Transcript
Well, we’ve enjoyed the week with you folks and admire you for coming back night after night to sit with us in the book of Acts. We’ve got our work cut out for us tonight since I want to go over panel five and panel six. We’re going to brush over panel six very rapidly and then after our break I want us to consider the subject of salvation in the book of Acts where we will try to tackle some of the apparent difficulties that are raised by the text of the book of Acts.
First of all let’s look again at our breakdown of the entire book. We have divided the book along the lines suggested long ago by C. H. Turner into six panels. In the first panel we discovered that the thrust was that the Christian Church was founded as a powerful movement of the Spirit within the nation of Israel. It accumulated converts rapidly but at the end of the panel it was beginning to run into difficulties and opposition.
In the second panel we have the panel beginning with the message of Stephen and that is climaxed by his death and by a very significant persecution which drives the Christian faith outward. The evangelization of Samaria and Judea occurs here and by the time that the panel ends we have God reaching people on the roads leading away from the city of Jerusalem. The Ethiopian eunuch traveling south and Saul of Tarsus traveling north.
In the third panel we have what from Luke’s standpoint is the climax of Peter’s apostleship. We begin with the great and very central story of Peter opening the door of faith to the Gentiles and the household of Cornelius. We end the panel, you remember, with Peter serving as a kind of a visual symbol of the truth that the Word of God cannot be successfully restrained. And though Herod Agrippa the First had successfully killed one of the apostles he finds himself unable to even keep the other apostle in prison. His maximum security arrangements are run roughshod over by God as he liberates Peter and then God strikes down Herod Agrippa himself and he is eaten with worms. And that statement is put side by side with the statement that the Word of God grew and multiplied. Man corrupts and decays. The Word of God continues to grow.
In the fourth panel we have what is from the Lucan standpoint the establishment of the apostleship of Paul. And here there is a unit that really affirms for us that Paul is sent out by the Holy Spirit, is empowered by the Spirit, and the Spirit works through the apostle. There’s a middle unit in this particular panel that gives us a glimpse at what I called the quintessential Paul, the core Paul, the real Paul down underneath all of the hype. What does he really like? What is his ministry really like? And then the third unit was one of the more important sections of the book of Acts: the ratification of the apostleship of Paul through the Jerusalem Council.
That brings us to panel five which we have called The Lord Jesus Glorified Among the Gentiles. And here I think the major thrust of the panel is to show that in the Pauline mission God is sovereign. God is determining where Paul goes and what happens in the places where he goes. And the ultimate outcome of all that God is doing through the apostle Paul is that the name of the Lord Jesus Christ is glorified.
Let’s look at this in a little detail. There is a sense in which we could call panel five or book five the book of the six cities since the events of this particular section of Acts revolve around the six cities that you see there on the map. Each of these stories it seems to me has its own distinctive character. We might call Philippi the city of the opened heart. We begin with the conversion of Lydia whose heart the Lord opened, it says, to take heed to the things spoken by Paul. God is an opener of hearts and if necessary He will open all the doors of a prison to open a heart. And so all of the doors of the prison in Philippi are opened and the heart of the Philippian jailer is opened. And one of the most famous conversion stories in the Bible. So I call Philippi the city of the open heart.
Berea is the city where Paul has ministry but the major event that occurs here is that there is trouble in Thessalonica and he is driven out of Thessalonica and goes down to Berea. One remembers the famous statement about the Bereans that they were more noble than the others and that they searched the Scriptures daily to see whether the things that Paul spoke were true. Needless to say there are many conversions in Berea because there’s an openness in that city to the Word of God and to the fulfillment of prophecy.
However the Jews come down from Thessalonica and control a tribe, pull out again. And this time he moves down to Athens. In Athens is the famous address that he gives on Mars Hill. And may I say that it has sometimes been suggested that somehow or other Paul took the wrong approach in Athens and as a result of his wrong approach he didn’t get many converts. I must say I can’t see that at all. The approach that Paul takes is precisely the right approach here. Here is an intellectual and pagan city. He argues that the idolatry with which the city is filled is contrary to what the evidence of nature shows. He uses an approach here that is very similar to Romans one and very similar also to the arguments he offers in chapter fourteen where he is telling the people of Lystra and Derbe that God has done all of these things for them and they should not consider that God is represented by an image made with hands.
But the problem at Athens is not so much his appeal to the evidence of creation as his statement about the resurrection. Where as soon as he gets to the resurrection everybody begins to scoff at it. And here we need to remember that in the Greco-Roman world, in the intellectual circles of the Greco-Roman world, the idea of physical resurrection was considered ridiculous. Now that is not the same as saying that nobody believed in immortality but the more brainy types in the Greco-Roman world believed in some kind of spiritual immortality. And the thought of a physical resurrection and a physical world to come was something that was alien to the Greek mind. And Paul’s message was rejected at the point that is most basic to his message because he must proclaim the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of those who put their faith in Him. And he is rejected not because he has appealed to the evidence of creation but because he has appealed to the resurrection. And therefore there is no church apparently founded at Athens. There are a few converts because the Word of God always accomplishes something whatever it is that God purposes. But Athens is not a fruitful field. And it has been true all through the centuries since then that one of the least fruitful fields for the gospel are environments where intellectual pretensions and academic attainments are highly valued. The higher the level of education the lower the appropriation of simple Christian truth that works everywhere. And you will find that on university campuses you have some of your greatest enemies of the Christian faith.
Where does Paul go from here? He goes to Corinth, just exactly, not exactly perhaps but almost an opposite of Athens. Corinth was a very degraded city. In fact so severe was the debauchery that went on at Corinth that the language developed a word “to Corinthianize” that meant to live a depraved life. And so Corinth, so far from being an example of excellence and intellect, was an example of depravity and sin. But remember that just as the Jews seemed to be about to cause Paul some trouble in Corinth and he probably expected to be driven out of Corinth just as he had been driven out of Thessalonica and Berea, Gallio the Roman official in charge at Corinth dismisses the Jewish case. The result is that Paul was able to spend eighteen months at Corinth. And prior to the intervention of Gallio God had said to Paul, “Don’t be afraid. Nobody will harm you. I have much people. I have much people in this city.” And so He did. He had few people in the city of wisdom but He had much people in the city of sin. For where sin abounds grace does much more abound.
And then finally in this book Paul goes to Ephesus. And we’re going to say more about the incidents in Ephesus in a moment. But notice that we can see various aspects to the work of the Holy Spirit in this particular section of Acts. In Philippi we see how He prepares hearts and opens that heart. In Thessalonica and Berea we can see how He uses persecution to propel the message forward. In Athens and Corinth we can see how He prefers the foolish things of the world. To the Corinthians he later wrote,
You see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble are called. God has chosen the foolish things of the world and the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are.
And very skillfully the author of Acts puts Athens and Corinth side by side to illustrate this facet of Paul’s teaching and theology.
And then we have the incidents at Ephesus where let me suggest the theme is the glorification of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we will talk about that further in just a moment. Before doing so however let’s take a look at an overhead on Philippi. This particular overhead as you can see has suffered some water damage. Do not put your eyes out trying to read the very light red that’s there. I’m about to have an overlay where the red is more readable. That’s just the remains from the water damage.
The incident in Philippi can be looked at in this way. The preachers begin acting in perfect freedom and when the little girl the fortune-teller begins to follow them and announce that these are the servants of the Most High God who show to us the way of salvation, Paul turns to her and in the name of the Lord Jesus he casts out the demon. So the power of the Lord is working there. However very shortly as a result of what they have done to the little demon-possessed girl and taken away the possibility that her owners can get any more money from her, the owners foment a persecution. The preachers are arrested. They are beaten. They are thrown into prison and their feet are put into stocks. They reach the bottom of this downward descent when they are in prison. But as a result of their imprisonment the jailer is saved. You remember then that the next day the magistrates come in and at least the messengers of the magistrates come to announce that they are free to go. And Paul says, “No indeed. Let them come themselves and free us.” And so the magistrates, embarrassed now because they have done this to a Roman citizen without due process, come down and kind of, I can imagine them being very obsequious to these men, hoping that no prosecution is nigh in the future for their miscarriage of justice on a Roman citizen.
Now it is striking that this experience in Philippi bears some resemblances to one of the great passages in the book of Philippians. So that we all remember this passage: that Christ Jesus, who was equal with God, made Himself of no reputation. He started the downhill, going downhill until He reached the death of the cross. He humbled Himself and made Himself obedient even to the death of the cross. Wherefore God also has highly exalted Him. In a very vague way but nevertheless in a fairly clear way the preachers experience something like the Lord Jesus Christ experienced. One wonders whether Paul meditated on his own experience in Philippi and was inspired by that to write this elevated and elegant passage about the condescension of Jesus Christ, His death and subsequent exaltation.
One brief little look again at several of the cities. As we indicated as we went through the larger map, Berea and Thessalonica could go together and they could be called the Jewish section because the Jews are prominent here and they drive the message out of both cities. In Athens and Corinth however the Jews are not quite so prominent. They are not active at all in Corinth and in Athens. And in Corinth their efforts are aborted by the intervention of Gallio. It seems to me that a principle Paul stated earlier in Acts is illustrative. In Thessalonica and Berea since you’ve thrust the gospel from you and you consider yourselves unworthy of eternal life we go and preach to the Gentiles. And that’s what happens in both of these cities. As we’ve already indicated in Corinth and Athens we have the striking contrast between the city of wisdom (the world by wisdom knew not God) and the city of sinners where God saves the foolish and the insignificant.
Let’s turn then to Ephesus. It seems to me that the book that we’re looking at now, that is the panel, definitely is moving toward Ephesus as the grand finale of this unit of material. And on this particular overhead, this is the first of several on Ephesus that I want to show you, we can consider Ephesus to be the city that is bypassed in this section until at last God’s timing is ready for Paul to go there. As book five opens Paul is passing through the regions of Phrygia and Galatia. And remember that we are told there that he is forbidden to preach the word in Asia. Ephesus was in Asia. Had he been allowed to move into Asia he could have moved into Ephesus but he’s not allowed to do so. What happens is that he then tries to go into Bithynia which was up north and is once again forbidden by God to do that. He finally winds up with his party at Troas where the very famous Macedonian vision occurs and where he draws the conclusion that they are being called to Macedonia to preach the gospel.
They wind up in Philippi. I’ve often said, and other preachers have said this as well, the man of Macedonia turned out to be a woman of Macedonia. They caused the very first convert in Macedonia was Lydia. And when Paul arrives at the city there’s no synagogue in Philippi. This was a Roman colony and basically made up originally of Roman veterans as I understand it. And so he goes out to a prayer meeting that is being held on the banks of the river by women and he preaches the gospel to them. So the Macedonian man, the Macedonian woman. Actually I want to think that the Philippian jailer is the Macedonian man but I like it better to say that the Macedonian man turned out to be the woman of Macedonia.
From Philippi as we’ve seen he goes to these other cities and then he sails away from Corinth. He stops in Ephesus but even though a big opportunity seems to be there for him, you remember that he can’t stay. Then he has a vow that he’s on his way to Jerusalem and so he has to leave Ephesus without spending any substantial amount of time there. By the way on your overheads that is supposed to be an eight. It was accidentally originally a six and it looks ambiguous at this point but it’s eighteen, eighteen to twenty-one. So he goes back to Judea. He goes to Caesarea. Goes up to visit the church at Jerusalem and then he goes back down to Antioch. It is only as he retraces his steps that he later is able to wind up at Ephesus. So notice that it is on the second time through that he gets to the city which is reserved therefore in the program of God and also in the exposition of Luke to the very end of this panel.
We have called Ephesus the bypassed city. It is also the prepared city and perhaps can be understood as illustrating the truth that one plants and another waters but of course it is God who gives the increase. When Paul leaves Corinth and stops briefly at Ephesus Aquila and Priscilla are with him. He leaves them behind at Ephesus and Paul goes on as we’ve seen to Caesarea and Jerusalem. Meanwhile while Paul is gone Apollos comes to Ephesus. And remember that Apollos was an eloquent man and learned in the Scriptures but he knew only the baptism of John. And fortunately for him he encounters Priscilla and Aquila who update him on the truth of God as they have learned it from the apostle Paul. And they improve the competence of Apollos to minister the Word and he proceeds on to the city of Corinth.
Then but only then does the apostle Paul come there for an extended stay. Notice therefore that what God has done is He has blocked the apostle Paul twice from coming to the city of Ephesus. Meanwhile He has had Priscilla and Aquila to stay there and for Apollos to come there and to lay a foundation through his ministry to profit from Priscilla and Aquila. And then the ground is truly prepared for the ministry which God has for the apostle Paul. I’m sure I don’t need to give you the application here do I? God is sovereign in choosing the locale for His servant. Well I can say tonight for example I suddenly decided that God wanted me in Hong Kong. I could say I am going to go out to Hong Kong right after the first of the year. Will I go out to Hong Kong on the first of the year? Maybe. Maybe yes and maybe no because I can’t guarantee that that’s where I’ll be at that particular time. From one point of view I can’t even guarantee that I’ll ever be there. We attempt to bring the gospel to the places where we believe that the gospel needs to be brought but sometimes God blocks our way. Sometimes He blocks it totally. Sometimes He blocks it for a time. And whenever the gospel is preached God is the sovereign God who determines when and where His servants will minister the Word.
Now in addition to Ephesus being the bypassed city, in addition to it being the prepared city, I would like to suggest it is also the typical city. I don’t remember when I first saw this in the text. It was not the first time that I preached through or taught through the book of Acts but this I think is a very remarkable thing. There is a sense in which the ministry in Ephesus is a microcosm of the whole program of God for the church. There is a sense in which the history of the church is recapitulated in miniature by the events at Ephesus. Let me show you what I mean.
Apollos comes to Ephesus first. He knows only the baptism of John. Right? So he precedes the apostle Paul. When the apostle Paul eventually gets there he meets twelve disciples and he’s puzzled by these disciples because it appears to him that they don’t possess the Holy Spirit. And so he asks them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they reply, “We don’t even know whether the Spirit has come yet.” And Paul says, “Well into what were you baptized?” And they say, “Into the baptism of John.” Notice they’re John’s disciples in Ephesus and John’s baptism in the twelve. And what does Paul do? He commands them to be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. He lays hands on them and He bestows the Holy Spirit on them. Hard not to see the parallels isn’t it? Apollos is the John-like figure preceding the apostle Paul. Paul is a Christ-like figure who bestows the Holy Spirit. The twelve upon whom the Holy Spirit is bestowed are a microcosm of the hundred and twenty, ten times twelve, that received the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.
And then what happens? Well remember that the Ephesians were very proud of Artemis their deity whom Asia and all the world worships. A commercial exaggeration probably on the part of the silversmiths in Ephesus who made their money on the images of Diana. But what happens when Paul gets there? He spends two years in the school of Tyrannus and the result is that all Asia hears the Word of God. The analogies are like this: Apollos corresponding to John, Paul to Christ. They bestow love, the Spirit, the twelve corresponding to Pentecost. Ephesus corresponding to Jerusalem and Asia corresponding to the world. In a remarkable and inspired feat of historical writing the author of this book has managed to give us at Ephesus a miniature of the history of the church.
And here’s the remarkable thing folks to me. On top of that if we had to choose one epistle of Paul that more than any other in average church truth, what epistle would we choose? Ephesians. By most estimates Ephesians is the deepest of the epistles, the richest of the epistles, and certainly focuses more directly than any of the epistles upon the Christian Church as a mystery that is now revealed unto God’s holy apostles and prophets. This is a very impressive climax.
Now against the background of this is the incident that takes place in the city of Ephesus. And you remember that Paul is casting out demons and all of this and there are seven sons of Sceva who are exorcists. They are renegade Jews because they obviously dabbled in magic which was anathema to a strict Jew. And they decide that if they use the name of Jesus to cast out demons they can do it the same way that Paul did it. Now they are exhibiting in this the mentality of the magician of the ancient world. The idea in magic was if you had the formula, if you had the mystic name, if you said the right words you could do it. And so they treat the name of the Lord Jesus Christ as if it were no different than any other of the many, many, many powerful names that were thought to circulate in the Roman world.
And they go into this house where this demon-possessed man is and they call over him, “By Jesus whom Paul preaches.” And the demon says, “Jesus I know and Paul I know but who are you?” And then he drives them out of the house. That is they run out of the house wounded and stripped of their clothing. And suddenly it is discovered and displayed that the name of Jesus is far above the magical names that were in circulation. The name of Jesus cannot be picked up and used by anybody as though it were a kind of a charm or an amulet that would focus power. No. The name of the Lord Jesus Christ is the name that is exalted above every name, above all principality and power and might and dominion. And suddenly the people at Ephesus realized the difference.
And apparently some of the believers who had already believed in the name of the Lord Jesus were still clinging to their magic books. And so they bring their magic books out and there’s a great big bonfire of magic books. May I pause to make an application of this. Sometimes we treat God and the Lord Jesus Christ as if we had the mentality of a magician. So if I just do all the right things, you know, if I get up in the morning and I have my quiet time, I read my Bible and say my prayers, I do the things I’m supposed to do every day, God’s power will work for me. And if I ask Him for something He’ll surely do it. That mentality is not very far from any of us is it? And we must remember that when it comes to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ we are dealing with a person who is exalted above every other name. And it is His sovereign will that is being carried out in the world and not ours. The name of the Lord Jesus is not something that I use to manipulate so that I can get my wishes fulfilled. The name of the Lord Jesus is the name of a person who wishes to use me to get His wishes fulfilled.
So the grand and tremendous climax of this section of the book of Acts is that in the ministry of the apostle Paul God is sovereign. The risen Christ is sovereign. Paul can’t go where the Lord won’t permit him to go. He can’t win souls wherever the Lord is not winning souls. He can only do what the risen Christ enables him to do. This is a powerful and effective section of the book of Acts I think.
Now I have a confession for you. Book six I do not have any prepared overheads for book six. You know why? I almost never got to it in my course on Acts. I didn’t need overheads. The course was over. And I want you to know that I have prepared an overhead on book six that has never been seen anywhere but here in July. But wait. After you see it you may advise me not to show it anywhere but here inside. So here goes folks. I made it this afternoon. It is probably cut below the others I have showed you. Two, three, four, five cuts below the other that I showed you. But this is from one point of view an overview of book six.
Now let me ask you if you will to turn to Acts nineteen and verse twenty. We have suggested that panel five ends with the summary statement in Acts 19:20,
So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed.
After the bonfire of the magical vanities the word of the Lord grows mightily and prevails. But now the new book or the new panel begins, “When these things were accomplished, Paul purposed in the spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem, saying, ‘After I have been there I must also see Rome.’” The outline of the book. So he’s going to pass through Macedonia and Achaia. He’s going to go to Jerusalem. And after he’s been there he’s going to go to Rome. He doesn’t know that he will go to Rome as a prisoner but it doesn’t matter. The sovereign work of God is being carried out.
So here let me just very, very quickly and briefly trace what happens in book six. The very next incident that occurs in book six is the riot at Ephesus which precipitates the movement within this book. And indeed Paul does go up through Macedonia, down through Achaia, goes back up through Macedonia and goes by foot all the way to Assos where he is picked up. And where they land at Miletus. At Miletus he summons the elders of the church at Ephesus and he gives them that famous exhortation that we have in Acts twenty. Then he takes ship to Patara. From Patara he goes down to Tyre. When he reaches Tyre there is a prophecy that trouble lies ahead of him in Jerusalem but he proceeds. The ship puts in for a while at Ptolemais and then puts in at Caesarea. That’s that real once again there is prophetic warning about the difficulties that lie ahead. In none of these cases is Paul being forbidden to go to Jerusalem. He is being warned of what lies ahead. And he’s already said to the Ephesian elders that even though the Holy Spirit is predicting bonds and imprisonment that he is committed to fulfilling the ministry that God has chosen him to fulfill.
So he goes down to Jerusalem. He attempts to, is the distortion of his life and his ministry and his message that has even begun to spread among the Christians at Jerusalem. What we meet here is a Jerusalem church that appears to have grown even more legalistic than it was in Acts fifteen. In Acts fifteen we had some people who were legalistically minded but now we have multitudes of Jews who are adherents to the law. And Paul is advised to take an accommodating step which he willingly does. The results are not successful. What happens is basically another riot. So there’s a riot up here. There’s a riot down here. And this riot begins to propel Paul back in the direction of Rome so that he is placed under arrest. He is rescued from the dangerous circumstances in Jerusalem and he’s brought to Caesarea where he remains for a time. And from Caesarea he eventually sets out on a trip to Rome.
Now that’s the overview. Let me ask you to look with me very briefly at the outline that we have distributed here. I really encourage you at your own convenience to try to study this section of the book of Acts. I’ve already confessed that I tended to neglect this when I was teaching the book of Acts even though I think that it is one of the most important sections of the book of Acts from Luke’s standpoint. Remember that we have suggested that the theme of Acts is the Pauline mission is indeed an extension of the work of the risen Christ. But the effort that Luke is making in this book is to validate and ratify the Pauline mission.
What is the contribution of book six to this overarching purpose of the book of Acts? Well I want to suggest that what Luke does in book six is to show us Paul the man. To show us Paul the man. We have seen him in panel four as God’s authenticated apostle. We have seen his mission in panel five as something that God’s sovereignty superintends. What comes before us here is the personality of this great man of God. And by extensive material dealing with his experiences, dealing with his trials, dealing with his attitudes in times of trial, we discover what kind of a person Paul is. And that’s the climactic point of this book. The man whom God chose to be the apostle to the Gentiles is not only a man on God’s mission but he is himself a man of God. He’s not only a man on God’s mission he is himself a man of God.
And I think you will be able, hopefully you will be able by looking through the outline at your convenience to see the way that we’ve developed this. Please notice that Roman numeral one, the first half of the book, is the repeated repudiation of Paul’s witness at Jerusalem. This is the Jerusalem section and it carries us down. I think you don’t have it on exactly the same arrangement that I do. If you’re on a front and back I’m on parts of three pages here. But can you find Roman numeral two: the relocation of Paul’s witness in Rome? And if you will work through these I think you will find that each section makes a very viable contribution to the portrait that the author is drawing of this man of God.
Let me make a couple of suggestions since our time is running a little down. I want to break and then we want to come back to the subject of salvation in the book of Acts. Let’s look under number one right at the top of your outline. There are two scenes here under A. One of these is the scene at Ephesus where there is riot because of the apostle Paul. The other is the scene at Troas where he meets with Christians and where Eutychus, the favorite of all preachers, he fell asleep on the apostle Paul. And if a man can fall asleep on the apostle Paul he can fall asleep even on us. And we don’t feel as bad. We just hope they don’t fall out the window because we can’t raise them from the dead. But he fell out of the window. Paul went down and basically raised him from the dead and the Christians there were much comforted.
The contrast here is striking. This is Paul on the Gentile mission field. What do we see? He’s the archenemy of paganism. The pagans hated him. He’s losing them money by converting people away from paganism. It’s a lie and a slander for the Jewish people to think that he’s compromising with paganism but paganism doesn’t like him at all. But the Christians love him. They will listen to him deep into the night. And he has a compassion for individuals so that when Eutychus falls down Paul indicates this knee, braces the young man, and the young man is restored to the fellowship. So Luke is painting a portrait here of the man. Here’s what he looks like to the pagan idol worshipers but here’s what he really is in the presence of the disciples of Christ.
And you can go through these the unit that way and I think you’ll be surprised if you look at it this way how much you can learn about the portrait that Luke is painting. Let’s think about five minutes for questions then we’ll give you a little break and we’ll come back to the subject of salvation. Do study the section of Acts. It’s an eclectic section because we think well there’s not a lot of doctrine here. You know we don’t meet tongues and we don’t meet miracles but there’s a huge amount of portraiture that is spiritual and impacting when we study it.
And I really don’t know. I think there is every possibility that he had not met Paul. It seems like Luke has a passion here. Is this long session? Yes very definitely. Any way that he would know all there is to know about you’d be very relaxed with this leader who is the line. Right? It was customary I understand in ancient times for the dedicatee to often finance the production of this and Theophilus is the one to whom this is dedicated. And I think in Luke’s mind he is representative of the type of audience that Luke wishes to reach. So he might not have ever known the apostle Paul personally. He might have but even if he did many of those who were intended to read this did not. And therefore they need this extensive portrait here. Here is a man as we can see in this section terribly maligned, distorted back in Jerusalem. They have no idea of what he’s really like. And so Luke unfolds for us on the pages of panel six here’s what the man is really like. Here’s his dedication to God, his courage, his commitment to the truth, on and on you can go. This is a great section of exposition now recommended heartily.