We turn for our New Testament reading to 1 John chapter 5, and then in the Old Testament to Psalm 51, and let's stand to give our attention to the word read. 1 John chapter 1. Verses 5-7, this is the message which we have heard from Him and declared to you, that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. Now to Psalm 51. where we read again from this penitential psalm and particularly give attention to David's request for cleansing, pardon, and forgiveness. To the chief musician, a psalm of David when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your lovingkindness, according to the multitude of your tender mercies. Blot out my transgressions. wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me against you, and you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight, that you may be found just when you speak and blameless when you judge. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part you will make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me hear joy and gladness, that the bones of you that are broken may rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me by your generous spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners shall be converted to you. Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of your righteousness. The grass withers, the flower fades, and the word of God endures forever. and we pray together. Lord God, we are thankful that we could recount back to You and praise You for Your unchanging covenant promises. The Son of David would sit on the throne forever, provide righteousness, life, and salvation for sinners such as we are. We pray that You would teach us of that same saving mercy fulfilled in Your promises to David long ago, So needed by David and all of us. So we pray lift up Christ even as we hear your word preached in Jesus name. Amen. We turn again to Psalm 51 and we are in a series which I introduced Two weeks ago, I believe. I'm losing track. I believe, yeah, two weeks ago. A series that has to do with, in the main, the doctrine of repentance. What does it mean to turn from sin to God? In Psalm 51, if we study it carefully, it gives us a template for repentance. It also reminds us of the urgency of repentance and how quickly we can fall into sin. I noted last time, I'll note again that the occasion of this psalm and the inscription at the beginning is that it pertains to David's great sin, his fall. That he committed adultery, that he took another man's wife to himself against the law of God, lied about it, and that he was willing to murder to cover up that sin. And, that after all of this, he was willing to live in an unrepentant, hard-hearted state until Nathan the prophet would come to him and confront him about his sins. The psalm is about a great sinner. And a man who, before Nathan came to Him, was not penitent, but impenitent. Who had not confessed, nor asked for forgiveness, nor apparently because of these things, truly turned from his sin. It's about somebody who is in desperate need of God's redeeming grace and forgiveness. And this matter of God's redeeming grace and forgiveness lies at the heart of Christianity. We are in a world where Just as the ideas of righteousness and holiness are falling on hard times, the ideas of forgiveness are falling on hard times. But there are certain social sins you can commit now that if you do, you will be permanently ostracized. They are in a sense unforgivable, that there are things beyond redemption or recovery. But at the heart of the Christian faith is that Even for a man like David, there could be this glorious truth, something called the forgiveness of sins. That they could all be washed away. That that exceedingly wicked, no other way to call it, exceedingly wicked episode in his life, could by the grace of God, be washed away. and that the attendant sadness that it had brought to David's life, which when he didn't confess it, for example, make me hear joy and gladness, verse 8, that the bones that you have broken may rejoice, which brings to mind a similar psalm that appears to be linked to the same episode in David's life, Psalm 32. When I kept silent, my bones grew old. Through my groaning all the day long, for day and night your hand was heavy on me. My vitality turned to the drought of summer. under an accusing conscience, had no peace at all, that his sin had brought real separation from God. Verse 11, a sense of being cast away from God's presence and without the influence of the Holy Spirit. What the Gospel says is that all of these realities can be reversed through the forgiveness of sins. And what's even more surprising, perhaps for us to comprehend, and we maybe instinctively recoil, is that this forgiveness was offered to and received by a man who had so many privileges. I mean, he wasn't sinning out of ignorance. He was sinning against an astonishing backdrop of the favor of God in so many ways. It was high-handed sin. The sin of somebody who not only knew what the Bible said, but who was even being used by God to write scripture. A sinner. Actual sins. I acknowledge my transgressions. My sin is before me. And coming to a recognition, verse 5, that he wasn't just a sinner because of some bad things he had done incidentally, but that he was fundamentally corrupt. That he was conceived and born in sin. So last week he began to study the psalm as a template for the doctrine of repentance I said a moment ago. The occasion is surely pertinent to our age. I mentioned sexual sins last week in the introduction to my sermon, or two weeks ago in Psalm 51. This past week I decided to get a little bit curious and look at the Covenant Eyes has a, if you've heard of it, a website, has some statistics on sexual sin in Christ's church. Forget the world. The world of numbers are staggering. Here's one of the first statistics they list. Around one in six pastors in the evangelical Christianity, pastors, regularly engage in sexual sin. The numbers within the church are hardly different than the 70% of men and 30 to 40% of women who not uncommonly engage in sexual sin online. The sins that David fell into apparently are not far from the life of those who profess faith in Jesus Christ in the present age. The occasion of David's sin is the description of our present age. And the big question that we ask in repentance, we're asking in this psalm, is what does a sinner do? Now that's not the only category of sin, there's a hundred other lusts and ways to sin, but what does a sinner do who's caught in great sin? What do you do? It means there's a great problem between you and God, against you and you only have I sinned. What do we do about the gulf that sin creates? Last time we looked at one action in the psalm, which was the confession of sin. The remarkable truth that also lies at the heart of Christianity is that when you sin you can go to God and tell him. You have to think about what that is. He already knows you did it. But that he asks you to come in a posture of humility and tell him about it. That's very remarkable. The holy God who inhabits eternity would receive us and David believed that he would because of his character, that he was a God of mercy and loving kindness and a multitude of tender mercies. Confession in the hope of God's mercy. But I also would posit to you that you understand being made in the image of God that simply saying, I did it, does not repair the problem. We have another toddler in our home and she is starting to learn words. If the experience of the other eight has taught me anything, there will come a time where you can ask a toddler if they did something you told them not to do and they simply say, I did it. But simply confessing is not the same as contrition or repentance. In other words, just naming it. And sometimes we think it is, but it doesn't repair the relationship, it doesn't fix the breach, it doesn't actually remove the problem. The act of confessing on its own, speaking of what we've done. As a matter of fact, I've often seen as a pastor that sometimes when people come and tell me I did this horrible thing, that it actually makes them feel better about the thing they've done instead of worse. If we think this way, we underestimate the necessity and need for the forgiveness of sins. We could say this, I've seen people do this, I've sinned greatly against you and now it's your job to what? I confessed it so you should forgive it because we're Christians. But there is something about confession in which we are seeking something from God beyond a bare statement of what we have done, an acknowledgement beyond a bare acknowledgement. We are both acknowledging and seeking God's face for a special kind of mercy. A true penitent is not only confessing sin, but asking for divine forgiveness. And it's that narrow matter of forgiveness that we wanna study from the Psalm, from David's example in Psalm 51. And so we're gonna see a number of things, a mark of a true Christian or a true believer is that we ask, we not only confess our sins, but secondly, we ask for forgiveness of sins. Second thing we're gonna look at is the provision of God by which we are able to, or the ground on which we stand to ask for forgiveness. And then we'll see in the third from the psalm, the gracious way that God responds to that request. So, number one, the key mark of a true Christian, we ask for forgiveness. Second, the ground on which we must stand when we ask for forgiveness. And then third, what God does in response to such a request. Well, it's an obvious pattern in the prayer here. If you heard when I read, I emphasized this reading, these requests for forgiveness. The focus of the request for the forgiveness of sins comes in verses 7 through 9. In a series of requests offered to God for what we could call cleansing. A broad category of cleansing. Look at verse 7. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Verse 9. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Verse 14, we have an intimation of the same principle, deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed. And if we go all the way to the beginning of this psalm, we have the same language right at the beginning, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. And I want you to see how this... pulse runs through the entirety of the psalm. These phrases and words are just piled up. There is something specific and urgent in addition to the acknowledgement of sin that David is asking for from God. He has a goal. He has a request. He is asking, seeking, and knocking. He is pursuing persistently the mercy of God in forgiveness. The words are piling up. to blot out, to wash, to cleanse, to purge, to hide God's face, to blot out again. And the object or the thing that needs to be blotted out is every time sins, iniquities, and transgressions. In other words, I have sinned, but God, I am asking you to do something to remove my sins from me, to take them away. And what David is acknowledging is something about sin. Sometimes when we just say to somebody, well, I confess my sin, it's your job to forgive. We believe that, in a sense, it's over. That I've done my part, now you do your part. And sometimes people are surprised. Why don't you do your part? But David understands something else about sin. He's seeking God because he understands verse 4 that God is the offended party and that He's violated His standard. He's asking Him to do something with his sins. What exactly is David asking for when he asks for this? It's what we call forgiveness. What are we asking God to do when we ask Him to forgive our debts? What are we asking for? Sometimes we think we're asking for a small thing. Perhaps some of you have been pulled over by an officer of the law. and you're going five over. So you're not being reckless. Maybe you weren't even looking. Speedometer, right? You weren't looking and all of a sudden the blue lights come on. I actually had this happen to me not too long ago in Landrum a few months ago. And I had turned from one road to another. There was a traffic jam on the main street in Landrum. Not a very big traffic jam if you've been to Landrum, but I was trying to get around it and I ended up from one road to another. Speed limit changed. I wasn't looking. Boom. I was actually on the phone with my brother. I had to hang up. The officer comes to the window and I said, officer, it's my fault. I just didn't know the speed limit change. I was going too fast. And what did he do? Graciously, he said, don't do it again. And he let me go. Sometimes we think that's all forgiveness is. Just let him go. We think that's what God does when he forgives sins. If we would turn over to Psalm 130, we get a different sense. If you, Lord, should mark iniquities, who then could stand? It's not possible for a righteous God just to let us go. So what are we asking for again when we ask for forgiveness? Look at the key words in the text again, verse one. We are asking God to blot out. to expunge our record. To use the words of the Apostle Paul in Colossians chapter 2, what Christ came to do is to remove the handwriting of the law that was against us. The charges, the legal charges and their specifications that they would be lifted, blotted out. That God would wash and cleanse. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity. Cleanse me from my sin. Look at verse 7. Purge me. Wash me. Blot out, verse 9, all of my iniquities. Deliver me from the guilt of. But this idea of washing and cleansing, what does sin do? It's not just something you've done in the past. It is a polluting act. And it leaves you guilty before God. We tend to think that the fundamental problem of our sins is that it only hurts others. Even we could say from verse three, well, God is offended, that's my problem, so he needs not to be offended. Or my spouse is offended because I betrayed him or her, and now it's their problem. Or I've offended my friend, and they need to get over it, and that's what forgiveness is. But the problem with sin is that it's far greater than we imagine. It is a polluting act. And the problem is not in God, not in the other, it's in us. For we've committed the iniquity, the transgression, and the sin. And when we're asking for forgiveness, we are recognizing that the guilt of sin and the pollution of sin is in us. It makes us guilty before God. It makes us unable to enter His holy presence. It makes us condemnable. If you were to take a drop of perfectly pure water, and on a cold day I was to offer you a drink of cold water out of a five-gallon bucket, just take a cup, scoop it, and give you. You'd take it. If I put one drop of cyanide in, you wouldn't take it. Why? Because that one act had polluted the whole. It can't be distinguished from the whole anymore. And that's what happens when we sin against God. And that's why even one sin, breaking one commandment is breaking them all. It's offending God. It's falling short of His glory. How about the word purge? Strong. Remove all traces, Lord. How about hide your face from it? Do not look again upon it. For if you were to look again upon it, Lord, if you should mark iniquities back to Psalm 130, who could stand? I would be lost. And we are asking fundamentally this. Lord, please look on me. as if I had never sinned. It's a massive request, a bold request, an astounding request, particularly when the character of God is in view, and the nature of sin, which is a violence to His character, and the reason we were created to bring Him glory, and we've fallen short of His glory, and we're asking for all of that to be expunged and blotted out and cleansed and washed away, and that this is part of repentance. How many times do you ask for this? I think I mentioned last time in preaching that one of the things my mother always taught me was to ask for forgiveness of sins. If you read Calvin and his Institutes on Prayer, he says this is one of the themes that runs through every Christian prayer. Every Christian prayer. an acknowledgement of my unworthiness, and a reaching for the mercy of God, and an asking for Him to do in me what I cannot do for myself, which is deliver me from the guilt, and pollution, and power of sin, to do something supernatural to reach within me, to deliver me. How about if you ask someone else to forgive you? Do you realize how big of a request that is? Do you realize how? You are asking for the other to treat you as if you had not sinned. You know, sometimes we get sideways with each other. Laurel and I, years ago, early in our marriage, sometimes we would differ a little now and then. And we realized that sometimes we didn't differ well, and so we have to sort that out. Somewhere early we decided, No, we're gonna name what we've done wrong, and then we're gonna ask for specific forgiveness for it. We're not just gonna say, I'm sorry, and I won't do it again, and beat around the bush. No, if I've sinned, I'm gonna name it, I'm gonna ask for forgiveness, and we're gonna keep short accounts. But even that can become commonplace. Every time you ask, it's a staggering ask. Please treat me like I never did it before. That's what we're asking of God. And that's what lies at the heart of being a Christian. The Lord's Prayer, forgive us our debts. David, a great sinner, under conviction here, simply asks, and I would say one thing very simply, if you don't do this, you cannot possibly be a Christian. You don't understand the beginning of the Christian faith. But this begs another question in the second place, how can David ask for this? What is it? How can he ask, what is he asking for? What is he, we'll put it this way, how can he ask for God to look on him as if he hadn't sinned? How can he ask God, in light of his holy justice, to wash away the pollution that his sin has created in his soul? Well, there's an idea in this psalm I want to pick up a little bit more. It's right there, and it's again and again. We've already touched on it, but let's go deeper. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity. Verse two, cleanse me from my sin. And then purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Blot, wash, cleanse, purge. He's asking for a supernatural cleansing. He's recognizing that he's been polluted and there is only one who can wash the pollution away, only one. There's one key phrase that perhaps explains all the others and has a more direct connection to the Old Testament theology of forgiveness and that's the little phrase in verse seven, purge me with hyssop. which is a window into something of the theology of forgiveness in the Old Testament because it's not only a request for an action, purging or washing, but it's an indication that David has in mind a means of cleansing. Purge me with something. What does this mean? What is hyssop? Hyssop is a plant that grows very simply with fine stems and leaves and makes a natural sort of brush. And children, what do you do with brushes? You can do one of two things. You can clean something, or you can paint something, right? Two things you can do with a brush. And hyssop, as a sort of natural brush, is a nod towards some remarkable language in the Old Testament. What was the use of hyssop in the Bible? Does anyone remember the most famous place? Exodus 12. When Israel was in Egypt and the angel of death was passing over, they were to take the Passover lamb and slaughter it and take the blood and take hyssop and paint it on the doorposts. And then they were under the blood, and under the blood, the angel of death, who even Israel deserved to stop at each of their homes, would not stop on account of the blood sprinkled on the doorposts with the hyssop branch. This would have been embedded into the entire understanding of Israel. That purge me with hyssop is Exodus language. It's blood on the doorpost language. It's Leviticus language. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins. As a matter of fact, it's hyssop again that is needed for a leper to be cleansed. Atonement to be given for the sin of a leper. Again, it is the brushing by the hyssop plant that indicates the cleansing of a leper. Leprosy being a picture of sin. In Numbers chapter 19 and verse 14. If you were to be cleansed from the pollution of a corpse, if you had touched a dead body, it required you to be cleansed with water on a hyssop branch in order that the pollution of sin be ceremonially removed from you. And this use of the hyssop plant with water and with blood for the cleansing of Israel throughout her ordinary life is not a small picture that David brings up. As a matter of fact, he is saying something Something that the writer of the Hebrews would say, and Moses and Leviticus would say, that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. That there needs to be some divine action and satisfaction and substitution and the shedding of blood for the forgiveness of sins. In this little phrase he's confessing that the wages of sin is death. I deserve death. I have been polluted with the leprosy of sin and death and its pollution on me. Purge me Lord with hyssop. Take all of the cleansing you promised in the ceremonial law and grant it to me. Lord, as Moses sprinkled the blood on the people in Exodus 24 at Sinai, purge me, cleanse me, wash me, make me clean. He's referring to the entire theology of sacrifice and atonement. David is profoundly confessing here that the wages of sin is death. Big sins. Shameful, entangling, often public, complicating sins. Big sins. Wages of sin is death. Little sins that no one else sees. Wages of sin is death. And all of them need the purging with hyssop to make us clean. Don't underestimate that supernatural divine power is required for you to be forgiven and for the guilt and pollution of sin to be washed away. If God's wrath is like a hurricane on account of your sins, you're like a moth born on the wrath of God. There is no way in your sins to resist His judgments. Sin makes you an object of wrath. David understands life in the presence of God requires total cleansing to such a degree that I am no longer an object of that wrath. Forgive me, not just any kind of forgiveness, not a light forgiveness, but a supernatural intervention, removal of the guilt and pollution. And if we were to draw a line here, you're not surprised it would go all the way to the new covenant. We say earlier, you were asking for, when you ask for forgiveness, Lord, please treat me and look on me like I never did it. What's David asking for? The Lord is so merciful to place David in this Psalm and the scriptures for you and for me. Lord, please look on me as if I never committed adultery. as if I never lied, as if I never murdered, and as if I never refused to confess. That's the kind of forgiveness David is asking for. Not just any kind, but massive. The only way you could possibly ask God to treat you like this is if you were to understand fast forwarding from the old covenant types and shadows to the atoning blood of Jesus Christ. He takes the wages of sin across. He pays the price. He quenches the wrath. He endures the penalty. He sheds his own blood. He absorbs the unbounded holy power of God against sin. His wrath against sin. He's the propitiation for our sins, John writes. And he quenches the fires of God's judgment and he passes the crucible of the cross. And this is how forgiveness is procured for God's people. His atoning death, what is it? If you are asking God for the forgiveness of sins, you are acknowledging that Jesus Christ took your sins on the cross. That he became sin for you. That this is the only means of cleansing and removal. That the guilt and pollution will be placed on another. Every time you ask for forgiveness, it's running all the way through the glory and power and bitterness of the cross. When you ask for forgiveness, what are you asking for? You're saying, Lord, by your Spirit, please apply to me the hyssop branch of the cleansing fountain of Jesus Christ's work for me. And please, for his sake, remove it all. And look at me as if it never happened. The precious blood of Christ is what Peter writes about in 1 Peter chapter 1. We've been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ. This is why John, as we read a moment ago, says it's the blood of Christ that cleanses us from all sin. This is why Revelation chapter 1, we read about Christ who with His blood redeemed His people. How should you pray as a sinner? regularly for the forgiveness of sins through the Lord Jesus Christ. I'll put it this way, you never graduate beyond this, ever, ever, ever. And then in a second way, you know how Christians have habits in prayer, and a lot of them are good habits, but they become bad habits if you use them and you don't know why you're using them. But when we teach our little children to pray, what do we say? Lord, please forgive my sins for Jesus' sake. Don't stop saying that, but recognize the unbreakable tie between the request and the ground, that it is The only reason I can ask is because of the atonement of another, and I humbly place before you Christ my pleading ground. Please wash, pardon, cleanse, blot out, hide from your face, remove from me as far as east is from west for his sake, and think about the mercy of God in Christ. What is God's response? The gracious response of God to those who seek this kind of forgiveness. He forgives sins. He does what we ask. This is remarkable. You come ask in faith, He forgives. Completely. I want you to notice David's remarkable boldness. Let's go back to verses seven through nine. In verse two, you'll notice, one and two, he says, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin. But notice the difference in verses seven through nine. Purge me with hyssop, what's the next phrase? And I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. David has a confidence in the Lord that if I confess my sins, He is faithful and just to forgive my sins and cleanse me from all unrighteousness. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Some of you maybe right now are caught in deep, deep trouble. As a minister of the gospel, it's not uncommon that I deal with people that are caught in significant trouble because of very bad decisions that have the capacity to blow up your entire life and leave your conscience absolutely wrecked. And you maybe are living currently under a pervasive sense of hopelessness. You know sometimes you ask people for help and they forget to return your call, they get busy, or they just don't care. David understands God not to be like this. He understands that he can say these words together, purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow, that when I ask he forgives. When you ask God for this, the promise of the gospel is that He justifies, He reckons your sins to Christ's account, Christ's righteousness to your account. That He will divinely, supernaturally purge you and make you clean. That He is both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus Christ. And so ask, and believe, and know that this is the mighty act of God, His response, He forgives sins. Second, He restores our joy. We'll see more about this in the coming weeks, but look back at the text. Before we look at the text, the wages of sin is death, and that's the broadest category, that's ultimate hell and eternal death, but there are the tendrils and experiences of misery that are immediately attached to sin. And some of them are that we break up relationships and lose our money and we have just present disaster. But there's one misery we don't often think of and that's the misery of a bitter conscience. A self-inflicted wound that sometimes we can live under for years. No peace with God. No peace within. You can lie to people about a lot of other things. You might be able to keep all the balls in the air. But when you go to sleep at night and your conscience isn't at peace, it's misery. Isn't it? And there's sickness in the world, war in the world, and all kinds of other miseries. But this bitter conscience is a bitter soul misery. It's often the root cause and the lack of our joy and purpose and happiness in this life. And America right now is the most, the rate at which we are medicating ourselves is astonishing. And often for sadness. And there are some times and places where a medical intervention could be wise and necessary. However, as a culture, why is it? that we are in the place that we're in. Why do we as a culture increasingly lack joy, purpose, happiness, and peace? Could it be that we don't know the joy of forgiveness? Verse 8, make me hear joy and gladness that the bones that you have broken may rejoice. I expect in forgiveness that the brokenness of my condition would be turned to joy. Just by receiving forgiveness, Restore to me, verse 12, the joy of your salvation. Uphold me by your generous spirit. Reminds me of a hymn that we're about to sing. My sin, O the bliss of this glorious thought. My sin, not in part, but the whole. Nailed to the cross, I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul. If you have this, you can live happy, you can die happy, you can suffer happy. because you have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. If you're miserable tonight, go to God. Say, search my heart. It's my conscience, Lord. You have a conscience that's never been at peace with you. Go to God now and ask him for forgiveness. Maybe tonight it might mean a walk in the dark once your kids are in bed. A time to pray like you've never prayed before. It might be on your knees beside your bed, husband and wife. But ask Him. Plead with Him. Cry out to Him. Say, Lord, I would ask for Your forgiveness, and I pray that You would restore my joy. For Christ's sake, have mercy on me. The Gospel proclaims tonight, He will not turn you away. He will restore your joy. Let's pray. Lord our God, we ask tonight that You would help us to always ask for Your forgiveness. or to recognize that this is part of your glory, that you forgive iniquity and transgression and sin. And then when we think about the cross, Lord, we see that glory, as you so loved the world and you gave your Son to be the propitiation for our sins, not ours only, but also for the world. Lord, we read that the blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin, that it is by him that we can be purged with hyssop, and we will be clean, washed, and we will be whiter than snow. Lord, tonight we bring before you our sins in an act of confession. But Lord, we ask for more. We not only speak of what we've done wrong, we not only hope in your mercy, but we ask for your cleansing grace. Lord, we also pray that this would be followed by peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Spirit, Lord, increase of faith, and Lord, perseverance to the very end. And we pray in Jesus' name, amen. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His accountants upon you and give you His peace, amen.