Sermon Transcript
For the light. Glad that you all are here, made the choice to be here today. I want to invite you to turn in your Bibles, if you would please, to the book of James.
Thank you. Thank you. If you’re visiting with us, that was for everybody else here that’s been here once or twice. The book of James, that’s in the New Testament. And if you didn’t bring your Bible, there’s one provided in the pews in front of you.
It’s near the end of the New Testament. You can find it. The book of James. We’ll be looking at chapter 2. Primarily, although we’ll look a little bit at chapter 1.
Before I get into the Scripture, I just want to commend several people. This last week we had our kids’ science camp. That was something that was themed Out of This World, where we explored outer space and we took a look at how God is a great God and how he speaks to us through the heavens and through the stars and the planets and the moon and the sun and how amazing our universe is. And I want to first of all commend Marci Bates, who— yeah, she’s just an amazing person. She came up with this concept and the whole thing on her own.
She did this last year as well. She just kind of dreams up these ideas in her mind. She’s got a very scientific mind, and I’m grateful for that because I don’t. We had 120 kiddos that were here, both from the church and from the wider community. I want to commend a few different people.
I want to commend Tara Fluitt, who was in charge of our game station. We had Kathy Spilar and Tim Logan in our science teaching station. We had Megan Mueller and Tessa Ennels and Charmaine Thomas in our craft station. We had Missy Finnell and Chris Beals and Charlie Larson and Tanya Alvarado in our snack station. We had Kiersey Yoxie and the lovely, lovely Shannon Durand that were in our— did I say lovely?— that were in our Bible teaching station.
We had Lisa Stenfort doing the hosting and greeting of people, and Peter and Katie Licari. We had Jason Garvey taking pictures. We had people doing all kinds of things. Guys, can I also just tell you, we have some amazing students here at this church? Like really, really outstanding students.
A number of our students helped out between CJ and Raya and Faith and Evelina and who else? Trevor, you were there, and Matthew Stenfort. Good job. I know you wanted to be there. And Tate and Veronica and Kaitlyn, and I think that We have several other students that helped out as well that were there.
So it was a great time. It was really, really good. And on Thursday they had the opportunity— they and I had the opportunity to present the gospel. We had a number of children that expressed interest in learning more or prayed a prayer that was sort of a prayer of commitment of professing faith in Jesus Christ. And so that was exciting too.
And so we’re going to follow up with them. But thank you to all those who played a part. Next Sunday I’m going to be headed down— well, headed up to the Sierra Nevadas to Silver Spur Camp with our middle schoolers. We have about 15 middle schoolers that I’m going to be with, including Matthew Ricimaro is going to be there, and Christina Wong, and Tara will be there with us. So we’re excited about that.
High schoolers, how was Hume? It was good? Yes? Exciting? So we’ll see if we can get a couple of them to share at some point about their experiences at Hume Lake a couple weeks ago at high school camp.
So good stuff happening here. This weekend we had a garage sale, and by we I mean my wife had a garage sale. I just moved things from point A to point B, and she did it with a couple different friends that are here today that sold some things, and our kids made some money. And you know what? I get attached to some of the things that we sell at these things.
We have garage sales every once in a while, and this was the rite of passage garage sale. We’ve had them at other times. This was, I can’t believe, Shannon, you’re getting rid of this. Like, we can’t get rid of this. You know, like the train table and like the boys’ bunk beds and all these things that mean I’m getting old and they’re getting old and I get attached to these things.
We turned over the kitchen table that we were going to sell and I saw CJ had carved in his initials in there whenever he was younger. It’s like, we cannot get rid of this. We can’t get rid of the little bike with the training wheels. The boys might need it at some point, right? The regular bike might wear out.
They’ll need these bunk beds when they’re 18 and 19 years old and those sorts of things. You know, it got me thinking because we had the garage sale yesterday, but we also— last weekend I was in Illinois. I was in Illinois with my mom and my younger brother, and we went through our grandmother’s farmhouse. My grandmother has lived in southern Illinois for a long time, and she is one of 12 children. This is a house that has passed through the decades through our family, and my grandmother recently was moved down to Houston to live in an assisted living So nobody’s taking care of the farmhouse, and so we’re going through room after room after room after room of boxes and history that’s just existing.
And it’s a little bit like a garage sale, but it’s different, right? It’s different because you have one pile that’s like, okay, we have to go through these things and we’re going to give this stuff to other people. We have this pile of stuff that we’re going to sell or we’re going to auction off, and then we have this pile of stuff that’s going to be trash. And I don’t know about you, when I go to garage sales and it’s other people’s stuff, I just rifle through the stuff. When you’re going through somebody else’s stuff, though, that’s attached to you, or you’re going through your own stuff, you’re a bit more cautious about it, you’re more attached to it.
But I have to say, even last weekend, I mean, we’re going through this amazing house, and if we took our time, we’d be there forever, and we had 3 days. So we’re just going through stuff as to what do we do, and we’re making arbitrary decisions, sometimes for silly reasons, sometimes for personal reasons, and we’re just, okay, trash, sell this, auction this, sell this, trash, give this. And we’re taking decades of history and we’re just making immediate decisions and categorizing things and jumping to conclusions. And we’re talking about this is somebody’s life here, right? This is something that’s really, really personal to certain people.
Have you ever realized that we do this with people?
We see somebody and we’ll make an immediate judgment. We’ll classify somebody. We’ll categorize them. We see a group of people and we automatically make a judgment about them. We have an attitude or a thought about them.
We jump to a conclusion.
We do this all the time. Each of us, let’s be honest, we walk around with an unpublished list in our minds of certain people that we like and other people that we could simply do without. We walk around with this unpublished list of people that we, you know, are desirable and people who are, quite frankly, undesirable. People who we trust, people who we don’t trust.
What we’re essentially saying is these people matter and these people don’t. This person is more important than this person. I’m not talking about family relationships either. I’m just talking about in general. There’s not a day that passes by, in fact, even this morning, perhaps you passed somebody on the road.
Somebody was driving a particular way and you made an immediate stereotype or prejudiced judgment about that person. You jump to a conclusion. You met somebody for the first time today. Somebody came into a class, or you shook somebody’s hand for the first time. You immediately jump to some sort of a conclusion.
I do it. You do it. We all do it. We do it with our stuff, but we really, really, really do it with people. Right?
Fortunately, this problem doesn’t exist in the church. Right? It’s only out in the world.
We’re going to look at the book of James, and he’s going to step on our toes, as he does every time you read the book of James. And can I just encourage you to do something? I’ve encouraged our middle schoolers also. I’m going to encourage you, like, would you read through the book of James once this summer at least for yourself outside of church? Do yourself a favor and just read through the book of James.
It’s filled with great stuff. It’s just 5 chapters. You could read it, you know, a chapter a day, a chapter a week. Just work through it sometime this summer. Would you do that?
Because I think that as we get into God’s word, God will show us things. That will be greater and stronger and more impactful than anything that we can preach or teach about, as God speaks to you personally. I encourage you to do that, and it’s a great first step if you don’t already have that step. So we’re going to look through the book of James, and we’re going to look at this problem that exists of how we categorize and we lump people together and we make assumptions and these value judgments. Before though we get to James 2, one of the things I have to remind myself, and I’ll just remind you in case you’re like me, we know that the Bible wasn’t originally formatted in chapters and verses, right?
It didn’t have the cute little section titles. So whenever we finish one chapter and we move into the next, it’s wise for us to look at what we’re— where we just came from. And Pastor David, our pastor of young adults, preached last week from chapter 1 at the very, very end of James. And so I just want to go back there because James raises a couple things that help us as we think about going into chapter 2. Starting in verse 27 of chapter 1 in the book of James, James says, religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this.
James is gonna tell us religion that God accepts. First of all, to look after orphans and widows and those who are helpless in their distress. And 2, to keep oneself from being polluted by the world, to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James is saying we need to keep ourselves unstained from the world as a picture of pure and undefiled and faultless religion. That means we think the way that God thinks.
That means that we see things the way that God sees things, and that even though you’re in the world and I’m in the world and we’re bombarded by messages throughout the week, that we don’t live like the world. We’re not stained by it. We’re pure. We’re different. We weren’t called to be like the world.
James is writing here to Christ followers. So if you’ve made a profession of faith, we’re not to be like the world around us. And one of the ways that James is going to show us now in chapter 2 that we get stained by the world and we become like the world is the way that we treat one another. And he’s saying this should not be. So start in chapter 2 now of James.
He says, my brothers and sisters, again, he’s writing to a Christian audience. If you’re not a Christ follower here today, you’re off the hook. Honestly, I think that sometimes we’re guilty in the church of saying, well, if you’re not a Christ follower, you have to do the same thing that we as Christ followers— no. James is writing to a Christian audience here, and he makes no bones about it. Now, we’re all wise if we apply these things, but he gets in, my brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not— what?
Show favoritism. Must not show favoritism. One of the ways that I think is interesting to look at a Bible passage whenever you’re reading to make sense of it, and I just encourage you to do this, is to think in terms of 3 questions: What? So what? And now what?
What? So what? And now what? And sometimes you have to really dig to find what that is. James just lays it up on a tee here for us.
It’s almost like he just came right out and thought somebody was going to preach on this because he gives us the what right away. What is the principle of this passage? Do not show favoritism. That is the principle that James wants us to get here. Do not show favoritism.
Do not show partiality. Partiality comes from a word that means to receive one’s face. That means making a value judgment based upon outward appearances. We see somebody’s face or outward appearance and we make a judgment about them, something external. And he’s saying, don’t do that.
He’s saying, don’t do that. That’s the principle here. And what he really means is, don’t be a respecter of persons. Don’t look at one person and say that this person’s better or worse than another person. We shouldn’t create hierarchies and view people within those hierarchies.
This person’s better than another. We shouldn’t treat people differently. Don’t show favoritism. The reality is, is that there are certain people that we prefer, and what do we do? We give those people special treatment.
We show favoritism to them. And often it’s for arbitrary reasons or illogical reasons. Often it’s just personal. We can benefit from that person. So it’s selfish.
Other times we limit others or we devalue them based on the fact that they don’t bring anything to add value to our life. And I don’t even think we’re aware of the fact that we do this. And we’ll get into some of the categories that we do this with people on in just a little bit. But James starts out here with the what. So in your Bible, not if you’re using a pew Bible, but if you brought your own Bible, you might want to, with a pen or pencil, write the question next to verse 1, what?
And anytime you read a passage, you might want to do that. Write down the question, what? What is the principle here? And he just gives it to us right there. Don’t show favoritism.
And the reason why we’re not to show favoritism is something underneath the principle, and it’s this: faith and favoritism don’t mix. He says, as believers in our Lord Jesus Christ, brothers and sisters, we should not do this. Faith and favoritism don’t mix. You cannot say you’re a Christ follower and then at the same time say, I’m going to show preferential treatment to this person. He’s saying it’s incompatible.
There are several things in our world that don’t go together. That’s it. Faith and favoritism. Bias and faith. You can’t do it.
It’s incompatible. It doesn’t go together. And then he illustrates this in verse 2.
I don’t know if this is a hypothetical illustration. Maybe he saw this unfold. Who knows? Suppose a man, verse 2, he says, comes into your meeting. He’s talking about church, like a church meeting, a worship service, wearing a gold ring and fine clothes.
And a poor man is in filthy old clothes and he comes in. I don’t know if the rich man wants preferential treatment, but he’s certainly dressed to attract attention. He’s wearing the gold ring and fine clothes. The other person is not just wearing old or ragged clothes. They’re filthy.
They stink.
And James says in verse 3, if you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, here’s a good seat for you here, come down here in front. What can we do for you? And yet, you say to the poor man, stand over there. Sit on the floor by my feet. I mean, can you even imagine?
Sit on the floor by my feet? Listen, we’re not even going to give you a seat because you’re going to mess it up with your filthy clothes here. James says, if we do that, and this is a key verse here, have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? See, that’s what we do whenever we categorize people or we see somebody and we make a value judgment is that we’re acting as judges.
We’re judging. We’re evaluating. We’re making a judgment. And he’s saying, have you not done that when you have 2 people who come in and you say, here, you get this treatment, and then you over here, we’ve got a different service for you. Here, you go over here with these people.
If we even do that at all. James isn’t saying that this is about the rich person. This isn’t about the rich person at all. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with being rich. In fact, if you read through Scripture, you find Abraham and Job and people like Joseph of Arimathea, they had lots of money and God honored them and they had a life of faith.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with being rich, and there’s nothing necessarily wrong with being poor. This illustration is not about the rich man or the poor man. It’s about the person saying the rich man is better than the poor man. This person’s better than this person. This person is more important.
This person matters more than this person. Now, I’ve never been in a church service where I’ve seen such contrasting treatment of people, where a person is literally told, sit on the floor. Even though we have seats, we’re not going to give one to you. I’ve not seen that, thankfully. And I, in my— listen, I’ve been in a lot of churches.
I’ve been in church a long time. I typically don’t think it’s the rich-poor thing that necessarily gets us, although sometimes that can be. Churches are sometimes guilty of saying, this person can run a bank. I bet they can sit on a committee. This person could be an elder.
This person could benefit us. But I don’t think it’s often the rich or poor people. I think it’s other categories. So I made a list. And I bet you’re somewhere on this list.
I’m somewhere on this list. This isn’t my personal list. This is just a list that I think will capture some of the categories that trip us up. Sometimes it is the rich-poor thing. For instance, some people here in this room, you don’t like rich people.
They’re snobs. You drive into a parking lot, you see fancy cars there, you walk into a room, you say, this is not the place for me. And you immediately categorize people with money in a certain way and you judge them. Some of you don’t like poor people. You think poor people are lazy.
You see a person standing on the corner. Well, why don’t they just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get a job? What’s wrong with them? Or maybe there’s something else that you immediately jump to conclusions with.
Some of us judge people who are overweight. Without knowing anything about them, or even if we do, we just judge them. Some people judge people who are underweight. That person needs to gain some weight. They’re too skinny.
Some people judge divorced people.
They’ve got a bias against divorced people or single people. Why aren’t they married? Is there something wrong with them?
Some of you don’t like young people. Although, if you’re in this service, you’re in the wrong service because we like young people. But some of us have biases against young people. Those young people. Some of you don’t like old people.
You’d never admit to that. Maybe you would, but you have a bias against older people. Old people are, and then you fill in the blank. Some of you don’t like people with bad taste.
I would never be caught dead wearing that.
Am I stepping on any toes here? I hope I am, because James is here. I think, to me, I don’t think it’s too far-reaching for us to get into these categories. He’s talking about rich and poor. There’s other ways that we value and undervalue certain people.
Some people don’t like stay-at-home moms.
What do you do all day? Some people don’t like moms who work outside the home. Shouldn’t you be there for those children?
Some people have an attitude against people who put their kids in public school.
Some people have an attitude against people who put their kids in private school or who homeschool. We lump people together in these categories. Well, that family has too many kids. They’re just being irresponsible. These people don’t have too many kids.
They only have 1 or 2 kids. They’re not believing God enough. Or this couple doesn’t even have kids. Some of you don’t like African Americans.
Some of you don’t like Asians.
Some of you don’t like Indians.
Or pick your culture. If you’re from another culture, some of you might not like Caucasians, Americans. You wouldn’t admit to as much, but maybe you would joke. Or make a statement, or lump people together without knowing anything about a person, and you just completely write off a group of people, or I write off a group of people. Some of us are extremely judgmental towards homosexuals.
And I’m not talking about, you know, your own religious conviction. I’m just talking about if homosexuality comes up, you’ve got your own thought about them. Somebody who votes different than you. I only vote this, I only vote that, and the other side is the other side.
Some of you have an attitude against people who worship differently than you, who learn differently than you.
The point is, is that we’re watching this unfold and God is saying, what are you all doing? Seriously, what are you doing? What if I treated you that way? God is saying, what if I took the same criteria you use to value others and to accept others, and I accepted you in that same way? What if I did that?
You see, God offers eternal life and salvation and a relationship with him, even though we bring nothing to the table. In spite of our irregularities and quirks and faults and sinfulness. And then we turn around and judge people for the dumbest, most insignificant things sometimes. And we say, well, that’s just how I am. It’s wrong.
James says, don’t do it. What if God accepted you that way based on your appearance? What if God accepted you based upon your bank account? What if God accepted you based on your past?
We can’t do it. Faith and favoritism don’t mix. Verse 5. This is the so what. This is the so what.
So in your Bible there, you can write so what starting at verse 5. He’s going to tell us why this matters. He’s going to tell us— he’s already told us the principle, don’t show favoritism. He’s now going to tell us the problem. The problem.
Why favoritism or partiality is wrong. Why this attitude is wrong. Starting in verse 5, listen, my dear brothers and sisters, has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? One of the reasons why favoritism is wrong is because favoritism is unlike God. God doesn’t show partiality, so why are we doing it?
God doesn’t play favorites, so why are we doing it? Favoritism is unlike God. And as brothers and sisters, Christ followers, faith and favoritism don’t mix. It’s unlike God. And then he goes on, verse 6, but you have dishonored the poor.
Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong? Not only is favoritism unlike God, but favoritism is unreasonable. And in these people’s case, Favoritism was unreasonable because the rich were exploiting the poor.
It was one group of people that was taking advantage of another, and they were not honoring God. Didn’t make any sense. It’s unreasonable.
God doesn’t show any partiality. It’s completely foreign to him. He has zero partiality within him.
So why do we have that? He’s not impressed by our outward exterior things like we are. And yet we dishonor the poor, or you fill in the blank of whatever the group is. We dishonor and judge those that we deem are not worthy or valuable enough.
And again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with being rich or poor. God is greatly honored, though, by the faith of somebody who doesn’t have the financial means that perhaps somebody else might. God is honored by the faith of the poor person because it’s harder to believe in a good God when life is not so good. So God leans into the poor. He hears their cries.
He has a special place in his heart, not a preferential place in his heart, but he makes the kingdom of God available to all regardless of income. And then verse 8, we said favoritism is unlike God. Favoritism is unreasonable. Verse 8, favoritism is unloving. If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, love your neighbor as yourself, you’re doing right.
Jesus was asked on one occasion, Teacher, what is the greatest commandment? Jesus said, I’ll give you 2 of them. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. Love others as yourself. And that’s what James is quoting here, loving others as yourself.
And James refers to that as the royal law. And he says, if you do that, you’re doing well. You don’t have to worry about all the other commands in Scripture because underneath all of them is loving people as you love yourself. He says, but if you show favoritism, favoritism, you sin. This isn’t just a, well, that’s just how I am.
I just don’t like these people. I just don’t like that person. It’s a sin. You sin and you are convicted by the law as a sinner, as a lawbreaker. Verse 9, for whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.
You say, well, I may be guilty of favoritism, but I have never killed anybody. I may be guilty of showing favorable treatment or undervaluing this person over here, but I have never committed adultery. And yet James says, for he who said you shall not commit adultery also said you shall not murder. If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker. It doesn’t matter— murder, adultery, favoritism— it’s all sin.
You commit one, you break all of them because they all violate the command to love others as we love ourselves. Favoritism is unlike God. It’s unreasonable and it’s unloving. It’s not loving others as we love ourselves.
Then he gets into the prescription. Your response, my response to favoritism. We’ve covered the what, the principle, don’t show favoritism. We’ve covered the so what, why this matters, because favoritism is unlike God, it’s unreasonable.
But then he’s going to get now into the now what. So at verse 12, you can write in now what, question mark. And again, anytime you read scriptures, look for the what, the so what, and the now what. Now what, the prescription, your response to favoritism. Verse 12, Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful.
Mercy triumphs over judgment. You see, we are to speak and act as those who are going to be judged one day, because we will be. We will be judged one day. We’re to speak and act as those who will be judged rather than those who are a judge. We’re to speak and act towards others in the way that we would want to be received.
We are to love others as we would want to be loved, to accept in the way that we would want to be accepted. So our first response, we’ve already covered this, is to confess favoritism as sin. To confess favoritism as sin. I’m going to give you a chance to do that here in just a moment. We’re just between you and God.
You have the opportunity to say, God, I have been guilty. Of showing preferential treatment or undervaluing this person or this group of people. And hopefully, one or two people are coming to mind.
God, I’ve been guilty of showing judgment rather than mercy.
I’ve been guilty of forgetting that you accept me and therefore I have no right to judge. So confess favoritism as sin. Our second response is to speak and act with mercy to all. To all. What if instead of going in the other direction and trying to avoid people that you would normally try to avoid, what if you went towards them and you spoke and acted with mercy towards them and you loved them the way that you would want to be loved and you received them the way that you would want to be received and accepted them the way that you would want to be accepted?
What would that look like? It’d be transformative. You see, if we can’t act with mercy towards that person or that group, then I would go to the next conclusion and say, we don’t get the gospel. If you don’t understand mercy and you can’t extend mercy, then you don’t understand what Jesus did for you.
If you can’t extend mercy and you would instead rather judge, you don’t understand that Jesus died on the cross to take your sin upon yourself He didn’t come to condemn you. He came to receive you.
And if you can’t show mercy, and if I can’t show mercy, and we’re struggling with that, we have to go back to the beginning to get a real sense of our need and God’s great grace. And maybe that’s what some of you need to do here today, to go back to the gospel, your need and God’s great grace. That he makes available to all.
You say, Steve, I don’t know how much of a problem this is here in the church, and I just want to get a little bit more kind of macro level instead of just on the individual level. As a church, we’ve not been guilty of making people sit on the floor, right? We’ve not done that. You wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t do that.
Yeah, but have you invited them over to your house?
Have you had them over for lunch? Have you made an effort to really get to know that person or that group of people that you’re normally not attracted to? You see, churches can be incredibly segregated, and we often aren’t aware of it at the time. But you think about it, we all arrive at the same time, we park in our same parking spots, we go to the same classes, we come sit in our same pews, we go out to lunch with the same people.
And we don’t make any effort to go towards those, and I don’t make any effort to go towards those that we wouldn’t naturally be drawn towards.
And we would normally look at that and say, well, that’s just who I am. I just prefer these people. And James is exhorting us to go further. True faith, true religion that God values is helping those who are in distress, But it also includes accepting others as we would want to be accepted.
And this not only says a lot about us, but it says a lot about our great God, that he would love us in spite of all of this and make his grace available to us. This week, speak and act with mercy to all. Ask God to give you a special place in your heart for the person that you would normally resist. Ask him to surround you and to make you uncomfortable if necessary by putting somebody in your path that you would normally resist or reject.
Love that person the way that God loves you and the way that you would want to be loved. Let’s pray.
Lord, in the quietness of this moment, I just want to allow people an opportunity to confess to you any prejudice, any bias, any favoritism, partiality in their life and in my life.
And as your heads are bowed and your eyes are closed, I want to invite you to just take a moment to just— would you be willing to take a step forward in your faith today? Would you just confess to God an attitude of favoritism, if it exists and where it exists, and ask God to forgive you. Would you just take a moment to confess that to the Lord? Don’t sweep it under the rug.
Don’t excuse it because of who you are, your personality. Confess it as sin. Say the same thing about it that God would say about it.
Would you also take a moment to just ask God to give you an opportunity, a teachable moment this week where you can speak and act with love towards somebody that might be hard to love?
Father, we confess that we sin and fall short of your glory. We miss the mark of your absolutely perfect standard, and we’re so grateful that you do not accept us based on the things that we accept others on.
Thank you, God, having mercy towards the rich and the poor, the desirable and the undesirable, the valuable and those that we would deem to have less value.
Help us, Lord, to look at one another as being valuable and worthy because of being made in the image and likeness of God. Help us to see people the way that you see them, to love people the way that you love them.
Help us to be humble and teachable.
And Father, as we enter into a time of worship and reflection and, and now communion, we come to the Lord’s table recognizing the sacrifice of your Son Jesus, and that even though we brought nothing to the table, You accept us by your grace, and I pray that you would help us in these moments to remember the sacrifice of Jesus, his body broken for us, his blood spilled for us. God, we take these elements in remembrance of you.
Lord, draw us near to you in these closing moments. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
