Ephesians 1:1-2 • U-Turn Letters

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In this moment, He's even, as this next modern hymn says, "Seated on His throne."
And He demands and He requires praise, but yet He is also worthy of our praise.
He delights for us to behold Him.
He delights for us to delight in Him.
So we can do that willingly now with sacrifrice--, with sacrificial hearts, or we can harden our hearts and resist His call.
But I guarantee you this:  One day you will bow; you will bend the knee before Him, because His glory demands it; His character demands it.
My encouragement to you this morning is that you do it with willing and humble, submissive love.
>>> Who has given counsel?
>>> No one.
>>> Amen.
[Applause]
>>> Kathy and I wanted to express our thanks to you as a church family for your care to us during this past week in particular that we were caring for my mother and father as my father was experiencing his homegoing to be with his Lord.
We have received so many notes and expressions of kindness from you.
It's hard for me even to tell you:  The stack of letters on our desk at home is over a foot tall.
That is not counting the email that has come in.
That is not counting the letters that have come in here to the office.
We have a sweet family of relatives.
You are our church family, and you have been tremendously supportive to us for which we are most thankful.
I want to do as much as I can to support you, to tell you know some of what we experienced.
Brain cancer is an ugly thing.
And one of the things that I did was now begin to pastor my own family and help my mother in those extremities of life that some of you have experienced as well.
What happens when life is so difficult and you wonder about what measures to take at the end of life and those decisions.
I ended up saying to my mother what I have said to others in those circumstances.
We as believers who hold life sacred have every obligation to prolong life.
But we have no obligation to prolong death.
When the Lord has called somebody home, we pray that that would be swift and easy.
My father had two very difficult days.
And in that, it became easier and easier for my mother and us to pray, "Lord, take him quickly and easily."
How can we pray such things?
But that we believe what the scriptures say:  Where you and I are now is not the final nor even the greater reality, but rather there is eternity where we shall be with our Savior where we will have no more night nor pain nor crying nor cancer.
It is that that we pray for that the Lord would take us to with the sweetness and the gentleness that He alone can do.
That we pray for when we know that reality is so close in His great providence.
>>> We do want to continue to worship the Risen Lamb, as I told the first service, who has called us together this morning for this very thing.
He is calling out a people across the entire globe from every nation, tribe, language and tongue to render Him the praise He is so worthy and so deserving of.
So let me invite you again to stand.
And we want to sing to our Rock, to our Cornerstone.
>>> Sing that again:  "My hope is built."
[Applause]
>>> I am thankful for your worship this day that ministers to me and my heart as I pray it does to others of you here who so much rely upon our Cornerstone and know the strength that that gives.
Last year, we spent much of the year looking at the gospel of John.
And in that gospel, we met the Lord Jesus, got to know Him, learned more about trusting Him.
And the question becomes what next?
He lived, He died, He rose again, then He ascended:  What next?
There's an old story that says that when Jesus ascended He gathered the heavenly hosts around Him.
And He explained what was next.
He said, "I'm going to use those weak, sinful, frail and filthy people that I have saved and I am going to use them as living stones to build a foundation for the church that is going to transform the world."
And after He said that, there was an overwhelming silence in heaven, not broken until the angel Gabriel spoke and in response to that claim that the Lord was going to use the weak and sinful, frail and filthy people as a foundation for a church that would transform the world, Gabriel finally said, "What's plan B?"
[Laughter]
Well, there is no plan B.
The plan is that God would use people like us to build a foundation of grace upon which the church would establish the hope of the world.
That's us.
We're a little part of that church of Jesus Christ on which He is building the hope of the world.
How does He do that?
This day we're going to begin looking at the book of Ephesians, which is one of those early churches where God was explaining to His people through the apostle Paul how He would use the weak and sinful, frail and filthy to build hope for the world.
We're going to look at Ephesians chapter 1 verses 1 and 2.
In your Grace bibles, that's page 976.
Let's stand as we read these opening verses of the apostle Paul to the church at Ephesus as he begins to explain to them their role and his in changing our world.
The apostle Paul says this:  "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus:  Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
Let's pray together.
>>> Father, teach us who have hope or would have it what it means to have grace and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, that we, having experienced the wonders of Your goodness to us, might become fountains of it to others.
Use us as a foundation of hope for our families and friends and this community.
And we pray that You would launch us even as we begin now in Ephesians to understand how precious and good is the calling You give us.
Grant us grace and peace for Christ's sake we ask.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
>>> Please be seated.
A friend of Kathy's and mine who ministers in the Philippines, particularly in the southern regions that are largely dominated by Muslims, recently wrote us a letter about his efforts.
He wrote this:  "Our plan was to proceed to Zamboanga City to repair the ministry center that had been damaged by a typhoon.
Our efforts were stressed by the shortage of construction materials caused by the burning of many villages by Muslim rebels.
Second, shortages caused by the destruction of bridges and roads by the seawaters driven by the typhoon.
And, finally, our efforts were stressed by a Muslim leader telling workers on our project that they would be driven from the mosque if they helped Christians rebuild.
The Sunday after that threat had been issued, the Christians in our town," he said, "gathered for worship, only to have the wife of a key leader in our church announce that she was planning to leave her husband because of his hard spirit and harsh treatment of his family."
If you just catalog in those two short paragraphs all that were being faced by the church in the Philippines, it's just overwhelming.
I mean, you think of the external challenges:  typhoon, transportation difficulties, material shortages, rebel attacks, religious opposition.
That's just the outside.
What's happening inside the church?
Troubled leadership, fractured families, intentional disruption, personal discouragement.
It's awful.
And, yet, despite the course of all of those difficulties, the letter ends with this amazing U-turn.
Renee writes at the end, "We give glory to God and thank you for praying with us.
God has not only added numbers to our fellowship but spiritual growth as well."
I mean, it's just incredible.
It should be all discouragement and darkness and wrong.
And, yet, he ends on this wonderful ray of hope.
It's not unlike this letter to the Ephesians.
I mean, we will talk more about the church of Ephesus as we go forward, but let me tell you:  This is an awful place for Christians where both government and religion and secular forces and commerce and culture all combine to make it very hard to be a believer in Ephesus.
And, yet, Paul starts with this amazing U-turn:  "Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
It's what we would hope for ourselves:  that we would not be blind to the obstacles, that we would not be unaware of the challenges to the gospel but something in us deep down would so take hope and courage from the provision of God that we too could send the letters to people around us by our lives, by our words, maybe by letters themselves to say, "And yet take heart and hope.
The gospel is real and powerful, and we depend upon it.
We still give thanks to God regardless of the obstacles we face."
How do we do that?
How do we send those letters from our lives and lips that truly give people hope?
Well, if you're going to send a letter that gets through, you better have the right return address to start with.
I mean, some of you, if you send to family or friends who are in prison or in military settings or sensitive government positions, you know that if you do not have a return address, that letter is not going to be delivered.
And Paul begins by establishing, as it were, who the sender is of this letter right at the beginning.
He identifies himself:  "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God."
The first thing there is simply a name of humility.
Now, Paul is not the name that this person went through through much of his earlier life.
What was the name he went through in his earlier life?
What was it?
Saul.
Okay, Saul was a Jewish name remembering an early king of Israel, a man who was chosen because of his stature and strength and good looks.
I mean, this is the name of pride.
But now he identifies himself as Paul.
Paul is not a Hebrew name:  It's a Latin Roman name.
Do you know what it means?
Paul means small.
He goes from being King Saul by remembrance to just being small Paul.
And it's not just a statement of humility:  It's a statement of hope, because by taking the name of a gentile as the one that he's now going to be using, he's actually identifying with those to whom he's writing, not just Jews anymore, but in the wonderful progress of the gospel he is now the minister to the gentiles.
And he begins to identify with those who need hope from someone like them.
But he's not like them only in name:  He is like them in need.
After all, what does it mean that one is now Paul who was formerly Saul?
It means there's been a new beginning.
It means there's been a new start.
It means there's a new identity.
If he can change names, if he can have a new identity and a new purpose and a new start, it means other people can have the same.
I think of that sweet song by Michael Card called "The Beginnings" in which he says simply this:  "New life belongs to God.
He hands us each new moment saying, 'My child, start again.'"
Aren't you glad God speaks to us that way?
After the fall, after the trial, after the sin, He knowing it all says, "My child, begin again."
And to know that there can be a new identity and a new start simply by having a reality of the apostle Paul himself had to have a new name is telling us where there is hope being provided.
And the hope is identified not just in his name but in his title.
Again, in your return address you might say Mister or Missus or doctor or attorney something.
But Paul says, "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus."
Apostle might not sound like a title, but it actually means appointed messenger.
And when you see that, you're ready for your first U-turn in this gospel letter that the apostle is writing.
"Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus."
Wow, what?!
I mean, if we were just kind of driving down the road minding our own business, not thinking about it very much, and suddenly we pass that garage sale where they had the china cabinet we'd looking for for the last ten years or the Johnny Cash album we though we'd never seen, we can be driving along:  What's going to happen?
Make a U-turn.
[Laughter]
Yeah, when it's safe, make a U-turn, and we're going back there.
And suddenly, if we're reading with sensitivity what Paul's, "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus."
What are you talking about?
He has been a persecutor of Christians.
Do you remember what happened?
Paul tells us in Acts 9, remember, about going along on his road.
And suddenly there is thunder and lightning.
He is struck blind.
And he wonders why.
And the Lord Jesus speaks to him and says, "You, Paul, are persecuting Me."
Paul is left blind until he meets a prophet of the Lord Jesus who explains that he is now to be an apostle to the gentiles.
He's to take the message to the gent--.
You know why it's so appropriate that he would become an apostle to the gentiles and not to the Jews, that is his background?
Because of what he tells us in Acts 22 was actually his testimony.
What does it mean to be a persecutor of Christians?
You know, we can kind of put that in Sunday School terms that are so sanitized that we do not recognize what it really means.
He says in Acts 22 that he persecuted the Way of Jesus to the death, taking both men and women, putting them in bonds and delivering them to prison where they would be killed.
Or else, he says, he actually went from synagogue to synagogue beating those who were within who would worship Christ.
And finally we learn the apex of that is holding the cloaks of those who would stone Stephen.
We have, certainly, the news accounts of our own day to make sense of this, because if you would say is it al-Qaeda, is it I.S.I.S., is it Boko Haram?
That you would recognize there are those who go into churches and take men and women for slaughter.
And we can think about apostle Paul being so sweet and mild later on in life and recognize if you were a Jew his name would bring absolute terror to your heart.
And now he is saying that he becomes an apostle of Jesus Christ.
It's saying something has amazingly happened in his heart.
There has been this huge, uge--, U-turn, as the one who breathed murder and suffering and hurt for men and women alike, this one now is an apostle, a proclaimer of the good news of the very one whose disciples he once hated and hunted.
Something remarkable has happened.
And he explains how it happened.
Remember?
"An apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God."
This is both his defense and his offense.
It's his defense as people would by saying, "Why should I listen to you?"
He'd say, "Well, not for anything in me.
But I have been changed by the will of God.
I don't stand on my authority.
It's not just my defense of why I can talk to you:  It's actually my defense of why I go to the gentiles.
Because I know you Jews aren't going to listen to me."
It's the way God was preparing the apostle Paul to be that apostle to the gentiles.
By, in essence, getting the door closed in the synagogues so that his hearing would be actually among those that the Jews didn't want to talk to.
Now he's prepared; he's ready to go.
But as he is ready to go at the same time he knows people don't want to listen to him.
So his offense is, "You have to listen to me because it's the will of God that you do."
It's the letter its' authority.
This is by the will of God.
Remember what Paul would later write to those at Thessalonica.
He praised them that those in Thessalonica listened to his letters, not as the word of man but as it was in truth the word of God.
The reason that this church so insists and I so treasure you that you want me to preach from the scriptures is fundamentally you're not interested in my opinion or the opinion of the age or some poll or some politics.
You want to know what is the will of God.
What does the Word say?
And the apostle Paul is saying that, not only to give some offense, as it were:  This is why I can speak to you, why you must listen to me.
But also to express his expectation.
If I am speaking to you from the Word and will of God, then I'm thinking that what has happened to me, this amazing life U-turn, can also happen in other people as well.
Perhaps the greatest example of that is what actually happened to Paul at Ephesus when he began to minister there.
Do you remember?
People began to believe.
And as a consequence, they began to get rid of their idols, including those idols to Artemis, that's Diana, right?
Which the silversmiths of Ephesus made their living with, selling those idols of Artemis.
Artemis was the goddess who was supposed to bring babies to women, to bring food from the fields or from tho--, for those who hunted to bring it from the woods and forests.
This Artemis was supposedly the provider of all good things of life in the world.
And when the silversmiths recognized that their business was going to be hurt because people were turning to Christ by the ministry of Paul, they began to incite the people in saying, "Not only if they believe will people not buy our statues:  They will defile the temple of Artemis.
They will not worship her any longer."
And the crowd got so incensed that twenty thousand of them went to the coliseum and began to chant for hours:  "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians; Great is Artemis of the Ephesians."
And what did the apostle Paul do, believing he was called by the will of God?
He said, "We've got them all in one place:  Let me go preach to them."
[Laughter]
Now, a little more pragmatic disciple said, "No, Paul.
They'll tear you apart."
And so ultimately you know it was their own town councilor who settled them down.
But Paul was showing what he believed:  that what had happened in him could happen in others too.
It's our great hope, too:  that we would believe that past does not determine future; that what God has done in the life of Paul, what he believed could happen in the others, could happen in our lives, too.
We look at pasts that we are ashamed of, at families that are fractures, of difficulties that we've gone through, and we believe that will mark us forever.
And what the apostle does with the change of name and the new title and the new mission and the expectation that the will of God, not just the opinion of man, not just what was in us, but that the will of God could change people eternally is willing to speak the truth of the gospel.
And he says so as we must say so as well.
I know what it means we must say to others to be standing before God on my own goodness, and I've realized that was not going to work.
But God changed me.
He put a U-turn in my life.
He made me dependent upon Him.
I'm now humbled.
I'm small Paul, too.
Humbled before God, not made right by my merit or my goodness.
He loved me.
He changed me.
He put the U-turn in my life.
And the fact that Paul believes that that can happen for others is plain not only in the return address, who he is, but in his understanding of those to whom he is writing.
Who, after all, are the readers of this letter?
He says, still verse 1, that he is writing "to the saints."
Now, when we hear that language, we go, "Well, this doesn't apply to me."
[Chuckles]
"To saint," well, that's not me.
But we have to keep reading.
"To the saints who are in Ephesus."
Now, this is the next U-turn.
Now, we should be saying, "What?
Say what?"
"To the saints who are in Ephesus"?
I mean, that's kind of like saying, to all the violinists in the heavy metal band.
[Laughter]
Now, Joshua tells me that Metallica has violinists, but that's not the norm.
[Laughter]
To all the polar bears in the Sahara.
To all the Cub fans in St. Louis.
[Laughter]
Okay, all the Cardinal fans in Chicago.
Now, you'd think, this doesn't fit; this doesn't go together.
It's to all the saints in Ephesus?
What are you talking about?
I mean, the people who were reading these letters knew what went on in Ephesus.
Some of you may have been on some tour already in the part of the world where Ephesus is there in northern Turkey, and you might recognize that even now if you walk the streets of Ephesus and you come from where the sailors in this great port city of the ancient world would have come, they would have walked from the port up into the center of town.
And even now, etched in stone in the streets of Ephesus, are the directions to the brothels.
So the sailors couldn't miss it.
But it wasn't just the sailors who visited them.
The greatest building that you will see if you go to Ephesus in its restored state even now is the library.
Because the assumption of the cults that were in Ephesus is that superior knowledge, knowledge more than ordinary people, would get you merit and understanding of the higher state of whatever god they worshipped.
And so you needed the great knowledge that you could gain in the library at Ephesus.
But there are tunnels under the street that connect the library to the brothels.
Because you might not know your god only by greater knowledge but by ecstatic experience.
And so the way to god was by greater knowledge or by greater immorality:  Either would work.
And the city itself, the fifth largest city of the ancient world, was consumed with different nationalities, different languages, different religions.
But everybody pursuing the dollar.
How much can we make and how fast?
I mean, the whole city was oriented toward making more.
And to control it, the Romans came and took control as well at a time that the emperor cult was also strong.
That the way that you would get to god, if it wasn't your local religion, was through the emperor of Rome who was the god who would get you to your god.
Even now as you go through the gates of Ephesus in its reconstructed state, you will find this remnant of a great statue to the Roman emperor Trajan.
It's a large globe on a pedestal with just the foot of Trajan remaining, saying, "My foot is over all the world."
Two things from that example:  One, even the ancients knew that the world was round.
Don't believe the myths that they didn't know.
Second:  They believed that the way to god was by the power and might of the Roman emperor, and actually many believed and taught that he was a god, too.
To be a saint in Ephesus had to be terribly hard.
And to recognize that the Christians who gathered gathered in little, not churches like this, but little house churches in different places of the.
It must have been so discouraging and so hard.
And, yet, the apostle Paul goes on, and he says, "To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus."
Now, if it says "faithful for Christ Jesus" I'd be worried.
He's writing to saints whose faithfulness is extraordinary.
But he says "to the faithful in Christ Jesus."
Some of you will recognize that that "in Christ Jesus" is one of the apostle Paul's favorite expressions, used over two hundred times in his epistles in the Bible.
And he is reminding us what makes us faithful?
It's not what you do.
It's being faithful in Christ Jesus.
If you have a smartphone that you recharge at night by putting it in a cradle, you recognize that that cradle surrounds the phone and gives it power at the very same moment.
And when the apostle Paul talks about our union with Christ, about being in Christ Jesus, he means both things:  that we are surrounded, as it were, by the character and the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
That I am not faithful because I have been faithful enough:  I am faithful because of my faith of the righteousness of Christ that surrounds me.
I'm in Him.
I'm perceived as a saint, not because I'm saintly in every way but because I'm in Christ Jesus.
I'm surrounded by His righteousness, clothed in robes that are not my own, existing in the provision of Christ's blood.
That's who I am, made right by the blood that washes away my sin and faith in that.
But at the very same moment that I am surrounded by the righteousness of Christ, I am receiving the power that comes from Him.
I am in Christ Jesus and He in me, so that the energy, the power, the strength that I need to be faithful is from Him at the very same moment.
I couldn't help but think of it just a few weeks ago when I was in Australia ministering in your behalf and met an old friend again.
His name is Malcolm Gill; he's a church leader in Australia.
And I had not heard from him before the account of his own path of faith.
He said that he was raised in a Christian home, but it didn't mean much to him until the time when his father, who was a policeman, in breaking up a robbery was shot four times.
The man and son who shot him were imprisoned.
And Malcolm's father, the policeman, began to visit them in prison to say, "You can have a U-turn.
The things that are wrong, the guilt that is yours, Christ Jesus can put away."
I must tell you that that father and son who had shot him wondered what in the world is this policeman doing visiting us in prison and were hugely suspicious and did not want to listen to him.
Until Malcolm's mother began to care for the wife and mother of the two who had shot her husband.
And as she began to care for those who had tried to kill her own husband, the two who were in prison began to listen to Malcolm's father.
Today, Malcolm says there are two families who worship the Lord together:  his family and the family of those who tried to shoot his father.
They're all believers.
They're all together in worshipping God.
But the sweetness of the story as Malcolm explained it to me and you have to kind of say this in Australian, whatever that means:  He said, "Bryan, what really moved me," he said, "my father is just an ordinary punter."
I don't know what an ordinary punter is.
It means an ordinary guy.
"My father's just an ordinary guy in whom Jesus showed Himself strong."
He was in Christ Jesus, not made right by his doing but believing that God had saved him:  his life from the shooting but also his heart for eternity.
He became empowered to do this extraordinary thing of caring for those who had tried to kill him and then for the wife and mother of those who had tried to kill him.
And the Lord used that, because he was in Christ Jesus, to change people.
It's the hope that we have too, isn't it?
That we look at people around us and sometimes we write them off and we say their lives are too bad or they've hurt me or they've wronged me in some way.
There's no way that I have something to say to them.
But if you were in Christ Jesus, you recognize the righteousness you have is not your own.
And the power you need is truly yours because you are in Christ Jesus.
His provision, not your.
If you know that, what does it mean you can actually say to people?
You know, if you're going to have the letter that gets through, you not only need the right return address and the right address of the one to whom you're sending:  You need a stamp, right?
And it has to be purchased and from the right authority.
Did you notice the stamp that the apostle Paul puts on his letter?
It's right at the beginning.
Verse 2 says, "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
What is the grace?
Well, it's what Paul's life exemplifies.
I was going this a-way, and God turned me around and brought me this a-way.
All of this characterized my life:  murder and sin and hatred.
That was me.
And now I'm talking to you about the grace and the peace that are from Christ:  that He can take the sin away.
And when the sin is gone, when I know I am right with God, what happens then?
There is peace.
No longer striving, no longer trying to make it right, but to actually believe by the work of God He makes me right with Him and therefore I have peace.
Is there any reason to believe that?
Well, yes, because the word comes from the right authority.
Who says there's grace and peace?
God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Where does the grace and peace come from?
But from your heavenly Father who is over all things and from your eternal Brother who has made a way to the grace and the peace that God intended Him to give.
One of my father's finest moments came at one of the extreme lows of his life.
It was that moment when he learned that his son was going to go to prison.
And I can remember when the family was called in to a little cell, and it was just those last moments that the family would have with my brother before he was sent to prison for years.
What would you say?
What would you do?
What my father did through tears is said to my brother the words of "How firm a foundation."
You'll know these words.
"'When through fiery trials your pathway shall lie, My grace, all sufficient, shall be your supply:  The flame shall not hurt you; I only design your dross to consume and your gold to refine.'"
Even there in that cell, my father believed that a U-turn was possible, that the prison itself could be consuming the dross and refining the gold in my brother's heart and life.
We saw a little of that gold refinement this last week.
A number of you prayed, thank you for doing so, that my brother in prison would be released in time to come to my father's funeral.
Even a temporary out was not allowed, ultimately, because he would have had to cross state lines, and we learned that was not going to be possible.
And so we had to make the call to my brother to let him know he would not be allowed out.
And we dreaded it, what it would be like, just the emotion and the hurt of not being able to attend your own father's funeral.
But when we called and told him that he would not be able to come, in our tears, my brother in prison began to comfort us.
"It's okay.
Dad is with the Lord, and he's not hurting anymore, and the cancer's gone.
And we will all be together again."
And there was gold in there, as God was completing the U-turn and was saying to us, to my brother and to others, "Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
Can you say it to others?
So much depends upon knowing who you are.
You're the one who needs the grace.
And knowing to whom you talk:  They are just like you, just bound toward hell and hurt apart from what you would say and the way the Lord would use you.
And so what we do in all of our weakness and all of our sin and all of our fallibility is we say, "But I'm in Christ Jesus.
I'm robed in His righteousness, not mine.
He shed His blood for me.
That's what I believe.
And that's why I'm speaking to you, so that you could know it too."
It's what makes our letters heard:  that we know who the sender is and we know who the receiver is.
They are the same ones who need to know grace and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
If you're a person who needs that this day, I pray you will know those who are seated here:  They are not right by their doing but by the will of God who sent His Son to save.
And we believe that.
Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is our hope and our joy.
Receive it in Jesus' name.
>>> Father, would You work Your Word into our hearts yet again?
That we who have heard the word might be the senders of it, not because we are worthy by our works but even in our humility are the best senders of the message of Jesus.
We're in Him.
If there are those here, Father, who aren't, help them to know they can be.
If Paul, the murdered of Christians could be saved by Jesus, so can the people who are here.
If we've had these wonderful testimonies in recent weeks of people who've been down dark paths but You have put the U-turn into their lives and they now can be beyond their past looking to a future walk with Jesus, if my brother could have his gold refined:  Father, it's what You do by a great grace.
Help us each to claim it, even this day, that we might lift our eyes in the freedom of the gospel, not bound by prison walls, not bound by our sin, but set free by the grace and the peace that is in Christ Jesus.
So give us these blessings we pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.

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