Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your careful attention to Psalm Solomon chapter 8 and
reading for our text verse 13. Thou that dwellest in the gardens,
the companions hearken to thy voice, cause me to hear it. Song of Solomon, eight and verse. Throughout the Song of Solomon
we have our Lord and Savior set forth as the Beloved and His
Spouse, the Church. Sometimes it's hard to discern
who is speaking and who is being referred to, but we have Christ
in His Church listening to her we have his church, his people
listening to her beloved Christ. We would remember that in preaching,
his people hear his voice. The Lord speaks to his people
through the word that he has preached. He that hath an ear,
let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. In prayer the Lord hears his
people and listens to their cries. His ear is open unto their cries
and to their petitions. And the Lord Jesus Christ is
he that receives them and that is our advocate with the Father,
Jesus Christ the righteous. And so in our text we have both
these things. We have the Church and we have
Christ. We have a listening and we have
a speaking. But before we come to the words
of the text, I want to just briefly cover what is in this chapter,
in this passage. Firstly, we have in the first
couple of verses, the Church to Christ, the individual members
of the Church, they desire Christ, they desire to bring Him amongst
them as a precious thing, where a Church is comprised of those
who come to the house of God, they come from private prayer,
they come desiring the Lord's presence and the Lord's blessing
with them. Walls of its own, They are not
light, they are not songs. And the hymn speaks about the
people of God, that coming they bring Him, with them going they
take Him to their homes. The church is a gathering of
the people of God. You find in verse 3 that they
are embraced and supported by Christ. His left hand should
be under my head and His right hand should embrace me. And when they are blessed, as
in verse 4, they don't want to lose Him. They don't want to
lose that sense of His blessing. I hope we know something of that. That when the Lord has favoured
us, we are mindful how easy conversation, how easy things can come. Grieve the Spirit, and we lose
the sweet witness, the sweet savour and help and blessing
that we have had. I charge you, O daughters of
Jerusalem, that you stir not up nor awake my love until he
pleads." Then we have the daughters of Jerusalem, they are asking
a question, who is this that cometh up? from the wilderness
leaning upon her beloved. The church in the wilderness,
Stephen when he was giving his dying testimony, he spoke of
the church in the wilderness, that Christ was in it. The Apostle
Paul, he says they drank of that spiritual rock that followed
them and that rock was Christ. And who is this, this church
that raised thee up? It was the Old Testament church,
through the types, through the shadows, through the promises,
that Christ is being raised up in expectation, lifted up, and
he came, according to the flesh, to his ancient people, and was
able afterwards to point back to those Old Testament times,
and all that was done and all that was written, Christ did
all the Scriptures. And for the Gospel day, we may
truly say that from the first promise in Eden, that our Lord
was raised up in the church, an expectation coming up out
of the wilderness. And we have this in a spiritual
way. In Hebrews, we have one of the
marks of true faith, those that declare plainly that there are
strangers and pilgrims here below. This world is not their rest.
And the Lord says, Come ye out from among them, touch not the
unclean thing, and I will receive you. Every one of God's dear
children, they come up from the wilderness of this world wherein
there is no help, no life, no sustenance, and they come up
leaning upon their beloved. It is Christ that the church
rests upon, not man, not the things of this world, and they
don't remain in the wilderness, they come up out of the wilderness. We have verses six and seven,
the church speaking of Christ and speaking to Christ of what
He is and what they want Him to do, set me as a seal upon
thy heart, as a seal upon thy arm, for love is strong as death,
jealousy as cruel as a grave. And these things are spoken,
petitions to Christ, of what they desire Him to do for them. I hope that is with us, that
those things we desire Christ to do for us, and that we might
be amongst His people and blessed by Him and favoured as part of
His Church and with Him. Then we have the Gentile Church. We would remember that always
God's plan has been that in Christ every nation should be blessed.
It's very clearly set forth in the prophecies of Isaiah and
we would think it's strange when we have Christ and His Church
set forth in the Song of Solomon that the Gentile church did not
have any mention. And so we have a church in verse
8 that as yet has not been developed. And it's good in the simple illustration
we have a little sister and she had no breasts. That is the Gentile
church is not developed, is not brought forth as yet in this
Old Testament dispensation. But what she shall be is set
forth as well. She shall be built, and that
is in verse 9. If she be a wall, we will build
upon her a palace of silver. If she be a door, we will enclose
her with boards of cedar. And then we have the answer of
the Gentile church, I am. I am a wall and my breast like
towers. Then was I in his eyes as one
that found favour. And we know, of course, the Lord
did have his Gentile church in Ruth, in Rahab, in those that
were called Gentiles in the Old Testament and the blessing of
the Lord was upon them. And in these Gospel days the
Lord has so clearly set forth his blessing upon the Gentile
church. We are a Gentile church here. Then we have in Verse 11, the
success of the gospel. Solomon had a vineyard at Bethlehem
and he let out the vineyard unto keepers. Every one for the fruit
thereof was to bring a thousand pieces of silver. A fruitful
vineyard. The Lord has used his apostles,
his ministers, his preachers to send forth the word We are,
as it were, keepers of that vineyard, but the fruit, the blessing of
it is from the Lord. And that fruit is to the honour
and glory of the Lord and also the encouragement of the keepers
of it. We have the Lord asserting in
verse 12 that that vineyard is His. My vineyard which is mine
is before me. may ever remember that the Lord,
the Church of God, is His, and is His vineyard, and the fruit
of it is for Him, and to His honour and glory. The closing
verse, we'll come back to the verse of our text, is the Church
saying unto Christ, You make haste, and we have that reaffirmed
in the last chapters of the Word of God, the Spirit and the Bride
say, Come, even so, come, Lord Jesus. The Old Testament Church
longed for His first coming, and the New Testament longs for
His second. And every soul that is quickened
and made alive, they long for His coming, for His appearing.
May it be so this evening. The Lord gives us a longing,
a desire, a hunger and a thirst, a looking and expectancy for
the Lord to come. Make haste, my beloved, be thou
light to a row or to a young heart on the mountains of spices. And so we have just a brief picture
through this chapter of the words of our text. Thou that dwellest
in the gardens, the companions hearken to thy voice cause me
to hear it. Of course the context here, we
think of the end of chapter four and chapter five where we have
the Lord speaking, I've come into my garden, my sister, my
spouse. And we think of the garden of
Eden, what was brought there, God planted that, there he planted,
there he gave man, there through the fall took place, then the
Lord has seen effect that in the redemption there is the garden
of Gethsemane where the sins of his people were laid upon
him. And then we have the garden where
our Lord was crucified and then slain, laid in the grave in the
tomb where was a garden. The type of it, especially a
fruitful garden, is very closely aligned to our Lord Jesus Christ
and his people as being those plants in that garden. The garden
enclosed is my sister, my spouse, the Lord protecting his church
and watching over it and keeping it. We think of our own gardens
at home, the enclosing of fences and what is within it, and we
don't water, as it were, the neighbour's garden or go outside
of that, but we watch over what is ours, and the Lord does that
for his church. I want to look this evening then
at three points. Firstly, the one addressed in
our text, it says, Thou that dwellest in the gardens. There is one that is addressed. And then secondly, the observation
on which the request is made. The observation is the companion's
hearken to thy voice. Then we have the request itself
calls me to hear it. Firstly, the one that is addressed. Thou that dwellest in the gardens. Thou that dwellest in the church. Now we are told in the original
that the gender, as it were, of these words, it is as feminine. So it is Christ speaking to the
church. Thou that dwellest in the gardens. The Lord speaking to those that
are actually in the church, the one addressed. The one addressed
is the church. In the Septuagint, the oldest
translation of the Word of God, the gender was changed so that
it actually reads as the masculine. So that is then the church speaking
to Christ. It is true that Christ dwells
in the church. We know that in the type of the
candlesticks he is in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks,
where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am
I in the midst. And so the church of God then
speaks to the Lord thou that dwellest in the gardens. And this evening I want to look
at it and each of the following points as first one way and then
the other way. As we said right at the beginning
it will be a two way conversation. It will be Christ speaking to
his church and the church speaking unto Christ. And it is a better thing where there's
that communion and that fellowship and that union of one with another,
walking together in a natural way if there's two that have
loved one to another. It is not one doing all the talking
and the other doing all the listening. It is a communion. It is one
speaking and the other hearing, and the other speaking, and the
other is hearing, and they're sharing, they're having that
fellowship, they're communion, one with another. We have that
in John's epistles, first epistles. He says, that which we have seen
and heard, declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship
with us. And truly our fellowship is with
the Father, and with his son Jesus Christ. And when our Lord
was on earth, we heard constantly between him and his disciples
a communion, asking him the meaning of the parables. The Lord is
declaring the meaning of the parables. They bring things before
him. He's bringing things before them.
And there's this two-sided communion turn one to another. Ain't one of the sweetest things
the best of thing here? If we look at it even in both
ways, they both are together. They're not separate. And it
is not just a little one. The word that is here is dwells. that is not just coming and going. We might go and see some beautiful
gardens in this heritage, National Trust Gardens, and we go through
them and we see all the beauty, and we go out and we go back
to our own home. We've seen them all, we've been
in them, but we don't dwell there. We don't stay there all the time.
But the Lord has said, to the Church of God, lo, I am with
you always, even unto the end of the world. He dwells in the
Church, doesn't come and go, He is with His people, and His
desire, His prayer for them is, Father, I will that they whom
thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold
my glory. He says that no man can come
unto me except the Father which sent me draw him, or raise him
up, of the last day. And the whole idea is of bringing
together, bringing together in grace, of bringing together in
the Church of God. That's why the commission was
to go and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth
and is baptized shall be saved. He that believeth not shall be
damned. And they were brought into those
local churches, those churches typified in the seven churches
of Asia, where in every one of them they were hearing what the
Spirit said unto the churches. Though they were local churches,
not all in one place, but Christ was with each one of those churches. And we ought to have a high view
of the church of God. and a realization of his presence. And so when we read, Thou that
dwellest in the gardens, if we take it as the church speaking
unto Christ, or Christ speaking unto the church, we know that
in both those cases, it will be so. There will be a communion,
one with another. Thou that dwellest in the gardens,
the companions hearken to thy voice, cause me to hear it. So on to look then secondly about
the observation on which the request is made. The observation
is the companions hearken to thy voice. Now before we look
actually at this word, just the general principle of having something
that is the basis for our requests of the Lord. And this is an observation. It's something that is noticed
that then brings forth prayer. And I hope it is with us that
in life's journey that those things that we see that cause
us to pray. On the negative side, we have
those that have a blessing pronounced upon them who sigh and cry on
account of the abominations done in the land. They see the things
that are done, they hear them, and it causes them to sigh and
to cry. You think of how it must have
been with Jeremiah to see the temple destroyed, to see the
people brought into captivity, angry, hear the lamentations
of Jeremiah, it touches his heart, it brings forth many things,
petitions and requests from the Lord, and it's based upon what
he is observing. In Psalm 73 we have again the
psalmist observing the wicked, how that they prosper, they get
on, there's no bans in their death, but God's people He says,
therefore waters of a full cup are rung out to the people of
God. Doth God know? Doth He see? Doth He understand
these things that are happening? If you and I have things that
are set before us, things that happen in our lives, things that
we see, then instead of just passing them off as chance or
something of no consequence, that we might then make that
a basis of what our requests are and our prayers to the Lord
and seeing the people of God and those that are longing after
the Lord and our request that the Lord would come and bless
them or seeing those that are unconverted and that they are
so hardened and so ignorant and far off that that then moves
us to cry unto the Lord, to send forth His Spirit and to give
a real reviving and to open our eyes. And our petitions are flowing
out from what we actually observe. We think of the beautiful Psalm
107, where we have the many changes of the people of God, the Church
of God, And they fell down, and there was none to help them.
They cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and the Lord delivered
them out of their distresses. And at the end of that psalm
we read this, Whoso is wise and will observe these things, even
they shall understand the loving kindness of the Lord. And it
also implies that those that don't observe, they see it, it
happens, it is brought before their eyes, But it doesn't touch
them at all. You know, the woman at the well
of Samaria, and our Lord asked that she give him water to drink. She said, how is it that thou,
being a Jew, askest water of me, a man of Samaritan? And our
Lord said, if thou knewest the gift of God and who it is that
saith unto thee, thee, give thee to drink, thou wouldst have asked
of him. And he should have given the living water. And very often
there, those things if we knew, if we considered, then we would
ask. And then we put our petitions.
There were those who spoke this morning, and the day following
when the Lord fed the multitudes, and then the day after, he then
joined the teaching of the manna from heaven and the feeding upon
that manna. there are those that he reproved
them, because they'd seen miracles. But they stopped short of just
saying, well we got bread for our bodies, we've been satisfied
in that way, and they didn't actually observe that this was
a miracle that no man had ever done. Surely this was the Christ,
surely this was He that did what never any other man did, And
surely then they would have asked of him eternal life, not just
settled for bread for their bodies just for a moment, but to ask
for greater things. And so there is much that hangs
upon actually observing and then making a petition. Even the servants
of wicked Ben-Hadad, when they came seeking mercy from Ahab,
who was also wicked king, And they came humbly, robes upon
their heads, dust and ashes, and seeking mercy for Ben-Hadad. And Ahab said, Ben-Hadad, he
is my brother. And they hastily caught at it. They saw there that there was
a relationship that they could base a petition on, my brother
Ben-Hadad. And they managed to get release,
and he should be let go. Ahab later had to pay with his
own life for letting one go that God had ordained him after destruction. But they had a good lesson of
coming and watching for any sign, any token of favour, and then
quickly pressing their case and their petition. And so I say
that in the first thought in this, the observation on which
the request is made, in this case, is the companion's hearken
to thy voice. So, firstly, thinking of this
being addressed to the church, by our Lord Jesus Christ. We sang in the hymn about if our tale of all our
sad woes told to our fellow preachers was told to the Lord, then would
our cry more often be, hear what the Lord hath done for me. Very often we speak one to another
We may confine one to another, we may speak one to another,
like the two on the way to Emmaus. The two on Emmaus were talking
of those things that had been done. They were sad. They had
seen what was done in Jerusalem. And the Lord drew near and hearkened
to what they were saying, and he He didn't just, and he would
have known exactly what they had been saying, but he wanted
to hear from their own lips what they were saying. And so he makes
out that he's a stranger, he makes out that he doesn't know
what has been going on, and he draws it out from them, what
things. And they say how the Jesus of
Nashville, the man mighty works that had been crucified and slain
before all these things, and beside all these things this
was the third day, and we trusted that it should have been He that
should have redeemed Israel. Now all those things that they
had been discussing together, the Lord drew out for them from
them so that they told Him. And I fear this will be a word
that the Lord might often speak to the Church of God, and says
to them, their companions are listening to thy voice. You're
telling them your troubles, you're telling them your problems, you're
asking them, what about them? Now imagine if you're in a group,
and there's two people there speaking together, you're standing
on the outside, you're listening, And they're excluding you. They're
talking between themselves. And you think, I know the answer
to that question. I'm in the position to be able
to help you. Why don't you ask me? And you
think, well, they know. They know that I could help them.
But they're not. They're excluding me. And how
often that is the case with the Lord, that desire that He hear
the voice of His people. that they put into prayer those
things that they're speaking one to another, that they don't
just say, well, the Lord has heard, it doesn't matter. Sometimes
it is good after we've had a time speaking together, going over
things, and then when we have the time of prayer, to actually
say to the Lord, Lord, hear all what we have been discussing,
all the things that we've been saying one to another, We bring
it, we bring it like Isaiah's, the letter that was brought from
Sennacherib and we spread it out before them so that all these
things are then brought in the attitude of prayer. And here's
a sad thing, when the church excludes their best beloved,
excludes the Lord, they speak amongst each other, that they
don't speak directly to the Lord and make their petitions directly
to the Lord. And the observation that our
Lord makes before he brings his petition or request is a noticing
that the companions are hearkening to thy voice. Now we put it the
other way around and we bring it to the church speaking unto
Christ. And it may be that we notice
that the Lord's people, the companions in the Church of God, that they
are hearing the voice of the Lord. They are being blessed.
They are being guided. The Lord is speaking to them. He is feeding them. He is instructing
them. He is with them, but you don't
hear His voice. And that causes great concern,
great exercise, hasn't the Lord said in John 10, my sheep, they
hear my voice and they follow me. And you notice others are,
but you're not. And it's a good thing to notice
when the people of God are hearing from their Lord. How often has
been the exercise of the church, be not silent unto me, lest if
thou be silent unto me, I become like them that go down into the
pit. That is not only the church of
God that is making its petition to their God, but the church
is hearing from their God. He that hath an ear, let him
hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. And it's a good
thing to observe that there are those that actually are feeding
under the Word. There are those that are hearing
the voice of the Lord. And to lay that to heart, to
observe that that is so. Maybe you might have solved the
thing. If the Church of God was not hearing from the Lord, the
Lord was not. speaking to them. But very often
with the people of God, before he blesses them personally, they
will see the promises are far off, they'll embrace them, they'll
see others that are blessed in the way they want to be blessed.
The man that was waiting at the pool at Bethesda, 38 years, he'd
seen again and again those blessed with what he wanted. He wasn't
quick enough. He couldn't go down into the
pool. He wasn't cleansed and healed. He saw others stepped out before
him. That's what he wanted. And the
Lord knew that he'd waited that long. And I can think of when
I exercised myself years ago, sitting in the back of the chapel,
looking at the Lord's people gathering around the Lord's table,
the blessings that I saw them have, knew they had, I desired
to be where they were, desired to have the blessings that they
had. And yet it seemed such a distance and such a difference. And yet
in this the Lord gives us to observe first, and then there's
in that observation a basis for what we are asking. There's something
we have actually seen, and we make our petition upon that. And this, what is heard here,
is the companions hearken to thy voice. How many of the dear
saints of God we can say, and in our minds think, yes, I'm
thinking of that saint, that one of the Lord's people, and
I've seen him, after the service at the Lord's house, I've seen
how they've gone home, I've seen how they've reacted, I've seen
how the Lord has directed them, I've seen how they've been blessed,
how they've been softened, how they've had the love of God shed
abroad in their hearts, how they've been able to speak of the sweetness
of the Word of God, how that they've known the power of God,
how that they have reacted under that, and you've viewed that. and be able to say the Companions
hearken to thy voice. So may the Lord make us to be
observant. Before we are blessed, may we
see and notice the blessing of others and may our petitions
be, instead of just a vain repetition or saying week by week occasion
by occasion, that they are prompted by things that we actually see
and actually hear. Many times the petitions of the
disciples where the Lord had spoken a parable, and so that
then was declared unto us the parable of, and that was what
their petition was based upon when the Lord appeared to the
disciples in the upper room when he rose from the dead, then at
first Thomas was not there, he was not with them, and he did
not believe the disciples that the Lord had appeared, and he
desired, he said, except I see in his hands the print of the
nails put my finger in the print of the nails and thrust my hand
into his side I would not believe but he wanted those same things
that they had seen and the Lord granted that to him after eight
days and every one of God's children had a time like Samuel that did
not yet know the Lord the Lord had not yet spoken to him but
the Lord did speak to him And they've seen the Lord speaking
to others, but he hasn't yet spoken to them. And this is then
the basis of their petition. So, thirdly then, the request
caused me to hear it. Christ to the church, speak unto
me. It really is a beautiful invitation
to come to the throne of grace, large petitions with thee bring,
now I'm coming to attend. The Lord has sat before us that
he is that advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous,
that there is a mercy seat, a blood-sprinkled mercy seat, and there is that
invitation that we should make our petitions known there. And the Lord then loves to hear
the voice of his people. I fear sometimes we sift out
what we say to the Lord thinking that those sort of petitions
would not be acceptable. We refer to Psalm 73 And the psalmist said, if I should
speak thus, I should offend against the generation of my children. And I'm sure each one of us have
thought that if we gave expression to some things that we thought
in our hearts, and we let the Church of God know that, they'd
say, oh, you're a believer, and you think that, and you feel
that. And so we don't say it. We think
that. But when someone else says it,
I felt that too. I was troubled by that too. I
was perplexed with that too. But when it comes to the Lord,
we can indeed bring exactly our complaints and all that was in
our hearts, and we can lay it before Him. What we ourselves
fear, feel, whether it be anger or frustration, perplexity, whatever
it is, And especially if we started to let others hear our voice,
that tells us what we are to bring to the Lord. It might seem strange, but we think,
well, the Lord has a request to His Church. But really, throughout
the Scriptures, there's many things. The Lord requests and
desires of His Church to walk in His ways, to keep his words,
to love one another, to fear the Lord, to gather one to another. There's many, many requests,
and here is a request that they actually speak unto the Lord. Maybe it finds us this evening
that we say, Lord, I am guilty. I restrain prayer. I speak much
to my companions. much to others. But if it was
weighed in the balance, and all what I say to men was on one
side, and all what I say to the Lord was on the other side, then
the scale would be weighed down heavily in what I say to man. And if you examine as to what
is being said, then there's many things said to our fellow preachers
and to the Church of God that are not being said to the Lord,
and we're silent to Him concerning
those things. So the petition, the asking of
our Lord, caused me to hear it. Caused me to hear it. But then
there is the other side. to Christ. He mentioned about
Samuel and Eli when he perceived that the Lord had spoken to him. He gave him a direction that
when the Lord should come again that Samuel should say, speak
Lord for thy servant Ewan. And the Lord did speak. Samuel
had to know first that it was the Lord that had come and that
the Lord would speak to him. And so with the people of God,
the request of the church to Christ, speak to me. Be not silent to me. Cause me
to have that mark of a sheep that hear thy voice. Speak to
me. Sometimes it might be in a way
of blessing, of pardon, forgiveness. Sometimes it might be in a way
of direction, of guidance. I have noticed others seem to
be guided in a clear guidance and direction, but you are not. You say, bring it to the Lord,
speak to me. I will instruct thee and teach
thee in the way which thou shalt go, I'll guide thee with my eye. And the Lord guides with his
eye and then speaks. Word behind me saying this is
the way, walk ye in it. When you turn to the right hand,
when you turn to the left. Sometimes when the Lord is silent,
the whole reason why is that his people should continue on
in the way that they are going. And there is a reason for his
silence. Sometimes the reason is that
he's already spoken, and his people have refused to hear his
voice. So when the church is saying,
speak to me, and then the Lord is silent, there's a reason why. You might come to the house of
God, seeking the Lord to speak and give direction, and the Lord
is silent. Maybe the door of the house of
God is shut. Maybe you've gone and joined
in to hear when something has gone wrong and you can't hear
the word and you don't hear it and it makes you search and look
back and the Lord show you that actually he's already given direction
he's already spoken but you have not heard and have not listened
to what the Lord has said there's two sides to that and if we are
making this request speak to me then surely we would be listening,
we would be watching, we would be perceiving what the Lord would
say, and how he would speak, and what he would say. And that's
very important. You know, dear Martha, she was
cumbered about with much serving. She wasn't sitting at the feet
of the Lord. She was depriving herself of
hearing the words of the Lord. And whatever the Lord said, it
was all of that busyness, it was all of those things, cumbered
about with much serving, and she wasn't hearing the words
of the Lord. Sometimes we can be sitting in
the house of God, or reading at home, and as the word is read,
our mind goes off to something else, and suddenly we realize
that the reading's finished, or the sermon's finished. And
we haven't heard anything of it at all. We haven't been listening
for it. And so when they have the petition,
cause me to hear it, cause me to hear the voice, that must
be attended with a desiring to hear and listening, that expectancy
that the Lord does speak to us through His Word. And I had it
this morning, a still small voice, the word of the Lord, the Lord
speaking to his people. Thou that dwellest in the gardens,
the companions hearken to thy voice, cause me to hear it. And
I think especially of the voice of the gospel, the blessings
of the provision for the people of God, all determined to No
nothing among men saved Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And
no many, they did not want to hear that. And yet, the way the
Lord speaks to His people is through His beloved Son. And
it is the voice of pardon, it is the voice of mercy. It is
the voice not of works, but of what Christ has done. It is the
voice of salvation. and it is the voice of the gospel
in a gospel day. And so may we recognize it, we
had this morning that, the contrast in what Elijah heard, and the
difference between the law and the gospel, and how often the
Lord gives that contrast, and by that, we know and perceive
the voice of the Lord, not the law and thunders, law and terrors
that do but harden, but the still small voice, the blessing of
the gospel, the pardon, neither do I condemn them, go and sin
no more, the blessing of the Lord that maketh rich and addeth
no sorrow within. Thou that dwellest in the garden,
The Companion's hearkening to my voice calls me to hear it. The Lord answer that petition
and bless the world. Amen.