Prayer Before the Father

Well, as we met last week, we continued moving forward in Christ's sermon on the mount and we moved from chapter five into the first four verses of chapter six. Now I wanna just briefly remind you because it is important that we keep this in front of us that we not get distracted here by the chapter and verse designations.

The Sermon on the Mount Continues from Chapter Five into Chapter Six

In fact, as you read scripture, you should not get distracted by the chapter and verse designations and remember that it was written without those. We add those as reference points to make it easier. We need that reminder so that there is no misleading that we recognize that this is a continual message that is being delivered by Christ on the mountain.

And so we can't separate what began in chapter five from what we now read in chapter six. They aren't separate thoughts, they aren't separate occurrences. This is one flowing message given to the people and what we see is that the righteousness Christ began to describe for us in chapter five, the righteousness that he defines for us as being required for entrance into the kingdom carries on into chapter six, that it moves from the actions we take and the ways that we live into the very motives of the things that we do.

So we talked a lot over the last several weeks about external actions without a transformed heart. Now we move to external actions that should be happening, but we still deal with the internal motives of our hearts.

And we move beyond this idea of whether a good work was done and we are faced with the concern and the warning that we are to be aware and be on guard that these works are being done not before men to be noticed by men, but for the glory of the father alone.

Last week we looked at giving. We saw in the example of giving that it was not merely whether we give or don't give, what we see identified in those verses is that the expectation is we give, the assumption is that we give.

Christ doesn't say if you give, he says when you give. And so the question is not whether or not we give, the question is with what heart do we give? What are our motives? And the same thing holds true now as we move from this first section into section dealing with prayer.

Now I'll go ahead and warn you, this is going to take a little while, okay? And so to be very polite to you and your backsides, we're not gonna cover all of it this week, okay? We're gonna break it apart.

Otherwise we would be here probably until next Sunday if we really wanted to treat the Lord's prayer the way it should be treated. So over the next probably many weeks, we are going to work through Matthew chapter six verses five through 15.

This morning, we begin with verses five and six. We were gonna do five through eight, but again, out of respect for your backside, we're gonna focus in on the first two verses. Now what we see here is language that upholds the same principle that we see being delivered to us and in fact throughout scripture that the expectation is not the concern.

There is an expectation that exists, but the expectation is not the concern. The concern is the motive. And so we see here in these first two verses that Christ warns his disciples against a distortion of hypocrisy in prayer.

In the two verses that we'll deal with next week, we will see another distortion regarding repetition in approaching the throne. In both of the cases, what we will see is direct contrast given by Christ that one reassures us that we will deal with this week that our Father is who we are praying to and that our Father knows our needs and that our Father who sees all things sees our actions and that we are to trust that he has met and will meet our needs.

Now, the emphasis of the passage that we will look at this morning and next week is not on where we pray. It's not on how long we pray. It's not the posture with which we pray. Although all of these things are taught by different groups of people, what is the truth of the concern, the emphasis of the passage is on the heart with which it is done.

Christ teaches us to pray before the Father than before men because our dependence is on the Father. And not on men. And so with all of this in mind, let us turn our attention now to the word of God where over the next few weeks as we deal with this entire passage, we will continually reread chapter six, verses five through 15.

So if you will, I would ask having found your place that you stand and for the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative, sufficient, complete, and certain word. Beginning in Matthew chapter six, verse five and following, we read these words.

Jesus' Teaching on Hypocritical and Godward Prayer

And when you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward in full.

But you, when you pray, go into your inner room. And when you have shut the door, pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you are praying, do not use meaningless reputation as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words.

Therefore, do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then in this way, our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, amen.

For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. Most gracious heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of your word, for the truth that you did not leave us without direction or guidance in this life, but that you have provided and you are providing and you will continue to provide direction, guidance and supply the needs of your people.

Lord help us as we study this text to approach it in humility and to approach it in submission. That these words direct us, that they challenge us, that they expose us and that they correct us. Father, we ask that you grant us strength to live according to the truths of your word, even when this world would pull and seek to shift us away from the truth.

Father, we pray that you would grant us now according to the power of the Holy Spirit through the truth of your word, that we would see and recall that in ourselves, that in and of ourselves we are not sufficient, that we shall not be sufficient, that we cannot produce the righteousness that is required.

Father, give us praise upon our lips for the work of Christ that allows us to enter into your presence. By his righteousness, we are accepted. By his work, we are adopted. Through him, we can pray as we are taught, crying out, Father, and making our petitions known before you, for it is in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ that we pray, amen.

You may be seated. So Christ begins his transition from giving to prayer with just a few brief words, and when you pray. You'll notice that much like giving, the option of you not praying is not here.

In other words, we are expected and assumed that the people of God, just like we would give to those in need, will pray, that we will, because we have been transformed, come before the Father, and it will be a part of our ordinary, regular life.

Prayer is not one of those things that is reserved for just those moments of crisis, although moments of crisis are wonderful times to pray. It is not one of those things that is presented as something that is practiced only by those who possess some high degree of spirituality, although the more spiritual you are when it comes to the things of God, the more you will seek him.

It is part of our normal life, and so by beginning with this implicit command, the teaching is not concerned with when you pray, because the implicit command is that you pray. The teaching is what is taking place in our hearts when we pray.

I think we could all agree that prayer is a good and righteous thing. Obviously, it is a commanded thing, but we need to be reminded that a righteous act can and is corrupted by unrighteous motives. And so the central issue actually of verses five through eight becomes who is the audience of our righteousness?

Are we doing these things before God for his glory, or are we doing them for the attention and praise of man? Christ helps us to ensure that we pray. Evaluate by giving us the simple statement that we are not to be like the hypocrites.

This is obviously a negative command, telling you what not to do. It is a situation where we understand that this word, or we should understand that this word hypocrite now becomes very important. In our day and time, it's a word we love to throw around, but we often maybe don't understand the full extent of the meaning.

Hypocrite was used primarily involved in the theater, but the use of the word here helps to eliminate that this is someone who is just making an error. Because the word carries with it this idea and understanding that this is an intentional action.

And so a hypocrite used in the theater was one who was the actor. He was the role, it was the person who assumed the role, who presented himself before an audience. Now we all are aware of the use of the word hypocrite when it comes to carrying the moral idea of someone whose outward appearance did not correspond to their inward reality.

We use it today primarily to denote someone who says one thing, but does and lives in a different direction. The command here is for us not to be that way. The hypocrite presents one thing, desires another.

In this case, the hypocrite appears to be praying to God. The hypocrite appears to be performing the religious duty as he should. The hypocrite appears to be righteous because he offers his prayer, but the reality is the attention that he desires is the attention of men.

Words may be addressed to the heavens, but the concern has nothing to do with the heavens and rather the crowd that has been garnered. This is evidenced in Christ's next words, where he says, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners.

We have to be careful here because we can read this passage in such a way as to say, oh, okay, I got it. So we can't stand and pray, and we can't be in church and pray, and we can't be on the street corner and pray.

So we have to sit, lay, or kneel in our own home. That's the only places that prayer is appropriate. That's not what the scripture's teaching. In fact, what the scripture is teaching has nothing to do with the posture of standing.

If you study scripture long enough, you will see standing is an ordinary posture of prayer throughout scripture, just as kneeling is a ordinary posture of prayer, just as actually lying prone, which is face down, is also an ordinary posture of prayer.

We will also see that scripture very clearly teaches that we are to be praying people, and we are to pray in public. So there's not a condemnation of public prayer. In fact, as we study 1 Kings 8, Solomon publicly prays at the dedication of the temple.

The church gathered in Acts chapter four together in prayer. Paul gives instructions in 1 Timothy 2 concerning prayer in the life of the church. So we know that it's not a restriction on the place. We know that it's not a restriction on the posture, and therefore the issue then becomes why.

The issue becomes why the locations here are even mentioned, why the posture is mentioned. What we see is that the answer is that because the posture and the location is a posture and places that will maximize the visibility.

It will maximize the attention and exposure to others. What we see is that the hypocrite has deliberately placed themselves in a place where their prayers, an act that is supposedly being directed to God, is gaining and garnering them attention.

And so the place became useful simply because it supplied the audience. The posture became useful because it elevated them and helped them above others, again, drawing and gaining attention. That's why Christ continues here and says that the reason that they stand and pray in synagogues on the street corners so that they may be seen by men.

So that is a term that literally just tells us that he is bringing this, this is the conclusion of why they do this. This is the behavior. Here's why they do the behavior. Here's the reason. Here's the why.

Here's the purpose. The words expose the heart. The hypocrite has and will practice religious efforts, but they are doing it with the goal of drawing attention. Now, if you'll recall back in chapter five, verse 16, we looked at this verse last week again.

We'll look at it this week. We'll look at it some more in the weeks to come, but Christ tells us, "'Let your good works shine before men "'so that your Father may be glorified.'". So again, we see that the action is not the public prayer.

The problem is not that prayer is being done. The issue is in verse five or in chapter five, verse 16, the work is being done for the glory of the Father. In chapter six, verse five, it is being done for men.

And so the two truths reveal the difference between visibility and motive. Visibility is not the issue. Motive is. The glory and who was being glorified is the problem. So as we keep that in front of us, that helps us to prevent turning this thing into an external rule.

Again, very easily, we can look at this passage and go, oh, there it is, obvious. We're not supposed to pray in church. We're not supposed to pray in public. We're not supposed to pray standing up. And we give three no's of how we're not supposed to pray.

But if we turn this into another external rule, as though praying in public itself was hypocritical, and that private prayer was necessary for righteousness, then we fall into the same place that the rabbis and the scribes were in, where our behavior dictates our entrance.

We begin praying with the idea that if we don't do it in a certain way, it's wrong. And then what happens is we become so afraid that we're not gonna do it in the right way. What do we do? We stop. I don't wanna mess it up, so why bother?

Christ is pushing us past this. But here's the thing, this is, this warning should press in on us because hypocrisy can be very easy to recognize when it is very obvious. But the truth is, is that when hypocrisy takes on far more subtle forms within us, then it becomes much harder to see.

What I mean is that we could begin praying to God, and then we become concerned with how others may hear our prayer and evaluate us and think our prayer is not lofty enough, it's not righteous enough, it's not, doesn't contain enough of the right words.

Our words can be very orthodox. In fact, I would argue that you could pray the Lord's model prayer, and as orthodox as those words are, if your motive is the attention of others, if your concern is the attention of others, if the approval that you seek is from anyone other than God, that is when it becomes the issue.

And Christ closes this verse with the words, truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. Much like last week when we looked at this in verse two, it's the exact same language. This is the idea of an account being settled, a payment being received.

These people are seeking the attention of men, the attention of men is what they have. They wanted it, they got it. People noticed, people approved, people were impressed, but when the moment's over and the impression has worn off and the approval has subsided, the reward is gone because the praise and approval of men is but fleeting.

That praise is the full reward for those who are seeking the praise of men. I want you to take a moment and understand how sobering that truth can be because even in the thought process of, thank God I don't pray in that way like these other people do, like these hypocrites, can become hypocritical.

You may not be seeking the attention or approval of others, but are you seeking the attention and approval of yourself? Do you look at it and say, hey, I can pat myself on my own back because I don't pray that way.

Again, it's fleeting, that approval, it's faltering. A prayer can sound deeply spiritual, but can be completely devoid of the real purpose, the real truth. So the warning that we have here in verse five, broken down very simply, is do not turn prayer into a performance.

Whether you're performing for yourself or whether you're performing for others, prayer is not a performance. It is communion where we are coming before God, declaring our dependence upon him, not establishing our righteousness for our own satisfaction or for the satisfaction of others.

Private Prayer Is Communion with the Father, Not a Performance

And so verse six moves from the negative of do not do this as the hypocrite to positive instruction regarding the prayer of the disciple. And the contrast that is shown here is very deliberate. Verse five shows the hypocrite seeking places where they can be seen.

Verse six, Christ directs us away from visible places to the privacy of the father. Now again, before we jump and we make this about the location, it's not primarily about the location. This is a movement from performance to true communion and our ultimately being satisfied that God himself sees.

Again, Christ opens it when you pray. But there's a little thing that doesn't really get translated well that occurs here in the original language. There is an emphasis here on you. What happens is we move from the generic statement of disciples, it's about praying in verse five, it's about you praying in verse five, but it's more of a plural group thing as opposed to what we encounter in verse six.

But you, when you pray, focusing in on the individual, again, prayer is shown and seen as a ordinary part of the life, but the instruction becomes more personal. So that we don't get the idea that prayer belongs just to the leaders, just to those in a position of authority, prayer is something personal in the life of every believers.

He spoke of the hypocrites as a group and now he is specifically addressing the individual disciples. So he shifts from the warning to what prayer should look like when our motives are corrected. So he says, go into your inner room.

When you have gotten there, shut the door. Now, the word that we have translated in the LSB, inner room, can be used to define an interior room, a storeroom, a chamber that is removed from the more public area of the house.

Again, the location is not important. So let me maybe help you understand this a little bit better in modern day jargon. If you have somebody telling you that you can only pray in your prayer closet, that's not what scripture teaches.

There's nothing wrong with praying in a place designated that is private, quiet, and away from everyone. But never get the idea that that's the only place prayer is accepted. The architecture of the room, the place of the room, none of those matter.

The idea, the description that Christ is using is away from the eyes of men. This is something you can do in full view of everyone else because the concern is the removal of the concern of what other people think, the removal of the performance, the removal of the concern or the change that comes about because you're now in the limelight.

Well, I'm standing in front of the church. I've got to pray in a very certain way. I've got to use the right tone, the right inflection. I don't know how many of you have ever done this, but if you go back and listen to old preachers, you ever notice a lot of old preachers sound the same?

Got that whole sing-songy voice. If you go back even further, it gets worse because the idea was that you had to be at a certain level, a certain place before certain things were done appropriately. Christ is teaching us that we don't need the visibility of men.

We need the visibility of God. Thankfully, we'll address that in a few minutes. So we go to this place and we don't require the eyes of men because the prayer was never intended for men anyway. But the other thing about this is that private prayer, truly private prayer, is a mark of spiritual health.

Not only is it a mark of spiritual health, but it is also one of those things that continues to help you become spiritually healthier. Why? How many of you will tell things to God that you won't tell to others?

Confess things before him that you would never confess before others because I might not look good. It might change their perception of me. It might make them think less of me. When we are alone before God, those things are stripped away.

We don't have to worry about the big vocabulary words. We don't have to worry about the length so that it's sufficiently long, but not so long that it becomes this performance. We just wanna get it just right.

30, 45 seconds, boom, we're done and out. But we also don't wanna have that, as we go around the room and everybody prays, we're that one person, well, thank you, Jesus. That's all I gotta pray. Oh, well, you just must not be spiritual enough.

You ain't got enough to say to him. It eliminates all of those concerns where no one is there or going to evaluate whether you are sufficiently theological, emotional, spiritual, whether your voice gets loud or soft, whether or not you can force tears down your face.

But at the end of the day, it also exposes something to you. This is a question that only you can answer. Would you still pray if no one ever knew that you prayed? Would you still seek him if there was no reputation to gain from seeking him?

And as striking as that is, that's not even the heart of the verse. The heart of the verse is found in the words, pray to your Father. Pray to your Father. Christ is directing our attention away from men to the Father.

Adoption in Christ Gives Believers Access to the Father

You see, the answer, the true answer to avoiding or being away from hypocritical prayer is not just you being more secretive in your prayer life. That's why it's important that you understand that the location is not, this isn't real estate, okay?

It's not location, location, location. The importance here is that you understand the purpose and having a right understanding of God the Father will dictate your prayer life. And if you don't have a right understanding of God, it becomes very easy to have your prayer life manipulated.

It becomes very easy to make it a list of, you know, God, if you don't do these things for me, then I'm just not gonna have anything to do with you anymore. Don't get me wrong, we've all made bargains.

Anybody in here who says they've never bargained with God in a prayer is lying to themselves above all else. It's reality, but that is not the point. Notice, he doesn't just say, pray to God. That would be true enough.

What he says is, pray to your Father. Father. The language is carrying a truth about the relationship that exists here. That God in his grace has granted us by the righteous work of Christ as sons and daughters.

We are adopted into the family. So we don't approach him merely as creatures standing before the creator or subjects standing before a king. Although we are creatures and he is our creator and we are subjects and he is our king.

We approach him as children come to a kingdom Father, this is reserved for those in Christ and in Christ alone. We have no righteousness of our own by which we gain entrance here. We don't come apart from Christ.

We come in Christ because it is in Christ that we have been accepted. It is in Christ that we have been adopted. He has brought us near and therefore, because he has brought us near, we may approach the throne.

Hebrews chapter four verse 16 says, therefore, let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in a time of need. Why? Because we have such a great high priest as Christ.

This changes the entire character of prayer. Those four little words, pray to your father. Because what it does is it says that you don't need men to see you and approve. We already have something that is infinitely greater.

We have access to the father. Men will fail. They will falter. They will fall away. But because we know that we have the father, because we know that we are adopted, we don't need to create an audience.

We don't need to advertise our devotion. Why? Because we know that God is already present and already knows. And when we understand that, and when we're reminded of that, and when we're cognizant of that, then our prayer becomes an expression of our faith as it should be.

A prayer life, in effect, says, it is enough that my father hears me. It is enough that my father sees. John Calvin rightly noted this principle when he wrote that we are to have God always before our eyes when we engage in prayer.

And so Christ continues with the result of what this does, this pray to your father does. He says, your father who is in secret. The world would have us think that God is absent because he is unseen. The world would have us think that he's not there.

We pray to the God, to God, who we cannot see because we know by faith that he is here, that he is present. The closed door that we see up here takes away human observation, but it doesn't remove the observation of God.

It doesn't remove his presence. In fact, that's the entire comfort to the believer of this command, that even outside of the presence of others, God sees we can be away from the audience of men because we are always in the presence of the father.

The Father Sees the Secret Motives Behind Prayer

So your father who sees what is done in secret men only see what's placed before them. Men only see what is in their eyes. They see outward actions. They hear words. They form judgments based on what they see.

You and I form judgments based on what we see. That's why we're taught from a young age, the old adage, don't judge a book by its cover because we judge things by what we see. The father, the father sees what cannot be seen.

The father sees the heart of our prayers. The father sees the prayer that is offered in a room where there is no one else, but more than that, he sees the motives of the heart behind the prayer. Nothing, nothing about our devotion is hidden from him simply because there is no one else there because God is everywhere.

There is a sense in which we should find this deeply comforting. We should find it deeply comforting because we are assured that the faithfulness that may go unnoticed by men never goes unnoticed by God.

In our lives there as believers, there are prayers that will be offered through tears that no one else hears. There are petitions that are repeated day after day and no one else knows the burden. We come before him with thanksgiving offered quietly, with confessions that are made privately with intercessions carried before God that no one ever knows about.

But we can do all of those things in confidence because we know that God sees, the father sees. At the same time that it is very comforting, we should also be aware that this truth is going to search and confront us very deeply because the father sees more than even you see.

He sees more than the act itself. You can't, I can't fool him with the appearance of spirituality. In other words, we can't force a prayer life that is sufficient. He knows whether our prayers arise from faith, from dependence, from repentance, from gratitude, or whether we're just checking off a list so that we can wallow in our own self-righteousness.

We can hold our head high. We can say, well, I said my prayers today. I accomplished that task. I got it done. Read my Bible, said my prayers, check, check. I'm good for today. I can go live how I want to live.

The secrecy of the room, the secrecy of our prayer, not because we don't draw the attention of men or just because we don't draw the attention of men does our prayer become righteous because the father who sees the secret prayer sees the secret motive.

Jesus closes the verse when he says, your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. Again, we have this deliberate contrast to verse five. The hypocrite received his reward in full from the approval of people.

But you and I as disciples, you and I as believers, we leave the accounting in the hands of God. You don't need recognition to feel secure. You don't need the approval of men to feel secure because we trust in the judgment and goodness of God.

There's a parable in Luke's gospel of the woman who continues to come before the judge who is unrighteous. The judge relents, not because he's righteous. In fact, the judge even makes, basically makes that statement himself.

But because he wants the woman to leave him alone. Jesus' point is that God is just. He is righteous. He will deal with it in justice and in righteousness and in goodness. Now we can't turn this transaction into, or can't turn this into a transaction.

This is not, okay, if I go and do my private prayer and I do everything the way you said, then I'll earn this reward and gain entrance. The relationship that we see described here prevents that. The relationship here is adoption.

He is your father. He's already your father. That's why he says, pray to your father. It's not someone who will become. It is someone who already is. The reward is not a wage because we did things the right way.

It's gracious recognition of the father to the child. You and I don't pray in secret so that we one-up God. We don't run around with a tally sheet going one for me. We pray because we belong to him, because we trust him, because his approval is of greater worth than anything.

And so we have this redirection that we see here of the entire focus of prayer, the focus of prayer away from men. So Christ doesn't just move from the street corner into a room. What's happening is our attention's being thrown away from men towards the father.

For us, we are not alone. We are never alone. The father sees, the father hears, the father knows, the father alone is sufficient. But there is a danger here that we have to avoid. I've referenced this the whole morning, but we cannot, we cannot, we cannot hear the words of Christ here and simply reduce them to another set of external instructions.

You're like, preacher, why are you beating at it? Because it's so easy for us to do. That's the way in which we function most of the time. We could walk away from here going that the lesson is simply that we ought to pray more often, more privately, more carefully about our motives.

All of those things are true. You should pray more often. You should pray more carefully. You should be concerned about your motives. But if that is all you hear, then you have missed everything from Matthew chapter five, verse one to now.

Because what Christ has continuously been doing is pressing beyond the outward action into the heart. Why? Matthew chapter five, verse 48. Therefore you are to be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.

Maybe you recall, but that is the standard, the perfection of God, the standard that has been set before us. And that standard is not dealing with the posture of our prayers, whether we're standing or sitting or kneeling or eyes closed and hands folded, right?

All of those things you were told as you grew up that had to be done in order for your prayer to be successful. None of those things is what matters. None of those things is what's true and right. Christ is dealing with our heart, a heart that should be seeking the glory of God rather than the attention of men, but that's where we are.

And so when we hold this truth up, when we hold this truth regarding the motives of our prayer against the standard that God has set, how quickly we should recognize the truth of our inability. Ask yourself these questions.

How many of us in here could honestly say that our motives are always pure when we pray? How many of us in here can say that we are never concerned with how we appear before other people? Or we never allow pride to enter our devotion or we never permit our attention to wander from the Father?

If you are one of those people who thinks your attention wanders from the Father or that that's like this thing that only you do, maybe you should read Martin Luther a little bit on that subject. Even in prayer, even in prayer, one of the most Godward things we can do, our hearts, the corruption within allows us to corrupt it.

The Righteousness We Need Is Christ's, Not Our Own

And so once again, Christ's teaching forces the truth that we have seen throughout this sermon and we'll continue to see throughout this sermon that he is not exposing the insufficiency of outward righteousness so that we will make a better version.

It's not so that we will go through a set of rules. He is exposing our lack of ability to be righteous simply because we need a different righteousness, one that is not our own. Standard of the kingdom is a standard that cannot be met with our learning how to appear less hypocritical.

The only way that the standard of the kingdom is met is the righteousness of Christ. But there is where the beauty rests. The very one teaching us how to pray is the one who possesses and gives the righteousness that we lack.

There was never a divided motive in Christ. He never sought the attention of men above the attention of the Father. He never sought his own glory above the Father's glory. What we see is that he perfectly obeyed, he perfectly loved, he perfectly accomplished the Father's will.

And the truth of the gospel is that those who are united into Christ, we don't come into the presence of God on the strength and purity of our own efforts. It is all on the righteousness and the mediation of the Son.

This is why we go back to the language of your Father. This is why that is such a key truth to understand. We don't make God our Father by praying correctly. He's already our Father in the passage. We don't earn access to him by finding the right room, closing the right door, sitting or standing in the right posture, or eliminating every imperfect motive.