We'll be reading this morning from Isaiah chapter 43, and we will read verses 1 through 15. Isaiah 43, 1 through 15. Hear the word of the Lord. But now, thus says the Lord who created you, O Jacob, and he who formed you, O Israel, fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name. You are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, nor shall the flames scorch you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I gave Egypt for your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in your place, since you were precious in my sight. You have been honored, and I have loved you. Therefore I will give men for you and people for your life. Fear not, for I am with you. I will bring your descendants from the east and gather you from the west. I will say to the north, give them up, and to the south, do not keep them back. Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I have created for my glory, whom I have formed him. Yes, I have made him. Bring out the blind people who have eyes and the deaf who have ears. Let all the nations be gathered together and let the people be assembled. Who among them can declare this and show us former things? Let them bring out their witnesses, that they may be justified, or let them hear and say, it is truth. You are my witnesses, says the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me, and understand that I am he. Before me there was no God formed, nor shall there be after me. I, even I, am the Lord, and beside me there is no Savior. I have declared and saved, I have proclaimed, and there was no foreign God among you. Therefore you are my witnesses, says the Lord, that I am God. Indeed, before the day was, I am He. There is no one who can deliver out of my hand. I work, and who will reverse it? Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, for your sake I will send to Babylon and bring them all down as fugitives, the Chaldeans who rejoice in their ships. I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King. Well, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever. You may be seated. You may be familiar with these words, I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. This is the first line from the Apostles' Creed. This beloved statement of Christian belief has been a part of the church's tradition. since about the 2nd century. The final form of the words wasn't settled until perhaps the 5th century, but some parts of the Creed, including this first line, were settled very early in the history of the Church. The Church Father Irenaeus quotes this first line of the Creed in the mid-2nd century. The Apostles' Creed serves as a basic statement of Christian faith. It has been used throughout the history of the church as an introduction to that which must be believed to be considered a Christian, to be admitted to church membership and to the waters of baptism. We have made it our practice here at Antioch Reform Baptist Church to quote the Apostles' Creed together each month as we celebrate the Lord's Supper on the first Sunday. This is a means of us confessing together our common faith, not just with one another, but with the church universal throughout time and space. We do so while we partake in the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, which Christ has instructed us and commanded us that the church is to do until he returns to gather his church to himself. Now, since we quote this creed each month, the elders have discussed this and thought that it would be helpful to expound upon the beliefs of the creed that we are confessing together each time we do this. And since we do this on the first Sunday of the month, and since the creed can be broken down into 12 belief statements, we thought that preaching through the Apostles' Creed on the first Sunday of each month would be a good idea. So, beginning this morning, January, each month, we will look at the next line in the Apostles' Creed, and by the end of the year, we will have worked our way through the entire creed. So, our subject this morning is the first line of the creed, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. Now, before we get particularly into the doctrine of the creed, there's a matter of structure that deserves a comment or two. The creed itself can be broken down into 12 distinct statements, but those statements can be easily grouped together into three larger sections, each one beginning with the words, I believe. Not all English translations of the Creed will have all three I Believe statements, though some do, but in the original Greek and Latin, it is there. Each of the I Believe statements in the Creed is said in regard to one of the members of the Trinity. I believe in God, the Father Almighty. I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord. I believe in the Holy Spirit. So you can see that the Creed, in its structure, is explicitly Trinitarian, confessing that we believe in one God, in unity, but in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This belief in one God who exists eternally in three personal subsistences, distinguished from one another by their relations to one another, and yet perfectly united of the same substance, the same power, the same essence and being. This belief in the Trinity sets Christianity apart from all other world religions. The Jews confess God as their father, but they reject the idea of the Trinity. The Muslims confess Allah as their God, but they dare not even call him father. They have 99 names for Allah and Father is not one of them. They believe that He is too grand, too unknowable to be so familiar with Him. They believe Christ to have been a prophet and yet they reject the idea that He is in fact God of the same substance with God. No other religion confesses one God in three persons, distinct and yet perfectly united. Later creeds of Christendom are more thorough and explicit regarding the doctrine of the Trinity, but the Apostles' Creed sets the foundation for what Christians must believe. The Trinity is a foundational doctrine for Christianity. We know that Christianity is a religion of belief. Belief itself is foundational to being a Christian. We see this throughout the scriptures. As early as Genesis chapter 15, we read of Abraham's faith. It says, and he believed in the Lord and he accounted it to him for righteousness. This is the doctrine of justification by faith alone, believing in the promises of God. We see in the text that we have before us this morning, this idea of belief. Look at verse 10. You are my witnesses, says the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me. Throughout the New Testament, people are told to believe in Christ for salvation. The most well-known verse in the Bible, perhaps, is John 3.16. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him might not perish but have everlasting life. Whosoever believes Belief is the key. Now, this is not merely intellectual assent to a particular set of facts. Rather, this is believing in such a way as to trust yourself to Christ, to trust His finished work of sacrificial atonement on your behalf. It's to trust His work and not your own, His righteousness and not your own. This is what it means to be a Christian. that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10 verse 9. And to the astonishment of the Jews in the first century, even the Gentiles were saved when they believed in Christ. You can see that this statement of the creed, I believe, is very important. It is confessing with our mouths that we believe in our hearts these doctrines of the Christian faith to be fundamental. The creed was originally written in Greek, but was soon translated into Latin. And in the Latin, the creed says, credo in deum patrem, I believe in God the Father. The word believe in the Latin is credo, which is where we get our English word creed. So the creed is a statement of belief. And when it comes to baptismal positions, you can see this Latin word used of our own position. Those who baptize infants are called pedobaptists. Those who baptize only those who make a profession of faith are called credo-Baptists. The baptism of those who believe. The term Baptist is really not as specific as it ought to be. All Christians are Baptists. We all baptize. The question is, who do we baptize? We are credo-Baptists. We baptize those who have confessed belief in Christ. And so you can see how this term came to be used. The Apostles' Creed takes its name in part from these three statements of belief which each begin with the word creed, credo. And the early church required converts to Christianity to memorize the Apostles' Creed and then to profess it as their own personal creed, their own statement of belief when they were brought to baptism. This is the practice of the church for centuries. We are saved by God's grace through faith or through belief in Christ. So that's why the creed is called the Apostles' Creed. It's a statement of the basic tenets of the doctrines of the Christian faith as taught by the apostles of Christ in the form of a creed, a statement of belief. and it is thoroughly Trinitarian. I believe in God the Father, I believe in Jesus Christ His only Son, I believe in the Holy Spirit. So, this is the creed. The Christian religion itself is founded upon this idea of, I believe. But now we have to ask the question, what is it that Christians believe? Well, this morning, as we consider this first statement of the creed, it says, I believe in God. The Creed begins by confirming our belief in God. James Renahan writes and says, God is. A simple but profound statement. He is life itself. He alone is infinite and perfect, comprehending himself fully and thoroughly. He has a perfect knowledge of himself and can alone and uniquely know what it means to be God. This is beyond human comprehension. It is a truth to be received by faith, by belief. And so we confess, I believe in God. We're not atheists. We're not naturalists believing in mother nature or the goodness of the universe as some impersonal force. We believe in God. Now, this is not in itself unique to Christianity. Most religions believe in a God of some sort, a higher power as it is sometimes called. that to believe in God is to believe that there is something other than, something greater than ourselves. is to believe that there is a higher power, higher, and that it stands above humans, in authority over us, and that one day humanity must answer to this power. As we saw a few weeks ago in CLA, the percentage of Americans with a Christian or biblical worldview has decreased dramatically in recent years, at an all-time low of about 4%. And yet, A full 81% of Americans claim to believe in a God of some sort. It's part of our nature to believe in God. We're created by God, created in His image with an in-built knowledge and understanding and intuition that there is a God. But in our fallenness and in our sin, we discount the holiness of God. the power of God, the transcendent nature of God, the uniqueness of God. We often think that God must not be that different than us. He's just greater than we are. He's like a superhuman, but he probably thinks in the same ways that we do, right? The excuses, little faults, not that concerned about small sins. Maybe he's not even the only God. We think too little of God when we think in this way. See, we have no perfection, we have no experience of perfection in our human existence. We know ourselves to be imperfect. We know others around us to be imperfect. We see each other's faults. And we often overlook the little ones, the little faults. We may not call them sins, but we recognize that they're faults and we overlook them. We're more generous with ourselves. We overlook larger faults in ourselves than we are willing to in others. But we reason that God must do the same, right? He overlooks the small things. But we think this way because we think that God thinks the way we do. We're thinking too much of ourselves and too little of God in this case. We can't imagine a perfect, holy, just, and altogether righteous God because we have no experience of such a being in our natural lives. This is why we need his self-revelation of himself to us in the scriptures and so that we can learn of this God. Most religions don't even have a God who is perfect, holy, and righteous. Most of the pagan religions throughout history have had gods that were, as I said, superhuman. They're more powerful than human, but they're susceptible to the same sorts of faults and errors that humans make. But Christianity believes in a God who has revealed himself in the Bible to be holy and entirely pure, perfect, righteous, just, altogether holy and without any fault whatsoever. In our text here in Isaiah 43, we see that God proclaims Himself repeatedly to be holy. Look at verse 3, for I am the Lord your God, the Holy One. Again, in verse 14, thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. And in verse 15, I am the Lord, your Holy One. God proclaims Himself to be the Holy One. Not one of the Holy Ones, but THE Holy One. He's altogether unlike anything else. He is self-existent. He's perfect, completely pure. God could never become more perfect than He already is, more good than He already is. There's no potential for goodness in God because He is perfectly good to the fullest extent possible. There's no unactualized potential there. In this sense, the theologians talk about God and they say that He is pure act or pure actuality. There's no possibility that He could in any way be better than He currently is. We have the potential to be better than we are. I think we would all agree with that. But God has no potential because He is as perfect as it is possible to be. This is what it means for Him to be God. When we confess our belief in God, this is the God we are confessing, the Holy One, altogether perfect and without fault. He is unique. He is the only God. There is no other. Look at verse 10. I, even I, am the Lord, and beside me there is no Savior. I have declared and saved, I have proclaimed. There was no foreign God among you, therefore you are my witnesses, says the Lord, that I am God. Indeed, before the day was, I am He. There is no one who can deliver out of my hand. I work, and who will reverse it? All other gods of the religions of the world are pretend gods. The gods of Rome and Greece, of Islam, Mormonism, of modern paganism, of Hinduism, all these other religions in the world, they're all pretenders. The Lord alone is God. There is no other. In the very next chapter, the Lord declares in chapter 44, verse 6, Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, I am the first and the last, besides me there is no God. The God we confess, the God we believe, the God that we worship, the God that we trust ourselves to is the only God. the first and the last, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. Beside Him, there is no God. Beside Him, there is no Savior. Beside Him, there is no hope. I believe in God. But this perfect and holy God, though altogether unique, distinct from all other beings in existence, is not, as the Muslims believe of their God, unknowable. He is the God, the Father. This is what the Creed says, I believe in God the Father. And since God is the Father, this means that He is knowable, personal, that it's possible to be in relationship to Him as His child, and He as our Father. A holy, righteous, and altogether just God who is not knowable, who is impersonal, that would be terrifying. God such as that would have no compassion, no mercy, no grace. But we confess to believe in God the Father. The fatherhood of God tells us that he exercises care over his creation, especially over those that he has taken as his children. Then again, our text bears this out. But now thus says the Lord who created you, O Jacob, and he who formed you, O Israel, fear not. For I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name. You are mine. As a caring father, God puts our fears to rest. He calls us by name. He assures us that we are safe because He is there with us. He loves us. Now for many of us, our own experience of our earthly fathers mirrors the fatherly love of God. Our earthly fathers scared away the monsters under the bed and in the closet. They assured us of their care and protection. They held us when we were scared. They called us by name. They called us by the title of son or daughter. But for others, our earthly fathers may not have been loving and protective like they should have been. And in those cases, the fatherhood of God can be a concept that is difficult to accept, difficult to believe. But Scripture assures us that God is a loving Father to those who are His. He says, fear not, for I have redeemed you. As a loving Father, He redeems His people from their sins. This is the fatherly love of God rescuing his children. He doesn't simply leave them to destruction, bearing the weight of his perfect justice, but instead he redeems them. He says, I have called you by name, you are mine. As a loving father, he knows our names. He calls us by name. He calls us his own. expressing his love and tender compassion for those who are in fear. And then he assures us that when you pass through the waters, I will be with you. As a loving father, he assures us that his presence is with us during times of difficulty. Those circumstances may seem overwhelming like a flood, he is there with us. We've just spent the last five weeks exploring the idea of Emmanuel, God with us, in the person and work of Christ. And God assures us that he is with us at all times. In verse two, when you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, nor shall the flame scorch you. As a loving father, God preserves his children through the trials and tribulations of life. Consider the account of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, which occurs 150 years after Isaiah wrote this passage. 150 years later, these three men are in exile in Babylon. They refuse to bow the knee and to worship any other God than the God of the Scriptures. And as a result, the king casts them into the fiery furnace. But when the king rose up to look on their destruction and suffering that he expected to behold in the midst of the furnace, instead he saw them walking unharmed. and a fourth figure walking with them in the midst of the fire. And when they were brought out of the furnace, Scripture says that the satraps, administrators, governors, and the king's counselors gathered together, and they saw these men on whose bodies the fire had no power. The hair of their head was not singed, nor were their garments affected, and the smell of fire was not on them. I don't know about you, but I can't even load logs into my fireplace without singeing the hair on my arms occasionally. I can't sit on the back deck next to the fire pit without coming back in with my clothes smelling of smoke. And yet these three men are cast into a wood furnace walking around down there and they come out and they don't even smell like smoke. This is the fulfillment of the promise recorded here in Isaiah 43, but it points toward an even larger fulfillment of this promise. God preserves his children not simply from physical fire, but from the fires of hell itself. We deserve, because of our sin, to be cast into the lake of fire, and yet Hebrews says that our great high priest saves us to the utmost. to the utmost, saved entirely. We're not just saved from the lake of fire. Our sins are removed as far from us as the East is from the West. His righteousness is given to us so that Christ may present us to God as a holy church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such things, but that she should be holy and without blemish. In other words, we are preserved from the fires of everlasting torment so that one day we may walk into our heavenly home without so much as the smell of smoke on our clothes. Amen indeed. This is the Father's love for His children. Like a loving Father, He preserves us, He protects us, He gathers His children to Himself. It says in verse six, I will say to the north, give them up, and to the south, do not keep them back. Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth. Everyone who is called by my name, whom I have created for my glory, I have formed him. Yes, I have made him. The doctrine of the fatherhood of God should give us great comfort and peace, knowing that God, our Heavenly Father, cares for us perfectly. If you had a poor earthly father who did not treat his children with love and care as he should have, know that God the Father does treat his children with never-ending, always and forever love, redeeming them from the curse of sin, from the fires of hell, and gathering them to himself for a great feast in the kingdom of his love. If you had a good earthly father who treated you well, then let him be a reminder to you of the even greater perfect and pure love of the heavenly father. Now, our earthly fathers, however good they might have been, are still flawed. They're still weak human creatures. They could not protect us from all evil and all harm, and they will eventually grow old, and they'll need us to help care for them. Such is not the case with God. For the creed says that I believe in God the Father Almighty. Almighty. not just mighty, all mighty. He alone is God, all power is His. There is no greater power in heaven or on earth. God reigns supreme over all. Any earthly powers or spiritual powers have only so much power as He grants and permits them. Their power has limits. God's power is infinite. That's what it means to say that He is almighty. He has power in heaven where His will is done perfectly, where the souls of both men and the spirits of angels are gathered around His throne, praising Him, worshiping Him, rejoicing in His presence and in His power. And none come there but by the grant of His permission. No one can enter the halls of heaven under their own power, but only if God permits it. And those who he sends leave there happily to go and do the will of the Almighty God. He has all power in heaven, and he has all power on earth. The Proverbs tell us the king's heart is in the hands of the Lord. Like the rivers of water, he turns it wherever he wills. The king's hand. I can't turn the king, but God can. God can turn his heart and his hands to do whatever God wills. No one can act against God's sovereign rule. No one can defy or thwart his divine will. It says in verse 13, Indeed, before the day was, I am he, and there is no one who can deliver out of my hand. I work, and who will reverse it? The answer is no one. No one can reverse the work of God. No one has the power to take out of his hand that which he holds. No one has the power to undo what he has done. And this is said here particularly in reference to the salvation of his people. If God has saved you in Christ Jesus, then no one can undo that. You can't undo that. Your greatest enemy can't undo that. Satan himself cannot undo that. No one can reverse the work of God. Our salvation is secure because our God is almighty. Not even the grave is beyond His power. For one day He will raise from dust and ashes the bodies of all those who have died, restore their souls to their bodies, and they will stand before His throne to be judged. John, in his vision, records for us in Revelation chapter 20, saying, And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God. And books were opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works by the things which were written in the books. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. and they were judged, each one according to his works. Then death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire." Death is cast into the lake of fire, which is the second death. This is the death of death at the hands of Almighty God. This power is so overwhelming, so incomprehensible, we can't wrap our minds around it. Apart from the title of Father, it would be absolutely terrifying to consider a God who is Almighty. But He's not simply Almighty. He is God the Father Almighty. This gives us assurance that His might and His power are employed for our good, for those who are called His children. I want to share with you a quote from the Puritan Stephen Charnock, and it's a bit longer than the quotes I normally share, but it's worth sharing, and it will be the end of what I have to say on the mightiness of God. Here's what Charnock wrote, The power of the greatest potentate or the mightiest creature is but of small extent. There are none but have their limits. It may be understood how far they can act, in what sphere their activity is bounded. But when I have spoken all of divine power that I can, and when you have thought all that you can think of it, Your souls will prompt you to conceive something more beyond what I have spoken and what you have thought. His power shines in everything and is beyond everything. There is infinitely more power lodged in His nature not expressed to the world. The understanding of men and angels centered in one creature would fall short of the perception of the infiniteness of God's power. All that can be comprehended of it are but little fringes of it, a small portion, no man ever discoursed or can of God's power according to the magnificence of it. No creature can conceive it. God Himself alone comprehends it. God Himself alone is able to express it. Man's power being limited, His line is too short to measure the incomprehensible omnipotence of God. I believe in God the Father Almighty. But how is his power expressed so that our limited understanding can begin to grasp who this God is? Well, the Creed says, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. The power of God is displayed in the things that He has made. Romans 1 verse 20, for since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead. Everything that exists exists by the will and the power of God. Even this ladybug who just landed on the microphone. What greater power could there ever be than that of the creator of all things? The God we confess is the almighty creator. He made all things. He upholds all things by the word of his power. by the Word. He just speaks it and it happens. That is how overwhelmingly incomprehensible His power is. The universe didn't create itself. Everything didn't come from nothing by mere happenstance. It's just not how it works. There is an order to the universe. The earth is in exactly the right place. It's exactly the correct distance from the sun to sustain life. A little bit closer and we're burned to crisp. A little bit further away, we freeze to death. It's held in this position by the gravitational forces of the sun and the other planets in tension with the centrifugal force of the Earth's orbit and rotation. It's perfect. Just a little more gravity pulling the wrong direction and we either careen into the sun or zing off into outer space. This perfect balance, this perfect spot to sustain life didn't happen by chance. It's not an accident. It is the result of God's creative wisdom and power. Even time itself is the creation of God. He says in verse 13, Indeed, before the day was, I am He. Before there was a unit of time that could be measured and called a day, God was. He's eternal. What this means is that God is not bound by time. He doesn't experience a succession of moments from one to the next. Now some try and explain this by saying that God is outside of time, as if he were above it, looking down on a timeline of history, viewing it all from the outside, seeing it all simultaneously. But that picture of God doesn't really capture what is happening. God is not limited, he is eternal. It may help to consider another attribute of God by way of comparison. We say that God is omnipresent, meaning that he is in all places at once. Second Chronicles 2.6 says, but who is able to build him a temple since heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain him? See, we talk about God being in heaven. He's on his throne in heaven. God dwells in heaven. Heaven is the residence of God and he is in heaven. But we also understand that he is present everywhere on earth as well. In fact, he's present everywhere in the universe all at once. God is a pure spirit. He cannot be contained to one location. This doesn't mean that God is outside the material universe looking down on it from above and seeing it all at once as if it's laid out on his workbench from some bird's eye point of view. What it means is that God sees it all from every angle, all at the same time. He is omnipresent, all present. He sees all of His creation, both from the outside, not being bound by it, but also from the inside, from every possible point of space. He is there in every single space, point in time and space. In the same way, God sees all of time, not just from the outside, because He is not bound by it, but also from the inside. He sees every moment from every single moment all at the same time. He's present in them all at once. Do we say He is omnipresent? We might also say He is omni-when, which is to say He is eternal. He is everywhere and He is every-when. Indeed, before the day was, I am He. He's an everlasting present all at once. This is beyond our understanding, beyond our ability to comprehend. God created all things, including time itself, and He inhabits all things and all moments in time. This is a display of power unlike anything in our human experience. And just as we saw that his almighty power must be wedded to his fatherly love so that we could be comforted rather than terrified, so too we see that his status as creator puts him in direct relationship with his people. Because he's not the watchmaker of the deists, who simply creates the universe, winds it up, and then steps back and takes his hands off of it. No, he created all things and he continues as the creator by creating for himself a people. Verse one, but now says the Lord who created you, O Jacob, and he who formed you, O Israel. Verse seven, everyone who is called by my name, whom I have created for my glory, I have formed him. Yes, I have made him. Verse 15, I am the Lord, your Holy One, the creator of Israel. God is not some unknowable and impersonal creator far from his creation. He is our creator. He knows us by name. He not only created us as creatures, but he created us as a people for himself. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. He creates in us new hearts, He gives us spiritual life, the new birth, making us new creatures in Christ, and then He gathers us together as a people for His own glory. I believe in God, the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. The Christian faith is rooted in this self-revelation of the one true and living God, the Creator of all things. But then we have to ask the question, how can we be certain of being His child? As the Creed says, by believing. By believing in His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. If you can say that you believe this, that you're trusting in Christ alone for your salvation, that you are a child of God the Father, The Scripture says that as many as receive Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name. So if you've stopped trusting in yourself, if you've stopped trusting in your own strength, stopped trusting in your own goodness, stopped trusting in your own works, and instead you have trusted in Christ, in His strength, for He is almighty, in His goodness, for He is the everlasting Father, in His work, for He is the Savior and Redeemer. If you have believed, then He says to you, fear not. For I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name. You are mine." The Christian faith is rooted in this God who reveals himself to us as the one true and living God, the creator of all things. including the creation of a people for his own glory, created in Christ Jesus. As Peter says, you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people. Why? So that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Believer, rest assured this morning in the loving, almighty care of God the Father, almighty creator of heaven and earth, and the creator of you and the creator of his church. He is the Lord, your holy one, your creator, your king. Let's pray.