The Love of God

[00:00:00] One John, chapter four, eight. [00:00:08] He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love. [00:00:17] Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God sent his only begotten son into the world, that we might live through him. [00:00:32] Herein is love. [00:00:35] Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. [00:00:50] Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. [00:01:02] And then in chapter three, the previous chapter, verse 16, hereby know we love because he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. [00:01:38] On Friday evening you will remember that we sought very, very swiftly to travel the scriptures and to find out what really was the theme of the Bible. In a few words, you remember we said that the Bible is not an encyclopedia, not even a spiritual encyclopedia. [00:02:12] The Bible is not just holy scripture, it's not just a volume, a book. [00:02:22] The Bible is a message from God to humanity with the one aim of putting into humanity's hands the key to the universe and to the humanity we were all part of and to God's redemption and to God's purpose for man. [00:02:52] And you remember we said that the tragedy amongst the people of God, amongst all of us and the people of God generally, is that we have the Bible, we have the scriptures, we've got all much knowledge of different parts of the scriptures. We can call the scriptures, we can turn the scriptures, and yet we have not, we are not in profession really of the essential message of the scriptures. [00:03:23] Somehow or other we get so taken up with all the different and by ways that we miss the real point of the scriptures. And we remember on Friday we went through the scriptures from the beginning, the first three chapters where we found two things, one or two things. We found princes. Marriage was instituted for a very real reason. And then we found after that there were certain precious metals found in that river that flowed out. From then we looked at the end of the Bible and we found here was the thing typified had come to pass. There was a bride, a wife of the land, and they were being brought together eternally and forever. We found too that the materials, those things that were there in the bed of the river in the first chapter of the Bible had been worked. They had been, as it were, taken out of the earth and had been worked upon. And there we found at the end of the Bible a city which was the eternal dwelling place of God. [00:04:34] So either we found the beginning of the Bible and the end of the Bible corresponding intimately and accurately then we were, you will remember, we started to look right through the scriptures of all the figures and the metaphors that were used from the beginning, right the way through. We went to things like the tabernacle and the temple, and then on to such terms as the vine and the bride and the body and the household of God and the house of God and so on, all these different terms. We found that salvation was never an end in itself. We found that the scripture never teaches anywhere that salvation is an end. It always teaches that salvation is only a beginning. It is the primary thing. But salvation was a means to an end. All that salvation is to put us back into God's original purpose, to put us back onto the course, to put us back into the thing that he has ever desired. And you remember that we summed it all up in this way. The one great difficulty that has face the Holy Spirit from the beginning has been to put the great eternal longing and desire of God into human language in a way which will put us in possession of an understanding of goddess. So there's danger in taking these metaphors and figures in a childish way, getting wrapped up with the symbolism. [00:06:20] But we've got to ask the Lord that we might be led from these human figures of speech, these metaphors, these human metaphors and figures beyond them to the reality that the Holy Spirit is trying to express. He takes up this thing and tries to express it through this. He takes up that and tries to express it through there. He takes this life in the old testament and symbolically, he typifies it and illustrates it in this life and again and again. [00:06:55] And Paul, in the end, tells us that this thing, which has been only seen in a shadowy way, in a sort of dim way, through the darkness, very, very vaguely and in an abstract way, he says it's now being revealed utterly clearly. He calls it the mystery, this mystery which has now been unveiled to us. What is this mystery? Well, to put it again in human languages, that, of course, again, is human language. It's a figure. Again, it's something that belongs to this life that we can understand, a home, something that's temporal, something that is transient, something that belongs to earth, a home. But a home is only a picture of an eternal reality. [00:07:55] God's great desire is to have a home, to have a vessel, to have a body, to have something that he can rest in, something that he can become part of, that can become part of him, something that corresponds to him, something that is an integral part of his being, in which he's really at home. Not in the office, not out visiting friends, but himself at home. [00:08:22] Absolutely at home. [00:08:26] Oh, we could spend so long again just looking at different figures, things that just show this rest of God. God seeking his rest. [00:08:38] Well, this morning I want to leave that. We dealt with that on Friday, and I must leave that with you. [00:08:47] I want this morning to go one step deeper. [00:08:52] And I want us to ask ourselves one very simple question. [00:08:57] Why, really, has God persevered over millenniums of human history to get this hope? [00:09:09] Is there anything, anywhere in the word that the Lord has revealed to us that in any way can give us some understanding as to why the Lord has so sent his whole being upon the obtaining and the profession of this home? [00:09:27] What is it? It is found here in one John, chapter four. It simply says it in three words. God is. Is love. [00:09:41] God is love. It does not say God has love. It does not say God loves. [00:09:48] It does not say that one aspect of God is love. It says God is love. [00:09:55] That means that love is God. [00:10:02] Now, let us be very clear that we're not talking about that sentimentalism or that partial thing or that natural thing that we so often understand by the term love. [00:10:18] God is true love. Not the perverted thing we find in ourselves, the thing that gives rise to all the strife, quarreling, jealousy, faction. [00:10:33] God is love. The real thing, the thing that at the very beginning he intended us to express and to be, as it were, a tangible evidence of God is love. And everything else takes its rise from the fact that God is love. God's truth, God's holiness, God's grace, God's mercy, God's anger, God's jealousy, God's wrath, God's judgment, all these things spring out of the fact that God is love. There will come a day when God's love will be so utterly vindicated that we shall understand such things as hell. We shall understand such things as judgment. We shall understand such things as the anger of God, because his love will be vindicated. [00:11:38] Behind all these expressions of the character of God is this one basic, fundamental, essential thing which we call life. We sang it in one of our hymns together. His name is love. [00:11:53] His name is love. [00:11:57] God is love. [00:11:59] Now it is because God is love that he has persevered over the millenniums of human history to obtain this vessel, this home for himself. You must not, and I must not, we must not ever think that God is legal, that God is somehow ethereal, theoretical. Oh, the evangelical world has so often depicted the Lord as someone who is removed from life, someone who is sort of far away someone who is so very ethereal and theoretical. [00:12:43] But we understand God in terms of practice. [00:12:53] We understand God from this as one who, because he is love, has had to express himself. [00:13:05] We shall never be part of the. We shall never become part of his being, as it were. We shall never become integrated to be the body of the Lord Jesus in which God shall be admired and wondered at by the whole universe. [00:13:25] Unless we understand that it was the love of God that reached out to us and the love of God that persevered over us and the love of God that in the end, God is there. [00:13:38] You see, it's God love. When God sets his love upon us, it's a tremendous thing. You see, we think, of course, of God's love in a sentimental way so often because we understand it through this kind of natural love that we all have. And therefore we think of it being a kind of wishy washy, vague kind of thing that doesn't do anything definite or is not at any time angry. But you see, when you look at the love of God in scripture, you will find such strange words as this. [00:14:15] He chase us or chastise us, everyone whom he loveth. And Spurgeon is the Son whom he receives. [00:14:27] This is the kind of love that's gone, the love that is prepared to put us into the frame of a trial. [00:14:37] Because in the end it will be in it the kind of love that is prepared to devastate us at the beginning. Because in the end we should worship before him, prostrate for what he did. [00:14:56] It is the kind of love that does not take account of our queries and questions and quarrels and rebellions and murmurings whilst we are being put into the place. [00:15:09] But it's the kind of love that they fastly go wrong doing because it has a glorious which will be utterly justified. [00:15:22] God is love. [00:15:27] It is a wonderful thing to think, if you sit back and think about it, that our salvation, which always in scripture is, we are told the expression of God's love. We are told that we know. We know that he loves us because he gave himself. [00:15:43] God is a practical. [00:15:45] He doesn't say, you've got to love me. You've got to believe that I love you by faith. [00:15:51] You've just got to somehow deceive yourself into believing that I love you. I won't give you any evidence for it, but you've just got to believe. [00:16:00] God has given us the greatest evidence that any man or woman could ever wish to have. What is this evidence? He gave up his being on the cross to death, he gave himself in the person of his son to death. For us, the propitiation for our sins. God our savior. [00:16:24] God our savior. This is the evidence that he has put into our hands of a love to write. [00:16:35] If we can only understand that we've understood the first thing about the love of God. God does not expect us to believe that he loves us without any evidence. God has given us the greatest, the most total thing that we could be given as evidence of his love. When a man dies for another, that is the total cost. [00:16:59] You could do no more if I loved you so much. That I was prepared to die in your place. That is the most, the uttermost thing I could do for you. To prove my love. I could do no more. [00:17:13] Write books about you, write hymns about you, sing your praises. Oh, that can be very easy. That can be very easy. It can almost be cheap. [00:17:29] But to actually sacrifice my own existence and being here on earth for you. [00:17:37] Would be the most final thing I could do. [00:17:42] Greater love hath no man than this. For the man lay down. As much as the Lord has proved his love. And by laying down his very being, I lay down my life. [00:18:00] He had laid down his life for us, given himself up. [00:18:06] Of course, we could say that the life of the Lord Jesus. From the beginning to the end. Is an expression of love. The very fact that he came into this sin ridden world. In the way in which he did come into. And the way in which he slayed as a carpenter. The way in which he was misunderstood by sinful men and women. The whole thing of an expression of. [00:18:27] But the scripture always says that it was his name down in his life on the cross. [00:18:34] That is the evidence of his life. [00:18:39] We understand that if we've taken hold of that, we've come to our knowledge of him. We've been saved by his grace. But what is this? [00:18:48] What is this? That's not the beginning. [00:18:51] God's love didn't save us just like that for that over. He didn't just save us out of sin as a kind of lovely little ornament. [00:19:02] And many christians think that's all it is. You've been saved, and that set is wonderful. Now you're saved, you could have a sin, and that's all. [00:19:12] What is one wonderful thing? To seek the salvation another. [00:19:16] Oh, that we could see that God hasn't saved us of something in itself. He saved us to bring us in the end, to be part of himself eternally. What does it mean to be a body? [00:19:30] What does it mean to be the body of the Lord Jesus, but to be an integral part of him, to become so essentially part of him, that in a rite where he cannot do without us, what we cannot do without him, what an amazing thing it is that our salvation is a common salvation. [00:19:49] Our salvation has brought us to be members of Christ and members one of another. We have come into a place in which we have become one entity. [00:20:01] And in the end, we find at the end of the Bible that this city of God, in which God comes to dwell forever, as I said on Friday, is so much part of God, and God is so much part of it that you cannot distinguish what is his people and what is God. They have become absolutely worthless now. That's the love of God. Why should God persevere with wayward, sinful, rebellious, difficult human flesh such as us? [00:20:38] He isn't persevered. The whole record of scripture is one of the most haughty people yet. People that have been saved by his grace and people that he has perseverance and people, as I may put it that way. That is love. [00:20:58] Love is the realization of Jacob. Have I loved. There is no other explanation for Jacob than that God loved him into Israel. [00:21:10] He loved him and loved him and loved him and loved him. And God's love meant that Jacob was utterly dead. [00:21:19] That was love. [00:21:23] He gave him a limp for the rest of his life. That was love. [00:21:28] That he loved you into being the father of his. [00:21:36] So we can understand something of this God, great object is his eternal dwelling thing. He wants something. Do you honestly really believe that this universe is everything? Do you really, do you think that this little pinprick of time is everything that God has ever thought, with all its sin, with all its misery, with all its sorrow, with all its perversion? You think that this little universe, numbered by packed 6000 years, is everything that God can, can think of? It's exhausted God. [00:22:13] Genius. Do you think that this, this perverted, sinful, ruined world is not anything? [00:22:27] Anything? [00:22:29] It's not anything. [00:22:31] When we think of the ages that I had on, what's going to happen? What is God going to create? What new world of identity? What is God going to do? [00:22:44] But you see, to do it all, he must have purpose to drink it. [00:22:51] The scripture says quite clearly that man is the heart of it all. God has given man dominion. It says in 9th Psalm. And the whole point of the Lord Jesus is Mandev, is that he has triumphed. Where Adam fails. [00:23:09] Now, God is going to bring a people, a new man to take possession at the heart of the ages of the ages that are yet to be. [00:23:23] Well, it says here that God is now. [00:23:30] That's why God is persevering with us. That's why God goes on with us. That's why God deals with us. That's sometimes why God is angry with us. That's why God puts us through different things. He scourges us. He chastises us because of his love. He has an ultimate thing in view. Something at the end, something. [00:23:52] Oh, something so utterly glorious. That we shall thank the law for every single thing that ever happened to us, if in any way used by him to get us there. [00:24:05] But I want also to say something more on the practical side. Every one of us, we all need it. I need it. You need it. [00:24:16] We are told here that because God is love, love, true love, divine love, not our love, but divine love is the key, the real key to emphasis. [00:24:36] Without it, it is of no value to the Lord. Nothing is of any value to the Lord. You can give your body to be burned. [00:24:44] You can preach till you have lost your voice, you can work till you've got dead. But there's nothing of any value to the Lord unless love is the key to it. God is love. Therefore God looks for love. God must have love, because God is love. He can only understand love. And he will not accept anything that does not spring out of love. [00:25:10] Oh, the Lord's people. We. We and the Lord's people could understand how violently the Lord is against just legal practice, against high bound duty. [00:25:24] Oh, how he reacts against it. Why was the Lord so full of all when he touched the Pharisees? The Pharisees were such good people. People have tried to blacken the name of the Pharisees. But you and some of them, more scholarly interpretations of the pharisaic party, and you will discover that the Pharisees are very much like ourselves. Good living, decent, upright, moral people, church going people. People who believed in their scriptures from beginning to end. [00:25:56] But the Lord's reaction against them was violent, because it was all legal. It was duty. They thought. They thought that they were suffering for the sake of God, living for God and serving God. He said himself, you'll go to the end of the world to make one prophet. [00:26:21] That's something, you know, go that way. [00:26:27] And yet the Lord said, and then he greeted more a child of the devil. [00:26:38] You see, one corinthians 13 gets to the heart of the whole thing. [00:26:44] It just simply tells us that God writes up everything. [00:26:48] If the heart of the whole thing is not love, it is most remarkable that in this letter, which deals with the, and the practical expression of the church, his unity and all these other things that were prevalent at Corinth. And then Paul comes to that marvelous chapter twelve when he talks about the body and its functions, its gifts and everything else. Then all of a sudden, just when you expect him to get onto something even more marvelous, he suddenly says. And there he says, though we speak with the tongues of angels and of men and have not love, we are no less. And at the end of it, he says, love is the way. [00:27:34] Love is the way. [00:27:36] So therefore, it simply means this, that if God is going to get his home, he has provided us with all the means, becoming part of his by laying down his life, he says that we cannot become part of that home unless we go the same way. [00:27:56] What is love? [00:27:58] Love is when we lay down our lives. [00:28:02] None of us can speak as though we have attained my channel. You cannot in this matter. [00:28:09] Love is when we have laid down our love for the Lord and for one another. [00:28:23] When that happens, the church comes into being in a practical way. [00:28:33] Love is the way you remember. That's one of the great messages that the Holy Spirit brought to the seven churches once, to a very good church, the church they had existed. [00:28:47] There was nothing wrong about them. They were sound, they were keen. There was much work, there was much labor. There was very real steadfastness and faithfulness. They proved those that called themselves apostles and found they were not and put them out. [00:29:04] As far as things go, they compare with the other fix. Judges very well abhor, cry out, statue. And in spite of everything that is so good and so wonderful, all the activities of service, the testimony, the work, the devotion that there was there in so many ways, the Lord said, if you do not repent and come back, that so far, I will remove the candles. [00:29:40] In the eyes of the law, the church's ephesus was as bad as the church of liberty. [00:29:48] He told both of them he would remove the temples. [00:29:52] And the reason was that they had left their son. [00:29:58] So you can see that if our service is duty, if our service is just to offense, that we ought to, if our service is from an eagle motive, it is of no use to God. We might as well give up now. [00:30:16] We might as well Covid personally, if love is not the key to it all. [00:30:27] God is love. [00:30:30] God is love. [00:30:32] And because God is love, the one thing is purpose of flame, of love in us, we can have everything else. But if we haven't got the flame of love for it, how very practical, really, that is when it comes down to life, those of us who had any responsibility in the work, Lord's work, how easy it is, the work. Take over from last duty. Take the place of real personal devotion to the Lord Jesus and to one another. How do you love the Lord Jesus? By loving each other. [00:31:22] The way we love the Lord Jesus is by loving the members as a part of him. Through them we weeps, we give a cup of cold water to one. Even an unsafe person gives a cup of water to one shall not go without a reward. [00:31:40] The last day you see the members of the Lord Jesus are in the eyes of God, the heart of Christ. What you do today, you do to the Lord Jesus. How you react to them is your reaction to the Lord Jesus. The way you cherish them is the way you cherish the Lord Jesus. There's no bigger lie. Say that we love the Lord Jesus and can't love one another. [00:32:10] And one of the ugliest things of all in lovable who want to go on with the Lord is in any way to be those who are just found with an answer or less of truth. [00:32:33] Of course, we have this natural thing. [00:32:37] And this natural thing is powerful. [00:32:41] This natural thing has got a thing of heroin. [00:32:47] It's got a poison. [00:32:50] And this natural thing, if we take it to be the love of God, can cause every side is just sheer self centered wishes to be taken. No, someone wants to be packed and put past. That's not the love of God. [00:33:13] Every one of us ought to so lay down our lives that we don't expect anything from anyone else. But we do believe that we've got to love when we get to that place. We've got to the place of the Lord Jesus. I believe it was a battle the Lord Jesus had to get to. Was he going to love? Adidas took a great step when he came into the fire. He walked this world of one who never loved everyone. [00:33:46] He lays down his life at the beginning. [00:33:50] I believe that's why a one like John is so entered into this intimate union with the Lord Jew. Because he was one who loved him so deeply. And I believe that's why Mary with her alabaster flower flew into me. An intimate understanding. For all these were the few people that really loved him, really loved him, were devoted to him. [00:34:19] But even there, you see, nearly all failed Lord Jesus. But I believe the Lord Jesus had got to at the very beginning, he came on the ground that he did not expect to delight. It made down his life and hold now I know in saying this that I could be judged very severely on many of these words and so could all be judged here. For believe me, it's one of the greatest tragedies that we can ever take our natural love as being the love of God. [00:35:04] You read in that little scripture that we read together, this very interesting verse. [00:35:10] It says, herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God has sent his only begotten son into the world that we might live through. [00:35:23] God is love. [00:35:26] How do God manifested in us? By living through us. We live through the Lord Jesus. The love of God will be manifested if we understood more of the love of God, the love of God and not this other thing that we have, which is so powerful, we should find that we were growing, all earth were growing much more spiritually because we were going out. [00:35:56] We always stop growing spiritually when we center upon ourselves in any shape or form, wealth. [00:36:04] And as soon as we do that, we become a net of evil things, every kind of evil thing. [00:36:15] The key is to come to the lawn in a new way. [00:36:21] And this whole question of laying down our lives, the way in which God loves us, is the way in which God expects us to love him and to love one another. How do we love him? By loving each other. [00:36:41] What is the way we lay down our life? [00:36:46] No one wants to lay down their lap. I don't. [00:36:50] I'd like to meet someone who wants to lay down their lap. [00:36:53] Really wants to lay down their. [00:36:57] No one wants to lay down their lap. Your fast means if you lay down your life, you'll be probably tipped. [00:37:06] People will use you as a doormat. You'll be lonely, you'll be forgotten, you'll be overlooked. I lay down my life and never utter a peep about other people. And the way they speak herein is love. [00:37:22] That he lays down his life for us. We ought also to lay down our lives for the brethren. [00:37:31] Is it not remarkable that John says a thing? And John's always giving us problems like this? But John says when he spoke of here in Islam that he sent his son to be the appreciation of our sins. Beloved, we are also beloved. We are also so beloved. [00:37:52] Did you hear that? [00:37:54] In the way in which God sends his tongue of our sins, those is the word. So says John. We ought also to love. We also ought to love one another if God so loves us. Because if God so loves us, we ought always. [00:38:22] The way in which God loves us is the way in which God expects us to love him and to love one another. How do we love him? By loving each other. [00:38:35] What is the way we lay down our life. [00:38:40] No one wants to lay down their life. I don't. [00:38:43] I'd like to meet someone who wants to lay down their life. [00:38:47] Really wants to lay down their life. [00:38:51] No one wants to lay down their life. You're questioning that. If you lay down your life, you'll be clodding on, kicked. [00:38:59] People will use you as a doormat. You'll be lonely, you'll be forgotten. You'll be overlooked. You think if I lay down my life and never utter a peep about other people and the way they treat me and the rest of it, I should be forgotten? [00:39:17] I should be just left completely out? [00:39:25] How do we laugh? By laying down our life. [00:39:30] There is nothing else in the vocabulary of God that is love. [00:39:37] So let us remember this, that all the other things so often we think of as love, if they do not issue from the cross at the heart of it all, it's not love. [00:39:48] It is this counterfeit thing that is natural and it will break down. I know so many. I know myself, I know for many who are responsible of the Lord for so partially, oh, so partially, when it comes to this question of openness, of embroidery, of inclusive, oh, how very, very powerful we can be if we've got this natural thing. [00:40:21] We can. We can gloss it all over in spiritual terms to talk about those that have seen and those that haven't seen in all the rest of us. [00:40:28] But what is love? Did the Lord Jesus only love those that poor? [00:40:35] Do you think that in the Lord Jesus only went to the cross for those that? If so, I do believe that only Mary would have alabaster flask and John, possibly his mother, and just that one. They were the only other end of two years of ministry and 33 years of life here had understood any at all of what he was doing. [00:41:04] Did he only die for them? Did he only love them? [00:41:08] Did he not love even Judas? [00:41:12] Did he ever. Did he ever take any action against Judas? Did he ever exclude you? Did he ever stop Judas from being in an. [00:41:21] Did he ever refuse to let Judas see into his heart? [00:41:27] You reap, and you will be very surprised. [00:41:31] Lord Jesus and I change Christ. [00:41:38] That's love. [00:41:43] Now, I'm not shaming the deep, but the thing we call sentiment is to take over, because when Judas tells us there was no coming back, love works both ways. [00:42:07] What I am saying is this, that when the Lord Jesus was here, he was the expression of God in his mouth. [00:42:15] And he not only went to those that saw and loved him, and I believe he loved them, especially from what he took them in. [00:42:23] John was always leaving what he said, but he never allowed the fact that they had seen to claim anything, oh, peculiar, particular. [00:42:36] His love was for the whole world. You and I were loved by the Lord Jesus when he came. [00:42:44] Oh, if we could understand that. What a difference it had made to everything for service. Well, I'm only simply saying that if we haven't got this love, if this love is not the real secret, then everything that we do, what we say, our singing, our praise, our ministry, our service, our activity is just a meaning. [00:43:09] How will God really get us to them? [00:43:13] Bowling down our lines. Because we love him. Because we love our. And that's a total thing to do. It means that everyone will have to face a big issue, another, a very big issue, another. [00:43:29] It's all up to lay down our lives if we should be loved for it and care and cherished because we've gone that way. [00:43:38] It's another thing to go that way and be prepared for all that is entailed in coming to an end. And that's what it is. To lay down our life is to come to an end. [00:43:55] That's the way God builds his house. [00:43:59] The city at the end is the personification of God. [00:44:04] Why are the blinds brought together? [00:44:09] The personification and consummation of love? [00:44:14] I don't believe stuff in it. But then we can all blossom in love for the Lord and for one another. That would be a terrible caliber. I believe that if we're going to be part of such a thing, then we shall have found that we have been part of it now. [00:44:31] We have learned to love by his love now. [00:44:38] And when they learn that expires of the other, I trust that that will not just be dismissed as something we've heard again and again or something that we all just agree to and do nothing about. [00:44:58] I trust that really it will mean that all of us, everyone of us, myself included, will really take such an issue through the law and really seek to so love and feel ourselves. [00:45:24] Lord, thou knowest how afraid of this matter of love we are because of the faintness and coldness of our hearts and because of our inner consciousness of the cost, are really loving in the way that thou didst love us. [00:45:43] But, o our father, thou who dost so dwell in the praises and the worship of thy people. [00:45:50] O Lord, we cry to thee that thou wilt make us those in whom that flame of love is growing stronger and stronger. [00:46:03] Lord, don't let us escape the issues. Don't let us evade them. Don't let them just don't let us just believe them, o Lord, please. [00:46:12] But, o our father, we pray that thou thyself. Make thyself responsible for taking hold of all this and really challenging each one of us. Myself and every one of us, Lord. Challenging us over it all. Thou knowest it, our father. Thou art able to do it. Thou art love, O Lord. And we know that thou art desiring more than anything else that we should so love thee and each other and this world around us. Us, Lord. Therefore hear us and afresh baptize us in thy love. For we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. [00:46:51] And to him be all the glory.