Hosea 13 reveals that Israel's self-destruction stemmed from their idolatry and turning away from God, despite His faithfulness and provision. The sermon traces Israel's history from their deliverance from Egypt and guidance in the wilderness to their exaltation in prosperity, which led to forgetting God and embracing idols. The message emphasizes that turning to idols or man-made systems is like a morning cloud or chaff, ultimately leading to destruction, and contrasts this with the enduring truth of God's word and His offer of salvation through Jesus Christ. The sermon concludes by urging listeners to heed God's warnings of judgment and to embrace His offer of redemption, lest they be left behind.
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I shall return once more to the small prophecy of Hosea, the Book of Hosea, chapter thirteen. Hosea chapter thirteen. For those of you that have the old scope of the Bible, page nine hundred and twenty-eight. When Ephraim spake trembling, he exalted himself in Israel, but when he offended in Baal, he died. And now they sin more and more, and have made them molten images of their silver and idols according to their own understanding, all of it the work of the craftsmen.
They say of them, Let the men that sacrifice kiss the cow. Therefore they should be as a morning cloud, and as the early Jew that passes away, as the chaff that is driven with the whirlwind out of the floor. and as the smoke out of the chimney. Yet I am the Lord thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no God but me, for there is no Savior beside me. I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought. According to their pasture so were they filled. They were filled, and their heart was exalted.
Therefore have they forgotten me? Therefore I will be unto them as a lion, as a leopard by the way, when I observe them, I will meet them as a bear that is bereaved of her wealth, and I will rend the call of their heart, and there will I deliver them like a lion. The wild beast shall tear them. O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thine help. I will be thy king. Where is any other? And thy judges of whom thou said, Give me a king and princes. I gave thee a king in mine anger, and took him away in my wrath.
The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up. His sin is hid. The sorrows of a travailing woman shall come upon him. He is an unwise son, for he should not stay long in the place of the breaking forth of children. I will ransom them from the power of the grave. I will redeem them from death. O death, I will be thy plagues. O grave, I will be thy destruction. Repentance shall be hid from thine eyes. Though he be fruitful among his brethren, an east wind shall come, the wind of the Lord shall come up from the wilderness, and his spring shall become dry, and his fountain shall be dried up.
He shall sprawl the treasure of all pleasant vessels. Semario shall become desolate, for she hath rebelled against her God. They shall fall by the sword. Their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up. Thank God bless the reading of his word. Shall we seek his face again? Blessed God, we thank thee for this Sunday evening and for the great privilege of meeting together in this warm, comfortable place. which thou hast provided for us. We thank thee, Lord, for the goodly number, despite the cold weather that are out tonight.
We thank thee for giving us all health and strength to be here. We thank thee for giving us sight and hearing, with some of us, Lord, is getting somewhat impaired, but we thank thee that we have thy word and we can read it and hear it, and we ask thee, Lord, that thou bless us long this way. Be with us then tonight, Lord. Take thy precious word. May the Holy Spirit reveal it to our hearts, and would thou do something in each of these hearts of ours for thy glory? We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen. Well, it seems that everything is running out on us. The year is running out.
There's not many Sundays. They're running out. And our book of wholesale is running out. It all seems to fit in together. I don't know how what you've thought about these readings and studies in Hosea, but I greatly enjoyed them myself. It was more or less a closed book to me. I've read it many times, but never gone into it in much detail. And it's been a great joy to pick up this obscure prophet, Hosea. We know so little about the minor prophets, and yet it seems to me that these are the books that the early church just had to feed on. They had no New Testament, the early church. And when they refer to the Word of God, the Apostle Paul and Peter and so on, they're referring to these Old Testament scriptures.
And it's so wonderful to dig into them and see the wonderful things and the wonderful pictures God has given us in these books. Osama was a prophet to Israel. Now, we've often said through these talks, and this is the thirteen talk we've had on this book, we've often said that After the death of Solomon, the children of Israel were divided into two companies. Judah and Benjamin, the two southern tribes, remained there, but the ten northern tribes broke away.
The two southern ones were called Judah. The ten northern tribes were called Israel. And Hosea was a prophet to Israel. He prophesied for sixty years. And he lived at the very end of Israel's history. Because the king of Assyria came and carried Israel away into captivity. And we've heard nothing of them since. They went into oblivion as far as we know. God knows where they are, and in God's time he's going to bring them back.
But they went into captivity, into dispersion. Many years later, Judah, the southern kingdom, was also captured by King Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonish king. They were carried into captivity in Babylon, and after seventy years, some of them got back. They have never had a king since, and they will never have a king until the king of kings and lord of lords. their Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, comes back to reign. Hosea lived at the very end of this period in Israel's history. He lived just before the Day of Judgment.
And that's why we decided to talk about this book, because I feel that we live just before the Day of Judgment. And I feel that our message today should be a message of coming judgment. Things cannot go on much longer as they are. It seems amazing that our great cities, Washington, D.C., that beautiful city, it seems amazing that you can't walk on the streets of Washington at night now for fear of being mugged or clubbed or your throat cut or something else. All our big cities today are just terror places.
And things are getting worse and worse and worse. And we're living at the very end, I believe, like Hosea, the end of an age. I think we're at the end of the church's history upon the earth, and the Lord Jesus is coming back. And the church is going to be called up to meet the Lord in the air, and then judgment is going to come. And this is the judgment I think we've got to warn people to flee from the wrath to come. That's what Jose was telling them. Judgment must come if you don't turn to God. And we can apply it today individually to the people around us who are out of Christ. Judgment is going to fall upon them if they're left behind when the church is called away.
It's a great question for you and for me tonight. And as I look around here, I believe we've all answered this question. The great question is, when the Lord Jesus comes back, Am I amongst those who are born again that will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, or will I be left behind for judgment? If we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, if we are born again, if our sins are forgiven, if we have eternal life, then we are in the church, and the Lord is coming back for his church. If there's someone here tonight, and these are solemn words, if there's someone here tonight that has never yet accepted the Lord Jesus, although you might be religious, and although you might have lived a so-called Christian life for many years, if you are not born again and truly saved, there cannot be any affinity or any response.
When the Lord comes back, you'll be left behind for this world's judgment. That's how serious it is, as I understand the Scripture. And Isaiah was trying to get this message over, and he gives us these fourteen chapters. And we've looked at twelve of them already. There's much repetition. The story is told over and over again, and it must be so, because it's the same story that God must punish sin. It's the same story that we must repent and turn to him. And sixty years he told his story. And now he gets to the end. And he keeps on going back to the early days of Israel's history. Remember the chapter we were reading two or three weeks ago when he said, when Israel was a child, I loved him and called him out of Egypt.
And how like a parent takes a little baby by the arms when it's learning to walk, he said, I took Israel by the arms and laid him. And he goes back and back and back to the early days of Israel's history. When he speaks of Ephraim, Ephraim was one of the ten tribes, and he keeps mentioning Ephraim as representative of the ten tribes. And so he says, when Ephraim spake, tremblingly, he exalted himself. That's to say, when Ephraim was young and tender, tremblingly, he says. And when he recognized God, then he was exalted. And all went well. But what happened?
When he offended in Baal, he died. Let me read it to you from the... Amplified. When Ephraim spoke with trembling, he exalted himself in Israel. But when he offended and became guilty in Baal worship, he died spiritually. And then outward ruin came also, sealing Israel's doom as a nation. This is just what happened to Israel. They deserted God. They built idols.
King Jeroboam, the first king of Israel, set up two golden calves and said, worship me. And he forbade anyone to go down to Jerusalem where God had put his name forever. And so the northern kingdoms, Israel, had no connection with the real true worship of Jehovah down there in Jerusalem. They didn't go to the temple. They had no priests. They set up their own, a new system, their own system. And instead of worshiping God, they worship two golden calves. And so he says, he worshiped Baal, of course, one of the heathen gods. And in verse two, and now they sin more and more, and have made the molten images of their silver and idols according to their own understanding.
All of it the work of the craftsmen. They say of them, let the men that sacrifice kiss the calves. Go and kiss these golden calves. Do they do that today? Now I'll say this. Judah learned the great lesson of idolatry. You never find a Jew worshipping idols anymore. And in the final chapter it says in verse eight, chapter fourteen verse eight, Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols? What have I to do any more with idols? There's a wonderful day coming when God's going to restore Israel, and they will have forever finished with idols.
You don't find the Jews, Judah, and Benjamin, who came back from the Babylonish captivity. You don't find them worshiping idols, and stone and brass and wood and so on. But there are idols, you know. We can make our home an idol. We can make our family an idol. We can make our business an idol. And there are some people in the world that kiss idols, you know that? I lived ten years in Greece and I remember the first time I went into a Greek Orthodox church. It was very dark in there. And I'd never been in one and knew nothing about the Orthodox religion.
And Vera and I went in and watched the people coming in. They put their black in the box and take a candle. and light the candle and then they would go and take it and place it in a little candle stand in front of an icon. An icon is a picture of a saint and then every one of them would go up and kiss that picture and they say we don't have idols, we don't kiss idols. They say we left the Roman Catholic Church centuries ago and it says, thou shalt not make unto thee any grave an image. We don't have an idol.
The Catholic Church have idols. We don't have idols. We have pictures of saints, but they go and kiss the pictures. I remember how it impressed me when I first saw this, because we saw it hundreds and hundreds of times during the years we were in Greece, but the first time I didn't know about it, and I didn't realize that people do things like this. They wouldn't call it idolatry. Oh, no. They think it's quite wonderful Christianity to go and talk to these saints whom they think are in the presence of God and can intercede for them when they go and kiss them and light candles before them. As far as I can see, it's idolatry. And this thing goes on in the world today.
There are many forms of idolatry. But Israel worshiped golden calves and worshipped idols made with hands of silver and gold and brass, with cunning craftsmanship, the work of their own hands. And God says of them, therefore, verse three, they shall be as the morning cloud. Now he mentions four things here, four things that disappear, the instability of idolatry. In God's sight there's nothing in it. And those who put their trust in idols, those who put their trust in men's work, and the work of their own hands, and the work of their own understanding.
You see, he says they made idols according to their own understanding. And we have lots of cults and lots of religions and lots of theories in our world today that are the work of our own understanding. Few people go by this book anymore. They have their own idea. And God says of all these things in the scripture in the New Testament, he calls them a refuge of light. But God says of these things, this is what's going to happen to them. They shall be as a morning cloud.
A morning cloud looks so beautiful when the sun's shining on it. But you know, You just sort of turn your head, go in the house and go out again, and where's the cloud come? The wind's driven it away. Number two, they should be as the early dew that passes away. The ground is wet with dew early in the morning, but the sun comes up and it's gone. Or they should be, he says, as the chas that is driven with a whirlwind out of the floor. What's the good of chaff anyhow? It's what's left. The wheat is flashed out of the chaff and the chaff is left. And then the wind comes a whirlwind and it's all taken away.
God. And finally he says they're like the smoke out of a chimney. Goes up and disappears. How wonderful this old prophet was in bringing these illustrations. The cloud, the dew, the chaff and the smoke out of a chimney. And God says, These who make their own religions, their own religions, and they're just like this, are God, finish with. How wonderful to come back to this book and say the word of the Lord ends here in forever. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall never pass away. And that's what we trust in today. Not man-made religion, but we trust in the word of the living God.
And he said, he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, and nothing can alter that. We know we're saved because God says we're saved, not because we feel saved and because we have ideas of our own about it, but we know we're saved because the word of God saved. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that those who ever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. God says it. I believe it. I've got it. Can you say that? He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life. The wind won't blow this away. This won't be like the Jew that disappears when the sun comes up.
But belief, faith in this unchangeable word of God will last forever. We have eternal life. I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish. Verse four, Yet I am the Lord thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no God but me, For there is no Savior beside me. God keeps looking back to those far away days, hundreds of years now, since he brought them up out of Egypt. And he says, I was your God. I brought you out of Egypt. And he keeps telling them of his mighty power how he brought them out of Egypt.
And yet they turned away from him. And he calls them back to this great God of power. And he says, I am the Lord thy God. I brought thee from the land of Egypt. Thou shalt know no God but me, for there is no Savior beside me. Do you believe that? There is no Savior beside me. There is none other name among men, given among men, whereby we must be saved, except the name of Jesus. No other way. I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought. Not only does God remind them of their salvation and the great deliverance from Egypt, but it reminds them of the wonderful way He provided for them in the wilderness.
Forty long years they wanted in the wilderness. And Wilson repeated. It was repeated at our meeting this morning that in those long forty years their shoes never wore out. Their clothes never wore out. God was their shoemaker. God was their tailor. They didn't need shoemakers. God provided for them. And He provided food and drinking water, raiment, everything they needed for forty long years. And some of us have been in the wilderness forty years. And we can look back over life's pathway and say with Israel, there's not failed one word of all God's promise all the way through.
He's been with us. and guided us and blessed us and met all our needs. Sometimes we've been tested and proved and tried, but God is God and He's proved Himself every time. Why then should we depart from Him? This message is for us tonight, I believe, as well as for Israel. They departed from the God that saved them. They departed from the God that blessed them, and the God that cared for them and brought them through the wilderness. And he said, I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought.
According to their pasture, so were they filled. They got into the land, and they got all the good of the land, and they were filled. And their prosperity was their due. According to their pastures, so were they filled. They were filled and their heart was exalted. Therefore have they forgotten me." I remember when we were going through a big trial of adversity many years ago, and then God gave me a job which had prospects and turned out to be very well. But I remember a man said to me, an evangelist, a great friend of mine, he said, Now, Brother Willie, let me give you one word of warning.
More people are shipped, more people are wrecked, shipwrecked on the sea of prosperity than on the sea of adversity. Just beware, he said. Thank God you never let us get into that great place of prosperity that we would be shipwrecked. But how true it is that many Christians, they trust the Lord when they're poor and needy, and then when they become rich, and their pasture is filled, and they are filled, then their hearts exalted, therefore they've forgotten me. I guarantee every one of us could tell stories that instances and and cases we have known in our own lives of Christians that have been shipwrecked on the sea of prosperity.
God has blessed them, and then they can live without God. This is what we've got to beware of here. God is blessing us. And oh, I do pray day by day, and I trust you're all praying, that God will keep us here at Park of the Pound. I have always found down through life this, that when God is blessing, When God is dressing, Satan makes his job to break it up. And I tell you how he breaks it up. And he always does it this way. He breaks it up from inside, not from outside. It isn't the enemy outside, it's somebody inside that does it. And he splits up the saints of God and break it up that way.
I've seen it happen over and over and over again. And you get heartaches and heartbreaks and sorrows and tears. But God can bring us through all that. Let's keep very humble, beloved. Let's keep at his feet very low. And let's day by day pray that Satan may not get in here, but we might go from strength to strength, not according to being filled with our own prosperity, but that we might be filled with him and the prosperity might be his and the blessing might be his. And God will keep us humble and lowly and keep us from getting divided up. Verse seven, Therefore, that's because they have forgotten me.
Therefore, he says, I will be as a bear that is bereaved of her wealth, and will rend the call of their heart, and I will deliver them like a lion. The wild beast shall tear them. And he mentioned the bear somewhere. A leopard, rather. Verse seven, therefore I'll be unto them as a lion and a leopard. And in verse eight is a bear. These are actually the animals that are mentioned, you know, by Daniel. Of course that applies more to Judas than it does to Israel, but the nations that came against Israel, in Daniel chapter seven, the Babylonian Empire, the first beast that came up was like a lion.
And then the Medial Persian Empire, which came into being after the Babylonian Empire, was likened to a bear. And the Grecian Empire, which came after the Babylonian, the Medial Persian Empire, the Grecian Empire was likened to a leper, swift beast. Alexander the Great conquered the world quicker than any other man in history, a swift beast like a leper. And God mentioned these things. I'll be a lion, a leopard, and a bear. Which is if God's looking on into history and saying what's going to happen to those who would reject him, his nation, Israel that would wander from him, and all the animals, the nations, the beasts, the great world empires that would come in and capture them.
And isn't it so today? A few Jews have got back into Palestine. And look at the vultures all around. Look at the bears and the lions and the leopards and all around that are ready to pounce on them just now. And they will by and by, but God in His mercy will bring them out and save them ultimately. Verse nine, O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thine help. I think this is a verse we can take courage in today. There's so many around us today that if life has become just a, they become derelicts because of sin and wickedness.
Thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thine help. We can go out with the gospel. We can go out with the message of Jesus Christ. And we can be used of God to win even the derelicts, those who have destroyed themselves to win them back to God. And I'm always amazed when I get hold of a book or read a story or hear a testimony. It always fills my heart to see how God can save the man that's right down in the gutter and turn his life right round about and make him a man of God and a servant of God and someone whom he can use. I will be thy king.
Where is any other that may save thee in all thy city? I will be thy king, saith God. He is looking now into the future. And truly this will take place by and by. I will be thy king. Where is any other that can save thee? And thy judges whom thou said, Give me a king. You see, long ago, and God keeps looking back into their history. No thing we can do is left, you know. There's a record kept and sin as its retribution later. God says he'll visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. And God goes right back now to the days of Samuel when they went to Samuel and said, Give us a king like all the other nations.
We want a king. We want to be like the others. And God said to Samuel, Don't worry, Samuel. They haven't rejected you. They rejected me. We'll give them a king. And you know that King Saul... Saul, the son of Kish, was found, head and shoulders above everybody, a wonderful young man. And God gave him for a king, but oh, what a disappointment he was. God says, I gave them a king in mine anger, and I took him away in my wrath. And King Saul died a suicide on Mount Gilboa, died by his own hand in the Battle of Gilboa, a great, great failure. The end of his life he called upon God, and God wouldn't answer him.
And yet in youth he was head and shoulders above all the rest, and in the exalted position, the king over God's people. And he failed and failed and failed. God says, I gave him a king in my anger and took him away in my wrath. But he says, I will be their king. The Lord Jesus Christ is the only king of Israel. The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up. His sin is his. Now here's the wonderful picture. You remember when Achan... took of the forbidden things in the battle. When they captured Jericho, you remember they were told that they were not to take any of the treasures. Everything was to be burned up, and they weren't to take anything at all.
But Achan, he saw these Babylonish garments, and he saw this wedge of gold. He coveted it, and he wrapped it up, and he dug a hole in the sand under his tent and buried it. Did that hide it? Oh, no. They went out to battle next day against the little city of Ahai. And they were defeated and ran away, and Moses said to God, what's the matter? Well, aren't you with us anymore? God says, oh, yes. Not my fault, it's your fault. There's sin in the camp. Could God see that which of gold hidden in a tent? Oh, yes, he knew it was there. I lived four years with the Arabs in Egypt. And you know, the sand is their bank.
I remember one night they came in and Vera was working in a soldiers' home away in the desert. I was miles from there, but I used to go and see her sometimes. And they got in there one night, the Arabs, and they stole all sorts of things. All sorts of kitchen utensils and all sorts of food and things, tin food, and disappeared. The next morning when we got the... military police and so on and they said we'll find it and they sent out what they call trackers across the sand of the desert you know and they watched their footsteps and finally they found everything buried in the sand and that's what they do they steal things and bury it in the sand out there we couldn't keep a thing it was all stone used to have great big equipment depots you know And to keep the robbers out, we used to put two rows of barbed wire with a distance probably the width of this chapel here, forty feet between the two rows of barbed wire right around this equipment place.
And then in this space between we used to put anti-personnel mines. And what do you think they did? They'd come at night, and with a pair of flowers they cut the barbed wire, and then they'd send a donkey through. And if the donkey could find his way through without getting blown up, they followed his footsteps and they got in and they stole everything they could steal. And then how could you find it? They buried it in the desert. That was their bank. That was their storehouse in the sand. That's what the Arab does. He doesn't go to the bank. Somewhere out in the desert in that vast space you never find it. He knows just, weren't he? That's when he buries it. And God says, The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up.
He's taking a sin and bound it up in a raft, you know. And he's hidden it. It's in the sand. And he says, it's all right. God doesn't know. Nobody knows. Yeah, but God does know. Oh, friend, I wonder now, as we look back over our life, what have we got hidden in the sand? Some of these dark things, some of these secret things, God knows all about them. We cannot hide from him. And I found the blessing amongst God's people and the blessing amongst God's work is often held back because of secret things which we think we've hidden. But God looks down and he knows, and he says, he's saying, you've hidden your sin.
You've bound it up in a napkin and hidden it. All right, he said, it's coming up. The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up. His sin is hid. The sorrows of a travailing woman shall come upon him. There is no escape, and the Lord used this symbol of the day of judgment. As a woman in travel, they shall not escape. Judgment is bound to come upon sin. Then a little glimpse into the future, he says. I will ransom them from the power of the grave. I will redeem them from death. Oh, death, I will be thy plague. Oh, grave, I will be thy destruction. Repentance should be hid from thine eyes.
The Lord looks into the future Hainish verse to that day when he will raise Israel from the dust of death. Israel is a nation. Let's look at one verse. Daniel chapter twelve, verse two. Let's read verse one. At that time, chapter twelve of Daniel, at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince, which standeth for the children of thy people, and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation, even to that same time. And at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall await, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt, God is going to raise up the sleeping dust of Israel.
And God is the Lord Jesus, who's yet going to reign over all his people at Jerusalem. And they're going to be restored in God's infinite mercy and grace. And in God's eternal plan, they will be put back into their kingdom, back into their land with the Lord Jesus as their only king. And he says, I will be their king. And then finally that last verse, verse sixteen, Samaria. That was their pride. That was their capital. That was their great city, Samaria. The capital of Israel, Samaria shall become desolate. For she hath rebelled against their God. They shall fall by the sword. And look at these terrible words and this actually did take place.
You read history of the terrible siege and the terrible capture and the terrible captivity. they shall fall by the sword, their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up. This actually fell upon Israel, because Israel rebelled against God. What then is going to be the judgment for this age in which we live? A nation with all the enlightenment we have today, with the gospel being beamed out every day over the air with a radio, and all the privileges that we've got of reading the Word of God in our own mother tongue, and all the churches on every corner that we've got in our land, what is going to be the judgment that's going to fall upon this Christ-rejecting generation in which we live today?
May God help us to go out somewhere in the other to get the gospel out to the men and women of our generation while it is still time before the day of judgment comes. There's only one little chapter left. It's the best chapter in Hosea. It's the chapter about restoration. It's the chapter about the future. I don't know whether we ever get around it, whether we get another chance now. We may not. But I'm so glad to have been able to have these studies with you in the book of Hosea. Shall we just bow before the Lord? Blessed Lord, we do thank thee for this wonderful little prophecy. Telling of thine infinite grace and thine infinite patience, and an infinite mercy with thy people long ago, pleading with them, arising with times, getting up in the morning the prophets to tell them and to beseech them, and bring them back to thee, but they would not hear.
And finally judgment fell upon the God-rejecting generation, and they were taken into captivity. Oh, blessed Lord, we pray thee that we might be earnest in telling our generation about these judgments of God that are going to fall upon this scene. We pray, Lord, that make us active. If we can't go from part of the palms, help us to send with our money, with our efforts, with our work, with our influence and our letters, oh God, help us that we here might do something as the Hosea did to warn these men of the wrath that's coming.
Lead us and guide us in thy service. Here we pray thee. We thank you for these studies. And we pray that as in our leisure time we go back over this book and think more about the wondrous messages thou hast given us. We pray, Lord, that thou warm our hearts and give us to trust thee more and know thee better. We thank thee, Lord, for the Sunday evenings we've spent studying this book. And now we seek thy blessing and ask thee that thou lead us on in all the days that lie ahead and all the ministry and the meetings that we'll be having here in the near future. Would thou prepare every speaker Prepare our hearts and grant, Lord, that we might learn more and more from thy precious word.
We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.