what a beautiful picture of an
even more serious situation because we have a disease far worse than
anything doctors can deal with we have a terminal case of sin
and uncleanness and yet our Lord came into this world and it is
written that he was the friend of sinners that he welcomed sinners
and even would sit down and eat with them and that He would touch
them. And I'm glad that our Lord does
not withhold His hand from touching us in our filthiness. Because
if He did, what hope would there be for us? All right, Colossians
chapter 2. I've entitled this message, Singularities. Whenever someone's going to build
a house, And I've built a few of them. But the first thing you've got
to do is establish where the corners of the house are. You
know, you have to find the very first one, which generally involves
taking some measurements from, if you're in the city, you've
got to take measurements, generally speaking, from the middle of
the street and be so far back from there and, you know, so
far in from the lot lines and those laws, but you establish
where the first corner is, and then from there you begin to
draw measurements to the other corners. And if you don't do
that first, who knows what you're going to end up with. You've
got to establish some immovable points, and then from those points
you can make all your other measurements that you need to. Well, the same
principle can be applied to scriptures, specifically in the interpretation
of scriptures. There are things in the scriptures
which are difficult to understand. They are open to interpretation
if you just read that, read that particular portion of scripture. In fact, if you'll look, here in 1 Timothy chapter 2. I hope that's the text I sent
you all to, 1 Timothy chapter 2. And if you'll look at verse
15 of 1 Timothy chapter 2, it says, but women will be saved
through childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and
holiness with propriety. I remember in my first year of
Bible school as the visiting lecturer who was responsible
for teaching us both first and second Timothy, he got to that
verse and he says, I have no idea what that means, so let's
just move on. And I respected him for that. You know, when
you don't know something, don't speculate. Unless you let everybody
know, you're speculating. But Peter said of the things
Paul wrote, that there was things hard to understand, which the
unlearned or the uneducated or untrained in the scriptures,
will twist to their own destruction. And so there are scriptures like
that, but there are things in the scriptures that are impossible
to misunderstand unless someone is being willfully stubborn.
There are things we might call them the corner posts, where
God has established a point, a point of truth, And if you
don't get it, if you don't understand what it means, it's because you
don't want to understand. Or if you understand what it
means, but choose to ignore it and take your measurements off
of other points, you're gonna end up with a mess. You're gonna
end up with a house you can't live in. So verse five is one
of these corner post type of scriptures. We'll read it again,
for there is one God and one mediator between God and men,
the man, Christ Jesus. Now you can see why I entitled
this Singularities. One God, one mediator. The gospel is full of singularities. The Lord Jesus Christ said, I
am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father
But by me? Now that's a singularity. He
said there's only one way. When we had vacation Bible school
last year, one of the songs that the kids learned was one I sang
as a youth in the Bible clubs that my mother taught. There's
one way God said to get to heaven. Jesus is the only way. One way
to have my sins forgiven. Jesus is the only way. No other
way, no other way. No other way to go. One way,
God said, to get to heaven. Jesus is the only way. Now that's a singularity. And
we don't apologize for that singularity. We didn't make it up. We don't
say to people, unless you go our way, you'll be lost. It may
be the way we're going, but it's not our way. It's the Lord's
way. And the Lord Jesus Christ is
the one who said, He is the only way. There's only one principle
by which the gospel operates, that's the principle of grace.
There's nothing in the gospel and there is no blessing from
God given to men that is not given on the basis of God's free
grace in Christ Jesus, nothing. Only one principle, grace. So
you see, there's several things like that in the scriptures,
and that's why they present nice corner posts or corner markings,
because from them, they are immovable, they are plain and clear, and
we can draw our measurements from there, do all our other
interpretation of the scriptures from those points. And it must
fit inside those points. So there's one God. One God. When God entered into covenant
with the house of Israel, there on Mount Sinai, he began with,
hear O Israel, Jehovah your God is one Jehovah. Now that sounds
kind of funny, but he was blending together the two things about
him that are outstanding, and by that I don't mean outstanding
in the sense of good, things that stand out about him that
separates him from all the other gods. First of all, he calls
himself by the name Jehovah, which most people believe is
derived from when he told Moses, I am. Tell them I am sent you,
and then the name Jehovah arose out of that. So he is setting
forth there to Israel on Mount Sinai, his essential eternal
existence. Or as some like to put it, the
self existing one. From time to time, those who
do not believe anything or they're atheistic or agnostic or whatever,
they'll say, well, who made God? Who created God? Well, nobody
did. And you say, well, that, you know, they say, well, that
doesn't make any sense. And yet they'll turn right around and
say the creation made itself because if God didn't make it,
it had to make itself. God is by definition, the self-existent
one. And then he says, there's only
one of me. And that makes sense too. How
else could there be two self-existing beings? So far as I know, and
this is an interesting point in religious history, the three
major monotheistic religions, and monotheism just means one
God, the three only one God religions of the world arose from Abraham. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The only other monotheistic religion
I am aware of is one called Zoroastrianism. And it is the religion that Nebuchadnezzar
eventually got involved with and promoted in his day. But
you still see it came out there from the Middle East, the concept
of monotheism. And it's the only form of religion
that the scriptures will allow, of course, but if someone would
stop to think, it's the only one that makes any sense. Now,
all other religions involve more than one God. These gods have various, you
know, they are gods over various realms of creation. You know,
you had your rain gods, and then you had your sun god, and the
moon gods, and you had gods of the valleys, and gods of the
mountains, and all this. They had gods for everything
and everywhere. I can't remember the exact number,
it was told to me when I was in India, or at least a rough
number because it keeps changing, but they have tens of thousands
of gods in India. Because there's a god for virtually
everything. Now can you imagine trying to keep up with all of
that? But these gods, none of them
are all powerful, and they're in constant warfare with each
other. In fact, one of the common paradigms
in all of the world's religion is the warfare between the god
of chaos and the god of order. And so order and chaos are always
at war with each other. There's one god. Now, because
of the way we were raised or where we were raised, we grew
up with monotheism as part and parcel of the way we think. Therefore,
when we hear the word God, we never think of it in the plural.
But polytheism, more than one God, was the common practice
in this world and still is very common, just you don't see much
of it in the United States of America. And we have an idea
of God, in the way we use that word, that really wouldn't even
allow for there to be more than one God. But Paul had to stress
the point because he was the minister, you know, the apostle
to the Gentiles, and that means he was going where people commonly
worshipped many gods. It was the Roman Empire. So you're
going to have Well, all those old Greek gods,
it's just they gave them Latin names, Roman names. Instead of
Zeus, you have Jupiter. And instead of, if I can remember,
I think the Greeks called him Hermes and the Romans called
him Mars. and Aphrodite and Venus and all
that. They're all the same gods, got different names, but there
was a lot of them and there were shrines to all of them. When
Paul was in Athens and spoke there on Mars Hill, there you
go, they even had a place, you know, for Mars, where people
would go and talk and discuss any new thing they'd heard. But
he told them, he says, as I came through your city, I see that
you all are very religious people. And the reason He knew that as
there were idols everywhere, just on every corner. There was
some little shrine to some God. And he said, and I noticed one
shrine called the unknown God. These people were so afraid that
they were going to miss a God, you know, and not properly honor
him. And then that God would get upset
and bring them some kind of curse. They just, well, the God I don't
even know about, I'm gonna leave an oblation here for him. Well,
Paul just picked that up and said, well, this God you don't
know, let me tell you about him. And of course, in telling them
about the God, he completely overthrew any of the other gods. But there is one God, and only
one. Now, there is one God in essence,
and I mean there's only one God that exists. But also we've got
to say that there is only one true God in definition. And what do I mean by that? Well,
there are people who will claim to worship this one God, but
they define him differently than the scriptures do. And I got into another one of
those discussions with some people that didn't like the idea of
God being sovereign on all things. It's amazing how silly people
can get when they're trying to, and I don't say that in terms
of judgment. I'm sorry, I don't want to put down any, but it
is foolishness. Some of the statements they'll
put forward, because once again, they're not starting with the
corner posts. They're starting with a corner
of their own making, and since men are utterly devoted to the
idea of man having free will, they will twist any scripture
that acts as though God or speaks as God being absolutely sovereign,
they'll make it say something else. And one person actually
said this, well, God sovereignly chose to let man have free will.
And of course they couldn't see me on the other side of my monitor,
but I just go, you know, that makes absolutely no sense at
all. That makes no more sense than for Shakespeare to say,
I've got to let Romeo decide whether or not he takes his own
life. And just stop writing until Romeo
makes up his mind. Well, Romeo doesn't have a mind
until Shakespeare writes it down. But God is absolutely sovereign,
and he is of one definition, and I'm not gonna act as though
we fully understand everything there is to know about God, but we must know God in truth,
or we are worshiping a false God, even if we use the right
name. Only one God. It's the God of
all men. In the age of what is called
postmodernism, which is right now, what they call postmodernism,
everything is relative, including truth. It's really sad that people
have come to the point, they don't even believe there's such
a thing as truth out there, which is the same for everybody. And
if you tell them, Something that you claim to be absolutely truthful.
I say, well, that's your truth. I have my truth. There is no
such thing as your truth or my truth. There's the truth. That's
all there is. And so, if our professed truth
is contrary to the truth, our truth isn't the truth. It's just
we've been deceived or we are liars, one or the other. And
so, We worship this one God according to truth, and that means if there's
only one God, then He's the God of all men, whether or not they
acknowledge it. The Bible refers to Him as God
over all, blessed forever. He is the God of people, who
worship Him such as you and I do. He's the God of all those who
worship Him falsely. He is the God of those who worship
other gods, and He's the God of those who think there isn't
a God. He's the God of those who've never heard His name.
Why? Well, there is only one God,
and He's God over all. Now, that's one of the corner
posts here. One mediator between God and
men. Now a mediator is a middleman. In fact, the word translated
mediator here is derived from the Greek word meaning middle. And that's what the Lord Jesus Christ
is. He is one who is in the middle. between us and God. He is the one that Job spoke
of in his sorrow and trouble. He said, oh, that there was,
I think the King James says a daysman, more modern translations use
a word like umpire or something like that. But it says that some
fellow like that, that was between us who could lay his hands on
both of us, meaning Job and God. In other words, he said, oh,
that there was a mediator, someone to come between me and God who
is great enough to span the distance and who can lay his hand on God
and not die and lay his hands on Job and not be polluted. And that is this one mediator,
the man, Christ Jesus. Now, the fact that there is a
mediator is a necessary implication that we need one. We need a mediator. God doesn't provide things that
are not needed. And in as much as he has provided
for us a mediator, a go-between, a middleman, it means that we
need one. There is a dispute, and that's
what mediators handle. There's a dispute between us
and God. And when I say us, I mean the
human race in general. And the dispute really comes
down to this. Who's God? Him or us? That's why I have often made
the remark that the word atheist is off by one letter. It ought
to be atheist. Because that is what, well, when
I say the atheist, not just the atheist, everybody who's not
worshiping this God is an atheist. Because the God he's worshiping
is a God of his own invention. And it's simply an expression
of his own values cast in a divine form, that's all it is. Until
men worship this God, they worship themselves. And so, just as there
in the Garden of Eden, what did the serpent deceive Eve about? He said, you won't die. God's just being selfish. Because he knows that when you
eat of that tree, you will be as God. And that was the essential attack
upon God there in the Garden of Eden, man trying to set himself
up as his own God. We could say it's who is God,
or we could say who's in charge. That's essentially the same thing.
Because whoever is in charge is God. The psalmist said, why
do the nations ask, where is your God? Our God is in the heavens. He does whatever pleases him.
Now, anybody who can do just anything he wants to, that's
God, by very definition. The one who has the right to
order everything in the universe, to decree what shall come to
pass and work to see that it actually does come to pass, that
person is God. The one who has the right to
say what is right and what is wrong, that is God. And all sin,
all transgression, the very nature of our sin, the very sinful thoughts
we have, all of this are an attack. They are essentially an attack
on the godhood of God. It's us saying, not you, Lord,
but unto us be the glory and the power and the authority. Not unto God, but unto us. Well,
that's a pretty heavy dispute. That's why we say sin is a much
deeper thing than most people think. That's why people can
look at sins and say, well, this sin's not as bad as that sin,
and that's, you know, but this one's really bad, that one, nah,
not such a big deal. Because they're measuring sin
according to how it affects them. And that's not what makes sin
to be sin. The sinfulness of sin is that
it is a rebellion against God. It is an attempt on the part
of man to make himself to be God. And God said, I'm the only
one and I will not share my glory with another. I'll not tolerate
another God. Now, the Jews were guilty of
many of your standard transgressions against the law of God. Well, that's a noisy bottle. I mean, you read about the things
that go on and you think, why didn't God judge them before
he did? I mean, all kinds of immorality,
violence, and all of this. Do you know what was the essential
crime for which the Lord sent both the northern and southern
tribes into captivity? It was idolatry. There were actually
two things. ignoring his Sabbath, or Sabbaths,
and idolatry. And both of them are, well, they
directly impact the gospel. Because there is no gospel, there
is no good news apart from this God. So to introduce any other
God or to look to any other God for salvation apart from looking
to this God is to overthrow the gospel. And then what is the
Sabbath day? What was the Sabbath day? And
the many other Sabbath observances they were required to do. They
were all pictures of the rest we have in Christ. And those
who do not labor to enter into that rest are simply unbelievers. And so you see in the two essential
things with regard to our relationship to God, that's what God punished
the Jews for, false gods, and then they wouldn't rest. And therefore it is required
that there be a mediator, a go-between, to stand between God and us,
one who can speak the language of God and the language of man,
and one who has the power to make arguments that hold sway
with God. Now we pray, and we're supposed
to, and we should be glad to, But anybody that knows God and
tries to pray realizes that when he's done praying, his prayers
did not in and of themselves have the power to change anything. For one thing, God doesn't change,
so you're not really going to change God. Someone asked a man
one time, says, well, why do you pray? Do you think somehow
or another it changes God? He said, no, it doesn't change
God, but it sure changes me. And that's part of the reason
we pray, because often in prayer, God deals with us as we're working
these things through in our mind. He is miraculously teaching us
what we need to know with regard to the things we're praying.
And he may not change what's going on, but we are altered
to where we are reconciled to what's going on. And then sometimes
we pray, And God does change the course of events from what
we thought was gonna happen, but he never has changed the
course of events from what he decreed would happen. But we have one here in the mediator,
Christ Jesus, who prays, who speaks to God, who speaks in
the language that God always hears, And he gets absolutely
everything that he asks for. I love that truth. Because I find in the scriptures,
particularly in John 17, when I see what our Lord prayed for,
knowing that the Father will give it to him. The Father will
never deny his son anything his son asks for. And he said, I
would that those that you have given me would be with me where
I am, that they may behold my glory. Now, the Lord Jesus Christ prayed
that for every one of his people. And that means it's going to
happen. The Father will bring all of those who he gave to the
Lord Jesus. They will all be with him, and
they will behold his glory. And John says to us that when
we see him as he is, which is the same thing as to behold him
in his glory, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as
he is. And that one prayer includes
in it everything necessary to get us there. And it'll happen. What a mediator. He speaks to
God on our behalf and he speaks the things that need to be spoken. Now, when we go to prayer, we
don't have to be careful what we ask for. We don't have to say, well, is
it, you know, should I ask God for that? I mean, Paul said,
make your request known to God. But with us, it's a request. Our Lord didn't say, Father,
I ask that you would do such and such. He says, I would, I
will. He's the only one that can say
to God, I will. And that's because he is the
mediator, the God-man. He's not only man, he's God,
and therefore he can speak as man, but with the authority of
God. Now Christ's work as our mediator
involves intercession, prayers in behalf of his people, but
here is his essential work of mediation. Verse six, who gave
himself as a ransom for all men. Now we're not gonna stumble over
that word all right now, we'll get to it in just a minute. But
the mediatorship of our Lord Jesus Christ was when he came between us and
God and bore for us that which would have fallen upon us were
he not between us. That's his essential mediatorial
work. There on the cross, He gave himself
a ransom, a redemption price. He paid to the justice of God
that which was necessary for the justice of God to let them
go. It was not a payment, just money
put on deposit, which we can go and then make use of to pay
our debt. When our Lord Jesus Christ gave
His life, gave Himself as a ransom, it was an actual payment to our
creditor, an actual payment to God. And the resurrection from
the dead, when God raised His Son from the dead, that's God's
testimony that He accepted the payment. Now, in the freewillism that
I was raised in, they would say, Jesus Christ by his blood wrote
a check, but you know He left that part out there paid of the
order of he left that blank And you got to fill that in No, he
didn't It was paid to the order of God and See, they think it
was paid to us. You put your name in the pay
to the order of, and then you take that, you know, and endorse
the back of it and hand it to God on your own behalf. No. If
you want to liken it to a check, the redemption of our Lord Jesus
Christ, His saving work, was a check written out to God for
the specified amount, signed by the Lord Jesus Christ, accepted
by God, because he endorsed it, and it was canceled. It's been,
in terms of banking, it's already been negotiated. It's already
been paid. You know, when we used to use
paper checks, you'd keep them for a while, because if there
was ever a dispute that you'd pay the bill, all you had to
do is go get that check, Shows, well, there's paid to you. I
signed it, here's the amount and look on the back. The bank
has put its stamp on it. That meant this check has been
canceled and the debt that it was sent to pay has been canceled. And that's what the gospel is.
It's not a blank check. There's not a blank line on it.
Everything is there and it has been negotiated. It's canceled. Jesus Christ paid the ransom,
and he paid it for all kinds of people. Now those who want
to promote a universal atonement will go to places like this where
it says all, and they ignore many places where the word all
obviously cannot mean a reference to every individual. All, every,
and that kind of thing. In fact, look up here at verse
1, I urge then first of all that requests, prayers, intercessions,
and thanksgiving be made for everyone. There are seven and
a half billion people in this world, I don't have time to pray
for everyone. So what Paul is talking about
there, he doesn't mean everyone as individuals, he's talking
about everyone regardless of their position, status, or any
fleshly distinction they might have. You see, Jews didn't pray
for Gentiles. You know, it was just them, they
prayed for other Jews. They thought we're the people,
he's our God, we pray to him about us. But now the gospel
has revealed what was true all along, that God is no respecter
of persons. He doesn't have any special affection
for you because of your ancestry, or because of how smart you are,
or what social status you may have. And therefore, we are not to
withhold prayer. or withhold praying from someone
because of anything about them that we see. And he shows us
what he means by it in verse two, for kings and all in authority. Now, that was the only example
he gives, but it shows us what kind of things he's talking about
there. Because you see, at this point, Paul's in prison, the
king is going to soon give an order to take off his head. And many Christians had suffered
under the king. And you can imagine nobody wanted
to pray for him. Their prayer would be more like,
you know, Lord would you kill that man and get him out of our
way? He said, no. All kinds of people. There's
nobody that that you should withhold a prayer for. And we pray for them. We can pray for them for things
regarding themselves. I pray, when I think of the ones
who run our government, I pray that God will give them some
wisdom, because they certainly seem to be in need of it. I pray
that God will give them some decency. because they're certainly
in need of that. But notice what Paul goes on
to say, he says, for kings and all those in authority, that
we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. Now, unfortunately, it's part of our
American heritage, I guess. We're very vocal, very opinionated
in our politics. And you've got many within the
broad Christian community that think that the word of God would
promote a particular political form. It doesn't. God has never said in the scriptures
that a democratic republic is to be preferred over a monarchy. or socialism or anything else. And why did he not put forward
a form of government? Because it doesn't matter what
the form is, he's in charge of the guy or the people who are
running things. He's in charge of them. And so
all government is in truth a divine government. And so when Christians
take up the political causes They are, and I'm talking about
publicly, making that a thing that the church does. I know
as individuals, as Americans, we talk about these things, and
that's fine. But one reason I don't address political issues from
this pulpit is that would be what, you know, this pulpit's
for much bigger things. than what goes on in Washington,
D.C. But here is what Paul says we're to pray for and we're to
be content if we have this, if we can get this from our government,
we should be glad that as believers we can live peaceful and quiet
lives in all godliness and holiness. That should be enough. If they
tax us so much that we can barely afford what we need, well, certainly
we would like for it to be another way. But if we've got what we
need to eat, enough to wear, and a place to live, the Lord
said, be content with that. And if otherwise, they'll leave
you alone to worship God according to your conscience and not bother
you, then you should thank God that you have such a government.
So we pray for those, even if we don't like them, even if they're
from the political party that we didn't vote for, even if we
think that they are destroying some of the fundamental freedoms
of this country, so long as we can live peaceful and quiet lives
as we worship God. And you know that word holiness
there? He's not talking about there about morality. He's talking
about that we can live our lives separate from the world. When the church is called to
arms, so to speak, as though their job is to address political
issues, they're not doing what Paul said here in terms of holiness. It embarrasses me for the sake
of Christ when I see these big name preachers get up and say
they're for or against this or that politician and, well, this
is God's man here. What do you mean? Whoever gets
in there is God's man. That's the one God put in there
to accomplish his purpose and he will. What we're looking for
and what we should be satisfied with is that we can worship God
and live in peace and quietness willing to keep to ourselves, not trying to stir up trouble
for the government. I read that some church in Texas,
I think it was, BBC, Big Baptist Church, and
in defiance of the law, they were meeting, and I mean, this
is a several hundred, maybe several thousand member church, I can't
remember. in defiance of the law. Now what do you expect the law
to do? They said with good reason, keep the group small. And they
say, oh, that's an infringement on our religious rights. No,
it's not. Are you free to worship? Yeah.
Well, you don't have to go. to the big building in the middle
of town or out on the outskirts, no, it was in the suburbs, really,
the suburbs. Here we are, there's seven in
attendance this morning here at the building. That's more
than the two or three the Lord promised, isn't it? And I assume there's more of
our membership watching the live stream or we'll pick up the recording
later. We should live our lives And
the only time the government should find opposition from us
is when they tell us we must do something God said not to
do. They told you, apostles, don't
you preach in that name anymore. And the apostles said, well,
you answer for yourself whether we ought to obey God or obey
you. Now, when it comes down to a choice, we know what the
choice is, but we aren't even close to that yet. Not even close. He says, verse four, who wants
all men to be saved? Once again, he's not referring
to every individual, because if that's what God wanted, that's
what would happen. He's talking about God has a
people chosen from all kinds of people. There are some kings
in history that knew God, that believed God. I'm reminded of
Queen Victoria in England, who, it was said anyway, reported
that she made it public. She thanked God for the letter
M, because it is written, there are not many, and Paul said,
you look at your calling and election, there's not many noble.
And she said, were it not for the letter M, I would be on the
outside, because it would say there are not any noble. And
so even though she was the Queen of England, a monarch, Yet she
was humbled to the point she thanked God that she was not
excluded from the kingdom of God simply because she was at
the top of the human kingdom. God has some from the upper echelons,
not many, but he has some. And he's got some educated and
he's got some uneducated. He's got Jews, he's got Gentiles,
he's got men, women, old, young, black, white. Remember listening
to When Brother Miles and I were in India, and you know, India
and Pakistan, they don't get along at all. They're mortal
enemies, so far as national things are concerned. And Miles was
preaching and preaching, you know, and he was talking about Something our brethren around
the world or, you know, the way the gospel's presented, but he
said, you know, Indians that believe are saved. Pakistanis
that believe are saved. You know, and I'm, you know,
we don't go down and sit in the pews when the other guy's preaching.
They always had us up on the platform. And I don't think I
made a face, but inside I thought, whew, boy, Miles. You're calling on them to really,
you know, change their thinking. But that's what the gospel does,
isn't it? That's what Jews had to suddenly realize, hey, we're
no better than the Gentiles. One of our pastors in one of
our sister churches, when he was pastoring a church in Louisiana,
and it was an all-white church, and most people there were pretty
old, so they were way, you know, from the World War II generation
and older, and held the racial views of that time period. And
the issue came up of, well, what if a black person shows up at
church? There's some of them said, well, let's tell them they
need to go somewhere else. And he just told them, he said, well,
you tell them they need to go somewhere else, I'm going somewhere else.
Why? There's no difference. No difference
at all. The Lord has a people from every
kindred, tongue, tribe, and nation, from every social strata. And then we learn from this that being saved is connected
to and cannot be divorced from coming to a knowledge of the
truth. There is no salvation without
truth. The Lord said you shall know the truth and the truth
will make you free. It doesn't matter how many times
you say Jesus. It doesn't matter how many worship songs you know.
It doesn't matter how much you read your Bible or how much you
pray. If you don't know the truth,
you're lost. Now that doesn't mean God can't
teach you the truth yet. But anyone who's been saved by
God knows the truth. And the truth is this. There's
one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. Heavenly Father, I pray that
the words spoken here were an honor to your name and be a benefit
to those who hear. Bless us for Christ's sake. It's
in his name we pray, amen.