In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulcher. And behold, there was a great earthquake. For the angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning and his raiment white as snow. And for fear of him, the keepers did shake and became as dead men. And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye, for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here, for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead. And behold, he goeth before you into Galilee. There shall ye see him. Lo, I have told you. And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy, and did run to bring his disciples word. And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet and worshipped him. Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid. Go, tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me. Now when they were going, behold, some of the watch came into the city and showed unto the chief priests all the things that were done. And when they were assembled with the elders and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, saying, Say ye, his disciples came by night and stole him away while we slept. And if this come to the governor's ears, we will persuade him and secure you. So they took the money and did as they were taught. And this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day. Then the 11 disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. This is the inspired and infallible word of our covenant God. May he bless it to our hearts this morning. Our text is verses five and six. And the angel answered and said unto the women, fear not ye, for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here, for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. Beloved congregation, in our Lord Jesus Christ, on that Sunday morning after Jesus had been crucified, a few women gathered together very early in the morning, so early that it was still dark when they left their homes, in order to go to the tomb of Jesus Christ. They came to Him. They sought Him. They sought Him where they had last seen Him, in the grave. It was so early that it was still dark. By the time they arrived at the sepulcher, the sun still had not entirely risen yet, although it was beginning to dawn toward the first day of the week, so that the first signs in the eastern sky of light could be seen. But it was still dark as they arrived at the sepulcher. Meanwhile, as they made their way to the tomb, in that tomb itself, Jesus' body lay alone. His was the only body in that newly hewn sepulcher in the side of the cliff, with a stone rolled in front of its mouth to seal it shut. Jesus lay there alone, and then Jesus arose by his own power, And by the power of the Holy Spirit, He arose from the dead, so that that body which had been dead, very really dead, was now alive. And that body within the tomb was not merely alive with the old life that He had lived on the earth, but with new, exalted, heavenly life, alive with heavenly glory and incorruptible. The Lord Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, left the tomb, not through an opening somewhere, not through the stone rolled away, but left the tomb because that tomb could not hold Him anymore. The grave could not be a prison for Him. As the Lord Jesus Christ arose from the dead, Two mighty angels came down from heaven. We read of only one of them in Matthew 28, probably because one of those angels did all of the talking to the women. But in other accounts, we read of two angels who came down from heaven and rolled the stone away from the tomb. And the watchmen, the guards from the Jews on the outside of the tomb, were so terrified by the sight of that glorious angel, so terrified by the earthquake that accompanied the resurrection of the Lord from the dead, that they fell down in a stupor as dead men, insensible to what was going on. Those two angels then went into the tomb, which was now empty, and waited there for the women. who were making their way to the tomb. They came, those women did, to seek the Lord Jesus Christ. And when they would arrive at that tomb, would find it to be empty. One of the angels said to the women, Fear not ye, I know why you're here. You seek Jesus, which was crucified. You have to be near Him. I know why you're here. You desire to be with Him. Fear not ye. I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here, for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. Why are you here this morning? Why am I here? Why have you come to church on Resurrection Sunday? Why do you come any Lord's Day of the year? I know why you're here, and the Lord knows why we are here. We seek Jesus, which was crucified, our Savior, who gave His life for our sakes. We must be with Him. We must have Him. We seek Jesus, which was crucified. And so the words of the angel to the women are the words of the angel to us. Fear not. I know ye seek Him which was crucified. He is risen now, as He said, and therefore your salvation and your everlasting life is assured." Let's consider this Word of God then under the theme this morning, seeking Jesus which was crucified. In the first place, consider why He is sought. In the second place, consider where He is found. And in the third place, consider with what assurance. Seeking Jesus, which was crucified, why He is sought, where He is found, and with what assurance. The women came to the tomb that morning because they were seeking Jesus. We read that they, at the beginning of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to the sepulchre. They were coming. They were coming to the sepulchre. They were coming to Jesus Christ. And the angel explains their coming to the sepulchre this way in verse 5. Jesus. They were seeking this Jesus whom they loved. And so the question we face right away in the sermon is, what does it mean that they sought Jesus? What does it mean for us to seek Jesus Christ? Well, the idea of this seeking is that somebody looks for someone with the intention of finding them. There's a purpose that one has in mind when one seeks, and that purpose is to find. And that seeking is not an indifferent kind of looking. That seeking is earnest. That seeking is full of zeal. We seek the Lord Jesus Christ, and the women sought the Lord Jesus Christ. The idea is that they have to have Him. It is intolerable for them not to have Him. And that's what many of the Psalms teach us regarding this seeking of the Lord and this seeking of the Savior. For example, we read in Psalm 27, verse 4, There's no indifference there in Psalm 27, verse 4. This psalmist says, And that one thing will I seek after. That's the idea also of Psalm 34, verse 14, where we read, This seeking involves a pursuit It involves the entire being of a man as he hunts for and searches after and seeks this peace and the Lord himself. We read that in Psalm 63, verse 1. Oh God, thou art my God. Early will I seek thee. My soul thirsteth for thee. My flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is. There's the idea of seeking, thirsting for God, and longing for God as one who is parched in the desert thirsts for the waters. That's the idea of the women seeking Jesus, and that's the idea of our seeking the Lord Jesus Christ. It is an earnest search for Him, an earnest seeking for Him, a coming to Him, and a going to Him, because it's intolerable for the child of God that he be without the Lord Jesus Christ. And that earnest nature of this seeking is illustrated by the women demonstrated by the women as they came to seek Jesus in spite of all of the reasons that they could not get to Him, that they would not be able to see Him. There were powerful reasons standing against these women. There was, first of all, the stone that blocked the tomb. In fact, as the women made their way to the tomb, the conversation they had among themselves was, who will roll away the stone for us? These women did not expect to have the strength themselves, apparently even as a group, to be able to push that stone away. They needed a man there. They needed men there to push the stone away. But they come anyway. They seek Jesus Christ. And then there was the impediment of the soldiers who were guarding that tomb. The Jews, the unbelieving Jews, knew what Jesus had said. They remembered His words. Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it again. They had twisted those words. They had found false witnesses who would use those words against Jesus Christ, as if he had threatened to destroy the temple himself. But they remembered what Jesus had said, three days later I will raise it again. They knew what Jesus had said to his disciples, I must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things and be crucified, but the third day I will rise again from the dead. They remembered those things. And so the unbelieving Jews went to Pilate and besought Pilate for a guard to watch that tomb so that the disciples would not come by night, steal him away, steal his body away, and say he had risen from the dead after all. Pilate said to the Jews, you have your own soldiers, you have your own watch, you have your own men who guard the temple. Take some of those men and set them in front of the tomb and let them guard the tomb. And those soldiers were there and the women knew it. Everyone had seen those soldiers outside the tomb of this famous Jesus Christ who had been crucified on Good Friday and buried If those women had walked up to the soldiers and said to them, we would like to see the body of Jesus. Could you roll the stone away, please, for us? Those soldiers would have laughed at them and mocked them to scorn. The soldiers would have said, oh really, you want to see the body of Jesus, do you? That's all you want to do, is it? You're here innocently to behold the dead body of your Lord. We know what you're here for. You're here to steal that body. You're here to take it away. so that the report can go out that he really did rise from the dead. Those women could not deal with the soldiers, could not get past the soldiers, and yet they sought Jesus. They had to be near Him. It was intolerable that they stay away from Him. And so it is for the child of God today. We seek Jesus, which was crucified And it is intolerable for us that we don't have Him, that we be apart from Him. And we seek Him even though there are all kinds of obstacles that present themselves. Having Jesus Christ, belonging to Him, and being with Him is dangerous for a man or for a woman. or for a young person. We don't see that all of the time in our land today. The Lord has given us in our own land the freedom to worship the Lord according to his word, so that when we gather in the sanctuary today, we don't expect the government to come storming through the back doors and arrest us for being in church. But believing in Jesus Christ and seeking Him and following Him is dangerous nevertheless for a child of God. It's dangerous from the point of view of the ridicule and the scorn that may be heaped upon us by those unbelievers with whom we rub shoulders in our daily life. You believe, they may say, that that dead man rose from the dead? You believe the resurrection of the body to a higher life? What kind of foolishness is that? What kind of science can explain that? It was always this truth of the resurrection. that first brought scorn on the followers of Jesus. So that when Paul would preach, many Greeks would listen to him until he got to the resurrection of the dead and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And then they laughed and turned their backs on him. And seeking Jesus Christ is dangerous and will become increasingly dangerous in a land that is becoming increasingly anti-Christian. The signs of that increasing anti-Christian character, even of our own nation, is being seen all around. So that God's people are persecuted if they do not toe the line of the modern, progressive agenda of some people. Deny that homosexuals may be married. Deny that a man may become a woman or a woman a man. And society casts one out and even brings one to court and threatens one with all kinds of trouble. Our land is not going to become more Christian as the end approaches. This anti-Christian trend will continue so that it becomes increasingly dangerous for one to seek the Lord and follow Him. And yet we seek Him. We cannot be apart from Him. We seek Jesus, which was crucified. Why? Why would the women seek Him, though it went against all human logic? Why would we seek Him though it becomes increasingly dangerous for us to do so? Why seek the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, we find as we read this that what the women were doing and what we do is not natural. It's not natural. In fact, by nature, These women would have been not only indifferent to Jesus Christ, but they would have been actively opposed to Him. And so it is for us. We read a word in the passage in Matthew 28 verse 5 that is striking, and that word is seek. I know that ye seek Jesus. What does the word have to say about mankind seeking Jesus or seeking God? Psalm 14 verses 1 through 3, this is what we read. The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt. They have done abominable works. There is none that doeth good. The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any that did understand and seek God. They are all gone aside. They are all together become filthy. There is none that doeth good. No, not one. And that passage is quoted in Romans 3 where we read in verse 11. There is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after God. Seeking is not natural to a human being. Seeking Jehovah God is not natural to a human being. Seeking Jesus which was crucified is not natural. By nature, we do not seek. By nature, we hate. By nature, we would have been crying with the Jews, crucify him, crucify him. Get him out of our sight. Rid us of this man. We would not have him in our midst anymore. And yet, we find in the text the women seeking Jesus, which was crucified. In our own hearts, we seek Him and have come to His house today to seek Him in His Word. How can this be that natural rebels seek the Lord? Well, that happens in the first place because God reveals Jesus Christ as the Savior. God reveals salvation and reveals His love for His chosen people in Jesus Christ. That's what had been going on throughout Jesus' life and especially during His earthly ministry. God had been revealing Jesus as the only Savior. He had revealed Him as the prophet, the prophet who was unlike any other. a prophet who spoke the same truth that Isaiah did, for example, or Jeremiah did, but a prophet who was unlike any other, because this prophet knew the Word of God directly. And this prophet, when he spoke to them, taught not as the scribes and the Pharisees, but as one who had authority and one who had power. This was a prophet who knew the very mind of God, and who even announced to the people, I and my Father are one. What the Lord has determined, that I determine. What the Lord's will is, that is my will. A prophet unlike any other. The Lord had revealed Jesus Christ as a king unlike any other. A king who did not have to back up his commands with an army. at his beck and call, although the Lord could have called an army of angels to back up his words. But a king whose very word was power, so that when the storm arose on the sea and the disciples woke Jesus up in a panic, Jesus calmly rebuked the wind and the waves and they obeyed him. So that the disciples asked themselves, what manner of man is this that even the sea obeys him? He was a king unlike any other. He was a priest, a high priest, unlike any other. A high priest who had made himself, his own flesh, an offering for sin. The Lord revealed Jesus Christ as the Savior. He is Jesus, after all, which was crucified. And that revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ goes on in the preaching of the Word yet today and the reading of the Scriptures in our homes. We're seeing Jesus Christ. We're understanding who He is and what He is, His person and His work. We see the glory and love of the Lord displayed to His people in that Savior. The Lord not only reveals Jesus Christ as the only Savior from sin, but the Lord also draws His people to Him by His own sovereign power so that we do seek Him. That's what was happening to these women who assembled early in the morning while it was still dark to go to the tomb and seek Jesus. This was not a plan that they had come up with. in their own minds. This is not something that they had determined by their own will. This was the Lord Jesus Christ from the tomb, as it were, reaching out and taking hold of them and drawing them to Himself. That's how the women sought the Lord. The Lord drew them. We read of that in John 6, verse 44. where Jesus says, No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw him, and I will raise him up at the last day. How do men come to Jesus? How is it that those women walked on that path and desired to see Him? How is it that we have longed to see our risen Savior as we come to the house of God today? Why, Jehovah God draws us as He drew them. And that's Psalm 24, or Psalm 27, rather, as well, verse 8. When thou saidst, Seek ye my face, my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek. Jehovah speaks a powerful word, the powerful gospel. Seek ye my face. And that powerful word of the gospel of Jesus Christ causes us to seek Him. That's the coming of the women to the grave. That's their seeking Him. And that's our seeking the Lord as well, drawn by the Lord. And we call that gift that God gives to us, drawing us to Him, we call that gift faith. It is faith that seeks Jesus, which was crucified It is that union, that bond between Jesus Christ and us that must have Him, that must be near Him, that finds it intolerable to be apart from Him. Our confessions describe faith as that seeking. The Belgic Confession Article 22 on page 45 in the back of the Psalter, Belgic Confession Article 22, which describes faith in Jesus Christ, says, we believe that to attain the true knowledge of this great mystery, the Holy Ghost kindleth in our hearts an upright faith, which embraces Jesus Christ with all his merits, appropriates him, and seeks nothing more besides him. It seeks Him and seeks nothing more besides Him. That's the explanation then for why someone seeks the Lord. Why the women did and why we do. Because the Lord has drawn us. He has given us faith. By that faith we seek our Savior. The child of God who has stood at Calvary on Good Friday seeks the Lord. The child of God who has seen the font opened up to cleanse him from his sins seeks the Lord Jesus Christ. The child of God who has known the love of God in Christ must seek Him. Where is he found, this Jesus which was crucified? The women sought him at the tomb where they had last seen him. Coming to the tomb that morning with spices prepared to anoint him, yet not knowing how they would enter, they sought the Lord at the tomb. They sought the Lord among the dead. And the angels said to these women, when they came into the sepulcher and saw that the tomb was empty, why seek ye the living among the dead? Jesus Christ is not found in the tomb. Jesus Christ is found among the living. And that's because the Lord Jesus Christ arose from the dead. That was the word of the angel to the women. He is not here, for He is risen, as He said, come, see the place where the Lord lay. He's risen! Jesus Christ, by His own mighty power, took up His life again, just as by His own mighty power on Friday, He had laid it down. Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, took His life again, and took it in a way that it was raised to incorruption and immortality and glory and power. What must it have been to see that resurrection in the tomb that morning? What must it have been like to witness the Lord rise? He had been wrapped on Friday in the normal way of preparing a body with long strips of cloth wound all the way around him, wound around his limbs, and then a head napkin, which would have looked something like a pillowcase, put over his head and laid there on the floor or on a slab in the rock wall of that tomb. And Sunday morning, Without unwrapping all of the strips of cloth, the Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead, came through those strips of cloth so that later when Peter and John would come into the tomb, they would see all of the wrappings like they were wrapped around a body yet. Not unwrapped and thrown in a pile in the corner, but all wrapped up and the head napkin lying off a little ways so that you could see those wrappings were empty. The Lord Jesus Christ rose through those wrappings. And when the angel came to roll the stone away, that wasn't to let Jesus out of the tomb. He rose right through the rock wall of that tomb. It could not be a prison for him. The Lord Jesus Christ arose from the dead and was seen by many, by the women and by many others. That truth, that fact of Jesus' resurrection must be maintained by the church today because that fact, that truth is opposed by many. It's opposed by the modern scientific worldview that permeates our culture today and that permeates the thinking all around the world. That modern scientific worldview cannot explain the resurrection of the dead. That modern scientific worldview cannot replicate the resurrection of the dead. It cannot make it happen and so must deny it as an impossibility. But the truth and the fact of the resurrection of Christ is denied by many churches today. by modern unbelieving churches who are losing members like crazy, but who still have influence in our land. The modern churches deny the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and explain the resurrection this way. The resurrection only means that Jesus rose in our minds. It means that we remember him and think about him. And that's how he lives on, though he never rose from the dead. over against that unbelief, over against that denial of the Word of the Lord, we maintain, by God's grace, He arose. The angel said so. He arose. He is not here, for He is risen, as He said, Come, see the place where the Lord lay. The Lord must be sought among the living, not among the dead. The Lord Jesus Christ arose from the dead and was allowed to rise from the dead because of his death. The angel does not merely say, ye seek Jesus, which is risen, but ye seek Jesus which was crucified. There's a connection between that cross and that resurrection. And the connection is this, by that cross, the Lord earned and won resurrection for himself and for all of his people. This is how that connection works. When Jesus hung upon the cross, the Lord was pouring out upon him his curse against our sins and sinfulness. The Lord was punishing our guilt And what's the punishment for sin? Death. And the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. And, Romans 6, the wages of sin is death. The punishment for sin is death. The Lord was visiting death on the Lord Jesus Christ as He hung upon the cross. And if the Lord had left any of our sins unatoned, then that punishment must remain upon him. There could be no resurrection because the sins would not have yet been paid for. So that when Jesus Christ arose the third day, he proved by it decisively, your sins have been forgiven. There's no punishment of death left to be visited upon you for your sins. I live and rise from the dead as the proof and demonstration that you are justified, that you are forgiven all your iniquities by my blood. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ was a wonderful, powerful act in its own right, but it is an act that can be understood only in light of the cross. The Lord paid for your sins and mine, and therefore rose again the third day, and must be sought among the living and not among the dead, because the punishment is gone. And so we too seek the Lord Jesus Christ by faith, by the drawing of God. According to God's revelation, we seek Jesus Christ among the living. We seek Him where He now sits in heaven at God's right hand. We seek Him there and know Him there as He is revealed in the Holy Scriptures. A child of God seeking Jesus. Seeks Him according to the Word. Seeks Him in the revelation of God. That's why we've come to church this morning. This is where we seek Jesus Christ, the proclamation of the Gospel. That's why before the dinner, maybe with family all gathered around this afternoon, We read the Word of God and pray together. That's where we seek Jesus and find Him among the living as He's revealed in the Word. That's why we read the Word of God on our own and meditate upon it. We seek Jesus among the living. And those who seek Jesus by faith, drawn by God, according to God's revelation, have the assurance, the absolute assurance, of finding the Lord Jesus Christ. That is, the absolute assurance of knowing Him and worshiping Him in reality where He sits in heaven. The angel told the women that they could be sure of His resurrection, of His living, When the angel said, He is not here, for He has risen, as He said, as He said, Come, see the place where the Lord lay. The angel was showing the women proof that the Lord Jesus Christ had risen. Well, what might that proof be? There are the grave clothes still formed in the form of a man, but obviously empty. There's proof. Look around in the whole tomb. In this cave, this cavern, you're not going to find anybody here because he's not here. He's risen. The tomb is empty. There's proof. There could have been all kinds of proof that the angel pointed to, maybe even the angel's own word. I tell you, Jesus is not here. But what's the very first proof that the angel points to? As he said, he has risen as he said. The angel points to Jesus' word. Before he died and rose again, Jesus had said, I go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders and the Jews and I will be crucified and rise again the third day. Jesus had said He would rise from the dead. Jesus had said destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again. He had said He would rise and that's the greatest proof of His resurrection. Even to the women standing in the empty tomb, the first proof of all is the words, is the word of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's the proof that carries weight in the heart of the child of God. That's the proof that convinces the child of God He's risen indeed. Because we hear Him say it. He speaks that word, I arose or I will arise. The child of God hears it in his own soul by the ear of faith. He's absolutely sure it's true because it's the word of Jesus Christ. We don't have to have stood there with those women that day and go look in the tomb ourselves to see if it's empty. We have the word of our Lord, which was the main way the women knew, too, that He was risen, as He said. And that's such rich comfort, because the Lord said many other things, too. The Lord said also, I will not leave you nor forsake you. The Lord said also, lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world. The Lord said also, I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am there ye may be also. The Lord said also, surely I come quickly. The Lord has said all of these things. And when He says them, the child of God believes them, is assured of them, because the word of the Lord cannot fail. That word could not fail at His resurrection. He said He would rise and rose. And so the word of the Lord and all of these other promises cannot fail, but is true and sure. A child of God seeking the Lord Jesus Christ by faith has the assurance that the Lord's word is true. And the angel in the text pointed to the place where the Lord lay as well. Those words are almost chilling to us. The place where the Lord lay. That's the Lord's grave. That's the Lord's tomb. That's that spot in the earth that held the Lord's body for a little while after He had died. And that place where the dead body lies is an awful place. The grave is the place of corruption. The grave is the place where the body molders and decays and turns to dust. That's the place that is our grave. And the Lord had such a place. Now by virtue of His Godhead, His body did not molder and decay in those three days. But He lay nevertheless in that place, in that grave, And as far as the grave was concerned, its purpose was to claim His body and turn it again to dust. Come see the place where the Lord lay. But by His resurrection, the Lord Jesus Christ took hold of that place. And by His resurrection, the Lord Jesus Christ made that place not His master, not his defeat, but made that place his servant. The Lord Jesus Christ had a place where he lay, but he rose from it, and now that place is empty. And by that resurrection from his place in the grave, the Lord has also entered into the grave of every one of his people, into that place that is yours, and he has sanctified it. He has changed it and turned it so that now that grave must serve the Lord Christ and therefore serve you. That's the encouragement and the assurance and comfort that the child of God may have. At the graveside of a loved one as we bury our dead who have fallen asleep in the Lord, we remember as we stand before that hole in the ground, that place where our loved one shall be laying. The Lord has sanctified this place. And when he arose out of his place, He has testified that our loved one shall arise out of this place too in the return of our Savior on the clouds of glory. So the children of God, with this hope, with this assurance, with this confidence, seek the Lord Jesus Christ which was crucified. beseeching Him to come and finish, come and complete our redemption by raising our bodies. Amen. Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. We thank Thee for Jesus Christ, our Savior, and for His resurrection. We thank Thee that He is risen from the dead, We thank Thee for Thy power in our hearts to make us seek Him. We pray that Thou will bless us from heaven with all spiritual blessings that our risen Lord now pours upon us. Hear our prayer, forgive our sins, for Jesus' sake, amen. Psalter number 132, 132. Notice stanza five. This mighty God forever lives. Our God and Savior to abide. Until our pilgrim days shall end. Forever be our faithful God. The five stanzas, all five of 132. R-S-E-S, we protest thee. to abide, and till our pilgrim days shall end, we'll ever be our faithful guide. Thou blessed be the mighty one, the home, the God of Israel, for he alone has loved his God, and he took glory at exile. And blessed be his glorious name, long as the ages Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.