In this sermon, the speaker discusses how God reveals himself to different individuals in various ways. He mentions examples such as visions, trances, and direct visible encounters. The speaker also explores the story of Abraham and how God chose him despite his lack of personal ability or competency. The sermon emphasizes the selective grace and love of God in choosing individuals for his purposes.

I suggested to you on Wednesday morning that the subject of our morning study, Visions of God, is taken from Ezekiel, Chapter 1, and Verse 1, and the evening studies of the Revelation of Jesus Christ is taken from Revelation, Chapter 1, and Verse 1. Some of you, I know, will have thought when I said that, well, he could have got them both out of just one verse, and that is 2 Corinthians, Chapter 12, and Verse 1, and Paul says, it is not expedient for me, doubtless to glory, I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. So, we have the two things in 2 Corinthians, Chapter 12, and Verse 1, as well as individually in Ezekiel 1 and Revelation, Chapter 1. Let me suggest to you this morning that the matter of God revealing Himself to different individuals is most interesting and instructive to us. In the Old Testament, as well as in the New, the manner and means in which He did it is instructive, sometimes by His spoken words, sometimes by the visible presence of an angel, some by the physical sight of God Himself, and I may quote you some verses in corroboration and confirmation of that. And then, another thing that is interesting to notice, and that is the category into which the individuals fall who receive such visions from God. You may have a king, a prophet, a priest, a shepherd, you may have a woman in distress, you may have a woman in her home looking after the regular duties of life, you may have someone very grieved and grievously treated, you may have a young man, you may have a boy, you may have an old person. And this kaleidoscope, this compilation of individuals in their different characters and walks of life, encourages us greatly when we consider that God is pleased to reveal Himself not only in these various ways and manners, but to these various individuals. There is no exclusivism in the revelations of God to His people. In fact, I hope we may have time to look at some of these just to prove that to you. Now, one of the most interesting recipients of visions of God that we have, particularly in the Old Testament, I want to ask you to turn with me this morning and consider some of the details of the life of Abraham. Let's look at Genesis chapter 12, please. Genesis chapter 12. Five times in the life of Abraham, the word is used that the Lord appeared unto him, and several times it is said the Lord spoke to him. So, as I've suggested to you already, God reveals Himself sometimes by the spoken word, and He has revealed Himself by a personal presentation. Human eyes have looked upon the God of Israel, the God of Eternity, the El Shaddai, the All-Sufficient and Almighty God. That's a marvelous thing to consider, and I know you are thinking, as was stated on Lord's morning, that God said to Moses on one occasion that, No man can see, nor must see, my face, and live. Then Paul writes to Timothy and says he is the only Potentate, the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, whom no man has seen nor can see. Because these appear to be absolute statements that admit of no consideration or variance, for that reason I have quoted to you some of the scriptures already wherein it is said that they saw God. And such unexpected persons as Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, for example, the Seventy Elders of Israel, Exodus chapter 24, they went up into the mountain as called by God, for God sent Moses down from one of the occasions in which he had been up in the mountain, and he said, Go down and bring up your brother Aaron, and bring up his two sons, Nadab and Abihu. Now, that's interesting, because Nadab and Abihu were to be slain, as you remember later on, because they offered strange fire before the Lord. But the future must not mortgage the present, so what God knows we will be or will do is not necessarily going to restrict or hinder what he wants to do and will do today. Moreover, let me reverse that to you now. What we are or what we may do today does not necessarily mortgage the future, because God is pleased so often to reverse what we have done or what we are on a certain day or in a certain circumstance regarding the future. Whoever would have thought that Nadab and Abihu, who were to be slain from before the Lord because of offering strange fire, would actually be mentioned by God to come up into the mountain? And who would have thought that God would say to Moses, Go down and get your brother Aaron, and bring him up into the mountain? And then, if you read farther on in that passage, you'll read it, and it says, They saw the God of Israel. Twice over it says, They saw the God of Israel, and that describes the pavement that was under his feet and what his presence looked like. These are some of the intriguing things that we discover in the scriptures of truth when God accommodates himself to our frailty, to our humanity. Who would have chosen Aaron to be the high priest of Israel, to be invested with the royal robes, and to go into the presence of God after he made a golden calf? Yet, that's exactly what God did. So, I may suggest to you that our falls, and our faults, and our failures of today do not necessarily mean that God will not use us, nor call us tomorrow. Nor may we assume that because there is tragedy ahead somewhere, and a stumbling down the road, God will not use us today. He will not mortgage the present because of the future that he knows so well. I recall being in Argentina on one occasion for a visit there, and I was having some meetings in the city of Buenos Aires, and then was able, with the able guide of Daniel de Cesari, to go on a trip into the interior for about a month. And when I was in a home of one of the brethren in Buenos Aires, he told me about his life, how he and his wife had agreed to sell a house that they had, and to rent another smaller place, and put the money into supplying books for their workers there. And he had a partner who had a farm, and sold the farm, and rented an apartment, and took the money to add to the first contribution between the two of them. They were going to fund a book store for their younger preachers. And he said to me one morning, he said, Don David, we have a problem here between the two of us. And I said, what is that? He said, well, we have just received a large shipment of books from Europe, and after we ordered them and received them, we heard that the author has had a, well, what we call a moral fall. I think that's a misused term. If we are talking about a sexual fall, we should say sexual fall, and not a moral fall, because I've heard it said so many times that Peter, when he denied the Lord, did not have a moral fall. Well, he did have a moral fall. Dishonesty is morality abuse. Morality takes in more than sexuality. So, a man who is defeatable, a man who lies, a man who denies, has a moral fall just as much as the other one does. So, he said to me, we've just learned since this big shipment of books came in that this man has had a moral fall. Now, he said, my partner believes we should not give them out to the workers, that we should not read these books now because of the scandal that has arisen due to the author's conduct. And he said, I think we should give them away, and that the younger folks should profit by them. Now, what say ye? You know, that's how you get into a rock and a hard place, and I generally can get out of those by saying nothing and listening a little longer, and then I get the answer given to me anyway, because oftentimes when they ask you a question, it isn't that you want the answer, they want to give you the answer. But on this occasion, I didn't get out of it. And he said, now, we want to know what we're going to do with these books, and we'd like your opinion. Well, I said, I suppose if you're not going to use them, then you'll have to at least throw out some of the Psalms of David. You won't be able to read 32nd Psalm, you won't be able to read the 51st Psalm, you won't be able to read some of the subsequent Psalms which David wrote after he had his fall. So I didn't say more than that, and I said, just cut them out of your book and don't use them any longer. So he turned to his partner who was there, and he said, are we prepared to do that? And he said, no, we're not prepared to do that. I guess we'll give the books out. Certainly God does not do as we would do. He does not condemn us flat out. He does not put a mortgage on anything we may do after we have had an experience like that. And so some of these individuals, particularly, I was thinking of Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, go up into the mountains and says they saw the God of Israel. And then it says they did eat and drink, and on them he laid not his hands. So with such practices in mind, we are encouraged to look back at some of the instances in which God has appeared to those perhaps to whom we would not have conceded that they were competent to receive a vision from God. Genesis chapter 12, we have two appearings of the Lord to Abram. The first verse starts as you can see, the Lord had said unto Abram. Now, that in itself does not appear to have been a vision of God, but when you go to Stephen's defense in Acts chapter 7, you remember how Stephen starts off his defense before the Sanhedrin. He says, the God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham when he was yet in Mesopotamia and Ur of the Chaldees. So hidden under this opening statement of chapter 12 is a vision, a vision of God. The God of glory appeared unto our father Abram when he was in Mesopotamia in Ur of the Chaldees. Now, some of these statements of scripture are left for our consideration, and sometimes I think to our imagination. Why is he called the God of glory when he appears to a man who's living in an idolatrous land, a land of pagan unbelief? He is called the God of glory. He appeared. Now, it does not say in which fashion he appeared. It does not say how he appeared. It does not say why he appeared. Why did he choose Abram? How did God reveal himself? How did he make himself seen? The word is to see. Now, let me pause a minute here, and let me suggest to you that this business of seeing in connection with God sometimes is directly visible, something visible by the human eye. At other times, to see means to perceive by the spirit, by the mind. Sometimes it will be in an open area in the daylight by someone who comes to the individual who is material, and then there are other times when it happened in a trance. You remember, Balaam said, these things says he who fell into a trance having his eyes opened. Or how about Peter on the housetop? In Acts chapter 10, he went up to the housetop to pray because he was hungry. It's not always a full answer to an empty stomach, you understand, but you can try it at times, and maybe it's easier with an empty stomach to fall into a trance. I don't know, but I get some of my worst dreams when mine is full. However, he goes up on the house, and he's praying while he's waiting for the preparation of the meal, and it says he fell into a trance and saw the sheep set down from heaven. Now, that was a perception while he was in a trance, so that is not a palpable, visible, material thing that he saw, but he perceived it in the vision of his spirit. But as I suggested to you on Sunday morning when the disciples were in the Mount of the Lord and the Mount of Transfiguration, they saw the Master. They saw him transfigured. He was still the same Lord. He was still the same Jesus of Nazareth, and he was going down the mountain. He said, tell the vision to no man. So it was a vision, you see, but it was a vision that was palpable, that was tangible, that was material. They could handle him. They could listen to him speak. Now, when we put all the aggregate of this into one box and look at it, and all these instances, all these different people that I have mentioned to you already, and all these various categories of life, it is amazing to see how God is pleased to present himself in these various ways to these various individuals under these various circumstances. So here's a man living in Ur of the Chaldees, a very modern, up-to-date city, if you can go by Professor Urquhart, who tells us of a telephone system they had in Ur in the days of Abram, who tells us of a sanitary and water system operating in Ur of the Chaldees in the days of Abram. Some of the discoveries of the archaeologists are very remarkable and turn our concept around that we've had of these olden times. Nevertheless, he's in an idolatrous country, he's in a pagan land, and the God of Glory doesn't say the God of Israel yet, but the God of Glory appears to him, and he says, get thee out. Now, you may draw your own conclusions as to why and how God did that. I always ask myself questions like that when I read a statement like this, and I say, now, why Abram? Why did God do this? Did he do it because of what he said later on in chapter 18 of Genesis? I know this man, and I know what he will do, and I know his character, and I know that he will judge his children after him. I know he will keep the commandments of the Lord, and because I know who this man is, I will reveal myself to him. Five times over, at least, God presented himself in what is called an appearance to Abraham, and this is the first time he's called the God of Glory. Those are very unsuggested words. These are very intriguing words to me. They're inspiring words to me. We may live in the darkest era of this century. It certainly looks like it, doesn't it? We may live in very difficult circumstances. We may have an idolatrous world all around us who are either worshiping themselves or what they can see and acquire, and is it so? Is God so covered? Is he hidden that he can't reveal himself to us today? That's when it was that the God of Glory appeared to our father Abraham, and he sent him out, and, as you know, they left the Ur of the Chaldeans and went up to Charon in the north, and then after Terah died, Abraham moved south with Lot and his servants, and he comes down into the land. Now, after he's come through the land, we come down to verse 7 of chapter 12, and it says again, The Lord appeared unto Abraham and said unto thy seed, Will I give this land? And there builded he an altar unto the Lord who appeared unto him. The result, the fruit of these revelations, these visions of God, are also most instructive. The first time we read of God appearing to Abraham after he left Ur of the Chaldeans, not when he was in Charon or Haran, but after when he came down into the land of Canaan, then the Lord appears to him and makes to him a promise regarding the land. He makes subsequent promises regarding the same country, the same land, the same inheritance, the same possession in the following chapters, and he enlarges them as he does this, and I think there's a principle here as well. God reveals himself to us today. He does it in his own way, at his own time, and for his own reasons. There must have been sovereignty involved in the choice of Abraham when he was in Ur of the Chaldeans. It reminds me of Exodus chapter 19, when God brought Israel out of the land of Egypt and brought them to Mount Sinai, to Horeb, and he gathered them together at the foot of the mountain, and he says to Moses, now tell this people that if they will obey the voice of the Lord they shall be to me a peculiar treasure and a holy nation. Tell them that I have chosen them to be this on this base. Deuteronomy 7 adds something to this. Moses said later on in Deuteronomy 7, he said the Lord didn't choose you because you were many, for you were few. You were insignificant. You didn't have a glorious past. You didn't have something that you could look back on. Some of us are very proud of our past, aren't we? Someone was asking me yesterday, I think it was, about some of my ancestors, and I like to think that my grandfather on my father's side was one of the first brethren who met in assemblies in London, England in the last century, and some of our family friends, or cousins rather, have decided to look up the family history and build a tree, you know how it is, and then send you the crest and all that, and I said to my mother one day, I said, we know a lot about my father's family, of our father's family, but we don't know anything about your family. She said, I suggest you don't bother, and I said, well, I think it'd be interesting to know. We know so many. My father's family, there were 17 children and 14 of them lived, and they're scattered across the world from Malaysia to Australia to Africa to England and United States here and other places, and I said, we know a lot about father's family, but I'd like to know something about your family. She said, just leave it alone. If you go back too far, you'll just find a lot of thieves and rogues, so leave it alone. So I left it alone. What else could I do? He said, I didn't choose you as a nation because you were mighty, because you had a glorious past, because you were the least of all the nations when I chose you, and the reason I chose you, says God, and the reason why you will be a peculiar treasure unto me is because all the earth is mine. And as we say in Spanish, this is the sum and substance of it. This is the reason for it. This is the heart of it. It's sovereign, selective grace, and they could not claim to anything else. I've chosen you, I'm going to make you a peculiar treasure, I'm going to make you a kingdom of priests if you obey my voice, because all the earth is mine. And he will have mercy on whom he will have mercy, and he will choose whom he will he choose. What is the clay going to say to the potter when the potter's design is to make it as he wills? So I look at Abram and I say, God chose him, the God of glory appeared to him. I look at myself, I look at others, and I say, but why was I chosen in Christ from before the foundation of the world? Why did God put his hand upon me? For I know of no reason he should have done this on the basis of what we would call competency or personal ability. But that love which is causeless is selective, we may glory in the grace of it. So he appears unto Abram in verse 7 of chapter 12, and he said that he had promised to give him the land into which he had come. Now, let's look further over to chapter 13. Chapter 13, you recall, I'm just going to briefly make a summary of some of these chapters as we move through them. It's the first mention of the word brethren in the Bible, by the way, and you know what happened? Well, there was strife amongst them. That's right, that's what it says. That's what it says. The herdsmen of Lot and the herdsmen of Abram were striving together and quarreling together, and Abram said to Lot, let us not have strife amongst us because we be brethren. Yes, not straight about that. So, Abram said, now you take the choice. You go where you will, and I'll go wherever you don't. So he gave Lot the choice, as you know, and Lot looked down to the well-watered plain of Jordan, and he said, it looks like the garden of the Lord as thou comest into Egypt. Now, isn't that a strange combination of things? It looks like the garden of the Lord, it looks like the paradise of God, and it looks like the same, the land as you come into Egypt. Now, what distorted vision would make a man compare the paradise of God with the land of Egypt? Only a man whose mind is centered strictly and specifically on material things. The world never can look to us comparable with the paradise of God, can it? The land of Jordan, the vale of Jordan, and then, of course, the comment is made that the sinners of Sodom were exceedingly wicked before the Lord. It never could be compared, could it, with the garden of the Lord, with the paradise of God. And yet, sometimes our hearts actually want to settle down in this valley of Jordan because it is so comfortable. In our traveling around Latin America, Central America, and South America, particularly in the last 25 years or 30 years, I'm always impressed when I leave these countries, and particularly Cuba as it is today, which we've been visiting recently, to discover how many things a Christian doesn't need to be happy, and how he can or she can be happy and joyous in the Lord with nothing of the things that we consider make us happy or comfortable. And they don't measure the sacrifice they have to make to go to a conference. They'll travel in a train for anywhere from 23 to 30 hours, and get off the end of the train, and get on a cattle truck, and hitch rides, and so forth, to go a way down to an assembly at the foot of the mountains in the eastern part of the country for a conference. And they're joyous, they're exulting, they're exuberant about their Christian faith now. And yet, they're living under very stringent circumstances. They're still rationed, they still get one pair of shoes a year, providing the store where they're allowed to buy them on the day in which they're allowed to buy them has their size. And if it doesn't, you can come back next year. Or you can take whatever size they have and try and trade with somebody else who has your size. And the ladies get one dress a year, and the men get one pair of pants and shirt a year, and they get so many pounds of sugar a month, and four ounces of meat a week, and so many beans, and so on. That kind of thing is still there, still existent. And if you use up all your soap, you can buy a bar on the black market for $12 a bar of soap. Prices are exorbitant. We have a little girl, I shouldn't take a lot of time telling you stories, but we have a little girl living in our home, which was, and as an assembly family living in 16 years of age, and she said to me, I asked her what she was doing, what she was going to do, and she said, well, I've tried to get a job seven times, and each time I fail. And I said, how come? She said, well, the last question always on the form that I have to fill out is, do you believe in God? And I always put yes, and I throw it out. So she says, that's happened to me seven times. I said, well, why don't you leave it blank? She said, I can't believe it blank, but it asks me if I believe in God. So I say, yes. I said, well, what are you going to do now? She said, well, I'm taking in children from farm countries around, country around, and they're looking after children, and I'm getting a little money that way. She had on a pair of sneakers, running shoes, as we call them down here, these cannabis shoes, you know, and I said, those are nice shoes you've got, red and white, they were. She said, do you know how much I paid for those? And I said, no, she said, I paid $180 for them. You can buy them in the tourist hotel where we go and make our purchases with American dollars. You can buy them for $5.95. And the very same shoes, exactly. And on the black market, this is what she has to pay. Now, in spite of that fact, she is one of the most excited and inspired and driven Christians that we have. She goes and lines up for three days in order to get reserved seats. You have to reserve them, there's only one way you can go, to travel on a bus to go down to the Havana area for as many as you want to go for a conference. And she would just stand there hour by hour by hour for three days to get these tickets so that some of them can go down to attend a conference. There are so many things that a Christian doesn't need to be happy, especially to be happy in the Lord. Lot says, I'll have that. And so he chooses the plane of Jordan and he goes this way. And Abram says, you take the right hand, I'll go to the left. You take the left hand, I'll go to the right. And I leave the decision with you. And in the ultimate, it's left with God. Lot makes his choice. He goes his way. Abraham then takes what is left. And what happens? Well, you know what happens. It says here in verse 14, the Lord said unto Abram after the lot was separated from him, lift up now thine eyes and look from the place where thou art northward and southward and eastward and westward for all the land which thou seest to thee will I give it unto thy seed forever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth, so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it, for I will give it unto thee. And Abram removed his tent and came and dwelt in the place of the plane of Mamre. Now, some translation of this word, Mamre, is from the vision. From the vision. God gives him a vision. He gives him a twofold vision. He gives him a vision of himself, and he gives him a vision of the land. And the vision is you have left the choice with me. You did not choose the best for yourself. You left it for Lot to take what he wanted. You left the choice with me. I will give you what my choice is for you. And he gave him the vision of the land. Do we experience or appreciate a vision of the land that God has given to us? The possession which is ours in Christ, and the material things drop off from us until we look full into the face and person of our glorious Lord, which we are doing in the evening, Lord willing, and we see something of the great inheritance that God has given to us. Let us walk through the land, the length and the breadth of it, to the north and to the south of it. And he says, I will give it to you. Reminds us of Joshua later on, doesn't it? Moses' servant and his follower. So that's the vision. Mamre means from the vision God is going to reward him for leaving the choice with him. Chapter 14, you have the battle. Now, that's a future battle. That's a prophetic battle, I should say, of the days that are coming when the Melchizedek, the King of Salem, and the priest of the Most High God comes out in verse 18 to meet Abram coming from the slaughter of the kings. I suggest to you, if you're interested, you want to know something about how our Lord is going to appear to Israel in the Melchizedek, in the character of being the Melchizedek High Priest, you look at this battle here, because there's another battle going to take place shortly in the land of Israel. Consequent upon that battle, and the outcome of that battle, Israel is going to discover who the Melchizedek High Priest really is. So this is prophetic. And Melchizedek goes out to meet Abram, and he blesses him, as you have in verse 19. And then the King of Sodom comes out and makes his offer to him, and Abram refuses anything from the hands of the King of Sodom, because he knows the possessor of heaven and earth. He will not take us from a thread, he says in verse 23, chapter 14, even to a shoelace. Now, consequent upon that, we have in chapter 15 another vision of God to Abraham. After these things, now that embraces the battle, the meeting with Melchizedek, the High Priest, or the Priest of the Most High God, that's a millennial title, and then the meeting of the temptation with the King of Sodom. After these three things, then what happens? The word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram, I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward. The spoils of the victory were not Abram's. The spoils of the victory for Abram was God. He was to be his exceeding great reward. He would take nothing from the King of Sodom. He would take everything from the Most High God, the possessor of heaven and earth. Why should we live in poverty? Why should we live in spiritual destitution? Why should we be down and discouraged, and why should we feel we have nothing and are nothing? When the Lord is the portion of his people, he will be our shield, shield from the temptations of the King of Sodom, and our exceeding great reward when we lose nothing by choosing him. So that's the vision in part of chapter 15. Then, as a result of that, we have the promise of an heir, and that comes in verse 4. This will be God's subject with Abraham from now on. He's going to talk about the seed. He's going to talk about the heir. He said that he would, in verse 5, he brought him forth abroad and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars. Oh, I recall noticing over in verse 16 of chapter 13, it was the dust of the earth. His seed was going to be as the dust of the earth. Now God says, Look toward heaven, or the heavens, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them. That's the contrast between the dust of the earth and the stars of heaven. And he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. And then we have this famous statement repeated in the New Testament. He believed in the Lord, or in Jehovah, and he counted it to him for righteousness. Now, God goes back to say, It was I in verse 7 that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees. And I who brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees now, not only will I give you this land, but I will give this land to your seed, to your posterity forever and forever. Later on we have two expressions, I think it's in chapter 17, an everlasting possession and an everlasting covenant. My brethren, let us realize that what we have to invest in today is what we shall enjoy forever, and that is Christ. In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. The fullness of the Godhead is in him bodily. He has brought us out of idolatry, and he has given us himself as our exceeding great reward, as our possession, an eternal possession. I sometimes say mostly to the young folks, I could say it to the older young folks I guess too, that I am convinced, through personal experience and otherwise, that every Christian has the birthright of having a personal covenant relationship with God. Now, I hope I will be able to consider with you some of these cases of some of the women and the circumstances under which they came into a covenant relationship with God. And I believe that the Lord deals with us not in the aggregate but in the individuality of our persons and our life. And God has an interest in being to us a very personal, individual God, and revealing to us his covenant, his plans, his purpose for us now, individually. We'll see that later on in others, men as well as women, but I think for today we should understand that. Sometimes I believe that we diffuse our concept of what we have in Christ by spreading it out over the whole body of Christ, and lose the individual relationship and character of what we have in Christ. I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward. I may apologize to you modern folks, but I'd still like to be a thy person, a thy and a thee. The thees and the thous, you know how I like it over the you? You see, you can't do this in Spanish. You can't say you as we say it in English and mean singular and plural at the same time. You can't do that. I like it because it singles us out individually. And some people have trouble with the thees and the thous, but I guess I was raised in the thees and the thous, and so the thees and the thous are part of my makeup, and I can't change that. Not that I necessarily want to. But I like the Ten Commandments because it says thou, thou, thou, thou, thou, and you can't pass that on in the aggregate to anybody. You can't give that to the whole nation. You can't give that to a whole congregation. You can't give it to an assembly. You can't give it to a family. It's thou shall. Individual. God nails us individually, doesn't he? I had a Jew came to see me a little while back, and he landed at my house with a big Bible under his arm. He said, my four sons gave me this for Christmas, and I don't understand it. And I said, I know what's the problem. He's not going to understand the thees and the thous. It was a King James Version, you know, and he said, I don't understand it, and I was told that you could explain this to me. And I said, well, tell me what is the problem. What is it you don't understand? He says, I don't understand the spakes and the spokes. That is a little bit of a development on the thees and the thous. God is to us our individual possession and reward. So we pray. We pray. May it please thee, our Father, to bless our consideration of thyself and our glorious Lord, the one who has come to us individually and personally, who is our own. May thy blessing rest upon thy people in all our activities today we ask as we commend us to thee in his name. Amen.