 Okay, so briefly I'd like to talk about highlighting there in Nehemiah chapter 8, the last verse that we read verse 8. I wanted to get the context as are the priests that bring in the Bible in front of all the people and they're reading the Bible for the first time as a congregation in quite some time and the verse 8 there that I want to highlight it says, so they read in the book in the law of God distinctly and gave the sense and cause them to understand the reading. Sometimes when we read the Bible, if we're doing it on our own time or even if we're hearing it at church or listening to it on an audio Bible or something like that, oftentimes there's words or phrases specifically like numbers and measurements and things that we don't use in 2024 America that maybe we're not familiar with. I'll read for you Leviticus 19 verse 36. It says, just balances, just waits, adjust ifa, adjust hen shall ye have. I am the Lord your God which brought you out of the land of Egypt. So these an ifa or a hen, these are volumetric measurements that we don't necessarily know exactly what they mean, right? If you've ever met somebody from a different country or somebody that uses the metric system, sometimes we have this, you know, somebody might say, oh, I was driving 100 kilometers an hour and we don't really know how fast that is until they say, oh, 62 miles an hour. Oh, okay, I can relate to that, right? Or if you're talking about pesos or euros or the dollar or the yen, different currencies kind of translate differently to us. If somebody were to say, hey, I weigh 100 kilograms, we don't really know exactly off the top of our head, at least in America what that signifies, oh, that's 220 pounds, right? Somebody that's, you say somebody's six foot one, you know how tall they are, but if they say, well, I'm 185 centimeters, sometimes that goes over our heads, right? And so when we're reading the Bible, like it says there in Nehemiah 8 and verse 8, it says they read in the book in the law of God distinctly and gave the sense and cause them to understand the reading. We should also make sure that we take time to understand what those words mean, especially if they're a word that's not familiar to us or a word that is in a measurement that we don't use. So I kind of wanted to go over a few of those. Pastor was going over John chapter 12 on Wednesday night and that's the story where the costly bottle of ointment was poured on Jesus' feet and it says it was sold, it should have been, Judas says, why was this not sold for 300 pence? We don't really, we're not familiar with the pence, but we'll look at that and kind of get an idea and kind of show, make it more relatable to us, right? If you would, please turn to Ezekiel chapter 45. Ezekiel chapter 45. There's a couple of different types of measurements that I'd like to just go over. One would be the volumetric measurements, how a volume, you know, we would use gallons or quartz or pints. In the Bible it uses a different metric. Ezekiel chapter 45 and verse 11, verse 11 says, the ephah and the bath shall be of one measure, that the bath may contain the tenth part of an Homer and the ephah, the tenth part of an Homer. The measure thereof shall be after the Homer. So a Homer, if you look it up, a Homer is 50 gallons. So when it's talking about a Homer, we don't really recognize what that means, but if you say 50 gallons, you can imagine 5 or 10 5-gallon buckets or a 55-gallon drum of oil. The ephah and the bath, it says in the first part, shall be of one measure, meaning they're the same, and it says that the bath may contain the tenth part of an Homer. So a Homer, 50 gallons, a tenth of that is 5 gallons. So we can kind of get a feel for the metrics that the Bible is using here. There's another one that's talked about, I read it in the Leviticus, a hymn, that's just means simply a gallon. And it's important also that we pay attention here in Ezekiel 45 where you're at, it says Homer, H-O-M-E-R. I'll read for you in Exodus 16. It says a very similar word. It says, in Moses said unto Aaron, take a pot and put an Homer full of manna therein and lay it up before the Lord to be kept for your generations. This was the pot of manna that was to be stored in the Ark of the Covenant. And if you're just listening to it, Homer and Homer, they sound very similar. It wasn't a 55-gallon jar that they had that they stored in the thing. An Homer, O-M-E-R is a half gallon, two quarts. That makes sense when you're reading the context, but sometimes it helps to put it into measurements that we understand. Turn to Genesis chapter six. Please, Genesis chapter number six at the beginning of the Bible. This is the story of Noah and the Ark, Noah making the Ark of wood. And now we'll get into length measurements. A qubit is what the Bible talks about. And a qubit isn't something, it's typically from the elbow to the point of the finger, standardized at 18 inches or a foot and a half. And that's an metric that we can kind of comprehend, a foot and a half. We know how big a foot is, a foot and a half. It says in Genesis 6 and verse 14, make thee an ark of gopher wood. Room shall they'll make in the ark and shall pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make of it. The length of the ark shall be 300 qubits. The breadth of it 50 qubits and the height of it 30 qubits. So if we just go those 350 and 30 qubits, sometimes that can go over our head. But if we, okay, that's 450 feet, that's 75 foot wide, and that's 45 feet tall. Okay, we can kind of understand that in metrics that we use on a daily basis. There's also a metric that the Bible uses called a rod. That's talked about in Ezekiel and also in Revelation kind of describing the temple. A rod is typically 10 and a half feet. So that's kind of gives you measurements when you're reading through those. Another one in the book of Acts, when Paul's on his journey on the boat and they're about to be shipwrecked. Some of the people that are familiar with boating and it may be familiar with this term, but I wasn't. Acts 27 verse 28, it says, and sounded and found it 20 fathoms. And when they had gone a little farther, they sounded again and found it 15 fathoms. They're coming up to an island or to a piece of land and they wanna make sure that they're not getting too shallow, so that they're gonna strike ground on the boat that they're on. Well, a fathom, I don't really understand what that is. If you look it up, a fathom is six feet. So, okay, 20 fathoms, it's 120 foot deep of water. 15 fathoms, they're 90 foot deep water, it's getting shallower and shallower. So, we can kinda get the sense of it from the context, but oftentimes it helps to look it up and really put it into terms that we can understand. Another one that's interesting in John chapter 6 is a furlong. A furlong is a word we don't use much anymore, but that means an eighth of a mile. So, an eighth of a mile, the Bible says in John 6 and verse 19, it says, when they had rode about five and 20 or 30 furlongs, they say Jesus walking on the sea and drawing nigh unto the ship, and they were afraid. So, 25 to 30 furlongs, that's a little over three miles to almost four miles. Furlongs, we don't quite comprehend, but when we put it in miles, we can understand what a mile is, how long three miles is. Turn to Matthew chapter 20, please, Matthew chapter number 20. The last type of metric I wanna look at, one that we're not familiar with in the Bible terms, but we can put it into terms that we are familiar with, is in Matthew chapter 20, one example of it. So in the Bible, weight measurements is another measurement that the Bible talks about, the shekel, talent is a weight measurement. A piece of silver is equated to a shekel of silver, and that's a weight measurement, how much something weighs. So this is how people trade, in this example, currency, and it was a weighed out amount of silver, typically. So in Matthew 20 and verse one, it says, for the kingdom of heaven is likened to a man that is a householder, which went out early in the morning to hire laborers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the laborers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. Now when we see, when we read a penny a day, we're thinking of the one cent coin with a Blinken's face on it, right? Well, a penny in the Bible is here just described as a day's wage. So in the United States, average annual income is about 60,000 plus or minus. If you break that down into a daily wage, 52 weeks in the year and a five day work week, a penny would be about 230 bucks. So $230 is about what they had agreed to as their daily wage here, putting it into 2024 US dollars. That example I talked about earlier when it says in John chapter 12, Judas Iscariot after this ointment was poured on Jesus' feet, he asked why was not this ointment sold for 300 pence and given to the poor. A pence, in the same way that when we talk about our penny, our one cent penny, we say, well, instead of saying I have seven pennies, we say we have seven cents, right? In Britain, when they use the pound as the measurement, they also have pennies, but they don't say they have seven pennies, they say they have seven pence. So pence is just multiple pennies in the Bible. So a penny again at $230, if you do the math on that 300 pence, this ointment that he estimated its value, that's $69,000. That really kind of sits a little different when you read the story, right? And the Bible does say it was a very costly ointment and so on, but it kind of puts into perspective in numbers that we can understand and comprehend what these mean. Another one, again, the shekel. So a shekel is also equated in the Bible, shekel or piece of silver, they're used interchangeably. A shekel is a little less than half an ounce. So US ounce, 16 ounces in a pound, 0.4 ounces is the exact measurement for a shekel. So if you take silver just as a metric of worth, and that whole pence was done in weight as well. But this silver, $25 an ounce is what it's currently trading for today in America, that equates to a shekel of silver being worth $10 in today's standards. So in Matthew 26, I'll just read for you here in verse 15, it says, and said unto them, this is Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed Christ. What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenant it with him for 30 pieces of silver, 30 pieces at $10 a piece. That's $300 is what he sold out Jesus Christ for, $300. So when you talk about these numbers in the Bible and we can obviously kind of get the context gives us some clues as to how much or how little these values are worth. But it does help translating it into terms that we're familiar with, right? The whole idea between centimeters and inches or centimeters and feet, we can comprehend typically in America, we can comprehend feet easier than centimeters or millimeters. It's not a metric we're familiar with. And like the Bible said, like we read earlier in Nehemiah chapter 8, when we're reading in the Bible, we ought to make sure that we fully understand and that we fully understand what we're reading. That we can get the full sense of what we're reading so that we have the best chance at understanding clearly what the Bible is trying to say, not interjecting our own understanding into it. Matthew 13, we'll close here Matthew 13 and verse 19. This is the parable of the sower. And Jesus is explaining the parable to the sower, specifically one part of this parable to his disciples afterwards. He's excited to hear you the parable, hear you therefore, excuse me, the parable of the sower. When anyone heareth the word of the kingdom and understandeth it not, then comeeth the wicked one and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the wayside. And specifically this is talking about when somebody's getting the gospel and they understand it not. That's akin, that allows the wicked one, the devil, to come and take that seed out of their heart, take that word of God out of their heart. And when we're reading the Bible for ourselves or when we're listening to it, if there's words that we don't understand or there's sayings or phrases that maybe we don't understand, we should. It would help us to get the sense of the passage to look up those words and fully understand what those words are meaning in terms that we understand. I've always kind of read through the Bible and not always understood what a pence was and what a pound was and a talent and so on. A talent, by the way, I didn't say that. A talent is 75 pounds, 75 pounds. So that kind of gives that metric there as well. But yeah, so make sure when we're reading our Bible we look up the words that maybe we don't understand so that we can get the full meaning and understand it more completely. Let's go ahead and close in prayer.