Good News of Great Joy

Good morning. Merry Christmas. All right, that was a little more enthusiastic. We are missing many in travel or sickness. Thankful for you who can be here. If you're a guest, we normally walk through books of the Bible at a time, and here we are in Luke. We started it at the beginning of the Advent season. We'll continue on afterwards. This is, as Sheila said, one of the most familiar passages. Christmas time is supposed to be a time of wonder, awe, excitement. We definitely do that in many ways, just culturally with family, gifts, decorations, feast lights. Here, one of my favorite memories as a child is actually before the gifts would be opened, my grandfather made us, one grandchild, read this section we just read. And it was painful at the time. Because this is something one grandchild had to read. We didn't really want to read publicly. And we really just wanted to open the gifts. As I got older, this is actually one of the, this tradition is one of the things I remember very fondly when Christ called me to himself as a teenager. Just that sweet memory of the importance of Christ and the salvation that has come. This morning we're looking at this very familiar passage. The early church emphasized Christmas and Easter. But Christmas because this is the important beginning. God has become man. God added to himself humanity. The father sent his son to become like us. This is essential for the gospel. This is the beginning of the truth of the gospel. And Luke gives us the most detailed account throughout the first, well, numerous verses, chapter one and most of chapter two. If you look back at chapter one, we can see verses one to four, that's his introduction. Many have written a narrative, the story of Christ. But he, that is Luke, wants to give an orderly account, an account for my witnesses. And notice the purpose, that you might have certainty, verse four. We're gonna keep going back to this. God is revealing himself, he is making known himself so that we can have certainty. And we will see that there's a number of important details that Luke includes here so that we can have certainty. This morning I'm gonna order the sermon around questions. It's not as much of an outline that we would normally have in terms of point one, two, three. I want to ask the basic questions. I want to pick up the story and look at it from different angles by asking questions. Pretty straightforward, who, what, when, where, how. Who is our first question? Who is our first question? There's important characters. If you just turn back over to chapter one, The story of Jesus Christ begins with this surprising story about a priest named Zechariah and Elizabeth. They were old. She was barren. God gives them a miracle baby, and this is the way that God begins his story by opening the womb of an older woman. This has happened numerous times. It's supposed to echo the story of Abraham and Sarah. Then we have another character. We have Zechariah and Elizabeth. Another important character that's Central to this is Gabriel, the angel, who proclaims God's truth to God's people. He reveals himself to Zechariah. He reveals himself to our next significant character, Mary, the virgin mother of Jesus. Joseph is engaged to Mary. Jesus is the baby in the womb of Mary, conceived, and that next scene is interesting because Mary's going to go to Elizabeth, her husband, and John the Baptist is going to start leaping for joy because the Savior has come. So Elizabeth, Zechariah, Gabriel, Mary, Joseph, and then we have angels and shepherds. Notice who's not there, the drummer boy. I have to take this opportunity every year and talk about how ridiculous it is that a mother who just gave birth would want a drummer boy. But we move on. What? This is a birth narrative. There's an announcement of the birth of John the Baptist, who's the last Old Testament prophet. He's going to be the forerunner. He's going to open up the way. He's going to pave the path, and he's going to be the one who recognizes this is the Son of God. This is the true Lamb of God. Jesus is announced to Mary. Mary, without knowing a man, you're going to have a baby. Mary, you're going to give birth to God. She responds, I am a servant of the Lord. We saw the birth of John the Baptist last week and how Zechariah proclaims a praise and a blessing to God. This week, it is the birth of our Savior, Jesus. It's important here. God doesn't just show up out of nowhere. He shows up miraculously, incredibly, but it's been prepared with promises. That's why we read 1 Peter 1. It's been prepared with promises, prepared with promises. God was born of a woman. God took on the form of likeness of a man. God is with us, Emmanuel. Now we ask when? Well, Luke is very careful here. Look at chapter two, verse one. In those days, okay, that's pretty general, but now he's gonna give us some important specifics. A decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. Caesar Augustus, we know, reigned from 27 B.C. to 14 A.D. There's enough historical evidence to make that very clear. And he is the first Roman Caesar to order a 14-year census. Every 14 years, he wanted to provide a census. And the census had two purposes. How am I going to tax the people? You need a census. You need to know who is in each governing region and in each state in order to know how to tax and to conscript military. Now, Israel was not part of the military, but they were taxed. So we see here Caesar Augustus is bringing about a census. He wants to count the people so that he can know how to tax the people. We keep reading. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. All right, so now we have a conundrum. I want to be very honest and very clear about this. Based upon the only evidence we have outside of scripture, Quirinius did not become governor of Syria until 6 A.D. According to Matthew's gospel, Herod died in 4 A.D. I'm sorry, he didn't die in 4 A.D. Jesus was born in the time of Herod, and we have external evidence that says Herod died in 4 A.D. So, Luke and Matthew, if we actually trust those other historical references, there's a conundrum. One of them might be wrong. And if one of them's wrong, we're wasting our time. But I want to walk back from that and make it clear there's one external source, one external piece of evidence that says Quirinius didn't reign until 6 AD. There's also another way of reading the text to make it clear it's not actually the one that started with Quirinius, it was before Quirinius. There's numerous ways that Christians have tried to explain this, but I just wanna back up from that and ask, why do we immediately question scripture with what little evidence there might be from other historical sources? There's something wrong with that posture. This is God's word. This is God telling us how he entered into the world. This is Luke giving a very clear historical declaration to Theophilus. Let's go back to that. Most excellent Theophilus. Probably an aristocrat. Educated, powerful, political. When Luke is going to reference this very historical moment that would have been known throughout the region, He's not worried about having a factual problem. He's giving a historical marker that if it were wrong, it could be proven. No, my point here is we don't have enough information to fact check Scripture. We'd be careful in wanting to put some other external source over Scripture and say Scripture has to align with what others have said. No, if this is God's Word, it judges everything else. Now to be very clear, it's historically accurate. To be very clear, the more we actually understand and do archeology and the more we dig into the history and the secular sources, the more it's proven to be true historically. We don't just throw up our hands and say we don't know, but we wanna be careful. There's not enough evidence to say Luke and Matthew are wrong. I really just wanna challenge that posture that says the first thing we should do is question Scripture. No, the first thing we do is trust Scripture. Luke is writing to give confidence and certainty to Theophilus. He's done so in such a way that he said this is the exact time frame in which these people, Mary and Joseph, have gone to Bethlehem, and God is bringing about his will. So who? Mary, Joseph, Jesus. When? Time of Quirinius. There's a census. Early church believed this was around two or three A.D. Now, where? This is getting into much more of the specifics of the story. Where? Well, each person went to be registered in their own town, verse 3. Verse 4, Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because it was the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth, and she gave birth to a firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for him in the inn. So we see a place, Bethlehem, which is in Judah, which is in Israel, because the ruler of the known world has ordered a census. Notice that the whole world was called to be registered, verse one. The known world was put under this census, this registration. But here we have three different ways to look at this particular issue. Where? Bethlehem. Well, why are they going to Bethlehem? Luke tells us very specifically. They're going to Bethlehem because that is David's hometown. Because he was in the house and lineage of David. Now it doesn't say because Joseph understood this is what God will was, David is a good citizen of Rome. He's obeying his earthly government. He's doing what the governor has ordered and there must have been something going on because you typically would not want to put a pregnant woman on some animal or have her walk the kind of distance it would have been to go to a registry. Rome could be a little heavy handed. There must be something going on that forced this at this time, because Mary here is still betrothed to Joseph. She is with child, and they're traveling. So personally, Joseph is going home. He probably still has land there, which is why he had to go back to Bethlehem. Okay, the second reason, that's the personal reason. Joseph is from Bethlehem. The second is political. The census again was here to bring about the taxation on Israel. Whatever's happened, Caesar has demanded something, Quirinius has declared this has to happen now, and Joseph is forced to bring a pregnant woman all the way to Bethlehem. So it's personal, it's political, but most importantly for us, it's prophetic, prophetic. Micah, chapter 5, verse 2. But you, O Bethlehem, a prophet, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from old, from ancient days. He shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has given birth, and the rest of his brothers shall return to the people of Israel, and he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God, and they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of all the earth, and he shall be their peace. 600 years before this event, God said, The king I have promised will be born in a very specific place, Bethlehem. Now, we go all the way back to 2 Samuel 7. We've looked at this a few times. Let's look at it with Mary's announcement. God told David, you will have a son who will reign forever. I will be like to him a father and he will be like to me a son. You will have a physical descendant who will reign forever. And now, to Micah, he's saying that son of David will be born in Bethlehem. That's very specific. Because God wants us to have great confidence. Bethlehem, the city of David, is where we see Joseph going back to. And then we look back at 1 Peter 1, this salvation that was spoken of the prophets of old is now clear to us. This is how sovereign God is. He has complete control of all people and all places and all things to bring about his will. It doesn't say Joseph and Mary are going back to fulfill the promise, they're going back to fulfill a command by a pagan Roman governor. but they're fulfilling God's will by doing it. The pagan anti-God governor, he's not trying to fulfill God's will by sending the Savior back to Bethlehem, he's trying to send everyone back to their hometown so he knows how to take their money. And in that declaration, God is saying, I am giving the world my greatest gift. He uses the great ruler of all the earth to bring about his own will as if he's his puppet. It's amazing to see God's power in Bethlehem being at center stage, fulfilling a promise, unbeknownst to Mary and Joseph it appears, definitely unknown to Caesar Augustus. Here we see God doing what he promised. Reminds us of Psalm 2. The nation's rage against God's elect. The Caesar will hate this son. The Caesar will hate God's people. And God laughs because he is establishing his will, his way, even using the abusive actions of that king. Reminds us of the great lesson of Genesis 50. What man intended for evil, God uses for good. Church, I believe this is an opportunity for us to reflect. No matter how chaotic this world might seem to be, nor no matter how much rage there is among the nations or from the nations, God is in complete control. We can see here how he brings about his will perfectly for the birth of his Savior. We can see now that he will bring about a perfect and full salvation for us as his people. no matter what the nations are doing. So why Bethlehem? To prove God is God. The third question, why the manger? Why the manger? Let's look at verses six to seven. And while they were there, that is in Bethlehem, that time came for her to give birth. She gave birth to the firstborn son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the inn. Now much has been made of this to show the humble beginnings of Jesus, and there certainly is a theme, a motif of Luke is that he exalts the oppressed and he takes down the prideful. That is a key theme that runs throughout the Gospel of Luke, but he doesn't seem to be making much of that theme here. There's circumstantial things that are happening. There's no room for them in the inn. That could be guest room in other people's homes. So why the manger? I don't think it's to show necessarily the humble beginnings of Christ. We could do something like look at the word manger. If we took the first three words, that's man, God became man. Take off the first letter, anger. God's anger is against man, but now we have God in the manger. If we turn it backwards, it's regnam. And I'm glad someone gets that that's an exercise in futility. We try to make something out of nothing. When God actually tells us why, with great clarity. Why a manger? Why a manger? Look at verse 12. After he tells the shepherds the good news, and this will be a sign for you. You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. The whole point of it being a child born in an unusual place is so that the shepherds who are the first to hear this good news publicly in the fields, they know how to identify the child. This is how good God is. They're not supposed to get a stick and kind of figure out where the secret passage is. No, it's very specific. It's very unique. It's very clear. This is what I'm doing. This is what I promised. This is what has been done. Go find the baby in the manger. See it. Proclaim it. God is good. We look back at the way God has been about this incredible miracle. He's promised beforehand that shall be born in Bethlehem. Remember when Zachariah wanted a sign, he was given one? You can't talk for nine months. Mary did not ask for a sign, but she was given that great confirmation of John the Baptist leaping in Elizabeth's womb as a confirmation that she is giving birth to God himself, her own savior. God speaks and reveals himself. He makes known so that we can have Confidence. It's the theme of the story, why Bethlehem? To prove God is God. He's fulfilling promises. Why a manger? To make it clear and evident. And now we really get to the heart of the passage. Verses eight through 11. Why the Savior? So Jesus has been born. He's in a manger. And now we pan out from this stable or maybe this home where the animals are, and we pan out into the fields. In the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. We've seen this already before. Before it was declared it was specifically Gabriel, maybe Gabriel's here with them. But notice that the glory of the Lord is present. They have come down from heaven with a message from God, and the glory of the Lord is revealed to these shepherds. And they respond as we should respond, with fear. And the angels speak as angels speak, fear not. Verse 10. And the angel said to them, fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people. And unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior who is Christ the Lord. If you wanna memorize a particular section here, if you want one memory verse, it's nine to 11, or I'm sorry, 10 to 11. This announcement. If you want to really just hone in and focus what Christmas is really all about, it's the good news of great joy for all people. That's it. Good news. The gospel. Something you herald as a victory. Great joy. There's gonna be rejoicing because God is fulfilling his promise. There's gonna be rejoicing because of what God has done. all people, not just Israel, not just a powerful, not just a privilege. No, Luke is gonna make it very clear, especially for those who are lowly, for the poor, for all image bearers. Verse 11 gives us even more specific information. A child has been born. There's three specific things. City of David, we've already seen God said, my child, my savior, my king, we're born in Bethlehem. Who is Christ the Lord, that is the anointed one, the Lord being a reference for Yahweh himself, the covenant God. And then that declaration, a savior. A savior. One who will heal, deliver, and rescue. We want to think about this particular word here because we're asking why a Savior. It's only used twice in Luke. You can look back over to Luke 1. Mary's Magnificat. My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior. God is her Savior and here we see the one who is being born is God, her Savior. Now if you're Israel, you want salvation from Caesar Augustus. He's a bad dude. If you're Israel, you want freedom from this taxation. If you're Israel, you're wanting a savior from political oppression and from hunger, from disease. God is bringing a savior for us sinners. This short little declaration tells us a lot about Jesus, our Savior. Two important questions. Who is he? What does he do? Who is he? What does he do? First, a child has been born. It's a baby, an image bearer. When they showed up, the child is wrapped in swaddling clothes like any child would be. It's in a manger, that's what's different. But a human being has been born. Jesus Christ is an image bearer. He is added to his divine nature, our humanity. He is a child of Eve, just like you and me. He is the Christ, anointed and empowered by God for a very specific purpose. He is Christ. The Lord. Something we fail to grasp oftentimes is the importance of covenant. Promise making, promise keeping. Marriage is a covenant. There's a promise making, a promise keeping. There's a union that a covenant brings about. It's because God is a covenant God. He's given it his covenant name, Yahweh. And here we see in this act, covenant union. God has forever united himself with man by adding our nature to him. And he had to. He had to because he promised to. God had to add to himself our nature, not because he needed us, it's because he promised because we needed him. It's mesmerizing. What Christ does, what Don read about in Philippians 2, he empties himself. That doesn't mean he stops being God. It means he stops living in the glory of being God. He sets aside the trappings of glory and he takes on the humbleness and the humility of a creature lower than himself, us. It's difficult to contemplate. He who spoke the Son into existence now depends upon it for light and heat. He who breathed life into man now has air, and he needs air in his own lungs. He who took woman by taking a rib out of man has dwelt in the womb of a woman. It's hard to understand. It's an incredible miracle that shows how God has come To do what God does, He saves. Now, that is not a verb in our passage. It's a Savior. But what does a Savior do? He saves. He saves. Luke is going to tell us He's going to bring freedom to the oppressed. He's going to liberate the captives. There's a way in which God continues to change stories. He changed Elizabeth's story from being one of, she was barren with reproach and now there's great rejoicing. That's a small sample of what God does. But it's good news. God has brought about a salvation for all people. And it's not salvation from a bad government. It's not a salvation from difficult circumstances. This is the most important thing for you to hear. God has brought a salvation for us. He saves us from ourselves. He saves us from ourselves. See, sin is when we stop looking to God and trusting him and we turn inward and say, I think I can do this better. Sin is turning the heart and worship inward. We reject God by not loving him with all our heart, rather we love ourselves or something else as if it's God. We rebel against God by not worshiping him the way he's supposed to be worshiped. We refuse to give him honor and glory and praise. Jesus has come to give us salvation from the sin that we commit. Let's look at one other declaration here that helps us understand salvation. Verse 13, suddenly there were angels, a multitude, and they were saying, glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace. That word is so rightly associated with Christmas. We've sung it in numerous songs. We heard it in the Bethlehem passage from Micah 2, Micah 5, peace. Now peace is rightly associated with Christmas, but I fear we too often think peace means we're not supposed to have any governing problems, we're not supposed to have any family problems, we're not supposed to have any church problems. We have a wrong idea of peace. No, Jesus actually tells us there's gonna be wars. Jesus actually tells us he's gonna come and families are gonna have division and actually fighting with him. Jesus tells us there's gonna be false teachers that are gonna try to corrupt the church. It's not a peace without problems. No, the peace that Jesus has come to give is restoration and reconciliation. Jesus, first and foremost, has come to give us peace with God. We have sinned against God. We deserve his righteous wrath. His anger is upon us. But Christ has come to become like us in every way, to live the life we refuse to live, to die on the cross, to take the punishment we truly deserve so that now God can bring peace where there was hostility. We were hostile towards God and he had righteous anger towards us. Peace means God removes our sin so that he can draw closer to us. Peace is what Christ accomplishes. Is peace what you experience today, Christian? Is peace what we experience? That doesn't mean there's no conflict, it means there's a contentment, there's a joy in Christ. There's a true understanding that my guilt has been removed, my shame lifted, my distance destroyed. My sin overcome. Is there peace? It's the fruit of the Spirit. Christian, you need to hear this. No one can steal your peace, but you can give it away. You can give it away by choosing sin. The peace God has come to accomplish is perfect. It's to be enjoyed. No one can take it from you. But if you choose to reject the one who tells you of that peace, accomplishes that peace, you give it away. This verse is one of those complicated verses. On earth peace among those whom he is pleased. King James would say peace and goodwill for all those. There's a difference in translation because of some issues with the text, but the clarity here is that God brings peace where there was no peace. It is his goodwill to bring peace to us. In no way is this saying you earn it by pleasing him. You wouldn't need a savior if that were the case. If you're not a Christian this morning, God saved us from ourselves. We cannot save ourselves. Don't believe the lie that somehow you need to come up with your own peace so that then you'll come to God and you'll be all right. That there's not enough cleaning we can do to ever please God. He has sent his son, born in Bethlehem, headed to Jerusalem to humbly die on the cross and to rise again, to lift our shame, to take away our guilt. He will bring peace and is received by faith. Don't think you've gotta clean yourself up to come to Christ. No, the cleansing is what he does. That word Savior is really one of the most universal or generic words for salvation. It captures so many things. There's rescuer, deliverer, healer. There's many ways in which God saves us. He takes away our guilt. We're really guilty. When we stand before God, we're gonna really see our sin, and there's gonna be a just judge, and he's gonna declare guilty. We are guilty in our sin. but we believe in Jesus, the declaration comes down from above, not guilty, forgiven. There's shame to sin, there's shame, there's embarrassment, there's wanting to hide, there's fear, but he changes the story. He glorifies those who come to Him in faith, seeking to have their shame removed. He exalts the lowly. There's a real problem with distance. We're distant from God because our sin doesn't allow us to draw near to Him. There's a distance from God because He in His kindness did not let His holiness consume us in our sin. He has come near. There's destruction. We all know, we at least see in others, if not ourselves, how destructive our sinful patterns can be. Sin is destructive. God has come to bring peace, to call us to repentance, to call us to straighten us out, to unknot the heart. How do you receive this peace? Believe in Jesus Christ. How do we know? Our next question, how do we know? We've looked at who, what, where, when, why, very important, because Luke tells us why, how do we know? Look at chapter one, verse four again. Theophilus, I want you to have certainty concerning the gospel that you have been taught. As I read 15 to 20, I want you to be listening for certain words. Seen, found, heard, made known. This isn't a myth that was made up somewhere. It was made known, it was seen, it was talked about. It was discovered. Again, remember these shepherds who all of a sudden were just in the middle of the desert or the middle of the wilderness. And they hadn't heard of Mary and they hadn't heard, maybe they heard of Zechariah and he couldn't talk for a little while, but this is why God gave him a sign to confirm for them. And then they decided we're gonna go and see what we've been told. And when the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us. Now already, let's just pause. Let us see what has been known to us in Bethlehem. This is happening historically. This is happening in a way that is demonstratable. God is acting and speaking. Let us go over, see this thing that has happened, which the Lord may know. And they went with haste, and they found Mary and Joseph. and the baby lying in a manger, just as God said. And when they saw it, they may known the saying that had been told them concerning the child, and all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen as it had been told. The gospel is not some cleverly devised myth. The gospel is how God has spoken and made promises in years past. The gospel is how God has acted in our actual history. The gospel is how He has made known, not just with proclamations and actions, but interpretations of those own actions. He has told these shepherds, this is who the baby is, the Savior, Christ the Lord. Go and see it for yourself. And they went and they found exactly what God had said. And then they even share it with Mary, just as Mary and Elizabeth had this moment of recognizing what God is doing is something amazing. The shepherds, they share it with Mary, and she treasures it just like a mom would. God makes himself known. We can look back and see how he made himself known through Caesar Augustus and that prophecy in Micah. Here, much more specifically, in this moment, he chose to make himself known with clarity. Now we can't be eyewitnesses of this. Jesus came down to be man once and died on the cross once and rose again and now he's ascended. So what do we do? Friends, these words are God's word. These words are how God is revealing to us right now what he's done. Okay, you don't get to go see the manger. You don't get to see the cross. You don't get to put your finger in the wounds of Jesus like God offered to Thomas. No, you get to have faith in the clarity with which God has written what he has done. It's written for us. And more than that, we have the Holy Spirit who allows us to actually believe these things, that interprets and illuminates our own hearts. When you're not at a disadvantage because you don't get to go see it, you are at a great advantage because you get to see the entire story as it is written and interpreted. So how do we respond? The angels sing glory to God in the highest. Mary treasures up all the things that are happening. And the shepherds, they glorify and praise God. Come and see by faith so that you might know the great joy that comes from the good news for all people. Believe to receive the salvation of God. Believe to rejoice that he has fulfilled every promise. Believe in order to be saved from our own sin and the self-deception. Believe and rejoice. Christians, we should be marked as a people with peace and joy. Rejoice. We know the God who is in control of every nation. We know the God who is in control of the entire history of this world. We know the God who has made great promises, who has sent his own son because he loved us while we were still sinners. Treasure these things. Rejoice in these things. Great joy is only found when we are glorifying God. Great joy is only found when we are glorifying God. How do we do that? I'm not really one big on New Year's resolutions. It's good to have the opportunity to restart and reflect and renew. Maybe some do need a new start and this new year is the time to really do that. But life is about those ongoing duties, practices that change and make who we are. Every New Year's I do go back and I read Jonathan Edwards' resolutions. These will be in the weekly. This is his first resolution. He read these every day. Resolved that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God's glory in my own good, profit and pleasure, in the whole of my duration, without any consideration of the time, whether now or never so many myriads of ages hence. Resolved to do whatever I think to be my duty and most for the good and advantage of mankind in general. Resolved to do this, whatever difficulties I meet, how many and how great soever. You see there, love God. I am resolved to do what is most to God's glory. Resolved to love my neighbor, whatever is to the advantage of mankind. And by doing whatever is greatest for God's glory, it is at the same time for my own good. Resolved to take up God's word, to feast, To meditate upon the gospel. To not want to hide sin, but to confess it and be free. To not want to be entangled in sin, but to have that knot untied and be free. God is powerful. If we confess our sins, he forgives us. If we seek him in his will, he exalts us. The good news. brings great joy for all people that call us to believe. Will you pray with me?