John verses one through three. The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth, not only I, but also all who know the truth for the sake of the truth, which abides in us and will be with us forever. Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love. As I said in the introduction, there's multiple ways of dividing this text up. But I kinda like the way that MacArthur lined it up in his study Bible. So I'm gonna use that outline loosely. Verses one through three, we've got the basis for Christian hospitality. And then just to give you an insight of how this will be lined up, uh, Lord willing, next, next week, we'll look at the behavior of hospitality versus four through six versus seven through 11, the limits to Christian hospitality. And then, uh, and then 12 and 13 be our final sermon on the blessing of hospitality, which is full joy. So we start out this letter, though, in this first verse. He says, the elder to the lady and her children, whom I love in truth, and not only I, but also all who know the truth. We begin to see who's writing and who he's writing to. Now, most everybody, going all the way back to the time of the so-called church fathers, going all the way back to the early days of Christianity and on into where some controversies begin to emerge within Christianity, everybody agreed who wrote on this subject, that this was written by John. There's no debate about it. There's some debate about some of the other books of the Bible, but not this one. And it's interesting that it's that way because he doesn't say, I, John, to the late lady. He doesn't write that way. He says, the elder to the late lady. So this was definitely accepted as coming from John. The writing style certainly matches up. We just got through 1 John, and as we read 2 John, it matches the way that he wrote, his style. And that's the beauty of the Bible as well, or at least one of the beauties of it is that Yes, this is the inspired word of God, but God didn't just zap it down from heaven. It didn't fall out of the sky in a complete book. He used men to write. And as he used men to write, he didn't take away their personalities or their writing styles. And so, uh, John wrote different than Paul, and Paul wrote different than Matthew, and Matthew wrote different than Mark, and David wrote different than Moses, and so on and so forth. But it's all the Word of God. And here in this text, in verse 1, he refers to himself not as John the Apostle, which he was, but he refers to himself as the elder. Now this may have been due to his advanced age. Remember at this point in life, he was the oldest and only remaining of the apostles. Some say he may have been close to a hundred years old. So he may have referred to himself as the elder, on advance or on account of his age, but it may have been due to his office. He was a pastor after all, an elder being one of the terms that's used interchangeably. pastor, elder, bishop or overseer, depending on the translation you use there. They're all the same office. And so he may have been referring to that, but maybe, maybe, just maybe he's using this terminology because this was a more familiar kind of a letter. He doesn't use the more authoritative designation of apostle. This wasn't uncommon. In fact, if you go to 1 Peter, 1 Peter 5, look at how Peter begins or writes in this letter, in 1 Peter 5, he doesn't begin it this way, but in chapter 5 and verse 1, This is how he begins to close this letter, this first one, or second one that he writes. And he says there, therefore, I exhort the elders among you as your fellow elder, witness of the sufferings of Christ and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed. And so he's coming down to this term, elder, this elder. this way of putting it, this way of writing. It wasn't uncommon in those days, and certainly not uncommon in our day. Think of presidents. If we meet up with President Trump, we're gonna call him President Trump, but in some circles, I dare say he's known as Donald. I don't know that I would be able to walk up to him and say, hey, Donald, how are you? You know, I refer to him as President Trump. And I guarantee you, if he wrote me a letter, he would sign it, President Trump. We're not on that basis. Even President Biden, you know, he and I differ on a lot more things than even what President Trump and I differ on, but the office, the respect of the office. But I know in some circles, he was known as Joe. In other circles, he was known as the big guy, but that's something different, I guess. But, you know, different places, different things, and this is how it is, even in our day. So it may be with you. We're on a first-name basis here, but, you know, there may be, there's places and times where I refer to as Mr. Green. That's Mr. Smith, that's Mrs. Smith. Different ways of looking at things, certainly addressing people. So there's no controversy as to who wrote it, even though he just refers to him as the elder, and we can see why he would do that. The controversy comes, of course, as I mentioned in the introduction, as to who is the lady and her children. I dug some more into this, I put out a few more commentaries and things like that, just to really dig a little deeper to see what was going on. And I focused my attention on Baptist commentaries. John Gill was the oldest one that I looked at. John Gill said, the elect lady is the person he writes unto by whom is designed not the church of Christ, since such a way of speaking is unusual. And besides, he speaks of coming to see her face to face and of the children of her elect sister. But some particular person, some rich as well as gracious woman of John's acquaintance." And these words, elect lady, are neither of them proper names of the person. So what we see is that even back in the 1700s, there was apparently some discussion going on whether this was a real lady or church. And John Gill said, no, this is a real lady. This is what he believed as he dug into the scriptures. And by the way, even though I'm just now hearing about it and learning about it, apparently there was also some debate as to whether in the Greek was her real name. And so that maybe somehow the translators had missed the point there. But Gill didn't believe that, that that was her real name. Gill wasn't right about everything, obviously, but that was his take on it. So that was in the 1700s. The 1800s, there's a couple of commentaries I like very well. B.H. Carroll being one. B.H. Carroll, a famous Baptist from Texas, he says, to whom is this letter addressed? The answer consists of four parts, and so he starts out. I'm just gonna do partial quote here for time's sake, but he says, the author confesses himself unable, so he's writing about, when B.H. Carroll says the author, he's talking about himself. He says, the author confesses himself unable to appreciate the mystical sense imported by some into the very plain language of a letter not apocalyptic on its face, so as to render the Greek word curia in one verse, in verse one, as lady, and then claim that lady means a church, and then construe the Greek word techna, children, as members of the church. Yet again, at the end of the letter, to so construe the Greek word adelphes, sister, to make it mean church, is to him too far stretched for serious consideration. And yet, all through the ages, and particularly among our hardshell brethren, is this theory held. They say the elder to the elect lady, meaning some elect church called lady, but it all sounds silly to me." That's what B.H. Carroll wrote. So he didn't really beat around the bush. He just says, hey, you're doing some gymnastics with the Greek, trying to make that into a church, and he says, it sounds silly to me. There is a third commentary set that I like a lot. John Brotis did the Matthew commentary on the set, but it's a commentary of all of the New Testament. It's a very fascinating commentary. And it's called the name of the set. left me. However, it was started before the Civil War. It was ended after. And the reason why it took so long to do is because there were some Southern Baptists, or some Baptists in the South, and there were some Baptists in the North that were working on the project. When the war broke out, they were separated. Probably a lot of them really said some bad things about each other, knowing how Baptists are. And then after the war, the project, you know, there was some healing done and all that, and the project got back on track, and I'm glad. Now, I don't agree with everything in the set, but it is one of my most valued possessions, and one reason is because it took me so long to get it pieced together. But the one who wrote on the epistles of John was a Baptist by the name of Henry Saltel, and this is what he wrote. He said, there are indications that the third letter of John and our letter were written about the same time. If the third was written to an individual by name, Gaius, is not the second likely to be. It is more common for the New Testament writers to mention the person addressed by simple name than by any descriptive title. To make the translation lady, and then to interpret lady as the church, is a mysticism foreign to sacred epistolary writings. It comes, therefore, to this, that if we have New Testament epistles addressed to brethren as Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Gaius, we have likewise one directed to a sister also by name. And the reasonable prominence of women in the early church is exemplified. that the term elect is an adjective and not a proper name, electra, or electra, is suggested by its position without the article in the Greek as well as its application also to a sister, verse 13, of the person addressed. And so that's how he took it as well. So what I gather from all this is this, that even as it is in our present time, We all know in our mind some good brethren who take and interpret this as churches, or a church, and do some things with the plain language of the letter. But yeah, we know them to be orthodox in their faith. We know that they are not heretics by any means. We just simply come at this with a different angle. So it has been in the 1900s, the 1800s, the 1700s. And I dare say, if you were to go all the way back, you would find debates about this sort of thing going all the way back. In fact, Milburn Cockrell is the last one I want to quote from, which is a more recent brother. He has a book, A Survey of the New Testament, a little spiral-bound book that's not very big, but it's definitely one of my most prized books that he did that I used quite frequently. He says, the meaning of this address is debated by scholars. Some make it figurative, others literal. Those of the figurative meaning are in two groups. First, some make it a Catholic epistle addressed to the church as a whole under the figure of a lady. This is doubtful as the author has knowledge of the circumstances and problems of his readers. This also makes verse 13 meaningless. So that's what Milburn Cockrell wrote. But then he says second. So in other words, you and I, we're not likely to find any brethren in our circles or any circles that are remotely like us, who take this to being the universal Catholic kind of a interpretation. What we're likely to find is the second group, which is what he writes next, and he says, second, many others make the late lady to be a local church. They say Corinth, Philadelphia, Jerusalem, Ephesus, or Babylon is the church. Their arguments are as follows. and these are the arguments that are given for that position. The term elect was used in greeting from church to church. Number two, it has no personal names like third John. Number three, the church is the bride of Christ. Number four, a false church is called a whore in Revelation 17. Why not a true church being called a lady, an elect lady? Against this idea, he goes on, he says, it must be said that nothing in the epistle suggests this is allegorical meaning. If the lady is the church, who are her children? The lady cannot mean the church and the children, the members. This would make lady and children identical. There is no other instance in the New Testament where the church is addressed in such a figurative manner. He says, it's best to understand this letter as addressed to a Christian woman who had children and a sister. There is mention of her house, which was probably the place where the church in her community met. The Greek is capable of four different meanings, he says. One is to an elect lady, two, to the elect lady, or three, to the elect Syria or Curia, or four, to the lady Electra. So there's a possibility some people say when it comes down, if it's really a lady, then maybe her name was Syria or Curia or Electra or Electra. But the fourth idea would make two sisters have the same name, Electra and Electra, because when you look at verse one, the elder to the late lady, that's where the controversy comes in. They say, well, that Elect is a proper name. Well, if that's the case, then go on down to verse 13, and he says, the children of your elect sister greet you. So if it's a proper name in verse one, What about verse 13, and what kind of nonsense would it be for a family to have two sisters with the same name? So you see how some of these controversies, they kind of get cleaned up a little bit with the plain reading of the text. And the third does have some merit. As Brother Cockrell writes, the name Curia does occur in the ancient documents. It is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Martha. He says, but the other two are most likely correct, but they leave the woman unnamed. And so, if there's going to be something to be said about this, then this is probably either to an elect lady or to the elect lady is the best way to interpret this as to what he's saying. She was likely a widow known for exemplary character and hospitality, and she probably did not live far from Ephesus. Because Ephesus, by the way, is where we're told that this letter was written from. And so, If there's some disagreement about the way I'm interpreting this, understand this. It's not gonna be settled this year or in our lifetime as to the differences that good men have on this. It's been going on in the past several centuries by men that dug a lot deeper into it than I'm going to. But furthermore, when we look at this, I'm gonna take the approach that what's written was written the way it was for a reason, that God meant what he said and said what he meant here in this text. As he writes to this lady, we notice something here. He says that, I love in the truth, and not only I, but also all who know the truth. And as you begin to look at these first three verses, and even into verse four, you notice the word truth is repeated multiple times. Indeed, this lady was known and well-loved for the truth's sake. And as I read this, the elder to the lady and her children, whom I love in the truth, and not only I, but also all who know the truth, for the sake of the truth which abides in us, be with us forever. I'm reminded of a similar greeting that Paul gave to the church at Rome when he wrote to those saints there in Romans 1 in verse 8. Romans 1 in verse 8. He says, First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, because your faith is being proclaimed throughout the whole world. This was a group of people there in Romans whose faith was being proclaimed throughout the whole world. And then in 2 John, he's writing to a lady who was known and loved for the truth's sake. See, it's one thing to to say, oh, I love such and such church. I love such and such church here and such and such church there. And I thank God for that church and this church, but how well do we know the members of that church? I believe Paul. knew the members of that church, but they're in Rome, but John, John, he focuses down in and he's writing to a specific person. What a reminder that is, not only for the pastor of the specific church where he's at, but to think about I was going through some pictures the other day, and I like to take pictures of different things. One of my favorite ways to take pictures is just candid shots. It's one thing to get a picture of a conference with all the preachers standing up in the front with their proper and all that sort of thing, but I really enjoy looking at the pictures where the preachers are mingling with the people. And there are some preachers who never mingle with the church where they're at. They never mingle with the people. They come, they preach the message, and then they go home. And then they tell other congregations, yeah, I love Sovereign Grace Baptist Church, but do they really know Sovereign Grace Baptist Church? What I really enjoy are the ones who come, and they're with us, and they're right down there on our level talking to every individual, talking to every family, and getting to know getting to know who is Isaiah, who is Barry, who is Tina, who's Jill? Names that they ought to know so that when they're among us, they can get to know us, but also when they're away, they pray for Sovereign Grace Baptist Church. Those people come to their mind, you see. what I get from this epistle. We can debate all day long whether we've got her real name locked up in the Greek or not, but it really doesn't matter. We've got a man, a preacher, a pastor, an elder, John, who's at the very end of his life, and he's taking time to write to this lady and her children. Some may say, well, if you don't interpret this to be the church, then you've done a great disservice to the church. But I say that when we interpret it as it is written, we learn of what a pastor, what a preacher ought to be with the people of the church. and learning practicality what ought to be happening as he paid attention to the people. And he knew what their needs were. He knew what was going on. And we can see that in this very pastoral epistle. As we think about our points, The basis for Christian hospitality, this is point number one, and it is the truth. The truth is the basis for Christian hospitality. John repeats this word truth four times in these first three verses. If you take verse four and add it in there, you've got another time he uses that word truth. Truth is important, foundational for the Christian life, for unity, for hospitality. Remember what we read in 1 John chapter 2. 1 John chapter 2 and verses 21 through 23, He says, I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. Everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father. The one who confesses the Son has the Father also. The truth. The truth. It was important then, it's important now. But ours is an age when many dogmatically deny truth. What is it we hear? There are no ultimate realities. There is no truth. That's what we hear now in the world of philosophy and social media and all these things. There are even some who go so far as to say that truth is defined according to personal preference. So, you've got your truth and I've got my truth. That sort of thing. John declares the existence of an absolute. God is the ultimate standard by which all else can be judged. And what do we have? What do we have? Experience. One man over here says, oh, I've got a word from God. Another man over here says, I've got a word from God. And a woman over there says, I've got a word from God. And they're all different words. Where do we get the standard? We get the standard from the Bible. John 17 and verse 17 says, sanctify them by the truth. Your word is truth. God is true. His words and ways are always true. Whatever or whoever contradicts or opposes him is false, deceptive, and dangerous. John wrote this second letter, which probably fit on one sheet of papyrus. It's not very long. but he warned this woman against inadvertently supporting false teachers. And by extension, he's warning all of us. The Holy Spirit has given us this letter that was written to this woman and it's been passed down and translated and we're all warned The basis for hospitality has got to be the truth. And as we get down through this letter, we'll find not only is the basis of hospitality the truth, but hospitality has limits. Think about it. The basis for hospitality is the truth. One of the requirements of being a pastor is that he be hospitable. We've opened up our home to church service this morning. And I know that y'all would open up your home for church, and you've done it before, and I thank God for that. But what's the basis for it? Let me put it to you another way. If a group of Mormons or Catholics came knocking on our door and said, Mr. Green, we heard that you're having church in your house. We've seen the video. You've got a nice pulpit stand. We know you have songbooks. We would like, we would like to hold a service in your house. You're hospitable, you're a pastor, you're supposed to be hospitable. Won't you let us have a service in your house? What would we do? Well, I'd send them packing, going down the road. After I spoke to them for a while, of course, but they wouldn't be having a Mormon service here. They wouldn't be having a Catholic service here. Why? Because I'll not open my home to anything and everything. The truth matters. The truth matters. The same token. There's times I get emails and phone calls. They say, Mr. Green, Pastor Green, they always say, Pastor Green, we found your webpage on the internet. We know you're on Sermon Audio. We have this great mission work. And it's going on. We'd like to come and preach for you and present. Present the work. Question number one, I'm asking, what church sent you? If they don't have a sending church, I'm done. I don't want to hear any more about their mission work. If a man will not get under the authority of a church and go out the biblical pattern, I don't want anything to do with it. They're not coming here. Well, I always invite them. I say, they can come hear me preach, but you're not going to come and present your work. You can't get the biblical pattern right of mission work. But if they tell me the church, I want to know what church it is. And, you know, all those things are important. We'd have visiting preachers quite frequently if I let everybody in. But truth, truth matters. Truth is the basis for Christian hospitality. Look there at verse three. Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God, the father, from Jesus Christ, the son of the father in truth and love. So the truth matters. Truth of God's word, truth of Jesus Christ that matters. And as he goes on here, he gives this succession from grace to mercy and then peace. That's no accident. This is the order from God's first dealings with us to man's final satisfaction. Grace, mercy, peace. It's the life of a child of God. And this is written within the spear of truth and love, which go hand in hand. Truth and love, they have to go hand in hand in order to have true unity or hospitality. Found this quote, which was attributed to John MacArthur. I wasn't able to check it out. It may have been a MacArthur quote. It may have been somebody else. Sometimes social media is kind of weird about those things, but I like to quote, and I jotted it down. It said, truth without love has no decency. It's just brutality. But love without truth has no character. It's just hypocrisy. So truth without love has no decency, it's just brutality. Love without truth has no character, it's just hypocrisy. You see, there's got to be a balance. So where do we find the balance? Is the balance to be found in me, or John MacArthur, or fill in the blank, your favorite preacher or ministry? No. The balance is to be found in the word of God. We don't want to get off balance on this because we've seen some very off balanced churches and people in our lifetime, too much of it. Some of y'all too young to remember this, but there was a group called the Westboro Baptists in Kansas. The man who was pastor of that group was a man who years ago had somehow been affiliated in some of our circles, but that was before my time. But something happened with that group, and I don't know. Maybe they started out with good intentions. Wherever it started in that church, it ended up somewhere terrible. Now, you can search them out on the internet. They've even got a Wikipedia page. And you think about, oh, I'd like to get my name out there on the internet. I'd like to be well known so that people will be able to find us. Make sure you're known for Christ. These people were so opposed to the homosexual movement, which, yes, it's a sin. Yes, it's terrible the way things were going in the 90s, and if it could have been stopped then, we might not be in the mess that we're in now as a country. But in their zeal to try to stop it, They forgot about love. They forgot about love for Christ. They forgot about love for the sinner too. And instead of being a witness for Christ, they became a nuisance to the world. They made a name for themselves. Even though they're not in the news like they used to be, they're still known. for what they did. In the 90s, they were going around protesting about homosexuality, but they weren't showing up with the message of the gospel the way it should have been presented. They were holding up signs like, God hates faggots and other things like that. They weren't just showing up to queer nightclubs or gay parades either. They were showing up to veteran funerals, places that they should have never been. It's an example of a group that had some truth, but no love. Is it a sin for a man to lie down with another man? Absolutely it is. It's a terrible sin. And people start asking about, well, what about this or that? And then all kinds of weirdness starts going on. Listen, the only safe sex is between a man and his wife. That's it. The only biblically approved relationship is marital union. That's all. The Westboro people, they were going around it. Truth but no love. No decency and brutality, as the quote said. They saw sin and won nobody over to Christ. A person can do that with any number of sins or even preferences. you can become hateful over the smallest of things, you know. Yeah, that was a big thing that they were talking about, but my goodness, if you think that it's a sin for a man to get up in the pulpit without a tie, you can make that into a into a big nuisance. Tear up a whole Bible conference because brother so-and-so wasn't wearing a tie. Social media has only amplified this sort of thing. Certainly before you sit down and try to argue with anybody, about anything on the internet, just forget about the keyboard. Remember, on the other side of that screen is a human being who needs the Lord. But on the other side of it, there are another ditch. That is love without truth. So someone might see the Westboro guys out there with their signs, their hatred and meanness and all that. And so, oh, well, that's not us. And so we're gonna get as far away from them as what we can. And the knee-jerk reaction is, well, maybe we've got a family member who has fallen into that sin. And now, because we're Baptist and Westboro Baptist and we don't wanna be associated with them, now we're gonna just stay quiet Or worse yet, we're going to approve their sinful ways. We can't do that. It's not loving at all either. See someone on their way to an eternal hell, a lifestyle of sin Rebellion against God, we can't stay silent. But as we think about these things, truth and love have to go hand in hand. And as we navigate this, we've got to have discernment. There is a time to speak and a time to stay silent. Yes, let them know the terribleness of their sin, but also point them to Christ. I think there's a great example in the Bible as we look at the way that Jesus navigated things while he was here on this earth in Luke chapter 15. Luke chapter 15 and verses 1 and 2. I've been really thinking about this text a lot in my own studies, and I wrote some about this text online, but look at verses one and two there. Now, all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near him to listen to him. Both the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling, saying, this man receives sinners and eats with them. So Jesus was mingling with sinners, tax collectors. I suppose that if anybody would have had a reaction about any sinful people in that day, it would have been It would have been the Jews rising up, being against the tax collectors, and kind of maybe even somewhat in the same way that the Westboro Baptists went against the homosexual movement in the 90s. These were the worst of the sinners in the minds of the Jews. The Pharisees and the others, they despised them. I mean, here they were. They were collecting taxes And when they talk about these tax collectors, they're normally talking about Jewish tax collectors who were collecting taxes for the Roman government. That was an insult to these proud Jews. And what are you doing? Why are you doing this? You know, that's being a traitor to the nation. Jesus comes along and he's mingling with them, receiving them and eating with them. Now, Jesus was not... I think it goes without saying, but I feel like I have to say it. Jesus was not approving of their sins by eating with them, by being around them, but He understood that they had a need. They needed Christ. They needed the truth. So what did he do? He met them on their level. He ate with sinners. You want to see? You want to test your own heart? Think about that one sin that you absolutely despise. And then think about if they only had one way to hear about Christ, and that is for you to invite them into your house to sit at your table while you feed them, would you do it? And then think about would you do it knowing what the brethren would say? Would you invite someone who is on drugs or a homosexual, whatever, to your table, to feed them, to be able to, in that moment, witness to that person. People are more receptive to hearing the gospel when they're hearing anything, really. when you sit down to eat. That's why the best salespeople, and we're not salesmen for Christ, don't get me wrong there, but the best salespeople know, hey, I wanna tell you about this opportunity I've got, why don't we talk about it over lunch? They know, they know. Jesus knew that too. That's why you find him feeding the multitude. You find him here sitting with the sinners eating with them, even though the Pharisees came and said, oh, what's he doing? This man receives sinners and eats with them. You know, there are modern day Pharisees out there and they'll say, oh, well, what's David doing with that guy? Why is he talking to that man? Why is he hanging out with this person or that person? We don't know how the Lord might use that sort of thing, but we've got to find the right balance of love and the truth, and pray that God will help us, that if there is any corner of our heart that would say, oh, we can't do that, we won't do that, what will the other say, blah, blah, blah, get that cleaned out. Oh, I don't want to invite them to church or to the house because if they show up, what will the others say? Who cares what the others will say? Invite them. Sit down and talk to them. Let the Pharisees say what they will. We don't know anything about the lady that John wrote to. but I'm glad, I'm glad that he took the time to write these things out. That's on the human side. As a pastor, as an aged apostle, I'm glad he took the time to write to her, but I'm also thankful that God has preserved his word so that some 2,000 years later, we can read it and we can apply these things to our own lives. whether we're thinking about in a church context or even in our own homes or the way that we are, we all, none of us are completely separated from the world insofar as we have to do business, we have school, we have work, we're out in the coffee shop or the fishing pier or wherever it might be, how will we engage with them? for the cause of Christ. We want to get to their level, not in the level of partaking of their sin. We don't want to curse like they do. We don't want to drink like they do. We don't want to engage in sexual whatever that they do. We don't want their drugs. We don't want their lifestyle, but we do wanna meet them on a human level. Hey, you hungry? Let's have some coffee and let's talk about this. Let's get into the scriptures. Oh, I see that we share the same hobby. You like to fish, I like to fish. You know, whatever it might be. Paul met with people because he was a tent maker. Whatever way, We've got, I was listening to a podcast the other day and they were talking about how to reach people for Christ. Point number one, get a hobby and take it out of the lobby. And I thought that was good. And get out, mingle with the world, with your hobby. And you know what? That opens up opportunities to talk to people. You know, whatever it takes. be hospitable, but the level of it is the truth. This is, this is the basis for hospitality. And so, and so Lord willing, next week we'll look at more about truth and love because that is the behavior of Christian Hospitality, that's verses four through six. I wanna thank you for your attention today. I trust this has been a blessing. May God add a blessing to preaching.