Introductory Session

Good evening. Let's try that again. Good evening. It's good to be here. It's strange to be here. I've left my family before to go and preach elsewhere, but I've always left them with you, So it's very strange to come here to you having left them somewhere else. But it is a unique delight to be here. Thank you for your prayers for us and for your concern for us. Everyone is doing well. We are grateful to God for his care for us and pray for us. There's a deadline coming up. Everything should have been done with our registration with the government, but certain bureaucratic issues have hindered that, and there's a November fifteenth deadline, and if we don't make that November fifteenth deadline, we won't be able to start in January. So just pray that God just toaks care of that and his timing and that we're able to get this to get this work started. One of the things that has been very interesting to me thinking about this particular issue is to see the ways in which the Word of Faith movement and the Prosperity Gospel from here in the United States has taken root and taken whole and has wreaked havoc in Africa. I remember, you know, I would have said, you know, when I first became aware of the Word of Faith movement and began to look into and study the Word of movement, I would always say things like, yeah, they can get away with that here, but you can't do that in a third world country. How wrong I was. It's worse, It's worse. You would think that there would have to be a certain amount of wealth within a culture in order to get people to grab a hold of this kind of ideology, and the fact of the matter is that that's just not the case. This movement is not necessarily about the amount of wealth that an individual or a culture has, as much as it is about the desire that we have for more about our flesh and the feeding of our flesh, and how this movement essentially tells us that we can have everything we want and Jesus, whereas Christ has come to bid us to come and die, this movement says, you don't have to Your flesh doesn't have to die, Your yearnings, your desires don't have to die, your materialism doesn't have to die. In fact, you can have it on steroids and still be all that Christ has called you to be, and it's amazing to see it in that kind of environment. Some of you may have heard about recent events now our part of the world. One and I think we talked about before, was a church where a pastor had its people literally out on the front lawn of the church on their hands and knees, crawling and eating grass, literally on their hands and knees and eating grass. There is another instance where some people have been actually killed because apparently during some service the pastor sort of manifested as a serpent. Again, these types of things are horrendous, but they're becoming all too common, and in cultures where there is already a bent toward animism, and already a bent toward you know, this sort of ancestral religion and this idea of the spiritual strong man and the witch doctor and so on and so forth. In cultures like that, when you introduce ideas that sound very similar to it and put Jesus' name with it, what you get is a brand of Christianity that is not at all Christian. And Justin Peters will tell us all about that. But what I want to do tonight is address the elephant in the room. And that is the idea of whether or not it's appropriate for us to even do this, because you know as well as I do that there are those individuals who would argue that what's happening here is divisive, what's happening here is not loving, what's happening here is judgmental. We're putting God in a box, We're quenching the spirit, touching God's anointed, and so on and so forth. Well, if you have your Bibles with you, open them to the Book of Jude. Don't ask what chapter. Open them to the Book of Jude. And let's look at those first four verses, shall we? Therein Jude small letter. I heard someone refer to it once as a as a postcard. Jude a bond servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. May mercy, peace and love be multiplied to you, beloved. Although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvage, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. Couple of observations that I want to make here really one observation, and some other observations that are subsequent to that. And the one observation that I really want to make, regardless of what else we have time for, is this that the idea of contending for the faith is consistent with the idea of mercy, peace and love. The idea of contending for the faith is consistent, not at odds with, but consistent with the ideas of mercy, peace and love. Now, as I've said before, you've heard me say this many times. The eleventh commandment is thou shalt be nice, and we don't believe the other ten. That's our culture. Niceness is the height and the epitome of true Christianity, and contending is seen as not being nice, as not being loving. So if you are contending, then you are not being loving, you are not being Christian. But note what Jude says. He says in verse two, may mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. And then in verse three he says agonize greatly contend. The word that he uses in the Greek is EPAGONIDZAMAI agonize greatly for the faith wrestle. That the word there would be a word for wrestling. It'd be a word that was derived from the physical sport of man on man combat and wrestling, and two men agonizing with one another in the most physical manner possible. That's the word that he chooses to use in verse three when he says contend for the faith that was once for all delivered or handed down to the saints. And he uses this one verse after his prayer that mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. Now, how could the apostle argue for mercy, peace, and love being multiplied to you on the one hand, and argue for agonizing greatly for the faith on the other. If there is some inconsistency between the two. How could he possibly juxtapose these things if to do one was to negate the other. He can only do this if, somehow, if in some way, these things are compatible. And again this grates on us, This works against us. I get that, I understand that, and actually I understand it from both sides. Many of you may not know this about me. I talked Stephen about this. He didn't know this about me. The first book that I ever read as a Christian, the first like you know, book book that I ever read as a Christian, not a book in the Bible, but like a Christian book that you find in the Christian bookstore and go and read the thing from cover to cover was Good Morning, Holy Spirit by Benny Hint. True story, true story, first book that I ever read. It was part of a group in college that was basically charismatic in nature. I'd served on staff at a church while I was in seminary that was a charismatic church. Early on in my faith, I attended a charismatic church where they had a you know, the sort of tarrying bench. And then some of y'all from a charismatic background, you know about the tarrying bench. You haven't got the gift yet, you know. So you come at the end of the service, and some people come to get saved. Other people come so you can get the second blessing. And so you come and they lay hands on you, and you lay hands on your head and maybe even lay on your chest and your belly and tell you to just let it bubble out of your belly. And so you got to start stringing syllables together so that you sound like you're speaking in tongues. And you know, and the more you do it, the more syllables that you can string together. Never Mind, you sound just like the other people who are stringing syllables together. And for the never mind the fact that you know that what you're doing is stringing syllables together. The fact of the matter is you start stringing these syllables together, and all of a sudden, people shout and they get happy because somebody else just got the second blessing. In fact, it was more exciting for someone to speak in tongues than it was for someone to be converted. Been there, served on staff at a charismatic church. Again, Remember I didn't come to faith until I got to I never heard the gospel till I got to college. And the modern man in church just by default is dispensational and charismatic, just by default, not through people thinking it through and making that decision. It just is. Nobody questions those two things. Nobody questions dispensationalism nobody questions continuationism. If you're a Christian, you basically accept those two ideas. And I basically accepted those two ideas, and then I began to grapple with reformed theology. Messed me up, and it was then that I became contentious. Now I didn't change, hear me carefully, I didn't change. But here the way this thing works. When you're on the charismatic side of the ledger and believe that you're speaking in tongues, and believe that you have this second blessing, and believe that you now had the Holy Spirit in the kind of abundance that other you know, mirror just baptized, just water baptized Christians don't have. You're not considered contentious in the least. You look down on other people for literally not being as spiritual as you are because you have something that they don't have. But you're not considered contentious in the least. You make claims about what God told me and what God showed me, and what God you know. You can't have an evangelistic encounter. You can't meet someone and the conversation turned to the gospel. You can't do that when you tell the story. I looked over and God told me go talk to that person. And I say, what, Lord, you want me to talk to that person? And I so yeah, He said, yeah, I want you to talk to thee. That's the wory. You have to tell the story on that side. But you're not being contentious at all, or you're not considered contentious at all. But the minute you begin to question the charismatic assumptions, in that very second, you are considered contentious and unloving. It's not unloving for me to believe that I'm more spiritual than you are, because I've got a second blessing and you don't. It's unloving for me to question whether or not that experience is appropriate. I saw it just as clear as day. All of a sudden, I was considered contentious, all of a sudden, I was considered less than. All of a sudden, I was considered unloving, and all of a sudden, I was considered dangerous. Now, people whose theology was wrecking folks faith weren't considered dangerous, but those who would dare to question these concepts were considered dangerous. Because there is this idea, and this idea is that if you are not part of this program, then you are actually against God and against God's work even the way the conversation is framed. Had a conversation recently with a gentleman who is, you know, a conversation through email, but he just really wanted to understand how someone who, in his words, seemed so spiritual, How can someone like you, who seemed so spiritual, seems to have such insight into God's word, seems so passionate about God? How can someone like you, and here is the quote not believe in the gifts? Do you catch that? How dishonest? How completely and utterly dishonest we believe in the gift? You don't believe in the gifts. You don't believe God can heal, You don't believe that God's the same today, you don't believe. Really, how dishonest can you be? Do you know how many spiritual gifts there are in the scriptures? Cessatianists make arguments about a very specific line of gifts that we would call sign gifts that we would argue are relegated to the Apostolic age, And all of a sudden, we don't believe in the gifts. We don't believe in any gifts. We pray for people to get healed. Amen. We pray for the spirit of God to change people's hearts. We pray for God to do all of these things. Why because we believe in all of those things. We just do not believe that those gifts are resident in individuals today like they were during the Apostolic Age. But God can do every and anything that God desires to do. Can God do all things? Yes, God can do children, all his holy will, all his Holy will. There's a difference between not believing that those gifts are resident in individuals today like they were during the Apostolic Age when the apostles were being set apart and validated, and believing that there are no spiritual gifts, that God can't do what God wants to do. But even even the way that is framed is condemning. But we're the ones who are not loving. This is a problem and it's something that we have to clear up. But so, how in light of that reality do we answer the charge? How do we answer the accusation in the midst of a culture where people literally believed, are literally convinced that the idea of contending on these kinds of issues is automatically inconsistent with love, mercy, and peace. Well number one, the text could be clearer. The juxtaposition of verse two and verse three proves our point. But why why? What is the theological reality to which the apostle is pointing? Notice it if you go back to verse one, look at the second part of verse one, to those who are called beloved in God, the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. I would argue that this is a trinitarian application. That basically he's saying, the Holy Spirit calls those whom God loves and keeps for the son. The Spirit calls the Father loves and keeps four the son. I would argue that this is clearly, clearly a Trinitarian construct, and that is important. Why it's important because one cannot understand love in the truest sense and unity in the truest sense apart from the triunity of God. In fact, look with me if you will and first John, First John, chapter four and verse sixteen. First John, Chapter four and verse sixteen. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love. So there's the first thing. God is love. You can't define love apart from God. We want to do it. We want to redefine love in our culture of romanticism. And it doesn't look anything like what you find in the Bible. But God is love. So you can't define love in a way that's inconsistent with who God is. God is Love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. Why because the very concept of love is rooted and grounded in the Godhead. The love that the Father has for the Son and the Spirit, the love that the Son has for the Spirit and the Father. The love that the Spirit has for the Father and the Son. This love that is an eternal love. This love defines all love. And in fact, even in our yearning for love, what we yearn for is something that you can only find in God. Think about the love songs, you know, what are they all about. They're all about a love that is endless, that is eternal. News flash, that's not human love. We die. Amen. Somebody where does that that idea a love that will last forever? Where do you get that from? Where? Human beings who die and return to the dust and then go marry somebody else when they love give you? Where do you get that from. Does this mean that all of a sudden, the love is not love? No, absolutely not. The idea is that the love we have is based on something that is more significant than what you and I can actually experience and manifest as limited human beings. And it's only when we grasp love from a biblical perspective, from a trying perspective, from an eternal perspective, that it actually makes any sense. This is why we yearn for that which we can't get from another human being. Our love songs always talk about a love that is sacrificial, a love that would climb a mountain and cross a sea, love that would catch a grenade for you. As one love song, some of y'all are that what never mind? Don't don't, don't worry about it. If you miss that era, you didn't miss much. Where does that come from? That comes from the idea of love that is rooted and grounded in the triunity of the God demonstrates his love for us in this that while we were at sinners, Christ died for us. So God demonstrates his love for us in that way. And what do we yearn for? We yearn for a love that is demonstrated like that love is demonstrated, and no human being can ever give that to us. In the truest sense. Our love songs yearn for a love that what that is constant. You're always on my mind. No you're not. I'm not capable of that kind of sustained attention paid to another human being. You are not always on my mind. That's only true from God's perspective. So even the things that we hold in highest esteem relating to love, they are only true because of God. They are only true in God, and they are only true through God. So whenever we're talking about love, we have to be very careful and understand that we have to couch it within the triunity of God. God is love. So if I'm saying that I'm not being loving and I'm not defining it by I'm not being what God is exhibiting in the Trinity, then I'm missing it. So those who are called, there's the spirit at work, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ. Notice that even this love that is communicated here is a love that is not universal in its application. If there are some who are called, then there are some who are not. Otherwise, it doesn't mean anything to be called. Amen. If I love everybody the same way that I love my wife, I really don't love my wife. Amen. Somebody beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. Not everyone is beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. So again, this idea of discriminating is an idea that is rooted and grounded in the love of the triune God. God loves himself more than he loves us. In fact, God only loves us because of the love that he has for himself. If God loves me more than God loves God, then God is guilty of idolatry. Everybody with me, he said again. If God loves me more than God loves God, then God is guilty of idolatry because he has placed something above God. God can't do that. God won't do that. Why is this important, Because here's where the agonizing greatly comes in. If something is claiming to be from God and it's not, I must not love it. I can't. If something is claiming to represent God but is instead misrepresenting God, and I give it the same kind of love that I give those things that are representing God. Accurately, I am not being loving, I am guilty of idolatry. So if I am not agonizing greatly, if I am not contending, if I am not wrestling with and wrestling against all of those things that are inconsistent with the Triune God, then I am not number one loving God. And secondly, I'm not truly loving those individuals because I'm satisfied with their godlessness. That's why contending is consistent with the multiplication of mercy and peace and love. Because we do not have, will not have, cannot have mercy and peace and love of God, with God and from God God. Within the context of error, love rejoices in the truth. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing. Verse Greentiens thirteen makes that clear. Genuine love does not, cannot, must not rejoice in wrongdoing, but instead must rejoice and truth. So you see, those individuals who hold up these ideas that's inconsistent with one another are only doing so from a standpoint of idolatry. Let me explain what we've presented here is the idea that the Triune God is the source of all love, that the Triune God is the standard of all love, and that the truth of the Triune God must be pursued and defended. If our love is genuine, we have to contend. This is what we've argued, So if it comes down to choosing between your lie and God's truth, genuine godly love will always condemn your lie and embrace God's truth. The problem that we have in our culture is that we are not God centered. We are man centered. So essentially what we say is you are the standard, not God, and what I must be committed to is doing and saying and believing whatever is required and whatever is necessary for there to not be disagreement and contention between the two of us, because the ultimate is not God. The ultimate is you. It's all about you. You are the center. And when you come at it with that kind of thinking, the result is any individual who claims to be a Christian who is disagreeing with and contending with another individual who claims to be a Christian is violating that seminal law of love, because our understanding of love is horizontal and not vertical. But when you understand what's being communicated here between verses one, two, and three, you understand number one that the text juxtaposes these ideas in such a way that one cannot argue that there is an inconsistency between contending and multiplying mercy, peace and love. And number two, you understand when you back up the verse one that this is true when and because it is rooted and grounded in the very nature of the triune God. That's where we start. Secondly, coming from that, now, let's get down and look at verse three more closely. But look, although I was eager to write you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. Here's the second thing. There is this false dichotomy that is often presented. What we need to be about is the salvation of souls, not all these disagreements, Because if our passion is for souls, then we can let all the rest of that stuff go and we can just go and pursue the salvation of souls, because nothing's more important than the salvation of souls. Listen to verse three again, Beloved, Although I, an apostle, was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, here's an apostle who says, you know what, I sat down and I was going to write to you an epistle under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So this is God, and all of a sudden, in my desire to write to you about our common salvation, which is seminal primary top shelf issue, I felt the need in the midst of that desire to urge you to contend for the faith. He obliterates the false dichotomy. There is no either or there. There is no either we unite in our passion for souls or we quibble about issues. There is no either or there. The apostle would argue that because of our desire for souls, we must contend for the purity of the gospel. It is our desire for souls that compels us to contend with the purity of the gospel. Not ashamed of the gospel. Why, because it and it alone is the power of God and the salvation to all those who believe. But if what we believe is a tainted gospel and a perverted gospel, then we are calling into question the very concept of salvation itself. There is no either or dichotomy here. We must be passionate about souls, and we must be passionate about contending for truth. We must be passionate about contending for truth, because we're passionate about souls. There is no disagreement here. Why contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. That's what we're communicating. That's what we're contending for, This faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. Notice that it's been done. It's not in process. It's been done. This apostolic teaching is it was. We have it. We're not waiting on it. Amen, We're not waiting on it. Folks, you don't need a new fresh word from me. If you get a new fresh word from me, that means God didn't give you enough in the first place. You don't need a new fresh word from me. Master these first, Amen, You'll spend the rest of eternity unpacking these. More. Lord, more, we want more. We want to know you don't. You can't handle what you got more of? God would kill you. Hey man, somebody, But isn't it interesting? There was an event in Zambia and Pastor Conrad sent me a text afterwards, this big you know, crusade that happened, A miracle crusade that happened, And it was reported that on the last night, two hundred and fifty thousand people packed the National Stadium. Now they probably weren't two hundred and fifty thousand people. But here's the interesting thing. If there's this tendency, uh to speak pastorally about numbers, that mean July. If there's this tendency to speak pastorally about numbers, then then follow me for a moment. Okay, one one could could leave here and say there were there were, there were thousands pastorally speaking, right, But there's no way on God's green earth that you leave here going there were two hundred and fifty thousand people. So even for that to be a stretch, you're talking about one hundred thousand plus, literally literally one hundred thousand plus. You better believe. The topic was not the gospel. The topic was not you know, come and have your sins forgiven, come and repent and believe. No, you know what it was. Come get your blessing, Come get your miracle, Come get your deliverance, Come get your and the list goes on. And these are the things that thousands flocked to. And here's the assumption. The assumption is we've already mastered repentance and faith We've already plumbed the depths of the Gospel. We've already done all the exposition that we need to do, all all the books of the Bible. What we need now is that real stuff. The Apostle says, contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. Why why? And this is what's amazing Verse four. For certain people have crypt in unnoticed. He's not saying contend for the faith because there are people on the outside who, you know, openly hate us, and who openly disagree with us, and who openly vilify us Christians. And they know, he says, certain persons have crypt in unnoticed. They have titles bishop, apostle, crept in unnoticed. How do you recognize them? They were long before designated for this condemnation. God's not surprised. Amen, that's good news. By the way, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. They pervert the Gospel and misrepresent Jesus. That's as simple as I can put it. Who are they? They are people who, in the name of Jesus, pervert the Gospel and misrepresent Jesus, and they must be contended with, They must be refuted, they must be exposed. Why because if you pervert the Gospel and misrepresent Jesus, you undermine salvation. Look at first Corinthians chapter fifteen, and I'll close with this one Corinthians chapter fifteen, beginning of verse one. Now, I would remind you brothers of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved. If you hold fast to the word I preach to you, unless you believed in vain. If the gospel that you're holding to is not the gospel proclaimed by the apostles you believed in vain, it does you no good to believe a false gospel. As Paul would say in Galatians, that's no gospel at all. We must believe the true gospel, the pure gospel. And the only way that people are going to believe the pure gospel and the true gospel is if someone somewhere stands up and refutes the false one. This is the job of every elder, according to Titus one nine, to hold firmly to the trustworthy word as taught. That's apostolic teaching so that they might exhort in sound doctrine and refute those who contradict it. It's the duty of every elder, the responsibility of every head of household hold firmly to sound doctrine and refute those who contradicted Why because we're arrogant and we want to be the only ones who are right. Oh, absolutely not. Because the Gospel is our only hope. That's why the Gospel is our only hope. In fact, what this does, we're not talking about arrogance, because where this starts is with me. Where this starts is when I'm reading the Bible. When I read the Bible, I can't sit in judgment on the text. I have to allow the text to sit in judgment on me, so that when the true Christian reads the Bible as a true Christian, he is also allowing himself to be refuted in those areas where he or she is wrong. The assumption is not I know averything and I'm just reading the Bible to confirm everything I already know. The assumption is that I am sinful and broken and I need the Word of God to correct me. This is why we need to sit under the preaching of the Word of God on a regular basis, because even when I'm reading the Bible with the best of intentions, I'm bringing assumptions to bear. And so what I need is someone to guide me through the Word of God and challenge my assumptions in a way that I won't do myself. This is why we need the preaching of the Word of God. And this is why we need preachers of the Word of God who will refute error without fail without compromise, without backing down, because every one of us stands in need of having that done in our lives. But it's the idea is never ruffle feathers. Only stand on those things that are never gonna cause any confusion. No no matter how wrong people are out there, never If that's our attitude, we never checked, we're never corrected, we don't get fixed. But you haven't arrived, saints. I got a letter. I got it a while back, but I just got a big stack of mail today. We've left and our mail has been collected for us. And so I got the stack of mail today and I had this one letter. It was It was in an envelop envelope from a ligondeer and I appreciate their conference a while back, and inside it there was a card from someone else who had written the card to me, but they wrote it to Ligoneer because they heard me through the Ligoneer conference. And one of the statements that I made was a statement about the great joy that I derive from meeting old old saints who've been walking with Jesus for a long time and hearing them talk about what they're continuing to learn, and how that just encourages me that you don't ever exhaust this this letter again this afternoon, I'm sitting in my hotel room crying this afternoon because this woman writes this letter and talks about how she was encouraged and talks about how sees one of those old, bent over, slow walking saints who's still growing in grace. And at the end of it, she says, I'll be ninety seven on my birthday in October, ninety seven years old, listening to sermons, growing in grace, being challenged, and taking the time to write a handwritten note to say thank you for helping me on my journey to sanctification. Ninety seven years old. Amen, hallelujah, Praise the Lord. You don't know everything. Amen. By the way, that's good news. I'd be terribly depressed if I found out that at this moment, I know everything that there is to know and I've got nothing else to look forward to. How awful would that be, Saints? But you know what, some of us treat God like that. And this is why it's so appealing. If I have this arrogant attitude that says I've got the Bible figured out, there's nothing else for me to learn by digging into the text. What is left for me? Give me a fresh word, give me something new, give me an experience, do something I've never seen before. That's all we got left. But on the other hand, when I have embraced the reality of God's inexhaustibleness, you don't have to do songs and dance and pony shows for me. Just preach the word. Let the Word of God do what it does. Preach it true, Preach it hard, Preach it without compromise. Preach it like you believe that there's somebody who needs to hear it. Preach it like you're preaching the people who are wrong and they need to be right. Because that's exactly who I am, A sinner who needs to be confronted on the regular by someone who loves me enough and who loves the Triune God enough to contend earnestly for the faith that was once for all handed down to the saints. And it's far from unkind to do so, far from unloving to do so. Now, granted, you can do it in a nasty, unloving way, and nobody's arguing for that. Well, you know what, even if you do it in a nasty, unloving way, you know how I'm gonna treat it. I'm gonna treat it like somebody who crumbles up one hundred dollars bill and throws it on the ground instead of putting it in my hand. I may be offended, but I'm gonna pick up my money. Amen, somebody right, I may talk about you for a while while I'm uncrumbling that thing, and you know, but I'm gonna pick up my money. You know, it's so sad because we have been so conditioned by our culture. Number One, we get offended just by the mere gesture of suggesting that there is truth and error and error needs to be refuted. And then, secondly, in our offense, we decide that because of that error. There's nothing you're saying that's worth hearing. And so you got people who crumbling the one hundred dollars bills and throw them on the ground, and you're refusing to pick them up because you think so highly of yourself. May it never be. May we always rejoice and the truth. May we always love as the Triune God is love. And may we always, because of our passion for souls, be passionate about the purity of the gospel that saves them. Let's pray, Gracious God, our Father, we thank you. We thank you for your kindness and your mercy toward us. We thank you for your patience and long suffering with us. We thank you God for your love, and for the fact that that love not only redeems us, but that love gives us the ability to love. That love teaches us what love is, Love defines love for us, that love sustains us, that love keeps us. Grant by your grace, that we might be so captivated with this love that we refuse to allow it to be misrepresented or cheapened by anyone, including ourselves, And grant this we pray, so that Christ might indeed have the fullness of the reward for which he died. This we pray and his name for his sake. Amen,