The Restoration of God as Seen in the Tabernacle and Ark of the Covenant — John Saunders

Lord, how we thank you for your great love for us. Father, you have demonstrated in sending your Son to die for us that you love us with an eternal love. And Lord, we are quickened just as we have been singing to you, Lord.

Open our ears and our eyes and my mouth. Oh, Lord, this is beyond us. We need you. Lord, give us your Word today. Lord, get past every barrier, every weakness. Lord, in the speaker and all the hearers.

Lord, for you to come and make yourself clear and plain and understood. Lord, not only do we ask for your Word, but Lord, we ask for our hearts. Lord, we know that your eyes move to and fro throughout the earth, that you might strongly support those whose hearts are completely yours.

Now, Lord, what shall we say to this? Are our hearts completely yours? Lord, create in us a heart that is completely yours. Lord, we don't want to be hearers only. Lord, we want to be those who respond to your Word.

Heart obedience. Faith and love. Lord, we need you. Lord, we trust you. And we thank you for the blessing that you are pouring out for us. In Jesus' name, amen. Could you turn to Psalm 80, the psalm of Asaph?

Asaph's Burden for Restoration

I don't know what you know about Asaph. There are 150 psalms in the Bible. Fifty are anonymous. No writer is ascribed to them in the Scripture. David wrote 73 psalms. And after David, Asaph wrote more psalms than anyone.

He wrote 12 psalms. After Asaph, the sons of Korah are attributed ten psalms. Solomon wrote two. Moses wrote one. Heman wrote one. And Ethan wrote one. Who is this man? Hopefully the Lord will give us time at the end of my message.

I'd like to speak a little bit about Asaph. But this man spent over 40 years ministering before the Ark of the Covenant in the tabernacle of David. And I think that he has a kindred heart with us, I think.

Hopefully a kindred spirit. He spent perhaps most of his adult life in the most wonderful ministry. And he writes in Psalm 80, O give ear, shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock. You who are enthroned above the cherubim, shine forth.

Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up your power and come to save us. O God, restore us. And cause your face to shine upon us and we will be saved. O Lord God of hosts, how long will you be angry with the prayer of your people?

You have fed them with the bread of tears and you have made them to drink tears in large measure. You make us an object of contention for our neighbors and our enemies laugh among themselves. O God of hosts, restore us.

And cause your face to shine upon us and we will be saved. You did remove a vine from Egypt. You did drive out the nations and did plant it. You did clear the ground before it and it took deep root and filled the land.

The mountains were covered with its shadow and the cedars of God with its boughs. It was sending out its branches to the sea and its shoots to the river. Why have you broken down its hedges so that all who pass that way pick its fruit?

A boar from the forest eats it away and whatever moves in the field feeds on it. O God of hosts, turn now, again we beseech you. Look down from heaven and sea and take care of this vine. Even the shoot which your right hand has planted and on the son whom you have strengthened for yourself.

It is burned with fire, it is cut down. They perish at its rebuke, at the rebuke of your countenance. Let your hand be upon the man of your right hand. Upon the son of man whom you did make strong for yourself.

Then we shall not turn back from you. Revive us and we will call upon your name. O Lord God of hosts, restore us. Cause your face to shine upon us and we will be saved. Perhaps you can see Asaph's heart and burden for restoration.

And it seems to Bill, three times he says he asked for the Lord to restore his people. But listen to it Bill, in verse three, O God, restore us. In verse seven, O God of hosts, restore us. And finally in verse nineteen, O Lord God of hosts, restore us.

Cause your face to shine upon us and we will be saved. Our brother has a burden and a heart for restoration. It's interesting, he wrote Psalms 73 through 83, 11. And he wrote Psalm 50. Now there are 150 Psalms, someone would have to write Psalm 50.

But I think it's interesting that all his Psalms are there together. In the third book of the Psalms he wrote most of them, 11 out of 17. But he wrote also, the Lord gave it to him to write Psalm 50. Now 50 is the number of Jubilee.

You remember that every 50th year, everything was restored to those to whom it should be restored to. Maybe someone had to sell their land and it was held by others. But on the 50th year, it went back to those whose inheritance it was.

So 50 speaks of restoration. Our brother has this burden of restoration. He wrote Psalm 50. And I hope today that I'm speaking to brothers and sisters in Christ who have a desire for the restoration work of the living God.

God as the God of Restoration

Because our God is a God of restoration. And he's a God of restoration because he's chosen to be a God of restoration. It's not circumstances that have caused the Lord to have to deal with things in this way.

All through the Scriptures, from beginning to end, he's the God of restoration. All through church history, he's the God of restoration. The Bible begins, Genesis 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

And the earth became formless, a waste place, formless and void. And the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the deep. Darkness was there. Isaiah 45, verse 18 says,. Thus saith the Lord who created the heavens and the earth.

Who created the heavens. And he, let me read it for you. So I don't misquote it. For thus says the Lord who created the heavens. He is the God who formed the earth and made it. He established it and did not create it a waste place or formless.

But formed it to be inhabited. And then we move to the end of the Bible and John says,. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth. So from the very beginning, we see ruin come to something, to the Lord's purpose actually.

And we see the Lord all through the history of the universe bring that ruin to perfect restoration. Filled with his glory. It's interesting how it says,. And I saw the city of God descending out of heaven like a bride adorned for her husband.

Having the glory of God. Our God is a God of restoration. There was a rebellion in the heavenly places. And Satan and a third of the angels rebelled. And were cast out of heaven to the earth. When they came to the earth, it devastated God's creation.

And the earth became formless and void. That word became is the same word that's mostly translated was in many translations. But it's the word, the same word in Genesis 19 where it says,. And Lot's wife became a pillar of salt.

So of course it was formless and void because it became formless and void. It was devastated. Darkness. Emptiness. Formlessness. A waste place. And you see the spirit of God hovering. Moving. Travailing.

Over the surface of the deep. Our God is a God of restoration. On the second day of creation. Is a very interesting day because it's the one day in the whole story of God making. Restoring the heavens and the earth from their devastation.

Where the Lord does not say God saw that it was good. Because the enemy was there. It's the day when God created the heavens around the earth. And in Ephesians chapter 2 it said he's the prince of the power of the air.

Chapter 6 it says powers and principalities in the heavenly places. The disciples came back to the Lord Jesus. And said Lord even the demons were subject to us in your name. And he said I was beholding Satan fall from heaven like lightning.

The enemy was there. Already in the second day. And the Lord began to restore. God created man. Let us make man in our image and in our likeness. The enemy came. And deceived man. And man rebelled and fell.

And in the fullness of time God the son came in human flesh. The son of man. And restored man to the purpose of God. But God was not after one man. He said and give them dominion. It was a corporate man.

And every time a man, a woman, a child has believed in the Lord Jesus. Over the last 2 ,000 years that restoration has become fuller. Progressing further towards the purpose of God. God is the God of restoration.

And in the scriptures there are stories of restoration. And like wheels within wheels. And great stories of restoration. Within them there are little stories of restoration. The Lord, we have an enemy brothers and sisters.

And the Lord calls a people after Himself. And He will take that people with Himself as far as they will allow Him to take them. They love Him. They hear His call. They go after Him. But the enemy tirelessly, ceaselessly, head on, violently, subtly comes against the work of God.

And finally, the people turn to the right or to the left. And it seems as though the enemy has won. But the Lord is the Lord of restoration. He calls a remnant to Himself. And He begins to work again.

And He restores everything that was lost in the seeming victory of the enemy. Everything that was lost and more. He never just restores what was lost, but always more. So He goes from glory to more glory to more and more glory.

Until at the end, He restores everything that He desired in the beginning. The enemy is not forced, the Lord, to be a God of restoration. You know, the Lord has chosen to glorify Himself in this way. Why, I do not know.

I mean, what can we know about why the Lord does what He does? But our God has all knowledge, omniscience, foreknowledge. Before He created any of the angels, He knew what they would do. If He wanted, He could have said, I think I'll create Gabriel and Michael, but not Satan.

But He created the ones He created. They chose to do what they chose to do. And He has spent the centuries and the ages restoring unto His glory. And in the end, all is restored. It's the most amazing thing to me that when God the Son came, this is the one who created the universe.

This is the one who has all power and authority. And in Him, all things hold together. And you're thinking, or maybe I'm thinking, oh Satan, you're in trouble now. God the Son has come, but He came to restore everything as a Lamb in weakness.

One little word from the Lord Jesus and the enemy is done for as God. But He comes as a Lamb. The enemy is filled with pride. The Lord Jesus is full of humility. The enemy is filled with ambition, grasping to take the highest place for himself.

The Lord Jesus takes the lowest place of the servant, delivers Himself up to death. And in what seemingly is the weakest thing that anyone ever saw, completely and thoroughly defeats all of His enemies.

The Ark and Tabernacle as Pictures of Christ and the Church

Amazing. Today, this afternoon, I would like to explore with you one of these movements in the Scripture of restoration. There are a number of them. The one that the Lord has put upon my heart has to do with the Ark of the Covenant and the Tabernacle.

As they travel and move through the nation of Israel after they cross the Jordan River. And I would like us to be open to the Lord today to see, first of all, how the Lord builds what He builds. The process and then also the way the Lord restores once the enemy has come in and seemingly won a victory.

And then the Lord takes that seemingly disaster and takes it to His glory to restore to greater glory. So if you will, we'll begin telling the story as Joshua is leading Israel across the Jordan River.

I'm going to be referring to a lot of scriptures in Joshua, perhaps also in Judges. I'll try to just refer to them. If you want to jot them down, you can read them later. I think I have a lot of material to cover, so here we go.

We'll take this journey with the Ark and the Tabernacle. First, I'd like to say a little word about the Ark and the Tabernacle. The Ark of the Covenant speaks of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Tabernacle was made for the Ark, not the other way around.

The Lord Jesus Christ has a centrality in the church. He has first place. The church exists for Him, not Him for the church. And the Tabernacle speaks of the house of God. And it's a glorious and wonderful place as long as the Lord Jesus has the headship, has the preeminence, has first place in everything.

But when that ceases to be the reality, what does the church become? Derelict. Something that it was never intended to be. So when it begins, we see everything in its right place. We see the Ark of God in the Holy of Holies.

We see the Tabernacle of Moses being a fit, right dwelling place for the testimony that speaks of the testimony of Jesus. They come to the Jordan River, and the priests go out and stand in the middle of the Jordan with the Ark.

The waters heap up, and Israel crosses on dry land. And they come up out of the Jordan, and the first place that they set up the Tabernacle with the Ark in the Holy of Holies is a place called Gilgal.

Gilgal and the Cross of Christ

Now Gilgal means rolling, revolving. And it's a place, when they come there, a couple of notable things happen there that tells us what this is speaking of to us who know the Lord Jesus. The first thing it speaks to us is concerning this matter of circumcision.

For 40 years in the wilderness, none of the people of Israel were circumcised. They were circumcised in Israel and Egypt before they came out, but then for 40 years, none of the people were circumcised.

So when they came into the land, the first thing that happened was everyone, I guess 40 years and under, all the males were circumcised. And it was done at Gilgal, and they called the place the Hill of the Foreskins.

And the next thing that happened there was they celebrated the Passover. All the years that they'd been in the wilderness, they didn't celebrate the Passover. And the first thing they did when they came in, it was exactly at the time of the Passover, they celebrated the Passover.

Now what does this speak to us of but the cross of Calvary, the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, His crucifixion, His death, His burial, His resurrection? Circumcision speaks of baptism. It corresponds.

The removal of the flesh. I've been crucified with Christ. When the Lord Jesus was crucified on Calvary, one died and all died with Him. And in the Passover, He is the Passover Lamb. The blood of the Passover Lamb is applied to the door of my life.

We sing that song, Christ is our Passover. And by His precious blood on Calvary, all of our sins have been washed away. For the church or for an individual Christian, there's no other starting place than the cross of Jesus Christ.

The mighty work, the victory that He accomplished there over all His enemies and our enemies. Gilgal. That's the beginning place, the first place that the house of God was set up in the land when they came.

And it was from Gilgal that they went out and conquered the whole land. Brothers and sisters, all the victory that we will ever know in the Christian life is based upon the victory that Jesus Christ won for us at the cross.

Everything that He accomplished there, active, working, effective in our lives, brings us into victory. There's no victory aside from the Lord Jesus and the victory that He has gained. So they were there in Gilgal.

The tabernacle was set up there and they went out and they conquered the whole land, or as much of it as they cared to conquer. Unfortunately, they could have conquered a little more. The Lord said to them, wherever the sole of your feet touches, I've already given it to you.

Oh, that they would have walked a few more places. But they conquered a good portion of the land. And after they did, they moved the tabernacle. The next place they moved it to, you can see it in Joshua chapter 18, verse 1, they moved it to Shiloh.

Shiloh and Peace with God

And Shiloh speaks, well, it's translated, great tranquility, peace, a savior. And Shiloh speaks of those who, through the cross of Jesus Christ, have peace with God. By the way, as long as you are moving the tabernacle, the house of God, following the Lord, every place where they dwelt before, when they move it, they take the reality of that place with them.

It's not like, well, we've known the reality of the cross now, now we're moving on. No, as you move on, you take the reality of everything you knew there and come to the next place, and so on and so forth, as long as you're going forward with the Lord.

Now, if you retreat, you're abandoning the ground. So they come to Shiloh, peace with God. And you see that in Shiloh, they find out that they have an inheritance. And that's as it is with us. We are saved, and the Lord Jesus' blood cleanses us from all sin.

And we find out that not only did He die for us, but we died with Him. And through the cross, we have peace with God. And we come into that relationship with Him, and we find out that we have an inheritance, a glorious inheritance in Christ.

You know, I can see a group of people who begin to gather together, meeting, who love the Lord, who believe on the Lord Jesus, and who have come into peace with God in the body of Christ. And you know, the church is the Lord's testimony.

The church of Jesus Christ is to be that place on the earth, when if people want to see what the Lord Jesus is like, they can come to His testimony. That's what the Lord told His disciples. And John, He said, A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you.

By this, all men will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another. So the whole world is looking at these people who are gathering there, who by the cross have peace with God and with one another, and looking to see, do they love one another?

With what kind of love? With the same love that the Lord Jesus loved us. He laid down His life for us. Do they have this sort of love? Is this speaking that these people certainly are His disciples? And then what did He pray in John chapter 17?

Oh Father, I pray that these might be one. Even as You and I are one, Father, that they might be one. That the world might know that You sent Me. This glorious unity that the Lord has established for us.

The unity of the Spirit of God. And when the world sees it, they know that the Father sent the Son. They know that we are His disciples, as we love one another. And they see us walking in this precious unity of the Spirit of God in the body of Christ.

And they say, the Father certainly sent the Son. What a testimony. But as we are gathering together, at first everything is wonderful. We are just loving the Lord. But time goes on and I find that I have an interesting experience.

And that is that my brother offends me. And I'm offended. And I come into crisis and I say, Lord, I know You've called me to love my brother. But he's not only offended me, frankly Lord, he's offensive.

Maybe if I don't meet with this one. And Lord, I know that You made us one with the same unity that You have with the Father. One Spirit. But Lord, there are a few here that we need to weed out. Probably I'm the first one.

Shechem and the Subjective Work of the Cross

We learned that we have a great inheritance in Shiloh. But I think in order to come into our inheritance, we need to move the tabernacle again. We need to go onward and upward with the Lord. Where is the next place that they moved it?

If you'll turn to Joshua 24. Verse 1,. Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and called for the elders of Israel, and for their heads, and their judges, and their officers. And they presented themselves before God.

Verse 23,. Now, therefore, put away the foreign gods which are in your midst, and incline your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel. And the people said to Joshua, We will serve the Lord our God, and we will obey His voice.

So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and he made for them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem. And Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God, and he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord.

Now, the sanctuary there is the tabernacle. It's the same word when the Lord first referred to the tabernacle in the book of Exodus. And he said, Now, build for me a sanctuary. So far, the tabernacle with the ark at its center has moved from Gilgal, speaking of the cross of Jesus Christ, His crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection, the victory that He has won and that we've won in Him, to Shiloh, which speaks of having peace with God and finding out that we have an inheritance.

But in order to gain this inheritance, we find out that we need something, spoken of by this place called Shechem. Now, what is Shechem, and what does it speak of? Well, we see that when Abraham first came into the land, the first place that he came from Haran, when he entered the land of Canaan, he came to this place called Shechem.

And there was two things notably there. A notable tree, which apparently was still here in the book of Joshua. And he built an altar there. Now, the tree speaks of the work of the cross. The altar speaks of the work of the cross.

The next place we see Shechem is when Jacob is coming back from his uncle Laban, spending 20 years in Haran, coming again into the land of promise. And the first place that he comes to once he finally crosses the Jordan River is the place of Shechem.

And what do we find there? We see in Shechem at that time a great circumcision. You remember the people who lived there, they wanted to join themselves with Israel. And they said, Jacob's son said, well, you're not circumcised, we can't have anything to do with you.

They had much wealth, livestock. And they said, well, we'll circumcise ourselves. And they said, well, okay, go ahead and do it. And they did it. And then the third day when they were in their pain, his two sons, Simeon and Levi, came in and slaughtered every man in the town.

We see a great circumcision, the cross. A great slaughter, a great death, the cross. And also Shechem is the site of a very notable grave. It's the place that they buried the remains of Joseph, the son of Jacob, who had ruled Egypt.

You remember when he was dying, he said, take me with you, whatever's left of me, take with you and bury it in the land when you come there. They buried it there. The grave, a slaughter, circumcision, the tree, the altar.

Shechem speaks of the work of the cross. You think, well, I thought Gilgal spoke of the work of the cross. Well, it does. But Gilgal speaks of the objective work of the cross, the Lord Jesus who died once for all.

Shechem speaks of the subjective work of the cross in your life and in my life. It's the Holy Spirit works in us so that we don't bite and devour one another in the house of God. I find that the Lord's house is a wonderful place.

The only problem is, is that I'm here. And that there's something in me that doesn't jive with the house of God, with this command to love one another as the Lord loved us. And with this unity that He's made for us by baptizing us into one spirit, into Christ.

There's a self-nature in me, very selfish, life of the flesh. And the Lord works in me by the power of the cross. Everything that He accomplished at Calvary, He works in me subjectively in time and in place and in circumstances so that I can come into my inheritance.

You see what happens at the end of Joshua chapter 24 in verse 28? Then Joshua dismissed the people, each to his inheritance. So in Shiloh they had peace with God. They found out they had an inheritance, but they couldn't receive the inheritance from Shiloh.

They moved the tabernacle again to Shechem. And by the work of the cross, putting to death that man of the flesh, the mind set on the flesh is death, the mind set on the spirit is life and peace. We find that we can come into our inheritance.

Bethel, the House of God, and the Crisis in Benjamin

So then they moved the tabernacle and the ark again. Now where's the next place that they moved it to? It's difficult to find. If you look at the book of Judges, you see that the first 16 chapters in the book of Judges are in chronological order from the beginning to chapter 16.

But the last five chapters of the book of Judges are not in chronological order. They actually tell two stories that happen at the beginning of the book of Judges and one of them even before the book of Judges.

I won't go into it too much because that's not my burden, but in chapter 17 and 18 we have that story of that Levite who for ten shekels in a suit of clothes decided to become the personal priest of Micah and his family.

You know that story. And you know that later on the tribe of Dan comes and sort of kidnaps him or takes him away to be their own priest. And it says some things that happened to Dan. And we look back in Joshua chapter 19 verses I think 41 through about 47 and we see the same things that happened to Dan were happening there in Joshua.

In Judges it says, now in those days Dan had received an inheritance. But when we look back in Joshua we see that they had received an inheritance. And in Judges we see they go off and take a place named called Laish and name the place Laish Dan.

And in Joshua chapter 19 we see that they go and attack a place called Leshim and name the place Leshim Dan. It's the same place. And this situation in Judges 17 and 18 is synonymous with what was happening in Joshua chapter 19.

And the Lord put it there for a reason and we can't go there today. Now the second story is that terrible story in verse 19, 20 and 21 about the Levite who had the concubine who he went to Bethlehem to woo her back.

And they're on their way back to the hill country of Ephraim and they stay overnight in a town in Benjamin. And the men of that place, Israelites, behave just like the men of Sodom and Gomorrah. Send that man out to us that we might have relation with him.

Unspeakable. The end result of the matter is that they rape and ravish and murder his concubine. And you remember that all of Israel comes to a moral outrage at this immorality that has been done. And they all come together against Benjamin and say, those men who did that must be punished.

And Benjamin and their pride say, we will not give them to you. Now if you'll turn there to Joshua chapter 20, I'm sorry, Judges chapter 20, they then go to war against Benjamin and for two days they suffer defeat.

The first day they lose, I think it's 22 ,000. The second day, 18 ,000. And they're wondering, what is going on here? We know we're right. And so it says in verse 20, chapter 20, verse 23,. And the sons of Israel went up and wept before the Lord until evening, and inquired of the Lord, saying, Shall we again draw near for battle against the sons of my brother Benjamin?

And the Lord said, Go up against him. Then the sons of Israel came against the sons of Benjamin the second day, and that's when 18 ,000 men perished. So in verse 26 it says,. Then all the sons of Israel and all the people went up and came to Bethel and wept.

Thus they remained there before the Lord and fasted that day until evening. And they offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord. And the sons of Israel inquired of the Lord, for the ark of the covenant of God was there in those days.

And Phinehas the son of Eleazar, Aaron's son, stood before it to minister in those days. So by this we know that this couldn't be happening hundreds and hundreds of years after they passed across the Jordan because Phinehas was a grown man in the wilderness.

You remember there's an account of him taking a spear and checking a plague by running that spear through two people, an Israelite and a Midianite woman. So Phinehas is a grown man when they cross the Jordan River.

And at the end of Joshua, the book of Joshua, Joshua and Eleazar die and Phinehas becomes the high priest at the very beginning of the time of the judges. And they didn't live hundreds and hundreds of years as some of their ancestors did.

Moses lived for 120 and that was remarkable. Joshua lived for 110, I think also remarkable. So Phinehas was there before the ark at Bethel at a time synonymous with the beginning of the book of Judges.

So the next place that the tabernacle was moved in the scriptures was Bethel, the house of God. Finally, the tabernacle, the thing that is the house of God in the Old Testament, but it speaks of the house of God today.

It's a picture, a type of the church of Jesus Christ today is on the ground in the reality of the place that is the house of God. You remember when God appeared to Jacob when he was in Herod. He revealed himself.

He was telling him to go back home. He said, I'm the God of Bethel, the God of the house of God. Finally, so you see that the tabernacle has come from the place, from Gilgal, the place that speaks of the cross of Jesus.

All that he accomplished on the cross. To Shiloh, peace with God, where we find we have inheritance. To Shechem, where the work of the cross causes us to be able to inherit our inheritance. And finally, through all of that, to the place that is the reality and the ground of a house of God.

And the Lord has his tabernacle and his ark in the place where it was always meant to be. So we find it very peculiar when we come to 1 Samuel and we see that the tabernacle is back in Shiloh. In other words, it's gone backwards.

The Tabernacle's Regression and the Captured Ark

What could cause them, but more pointedly, what could cause us to abandon the reality and the ground and the place that says the house of God. And go back to that place that simply says, peace with God.

You know, as we gather together in our assemblies and we run this race, hopefully with endurance, it's a race to the end. I praise the Lord that Paul was able to write to Timothy and say, I finished my course.

What a glorious thing. I fought the good fight. I kept the faith. I finished my course. Brothers and sisters, the race is a race to the end. But there is such a temptation to run and run and begin to look around and look at one another and say, you know, we've come so far.

Maybe we compare ourselves to someone else. That's what we always do. That's what I do. I don't know. You do what you do, but I know what I do. I'm like Peter who says to the Lord, what about this man?

The Lord says, that's none of your affair. You follow me. Here we are and we say, you know, we've run. We've suffered. The cross of the Lord has worked. This is far enough. Don't you think? Who else has come this far?

The old is good enough. It's OK. Look, we belong to Jesus. We're going to heaven. That's good enough. Don't you think? It's difficult to remain on the ground of Bethel, the ground of the house of God, because it takes a continual dying.

I must decrease. He must increase. Paul said, I die daily. The Lord Jesus said, if any man come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. And we've known loss. We've given up our rights and we just get weary.