In this sermon, Scott Brown discusses ten guiding lights from the Word of God for a successful marriage. He emphasizes that marriage is designed to be a picture of Christ's love for the church and the church's submission and love toward Christ. He highlights the importance of oneness, repentance, and being filled with the Holy Spirit in a marriage. Brown also stresses that understanding our roles in marriage – husbands representing Christ's love and wives representing the church's submission – can help in handling conflicts and maintaining a loving relationship. He encourages couples to focus on the Word of God and turn away from worldly distractions that can hinder their marriage.

Well I don't know if there could have been a better song to open up a marriage conference like this than the one that we just sang. I really so appreciate that. I really do pray that everything in that song would be the end of everything that we receive here at this time. I want to give you today ten guiding lights from the Word of God for your marriage. You know, Deborah and I have been married for just about 40 years.

There you go. Yeah, that's nothing. My parents were married 73 years. So how about that? You know they had a really happy marriage every day.

I was able to watch joy and tenderness every day of my life. My parents moved in with us about a decade and a half ago. My dad died last year, but I got to see my father and my mother read together every day. They were always listening to the Word of God or reading it or it was such a beautiful, beautiful thing and I pray that God will give all of you such a picture that your children will be able to see. Pictures of tenderness and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness, but that's what they'll see.

You know, children, you're always teaching your children about marriage. You actually don't have to teach them much. They see it all, and I pray that God really gives that to you. When Deborah and I were married you know 40 years ago life was a lot simpler. We had the luxury of being married at a time when there were no cell phones.

The phone was bolted to the wall. So like we got married, you know, and if we left the house for anything you weren't gonna find, you had to go find us. You had to go search around our little town where I was a pastor and I was able to walk home from from my office which was a church every day and just have lunch with Deborah but there's so many things to distract couples today that actually didn't exist so you have it you're getting married at a really really challenging time where you know everything's going off the rails People can't even figure out whether they're a boy or a girl anymore. What help do you have to have a marriage in the midst of this culture. One of the things that my dad said to me over and over again is he would he would stop me and he would say, Scott, hug your honey.

And what he didn't mean go hug her, really. He meant, you know, you need to go smell the roses with that girl. You know, pay attention to her. He really meant the whole orb of love when he said hug your honey. And it's funny, I did a podcast about my dad and we called it Hug Your Honey just a few days ago and it hasn't launched yet.

But I did this podcast with one of my dear friends, Jason Delm, who I did his wedding 30 years ago, and he said my dad at least a hundred times told him, hug your honey. And then I find out he was saying that to everybody, you know, and what a blessing it is. You know, so the Bible says that there's a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, and Guess what time you're in now? You're in the time for embracing. It's the time.

It's years of time, hopefully, of embracing. And I just want to talk about how you embrace according to the love of God, And I want to give you ten things about that. You know, people are very confused about what love is. The Bible tells you what love is. Love is not found in your heart.

Love is found outside of you in God and is implanted in you by the Spirit of God when you believe. There's very little hope for marriages where this Holy Spirit does not exist. And that's really the greatest trouble. I want to talk about what love is this morning and when I speak later on. You know, I want to just urge you all, don't be hard to live with.

Are you easy to live with? Hey, you know what, I married a girl that was easy to live with. I'm pretty sure I'm harder to live with than she is to live with, so. But are you easy to live with? The Lord has given you everything you need to be easy to live with in the sense that I'm talking about and I pray that you are you know maybe maybe even in the course of the minutes that we'll have together you'll you'll lay down some of your offenses that have made it hard for you to be lived with.

Maybe some assumptions. Maybe you'll change the focus of how you think about your spouse, and you won't be so hard to live with. How about that? Are you with me? Let's do that.

So yeah, so yeah, hug your honey. And you know, here's another thing. Couples, when they get frustrated, They often run around desperately to try to find the silver bullet to fix their marriage. They might go, you know, they're gonna go read, I got to read this book. This book is gonna fix my marriage.

You know, this podcast is gonna fix my marriage. This, you know, this blog post is gonna fix my marriage. But God has given you everything you need. The Bible has it all for you. You don't really need all these things.

You need the Word of God. You know, Deborah and I were counseling with a young couple and they were having trouble because the husband had gotten involved in pornography. It was very heartbreaking, particularly for her. And so she, you know, was on kind of a desperate search to try to fix herself and to fix her husband. And so she was very angry with him.

And so she came to us, she said, well I went to this blog and it was so helpful because I learned about the five stages of grieving. And she says, I'm in the, I'm in the, I'm in the anger. That's the, I'm just, I'm just gonna, I'm in that stage. I'm in the anger stage." I said, really? Where did you get that idea?

Well, actually, this idea came from actually, I think 40 years ago I read a book by Elizabeth Kubler Ross. She was a Satanist and she kind of launched that idea. It became very popular in evangelical circles to talk about these stages of grieving. You go through these stages of grieving. I said, but the Bible doesn't say that.

The Bible doesn't lead you through stages of grieving. The Bible leads you through stages of forgiveness, and loving kindness, and speaking words seasoned with salt. I mean, the Bible tells you how to do all this. Don't get stuck in some stage of grieving don't get stuck don't get incarcerated don't don't be imprisoned by some blog post that you that you read go to God go to the Word of God the Word of God is has everything you need to be released from whatever it might be, from your anger particularly. And loving Jesus Christ, becoming like Jesus Christ, filling your mind up with the counsel of God.

That's what you need. And I pray that we'll just be doing that. I know these other brothers are going to lead us there. So consecrate yourself to the love of God. Consecrate yourself to be a tool of the love of God.

You know, God created marriage for different purposes, but one of those purposes is to preserve love in somebody else's life. Like when you get married you make a covenant and you tell that person and you tell everyone that you're going to love that person for the rest of their life. You're keeping love alive in the world. When you got married, you made a covenant to keep love alive regardless of the things that might hinder it. But when you think about that for a minute?

You've been appointed to do something for somebody that's so important. I hope you're married to a person who says, My spouse will never leave me or forsake me. I'll always be loved. God called my spouse to love me and I know I'll be loved because my spouse loves the Lord Jesus Christ. And what marriage is really designed among the many things to keep the love of God alive in the world and God calls husbands and wives first of all to love one another.

By the way everything comes out of a marriage. Everything comes out of a relationship with a husband and a wife. Everything. Everything in society comes out of a relationship between a man and a woman. It's so pivotal.

It's a fountainhead of love or it's a fountainhead of poison and that's what God has appointed you to. He's appointed you to the greatest thing. The greatest of these is love, says the Word of God. And God actually desires that his children are loved their whole life long. Isn't that amazing?

This is the love of God. To have a person in their life that would always love them, no matter what they go through and no matter what they say or whatever happens to them. It's such a marvelous thing. And so I so commend it to you. And you could say someone loves me.

It's my spouse. And you can say, I'm going to love that spouse of mine till the day I die. I'm going to make sure that love is kept alive in this world through me toward that girl or that man that I married. So you know, marriage is God's primary design for the creation of all of culture. It all comes out of a family.

It's really the foundation of unity in all of society. It's made for companionship. It's made to be an exclusive relationship. It's made for a lifelong covenant. You entered into a covenant when you got married.

And it's designed to raise children and to teach your children what love looks like by showing them by the way that you walk with one another and you treat one another. So this is such an important thing here. I just pray that God would use these things. Okay, now I told you I'm going to give you ten things to guide you, ten guiding lights, but the greatest of them all, the summary of them all, is the picture of marriage that God has given. And God has designed your marriage to actually be a picture of something greater.

And of course the Bible works like that. The Bible is so full of pictures that point to something greater and marriage is like that. And if you open your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 5, and I'll just tell you most of what I will say will arise out of some phrase or principle out of this passage of Scripture, Ephesians 5, 22 to 33. But in Ephesians 5 you find what is, it's the flagship biblical text on marriage. It really, it summarizes everything the Bible says about marriage.

It's all condensed, you know, in this one place. Of course I'm going to take you all over the Bible here this morning, but there's something in Ephesians 5, one thing I want to point out, and that is that we learn why marriage was created. It was created to be a picture of Christ's love for his church and the church's submission and love toward Christ. That's why marriage is in the world. God created marriage for that purpose.

God didn't create marriage necessarily, primarily for you. He created it so that you would paint a picture. And you're painting a picture, you know, here's the reality. Debra and I have done lots of gatherings like this on marriage and most of the time there's somebody in that room, this is the kind of like their last-ditch effort. This is like their last stop because they're so frustrated with one, they're so done and they're thinking maybe, maybe there's some kind of hope we can get out of this thing.

And for all of us here I just want us to understand really clearly that marriage is a picture of Christ and His church. And if you don't understand what marriage is all about, you won't really understand how to be married. And in Ephesians 5, you have this phrase in verse 22, as to the Lord, as also Christ is head of the church, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be their own husbands. Verse 25, Just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her. You see the pattern, just as, just as.

Marriage is compared to Christ's love for the church and the church's love for Christ. Verse 27, that he might present her to himself a glorious church. Verse 29, no one ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it. How? Just as the Lord does the church.

And then in verse 32, this is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. So marriage is about Christ and the church. And here's why this is so important. In this picture, there are two parties. There's Christ and His love.

And there's the church and her submission. So you have these two parties. It's a picture of a husband and a wife, and you're painting a picture. In marriage, you're actually painting a picture. It's not your picture, right?

It's his picture. You're painting a picture of Christ's love, if you're a husband. If you're a wife, you're painting a picture of the church's submission to Christ. You know, a loveless marriage, a marriage where there's no submission or honor, is a marriage that doesn't reflect Christ and His church. But you're painting a picture and one of the most important things that you need to know about your marriage is that you're playing a role that's not yours.

You husbands, you're not living out your dream. You're not living out your story. That wasn't why God got you married. You're married to live out Christ's love for the church, that story. You're not your own.

You can't do whatever you want to do in your marriage. You play the role of Jesus Christ. You can't say whatever you want to say, you can't lead this marriage in any direction you want, you play the role of Jesus Christ. And wives are the same thing. You're playing a role that's not your own.

You're painting a picture of Christ's submission to the Lord. And as long as you know who you are in the relationship, you'll always know what to do. If your wife is speaking to you in a way that is not helpful, you know what to do. What would Jesus Christ do? What is he like?

How does he treat his bride? You'll always know what to do. You'll never ever be stuck if you know who you are. If a wife knows who she is, She's playing a role that's not her own. She's not finding herself.

The worst thing you can do, by the way, in this world is try to find yourself. You know, this is the whole point of the deconstruction movement. Find yourself. Believe in yourself. Trust yourself.

And by the way, just so you know, that is the most deconstructing thing you can do in your marriage is to become yourself and find yourself. You need to become like Christ. If not, the whole house will fall down. And those who are deconstructing their faith, I don't know if you've noticed, they're also deconstructing their marriages and there's a reason. Because when you find yourself it doesn't go that well with everybody else in your life.

So you have to know that you're painting a picture. You're telling, you're actually telling a story that's not even your own story. You're telling a story of Christ's love for his church and the church's adoration and submission to the Lord. So if as long as you know who you are, you'll be okay. As long as you have the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ working in your heart you'll be okay.

You'll know what to say. You'll know what to think because the Bible tells you all these things. You have everything you need for life and godliness. So getting the picture right is so critical. Knowing who you are is so critical.

We live in a world where everybody wants to find themselves. And they just want to inflame their pride to become somebody. That's the worst thing you can do in your marriage. But if you become like Christ, now you've got love. Now you have something that will endure.

Okay, I'm gonna give you ten guiding lights from ten texts of Scripture. I'm going to give you a word, a handle on each one of these. What you're going to get here are basically ten texts about marriage. Now many, you know, many things that are so important about your marriage aren't in these marriage texts. All of the one another's apply to your marriage.

All the relational commands of the Bible are for your marriage. But I wanted to give you sort of a doctrinal overview of what you've done and what it's all about. As Scott said earlier, our whole ministry at Church and Family Life is to say Scripture is sufficient. It's all you need. It's sweeter than honey.

It's a rock you can build your life on. Go build your life out of the Word of God. It is your life. That's our message. So I'm going to give you sort of a quick overview of, I'm just calling them guiding lights from ten texts of Scripture.

And the first is Genesis 2, 21 through 25. Genesis 2, 21 through 25. And the word I want to give you is oneness. Oneness. Whatever you're doing in your marriage, make sure you're here headed toward oneness.

Now, of course, the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept and then the rib which the Lord had he had taken from man he made into a woman and he brought her to the man and Adam said now this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh. So, oneness. This is the most fundamental, almost irreducible category of marriage is oneness. It is unity.

And the question I would just ask you is, is there a sense of oneness? Now God actually has designed a physical act to demonstrate the oneness, sexual intimacy. He designed this physical act to actually demonstrate. It's actually a little bit of like a sign of a covenant. It's the sign that you're married and when you when you do that you're actually performing the sign.

By the way there's there's much in Scripture to make it very clear that sex should not die in your marriage because it's a sign. And every time you do it, you're proclaiming that you're married and you're proclaiming oneness. You're proclaiming the unity that God has called you to. So this first guiding light is oneness. And so I'm just here to ask you, Is there anything that you are thinking or doing that's disturbing the unity in your marriage?

That's the first. Number at the second is repentance. This is from Genesis 3, 7 through 10. The first awareness of fallenness was in the area of sexuality and marriage. We read in Genesis chapter 3 verse 7, the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made for themselves coverings and they heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden.

And then the Lord God called Adam and said to him, where are you? And he said, I heard your voice in the garden. And I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. And then of course there's that famous statement that Adam makes, what was the woman that you gave me? That's why I did this.

And This is a picture of the fall. And of course, this is always the greatest danger in a marriage is the fall. And this is why the road back from the brink of troubles in a marriage is always repentance. You know, you can always identify, you can always identify the heart of a problem in a marriage through sin. There's always sin somewhere, and it's usually in both parties.

But repentance is so critical. The first awareness of fallenness was in the area of marriage and sexuality. And of course that's why the devil is constantly attacking on that matter of sexuality. And repentance is so critical. This is the heart of humility in a marriage.

And so as you think about your marriage, you know, is there repentance toward God that's necessary to break the log jam? Is there humility that is necessary that you just haven't been able to achieve. Pride, of course, is our greatest danger. And that leads us to be hard-hearted and unrepentant. So repentance, repentance, Genesis 3, the fall.

And then the next, the next light, guiding light, is the word filling, filling. This is from Ephesians 5, the entire chapter. This speaks of the work of the Holy Spirit, the filling of the Holy Spirit. Ephesians chapter 4 verse 30 we read, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another even as Christ forgave you." Well that's sort of the beginning of this discussion, but when the Apostle Paul speaks about marriage in Ephesians 5, It's prefaced by Ephesians 5 18.

Therefore do not be drunk with wine, which is dissipation, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. And then he begins to itemize things that happen when you're filled with the Spirit. In the church you start speaking to one another in Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs. You start singing together. And then in the church, you know, in 521 that people submit to one another.

They honor one another. And then in marriage Wives actually submit to their husbands. It's a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Husbands love their wives. It's a manifestation of the Holy Spirit.

The family life codes in Ephesians are dependent on the filling of the Holy Spirit. You know, you have these declarations about husbands and wives and then the training of children, their fathers not exasperating their children, and then how to deal with your work life. You know, all those things are dependent upon the Holy Spirit. You know, God doesn't just tell you what to do. He shows you how by the power of the Holy Spirit.

And this is why the apostle says, you know, do not grieve the Spirit of God by whom you were sealed. In other words, let all bitterness and wrath and dissension and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you. You know, in my experience, one of the greatest outward manifestations of problems in a marriage is the way that people talk to each other. They never learned how to talk. They actually never learned how to listen.

They never learned how to let another person finish a sentence. They never learned how to say, can you tell me more about that? They just want to jump right in and you know cut to the chase which keeps the chase going and you know speaking to one another out of the power of the Holy Spirit. I mean, what that means is you must be born again. And if you're not born again, you don't even really have the capacity that the Apostle is speaking of here about being kind and tenderhearted toward one another because it's God that does it.

It's the Holy Spirit that does that. And you know, I'm expecting maybe some of you are not born again and you can tell. You know it because the power of sin is all over you and you just, it hasn't been broken and you haven't actually given your heart to the Lord and said I'll follow you wherever you go but the holy the power of the Holy Spirit the filling of the Holy Spirit is really the key. And the Apostle says, rather be kind, be tenderhearted. You know at the beginning of Ephesians 5, the Apostle says, be imitators of God as dear children and walk in love, as Christ also loved us and given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling aroma.

Now I don't know if this is you but often people who have a hard time loving their spouse are people who've never actually tasted the love of God. They don't know the mercy of God. They don't know the forgiveness of God. They don't understand the magnitude of God's kindness toward them in Jesus Christ to suffer for their sins and to set them free for the law of sin and death and to forgive them for all their sins past present future they don't they've never experienced mercy so they don't give mercy They don't know how to give it because they've never had it and maybe there's somebody here like that and maybe you have acted like you have it. You know by going to church and becoming a church member but Maybe you don't have it.

Maybe you do. But the fact is, to be filled with the Holy Spirit really is the heart of a family. That's why the family life codes are dependent upon the filling of the Holy Spirit, which just gives you a sense of what family life can be like. You know the fruit of the Spirit is love. It's joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

That's what the Holy Spirit does to you. That's what God wants to do to you. Well He creates a world of love. And then the next word, number four, is interplay. Interplay.

This has to do with the complementary roles. I expect that I'll probably talk about this in the afternoon session. Roles. How husbands and wives actually function together in the interplay. There's a complementary role that husbands and wives play, there's an interplay.

The roles are defined. You know, what husbands are supposed to do and what wives are supposed to do is defined. You don't have to make it up on your own. And Men and women are different. Men are men and women are women.

Isn't that revolutionary? But the truth is if you don't know who you are, you can never become what you were meant to be. And that just takes us back to who are you in this picture? Are you the picture of Christ or are you a picture of the church? You must know who you are in the story so that you can paint the picture that's beautiful.

When we paint on our own, we paint, we don't paint very beautiful pictures, but God teaches us how to paint beautifully And you're painting right now, all of us are. What kind of picture is it? The fifth is humility. This is 1 Peter 3, 1 through 6. Likewise, wives, be submissive to your own husbands that even if they do not obey the word, they without a word may be won by the conduct of their wives.

And then he turns to husbands and he says husbands honor your wives and recognize that They are a weaker vessel. Dwell with them in an understanding way. In other words, consider their situations. Consider their bodies. Consider their thinking.

Consider husbands have to. There's a way that husbands submit to their wives. I mean, when you honor someone you're putting yourself below them. You know the husband being the head of the wife doesn't doesn't make him domineer her. I mean he honors her.

He actually puts himself below her. That's also contained in these these complementary roles of humility. But in 1 Peter 3, both husbands and wives humbled themselves before one another. And then the sixth purity. This is Hebrews 13, 4 through 6 purity.

Hebrews 6 13 4 marriage is honorable among all and the bed undefiled but fornicators and adulterers God will judge. Let your conduct be without covetousness Be content with such things as you have. For he himself has said, I will never leave you or forsake you. So we may boldly say, the Lord is my helper, I will not fear. What can man do to me?

This has to do with purity. You know that one of the greatest dangers in your marriage is pornography. One of the greatest dangers in your marriage is covetousness, wanting somebody else's spouse, how they look, how they act, But purity, you know God desires a pure church. And then number seven, authority. 1st Corinthians 7, 3 through 5.

Authority. 1st Corinthians 7, this has to do with the whole sexual relationship of a husband and wife and the Apostle Paul is instructing the church in Corinth that was a very very pornified culture in Corinth and the Apostle wants the church members there to understand how to deal with their sexuality. Their sexuality had been so disfigured and so messed up. Maybe you've traveled to Corinth. You know, I've been there.

It was a pornified city, absolutely. But he says, let the husband render to his wife the affection due her and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her body, but the husband does. And then, and likewise, the husband doesn't have authority over his body, but the wife does. In other words, when you get married, you give a lot of authority to your spouse over your body.

You body. Again, you know, God doesn't desire sexual intimacy to die in your marriage, you need to keep it alive. The Apostle Paul is telling you to keep it alive. There's so many things that would kill sexual intimacy and you know what they are. Anger, fatigue, illness, problems with your body, there are so many things.

You know I had a friend of mine a while back, it was last week, he was his wife died and he's in his 50s and he wants to get married. He should get married. And he said, he asked me a question. He said, Scott, why do you think there's such a thing called menopause? Why did God do that?

By the way, God did that. God did that. God created women's bodies to go through cycles and gyrations that men's bodies just don't. Why did God do that? I don't have a biblical text for it, but I think God did that to grow genuine love, so that you would know what love really is about.

What is love? It's not just getting something for yourself. It teaches you how to cherish and nourish. It teaches you how to honor your wife. And it also actually gives your wife, if you're a husband, authority over your body and you over hers.

It grows love. Authority, 1 Corinthians 7 through 5. And then number eight, covenant. This is Malachi 2, 14. Marriage is a covenant.

Marriage is not...well the problem with marriages is that, you know, people are looking for marriage to do something for them rather than for them to do something for somebody else, and in a covenant you're entering in to do something for someone else. You know marriages can't be held together with feelings. They will not be held together with feelings. They are only held together of the Covenant. And then number nine, joy.

You know the Bible paints a picture of a glorious church, a happy church. Joy is one of the most fundamental elements of all of Christianity. And if you read the passages of scripture on marriage, like in Song of Solomon 3.11, The wedding day was the day of the gladness of his heart. In Matthew 22 the Lord Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is is like a marriage. It's for joy.

David in Psalm 19 says that, you know, a husband is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a strong man to run his race with joy. He can't wait to get there. Marriage is about joy. You know, brides, their wedding garments are manifestations of joy in Jeremiah 2 32 and Jeremiah 3. It's the matter of joy.

Has the joy been dampened? Well, you can get it back by the filling of the Holy Spirit and by knowing who you are and playing the role and painting the picture that God has given you to paint. You know, if you're a husband, you are a picture of Christ. You always know what to say. You're lying.

As a wife, you'll always know what a glorious church is, submissive to the Lord. And a wife actually is becoming like Christ too in the picture. And then finally hardness. Hardness. Matthew 19 7 and 8 and Mark 10 4 and 5 the disciples came to Jesus and said, why did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce to put her away?

And he said, Moses said, because of the hardness of your hearts because of the hardness of your hearts. That's the most tragic thing that can happen in a marriage. A hardened heart. It's so contrary to the whole gospel. So there you have it.

You've been given a picture. You're painting a picture. You're saying your lines, but your lines are not your own. You're not creating your own world. You're creating a world of love.

You're creating the kingdom of God on earth. Your home is a little piece of heaven where Christ and his love and the adoring church is there in your home. And that's the picture that you're painting. It's not your own picture. Stop painting your own picture.

Paint God's picture. It's the very best picture of them all and I've and I've given you ten guiding lights. I'll just repeat them. Oneness, repentance, repentance, filling, interplay, humility, purity, authority, covenant, joy, and hardness. So now when my dad used to say, hug your honey, he always had these one-liners.

They were just amazing. You know, by the way, the last, my father's last words that he said before he died. He said, son, the Lord knows what he's doing. That was my dad's last words. But he also said, son, hug your honey.

Now, a wife can fulfill that command as well. So hug your honey. If you're a husband, if you're a wife, hug your honey. Would you pray with me? Lord, we thank you for your love in the world through your son, Jesus, who gave his life up for us all, so that we might have a picture, a beautiful picture, that even the bad things in our picture can be modified over time through the work of your spirit and sanctifying us.

I pray that you would Take all these words of Scripture and sanctify them in truth for your word is truth. Amen.