Preparation For The Wedding Feast - Tyler Behel

The Biblical high holy days commemorate what God did for Israel, but they also point to what God is doing for all of creation. This teaching on Rosh Hashanah draws parallels between the Song of Solomon and the wedding feast of the Lamb, with a bride of Christ who is pure and and holy.

Full transcript generated by ai (please excuse errors):




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​Okay, so good morning, everyone. So this morning, we are preparing for our retreat that is coming up in a couple of weeks. We're also entering into this this month on the Jewish calendar called a rule, which I'm sure some of you may not have heard what that is. But, but it's this this month on the Jewish calendar, that's a preparation for the High Holy Days. And when I'm talking about the High Holy Days, I'm talking about Rosh Hashanah. I'm talking about Yom Kippur war. And I'm talking about Sukkot. So that's what today is, for those of you that have never heard me talk about the biblical high holy days before. I'm going to take just a couple of minutes, to very briefly go over why I think it's important for us, as Christians, as believers in Jesus to pay attention to these holidays. I know, in Christian circles, it isn't necessarily popular to look at the Old Testament feast. But there's a lot of truth, you know, when we look at the totality of Scripture, that God's telling us about his plan for creation, all the way from the beginning to the end. So these holidays, very clearly depict God's redemptive plan for creation. So first, we have Rosh Hashanah. And that begins a 10 day period of repentance, or returning back to God. And then right after that, we have Yom Kippur War, which is called the Day of Atonement. And that marks the day that we forgive others. And that marks the day that God forgives us, you know, it covers our sins. And then right after that, we have Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, that, that talks about God appoints to God come and tabernacle in with his people stay being on earth with His people. And we see Jesus as a fulfillment of that. But when we look at it from the from the biblical Feast context, it points to God coming down and leading his people out of Egypt, and leading them into the Promised Land. So when we look at that, at that Exodus model, than leaving God, leaving the people out of Egypt, and into the Promised Land, what we see is this the same model that we have for salvation, we see a god that's leading his people out of bondage, death, passing them over, due to the blood of the Lamb. And then we see God bringing them into the land of promise. It sounds really close to the Salvation narrative, doesn't it? It's the same thing brings us out of the bondage of slavery, he passes us over death passes us over, because the blood of Jesus the blood of the Lamb, and then we get to live with God, God tabernacles with us. So we see this repentance, atonement, forgiveness, and then we live with God. So these high holy days, commemorate what God did for Israel, but they also point to what God is doing for all of creation. So that's why my kind of brief synopsis of why we care about the Jewish calendar and the Biblical Feasts. So the focus of this month and the theme of the retreat this year, which is a weekend and the kings observatory, they have a very close relationship. And I felt like this would provide an excellent means for us to meditate and prepare, as we're getting ready for the retreat. And as we're preparing for these high holy days. So going back to a little so what is a little so it's this month of preparation, before we get to Rosh Hashanah. And that's the actual time where were we going to this time of repentance? So the best teachings on Elul. What they do is they take the four letters of the Month Name, and it's an acronym for this verse in The Song of Solomon. So in Song of Solomon six, verse three, Annie Lee Doe, the widow, the LEA, I am my beloved's. And my beloved is mine. And the acronym is is all Islamic vav Lamas and basically what this is, is is the sages would believe that, you know, the beloved is referring to God. And the relationship that God has with Israel is really close, loving, marriage covenant relationship with Israel. So a little then it's our time to establish this closeness so that we can approach those high holy days trusting that when God's judgment comes on the earth, you know, we don't have anything to fear. Because we're in a marriage covenant with God. We approach the trial not out of fear but out of love, and to prepare ourselves for the coming wedding feast of the Lamb. So that's what this whole period of this month is for. So the meditation for this period of preparation, you just use it this language of a marriage ceremony. And it reminds us that salvation is far more than a ticket to heaven. That's not the whole purpose and salvation. It's an eternal, intimate relationship with the King of kings. And that's really what salvation is all about. It's restoring that intimacy, that relationship that we had in the Garden of Eden, before sand destroyed it. So, when we see in Song of Solomon, if you continue on in verses like four through 10, after that, after the meditation that we have, you know, directly following it, it talks about a husband that delights in His Bride, he finds her beautiful, he finds her desirable, and he finds her perfect. And likewise, the bride loves her husband, and she seeks him out. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna go ahead and read a couple of the verses that are from the selection just to give you a sense of what I'm talking about. Not all of them, but I'm going to pick out a few. So starting in chapter six, verse four of the Song of Solomon, it says, You are beautiful, as tears of My Love, lovely as Jerusalem. Awesome as an army of many banners, turn your eyes for me, for they overwhelm me, you know, it's this just this overwhelming feeling of adoration for his wife. And then he starts by by going down through a list of some of her features and attributes, which, to me sound kind of amusing, it reminds me of some of the Alabama jokes people used to tell, you know, oh, man, she got all her teeth, that's good. But he goes through, and he's, and he's talking about some of the things that he admires about her, you know, like, your teeth are beautiful, you know, like, Your cheeks are beautiful. And then he goes on to say, you know, there are 60, Queens and 80, concubines and virgins without number. But my dove, my perfect one is the only one, the only one of her mother pure to her who bore her. The young women saw her and they call her blessed, the Queen's and concubines also. And they praised her. Who is this who looks down like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun, awesome as an army with banners. So what he's saying is, you know, there are a whole bunch of ladies out there in the world, but you're the one, you're the perfect one. You're the one I love, you're the one that I adore. And so we see this Language Of Desire and beauty and adoration from the husband to the wife. And while I don't believe that we should read the Song of Solomon, as just entirely symbolic and allegorical. It's an it's a spiritual book. So it has a spiritual dynamic. And it is like theologians throughout history have viewed this as a picture of God's love for His people. So this is the pursuit of both both Christ and the church. This is the relationship that we're pursuing. And we see this very clearly in the wedding feast of the Lamb, and Revelation 19. And if you want to go there you can. I'll give you just a minute to get there. But what we're going to see is it It echoes this, this feeling of adoration and joy and beauty and consummation. So starting in verse six through 10, of revelation 19, it says, Then I heard what seemed to be a voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters, like the sound of mighty peals of thunder crying out, hallelujah. For the Lord, our God, the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. It was granted to her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure, for the linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, right, this blessed are those who were invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he said to me, these are the true words of God. So in both of these instances, looking at the Song of Solomon, and then looking at Revelation, the husband, delights in His Bride, he finds her pure, he finds her bright, he finds a beautiful, and we also see in Revelation that both parties in this marriage feasts had a role in the preparation. What we see in verse seven, it says, And his bride has made herself ready, the bride prepared, the bride took part and making herself pure. The bride took an active role in cultivating the relationship between she and her husband. And then in verse eight, it was granted to her to clothe herself and fine linen, bright and pure. So she wasn't she wasn't able to attain the fine linen on her own. She wasn't able to do it on her own. She required the bridegroom to make her pure and holy, and to grant to her the honor of adorning purity. So that came from the bridegroom. She had a role in the preparation. She had a role in seeking that relationship, but she couldn't bring it to consummation on her own. It required required the bridegroom it required Christ. So Ephesians it echoes this picture of Christ, the husband making his bride pure and holy through His sacrifice and it uses the symbol as a means of in instruction of how we should conduct our earthly marriages. So Ephesians 523 through 33 says Husbands love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and he gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the Word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church, without a stain or wrinkle, or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church. for we are members of His Body. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery. But I'm talking about Christ in the church. However, each one of you must also love his wife as he loves himself and the wife must respect her husband. So there's a lot that we could unpack in this, but but for the sake of this, this idea of of preparation for the marriage feast and keeping it with a theme, I'm just kind of going to focus on that portion of it. So Christ portion is to make us pure and blameless, to present to himself a radiant church. But where we come in that, you know, where does that leave us? What's our role? How do we fulfill the portion of revelation 19? Seven, it says, The bride has made herself ready. You know, of Christ has completed all the work that we have to do anything I would say we do. So, whenever you were preparing to get married, or say you're dating someone, you're not there yet, or you're just trying to start a relationship or build a relationship with someone, you know, what are some of the things that you do? What are some of the things you think about? Anybody gonna pay for dinner? Anything else? If you're trying to build a relationship with someone make a good impression. Yeah, you try to make a good impression. Take a shower. You try to get to know them too. Right? I will say when rod first started dating, like we weren't even dating it. And he just kept saying, You need to know me. And so he would just like, tell me all this background information, all the things the Lord had done in their lives, and it was just this. Exactly. Exactly, exactly, you have to know that person, in order to build a relationship with them, you have to understand them. So that's one of the things you know, you have to discover the things that that that person is passionate about, you need to figure out how to relate to them along those lines, you know, because that's how you build the conversation. That's how you build the relationship, you may get them something you think they would like, or, or choose dates that you think are fun, and you seek to bring them joy in the relationship. But in order to do that, you have to know who they are, you know, with friends, it's the same way, you know, you ask them to do things, steer conversations to things that they're interested in. It's it's important. You have to, you know, we seek to get to know the person well. And we seek out what's important to them. And we try to participate in that. We're typically hyper observant when you start a new relationship, trying to see what the other person likes, you know, what they care about. So we can discover the secrets and the unknown places in them that make that person unique. We want to know what makes that person special. We want to know what makes them tick. You know, it's it's it's a relational process, and it requires spin and a lot of quality time with someone to do it. Well. The next thing we do when whenever you're preparing, yeah, I would also say, from my experience, I would always want to know the family to exactly, usually the child is a smaller version of whoever raised him. Exactly. And I also wanted to make sure that they like me for who I was, because if they didn't, that also created a strain in the relationship that I would try to have with one partner. Exactly. You have to you have to know the backstory, you know, it provides the context for everything else that you're going to see in that person. And in the family, too. It's super important. So in the context of marriage, the next thing we do, like whenever we're coming up on that big day, is we prepare ourselves, you know, we start preparing for the wedding. We start making plans, we start shopping, we want to make sure that we present ourselves or our wife or husband in a way that they're going to desire us, you know, we want to remain pure for them. We want to remain holy for them. We want to be handsome or beautiful for them. You know, you get your hair done, you get your nails done, you know, you you go buy a nice suit or a tuxedo, you know, you try to present yourself as somebody that's desirable to your spouse. The goal of both of these pursuits, though, is the cultivation of starting out a strong marriage. In the song and Song of Solomon six we You see this play out because the two lovers are not delighting each other, they're admiring one another, you know, they're professing their their love and their joy and how much they they care for the other person. When it comes to our relationship with God, it isn't much different. In fact, I'd say it's exactly the same. You know, how do you get to know someone or find out what they care about, you know, you spend time with them. You spend time with them, you're observant to the things they care about, you take note of their passions, the things that hurt them, you know, so you can avoid those things. It's the same way with God, these are important qualities in cultivating any relationship with people or God, we have to get to know that person. And you do you know people who do that? Well, when it comes to their relationship with God, who, who just seemed to know God really well, and seem to relate to him? Well, you know, they seem to have some sort of a close and intimate relationship, and you're just trying to crack the code, like, you know, how do I get that. If you ask them what their life rhythms are, like, if you ask them, you know what they're doing to stay close to the Lord, I guarantee you're going to hear a couple of these things, you're going to, you're going to hear a combination of them spinning a lot of time in His Word, and trying to discover who he is, you're going to discover that these people spend a lot of time in prayer, and actually spending time with God, and presence before the Lord. And then they're also pursuing the things that God cares about. And they're trying to participate in those things. You know, when when Marina and I were first dating, and I wanted to go visit her in Guatemala, for the first time, we've been dating months long distance, and we didn't really know each other all that well. You know, as best you can, with a language barrier and type in emails and Skype, you know, we knew each other somewhat, but we didn't know each other super well. So when I went down there, you know, I did my very best to, like, observe and take note of a few things. So I could know who she is. One of the things I did is, you know, I watched the way she behaved, I watched the way that that she would look at things in the stores and kind of take note of the things that she liked. I'd see how she interacted with people, you know, how did she relate to, to folks, you know, you know, how does she treat others? You know, how does she respond to different situations, you know, stressful or joyous? You know, what? It gave me context to know, you know, how was what was her heart? Like? What were her emotions? Like, you know, how can I provide support for her? How can I show her love? You know, how does, how does she receive that? The next thing it is a pay the pay attention the way she had a room setup, you know, that showed you things like you know, what kind of things you have in a walls? What kind of movies was she into, you can tell all those things by walking into her bedroom. You know, what, what kind of books did you read what was on her bookshelf, all these sorts of things give you a much better idea of who that person is and how to relate to them. And it definitely did with Marina. So in the same way, when we look at God through Scripture, we can we can do the same things, we can do the same things. When we spend time in in Scripture meditating on, on how God responds to situations, who he is, you know, how he interacts with people, how we set up his throne room, we can figure out what he cares about. And we can relate to him in those in those ways we can relate to him in that context, because the same way that we try to discover things about our spouse or our significant other, we try to discover things about God to when we look at the Psalms, we'll look at creation. When when we look at the description of heaven, we see, you know, the way that God loves worship, we see a God that loves beauty, we see a God that loves art, when we see a guy that loves creativity. When we look at how Jesus related to people on Earth, the writings of the prophets, the the holy, the Holy Spirit inspired scriptures all the way through, we see it he cares about the meek, we see that he cares about the lowly, we see that he cares about the oppressed, and those that need his help. You know, when we look at the way God responds to idolatry, versus you know how we respond to the Leichhardt circumcision, we start to see a pattern and the things that he values and the things that he loves. And I'm not saying this is some sort of a legalistic thing that we need to do. But what I am saying is, it's a best practice in any relationship, whenever you love someone to take the time to discover the things that that person loves the things that that person feels the way that that person is, so that you can relate to them and love them well. When we look at the way that God's set up his throne room, you know, we see a God who remembers his people who loves and remembers their prayers, and who's dedicated to their salvation. So I'm going to talk about that portion of it a little bit more at the retreat. So I'm not going to expound on it too much here, but I encourage all of you to do some exploration. So I think you said it earlier. The topic of the retreat is a weekend in the Kings observer. Vittore so what better way to get to know the king, than to look around as observatory and take note of what he's looking at, to take note of how he has set up? You know, what things you have on the walls, you know, What things does he put in there and this place that he spends his time, you know, it says a lot about who he is and his character. Think about when you go to someone's house, and you look at their room that they spend the most time in. Now, I'm not talking about the living room, necessarily, you know, the formal living room that's got a couple of nice things on the walls and faces and, and fake plants, I'm talking about, you know, the place that they spend all their time, you get a quick picture of what they love and what they're into. So I got a good buddy, that when you walk down into his basement, what you're going to find is every gaming system, from Atari to PlayStation five, you're going to see arcade games, you're going to see toys wrapped in plastic from the original GI Joes and Batman, Transformers Star Wars. So when you're upstairs in his house, you don't really get this picture of him. But when you walk into his basement, where he hangs out, you get a really good idea of what he's into and what he likes. You kind of know what what's going to excite him in conversations, you know, in a conversation with people he didn't really have a strong relationship with those things probably wouldn't come up. But if you spend time with him, and you pay attention, you start to find out what he cares about, you know, it's the same way with God. So the verse that we're using for the retreat, you know, that's on the advertisement for proverbs 25. Two, it says, it's the glory of God to conceal a matter, and the glory of kings to search it out. What greater pursuit can we have, than to get to know God? You know, and and once we discover who he is, we can figure out how to relate to him accordingly, you know, all those secret places, and God, all those hidden things in God about his character and his attributes, you know, all those things that you have to discover that he doesn't say explicitly, that that's the glory of kings to seek that stuff out. You know, I hear a lot of messages, and evangelical circles, which focus on God's love for us, and how he meets us and how he relates to us. And while all those things are true, when we love the Lord with all of our hearts, we're going to want to meet him, we're going to want to relate to him. And we're going to want to participate in his mission. And as his helpmeet, you know, if you want to continue with his home, like marriage analogy, that's throughout scripture, and his body is Ephesians calls us, we want to seek him out, know Him and serve Him. You know, this is the first way that that as the bride of Christ, we prepare, we get to know the person we're going to be in relationship with for eternity. And we figure out how, what what God's love language is, and we try to serve Him in that way. So, for the last few weeks, we've been talking about pillars, you know, the pillars of air Nova, and rods pointed to a bunch of practical ways that we do this as a spiritual family, how we get to know God, how we seek God, the spiritual arts and disciplines for instance, they provide a means for us to discover the heart of God, you know, the that apostolic prayer that that time meditating, and in Scripture, examine, you know, there are lots of different tools we can use to do this well, and none of those things are an end unto themselves, but their means for us to discover the Lord. The second way, the second way is the bride of Christ that we prepare ourselves for the wedding is you know, and most is we prepare, we actually prepare for the wedding itself. So in weddings, most Western cultures the bride wears white, to symbolize purity. And the revelation 19 that we read earlier, we saw a similar picture, you know, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready. It was granted to her to clothe ourselves and find linen, Brighton Pier, so linen is usually white, and pure. So kind of the same deal this this marriage garment symbolizes purity. And then again in Ephesians, that we read earlier, it says without stain or wrinkle without blemish, but holy and blameless. In both cases, Christ brought about the purity, but the bride pursued it. Romans 12 gives us a picture of what this looks like. In Romans 12, verses one and two. It says, I appeal to you, therefore brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is in your spirit, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that by testing you will discern what is the will of God, and what is good and acceptable and perfect. So, we need to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. Holy, unacceptable to God. What does that mean? You know, Christ makes us holy. But this remains our pursuit as a people who love him. We're never going to attain perfection in this life. But we have to continue striving for that goal out of our love for Him. When we get to like verse two, it kind of gives us an application of what this looks like. It says, Don't be conformed to the world, which, you know, there's so many things in the world that are just contrary to God and his culture. We can't conform to those things, the attitudes, the values, the ethical systems, that are just completely contrary to God's laws. You know, the definitions of justice and righteousness, we can't conform to those things, we have to look into God and discover what he what he cares about. And it says, instead, Be transformed by the renewing of your mind that by testing, you may discern what is God's will, what is good, what is acceptable, and what is perfect. So that's the that's the whole deal, you know, we try to turn away from the world and then we try to turn towards what God wants. And that's how we reach this purity, you know, that we need to prepare for it. Similarly, in Philippians, one, nine through 11, it says, And It's my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent. And so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. So this whole this day of Christ, that it's talking about the day of the Lord that we see in Scripture, the wedding feast, these are all pointing to the same culmination of events, you know, this wedding feast of the Lamb. When that day comes, we want to be prepared. We want to, we want to have known the will of God, and we want to have walked in the will of God, over the will of the world, we want to pursue the will of God. And this is where I see the focus of who is providing some sort of value for us as Christians. Because it's a time where we try to turn back to that we try to discern what God's will is, and we look for it. It's a time of soul searching. It's to figure out where we need to make changes in preparation for the time of repentance, and utterly, the marriage feast of the Lamb. This whole theme echoes the cry of David, and Psalm 139 23, and 24. I'm sure you guys probably know it, but I'll read it real quick. Just for reference, it says, Search me, O God, and know my heart, test me and know my anxious thoughts, and see if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. So the psalmist uses this very similar wording. So the author of Romans 12. So David use heart, and Paul used mind, but they're both referencing this internal disposition of their being. There, they're trying to, they're referencing their heart posture, their spiritual health of their soul. You know, they both mentioned testing. And then they both mentioned a new understanding, and an execution of God's will. So they were seeking to orient their heart towards God's desires, and away from the world's desires. And that is the biggest thing of repentance. That's the biggest part of repentance and this whole idea of Elul. And what it's all about the preparation, the holiness, that we need to understand, it's more than just avoiding sin. It's so much more than just avoiding sin. It's an orientation back towards God. So for people that are listening later on the podcast, I'm sorry, if you don't get this reference. So I'll give you a quick map of where we're at. So we're in Colorado Springs, Denver is a city to the north of us, and Pueblo is a city to the south of us. So that's where I'm gonna go with this illustration, that'll be helpful. So say you need to drive from Colorado Springs to Denver. But you know, that go into Pueblo sin. And play was kind of a rough town, so it's not that far fetched. If you just try to avoid going to Pueblo, you're probably never going to reach Denver. You know, there are a lot of places that you can go away from Pueblo that don't go in the direction of Denver. If you want to go to Denver, you need to drive towards Denver. And there's only a couple of ways to get there from here. It's the same thing whenever you're talking about pursuing God and holiness and repentance. You can try to avoid sin all day. But you may end up someplace you weren't intending to go. It's not about just avoiding sin. It's about running towards God. It's about this pursuit of God. That's what David and Paul were talking about. The secret to live in a holy life isn't just avoiding sin, though. That's part of it. The secret is a constant course correction toward God. So David said it this way, he said, lead me in the way everlasting. And then Paul said, discern what's the will of God, what's good and acceptable and perfect, but they're talking about the same thing. They're talking about God revealing to us what He desires, what His will is, and for us running in that direction, rather than running in some other direction. Both highlight the need to pursue the Lord. The pursuit of holiness, the preparation for the wedding feast and the culmination of or the cultivating of the marriage relationship. They're also very connected because Whenever you cultivate the relationship with Christ, you start to learn what His will is because you're doing your best to learn who he is and how to relate to him. So you're discerning what His will is, and you're running towards his will, because your love for him grows and your desire to deviate from that diminishes. So they're so they're so connected, you know, this whole idea of presenting yourself as a Pure Bride for Christ just goes hand in hand with trying to cultivate and build a relationship. So those two preparations, they're kind of one, they're kind of linked up. The more we cultivate the relationship, the more prepared we are for the wedding, and the eternity that follows. So I want to encourage everyone, let's spend time getting to know God, getting to know Jesus and getting to know the Holy Spirit. Let us spend time meditating on who he is. And then learning how we can relate to him according to that, you know, let us spend time doing the things that he cares about, and discover what those are in the pursuit of him. So I encourage you, as you read the Bible this week, try to write down things that you recognize in Scripture as the attributes of God, you know, whenever you're reading, don't just read, read with a purpose and try to tailor it. Try to try to write down the things you see that are there the attributes of God, try to write down the things that you see that are the cares of God. And then try to write down the pursuits of God in Scripture, you know, things that you see your his mission, things that he's doing things that he cares about, the way that he interacts with folks, you know, write those things down and keep them in categories. So you can start to get a picture of who he is. And then you can take those things, and then you can relate to God according to those, you can participate in those things as you discover who God is and what his mission is, you know, and if you need a place to start, I recommend you start looking at Revelation four, or go and look at Daniel seven. And just make note of what God's throne room looks like. So you can consider what you're going to witness there. You know, when you're thinking about when you're thinking about how God set up his throne room, and you're doing this exercise, you know, write down what you see, if you were there, as an observer, write down what you will hear, write down what you would smell, write down what you would taste, and then consider what those things tell you about God. And I think you're going to, you're going to find this as, as an exercise, it's really going to do a lot for you. You can take that and apply it to anywhere in Scripture, but it works really, really well with with verses that talk about imagery. You could use it if you wanted to with with genealogies, but you might want to adapt it, it'd be a little more difficult, but especially when it comes to writing down things with imagery. It just, it paints a picture of who God is. So during this month of Elul, I want to encourage everyone, let's dedicate some time for self reflection, and preparation for the High Holy Days. And then let's dedicate some time to better know God and His character. I know that that sounds like a cliche, but really try to target and focus your, your preparation, on that, you know, learning who God is, learn his desires. And as one that loves the Lord, with with all of your heart, you know, take time to meditate on that and figure out how you can relate to him, according to His love language, you know, so that we are the bride of Christ that are presenting ourselves to God as holy. But we're also can we're also presenting ourselves as a bride who's cultivated the relationship, you know, who's that helped meet the that God calls us to be. And I think if you do this, this this month is going to be an entire some incredible spiritual growth for you. Just that's kind of the crux of what I wanted to bring out today. You know, let's let's take some time for reflection was take some time and get to know the Lord. And if we're going to be in a marriage relationship with God for eternity. Why do we need to? To look at that any different than we would look at how we cultivate a marriage relationship here on earth with our spouse, there's a reason that God chose that symbol for us to use. 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