Romans chapter 5. 10.02. Thank you. Okay, that's page 10.02 in those Pew Bibles. Oh, I said Pew. I know. My purist record is destroyed. Romans 5. I'm going to read to you verses 1-8 once we're all there. Romans 5 verses 1-8. Romans is a letter written by Paul of Tarsus to the Christians in Rome 2,000 years ago. Paul is a servant of Jesus whom Jesus appointed to teach the gospel to mostly non-Jewish people in the Mediterranean world 2,000 years ago. And so Romans is Paul's letter to these Christians in Rome. He's instructing them chiefly about the message of Jesus, the central teaching of Christ and what Christ's life and death and resurrection are about. Let's ask God's blessing. Dear Father, we stand in great need. But if we are wise, we would have great boldness and faith in you, that you would come down even now, that you would tear the heavens, that the mountains would shake at your presence. We beg you, O God, we beg you to be present in our midst as we study this holy scripture. We beg you, Lord, to aid us in our exploration of the gospel of Christ. O God, open my foolish, sinful, and mute mouth in exaltation of your glorious gospel. Open our hearts to receive from you, Father. We are dead and cold, but you are more than equal to the task of reviving us. So do it, oh God, we pray. Do it, oh God, by your great and glorious spirit poured out on the church all these centuries. Lord God, have mercy on us. In Jesus' name, amen. Romans 5 starting at verse 1, Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we exult in hope of the glory of God. Not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance, and perseverance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. May God bless his gospel. Romans is the greatest letter ever written. It is the greatest letter ever written. Romans is the greatest book ever written. Romans is the greatest anything ever written. 10,000 years, men in our world have suffered the evils of living in a fallen world and have searched for a solution to the world's problems. Romans is the solution. Romans contains the solution to all the world's problems without exception. Romans is the solution because it gets the answer to the question right. The question which is, what is wrong with the world and what do we do about it? Romans is the solution because it gets the question and the answer right. If we ask what lies at the heart of man's problems, the world says it is inequality. of education, and inequality of wealth, and inequality of opportunity. Romans says that the problem is that man is wrong before God. It is not that we don't all have the same amount of money, education, and opportunity. It's that you're wrong before God. That is the problem. Romans says the problem is none of those things. It's our guilty standing before God. The world asks, based on its premise, How then do we make everybody equal? How do we solve the problem of inequality by making everybody equal? What do we do? Romans, in contrast, asks, how can men be right before God? If the chief problem is that you are wrong before God from the day of your birth, then what can be done to make you right before God? Romans gets the answer right. The world says the solution is multiculturalism. That's the solution. The world says that the solution is forced diversity, redistribution of wealth, tuition-free college. That will solve all of the Earth's problems. Romans, in contrast, says the answer is a dying and a rising Christ who makes men right with God. Do you see the difference? It couldn't be wider. Now, the world assumes that we deserve a solution to our problem. The world always couches it in terms of, we have a problem, there is a solution, and you deserve a solution. And modern advertising is picked up on this. Every single advertising campaign there is, its thrust is, you deserve this. Do this for you. Because after all, you're you. You deserve it. The world thinks they deserve a solution to their problem. That's often why they hate the real God so much. They hate the real God because he says all that you deserve, all that you deserve is not a really nice day at the sauna. All that you deserve is not a vacation and not a cruise and not a great steak dinner. All that you deserve is outer darkness. To be pushed out to the extremities of the universe where there is cold and dark and you are alone with your regret at having been wrong with God and remained wrong with God. In pain and suffering, absorbing the wrath of God forever. The world hates the biblical God because he says that is the only thing that we really deserve. Romans says God has provided a solution, but not because we deserve it. And so our question is then if there is a problem that we are wrong before God, and there is a solution, the dying and rising Christ who can make us right with God by faith, then what is the impetus for the solution? Which is to say, what causes God to give a solution at all? If it's not that we deserve it, contrary to every ad campaign from here to Jupiter, then what's driving God as he provides a solution to our big problem? And the answer, according to Romans, is that the impetus for the solution is the love of God. The love of God. The reason God gave a dying and a rising Christ to save us is that God is love. God is love and he loves his people with an immense and an intense love. So today our business is to consider how God displayed this immense and this intense love in sending Jesus to die for us. That's what we're gonna try and do. We're just gonna consider this demonstration of love, divine love in the death of Christ. Do you know how earth functions? Do you know the guiding principle of the world that you live in? I can sum it up very quickly and easily. It's not confusing. Quid pro quo. Quid pro quo. This for that. Quid pro quo is a Latin phrase that business is all based on. You do something for me, I do something for you. You want one of my sheep? Fine, 20 bucks. You want a car? Fine, 10 grand. You can have whatever you want, you just have to pay for it. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. You can have what you want, but it's not free. You can't just take it. I'm going to get something out of this deal. Quid pro quo. Do you know that heaven is very different? You know that in the heavens, outside of this besieged, wicked, and fallen world, things are entirely different? Heaven does not function by quid pro quo. Heaven operates by grace. Love and acceptance with God in the heavens cannot be earned. They can only be received as a gift. You don't go into the heavens and start doing quid pro quo. They'd laugh at you. In heaven, there's only grace. Paul points out that in order to demonstrate the immensity and the intensity of God's love for his people, God gave Christ to die, specifically for whom? A sinful people, a bad, corrupt people. This was a people that God could not take joy in, because they were sinful. When you are outside of Christ, God can't look at you and be pleased. He can't, any more than you can enjoy a tarantula. Most of you, I know some of you are strange, but most of you can't enjoy a tarantula. Most of you can't enjoy a dirty diaper. I know mothers can endure it. They have my admiration and let them do it. You can't enjoy it though. You can't enjoy a trash can. You can't enjoy a dumpster. You can't enjoy a trash dump. When God looks at the sinner, he can't enjoy him. The sin prevents it. Our sin repulses God. Our sin aggravates God. Our sin even enrages God. It offends Him. It's vile to Him. It stinks in His nostrils like a litter box, like a dirty diaper, like a trash can, like an infected wound. That's what your sin does to God outside of Christ. Our sin is an agony to God. It is a misery for God to watch his creatures in his own image, explore every possible perversion under heaven. It's a misery. We are images of God. We bear the family resemblance. Did you know that? Did you know you look like God? You got his nose? No, God doesn't have a nose. I'm kind of joking there, but the point is, you look like Him. You're not a rock. You're not a parakeet. You're not a cat. You got something, the parakeet and the cat don't. You bear the family resemblance of God. You are in his image. In a special way, we look like God. Even lost people. So what we have then is creatures who resemble God, taking that resemblance into the filthiness of their sin. The murderer slays a man while bearing God's image. Do you see? The fornicator embraces his foul partner while bearing God's image. The godless worldly man ignores God all day long, even while he looks like God. Imagine you had a child who looked exactly like you do. Maybe some of you do. You have a kid and we say, that's your spitting image right there. Imagine you have a son or a daughter who looks exactly like you. Now imagine them as a lowlife looking like you. Imagine them a cheat, a robber, a dirty tramp who's been in every bed in town looking like you. It's your face, your image that they bring with them into their dumpster of sin. So is the sinner. Every sin of your life has been performed while you bore the family resemblance, while you wore God's own face. I can't help but think Satan would see this as a great victory, because you see, Satan has no power to degrade God. But what Satan can do is take God's creatures who wear God's image, God's very face, and degrade them lower than dogs. And that's a decent second best. Think of it this way, Satan wishes he could smear God with mud. Satan can't because he can't reach that high. But what Satan can do is find pictures of God and deface them. He can scrawl a mustache and a goatee onto the picture of God. He can draw foul images on the picture, like people draw in a public restroom. Satan can't get at God like he wants to, but he can deface and profane the images of God, which we call man, men and women. When we say God loved the sinner by sending Christ to die for him, this is what we mean. So immense is the self-giving, the self-sacrifice, the sweetness, the warmth, the tenderness, the gentleness of God that He gave this gift to people who at the very same moment are wearing His face in their filthiness. the utter blasphemy and degradation of the face of God. They were dragging his glorious image and name through the mud while he died for them. His murder was them dragging his glory through the mud while he died for them. Can you imagine the husband who catches his wife with her lover and then gives his own organs to save her from an illness? Can you imagine the mother who finds her son slandering her, mocking her in every possible way, and then she responds by throwing herself in front of a truck to save him? We are driven to exclaim, that doesn't make sense. Don't save that floozy of a wife, and certainly not at cost to yourself. Throw her and all her belongings out on the lawn. Don't rescue that ungrateful twerp of a son. Let him absorb the impact of the truck himself. How dare he curse his mother? Serves him right. And this is what we have to feel in the death of Christ. If the death of Christ were not so precious, if it were not so infinitely and gloriously right, look, we'd be forced to say it's just plain wrong. It's just plain wrong. It's irrational. The bad guy should get it at the end of the movie, not the good guy. In the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good guy gets it. And what's more, he gets it for the bad guy. That's the twist that nobody saw coming. And it's a bad twist, right? It bothers us, doesn't it? If you do good, shouldn't you get good? That's what you teach your kids, isn't it? That's what you expect at work, isn't it? If you do good, shouldn't you get good? And if you do bad, you should get bad. We did bad and we got good. Jesus did good and he got bad. It's all wrong. It's all wrong. It shouldn't go that way. Doesn't Jesus know quid pro quo? Has Jesus never owned a business? Doesn't he understand you can't get something for nothing? No, it's not all wrong. It is the unpredictable. It is the unforeseen. It is the unhoped for love of God. God displays the immensity and the intensity of his love by giving Christ up to death for us, not in response to us straightening up and walking right, but in response to us breaking every single law, perverting every standard, refusing every single advance of God. We smack him in the face, he kisses us. We shake our fist at him and flip him off, he gives a gift of love. This is not God going soft in his old age. I know that's what some people would think, because they hear this, uh-oh, God's getting a little, you know, Little senile there. He's obviously not clear on what's happening. If he was, he'd respond with quid pro quo. He'd give like for like. He'd punish those people who sinned against him. He must be going soft and indulgent. No, not at all. It's actually not like that at all. You see, God says to his people in the scripture, in effect, keep my law or I'll kill you. Oh yes, yeah, that's biblical. Read Deuteronomy. Read chapters 27 through 29. Keep my law or I'll kill you. and I'll kill you something fierce too. It'll last long and it'll be good and it'll be hard. Keep my law or I'll kill you. And the sinner, we say back to him, we don't need no stinking law. We're not keeping anything. I would rather do what I want for 40 or 50 or 60 years and go to hell than get locked into a heaven with a God like you. Because any God who makes a place called hell deserves to go there. I've heard those words out of sinners' mouths. My own heart, if not, if I can't say it said it, it's been on the track. We don't need no stinking law. God says, keep my law or I'll kill you. We say, we don't need no law. We're gonna do whatever we want. And then God responds, all right, then I'll keep the law for you. And I will get killed for you. We go, what? That ain't how the movies go. In the movies, the bad guy does bad for the first part of the movie, and in the end, he gets it. Is God confused about how stories are written? Quid pro quo? No, thank God, no. I will keep it for you. I will keep the law. And then I will be killed in your place. And when the dust has settled, you will be saved. You will be rescued. You'll be right with God. You'll be made new. Completely new. And no, not even you can stop it. Don't worry. Wouldn't leave that eventuality out. Well, further in the text, Paul points out that maybe Maybe you could get someone to die for a good man. Maybe. The reason you might do this is because that good men have value. Don't you ever believe somebody when they tell you that everybody's equal? It's like them telling you everybody's the same height. I'm pretty sure we're not. It's like telling you everybody's the same weight. I wish. Everybody's the same attractiveness, can't you tell? We won't go too far with that one, right? Oh, everybody's equal. They're absolutely equal. They're interchangeable. Yeah, yeah, right. Some men are worth more than other men. What do I mean by that? I mean, some men do what's right. Work hard, take care of their families. You can count on them if you need something. They go out of their way for you. That man has more value than some drunken fool. who's an idiot and does everything wrong. Do I mean that God doesn't love both of them? Obviously not. Are you listening to the sermon? But it is nonsense to say that we are all exactly equal in every possible way. Don't be ridiculous. We're not all the same height. If a good man does what's right, if he helps others, if he is generally favored, we would hate to see him come to harm. And so maybe to stop his harm, maybe somebody would be willing to offer themselves up to die to save such a man because he has value, you see. It's the exact same thing as when I go to the store and I go, I like that cereal, but I don't like it eight bucks worth. I mean three, I'll give three for it. Is there a deal for three? No, forget it then, it ain't worth it to me. I don't like it that much. Die for that guy? How much value does he have? How good is he? Quid pro quo, this is how we work. When a thing has value, we're willing to suffer loss to protect it. If I had a sick parakeet, I'm very sorry to have to confess to you, I would pay very little at the vet to restore it to health. In fact, I wouldn't pay a dime. Let it die. It's a bird. That's all. It's not valuable to me. If Shepard were hospitalized and it cost everything I had to pay for a life-saving procedure, I wouldn't even think twice. I'd be prodigal in my spending. I'd be exorbitant. I'd drop everything I had. The doctor could demand the clothes off of my body, and I wouldn't hesitate. When Shepard was better, he and I would walk home, because remember I gave him my car. I had to give him everything. We don't got a car now. We'd walk home together. Shepard would have clothes on, and I'd be naked. And I counted a sweet deal. That's fine. I'll walk home naked for Shepard. to save his life, deal, yeah, I'd have a smile on my face. Folks driving by wouldn't, but I would. So maybe, maybe someone would consider a good man so valuable as to be willing to die for him, but really guys, honestly, probably not. He may be a very good man, but tell me, what's that to me? How's it affect me? I don't care if he's that good. I'd be willing to do something to help him. Maybe I do a lot in some cases to help him, but he's not so valuable to me that I'm willing to die to protect him, and that's a good man. Now let's talk about a bad one. Raise your hand if you'd be willing to die to save Barack Obama. Oh, nobody? No takers? Not all at once. Not all at once. Let's have an orderly line to the front. Raise your hand if you'd be willing to die to save Hillary Clinton. How about one of those child molesters over at FCI? Who'd be willing to die for them? Any takers? Crickets? Think of someone who hates you with a passion. Sadly, at least some of us have those. right? Think of somebody who hates you with a passion or think of a person who has harmed you deeply, deeply and lastingly. Are you ready to give your life to save them? Not if quid pro quo has anything to do with it. Anybody want to die for an abortionist? To save him? Anybody want to die for an old worn out prostitute? On her last leg? Anybody want to die for an ISIS Muslim murderer? Oh, no? Of course you don't. Quid pro quo. Neither do I. Not interested. That, my friends, is the big difference between you and me, on the one hand, and God. There's the difference. God doesn't require people to be valuable before he dies for them. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. When we were helpless, when we were weak, when we are sickly, when our souls were shot through with iniquity, ravening lust, merciless hatred, rank pride, that's when Christ died for us. Our condition BC, you know, before Christ, That's what God knew we would be when he decided to put Christ to death for us. His plan is to save sinners, not righteous people. When it comes to the people of God, there is no quid pro quo, this for that. We did evil and we get eternal life. We are evil and we receive eternal life. You're beholding divine love because only God has the power to love a rancid prostitute. Only God has the power to love a pedophile. Only God has the power to love the ISIS murderer. Only God, and folks, He does. He really actually does. Brothers and sisters, hear me. Only God has power to love you. Caught ya. I got ya. Yeah, get him, get him, get him. Yeah, get him. Kill that pedophile. Kill that murderer. Kill those Muslims. Kill that prostitute. Get him, get him, get him, get him, get him. Surprise, you're the pedophile. Surprise, you're the prostitute. Surprise, you're ISIS. Yes, yes, yes. You, even you. And me. Apart from the divine love, the divine restraining love, I'm the prostitute and the pedophile and the murderer. It's me. Only divine love could ever love me. Here's the gospel. Divine love did love me. Divine love did love you. Let's call it the in spite of love. In spite of love. It is the love which hunts us down in spite of what we are, what we've done, and what we deserve. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Well, further, the love of God is displayed by the disproportion between the sinner and the one who dies for him. Disproportion means two things are totally out of whack. One's huge and one's small. So if you say, oh, Dave, Dave, quick, there's a bee behind you. I say, hang on. I run home and I get my 12 gauge. Boom, blow a hole through the wall. There's sunlight coming in. That was a disproportionate response. The response does not equal issue that occasioned it, okay? So the love of God is displayed by the disproportion between the sinner and the one who saves him. The sacrifice is Christ himself. Do you know who dies for you? You know who we're talking about? Interesting historical figure? No, not quite. Christ himself dies, the eternal creator. the person whose hands laid the foundation of the earth and wove the skies. Christ is the one whose powerful word has continued to hold your being up. all your life and all of history before it and all of history after and it continues to do it this very second. When the Romans and Jews together put Christ on the cross, even then Christ held up their being. If he hadn't held them up, they couldn't have held him up to kill him on the cross. Christ had to help his killers kill him. He had to help his killers kill him. They needed his support, like a father who has to stoop and pick up his toddler so she can reach him to slap him in the face. Christ is Lord of Providence. Further, when the murderous Romans and Jews went home to supper that evening, it was a supper prepared by the hands they'd just finished piercing. They enjoyed their supper, their bed, their wife, their children, their wages, and a million other comforts. Every one of them was provided by Jesus lovingly and tenderly. Christ is the infinite Yahweh. He is the source of all beauty, all goodness, all truth. He is joy. He is wonder. He is marvel. His glory is bright. His mind is unknowable. That's the one who was slain for the love of child molesters and prostitutes and ISIS terrorists. See the disproportion? That looks like a shotgun going after the hornet, doesn't it? Disproportion. Wait a second. Is there disproportion? Is it all out of whack? He's infinitely good, we're hopelessly bad. Maybe there's not disproportion. The reason the sacrifice has to be so immense is that the offense was so immense. You know our sin has to be bad if the only way to pay for it is for God to die. Is it disproportionate? On the other hand, if you compare the badness of our sin with the value of Christ's sacrifice, I think we find there is still disproportion. It still is the 12-gauge in the Hornet. Why? Because it's not one-to-one equivalency. The goodness of Christ's death is far greater than the badness of your sin. Did you know that? You say, I am so bad, there is no way God could save me. You're getting too big for your britches. Do you have any idea the value of Jesus's death? There is nothing it can't wash away. There is nobody it can't rescue. He's way too big for you. Is your sin bad? Yeah, it's horribly bad. But compared to the death of Jesus, it's a drop in the ocean. It doesn't matter at all. So if he'd wanted to, Christ by his death could have saved, we say, a thousand worlds of sinners. Is there disproportion? Yes. Yes, the gift far exceeds the transgression. The gift far exceeds the sin which occasioned it. Now if the love of God was given to us in spite of our sinful state, then fundamentally I need to tell you the love of God for us is not based on any good thing in us. It is based on God's own perfect love nature and on Christ's perfect law-keeping and atoning death. But that is so not only when God gives Christ, not only when you're converted, it's so everlastingly. So perhaps you were converted 50 years ago. God's love for you in this sense is no more based on you now than it was then, and vice versa. God's love for you in its deepest sense is never based on you, ever, ever. We know it couldn't be because at the beginning, there was nothing lovely in us for him to base it on. He couldn't say, I love Dave because he's so sweet. I love Dave because he's so nice to everybody. I love Dave because he's really got it all together. There wasn't anything like that. Not from what God can see. And so it can't be based on me, us. By the way, there are, I just said that the love of God is not based on lovely stuff in you because there wasn't anything. There is now. There is loveliness in you now, Christian. Yes, there actually is. The Spirit of God begins working on the sinner the moment he's converted. And from that moment, however small, however hard to see, a divinely wrought, a divinely worked loveliness has begun in the soul. You say, but I know that in my flesh dwells no good thing. So Dave, you have to be wrong. The Bible says we're bad, we're all bad, we're bad all the time. Yeah, yeah, as a sinner you are, of course, outside of Christ you are nothing but bad. Yeah, yes, yes, but you're not outside of Christ, Christian. A divinely wrought loveliness has begun in your soul. Your flesh, your flesh. I know there's no good thing in my flesh. Yes, in your flesh. Christian, you're not in your flesh. Flesh is a term in this sense that refers to a person who is outside of Christ operating under the evil powers. That ain't the Christian. The Christian's been transferred out of the evil kingdom into the kingdom of God's Son. They're in a whole new position. Your flesh is no longer the whole story of you. Thank God, there is a spirit, a holy spirit who inhabits your life now. And that spirit is uncreated, exultant beauty. and he's making you into exultant beauty. The day is coming when that slowly encroaching loveliness which God has started in your soul is going to quit beating around the bush and swallow you alive. So hang on brothers, the day is coming. But if there is a real loveliness in us now, then maybe after all, God's love is based on something in me. Namely, the loveliness which he has put in me. Is that so? No! No! In the deepest sense, God's love for us is never based on us. It is not even based on the loveliness which God works in us. Never. It is based on himself alone. God loves us because God is love. God loves us because we are, not because we are good, but because Jesus is good. God loves us not because we've done right, but because Jesus has done right. God's love for us is simply and wholly and fully based on God. And that means his love for us can never change or be removed from us because God cannot change. In order for God to cease loving you, the Christian, in order for him to love you one iota less than he does right now, he himself would have to change by just that much. You don't have to worry that that's ever going to happen. Okay, so what should we do? Well, just one thing. Would you turn and look to the God of love and be saved? would you turn and look to the God of love and be saved? Look with a look of neediness. Look with a look of longing. Look with hunger. Look with thirst. Look with desperation. Look with poverty of spirit. Look with the sinful wretchedness you were born with. Look that way. Behold Christ crucified. He is the bloody love of God. God's love is infinite. disproportionate, it's unforeseen, it is unpredictable, it is aimed at the most unworthy objects. It isn't based on anything in us, so believe then, and be saved. And enjoy, rejoice in the love of God daily. Enjoy the love of God, and by enjoying it, cut the head off of your sin. Enjoy the love of God and thereby kill your sin. You need to become a sin murderer. A sin murderer like Paul says we have to become. What weapon will you use in your murder of sin? Faith in the love of God as displayed in the justifying death of Christ. That's the weapon you will use and it is the only one. It's the only one that can kill. You go after your sin with some other tool, some other weapon, you're going to get a bad surprise. Go after your sin with faith in the absolutely comprehensive, sufficient, and complete love of God for you as displayed in the death of Christ, and you are going to massacre your sin. What is the application? Simply, have peace. Have peace, have supernatural peace which passes understanding. Do you hear the news of the gospel? Your sins, which are many, are paid for in full. The love of God is eternally and invincibly set upon you. It has been shown. It has been manifested by a historical proof, the crucifixion of Christ. There is not an unbeliever alive whom anyone would ever listen to, who knows anything about anything, who denies that Jesus of Nazareth died on a Roman cross. The unbelievers know it too. Your faith is based, and I don't mean just faith like, yeah, I believe it's true. I mean your faith that hungers for rightness with God, and it looks to God and says, please, oh God, please make me right. I don't want to be this wretched thing anymore. That faith, your faith, is based on a historical fact. The death of Jesus of Nazareth under the Romans, under Pontius Pilate 2,000 years ago, at the instigation of the Jews, followed by a resurrection. Your hunger after God, your longing, your peace is based on that. God in his love has done everything it takes to make you right with him. Perfectly, completely, irreversibly, and invincibly right, right with God. So the application is let your hearts be at peace, Christians. and hope, consider how lavish the love of God that his divine son would die in your place. If he gives this kind of love now, in the present, what will he do in the future? That's what we call Christian divine love gospel logic. If he gives this lavish banquet now, when things are like this in this wretched world, what on earth is coming when he makes all things new? hope in the love of God that's to come. God has promised eternal life and a resurrected world all for you, the Christian, all for us. Let the past and the present love of God fuel your hope for the future love of God and be sustained by that. So believe, enjoy, have peace, and look forward in hope because while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Let's pray. Dear Father, we rejoice in you. Open our hearts to love you rightly, to perceive this great divine and heavenly love. Oh God, open us. My heart is dull, my heart is hard. I cannot worship you as I ought. I cannot perceive the beauty and the sweetness of your love toward us. Oh God, help us. Come down upon us, open us. Unstop our ears, give light to our eyes, and we will rejoice in you, Father. In Jesus' name, amen. Have your attention please, time to begin. That got their attention, didn't it? There is not a whole lot of food, not a lot of food. Children, if you're not going to eat the food on your plate, don't get it. You understand? Parents might want to police that a little bit.