unmute, set a good volume, maybe a little too loud. Down a bit, please. Thanks. Yeah.
I just don't like myself ringing in my ears. Yeah, that's good. Thank you. Turning your Bibles, please to Micah chapter 6.
That's the chapter I'm going to be speaking on this evening. So thanks for coming out. It's great to see you here. And I hope that the Lord blesses you tonight from his word.
I'm going to start by reading this chapter in its entirety. So what do we have here, 16 verses? And then I'll pray, and then we'll continue. So here's what Micah chapter 6 says.
Here now what the Lord is saying. Arise, plead your case before the mountains. And let the hills hear your voice. Listen, you mountains, to the indictment of the Lord.
The indictment. And you enduring foundations of the earth. Because the Lord has a case against his people. Even with Israel, he will dispute.
My people, what have I done to you? And how have I weary you? Answer me. Indeed, I brought you up from the land of Egypt and ransom to you from the house of slavery.
I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. My people remember now what Balak, King of Moab, counseled, and what Balam, son of Balor answered him. And from Shittim to Gilgal, so that you might know the righteous acts of the Lord. With what shall I come to the Lord and bow myself before the God on high?
Shall I come to him with burnt offerings, with yearling calves? Does the Lord take the light in thousands of rams? In 10,000 rivers of oil? Shall I present my firstborn for my rebellious acts, the fruit of my body, for the sin of my soul?
He has told you, oh man, what is good? And what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? The city of the Lord will, the voice of the Lord will call to the city, and it is sound wisdom to fear your name, hear O tribe who has appointed its time. There's yet a man in the wicked house, along with treasures of wickedness and a short measure that is cursed.
Can I justify wicked scales and a bag of deceptive weights? For the rich men of the city are full of violence. Her residents speak lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth. So also I will make you sick, striking you down, desolating you because of your sins.
You will eat, but you will not be satisfied. And your vileness will be in your midst. You will try to remove for safekeeping, but you will not preserve anything. And what you do preserve, I will give to the sword.
You will sow, but you will not reap. You will tread the olive, but you will not anoint yourself with oil, and the grapes, but you will not drink wine. The statutes of Omri and all the works of the house of Ahab are observed, and in their devices you walk. Therefore I will give you up for destruction, and your inhabitants for derision, and you will bear the reproach of my people.
Heavenly Father, I thank you for your word, thank you for the prophet Micah, and for what he had to say to your people. I pray tonight that as we consider your holy inspired word, that you would bless us from the scriptures, that you would speak to us in our hearts, that you would help me treat your word well, and with reverence and that we would spiritually be blessed by you today, and that your words would come through here. And I pray this in Jesus' name, amen. So just a little bit of background on that.
I know it was a big chunk to read, but it's the best way to kind of jump into it. So this is about 700 years before Christ. It's before the exile, before both the Assyrians or Babylonians have conquered either the northern or southern kingdom of Israel, but it's after the time of Solomon when the nation is split. But it is addressed to all of Israel, so despite the fact that the nation is splintered, it's actually addressed to all of the people.
And then another point is that there are three clear voices in the text, and we'll see them as we go through, but God speaks, and Israel speaks, and Micah speaks, and then God speaks again. Yeah, so just continue to go perfect. So it is a courtroom-like opening. So it says a pleader case, and God calls the mountains as a witness.
So it's a conversation that Micah was inspired to write, and Micah was from the southern kingdom, and he was inspired to write this, and it resembles a legal case. And God calls the mountains here, in verses one and two, as witness. So typically in a legal case, you call witnesses. And so the mountains in this case, they were present in the initial covenant making in Exodus 20, right?
So it kind of makes sense to call them. Also, it says, the enduring foundations of the earth. And that's the enduring aspect, the timelessness and the strength of God's covenant with his people. This is something that can't really be broken.
It's never going to pass away so long as there's a place for this kind of thing to take place. I mean, you got the picture. So very strong, very enduring covenant. And turn if you want to Psalm 19.
I'm going to flip there more than once. If you have a spare bookmark, you can mark this one. And when we went to prayer meeting the other night, this was just happened to be the Psalm we were reading, and I had read it as part of this. So that was cool.
It's so cool when the word lines itself up in your life. I find it spooky how often that happens. If you're in the word and you're just walking in your life and you're like, hey, what's that on the radio? Exactly what I read for my devotion last night.
Happens all the time. So it's Psalm 19 verses one to four. They speak of the so-called silent witness of creation. I don't think it's so silent.
I think it's one of the loudest witnesses to God's majesty that there is. So the heavens are telling of the glory of God and their expanse is declaring the work of his hands. Day to day, pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor are there words.
Their voice is not heard. There's different translations. It's like, their line has gone out through all the earth and their utterances to the end of the world. In them, he has placed a tent for the sun.
So it continues. The point is, it's not bared by language. You can be a Chinese person and appreciate the wonder of God's majesty. And you won't speak English.
And that's fine. And we can both agree. Creation is majestic and awesome. Yeah, so the point here is God calls the mountains and calling to witness creation itself.
So God's people, in this case, they're straying from God. You probably know the history, but they're straying from God and becoming more and more involved in materialism and affluence and corruption. And this, I think, is sort of like today. People say, well, I don't care about that.
I just am interested in material things. And they don't look at creation as a witness to God. So that was my point with bringing that in. Yeah, so it continues on.
And God says, in verse 3, my people, what have I done to you? And how have I we already do? Answer me. He's demanding an answer.
And all those little icons think of all the things that the nation of Israel has been through at this point. And we go through a little synopsis of their history together. So the Red Sea and the Jordan River, they've crossed those, which are both mentioned. That's from Shittim to Gilgal.
That's referring to the Jordan River and the crossing through the Jordan River. So God paring the waters for them, providing for their physical needs. So think of the manna, the quail that they received and the desert God sustains them. He gave them water out of a rock.
He made their clothes and sandals not wear out. So all kinds of miracles. And then defending them from other kings and nations. So that's talking about Beylak, King of Moab.
And you can think of Numbers 22. I don't think we need to take the time to go there. But the point of that whole story with Beylah and Beylak is that God's presence and God's angels are there. And Beylah is on his donkey riding along, and they're invisible to him.
And his donkey even sees them. So the point is it's like with creation, you know, it's so obvious. God is here. God is part of your life.
God is part of Israel's life. And they're just blind, like Beylah. And then choosing up leaders, Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. I'm just interested that Miriam's mentioned here, the sister of those two men.
And so God asks, why are you treating this to me? What have I done to deserve this? The way that they're treating him? So people who are becoming distant, more and more distant, they're not treating God right.
They're not in a right relationship with God. So we've made it to verse six at this point. So at verse six, it's a pretty abrupt point where it changes it says, there's a period full stop in quotation. And it says, with what shall I come to the Lord and bow myself before the God on high?
And if this is the voice of Israel, I mean, Micah wrote it, but he's representing the heart of Israel and doing that. And they kind of get right onto the wrong track. Directly, they're just going in the wrong direction. And they have this kind of false obedience that's really, you can read about it in, for example, the book of Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament.
It's full of this kind of discourse. And in the Psalms, also even, I have Psalm 24. One thing I don't need to, oh, I don't think that's the one I'm thinking of. And Jesus spoke of it in Matthew, chapter six, in the sermon of the Mount.
When you do good works and when you give to the poor, don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing because you'll do this good deed in secret and God will reward you in secret. So it's all these different ways of being able to do false obedience. So the verses, it's talking about this extreme amount of sacrifice. Like, oh, OK, so God's not happy with me.
So what you must want is just more sacrifice, more material sacrifice. That's pretty much the gist of verses 6 and 7. And yeah, it says it for itself. There are more religion, more works, more material sacrifice, as if this could solve the problem of sin.
But true obedience in the heart is only possible with repentance from sin. And Psalm 24 just says, like, the earth is the Lord's and all that is within it. What are you going to come and give to God that's not already his? What can we give to God?
That doesn't belong to him. He's rich. He owns the earth and all that's in it. Everything is his.
And so this kind of idea, they're saying, you want 10,000 rivers of oil? It's so wrong, you know, wrong thinking. Where maybe they were thinking of, for example, in First Kings chapter 8, this is the peak of Solomon's temple, dedicating the temple. And they sacrifice 142,000 animals.
And we can turn there. It's pretty cool. If we go to First Kings 8, 63, 64. Yeah, Solomon offered for the sacrifice of peace offering, which he offered there to the Lord, 22,000 oxen.
Imagine with me for a second, 22,000 oxen. OK. All right, now ready for the next part. 120,000 sheep.
I can try that out. 120,000 sheep. Like Citadel Hill would be like Citadel Dirt Mount. There'd be no grass left in like five minutes.
So the king and all the sons of Israel dedicated the house of the Lord. So they're dedicating the temple. On the same day, the king was consecrated consecrated at the middle of the court. That was before the house of the Lord.
There he offered the burnt offering and the grain offering and the fat of the peace offerings for the bronze altar that was before the Lord was too small to hold the burnt offerings and the grain offerings and the fat with the peace offerings, not even the bodies, just like the fat. So maybe they were thinking like, ah, they're good old glory days back when Solomon was around. United Nation, Israel's reaching the peak of their international power and their material wealth and affluence. And maybe, I don't know, how did these people let their hearts stray so far from God?
I don't know. Even in verse seven B, like the second half of verse seven, if you look, it says, shall I present my firstborn for my sins, fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? I don't know what's going on. Maybe they forgot what the letter of the loss is.
They forgot their commandments independent took. Maybe they've forgotten the character of God because they started looking at what other gods are like, idolatry. Remember they're trying to mix in these ideas that are from other gods and other nations. And this is why God instructed them.
Don't have anything to do with these neighboring nations. Don't marry with them. Don't adopt their customs. Just push them out, wipe them out because God knew.
This is God knew that this is going to happen, I guess. That's what I get out of that. Why are they proposing child sacrifice? And Israel, at some point, has definitely been near nations who have done that.
And so they're truly reaching a dark time in their spiritual life. So then we finally, Israel has finished speaking after that, verse seven. And in verse eight, we're talking about famous verses. This is a famous verse, really famous verse.
Micah, I think, talks here. Micah chimes in. He maybe calls in as an expert witness, a prophet, into this courtroom case. And he chimes in.
He says, God has told you. He has told you, oh man, what is good? And what does the Lord require of you? But to do justice, to love, kindness, or mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.
So sometimes it's said, I know, Ravi, for example, says, or Mr. Zacharias, I should say. I don't know him personally. Yeah.
Just kidding. The Mosaic law, you can read through and list everything. Unique laws, there's like 613, maybe around there, 630. David and some of the Psalms has listed, maybe, like, 11, or 30, 10, depending on which Psalm.
Micah here has three. Do justice, love, kindness, and walk humbly with your God. Jesus put it down to two. So it's kind of like getting down to the core of the issue.
And this is one of, if you want to just remember, like, OK, how am I supposed to live? This is a good verse for that. How am I supposed to live? Do justice, love, mercy, and walk humbly with your God.
It's a lot harder than it sounds. Much harder than it sounds, right? And we all know that. So I kind of divided this into three areas of life, just thinking about it, meditating on these instructions.
How does this work for me? So do justly. See that as external things and things that are visible, your actions. Make sure all of your actions are in line with the law.
Be the law. Be upright in your actions. It's the obvious one. Don't lie, cheat, steal, murder, follow the 10 commandments.
I put here first, Peter 1, 16. That's just the Holy for I am holy. God is holy. As Christians, we should strive to imitate his character.
And then the second part, love, mercy, slash kindness. It depends on your translation. I see this as both external and internal. So it's a mixing of the worlds.
And love, it's an intentional, it's an active choice. You have to constantly choose to do this. And people really notice this when you treat them with kindness. So it's visible on the outside because when you do this, when you love mercy and you show someone kindness, they notice.
They notice big time. And I put second Corinthians 1, 4. That's comfort others with the comfort that you have. So God has shown us such mercy, such kindness.
We love that. We love God's mercy. We love God's mercy in Christ to us. We love that so much.
We want to show that to other people. We love mercy. And so it's right in the gospel. It's one way, but also just materially, there's meeting people.
And we just want to be kind and shine our good works before a man that they make glorified God. That's kind of how I see that. It is internal. It comes from the heart, but it goes out into the external world.
Third one says, walk humbly with your God. This I see as mostly, almost maybe entirely, internal and unseen. Because someone can pretty much appear to be like the great Christian life. They're like, wow, look at that guy.
Seems like he has all his spiritual life altogether, but he may have pride of self-righteousness, which is not a good situation you want to be in at all. So I see this basically as invisible to other people, basically between you and God. And no one else can manage your spiritual life for you. No one else can do it.
It's between you and God. And worshipping God in your own heart is a decision. And if you kept your finger in Psalm 19, that's great, because then it's really easy to get verse 12, which says, who can discern his errors? You quit me of hidden faults.
Also keep back your servant from presumptuous sins. Let them not rule over me. And that's a big verse. Presumptuous sins, ruling.
So it's not just like presumptuous sins that have a minor impact. It's like my assumptions have led me completely on the wrong trail. This may sound familiar when we're talking about Israel with, you want 10,000 rivers of oil? Maybe 100,000 rivers of oil?
What do you want? God, how do I make this right? How do I satisfy God? How do I have obedience to God?
And it continues. Then I will be blameless. And I shall be acquitted of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, oh, Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
Talk about humility before God. Equip me of my hidden faults. I don't even know what I'm doing wrong. God, please help me.
I need to know what I'm doing wrong. There's lots of prayers of David like that. And that should be our prayer, because pride can creep in so easily. And it's not just a ritual that we need.
It's being right with God in our heart. And this humility, walking humbly with God, I believe means knowing that our spiritual well-being is in His power. It's in Christ. And it's in the power of the Holy Spirit.
We are no match, none of us, for the three enemies that we have, the enemies of our soul, our own flesh, the world, and Satan. I mean, you don't know what's coming your way. We need to be humble before God and seeking His protection against ourselves even. If the moment prides steps in, it's like, all right, I'm good.
I got this being a Christian thing down. I'm not going to sin. I used to do that, but I'm not going to do that anymore. You're right there again.
You're right there again, because the flesh is right there. And so we need to be humble as we walk with God for so many reasons. There's more reasons than just that. But this is what really got me, because it's inside your heart.
And it takes a lot of prayer on your knees to combat this, to make sure that all areas of your life are touched by God. If I can channel John McKim for a second, I'll say the heart of the law is a law for your heart. The heart of the law is a law for your heart. That's exactly something he would say.
And it's so easy to be like Israel and to just think, God just wants me to tithe. Or God just wants me to be nice to people. Doesn't matter what I think, as long as I don't swear. It's so easy to not have Christ as all in all.
But that's what's so important, is Christ is all in all. Everything, touching every part of our life that true obedience reaches all areas of life. We heard this morning. Why did Jesus die?
That we could live through him, that we could live for him, that we could live with him. It's all areas of life. It's not just material. It's not just emotional.
We're not just here to have really awesome worship sessions where we just listen to some cool music and get a kick out of that. You can do that at a YouTube concert. That's not what it's about. So this is a very famous verse.
And that's the verse that drew me to this chapter. But I wanted to treat the chapter in full, just for the sake of it. So I'll try very hard to wrap up here quickly in the next seven verses. So after that verse in verses 9 to 16, it's the consequences of sin.
So God's judgment is here now and also coming soon. That's the gist of the verses there. So how does this look on the projector anyways? I just want to see the colors.
Pretty bad. It's supposed to be red. So there's a picture of exile. So yeah, that's the bigger of the judgments, I guess.
Not to say one's bigger than the other, but the north is taken by Syria, the south is taken by Babylon in terms of Israel, and exile comes, and their nation is, how can we say it? You will be the reproach of my people, and your inhabitants for derision. They're given up for destruction. So that's kind of the gist of this.
But going through it, so there's a whole bunch of verses here, or a few verses, I guess. I'm going to talk about a short measure. Let me sell you 20 feet of wood. Let me get my special one-foot ruler.
That's actually only 95% or 90% of a foot, and sell you 20 of those. So people cheating each other. Weights that are deceptive and scales that tip one way, more than the other. And God hates this.
He hates this greed. In the Mosaic law, God's people, that's us also, Israel is supposed to use their wealth to take care of the poor. It's pretty clear if you read those many commandments that are there. But here we have the rich oppressing the poor, and it's a really bad situation.
And as you read the Gospels, you see where the Pharisees came from. Really, you do. You get a sense of where these guys came from, how it is that they exist the way they do. And if you read all the minor prophets, and you get a real background for this kind of thing.
I have written here, I think it was for this slide, because it's all about exile. God is sovereign. We're saying about the sovereignty of God. This is in Majesty who's saying, here I am, humbled by your majesty.
God is sovereign. The nations are like a drop in a bucket to God. You go home and fill a bucket, drop by drop. And that's what nations are to God.
Billions are millions of people, entire continents. And God is so much bigger than that. Go research some stuff about space. Figure out how far we are from the sun, and how many earths that is.
God is huge. God is sovereign. And God can do things like make an extremely powerful ruler go mad and think he's a cow for seven years. With Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon.
That happens later. But maybe doing that now. I'm not sure with all the leaders we have. So yeah.
And then God is in control. God is in control of even our experience of life, because in verses 13 to 15, he takes away the prosperity, like you'll sow, but you won't reap, that kind of thing. And also the ability to enjoy prosperity. He controls people's experience of life.
You can be rich and miserable. Hate to break it to you. You can have every physical need met, and you can have lots of cool toys, and be absolutely destitute and miserable. And that's what God does to some of these people.
He says, you will eat and not be satisfied. How awful is it? You'll sit down, beautiful restaurant, fancy schmancy. People light up your food, serve you.
Maybe give you an appetizer. Main course comes. You just have no appetite. It's the most beautiful food in the world.
You put it in your mouth, turns to sawdust, just because your soul is just rubble. Your soul is just not there to enjoy it. So God controls our experience of life. God gives us joy.
It's a great mercy of God that we can have joy in life. So that's kind of like the present thing. He ruins, he brings about judgment on these violent, greedy men and women, I guess. And then the future judgment, which hasn't happened at this point, but in verse 16, I'll give you up for destruction.
I already read that part. But he gives Judah over to Babylon. And so I made a little timeline, just to try. There's a lot of background.
It's not enough time to do everything. But it's a little background. So Micah lived something like 750 to 650-ish. We're not sure necessarily.
But Micah, Isaiah, Hosea, they're all contemporaries. And then the kings, Dotham, Ahez, and Hezekiah. They're all kind of like during that period. And so like 700 years before Christ, 721 is when the northern part of the kingdom, Sumeria, is conquered by the Assyrians.
And then it's not until 100 years after Micah, that the Babylonians actually come along and become the major player in the international scene at that time. So his prophecy is well before the event, about 100 years. At the time when this is prophesied, if you want to look at 410 there, says, you will go to Babylon. So it's a pretty direct prophecy.
It mentions Babylon by name. Babylon's a place, not like a tiny place, but they're not the major players on the world scene. The Assyrians and Egyptians are dominant at that time. So that's pretty cool because those guys really, the Babylonians, happens.
History bears it out. So I'd like to wrap up a bunch of C words. I don't know why, just to wrap up, try to review, try and bring to mind all the things. It's a lot, you know.
But is this prophecy declaring the mind of God? That's what prophecy is not just predicting things. Predicting things is pretty cool. Predicting the future is a pretty neat trick.
But prophecy really is declaring the mind of God. So is this prophecy relevant for today? Not just the predicting the future bit. Yeah, the top three are kind of like things we consider positively perhaps.
And then the bottom three are kind of things we want to stay away from. So let's do them one by one courtroom. So it's not just like when God shows up to Micah and says, all right, let's have a courtroom style conversation. He's always a holy judge, overall mankind.
And he still feels the same way about sin. It's still repugnant to him. And God still expects the same level of obedience, maybe even more from his people. So Israel versus the church, we have a lot in common.
We both have covenants, for example. So if God kind of did this today to us, for example, or the church in general, what would he say? Would he ask how if I were to do, and why are you treating me this way? I hope not.
But Revelation one kind of does that basically. And it's not just like a pat on the head, good tried participation word, there you go, go to heaven. No, it's like we have real duty. So covenant.
I have here, the witness here in Micah 6 is the enduring foundation of the earth and the mountain. Makes sense. That's kind of like what was going on when they made covenant. For us, it's the blood of Christ and the witness of Christ.
And that's greater than the blood of bulls and the witness of mountains. And we should take that seriously. And we do. It's a great covenant that we have with God and gives me joy in life.
And breaking of bread is like what keeps us going. I'm sure we can all relate on that. We have a great calling. We already heard about that today.
We have so much more to live for than just the day to day stuff. There's the huge calling as Christians. We know that the gospel is the greatest work that we can do with our lives. It's the work of Christ.
It's continuing what he had to do, bringing people, reconciling people to God. And so every opportunity we can take, I mean, we all have responsibilities. And we can also be godly in those responsibilities. God is touching every part of our lives.
But we have a great calling to allow this to happen, to allow Christ to be our everything, our all and all. So now for the bottom three, carelessness. So backsliding doesn't just usually happen from a single decision all at once. It's an incremental thing.
It's like a step-by-step. You know what I'm talking about? One step leads to another. And suddenly, you don't even know who God is.
That's what happened to Israel. They asked for kings. They had some good kings. They had some bad kings.
They put the responsibility of their spiritual life on priests and kings instead of on themselves. They put their trust in a system instead of a person. And this carelessness can lead to ruin. So be very careful not to be presumptuous, careless.
I have another word that I forgot. You know what I mean? So covetousness is the next one. This is one of the most dangerous attitudes out there.
Greed is what really, after the carelessness took hold, then came the covetousness, the greed. And that kind of, that'll kill you being a covetous. So if you're cherished what you have, be thankful for what you have, cherish it. Like that word.
It's perhaps sometimes true that familiarity reads contempt. It's a common saying. Maybe it doesn't need to. And cherish what you have.
We forget too easily the value of the things we have. So precious, what we have. Just consider it. Peace with God.
We ever just take in a few minutes before you sleep and just meditate on the peace with God that you have. Do you remember when you didn't have that? Because I do. And it's a difficult thing, I think, to perceive.
Life is busy. But I believe people who are having peace with God, it's like I always picture it as holding water in your hands. Like when you're kind of not doing anything, that's feasible for short periods of time. And then as soon as you kind of go to do something, that water drops out of your hands and your hands are wet.
But it's something to meditate on. So cherish what you have. Another thing I have here is the infinite grace and spiritual riches we have in Christ. That's easy to forget, isn't it?
I'm just kidding. It's not. But we can easily, in the heat of the moment or whatever, forget that we have so much in Christ. And there's no limit to how much you can just put your life in doing his will.
And you'll never go wrong. And I have here also our families in the time we can spend together here at Northbrook. Cherish this. Cherish each other.
Cherish your family as much as you can. And men, I'm going to speak specifically to you. Cherish your wives. Cherish your wives.
Love your wife. Defend that relationship with everything you have spiritually. And in all other matters, mostly because it's against yourself. So defending against.
I guess that's the primary problem, isn't it? In each of our relationships, it's all the men. And so last one, corruption. So it's like rust on a car.
Once it's in there, it's really hard to fix. You've got to nip it in the bud if you want to have any chance of preventing this from happening. And the whole thing is that returning from the path of sin is like 100 times harder than avoiding it in the first place. Prevention is the best cure.
So cutting corners is faster. If you've ever cut something out or colored something in, it's easier to not really follow the rules. It's faster. But once you do it once, twice, you never unlearn how to do things the wrong way.
And so corruption sets in quickly. So be careful. And don't allow that kind of more profit, less work, attitude to seep in because that is exactly what happened to some of the people of Israel. And they all paid the price.
So yeah, that's the end of the slide. So I guess that's the end. And thank you for listening. Let's close in prayer.
Heavenly Father, thank you for the prophecy from Micah, for inspiring your word, writing it down, and defending it through the ages at great cost for us to have here. Pray that you would help us to be in your word, to meditate on it, to get something out of all parts of your word, not just the parts that are easy to read. I pray that you would put a reference for this in our hearts and that you would put a desire in our hearts to always have Christ as our all and all. So we can sing stuff like Jesus, all for Jesus.
And I really mean it. Pray for Northbrook. I pray that you would give us unity and help us to love one another and to be kind to one another. And that you'd help us to follow this famous verse, Micah, to do justice in our lives, to love mercy, in our hearts and to walk humbly with you, Lord.
So pray these things and commit them to you in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.