He Is Able to Humble

Pride whispers that we’re in control; Daniel 4 shows what happens when heaven answers back. We walk through Nebuchadnezzar’s sweeping testimony—from ease and prosperity, to a troubling dream, to a warning delivered by Daniel, to a hard fall, and finally to restoration that only began when he lifted his eyes to heaven. Along the way, we explore why God often disturbs our comfort, how to recognize the “Daniels” who speak hard truth with nothing to gain, and what it means to choose the easy road of repentance rather than the hard road of breaking.

We dig into the dream of the great tree, the decree of the watchers, and the sobering reality that authority is always on loan from the Most High. Pride reduces a soul to survival mode; humility restores reason, clarity, and joy. You’ll hear a candid personal story of being humbled and finding renewal, plus reflections on art and culture—like Bruegel’s Icarus and a 60 Minutes moment with Tom Brady—that illuminate how success can still leave us aching for more. The thread through it all is simple and searching: those who walk in pride he is able to humble, and those who look up are lifted.

Centered on the gospel, we point to Jesus, the true King who chose the low place, took up the cross, and opened the path from self to surrender to life. If you’re feeling troubled, facing a warning, or walking through a breaking, take heart: God’s aim is restoration. Listen, share with someone who needs a nudge toward humility, and subscribe so you won’t miss what’s next. If this moved you, leave a review and tell us where you sense heaven nudging you today.

Transcript

Reading Daniel 4 Aloud

SPEAKER_00 0:00

For the rest of us, I want to invite us to stand for the reading of God's Word this morning. Because it's a lengthy reading, it's not found in the bulletin. So if you have your Bible with you, imagine that, or if you have an app on your phone, you can pull that out as well. I encourage you to follow along in Daniel chapter 4. We will be reading the whole chapter, beginning in verse 1, the Word of God reads this way. King Nebuchadnezzar, to all peoples, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth, peace be multiplied to you. It has seemed good to me to show the signs and wonders that the Most High God has done for me. How great are his signs, how mighty his wonders. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion endures from generation to generation. I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at ease in my house and prospering in my palace. I saw a dream that made me afraid. As I lay in bed, the fancies and the visions of my head alarmed me. So I made a decree that all the wise men of Babylon should be brought before me, that they might make known to me the interpretation of the dream. Then the magicians, the enchanters, the Chaldeans, and the astrologers came in, and I told them the dream, but they could not make known to me its interpretation. At last Daniel came in before me, he who was named Beltishazzar after the name of my God, and in whom is the Spirit of the Holy Gods. And I told him the dream, saying, O Beltashazzar, chief of the magicians, because I know that the spirit of the holy gods is in you, and that no mystery is too difficult for you, tell me the visions of my of my dream that I saw in their interpretation. The visions of my head as I lay in bed were these. And because the king saw a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven, and saying, Chop down the tree and destroy it, but leave the stump of its roots in the earth, bound with a band of iron and bronze, in the tender grass of the field, and let him be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts of the field, till seven periods of time pass over him. This is the interpretation, O King. It is a decree of the Most High, which has come upon my Lord the King, that you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and you shall be wet with the dew of heaven, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, till you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will. And it was commanded, and as it was commanded, to leave the stump of the roots of the tree, your kingdom shall be confirmed for you from the time that you know that heaven rules. Therefore, O king, let my counsel counsel be acceptable to you. Break off your sins by practicing righteousness, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the oppressed, that there may perhaps be a lengthening of your prosperity. All this came upon King Nebuchadnezzar. At the end of twelve months he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, and the king answered and said, Is not this great Babylon which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty? While the words were still in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken, the kingdom has departed from you, and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, and you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven periods of time shall pass over you until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will. Immediately the word was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew long as eagle's feathers, and his nails were like birds' claws. At the end of the days, I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever. For his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his hand or say to him, What have you done? At the same time my reason returned to me, and for the glory of my kingdom my majesty and splendor returned to me. My counselors and my lords sought me, and I was established in my kingdom, and still more greatness was added to me. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are right, and his ways are just, and those who walk in pride he is able to humble. This is God's word. Thanks be to God. You may be seated, and may God bless this reading and preaching of his word. The chess players is a famous painting by the German artist Friedrich Rech. It's one of my favorite paintings. Um there's just so many layers to it. At first glance, it looks like a simple chess match. But the closer you look, the stranger the details become. The first thing that you notice is something unsettling. One of the players is the devil. And across the table from him, uh the young man across the board looks looks discouraged or dismayed, disheartened. The devil looks confident, and behind the young man stands an angel quietly watching the game. And the position on the board appears hopeless. It looks like a checkmate. And you look at that painting and you're left with so many questions. What what what sort of wager must have been made? What is this young man losing in his chess match to the devil? And for years, people assumed that the painting was about defeat or about some kind of Faustian bargain. But there's even more to it than that. Because one day, a chess master studied the board carefully in the painting, and he saw something that for decades everyone else had missed. He saw that it really wasn't checkmate after all, that the game was not over, and that the king had one more move. As we have been studying the book of Daniel, we have been witnessing a chess match unfold between King Nebuchadnezzar and the Most High God. Nebuchadnezzar has many times been confronted with the power of the King of Heaven and even forced to recognize and to give glory to the King of Heaven. But each time Nebuchadnezzar has evaded capture. Nebuchadnezzar believes that he controls the board. But in chapter 4, we see that the King of Heaven has one more move. Daniel 4 is the story of Nebuchadnezzar's surrender to the King of Heaven and Nebuchadnezzar's salvation as a result of that. And it teaches us more than simply how Nebuchadnezzar was saved or came to know God in a saving way, but it teaches us more broadly about how God saves people, how anyone comes to be saved. In order to arrive at a saving knowledge of God, all people must play the same game. We must all engage in the same chess match, and we must all arrive at the same conclusions as Nebuchadnezzar. So what is the basic lesson that we must all learn? God must humble us in order to save us. God must humble us in order to save us. Why is that? Spiritual pride is our MO, it's our natural fallen state. And spiritual pride is the notion that we do not need God and that we can live successfully without Him. And the problem with spiritual pride is that it's delusional because we absolutely need God, whether or not we recognize it. We cannot live successfully without Him. It's a complete delusion. Spiritual humility is what we have to learn. And spiritual humility is the realization that we do need God and that we cannot live without Him. If you're hearing this as a Christian, you might be tempted to think that this sermon is not for you because you're already saved. But God still has a lot more saving to do in your life and in my life in order to fit us for heaven. And we need to continue to move, continue to make progress from spiritual pride to spiritual humility. The Christian life from the beginning to end really is a series of epiphanies, and they're all the same epiphany. We keep coming back to this realization, I need God more than I thought. When we first become saved, we realize that, and then the more progress we make, each year in each epiphany that we come to, it's the same thing. It's I need God more than I thought. I thought I needed him this much, but I actually need him this much, and on and on. So how does God move us from spiritual pride to spiritual humility? And here's what we learn from this story: it's four things. God troubles the proud, God warns the proud, God breaks the proud, and God restores the humble. So first, God troubles the proud. God is able to trouble those who are at ease and prospering. Chapter 4 begins with a surprising shift in voice, because in chapter 4, Nebuchadnezzar himself is speaking, which is different from the rest of the book of Daniel. The entire chapter reads like a royal testimony from the king of Babylon, making a proclamation to his people. He tells us what the story is about. Verse 2, it says, It has seemed good to me to show the signs and wonders that the Most High God has done for me. And he comes back to that same conclusion in verse 37. Those who walk in pride, he is able to humble. That's the theme of his story. Before God invaded Nebuchadnezzar's life and makes his move here, everything was going well. Listen to how he describes his life in verse 4. He says, I was at ease in my house and prospering in my palace. In other words, Nebuchadnezzar had everything that the world promises will make a person secure. He was at ease and prospering. But God is still able to trouble him, even though everything is going according to plan, in order to show him that something is missing. In verse 5, he says, I saw a dream that made me afraid. As I lay in bed, the fancies and the visions of my head alarmed me. In order to break our spiritual pride, one of the first steps that God often makes is that he must trouble us. He must disturb our peace and our prosperity, even if everything's going well, so that we realize that maybe something is missing. Maybe something is not right. But in 2005, Tom Brady did an interview with 60 Minutes. And he had just won his third Super Bowl. He had he had everything. He had fame, he had wealth and success, he had a supermodel wife, he he had everything that the world promises would make us secure and at ease and prospering. By every measure, he had achieved the dream. And in that interview, he said something surprising. He said he's he the he the interviewer is um he's treating him like a counselor, so so to speak, and he says, Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think that there's something greater out there for me? I reached my dream, I reached what I wanted to in life, but there's gotta be more to it than this. And he didn't know the answer, and the interviewer didn't know the answer either, but it's clear that even at the height of his success, something was troubling him. He was at ease and prospering, and yet something was troubling him. He could not shake the feeling that maybe something was missing. No one enters the kingdom of God or makes progress in the kingdom of God without first being troubled. We must begin to see and feel that something's not right, that something is missing. And sometimes we might get discouraged when we think about friends and family who we wish would come to know the Lord. And we get discouraged when we look at their lives because they live completely independently from God, and yet they are at ease in prospering. And we wish, I mean, I wish they would just break a leg or something like that, so that they would know that they need God. Well, don't forget that it is no difficult thing for God to trouble people in high places, or for God to trouble those who are at ease in prospering, even if everything is going well. God can still get to their heart. Maybe you're troubled right now, even though with your life everything on paper is going right for you. You cannot shake the feeling that something is missing. Maybe you even feel this way as someone who knows God, as someone who considers themselves to be a Christian. That nagging feeling is always a good thing to press into because God still has much saving that he needs to do in your life. No one enters the kingdom of God or makes progress in the kingdom of God without first being troubled. God troubles the proud. God warns the proud as well. This is point two. God warns the proud by sending Daniels. The king is again troubled by a dream like he was in chapter two when he dreamed of the statue. This time, the dream is about a great tree. It's a great infrastructure that supports the life of many, that many people benefit from and seek shelter from. But the troubling part is not the tree. The troubling part is that the tree is cut down at the height of its prosperity. And this represents a judgment from heaven. The angel proclaims in verse 17: the sentence is by the decree of the watchers, the decision by the word of the holy ones, to the end that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will, and sets over it the lowliest of men. He has this troubling dream. So he again calls and assembles his counselors, and again they are unable to help him. So he turns to Daniel, who now has earned his respect, and in verse 9 he says, O Belteshazzar, chief of the magicians, and it's clear from his language here that he still does not understand the Lord very well, chief of the magicians, because I know that the spirit of the holy gods is in you and that no mystery is too difficult for you, tell me the visions of my dream that I saw in their interpretation. Daniel has nothing to gain from telling the king the truth. As a matter of fact, he has everything to lose, because to give the king an ill omen could mean risking or even forfeiting his own life. He has nothing to gain. He could just make up a story about how this is about Nebuchadnezzar's enemies, and Nebuchadnezzar would never know that. He has nothing to gain. But Daniel is a good man, and he tells the king the truth, even though it's a truth that's hard to hear. Daniel says with some trepidation in verse 22, he says, It is you, O king, the tree is you, this dream is about you. And he goes on to explain that the king is in danger of losing everything as a judgment from God. And then he is so bold as to advise the king, even though the king doesn't ask for advice. In verse 27, he says, Therefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable to you. Break off your sins by practicing righteousness, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the oppressed, that they mer that there may perhaps be a lengthening of your prosperity. It's not even certain. There's this dream. Daniel gives him advice. He says, If you want my advice, I think you should repent of your sins, and maybe God will not do this. Maybe there will be a lengthening of your prosperity. A crisis is coming, but the crisis could be averted if the king will repent now. That's quite a bold thing to say to the king, especially a king like Nebuchadnezzar, but it's just what the king needs to hear. God is gracious in our salvation. We need to be humbled, but there's an easy way and there's a hard way. God is good to warn us, but the choice is ours. A few years ago, I bumped into an old friend from my campus ministry days, and he had been a student in our ministry, and I had not seen him for many years. I bumped into him and he he caught me and he wanted to thank me because one time when he was a student, we got coffee together, and for about an hour I told him it how arrogant he was in that meeting. And he was a he was a young, devout believer, but apparently I picked him apart for about an hour and I gave him grief for his for his arrogance and his looking down on everybody else. It was surprising to him at the time and difficult for him to hear because he and I were in the same theological camp, and so he he thought I was just gonna give him some kudos and tell him how great he was. Though it was a challenging conversation for him at the time, he said that it was a life-changing conversation, and he still remembers it to this day, and so he thanked me for that. In God's providence, I have no memory of ever having had that conversation. And I've experienced in in throughout my ministry the most helpful things I've ever said are things that I have no memory of saying. Um, things that God chooses to use and the things that I think that I've done well that are important typically make no difference at all. Um so it is it is God's grace in that. But I know uh that I would have had nothing to gain from it. In fact, I was risking losing uh this student entirely by telling him these things, but God used that conversation to help course correct this young man and perhaps divert something even more painful from happening to him. If the hound of heaven is pursuing you, it's only a matter of time until he has you. We must all be humbled in order to enter God's kingdom and to make progress in God's kingdom. But you don't have to be broken. I think that the point three that God breaks the proud, that in some ways, that's up to us. God leaves that up to us. And depends on whether or not we will listen to the Daniels that God sends into our life. As God pursues you to save you, He will send people into your life like Daniel. And how will you recognize them? How do you know that this is a Daniel that you ought to listen to? They are the people telling you the truth that's hard to hear when they have nothing to gain from it, even though they have nothing to gain. So if you have people in your life, a friend, a spouse, a parent, even a child who is telling you a hard truth, even though it's hard for them, and even though they have nothing to gain from it, maybe listen to them, maybe consider what they have to say. It could be important. That could very well be a Daniel, and God has sent them to warn you of a crisis that's coming, but that could be averted if you will only listen and repent and turn from your sins. We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way. God graciously warns us, but he leaves that choice often in our hands. God warns the proud. Point three, God breaks the proud. If the proud will not humble themselves, God will break them. I think God would prefer to do things the easy way. That's why he sends Daniel. God he graciously troubles the king, he graciously warns the king, and he gives him an opportunity to choose an easier path, but the king will not repent. Look at verses twenty-eight through thirty. And twenty-eight he says, it says, All this came upon King Nebuchadnezzar. At the end of twelve months, he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, and the king answered and said, and this is how we know that he's not yet humbled, is not this great Babylon which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty. The first thing that we should notice here is the time period, twelve months. This is twelve months later. So Nebuchadnezzar has this troubling dream. He's given a warning, and God gives him a whole year to repent, a whole year to consider these things and to think about it. It gives him twelve months. Nothing happens for 12 months. But Nebuchadnezzar's response gives us an insight not only into God's patience toward us, but into the foolish stubbornness of our own sin. Many of us will never repent until God humbles us. And this is even for those of us who are Christians. We have ongoing, besetting sins in our lives and dysfunction in our lives, and many of us will never recognize it and never turn from it until God humbles us. Many of us choose the hard way. All of us are going to choose the hard way at some point in our lives. Nebuchadnezzar's discipline, his judgment, is that he is reduced to the state of a beast. And this is probably some kind of madness or mental illness inflicted upon him. And the idea is to humble him so that he would know that he is merely a man and that he is not God. He needs to lift his eyes to heaven in order for his reason to return. From his own words, Nebuchadnezzar believes that it is he who has built up Babylon, and it is he who has accomplished these great things. It is he who keeps the world at peace, and it is he who watches over the world. But in reality, Nebuchadnezzar is the one being watched. Did you notice that the angel here, the angels here are called watchers? It is the king who is under divine surveillance, and who is just one of many who are being watched over from heaven. And he's mentally reduced to the state of a beast until he learns that it is God and not man who watches over the earth and gives dominion of the earth to whomever he will. Pride comes before a fall, and if we will not humble ourselves, God will do it for us. Because we need to be humbled. Again, there's an easy way and a hard way, but God will God will do it if we choose the hard way. Another one of my favorite paintings is uh Bruegel the Elder's Landscape with the fall of Icarus. Have you ever seen that painting before? Show of hands. Anybody ever seen that? Go home and Google it. Landscape with the fall of Icarus. You would not know that it is about the fall of Icarus except for the title. The painting depicts a beautiful landscape. A farmer plows his field next to a seaside, on the sea, ships set sail. It depicts normal life on a landscape except for one detail. There is a small leg sticking out of the water. Icarus has fallen to his death and is drowning, and the world goes on without noticing. In the story of Icarus, Icarus and his father Daedalus are trapped on an island, and Daedalus builds wings out of feathers and wax to escape, and he tells his son, don't fly too low, too close to the sea, and get the wings wet, and don't fly too close to the sun, because the sun will melt the wax. Well, Icarus takes off in flight, and he is he's so exhilarated by his newfound power. He's so proud of himself, he flies too close to the sun, thinking the rules don't apply to me. I'm Icarus, but the rules do apply to him, and the wax melts and he falls into the sea and he drowns. In Bruegel's painting, Icarus' pride led to a great fall that goes unnoticed by the busy world. In our pride, we think that we're a big deal, and humility is realizing that we are in fact very easy to ignore. We think that we're a big deal, but life is going to go on without us, even if we should fall. Even if we're someone like Nebuchadnezzar, the world will easily figure out a way to go forward without us. Sometimes we must be broken in order to learn that we're not invincible, and in order to learn that we're not as big of a deal as as we think that we are, in order to learn that we're not as necessary as we think we are, in order to learn that the rules do apply to us and that we don't get a free pass, and in order to learn that it is God who watches over the world and who makes life work. God is gracious and good to involve us in his work even though he doesn't need us. And humility is realizing that we're really nobody special and that the rules apply to us too, that if we fly too close to the sun, our wings our our wings will melt, and that we are dust and dust we will return. Sorry about that. Sometimes God must break us so that we will learn the truth. But the truth is not depressing. As a matter of fact, it's the exact opposite. It's so liberating to learn that the world does not revolve around you. It's so liber liberating to learn that it does not all depend upon you, and that you are kind of a nobody, uh, trying to tell everybody about somebody, and that uh that you're accountable to God and that it's in his hands. That's not depressing at all. It's liberating. And when we learn that lesson, it is finally safe for God to begin to restore us. So we've seen that God troubles the proud, he warns the proud, he breaks the proud, but he is also good to restore the humble. This is a point four. We'll conclude with this. God is gracious to restore the humble who look to him. God is not overly harsh, even though he disciplines and he breaks, he doesn't overdo it. He only applies, he only ever applies as much discipline as is necessary for us to learn the lesson. What a gracious God we have. In verse 34, we read, At the end of the days, I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High God, and praised and honored him who lives forever. Nebuchadnezzar finally comes to worship God, and he learns the lesson that God is great and that man is small in comparison. God then graciously restores the king. Verse thirty-six and thirty-seven, he says, At the same time my reason returned to me, and for the glory of my kingdom, my majesty and splendor returned to me. My counselors and my lords sought me, and I was established in my kingdom, and still more greatness was added to me. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of Heaven, for all his works are right, and his ways are just, and those who walk in pride he is able to humble. Only when he lifts his eyes to heaven does his reason return. For as long as he's focused on himself, he's as good as a madman, and God reduces him to the state of a madman, but as soon as he gets that heavenly perspective, everything else begins to make sense, and his reason returns. His counselors seek him out again, his kingdom is established again, and grows even greater than it had been before, with one important difference. Now I praise and extol and honor the King of heaven. Nebuchadnezzar's discipline did not leave him broken beyond repair, but it ended and resulted in his restoration, his newfound humility, and a deep praise and thankfulness to God. In order to enter the kingdom or to make progress in the kingdom, we must move from spiritual pride to spiritual humility. We have to learn our complete dependence upon God. And to accomplish this, God graciously troubles us, he warns us, he breaks us. But his ultimate aim, what he really wants to accomplish in all of this, is to restore us to be more than we were when he first found us, with the difference that now we praise and we honor God. Before I was called as a church planter here at St. John, I served as an assistant pastor at another church for six years. And in 2021, I was unexpectedly terminated. It was the first time I'd ever gotten fired from anything. Everybody's always liked me. I've always done a good job. But I got terminated, and I was it was a very humbling time in my life. My reputation was called into question. I wasn't the golden boy anymore. I had to take a significant pay cut, working a different job to provide for my family, working an entry-level carpentry job, making$21 an hour. And before that event, I felt a little invincible. I felt like somebody. And afterward, I felt like a nobody as I came crashing down. And one of my worst fears came true. The fear that I would have to actually work some other job other than ministry and maybe hurt my soft hands. It came true. But God did a lot of work on me and in me in that period. And today, He has given me more than I would have ever even thought to ask. It led me to by vocational ministry, which has been a tremendous blessing. But I think more importantly, it helped me get more down to earth. It helped me more than anything else to take my theology from being an academic thing down to the dirt and the sawdust and the sweat of real life. Hopefully, God humbled me at least a little bit more through that experience so that I know that I'm not special and that I'm no better than anyone who I'm ministering to who's sitting in the pews or sitting across the table from me. God's design in breaking us is not to leave us in the trash heap or to that we end up in the spiritual bit FTA to be bit upon by the highest bidder, but to rebuild us into something so much better. And this does not just happen once. This doesn't just happen at the time of our salvation, but he often must do this many times in our life as we need to be continually be humbled and brought to him. Sinners must be humbled and broken in order to be saved, because the essence, the very essence of sin, is exalting ourselves too highly. And so in order to be saved, we must be humbled to imagine that we do not need God to live successfully. Sin is when men and women of dust exalt themselves to the place of God. And salvation is when God humbles himself and takes the form of a servant. Jesus Christ emptied himself, not counting a quality with God, a thing to be grasped, but he was found in the form of a servant. The Most High God became a humble carpenter, and he suffered for us, with us, and for us, and ultimately became the lowliest man ever to live, and died a lowly death that we deserve, so that we could be rebuilt and exalted to a place that we don't deserve. That's what salvation is. Nebuchadnezzar had to be broken, but King Jesus humbled himself for our sake. We cannot enter the kingdom or make progress in the kingdom unless we are humbled. So wherever you find yourself in that process this morning, look to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our salvation, to strengthen our hands under God's gracious discipline. To this end, let us pray. Father, we give you thanks for this example here that we have in Nebuchadnezzar and the many things that we learn from it. And I do pray, Lord, that as we have meditated on and studied this story, that it would continue to stick in our minds and that we would continue to gain insight from it and learn its lessons. Lord, we do pray that you would humble us and we ask, Lord, that we could do it the easy way by your grace and in your providence. Help us to be able to recognize our own sin and our own pride and to turn from it before it's too late. But Lord, for some of us it is too late, and things have already befallen us and we have already been broken. But even then, God, it is never too late for you to save and to restore. Even if we are broken this morning, we're still in the process of your salvation. We need to be humbled. And so for those of us who are feeling broken, I pray, God, that you would give some encouragement and that you would help us to learn the things that we need to learn so that we can seek your restoration. We thank you, Lord, for Jesus Christ and what he has done for us. It is because of him and his work on the cross that we know for certain that your discipline is not meant to destroy us or to break us down, but it is your loving discipline meant to save us and to exalt us to a place that we don't deserve. We thank you, and we pray all this in Jesus' mighty name. Amen. Let's stand and sing together.