The Parable of Grace - 3

Well good evening.

It's good to see you tonight. I hope you are refreshed and ready to go. You realize our text is rather lengthy.

The entire... I have actually preached a Bible conference, five sessions on this one chapter. So get ready, strap in, and away we go. No, I will try to have mercy on you and get you out of here at a reasonable hour.

I know many of you have had a long hard day, and I know the mind can only absorb what the bottom can endure, and so I'll try to keep that in mind. Luke 15. I must confess to you this is one of my... well it's my favorite parable of the Lord.

I find it an amazing... just a masterpiece, and we'll explain some of that as we go. It seems in the ministry of our Lord, you'd think just to sit down with somebody and have a meal would be a rather innocent thing, a quiet little dinner together, but it seems like every time our Lord had a meal, there's somebody sitting around criticizing what's going on. Remember even when his disciples are out rubbing the grain, eating the grain hungry, apparently very hungry, and they're criticized because they're eating with unwashed hands.

We have him at Simon's house. The woman comes in from the street washing his feet with her hair, and he's being criticized because this woman is a sinner, says Simon. Set with Matthew after he called Matthew, and criticized again because he's eating with publicans. Well here apparently he is also eating once again with the publicans and sinners as you see in this first verse, and once again he is being criticized by the Pharisees and the scribes saying this man receives sinners and eats with them. And to eat with someone in that context culturally carried much more of a message than it does in our day. We're used to going out and eating with people.

That's no big deal. You salesmen, you entertain your clients, all that kind of stuff, and nobody thinks anything about it, but in this day to have a meal with someone was to indicate that you are in fellowship with them. They are in your favor, and so we see the Pharisees and scribes criticizing our Lord for his reception of these people. Now we're going to try to pay attention to the cultural setting because as some have put it, though the scripture was written for us, it was not written to us. It was written to a different day, people in a different part of the world in a different time period, and so we've got to pay attention to what's going on. And some of the words that are being used in this parable don't exactly mean the same thing they do in our day and time, and we'll see that as we go. But it's always helpful to pay attention to the prologues of these parables. Let's look at the reason the parable is being given, and here we see it in these first two verses. I believe, as your pastor has already said, that this is not separate parables. This is one long parable, and it is tied together with this theme of lostness. We have a lost sheep in the first section, we have a lost coin in the second, and then a lost son. Notice verse 24, the father says this, my son was dead, he's alive again, he was lost and is found. The problem is that to us the word lost sort of conjures up an image of a hunter out here lost in the wood trying to find his way back to his pickup, right?

That's not really the idea here. To be lost in the biblical sense, apalumi, if you're interested in the word behind it, it's used in interesting ways. John 3 16, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, whosoever believed in him should not perish. That's this same word, be lost. It carries the idea of being ruined, devastated. Or another good spot is over in Mark 2 verse 22 where Jesus is giving the teaching of you putting new wine in old wine skins. Why would you not put new wine into new old wine skins?

Because the wine swells and the wine skin burst and is marred. That's the same word, lost. In other words, what we're talking about here is like you blow up a balloon and it pops.

What do you do with a pop balloon? You throw it away, it's good for nothing, it's unsalvageable. And that's the idea here. It's that this is indicating what we would call a state of lostness.

Now we do use that word in that way in our culture. When your team is behind 30 points and you got one minute left in the game, you throw up your hands and you say well we lost the game. Well what do you mean? You can't find the game? No, you mean that now the game has passed into a state of unsalvageability, irredeemability.

You get the picture? It's like that pop balloon. You can't patch it up, you can't glue it back together, it's lost, valueless, it's gone. And that is the way that the word lost is being used in this parable.

It's the way they would use it in that day. At first of all we find, and I realize I've got to keep moving here, I'd like to camp on each one of these and preach a sermon, but I'm trying to resist that temptation. You pray for me, which is actually praying for yourself, you understand, but pray for me that we can keep going. But you're familiar with this. I'm sure we have the man with has 100 sheep, one of them gets lost and he leaves the 99, he goes out to find it. Now some of you guys, you know Greek, but I have an advantage here because I know sheep. I grew up on a cotton farm in East Texas and when I was about 13 my father brought home 25 head of the onerous, mangiest sheep you ever saw in your life and he turned them over to me that I was going to learn. He told me this is the way you're going to make your money through high school.

You want to go out and do some stuff, here's the way you do it. I'll let you have these sheep, you can keep the money from the wool and from the lambs, but you're gonna have to take care of them. You're gonna have to learn how to manage sheep. I have often said that I think most of our seminaries are failing in that what they need to do is put out behind every seminary a big pasture with a bunch of sheep and turn them over to these preacher boys because you will learn more about the ministry.

Pastoring, I mean this is pastoral theology. I learned it in the pasture, okay, handling a bunch of sheep. Now you say well how does that help you with this parable? Because I know something about sheep getting lost. My sheep had an uncanny ability to find the least little hole in the fence and when one of them goes out, sheep like to follow the leader, every single one of them are out and suddenly they scatter all over the field and then they have the ability to group amnesia, I call it, that they cannot figure out how to get back in.

They can get themselves lost, but they cannot get themselves found. I don't know who wrote Little Bo Peep, but this nonsense about leave them alone and they'll come home ragging their tails behind them, he doesn't know a doggone thing about sheep, let me tell you. Because you in a situation like this, now this is out in the wilderness, this is out like they raise sheep in Wyoming and the wilderness is a dangerous place for a sheep.

I always said there's an advantage to being a cattle rancher out there because you got a herd of cattle, you turn them out in the pasture, you go away for a week and come back, they're probably still gonna be there, probably be alright. You have a flock of sheep out there, turn them out in the pasture, go away for a week and come back, they'll all be dead. They are sitting ducks for predators. I mean, sheep have certain qualities that certainly reflect us. They're rather dumb. I used to say my sheep would stay up late at night trying to figure out ways to die the next day. It was like they have a death wish.

Oh my. And they stink. Get them wet and you can't hardly stand it. And then thirdly, which is the thing that we find here, is they are wanton. They stray and so do we. That's why we need a shepherd. And so we have this picture of this sheep and in the wilderness the sheep is absolutely defenseless, has no defense against a predator, against its prey. The only defense is the shepherd, you see, and that's why the shepherd is so important. So what has to happen if this lost sheep gets back?

Exactly what Jesus says in this parable. The shepherd must leave the 99, he must go out into the wilderness, he must go to the environment where the lost sheep is. He must expose himself to the lost environment, to this dangerous environment, and recover the sheep.

And when he gets back he doesn't say, well look at this, old horns came back. I mean who recovers the sheep? Does the sheep recover himself?

No. And the work that reclaiming this lost sheep is all totally the work of the shepherd. I mean the sheep does not cooperate. This is not, if to use theological language here, this is not a synergism that the shepherd does his part and the sheep does his part.

It is totally the work of the shepherd. The shepherd lays the sheep on his shoulders and carries the thing back. I never was quite that much of a good shepherd.

I've kicked a few sheep back in my day. But here's the shepherd carrying the sheep on his shoulders. And so notice the rejoicing is not over the sheep, the rejoicing is with the shepherd.

Rejoice with me because I have found the sheep which was lost. In other words, who's getting the glory here? Who is the rejoicing over? It's over his work. He's the one that did it. You get the picture?

Got any Calvinists out there who want to say amen? Do you see what's going on here? Okay. Let's go to the second little scene here. Second part of this three-part play. It's a woman who has ten coins and has lost one of them. Now I did this because I remember seeing a little booklet, I think it was written by a couple from Bob Jones way back in the early 1900s, if that, is that possible? I don't know. They were missionaries over in Israel in the really early days and it's a little booklet called Strange Scriptures That Perplex the Western Mind.

I've only seen one copy of it, I've never seen another copy, I don't even know if it's still in print, but it was a whole little booklet on things they had seen over there in Israel that illustrated certain things here in Scripture. And what they said, a lot of times the women out there that are preparing for marriage, they put this like a turban on their head and they have coins, like a headband that we would have as men, a headband of these coins, oftentimes silver coins, around their headband. That's their dowry, that's what they're bringing with them into the marriage, you see. And they suspected that that's what's being described here.

I don't know if that's true, but it's interesting. And notice she has lost one of these ten coins. Now notice the escalation of loss. In the first section we have one out of a hundred, one percent loss. And if you're raising livestock that's, you know, that's sort of expected.

But here we have a higher percentage, we have now a ten percent loss, right? And now the woman goes in the environment. Let me ask you a question, we talked about where do sheep go to get lost? Well, they're out there in the wilderness. Where do coins go to get lost? Right out here in the middle of the floor?

Not gonna be lost long, is it? I discovered something, my late wife, she didn't ever let me, like me tell this story, but my new wife, she doesn't mind me telling this on my late wife, okay. One day I had the washing machine. Notice how we put R in washing machine.

The washer, the washer broke down and I had to fix the thing and I had to slide it out from the wall and I learned an amazing, something just shocking truth that my wife did not clean behind the washing machine. And I mean there's dust and dirt and everything, but there's a treasure back there. Man, I started picking up quarters and nickels and dimes, all kinds, I had a treasure right there and that's where coins go to get lost, right?

It's not in a dangerous environment, it's in a dark and dirty environment, right? And notice that's exactly what the woman here in the parable attacks, the darkness and the dirt. She lights a lamp and she gets a broom and sweeps until she finds that lost coin. And then once again, just like the shepherd, she says to her neighbors rejoice with me for I have found the coin that I'd lost, okay. And now we come to the third scene which has two parts to it. This time it is not one of a hundred, it is not one of ten, it's one of two. And it's not a sheep, it's not a coin, it's a son.

An unimaginable loss. This time the younger son goes to his father and asks for his portion of the inheritance and his father gives him his share. And he takes it after a few days and takes off for the hills, takes off for a far country and that's important. He has turned his back on the Commonwealth of Israel, turned his back in leaving the borders on the God of Israel.

He has more or less shirked everything that a good Jew would stand for. And he goes out and for a while everything's fine, while the money lasts he wastes it with righteous living. And then a famine comes. And you notice what's going on here, God is describing to us the ruinous career of someone in sin. For a while there's pleasure, there's fun, we wouldn't do it, there wasn't a temporary pleasure. And yet it's not long before the pleasure gives way to bondage. And here we find him after the money's gone almost selling himself.

He joins himself, that's a word that means sort of like glued, he glued himself to a citizen of that land. And he winds up feeding hogs. You can almost hear a gasp from Christ's audience at this point. For a Jew to sink this low, and not only is he feeding the pigs, but he wants to eat the feed that the pigs are eating and they won't let him. The pigs are more valuable to his master than he is. They say, how low can you go?

This is about it. For a Jew in that day, this is absolutely rock bottom. And then something happens, we see it in verse 17, a turning point. And the turning point is described like this, he came to himself. Isn't that a strange expression? Where had he been?

I'll tell you, he'd been in la-la land. That's where he's been. You see the world thinks of you and I as Christians as folks that have lost our marble. We've gone out and left field and scattered our marbles. When the reality is, is that we have come in from left field. We've gathered up our marbles and came back in.

You see the picture? He came to himself. We say someone came to, they were out of their mind, they were out of their right head and now they've come to. Brother Greg, I wish I could figure out how to do that with sinners. I have wanted sometimes to go get me a two-by-four and take it and see if I could knock some sense into somebody. You're sitting there listening to their tale of woe and what they're up to and what they're involved with and you just want to slap them because you can't knock any sense out. Maybe you can knock some sense in. You get the picture?

But we can't do this. Something happens at this point and from here on out, once he comes to, it's like his eyes are open, he wakes up, he's out of this dream, out of this fog and from here on everything falls into place. Notice the steps to his recovery. He comes to himself, then he says, amazing how smart he got in a hurry, how many of my father's hired servants have bred enough in despair and I'm perishing with hunger. Back there they're eating fine, the hired servant, that's the day laborer. The lowest man on the totem pole at my father's place is eating good tonight and I'm starving.

So he's saying basically, this is nuts. I will arise and I'll go to my father, I'll say unto him, father I've sinned against heaven and before thee and I'm no more worthy to be called thy son, make me as one of thy hired servants. I'll go back and I'll plead for mercy, the least bit of favor. And notice he not only wills to do it, but he does it.

There is a difference. I remember punishing my son when he was little and he'd be screaming, I will, I will, I will. Soon as you stopped, he won't. No, he wasn't, wasn't gonna do it.

Just right back to his old ways. There is a difference between saying, yeah, I will. But notice he said, I will go. And then in verse 18, I will, I will arise. And then verse 20, he arose and came to his father. And then we have this wondrous scene of the father seeing his son far off and running, having compassion, falling on him, kissing him. And the son begins his little speech. I've sinned against heaven and in thy sight, no more worthy to be called thy son. And the father interrupts, bring the robe and put it on him, put the ring on his hand, put shoes on his feet, bring that catted, fatted calf we've been keeping, slay it, fix it.

We're fixing to have a party with this. My son was dead and is alive again. He was lost in his found. Now I want to stop right here and say that our Armenian friends like this story because they would say to us, Now where's your Calvinism now? Yeah, you might have had the retrieving of the lost thing in those first two sections.

When you're dealing with sheep and coin, we can go with you. We can believe in sovereignty, you know, sovereign grace, fetching grace as we talked about in the field shift this afternoon. But when it comes to people, you see the boy, nobody went and found him.

Nobody went and fetched him. He just of his own free will decided to come back home. Mhm. Let me try to stop a minute and try to explain what's going on here out west. Uh, I love the history of the West and the old mountain men that roamed out there.

It's just fascinating stuff. And and you hear of places like Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Do you know why it's called Jackson Hole?

Mhm. Well, there was a man named David Jackson that had a trading post in that big valley outside of Jackson, Wyoming and the mountain man you see who lived in the mountains. What stood out to them were the holes, the valleys. There's Jackson Hole on this side of the Tetons on the backside over in Idaho.

There's Pierre's Hole over there. Another mountain man with a fort because they live their lives in the high country, you see. And so what they see you and I go through, we're driving down low on the highway and we're looking up and we're talking about the names of the mountains.

They're living in the mountains and they're looking down talking about the holes. You see, it's a different perspective. And may I submit to you that that is precisely what is going on here. It's a matter of perspective. In the first two sections, first two stories, we're looking at this recovery of a lost thing from the perspective of heaven. If you're looking at it through the eyes of heaven, what you're seeing is not what the lost thing does, but the recover of the lost thing.

But you and I are not looking at the situation from heaven down here on earth. We're looking at it down here and what we see. Well, it's like old horns was lost.

Well, look at here. Horns is back. Thank you.

Go old horns. You wised up. You came back. You see what was unseen to the rest of the sheep is what that shepherd did all night long, finding that sheep and bringing it back. We're looking at exactly the same story. We're just looking at it from two different angles, two different perspectives. Well, I can tell by the look on your face, you're not totally convinced.

You're saying? Well, I think I see a Calvinist here struggling to salvage his theology here. No, no, because look at 21 verse 21. Look at what the father says this. My son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. Tell me who found him. You see, that's the missing thing, right?

That's what we see in the other two stories. There's a finder in this story. We never see a finder, but the father says there's a finder. Somebody found him. Somebody fetched him.

Somebody brought him back. And oh, yes, he was dead in Jewish culture. I am told I've never found any proof of this, that in some cases, when a Jew apostatizes, they actually have a funeral for him, that this is the family's way of turning and cutting off that person utterly. I don't know if that's true, but it certainly fits what's going on here to the father. He was dead.

It didn't mean he ceased to exist, but it means that there was a separation between the son and the father. And now the son is alive once again. Now, this is a wonderful parable, and yet we're not even near finished because all of this is just sort of window dressing leading up to this last scene when the older brother comes in from the field. And as he gets close to the house, he starts hearing music and dancing.

I mean, there's a celebration going on. And he calls one of the servants and says, Well, what's happened? And he said, Well, your brother came home. Your father's killed the fatted calf, and they're and they're having a big time, and he's angry. It's sort of a New Testament version of Jonah. When Jonah was fretting underneath the gourd, you remember, in the shade of the weed outside of Nineveh, mad as a wet hen because God didn't destroy Nineveh. It's like Jonah when he and when Jonah speaks to God, he says, I knew that it's just like you, God.

It's just like you. I knew this is what you were up to. That's why I didn't want to go to Nineveh in the first place. I mean, you think about it. Do you have to send a prophet to warn Nineveh if God's purpose was just to destroy Nineveh? You get the picture. And so Jonah says, I knew this is what you were up to all along, and that's why I didn't want to go.

Wouldn't you like to have him as your missionary, your pastor, you know, mad because God saved it? Go figure. But that's the attitude of the older brother. How dare you?

I do. It's just like you, Dad, to do something like this. He won't go in, but his father comes out and entreats him, pleased with him.

Pleased with him what? To come inside, to join the party, to sit out at the table, eat of the fatted cat. That's what he's out there doing, pleading with this older son to come inside. And yet the older son says, Lo, these many years I've served you. You have to understand that in the eyes of the right self righteous Pharisee, okay, sin is a pleasure that you've got to deny yourself. Obedience is a duty.

You've got to grit your teeth and to that's what's going on here. Father, I've served you these knowledge, these many, many years. I like to say all these hot, long days I've served you long days out there in the field. And you never did one thing for me. Never killed a kid goat for me to have with my friends and rejoice. But this guy, as soon as he comes home, he devoured your substance with harlots.

Notice that's just sort of gratuitously thrown in there. How does he know that? But could be soon as he comes, not my brother, but your son. Soon as he comes, you kill the fatty calf. You do for him what you never do for me. And the father simply replies, Son, uh, you see, he's asking, Why did I ever get out of this thing?

And the son of the father is basically saying, Son, you've got to be with me. You could be here. You got the run of the place.

It's all yours. What do you mean? What did I ever get? Are you grieving because you didn't get to go? So your wild oats like your brother. Are you envious of him and all the pleasure he got to endure while you stuck it out and gritted your teeth out there in the field?

What did you get out of this? You got to eat when he was starving. You're sitting at my table when he's out there slopping pigs. And it's right that we rejoice because he was dead and he's alive again. He was lost and he's found.

This is the right thing to do. One of the reasons I find this parable so intriguing is because what Jesus is doing is telling a story fictional story that is exactly describing his present situation. That's the masterpiece of this thing. Remember, he's eating with publicans and and sinners, and the Pharisees and sinners are standing outside, not willing to come in to sit at the table with Jesus. Here's the messiah. They will not sit at the messianic table because of who's there. The publicans and sinners. It's exactly the same scenario of the elder brother refusing to come into the house where the younger brother has come home.

You see the picture? That's why this is such an amazing parable. And I want you to realize that it's an open ended parable.

It's a cliffhanger and it leaves you hanging. He never really tells you do did the older brother ever go into the house? Here is the older brother saying, Father, I've never disobeyed you while he's in the act of disobeying his father.

And the father is pleading. Here are the Pharisees and the scribes who see themselves as the holy ones of Israel, the representatives of God to the people. And what Jesus is showing here in this parable is that their heart is nothing like the heart of God.

The elder brother's heart is nothing like the heart of his father. And so it is while they are priding themselves on being so in line with God, they are nothing like God. They have no pity.

They have no mercy. They can't rejoice when a sinner comes home and notice the context demands that we understand that these are repentant sinners who have come to eat with Jesus. These are all repenting the sheep, the coin, the son. These are all repenting. Notice more joy in heaven over one center that what repents than over 99 just persons that need no repentance. And this brings us to an interesting question.

Well, wait a minute. Are there really just persons? In other words, in each of these stories, we have that which is lost and that which is not lost, right?

One cheaps lost 99 is not one coins lost 10 at nine or not. And now we have a lost son and a may I say not lost son. But we must understand what they would understand in that day to be lost meant is that you're a sinner. Well, you say everybody's a sinner.

Yeah, but this is being used in a more technical sense. To say they are center means they are where we use the term in the south plum lost, hopelessly lost, helplessly lost. The son has taken off to the far country. He's dead to his father and there is no way back. But he comes back. I've had people ask me where is Christ in this parable? Is he the robe that puts on the back of the sun? Is he the ring on the finger? Is he the shoes on the feet?

Is he the fatted calf? Is that pointing us to Christ? I believe the best way to understand Christ place in all of this is that he is the road back home. He is the one who makes it possible for this lost son plum lost. He's lost in the sense that he has cut off from the Commonwealth of Israel. He's not welcome in the synagogue, not welcome in the temple. He's utterly cut off.

He's absolutely out there, hopeless and helpless. And yet in Christ there is a way back home for a lost sinner and these who are being described as righteous in the eyes of the people. That's who the scribes and Pharisees were. And it is their righteousness that is their biggest stumbling block. Remember that stone that the builders refused that we talked about last evening.

Now we see that that stone becomes a stumbling block to Israel. The fact that Christ being crucified has opened the door for the riff raff and the scum like you and me, we who were far off, cut off, hopeless, helpless. Paul describes us in visions to now are made nine through the blood of Jesus, and the Jews are scandalized by if this is the messiah, we want nothing to do with him. Well, my friend, I don't know where you are tonight.

I don't know which group you fit into, but I think you see one thing is that whoever you are, you need to come to Christ. You need to come inside and sit down at the table because in the eyes of the Jew, the way God's salvation work was a curve. You ever been graded on the curve college? The curve? You always have one curve wrecker in the class, you know, made the real high grade.

Mhm. The idea of the professor adjusts the grades. A B C. Indeed, you know, who I think the first chemistry test I took it rice, I made 27 on thought I was gonna flunk. Turned out. 27 is pretty good grade. Gotta be because he rated on the curve.

You know, I wasn't bad. I certainly wasn't perfect, but I was better than most. God doesn't grade on the curve. He grades on past fail, mhm.

And there's just one question on his test. Have you believed in Jesus, my son? Have you embraced him?

Have you come in from outside and set down in fellowship with my son? That's the question. And you've got some folks that never attended a day of class that aced that test. They got in mhm. And you've got folks that were out there in the field working hard every day. You see what's being illustrated there?

The duties, the rigidness of the scribes and Pharisees. Oh, my could go on for hours about some of their ridiculous rules. And yet they miss the whole point. My friend don't miss it. Certainly.

Is it better for you to be the elder son than the younger one? Yeah, I don't want to spend my time out there slawing pigs, but not if it means that I miss the fees, not if it means that I miss Jesus, that no matter who we are, whether we would fall into that center category or righteous category, we need the Christ for the whole point of keeping the law. What does the scripture say? Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes he was the whole. The law was our schoolmaster, our pedagogy, this one that brings us to Christ. That's the whole point of the law.

And here you have these who were supposedly keeping it, refusing the very thing the law was leading them to do. You see the problem and these who have never been under that have refused and rejected they're entering. And there is a savior who makes it possible for you and I can I'll try to quote you that last line of that song I sang a little while ago. It's a blessed surrender when you turn and come back home fleeing all your former masters now the bow to Christ alone under him your life to render laying all down at his feet. It's this blessed surrender that truly sets you free come to Christ. You said, Well, I'm waiting on him to drag me, you know, pull, you know, I'm gonna sit in the easy chair and wait for salvation to drop my lap.

Did you notice how the son came? That's how you're gonna have to come. You're gonna have to will. Everybody thinks that we don't believe that men have to will to be saved. I have never met a Christian yet that didn't will to be saved. Have you ever met anybody that didn't exercise their will to come to Christ dragged there against their will?

Never. This is how God brings us. This is how he drags us not from without, but from a work of grace within, bringing us to our senses, to our right self, to be able to see things as they truly are to wake us up from the fog, the haze. We've been doped on the spirit of this world of the spirit of this age, the spirit of the prince of the air. And suddenly, through the work of the Holy Spirit, we sober up. And then from then, it's just an easy trip home. Mhm.

Mhm. Oh, my thank you for Jesus. Let's pray. Father, thank you that there is a road home for sinners who have done it.

He was sending away all hope cut off, alienated, estranged. And yet in Christ there is a way back. And father, we plead with men. We preach our hearts out. We think that if we were just better preachers and had better illustrations and knew how to apply the text better, that maybe we'd see more results. And we forget that what we're utterly dependent on is this work that brings lost sinners to themselves.

May you do that tonight. If there's one here who's outside of the kingdom outside of Christ, who's still out there in that far off country slopping the hogs, I pray that this might be the night that you awaken them to their need, that they see their lostness, that they too, like this lost son are perishing in sin. And there is a savior who welcomes them, entreats them like the father in treats and begs his son. And as Jesus in this parable is extending his arms to these crimes and Pharisees to come and sit down with the sinners and publicans at his table, okay? May we father understand that it's right for us to rejoice over centers that repent that we give you the glory and that we understand that if we come, it's because you fetched us because you drew us. Father, thank you for such a savior as Christ who saves us from the uttermost to the gutter most and presents us faultless before your throne in Christ, we pray. Amen.