Father in heaven, we pause for just another moment, not merely out of routine because we think this is what we do before sermons, but that we might acknowledging openly our need for You. I need You if I am to preach Your Word humbly, boldly, faithfully, and we need You if we are to hear it and receive it in faith and be moved, comforted, convicted, transformed from one degree of glory to the next. So do all of this, we pray, through the power of Your inspired, inerrant word. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
We continue this morning with our series in the book of Joshua. Turn in your Bibles to Joshua chapter 3. Joshua, chapter 3. Joshua 3 and 4 stand together as a unit and really chapter 5 you could almost put with it as the new generation there is circumcised and the first Passover is celebrated. All of these three chapters deal with the preparation before they get to Jericho and they finally enter officially into the Promised Land, defeating that frontier city.
But here at chapter 3 and 4, it is the dramatic occasion where they cross over the Jordan to enter from the east side to the west side into the Promised Land of Canaan. Follow along, beginning at verse 1.
“Then Joshua rose early in the morning and they set out from Shittim. And they came to the Jordan, he and all the people of Israel, and lodged there before they passed over. At the end of three days the officers went through the camp and commanded the people, “As soon as you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God being carried by the Levitical priests, then you shall set out from your place and follow it. Yet there shall be a distance between you and it, about 2,000 cubits in length. Do not come near it, in order that you may know the way you shall go, for you have not passed this way before.” Then Joshua said to the people, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.” And Joshua said to the priests, “Take up the ark of the covenant and pass on before the people.” So they took up the ark of the covenant and went before the people.”
“The Lord said to Joshua, “Today I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. And as for you, command the priests who bear the ark of the covenant, ‘When you come to the brink of the waters of the Jordan, you shall stand still in the Jordan.’” And Joshua said to the people of Israel, “Come here and listen to the words of the Lord your God.” And Joshua said, “Here is how you shall know that the living God is among you and that He will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Hivites, the Perizzites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, and the Jebusites. Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth is passing over before you into the Jordan. Now therefore take twelve men from the tribes of Israel, from each tribe a man. And when the soles of the feet of the priests bearing the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan shall be cut off from flowing, and the waters coming down from above shall stand in one heap.””
“So when the people set out from their tents to pass over the Jordan with the priests bearing the ark of the covenant before the people, and as soon as those bearing the ark had come as far as the Jordan, and the feet of the priests bearing the ark were dipped in the brink of the water (now the Jordan overflows all its banks throughout the time of harvest), the waters coming down from above stood and rose up in a heap very far away, at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan, and those flowing down toward the Sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, were completely cut off. And the people passed over opposite Jericho. Now the priests bearing the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firmly on dry ground in the midst of the Jordan, and all Israel was passing over on dry ground until all the nation finished passing over the Jordan.”
This dramatic passage is to underscore and highlight one of the most fundamental promises in all the Bible. It’s also one of the simplest promises. And because of that, it can sound like a rather ordinary promise. The promise, in fact you could argue it’s the central promise if not the central theme in the Bible, is so familiar to us it is easy to overlook and it is easy to underappreciate. What is the promise I’m talking about? It is the promise that God makes to Joshua. He says there at the end of verse 7, “As I was Moses, so I will be with you.” I will be with you.
It’s the promise that Joshua reiterates to the people in verse 10 – Joshua said, “Here is how you shall know that the living God is among you.” It’s the good news announced for all the world in John 1:14 – and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. It’s that promise that God makes to His people. He makes it to Joshua, He makes it to Israel, He makes it to us – I will be with you.
Now as I said, if we’re honest, it sounds a bit underwhelming, like what you pray for someone when you’ve run out of things to pray for and you haven’t given it much thought and you’re just rattling off some names and then you say, “Lord, just be with them.” Or when you say goodbye to someone on a trip and you want to sound especially spiritual and you said, “God be with you” instead of a simple goodbye.
Now do you realize that “goodbye” is a contraction of “God be with ye”? So you didn’t even know. You’re saying goodbye, you’re doing it already. God be with ye. But we don’t usually speak that way.
We know it’s good news, Emmanuel, God with us. But of all the things somebody could say to encourage us, if they just said, “Well, have a great week. God be with you.” We almost say it so casually, so trite, it’s just a throw-away line, and yet it is one of the most fundamental promises in all the Bible.
And think about it. In other contexts, “I will be with you” is wonderful news.
When I was looking at what seminary to go to and drove all around the eastern seaboard and for one of the trips I went with my dad, for another one of the trips the summer I drove down from Michigan to Florida. We drove back from all the way down in Fort Lauderdale up to Michigan in one day. Don’t recommend you do it. Children of mine, don’t to that, but I did it. But I wasn’t alone. I had one of my good friends there who said, “I’m not going to seminary but I’ll do this road trip with you.”
Well, suddenly it went from an arduous thing you’re not looking forward to to the stuff of legend, “will be with you.” We were, for better or worse, my friend and I, we were very serious about the Lord and we were so serious we were absolutely convinced, and I won’t tell you if I’m still convinced of this, but absolutely convinced we could not drive one mile over the speed limit and we made a nightmare for everyone driving behind us. It took extra hours, so I won’t, but, do drive within a reasonable speed limit.
If you’re walking, or better yet, because we don’t have basements here in North Carolina, lots of basements up in Michigan, but you’ve got crawlspaces… Ohhh, scary. We have one. You’ve got to go outside, you feel like you’re in The Wizard of Oz or something going down there, and if you had to get something, because there’s a few random things back there and you had to go and it’s always musty and it’s dank and it’s dark and it’s where very many and large spiders are known to congregate, and you had to go somewhere dark or the palmetto bugs as we call them, you would be happy if somebody says, “Don’t worry, honey, I’m coming with you.”
As children we know if we have to do something for the first time and it’s scary, it helps if mom or dad say, “Don’t worry. I’ll be right here beside you.”
And as many of you know, with very tender pain of missing a husband or a wife, or a mother or a father, or a son or a daughter, more than anything in the world you would just want to be with them. You maybe don’t even have a specific thing that you would want to do, just to have a moment again on the same couch, in the same room, under the same roof.
So yes, to simply be with someone is great news. It’s unimaginably good news when God tells us, “Wherever you go, I will be with you.”
Joshua 3 is about God making sure that Joshua, and the people, know He is the same God that was with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is the same God who was with Moses. It had been 500 years since God had made this promise to Abraham. That’s a long time. Twice as long as our country has been a country they’ve had this, and then for 40 years of wandering, and now they are on the literal brink and edge of entering into the Promised Land.
Surely they would have in their mind, oh, we know the stories, we know those great stories of what You did to save Isaac and we know the stories of how You multiplied and blessed the patriarchs, and we certainly have passed on the stories of the plague and the Red Sea and the mighty wonders that You did for the people of Israel, but that was then. This is now.
So this chapter wants Israel to know, yes, that was then, yes, this is now, but it’s the same God now as it was back then.
So first is the promise to Joshua. He says, look at verse 7, “today I will begin to exalt you.” Now it’s not to give Joshua a big head or to show that he is to be proud, but there is a proper way to exalt. He is to be the leader and what God is saying is “I will have all the people to know that just as I was with Moses,” nobody doubted the Lord had been with Moses, from the burning bush to the plagues to the arms up and the battle was won and what he could do with that staff and the water from the rock and the miracles and the wonders from his hand, everyone knew the Lord was with Moses. God says, “I want the people to know I will be with you, Joshua.”
Yes, we have lost the great leader of our people, but we have not lost the God of our people. So He will exalt, meaning, “I am going to do miracles here so the people will know that I’ve not left them.” Yes, the name at the top of the org chart now says “Joshua” instead of “Moses,” but the real top of the org chart, Yahweh, is just the same.
So there are a number of parallels. The most obvious one is that the waters are put up on a heap, like a wall, and they can pass through on dry ground, just like they did leaving Egypt through the Red Sea, they do here through the Jordan River. But also when God’s people met on the mountain, at Mount Sinai in Exodus 19 and 20, he tells the people there to consecrate themselves, get ready, two things at least, washing their clothes and abstaining from sex for a time, consecrate yourselves, get ready. So God is saying, “Just like I visited you on the mountain, I’m going to visit you here. I was there with Moses when he received the 10 words. I am here with you, Joshua.”
And the language throughout here of wonders – “I’m going to do miracles. I’m going to do amazing things and the people will sit up and notice.” Same language He used all those many years ago with Moses – I will continue to do wonders.
Yes, this was, at last, the long-awaited moment. They had the exodus, now they needed the eisodos, eis being the word for in to, ex – out of, is – in to. It was not enough that they simply had an exodus, ooh, we made it out of Egypt, we’re here, but it was always to leave Egypt that they might worship the Lord their God and it was always to fulfill that promise made four centuries earlier that they would have a place of their own. The Exodus and now the eisodos. They’re finally going to enter the Promised Land.
So part of what the Lord is doing is reminding Joshua, exalting Joshua, “I was with Moses, I will be with you.” But even more importantly, it is to remind the people that He will be with them. And He will go before them and He will be in the midst of them.
Now when you’re reading the Bible and you want to determine what the big idea of a chapter or a story or a unit is, it doesn’t always work to just add up key terms and find which one is mentioned the most often, but sometimes that does give you the right answer, and this is one of those occasions. In chapters 3 and 4, these two chapters that deal with crossing the Red Sea, because chapter 3 they cross over but it really picks up the story again in chapter 4 with the memorial stones, 20 times we have the verb “to cross.” So obviously that’s a big idea, they are crossing over the Jordan.
But there’s another word – it’s the word “ark.” Did you notice how many times I read the word “ark.” It’s mentioned 17 times in chapters 3 and 4, six variations on the name. Look at the one in verse 11 – “Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth.” That’s the granddaddy of them all. Not just the ark or the ark of the covenant, but the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth. That this symbolic representation of God is there in the midst of the people and to led the people.
Just listen. Verse 3: He commanded the people, “As soon as you see the ark.
Verse 6: Joshua said to the priests, take up the ark, so they took up the ark of the covenant.
Verse 8: As for you, command the priests who bear the ark of the covenant.
Verse 11: Behold the ark of the covenant.
Verse 13: And when the soles of the feet of the priests bearing the ark of the Lord.
Verse 14: When the people set out from their tents to pass the Jordan with the priests bearing the ark of the covenant.
Again in verse 15: The feet of the priests bearing the ark were dipped into the water.
And finally again verse 17: The priests bearing the ark of the covenant.
That’s not even to go to chapter 4. Clearly we are meant to see the verbal, theological, thematic center of this story is the ark.
Let me remind you what this box was and represented. We have the details for the construction of the ark in Exodus 25. You don’t need to go there, but that’s where you find it. Now in Exodus 25, it’s the start of one of those passages of Scripture that you can find a bit tedious because after all of the excitement in Exodus with the plagues and the Red Sea and the 10 commandments, things seem to really grind to a halt with lots of tabernacle chapters. Not only does God tell the people how to build the tabernacle, then says almost the same thing again when they do build the tabernacle.
But far from being superfluous, this was the whole point of leaving Egypt, that they would have a tent of meeting and a place where God would dwell in the midst of them. It wasn’t simply a story of political liberation, though it was that. It was the story of theological liberation, that is from their sins, but it was the story of doxology, of worship, of meeting with God. That’s what the tabernacle represented. The tabernacle was like God’s house.
Now if you were describing how you would build your house, you would start with probably describing the foundation or the walls or how tall it is. If you were going over the blueprint. But when God wants to start to describe His house, He says here’s the first thing I want you to know about My house, I want you to know the furniture. That’s not what we would do. I’m going to talk about the couch that I have? But God says, “I want you to know what’s inside the tabernacle,” and the most important thing inside the tabernacle was the ark.
It’s a simple box, 2-1/2 cubits by 1-1/2 by 1-1/2 cubits. A cubit was considered the distance between a man’s finger and his elbow, traditionally considered 18 inches, a foot and a half. So the ark was not a big thing, 45 inches long, 27 inches wide, 27 inches tall. Made with wood, plated inside and out with gold. Had some feet at the bottom so that the ark itself would not touch the ground because it’s a holy artifact. There were four rings for two poles so that the ark would be safely carried by the Levitical priests. They couldn’t touch it. Nothing that says their faces would melt, that was a Steven Spielberg invention later, but it was a holy box and inside it were placed the testimony, that is the commandments of God.
We read later in the Old Testament and again in Hebrews three things placed in the ark – the 10 commandments, Aaron’s rod that blossomed, and a jar of manna. And on top of the ark was a lid of pure gold. So not just overlaid wood but pure gold. And on top of the lid were two cherubim of hammered gold.
Now think about the imagery. Angels are often the police officers of the Bible. Now they’re messengers, that’s what the name means, but they’re guardians, they’re protectors. They serve and protect. So often the angels are there to protect. So the angel, the cherubim, comes outside the garden of Eden once Adam and Eve sin, why? Because it’s saying this place is holy, you are unholy, so an angel guards the entrance to it. An angel there at the empty tomb, a bit of a reversal, because now that death has been conquered, the angel who was there to guard this holy place now says, “He has risen just as He said and He is out and among you.”
So the angels on top of the ark of the covenant are to indicate this is the dwelling place of God Almighty, and they keep guard over it, these two cherubim, just like the cherubim at the garden of Eden.
The lid is called in the ESV the mercy seat. In Hebrew the word kapporeth from the verb kaphar, which means to cover. Makes sense, it’s a lid or a cover for a box. But it’s also used throughout the Old Testament in the sense of an atonement, that is a covering for sin.
Think of the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur. You hear that same Hebrew root kaphar, the say of covering, the day of atonement. It is the day where God’s people’s sins are taken care of, and here the mercy seat is the place where God sits, it’s like a throne, it’s a seat, and it’s a cover where their sins are atoned for.
The key description of the ark in Exodus 25 comes in Exodus 25:22. Here’s what we read: There I will meet with you and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you about all the commandments I have given for the people of Israel.
Did you hear that language? There on the seat I will meet you, I will speak to you.
It was the representation. They didn’t have idols. They were not to have any graven images. They didn’t have idols and statues like the people of the nations. They did have a symbolic representation, not to be worshiped, but to evoke the holiness of God, who dwells there and sits there in between the cherubim. So everyone knew the ark of the covenant, that’s where God is.
It’s literally everywhere in this story. Look at verse 6: And Joshua said to the priests, “Take up the ark of the covenant and pass on before the people.”
There’s a parallel expression in Numbers 10:35 that says when the ark set out, Moses said, “Arise, O Lord.” So that language, “arise, O Lord,” would have been often literally, visually represented. “Arise, O Lord” meant the priests are lifting up the ark and that representation of the Lord God Almighty is leaving the camp. He has arisen.
So Joshua says, “Take up, arise, the Lord Himself is leading us.” So they are not just going at the command of God, but they are going with the very presence of God. God is getting up and you notice what they’re told to do? They’re to stand back, you see in verse 4, at a distance 2000 cubits. Now you know a cubit is a foot and a half, so 3000 feet, 1000 yards, 10 football fields, a little more than a half mile. Now why stand back 10 football fields away from the ark? Some of it may be because the ark was holy and they couldn’t get too close to it, but that’s not what’s emphasized here – it’s so you can know where you have to go, because in order to snake your way down through the Jordan valley, this isn’t just walking up to a river, just a flat traversing and here we are, you’re going down to the Jordan valley through think brush and brambles and wild animals, in order to see, because you notice the language, “Do not come near it in order that you may know the way you shall go for you have not passed this way before.”
Just, if you’ve got a Bible that you mark up and you can decide if you should or you shouldn’t, but if you do, there’s a phrase to dwell on – “You’ve not been this way before.” You may have that in your life right this very moment. A new season in life, a loved one passed away, kids are gone, widow, a widower, new job, a new school. You say, “I’ve not, this is all new. I don’t like it. I’ve not done this before.” Well, here’s a good verse.
I know, I know, you’ve not done this before. Just like the child that’s going to get dropped off at the first day of school. Mom and dad are going to bring them there, bring them to the door or bring them to the bus. I’m going to bring you, I know you haven’t done this before. I’m going to help you. I’m going to lead you, I’m going to show you where to do.
It’s a great, sweet testimony to the Lord’s kindness here to His people. You’ve got to cross over. You’ve not been there. You’ve heard a lot about it. You’ve dreamt of it. You’ve thought about it. But you haven’t been this way before, so I want you to watch Me. I want you to watch the ark. Stand at a distance so you can all see.
Remember, this is not a few hundred or a few thousand people. This may be 2 million people. This is a big group of people who have to cross through and at least they need to be able to see where are we going, where is this ark taking us. And if it’s perhaps not too fanciful a reading here on this text, maybe there’s something of an aspect of faith and trust because you imagine, people might have said, “Okay, we’re doing this scary thing, and the ark is leading us, I want to stay right next to the ark. Can we all just sort be touching the person who’s touching the person who’s touching the ark?” Well, they can’t do it that way. Going to stand at a distance, I’m going to go before you, and you’re going to watch and you’re going to trust.
There’s a dramatic scene. It’s almost like the camera is switching back and forth, as if underneath it says, “Meanwhile” and then they go back to another shot. When we come to chapter 4, it’ll be yet another shot. Several times you have this dramatic language. It’s very deliberate. And the priests have their heels touching the very edge of the water. Just can imagine the people of Israel for centuries hearing this read, maybe in their synagogues, passed along, the scrolls are read, “Mommy, daddy, go to that part again, right where their feet are right at the water, because the water’s going to do something amazing.”
You look at verse 15. In the ESV, I think helpfully, puts this in a parentheses. Of course, the Hebrew doesn’t have parentheses, but’s just indicating this is a parenthetical statement. It seems a little bland. We have this action going. The feet of the priests bearing the ark were dipped in the brink of the water, we’re almost there, we’re crossing into Canaan.
Now, footnote, pay attention – “The Jordan overflows all its banks through the time of harvest.” Okay, get on with the action. Is it there for dramatic effect? Well, there’s something of that. It’s a pause. But more than that, it’s telling us that the Jordan River at this time of the year was not a little stream. Now the Jordan River is not the Mississippi or the Amazon. It’s not a mighty, massive river. It flows from the Sea of Galilee in the north down to the Dead Sea, or called the Salt Sea because the Dead Sea is 34% salt, or the Sea of Arabah, those are all the same names for the Dead Sea.
The Jordan valley could be quite wide, 3 to 14 miles wide, the actual valley. The flood plain might be a couple hundred yards to close to a mile at its broadest. Normally it would maybe be 90 to 100 feet. So it’s normally, it’s not a big river, and maybe 3 to 10 feet deep. It might even be something that at certain points there were a number of fjords, those places where nature makes a land bridge across where the water was low enough. So there were places where you could have gone and just walked across.
But this statement in verse 15 is to tell us that’s not what was happening. This is not just a little low spot that the creek running through McAlpine was just really low and they were able to just kind of walk across. No, this is flood season. That’s what it means. We’ve already had the spies hid in the flax, that means that the harvest has come, there’s a springtime harvest. There’s late rains in the spring and the warm weather is coming and the snow on Mount Herman has melted. That’s why it says, verse 16, the water is coming down from above, they come down from Mount Herman. So this would have been the fullest time where the waters were spilled over into their floods.
So this could have been quite a rushing rapids and a whole nation of people could not pass through except for this miracle. So it says the waters coming as far away, you she verse 16, at Adam (now that’s not a person here, but a city), the city that is beside Zarethan, this is about 19 miles north of where you would cross over to Jericho. So it’s saying 19 miles north the waters were piled up in a heap. So instead of rushing down at the springtime flood, they’re piled up miles and miles away, which makes sense, because you’re not going to have 2 million people just pass through single file across the Jordan, but there’s quite an expansive land that is open to walk through on dry ground. It’s a miracle. Piled up in a heap, just like the Red Sea was piled up in two walls.
The moment finally they had been waiting for. Caleb and Joshua waiting for probably close to 80 years. Most of the others had been born in the wilderness as the rebellious generation died off and they had been waiting literally their entire lives, since they were old enough to hear stories from their parents, they heard that they were coming in to the Promised Land, and now here it is. God wants to remind them, “I’m the same God, the same God who made the promises to Abraham all those centuries ago, the same God who worked mighty miracles for Moses even before you were born, the same God who did all of this will now do it for Joshua and for you.”
I hope you can see then the payoff for us. It means He’s the same God working for us. We know this theologically, but isn’t it true, we read these stories, we think, “That’s, wow, great, I love it, dramatic story. Man, God used to do lots of cool stuff.” Same God today. Do you believe that? Really, ask yourselves. Do you really believe that?
__ who said, “Christianity is at the very least unembarrassed supernaturalism,” or it was Warfield. You can look it up.
But he’s right. Do we believe in the supernatural? Do we believe that God Himself, the same God who did these things for Moses and Joshua, He’s our God? This God promises to be with us and not only that, but He sent His Son that in human form God of God, light of light, true man of the same nature with His Father and with us, lived and dwelt among us. That’s the promise.
Now you say, well, that’s good and I appreciate that reminder, but how, how is He with us? He’s with us by His Spirit, strengthening us in the inner being. He’s with us as we rely and rest on His great and precious promises. He’s with us in the fellowship of the saints.
But let me end with this, lest we forget that we believe in what are called the ordinary means of grace. Sounds like something Presbyterians would be into, doesn’t it? Don’t give us the extraordinary, just the ordinary. But there are ordinary means of grace that communicate to us extraordinary blessing. The psalmist says that the Lord is enthroned on the praises of His people. Now, yes, God is omnipresent. You can’t flee from His metaphysical presence. But then there’s, you might say, His covenantal presence. There’s no place where we get more of God than in these ordinary means of grace, in the word preached.
You remember when Moses was up and he says to God, “Would You show me Your glory? Would You just let me see You?” Remember how God showed Himself? He said, “Okay, you can see me” and then the Lord spoke. We see by hearing. And not just the Word that is proclaimed, but as we come to the table this morning, the Word that we can taste and touch and feast upon. As you’ve heard me say many times from 1 Corinthians 10:16, the cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation, koinonia, fellowship, in the blood of Christ? The bred that we break, is it not participation in the body of Christ?
Now Christ’s body is not here, He has a human body at one place at one time, but joined to the Spirit by faith we are lifted into the heavenly places and we have true communion with Christ. We don’t celebrate this merely as a memorial, as if it is a celebration of Christ’s real absence. Oh, that’s great, Jesus came and He’ll come back, but it is also His real presence spiritually with us, participating, fellowship.
Listen to what the Belgic Confession says, and I hope you know confessions can be beautiful. The banquet, this banquet, is a spiritual table at which Christ communicates Himself to us with all His benefits. At that table He makes us enjoy Himself as much as the merits of His suffering and death as He nourishes and comforts our poor, desolate souls by the eating of His flesh and relieves and renews them by the drinking of His blood.
If you’re here this morning, and you’re hungry, spiritually hungry, you’re sick and tired of your sin, you want more of Christ in your life, you’ve come to the right place. This is where we feast upon Him.
There can be a unique blessing we receive from these elements. I love what the divine Robert Bruce said – while we do not get a better Christ in the sacraments than we do in the Word, there are times when we get Christ better, to see.
You say, why don’t we, some churches have visuals, some churches have smells and bells, and some churches have drama. Why don’t you do that here? Oh, but we do. The God-given drama, the God-given symbol, the God-given elements to taste and to touch.
God promises to be with us and He comes in a special way in the gathering of His people through the Word and the sacrament to draw near. Do you know that good news of the presence of Christ? Your loved ones who died, some of them just this past year, no matter how they died, in a hospital bed, on a road somewhere, you can rest assured if they died in Christ, they did not die alone. Christ was with them.
No matter where your children and grandchildren are at this moment, if they are a part of God’s covenant people, Christ is with them. Wherever you go in life or later this week or tomorrow, if you’re a Christian, Christ will be with you. There is no better promise. Remember what Jesus told His disciples in His last words before He ascended into heaven, so maybe we should underline it in our hearts, and behold, He said, I am with you always to the end of the age.
Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we thank You for these promises, this assurance, and thank You for meeting us in the Word that is preached and the Word that is tasted, smelled, seen, digested. So come, dwell with us, minister to us, be with us, nourish us we pray in Jesus. Amen.