“Sing unto the Lord, O ye saints of His, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness. 5. For His anger endures for a moment: in His favor is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.”
In these two verses, David calls upon God’s saints to “sing unto the Lord" a glad song. Singing is one way throughout history that we have been able to express ourselves in joy or sorrow. Singing (music), is one of the great blessings of God to us. Our devotion to God needs to be expressed and one of the main ways that we do it is through singing. Why should we sing unto the Lord? We should sing unto the Lord because we are “saints of his.” In the Bible, a saint is not a person who has been set aside as being a special person; rather a saint is anyone who belongs to the Lord. In the Old Testament the Israelites are referred to as “saints.” In the New Testament, all believers in Jesus Christ are referred to as “saints.” Today, being a saint means that one belongs to God through faith in Jesus Christ. This is, perhaps, our greatest reason for singing songs of joy, because we belong to God. We belong to God by His grace, not because we deserve it. God’s grace bestowed upon us is a reason for us to sing unto the Lord. We should sing unto God because He is holy: “and give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness.” The fact that there is a holy God overseeing this seemingly erratic universe should give us a song in our hearts. God’s holiness does not just mean that He is good and above reproach. It also means that He is holy in all of His dealings with us. In other words, we can trust God because He is holy. Whatever happens, we can be assured that the Holy God loves us and that He is looking out for our best interests. We will not understand all that God has done for us until we are face to face with Him, but by faith we can sing about His favor now. Which brings us to: We should sing unto the Lord because, “His anger endures for a moment: in His favor is life.” I pity the people who only see God as “the angry God.” Some people refuse to believe in Him because they read about His judgments in the Bible, or see His judgments today. This is not the complete picture of the God who has been revealed to us through Jesus Christ. The important thing to know about God is not that He is angry, for "His anger lasts but a moment, but His favor lasts for a lifetime." In the final analysis, the “saints of God” will be in His favor no matter what other judgments may come in their lives. The Bible tells us that God disciplines His children just as a good parent disciplines his or her children. God’s discipline is a result of His love and favor. When we forget that, we do not sing unto the Lord. We should sing unto the Lord because, “weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” We have probably all had a fitful night’s sleep, worrying about what we had to face, but when morning light broke we saw what we were worried about in a new light. God did a work of grace in our lives even while we slept. We can be sure that there will be times for us to weep. But we can be equally sure that our weeping will turn to joy when God does His work in our lives. This is why we should have a song in our hearts, and why we should be optimistic about life. We can trust that though “weeping may endure for a night…joy comes in the morning." Believe it! Bro. Joe
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“I will praise you, O Lord, with my whole heart; I will show forth all your marvelous works. 2. I will be glad and rejoice in you: I will sing praise to your name, O thou most high.”
We occasionally need to ask ourselves how much we appreciate the Lord. It is good manners to offer appreciation for what people do for us, how much more should we appreciate the Lord? It is not that God needs our appreciation; rather we need to appreciate Him. The Lord doesn’t need anything from us, but He knows that we need to give to Him. This includes our appreciation as much as it does, for example, our tithes. These two verses from Psalm 92 show us how to show appreciation to the Lord. First, we show our appreciation to the Lord by giving Him wholehearted praise. David wrote: “I will praise you, O Lord, with my whole heart.” We seem to think that praise and noise are related. Some people seem to think the Louder the noise, the greater the praise. That’s not to say that loud praise is wrong, it is to say that real praise does not come from the mouth, but from the heart. David wrote that He would praise God with His whole heart. Heartfelt praise can be loud or silent. On the other hand, there are people who seem to equate praise with deadness. There is a great difference between silent praise and just plain silence. Silence can sometimes mean boredom. I think that is often what we have in churches. What we need to do is to look into our hearts and be honest about whether or not we are really praising God from there instead of just for show. Second, we show our appreciation to the Lord by “showing forth (His) marvelous works.” We should not keep what the Lord has done for us to ourselves. I know that I enjoy it when someone shows their appreciation to me for something I might have done for them. I also want to be careful to offer appreciation to people who do things for me. The Lord has certainly done great things for us. The Lord gives His great love to us. Throughout the Bible, we are reminded of the love that God has for us. Some people who do not believe think that the Bible shows a terrible God, but those of us who have experienced Him personally know better. John wrote: “We love Him because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19) John also wrote in 1 John 4:10:“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” “Propitiation” means that, out of love for us, God’s wrath was poured out on Jesus for us. I certainly can’t explain why that had to be, but I know that it is biblical. I don’t know what “marvelous works” the Lord has done in your life, but if you believe in Him, I know that He has done marvelous things for you. I can’t even begin to enumerate all of the “marvelous works” God has done for me, let alone what He has done for you. The point is that the Lord wants us to tell others about what He has done for us. Out of appreciation for Him, we should do it. Third, we show our appreciation to the Lord by being glad for who and what the Lord is, rejoicing in Him and singing praise to His name. We need to pause each day and think about the greatness of the Lord. We need to ask ourselves whether or not we are really glad that the Lord is in our lives, and that our lives are better because He is in our lives. Some people refuse to believe because they are afraid that God will take something away from them. Believe me; whatever He takes away will be replaced by something much better. Because of the gladness in our hearts, and because of all of the “marvelous works” that God has done in our lives, we sing praises to Him. Does this describe your appreciation for the Lord? Bro. Joe “Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to His power that works in us. 21. Unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end, amen.”
We need to understand that when we serve the Lord, whatever that service is, we are not in it by ourselves. In our flesh we are limited as to what we can do. In His infinite wisdom, God has shown me what I can do in my flesh, and that is mainly to make a mess. Whatever your task is as a Christian, you cannot do it by yourself. You need the power of God. I think that this is the crux of the problem in a lot of church work today. We go about church business as though it is simply our business, not realizing that it is not simply “our” business. Before Jesus was crucified and ascended, He promised His disciples that He would send the Holy Spirit to work within them. That promise was not just for the disciples, it is also for us. If you are a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit living within you, and He is not in you just to give you some holy thrills. He is in you to enable you to do whatever it is that God wants you to do. He is in you to help you live the Christian life. We depend every day on that “power that works in us.” If we are not depending on Him, then we are not getting done for the Lord what He wants done. You might say, “Wait a minute, do you mean that when I keep the nursery at church that I need the power of the Holy Spirit to help me do it?” I will assure you that if my job at church was keeping the nursery, I would need every bit of the Holy Spirit to help me do it. Don’t you think that tending babies is a gift from God? Not everyone who tends babies is serving God, but if you are doing it in His kingdom work, it is a gift from God. That’s why we don’t need to take any task that we do in the church or the community lightly. God does not take anything that we do for Him lightly. Read this very carefully: What the church needs today is for all of her people, whatever their tasks, to depend on the Holy Spirit, who can give them the power to serve. Of course, that doesn’t just apply to the things that we do at church. It also applies to the things that we do seven days a week. We need to depend on the Holy Spirit when we are at work. Don’t you think that God wants to use you on a daily basis? The problem is that you might feel surrounded and intimidated by those who work with you. We need to always be reminded about what is recorded in 1 John 4:4: “You are of God. Little children, and have overcome them: because greater is He that is in you than he who is in the world.” There is no need to feel intimidated, because we are not in it by ourselves. Remember that you belong to God and that He has empowered you with His Spirit. If God has something that He wants us to do, no matter how menial it may seem to us, it is important because God wants us to do it. Do not belittle your service to Him. Sometimes our service might be to just be quiet Christians, quietly living out our faith before the world. Just remember as you face life’s daily challenges, that God is working in you “according to His power that works in us.” God’s power is never menial, and it is never unimportant. Let’s just go out into the world, into the church, or wherever, with the understanding that God’s power is at work in us. Bro. Joe “But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate day and night.”
This verse is part of the psalmists description of godly and ungodly people. This is a description of what the godly person delights in. (By “godly” I do not mean self-righteous and condescending.) What we delight in will tell a lot about our lives and what is really important to us. We occasionally need to pause and ask ourselves where our real delights are. We can delight in a lot of things, but we need to be reminded that some things are more worthy of our delight than others. There are some things that we should delight in if we want to live godly lives and be effective witnesses for Jesus. In the context of this verse, the godly person delights in “the law of the Lord.” This means that his delight is in the word of God – the Bible. We should delight in God’s word because it steers us in the right direction. I will admit that not all of it is delightful to human eyes, but it is delightful in what it teaches us. There are parts of the Bible that I delight in more than others, and this is, no doubt, true of you, but when taken in its totality all of God’s word is delightful because it is from God and because it was written, not just for our information but for our good. The Bible is a treasure trove of God’s wisdom and God’s actions through the ages. We can never understand the working of God if we do not read, study, and delight in the Bible. We can never fathom the ups and downs of life if we do not acquaint ourselves with the word of God. The Bible helps us understand suffering, it helps us understand righteousness, and it helps us understand all of the difficulties of life. We should delight in God Himself. After all, the Bible was given to us by inspiration of the Holy Spirit in order for us to have a better understanding of God. The Bible depicts God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The triune God is not revealed in the Bible to puzzle us, but to inform us of the true nature of God. It is only as we see Him as the Father sending the Son to die for our sins, and the Son sending the Spirit to dwell in our hearts and lives, that we understand that He takes us personally. All of the world’s religions that recognize a god, see him as one who is distant and so far above humanity that he could not possibly be interested in their lives. How can one delight in a god who has no interest in his or her life? How can one delight in a god who creates but does not relate to His creation? We can delight in God because He not only wants to relate to us but has gone to great lengths to relate to us. All the way through the Bible we see God working out His relationship with us, warning us, seeking us and ultimately saving us through faith in His Son. We can delight in our God, for He is the true God of the universe. We should delight in the worship of God. I think that church seems boring to us sometimes because we see church attendance as a duty that we have to perform. Church worship is not a duty, it is a privilege. We gather together as God’s people in order to delight in our corporate worship of Him. But we also need to remember that we can delight in our worship of Him on a daily basis. We can have a time of personal worship, but we can also delight in worshiping Him as we go through each day. Don’t you sometimes look up to the beautiful blue sky and just praise and worship God just because He is God? Don’t you sometimes just want to burst out in praise and adoration for Him, because you know that He is present with you, loving you and wanting the best for you? Some people do not delight in worshiping God, because they do not understand His love and concern for their lives. Don’t be one of them! This would be a good time for you to pause and ask yourself what you really delight in and at least turn your attention to the three things that we have looked at today in which we should delight. Bro. Joe “And she (Martha) had a sister named Mary, which also sat at the feet of Jesus, and heard His word. 42. But one thing is needful, and Mary has chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”
Mary and Martha both loved Jesus, and Jesus, evidently, considered them to be good friends. He seemed to be comfortable in their home. The problem arose when Martha became irate with Mary because she sat at the feet of Jesus and was not helping her with the work that had to be done. Mary’s response to Jesus impressed Him more than Martha’s. Mary sat at His feet. Martha was concerned about preparations for the important guest, but Mary chose to take advantage of His presence to sit at His feet. We need to follow Mary’s example. To see why we should follow Mary’s example, let’s look at what took place between Mary and Jesus as she sat at His feet. The first thing that took place was worship. Mary forgot about everything but Jesus. This is the essence of worship. Worship doesn’t occur just because we say that we are at worship. No matter where we are, at home, at church, or anywhere else, worship takes place when we give Jesus our complete attention. Mary worshiped Jesus because she knew that He was more than a mere man. Her conversation with Jesus in John 11 reveals that she knew that Jesus was the Messiah, and that He was the Son of God. She knew that Jesus was worthy of worship. What we know about Jesus should cause us to sit at His feet in worship as well. With this in mind, how much time do you spend at the feet of Jesus. Who Jesus is and what He did for you at Calvary should teach you that worshiping Him is important. The second thing that took place between Mary and Jesus was teaching. Mary “heard His word….” What took place was not just idle chit chat. Jesus shared His word with Mary. We can compare this to Jesus sharing His word with the men on the Emmaus Road. Jesus taught those men about Himself from scripture. This is possibly what took place with Mary. Sitting at Jesus’ feet and worshiping Him, Mary learned about the scriptures that referred to Jesus. Mary heard Jesus’ word because she knew what He said was important. Mary knew that she needed to grow in her knowledge of Jesus. We can grow in our knowledge of Him if we will take the time to sit at His feet in prayer and in study of His word. The third thing that took place between Mary and Jesus was that she was commended for sitting at His feet worshiping Him. This was the “one needful thing” at that moment. Jesus did not love Mary more than He loved Martha. He commended Mary because she chose “the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.” The meal that Martha was preparing would be eaten and be over, but what Mary received from Jesus could never be taken away from her. Temporal things can be taken away from us, but time spent with Jesus has eternal meaning and can never be taken away. Mary chose what was best. Spending time at Jesus’ feet is an urgent matter, and worshiping Him and learning His word is always the best thing to do. Could Jesus commend you for sitting at His feet and hearing His word? Could Jesus commend you for choosing the most important over the least important? Learn from Mary’s experience. Spend more time worshiping Jesus and hearing His word. Do not let the distractions of the world keep you from Him. Bro.Joe “Sing praises to God, sing praises unto the King, sing praises. 7. For God is the king of all the earth: sing ye praises with understanding. 8. God reigns over the heathen: God sits upon the throne of His holiness. KJV
“Sing praises to God, sing praises! Sing praises to our king, sing praises. 7. For God is the king of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm! 8. God reigns over the nations; God sits on His holy throne. ESV These three verses in Psalm 47 emphatically urge us to sing praises to God. When I read this, I began to wonder about our own singing. When we sing in church services, either the old hymns, or the praise songs are we really praising God, or just going through the motions of singing the familiar words? I know most of the old hymns by heart since I have heard them my whole life. (At least I know the first, second, and last verses but not the third, since we don’t usually sing this verse.) Not a day goes by that I don’t sing several of the hymns that I know. (Not aloud, however, for the sake of others.) I will admit that they mean more to me when I sing from my heart rather than from memory – if you get my drift. Why should we sing praises to God from our hearts? First, we should sing praises to God because He is our King – with a capital K. A king is the ruler of his domain. In this case, verse 7 tells us that “God is the King of all the earth…” This means that every place on earth is God’s domain. We cannot go farther than that. God is the king of the universe. We are told that God created “the heavens and the earth.” The “heavens” are what we call sky, or space, and we know that space stretches into infinity. If we could go to the farthest reaches of the universe, we would find God there. The immensity of God’s domain will blow our minds if we let it. In fact, the immensity of God will blow our minds if we let it. It doesn’t blow our minds because we think about it in faith and we praise Him in and for His greatness. Second, we should sing praises to God “with understanding.” The Hebrew term used here, translated “psalm” in the ESV, is a term of praise, meaning that we are to understand the greatness of God when we sing praises to Him. We are to be aware of God’s love for us when we sing praises to Him. We are to be aware of God’s grace towards us when we sing praise to Him. We are to be aware of God’s presence with us when we sing praises to Him. To sing praises with these things, and myriads of others, is to sing praises with an understanding of whom and what God is to us and to the world. In other words, we are not just singing praises; we are singing praises to almighty God. This kind of praise could change our understanding of God’s presence in our lives and cause a spiritual growth spurt that would change our lives for the better. Third, we should sing praises to God because “He reigns over the nations, God sits on His holy throne.” The KJV translates this that God reigns over the “heathen.” This is how the Jews in the psalmist's day viewed the nations- anyone who wasn’t a Jew was a heathen. They would understand that the psalmists, in this case the sons of Korah, were telling them that God’s ultimate reign was not just in Jerusalem, but in the whole world. God reigns in holiness over the whole world. Perhaps the majority of the world’s people would scoff at this notion, but that does not make it untrue. That’s why it is so important for us to go to the nations and introduce them to the God who reigns in holiness over them. When you are singing praises to God this week, think about the three things that this psalm tells us about how to sing praises to Him. Bro. Joe “Sing to the Lord, you saints of His, praise His holy name. 5. For His anger lasts only a moment, but His favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night but rejoicing comes in the morning.”
These verses remind us of what our response should be to God no matter how trying life has become. When things are not going well for us, we have a tendency to blame God. We might not consciously admit this, but in the back of our minds we think that God owes us more than we are getting. Blaming God for hardships will get us nowhere. We live in a fallen world and that is the way life is in a fallen world. Trials and tribulations are part of living, and they can be tests of our faith. The question is what is our response to God when things are tough? These two verses from Psalm 30 will tell us what our response should be – regardless. “Sing to the Lord, you saints of His, praise His holy name.” What God wants from us at all times is to praise Him. Praise was not always easy for David and other psalmists. The psalms are full of complaints to the Lord because of what life was handing them at the time. Yet the psalmists also remind us time after time that we are to praise God. In psalm 35:28 David wrote: “And my tongue shall speak of your righteousness and of your praise all the day long.”If we praise God “all the daylong” we will surely, at some point, praise Him in the midst of trouble. Asaph wrote in psalm 50:15: “And call upon me in the day of trouble; and I will deliver you, and you shall glorify (praise) me.” I looked up “praise” in my Strong’s exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, and I found passage after passage about praising God. The Bible is full of the praises of God. I know that life can be hard, and that some things that happen to us are awfully hard to overcome, but it does us no good to give in to self-pity or grumbling and complaining. What we need to do during these times is to “sing to the Lord…praise His holy name.” You will be a better person for it, and you will feel better about yourself. “His anger lasts only for a moment, but His favor lasts a lifetime.” This is a good reminder for us that God is not against us. He might be against the way we are living at a given time, as we are told: “His anger lasts only a moment,” which does mean that He gets angry with us. That anger comes because He knows that we can do better. When you feel God-forsaken, and think that God is not doing anything in your life, remember that you have His favor. We need to be careful with this word “favor.” We can get the idea that when things are not going our way, we have lost God’s favor. Read it again: “But His favor lasts a lifetime…” There are times when we feel God’s favor more than at other times, but God always wants the best for us, and when we forget that fact we stray from what the Lord Jesus wants of us. We do well to remember His favor, especially when we are going through difficult times. “Weeping may endure for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” There are four words that have come to mean a lot to me over the years, and they are: “this, too, shall pass.” That is what David meant when he wrote: “Weeping may endure for a night…” We need to remember that nothing lasts forever. Whatever you are going through right now will come to an end, and at the end of it there will be joy and rejoicing. Sometimes it seems that woes will never end, but they do. What we need to focus on is not the weeping but the joy and rejoicing. The choice as to how we will respond to the “weeping” is really up to us. We can pout and simmer, but that will only prolong the weeping. We just need to remember that when “morning” comes there will be joy and rejoicing. Grab a hold of this truth, and make it a way of life. The right response to the Lord is to praise Him, remember His favor and accept the joy that He sends “in the morning." Bro. Joe “For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.”
The first thing that I need to do is to define ritual so that there will be no doubt what I mean. Ritualism is defined as: “adherence to and fondness for decorous ceremonial customs in public worship.” (New Webster’s Dictionary) Hosea was writing to the northern kingdom of Israel about God’s judgment on them for the way they were living. The problem was that they were going through all of the rituals of animal sacrifices that God had prescribed through Moses, but that was not enough. The sacrifices were to God, but they were to remind the people what God was/is and how they should live. In other words, Israel was going through the motions of religion, but their hearts and lives were not in it. What the people of Israel did not understand was that God did not just want their empty ceremonies as much as He wanted their hearts. It is the same with us. It is important for us to worship together in church, sing, pray, give and preach. But the act of doing those things in public worship does not mean much if the life that we bring to the worship experience is devoid of dedication to God. God wants us to let our rituals make a difference in the way we live our lives. It is not enough to just “go to church.” Going to church is a good thing, but it is a means to an end. To just go to church and not let it have some effect on our lives is like the Israelites taking their sacrifices to the altar without it touching their lives and making a difference in how they lived. The Bible tells us in Hebrews 10:25 to not forsake “the assembling of ourselves together.” Therefore it is important to attend public worship, but our mere bodily presence is not enough. I compare going to church to fueling my car. I do not take my car to the service station (usually convenience store) to buy gas just for the sake of buying gas. The church is our service station where we go to get fueled up to live each day for the Lord, just as I take my car to buy gas so that it will take me where I need to go. If you think that just being in church is all that God requires, you have missed the point. It is not enough to just read the Bible. Reading the Bible can be an empty ritual if reading it does not help us to live better lives. One of my daily rituals is to read eight chapters from the Bible. But when I stand before the Lord, He is not going to commend me for arbitrarily reading eight chapters each day. He is going to be more interested in what reading the Bible did for my life. We will not be commended for just reading the Bible, but we will be commended for the difference that reading it made in our lives. Don’t misunderstand me, ritually reading the Bible is not a bad thing, for if we do not read it, we cannot know what’s in it. But the reading of it should make a difference in our lives. As you live your life today, remember that God “desires mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.” Bro. Joe “Then said Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan; for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.”
You probably recognize that this verse is centered in Jesus’ temptation by Satan after JESUS had fasted for forty days and forty nights. Satan was trying to get Jesus to worship him, but Jesus made it plain to Satan that people are to worship God and God alone. ("Worship" and "serve" are closely related in the Bible.) We read about worship throughout the Bible. Worship is important for it takes place when we center and focus our minds and hearts on the Lord. We are to worship privately and publically. Worship is as necessary to the Christian as eating and drinking. That answers why we worship, now we need to look at how we worship. We worship God through prayer. Prayer itself is an act of worship. When we pray we concentrate our hearts and minds on God, either in petition or meditation. Petition and meditation are important parts of worship. In petitioning God we are confessing to Him that we know that all of the things that we need in this life come from Him. In meditating we focus our minds and hearts on God and just let Him speak to our hearts. Worshipful prayer is a two-way communication: God hears us when we pray and we hear His “still small voice” while we concentrate fully on Him. Prayer is a great act of worship for it verifies that we know that we are wholly dependent on God in all of life. We worship God through singing. Paul wrote about this in Ephesians 5:18-19: “And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit. 19. Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” We come together to worship in fellowship with fellow Christians and a large part of our worship together is singing. We do not sing to show off our talents, or to merely make merry in song. We sing to worship the Lord. The words of hymns can help us to focus our minds on God. Many of our hymns remind us of what Jesus did for us at Calvary, and we worship Him in the process. When the choir sings, we are not to just listen to the beauty of the music, but we are to see the beauty of the Lord. But we do not worship in song only in fellowship with other Christians. There are times when I sing some of the hymns that I know by heart in my private worship. The familiar words of the hymns help me to focus on the Lord. I have found that I can concentrate on what God is saying to my heart when I am “making melody in my heart and soul to the Lord.” There are many new songs that are being sung today called “praise hymns.” They also have a message about the Lord and lift up praise to Christ Jesus. We worship God through the preaching of His word. In most non-Catholic churches, the pulpit stand is in the center of the pulpit area. This is simply a symbol that God’s word and the preaching of it is the central act of worship. Whether the pulpit is in the center or not, preaching is still the central act of worship. That is why we are to listen reverently while the preacher is preaching. The preacher is sharing a portion of God’s word and applying it to life. While the preaching is going on, the Holy Spirit is at work in the minds and hearts of the preacher and the people. When I preach, I sometimes remind the congregation that what I am saying is important. It is not important because I’m saying it, but because it is what God has given to me to share with them on that day. The “preaching moment” is an act of worship by the preacher and the congregation. There is certainly more to worship than I have written here, but the three things that I wrote about are familiar to us and need to be recognized as part of our worship. Bro. Joe “Make a joyful noise unto God, all ye lands: 2. Sing forth the honor of His name: make His praise glorious.”
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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