Paul's Resume in the Flesh
Philippians 3:4-6 · Roger Henderson · Jun 23, 2024
Philippians (2021-24), No. 24
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261935387841

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Today we're down to lesson, I don't have a number for the lesson, but anyway, somewhere in here. We're down to verses 4 to 6 in chapter 3. And this is a cool section. So, and Paul's going to give his, I don't know, his resume in the flesh. This is his earthly If you aren't in the job market, resumes may seem kind of a strange thing, but if you're in the job market, in today's world, you usually put down the things that you, I've accomplished this, I've accomplished that, I took this course, whatever you might be. Paul's resume in the flesh, in the Jewish community, was beyond measure.

He is the best of the best. And he's going to talk about that, but then he's going to talk about the wonderful thing. When he compares that with his knowing Christ, there's no comparison. And he's going to say that in the coming, we'll see that in the coming weeks.

Just an incredible section. So I like to use McCauley many times for an outline. So this is McCauley's outline for this section. Christian maturity. And so verses 1 through 11 he calls shunning all legalism. And a warning given, and we saw it last week that Bob did, the safeguard of repetition. And Paul said, there's no problem for me to repeat this. We're going to read through that verse again. And he said, beware of three things. We'll talk about that a little bit.

And then the last thing he says, but put no confidence in the flesh. And that's going to lead us into the rest of this section. Putting no confidence in our flesh. And the flesh in this sense, I think, in this section is not putting confidence in what you obtained as a human being in your life, wherever you might be. And it's not to say that you shouldn't try to do your best job and things like that, but when you rely upon that, on your favor with God, you think somehow that will give you a better standing with God, I think you're in trouble.

And Paul is going to show the relationship between all that he gained in his fleshly life as a Jew, a Jew of Jews, with knowing Christ. And he's going to say there's no comparison. He calls it manure, rubbish. He calls all that he gained in his life rubbish in comparison with knowing Christ. Pretty incredible statement. Okay, so today we're going to look at his example. And then the next two weeks we're going to talk about his past in verses 7 through 9. and he renounces all personal merit and then his total dedication to the knowledge of Christ.

So just some neat sections, you know, just dear sections in God's Word. Okay, any questions before we start? We're just going to go through these verses. We'll go back and look at verse 3. I think it's pivotal. I'm going to take a little more time in verse 3 to kind of lead us into 4 through 6. Okay, so with that in mind, we'll just carry ahead. So this is last week. Finally my brethren, Rejoice in the Lord. To write the same thing again is no trouble to me.

And it's a safeguard for you. Beware of dogs. Beware of evil workers. Beware of the false circumcision. I'm just going to stop there for a second. So he starts out and he talks about rejoicing in the Lord. Bob did a great job last week talking about that. It's no trouble for me. It's a safeguard for you. And we know that being in God's Word is a safeguard. It keeps our mind on the right focus. We find as we drift away from God's Word, our mind goes, you know, it goes to self, basically. But in God's Word, it can be a focus on our Savior and what He would have for us. Then we get into verse 2, and I think it was pointed out last week, we're not about dogs.

Dogs are good. If you like dogs, that's a good thing. This is dogs in the sense of being, as a person puts the word, Technology? No, there's another. Bad guys. What's that? Bad guys. Well, I'm just saying, you know, you use a word in place of another word, rather than saying these are bums and derelicts, you say this is so-and-so. I can't think of the word anyway. Euphemism. What's that? Euphemism. That's really, that's good. Thank you. Okay, so, he said beware of those kinds of people. He calls them dogs and they're evil workers. And then he says, beware of the false circumcision.

If you think back to the nation of Israel, because of the covenant with Moses, they hung their hat. They said, boy, to be circumcised, for a male to be circumcised is the number one, that got you into God's grace. Without that, you were not going to go very far with God.

So we're going to see how Paul is going to turn that around. He's going to make a statement. In the next verse it says, just kind of, wow, think about this. And the next verse is, for we are the true circumcision who worship in the spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh. So we're going to review that verse and then we're going to look at the verses about his resume. He says, also I myself might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more. And that's a pretty emphatic, the eye for more, eye for greater.

I'm at the top of the heap. Paul claims he's at the top of the heap in Judaism. There's none above him, which is an incredible statement. That's where he was. He was at the top of the heap. No other man was there. And he gets his resume. He's done this before. In Corinthians he's done this.

So here's his resume. circumcised the eighth day for the nation of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews. Now notice the change. In the middle of that verse, middle of verse 5, it changes and it has these statements, as to, as to, as to, as to the law, a Pharisee, as to zeal, persecutor of the church, as to righteousness, which is in the law, found blameless. So we're going to sort through this, but first let's go look at verse 3.

So I like this approach, and this is not sentence diagramming. It's block diagramming of a verse. That's my favorite. I like it. I hope it is helpful to you. So we start off, for we are the circumcision. And the truth of the matter, if you notice in the text. So this word, this idea here is the idea that this word, amy, is one of these neat Greek words that has the idea of status quo. This is a place that we, Paul and all believers, are. We are the circumcision. And you think, wow, I've heard about what the Jews did. What does it mean in terms of a believer? What does that mean? Okay, and it's a big help here.

In Colossians 2.11, and in him, in Christ, he was also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands. and the removal of the body of flesh by the circumcision of Christ.

So I want to ask a question. Does this ring a bell with anybody besides me? I know the answer. I'm looking for it. Does this kind of ring a bell? You've been going through Romans, right? You're reading Romans about some things that's happened to every believer. So does that last part of that verse kind of seem like it's talking about something that happened in Romans 6.

Does anybody else kind of pick up on that? I pick up because I've studied this for the last couple of weeks. It's not a fair thing, but hopefully the last part does. I'll take that. If you want to speak up and make a comment. We're dead to the flesh. Okay, that's good. You're on the right track. It has to do with the flesh.

So what happened? What happened when we put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ, right? And what does Romans 6 describe? It's described that we've been separated, right? It talks about we've been baptized into Christ Jesus, we've been separated from our fleshly nature.

It says here removal, and I haven't gone back to check out that, but I think this is speaking to the fact that the reason we're the circumcision is because we've been cut loose or separated, and it calls circumcision here from our fleshly nature, from our sin nature. I think it's speaking to that. And that's a whole study in itself, but I, you know, I had noticed that when I looked at this the first time through, but we need your thoughts on that before we go on. But I think it's just a really, so we are, we're in this, as a status quo world, this is the state that every single believer is.

We are a circumcision. We've been cut loose from our sin nature. our nature in Adam. And that's huge news. That's just incredible news. Not well-taught in most Christian circles, but just so important to understand. We've been cut. We're separated. It's not gone, but we're separated from it.

So he's going to start out with that. He's going to say, here's all the things that you have based upon that you are. We have uncircumcised, which is made without hands. Okay. Alright, so here we go. So Roger, I said we're dead to the flesh, but maybe a better way of saying it is we're no longer in bondage to the flesh. I like that, that's excellent.

We've been separated, we've been cut loose. Just like you think about circumcision as a cutting, and baptism, being baptized into Christ, we've been separated or cut loose from our sin nature. So very similar kind of ideas. I think anything that's severed from the body becomes dead, useless, right? Right. If you cut off your finger, it doesn't work as well, right? Yeah. The same picture with circumcision.

Like Paul said, who will save you from the body of this death? Well, praise God, in Christ Jesus, we're dead to that fleshly body. It still looks very much alive, but we're very much dead to it. That's true. It does look alive. And it acts alive, too. That's the tough part. Okay. So the rest of this verse is going to give us the results of the circumcision. It says, For we are the circumcision, the ones worshiping by the Spirit. Okay, that's good. Amen, brother. We worship by the Spirit. I can't worship God. He has to worship through me. I'll worship through the Holy Spirit. But also, we live by the Spirit. We walk by the Spirit.

So the whole Christian life is one where the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, is the one who lives a Christian life through us. And boy, is that another key thing to have in your head and in your mind, because when we try to live the Christian life, we don't do a good job. And Paul's going to talk to that. He's going to speak to that.

So we worship by the Spirit, we live by the Spirit, we walk by the Spirit. And then he goes on to say, and we glory in Christ Jesus, And glorying is this idea to boast. But may it never be that I would boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. And it goes on. So we worship by the Spirit. We glorify in Christ Jesus. And then the third thing he says, and have no confidence in the flesh. I took the inner linear version in this case. Having no confidence.

We're not trusting in the flesh because we've been separated from it. Why would I want to go back and trust in my flesh? And of course, in this context, the flesh is going to be spoken of as this merit that Paul had in the flesh. Okay, so that's kind of the review and how we're going to tie in. He's going to launch off after saying he has no confidence in the flesh. He's going to make a comparison that why he might want to have confidence in his flesh.

It's sort of like If you were the highest position, in our country it's president or your premier or whatever, the highest, and you say, this is my earthly position, he's going to say, I have all this, I've got the highest of the highest. And then he's going to compare that with knowing Christ, which is really neat. Okay, so we're going to go to verse four. So now he says, even though, or although, I could be happy.

He says, you know, it reminds me of that commercial a long time ago, I'm going to date myself here. I could have had a V8. It's an old commercial that they tried to sell their juice, not juice, it was a veggie drink, V8 it was called, all these vegetables in it, so they would kind of have a little rhyme, like, you might have a Coke, but I could have had a V8. All I'm saying here, I could have commerce in my flesh. You know, I really could.

I have got to the top of the top. I could be having confidence in the flesh. That's what he's saying. And so here comes the contrast. He says a believer who has crucified the flesh or circumcised the flesh is to put no confidence in the flesh. He says, but I Now in verse 4 he says, but I could be having confidence in my flesh. He's going to go down one side of the argument and he's going to compare it with another side. To be having, to have, to hold, to find possession. I could be hanging on to those things. The flesh is here, the idea of human merit. I could be hanging on to that human merit. So let's just skip that and go to the next one.

Then he kind of expands that and he kind of doubles down on it, if you will. He says, if any other person thinks, and here's where he just pushes himself to the top of the heap. If any other person thinks to have confidence in the flesh, I more. And we have, I far more. It's even stronger than that. So it's assumed to be true. He says there's, you know, I'm it. And so Weiss has it.

If, as is the case, other person thinks he has confidence. Any other person? That's any of the same kind as Paul? So we're going to see here that he's going to show his merits in verses 5 and 6. Thanks to suppose, to think, for an opinion. Least has presumed. So basically just kind of reviewing that. Let me see, here we go. Oh yeah, okay. To have confidence, to persuade, to be confident. And I'll make sure I've packed it just a little bit together here.

So it's, he's saying, and it's in the perfect, anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh and so it's it's presumed to be true in the past with abiding results he's still the number one to have come to a settled persuasion so he's settled about this in the flesh in his human condition so that I'm more is actually a go melon I greater so Paul Suisse has it I can occupy that place with more reason. He says I have the place, the highest place, and I have the most reasons for that. So like I said, in verse 4 he doubles down on the fact that he could have confidence in his place as a Jew in Israel far than anyone else.

Okay, so then with a colon he starts his list. So here we go. So he starts his list. I'm going to zip through this too fast like you see right now. You guys have to have some questions here. Okay. So he cites seven advantages. And you know, it's good when you see these lists, you know, I think I was talking with Mike and with with Myles here. Myles is going to have a list next week.

When you have these lists and scripture things, it's always kind of a challenge. Well, how do I present it? You grind through each one and you get lost. Where am I at? The next one, the next one, the next one. So what's good is I kind of found here, Constable kind of helped me a bit here.

He said the first four things that Paul is going to mention here are things of his inheritance as a child in his family in Israel. This was his earthly human birth and his schooling, if you will. And then the last three are things that he chose. They were convictions of Paul that he had. And this is all prior, and I believe this is all prior to his conversion.

That's why he's making this big contrast. So first of all, circumcise the eighth day. And that's an important thing. And actually, it's literally in the Greek, eight days old in circumcision, and that's exactly when they did it. They were prescribed by the law, and here it is in Leviticus. This is exactly what Moses told them to do. And the Lord spoke to Moses, when a woman gives birth and bears a male child, on the eighth day, the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.

So that's what you did as a religious Jew. You did that, and that that locks you in, that's like, I almost think like, we have groups of believers that have replaced circumcision with baptism. They say, well, if you get baptized, you're in, right? God has to approve you. Scripture doesn't teach that, but it's interesting how they have taken that baptism and put it in place as circumcision. So, you're baptized, and I know Mike tells about his, I think it's his mother, Hope has a story, right?

Michael comes. And correct me here, but I think his mother would go around to the grandchildren and baptize them when they were infants when nobody else was around. She'd pour water and do something because she was so convinced that they needed to be baptized. She would baptize them when they were just little babies, when she'd been taking care of them. I think that's a true story. We called it christened. Yeah. Okay. So it's interesting about that. So this is his first item of his heritage is that he was eight days old and baptized.

Of the nation of Israel. And the idea here is it's actually of the race or offspring of Israel. So, you know, Israel is what is defined in the scripture is the apple of God's eye. God chose Israel and he says not because they were the greatest people, not because they were greater in number, not because they were the best or whatever. He chose them because he loved them, simply because he loved them. So that's one of the traits of the nation of Israel. And then Barclay here says that the Jews used the word Israelite to describe themselves when they wanted to stress their special relationship to God. And we see that if you look in those verses. In fact, actually we have a little bit of time here. Can somebody read Luke? We have our Bible handy. Read Luke 1, 54. And then read 68.

He just kind of talks about this special place that the nation of Israel had. 154? Yes. It says, He has given help to Israel, His servant, in remembrance of His mercy. Okay, so you see there it talks about that special mercy and relationship with Israel. Then 68? Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people. Okay, so they're His people. So Israel was a name that described that nation that God had blessed and that he had especially done things on their behalf.

And he hadn't. The whole Old Testament is just full of what he did. He suffered and we're going to find out starting this morning. He continues and he's, yes, he's been put aside, but there he hasn't forgotten Israel. He started with them and he's going to see it through with them.

Okay, so that's number two. Number three, of the tribe of Benjamin, I have to admit that this is one of the weakest points I had. I had not really studied, you know, the twelve tribes and Benjamin especially. And so I relied on Constable here. But Benjamin's life and what he did and his tribe are interesting. And that was a premier tribe, if you will, of the tribes of Israel. So here we go.

So if you remember, Benjamin was the younger of the two sons born to Jacob's wife, his favorite wife, Rachel. There was Joseph and Benjamin, and Benjamin was the younger. Benjamin was the only son of Jacob who was born in the Promised Land. The tribe of Benjamin provided many noble warriors through Israel's history.

And I looked that up and it wasn't that hard. You have to do a little homework on some of these. Israel's first lawful king came to the tribe of Benjamin, son. Jerusalem and the temple stood within Benjamin's territory. It kind of shows you, you know, it's interesting. God's Word is so complete.

If you start out with, I want to find out, like, about Benjamin. What was Benjamin about? There's an awful lot in there. You have to be a diligent student, but you can find out all these nitty gritty things that really make a case for why would Paul make a point that he was of the tribe of Benjamin? Because Benjamin was so unique in Israel's history. And then lastly, go ahead. Are you saying that King Saul was from the tribe of Benjamin? Well, that's a good question. I'm not sure I'm saying that. I think he was.

And Saul was named after King Solomon. Okay, okay, all right. Good, good, thank you, thank you. And then the last point here was that this tribe alone, I had not realized this either, besides Judah, remained loyal to David's house when the monarch was divided, when the two kingdoms were divided. So Benjamin, the tribe of Benjamin was the tribe, so to speak. Okay, number four.

A Hebrew of Hebrews. And if you look back and look in Genesis, you'll see that in referring to Abram at that time, he was called a Hebrew. At that time, that was the first time he was used in scripture. So, if you look at various verses, you'll see it means that Paul's parents floored him up in the strict Jewish, observing the Jewish customs, unlike the Hellenistic Jews, I noticed in this one you kind of had to compare how Paul was brought up versus how other Jews were brought up. And another thing here, you'll notice that, and Paul used this to his advantage.

He could speak in the Hebrew dialect as he was trained in that. And that wasn't true of many of the Jews. There's another thing that was kind of neat in studying through this. A lot of the Jews could only speak, we didn't speak Aramaic. So, but Paul could speak. Remember in the Acts passage, that's the one where he starts speaking and they realize that he's speaking in the Hebrew dialect. And so they got quiet.

This man knows the language. I mean, it's just like, I don't know, you know, somebody that has a particularly good voice, you kind of get quiet. This person seems like he knows what he's talking about. Sometimes it's not true, but it can be true. So he, he spoke in a dialect that commanded attention.

Okay, so now this is kind of where the change starts right here. So I've highlighted as to. So these are Paul's convictions, his zealous convictions. And as to is a Greek word kata, it's according to. So you can say, if you look at those phrases, you can kind of flip them around a bit and you can look at the subject here in each one. So he's a Pharisee. He's a persecutor of the church. have him become blameless. The last one kind of stumped me for a bit, for a while. Obviously, he didn't obtain blamelessness before God, so it has to be before men.

Paul saw himself, and maybe his peers too, as being a blameless Jew. He did everything right. He dotted every I across every T. Everything he did was blameless. He makes that statement here. So you have to kind of think, well, he can't be talking about his relationship to God, because there's only one that's blameless. It's the Lord Jesus. Without sin.

Roger, if you look down at verse 9, he calls it a righteousness of my own. There you go. Thank you. Thank you. Good. Roger, he was basically saying he was playing us according to the law. I know, isn't that amazing? You know, the guy is so disciplined that he can keep every letter of the law. How many people can do that? I keep every letter of the law and you begin to think, who is this guy? And it's that kind of discipline that God used to bring him around and proclaim the gospel. We're going to see, down to the church here. He is so zealous. He is a dog after the church. A bad dog after the church.

So concerning being blameless, that kind of tells me legalism kind of promotes self-righteousness. Really? Are you just figuring that out? My wife tells me that all the time. I can amend. No, I'm kidding. That you're blameless? No, she reminds me of what I think I am. My wife reminds me I'm not legless. Anyway, I'm trying to talk you there. Okay, here we go. Okay, first. So what I did is I kind of flipped it around and to me this made more sense and it puts the name first, if you will.

So Paul was a Pharisee according to the norm and standard of the law. he was a pharisee and it's all about he was able, I don't know, in his humanness to follow the law to the teeth. So he was a pharisee. So does the law tell him what the requirements of a pharisee is? According to their interpretation, I think.

The Jews had their own I know that there was a law, right? And then they had their interpretation to make it so they could follow it. So if you study Judaism, there was the Torah, which is God's word, and then you have their writings. And so they would make those writings, you know.

And so this is according to Acts, Paul says, I lived as a Pharisee according to the strict sect of our religion. So he says it's a strictest sect. did he follow the 613 written laws, but he also followed the oral law, which many of the Pharisees back then say that it was given to Moses, but you don't find that in Scripture anyway. Many times Christ asked questions of the Pharisees, you have said Speaking of the tradition for oral law, which really has nothing to do with the written law.

Exactly. But Saul followed all of those. He was an incredible guy. Anyway, so he says, I follow the strictest sect. In Galatians he says, I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral tradition. So he was, okay, pretty amazing.

Now we're going to get to the church. Paul was a persecutor of the church according to the Norman standards of zeal, which sounds kind of funny. The standard of zeal, what's the standard of zeal? A wild man. We're going to see, it's pretty much that. Or you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism. Now I used to persecute the Church of God beyond measure and I tried to destroy it. It gets worse. I had to do many things hostile to the name of Jesus and Nazarene.

Not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons, but also when they were being put to death, this is pretty I cast my vote against them. So he hurried real fast to get there to cast the vote to make sure they got killed. And then it didn't stop there. I punished them often in all the synagogues. I tried to force them to blaspheme. I became furiously enraged at them. Boy, this just blows your mind.

And kept pursuing them even to foreign cities. I was kind of thinking about today, you know, in our country, I'm not sure how it is in Canada, but we've had the government kind of pursue people. and hound them for political reasons. I've made it many times. But how would you like to have Paul after you as a believer? Good luck on that. He's going to pursue you back to old. Go ahead.

Somebody have a question? was doing more than any other Pharisee. There's no other writings about any Pharisees persecuting the church. But Paul went out of his way to do such a thing. This guy was motivated. You can see this stark change that's going to happen. We're going to get a chance to talk about it. It's just incredible. God totally turns him around.

The last one is Paul having become blameless according to the Norman standard of the righteousness in the law. So I borrowed a couple of comments here. One from Weiss. He said he became blameless so far as the righteousness, which is in the law, was concerned.

He had carried this righteousness so far as to become perfect before men. And that's what was read there. That was his goal, to be perfect before men. That he strived for that. Actually, in some ways, if you think about it, I would say that there probably are many, maybe even brothers and sisters, who strive that in their life. They strive. They want to please God, but they have gotten the wrong information, or they've taken it and twisted it. And they try to please God by their efforts. When God says, you please me by trusting what I've done, by agreeing with me, by walking with me. I'm trying to share with my sister, who's not a believer. She's a couple of years younger than me.

And so I met the Lord over four years ago. So I told her, I said, well, I've had 40 years to think about this. My name is Trish. I've had 40 years to think about this. And what I'm sharing with you is what I think you need to understand. Oh yeah, I believe in God. That's not exactly what I'm looking for. I'm sorry. Even the devils, right? Believe in God. Who's Jesus Christ? It's a question.

Okay. So then, I, Paul, also do my best to maintain always a blameless, I thought this was kind of telling, do my best to always maintain a blameless conscience before God and before man. And lastly, Constable, Paul's obedience to the law of Moses and his regulated external behavior had been without blame. He was very Conscience. Conscience. I knew I was going to say that. Conscience is about the law. What the law required. And omitted no observation how trivial. Okay, so just as a preview for next week. So here, this is next week's verses. Just incredible verses for next week.

So now, Paul gives his resume and then he has a big but. Strong contrast in green. Whatever things were gained to me, all those things he just mentioned, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Then he does a double down again, another double down, positively. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. I might share one lesson to do justice to this. I'll give it a try. But that's for next week. Any other? We have a few minutes left. Any other thoughts, sir?

Something about the zealousness of Paul. I'll call him Saul right now. Back when they were persecuting Peter and John, Gamaliel, who Saul was his number one student, said, just leave them alone. If it's of God, then we're in trouble. But if it's not of God, it'll fade away. And I'm sure Paul heard Gamaliel say that. But Paul decided, no, I'm not going to leave them alone. I'm going to go after them.

But something I noticed in the book of Acts, after Saul was converted, the persecution of the Jews of the Christians kind of fell off. So Saul was very instrumental in going after the Christians. That's it. That's good. That's a really good point. Excellent. I was thinking the same thing.

And I was also thinking, you know, if Jesus was not the Messiah, then according to law, Paul was doing what he should have done. Under Jewish law, any apostate Jew should have been put to death. And so he did this all, like he says, with a clear conscience, with extreme zealousness for the law. And only when he realized that Jesus was indeed the Messiah did he change his stance.

Right. Well, the thing about his encounter on the road to Damascus when the Lord, you know, why are you persecuting me? It's just, you know, it's just like, wow. And me versus you. Well, if we're being persecuted by the world today, and in many countries, it's terrible. In the United States, it's starting to get bad. But if we are being persecuted, Christ is being persecuted because we are in Christ.

Right. Exactly. I agree. I agree. Yeah. And in my mind, COVID was a little snapshot. It really wasn't bad. It was bad, but it wasn't bad, bad. I mean, you know, in Canada we're put in jail. A few in jail here, maybe here and there, but nothing real terrible. But it gives you a glimpse of what can happen going forward. Back during COVID, why in the world could I go to Home Depot and Costco but not be allowed to go to church? I know, I agree with you. I know, it's the most insane.

And then you have the scientists that realized this wasn't the right approach. Blocking everybody down is not the right approach. They got together, but their views were just pushed to the side, because politics had to prevail. We had to do it this way, so we can control people.

And with a fallen world, and with the prince and power of the air behind it, hey, this is what it's about. Yeah, I think it gave us a glimpse. It did. Like this. Alright. Well, let's close a little earlier. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for the blessings we have in our Savior, Lord. We thank you for his life that you've given us, Lord, that we trust you and walk with you day by day. Yes, in his name, amen.