When Hopes Are Dashed

SERMON: 2017-04-09--mt2117--when-hopes-are-dashed SOURCE DURATION: 00:45:41.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.98 APPROVED: false REASON: All candidates form a continuous narrative flow, moving from theological exposition to scripture reading and concluding with pastoral application/final thoughts. Since there is no clear transition to non-sermon material (music, announcement) after candidate 15, the final candidate must be selected as it represents the end of the sermon content provided. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- The Palm Sunday story, as perhaps you know, is recorded for us in varying degrees in all four gospels in the New Testament. Each story is slightly different, and the details are somewhat different because the stories aren't simply a recounting of the facts. They are also an application of a theological point. And the story of Palm Sunday that we want to read together this morning comes from Matthew's gospel because Matthew is interested in demonstrating that the triumphal entry is the fulfillment of that prophecy made many years earlier by the prophet Zechariah. So here from Matthew's gospel, chapter 21, let's read the first 11 verses. As they, that is Jesus with his disciples, approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples saying to them, "Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there with her colt by her." Matthew is one of the few who mentions that it's both a donkey and a colt, because that's the reference in Zechariah. "Untie them, bring them to me, and if anyone says anything to you, tell him that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away." This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet, "Say to the daughter of Zion, 'See, your king comes to you gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.'" The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and the colt, placed their cloaks on them, and Jesus sat on them. It's very interesting. The Church Father, Jerome, was of the opinion that the two donkeys here represented Jew and Gentile, and that Jesus rode on both of them to indicate that He was bringing both Jew and Gentile into the kingdom. Verse 8, "A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of Him and those that followed shouted, 'Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest!'" When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, "Who is this?" The crowds answered, "This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee." Follow me in prayer. Lord, as we look at this story together and consider its implications for our lives today, I pray first of all that you give me the words to explain this succinctly and clearly. And also, Lord, that you will give each of us ears to hear, not only mentally and physically, but even more importantly, spiritually. Help us to understand where the Jewish expectations went wrong, how readily we fall into that same trap ourselves and give us, Lord, a very clear understanding of what you've done in Christ and who it is that we can be in Him and what it is that we can truly expect from you as by faith we're joined to Jesus. And then, Lord, as we prepare for a Good Friday and for our Easter celebration, may we stand amazed afresh at the greatness and the goodness of your love and your commitment to each of us as your people. Thank you for hearing us, we pray, in Jesus' name, Amen. I've always thought that one of the intriguing elements of the Palm Sunday story is the way the crowd turned on Jesus. Here in Matthew chapter 21, on Palm Sunday, we have them, "Besides themselves with joy, Hosanna to the Son of David, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest." Four days later, before Pontius Pilate, many, I'm sure, in that same crowd shouted, "Crucify Him, crucify Him." How do you explain that kind of turnabout? Well, some people might consider, "Well, you know, the two crowds were different crowds. The first crowd was the crowd of disciples, and the second crowd was people in the city." And that's a possibility, but you've got to remember that, first of all, this crowd of disciples was huge. And secondly, the passage ends with the fact that the whole city was stirred. So to my mind, there was considerable overlap between the two crowds. The crowd that shouted, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord," and the crowd that shouted, "Crucify Him." Why the turnabout? Well, the Gospels tell us that the crowds were influenced by the Pharisees and the elders when Pontius Pilate said, "I'll give you a choice between Jesus who claims to be your king and Barabbas who is a murderer and an insurrectionist. Who do you want to choose?" The Bible tells us that the Pharisees went around encouraging people to choose Barabbas over Jesus, and then when Pontius Pilate said, "What will I do with Jesus?" They shouted all the more, "Crucify Him and crucify Him." So the Pharisees and the elders of the people played a great role in how the crowds shifted. But you know just as well as I do, they wouldn't have had that power if there wasn't something in the crowd itself that resonated with their anger and with their resentment. I don't know about you, my guess, the crowd had their hopes dashed, and that disappointment led them to turn on Jesus. You know as well as I do that the Jewish expectation was that when the Messiah came, He would set up a physical kingdom in Israel. He would get rid of the Roman Empire and He would get rid of the Roman occupiers, and they would finally return to the glory that they had experienced under the rule of David. And so when Jesus comes into Jerusalem on the back of that donkey, to the shouts of Blessed Hosanna to the Son of David, they were beside themselves for joy because they knew the Old Testament prophecies that the Son of David would come and He would deliver them. But then when He didn't deliver to their expectations, when He showed no interest in being crowned as king, when instead He just went on with His business predicting His death and criticizing the religious establishment in Jerusalem for what they were, their disappointment knew no bounds. And if you know anything about the human heart, you will know that there is nothing like having your hopes dashed and disappointment setting in to lead to disillusionment, anger, and ultimately murder. I believe that was the fertile ground that the Pharisees played on and that's what enabled them to choose. I mean, think of this. To choose Bar-Abbas, a murderer, over Jesus who was the life-giver, what had to happen in their hearts to bring them to that point. Peter drives that point home to them years later in Acts chapter 3 when he's preaching the gospel and he says to the people, "You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer would be released to you." I don't know that we can fully weigh out what drove the crowds to make that kind of transition. And I believe what it illustrates is that underneath it all there was a faulty belief system among the Israelites that made fertile ground for this level of disappointment. And I want to take just a little bit this morning to try to walk you through three faulty belief systems that were part of the culture of that day that made them so misunderstand the person and the mission of Jesus. Three mistaken notions that they had bought into. The first, the nature of God's promised salvation. The nature of God's promised salvation. From the beginning of time, after Adam and Eve had fallen into sin, God had come to His people and He said, "I'm going to send you a Messiah and He is going to come and redeem you. He is going to restore everything to what should be." Now as I've already mentioned, that for Israel that translated into a restoration of the glory they experienced when King David was the king. When David was king, a man after God's own heart, the nation expanded, it prospered, things were good. God said, "I'm going to send the son of David and He is going to bring a restoration of that kingdom." What is the expectation? And you can't really fault the people of Israel for believing that because any plain reading of Old Testament prophecies would indicate that is precisely what God had promised. Listen to these verses, two verses here from Jeremiah 23, 5, and 6. "The days are coming," declares the Lord, "when I will raise up to David a righteous branch, a king who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. In his days, Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety." And then Zechariah 9, 9, the Old Testament prophecy referred to earlier in this passage, "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, shout, daughter of Jerusalem, see your king comes to you, righteous in having salvation, gentle in riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey." Is it any wonder that the Israelites had an expectation of a king who would bring deliverance from Roman ruin? No, but see, here's the problem, and here's the trick, earthly salvation, such as they were expecting, falls far short of God's eternal intention. Because if salvation is just a thing for the here and now, making our lives better now, then we still die, we still lose it all, and it doesn't last. And so what Israel didn't understand, but what was present in God's heart all along, is that God wasn't just interested in putting band-aids on our wounds and wiping away the occasional tear. God wasn't just wanting to fix up this life and make this life better and perfect. No, God wanted to create a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness would reign, which would last forever so that we would have eternal joy. And that, of course, is what in the book of Revelation John experienced when he saw in Revelation 21 a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and there was no longer any sea. New heavens and a new earth. God's not just interested in making our lives a little bit better today, that's important, but that alone isn't going to make any difference. He's interested in an eternal salvation that His people will experience. But see, here's the problem, the Old Testament saints, especially without the Holy Spirit and even the prophets only saw this dimly, they had no frame of reference for this. And so God used Old Testament Word pictures to try to describe for them the glory that was going to be revealed to them, but they didn't really get it. So they misunderstood the nature of salvation. Does that make sense? They didn't get it. They could only think, just like a baby that hasn't been born yet can only be dimly aware of the outside world, outside of its mother's womb, and has no comprehension of what life looks like beyond that. So without the Holy Spirit in the here and now, we cannot comprehend what eye has not seen, ear has not heard, and the heart of man hasn't even conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him. So let's not be too hard on the Israelites. As we'll see later on, we're probably not much different. They didn't understand the nature of God's promised salvation, and because they didn't understand the nature of God's promised salvation, they also didn't understand how that salvation was going to be accomplished. Makes sense, doesn't it? If you think of salvation in terms of the Davidic empire is going to be restored, and this is what the Messiah is going to do, then how is Messiah going to make that happen? Well, how did David make it happen? He was a warrior. God was with him, powerfully anointed him, everywhere he went, he had military success, and that's what established the kingdom. And so you can't blame them for thinking when the Messiah comes, that's what he's going to do. He's going to beat the snot out of the Romans. He's going to deliver us and bring us a new golden age. Makes perfectly good sense. But see, there's a problem with that. And the problem with that is that it doesn't address the real issue. Because what's mankind's real issue? Not just that there are bad people in the world, or that we have lost our freedom to the Romans, or that we could sick and die, all of those are bad, but the real issue is our sin separates us from God. If we weren't separated from God, and God wasn't angry with us, then the world wouldn't be under a curse. We wouldn't be nasty people, and we wouldn't have to wage war to live in freedom and liberty. Not to mention, we wouldn't get sick and die. So for salvation to come, for God to bring us into a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness would reign and where we could forever live in bliss beyond compare, sin had to be dealt with. Our sins had to be atoned. And before the Messiah could take up His sword and beat the nations into submission, the issue of sin had to be dealt with, because without it, God's people could not receive the blessings of God either. So they misunderstood not only the nature of salvation, but because they misunderstood the nature of salvation, they also misunderstood the means by which salvation would come. Which leads me to a third area then where they were totally out of tune with the purposes of God. They failed to understand the role of the Messiah. They failed to understand the role of the Messiah. And because they misunderstood the nature of salvation, they misunderstood what needed to happen for salvation to come, they also misunderstood what the Messiah would have to do in order to produce salvation, because if sin was the big issue, then sin had to be addressed so that we could be declared righteous before God. Now all through Israel's history, God was portraying the need for atonement and sins to be dealt with. That's why in the Old Testament you have this whole sacrificial system where blood is constantly being shed, which is why Passover, which corresponds to the death of Jesus on the cross, was such a critical component of Israel's national life. The angel of death would pass over when he saw the blood of the lamb testifying to an acknowledgement of sin and the need for atonement. The problem with the Old Testament sacrificial system, which by the way religious Jews in Israel are trying to reestablish, within one hour if they got the word today, they would be prepared to make the Passover sacrifice, the Sanhedrin has been reestablished, plans are made for a third temple to be built in Jerusalem. They are gearing up, if it ever comes that far, to reinstating all of this in expectation of the Messiah, which they believe is still to come. The problem with the sacrificial system is that it can remind us of sin, it cannot remove sin and it cannot change the human heart, which is why the sacrifices have to be repeated again and again. So in the book of Hebrews, this is how it's described to us, Hebrews 10.1, "The law that refers to this whole Old Testament system is only a shadow of the good things are coming, not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship." It can't do it. And so God, in fulfillment of everything the Old Testament has stood for, sends His own Son into the world for sin, so that in His sinless body, He can absorb all our sin, experience God's judgment, but because He was innocent, death could not hold Him. He gets raised from the dead and the message of the gospel is that when we understand this, when we understand our alienation from God on account of our sin, and we confess that sin, and we put our trust and our faith in Jesus, in Jesus only, then God declares us righteous and He gives us a new heart and a new spirit and He prepares us, He gives us a foretaste of this new creation. Hebrews puts it this way, verse 14 of the same chapter, "By one sacrifice," as opposed to all the sacrifices that have to keep on happening, "He has made perfect forever those who are made holy." Isn't that neat? See they were wrong about salvation. They were wrong about what needed to happen for salvation to happen. And they were wrong about the role the Messiah played. They didn't understand that long before He could come and rule all the nations, He had to redeem us from our sin by His death on the cross. The Jews had limited understanding of that. Even the disciples of Jesus, if you read the gospels, how many times doesn't Jesus tell them He's going to Jerusalem to die? And how many times do they not get it? And what did it take even after His resurrection for their eyes to be open and for them to understand that He was raised from the dead? See for Jews, a suffering Messiah was an anachronism. To be hung on the cross meant to be cursed by God. The Messiah was to have God's favor, God's anointing, not God turning His back on Him so He couldn't possibly be the chosen Messiah. And the religious leaders especially rejected Him because they couldn't figure out how He fit into their religious system. So is it any wonder? Is it any wonder the crowd turned their backs on Jesus when they didn't clue in to God's agenda? As I said, even His disciples were totally confused and bewildered and repeatedly… I mean, think of the scene in the garden, you know, Judas and the mob are coming to arrest Jesus, Peter takes out his sword and he cuts off Malchus' ear, the last recorded miracle that Jesus does when he puts his ear back on, tells Peter to put his sword away because those who take the sword will perish by the sword, and he gives himself over to the people that come to arrest him. What does the Bible say the disciples did next? And they forsook him and fled because it didn't make any sense. Now, you know, it's easy, always easy with the hindsight of history for us to be critical of the Jewish people and say, "What a bunch of dummies, why didn't they get it?" But think it through with me a little bit. Because once you understand these dynamics of crushed expectations, you'll understand why they did what they did, because when your heart is wide open, you expect your deepest longings to be fulfilled, and then it doesn't happen. The pain is unlike anything that you have ever experienced in life. Those are the places where you feel betrayed, and once you feel betrayed, love and adoration quickly turn to hate and disillusionment. And the reality is, people, it's not only the Jews that are susceptible to that kind of disappointment, because you and I are not unlike that. How many times in our own lives hasn't it happened that we've had our hearts wide open towards God, we believed his promises, we have stepped out into the promises, expected him to do what he promised to do, we've gone out on a limb, perhaps even suffered abuse of the hands of others, only to discover that we were left hanging high and dry, isn't that true? See, this isn't something that happens to people who are just nominal Christians. They never go out on a limb that far. They're never disappointed in God because they never expect anything. I read a while back that some of the happiest people in the world are the Danish people, and you know why they're happy? Because they have no expectations. And if you want to see unhappy people, you look at people who have expectations, see, it's never how much your neighbor has or how little you have, it's how much your neighbor has and what that does to you. That's what makes for unhappy people. Some of the poorest people in the world are the happiest people, and some of the richest people are the most unhappy, because it's all about expectation. And you and I, when we grow in Christ, and we hear the promises of God, and the Holy Spirit works in our hearts, and we start trusting Him for healing, or we start trusting Him for our children, or we start trusting Him for our daily work, and we expect Him to honor the stepping out that we do in faith, and then sometimes it doesn't happen that way. What happens to you and me? We get disillusioned, our hearts grow cold, and the world is full of people who have turned away from God because God didn't deliver what they thought He should deliver. Isn't that true? Isn't that even true among us? I've told you the story before in my own life. I was a senior at college. It had been a season of tremendous growth in the Lord. We had a little prayer group growing that met, I still can't believe that we manage this. We met an hour and a half almost every night of the week for prayer and Bible study and fellowship. And we still got a good grade, so that must have been amazing grades. But it was a huge chunk of time, the Lord honored it, and we grew immeasurably. And because we grew immeasurably, we wanted to grow in obedience. And somewhere along the line in this whole process, I felt the Lord saying to me that He wanted me to serve as a dorm advisor for the following year and to make application for that. And so I did, and I did so in faith and expectation that if this is what the Lord wanted for me, He was going to give it to me. So I didn't make any arrangements for housing the next year, because that would be like going to a prayer meeting for rain without an umbrella, right? I mean, what does faith look like? Now, to make a long story short, you can imagine my dismay and disappointment when despite stepping out on what I thought was what the Lord was telling me, I didn't get the position and that didn't bother me so much because I wasn't particularly interested in that. I was more interested in having God come through when I stepped out in obedience. And that took me a long time to recover from because how do I know when I'm hearing from you when it's just me? See, that's the place where faith dies, and that's where hearts get cold. And you look at many of the great atheists of our day, you look at many people who are antagonistic towards God, who will darken the door of a church, who don't care about the things of God, and you will find people whose hearts have been opened, whether to their parents or to God or to the world, and their dreams have been crushed, their hopes have been dashed, and they said to themselves, "Never will I trust again." So, here's what I'm getting to. If we want to not only survive but thrive in the Christian life, we need to have a realistic understanding of salvation as God ordained it. We need a realistic understanding of the way God brings about that salvation, and we need a very realistic understanding of how Jesus fulfills those demands of God. So, in the time that remains, I want to give you six things, and I'll try to be fast with this, I'll try to give you six things that the Bible says in Christ we can legitimately expect from God, and he will deliver those who trust in God in these areas, will not be disappointed because this is according to the plan and the purpose of God. I'll go quickly with this, but bear with me because this is what gives Christians victory in a world that is filled with disappointment and filled with darkness. The first thing that God promises to His children is a personal relationship with the living God through faith in Jesus. Ephesians 2.18, "Through Him," that is through Jesus, "We both have access to the Father by one Spirit." Romans 5.1 and 2, "Since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand." To have peace with God means that God is no longer angry with us, our sin no longer gets in the way, He gives us His Holy Spirit, and His Spirit bears witness with our spirit that the God of the universe, who is beyond comprehension in His glory in Christ Jesus, has become my Abba Father. That is the right of every last child of God. Doesn't mean we're always going to feel it, but faith says this is what God promises, and this is what we can ask for, and this is what He will deliver because this is what Jesus has come to do. This is eternal life, that they know you the true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Number two, we have access to divine life, that is the life of Jesus. Second Peter 1.3 and 4, "His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. Through these He has given us His very great and precious promises so that through them you may participate," notice, "in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires." Please understand with me that being a Christian is not just becoming a better person. It's not just cleaning up your life a little bit. It's not just rising above the fray of humanity. It is a heart transplant. It is heaven's life coming to live in you through the Holy Spirit and by that life learning to put to death the deeds of the body and learning to live in a way that pleases God. That's what it is to be a Christian. It is to be a colony of heaven on earth and it is your right when by faith you're joined to Jesus. It doesn't mean you're going to be a saint overnight and without saying, but it means that you have in you a new capacity to love God and a new capacity to love your neighbor. And if we will feed that and let that grow, our lives will bear the fruit of the Spirit. That is salvation that God has promised in Christ Jesus. Number three, we have an ability to influence the world around us. Jesus put it this way in the Sermon on the Mount to His disciples. He said, "You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world." And if salt slows down decay and corruption, then light lights up the darkness and shows where we ought to go and where other people ought to go. When we have peace with God and the Holy Spirit lives in us and our lives begin to reflect in whatever way the presence of Jesus, then we start having an influence on people around us. When you're with your friends and they're swearing all the time and you're not swearing, believe you me, they will take notice. And they might in fact slow down or apologize because they know you don't join them. And when you're the light of the world, your lifestyle shows an other way of living that exposes their stuff and gives them an opportunity to change their lives by coming to faith in Jesus. Salt of the earth, light of the world. And very important here to understand something, a lot of times young people, especially in this day and age, they get caught with a grand vision of changing the world. You've often heard that said, "We're going to change the world in our generation." Well, good luck. Because changing the world happens to be a lot harder than most people think. Because there are principalities and powers that are at work that are bound and determined to stop you from doing it. But there's nothing to stop you from making your light shine in your little corner in life and letting the colony of heaven take root in the world where it blossoms so that people can come to faith and people can see the difference that Jesus makes. Isn't that true? Isn't that the function of the church? We are salt and we are light. We may not do it perfectly, but believe you me, we make a difference in the world and disguise the limit of the difference that we can make. Number four, we will experience persecution. I know that's a surprise. We will experience persecution. Jesus, John 15, 20, "Remember the words I spoke to you. No servant is greater than his master. They persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also." And if you read the story of Jesus's Passion Week, he's on his way to the cross and the women are wailing and the people are, his disciples are troubled by the agony of all of this. And he says, here's something I want you to hear. He says, "If they do this when the tree is green, what are they going to do when the wood is dry?" In other words, if they do this to me now, what do you think is going to happen to you when I'm out of the picture and the powers of the world have their way? Andre was just telling me this morning, as I was sitting down here in Egypt, two Christian churches destroyed by ISIS who has made a whole list of wanting to get rid of Christians in Egypt. That's painful business. And the Apostle Paul said, "All those who live godly lives in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution." And it isn't just because we're nice people. It's because they smell Jesus on you. And it's Jesus in you that is offensive because Jesus in you will not bow to the dictates of society. Vimeo, some of you will know, a huge video service, a Christian organization called Purity Ministries that is committed to helping people into sexual wholeness and are doing it in a tasteful and in a good way, have just been informed that their whole catalog of videos will no longer be displayed because Vimeo doesn't share their fundamental values. That's persecution. It's on our doorsteps, and it's coming at us a lot faster than we could even begin to imagine. It's enough to make you want to die. And the good news is, when we do, we go to be with Him. The Apostle Paul, Philippians 1.23, he's debating on whether he wants to stay alive or whether he wants to go to be with Jesus, and he says, "I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better." And then he says, "I'm going to stick around because you need me still." But note the emphasis to be with Christ. Jesus on the cross to the thief on the cross, what does He say? "Today you will be with Me in paradise." Stephen, in the book of Acts, when he becomes the first martyr of the Christian church, what does he do? "Father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing. And receive My Spirit." The promise of the gospel is when we are the children of God through faith in Jesus, when we die, we go to be with Him. That's what makes Christian funerals so different from non-Christian funerals. Non-Christian funerals only have grief and they can only have the memory of the person who passed away. We rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God, and we know that we're going to see each other again come the day of glory. What an incredible testimony to God's faithfulness. One more and we'll be done. We will inherit a new heaven and a new earth. Already quoted your Revelation 21.1, "I saw a new heaven and a new earth, the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there was no longer any sea." The sea there, you might recall, represents the powers of darkness, the chaos of the original creation story. I don't think it's meant to be a downer for people who enjoy water sports. The fact that the new creation doesn't have any sea is God's declaration that there is no serpent lurking in the garden. And you never have to worry about some monster reaching out and doing you in. In the new creation, we will forever share the glory of God and nobody can ever take it away from us. See, that's the promise. That's the promise of the gospel. And the Jews weren't that far off when they expected the Messiah to come and make all things new. They knew their Bibles, but they didn't understand that salvation came in two phases. The first salvation was to do the groundwork so that we could be properly restored to God. The second, when He comes again, He's going to implement that salvation and the whole world will experience the reign of King Jesus. So let me end with these verses from the book of Hebrews. "Just as man is destined to die once and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people. And He will," what? "Appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for Him." And if there's any practical application to what it is that we're talking about today, it ought to be the realization that because of what Jesus has done and what He continues to do, we live for Him in a way that causes us to look expectantly to His return when everything that is crooked in the world, everything that is still broken in our own lives, will gloriously be healed because Jesus, the Messiah, has come and has taken up His reign among [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:45:38.820; remove through 00:45:41.000] His people. [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:45:41.000; resume after this marked segment]