Fr. Stephen:

Then He went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in it, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house is a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’”

So notice, remember in St. Matthew’s Gospel there was sort of this very structured week, the first day where we had this whole pattern where Jesus was staying in Bethany. Then he’d go to Jerusalem and then he’d come back out, and then he goes to Jerusalem and come back out. Here, this is sort of all one motion. Remember what we were saying about how St. Luke structures his Gospel? Right, point A to point B. So Jesus rides into town, goes straight to the Temple, right? Straight there, goes and drives out everybody who’s buying and selling. And notice he doesn’t say anything about buying and selling for a profit. Remember St. Matthew’s Gospel? We got a little more elaboration. This is just anybody doing commerce, period, right in the Temple. He quotes my house is a house of prayer, says, you’ve made it a den of thieves.

Now, this is not just… one of the reasons why, we’ve seen St. Luke has an interesting relationship to issues of wealth and poverty. With St. Matthew’s Gospel, in his account of this, he tries to make clear that what they were doing was these individual people were abusing pilgrims, essentially, because if you’re coming from you’re coming on a three days walking journey to Jerusalem for a feast like Passover, you’re not going to drag a lamb with you. You’re not going to grab a bunch of your livestock that you’re sacrificing to try to drag it with you, stable it for three days, especially if you don’t have a lot of money. You’re not going to do that. You’re going to take your journey to Jerusalem, you’re going to have some money with you, you’re going to buy a lamb, you’re going to buy whatever there in the city. St. Matthew’s make you the point that they were sort of because they had cornered the market, where else are you going to get livestock for the Temple now that you’re here, but from us, we’ve got a monopoly so they could charge whatever exorbitant prices they wanted. So let’s say Matthew’s Gospel, he makes it clear that this is about exploitation here.

You notice there’s none of that detail because St. Luke is aiming this not just at those particular people we talked about, especially in St. Mark’s Gospel, because this was a theme in his Gospel also about the fact that the Temple, and this is the reason why the Romans Destroyed it in 70 AD, was sort of the center of what power any of the Jews still had. The High Priest’s family, the Chief Priest’s family had come to own about 90% of the privately owned land in Judea. Now, a lot of the land was taken by the Romans, but of the land that was still privately owned, 90% of it was owned by the temple. How did that happen? People left it to the temple in their will? Not quite. How that happened was the temple had been given the authority by the Romans, because the Romans didn’t want to pay for its upkeep, and been given the authority to levy taxes. They could level taxes against the Jewish people, not on the Romans. Couldn’t charge any Roman citizens taxes. But they could charge the Jewish peasants. They could go out and tax them. And they use that money to keep the temple going, for the livelihood of the priests who served there, for the animals, for the sacrifices, for all those things.

Well, if you couldn’t pay your tax, what was your other option? The only thing you had was land. And so we saw in the Torah, God divvied up the land by person. It was distributed to the tribes by person. Each family got the same amount of land. It was up to them than what they did with it. But remember, there was the year of Jubilee every 50 years. So if I took my piece of land and I was bad at business and I ended up in hawk and I ended up losing it, my grandson would not be in poverty his whole life because I was an idiot. After 50 years, it would revert to my grandson. And he’d get a fresh start. Now, if he was an idiot too, he could lose it too. He still had to go out and work it. But everybody had the same starting point; that’s built into the Torah.

So, what have the chief priests done by taking possession of all the land? Remember, the Levites were supposed to own how much land? None. They were the only tribes that didn’t get any land. Now they own 90% of it, and they’ve taken it from the people. I mean, they’ve confiscated it. They haven’t paid them for it. They’ve confiscated it under the guise of this tax. And they’re making the people work what used to be their own land as tenant farmers, working for them, paying them a pittance as peasant farmers, while they not only own the land, but reap all of the financial rewards from the crops.

So when Jesus here says the temple is the den of robbers, He’s not just referring to the conduct of these few people selling turtle doves and sheep and calves. He’s referring to the temple as the temple. Are the priests there to pray? Are the priests there to intercede for the sins of the people before God? No, the priests are there getting rich. And they’re handing down their priesthood in the family to their sons and grandsons who are inheriting all this wealth, not returning any of it, jubilee or no, not returning any of it. And if you recall, these aren’t even the families that were supposed to be priests, according to the Torah. These folks just sort of seized it after the Maccabean revolt. It’s not even just that the rightful priests went bad. These aren’t even the rightful priests who are doing this.

So this is what Jesus, when he comes in and he drives them out, this is the point he’s making symbolically, dovetailing with what he just said about the city. The reason the city is not at peace, the reason the Romans are there is because they’ve become corrupt and sinful and wicked, and because they won’t repent, because they won’t accept the message of repentance that Christ is bringing, they’re going to be destroyed in their sins. That’s what Jesus is attempting to communicate to them here. They’re not going to take kindly to his political criticism, as we’re going to see.

And He was teaching daily in the temple. But the chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people sought to destroy Him,

So they got the message, because we haven’t seen the chief priests before, right? This is the first time they pop up. There’s been Pharisees wandering around and popping up like whack-a-moles and causing trouble. But we haven’t seen the chief priest yet. Well, when he comes and runs everybody out of the temple and makes that statement, calls them a bunch of thieves, challenges their authority, challenges their right to be priests, challenges how they’re conducting the priesthood, they get the message that they want to kill them.

Pharisees just wanted to shut the people up so they didn’t get in trouble with the Romans. Chief priests want him dead. They want him dead.

and were unable to do anything; for all the people were very attentive to hear Him.

Unfortunately, he’s got this crowd around them. Same crowd that was cheering before that, believes he’s the Messiah. They’re all following. They’re all listening to him while he’s teaching this crowd. So even though the chief priests had sort of a group of soldiers, they were allowed to have their own guards, because they wouldn’t let the Romans. The Romans were Gentiles, they can’t come into the temple. Well, somebody’s got to guard the temple in case somebody starts causing trouble, in case someone tries to go someplace they’re not supposed to be. So they’re allowed to have a little group of guards.

So the chief priests would very much like… Jesus is there, the temple priest, they’d very much like to send in their guards to grab them and arrest them and haul them off. But they know if they try that this crowd could turn on them. Now, would the crowd really kill the priest? Probably not. But if there starts to be a riot in the temple, who’s going to show up to stop the riot? The Romans. And the Romans will kill whoever they have to, to make sure there’s no more riots. So the chief priests are scared to make a move, because this is the wrong time of the year with this many people in the city to start trouble if they want to stay clear of the Romans, which they do.

Now it happened on one of those days, as He taught the people in the temple and preached the gospel, that the chief priests and the scribes, together with the elders, confronted Him and spoke to Him, saying, “Tell us, by what authority are You doing these things? Or who is he who gave You this authority?”

Now, notice we got to take this in context again. Sometimes if we read this by itself, we assume that “these things” means miracles. Is that what they’re referring to? Has Jesus done any of those in Jerusalem yet? No. “These things” are referring to what? Coming to the temple and throwing everybody out, causing trouble, challenging their authority, attacking them. They’re essentially coming to Jesus and say, “Who do you think you are coming in here with this and that and the other? I’m the high priest’s nephew, we’re here with these other important rabbis and elders of the people. We’re the important people… We’re the rulers of the people. We’re the shepherds of the people. Who do you think you are, some peasant from Galilee we never heard of coming in here, causing trouble, going around teaching these people like you know something when we’re the educated ones?”

But He answered and said to them, “I also will ask you one thing, and answer Me: The baptism of Johnówas it from heaven or from men?”

So he refers us back to St. John the Forerunner. Remember back before Herod had him murdered, he was out baptizing in the wilderness and preaching repentance. So chief priest says, “Well, what authority do you do this?” He says to them, well, let me ask you a question first. Remember St. John out there? Did his authority, did his baptism, come from heaven, meaning from God or was it from men? His movement.

And they reasoned among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ He will say, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’”

Because they weren’t going out there and getting baptized. They weren’t repenting of anything. So we say it was from God. Then he’s going to ask why we didn’t go out and we’re going to look stupid.

“But if we say, ‘From men,’ all the people will stone us, for they are persuaded that John was a prophet.”

So, St. John had this reputation among the people, that he was this great prophet who the evil king Herod killed. So they figure if they say, “from men”, the people will think they’re siding with Herod. They’re going to get mad, we’re going to have a riot on our hands. This is all going to go south. So we can’t say that either. So they go, “Okay, well, we can’t say either option.”

So they answered that they did not know where it was from.

“Uhhh, We don’t know. What do you think?”

And Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

Now, is that just Jesus being clever and not answering the question, or did Jesus actually just answer the question? That Jesus does these things and is now judging these chief priests by the same authority that St. John did what he did. Because, remember, what did St. John do that got him killed? He stood up to Herod, specifically, he talked about Herod marrying his brother’s wife, his brother Philip’s wife. So that was unlawful; that’s sin. Publicly denounced Herod. That’s what ended up getting him killed.

What did Jesus just do? He just publicly denounced the chief priest. What are the chief priests planning to do in response? Kill him. So Jesus did just answer the question about whose authority he has and just which side the chief priests are really on.

Then He began to tell the people this parable:

So remember, this is coming right off of this.  Says this to the chief priest, turns and speaks to the people who are gathered around him.

“A certain man planted a vineyard, leased it to vinedressers, and went into a far country for a long time. Now at vintage-time he sent a servant to the vinedressers, that they might give him some of the fruit of the vineyard.  But the vinedressers beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Again he sent another servant; and they beat him also, treated him shamefully, and sent him away empty-handed. And again he sent a third; and they wounded him also and cast him out.

“Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my beloved son. Probably they will respect him when they see him.’  But when the vinedressers saw him, they reasoned among themselves, saying, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours.’  So they cast him out of the vineyard and killed him. Therefore what will the owner of the vineyard do to them?  He will come and destroy those vinedressers and give the vineyard to others.”

So this is one of the more thinly veiled parables, right? It’s pretty clear what he’s talking about. When we were going through the Old Testament, if you read the Old Testament closely, it’s sometimes shorthanded that God gave the land of Canaan to Israel, but he never actually did that. Remember? In fact, part of what he told them was that they weren’t to ever settle down. That was part of the ritual around Passover. Remember, they were supposed to gird up like they were going on a journey, the Feast of Booths. They’d all go live in tents. Remember the time when they were the wilderness point was, they were not to make themselves at home. So it wasn’t their home. They were tenants. It was still God’s land. And God would hold them responsible for what they did there and what they did with it.

So, God here is the one who owns the land. He gives it to these tenants, to the people of Israel. Well, the time comes for them to give him back a portion, because, remember, that’s what God asked in return from them. That’s what the sacrificial system was about. The sacrificial system was about, God gave them the land, God gave them the rain, God gave them prosperity, God gave them all these things. And so, they were to come and give back to God in thanksgiving and thankfulness for what they received. They were to do that, starting with a tithe and then with sacrifices and then in other ways.

So, God sends people, God sends prophets in the Old Testament, to come to them and say, “Hey, you guys are seeming a little ungrateful for everything God has done for you. You’re doing this, you’re doing that, you’re doing the other.” And how did they treat the prophets of the Old Testament? Did they say, “Thank you for bringing this message to us, a prophet from God, we will amend our ways and repent.”? No. What did they do? They beat them, they stoned them, they threw them out. They threw Jeremiah, who were talking about before, threw him down a dry well. They treated them all badly.

So, what does the landlord do? Finally, he says, “Well, I’ll send my son because they’ll know he’s my son and they’ll respect him because he’s my son.” What do the people think when the son comes? They say, “This is the heir. This is the one who all the promises were made to. If we kill him, then he’ll have no heir. And when he dies, all this will finally be ours. All this will finally be ours.” Now, we know here that this is talking about Jesus coming as the Son of God, this is what it’s about, and then killing him. But notice that the detail here in this parable. It’s not just that these people are evil and kill prophets. No, that’s true. It’s not just that they kill prophets. This is, remember, why the prophets came. To receive the thanksgiving offerings from the people. This is the ultimate act of ingratitude. Not only are they not grateful to God for all that he has given them, they want to have it for themselves. They want to have it for themselves.

And it’s not coincidental that the chief priests are standing there while Jesus says this and he’s talking about who owns the land. Because according to the Torah, God still owns the land and he can apportion it to people as he sees fit, and that’s why it reverts to the people whose families who originally owns it, in the year of Jubilee, according to these chief priests, they own as much of the land as they can get their hands on.

And so obviously, within the story, what would you do? What would you do if every servant you sent, then you sent your son and they murdered him? You’d send in your men to kill those murderers and throw them out, and give the vineyard to somebody else. Somebody else who’s going to do what? Who is going to give thanks to you for what you’ve given them. And so, what we see here is what St. Paul is going to meditate on in Romans, chapters nine through eleven in particular, because he’s going to look and see that by that point, already, around 50 AD, when he’s writing his epistle to the Romans, already most of the Christian community is Gentiles.

And he’s going to look back and he’s going to say, “All these promises were made in the Old Testament, all these promises were made, in the Torah to the Jewish people, but now it seems like it’s all the Gentiles who have received them. How did that happen?” Well, it happened because, as you could argue in Galatians and again in Romans, it was actually Christ who was the heir of all those promises. And that this story, is what happened. Christ was the heir of those promises, and rather than embracing Him and receiving those promises through Him, they rejected Him. And so God has given those promises to someone else who was willing to offer thanksgiving. This is why we call the central act of our worship the Eucharist, from the Greek word evcaristo, to give thanks. The central act of our worship is to give thanks to God for what he’s given to us.

And when they heard it they said, “Certainly not!”

They got this parable, with the chief priest standing right there. They understood exactly what Jesus was talking about and they didn’t like where it was going. Now notice the “they” isn’t the chief priest. The “they” is the people. “Whoa, wait. What? We thought you were coming here to give us all a pony. We thought you were coming here to give us all the prophets.” What? You’re taking it away from us? What?”

Then He looked at them and said,

Now notice that it doesn’t just say Jesus responded. Jesus looked at them and said,

“What then is this that is written:”

“What then”, meaning, they said, “Certainly not.” “Okay, well, if this isn’t true, then what does it mean?”

“‘The stone which the builders rejected

Has become the chief cornerstone’?

Whoever falls on that stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder.”

So this is why there’s a transition, because this parable, this story, what he’s talking about is rejecting Jesus because Jesus is the heir of the promises. If you reject Jesus, you reject the promises, right? So Jesus is the stone that the builders are rejecting, but he’s going to become the headstone of the corner. He’s going to become the headstone of the corner. Notice whatever falls on that stone will be broken. What’s to talk about there? Why would you want to be broken? He’s talking about repentance, right? Because that’s the correct response. That’s the correct response. The correct response isn’t “woe is me”. Correct response is not, “Oh no, Jerusalem is going to be destroyed, we’re going to lose everything.” The response Jesus is looking for is repentance.

Remember, “A sacrifice to God is a broken spirit” in Psalm 50. Repentance. That’s what Jesus is talking about. “But on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder.” We can be broken in repentance or we can be destroyed in our sins. Those are the two options we have as human beings, because we’re all sinful. There’s no third option of just being righteous. Because we’re all sinful, we have two options. We can be broken in repentance or we can be destroyed in our sins. And that’s sort of a harsher way of putting it. But this is what Jesus has been saying all along. He who exalts himself will be humbled, he who humbles himself will be exalted. The way of repentance is the way that leads to life. And again, people who hear it get it this time.

And the chief priests and the scribes that very hour sought to lay hands on Him,

Right then. They didn’t go off and scheme about it. They were ready to grab Him right there, then kill Him.

but they feared the peopleófor they knew He had spoken this parable against them.

They know exactly what Jesus is saying and they know he’s saying it about them.

And so again, they want to take Him, they want to grab Him. They want to probably stone Him to death right there. But we’re like, “Ehhh, we’re going to be looking at a riot again. So let’s stop.”

Interlocutor: Do these people get it, that that’s what he’s talking about?

Fr. Stephen: The crowds, you mean, or the chief priests?

Interlocutor: The crowds. Do they understand what he’s talking about?

Fr. Stephen: I believe they do because they do the “certainly not”. That’s their reaction, but they don’t try to kill Jesus because of it. But this is the beginning of the turn, because remember, it’s the same crowd that’s chanting as he rides into the city and that’s here listening to Him now and it’s going to be chanting, “Crucify Him” later. We’re talking about what, five, six days, five days’ time? Four or five days’ time that flip’s going to happen. I think what we have right here with that certainly not and that kind of thing is that this is where he starts losing them. The crowd. This is where the crowd starts to say, “He’s not talking very Messiah like. This isn’t what we wanted to hear.”

This is sort of a pivot point in the week because right now they’re still kind of worried that if they try to grab them in the crowd, there might be a riot. Later on, they’re not going to be worried. Later on, they’re going to make their move.

Interlocutor: I don’t understand why the people turned, because they should have turned against the chief priests for taking all their land.

Fr. Stephen: If he was just criticizing the chief priests, but he’s prophesying the promises that were given to Israel, right? The reason they’re all there following Jesus is, why? They want a Messiah to come in and overthrow the Romans. That’s what they’re looking for. So when he starts saying things like, “The promises are going to be taken away from Israel and given to someone else.” “Wait a sec, wait. No, no. We’re here because we want the kingdom. They’re going to give it to somebody else?” This is where they start to realize something’s not right here in their mind, right. This isn’t what the Messiah is supposed to do. This isn’t going the way it’s supposed to go. Like I said, this is not where they turn on. This is where things start to shift from these people being these big supporters of Jesus and cheering for Him. They’re now starting to move to, “Uhhh, some of the things he’s saying. I don’t know.” Now it’s going to tilt to tilt in the other direction.

So they watched Him, and sent spies who pretended to be righteous,

Meaning what? Meaning they’re pretending to be part of his followers, part of those who are following him. They send people to go, “Oh, Jesus, you’re just swell, you’re the best, you’re the Messiah. Absolutely, we’re with you.” To keep an eye on them. Why?

that they might seize on His words, in order to deliver Him to the power and the authority of the governor.

This is the solution to their problem. Their problem is, “We want to get rid of this guy, but if we try and do it ourselves, riot might start, the Romans might come down on us. What’s the solution to that? We need to get the Romans to come down on him. Get the Romans to do our dirty work for us. They don’t mind killing Jews, the Romans, they kill several a day. Okay, so we just need to find a way to get him in trouble with the Romans. Let the Romans kill him for us, and then we don’t have to worry about the Romans coming down on us because it’s the Romans who killed him.” So they have to trick him into saying something. They have to get him to say something they can use to accuse him before the governor. And they probably figure they’ve got this Messiah, this kingship thing going for them. So if we could get this guy on a treason charge. If we can get this guy that he’s trying to set himself up as a king. He’s opposed to Rome, he’s here to overthrow Rome. We can get him saying something like that. All it has to do is come out of his mouth and all we have to do is accuse him. Because again, the Romans don’t care about Jewish peasants. It’s not like they’re going to have a big inquiry to find out if the accusation is true, right? Pretty easy to get a Jew killed by the Romans. So they just say, “We just have to get something. We just have to get some kind of something that we could twist around.”

Then they asked Him, saying, “Teacher, we know that You say and teach rightly, and You do not show personal favoritism, but teach the way of God in truth”

A lot of butter on that bread, right? Spread it on there.

“Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

Okay, so what’s the trap here? Isn’t it lawful?

Interlocutor: If he says no, then it’s treason against Rome, and if he says yes then he’s for the Romans and not the Jews.

Fr. Stephen: Right. The people will turn on him, so that’s it. They asked this in front of the crowd and “lawful” here, they’re not talking about Roman law, obviously. They’re talking about Torah. They’re talking about God’s law. Is it lawful? Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not? If he says, yes, you should pay taxes to Caesar, well, that will be the last straw for this crowd, right? Why? Well, not just because they hate the Romans, but because that will make it pretty clear he’s not the Messiah, because he isn’t here to overthrow the Romans if he’s telling you to pay your taxes to them. 

So if we do that, if he says that to the crowd, he’ll lose the crowd, and then we can grab him and we can kill him. We don’t have to worry about the crowd. If he says, “No, don’t pay taxes to Caesar,” we go and tell Pilate he said that that he was telling a crowd of people not to pay their taxes. Jesus is done for. Romans will kill them. So I think they’ve got a pretty good trap laid here.

But He perceived their craftiness,

I like that translation. Jesus knows exactly what they’re up to.

and said to them, “Why do you test Me?”

Why does he say, “Why do you test me?” Well, they’re sitting there buttering… “Oh, teacher, you’re so wise, and you call it like it is.” So, if that’s really how you feel, then why are you laying traps? He’s basically telling them that he’s on to them, “You’re not fooling me, Eddie Haskell”, if you used to watch Leave it to Beaver. You’re not fooling me.

“Show Me a denarius. Whose image and inscription does it have?”

So He says, pull out a denarius. Denarius, remember, was one day’s wage for a peasant worker. So this is a coin that people would have had that your average person would have had. This is like saying, pull out a dollar bill. He says, whose image and inscription is on there? Now, the image, of course, was a picture of Caesar, the inscription. Do you know what the inscription was on a denarius in first century Rome? I don’t know if I’ve covered this or not. The inscription was Divi Filius, which is Latin for Son of God, because that was one of his titles. Now, they believed he was Son of God in a different sense. Because they believed that Augustus, when he died, became a god. So if you were his son, then you were the son of a god. They believed that the previous emperors had all ascended into the heavens and become gods after they died. But it says Son of God. So he asked them, Whose image and inscription is that?

They answered and said, “Caesarís.”

And He said to them, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesarís, and to God the things that are Godís.”

But they could not catch Him in His words in the presence of the people. And they marveled at His answer and kept silent.

That response is how you know that the way this is usually interpreted is wrong. The way this passage is usually interpreted is that Jesus said to pay your taxes to Caesar. Give to Caesar what is Caesar. Yeah, the coin, see, it’s got Caesar, his face on it. So that’s Caesar, so give that to him, but give to God what is God. Give your heart or whatever. So material things yeah, and spiritual things are good or something.

Does that work with anything we’ve seen in St Luke’s Gospel so far? St. Luke just isn’t concerned with wealth and poverty and money, he’s only concerned with spiritual things. That’s the exact opposite of what we see in St Luke’s Gospel. He talks about wealth and poverty and money and what you do with it all the time.

And also, if that is what Jesus has said, if Jesus had just said one of the two answers, either of them, if Jesus had said, “Yeah, pay your taxes to Caesar,” why would they have marveled and felt that they were unable to trap him? The trap had worked. So that’s not what he said. Because you notice Jesus’s question back to them is basically a reiteration of their question to him. Their question is, “Do we pay taxes to Caesar or not?” His question is, whose image is that? The word in Greek is eikon. Whose image is that? Whose image is Caesar? The actual Caesar? Not the coin, the actual Caesar. Whose image is he?

God. Because Caesar is a man. He’s a man, therefore he is the image of God. Caesar is the image of God. The inscription, who is the son of God?

So then when he says Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give to God what is God’s? Who belongs to God? Caesar, right? So what Jesus is saying here is, “Okay, that’s Caesar’s coin, he minted it. If he wants it back, give it back to him.” But what belongs to God? Everything. Everything belongs to God. Caesar himself belongs to God because he was created by God in his image. All the people listening there belong to God. All their money belongs to God. Their land belongs to God. Their city belongs to God.

Remember the parable, it’s about who owns the land. This is continuing off of that. God owns everything. Everything belongs to God. And so what should we be doing? We should be offering everything back to God. What? In thanksgiving. This is building off the previous parable. We should be offering everything back to God.

And so, these spies prove that they’re the ones who don’t understand. Because when you ask them whose image it is, they say, Caesar’s.  Remember what the people are going to say, when Pilate asks them about Jesus, “Should I crucify your king?” They say, “We have no king but Caesar.”

So these spies just fell into their own trap. These spies just fell into their own trap. That’s why they marvel at Jesus’s answer, right? Sure, yeah, Caesar minted the coin. If he wants it back from you, give him the coin back. But in reality, everything, including Caesar, including you, your life, your wellbeing, everything else really, they all belong to God. And you should be offering them back to God, not as a tax to the temple, but in thanksgiving and in gratitude for God having given them to you.

That’s probably a good place to break thematically and time-wise for this evening. So, when we come back next week and I will be doing Bible study next week, so go eat at the picnic, and then if you could stand the heat. And then we’ll have Bible study later in the evening, we’ll come back here in Luke 20 verse 27 and pick up. So thank you, everybody.