What's at the Heart of Worship?

Transcript

This morning, we find ourselves back in the Gospel of John as we continue our study of that wonderful Gospel, and we’re going to be looking at John Chapter 2. So if you have a Bible, I’d like to invite you to open your Bible to John Chapter 2. We’ll be looking at verse 12. Man, this is amazing. When printing my manuscript, I decided to go up one font size for easier reading, and this is just the world of a difference. And it’s one of those moments where you just realize, I’m getting older. Because I’ve just been doing this, and it’s like, I don’t know if I thought it was cool to print in smaller font, but this is just so much better. I’m now at font 46. It’s a 30-page manuscript. Friends, can I invite you to stand for the reading of the Word of God.

John Chapter 2, beginning from verse 12. After this, he went down to Capernaum with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days. The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple, he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money changers sitting there and making a whip of cords. He drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and oxen, and he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, take these things away. Do not make my father’s house a house of trade. His disciples, remembering that it was written, zeal for your house will consume me. So the Jews said to him, what sign do you show us for doing these things?

Jesus answered them, destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews then said, it has taken 46 years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days? But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing, but Jesus, on his part, did not entrust himself to them because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man. This is the word of the Lord, saints. You may be seated. Pray with me, friends. Father, we want to see you more clearly this morning.

A New Temple

In hearing from your word, we want for Jesus to be preeminent in our hearts, in our minds, the center of our emotions, and so we ask that you would guide our thoughts, that you would still our minds, remove any distractions that may be lingering from this morning, from the week that’s passed, and help us to see Jesus. We ask in his name, amen. There are an estimated four to 10,000 religions currently operating in the world today. Each of them will make some kind of claim to truth. They will offer some kind of answers to life’s many questions, and each of them will give its followers some kind of path to God, however that God or those gods may be defined. And within each of these religions, there are countless approaches to worship, to adherence, sacrifice, offering, each of which should ideally, or so the religion would claim, bring

you closer to God, bring you closer to a deeper understanding of truth, bring you closer to some kind of greater understanding of the meaning of life and what it is that we’re all doing here. Some of these religions may dare even to make objective truth claims, while others will keep things rather ambiguous. The ones that would make objective truth claims would state that their way of worshiping, their way of drawing to God, their way of sacrifice, of understanding who or what he is, is the right way. And then there’s Jesus. If you read through the gospel accounts in the New Testament, you’ll quickly see that he makes several audacious claims. He does a number of things that are subversive, controversial, and for the religiously minded of his time, deeply offensive. When he asks his disciples the question, who do you say that I am, in Matthew 16, Peter

responds with, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. This puts Jesus, his teaching, his followers at a bit of a fork in the road when Peter makes this claim. Peter’s statement is either way off, like completely off the rails, untrue, or it is true, which is shocking. And Jesus’ response to Peter tells us all we need to know about how Jesus understood himself. Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. He didn’t correct Peter. He didn’t qualify Peter’s statement or amend it in any way. He said that this statement, that he is the Christ, that he is the promised Messiah, the son of the living God, is truth revealed to Peter by God himself. There are a number of times where Jesus makes it clear and says it plainly who he is, what

he’s doing, and why it matters to those seeing and hearing him, and why it matters to us reading of it now. And so, beloved, when we read passages like the one that we just read from John 2, we come to the obvious question, who is this Jesus flipping tables, chasing people out of the temple, throwing money everywhere, whipping animals, chasing crowds of people out, scaring others? Who is this Jesus who dares to say that he knows what is in man’s heart? This is what we’ll unpack this morning. And so far in our study, we’ve been introduced to Jesus, the Logos, the Word became flesh. We’ve witnessed the voice of the final Old Testament prophet, John the Baptist, crying out in the wilderness that the Messiah has arrived. And last week, we saw Jesus perform his first miracle recorded in the Gospel of John, turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana.

And as the previous story ends, what we see is the disciples beginning to believe in him. They’re starting to get it. Things are starting to click. His miracle manifested his glory, the text says, which then produced faith in his followers. The picture of who he is slowly coming together, more and more vivid with each new verse that we read. And then we see, after this, he went down to Capernaum with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days. And after a time in Capernaum with those who are close to him, Jesus heads down to Jerusalem for the Passover. And this is where our text brings us. And saints, I want to encourage you, as we consider the heart of worship, think deeply about the way that you think about worship. Think deeply about the way that you think about what it means to come before God and

worship him. Know him. Give him the praise that he is due. And as we do that together, we’ll see in our text that Jesus brings about a new temple, and then he makes it known what’s required to worship God in the way that he requires. And that is a new heart. And so in verses 12 through 22, we see a new temple. If you’ve read the other gospels, the other three gospels, what are known as the synoptic gospels, you’ll notice that this story actually appears in all of them. So the story appears in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And if you’ve read those accounts carefully, or maybe just a little bit more recently, you’ll notice that John’s account differs a bit. What’s going on here? Why is John’s different than the other three? John speaks of this story as happening very early on in Jesus’ ministry, whereas the others

talk about it as something happens in his final week of life on his way to the cross, which is correct. Some scholars would say that this is due to the fact that the gospel writers of this time weren’t super concerned with an accurate chronology. They weren’t as concerned as we might be as to the timing of things. And so they would take the topics, or they would take the stories happening in Jesus’ life, they would take his teachings, and they would arrange them topically or thematically with the timelines kind of jumping around, something happening maybe later in his life and ministry, but it makes a little bit more sense to put it in the beginning. So they would say that’s probably what John is doing. So they say John is making it fit into this section, which is contrasting different elements of Jesus’ life and ministry.

We have water and wine. We have the physical temple and the temple of his body, whereas the others are just kind of placing it in the place chronologically where it actually happened. However, throughout church history what has been believed about this seeming discrepancy is that Jesus actually cleansed the temple twice. Jesus cleansed it at the beginning of his ministry, and then on his way to the cross he comes back to the temple and he sees the same thing happening again, and he cleanses the temple twice. This seems to make the most sense, and R.C. Sproul in writing about this in his commentary basically asks the question of the reader, do we really think that when Jesus flipped the tables over and chased people out of the temple that they didn’t just wait for him to leave to come right back, clean everything up and keep getting their money and keep doing

things the way that they were used to doing? Set up shop again. I also like this idea of the religious leaders and those working in the temple complex after he leaves being like, well, surely he’s not going to come back and do this again. So they bring everything right back in. When Jesus comes back to Jerusalem during the Passover, right before his death, what he sees angers him again, holy, righteous anger. He goes back into the temple, the one where he saw people making it a house of trade, the one where he saw people making the beautiful ugly, and he sees the same thing, and so he cleanses it once more. Same issue, same solution. But you’ll see if you study those accounts in the different gospels that the details differ in the different stories. And so the text tells us that he finds all of this commotion, all of this stuff happening

The Heart of Worship

in the temple, all of this activity where there should be contemplation and prayer and worship. He finds oxen and sheep and pigeons and money changers in the temple. Why were they there? What were they doing there? Why is all this stuff happening in this place of worship? When people were coming to Jerusalem for the Passover, the reason that the setup was happening in the temple is that these people coming from outside of Jerusalem were required to offer a sacrifice. Everyone, those within Jerusalem and those outside Jerusalem were required to offer a sacrifice. And it would have been a huge challenge, especially those traveling a long way to bring animals with them for the journey. So it would be much easier for people to purchase their animals at the temple. Thus, the variety of availability for sale, depending on what kind of animal, what kind

of sacrifice, what you need, you basically have this whole marketplace that is going to help you sacrifice in the way that you ought to. Moreover, there was also a temple tax required for those coming for the Passover. And the religious leaders of that time were very, very specific about what kind of coins could be used for the tax. So you couldn’t just bring any kind of coin. You couldn’t just bring any purity of coin. It had to be very, very specific to what they required since they wanted a certain metal purity for their tax. And so conveniently, money changers were there to exchange people’s local currencies for the appropriate currency required for the tax, while, of course, taking a little fee for themselves because, you know, a man’s got to make a living. And so they’re exchanging this money and they’re making a little bit on the side.

And then what you also see is that they’re charging more for the animals than those animals are worth because, well, I’ve been, you know, I’m doing all of this work, I’m bringing them into the temple. I got to make a little bit for my family. And so the money changers are making a little bit. The people selling the animals are making a little bit for the convenience essentially of not having to worry about all of the details on your way to worship God. Ostensibly, this is to serve the people. It’s the equivalent of if you’ve ever bought tickets on Ticketmaster.com, the convenience charge that they charge for a ticket. Now the interesting thing is that Jesus’ issue wasn’t that there was some kind of convenience being offered to people coming to worship, but rather that it was being done in the temple where only worship should take place.

The service had been previously offered to the Jews. This wasn’t like a brand new thing that just started when Jesus’ ministry started. This was offered for worshipers traveling from afar. This isn’t a new thing. But scholars state that prior to this period in Israel’s history, that this would all be happening across the Kidron Valley, on the slopes of the Mount of Olives, far from the temple, removed, not a distraction, not something that would kind of pull people away from worship until convenience and a desire for expediency and not to mention an opportunity to make a little bit of extra money took over. And so the money changers and the animals started moving closer and closer and closer until they were in the temple itself. And so Jesus is angry. Jesus is righteously angry. He’s fired up. He’s very upset. But reading this, we might think, man, that’s a little bit much, like whipping and throwing

things and spilling money. Couldn’t he just ask people to leave? Why is it that Jesus did what he did? Well, look again at verse 17. His disciples remembered that it was written, zeal for your house will consume me. This is a reference to Psalm 69.9. And in the broader context of Psalm 69.9, we see that David is essentially saying about the zeal because of faithfulness to your word, God, I experience hatred because I am faithful to you. I experience distancing from those around me because of my zeal for your house. I am despised by others, which is exactly what’s happening here. And so the disciples in watching this whole scene, they look at David’s son, David’s greater son as having this in common with his father. And so they see this connection. Zeal for the Lord’s house brings about hatred from others. The zeal that Jesus felt for God’s house stemmed out of a love for his father, not just for

a certain kind of formula for worship. The zeal that he felt stemmed out of a desire to worship him as he ought to be worshiped without distraction, without additional things needing to happen, without things being tacked on to sacrifice, without extra impediments to God being close to people and people being close to God, without the thought of the extra things that should be done before we can finally come to the point of praising God for his goodness and giving him glory. He saw the commotion. He heard the noise. He smelled the animals and it disturbed him. It angered him. How can people worship when they need to think about all that they still have to do to bring their offerings, to give their money? Why is all of this being tacked on to something as pure and beautiful as worshiping God? The sacred space reserved for worship became chaotic.

It became ugly. Saints, do you see beauty and an enjoyment of God when you’re worshiping him? Or do you think about all the things that need to happen before you can get to that point of glorifying him and praising him and enjoying him and reveling in him and gazing upon him and seeing just how beautiful he truly is? Do you think about the multiple things that need to happen along the way when you sing to him, when you pray to him, when you hear from him in his word? So this house, this place, this temple, why Jesus was so angry is it was supposed to be about fellowship with the Father, speaking to God, hearing from him, enjoying him. Psalm 73, 25 says, Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. That’s the heart of worship.

Psalm 84, 10, A day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. And Jesus, in seeing this scene in the temple, says this is a miserable place. This has become a miserable place. The trade is happening right in the place where the enjoyment of God and reverence of him should be happening. This was most certainly an adjustment made by the religious leaders to expedite the process of sacrifice and offering and worship to make it easier. But God doesn’t adjust his requirements just because the times have changed. It’s not that we’re all so busy and we’re traveling from afar and we have stuff to do. God doesn’t adjust the requirement of worshiping him in spirit and in truth, of worshiping him fully with the whole of who you are just because this is the time that we live in. See, it’s easy for us to change the way that we think about what it takes to worship God

and what it takes to be in fellowship with him and what it takes to be in communion with others just because our lives are so busy. Our lives are so hectic. We got to speed things up. We got to clean it up. We got to polish it up. But God doesn’t give us that option. God sets the standard. God calls the shots because he is the object of worship, not us. What’s the core of this trade happening in the temple, the expediency and the convenience offered to the worshipers? Is it just this convenience? Well, for the Pharisees, it’s also a love of money. Yes, they were legalists. Yes, they were unloving and unkind. But Luke 16, verses 13 and 14, Jesus calls out their love of money. He says, no servant can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the

other or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. And the text says the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things and they ridiculed him. Again, in Matthew 23, 25, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. They looked good, these Pharisees, these religious leaders. They sounded good. They said all the right stuff, but inside they were full of greed and self-indulgence. They were dead inside. They didn’t worship God. They worshiped themselves. And they set up the temple, the place where people could come to be with God, where people could be removed from this stuff happening in the world that consumes everybody and everything in the world around us. They took all of that stuff and brought it into the place where people ought to be worshiping

God and they turned it into a machine that gets them more power and more control and more money, evil. It’s evil. It’s dark. Now, saints, before we start thinking about how much better we are than the Pharisees and do the very thing that they did for thanking God that they’re not like so-and-so, remember, apart from the work of the Spirit in our hearts and the accountability and help of the brothers and sisters around us, we too can drift into mindless religious practice. We too can drift into legalism and greed and corrupting patterns of sin. May our prayer be, Lord, make me holy. Keep me from sin. All of this can quickly become ugly when it becomes man-centered and man-driven. So as we consider this whole scene, as we consider the background, as we consider this whole picture of this worship, so-called the anger Jesus, I want to ask you, have you ever

Empty Religion’s Danger

felt discouraged or let down by religion, by a religious system? Do you have some church hurt? Has a spiritual authority or a leader maybe sinned against you? Jesus took issue with the religious system of his day, friends, so he can certainly sympathize with you, and he’s not indifferent to what you’ve been through. I know it’s hard. I personally know it’s hard, and I know how that pain can sting. But in response to these abuses that he saw in his time, Jesus didn’t say, just forget it. Just define it however you want. Just do what makes you happy. Worship God in the way that makes sense to you. Do church the way that makes sense to you. No, he challenged the system. He pushed back. He was offended and righteously angry about a lot of what he saw, but his standard was always measured from the word of God, and the direction that he always pushed people

when challenging the religious system was toward God himself, not just away from the problematic things that he was seeing. He didn’t say no more religion, but what he offered, as James 1.27 says, was pure and unblemished religion. Empty religion and mindless worship are incredibly dangerous, and thus Jesus reacted strongly to what he was seeing. Isaiah 29.13 says that this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips while their hearts are far from me. And I think that this again should just be a warning for all of us. Friends, there will be a shocking amount of very religious, very hypocritical people in hell. People who think that they’ve attained something, that they’ve earned something, that they figured things out. And so this is what’s happening here. Desire for more, to stir up their religious sentiments, to feel like they’re doing more, to feel like they’re involved, to feel like they’re in the system, that they’re participating,

that they’re sacrificing, that they’re worshiping. And then in verse 18 it says they want a sign. Jesus correctly rebukes and corrects and pushes them away from the ugliness and towards God, and they said, what’s the sign? What’s the evidence for this thing? These people will do this more than once over the course of his ministry. They’ll continue to misunderstand him. They’ll continue to demand more proof. They’ll refuse to see what the scriptures promised about the Messiah, but what they need isn’t a sign. They don’t need another sign. What they need is for hearts to believe what they’re already seeing and what they’re already hearing. And when Jesus answers them, when they ask for this sign, he answers them with a kind of paradoxical saying, something that can be understood in more than one way. He’s layering the actual temple in which they’re standing with the temple of his body and the

future temple of the church, and he’s layering all of these things into what he’s teaching them. See, Israel’s temple was the place where God dwelt, and in a superior sense, Jesus is the embodiment of God. He is the fullness of God dwelling in him. Colossians 1

says, for in him, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. And this makes Jesus a type of the temple, which John is pointing to in verse 22. And so in destroying his body, the Jews completed the process of the destruction of the physical temple in which they previously worshiped. And we see this in Matthew 27, verse 51, where upon his death, the curtain is torn in two, the veil is torn in two, with God leaving it, and never again to dwell in a temple made by human hands, as we see in Acts 17, which then leads to the establishment of the church,

the temple in which God now dwells, as we see in 1 Corinthians 3, 2 Corinthians 6, and Ephesians 2. All of this begins, as John notes in verses 21 and 22, when Jesus, the living temple, was destroyed and rebuilt by being raised from the dead. And we heard in the first sermon of our series that the word became flesh and dwelt among us in John 1, 14. Some translations would translate this word dwelt as tabernacled, instead of dwelt. God’s dwelling place among us. As Jesus was saying these things and doing things that were angry in the religious leaders, he gained a bit of a following. And as we see in our text, people began to believe in him. They’re impressed by him. But this isn’t as good as it may sound at first. Something is still missing from this belief, which brings us to our second point, the need

A New Heart Required

for a new heart, verses 23 through 25. Reread these verses with me. Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus, on his part, did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people, and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man. These three verses are incredibly interesting. I mean, isn’t the whole purpose of Jesus’ ministry so that people would believe in him? So that people would draw closer to him? They saw his signs and they believed. That’s how that should work. But Jesus, it says, didn’t entrust himself to these people because he could see what was going on in their hearts. So what do we make of that? It’s very important to note, first of all, when we see that he himself knew what was

in man, in verse 25, this actually is a phenomenally important saying. This points to his deity. How do we know that? Consider Psalm 44

. Would God not discover this? For he knows the secrets of the heart. In Jeremiah 1710, I, the Lord, search the heart and test the mind. The one who knows what is in man is God. And the one who knows what is in man is the only one who knows what it’ll take to fix it. Jesus knows all about all people. No one is excluded. He knows everyone, and he knows everything about everyone. Friend, there are no secrets in your life. You may have fooled everyone around you. You may have built a certain image of how you want the world to perceive you, but God knows who you truly are, what you’re truly like. Now, this can be scary in the sense that our deepest and darkest sins and desires and secrets

are known and they’re seen and uncovered before a holy and a righteous God, but it’s also profoundly beautiful. As Jesus says in John 6

, that whoever comes to me, I will never cast out, no matter the darkness that lingers beneath the surface. Whatever you’ve done, whatever you’re most ashamed of, it isn’t enough for him to reject you if you would just run to him. Leave your sin at the foot of the cross and trust in him for your salvation. And if you’re a Christian, Jesus knows you completely. He sees every part of you, and he doesn’t cast you aside. You are his, and he is yours forever. He knows you. He loves you. No one will ever understand you like he does. No one will ever love you and accept you and care for you in the way that he does. The other layer to this portion of text is the fact that we don’t really know ourselves

all that well. The people here in our text must have seen their belief in this teacher and this miracle worker as a good thing. They’re just like, oh, okay, well, he’s doing the right thing, I guess we just believe. So they themselves didn’t even see their own hearts. Sure, we know our own stories, and we know the details of what we’ve been through and what’s happened to us, but we don’t really truly understand ourselves. Jeremiah 17.9 says that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? Psalm 19.12, David asks the Lord to declare me innocent from hidden faults. Those things that he himself has hidden away and maybe doesn’t even understand to be his faults. Those things that he’s continuing to do that are maybe offensive to God that he himself isn’t even thinking about. People pay a lot of money to mental health specialists to uncover past traumas and patterns

spanning the course of their lives to do what? To understand themselves and why they are the way that they are. But there is one who understands us very well. There is one who really knows who we are and why we are that way. And he’s the one that will never cast you aside. Isn’t it incredible to consider that there’s someone in your life, if you’re a Christian, who knows you in your entirety? Not a single thing hidden, not a single thought, not a single desire, and he loves you completely. He’s not ashamed of you. He intercedes for you because you’re his. And that sin, that darkness from your past, it was dealt with on the cross. And Micah says it was cast into the sea, never to be remembered again. So what’s going on here with these people seeing what he was doing, believing in his

name and him not entrusting himself to them? Again, isn’t that the point? Isn’t that what is supposed to be happening? The thing is, these people are merely chasing after signs. They’re merely chasing after miracles. They’re merely chasing after big, grand, impressive things. These people are saying, wow, this is incredible. Look at this miraculous thing he’s doing. Listen to his teaching. Listen to that exposition. Listen to how great he is. He’s so smart. He’s so engaging. And Jesus’ response here is the same as we’ll see his response to Nicodemus in the following chapter. Unless there is true life, a new life, seeing and acknowledging and marveling in signs that wonders does nothing for your soul. Chasing after miracles, even the miracles of God, can actually be counterproductive if the goal is to see the miracle and not behold and know and be known by God himself.

The problem, in order to behold him, you need new eyes to see. You need new ears to hear, a new heart with new affections. And so God has to do it. God has to give you the new heart. It’s not just a matter of seeing and reacting because these people see and react and Jesus says it’s not it. Jesus in looking at their hearts could see what they were after. And it was just what he had to offer, but it wasn’t him. They weren’t interested in him. They were interested in his miracles. They were interested in his teaching. Jesus cleansed the temple of impurity so that God could be worshipped as he ought to be. Jesus pointed to his death and resurrection so he could show what it would take to save sinners and reconcile them to God. And here he points to the issue that keeps them in darkness.

True vs False Belief

Their hard hearts set on empty religion, but not on worship. In order to follow Jesus, in order to be born again, to be made new, the old man has to die. The one who chases after a religion of his own making, a type of worship that makes sense to him, the one who seeks after signs and wonders and constant stimulation in order for his love and affections to stay at an emotional high. In John 5.44, Jesus says, how can you believe when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? If your walk has to do with you, your preferences, your convenience, Christianity done your way, the fulfillment of your desires, the exaltation of your status, it’s not about Jesus, friend. It’s about you. This is why the defilement of the temple was so offensive to Jesus.

The place where worship should have been happening was cheapened and made ugly so that the things that are comfortable and convenient for one group could happen while lining the pockets of the other group. This is why Jesus isn’t okay with people just being impressed with signs and wonders and miracles and the wisdom of teaching and the greatness of a ministry. He’s after you. He’s after the whole you. Because he takes people with adulterous, idolatrous, corrupted hearts and he makes them brand new. That’s the only way this works. This doesn’t work by just noticing more stuff, knowing more stuff, reading better, listening more intently, doing more things. One of the most terrifying texts in the whole of Scripture speaks about the people that on that final day will come to him and say, Lord, look at all the stuff we did. We healed. We prophesied. We did miracles.

We taught. We did a lot of stuff, Jesus. We kind of earned this. And he doesn’t say, no, no, no, you kind of tripped up along the way and you fell away. You misunderstood some stuff. What he says is the most horrifying thing ever. Depart from me, you workers of evil. He’s pointing to their lives which they see as ministry, which they see as fruitfulness, which they see as effectiveness, and he says, it’s evil. Because you never loved me. You loved your ministry. You loved your miracles. You loved your preachers and your theologians. You loved the convenience of worshiping God in the way that you want to worship him. Depart from me. This story is why, with everything that John records about the life and ministry of Jesus, he says at the end of the gospel, these are written so that you may believe that Jesus

is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. This isn’t meant to just scare us and leave us there. This is meant to point us to him so that we can cling desperately to the only one who can give us life. Amen? Amen. Pray with me, friends. Lord, help us to cling to you. Only you. Help us to be honest about the way that we approach you so that we could strip away and get rid of everything that stands between us and worshiping you and the fullness of who we are because we understand that all we are is only because of your great love, your mercy, and your grace shown to us in Jesus Christ. In whose name we pray, amen.