I think so. That's it and everything? Yeah, yeah. The displays are working. Yeah.  And so that would keep it? Because you can just drag. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Not that you could drag much. But I don't think. Oh, yeah. Fantastic. I just want to make sure you're okay. We'll have a good talk. Yeah. Thank you. No worries. Okay. I think we are good to start. It's too. You're here for looking at, you know. You're here for looking at. You're here for looking at. You're here for looking at. You're here for looking at. You're here for looking at.  But I should be audible. I don't think the mics really necessary, the microphones. So how are you enjoying the conference so far? Good. The city. I'm guessing most of you are already from here. Well, this is my first trip here. First time I've been to London. Love it. It's, it's, it's. And yeah, this is by the way, this is my first time in snow. So it's been even more awesome.  I'm enjoying it right now. Okay. So, so I'm the guy on the left, the right. I'm getting, I'm getting it mixed up. Yeah. So I'm the one on the right. I work as an engineering manager at Accel event. We are a completely remote company. We have presence in India, US, and well, since we are remote, we can have presence anyway, you know. So for example, Nathan over there works from Japan. And we have various team members from US, from Africa, from, well, no one from Europe yet. Yeah. So I work as an engineering manager since about a year. And it's been my job, you know, even before I was formerly an engineering manager, it was, it's always been my job to look at how do we improve contributions. And we'll talk about that, you know. So we'll talk about why should contribution be important to you. So I'll put it in terms of, you know, why is it important to us, you know. So essentially, more contributions mean less work for others and for you. So maybe I should have started off with this. How many of you are developers here? Okay. Almost, I think a good majority. So as a developer, you would know the value of reusability. You know, you solve the problem once. You don't have to keep solving it. That's the real value. And if you can put it someplace, you know, GitHub or Drupal or ORG, then just reuse it later on. It's probably not a surprise to anyone that contributors have a stronger voice in the project. You know, Drupal has sometimes been criticized for being a democracy. Well, but that's that, you know. Contributors do have a stronger voice in the direction of the overall project, you know. It, ranging from Drupal core, but also to some of the popular contributor modules.  Contributing helps you learn Drupal faster. I can't begin to count how many people have learned Drupal who are excelling in their jobs right now because they began, because they started out by contributing. I just jumped in, like, you know, a few years back, I just jumped in the issue queues and started contributing and that helped me learn Drupal 8. So I started by contributing to Drupal 8. And that helped me learn Drupal 8 better. It's, I mean, like, the contributions have scaled up since then, but also, I didn't say my work quality has won it. I have a, I have, what's the word? I can think of problems in terms of, not just in terms of, you know, that this is how I would solve it in Drupal, but also in terms of this is how I would solve it and solve this problem in other frameworks, you know, because it's Drupal 8, right? It's a bit of symphony, but that's another story. And this could be true for your team as well. We, you know, more on this later, you know, how do we encourage contributions at Accelerant? And then I'll tell you about how it helps all the, all my team members, all my colleagues to really excel, to really learn, to learn in the real world, not just in a closed cabin, you know, not be limited by geography or by, you know, not just sitting in a cubicle. From a business point of view, more contributions mean more business. Again, I have a few points about that. Well, Drupal community members are good people. You probably already have experience about that. You know, I don't need to really talk about that. And there are a lot of other perks, perks like this, for example. I was in a session just before this by Eli and he mentioned, you know, how Namneet, him contributing to Umami, I don't know if you were there in that session, but Umami is like a demo profile that's being built out, you know, to showcase Drupal capabilities better. And how his contributions to Umami have helped him receive a scholarship to attend DrupalCon Nashville. And well, I mean, that's true for everyone, you know. So I attended DrupalCon Baltimore on a similar grant last year. And hopefully I will, you know, I will attend Nashville as well. And it all comes down to this, I think, you know, social capital. And the definition says that it's a, well, the definition is right over there. You can read it. But it's basically kind of an intangible, I mean, the best way I can put it is, you know, and I'm really humbled by this, you know, even if I don't sound it. When I walk into an event, you know, a conference and, you know, I get a really strong, good feeling that I'm immediately recognized. I mean, I just walked in today morning with the first face I saw, Vijay, by the way, like we were friends meeting after a long time. And that's true for, I mean, just walking through the corridor over here, and this happens all the time at DrupalCon as well. The Drupal camps we organize in India over there and DrupalCon as well. This was kind of fortunate, the photo you see over here. So DrupalCon Asia a couple of years back, there was a panel about, well, it was a couple of years back and I forgot what the panel was about. But yeah, I was invited by, you know, really prominent members like, that's Mike Lam, Holly and Jam. So by the way, Jam is here right now in the email. So these are the kind of benefits you get. The connections you make, they're really invaluable. And again, there is no shortage of stories. Any community member I talked to, there is a story after story about how Drupal has improved the lives. I mean, were you in the keynote today morning? It was all about that, really. And from a more business point of view, there is a Drupal.org marketplace, the contributions are tracked on Drupal.org in the form of issue credits and everything. And that helps you put on this ladder, which means, like I mentioned earlier, it just means more business. So this is what Accelerance page looks like on Drupal.org. And you can see that for anyone who is involved in a business to do anything, which has anything to do with Drupal, this page just shows all the information that's immediately valuable to your customer. So these are case studies and general metadata. But if you go down and you see that the contributions section starts over here, and Drupal.org does quite a good job of trying to track almost all contributions that you make to the project. They do a good job of tracking it. Like from over here, project supported, and this credited fees you see at way down to the bottom. All that is automated. So anyone who contributes to one of those projects or commits something, gets credited on the issue, it comes up in a listing over here. And of course, there are things that are not automatically tracked, and then of course, we mentioned all of that over here. So this immediately becomes extremely valuable to any prospective customer, and to an agency that's really invaluable. And of course, this presentation is mostly targeted towards agencies, but these points, they're generally applicable. They apply to you, if you're an individual, if you're in a design studio, all of these apply. Similarly, you know, going on the trend of the social capital we were talking about, this is, this chart is from the State of Drupal Contributions blog post, Drees writes every year. So this is from the 2017, and you can see that many organizations, many countries, listed over here in the rank of the contributions that they make towards Drupal. So let's, I mean, all this is good. You being in the session probably already says that you recognize why contribution is important. But let's talk about challenges, because it's not as easy as it looks, and especially in an agency, you have challenges with deadlines. It's very, very common working in a team that, you know, you come across a bug in a contributed module, or you have to write a module to solve something. You just do it now, just fix it now, and we'll contribute it as a patch later, or we'll contribute the module later. We used to do that, and we have, we have attempted to solve that problem, and I'll explain more about that later. Then of course there are general issues surrounding the skills, the awareness in how to get people started. It's a very intimidating thing, right? It's a very intimidating thing, you know, just landing on Drupal.org, finding the issue queues, and then just jumping into a discussion. It's not as easy as it looks, you know.  It might be like filing a bug in JIRA, and eventually it should be.  And then there is that hurdle of connections, you know, like whom do I talk to? You need that support, you need that initial mentoring to get over your fears, over your reservations, and you know, just go in, post a patch, or post a problem in the issue queue, or go help out someone in an online forum like Stack Overflow, for example. So all these challenges exist all the time. And then of course, there are challenges in just contributing code. And this is something I see all the time. Don't think of it as open source code. When you're working on a Drupal project, and you face issues with the code, or one of the contrib modules, don't think of it as, you know, that, okay, I'm contributing. Just think of it as an upstream code base, you know, something that you're using. And all you have to do is create an issue. It's just, it's a very tiny shift in mindset, but it's actually very powerful. Because when you start thinking about writing code this way, contributing code this way, you're not, you're not intimidated anymore. You know, it's just a line of code. You know, somebody else has written it, somebody who's equally likely to make a mistake. There's nothing wrong, you know, I mean, if you're working on your project, you wouldn't have reservations to file an issue in JIRA, right? So why would you have reservations to file an issue in, on Drupal Autology issue queues? So this is a reservation, this is a mindset I've been trying to change in my organization, and everywhere in the meetups I organize, and the sprints and everything, that bring this into your workflow. And again, I'm afraid I won't be able, there's a demonstration actually, but since this is recorded, I won't be able to show it over here, I'll be able to show it later on, you know, one-on-one, about how we, how we encourage this, you know. So basically we have recorded a few videos about how we work, how do we contribute. So like one of those videos is about how we contribute, how do we, like I say over here, you know, just treat this as an upstream project, and contribute while you're working on the job. But in that I'm using a live project, and that's why it's internal. So I don't want to get in this recording. Second thing, well, another thing in dealing with this challenge is the challenge of culture, you know. And I think, you know, Ryan, in the morning, he summed it up very nicely by saying, you know, it's like do well and do good.   And that applies to individuals as well. You know, somebody who is contributing a lot of time towards open source projects, they shouldn't be, you know, like, they shouldn't have to go hungry, you know, like I'm taking the extreme example I know. But yeah, so do well and do good. So doing good is, of course, you know, how do you build this culture of doing good and at the same time, keeping well. And there are a few ways, you know. And this is mostly experimentation, experimented on our side as well. You know, this is not, it's a very complex problem to solve. It's not something that, you know, we just decided that we are going to solve it and it's done. We have taken many steps. But I think it all starts out by saying that, you know, the informal activity of contribution, you know, getting on issue queues and going to events and talking to people, make it formal.  Measure those contributions, you know. So Drupal.org, one of the biggest successes of the Drupal project as a whole is the issue-created system. You know, how it encourages organizations to contribute more, how it provides value to the individual contributors and everything. And get the whole team to buy-in. I mean, of course, you know, you can't force someone to work in an open source project unless they want to. So, you know, we have to obtain that buy-in, you know. And that's again by showing the benefits and I mean, of course, I have a completely different deck for, you know, why you should be contributing. I didn't go too deep into that over here. And so what do we do? You know, the policies I mentioned, we form policies to encourage all kinds of contribution. You know, really, what I just said. So contributing code, we have KPIs around this. Well, actually, I'm a little mixed about that. It's not a KPA anymore. It's like, you know, it's a different term, but we incentivize all kinds of contributions, you know. And since we are at a stage where we, like, you know, where we are getting, you know, where we are just getting our feet wet, we don't have like strict control around this.  You get one point on that impact scale, you know, the scale we have internally. Attending events. We have a very generous travel sponsorship policy and which, you know... So by the way, I love to travel. In Accelerant, I have... Okay, I'm not going to attempt to count the countries, but I think the only continent I've not been so far is South America. Well, except Antarctica. I've not been there as well. So it's really, you know, like, I mean, I've always dreamed of traveling to Europe or to London, of course, and places like Australia, U.S. and I've been able to do that.  Every year I've been attending DrupalCon in North America. Europe, there's always a scheduling conflict. I'll be missing this year's Drupal Europe as well. So we incentivize these events. So for example, we have a policy that if you're speaking, if your session gets selected at an event, Accelerant sponsors the entire... All the expenses on a trip. And similarly, there are similar policies for domestic events as well. We have, like, around four to five camps within India and meetups and everything. We have similar metrics to try writing blog posts. Nathan over here, for example, you know, we worked on a model where we incentivize writing blog posts, technical blog posts, and speaking, like I just mentioned, you know, if your session gets selected, if you're speaking at an event, all the expenses are met. Participating in online forums, again, that is tracked, and I'll show. Yeah, I'll just show right now. So this is actually a target of Drupal Association as well. How do you track all kinds of contributions? And we do a great job at tracking code contributions. Not so great job at tracking non-code contributions, you know, like organizing events, volunteering at events and all that. That's, I mean, like, on the scale of Drupal Association, there are a lot of challenges. But at least for ourselves, we have built something called Contrib Tracker. We built this in one of our hackathons. And put very simply, it just tracks, you know, whatever contribution you do. It's simple so far. But the impact is quite powerful. So you have things like code contributions, event contributions, non-code contributions. These are, like, on a very, very broad level, these are the classifications we have. Oh, by the way, this is open source. You can actually go to the link right now, www.contrib.accelerant.com, and you can see this page, the one you're seeing on the screen. And the site itself is open source. So I can share the link later. You can just clone it and set it up, and you can have this running on your systems as well. So, well, you can create event contributions and non-code contributions. So I am delivering a presentation over here, and one tomorrow as well. So I would go over here, and I would file it as an event contribution. If I am organizing a meetup, that's the event contribution. Non-code contributions are, like, helping out people on Stack Overflow and all that. And code contributions, well, that's the whole magic of this project, that it tracks it automatically. So, I mean, who doesn't use Slack, right? So this is what happens. You know, anyone who posts a comment, posts a patch on Rukul.gov. So right now it's only Rukul.gov. We have plans to, like, implement the same thing for GitHub eventually. So this is what happens if you post a patch. So, like, for example, Nikun's colleague of mine, he posted a comment on, he actually posted a patch over here. So it just says that he posted a patch on so-and-so issuing Rukul.gov with one patch, and changed the status to needs that need. And he immediately asked me, can anyone help me over here? You know, can someone test it? And well, the conversation goes on, and you know, this is what we do every day. So what changed? In our workflow, like I said, we treat all code as upstream, you know, and that's, like, you know, the solution to this problem is really a simple thing. You know, just treat it as upstream. So we find a bug in one of the core modules, in Rukul core, or in one of the contrived modules. We create a patch straight away. We don't wait for that. It's not like we, so, you know, actually to help that, we adopt all the engineering best practices, you know. So Composer, you know, how many of you are familiar with Composer, right?   You have to write a patch. And if you're writing a patch in peer review, it's caught over there. You know, why are you writing a local patch? Contribute it on Rukul Autowazhi. Create an issue for that. Post it over there and use it from there. This is what we do. And the same goes for contract modules. If, so, for new team members, this is caught in peer review, but you know, there are enough of your team members who just go and create it. So for example, you know, few slides back, we saw that accelerants, yeah, project supported. So a lot of these, the modules that you see over here came out of such tasks. A few examples like WordPress migration from the VTAT module. For example, that's the recording I'm talking about. That's what I use for my own example of how do you contribute while working. So essentially, in that screencast, the series of screencasts, I notice a bug in my module. And then I record myself fixing it the right way you should. Block and then machine. I think, you know, almost all of these modules, they came out this way. You know, there was a problem that we needed to solve instead of writing a custom module. We created a contract module on day one. Even before the first commit we made it. We planned it out. And we created a project and then treated it as a contract module from day one. So coming back to this. Yeah, so this is how we work. And this is the reason why our Slack channels are always full of these kind of conversations. That's simply because, you know, any problem we face with Drupal core or contract modules, we fix it right then and there. So this is what the website looks like. You know, if you log into phone, if you look at the website right now, this is what it looks like. Except the admin bar, of course. I'm logged in as admin right now. But I'll just do a very, very quick walkthrough of, you know, what this website looks like. So like I said, most of it is automated. Anyone creates an issue. It creates a road over here saying that, okay, for example, put an issue or, you know, the title is actually the comment that they place. And so we don't really worry about the code contributions anymore. It's all automatic. Nobody has to go through a form like, you know, like, you know, nobody goes through this form and fills it out and says, so this actually encourages a lot. You know, one of the things we noticed when we tried to measure contributions, you know, I mentioned that we measure contributions on a quarterly basis. We don't want anyone to go through, you know, like additional work in, you know, like filing that, okay, I wrote 10 patches. Here are the links. We don't have, we don't want anyone to do that. So we wrote a tool for that. And of course there are things like where you really can't write a tool, you know, like volunteering at an event or speaking at an event. So for that, you simply go over here and you log in through your excellent ID and it has Google plus Google authentication. And you would create one of, either one of the event contribution or non-code contribution. So let's see, I'm speaking in this event, right? So I'll just, what's the name of this session? Okay, I probably already have this. Created this. We create events like this, Google Camp London, for example, and session. So they're like, I mean, of course, all of this is controlled. It's a simple site build, you know. What kind of contribution, you know, you did over here. Technology, it's Drupal in this case. Even contribution link, I can paste in the URL to my session and everything. And this is today. So I'm saying that everywhere. And that's it. So this is what we expect all people to do, you know, while delivering your session. And a quick look at what non-code contributions look like. So again, you know, it could be like, something like Stack Overflow, for example, you know, we right now have to blog in Stack Overflow. Of course, it can be expanded for more.  Said that, few comments, and the author. Moderator comments are, you know, only a moderator can see that. I can see that right now because I'm logged in. So yeah, that's about it. All of these contributions get logged. And on a quarterly basis, we build out a report. And we're working on better reports, but right now this is what it looks like. I can, like, really drill down, you know, like who contributed between these two dates and, you know, how many patches, how many files. And we are improving the reports. So like, one of the plans in future is to actually have kind of like a nice dashboard, you know, for Accelerant as a whole, how many patches did we contribute? How many team members have been contributing to various, how many projects? You know, things like that. And, you know, maybe sometime soon we'll actually implement that. So I'm trying to find my, yeah. So that's it really. In a summary, how do you sustainably contribute? It just boils down to three main things, you know, understand the benefits. If you lose the sight of benefits, you can't contribute for long, you know. You will feel demotivated pretty soon. Then once you understand the benefits, once you have made sure your team has understood the benefits, build a culture around contributions, you know. Again, it could be as simple as just treating it as upstream. You know, you don't have to get very fancy about it. And then, of course, measure and improve. That's it, three simple things. And thank you all for coming to the session. Of course, you know, if you have any questions, you can ask here. Or you can talk to me at Hussain Web. I'm quite active on Twitter. Any questions? Yeah. It's just a point. If anybody works for a company that doesn't allow them time to contribute back to the community, the change in the tax laws two years ago allows a company to charge, I think, 25% of their workers' time for R&D and use it as a tax right. So they can claim it back against tax. So, I mean, they can use that 25% for community work. And effectively reduce their tax. All right. Is that for UK? That's for UK. Everybody's been working on it for a big multinational. There's a big project, a really huge multinational mapping company. And they now, all their research on R&D and use it now tax-free. That's amazing. It's basically a tax. They can claim it against tax. So, yeah, agencies... Monetary benefit, yeah. This is more like a monetary benefit. Yeah, but that's one of the reasons a lot of agencies want to go into it. Yeah. I mean, I work for an agency and I work for a team. Really? Yeah. Yeah. It's not... You can't imagine an agency like that succeeding anymore. You know, where... Again, I'm not trying to imply that you have to go out of your way to contribute. We all need to stay healthy. We all need to keep being well. If you want to keep doing good, they go together. It's not one or the other. You can't help... You can't sustain it if you just pick one over the other. And you... These kind of benefits certainly motivate. Okay. What are the barriers of R&D? It's something I've worked with a lot of developers on. They come with different backgrounds. They haven't used R&D before. So, they're good developers, but they're just starting finding styles and introducing them to Drupal.org. They haven't seen that kind of patch-based workload because they use things like GitHub. And I think that's quite a big barrier in the moment to getting more people involved. And I know there's quite a talk around moving Drupal.org to something like GitHub. I think the idea was to get lab instance, but that seems to die down now. Well, actually, it just... From what I know, it just had its recent update that it was kind of tentatively locked at Atlation. At Atlation. The company behind Jira. So, we would be using Bitbucket. But it's not a final decision. And since we made this call that, okay, we'll use Bitbucket, I think GitLab has reached out to the community again, to Drupal Association and see how can we address some of the challenges that you're facing. So, it could, again, go either of these ways. It could either be Bitbucket or GitLab. But there is a... Yeah, there is a deadline on this. So, hopefully, I mean, I do hope it will happen. And I'm quite positive it will. But let's see if we meet the deadline. So, there is a deadline to make a final decision. It's like we are tentatively going to Bitbucket, but we still have this last offer from GitLab and if we can make it work with them. GitLab has a very strong history of contributing to open source as well. I mean, GitLab, you know that it's completely open source and they're completely open source themselves. So, it would be a very good fit, but there were some technical issues that we couldn't get around. And they have actually showed willingness. So, I heard this on a podcast, actually. And the way... I'm sorry, I'm forgetting the name. Hestanet, I think, you know, that's what happens if you're contributing too long. You know, you remember the D.O. names more than actual names. But I think, like, Hestanet, in the podcast, he was talking about this and said that, you know, they announced this that they're going with Bitbucket. And the GitLab CEO, he posted a comment saying that, you know, we are willing to do whatever it takes to make this work. Yeah. So, it's not died down and yeah, I completely understand it. It's a huge barrier, you know, the patch-based workflow against the pull request thing. So, hopefully, that'll address it. But as for the previous thing, you know, we have a very strong mentoring practice at Accident as well. So, I mean, of course, that's a more overarching thing that's mentoring in all aspects of the career. But there is a huge component of contributing to open source as well over there. Have you heard of the Drupal GIF initiative? Yes. Just vaguely. For those who don't know, it's an initiative launched, I think, two years ago that Drupal agencies have slash Drupal GIF on their website and exposing all the things you do you give back to Drupal, including modules and Drupal code contribution but also events. And I see a lot of overlap with what you build. It might be nice to not only have this information in your company but also expose it on the Drupal GIF. So, right now, the reports aren't as pretty. That's the only reason, you know, that's the only thing we are working on and I do believe we have a Drupal GIF page, right? Nathan, sorry to put you on the spot here but we do have a Drupal GIF page. Yes, we do. Yes. Did you talk a lot about contributing to the organization? Do you have a reference client in terms of actually for projects you've worked on with clients do you talk to them about how bits of their project you've been able to contribute back or do you just keep it internal? It's a mixed answer. So, being an agency the clients we have so we are kind of picky about our clients as well in a way. So, the clients we have are already on board with this contribution. So, well, you know, I'm actually a little afraid giving out the names here because well, I mean, Stanford University, Strowman Open Source, then Red Hat, like they are an open source. So, well, I'm not sure if I follow the question correctly. So, are you saying that do they see the benefits? Oh, yeah, of course. So, since this is in our practice, it's part of our day-to-day routine that we, when we are working on a project, at the same time we are filing issues, you know, we are pulling in patches from the, so it's quite apparent all the levels that, you know, from the team lead on the client side to the manager level, they are all familiar with this, that, you know, that we are contributing and of course, you know, a lot of our clients are, like I said, they are already strong in the open source ethos, so they are, it's not a, it's never been a problem for us. It's like to sell this idea of contributing back to open source. That's the way business is done right now, you know, it's like the whole, you know, like get approval before doing anything or before releasing any code is, it is not, I mean, like, you know, we do understand that there is a question of intellectual property, but then we know that where do we draw the line, you know, that this is a piece of code that could be useful to everybody and our clients understand that, you know, we are using code from open source community. It's only right to give back. Give back what we code, you know, I mean, of course, there are custom things which don't make sense and of course, that's that's still not. All right, if there are any more questions, you can always find me at Hossein Web or around the event. Thank you, thank you all for coming. There's a yacking about through and action contribution stuff. Sounds good. Did you get the mic? I'm not sure there's a mic here. There are a few stickers if anyone's interested. Yeah, just a couple. I didn't carry much. Well, I have been lucky a couple of local communities generally started to stick which is great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Oh, thank you. Thank you for coming. I hope you enjoyed it. Yeah, it's a shame. It would be nice to get the government to do that for you. Oh, that's on freelance. So you don't plan to do that? Yeah. So we can say, yeah, we'll do this in a little time. Yeah, we do. Should we? Or would Universal be the kingdom? It's a thing we wouldn't be able to do. Well, it's going to happen. It's going to happen. They can't get rid of it. I'll do a picture of my robe on the silver one. Thanks. When you mean you haven't, your cunas? Yeah. She's the one I haven't. I think so. What's the kind of deadline for that decision to move into something? I don't remember the dates. It's a couple of months. Yeah, it's been discussed. Are you going to do that? I'll work with Big Bucket.  It was during a link with that last year. What's the, what's the, Confluence. Confluence. Everything was linked together. And it was annoying me because I'd do something like that. I have to create it. Again. In another thing, I'm familiar with Big Bucket. I just want Big Bucket so much easier for you. You've got a cookie. I don't know why. It's simple. And when you, Oh, yeah. The integration is really strong. Yeah. Just link it to the comment. You just had a bad fix. That fix is that issue. The issue is closed, yeah. An issue gets turned into, you know, somebody here reviews it. I'm committed. Push to like, side-back. Side-back. Actually, I'm happy with the dead-offs. Wrong. The wrong base. Committed to the right base. But we told you. You didn't realize we were working, you didn't have to change. Granted. Some people are that fun. Yeah, right. Really? Or just saying that? No, just tell you to stop. All of your content, miss all words, or visuals. Well, it could have been bad, but it wouldn't have been so bad to have miss papers. It's very good. Crap swag, this is your marketing department. You should have been fired. That sign that your session went well is that there's lots of questions in the end. Yeah, and the work. It's a good measure. Say hi. Say hi. Say hi. Say hi. Say hi to Hussein Uncle. Hi, Hussein Uncle. I don't see anyone here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My kids. I don't see anyone here. Hussein, tell them about building your contribution culture. I don't know. We're keeping it here. We are keeping it here. We are keeping it here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Don't you have anything else? Don't you have anything else? No. Cheese. Cheese. It's so good. We're all going to need to join you. So you're going to be in that room too? Yeah. Let's go. Let's go child. Let's go tell them again. We're not talking. We'll grab them and we'll hold them.


in Luke chapter 18 and or continue our study, our verse by verse here in Luke. And so let's read verses 28 through 30 and I'm gonna give you a background, a context and then we'll move into those verses but reading verses 28 through 30, Luke writes, then Peter said, see we have left all and followed you. So he said to them, I shortly I say to you there is no one who has left house or parents or brothers or wife or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who shall not receive many times more in this present time and in the age to come eternal life. Now what would prompt the apostle Peter to make that kind of statement? We have left all and followed you. Well all we need to do is remember what has just taken place. What has just taken place is a rich young ruler who has approached the Lord Jesus Christ and has asked him a question. He has said, good master, good teacher, what good thing should I do to inherit eternal life? And so Jesus had responded to that question. The young man was asking a very valid and a very important question. How can I enter into the kingdom of God? And as the Lord Jesus was speaking to him he spoke concerning the things that pertain to him. Seeing that he was a rich young ruler especially a ruler that means that he was a synagogue official. He had religious background and that's what he did. Jesus spoke to him in a religious way. He said you know the commandments and then he gave to him a few of the commandments and he said these are things that you ought to be doing. Obey the law of Moses. Well obviously Jesus would say obey the law of Moses because it would reveal to this young man that he was still empty even though he's attempted to do that. Which was the response. These things I've done since I was a youth. And again remember with me I shared how Matthew had said that the man continued by saying what do I still or what do I yet lack? In other words I've done these things, the things that you've said from the time I was a child and still there's an emptiness in me and that's why Jesus went on to say to him well go sell all that you possess and give to the poor and then come and follow me and you'll have riches in heaven. And the man at that point understood completely what Jesus was saying. He was saying that to follow me is gonna require some sacrifice on your part. You're gonna have to let go of the things that you trust most in which is your riches. And he went away greatly, greatly saddened because he was a very, very rich young man. Verse 23 says when he heard this he became very sorrowful for he was very rich. And so in verse 24 when Jesus saw that he became very sorrowful he said how hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. And those who heard it said who then can be saved. But he said the things which are impossible with men are possible with God. You see if you let go of that which is earthly he was saying you will have that which is heavenly. And this man because he was very rich didn't want to relieve himself of those things. And it was his wealth and his possessions that was holding him back and we saw that last time. And so as this is taking place naturally the question is gonna be asked well who can be saved because the rich people have such great advantages. Well with men it's impossible. Man cannot save himself but with God all things are possible because it's God who changes the sinful heart. It's God who is able to save helpless men and helpless women. And so with man it's impossible. This young man isn't gonna be able to keep the commandments. He's not gonna be able to perfect himself to become righteous enough in his own attempts to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Therefore he has to release that which is holding him back. And so man can't save himself with man it's impossible. But with God all things are possible. Salvation originates with God and God is the one who will grant that to us. And so as this is taking place and Jesus has just told this young man to let go of everything he has the Apostle Peter who's standing there listening to what Jesus says immediately interrupts if he will again and he says see we've left all and followed you. And so he's following, he's tracking with the Lord Jesus Christ but now he wants to make it very clear that he and the others who are with him have left everything to pursue the Lord. And they're basically wanting to know what is it that we're gonna have because we have left all and we have followed you. In Matthew chapter four verses 18 through 22. Matthew records Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee. He saw two brothers Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake for they were fishermen. Come follow me Jesus said and I will make you fishers of men. At once they left their nets and followed him. Going on from there he saw two other brothers James, the son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee preparing their nets. Jesus called them and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. So Peter is speaking concerning himself and the other men who have given up. Now obviously Judas is part of the 12 that he's speaking concerning but at this point Peter doesn't realize that Judas' heart is not with the Lord. He's speaking for the Apostle so and he's saying we have left all indeed they had and they'd been pursuing the Lord and following him. So we have given up things. What do we gain for giving up these things? And I want you to see Jesus' response in verse 29. He said to them assuredly I say to you there's no one who has left house or parents or brothers or wife or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who shall not receive many times more in this present time and in the age to come eternal life. You haven't given up anything. You're gaining everything. I think if we were to understand that you didn't lose you won when you came to Christ your life would be more joyful. I heard somebody giving his testimony once and he said you know when I came to Christ I really gave up a lot. He said I gave up alcoholism. I gave up ulcers. I gave up a rocky marriage. I gave up misery. I gave up all of that. He said just think about all I've given up and really in reality that's pretty much what it is isn't it? I mean we gave up what? We gave up a life of sin. We've given it all up but we've gained so much. We've given it all up. What did we have in the first place? Even this rich young guy had everything but had nothing. He was empty. He had everything but he had nothing. Why was he pursuing a rabbi named Jesus an itinerant preacher who didn't really even have a synagogue that he could say he was a master over. He was someone who went from place to place preaching and ministering and all even as Jesus later on says he says, Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Jesus would go into it as he's doing right now here in the Gospel of Luke. He's going into Jerusalem and he's gonna end up spending his time sleeping in the garden of Gethsemane because he doesn't have a place to rest. That's called his own. His followers would provide for him in every way and yet here's this rich man, this guy who's got everything, this man who is absolutely beyond our comprehension rich who comes to this man who has nothing and he says, listen I wanna know how I can get to heaven. I wanna know how I can have eternal life. I believe that you more than likely can supply that answer. Now I'm a religious guy and I'm a young guy. I've got all the advantages of youth and wealth but I really don't have satisfaction in my soul and I'd like to know how I can have that. Well, you know the commandments, keep them. I've been doing that and I'm still empty. Well you've got an anchor, it's called your money. Get rid of it. Give to the poor because in doing so you'll fulfill Leviticus 19, 18 which is to love your neighbor as yourself. You'll care for that person and I'll provide for you. I'll make sure you have your daily bread. I'll make sure you're cared for. You're gonna have to put faith and trust in me. Are you willing to do that? No. No, I was hoping you'd give me a few commands or something I could do for myself so I could gain this. No, you've gotta let go in order to have. Many, many, many years ago now, not thousands but a hundred and some. It was a wrestler, a European champion, came to the United States to wrestle in a series of wrestling matches with American wrestlers in Holland and as the champion, he made a lot of money. And so at that time they paid in gold and he had a bag, several bags, that were filled really with gold dust and gold as anybody here knows is heavy and he had some bags of gold and he traveled across from Europe on a steam ship and so after he had won all his matches and made a lot of money, been here for a while, he was traveling back to Europe and as he was traveling back to Europe, the ship began to sink. And so this guy took his gold and had a gold belt, one of these money belts and he put the gold dust in his money belt and jumped overboard expecting to tread some water and get to one of the life boats and all but he promptly sank to the very bottom and drowned because his gold was weighing him down and ended up in his own death because he valued that more than anything else, he ended up losing everything for that and that's basically what Jesus is talking about here. Jesus is saying to this young man, you have to let go of that which is bringing you down but the apostle Peter is listening and he's saying, well we left all, I was a successful businessman and so was John and a couple of the guys and we left everything and Matthew was very wealthy as a tax collector and we've given everything up and I'm just wondering what do we get because you're telling this guy he can gain everything because if he gives everything up, well we literally have done that so what are we gonna gain from this and seeing that we've given everything up and Jesus is basically saying you haven't given anything up, you're gaining everything. When you let go of that which is bringing you down you gain everything and so that's what Jesus is pointing out. He says to him, assuredly I say to you there's no one who's left house or parents, brothers or wife, children for the sake of the kingdom of God who shall not receive many times more in this present time and in the age to come, eternal life, you don't lose, you gain. On the one hand, there are many of us who when you got saved, you lost, you lost your family. You were wife and your husband didn't want anything to do with you. Your husband, your wife, doesn't like the way that you've changed. Your children don't like the way the parents have become. I can't tell you how many times parents have spoken to me in this fellowship and have said, listen, I raised my kids without the Lord and now they're teenagers, I've gotten saved. They don't want to come to church.  I hear that fairly often. The changes that take place, when I got saved my friends basically wanted nothing to do with me. Those whom I thought were my closest friends no longer wanted to be around me because I got saved because I was a Christian. I was, at that time they called us Jesus freaks and that's what I had become and they didn't like that about me. They didn't like the way that I changed. I remember my cousin, I had a cousin named Ray who one day said, what happened to you, man? You used to have such a sense of humor. You used to make us laugh. You used to do such things. You were always laughing, David. Now you're so serious in everything. What happened to you? And I said, well, Ray, I'm the same person I was before except I don't have to be a fool anymore. I don't have to be anybody's clown anymore. I can have self-respect now. I don't need the attention. What happened to me is I got saved and people didn't like that. And some of you know what I'm talking about. They didn't like it. They don't like the changes that took place in you. And so in some ways, you know, you may see a loss in the sense of losing a family, losing a wife or a husband, losing a brother, parents, children, in the sense that their affection is no longer part of your life. Sometimes it costs in that way. In Matthew chapter 10, verses 34 through 38, Jesus said, do not suppose that I have come to bring peace on the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.  Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me, it's not worthy of me. Anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. So you make a choice, who am I gonna follow? Who am I going to please? Like the apostle Paul said, if I still wanted to please men, I wouldn't be preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. Who am I going to follow? Who am I going to please? Well, we made the decision to please the Lord. And sometimes we do lose friends, but you may lose your physical family and some have, but you gain a great family called the body of Christ. And that's what happens. In verse 30, he says, who shall not receive many times more in this present time and in the age to come eternal life. You gain when you come to Christ and you begin to fellowship with brothers and sisters when you're part of the body of Christ, you gain. And it's amazing your family has spread out throughout this world. I've had opportunities to travel to quite a number of countries in the world. And I've encountered brothers and sisters in most everyone that I've ever gone to. I've encountered them in Asia, in Israel. I've encountered them throughout Europe. Brothers and sisters in the Lord.  Not just in the city that I grew up in and not just the city that I now live in, but throughout the world. I have relatives in Christ and that's what he's talking about. In Mark chapter 10, verse 30, Jesus said he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brethren and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions. But in the world to come, eternal life. And you do, you gain so much. It's not what you lose, it's what you're gaining. And when you come to Christ, you gain a family. You gain people who care for you. You gain people who bless you. You gain people who open their house up to you. You gain people who will invite you over for a meal that you don't pay for. You gain so many different things, so many relationships that come because of your knowledge of Jesus Christ. And so the apostle says we left all and followed you but Jesus in essence is saying you didn't really leave anything, you gained everything. So verse 31, then he took the 12 aside and said to them, behold, we are going up to Jerusalem and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the son of man will be accomplished. For he will be delivered to the Gentiles and will be mocked and insulted and spit upon. They will scourge him and kill him. And the third day, he will rise again. But they understood none of these things. The saying was hidden from them and they did not know the things which were spoken. So this is now a private conversation that Jesus is having. Notice verse 31, he took the 12 aside. So this is a private conversation with his apostles and he's instructing them in a private fashion. Some of the things that he has to say are for their ears only. They're things that he's preparing them to hear. If you were to look at Matthew chapter 13, for example, in verses 10 and 11, Jesus was given a parable and the disciples came to him and asked, why do you speak to the people in parables? And Jesus' answer was, the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you but not to them. There were some things that Jesus would speak only to his disciples. He was preparing them and ministering to them. And so he says, we're gonna go up to Jerusalem. And so what he's referring to is his suffering and his death. And so I wanna give to you a study at this point to remind you that the suffering and death of the Lord Jesus Christ was no afterthought and it wasn't an accident. Jesus dying on the cross is actually the purpose that he was sent in the first place. We all know John 3.16, I quote it quite often. It's the most famous New Testament scripture. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. The heart of the gospel is the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the suffering and death of Jesus was not an afterthought, it was not an accident. It wasn't something that occurred simply because he was rejected and therefore a new plan had to be brought up. This was what God had planned all along. Matthew 1811 says the son of man has come to save that which was lost. Later on in Luke in chapter 19 verse 10, Jesus will say the son of man has come to seek and save that which was lost. And so Jesus Christ, his death is not an afterthought. It wasn't something that he was not prepared for but he wants to prepare his disciples. And so it's necessary to instruct them further. They have to be prepared for his death because they're gonna carry on his work in the world.  It's gonna cause them so much grief that it would cause them to become helpless. I mean you have to think about it for just a moment how it would have been to be with the Lord Jesus Christ as one of his early disciples walking with him, listening to him as he spoke. Can you imagine what it would have been like to be with him when he actually would turn that water into wine when they saw that miracle? Can you imagine what that would be like to see something like that? To see him do something like that and it would just be so amazing. To see somebody who's a leper, totally unclean.  Somebody whose skin is rotting right off their body.  And to see Jesus reach out and touch somebody like that. Breaking the Jewish law against, at least in the eyes of the Pharisees by actually coming into contact with the leper though he cleansed him instantly and wasn't becoming unclean himself. To see him do that.  Can you imagine what that would have been like? To be hungry in an afternoon and to have watched Jesus as he's ministered and now there's so many people there and so you walk up to him and you say to him you know Master you need to send him away it's getting late and there's no way we can supply their needs out here. They haven't eaten and then Jesus looked at them and says well you feed them. Don't we don't have anything? We've got some bread and some fish and we got that from a little boy ripped off his lunch.  And there are 5,000 men, the scriptures tell us not including children and wives and some would say that there were anywhere from 13 to 15,000 in total who were there the day that Jesus took some bread and some fish, multiplied it and taught his disciples something about God's supply and every man's need. They're learning these lessons guys. They're watching Jesus when the Pharisees who were the intellectuals of the day, the doctors of the law, when they would come and they would try and debate him. It was so cool to have Jesus there just to watch him as he would just turn them inside out. He didn't lose an argument, he was afraid of nothing. There could be a storm on the sea and with just a fish's voice, just a command, cease be still and the waves and the wind ceases and it calms down like a naughty child that's been disciplined and they saw this. They were there. He even gave to them the ability to go out and do these kinds of works too, to heal the sick, to cleanse the leper, to raise the dead. They knew that with Jesus they could do all things and there was nothing impossible with him.  But Jesus is preparing them. He's preparing them because he is gonna ascend to heaven and leave them behind to carry on his work and so he's once again preparing them and so notice verse 31 how he says, behold, we are going up to Jerusalem and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the son of man will be accomplished. He points their eyes to the word of God. You see, in the ministry life of Jesus Christ he fulfilled over 300 specific prophecies demonstrating that he is Messiah. Over 300 specific prophecies. I'll give you nine briefly just to illustrate this because he says that all things that are written by the prophets concerning the son of man will be accomplished and so this is about to be accomplished. He's gonna enter into Jerusalem on a donkey. Matthew 21 verses one through five records that which fulfills Zechariah chapter nine verse nine which reads, rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, shout, O daughter of Jerusalem, behold, your king comes to you.  So he's gonna enter into Jerusalem fulfilling scripture. Secondly, he's gonna be abandoned by his disciples. Zechariah 13, seven, O wake, O sword, against my shepherd and against the man that is my fellow, says the Lord of hosts, might the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered and I will turn my hand upon the little ones. That was fulfilled in Matthew 26, 31. He's gonna be rejected by men. Isaiah 53, three says he is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. We hid as it were our faces from him. He was despised, we esteemed him not. That is fulfilled in Luke 23, 18 through 25.  Psalm 22, 16, dogs have compassed me, the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me, they pierced my hands and my feet. That's fulfilled in John 19, 37. He's gonna cry out. Psalm 22, verse one, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? You see that fulfilled in Mark 15, 34. His clothing is gonna be gambled for. Psalm 22, 18, they part my garments among them, cast lots for my vesture. That's fulfilled in John 19, 23 and 24. He's gonna receive vinegar to drink while on the cross. Psalm 69, 21 says in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink, fulfilled in Mark 15, 23. He's gonna be pierced by a spear. Zechariah 12, 10 says they shall look upon me whom they have pierced. That's fulfilled in John 19, 34 through 37. And then obviously he's gonna fulfill the promise of resurrection, which is the core of all Christian faith.  And so when Jesus is speaking to his disciples, he's letting them know that what he's going to do is fulfill scripture. This has been written by the prophets. This is what is gonna happen. This is something that I've come to do. And so that's what's about to take place.  Now, when he says here in verse 31, behold, we're gonna go up to Jerusalem. Immediately his disciples are concerned. They know that he's a marked man in the city of Jerusalem. As a matter of fact, conspiracy to put him to death has been developing for some time. You see, Jesus had been in Jerusalem and he had healed a man. There was a crippled man at the pool of Bethesda. And when Jesus had healed this crippled man at the pool there, Jesus had performed that work on the Sabbath. And so the people who were present when Jesus Christ did that began to think that Jesus did not honor the law of Moses by breaking the Sabbath, which they considered to be a work. And you're not supposed to work on the Sabbath. Therefore, Jesus doesn't honor Moses, nor the law, he's a false teacher, and they had a real problem with him. It says in John 5, verses 16 through 18, for this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus and sought to kill him because he had done these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, my father's been working until now and I've been working. Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill him because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was his father making himself equal with God. The disciples are aware of the fact that there is a plot to kill Jesus Christ. Jesus has set his face to go to Jerusalem, but they are concerned for him because they know that there's a plot to kill him. So when Jesus is speaking, we are going up to Jerusalem, that's gonna send a chill in their heart. Now he's been instructing them concerning this for some time because as we've been here in Luke since chapter nine, verse 51, Jesus has been making his way to the city of Jerusalem because it says in Luke 9, 51 it came to pass when the time had come for him to be received up that he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem. And so Jesus is on his way and he tells them what's gonna take place. Notice verse 32. He will be delivered to the Gentiles, will be mocked and insulted and spit upon. They will scourge him and kill him, and the third day he will rise again. Delivered, mocked, insulted, spit upon, scourged, crucified.  That would be so very difficult to embrace. But the bottom line is that Jesus had 12 men, but one of them was unfaithful, Judas. When my kids were born, I wanted to give them biblical names. Now obviously, Corrine was the exception, because I've never read the name Corrine in the Bible. I actually found her name when I was in Holland in 1975. Met a girl named Corrine Anderson, and I thought, that's a cool name. If I ever have a little girl, I think I'll name her that. And so when Corrine was born, I gave her the name Corrine. But my other kids have biblical names. David Aaron, Anna Rebecca, Joseph Andrew. Actually, Corrine's real name isn't Corrine. Her real name, her legal name, is Marie Elena. I've never told you this story, I don't think. When Marie gave birth, she was so out of it that they brought the paperwork and where it said name of child, Marie wrote Marie Elena. And so Corrine didn't even know her name is really Marie Elena until she went to get a passport on her own a few years ago, and she called her mom up and said, what did you do to me? My name is Marie Elena. And anyway, just thought I'd tell you that. But you name your kids. A lot of kids in our church are named Joseph or Josiah, or there are a lot of biblical names. But I've never dedicated a Judas. Have you ever heard me say this is Judas? Oh my God. Now they turn out to be one when they're 13, but that's another story.   Why not? Because he's a betrayer. Because that name has gone down in history in infamy, that's why, because you would not do that to a child. You would not give that child the name Judas because that's an evil name. And but we've got one, Judas. Judas is one of the 12. And for whatever reason he had, he sold Jesus Christ. He sold him out. This was a guy who has no excuse for that. I was talking to somebody just the other day and they said, well, I have a friend who thinks that it was unfair. That Judas would be a betrayer. I mean, it's like he was selected to do that. I said, no, wait a minute. If there's anybody in history who has no excuse, it's Judas. He has no excuse. This is a man who walked with Jesus for over three years. This is a man who camped out next to him, who heard things said that no other ears had heard before other than the 12. This is a man who received the authority and power to raise the dead.  This guy had such a tight, close relationship with the Lord that he was able to use that to his advantage because he was the one who was the treasurer in the apostolic group. And he would take that money, John tells us, and he would take money out of the bag and he would spend it on whatever he wanted. He was a thief and he stole the revenue from the ministry of Jesus Christ. This was a man who had every opportunity to be a follower of Christ who decided against it. And Judas sold Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. We don't know what that valuation is at this moment, but I do know that 30 pieces of silver, 30 pieces was what you would pay during that time for a house slave. You would pay for a human being with 30 pieces of silver. Judas treated Jesus in that fashion, sold him out for 30 pieces of silver. He sold him out to the priests, but the priests in turn, because they didn't have the ability to put a man to death. They had lost that right when Rome rescinded it from them. Which really falls in line with prophecy because the Jewish method of capital punishment is stoning. But Jesus was to be crucified. So in God's way he worked things out, if you will, Romans having authority for capital punishment were able to pierce Jesus Christ, thus fulfilling Psalm 22. But Judas had sold Jesus to the priests who in turn wanted to have Jesus put to death but didn't have the authority to do that, and therefore they had to take him to Pontius Pilate, a Gentile, which is what Jesus is speaking about here. When he says in verse 32, he will be delivered to the Gentiles.  Matthew chapter 26 verses 14 through 16 says, one of the 12 called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests and said to them, what will you give me, and I will deliver him up unto you? And they covenanted with him for 30 pieces of silver, and from that time he sought opportunity to betray him, and then ultimately he turned him over to the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. In John 1831, when they had brought Jesus before him, Pilate said to them, you take him and judge him according to your law, and the Jews said to him, it's not lawful for us to put any man to death.  Now while he was in custody of Rome, Jesus is mocked, spit upon, and he was scourged, and that's what it says in verse 32, he will be mocked, insulted, and spit upon, as well as being beaten. The Bible in Matthew 26 verses 67 and 68 says, they spat on his face and they beat him, and others struck him with the palms of their hands. Same prophesy to us Christ, who is the one who struck you? Blindsided. Some of us like to play football, and some of us know what it's like to be running with a ball and to be looking upfield and not to see somebody on your side.  But when you're running and you're looking upfield and somebody's coming from an area you can't see, you have no moment of preparation, and sometimes you just get nailed. I remember going up for a pass and I was stretched out and this guy hit me in my tailbone and I did a complete flip and landed on top of my head, and they call that and ring in your bell. And man, I was like, you could hear the birds chirping and it was just an amazing experience, you know. It hurts. There are guys who, you know, they're at a party, somebody's getting loud or weird. And there are guys who will just come up and stand behind them and then just hammer them as hard as they can in the back of the head. No moment to respond, you just get blindsided. I've had that, that hurts too. Everything hurts when I think about it. My age, everything hurts. Getting up out of bed hurts, but when you think about the Lord, they had blindfolded him and they hit him and then they would say, prophesy to us, Christ, who hit you? No opportunity to be prepared. Not only did they do that to him, but they took great portions of his beard and they twisted it with their hands and pulled it out of his face so that large gaps of his beard had been ripped out from him. They took a reed and they smote him in the head with it.  It's like being hit with a billy club. They took thorns that were about an inch and a half long and they actually wove this thorny bush into a thorny crown and they put it on his head and pressed it in and slammed him with the club. That's how they treated Jesus. And it's interesting to me that he's telling them, I know exactly what's gonna happen to me. I'm gonna be delivered to the Gentiles. I'm gonna be mocked. I'm gonna be insulted. I'm gonna be spit upon. The greatest insult, one of the very greatest insults that you could ever give to a Jewish man is to spit on him. Even to this day, tell me how you would feel. Even we Americans in the 21st century, if somebody was angry at you and spit in your face, there's just something about that that would be so humiliating and so anger provoking, they spit on his face. Jesus' head was swollen, was bruised.  This actually happens. And that's what he's speaking about. Verse 33, they will scourge him. Every Easter, every good Friday, I share with you in details about the scourging that took place. We have a tendency of sanitizing what happened to Jesus. We sanitize it because we cannot bear to really see how brutal it was.  How they would strip him. And they would get their, they were called lictors. They would get the men who would do the beating, who were very adept at it, who would use what we would today call a cat of nine tails. It was a small handled whip with nine pieces of leather that had ceramic or various sharpened rocks that were embedded in it. And they knew how to use it in such a way, a way that they could actually snap it. And it would cross in front of the chest and would rip from the chest in the front all the way to the back. And in Jewish law, there was a scourging. There was a law that stated that you could receive 40 lashes. But they would usually have 40 and then they would reduce that penalty by one because 40 is the number of judgment in Scripture. 39 is the number of mercy. And so the Jews said that judgment must always be tempered by mercy. And so we know that when the Romans were beating Jesus that they gave him great numbers of stripes. As a matter of fact, the people who were being beaten very often, it was called the living death because sometimes they would quiver with shock and blood loss during the beating to the degree that some would die under the lash. And Jesus is saying, this is what's gonna happen to me. I am going to be scourged. So when they took Jesus and scourged him, they lacerated his entire frame from the chest through the back, more than likely through his buttocks down to his thighs, was all one open wound. When you have 40 and then you have nine straps, think of how many wounds were placed on his back. And he's speaking about this to his disciples and he's telling them, this is what is gonna take place. You see, whenever I go through this passage, the Lord has a tendency of causing me to think of that for a minute, to think about what happened. I mean, we can have this almost a casual idea of what it costs the Lord Jesus Christ to purchase us and we can reduce it because we weren't there, we didn't see it happen. But can you imagine what it would have been like to have been standing there, seeing this one whom you love with all of your heart being treated like this? Can you imagine what it would have felt like? What did his mother feel like? What did his men who could see this, what did they feel like? And yet he's letting them know, he's saying, this is gonna take place. I am gonna have this happen. I will be mocked, I will be insulted, I will be spit upon, I will be scourged and I will be killed. But verse 33, the third day he will rise again. When Jesus died, can you imagine what the disciples went through at that moment? Can you imagine what you would have felt because you're not thinking in terms of a resurrection, that is something you don't understand yet. It's never happened.  That's all you know. And you have nothing else in your mind other than I thought this was the one and apparently he wasn't. But Jesus is encouraging his disciples to maintain their faith in him. I was reading how General Wellington commanded the victorious forces at the Great Battle of Waterloo that ended the Napoleonic Wars. The story has been told that when the battle was over, Wellington sent the great news of his victory to England. A series of stations, one within side of the next, had been established to send code messages between England and the continent. The message to be sent was, Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. Meanwhile, a fog set in and interrupted the message sending. As a result, people only saw news of Wellington defeated. Later, the fog cleared and the full message continued, which was quite different from the outcome that the people originally thought had happened. And the same is true today. When many look at what happened on Good Friday, the death of Christ, they see only defeat. Yet on Easter, at the resurrection, God's message was completed because the resurrection spelled victory. And that's what Jesus has teaching them. On the third day, he will rise again. Verse 34, but they understood none of these things. The same was hidden from them. They did not know the things which were spoken. How did they react? They didn't understand it. Now this is consistent with how they've been acting. In Luke 9, 44 and 45, Jesus had said, let these words sink down into your ears. The Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men. They did not understand this saying. It was hidden from them so that they did not perceive it and they were afraid to ask him about this saying. So they simply did not understand it. You see, Jesus says to them in John 13.7 and I love this scripture. What I am doing, you do not understand now, but you will know after this. There are some things in your spiritual life that you have to wait until the full message is given. There are some things that you won't understand immediately. There are things that can happen that you simply do not see God's actions in it. You can't imagine how the Lord could be even part of that. There are things that have happened in my own spiritual life where I thought for sure that it was a hopeless event, that there's nothing I can do about this, where God has taken this, what appeared to be a defeat and turned it into a wonderful victory in my life. And I've discovered that all you need to do with the Lord is wait. A long time ago, I began to learn the lesson that when something seems to be impossible, give it three days and let's see what God can do. Jesus was in the grave for three days. And for those three days, you had disciples who thought, he's gone, it's all over, but give him three days and watch what God can do. He has a way of resurrecting hope. He has a way of doing things that'll blow your mind. And in spiritual growth, some things take time. Some things you're just not ready to understand it. In John 16, verse 12, Jesus said, I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. There are things that I wanna share with you that you're not in the position yet to understand.  You become pregnant. You're first baby.  You talk to your mom. Mom had four or five kids.  But you know more than mom, don't you? What's your mom really know? She didn't know anything.  This is 21st century.  Things are different.  Don't be surprised if she starts telling you things that she went through. Now she's your mom, but you, no, no. No, I'll be fine.   But after a while, you do. You do receive it. You do understand it. In spiritual things, there are times the Lord will give to you something. You'll say, this is what I'm gonna do. But you're not yet ready to receive that. But over time, you will. That's how spiritual maturity takes place. Because later on, it is to be revealed to you and it is revealed by the Spirit of God. In John 14, verse 26, Jesus said, the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. Spiritual truth is revealed by the Spirit of God. And so as Jesus is speaking here, they don't understand. They understand none of these things. Why? It's hidden from them. They did not know the things which were spoken. They didn't understand it then. But when Jesus was resurrected, then it all made sense. So that's what he was talking about. And that's how it works in our spiritual life. I like to give the Lord time. I've learned to do that to some degree. Lord, I don't understand right now. So I'm gonna give you time to teach me because it's obvious that I really am not on the same page with you. So I'm just gonna give you time to teach me because I know you're going to. I know this will be revealed to me. What you're doing, I do not understand now, but I will later. So some things the Lord will answer you quickly. Some things he'll answer you shortly. Some things take a lifetime till you finally understand them. But most all things you ultimately, if you put them in the hands of the Lord will gain an understanding of. Just by trusting him, just by waiting on him, and just by allowing him to bring you to the place where it finally all ties together and makes sense. And so they didn't understand at that moment that things were hidden from them, but ultimately they would. And in our life, not everything makes sense, but ultimately it does.


So briefly, what is an LTK? Before I answer that question, I'll give you a small overview of what natural language understanding is, because giving you an overview at an LTK does without telling you what the problem is is like giving a solution without a problem. So briefly, natural language understanding is trying to parse plain unstructured text, basically the wind that's coming out of my mouth and reaching your ears, and makes sense out of it. It's a difficult problem. It's far from being solved. There are many steps to it, and there are somewhat two approaches to it. There's a more computational linguistic approach to it, which tries to understand how language works. And then there's all the people who actually just want to use the results of natural language understanding. And for example, parse Wikipedia and build databases of information which is structured and which can be used for reasoning, automated inferencing. One of these main users is DBpedia. Right now, they're limited to using content from the info boxes and from links, which is a very small part of what information is stored in Wikipedia. And they'd like to use natural language processing to gather information out of the text and make it directly into triples, which contain logical information. So how do we go about trying to understand text? Well, let's look at the question, what is an LTK? We can break it down into components. So very briefly, we have a word, which is what. It's a word that starts with wh, and many of those words in English, what, why, when. How is an exception, because it doesn't start with wh, but there are words that introduce questions. And then it's followed by a verb, is. And a noun phrase, an LTK, which is a named entity, typically, is what we call it. So it's a word that represents something specific. So how do we go about breaking text down into its components? Well, typically, we'll run a sort of pipeline. First, we split text into sentences. It seems easy. It's not as easy as you'd think. Trying to cut the sentences in terms of punctuation is generally how you do it. But then there are some words like US, for example, which end with a dot and can confuse a system. Once a text is split into sentences, you also need to split it into words or tokens. And then you can analyze those. The next step will depend a bit on the pipeline. But typically, we'll either involve determining what type of word it is. So breaking it down into tags, such as WP on this example. The what and then VBZ for verb nouns and so on. Another step is looking up named entities. So things like an LTK usually have some kind of a database. And you try and find words that match in there. There are other approaches which use machine learning instead. So they try and use features like, is this word capitalized? Is this a sequence of nouns, many in a row? And try and guess based on that. So I'll give you a very quick demo of a short NLTK approach to breaking part of this down. I'll be looking. So I'll be showing you briefly how to parse a sentence in terms of obtaining the parse tree. So first, import an LTK. Don't actually do that in real life. An LTK does an import star in itself. It makes looking at examples very easy. On the other hand, it's somewhat of a nasty trick. And then I'm using a very simple sentence where there's no need to break apart punctuation or anything. It's just a series of words that can be tokenized really quickly. And then loading a grammar. A grammar is basically just a definition of the language. And then I get a parse tree out of it. So you see the different parts, the different components of the sentence. And quickly, and then the named entity lookup. You have NLTK groups. Actually, I don't think you can see the whole thing. But basically, NLTK uses chunking. It finds a bunch of capitalized words and tags them as an organization, which natural language toolkit actually isn't. This is looking at the whole thing. But basically, it's looking at natural language toolkit and thinking it's an organization because it's not better informed. So quite briefly, here are some resources to learn more about NLTK and natural language processing. And do you have any questions?


Eighteen English phrasal verbs with take from espressoenglish.net. To take after someone means to have a similar appearance or personality, especially a relative. For example, she takes after her mother. They have the same green eyes and curly brown hair. John is such a funny person. He takes after his grandfather, who is a comedian. To take something apart means to separate it into parts. For example, the technician is taking apart the TV so that he can fix it. Take something back has two meanings. One is to return something to a store. For example, the jeans I bought were too small, so I took them back and exchanged them for a larger size. Take something back also means to admit that something you said was wrong.  I take it back. Take something down also has a couple of definitions. It means to separate a structure into parts. For example, after the circus was over, the workers took down the big tents. Take something down can also mean to write information on paper. For example, he took down my address and phone number and said he'd call me later. To take someone in means to let somebody stay in your house. For example, my friend lost his job and his apartment, so I took him in for a month. To take something in means to receive and understand information. For example, the instructor spoke so fast that I couldn't take in all the information. Take in also means to make clothing smaller so that it fits you. For example, I love this dress, but it's a little too loose. Could you take it in an inch? Take off has multiple meanings. One is an airplane leaving the ground and going up into the air. For example, what time does the plane take off? Take off also means to become successful or popular very fast. For example, in the last few years social media sites have taken off all over the world. Informally, take off means to leave a place suddenly. For example, he was at the party for about 15 minutes and then he took off. To take something off means to remove a piece of clothing from your body. For example, I always take off my shoes as soon as I get home. To take time off means to not go to work for a period of time. For example, Jamie took three days off to go skiing in the mountains. Take something on means to accept some work or responsibility. For example, do you have time to take on a new project? Take someone on means to hire or employ somebody. For example, the company has taken on three new staff members. And it can also mean to fight or compete against somebody. For example, in tonight's boxing match Antonio will take on an undefeated boxer from Argentina. Take somebody out means to go with somebody to a restaurant or movie and pay for their food or ticket. For example, I'm taking my girlfriend out to dinner on our anniversary. Take something out means to remove something from a place. For example, I took the letter out of the envelope. We also have the expression take something out on someone, meaning to treat an innocent person badly because you are tired or angry about something else. For example, hey I know you had a terrible day at work but don't take it out on me. Take over something means to take control. For example, Germany took over several other countries during World War II. To take someone through something means to explain something to somebody in detail. For example, let me take you through the procedure for operating this machine. First you need to take up has a couple of meanings. It can mean to fill space or time. For example, these books are taking up all the space in my room. Last month an urgent project took up all my spare time. To take up an activity means to start doing that activity regularly. For example, I've recently taken up yoga. We also have the expression take someone up on something, meaning to accept an offer or invitation. For example, when you travel to China you're welcome to stay at my house. Really? I might take you up on that. And to take something up with someone means to complain to someone about a problem. For example, if you don't like the way I do my job take it up with my manager. If you want to learn more phrasal verbs like these check out my course phrasal verbs in conversation. It will help you learn and practice 500 common phrasal verbs in the context of conversations. Click on the link in the video for more information and a free sample lesson.


Good morning from the Marfa Lights viewing station, just about 8 miles outside of Marfa. Nick possibly saw the lights last night. I was seeing sheep jump over the moon. Today is going to be kind of a driving day. I'm not sure how exciting it's going to be, but buckle your seatbelts because I'm going to try and make it super exciting. And it is Christmas Eve today, Merry Christmas. So just several miles outside of town, we have this radar system. This is also on roadside America and they got a big old, I don't know, thingamajiggy there too. But you can, I don't know if you can see it, but it is tied with some kind of cable to the ground all the way up there. And Nick actually, you probably know more about this than any of us. It's basically a tethered radar. So if you see the dish down there, it's kind of like that except airborne. Interesting. Yeah. Well, that's a good bit of information. Alright. Thank you, sir. Now that it's Christmas Eve and girls love to go shopping, I figured I would take small town Claire to the protestor and get her a pair of shoes. Let's go up to the front door and see what's, see what we can find in there. Thank you, Claire. Thank you. Oh, it doesn't open, does it? No. That's right. Here we are at Prada Marfa. Looks like there is a little camera right there looking at us. This is a, I stopped here before a long time ago, but basically this is an art exhibit and established 2005. Here's the artist and yeah, kind of bizarre. But what else do you do in the middle of nowhere? You put art on the side of the road for people like me and Nick in the small town of Claire to appreciate. So just like the Target Marathon, I would totally do some boondocking right here. This is nice level ground, it's all fenced off, middle of nowhere. You know the motto. If no one's around, nobody's around to care. So if you do swing by and it's late, I would say feel free to park your ass here for the night if not across the street is a good spot as well. We're headed to Discovery. Want to share with us what your Discovery is? Spring's book, so Christmas Eve. We're headed towards Guadalupe, or Guadalupe. Alternatives. Hopefully something to area. Alright, we got some more javelinas here crossing the road. It's like a little family. It looks like they're first kind of spike up when they either get scared or when they run. I kind of wish I had a 22 because if I did, I could have shot one and had javelina tacos for dinner. It's being good tonight. The Carlsbad Caverns, there is the Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Yeah, I got some more postcards. I will announce a giveaway in a future video because I just did one two days ago or something. So look out for that one and make sure to hit the notifications so you can watch the video when it comes out if you want to enter to win. It will be another comment thing, but not in this one. In a future one. Alright, exciting stuff. Exciting stuff. We just saw some big ole rams over here. I don't know if they're like mountain goats or what, but look at how cool it is. There they go. A big ole family. That is pretty cool. Let's see. Let's try and count. Three right there. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18. Up in the little candy thing there? Yeah. I think I counted 18. That is pretty awesome. This is not your everyday side. I feel like we've seen a bunch of nature in the past couple of days. Really cool. That one's like huge right there. Yeah, he's, well, look at him jump. Look at him jump. That's so cool. Yeah. I was watching a video the other day on some sheep, like ramming humans. I would not want to be rammed by one of these things. Those things got some lethal horns on there. Man, they could knock you out for sure. Oh, whoa. And across the street we got the cars. Hopefully nobody hits them. Oh, now they're kind of herded the other way. Yeah. Yeah. There's more of them. Very cool. We're probably not supposed to stop in the middle of the road, you know, Merry Christmas. State Park, National Park, and we came over here to the Carl's Baton and we just made it. We got here a little bit too late to do the natural entrance, so we took the elevator down and we are walking around what is called the big room. And the reason why my voice is so soft is because your voice can carry for a quarter mile down here. So just to be respectful to the other people down here, it is a little bit on the quiet side. Plus, there's no wind, there's no noise, except for water dripping and of course people walking around and stuff. So I don't really need to talk very loudly. But, yeah. This is a pretty impressive place. Even being here one other time, but this time I have a much, much better camera to capture for you guys.