Now as I was reading, you notice
that the major portion of this passage is a rehearsal of God's
refusal to allow David to build the house unto the Lord and the
promise to raise up David's son to build and finish the house
unto the Lord. It is also a record of Solomon
calling upon God to dwell in this house as God had promised
David because God had respect to David's prayer. That's what
he says down in verse 28. As we have seen from the beginning
of this study in 1 Kings about the building of the temple, these
things speak of Christ, Him being the temple, Him building the
temple, His church, His body, and dwelling in the midst of
His people. This is promised throughout the Old Testament.
Look for a moment, just a moment in Zechariah chapter 6 when it
talks about this king who is also a priest, Zechariah 6, verse 12, it says,
And speak unto him, saying, Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying,
Behold the man whose name is the branch, and he shall grow
up out of his place, and shall build the temple of the Lord.
even he shall build the temple of the Lord, and he shall bear
the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne, and he
shall be a priest upon his throne, and the counsel of peace shall
be between them." That's a promise of the Lord Jesus Christ coming
and building his church. He said to Peter, upon this rock
I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it. So this is a picture of God sending
his son to build and establish his church. And this is also
the account of the old and the new covenants. David was a man
of war. The sword did not leave his hand
as God promised him. Scripture declares that the sword
would not depart from his house. He represents God as he is revealed
in the old covenant. The old covenant. He's a man
of war, a man who kills, a man who destroys, a man who defeats
in battle. He pictures the old covenant.
He pictures the God who weighs men's actions in light of the
exacting edicts of the holy law. By Him, actions are weighed,
Hannah said in his prayer. That covenant was a conditional
covenant. The law written on stone was
breakable but not bendable. And blessing or cursing was conditioned
upon the obedience rendered to that law. And that covenant was
set for failure, designed to fail as part of God's plan and
intent because an imperfect offer of obedience could never be accepted.
For Leviticus 22.21 says if you're going to offer anything to God,
whatever it is, it must be perfect to be accepted. When I call this
old covenant a failure, I was not talking about it didn't work.
Oh, it did work. It worked exactly like it was
supposed to work. It was supposed to fail. That
was the purpose of it. Therefore, in its failure, it
was an absolute success. And having been finished, it
is now put on the shelf and is of no more value other than as
we see Christ pictured in the Old Testament. But under that
covenant, the house, the temple of God could not be built. The
church was not built under the old covenant because God's house
was to be a house of established peace. Of established peace,
a place of forgiveness. And under the law, peace and
forgiveness is not and never will be possible. It simply is
not. Under the law, peace and forgiveness,
mercy and grace is impossible. Paul said to the Roman church,
In Romans 3.19, he said, Whatsoever the law saith, it saith to them
that are under the law, that every mouth might be stopped,
and the whole world become guilty before God. That's all the law
can tell you, is that you're guilty. David cannot build the
house. God says you can't build the
house, you're a man of war. But your son that's going to
come forth from your loins, He'll build your house. His son Solomon,
what does his name mean? Comes from the Hebrew word Shalom. Comes from the Greek translation
of the Hebrew word Salem. Shalom, Salem, Solomon. It means
peace. This house is a house of peace.
This house is named for the man who is the prince of peace. The
one who will build this house wherein the habitation of God
is, is peace. Likewise, it is the house of
forgiveness. I was interested in reading as
I read, I read past what I was going to work on tonight, but
in verse, beginning in verse 30, Solomon says, this house
is so the people So when the people sin against you, they
can call on your name and you will forgive them. That's what
he says. When you're dwelling here in this house, And this
is what it's for. Look at verse 30. Let's read
a few verses of Scripture here. Verse 30 says, And hearken unto
the supplication of thy servant and thy people, when they shall
pray toward this house, and hear thou in heaven in the dwelling
place, and when thou hearest, forgive. Do you think there's
a presupposition there in that passage of Scripture? When thou
hearest, bless. No, of course He did. When thou
hearest, Tell them you love them and have a wonderful plan for
their life? No. When thou hearest, forgive. There's
a presupposition there that they are all sinners. And they need
forgiveness. But you remember back in Deuteronomy
when he said, I'm going to give you that whole land. And then
after he said that, I think it's around chapter 6 or chapter 7,
he says, here's what you're going to do when you get in that land.
You're going to go with other gods. You're going to sin against
me. You're going to do all kinds
of horrible things. And then you're going to call
on me and I'm going to forgive you. This is a house of forgiveness. There
was no forgiveness under that old covenant. You either obeyed
or you disobeyed. If you obeyed, you were blessed.
If you disobeyed, you were punished. But there was nothing to do with
asking for forgiveness. Because the law cannot forgive. That's very important to understand.
Look at verse 33. When thy people Israel shall
be smitten now before an enemy, Because they have sinned against
thee, and shall turn again to thee, and confess thy name, and
pray, and make supplication unto thee in this house. Then hear
thou from heaven, and forgive." Hear thou from heaven, and forgive. Same thing in verse 37, it says,
If there be in this land famine, and there be pestilence, blasting,
mildew, locust, or there be caterpillar, if there be enemy besieged them
in the land or their cities, whatsoever plague, whatsoever
sickness there be, what prayer and supplication so ever be made
by any man, or by all the people of Israel, which shall know every
man the plague of his own heart, and spread forth his hands toward
the house of God. Then hear thou in heaven, Thy dwelling place. And forgive. And forgive. So that's what this house is
built for. This house is a place where a person is forgiven. It's
a house of peace. And that peace we know is established
by the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a house of forgiveness. It's also a house of confession. It's a house of confession. Look
at verse 46. It says, And if they sin against Thee, for there
is no man that sinneth not, And thou be angry with them, and
deliver them unto the enemy, so that they carry them away
captives unto the land of the enemy far and near. Yet they
shall bethink themselves in the land whither they are carried,
and repent, and make supplication unto thee in the land of them
that carried them captives, saying, We have sinned, and have done
perversely. We have committed wickedness.
And so return unto thee with their heart. and with all their
soul in the land of their enemies, which led them away captive,
and pray unto thee toward their land, which thou gavest them
unto the fathers, the city which thou hast chosen, and the house
which I have built for thy name. Then hear thou their prayer and
their supplication in heaven in thy dwelling place, and maintain
their cause, and forgive the people." Forgive the people. This is a house also of confession. If anybody's seeing, then there's
nobody that doesn't. That's a wonderful little parenthetical
phrase there, just in case you wanted it. There might be a possibility
you wouldn't, if there be any that's seeing, and since everyone
does see. call upon the name of the Lord.
That's what this house is for. It's different from that old
covenant, this new covenant. And only the King whose name
is Peace, and that's the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, He
is our Peace. He is the Prince of Peace. Only
He can build the house where God dwells. So David represents
God under that old covenant. Can't no house be built. But
his son, which proceeded from his law, His son, the Lord Jesus
Christ, he can build the house and build the temple, and it's
a place where his children will be forgiven. Our Lord says, Lo,
I come in the volume of the book it is written of me to do thy
will, O God. He taketh away the first, that's
that old covenant, and establishes the second covenant, Hebrews
10, 9 and 10. And this is the theme of this
chapter. That's what this chapter is about. And we're going to
look at it, probably it's going to take us a few weeks to get
through this chapter because there's a whole lot in it. But
tonight I want us just to look at a few things. A few things
that Solomon, in light of what he has said in this chapter,
a few things that he says about God. A few things that Solomon
says about God. Solomon remembers a picture of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And he speaks about God. First
he says in verse 12, they spake Solomon, or then spake Solomon,
the Lord said that he would dwell in the thick darkness. The thick darkness. Now he explains to the elders
and the priests something they've just witnessed. You remember
our last time in this study we looked at The priest bringing
the Ark of the Covenant into the most holy place, the Holy
of Holies. And then God filled this place with smoke. And the
end result was that the ministers, because of the cloud, they couldn't
move. They couldn't speak. They couldn't
do anything. That's found in verse 11. For the glory of the
Lord filled the house. They were dumbfounded. They were
dumbfounded. The holy place has been engulfed
with smoke. indicating that God has manifest
Himself in His Shekinah glory above the mercy seat. Now, what
is the mercy seat? The mercy seat is the only place,
according to Exodus 25, where the Lord will commune or meet
with His people. Now, could anybody just walk
into the Holy of Holies? If we were an Israelite, could
we sneak up under that curtain and get a good look at the Ark
of the Covenant? People who looked at the Ark of the Covenant didn't
fare well. You remember when the Ark of the Covenant was being
brought back or sent back by the Philistines on that fine
ox cart they made, and the men of Beth Shemas lifted up and
looked inside that thing, and God killed 50,000 of them right
away? When it just trembled on the cart, Uzzah stuck out his
hand to balance it, and God slew him. The word there in the original
says that God drew and quartered him, like you do a lamb, right
in front of all the people. How is it that God says, I will
meet with my people above the mercy seat, and there I will
commune with them? Only in that representative high
priest, one day a year, on the day of atonement, was that meeting
and communion made. He met with a representative.
How will God meet with you? You going to crawl into the holy
of holies? He going to meet with you and with the representative
at his right hand who went into the most holy place not made
with hands, offering his own blood and put away our sins by
the sacrifice of himself. The effect was that the place
became silent. when the smoke filled the temple,
became silent, and priests were unable to minister. That doesn't
sound like religion today, is it? They say, well, God showed
up. How do I know? Well, people was running to pews.
They was throwing song books. They was waving their hands in
the air. They was raising their hand. I see that all the time,
raising their hand. Several years ago, a young lady hadn't been
attending here very long and raised her hand while I was preaching.
Raised her hand while I was preaching. After the service, I said, did
you need to go to the bathroom or something? She said, no, I was
rejoicing in the Lord. I said, no, you wasn't. You was
trying to draw attention to yourself. You're saying, look at me. Look
at me. When God shows up, pictured metaphorically by this
smoke filling the temple, people don't get loud and sassy. The
ministers, the priests, whose job was to work 24 hours a day
without sitting down, they could not minister. They were in such
awe and reverence, to such an extent that they were immobilized. What is this picture? It pictures
the building of the temple. What happens when God saves a
sinner? When God saves a sinner. Picture
what happens when God brings a sinner to Christ. No one steps
forth and takes credit. Solomon was shut up too. And
so were the priests. Nobody comes up to claim that
I won this soul for Jesus, do they? People talk all that way.
But not when God shows up. Not when God shows up. All present, when God shows up,
know that God has come and done a thing that has no human fingerprints
upon it. The Lord is in His holy temple.
Let's start shouting and clapping our hands and speaking in foreign
languages. Let's do that. The Lord is in
His holy temple. Let all the earth be silent. Why? Because you don't have anything
to do with what God is doing. Solomon explains the smoke and
darkness by quoting Scripture. Look over at Psalm 18. Psalm
18. Verse 11, He made darkness His
secret place. His pavilion round about Him
were dark waters and thick clouds of the sky. Dark waters, thick
clouds of the sky. Look at Psalm 97. Verse 2, clouds and darkness
are round about him, righteousness and judgment are the habitation
of his throne. Righteousness and judgment are
the habitation of his throne. Makes me think of something Solomon
talked about a little earlier. Solomon requested God to come
into this place. Lord, I built this house for
you. Now come and dwell in the house." How? It's the God who's a God
of a covenant. It talks about Him dwelling in
darkness. It also talks about Him dwelling
in righteousness and judgment. One thing we always need to remember,
and I think every believer does, and whether he realizes it intellectually
all the time or not, when he gets down on his knees to pray,
it's in his mind. It's in his mind. We are privileged
to have the whole account in our hands here, this book. We know how the story ends. We know what God has promised,
He always fulfills. He never breaks a promise. And
all promises are realized and ratified in the hands of a mediator
of that covenant. God deals in a covenant manner. Solomon calls upon the Lord to
remember the covenant made with David. Remember that covenant. All the promises according to
Scripture are yea and amen in the Lord Jesus Christ. Solomon
does not do so because he's doubtful or fearful, but because he knows
that God is glorified in His covenant relationship with His
people. What are you praying when you pray, Thy will be done? Because we all pray that. Thy
will be done. We don't do so because of some
wishful hope, but in assurance, because God is the God of covenant. I will keep my covenant with
my people. He says over and over again in
Scripture, and we see that. That's how God's people pray.
You remember when David wrote Psalm 130, he says, If the Lord
God should mark iniquities, who, O Lord, should stand? That's
God. There is mercy with thee. Covenant
mercies. The sure mercies of David. How
about Isaiah when he said, All my righteousness are filthy rags,
and we do all faith as a leaf, and none calls upon you. But
thou art our Father. That's how we pray. Thou wilt
be done. Why? Because there's a covenant God
we're approaching. A God who deals with a covenant. That covenant
has to do with with the sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus Christ
as the mediator of the covenant, whose covenant is the covenant
in His blood. Solomon speaks of righteousness
and judgment in this dark cloud. In this dark cloud. These clouds,
Scripture says, are the dust of his feet. The smoke and darkness
assures the presence of God and does so in the truth that no
man can see Him and live. No man can see God and live.
But the darkness is not the darkness of ignorance and terror, but the darkness of hiding and
mystery which no man can fully know. As Habakkuk said, the Lord
came from temen upon the mount, and shafts of bright light came
out of his hands, and smoke filled the place. Smoke and trembling. There was the hiding, not the revelation, the hiding
of his power. Did somebody see that? They said,
boy, that's powerful. Somewhere behind all that is
the hiding of His power, where His true power is. Our Lord, when He fills a place
with smoke, it's a picture of Him revealing Himself somewhere
and some way other than His actual being. of the Lord Jesus Christ, what
did the Lord do? He opened up heaven and said, this is my beloved
Son. On the Mount of Transfiguration, He covered the place in smoke
and said, this is my beloved Son. On the cross, He shut down
the lights for three hours when He dealt with Christ because
of our sins. He hid it in that smoke. Remember, that's what it said
in Psalm 18. That's His secret place. His secret place. Secondly, the reason why our
Lord glorifies Himself in abiding in the temple is always the same.
It is to honor His Son in the salvation of the elect. That's
why the church exists in the world. We're not a social organization.
We're not a community club. We're not a country club. The
church is here for one reason, to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ
in the salvation of sinners, to glorify God as He's chosen
and predestinated His elect unto salvation, and to be conformed
to the Lord Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ having finished
the work of salvation. That's why the church is here.
You say, well, don't we help people? Sure you do. We help
people, the people in need, but that's not why we're here. The
church exists for one reason. The temple exists. The body exists
to exalt the head. That's why the body is here.
That's why the body is here. It all has to do with the salvation
of the elect, back in our text. And if you find Solomon talking,
no matter how much he talks, it's not going to take him long
to get back to this place and remind Israel of what God has
done. In verse 21, he says, And I have
set there a place for the ark, Wherein is the covenant of the
Lord? Where is the covenant of the Lord which He made with our
fathers when He brought them out of the land of Egypt? How
did He bring them out of the land of Egypt? By the blood of
the Lamb. When I see the blood, I will
pass over you, is what He said. That's how He brought them out.
Solomon speaks of this twice. If you read the Old Testament,
our Lord says time and time again, remember, Remember that you were
a slave in the house of Egypt. And I brought you out by my mighty
power. I brought you out. You remember
that. You never forget that. Like I said Sunday morning, I
hope one of the two things that God will always keep in my mind
is that I'm a sinner. I'm a sinner. I hope He never
lets me graduate from that position because if I do, I'll never love
and appreciate the grace and mercy that He's shown me. I'm
a sinner. Our Lord says, you don't forget,
this covenant is a covenant of mercy, a covenant of Him bringing
you out of Israel. That covenant, that covenant
that He made there is a picture of the covenant of grace, not
the covenant of words. It's not a picture of the old
covenant, which was the law. It's a picture of the covenant
of grace. They were brought out. What did they do? They didn't
do nothing, they just come out. Did they work to get theirselves
loose? No, they worked to make slaves, to make bricks for their
enemy. That's what they did. What did they do? They came out
rich. Well, just a few days ago, they
didn't even have a straw to make bricks with. How come they were
rich? God gave them everything Egypt had. He said, take it with
you, it's yours. He said, I'm going to give you
a land. You're going to have houses to live in you didn't
build. You're going to have crops to eat you didn't sow. You're
going to have cattle to tend to that you didn't raise. I'm
going to do all that for you. I'm not even going to make it
rain when it's supposed to rain. You're going to have a fine crop.
You didn't do anything of this. And if you understand the grace
of Almighty God, you understand that about your salvation. You
didn't do anything. Everything you got is by grace. And that simply means this. You
could not ever, ever, ever deserve it or merit it. It's a declaration
that you are a sinner without hope and without help in this
world and you cannot better your condition one iota. That's what
grace teaches us. That's why we talk about sovereign
grace because it is sovereign grace. It's God's absolute all-powerful
grace, overcoming grace, omnipotent grace. And you're going to be
reminded. And so he reminds them once again
here as he talks about this temple, speaking of the church of the
living God that Solomon built, the Prince of Peace, the King
of Peace built. Thirdly, where God manifests
Himself is based on His Word, based on His Word, the singular
revelation of His person. I know people talk about God
told me this and God told me that. They lied to you. God didn't
tell them nothing. God spoke. Wrote the Old Testament. Then it was 400 years without
saying a word. 400 years. Now He spoke. He's finished this
book. It's done. You're not speaking now. He has
spoken. So when somebody says, God told
me, say, Scripture please. Open to Scriptures, and we'll
see if God said anything to you. We'll see. God speaks through
His Word. Look at verse 26. And now, O
God of Israel, let Thy Word, I pray Thee, be verified. Verified,
which thou spakest unto thy servant David my father. Let thy word
be verified. Old Scott Richard used to say
that we ought to preach in a manner that God Himself would be willing
to sign His name to what we have said. That's quite a statement,
isn't it? You think about that. He said,
I want to preach in a way that God, if God came down from heaven,
He had signed his name to what I said. Now, was he bragging
because he was a great preacher? He said, no. He said, I want
to say right things about God. I want to say right things about
God. It's a bold statement, but it
can only be made if we preach the Gospel. You preach the Gospel,
that's where God's going to show up and nowhere else. God is worshipped
in spirit and in truth. And where the Gospel is not preached,
the smoke of God's presence above the mercy seat, which is propitiation,
will never fill the temple. It never will. His Word. In effect, we are, when we preach
the Gospel, reporting what God has done. We don't make promises that God
doesn't make. We repeat the ones that He makes,
and we don't promise it ourselves. We say God promised that. And
it's up to Him who made the covenant to see the covenant through.
It's not up to us. We report what God has done.
And when we do that, we are calling on God to let His Word be verified. Preachers and religion can come
up with a whole lot of stunts and a whole lot of things to
get people to do things. But I trust the Gospel. I do. When the Gospel is preached,
it will be a savor of life unto some and a savor of death unto
some, and those who preach it are always victorious. That's
a guarantee from God. Why am I going to go off on some
stupid tangent and try to come up with a way to fill a pew?
Or to fill up a church? Or to build a church? Why would
I do that? The Gospel. When we preach the Gospel, we
tell what God has done and we're saying, God, come down and verify.
Verify Your Word. Verify it. Isaiah chapter 45. Verse 22 says, the Lord says,
Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth. For I am a just God. For I am
God, and there is none beside Me. I have sworn by Myself. Now, if God has sworn it, He's
verified it. The Word is going out of my mouth
in righteousness. God says, I speak right things.
I don't hide what I say in a corner. He said, and it's not going to
return. Isaiah 55, 11 says, it's not going to return unto Him
void. And here's what I've sworn to. This is going to happen.
If you've come to know Christ, this has happened to you. That
unto me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall swear. He was obedient even to the death
of the cross, wherefore God is highly exalted to Him, giving
Him a name above every name, that every knee should bow and every
tongue confess that He is Jesus and He is Lord, in the glory
of the Father. Every knee is going to bow. Every tongue is
going to confess. Surely shall one say in the Lord,
have I righteousness? Yeah, one is going to say that.
Everyone whom God saves is going to say that. Christ is my righteousness. and my strength. And even to
Him shall men come." Well, not unless we invent an invitation
system or get people to walk down an aisle or do something
to cajole or conjure up some way to get people to do something.
No. God said, I've sworn people are going to come to Him. The
promise to Judah or of Judah in Genesis 49, to Him shall the
gathering of the people be. Going to be. You reckon that's
going to happen? Of course, God has sworn it.
And they that are incensed against Him, those who despise Him, they're
going to be shamed or brought to shame. And the Lord shall
all the seed of Israel be justified. Every one of them is going to
be justified. And He's not talking about natural
Israel. He's talking about true Israel.
He's talking about the temple of the living God. He's talking
about the church of the living God. All Israel shall be justified
and they're going to glory. What are they going to glory
in? They're going to glory in the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul said,
I'm not ashamed of the Gospel. For it is the power of God unto
salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, then also to
the Greek. For therein, where? There, therein, in the gospel,
is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. For it is
written, the just shall live by faith. Paul wrote to the Corinthian
church, after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew
not God. sends His preachers to preach
Christ. And Christ is the power and the wisdom of God. We preach
Christ. We preach Christ. Finally, the
glory of God. What is the glory of God? Well,
we know the glory of God is the salvation of His elect by the
perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. That's what glorifies
Him. But here Solomon speaks of his
greatness. We used to say a little prayer
when we were kids, God is great, God is good. Let us thank Him
for our food. That's what we said at the table.
We said that saving grace. We said God is great. Now greatness
is attributed to God in some of the strangest ways. One way
in the book of Job it says, God is great, He maketh it to rain. Yeah. Try going without it. God is great. God is great. Back in our text, in verse 27,
He says, But will God indeed dwell on the earth? I built Him a house. We brought
the ark into the holy place. He's filled the place with smoke
and His Shekinah glory has manifested itself. But will God dwell in
a house? on the earth. Behold, the heaven
and heaven of heavens cannot contain Him. How much less this
house that I have built. How much less. Will God dwell
on earth? The thought of Him being in a
place, when you think about it, God being someplace. When all
things are before Him, and in Him, and through Him, and created
by Him, for Him, that just seems ridiculous that God could be
in a place. Solomon realizes this, but he
also knows that God always keeps His promise. He said, but you
had respect for your servant's prayer. God's too great to dwell in our
house. Jeremiah 23 says that heavens can't contain Him. Isaiah
66, where is the house that you will build me? All this stuff
I made, you're just making stuff out of the stuff I made. But
unto this man will I look, him of a contrite spirit, and tremble
at my word. Who do you reckon he's talking
about? You? Me? No. The one man that truly had a
contrite heart and a contrite spirit and was in awe and reverence
of his Father's Word was the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the
man to whom God looks. To this man will I look." When
Stephen preached his sermon for which he was stoned to death,
he told them, you fellows built a temple, Solomon built a temple,
but God don't dwell in houses. God don't dwell in houses. Paul
said to those on Mars Hill, I'm going to tell you about the unknown
God. And here's what I'm going to tell you, He don't dwell.
in houses made with hands. You just don't. In Him, in Him
we live and move and have our being. So, here we have somewhat
of a dilemma. He will not dwell, and yet He
will dwell. The question is this in the title
of my message. Where does God dwell? God dwells in His temple, in the body of His Son. in the
person of His Son. In Ephesians 2, it says, you're
built it up. You're strangers and pilgrims.
You're strangers and pilgrims no more. You're built it up into
a holy temple, a habitation of God. God dwells in His temple. In Colossians chapter 2, it speaks
of God dwelling in Christ. In Him dwelleth the fullness
of the Godhead bodily and you are complete in Him. In 1 Corinthians
4, verse 6, it says, the glory of God is revealed in the face
of the Lord Jesus Christ. In John 14, 8 and 9, Philip says,
show us the Father. He says, have I been so long
with you? If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. You've
seen the Father. Look at Psalm 132 and I'll quit. Verse 13 says, For the Lord hath
chosen Zion, that's the church, he hath desired it for his habitation. And he says, the Lord, this is
my rest forever, here will I dwell, for I have desired it. Whatever
the Lord wants, that's what he does. Whatever the Lord wants. It is indwelled by the Spirit
of God. It is the habitation of God.
It is the Lord Jesus Christ. So if you're going to know God,
you're going to know Christ. And that's the only God we know. The only God we know is Jesus
Christ. Because in Him dwelleth God the
Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Father, bless
this to our understanding. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.