Well, we've been blessed to go through Westminster Confession of Faith for some time now. We haven't made it very far, but this will be our fifth and final session on chapter three, which is called Of God's Eternal Decree. And last week we made it through paragraph seven. And so now we're just going to look at paragraph eight. I'm gonna go ahead and read it for us and then we'll dive in. Chapter three of God's eternal decree, paragraph eight. This is what the divines wrote. The doctrine of this high mystery of predestination is to be handled with special prudence and care that men attending the will of God revealed in his word and yielding obedience there unto may from the certainty of their effectual vocation be assured of their eternal election. So shall this doctrine afford matter of praise, reverence, and admiration of God, and of humility, diligence, and abundant consolation to all that sincerely obey the gospel. So we just barely touched on that paragraph. I basically read it to you last week and then made like one really, really quick note. And then we had to save the rest for today. But this paragraph opens by saying that the doctrine of predestination is a high mystery and it is to be handled with special prudence and care. And I think this is perhaps even more helpful today, at least it feels more helpful to me who's living today, than it may have been when the divines wrote this. And the reason I say that is because there are many people today, especially younger people, and especially since COVID, it seems, that seem to think they can learn theology just fine from books and from sermons online, preached by a pastor far, far away. and from YouTube videos and podcasts and debates and things, and all those things can be great blessings from God. But the divines here remind us that the mysteries of God's word, and here particularly we're discussing election, must be handled with special prudence and care. And I think perhaps the chief way that our culture Even our Christian culture, the church today needs to heed these words is by handling these doctrines within our God-ordained covenant institutions of the church and the family. If you think you can learn theology on your own with all the resources I just named, just as well as you can with flesh and blood people around you who care about you, then you are very sorely mistaken. And you are setting yourself up for some strange, heretical flight of fancy, or some perhaps even character you know, bad character growth that no one will be there to rebuke out of you if you think you can just be pastored by YouTube and by a bunch of old dead people, which both those things I love. I love reading old dead people. I love YouTube. It's such a great blessing. But we have to learn theology within the context of the body. You need to have pastors who love and care for you, who know their doctrine and their people and can walk through these things with you. Children, The children that are here, you need your parents to teach you and walk through these weighty matters with you. You need your parents. That's who God assigned. God didn't assign some random person you've never met to teach you about election. He assigned your parents. Adults, you also need each other. Just because you're adults doesn't mean you can just figure out everything on your own. We need our brothers and sisters in Christ. They are gifts from God. for our own good and for the good of the body as a whole. Iron sharpening iron. Both things have to be rubbing against one another. It's a give and take relationship. Wives, you need husbands. And husbands, though you are the leaders of your home, and though God has gifted you uniquely in a sense, with the ability to discern and teach God's word, you need your wives too. It's not good that you should be alone. God made men and women to be together. But in much of the mushy evangelical world and culture that we live in, and that some of us have come out of to some extent, we have forgotten this truth. that we have to learn our theology and live out our theology in these covenant institutions. We believe like that old country song, me and Jesus, we got our own thing going. I'm sure some of y'all have heard that. It's absolute rubbish. That's so not true. That's how many, many people within our broad evangelical world tend to think with their boots on the ground. Me and Jesus, we got our own thing going. We don't need anybody to tell us what it's all about. Famous song. Why do you think it's famous? Resonates with people. Everything is personal, individual, subjective. We think that the Holy Spirit can just teach us whatever he wants on his own. Well, he can, he can, but he has clearly ordained that not be that way in the vast majority of cases. Now, in some of the high church traditions, such as Roman Catholicism, the church has a very high view of itself. making sure people understand that she and she alone is the great guarantor of truth. And without going through her, without going through the magisterium of Rome, you can't properly understand God's word at all. But find me a Roman Catholic family that opens God's word together every day. I don't know that you will be able to do it. You may find Roman Catholic families that pray the rosary together every day, that pray the divine office even together. You may even find devout families that go to mass every single day. That's not unheard of, but I have yet to encounter a Roman Catholic family that has Bible-centered family worship in their home every day. So there's that ditch we can fall off to. There's the mushy evangelical side. There's the church is everything side. And then on our end of things, in the conservative Christian homeschooling world, you will sometimes find strong fathers who rule and teach their families well, but who are very distrustful of the institutional church and keep pastors and church leaders at arm's length, never allowing anyone else to influence their children or their wives. They won't ever submit to a teaching or decision that's not their own. So in order to heed the divine's words here in paragraph eight, we have to avoid all these errors on all the sides. The me and Jesus, that's the only place I can learn. The only in the family and dad is everything. The church is the answer to all things. We have to avoid all the errors of just putting everything into one of those baskets because they're all true. The church is important. The family's important. We, of course, have to have an individual relationship with Christ as well. And let's not forget the third God-ordained covenant institution, the state. The state. Ideally, our theology would be being shaped by a godly state, by Christian princes and Christian magistrates that have submitted to God's word and govern us according to God's word. Right now, we're in a place in our culture where we're striving to disciple the state, that we're trying to lead the state to know Christ. But in an ideal world, the state would be guiding us, would be guiding her citizens. And the church leaders and the state leaders would be working together to create an environment that is warm to the Christian faith, that honors the Bible. One day that'll be the case, but not yet. But we still can rely on the church and the family now. So that's a context for how we're gonna do the special prudence and care. Can't just do it on your own. You have to go with the way that God has laid out. But we might ask why, why this doctrine? There's tons of doctrines. Why does this high mystery of predestination particularly need to be handled with special care and prudence? Does anyone want to hazard a guess? Or maybe from your own experience, maybe John or David, you've learned something in your time in the reformed world. Why does this doctrine need to be handled with special care and prudence? It tends to be misunderstood. Yeah. the source of unnecessary division. That's absolutely true. Division's okay when it's based on true understanding. Right. Then, you know, over time God irons that out, but a lot of times this doctrine is not fully understood. That's true. Yeah, that's absolutely true. People, people definitely, something about election makes them uncomfortable and they, Misunderstand it in a variety of ways. It's just the pervasiveness of sin. It's nothing unclear about God's word, but the pervasiveness of sin can lead a couple particular directions here. We've seen a big thing that a misunderstanding and a misapplication of the doctrine of election can lead to is pride, can lead to pride and closed mindedness. Has anyone here ever heard of the term cage stage Calvinist? Cage Stage Calvinist. Scott, you wanna give us a definition? You don't have to if you don't want, but I saw you shaking your head. It's somebody who, oh, how would I word this? It's somebody who has attached themselves to Calvinism, usually just the five points and nothing else, and sees, see what, is more proud to say they're a Calvinist Christian than a Christian Calvinist. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's it for sure. This is a term that kind of gained popularity in what's called the Neo-Calvinism movement, which was really at the turn of the 21st century and especially the first decade of the 21st century. Many, many people came to a Calvinistic adjacent type of understanding of the faith through a couple of big-name people like Tim Keller for instance and and Not that Tim Keller calls this at all. That's not what I'm saying He was just a figure within that movement, but a lot of people it was not through their local churches or through their families but it was through they found a video on YouTube or something and they latched on and they didn't have that special prudence and care and they just latched on to this idea of God's sovereignty and they thought well I trust in Christ so obviously he picked me and a lot of these guys went crazy and they went into like this weird pride mode of if you're not a Calvinist you just can't understand the Bible and you must not have the Spirit and obviously you're not elect either and this was a big thing when I was in seminary if someone Started to become convicted of certain aspects of reform theology mainly what Scott references the five points which is a just a tool for understanding justification and election and things like that and five points of Calvinism they would go into this cage stage where they were just crazy and All they ever wanted to talk about was Romans 9 and that was it that was like their whole Bible, you know you can do this on any doctrine, but it's a phenomenon that's happened within our community and in the past couple decades. Maybe you'll meet someone. I've met a number of people like this. If you ever especially go to a seminary or get on Twitter, which I think is where these guys tend to live in seminary classrooms and on X, but you might meet someone who can't hardly have a conversation about any topic without using the phrase doctrines of grace. But then the whole time you're thinking, I think you're the least gracious person I've ever met. It's a problem. The doctrine itself of election cannot lead to pride, but a mishandling without special prudence and care and a misunderstanding of election can lead to pride. But I can tell you there are a few things more inconsistent than a proud Calvinist or an arrogant Calvinist. It is just a complete contradiction in terms. You can't have an arrogant Calvinist who is consistent in living out what he claims to believe. But this particular doctrine doesn't only need to be handled with special prudence and care because of pride. I think there's actually an even more prevalent problem and issue at play here that the divines were probably especially aware of in their churches. And that is that when people are actually awakened to their sinfulness, And when they have tender consciences to God's word and to the Holy Spirit, and they begin to understand the biblical doctrine of God's absolute uncompromising sovereignty, especially as it pertains to election, then they begin to despair. They fall into a pit of despair because they think, I absolutely believe this, it's so clear from the scriptures, but what if I'm not elect? What if I'm not among that number? Or how could I be elect? Because I still sin so much. If I was elect, certainly I would have stopped sinning by now. I know my faith isn't what it should be. They get into this cycle where every time they fall into a big sin, they think, I must not be elect. I must be going to hell. We talked about this just very, very briefly last week. I mentioned one of my heroes, John Bunyan. He struggled with this for years and years as a minister. He struggled. Could he really be saved? Does God really love him? Has he been abandoned by God? And it wouldn't even be things he did. It would be fleeting temptations that came into his mind, and he just immediately would lose all assurance, sometimes for years at a time. He was even near his death, praying, asking his friends to pray for his salvation. This is a big problem, even among smart, godly, diligent Christians. But Jesus wants his people to have tender conscience, since that's a good thing. He doesn't want you to have a hard conscience that thinks, you know, like Paul said, you know, well, what if I just keep sinning? It doesn't matter, grace will just abound all the more. No, no, no. Paul said those people's condemnation are just. He wants you to be tender and wounded when you sin against him. He wants you to be aware of your sin and hate your sin. Jesus hates pride within his body. So there's much to commend in those who have doubts about their salvation. But the Bible is clear also that God wants us to know that we are saved. The Roman church during the middle ages, they foisted so much power upon people by convincing people that they couldn't know if they were saved. But then they gave them steps not to get assurance of salvation, but to get assurance that they would give it one step away from damnation a little farther. Well, do these specific acts of penance by this indulgence, have this type of contrition, and maybe that'll assuage some of God's wrath. Because people have always had this problem. What if I'm not, say it's not only Calvinists, I think we just have a possibility for this being exacerbated, within our theology. The Bible is clear that God wants us to know that we are saved. How unloving would it be for a father to never let his son or daughter know that they were truly his? To always keep his children in doubt whether he was really the dad. I mean, can you imagine? What type of a terrible parent would, we can't even hardly in our context, especially in the families we have, imagine what that's like. And the Bible says that we are evil. How much better would our good heavenly father not act like us? And we can't even think like that. But think about that. Why would we put that on God? That God would want us to be in doubt about whether we're his children or not. What type of father would God be if he always let it hang over us, that if we make a mess up, We're gonna get disowned and he's gonna cast us out. We say it and we're like, well, of course God doesn't think that. And then we fall into these traps of thinking, am I really his child? If you are God's child, he wants you to know that you are his child. He wants you to have peace. He wants you to have assurance. Famously, the apostle John writes this. If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater. For this is the witness of God which he has testified of his Son. He who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself. He who does not believe, God has made him a liar, because he has not believed the testimony that God has given of his Son. And this is the testimony that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God." The Apostle John's saying, God wants you to know, God has testified to what he's done for you by his Son. Do you believe in his Son? God doesn't want you to be in a constant crisis of identity. And although a tender conscience can be a great blessing, people who struggle in this way, and I'm convinced personally that all true Christians at some point in their lives do struggle in this way to some extent or another, am I really saved? But people who struggle like this can sometimes make an error that's ironically very similar to the pride of the cage-staged Calvinist. And the error is that they can slip right back into that workspace system of salvation. When you're obeying, you think you're good to go because you feel God's blessing. That's a good thing. You obey, you feel God's blessing. Obedience feels good. That's good. But then you think, well, I'm obeying. I must be good to go. I'm saved. Then when you fall into a big sin, you think, nope, I'm lost. I was just deceiving myself the whole time when I was obeying. And you end up looking, not to the blessing of God, but to your works and your own obedience for your assurance. And that is a form of pride. To look to what you're doing to determine whether you're saved, that is a form of pride. That's works-based righteousness. That's not the gospel. Instead, you need to be looking to Christ for your assurance. Look to the cross, look to his work and trust in him and not in yourself. I was reading something, I didn't reproduce it here just for time, but William Bridge, Puritan pastor, he was talking about, don't just focus so much on your sin. He said, look straight at the cross, look at what Jesus has done. He said, when you look there, you'll see your sin well enough. You'll see your sin well enough. But if you start by looking inward at your sin, you might never make it up to looking to Christ, because you could just fall into constant despair. But look to Christ first, you'll see your sin, and you'll see its solution in Jesus. So those are some of the reasons why this doctrine needs to be handled with special care. But then we might ask, how? How? What did the Westminster Divines mean when they wrote this? Well, we mentioned the importance of the local church and family and the need for pastors to shepherd their flocks and fathers to shepherd their homes. That's the crucial context here. But still, how do we actually go about learning and applying this doctrine well? How do we apply this special care? Paragraph eight here gives us the basics of the answer. We have to attend to the will of God revealed in his word and yield obedience thereunto. That's what the divine say. We have to attend to the will of God revealed in his word and yield obedience thereunto. So our obedience is very important. And if we do not care about obedience and think that we are free to disregard or disobey God's law, then that should lead us to doubt our salvation. If you're thinking, I'm under grace, I don't need the law anymore. And it doesn't matter if I do this or that or the other, Jesus has saved me. I got my get out of hell free card. You definitely should be doubting your salvation. If that attitude persists, you probably are not born again. But our personal obedience itself cannot be the ground of our belief that God loves us. While we were still sinners, that's how God chooses love for us. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Christ's obedience must be the ground of our assurance. Was he obedient? Absolutely he was. He obeyed the law perfectly and he went to a gruesome and horrible death on the cross for you. And that belief in him and in his work, that should lead us then to obey the law ourself. So with the divine's advice in mind, I want us to just look at the word briefly here. I wanna look at some of the proof texts that they've given us for chapter three, paragraph eight, not all of them, but just a few of them. The first one they list is Romans 9.20. Oh man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus? We keep referring back to Romans nine throughout all of chapter three here. It's not because it's the only place that election is taught, but it is the place in the New Testament where it is dealt with in the greatest detail. So this is a very important chapter for us to understand. And in Romans 9, Paul explains very clearly that God's sovereignty is absolute and it is eternal. Therefore, it is the same in the Old Testament and the New Testament. So Romans 9 gives us a wonderful, clear picture of how God has chosen his people from eternity and then worked out that choice throughout time. And here in Romans 9, Paul tells us that this should lead us to humility. We're just the clay. We're just the clay. The clay can't make itself any way, one way or the other. And we cannot backtalk the potter. We cannot question the potter's decisions as if to challenge him or complain to him. We don't have that right. We are not to do that. We also have the divines give us Deuteronomy 29, 29. The secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. And this is such a helpful verse. I think it should be a memory verse for every Christian. The Lamb's book of life is one of those secret things that belongs exclusively to God. We will never know the exact contents of that book in this life. We will not know exactly what's in that book until judgment day when it is opened up and read for everyone to hear. But God has not been stingy with his revelation. God hasn't just given us a little sprinkling of who he is and how he works. The things which are revealed are more than we could ever fully absorb or get to the bottom of in this life or in a hundred lifetimes. Surely we could say with David in Psalm 23, our cup runneth over with the knowledge of God and his ways. And these things not only belong to us, Moses reminds us, but our children as well. Remember the special care and the prudence happens in the church, happens in the home. These things belong to our children. We raise our children as insiders in God's family, sharing with them the revelation that God has graciously given to them. We're not just sharing something that's been given to us only, mature adult believers, but it's been given to them. knowing that they have to have faith in their own hearts, of course, but what better way to lead them to know and love and trust the King than by raising them within the kingdom. We don't treat our children as pagans. We don't educate them as pagans. We don't wait for them to initiate a relationship with Christ. but we don't presume they are elect apart from the means God has given us either. God has given us the means to make our calling and election sure, and we make sure our children have every advantage of those means as possible. Then we have 2 Peter 1.10, the divine site. Wherefore the rather brethren give diligence to make your calling and election sure, for if you do these things, ye shall never fall. We might say, well, how do we make our calling in election sure? If I can't go look in the Lamb's book of life, how do I do that? How do I get certainty about that? Well, how do you make sure you can swim? By just reading books about swimming, thinking about swimming, watching videos of people swimming. How do you make sure you can swim? By jumping in the water and swimming. You have to be taught. Of course, you don't do it on your own. Remember, you do it within a context of a church and a family, but you do it by being in the water. So the more you walk out the Christian life, the more you'll be assured that you are, in fact, a Christian. You go to church. You receive baptism if you've not been baptized. You read the Bible. You repent of your sins daily. You pray to God. You take the Lord's Supper. You do these things. You swim. you walk out the walk of a Christian. There's also a place here for self-examination. I said we don't measure whether we are Christians by how obedient we are, but that doesn't mean that self-examination is wrong. It is in fact commanded. It just isn't the ground of our hope. but examine yourself. Have I lived today consistent with my confession that Jesus Christ is Lord? Have I honored my father and mother today? Have I not lusted after a woman in my heart? Have I worshiped God as he has commanded and not as I made up in my mind? Have I been free from all covetousness? Have I been free from all unrighteous anger and self-righteous anger? Ask yourselves these questions and others. And then when you find that you haven't lived up to God's standard, then don't merely dive first into misery and depression. This isn't just a recipe for making your calling an election unsure. That's not the purpose of it. What do you do? You don't dive into depression. You grieve over your sins and you repent, and then you rise in joy. That's a process. It's like when a parent disciplines a child. You explain the problem, you administer the discipline, The child may be crying and losing his head sometimes at this point. You comfort them, you pray with them, you say, everything's good now. We don't have to ever talk about this particular incident again. Get back out and play. Rejoin the family. And it's over. It's done. There's no record of wrongs there between that parent and that child. You grieve over your sins and you repent. Repent means turning away from the sin and turning to Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Ask that God would change your mind, your heart, and your actions. Ask forgiveness for falling again, and then believe God's promises that he forgives his children. What do we read almost every week in our assurance of pardon? If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Some unrighteousness, all unrighteousness. If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Believe that. Confess your sins and trust in Christ that he has in fact forgiven you. You don't need to look in the Lamb's book of life. If you needed to do that, God would have made a way. You don't need to do that. It's not a need. You just need to look in the book that he has given you. He's given us a book. Look in the Bible and believe it. If you doubt whether God would be willing to love someone as wretched as you, look to the cross. That is the measure we should have of how willing God was to love and save us. Jesus went through that. We can never fathom how terrible that was spiritually, physically, every which way. That is the measure of God's love. He is willing and He is able to forgive terrible, terrible sins. Believe Him. Believe Jesus more than your doubts. Why are you giving your doubts more authority over what you believe sometimes than Christ and His Word? And if you're still doubting, even after all that, you say, James, I hear you. I agree with you. But I'm still doubting. I've been there too. I might be there again. You might be there tonight. But if you're still doubting, just cry out to God that He would give you true freedom and assurance. Go again to the throne of grace. The Westminster Divines are very clear, if you look at all their standards, that assurance of faith is not necessary to the essence of faith. That means you can have real true faith and not be assured about it. So that's a comfort. But they also say that it is God's will that His children would grow in this over their spiritual lives. God doesn't want you to be confused about who you are. Now let's look at the last sentence of paragraph eight here. So shall this doctrine afford matter of praise, reverence, and admiration of God, and of humility, diligence, and abundant consolation to all that sincerely obey the gospel. So shall this doctrine afford matter of praise, reverence, and admiration of God, and of humility, diligence, and abundant consolation to all that sincerely obey the gospel. So far from creating pride within us, that happens when we don't use the special care and prudence, and far from creating discouragement or depression, this high and wonderful doctrine of election should cause us to praise, revere, and admire God. Now, why is that? Can someone tell me why the doctrine of predestination should lead us to praise God? There's not only one answer here, by the way. There are right answers, but it can be kind of subjective. Why does it lead you to praise God? Absolutely. Absolutely. Not just you though. I'm not calling you out. Me too. And everyone. Yeah, David would fail. That's right. God has done something for us that we could never ever do on our own. How grateful are you when someone helps you with something that you can't do on your own? You come up with a problem, you can't solve it. And someone comes in and says, I'll help you. They just do it for you. Woo, relief. Now think about that magnified a billion times. The problem you're in with God, if you are in your sins, is bigger than you even think. And God is willing and able to remove all that hostility. He did something we could never do on our own. He did something that cost him more dearly than we will ever completely understand. The cost was very, very great for him to resolve the sin problem. And he did something that he was under no compulsion whatsoever to do. God didn't have to do a single thing. He still would have been love. God would still have been a God of love if he didn't do anything to save us. In Christ, God has taken away our sin and given us His very own righteousness. So what else would there be to do besides praise God and just wonder at His amazing love? There should be no room for pride or depression. Like the hymn says, amazing love, how can it be that thou, my God, shouldst die for me? It's almost incomprehensible. Amazing love. And the divines also tell us here that this doctrine should lead to humility, diligence, and abundant consolation to all who sincerely obey the gospel. So we should be humble because we don't deserve this. The wages of sin is death. That's what we deserve, death. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. So there's no place for pride, just humility. And then diligence. Doesn't lead to laziness to know that we've been saved, but true Christians are led to diligence. We must work out our salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that works within us, both to will and to do according to his good pleasure. We don't work for grace. But grace certainly makes us engage in joyful work. It's the fuel to do our work well. We can't obey and obey and obey enough to hopefully be forgiven, like paying off a debt. But if we truly believe we are forgiven, we will be motivated to obey. Absolutely. We can't climb the ladder of the law as it were, to get to the glorious light of forgiveness in the gospel. But if we embrace the gospel, where does it send us right back to? The law. not as a harsh taskmaster to beat us over the head, but as a lamp to show us the good and pleasant way to walk, to honor and love Christ and our neighbor. And then we have abundant consolation. That's the last thing that the divines put here. The doctrine of predestination should give us abundant consolation or abundant comfort because we know that we will never be powerful enough to undo God's eternal decree. That's a great comfort. If we could mess it up, we would. If you could lose your salvation, you would have already lost it. So if we have believed the promises and we are trusting in Christ and walking with Christ, then we should have great comfort that when we die, we will be welcomed into God's eternal kingdom with open arms. Jesus said to his disciples before he left them, let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my father's house, there are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself. That where I am, there you may be also. And where I go, you know, and the way you know. And then Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going. And how can we know the way? Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father, but by me. So if we know Christ, we know the way and he's preparing a place for us and he has promised us and we can believe that promise more than we can believe whatever our own thoughts are telling us. All right, we'll let that be the conclusion of our time in chapter three of God's eternal decree. What questions do we have? Yes. That's so interesting that you asked that, because that is exactly what Mr. Kennedy asked last week when you were, or two weeks ago when you were gone, yeah. Yeah, that, I call them that because that is what they have historically been called. And I believe the term comes from an old practice in the church and in academia where you call a trained theologian a divine. Like I have a degree called a Master of Divinity. And so I think it's just a historical thing that is very strange sounding to us, but would not have been strange to them. Like for us, especially in the 21st century in America, it would be very, very weird if we called each other Lord, for instance. We'd be like, oh, that is heresy. But in this culture, in this time, in this place, they would have called each other Lord if they were noble. They would have called each other your majesty. They would have bowed to each other. So there's a cultural difference that we are removed from. So it's strange to us. But the reason I continue to call them that is because that's how they're referred to in a lot of the literature. And that's just what our reformed tradition has said. So it's not to elevate them to a divine status. It more refers to they work in the field of divinity. That's their work sphere. They labor in God's word. They labor in ministering God's word. They labor in thinking about theological things. So that's why we call them that. But it doesn't mean that they are special. It's like calling a judge your honor. It doesn't mean he's more honorable than someone else. That's just the title that goes with that field of being a judge at the bench of the law. Does that make sense? You certainly don't have to use that title if you don't want to. Very good question. I'm glad you asked that. Anyone else have a question? Well, we'll move on to prayer requests then.