Hebrews Talk 1 (Introduction 1)

0:01 Thanks to Chris and the band. Okay, if you've got your head of me, you've got my first slide up already. We're going to begin this morning with a little bit of hands-up market research. Don't worry, I'm not recording your data. This is GDPR compliant. But a little bit of a raise of hands. Let's see who in the room we have are one of these different generations. So who here is a boomer?

0:26 Put up your hand if you are a boomer. 19, what's that? I can't see. You can tell what generous I am. 1946 to 64. A few boomers in here. Good. Sorry if you are before boomers.

0:37 By the way, I apologize. I don't know. I think you're called the silent generation, believe it or not. I don't know whether that's a compliment. I think it probably is. So we've got boomers. What about Gen X's? Who's a Gen X?

0:48 That's me. 1978. Gen X. Good. Who's a millennial in the room? Oh, quite a few millennials as well. Good. I want to say Gen Z, but it doesn't sound, right? I want to be regionally appropriate, but you physically have to call it Gen Z. Who here is a Gen Z person?

1:03 So a lot of Gen Zs in the room as well. And then, of course, we're not going to have any Gen Alpha's. They're probably a way to ignite some of the older ones or kid stuff, or that sort of thing. Now, with all that in mind, who here has the privilege, the absolute privilege of being a parent or being a grandparent of a Gen Z-er? Put up your hand if you are one of those Okay, do you feel sometimes, like whenever you're talking with them or you're in their company, that you feel that you've entered alien territory? Do you feel that you might have just appeared in a foreign land where people speak a foreign language, where you know nothing of the culture, the vocabulary, anything like that at all? Would that be anybody's experience here? I would imagine especially grandparents.

1:52 Well, in our house on a Sunday afternoon, it's always a very interesting social experiment because we have the four of us are there for Sunday dinner. That's my two Gen Zers, my 21-year-old and my 19-year-old, and my boomer dad. And it's always interesting to see dad really trying to get into the conversation between Calum and Ollie at the beginning and trying to keep up with what's going on. And then there is that moment where you see the eyes glaze over. Isn't that right, Dad? You see the eyes glaze over, and he's just given up. He cannot keep up anymore with what it is they're talking about. Oh, let's talk about YouTube and influencers, and all these different things going on.

2:34 Knows nothing. He wants to ask them, did you not see this thing on BBC? You know, all those sorts of things. And you can see him glaze over. And for me, don't talk to me about those people when you mention six and seven in close proximity to each other. I like that. Owen Shearer, I'm talking about you. So we all understand, don't we?

2:56 We can all empathize with that cultural chasm, if you like, between generations, that linguistic chasm even as well between different generations. And if we can't do that, we can definitely do it with, you know, other nationalities, geography, all that sort of thing, different cultures. We understand what it is like. We understand that sense of disorientation, of being confused. And where we have little commonality, well, it's very easy, isn't it, to just glaze over and check out and not engage because it takes so much work and a lot of bridge building to understand and inhabit the world of the other. So why do I start with this in relation to our letter to the Hebrews? Well, I start there because that bridge building work is where I want to begin today for us with this letter.

3:55 Because probably more than any other letter in the New Testament, Hebrews is just so far removed from us in terms of culture, in terms of language and imagery and argument. All right, the chasm between a Gen Zer and a boomer is nothing compared with the chasm between us and the original writer and audience of the letter to the Hebrews. Perhaps you've taken some time in the lead up to this week to attempt to read the letter for yourself, and you might have experienced some of this. Absolutely, there are those really well-known encouraging passages from this letter, a couple of which I used at the beginning, but there are also these big, long passages which, if we don't understand the context, can feel very alien and opaque and baffling, really baffling. And so we're going to do things slightly differently over the next couple of weeks. We're going to take not just one, but those two weeks to try to construct some bridges so that we can engage with this letter in as positive and helpful and enlightened way as possible. This week, we're going to think about the original audience and the author and why he's writing. And then next week, we're going to look specifically, you're very excited about this, I'm sure, specifically at the Jewish worship system described in the Old Testament.

5:28 Because all about things like the priesthood and the high priest and the sacrificial system and the tabernacle and the temple and so on. And so the more we can understand that, then the more we're going to be able to engage with and get out of and enjoy the richness of this letter. So these next two weeks are definitely going to be different than normal. But I hope that when we get to the end of the nine weeks, halfway through this letter, you'll look back on these and hopefully find them helpful. At the end of the day, our goal is this, to really grasp the sort of audience so that we can start to apply this for ourselves, and so that when you're reading this letter for yourself, you might have more of an insight, and it might help you to understand that. So we're going to get stuck in. And I was looking back, actually, to a talk a bit similar like this that I gave back in 2022 when we went through our long journey in 1 Corinthians, and I did an introductory talk for that letter. But I was looking at my main points for that, and it was very interesting because I had three context points for that introductory talk.

6:40 The first one was this, context point one, the backstory of the letter. There's a backstory in Acts 18 all about Corinth and Paul's involvement with them and him going to spend time with them and all the rest. There's of Corinth, okay, the significance of its geography, its history, the influence of its culture, the temple of Aphrodite, how all that actually impacts the audience that's being written to. And then we have the obvious context point three, the writer Paul, and how his story intersects with the Corinthian story, his relationship with them, why he's writing to them now, all that sort of thing. And I highlight that in 1 Corinthians, all those context points, because when it comes to Hebrews, we have none of those things at all. None of them. We've no backstory. We've no named author.

7:31 We've no identified recipients. Even a quick comparison of the two introductions here, the two openings to the letters are very, very different. We see how different they are. We can see the fact that there's this greeting in Paul's letter that identifies him, that identifies the church that he's writing to, but in the letter to the Hebrews, the writer goes straight into this amazing, glorious description of the person, the identity of Jesus, but he leaves us absolutely none the wiser to who he is or to who he is writing to. As William L. Lane, one commentator, puts it, Hebrews is a delight for the person who enjoys puzzles. A delight for the person who enjoys puzzles. So if you're a Sudoku fan, you might enjoy looking into Hebrews. And so as we seek to understand the original hearers of this letter and the challenges and the dangers that the author is writing into, here's what I want to do this morning.

8:36 Rather than making this a very potentially dry academic exercise, I think in concrete terms. so this is probably for me as much as it is for you. And what I want to do is to take a slightly different approach. Those baby boomers who are in the room, maybe some Gen Xers as well, will remember Crime Watch. Sadly not on anymore. Don't have nightmares. Do sleep well. And Crime Watch always had these things where they showed an e-fit of somebody.

9:03 Somebody had made this, a victim of the crime had described the perpetrator and then they put this picture together. These six are some of, an article I found, some of the worst efits that police ever actually did put out. These are real. Okay? But what I want to do really as we try to build those bridges and step into possible stories and psychology and mindsets of the possible hearers of this letter, the original hearers, what I want to do really is attempt to create a descriptive, not a pictorial one, a descriptive sort of e-fit, using the clues from the letter to the Hebrews, because we can only look internally at the content of the letter for our clues, and come up with an imagined character, okay? Let me be clear, this character is imagined. Not real in any way, but by actually putting all of this into one character, it certainly helps me think through and get into the mindset of some of the people that this letter might have been written into.

10:08 Okay, so I'm going to call this character Jonathan. Jonathan, very common first century Jewish name, not the name of an apostle, so that doesn't cause any confusion. And like I say, I'm going to give you a little bit of an insight into what some of the audience of this letter might have been dealing with, their background, all of that sort of thing through this imagined character. And as I go along, I'll explain where I get some of those clues from. All right, you with me on that? So Jonathan is, first of all, a Jewish Christian. He's a Christian with a Jewish background, Jewish heritage, and it's very straightforward where the clues for that come from. The whole letter, really, is a big clue as to the fact that it was Jewish Christians that the writer is writing to.

10:56 They're the core audience. I've already highlighted the author's assumption that his audience has a deep understanding of the temple sacrificial system, a deep understanding and knowledge of the Old Testament scriptures. In fact, what he'll do in this letter is he will construct arguments around four key Old Testament passages, around Psalm 8, around Psalm 95, around Psalm 110, and then around Jeremiah 31. So he is assuming that his listeners, his hearers, have a really deep understanding of those scriptures and the sacrificial system of the temple. So, Jonathan is clearly a Jewish Christian. And then secondly, I have placed him living in Jerusalem. Now, that point is much more open for debate than the first one, okay? This is much more debatable.

11:47 Many scholars think a church or churches in Jerusalem are the likely recipients of this letter. But a lot of people, a lot of scholars also think that it might have been a church in Rome. I'm more likely and more inclined to go with Jerusalem because of the seeming emphasis of a lived experience of that temple sacrificial system and not an experience from a distance, but it is not at all beyond the realms of possibility that the people talking about Rome are right. That could be the case. We just don't know. But I've placed him in Jerusalem. The year is around AD 65, and I've made Jonathan in his sort of early 40s. And there are a few clues as to the dating of this letter from inside the letter itself.

12:35 The author makes it clear, for example, that he's not writing to new Christian converts. A lot of us will know this section from chapter five when he says to them, in fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. It's very clear. These aren't new young believers that he is talking to. And he also urges them in chapter 13. He says, remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. In terms of past tense. In terms of the fact that they are no longer with them.

13:09 The leaders, the first generation have passed away. So that's some of the clues as to the dating. And one of those, again imagine, one of those leaders, one of that first generation would have been Jonathan's father. He might have actually been at the gathering at Pentecost whenever Peter and Peter's sermon cut them to the heart. He might have been one of those people that was cut to the heart, who basically gave his life at that point, repented, was baptized, received the Holy Spirit. And Jonathan has heard growing up from his parents and from others about just the joy and the excitement and the deep community of the believers in those very early days. They lived together, life lived together in the fervent and hope-filled expectation of Jesus' imminent return.

14:11 They lived as if Jesus could return tomorrow. That's what they were thinking. That was their mindset. But on the other hand, he's also heard and he remembers snippets from growing up of this deep concern and fear about persecution. In the letter itself in chapter 10, the writer refers to this, of this persecution. And Jonathan remembers some of this, of believers, of family friends being imprisoned, of having their possessions confiscated. And of all the followers of Jesus, including his family, facing insult and ostracization from the rest of the Jewish community. And he remembers how that persecution sort of bound them together.

14:59 It intensified their resolve for the name of Jesus. And that feeling of things in those early days. But things have settled a little bit since then. Things have calmed a little bit since those days. while the Jewish religious authorities are still as fervently and bitterly hostile to the followers of Jesus, there's not quite the same level of hostility among ordinary Jews. And it's sort of that over time, being a Jewish Christian has become a little bit more socially acceptable. And in recent years, many, many more Jews have come and been added to those who believe. For apostles telling Paul, probably around AD 57, 58, about thousands or myriads of Jews believing.

15:55 Although interestingly, the context he has for telling Paul that is the fact that they are fervent, zealous for the law, and that they are deeply concerned about Paul's mission to the Gentiles and bringing the Gentiles into this. That's very apt for this letter. And Jonathan's life, Well, it revolves around the weekend of the synagogue on the Jewish Sabbath, going to the synagogue on the Jewish Sabbath, Saturday, and then going to his house church gathering on the Lord's Day Sunday, where they would have a meal together, break bread together, pray together, worship together, learn together. He continues to take part in the temple sacrificial system at key festivals, maybe about three times a year, just like we see Paul do in Acts 21. But like Paul, he does so very much through the lens of his faith in Jesus, celebrating his hope in Jesus, understanding that all that he is doing and joining in on is pointing to and has already found its fulfillment in Jesus. But Jonathan Dawes really love and is really deeply proud of his Jewish heritage and identity. It is incredibly important. It's incredibly precious, incredibly dear to him.

17:23 He can't imagine not being part of synagogue life or not having the temple festivals and the sacrifices to shape the pattern of his year, the community of it. the tangibility of those practices the ritual the tradition of it it's so much a part of who he is and that that just that thread of his life and if he's being honest his house church has had its challenges recently his christian community's had its challenges in fact he has been going through a season of real personal discouragement. Really discouraged. Because there was such a fervent expectation among them that Jesus would have returned by now. And they're asked, why has he not? And that first generation, like his father, they've passed away. And it sort of feels like something has passed away with that generation and their leadership and their connection with those early days. And there are definitely those then in the church community who are beginning to ask questions.

18:42 Have we got this wrong? Might it be that this isn't true? Might it be that our parents, that first generation, got it wrong? There are people definitely asking questions and friends who never used to miss the gathering on a Sunday, just aren't around as much, if at all. The writer, again, writes about that in chapter 10. Keep on meeting together, don't be in the habit of stopping that. And Jonathan misses them. He misses those people that are gone.

19:22 The church misses them. Their absence is profound. It's so felt. And their absence also is working on those seeds of questions in Jonathan's mind as well. Added to that too is the growing issue of the Gentiles. Again, Luke's account in Acts 21 and 22 show that the Jews in Jerusalem, fervent for the law, in this instance where Paul stands up and gives a speech, they were willing to listen to Paul quietly as he spoke to them in Aramaic about, his encounter with Jesus. They were willing to hear the name Jesus being spoken. But as soon as Paul mentioned the Gentiles and his mission to the Gentiles, that's when they kicked off.

20:10 That's when they went mad through dust up in the air and were ready to kill Paul because of that mention. And more and more Gentiles were being added to the church. But these pagan converts to practice the Jewish law, circumcision, sacrifice, tributes at the temple, all that sort of thing. In fact, it appeared that they actively discouraged that. And Jonathan didn't really know what he thought about this, but he certainly knew the way some of the others in his church thought about it. They were up in arms. And there's no doubt that that's why some of them had stopped coming to the gathering on the Lord's day. And Jonathan and others could see, and they talked about a lot, the trajectory that things were on.

21:05 It seemed clear that it was only a matter of time, given the way the apostles were going and taking things, and given just the hard-heartedness of the Jewish authorities towards the Christian community, that there would have to be a day coming when there was a complete separation of Judaism and Christianity. They couldn't coexist in the way they had anymore. It would have to be this way. But if and when that time came, what would he do? That's the core question. If that time came, when that time came, what would Jonathan do? What choice would he make? And he could see the way others in his church would go very obviously.

21:50 Because as with every church community, this one included, in a group of people, it's a mixed crowd. Not everybody is the same. It's not a uniform group. It's not a homogenous group of people. And that's a really important point to pick up on, that as we go through this letter, we're going to find some serious and difficult warnings from the writer. And it's really crucial that we get this idea and understand that he was writing to a mixed crowd, because that's really going to help us make sense of some of those warnings as we come to them. So as an example of that mixed crowd, I've got a couple of other people. Jonathan has one friend, Simon, and Jonathan has no doubt.

22:37 Simon will choose Jesus over Judaism every single day of the week. It is not even in question. Simon attends synagogue, yes, but not because it's something that he needs for his identity or for the ritual, but because it gives him the opportunity to bear witness to Jesus through the scriptures to other Jews. Simon actually hasn't been at the temple in years. He says it's all pointless because it's all been fulfilled in Jesus. What's the point in doing all that? And Simon welcomes and befriends and breaks bread with new Gentile believers without any sort of suspicion or expectation at all. Simon will choose Jesus.

23:23 He already has. Another friend of Jonathan's, Jacob, well, he's a different story. Jacob has professed belief in Jesus, But Jonathan has wondered at times what Jacob understands that to mean. And that borne out in the fruit of his life. The things of the law you see for Jacob. Law and the priesthood and the temple. And the temple very much in terms of what it represents politically. And the things of the nation of Israel.

23:55 And his concern for its liberation from their Gentile Roman oppressors. All those things seem far higher up on Jacob's agenda than worship of and faithfulness to Jesus. Jacob's the sort of guy that never misses a Saturday, but he's hit and miss for somebody. It appears as if he's far more interested in Jesus as a sort of political, liberator, messianic figure. as an add-on to what he already has in Judaism, rather than the central new thing. And that's despite what the apostles have taught to the country. So that's Simon and that's Jacob, but what about Jonathan? If it came to that point, if he had to choose between Jesus and the temple,

24:52 If he had to choose between the sacrifice of Jesus or the sacrifice of animals. If he had to choose a life loyal to Jesus, but that life meant that he had to live a life outside of the camp of Judaism. A term that the writer uses in chapter 13. Because if he chose Jesus, what would that mean? These aren't academic questions to these people. They have real life serious consequences. What would that mean for friendships? What would that mean for family life?

25:35 Jonathan's wife's a believer in Jesus, but her parents and her siblings aren't. Things are already tense between them. What would things be like if they stopped all their Judaistic practices? And what about his employment? His boss is a fervent, nationalistic Jew. He has plenty to say already about Jonathan's growing association with those Gentile dogs. Could his livelihood be under threat? Could his family face destitution?

26:17 These are real questions. and the central one in them all is this then, is Jesus and faithfulness to him worth it? Is Jesus worth all of this? And that's the question that Jonathan will be left with and those are my, like I said, imagined, very much imagined, if you don't agree with a lot of stuff, that's fine, but trying to get us into, like I say, understanding what might have been going on in some of these people's lives. That's the sort of thing, these are the sort of things that the writer will be writing into. The sort of people that he'll be writing to. So then, if that's the audience, what about the author? Well, like I said, we simply do not know who the author is.

27:14 anything is a best guess. That's all it is, a best guess. We can deduce again from within the letter some things about him, though, from what he writes and how he writes. Let me just take you through a few of these so that again you can get a picture of the author. He himself is clearly as well as the audience, a Jewish Christian, steeped in knowledge and deep understanding of the Old Testament and the Jewish worship system. He's also clearly very highly educated. He is skilled in rhetorical writing in the Greek language. He is quoting from the Greek translation of the Old Testament when he talks to them.

27:52 He's constructing highly complex arguments. He was also likely an experienced Bible teacher because what we have here in Hebrews is a letter, yes, but it's really a sermon in a letter. That's what we've got. Given that he mentions Timothy at the end of the letter, he was likely in Paul's circle. in some way. And the teaching of this letter and this letter is very certainly consistent with the teaching in Paul's letters as well. And then he is so deeply pastoral. So deeply pastoral to a group he knows intimately.

28:31 At the end of the letter, he asks that they would pray that he might be restored to them. So he obviously knows them well. They have a strong connection. And it's clear from the tone, it's clear from the urgency of the letter, how much he cares for, how much he loves this group of people that he's writing to, and how, even in the midst of some serious warnings, how sympathetic he is to the situation they find themselves in. And that, again, is so important that as we read this letter, we recognize his empathy and his sympathy and that posture towards these people. And don't go outside of that and start to be very condemnatory looking from afar. These were tough situations that these people found themselves in. And he desperately wants though to get through to them, to people like Jonathan and also to people like Jacob, that Jesus is worth it.

29:36 That he's worth all of the discouragement, all of the rejection, all of the persecution, all of the reproach, all of the separation. He's worth it. It's worth having to live a life outside the camp because it is a life with him and it is a life for him. He is worth all of it. That's what the writer's getting at here. That's what he's hammering home. And that's why even in the opening, he doesn't waste any time or energy or ink to just get stuck straight into presenting to them this glorious picture of Jesus because he wants them to hold on and hold fast and see just the majesty and the glory of who Jesus is straight off the bat. he wants them to look and then go of course how could I ever think how could I ever contemplate going back on this Jesus and he goes on from here and he painstakingly develops these arguments

30:40 like I said centered around our Old Testament scriptures if you want to get through to somebody like a Jacob where better to go than to the scriptures in the Old Testament they hold so dear and show him through those that this is who Jesus truly is and urge him to hold fast to him. And he pleads with them in urgent love then at the end of the letter, bear with my word of exhortation. Bear with, please, please listen to what it is that I'm saying to you. Please don't Ignore it. This is too serious a thing to ignore. Please don't go back. Don't go back to the old covenant because in the words of chapter eight, which we have up here, that is now obsolete and outdated and will soon disappear. And I mentioned earlier the approximate date of the letter, but in this verse, 813, the writer inspired by the Holy Spirit prophesies a catastrophic event in history, in Jerusalem in AD 70, an event already prophesied by Jesus.

32:00 You can see that here in Matthew 23 and 24. Jesus is talking to the Jewish leaders and he says these words, look, your house is left desolate and then further on down. Truly, I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another. Everyone will be thrown down. Jesus and the writer of the Hebrews are both prophesying the same thing. They are prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of Rome and the complete dismantling of the temple at its heart. What is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear. Temple-based sacrifices were coming to an end.

32:41 They've never come back from AD 70. There's still no temple there. And Judaism would be changed forever. The hearers didn't know that, of course. The writer may not have understood the detail of what he was pointing to, inspired by the Holy Spirit. But he knows he needs to urge them, don't go back. Don't choose the old over the new. Don't choose the shadow of Judaism over the fulfillment, over the real thing of Jesus.

33:11 what a terrible decision to make. Take the opposite path. Hold fast to Jesus. Hold fast and press forward in your faith. Jesus, not Judaism or anything else. That is where and through whom you can receive a kingdom that cannot be shaken. Judaism is going to be shaken and destroyed in that sense of the way they think of it right now. But in Jesus, they will inherit an unshakable kingdom again.

33:45 Words from this letter. He's pleading with them. He's exhorting them in love. Don't go back. Don't fall away. Don't choose the shadow over the real thing. Stick with Jesus. There's so much more that I could say.

34:06 I could gladly do a month of introductions to Hebrews. I'm sure you don't want that. but that's enough for today. Hopefully, like I say, the goal is as you read through this letter this week for yourself, that you might have a little bit more insight and a little more stuff in your head to help you sort of think through what it is you're reading. And can I encourage you to do that? Like I said, this is a letter. This is a sermon within a letter. It was originally meant to be heard in one sitting.

34:33 And so if you can find, I don't know, 30 to 45 minutes this week to find a quiet space, And to do that, read it in one sitting. And then maybe do that again and again each week. Then you're going to get to really grasp some of the stuff that's coming out of this letter. Asking God by his spirit to help you understand what it is you're reading. And as you read and as we begin then to talk about all of this in our home groups, this is a Tide series. We're going to be looking at this and discussing this each week together in those groups. So this is a plug. if you're not already in a home group here is a perfect time to try one, to jump in at the beginning of a series like this.

35:13 And if you want to find out more about that, you can talk to somebody at our connection point afterwards, and I'm sure they'll be able to point you in the direction of one local to you. But as we begin to do that, as we begin to put ourselves in the shoes of these original hearers, this original audience, let's then too begin to consider how might God, by his Holy Spirit, want to use this letter in our lives over the next couple of months as we go through it? How might God, by his Spirit, want to use this letter in your life, in your situation, in the way you're thinking and where you are? What does this letter have to say to us and teach us about Jesus? What does it have to teach us about ourselves? For example, when our feelings, when our feelings scream that following Jesus is just too hard, it's just too much, it's just too heavy, too sacrificial, and of course we're told by the world around us that we should follow our feelings, that they should be our guide. What does this letter have to say to us if that's where we are? What might it have to say to us, those of us here who know in our hearts that we are drifting?

36:44 If we look a year ago, or five years ago, or ten years ago, we know. What does it have to say to us here, those of us who are, in that sense, like the audience here, those second generation Christians, those ones who have inherited our faith from the generation before. It's going to have a lot to say to people like us, this letter. And it's also going to, I think, expose to us those things that we maybe hold on really, really tightly to, that make no sense to hold on tightly to in light of Jesus and who he is and what he's done. there are going to be responses in this letter to all of those questions and far more but as we finish let me just return to where we started this morning and that exhortation found in chapter 12 let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us fixing our eyes on Jesus that's what this letter is going to get us to do that's what we hope is going to happen as we go through it the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. When our boys were young, I can remember teaching them to ride their bikes without the stabilizers for the first time.

38:23 they learned that at a little caravan site that we went to then we still go to today and what I taught them to do was as soon as they started pedaling to lift their eyes and there was a straight bit of road and there's a lamppost at the end of the road and I told them whatever you do don't take your eyes off that lamppost and if you do that trust me you'll stay steady if you look down here everything's going to go wobbly but if you look up there Trust me, you're going to stay steady. Fix your eyes on Jesus. Consider him. That's our prayer for the next nine weeks or so. Let's pray together then as the band come back. Father, this is then our prayer. That through this letter we would see the treasure that is ours in Jesus. And that in lives that are challenging and messy and difficult,

39:34 and where we find it really tough at times to be followers of Jesus, that this letter will speak to us, that you will speak to us by your Spirit, through your Word, teaching us, spurring us on, helping us and guiding us to hold fast to what is true, to what is real, to what is new, to what is perfect, to your Son. And we ask this in his name. Amen.