Tonight, we consider what we as believers confess as the Belgic Confession lays it out in Articles 8 and 9, dealing with that mystery that we call the Trinity. In connection with that, I would ask that you turn with me to John chapter 14 as we read that chapter together. We read that for background reading and in connection with Belgic Confession, Articles 8 and 9, we consider the very last verse of 2 Corinthians 13. 2 Corinthians 13, verse 14, which is very familiar to you. It's generally the benediction blessing that I use in the evening service. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. We read together from John 14, also the Belgic Confession. And if you would open that and we'll refer back to that throughout the sermon, pages 72 and 73 in the back of the Psalter hymnal. John chapter 14, as we hear the Word of God. Our Lord says, Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God. Trust also in Me. In My Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. but if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with Me, that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going. Thomas said to Him, Lord, we don't know where You are going, so how can we know the way? Jesus answered, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you really knew Me, you would know My Father as well. From now on, you do know Him and have seen Him. Philip said, Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us. Jesus answered, don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father? Don't you believe that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father living in me who is doing His work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me. Or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in Me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in My name so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask Me for anything in My name and I will do it. If you love Me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept Him because it neither sees Him nor knows Him, but you know Him, for He lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see Me anymore, but you will see Me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day, you will realize that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you. Whoever has My commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves Me. He who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I too will love him and show Myself to him. Then Judas, not Judas Iscariot, said, But Lord, why do You intend to show Yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus replied, If anyone loves Me, he will obey My teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love Me will not obey My teaching. These words you hear are not my own. They belong to the Father who sent me. All this I have spoken while still with you, but the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. You heard me say, I am going away and I am coming back to you. If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen, you will believe. I will not speak with you much longer, for the Prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me, but the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me. Come now, let us leave. Beloved in the Lord, Article 7 of the Belgic Confession began, We believe that those holy Scriptures fully contain the will of God, and that whatsoever man ought to believe unto salvation is sufficiently taught therein. And a part of that which is sufficiently taught and that we are to believe unto salvation includes the truth about God Himself. In Article 1, the believer's confession states the truth that there is only one God and it includes there a sampling of His attributes, that He is eternal, incomprehensible, invisible, immutable, infinite, almighty, perfectly wise, just, good, and the overflowing fountain of all good. You see, that truth of the Christian faith has been important in every age since the church, since true believers have always been surrounded by those who believe in many gods, or we might say many kinds or types of gods. A broad spectrum of belief with regard to who God is and what God is like. Even Eve, you know, was tempted to think that she and Adam could be like God. But now, Articles 8 and 9 present the believer's confession of further revelation of God about himself, and that is that he is the Great One in three. The doctrine of the Trinity, the Triune God, is that there is one God who is three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And as the Athanasian Creed says, we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity. Now boys and girls, if that's hard for you to understand, please don't become discouraged because it's hard for those of us who are adults to understand. We just can't make it add up. We can't reason it. And we don't like it, you see, when we can't figure something out and make it fit into a nice mold of some sort. The doctrine of the Trinity is indeed a mystery. It's difficult to understand. It's difficult to preach about. It's not completely clear and understandable for us and it has caused many people to stumble. But we must understand, you see, that just because we can't make total sense out of it, just because we can't completely understand how this is possible and how the three persons can be one God and that each of the three persons is fully and completely God, just because we can't make it add up does not mean that it's not true. We must believe and confess that God is triune because that is how He reveals Himself in His Word. And if we are going to know anything about God, we can only know what comes from Him. And since God Himself reveals in His Word that He is triune, that means then that this doctrine is not a matter of blind faith. But it's a matter of enlightened faith. Enlightened by His Word, by the illumination of the Holy Spirit. And God has revealed Himself little by little, bit by bit, and it's gotten more clear throughout the inscripturated Old Testament and New Testament. And the author of the Belgian Confession has done a good job of taking that doctrine which is spread throughout the Bible and putting it into these two confessional statements. I'm going to ask you to follow along as I read Article 8 and then just two of the paragraphs from Article 9, since that's quite lengthy. Article 8, the heading, God is one in essence, yet distinguished in three persons. According to this truth and this Word of God, we believe in one only God, who is the one single essence in which are three persons really, truly, and eternally distinct according to their incommunicable properties, namely the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Father is the cause, origin, and beginning of all things, visible and invisible. The Son is the word, wisdom, and image of the Father. The Holy Spirit is the eternal power and might proceeding from the Father and the Son. Nevertheless, God is not by this distinction divided into three since the Holy Scriptures teach us that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have each his personality distinguished by their properties, but in such wise that these three persons are but one only God. Hence, then, it is evident that the Father is not the Son, nor the Son the Father, and likewise the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son. Nevertheless, these persons thus distinguished are not divided nor intermixed, for the Father has not assumed the flesh, nor has the Holy Spirit, but the Son only. The Father has never been without His Son or without His Holy Spirit, for they are all three co-eternal and co-essential. There is neither first nor last, for they are all three, one, in truth, in power, in goodness, and in mercy. And then Article 9 goes on to give scripture proofs of the previous article on the Trinity of Persons in One God. And just the first two full paragraphs in the second column, beginning with, In All These Places. In all these places, we are fully taught that there are three persons in one only divine essence. And although this doctrine far surpasses all human understanding, nevertheless, we now believe it by means of the Word of God, but expect hereafter to enjoy the perfect knowledge and benefit thereof in heaven. Moreover, we must observe the particular offices and operations of these three persons towards us. The Father is called our Creator by His power. The Son is our Savior and Redeemer by His blood. The Holy Spirit is our sanctifier by His dwelling in our hearts. Having read that, beloved, let's first then consider what the doctrine of the Triune God itself is all about. We know that God's Word has always stayed the same, which means that God has never changed what He has said, not even about Himself. Yet we might say that the doctrine of the triune God has been harvested from Scripture as the church was forced to study this truth in the midst of heresy. Now, our three Reformed confessions, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, and the Canons of Dort are the fruit of the Reformation of the 16th century. But the three creeds of Christendom, of Christianity, of the true church, The Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed are much older and are much more specific and we might say are the fruit of the church's careful study by different ecumenical councils in the first centuries of the New Testament church and this because of heretical attack. Article 9 includes some of these in the last paragraph. This doctrine of the Holy Trinity has always been affirmed and maintained by the true church since the time of the apostles to this very day against the Jews, Mohammedans, and some false Christians and heretics as Marcion, Manus, Proxius, Sibelius, Samosetanus, Arius, and such like who have been justly condemned by the Orthodox fathers. And our three creeds are what we call Trinitarian, as we know, which confess the truth of God because if you don't confess the truth of God, there is no hope. even as is made clear in the Athanasian Creed. Whoever wants to be saved must believe the triune God. Now, of course, we could say something about each one of these names and these false teachings listed in Article 9, but there are three main difficulties that we find. The errors pretty much fall into one of three categories. Of all the errors out there, you can pretty much put them into one of three categories. First of all, Unitarianism, which denies the Trinity by saying that the Son and the Holy Spirit are not divine. They're not God. And then there's modalism, also known as Sibelianism, after Sibelius, who is, we might say, the father of that heretical teaching. Modalism works, you see, to preserve the unity of the one God and therefore denies the distinction of the three persons. And instead, God only manifests Himself throughout history in three forms or three modes, kind of like masks as well. God wears the mask of the Father at one point, the mask of the Son at another point, the mask of the Holy Spirit at yet another point. Or as Sibelius said in essence, that just as the same man can be a husband, a doctor, and a taxpayer, in the same way the one God can act at one time as Father and Creator, at another as Son and Redeemer, and at still another as Spirit and Sanctifier. And then there is tritheism, which denies the unity of the one God in order then to preserve the deity of the individual persons, and the result then is having three gods, or we might also say polytheism. But about anything you can imagine is out there or has been out there with regard to who or what God is. Now, if you study Article 8 closely, you will see that it refutes each of these three particular categories. And then we can talk specifically about a man named Arius, who lived from around 250 to 336. And he was the father of the heresy called Arianism. He was a preacher who ministered in Alexandria, Egypt, and he taught that Jesus Christ, among that which he taught, He taught that Jesus Christ was not truly God, but instead He was the first and the most exalted of all of God's creatures. He was a creature created by God. The first and most exalted. And Arius' followers said of Christ, they said there was a time when He was not. In other words, there was a time when He did not exist. And we find this heresy believed and taught today by the Mormons. And the Jehovah's Witnesses. But you see, beloved, you cannot believe this and be saved. 1 John 2, verse 22 says, Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the Antichrist. He denies the Father and the Son. And as the article says, the Father has never been without His Son or without His Spirit. Yet in God's providence, it was the heresy of Arius, probably more than any of the others, that forced the church to define the clear teaching of the Trinity as revealed in God's Word. And in response to the followers of Arius, the church said of Christ, there was not when He was not. In other words, there was not a time when He did not exist. He always has existed. The council of Nicaea in 325 declared the truth of Scripture that Jesus is God and that He, the Son, was of one substance with the Father. Same being, same essence. And the fruit of the councils of Nicaea in 325 and of Constantinople in 381 is that beautiful Nicene Creed. Not in the exact form that we have it today, but that's the fruit of those two councils. And of course, congregation, there's so much that we could say about the Christological and other Trinitarian heresies throughout the history of the church which attacked the doctrine of the Trinity. We could go on and on about church history in that way. And we can all read about these in the church history books. And we can also see how these heresies manifest themselves still today under different names because the Scripture says, in truth, there is nothing new under the sun. But what is the teaching of Scripture which the true church and true believers confess? First of all, there is only one simple and spiritual being which we call God, as Article 1 says. And again, Article 8 says, we believe in one only God who is the one single essence. He is one being or one essence. In Deuteronomy 6, verse 4, Moses says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. The Israelites, God's people in the Old Testament, in the midst of a polytheistic world, a many gods or many types of God world, including the 400 years of slavery in Egypt, they needed to understand that that polytheistic influence all around them was not right. It was not true, but false. The truth is there is only one God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In other places in the Old Testament, God spoke of Himself as one. For example, in a number of places in Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 43, chapter 44, 45, 46. In the New Testament, Paul speaks of the truth of one God in 1 Corinthians 8, as well as in Ephesians 4, verse 6. And James 2, verse 19 says, You believe that there is one God, good. Even the demons believe that and shudder. Beloved, the Bible teaches that there is only one God. Yet, the Bible also teaches that this one God is three. Not three gods. And He's not divided up into three so that the Father is one-third God and the Son is one-third God and the Holy Spirit is one-third God. But within the life or being or essence of the one true God are three distinct persons who are fully, completely, and truly God. And each possesses the fullness and the completeness of all of the attributes of God. In other words, each person of the Godhead is eternal, incomprehensible, and so forth. as Article 1 says, and as we confess also in the Athanasian Creed. And although the New Testament is more clear about the existence of the three persons of the divine Godhead, the confession accurately points out that there are pictures of the plurality of the threeness within the Godhead already in the Old Testament. Even though we might say that they are shadowy pictures. Article 9 talks about the us and the our passages of Genesis 1 and 3, a little bit down in that second paragraph, first column. From this saying, let us make man in our image, it appears that there are more persons than one in the Godhead. And when he says, God created, he signifies the unity. It is true, he does not say how many persons there are. Some other Old Testament examples include again from Genesis 1 where we read that God makes the heavens and the earth pointing to the Father and the Spirit of God hovers over creation and God by His Word, and John makes it clear in John chapter 1 that the Word became flesh pointing to Christ. God by His Word speaks everything into existence. Psalm 33 verse 6 says it is by the Word, again pointing to the Son, and the breath pointing to the Spirit, the breath of the Lord that the heavens are made. In Isaiah 61, the voice of the servant of the Lord, pointing to the Messiah, speaks of the Spirit of the Lord being upon Him. And we know that our Lord Jesus Christ applied that word to Himself in the Gospels. And then in Isaiah 63, we read that it was the Lord, the angel of His presence, and the Holy Spirit that redeemed Israel from Egypt. But then what is that which is shadowy in the Old Testament, we might say is made more clear in the New Testament. And one of the clearest passages is found in the Gospel accounts of Christ's baptism. When Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, the voice of the Father was heard, the Son was physically seen in the Jordan, and the Holy Spirit was seen descending as a dove. As well, when Jesus instituted baptism in Matthew 28, He said it was to be done in the name singular of the plural Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. John 14, a beautiful chapter in its own right, but if you notice, it speaks much about the three persons. And in John 14, Jesus speaks of His Father, and He equates Himself to His Father. I and My Father are one. He who has seen Me has seen the Father. And He also there speaks of the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, and says, He, not it, but He, pointing to the personhood of the Holy Spirit, would come in Jesus' name and as a divine person of the Godhead would teach them all things and remind them of everything Jesus had said to them. You see, beloved, we know that God constantly and continually speaks of Himself in Scripture in the context of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I didn't realize how many times until you put it all together. We find that in the opening greetings and in the closing benedictions of many, The epistles, again, such as 2 Corinthians 13, 14. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. The love of God. And the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. But then also, John 15, verse 26. When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth who goes out from the Father, He will testify about me. All three are included. Galatians 4, verse 6. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out Abba, Father. All three again. We consider together in our series on 1 Peter, we considered 1 Peter 1 verse 2 a couple of weeks ago. Peter says to God's elect, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through the sanctifying work of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by His blood. Evidence of the triune God. Then if you want a few more to jot down in your notes, 1 John 4, verses 13 and 14. Jude, verses 20 and 21. Ephesians 3, verses 14 to 16. You see, these passages are simply a sampling of the Scripture text that speak of the great three who are one, the great one in three. And each is really and truly and completely God. One is not more God than the others. Again, the son Jesus made himself equal with God when he said, I and my Father are one. And he also said, trust in God. And then he adds, trust also in me. As if to say, as he was, I too am God. In Acts 5, we read about Ananias and Sapphira. And Peter says they lied to the Holy Spirit. And then he adds, you have not lied to men, but to God. In other words, Peter was saying that the Holy Spirit is God. The proof is there that all three are God. But these three persons who are one God, one essence, one being, are also distinct and are to be distinguished from each other, as Article 8 says, according to their incommunicable properties. These are properties that are not communicated among them, properties that are not shared. The Confession says, The Father is the cause, origin. It's in Article 8 about halfway down that first column. The Father is the cause, origin, and beginning of all things, visible and invisible. The Son is the word, wisdom, and image of the Father. The Holy Spirit is the eternal power and might proceeding from the Father and the Son. Nevertheless, God is not by this distinction divided into three, since the Holy Scriptures teach us that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have each His personality distinguished by their properties, but in such wise that these three persons are but one only God. You see, they are distinct with regard to their work within the Godhead. Their work on your behalf and my behalf. Peter also again points to that distinction in the verse we quoted. God's people are elect or chosen, again, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. Sanctification is the work of the Spirit. They are sprinkled by the blood of Jesus Christ for obedience. Clearly, Scripture clearly teaches that the Father is the cause and the origin and the beginning of all things. Many passages, again, we could quote to support that, but let me summarize by saying that He is described as the eternal Father of His Son. As well, He is the Father of all things in the creative sense. And He is the Father of His chosen people in the redemptive sense. Jesus Christ, the Son, is the Word in that He fully and savingly reveals the Father. He is the wisdom in that He is the personal manifestation of God in all of His works. The wisdom of God is seen in the Son. He is the image of the Father in that He is the very likeness of the essence and glory of the Father so that He can say, You have seen me, you have seen the Father. And then as the eternal power and might, the Holy Spirit's task is to bring to completion all the plans and purposes of the triune God. And he does this for believers by working personally in each child of God. Dr. P.Y. DeYoung says in his commentary on the Belcher Confession called The Church's Witness to the World, he says, The Lord our God is one God. All three persons are equally divine. All possess the fullness of the divine being and attributes. None is dependent upon either of the other persons, although none ever exists apart from the others. And again, the last paragraph of Article 8, Hence then it is evident that the Father is not the Son, nor the Son the Father, and likewise the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son. Nevertheless, these persons thus distinguished Beloved, that in a nutshell is the doctrine, the teaching of the triune God, but then notice also the comfort of the triune God. And I believe that the benediction that we find in 2 Corinthians 13, verse 14, summarizes the teaching of Scripture with regard to this comfort. Again, as Paul says, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Because He is one. He has one goal, which is His glory through the salvation of His people. And our comfort, beloved, is that each person of the Godhead works through their incommunicable properties toward the completion and the fulfillment of that one goal. Article 9 says again, second to last paragraph, Moreover, we must observe the particular offices and operations of these three persons towards us. The Father is called our Creator by His power. The Son is our Savior and Redeemer by His blood. The Holy Spirit is our sanctifier by His dwelling. in our hearts. And you may recall that echoes Heidelberg Catechism, Lord's Day 8, which speaks of the division of the articles of the Apostles' Creed into three parts it says, God the Father and our creation, God the Son and our deliverance, God the Holy Spirit and our sanctification. You see, there is one will of God for our salvation. There is one way of salvation. There is one means of salvation all accomplished by the one triune God. And Paul reflects that in his Trinitarian blessing with the words grace, love, and fellowship. God the Father in His great love for you and me as the first person of the Trinity has the distinct role in the history of redemption of being our Creator by His power. And not only has God created us physically, But He has elected us to that spiritual rebirth, being born again for the sake of the accomplishment, the accomplished work of His Son, applied then to us by His Holy Spirit. And the Father's love is the source of grace. God the Son has the distinct role in the history of redemption of being our gracious Savior and Redeemer by His blood. He took our place, the place that we deserved and without any merit in ourselves, He paid for all of our sins. He has freely given to us His righteousness to stand not guilty before the Holy God. And then in the history of redemption, this is true for you and me as believers because of the distinct role of the Holy Spirit who as our sanctifier then makes us, we might say, makes us really to match with that verdict that God gives of not guilty. He works to cleanse us, to make us righteous, and we will be perfectly holy and righteous one day in glory. But also, it's His role to fellowship with us and make us partakers of Christ through faith. It's only by the power and the influence of the Holy Spirit that we come to possess Christ and all of His benefits. The Holy Spirit who comes to live in and work in our hearts is somewhat, we might say, we might describe Him as somewhat of the silent partner in the Godhead in that He doesn't come to exalt Himself. He doesn't come to tell us His own thing. But He comes, you see, as Jesus says, to take of what is Christ's and reveal it to us. To lead us into all truth about Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit gives the gifts by which the church lives and functions. And He applies the love of God and the grace of Christ to our lives. He bears witness to our hearts that we are children of God and He strengthens us through the preaching of the Holy Gospel and through partaking, participating of the Holy Sacraments. He is the one who joins believers to the body of Christ and seals unto us the promise of full redemption and of that eternal inheritance. Beloved, the work of the triune God is made very real to us by faith because our God is a personal God. He is not some far-off being or impersonal force that has nothing to do with His creation, but He has everything to do with it. Everything, you see, is going according to His sovereign plan. We are a part of it. We know it by faith. And we know what part we play in it. As one commentator says with regard to Paul's benediction in speaking of the grace of Christ, Paul takes us back to Bethlehem, where he became poor for us. And the love of God takes us to Calvary, where God the Father gave His Son. And the communion or fellowship of the Holy Spirit takes us to Pentecost, where the Spirit baptized all believers into the body of Christ. Beloved, do you enjoy the believer's comfort of the triune God? Are you comforted by the truth that God the Father made you, not for eternal death, but for eternal life, and has given you to the Son He loves? And are you comforted that God the Son became flesh and did for you and me that which needed to be done, but we could not do? He shed His blood for you to redeem you from Satan, sin, and shame and has made you His own possession by adoption into the family of God. And are you comforted that God the Holy Spirit has made His home in your heart? That He leads you into all truth of Jesus Christ and that He makes you humbly, makes you able to humbly and confidently confess that you are not your own but belong body and soul and life and in death to your faithful Savior, Jesus Christ? Are you comforted that God has entered into a personal relationship with you that He guides and protects that relationship so that you will never, ever be out of His care? But we must also be challenged and maybe even admonished as Paul's original audience would have been. We know from Paul's first letter to the church in Corinth that he had to rebuke them a number of times for their doctrine and for their life. There was division among them. They abused the sacraments. And they struggled with the immoral society around them. We might say that Paul's benediction blessing to them and to us teaches that the grace of Jesus Christ condemns our self-centeredness, Our selfishness, that grace, that unmerited favor condemns our selfishness and is a source and is an example of self-denial. The love of God demonstrated by Christ condemns jealousy and taking sides and provides an antidote for jealousy and for unholy competition. And the fellowship of the Holy Spirit condemns and shows how ridiculous are petty quarrels and arguments and give spiritual power for living together in love. The great one in three. A mystery? With regard to how it's possible? Yes. But with regard to the fact that it's true? No. God says it clearly. There are no good earthly analogies to describe the Trinity. Many have tried, and we've all heard them, but if you take them one by one and if you examine them closely, any earthly analogy, whether it's the water analogy, steam, solid, liquid, or the egg analogy, the yolk, the white, the shell, you take any analogy that you've ever heard and examine it very closely, you will see that each one more accurately describes one of the heresies that we mentioned. Because each one fails to truly explain how one God is revealed in three persons. It cannot be done by you and me. And therefore, let's leave the analogies behind and stick to what God has said. This great one in three has revealed himself in his word as the one and only one who rescues us and redeems us from sin. The doctrine of the triune God is the foundation, beloved, of our salvation and of our lives of gratitude. And the three persons of the Blessed Trinity act in unity to save us from our sins. And we can rejoice in this God alone as we look forward to eternal fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit one day in that new Jerusalem. Amen. Shall we pray? Father, we pray that that gift of faith that You've given to us might be used by each one of us in such a way that we would believe what You have said even if we cannot and do not understand it and cannot make it fit with our reasoning and our thinking. Father, help us to understand that You are wise. wiser than all things. And in your wisdom you created this world and us. That we are not to challenge your wisdom, O Lord, but to take you at your word. We thank you indeed, Heavenly Father, our God, that you have revealed yourself as the great one in three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We exalt you, great one in three. And may our worship of you ever be upon our lips. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray these things. Amen.