Isaiah 59:1-13 - All Have Sinned

Turn over to Isaiah 59.

Isaiah 59.

We're going through this book of the Bible together, and you might wonder, why are we here today?

Well, it's our normal pattern on Sunday morning to go through books of the Bible.

There's occasions where we'll take a Sunday to do a different passage, or we might at some point do a series on a certain important topic.

But there's a number of reasons why we tend to normally go through books of the Bible, a paragraph at a time, a chapter at a time, a few chapters at a time.

Won't go through all those reasons, but one of the reasons is God has told us to preach the whole counsel of God.

Not just what I think or what might be on my mind or what I'd like to talk about, but what does he actually say?

So when we go through a book of the Bible, half a chapter at a time, paragraph, chapter at a time, it helps us remember, well, this is what God says, and whatever he has for us is important.

So that's why we're here in Isaiah 59 this morning.

It's a dark passage, and it's nevertheless God's holy word.

I'm going to start by reading for us.

We'll look at the first 13 verses today, Isaiah 59, verses 1 to 13.

Isaiah 59:1–13

Indeed, the Lord's arm is not too weak to save, and his ear is not too deaf to hear.

But your iniquities are separating you from your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he does not listen.

For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity.

Your lips have spoken lies, and your tongues mutter injustice.

No one makes claims justly, no one pleads honestly.

They trust in empty and worthless words.

They conceive trouble and give birth to iniquity.

They hatch vipers' eggs and weave spiders' webs.

Whoever eats their eggs will die, crack one open, and a viper is hatched.

Their webs cannot become clothing, they cannot cover themselves with their works, their works are sinful works, and violent acts are in their hands.

Their feet run after evil, and they rush to shed innocent blood.

Their thoughts are sinful thoughts, ruin and wretchedness are in their paths, they have not known the path of peace, and there is no justice in their ways.

They have made their roads crooked, no one who walks on them will know peace.

Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us.

We hope for light, but there is darkness, for brightness, but we live in the night.

We grope along a wall like the blind.

We grope like those without eyes.

We stumble at noon as though it were twilight, we are like the dead among those who are healthy.

We all growl like bears and moan like doves.

We hope for justice, but there is none, for salvation, but it is far from us.

For our transgressions have multiplied before you, and our sins testify against us, for our transgressions are with us, and we know our iniquities, transgression and deception against the Lord, turning away from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering lying words from the heart.

Let's just briefly seek the Lord again.

Lord, we don't want to minimize the weight of your word.

We know that it's here with your authority, and yet we need the Spirit to bring that authority.

It's not my authority, it's the Holy Spirit at work.

So we pray for the Spirit's work today in Jesus' name.

Amen.

One pastor tells the story of how his children wanted to put on a church service for him and his wife.

Kids like to play act, you know, a tea party.

Why not a church service?

And this particular pastor has nine children.

Now, I don't know how many he had at the specific time this happened, but they were mostly young children.

But it's nice because you got many children.

One of them can be the usher, one of them can take you to your seat, can do a prayer, do a song, bang on the trash can lid for the music, you know.

So he and his wife are ushered into the basement for the children's church service they were going to put on for their parents.

And they sit down, there's some songs, a little prayer.

And then one of his sons gets up to preach.

Now, this was not a college-age, you know, son.

This was a this was a child.

And the pastor's thinking, you know, my son hears me every week.

What is it, what is this sermon gonna be?

And the child gets up behind the makeshift pulpit and proceeds to deliver a very brief sermon.

You're all sinners.

Let's pray.

I have to warn you in advance, that's what this sermon is going to be today.

It's gonna be more than one sentence, but that's really the sermon in a nutshell.

All have sinned.

When we move, though, from a children's drama to scripture, there's a there's a big difference.

Children are adorable, they just are.

Sin isn't.

It's grotesque.

Sin is really of itself no laughing matter.

And our passage today is filled up with sin.

We just heard it.

You heard it read.

Look again at verse 2.

Your iniquities are separating you from your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so he doesn't listen.

There's the important summary that indeed all have sinned.

As we work through these first 13 verses today, notice that there's a shift in the pronouns.

You're like, okay, wow, I was, you know, sin is one thing, a grammar lesson, that's even worse.

Look, look at verses two and three.

There, it's your iniquities, your sins, your hands, your iniquity.

Then in verse four, the you, you, you becomes no one.

And then in verse five, it's they hatch viper's legs.

Verse six, their webs, verse seven, their feet, verse eight, they have not known the path of peace.

Why does Isaiah move from you, you, to they, their.

Well, remember that Isaiah is prophesying here to the nation of Israel, especially to Judah and Jerusalem, but that's his first audience.

And yet, under God's inspiration, he's pointing to a deeper and more universal problem in the way this passage develops.

So hold your finger here and turn back over to Romans 3.

All right, hold your finger here in Isaiah 59.

Go back to Romans 3 if you've got your scriptures.

We read this earlier, and I want you to look again specifically at verses 15 to 17 of Romans 3.

There, Paul writes, their feet are swift to shed blood, ruin and wretchedness are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known.

Well, that's from Isaiah 59.

Paul quotes from our passage.

Why does he do that?

If you look here in Romans 3, uh Mike laid some of this out, but Paul is quoting from a number of different Old Testament passages, and he's doing that to make a point.

What's his point?

Well, go back earlier in the chapter, verses 9 and 10.

He gives us the point.

What then?

Are we any better off we Jews?

Not at all.

For we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin.

It's not just Jewish people who are sinners, it's Gentiles as well.

And Paul proves his point by going to Isaiah 59, among other places.

Israel's problem is the world's problem.

So you can go back now to Isaiah 59, but when Isaiah shifts from you, you, to they, there, he's hinting at a very profound point.

Israel's problem is not just Israel's problem, it's everyone's problem.

All have sinned.

And there's one more pronoun shift in the passage, verse number eight.

So verse number eight says, starts, they have not known the path of peace.

Then when you come to verse nine, it says, Therefore, justice is far from us.

We hope for light.

We live in the light.

Verse 10, we grope along the wall.

Verse 11, we growl.

Verse 12, our transgressions.

So Isaiah moves from you to they to we.

Isaiah is not preaching from an ivory tower.

He's including himself among the sinful people.

He's already done that in chapter six.

Woe to me, for I am a man of unclean lips.

Yes, I live in a midst of a people of unclean lips, but I myself am man of unclean lips.

So the message is not you're all sinners, it's we're all sinners.

We all have sinned.

Israel's sin, the world's sin, and our sin.

That's the path that the passage takes, and that's the path we're gonna take in the sermon today.

Israel's sin, the world's sin, and our sin.

So first, Israel's sin, verse three, your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity, your lips have spoken lies, and your tongues mutter injustice.

Isaiah says that Israel is a people of lying lips and bloody hands.

Throughout their history, generation after generation is marked by the rebellion of lying lips and bloody hands.

They come out of Egypt.

God has just rescued them.

They set up a golden calf, and they say, This is your God, O Israel.

Lies.

Lies.

They complain in the wilderness.

But what is complaining?

Complaining is one of two things.

Either, God, I know you're not in control of my circumstances.

I don't like my circumstances.

Well, that's not true.

God's in control.

Or it's God, yeah, you're in control of my circumstances, but you're not doing a very good job with those.

Either way, it's it's complaining is a lie, and that's what they were marked by, time and time again.

The book of Judges shows us that, yes, lying lips and also bloody hands.

Judges chapter 19, you don't have to turn there, but it contains a gruesome story.

Judges 19 · chapter mention

It's probably not the story they're doing in the children's Bible lesson today.

But in Judges 19, there's a Levite traveling with a woman, and they come to a town within Israel, and men of the town assault and rape this woman and leave her for dead.

And the next morning the Levite picks her up, puts her on his donkey, takes the body back to his house, cuts her up into 12 pieces, sends one piece to each tribe of Israel just to try to wake them up to the reality of how violent they've become.

Well, there's no king in Israel during the time of the judges.

Maybe a king could help out.

Doesn't always help out.

Sometimes the kings actually make it worse.

Remember the story of Naboth's vineyard?

There's a man, landowner, he's got a vineyard next to Ahab's palace.

And the king, Ahab, he likes that vineyard.

So he tries to buy it.

And Naboth says, no sale.

So what does Ahab do?

His wife helps him concoct a plan to have two guys lie about Naboth, that he's a blasphemer, so that they can kill him and just take the vineyard.

Lying lips, bloody hands.

And you fast forward to the book of Acts, Stephen preaches this powerful sermon to a group of Jewish people, and he's able to speak to them only because he's been accused of blasphemy by lying men, and they're talking about killing him.

And he's given the stage and he says this You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears, you're always resisting the Holy Spirit.

As your ancestors did, so do you also.

Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute?

They even killed those who foretold the coming of the righteous one, whose betrayers and murderers you've become.

And how do those Israelites respond to Stephen?

They stone him to death.

Now I say all this, no animosity whatsoever in my heart toward Israel.

Our prayer for them should be like Paul's prayer, his heart's desire that they might be saved.

We want more and more Jewish people to come to the Lord Jesus Christ.

But in order to do that, they have to reckon with the reality that they are sinners, because all have sinned.

So we see not only in this passage, Isaiah 59, Israel's sin, when we move into verses 4 to 8, we see the world's sin.

And the world sin is also marked by lying lips and bloody hands.

You could say a lot, but Isaiah seems to highlight those categories especially.

Verse 3, your lips have spoken lies, yes.

Now what about verse 7?

They rush to shed innocent blood.

Is it really just Israel?

No, it's not.

We can go back all the way before Moses, all the way before Abraham, all the way to the beginning in the garden, when the serpent comes along and says, Did God really say, You won't surely die?

It's a lie.

A lie that Adam and Eve believed.

The very first sibling rivalry was not about who gets to play the trash can lids for the children's service for the parents.

The first sibling rivalry was between Cain and Abel, where one son killed the other son.

As you move on in the Old Testament, there's wickedness from the surrounding nations in all kinds of ways, some particularly grievous ways.

Yes, warfare, unnecessary desire to have more territory to kill others, even going so far as child sacrifice.

You can read that in places like Leviticus 20 and Jeremiah 19.

Think of how distorted that is.

God's command of the beginning, be fruitful and multiply.

God loves children, and yet to take those image bearers and sacrifice them.

And we want a better harvest in the future, so let's sacrifice a child now.

We want to be blessed with more family in the future.

Let's kill one of our own children now.

It's a twisted lie that lands in grievous violence.

Here in Isaiah, Isaiah's also had time to call out the people of Israel for their sin.

But even in this book of Isaiah, we've seen him pronouncing judgment against the surrounding nations.

Again, you don't have to turn there, but chapters 13 to 23 are a series of judgment oracles against Babylon, Philistia, Moab, right on down the list.

Israel's problem is the world's problem.

Who killed the Lord Jesus?

The truly innocent one of all innocent ones?

The Greco-Roman world or the Jewish people?

Yes.

The Jews helped to instigate his death, but the Romans were the ones that actually carried it out.

Pilate might have washed his hands, but he didn't change his orders.

He still had bloody hands.

And as we look out, even over the history of the world, we've seen Isaiah's prophecy coming true time and time again.

How much unnecessary bloodshed of image bearers has been shed.

You know, in the Western world, sometimes because technology develops or maybe economy gets a little better, we get the illusion that morality is greatly increasing, that humans are inherently good and they're going to find the answer and the success.

The last century, the 20th century, most estimates indicate that there was more death from warfare in the 20th century than in all the other previous centuries combined.

How can we say, oh, we're we're doing so much, so much better now?

Everything's about to be wonderful.

Humans are going to find within themselves the answer and the solution.

You find lies and blood.

And you might say, okay, well, I mean, it's America did have a civil war, brother against brother.

That was 150 years ago.

That was a long time ago.

Uh, you know, at least we're not like those ancient civilizations that that sacrifice their babies to the fire.

In the last 50 years, 50 million babies killed in America alone.

50 million.

Let's get a better harvest.

Let's sacrifice a child.

Let me let sure my career goals aren't interrupted.

Let's sacrifice a child.

Is it really all that different?

And what often drives that violence are the pressures of sometimes parents, boyfriends, people in the public world assuring women it's okay.

You won't feel any.

It's better this way.

Lies.

Here in Isaiah 59, as we think about the world's sin, we move from Israel's sin to the world's sin.

We don't only move further out, we also start to move further in, into the heart.

It's not merely actions that God cares about.

It's the heart of Israel, the heart of the world.

Look at verse 4, the end of verse 4.

They conceive trouble and give birth to iniquity.

Verse 5, they hatch vipers' eggs.

Verse 7, their thoughts are sinful thoughts.

Cain's problem didn't just start when he actually killed his brother, it started with the anger of his heart, where he began to contemplate what it would be like to kill his own brother.

Genesis 6 gives us the indictment during Noah's day.

And listen to what it says.

It doesn't just say that every action of humanity was rebelling against God.

Genesis 6 tells us every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time.

If you go to Nebuchadnezzar's day, God judges him.

Not when he sets up this giant idol, as sinful as that was.

God judges Nebuchadnezzar, the king, when he's strolling along the roof of his palace and he says, Look at this Babylon that I've built.

Just the prideful thought of his heart was so revulsive to God that that's the point when God chooses to bring him low.

The Ten Commandments reveal the importance of the heart.

Yes, don't steal, don't commit adultery, but what's the very last one?

Don't covet your neighbor's house, your neighbor's wife.

One of the challenges with our world today is that they often think that what you think and feel, as long as it doesn't matter to anyone else, it's it's a category of irrelevant, not not wrong or right.

It's only the things you do that can be wrong or right.

And that's one reason why the world doesn't feel the weight of sin in the way that the Bible outlines what sin is and the way that it goes against God, not only in actions, but also even in thoughts and heart motives.

I mean, if you could, even leaving aside for a fact that there's no perfect place in the world, that cultures vary from one to the other.

You can never totally agree within one culture, even of exactly what's right and wrong.

People think that the only things that are wrong are things that are illegal.

That's just, even if you had a culture that was as good as you could possibly imagine, that had laws that were as just as possible, the things that are illegal are only the tip of the iceberg of what sin is.

And just for the record, I don't believe governments should prosecute covetousness.

So I don't believe scripture encourages governments to prosecute these thoughts of covetousness.

But God will.

And that's the important thing.

The important thing is not what the world around says is right or wrong.

The important thing is not measuring up to my own standard.

The important thing is, am I measuring up to God's standard?

1 John 3, 4, sin is the transgression of the law of God.

So if sin is not measuring up to God's standard, then it makes sense that when the world doesn't measure up to God's standard, when it falls short, there's a separation between humanity and God, which we find in verse number two.

Iniquity separates us from God, and our sins hide his face from us.

That's how Isaiah begins.

He doesn't begin to Israel, or again, by implication here to all the nations, to everyone.

He doesn't begin by saying, Well, you know, your decisions are really hurting your future job prospects, or they're giving you feelings of guilt.

We got to work on those feelings of guilt.

That those things also have consequences.

He says the biggest problem is your sin is separating you from God.

That's the biggest problem in the world.

The biggest problem is not warfare from one nation to the next, that's downstream of the larger problem that the world has turned away from God and God is separated from humanity.

Jonathan Edwards gets it right.

The smallest sin is an act of cosmic treason against the holy God.

Sin cuts off the world from the best relationship they could ever have.

And we don't need to fear the wrath of any person or even government like we need to fear the wrath of the one that can cast soul and body into hell, as Jesus our Lord Himself says.

The world has a sin problem.

And then finally today, we have a sin problem.

Verse number 10, we turn to the we's of the passage.

We grope along a wall like the blind.

Sin is deceptive, it clouds our judgment.

Verse 12 ends, we know our iniquity.

That's almost a tension there.

Well, if if we're blind, how do we know?

It's the Romans 1 story.

People know God, but they intentionally suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

They know in their conscience that judgment is coming, but they press it down, they try to put it out of their minds, out of their lives.

We're all implicated, all have sinned.

And sometimes we can we need to be careful, even as God's people, that we begin to think like we're really, really wildly different than the world around us.

But isn't it true that even in our lives as God's people, sometimes our lives can be larked, can be marked by forms of lying lips and bloody hands?

Leviticus 20, uh, that's a place where God's instructing his people not to give their children over to Molech in sacrifice, the way some surrounding nations do.

And listen to what God says.

Proverbs 24, 11 and 12.

Rescue those being taken off to death, and save those stumbling towards slaughter.

If you say, But we didn't know about this, won't he who weighs hearts consider it?

Won't he who protects your life know?

Won't he repay a person according to his work?

How can we say we didn't know?

We we know about bloody hands, we know.

We just want to stay sometimes in our comfortable sanitized worlds.

You say, well, Micah, what am I supposed to do?

Just quit my job and become some kind of full-time advocate for this or that cause.

No, I'm not saying you need to quit your job.

And then it's gonna look different for different ones of us in how we respond and think about this, but is it on your heart to care?

What do you do when your friend says, yeah, you know, I'm thinking about getting an abortion?

Why are we so quick to say, well, I mean, it's none of my, who am I to say anything?

None of my business.

Wouldn't it be odd?

I'm gonna ask you this seriously, wouldn't it be odd if I was talking to a police officer and I said, So what do you got planned for this week?

And they said, Well, you know, I'm planning to kill someone.

And I said, Well, what do you mean?

And they say, Well, there's this guy on my block, and it's just he makes my life difficult.

He's drunk one day, he's jaywalking the next, and I just think my life will be a little, a little, a little better if I if I just kill him, not gonna torture him, but just kill him.

Don't worry, I cleared it with my boss.

Wouldn't it be weird if I said, Well, I, you know, who am I?

That's the way policing works these days.

I mean, he said he cleared it with his boss.

I don't know.

I I would hope that you'd want me to say, well, please don't do that.

And who is your boss?

We need to get that guy fired immediately.

Do do these considerations about death around us, in sometimes extreme and and and factory-like form, does it take any consideration into our civic life, our life as friends?

Christians can face all kinds of temptation to minimize sin.

And that extends to actions, it extends to the heart as well.

Because remember, Isaiah's told us sin is about the heart, not even just about behavior.

And sometimes Christians can be tempted to kind of split the difference between the world and God's word.

Let me give you an example of that.

The world says, well, you know, your a feeling can't be wrong.

Maybe some actions can be wrong, but not a feeling or a thought.

And then we see in scripture, certain behaviors are clearly condemned by God.

And we're tempted to split the difference.

Okay, so these patterns of behavior, we can't say those are okay because the Bible's clear about that, but we'll split the difference and say, well, as long as you don't actually act on those sinful desires, those sinful desires, you know, it's okay.

That's a lie.

That's that's that's excusing what the Bible says is a part of the sin that, yes, leads to death, it can lead to all kinds of actions, but it's the thoughts of the heart and not merely actions.

We don't want to hide sinful hearts.

We want to expose our sinful hearts.

There's a book called Deeper by Dane Ortland, and he has a very thoughtful chapter on sin.

It's called Despair, the title of the chapter, which even there says something truthful.

But at one point he says, evil is the oceans, not the islands of our internal existence.

You hear what he's saying there.

Sin is not just occasionally we do a wrong thing.

There's something about who we are that doesn't recognize God and that is okay with going against his word, with little thoughtfulness.

Or one other commentator writes, We may very well live in a dark world, but the darkness that first calls for rectification is within.

What about the angry thoughts of our heart toward others?

Doesn't Jesus say in Matthew 5, you've heard it said, don't murder, and whoever murders will be subject to judgment, to judgment.

But I tell you, everyone who is angry with his brother or sister will be subject to judgment.

If you're angry with your spouse, ask, is this really a righteous anger?

You you I think you know what the answer probably is.

Is there someone else in this church?

Is there someone that you just wish would leave this church and never come back?

They might not know your attitude.

The Lord knows it.

And he sees.

Beware that heart of anger.

What about lying lips?

How eager are we to talk about our devotional lives when things are going well?

And when we neglect God, we just uh don't bring it up.

Or if someone asks us, we'll give them a devotional nugget from two months ago, like it was from two days ago.

Because we don't want them to see or know who we are.

Rather than asking for prayer, we lie about the truth.

Isaiah 59 highlights these categories of violence and speech, hands and tongue.

Those are two broad categories, but those categories, as we've seen through example after example in scripture, those categories of lying lips and bloody hands are often connected.

We don't mind slanting the truth to someone that we're angry at.

Isn't that how the internet works in significant ways?

Isn't that why some things are so successfully passed along and retweeted?

We're not concerned so much.

As long as the object of this negative article or post is someone we don't like, we're not as concerned about the truthfulness of it.

But oh, if it's a person that we like, now we're gonna say, well, we've got to fact-check this.

We've got to make sure it's entirely true.

Before you pass along that link that is negative towards some other person or group, ask the question, is this true or am I in the danger of multiplying lying lips?

And then even if you have good reason to believe that it is true, ask, well, why do I want to send this to others?

Is it is it really to help make them better informed or to stir up righteous concern?

Is that really the reason?

Okay, or is it I just want others to share in my vindictive spirit?

Many of us need to, on our internet browsers, have a permanent header from the Charles Wesley hymn.

Ye servants of God, your master proclaim and publish abroad his wonderful name.

Israel's sin, the world's sin, it's it's our sin.

All have sinned.

Our passage today brings us into what's called the doctrine of total depravity.

Now that that doesn't mean every person is as bad as they possibly could be.

That's not what scripture says or that I'm saying.

We could all be worse if it wasn't for God's restraining grace.

But it does help us see that every part of us, from our thoughts to our hearts, to our lips, to our hands, every single part of us is tainted and captured by sin as we come into the world.

I know it's been a dark passage, uh, but it doesn't do us any good to paper over the reality.

You imagine if you had a doctor and you had some chest pain and you went to see the doctor, and he looks at the scan and sees that you're riddled with lung cancer.

And he comes back out and sits down with you, and you say, Doc, give me some good news.

He says, Oh, okay, I will.

It's looking pretty good.

Here's some Tums.

If you have some chest pains, pop a couple of these, you should be okay.

That's malpractice.

It makes you feel better in the moment, but it doesn't help your actual health in the long run.

Isaiah is a good doctor.

He's bringing us into the reality of how severe the problem is.

Micah, come on.

I mean, it's it's almost Christmas.

We got the decorations.

Can't we talk about mangers or something?

Why do you think Christ came?

And that's a serious question.

If you're maybe visiting today or just here because it is holiday season, I'll check out church.

Why did Christ come?

I wonder as I wander out under the sky.

Leave aside your phone for just two days and force yourself to think, what is the purpose of life?

Why am I even here?

Why did Jesus actually come?

Once more from Dane Ortland, he says, fallen humans are factories of filth.

And he he goes on, if you plunge down only a little into self-despair, you will rise only a little into joyous growth in Christ.

So this sermon has not been a passage of hope, I know, because the passage hasn't been a passage of hope.

I mean, even the way that it starts out, the Lord's arm is not too weak to save, okay, and his ear is not too deaf to hear, and yet your sins have separated you.

He's not listening to you.

So the passage moves from some kind of potential, like the Lord can do it, but will he do it?

And this particular passage just takes you further and further down into despair.

Not to leave you there, but it's where we're gonna be left today.

Now, the service itself had hope.

If you were listening to the songs we sang, if you were listening to Joy's testimony, there's there's hope there.

But if you want hope in the sermon, you gotta come back next week.

So if you're visiting, you might as well come back next week, because this chapter is going to progress to give the hope of what the Lord has done.

So we're not wanting to wallow in self-despair, but we've got to spend time there so we can understand the glory of all that God Himself has accomplished.

Now, before I close in prayer, let me hasten to say if you're in despair of heart today, don't wait till next Sunday.

Come talk to someone afterwards.

We're more than happy to talk with you after the service is over today.

But may God help us to see ourselves for who we truly are.

Let's pray.

Lord, who are we that we could even speak to you?

A holy God, when the sins of our hearts and our thoughts, our jealousy and our coveting ways, our anger and our intention to deceive.

That even our thoughts and motives are enough to separate us from you as the righteous and holy God.

And yet we know that it's your goodness to bring us to repentance.

It's your goodness to see our desperate condition.

It's your goodness to help us to know we cannot rescue ourselves.

We can't change ourselves.

No mere politician, not even the good influences of family and friends can change a leper spots.

But we wait on you, and our hearts wait on you, because where else can we go?

You alone have words of eternal life.

So even as we sing, that we would sing, expressing our need, expressing our hope, and even through song, expressing confidence that we can have as we come to the Lord Jesus Christ.

We pray these things in the name of your only and all glorious Son.

Amen.