All right, good morning, let's find our seats and get started here. Give the person a chance to get back to her seat. We don't want you to forget what Mr. Burroughs looks like, and if you miss the first slide every week, you don't remember what he looks like. All right, well, good morning. If you haven't been here in the past few weeks, we're still finishing up this book. I think we have one more next week and then the following week we're going to do more of an open forum question and answer kind of approach to wrap it up. So I think it's chapter 8 of this book and I can't really recall where it is in the abridged version but today we're going to talk about the excuses of a discontented heart. So there he is, Mr. Burrow sitting there in the dark as he usually is. And he looks pleasant enough, but he is about to step on all of your excuses, and even some that he probably doesn't name out loud. So, that's what's coming, and you can prepare yourself. I've been thinking about it all week, so I'm a little bit more ready probably than you are. But here we go. Here are the 13 that he lists, the 13 excuses of a discontented heart. Why don't you just go ahead there and find the one you like the most and the one that you employ the most and just prepare yourself because he's going to knock it out of the park. If yours isn't up there, then in our discussion today, you'll probably get rid of that one too. It is a sense of my condition. So it's not just that I'm discontent or I'm murmuring because I'm sinful or I'm sinning. If you really understood my condition, you would think that it would be right to be discontent as well. Or, this one sounds a little bit more noble, a little bit more choice. It's not, my discontentment isn't sinful because I'm not really discontent over my condition or my affliction or my circumstances, but really that I'm a sinner in my circumstances. Of course, no one's gonna argue with you. You should be upset over your own sin. If you're hanging on to that one, you can for a little bit longer, but in about six slides, like I said, you'll discard that one too. Can anyone be satisfied in an affliction where the Lord has withdrawn himself? I could be content if I could see or I could understand what God's doing in it. My affliction was altogether unlooked for and unexpected. My affliction is exceedingly great. My affliction is exceedingly different than other afflictions, or greater than others' afflictions. Oh, sorry, I skipped one there. So the one in the upper right there is the different afflictions. The one down here, it's just different, or it's greater than somebody else's affliction. They have it better. That's why it's not so bad, you see. My affliction makes me unserviceable to the Lord. Okay, that one sounds pretty noble. Don't hang on too tightly. It's the unsettledness of my condition. It's not so much the circumstances itself, but the fact that my circumstances are always changing and afflictions come and go and they're always different. That's the reason I'm discontent. The way the Lord has blessed me in the past has set me up to be discontented now that things are different. Or, I've gone after this goal, this thing that I knew would bring me contentment, and now, right here at the end, when the Lord has changed it, now that is the reason for my discontentment, because I was so close. And then finally, well, at least I don't murmur as much or as loudly as I could. So as you see, some of those are a little bit more noble sounding than others, but we'll go through them all here. So, first of all, out of the 13, I think, what is that? Seven? Yeah, seven of them here. I think right off the bat, you'll probably see, based on our previous discussion, that there's some similarity. There's similarity amongst the whole list, but these in particular, and I would say that these in particular are foolish primarily because All of these excuses do is reveal that the things which bring us contentment are foolish, fleeting, temporal things rather than things that are eternal and worthy of bringing contentment, grounding our contentment. So all of these excuses, all that these excuses do is reveal that we have the wrong, we're searching for contentment in the wrong things. And as we've said, a couple weeks ago we talked about reasons why some murmuring is worse than others, but it doesn't really go the other direction. There's nothing really you can say is the reason. These things are not a reason to say my murmuring is better than somebody else's or some other murmuring. That's the foolishness of it. And as we've been talking all throughout this series here, The antidote is contentment that is based on proper ground, immutable ground, unchangeable ground, and those things you see there listed at the bottom are the things that we've identified as the proper sources of contentment. So, a proper view of mercy and understanding that we could be receiving justice, but instead we are receiving mercy and that should cause us to be content in whatever else comes along. contentment based on God's sovereignty, contentment based on His purpose for us as a follower of Christ and His call for Christian duty, and then, of course, the eternal reward, the inheritance that Christ has purchased for us. And all of those things work together, as we've seen over the last few weeks, for true joy. So now we're down to six. Let's take a look at this one here. It is a sense of my condition. So like I said, in other words, my contentment, or my discontentment rather, seems like it's sinful, but if you really knew, really what I'm doing here is I'm properly sensing the condition, whereas you are not. And if you saw the condition the way that I do you would see that murmuring and discontentment make sense. So here's a few things that Mr. Burroughs said about this. First he said, there is no sense of any affliction that will hinder the sense of God's mercies. And this is important because I think it brings up something that we've kind of mentioned in tension with discontentment, which is that proper sense of grief. Right? We can say that discontentment and the proper sense of grief, there's a fine line there where we have to be careful not to identify one as the other or vice versa. And these three things actually are good diagnostic questions to tell whether we're in this sense of grief that is actually discontentment or sense of grief that is actually real. One of the ways would be if we also cannot see God's mercy in it, then we've erred toward discontentment rather than legitimate grief. The second one, if it were but a bare sense of affliction, it would not hinder you in the duties of your condition. So real grief does not erase the call, the sense of duty to walk the Christian life. whereas discontentment erases or blurs that duty. And then finally, if it were but a mere sense of your affliction, then in your condition you could bless God for the mercies that others have. So discontentment would say that person has what I want to ground my discontentment, and that makes me discontent. True grief says I'm in this condition and it hurts, But I wouldn't want to steal that thing from somebody else. Or it does not bother me that somebody else has been blessed in that way, even though I am grieving over the fact that I am not blessed in that way. So there goes that one. And again, we're back to the proper grounds of contentment there at the bottom. And that's kind of how Jeremiah knocks that one off the list. So now we're down to five. My affliction makes me unserviceable. This is a pretty good one. In fact, he even says at the beginning of this section, this is the one that sounds the best. This is the one that you'll fool most people if you say the reason I'm discontent is because this condition hinders my service to the Lord. That sounds pretty noble, right? Well, Is it that your situation makes you unserviceable? Or is it that you are actually just discontent that you are not the head and you are instead the toe? Or you are not the mouth, you are instead the ear? Or you are not the heart, but you are instead the hands of the body? Your service to the Lord, the thing that he has called you to do, is not separate and distinct from the condition or the circumstances He places you in to do them. So whatever the circumstances, your calling is still there and is still accomplishable. Otherwise, you wouldn't be there. And that is the will of God. And we talked about the will of God, but a couple of things that come to mind. Of course, I'm going to have to do these from memory, so I'm going to have to paraphrase there. But 1 Thessalonians 4, this is the will of God, your, sanctification or Romans 8 29 for new predestined to be conformed to the image of his son right so when you ask what is the will of God it's not every morning you see the new date on the newspaper and you say I wonder what God wants out of me today he has revealed his will for you today it is right here it is right there and there's no question about it Of course, we usually want him to be more explicit in particular, but this is what he has given us. So in whatever circumstances, you are not unserviceable. Your sanctification and your conformance to the image of Jesus Christ are still accomplishable in those circumstances. All right, we are now down to four. Is anybody's favorite still on the list, by the way? My favorites were way up at the top, so, like, easy, which was pretty convicting this week. Okay, so, now these last four, they even have a stronger connection, I think, and we'll draw that out here in the next few slides. These first two, and you know, I am kind of being flippant, about getting rid of these excuses. I hope you understand the seriousness and we'll look at it seriously for sure in the next, the rest of this session. this presentation here. But these first two here, my affliction was altogether unlooked for and unexpected, and I could be content if I could see God's hand in it. Well, let me just put it another way, and I think if you don't already, you'll see how foolish these are. And again, I'm not saying foolish flippantly. I was discontent this week. I'm sure at least some of you would jump in that boat with me. And when I thought about these things, I saw how foolish that discontentment was. And so here I am. I'm looking in a condition of contentment, relatively speaking. And now I see the foolishness of these very things that discontent people use as excuses. So again, we can be flippant if we just assume that we're always going to be in the content boat. But as soon as we jump into the boat of discontentment, now we don't see how foolish these things are. They feel real. They smell real. They are things that you want to grasp onto and use as excuses. The top one there. as you probably expect by now listening to Burroughs for seven chapters, he just kind of says, really? Like, really, you did not expect hard circumstances? Have you read the New Testament? That's effectively his argument. And again, that doesn't lessen the gravity of the circumstances that you're in, but it does seem foolish to say I am discontent because I did not see hard times coming. Right? The second one is similar because it effectively says this one set of circumstances over here in some dark corner is outside the hand of God. And if I could see, if you could prove to me that God was actually in it, then I wouldn't be discontent. But as we know, God's hand is in every circumstance. And even if we don't understand it, we know him and we know his purposes for our circumstances. So this excuse evaporates as well. So now we're down to two. It is for my sin rather than my affliction. Now, I said that most of mine were eradicated up front, but this is a particular favorite of mine. Sounds pretty noble. They were never troubled for their sin before the affliction came. If it is your sin that troubles you, then even if God should take away the affliction, yet unless your sin is taken away and your heart is better, this would not content you. You could not be satisfied. So here is a diagnostic kind of question. Am I discontent over the circumstances or am I discontent over my sin, which is what I'm using as an excuse. And the way to tell is, if God would take away or give me the grace to defeat the sin, would I still be content in these same exact circumstances? Then he says, it would be your great care not to sin in this trouble, so as not by your trouble to increase your sin. So here we are saying it's my sin that I'm discontented over, not my condition, my affliction, my circumstances. Well, if you're going to continue murmuring about it, you're simply increasing your sin rather than making a valid excuse. Then you have the more need to submit to God's hand and accept the punishment of your iniquity. Now we're going to talk about this word punishment here in a couple of slides. simply because I think that there's a better word to use there for clarity's sake, but his point is that maybe God is disciplining you on purpose. Maybe these afflictions are not something that are causing your sin, but the result of your sin and God's discipline to you for that iniquity. And then he says, there is no consideration to look upon my sin as the cause of my affliction. And that's kind of what he was getting at there in that second-to-last point. So we are down to one. Can anyone be satisfied with such a condition when the Lord withdraws himself? He says this, it is very evil to conclude that God is departed. And on the face of it, you know this to be true. Before I brought this slide up, if I would say, is there any situation in which you would say God has departed from you? The answer would be a resounding no, I presume. And our circumstances do not change that. The greatest sign of God's departing is because you are so disturbed. Now, this is some of that Puritan English confusing the issue, because this just isn't the way that we would say it. But what he's getting at is the thing we were talking about before, which is the sign that God is gone is the cause Your sin is the cause of God's withdrawal. It seems like God is away. Of course, he's not really departed. But it seems like God is so far because he is purposefully distancing himself for discipline's sake. And then he gives a pretty good analogy. When the child is following the mother and the child says the mother has departed, from me, does the child continue to chase after the mother or does the child say the mother has departed me so I will turn the other direction and I will depart from her as well. That is just not how we, that's not where we run or where we ought to run when it seems that God is distancing or withdrawing himself from us. And so here we are. No surprise, you didn't really expect I was going to say something new about discontentment. He's been chewing on this thing for eight chapters, so have we. And we still see the correct grounds, the unchangeable, immutable ground for true joy, true contentment, are right there at the bottom, as they always have been throughout this book. Now, let me back up one here. I said that these four had a particularly stronger connection than some of the others and this is what I mean. If we think about these, it kind of presses right around a sore spot or a tension point that has come up in the past about Why does God put us in these circumstances, or allow us to enter these circumstances, or let us remain in these circumstances, these times of affliction, these hardships, these trials? Why does he do that? And so we're just going to look a couple places today. I'm going to make an extra comment there about the word punishment that I highlighted a moment ago. And then we can wrap up. So 1 Peter 1. Again, this is not a full biblical theology of why does God let us suffer, let us encounter affliction, but just a couple of examples. I do think, I mean, maybe at the end here, or even if you wanna raise your hand now, if you wanna add a reason there to that list of three that I have, feel free. That might actually cover them all, but at least, if nothing else, those are three main categories of why God does this. 1 Peter 1, I'll start in verse 3. He says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who, by God's power, are being guarded through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, and I think that this is that living hope. In that living hope you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you've been grieved by various trials. so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested or refined by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. So at least one reason God allows us to enter trial, to enter suffering, to enter affliction, to enter circumstances which might seem to cause a legitimate discontentment. One of the reasons is that he is testing, he is refining, he is proving our faith. And I put the word proving up there because it's actually one of the glosses, one of the ways you can translate that word trial. both here and in James when he says, count it all joy, when you enter various trials. And the picture of that gold refinement helps us see how those two words are kind of connected. Because when you refine gold, you heat it up and the dross falls out and the pure gold stays, it separates. That's why you put it to that kind of heat. And in the same way, our difficult trials and circumstances put pressure, put heat on us to refine, to prove, to see the purity of the faith that resides therein. And so that's one of the reasons God afflicts. Now Peter goes on and actually hits the second reason there in the same chapter down in verse 13. He says, therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy. And if you call on him as father, who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile. meaning our time here. Knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things, such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in the last times for your sake, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth, for sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God. For all flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower fails, but the word of the Lord remains forever. And this word is the good news that was preached to you. So not only does God afflict or put us in circumstances and let us remain there to test or refine or prove our faith, but also for our sanctification. And you can probably see that it might be difficult to actually try to distinguish those two too far from one another. To prove your faith, refine your faith, and to sanctify yourself to holiness, those concepts are pretty closely related. probably tell. And then the third big category here I want to address, Hebrews chapter 12. Just turn to the left a couple pages and you should be there. Hebrews chapter 12, clearly the author of Hebrews addresses discipline here. Starting in verse 1, he says, therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a crowd of witnesses, and you'll remember that crowd of witnesses are those heroes of the faith, for lack of a better term, that he listed in chapter 11. Let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and the perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself. so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted. In your struggle against sin, you haven't resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?" Now, this is important. He's saying, the Lord is addressing you as a son when he disciplines you through the circumstances. "'My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you're left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we've had earthly fathers discipline us, and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they, our earthly fathers, disciplined us for a short time, as it seemed best to them. But he, the Father, disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. And for the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant. But later, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Strive for peace with everyone and for holiness, without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled, that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal. For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears. Now, there's about six sermons in there probably. And I won't give them to you all now, although it would be a fun assignment because it's so deep and thick and rich there. But as you saw, his point is pretty explicit. The Lord disciplines us for our own good. And honestly, I'm going to say this now because I'm kind of worried that I would forget it. we're gonna put up that list of 13 excuses. And especially for those of you who are parents, if you just think what your reaction would be to your child's use of that excuse, you've probably hit it on the head as to identifying why it's a foolish attempt at an excuse. For those of you who don't have parents, you'll just have to revert to your use sorry, who aren't parents, thank you, who aren't parents, you'll just have to revert to your childhood when you use those excuses probably more frequently than you do now. So, before we move on here towards the end, I put this quote up earlier and I highlighted that I'm not quite sure, there it is, look at that, that word, punishment. Now, this gets to, This gets, it gets easily off onto a rabbit trail, and I won't go down this rabbit trail for too long here. But I think that that use of the word punishment is actually part of the reason we can get confused about the notion that God puts us in circumstances as a disciplinary measure. Okay, it's at least part of the problem in my view. I think here are some of the liabilities for thinking of that act whereby God places us in circumstances for discipline and calling it punishment. We are liable to do a few things. First of all, we're liable to say God is punishing me and therefore there is justice yet to be served on my sin tomorrow and therefore I am in and out and in and out and in and out of grace, of salvation, and this causes consternation. God's discipline, we have to remember that this is a fatherly role. And if at least one way to put salvation is we move from God as judge to God as father. And just like with your children, you don't say, since you disobeyed me, you're out. Here's your punishment. And when your punishment is served, you're back in. No. You say, this discipline, spanking, whatever, however you use discipline as a parent, is to train you, is to form you, is to conform you, not to punish you. And again, this might be a simple Puritanism where that word would have brought forth that idea, but I think you'll see with my slash there, I don't necessarily think it's just a Puritan thing. If you think about the way Roman Catholicism views sin, we're right here at the heart of it. When you sin in the Roman Catholic system, you are now off the path to holiness. And you have to pay some sort of penance through the sacramental system to get yourself back on the road. There are some sins which knock you off the road, and they irreparably keep you off of the road. Most sins, you can do something to get back on the road. And those who are perfectly on the road at the end of their life are the ones that they call saints. Those who are not perfectly on the road, having paid penance at the end of their life, are now subject to purgatory for continual temporal punishment, this is Catholic terminology, for the rest of the required temporal punishment for your temporal sins. So I hope you can see the connection I'm trying to draw there. If we replace God's use of our circumstances as discipline with the word punishment, we are at least liable. to think that when God is punishing him, we are outside his family. And until we serve that punishment, we are not allowed back into his family. But that is a clearly wrong view of how God has given us his grace. If he puts us in those circumstances for discipline, we see that his purposes are to conform us and to shape us and to train us, not to exact punishment. Where has the punishment for your sin yesterday been paid on the cross. Where has the sin for your punishment today been paid on the cross? Where has the sin for your punishment tomorrow been paid on the cross? The penalty is done. That is why the word punishment is so dangerous here in my view. We hit number two there. Confusion about God's withdrawal. I think this idea of punishment also helps add to the problem of confusion about God's withdrawal. Again, I'm sorry I'm addressing these in terms of parenthood, but I think it's a biblical connection, and if you're not parents, then you'll just have to make that extra step here. But sometimes, as parents, or sometimes your parents, as discipline let you receive the natural consequences of your folly, right? Especially as you get older. Especially as I got older, my parents just let my consequences for my stupid actions hit me with full force instead of protecting me. And so they withdrew, not as punishment, because I had broken some relationship irreparably that I needed to pay in order to get back, but they just removed themselves so that the consequences of my folly could hit me with full force and turn me back around. And in the same way, when it feels like God is distant, he might be withdrawing in that sense, letting the consequences of our folly hit us with that full force to turn that wandering child from finding mama in the other direction back to the parents in the correct direction. And so again, I've made a lot of parenting analogy here, mainly because it's in Hebrews chapter 12, and I think it's a very sound and solid picture by which to think about these things. I'll just say one last thing, because this is actually where it starts in the parenting literature, is this idea of corporal punishment. What do we mean when we say corporal punishment? We mean physical, banking, whatever. But here, I'm not going to argue whether it's the cause or the result of this line of thinking. But when we spank our child, is that corporal punishment? Are we punishing them as a judge? Or are we disciplining them? I think you could say, rightly, that if you are punishing them, you've crossed the line. And we all know that if we have children, we've wrestled with the line between when you spank the child because you're angry and you want vengeance, you want justice, obviously you should probably wait. But if you're spanking the child out of a heart for discipline, for training, for confirmation, for molding, for shaping, then you're on the right track. And so, again, this simple word, punishment versus discipline, I didn't wanna get into all the parenting stuff, but only to highlight that this is what makes sense out of that sense in which it feels like God's withdrawn himself, or so that we're not afraid to conclude, I am in these circumstances, because I have sinned and the Lord is disciplining me. Because typically we're afraid to go there, at least I am. I think it's fairly common, maybe not. But we're afraid to go there because we don't want to cross the line of into we've lost our salvation. We know that that line is none shall pass. And so we don't want to say the Lord's disciplining me, the Lord's letting me have it, if you will. Because we know that there's a boundary there we don't want to cross. But if we have this right view of discipline versus punishment, I think we can seriously consider the possibility that our afflictions are as a means of discipline to us, of loving discipline to us, without fear that we're going to cross that line into thinking that God is treating us as a judge, when in fact he is still treating us like a father, like an earthly father who had disciplined us for a time, and like the eternal father who disciplines us for the sake of our conformity to Jesus Christ. So there are those last four. And those four, like I said, are just a little bit more connected, I think. around this idea that my sin might be the cause of my trials, my difficult circumstances, if we clearly understand what the word or what God's discipline might look like. Okay. So here we are at the end. I think Mr. Burroughs has successfully killed all of these excuses and any more that I might have made up were killed in there as well. Again, I'll just put it this way. If you are a parent, just think about your response to those coming from your child. If you're not, then think about how your parents might have responded to an excuse like that. And most of the time you'll probably get to the following in those. Now, yeah, I thought that was the end here. Let me shut this off so we can think about this last thought without distraction here. I wanted to conclude with some sort of exhortation or plan of action, and I know you all are capable of doing that on your own, but since I'm here I can kind of lead us down the right trail, I think. And it is in Hebrews chapter 12, verse 15, I think will get us mostly the way there as to what to do with this. The writer says, see to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled. So I think here's the right first step for what am I going to do about this, or so what? If you don't have somebody that will immediately point out your grumbling or murmuring or discontentment. If you don't have somebody like that, find somebody and tell them explicitly, if you hear me grumbling, if you hear me murmuring, if you see me discontented, point it out. This is a call to the whole audience of the writer of the Hebrews to, as a group, Root it out of yourself. See to it that no one fails to obtain, not just see to it that you fail, or you don't fail, see to it that no one fails. And so this is a collective thing because, as is obviously true, and I don't have to prove it to you, your murmuring, your grumbling, and your discontentment will be apparent to others way sooner, extremely sooner, Those are not even adverbs that go together. Well before it's apparent to you, right? You know this to be true. And so, if your spouse is unwilling to perform that task, which I bet he or she is not, but, or you don't have a spouse, find someone, we are the body, and find someone who knows you well enough to know that you're discontented or you're murmuring. So that, as he says, no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled. And with that, I'll take questions or comments or wise proverbs from the crowd. Anybody have anything to say? Did it hurt as much as it hurt me? I've been thinking about it for a week. That was pretty rough. Yes ma'am? Right. Right, yeah, I think in some sense that's true. Certainly, if the God that we have in our minds is the God that does it the way that we want, then we're not actually talking about God. And of course, that God is going to fail because he's imaginary. He has made promises that the real God has not. Anyone else? All right, well, I don't know if that's because everybody's so stunned as I was this week, but since we're done, I'll close with some prayer. Lord, thank you for the time together this morning, and thank you for your word concerning why we go through trials, why we endure affliction, and what your purposes are for us. Lord, thank you that As a father, you discipline us, and you do not forsake us, but you discipline us towards conformity to the image of your Son, who is our glorious Savior and who we worship today. And in his name we pray, amen.