Christ and Cancel Culture - Abdu Murray

- Boy, it is an honor and a pleasure to bookend this on guard series. I started it and I'm ending it, and judging by the fact that the seats are relatively full of smiling faces, you either liked it or you have very short memories. (audience laughing) I'm not sure which one it is, but we'll find out by the time we're finished. I'm excited to be with you. I wanted to share this one thing before I get started. My staff would kill me if I didn't say, "Hey, can we just throw up a slide "that shows how you can connect with us." One thing we do, every single, right there, and you can scan the QR code if you'd like to. Every single month, we send out a resource of some kind that can equip you on a big cultural challenge that's happening. We send out a monthly communication, usually with links to videos and articles that will help you, I think, equip you. And if you're not a Christian, by the way, please take a look at it. Yell at us if you'd like to in the comments. We're good with that. We like to have engagement on these kinds of things, and we're hoping that we provide resources that don't just answer questions, but they answer people.

That's the heart of what Embrace the Truth is about. It's not about answering questions, it's about answering people. So when we go into the Q&A section of tonight's festivities, as it were, I would like to make sure that we approach it in the sense that every question is important because a person is asking it. It's not an abstract idea. It's something that matters to you. So please, bring the toughest questions you can think of. One time someone introduced me during a Q&A to a bunch of people, most of which were Christians, some of which weren't, and he said, for you Christians, if you're going to ask a question, make it the kind of question that would make your neighbor think, is that guy really a Christian? So bring the hard one. Before we begin, though, I want to talk about this idea of Christ and cancel culture. And cancel culture has become somewhat of a pass-A term in some ways because people are saying, is this really a real thing? Is it gone now? Is it really a thing on the left? Is it thing on the right? What's happening in the culture right now? And I'm here to say that I think it is quite real. It's quite relevant in terms of being able to contend for the faith because oftentimes, what

cancel culture will do is it will stop you from speaking before you even get to say something. Assumptions are made about the kind of things you will say, whether you're on this side or that side. We'll make assumptions about it, and then we will try to shut you down so that you don't get to say it. And if you have a platform of any kind, whether it's a personality or a public figure, or you're a sports person or author or a musician, we will stop buying your books. We will burn your jerseys. We will boycott your films. We'll just do all kind of stuff on social media to make sure that you're shamed out of speaking ever again. That's what's going on here. Now, what's interesting about this, and I remember observing this as someone who comes from a Middle Eastern background. I grew up in an honor and shame culture, and I'm going to explain that in a minute what I mean by that. It was fascinating to me that as I began to see the rise of cancel culture, even in the '90s, frankly, when it was in its nascent stages, and it became really fervent, I'd say, in the past 10 years or so, as I begin to observe what's going on, where people weren't hearing each other, they were simply canceling each other and ruining careers, and sometimes ruining lives, I was amazed how Eastern

this actually is. This Western phenomenon is actually quite Eastern. It's quite Eastern in many, many ways. So what I want to talk to you as a background for this is a Middle Easterner and an Easterner. We'll tell you that they come from what's called an honor and shame culture. Now, the honor and shame culture is a culture that looks at the same kind of morality as a Western culture does, but it enforces morality in a collective way based on the way the collective views things, how your family views things, how the community views things, and these kind of things. So there's two kinds of cultures here. In the West, we have an innocence and guilt culture because we're highly individualistic. So an innocence and guilt culture is a culture where we have the same sort of morality as other cultures do, but when someone does something wrong, when they're on a foul of some cultural moray or some rule, they have a inner sense of their conscience as pricked. They have this sense that they've done something wrong. They can go and make amends to the person they've wrong, and then therefore they've made up for it through an individual action. And so they go from guilt, personal guilt, to personal innocence, and that's how we do these things. Because we're highly individualistic in the West. We have this go West young man kind of a thing. And of course, you know, Mr. New York

and all these things, Frank Sinatra, I did it in my way. You know, we're extremely individualistic, and it's a good thing. In many ways, the individualistic idea is good because it allows us to break down barriers and to take some constraints. "I'm gonna dare to breach those things and go and do it my way." And there's a lot of great benefits that come from that. There's a shadow side. Everything this side of heaven has a shadow side. No matter how much light is on it, on this side of heaven, before everything has changed, there's a shadow side. And the shadow side to an innocence and guilt culture that's heavily individualistic is that we do things oftentimes without thinking about how it will affect our neighbor. We don't think about those things. It's like, "You don't like it? That's tough for you, man. I'm doing it my way." And so there's a lot of pain and heartache that comes from that kind of a thing. That's part of the innocence and guilt culture. Jesus operated in the Middle Eastern and Eastern honor and shame culture. And so like I said, the morality is still the same. The same moral values exist, but they're enforced in a cultural or communal way. So in an honor and shame culture, if I run afoul of some kind of social moray for the culture and I shame someone or I shame myself,

I can't just go and make up for it. I can't go do something as an individual because what's happened is I've shamed my family. I've shamed the community my family's a part of and I've even shamed the nation to some degree and the entire sort of ethnicity that I belong to. That's a big part of the honor and shame culture. So the light side to that, the good part to that, is that when someone thinks about what they're gonna do, they think about how it's gonna affect their family, their loved ones, how it will reflect on them. It's a big part of what the honor and shame culture is, is to think about other people. And that's a good thing in many ways. But that also has a shadow side. The shadow side to an honor and shame culture is that you will believe things not because they're true or false. You will believe things because they either bring honor or they avoid shame. That's why when you look at people from the East specifically, whether it's Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, people from far Eastern religious systems or whatever it might be, even in parts of Africa and even in the global South, when someone is challenged on their worldview that maybe there is something more than what their worldview has to offer and they might see the truth of that whole thing. They might see, wow, you're giving me

some convincing arguments. It becomes incredibly difficult for them to understand this and to embrace it because there's consequences, there's social consequences. So they may look at you and acknowledge what you're saying is true, but they know that there's gonna be consequences to it because they will shame themselves. And so what ends up happening is you will believe something that's false because believing it, even though it's false, brings honor to your community. And you will avoid something that's true because avoiding it brings honor to your community and avoid shame if you embrace it. So some years ago, I was invited to speak in Canada, which is interesting because I just got back from there. This literally two hours ago, I flew in, I was doing two university open forums up in Canada and made it here by the skin of my teeth, as it were. I was very worried about the government shutdown canceling my flights, but here we are. God was great and God was generous. (audience applauding) But years ago, I was doing an open forum in Canada. And a friend called me, he didn't know I was in Canada, he called me and he said, "Hey, there's this guy "I've been back and forcing with on Twitter "who is a Muslim guy." And he's pretty curious about Christianity, but he's got some pretty good questions.

Do you think you might be able to interact with him and sort of take up the mantle where I left it? And I said, "Sure, I'd love to do that "and connect me with them online and social media "and that kind of thing." He said, "Great, well, he lives in Canada, "he lives in this city and I won't name the city, "but he lives in this city." Like, "You're kidding me, he lives there? "I'm there now, like right now. "I'm doing an open forum tonight. "You think you can get there?" And so a friend of mine who happens to live in the area went and picked this guy up and I said, "Have him come to the open forum a good hour "before it starts 'cause I want to talk with him "and ask him the questions and to have him come. "If he wants to ask a question at the microphone, "please have him be the first one." By the way, if you're someone who's here and you don't believe in this Christianity stuff or you might have some serious doubts or maybe you've believed for a while now but you're sort of flagging in your faith, there'd be Christians coming to the mics, that's great, but if you're somebody who is like, "I got some serious issues and I want to get through them "and it's all sincerity, please come to the microphone, "please be the first one." So this guy comes and we sit down and we talk

and he is acknowledging the strength of all the arguments in favor of Christianity. It's Muslim guy from an Indian background. He is talking to me about how he finds some of these things compelling. Like what is holding you up? What is holding you up? So he said, "I want to listen to him." at the microphone. He didn't do that. But he listened the whole time. And then he stayed after and a colleague of mine and I sat next to him after the entire place was cleared out. It was just the three of us sitting down in the venue, just chatting. And he asked some more questions and I provided some more answers. And I began to ask him questions about what's holding him back. And he was looking down the entire time. As if the answers to life's questions were written on his shoes. And I started to stare at his shoes like, "What's on those shoes?" And then I saw what was on those shoes, teardrops. He looked up at me and he said, "My father has never told me. He's proud of me. And if I become a Christian tonight, he never will." That's a form of cancel culture. That is the original form of cancel culture. Easterners and Middle Easterners invented it. We simply exported it to the west. You're welcome. But the point in bringing this up is really important. And I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on this particular topic because time runs a little on the short side so we can get to the Q&A. But here's what I want to make the case for in the short minutes we have before we get into the Q&A. The fact that cancel culture is a form of Eastern and Middle Eastern honor and shame culture demonstrates something important to me as I read the pages of Holy Rit and I read the pages of Scripture. I see it over and over again and I can give you countless examples and please ask me about them if you'd like to during the Q&A. But I see countless examples of what Leslie Newbiggan says. Leslie Newbig entitles one of his books Christ, Our Eternal Contemporary. What a beautifully worded phrase. What it means is that Jesus, though ancient, in fact eternal, is always relevant. He's always our contemporary. For some reason, this sort of carpenter from Nazareth of questionable parentage people thought with a ragtag bunch of fishermen and tax collectors as his group

of people who follow him speaks so relevantly that he somehow speaks to the culture he lives in 2000 years ago on the different continent and he speaks to you today. It's almost like God wrote this book. When I see that, I'm amazed. I'm amazed. And so I think now in the midst of this kind of cancel culture, we have to take his words more seriously because I want to say something to your friends and I know it's going to sound a little bit on the extreme side. But the evidence is more and more apparent to me every time I open my newsfeed and I read something on the news. I wrote an article for this for Breakpoint magazine that came out one week before Charlie Kirk was assassinated and my article's title was One Week Before the Man Died, the title of my article was cancel culture has leveled up to assassination culture. That's what's going on now and I can give you at least five examples of the time of things where we're trying to assassinate people because of what they think. It used to be the case. It used to be the case that we had a strong sense of the value of a human being. We believe that a person was infinitely valuable because no matter what they said, thought, believed or did, they were still made in God's image and bore a divine image. We've lost any sense of that or most senses of that. So now what's happened in the cancel culture which is now leveled up to its assassination culture as we find ourselves in a situation where we've equated the value of a person with the value of the idea they actually have. So if we can hate the idea, and by the way, some ideas are hateable. Some ideas are bad. My friend John Stone Street says that ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims. Some ideas are bad and we should strive to eradicate those ideas not with violence but with better ideas and fresh speech and beautiful speech and beautiful stories and good news. Does that sound familiar? But we've not done that anymore because we've equated a bad idea and our desire to eradicate the idea is now melded into our desire to eradicate the person who has the idea. We don't want to convince them. We'd like to eliminate them because them and their idea are now the same thing. One of the chief fundamental differences, I believe, between Christianity truly expressed. Not hijacked for sort of ideas. they think, believe, say, or do, and says, "Why don't we change what you think, believe, say, or do, so that what you think, believe, say, or do conforms to the image in which you were made?"

How does Jesus do this? How does Jesus do this? I think he does it in that way that has that beautiful encounter with people in the midst of cancel culture who's trying to cancel them. So there were two ways that Jesus was questioned when you look at the Bible, there's two ways. He was questioned in public and in private, of course, those are the only two ways you can be questioned, but you can see there's a fundamental difference between the way Jesus responds to a person who's answering, asking a public question and a private question. So when you look at the Bible, what you end up seeing is that the people who ask Jesus public questions by and large, not every single person, because oftentimes when someone asks them a question in public and they were of low repute or they weren't sort of high religiosity or high governmental authority, they were asking the question like, "Can you help me?" So there was a sincerity there, but I mean when someone asked them a theological question or a political question and they did it in public, it was to play what scholars call the honor game. The honor game is this idea that if I ask you a carefully worded question, an artfully worded question, that's hard for you to answer, you will lose honor in the face of the crowd and I will gain honor because I stumped you. That sounds exactly like Twitter. That's what's going on here, okay, so this is honor game. That's when questions are asked in public, but they're also privately asked questions, and if you notice something when Jesus is asked a question in private, it isn't always because the person wants a real answer, they're kind of struggling with getting the answer, but there's a sincerity baked in to the encounter because they're asking privately, because they're in an honor and shame system you see, and if they ask a question publicly and Jesus wins the battle, they are now shamed and they have to walk away from it, but if they ask a question privately and Jesus gives them the truth and wins over their heart, they don't have the public shame, they have to deal with what they just heard, but there's not a public shaming to the whole thing, so that's what's going on in the book, throughout the pages

of Scripture. You see this over and over again, so think about the public questions Jesus was asked. Think about the Sadducees for example, the Sadducees were a group of people who believed in the Torah, they believed in the Old Testament, they were strong, practicing Jews as it were, but they didn't believe in an afterlife, they didn't believe in a resurrection, they thought that when you died, you stayed that way, which is why they were so sad, you see? That's a joke no one should ever laugh at again, I thought we should never make it. So they come to Jesus and they don't like this idea of resurrection, he's preaching about a bodily resurrection, they're like this is crazy, the Pharisees believe this crazy thing, now you believe this crazy thing, we're going to show you how crazy it actually is. So in public they say Jesus, you're a good teacher, tell us this, there's a man who was among us who was married and before he had children, he died. Now our law says that his wife should marry his brother and lawfully tend marry his brother, so she does, she marries his brother and before they have children, he dies and because they don't have children, she can marry yet another brother and this happened seven times, all the brothers died before they had children with this woman. So my question is Jesus is that when there is a resurrection, if all of them are raised from the dead, whose wife will she be? And Jesus, obviously this is a ridiculous scenario, but Jesus looks at them and he says something in front of the crowd, he says you don't know the scriptures, this is a polite way of saying you ignoramuses, you don't know the scriptures, they will not be married nor given in marriage, but like the angels in heaven and so he's saying you don't understand what the resurrection is all about, nice try but you don't understand what this is all about and so he does there, this is the beautiful part of who Jesus actually is, is that he answers them, he doesn't actually humiliate them, he simply corrects them in a semi-aserbic way because he responds to their energy with equal energy, but he's showing them the truth of the things they're misunderstanding, but remember it isn't just them who's his audience, there's an audience there of people who are under the thumb of some of these religious people and who feel terrible about themselves, who have felt canceled because they didn't

follow law 100% and they didn't do all these things, they don't know what to believe when these people are warring amongst each other and Jesus gives them all hope, so he answers them directly but he tells the crowd is that all this nitpicking you're doing over what's going to happen and whether or not you're married and you're whole because you're married or you're whole because you don't have kids and you're like in my brokens I don't have kids and you live in shame this way, you're actually whole and you will be made whole, your social circumstances don't cancel you, so this is the way he answers, he answers biblically That's the way you do it. Now, what's interesting is that when you look at the ways in which at some point the leaders are kind of fed up with Jesus winning all the time, so they stop asking him questions. In fact, the Bible says that no one dared ask him any more questions. What's interesting, though, is you look at the Bible, people did ask him more questions after that. But they didn't ask him public questions, they were private. Like, think of like Nicodemus coming to him under cover of night because he was worried that the Jews would cancel him, would kick him off the Sanhedrin and get him out of the temple and cut him off from the people, as it were. That's what was going on there. And they come in private. Now, I was going to give one more example, turn to some scripture, take a couple of scriptural examples of what I mean by this, and then turn it over to the question and answer periods. We have maximum time for that. I was doing an open forum. This is how it happens today. I was doing an open forum at a very large church. It was in Canada. And the crowd was mixed in terms of its religious makeup.

Atheists, lots of Muslims, lots of Hindus in the area, lots of Christians who were there as well. It was actually wonderful. And they came and I talked about man's search for meaning. Is there really meaning in life without God? And so the question and answer period opened up. And a guy comes to the microphone and he comes with purpose. Like, he is going to ask a question. And he's kind of huffy about it. And he asks me, he's a Muslim guy. And he says, where does Jesus say in the Bible, I am God, worship me. Where does he say that? Now, this kind of made me chuckle a little bit inside because I used to ask the exact same question in the exact same way. And the reason I'd ask that question as a Muslim is because there's no place in the Bible where Jesus says in this formula, I am God, worship me. He doesn't do that. So if you can't find it, they win. And I would win back in the day. So my first question back to him was this. Because he came in the front of about 1,800 people. He asked this question. And I said, I have a question back for you. And then I'll answer your question. Is the answer important? In other words, if I could show you that Jesus did in fact claim to be God unequivocally

in the Bible, would you become a Christian? And he mumbled something like, well, if the evidence gets there, but you're not going to get there. So then I answered his question. I gave him a bunch of places where Jesus says, in very specific terms, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not just a God, like a gust of Caesar, but I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And then he sat down. A public question to win the honor game. But then another person sent the question. But this one was by a text, because you could do it both ways. And so this person, also a Muslim, by the way, asked me a question and said, you talked about man's search for meaning and about God needing to give you that meaning. I'm a Muslim. I believe in God, but my life feels so meaningless. Why is that? I don't know if this is a woman or a man. I have no idea, because it was anonymous and it was over text. But you notice the difference? One was asked publicly, because he wanted to win a game. The second one was asked privately, because this person wanted an answer. It's part of the way we do things. Now, it doesn't mean, if you have a hot button question, please come up. We're not going to have a lively exchange, I promise. And you're very welcome. I love the in-person things, but this is the kind of thing

that I want to sort of give you the illustration about. But I want to fast forward to Jesus in the way he actually addresses this beautifully in the pages of Scripture, in ways that might surprise you. Now, this is a bit of an apologetic answer for me, because what I said in the beginning of my time with you guys is that there are parts of Scripture, and I have so many of these. I read the Bible sometimes, and I just sit back and say, what in the world just happened? Not in terms of what happened on the page, but what in the world has happened is the fact that I saw something I hadn't seen before. It has this way of doing this, you know. So here's this thing that happens. I'm thinking about this honor and shame culture, right? And someone shared with me a parable of Jesus. When I was a Muslim, someone shared with me a parable of Jesus, and it was all about the idea of God's sovereign grace. And it's found in Matthew chapter 20, verses 1 to 16. Now, I'm not going to read it. I'm just going to summarize it for the sake of time. But here's how the parable goes. It's called the parable of a generous employer. Remember now, I was not a Christian when I was being shared this passage of Scripture with. I was a Muslim who believes that God's mercy is important for salvation, but if you do enough good works, you can earn that mercy. get day laborers to come and work in the field for him. So there's these guys who are day laborers

who are sitting out there waiting for work. Happens today, all the time, day laborers, it's still a thing we do. So they go in the morning and they wait for work and then they get picked. But in the morning, if you don't get selected, it's over. You got to go home. It's done. You're not making money that day. It's kind of a shameful thing. You walk home in shame because you aren't able to provide for your family one of the worst things that could happen to a Middle Eastern man back in those days especially. So the generous employer who's, by the way, God in the story, he goes out and he says, okay, I'll pick you, you, and you to work in my field. And they negotiate how much it would be. And he says, okay, I'll pay you a denarius for one day's labor. They think it's a good deal. They go and work in his field. He comes back a little while later and he sees that there are guys still standing around waiting for work. So he goes, okay, I need some more guys. So you, you, and you go in my field and work and I'll pay you a denarius. He comes back a third time, still guys. He picks more guys. He goes back a fourth time. He goes back a fifth time. Now, there's only one hour left of work left in the day. And these guys have been standing around the whole day waiting for someone to give them a job. Now, culturally speaking and even practically speaking, they should have went home. No one's giving you a job with one hour left to work in the day. It ain't happening. But they didn't want to go home and shame and they couldn't bring themselves to do it. So the generous employer comes to them and says, why are you waiting around? What are you still here for? And they say, we hope that someone will give us work. So he says, okay, go in my field. I'll give you a denarius. Go in the field and work, even for one hour. Now, the day of the work is done. And the generous employer, the master of the vineyard, says to the foreman, okay, I want you to pay everybody. But I want you to pay the last guys first because I want the first guys to see it. I want the first guys who worked all day to see me pay the guys at the end who got work one hour and got a whole denarius out of it. I want them to see it. So they pay them that way. And the guys get upset. And they say, wait a minute, we've been here all day. You owe us more money. Now, what's interesting about this is the answer is so brilliant. It is really the genius of Jesus to give this kind of an answer. Remember, I was a Muslim at the time who believed in a workspace system of salvation. And when I first read this whole passage and the way that God just basically gives people what they don't deserve and all these kind of things, I remember telling the Christian, did you read this before you gave this to me? Because this is terrible. This is horribly unfair. But then something happened. Something clicked. My Middle Eastern

honor and shame sensibility came out. And I saw something in the pages of Scripture. When the employer, the master of the vineyard says, why are you still here? The men said, we had hoped that someone would give us work. Now, he paid the last guys, the same amount of money he paid the first guys because the last guys had faith that someone would redeem them. And he credited their faith as if it was righteousness that goes all the way back to Abraham. Jesus strings the Old Testament, Genesis, and how Abraham's faith was credited as righteousness back to this one parable. And the reason why this is important friends is because he redeems them from their shame. He redeems them from their shame and honor and shame culture. But here's the really cool part about this whole thing. When I go to universities, it happened last night at the university I was at. Someone asked me the question, how does God's sovereignty, that God can do everything? And he's in control of everything? And he makes things happen? How does that mesh with our free will? How is it possible that we actually can be judged for the things we've done when God's the one who made everything happen, including the things we've done? It seems unfair for him to judge us for the things that he made us do. And I get a lot of skeptics who ask this as well as Christians. You know what's cool about this story? And as he answers that objection, it deals with it. Not only does it deal with the honor and shame culture, but it deals with the 21st century philosophical conundrum. Because remember what happens in the story? The men say, wait a minute, you owe us more money. We worked all day and you paid these guys a dollar. You paid that denarius. The full amount that we should have got, that we got paid, we need more money. The master of the vineyard says to them, "Friend, I have done you no wrong. Can't I do with my money what I want? God's sovereignty. But here's the kicker, and didn't you negotiate for the denarius human free will?" Two stories that bridge east and west. First century, 21st century. Jesus has a passport with many stamps, both time and place. He speaks to us today. I want to come back to my friend who was crying on top of his own shoes. A short while later, we were communicating. And we were talking about the fact

that he was going to feel this sense of shame. I can give you story after story of other people who have been away from the faith, who have felt like they've been canceled by their own family, or felt that they've been canceled by their culture, for saying the wrong thing, or doing the wrong thing, or whatever it was, even when they were wrong in what they did. And here's this young man who was struggling so fiercely to wrestle with the truth, but was afraid of the consequences of it, that he was literally baptizing his shoes with his tears. And he calls me, and we have a conversation, and he sees the beauty and truth of the Bible, and who Jesus actually is. And he says, I'm ready. [APPLAUSE] I don't know, friend, if you're here because you've been wrestling with this stuff, or you have objections for a long time, or maybe you've been wondering, hey, I've been on the faith fence for quite some time now. Maybe something will happen tonight. Maybe it won't. I don't know. Maybe you've felt canceled. Maybe you felt canceled by God, because what happened to you in your life, I don't know. I don't know that. What I can tell you is that Jesus has this way of bringing about honor amidst the cultures

trying to cancel you. Happened in John chapter 9, a young man born blind, and he's healed. And Jesus says, go wash the pool of Salom and all this stuff, and he goes and he does it, and the Pharisees come, and they say, anybody who proclaims this name of Jesus, I'm going to cancel this guy. You're going to be kicked out of the synagogue? It's such a serious cancellation in that culture that everyone's afraid to say that Jesus is who Jesus claims to be, even when he heals them, so that Pharisees come to this young man and say, who healed you? Who healed you? Because the guy was born blind. And the Pharisees think a scam has been happening, that maybe the parents have lied and said he's blind, but he's not really. They're just getting money for their kid who please help him. He's blind kind of a thing. So they question the parents, and the parents say, who healed your son? Is this really your son who you say was born blind? And the parents are so afraid of being canceled that they throw their son under the bus. They say, he is of age, go ask him. This kid's probably around 13 or 14 years old, because he is of age is a hit that he's just barely a man. So they send these Pharisees to question him, and they do. And like a teenager, he says, why do you keep asking me?

Do you want to be his disciples too? Sort of this smart, out of key thing. And then they cancel him. They kick him out of the synagogue. And Jesus, his canceled culture radar goes off. And he goes back to that young boy. And he says to him, you are in the kingdom of God. You are not blind. Other people, they're blind. Here's my point. Jesus bestows honor to those who've been shamed by a culture of hypocrites. And he can do that for you. He can do that for me. I finished with this quote from Isaac Watts from his hymn. And how he showed you the honor and shame and the innocence and guilt culture of the East and the West merge in Christ. The Lord is just and kind. The meek shall learn his ways. And every humble sinner find the methods of his grace. For his own goodness sake, he saves my soul from shame. He pardons, though my guilt be great through my redeemer's name. Friends, I hope you see that Jesus is our eternal contemporary. He really is. There's so much more to say. And I hope we can engage deeply in the question and answer session together. I am humbled that you ask me to come back and that you're here.

And you've come back yourself. Thank you so much for the privilege and pleasure of your time. God bless you guys. [APPLAUSE]