Informal Perspectives On Lies 1-5

We’ve come a long way in our series about ten lies about God and now it’s time for some review. This is Dave McAllister with Pastor Lutzer. In our conversation we’ll try to sum up what we’ve learned thus far about the first five of those lies. Pastor Lutzer has been discussing ten lies about God and why you might already be deceived.

Pastor Lutzer, lie number one you spoke about in your sermon was that there are many ways to the Divine. Now how are people today making their own approaches to God?

Pastor Lutzer:
The simple fact is that today the word God is like a canvas upon which people can paint whatever they’d like, whatever meaning they would like to have. And the big problem is that they are actually inventing ideas of God, and in our postmodern age they think that their ideas are right simply because they think them, and therefore people say, “Well, this is my view of God,” and you can have your own view of God. And it is as if they don’t realize that you can’t do that. You can’t have conflicting views of God. You cannot create a God from within that you happen to like.

Dave McAllister:
Is that why some people would say, “Well, my God wouldn’t judge people like that”?

Pastor Lutzer:
That’s right! How many different gods are we talking about? Later on we’re going to talk about some specific examples of how people do this. But that’s another thing. People say, “My god won’t do this.”

I was speaking one time, quite recently actually, at a conference where I was defending the uniqueness of Christ, and somebody came up and said, “Well, I believe that Buddha and all of the other religious leaders are in heaven, too, even if they are not quite as high as Christ on the totem pole.” Well, without discussing the individual salvation of these men whose hearts we don’t know, I simply had to confront this man with a question: “How do you know these things?” Now interestingly it turns out that it was his own opinion, because people are into opinion and they think that their opinions are right. What I want to maintain is that the only accurate knowledge we can have about God is what He has seen fit to reveal to us because we can’t simply have it arise from within us.

Dave McAllister:
Well if there are many ways to the Divine in modern consensus thinking, what does that say about our culture?

Pastor Lutzer:
Well, what it says is, first of all, that we’re deeply into spirituality. God created us as spiritual beings and we can’t get away from that, and that’s why you have the proliferation of the New Age Movement with all of its different silliness about God. That’s number one, but number two, Dave, we are such an arrogant culture. Just think about it. People think that they can, in effect, create whatever god they like.

The illustration of a cafeteria is very, very important because in a cafeteria when you are going through, number one you remain in charge. You select whatever you like and leave the rest. And number two, you can’t be critical of someone else who selects something different. And so today we have cafeteria religion. People say, “I take a little bit here and a little bit there, and I construct my own view of God,” as if to say they can actually manufacture reality. That’s an awesome, stupendous prideful claim.

Dave McAllister:
Now is that a uniquely American cultural phenomenon, or would that be true elsewhere?

Pastor Lutzer:
No, I think that is true, certainly in the East, for example, where you have a lot of religion that is tied in with mysticism. People think that conception of God is somehow perfectly right, even if it conflicts with other people’s conception. You know, Calvin, the great reformer, said that our minds are an idol factory. We are constantly spewing out images of God, usually images of a god who looks a whole lot like us, and certainly today people are doing that.

Dave McAllister:
Well today the big thing is being tolerant, of course, of other views of God, so we have several hundred different conceptions of God and we’re all kind of making it look like we’re tolerating each other’s viewpoint even if they do, as you say, conflict. Doesn’t that create a kind of societal schizophrenia?

Pastor Lutzer:
Well, it does. And let me say this about tolerance. First of all, of course we should be tolerant if that means that we should respect other people’s views and allow them to believe or not believe whatever they like. But there’s another kind of tolerance in America today. It’s a kind of (what shall we say?) a very mindless tolerance that says we can live with all these conflicting views and should make no attempt to try to see their consistency or harmony. And that’s a destructive kind of tolerance.

You know, I think in one of the messages I pointed out that at one of our universities there was a sign that said these words: “It’s okay to think that you are right, but it is not okay for you to think someone else is wrong.” And that’s where we are at; you can’t think that someone else is wrong.

Dave McAllister:
Well, in all this mélange of concepts of God, there is certainly for us at least, and perhaps we can help communicate the reality of this to others who might be listening, there is one absolute benchmark that helps us define how one does approach God. And we believe that that’s the Word of God, the Bible. What do we find there about how we must approach God?

Pastor Lutzer:
First of all, we have to approach God with the right mediator. All knowledge of God, all experiences of God in the Bible have to be mediated. If they weren’t mediated, that’s what you have when Moses is up on the mountain, and he sees a glimmer of God. But God cannot be approached directly so you need the right mediator. You need the right sacrifice. It says in the book of Hebrews that He, by one sacrifice, perfected us. And then you need the right attitude. It says, “With a humble heart we approach God.” But that’s the way in which we approach Him. We have to approach Him in the way that He Himself has revealed.

Dave McAllister:
So lie number one: There are many ways to the Divine. Then lie number two is that God is more tolerant now than He used to be. You know, Pastor, in a recent Sunday school experience I had, we were in Numbers 16 where God was judging the people of Israel for disobeying the authority of Moses. And actually the earth opened up and swallowed up several families who were instigating the rebellion. And fire from heaven came down and consumed 250 community leaders at that time while they were wandering in the desert. God was saying, “I have chosen Moses. That’s My choice. That’s the end of it.” Now people would look at that and say, “Well, how does that equate to a gentle, sweet, loving Jesus in the New Testament? Has not God really changed His tune?”

Pastor Lutzer:
You know, not only that experience that you referred to in the book of Numbers, but I think I counted one time that there are at least a dozen different sins or crimes in the Old Testament for which people were to be stoned, including children who cursed their parents. And you have, you know, adultery. You have someone who is gathering sticks on the Sabbath so natural man looks at this and says that clearly God has evolved.

You know, there was a PBS special where Bill Moyers, in effect, as he was talking to various participants, came to the conclusion that in the Old Testament God was harsh, and in the case of Noah He sent a rainbow, which meant that He really regretted what He did. He was like a child who got mad and destroyed a castle, and then later regretted it. So those are very humanistic views of God.

Let me simply say that God’s nature has not changed. “I am the Lord. I change not.” His opinion of all of these things has to be the same throughout the centuries or else He’s not God. What has changed is that God has decided to have a different administration today so that instead of dealing with Israel as a nation, He decided to call out individuals from all the different nations of the world to form a church. Therefore we do not have a theocracy. And (this is very important) God, in the Old Testament, chose to punish sin immediately. You know, you rebel against Moses, as the illustration is that you gave, and instantly, you know, the ground is opening up and you are being swallowed up. In the New Testament God decided to postpone judgment. And so judgment is postponed, but in no way is it negated. You know, there’s that verse in Ecclesiastes which one of the paraphrases says, “Because God does not execute judgment against sin immediately, people think it’s okay to do wrong.”

Now in the book of Hebrews it’s very clear. The writer says that if they did not escape when God spoke to them from Mount Sinai (the Old Testament God), what makes you think that you are going to escape when God talks to you out of heaven? Before He shook the earth, but He is going to shake both the earth and the heavens. And here’s the point. In a sense, God was more gracious in the Old Testament than the New because in the Old Testament they saw the immediate consequences of disobedience acted out before their eyes.

Because God has chosen to postpone judgment in the New Testament it appears that people are getting by, and therefore they are deceiving themselves. But you’ll notice in the same passage there in Hebrews, it says in chapter 12 at the end, “Our God is a consuming fire,” and he links together the God of Sinai and the God of Calvary and says, “We have the same God. The same standards apply.” Thankfully, because of Jesus Christ, our entrance into heaven can be assured because God, through Christ, met our requirements for us, but apart from that we are dealing with the God of the Old Testament who is the same as the God of the New.

And one more footnote: When you read the book of Revelation and you see the judgments there, you see definitely that the God of the New Testament is the same God as that of the Old. They are terrifying.

Dave McAllister:
Is it possible that some of us as believers who perhaps don’t ground ourselves in the Old Testament, and perhaps focus on the New Testament only may have a view of God which is incomplete, and therefore, we may approach God in an entirely too familiar way? In other words, He’s my friend; He’s my pal; He’s my buddy; He’s not my judge.

Pastor Lutzer:
That’s right! Oh, we find it all over. You see, we’re so much into this business that God loves us unconditionally, and that He is gracious. And of course, He is all that, but there’s a part of God that we don’t want to deal with, and that’s the part that’s in the Old Testament. And, you know, people look at it and say that He overreacted. Uzzah touches the Ark and is smitten down, and Nadab and Abihu, two seminary students, basically experiment with some oil and they offer strange fire, and they are killed! The simple fact is that God is the same today, and because of Christ His judgment is, of course, averted for us. But in the end, let me put it this way as clearly as I can. The judgment under grace is going to be much more severe to those who refuse God’s grace than the judgments of the Old Testament.

Dave McAllister:
Is it not true though that God’s severity was an expression of His attempt to communicate His absolute holiness to His people, that the differentiation between His holy other, that He sets standards that he wants to be adhered to, for example, in those days, the temple worship, and this is how you do it? Don’t do it any other way. Do it the way I tell you to do it.

Pastor Lutzer:
That’s right!

Dave McAllister:
And we tend to take more of, like you say, a cafeteria approach. We pick the parts of the revelation in the Word of God that we like, and maybe don’t want to hear the parts that are difficult to take.

Pastor Lutzer:
And that’s why some of the messages that I preached in this series, Dave, were difficult to preach because they were very contrary to standard opinion. But we have to let God be God.

Dave McAllister:
Well, let’s move on to lie number three, a very interesting one. Some would believe that God has personally never suffered.

Pastor Lutzer:
That’s right.

Dave McAllister:
Now why have theologians argued that God is without passion?

Pastor Lutzer:
The Westminster Confession of Faith said that God is without passions because here was the problem. They thought if we have a god who has emotions, who someday is in a bad mood, there are two problems, they said, with that. Number one, it seems as if His happiness is dependent on something outside of Him. That was the first problem. Does God really need the world to make Him happy or sad? That’s the first question. The second question is they felt that this was contrary to immutability. “I am the Lord. I change not.”

Now the way in which I answer that is to say, first of all, when we talk about God having suffered, it is so important to realize that He chose to suffer. See, when you and I suffer oftentimes it is because we have no choice. You did not choose, Dave, for example, that your son would be killed, and therefore you suffered. God made that choice, however, with regard to His Son. God chose. God could have chosen otherwise, but He so loved the world. Therefore, He continually remains as God. Therefore, in no sense is this contrary to immutability. You read the Old Testament and you find that the anger of the Lord was kindled. You find in the book of Hosea that God is pleading with His people. So God is a God of emotions, and we must keep that in mind.

And, of course, He’s not subject to the whims of what we do or what happens on Planet Earth except insofar as He has chosen to have that relationship with His creation. So I maintain that God suffered, and especially at the cross. You know, Dave, as you think about your children, if your son suffers, you know that you suffer. It is unthinkable to me that Jesus would die as the God man and go through that agony, and say, “My God, My God, why has Thou forsaken Me?” without the Father Himself entering into His Son’s suffering.

You know in Italy I’m told there is a picture of Christ dying on the cross with huge spikes through His hands, but behind Him there is a shadowy figure that almost goes off into eternity. And that shadowy figure is also on His hands. The idea is that the nails that went through the hands of Jesus also affected the heart of God.

Dave McAllister:
Well, if God suffered in that sense, as we think of Christ being God in our place on the cross, paying that awful price, is there any sense in which that suffering was a one-time occurrence and now it’s over? Or is there a sense in which He still suffers today?

Pastor Lutzer:
Excellent question! You know, I tend to think that when Jesus said to Saul on the way to Damascus, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?” that was a very good hint that Jesus Christ is touched, as the book of Hebrews said, with the feelings of our infirmities. And therefore also I believe that God continues to suffer. God does not delight in the death of the wicked. And by suffering you understand I mean that God is a part of our (what shall we say?) emotions. He created us with emotions. He has emotions. But, and this is important, let’s keep in mind that God suffers and does not like what He sees when He looks at the world through a narrow lens, and when He sees our suffering. But when He looks at things from the standpoint of eternity, He is very, very pleased because He knows where it’s all going. Our God is in the heavens. He has done whatever He has pleased.

Dave McAllister:
So far now we have heard three of the ten lies about God and why we might already be deceived. The first is that there are many ways to the Divine. The second is that God is more tolerant than He used to be. The third is that God has personally never suffered.

Lie number four is that God thinks like we do. We tend to think that we are the end of all creation and our ability to reason is similar to His. Is that really true, Pastor?

Pastor Lutzer:
And of course, what God says in Isaiah 55 is that, “‘My ways are not your ways, neither are my thoughts your thoughts,’ says the Lord.”

You’ll notice a moment ago when we were talking about the other lie, that God never personally suffered, I think that it’s possible to have a God who isn’t human enough, and that’s why I insisted that God suffered. Now we’re talking about the opposite lie that God is too human, that God is like us. And so that’s why we tend to construct these idols, and the culture in which we live has done that.

Dave McAllister:
Well, what are the kinds of idols that we make up? What do you mean?

Pastor Lutzer:
Well, there are many. Some of these may not be totally wrong. Others of them are. But for example, let’s take the health and wealth gospel, the god of my health and wealth. Now that’s basically an American god. We love success. We live in a capitalistic country. You could not preach that message in Belarus or Romania or some of the countries where there is extreme poverty. The people who died – the martyrs – would have been shocked to discover that it was God’s desire to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in this life. It’s an idol. It’s a construct.

You have, for example, the god of my cause. Here I’m thinking of the radical feminists who want to reimage God into mother, so God becomes gender inclusive. It’s idolatry. You remember the conference that received so much publicity where they spoke about Sophia as being God. They are making God after their own image. The god of my sexuality! People want a god who is tolerant of their lifestyle. The god of my emotional need! God exists in heaven to make me feel better. But the one that is most important is the god of my personal notions.

One day I was at the airport, and I decided to buy a book. I hate to buy these kinds of books that are so wrong, and to spend money and to add to their sales, but I decided to buy the book Conversations with God because the author took the point of view that he began to communicate with God, and God communicated with him and actually helped him write the book. He heard messages. Now you know that in occult practices, frequently there is what is known as automatic writing where a spirit comes along and helps you. And what this writer says is blasphemous. I mean, isn’t it interesting that God agrees with everything that this writer agrees with? God says, for example, “Your lifestyle is a matter of indifference to me. I have no preference.” And “Your will is God’s will for you.” And “God communicates not by words but by feelings,” which raises the question of why write a book of two or three hundred pages?

But the simple fact, Dave, is that book has sold millions, and there is a companion book, and so forth. And people are buying this and believing it, and all that it is, is your inclination and hunches ascribed to God. It is blasphemy. And yet people are buying it.

Dave McAllister:
Isn’t this basically because people make their reference point to God, as you said earlier, kind of out of their own head rather than on the basis of any revelation? And so separated or disjoined from the Word of God as a source of revelation, it’s kind of God is whatever you want Him to be.

Pastor Lutzer:
And you know what happens is not only do you make a god according to your own image, but also even evangelicals who do that sometimes construct a god that is imbalanced. Now I don’t pretend to say that my view of God is the correct one exactly because there is much about God that we don’t understand. But we need to balance it. For example, in Isaiah 57, I believe it is, God says, “I am the high and the holy one who inhabits eternity, but I dwell with him who is of a contrite spirit and a contrite heart.” You’ll notice the contrast there between God’s transcendence, the high and the holy one, and yet He lives with those who are of a humble spirit. And what people do today often is they forget about the transcendence of God. They look merely at God with us and they become pantheists. There are those who look at God’s transcendence and all that they see is a distant deistic God who is uninvolved in the world. And that’s why we have to go to the Bible. Ultimately only God knows what He is like, and we really have to limit our knowledge to what He has told us.

Dave McAllister:
So then, how can we be encouraged to know a God who is so high and lifted up? Is He not almost unapproachable?

Pastor Lutzer:
You know, Dave, as I’ve been doing this study I’ve concluded something I don’t think I understood well before. Maybe it was there but I didn’t articulate it. There is so much more about God that we do not know than that which we know. I mean it’s almost scary. When you think of the fact that God is infinite, when you think of the fact that we do not know all of His purposes, that He has purposes that may never be revealed to us, it is breathtaking.

In the fourteenth century there was a monk who wrote a book entitled The Cloud of Unknowing. It’s a mystical book. I don’t agree with everything, but in it he has a wonderful analogy. He says that when you approach God, it is as if God is hidden behind a cloud, and you can do one of two things. You can back away and say that you’re not going to penetrate that cloud, or if you wish, you can use that cloud as a motivation to go deeper and deeper and to know God as far as He possibly can be known. And if we were to do that, just think of what would happen. The Bible is so clear that He rewards those who diligently seek Him out. And that’s what we should be doing. It is a remarkable quest to know God, to love Him and to serve Him, but at the same time sometimes I find myself almost drawing away and shrinking back because there is so much mystery. If anything, this series of messages has greatly humbled me and made me realize that I don’t know nearly as much about God as I once thought I did.

Dave McAllister:
Didn’t some great Christian author pen the words to the effect that we will through all eternity be discovering the works of God?

Pastor Lutzer:
Well, I know that Jonathan Edwards had words to that effect, saying that in eternity we are going to begin with the basic doctrines and meditate upon them, the doctrine of salvation and so forth. But then he said, and I think this is a quote, “The ideas of God will go on throughout all of eternity.” So that’s right. Lots of mystery! Lots to learn! And the mindboggling thing is you will never come to the end of knowing God, even when we behold Him face to face.

Dave McAllister:
I think of C. S. Lewis’s children’s book series about the Chronicles of Narnia. In the analogy of heaven there was the call to the little children to go further up and further in at the end of the last book to suggest endlessness, as you just mentioned. I think C. S. Lewis gives us, in a small way, a picture of what you just said that we can perhaps grasp a little bit.

There’s a fifth lie that we can discuss to conclude our time right now, Pastor, and that is that God is somehow obligated to save followers of other religions. I think all of us have children who are quick to say, “That’s not fair.” We’re into fairness these days, and almost to the point of an obsession about it, and they probably would figure, “Well, it’s not fair if God does not save those who are of other faiths.” What do you feel about that?

Pastor Lutzer:
Well, first of all, let me say regarding people needing to be saved by Christ, let’s start there, and then we’ll get into the fairness issue. The simple fact is that there is no other way to God because no one else can give us what we need, namely the righteousness that God accepts. I never tire of pointing out to people that you can’t put Jesus on the same shelf as Buddha and Krishna and all the other options out there because they were sinners.

You know my experience at the Parliament of World Religions that I refer to far too often probably, looking for a sinless savior and discovering that there are no saviors out there. So that’s number one.

By the way, there are some evangelicals like Clark Pinnock who hold to the wider mercy view, believing that sincere Hindus will be saved, and some day they’ll get to heaven and God will say, “Now I want you to know that you were actually worshiping Christ but you didn’t know his name.” So Pinnock and others say that there are going to be those who will be saved on the basis of Christ, even though they have never heard the Gospel. It’s very, very difficult to prove scripturally. There’s really no great evidence on that one, but here’s the point that needs to be stressed. God’s opinion of pagan religions is very low. You remember it says in the book of Romans that they knew, but they glorified Him not as God, neither were they thankful. They became vain in their imaginations. Their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing themselves to be wise they became fools.

So you look at the Old Testament. You know, our Jewish friends are so sensitive. The Southern Baptists pray that they’ll accept Jesus as Messiah, and low and behold you have a firestorm of controversy. But look at what it says in the Old Testament regarding pagan gods. Tear down their idols, you know, and have nothing to do with them, and so forth.

So, if God is God, and if He’s a jealous God, then, of course, it is clear that He must be approached in the right way, and pagan religions are to be rejected. But the thing that is so important is the basis upon which people will be judged, and that is that they’ll be judged on the basis of what they did with what they knew.

Dave McAllister:
Would that mean that someone could sincerely respond to what he did know? Would that in some way qualify him for getting his foot in the door of heaven in some small way, or what?

Pastor Lutzer:
That’s a very good question. A couple of things! First of all, talking about what people know, the Apostle Paul says that there are two forms of revelation. One is the starry heavens above (Romans 1 – His eternal power and Godhood), and Romans 2 – conscience. And he says, “When Gentiles, who did not receive the Law (they did not get it) but they, by nature do the things that are in the Law, they show that the Law is written on their hearts.”

Okay! Now, basically the Bible would say that even though people will be judged on that basis, see God isn’t going to say to somebody, “You’re going to hell because you did not accept Christ as Savior.” I mean if they’ve never heard of Christ that would be unfair. I mean how can they believe on somebody that they’ve not even heard of? What Christ will say to them is, “You had the light of nature, and you had the light of conscience.”

Now, if someone prays and desires to know that true God, and therefore turns away from his idols and turns away from pantheistic notions of God that are filling actually the eastern religions, and he turns away from all of that, and seeks God, I believe that God is obligated to give that man more light so that he comes to saving faith. “If you seek you shall find.”

Now evidence would suggest that this does not happen very often, but occasionally we have many stories that come to us from missionaries, and so forth, of people who were seeking. But they had to turn away from their own religion. This is not somehow saying that people of other religions will be saved because those people intuitively must know that they are wrong. God is not a pantheistic god. He is not an idol. But if they turn away from that and they seek with their whole hearts!

Some time ago I interviewed a young man who grew up Muslim. He was in a Muslim university, and nevertheless, was seeking the true God. He was restless because his own religion had no way to really deal with sin. And then he had a dream about Jesus. And somebody gave him a New Testament and he came to saving faith in Christ. So I think that that happens, that God leads people together where there is a genuine turning from a pagan religion to seek the true and the living God.

Dave McAllister:
How does that square with Paul’s statement in Romans, though, that there are none that seek after God, there are none righteous, and they are altogether become unprofitable?

Pastor Lutzer:
Well, Dave, let me ask you a question? Why did you seek after God?

Dave McAllister:
Because He sought after me, like the hound from heaven!

Pastor Lutzer:
Exactly.

Dave McAllister:
I was pursued. Other people would say, “Well, I chose Christ. I had options A, B, C, and D, and I liked option C – Jesus.” Now that wasn’t my experience. I can’t speak for other people but I’m just wondering. Does anyone really seek after God or are there only those who heed His calling toward Himself? As Jesus said, “No man comes to me except the Father draw him.”

Pastor Lutzer:
Dave, I think that you know my theology well enough, and you’ve listened to an awful lot of my sermons, haven’t you, as producer, to know that the reason why some pagan would really seek the true God is because God would implant that desire within his heart? You are absolutely right. Left to himself, no one seeks after God. Everybody goes his or her own way. Everybody goes with the god who makes him or her more comfortable in their sin. And so, just like you and I, however, we heard the Gospel. Now that’s the difference. We heard the Gospel, and therefore we sought God because the Holy Spirit used the message of the Gospel to draw us. But I think in the same way, it’s possible that there are people, in whose hearts God is working in other cultures, and they do not have the Gospel, and therefore they begin to seek.

And that’s why I think you do have these stories. Now we’re not basing our theology on stories. I tend to think I would believe that even without a story because Paul said, “They are without excuse.” Okay, so that must mean that if they earnestly lived up to the light that they knew, and turned from their pagan culture, that God would grant them additional revelation.

One more comment! In Acts 17 Paul is at Mars Hill, and he said that God took people and put them in different parts of the world (And now I’m using the Old King James here) “that they might grope after God, and perhaps find Him, for in Him we live and move and have our being.” There’s a hint, too, that people can grope after God and find Him.

Dave McAllister:
We’ve now talked about the first five of the ten lies that you might be believing already about God. What occurs to me is that a lot of the lies that we might believe are really rooted in the fact that somehow we see ourselves as better than we really are. We don’t know how really needy we are for the grace of God.

Pastor Lutzer:
That’s right, Dave. And this is a great note on which we close, and that is that today people simply have no sense of sin. None! They glory in things that should cause them shame. And there is no shame. And there isn’t because they have the wrong god. I think when I was preaching that series of messages there was a quote that I had from the New York Times (I believe it was) that said, “When sin vanished so did man’s responsibility, and people have (and now I’m paraphrasing obviously) nothing that roots their lives.” And then it says, “We will say this much for sin. At least it gave people a sense of right and wrong and decency.” We’ve lost that.

And that’s why you have people sauntering into God’s presence with no fear. There’s no fear of God before their eyes, a god that they themselves have constructed that is totally compatible with their lifestyle, and as a result of that we have lost our sense of sin.

Bottom line: The more truthfully we come to know the living and the true God of the Bible, the more we become aware of our sinfulness, and our sinfulness both repels us from God (we want to flee) but it also draws us to Him to seek Him for mercy and for grace.

“And they that come to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder (and I love this translation) of them who diligently seek Him out.” So I would encourage all who are listening to give your life to one pursuit, and that is to diligently seek Him out.

Dave McAllister:
Thank you, Pastor Lutzer.

Pastor Lutzer:
Thanks, Dave.