As we come now to the proclamation of the Word of God this morning, I would ask that you turn in your Bibles to Mark chapter 9. The Pew Bible is found on page 1075. I'll be reading this morning verses 14 through 29, and we'll be considering verse 24 by itself this morning in sermon. Let's give our attention to this Word as it is, the Word of God and not the Word of man. And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them and scribes arguing with them. And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him. And he asked them, What are you arguing about with them? And someone from the crowd answered him, Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able. And he answered them, O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me. And they brought the boy to him. And when the Spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy. And he fell on the ground and rolled about foaming at the mouth. And Jesus asked his father, How long has this been happening to him? And he said, From childhood. And it has often cast him into the fire and into water and to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. And Jesus said to him, If you can, all things are possible for one who believes. Immediately, the father of the child cried out and said, I believe. Help my unbelief. And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, You mutant, deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again. And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out. And the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, He is dead. But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. When he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, Why could we not cast it out? And he said to them, This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer. Let's save the Lord. Let's seek his blessing. Father, your word is alive and active, more powerful than any double-edged sword. We come to it as a living Word. We ask that You would open our eyes to see it. Grant that Your Spirit would pierce our hearts with this truth and that we would draw near to Christ. Indeed, grant to us true faith this day in the Lord and Savior Jesus. In His name we pray, Amen. I know I told you last week that we were going to be in and out of this passage with one sermon. I'm not going to say that I lied, but in any case, there really is something else we need to see. I'm referring, of course, as I mentioned earlier, to verse 24, to the desperate prayer of this Father. It's the very prayer of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ which the disciples lacked in their attempt to cast out this demon. You remember last Lord's Day. And therefore, it's also the believing prayer to which Jesus refers in verse 29 as the means by which we gain the victory over Satan's malice. Last week we learned that one of the key notes of both the disciples and the Father's helplessness was the weakness of their faith. But then we also learned that Christ's purpose in all of this was both to increase the Father's faith and to teach the disciples an important lesson about the place of faith, not only in their ministry, but also in their very lives. And so this is the reason I brought us back to this passage again, that we ourselves might learn more about what it means to look in faith, away from ourselves and unto Christ. And this means we need to consider three aspects of saving faith this morning. And you can see this on the outline, which I trust you have before you. Three aspects of saving faith that I believe show up in this man's prayer. And that is faith's object, faith's power, and faith's excellence. But before we do that, let me say a quick word about what's going on in this man's heart, because I believe this will prove a comfort to all of us. Jesus says, In another place, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Well, notice what comes out of this man's mouth. What is in this man's prayer? It's a confession of faith. I believe. It's also a confession of unbelief. Help my unbelief. And so what this means is that there was a war going on in his heart. A war between faith and unbelief. He possessed a true faith in Christ. We see that in verse 17 because he brought his Son to Christ. He possessed a true faith, but for various reasons, His faith was so overcast by the dark clouds of unbelief that its light could hardly be seen. By the time the disciples have failed, the scribes have argued, by the time Christ comes to Him, He says, if you can do anything, just have compassion and help us. Do something. His faith had weakened so much. What we see here, is something that we all experience. We all understand what this feels like. We too feel this constant battle in our hearts, not just between faith and unbelief or faith and doubt, but between our desire to do anything good for God and the immediate rebellion of our sinful nature against it. Paul says in Romans 7, whenever I would do good, Evil is present with me. That means everywhere I turn, whether it's to pay my tithe, or whether it's to help a brother make a phone call, say a kind word, go to church, anything we would do for God, our sinful nature rears up its ugly head and says, do you really want to do that? Maybe you shouldn't. We struggle with this greatly. We all understand this inward battle. Paul describes this for us. The battle of the Christian's heart in Romans 7, 21-23. I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members." In his body. And so what this man's prayer teaches us then is that the presence of doubts, fears, and even unbelief is not inconsistent with the true work of grace in our hearts. Now this doesn't mean that we should be satisfied with unbelief. It doesn't mean we should be satisfied with doubts or fears. Or it doesn't mean as well that we should allow them to hinder our walk with Christ. But it means this, that as long as we are in this life, we should not be surprised by the struggle with our old man. We should not be surprised by the oncoming of doubts, We should not be surprised at a lack of faith when we thought we would have it. In fact, our ongoing struggle with sin in our own hearts, our ongoing struggle with the temptations of Satan, our ongoing struggle with the seduction of a fallen and sinful world in which we live, are the very signs of being alive unto God and being alive in righteousness. Think about this. This is what it means to be alive. It means to be at war. It means to take up the cross. It means to fight, to struggle. Those who are dead know not this struggle. Weigh that in your hearts, beloved. If you're sitting here today and you call yourself a Christian, but you are a stranger to this war within, this war against your sin, this war against the fiery darts and the assaults of Satan and the kingdom of darkness, because you find yourself rather at home with sin and a friend of the world, then the Scripture says it's a sure proof that you are yet an enemy of God and dead in your sin. This war is what it means to be a Christian. It means to swim upstream instead of floating dead downstream. If that's you, beloved, then I urge you to come to Christ at once for salvation. Do not delay a single moment. And so the first thing we learn from this man's prayer is that both faith and unbelief reside in the Christian's heart. Faith indeed rules the kingdom. sits upon the throne of our hearts. But unbelief is that cruel usurper who constantly challenges the throne of our hearts, and this is what occasions this continual war against sin. And if you're a Christian, you know exactly what I'm talking about. 1 John 5, verse 4 assures us of the victory of our faith. We overcome the world, John says, by this, by faith. But Mark 8.34, taking up our cross, and 2 Timothy 4.7 both assure us that this battle will last all our life long. This war within. This struggle. This fight to do right in the eyes of God. To live out who we are in Christ. To live as Christians because we are Christians. Think about that. Let's turn our attention now then to this man's faith and consider the three characteristics of saving faith, which I said I believe manifest themselves in his prayer. The first to consider is the most important, and I will spend most of my time here. The first thing is faith's object. To speak of the object of our faith is to speak of that which faith lays hold. It's to speak of that which faith anchors itself to in the storm of life. It's that upon which and in which faith trusts for its all. And thus the object of our faith is its most important characteristic. Because for one, what is faith? Faith is nothing in itself. It is a no-thing. Faith is nothing. It must lay hold upon, it must anchor itself to, it must trust in something or someone else. It has nothing in itself. And therefore, secondly, the worth and the strength of faith isn't in itself, but it's wholly in its object, whatever that might be. Which means that faith is only as valuable and only as strong as its object. Now what we learn in this man's prayer is that the object of saving faith, the object of the Christian faith, is Jesus Christ Himself. Acts 16.31 says, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Romans 3.22, The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. When this man said, I believe, it was upon Christ that he laid hold. It was to Christ that He anchored His soul. And it was in Christ's person and in Christ's ability to help His boy that He trusted. And therefore, His faith was solid. And that's why this man's faith, as weak and as frail as it is, brought about the miracle he needed. First, in his own heart, in his own struggle with unbelief. And secondly, in his son's body being possessed by this demon. Now what this teaches us is that faith doesn't save us. Fix that in your minds right now. Faith doesn't save you. Faith is no thing. It doesn't save you. And therefore, the weakness of your faith doesn't mean you're not saved or that you're a little Christian. Faith doesn't save you. It is Christ who saves us. What is faith then? Faith is that empty hand. That empty hand of the soul by which we reach out and grab hold of Christ. That empty hand of the soul by which we receive Christ from the Father according to the terms of the Gospel. Hear again these verses. Romans 3.25, God put Christ forward as a propitiation to be received by faith. An empty hand. Romans 1.16, Paul says the Gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. Galatians 3.14, we receive the promised Spirit through faith. We take hold of the promise of God through faith. And then in verse 26 of Galatians 3, in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith. Let me illustrate this for you. Let me illustrate for you how faith closes with Christ. We must close with Christ if we would be saved. How does faith do that? How does it close with Christ as its object? First of all, the eye of faith looks to Christ. Hebrews 12, verses 1 and 2. Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which clings so closely, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. You remember when Moses lifted up the bronze serpent in the wilderness, only those who looked upon it were healed from the sting of the fiery serpent. Those who did not look were not healed. In the same way, Jesus tells us in John 3 even, that the Father has lifted up the Son on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins, but only those who look upon Him in faith will be healed of the sting of sin. To look upon Christ in faith is to see Christ as the fountain of mercy, as the spring of forgiveness. It is to see Christ as the satisfaction for my sin. Not just the satisfaction for sin, but the satisfaction for my sins. And to see Christ as the divinely appointed means for the reconciliation of me with God. Martin Luther had it right. Christianity is in the pronouns. Christ is Saviour. Yes, but is He your Saviour? Can you say He is my Saviour? Can you say I trust in Him? My faith is in Christ. There is Christianity in its essence. Remove the pronouns and we have nothing but a demon. Because the Bible says even a demon believes and he shudders. Think about this. The hand. The hand of faith. lays hold on Christ. Isaiah 27, verse 5, God says, lay hold of My protection and make peace with Me. In Hebrews 6, it says, we who have fled for refuge hold fast, or we lay hold on the hope set before us, which is Christ, the sure and steadfast anchor of the soul. The drowning man must lay hold of the raft lest he sink. And so the sinner must lay hold upon Christ lest he sink under the weight of his sin. And so that hand of faith lays hold upon Christ. It embraces Christ for salvation because it sees that in Christ alone is safety from the wages of sin. In Christ's righteousness alone is God pleased. If I have not His righteousness, I cannot stand before God. And so the hand of faith lays hold upon the righteousness of Christ which is offered to us. It grabs hold and it holds it tight and will not let go. Thirdly, defeat of faith. Flee to Christ. Proverbs 18.10 says, the Lord is a strong tower and the righteous man runs into it and is safe. The awakened sinner, the convicted sinner is like the manslayer you remember in the Old Testament, whose only safety from the avenger of blood was in the city of refuge. And therefore, he fled as fast as his feet would take him to the city of refuge because there he could not be touched. Well, as sinners, God's justice pursues us. God's justice pursues us because of our sins, and death itself will slay us if it finds us outside of Christ. It will sting us eternally. And so it's out of a sense of our danger, it's out of a need for refuge, that we must flee to Christ in faith. Because His righteousness alone and His sacrifice alone can protect us and save us. It is as Christian in Pilgrim's Progress, with the burden upon his back, none could relieve that. But what did he do? As best as he could, he ran to the wicked gate who is Christ. For there was his refuge beyond that gate. The arrows of the Elzebub could no longer reach him. Fourthly, the heart of faith. The heart of faith desires and loves Christ. The heart of true faith says with Asaph in Psalm 73, there is nothing on earth I desire besides You, for You are the strength of my heart. You are my eternal portion. The heart of faith echoes David in Psalm 42, as the deer pants and longs for the flowing stream, so my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for the living God. Having received the gracious love of God in Christ, the heart of faith returns love to God by loving the Savior. The heart of true faith sees such a beauty and such a loveliness in Christ that a thousand hearts would not be enough with which to love Christ in proportion to His beauty and glory. What was the song? Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing. It would not be enough. We could say, oh, for a thousand hearts to love Christ, we would still fall so far short. And the heart of faith desires to be nowhere in all the world, but hid behind the righteousness of Christ. For there is the only refuge. Fifthly, the back of faith rolls over its burden upon Christ. Psalm 55 verse 22 says, cast your burden on the Lord and He will sustain you. The Word denotes an action by which a weak person would roll over his burden onto a person stronger than him. Come up next to a person and roll over your burden on top of his shoulders because you are too weak to bear it. Well, there is no burden greater than our sin. There is no burden greater than our sin and the weight of God's wrath that rests upon our sins. Psalm 38, verse 4, David says, My iniquities have gone over my head like a burden. They are too heavy for me. We cannot bear our sins. In fact, Paul tells us in Romans 8.22 that the creation itself groans under the weight and the burden of our sins. If the creation itself cannot bear our sins, how could we? But when a person comes to Christ for salvation, he rolls over his burden of sins onto Christ's back, onto Christ's cross, believing that his sacrifice of himself was fully sufficient to bear up under such a crushing load. And finally, our naked and empty faith puts on Christ. Romans 13, 14 says simply, put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Put Him on. Clothe yourself with Christ. So that to believe on Christ is to put on Christ. Anything else that we put on will be no better than the fig leaves of our first parents. And they will melt under the judgment of God's wrath. Nothing else will stand up in judgment. Nothing else will cause us to appear before God with a loveliness and a beauty that will bring forth those words. Well done, my good and faithful servant. Enter into your rest. Nothing else but the robes of righteousness that belong to Christ. And so that believing soul which closes with Christ as its object puts on Christ as a covering or a robe of imputed righteousness. Think about this, this object of our faith. As I said, I put Kelp of our camp right here. Here is our greatest concern, because this is the very thing that makes the Christian faith a saving faith. Because it's a God-born and a Spirit-wrought faith in Christ the Savior. Why does faith save? Why is faith the hand of the soul? Why is faith the instrument by which we receive salvation, eternal salvation, pardon and acceptance? Why is such an empty thing so powerful? Because it's in Christ. Place your faith in anything else and you will see on that day how worthless and weak it is. Place it in Christ and you shall never be disappointed. To believe in anyone or anything else, to trust in anyone or anything else for salvation is to believe in a puff of smoke. It is to believe in nothing. It is, as Christ said, to build your hopes on a foundation of sand. For Peter declared, there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved except for that matchless and that worthy name of Jesus Christ. If the object of our faith is Christ, then clearly the power and the strength of our faith must also be Christ. As I said, faith has no power or strength in itself because it is a passive, self-denying action by which the soul lays hold on another. And in laying hold upon Christ, the Almighty One, faith takes hold of and believes in an almighty power. And this is exactly how Christ spoke of it. Here in verse 23 in our passage, Jesus says, all things are possible for the one who believes. And in Matthew 17, 20, the parallel passage of this story, Jesus told His disciples, if you have faith like the grain of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, move from here to there. And it will move. And nothing will be impossible for you. And this is why this man's weak, feeble, frail faith, his parched, dry faith, still occasioned such a great miracle. Because his faith had laid hold on Christ. by looking outside of itself, and thus away from its own strength, understanding, resources, looked away from everything to do with self, and laid hold strictly upon Christ. Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. He was saying, Lord, I believe in You, that all things are possible for You, that the power to help us is in You. I believe. a very weak, a mustard seed faith, but look what it accomplished. It moved a mountain. It uprooted a tree and planted it in the sea. It withered the fig tree of sin, and it cast out the mountain of a demon, just as Christ promised. The Father's was a prayer of faith. That prayer of faith which the disciples lacked, and according to verse 29, the prayer of faith that is the sole means to lay hold of Christ's gracious, almighty power. And so whenever you see the Scriptures speak of the power of faith, whenever you see Christ say, whatever you ask, I will give it to you. You will do all things. Nothing is impossible for you. Understand that the boldness of faith isn't in itself, but it's only in the person of Christ whose promises alone govern and determine believing prayer. Finally, we learn from this verse of the excellence of faith. By the excellence of faith, I mean that which makes faith the most excellent and foundational of all graces. And this can be seen in this man's request for Christ's help. No matter what his need was, you remember we said last week, no matter what his need was, Christ wasn't going to do anything until he drew out this man's faith. By faith, anything could be done. Without faith, nothing would be done. And so from this we learn that faith is excellent in two things. First of all, it excels all other graces because of its usefulness. What Paul said of godliness in 1 Timothy 4.8 may most properly be said of faith. It holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. To believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ is to take in hand Him who has all and is all. But to regard the Lord Jesus Christ with unbelief is to have nothing. And it is to lose Him who has everything. What is Hebrews 11? But a litany of the great usefulness of faith. By faith men lived and conquered in this life, it says. And only by faith did such men inherit and enjoy the life to come. Think of this image. Too many Christians regard faith as that bridal dress in which we make our match with Christ and then put away for a special occasion. And then they wonder why they're not growing in devotion to Christ. They wonder why they are still wallowing instead in sloth and in that coldness of heart that should have been put off so long ago in their infancy as a Christian. Faith isn't the bridal gown, congregation. Faith is that wedding ring by which our soul is eternally bound to Christ and Christ Himself is eternally indebted to us. The wedding ring by which He has taken us as His bride. He will care for us. For as Ephesians 5 says, we are His body. And He will love Himself by loving us, it says. It is the seal. Faith is the seal and the guarantee that all Christ has and is, is ours. And so, faith is most useful. And therefore, secondly, faith excels all other graces in its fruitfulness. And here you only need to understand one thing, that it is by faith that the Spirit of God unites us to Jesus Christ. It is by faith that we are joined as part of Christ's mystical body, the body of Christ. Over and over and over again, the Apostle Paul speaks of being in Christ, being one with Christ, or being united to Christ. Just consider the first chapter of Ephesians. Verse 4, God chose us in Him. Verse 6, He has blessed us with grace in the Beloved. Verse 7, in Him we have redemption. Verse 9, the purpose of salvation is set forth in Christ. Verse 11, in Him we have obtained an inheritance. And in verse 13, in Him you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. So that by uniting us to Christ, or by hiding us in Christ as Colossians 3 has it, faith unites us to all of the benefits of Christ's mediation for us as our Savior. What this means is that all of the blessings, all of the graces, all of the mercies which we enjoy as Christians, both in this life and the ones we receive in the life to come, are because we have been united to Christ and we have received Him. How? By faith. Whatever it is with which you struggle, whatever it is that you see you lack in your Christian life, whatever sin seems to have the mastery over you, whatever grace seems to fail you that you need to be strengthened, look to Christ in faith for it and you shall have it. He has it for you. Draw it as sap from the root. Draw it from Christ. So, faith boasts of this fruitfulness by which it excels all other graces, because faith alone is that mother grace. That mother grace from which all other graces come forth as offspring. Think about these things, beloved. The object of faith. The excellence of faith. The power of faith. The application for us this morning is clear. Where is your faith? We need to examine where our faith lies. We need to examine and be certain that we have laid hold on the Lord Jesus Christ, the alone Savior of sinners. You see, because some people have faith in their faith. They think themselves Christians simply because they believe in God or they believe in Christ. But they know nothing of what it means to lay hold on Christ, to trust in Christ, to love Christ, to serve Christ. They know nothing of what this means. Their faith, therefore, will not and cannot save them from the wages of their sins because it is faith in faith. It is nothing trusting in nothing. It is a fool's salvation that will go up in smoke on judgment day. Do not hope in your faith. Hope in Christ. Some people further than that have faith in their morality or in their religious sensitivity. They think themselves Christians simply because they walk above the stark immorality that we see in the criminals behind bars We're not like them. We're better. Or because they're not opposed to religion. I have no problem with religion. I'm a very religious person, they say. I believe in this, this, this, this, this. And then we hear that they're a polytheist. They have all sorts of gods. They just believe in religion. But they think that makes them safe. They think indeed that that is true faith when it's not. They've yet to feel the curse of God. The curse of God's law against their sinful thoughts and deeds. They may be better than those behind bars because they've not gotten caught. Because no one arraigns their thoughts. But let God search our thoughts and we'll see we're no better at all. And they've yet to feel the demands which God's law makes upon their heart and mind. God's law demands not just external obedience, but internal obedience. It demands right affections. It demands right desires, right motives. And we fail in this all the time. God's law searches to the depth of our being. We cannot live up to it as we should. We are all guilty before God, Romans 3 says, and therefore their faith will not save them either because it's faith in themselves. It's faith in their religious sensitivity. It's faith in their morality. It's faith because they're better than someone that they've picked to compare themselves with. It will not save them. They are like the man in Matthew 22, who presumed to come to the wedding feast, you remember, without a wedding garment, only to be cast into the outer darkness by the King Himself. And Jesus says, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. He had nothing. Was He there? Yes, with the rest who had the garment, but He had no garment. He had no relationship to Christ. No relationship to this feast at all, except that He wanted its fare. He was cast out. We cannot have faith in ourselves. It will not save us. And so we must examine our faith. Because Satan's greatest efforts are spent right here. Convincing us that we are safe when we are not. Convincing us that we believe in Christ when we don't. Satan would quickly deceive us with a false faith. We see this in Pilgrim's Progress, a story that we're studying. But a true faith is this. A true faith in Christ will prove itself, as we've learned already, both by its object and its fruit. However weak, however frail, however dim and sluggish at times your faith in Christ may be, it is true saving faith and you need not fear come judgment day. For it is true faith if by it you look to Christ alone as mediator If by it you lay hold on no other anchor of righteousness than Christ, you flee to no other city of refuge than the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, you love and desire no other Savior, no other Bridegroom than Christ, and you cast your sins, you roll your sins over on no one else's shoulders and upon no other cross than Christ, and you seek to be hidden behind, you seek to be closed by no other righteousness before God, than Christ. Paul says, I count all things as loss for the sake of the knowledge of Christ, that I might be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own, but having His righteousness. Because that alone can clothe us and protect us on that day. Test your faith by such self-denying, self-emptying soul activity as this, and you will immediately know where your faith lies this morning. You will be in no doubt at all But in order that you might not be self-deceived, you must also examine the validity of your faith by its fruit. Your faith in Christ is a true and saving faith if it produces and sets you a striving after that holiness without which no man will see the Lord. Because that faith is rooted in Christ, so it can't fail to bring forth those fruits of which Christ is the author and perfecter. In other words, as Christ is our redemption, saving us, He is our sanctification who makes us holy. Those He saves, He sanctifies. Those for whom He prepares heaven even now, He prepares for heaven. And those He saves from the power of sin, He saves from the presence of sin. There is no happiness without holiness. We are fools if we can imagine that we will see happiness afterwards. if we cannot point to holiness here. There is no such thing. And indeed, our holiness and our refuge is not our own, but Christ. But it is Christ's holiness which produces in us a like holiness, a reflection, a poor reflection, a dim reflection, but a reflection nonetheless, so that we are seen to walk in His ways. We are seen to desire Him. And so we must look to our life this morning. We must look for growth both away from and toward holiness. Away from sin, rather, and toward holiness. And we will know if we look at ourselves, if we give ourselves that test, we will know again immediately where our faith lies this morning. Whether we have laid hold on the Savior of sinners. But remember, you're not looking for perfection because you will not find it in your heart. You will certainly not find it in your thoughts. We're not looking for perfection here when we look to our lives and look for fruit. But what we're looking for is that certain movement and certain desire after Christ. Because where Christ is the magnet and our soul is the true metal, He will draw us heavenward without fail. He will draw your heart so that your affections are only for Him. We say we are Christians, but where are our affections? Let that be a test. Where are your affections? What do you love? What do you give yourself to? What do you sacrifice for? There's your love. What can you not live without? There's your love. Be careful, beloved. Let your love be in no other place but in Christ's heart. Let your affections be for Christ as your husband and Lord. But after Christ draws our affections, he also draws our will so that we hear, as he said, only his voice and we walk only in his ways. So if your heart is being pulled heavenward this morning, then you can be sure it is your Savior who draws you. and take comfort then in the certainty of your salvation. May God send forth His Spirit upon every heart this morning. May He effectually gather us all unto Christ whether He must birth faith or increase faith. May He draw us to Christ as a people this morning. And to that end, let us plead with Him that He might lay hold upon us by His almighty power that He might reach into our hearts in order that we might in turn lay hold upon Christ. Because as the Apostle says, from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. Amen.