I've been much struck with the
story of Nicodemus, been burdening my heart for these last several
weeks and I trust the Lord might cause us to see what he has to
teach us through these verses and I'm only planning to look
at the first three verses of chapter three this morning and
then we'll have to go back and look at them in more detail but
this is a meeting, a meeting between one of Adam's children and God
incarnate and that's What the gospel brings, doesn't it? It
brings a meeting between God and people. It brings that meeting
here, when there will be a meeting in the not-too-distant future. This man, Nicodemus, is a religious
man, and we're all naturally religious, and we expect our
natural religion to be honored. Nicodemus was a knowledgeable
man, and we like to think that that knowledge can be increased. Nicodemus had a remarkable heritage. Nicodemus had the esteem of others,
and flesh is flesh, and no matter how polished it is, only a new
creation and only the revelation of God will show us what we are
and who he is. This is a precious account of
the Lord dealing with a lost sinner concerning his sin and
concerning the character of God and the revelation that his name
is holy. So these are vital matters told
in John's inimitable style of very, very simple words and phrases,
but behind them and in them is just a remarkable depth. And
as we contemplate the Lord's dealings with Nicodemus in this
passage, you cannot help but be struck with the enormous difference
there is between the way the Lord Jesus Christ deals with
this man who is a sinner, that comes to him, and the way the
soul winners of our day approach people. It is a remarkable contrast. The challenge to the Lord Jesus
Christ is what authority? We only have one basis of authority,
and that is the word of God. And here we have the living word
of God, Speaking to a sinner, speaking personally to a sinner,
speaking privately to a sinner, it happens. Nicodemus, it says, came to Jesus,
but in reality, and let's never forget that it's the Lord Jesus
Christ that came, and that's what this passage goes on to
say, doesn't it? He came from heaven. He came
from Galilee. He came from the testimony and
the witness of John the Baptist. He came from a wedding. to this meeting from a temple
cleared and cleansed. So I want us to look at who it
was that came and we want to look at when he came and why
he came and what was his coming, what was the significance of
his coming. As we read earlier, The chapter
divisions don't help us there, but at the end of chapter two,
the Lord Jesus didn't need anyone to bear witness of what was man,
for he knew what was in man. And there was a man of the Pharisees. The word Pharisee means to be
a separated one. Why were they separated? They
were separated from the defilements of other sinners. They thought
that their holiness and their righteousness being external
could be impinged and damaged and polluted by external things. And so they always separated
themselves. And you might recall that story
of the publican and the Pharisee in the temple. And he says, I'm
not like other men. They weren't like other men.
He's not like this sinner. They had a remarkable righteousness.
They were the separated ones. And there were 7,000 of them
in Israel and they were the ones who were esteemed for their their
extraordinary knowledge of the Scriptures, and the extraordinary
zeal with which they purified themselves and kept themselves
pure, which is why they were separated. And his name, Nicodemus,
that word is extraordinary. It means victor over the people. It's a Greek name, and many of
the Jewish leaders of that time did have Greek names. And it
says he was a ruler of the Jews. He was a member of the Sanhedrin.
In verse 10, the Lord Jesus describes him as a master of Israel. In fact, the teacher of Israel. So here we have the best of the
best. And Nicodemus in these roles
would have been one of those responsible for sending those
examiners in chapter two up to see whether John the Baptist
was actually a man sent from God, and to see whether the Lamb
of God that John the Baptist described and proclaimed and
bore witness to was the Lamb of God. And they looked at those men. They
looked at John. And they heard his words, and
they saw the Lord Jesus Christ, and they thought, well, there's
nothing in here. There's nothing in here. The priest and Levi were sent
from Jerusalem, and they were sent by Nicodemus. And Nicodemus
also, as the teacher of Israel, would have in some way been responsible
for the things that happened in Jerusalem in religion. He
would have been in some part responsible as a member of the
Sanhedrin for the temple courts being turned into a marketplace
and not a house of prayer. But after that momentous event
in the temple, when the Lord made that cord of whips and drove
out the merchandises out of the temple, in that week that followed,
that week of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the words and the works
of the Lord Jesus Christ Nicodemus comes, he speaks of
the Lord Jesus Christ in verse 2 as a teacher who came from
God for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be
with him. In John chapter 3 it says And Jesus
and Nicodemus the same, came to Jesus by night. We have in the gospel accounts
these three meetings of Nicodemus testifying of the Lord Jesus.
We have this one that's before us that in John chapter seven,
Nicodemus rebukes the Sanhedrin of which
he was a member. And this is their judgment. In
verse 45 in John chapter 7, Then came the officers to the chief
priests and Pharisees, and they said unto them, Why have you
not brought him in? The officers answered, Never
a man spake like this man. Then answered them of the Pharisees,
Are you also deceived? Have any of the rulers or of
the Pharisees believed on him? But this people who knoweth not
the truth are cursed. The other notable account, as
you probably know well, is at the end of the Lord Jesus after the crucifixion. Nicodemus comes with Joseph of
Arimathea. And there came also, verse 39
of John 19, there came also Nicodemus, which at first came to Jesus
by night and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred
pound weight. Then they took the body of Jesus
and wound it in linen cloths with spices as a matter of the
Jews to bury. And they laid him, they laid
him in Joseph's tomb. Three times, three is a significant
number in the scriptures. But he came to Jesus by night. See, he wanted a private audience
with the Lord Jesus Christ. In some sense, he came as a teacher
to speak and to learn from the Lord Jesus Christ. But also,
he was coming at night because he didn't want this audience
to be witnessed by the people, or by the Sanhedrin. There was
a sense in which he came, but he came with a reluctance, and
he came under the cover of darkness. But darkness, of course, in John's
Gospel, is a picture and a symbol of the darkness of men in their
fallen state and the darkness of men in their religion. The
light is the Lord Jesus Christ. The light shines in the darkness.
In 3 verse 19, men loved the darkness. Nicodemus coming out of the darkness
into the light of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ is a
picture both of the extraordinary contrast between the light of
the Lord Jesus and that darkness, but it's also a picture of the
darkness of the Jews' religion. So the Pharisees were noted for
their pride and for their self-righteousness, and the Lord declares them hypocrites. He says, beware of the leaven
of the Pharisees. Beware of the doctrine, beware
of the teaching of the Pharisees. In Matthew 23, he calls them
hypocrites. To be a Pharisee is to be a self-righteous,
legalistic hypocrite. And people might say, well, you
can't speak of a whole class of people like that. to call yourself a Pharisee in
the eyes and in the words of the Lord Jesus Christ was to
be a hypocrite. The very activities of the Lord
Jesus Christ reveal them in a way that can never be revealed in
any other way. These men had celebrated the Passover, but
they rejected the Passover itself. He who is the Passover, they
studied the word of God, but they rejected the word made flesh.
They thought that they could see clearly and they were blind. They thought that they could
stand in judgment of God's servants, and yet judging them in their blindness.
John quoted Scripture to them. John quoted Isaiah to them. The
Lord Jesus Christ acted out and fulfilled the prophecies at Malachi
chapter three. They honored and gloried in the
temple, and yet they were desecrating it. They had a zeal for God,
but they were in darkness. They had no knowledge of the
character of God. They had no knowledge of their
own sinfulness, and they had no knowledge of how God saves
sinners. They thought that in their religious
zeal they had rid Israel of idolatry, the idolatry that brought the
Babylonian captivity and the judgments of God upon them. They
were preparing Israel and themselves to welcome the Messiah. They
thought that they were in the kingdom of God. And the Lord
Jesus Christ exposes Nicodemus, the best of them. Nicodemus is a picture of man
in his best state in religion. And if you think this is just
a story of something that happened 2,000 years ago, and there aren't
Pharisees around today, we are not seeing what these words of
God are saying. The Pharisees are around. No
one would want to call their church the Church of the Pharisees. But the reality is the Pharisees
are as alive and as well today as they ever were. And the Pharisees
and the Sadducees and the Herodians and the others pictured in the
gospel accounts are alive and as well and as active and as
powerful as they are today, as they were in Jesus' day. The
reality is that false religion and false profession is only
exposed by the revelation of the truth. Only exposed by the
revelation of He who is the truth. And all those on the inside of
man-made works, legalistic religion, will never see it. You won't see it from the inside. They had so many signs which
gave them assurance and confidence. They saw change lives. They saw
their missionary activities. They saw the zeal with which
they tithed their mint and their herbs in their gardens. They
saw the zeal with which they went overseas. The zeal with
which they studied the word of God and knew it. Men loved the darkness, the Lord
Jesus Christ said, rather than light, because their deeds were
evil. So Nicodemus, as I said, is a
picture of a man in his best state. He's a picture of us in
our best state. This story is for us to see ourselves
in our meeting with the Lord Jesus Christ. So he came as a
Pharisee, and he came at night. Why did he come? All that the Father had given
me will come to me. As the Lord said, I bore you
and bear you on eagle's wings and brought you unto myself. Nicodemus was one. There were
many in those previous verses in chapter two, that thought
they believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and the Lord Jesus Christ
turned away from them. There's one man, there's a man. There is, there was a man. God always deals individually. There was a man, you might read
in the scriptures again and again that word that's so often used,
a certain woman and a certain man. See, he was drawn by a sovereign
hand of God. He was drawn despite the danger
to his reputation. He was drawn despite the fact
that he would have suffered a rebuke at the Lord's hands at the cleansing
of the temple. Nicodemus was responsible. He
was drawn with words of respect to the Lord Jesus Christ. He
calls him Rabbi. teacher that means, it means
my great one, my honourable sir. I think given the fact that Nicodemus
was rebuked, we have to read this story as this is a man who
came with sincerity and I think he came with respectfulness to
the Lord Jesus Christ and he came, he came when others were
left. He came and others were left. and in the most humiliating way. You are titled the teacher of
Israel and you're completely ignorant. As you'll see later
on in the following weeks, Nicodemus is caused to say things that
are just embarrassingly stupid for a man who claimed to have
some intelligence. He came having witnessed the
miracles that comes to the Lord Jesus as a teacher come from
God, he doesn't come at a time of miracle working, he comes
to have this private audience with him. And I love to think
of the fact that Nicodemus is unique among religious leaders. He responds to chastening, he
responds to the challenge of the Lord Jesus Christ. in a way
which I have never witnessed from a religious leader of any
sort in all of my 25 years, whether they be heads of schools, heads
of denominations, heads of Bible colleges, pastors of churches, the Lord Jesus Christ. In a sense
he's owning the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ in his rebuke
of what happened in the temple, in his rebuke of Nicodemus in
these verses and it's so strong and passionate, he still comes
and he defends him and then he comes ultimately to honour that
body. See he went away wounded but
in John chapter 7 he defends the Lord before the Sanhedrin
and he condemns the Sanhedrin. humbled, and in John chapter
19 he humbles himself in the most remarkable way. To touch
that dead body is to defile yourself. And he comes and he honors the
body of the Lord Jesus Christ. No doubt those words about this
temple to be destroyed that the Lord Jesus spoke of is, and now
is promised and fulfilled in John chapter 19. This temple
is honored in its death despite the best efforts of the Sanhedrin
to abuse and to defile the very body of the Lord Jesus Christ.
So we see in Nicodemus a sincerity and a seeking heart. We see in
Nicodemus a sincerity and a seeking heart even exposed to his darkness. The
Lord looked down from heaven, Psalm 14, three, looked down
from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any
that did understand. If there were any that seek God. They are all gone astray, gone
aside. They are all together become
filthy. There is none that doeth good. No, not one. I love the fact
that the Lord's prevenient grace is so exercised in sinners long
before we had any knowledge of the hand of God upon our lives.
You look back on your lives, brothers and sisters, and think
of the remarkable things If you are given eyes to see,
you'll see a hand of the sovereign God upon it. What a remarkable
thing that Nicodemus is drawn. He's coming, he came, he came. The one message of the scriptures,
isn't it? He's come, keep coming, keep
coming. No matter what the rebuke is,
keep coming. No matter what the potential
to lose face in the eyes of the world, Keep coming to the Lord
Jesus. Come unto me and be ye saved,
all of the ends of the earth. And we see in Nicodemus the words
of his coming. He says in verse two of chapter
three, Rabbi, we know, we know, that thou art a teacher come. from God. For no man can do these
miracles that thou doest, except God be with him." He came, and
the very first words out of Nicodemus' mouth are an expression of what
he knows. And what is going to transpire in the rest of this
chapter is that Nicodemus is going to be shown that he knows
absolutely nothing. They knew enough about Sanhedrin
05. They knew enough to stand in
judgment of God He doesn't just see what's on
the outside, he sees what's in you. If any man, 1 Corinthians
3.18, if any man among you seemeth to be wise, to be wise in the
religion of this world, to be wise in the righteousness of
this world, to be wise in the esteem of this world, let him
become a fool that he may be wise. We know, says Nicodemus,
and what does the Lord Jesus Christ reveal? In verse 3 he
says, you're as blind as a bat, Nicodemus. You can't even see
the kingdom of God. You think you're in the kingdom
of God, but you can't even see the kingdom of God. You can't
perceive, Nicodemus, you can't perceive the kingdom of God.
And Nicodemus says, how can these things be? In verse 10 the Lord
says to him, of Israel and knowest not these things. You don't even
know the very basics of who God is and how God saves sinners. You cannot see the kingdom of
God. You cannot enter, verse 5, the
kingdom of God. You cannot enter unless God does
a miraculous work. You do not You do err, said the
Lord to these Pharisees and others later on. You don't know the
scriptures and you don't know the power of God. The first lesson
Nicodemus has to know is that the we knows of men must become
the I know nothing. Can man by searching find out
God? You think that I'm all together
one like you, says God. We have so many people who come
to the Lord And if people today came to us, as Nicodemus came
to the Lord, we'd be patting them on the back, wouldn't we?
You'd be taking them through two ways to live, and now you
need a little bit more knowledge, and now you can make your decision.
The most widely used course in all the world is called the Alpha
Course, and the Alpha Course is all about people gaining some
knowledge of God. Nicodemus knew nothing. Nicodemus was actually wrong
in what he knew, but Nicodemus also, like all of us, was impressed
with what he saw. And so are we. John was impressed
with what he saw in Revelation, and the angels said, you're looking
at the wrong things, John. It happens to save sinners. Samuel was impressed with the
outside appearance of Jesse's sons when he met them. And God
says, I don't see what you see, and I don't look the way you
look. God looks on the heart. See, the Lord Nicodemus had to
be taken from what he saw in the miracles to what the true
message of the Lord Jesus Christ was. Salvation, salvation in
a temple destroyed. Salvation in a substitute destroyed. He was brought into the very
presence of God Almighty. It's a sobering thing to ponder,
isn't it, that we, in the preaching of the gospel, bring sinners,
the Nicodemuses of this world, Nicodemus came for this private
audience, and obviously it wasn't too private, John and those other
few disciples that came for Capernaum, and maybe others were there,
but he's in the very presence of God Almighty, and in the presence
of God Almighty, it's just you. It's just you standing before
him. And in his presence, your nose,
your esteems, and your righteousness and your will and your worth
and your works are all brought to nothing. The Lord Jesus Christ is God Almighty. That's He with whom we must do
always. And this is just a remarkable
account of that. In him, in the Lord Jesus Christ,
are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And
he's speaking to us today as he spoke to Nicodemus. Verse
three, Jesus answered, he came with this commendation,
didn't he? A commendation of the Lord Jesus
answered and said unto him, verily, verily, truly, truly, I say unto
thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of
God. What was the Lord Jesus Christ
answering? It says he answered him. He said
nothing in reply to Nicodemus' commendation of him as a teacher. He said nothing about the miracles,
He ignores Nicodemus' words completely. He sees his HUD. He answers. What was the only thing in the
context of this passage that is an answer, that Jesus' statement
answers to? It is that we know. It is that
we know. Nicodemus claimed to know something. The Lord Jesus Christ ignores
ignores all of his words and deals with the very heart of
the matter. He doesn't want to leave Nicodemus to think that
there was any esteem in what he said. The Lord Jesus Christ
will tell us what we need to hear. He's not here in the business
of tickling our itching ears. We come into his presence to
hear him speak. to hear what He has to say, to
learn, as He says in Matthew 11, to learn of Me. People can study like the Pharisees
had and they'd studied so much by so many people who were studious
in the Scriptures. They're studying to establish
their own opinions and to have them validated, and they'll find
enough inscription to do so. Nicodemus, no doubt, had validated
the fact that when the men came back that John the Baptist can't
be the forerunner that is promised, and the Lamb of God cannot be
the true Messiah, and you just have to look at them, just look
at their flesh. They're most unimpressive men you could ever
wish to see. There was nothing in them that
we would desire or esteem. You were brought into the presence
of God and you're going to have to deal with God personally. So Nicodemus said some things
which sounded good and they sounded complimentary, didn't he? Listen
to what he says. Thou art a teacher. We know thou
art a teacher come from God. We've actually sat down and we've
made this assessment. Now you're a teacher come from
God. It's so right and so profoundly
wrong, like so much of pharisaical, natural, man-made religion. He is, in large measure, a teacher
come from God. But Christ is God who's come
to teach. Christ is God teaching about
who God is. And Christ is God teaching about
how God deals and how God saves a sinner. And he says, God must
be with you to do these miracles. That sounds nice, doesn't it?
It's profoundly untrue. Christ is God with us. I love what Luther said of Erasmus
in those days, early days of what's called the Reformation.
He says to Erasmus, the great Catholic scholar and apologist,
he says, your thoughts of God are far too human. That's true of all of us, isn't
it? Our thoughts of God are far too
human. Emmanuel is his name, God with
us. Nicodemus. has to be brought
to see that he is a sinner and that his thoughts of God, his thoughts of God are dishonoring
to God. Nicodemus, you think you can
learn, you can think you can change to improve, but the Lord
Jesus Christ is saying to him, Unless you are a new creation,
unless you are a new life from God, you are ignorant. You're
in darkness so deep that what you think is light is darkness,
what you think is righteousness is evil. What commends you, what
you think commends you to God actually damns you. Nicodemus,
you need a Saviour. You need a new life from God
to save the Saviour. Like a lot of lost sinners, their
greatest problem righteous. God sees and knows
and does all things. No wonder man-made religion always
bears the marks of Satan's attack upon the very character of God. It always begins with false notions
of God and he had to have firstly his
false notions of God corrected, and he had to have his false
notions of himself corrected. May God save us, may God don't
leave us to, don't leave me to myself, don't leave me to my
knowledge. Intervene, Father, in our lives. I love what Isaiah says in Isaiah
18, come let us reason together. What a remarkable, what a remarkable
invitation as it were from God. Come let us reason together.
The very first thing he says, then your sins be as scarred. First thing you have to know
Nicodemus is that you are a sinner. And in your sinfulness you have
a profound ignorance. Born again, you must be born
again. Accept a man, be born again. He cannot see the kingdom of
God. This word, like so many of the
phrases in John chapter three, is abandoned about so much. I
was with Tom the other day. A man came along and said, you're
a born again Christian, Tom. As if somehow he knew. If he
was in the presence of God, he would have this conversation
with Nicodemus. My trusted Tom is born again,
but born again in a very different way from that man in religion
thinks of. What's born again? It literally
means to be born from above. Things coming from heaven, it
speaks of, that word above. Is it really? It's things coming
from God, to be born. It's the phrase that's used of
men fathering children. It speaks of God fathering children
born from above. Nicodemus is told by the Lord
Jesus Christ, if you're to know anything about God, if you know
anything about yourself, if you're to know anything about God's
salvation, you have to be fathered. You have to be begotten again
by God. We know, says Nicodemus, you
know nothing, you know nothing, unless you are born from above. You're born from God, born and
fathered by God. That's why John speaks so wonderfully,
doesn't he? In verse 12 of chapter one, he
says, he gave them power to become the sons of God. For those that
receive him, there is a reception of him. Nicodemus pictures someone
who is in the process of receiving God in a way that he had never
understood in the past, isn't it? But as many as received him,
to them gave he power to become sons of God, even to them that
believe on his name. Nicodemus needs a lesson in the
name of God. He needs a lesson in the character
of God. God is standing before him. The
Nicodemus doesn't have a clue. Which were born, John 1, 13,
which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of flesh, nor
of the will of man, but of God. Salvation is not you acquiring
some knowledge. Salvation is a new creation.
Salvation, not you making decisions. Give your heart to Jesus, they
say. What on earth would he want to
do with a heart that is nothing but sin and depraved? He gives
a new heart. He creates a new creature, created
in righteousness and true holiness. Nicodemus, you can't see and
you can't enter. You can't see and you can't walk.
The seeing eye and the hearing ear, both of these are from the
Lord. He says, a new heart will I give you. So Nicodemus must
first come to know his lostness, his darkness, and his spiritual
deadness. When the Lord Jesus Christ comes
to the temple of man, he has to take a cord, and he has to
cast out all the merchandise. Nicodemus thought that he could
come and do some merchandise with the Lord Jesus Christ. You
could give him some compliments and get some compliments in return.
You know it all the time, don't you? So many people come to you
and they compliment you with their sole intention. that they'll
have something in return. Nicodemus has to know at first
his lostness, his deadness. And the Lord seems to deal extraordinarily
harshly with Nicodemus. But the Lord kills that he may
make a life. He wounds that he may heal. The Lord exposes lostness that
he might be seen as the seeker and the searcher and the finder.
The Lord strips Nicodemus, of all of his supposed esteemed
knowledge. The Lord strips that he might
clothe anew. The Lord empties that he might
fill. The Lord takes his whip to cleanse
his temple of merchandise. I love that picture of Adam and
Eve after the fall. Where are they? you're hiding
from the all-seeing God and you're covered in the rubbish of your
own doings and your own workings, and God is the one who searches,
and God is the one who draws his people to himself, and God
is the one who strips them naked before him, and God is the one
who clothes and robes them in the very righteousness of God,
and covers their shame by a work that had nothing to do with them
whatsoever, and was done on the basis of the shed blood of the
Lord Jesus Christ. You come with your we knows of
your understanding, and I'm telling you, unless you're taught by
the free and distinguishing grace of God, you'll remain in your
ignorance. Nicodemus has to know that he
is no longer sovereign, and he is no longer in a place to judge. He is in God's hands, and not
God in his hands. your problem is much deeper.
Sinners, in the presence of God, your problem is much deeper than
a lack of knowledge. You need a life. You need a life
from above. I'm not appealing to people's
knowledge expecting people to make a decision. You need a life. You need spiritual life. We need
a new birth. delivery. In fact, the babies
don't want to come out. They're forced out by a mother
that can't cope with them any longer. And they come out screaming,
don't they? They come out acting as if they're
being murdered by those around them. They come out lying, don't
they? So the new birth requires a conception
from God of the getting from above. to see God, is to hear God, and
in the words of verse 5, a walk to enter in. You cannot enter
into the kingdom of God. You must be born again. Lord willing, we'll look at this more
next week. Billy Graham wrote a famous book,
didn't he? How To Be Born Again. He wrote
hundreds of pages on how to be born again. How you can be born
again. The very title of the book showed
that he didn't have a clue what he was talking about. This is
a sovereign act of God. What a privilege, what a privilege
it was for Nicodemus when others left God. When others were rebuked
and went away and licked their wounds and found out ways that
they could attack the messenger and attack the message of the
messenger, Nicodemus defends. At the end, Nicodemus honors
that broken body. He honors that shed blood. He
honors that temple destroyed. May the Lord work in our hearts
and may he take his words and pours us under his gracious hand
of wounding and stripping us of our righteousness. May we
see in his chastening hand the hand of love that brings us to
himself and may that be the portion of those who hear me. And may
we, like Nicodemus, keep coming. There was a man who came to Jesus. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
we pray that you would continue to draw your children to yourself,
Heavenly Father. We are prone to wander. We are
prone so often to look at the things of this world and look
at the circumstances of our lives, and we pray, Heavenly Father,
that you would turn our gaze yet again away from ourselves
and turn it to You, our great and glorious and holy and righteous
and sovereign God. We praise You, Heavenly Father,
that the Lord Jesus Christ came to seek and to save that which
was lost. And seek them He did, and save
them He did, and He keeps them. Keep us, Heavenly Father. Save
us from ourselves, from Satan and this world, and cause us,
Heavenly Father, to have the simple childlike faith. in what you say, in your precious
word of promise. Bless your words to our hearts,
Heavenly Father, for we pray in Jesus' name and for his glory. Amen. Let's finish with these
remarkable words. Now unto him that is able to
keep you, from falling and to present you faultless before
the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. To the only wise
God our Saviour be glory and majesty, dominion and power,
both now and ever. Amen. I thank you for joining
us and may Thanks for joining us.