Good evening, brothers and sisters.
We would like to open our Bibles to the very end of the book of Deuteronomy, please: Deuteronomy 34:9. Then we are going to read on the next page, Joshua 1:1-9.
Now Joshua the son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands on him; and the sons of Israel listened to him and did as the Lord had commanded Moses.
Then Joshua 1:1-9:
Now it came about after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, that the Lord spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ attendant, saying,
“Moses My servant is dead; now therefore arise, cross this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them, to the sons of Israel.
Every place on which the sole of your foot treads, I have given it to you, just as I spoke to Moses.
From the wilderness and this Lebanon, even as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and as far as the Great Sea toward the setting of the sun, will be your territory.
No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life.
Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you.
Be strong and courageous, for you shall give this people possession of the land which I swore to their fathers to give them.
Only be strong and very courageous; be careful to do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may have success wherever you go.
This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.
Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
Then we want to look in Ephesians 1. Could I have just a little adjustment? The microphone is a little too loud; it has that bounce-back feedback there. Take that off, please.
Ephesians 1, beginning in verse 3:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ,
just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.
In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will,
to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
Then verse 14:
Who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.
For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you and your love for all the saints,
do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers;
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,
and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.
These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenlies,
far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.
And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church,
which is His body, the fullness of Him Who fills all in all.
Then we want to go to Hebrews 10, verses 32-39.
But remember the former days, when, after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings,
partly by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated.
For you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one.
Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.
For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.
For yet in a very little while,
He Who is coming will come, and will not delay.
But My righteous one shall live by faith;
And if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him.
But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.
Father, we thank You for Your precious Word. We thank You for the accumulating testimony during this week of light, of truth, that You are granting unto us.
We realize that when You gather Your people together, there is always a deep purpose in Your heart. We pray that You would reveal that purpose to us more and more as we meet together, as we pray individually, and as we fellowship together.
Even tonight, as we come again to Your Word, we ask that the Holy Spirit would open our eyes so that we could see this whole matter of our inheritance and the fullness that You desire for us.
Oh, lead us then by Your Spirit into that which You have designed for us since the beginning of time, that we might be to Your pleasure and satisfaction in every way. Gather our hearts to hear, understand, and obey. We pray in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
As I shared last night, when I was considering what to share upon, the word fullness came to me. It is a growing burden in my heart that we would come to fullness.
This is a word, as you probably recognize, that is used throughout the Bible, but especially in such books as Ephesians and Colossians. This matter of fullness speaks of what God is desiring among His people.
When we see this word throughout Ephesians, it is almost in every chapter. But more than just the word itself, the thought of the church in fullness predominates the whole letter.
In the letter to the Colossians, Paul is individually concerned for the Christians, that they might be so united with Christ that they would experience the fullness that comes from that unity. Colossians was written on that sort of personal level.
But even there, where he says, “All the fullness of Deity dwells in Him,” then it says, “You are made full in Him.” Our translations usually say “complete in Him,” but I think you know that in the Greek it says, “You are filled full in Him.”
How immediately we see the personal implications of that, and they are very true. The fullness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form in Christ. So, if we want to know what fullness is, let us look at Christ and see God fully dwelling, fully displaying, fully loving, through Christ.
There is the picture of fullness for us. Then, to hear this gospel: “Ye are made full in Him.” Well, we see now the channel for our fullness as well.
But I do want you to notice that “ye” is the plural “you.” There is something about fullness that is just too large for individual consumption alone.
I mean, the Lord does want to fill us up with Himself. If we were to simply define what fullness is, we could say fullness means to be full of Christ. And it is true—absolutely true.
Nothing could please our Lord Jesus more than for His church to be full of Himself.
We know, when we see our Lord Jesus in the book of Revelation looking at the seven churches, simply put, what He is looking for is Himself: “Bone of My bone.” This church was created out of My side, and I am looking for that which is of Me.
“I am not looking for an orangutan that is the church. I am not looking for Spider-Man that is the church, or Superman that is the church. I am looking for Myself. That is all I want. I do not want super-spiritual men. I do not want shamans or gurus. I want Me.”
It is a simple demand.
When we talk about this matter of fullness, of course we need to be filled with Christ and then gather together in order for the church to experience fullness. But there is a certain sense in which corporate fullness cannot be achieved unless we are walking together, being knit together, being shaped together, and being rubbed together.
Finally, we cannot come to fullness without that.
Ephesians is full of fullness: the fullness of time; the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him Who fills all in all.
In Ephesians 3, after talking about us getting together, maybe you know the width, maybe you know the length, maybe you know the height, maybe you know the depth. But we all have to gather together in fellowship, in life, during worship, through prayer, through gospel, and through all of our life together.
We begin to comprehend, “Wow, He is longer and wider and higher and deeper than we ever thought.” This can only be discovered together. When people try to discover it individually, they always come short. They become one-dimensional.
Having said that we may comprehend the width, length, height, and depth—you see, this is all Joshua. We are talking about comprehending all the landscape of the promised land—Paul continues to say, “I am praying that you could comprehend these things and be filled up to all the fullness of God.”
Now, that goes way beyond what you and I could possibly understand. But we are talking about something that can only be contained in a corporate vessel: the fullness of Christ.
In Ephesians 5, it talks about being filled with the Spirit. Again, fullness. How we need fullness when we come to worship in our assemblies.
It is a wonderful thing that we, of our own free will, gather together with saints very simply, gather around the Lord’s table, and open the time up for a prayer or a psalm. But that does not bring in fullness.
There must be some sense in which we deny ourselves and allow the Spirit to lead us. Our prayers must be directed toward the Lord and not toward one another. Our focus must not be upon our own needs but upon being pleasing to the Lord.
Oh, that there would be fullness when we gather together for worship. Is it not terrible when we have disastrous meetings? Well, some of the lessons we learn toward fullness come when we have disastrous meetings. We learn a lot in disastrous meetings. If it leads us to fullness, praise God.
But fullness when we gather; fullness when we pray.
I think probably all of you have been privileged to be in a prayer meeting where the Lord dropped in in fullness. There was praying in the Spirit, and a unity that was unusual; a perception that was deeper than we usually had; and a touching of matters that settled issues, instead of the usual, “Let us throw things up into the sky and see if anything comes down.”
We need fullness in prayer, and the Lord wants to teach us these things.
But in order to have fullness, I want to impress on us tonight this matter: it takes time.
Obviously, that makes sense in our individual lives. For the Lord to bring us to completion, to bring us to perfection, to maturity, it takes time.
But I want us to have in the back of our minds, as we look at Joshua tonight, that it takes a long time for the Lord to bring a particular assembly into fullness.
Some of you have been around for a long time. You realize that, for most of us in our life, God willing, if we really have a heart to know this fullness, He grants us one or two—or perhaps three—times in our life where we are gathering with an assembly and drawing toward fullness.
It takes years for the Lord to establish fullness in a place. And all the tragedy when people separate and divide, find it too tough, quit, or settle—as we talked last night—for just Sardesian sleepwalking, with a name that you are alive but knowing that you are dead.
The Lord gathers people. Sometimes, because I am an outsider often, and I travel, I see a group of people and go back to my room after the first time I have seen them and say, “Lord, this is the most amazing group. It is so diverse.”
“Look at those brothers in leadership. You have that kind of guy who is right on time and the guy who is always late. You have the Bible-pounding guy and the guy who is filled with love. You stuck them all together; they are all in leadership. What a wonder. How did You ever work this thing out?”
Then we begin to pray that these brothers will not all divide up, because there is nothing worse than just an assembly of all Bible thumpers, or all pastoral lovers with no Bible knowledge, or everybody on time but dead, or everybody late but full of, you know, life.
The Lord wants us together: to learn to gather, to stay together, to be fitted together, and to be dealt with together. You see, it takes time to come to fullness. It takes time. And I am not talking two years.
The vital life of an assembly should go on for a generation, and then beyond that if we are faithful. But the shelf life of most churches and assemblies today is under ten years—ten years before they split to smithereens, and you have a few little ember assemblies that never go anywhere.
It is such a tragedy. When I visited India a few years ago, a whole number of groups that had been together for years just split. They split over this issue of full-time ministers and elders. Every city had a church of elders and a church of full-time workers.
As a result, both assemblies languished. How the elders needed those gospel preachers. How those gospel preachers needed those elders. But they divided, stayed apart, and experienced limitation instead of fullness, after years of the Lord building them together.
I know it is hard for elders to put up with these full-time dudes. It would be better to take them all out in the back and shoot them, because workers cause a lot of problems. They cause a lot of problems.
But the only people who can help a worker remain honest are elders who are willing to stand up to them and speak the truth to them in love. It is the only salvation of a poor worker who otherwise is set out on his own like the Lone Ranger.
How they need elders, but how elders need workers. That is one of those strange mixes God has put in the church just to bug every one of us.
So we have to put up with each other. Putting up with elders is really something, especially when they get over my age. Elders get stubborn and stiff, and the Lord says, “Good. Deal with it.”
All I am trying to say at the beginning of this is that the Lord is investing a lot of time in what He has brought together. Has the Lord brought your assembly together?
There are assemblies that have just been manufactured by men. We can get some people together, get some guitar players, bring in a preacher, and manufacture something. I am not talking about that. The shelf life there? I do not know how long that will be. It depends on how good the preacher is.
But I am talking about a marriage that God puts together—a marriage of brothers and sisters that God puts together. When God puts them together, it is just like a marriage: I do not care if you fight and scream; just stay together, and God will work it out.
Now, I am serious. Many of you would never think of leaving your husband or wife, even through difficult times, but you leave a fellowship over some small little issue that upset you. Perhaps you set back by years something that the Lord has brought to some kind of equilibrium, so that His life can be expressed.
You see, fullness takes time. In your individual life and in assembly life, do not quit on it, my dear brothers and sisters. The Lord wants to bring us into something.
God is working today. God is moving today. But if we understand the Scriptures rightly, we would also have to say that most of His work, even in these end times, is hidden.
If the Lord can prepare His people and bring them into maturity and into fullness, we might be surprised how quickly He can complete the work.
The outer things can manifest fullness quite quickly if there have been years of faithful preparation in the hidden place. I am sure we will see that tonight in the story of Joshua.
For those of you who were here last night, I was trying to look at fullness, and so I landed upon Joshua—this wonderful book—as a picture of fullness for us, so that we can see what fullness means.
What does fullness mean? Let us look at that Old Testament picture in the book of Joshua and see what fullness means. A land has been promised to us: Christ. Every part of Christ—His power, His love, His light, His mercy, His saving, His healing, His truth.
There are things we do not even know about Christ yet. Even at the end of the book of Revelation, He has a name that nobody knows but Himself. There is still so much to discover.
The Lord gathers us together so that we can discover something of Christ in His fullness. It is like that promised land.
Can you imagine the children of Israel going through the Jordan River—a miracle in itself, which we will talk about tomorrow night—and coming into the promised land? They had never been to Bethel before, never been to Shechem, maybe had heard stories of Beersheba from Abraham’s day, but they had never been to any of those places.
Moses went up on a mountain and kind of saw the whole thing with spiritual eyes, but they had a lot of new things to discover. Of course, they also had a lot of enemy tribes to run upon and defeat—which they did.
In the book of Joshua, we see this wonderful picture of the children of Israel coming into the promised land and experiencing fullness—actually possessing the land.
Can you imagine? You had been a slave in Egypt for years. Then you were some sort of nomadic shepherd, wandering around in a wilderness, and suddenly you come in and God says, “There you are. Settle down right there. There is your inheritance: New Jersey.”
You go in there and settle down in some wonderful town like Newark, and it is all yours. It has buildings that you did not build, but you can take advantage of them. It has watchtowers, olive presses, all kinds of things, and it is yours. You possess it.
There are houses. Well, you may have to fix them up just a little bit because you pretty well destroyed them when you wiped out the people behind you. But you fix them up, and now they are yours.
Would you believe that you came into the promised land at harvest time? You just go into the field and harvest stuff you did not even plant. Whoa, the grace of God! But you better harvest it before it turns bad.
Then somebody is assigned way up in the north, Dan, while Beersheba way down in the south is owned by another tribe. Everybody goes out there. There is fullness: people all over the land, inhabiting the land, using the land.
But even better, could you imagine what would have happened if the children of Israel had gone into the land and all remained one together? Suppose they actually believed God was their King.
Suppose they did not do anything without going to the temple and checking with the high priest, saying, “What does the Lord want us to do? We have some marauders coming in from Midian. What does the Lord want us to do?”
They pray, and the high priest says, “Let Ephraim, Benjamin, and Issachar gather together against the Midianites.” Why, the Midianites would have been crushed instead of oppressing the children of Israel, as we find in the book of Judges.
God’s plan was for oneness. Actually, God’s plan was eventually to have a city that was His, a temple that was His, a throne that was His, and a King that was His.
God’s fullness extended from the Euphrates River all the way to the Mediterranean Sea, and from Dan to Beersheba. What a beautiful, tremendous land this was—all in unity.
The saints would come together for times of worship at the feasts and declare their unity: how good the Lord has been to us, how good the harvest has been.
If the tribe of Benjamin went through a tough time because their region was having some sort of trouble, it was all right. Their brothers in Ephraim and Judah would come and bring them supplies. They were all one. They all shared together.
They were twelve individual tribes, but they were all one family, living in this fullness, living in this land. There was not an enemy that could cross their borders. They were watchful, gave praise to their God, and depended upon Him.
This was God’s plan. In the book of Joshua, we see the beginning of its fulfillment. That is why, to me, it is such a wonderful picture of fullness.
Tonight we want to look at Joshua, the individual man, as a picture of sonship.
What is sonship in the New Testament? We read in Ephesians that we have been predestined to adoption as sons.
Paul says God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, and then he immediately begins to list some things: He chose us before the foundation of the world, and He predestined us to the placing of sons.
Literally, in the Greek, I think you all know, we use this word “adoption as sons,” but it means “the placing of sons.” We have been predestined to become God’s sons.
God is going to bring many sons to glory through Jesus Christ. Does that include you? Absolutely.
But the book of Hebrews warns us that sons have to go through child training and discipline. Sons have to hold fast to their confidence, or they can lose out. But there is great reward for sons who grow up—Christians who become responsible.
I want to look at this sonship not just as an individual matter, although in the end it has to be, but as an assembly that comes into sonship.
What is sonship? Is it perfection? No. But it is maturity.
It is a maturity that can understand the mind of God. Beyond doubt that we are saved, the Lord begins to build the Word of God upon that foundation. The person knows that they are saved, and the Word of God comes into them.
Sonship is without gender, of course. When we are talking about sonship, we are talking about men and women who have been born again as children of God and whom the Lord wants to grow up into sonship.
The life of Joshua shows us something of this picture: Joshua coming into fullness, Joshua coming into leadership.
When we are talking about sonship, we are talking about leadership—not just a couple of brothers who may lead an assembly, but spiritual leadership: men and women who can discern time, men and women who lead holy lives, and men and women who serve the Lord.
When the Bible is talking about fullness in Ephesians 1, and it says, “The church which is His body, the fullness of Him Who fills all in all,” what does it mean there that the church is His fullness?
In the context, it was just talking about the fact that when Jesus was seated at the right hand of God, God said, “Sit here while I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.”
Now, guess who gets to take the enemies and make them part of the footstool? His fullness—the body of Christ.
So, are we footstool stuffers?
I do not know how I got this old footstool in my study. I think it comes from Africa. I am not sure how my wife got hold of it. Oh, she got it from Marie, from her parents. But anyway, I have this thing. I put my feet on it, but the trouble is that the stuffing is coming out.
It is so old. It is leather, and the leather is all kind of rotten, so the seams pull apart and the stuffing comes out. You know what the stuffing is? It is like camel’s hair. I mean, it is pretty yucky stuff.
Now the Lord Jesus has won the victory on Calvary and in His resurrection, and He is sitting down on the throne. God says, “Okay, now who will go and fetch the enemies and make stuffing for His footstool?”
Are you a footstool stuffer?
We need to learn how to fight the warfare. That is part of what it means to be His fullness. We are His servants. It means whatever He wants, we do. We have willing hearts.
If He says, “Go,” we go. If He says, “I want a glass of water,” we are there. As a matter of fact, we have the glass of water before He even asks, because we know His heart.
Fullness is when we are really servants. It is delightful service.
I go to a conference, the WCCC—not to be confused with WCC. Every year I go, and there I am still a young person, so I work among the young people.
Sometimes I get seventy-five young people, and they just lock me in a room to see if I survive with these kids. So I have to go to my dorm, get my guitar, and drag it down there a quarter of a mile. Then I have to get the overhead projector and bring it to the room.
After the meeting, I have to take my guitar up the hill to the dining room. My guitar weighs, I do not know, twenty pounds. It is kind of heavy, going uphill and downhill.
One year there was this kid—he was actually out of college—and I went to the young people’s meeting and he came along. He said, “I just want to watch and see what you are doing.” I said, “Well, you should be in the meeting, you know.” But okay.
This guy came in there, and from then on I had a servant.
He went and got me a bottle of water. Nobody had even thought that I might need that, but he did. He insisted on carrying my guitar everywhere—up the hill, down the hill.
I said, “I will just take it to you.” He said, “No, no, do not leave it in the cafeteria. I will take it to your room.” I said, “But I need it at six o’clock for the meeting, because we have meetings in different places.” He said, “Okay, I will bring it over there.” And it was there. And he was there.
Then I would be speaking, and some kids would be unruly. Heaven forbid our children be unruly. One or two of them, you know—I see them here tonight.
They got a little unruly, and this brother went and sat down next to the kids. Of course, they got a little self-conscious about it. If need be, he told them, “Settle down.”
I have never seen this guy preach. I do not think he can. I do not know much about him. But I do know this: it was delightful to see him every year.
He came every year. He helped every year. He did all of that. I never asked him to. I never said, “I need it.” They never sent him to me through the committee. The committee did not think I needed help.
I do not want to be mean about that, but I never asked. But this guy was there. What a delight.
What does it mean to be the fullness of Him Who fills all in all? To be His delightful servant.
Are you ready up in the morning? “Lord, here I am. Ready to pray. What do You want? What can I do? Who can I witness to?” There is a delightful servant.
That is the kind of fullness we should grow up to: service. Footstool stuffers. Any enemy put under the feet of the Lord—we have the authority to do that. The servants do.
But also, fullness has got to be talking about love, right?
The church which is His body, the fullness of Him Who fills all in all. First of all, if we are filled with anything worthwhile, it is Jesus, right? He fills all in all. So if we are filled with anything of value, we are filled with Jesus.
So how can we be His fullness when we need Him to be our fullness? Well, only in one way: when He fills us, we love Him.
It is the story our brother was sharing this morning. It is the same story as Adam and Eve. Did Adam need Eve? No. Men do not need women.
Well, Adam was an overcomer. Adam was already a son. Adam was naming the animals and gardening, having a great time. There was something wrong, I do not know. But when he met Eve, he said, “Bone of my bone. There she is. Now I know fullness. Now she makes me very happy.”
The Lord Jesus—does He need us? No. He could live in eternity, talk to the angels, His Father, and the Holy Spirit.
But He is looking for something. He is looking for people who really love Him, who just say, “You know, I want to be Your wife. Whatever You want, Lord, I want to help You. I just want to serve You. I just want to show You how much I appreciate the fact that You have filled me up.”
“I am so glad I am married to You.”
Now, how can we do that as individuals? That is why nuns take the pledge. Nuns go into the nunnery, and they say they marry Jesus in the ceremony, which is actually a little bit of baloney.
Why? Because only as the church together are we the bride, right? Only as the church together, all delighting in and serving Him, could we possibly be His bride.
So fullness is talking a lot about love. Not that He needs us that much for anything, although a gardener comes in handy, or a footstool stuffer—there are different things for us to do, for sure.
But a lover, up in the morning loving the Lord—He likes that. It is good for Him to be married. That is what He is looking for.
Now, when we come to Joshua and look at this matter of sonship, we see Joshua there at the beginning of the book. Let us go back to Joshua now. Sorry, we have wandered far afield here.
At the beginning of the book of Joshua, we see God commanding Joshua: “Moses My servant is dead. Now rise up. Go into the promised land.”
It is a tremendous occasion. Here he is: a son, mature, ready.
Here we see him at the moment of fruitfulness, at the moment where this is the reason he was born.
But this is the sort of fallacy—what one of my theologian professors used to call the aorist punctiliar fallacy—that all Christians labor under, thinking that we could be saved tomorrow and be God’s ready servant the next day.
We have this idea: “Well, you see, we are saved. Well, we can serve.”
Actually, we can express His fullness to some degree as Christians, to the degree that we are yielded to Him and dependent upon Him. But the problem is, we are all so full of ourselves.
When we start to serve Him, that is why one brother says when somebody gets saved, you need to cage them up for the first six months because of the potential damage they can do to their family. They run over everybody demanding salvation and make a real mess of things.
That is what happens to people. They get excited, they are all full of themselves, and they serve God by the fullness of themselves.
When Saul of Tarsus got saved—ah, that was completely different. When he got saved, he was ready to serve, right? Wrong.
A couple of days of witness, and the Lord says, “Yep, to the wilderness for you.” After a couple of years in the desert: “Go back home and make tents for a while.”
Saul was so full of himself. It is the same for all of us. How long have you been saved? Three years? You are ready.
Can you imagine? I got out of seminary as a Christian five years, ready to go—home missionary, pastor, you know. So full of myself. I made a mess everywhere I went, of course.
While I was at seminary, one day we saw some missionaries. These missionaries told their stories, and afterward I said to the professor, “Those guys are megalomaniacs—totally ego-centered, selfish guys.” And they were. Everything was about them.
The professor said, “You know, God uses flesh to do His will. Remember Samson?”
Now, it is true that Samson was a very carnal man, and God did use him in spite of himself. But Samson is hardly a model for ministry.
He said, basically, “Well, that is okay.” The denomination I was part of did not take flesh too seriously anyway. Just be good to people, come up with some great ideas, and preach the Word. That is all you have got to do. Flesh things—no problem. You have some flesh; God will use it.
Oh, well. Oh, my goodness.
Here is Joshua, ready to go. He has decreased. The Lord is in him. He is His son, ready to take the land.
This is a great commissioning, a great commanding to go into the land. But of course it could not have just happened like this. Joshua did not wake up Thursday morning, and God say, “Okay, Joshua, here we go.”
Oh, no. The whole thing goes back before Joshua was even born. God had a plan for this man. Throughout Joshua’s life, God was preparing this man.
By the time Joshua came to this river, he was better than eighty years old, that we know. All that time: hidden work, preparation for sonship, in order to be fruitful and to be fullness to God in his last days.
So we have got to go back a little bit. We read a verse of his commissioning right at the end of Deuteronomy: Joshua, now filled with a spirit of wisdom. But let us look at another verse or so.
Deuteronomy 31:14:
The Lord said to Moses, “Behold, the time for you to die is near; call Joshua, and present yourselves at the tent of meeting, that I may commission him.” So Moses and Joshua went and presented themselves at the tent of meeting.
Joshua went through a commissioning. Turn to Numbers 27. We see this commissioning mentioned again, in verses 18-20.
So the Lord said to Moses, “Take Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit, and lay your hand on him;
and have him stand before Eleazar the priest and before all the congregation, and commission him in their sight.
You shall put some of your authority on him, in order that all the congregation of the sons of Israel may obey him.”
Ah, well, that is the secret. He had hands laid on him. I had hands laid on me. It did not do any good.
The Lord has to lay His hand on you; then I think it will do something. But in the whole structure of the thing, somebody laid their hands on me and said all kinds of magic words to make me a holy priest of God.
Is this the secret to Joshua’s life right here—the commissioning? Yes, that is it. But no, it is not, because he already had the Spirit.
This was done as much for the people as anything else. Commission him in front of the people. Get Eleazar up here. Let us make a little thing of this. Let us recognize that this is true.
But what they were recognizing was that he was already prepared. For preparation, we have to go back more than forty years.
Now I just interject this: are you ready for forty years of preparation? For Jesus, it was thirty years of preparation.
Let us go back and look at the first little statements we find about Joshua and see how the Lord was working upon him. In Numbers 11:27, we find our first chronological insight into Joshua.
So a young man ran and told Moses and said, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.”
Then Joshua the son of Nun, the attendant of Moses from his youth, said, “Moses, my lord, restrain them.”
I will deal with that in just a minute, but here we see this little insight: Joshua, the son of Nun, the attendant of Moses from his youth.
Now, if you take that word attendant, remember it, and go over to Joshua 1, where we read verses 1 and 2, we find something interesting.
At the very beginning of Joshua, it says, “Now it came about after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord.” What a wonderful word, servant, to describe Moses. “The Lord spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ attendant.”
Again, it is the same word that was back in Numbers. This is the first thing Joshua learned in preparation for sonship: he was the servant of a servant, the attendant of a servant.
Now, a servant is a nobody. The attendant of a servant is somebody carrying water for the servant. That is where a son begins.
Joshua, from his youth, was the guy who tied up Moses’ tunic when it came loose, polished his sandals at night, and brought him water and a candle—or whatever it is that the attendant of a servant does.
A servant has no money. Moses, you know what I am saying, was not a rich guy. The attendant of the servant is the attendant of the servant.
It is interesting that Joshua never gained a great name. As a matter of fact, this was his reputation: “Oh yeah, Joshua—Moses’ attendant.” That became his appellation.
He learned that lesson early: he was nothing, just a servant, and a servant of the servant.
Sonship is always serving the Servant. Jesus is our Servant.
Then in Numbers 13, let us look at this. We have a list of the spies who go into the promised land, and we see in verse 8 something interesting:
From the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea the son of Nun.
Then down in verse 16:
These are the names of the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land; but Moses called Hoshea the son of Nun, Joshua.
Ah, now Joshua had a name change. He started out Hoshea, which means salvation. Moses said, “No, no, no. I am changing your name.”
We do not find that he did that with anybody else, but with Joshua, his personal attendant, whom he had seen over those years, he said, “No, no, no. You know who you are? You are, ‘the Lord is salvation.’”
Do not forget: Joshua, or Hoshea, came out of Egypt. He knew redemption. He was a slave in Egypt, like everybody else—a young person there—but he was a slave nevertheless, and he knew his redemption.
The wonderful thing that caused his name change was the character change that came in Joshua when this salvation was made personal and real to him. It was more than merely salvation—Hoshea. It was, “The Lord is your salvation.”
There was some growth there, even at the foundational level. We can see it even by the name change. He was not just saved, but he knew the One Who saved him.
All part of preparation for sonship. Many people are saved, but do they know the Lord? Joshua did. At least we can see that in that little picture we have in his name.
In Exodus 17, we have the first reference to Joshua in the Bible. Look there in verse 9. What do we find? They are fighting the Amalekites.
In Exodus 17:8-9, it says:
Then Amalek came and fought against Israel at Rephidim.
So Moses said to Joshua, “Choose men for us and go out, fight against Amalek. Tomorrow I will station myself on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.”
Joshua did as Moses told him. We will find this to be true: Joshua always did as Moses told him.
Verse 13 ends the story:
So Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.
I like to say that this is a picture of Joshua coming into a spiritual level where he learned how to fight.
It is that level John talks about in his letter: “I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the Word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.”
It is wonderful to see a young man grow up and become strong in the Word of God and able to fight against the enemy. This is Joshua, one of the young men.
Moses immediately said, “Joshua, you go out and fight. I am staying here on the hill with Aaron and Hur. Watch me. Be faithful.” And Joshua was. He was learning how to fight.
As we grow as sons, we learn how to fight. The enemy begins to attack. You go into a wilderness where you are tempted by all kinds of things as a young Christian. Do you not know the Lord is trying to strengthen you?
You are strengthened by the Word of God that abides in you. Joshua was a real student of the Word of God, of the law that was given to Moses. This was the basis of his strength as he rose up and became a fighter.
This is the next stage we see in his life: as a young man, strong and overcoming the evil one.
The next one is in Exodus 24, the fourth stage. We find this interesting statement in verses 12 and 13.
Now the Lord said to Moses, “Come up to Me on the mountain and remain there, and I will give you the stone tablets with the law and the commandment which I have written for their instruction.”
So Moses arose with Joshua his servant, and Moses went up to the mountain of God.
Joshua went up as Moses’ servant. Maybe Moses needed a little help climbing the mountain; I do not know. But all I know is Moses touched the holiness of God.
To me, that is another picture. For young and old, to know the holiness of God is to have a life that is consecrated.
Sonship cannot be part of an assembly that skitters around the matter of holiness and consecration. Joshua learned that lesson.
You cannot be up on Mount Sinai and miss it. It says Joshua went up on the mountain with Moses, while the elders said, “We will wait down here.”
Verse 15 says Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered him. The glory of the Lord came down, and Joshua saw. Maybe he was scared to death. Maybe he was not.
But Moses brought him up there to see the glory of God and realize the holiness of God up on the mountain. It is one thing to be down in the foothills. When you are up there touching the holiness of God, it changes your life.
Oh, may the Lord touch us. May we come to Him and consecrate our lives. May we experience the Lord’s fire of holiness.
No, we cannot individually attain sonship, nor can an assembly find sonship apart from this stage in our lives.
Then we come to Exodus 32, where we find Joshua again. Here Joshua is gaining some spiritual ears.
They had been up on the mountain, as you know, and while they were up there God said, “Just go back down. The children are committing harlotry.”
They started heading down the mountain. In Exodus 32:17, it says:
Now when Joshua heard the sound of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a sound of war in the camp.”
I like this because it is a picture of when a servant of God begins to hear, but is not hearing with discernment yet. He hears the shout of the people, but he interprets it as a war shout.
Moses knew better. God had told him what it was all about. “No, no, no. This is not the shout of war. This is a shout of play, of revelry, in the congregation.”
Sometimes we hear the Lord, we interpret things, but we do not yet have spiritual wisdom. Joshua was in this process of learning to hear and understand with discernment the things that were going on.
Then in Exodus 33, we see this little note that includes Joshua. In verse 11, we come to the next stage:
Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses returned to the camp, his servant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.
There was also this benefit of serving, of being an attendant of Moses: Joshua learned fellowship in the tent.
Moses went out to speak to the people and went back home. Joshua decided to stay in the tent, clean things up, sit around, wonder about that lampstand, wonder about the cherubim.
Occasionally, perhaps he thought he was hearing God, praying to God before the incense, keeping everything in shape there in the tent. Fellowship.
He caught on to what Moses understood: God wants fellowship. He stayed in the tent.
Oh, dear brothers and sisters, if we are not abiding in Christ, if we do not come to Him in the morning and during the day and say, “Lord, I need Your help on this one. Lord, I want to discuss something with You. Lord, I read something this morning. It made me wonder about Your size, Your love, or the way You deal with people.”
Somebody dialoguing in fellowship, abiding with God, and letting the Word abide in us—this is a son. This is somebody coming into sonship. They are dwelling and abiding in the tent of meeting.
There comes a further stage in Numbers 11. In Numbers 11, we find that Joshua was one of those men among the seventy elders upon whom the Spirit came.
We will look at verse 26. After the Spirit came down upon these men and they prophesied, it says:
But two men had remained in the camp; the name of one was Eldad and the name of the other Medad. And the Spirit rested upon them. Now they were among those who had been registered, but had not gone out to the tent, and they prophesied in the camp.
A young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” Joshua, the son of Nun, was up there. He was one of those men filled with the Spirit, the attendant of Moses. He said, “Moses, my lord, restrain them.”
Moses said:
“Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!”
Here is a young man filled with the Spirit. Again, we have many lessons to learn in this matter of sonship, and Joshua is learning these lessons.
He is filled with the Spirit, but he has no idea what spirit comes from. It reminds me of the story when Jesus was trying to go to a town in Samaria and was prevented. James and John wanted to send fire down. Jesus said, “You do not know what spirit you are of.”
Here is Joshua, sort of the same way. “Can you believe it? Two guys outside of the special group, and they are prophesying!” He was much more jealous for Moses than Moses was.
He had to learn something about his own personal self, his narrowness, and his interpretation of these things. And he did learn, of course.
Then in Numbers 14, we come to the last of this series of steps. Of course, he went through years and many things not recorded, but Numbers 14 is when he goes out as a faithful spy.
He goes out as a spy with the other eleven, comes back, and reports are given. He and Caleb give a good report.
What is a good report? The other ten spies gave an evil report. The only difference between a good report and an evil report is that they all spoke of the same facts.
But a good report is when you see the land in the light of the Word of God.
“We can take this land. God promised it. We can do it.” They saw things according to the Word of God.
Now, the other ten spies said, “Oh man, we have giants, walled cities. We look like grasshoppers.” Caleb said, “No, no. What are you talking about? We should go in and take the land.”
Thank God for faithful spies. Many times, those who see according to the Word of God are in the minority in the assembly. An assembly tends toward unbelief and murmuring.
Thank God some people see according to God’s promises. Joshua was faithful. He saw the land. He saw the Lord’s will.
Again, we want to address this question, my dear brothers and sisters: God takes years to prepare you as a servant. Has He not been faithful to you?
Has He not shown you precious things regarding Himself? Has He not taken you under His wing, shown you things, led you places, taught you things, and brought you correction?
Oh, has He not been so patient with you? There we are, our neck in the yoke along with Him. How does He put up with this?
I feel for the Lord. He says a few times in the Gospels, “How long am I going to have to put up with you guys?” But He is deeply patient.
He has brought you through some trials. Are they all going to be in vain? Are you just going to quit?
He is testing you, taking years to get you to the place where you have nowhere else to go. You are caught.
His servants have to be those who are caught. They have nowhere else to go. You think service is all easy and fluff and full of good times?
Oh, but He has been so faithful to show you. There is always the other side of the trials, dealings, and provings. It is that other side of love, His telling His secrets to you, and His encouraging your heart when you get downcast.
I reckon, when I look out here in this assembly, we have people that the Lord has been working with for years. We have been kept from evil all this time.
I ask the question of Hebrews: will you throw away your confidence, which has great reward?
If the Lord has spent all this time preparing you, are you going to quit? Are you quit? Have you quit? Do you think you have quit? Is it too tough for you?
It takes years to bring someone to sonship, to give them some sense of maturity. There is not anyone here who would dare talk about perfection. But after a while, you gain some spiritual sensibility, some sense of what the Lord wants.
How long has the Lord been plowing these things into us, teaching us, showing us His grace and love, balancing us, telling us to be quiet, using us when we do not want to be used, and showing us how, when we least feel able, He is more than able?
There are so many things He has taught us over the years.
Joshua went through this process. But of course, there was one last thing that I cannot point to a Scripture and show you.
That was the thing that really qualified Joshua to gather together with other sons and go in and take the land. There was one more step of preparation that does not have a verse, because it has to do with a life.
Do you know what finally qualified Joshua to be a servant in the house of God, to be a son who is responsible?
The final qualification was this: he was called upon to waste his life because of the people of God.
What do I mean by that? The children of Israel, because they refused to go into the promised land, were told by God in His wrath, “All of you are going to die in the wilderness.”
Except Joshua and Caleb, who were going to go in—after thirty-eight years. A lifetime.
Joshua was ready. Joshua was faithful. Joshua was prepared. Joshua said, “Let us go in.” Joshua should have been able to go in, but he had to wait thirty-eight years for his brothers and sisters.
All the time, he shepherded them and prayed for them.
You see, in Numbers 14, when God says, “Stand aside. I am going to wipe out this whole generation right now,” Moses and Aaron fell on their faces. But would you notice that Joshua also tore his clothes and joined in the intercession?
“Oh God, do not kill these children. What would happen to Your testimony? You said You were going to bring them in, Lord. If You take them out, what would happen to Your testimony?”
Basically, Joshua began interceding, shepherding, and loving these people who were preventing him from going in for thirty-eight years.
Now, brothers and sisters, how much do you love the brethren? How longsuffering can we be?
I would say perhaps some of you are ready to go in, and your brothers and sisters are not. Well, should we break away? The temptation, you know.
Or do we waste the life for the sake of the people?
He waited all that time. He had to hold on to the promise: “You are going in, Joshua. You are going in.”
Thirty-eight years waiting—waiting, ready all that time—and preparing the rest, until that old flesh had died out.
Oh, I wish God could do it in a moment, but He has chosen not to. I wish the old flesh could die out of all these leaders who fight each other, cannot get through, cannot be won, cannot make resolution, and are just stuck and paralyzed.
All the people are being damaged, and all the sheep are crying. These leaders and people are so full of flesh. Oh, that all that flesh could die in the wilderness. But no, no, it just goes on and on.
Meanwhile, God does a deep work. And you, if you are willing to put up with this—and I do not even mean merely put up with it; I mean overcome in the midst of it.
How many times, I can just imagine—of course Joshua did not sing Negro spirituals—but I love that song that I sing sometimes myself:
Sometimes I feel discouraged,
And think my work’s in vain;
But then the Holy Spirit
Revives my soul again.
How many times Joshua, shepherding in the wilderness, must have wondered, “Why should I go through this? Why for these people? What is it worth?”
You know what it was worth? It was worth it for the day in Joshua 1 when God said, “It is time to go.”
God had prepared this man in a secret place.
Moses, just before he died, sang that tremendous song in Deuteronomy 32. It is a tremendous song—a song of prophecy, vision, warning, and destiny.
Moses was singing that song. It was his second and final song. It says Moses sang it, and then he died. But do you know what it says? It says Moses sang the song along with Joshua.
You know what those thirty-eight years had done? Joshua knew the song of destiny. He knew the song of vision. He knew the song of purpose. He understood what God was doing. He knew the warnings, and he knew the promises.
That whole song was now Joshua’s song. Is that not amazing? Oh, he could sing a song.
Then God said, “Now it is time to go in. Take the land. Bring the people through.” Joshua was ready, Joshua was faithful, and the people were ready too. They had been made ready, even by Joshua.
It says in Numbers, “I will make your children to be shepherds in the wilderness,” to learn how to shepherd one another in difficult times.
Oh, brothers and sisters, it is easy to shepherd people when everything is going great in the assembly. But can you shepherd people in the wilderness? Ah, now there is a proving ground.
We can quickly look at what happened on the other side. We know in Joshua that these precious promises were made to him: “Rise up. Take the land. Every place the sole of your foot treads, I have given you this land.”
“Now be strong and courageous. Now be strong and courageous. Now be strong and courageous. Remember My promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Remember the law. Meditate on it. Be strong and courageous, because My presence will go with you.”
Joshua says, “Amen. Let us go.”
Of course, the most amazing things began to happen. How could the Jordan River pull back and they walk through in flood time? We will talk about that a little tomorrow. What a tremendous miracle.
They came up on the other side. Jericho was standing there. No problem. The Lord was going to bring it down.
Then there were attacks from the south and attacks from the middle. But everywhere they went, they found victory on every hand. Oh, my goodness.
He was ready. They were ready. The assembly was ready. They actually possessed some land. They actually took some territory. They actually expressed some fullness.
What a wonderful time, this season of years that they went through. It was because Joshua obeyed God without wavering as he went through these various things.
Let us look at a couple of things about sonship on the other side. After all that preparation and all those difficult things, look what the Lord says to him. This is a very precious thing.
After you have been the servant’s attendant for a while, it is not even a question of pride anymore. But the Lord says to him in Joshua 3:7:
Now the Lord said to Joshua, “This day I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you.”
Joshua 4:14 says:
That day the Lord exalted Joshua in the sight of all Israel, so that they revered him, just as they had revered Moses all the days of his life.
Do you think this stuff was going to Joshua’s head? No. The Lord said, “Here is why I am exalting you: because otherwise they would not listen to you.”
They might say, “No, no, we only take it from Moses.” So He said, “No, no. I am making you a man of stature. People will listen to you as they listened to Moses.”
There was a practical reason for it. But do not take it too seriously. You are still the servant’s attendant.
Joshua 6:27 says:
So the Lord was with Joshua, and his fame was in all the land.
That was for the sake of the unbelievers and the enemies in the land. Joshua’s fame went out. Somebody heard the name Joshua, and their hearts melted within them.
“Oh, not Joshua, not that great giant Joshua.” They probably had stories of him being taller than Goliath. His fame went out through all the land.
There even came a war in Joshua 8, as they were fighting against Ai after they had rooted out the problems. In verse 18, the Lord says to Joshua, “Stretch out the javelin that is in your hand toward Ai, for I will give it into your hand.”
Joshua stretched it forth, and as long as he stretched it forth, they defeated the people of Ai. Such a scene of authority given to Joshua, as the Lord was with him in every way.
The Lord did stand with him.
Let us read the adventure in Joshua 10. We see that he fights at Gibeon against enemies that came up.
In verse 12, Joshua spoke to the Lord. I just skipped over some verses that said the Lord threw stones at them. The Lord was just with them against the enemy, and the enemy had quite a bashing.
But in Joshua 10:12-14:
Then Joshua spoke to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel,
“O sun, stand still at Gibeon,
And O moon, in the valley of Aijalon.”
So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped,
Until the nation avenged themselves of their enemies.
Is it not written in the book of Jashar?
And the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day.
There was no day like that before it or after it, when the Lord listened to the voice of a man; for the Lord fought for Israel.
Here was Joshua in the conflict, possessing the possessions and taking the land. He was in the will of God, doing God’s will. When he said, “Lord, stop the sun,” the Lord listened to him.
That is an amazing statement, of course. The Lord had this in His meteorological calendar; I do not know how. But Joshua obviously tapped into that. I do not want to get into that mystery—it is so deep.
The interesting thing is that he was fighting here at Gibeon, and that was the mess he and the elders had made by not taking counsel about the Gibeonites. But the Lord still stood there.
Of course, we all know this wonderful ending in Joshua 24, where Joshua takes his stand and tells Israel they must take their stand.
Sonship is always an individual thing. You must be released to the Lord. You must be captured by the Lord. You must serve the Lord. And you must decide.
So he says in Joshua 24:14-15:
Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.
If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living;
but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
Now, there is a son. He brings his own sons into service.
Then we find the final record in Joshua 24:29-31.
It came about after these things that Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died, being one hundred and ten years old.
And they buried him in the territory of his inheritance in Timnath-serah, which is in the hill country of Ephraim, on the north side of Mount Gaash.
Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who survived Joshua, and had known all the deeds of the Lord which He had done for Israel.
Joshua, in his sonship, faithfulness, service, possessing, and confidence, was such a faithful servant that he inspired the others to be faithful.
Oh, leaders of God, if we could just be faithful, full of our devotion to the Lord, a generation would be inspired. The whole generation, because of his testimony, remained faithful to the Lord.
Not only that, it was not like he died and there was nobody left. The elders were still there, they remembered, and the people remained faithful.
Oh, there is such enlargement here—such enlargement, not limitation. The usual limitation of leaders who fall away and have no strength. But here is sonship, seen in Joshua: a faithful servant.
This is a picture for you and me, brothers and sisters. I will leave you with these two thoughts.
First: the Lord wants to bring the assembly into fullness, and it is going to take some time.
Are you willing to waste your life for thirty-eight years in the hidden place in order for the Lord to do in ten years what He wants to do to bring things to fullness?
How much time has the Lord invested in you toward sonship? Have you known His leading and driving? You know that in your life it is going to take time. Will you be faithful to Him?
The last thing I want to say is this: for those of you who are already leaders, you know you have brought in limitations because of self instead of fullness.
The assembly needs brothers and sisters of spiritual maturity who know fullness, who live in that fullness—not with bad attitudes, not sour-puss, not unbelieving.
Sometimes the shame of it all is that the leaders are the basket cases, and everybody is tiptoeing around the leaders, wondering whether they will get upset.
Instead, leaders should be pillars: responsible, faithful, ready with the Word of God.
It is such a shame when an assembly falls into a pattern and all the responsibility for ministry is left with one dear saint, perhaps two, when there is such an abundance but people are unwilling to give themselves to the Lord.
And if you are a leader, I just want to ask you in Jesus’ name to respect the work that the Lord has been doing in your life. Do not quit on the Lord.
It is possible to come to a tragic end. But it is also more than possible, by the grace of God, for you to be faithful in these last days.
Be responsible to the Lord. Be full-hearted toward the Lord. Be a testimony of fullness, maturity, holiness, fellowship, and obedience.
Brothers and sisters, what a difference it would make in the assembly if you were such a kind of person for others.
We no longer have the time to make those foolish kinds of excuses: “Oh, I am not qualified. Oh, I am no good. Oh, I have nothing.” You have done that too long.
The Lord has invested too much for you to devalue what He is doing in your life.
I am not talking about everybody rising up and preaching. I am talking about that kind of spiritual leadership that can be seen in lives that sparkle with the reality of Jesus—His fullness.
We are brothers and sisters. Learn how to be Joshua.
Oh, the Lord is looking for somebody—some people—to be like Joshua: overcoming. Is that not an overcomer right there? I think that is it.
The Lord raised up Joshua. That is true.
Lord, we do not understand Your patience with us, nor Your investment. But we reckon we have nowhere else to go.
I thank You for my dear brothers and sisters. I know many of them have served You and been faithful to You through sickness and sin. They have been tested by the brethren, by murmurings, by difficulties, and by trials that have come about in our life together.
Oh Lord, I pray, Lord, have mercy upon us.
Do not allow us to throw away the confidence and the boast of hope that we have.
Oh Lord, we see that Joshua was exactly that: a man who exuded the confidence of obedience and faith.
So raise up young men, old men, poor sons. We thank You for this testimony of Joshua and the testimony of those whose spirit is like his: a man who brought in a new generation into the land, but a man who was connected and actually part of the old generation.
Oh Lord, in sonship there is no generation gap. Mold us together. Make us one.
Teach us the lessons in the hidden places that would enable us to bear fruitful and loving service to You in these end days.
Oh Lord, make us sons. Bring us into fullness. Bring us into the land of all the purpose of Christ. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.