An Unusual Ending

Mark 16:1:

“When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. And they were saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?’ And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. And he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he[’s] going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’ And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Amen.

Well, here we are at the end of our series on Mark. We began, quite staggeringly, on the first of February 2009. There have been a lot of interruptions along the way. Today will be the eighty-sixth sermon. I wager that nobody has heard all of them except me. We have done an average of 7.8 verses per study. And here we are, so let’s pray and ask for God to help us:

O Lord, we open our Bibles again with great expectation, asking that you will take our minds and help us to think, that you will take our hearts—the very center of our existence, our emotions, and our will—and that you will confront us with the reality of Jesus, and that you will take our entire lives and turn them upside down for the gospel’s sake. And we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, some of you are saying, “But I thought we already did the first eight verses two weeks ago on Easter Sunday.” Yes, we did, but we come back to them purposefully, as I’m going to point out in just a moment. Look at verse 8, particularly: “And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

I imagine that all of us have had the experience, either in the reading of a book or in the seeing of a film, of being taken aback by the abruptness of the ending. We’ve been sitting there, expecting it to go on for another five or ten minutes, and suddenly the credits have come up, or we’ve turned the page, and we realized that the rest of the book that we thought we were about to read is actually footnotes, and we’ve now turned to the final page. And we’ve perhaps said out loud, “But it can’t possibly end like this,” or “It can’t possibly end like that.”

Now, if your Bible is open—and I hope it is—if you’re using the English Standard Version, you will notice that in between verse 8 and 9, there is a statement put there by the translators, by the publishers: “Some of the earliest manuscripts do not include 16:9–20.” So, presumably, 16:9–20, an appendix, a postscript, was placed at the end of Mark’s Gospel, because when people read the end of Mark’s Gospel at verse 8, they found themselves saying, “But it can’t end like that.” How can the Gospel of Mark, how can any Gospel, end with the phrase “They were afraid”?

Now, since we’re not going to be dealing with the appendix, or the postscript—that is, verses 9–20—but concluding with the eighth verse, it’s important for me to say something by way of explanation. And the first thing that we need to affirm is this: the Bible’s absolute authority as the Word of God; to make sure that we’re affirming together that the Bible is God’s speech in written form, that what the Bible says, God says. That’s why our view of ethics, our view of marriage, our view of everything in life is governed by, framed by, constrained by the Bible: because what the Bible says, God says. The Bible is completely true in what it says, and it makes no claims that are not true. It’s not our purpose this morning to substantiate this, but simply to acknowledge that that is both an orthodox and an evangelical view of Scripture, and it is the view of Scripture that is held by us here at Parkside Church.

We understand why Paul wrote to Timothy to affirm for him the necessity of being a proclaimer of the good news and reminding him along the way that “all Scripture is [God-breathed] and profitable for teaching,” and “for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.”[1] What is Timothy to proclaim? In the first century, he is to proclaim the good news of God. What are we to proclaim in the twenty-first century? The exact same thing.

And what Paul says in 2 Timothy, Peter says in his second letter, reminding his readers that people didn’t just come up with this stuff, but rather, to quote him, “men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”[2] And we have in the past taken time to understand at least a little of what we mean when we talk about the dual authorship of Scripture: that God has breathed out and, by the use of human means as spokesmen, he has provided for us that which we now have here to consider this morning.

What is Timothy to proclaim? In the first century, he is to proclaim the good news of God. What are we to proclaim in the twenty-first century? The exact same thing.

Now, it’s very, very important that this affirmation is made in light of the consideration that is here. This is not the only place where you will find an editorial note in your Bible. And the most striking other one is, if you want just to see it for yourself, is at the end of John chapter 7, in between verses 52 and 53 of John 7. And once again, it reads, “The earliest manuscripts do not include 7:53–8:11.” All right? So, number one, we affirm the absolute authority and inerrancy of Scripture. Number two, we take seriously the observation that is here that the oldest manuscripts of Mark’s Gospel do not contain verses 9–20.

Now, for most of church history, Mark 16 has included 9–20. For those of us who were brought up in the King James Version, we have affirmed long and hard that the Bible that was used by the apostle Paul is the only true Bible, and we have said that sometimes not understanding what we’re actually saying, such has been our allegiance to a particular translation. And every two or three Sundays, somebody comes up to me with a question concerning the translation of the Bible that we use and why we don’t use the “Authorized Version.” And usually they have good reason for the question. My response is always the same: “I share your concern. I do not share your conclusion. If I shared your conclusion, then we would be using the King James Version. I share your concern about the absolute necessity of paying careful attention to what we say in relationship to the Bible, but not the conclusion.”

What has happened is that with the discovery of older manuscripts, orthodox and evangelical scholarship has concluded that verses 9–20 were not in the original manuscript. Now, I think it would be obvious to us that the Christian church does not have the original manuscript of the Gospel of Mark. We only have copies. If you think about it, for fifteen hundred years or so, if somebody wanted a copy of the Gospel of Mark, then they’ve got to take out a pen and start scribbling. There’s no other way that the Gospel of Mark would be transmitted from one person to another person, with all of the potential that is represented there for the absence not only of commas but of s’s, and of plurals, and changes of tense, and so on.

Now, don’t look quizzically at me here. Don’t be alarmed in any way. Don’t be unsettled by this. Don’t be unsettled by it. As elders, we’ve been going through a book by Christopher Ash. Christopher Ash is, God willing, coming here for our Basics Conference 2014. And we’ve been greatly helped by this book. It’s quite challenging. It’s called Hearing the Spirit: Knowing the Father through the Son. And at our last elders’ meeting, we paid particular attention to a brief statement that he has on this very subject, interestingly, concerning manuscripts and translations. Let me read it to you:

Since we do not have access to any of the original manuscripts, this means that the scholarly work of what is called “textual criticism” is necessary. Textual criticism is the discipline of examining all the manuscripts we do have and working back from those to the best approximation we can manage to the wording of the original manuscripts. It is an honourable skill and one that has been well-honed over the years. Thank God we have excellent and strong manuscript evidence and that it is not difficult to be very confident indeed about the very large majority of the Bible’s words.

Now, here’s an important sentence: “No Christian doctrine depends on those parts where there are residual uncertainties.”[3]

See what he’s saying? In other words, nothing about the Christian faith, nothing about our understanding of Jesus, is changed based upon whether we think this section is authentic or not. There’s nothing that is introduced in it that gives to us doctrine that we would otherwise not have, and so we can rest confident that what we have with the shorter ending takes care of things.

And now, with a good study Bible, you can discover the scholars’ reasons for this. In fact, if you have a study Bible for the ESV, there’s a tremendous amount of helpful information that you can peruse at your home and while you’re having a coffee. But let’s just be absolutely clear that what we’re saying when we say that is not somehow or another that we’re excising people or things from the Bible. The man who taught me New Testament, Donald Guthrie, says verses 9–20 is like an “independent summary … composed from the other Gospels” and “used for catechetical purposes”—not “part of Mark’s Gospel” but still “an authentic account of resurrection appearances.”[4] Okay? So that’s very important to understand.

So, number one, then, we affirm the absolute authority and inerrancy of the Bible. Number two, we recognize what scholarship says—namely, that the oldest manuscripts, and you’re going back to the oldest, the earliest—the oldest manuscripts do not have this as an ending. However, we are still left to determine why this is so. Why is it so? Had Mark written a longer ending, and it was lost or destroyed? Is the sudden ending at verse 8 accidental or intentional?

Some argue that something happened to Mark; if you like, he went out for a coffee and intended to come back and pick it up when he came home, but he never, ever came home. Others have suggested that in actual fact, Mark was planning on doing what Luke did—namely, writing a second volume, à la the Acts of the Apostles—but in fact, he never got round to it. But these kinds of suggestions are only needed if we conclude that this ending is unintentional. These suggestions are only necessary if we can’t bring ourselves to accept the fact that Mark purposefully ended by telling us that the women “fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, … they said nothing to anyone, … they were afraid.” Right?

So you don’t think that Mark would end his Gospel in that way. Let me tell you that I do. You may not care about that unduly, but I want to take my stand with those who believe that Mark ends his Gospel at verse 8, and he does so purposefully.

Now, I don’t do that just in a cavalier fashion. Many of the people that I admire and study and read would come to a different conclusion. My favorite commentator, really, throughout the studies in Mark is a man by the name of Cranfield. I was interested to discover that he’s still alive, in his nineties. And his commentary on the Greek text of Mark is unparalleled in its usefulness. And so I was intrigued to go and immediately see what my friend Cranfield said about the idea that I’m proposing. This is what he said: the idea that verse 8 is the “intended” end of the gospel “has received considerable support …, but [it] should surely be rejected.”[5] So there’s my hero, and he said, “No, you’re wrong, Begg.” I am not worthy to undo his sandals, but I don’t think I am. Notice the important word: the idea that verse 8 is the “intended” end of the gospel. Cranfield is convinced that verse 8 is the end of the Gospel. What he is questioning is whether it is the intended end of the Gospel. So he’s left, with others, trying to explain why it would be that it ends this way if it wasn’t his intention to end this way. But if you accept that he intended to end this way, then you don’t have to go and ferret around and look for other explanations.

Now, why, then, would I conclude as I do? And let me tell you.

Mark’s Pace

First of all, because this kind of ending fits with Mark’s pace and his pattern.

Come back with me to the very beginning of the Gospel. Go back to 1:1. Do you remember that? Now, don’t sin your souls. But we began a long time ago, February 2009: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” And on that morning when we began, we quoted from Peterson’s Message paraphrase, which essentially, I think from memory, begins like “The good news [about] Jesus Christ … begins here.” Straight into it. And we noted then, and I’m pointing it out to you again now, purposefully, that Mark doesn’t use up any time in beginning his Gospel with preliminaries. You read Matthew, you read Luke, you have birth narratives. You have the record of some of the earlier life of Jesus. You read the Gospel of John, and it begins in eternity past: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”[6] So we start in eternity with John. But look at how Mark begins. He gets off immediately to a flying start.

And as we’ve gone through the Gospel, we’ve noted that movement, pace, seems almost to be more significant for Mark than discourse. So, you do not have in Mark the big blocks of teaching that you have in the other two Gospels of Matthew and Luke—what we refer to as the Synoptic Gospels, along with Mark—nor do you have the material that is present, much of it, in John. The biggest pause you really have, we noted in chapter 13, in the Olivet Discourse. So Mark is moving directly through his Gospel.

If your Bible is still open at chapter 1, let me point out to you what I’ve tried to point out as we’ve gone through, and that is Mark’s use of pace. So, for example, in verse 9: “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water”—notice the word—“immediately he saw the heavens being torn open.” Verse 12: “The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.” Verse 21: “And they went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue.” We’re beginning to get to the picture here, aren’t we? Mark is telling us that this thing is chasing along. This is moving along. This isn’t as much marching as it is galloping. It’s a great, amazing discourse, a fast-moving drama that is getting as quickly, it seems, as it possibly can to the central event in it all—namely, the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. You have the same thing in verse 28. The people were saying, “He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”[7] Verse 28: “And at once his fame spread everywhere.” Verse 29: “And immediately he left the synagogue.”

So, would you agree with me that there is a sort of fast-paced movement, a sort of an abruptness, about the way that Mark moves from place to place? He’s hardly finished one part, then he’s moved on to the next: “Let’s get on, now. Let’s make clear. Let’s… We’re writing the gospel here.” Some have even suggested that he wrote it backwards—that he started at the end and worked forwards. An intriguing idea! We’ll leave that aside. I don’t mean to unsettle you by that.

Mark’s Pattern

So, that’s the first thing: it fits with his pace. But it fits also with his pattern. And the pattern to which I am referring is what I might regard as the fear factor. The fear factor. Now, let me show you a couple of illustrations of this. You can find the rest on your own.

Chapter 4 and Jesus calming the storm. Remember? “Let[’s] go [over] to the other side.” The waves break into the boat. The boat’s filling. He’s in the stern. They wake him up to let him know that “we[’re all] perishing.” He awakens, rebukes the winds, said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” “The wind ceased, and there was … great calm.”[8] And they began singing, “I love you, Lord, and I lift my voice.”[9] No. It says, “And the wind[s] ceased, and there was … great calm. [And] he said to them, ‘Why are you so afraid?’”[10] “What’s up with you guys? Have you still no faith?” Verse 41: “And they were filled with great fear.” “They were filled with great fear.” That was their response to this demonstration of the power of God in the Son of God, about whom we’ve been singing—this “fairest Lord Jesus, … Son of God and Son of Man.”[11] That’s what Mark is doing. He’s saying, “I’m writing down for you the story of who Jesus is, what Jesus did, why Jesus has come.” And as we go through it, we discover that this recurs again and again.

Let me give you just two more, and we’ll just stay in chapter 5. Chapter 5 and in verse 14: “And [the] people came to see what … had happened.” That was because the demoniac had been set free from the demons. Remember, they had all run down—about two thousand pigs had gone “down [a] steep bank” and “drowned in the sea.” There’s no question that people are coming out to see what had happened. That’s a lot of money just went right in the sea there for all those Jewish guys, who shouldn’t have been dealing with pigs in the first place. But anyway: “The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. [The] people came to see what [has] happened.”[12] Verse 15: “And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind”—“and they began to sing.” No: “and they were afraid.”

One more. The woman who had the hemorrhage touches the hem of Jesus’ garment. Jesus says, “Someone has touched me.” The disciples say, “A lot of people have touched you. What are you talking about? Look at the crowd that’s here.”[13] And Jesus “looked around to see who had done it.”[14] And “the woman, knowing what had happened,” verse 33, “came in fear and trembling and fell down before him.”

Mark’s Purpose

Therefore, I suggest to you that we should not be surprised that Mark would end his Gospel with the phrase “They were afraid.” Because the unusual ending not only fits with his pace and with his pattern, but it is entirely in keeping with his express purpose. Pace, pattern, purpose.

What is his purpose? From the very beginning: to declare the good news of who Jesus is. You have immediately into John the Baptist, straight out of John the Baptist into Jesus, and Jesus says, “The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!”[15] Mark is immediately at that. The kingdom is present because Jesus is present, and Jesus is the King. And Jesus is inviting people to enter into the kingdom, and the entry into the kingdom is by way of repentance and faith—turning from sin, turning to trust in this one who is moving towards the cross. So in other words, he is providing the answers to the questions of people like Joseph of Arimathea, whom we considered just briefly on Good Friday, some of us who were here, at the end of chapter 15, when Joseph of Arimathea, we’re told, was a high-ranking official within the Sanhedrin, and he had gone to Pilate asking for the body of Jesus, and the background to him is in that little phrase, “[He] was also himself looking for the kingdom of God.”[16] He was “looking for the kingdom of God.”

Well now, what that meant in the mind of Joseph we can only surmise. As a Jew, he would be looking for the overturn of the Roman authorities. He would be looking for the establishment of a territorial dimension in which Judaism was there. And yet against that notion he had all the statements of Jesus, all that had gone on. They had conversations he presumably had had with his friend, Nicodemus, because Nicodemus and he were the boys that were together at this point. You can imagine them eating and drinking together and Nicodemus saying, “And I went to see Jesus the other night. And I told him, I said, ‘You know, you must have come from God, because nobody can teach the way you teach.’” And Joseph might have said to him, “And what did he say to you then?” And Nicodemus would have said, “He said to me, ‘Let me tell you something, Nicodemus; unless a man is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ And then he followed it up by saying, ‘Unless a man is born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.’”[17] And they would have discussed what that meant, to “enter the kingdom of God.”

Some of you are actually here this morning, and you’re looking for the kingdom of God. But you don’t know that. You wouldn’t use that terminology. If somebody said to you, “You know what you’re looking for? You’re looking for the kingdom of God,” you would have said, “You’ve lost your mind.” You said, “No, I’m looking for justice. I’m looking for freedom. I’m looking for meaning. I’m looking for forgiveness.” Well, that’s exactly right. And where are all these things found? They’re found in Jesus, who is the King.

We live at a period in history where it is cool to be searching for these things; it isn’t cool to say we found them. Isn’t that interesting? I guarantee you: you can go back into your work in a lab, or your work in a factory or something, or having coffee in the morning—if you volunteer the fact that you are looking for answers for spiritual answers to the questions that are posed by life and by death, your friends will say, “Well, that’s very interesting. Tell me about that.” And they may be able to volunteer some of their search as well. You’ll probably get through the conversation with relative ease. Let me tell you how to stop the conversation in its tracks: do not go in and tell them that you’re searching; go in and tell them that you have found. Go in and tell them that you have found that Jesus is the King, and you’ve entered his kingdom by repentance and by faith. You’ve discovered that Jesus is the only Savior and that he has forgiven you of your sins and he’s made you a new person. No, it’s cool to be searching. It isn’t cool to be finding.

That’s why some of you remain outside of Christ: ’cause you’re too cool. You’re too cool. You want to be cool in the office, cool amongst the other attorneys, cool amongst the other guys that go out on Fridays. You don’t want to be one of the weird ones. You want to live in the secrecy of Joseph of Arimathea. You don’t want to come out into the open. And until you come out into the open, Jesus cannot truly be said to be your king.

Now, let’s think about this as we draw to a close. Instead of rounding out his Gospel, in the way that Matthew and Luke and John do, with the resurrection appearances, Mark determines to finish in such a fashion as to cause us to say, “Oh, you can’t finish like this. You can’t finish here.” But yes, he can, and yes, he does—forcing the reader to recognize that the resurrection freaked these ladies out.

These ladies were not expecting a resurrection. Even Martha, when Jesus explains to her that her brother Lazarus will rise, recorded for us in John 11, she says, “Oh yeah, I know that he will rise at the last day. We know there’s going to be something somewhere way out there.” Jesus says, “No, wait till you see what happens this afternoon. I am the resurrection and the life. He that believes in me, even though he dies, shall he live, and whosoever lives and believes in me will never die.” And then he says to her, “Do you actually believe this?”[18] That’s the question: “Do you actually believe this?” And these women didn’t really believe that, no more than the disciples, the men, believed it. If they believed it, they should have all been standing out there, waiting for the resurrection: “Hey! hey! Any time now, Jesus will be coming out! We’re ready to go hit Jerusalem with the news!” No! They’re hidden away, hiding with the doors locked, in case they get crucified as well.

See what Mark’s doing? He’s making it absolutely clear that these people were overwhelmed by the reality of the resurrection. It stunned them. They were dumbstruck. They couldn’t even say a word when they walked away from the tomb. They fled. They were overwhelmed. They were fearful. They were afraid. They said nothing. I think that’s exactly what he’s doing. I think he knows exactly why he finished at verse 8. I understand also why people would want to clean it up for him: “Oh, let’s have a little resurrection appearance. Come on, now. We know what else would happen.” Of course he knows everything else that happened! But he’s doing this.

You see, what he’s doing at this point in Jesus’ life is what Luke tells us at the very beginning of Jesus’ life: “And there were … shepherds abiding in the field[s], keeping watch over their flock[s] by night. And … [an] angel of the Lord [appeared to] them, and the glory of the Lord shone [a]round them: and they were sore afraid.”[19] They didn’t go, “Oh, that makes a lot of sense. This must be the incarnation! Look at that! Isn’t that amazing!” No, they were totally overwhelmed. And when the hymn writer puts it for us as children—you know,

While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
All seated on the ground,
An angel of the Lord came down
And glory shone around.

Second verse:

“Fear not,” said he, for mighty dread
Had seized their troubled mind[s].[20]

The revelation of God. The encounter with God. The fact that God is God. The godness of God. The holiness of God. The majesty of God. The eternity of God in relationship to our finitude. Goodness gracious, wouldn’t it be surprising if they weren’t dumbstruck, if they didn’t find themselves saying…

Now, let me finish. Their reaction—their reaction—forces us to say, “What is my reaction?” I’ve gone through the Gospel of Mark. We’ve gone through the Gospel of Mark. Here we are. Jesus has died for sin. Jesus has been resurrected. What are we going to do with it? It’s “the fear of the Lord” that “is the beginning of wisdom,”[21] not terror. Terror of God is the reaction of guilt in the face of his holiness. Terror only desires to run away from God and hide in despair. But when we think in terms of this kind of God-engendered fearfulness, to fear God and to know God and to love God and to serve God are really one in the same thing.

That’s why when John Newton, who was a blasphemous, slave-trading captain of ships, discovered God, what does he write? “[It was] grace that taught my heart to fear.” “To fear.” “And [that] grace my fears relieved.”[22] “You are God. You are risen. I am weak. Wow!”

Let me ask you… We’re done. Mark’s over. God looks at Newton, and he says, “Newton, I intend to eradicate everything in you that is sinful, and the reason that I’m going to do this is ’cause I love you so much. That’s why I’ve pursued you in your miserable boat, with your horrible slave trading and your horrible, ugly, filthy, swearing mouth: because I loved you. From eternity I loved you.” Now, does that make you sing, or does that make you fearful? That the God of the universe comes down out of eternity into time to seek us out and to save us.

No, it makes perfect sense to me. His ending is unusual. His ending is abrupt. His ending is purposeful. It’s ending with the question mark: Since Jesus is King, have I come to be entering his kingdom by repentance and faith? Since Jesus is Savior, have I come to him and confessed my sin? Since Jesus is Lord, have I come out from the secrecy and declared boldly that I am prepared to do what he says and to go where he goes, even if my very life is taken from me? Which, of course, it was for Peter, who was the source for Mark in writing his Gospel and in finishing in such an unusual manner.

Just a moment of silence.

And some of you have listened to the majority of these talks, and you’ve never actually turned to Jesus in repentance and in faith, and you could do so just today. You’ve found a reason to sidestep his claims, to explain away his calls, and he’s been so kind to you, so gracious, to sustain your life, to keep you, and to call out to you, so that even the fact that the thing ends in this way, begging the question “Where am I in this?”—and today you may turn to him in childlike trust and in believing faith: “Lord Jesus, I have rejected you. I have paid no attention to you. I have been doing my own thing quite happily. But I confess to you my selfishness and my sin, and I thank you that you died to be my Savior, and I welcome you. Make me a new creation. For I pray in your name. Amen.”

[1] 2 Timothy 3:16 (ESV).

[2] 2 Peter 1:21 (ESV).

[3] Christopher Ash, Hearing the Spirit: Knowing the Father through the Son (Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2011), 82.

[4] Donald Guthrie, New Testament Introduction: The Gospels and Acts (1965; repr., Chicago: Inter-Varsity, 1968), 75.

[5] C. E. B. Cranfield, The Gospel According to Saint Mark, Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 470–71.

[6] John 1:1 (ESV).

[7] Mark 1:27 (ESV).

[8] Mark 4:35–39 (ESV).

[9] Laurie Klein, “I Love You, Lord” (1978).

[10] Mark 35:39–40 (ESV).

[11] “Fairest Lord Jesus.”

[12] Mark 5:13–14 (ESV).

[13] Mark 5:30–31 (paraphrased).

[14] Mark 5:32 (ESV).

[15] Mark 1:15 (paraphrased).

[16] Mark 15:43 (ESV).

[17] John 3:2–5 (paraphrased).

[18] John 11:24–26 (paraphrased).

[19] Luke 2:8–9 (KJV).

[20] Nahum Tate, “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks” (1700).

[21] Psalm 111:10; Proverbs 9:10 (ESV). See also Proverbs 1:7.

[22] John Newton, “Amazing Grace” (1779).