If you'll stand now for the reading of Scripture. Our New Testament reading is 2 Corinthians chapter 12, verses 1 through 10. And our Old Testament reading, which is also our text, is Job 3, 1 through 19. Hear now the word of Christ from 2 Corinthians 12. Boasting is necessary, though it's not profitable. But I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago, whether in the body I do not know or out of the body I do not know, God knows, such a man was caught up to the third heaven. And I know how such a man, whether in the body or apart from the body, I do not know, God knows, was caught up into paradise and heard inexpressible words which a man is not permitted to speak. On behalf of such a man, I will boast. But on my own behalf, I will not boast except in regard to my weakness." Weakness says, "'For I do not wish to boast. For if I do wish to boast, I will not be foolish, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from this so that no one will credit me with more than he sees in me or hears from me.'" Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason to keep me from exalting myself, it was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me, to keep me from exalting myself. Concerning this, I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And he has said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore, I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties for Christ's sake. For when I'm weak, then I am strong." And now over to Job chapter 3 and the first 19 verses. And afterward, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. And Job said, let the day perish on which I was to be born, and the night which said, a boy is conceived. May that day be darkness. Let not God above care for it, nor light shine on it. Let darkness and black gloom claim it. Let a cloud settle on it. Let the blackness of the day, let the blackness of the day terrify it. As for that night, let darkness seize it. Let it not rejoice among the days of the year. Let it not come into the number of the months. Behold, let that night be barren. Let no joyful shout enter it. Let those curse it who curse the day, who are prepared to rouse Leviathan. Let the stars of its twilight be darkened. Let it wait for light, but have none. And let it not see the breaking dawn. Because it did not shut the opening of my mother's womb or hide trouble from my eyes. Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb and expire? Why did the knees receive me, and why the breast that I should suck? For now I would have lain down and been quiet. I would have slept then. I would have been at rest. With kings and with counselors of the earth, who rebuilt ruins for themselves, or with princes who had gold, who were filling their houses with silver, or like a miscarriage which is discarded, I would not be, as infants that never saw light. There the wicked cease from raging, and there the weary are at rest. The prisoners are at ease together. They do not hear the voice of the taskmaster. The small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our Lord endures forevermore. Let us pray. Indeed, our God, we call out unto you to have mercy and look on us now as we seek you in the way that you have appointed through the preaching of your word. We ask that the spirit who inspired these words indeed will illumine them to our understanding and our practice and grant they be preached in a holy power. And we ask this for Christ's sake. Amen. Probably most of us have been in that situation where we inadvertently hit our thumb with a hammer or pinched a finger and in the pain we turned around and we lashed out at somebody that was standing there beside us. I've done that. I imagine that most of you have done that. I'll make it a bit more serious. When people are in the throes of great distress, trial, and affliction, emotional pain, so often they lash out at those that love them most and that they love most. It's something that we do in our sinful nature. And at times like that, in a sense, we are lashing out at God. when it's a serious issue. And what's happened is, whether it's a minor thing or a big thing, we really are being motivated by self-pity. Whether it's momentarily or whether it is for some longer period of time, we have become obsessed with ourselves. That's very easy to do. Particularly as I think about this congregation. I know many of you from many different times in my own life as God's intertwined our lives together. And in God's providence there are many diverse afflictions and trials in this congregation. And more than likely at any one time when we gather there are those that are beaten down by those trials, obsessed by those trials. what we actually call depressed by those trials. Well, that's where we find Job tonight in Job chapter 3. You know well the story of Job, the four great actors in the book. Job himself, a man declared by God to be blameless, upright, a God-fearer who turns away from evil. The sovereign and glorious God is the second person at work in the book. And then Satan, who comes by God's permission, by God's compulsion into God's presence. And under God's sovereign authority is allowed to tempt Job to deny God. And then at the end of chapter two, Job's three friends show up and they will dialogue with Job, continuing in a sense in those dialogues Satan's temptations. Now Job has stood the test well, twice in these two awful attacks, one on his estate, with his property and his servants and his children being destroyed. And the second more severely in his health, where his own body is being destroyed, what was apparently a terminal, painfully terminal illness, and the betrayal of his own wife. Job has submitted with great patience. He has not denied God or cursed Him. His friends come. And they sit with Job for seven days, which is an appropriate thing for friends to do in times of grief and sorrow, waiting for Job to speak. But when Job opened his mouth and spoke, I'm sure that they, like us, were greatly surprised. What we find here in these 19 verses is the lament of a man who has been so obsessed with his own difficulties that he's taken his eyes off of God. He's focused on himself and thus he is thinking and speaking inappropriately. And that, dear friends, is something that any of us are liable to do. A believer can become so obsessed with the trials of his or her life that He loses focus, he loses perspective, and he then thinks, speaks, acts inappropriately. You and I have found ourselves in those situations, obsessed with the trials or the circumstances of our lives where we have lost focus, lost perspective, and we have thought and spoken and acted inappropriately. So we want to look at Job's first part of Job's speech here in these 19 verses under two headings, the loss of focus and the loss of perspective. In verses 1 through 10, the Spirit describes for us Job's words as he loses focus. Notice how the speech is introduced. It's a typical Hebrew idiom to show intensity of speech and thought, particularly a lamentation. And afterward, Job opened his mouth. And out of his mouth spews a cursing, a cursing of the day of his birth. And we now read. the words that Job spoke. You notice well, as we look at these words, the tremendous rhetorical aspect of the speech. A petulant teenager would simply say, I wish I were dead. But Job takes 19 verses to tell us that he wishes he were dead. And he does so with really a wonderful rhetorical flourish. And it's a bit of a window on ancient people. We're told in the scripture that Job was the greatest of the men of the East, and the men of the East were known amongst all men for their wisdom. Job and his friends would have been trained rhetoricians. The chieftains of Homer have nothing over the speeches of Job and of his friends that we find here in this book. So Job is pouring out his heart with great rhetorical flourish. The first thing that he's emphasizing is that he wishes that he had not been born. In verse 3, let the day perish on which I was to be born, notice that I was to be born, and the night which said a boy is conceived. He wishes that even the day of his conception could be erased and done away with. As Job wishes that he had not been born, he expresses three things about his birthday. Think about this the next time you have a birthday. He asks that the day would be obliterated from the calendar, bereft of all joy and deprived of all glory. So first he says that he wishes the day could be removed from the calendar. Go back in a time machine and simply take out that nine-month period of time. Verses four through six. May that day be darkness. Let not God above care for it, nor light shine on it. Let darkness and black gloom claim it. Let a cloud settle on it. Let the blackness of the day terrify it. And as for that night, let darkness seize it. Let it not rejoice among the days of the year. Let it not come into the number of the months. In his pain and his sorrow, Job simply laments, oh, that that day never had been. It's simply his way of saying, I wish that I had never been born. Notice the repetition. Let the day be a darkness. Let no light shine on it. Let darkness and black gloom claim it. A cloud settle on it. Blackness, terrify it. Let the darkness seize it. Let it not even be listed in the days of the year or in the number of the months. Job is saying, I wish that that day had never been. In other words, he wished that he was not in existence. He'd never seen the light of day. He'd never drawn the first breath. He second says that he longs that that day be simply bereft of all joy. We know the joy of a newborn child, that accustomed shout, it's a boy, it's a girl. I can still remember the night or morning that I held my daughter and the joy of such an experience. Well, I had joy too when Joy was born, but you know how it is with the firstborn. But there's joy in such an occasion. Not in Job's mind. He wants that day to be deprived of all pleasure and joy. Verse 7, let that night be barren. Let no joyful shout enter it. Don't let there have been a shout of joy. A boy is born to you. Rather let those who curse things curse the day. Let the rabble-rousers and troublemakers take hold of the day. Notice how he says that. Let those curse it who curse the day who are prepared to rouse Leviathan. Now in chapter 41, God tells us about the Leviathan, this fantastic creature, a dragon dinosaur. But as God describes that creature, he tells us that men are incapable of killing it, of capturing it, let alone of domesticating it. It had no purpose for men whatsoever, and you got into a fight with it, you soon would wish you hadn't. So the person described here as the one who is prepared to rouse Leviathan is simply a troublemaker. A rabble rouser. And Job was saying, rather than there be shouting and songs of joy in the house and the streets, let the rabble rousers, let the rioters take over. Let there be no joy involved in the day of my birth. And then let it be deprived of all glory. Verses 9, or verse 9, that the stars of its twilight be darkened, let it wait for light but have none, and let it not see the breaking of dawn. The glory of the night is, of course, the stars, this wonderful panoply in the sky that brings delight and joy to our own hearts. And, of course, the glory of the morning, that rising sun with its beams flashing across the earth again bringing joy and delight. And Job is saying, let that day be a dead day, a day in which there is no expression of glory, no expression of wonder and awe. No, let that be a cursed day. And why? In verse 10, because it did not shut the opening of my mother's womb or hide trouble from my eyes. Now, you see, as Job is cursing the day of his birth, over the top, over-speaking himself, wishing for things that were absolutely impossible, let alone that he hadn't been born, but that that day itself could be removed from all human history. You see what's happened to him. He has lost focus, and he's what we would describe as extremely depressed. And his depression, he speaks now, although in a beautiful way, so to speak rhetorically, he speaks irrationally. And he speaks in this way because he's become obsessed with himself other than with God. And that happens to us, doesn't it? You can become obsessed with your physical condition. Richard Weaver in that great book, Ideas Have Consequences, Spells out the fact that a person with a chronic illness, for the most part, except by God's grace, not that Weaver would have spoken of God's grace, but I'll add that little note, becomes self-obsessed. Their body, their life, their person becomes the center of their universe. And there might be perhaps some of you here tonight that wrestle with painful, terminal, or chronic illnesses. And it's so easy to lose our focus and to become self-obsessed. We become obsessed with economic problems and constantly dwell on our needs, or our bank account, or our employment, our lack of employment. And that takes over our lives. And it creates wrong thinking and can lead to depression. We can become obsessed with relationships, difficult, problematic relationships. Perhaps a child that has walked away from the Lord. And this begins to dictate our lives. And you see, this is one of the causes of depression. And it's what was behind Job's speaking in this manner. Now understand that the most godly, even the prophet of God, can fall into this trap. Consider the speech of Jeremiah in Jeremiah chapter 20. Jeremiah in chapter 20 is having a pity party. He is greatly distressed. He's been threatened by his own kinsmen, all types of persecution and attacks on him. And so what happens in verse 14? Obviously, well, I say obviously, I think he's got Job in front of him. Cursed be the day when I was born. Let the day not be blessed when my mother bore me. Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father saying, a baby boy has been born to you and made him very happy. Let that man be like the cities which the Lord overthrew without relenting. Let him hear an outcry in the morning and a shout of alarm at noon because he did not kill me before birth so that my mother would have been my grave and her womb ever pregnant. Why did I ever come forth from the womb to look on trouble and sorrow, so that my days have been spent in shame? You see, what happened to Jeremiah? Jeremiah lost focus, took his eyes off of God's calling, that which he'd been warned about in his calling, and focused on himself and speaks now like Job, cursing the day of his birth, wishing that he had never been born. But think about another, one who suffered more than Jeremiah. Yes, even more than Job. Now, Job is a remarkable type of Christ. He's God's champion. The whole contest is God's battle, Job against Satan. And God, through Job, defeats Satan. Job suffers enormously in the process and in the development of the book. And he does suffer probably more than any other mere man in the history of mankind. But his sufferings are nothing in comparison to that of the Savior, who also was rejected and despised and cast off by friends and unjustly condemned to death and deserted by God, not just as Job felt deserted by God because of the apparent absence of God, but deserted judicially by God, under God's wrath and condemnation in the place of sinners. And then think about his lament in Psalm 22. I love Psalm 22. Psalm 22 lets us look at the cross through the eyes of the Savior as he's hanging there. This is what he was thinking. This is what he saw. This is the expression of his lament and of his faith. He begins with the lament, a question, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning. Oh my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I have no rest." So here's his question, here's his lament, here's his broken heart being poured out, but you notice immediately the difference. He's doing so in faith. He addresses God as my God, and then he confesses in verse 3, Yet you are holy, O you who are enthroned upon the praises of Israel. In you our fathers trusted, they trusted, and you delivered them. In you they cried out and were delivered. In you they trusted and were not disappointed." God had a track record. And the Savior looks through the suffering to God. He stays focused on God, even in the midst of suffering hell itself. He returns to himself. but I'm a worm and not a man. I'm not like them in other words. A reproach of men and despised by the people. All who see me sneer at me. They separate with the lip. They wag the head saying, commit yourself to the Lord. Let him deliver him. Let him rescue him because he delights in him. But notice where he settles. He also thinks about his birth. Yet you were he who brought me forth from the womb. You made me trust when upon my mother's breast, upon you I was cast from birth. You have been my God from my mother's womb." You see where his focus remained. He could lament. God enables us to express great lamentation and sorrow. He's given us the Psalms to help us to learn to do that. But our lamentation must always be with an eye on the great and glorious triune God who has loved us from eternity and does everything for us. If you lose your focus, as Job lost his focus, you will speak and act inappropriately. You often will become depressed. And so we must seek God's grace not to lose focus. The second thing I want to show you here is Job's loss of perspective. Now, there's a growth in Job in the expression of his faith between verse 10 and verse 11. In fact, you'll see this through the book. There's a trend in Job's responses as faith, first a baby, incipient faith, wrestles with the blackness of his situation. But it becomes stronger and more evident as the book continues. So Job will never again speak as he has spoken in these first ten verses. But he still, in the loss of focus, has lost perspective, particularly with respect to death, as we see. As he asked the question, and it's not wrong to ask questions. The Savior asked a question. We must ask the questions with submission and a quietness, waiting on the Lord. But it's not wrong to question why. Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb and expire? Perhaps your life's been so difficult, you've asked that question. It's not necessarily a wrong question. But for Job, it was wrong in how he now expands on the question. And we see that the loss of perspective is in his view of death. He sees death as the great release. Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb, and expire? If he'd simply died on the day of his birth, he would not be going through all of these trials. But what he does is idealizes death. He is not thinking about the death of a righteous man. The old covenant saints, they knew about life after death. Job himself will confess that in Job chapter 19. Not just life after death, but the glorious appearance of the Redeemer. But Job is thinking only now physically. He's thinking only of the release from the circumstances of his life and he idealizes death in three ways, as rest, as a great equalizer, and as a great deliverance. He first speaks of physical death as rest. Why did the knees receive me and why the breast that I should suck? You see, Job was well aware of God's providential provision. It's God who gives life in the womb. It's God who provides for the life of a baby. It is quite remarkable that we, the noble image bearer of God, need the most care for the longest period of time. And Job is alluding to that when he says that there was a midwife there. that received him on the knees, and there were the breast of his mother that he should be nourished. But why, he says, why did God not let me die? Now notice, for now, the day he speaks, I would have lain down and been quiet. I would have slept, then I would have been at rest." Notice he uses four terms to describe this rest, this idea of rest that has gripped him. To lay down, to be quiet, to sleep, yes, to be at rest. Now there is a rest. for the believer in death. In fact, the New Testament uses the word sleep for the death of a believer. There is a deliverance from the immediate trials and terrors and persecutions of this life. But the greater thing about death is not the ceasing of life physically, but it's the entrance of the soul into the glory of God. And the realization, as our catechism says, that our bodies, as they decay in the tomb, remain in union with the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, yes, for a believer, death is a respite. I can understand the person being persecuted and tortured. Longing for the release of death. The person who is struggling with a terminal illness that's just eating away with pain. They don't want to be on morphine. The person who is completely debilitated. Longing to die and be with the Lord. Like the Apostle Paul. But it's die and be with the Lord. And that's a comforting thought. But you see, Job didn't go that far. All he saw was a cessation of trouble. He idealized death, not the death of a believer and a righteous man. Second, he makes death the great equalizer, which indeed it is. He says he would have been at rest with kings and counselors of the earth, verse 14, who rebuilt ruins for themselves, or with princes who had gold, who were filling their houses with silver, or like a miscarriage which is discarded, I would not be as infants that never saw light." Now again, what he says is quite true. He didn't bring anything into the world. You can't take anything out of the world. The greatest, the most glorious, the most powerful of kings dies like just the rest of us. Death is the great equalizer. It's no respecter of persons. And in the act of death, in the decay, the return to dust and ashes were all equally the same. But it stops right there, you see, because there is a great division that takes place at death. The division described in Christ's parable between Abraham's bosom, which is heaven, and hell. And Abraham said there's a great chasm. between heaven and hell that no man can pass over. There's not simply equalization. There is a division that takes place at death. A division for every one of you sitting here tonight. And yes, if you're not in Christ, you'll be like everybody else physically for a period of time. but your soul will immediately be separated from all that is glorious and beautiful and righteous. Death is not the equalizer for the Christian. And then third, death's a great deliverance. He says in verse 17 through 19, there the wicked cease from raging, and there the weary are at rest. The prisoners are at ease together. They do not hear the voice of the taskmaster. The small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master. There is a freedom from oppression. There's a deliverance from tyrants. There's liberation for slaves. All of that takes place in death as we are delivered from life's present difficulties. But again, you see Job's lost perspective. And he stops only at the physical reality. He's not thinking about the greater deliverance that will be his when he enters into the presence of the triune God. This is what I mean when I say he has lost perspective. But there's something very important to note here about Job. Many people become so depressed, they become suicidal. And I think that depression is one of the great causes of suicide. Now, suicide is not the unpardonable sin. But we can see in Job how a person gets there, but notice where Job stops. Job confesses two very important truths in these 19 verses. In the first place, it's God who gives life. You see, the whole lament is clear about that, isn't it? It was God who caused him to be conceived. It was God who gave him birth. It was God who cared for him through midwives and mothers and fathers and whatever. The other thing is, Only God has the right to end life. Job longed for death, wrongly, but Job never took the next step. It had been so easy for him to do, to take his own life. He was preserved in his depression by the grace of God. But you need to understand, this is what depression can do. This is why some people will kill themselves. Some Christians will kill themselves, but you go back to the root problem. They became obsessed with themselves, with their lives, with their difficulties, with their trials. That obsession, the loss of focus then of God, the loss of perspective, is worked out in depression. Oh, I wish I were dead. Oh, nobody loves me. Or my family would be so much better off if I were not here. The lies of Satan that come out of such depression And a person commits suicide. But Job didn't do that. Job, by God's grace, persisted. So you see the truth of the text. You can become so obsessed with yourself that you'll lose focus, perspective, and you'll think and speak and act inappropriately. But there are great, important lessons here for us beyond the application I've already made. You read Apaches like this and sometimes you can be a bit stretched. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable. Well, this text is very profitable. I trust you've seen that already. But let me give you four other important lessons out of this text as we move toward the Lord's table. In the first place, this text is a mirror on the heart of depressed people. It's an opening that God gives us to help us understand what might be happening to you even tonight as you sit here and what will happen or maybe is happening to friends and family who are around you. God has given us this mirror. Even though Job over speaks himself, as Calvin will say, what the Spirit shows us here is the condition of such a person. Not that we might respond self-righteously or condemningly. but that we might have an insight here. You need to understand that as you deal with a depressed person that they will say irrational things and they will say things they don't mean. They'll say mean things, but they're speaking out of a condition in which they've lost their focus of God. And we then are to bear patiently with them in that depression. Many of you men here tonight are in the ministry, are preparing for ministry. It's wonderful that God gives us a section like this to help us understand others. I've never had much depression in my life. I can remember that when we moved from the pastorate to Philadelphia and I was writing, I was depressed. Normally my wife doesn't know when I'm depressed, but she recognized that I was depressed and I knew why I was depressed and we dealt with it. But this is a very useful section to help us understand the heart, the feelings, the emotions. of those with whom you will counsel and who will do things that seem to you inexplicable for a believer to do. And so God gives us these passages to help us understand, perhaps ourselves, but surely to understand others. A second lesson that we have here is the necessity of God's grace. Perhaps you're asking the question, what happened to heroic Job? Those two great confessions of faith in chapter 1 and chapter 2, where did he go? What happened to that man who now is filled with self-pity and curses the day of his birth, wishes that he were dead? The only explanation is God's grace. As God put Job into the match with Satan. God gave Job everything necessary, gave him all of the grace to uphold him in those attacks. But now, in a sovereign fatherly nurturing of a child, God takes a couple of steps backwards. It's spelled out for us in our confession of faith in the chapter on providence, chapter five, paragraph five, the back of your hymnal. It's on page 831. The most wise, righteous, and gracious God doth oftentimes leave for a season his own children to manifold temptations and the corruption of their own hearts. to chastise them for their former sins, or to discover unto them the hidden strength of corruption and deceitfulness of their hearts, that they may be humble, and to raise them to a more close and constant dependence for their support upon himself, and to make them more watchful against all future occasions of sin, and for sundry other just and holy ends. It's God's good pleasure at times to back off a bit so that we are reminded of our frailty, our weakness, our remnant of corruption, and become all the more dependent upon him. But even when God does that, His grace is always sufficient if we will seek Him in those situations. That's why we read 2 Corinthians chapter 12. Paul pled with God to be delivered from whatever this thorn in the flesh was three times. But God said to him in verse 9, my grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, I would rather boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me." Now, because of grace, Paul can say, therefore, I'm well content with weaknesses, insults, distresses, persecutions, difficulties, for Christ's sake. For when I'm weak, then I am strong. Remember that God has promised that there's no temptation taking you, but such is common to man. And will the temptation bring a way to escape that you may be able to bear it. So God does expose us to our frailties, but there's grace there. Tonight we'll come to the Lord's table. And He gives us grace. And you come to this table in your struggles and your pains and your sorrows, and you take hold of Christ for the grace that He offers and gives by His Spirit. The third lesson, closely connected, we've seen that it's a window on the heart of the depressed. It's a reminder of our need for God's grace. Closely connected, it reminds us, teaches us that we cannot trust yesterday's victories for today's trials. We do that. You go through a trial, you come out really well on the other side, you've done well, you've dealt with a temptation or difficulty and, oh, you put your thing in the thumb and the Putting and bringing out, oh, what a good boy am I. And you think that one's passed, it'll never come again. And five minutes later, you do exactly the same thing. Why? Because you weren't trusting Christ, you were trusting your victory. Job had great victory, but Job couldn't look to the victory, he had to look to God, he lost his focus. And you and I must not look at our past successes in the midst of present trials, but look always to the triune God. And then the fourth lesson, the most beautiful lesson, we've already said that Job was a type of Christ. And here as we see the anguish that Job suffered, we are once again reminded of our Savior's faithfulness as he hanged on the cross of Calvary. as he opened his soul to soak in the wrath of God. Loving God and loving you and me in that process so he didn't flinch and he never lost the sight and the focus of what he was about. Thank God for Christ Jesus. Thank God for what he endured for us on the cross. And know then that because Christ endured the cross, despising the shame, but looking forward to the joy and the glory, the reward that was before Him, that He pardons all of your self-focused, self-centered, self-pity-ness. But He also gives you an example to follow, that by His grace, You too can do that. But understand, dear friends, you can only do that if you're trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone for your salvation. It's my earnest desire that every one of you here tonight is resting in this great God-man who suffered far beyond Job and Jeremiah and didn't flinch and didn't turn back. that He might provide salvation for His people. That salvation is fully accomplished. And if tonight, in repentance and faith, you cry out to the Lord Jesus Christ, God will save you. And God will deliver you from your self-obsession, painfully and slowly at times, but He will. And He will bring you not just to death, but He'll bring you to glory. Blessed be His holy name. Our God in heaven, we thank you for Job's troubles and Job's sinful lament that we might learn where to keep our focus. We might know ourselves better and one another. We pray that you will imprint these lessons deeply into our hearts. And as we come now to the table, we've been reminded that there's only one source of grace, and that's in Christ Jesus. And we now will celebrate what he's done for us, what you, Triune God, have done for us. And we pray that you'll feed us, for Christ's sake. Amen.