Gardeners In The Garden

Transcript

Genesis 1

and 2.

So God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them. And God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the ground. 2

. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

— Genesis 1

, 2

(ESV)

Family this is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray. Our Father and our God as we approach your word this morning we do pray, we desperately pray that you would be in our midst, that you would meet us, that your Holy Spirit would mold us and make clear what is in your words so that we might be

conformed into the image of Jesus who is the head of the church. Father we need you. Come be among your people this morning. Walk in our midst. We delight in you and we delight in your word and we pray all of these things in the name of our mighty King and priest Jesus. Amen. You may be seated. I do love hearing all the little baby voices in here. Yes. If someone was to ask you what is the church and what do you do there, what would your response be? Would you describe the church as a place or a building that you go to on Sunday mornings to hear a preacher preach a sermon? Or would you describe the church as simply your community? Well if that’s how you define the church I’m very thankful that you’re here this morning because this morning my burden is to

What Is the Church?

show you from the scriptures that the church is not so much defined as a place or a building but as a people. And neither is the church defined as a place that you go to hear a preacher preach a sermon. And while there is some truth to the statement that the church is a community, I would also argue that the church is not merely a community. And the reason this is important to understand is because if your view of the church is merely a place or a community or if your understanding of what the church does when it gathers is simply to listen to a sermon, then the way that you participate and relate with others in the church will be altogether shallow, unhealthy, and I think ultimately unfulfilling. What I hope to show you from the scriptures this morning is that the church is a local gathering of God’s chosen people who have been brought into

a new covenant community where each member of this covenant community works within it for the overall health, protection, unity, and witness of the church to a broken and dying world. And this work that every member in the new covenant community does, it’s not open for interpretation. We don’t get to define on our own what that looks like. It’s actually very specific and it’s delegated to you by Christ himself who is the head of the church. Just as pastors or deacons have very specific roles or jobs within this new covenant community, so does every one of its members. I’ve mentioned this before, but the church is not an institution where the pastors do all the work. Amen, pastors? Amen. The job of a pastor is to biblically equip you to do the work that God calls you to do within the church. We see this plainly in Ephesians 4. This is

why every member of this church adheres to a membership covenant, so that we can hold one another accountable for some of that work. And it is this job, this member job, and the job description that we’re going to be unpacking over the next five or six weeks. And family, listen, the reason this is important is that your understanding of your job and your job description in this new covenant community should fundamentally change your approach to church, to worship, to service, to discipleship, and all the other aspects of our life together. It should fundamentally change the church’s level of importance and commitment in your life. Let me just listen to how the Apostle Paul describes the importance and significance of the church. In Ephesians 3, 8 through 11, he says, To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach

to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he realized in Christ Jesus our Lord. According to God’s eternal plan, he created the church to reveal the mystery of God and to showcase the manifold wisdom of God. Family, that is a cosmic and spiritual reality that is taking place in the church. That sounds like a pretty big deal to me. Something that we should maybe adjust our priorities for. Yet how often do we approach church casually or with a sense of indifference? Maybe I’ll go to church today, maybe I won’t. I just need a

little me time today, and Sunday is the Sabbath day, so I might as well just kick it. You see, when we understand how your role in the church is in every way connected to this cosmic and spiritual reality, you will adjust your priorities and you will adjust your level of commitment. Now, we could go to the New Testament letters and pull out some very helpful principles on the job of a member and what that looks like, but this morning what I want to do to help you fully understand your job as a member and help you understand the covenant you’ve been brought into is bring you to the very beginning, to the creation account. Because your job as a member in the church and this covenant community that you belong to, it began with Adam in the midst of a beautiful garden. And friends, that’s why I’ve titled the sermon this morning, Gardeners in the

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Gardeners in the Garden

Garden. Now, normally we preach expositionally, which just means we preach line by line, and I do find this to be the most helpful way to understand our Bibles, but there are these rare occasions where we preach a bit more topically when it’s helpful, and I think today is one of those days. So this morning what I’m gonna try to do is kind of squeeze together a biblical theology of work, garden, and covenants. That sounds like a crazy task. I’m not gonna be exhaustive, but I’m just gonna try to give us an overview. So we are gonna bounce around a lot in our Bibles, more than we typically do, but I think that in the end this will help serve us well. Okay, so we have a lot to unpack, so we’ll pick up in Genesis chapter 2, verse 7 and 8, and in all of these passages I think

will be on the screen. And just so you guys know, brother Mark behind there running the slides, he’s kind of doing this blindly today because it’s a new projector and it’s not worked as well as it did before. So brother, thank you for doing that blindly and holding it down, because there are so many pieces of Scripture that we’re gonna go through. Genesis 2

. Then the Lord God formed a man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. Genesis 2. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. Genesis 1, very popular verse, says, So God created man in his own

image. In the image of God he created him, male and female he created them, and God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. So all that to say, God creates Adam from the dust, breathes life into his lungs, and places him in the midst of a beautiful and bountiful garden. But God doesn’t just place him there for nothing, or to simply be enjoyed, though that is part of it. No, like a good father, God gives Adam a job. It’s kind of like a divine vocation, if you will. Some biblical theologians refer to Adam’s job title as the priest king of the garden, and I think that’s a great title. But what

specifically is Adam’s job description for this job of priest king of the garden, and what in the world does that title even mean? Well, I think the job description is basically threefold, and for the sake of simplicity, I’ll explain it this way. Glorifying, growing, and guarding. Guarding. Now, we briefly unpack each one of these for you. So first, let’s talk about glorifying. If you look back to Genesis 1

, it tells us, so God created man in his own image. Now, what does it mean to be created in the image of God? It means to be born in the likeness or imprint of God. It’s to be an image or a reflection of what God is like in terms of his character and his nature, but most explicitly, it is to be a reflection of his glory. And this family is a job. It’s a job. This job is inherent

to all humanity. We were all born as image bearers. Now, whether you do that job or not is another question, maybe another sermon, but all humanity is born to fulfill this cosmic commission of reflecting the image we were born into. Humanity was made to image back to God and to the world the glory of God. This is why the Westminster Catechism rightly asks, what is the chief end of mankind? And the answer, to glorify God and enjoy him forever. This is why Adam was placed in the garden. This is what he was meant to do. In other words, Adam’s job was to reflect the glory of God to a soon-to-be watching world. And again, this job, though it began with Adam because he was the first human, it’s not exclusive to Adam. In fact, this cosmic commission is located in chapter 1 of Genesis, before

Adam’s Job Description

we get to chapter 2, where we see the story of Adam and Eve. So when it says man and woman, he created them, he’s speaking generally and universally concerning humanity. All people are made in the image of God. Therefore, all people have the job of reflecting the glory of God. Turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm 8. Psalm 8. Here we find the purpose for God creating Adam and humanity in his image. And that purpose is to fill the whole earth with his glory. You’ll notice that verses 1 and 9 are exactly the same. It’s because they are the bookends of God’s plan for his glory to be spread through the entire earth. So Psalm 8, 1, and 9 says, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. When you look at Psalm 8, 5, and 6, and he’s speaking of Adam and

humanity, yet you have made him, Adam, humanity, a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet. So part of imaging God is not just reflecting his glory, but taking dominion over God’s creation. This dominion begins with ruling creatures and creating more people to rule his creatures. This is most explicit in God’s command for humanity to be fruitful and multiply. This is the job of growing. This task is really filling the garden with children. Now, I want to be sensitive here because I do understand this can be a difficult concept to hear for some people, especially those who desire to grow a family, who want to multiply, be fruitful, but for whatever reason, they can’t do it biologically. And for those of you here,

I do want to encourage you that growing a family also includes adoption. It also includes adoption. In fact, adoption is one of the most powerful ways to multiply and be fruitful. Bringing adopted children into gospel homes where the gospel is made consistently accessible is exceedingly fruitful, and it grows the kingdom of God. And in many ways, it’s the perfect picture of the gospel because God has adopted us and brought us in to this growing family of believers. So be encouraged. And so because God’s design is for his glory to fill the earth, Adam and Eve, as the prototype of a holy union, were commissioned by God to multiply and grow other image-bearers who would reflect his glory so that his majestic name would be spread through all the earth. Now, theoretically, as more and more people grew in the garden, more children flooded it, kind of like our sanctuary, Adam and Eve would also need

to expand the geographical boundaries of the garden to make room for all the children who would fill it. This is why in chapter 2

, it says, the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it. So growing the people to reflect God’s glory is the first part of his work, but growing the boundaries of the garden would also be included in that work. So practically, Adam’s original job was to take this perfect and livable garden and build it out. And building it out meant taking the rough and chaotic terrain just outside the garden and cultivating it, transforming it, pulling weeds, growing plants, and making it a hospitable and livable garden. Family, this is the work of subduing and taking dominion over the land. And this, by the way, is exactly what God did with creation. After speaking creation into existence, he began to make order out of the chaos around.

He began to separate the oceans and the dry lands, and he eventually took the shrubbery of the land, and he manicures this perfect and livable garden, and then he picks Adam up, and he places him in the garden. Adam, as part of his imaging God, is called to subcreate and cultivate the chaos around him and make it part of the garden. And notice I said subcreate. And this is important to understand. I say this to creative people all the time. Adam’s job was to recreate. God creates from nothing, but man uses the resources God has given him to recreate, to rule, and to have authority. So all of that was delegated to them. Adam’s role, in a sense, is an underking of the eternal king, whom everything belongs to. So in essence, God deputized Adam with the authority to create, to rule, subdue, and do all of that while submitting under God’s authority.

So in this way, Adam reflects the kingly rule of his creator over creation. And this was God’s ultimate goal in creating creation. God created it so that his creatures would fill the world and work in it to be a livable place so that all might glorify him and enjoy him forever. We see the purpose here in Isaiah 45, 18. For thus says the Lord who created the heavens, he is God who formed the earth and made it, he established it, he did not create it empty, he formed it to be inhabited. I am the Lord and there is no other. Psalm 115, 16 says, The heavens are the Lord’s heavens, but the earth he has given to the children of man. But Adam’s job was not just about growing and gardening in the garden. He also had the task of guarding the garden. This is where we see the third aspect of his job description.

Look again at Genesis 2

. It says the Lord took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. Okay, the word keep here does not mean keep it tidy or neat, or like what we would tell our kids to do every day. Keep your room clean, right? The original language for this word keep means to watch, to guard, and protect.

The reason for this was that the garden was a sacred space. Not just because God made it, but because it was the place where the Lord’s presence was evident, where God walked among his people. You see this in Genesis 3, 8. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. So the garden in many ways was a sanctuary or a temple. Or a temple. Part of Adam’s job is working and keeping. And part of that meant expanding the boundaries through work, but also protecting the boundaries. He had to keep it holy. He had to keep it sacred. He had to keep it free from all unclean things. He needed to keep intruders out. It was Adam’s job to keep those who would threaten the sacredness, purity, beauty, and holiness of the garden outside of the walls of the garden.

So in a sense, Adam’s guarding was reflecting the priestly role of his creator over creation. And this is why Adam’s job title was that of a priest-king of the garden. So Adam is commissioned by God with a job and a job description. And after he tells him what he must do, he establishes a conditional covenant with Adam that in every way is directly related to the garden. And this conditional covenant is found in Genesis 2

.

And the Lord God commanded the man saying, you shall surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

— Genesis 2

(ESV)

So Adam was given the priestly and kingly authority to subdue and to rule the garden. This means he had access to everything.

Out of all of the fruit and all the benefits the garden had to offer, there was only one restriction. One. The fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And the covenant and the contract is this. As long as Adam obeyed this one command, he would experience the blessing of life and the unique presence of God in the garden for all of eternity. But as we know from chapter 3 of Genesis, Adam failed to keep up his end of the deal and he disobeyed God. He disobeyed God’s one and only command. And not only did he disobey God’s one command, Adam also failed in his job to protect the garden. Adam was derelict in his duty because the serpent made its way into the garden on Adam’s watch. Adam should have taken action to prevent the serpent from ever reaching his wife.

But he wasn’t guarding the garden properly. And as a result, they both disobeyed. And Adam’s failure to fulfill his priestly and kingly responsibilities ends horribly. Both Adam and Eve were exiled from the garden, exchanging God’s blessing and presence for a curse and death. And because Adam is representative of all humanity, this sin, this curse and death has spread to all humanity. It’s infected us all. And yet, even in the midst of judgment and punishment for breaking God’s command, even as they’re being exiled from the garden, God made a covenant with Adam. This covenant would not be conditional. God made a promise to Adam and all humanity that he would send a redeemer that would come to crush the head of the serpent. In other words, he would send a redeemer to destroy Satan’s sin and make all things new. This curse and covenant is found in Genesis 3

,

The Pattern of Failure

where God says, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. And the same motif of commissioning, commanding, and this covenant moves throughout the Old Testament. God raised up other Adam-like figures to obey God’s command and continue the commission of glorifying, growing and guarding the garden. But all fail. All of them fail. But God continues to make his covenant with people. And you see this with every priest-king after Adam. You see it first with Noah. As the wickedness of man became greater and greater, God decides he’s going to destroy the people. But God engages Noah, a righteous man. Just like God placed Adam in the garden, he placed Noah in an ark, a kind of sacred temple or garden where all unclean things were to be kept out.

Just like Adam, Noah subdued the earth, not by naming the animals, but this time numbering the animals. He was responsible for distinguishing between clean and unclean animals. And after the flood, God commissioned Noah with the same job as Adam, to be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth. And just like Adam, God makes a covenant with Noah, promising to never again destroy all flesh by a flood. So it seems Noah did a better job than Adam because Noah was righteous in ways that Adam was not. But sadly, just like Adam, Noah also failed to be righteous and failed in his responsibilities. You see, Noah was a drunk, and in his drunkenness, he failed to protect the righteousness and purity of his family. In other words, Noah didn’t guard his own garden. But God remains faithful even when man is not. So God’s commission is then passed from Noah to Abraham,

and in a similar nature. We see this in Genesis 12

, and I’ll just explain this briefly. God places Abraham, much like Adam and Noah, in a land. And he calls him to keep it and work it. He gives him the promise to bless him and make him a great nation. God made Abraham multiply. Abraham was exceedingly fruitful. His family grows from a family to a tribe into a nation. And in Genesis 17, we see that God establishes a covenant with Abraham. And as a physical sign of the covenant between God and Abraham and the people of Israel, God commands Abraham to circumcise himself, his male descendants, and even male servants as a token of their commitment to this covenant. This call to circumcision was a way of separating the people of Israel from all other nations. It was to set them apart.

This was guarding Israel from outsiders, those who would threaten to destroy the purity of God’s chosen people. This was the same job as Adam, just with a different man in a different location. But Abraham fails, both in his righteousness and in his job, because Abraham had trust issues with God, and Abraham was a liar. And so the commission is passed from Abraham to Israel as a whole. And here you see the job description goes from one man to an entire nation of people. In a sense, God deputizes the nation of Israel, God’s chosen people, to do the job of priests, kings. And so Israel grows, as God promises, because God is faithful in his covenant. But instead of Israel being a holy nation set apart from the world, keeping unclean things out, they actually turn away from God and worship idols, making themselves unclean. Even when God brings them out of Egypt, they still worship false idols.

But God remains faithful even when Israel is not. And so God continues his covenant with Israel that he made with Abraham, but this time it comes with a covenant that has a condition. They needed to obey the law of God given through Moses. It’s what we call the Mosaic Law or the Old Covenant. So Moses, as a priest-king, spoke to God on behalf of the people, brought God’s holy law down to the people on tablets of stone, and even as the law is being presented to Israel, they again disobey and forfeit their job description. Instead of reflecting the glory of God, they reflected false gods and graven images. Israel was meant to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. They were to rule the land, but Israel’s disobedience and fickleness caused them to fail. Israel as a whole was unfaithful. But God remains faithful even when Israel is not.

God in his kindness commissions David, and much like Adam but to a greater degree, David is placed not just in a land but over a nation to rule as a priest-king. David’s job was to grow and guard the nation with wisdom and righteousness, but David fails in his righteousness and in his responsibilities because David was a murderer and an adulterer. But even though David fails in his righteousness and in his job, God makes a covenant with David, promising that through his offspring he would establish an everlasting kingdom. So from Adam to Noah to Abraham to Israel to David, all of them failed to keep God’s commandments. They were not righteous enough to do what God called them to do. All of them failed their jobs as priest-kings of the garden. None of these figures could keep God’s command, no matter how hard they try. Even when the law was written on stone for them to see,

this is how you keep my law, they failed. And you see, family, all of this failure just points to the fact that we can’t do it as humans because we are sinful people. None of us are righteous enough to keep the law. We need a perfect king and a perfect priest to do what we could never do. We need a better Adam, a more faithful Israel, and a greater David. We need a Redeemer who would perfectly fulfill his job as priest and king, who would perfectly obey God’s law, who would bring a new covenant to ultimately fulfill God’s law and promises. And this Redeemer family is Jesus Christ, the one God promised in the garden who would crush the head of the serpent, the one prophesied by the prophets who would come to destroy Satan, sin, and death, the one that all these old covenants pointed to,

the promised perfect priest-king. And we see this explicitly in Jeremiah 31. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them. I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they shall be my people, and no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.

For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more. Family, this prophecy from Jeremiah points directly to Jesus Christ, who is the better Adam, the descendant from the seed of Abraham, from the nation of Israel, and from the line of David. God, speaking through the prophet Jeremiah, promises that this new covenant, that through it, God will transform hearts of stone into hearts of flesh. In other words, he will regenerate people. He will write his laws not on tablets of stone, but on the tablets of their hearts. Through this new covenant, he will make us a people, and through the indwelling Holy Spirit, he will give us the power to obey God’s commands. Through this covenant, we will have direct access to God, which means we won’t need a mediator or priest anymore to bring us to God, because we will all know God.

We will all be in relationship with God. Through this new covenant, we will be forgiven and reconciled, because Jesus makes us righteous. And family, how does all this happen? How does Jesus fulfill the old covenant and bring us the new? How are we forgiven and reconciled to God, when the curse of death was looming over us?

The Perfect Priest-King

By God sending us Jesus to secure it for us. The perfect king leaves the riches of heaven and comes into the sinful world to rescue his people from Satan, sin, and death. And he rescues his people by being a perfect priest, who offers his perfect life as a sacrifice to pay for all of the sins of humanity. Jesus bore all the sins of Adam and every other human down the line, taking upon himself the curse we deserve. And in so doing, made a way for us to experience life and the presence of God. In essence, Jesus, through his life, death, and resurrection, brings us into a new covenant by fulfilling the old and making us new. 2 Corinthians 5, 17-21 says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself

and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against him and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. God, through Jesus, has dealt with our sin. He’s reconciled us to God, and he’s made us new, so that even when we fail, his righteousness is still credited to us.

Listen to what the writer of Hebrews says concerning Jesus and this new covenant. Hebrews 9

, Therefore, he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since his death has redeemed them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. Hebrews 8 But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is far more excellent than the old, because the covenant he mediates is better, enacted on better promises. This new covenant is God’s grace, redemption, and reconciliation through faith in Christ Jesus, and all who trust and believe in him become part of this new covenant community. And in this new covenant community, our job as priests, kings of the garden is recommissioned. Our job remains the same as Adam, to glorify God in the garden, to grow the garden, and to guard the garden.

And family, what does all of this have to do with the church? Everything. Because the new covenant community is the church. We are a local assembly of this new covenant community, and the church is our garden. And the job of each and every member in this church is to glorify God in unity by reflecting the very image of God so that those outside of the garden might look in and see what God is like. Holy, righteous, gracious, good, merciful, compassionate. That’s what the world should see as they peer into our garden. The job of every Christian in this community is to work the garden, to cultivate it, and expand the boundaries of it through discipleship and evangelism, so that more and more Christians might flourish and fill it. And fill it. Our job is to guard it and protect it, to fortify its borders and keep out intruders

and false teaching to ensure that those who come into the garden, who are residents of the garden, are actually regenerate Christians, who have the Holy Spirit within them, whose law is written on their hearts, so that we can keep the garden sacred and holy. This is your job.

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Our Job Today

This is what God calls you to do as members of this covenant community. And in many ways, for a very long time, we have robbed you from the joy and obedience of doing your job fully and completely. Now, listen, by God’s grace, you have done so much of your job so well, and for that, I am exceedingly thankful. But one of the ways in which we’ve robbed you from doing your job is from guarding the garden, by bringing members into the garden. As many of you know, the process of membership historically has been after a prospective member completes the membership class and fills out an application, that prospective member meets with one of the elders or two of the elders, they’re asked about their life, their understanding of the gospel, and if that elder or two elders believes that prospective member is indeed a Christian,

then at the consensus of all the elders, we present them to you as members. The pastors have brought them into the garden. But that means you, whose job it is to watch and protect the garden, have not had the chance to do your job of vetting and voting. Voting them into the garden to ensure that they are indeed regenerate Christians, where you can stand with confidence and say, yes, I can attest that this person is a believer. And so, family, we’d like that to change. We’d like that to change. We’d like to empower you to do your job, the job that God has called you to do. And family, this is one of the reasons for moving towards elder-led congregationalism. So that you, along with the elders, can glorify, grow, and guard the garden that God has so graciously placed you in.

This is the job God has entrusted to us until we are with God face-to-face in the new heavens and the new earth, which, by the way, will be a garden. We are gardeners in this garden until God restores and renovates this world to make it a new garden, the new Eden. But until that day, family of God, we have a lot of work to do. Everyone has a job. Amen? Let’s pray. Our Father and our God, we do thank you that when we fail, you are faithful. We thank you, O Lord and God, that in the deadness of our sin, you gave us Jesus to bring us back to life, to bring us into this new covenant community. And we pray, O Lord and God, that as we engage in our work as members of this church, that you would empower us by the Holy Spirit to do the work that you’ve called us to do.

We pray, God, that you would help us to guard this garden, to keep it so that we are a chosen people who glorify you, who grow the boundaries of this garden, and who guard it, protect it, keep it sacred and holy. And we pray, God, that over the next coming weeks, you would help us to see how exactly we are to do that from your word. We love you, and we thank you for your divine instruction. We live by it, and we place ourselves under it. We pray all of these things in Christ Jesus. Amen.