KV11b: Jesus Begins His Ministry

9-11: The Long-awaited Beloved Son
12-13: Kingdom Advance Is Always Contested
14-15: From John to Jesus – Torch Passed

Introduction

Last time, we saw how Mark thought it important enough to begin with the historical character of John the Baptist, the last prophet under the previous covenant, the Old Testament. We considered his ministry in some detail and found it to be a ceremonial baptism in water to indicate a repentance, that is, a changing of one’s mind about said sin, recognizing it as sin, and faith in a coming Messiah as the one who would ultimately deal with that sin in some way. Faith here may be defined as an opinion or persuasion held by you so strongly that it affects the way you live. This repentance that leads to faith is the only way a believer under any covenant in any “dispensation,” that is, period of time, may be saved from the coming wrath of God.

In our text this evening, we are going to see the final hand-off of the baton, just like in a relay race of sorts. John the Baptist will hand off that baton to the actual Messiah, the Son of God, who will finally deal with the sins of men for all time. This is how that story starts for Mark, because this is how Peter thought of the gospel and what was important for Gentile converts. Peter thought it important to join the Old Covenant and the New Covenant in time and space to the person of the Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ. If this was indeed the changing of the covenants, it must be connected to the reasons for the change. Mark records Peter’s thoughts as to why, and we see it in this text in this study.

Let’s get into the text.

9-11: The Long-awaited Beloved Son

Return in your mind to our relay race metaphor for a moment. The Lord Jesus at this point was waiting like that runner, coiled to burst into a fast run as soon as that baton is passed to Him. Here comes the runner immediately before Him in the succession – John the Baptist, His cousin, apparently. John is coming down the track at what has been described as “full-tilt boogie” with that baton. The Lord Jesus is coiled in His starting position, hand outstretched, waiting for that solid contact. John reaches forward…and contact! The hand of Jesus closes around the baton and his feet start to move, and the baton is passed.

I know it’s an analogy, but I like it. Let’s look at how the text tells us the transfer takes place, and maybe discuss what it means. Into the text!

9: In those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.

It starts out with the phrase, “in those days,” which from the surrounding text refers to the days when John was baptizing the penitent. Did Jesus come to “repent” here? No, I don’t think a change of mind was what was at issue here. Jesus came to identify Himself to the world. He came from Nazareth of Galilee as a fulfilment of prophecy. Although there is no specific prophecy that says this in the Old Testament, and I spent some time looking, there are some reasons this may have been said. The first of these is a bit of Hebrew wordplay. I personally see this as more than possible, because the Holy Spirit seems to like word games. And example of this would be “you must be born again.” The Greek phrase is “γεννηθῇ ἄνωθεν,” and it does mean “born again,” but it means at the same time, “born from above.” This is the kind of wordplay the Holy Spirit Himself seems to enjoy, so I will roll with that.

It turns out that this may be a reference to the “Branch” prophecies of the Old Testament, which are Messianic in nature. The consonants that make up the word “branch” in Hebrew,” that is, n, ts, and r, are shared by the words in Hebrew for Nazareth and Nazarene. The linguistic connection is what makes the connection. Jesus’s hometown is literally named “Branch place.” Jesus Himself then becomes “Branch person.” Matthew knew that especially the Pharisees but all Jewish scholars paid attention to things like this, and thus made an etymological connection for his target audience, the Jewish reader, in an attempt to show how Jesus was the Messianic character from the Old Testament. Mark, in our constructed timeline from two studies ago, have Mark as the second book written (Matthew being the first), is simply acknowledging the connection that Peter made, possibly from Matthew’s influence. Let’s look at these “Branch” prophecies.

The first of the three is in Isaiah 4:2, which says, “In that day the Branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth will be the pride and the adornment of the survivors of Israel.” The context here is the gathering of the Remnant at the return of the Messiah.

The second Branch propheciy, perhaps the best known, is in Isaiah 11:1, says, “Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, And a branch from his roots will bear fruit.” The context here is the reign of the righteous Branch, a reference of the Messiah ruling over all the earth and the character of His reign.

The final one comes from Jeremiah 23:5, which says, “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “When I will raise up for David a righteous Branch; And He will reign as king and act wisely And do justice and righteousness in the land.” This is from a different prophet, and it is speaking the same thing in a similar concept, the righteous reigning Branch, the Messiah King.

Thee is another train of thought on this, and that it is a reference to the despised character of Nazarenes in general in the Old Testament. Their lifestyle was both daunting for those who might think of the journey and despised for those who would look for an easier path, I think. This idea references the suffering servant in passages like Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 to demonstrate the despised and rejected nature of the Nazarene. They would directly connect such passages to Messiah, just as Philip the Evangelist did in Acts 8:30–35, which says, “Philip ran up and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and said, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ And he said, ‘Well, how could I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the passage of Scripture which he was reading was this: ‘He was led as a sheep to slaughter; And as a lamb before its shearer is silent, So He does not open His mouth. In humiliation His judgment was taken away; Who will relate His generation? For His life is removed from the earth.’ The eunuch answered Philip and said, ‘Please tell me, of whom does the prophet say this? Of himself or of someone else?’ Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this Scripture he preached Jesus to him.”

The discussion in the literature seems to make this an either/or arrangement, but I see no reason it cannot be both. Either way, the connection is easily made, and both support Jesus as the Messiah of the Jews, and the Christ of the Gentiles.

In other places in the gospels, it tells us that there was a discussion about whether John could or should be baptizing the Creator of All, and Jesus told Him it was okay. We will look at what those passages say when we study them. However, this did make me ask why Jesus felt it was necessary to be baptized at all. I am certain there was more to it than to give us a way to obey Him by following His example.

Here is my conclusion of that reasoning. Baptism was not about the act of repentance because Jesus had nothing in His life of which he needed to repent. He did not have to change His mind, He was the Holy One who had no sin. From this we should conclude that baptism is an act of the will of the one being baptized to follow the will of God for their lives in obedience to Him. At the very beginning of His public ministry, Jesus was mnaking that choice, that act of will, to obey God the Father and do His will in all things. That, as it turned out was a hard row to hoe, to use a phrase from the farm. It involved 2 Corinthians 5:21, which says, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” We will see more of this as we go along, but Jesu’s choice to die on the cross was made here, if not before He took the form of a human.

This implies that Baptism for us means that we are now willing to follow Christ’s example going forward from our own baptism in doing the will of God the Father to live in a way that pleases Him, whatever that might be, at whatever the cost of that obedience. Reading through church history, particularly men like Tyndale, Luther, Knox, Bunyan, and many, many others, we can see that price can be quite high. Paul was beheaded. Peter was crucified, and tradition says he did not feel worthy to die the same way Christ did, so he chose to be crucified upside down. At any rate, we can see the baton was passed, and ultimately it was passed to us, so we must run well. Next verse.

10: Immediately coming up out of the water, He saw the heavens opening, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon Him;

I am not certain how Mark gained the perspective to know what the Lord Jesus saw, other than Peter describing it to Him, but the text tells us this is what Jesus saw. That means either Jesus described what He saw to Peter, or Peter saw it also. For an economy of energy, logic tells me that everyone present saw it, and from other accounts in other gospels, I think John saw it too. The account in Matthew says that it happened openly, and even included the audible voice of God the Father identifying Jesus as follows in Matthew 3:17, which says, “and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.” (As does Mark in the next verse.)

What does this mean? Coming up from the waters, having made that commitment to God in His heart, Heaven acknowledges His commitment. Because it is God the Son Himself, God the Father acknowledges the commitment personally. Then the Holy Spirit descends on Him, not because He needed it, but to show the Godhead standing together in unity of purpose—the purpose of salvation from the wrath that is coming on the Earth and all men who will not turn to Christ in faith.

It is significant that the Holy Spirit is represented as a dove. Doves have appeared before in Scripture. Apart from being the representative of the Holy Spirit (and not the only one of those), it mainly symbolizes peace. Taken together, it is sybolic of divine presence and divine approval. We can see that in the text here, and especially in the next verse. Other things it can sybolize are innocence, purity, vulnerability, and longing. In nature, the dove (Columbina passerina) is a very delicate bird in terms of preferences. Noah employed a dove to see if there was dry ground after the flood. Doves will not land if there is anything dodgy or sketchy about the environment around it. Noah understood that when the dove did not return to him by the end of the day, it was safe for everyone to disembark from the ark. The Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, would only land if it were absolutely certain of the surface on which it would land. Where did the dove land? Squarely on the Lord Jesus Christ. I cannot be more clear about the sybology here, I do not know how. For this reason, the dove is seen as a harbinger of reconciliation with God, with Noah first, and with Jesus in His day, with a direct line between them. And we are only to the middle of the statement. Next verse.

11: and a voice came out of the heavens: “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.”

There is a small group of people, apparently, that does not believe that God speaks with an audible voice. I’ve never met one, but they are out there. This verse shows they are wrong. God spoke audibly to Jesus and everyone heard it, including Peter. Peter told Mark, and we have it in the gospel. Matthew heard it and recorded it, and so did John. What did God say?

At Jesus baptism, His commitment to live obediently to the will of God no matter the cost, God the Father spoke to His Son and identified Him to everyone standing there! God told Jesus He was His Son. Anyone there would have immediately been forced to the conclusion that Jesus was the Messiah, by the way. Messiah was known to be the Son of God by the religious ruling elites, and they were always on the lookout for the Messiah, or were supposed to be. The word used in the Greek text for “Son” was υἱός, the adult heir, the one who was legally able to posess the inheritance. There are other words that describe younger children elsewhere, but we will leave that off for now.

Apart from identifying Jesus as His Son the Heir, and His Anointed One who would save all those who turned to Him in repentance and faith, God the Father salso said He was pleased with Him. The Greek phrase ἐν ⸀σοὶ εὐδόκησα means something like “I take delight in you, and He spoke this to Jesus. And this is the very beginning of Jesus’s ministry.

Whatever you may think of the Lord Jesus Christ, God spoke His opinion in visible and audible ways publicly. I have over the years heard the objection to Christianity and indeed to the existance of God Himself, “If there is a God, why doesn’t He come and show Himself to us? Or say something? Or give us a sign?

Well, in this text, He did. Your move. Now what?

12-13: Kingdom Advance Is Always Contested

Now our Lord has been publically and lovingly identified, and begun His ministry with the great commitment to live for God and to do His will regardless of the cost. That is what our own baptism should reflect, by the way. You must be a willing participant. Especially because of what happened next. Any work of God will be opposed. There are beings of greater intelligence and power that do not want this kind of work to go forward, and they will hinder it if they can. If we were to take the time, we could get into the book of Job and look at that hidden reality behind what we see and know and how it can affect us, but it will suffice to explain there is nothing that we will go through that God doesn’t already know about and has approved in advance of our experiences of it. Let’s get into the text and see what this means.

12: Immediately the Spirit impelled Him to go out into the wilderness.

Mark gives only the briefest accounts. Matthew and Luke go into much more detail about the events that occurred, and we will look at each in turn when we study those books. What Peter thought to be important to convey is found in verse 12. Jesus went directly from His baptism into the wilderness. The most important detail isn’t what was going to happen, which we will see in the next verse, but that he was “impelled” by the Spirit.

That word “impelled” was translated from the Greek word ἐκβάλλει, meaning “to drive out” or “to expel.” To impel in this sense means to drive along, also within the meaning of the Greek. I am more familiar with the word “impel” from my days as a firefighter. Our water pumps were all built on the double impeller model, which gives more pressure than you would get from a basic single impeller. The single impeller gives you a glorified garden hose. The double impeller can give you a hose that it takes two men to hold onto, and several hand lines that are capable of lifting you off the ground if you aren’t careful. It als breaks the spray into controllable sizing of water droplets that can be propelled at force toward a fire to knock a blaze down. There is a lot of hydraulic engineering that goes into this, but modern firefighters will understand me, and I think everyone is better with that model of fire suppression. I pick the idea of a firefighter on purpose here. Our Lord Jesus is perhaps the greatest firefighter that ever lived, because He can extinguish the fires of Hell for those who will turn to Him in repentance and faith.

This is the central message of the entire bible: Acts 17:30–32 say it best: “‘Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.’ Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, ‘We shall hear you again concerning this.’” A long time ago, the first man and woman disobeyed God together, and we as their offspring fell under the same judgement and penalty as they did. We became accountable for not only their sin, the price of their redemption never being filled by them (they were incapable), we became accountable for their original sin of disobedience, and then for all of our own sins we have committed as humans, and we ALL have done that. If I were to take the 45 minutes or so to walk you through the Ten Commandments, I could show you how we have ALL broken every single one of them. Beloved, such sinning brings judgement, and that judgement brings consequences of punishment. No human has ever existed that can pay for any of it themselves—save One. We just read about His baptism. When He was here as the God who became a Man, He lived a perfect life under the Law of Moses (which He wrote with His own hand in stone for Moses, twice), and at the right time, he used world events that He provoked and engineered to cause the leadership of His own nation to reject Him and hand Him over to be put to death for OUR crimes, because He committed none of His own. When He was put to death on that Roman cross, He acted willingly as the perfect atoning sacrifice for every cosmic crime we had ever committed. He took our place on the cross. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” He himself stood in the path of the punishment directed toward us and took the blows Himself. He died, and He rose again to show the world that He really did it, and that death no longer had any power of hold on Him. It no longer should hold the one whi has turned to Him in fear. He has paid the price for us. We now belong to Him as His beloved Bride, the Church.

Because of all of that, it should be no surprise that there will be those who are NOT happy with it, and will hinder it any way they can. And the Holy Spirit DROVE Him out into the wilderness, and for a period of forty days, underwent tempatation by our primary enemy, the Accuser of the Brethren, or in Hebrew, Satan. Don’t believe me? Next verse!

13: And He was in the wilderness forty days being tempted by Satan; and He was with the wild beasts, and the angels were ministering to Him.

The number 40 in Scripture is usually used symbolically for a time of trial. The flood occurred wehn it rained for 40 days and nights, for example. Genesis 7:12 tells us that “The rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights.” 1 Kings 19:8, speaking of Elijah’s specific trials, says, “So he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mountain of God.” Matthew tells us that the Lord Jesus fasted for 40 days, these very days referred to here, in Matthew 4:2 “And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry.” Luke adds to that in Luke 4:2 “for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And He ate nothing during those days, and when they had ended, He became hungry.” In each of these things, a period of trial or tribulation and trouble of some kind is being described. Finally, in Acts 1:3 it says, “To these He also presented Himself alive after His suffering, by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God.” The Lord Jesus redeemed even that. Hallelujah.

It says that the wild beasts were with Him. I have often wondered what it would have been like being approached as the Saviour by wild animals. There is some support for a benign kind of relationship with Jesus. The Greek phrase is καὶ ἦν μετὰ τῶν θηρίων, and it suggests that the relationship was not necessarily adversarial. There are theologians that place the animals alongside the angels that come to minister to Him as servants who are subservient to Christ. This does draw from Isaiah’s Messianic expectations, in which the Messiah will rule over all of creation peacefully in a kind of paradise that will rival Eden or surpass it. The suggestion is that Jesus did not command the animals, but let them be who they were. And they would seem to have known who He was when they were there. I used to watch a TV show when I was in single digits called Grizzly Adams. The man with the name had a grizzly bear as a pet. I’ve always wanted one of those. Who knows? New creation, all that. I know it’s not an important point, but I find it fascinating. I believe it may have been a kind of cheering section, to keep the morale of the Creator up with interactions with His creatures who were NOT sinful humans.

I need to return for a moment to the passage in Luke again. It says He ate nothing in those days. For 40 days. How? Most humans will die before our day-count gets to 22, and before it gets ot 4 if there is no water. He was nearby the Jordan, so I don’t know this would have been a problem, but the not eating for 40 days is a trial all its own. Can you think of a better way to demonstrate His divinity that to supernaturally go without food for almost twice what a regular human could survive? This puts a death-stroke to the Kenotic heresy that says Jesus did everything He did on earth as a human only, at least in my thinking. To me, this is evidence of His divinity leaking through the flesh. What makes me think this is that it is only after 40 days he started to become hungry.

What is all this saying? It is telling us that even the work of our Lord Jesus Christ was contested on earth. He went through hard times and difficult conditions. He faced opposition almost from the start. Why else would the angels come to minister to Him? It isn’t like they were leavinbg Him food. This seems to me to be support for the hypostatic union, that Jesus was fully God and fully man, not to mention that He reads minds, something that comes up later.

When we consider that He really is God Himself, and that He faced everything he faced with grace and peace, probably even with joy, we should think about adopting His mindset of Hebrews 12:2 “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” There is more I could say about all of this, but I will move on.

14-15: From John to Jesus – Torch Passed

I know I have talked about this already a bit, but there is more I can say. In our modern world, this set of events would be known as an “inflection point,” that is, a moment of dramatic change. It is the very point that the old system of prophets moves into the new system of the centrality of Christ, where all the types and shadows are fulfilled and the reality of the Saviour, His person, and His work become clear. In the analogy of the relay race we began with, it is the moment the baton changes hands. Beginning with the baptism of Jesus, that baton has clearly been passed. Colonel John McRae wrote in his famous poem title “Flanders Fields,” he says, “…from failing hands we throw the torch – be yours to hold it high…” Beloved, the torch has been passed. It has implications for us, but we will talk about that in a bit. Let’s get into the text.

14: Now after John had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God,

Wait—what? John was taken into custody? He was arrested and jailed? What happened? Last time, we talked about how Herod had married his half-brother’s wife. It seems that Herod the Tetrarch, son of Herod the Great, the guy who went after Jesus as a toddler, broke a Levitical command. That Herod had a brother from a different mother, also named Herod, to make things really clear, who married a lady. She was Sister of King Agrippa, who the Apostle Paul met and shared the gospel with in Acts 26. Her name was Herodias, and she was married to a different Herod to begin with. It seems Herod the Tetrarch fell in love with Herodias and took her as wife. Unfortunately for himself, John the Baptist knew what it said in Leviticus 18:16, “You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother’s wife; it is your brother’s nakedness.” He said as much to Herod publicly. Herod wanted to kill him on the spot, but because Herod feared the people, he only jailed him. The people thought of John the Baptizer as a prophet, the first prophet in 400 years, and everyone knew the law and how Herod was disregarding the command.

Josephus informs us that not only did Herod have John executed, but also blames the loss of his army in a war with Aretas, King of Arabia, on the execution of John, suggesting it was a form of divine judgment. Josephus 18.5.2 says, “(116) Now, some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod’s army came from God, and that very justly, as a punishment of what he did against John, that was called the Baptist; (117) for Herod slew him, who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for that the washing [WITH WATER] would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order to the putting away [OR THE REMISSION] of some sins [ONLY], but for the purification of the body; supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness.” For the record, I am using the updated 1987 Hendrickson translation. Remember, Josephus was an apostate Jew that worked for Rome, so had no real stake in the happenings. He was writing from what I will term a parahistorical perspective as an observer in this case.

It was after the arrest and confinement of John the Baptist that Jesus came to Galilee to proclaim the gospel, or the good news of God. Here comes the runner that will take this long relay to the finish line. John the Baptist was the last prophet before the coming of Messiah. Here comes Messiah to do His singular work. And what was that work? Last verse.

15: and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

What does this mean? Our Lord Jesus was saying that the kingdom of God was arriving with Him. He then took the conditions that John the Baptist initiated (again, that is, for the whateverth time) thos of a commitment to turn away from your sins and forsake them, and added His own twist: Believe the good news.

What is that good news? We talk about it all the time, because it is the main point of the entire human life of Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God! Galatians 1:4 says about our Lord Jesus, “who gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father…” What Jesus said when he made believing the good news a condition of entering that kingdom is as follows, with as simple an explanation as I can make.

God created humanity in innocence. Because of interference and trickery, humanity fell from innocence in disobedience. Was God surprised at this? I do not think so, and I think we can see it by the rapidity with which God has a plan to deal with the sin of the humans. Genesis 3:15, which says, “And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.” is called in Latin the Protoevangelion, that is the first gospel promise given to humanity. It was a promise that a son born of woman would not only avenge the trickery that caused them to fall, but redeem humanity from the consequences of that leap into sin. How do we know it would be a son? The male pronoun is used. We are supposed to respect the pronouns, so I will here. Fastforward several thousand years to arrive at the point in our timeline we are this evening. Jesus is telling this story like He is involved both as God and as man. He is. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Let me exposit that properly. He, God the Father, made Him who knew no sin, that is God the Son, to take on the sins of the world vicariously, that is, as a substitute on our behalf so we would not need to expeerience the proper judgment for our sin. Instead, as He became the one who bore the punishment for our sins, WE became the ones who could participate in His glory when He rose from the dead after. It was not by any act that we had done, but He did all the work. And WE became the Righteousness of God (all of God, the whole trinity) in Him, God the Son. We gain that in the same way all believers have through all of history: We make a commitment to God to turn away from our sins and forsake them in favour of following His Son Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament, they looked forward to the coming of Messiah, said to be the Son of God. After Jesus’s self-sacrifice on the cross, we look back on His sacrifice as the moment the Messiah [Christ, Anointed One] did the work to make it all possible. There has only ever been one way to be saved from the penalty for sin and the coming wrathful judgment coming because of it. Jesus has saved us—from Himself. That’s the gospel.

Beloved, we talk a great deal about the predestination of all believers to be conformed to the image of our Lord Jesus. That starts here. Although it is true that God calls His elect, all of them chosen from before the foundation of the world, our will is still very much involved. We are not automatons that are plucked like sticks from the fire, though that is an apt analogy. When God calls us, He is making an offer that no thinking person would ever refuse. Perhaps you hear that call now. I beg you as His ambassador to accept His call you to to repent. Repentance is a forsaking of your sins by an act of your will. This is not “a work,” per se, rather it is obeying God’s command. When you have turned away from that, turn toward Christ. He died in your place as the perfect atoning sacrifice. Believe, again, involved in that same act of your will, obedience to God’s command, that God laid on Him every sin you have ever committed and will commit! Believe that He paid them. And believe that because they were ALL paid for, He rose from the grave as a demonstration that He had paid for them and that death now has no power to keep Him in the grave. Because He is alive to God, so are all of we who have believed. That is, as I said earlier, the gospel.

Now, this is the reason we do all of this Bible Study. It is so that we can show you the truth that Jesus Himself relayed to us, because that relay goes on, and we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who have already completed the race and are with Him now. If I have an application from this text, it is this: that I take hold of the torch passed to me and run as hard as I am able for the finish line. What began as Jesus beginning His public ministry as God’s suffering servant here will end with Him returning as the great General of the armies of Heaven with with all of His servants following Him. I hope to be in that number. It will be good to ride on a horse again. It will also be good to follow in His train. Praise the Lord. Amen and amen.

That’s what I got out of the text this time. Next time, we will look at verses 16-20.