Our sermon text for this morning comes from Luke chapter 18 verses 9 through 14. Let's begin reading in verse 9. The Lord says, He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves, that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus, God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get. But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted." Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father God, we thank you that you've given us your word and that you've not left us in the darkness of our ignorance, our thoughtlessness, of our hard-heartedness, that you've revealed to us not just truth, but a truth that breaks in and through the hardness of our hearts to illumine our minds, but to soften our hearts and to replace stone with flesh. We thank you that you've given us your Holy Spirit. Those of us who have been born again from above and father we pray that your Holy Spirit the same Holy Spirit would illumine us this morning so that we might understand the truth that you've revealed here. The truth as it is in Jesus that we might see him and respond faithfully to this truth. God, for those who are not in Christ this morning, who are among us, we pray that you would do a work in their heart as well, an initial saving work of grace to open their eyes that they might see the wonderful things that are here. They might see Christ and entrust themselves to the Savior. God, we pray that this morning that you would Help us to humble ourselves before you. God, that you would break down every pride by which we would exalt our hearts over our brothers and even before you, and humble ourselves before God and man. Do this work in us, we pray. We pray all of this in Christ's name. Amen. In the previous parable, Jesus teaches on prayer. And he taught his disciples that they ought to pray with hope. the way that Jesus puts it in chapter 18 verse 1, if you're following along. He says there, to pray and not lose heart. To pray with hope. And now Jesus gives them another parable in which he teaches them to pray with humility. Both of these ideas are significant. They're very important for eternity. He wants us to think about the eternal significance of how we pray. It's easy to look at these verses 9 through 14 as simply being about justification. About what it means to be saved. And that's certainly valid. That's much of what we'll talk about this morning. But don't lose sight of the fact that he's teaching them how to pray. And it's what our prayers say about who we are and the condition of our hearts and how our prayer life reflects on our Our inner man. Our inner person. Both of these ideas are significant. They're very important for eternity. Praying with hope. Praying with humility. Christ wants us to think about the eternal significance of how we pray. And we know this because he takes... He talks about his second coming in verse 8. Look at verse 8 with me. He says, When the Son of Man comes. That's of course one of Jesus' favorite self-designations. It's a title that he He likes to use for himself an Old Testament title that comes from the book of Daniel. But he's talking about himself here and he's talking about this future reality of his own second coming. He's coming. He's coming to judge. That's also here in context. If we look at verses 7 and 8. Verse 7, will not God give justice? In verse 8. he will give justice speedily. He's coming to judge, and he's going to give justice. And what does that mean? If we think about a court of law here on earth, if you have ever been in a court of law, especially a court of criminal law, then there's going to be a judge, there might be a jury, and the judge is going to make a pronouncement, and the pronouncement is going to be guilty or not guilty. That's the main thing. Until that moment when the judge utters those words, everybody is waiting on bated breath to hear whether the person who has been accused of some kind of criminality is going to be declared to be guilty or not guilty. Now, of course, in our system, in our justice system, that's not final. There are appeals that can be made, rulings can be overturned, but God's justice is final. when that judgment is pronounced by our judge, it'll be final. And so there's a sense in which this is what is all sort of culminating in, this is the moment that we've all been waiting for, and this is what determines where we'll spend eternity. And so Jesus, he's in the context of prayer, the second coming is coming to judge and that final judgment that will be pronounced on all mankind, whether guilty or not guilty. Or the way that we talk about it oftentimes in Christianity is whether or not someone is justified or not. Are they justified with God? Have they been declared to be righteous in his sight so that they can enter into heaven enter into the joy of their master heaven glory or they're going to be cast into utter darkness into eternal punishment in hell so this is this is part of the context he's coming to judge to give justice but what will he find when he comes what will his assessment be of you I wonder well how we pray reveals our heart in our spiritual condition and it can give us a some indication of what will happen on that day in the future. Whenever we think about a court of law, sometimes we think about the inclinations or the the judicial philosophy or there's certain a history a record that a certain judge has and we might try to speculate about how the judge is going to come down on a certain issue and we think well man that person's really in for it because they've got a tough judge we have to have an unsympathetic judge and so there are ways that we can kind of speculate in advance and the Bible gives us quite clear teaching about but how we can know what judgment we'll receive on the day of judgment when the Son of Man comes. We ought to care about this. It's not only relevant, it's in one sense the only thing that's relevant for us. And when we put life now in eternal perspective, everything takes on a new cast, it looks differently to us. It has a different degree of significance. And the things that we consider to be very important and that we hold dear all matter much less when we think about the fact, what does it matter whether we gain the whole world but lose our soul? And so how we pray reveals our heart. And we see this in this passage. What we have in this parable is two men. Two men, two prayers, two outcomes, two designations or judgments from God. And I want to look at these two men first of all. Let's begin here in verse 10. Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. It's difficult for us to hear this with the kind of fresh ears that we need to hear this with to fully appreciate this text. Because if you've been in church for any length of time, maybe you're brand new, or you've just, I don't know, been checking out and not paying attention, and you don't know who the Pharisees are. Those guys sound great. But for most Christians, we don't think those are the good guys. Those are the guys in the New Testament who are wearing the black hats. We know that if it was a Western, they'd have mustaches and curly mustaches and black cowboy hats and it seems to be obvious to us these are not the good guys. But that's not how Jesus' hearers would have interpreted this or understood this. These would have been the good guys. And so we need, I think, to understand this in our modern context. And so I want you to reflect for a moment about who these would be in our day. These would be people who are faithful in their church attendance. You know, sometimes we lament the fact that there are a lot of people who are not very faithful in their church attendance. And we think, I wish more of Maybe we know people who don't go to church at all, but maybe we know people who come very sporadically and frequently. And we think about the people who are here every time the doors are open. That's a guy, that's a man or a woman who loves the Lord, who is committed to His cause, an exemplary Christian. We admire them, I think in a sense rightly so. We aspire to be similarly committed to the Lord and His people. We think about people in our church who know their Bibles really well. Whenever they're thinking of some passage that comes to mind, they're like, I know where that's at. That's 1 Corinthians 7. That's Psalm chapter 2. And they know exactly where it's at, and they even can envision where it's located on the page. and they're quoting scripture, and their prayers are filled with allusions to the language of the Bible. They just know their Bibles. That's what a Pharisee was, someone who was faithful in their religious observance, someone who knew the word of God. The whole Pharisee movement was really not an elite, upper-class type of movement. It was basically working class. These weren't the Sadducees. These weren't the elders of the people. These were Pharisees, but it was sort of If you want to think about it like this, in our history, if you're old enough, maybe you can recall, even in the Southern Baptist Convention, that we had our own conservative resurgence, it was called. And it was sort of a back to the Bible movement. It was to recognize that many of our institutions, our seminaries, and the publications that were coming out, and all of this, were starting to go sort of liberal. And so we wanted to recapture that, but the emphasis is on that we're going to make sure that these seminaries are teaching and that the publications that are coming out of our publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, that all of this is going to be true to the Word of God. that is going to be founded on the doctrine of infallibility and the inerrancy of the Word of God and we're going to be true to Scripture. That's what the Pharisees were. They were a back-to-the-Bible movement. Very socially conservative, very committed, and so I think that if they were among us, we would have to really know them personally. There might be indications, but I think that most of us would probably overlook a lot of the signs that maybe Jesus points out in his ministry. What we would see, what would be most obvious to us, is all of the exemplary characteristics of the Pharisees. So you have to, I think, understand this, that these are the kinds of people, by and large, that Jesus' audience here, his first hearers, are thinking, these are the people who really please the Lord. They're a shoe-in, you know, for heaven. And so we need to understand that. Two men went into the temple to pray. One a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. So the question in this, in the whole format of this parable as we go on, we'll see this more clearly. towards the end of this, the question is which one of these men do you envision is right with God? Which one is justified and which one is not? Which one is pleasing to the Lord? Which one is exemplary? Which one really captures the heart of the Christian religion and which one is just totally doesn't get it? And if you're thinking about that you just see the Pharisee on the one hand, and your inclination, your impulse is to think, that's the guy. That's the guy who's pleasing the Lord, who's going to be justified, so forth. But now we have this tax collector in verse 10. That was the other man. And before we hear anything that he said, or if we know nothing else about him, we know this, that he is a notorious sinner. He's considered to be a notorious sinner. He's oftentimes lumped together with other of the worst sinners whose sins are not the respectable sins of church-going people. I think even church-going people, we can admit that we have our own sins, but if we've been in Christ for a long time, and if we've been growing, we know that our sins are... If we were to talk about our sins to other people who are out in the world, who are very far from God, they're going to think, that's not sin. little pride, gossip a little bit here and there, you lost your temper, kind of, you didn't punch a wall or anything, but you felt that gut flushed and you feel bad about it. People are thinking, that's not a real sin. If you're gonna sin, sin. That's church people sin. Well, maybe the Pharisees got that, but this guy is not. He's the one that you look at and you go, this is a notorious sinner. Look at the way that the Pharisee even talks about him in his prayer. He says, He says here in verse 11, God, I thank you that I am not like other men. And then he lists the men he's thankful that he's not like, and he's gonna list the notorious sinners whose sins are obvious to all. Extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this, tax collector. I think that in our context, we have a hard time because we think, oh yeah, I don't like tax collectors either. You know, but we want to hate tax collectors because they do take a lot of our, they take a big portion of our income, and we're not happy with the amount of income that they take. But they're just doing their job, you know? They're just doing their job. And they're not doing anything that's unethical. They're to the book. And that's not what these men were like. These men were like, it would be like if our tax collectors, our IRS, if they were collecting money to send to our sworn enemies overseas. To send them to some kind of jihadist group that was hell-bent on destroying the fabric of our society. And they were funneling money to them. But there's nothing we could do about it for some reason. Or to send this money to China or something like this. And so we're just like, these people are traitors. Their actions are treasonous. They hate their own people by supporting the enemies of their people, the Romans in their case. And furthermore, in order to make their living, they weren't paid by the Romans so much as they were taking in more money than they ought to have taken. They were themselves sort of extortioners. They took an exorbitant sum and passed along the required amount to the Romans, then kept a lot for themselves, and they lived sort of high on the hog. They lived well, and so if you're a Jewish person, you're a pious Jew, and you're like this Pharisee, you're actually very generous. a religiously devoted, generous person, and you've got this other man praying, but this is a tax collector. He's collecting money to support our sworn enemies, and I know where he lives, you know, with this job he's got. He's living in the mansion down the really big house. I'm living in a very modest home. He wears fine clothing. I'm dressed very modestly in my apparel, and you can't help but be bitter towards these people because they are, great sinners and they are just about universally hated. So this was this man, this tax collector. So at the outset we see two men and this is to set us up for unexpected turn in the story because if you're looking at this with fresh eyes and you're hearing this with fresh ears, you're not thinking Pharisee is the black hat. He's the bad guy. What you're thinking is the Pharisee is a shoo-in for heaven. Obviously he's the one that pleases God. When the Son of Man comes to bring justice, this man will be justified. He's the one that's going to hear, well done, good and faithful servant and meet with God's approval. The tax collector, absolutely not. It's ridiculous to even think that. And so I think maybe for us, as you're reflecting on this, you have to maybe substitute these two men or these class of people for people in your own experience. a respectable church member, someone who's a pastor or a deacon, who's generous, who gives of their time, who, you know, I mean, many people around us, people that we love in our own church. This is the kind of person that we're envisioning. Not that the people around us are hypocrites like the Pharisees were, but this is the kind of person that they were envisioning that we ought to envision. And the tax collector is someone that we feel deeply uncomfortable with, someone that refuses to repent of their sin and seems to be a notorious sinner and a rebel. So there's two prayers. First we see in verse 11, the Pharisee standing by himself prayed thus, God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. Jesus has already said in verse 9 that he's addressing this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. And these two things sort of go together. How we think about ourselves, how we treat others, it's people who are the most humble that treat others with the greatest degree of love and dignity and respect and patience. It's people that are proud, that have the least amount of patience or love or compassion on those who are not like them. And so we see these two things go together, and it's illustrated for us powerfully in verse 11 and verse 12 in the Pharisees' prairie parade. And first of all, he treats others with contempt. And we see why, because in verse 12 we see how he thinks about himself, and he trusted in himself that he was righteous. And this is the way that he puts it in verse 12. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get. And these things are not, strictly speaking, requirements of the law. What he's talking about is fasting twice a week. It's only required for God's people to fast once a year on the Day of Atonement. So it's required to fast once a year. That's what it means to be a pious Jew. He's so far advanced in his piety, his spirituality, godliness. He is fasting twice a week. You know, I don't know if you've ever heard the stories of, there's certain figures in church history that are exemplary for their prayer lives. Who was the guy that, George Mueller of Bristol, who ran the orphanage, if you've never read something on George Mueller, it would be encouraging, I think, to you. And he never asked for a dime, or whatever they have over there, pence or something, you know. Never asked for any money. He just prayed for the needs of his orphanage and God always answered, and it's really amazing the way that he trusted in God, and he delighted in God, and he prayed, and there are stories of people like Martin Luther or others who would pray for hours a day. I think it was Martin Luther who said, I've got so much work to do, I've got to begin my day in like three or four hours of prayer, because I've got so much to do. And his point was just that I won't be able to do anything except for God's grace. And so he's exemplary for his prayer. Well, that's what this Pharisee is doing here. He's fasting twice a week. This is an incredible degree of religious devotion. He gives a tithe of all that he gets, and this is, again, this is beyond, this is someone who's, I mean, they're scrupulous. You give them a birthday card with some money in it, they're like, well, I've gotta go exchange this for a lower denomination, so I gotta tithe on my birthday gift. They go to the grocery store, they buy a head of lettuce, they're trying to, with their knife, take a tenth of that off so that they can send that on. I mean, it's beyond what is an ordinary Christian devotion of being generous, of tithing, and being sacrificially generous with one's resources. But this is the focus of his religion. This is why he's confident before God. This is why the Pharisee can stand in prayer. You notice that he stands, he takes the traditional posture, undoubtedly, of prayer for Jewish people, which is to look up, raise the hands up to heaven. I actually think that perhaps the reason why we, our practice as Christians, is to look down, to close our eyes, is because of this text collector. Nowhere else, I don't think there's anywhere else in the scripture we have an example of anybody looking down when they pray. I mean even Paul talks about lifting holy hands in prayer, and it's always a looking up to heaven. with open-handed posture of receiving what God would give, that sort of thing, which is fine, you can do that, maybe people do that in certain cultures, but we do, our practice is typically to bow our heads in prayer. Well, that's what the sinner does in his prayer, he bows his head, but the Pharisee doesn't feel that sense of shame before God, of unworthiness, he feels entirely worthy. and he stands proudly, and he lifts his eyes up to heaven, and there's no cognitive dissonance, there's no disconnect with this man, and the basis of his confidence is self-evidently, here in verse 12, it's his own righteousness. Now I want to point something out to you that maybe you might miss here in verse 11. because in the way that people think about you know their own righteousness there are some people who think that you know it's just all me not many but there are and in the in church history there was a There was a monk called Pelagius. Maybe you've heard that name or that word Pelagianism. But he was, the early church had to really fight against this because the thought that he was teaching everywhere, and it was a big deal, was that, no, God can't help you in this way. It's all up to you. It's just basically salvation by works. You've got to do good. Salvation is by works. It's not at all by grace, but there are others that kind of go halfway in between works and grace. I think that's what this man does. And you have got to be on guard against this, because maybe you think, no, I know that I can't do it all myself. I need God. But listen to this man's prayer in verse 11. God, I thank you that I am not like other men. So he does give some credit to God. But at the end of the day, the basis for his confidence before God is his own works. I thank you, I wouldn't have been able to do these works apart from you. So you hear that he's recognizing God's role, he's recognizing that God has been gracious to him and helped him, so he thanks God, but at the end of the day, does that matter? Because his view of what it means to be right with God is still, it's based on what I have done. And this is his prayer, he's proud, he thinks more highly of himself than he ought to think, and he treats others with contempt. And we see this other prayer, the prayer of the tax collector. He's standing far off. They're both by himself, but we get the sense, by themselves, we get the sense that the tax collector has, does not consider himself to be worthy to stand in the same vicinity as the other worshipers. You can sense the shame that he feels. He stands far off. He would not even lift up his eyes to heaven. That's why I think maybe our tradition of looking down perhaps comes from this. He would not even lift up his eyes to heaven. He would beat his breast. Have you ever beat your breast? Or pounded something else? I had a pastor one time that used to do this when people were falling asleep. Wake you up. But have you ever done something like that whenever you just had so much sorrow, angst, grief, these strong emotions and you just have to, maybe you just pull your hair out or you bang your head against a wall and that's what this man is doing. He's beside himself. He beat his breast and he says, simply, God be merciful to me, a sinner. And interestingly, it doesn't even say a sinner in the Greek, although that's what many translations, including mine, the way it puts it. But if you have a New American Standard version, it says, God be merciful to me, the sinner. And that's actually exactly what it says in the Greek, the sinner. It's as if he's saying, compare with me, there's not another sinner in the whole world. And I think about the way that Paul says about himself, that he is the chief, among sinners. That's his feeling. So he's not, when it comes to other people, unlike this man, he's not treating other people with contempt. I think he's, it's not really explicit here, it doesn't say how he thinks about others, but I think that he's viewing others more highly than himself. Because he thinks of them well, he thinks of himself poorly. He's not putting himself into a category with others. He alone, in his mind, what matters is that he needs mercy. I don't know about them. It's not my role to judge those other people. I am the sinner. I'm the sinner, God. And so, and this is how I think that this plays out. I mean, just as we say, if you're proud and you exalt your own, if you are self-exalted and self-righteous, you will think poorly of others and fail to love your neighbors as you ought. But on the other hand, if you are humble before God, you acknowledge that the only thing you need is mercy. from God and you plead with God for mercy, that kind of self-abasement and that humility in prayer, it naturally leads to thinking of others better than yourself, considering them as more significant than yourself, as we're encouraged to do in the New Testament. So he pleads for mercy. I think that the way that we have these two men, we have their two prayers, they reflect two ways of thinking and our prayers often do this and so this is why I think it's so useful to consider our prayers and why Jesus discusses our justification in terms of how do you pray? How do you pray believer? like more like the Pharisee. Thank you that I'm such a great person and that I have really avoided the sins of many and that I thank you for my consistency in prayer and you're thanking God but you're thanking him for your focus of your confidence before God and your pride and it's all about what you do and who you are. If that's the way that you pray that reflects a certain way of thinking, what is that way of thinking? It's in verse 9. These are people who pray this way because they trust in themselves that they were righteous. Self-righteousness is not faith in Christ. It actually reflects someone whose trust is in themselves. So be warned. That is the pathway to damnation. It may seem right at first because these are very impressively religious, devoted, disciplined people. But what matters is not all the external things, not that they look the part. I was talking about someone recently, my brother-in-law golfs, and I've decided that I'm gonna go golfing with him. But I'm really bad at it, so anyhow. I was talking to someone about this, and they were mentioning how that they had received, their brother had died, and they had received all his golf equipment. Fancy golf shoes, clothes, equipment, and they went out there, on the golf course with a friend, and they really looked the part, you know, because they had all this fancy stuff. And then after they'd played a few holes, the guy says, you know, there was some kind of disconnect there because he looked like he was a golfer. He played the part well in the way that he dressed and the clubs that he carried, but it became obvious, this guy doesn't know what he's doing. The whole time he's just pulling balls out of the woods. That's it. That's what's going on here. These people look the part. They're doing all the right things from the outside. If you were just to kind of not know them very well, you'd assume that's the guy who's going to be justified before God when the Son of Man comes. He looks the part, but it's in the heart that matters, and this is a person that trusts in themselves. Think about your own heart. Because the final thing we see here is that not only do we have these two prayers, we have these two judgments. Ultimately it's not what you think about yourself that matters, it's what God thinks about you that matters. So you can be proud and you can be pleased with yourself because you think you're doing all the right things, at least well enough. compare with others to be a good person. But it doesn't matter what you think and it doesn't matter what I think about you or what anyone else here thinks about you. You can get all of us clapping for you and getting the applause of man. But none of that matters because what matters is what God thinks about you when he says when he says about you and look at what Jesus his judgment is in verse 14. I tell you Here's his sort of, this is the moment of, I know this isn't final judgment, but this is the moment where the judge declares guilty, not guilty. We're all waiting for this moment. I tell you, this man, the tax collector, went down to his house justified. That is to say, declared to be righteous. Obviously he's not righteous. He doesn't have inherent righteousness. It's not self-righteousness, but he is declared to be righteous. He went down to his house justified rather than the other. The other is not justified, guilty before God. And what is the basis for God doing this? Because if we have a judge and the judge says to someone who is guilty of murder and says not guilty, in spite of all of the clear evidence, we say that judge is unjust. Not a good judge. We don't commend the judge for their leniency, That's a murderer. The right thing to do is to pronounce a judgment on that murderer of guilty so that they are punished appropriately for that horrible crime. How can God be both just and the justifier of the one who, you know, in this case, cries for mercy and is given mercy, is justified? Well, you know, there are two times a day when Jewish people would pray. There's a morning prayer, there's an evening prayer. In all likelihood, this is when this man is praying, this tax collector. It's around three o'clock in the afternoon. And there at three o'clock, he cries out to the Lord, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. He had no idea what he was asking for. It's a parable, obviously. but no idea what he's asking for, because in order for God to answer that request, as this man was there for the evening sacrifice, for the evening prayer, when a lamb was skillfully slain, their blood was collected, sprinkled on the people for the atonement of sin. This was a part of what they are gathering to witness and to pray here. as he sees the lamb that was slain and he cries for mercy, no idea, but that God would put to death his own son, the one who's speaking these words. At about that time of day, three o'clock, the time of the evening sacrifice, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world was executed and his blood was spilled for the forgiveness of all those who cry out to him for mercy. That is how God can be both just and the justifier of the one who cries out for mercy because he is in fact the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus who gave himself for our sins, whose sacrifice has made an atonement for the sins of those who believe. So as we conclude here, I want you to look at that last phrase here, that last sentence in verse 14. Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. That's the call this morning, and I want to urge you If you've not put your faith in Christ, and I can't call you a brother or a sister, but if you have not yet put your faith in Christ, and you know this because you really, if you're honest with yourself, you think about the way that you pray, you're not praying with humility. You're praying with hope. You got that down. You're confident that when Christ comes again, but it's a false, that you'll be okay, that you'll be justified, but your confidence is misplaced. It's false because the basis for that hope is not this humility. this cry for mercy, it's not faith in Christ, what He's done, His righteousness, it's your own. And Jesus is calling you to humble yourself, confess your sins to Him, cry out to mercy, cry out to God for mercy. He will be merciful to you. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father God, we thank you for your mercy. We can cry out with the tax collector. Be merciful to us. God, we pray that you would convict our hearts of our sin, that we would not be able to, by a lateral glance, by looking around at those we know who are perhaps in a worse spiritual condition, who seem to be further in sin than we ourselves are, that we feel okay, somehow, that we're going to be justified by Maybe we don't think we're perfect, but God, that we think we're good enough for heaven. Disabuse us of this falsehood, God, that when we look within, help us to see that there is nothing there but sin, unrighteousness. God, that there is no good, no not one, and that all of our good works are filthy rags. The only thing that we've contributed to our salvation is the sin that made it necessary that Christ should die. Help us to be humble, to pray with humility, to trust not in ourselves but in Christ this morning. We pray that you grant faith for those who are far from you and are yet to believe. We pray that you bring them to Christ, draw them in as the gospel is preached, that you would draw them to Christ and have them to trust in him as their savior. We pray that for those of us who do believe that you would keep us humble reminding us often that we stand before you, no matter how much progress we make in the Christian life, we stand before you accepted in the Beloved and not in anything that we ourselves have done, no matter how much we've grown. And God, we thank you for Christ in whose name we pray. Amen.