Well, brethren, let's again pause
and ask the Lord's blessing and time together as we come to this
last session of our brief conference and seek to turn to the Word
of God for further guidance on what it means to be shepherds
after God's own heart. Let's pray. Father, again, we're overwhelmed
with the privileges you've given to us We think right now of so
many of your servants in other parts of the world, shut up in
prisons in Russia, in China, parts of the Middle East where
men rot away in prisons for the sake of Christ and his gospel. We think of many other places
where servants of Christ labor all alone, no one to encourage
them, to instruct them, No other brethren of like mind to fellowship
with them. Lord, be mindful of all such
today and minister to them in your grace. And as we have the
privilege of once again sitting together before the word, help
me, O God, that I may be accurate in the handling of that word,
helpful and practical in the application of it. And may each
of us have the Berean spirit to search these things from the
scriptures to see whether they are so. Bless us now in this
our final session as we ask these mercies in Jesus name. Amen. Well brethren having laid before
you two of the ways in which we carry out our role as shepherds. Let me just give you the heads.
First of all, we do our work of shepherding by feeding the
flock with solid biblical preaching and teaching. And then secondly,
we do it by caring for the individual needs of the sheep by loving,
wise, assertive pastoral input. Now the third way in which we
shepherd the flock is this, by guiding the flock in its congregational life, by
guiding the flock in its congregational life with loving, assertive, leadership by guiding
the flock in its congregational life by wise, loving, I think
I left off the word wise, wise, loving, assertive leadership. Now let me very quickly, I don't
have time to go into detail because I preached too long in the previous
hour, but it's your fault, you were pulling it out of me and
I didn't look at my watch, so I'll shift the blame to you.
Let me give you several key texts which show very clearly that
no man is a true shepherd who is not engaged in guiding the
flock in its congregational life with wise, loving, assertive
leadership. In 1 Peter 3.5, Paul says, if
a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take
care of the house of God? And that word, take care, is
the very word used in the story of the Good Samaritan. When the
good Samaritan took the guy who had been battered and bruised
and left half dead and left him in the inn, he said to the innkeeper,
take care of him. See where his needs are. Respond
to those needs. And in 1 Peter 3, 1 Timothy 3,
5, an elder is described as someone who takes care of the house of
God. That is, he exercises wise, loving,
assertive leadership of the congregation of God's people. Hebrews 13,
7 and 17, Remember them that had the rule over you, men who
spoke unto you the word of God. Those Christians never had the
notion that they ran their own congregation. The writer to Hebrews
says, remember them that had the rule over you. Assuming that
they knew there were those who ruled over them, men who ruled
by speaking to them the word of God. In verse 17 he says,
obey them that have the rule over you and submit to them. for they watch on behalf of your
souls as they that must give an account that they may do so
with joy and not with grief. The assumption is there were
men who were exercising rule, and the two words obey and submit,
if you will look them up in a concordance, they are the very words used
in the other authority structures taught in the Word of God, the
citizen to the state, the wife to her husband, the children
to the parents. So there is real, wise, loving,
assertive leadership and God's people are called upon to submit
to that leadership. And then in 1 Peter 5, Peter
says, the elders among you I exhort, who am also a fellow elder, shepherd
the flock of God, exercising the oversight, not lording it
over God's people. And that Greek word means to
exercise an authority down upon people, not like little tin gods
oppressing and crushing people. No, we are to exercise the oversight
with wise, loving, assertive leadership, not with selfish,
harsh, and unbiblical leadership. Now, what is involved specifically
in doing this? Well, let me give you just three
very simple headings. Number one, Seeking to bring
all programs, practices, and ministries under the searchlight
of the Word of God. Seeking to bring all programs,
practices, and ministries under the searchlight of the Word of
God. In 1 Peter 3, 14 and 15, Paul
writes to Timothy saying, These things I write unto you, hoping
to come unto you shortly. But if I tarry long, that men
may know how they ought to behave themselves in the house of God,
which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of
the truth. Well, what things had he written
about? Well, he had written about the
programs, practices, and ministries of the church. He said that the
church is to be marked as a body of praying people. Chapter 2,
verse 1, I exhort therefore first of all that supplications and
prayers and intercessions and thanksgiving be made for all
men. In other words, what is to dominate
the life of the church is not programs to entertain, but a
structure where true worship, where there is true prayer, true
communion with God exists in the churches. He goes on in verse
8 to go into the roles and the gender in terms of leadership. I desire therefore that, and
you have in the original the article before the word men.
I desire therefore that the men pray in every place, lifting
up holy hands without wrath and disputing. In other words, male
leadership is to dominate in the church. And furthermore,
he says in verse 12, I do not permit a woman to teach, nor
to have dominion over a man, but to be in quietness. In the
ordering of the life of the church, women are not to preach and teach
in the mixed assembly, and women are not to give spiritual rule
in the assembly of God's house. Women elders are defiance of
the will of God. Women elders are a defiance of
the will of God. Women preachers are a defiance
of the will of God. The older women are to train
the younger women. So if an older woman gathers
some younger women to teach them in a more formal way, she is
not violating a God-given position, though the word there in Titus
is not the word for formal teaching. But women teaching women? Women
teaching children? Yes, Timothy learned the Word
of God from his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice. But they
didn't make old grandma Lois an elder. An elder-ess? No, the Word of
God is clear. And nothing could be more clear
than what is said here, and in the parallel passage in 1 Corinthians
14, as in all the churches of the saints, let your women keep
silent in the church, it is not permitted for them to speak.
That is, not to speak the Word of God authoritatively in the
mixed assembly. So brethren, as shepherds, we
are responsible to take care of the house of God, to see that
behavior is according to the Word of God. Notice chapter 3,
the standard for elders and deacons. What are you going to do? In
a church situation where anybody that's been around for a little
bit of time and he's a businessman or he's well-known and well-loved,
nobody ever examines him by 1 Timothy 3. You've got elders or deacons
that got no business being elders and deacons. What is your responsibility? To seek to bring all of the programs,
practices, and structures of the church under the searchlight
of the Word of God. It's God's house and He alone
has a right to say how we behave. It's not our club to be run by
our rules. It's God's house to be run by
God's house rules. And it's our responsibility before
God, first of all, not to go in like a madman and throw everything
over, but to search the Scriptures and under God to bring everything
in our church life to the standard of Holy Scripture. Secondly,
then we are to patiently lay out the biblical teaching as
to what is pleasing to God. We are to patiently lay out the
biblical teaching as to what is pleasing to God. Maybe we
should start with expounding Matthew 28, 18 to 20, where Jesus
said, All authority is given unto me in heaven and earth.
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing
them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Ghost, teaching them to observe whatsoever I have commanded you. Stand before your people and
say, Dear people, I have no commission but a commission to teach you
whatever Christ has commanded. And if Christ has commanded,
I must teach it. And if Christ has commanded it,
you must obey it, because he said, if you love me, you will
keep my commandments. Don't sit here and talk about,
oh, how I love Jesus. Oh, how I love Jesus. But just don't tell me what he
says. Tell people that's hypocrisy. He doesn't want to hear you singing,
oh, how I love Jesus. He said, if you love me, keep
my commandments. You got to teach him that. You
may have to get yourself a bulletproof vest, but you got to teach him. You got to teach him. And that's why Paul said when
he was writing to those Corinthians where the women were taking a
role they shouldn't. He said in 1 Corinthians 14 37
after giving all those regulations, he says, if any man thinks himself
spiritual or a prophet, let him acknowledge that the things that
I write unto you or I say unto you are the commandments of the
Lord. When apostles give directions
for the life of the church, that is the word of Jesus Christ.
And so we must bring all programs and practices under the light
of the Word. Then we must seek to lay out
patiently and clearly the biblical teaching as to what is pleasing
to the Lord. And then thirdly, we must cry
to God that the Lord Himself will give to His people a heart
of obedience. We must cry to God that He will
give to His people a heart of obedience. When we read through
Revelation chapters 2 and 3, it's a tragic thing. Christ stands
in the midst of the lampstands, the seven churches of Asia Minor,
and he points out the sins in five of the seven churches, and
he calls them to repentance. And it's a pathetic thing to
see Jesus Christ having to stand in his own church and say, I
have somewhat against you, I have somewhat against you, I have
this against you, I have this against you. We need to pray
that God will give to our people a spirit of repentance, that
they're ready to change anything that causes grief to the Lord
Jesus, whose church it is. Now that's our task, brethren.
Our task is not to just keep the status quo. There was a certain
old black preacher kept using the word status quo in his sermon.
And one day, one of the sisters came to him and says, preacher,
you's always using that word status quo. What's the status
quo? And he says, well, sister, the
best way I knows to tell you is this. The status quo is the
mess we's in. It's the mess we's in. Now you
won't find that in Webster's Dictionary, but that's it, that's
the mess we's in. And we need to cry to God that
the people will see the mess we's in needs to be changed by
the Word of God. When Jesus went to the temple
at Jerusalem, it says in Mark 11, that first night that he
came into Jerusalem, he went in, and the Greek is very vivid,
he went in and looked round about upon all things. His eye went
over his father's temple. And he went back that night and
probably spent a sleepless night in prayer and fasting because
the next morning, you remember, he was hungry as he came out
of Bethany on his way to Jerusalem. And he saw that fig tree and
cursed it. It said he was hungry. And then
he went into Jerusalem. And what did he do? He turned
over the money changers, he drove out the oxen, he went in and
cleaned out everything in his father's house that had no business
being there. And he said, you have taken my
father's house that should be a house of prayer for all the
nations and you've made it a cave for robbers. And my friends,
we need something of that spirit of our blessed Lord that we see
that the church is his house. And in His house only the things
that He has commanded should be there. And when Jesus looks
round about in our churches, and He sees women preaching,
and He sees women leading, and He sees no order in the worship,
everything confusion. He sees no real Bible preaching,
just standing up and whooping, getting the people, excited and
telling them flowery things Jesus looks at that and he says you've
turned my father's house into a den of robbers and we need to share the spirit
of our Lord that by his word and spirit he would come and
purge his living temple made up of the living stones That's
our responsibility. I have no sympathy for people
that say, well, I'll just preach the word and leave the state
of the church to the Lord. Is that right? Shepherd the flock
of God. Take care of the house of God. We got to be willing to get in
the trenches, brethren. and pay a price that Christ's
church will become what it ought to be. And then finally, our
fourth job as shepherds, and with this I'll be done, is to
protect the flock from enemies without and within. You see,
no shepherd is doing his job if he simply feeds the flock.
If he cares for the individual needs of the sheep, And if he
guides the overall life of the flock, he's got to protect the
flock from enemies without and within. Acts 20. Let's come back
to where we started in this passage we closed this morning. Paul
said, take heed to yourselves and to the flock. Why? Verse
29. I know that after my departing
grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves
shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to do what? To draw away
the disciples after them, wherefore, watch ye. He said, now you elders,
there are two great dangers to the flock and you've got to protect
them from those dangers. There's the picture of a pack
of wolves circling round the flock. Circling, circling, circling. What are they looking for? They're
looking for a stray sheep. They're looking for a weak sheep.
They're looking for a sheep that gets separated from the flock.
And when they are able to, he says, they will pounce upon that
sheep and they will devour it. See the language? Grievous wolves
shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock. There are
the wolves from without trying to devour the flock. Some of those wolves come over
the TV religious programs. Some of them come by the watchtower
literature. Some of them come in many ways. But we need to protect our people
from the wolves that would devour our sheep from without. But something
more subtle, he says, from among your own selves. And who was
he speaking to? The elders. He said, right out
of the shepherds there are going to come men. And what are they
trying to do? Look carefully at the language.
They speak perverse things. Why? To draw away the disciples
after them. They are shepherds looking for
their own flock, and they're going to try to make their flock
out of your flock. See that? To draw away disciples
after them. They're not concerned about the
truth, they're concerned about their own ego. They want to have
a following. He says, now you be watchful,
you be watchful. You be watchful when someone
begins to start visiting the homes of your people without
your knowledge, and the first thing you'll do is you'll try
to start sowing seeds of disaffection to the God-appointed shepherds.
He'll try to alienate the sheep from the true shepherds, that
once they're alienated, then he'll say, ah, those men are
not true shepherds. But I am a true shepherd. Come,
follow me. God have mercy on you if you
aren't watchful among your people. God says be watchful. You shepherds
of the church at Ephesus must protect the flock from the wolves
without and from those within. And my friends, that means you've
got to have your ears open, your eyes open. That's why he says,
be watchful. That's a military term. That's
the picture of the man sitting at his post at three in the morning,
pitch black night. and his ears are straining, listening
for the slightest crackle of a leave or the snapping of a
twig, his eyes peering into the darkness, his pupils fully dilated,
looking for any sign of any enemy. That's the word he uses. You
shepherds, be watchful. Look for the movement of the
wolves. Watch for men rising up from within. Oh, you say that's
being paranoid. No, it isn't. That's being a
good shepherd. That's being a good shepherd. And that's the awesome
responsibility that God's given to us, brethren. To put it as
simply as I know how, God has said he's given us to the flock
that we might be instruments in the hands of the Holy Spirit
to get the whole flock safely to heaven. That's what we live
for. That's what we sweat for. That's
what we cry for. That's what we bleed for. That's
what we pour our guts out for. It's that we might get our people
safely to heaven. What is our responsibility as
ministers? To take care of ourselves and
to take care of the flock. And as we look at that great
description of responsibility, surely We cry out, as does the
Apostle Paul, who is sufficient for these things? Who is sufficient
for these things? Who can guard his own heart,
let alone guard the flock? who can keep his own heart, let
alone keep the people of God in the way of holiness and in
the way of fruitfulness by patient, balanced, loving instruction
in the Word of God, intimate pastoral care, wise guidance
of the congregation, and perceptive protection from its enemies.
We are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything is from ourselves. But brethren, God has given us
the Holy Spirit, and He's given us the Holy Spirit not primarily
to give us glorious experiences that we can write about in a
book. He's given us the Holy Spirit to give us the moral courage,
the mental and spiritual strength, the discernment, the wisdom,
the love, the patience, and all that we need. to be good shepherds
of God's people. Oh, let us cry that God will
fill us with the Holy Spirit that we may be the kind of shepherds
God's called us to be. All right. I promised you we'd
have a little time for questions. Earl, you had a question. Oh, yes. All right. Yes, sir.
I'll do what I'm told. That's it. I got to keep that
on. All right. Good. All right. First one is Going
back with the individual, spending the individual, caring for the
individual needs by loving, wise, and assertive pastoral info.
Yes. How much time do you spend in
counseling and helping non-members? That's a good question. Our elder
right now is involved with a member, a non-member who is a friend
of a member whose family. Yes. All right, so the question
of our brother is, how much time do you spend with a non-member?
And my answer is this, that what is clear in the Bible is that
I am to shepherd the flock. That's the only thing that's
clear. Now, if I can do my work as a shepherd to the flock and
use some of my time to be of help, whether by evangelism or
just helping to keep a home together, Without sacrificing my God-given
duties here, Galatians 6.10 says, as we have opportunity, let us
do good unto all men, but especially those of the household of faith.
But as the congregation grows, you're going to find that if
word gets out that anybody with a problem can come and get hours
of counseling, it's going to undermine your shepherding of
God's people. So, as a general rule, we do
not shepherd, we do not offer counseling to people outside
the church family. We refer them to Christian counselors
who are earning their living that way. Now, occasionally we
make an exception where we feel it's proper to do so, but it's
only an exception and we tell the person, now don't spread
this abroad that we've spent time with you because there were
peculiar circumstances. And you see, the devil will use
a good thing to keep us from the best thing. And he'll use
our heart of compassion to be vulnerable to try to meet needs
that God has never called us to meet. So that would be my
counsel on that matter, and that's what we seek to practice in our
own use of time in our eldership. All right? Second question. It's a matter that I just would
say in all honesty, Earl, that I just do not have what I consider
a satisfactory resolution of the biblical identity of a man
who is a proven man who is sent forth by a church to plant a
church in another culture, in another town, in another city,
So I think what we must do, unless we're prepared to say that the
office of evangelist describes that, and God still gives evangelists,
but then the problem I have is there's no inspired record saying
an evangelist must be. So I'm very reluctant, and Owen
argues very powerfully against any notion that the office of
evangelist is a standing office from that very perspective. So
the way we have functioned is this. that since the work of
church planting involves the exercise of pastoral gifts, preaching
gifts, etc., a man must at least meet the standard of 1 Timothy
3 and Titus 1, plus show those gifts and graces particularly
needed to cross a culture and to minister in another culture.
Number one, an unusual aptitude for languages. Number two, an
unusual flexibility in terms of cultural adaptability. Number
three, the absence of any kind of crippling provincialisms. In other words, if a guy has
been brought up in a certain cultural framework and anything
outside of that, he gets unstrung, he doesn't belong there. And
you say, how do you know that? Well, in our case, we try to
send a man into several situations for a summer. and then get a
readout on him. Steve Hoffmeier, who's been sent
out by our church to the Philippines, he spent a summer in Africa,
and then he spent another summer in the Philippines, and the readout
we got was in these extra things he manifested unusual adaptability,
and therefore, had he stayed among us, we would have had no
problem recognizing him as an elder, so we felt he had the
God-given capabilities to labor in that capacity, and then we
sent him out as a church planter, but one who had been scrutinized
according to the standard of 1st Timothy 3. But we're reluctant
to call him an elder, because an elder is supposed to take
heed to the flock in which the Holy Spirit's made him an overseer.
So if we make him an elder in Trinity Baptist Church, he belongs
there shepherding those sheep. So I have problems with that
idea of make a man an elder and then send him. I've got problems
with that for that very reason. So that's where I am and I...
He is accountable to the eldership of the church, but he is not
a part, a functioning part of the eldership. Exactly. And our
elders visit him on the field, I have visited him. This past
summer two of our elders went over and were there for the constituting
of the church and now he has been recognized as an elder in
the church that he planted until such time as God raises up men
that he is already training And when they become elders, then
a decision will be made whether they now as an indigenous church
will lay hands upon Steve and send him out to plant another
church which they will oversee. And then we will simply be in
an advisory capacity. All right, yes, John? How much
should the elders depend or even expect the members to keep account
of one another, Galatians 6, 1, 2, 3, 5? Good question. How much should the elders expect
the members to keep an account of one another? Well, if we're
preaching the biblical concept of New Testament church life,
then our people will come to understand that they have real
accountability one to another. They are to exhort one another
daily, they are to bear one another's burdens, It says in 1 Thessalonians
5, not to the elders, but brethren, you are to support the weak,
you're to be patient, etc. Well, as your people are instructed,
there's a wonderful network of accountability that goes on and
long before sometimes we as elders notice that someone maybe has
been absent for a week or two, one of the members has, and they'll
come and say, look, Did you know that so-and-sos had unusual sickness?"
We've said, no, we didn't know. Well, I checked up. I missed
them for a week or two. Thank you. And then we're able
to follow through or send one of the deacons to check into
the matter. And often, in a healthy church situation, according to
the natural age groupings, according to the natural groupings of shared
interest like the young mothers, These lovely little networks
of normal cells develop not artificially because you've all split them
up by geography or by age or by Alphabet and we never even
know what's going on till I get a note to be read at prayer meeting
Please read at prayer meeting dear people of God Thank you
so much that for the past three weeks since I came home from
the hospital with our new child, I haven't had to cook a meal.
Thanks to those who've come in and cleaned my house and we didn't
even know nobody organized it. It just happens where the people
are instructed in terms of their God-given responsibility one
to another over a period of time. That becomes a climate that when
an outsider comes in, they immediately recognize that and they become
incorporated into it. Yes. Yes. Well, I think again there needs
to be periodic teaching. For example, both privately and
publicly. For example, recently one of
the women came to me and said, Pastor, I'm not sure what to
do. There's one of the sisters in the church that anytime I'm
with her, I'm on the phone, I'm in her home, I just feel she
indulges in gossip, and I don't know what to do. I said, well,
here's what the scripture says to do, and I opened up Galatians
1 and Hebrews 3, and I said, now you go, lay out the evidence,
entreat her to deal with it, and if she doesn't, take one
or two others that you know are aware of the same problem, keep
me abreast of what is happening well she called me the day before
I left and she said pastor she stonewalling me every time I
asked to get with her she's got an excuse what shall I do and
so the counsel was you tell her look this is a serious matter
the Bible says that if you have ought against anyone go tell
them their fault assuming then that the person is willing to
be received you must give me a hearing and then if she stonewalls
you she's left no opportunity but for me to go with that sister
call her in and say look so and so this dear sister tried on
five occasions to get to you you've been resisting it that
is contrary to the word of God Obviously your own conscience
is troubling you, now let's deal with the issue. So you try then
to monitor. There are times when people will
start to say something to me. Did you know that... I stop them
off. I say, wait a minute, wait a minute. Are you about to tell
me something you know? Yes. Have you gone to... No. You go to
them. Then if you're not satisfied that the issue's been dealt with,
then come and seek counsel as to what the next step is. So
it's an ongoing process of private instruction as well as the public
instruction from the pulpit as to how to deal with interpersonal
relationships. And you'll have some, you'll
always get some, that feel they're God's chief protector of the
flock. And they go around butchering
people in the name of helping to restore them. Well, then you
got to take them aside and say, look, you haven't earned the
right to do the unofficial work of chief inspector of the flock
here. And then you've got to. So those things, you know, they
will be open to abuse, but there's no truth that the flesh will
not abuse. But that's, again, keeping on
top of things and being aware of what's going on in the flock.
Very good. Yes, brother. Can you do it with outside wolves?
Would it be right to go to them? Yeah, all right. Do you ever,
you know, wolves that, you know, want to be members of this sort
of thing, you know, visit their house? Yes. You know, I would
bring them back to me, in my personal experience. But me,
I used to have pimples. I was trying not to get angry.
Because I know I'm persuaded as far as I know. I know person's
side is free. So as far as I know I don't want
to get angry. Because I know there's wolves, you know, and
the whole opposite of a thing. There's no need to keep away
from the body of the sheep. I've been praying about what
should I do. I pray to respect a man to come
along and say he's a pastor. I would say two things. It is
scriptural. According to such passages as
Romans 16, 17, it is scriptural in some instances to publicly
name and mark those who are troubling the flock. I beseech you, brethren,
mark them that are causing the divisions and occasions of stumbling
contrary to the doctrine which you learned and turn away from
them. for they that are such serve
not our Lord Christ but their own belly and by their smooth
and fair speech they beguile the hearts of the innocent so
if you've gone to this man and said look I do not regard you
as a shepherd but a wolf and I don't want you messing around
with my sheep and if one more of my sheep come to me and say
you've tried to call them get into their homes and influence
them we are going to publicly name you and tell our people
to avoid you that if you come by way of the phone they're going
to hang up if you come and knock on the door we're going to tell
them not to open the door That's what the Bible says to do with
people that by their fair speech would beguile your people. I
had in my notes, but I didn't have time to give an example
of protecting the people. Back some months ago, at the
end of the service, four or five scruffy looking guys came in
and sat down at the back of the church. And afterwards, because
some of our men have been trained to be watchdogs, in the right
sense, one of the deacons came to me not one of the elders he
said pastor he said those guys that came in he said they're
going around trying to talk to our people and pass out tracts
and the rest so I went to them I said what are you guys doing
here Oh, we came to go to the bookstore and get some books.
I said, well, then you get your books and then get on your way.
This group has been gathered as a church committed to a certain
confession of faith. And you are here trying to propagate
things contrary to that. If you want to come and sit and
learn, you're welcome. But you're not welcome to come
and propagate your heresy. Well, lo and behold, they thought
we didn't mean it. A couple of months later, they showed up.
And that deacon went right to them and said, I'm going to be
right at your elbow, you guys. And if you say anything contrary
to the word of God, you're going to be ushered out of here. And
he ushered him right out to the parking lot and told him if they
didn't get out, we'd call the police and we'd have them haul
him out. You've got to protect your sheep. Some guys are awfully
bold. And these guys were teaching
heresy. They didn't believe historic
Christian doctrine. And they saw a big crowd of people
and figured, hey, here's good hunting ground. But we said,
no way you're going to hunt with our sheep. And so there are times
when you need to do that, and that's scriptural. And so it
may be in that case, if you're afraid you might blow your cork
with this guy, maybe to write him a letter. Sit down and write
him a nice firm letter and say, if any of our sheep Tell me that
you've been on the phone, you've been trying to influence them.
I'm going to have to publicly name you and tell our people
to avoid you because you are causing disruption in the life
of this church. And God has appointed me as a
shepherd over them, not you. All right? Well, I think the
ladies are all ready, brethren, and we can carry on conversation
while we eat. Shall we give thanks to God?
Yes.