(Romans) the Condemnation of the World

Good evening guys, let's turn to Romans chapter 1. Two things to pray about. Pray that I can get through this in 30 minutes and pray that we can get through Romans in this year. The more I look at it I wonder how are we gonna do this actually, but we'll do it.

The Lord will help us do it. Verse 18 of chapter 1, we we looked at verse 18 last week and we just sort of, as you remember, we focus specifically on verse 18. But verse 18 is the beginning of the first segment of this epistle to the Romans.

Up until verse 18 you're basically dealing with Paul's introduction. And so having completed his introduction, verse 18 he here's where he begins to basically build his case. Paul, in a sense here in these first chapters of Romans, he's somewhat like a prosecuting attorney building the case against the human race, showing ultimately that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

That's why he said he's not ashamed of the gospel. That's why he said he is a debtor to all men, because he was compelled by this knowledge of man's sinfulness and the impending judgment of God. He was compelled by this to get the gospel to people.

And so verse 18 begins an argument that will carry on through chapter 3 verse 20. It's one continual argument from verse 18 of chapter 1 all the way through chapter 3 verse 20. And I want you to be aware of that, because people who fail to grasp that reality oftentimes misinterpret some of what Paul says in these chapters.

And people have actually accused Paul of contradicting himself because they fail to understand the context in which he's made some of these statements. So in these next few chapters, Paul has one primary goal, and that is, as I said, to show the utter condemnation of the entire human race. And he begins with the obviously condemned, the obvious sinners, the people that everyone else, for the most part, would agree, yes, okay, we understand that people who do these things are condemned.

But he doesn't stop there. As we move into chapter 2, he pronounces really the condemnation of God upon what you might call the respectable sinners, those that are more cultured and those that are more refined and those that aren't, you know, living in the gutters or hanging out in the bars and things like that. But he shows that they're equally condemned.

And then finally he goes on to show the condemnation of the religious world and using the Jew as his example, the Jew of course being the prime example in Paul's day of the religious man. So we're gonna tonight just get through the first chapter here. So let me read you verses 18 on through the chapter, and then we will come back and more or less highlight it.

So verse 18, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and divine nature, so that they are without excuse.

Because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness in the lust of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

Amen. For this reason God gave them up to vile passions, for even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind to do those things which are not fitting. Being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness, they are whispers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful, who knowing the righteous judgment of God that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them. The verses we just read could not describe more clearly the world as we see it today and yet this is actually a description of the world in Paul's day.

But it isn't only a description of the world in Paul's day, it is a description of what happens and what will happen to every civilization, nation, people, tribe, or person who rejects the knowledge of God. See, this is a picture of humanity at that place where they have completely disengaged from God. This is where it leads to.

And all throughout history, this cycle has been repeated over and over and over again. And now we, living in our culture, we've just sort of come to this portion of the cycle once again, where we read this and we say, wow, sounds like Paul was observing our world today. But he wasn't.

But in a sense he was because, again, this is man without God. This is where it leads to. Now, here in our text that we just read, Paul gives, first of all, several reasons why man is under the wrath of God.

So he begins in verse 18, as we've already noted, talking about the fact that God's wrath is being poured out. And so here he gives several reasons why men are under the wrath of God and let's just briefly touch on a few of these here. First of all, in verse 18, he says that man is under God's wrath for suppressing the truth.

And we talked about that last week, so we won't belabor the point now. But the idea is man knows what's right, but he suppresses it. He hardens himself.

He resists that conviction and even his own conscience, and he goes ahead and he acts against what he knows to be the truth. But secondly, we see that man is under God's wrath for shunning the revelation of God or ignoring God's revelation. Look at verses 19 and 20.

In verse 19, he says, because what may be known of God is manifest in them for God has shown it to them. And what Paul will ultimately say here, of course, is that there's not a single person who has a legitimate excuse for their rebellion or for their unbelief in God because God has revealed himself. First of all, he's manifest in them.

What may be known of God is manifest in man. You have to be taught to be an atheist. People are not atheistic by nature.

You can go all over the planet and find that people naturally have an innate sense that there is a God, that there is a creator, that there is a supreme being of, you know, some sort. That's common in every culture. Atheism is something that is imposed from the outside because there's a strong inner testimony to the reality of there being a God.

People just sense that that is the case. There must be a creator. Also, each and every person in the world has an internal sense of right and wrong.

That is something that is also innate within humanity. Again, people have to be taught that there's nothing that's actually right. People have to be, you know, programmed with ideas like relativism and things like that because everything inside of a person says that, hey, wait a second, that's wrong.

No, that shouldn't be done. Wait, wait, that, you know, they shouldn't talk like that or, you know, you shouldn't treat a person that way. That's the inner testimony that we have as people who were created in the image of God.

Now, later in the second chapter here of Romans, Paul is going to tell us what that is. He tells us it's actually the traces of the law that were originally written on the heart of mankind. See, when God created man, he created man with his law in his heart.

But when sin came into the picture, of course, man died spiritually and that law that was there at the forefront of man's being was, you know, removed from that place. But there are still these dim reminders within all people of that law of God, that innate sense of right and wrong. But notice he says that the manifestation, what may be known of God is manifest in them for God has shown it to them.

So there's the inward testimony and then there's the external testimony. And now he goes on in verse 20 to describe the external. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and divine nature, so that they are without excuse.

God expects man, the creature to observe himself and the world that he lives in and draw the only logical conclusion that anyone ought to draw that there must be a creator. The created world around us is a testimony. Psalm 19 says that heavens declare the glory of God.

The firmament shows his handiwork day and today utter speech night and tonight shows forth knowledge. There's no speech or language in which their voice is not heard. God is saying creation is crying out to all of humanity.

There is a creator. And, you know, I think our present generation, we are more responsible than any previous generation because of all the intricacies that we know about creation these days. Because of advances in technology, we, and, you know, the ability to look into the world through a microscope and things like that, the ability to dissect a cell and all of that, and looking at the complexity and seeing this amazing creation, man is more accountable than ever when he looks at himself, when he looks at the created world around him.

God fully expects a man to acknowledge a creator when he looks at the created world. Isn't it ironic that that's the very thing that man is refusing to do today? He looks at the creation and says, um, no, this is all a result of random chance. There is no creator.

The crazy thing is it's only in the biological world that people would ever even think to draw that kind of a conclusion. You would never look at a car or a watch or, you know, whatever other example you want to give and then conclude this just came about randomly. We have millions of years.

I don't know. It just, over the years, it just all assembled itself. Nobody would ever say anything like that.

But in the world of biology, which is a billion times more complex than, you know, um, an aircraft or an automobile or a watch or whatever, we just say, oh, well, this, this all happened randomly. I get this magazine. Um, I hate the thing, but I get it.

It's natural history and it's a, it comes out through, um, National Geographic and this most recent issue. Did I tell you guys this last week? No. Okay, good.

You know, I teach so many times. I don't know who I told what and if I'm repeating myself. Okay.

I told somebody this, but it wasn't you. Good. Anyway, this most recent issue, uh, Darwin is on the cover of the most recent issue and this particular magazine has become, uh, it seems almost like it's become, uh, the National Geographic's, uh, propaganda wing for evolution.

And every single article is praising Darwin and, uh, all, you know, many of the top scientists in the evolutionary world are making contributions. And the first article in there is by a biology professor from Oxford University, Richard Dawkins. Maybe you guys have heard of Richard Dawkins.

He's very much a, uh, an opponent of creationism. He just hates creationists. And, uh, it's interesting though, when you read the article, he refers to the intelligent design guys as the bully boys of creationism.

So shows that they're kind of getting under his skin. He doesn't really have any ability to contend with them as the reality. But the amazing thing, and he of course wrote a book called the blind watchmaker.

This is the guy who will admit, he will admit that there is apparently extreme complexity. And certainly there's an appearance of design in the world. He will admit that.

But then he simply goes on to say, it appears that way, but in actuality, it's not true. There is no designer. This wasn't designed.

It looks this way, but let me assure you on the authority of myself that, uh, there is no such thing as a creator. He is his own final authority. It amazes me as I read this most recent article that he did.

All he really did was mock and call names when it came to the creationist and the intelligent design guys. And then he just said, uh, anybody who doesn't believe that evolution is a fact is not a true scientist. He gave no proof.

He gave no examples to support. It's just simply upon his own authority. And you know, you look at a person like this, and this is the kind of person that's being described right here in, um, Romans chapter one, without excuse, God expects us to draw the most obvious conclusion.

As we look in the mirror, as we look at the trees, the sky, the sea, the, the animals around us, whatever he expects us to draw the logical conclusion. Here's a creation. There must be a creator.

And the man who does not draw that conclusion is the man who is without excuse and under the wrath of God. Now he goes on and he also says here in verse 21 that man is under God's wrath for refusing to give glory and thanks to God. Although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God nor were thankful.

Now, this is what happened all the way back in the early days leading up to the flood. This is what happened in the days after the flood leading up to, uh, the other judgments that occurred there, the, the tower of Babel and those things that we mentioned last week. But of course, these are the things that are still happening today.

Although they knew God, they didn't glorify him as God. And you know, it wasn't all that long ago that the general consensus in Western culture was that there was a God. And it's only been the past hundred years or more that that has really come under a severe attack.

But rather than giving glory to God and being thankful, what happens? He goes on in verse 22 and 23 and says that man perverts the glory of God. And so professing to be wise, they became fools, changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image, make like corruptible man, birds, four-footed animals, and creeping things. Now, Paul here, of course, is describing people going into idolatry and taking and molding and shaping images after the animal world, and then bowing down to these things and worshiping these things and referring to them as God.

But you know, you see a parallel even in our current situation with this whole evolutionary idea. I mean, what are they talking about? They're talking about our ancestors are what? They're apes or, you know, lower life forms. These are our ancestors.

We have descended from these things, they're saying. And in many ways, I think they're doing the same sort of a thing. In verse 25, he says that they worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.

And that's what atheism really is. Atheism is ultimately the worshiping and serving of the creature, the creature being man himself. We talk about humanism today.

Humanism is atheism. It's just a nice word for atheism. I like to refer to it as atheistic humanism because that's what it is.

It puts man up as the measure of all things and bows down before the altar of man. Now, secondly, the apostle tells us here, he gives us a picture of the inner process that man passed through that led him to do this, to suppress the truth in unrighteousness. In verse 21, we read that although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, but became futile in their thoughts.

So instead of receiving the revelation of God, man begins to speculate, man begins to philosophize. And in doing so, he's rejecting God's revelation of himself. And that's what has happened.

And that's what happens all around us today. People reject the revelation that God gave of himself, and then they come up with alternative theories to the reality of God being our creator. And we see that all around us today.

But notice what happens next. Their foolish heart becomes darkened. So the heart of man becomes dark, and he can no longer see clearly.

And this is what you see when you look at what atheism really is all about. When you look at Marxism, when you look at evolutionism, when you look at all this stuff, when you look at the stuff these guys say, and the stuff that they believe, and the stuff that they condone and tolerate, you realize the heart has become darkened. They can no longer think.

For anything, they can't see what's actually right or wrong. You know, it's astounding that what's right is that you can rip a baby out of a womb five minutes before it's going to be born and dash its head in. And that's okay, because that's not a problem.

Because what we're really concerned about is this woman's right to privacy or whatever it might be. But destroying this little life, well, this isn't any big deal. You know, it's nuts.

And you have the same people who are advocating that sort of thing. They're out crying about somebody smashing a mosquito somewhere. You know, the poor mosquito population is diminishing, and these cruel, you know, it's insanity.

You look at this stuff and you think, what's happened? What's happened is their foolish hearts have been darkened. And then he goes on to say, professing to be wise, they become fools. And I think that's really exactly, it's probably the best description of what's happened in our culture today.

You've got a bunch of people who claim to be wise. They're filled with intellectual pride, but when you listen to the stuff they say, when you listen to the stuff they espouse, when you listen to them justify the deaths of innocent people. You ever listen to people who are sympathetic with Marxism? I mean, I don't know how anybody in their right mind could sympathize with Marxism.

We've had plenty of examples all over the world of what it does. China, some 60 million people destroyed through Marxism. In the former Soviet Union, some 50 million or so at least.

Hitler, of course, although everybody always talks about the fascist Hitler, Hitler was very much influenced by Marxism. He was a socialist. You know, all of the destruction and devastation of the 20th century, much of it originated in Marxism.

But then you have professors all over the world in our universities talking about the beauty of Marxism, talking about socialism as being the ultimate economic or social system. You think these guys have lost their minds. How do you justify that? And sometimes I'll read or I'll listen to these guys and they will actually try to justify Mao Zedong or Pol Pot or one of these persons and say, well, you know, we know.

Well, that was unfortunate. But and they've got some rationale for why it was actually OK to kill 60 million of your countrymen. It's unbelievable.

But it's exactly what we're reading here. Professing to be wise, they become fools. And this is and you know this, guys, you see it more and more.

This is what's happened in our culture today. We have people with this mentality who are in places of power and they're they're seeking to impose their their views. Of course, their cry is always you Christians be quiet.

You don't you know, you're trying to impose your views on us. The problem is really they don't want any competition. They want their views to be shoved down everybody else's throat and they don't want anybody contradicting them.

But verse 25 says that they exchange the truth of God for the lie. They exchange God's truth for the lie. And the lie is basically that there is no God, that man is his own God.

But then thirdly, the apostle tells us how the wrath of God is presently being revealed. And we talked about that last week. But let's just look at it once again.

Remember, we talked about some of the catastrophic things that are going on and how it's a difficult thing to look at whether it's a hurricane or an earthquake or whatever and say, yes, this is God's judgment. Last week, I kind of got lost on that point a bit. But I was thinking, you know, recently with the hurricanes and the different things that are going on, many people have asked the question, you know, is this God's judgment? And I remember one morning when I was reading through Luke 13, and the Lord just really spoke to me right there.

Jesus tells the story. As a matter of fact, I just read it again yesterday. But Jesus tells the story of certain men in Galilee whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices.

And he says this, he says, do you think that they were worse sinners than all those in Galilee because this happened to them? And Jesus said, I tell you no, but unless you repent, you will likewise perish. And then he gave another illustration. And those 18 on whom the tower of Siloam fell, do you think that they were worse sinners than all men in Jerusalem? He said, I tell you no, but unless you repent, you shall all likewise perish.

So were the people in New Orleans worse than the sinners in Newport Beach? I tell you no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. You know, so we look at those things. And as I said, when we think about the judgment of God presently, God is not directly judging the world today as he has done in the past and as he will do in the future.

But he is indirectly judging the world today through what we read about right here versus 26, 28, 24, back to 24. Therefore, God also gave them up. That's the judgment right there.

You see what God does as long as men retain God in their knowledge, God keeps sin at bay. But when a man or a society disregards God, rejects God, says, I do not want to retain God in my knowledge. God takes off the restraints and he lets sin begin to overflow in a culture.

And sin, of course, is death. And that's what happens. Now, the funny thing is in the earliest stages of that, there are plenty of people who don't really see it as a judgment.

You know, we as men who have been influenced by God and by his word and had our lives changed and all that, we look at what's going on in our society today and we say, man, this is pathetic. This is horrible. This is corrupt.

This is the judgment of God. There are other people who look on and say, oh, no, this is wonderful what's happening today. Oh, people have freedom now and they can live how they want.

And they're not being made to feel guilty anymore. And we've got all of these new civil liberties and all this is wonderful. But you see, this is only the tip of the iceberg.

It just goes downhill from here. It goes from bad to worse. And that's what we see happening more and more and more.

So God gives them up. And then we read in verse 27 that they receiving in themselves the penalty of their error, which was due. You know, Isaiah says the way of the transgressor is hard.

And although men go out and live in total rebellion to God and live in sin and act like they're having a good old time, the fact of the matter is they're internally reaping the consequences of their sin. The way the transgressor is hard. They're miserable.

They're filled with hostility and there's no peace. And, you know, there are lots of different aspects of this idea here of receiving in themselves the penalty of their error, which was due. But that is certainly part of it.

You cannot rebel against God and expect to be a happy person. It just is not going to happen. It says again in Isaiah, there is no peace for the wicked, says the Lord.

Now, of course, people can put on a good show. And if you've got a lot of money and you've got, you know, the things that money can buy, you can go on pretending like it's all wonderful. It's fine.

It's not a problem. But the fact of the matter is you've got to drink yourself to sleep or take some pills or go lose yourself in some something or rather whatever it is, you know, all kinds of different escapes because there's no peace for the wicked. There's an internal sense of the judgment already going on in people's lives.

And then what ultimately happens, the final stage in the process is that wickedness overflows in a society to the point that man can no longer live a normal, comfortable, peaceful life in that society. And again, we see it. You know, we today, the world is different than it was 40 years ago, isn't it? There are many communities today in Los Angeles.

Take, for example, in LA. 40 years ago, there were many communities in LA. You could go sit on your front porch.

You could have a barbecue in your front yard. You could just, your kids could play in the street. Today, you can't go out your door without the risk of being shot to death because of the insanity that's going on in the streets, the gang activity, and the inability of the law enforcement world to really do anything about it, and the distorted ideas in our judiciary that say, basically, the criminal is really the victim, the victim of society, and we need to have more compassion for them.

And, you know, what this does is it just ruins life. And so as wickedness overflows, life, in any enjoyable sense, just becomes an impossibility. And we have not even, we haven't even gotten close to there yet.

I'll tell you, you read about some of the things that have gone on on the African continent in the past, say, 50 years. I've been reading recently just a lot of mission stuff, but reading about when the Congo was turned back over to the Congolese, and reading in Uganda, you know, when Idi Amin came to power and slaughtered 500,000 people and things. Rwanda is another good example.

A million people murdered in Rwanda. And this, but this is what happens as men turn away from God and are left to their own devices. All of the depravity, all of the sin, all of the evil that God would normally restrain, He allows it to overflow, and that's the way judgment happens in these days.

But as we pointed out in our previous study, there's, of course, a more direct judgment that's coming in the future. But here's what I want to leave you guys with tonight. First of all, as we look at this picture, verses 29 through 31, you know, whether you like it or not, or believe it or not, you're somewhere in the picture, and so am I. Because this is the reality.

This is the reality of the human heart. And so Paul's point is, again, to show us that we are all condemned. Because we have all, at one time or another, been guilty of at least one of these things, and in some cases several, and maybe in a few cases, every one of these things we have been guilty of.

But this is what we need to understand. This is a picture of the world that Jesus came to save. This is a picture, Paul's looking around himself and pinning these things, this is a picture of the world the apostles went into.

And my point is this, it's for these kinds of people that Christ died. This is what the gospel is about. And you see, for us today, we need to really, I think we need to get a hold of that reality again.

That the gospel is for sinners, for real sinners, not pretend sinners, but for real wicked, wretched, depraved, debased people. That's what the gospel's for. That's why Jesus came into this world.

And when the apostles went out into the world, this is the world they went out into. Now, there are many Christians today who look at the world and say, I don't want to go out there. That's bad.

That's evil. That's wicked. Here, let's all huddle together in here and hope it goes away.

Or maybe we'll get, you know, swept up in the rapture real quick and we'll just leave everybody themselves. That's not the mentality that we're to have. That's not the mentality that the apostles had.

Their mentality was we have got to go into the world with this message and bring this message to these people because these are the very people that Christ died for. And so as we see our culture going down the tubes, we need to be more aggressive with getting the gospel out than we've ever been before. We need to see it as a greater opportunity.

And I think a lot of times we forget that. A lot of times we fail to realize that God has always done His most powerful work in desperate times. When you read about the great works of God historically, going right back here to the beginning of the New Testament era, it's when things are dark that the light shines the brightest.

It's when things are desperate and people are desperate and people start to look around and say, there's no hope in this world. That's when they start to open up and soften up. And that's what we've been hearing and that's what we've been seeing with these different catastrophic things that are going on.

A few of you guys have gone down south and you've seen it firsthand and you come back with the reports that people want to hear the gospel. People realize there's a judgment coming. Our lives are short.

We need to tell us about Jesus. Pray with us. Those kinds of things.

So we need to have that perspective, I think. Not the isolate perspective, but the infiltrate perspective. That we get out into this world and we be the light of the world.

That we be the salt of the earth. That we let people see the reality of Christ in our lives. And if that brings persecution, if that brings animosity or hostility, that's just part of the Christian life.

And rather than complain about it, we need to just pray about it and just say, Lord, you know, because this has been the lot of all God's people throughout all of the ages. For some reason, we've sort of convinced ourselves that it's our constitutional right to not be persecuted or to not have anybody dislike us as Christians. That's not our constitutional right.

Whatever the constitution says, the Bible, of course, that's where we stand. And the Bible tells us in no uncertain terms, all those who will live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. That's a reality.

Because we live in a dark world. Because the devil is active. But we're not to draw back because of that.

We're to advance. We're to keep moving forward with this glorious message. And that's what motivated Paul.

That's why he said, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Because Paul knew, looking at these people that he described here, he knew that there was one solution and one solution only, and that was the gospel itself. And that's the reality.

There's one solution. There's one possibility for change in our society, and that's the gospel. That men would come into contact with Christ, have their sins forgiven, and their lives transformed.

And that's happened to us. It's happened to most of us. And we all have a testimony.

And you know yourself, and you know what God has done for you, and what God has done for you, he can do for the guy next to you as well. And he wants to do that for the guy next to you. And so as we look at this picture here, it is a bleak picture, but it's a realistic picture.

This is the real world. And guess what? This has always been the way it is. We have had an interesting experience in this land, and other countries have had it for brief periods of time, where there's been sort of a Christian veneer that's covered the culture, but there's always been plenty of sin just, you know, bubbling up underneath, just waiting for the opportunity to overflow.

It's always been there. It's just been covered. Now the cover is being pulled back, and we're seeing the reality that's always been there, just like the Bible said, men are sinners.

The human heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. But this is the reason Jesus came, to save men from their sins. And so may God help us to have that perspective, to have his heart, and to realize that it's not time to retreat, but it's time to charge into the battle, and see what God will do in and through our lives, in bringing people out of the darkness.

We're running a rescue mission. I think it was C.T. Studd. I can't remember if it was him or another guy, but I think it was C.T. Studd.

He was a missionary in China for many years, and then in Africa, and later life in India as well. But he said this. He said, some people want to set up their ministry within the shadow of the church steeple.

He said, I'd rather run a rescue boat at the gate of hell. I like that. A rescue boat at the gate of hell.

Right there, bringing people out of that. There's a lot of people around us today, guys, that I believe God wants to use us to bring them out of the kingdom of darkness, into his marvelous light. And all we have to keep in mind is that Jesus came to save sinners, and the gospel is God's power to bring that salvation to them, and just make ourselves available.

Lord, here I am. Use me. And you know what? You make yourself available, and God will take care of the rest.

As you've heard before, as it has been said, it's not ability God's looking for. It's availability, because God will give you the ability. That's the wonderful thing.

Father, thank you for your grace that has saved a wretch like me. Lord, thank you that your mercy has reached us. And Lord, we realize that you're still working, and you've left us here, not so we could isolate ourselves, but so we could be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

Help us, Lord, to let our light so shine before men that they will see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven and want to come and be part of this kingdom. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.