The Holy Spirit speaks through the Word of God, guiding believers in decisions, convicting of sin, and bringing renewal to those who listen. The Old Testament reveals many lessons about the Spirit’s work, how His light directs our steps, how Scripture exposes disobedience, and how obedience unlocks the Lord’s response. The Word of God, living and active, never returns empty but brings real change to those who honour and trust it. True spiritual life and power grow quietly yet surely where God’s Word is read, believed, and obeyed.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] You know that sometimes the sermons do good for the preacher. And one of the blessings, one of the good things that have come out of just this year in our going through about the Holy Spirit is that I learned that the Old Testament has an awful lot to say about the Holy Spirit. Although we in terms of understanding the doctrine of the Holy Spirit are leaning very heavily upon what the New Testament tells us subsequent to Jesus coming and Jesus having his mission and much of the teaching of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament is the outcome of his successful mission on earth and returning to heaven and he and the Father sending the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. but nonetheless there is much to be learned about the person of the Holy Spirit

[00:01:00] from the Old Testament and I’ve been sort of forced to discover that in our going into that question in our Sunday morning sermons. And so today I wanted to have a talk on some blessings, some benefits of the learning of the Holy Spirit that we can achieve through the Old Testament. And so I have five or six things, I don’t know whether I’ll get through the whole six, of these blessings that are ours, these benefits that are ours from going deep into the teaching of the Old Testament about the Holy Spirit. We’ll start with Psalm 119, we won’t read all the verses, but Psalm 119 and verse 105 is going to tell us something that is a great benefit of learning from the Scriptures about the Holy Spirit and how he works.

[00:02:00] And that working has to do with the connection between the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, and the Word of God. And the Word is a major topic coming through the Old Testament. And this verse, as you read on the screen, your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. I don’t know whether you’re a person that’s got good eyesight. My eyesight has been very good, as long as you don’t expect colour vision out of it, but my eyesight has been very good down through the years. But not always have my feet been as nimble these days as they used to be when I was young. And when you’re out in the real dark, there’s something you need to light up immediate soil that you’re about to tread on, or whether there’s a step that you didn’t know was there.

[00:02:56] And when it talks about a lamp to my feet, the illustration is actually of that sort of light, not so much to shine up the distant things, but to let you know where to put your feet. Have you ever been in a circumstance in life where the circumstances were such that you weren’t sure just how to step? Well, the Bible brings an answer by acting as a word that is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. It’s talking not only of physically, but metaphorically of the fact that the normal Christian life requires a number of decisions to be made that sometimes is pretty tricky. But spiritually, it’s even more the case that we are in need of having the Holy Spirit help us to make decisions and to allow us to have guidance.

[00:03:59] Often you make mistakes with your guidance, but you need the Word, which is the Scriptures, to act as a lamp to your feet. It’s a very important part of why we need the Scriptures. And the Old Testament, because of the size that it is, if you count the verses compared to the New, there’s an enormous amount of wisdom that is therein to be found. And it can act as a real example, a real means whereby we can know how to put our feet. I’m going to be moving through a little quickly so I can see how many of the six I get to, because they get more interesting as you travel down. But the second one is, that the Word of God does, is it acts as a bit of an expose. It’s amazing how the Scriptures can come to light on a certain moment that you’re needing guidance,

[00:05:02] and they give you a way to look at it, that you would never come to yourself. And turn with me please to, in the second instance, to our verse that we have, and it is in Isaiah, and chapter 58, and I think it’s about verse, let me see where it is, one to three. So, is that what you’ve got? Verse, that’ll do. Verse one to three. Cry aloud, do not hold back, lift up your voice like a trumpet, declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins. Now, the house of Jacob is Israel, and the lesson nonetheless is not only to people living in Israel, but for us now who are Christians. We have inherited much of the wisdom that God revealed through the Old Testament. And one of the needs that we have is for God to shine a light on our sins.

[00:06:04] And some of the revelation that comes through the Bible isn’t only just to tell you the doctrines, isn’t only that you might know the true items to be believed. We carried out a communion service that we do because of how the Scriptures teach us to remember how Jesus died for us. But it is also to be a bit of a trumpet blast about our sins. And in the case of the children of Israel, they were having lots of different issues that came along where they got off the track. And when a prophet came, he didn’t come just to give them some encouragement alone, but sometimes he had to come to give them a blast, a trumpet blast to the house of Jacob for their sins. This particular passage in verses 1 to 3, it says, Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways. That’s how they’re thinking of themselves.

[00:07:06] As if they were a nation that did righteousness. And actually the rest of the teaching in that Isaiah, those chapters, is about the fact that they were doing many things that displeased God, for which reason he wasn’t going to cooperate. And they’re busy saying, you know, worship the Lord, go to the temple. And he was saying, but I’m not listening. And he comes and tells you when you’re doing something wrong. It’s one of the features of our Christian life that we enjoy, where we have the Holy Spirit’s ministry more deeply than did the ones of the Old Testament. They sometimes needed a prophet to come and tell them. But when you become a Christian, as the Bible teaches us, how we can by coming to Christ and knowing him in our personal lives as our saviour,

[00:08:01] the Holy Spirit comes as an indwelling blast giver, if you like. The Bible talks about the fact that there is a peace of God that’s rather instructive. And the peace of God is instructive when suddenly you realise that it isn’t telling you that you’ve done the right thing, but it tells you that you’ve been taking a wrong step. Or telling you that you’ve had a wrong attitude. Or telling you that you haven’t come to God the way he wants you to. And actually what happened when some of the Old Testament people were busy going and doing all that the law requirement and all that they had learned was the worship of the Old Testament, they were assuming God would then listen to them. But he was saying in these chapters in Isaiah, you think that I’m listening, but I want to tell you that I’m not.

[00:08:59] And a part of what the Old Testament scriptures are good at doing is for telling you when you’re doing something off colour or something that isn’t what God wants. and that’s a very precious thing for us to have happen I’ll keep on moving because I do want to get to the later ones let’s understand about the Old and the New Testament again that under the Old Covenant the Holy Spirit involvement was primarily to empower specified, special, specific individuals for particular tasks and so the Holy Spirit did come on Old Testament people and there were times when he used them but that’s different to in the New Testament era after Jesus has accomplished his mission the Holy Spirit gains a role which is not just a role for a few specially chosen individuals I’m thinking about Samson I’m thinking about Gideon

[00:10:01] I’m thinking about Moses or Joshua Saul who did the right steps with God’s help by the Spirit but then made a mess of it? I’m thinking about the fact that the New Testament tells us that God takes on board everybody who’s one of his and that the Spirit comes to indwell them. That’s the difference between the Old Testament. The Old Testament had the Holy Spirit coming on specific individuals for specific tasks, certainly controlling them and filling them which is what the idea of filling of the Spirit means. the Holy Spirit taking over control. One of the books I’ve been reading recently had interesting use of language about the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and it said this. It said that first of all, God had spotted individuals. He didn’t use the word spotted. But God has spotted individuals

[00:10:55] in which he’d already given them endowments. Endowments are things you get by birthright. and it is true about us as human beings that even people who are yet to come in to become Jewish people in the Old Testament days or even today before people get converted to become Christians in the New Testament era that there are people who have within them what really are gifts of God. Those gifts sometimes are physical and they run races and they swim great distances without driving or they go to the Olympics and get themselves famous but this is just an endowment that you have that’s in the natural realm and it comes from God he’s the one that gives endowments and some of the people in the Old Testament ended up serving God because of how they were endowed with skills but in the book I was reading it says

[00:12:00] God also gives endowment if you could take the two words endowment you get just given it through natural birth and endowment is where the Spirit comes and what the Holy Spirit does in most cases is he takes a place that there’s already an endowment and enhances it or fills the person so they do particular things that he wants to lead you to do and so you get storylines like Samson who kept delivering Israel from the Philistines he wasn’t a very nice man and he made lots of ugly moves he was endowed with great strength but also he was a person who had an endowment that came on him on and off and if he disobeyed so badly God would take it off that’s the Old Testament scene that sometimes happened and there were people like Saul who had certain endowment can’t we get the words right

[00:13:01] endowment because he was physically very visibly a leader he was tall and he was strong and he was brought up in a way that made him everybody would pick to be the next king but there were times when the Holy Spirit came on him as an endowment and he actually became charismatic in the sense of being someone who was prophesying and coming out with displays of the Holy Spirit there can be endowments and there can be endowments if you transfer across to the New Testament that’s also the case that happens with some people and all of us have had endowments by natural birth but also all of us in the New Testament time have a spiritual gift which doesn’t get taken away like Saul lost what he had because he sinned against God when you get an endowment it’s God’s Spirit coming and giving you some way that he works for you

[00:14:05] or you may be now asking yourself the question between the Old Testament and the New what then is the difference did they receive the Spirit back then well not in the sense of permanently they had the Spirit come and go but in the New Testament there is what’s called receiving the Spirit which is when he comes to permanently indwell and that permanent coming to indwell within your person is the offering of the Gospel that when you come and get your peace made with God above through how Jesus died for you when you realise that his time on the cross has done away with your guilt and your sin and that God was calling you to come and come right back to him. And you know, that’s what the gospel does. It’s a call, a call to answer what Jesus did on the cross and receive the forgiveness that he worked for you.

[00:15:01] And when you come and you take Christ as your saviour, you get then a permanent indwelling. The Holy Spirit comes never to leave again. In the Old Testament, he could come and go like Samson’s illustrated, like Saul illustrated. But in the New Testament, when you come to Jesus, you get a permanent gift of the Holy Spirit. So did Peter in the day of Pentecost introduce that New Testament time with a call, repent, be baptised, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And that permanent indwelling became available on the day of Pentecost and on. It wasn’t just an issue of getting saved to get into heaven because I’m sure the Old Testament Jews who had faith in God and followed his laws as best they could,

[00:15:56] they’ll be in heaven, we’ll see them. But they didn’t have the New Testament offering of a permanent indwelling that began at the day of Pentecost and is what it is to be a Christian. A Christian is a New Testament thing to be, though we respect our Old Testament and learn much from it, as I’m trying to explain this morning. Well, we’re talking here about what the Holy Spirit does and so that brings up to me another point that we have and that is that the giving of the Holy Spirit to us in the New Testament era isn’t only to give us guidance in life as in the Old Testament, isn’t only to give reproof when we’re doing wrong also there in the Old Testament, but it’s also that we might be people to understand the new era that we’re in as Christians and sometimes people get that mixed up

[00:16:49] in terms of they read things in the Old Testament and they sometimes misinterpret it we’ll turn to a verse which is misinterpreted by many people today and get them off the track a bit but it’s in Isaiah 58 verse 8 alright now the reason why I’m putting this verse up is because this is one where someone in one of the prayer groups pointed out to me that they had been to a church where they interpret it entirely as he thought and I also thought was quite wrong and if you just read this verse I can see why you could jump to that wrong idea but this verse taken on its own and not put into context to the rest of the chapter then shall your light break forth like the dawn and your healing shall spring up speedily your righteousness shall go before you the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard

[00:17:46] it’s all in the one verse and the way this person reported to me was interpreted was the healing just waits for you to get the point and your healing shall spring up speedily quickly and they were teaching that all sicknesses will be healed. Now, they had a truth when it comes to Jesus in his public ministry. If you read carefully in the Gospels, Jesus healed everybody you met who was then asking for help. But if you read further into the teaching of the apostles, the apostle Paul uses himself as an example because he had what’s commonly known as his thorn in the flesh. He had some problem. All the scholars try and guess what it is. Some think that he had poor eyesight. Some give other ideas. And he prayed three times for God to take it away, but the Lord refused and simply said, no, it’s not going to happen.

[00:18:44] He said, my grace will be enough for you. My grace is sufficient for you, not just the grace to carry on, though you’ve got a problem physically. God doesn’t promise to heal everything that we Christians have, even though we have the permanent indwelling of Christ. That doesn’t mean that he’s always not going to heal. We should bring every problem to him and see what he says, like the apostle Paul did. But that verse was interpreted quite wrongly because the way that you find out how to interpret a verse is you read the context, the first context about the book of Isaiah. But as you go through a survey, you see it’s a book that’s preaching against backsliding. It’s preaching about the fact of not obeying God and having him not cooperate. And the answer to it is to repent and do what God says

[00:19:44] and then he will heal you from your backsliding. There’s another verse that talks about by his stripes you are healed that links God’s willingness to forgive and to bring you back to the fact that he died for you on the cross and all that happened in his crucifixion. By his stripes you are healed. but the healing that the book of Isaiah at least is talking about is healing from backsliding. It’s not a promise that any sickness you have, you can be healed and if you’re still sick, then you have not had enough faith. That is just not what was true of the Apostle Paul and isn’t necessarily true for us. And if at this moment you have got a need for healing by every means, obey the New Testament and take it to God in prayer, but take it to him for him to decide what to do.

[00:20:42] And you know that there’s a lot of things that people, we as Christians, have that trouble us and get us down, that get on top of us. That when you come to a moment of yielding it to Jesus and giving it to God and saying, not my will, but yours be done, that there is a peace, even about something that he doesn’t decide to answer with a healing. Now I’m talking a little bit as a hypocrite because you know I’ve been healed three times. In fact, I could probably add a few more things in and that’s just in my case. But there’s other things that I’ve asked God for that he hasn’t chosen to do. We need to recognise the sovereignty of God and when we yield an issue, there was a mother who had a child really sick and she was a strong Christian and she pled with heaven to fix the child and it only got worse.

[00:21:58] I don’t remember the story well enough to say it was a little girl, a little boy. And desperately, in her prayers, she came to the moment of saying, all right, Lord, you have your way, your will be done. And on that occasion, the boy got bitter. There is a place to surrender to the Lord all of your issues and let him fix them. Let him have his sovereignty back again. Prayer is not giving you a handle on God, not to force his decisions, that is. Prayer does give us. I could murder that handle on God to mean another thing, the fact that you can get close to him. And so I had a couple of chapters in Isaiah where all this is proven, but I won’t take us through the verses because I’ve got another one that’s more important. But if you look through the scriptures, they had hard times,

[00:23:17] and the Jewish people did in the Old Testament age, where God tells them off, you think you can come and pray to me, but you don’t respect my Sabbaths. You think you can come and get what you want out of me, but you don’t look after the people who are needy all around you. And some of these chapters in Isaiah, especially near the end, are like that. They’re telling God, telling them off on one stage. I really found it interesting the way the Lord used his language because in the Old Testament it says, you pray as if I’m going to answer. But if you remember about the people in your village or your place who are hungry, and you go and feed them, if you go and clothe the person who hasn’t got any warmth to wear, if you do the things that are like me to look after the needy, then will you hear from me.

[00:24:24] And God uses a little phrase. He says, do you remember the story of Samuel who kept getting called by God and he thought it was Eli the old priest, and he got running to Eli saying, here I am for you called me. And eventually Eli told him to go back and recognise it was the Lord. And when the Lord called, he says to God, here I am for you called me. But in this part, in the book of Isaiah, God says, when you do the things that I want you to do and you look after the needy and you do the things that help the ones who are weak, then when you pray, I’m going to say, here I am for you called me. is there someone here this morning and you’re calling on God and he’s got an answer for you today here I am for you call me is what he will say when you get the obedience question fixed up in your life when you do the things

[00:25:21] he’s already told you to do when you find yourself who’s got a forgiveness problem that you’ve never healed and you’re asking God to heal some other issue and he’s saying to you if you get the other issues fixed I, God, will say to you like a little boy here I am for you call me God is indeed in the business of answering the calls of people who pray to him but he waits to see that you’re people who are doing what he last said wow that’s a very big lesson I want us to go I want to leave myself time for my number 6 please on the list and Hebrews 4 no, no Hebrews 5 number 5 Hebrews 5 10 to 11 no, that’s Hebrews 4 can you go to the one before that Hebrews Isaiah 55 Isaiah 55 10 to 11 okay now what we have here thank you are some some of the most beautiful verses in the Bible in my opinion and these verses are about the significance

[00:26:59] the potency the wonderful benefit of the Word of God in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament anything that is the Word of God this is about for as the rain and the snow come down from heaven this is not very timely in these days when it’s hail that you don’t want on your roof or on your car but for as the rain and the snow comes down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth making it bring forth and sprout. He’s talking about the quiet way, the softness of the rain and the snow that comes and has a beautiful effect giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater so shall my word be that goes out of my mouth it shall not return to me empty or the old versions read void but it shall accomplish that to which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

[00:28:05] Why the value of the word of God? Because it is successful to what he sends. Now it’s interesting about this, we don’t have much snow to get the metaphor but we do have rain and there is something very beautiful about the rain and the effect that it has when you see, especially when I used to live out west and you saw all the barrenness but you just get one time of a few days rain in the whole place. There’s things springing up and what might be a very deserted area suddenly becomes a lot of life scene and the word of God is like the snow and like the rain that at first seems very quietly working and you hardly notice. Do you know it’s this passage that leads me to be the style of person in the ministry who I better be careful how I say it but I don’t do everything normal pastors do. I haven’t got time

[00:29:15] but I’ve got one thing I can do and I’m doing it now. I bring the word of God and I know from past experience of watching what happens that when you have a church where the word of God is made clear it’s a soft at first, unnoticeable difference. Some people might come to our church and just say, well they seem to give you a lot of time for we had communion and then you’ve got another sermon as well. You’ve got your money’s worth today. But sometimes I hear comments back or they basically just give you Bible, theology, that’s all they do. We don’t have a lot of programs. We don’t have a lot of things to promote the place but we’ve got the word of God. Now I know what that does. This passage is about it. Go back to the major part of the passage you’ll see that this starts just like snow and rain as a soft,

[00:30:25] hardly noticeable difference when you get a little bit of snow, a little bit of rain. But as you have that continually coming there’s a great blossoming of life. That’s what makes the church blossom. It’s the constancy of the word of God opened. When we do it for our children, what’s happening downstairs and we teach them from the earliest of years, something happens in young people when they hear the word of God. I sometimes have people asking, how is it your kids know the Lord? As if it was something unexpected. No, they just have to hear the word of God. Sure, there’s pressures from outside and from the world but there is great power. And so our passage, I’m talking from Isaiah 55 and this passage about the word of God just prior to verses 10 and 11. It may be just like the snow coming down from heaven

[00:31:41] but it won’t return to heaven with nothing won. Something’s broken forth and sprouted. seed to the sower and bread to the eater. So shall my word be that goes out of my mouth. It shall not return to me empty but it shall accomplish that to which I purpose. It’ll succeed to the thing that I sent it. And the one way for a church to have a life is simple. Keep promulgating, propagating, prosecuting, the word of the Lord. Likewise, in your personal life, if you let the word of God get left alone, if you don’t work on yourself to set up a habit to be always going back to it, I praise God. You know, it’s my week. Basically, I’ve got sermons coming up. This one coming up, I’ll have three with Andre and Anna. They’re giving me an extra sermon to do. How do you think you get three new sermons every week?

[00:32:55] Well, I sometimes only have two. But that takes a lot of going back to the word of God or having somewhere where you’re digging. Not everything that I go digging in turns up in a sermon, but it blesses me. But the whole practice is something, it’s like the rain and the snow that comes down. It eventually bears its fruit. And it’s the power of the word of God. The one most important thing in this church is this book, the Bible. And it works. It works in individuals. It works. It’s able and wise to bring people to salvation. It speaks of itself. It’s what we’ve got going for us here in our church. Well, I’m so happy to say I’ve still got number six. Have we done number six? Yeah, go to Hebrews 4, please. Hebrews 4. And this is a very famous passage. Let us therefore strive to enter into that rest, the rest of God

[00:34:10] working for us, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience, looking back to what happened to the Israelites. For the word of God is living and active. Now, you’d be surprised at how God can use his word. I think there’s a place to track back like I’ve done about Isaiah and show that the general purpose of the book is to bring the children of Israel back from backsliding and that you could get it wrong if you tried to interpret it as saying healing when it’s not meaning healing just from physical diseases. There’s other passages do but this is the book of Isaiah is about God healing his people back from where they’ve gone in Australia and it’s by having the word of God. We Baptists continually have areas of life that keeps getting rotten. That sounds serious doesn’t it? But we do go off the track just like

[00:35:15] any group might do. But if you leave out the word of God you’ll go worse and worse and worse. But if you accept the ministry of the word of God if you honour it in church life then there’ll be that restoration to just the life that God wants. The word of God is living and active and when it says living and active it’s not like a dead thing that you’ve got to do study to get the word exactly right just for the sake of it’s going to be, if you don’t say it right or if you read it from the wrong translation, it won’t help you. No, that’s not. It’s living. And I’ve seen in my father’s life how the word of God helped him to go where God wanted, even though there were things that were hard to understand. I saw God lead him from Perth to Sydney and then to Adelaide and then to Brisbane.

[00:36:22] And every time, sometimes those moves were because circumstances were not as good as they could have been in the other places, but every time God took him somewhere, God stepped in. I saw him worried about me when I was a teenager, the youngest of his three, and my sister was always doing all the good things, but my brother and I were always doing dangerous things, going swimming where there were sharks. Paul Dinga Beach, the day before, the fellow got taken by a white point at the same spot. Another time, my brother saw an island a mile out. He’s always doing big deal things. He said, we’ll swim to the island. I was a little brother following him. You know, one mile out, swimming. Eventually, he’d get there, he’d let me rest a bit, and we’d come back again.

[00:37:17] And then I’d discover later on there were sharks in between. None of them somehow came to us. Or my brother that had air rifles, and then he had a .22. I’ve been the victim of them. And I want to tell you, you know, it wasn’t safe. And my dad and mum, when they got a call to come here to Brisbane, I know what he was worried about. It wasn’t only my brother and what, but I was also doing risky things, silly little things when I look back. I loved learning about scuba diving, but I didn’t have one myself. But what I could do is get some of the bicycle tubes and pump them up, put the mouth in your mouth and go pretending you’re scuba diving. It’d give you an extra couple of minutes. And I’d learn from reading books that if you take in a breath when you’re down a bit deeper, you’re getting compressed air,

[00:38:18] and then if you shoot to the surface and don’t let it out, you’ll get air embolism in your lungs. At least I knew that, but my dad didn’t know how much I knew, and he was worried about what would happen to leave me down there in Adelaide when he came up here. And God spoke to him, and this really, I’ve told the church this once before, but this really speaks to me because the passage that he found that gave him assurance to come up here and leave me in danger down in Adelaide was a verse that says, when your father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take you up, and he interpreted it not the way it was written. If he had been an exegeter, he had to say, well, it’s talking about what you do and God looking after you, and you’re interpreting it about your family. But God, the word of God is living,

[00:39:11] and he knew through that verse, though the exact exegesis didn’t apply exactly to his scenario with me, but he took it to be God giving a promise that he trusted me down there on my own. My brother was already on his own, doing his own thing. My sister always was doing good things. But he trusted us to God, and in that time period of him coming up here and me being down there was a little revival in our home church that I was in the middle of and is the reason why I am standing here today. The word of God, look at that, is living and active. It’s not just a set of propositions to squat, to swat. It’s living. Sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of the soul and the spirit. It goes to the deepest part of you. And discerning the thoughts and the intentions of the heart, it’s a living thing,

[00:40:26] the word of God. Don’t just look at it as a book to exegete. I’m not against exegesis, of course, but I’m just saying it’s please recognise the living nature of the word of God and the way it speaks and no creature is hidden from his sight because God and his word, he doesn’t ever let you take them apart. It’s his sight. But all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account. He can see you. He knows what you need. He’s got your case in mind and you can trust him. Listen to him. Find him in the word of God, including in the Old Testament. It’s a fantastic place to read. My last verse, those from Hebrews in the New Testament. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your promises and that there is such a thing as a Christian life doesn’t need to have a church which has got every fancy thing. It doesn’t need

[00:41:46] to have Lord, the good things that you give us and we thank you for what you’ve been doing recently. Lord, I remember when you helped the workmen of our church to finish what I’m now standing on. This stage was a major step forward for us. I thank you for what you were doing recently with the hall and the platform and what we’ll have in the end will be greatly useful. We thank you. We thank you for these things but Lord most of all what we thank you for is for the word of God and we rest in it to make what you want for us in Jesus’ name. Amen.