Romans 1:16-17 • Sheer Grace
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
And as you're being seated, let me ask that you would look in your Bibles at Romans chapter 1, Romans chapter 1, as we'll be considering verses 16 and 17, beginning our fall series in the book of Romans.
If you want to create a controversy with Cardinal fans, mention the call.
1985, Todd Worrell on the mound makes a pick-off move to Jack Clark at first base, and the Kansas City Royals runner is obviously out.
The umpire, Don Denkinger, calls him safe.
Now why should you care?
Why do Cardinal fans care? I mean, there are thousands of first base calls every year. What was at stake?
It was the bottom of the ninth in the sixth game of the World Series that was potentially the deciding game. And that call turned the tide and at least for Cardinal fans created unthinkable tragedy for the rest of the series.
The verse… Thank you, Bill.
I do care though.
No less controversy, these verses of Romans 1, verses 16 and 17.
Why controversial?
Because they were the verses that so affected Martin Luther 500 years ago this year when he nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenberg, or if you're German, the Wittenberg door, that cathedral where he was saying, "I've learned the gospel in a different way." And set in motion such events that now millions of Christians have been affected through the series. Quite literally hundreds of thousands have given their lives for what they understand these verses, Romans 1, verses 16 and 17 to mean. Here's what's at stake. It's that little phrase in verse 17, "The righteousness of God." What does that mean? What is the gospel that's revealing the righteousness of God? If all you think about when you think of the righteousness of God is that He is righteous,
holy and pure, if that's the good news of the gospel, then the gospel is obviously measure up or you can't be right with a righteous God.
But if what you perceive the righteousness of God to be is not just about measuring up,
but how great is the heart of a holy God, then you recognize that the message is, "Trust Him, even when you cannot measure up, for He is the one who will give you the righteousness of God." Let me ask that you read with me verses 16 and 17 just as we consider what is this righteousness of God. Paul writes, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek, for in it," that is, "in the gospel," which just means good news, "for in it," the gospel, "the righteousness of God is revealed from faith, for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith."
Listen for me as we start.
Can a trip to college make you hate God?
It's actually what happened to Martin Luther.
1505, he's going back to university, as so many are doing right now in our culture. And as he goes in a time of horses and carriages, he gets caught in a fierce thunderstorm. And as the lightning is crashing around him, he calls out in terror, "St. Anne, save me and I'll become a monk."
We understand.
We understand what it is to fear things so much that you'd make a bargain with God. "God, keep me out of the principal's office and I'll go to church this week.
Heal my wife's cancer and I'll stop drinking.
Get me out of this contract and I'll give the savings to the church."
We know what it is to make a vow because we are afraid.
But we also know the consequences of simply responding to a God who terrorizes you.
Luther immediately regretted his vow.
He was after all going to be a prestigious lawyer. Now he has to live as an impoverished monk, but he would not break his vow because he was so terrorized of what God would do to him. Those terrors continued in the monastery. Luther would write, "Those terrors were so great and so much like hell that no tongue could adequately express them." In such a situation, God appears terribly angry.
There's no flight, no comfort, only accusation of everything. All that remains is the stark naked desire for help and a terrible groaning filled with the greatest bitterness and dread and trembling.
Luther did everything he could to appease the God who terrorized him so much. Yeah, he studied hard in the monastery and would beat himself with whips to make God happy.
He would go on fast for weeks. He would have days-long vigils and freezing cold to make God happy.
So much did he abuse his own body that for the rest of his life, he had physical consequences of what he did in the monastery to try to appease God and make that God happy. Despite all of that abuse to his body, he would also confess his sins in the confessional, spending as much as six hours a day in the confessional confessing sin, confessing wrong, and trying to make himself right with God until the father who was listening to his confession said, "Please stop confessing."
He was so worn out of listening to Luther. As a consequence, Luther wrote about himself later, "I kept the rule of my order so strictly that I must say if ever a monk got to heaven by his monkery, it would have been I."
It didn't help.
If the reason that you are serving the righteous God is so that you will get right enough to be okay with him, then you recognize that what ultimately God is saying to you is, "You be good or you be damned.
You measure up or I will tear you apart.
Keep in line or face my fury. You might obey that God, but loving him would be something else again."
As a consequence, Luther wrote, "I hated this phrase, the righteousness of God, by which I had been made to understand that there is a God who is righteous and he punishes the unrighteous sinner." But he added, "Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God and I did not love, rather I hated that God."
If all that you perceive is there is a standard of righteousness by a righteous God and you had better measure up, you might try really, really hard, but ultimately you will hate that God. What is the gospel though? If it's really good news, what is the gospel that so touched Luther out of these verses so is meant to touch Christians in all ages that is saying there is a righteousness of God that is meant to give you hope and not just horror.
Ultimately it is understanding that the righteousness of God is not just the righteousness of God revealed to us, but revealed for us.
God, in his righteousness, acting in our behalf, it's ultimately us deciding what is this good news, this gospel, what does it provide and what does it reveal and what does it really promise.
To understand what this gospel provides, you have to understand its context because Paul, the Apostle, is saying this good news that is revealing the righteousness of God is ultimately meant to rescue you from the wrath of God.
Oh, it's so sweet just to read verses 16 and 17 about the righteous living by faith.
But verse 18 is still sitting there. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of man. Oh, you can talk about this good news, but isn't God righteous?
Doesn't He bring His wrath to bear upon all those who oppose Him who don't live according to His standards? And the answer is yes. Well then, how is there possibly good news?
Because it is the gospel of salvation.
To all who believe that there is wrath, but God is providing a means to rescue us. From what?
How is the wrath on display? There are present consequences of God's wrath and there are future consequences of God's wrath. The present consequences are described more fully in the rest of chapter 1.
The Apostle in verse 22 talks about those who do not turn to God. He says, "They are claiming to be wise, but they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things."
Part of the way in which the wrath of God is being revealed is simply revealing the foolishness of those who make their way through life without God, who begin to trust in the creature and creatures more than the Creator.
And as a result, they trust that they will be made right by an idol, which is not just creeping things, but idols that look like us too.
Images made like us so that we think by our strength, by our wisdom, by our abilities that we will be made right in this world, that it will be just fine. Give me enough elbow room and enough strength and enough money and I'll be fine.
And God is saying that as a foolishness that we would live that ultimately would take us to His wrath because in and itself is going to be slavery. The slavery we impose on ourselves. Verse 24, "Therefore God gave them up, those who pursue their own wisdom, in the lust of their hearts to impurity, due dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever." Oh, I know when you and I see pictures from Malaysia, people who are abusing their bodies, who are dragging weights through the streets to satisfy an elephant God, that we think that is just slavery, to superstition, that's just slavery. But you must recognize that part of the creatureliness to which we become enslaved is, "If I can just get this person or this much money or a big enough house or enough things to satisfy me, then I'm going to be right in this life and forever." And ultimately Paul is saying you become a slave to your own passions. That you ultimately begin to follow those things that you think will make you right and you are actually disabling yourself to do. I think of the businessman I told you about who by his pursuit of two things, right? Money and sports.
I'll be a very successful businessman and I'll play golf very well. And he was losing his family and didn't recognize he's enslaved to money and sports and everything that is most dear to him, he was losing and didn't even recognize that was happening. A slave to his own abilities as it were, trusting them. And God ultimately recognizes for us what is that present wrath expression.
It's just abandonment to ourselves. It's said three times in this passage, which I think these are some of the hardest words of all scripture. Verse 24, "Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts." Verse 26, "For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions." Verse 28, "Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind." What is the greatest penalty in this life for turning away from God? It is God says, "I'll just let you have your way."
Just go on. You think that's going to give you happiness? You think that's going to satisfy? You think that is where real happiness, satisfaction, pleasure and fulfillment is?
Have it.
And we come to the end of ourselves and we recognize what it actually means to say, "I need something other than myself."
And it's not just because of what would happen in this life that I would experience as it were the consequences of my own sin. God is also telling us that we are by His righteousness being rescued from the wrath to come.
That is here as well, chapter 2 and verse 5 if you look ahead in your Bibles. "Because of your heart and impenitent heart, you are storing up for yourself wrath on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed." It's righteous judgment.
It's not just peak. It's not just God somehow being petty. What will He do? Verse 6 of chapter 2, "He will render to each one according to his works."
If my best works are filthy rags compared to a holy and righteous God, if what Jesus Himself would say in Luke 17, "When you have done all that you should do, you are still an unworthy servant because your righteousness does not measure the righteousness of God."
When you recognize that even our best works are storing up for us the wrath of God at the end of the ages, that there is a balancing of the scales, not where God is saying, "Well, do your good works outweigh your bad? Because if my best works are filthy rags, they actually weigh against me." But God is saying this is a moral universe and ultimately God will judge and He will judge us according to our works, whether they be good or evil, He will ultimately judge. And what we are being promised by the righteousness of God in the gospel is that though wrath is to come, there is salvation. There is rescue from this.
It's not just rescue from wrath, it's rescue from shame.
Verse 16, many of you know well, Paul writes, "I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for this salvation." Why would the gospel bring shame?
It's not a mystery to people who have walked with the Lord for a while. Gospel, good news, living for Christ makes us seem silly to our culture.
You're not going to go to that party, you're not going to take those drugs, you're not going to smoke that, you're not going to do that, you're not going to go to those people, you're not going to go to those plays. Man, your God is just an eternal killjoy, isn't He?
The perception of the strictness of God, the perception that He's just robbing us of what's nice gives people the sense that we should just be ashamed of this God that we follow. And we think sometimes, "No, that's not really what I believe." But we are forgetting the shame that we should be feeling. We sometimes create a mythology in our own minds of what it would have been like to meet Jesus. Right? Wouldn't it be great to be at the Sermon on the Mount? Wouldn't you love that? There's Jesus in that beautiful setting on the hillside overlooking the seas, and look at the birds of the air. They don't sow or gather into barns and your Heavenly Father takes care of them. And look at the lilies of the valley, the flowers of the field. Why even Solomon, in all of his glory, was not arrayed like one of these. Well, how pretty, how nice, how sweet.
Did you hear the Sermon?
Jesus said, "You have heard it said you should not murder."
I say to you, if you even call your brother a fool, you are going to hell.
You have heard it said, "You should not commit adultery." I say to you, said Jesus, if you even look at another person with lust on your heart, you've already committed adultery. If you had heard what Jesus was actually saying in his gospel of the righteousness of God, you would have walked away with your chin on the ground saying, "Who can live up to this? Who can stand up under the righteousness of God? I am ashamed.
Is there no relief from this?" And it's not just the shame of the strictness of what we believe. There is shame in the silliness of it as the world perceives it. I mean, you look at pictures of idols and people's activities for their God, and we forget in our culture how strange it must have been for even the Apostle Paul to said, "I am a servant of Christ Jesus." Wait a second.
Wasn't he that outcast rabbi that they crucified?
What do you mean you're a servant of Christ Jesus?
You hear it so often in the church, we don't recognize the strangeness of it, the silliness to other ears. I believe that Jesus was born of a virgin to keep him from the taint of the sin of humanity so that as he lived a perfect life, he would be a perfect sacrifice for my sin and your sin. And as the one who paid the penalty, despite his innocence, he would not only take the sin of the world upon him, but God to show that the power of sin would be broken would
raise him from the dead and seat him at the right hand of glory where even now he rules and reigns in behalf of his people. Are you nuts?
Did you hear all of that? I mean, if you say, "This is my belief. This is what I'm banking my eternity on."
I believe it. You believe it. It sounds so silly. Why would we believe something that would seem to bring such shame to us? I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Why? Because the power of God and to salvation, what compensates for the shame both of what is apparent strictness and for some people silliness, what compensates for it? Salvation.
That I am made secure with God for eternity.
I think you know I lived in one place in St. Louis for 30 years. And as a consequence living in that place because I'm a jogger, there were just so many paths that I could follow. And after 30 years, I must tell you that as other people followed those paths in our neighborhood, I got fairly familiar with the other joggers in the area.
One was a doctor I got to know.
And as I got to know him, he began to talk about how God had saved him from himself.
As a doctor, he'd lived the party scene. As a doctor, he'd written himself prescriptions. He had the drugs that he wanted. He could live and party all he wanted. He had the money to do so.
And as he became a slave to the drugs and the partying and the selfishness, he lost his wife.
He lost his home.
Everything dear to him. He said to me one day, "If Jesus had not saved me, I would be dead today."
To say the righteous shall live by faith was not to him just kind of platitudes. It was the reality that he was facing. If I had not been saved, I would be dead.
So I say, "Of course, as you would." What got to you? What reached into you? And then he kind of blushed because he didn't want to tell me because it was embarrassing, because it created shame. He said, "Well, you know, I had a business partner that invited me to a Christmas service.
And at the Christmas service, the pastor told a cheesy little story" — I've told it too, by the way — "about a man who's in conflict. He's in conversation with a business colleague and when he's talking, the daughter just keeps pulling on the sleeve of her dad.
Daddy, daddy."
Don't interrupt. "Daddy, daddy." Man keeps trying to talk. Finally, he says, "What is it?" And the daughter says, "Daddy, I love you this much."
But said the doctor when the preacher told that cheesy story and he spread out his arms somehow from where I was sitting, the cross was silhouetted in his arms. And I recognized Jesus who was saying to me, "I love you this much." Selfishness, the sin, the slavery to drugs, "I still love you this much."
What we believe is this gospel. And what relieves us from the shame of believing in a little story of a Galilee rabbi who would give himself on a cross for his people to save them from their sin, it is the power of God unto salvation to them who believe, "I am saved by this. I'm made right with God. The God who is righteous is also providing for me. That is the great hope that I have and it is what this gospel is revealing." Now it will not reveal that if all you read is these words about the righteousness of God. If the totality of the gospel is, "There is a gospel that reveals to me the righteousness of God," then you'll say, "Well, I kind of knew that.
I knew that God was holy and I knew that He was righteous, but what I recognize is I am not."
How does that have any encouragement in it at all? You have to say, "Well, listen, I'm glad for anything that makes faith flower."
But it sure seems like a message of the righteousness of God has nothing but thorns in it. He is righteous. Why is that good news? I mean even when a prophet like Isaiah had the roof of the temple open before him and he saw up into heaven where there was seated the Lord of glory and around him the seraphim, the angels singing, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty and the whole earth is full of His glory. What could a man do but he fell on his face and says, "Woe is me. I am ruined." There's no good news here. If God is really that holy, I only am crushed by the righteousness of God.
And it's not just that His righteousness crushes me. I recognize the fact that He to be righteous has to judge unrighteousness, must also crush me. That's verse 18, "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness." For God to be righteous, He has not just to be good, He's got to be able to judge what is not good.
Some of you may have experienced, our family has experienced it, where someone dear to us has been terribly hurt by assault of a criminal.
And I will tell you, when you go to that court and you are listening for the judgment of the judge, who you expect to be righteous, you do not expect for the judge to say to the criminal, "It's okay, don't worry about it, it's fine."
Righteousness requires just judgment.
And it is that just judgment that is here, but it's precisely that judgment that Luther recognized was necessary for a righteous God that actually made Him hate God.
One hundred miles from Luther's monastery to Rome, the pilgrimage that good monks were supposed to make across the Alps to get there. And as a consequence, Luther on his pilgrimage would pass quite literally thousands, not thousands, hundreds of graves of previous monks trying to make themselves right with God.
Even to actually go to Rome and go through the various rituals and ceremonies to make oneself right with God, still not enough.
And so while he was in Rome, Luther made the journey up what is known as the sanctus scala, the holy steps in St. John's ladder in church that are still there today.
Steps that supposedly were taken by an angel from Jerusalem to Rome, the same steps that Jesus ascended before His trial with Pilate. And to make himself right with God, to appease the God of wrath, Luther went up each step on his knees, pausing in each step to say the Lord's Prayer and kiss the stone.
And then got to the top step and instead of doing the victory dance of Rocky Balboa, said
two things, what if it's not true?
And what if it's not enough?
How can I satisfy the righteousness of God?
If He is righteous and He is just, then this is only the thorn in the gospel.
But you must recognize there is more that is here. There is a bloom that Luther began to perceive that we should perceive also in these verses. Now everybody agrees that these verses are the title verses of the book of Romans. But like any title, if you get into the book, you begin to perceive more being communicated. Those of you who are C.S. Lewis fans, if you read the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, right, you read a little bit and you know this is more than about a zoo animal, a Halloween character and bedroom furniture.
The gospel is unfolding and the righteousness of God is about more than the obvious, the righteousness and the justice of God. What else is being revealed? The first hint is there in verse 17, the righteousness of God is being revealed from faith for faith.
The from faith is the reference to the good faith of God. God is operating in good faith. For whom?
Well that was verse 16, remember?
The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first
and also to the Greek. God is being faithful to the Jew.
Wait a second.
These were the people who constantly rebelled against God in the Old Testament, who constantly returned to idolatry. And then when He rescued them, would go back to idolatry again. And then when God sent His Son, the Messiah, for whom they had longed, what did they do? They beat Him and spat upon Him and turned Him over to Pilate for crucifixion. And now we are being told there is for the Jews good news through the righteousness of God.
It's His faith, His good faith, that dealing with His people, it's what we think of as that hesed, the steadfast love of God for His people. They turn and walk away. They disregard. They reject.
And He maintains His love.
It's His faithfulness, it's meant to bring faith out of His. It's His faithfulness toward the unfaithful that's the mark of His own righteousness, the steadfast love of the Lord never faileth. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning, new every morning. Great is Thy faithfulness, O God.
Great is Thy faithfulness, and it's supposed to draw my heart in understanding of the righteousness of God. This is more than just His purity and His justice. There's a great heart on display here as He does not turn away from His people because we had a child who stutters.
I couldn't help but listen to a podcast this week on how to advise modern parents if you have a child who stutters. And the very first piece of advice was like a knife in my heart because the very first piece of advice was if you're a parent of a child who stutters, when your child stutters,
maintain normal eye contact.
Sounds so simple.
Don't look disappointed. Don't look angry. Don't look frustrated. Don't look away.
And here is God acting behalf of His children who turn away, who stumble, who stutter over and over again, and He says, "I'm not going to look away."
That's part of the righteousness of God is He is maintaining His steadfast love toward His people. And it's not just toward the Jews. Did you catch that? To the Jew first, but also to the Greeks, that is all other Gentiles, including those who crucified Him, including people like us, that there is God's steadfast love for those who don't seem to deserve it. And the second hint is not just of the expansiveness of His love, but how great is His mercy.
What He actually says is, Paul the Apostle, verse 16, "I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to all who qualify." That is not what it says.
"For all who believe," as though your righteousness can't measure up, and yet here comes the saving power of God in behalf of those who believe He can make it right. Not you can make it right. He can make it right. That when you're willing to kind of hide yourself behind the provision of God to just say, "God, your agenda is mine now. I'm not trusting what I provide. I'm not trusting what I do. I'm not believing I can get good enough for your righteousness. I'm actually beginning to think that what Jesus did on the cross was pay the penalty for my sin."
Not just people out there, not just horrible people somewhere, not just people who are nations that serve to idols. That in my selfishness, in my self-pursuit, you were still pursuing me.
And you said that if I would believe that Jesus had made away for me, that that would be so good, so right, that my guilt, my shame would be put away. I wanted to shout it on the streets when I was in Malaysia. Listen, you can go down a highway for nine miles, and there are symbols on the road every hundred yards or so in which they are symbolizing where the God supposedly is, goes from his temple to the center city and back, and people by the millions will walk that highway to make themselves right with God. What if I could say, "Listen, everything that you're trying, your sighs and prayers and tears and guilt and shame and pursuit is not what does it, not them, not you."
Anyone who believes, who says, "I believe Jesus made the way." It's ultimately what the apostle is saying. It's our preview of what's coming. So he's going to say in chapter 3 and verse 21, "But now the righteousness of God has been manifested, apart from the law."
Apart from just good standards straighten up, flying right, there's a righteousness of God that's been revealed. And what is it? Verse 22 of chapter 3, "The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe." There's no distinction. "For all have sinned, all fall short of the glory of God." So what? Verse 24, "They are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God put forward as a sacrifice, a propitiation by His blood, by what Christ did, not by what we do, not by our sacrifices, to receive by faith. This was to show the righteousness of God." It's not just righteousness about justice and goodness, nor even about expanded mercy. It's about God saying, "I will provide sacrifice in your behalf." That's His righteousness. He keeps looking, He keeps holding, He has steadfast love, and He makes a way for us. That's the righteousness of God in full bloom. Yes, I'm righteous. Yes. But if that's all you believe, you'll hate me because you know you can't measure up. But if I say, "Even though you can't maintain my righteousness, I love you and I make a way for you to know me by the sacrifice of my own soul," believe that's what makes it right, not what you do, what He has done.
That is solace to our soul.
It's what Luther himself came to claim when he recognized that God's promise was a gracious provision, not of a measure-up provision. He wrote these words. "I grasped that the righteousness of God is that righteousness by which, through sheer grace and mercy, God justifies us by faith alone."
Not qualified, believing He qualified. And as we hide in Him, as we say, "You're the one who made it right. I'm trusting you, not my works, not my accomplishments.
I'm trusting you, Jesus."
Thereupon said Luther, "I felt myself altogether born again as though I had already entered the gates of paradise." I'm not fearful of Him anymore.
I'm not ashamed anymore.
I believe that Christ paid the penalty. And God's not going to look away from me because I've messed up. In fact, He extends to me His great gift of grace through faith for my faith because ultimately, verse 17, "The righteous shall live by faith."
We're at the end of the service today.
No music, no extra words, just this reality.
Does the righteousness of God make you hate Him?
Did you come here today because you had to, because somebody expected it, because you hoped you could do something to make God happy?
Or do you recognize the message that this church, that this gospel was built upon, was God made a way for you because His great love provided Jesus to die on the cross for your sin and when you believe in Him, when you say, "Okay, God, I'm just going to walk your path now. I'm just going to get in the Jesus line. I'm just going to trust Him for the past to go away and for the future. I'm just going to walk with Him."
That here's the great promise of God, "The righteous will now live by faith." It's not faith in your faith. You've got to pump up enough. It's not faith in enough of your anything. It's just saying, "God, I think Jesus did it. That's my hope. Jesus made it right."
If that's your faith, then I'm not ashamed of the gospel.
It is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in that is the righteousness of God revealed from faith for your faith. For this is the truth. The righteous shall live by their faith. God is made away. Let's trust Him and pray together. Father, as we are praying, I ask that you would do a work in this place in our hearts even now.
If there are people here who have hated you because they feel like they can't measure up, they came here even today to try to measure up, would you just work this work in our hearts?
Help our prayer to be, "Jesus, I can't make it right, but I believe you did.
You died to pay the penalty for my sin.
You rose to show that it really worked, and now I receive that.
I receive that message of your grace, and I want to walk with you now into the future."
Friends, I'm not going to prolong this, but I'm going to ask if there's anyone here who needs to make that prayer. God, I'm just going to stop trusting me and my ability and my goodness, and I want to trust Jesus to make me right with you.
If that's your prayer, would you raise your hand?
Thank you. I see that.
Anyone else? Would you want to raise a hand? I might pray for you here.
Thank you.
Father, I pray that you would teach us the wondrous gospel of your grace, that the God who had every right to be only righteous and wrathful would be steadfast in His love and marvelous in His mercy so that those who trust in what you have done provided Jesus for us,
would live outside of guilt and shame, outside of terror and fear, but in the reality of a God who secures them now and forever.
So give our hearts this peace.
If you held up your hand and you want to talk to me after the service, call me this week. If you didn't hold up your hand and you want to, please do.
Father God, bless us we pray for Jesus' sake. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.