It's Sam Friday. Oh, yes, it is. It was so good. That's good. I figured I'd give you a what exactly. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Those of you here in house and online, welcome. Glad to see you today. And we're going to do a little bit of this and a little bit of that as our current series, which means we're bouncing all over the place. And today we are going to bounce to the Psalms and to the book of Ephesians, Ephesians, chapter 4, verse 8, and Psalm 68, verse 18. And it's a passage that many, if you've studied the Bible before, you are, you've, you've heard before. Anyway, taking captivity captive, we're going to try to figure out what taking captivity captive means. And I wouldn't, I don't know if I should say this right up front, but I wouldn't be surprised if we don't come to the conclusion at the end to say, hey, I know a pretty good option. But in the end, who knows what taking captivity captive is? But you know, I think it's going to be one of these process of elimination. Is it, is it this? There's only two or three, four things that it could possibly mean. So what does it mean? We'll take a look at that here and see what some others think and some interesting textual things about it as well. Well, with. Let me lead us in the word of prayer and we'll begin. Heavenly Father, we're grateful to be able to come into the Word today in the Psalms and Ephesians and other passages we might look into today and be encouraged of just trying to dig into a concept that is mysterious to many of us who study the Word and pray that we could come to understand it. Well, we ask it in Jesus name. Amen. Okay, let's, let's jump right into it. I put two passages of scripture side by side up here. I know that makes it kind of hard to see, but I wanted to compare them and put them up because one is a quote of the other kind of sort of. And we're going to look at it and then later I'll make these a little bit bigger. But Psalm 68, 18 is where the original comes from. And it says right here, here thou hast ascended on high. Thou has led captivity captive. Okay. An Old Testament psalm. It is a psalm of praise. If you read Psalm 68 up to verse 18, it's a Psalm of honoring the Lord, if you will, for his victories. And here in celebrating victory, it comes. Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive. And then it says, thou hast received gifts for men, yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord might dwell okay among them. Then in the New Testament, Paul quoted it when he said in Ephesians 4, 8, wherefore he saith, he, the Psalmist saith, when he ascended upon high, he led captivity captive. Okay, so far, so good. Everything is about the same. And then it says, and gave gifts unto men. Now, that part there we're going to look at a little bit different because I want you this is why I wanted to put them side by side. Look at Psalm, thou hast received gifts for men. But Paul says, and gave gifts unto men. Got a difference there. So what is that difference? And that's what we're going to see. So we got two things we're going to see. Led captivity captive is our main thing. What does it mean to lead captivity captive? And then the second thing is, why is there a change? If you're quoting the passage and he, you know, he says wherefore he saith. So it's a quote. If you're quoting the passage, why is it different there? And that's what we're going to look at. Okay, the one that one of the textual issues. And then we'll get into it later down in the outline, if you're following along on the outline, which is available for those of you online there. But one of the things you usually look for, if there's a difference, like he received gifts, he gave gifts, that seems to be kind of different there. And if there's a difference, you usually look to say, okay, is there a textual variant? Very seldom, I would say, in the Old Testament do you ever get a textual variant. That's almost always in the New Testament. And I won't go into the reasons for that. But anyway, in the Old Testament, almost never is there a textual variant. Now, sometimes there will be a variance between the Hebrew text that we use. It's called the Masoretic text, in case you want to be able to pass the test. The Masoretic text is the one that we use that our Bibles are based upon. And then there is the Septuagint, which is actually a Greek translation of the Hebrew. And sometimes the Septuagint will differ a little bit. And then some think, I don't buy this line, but some think the New Testament, like Paul, well, maybe he was quoting the Septuagint. Now, I think it's a flawed argument in a number of different ways, but here it can't even be because that was a long way around saying the Masoretic text of the Hebrew and the Greek Septuagint say the same thing. That is he received gifts for men. So very solid. We have no variant here. The psalm says he received gifts for men, but very solid. Also, there's not a single New Testament document out of some 5,000 that says here he received gifts for men. They all say he gave gifts unto men. So why that difference? Okay, we will look at that later. But I didn't want you to be looking and say, hey, wait a minute, you didn't think, you didn't put all that together. Okay, now with that, I am going to put just a single scripture on here and we'll get the psalm passage up here and let's talk about, well, let's talk about this right here. Thou hast led captivity. Captive. What are we going to do with that? And try to figure out. I want to, I want, want to go through a little bit of a, I don't know, a historical viewpoint. What did other people come to see? I, I don't always like to do that. In fact, I'd say most of the time I just kind of skip that part and say, well, I just want to know what it means. And I want scripture to interpret Scripture, not history to interpret Scripture, because somebody back there might have got it wrong. And if I go by their interpretation, I'm going to get it wrong. But here, this is the only two times we really have those words used and one is a quote from the other. So virtually you have one thing to compare it to. Well, that's not really a comparison, looking at comparing one thing to itself. Right. So what are we supposed to do? Well, in that case, sometimes you do go back to a historical viewpoint. Now, I kind of like it when you do get an Old Testament passage. And the reason is because the Jews, the rabbis down through the centuries, they have all studied this. They know it like the back of their hand. You know, they studied inside, outside, every way there is about us. So that kind of helps us. So I want to go to the Jewish interpretations first. And when we talk about the Jewish interpretations, usually we would call it the rabbinical interpretation. Now, the reason we would call it rabbinical is because there's a lot of rabbi philosophy put into this rabbi oral tradition, often it's called. And sometimes that's a little hard to nail down, you know, oral tradition. I don't know. Why do we, why do we have sweet potatoes on Christmas? Because we do that's why. And, you know, going back and really nailing it down. What's the, What's. Where's the start? What, you know, what's. What's this? Or, you know, do you put marshmallows or. No marshmallows? Do you, you know, have them whole or mashed? What? All the different traditions. Okay. Oral traditions. So when you talk about rabbinical, There's a lot of oral traditions. And rabbis are kind of like Baptists. Get two or three together and you'll have four or five opinions. So you can find it all over the map here. But there is. There's often a consensus that goes through. Okay. There is something called the Targum. T A R G U M. The Targum is just a translation of the Old Testament. It is a translation into Aramaic, which is a dialect of Hebrew. So Targum Psalms, as it's called, says this. You ascended on. You ascended to the firmament, O prophet Moses. You captured captives. You taught the words of Torah. You gave gifts to the sons of men, even among the stubborn who are converted. Now, you might say that is way more than a translation. And the Targum, the Aramaic translation is almost a translation and a commentary all worked into one. So. But I want you. I want you to notice what they do here, which virtually no Christian does. But there's. There's something to. To be, to be considered here. Thou has descended on high. Notice then what it says. Who ascended on high, according to the Targum. You got it, O prophet Moses. Wait a minute. Moses ascended on high. Moses led captivity captive. Moses received gifts for men, yea, the rebellious, they say, stubborn also, that God might dwell among them. A very different reading here, that is given. Now, at first glance, I know you say, well, that's dumb. Moses is. This is about the Lord. It's not about Moses. This is about Jesus Christ, not about Moses. And the reason we know that is because. Read a commentary. I want you to let. Let me. Let me back up. Oh, let's. Let's even say to verse 17, just 1, 1. One verse earlier. The chariots of God are 20,000, even thousands of angels. The Lord is among them. As in Sinai, in the holy place. Okay, if it just said as in the holy place, we might think maybe of the temple. In the context here, we probably would think more of heaven, you know, the throne room of heaven, as in the holy place. But here it defines it for us. It tells us that the Lord is among them, as in Sinai. Now, the Lord. I'm not going to go back through the Previous verses, but all the way through it is talking about the Lord and speaks to him then directly. Excuse me, does not speak to him directly. It's always in the third person. The Lord this, the Lord that. The Lord is mighty, the Lord is wonderful. It's all a psalm of praise the Lord. And it goes right here, the Lord, but then it switches right here. Thou hast ascended. Okay, Thou, the Lord hast ascended. Hast ascended. Where you know there is context to scripture and you let context help you interpret. And here ascended, we immediately say he went to the throne room on high. But the immediate context here is not the throne room, is it? The immediate context is what? Sinai, who ascended up Mount Sinai? Moses. Exactly. So it's not all that far fetched. Now let me, let me continue here. So thou, you know, we are. Says right there, persnickety. We are persnickety. Especially about pronouns. You can, you can build the argument that thou is the Lord Jesus Christ, but you can build the argument that thou is Moses as well. Thou, whom, you know, thou is one of those. A pronoun stands in for somebody. Our job is to say, who does it stand in for? Thou or you? Is it the Lord? Well, it's kind of weird if it is the Lord. Look, the you, Lord, have ascended. You, Lord, have received for the rebellious that the Lord. Oh, wait a minute, why doesn't it say that thou, Lord here? The Lord seems to be a little bit separated. Now we in Christianity probably would come with a trinitarian argument and say, oh, this is the Lord God the Father, and this is the Lord the Son, and put this together. But that's a lot of. It may be a good argument, by the way, but it's also a lot of eisegesis. There's your. We've had a lot of two dollar words here today, haven't we? The eisegesis is reading into scripture. Certainly the Jewish people are not going to read in the Trinity because they don't believe in the Trinity. So they're not going to see the Trinity there like we might see God the Father, God the Son. And we see that of course, partly because of what, what Paul has told us, but they don't, they don't read Paul, they don't have any of that. So they're, they're trying to figure out who thou is. And it makes sense. Okay, Sinai, the holy place, who ascended on high. It was Moses. So Moses led captivity. Captive. Now this is where the Jewish people have to say, okay, what does that mean? Just like we do. Okay, what does that mean? But you can imagine they're going to come up with a different answer than we're going to come up with. Because we're seeing it as Jesus led captivity captive. They're seeing it as Moses led captivity captive. And so they're searching their scriptures to say, how did Moses take captivity captive? How did. And we're searching, saying, how did Jesus take captivity captive? And we're going on two different trails here. Now, Moses, what they came up with, we won't go through all the, all the issue, or I'll never get to the bottom line here today. But as what they come up with is Moses went and up on Mount Sinai. And let me give a disclaimer before I say it. There's more to this than I'm going to be able to pack in. And I don't want you to go home saying that's the dumbest thing I ever heard. Because sometimes things on the surface level like this, even being Moses sounds like that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. But then when you find out the rest of the story, you're like, oh, well, okay, it's actually a. Not a bad argument. But anyway, what they say, Moses went up there on Mount Sinai and he struggled with the angels to get Torah, the revelation of God. He insisted, I am not coming down here unless I have God's will for this people. And, and so that struggle for Torah is what they would say this is led captivity captive. And when he got it, he got gifts for men, yea, for the rebellious also. And the gifts for men was Torah, the truths of Torah, that the Lord God might dwell among them. Now let me. You all will be ahead of the game for the service on Ecclesiastes, which I probably won't even mention this part, but who knows, maybe I will. In Ecclesiastes, it's going to teach us that history repeats itself. And even the Jewish people would say, hey, we believe that history is going to repeat itself. And so there is going to be another episode of this. I wouldn't be surprised if Paul is not sort of taking this concept of somebody went, took captivity captive, and then he takes it to the fulfillment of that, the ultimate somebody going on high and taking captivity captive. So this may be a thing where both are right, depending on which chapter of the book you're talking about. But a very, very interesting, very you, you. I doubt you'd find any Christian commentator that took this particular view, but here, Torah is the ultimate gift that was given unto Men. So Moses here not explicitly mentioned. But you do have to decide who is thou? It can't be the Lord God even, you know, even into verse 19. Blessed be the Lord who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. He that is our God is the God of salvation. And the God the. And. And unto God the Lord belong the issues from death. It goes on speaking about God. It speaks about God and the Lord even in verse 17. The Lord and God always in third person. But here is a. Thou turns to somebody and says you ascended somewhere and you did something. Once you got there. That's what we got. Who is it? A good interpreter is going to ask those questions and bring that down. So that is one interpretation, the Jewish interpretation or rabbinical interpretation, fairly standard. You go, you know, as early as the 2nd 3rd century AD in Jewish writings up through Middle Ages, up through today. That would be the viewpoint. In fact, I'm sure if we walked across to the rabbi across the street at the Chabad house and said, who is thou? In Psalm 68:18, he would say, why, it's Moshe. Which is the way they say Moses. And a very standard view. Okay, now let's go into a more Christian setting and look at some other concepts. The early church fathers, as they're so called the patristics, sometimes they're called. These are their fathers or more Latin, patristic, because they're the ones whose stuff got left behind there. There may be somebody else who's far more important. But we lost their, their books, you know, so these are old books that we still have. And they took a couple, a couple of views on it. One was the. We call it today the Christus Victor. You can probably figure out what Christus Victor is. Christ the Conqueror, Christ the victor, Christ the guy who wins. And their idea is that from the early days that he took sin captive sin and death and all of the effects of sin kind of put the whole, the whole package of sin and death there together. And that sin and death had captured man and he took captivity captive, captivity being the thing that keeps captive. So took sin and death. That's the Christus Victor concept of the early church fathers. The other one is the. That they sometimes held. They don't. Church fathers don't always agree with one another, which is one. I'm not big on the Church fathers really, because we, we sometimes get into this fallacy, you know, that, you know, Irenaeus said or Tertullian said or Augustine said, or Origen said, or Clement of Alexandria said Or Clement of Rome said. But the truth is you can find another one who said exactly the opposite things. So, you know, it's like, okay, so it's a viewpoint, it's a historical viewpoint. That's what we're doing, interested in it. But some of them didn't take the Christus Victor view. They took the harrowing of hell view. Now, harrowing to us is something like, I had a harrowing experience, right, that, that roller coaster was just harrowing, frightful, terrifying, I think is what we would, how we would use harrowing. But in, in this sense, it's not used that way. And harrowing used to, in the English language, have a little bit different view. And it was to raid or plunder. So the harrowing of hell is to raid hell. So some of the early Church fathers took the Christus Victor. Others when it said, thou has led captivity captive is you went down to Hell, you plundered it, you raided it, you took the captives from it, and you set them free. So this would be, you know, the souls that were in, in Hades, you, you took. Okay, one more view other than the, the harrowing of hell, Christ liberating them is the Augustinian version. And this is, it's a little bit of a mix. But the Augustinian version is that the humans were captives of sin and he liberated them and willingly captured them. Now, for Augustine, it would have been the elect that he came and captured the elect who had been taken captive by sin and made them into the people of God. It's more Calvinist, Reformed kind of view that mixes a little bit of those other two views. Okay, let's, let's move on just a little bit into medieval theology. The, the Catholic Church pretty much exclusively went with the harrowing of Hell idea. And that's, I assume that's probably true unto this day. A little bit different than the evangelical version, which I'll explain in just a moment. But the Catholics again took the idea that Jesus went down into Hades, he rescued those who were faithful, he took them out of there and took them on to paradise. Now you might of course recognize that I don't know if I have this later on the outline or not, if I'm getting out of order. But Catholics have the idea of purgatory and of limbo and some of these things. Their concept in the harrowing of Hell is that he went to those who were in limbo prior to the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And so thou hast ascended is he went up to heaven, having taken those who were in limbo. And all the Old Testament saints, which they would, you know, not just narrow down to Israel, but the Old Testament believers took them all. That's the, the Catholic view. Beginning in medieval days, Eastern Orthodox really took more of a Christus Victor. It's a, a cosmic triumph over Hades, if you will, over sin and death. And they have a lot in their icons. And in Eastern Orthodoxy, icon iconography is a big thing. If you go into an Eastern Orthodox Church or any Russian, Greek, whatever version, it is going to be icons everywhere, pictures everywhere. And a lot of these will display Christ as the victor, even, even having the descent into hell and capturing or conquering sin and death in some form or fashion. And then one other thing that was added in into the medieval days is this received gifts for men in, excuse me, in Paul, it's gave gifts to men. That's when the idea that giving of spiritual gifts is what that's talking about. He gave, you know, to some the gift of prophecy, to others the gift of healing, to some the gift of mercy. You know, all these spiritual gifts that came about in the Middle Ages. Okay, you've got some Reformation, post Reformation stuff, which really is, is more of the same that comes through there. And into modern evangelicalism, I would say it's one of the other Christus Victor, one of two Christus Victor or the evangelical version of harrowing of hell. Now let's start with Herring of hell modern. I would even say dispensationalism, probably the standard evangelical answer. I would say I didn't do this. But if you go to gotquestions.org and say, what does it mean that Christ took captivity captive? First of all, you will never find on there, oh, actually that was Moses. That won't be there. It's a Jewish view. Nor will the defense that thou is Christ be there. There is a defense, but it wouldn't be there, as you would just completely be assumed. But took captivity captive would be the harrowing of hell. He plundered hell. He went in, he took a dispensational view, would be he took all of faithful Israel, the remnant, if you will, not unfaithful Israel, but those who were, you know, the Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Joshua, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Haggai, Habakkuk, all those people. He took that captive and he took all of those and emptied out hell of all of the good people. And only the bad people were left in hell. Now Hell, we have to understand, as the place of the dead rather than the lake of fire. So we might think of it in terms of the thief on the cross today I will be with you in paradise. He went to paradise and emptied it out. That's where all the good people were. Or in the story of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man was in Hades and he was in torment. And he sees Lazarus over there. Not the same Lazarus as the other Lazarus, but he sees Lazarus over there, the poor man. And in, in there it's Abraham's bosom. There he is. Would you just let him put his finger in some water and, and touch it on my tongue. So that is this Old Testament idea of Sheol or Hades where there's, there's two compartments. There's the paradise side and there's the torment side. So Christ came. This I would say the, the most common standard evangelical view. Christ came, went to paradise, emptied it out, took them on to heaven. They're in heaven today and the only people left in Hades are the site of destruction. Very common view, I would say. I am not sure that it's right, but it's a very common view. Anyway, to get it, you add, you put a few things together and come up with it and you can build an argument. I just don't think it's a very robust argument. The other argument is the Christus victor argument. And that is that Christian took sin, if you will, captive and, and conquered sin. Now there's a little bit of where everyone has been is. What are we going to do? First of all, let's take care of this issue right here. Thou hast received gifts for men in the Psalms. And let's go to the Ephesians, 4:18 passages. Passage and is it 4:18 for eight. Thank you. 68. 18, 4, 8. There we go. And here he ascended up on high. He led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men. I want to talk about that difference there. Did he receive gifts? Did he give gifts? Clearly the psalm says he received gifts kind of in the sense of the spoils of war. He went up, he was the victor. He got something to show for it. Okay. It's kind of like, I don't know, in all these negotiations that take place now between, you know, our country and other countries, this country and that country, whatnot, nobody likes to go home empty handed. If you do, you can ask Zelensky. If you do, it gets on the news, you know, you go home in shame. Oh, I lost that negotiation. Everybody wants to come home with something. So he received gifts is the concept of psalms. But here in the Ephesians it's definitely he gave Gifts. How does Paul get away with changing that? You're not supposed to change the Scripture, right? But here, clearly he doesn't say the same thing. This is one reason I like the King James, is that if you'll notice up there, it does not use quotation marks. It does not tell you where the quote begins and where it ends. I think that's important because first of all, the quotation marks are not in the original. So anytime there's a quotation mark in your Bible, somebody decided that it goes there. My problem is I don't know who that somebody is. I don't know what their thinking was. I don't know what the rationale is. So I like it better just to say, hey, it's your Bible. You figure it out. You decide where does this quotation begin and where does it end? And we could spend at least a full session, maybe a series of sessions, looking at various translations where this one starts the quote here and ends it there, but this one starts it there and ends it here. And how that changes actually what it is. I think many times when you see in the Bible and you find this from skeptics, especially skeptics will say, you know, Paul quoted this from the Old Testament. But that's not even what the Old Testament says. It actually says. And every time I hear that argument, I say to myself, you're not using the King James, are you? Because they're getting that Paul quoted from their modern Bible. And their modern Bible tells them, Paul said this, but the text of Scripture doesn't tell you that. Now I think here we have to say wherefore he said, quote, when he ascended up on high, he led captivity, captive, end quote. And then Paul adds, and he gave gifts to men. This, in this sense, Paul is taking one concept and changing that concept. He's using it in a different way. Paul certainly can do that. And I would say even to a degree, you and I can do it as long as we're careful doing it. Because sometimes we do say, hey, this is a basis for that. Even though this was not talking about that. And we can, we can use, use something in, in that strong way again. In the Ecclesiastes study today, we're going to see that history kind of repeats himself itself. From that rabbinical viewpoint. I think Paul is saying, hey, here's the history. But it was talking about Moses. I wouldn't be surprised if we, if we had a, if we were to invite the Apostle Paul in. My guess is if we had advertised it, the Apostle Paul was Going to be here. We would need more chairs. And we were to say, okay, Paul, I want to know, who are you talking about? That ascended up on high. I think Paul might say, well, that was talking about Moses. But because history repeats itself. Moses was the type. Christ is the antitype. That is Moses was the, the shadow. Christ is the substance. So, yeah, it was talking about Moses, but really, ultimately it all comes around and it's about Christ. So he. I don't think he's wrong in applying this to Christ, which I think there's no question he does apply this to Christ. So he comes, he applies it to Christ. He says, christ, ascend upon high. He led captivity captive. And then he stops quoting and he says he gave gifts to men. Now with that, what did he take captive and give gifts? I'm going to go with the. Some version anyway. I'm sure there's different versions out there of the Christus Victor idea that he took sin and death captive. That thing which had its hold, its grip on us. Captivity here is used in a, in a little bit of an abstract sense, obviously, when it says he took captivity captive. Captivity is the thing which grabs hold of us, the thing which won't let us go. And he took that captive. Now, I think it's out of context here to say the thing that was holding was the, the dead saints and he took them captive. I think far more. He's speaking, Paul here in the context. He's speaking in a, in a Christian life way. What is it in the Christian life that holds you captive? Well, there's, there's a number of scriptures that we could look at, and I put some of them on, on the back page of the outline here that, that tell us what it is that takes us captive. John 8:34. Whosoever committeth sin is a servant of sin. Okay, servant there a slave. You are captive by sin when you commit sin. Okay. If we're right in making, in connecting that idea to this passage, then captivity would be sin. Romans 7:23. Paul talks about being captive to the law of sin. This is in Romans 7. This is where Paul is struggling. I don't do the thing that I wanted to do, and I do the thing I didn't want to do. You know, none of us can understand that passage because it's not been our experience. We never sinned or struggle with it. Right. Okay. Maybe it has been our experience. So here's this struggle, this law of sin and death that. That comes grabs hold. Romans 5:12, 21 is the overall Passage, but speaks of sin and death universally reigning from Adam's sin onward and even. Doesn't even matter what type of sin you have, it still grabs hold. It's still captive. Okay, this is the idea. But then turn that around and you find so many things that speak of Christ liberating, freeing us from sin. Like John 1:29. Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. Okay, Takes the thing that holds captive. He takes it captive here. He takes away the sin of the world. Hebrews 9:26. Christ appeared. It says to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Okay, take away the sin of the world, put away sin. 2nd Corinthians 5:19. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. This is kind of the gift that he gives. If we, if we want to take this right here. Led captivity captive. Let's just make it. Wherefore he ascended up on high, having taken care of sin, having released sin's grip, and he gave gifts. Whosoever will believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you shall be saved. You know, he gave gifts to men. Is the gift of your sin is not being imputed against you. You are freed from sin's dominion. Let's go to Romans, chapter 6, verse 18. Being then made free from sin, you became servants of righteousness. Okay, he took captivity captive. He gave gifts. What were the gifts? The gifts were being made free from sin. So put all that together. Let me go Back to Ephesians 4:18. Here's, here's my summary. 4, 8. I'll get it. Wherefore he saith, he is the psalmist saith when he. The psalm says thou. So obviously not a direct quote here, but he is saying again, I think he's saying in that context was talking about Moses. But ultimately it's not talking about Moses getting Torah and passing it on. It's talking about Christ having become the sacrifice and ascended as the victor. He ascended up on high. He, Christ, led captivity captive, took away the bondage of sin. And now not being held, as the hymn says, held by sin's dark sway, no longer being kept, held captive by sin. He gave gifts to men. In a sense, that's the gospel. We, you know, we go out with the good news. Don't, don't you wish I'd have just simplified it to the gospel at the beginning and said, hey, here's what we got. God has taken care of the sin problem. He's offering that to you by grace through faith, not of works, you can receive this. It's a gift. It's a gift of God. And so in a sense, he led captivity captive, he gave gifts to men. Is some theological undergirding, if not just the, the Gospel itself in a nutshell, if you will, that he led captivity captive, he gave gifts unto men. Okay, now you've got a little bit of historical theology today. You got a little bit of, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. How's that? You got a little bit of historical theology, evangelical theology, dispensational theology, my theology, all brought to it. And the question has forever been answered, what does it mean that he took captivity captive? Right, sure. Let's have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, thanks for passages of scripture we had to dig into a little bit and try to figure out to thank you for the opportunity to see some, some different views. Maybe we hadn't thought of some, some things that are intriguing to think through and add some depth to it. And then this beautiful picture of the Gospel of what Christ has done, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, that Christ in the sacrifice of his own body, put away sin on our behalf, has taken that which kept us captive and took it captive himself and now give gives gift to men, which is the, the blessed gospel that we're able to share to men, women, boys and girls. We rejoice in it in Jesus name. Amen. Thanks for joining us, those of you online. We'll have a new link for you here in just a moment. And then those of you in house, we'll take a 12 1/2 minute break and be ready for. Ecclesiastes, chapter 3, verses 13 and 14. God bless.