Let's look to the Lord in prayer. Lord, we want to thank you for the opportunity to gather as brothers and sisters in Christ to worship you corporately as we are doing now. We thank you for the opportunity to sing praises to the Lord our God. We pray now that as we go to your word that you would grant us the wisdom and the insight that we need to be able to understand it clearly and how to apply it appropriately. And we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. So this week's message that we are returning to Acts is going to be a little different than a lot of the other messages we've done in Acts. This week we have some controversy we need to talk about within the book of Acts. In fact, today's passage is the most controversial passage in the entire book. It's a passage in which there are scholars, good scholars, divided on either side of the issue. And I had lost count of the number of commentaries and articles I read on the passage. The one thing I can say, though, is that because it's evident that it's there, the part that I struggled with is if somebody just bypassed it altogether as if, well, I'd just rather not touch that, then we'll go past it. We don't want to be that type of people. If something is there, we should be able to discuss it. We should be able to interact with it. We should be able to wrestle with it, because I think that's what God wants us to do. So there's actually two issues that are a little controversial, one more so than the other one. But the first one relates to, because Paul is heading to Jerusalem, the first one is, should Paul have even gone to Jerusalem? That's kind of part one of this, is that Paul is on his way to Jerusalem, and if you're kind of familiar with what's been happening all along, and we'll find out a little bit later, it's interesting that Luke doesn't mention it in this passage, but he mentions it a couple chapters later, and then it gets mentioned in another epistle, is that One of the reasons that Paul wants to be in Jerusalem is he wants to bring the offering that he has been collecting from all the Gentile churches along the way on his missionary journeys and he wants to bring that offering and deliver it himself to the church in Jerusalem and to help out the believers that are poor and in need in Jerusalem. So what we find is in Acts, it was actually read in 20. 20, 22 through 23, this is what Paul says, and now, compelled by the Spirit, I'm going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. Well, if we just stop there, we think, okay, well, the Spirit's compelling him to go. That answers it, we're done, let's move on. But as we move into chapter 21, verses 3 through 4, this is now Paul making his journey. After sighting Cyprus and passing to the south of it, we sailed on to Syria. We landed at Tyre, where our ship was to unload its cargo. We sought out the disciples there and stayed with them seven days. Through the Spirit, they urged Paul not to go on to Jerusalem. So Paul's compelled to go to Jerusalem, and it says specifically that through the Spirit, the disciples there said, we're warning you and encouraging you not to go on to Jerusalem. And now a few verses later, we get up to verse 8 of the chapter, and we meet our friend from way back in early Acts, we meet Philip again. He had four unmarried daughters who prophesied. After we had been there a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. Coming over to us, he took Paul's belt, tied his own hands and feet with it, and said, The Holy Spirit says, in this way the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles. When we heard this, we and the people there pleaded with Paul not to go up to Jerusalem. Then Paul answered, Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. When he would not be dissuaded, we gave up and said, The Lord's will be done. So it's interesting is that, you know, Paul has this message from the Spirit. The other believers have a message from the Spirit. Agabus tells them what's going to happen. And of course, and we think, well, Paul said, I'm ready to go to Jerusalem. Well, how, you know, how do you know through the Spirit that that's exactly what he should do? Because there's other times when he was warned of people that they got him out through the city and he left and went somewhere else. So there's, you know, sometimes it's not as clear as we would like to make it seem that, oh, well, this is clear cut. Even the people here said, yeah, go on. We know you're going to jail and you'll probably get beaten, but have a good time. No. You know, they have a great concern for him. They have a great concern that something is going to happen to Paul, and they're weeping about it. And so they're demonstrating their care for him. But nonetheless, the one thing that we want to talk about in relation to this is, remember, in the Book of Acts, we have to make determinations between what is descriptive and what is prescriptive, meaning that Luke is the historian here, and he is sharing this narrative, and he is describing what actually took place. It's not Luke's job. He's not making commentary on everything that's happening. Luke is explaining, this is what happened. This is what happened along the way. So we have to understand, too, there's a difference between narrative, that might be descriptive of what's happening, and what's prescriptive, what's didactic teaching, that here is what every believer must know about this particular subject matter. Now, of course, there's principles we can glean from all of this, but we, you know, we've got to be careful that we don't make something that maybe is descriptive in one case, that that means it's prescriptive for all of us, all believers at all times and all places. So, that gets us up to Paul has now arrived in Jerusalem. By the time we get to verse 17, that's where it starts, when we arrived in Jerusalem. So, this is where we're going to our main section for today. And what we're going to cover today is important for us to understand and to wrestle with on our own because there's going to be things in here that we should wrestle with. So we arrived in Jerusalem. And the brothers and sisters received us warmly. The next day, Paul and the rest of us went to see James. That's James, this is the half-brother of Jesus, the leader of the church in Jerusalem. And all the elders were present. Paul greeted them and reported in detail what God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. When they heard this, they praised God. So they, if we just read it just as it is, we end there, they praise God for the ministry Paul has had with the Gentiles. Then they said to Paul, you see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed and all of them are zealous for the law. Okay, we might run into some problems coming up here. We're happy with what you did with the Gentiles, but you've got to know that there's a lot of Thousands of Jews that have come to Christ and they are zealous for the law And they haven't been informed that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn away from Moses Telling them not to circumcise their children or live according to our customs What shall we do? So right there we should ask We don't think that this is accurate. I mean, Paul's been in Gentile and with Gentiles and Jews together. We're not exactly sure all the details, but if Paul had told him that, it shouldn't have been necessarily problematic. because to live according to our customs. What shall we do? So what we're going to end up with here is we have this transitional time in redemptive history in which there's still a huge divide between Jews and Gentiles. We thought back in Acts 15 when they came and they presented the ministry of the Gentiles and they said, sure, this is great, just remind them not to do these things. We thought, okay, everything is solved. Well, that rarely happens that way because we're dealing with people. And so we still got this significant issue between Jews and Gentiles that are taking place. In fact, it's almost hard to think how are these two groups, if this remains this way, how are they going to come together? How are we going, are we going to have one set of rules and everything for this group over here, and this other group, they get this other, and everything's going to be fine and we'll be unified? It doesn't seem like a great way to do it, and it also seems like in Jerusalem, they're looking at the Gentiles like they're our little brother. You know, that's great, we've got these few rules here for the Gentiles, but if you're a Jewish believer, we've got this other standard for all of you. So we've got this issue that's going on here. So he says, what shall we do? They will certainly hear that you have come. So do what we tell you. There are four men with us who have made a vow. Take these men, join in their purification rites, and pay their expenses so that they can have their heads shaved. Then everyone will know there is no truth in these reports about you, but that you yourself are living in obedience to the law. As for the Gentile believers, we have written to them our decision that they should abstain from food sacrifice to idol, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. So you see we've got these two different standards here. And the next day Paul took the men and purified himself along with them. Then he went to the temple to give notice of the date when the days of purification would end, and the offering would be made for each of them. So here's our issue. This is our topic. And I apologize that I have to use a 17-letter word to use it because I wouldn't want to use a 17-letter word, but that's what we've got to use today. So if you can remember, hey, you learned a 17-letter word today. It's contextualization. So what is that? This is going to be important because in fact, not only is it important here in Jerusalem at this very time of what we're studying, it's important for every one of you every single day of your life. So contextualization in a biblical sense for Christians is altering the method by which the gospel is communicated in order to achieve greater understanding and acceptance without altering the message in any way. So, altering the method by which the gospel is communicated in order to achieve greater understanding and acceptance without altering the message in any way. So the key words here are method and message. Meaning that every one of us in this room who's a Christian, we've done this already. You are wearing what you're wearing today because of this, of contextualization. You know, none of you are wearing, you know, you're not wearing just a little leather outfit. You're not, you know, most of you have shoes on probably. So all of us are doing contextualization all the time, or just even the songs that we sang. That's contextualization from our culture. If you were to go to another culture and they sing different songs of praise to God in a different style of music. If you were wearing a necktie today, that's fine. That's part of the context of our country. But if you go to another country, they might say, why are you wearing a noose around your neck? You know, so those things are, but those are methods. This is a method. We might go, and we are reaching people through, for an example, I just was reading an article yesterday, how there's a number of Christian movies that have come out, and people are using, in that sense, cinema to reach people the gospel. That's within the, it's sharing the gospel through this method. Whereas, and of course, in a lot of other countries, they don't have any resources to do such things. But the key is that the message cannot be altered in any way. And we've seen Paul do this throughout the book of Acts. When he's gone to different cities, how he's altered his method of trying to reach the people that he's trying to reach without altering the message. So, here is this from Paul in 1 Corinthians 9. Here is, he's kind of explaining his contextualization method, ministry. Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews, I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law, I became like one under the law, though I myself am not under the law, so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law, I became like one not having the law, though I am not free from God's law, but am under Christ's law. That's important. So as to win those not having the law. To the weak, I became weak to win the weak. I become all things to all people so that by all possible means, I might save some. So this is Paul's, in a sense, his mission of how he is going to go about reaching people with the gospel. And it becomes very important because, as with all things, you have to figure out, how am I going to do that? How am I going to stay with altering these methods, but not in any way altering the message that I've been given? So here's our four principles for contextualization from this passage. Number one is I willingly set aside my rights. In verse 12 of 1 Corinthians 9, Paul says, we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. You know, we struggle with this. I willingly set aside, we struggle with this as Americans because we are raised to demand our rights. This is my right. We demand our rights as Americans. And of course, we think we're right because it's us. We always think we're right. That's the problem we might have. So I have the right to do a lot of things, like wear my shoes indoors, eat my food with my left hand, leave a birthday party before the rice is served, dress how I want, except all of those things would be very much an affront to people in other cultures. That you would be, in a sense, alienating yourself from them by doing that in those cultures. And in fact, I don't have a biblical command to do any of those things that I just mentioned. But doing some of those would greatly hinder my ability to reach certain people groups. So I give them up voluntarily. I willingly set aside my rights in order that I might reach them. So when we go to another country and these are some of the things that they have that's not in relation to compromising their gospel, we willingly set those things aside. But there's things that we do in our own culture, too, that we're going to discuss a little bit later. The second one, I serve unbelievers. The interesting thing is this. Paul took the posture of servanthood just like Christ. Came not to serve, not to be served, but to serve. This should be our, again, part of what we are doing, our principles in reaching others, is to serve unbelievers. And paradoxically, this is how we actually demonstrate our freedom, by serving others. I don't know if you ever thought about that, but actually, for us to serve Christ is actually freedom, is what we're told. Number three, I live like those I'm trying to reach. Now don't get this point wrong. It doesn't mean I live morally like the people I'm trying to reach. But that means that if you are in a, say, a different culture somewhere else, is that you don't live in a very nice house while everybody else is living down on the streets if you're trying to reach those people. But here it might mean that I live like the people I'm trying to reach. That means I don't live as a monk. I don't just do something only at church. That means I get involved in community events. I'm willing to serve my community. I'm trying to get to know my neighbors. I'm trying to interact with them. I might be part of sports, athletic leagues. Whatever it might be is that I'm trying to live like the people that I'm living with. I'm not trying to avoid them and keep separate from them. I'm trying to be a part of what they're doing wherever I can. And number four, I am wholeheartedly bound by God's word. And that's the key. Where the Bible draws a line, we must draw a line. In Scripture, not our experience is the standard which by all things should be evaluated. And there's a lot of freedom within Scripture. And we move within those boundaries because there is a lot of room for that. But we cannot step outside of the boundaries of Scripture. So now let's, in a sense, return to our passage, because now we're getting to the controversial part here. So did Paul sin by joining in the vow of the four men? That's the question. Did Paul sin by joining in the vow of the four men? So option number one is no. And for these reasons, this is, in your notes, I only have so much paper to give you, so it's, you're just going to have to write it somewhere else on the back of your hand, wherever you can find space. Did Paul, no, it was, to him it was a theologically neutral ceremony, that's a possibility, is that what he was involving himself with, if you remember the law has its moral portion, it's got its judicial portion, it has its ceremonial portion. So to Paul, he was going back, I'm being all things to all people. To the Jew, I'm becoming a Jew. And to him, it was a theologically neutral ceremony like when he, right after the Council of Jerusalem, which we talked about already, seemed a little bizarre, is that right after that, he went and had Timothy be circumcised to go and reach the Jews. So was that the right decision? Well, that's the decision that they made, that they were going to reach the Jews. And for Timothy to be able to have a ministry with the Jews, he went and was circumcised in Acts 16. So that's one option. He was becoming like a Jew to win the Jews, meaning this is what the Jews, Christian Jews in Jerusalem are doing. And if I'm going to show them that I'm not opposed to the law of Moses, I'm going to participate. He may have performed a Nazirite vow earlier. In chapter 18, he talked about having his head shaved to complete a vow, but that's all that it was said about him having his head shaved. Was that the totality of it? Was there anything else involved? We don't know, but he may have performed a Nazirite vow earlier. And four, he wanted to reassure them that he was not demeaning the law of Moses in other parts of the world. Certainly he was not. He was not demeaning the law of Moses. In fact, Paul has talked many times about the advantages of being a Jew, having had this history of all these benefits of the patriarchs and everything else. So he wanted to reassure them that he was not demeaning the law of Moses in other parts of the world. So an option two is yes, he did. Number one, Paul and James went too far in trying to contextualize. So there's our 17-letter word that they, this is a view of many, is that they went too far, that you went past the boundaries. Even in a purification, right, what does a Christian, in a sense, have a ceremony to purify themselves, even through, let alone the second part that we're going to talk about here. It was a Nazirite vow which concludes with a sacrifice for sin. This is where we're gonna get to the sticky part. So if everything that's being shared here, that this was a Nazirite vow, you can go back to numbers to read more about the Nazirite vow, but part of that was related to, you might remember Samson, but you could take a Nazirite vow for a period of time, not just as long as Samson was doing it and others, but it could be for a 30-day period, it could be a seven-day period, but this was part, based on what is explained in Acts, it would certainly seem to be a Nazirite vow. And this is the key component here. Acts 21, 26. So here is gonna be the key word, offering. Depending on your version, some versions say that it's a sacrifice, but depending, it might say offering. But this is going to be the key term for our discussion. This is the Greek word prosphora. And this becomes important because this is what prosphora means. The Greek term for sacrifice or offering in verse 26 is prosphora, which the author of Hebrews uses to refer to the ultimate sacrifice or offering in Jesus's death. And animal sacrifice seems to be implied here in verse 26. So, Hebrews 10, 10 through 12, this same word is used. And by that will, we will have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. But when the priest, Jesus, had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. So in both of these places, this is the same Greek word for sacrifice. So this becomes the key component to the whole discussion, is that, did Paul join in this, in which the culmination of this vow was going to, he would have to go before the chief priests, who had not long, that long ago, crucified Jesus Christ, to present a sacrifice for sin. in order to contextualize, in order to try to reach these Jews. Is that the case? Well, the third reason that it probably, it may lead to that he did, in fact, sin is that God sovereignly prevents the sacrifice from taking place. So one verse later, after it said, verse 26, I'm just gonna read part of that. Then he went to the temple to give notice of the date when the days of purification would end and the offering would be made for each of them. Verse 27, when the seven days were nearly over, some of the Jews from the province of Asia saw Paul at the temple. They stirred up the whole crowd and seized him. So before it could come to its culmination, before it could come to the time that the sacrifice would be made, God steps in sovereignly and does not allow it to take place. So, I just want to say, for me, after all this time I've spent reading this, probably just 15 hours on that one verse, is that it comes down to, for me, if he were to sacrifice an animal, then he sinned. If there's something else, because there's not, all the information is not known, if that's not what was going to take place, if that's not what was going to happen, then I can see what, you know, the room for him to move outside of that. So, you know, bottom line for me is if it was going to be, if he was going to fulfill this sacrifice for sin, then he had gone too far, and that he had sinned. But no matter what, God sovereignly did prevent it from happening. He did not allow that sacrifice to take place. Paul gets seized and he gets imprisoned. Now I want to say two things because we can go over to Galatians 2 and we find out that this is the issue in Galatians 2. Not the same exact issue, but the issue was when men came from James, the Jewish believers from Jerusalem, let me just read that a little bit. When Cephas, Peter, came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, this is Paul speaking, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles, because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. Other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy so that by their hypocrisy, even Barnabas was led astray. So when I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, you are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it then that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs? And it goes on, but just the idea is that, couple things. If Paul did sin in this particular case, I don't have any less respect for Paul because people sin, you know that? Did you know that? People make bad decisions. Again, I don't have enough information to conclusively say, I'm saying if this were the case, then this is what would happen, but if he did, Let us recognize, I mean, we just had this, here's another apostle, Peter, where he had to be confronted to his face by Paul. It's not the end of the world that somebody makes a bad decision and sins. We should all be thankful of that, right? Because we've all made bad decisions. And it doesn't hinder Paul from moving on in ministry, and so that's where we're going to head here. So then, what are some important reminders related to this? We will make contextualization decisions every day, whether in thought, word, or actions. And you know what? Sometimes we're going to make the wrong ones. So when I worked at Sears, A man in my department, when I was in seminary, a man in my department, a manager, they were telling him that he was a married man. They were telling him he was going to have to share a room with a single woman on a business trip because they needed to save on expenses. He's got to make a decision, right? Sears Corporate would say, what's the big deal? There'll be two double beds. You'll be fine. You've got to make decisions, right? When I was in Nepal recently, last October, they oftentimes on these, when I do pastor seminars, we leave a lot of time for question and answer. And actually we had talked about this one issue the night before at the table, which was interesting. But the question was, a man in our village has a number of wives, and then he became a Christian. What does he do with these other wives? Yeah, we don't have that issue here, do we? But they have it there. So there's not a, you know, you don't have a simple answer to that as, well, you draw straws. No, you don't do that. Obviously he is committed to caring, especially in his village, is to care for these women. And this happened even before he was a believer. So it's not like, okay, now that I'm a believer, we get rid of two of you and one stays. So what about tattoos here in the United States? Tattoos are very popular in the United States. Not a big deal. You go to Japan, a tattoo means that you're a part of the yakuza. You're part of a crime syndicate. So if you were to try to go into the onsen or the hot springs, you would probably, which we experienced with somebody on our team, they don't want you to come in because they believe you're part of organized crime. So in Japan, you might have a hard time based on their culture, the context of the culture in which you're there. What about you're making a decision? Are you going to laugh at an inappropriate joke at the water cooler? Will I use gender neutral pronouns? Is there a difference between attending a wedding ceremony of a homosexual couple or attending a birthday party of a homosexual couple? How will I reach my neighbor whose political views are different than mine? I'm just throwing out things that every day we're going to have to make decisions that are part of contextualization. And you're going to have to make decisions as to what will I do that will honor the Lord the most. And sometimes we'll make bad decisions. And that's when repentance comes in. A right motive doesn't necessarily mean a right decision or the outcome we hoped for. A right motive doesn't necessarily mean the right decision or the outcome we hoped for. Because the people that were led by the Spirit to tell Paul not to go to Jerusalem certainly seemed they had a right motive. They were caring for Paul. But it doesn't necessarily mean it was the right decision. Paul had seemingly the right motive in doing what he was doing. Was that the right decision? And it might not be the outcome that you hoped for either. That can happen a lot. We might have the right motives for something, and it still could turn out to be disastrous. Paul certainly, his right motive to reach the Jews in Jerusalem with the gospel was a right motive. And how did that turn out? Well, the rest of the chapter tells us that that didn't go well. His evangelistic efforts in Jerusalem did not go well here. So even though he had the right motive of reaching them, it did not go well at all. So we have to figure out what even having the right motive sometimes. Or sometimes you make a decision and then you find out down the road, I don't think that was the best decision, although I thought my motive was right at the time. And do we ever, let's not kid ourselves either, a lot of times we have bad motives. I remember, this is so vivid to me, when I was the director of a Christian camp and conference center in New Hampshire, one of the speakers that came, who I respected greatly, he said that he wasn't sure that he had ever done anything in his life with 100% pure motive. That was shocking to me. But the more I thought about it, I thought, I think he's probably right. Just about everybody in general, for all of us other than Christ. Have we ever done anything in our lives with 100% pure motives? So we always have to understand there's probably, we've tainted whatever it is that we want somehow. Even if it is maybe a good thing, we probably have tainted it with something that we really want along the way too. The Word of God is infallible. The inspired men who wrote it are sinners, just like you and me. So I just wanted to say this because, okay, if Paul did sin here, who wrote much of the New Testament, what he had written as he's inspired by the Holy Spirit is infallible. It's without error. But as individuals, apostles are people like us, and they sin just like we do. And we don't even know all the things. They don't talk about the daily things of what's in somebody's mind each and every day as you go from place to place. And the recognition is that the apostles, although godly men, are sinners like we are. God's sovereign plan cannot be thwarted. So what is God's plan ultimately? Well, we're going to find that out next week and in the coming weeks, because what happens here, it looks like, oh, this has been a disaster. Paul is going to be involved in a riot here, and he's going to be in prison. There's going to be some other things that are happening. And yet, we're going to find out that he has an opportunity to reach almost all the main leaders of the known world in the next few chapters. So, and again, even when we make bad decisions, God closes the door sometimes to prevent us from doing something worse, thankfully. And he's done that for all of us too. When we are gonna make a bad decision, that God closed the door that prevented us from making a bad decision. So his plan cannot be thwarted. And God doesn't abandon us when we mess up. God doesn't abandon us when we mess up. Thankfully, a couple chapters later, chapter 23, verse 11, the following night, this is after a lot of this, what we're gonna talk about next week takes place. The Lord stood near Paul and said, take courage, as you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome. So again, it's just an encouraging statement. Take courage, Paul. A lot of bad things just took place in Jerusalem. And yet, take courage. I still have ministry for you to do, and you're still going to testify before me in Rome. So, personal reflection questions. What efforts am I making to properly contextualize the gospel with those in my sphere of influence? Are we making efforts to reach the people that we rub shoulders with regularly? And the second part is, have I taken a bridge too far in any of my relationships or personal decisions? Have I, in my thinking, thought, well, I'll do this because... Have we compromised in any way? Have we taken a bridge too far? I'm trying to reach people with these bridges, but maybe this bridge is too far, and I've stepped over the boundaries, and I've got to make that right with the Lord and with these other people. And I'll just say quickly is that I grew up in a, this goes back to, because we are Westerners, oh, well, most of us here, I can't see everybody, but that we think that the way we do things is the right way because it's our way. So we think it's the right way, whatever it might be. And I grew up in a home in junior high, when I, in our home, we also had Muslim college students live with us when I was in junior high. My mom wanted to reach Muslims for the Lord. And then in high school, I went off to a boarding school in which there were only five Americans in my dorm. I lived with people from all over the world. And again, all those years, I'm in a battle thinking my way is better than their way, while they're thinking their way is better than my way. And then so you're trying to interact and work with people and can try to contextualize what is appropriate and what's inappropriate. And that's the problem. I still have the problem today is that, of course, why do I do the things I do? Because I think it's the right thing, just like you do. And then we're going to come to find out that maybe it wasn't at some point down the road in relation to how we tried to contextualize things. And so that's why I left you with this quote here. You need to make a decision about a decision before you make a decision. Again, I learned this when I was in eighth grade and it always stuck with me. So that just means that you need to think through these things of how you're going to conjecturalize with your neighbors, with your coworkers, with other people now and be praying about it. So before a decision comes up, an immediate decision where you've got to make a spur of the moment decision and you decide, and then it's a bad decision. So you make a decision now about these things. So for young people, you're making decisions about what are you willing and unwilling to do when you're on a date? What are you willing and unwilling to do with your friends? Same with people, with your coworkers. What are you willing and unwilling to talk about? What boundary lines am I unwilling to step over? Before you have to make that decision when it comes up. And what came up with Paul, I don't know if, I don't think he expected it when he arrived in Jerusalem, that that was going to be the response. I thought he, I'm pretty sure in his mind he thought they're gonna be excited about this offering that we're providing and that everything is going to go smoothly with the Jewish believers here. I don't think he expected that they're going to ask him to enter into this vow and these purification rites. I don't even think that crossed his mind. But nonetheless, it's there. So let me just say this before I close in prayer. The gospel will never be comfortable to any fallen society or to any sinful human being. Our goal is to make sure that we do not put any obstacles in the way of the gospel ourselves, that the only stumbling block is the stumbling block of the cross, and that the meaning of the cross is clear to all. Dear Lord, we just pray that as we think about our own relationships and these decisions on contextualization that we make every day, that we would be in your word, we'd be people of the word, people of prayer, and that we would, Lord, come to wise conclusions as to how we should reach the people you've put in our sphere of influence. So grant us that wisdom, that strength, and help us to repent when we've stepped over the line. and gone past what we should. And thank you, Lord, that you don't abandon us when we do mess up. Thank you, Lord, that you love us, that you pick us up, and you move us along so that we might continue to glorify you and even maybe show through humility that we are wrong and in doing so might reach others for Christ as well. And we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. Have a great week. His power implies.