We'll hear now the word of the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, our Redeemer, from Joshua chapter 7, verses 16 through the end of the chapter. So Joshua rose early in the morning and brought Israel by their tribes, and the tribe of Judah was taken. He brought the clan of Judah, and he took the family of the Zarhites. And he brought the family of the Zarhites man by man, and Zabdi was taken. And he brought his household man by man, and Achan the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah of the tribe of Judah was taken. Now Joshua said to Achan, My son, I beg you, give glory to the Lord God of Israel and make confession to Him and tell me now what you have done. Do not hide it from me. And Achan answered Joshua and said, Indeed, I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and this is what I have done. When I saw among the spoils a beautiful Babylonian garment, 200 shekels of silver and a wedge of gold weighing 50 shekels, I coveted them and took them. And there they are hidden in the earth in the midst of my tent with the silver under it. So Joshua sent messengers and they ran to the tent and there it was hidden in this tent with the silver under it. And they took them from the midst of the tent, brought them to Joshua and to all the children of Israel and laid them out before the Lord. Then Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan the son of Zerah, the silver, the garment, the wedge of gold, his sons, his daughters, his oxen, his donkeys, his sheep, his tent, and all that he had. And they brought them to the valley of Achor. And Joshua said, why have you troubled us? The Lord will trouble you this day. So all Israel stoned him with stones, and they burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones. Then they raised over him a great heap of stones, still there to this day. So the Lord turned from the fierceness of his anger, therefore the name of that place has been called the Valley of Achor to this day. Father, as we finish off this chapter today, I pray that you would enable me to clearly articulate what you have laid upon my heart to share and that this would be a profitable edifying for this your people. Bless the preaching of your word, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Some of you may remember the Ashley Madison scandal back in 2015, and for those of you who don't know anything about that, it was a website that claimed to be an ultra-secure dating website that enabled married people to cheat on their spouses with total anonymity. They claimed to have 40 million users who had successfully used their site to engage in affairs with no secrets being disclosed. Well, a hacker's group called the Impact Team hacked their website and showed there really are no secrets on the web, and they exposed seven years' worth of Ashley Madison's documents on the web, including addresses, names, credit cards, transactions, what the transactions were. And there was a lot of people who had a lot of explaining to do. There were 1,200 very wealthy Saudi Arabians. who began to be, what's it called, extortion letters being sent because the death penalty could come in Saudi Arabia. There were a lot of people who committed suicide. This is probably where you found out about Josh Duggar. He was on, had used that site. There were people all the way up to the White House that were discovered that were on that site. And I think it illustrates well Numbers 32, verse 23, which says, be sure your sin will find you out. God knows your sins, He knows my sins, He knows how to expose our sins to the public if it suits Him to do so at any time. Achan's sin gets exposed here to all Israel. There's a newspaper known for printing scandals. They came under criticism for publishing some of the scandals of various politicians and their response was to put into the masthead of their paper, and you've got a screenshot of it in your outline, If you don't want it printed, don't let it happen. As we have been going through chapter 7 of Joshua, we've been learning a lot of lessons, actually, from Achan's hidden sin. Well, in this section, Achan's sin gets exposed to all of Israel, and his reactions are actually very instructive. I think they reveal the difference between full-hearted, genuine repentance, the way it should happen, and the kind of repentance that really does not accomplish what God intends it to accomplish. And it usually happens when you get caught red-handed. And you children, you know the difference between the times when you have confessed your sins to your parents before you got caught, because the Holy Spirit convicted you, and those times where you're caught and it's like you can't get out of it and you confess your sins because you've been caught. There is a difference between the two, though it's still better to confess even then. Well, Achan's confession is the kind that doesn't count, or at least it's not an adequate confession. He confesses to what is obvious, and even then he minimizes what he has done. And so before we look at verses 16 through 17, I'm going to jump ahead to what's wrong with Achan's confession. And the first thing the commentaries point out is that Achan must have thought that he could get away with his sin. He hid his sin, we saw last week, from the time that Jericho was conquered till the day that they had their defeat against Ai, whenever that was, and then he continued to hide it overnight, and then he continued hiding it during this long, deliberately drawn-out ordeal of weeding out each of the tribes of Israel, and when it was determined that it was within the tribe of Judah, then going through each of the clans within Judah until the clan of Zari was picked. and then going through the ancestral houses of Zari until the ancestral house of Karmi was picked, and then going through all of the extended families of Karmi until the extended family of Zabdi was picked, and then going through each of the nuclear families within Zabdi until the nuclear family of Achan was picked. In other words, it was a long, long, drawn-out process. The New King James doesn't really render the different Hebrew words for clans, ancestral houses, extended families, and nuclear families correctly, but I think you get the idea. Even with the translation there, it's pretty clear. A good part of the day was taken in isolating who did this deed. And there are many commentaries, and I would agree with them, that say that this was very deliberately done by the Lord to enable Achan to have plenty of time to come clean, to confess his sins before he gets caught. Okay, it's an extension of his grace. But people tend to hide their sins as long as they can, and that was certainly the case with Achan. He didn't confess his sins voluntarily. He was caught. Verse 18 says, Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was taken. Now, if you look up the Hebrew word for taken, it is usually translated as caught or as trapped. I think of the way monkeys were trapped by people out in Ethiopia where I grew up. It was very clever. They would take a gourd, they would put food inside of the gourd, and they would carve a little hole in it just big enough for the monkey to get its hand through. And they would put food, they would put it out where the monkeys were, and the monkey would smell the food and would come and look inside and really want that food and get the courage up to stick its hand inside and grab the food. And then a man in hiding would come running out. And when the monkey would see him, would frantically be trying to pull its hand out, but could not get its hand out. And the reason was, it had grabbed the food, and now its fist was too big to pull out. Here's the point. If you do not let go of sin, sin will not let go of you until you come under its bondage, and in this case, under God's judgment. The third evidence that Achan's confession was an extracted confession, not a true repentance, was that Joshua had to beg him to confess. The New King James has, I beg you, and ASB, I implore you. Two versions, I beseech you. This confession was not quickly forthcoming, but Joshua's hoping that Achan will at least get his conscience clean before he is executed. Now, Joshua said to Achan, My son, I beg you, give glory to the Lord God of Israel and make confession to him and tell me now what you have done. Do not hide it from me. Now, why did he do this? If God had been revealing things to Joshua all the way along, and he was a prophet, why would he have to ask? He could just by revelation know exactly where this was hidden. I don't think he asks this question because they don't know. There's no way that they can figure out where this is coming from. He is a prophet. I believe it's because Joshua is giving him the opportunity to come clean before the Lord, even at this late stage. And I think it is good for parents to try to get their children to confess to their sins before the evidence is shown to them as a test. of where their hearts are at. Sometimes parents have to go through this process over and over again until the kids finally figure out it pays to confess early, you know. We always punished our children much, much more severely when they lied to cover up than when they confessed freely of their sins. But there is no greater penalty that could be given to Achan here. Death penalty was the highest penalty, right? But the principle is the same. God was giving Achan the opportunity to get his conscience completely clean. But sadly, his confession is deficient at even this point. In verse 20, he does admit to the obvious. He says, indeed, I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel. Wow, that looks promising. Looks like he's going to come completely clean, and perhaps on first reading you thought that he had come completely clean, but if you think that, you are probably fooled by the less than stellar confessions of your own children. There's something wrong going on here. God wants our confessions to describe our sins as God describes our sins. There can be no excuses, minimizations, blame-shifting, making sin look not quite as bad as God thinks that it is. Achan goes on to say, and this is what I have done. Now let's compare his description of the sin to the description that God has already given of this sin. And I think you'll see the differences are quite obvious. Eight times in the previous verses, God had described all of the items of Jericho as being cherim. which means devoted to destruction, and anybody who took those items as also being cherim or devoted to destruction. But when making his confession, Achan doesn't use that word. In verse 21, he describes it as shalah, which is translated as spoils. Spoils is the exact opposite of cherim. Spoils was a gift of God. It's a good thing. In Ai, God's going to allow them to take spoils. That's chapter 8, verse 2, exactly the same word that is used by Achan right here. But eight times, God had explicitly prohibited taking any shalal from Jericho. Okay, in the previous verses, spoils is a positive term, herm is a negative term for what he had taken. Now, it may not seem like a big deal, but when you consistently use softer terms to describe your sin, you are engaged in the same false confession that Adam and Eve engaged in. Likewise, though God called it a disgraceful thing in verse 15, nevelah, Achan called it a good thing or a beautiful thing in verse 21, tovah. Tovah's a good, beautiful thing. God sees it as ugly, Achan sees it as beautiful. Now psychologically, using this term, it may be, we tend to do this anyway, we tend to excuse our sins by not seeing them quite as bad or quite as ugly as God does. People might understand why you spare something very beautiful and good, right? He doesn't want to admit to having deliberately embraced something ugly, so it softens the confession. Next, rather than identifying the accursed garment with Canaan, a land that was totally under God's judgment, he called the garment a Babylonian garment in verse 21. And perhaps this is a subtle way of rationalizing why a garment from a country that was not under God's judgment, and Babylon was certainly not under God's judgment at this point. So a garment from a country not under judgment should be rescued from a household that is under judgment. This is not a Canaanite garment. I didn't take a Canaanite garment, you know. Now you may question whether this is a softening of what he had done. I think it was. And it's true that Achan called what he did a sin against God in verse 20, but God describes the sin in much, much stronger language twice. In verse 11, he says, he has transgressed my covenant which I commanded them. Verse 15, because he has transgressed the covenant of God. So breaking or transgressing the covenant is much stronger language. As we saw last week, God does not treat all sins exactly the same way. There are different levels of sin, and breaking the covenant was a super serious sin. You don't break the covenant of God and get away with it. But again, the language used reveals a lot about Achan. Now, technically, it's correct language. but it's language that is not as clear. He does admit that he coveted at verse 21, but he uses a term that can also have a more positive meaning of to find pleasure in. But sadly, he was finding pleasure in something that God had pronounced the death penalty upon. He's not treating it as a sin worthy of the death penalty. In verse 11, God called what Achan had done theft or stealing. It was stealing from God himself because God had said all of the gold and silver needed to be melted, needed to be brought into the temple. And so it was theft. Achan uses a weaker term to translate it as, I took them. Now the language is technically correct. He took them, right? But it's not describing the sin as seriously as God had already had done so. Rather than using God's term for deception or feigned obedience, kikashu, Achan simply speaks of it as hidden in his tent, tamon. Rather than bringing the items to the Lord before being caught, he admits to what will soon become obvious. Now, I wouldn't have even made a big deal about this if it had not been for the fact that description after description, eight in all, lowers the definition from a God-centered perspective to a man-centered perspective. Okay, when we instructed our children in confession of sin, we instructed them to be accurate and scriptural in their confession. And we modeled that to our children. When we sinned against them or when we sinned against each other in front of our children, we would model confessing exactly what God thought about what we had done. You don't want to describe it as more serious than the Bible does or less serious than the Bible does. Don't be over-spiritual and describe your sin as being way, way worse than it is. Describe it as God does. But when you do that, there's going to be a willingness to hate sin as God does and to flee from sin the way God wants us to flee from it. J. Hampton Keithley III said, God gave divine direction and Achan was discovered by supernatural means. He did not come forth voluntarily to confess or repent and throw himself on the mercy of God. His failure to do so stands in contrast with the attitude of the prodigal son and the publican in the New Testament. Now, Keithley thinks that if he had confessed like the publican, that he could have received a lesser penalty. I doubt that myself, but it still shows why Joshua's description of Achan is not positive at all after his confession. When construction workers were laying a foundation for a building outside the city of Pompeii, they discovered a skeleton of a woman who was obviously fleeing from the ash from Mount Vesuvius. And they found in her skeletal hands a whole bunch of jewels, which I've seen pictures of them. They're just remarkably preserved. By taking the few extra moments to grab those jewels, she didn't quite make it to the sea where she could have probably escaped. So it was a situation that she had the jewels, but she lost her life. May we flee from our sins long before God has to bring a metaphoric volcanic eruption into our lives. In stark contrast to Achan's reluctance to embrace God's will, we're going to see now that the rest of Israel showed an eagerness to be holy and to please the Lord. These descriptions stand in such stark contrast to everything I've just described about Achan. I think they're deliberately juxtaposed in this way. First words in verse 16 are, so Joshua rose early in the morning and brought Israel. Joshua was no procrastinator. No matter how difficult a task, he immediately sought to do God's will. Now contrast that with Achan, waiting and waiting and waiting, hoping his sin will not be exposed. Four times we are told Joshua rose up early in the morning to do God's will. And I think we should challenge ourselves to do exactly the same thing. Do the worst tasks. This is what I've done over the years. Do the worst tasks first off in the morning. When you procrastinate, those tasks that you dread, they just weigh you down. They de-energize you all day long. Just get rid of them. Get them done early. Much better to do that. But those words show that Israel was quite willing to do the same. They too rose early. They too showed an eagerness to deal with anything that might have brought offense to God. They're a model of how we should deal with sin. And the next words in verses 16 through 17 show that they were willing to seek God's favor despite any inconvenience that was involved. It says, and brought Israel by their tribes And the tribe of Judah was taken. He brought the clan of Judah and he took the family of the Zarhites. He brought the family of the Zarhites man by man. Zabdi was taken. Then he brought his household man by man. And Achan the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah of the tribe of Judah was taken. Now, as we've already said, there was a systematic ruling out of tribes, clans, ancestral houses, extended families, nuclear families, one by one, through a process of elimination. Commentaries differ on whether this was done through casting of lots or through the, there was some form of guidance on the Urim and Thummim on the breastplate of the high priest, and others say, no, it was probably just God, bit by bit, giving Joshua prophetic revelation as he would approach various leaders. In one sense, we don't need to know. Whatever method God used, it was a method of guidance that was deliberately slow enough to give Achan plenty of time to confess, but he did not. Now, here's the point I'm making now. Israel embraced that slowness, which would have taken a good chunk of that day, embraced it, because that's what God required. They were okay with it, and they started first thing in the morning. Next, they were diligent and following through on the execution. Now, that would have been tough. Who wants to be involved in an execution? I wouldn't. That's a miserable job, but they wanted God's favor above everything else, and that made them willing to follow through on even something as distasteful as participating in an execution. And each part of the execution shows their diligence in following proper jurisprudence. Verses 22 through 23. So Joshua sent messengers, and they ran to the tent, and there it was, hidden in his tent, with the silver under it. And they took them from the midst of the tent, brought them to Joshua and to all the children of Israel, and laid them out before the Lord. And so the diligence can be seen in the fact they didn't just walk to the tent, they ran, and then they found the articles, they brought them where everybody could see it, and they did it all before the Lord. Now just as a side note in terms of civics, It was a public execution. It was not a secret execution. All executions in the Bible were public, and many reasons for that, but one obvious one is it keeps tyrants from using this secretly to get even, you know, with political enemies or in other ways to do things privately. Now, you might wonder why they even needed to get evidence since Achan already confessed. Why not save the time, just execute him? He's confessed, let's get it over with. But since this was a public execution, they wanted it to be done according to the normal procedures of the law, which meant they had to verify the evidence. You could probably think of some reasons why this biblical principle might be a good thing. Believe it or not, and I've read documentation of this, there have been people who have confessed the things that they didn't do because they were too cowardly to commit suicide themselves. They were suicidal and they wanted suicide by execution, you know, to have the state kill them. And because the state was willing to follow due process, that did not happen. Sometimes people admit to doing things they didn't do out of fear. I've actually seen children admit to things they didn't do because they're just confronted by the parents and they're fearful and okay, whatever the parent says, if they're accused of it, they will admit to it. Some people admit to things out of false humility, or out of undue blind submission to authority, or to protect somebody else that they don't want to put the finger on. There could be any number of reasons why you want to verify a confession. Okay, I think, in any case, they were diligent in following through. They needed to have firsthand evidence. It's a basic principle of justice. Witnesses need more than confessions or verbal testimony. They need to look at the evidence itself. Next, verse 24 says, then Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan the son of Zerah, the silver, the garment, the wedge of gold, his sons, his daughters, his oxen, his donkeys, his sheep, his tent, and all that he had, and they brought them to the Valley of Achor." I want you to notice that all Israel was involved. Since everything in Jericho had been put under the ban, and since Achan's family had willingly come under Jericho's curse, and since the curse was a harem curse of everything that had been destroyed, he and all his family and his animals were destroyed, just like the Jericho whites were. I mean, this is just a simple application of the lex talionis principle that Achan should receive exactly what Jericho was supposed to receive. By taking those things, he identified with Jericho, and thus this punishment was just. Next, the offense was restated. Verse 25, Joshua said, why have you troubled us? The Lord will trouble you this day. It appears that he was not satisfied with Achan's confession. At a minimum, the text is clear, his sin had brought great trouble to Israel. By embracing an accursed thing, which is a super serious sin, he brought covenant guilt and consequences on all Israel. And last week we saw not all sins do that, so we shouldn't over-apply the death penalty to all sins. And notice that all were involved in the stoning. Verse 25 goes on to say, so all Israel stoned him with stones and they burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones. And I probably didn't put enough space in your outlines for this, but I want to park on this a bit more because people have had questions about it. Why did the community have to be involved in capital punishment? Why not let a civil magistrate do it cleanly and private? I mean, this is so gross, you know, to be throwing stones at somebody with the blood splattering and everything. Well, there are many reasons that could be given as to why this is an important and a mandated policy, but let me list a few. First, it allows the condemned man to face his witnesses and executioners. People are less likely to falsely testify if they are the first ones that have to throw the stones. That's what the law required. and also if they received the same penalty for being false witnesses. But the accursed has the right to bring witnesses, he has the right to defend himself against the witnesses of the opposition. It's just a basic principle of justice. Second, it instills fear of doing the same crime into the hearts of everyone who witnesses the execution and who participated in it. Okay, it's a deterrent. I witnessed a public hanging as a young kid out in Ethiopia, and we found out what he did, and I thought, wow, that motivated me never in Ethiopia to do anything like what that man had done. I think it was an unjust penalty, by the way. It was a hanging for stealing, I think it was. But that motivated me to not steal as a kid. But anyway, stoning was even more of a deterrent. People nowadays doubt that this form of death penalty would be a deterrent, but God's inspired word says that it is. Let me read you some examples. Deuteronomy 13 11 says, So all Israel shall hear and fear and not again do such wickedness as this among you. He's saying the stoning would be a deterrent. Deuteronomy 17.13, and all the people shall hear and fear and no longer act presumptuously. Deuteronomy 19.20, and those who remain shall hear and fear, and hereafter they shall not again commit such evil among you. Deuteronomy 21.21, then all the men of this city shall stone him to death with stones, so you shall put away the evil from among you. And all Israel shall hear and fear." God keeps repeating Himself because He knows His people are not going to like this method of execution. To this day, people don't like this method of execution. But it's a mandated method for some crimes because it restrains evil. God guarantees it will be a deterrent. Third reason. by eliminating professional executioners, which is what we've got in America. Well, we don't actually have executions anymore, do we? But that's what we've tended to have in the past, professional executioners. By prohibiting that, it inhibits tyranny and it decentralizes civics. Each male adult member of the community was a part of civics. This, too, tends to prevent tyranny. The Bible as a whole is very, very opposed to big government, and this decentralization of even the executions, I think, is one of many evidences of that fact. You wouldn't get very many unjust executions if both the civil magistrate and the people had to be involved like this. Fourth, it promotes a commitment to God's law in a very tangible and visceral way. Gary North says, in stoning, each member of the community hurls a rock representing himself and his affirmation of God's judgment. The principle of stoning then affirms that the judgment is God's. The application of stoning affirms the community's assent and participation in that judgment. And then lastly, it affirms the corporate nature of capital crimes, in other words, of crimes that have God's curse resting upon them. We saw last week, not all sin has that corporate effect, not all crime does, but sins with God's curse upon them certainly do. Daniel Overdorf said, this communal execution of justice demonstrated corporate responsibility for sin and corporate desire for purity. Okay, enough on that. Yet another evidence of their diligence is that they used this place as a memorial for future generations. Verse 26 says, Now the huge number of stones shows the huge number of people involved. The naming of the place, Valley of Acre or Valley of Hope, is the way you could translate it, shows they wanted future generations to remember this event. But above all else, they desired God's wrath to be removed from the nation. I think the most fearful aspect of this story is God's desertion of His people. Verse 12 says in the second sentence, neither will I be with you anymore unless you destroy the accursed from among you. Neither will I be with you anymore. This is what Reformed people used to call spiritual desertions, not eternal desertions. You know, we believe in eternal security or God's preservation of the saints and our perseverance. but historical desertions designed to bring people to repentance. It's where God allows you to be defeated to wake you up to your need of Him. I read from Thomas Brooks last week, let me read part of that quote from him again. He explains why God leaves people alone for a while, so that they will run back to him. He says, by God's withdrawing from his people, that's a spiritual desertion, right? By God's withdrawing from his people, he prevents his people withdrawing from him. And so by an affliction, he prevents a sin. For God to withdraw from me is but my affliction. In other words, it's for my good, it's a spanking. But for me to withdraw from God, that is my sin. In other words, it's not for my good. Hebrews 10, 38 through 39, and therefore it were better for me that God should withdraw a thousand times from me than that I should once withdraw from God. God therefore forsakes us that we may not forsake him. I think that was well written description of God's spiritual desertions. God does not want us comfortable in our sin. And when we persevere in our sin, he will let us fall. He will let us suffer the losses. if it means that we will once again repent, cling to Him, and love Him with all of our heart. And so spiritual desertions or defeats are one of God's means of reclaiming a backslidden Christian or reclaiming a backslidden church. Samson, that's what happened. He lost God's power and he repented, didn't he? He came back to the Lord. The Lord knows how to do that. And so God deserted them to keep them from deserting Him any further. When you fail to deal with the accursed thing in your midst, you will find it more and more difficult to overcome the attacks of Satan. You'll find yourself backsliding further and further until you fall into sins you never dreamed of doing. You know, even one year before the Bathsheba event with David, David would have considered it absolutely unthinkable that he could ever commit adultery with his best friend's wife. or that he would get him drunk and try to cover over his sin and eventually murder him, but because there was a hole in the dike that he did not repair, that stream that came out became bigger and bigger until finally what was once unthinkable became an attractive alternative that he not only embraced, He justified. Take seriously the fact that if you are not mortifying your flesh, if you are not crucifying that sinful desire within your heart, concupiscence or whatever the other desire might be, you are feeding it. And as you keep feeding it, that cute little sin, it's going to grow into a terrible tiger that will devour you. But let me conclude with the name of that valley, Achor. When the prophets mention this valley in later history, it's mentioned as a symbol of how God uses even our defeats. And I just am so thankful to the Lord for this. He uses even our defeats to turn us closer to Him and to renew His blessing in our lives. He wants to bless us. For example, in Hosea 2.15, it says, I will give her her vineyards from there and the Valley of Acre as a door of hope. She shall sing there as in the days of her youth, as in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt. So God comforts us in the Valley of Acre because his forgiveness and his mercies are new every morning. Just hours before, Israel was doomed to destruction. Now they have God's favor. They're going to have victory. Okay? Where there is genuine repentance, God embraces you in his arms and gives you renewed strength to battle against sin. Now, I'd like to think that Achan was embraced by God in heaven. Maybe he was. I'm not entirely sure. God many times will use disciplines even unto death in order to restore people to himself. But certainly, Israel was embraced in history for precisely that reason. No matter how terrible your sin may be, God will receive you if you repent. No matter how deep your valley may be, your valley of Achor can be a valley of hope. But the second aspect of this hope is that chapter 7 verse 26 is not the end of the story. Chapter 8 verse 1 says, then the Lord said to Joshua, do not be afraid nor be dismayed. Take all the people of war with you and arise, go up to Ai. See, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, his people, his city, and his land. When you have God's favor, what formerly used to defeat you, you now easily have the victory over. Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. And if the church in America would come to repentance and turn from its wickedness, it would see true victory after victory. And it's my hope that in the upcoming sermons and the book of Joshua, you would be encouraged that despite your past failures, our God will give us victory after victory. May it be so, amen. Father, we thank you for your word. the challenges, the warnings, the encouragements that are in your Word. And I pray that this, your people, would be encouraged to pursue after you with their whole heart. Bless us this day as we engage with each other in fellowship, as iron sharpening iron, may we be of encouragement, may we build each other up in your most holy faith. Bless this, your people, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.