A Weighty Testimony

Let’s pray. We give thanks you to, O Lord, with our whole hearts, and we bow at Your throne and give thanks to Your Name for Your steadfast love and Your faithfulness. For You have exalted about all things Your Name and Your Word. Give us ears, we pray. Give us minds, give us hearts, to receive Your Word and believe in Your Name. In the name of Jesus, the Word made flesh, we pray. Amen.

We come this morning to John’s Gospel, chapter 5. Beginning next week we will start our series on the kings of Judah in the morning. We have a couple more weeks in the evening with the Canons of Dort before we start our summer series on the minor prophets, so we’ll be taking a few months of off John after finishing with John chapter 5 this morning.

We’ll be reading verses 30 through 47, John chapter 5, beginning at verse 30.

“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and My judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of Him who sent me. If I alone bear witness about Myself, my testimony is not true. There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that He bears about me is true. You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given Me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about Me that the Father has sent Me. And the Father who sent Me has himself borne witness about Me. His voice you have never heard, His form you have never seen, and you do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom He has sent. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about Me, yet you refuse to come to Me that you may have life. I do not receive glory from people. But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote of Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

Whether you realize it or not, you are all living for someone’s approval. It’s true. We all deep down desperately want someone to testify about us that we’re good, that we’re smart, that we’re special, that we’re beautiful, that there’s something about us that’s unique. We want to know deep down that we are accepted. So it’s true, no matter how old you are this morning, no matter how confident you may seem, every single one of you, and myself included, we’re living, we’re hungry, we’re desperate for someone’s approval.

And if you think that you’re not, it’s likely because you think you have that approval, and if it were to be taken away, you would see your world come crashing down. For some of you it’s desperately your whole life wanting to know that your parents really love you, or even like you, or accept you, or what you’ve down with your life has made them proud, and you’ve accomplished something.

For, for others, we’ve reversed it. For most of human history children have wanted to please their parents, but in our day it’s often parents who are living for the approval of their children. Do they say that I’ve been a good mom or dad? Did I get them into the right schools? Did I read them enough books when they were in the womb? Did I introduce Shakespeare before they aware conceived? Did I, have I done enough to get him ahead in life? Will my children like me?

Or many of you are at that stage of life where you’re not thinking a lot about your, your parents, but it’s your friends. Do you have people around you? What do they think, the people that are with you in school, the people that you see during the week, or in this new digital world, it’s social media, people that we barely know or a celebrity, if he or she would only re-tweet us.

I remember how excited I was a few years ago, maybe two years ago, I tweeted something about Fixer Upper, the show, and I said “Tricia, look it, look at this. Chip Gaines re-tweeted it!” [laughter] Now it wasn’t Joanna; that would have been just the end of the world, but, [laughter] wow! Someone I don’t know and doesn’t know me and I’ve never met, but he pushed a button! [laughter] And you saw it on Facebook and a lot people pushed a button and said “thumbs up” to you! [laughter] And we understand we get that dopamine hit and you go on there and you need to see how many people said I looked and how many people gave it thumbs up, how many people liked it, how many people re-sent it.

Or maybe it’s simply your employer or your employees or some institution, or an award that you’ve always wanted, an athletic achievement, musical, some degree, some honor. Perhaps just your colleagues, your peers to recognize you, or the academy. It’s easy for us to say “well, why, you know, why do we care about what those people think? Those people are always the people that mean nothing to us, so why are you living for the approval of the academy?” Well, because that’s not important, but you might be living for the approval of the arts community, or the business community, or your parents, or your friends, or perhaps it’s simply the “in” group in your life, and you feel like they’re the insiders, I’m the outsider, if only those people on the inside would like me on the outside, then I’ve arrived.

So all of us are living for someone’s approval. All of us are hungry, thirsty, desperate for someone to tell us that we’ve done a good job. That’s why we attach to grades: It’s right there, it’s a letter, it’s a number, it defines us. And of course it shouldn’t, but we let it.

With all of the approval your seeking, what about Jesus? Have you stopped to think what He thinks about you?

We saw last week in the previous verses how Jesus is given authority to execute judgment. There’s really one person’s approval ultimately that you need, and it’s the One who will stand in judgment over you. He spoke about the resurrection of life and the resurrection of judgment, we will all stand before Him.

Which raises two questions: 1, what is Jesus thinking in making such audacious claims?, and then 2, what is Jesus thinking about you? Or to divide it up just in a slightly different way, we see in the first half of this passage the testimony about Jesus and then we see in the second half of this passage the testimony from Jesus. So both are critical. To understand the testimony about Jesus, why He can make the claims that He makes, and then the testimony from Jesus, what might He say to you.

So let’s start in the first half, verse 30 through 37, the testimony about Jesus. Look at verse 31. He says “if I alone bear witness about Myself, My testimony is not true.” The Old Testament law was clear, Deuteronomy 17, Deuteronomy 19, that you were only to accept witness based on two independent testimonies. It still makes good common sense. You want to hear it from two different people. It’s remarkable that Jesus would say this. You would think if anyone could make a claim for himself to come on the scene and say “I speak for Myself, by Myself, I don’t need anyone else to speak for Me.” But that’s not what Jesus says. He says “if I just come in here and make claims for Myself, then you shouldn’t listen to Me. But it’s not Me alone. There are others who bear witness to Me.”

Isn’t it wise to look for more than one witness, to look for corroborating evidence. You know Proverbs 18:17: “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.” There’s always two sides to every story. That’s not exactly true; there’s usually 17 sides to every story.

There’s wisdom in seeking two witnesses. Not only to know the truth, but to know ourselves. Now we tend to say well, you know, nobody knows me except for me, when actually there’s probably a lot of people who actually know you better than you know you. I could make great claims before you about how I am an amazing dancer. Why are you laughing? [laughter] But you would be wise to want to hear testimony from others before you signed me up for Dancing with the Stars. My claim by itself would be rather hollow, and in this case our confidence would be misplaced.

The world says look, you are misunderstood genius. Be true to yourself. No one knows you like you! And the Bible says usually you misunderstand yourself to be a genius, and those closest to you probably see you more accurately than you see yourself.

It’s the season of graduations and there will be all sorts of graduation speeches around this country telling people “just be true to yourself and don’t listen to anyone else and march to the beat of your own drummer and just follow your heart and dig down deep.” Other sorts of Disney-fied nonsense.

No, listen to what people who love you and know you, people you trust, people who have been with you, people who have sacrificed for you. What do they say? What do they think you’re good at? What do they say about who you are? What do they say about what makes you valuable and special and important? You need more than just the testimony about yourself, even Jesus acknowledged that.

So He says there are others who bear testimony about Me. And He mentions two: One lesser and one greater. The lesser one, in verses 33 through 35, is John the Baptist. He says you listened to him for a while, John 1 verse 7, “he came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him.” So he was a shooting star, he had a light about him to point to the light, Jesus says “John came, and you were with him, and some of you liked him, until you killed him.”

If ever there were an example of the folly of living for the wisdom of the crowd, it’s John the Baptist, because John the Baptist had it going on. He was the “it” guy. He had more than his 15 minutes of fame. And it’s a good thing that he wasn’t living for the crowds and for the celebrity, because fame is always a fickle mistress. And John the Baptist had them clamoring for his attention and then the powers that be clamoring for his head, literally.

Jesus says, look at verse 34, “not that the testimony I receive is from man,” in other words, “I didn’t need John, I didn’t need John to validate Me, I didn’t need John the Baptist to come and say these things about Me. That’s testimony from man.” But look at what He says in the second half of verse 34: “But I say these things so that you may be saved.” In other words, Jesus understands “I didn’t really need the testimony of John the Baptist, but he was a big deal, he was a prophet, many of you looked to him, some of you followed him, and so I’ll point to John the Baptist so that maybe by his authority you’ll recognize My authority and you’ll be saved.”

So He says first there’s this lesser testimony, John the Baptist, and then He says there’s a greater testimony. Verse 36: “The testimony that I have is greater,” you could say weightier, “than that of John, and this testimony is from the Father.” Verse 32: “There is another who bears witness about me and I know that the testimony that He bears about Me is true.” Later in John’s Gospel he will talk about the other, another comforter who is coming, and that’s the Holy Spirit, but here the “other” is the father. Verse 36, second sentence: “For the works that the Father has given Me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about Me that the Father has sent me.”

So much weightier than John the Baptist is the Father’s testimony. Jesus says, verse 30, “I am doing His will, nothing more.” Verse 36, “I am doing His works.” Verse 37, “the Father bears witness about Me.” In all that He does through Him and all that He will do to vindicate him and in all that He has done to already speak of Him, the Father bears testimony. This is both the totality of Jesus’ ministry demonstrating the Father’s work in Him and Jesus may have a few specific instances in mind, like the Mount of Transfiguration where the voice will come from heaven and even more particularly the baptism, where the spirit descends as a dove and the Father from heaven says “this is My beloved Son. Listen to Him. I am pleased with Him.” That testimony from the Father was worth more than all of the fame, all of the celebrity, that all of the prophets in the world could ever give Him.

And do you know that’s true for you? Simply to have the Father, your heavenly Father, God Almighty, the creator of all things, to say to you and about you, “this, this is my adopted son, this is my adopted daughter, and I love her, and I am pleased with him.”

Jesus received this testimony, this testimony about Himself, and it is weighty because it comes from the Father. Look, the reason Christianity is true and other religions are not, has nothing to do with religion and it has everything to do with Christ. See, the first question is not, well, which system is better? How do I know that Christianity is better than Islam or Christianity is better than Hinduism, and you know, I was born into a Christian home, or I was born into Christian country and so I’m a Christian, maybe if I was born somewhere else I would have been a Muslim, and how do I know I picked the right one?

Well, it’s an honest question. But it’s not the first question to ask. The first question to ask is the question Jesus asked His disciples at Caesarea of Philippi, namely “who do you say that I am?” It’s not that we just woke up one day and said “okay, today’s the great religion fair at school. They’ve all got a spokesman and they are all, you know, kind of pick and you just say “what religion do you want to be? And you say oh, I kinda like that, they got some, well, that one’s got a lot of holidays and then you get presents there and you get wet with this one, well, with Presbyterians you don’t get that wet, so we’ll just kind of to this one,” and you just, just pick your religion day. That’s not how it works, I hope.

The question is Jesus, this man that everyone, He existed, and we read about Him? Who is He? He was sent from the Father. He does nothing but the will of the Father. He executes the work of the Father. He will judge the world with the authority granted to Him by the Father. If that’s what you believe, if you acknowledge all those claims about Jesus, and recognize the Father’s testimony about Jesus, then that’s where you start, not “well, I think I’ll take Christianity,” but “I believe what the Father says about Jesus.”

Christianity is the only religion where what the Father says about Jesus here in John is affirmed, believed, and celebrated. Jesus says there are two here bearing testimony: The lesser of John the Baptist and then the much weightier of My heavenly Father.

So that’s the first category, testimony about Jesus, why He makes the claims that He makes.

Well, then there is the testimony from Jesus. Look at verse 43: “I have come in my Father’s name and you do not receive me.”

We saw this prefaced already in the prologue in John chapter 1. “He was in the world and the world was made through Him yet the world did not know Him. He came to His own and His people did not receive Him.” That was one of the banners waving over this Gospel. He came to His own and they didn’t want Him. He came to his family reunion and they said “we don’t want you in our family.”

They did not believe in Him. Look at verse 38. “You do not have His Word abiding in you, for you do not believe the One whom He has sent.”

Most of the people that Jesus talked to rejected Jesus. Now you may think, perhaps, perhaps you’re here and you’re not a Christian, or you certainly have friends that are Christians, and so maybe you’ve thought to yourself or you’ve heard people say to you, “Look, what’s the big deal? You’re into Jesus, and I’m not. You’re religious, I’m not very religious. You think Jesus is Lord, you go to church; I think that’s fine if it helps you and your kids be better people, that’s great. I, I think He’s an important teacher, but I don’t judge you, so why, why should you judge me?” Had conversations like that before?

On the one hand you can say “you’re absolutely right, I’m not one to judge you. It’s not my place to judge you. There’s a difference between evaluating ideas, but I’m, I’m not judging you. But I believe the Bible, and the Bible says that Jesus will judge you. Yeah, it’s not my role, finally, to be your judge, but you can’t say that it’s just a light thing to do away with Jesus when my Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible, is the Jesus who is coming again to judge the living and the dead, so we ought to listen to what He has to say. If the Bible is true, then there is no more important approval in all the world except for this one. In fact, any other one hardly matters compared to this one.”

And look at Jesus’ assessment of the Jews in His day, and I hope it’s not the assessment He has of us. It is a relentlessly negative assessment. It’s the kind of assessment He gives to anyone who lingers in unbelief. It’s the assessment He gives to anyone who says “I don’t want the Son to be a part of our family reunion.” He came into the world, which was His own, and His own people did not receive Him.

Look at what Jesus says, He issues a seven-fold indictment to the crowd in front of Him. Verse 37. He says “His voice,” second sentence there in verse 37, “His voice you have never heard.” That is unlike Moses who in Mount Sinai heard the voice of God, Jesus says “if you don’t listen to Me, you’ve never heard from God. You’re going off and trying to find dreams and visions and crystals and stones and whatever, but if you don’t listen to Me, you’ve not heard from God.”

Second, he’s says “His form you have never seen. Unlike Jacob who saw God’s form in Genesis 32, you’ve not seen Him. If you don’t know enough to believe and to recognize that you have standing before you God in the flesh, then you’ll never see.” Hearing but never perceiving, seeing but never understanding. His voice you’ve never heard, His form you’ve never see.

Look at verse 38. Here’s the third part of the indictment: You do not have His Word abiding in you, unlike the psalmist, who hid God’s Word in his heart. They thought they were Word people. Jesus says if you don’t have My Word, you don’t have The Word.

And look at verse 29. Here’s the fourth indictment. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and they bear witness about Me, yet you refuse to come to Me and have life.

I have to stop here because most of us, we’re, we’re Bible people. You like the Bible and you do Bible studies and you’ve got multiple Bibles on your phone and in your home and you’ve been around it and we’re gonna do vacation Bible school and if I were to ask you how many of you like the Bible, you all like the Bible, you love the Bible. How many think the Bible is the Word of God? Most of you would say yes, the Bible is the Word, we’re Bible people.

You know what? They were Bible people. They were absolutely Bible people. And without a doubt they knew their Bibles. Most of them, certainly the leaders, knew their Bibles better than you did. Children had to memorize the Torah, or large parts of it. They didn’t have “Fortnite” to distract them; ask the teenagers later if you don’t know.

They had the Word. They were students of the Scriptures. They read their Bibles. They were serious about the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures. The term here, “you search the Scriptures,” is related to the word “midrash,” which is a technical term referring to the study, the exposition of the Scriptures.

Have you ever thought how can, how can nonbelievers get a Ph.D. in New Testament and become world-renowned experts and devote their whole life to studying the Bible, and yet never believe in Jesus? You think really, why would you do that? And yet there’s lots of people like that in the world, who know their way in and out of the Bible better than you do, better than I do. They’re experts, they know languages, they know history and culture and archeology and they’ve studied it and they have degrees on it, and there’s no life.

So one commentator says “Jesus insists that there is nothing intrinsically life-giving about studying the Scriptures if one fails to discern their true content and purpose.”

Yes, the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. The Word will do its work, but if you fail to discern to the true content and purpose of the Bible, you can win all sorts of Bible trivia quizzes and not really be born again. Do you know that’s possible? That you can know a lot of theology, you can learn a lot of Bible stories, you can turn to the, in your sword drills, faster than anyone else, and when the teacher says “turn to first Hesitations chapter 3” you say “that’s not a real book of the Bible.” [laughter] You know it. It is possible to be a great student of the Scriptures and still miss the forest for the trees. They searched the Scriptures and they did not get it. It’s not enough just to be around the Bible. You need the Bible in you.

Look at verse 42. Here’s the fifth indictment: “You do not have the love of God within you.” Because you do not receive Me, Jesus says, you don’t have the love of God in you. Now that sounds pretty harsh. If someone were to say that today, “if you don’t believe in Jesus you don’t have the love of God in you,” people would say “time out, why are you being so mean? Why are you being so narrow-minded? Why are you, why are you being so harsh to other people’s expressions of faith?” Well, that’s what Jesus said. You say “well, that’s not very nice.” Well, it’s the inescapable logic of the New Testament. If you do not love Jesus, I mean love Jesus as the One sent from the Father, if you do not love Jesus, you do not love the One who sent Him because He is the perfect expression and the literal embodiment of the essence of the Father. So if you don’t love Jesus, you don’t love God because God has given His best and final revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ. That’s why Jesus can say “if you don’t receive Me, you don’t have the love of God in you. Don’t tell me about how much you love God, because I, I, I am God in the flesh. I am the invisible God made visible, and if you can look at Me and say ‘eh, I’m not interested in this guy, I’m not ready to lay down my life to follow this person, this one isn’t the Son of God, he didn’t die for the sins of the world, I don’t need to worship him,'” then you don’t really know who God is, and you don’t have His love in your heart.

Then He says verse 43: “You will follow false Messiahs.” This is the sixth indictment on the unbelievers. “I have come in My Father’s name and you don’t receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him.” This was so popular in the first century in particular. They were looking for messiahs. They were looking for Christs. And there was any number of stories of people who had, who had come up and they would get a following and then they would go off and they would slaughter people or commit mass suicide or they would be arrested by the Romans. There were all of these false prophets, and Jesus says “look, if you don’t believe in My name, but you’ll believe in somebody who has no claim. No claim from the Father.”

See, the problem is not believing in nothing, the greater danger is believing in anything. When you don’t believe in the one true God, you may think “well, I just don’t believe, I believe in nothing at all, just a big vacuum.” But really most often the substitute for nothing is anything. If you don’t have the true and living God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as your God, something else will be your God. Medicine, you’ll be able to live forever, that’ll keep you alive, or exercise, if you can just do the right squats and jerks and lifts and if you can just eat the right clean food, or wealth, that’ll get you what you need. Or celebrity. Or family. Or social justice. Or the environment. Those all are substitute gods. The problem with believing nothing is that you don’t believe nothing for very long, you end up believing in anything.

In 2001, in the census in England and Wales, do you know what the fourth largest reported religion was? Christianity, Muslim, Hindu, Jedi. Almost 400,000 people in England and Wales marked “Jedi” as their religious preference. Now, are they going to Jedi services? Well, I don’t know. I wouldn’t be so sure they’re not. But, was it a joke, was it a sort of viral thing, look at this… Well, it continues to this day in different countries. How many people can we get to mark down our religious preference as Jedi? That’s, that’s in England and Wales in 2001, the fourth largest reported religion.

When you believe in nothing, you believe in anything. You’ll follow false messiahs.

Then the seventh indictment in verse 45 through the end of the chapter. He says Moses accuses you. Look, they are all about Moses. They were about the Torah, they were about the Scriptures, they were about the Law. Jesus may mean in part Moses, that is the Law of Moses, accuses you, because it convicts you of sin, but more than that, He is saying you’re all about Moses, Moses, Moses. But look, if you really knew Moses, you’d know that Moses is about Me. Moses writes about Me. He talks about a prophet, in Deuteronomy 18, he talks about the lion of the tribe of Judah, he talks about the One who will crush the serpent’s head, he talks about the scepter that shall rise out of Israel. Moses wrote about me, and if you can’t recognize who I am, then you, then you’ll have Moses to accuse you. Don’t think that I’ll be the one to accuse you. You’ll have your hero, Moses himself, on the judgment day, who’ll say why didn’t you listen? Why didn’t you see that this was the One that I had written about?

Jesus gives quite a stinging indictment of unbelief. Why? Why such a negative assessment? Well, because they refuse to believe. But what’s behind their unbelief? What’s the root that’s, that’s producing this fruit? If you see fruit, you know there’s a root. What, what’s producing this? Well, look, as we close, at verse 44. “How can you believe when you receive glory from one another, and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?”

They were looking for glory in all the wrong places. Jesus said, in verse 34, He does not accept human testimonies. He said in verse 41 He does not accept human glory. Jesus would not have endured the suffering of the cross if His goal in life was to accrue honor from people. Don’t miss the massively relevant implication of verse 44 for your life. Jesus says here’s why you don’t believe. Now there’s a lot of reasons, but here, here’s, here’s one of the taproots of why you don’t believe. It’s because you’re looking for glory in all the wrong places.

The word “glory,” “doxa” in the Greek from which we get our word “doxology” or “praise.” You may remember that the word in Hebrew is “kavod.” It’s the same word that means “heavy,” or “weighty.” The glory of God is His weightiness, His, His heaviness, His presence.

And the Bible understands we, we are glory thieves. We all want glory. We go through life trying to find impressive people, trying to be impressive people. And we forget what, what a difficult step it must have been for the Jews in the first century to, to align themselves with Jesus. Yeah, He was doing some, some remarkably amazing things, but it was still leaving behind some of what they knew. It was still aligning themselves not first of all with the Torah or the temple or the halakhah, but with Jesus. It was to take this step of faith, He is the One we’ve been looking for, He is the Messiah. It was to align yourself with One that all of your religious officials wanted to kill. Well, that takes some guts.

In today’s world, especially if you have most of your life in front of you, you will not be a faithful Christian unless you are prepared to be weird. Some of you are saying hallelujah, I knew I was in the right place. [laughter] No, I, I, I mean different. I mean stand out. I mean that you’ll have a moment where, where everyone around you says “that is absolute nonsense, what you believe about the Bible, what you believe about Jesus, what you believe about heaven, heel, and Christ, and the cross or marriage, or gender or sexuality. It’s worse than nonsense. It’s bigotry.” And so you need to decide, with the Spirit pressing upon you, what is the weightier testimony in your life? What weighs more? The testimony of your friends, of your political party, of your online digital world? Is that weighing heavier?

You will not go through life with a 100% approval rating, count on it. So you better decide whose approval really matters. What, what’s weightier? Jesus said you won’t believe in Me because you want the glory that comes from people and you’re not really seeking the glory that matters, the glory that lasts.

For years, until the piece of paper became too tattered and the writing became too worn that I removed it, I had for maybe a decade, I had a little folded up piece of paper in my wallet. I think I put it there when I was end of high school/beginning of college, maybe. And it had this line from George Mueller, George Mueller the pastor, the philanthropist, 19th century writer/author/Christian, built orphanages, man of faith, here’s what he wrote and I put this down: “There was a day when I died, utterly died, died to George Mueller, his opinions, preferences, tastes, and will. Died to the world, its approval or censure, died to the approval or blame even of my brethren and friends, and since then I have studied only to show myself approved unto God.”

When I read that, all those years ago, I thought I’ll put in my wallet, not because I thought it was me, but because I wanted it to be me, and I could say I died to Kevin, I died to my preferences, to my taste. I died to the approval or blame. I died that I might live to God, and I would study to show myself approved unto Him.

Whose testimony are you living for, really? Are you living for the testimony that is light, fleeting, trivial, ephemeral, passing by? Or for the testimony and the witness that is weighty, and eternal? Choose wisely.

Let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank You for the approval we have only in Christ, that we are Your treasured possession, your beloved ones, your precious ones, holy and blameless before You. Help us to live in the light of all that we are and have been declared to be in Christ. We pray for anyone here, maybe it’s a, maybe it’s a 9-year-old who’s feeling alone in the world, maybe it’s a 17-year-old heading off to college, quietly afraid, maybe it’s a 75-year-old wondering if she’s really lived for the right things. Lord, would you help each of us in whatever state we’re in to live for the glory that matters, for the glory that’s weighty, for the glory that lasts, for the glory that comes from You, and may we then give You the glory you deserve. In Jesus we pray. Amen.