designed to cause people to wince or to raise an eyebrow. So for example, it says here uh in in the description of the uh of Lazarus, it says, um, in verse 20, he's a beggar, he's covered with sores, so he's unclean, all right, covered with sores, and probably contagious, so not somebody that you could be around socially. But then it gets even worse. He's hungry, and then this uh the dogs came and licked his sores. Now, I know that a lot of us today we have pets, we have dogs, and we allow our dogs to lick us and they come close to us, and uh, you know, that's your prerogative, but this is not that kind of licking, right? The idea here is that the dogs were not pets in the days of Jesus as such. They were they served a purpose. There were guard dogs, and then there were a lot of stray dogs. And if you've traveled in other parts of the world, that's just kind of how it is. Like part of the landscape. Only the wealthiest of the wealthy have like pet pets. Nowadays we have pets, and people have like Instagram accounts for their pets, and it's like they are dressed their dogs up and out. It's a whole other thing. But this is not that. This is designed for the Jewish audience in particular to go, yeah. Dogs, unclean animals are licking his companions. I mean, sort of in a bad way.

SPEAKER_00 41:21

Even to me, thinking of a dog licking your sores is like, and you know, and I'm gonna have the baggage of correct.

SPEAKER_01 41:26

You're not a first century Jew that's continually worried about like social contamination or ritual contamination. And we should probably just say, and it's kind of actually uh it's unfortunate that I didn't already say so. As near as we can tell, this parable is being told in the very same context as the parables of Luke 15. Yeah the lost coin, the lost sheep, the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. There's no break here. Like you look if you look at Luke chapter 15, right? All of these parables are being told, and then you get to 16.1, Jesus tells his disciples the parable of the shrewd manager, which we'll get to a little bit later. And then it says just briefly here in verse 14, the Pharisees who loved money heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. So he said to them, and then the reach man of Lazarus follows. Yeah, this is the covered to the heart of Zero. So this is all taking place in the same setting. And when I've taught this before, Bright, what I have said is, and this is very helpful, you might want to write this down. There are three groups of people present. Yep. Three groups of people. You have the sinners, yes, right, that are the sinners and tax lectures, then you have the disciples, and then you have the religious leaders. And these parables are targeted parables. Right? So the lost sheep, lost points, and lost son are targeted at the sinners. As we will see, if you just look at chapter 16, verse 1, look at Luke 16, 1. It says Jesus told his disciples, his disciples, the parable of the truth manager. And we'll get to that, right? We're gonna have a that's I think chapter 26. And then look at this to the Pharisees who were lovers of money, he tells the rich man and Lazarus. Yeah. So we have to bear in mind that these were not just general parables that were spoken out into the air. In fact, it's only Luke that records the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, not Mark, not Matthew, not John. This is a targeted parable to a very specific audience making a very specific point. And it's almost impossible to miss because the central elements are exaggerated.

SPEAKER_00 43:22

Very exaggerated.

SPEAKER_01 43:23

He's wearing kirkball, you got this beggar who's got sores, the dogs are licking.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

That the Pharisees were supposed to go, uh well, and there's another, you know, just the fact that we have the name Lazarus as a character. The only the only character named in one of his parables. Right. And you know, it's the Greek form of Elite Eliaser. Very good. The the servant of Abraham who who was not, according to Genesis, he was not going to be in the covenant line. Right. He in a sense sat outside the gate, but he was faithful. Yep. Faithful. And kind of represents, you know, the overturning of well, it's just. This line. Yeah. It's it's it's kind of almost a predecessor of the idea of the Gentile being adopted. I like when we get into the idea of Abraham, too, which is Paul goes all over with that as well. That were adopted into the lineage in a spiritual form.

SPEAKER_01 44:17

Your point is that every element of this, remember, these stories existed as a genre, but every element of this particular parable is purposefully and even provocatively chosen. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Right. Not not just there aren't just random details. Yes. It's all purposeful. And you have to bear in mind this parable, this story was targeted toward the religious leaders. Now, we should also say, you want to write this down. In the Gospel of Luke, going all the way back to Luke chapter 11, Jesus has been in Luke 11, in Luke 12, in Luke 13, in Luke 14, in Luke 16, 15, and 16, Jesus has been in an ongoing conflict with the Pharisees, with the religious leaders. Like that is a that is a feature of the Gospel of Luke, going all the way back to Luke 11. You can trace, you can just read Luke 11 to 16, and it's uninterrupted conflict with the religio with the religious leaders.

SPEAKER_00 45:09

And the parable of the rich man in Lazarus, as Luke organizes his gospel, appears to be kind of the final blow to the rest of his ministry, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:22

And it it's basically saying that the Pharisees had it was the it was the final blow. It was the knock-out punch to Pharisaical ways of thinking. And actually, after this, Luke 17 and onward, the Pharisees just make a couple small appearances and no more conflict. It's like the boxing match is taking place in chapters 11 and 16, and they get knocked out by the force of Jesus' argument. You have Moses and the prophets. You have exactly right. Yeah. Exactly right. So all of this needs to be borne in mind. This is not just Jesus musing about the state of the dead. Right. Right. What happens when you die. These are targeted parables into very specific cultural, religious, social context. Absolutely. Yep. Okay, so far so good, everybody. All right. So let's keep reading then. Um there are today, there are today, page 310.

SPEAKER_00 46:14

You got that? I got that. There are today close beside us many who are hungry, naked, and homeless. A neglect to impart of our means to those needy and suffering ones places upon us a burden of guilt which we shall one day fear to meet. All covetousness is condemned as idolatry. Yep. All selfish indulgence is an offense in God's sight. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 46:34

So here she's just making the point of practical application, not unimportant, but that this situation was not unique to the first century, that we also are in situations where we can help. Yeah. And if we prioritize the things of this world over and against the things of the hereafter, and aren't helpful to people are building up the kingdom, recognizing the Imabu Dei, as you said, the image of God and others, then a similar fate awaits us. Absolutely. That's what she said. Yeah. Um, and if you don't mind, read that next long paragraph. And if you want, just take a breather about halfway through and see if you've got anything to say.

SPEAKER_00 47:08

Okay. God has made the rich, God made the rich man a steward of his means. And it was his duty to attend to just such cases as that of the beggar. The command has been given thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Beautiful. The rich man was a Jew, and he was acquainted with the command of God, but he forgot that he was accountable for the use of his entrusted means and capabilities. It goes back to what she said before. He'd been entrusted. You got it. And so there's an important word. Yes, entrusted. So our obligation is to God as much as it is to the beggar at the gate. Now that doesn't mean we don't have true godly compassion. But but you know, it's like Jesus said, do uh whatever you've done to the least of these, you've you've done to me. To me. So the gulf and the chasm is what we're creating with our relationship with God. And and it and if we're truly in that right relationship, uh, we do have this compassion for those who, for whatever reason, you know, have been dealt a harder blow in life than we have. And it maybe it's temporary, and maybe we we're temporarily in a good place. And but that that idea of being entrusted, of having obligation.

SPEAKER_01 48:22

You nailed it in the first sentence of that paragraph, she says uses the word steward, and then she talks about duty. Right. That that those of us that have resources, whether it's financial resources, resources of, as you said, time, talents, yeah. They we are putting trust with these, right? And it's now we are in the distribution business. What can you do with the resources that have been committed to you?

SPEAKER_00 48:43

Okay, keep reading. All right, the Lord's blessings rested upon him abundantly, but he employed them selfishly to honor himself, not his maker. In proportion to his abundance was his obligation to use his gifts for the uplifting of humanity. This was the Lord's command, but the rich man had no thought of his obligation to God. He lent money and took interest for what he loaned, but he returned no interest for what God had lent him. He had knowledge and talents, but he did not improve them. Forgetful of his accountability to God, he devoted all of his powers to pleasure. Everything with which he was surrounded, his his round of amusements, the praise and flattery of his friends ministered to his selfish enjoyment. So engrossed was he in the society of his friends that he lost all sense of his responsibility to cooperate with God in his ministry of mercy. He had opportunity to understand the Word of God and to practice its teachings, but the pleasure-loving society he chose so occupied his time that he forgot the God of eternity. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 49:43

So a lot going on there, and Ellen White is basically teasing out what would have been kind of understood by the first century here, that when you start using language like bore purple fairy sumptuously every day, he's a Jewish man, he's of the religious elite, he's kind of a part of the social aristocracy. All of this is the point. It's the priorization of selfish interest and selfish indulgence and the realm of amusements, as she says, over and against the duty, responsibility, stewardship, trust that had been given to him to care for those that, like himself, bore the image of God. Correct. And I love this. I don't know if you picked up on this, but I loved how she contrasts all of this language here: pleasure, amusement, flattery, selfish enjoyment. And then she contrasts that pleasure-loving society with the word eternity. She the word eternity shows up very in fact, you know what I wrote in my notes here. I wrote down these three kind of ideas as Ellen White's unpacking. She talks a lot about the idea of suffering. The word suffering comes up over and over again. Then the word eternity comes up a lot. And then these words, synonyms, selfishness, amusement, and pleasure. So those words are kind of out there. Suffering is going to show up, eternity is going to show up, and selfishness or some variation of pleasure, selfish pleasure is going to show up. Yeah. So you kind of drive those three stakes in the ground, so to speak. And we're going to find Ellen White's understanding of what's going on in this parable inside of those three stakes.

SPEAKER_00 51:21

Yeah. I, you know, I see on those again that idea of exchange. Yeah, let's mesh that a little bit. Yeah. You know, it's it's much it's somewhere in later in air, she just quotes that verse. Okay, you're gonna we're gonna get to Yeah, we can we can get to that. But it's it's an idea that kind of the reversal idea side thing that came up again.

SPEAKER_01 51:38

So in that last lord there of that paragraph, note the word eternity. Yeah. Eternity. Because uh here's the short version. The rich man, like the man yesterday, who said, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna make bigger barns. That's what I need. I need a bigger barn to store more of my stuff. He lacked an awareness of eternity. And when Jesus says, fool, tonight your life will be required of you. He's not saying, I'm gonna kill you because you're a bad person. He's like, you didn't know that this life is not the life that we're living for. This is just the probation or the the preamble or the appetizer to the real life that God has for us. And so eternity is a crucial idea in this whole story.

SPEAKER_00 52:18

Yeah. This is one of the things. One of the things I had written down was, you know, we we need to invest with eyes towards eternity. Yeah. And you know, it's that very same point. And it's more than just financially, that's part of it, but we need to invest who we are with eyes towards eternity.

SPEAKER_01 52:35

You can have your IRA, you can have your 401k, you can have your whatever, it's fine. But we need to be thinking about she's gonna make this foy. The real things that we will be able to take with us into eternity are two things character and converts. Character, yep. Character and converts. That's it. Those are the only things we're taking with us into eternity. We're not taking any widgets, we're not taking any stock portfolio, we're not taking any Bitcoin. The only thing we're taking into eternity is character and convicts. Praise God. Okay, let's keep reading. The time came when a change took place in the condition of the two men. The poor man had suffered, there it is again, that comes up a lot, day by day, but he had patiently and quietly endure. In the course of time, he died and was buried. There was no one to mourn for him. But by his patience and suffering, he had witnessed for Christ. He had endured the test of his faith, and at his death, he is represented as being carried by angels into Abraham's bosom. Right now, again, this is kind of an exaggerative element, like the Dobbs licking the sores, the wearing purple, all of that. Abraham's bosom is a purposefully provocative way that Jesus is saying heaven, but he puts He puts Lazarus in the one embrace of Abraham. The father of the You got it. By the way, Jesus did the same thing with the Roman centurion. Remember this in Mark chapter 8, or Matthew chapter 8, when he said, Many will come from the east and the west and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom, but the sons of the kingdom will be cast into outer darkness. There will be weeping and ashia of teeth. So Jesus has already employed Abraham, and the reason he's doing that is because, and Elamite makes this point actually kind of shockingly several times, that they had almost elevated their attachment to Abraham to an equal or even greater point status than their attachment to God.

SPEAKER_00 54:22

Well, that comes up in the parable when the root.

SPEAKER_01 54:26

It's like Father Abraham, Father Abraham, why don't you talk into God? Why why are you talking to so so and you might remember when John the Baptist was preaching, and uh Jesus uh John the Baptist said, you know, don't say to yourselves, we have that Abraham is our father, can God because God can raise up children unto Abraham from these stones. Yeah. So you get the sense there that the the context is a reliance upon Abrahamic genealogy and connection. Right. And this guy, the the la the the better, ends up in the warm embrace of Abraham, which is a provocative way of saying the good place.

SPEAKER_00 55:01

Yeah, so here you're here's what you're expecting for someone good to go. Right. So here's the beggar. We'll put him there and there in his arms. Uh why don't you read Lazarus represents? Lazarus represents the suffering poor, he believe in Christ. When the trumpet sounds, and all that are in the graves hear Christ's voice and come forth, they will receive the reward. For their faith in God was not only a mere theory, but a reality. Yeah. Keep reading. The rich man also died and was buried in hell, and he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and see of Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom, and he cried and said, Father Abraham. So here's he's trying to to Abraham, yeah, because he thinks that Abraham is his lifeline. Yes. Hey, what's going on here? I should be over there with you. Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus. He's okay. So he still thinks he still thinks he's the servant boy of the point. Yeah, in Lazarus. Send Lazarus, he can do it. That he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:04

So there's a lot going on here, and your point earlier is that you know there is a kind of cartoonishness to this story, and the idea that you could be in flaming torments, and that a tiny little drip of water could somehow be sustained on the finger in the heat flames. And it would be enough. It's in fact, uh Kim Papiano makes this point. I know I said that wrong, but he says, the parable therefore contains the following contradictory imagery. The rich man exists in bodily form in Hades in the midst of literal fire, which, however, causes him mental rather than physical agony. I'll come to that in a second, which in turn he seeks to relieve through real water. Now, the reason that he says physical, this term here, he actually let me see if I can find it here. There's a term, uh, the Greek word here for the agony that the uh rich man is experiencing is actually kind of an interesting term, and the turn is only used two other times in the writings of Luke. And both times, it is uh not physical suffering. For example, when Jesus' parents lose track of him, yeah, they are in agony, they're tormented. It's the same Greek word. And uh there was another one in Acts. And so they obviously were now in physical torment. That's exactly the point. Yeah. That's exactly the point. Let me see if I can find this here. This is really good. If you've got a point, why don't you uh make it there while I look for this? You got anything there?

SPEAKER_00 57:32

Um let's see. We're uh Well, I again we talked about the idea of um of Lazarus and he and he still kind of sees him as his as his Aaron boy. I like that. So think of that. Yeah, and that but this goes to her point, which is your character, what you have chosen in your life, that gulf is fixed. Right. This permanent. So so he gets to this state of of afterlife limbo, whatever, whatever it is in their case. Um and and his attitude toward the beggar hasn't changed. Right. Right? He still s he still sees him as the beggar, as the errand boy. You got it. And so so the gulf is still the gulf is still there, which I find. And that goes exactly to her point later when she talks about how the character is the great gulf.

SPEAKER_01 58:22

I can't find it, unfortunately. Um but there's only two other times. Oh, here it is. Here it is. Another peculiar element in this parable, the parable of the rich man of Lazarus, is the Greek word odunami, odunami, translated as anguish and used twice in this parable to describe the rich man's torments. It refers to mental anguish rather than physical pain, and is thus used elsewhere by Luke. Yet the rich man seeks to relieve his suffering through water. And the the two places where this is found is Luke chapter 12, verse 38, where it says that uh Mary and Joseph were in anguish over their inability to find Jesus. And then the other one is in Acts chapter 20, verse 38, the anguish of the elders at Ephesus uh when they were told that they would not see the face of Paul again. That's it. So the the total number of times that this word Adunamai is used in the writings of Luke, it's here. And then the other two times, there's no physical element to it at all. I mean, there's no flame. It's a psychological. It's this like psychological, oh no. Oh no. Quite fascinating. Interesting. That word, because there are other words for just pain or burning that could have easily been chosen, but this word of psychological, and you do get the sense of that. The sense is, oh no, what has happened? Please tell my brothers. He's he it and he's having an almost lively conversation with Abraham, and it seems impossible that that's the kind of thing that you could do if you were, I don't know, in flames. Yeah, I know. So it's it's all exaggerated, it's cartoonish. Jesus is, in fact, I'm gonna make uh almost just made one of my punchlines, which I'm not gonna do until the end. Okay. Woo! Almost said something too soon. Um okay, so let's jump down. Um where they do you have anything in the next couple paragraphs? I've got some uh not until the paragraph that begins, Christ desires his hearers. No, I don't think anything significant. Okay, so let's go to that paragraph there, page 312, Christ desires his hearers. It looks like it's 263 of the original, is that right? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:28

Okay, why don't you read that for us? Christ desires his hearers to understand that it is impossible for men to secure the salvation of the soul after death. Son, Abraham is represented as answering, remember that thou in thy lifetime received the good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things. But now he is comforted, and you are tormented. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed. How does it get? So that they which would pass from hence to you cannot, neither can they pass to us that would come from thence. Thus Christ represented the hopelessness of looking for a second probation. This life is the only time given to man in which to prepare for eternity.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:10

Eternity, there's our word again. I like this because now we've not only mentioned the God of eternity, but now this is it. And that's the fixity of the great gulf. There's no, as she says here, second probation, or we would say second chance. Right. And you made that point earlier. Um then she kind of continues to unpack the in that next uh paragraph, which we're not gonna read yet, but the next paragraph I do want to read the rich man had spent his life. The rich man had spent his life in self-pleasing, which is the bottom of page 313. And too late he saw he had made no provision for eternity. Here's our word again. He realized his folly and thought of his brothers, who would go on as he had done, living to please themselves. Then he made the request, I beg you, therefore, father, that you would send him, Lazarus, to my father's house, for I have five brothers, uh that they that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment. But Abraham said to him, They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them. And he said, No, no, Father Abraham. But if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent. But he said to him, No, if they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead. And you made this flight, or maybe you didn't make this flight, but the other character that we have in the gospels named Lazarus in John chapter 11 literally rises bodily from the dead. Right. And then in the end of chapter 11 of John, they're trying to kill him. Exactly. They do everything they can to make the story go away. So there is this kind of you know moment here where it's like, okay, now I am gonna say the thing I was gonna say earlier. Okay. Okay, this is the time. I'm gonna say it. So one of the things that the Kim Pape O Anu, Pape Onu, says in his book is this, and it's so brilliant. He says that Jesus is purposefully subverting this genre of story. Yeah. Okay. Now, how? Okay, here it is. The whole idea, and and you can read by Papiana's book and and have a look at it. But the whole idea here is that you have this reversal of expectation, this reversal of fortune. Someone's gone to the other side, they've come back with an urgent message. You need to reform. You've got to reform. And in the ways that these stories are often told, the people do reform. That it has the intended desired effect. Somebody has seen the other side, and now they've come back miraculously and they've reformed. It's all live happily ever after. And they all live happily ever after. And Papiato says, actually, Jesus in the parable refuses to Abraham refuses, flatly refuses twice to do this, right? Because he says, No, please, I have brothers. He's like, nope, they have it, Moses and the prophets. No, please, if somebody came back risen from the dead, they would no, and then it hangs there. And the reason is, says Papiano, and I agree with this, Jesus is purposefully undermining the idea, contrary to Torah, that you know, the idea, the idea in Torah is you cannot talk to the dead. We don't talk to the dead. Anybody that talked to the dead or had a familiar spirit or was involved in necromancy was cut off from Israel. And Jesus here is saying, that's not the way it works. The way it works is God has revealed Himself, His will, His principles, His ideals in Torah. Yeah. They have Torah. And so the whole point of the absurd, cartoonish use of the parable, and even using some elements of the parable that are like, what? Is to show this is stupid and this isn't how it works. The way that works is God has given principles. Those principles are found in Torah, and you turn to Torah, you don't wait for some miraculous deliverance to come from a person returning from the other side. Right. Interesting. That's fantastic. And that's how that's kind of Kim's full point. He says that, in fact, let me see if I can find it here. What do you what do you have any thoughts there? Let's see if I can read that. Um Let me see if I can find it here. Okay, here it is. This is his conclusion. He says, in this respect, any contribution of the parable to a synoptic understanding of the afterlife is in essence negative. The parable is important not for what it portrays, since it is set in the context of popular tale from the dead format that is eventually rejected. Rather, it is important for what it rejects. All tales of supposed revelations from the dead. Against such tales, it reinforces faith in the validity of the law and the prophets as the only reliable witness for repentance. Isn't that fascinating? Yeah, no, that's that's fantastic. That is such a great takeaway. And it would have meant so much to the religious leaders. Remember, this parable is targeted specifically to them, saying, Hey, I know you possess the law and the prophets, but do they possess you? As you step over the poor on the way to your flattering social religious meetings, you have Torah. Does Torah have you? Don't look for some supernatural messenger from the other side. Jesus purposefully undermines this whole genre of tale and says it's the law and the prophets. It's the Bible, the Bible. The type. Oh. That's fantastic. Isn't that incredible? Yeah, no, I love that. I just absolutely love that. Um, okay. Now, hustling right along here.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:34

Yeah, I just want to bring up something on the next paragraph. Uh, what paragraph? Uh it's when the rich man solicited additional evidence for his brothers. Oh, yep, yep, yep, yep. He's just plainly told the types and symbols. He was plainly told that should this evidence be given, they would not be persuaded. And this is the sentence that taught my attention. His request cast a reflection on God. He's uh it's almost, you know, shades of the Garden of Eden. It was this woman that you gave me. It was the serpent. Agree. Like we how would I how was I to know? How was I to know? That's why he he keeps coming back. The answer has the law on the prophet. You've had the law on the prophets. Yeah, this is like yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:12

And and that's great writing, too, by the way. The way that Ellen White just captures that idea in just such an economy of words. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven words. Yeah. His request cast a reflection on God. And then the next sentence, it was as if the rich man had said, If you have more thoroughly warned me, I should not now be here. Yeah, right. And Jesus is like, Yeah, you have the Moses the prophet, you have the whole of Torah, you have the entire prophetic revelation, and then obviously, you have Messiah present.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:43

And then she goes on to say, Light has been given them, but they would not see. Truth has been presented to them, but they would not hear, which is an ongoing, like, especially in the Gospel of Mark, you've got these him, I think it's seven and eight, you've got these two bookend healings between this whole idea, and a lot of this was around his disciples, if not, he said, Do you still not see? Do you still not understand? And he's he's he does this healing of where he's sticking the his fingers in the guy's ears. Yeah. In a way that he often doesn't heal. A lot more bells and whistles. A lot of times it's a very silent miracle that Jesus does. So he does that healing, and right in the midst of that, with the with the yeast of the Pharisees, he's saying, Do you still not see? Do you still not hear? And then there's the healing of the blind man where he he heals him. And it's like the with the poultice, is it? Uh or maybe just heals him. He heals him, but but he's like, Do you see? He's like, Well, I see I see menace priests, which, you know, the question arises, Well, did Anna do it right? And but it it was this idea of ongoing revelation. Yeah. Your eyes are slowly being open. So the disciples dealt with this, but I mean, here he's obviously pointing directly to the religious leaders.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:52

Well, I mean, you you're in the you're in Minnesota there, and you get experiences which we get here in Colorado, where you get a massive snow dump, and overnight maybe a whole blanket of snow has been laid, but the next day is sunny and bright. And if you've been in your house and you go out in the middle of the day and you're not ready for it, and you open the door, it can be absolutely blinding. It can be literally blinding. I mean, like literally, yeah, still blind for people to see. Yeah. Uh and so the idea here is that is that Jesus is not just fully disclosing every detail about who he is and what he came to do, and he's slowly, gradually giving them kind of like sunglasses and then a little less and then a little less until eventually that's are you getting it? Are you saying it? And here, in this ongoing conflict with the Pharisees, that's been going on all the way back since Luke chapter 11 in the context of the Gospel of Luke, this is the knock out blown. Yeah. Jesus is just giving it to him. He's very pointed to them. Blunt. Very pointed, very blunt. Um, okay, so now I'm gonna turn a few pages and I'm gonna go over. We've already made this one, but let's just dwell on it briefly. Page 316, paragraph begins, the parable of the rich, 266. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus shows how the two classes represented by these men are estimated in the unseen world. Do you have that? Yeah. Um, and then you have this line: There is no sin in being rich if riches are not acquired by injustice. And she's actually already had a whole chapter on this, which was Shall not God avenge his own. Right? Remember that, uh, let's see, which chapter was that? Uh chapter 14. Chapter 14. Uh this this idea, God has all or the the text has already dealt with this notion that wealth in and of itself is not a problem. Correct. As long as it has not been acquired through oppression, through injustice, through, you know, uh means that are not in keeping with but there are people that have just made good decisions, they've made good investments, they're industrious, they're hard working. No problem. So I love it that she says, you know, there is But that's how we steward it. Exactly. It's all and then she uses your word. A rich man is not condemned for having riches, but condemnation rests upon him if the means entrusted to him is spent in selfishness. Far better he might lay up his money beside the throne of God, which I think is a really cool image, putting your resources beside God's throne by using it to do good. Death cannot make any man poor who thus devotes himself to seeking eternal riches. Love that sentence. Nice wreath sentence. Yeah. And notice here again, you have this idea of selfishness, eternity. Remember, these are kind of like three pegs suffering, selfishness, eternity. And she has two of them in this paragraph here. And then she goes on to talk about, you know, if we are unfaithful stewards of the resources that have been committed to us, well, then that's a whole different situation. Okay, then she goes on and talk about, I'm happy to stop at any point here. Keep rolling. She talks about how winning souls to Jesus, character, and converts are the only riches that we're going to take from this world to the next. The people that we become, and she's made the point several times already, character determines destiny or character decides destiny. Right? That and then the people that we teach the gospel to, we preach the gospel to, hopefully, but not limited to, our own children. Correct. Coming along with us. And so that's the real treasure. And we should be putting our resources, our birthly resources, our temporal resources that we're gonna have to leave behind, rather than building bigger barns, Brett. Yes. We should be like, wait a minute. Can I invest these resources in character and converts? Right, right, right. And eyes to eternity. That eyes to eternity. Those are the only things that we're gonna be able to take with us. Right. Then she gets into a section, if you're ready for it, and if you've got anything uh before this, speak up. Or she basically says this is not only about sort of the distribution of one's wealth and resources to the poor, but how the Jewish nation had been entrusted with something even more uh important, even more uh uh valuable than literal riches. They were given truth, right? The truth of Torah, the truth of sanctuary, and they were to be a light to the Gentiles, a light to the world, and they had largely squandered that opportunity. Yeah. And so she has this subheading here, application to the Jewish nation. And this, in my view, is the main point. Actually, I think this is even more the point of the parable than even actual wealth. Yes. There's a number of other parables that touch on being a good steward, like the one that we just talked about yesterday with the man building larger and larger barns. But to me, what Jesus is saying, in fact, let me just throw this at you here. Remember back to the larger context of Luke 15 and 16. All the sinners and tax collectors are gathering around Jesus. The people are murmuring about this. Luke 15, verse 1. Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of Allah muttered and said, This man welcomed sinners and eats with them. Then Jesus told them this parable. This parable is for not only the sinners and tax collectors, but for the Pharisees. Lost sheep, lost coin, lost son. Okay? Now, then 16 1. Jesus told his disciples a parable. And this is a parable that we'll get to uh in a few chapters, and this is about being a good steward of what's been entrusted to you. Correct. And what's happening here is that Jesus is saying to the disciples, here's a story about a man who was put in great trust, but did not steward the trust that had been that he had been placed, the resources and opportunities that had he was a bad steward. In other words, he's saying to the disciples, don't you be the same. Then he turns his attention, because the disciples are just learning. They're growing, they're they're traveling with Jesus. Then he turns his attention to the Pharisees and he tells another parable. It's fundamentally about stewardship. This is not just stewardship of money and resources, but of Torah. Correct. And this is where the eternal riches. This is where my point about the knockout punch is he said something to the sinners and tax collectors, he said something to the disciples, and now he finally says something to the Pharisees. And what he says to the Pharisees is Um, you guys, if you don't collectively or individually turn around, you're on the fast track to Hades. Yeah. You're on the fast track to a life separated from God and clutch your pearls separated from Abraham. Right. Yeah. Your guy. So that's how you have to understand, Luke 15 and 16. In these, there's three audiences there, and Jesus is targeting these parables at specific audiences, and that's what Ellen White does here, where she's like, Look, let's make the application to the Jewish nation. They've been entrusted with a great many riches. The riches of Torah, the riches of the prophetic writings, the riches of sanctuary, the riches of the arrival of Messiah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:52

And she says here, halfway through that uh paragraph. The one that for the application to the Jewish nation when Christ gave the parable halfway through, he had appointed them stewards of his grace. And I just written by that riches. I mean to your point. Yeah. This these are the riches he's really getting to the bottom. Stewards of his grace. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:16

And, you know, in case we're tempted to look down our long noses at people that lived 2,000 years ago, we have been entrusted with rich resources. Right. Not just Torah, not just the prophetic writings, but how about the New Testament? Correct. How about the gospels themselves? How about Jesus, the life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus? So the point of this parable is not for us to go, man, those idiots. Like the parable of the two worshippers. Right. Remember Kenneth, he said, that's a trap. Because if you go, I'm glad I'm not like them. You are. You are like this. It's a similar trap. Like for us, it's like, okay, wait a minute. Am I stepping over people that are at my doorstep? Not literally, maybe, but do I have people in my life that I'm effectively stepping over who are longing for what I have on my way to my religious meetings, my self-congratulatory religious meetings? That's the take-home message for us today. Not just the way that we use our resources and our money, so we should be generous and charitable and kind, and to state the obvious, not corrupt, right? But how am I stewarding the considerable gospel resources that have been placed in my trust?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:27

Correct. You feel me? Yeah, absolutely. I I love how she finishes that paragraph too that she writes they have divorced themselves from God. Um you dismissed that. Powerful Yeah, again, dismissed that. It's the whole idea that that that the gulf is not created by God. You know, sometimes people think, well, God kind of decides. Yes. But no, she's saying, you decide. You got it. Well, you will. You gotta. You know, we we get we get that. I think I've heard you say before, in the end, everyone, everybody gets what they want. People get what they want. People get what they want. And as what she said, they divorced themselves, they created the gulf, the chasm. She's already said in this book several times, God destroys Nome.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:11

Yeah, correct. We destroy ourselves. We do. It's not like God has arbitrary in fact, God doesn't even really show up in the parable of the rich man at Lazarus.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:19

Right? Like angels are there, and the appeal, as we've already mentioned, is to Abraham. It's like, where is God in the story? And and that's kind of purposeful and provocative. It is provocate. Right? It's like, you really think it's in fact, let me just look at this again. I'm just gonna go through the variable here. Carried away Lazarus, he called the father's pity on me, and Lazarus to dip the tongue. But Abraham replies, I mean, what does God show up in this parable? I'm just reading it through here. Come in 26. Abraham replied, God doesn't even show up in the parable. Yeah. So, so the idea here is that this is this like imaginary dialogue with Abraham in whom they trusted, and the idea here is genealogically connected to Abraham. It's like, but what about the heart of God? What about the image of God? What about the grace of God? What about the truth of God? You think that you just happen to be luckily, happily, fortuitously born in the right family line, and now everything's fine? While people that bear the image of God are suffering at your gate? And then by way of illustration, people are around you that don't know about Jesus. It's like what are we doing? What are we doing? Right now, the world is kind of going a little crazy over the Winter Olympics is happening right now, which is fine. People can pay attention to the Winter Olympics. But there are lots of things in this world that can distract us and get us thinking about things that are not the most consequential things. Again, if you want to watch the gold medal match, I got no problem with that. I'm just saying, what are we all it's very easy to be, oh yeah, this and this, and then this shiny objects. Then shiny objects, exactly right. Where we need to the shiny object that we need to be thinking about every day is God, Christ, Scripture, and stewardship, character, converts, eternity, destiny. Not to the total exclusion.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:25

I mean, we do live in the world. And these thoughts don't have to be dour and like this is joyful. Yes, thank you, Jesus. You know, we do these challenges where we pour ourselves in for my I mean, it's invigorating. Correct. It's not monkish, we're not like, well, no, you know, I've got to study this. That's like hallelujah. This is fantastic. Yeah, exactly right.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:48

Um I love this line here, by the way, in that section. Uh that very not the next paragraph, but the one after this is bottom page 319-268. Christ recognized.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:57

You got that? Read that. That is so good. Christ recognized no virtue in lineage. He taught that spiritual connection supersedes all natural connection. Exactly right. Yeah. Keep reading. The Jews claim to have descended from Abraham, but by failing to do the works of Abraham, they proved that they were not his true children. Right. Only those who prove themselves to be spiritually in harmony with Abraham by obeying the voice of God are reckoned as of true descent. There you go. Although the beggar belonged to the class looked upon by men as inferior, Christ recognized him as one whom Abraham would take into the very closest friendship. That's the bosom. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:37

And by the way, when she says the Jews here, she's talking about the specifically the Jewish leaders of Jesus' day, not Jews writ large, and certainly not the Jews ethnically, because the whole church was made up of Jews. Right. Right? Like the disciples are all Jews. Jesus is a Jew. On the day of Pentecost, 3,000 Jews are the way the church is launched. So the institution Exactly right. She's talking about the Jewish leadership and the insularity of the Jewish religious leaders that just refuse to see, like you were saying, what was right in front of them. Yeah. Ah, it's all so good. It's all just so, so good. Okay, turning to page, page 320, another lengthy paragraph. This one begins, the rich man, though surrounded. I want to read this. The rich man, though surrounded with all the luxuries of life. Okay, there's one of my there's one of my states in the ground, like the luxuries of life, was so ignorant that he put Abraham where God should have been. You've made that if he had appreciated this his exalted privileges and had allowed God's spirit to mold his mind and heart, he would have had an altogether different position. So with the nation he represented. So she's talking about the nation. If he had responded with to the divine call, their future would have been totally different. They would have shown true spiritual discernment. They have means which God would have increased, making it sufficient to bless and enlighten the whole world in fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant, right? In you all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. But they had so far separated them, so far separated from the Lord's arrangement, divorce, that their whole life was perverted. They failed to use their gifts as God's stewards in accordance with the truth, with truth and righteousness. Eternity, as another one of my mistakes, was not brought into their reckoning, and the result of their unfaithfulness was to ruin the whole nation. Then notice the next paragraph. As a consequence of that, after AD 70, she does this. Christ knew that the destruction of Jerusalem Christ knew that at the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews would remember his warning, and it was so. When calamity came upon Jerusalem, when starvation and suffering, there's my third stake that I've put in the ground of this parable, of every kind came upon the people. They remembered the words of Christ and understood the parable. They had brought their suffering upon themselves by their neglect to let their God-given light shine forth to the world. And so all three elements are there. Sort of selfishness, the failure to have an eternal perspective, and suffering as a consequence of not living into the vocation and the stewardship that got.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:09

Which was a reversal because they were not paying attention to the Is that your word? It's gotta be. Reversal. It's a good word. You just kept saying it. So I well, I you know, I toyed with that one, exchange those, but no, it's something else. Something else. Okay. All right. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:24

Um let's see. Yep. Yep. Uh do you have anything there for us that jumped out? She basically said, Well, you know, make the application. Don't just look down your long nose at people that lived 2,000 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:41

What about you? What about us? Well, we we've talked about it before, but she makes it a very specific point, uh, second sentence in there. The rich man uh the rich man claimed to be a son of Abraham, but he was separated from Abraham by an impassable gulf, a character wrongly develops. So again, she makes the point that that this was the gulf is self-created. Yes. She said that elsewhere in the gets later in the chat. And then it's not genealogical connection, it's the character of Abraham. Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:16

Oh, very well said. Okay, what else you got?

SPEAKER_00 1:25:20

Uh boy, I've got nothing else there right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:23

So roll with women. Um bottom of that page, she says uh he chooses the atmosphere of sin. That kind of hit me hard. It's like do you live in an atmosphere of sin. Yeah. And I want to choose. I mean, we really have the option here to breathe the atmosphere of heaven to the atmosphere of sin. How do we breathe the atmosphere of heaven? I'll tell you how. You spend time doing what we're doing right now. Absolutely. You spend time in the Word, you spend time learning, you spend time praying, you spend time teaching as opportunity is afforded to you. You spend time fellowshipping with like-minded believers, you spend time filling your mind with things of eternal consequence. That's how we breathe the atmosphere. So I get that fresh air.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:59

Fresh air when you when you're in inside all day. And you're in an or even or an environment with worse pollution than that, and you can step into fresh air. It's like Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:08

Because we are in a world right now, friends, and I know you know this, but we're in a world where we're just being continually bombarded with shiny objects, like you said. Like, you know, whether it's social media or the television or 24-7 news channels that are just begging you to be angry, like it's we're just if you are not actively seeking out opportunities to breathe the atmosphere of heaven, you will by default be breathing the atmosphere of sin.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:38

Yeah, absolutely. It's like forest bathing. So I don't like that term. Oh, I it's I don't know a lot about it, but they talk about, you know, we we are such an inside culture that for our health. I mean, this may seem common sense to a lot of people, but get out. Get out and just spend some time outside. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:57

Forest bathing?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:58

Yeah. Yeah, no. I it's uh and I don't think you have to be naked on mosquito season.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:04

That's definitely not ought to be naked in mosquito season in northern Minnesota.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:08

No, there was there's a spiritual application too. It's like it's like touch real things. Have you heard of grounding?

SPEAKER_01 1:27:14

Do you sink your shoes off, you get out, you get your feet in the grass. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I don't know if it does all the things that people say, but I will say this. I will say this. When I'm with my boys and my wife, and we're in some park somewhere, some field somewhere, and we're throwing the frisbee. We love to throw our family loves throwing the frisbee, and you're running around without shoes, and your feet are in the grass and in the it is you're part of the earth. It's tactile, it's tactile. It is. Now, for me, I do a lot of this kind of thing because I'm a climber. So I'm often outside and I love backpacking and I love fly fishing. So I'm often in beautiful places. But there's a lot of people who only rarely get out in nature.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:55

It's some have lack of opportunity. That's exactly right. It's like they just are I mean you walk out your back door and the lake is right there. The lake is there, the forest is there. I mean you drove around here, you saw our view here. Yeah. Five minutes from my front door is an absolutely incredible state park. I spent a lot of time there, and I can be to the mountains in an hour and a half. Yeah. The point is, if if we're not to use your language forest vaping, not just outside in nature, in creation, in the mountains, in the woods, but in the text. Right. We are and in community and in books that are building up our character and giving us a desire for converts, well, you're not getting nothing. You're gonna have something, and you're gonna be getting the atmosphere of this world. Everything is vying and begging for our attention. And if we're not actively giving our attention to the things that matter most, then we will by default be giving our attention to things that don't matter. And before you know it, you could end up like, wait, wait, wait a minute. I thought I was supposed to, and you're, and I mean what? And by the way, one thing that's kind of interesting in the darable, you notice that the rich man never complains about his lot. In in the sense that he's never like, hey, this isn't right. He knows good and well, and that's how it's a judgment. Yeah. Nobody's gonna be like, no, I thought I was they've made their choice. They'll know. They will now they might protest initially, like, Lord Lord, didn't we cast out demons and we did all these things? And they're just gonna look at them and they're gonna go, yeah, no, you're right.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:23

And Revelation tells us, you know, that'll surround the city. Yeah, but it's almost performative at that point. I think they know and we don't have foregone conclusion, right? Um you have anything more in the chapter Um Anything more in the chapter. I thought it was interesting in the in the paragraph when the voice of God awakes the dead, he will come from the grave with the same appetites and passions. Yeah. This goes to this idea. Otherwise, you are who you are. You are who you are. God works no miracle to recreate who would not be recreated when he was granted every opportunity. I'm so glad you made this point. Uh read that again. Um, God works no miracle to recreate a man who would not be recreated when he was granted every opportunity. That's the very point that Kim makes in the book. And provided with every facility as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:09

That's the point about the undermining of the whole notion of miraculous messengers from the dead, from the other side, coming back to tell us something. She's like, no, that's not how that works. You have the means here and now to know the will of God, to practice the will of God, to live the will of God, to better understand the will of God. So that's I never I hadn't noticed that she kind of makes the very same point that Kim makes. Uh Kim, let's try it again. Pape Oanu. Good luck. Uh Pape Oanu, which is that Jesus is purposefully undermining this whole genre of tale, folklore, uh to say that's not how it works.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:47

Do you know what else I find so interesting is you know, the punchline. If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead. When Jesus rises from the dead on the road to Emmaus, he opens up starting off on the rock off and the prophets and the psalms, the things and himself. That's a good idea.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:08

Yes, yes. It's just like, yeah, that is so ties into this, right? That's exactly right. He wanted to show them, and he did that. He showed them before and he showed them after. Yeah, but it's there's one of the stories of the Bible. They're run to a man. They're doing a man, it's cool. In fact, let me let me just do this real quick. I wasn't planning on doing this. But one of the things I like to ask people is, you know, if you could be present for any 24-hour period in the Old Testament. He heard me say this before? If you can be present for any 24-hour period in the Old Testament, what would it be? And then I say if you could be present for any 24-hour period in the New Testament, what would it be? Okay. Now I've asked this question of hundreds of people, and one of the top five answers that I hear is I would want to be present for the Luke 24 Bible study. Jesus. Jesus Brent breaking a Jesus opening Torah and explaining to the disciples, oh, I'm here, and did you miss this? And here I am, and there I am in Torah, and here I am in the Psalms. Oh, and did you see this here at Ecclesiastes? And here I am, and here I am, and they just I mean that would be a great one. Yeah, no, that's I hadn't really thought that. Because what's so cool about it is is that in and of itself it's not really a miracle, right? Like some people say the flat eye resurrection itself, but that's a Bible study. That is in depth. You know, I love your point, which is Jesus resurrects and he's like, okay, here I am, but let me show you in Torah. Let me show you, let me show you how on the law of what happens. Because this is the standard. Because remember, uh this is just coming to my mind. Remember that Paul says, let me just quote this here briefly. This is such a great point. Paul in Galatians 1 says this. He says, but even if we are an angel from heaven, should preach a gospel other than the one we preach to you, let them be under God's curse, as we have already said. So now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God's curse. In other words, we taught you based on the revelation of who God is in Torah, in the prophets, in the writings, in our own personal exposure to Jesus, and Paul's case, the road to Damascus encounter, and subsequent appearances. And if somebody comes from the dead, or even an angel, some miraculous thing, that's not it. It's the text.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:23

Right. It's the text. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's in fact I have a text written down that pointed that very thing. I think it's which one did you quote? I just quoted one. I think there was one in Romans that says kind of the same thing. So we got three, I saw you quietly turning stages. Like I say, otherwise I did we miss anything made in there? No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:44

There's gotta be one gem that we missed. And no, let's let you're happy? Oh, I'm very happy. Yeah, this has been this is Okay, let me get my notes. Okay, since I'm doing the same here. Let me see. Go for it. Um let me look at my notes here. I wrote uh several parables in a row about selfishness, right? This is Vegas with a female. She consistently called, okay, got that, I got that, I got that, I got that, I got that. Oh, I got one. There's there's good reason to believe that this that all of this is taking place at some kind of meal setting. Okay. But it could it could have been, because if you go back to Luke 15, remember the critique is what? This man eats with eats with sinners. Well, why would they make that critique if he wasn't at that moment? Eating with sin, even with sinners. And then there's no break. Right from from Luke 15 All the way through to Luke 16, there's no change of scenery, there's no new camera angle. So this is quite a cool point. If all of Luke 15 and all of Luke 16 is happening in some meal thing, which by the way, look at Luke 14. Remember we already did this at the Pharisee's house? Yeah on the Sabbath, he at the Pharisee's house he heals the man that has the abnormal swelling of his body. Remember this? And then Jesus has this uh uh tells the great parable of the wedding or the the the great banquet. So there's good reason to believe that all of this, Luke 15 and 16, is happening at a meal. The Son of Man came eating and drinking. Yeah, but check this out. How about this? The the rich man did not share table fellowship with Lazarus. In fact, left in fact the language here is he wanted even the tiny crumbs that fell from his table. In other words, not leftovers. You don't even get the tiny crumbs that remember what the Syrophoenician one said to him. He says, but either the dogs get the So So the punchline here, if this is happening in a meal setting, the first century audience would have gone, well, why didn't he just invite him inside for a meal? Right? Why didn't he just invite him inside to share a meal? So the whole idea here is that that we have to be literally opening our homes, our houses, our pantries, our tables to them. Who's them? Well, you have them's in your life. I have thems in my life. Yeah. And I think that's a really cool

Rubric

SPEAKER_01 1:36:16

point. I love it. I think we I think we I think we got it. Like we did it. Okay, let's do our uh let's do our rubric. Okay. And uh Sarah, come on in here. Sarah's in the other room. I told her I might call her in to join us for the rubric. So Sarah, if you'd like to come and join us for the rubric. Um there's like a seven-second delay. So if she's gonna come, uh, it's gonna be in like really two artists. There she is. Okay, how d how did it go? Did we miss anything? No. Here you sneak right in here. Yeah, great. Could have gone on two more hours if probably. Can you just kind of uh here? Why don't you take that hello, but this is what we'll do. We'll give you this. This is a it's gonna be a little clumsy, but Sarah? Welcome. Thank you. We'll get to see you tomorrow night. Here you are. Um, okay, so anything that we missed at a point that you were like, I wish you would have said that. She was reading it today and was disappointed I stole this chapter. So honestly, uh, do we miss anything? Anything that jumped out that you were like, oh, I wish they would have said that.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:21

Um I think it would be covered probably when we go through the rubric.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:24

Okay, great. So let's go correct us through the rubric. So let's go through the rubric. Uh why don't we start with you, Sarah, since you're our new guest here? What for you is the shirt one, right? Yeah. You can read this.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:37

Yeah, with my glasses. I was writing on an airplane, David.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:41

But you're a lawyer, not a doctor. Okay, what's the point? What's the point here for you, Sarah? Give it to us.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:47

Okay. We have a choice. And he gives us sufficient light and grace to do the work that he gives us.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:54

Okay, so we have a choice, there's adequate light and grace. Okay, I love it. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:58

Uh, I went right with your thesis, the ending sentence. In this life, men decide their eternal deaths to me. Yeah, that's like the opening sentence. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:04

Yeah. Um, I put uh the point, there are many. For this is a complex parable, but the main emphasis to me appears to be about the call to godly stewardship of our resources and privileges, both temporal and spiritual. I I see that's what she's driving at. But or he's driving at. But there's so you're you're right. I mean, it's really about eternal destiny, and it's it's about all the things. Yeah. I think this is by far the most complex herb up to things. Uh Sarah, the first person, what did you learn about Jesus or God in this chapter that you might not have learned elsewhere?

SPEAKER_02 1:38:41

God is the giver of all that we need to choose him. He is fair and just yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:48

Yeah, totally. Love it. I went with God longs for our presence but respects our decision. Free will.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:58

I don't you leaned into the free will idea. Yeah. Right. At the end, everybody makes their decisions and that are opportunities. Yes. And I kind of went a little different direction. I went um Jesus was not a coward. This brain arms in that context, in that way, I mean, Jesus clear, clearly here is not a coward. And then I put um uh he was what we might call a straight shooter, right down the line. Understatement. I mean, every single person understood what it was that Jesus was saying in this parable. It's unmistakable. Yeah, it's like the parable of the two worshippers. It's like spoke to people's hearts. What are we talking about?

SPEAKER_02 1:39:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:45

Um, okay. The prayer. How do we pray this chapter, sir?

SPEAKER_02 1:39:49

Lord, please help me to use my gifts and my resources for you. They are unloan from the That's great.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:56

Unloan. I love it. Okay. Uh mine was similar. I said, May I steward all of his resources, and we've talked about them throughout the lesson, with an eye on eternal riches.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:07

The things that matter most. The things that you guys are in your 50s? Yeah. You're fives. You're in the fives, like me. Oh, 51. So 52. Oh. My okay. Well, I'm the old one here.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:17

I'm 52 too.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:19

You are there.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:20

You are not you're 53.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:21

Yeah. So so I don't know if you guys are having the same experience, but I'm very much having these rights in my life where as you age, and I have friends that have died. Do you have friends like of the peers of yours that have died? No. Yeah. Very many, but we've been fortunate. Old age, and I use that term loosely here because we would probably say we're still middle age, we're clinging to middle age, but it's good for us because it we know we are not gonna live probably as long as we've already lived. Yeah, no. So you get the opportunity to start thinking about the things that matter most. What does Alverb say? Better to be a house of warning than You got it. It's like good for us to be like, hey, wait a minute. Like we had a guy come over in a day uh that fixed our sink. You saw Stephen Hang fix our sink. And he, I don't know how old he is, but he looks like he's well and truly into his 70s. And I just I just looked at him and I thought, here's here to fix our sink, very helpful, very wonderful guy. And I was like, he's toward the end of his life and he's fixing our sink. Like, I wonder if like as you get uh closer and closer into your 60s, 70s, 80s, and beyond, you know you don't the time is there. Like it's such an opportunity to think about the things that matter most. And if you can do that in your 20s or 30s or 40s and have that as a legacy through your whole life, we can still that on our children, so much the better. Yep. Yeah. Okay, so for me, the prayer um, Father, give me a love for Moses and the prophets for your eternal word. That's right, it's good. Right? Like uh just miracles, yeah. Miracles are fine and good as they go, but what I really want is a love for God's eternal word. Okay, uh practice, Sarah. How do we practice this chapter?

SPEAKER_02 1:42:07

Well, I stole one of yours, I think, from the last night or two, give and live. Give and live. That's really what it's about. Such a common theme between those.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:15

I agree.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:15

Trust him, be as stewards.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:17

Very good. Give and live. To live is to give, to give is to live. Yeah. Okay, Brett.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:23

Practice. Gotta play on this idea of reversal exchange. I said to daily exchange earthly currency for heavenly currency. Oh, no. And when you travel to another country, I knew you were gonna say that. You exchange currency because it's I need this currency to work in this country. Clever.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:38

He's clever. He's very clever.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:40

So we gotta eat that.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:41

So so we've got to talk to have you heard the term forex? That's what they talk about. Like people that trade and foreign change. Um, they're calling fast traders. Yeah, yeah. So you should be thinking forex. That's right. Right? Like, what do I have? What resources do I have here, whether material or whatever, that I can exchange for character and converse. That's right. Because that's the current suit of the kingdom. It's the only one that matters. Woo! Okay. The practice. I got two. Number one, uh look to scripture as my authority and my rule of life. Uh, and number two, to steward my resources well and generously. Amen. Right? And that's that's what you said as well. Yeah. And then promise. Sarah.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:26

Yeah, going back tying in somewhat to the point here, he will give sufficient light and grace to do the work he gives us to do.

unknown 1:43:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:34

Page 315.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:35

Yeah. His sufficiency. Yeah, leaning into what all of his biddings are enabling, right? What God asks us to do, he enables us. Okay, Brent. No, virtually the same.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:44

God has provided us with sufficient light and grace to the city.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:47

Oh, you can say, Yeah, I think we quoted from the saying I think we quoted from the saying. Okay, all right, and here I go. Uh I lean back on this idea, which I have a few times now, that character decides destiny. And that's a promise both ways. That door swings both ways, doesn't it? It's like at the end of every day, we should be able to ask this question what did I do today that makes my character more reflect the God whose love I so believe in. Did I do did I was I kind today? It's a good report. You know, it's really important that we take these opportunities to self-reflect. Yeah. Clodin, you talked about forest bathing. But there's a lot of research now because we're getting information is coming together so fast, that there's a lot of research now that says that there's actually a term for it. Probably somebody will put it up in the chat. But this idea of slowing, but that's not it. It's like maybe I think it might be called slow maxing. Something like that, where you purposefully do things that take time. And one of the things they say is to reflect on your day. Yeah. To reflect on your day. And I think it's really important that we go, wait a minute. Okay, so if character determines destiny, what step did I do today? What was my destiny based on today? Like what what was it today? Was there any it doesn't have to be some huge thing? It's like today I sent a million dollars to the condo. Okay. Maybe, but it could have been, oh, you know what? Today I had a coworker who was and I came close to her, or whatever, it could be anything, but is there something? Yeah. Right? And you don't want to have too many not every day is gonna be like that. Like some days you just don't feel good, or some days you're traveling, but you don't want to have too many consecutive days where it's like, you know what? Not really oriented toward eternity at any of these days. Yeah. You don't want that.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:36

To me, that ties into gratitude. So every morning, that's the first thing I start with before I even get out of bed, is thinking about at least ten things that I want to praise God for.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:44

Oh, I love it. This is it, this is a great example of slow maxing, if that's the right term. Taking your time to think about being intentional. Yeah. Ten things. Did you do it this morning?

SPEAKER_02 1:45:53

Oh, always stand. Every morning.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:55

Yeah. I love it. Okay, now let's do our word. And the rule is if you see your word up there, nothing. Small standing. Okay, let's see. Everybody lean in here. We gotta get very close. You know, you get in here. Yeah. Okay. Keep one eye in.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:08

I want one more.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:09

So let's see what we've got here. Um what is your word, everyone? Uh let's see. Love that fixity, says Ruben. The rich man's habits were fixed long before the Gulf was. Ooh, I like that. Love that. Reversed. Character. Character. Uh-huh. Almost went with that. Opportunity. Okay, Grace Peace of Blessings. That's Reiner and Alice. They say eternity. Great word. I almost went with that one. Opportunities, stewardship. I had stewards. You had stewardship. Steward of his grace. Very good. Reversal. Forgot. Inattentive. Great word. Secure, says Cassandra. The rich man felt secure in his riches. We are only secure in Christ. Oh, I love it. Trust. Destiny and reflect. Responsibility. Other centered. Destiny. Oh, great words. Michelle says true. Rich 77AA says blind. There's a opportunity. Earl. What do we got here? Chasm says Earl says, Oh, yeah. I'm a little behind you guys. Destiny. Fixed kindness. Chasm. That's either Reiner or Alice. Patrick Phillips says neglect and estrangement. Second or lint, like things are lint to us. Probably not the Catholic lint. Right. Probably not. What are you thinking of? Dame 44 says entrusted. Rebecca says eternal. I haven't seen my word yet. I have not either. I don't think. Accountable. I love the word atmosphere and all that points to that. Yeah, very good. Oh, Stu Paul goes straight Eastern. Yeah. Karma. Yeah, I mean, listen, karma actually is kind of tapping into something that's true. Whatever a man sows, he reaps. That's right. Sandy says, uh, how not to neglect God, opportunities, the neglected. Oh, that's really good. So there's another neglected that I don't want to pay attention to. 303 says uh opportunity and decide. Syzygy. Great to see that. Same. Conversion. Reflect on where you are in your walks. Terrible Terry. Oh, reflect. Choices, reverse. Same. What's same? AKA Shaggy 99. I always like it. Same. Same. Explain it in a text. Yeah, something about that one. Choices, reverse, destiny. You haven't seen yours yet? I have not seen. I don't see all I could have said. I thought your word was going to be reversal or exchange. It's based on that idea, but it's a different word. I'm going to say it is what letter does it start with? R. M.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:53

It was mentioned many times in the chapter, but not it has to do with exchange.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:02

Don't tell me yet. Second word is stimulate. Almost like a currency. Feed. Choice. Frank says between.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:12

I don't know. Tell me what your word is. My word was riches. Oh, rich? You're playing on the idea of earthly riches. Yeah, but she makes the exchange, the whole story is the exchange of it's actually about each channel riches. Riches. So that's what I mean. That's a great one.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:26

So we got riches, we got Steward. Um there we go.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:30

Reverse. Yeah, he'll explain. We rise from the grave with the same character into it. Oh, that's fine. Now we get our slow minds.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:40

Um I don't think anyone had my word.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:41

This has been one of the few times My second word was sufficient for light and grace.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:47

Yeah, yeah, for that was under your uh promise. Yeah. Um my word actually was uh suffering.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:55

Oof.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:56

Yeah. My word was suffering for two reasons. Number one, uh, she talks a lot about suffering. The whole chapter is kind of built around suffering. We live in a world of suffering. You know, and Lazarus was suffering. But then also when the in the afterlife he's in torments or agony or suffering, depending on your translation, we made the point that it was the the word there is the Greek word there is less about physical suffering, and it's more about what could have been. What might have been, what should have been. And that's gonna be the real anguish that I think at the end of time when those that are finally lost tragically, terribly, it will be this realization, this suffering, like what was I thinking? I didn't have thought, isn't it? Heaven was so cheap. Heaven was cheap enough, the riches were there, right? The stewardship was there, the opportunity was there, the sufficiency was there. And then she talks about the sufferings of the Jerusalem and the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70. And so for me, it was like, you know what? Even if I sometimes have to do things that feel like suffering to me, like making a generous donation, and you know, but putting yourself out there, it's hard. It can be tough, but it's like, not really. Not really. So I just like that idea that that we live in a suffering world where we want to capture the opportunity to decrease the suffering, and heaven forbid, we don't want to experience the suffering of the agony of realizing, oh, what have I done? You know, what might have been, what could have been, what should have been. All right, everybody. This was a great, great. Look at us, look at us three of us all snug as a bug in a rug here. Um, by the way, I don't know if it looks like we're close on the screen, but we are really close to one another. We I can smell Sarah right now. Sorry. She smells fun. She smells great. Um, so let's close with prayer. And Sarah, since you jumped in here, why don't you have our clearing prayer? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:57

Our kind and gracious Heavenly Father, we just want to thank you again tonight. Um, that you have provided everything.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:03

Amen.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:05

And through that, we have this opportunity that you give us every single day to share.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:11

Amen.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:11

And Lord, I pray that our hearts would be generous, amen. And that our eyes would be focused on the eternal riches.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:19

Amen.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:20

And we thank you that you are the God who alleviates suffering. And that you use us at times too to do just that. Amen. Help us to be your hands and your feet each day and to just share your love. And Lord, thank you for this time to come together and to dig into your word and to walk away. Just knowing you a little bit better. Amen. After a time together, we love you, Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:45

Amen. Amen. Speaking of knowing him a little bit better, in your prayer, it occurred to me that another application of the suffering is Jesus has already suffered on our behalfs, right? That's true, too. There's no need for anybody to suffer separation from God at the end because Jesus has already dured that suffering, that pain. He has drunk the wine of the wrath of God. You know, that's already happened. And so let's embrace the suffering that's been done on our behalf and then go relieve suffering in the world. Amen. Amen. So I thought of that before. All right, we love you all so much. We will see you tomorrow night. Sarah. Are you ready? Awesome, yes. We'll see you tomorrow.