Good morning. If you were with us for Sunday school, we talked about the ministry that we're involved in with India at South India Baptist Bible College and Seminary. It is a Bible college ministry, training men for gospel ministry. There are actually quite a number of Bible colleges throughout India. Most of them are very, very small. So the one that we're gonna be involved with is a good bit larger than most Bible colleges there in India. There's another one I'm aware of. It's northeast of us in the city of Chennai. Chennai is a very large city in India. It's about 300 miles northeast of us. And it's a Bible college very similar to SIBBC. It's called the Hindustan Bible Institute. It's been around for quite a while. A man named Paul Gupta is the one who founded this college in 1952. So if you know anything about the history of India, this was a time of a lot of unrest and upheaval in India. So India gained its independence from one nation. Great Britain, and that was in 1947. And then 1950 was when India inaugurated their constitution, and then 1952 was when this Hindustan Bible Institute was founded. So around this time period after the British partition of India, all the Muslims were heading to East Pakistan and West Pakistan. Of course, East Pakistan is Bangladesh today. All the Hindus were going into India, and there was a lot of clash between these people, a lot of bloodshed, and a lot of unrest during this time of India's history. Paul Gupta, who founded the college, passed away a number of years ago, but his son, also named Paul Gupta, is now running the college. Paul Gupta's vision for the Hindustan Bible Institute was that they produce evangelists and church planners who could spread all over India and really reach the nation with the gospel. But there became a point when Paul Gupta became very concerned that they were not accomplishing that vision. They were not producing faithful men who were going out to reach the lost. And that first came to his attention at one of their graduation banquets. Every year, the school would host a special meal for all of their graduating students. And at this meal, the students would go around and they would share with the others what they were planning on doing once they graduated and left the college. And out of this one particular graduating class, there was only one student, only one, who was actually going out to be directly involved in ministry. All the others felt inadequate, they felt unprepared, some of them were simply going on for further studies. The Hindustan Bible Institute had experienced a lot of success from a human standpoint over the many years of their existence. They had grown, they had become accredited, they had improved their programs of study, but ultimately the leadership of the college realized that they were failing. They were failing to, they were not producing faithful men who were able to evangelize, plant churches, and teach others. They were failing to perpetuate gospel ministry. Now is really the vision of the, that was the burden of the Apostle Paul near the end of his life. So you can go ahead and turn to the book of 2 Timothy, 2 Timothy chapter 2. 2 Timothy is probably one of the last books in our New Testaments that Paul wrote. Paul knows that his death is imminent and Paul was concerned that after his death, the gospel ministry must continue. His successors must continue to train leadership who could continue the work of ministry of teaching others. So 2 Timothy chapter two, verses one through seven contain Paul's instructions to Timothy about perpetuating gospel ministry. Let's read these seven verses together, 2 Timothy chapter two. You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilians' pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hardworking farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. Now, before we look at this passage in detail, I wanna talk a little bit about this man, Timothy, to whom Paul is writing this letter. We're told that Paul first meets Timothy on his second missionary journey. Do you remember how many missionary journeys Paul went on? How many missionary journeys did he have? Three, three missionary journeys. And then he took a fourth journey to Rome under Roman guard. It was not part of his plan, but that was God's plan for him. But three major missionary journeys. And we're told that he met Timothy on this second missionary journey in the town of Lystra, which is in South Central modern day Turkey. We're told that his mother was Jewish and his father was a Greek. And although Timothy lived very early on here in the life of the church, he's actually a third-generation believer. We know from the first few verses of 2 Timothy that his grandmother Lois was the first one in his family who was converted, and his mother was also a believer, making Timothy a third-generation Christian. And we're told that he had an excellent reputation among the believers right there in his hometown of Lystra. And even as far away as Iconium, which was 30 miles from Lystra, the believers there knew of him, had heard of his excellent testimony and reputation and love for the Lord. And Timothy remained with Paul for the rest of his second missionary journey. And Timothy was with Paul on his third missionary journey as well, really being trained and mentored under Paul himself. It's interesting how often Timothy shows up in Paul's letters. Paul mentions Timothy by name 17 times in his letters. In fact, Timothy is listed as a co-author under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of six letters. Paul and Timothy to the church at Corinth, or Paul and Timothy to the church at Thessalonica, or Paul and Timothy to the church at Philippi. The author of Hebrews also mentions Timothy. There in the last chapter there, apparently, Timothy had just been released from prison. And so the author of Hebrews mentions that. We know from 1 Timothy that Paul left Timothy to continue the ministry, the small flock of believers they started there in Ephesus after Paul left for Macedonia. Timothy also spent time working with the believers in Corinth and Philippi and Thessalonica, really building up these very small groups of believers that Paul brought together on his missionary journeys. So by the time that Paul is writing this letter to Timothy, Timothy is a veteran minister of the gospel. He's a veteran missionary with extensive experience with pastoring churches, planning churches, evangelizing. He is a veteran minister of the gospel. Paul is probably writing to Timothy from the city of Rome. He is in prison, probably languishing in the infamous Mamertine prison. And according to church tradition, Paul died only three years after writing this letter. We're told that Emperor Nero executed Paul by beheading. Paul knows his death is imminent, and he is concerned that to perpetuate the ministry of the gospel once he is gone, once he's no longer on the scene. Who is going to carry on the work of the ministry? The gospel must continue to advance. But even a man like Timothy, excellent reputation, extensive ministry experience, trained under Paul himself, even Timothy needed this encouragement and this advice from Paul. I'm sure none of us are anywhere close to where Timothy was in his experience and passion for the Lord. And if Timothy needed this advice and this encouragement, how much more do we need this instruction? This passage is applicable to all who are involved in ministry. What is your ministry in this church? What is your ministry to your family, to your children, to your siblings, to your coworkers? This applies to all of us. This passage in 2 Timothy chapter two teaches us that in order to perpetuate gospel ministry, servants of Christ must follow the four imperatives we find here. There are four commands in this passage, and I wanna go ahead and point these out to you. The first command is right there in verse one. In verse one, we are commanded to be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Verse two contains our next command. If you look about in the middle of that verse, we are told to entrust certain things to faithful men. That verse is actually our college logo, and part of that verse appears on our college crest there at SIVBC. The third imperative is in verse three. What is the command in verse three? What is it? We are to share in suffering is the command. We are to suffer well is the idea. And then finally, verse seven contains our last imperative. We're told to think over what I say. So with the time that we have here, I wanna look at these commands in more detail. First of all, in order to perpetuate gospel ministry, we must first, and most importantly, be strengthened by Christ's grace. Be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. God strengthens us with grace. I want you to notice that this verb is be strengthened. How many of you are good with English grammar? Anybody good with English grammar? No one's good at English grammar. I'll give you a multiple choice quiz here. Be strengthened, that verb. What voice is it in? Is this verb in the active voice or in the passive voice? Have some active and some passive. How many say active? How many say passive? Oh, you're not doing well this morning. Be strengthened. This is actually a passive verb. This is not active. We must be strengthened. We do not strengthen ourselves, but we must allow ourselves to be strengthened. We must allow God to strengthen us. We must have an attitude that allows God to do this strengthening for us. This is a very interesting verb in our two New Testaments. It doesn't occur very often, only seven times, but it's interesting to note that whenever a person is the subject of this verb, It's always in the passive voice. This is something that is done to people. But whenever God is the subject of this verb, it's always in the active voice. This is something that God does, and the people he does it to are us, believers in him. God is the one who does the action, but we must receive it. God uses grace to achieve this strengthening. What is grace? Can someone give me a short definition of grace? What is it? What is it? It's something that's unmerited. It's God's unmerited goodness to us. And we deserve something else. We deserve punishment. But grace is God's goodness to us. when we deserve punishment. We've done nothing to deserve or to earn God's goodness. We do not work for it. God is good to us, even though we have done nothing that would make him want to be good to us. That is grace. And when God strengthens us in this way, it is a function of that grace to us, that unmerited goodness to us. When we are commanded to be strengthened in grace, the function of this strengthening is to support, to augment, to strengthen our lifestyle and ministry as a Christian. The strengthening that God does by this grace is not something that we work for, but it's something that we allow to be done to us. It is strengthening that allows us to be effective as servants of Christ. The final phrase of verse one fills out our understanding of this grace. This grace in which we are strengthened is found where? In Christ Jesus. Whenever the New Testament speaks of the grace of Jesus Christ, it nearly always is referring to his goodness in providing salvation in the Christian calling. Earlier in 2 Timothy in chapter one, verse nine, Paul explains that God saved us and he called us according to His grace. The grace with which God strengthens us is accomplished by Christ Jesus. And the grace refers to our entire salvation experience provided by Christ. Our salvation is our strength. So how do we obey this first command, this first imperative to be strengthened by Christ's grace? We must be surrendered to God to allow Him to work through us. We must surrender our whole being to God, as it talks about in Romans 1, to present your body, what? A living sacrifice, to allow Him to do with you whatever He wants you to do. Meditate on the goodness of God. in providing your justification, in working your sanctification, in making you one of his saints, one of his holy ones. And in this way, you will be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. This most important command we have here, without being strengthened by Christ's grace, nothing that we do is going to be effective. We must have this empowering from God himself. So we're looking at these commands in order to perpetuate gospel ministry. So first, what's the first command? Be strengthened by Christ's grace. And the second command, verse two, we must entrust certain things to faithful men. Entrust what you've learned to others. But first of all, that raises the question, what is it that we're entrusting to others? Well, what does verse two say? what you have, what does it say? What you have heard from me in the presence of faithful witnesses. And trust what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses. Paul instructs Timothy to pass on the things that he has learned from him. These are things that Timothy has learned from Paul in the presence of many witnesses. So Timothy was with Paul on his second and on his third missionary journey. And I'm sure Timothy heard Paul preach many, many times. And there were many witnesses who could also attest to what Paul preached. Well, what did Paul preach? What was it that Timothy heard? Well, in his missionary journeys, Paul really focused on virgin territory. Paul wanted to preach where Christ had never been named before. He talks about this in Romans 15. He wanted to evangelize in territory that had never heard the gospel. So Paul really focused on the gospel in his preaching. In the book of Acts, we have some samples of Paul's preaching. In Acts chapter 16, we're told that Timothy joined Paul and Silas on their journey. And soon after Timothy joined them, Paul received a vision from God telling him he is to preach the gospel in Macedonia. And so, Paul obeys that call, and they go to Macedonia, and Paul concluded that God had called us again to preach the gospel to them. And soon after that, they arrive in Philippi, and there's this demon girl in Philippi who follows them around, crying out and causing a lot of disturbance. And she said, these men are the servants of the Most High God who proclaim unto you the way of salvation. There's the gospel again. She was a witness that Paul indeed preached the gospel, the way of salvation. And then a few verses later in chapter 17, Paul comes to Thessalonica. And it talks about how he preached Christ there. It says that Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days, he reasoned with them out of the scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead and saying, this Jesus, whom I proclaim unto you, is the Christ. Paul preached a crucified and resurrected Savior, Jesus Christ. And this is the message that Paul wants Timothy to pass on to others. But there are many other things we find in Paul's letters. I'm sure these things are things that Paul wants Timothy to pass on as well. Things we find in the book of Romans concerning our justification in Christ. The book of Ephesians concerning our salvation. These are things that Timothy, I'm sure, learned from Paul himself. We're looking at Paul's commands to entrust what we have learned to others, and that's what we are to entrust. First of all, the gospel, the teaching in these letters that we find. But second, to whom are we to entrust this teaching? We are to entrust them to what kind of men? Faithful men. Entrust them to faithful men, the things you have heard from me. This word translated faithful, it has a little bit of a broader meaning than our English word faithful. Essentially, this word refers to people who are full of faith, full of faith in the gospel. They are believers. Back in 1 Timothy 4, verse 10, Paul uses this word when he talks about how God is the savior of all people, especially of those who believe. of the faithful, those who are full of faith in the gospel. So the kind of people to whom we must entrust gospel teaching are first and foremost believers in the gospel. They are full of faith in the gospel. But this word faithful also has the normal meaning that we think of when we use that word faithful. It has that meaning of the idea of trust, of being reliable, of being trustworthy, The kind of people to whom we must entrust gospel teaching are those who believe the gospel. And they're those who will be faithful, dependable, trustworthy. They're the kind of people that if we ask them to do something, we know they'll do it. If we give them a task, we can be confident that they'll finish it. But that brings us to our final part of verse two. What are these people supposed to be faithful in doing? Why must we entrust what we've learned to others? We must entrust what we have learned so that they, in turn, will be able to teach others also. These people are individuals who will be faithful in passing the teaching on to others. We learn gospel truth, we entrust it to faithful men, and they teach it to others. We learn gospel truth, we entrust it to faithful men, and they teach it to others. This is how the gospel ministry is perpetuated. We have a responsibility with the things that we learn. Every week we sit here in these chairs and we learn the great doctrines that we find in Paul's epistles. We learn the character of God in the Old Testament, the wonders of what God is doing in the world, his plan throughout history. But now we have a responsibility with that. Our responsibility is to pass it on, to pass it on to others. And as a teaching in India, as I'm doing, I'm attempting to do what these verses teach us to do. We've learned gospel truths and now we are trying to find faithful, reliable, trustworthy men and women who will perpetuate the gospel ministry and advance Christ's kingdom on the earth. But depending on your context, your way of fulfilling this is gonna look different. A lot of times it may be your children that you're teaching or teaching those around you, those in a Sunday school class you teach. But even among a group of believers this large, it's often difficult to find people who are faithful, faithful men, faithful women who will teach others also. Can we rely on you to pass on the teaching that is entrusted to you week after week? The author of Hebrews writes in chapter five, verse 12, that by this time you ought to be teachers, but you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. I hope that's not true of anyone here today, but often that is true, that we need someone to teach us again the basic principles of the oracles of God. God calls us to learn gospel truth and to pass it on to others who will faithfully teach others. And to some extent, it does seem that Timothy was already involved in this. There's an interesting comment in 1 Corinthians 4 where Paul writes that, I sent to you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ as I teach them in everywhere in every church. But even Timothy, who is already a faithful man and passing on this teaching to others, even he needed to be reminded of this. And how much more do we need this exhortation? We're looking at these four commands that Paul gives to Timothy in order to perpetuate gospel ministry. What's the first command? Be strengthened by Christ's grace. The second command? And trust what you've learned to others. And our third command, verses three through six, we must suffer well. We are to share in suffering, as verse three puts it. In these four verses, verses three through six, Paul is actually drawing three analogies to illustrate this, the reality of suffering and the life of a Christian who is perpetuating gospel ministry. The first analogy he draws there in verse three, he compares our suffering to what kind of a person? He's talking about a soldier. In verse five, he's talking about someone else. Who's he talking about in verse five? He's talking about an athlete. And then in verse six, he's talking about a farmer. First of all, we must suffer well as a soldier. It is not a question of if you will suffer. You will suffer. But we must make the choice now that we will suffer well as a good soldier. In this soldier analogy, Christ is our captain. He is our leader. He is our recruiter. He is the one who has called us into his service. And in the soldier analogy, Paul wants to teach us something about suffering and our quest to perpetuate gospel ministry. The point that he wants to get across is that a soldier refuses entanglement and life affairs. And the reason he does that, his reward, is that he pleases the one who calls him. A soldier surrenders the beneficial by entangling civilian affairs so that he can single-mindedly pursue his vocation as a soldier. The military can be a difficult calling for a family man. It can require being away from your family for extended periods of time. It can require being in places that are dangerous or difficult, threaten your life. It can require moving your family frequently from place to place. You can't put permanent roots down in one location. You gotta be ready to move whenever the military needs you somewhere else. Why would someone choose to suffer this way? A soldier gives up the ease and the stability of the civilian life of forwards in order to pursue the calling of the military. Why would someone choose to suffer this way? Well, he does it, verse four, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. That is his reward. Now let's move from the analogy to the reality it represents. We too, in a sense, are soldiers. Jesus Christ has called us to be his soldiers. He is the one who has chosen us. And as soldiers of Christ, we must renounce anything that might entangle us in that calling, that would hinder us in our service to Christ. We must be totally dedicated to and immersed in our calling as a soldier of Jesus Christ. We must be willing to do anything that Christ demands of us, absolutely anything. Now, I don't know what things may be entangling you in your life that may be keeping you from serving Christ with the single-minded devotion he requires. It's going to be different. for each person. It may be certain friends who are dragging you down, or your love of money, your desire for a certain job that will give you a certain future, or a certain status, or your desire to be fashionable or to impress others. All these things are things that can entangle us, that can distract us from the only purpose in our life. The only purpose you exist is to glorify Jesus Christ, to bring glory and honor to him. In order to perpetuate gospel ministry, we must be willing to suffer the sacrifice that a soldier makes by denying himself the pleasures of an easy life. And when you deny yourself and choose the suffering that comes from sacrifice, you please the one who called you, Jesus Christ. The second analogy to illustrate this idea of suffering is the analogy of an athlete in verse 5. We must suffer well as an athlete. An athlete disciplines himself to compete according to the rules. This word talks about how this athlete competes This word competes, we actually get an English word from that. The word compete is the word athleto. Athleto, do you recognize that word? It's really drawing this athletic analogies, an athlete competing in a competition. The suffering of an athlete that Paul wants to emphasize is that of his disciplining himself to compete according to the rules. All games and competitions have rules. One of the things I try to do on a regular basis, just to stay healthy and active, is I try to go running on a regular basis. Before I went to India, I did quite a bit of running. And I competed in two marathons. First marathon I ran was in Columbia, South Carolina, and then I ran another one in Charlotte, North Carolina. Now, I've never done very well. I'm a very slow runner. I think my best time is five hours and four minutes. It's a long time to be running, but at least I finished. At least I finished. But the rules for running in a marathon are very, very simple. All you need to do is follow the designated route, 26.2 miles, and you can't do anything that would give you an unfair advantage. You can't jump on a bicycle, bike part of the way, you can't hitch a ride with someone. You've got to run those 26.2 miles on your own two feet, following the designated route. But following those rules takes a lot of discipline, involves a lot of suffering, and I speak from experience. The suffering begins months before the race. When you're training every day, getting out there, sometimes before the sun comes up, running 10 miles, 13 miles. On the weekends, you're doing these long runs, 15 miles, 20 miles. It's a lot of hard work, running. And then on the day of the race, you've got to get up really early because these races are always you know, as the sun is coming up, so you gotta get up really early, and that's painful in itself. And then you're running, and by 13.1 miles, I'm ready to quit. But that's only halfway, you gotta run 13.1 more miles. And by 22 miles, it's just agony putting one foot in front of the other, just trying to keep on going. And then you finish, 26.2 miles. but your suffering has just begun as your muscles begin to realize that you have just run 26.2 miles. And the recovering and cooling down process is in many ways just as painful as running the 26.2 miles. And why do we do this? I have no idea why. We all must be crazy or something. So let's move from the analogy to the reality it represents. Paul is warning that we must be willing to suffer well. And sometimes our suffering is like that of an athlete. As Christians, we must maintain a lifestyle that is pleasing to the Lord. It involves denying ourselves of certain things that people in the world freely enjoy. The Christian life demands self-denial and discipline, which does involve suffering. But we must make up our minds that we will suffer well and ask God to help us to do so. Verse five says that an athlete is not crowned unless he competes well. Though we too, if we suffer well, we too will receive a crown. Later on in 2 Timothy chapter four, verse eight, Paul says that the Lord will give a crown of righteousness. to all who love his appearing. Are you willing to suffer the self-denial and the discipline of the Christian life in order to perpetuate gospel ministry? Paul is illustrating what it means to suffer. He's exhorting Timothy to perpetuate the gospel ministry, but it is going to involve enduring hardness and suffering. He's given us the illustration of a soldier. He's given us the illustration of an athlete. And finally, in verse six, he gives the illustration, the analogy of a farmer. We must suffer well as a farmer. It is the hardworking farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. A farmer must work hard, but his reward is that he receives the first share of the crops, the first fruits of his labor. Before I went to India for two years, right before I left for India in 2016, I worked a landscaping job with a fellow named Bruce Arnold. Landscaping, it's kind of like a farmer, kind of like agriculture. You're involved with the soil, and with growing things, and grass, and bushes, and things like that. But it involves a lot of hard work. You've gotta be out there every day, doesn't matter what kind of weather it is. It could be blazing hot outside, over 100 degrees, but you gotta be out there cutting the grass, or cutting the brown grass, whatever the case may be, if it's over 100 degrees, or trimming bushes. And then in the wintertime, in South Carolina, it doesn't get as cold as here, and so we spend our winters, you know, doing, cleaning up leaf jobs. We have a lot of trees, so cleaning up leaves in people's yards. It can be cold. You're out there, freezing cold weather, sometimes you get freezing rain. I remember sometimes, you know, working even in the rain and freezing rain and getting ice caked on my hood and on my coat. It's cold. It's a lot of suffering, a lot of sweating and toiling and freezing and freezing fingers and aching muscles. But as Christians, we must be prepared to suffer. Sometimes our suffering will be like that of a farmer. We must be willing to undergo the suffering of constant labor and toil. It is going to hurt. It will be painful. But there will be a reward. Verse six, the farmer who labors diligently ought to have the first share of the crops. If you have labored well, you will be rewarded with a harvest. If you labor well as a servant of Christ to perpetuate gospel ministry, being willing to endure suffering, God will reward you for your labor. Are you willing to suffer well? Are you willing to suffer as a soldier? To suffer as an athlete? to suffer as a farmer. This is what it's going to take to perpetuate gospel ministry. We're looking at these four commands that Paul has given Timothy in order to perpetuate gospel ministry. What's the first command again? Be strengthened with Christ's grace. The second command? And trust what you've learned to others. The third command? Suffer well. In the fourth command, verse seven, consider these things. Think over what I say. Paul wants us to understand what he is saying. He wants us to meditate on these things. To meditate simply means to be thinking about these things. In order to be thinking about, we need to have these things captured in our minds. And when you obey this injunction to consider these things, we're promised that the Lord will give us understanding in everything. This doesn't simply terminate with an intellectual comprehension of what it means to perpetuate gospel ministry and to suffer, but this will flourish into a practical application of what Paul is teaching here in this passage. As Paul writes Timothy, he knows he is nearing the end of his life. He's concerned that the ministry of the gospel continue once he is gone. So he writes Timothy to instruct him on how to multiply, to perpetuate gospel ministry. At the beginning of this message, I related to you the story of the Hindustan Bible Institute under the leadership of Paul Gupta. They had built this wonderful college, but they were failing in accomplishing their vision. They were failing to deliver, to commit what they had learned, to entrust what they had learned to faithful men who would go out and teach others. They were failing in their mission to perpetuate gospel ministry. That's not the end of the story. Things changed there at the Hindustan Bible Institute. The leadership of the college was allowing themselves to be strengthened by Christ's grace. And they meditated on the need to reproduce ministers of the gospel And so they began developing programs that targeted faithful men. They didn't want students who simply wanted a degree from an accredited college, a BTH, or an MDiv, or an MA, or an MTH. They wanted students who were faithful men, who were determined to go out and teach others also, who would evangelize the lost, who would plant churches, who would perpetuate gospel ministry, So God gave the leadership a vision for providing non-formal training that attracted the kind of students that they were looking for. The students received solid biblical training, but it wasn't a degree program. They didn't receive a diploma at the end of the program. They didn't even receive a certificate or diploma at the end of their training. It was simply Bible training. But it wasn't just theoretical, it was very, very practical. The students were required to go back to their villages between training sessions. And they would practice training and mentoring others, teaching others right there in their own villages. But starting such a program was not easy. It involved a lot of hard work and suffering, just like Paul talks about. but the leadership was willing to suffer in order to perpetuate gospel ministry. And when we follow the guidelines in this passage, God desires to bless our efforts to expand the influence of the gospel through faithful men. But God wants to use those who are willing, those who are submitted to him. We must allow ourselves to be strengthened by Christ's grace. We must allow God to give us understanding. We must be willing to suffer the work and the hardship it demands. What are you doing today to perpetuate gospel ministry? Let's close with a word of prayer.