Our New Testament reading which will be our scripture text is going to be Ephesians chapter 6 Ephesians chapter 6 verses 10 through 20 Finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers and against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak. Thus ends the reading of God's word. May he attach his blessing to it. You can take a seat and join me in prayer. God, we are grateful for your word to us today, a word that has a good warning that comes from your love and your loving fatherly care for us, but also a good word in it that reminds us of the work of Christ on our behalf. Would you help us to see him? Would you help us to trust in him? Would you help us to see him as more beautiful than all the passing pledges of this world in our sermon today? We pray that you would bless the preaching of your word for your glory, Lord, and for the good of your people. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Amen. In his preface to the Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis said something pretty interesting about people's belief in the demonic world. He said there are two equal and opposite errors into which our race, that is the human race, can fall into about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves, that is the devils, are equally pleased by both errors. If you think about those two errors that people can fall into, either unbelief in the spiritual, demonic realm, or over-belief and thinking there's a devil behind every corner. I can't speak for everyone here, but I imagine probably most of us, if we fall into one of these errors, fall into the first. Maybe not that we have a complete unbelief in the demonic, because the Bible speaks about those things, so we believe it, but perhaps an under-belief. We'd be happy to admit when we look at big examples of evil in the world, when we think of Germany's Third Reich or the child slave markets that exist up to this day, when we look at those things and say, oh, you know, there's something demonic, there's something devilish about that, we'd be, you know, we would readily admit something like that. But scripture And this passage in Ephesians reminds us that demonic activity is just as much involved in what seems like normal struggles, the normal mundane day-to-day life as a Christian. The spiritual war rages in the middle of what seems like normal life. Why? Why would that be the case? It's because as Christians, our life behind the veil behind the curtain of this physical world is anything but normal. It is anything but mundane. Actually, every time you put your faith in Christ, every time you try to love your neighbor as yourself to the glory of God, every time you engage in reading God's Word and in prayer, you actually put a target on your back that reminds the dark prince of this world that you don't belong to him. And he is upset about it, and he wants to stop it. That's what we're learning in this passage. He wants to The devil wants to destroy your life and kill your faith. God wants you to be aware of that. He does want you to be aware of it. So he tells us this in his word. And as Peter says, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. If the Honolulu Zoo put out a notice saying that one of their lions escaped and they don't know where it is, it probably wouldn't be wise to walk around Diamond Head and ignore the fact that a lion might be watching you. That wouldn't be a wise thing to do. But what we do as Christians, going about our day-to-day, not thinking about spiritual things all day long, is a little more dangerous. Actually, it's much more dangerous. It's not as if a lion might be watching us. It's that a lion absolutely is. And he's not a lion. He's a spiritual creature. He's a lot more powerful than us. This is bad news, this is sketchy news, but we know as God's people that his word gives us much, much more reason for hope than we have for fear. There is a war going on and we're in the middle of it, but God has given us spiritual armor for that spiritual war. And this is the message we learn in this passage, it's simple. Put on the armor, it will work. Put on the armor because it'll work. And in order for us to be mindful to put that armor on, there are three things we're going to focus on in this passage that encourage us to put on the armor. First, we're going to learn about the enemy who attacks. Second, we're going to learn about what the armor is, what is the armor that protects. And third, we need to consider the God who wins the war. So first, the enemy who attacks. Who is the enemy and what do his attacks look like? In verse 12, Paul says, we don't wrestle against flesh and blood. Instead, he calls our enemies spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places. What's remarkable about Paul saying this, that his enemies are spiritual and not physical or not human, what's incredible about this is Paul is in prison. He's in a human city, detained by a human government, being kept in chains and guarded by human prison guards, and yet he says his enemies aren't human. His enemies aren't ultimately human. And this helps us understand two things. If we ever undergo slander or persecution or any kind of assault as a result of being a Christian, we should be moved to pity those people rather than anger. We should be moved to pity rather than anger against them. See, Paul recognizes that the people that are guarding him are unwitting tools of much much stronger spiritual forces than they themselves. And as you read later in the passage, Paul is telling you, he's telling the church to, Paul's telling the Ephesians to pray for him, that he can proclaim the gospel boldly. Who do you think he's proclaiming the gospel to? The prison guards. Paul is having pity on people, knowing that there is a spiritual battle going on that goes beyond the physical. And so Paul is moved to preach the gospel, to plead with people to gain eternal life, to pray for them, even though they're persecuting him. Now, the people that we have struggles with as Christians, they're not openly holding us in prison. So we should have even more patience with our loved ones, with our family, with our friends who oppose the gospel, because we know that there's things going on that are more spiritual. We shouldn't take things personally, but we should recognize there's a spiritual battle going on and pray for people. Second, we learn here that since our enemies are spiritual, We need spiritual weapons to defeat them. We need the armor of God, and we'll talk about it later. Physical defense against enemies is sometimes useful, sometimes we need to as nations to do that, but it's limited. Spiritual defense and spiritual victory come through spiritual means. They come through the word of God and prayer. The word of God and prayer. That's how you change the world. That's how you change hearts. So that's it. So our enemy is spiritual. And second, the enemy is personal. Paul calls him by that personal name in verse 11, the devil. What this means is that Satan is real. He's a personal being. If you are a Christian, believing this is not an option. Jesus himself believed in a real, personal Satan, and he speaks about him in personal terms. And you know, there are a lot of people in our culture today Maybe, just specifically in our culture today, who don't believe in spiritual darkness or that there are actual spiritual evil forces, but a majority of people throughout all time definitely have believed that. Believing this, you are in the majority position. Most people believe in Satan. And for those who don't believe in him, it's tough to see whether they believe in anything such as evil at all. Do they think that when people abuse children, When people rob the poor, when people dump cancerous chemicals into public waterways, is this evil? Or is it just unfortunate? Is it just a blip in the course of the world? It just is what it is. It's a bad thing. We consider it bad, but it's not ultimately evil, because there's no real good or evil. There's no God. There's no Satan. It doesn't matter. Actually, our gut-level reaction to these things is not a biological trick. It is a God-given response to injustice. Evil is real. There is such a thing as evil. There are spiritual laws that we're supposed to keep, and we break. Evil's real, and everybody knows it deep down in their core. God says it's real. God is good, and he created all things, and some of his creatures are evil. Satan is one of those creatures. He tricked mankind and brought them along with him in his rebellion. He is a personal being who makes personal choices, and they're not for good. What this means when we consider that he is personal, a personal being, is that his anger against us is personal. He is personally offended and angered by the fact that you don't belong to him. In his mind, you're a sinner, right? You should belong to him. You're a sinner. but Jesus Christ has purchased you with his blood. As it says earlier in Ephesians, you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, that is the devil, the spirit that's now at work and the sons of disobedience. You were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. but God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." So we used to follow Satan, but now we belong to Jesus Christ. That's why he attacks. He hates that we aren't his. He hates it. He hates that we're weak, and even though we're weak, we've escaped his grasp, and he will trick you and lie to you, entice you with promises that he can't keep in order to get you. That's what he does. That's how he attacks. So that's the enemy. That's who he is. What are his attacks? What do they look like? Well, what was his first attack in the Garden of Eden? It was a lie. How did he attack Christ when he was in the wilderness? With lies. How does he attack the early church in Paul's day? With lies, they are lies. Paul says, he calls them schemes in verse 11. Paul says, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. I think by using that word schemes, he's referring back to something he wrote about in chapter four, where he says that it's the job of the church to build up the saints, that they would reach unity and maturity in Christ so that we would not be carried away by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. And you can hear that satanic serpent-like language there. Human craftiness, deceitful schemes. The devil, the spiritual attacks come through human lies. The lies that we hear in the world, the lies that we hear from people, maybe even the lies that we tell ourselves. This is how Satan attacks. They are anti-gospel truths, anti-biblical ideas, ranging from God doesn't even exist, to God exists, but he's not there for you. He's not there for you. And every lie in between. Maybe those lies might sound like, you know, in God's word, Jesus never claims to be God. We all know a lot of people who believe the Bible, yet, who claim to believe the Bible, yet don't believe Jesus is God. You hear those kinds of lies all the time. It might be lies about the gospel saying, putting your trust in Jesus Christ isn't enough, you need more. Or it might be the lies we tell ourselves. I must not be a Christian. If I was, I wouldn't be struggling the way I am. If I was a Christian, I wouldn't have these anger problems. If I was a Christian, I wouldn't doubt. That doesn't sound like spiritual life to me. But if you read the Psalms, that's exactly what spiritual life looks like. If you read Paul's writing about himself, that's what spiritual life looks like. It's a battle. It's a struggle. And we can convince ourselves of the lies sometimes. These kinds of thoughts are normal. And they are spiritual attacks that will destroy us if we don't have spiritual armor. But thanks be to God, he gives us spiritual armor. And that's the second thing we need to know. What is this armor that protects? The armor that protects, Paul talks about in verses 14 through 17. And there he lists all the individual pieces of the armor of God, and we're gonna go through each one, but it's important to zoom out and look here and say, when we talk about the armor of God, what we learn is that all of it is about God and what he does, and what he gives us. It's not our abilities, it's not our wisdom, it's about the equipment that God gives to us. That's what we need in spiritual war. Not our abilities, but his equipment. The first of these is the belt of truth. He says, fasten on the belt of truth. When Paul refers to a belt, he's not talking about the kind of belts that we have today. Like, I have a belt on, but I probably don't need it, right? Or a belt that just holds up pants. The belt that an ancient warrior would wear actually held his whole outfit together. He tied up his tunic. It held his breastplate in place, and it made it so that he was even ready to fight. Without his belt, he wasn't ready to fight at all. Without your belt, that is the belt of truth, you are not ready for the fight. Paul is saying that we should have the belt of truth fastened on us, and by that he means that we should be attentive to the truth, and we should know it. If we don't have this, our armor is not put together. The armor is not put together until we know the truth. And this makes sense. The more and more we're attentive to the truth, then lies will affect us less and less. The more and more we're attentive to the truth, then lies will affect us less and less. This is our duty. An example of this is, speaking of when people say that Jesus isn't God, you know, the Bible, they can say, you know, in the Bible, Jesus never says, I am God. Do you know that? And then you could hear that and be like, oh no, is that true? Let me look in the Bible. And you flip through the Gospels and you actually don't see it. Jesus never says, I am God. But if you have your belt of truth on and have learned to grow in the knowledge of his word, then you can say, yeah, he doesn't say, I am God. But he does say, before Abraham was, I am. He did say, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. He has power over creation, over the wind and the waves. He is the power and the right, the authority to forgive sins. He receives worship when no angel in the Bible ever allows themselves to receive worship, and he does freely, and the Bible exalts him for it. This is God. He is God. That is an example of how the belt of truth can help us, and it can help us in so many other situations where people lie against the Bible. Knowing the truth more and more makes it so that lies affect you less and less. And it's directly, that belt of truth is directly connected to the last piece of the equipment God gives. It is the sword of the spirit, which he says is the word of God. The word of God, the truth of God's word, is the beginning and end of what we need for the battle. It's what we need to enter into the fight. It's what we need to finish it. If you're assaulted by lies, which you will be, we will be assaulted by lies, remember that God has given you a weapon to cut them down with. Use it. And also remember that it's not up to you to make it powerful. It's God's word. It's his sword. You know, a lie I heard recently from someone is, you know, I'm going to leave the church because I feel like it's not serving me, and I want to go somewhere where I'm served. And they didn't end up in a church, by the way, after that kind of attitude. But you can trust God's Word and say, actually, Jesus says, whoever tries to save their life will lose it, but whoever gives up their life for my sake and for the gospel, they won't find it. And you can trust when you tell people that, that God will use it. If it's His will to use it, He will. It's His word, you trust Him. You use it, and you let Him work. That is the sword of the Spirit. He says His word will not return to Him empty. It will accomplish that for which He purposes it. It will succeed in the thing for which He sent it. It is God's job to make His word effective. It's our job to believe it, to trust it, and to speak it, and trust Him with the results. That's the beginning and end of the fight. Now you might be asking, is this random guy who showed up telling me I need to memorize the whole Bible? No. But you do need to grow in God's Word. We all need to grow in God's Word. That's what it means. And it also means that we're going to need each other. It means that we are supposed to share our doubts and our questions with one another, speaking the Word of God to one another, building each other up in the faith. Actually, in Ephesians 4, where Paul says that we shouldn't fall for human cunning, craftiness, and deceitful schemes, the antidote to that, he says right after, he says, rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head. So rather than falling for lies, what we should do is speak the truth in love to each other. That's what we're called to do as God's people. But there's something more specific that we need to know about God's Word. See, the beginning and end of the armor, the first and the last thing, are about God's Word generally. But the middle pieces are about something more specific. It is about the pinnacle of the message of God's Word. It is about the Gospel. Every piece of the armor in between the first and the last is about the Gospel. It's directly connected to the Gospel. The Gospel is what we need to remember. There is no hope and no chance of escaping the clutches of sin and death if Jesus didn't die for us, his people. But because he does, we have hope. The gospel is the armor. If you look with me again at verse 14, we read that we need to put on the breastplate of righteousness. Now, us doing righteous deeds, and in Colossians it says that we are that we are being remade in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. So righteousness and doing righteous things is something that God's people are called to do. We are called to do acts of service to one another in love. We are called to worship God without hidden motives. These are actually good things. Jesus says they receive rewards if we give a cup of cold water to someone in the name of a disciple. These are good things. And it confirms to us that God is at work in us when we can do them. If we want a breastplate, we need a righteousness outside of ourselves. For Paul, when he was faced with accusations, he pointed to not his own righteousness, but the righteousness of Jesus Christ. He clinged to the righteousness of Christ given to him by faith. That is our breastplate. That's what protects us, the righteousness of Christ given to us. We need to know, you need to know that if you believe in Jesus Christ, then the King of heaven, has declared you righteous, and there's no higher authority. There's no one who can stop him from declaring you righteous. If he has decided that you are declared righteous, you are righteous. That is yours. That is your breastplate. Wear it with confidence. You may question it one day. The world and the devil might tell you otherwise, but God himself has spoken. Jesus has died and was raised for your justification, for your righteousness. He is your righteousness. Believe it. And what's the next piece of equipment? The next piece of equipment is verse 15. It says, we have shoes for our feet, the readiness given by the gospel of peace. What on earth does that mean? This means that we can be ready and happy soldiers, knowing that our peace with God is secure. This morning I ran out to my car, and I didn't put slippers on, and I was stepping on rocks and sticks, and I didn't get there very fast. because I didn't grow up, I grew up wearing shoes all the time, right? So when I run without shoes, I gotta slow down. I don't have as much confidence, I don't have as much pep in my step. But when I put shoes on, I can march through those rocks and sticks, no problem. This is why we need these shoes given to us, these shoes, the readiness given by the gospel of peace. That is, we can run our race with confidence and joy, knowing that our peace with God is secure. We might think or we might tell ourselves that maybe I don't have peace with God because I'm weak and struggling, even though I do love him. Well, we need to remember that God sent his son to die for us when we hated him. When we hated him, he sent us his precious son. And then we think that now that we do, now that we struggle, though we do love him, that we don't, we don't have peace with him. Of course we have peace with him. When I was his enemy, he gave me his son. Of course we still have peace with the Lord. This means that we don't need to be afraid of opposition. We don't need to be afraid of trying and failing. If we get knocked down, we can get back up and go. That's what these shoes are for. You have peace with God through Jesus Christ, the most important thing in the world. Live like it. Run the race of faith, knowing that you have peace with God. This allows us to wake up every morning and say, His mercies are new every morning. I will follow after the Lord this day. No matter what happened yesterday, his mercies are new every morning I will follow after the Lord this day. These are shoes for our feet, and it makes us ready and happy soldiers to run the race of faith. And then there's the shield of faith in verse 16. He says that with it, that is the shield of faith, you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. In the ancient world, there was a practice of dipping arrows in pitch. and lighting them on fire and then shooting them at your enemy. And what this happened was not only would you strike someone with the arrow, but then a fire would run through the enemy camp. So in order to defend against that, people would take these shields covered in leather and soak them in water so that when an arrow hit the shield, not only would it stop the arrow, but it would stop the fire. Paul is saying, that the shield of faith not only stops Satan's attacks, it extinguishes them. It extinguishes them. I remember one morning about a decade ago, my trust, my knowledge of the gospel completely tanked, kind of out of nowhere. I woke up one day, and I had been a Christian, I loved the Lord, I loved serving the Lord, and I was really into apologetics, I loved the Bible, and then one day, I woke up with no faith. I don't know how to explain it. I searched in my head for something that I believed in and would cling to, and there was just nothing but doubts, questions about God's word, questions about myself, just swarming in my head. I looked into my head for something, and there was nothing. I was confused. I was confused and scared. My faith was brought down to this tiny flicker out of nowhere. And it lasted almost an entire summer. And I remember I went and talked to my father-in-law about it. And he wasn't my father-in-law at the time. I was dating his daughter. And we were on a bike ride, and I told him, hey, I don't know what to do, but I don't have any faith. And he had been serving the Lord for decades at that time. And I said, I don't feel like I believe in God or anything. I don't know what's going on. And his advice to me, I did not understand it until much later, but his advice to me was, you just got to have more faith, dude. That was his advice to me. I was like, what kind of advice is that? I don't have any faith. And you're telling me I need more faith? And he said, listen. And he's funny, he's a Mexican guy from East LA, lifeguard. And he goes, listen, when someone's bleeding and you put gauze on it, and they bleed through the gauze, you just keep putting more gauze on. You just keep putting more on. He's like, you just gotta put more faith on it. And then he got on his bike and rode away. And I was like, what? What kind of advice is this? And I was out of options, you know? So that's what I did. I just said, I just thought, you know, I thought, well, if I'm really scared to lose this, then I must believe it. I must believe in God deep down. And if Jesus is who he says he is, and I put my trust in him, he's gonna pull me through this. He's gonna take me out of this. And then one day, the bleeding stopped. I don't know when, I don't know how, but the doubts I was having, the questions I had were gone. I don't even remember what they were, honestly. They were gone. I do know, I do know that I was attacked. I put up the shield of faith and the fire stopped. The shield of faith is powerful because it is entirely relying on the work of God on our behalf. It is entirely relying on Him. It is saying, I belong to Jesus Christ. My trust is in Him. Lord, help me. Remember that all of this equipment is not about us and our abilities. It is about God and what He does and what He will do for us. The shield of faith is so powerful because it is not trusting in us at all. It's putting all of our faith in Him. And He will do that. He will take care of you. This is God's word for you. This is not about your ability. It's about the equipment God gives. And the shield of faith is one of those. And last, but probably most important, is the helmet of salvation. For Christians, this helmet, protecting the most important part of the body, is a reminder that no power in heaven and earth can deliver a fatal blow to your head. Spiritually, our soul is secure. If God has put this helmet on your head, you are saved, you are safe. If you're not a Christian, And for those that we know that aren't Christians, Scripture does not grant them that kind of assurance. People are living in a spiritual world without a helmet. And worst of all, God will be their judge if they do not put their trust in Christ. And if that's you today, I don't know everyone here, but if you put your trust in Christ, God will not turn you away. He will cover you in his righteousness, grant you peace with him, and save you forever. And by the way, of course, that is what we're all doing, isn't it? Not trusting in ourselves, our power, our wisdom, but trusting in the strength that He supplies. Again, all of this equipment is about what God has done, what God will do, and what God is doing, and He gives it freely. He just tells us to put it on and use it. We are engaged in a spiritual battle, but as David says, David said when he stood before Goliath, the battle belongs to the Lord. And the third thing we need to know to be encouraged to put on the armor is that the God who gives the armor is the God who wins the war. And this will be brief. At first glance, the picture that Paul is painting for us here about a man wearing armor is, it seems like he's simply just referring to a Roman soldier, perhaps a guard that he sees and he's describing his outfit applying it to the Christian life. It's sort of like when people take a contemporary image of a football game and use it as an illustration in a sermon. That is true. Paul is talking about a Roman soldier, and he's talking about his armor. But there is a deeper, biblical background to what Paul has in mind here. That background is in the book of Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 59, that section that we read in our Old Testament readings. In Isaiah chapter 59, we hear about the persistence of sin and injustice in Israel, his people. And these people are hopeless to stop it. Their problem, like our problem, isn't just that we have a spiritual enemy, or a human enemy, or human enemies, that's what they were worried about. Their biggest problem is their sin. Our biggest problem is our sin, our lack of righteousness. See, the Bible talks about our enemies, not just as the devil, but as the world, the flesh, and the devil. And the flesh is something we need help with. It's because of our sin that we have been held captive to spiritual forces of evil. See, our problem is that our sin made us enemies of God. And God saw this problem. He saw the lack of righteousness in mankind. And he says, again, I'll read it in chapter 59, verse 15. The Lord saw it, and it displeased him, that there was no justice, He saw that there was no man and wondered that there was no one to intercede. Then his own arm brought him salvation and his righteousness upheld him. Listen to this. He put on righteousness as a breastplate and a helmet of salvation on his head. This is speaking about the Messiah and what he came to do. He, in this passage in Isaiah 59, is wearing battle gear in order to fight and to mediate on his people's behalf. The armor that God gives us in the battle was first the armor that Jesus wore to win the war. Our ultimate problem isn't a spiritual enemy. Our ultimate problem aren't human enemies. Our ultimate problem was our sin that made us enemies of God and made us captive to spiritual forces of evil, and we were hopeless to change it. So Jesus dressed himself for battle, entered into our pain, took our sin upon himself, fought to the death and rose again in victory. He won. He conquered our enemies and our greatest enemy, which was our own sin. And in doing that, he made us a people sanctified for himself. And because of that, we will be with him forever because he paid for it. But until that day, He gives us his armor to wear. He gives us his strength. I can imagine if I had armor that fit me and I give it to my little kid how it kind of wouldn't fit them because it belongs on me. That's a picture of the armor that we wear. Christ wore it. Christ wore it and won the war for us. And now we get to wear it in the mop-up operation, in the battle. He won the war. His arm brought us salvation. His righteousness upholds us. That is the armor. It is knowing God's word, specifically knowing what Jesus has done, believing it and making it yours. Put on the armor, Christian. You're gonna need it. And know and trust that it will work. Ours is armor for the battle, strong enough to last the war. And he has said he will deliver safely to that golden shore. Let's pray. God, we are grateful for the good news of Jesus Christ. And we're grateful that though we walked around in this spiritual world without a helmet, Christ came wearing one, enacting justice, punishing sin. And he did this not by wiping out the world, but by taking sin upon himself and being punished for us. What a gift. What a gift of grace. Lord, we're grateful that we have this helmet of salvation, this armor which protects us. Help us to trust it. Help us to use it, to use your word, to know it well, that we could stand against the lies, the lies that we hear day to day, the lies that we'll hear throughout this week. We ask that God, that you would preserve us and keep us. that we would use the shield of faith well, and that you would show yourself strong to be our savior. You would show yourself strong to be our protector. And Lord, would you carry us this day and all days, the rest of our life, until we enter into glory with you. Give us faith, the faith we need to stand against the assaults of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Protect us, your people, we pray. In Christ's name, amen.