2nd Wednesday in Advent Service

I would like to welcome you all to Kongsvinger Lutheran Church. Tonight is our observance of our second of four midweek

Advent services. We're going to be following the order of Vespers on page 229.

Our psalm today is going to be Psalm 45 verses 1 to 6 and then when we get to the when we finish verse 6 you'll note that we'll just go forward to the glory be to the

Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit at the very end. So we'll just do the first six verses and then go right to the glory be.

And we'll be using psalm tone C as in Cucaracha. C is in Cucaracha for our for a psalm tone tonight.

We will be in Ruth chapter 2. If you want to follow along in your pew Bible you are welcome to do so and then give me a moment and then

I'll get up to the chancel and we'll begin. Congregation please rise.

O Lord open my lips. Make haste

O God to deliver me. Glory be to the

Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.

As it was in the beginning is now and will be forever.

Amen. Praise to you O Christ, King who comes to save us.

Psalm 45 verses 1 to 6. My heart overflows with a pleasing theme.

I address my verses to the King. You are the most handsome of the sons of men.

Grace is poured upon your lips. Gird your sword on your thigh

O Mighty One. In your majesty ride out victoriously for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness.

Your arrows are sharp in the heart of the King's enemies. Your throne

O God is forever and ever. The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the

Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning is now and will be forever.

Amen. You may be seated. A reading from the book of Ruth chapter 2.

Now Naomi had a relative of her husband's, a worthy man of the clan of Elimelech, whose name was

Boaz. And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain after him in whose sight

I shall find favor. And she said to her, go my daughter. So she set out and went and gleaned in the field after the

Reapers, and she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the clan of Elimelech.

And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem and he said to the Reapers, the Lord be with you.

And they answered, the Lord bless you. Then Boaz said to his young man who was in charge of the

Reapers, whose young woman is this. And the servant who was in charge of the

Reapers answered, she is the young Moabite woman who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab.

She said, please let me glean and gather among the sheaves after the

Reapers. So she came, and she has continued from early morning until now, except for a short rest.

Then Boaz said to Ruth, now listen my daughter, do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women.

Let your eyes be on the field that they are reaping, and go after them. Have I not charged the young men not to touch you?

And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink what the young men have drawn. Then she fell on her face, bowing to the ground, and said to him, why have

I found favor in your eyes that you should take notice of me since I am a foreigner?

But Boaz answered her, all that you have done for your mother -in -law since the death of your husband has been fully told to me.

And how you left your father, and your mother, and your native land, and came to a people that you did not know before.

The Lord repay you for what you have done, and a full reward be given to you by the Lord, the

God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge. Then she said,

I have found favor in your eyes, my Lord, for you have comforted me and spoken kindly to your servant, though I am not one of your servants.

And at mealtime, Boaz said to her, come here and eat some bread and dip your morsel in the wine.

So she sat beside the reapers, and he passed to her roasted grain, and she ate until she was satisfied, and she had some left over.

And when she rose to glean, Boaz instructed his young men, saying, let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not reproach her, and also pull out some of the bundles for her, and leave it for her to glean, and do not rebuke her.

So she gleaned in the field until evening, and then she beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley, and she took it up and went into the city.

Her mother -in -law saw what she had gleaned. She also brought out and gave her what food she had left over after being satisfied, and her mother -in -law said to her, where did you glean today, and where have you worked?

Blessed be the man who took notice of you. So she told her mother -in -law with whom she had worked, and said, the man's name with whom

I worked today is Boaz. And Naomi said to her daughter -in -law, may he be blessed by the

Lord whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead. Naomi also said to her, the man is a close relative of ours, one of our redeemers.

And Ruth the Moabite said, besides, he said to me, you shall keep close by my young men until they have finished all my harvest.

And Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter -in -law, it is good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women, lest in another field you be assaulted.

So she kept close to the young women of Boaz, gleaning until the end of the barley and the wheat harvests, and she lived with her mother and mother -in -law.

O Lord, have mercy on us. Thanks be to God.

We'll sing the response. Behold the days are coming, says the

Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch.

In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the

Holy Spirit, in the name of Jesus, amen.

All right, so in the corporate world, when you start a job, I gotta tell you, there's a few things that are more awkward than starting a new job.

In fact, the HR department has come up with all this corporate speak to talk about the process by which you bring an outside person into being a faithful employee of the company, and it's called onboarding.

Have you ever been onboarded, right? Yeah, welcome aboard, we're gonna now onboard you, and it sounds like a form of torture if you think about it, but the idea behind onboarding is that you have a person who's completely unfamiliar with your corporate's culture, and who does what, and where they fit into the big picture of what's happening in the company, and as a result of it, they have to sit down and they have to be onboarded.

They have to be, well, introduced to the rules, the regulations, the this's and the that's, and then be introduced to everybody that is on the team, which requires you to make the normal rounds, sit down and make sure you sign all the proper paperwork, making sure that you understand how

OSHA works, and all the different rules and regulations, and how your pay is supposed to be structured, and also our

DEI information on how we do all, I'm sorry I had to say that, right?

But that's the thing, this is one of the reasons why I believe that HR actually was formed by Satan himself, but that's a whole other story.

But the idea then is that when you first get to a company, you learn where the break room is, where it's safe to put your sack lunch, which coffee you can have, which things you're supposed to avoid, and of course when you get to your cubicle, there will always be the people who come up and introduce themselves to you, and you can always tell who the sneaky ones are, because after they come to visit you in your cubicle for the first time, they will let you know what the tea is there at the company, who's with who, and what's with what, and what the scuttlebutt is, and all this kind of stuff.

It's just a mess, and so as a result of that, you'll note that then once you get onboarded, you're part of the team, you're in.

Well, Ruth has found herself in a situation, she has left her father, she's left her mother, she's left her gods, her false gods behind her, and she is now finding herself under the protective wings of Yahweh in Israel, but she's a foreigner, and everybody knows it, and she has a different culture that she grew up in, and everybody knows it, and usually at this point in the story, what's supposed to happen, because we've seen stories like this before, this is where she runs and gets in trouble with the law, this is where she has the collision with the town gossip, this is where she's made to feel smaller than small, and they trip her up and things like this, this is how this goes.

You think of that Olsen lady from Little House on the Prairie, right? She's supposed to run into her, and this is where the chapter goes next, but not in this story.

Something completely changes in how a story like this is told, because the setbacks we've already heard about, the setbacks of, well, not having anything, of having lost everything, and rather than being treated like dirt, rather than being treated like a foreigner, something instead happens, and we're introduced in the very first part of our reading today to a fellow by the name of Boaz.

Now, let me tell you a little bit about Boaz. Boaz has parents, just like all of us, right? And his father's name is

Salmon. What a good name, of the tribe of Judah, Salmon of the tribe of Judah.

His mother is Rahab, the prostitute of Jericho.

Now, how this worked, I don't know. You know, in our culture, when you're dating a young lady, you have to introduce them to the parents, and mom, dad,

I would like to introduce you to the lady who I'm smitten with, Rahab, yeah, from Jericho.

Oh, really? What did you do for a living when you were there? And one has to wonder if Salmon's parents said, oy vey, is there not a young virgin maiden of Israel that you could fall in love with, and all this kind of stuff?

Why are we in love with the harlot, right? One has to wonder if something like that happened, but Scripture doesn't say anything about that.

But I've said it before, that with the fall of Jericho and Rahab, the prostitute, she is a type and shadow of the bride of Christ.

Salmon, a type and shadow of Christ himself. It has become a family trait in this particular genetic line, to have men who exemplify

Jesus Christ. And Boaz is no different. But note here, as we read this text out, you're going to note that there is constant information about the people who work for Boaz.

He has employees. He has servants. His servants are described as a young man, or young men, and his servants, young women, which means he's an older fellow.

And some biblical scholars put him in his late 40s or early 50s. Ruth? 25 -ish, maybe?

Tops? So we've got a little bit of an age gap going on here. So just keep this in mind.

It's never been unheard of, but this is part of the undercurrent of the story, because he's the unlikely hero in this, because of what's necessary for him to be, well, the redeemer of the widow of Elimelech, and, well,

Mahlon and Killeon's widow. Right?

One of them. So the story goes, Naomi had a relative of her husband's, a worthy man of the clan of Elimelech, whose name was

Boaz. Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain after him, in whose sight

I shall find favor. Basically, in whose sight I shall find favor is basically, let me go and see who's going to allow me to glean from their field.

And according to the Mosaic covenant, they didn't have welfare as we understand welfare.

When they got there, there was no social services that she can go and apply for, and then her and Naomi can get some kind of a stipend to live on month after month.

That's not how welfare worked in the Mosaic covenant. The way it worked in the Mosaic covenant is that God forbade, and I literally mean forbade, by a commandment that people who harvested their fields were not to harvest it all the way to the edge.

They had to leave the edges of their field for the poor, the downtrodden, to come and to glean from.

They could pick the bits that were not harvested up to the edge of the field, and then anything that fell to the ground belonged to the poor by command of God.

And it fell to the ground, you weren't to pick it up, it belonged to them no matter what. And so the idea here is that the welfare system of the

Mosaic covenant basically said, if you want to live, you're going to still have to work.

But God made a provision for them. It wasn't much of a living, but it was a living nonetheless.

And you're going to note here, Naomi isn't out there working. She's probably old enough at this point that a few days under the hot sun harvesting probably wouldn't have done her great harm.

She was not capable of doing this. And so what does Ruth do? She rolls up her sleeves, and without a single complaint, she goes out and she works hard, not only to provide for her, but works double time so that she can provide for her as well as Naomi.

And so she's looking for a field where she will not be harassed, where she will not be assaulted, where she will not be mistreated.

And already she's got, well, an expectation that that could happen, because after all, she's a foreigner.

She's a Moabite. So let me go out in the field and glean among the ears of grain after him, in whose sight

I shall find favor. And she said to her, go, my daughter. So she set out and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers.

And she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the clan of Elimelech.

And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem. And he said to the reapers, Yahweh be with you.

And they answered, and Yahweh bless you. Now, I would note something. This shows something about the character of Boaz.

I mean, could you imagine getting to work tomorrow, you know, wherever you're working, whether in the corporate world or whatever, and you say to your employees, the

Lord be with you, and they say, and also with you, right? That would be a Lutheran outfit, right? But here you'll get a note on the farm that Boaz runs.

When he sees his servants in the morning, he doesn't say, good day, how's it going?

Lovely weather. Have you seen the latest news? He begins with, the Lord be with you.

He's a pious, believing man. Beautiful when you think about it. So, the

Lord be with you, and Yahweh bless you. And then Boaz said to his young man who was in charge of the reapers, and this takes a little bit of interpretation, whose young woman is this?

She caught his eye, right? Because here's the thing, we learned from this passage that there's lots of young women who work on Boaz's farm, but this particular one has caught his eye.

She's different. And what's supposed to happen at this point is to say, well, that's Ruth, the

Moabite, and he's supposed to say, drive her off, get rid of her, we don't want that foreign woman here, right?

That's supposed to be what happens. But the servant who was in charge of the reapers answered, she is the young Moabite woman who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab.

Emphasis on the word young. So, she said, please let me glean and gather among the sheaves after the reapers.

Note that Ruth asked for permission. Although it was her right to glean, she still asked for permission.

This lady has got so much class. So, please let me glean and gather among the sheaves after the reapers.

So, she came, and she has continued from early morning until now, except for a short rest.

This is a good report. This is a hardworking woman. And not only that, she's courteous, and she's not entitled at all.

She asked for permission, and you'll note that she's as hardy as anybody, and she's working extremely hard.

She's not dawdling. She's not, well, scrolling Instagram when she should be working.

She's focused and hard at it, and this is a great report. So, now,

Boaz addresses Ruth for the first time. The foreigner, the gleaner, the sojourner in the land, right?

So, Boaz said to Ruth, listen, my daughter. He is old enough to be her father, by the way.

Listen, my daughter. Do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women.

Let your eyes be on the field that they are reaping and go after them. Have I not charged the young men not to touch you?

And when you are thirsty, you go to the vessels and drink what the young men have drawn. He gives her full privileges of a servant, of any of his employees.

She has access to the water. She can use the latrine if she needs to. All of the things that need to be taken care of, she has full run of the place, as if she were an actual servant of Boaz.

What a beautiful thing. Rather than mistreating her, rather than scorning her, rather than rebuking her, he gives her full privileges.

The gleaner is now the servant, and she responds in stunning, and I mean stunning humility.

Then she fell on her face, bowing to the ground and said to him, why have

I found favor in your eyes that you should take notice of me since I am a foreigner? A little bit of a note here.

We here in the United States do not have any kind of an equivalent for this. You want to see what it looks like to bow with your face, with your forehead to the ground.

You're going to have to travel to Japan. You're going to have to go to an eastern country. In fact, last night we saw the

Godzilla minus one movie, and there was a female character who did exactly this, and it actually took my breath away seeing it.

Such an act of humility, of complete surrender, of recognizing that you are in the presence of somebody who is powerful, and you have no power at all, and you give them all honor.

Not only honor with your words, but by your very actions of your body. Absolutely gorgeous and beautiful, and she asked a legitimate question, basically saying you're not going to mistreat me.

I'm a foreigner. How can you be treating me this way? And then

Boaz then answers, I know I'm going to have a hard time with this. It's going to be a rainstorm tonight, and next week as well.

I don't know how I'm going to get through chapter three. Boaz answered her, all that you have done for your mother -in -law since the death of your husband has been fully told to me.

Listen to that report. It has been fully told to me how you left your father, and your mother, and your native land, and came to a people that you did not know before.

And you'll note that's not how things operate in a small town. When I was a kid, my father moved away, and I didn't see him for several years.

And then when I finally was able to see him again, he had moved to a small town in Idaho, Grangeville, Idaho.

And when I had graduated from eighth grade, it was the summer between my eighth grade year and my first year in high school.

I went to go visit him in Grangeville, Idaho. Small, small town of like six, seven hundred.

And there was this blonde girl. She was kind of cute. And she was really interested in the kid from California.

So she came over to my dad's house. We watched movies and stuff like that.

It was fascinating, right? And she decided that, hey, why don't we go on a walk? So we walked from my dad's house to the main street in town, and then across over to the other side of town.

And then we played on the jungle gym set there, and then walked back.

And by the time I got back, my dad was standing on his porch in his police uniform with his arms crossed.

Where have you been? I went on a walk.

He's all, well, I have received no less than five calls from the people in town.

And I do not want you to be alone with any of the ladies here from this town or any of the young women.

And next time you decide you want to go on a walk, you'll either have a chaperone, or you're not going to go walking at all.

Okay. I had no idea. It was one of these things that kind of caught me off guard.

But one of the things that struck me is that it was everybody else's business what I was doing, right?

Isn't that supposed to be what's happening here with Ruth and Naomi? They've shown up completely destitute, and the people in town are supposed to be gossiping about her.

Everybody on the phone talking about that foreign Moabite chick and all this kind of stuff.

And of course, the inferences about the things that she's done wrong and all this kind of stuff.

There's nothing of that here. Not even a hint of it.

Instead, the only report that has gotten back to Boaz is this woman's great character, her good works, her love and sacrifice for her mother -in -law, and all of this is what has filled his ears instead of gossip.

This is a neat place to live, right? And then after conveying the fact that he had heard such a glowing report of her, which spoke so well of her character and her faith, he says,

Yahweh, may he repay you for what you have done, and may you receive a full reward given to you by Yahweh, the

God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge. Beautiful picture. She's now in the promised land under the protective wings of Yahweh, and so she responds.

She says, I have found favor in your eyes, my Lord, for you have comforted me and spoken kindly to your servant, though I am not one of your servants.

It's a beautiful thing. Beautiful, beautiful story. And of course, one has to wonder, does

Boaz start to have that kind of warm feeling under his collar? And does his heart go pitter -patter?

Because this is, after all, a love story. It's a chick flick. So then at mealtime, Boaz decides he's going to talk to her some more.

Come here and eat some bread and dip your morsel in the wine. Wait a second, what?

Bread? Wine? Hmm. Have I told you that I really think this is a story about Christ?

You can see it in the types and shadows here. Here, Boaz now feeds this woman with whom he already loves and has caught, his eye has caught, she has caught his eye.

He feeds her with bread and with wine, and she makes sure that she receives everything that she needs.

And here's where we're going to note something here. This is a penitential season, Advent. During the divine service, we don't even sing the

Gloria Patri, and things are kind of pared back. You're going to note, we don't sing thank the Lord and sing his praise.

We sing the Nocte Mitis instead because, oh, this is a penitential season. How is it appropriate to be teaching this love story kind of thing here during a penitential season?

Here's the important bit. Scripture is clear. It is

God's kindness that leads us to repentance. It's his kindness.

And Boaz exemplifies the kindness of Christ. He himself is sacrificial.

He himself is not basically being cynical or anything of the sort. He is now caring for her purely out of kindness and going above and beyond.

You see, our Savior, our groom, Jesus, we are the bride of Christ. He has come and humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

And by his stripes, we have been healed, and he is the one who cares for us.

And you'll note then, it is the good news that although you deserve to be treated like a foreigner in the kingdom of Christ, and indeed we all do, and to be cast out of the kingdom and into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth because of the great sin that we have all committed,

Christ has instead cast his loving eye on his bride and goes to the cross and bleeds and dies in her place so that he can save her.

And he now feeds her with bread and wine, his body and blood given and shed for the forgiveness of her sins, your sins and mine.

And you can begin to see how this all begins to dovetail. And there's just no way that a story like this was just created willy -nilly by chance, but this could only have happened through the instructive providence of God, right?

So here, eat some bread, dip your morsel in the wine. And so Ruth sat beside the reapers, and he passed to her roasted grain, and she ate until she was satisfied, and she had some leftover.

And what does she do with her leftovers? She takes them and tucks them away so that when she gets home,

Naomi can have a meal as well. Beautiful how selfless this woman is and how she thinks about others over her own self.

So when she rose to glean, Boaz instructed his young men, notice the word emphasis here, his young men, because he ain't one of them, right?

You let her glean even among the sheaves. Do not reproach her.

Well, that's not what the Mosaic Covenant says. You know, she can pick stuff off the ground, she can have the stuff that's out on the edge of the field, but you want us to allow her to glean from the sheaves?

Yeah, I do. And also, I want you to pull out some from the bundles for her and leave it, let it fall to the ground.

So beautiful. Leave it for her to glean and do not rebuke her.

So she gleaned in the field until evening, and then she beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley.

Now, this takes some translation, okay? An ephah, that's about three -fifths of a bushel, and I don't know what a bushel is, but I understand what liters are.

22 liters of grain on day one. 22 liters of grain.

She set the all -time world record for gleaning, and it's kind of outstanding.

Other gleaners are getting by with just a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and she has almost a full bushel.

She's got 22 liters of barley at this point. And so she took it up, she went to the city, her mother -in -law saw what she had gleaned, she also brought out and gave her what food she had left over after being satisfied, and her mother -in -law said to her, where did you glean today?

This is astonishment in this text. Where have you worked? And here it comes, blessed be the man who took notice of you.

Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match, right? Yeah, this is what's going on here. Oh, it's great.

Blessed be the man who took notice of you. So she told her mother -in -law with whom she had worked and said, the man's name with whom

I worked today is Boaz. And here's the thing, Ruth doesn't know Boaz from Adam.

She just knows that this was the man who extended such great kindness to her, undeserved kindness.

Rather than treating her like a foreigner, she is now an insider. She's not the gleaner or the sojourner, she's the servant.

She's welcomed to all the privileges of the house of Israel as if she were a citizen herself.

Naomi said to her daughter -in -law, well may he be blessed by Yahweh whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead.

And Naomi gives proper credit here, all good things come from the Lord, right?

So Naomi also said to her, this man is a close relative of ours and one of our redeemers.

Now give me a second here. I get myself worked up on these chick flicks. A redeemer, what is that?

Isn't Christ our redeemer? Indeed he is. And so you have to think of it this way, back in the time of the

Mosaic covenant in Israel, women were not allowed to own property. And so the only hope of salvation from poverty, from complete abject poverty for Naomi or for Ruth herself.

Because Ruth is basically setting in and getting ready to make this a lifestyle.

This has now become her career. We've got nothing and I've got nothing. We don't have any land to speak of.

And the land that belonged to Elimelech, well it's being run by the family.

And in order for Naomi or Ruth to get possession of the family farm, there is a requirement of the

Mosaic covenant. And that is that one of them is going to have to marry the redeemer.

And you'll note that even if the redeemer were already married, he could still marry.

And here's the idea then, his duty would be then to procreate with his new wife and the first born son of that union would be considered not his son, but the son of the deceased man, the widow's husband.

And I want you to think about that for a second. There are a lot of men in our day who are unwilling to marry women who have children.

And their attitude is this, they're not my kids. I don't want to raise them.

And that's their attitude. I've seen men with this attitude. They want a family all of their own.

But could you imagine going into a marriage knowing the first born son of that marriage isn't considered your son.

It's considered the son of a dead man. And it has to be a close relative who fills this job of the redeemer.

It is only by that means, by raising up offspring for the dead, that then the family farm can be restored.

Finding men willing to do that, that has to be a selfless man, a humble man.

A humble man who cares not only about his own needs, but truly cares about the needs of others.

Redeemers typify Christ. And you'll note here, we've lost the farm.

We sung about what Eden we had lost. The farm is the earth itself.

We've lost the farm. And you'll note over again in scripture describes salvation as receiving an inheritance.

We all have a parcel of land. We have a farm that we've lost and we lost it in Eden.

And in order for us to have it restored, we need a redeemer.

One who will marry the church. So we can see the direction this is heading.

So she said, the man is a close relative of ours, one of our redeemers.

Ruth the Moabite said, besides, he said to me, shall keep close by my young men until they have finished all of my harvest.

And Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter -in -law, it is good, my daughter, that you go out with this, with his young women, lest in another field you be assaulted.

So she kept close to the young women of Boaz, gleaning until the end of the barley and the wheat harvests.

And she lived with her mother -in -law. And so we don't know much about the relationship at this point.

Because at this point, she continues, Ruth continues to work hard. She works hard through all of the barley harvest.

And then on the heels of that, she works hard through the wheat harvest. And she lived with her mother -in -law.

And she's the one paying the bills. She's the one making sure that there's food. She's the one working hard.

Naomi is not able. But, like all good stories, the story has to continue next week.

You'll have to come back to hear what happens. And so we praise Christ for such a beautiful story, a love story between Boaz and Ruth.

And the intrigue, we're all drawn into it. But we thank God that Christ himself is our

Redeemer, who's come to set us free and to restore to us the farm that we lost, the earth that we lost, because of our sin and our foolishness.

In the name of Jesus, amen. Congregation, please rise.

Let my prayer rise before you as incense. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever.

Amen. The Lord be with you.

With each colic

I'll pray, I'll say amen. So say the amen along with me with each colic that I finish.

Oh Lord, our dwelling place and our peace. You have compassion on our weakness, put far from us all worry and fearfulness, that having confessed our sins and commending ourselves to your gracious mercy.

We may, when night shall come, commit ourselves, our work, and all that we love into your keeping, receiving from you the gift of quiet sleep, through Jesus Christ our

Lord. Amen. Stir up your power, oh

Lord, and come that by your protection we may be rescued from the threatening perils of our sins, and saved by your mighty deliverance and redemption.

For you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. Oh God, from whom come all holy desires, all good counsels, all just works.

Give to us your servants that peace which the world cannot give, that our hearts may be set to obey your commandments, and also that we, being defended from the fear of our enemies, may live in peace and quietness, through Jesus Christ, your

Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Amen. Let us bless the

Lord, the grace of our

Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the