We'll turn in your Bibles for
our Scripture reading today into Isaiah, the 35th chapter. The title of our message today is
called, The My Way of Man. The 35th chapter is such a wonderful
telling of grace and redemption. Isaiah 35. The wilderness and
the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall
rejoice and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly and
rejoice, even with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be
given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the
Lord and the excellency of our God. Strengthen ye the weak hands,
and confirm the feeble knees. Say to them that are of a fearful
heart, Be strong, fear not. Behold, your God will come with
vengeance, even God with a recompense, and He will come and save you.
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the
deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap
as a heart, and the tongue of the dumb sing. For in the wilderness
shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched
ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water. In the habitation of dragons,
where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes. And a
highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called the way
of holiness. The unclean shall not pass over
it, but it shall be for those the wayfaring men. The fools
shall not enter therein. No lion shall be there, nor any
ravenous beast shall go upon thereon. It shall not be found
there, but the redeemed shall walk there. And the ransomed
of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting
joy upon their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness
and sorrow, and sighing shall flee away. The ransom of the
Lord shall return. The Highway of the Lord. What a wonderful passage. Isn't
that just a wonderful passage? It just kind of covers everything
from where we are to the Lord making the way for us. He does
everything and takes care of it. Man always seeks the my way. I read the other day, and I've
been working on this for a while, and I was talking to Norm about
it before they left, and I was reading some things, and I found
this really great article, and it was just like a one-pager,
and it was pretty concise and pretty clear about grace and
faith and salvation. And then in the end, the last
sentence, it says, and these make, it's for those who accept
Jesus. Oh, it was so good. It was just
such a disappointment at the end that all that stuff just
makes you, enables you to accept or reject Jesus. What a slap in the face to God,
who effectually works all things for good for them. And you know,
when he ransomed you, you've been ransomed, and you just find
out about it later on. You know, here, in past years,
there's been a number of people that applied for government loans
to attend college, and a lot of them, they signed up for some fictitious
colleges, it turns out, or some fraudulent colleges that were
just schemes and a lot of them were arrested and some of them
just fell apart. But they collected all this money
from all these people that they got from government loans and
here a few weeks ago the government said, we're sending out a letter
to all those people that were involved in all these fraudulent
schemes saying your debt is canceled. You don't have to pay any more
on that, if you accept that. No, that's not what it said.
It said, your debt is canceled. You don't have to pay. And it
doesn't depend on, no further action needed on your part. It's
just, it's been taken care of. And that's kind of the way salvation
is, when the Lord reveals His Son to you and that He saved
you. That's kind of the way it works,
and yet man always enters into these schemes of things that
are based on his own thoughts, and ideas, and ideology. You know, the basic nature of
man is kind of to be religious, to be superstitious, to be self-righteous,
and opposed to what the Word of God says. They just don't see it in their
natural condition. The natural man, they're kind
of in two camps. Both are kind of religious of
a nature because one is just based on self. But one really thinks there is
no God, no real condemning sin, and therefore you don't really
need a Savior or salvation. Under that theme, many operate
under the concept that here on earth is all there is, and so
you must get for yourself all you can, because this life is
all there is, and then you die. That's their philosophy, as it
were. Then the second believes that
there is a God, but they have an incorrect and defective view
of him and understanding of him and of sin and of salvation and
of grace. They don't understand the ramifications
of the fall, which, as Mike brought out in Genesis this morning, spiritually dead and eventually
physically dead. But they don't equate that. Under that theme, good works
count, good intentions are worthy, Jesus loves everyone, and heaven
is really the goal. Not, I just want to get to heaven. Who cares about that sin stuff?
It all depends on what I do and what I say, and that gets me
to heaven or some physical activity. since their understanding is
darkened, as the scripture says, they have no true understanding
of how spiritually you're dead in sin and the fallen nature
and the true spiritual condition of the natural or unsaved man.
And the skewed thinking of that sort impacts the understanding
of what is actually required for the deliverance from the
penalty of sin. You know, those folks that had
those loans, they were on the hook for that. They were going
to have to pay or there was going to be consequences. When they
got that letter that says, you don't owe this anymore, they
were free from that. But in sin, they don't recognize
the true consequences and what is required to be free from that
debt. You know, they just push you're
going to go to heaven, and on the converse side of that, there's
just the hellfire or brimstone preachers that say, you should
be afraid of going to hell, therefore you should accept Jesus. So, no real understanding of
grace there either. Both of those kind of fall into
what I've termed the my way of man, as opposed to a highway
that God provides. There are solutions and concepts
that originate in minds that are dead in sins and trespasses. The truth of sin and the gospel
deliverance are so simple and wonderful that you would think
They would be easily understood and accepted. But we find the
truth is exactly the opposite of that. They can't be seen or
understood. Corinthians says, the natural
man receives not the things of the Spirit of God for their foolishness
unto him. Neither can he know them. They
have no ability because they're spiritually discerned. Instead,
the reliance is on that my way of man. the way that man has
determined, and they think in their mind, well, my way is as
good as God's way. What's wrong with my way? He
should be accepting of that. And if he isn't, then it's his
problem, not mine. That's how they think of God
in those small of terms. And it's just been that way since
the beginning. You know, when Adam sinned, as Mike related
in the Bible class this morning, He didn't try to get on the highway
of God. He hid himself. Then he tried to self-correct
and make his own aprons. Then he blamed God and blamed
the woman. He blamed everybody, not my fault. You shouldn't be angry with me,
God, because he says, actually, God, it's your fault because
you gave me the woman. That's essentially what he said. His total existence took such
a drastic turn at the fall. It just turned exactly opposite
to God. And, you know, then it goes on
through their son, Cain. His son, Cain, brought offerings
from the Miway, consisting of his works in offering fruits
of the ground. And I'm sure his father said,
You know, when we ate that fruit, God said, curse it is the ground,
and in sorrow shall thou eat of it all thy life, all the days
of thy life. So what's he do? He brings an
offering. from the curse ground, says,
here, this ought to work. And no, God did not have respect
unto Cain's offering. And so what did he do? He said,
I accept Jesus, and I'm sorry. No, he killed his brother. Killed
his brother that was demonstrating the gospel. So,
it's just serious. How serious is the fall and sin
that takes your whole being and transfers it from one that's
in alignment with God to one that's at enmity with Him and
opposite. It just takes grace to get the
road killed off the dead my way. They have no ability. I was going
up to my brother's the other day and he said, did you see
that nice four-point that was in the ditch all swelled up and
dead? Yeah, he'd been hit by a log
truck or something on that road and killed, and he had no ability
to get off that and go back about his business. He was dead. So, it takes an act of grace
to restore us to the highway of life of God. And the natural
man can't even see the highway of God. And true grace, as the
scripture said, is foolishness to him. And he thinks, well,
surely you must be able to contribute to or supply your own remedy. I'll make a deal with you. do this, I'll quit doing that,
or all those things that we're familiar with. And, you know, in Proverbs chapter
16, verse 17, it says, the highway of the upright
is to depart from evil. And he that keepeth his way preserveth
his soul." Well, that's a good proverb, but how does one become
upright who is dead in sin? How do you do that? And how do
you keep the way? Well, we're just like that deer. We're just like Lazarus. We can't
do it by ourselves because we lack that ability. The natural
man cannot receive those things. In that psalm, or that Isaiah
that we read in chapter 35, verse 8 of that says, a highway shall
be there. It's there. It's always been
there. And a way, it's called the way.
And you remember in the New Testament, Paul was on his way to Damascus
to persecute those that were in that way, the way of Jesus,
what they called the way. That means the road, the path. And it shall be called the way
of holiness, the road of holiness. And the unclean shall not pass
over it. But it shall be for those, the wayfaring men, though
fools shall not err therein." I like the NIV version of that. So the highway will be there
and it will be called the Way, capital W-A of capital H, holiness. It will be for those who walk
on that way and the unclean will not journey on it and wicked
fools will not go about on it. That way has been there from
Day one, but yet we can't see it and we can't get on it of
ourselves. So how does one become upright
who's dead in sin? How does one become clean so
that you can be on that highway? Well, the end of that scripture
says, the ransom shall return. The ones that God has made the
atonement for through Christ, the ones that have their sins
cleansed through the blood of Christ. In Psalm 40, a couple
of chapters later, or not Psalm, but Isaiah chapter 40, verse 1 through 5, Isaiah 40
says, one says, comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.
And, you know, there's all kinds of TV ads where you're just supposed
to send boxes of food to people and that's supposed to be the
comfort to them. But that's not what this is talking about. That
would be a good thing to do. And it would be a good thing
to do because it's a good thing to do, but it's not the, related to the gospel in the
way of salvation. Comfort ye my people, saith the
God, and speak comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that
her warfare is accomplished, and that her iniquity is pardoned.
For she has received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins.
What a word to the church. Comfort you with these words.
Your sin, not only has your sin been paid for, but it's been
paid for double. There's nothing left. It's all been erased. The voice
of him that crieth in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall
be exalted or lifted up. All the low places that, you
know, going down, we live up on a steep hill. And walking
down on it is like worse than walking up. It's hard on your
every, it's hard to, the muscles and everything that you engage
going down a steep slope. It's worse than climbing up.
But the Lord takes care of that. He levels the valleys. Every mountain and hill shall
be made low. And the crooked path shall be
made straight, and the rough place is plain." And plain is a plain, I guess you'd call it.
When I was up in Barrow, you could see the Arctic plain up
there, and so there's nothing growing up there. It's flat. Well, it's not flat
flat, but it's you can just about see the curve of the earth there
because there's just nothing in the way and you can see all
the way around. And you can just about see the
curve of the earth there because it's just nothing growing taller
than this. And you're only three feet above
sea level. And it's a long way to the Brooks Range from there.
You can't see them because of the curve of the earth from there. But it's plain, it's flat, there's
no obstructions there. And if it's that plain and unobstructed,
why can't it be seen? Why can't it be taken? But you
know, it says, unless a man be born again, or as your margins
might say in that translation, from above, unless a man be born
from above, He can't see or enter the kingdom of God. That's from
John 3, verse 3 through 5. And the glory of the Lord shall
be revealed. That's what has to happen. The glory of the Lord
has to be revealed. And all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. In Psalm, the 37th chapter, verse
23, it says, the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord,
and he delighteth in his way. And when the Lord saves a person,
He finds out that all of his steps have been directed according
to what Mike said in Romans 8, 28, all things are working for
good to them that love God, who are the called according to His
purpose. we don't really see that until it's revealed to us.
All the things that God has delivered us from, all the things that
we, places we've been, all of our family history, all the way
back to who knows, that all, everything has been engaged to either intersect one of the Lord's
sheep with the Gospel or to bring the Gospel to them or bring them
to the Gospel. He works it all out. And sometimes
that involves wars. Sometimes that involves disasters. Sometimes that involves things
that would seem ordinary. But He is all working it according
to His purpose. And we find that all of our steps
are ordered. You know, man in our natural
state, in the Psalms, it says, there's
none that doeth good. None. They're all gone out of
the way in Romans 3.12. They're all together become unprofitable. There's none that doeth good.
No, not one. That's pretty plain. But yet man keeps persistence
and saying, well, I've done some good. But they equate that to
physical things that are doing good. Again, those things are
good to do because they're good to do, but they're not going
to be taken into consideration for redemption or salvation. They're all gone out of the way. If we look at that, that's kind
of like one word, or a couple words in the Greek there, Out
of the way means to deviate from, to shun, to decline, to avoid. So that's how we are in our natural
state. There is a right way, but we,
like Adam, we avoid that. We hide ourselves or we deviate
from it. We go in another direction. We
decline it. And it takes God to overcome
that declining. Proverbs 14, 12 says, there's
a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof are the ways
of death. That seems pretty plain, but
yet in our natural state, we persist in that. The, the, my
way of man is an exact opposition to the way of God and the fruits
of the spirit. And, and, you know, the, the
Bible, we'll read this here in a minute, but the Bible says
the, to the my way of man is broad.
You go to Portland and try to get on the freeway and they have
those two lane things with the lights that let you time you
so you can kind of get on the freeway and you're not all just
trying to jam on at once. It kind of put you on, well,
the my way of man is like 80 lanes wide, and you can just
zoom on there onto the broad way that leads to destruction.
And, you know, it's composed of every false belief that man
ever came up with, and it's paved with things that all originate
in man, pride, self-reliance, and unbelief. You know, they're
all opposite of the fruits of the Spirit that God blesses us
with, and joy, and love, and peace, and longsuffering, and
gentleness, and goodness, and faith. All things that are given
to us in the new birth. You know, when we look at faith,
that article that I was talking about that I sent up to Norma,
it talked at length about faith. and how it's a gift of God, and
you can't obtain it any other way. And yet, it's just a byproduct
that gets you to a position where you're able to do or not do something. You know, Hebrews, I like the
NIV version of this. It talks about faith in that
faith chapter, and it lists all the, History of all the great names
in the Bible. He says, now faith is confidence
in what we hope for, and assurance about what we don't see. I like
that, confidence and assurance in what we hope for. We have
confidence. and what we hope for, not just
a wish that you don't really have any confidence in, but a
confidence that's based in God and His power and His might,
His greatness and assurance. When we're saved, we have assurance.
The Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are sons of
God. He's not going to save you and
not give you that assurance. not going to happen. He will
let you know. You know, in Isaiah, back a few
chapters back in Isaiah 32, 17 says, the work of righteousness,
and Christ is our righteousness, the work of righteousness shall
be peace. And the effect of righteousness is quietness and assurance forever. We don't have to keep going back
to the drawing board and saying, well yesterday I did this and
I did that and I felt good about my salvation, but today I kind
of had a setback and I kind of thought or said or did something
that Now I'm not so sure about my salvation, because it all
hinges on what you're doing or what you're not doing. But when
God saves you, He gives you peace, and He gives you quietness and
assurance, and you end up saying, I don't know why I did that,
or I thank God He took care of that. Thank God for grace. Well, how is faith obtained?
Well, you know, it can't be obtained. It's a gift. It's not earned. In Ephesians chapter 2, verse
8, one verse that I'm sure you're all familiar with, it says, for
grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It's a gift of God, not of works,
lest any man should boast, because that's what we do. You know,
if it was just up to us to say, well, I accepted Jesus or I didn't
accept Jesus, this conversation could go two ways when we meet
with somebody. We could say, God had mercy on
me, a sinner, and saved me. Or we can say, I accepted Jesus
back in 72. I gave him my heart and I accepted
him. So what's our confidence in?
Salvation or deliverance from the penalty of sin, which is
death. You know, physical death comes
to us all, but the second death, which is eternal, it's removed
from us through grace, which is in Christ. And if the penalty
for sin is death and the scripture in life tells us that everyone
is sin, there's no one that in reality can go through life and
say, I've been pure. then it must be paid for, and
it's either going to be paid for by us or the substitute that
God ordained, which is His Son. That's what it tells us in Romans
5, chapter 5, verse 6 through 11. When we were yet without strength,
when we had no ability because we're dead and trespassing sin,
in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. At the fullness
of time, God sent forth his son, made a woman. For scarcely for a righteous
man will one die. That seems pretty plain. I mean,
you wouldn't think you would lay down your life for some Jeffrey
Dahmer kind of a guy, some heinous serial killer or someone like
that. So, if it's scarcely for a righteous
man, one will die, yet perventure for a good man, some would even
dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward
us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Well, we were yet at enmity with
Him. When we were in total opposition
to Him, even if we claimed religion, we were still doing things that
denied Him and rejected His grace and tried to substitute our own
activities. While we were yet sinners, Christ
died for us. Much more than being now justified
by His blood, we will be saved from wrath through Him. For if
when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death
of His Son." So that tells you that Christ died for His people,
paid for their sins while they were still enemies. And that
concludes ones that haven't been born yet and ones that have passed
on. For if, when we were enemies,
we are reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more being
reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only so,
but we join God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have
now received the atonement." The atonement means that our
debt has been paid. The atonement means we are free
from that obligation, that debt of sin. When God reveals that to us,
we've received the letter in the mail that says, you no longer
owe that debt. The My Way of Man rejects that
truth of sin and the penalty for it, and the only remedy that
God has ordained, and substitutes some kind of works, really, which
deny what God has ordained. And really, when we do that,
we're giving God a slap in the face and saying, what you provided
isn't good enough. we think we have a better way.
Or, we only need this much of Jesus because we've done this
much good stuff. Or, we haven't done that many
bad things that we don't need the totality of Jesus. And that just incurs more wrath. You know, the natural man thinks
he can achieve all these, and in fact doesn't desire or need
them according to his circumstance, and doesn't concede that these
things come by grace. Blessings of God, not according
to merit. That's what grace means, gratis,
free, without merit. The My Way of Man charts an erroneous
course to God based on an incorrect or non-existent understanding
of God and His reality. Again, that way takes us in the
exact opposite direction. from the highway of God, which
leads to the city of refuge, which is Christ. There is a way
that seems right to a man, but the end thereof are the ways
of death. You find that in Proverbs 14, 12 and 16, 25. or words were never written.
You know, the scripture says we are to be conformed to him
in Romans 8. The very next verse from Mike's
Bible class in Romans 8.28 says, for whom he did foreknow. That
speaks of a people. He also did predestinate to be
conformed to the image of his son that he might be the firstborn
among many brethren. And so, for us, being conformed
begins in being born again. It's a point in time for us as
we look at it, but in God it was an eternity, as Mike read
from Ephesians and other places in the scripture. For God it
began before the foundation of the world, and there's no other
name given. the Scriptures say, whereby we
must be saved. And even though people agree
with the verbiage of that, they really don't agree with the truth
of God. Just like that article I read gives all these Scriptures
and all these truths from Ephesians and Romans and the Old Testament,
and then at the end it says, these apply to the person that
accepts Jesus. It's crazy. To one that really
has no knowledge of grace, who exist in a world of the unregenerate,
the my way is conceived in what's called the darkness of error
is what the scripture calls it. Can you imagine drawing a road
map in the dark with no light and just assuming you have a
right piece of paper and a pen and you're just kind of scribbling
all over the place? It doesn't lead to anything.
It seems like in our mind that that ought to be acceptable to
God, but we're doing the best we can. You know, and they say there's
many ways to God, and they're all valid. This way is just as
good as that way, and all roads lead to heaven, and all those
things. But, you know, that's that broad
way that's built with error and paved with the pavement of self-righteousness
and works that are created and performed by the workers of free will. You
notice in Romans 10, Paul wrote that to the Jews that suffered
from that. And they were just representative
of all of us. It says, they being ignorant
of God's righteousness and going about to establish their own
righteousness have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness
of God. And in truth, We can't do that
until the new birth. We have no ability to do that,
no will to do that, and we won't do that. I was thinking as I
wrote this, that we have to have the foundation of the Gospel.
It's the sure foundation that's built on Christ. And up in Alaska,
where we're from, the ground is awful. A lot of
it's frozen year round. And so they build these roads
across it. And they never last. The soil is unstable because
it's ice underneath it. And when you strip off the vegetation
and you put some black pavement over it, the sun thaws it out
and pretty soon it just sinks down to oblivion. Then they come
and dig all that out and put some fill dirt over it and pave
over it again and pretty soon that thaws out and sinks. Every five years they have to
redo the roads up there because they just don't last. They get what they call longitudinal
fissures in the road, big old cracks that go down the middle
of the road. They might be eight inches wide
and ten feet deep. It's where the ground just separates. When the winter gets so cold
and so dry up there, the ground just pops apart. And if you have any underground
facilities there, they pop apart too. So it's just unstable, and it's
bad all the way down, and it can't be overcome just by digging
down a few feet or meters and covering the problem. This year,
we're going to try layering some fabric over that. We think that
if we put some fabric over that, and then we put the gravel down,
and then another layer of fabric, Then there's more gravel, then
we'll put some pavement over it, and that'll last five years.
It all lasts maybe five years. It's defective. The base is defective. It never lasts and you just have
to do it over and over and over again. And, you know, when they
do it, you get a temporary feeling of ease and success. It's, boy,
when they redo a piece of road that's just been up and down
and full of craters and Bad bumps and everything they
they redo it and make it all smooth boy. It just feels good
It kind of gives you a temporarily feeling of ease and success but
eventually that fails and the results always the same and and
They'll repeat it again in five years and they'll use some different
You know, interestingly, the pipeline that goes 750 some miles
across Alaska from the very far north all the way down to Valdez,
everywhere that's above ground, it's on like a bridge. And they
have these posts that they put down in the ground, and they
have these little radiator tubes that go down there, and they
have these radiators up above the ground, and it circulates
ammonia or something that keeps the ground frozen underneath
it. And so it doesn't thaw the ground out. And the pipeline
rides on a little I-beam that goes between those that's, I
don't know, 10 or 15 feet across. And it just sits on these Teflon
pads and they make it kind of crooked because it's 750 some
miles long and it expands and contracts about three miles a
year from winter to summer. so they have to make it kind
of zig-zaggy and so it can, like an accordion, so it can kind
of accommodate that. So it slides back and forth on
these Teflon skids on these things that are built up over the ground
and they keep the ground frozen. Up in Barrow they put all the
houses up on poles, on stilts, so that the cold air can go underneath
them and keep the ground frozen. Otherwise they just They just
sink. But it's expensive to do that.
And so rather than do that, they try the cheap and cheerful method.
But you have to redo it all the area. It would be impossible
to build a highway system like that. It would just not be feasible. But the right way is too hard,
too expensive. And it's the same thing with
salvation. You know, the cost of casting
aside your pride and your self-exaltation and all those things is just
too much for the natural man. You can't do that. That has to
be overcome by the new birth. You know, we claim to give our
heart to Jesus, but the Bible says the heart is deceitful above
all things and desperately wicked. It tells us all this is okay
and it's going to work, just like that crummy road. But the
truth is, as it says in Ezekiel 36, 3626, I'll give you a new heart. I'll take the stony heart out
of your flesh and give you a new heart, a new spirit. I'll take care of you. I'll give
you a heart to know me and to love me." You know, Paul, when
he was on that road to Damascus, he told this story over and over
and over again. I think three times in the Acts
and Galatians. He was always telling people,
hey, you know what's happened to me? I accepted the Lord on
the way to Damascus. I just thought it over and thought,
you know what? I should just accept Jesus. But
he says, you know what? I verily thought within myself
that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus
of Nazareth. And he was on his way there to
wreak havoc and persecute the church, and he'd already had
some cast in prison and had them killed and all those awful things. And you know, he thought he was
on the right road. He thought he was representing
the Jewish religion. I was a Pharisee of Pharisees. I was all those religious things.
And I thought I was doing God a service by persecuting them
that were in that way, is what he said, that were on the king's
highway. You know what he said? He said,
I thought I was doing many things contrary to the name of Jesus.
And then he says, a big light shined on me and knocked me to
the ground. And then the Lord revealed himself
to him. That's what he said in Galatians
1, 15 and 16. He says, When it pleased God
to reveal his Son in me, When it pleased God, who separated
me from my mother's womb and called me by His grace to reveal
His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the heathen immediately,
I conferred not with flesh and blood." All those things he looked
at and said, boy, I did a lot of awful things, but somehow
God was working it for good to them that loved God, who were
called according to His purpose, and it turns out, He was going
to be the author of much of the New Testament. He was going to
be a mighty declarer of the Gospel to the Gentiles. So, that's what it takes to put
us on the King's Highway and take us off the my way of man. Turn me, and I shall be turned,
is what it says in Jeremiah. Turn us again, O God, in Psalm
80. Turn us again, O God. Turn us
again, O God. Turn us again, O God. We must
be turned, or we'll be like those lemmings of the far north with
suicide vests that are on the road to the cliff. Turn by grace, and you Hath he quickened who were dead
in trespasses and sins. So we'll close there. We'll have
a closing hymn and be dismissed. Thank you for your attention.