Would you turn in your Bibles, please, to Zechariah chapter 13. Zechariah is one of those books in the Old Testament that's just before the new. If you can find the book of Matthew, the first book in the New Testament, just flip back a few pages and you've got Zechariah. And we're in chapter 13 near the end of this book, we've been studying it for some months. And because of that, you probably will remember that Zechariah preached a little more than 500 years before the time of Christ. He preached at the time of the building of the second temple, and this was a temple that was built by the captives who had returned from the Babylonian captivity. And it was a small temple and the people had discouraging situations. They needed a lot of encouragement. And Zechariah was one of the prophets that helped motivate the building. Zechariah was one of the last prophets to speak before John the Baptist came to announce our Lord's coming. So his words were kind of the famous last words of the prophets of Israel. Only Malachi came after him. And now I'm going to read the first six verses of Zechariah, chapter 13. In that day, A fountain shall be open for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness. It shall be in that day, says the Lord of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols from the land and they shall no longer be remembered. I will also cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to depart from the land. It shall come to pass that if anyone still prophesies, then his father and his mother who begot him will say to him, you shall not live because you have spoken lies in the name of the Lord. And his father and his mother who begot him shall thrust him through when he prophesies. And it shall be in that day that every prophet will be ashamed of his vision when he prophesies. They will not wear a robe of coarse hair to deceive. But he will say, I am no prophet. I'm a farmer for a man taught me to keep cattle from my youth. And someone will say to him, what are these wounds in your hands? And he will answer, these are they which I was wounded in the house of my friends. Heavenly Father. We ask now. That this passage in your holy word might be illumined by the thoughts of other verses in your scripture, by the teaching of the Holy Spirit, and by even the words of your servant here. These are not familiar words to many of us. They're not familiar words even to me. And so we ask for the light of your Holy Spirit to give us understanding and help us to Understand the things that we don't know in the terms of the things that we do know and the things that have clearly been revealed in your word. May this be so. We thank you in Jesus name. Amen. In verse one of Zechariah, chapter 13, it says that in that day, a fountain shall be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem. for sin and for uncleanness. This fountain had to have been, the promise of this fountain to clean and to cleanse sin had to have been a great welcome to the ears of the people in Zechariah's time. For about a thousand years before that time, even since the time of Moses, an offering For sin had been burning on the altars of Israel daily morning and evening. And these daily offerings were supplemented by thousands of personal offerings, which the people offered. For sin, it was the only method God had prescribed for the problem of sin. Yet never did at one point did the need for these offerings ever cease, they always needed. to be done. And the book of Hebrews, in chapter 10, tells us why. In Hebrews, chapter 10, verses 1 through 4, the apostle writes, For the law can never, with these sacrifices which they offer continually, year by year, make those who approach perfect. For then, would not they have ceased to have been offered? For worshipers once purged would have no more consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sin. And so I believe it was Augustus Toplady who once wrote, speaking of this verse, not all the blood of beasts on Jewish altars slain could give the guilty conscience peace, nor take away the stain. You see, when the people made these offerings, they made them and then they sinned and then they saw the need for another offering. There was never a time when they didn't think they needed these offerings. For sin stained or in today's terms, infected, the whole human race. And this has been going on since the time of Adam, who was the first man, and since he sinned. Sin entered the world through Adam, and we call this original sin. It's the first. It caused Adam's death, and it's caused the death of every human being since Adam. If you're here and you do not believe in the reality of sin, you cannot deny the reality of death. And in the Bible, the two go together. Sin results in death. Adam would have lived forever had he not sinned. But Adam did sin. And he saw the fruits of his sin, not only himself, but in all the subsequent generations afterwards that he and Eve had born. His sin had infected his first born son, Cain. And Cain was the one who Eve thought would be the deliverer. Remember, the promise had been given to Eve in the garden that her seed, one of her children, would be a redeemer from the curse of sin. It wasn't her firstborn son. It came many, many years later. In fact, her firstborn son turned out to really fool both Adam and Eve. It was Cain. And Cain, in a fit of anger, slew his brother. And so Adam and Eve, who had committed the infraction of eating the forbidden fruit that God had told him not to eat, saw in their son the heinous crime of murder. And Cain, even after he had murdered his brother Abel, Cain was ashamed of the sin and he went into effectively hiding. And yet it wasn't too many generations after Cain when Lamech came along and Lamech had killed many men and he even boasted of it. And so you can see the decline of the human race and behavior from Adam through the subsequent generations until. After about 10 or 12 generations from Adam and mind you, people lives a long time in those days, so that could have been a span of 1000 years or so, but still after 10 or 12 generations. It says in Genesis chapter six and verse five, the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the story we well know is God destroyed the world then by a flood. But the flood did not eradicate sin, the flood did not wash away sin. The stain of sin still remained on the human race. Noah got off the boat and he sinned and Noah's sons sinned. And so the cycle continued on. By the time of Moses, God gave the law to Moses and to man to increase the knowledge of man's sin, but he also prescribed a way to remedy sin, and those remedies were the sacrifices of innocent animals to pay for the sins of the people. And that brought in the concept that an innocent sacrifice had to die for sin. And that concept was then practiced for many generations thereafter. But those sacrifices did not stop sin. It continued, it was part of the human race. It says in Psalm 51, David says, In sin my mother conceived me. Now, there's nothing sinful about the act of conception. But what is sinful is that the embryo that is formed during that conception, that embryo is stained with human sin. And so we sin because We're sinners. We're born that way. We've got it in our gene. It has infected us. In another psalm, Psalm 143, in verse 2, David says, In your sight, that is God's sight, no one living is righteous. The Proverbs tell us in Proverbs chapter 20, in verse 9, Who can say I have made my heart clean and I am pure from my sin? And then one other wisdom book in the Old Testament, the book of Ecclesiastes, written by perhaps Solomon. It says in Ecclesiastes 7, in verse 20, For there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin. Not a just man. Not one. King Solomon, when he was inaugurating the grand temple that he had built during his reign, had a dedication service. And at that dedication service, he gave a great prayer. And one of the things he said in that prayer is that when God's people turn and want to speak to you and they turn their face toward this temple, he says. When they sin against you, and then he says in parentheses, for there is none who does not sin, then turn your face to them and please hear them. As we move on in the Old Testament, and I'm only hitting the highlights, believe me, these are only the chief verses. As we move on, we come to that graphic verse in Isaiah 64, verse 6, where Isaiah says, But we are all as an unclean thing, and all of our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. All of our righteousness is the best that we can offer to the Lord. on our best day. It's like a pile of filthy rags. And those of you who know the real Hebrew of that know how bad that really is. All of our righteousnesses, and that includes Isaiah's righteousness, Isaiah, that wonderful prophet who trembled before the presence of the Lord in a vision that he once saw. Now, these words all come from the lips of godly men. We've heard from the lips of Moses, from David, from Solomon and his youth and from Isaiah. And these holy men were sensitive to sin. They felt its presence dragging them down to ruin them and to break their fellowship with God. If anybody out there today has no feelings about the guilt of sin, if sin has not disturbed your conscience, Then it isn't because you were free from the stain of sin. It's that sin has so numbed your conscience that you aren't even sensitive to it anymore. Your heart has, as the old King James puts it, waxed fat so that the conviction of sin can no longer stir you. One other thing about the words from these ancient saints that we had just read, they all spoke before the time of Zechariah. And all who heard Zechariah's words that we have just read in chapter 13, all that all people that heard the words in that time had also heard every one of the words that I just read to you from the scriptures. I didn't read from one New Testament verse. And having heard those words about sin and its problem. These people would have welcomed the idea of a fountain to open. to cleanse from their uncleanness, because up till that time they were helpless. There was no cure for sin. And Job voices some of this vexation about no cure for sin, where Job says in verse 9 and 30, he says, If I wash myself with snow water and cleanse my hands with soap, my own clothes will abhor me. That is soap and water, the finest, purest water cannot wash away sin. And then Job would ask in another question in chapter 14, verse four, he would say, who can bring a clean thing out of a thing unclean? And the implied answer is no one. But here's perhaps even a more graphic verse, it comes from the lips of the prophet Jeremiah, Jeremiah in chapter 13 and verse 23. Says can the Ethiopian change his skin or can the leopard change his spot? And the implied answer is no, we can't change our skin color and we can't remove the stain of sin from our souls. Later on, the prophet Isaiah. Gives a little ray of hope. And he says in chapter 1, verse 18, he says, Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, and that's deep red, they shall be white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be white as wool. That gives hope. And the question is, where is the fountain that can cleanse that type of sin? Where can sin be washed? And we have here in this verse before us a prophecy of where that fountain is. Zechariah, chapter 13 and verse one. Now, that verse is familiar to us on this side of the cross timeline. And we know that the cleansing fountain contains the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. We even sing a song about it. And many of you who grew up in more fundamental churches can remember this song. What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is the flow that makes me white as snow and no other fount I know. Nothing but the blood of Jesus. It says in the New Testament in 1 John, Chapter 1, verse 9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We are cleansed with the blood of Jesus, which he shed on the cross for sinners. We are cleansed with the blood of the ultimate and the final sacrifice for sins. Paid by the perfect sacrifice, Whereas an innocent animal had to die in the Old Testament for sin, Jesus Christ, the innocent Lamb of God, had to die for our sins and the sins of His people. He was the perfect sacrifice. He was the one who had no sin. He was not stained with Adam's sin because he had been virgin born. He was the perfect sacrifice, the Lord Jesus Christ. What do we have to do to rid ourselves from this curse of sin? Well, first, John chapter one and verse nine says, confess your sins to God, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. He paid for your sins on the cross. John 316, probably the most quoted verse in all the scriptures. But still very precious. Whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. And so the cure for sin is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, to believe that he died for your sins. First, you have to believe that you're a sinner, that you need a savior. Have you done that? Have you been to the cleansing fountain of the Lord's blood? Have you put your faith and trust in Him? Or are your sins not that bad? Well, yeah, I've said a bad word or two now and then in my life. Yeah, I've probably said a white lie here and there. Maybe even cheated on my tax once or twice. Yeah, maybe I gave my folks a hard time. But, you know, I don't do drugs. I'm not a shoplifter. I'm not like a lot of my friends. You know, I felt that way about sins when I was young. I haven't always been a church person. I was pretty good, I thought, in my own eyes and the eyes of other men. But I didn't see myself as a holy God saw me then. God looked down at me in those days and he pronounced the verdict guilty. And how do I know this? Well, I had never read the words that we read earlier today from the Old Testament. I'd never read those words that there's no one righteous before God, no one. Not one. By my own standards, I was a good guy, but not by God's. First, John. Chapter one in verse 10 says, if we say we have not sinned, we make God a liar and his word is not in us. Have you sinned? Are your sins so bad that you need a savior? Well, God says you do need a savior. He says your sins are bad, maybe not as bad as other men's, maybe not as bad as some of the crummy people we know on this earth. But in God's eyes, there are bad enough to condemn us and to rob us of his holy presence forever. And if we're robbed of God's holy presence forever because of our sin, which has separated us from God, then we'll never go to heaven. And the Apostle James says in his book. That if we've broken one of God's commandments we've broken, we're guilty of breaking them all, for James says, In verse 2 and chapter 10, I mean, chapter 2 and verse 10, whoever shall keep the whole law of God and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all. Well, to keep the whole law of God, I'd have to be perfect. That's right, because God is perfect. He is without sin. And if you want to be free from the stain of your sin, which is going to separate you from God, you have to come to the fountain. You have to be washed in God's fountain. Only then will you be able to stand in his holy presence. Jesus opened that fountain on the cross of Calvary when he shed his blood for the sins of many and all who believe in him to take away their sins are freed from the stain of sin. They are made as white as snow. You are no longer guilty before God. And you don't need to go to the fiery altars of burnt sacrifices to make an offering of an innocent animal to atone for your sin. And so now let me complete the poem that I started earlier from Augustus' top lady. Not all the blood of beasts on Jewish altars slain can give the guilty conscience peace or take away the stain. But Christ, the heavenly lamb, takes all our sins away A sacrifice of richer blood and nobler name than they. Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow. That's the fountain in Zechariah chapter 13 and verse one. It was a wonderful promise to the people living in his time, even though it occurred some 500 years before the fountain did actually open at the cross of Calvary. And now, as we look at verses two through six, which follow verse one, I believe that these verses result in the fulfillment of verse one. And I also think they were fulfilled shortly after the time that Jesus opened the fountain and rose from the dead and ascended to heaven. I think they happened mainly in the first century. My first clue is in verse 2. It says, In that day, that is the day the fountain was opened. In that day, the Lord, it says, that I will cut off the names of the idols from the land and they shall no longer be remembered. I will also cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to depart from the land. I think verse 2 poses a small dilemma. It says that there were no idols, that the idols would be removed from the land. And the question might be, well, how did the idols ever get into the land? Because there's no question about it, that before the captivity of Israel and Babylon, idolatry was a big problem with Israel. But after the Babylonian captivity, idolatry ceased. Almost every commentator will tell you that, that idolatry ceased. That was the one besetting sin that Israel finally got rid of during the captivity. God had sent them into captivity because of their idolatry and a few other reasons. But after Babylon, they saw so much idolatry being practiced in that land, they got sick of it. And when God called them back, it seemed to be cured. God does not take lightly the violation of his first commandment, that that shall have no other gods before me. And it appears that after they return from Babylon, the names that we read earlier in the Old Testament, names like Baal, Astra, Moloch, Dagon, Milcom and other pagan deities, you don't find those. In the writings of Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah or Malachi, you read none of those words. It appears that those idols had been purged from the land, that Israel is no longer guilty of doing those things. No more worshiping at the high places, no more worshiping under every green tree that all stopped after the captivity. Now, it is true that the returning captives almost opened the door to again rekindle idolatry when they started marrying their pagan neighbors. When the great exodus back to the land of Canaan from Babylon occurred, I did notice among the forty two thousand and the prominent names in that group, most of them were male. And there was likely a shortage of women, at least single women, among the returning captives. And so the Jewish men, for want of any kind of wife, were attracted to their pagan neighbors. And they married him, they had children by him. And this led to such a serious crisis that in the days of Ezra, who came a generation or two after, He and the elders of Israel had to spend two months in a special meeting writing divorce certificates for the men who had married these pagan women. Now, you might say, well, how can a God who says he hates divorce? How can a people who hold the sacred covenant of marriage to be a lifelong commitment? How could they do such a thing as actually write divorce certificates? Well, It was so important that idolatry not be introduced again into the land that they had to do that. They had to separate these men from their pagan wives. And it seems like drastically, because this measure is it was designed to prevent the resurgence of idolatry in the land. It had happened to Solomon. He had been lured by his many wives and foreign women. It had happened to him that he was led into idolatry. And if it could happen to Solomon, the best of men, how could it how could it not happen to the common Jew? Anyway, the Holy Spirit inspired this and put it in the book of Ezra for advocation. It's one of the few cases where divorce in the scriptures is sanctioned, and that's because it prevented idolatry or the rekindling of it in that time. So then the question has to be asked, who were the idols in these verses of Zechariah? Did idolatry actually creep in again into the Jewish community by the time of Christ? If it had, Jesus didn't say much about it. There doesn't seem to be any evidence in the New Testament. And we could ask the question, could Judea under the Roman rule During the times of Christ have adopted some of the Roman deities. Zeus, Jupiter, Mars, Diana. Again, there's not much evidence in the New Testament or in history that the Jews ever made such a compromise. Well, then who were these idols that Zechariah says were driven from the land? I'm going to humor you a little bit. With the interpretation of Mr. John Gill, a commentator of the 17th century, a very learned man. According to the learned Dr. Gill, these idols of gold, silver, brass and wood were. Are you ready for this? Images of the Virgin Mary and the Saints departed. If you're a Catholic and here this morning, please take no offense. Dr. Gill obviously projected this verse much, much beyond the first century and into the maybe times of his living when, at that time, the Roman Church did have some big problems with idolatry and corruption. But the main problem that I have with this view is that true Roman Catholics respect these images. You know, like statues of Mary and statues of Saint Christopher and other saints. And so if one of their relatives departed and started putting away these idols, their relatives would scold them, would scold them for giving them up. When a fourth, let's say, a former Catholic becomes, say, a Baptist and throws his idols away, His family, his Roman Catholic family, is not going to accuse him of being a false prophet, but they're going to accuse him of actually becoming one because he's cast away the very idols, the very things that they held dear. And I think the case in Zechariah 13 is just the opposite. If there were Jewish parents who had seen the light that Jesus Christ is the true Messiah. And the only way of salvation and their son is preaching Some other doctrine, other than Jesus, they're going to say, you're a false prophet. You're teaching something that's not true. You're teaching something that's not honoring Christ. Jesus is the true prophet and the true Messiah. And if their child was teaching to someone else, another Messiah, or perhaps proclaiming himself to be a deliverer, they want no part of him. Now, here's why I think some of this is true. Or this is the way I think this way. It hinges on something that Lord Jesus said to his disciples on the Olivet Discourse during the Olivet Discourse given in Matthew chapter 24. I think a lot of controversy over scripture comes from that chapter. But Jesus in Matthew 24 told foretold his disciples and he was speaking to them privately. He foretold them of times of great tribulation. Even for his disciples. And he warned them that during those times there would be false messiahs. He says in Matthew 24 and verse 23, if anyone says to you, look, here is Christ or there he is, do not believe it. Verse 24, for false Christ and false prophets shall arise and show great signs and wonders so as to deceive, if possible, even the elect, that is true believers. Now, let's consider something that happened in church history shortly after our Lord. Ascended to heaven. The day of Pentecost came and some 3000 believers Jewish people became believers and were baptized. They believed in the one in whom they had pierced, and great conviction fell upon them. And it was not long after that that the church role swelled to some 5,000 souls, it says in the book of Acts. There was a true revival going on among the Jewish community in Judea at that time. But while many people were believing in Jesus Christ for their salvation, There were others who were not. There were among the Jewish peoples, the nationalists, the patriots, the zealots. They wanted deliverance from Rome. They wanted Jewish independence again. And Jesus Christ did not deliver on that promise. They were very disappointed in that. It's one of the reasons they contrived to have him crucified. They were still looking for a political messiah. They were still looking for a man like Judas Maccabeus who had won temporary independence for Israel some four score and 70 years before that time. Now, there was a great tension between Rome and Judea in those days as the spirit of nationalism and independence picked up. Israel feared a Roman invasion. And as you know, Rome did. In 70 A.D., only 40 years after Christ, they did invade the land and destroy it. During that time, false Christs and false prophets arose, as the Lord said in Matthew 24. False Christs and false prophets arose, claiming to be deliverers of Israel. These men were disappointed in the crucified Jesus. They were ashamed of the cross. And they failed to see that he had conquered an enemy far, far greater than the Romans. Jesus Christ had conquered man's greatest enemy, and that's death. Speaking of these false Christs and false prophets, I want to read to you the words of the historian Alfred Ersheim in his book, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. This is what he says, speaking of our Lord's words in Matthew 24. He said, There was a multitude of imposters who, in the troubled times between the rule of Pilate and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., promised messianic deliverance to Israel. Among these imposters, few names and claims of this kind have been specially recorded. Yet yet the hints of the New Testament and references guarded by Jewish historians imply the appearance of many such seducers and a seducer is anyone who would lead you astray from the truth. Here's the point of Zechariah, chapter 13, in verse one, and these verses that follow, Jesus was the true Messiah. Amen. He is the Savior of the Jew first and also of the Gentiles. He is the genuine article. What happens when a genuine article of anything appears? Shortly after the genuine comes the fakes. How many of you have ever heard of a Rolex watch? You have heard of that. Rolex watch, I think it's made of pure gold, very precision jewel making. It's a status symbol. If you wear a Rolex, it says one thing, you make a lot of money, you can afford a Rolex. It costs thousands of dollars. When we were living in Bangkok back in the early 90s, there were vendors that sold merchandise on the streets. They had big tables full of their goods, and as you walked by in the busy, crowded streets, you could purchase these items. And among the favorite items were Rolex watches. And we even saw a sign that said, genuine fake Rolexes. And you know, they looked like a real Rolex. I mean, you really couldn't tell the difference Unless you really look at it close. And they kept time. And they cost about $15. They were fakes. But what? There would never would have been a fake Rolex if there hadn't been the real Rolex watch in the first place. Now, Jesus was the real deal. He was the original. He was the real and true Messiah. He healed. He did miracles. He cared for the poor. He died for our sins. But the one thing he didn't do was deliver the Jewish nation from Roman rule. And that desire still burned in the hearts of many of the Jewish people after he left the earth. So in his place, false Christs arose. Even by the power of Satan doing, as he said, signs and wonders, as Jesus said in Matthew 24, 24, they would do signs and wonders. Perhaps Simon, the sorceress in Samaria, who claimed to be someone great, was one of those fakes. Remember, in Acts chapter eight, when Philip came to Samaria, he met Simon. And Simon was impressed with Philip's ability to heal. And Simon apparently had been able to do some of that himself. Later on, he met Peter. And Simon tried to fake the power of the Holy Spirit, and Peter exposed Simon as a fake. And Simon appears to have repented. So how does this relate then to the idols given in chapter two and verse two of Zechariah 13? Well. An idol does not have to be a hunk of wood or metal, an idol can be another person. Don't we know this in America today? Don't we have TV shows named American Idol? An idol is anything or anyone in which you put your trust in. And so there were men that were putting their trust in these false Christs. And when their parents, who were true believers and who knew that Jesus was the real Messiah, said, no, you speak falsely. You're not speaking the truth. And it says they actually thrust him out of their house with violence. They told him he needs, he deserves to be stoned because even in the Old Testament says, if your son is a false prophet, it's your duty to stone him. And so the happy outcome of some of this isn't given in verse five. You know, men can deceive others, but they really can't deceive themselves. And when confronted by reality, some of them come to the truth. And they cast off their prophet's clothing, the robe of coarse hair, and they go back to the farm. The coarse hair robe spoken of in verse four was kind of the clothing that prophets wore, I think, perhaps an imitation of the old prophets like Isaiah and John the Baptist, who wore that coarse robe. It was kind of like maybe preachers today sometimes wear robes and such kind of indicates that you're somebody, a person of God, somebody special. But when confronted with reality, they said, no, I'm really just a prophet. I'm just really I'm not a prophet. I'm a farmer. They're embarrassed by their false prophecies and they go back to doing their livelihood. For which they've been trained. And in verse six, it speaks of the what the false prophet will give an account of how he got roughed up by his friends. For being a false prophet. And you might ask the question, well, do you know who these men were? These false Christs, these false prophets, these idols? If what I've been saying is true, I ought to be able to come up with a few names. I can't. And I think I can't because something that's brings true in verse. To Zechariah, chapter 13, in verse two. I will cut off the names of the idols from the land and they shall no longer be remembered. And so perhaps the reason why I can't remember any of them is they never got written down or if they had been written down, they were forgotten. And the sands of time have rolled over them ever since. There's a proverb that says the name of the wicked shall rot, the rotten things decay, they fade, they die, they fade away, and soon they are no more. They're forgotten. But Jesus Christ is the real Christ, the real prophet and the real savior of sinners. And let us rejoice this morning that he has not been forgotten. And may that be so forever. That we remember him, the true savior, forever. Let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, We are grateful that the name of Jesus Christ is the same today, yesterday, tomorrow and forever. We are glad that his name shall never be forgotten. And we remember that name each Sunday, each time we celebrate the Lord's Supper. And each time your people and everywhere in every age give thanks to him. We are grateful, Father, that he opened that fountain for sin. For cleansing, for uncleanness, had that fountain never been opened at Calvary two thousand years ago. We would, Lord, be without hope, we would forever be separated from you by our sins, but because of that wonderful fountain that was opened. All who trust in that fountain. and all who want their sins washed by his blood will be forgiven and will no longer be separated from your presence. We thank you for that wonderful hope. In his wonderful name, we thank you. Amen.