And Stephen, full of grace and of power, was doing great wonders and signs amongst the people. And some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the freedmen, as it was called, and of the Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and of those from Cilicia and Asia, they rose up and they disputed with Stephen. But they could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking. Then they secretly instigated men who said, we have heard them speak blasphemous words against Moses and God. And they stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council. And they set up false witnesses who said, This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs of Moses delivered to us. And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you and we ask that your grace and your mercy would be upon us. And Father, I pray that as we go to your word, we pray that this word would strengthen us. We pray that this word would build us up in our faith. We pray that this word would be such that if there are those here who do not have faith, that you would call them to faith as well. We pray that you would be glorified and honored and that you would be praised and proclaimed and now all that is said and read and done and that you would do this either through me or in spite of me. And this I pray in Jesus's name. Amen. I wanna talk a little bit today because we have Stephen. And most of us who kind of grew up around the church know a little bit about Stephen and his life. And really the distinguishing feature of Stephen is not that he was a deacon, though that's important. But this distinguishing feature about Stephen is that he is the first reported martyr after Pentecost. And so that's really kind of what we remember and mark Stephen for. But as we talk about Stephen, I want to just... spend a few minutes and kind of talk to your heart a little bit about talking. And I had a professor in seminary who used to, every once in a while, he would kind of stop his lecturing and he'd say, man, put your pens down and close up your notebooks and put your eyes on me because now it's Coach Justly that's talking to you and not not your professor. And that's what he would do every once in a while. And those were probably, in David Jefferson's lectures to us, probably those times that were most practical and most meaningful. And he used that. He had been a college football player. And actually, his first job out of college was as one of those those radio talk show announcer guys, you know, that do the radio versions of football games and such. And he had just this great voice for that before he eventually went into the ministry and served and eventually ended up as a professor down there. I want to talk to you in that way for just a few minutes today. Because we've seen this kind of thing before. Stephen is speaking, the people don't like what Stephen is saying, and they try and argue with him, they fail in arguing with him, and so the next result is to say, well, let's arrest him and get rid of him. You know, let's use force and power and boot him to the street. You've heard me say this before, and I will continue to say this more willingly as long as I live, that the use of force, the use of bullying, the use of intimidation to get your way is the work of people who are weak-minded, and you cannot defend the position that they're holding with reading and conversation. One of the things that I am really concerned about, about our culture. You know, when you turn on the news, you read the headlines, usually that's about as far as I get, and I typically choose One that's known for being on the left, and one that's known for being on the right. And I read both of their headlines and figure out that somewhere in between is probably what really happened. And there have not been meetings within anybody's political preferences there. But I fear that we have lost the ability as a culture, largely, to have civil discourse. You know, the symbol of this course is when two people or two groups of people, or sometimes more than two groups of people, sit down together and they have a sober-minded conversation. that is respectful, that is deliberate and intentional, where you actually listen to what the other person has to say. And when I say listen to what the other person has to say, I don't mean I'm listening to you long enough to figure out what I need to say next to attack you. But to listen to what the other person says, you kind of have to get an understanding of what they mean. That doesn't mean don't disagree. It doesn't mean that there's no such thing as absolute truth, and that all truths are equal. That's what our postmodern culture will say. Don't hear me wrong, there is absolute truth. We don't necessarily have a monopoly on it, but God does, and his word is the monopoly on absolute truth. Okay, so the closer we get to this, the closer we get to absolute truth, right? I think that's something that most of us would agree on in principle. But sometimes we don't agree on that in practice. Sometimes we fall into the habit. And social media is probably about one of the worst ways that we do this. Because social media rants tend to be just that. They tend to be rants with everybody talking in different directions and nobody actually engaging each other with meaningful conversation. Let me speak to your hearts for a little bit. Don't be guilty of that. In any context, whether it's on Facebook, and you know, Facebook's a great place to post things, and I'd be the first to admit that I'm one of those guys. I will post things that are sometimes Contentious isn't meant to be the right word. Controversial. Especially in things that I'm passionate about, like Christianity, like the pro-life movement, and things along those lines. And sometimes those can spark controversy. But when somebody challenges you or says something, be intentional about listening to what they say. And engage the ideas. Argue with the ideas that they have, and maybe not necessarily against the person. But we tend to don't do a good job of that as a society. Don't make that mistake. I think one of the reasons that Christianity, that reasoned Christianity is not growing in America today is that we forgot how to do that. And everybody wants to talk in sound bites. You know, and we've fallen into the trap of letting us be pulled into the soundbite world. But conversation doesn't happen in soundbites. Conversation needs to be held in such a way that we listen to each other with respect, with a degree of reverence. It's nothing new. What we're seeing here in the Book of Acts over and over again, and as we go through the Book of Acts, and if you continue reading past where we're gonna take a break from the Book of Acts in a couple weeks, you're gonna continue seeing that kind of thing take place. So there's nothing new under the sun. Solomon said that a long time ago, okay? But as Christians, we have something that is absolutely true. And so we shouldn't, be afraid of engaging people in reasoned, rational, polite conversation. Kindness. By the way, what's interesting to me about that word, kindness, it's used in the Bible a bunch. In fact, in Paul, when he writes, you know, all about the things above it in 1 Corinthians 13, kindness is one of those attributes that comes out above. Alright? But in the Christian world, kindness is seen to be a virtue. In the Roman world, it was seen to be a weakness. It was not something that people looked to and aspired towards. I fear that we've run into that same context today, where we're not intentionally kind to people that we perhaps disagree with. And again, being kind doesn't mean that we don't take strong stances on things. It doesn't mean that every desire or every idea deserves respect. There's some really stupid ideas out there, and those stupid ideas deserve to be mocked. God mocks them. Psalm chapter two, God mocks those who rise up against him. There's a place for that. But if our goal is genuinely to say, We want to engage with you so that at the end of the day that we both agree with this, then beating each other up is typically not going to be real successful in achieving that goal and that end. You hear me? You hear me when I say that? When you're on Facebook this afternoon, or this evening, or tomorrow, or whenever, or for maybe a generation down the Instagram world that I still haven't figured out, or there's another thing like Instagram, Snapchat, or those kinds of things. Us in the Generation X, we know a little bit about Twitter that we haven't always figured out how to use it right. You know, there's lots of those kinds of things. Let me challenge you to be intentional about what you say. Make sure that every word that you say is chosen deliberately, but then also apply that not just to what you do online, but to the conversations that you have with each other. Because sometimes, And I think part of the other reason that the church in America, in the West, is in decline, largely, is because we oftentimes don't have those same kind of kindness attitudes towards one another. Now, I heard a pastor once say, remind us to say, look, remember when you're talking to another Christian, part of the church, Jesus described the church as his bride. You know, and ask yourself before you say something to somebody who is a professing Christian, would I want somebody saying the same thing to my bride? And say, I'm gonna respect the bride of Christ. So there's a little bit different standard for a believer and non-believer, but we don't always know who all the elect are either, those whose names are in the Lamb's Book of Life. And so we want our conversations marked with kindness. And that also doesn't mean that we just be quiet to maintain peace. Sometimes we interpret that. One of the errors of my grandparent generation, especially, was that they were quiet about things of importance, particularly their faith. And as a result, they didn't pass those along well to the next generation. Don't fall into their trap. And engage bad ideas in the culture. But again, do it with a degree of respect and dialogue with the person in kindness. There's a phrase that I brought and was given to me by one of my professors in seminary. It says, be hard on ideas, but soft on people. Be gentle with people, but hard on the ideas. And when you kind of work through that in that way, you build relationship and you build respect. And you don't fall into the trap of these guys. And so really what I want you to kind of wrap your heads around as we look at Stephen's account. Okay, we're introduced to Stephen. We were introduced to him last week in a context. He's one of the deacons. He's actually the first of the deacons to be mentioned. His name is a Greek name. And so he's one of the Hellenists. So even these first deacons weren't all Jews. Some of these were Greeks. Stephen is one of them. And up until this point, they've been largely picking on the Apostles. they've gotten a little bit sidetracked, and they go, well, we're not gonna take on the apostles. Maybe if we can't get down, let's go after one of the underlings of the apostles, if you will, one of the second generation, if you will, that was converted under the ministry of the apostles. Maybe if we can't take this group down, we'll take this group down on their knees. That may be one of the reasons that they're targeting Stephen. Maybe they look at how Stephen is described. He's described as being full of grace and truth, and he's performing wonders and signs. And we've talked about wonders and signs, and when we talk about wonders and signs, one of the things I told you was that you normally see that when it comes to the work of the apostles. This is an exception to the rule. You don't say, OK, well, we're going to throw out the rule. We're just going to make all new rules based on the exceptions. We don't do that. The exception doesn't define the rule. The exception is just that. It's an exception to the rule. Stephen is an exception to the rule. Maybe they were just assuming he's one of the apostles because he worked miracles. We don't know. We're not really told all of those details in terms of why, other than the fact that he has distinguished himself. By the way, if you remember, just to kind of remind you of some things. When we talked about wonders and signs, we gave a definition for that. And we said that the definition of wonders and signs are those things which God does through His people to demonstrate that He is God of gods. That He is the God of the universe and those Stephen is identified in this way by these signs, these signs and wonders that are being done through him as an exception. By the way, the phrase full of grace and truth, that's only used of one other person in the Bible, and I think stuff like that is interesting when you bump into things like that. You wanna take a guess as to who that is? Jesus, you bet. And this is John 1, 14. Jesus is described as full of grace and truth. Stephen is as well. He's the only other one. That says a lot about his faith. But I think Luke, as he's writing the book of Acts, is being intentional too. And as he's being intentional, he's giving us a foretaste of what's to come. Because Jesus was who he was, working with signs and wonders, full of grace and truth. put him to death, Stephen is gonna follow in that same pattern of his life. And so I think it's important that we highlight and notice that. Okay, and so he meets opposition. There's a little bit of a different group of opposition. Up until this point, it's always been the priests, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the scribes, and all of those guys that we're used to from the Gospels that are coming after the apostles. Here's a layman. Here's a layman that are coming. We're told that the opposition is coming from the synagogue of the freemen. Now, that's actually a reference, and interestingly enough, in the, I think it was in the 50s or something, but in the 20th century, they actually, it was earlier than that, it was in the early 19-teens or 20s, they actually found a synagogue dedicated to those who were free Jewish slaves. They had been slaves to the Romans, given their freedom, it earned that freedom, and they established their own synagogue in Jerusalem. And we found actually a reference to that in the archeological digs around Jerusalem. I think that's interesting when we bump into pieces of history like that. So that's the context. These guys have been slaves. And they're worshiping together. They don't like what Stephen is having to say. And they're certainly not able to argue against it. And then we're told that there's Cyrenians, or people who were from the city or the region of Cyrene, and Alexandrians, people from Alexandria. This is an area in North Africa. Alexandria is, of course, the area of Egypt that we would call today. And Cyrene is closer to the area of Libya, of what we would call it today. It wasn't called Libya back then, obviously. And so these guys aren't real happy. So these North African Jews are coming in and they're trying to contend with Stephen and they're losing over and over and over again to him. And then we're also told that they're from Cilicia and Asia. Both of those regions are located in modern day Turkey. So we've got people from the southwest and from the northwest that are coming along with these free Jews and they're bringing opposition. By the way, an interesting piece of tidbit may be helping to connect the dots. The capital city of the region of Cilicia was a city called Tarsus. Saul of Tarsus, Paul the Apostle comes from that region. That's why he was given, obviously, the title that he had. He may have been one of the guys helping to stir things up with his own kinsmen. And that would, again, we're inferring some things, but that would make sense given the fact that he shows up at the end of the next chapter when Stephen is put to death. And so any connecting dots are important to see where some of these figures show up and where they come from. Because I don't think anything in history happens by accident. And if we follow our Heidelberg Catechisms, and those of you in the Confirmation class will see it in a couple weeks, when we talk about Providence. God governs all things by His Providence. So here we have all of these pieces of the puzzle coming together. And so they try and reason with Him. And they fail. And they're unable to do that. And there's a notation there that they just can't contend with his wisdom and his spirits. Spirit is capitalized in most of our Bibles, not all of the translations. There's some of the places where the word spirit, we don't know for sure whether it refers to the Holy Spirit, him, the third member of the Trinity, or whether it refers to the spirit that we're given And so context has to help us kind of interpret that, whether it's a capital spirit, as in terms of God himself, giving Stephen the words, which is what Jesus promised, or whether it's a spirit of God in Stephen, who is giving the word, giving him the boldness to speak as he ought. Again, some of our Bibles make that decision for us, but that's the context that we're seeing here. And so the solution, rather than going back to the drawing board, revaluating Stephen's arguments, saying, hmm, he's right or he's wrong, or he's lining up with scriptures or he's not, and if he's right, then I need to conform my ideas to what I'm being taught now, which is what the favorite Marines were doing, by the way, when Paul eventually gets to them. But they don't do that. They hire some thugs. some folks that are willing to do just about anything for a bribe in terms of money, and they come along and say, this guy, Stephen, is speaking blasphemous words against Moses and God. It's not right fabrication. What were the blasphemous words? that Jesus is the very son of the creator Moses. Well, Jews would consider that blasphemy perhaps, but in the entirety of scripture, he's not. He's not speaking about blasphemous words against God because he's speaking about, again, Jesus being God in the flesh. But that's what they're accusing him of. And so they trump up these charges and get the elders and the scribes involved. And Stephen is now arrested, and he's taken to trial before the council. Same council that's been dealing with the apostles all along. This is at Sanhedrin. You've heard plenty about Sanhedrin thus far. And they have a charge that they officially lay out against him. based on false witnesses, that's verse 13. And the charge is that this man never ceases to speak words against the holy place and the law. The holy place is the temple. In fact, it goes on to say this holy place. This is something that I want you to catch, because there's a half-truth at work here. One of the things that I would just simply say, wicked people do, when they're trying to win an argument by power, force, and intimidation. It is a kind of speak half-truths about what you're saying. They take some of the words that you've said, they take those words out of context, and they twist them to mean something entirely different. Okay? Yes, Stephen is speaking against the Temple. What is he saying about the Temple? Then the Temple doesn't have any need anymore, because Jesus is the greater Temple. Jesus is going to see this Temple torn down by the way that's prophetic, that happens in the year 70 AD, when God sends the Roman armies. to tear down the temple all the way to the ground, not even when rock is, when stone is laid upon another after they're done. They burned them, burned the place to the ground, destroyed everything that is there. They razed the city. Jesus was being prophetic. See, he was repeating what Jesus had been saying. Not blasphemy, though, because Jesus is the greatest Hebrews 10, verse 10, that another sacrifice never needs to be made. And one of the wonderful things about, again, God's providence in history is if you do some research in history, every time somebody's tried to rebuild the temple, tried to restart sacrifices on the Temple Mount, God sends an army and absolutely wiped them out before they could do so. And now an Islamic mosque sits upon the Temple Mount, preventing that from ever happening again. Yeah, I know there's a bunch of conspiracy theories that say, well, yeah, we've got the rock. It's silly stuff. OK? God placed a mosque on top of that Temple Mount so that people wouldn't try and continue sacrificing, because his son already did that work. And so if we were to ever sacrifice anything ever again, that would demean the sacrifice of Jesus. Why would we ever entertain that idea? People have, people do, and God prevented it in His providence. So that's what they say. So yeah, it's true. He's speaking against the temple. The lesser temple. Glorifying the greater temple. But speaking against the law, he's not speaking against the law. The law is in force. The law is still in force today, beloved. The difference is that if you are a born-again believer in Jesus Christ, if you are saved, and you're trusting in Jesus as your Lord and your Savior, Jesus has fulfilled the law on your behalf. So the law is still enforced. Jesus just fulfilled it for those who are His own. Not for everybody, but those who are His own. And thus, we don't need to bear the burden of living up to the law. Praise the Lord, because we can't. That's the problem of man. We can't live up to the law of God. That's what Stephen is teaching. And next week, we're gonna spend some time looking at his sermon in terms of his response to these guys. But this is the charge that's being placed. Something that is true, something that is false. And when false teachers come into your midst, that's how they always work. We used to say that if the devil wanted to infiltrate the church, he wouldn't do so by putting on a red costume with horns and carrying a pitchfork. That's not how he infiltrates the church. He infiltrates the church with little bad ideas that are mixed in with truth. And we kind of say, OK, well, we compromise a little bit for the bad idea. And then we kind of go a little bit further and a little bit further. And eventually, we end up with something that doesn't look like historic Christianity altogether. And you can look around, and you see it all over the place in terms of the history of the church and the way the churches have fallen. You know, I gotta say, when I was in seminary, and when I was before seminary, I hated church history. I hated history in general. I was not a historian guy. I liked World War II history because I could talk and talk about tanks and aircraft carriers, and those things were kind of cool. But beyond that, I really wasn't interested much in history. Maybe Roman soldiers, and that was kind of cool, too. But as a whole, I was not a history guy. But as I went through seminary and I got into the church for the first time, I began realizing how important our history was. Not just that it's rich and it's thorough and it's wonderful, but it's important because it's what keeps us grounded. It's what keeps us from being tempted to go astray. It's all of those bad ideas. And when we forget our history, we make the same mistakes that those before us have made. So yeah, I've learned that history is very important for us as a church. Whether that's our favorite pastime or not is irrelevant. What's relevant is the fact that it is one of the tools that God has given us to preserve truth and orthodoxy in the life of God's people. Okay, we need to do that. And one of the cool things about these sermons, and what Peter, or what Peter has preached, and what Stephen's about to preach, is we see them talking about it in church history, over and over again, going through the Old Testament, reminding us of the great things that God has done in His faithfulness. He is preaching against the temple, but he's not preaching against the law. The law still stands. He's just saying that it's fulfilled. They explain in verse 14 a little bit further, because he's preaching that this Jesus of Nazareth guy, you know, the one that we killed, will destroy this place, that's the temple, and will change the customs of Moses delivered to us. Again, half truths. Yeah, Jesus is going to destroy this place. He was going to see the temple razed to the ground in judgment for what they did. In judgment for putting the Lord of life on the cross of death. That's truth. The customs of the Jews are going to change. One way or the other. Because we're liberated in Christ from that. We don't need to keep track of all 600 and some 700 laws that they have and rules that the Pharisees made up. Praise the Lord that we don't have to keep track of all of those things. That's good stuff for us to be encouraged. But that's how people do it. And when people will challenge you, they will again challenge you with half-truths. I can't tell you how often times when I engage with atheists, they'll say, but you believe this. Well, sort of. You know, the joke at topics when some of those questions come up is that we say yes. You know, it's a combination of yes and no, because what they're charging us with is a little bit of truth and a lot of falsehood. And so we need to clear out the falsehood to reveal the truth. That's part of what we're called to do. And so they go on and they gaze at him. And we'll talk about what he talks about next week. But they gaze at him and makes a wonderful statement. That he had the face of an angel. Now, that's a phrase that gets used in the Bible, and you wanna see an example of what that looks like, turn to 2 Samuel 19.27 sometime, and read through that section of scripture. I wanna just simply state what that means. The first is this idea that he has confidence, not just simply that he is speaking truth of God as part of it, but he's doing it confidently. Angels don't get afraid. They don't get scared about men. Stephen wasn't afraid to engage with the truth. Too often times, when somebody challenges us, we back out. We cower underneath of their attacks. Don'ts. Stephen didn't. Of course, that makes him a little bit more angry. But Stephen didn't as well. He stood before them, and he engaged them. Let me just kind of wrap this morning up with a couple observations. First of all, opposition is part of the Christian life. If you're not facing opposition of one sort or another for the faith that you hold, you need to re-examine the faith that you hold and the lifestyle that you're living. Simple as that. There will be seasons where we get a break. But if you look at your life as a whole, you're going to face opposition when you hold to the truth. because we are not of this world, and we live in this world. That's just the reality. Jesus told us it was gonna be the reality. The apostles told us that it was gonna be the reality, and this is what we see demonstrated in the book of Acts. Yes, they may not arrest you, they may not stone you, they may not weep with you, they may not beat you, they may not put you to death, but again, they will seek to intimidate you into silence. or at least within the walls of your church when you gather. One of the phrases that boggled my mind when one of these more liberal types was thought and said that we don't have anything against those Christians and their religion, we just want them to keep it on the same level as their knitting clubs. And for the ladies who are knitting, this is not meant as a dig. But your Christianity is far more important than your knitting. I think all of you agree with that reality. But that's the kind of attitude that people are taking towards Christianity. They want you to be quiet about it. They want you to do it on your own and don't recruit. They don't want you to evangelize. They don't want you to proselytize your faith. But if we don't evangelize and proselytize, if we don't give a reason for the hope that we have, we are sinning. It's our call as Christians to do that. Opposition is going to come as a result of doing that. It's part of the Christian life. We see that in Stephen. We've already seen that in these apostles. But getting back to where we started, take care. and how you respond. You know, it's interesting, Colossians 3.8, and when I teach on the Ten Commandments, one of the things that sometimes people get surprised at, because they've always heard that the Third Commandment, you know, don't take the Lord's name in vain, is talking about not cussing. No, it's not talking about not cussing. Third Commandment is largely talking about not using God's name for your own personal main purposes. That's what it's talking about. But don't think that gives you an excuse to go cussing. Colossians 3.8, one of the things that Paul writes to Christians is that we are meant to have tongues that are free from, or mouths that are free from dirty language. a talk as people who are obscene and things along that. We're not supposed to have filthy, dirty talk. OK? The Bibles will translate that in a variety of different ways. But the Greek phrase there is we're not to have a preference for obscenities. I don't care what the context or what that sounds like. We're not supposed to be there. We're not supposed to, if you look at Clement of Alexandria, who was one of the early church fathers, the way he described his work, we as Christians are not supposed to talk like the common laborer talks. We're supposed to talk as somebody who is, if you will, in modern English, gentrified. You know why that is? It's because while there's nothing wrong with doing common labor for your vocation, if that's what you have been called to do, it's a noble thing. But we are not common. We are children of the king. And thus we should speak as such. Our language should reflect such. So again, be careful how you talk. Be careful of the things that you say. Paul and I spend some time joking every day. We got lost a couple times trying to climb the hill where the Hollywood sign is. And when we would get lost, Paul's joke would rip, and rest in peace, we're done. I was kind of thinking about that on our airplane flight home. Sometimes airplane flights are good times to just think that we can kind of rephrase that a little bit in terms of the concept of our passage this morning, when we talk and engage with people in dialogue and things like that. Call it the RIT principle, you know. But instead of rest in peace, let it be respect, integrity, and patience or perseverance. I couldn't decide which. And I didn't want to go rip and put or something along those lines. But respect. Respect the person you're talking to. Respect yourself. Respect the God that you worship and recognize that you represent him when you speak to anybody that you speak to in our culture and community. Have integrity. Integrity refers to the fact that we're consistent. OK? So a bridge. is consistent and straight all the way across, it's not going to fall apart. Don't fall apart. You've got the truth on your side. Why fear? You've got the Holy Spirit in you if you're a believer. Why fear? Fear God, not men. Have integrity when you speak. Integrity in terms of the consistency of the message, the consistency of the truth, the consistency of the boldness with which you speak. and patience or perseverance, okay? Be patient with those with whom you speak. Be patient with yourself, because you're not always gonna know the answer. Don't make it up as you go. I can't tell you how many times it boggles my mind, for instance, when they feel like they're trapped. They just make something up to try and get them out of the corner that they feel trapped in. It is much better to say, I don't know the answer to that, but I know somebody who probably does. And that's what text messages are for. That's what Facebook messages are for. That's what emails are for, or phone calls. We want to do it the old school way. And say, um, I'm stuck. Can you help me out here? OK? God surrounded you with a lot of people. And God has placed leaders. Rely on them and learn from them so that one day you could be the person that somebody calls and says, uh-oh, I am in the corner. Help me out of this bind. Teach me how to engage with this person. And part of the why I've got us brought us together as a body so that we can rely upon each other. And you have the strengths. But that's how we've been called to live as a church body. That's how we've been called to engage with those first years. And it's a demonstration that's been modeled for us, and it's what's being modeled by Stephen. He's going to have some pretty strong words, but everything that he says is dealing with the ideas that he's being challenged with. He is dealing with putting them in their place because they've got some pretty foolish things that they're saying, but He's standing on truth. And I would argue, willing to be corrected if He was in error, but He wasn't in error. His Holy Spirit was moving through Him in a powerful and profound way. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come before You. We know that we fall short. We oftentimes We lose our temper when we engage people we don't like being opposed. We sometimes have a desire to intimidate. We sometimes have a desire to attack. And while ideas at times should be attacked, we know that. We should be faithful in setting forth your gospel and give the reason for the hope that we have with gentleness and truth. So let us take a stance on that, and especially as we talk to each other, let us be careful as we do that as well. And may your glory and your mercies cover us in all that we do, not for our praise and honor, but for your praise and honor. In all of these things, we pray in Jesus' name.