Text today is Judges chapter 12, verses 1 through 15. It's on page 266 of the Bible's in the seats. So last week we saw Jephthah's thorough defeat of the Ammonites, but we also saw him make that strange vow about his daughter. likely that he sacrificed her, possibly that he dedicated her to the temple. Now this week we're gonna finish up the life of Jephthah and then we're gonna cover three more minor prophets as well. So we'll read all of chapter 12, it's not too long. Starting at verse one. Then the men of Ephraim were summoned and they crossed to Zephon and they said to Jephthah, why did you cross over to fight against the sons of Ammon without calling us to go with you? We will burn your house down on you. Jephthah said to them, I and my people were at great strife with the sons of Ammon when I called you, you did not deliver me from their hand. When I saw that you would not deliver me, I took my life in my hands and crossed over against the sons of Ammon and the Lord gave them into my hand. Why then have you come to me this day to fight against me? Then Jephthah gathered all the men of Gilead and fought Ephraim. And the men of Gilead defeated Ephraim because they said, you are fugitives of Ephraim of Gileadites in the midst of Ephraim and in the midst of Manasseh. The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan opposite Ephraim. And it happened when any of the fugitives of Ephraim said, let me cross over, the men of Gilead would say to him, are you an Ephraimite? If he said no, then they would say to him, say now Shibboleth. But he said, Sibyleth, for he could not pronounce it correctly. Then they seized him and slew him at the fords of the Jordan. Thus there fell at the time 42,000 of Ephraim. Jephthah judged Israel six years. Then Jephthah the Gileadite died and was buried in one of the cities of Gilead. Now Ibzan of Bethlehem judged Israel after him. He had thirty sons and thirty daughters whom he gave in marriage outside the family, and he brought in thirty daughters from outside for his sons. And he judged Israel seven years. Then Isban Ibzan died and was buried in Bethlehem. Now Elon, the Zebulonite, judged Israel after him and he judged Israel 10 years. Then Elon, the Zebulonite, died and was buried in Aijalon in the land of Zebulon. Now Abdon, the son of Hillel, the Pirathonite, judged Israel after him. He had 40 sons and 30 grandsons who rode on 70 donkeys and he judged Israel eight years. Then Abdon, the son of Hillel, the Pithrathonite, died and was buried at Pirathon. Parathon in the land of Ephraim in the hill country of the Amalekites. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, do not let your word go forth and return void today. Use it to accomplish redemption and sanctification. May it act as a hammer to shatter the hardness of stony hearts and soften those of us who believe. Make us receptive to the truth found in these scriptures. Bless our gathering with your presence. May it be glorifying to you, faithful to the text, and helpful for your people. Send your spirit to work in us now. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. So we're going to begin today in reverse order. We're going to start with the details at the end of the chapter in verses 8 through 13. with those minor judges. Just as before Jephthah, we covered the minor judges Tola and Jair, so after him we have three more minor judges in succession to cover Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon. And again, just like Tola and Jair, we have very little information about anything that happened during their time, some judges, other than the length of their judgeship, their burial locations, and a few family details that it sprinkles in there. And so again, we're left without the ability to do much more than mention their existence. We did see in Chapter 10 that Jair had a rather large family. And similar details are given about both Ibzan and Abdan, who likewise had enormous families. So both of these men must have been fairly prominent, fairly well-off. Both men likely had a handful of wives, and both men were blessed with a huge number of children. Jair, Ibzan, and Abdan, which kind of bookend Jephthah. He's right in between the two. They contrast with his singular daughter and the end of his family line. Regardless of how his vow about his daughter is understood, these two are on bookends of Jephthah, who's in the middle with the end of his family line in the midst of this story. There is one interesting note about the fact that Ibzan married all 60 of his children to people outside of his clan. And that is a bit of an odd detail, so I think we can only assume it must have been unusual, worth noting unusual. I don't know if there's any significance to it outside of its peculiarity. I couldn't really find anybody that expounded on it, said anything much about that, so I guess it just is what it is. With a family size that big, I assume bringing in some fresh blood from other clans would basically be a practical move, or else Interbreeding could probably become a problem with that many kids in one clan. Also, all three of these minor judges seem to serve in the role of judge for relatively short periods of time. Seven years, 10 years, eight years. It's kind of different than what we've been seeing throughout the book. We're kind of getting shorter. Yet all three of those minor judges are actually longer than Jephthah himself, who only served six years. Again, long, or not very long. Some claim that Jephthah's judgeship was cut short for having sacrificed his daughter. That's the reason. And that's sort of one of those claims we don't really have the ability to evaluate. That's getting into interpreting providence, which is generally imprudent unless heavily implied by the text itself. And I don't think that's necessarily justified here. It wouldn't be shocking, but you've got nothing from the text to really point us in that direction. In addition to the shorter services for the judges, we're also seeing a lack of resting periods for the land. It was noted earlier in the book, we'd say, you know, such and such judge served this long and the land had rest for this many years. We're not seeing that anymore in the Book of Judges. And those two factors together, plus the civil war that we read about today, all do seem to kind of be indicators of the downward spiral into trajectory, the trajectory into chaos. that we've been observing since chapter one. That seems to be continuing, it's getting worse, shorter judgeships, without resting, civil war now, they're not just fighting outsiders, they're fighting with themselves, so with all that, Can't really say much more about these minor judges. Let's now turn our attention to the events following Jephthah's defeat of Ammon that we saw in chapter 11. So sometime after all that fighting is done, after they defeat Ammon, the men of the tribe of Ephraim cross over into Gilead to confront Jephthah. They're angry that they were not called to go fight with them against Ammon. And they pose this significant threat to him, saying, we will burn your house down on you. So they're there to fight. They're angry. And it sort of raises the question, in my mind at least, what is Ephraim's deal? What is their problem? They didn't send messengers to go ask this question. They're not just inquiring, hey, what's going on? You know, we feel a little left out. No, they took a massive army over there ready to fight and kill over this issue. They're ready to kill over it. And they literally raised this exact same issue with Gideon, if you remember back in chapter eight. They said, hey, why'd you leave us out? They're ready to fight again there against Gideon. And you kind of wonder, did they just want to take part in the spoils of war? Are they kind of being greedy? Is it simply a matter of pride? Is it a bit of both, maybe? I don't know. Remember. Gilead, which is where Jephthah was from, this is Gilead that fought the Ammonites. Gilead was part of Manasseh, the half-tribe of Manasseh, and Manasseh was Ephraim's older brother. Ephraim and Manasseh are the two brothers of Joseph. They're half-tribes, but they're both very large. And back in Egypt, if you remember, it was Ephraim, the younger brother, who received the blessing from Jacob, the blessing of the firstborn from Jacob. You remember, Joseph brings Ephraim and Manasseh to him before Jacob dies, and he intentionally crosses his arms over. Joseph's like, no, no, no, this one's the older. He says, no, I know what I'm doing. He crossed over, and he said, both of these are going to have nations come from them. They're both going to be great, but Ephraim will be greater than Manasseh, his older brother. And now, in the promised land, the two tribes were neighbors. Part of Manasseh was on the east side of the Jordan, if you remember. Part of Manasseh, Gilead. It's on the east side of the Jordan. And then on the other side, just opposite on the other side, is the other half of Manasseh. And right below Manasseh there is Ephraim, so they're neighbors, and kind of diagonal and north and south of each other. Gilead is basically east Manasseh. And the rest of Manasseh was on the west side of the Jordan below west Manasseh. And now Ephraim has gone out across the Jordan into eastern Manasseh to question Jephthah about going to war without them. When Gideon was confronted the same way, he was able to diffuse the situation, if you remember. He used some self-deprecation. Who am I? Oh, I'm from this measly tribe. I'll never do as much as you. He heaps this praise onto Ephraim, and they're satisfied. Their pride is satiated. But Jephthah is a different kind of guy. He is a gibbereem, remember, a valiant warrior. Tried and true, a valiant warrior. And according to him, he's got that rough background, if you remember. According to him, he did actually call them to fight. He said, I did. And then I only took matters into my own hands when I saw that you're not going to be saving Israel. So I took my life in my own hands and we went and fought Ammon without you. You weren't going to do it. So I did it. I called you. Ephraim then goes on to insult the Gileadites, saying they're merely fugitives of both Ephraim and Manasseh. You're just fugitives among us two half-tribes, these two brother tribes. Basically saying they're just leftovers in Ephraim and Manasseh. And at that slight, Jephthah gathered the men of Gilead, and he led them in battle against his own brethren, the Ephraimites. His men were battle-hardened veterans. By now, they're warmed up. They just defeated Ammon. So they defeat Ephraim as well, even though they're pretty large, pretty powerful. And then, after they fought him, they thought ahead. And they went and they took control of the fords of the Jordan between Ephraim and Gilead. Remember, Ephraim's on the west. They cross over the Jordan into the east. After their defeat, Gideon goes down, cuts off in between east and west at the Jordan River, where they'd have to go across. Cuts off the force, takes control of the force. Now all the survivors of Ephraim would be trapped in Gilead in the east and forced to go through Jephthah's men if they attempt to escape back home to the west. And when those survivors did in fact show up, that is what happened, they show up at the Jordan, the men of Gilead would then question them, are you an Ephraimite? And if they denied being from Ephraim, they could detect them by making them pronounce the word Shibboleth, which they pronounced Sibboleth. Now it's, That's a difference in the seen and the sheen in the Hebrew language. It's essentially the same letter, but there's a dot that's in different locations. But they couldn't pronounce shibboleth the right way. Ephraimites apparently had this dialect distinct enough that you could tell them apart. So in other words, they talked a little funny, at least in some parts, and they couldn't pronounce certain words because of this dialect. I'm sure nobody here could relate to anything like that. Gileadites, if they discovered they were an Ephraimite, they would kill them on the spot. And the tribe of Ephraim ended up losing 42,000 men. 42,000 men. After this defeat, Ephraim really doesn't show up or play a significant role in Israel anymore. They're not wiped out, but they're just almost permanently diminished. They should have known not to confront a proven warrior like Jephthah the way that they did. They poked the wrong bear, if you could say it that way, and they paid for it in blood. Now, I'm not saying that the brutality of Jephthah and the Gileadites was entirely justified, but it is admittedly hard to feel sorry for Ephraim when they do this sort of thing. They were big and powerful. They were blessed over Manasseh. But they seem to have squandered their blessing. Ephraim is a tribe that squandered their blessing. They repeatedly stirred up unnecessary strife against the other tribes within Israel. And from the outside, it looks like they wanted to be recognized for their importance. They wanted to flex their muscle. They wanted a prominent role of leadership in Israel. But at the same time, they didn't really want to earn any respect. They didn't act like leaders. They were not a tribe that was ready and willing to defend their brothers. They're not there. They're in the middle of Israel. They're not one of the border towns. They don't have incursions into their land as frequently. So the fighting kind of goes on around them. But then they're always showing up like, hey, what about us? You know, they act like they're ready and willing to fight. They're always aware of the battles going on around them, but somehow they're not around for them. They're conveniently absent for these fights. And actually, even the writer in Psalm 78 recognizes this about them. It says, the sons of Ephraim were archers equipped with bows, yet they turned back in the day of battle. They did not keep the covenant of God and refused to walk in his law. They forgot his deeds and his miracles that he had shown them. And at the end of the psalm it says, he also rejected the tent of Joseph and did not choose the tribe of Ephraim in terms of the blessing from whom the seed would come. So the tribe of Ephraim was impressive on paper, but it was sorely lacking in reality. Instead of being leaders that they could have been, that they probably had the ability to be, they were just bullies. They were picking on their own countrymen. They were the Scott Farkas of Israel. No word if they had yellow eyes. But there's two ways to handle a bully, right? You can brush them off. You can diffuse. You can pacify them somehow the way Gideon did in chapter 10. And that's an option. Or you can stand up to them the way that Jephthah did here. And I'm not saying one is right and the other one is wrong. There's a time for each. And when I say bully, I mean someone that's clearly in the wrong, who displays a pattern of acting out with ill intent, which is what Ephraim did. And they had been doing this, and they give themselves this reputation now for having done this. You know, if somebody does it once, this sort of thing, they do it once, you know, it could just be a bad day. They made a bad decision, a slip of the tongue. They acted like a jerk that day. Their emotions got the better of them, something like that. But when it becomes habitual, then they're not really messing up. They're just putting on display their character. They're saying, this is... who I am, and they need to be corrected at that point, when it becomes a habitual thing where it's like, hey, you know, you overlook it once or twice, but look, you're doing this, you're basically creating, you're displaying a habit, this is your character now, it needs to be corrected and confronted. And not just for their sake, not just because bullies need to be stood up to, but for the sake of everyone that they're going to trample in the future, right? They go from one to the other to the next. Who's Ephraim gonna pick on next? Whose house are they gonna threaten to burn down on them next? And if they're not rebuked, then they're gonna be a problem. They're gonna be an ongoing problem, because that's what sin does. It festers, right? It's like gangrene. If it's not addressed, it will become a problem. That goes in the corporate body, that goes in your personal life, it will become a problem. It may just be a slip of the tongue or one bad decision, but it can spiral into a habit, and habits develop into character. And a life characterized by sin, whether public or private, is not the life of a true believer. Ken just talked about that in the assurance of pardon. If you say you don't have sin, the word is not in you. It's not the life of a true believer. Those that love Christ will keep his commandments. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. That's what he told us. And when we reveal that that's not what we're doing by displaying our character of habitual sin, then we need our brothers and sisters around us. We need the church to step in and rebuke us, almost like we're being a bully. We need somebody to come in and put us in our place, rebuke us, put that sin before us. We cannot let sin bully its way into our lives. If it's not confronted, it will come to dominate our actions. It will push out the good to make room for itself. And when dealing with sin, we need to use shibboleths. That term has actually come into our modern vernacular from this story. I don't know if you've heard that in English. It comes from this story. People use it. Even in English, a shibboleth is a distinguishing mark of a group or it's an indicator of something more significant. So for instance, where there's smoke, there's fire. That's technically, that's a shibboleth. The smoke is a type of shibboleth. It indicates something more significant is going on. Shibboleths are good. We should use them. Jesus uses them. Out of the heart, the mouth speaks, he said in Matthew 12. That's a shibboleth. The words that you say are a shibboleth of what's in your heart. It indicates what's in there. Matthew 7, you will know them by their fruits. That's a shibboleth. What Ken just said in the assurance of pardon, that's shibboleth. If you say this, it indicates the word is not in you. That's a shibboleth. What we say and how we say it is an indicator of what's going on in our hearts. The fruit that we bear reveals our faith, or it reveals our lack of faith. Our devotion to the church and worship is a shibboleth of our love for God. Our obedience is a shibboleth. It is an indicator of something far more significant. When we obey God and his law, it is a shibboleth of true saving faith within us. We can likewise use shibboleths regarding other sects and denominations or teachers, other groups. For instance, if there If somebody says, I'm spiritual but not religious, there's a great shibboleth, they have no idea what they're talking about, right? Ignore them, they have nothing to offer you. If they're egalitarian, another shibboleth, they're nearly always, they have a diminished view of biblical authority. Now it doesn't make you a non-Christian to be egalitarian, you're an heir, but it's a shibboleth of something far more serious going on. you're always going to find them denying something far more significant, far more integral to the gospel itself. This is why nearly every single egalitarian denomination is nothing more than an apostate sect coasting on the fumes of a formerly Orthodox church. You'll find that all over the U.S. Same goes for biblical inerrancy. When it is denied, you will nearly always find an abandonment of biblical law. One of the reasons they want to deny inerrancy is so that they can deny biblical law. When you find ecumenism and pluralism, then you're going to find it paired with a denial of the exclusivity of Christ. Those are shibboleths. You find a group or a person that's overly ecumenical, You dig down, very likely there's other ways to God. There's other religions that are true, that sort of idea. All of these things are shibboleths. Use them readily. Use them to determine who is and is not trustworthy. Being egalitarian or denying biblical inerrancy or being ecumenical in and of themselves are not a denial of the Christian faith. They're heirs. But they're not a denial of the Christian faith. But sadly, they are very often indicative of a person or a church that has denied the faith, or has proven themselves to be a false teacher. In fact, you could use, I think maybe it's over and over statement, but our confession is a collection of shibboleths in a lot of ways. Not just shibboleths, but it's full of shibboleths. Obviously, you can disagree with parts of our confession without denying the faith. I know that. But sometimes those denials of the confession are indicative of a denial of the ancient creeds. If a confession contains what should be believed and creeds contain what must be believed, then be on the lookout for confessional denials that are actually indicative of creedal denials. So use shibboleths, use them. Use them when you love one another in the church. Use them when you're examining your own life. Use them when you parent your kids. Use them when you're discerning who is and is not a trustworthy teacher, shibboleths are good. Use them wisely. Know them by their fruit. Know them by the words that they speak from their mouth. Let's go back to Ephraim. Ephraim who instigated this civil war, or as they like to call it, the war between the tribes. You know, that's what they prefer. One of the things about infighting, because this is an intra-Israeli fight. One of the things about infighting that makes it so devastating is it can be the bloodiest and the nastiest infighting, or the nastiest type of fighting. With infighting, what you have, you have two groups that have a background between them. two sides are on opposite sides of fighting and they have a background. There's years of experience together. They've had interaction for years. They've had relationship for years. And then when that goes south, All the hurts and the frustrations and the grudges from all those previous years come pouring out, of which there are many, right? Because we are sinners. When we have a relationship together, when we interact together, we're going to hurt each other. We're going to sin against one another. We fail to consider others above ourselves. So we build up these hurts. We have to overlook one another's faults. Love covers a multitude of sins. The point of that is when you have a relationship together with somebody, with a group, you have to have love between you because you're gonna sin against each other and the only way to overlook that, to cover that up is through love. And what infighting does is it withdraws that love and it uncovers all the previous faults. Years worth of faults that people have had together and then it reacts to all of them at once. So their reaction could be very hard, very swift, very nasty. So the vengeance against Ephraim we see here today probably had years of anger brewing behind it. Years of anger fueling it and ensuring that the slaughter that it was producing would be incredibly thorough. And it was, 42,000 men. The Gileadites probably felt slighted by Ephraim for generations at this point. And it was all set off by their pride, from Ephraim's desire for preeminence in Israel. for them puffing out their chests, acting like they're the greatest tribe in Israel. That attitude will always bring destruction into the covenant community. That same mentality in the church is a recipe for division and disharmony. Remember when James and John asked Jesus if they could sit at his right hand and his left hand in his glory in Mark 10. They're looking for preeminence in the covenant community. And as soon as the other disciples found out about that, what's the text tell us in verse 41 of that chapter? They were indignant with them. It immediately led to infighting and Jesus had to step in. The disciples immediately started fighting amongst themselves. The church is not a place to jockey for social position. It's not a place to seek praise or to grow your ego. We're not here to feed egos. We're here to crush egos. It's why we read the law every week. Every week you should have your ego destroyed and your head turned towards Christ. It's the whole point of this. This is a place where we turn our attention away from ourselves, other than examining for the sake of looking at sin, and we turn toward Christ. We do not seek glory for ourselves, we direct our glory to Jesus. Pride is antithetical to genuine worship. It's antithetical to Christian fellowship. As soon as you have a modern-day proud Ephraimite in the church that encounters a modern-day overreactive Gileadite, there will be blood. Not literally, obviously, but things get very nasty very quickly. Pride in the church is a cancer. It is an absolute cancer in the church. Now, while we have the advantage of being a small church, we don't tend to draw in those types that crave the type of attention and influence that you might achieve far more easily in a bigger church, a bigger, cooler church, maybe. We are not exempt from struggling with pride. We still have to be on the lookout for such an attitude amongst ourselves. And the Apostle Paul gives us clear direction in Philippians 2, which we read, for those that desire encouragement in Christ, consolation of love, fellowship of the Spirit, affection and compassion. It's what we look for in the church. He tells us to be of the same mind, to maintain the same love, to unite in the Spirit, and to be intent on one purpose. He calls for unity to prevent or to foster the fellowship of the Spirit. And this is, of course, exactly what we want in the church. We want to be an anti-Ethnomitic church. That's probably a bit of a stretch, I know. We don't want to be like Ephraim here. We, of course, want to be like Christ. which Paul goes on to detail by saying in the following verses, do nothing from selfish or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourselves. Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves, which you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." Can you imagine if that attitude was fostered and on display between Ephraim and Manasseh? This chapter would read entirely differently. It might not even be in the Bible. We wouldn't even have to have this horrible story. Now, no one judges there are men that accomplish great things by faith. Jephthah is mentioned in Hebrews 11. But more often than not, we are repulsed by the ugliness of what we read. A civil war within the covenant community. And while the story today doesn't contain gruesome details, the fact is there is death in this chapter by the tens of thousands. And it is Israel fighting against Israel. So we want to turn away, because it is ugly. We're not drawn in by the love and the brotherhood that we're seeing here within the covenant community in Judges 12. We're not looking at them as, there it is, our ancestors, the covenant community of old. Let's be like, no, you're not drawn in by that. But in turning away from what is ugly, we by default turn to that which is beautiful, to Jesus Christ, who put these Philippians 2 characteristics on display when he dwelt amongst us as a man. He did nothing out of selfish or empty conceit. Can you imagine what it would have been like for these disciples? for them to live with for years, be friends with a man who literally never did anything out of selfish or empty conceit. They still found a way to fight amongst themselves, but it was never stirred up because of some failure by Jesus. He never did anything to turn the fighting amongst themselves. A man who always considered the needs of others before himself. A man who was humble enough to get down and wash his disciples' feet. He had preeminence. He dwelt eternally in glory with the Father and Spirit, and yet he emptied himself. He took on the form of a bondservant. He took on human flesh. He lived as a man. He walked in obedience to the will of God, even to the point of dying for us. Our need was for a Savior, for a removal of guilt for our sins and an imputing of righteousness, which we were absent of. He considered our need to be saved before he considered his own desire to not suffer and die on a cross in shame. His love is our model to avoid civil strife in our covenant communities, in our churches, in our marriages. He is the model to avoid civil strife. If we through grace are of the same mind, If we maintain the same love, if we set our hearts to be intent on one purpose, then we will not build up years of hurts and sinning against one another that festers under the surface like a powder keg, just waiting to explode for the first time that pride and irascibility face off. Ephraim's arrogance, encountering Jephthah's pugnacity, was the perfect storm for this bloody battle. It's the perfect example of a group without humility of mind encountering a group not considering others more important than themselves. They had divergent purposes. They were of a different spirit. They did not have the same mind. They were not displaying Philippians 2 characteristics. Can you imagine if Christ were not the man that he was? He came in the flesh and encountered a people that were slow to believe and easily intimidated into abandoning Him when threatened. In much the same way, His holiness encountering our sin is the perfect storm for a bloody battle. It's a powder keg ready to explode when His wrath and our wickedness face off. But for us who believe, Powder keg has already been detonated. That bloody battle has already been fought. And the death that it brought, the bloody death that it brought was redirected from us to one man, Jesus Christ. And by his wounds we are healed. The covenant community is then preserved in peace because the chastisement for our peace was upon him, not only peace amongst ourselves, but peace with God. We forgive because he has forgiven us. We love because he first loved us. We are who we are because he is who he is. We are the covenant community, the church. Your family is a covenant community, but we are the fulfillment of Old Testament Israel. because he is a covenant-keeping God who is determined to set his love upon us and prevent us from being destroyed by our sins. Because Jesus has done this for us, because he is who he is, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him a name above all names, which is why we are here to worship him as our Lord and King. All praise to his name, at which every knee will bow on earth and under heaven. Amen and amen. Let's pray. Lord God, we confess that Christ is Lord to the glory of you, our Father. We again ask for your grace to prevent us from falling into the sinful practices we read about here today. We ask for your grace not to be the type of covenant community that fractures and fights within itself. Keep us fervent in displaying the characteristics we see Paul describing in Philippians 2 in order to maintain a unity in spirit. Foster those within us to keep us at peace within this body of believers. Maintain the peace amongst us. May we each wisely use shibboleths to sharpen one another with an eagerness to forgive and a detestation for grudges. Do not let a root of bitterness take hold in our hearts. Protect us in this same way in our individual homes so that our marriage covenants will likewise be absent of selfish or empty conceit. Increase our joy by pouring out your grace on us to conform us like Christ, to produce, to prove ourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. We pray all these things in Jesus Christ's name, the God name, amen.