Everything Is Meaningless - God Will Judge

You're ready for the word of God?

Yeah, me too.

Me too.

Ecclesiastes, chapter 3, starting in verse 16,.

Ecclesiastes 3 · chapter mention

Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice even there was wickedness.

I said in my heart God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work.

I said in my heart, with regard to the children of man, that God is testing them, that they may see that they themselves are but beasts, for what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beast is the same as one dies, so dies the other.

They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all his vanity.

All go to one place, all are from the dust, and to the dust all return.

Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth?

So I have been in the spirit of the beast.

The beast goes down into the earth.

So I saw that there's nothing better than that.

A man should rejoice, rejoice, rejoice in his work, for that is his lot.

Who can bring him to see what will be after him?

Well, father, we thank you for your word.

We know that it's alive and it's powerful.

We know it's every bit of it is for our instruction, and we pray for these words of wisdom that you give us this morning.

We ask for your Holy Spirit to speak to us and let us see the things we need to see this morning.

We pray for that in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, so here's a question of the morning.

If you could go back in time and sit for one day with any person in history Okay, jesus is assumed.

Okay, besides Jesus, all right, of course, the answer is Jesus, right.

If you could tear any battleground or any historical landmark with the person who made history there.

Or if you could go back to any time in history and find the greatest person living at that time.

Go back to the store, sit down with them, have a personal conversation with them, get wisdom from their mouth, not filtered by history books or anything like that.

Hear them say this is what I saw, this is what I experienced, this is what I concluded.

Who would you choose?

Okay, paul, that's good.

Yeah, he would have given Martin Luther, abraham Lincoln, adam.

What would you ask?

What did you do that for?

Oh, did not.

Somebody did not say Elvis, you got all of human history and you're going to go for Elvis.

Oh man, I feel like that's a low bar right there.

I feel like it would be pretty cool to get a guided tour of the moon with Neil Armstrong.

That would be nice, wouldn't it?

I'd like to sit.

This is just who I am.

I'd like to sit on a porch with a glass of sweet tea I sweet tea with Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln and talk about the emancipation of slaves.

That's just who I am.

Okay, fun question, but you know what?

It's good to remember that Ecclesiastes is a memoir.

Solomon is telling us his personal experiences, right, and it's in his own words, and he was the greatest of his time and he's looking back over his life and he's sharing with his readers and many things that he's learned.

This man is like the guide for life because he's had it all, he's seen it all, he's been in positions of great power, he has great wisdom, he's a great guide, right, and the amazing thing is that we can sit down with him this morning.

We actually can't hear his words this morning.

We can see what he saw and hear what he thought about what he saw.

He's like the guide for life and he asks all these questions that, especially like even here today, he asks questions, we talk, we ask, and mankind asks right Questions about the uncertainty of life and why do unjust things happen, and what is valuable and what happens after we die.

This is pretty important stuff, right, and he's going for it.

We see, from the very beginning, like in chapter one, we saw that Solomon reminds us that the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear satisfied with hearing or filled with hearing.

And so Solomon is saying temporary things do not satisfy my organs.

Organs only always, ever, want more and more until they fail or never filled up.

So he uses this word vanity over and over.

And the word really it's translated emptiness or meaninglessness.

But it's really it's a picture word and the picture is it's a fog, it's a mist, everything's misty.

I can't quite make it out or a mist is something that doesn't last for a long time, or a mist is something that really doesn't have much substance to it.

It's like cotton candy, you know put it in your mouth and it's just gone.

It's sweet, it's sweet to the tongue, but it never fills the stomach and then it gives you cavities.

And Solomon, but he's saying the process of trying to figure this life out is like shepherding the wind.

I think it's a beautiful and kind of desperate word picture.

Shepherding the wind.

How do you shepherd the wind?

How are you going to control the wind?

There's nothing you can really do to get a handle on the wind right.

So from one angle this book can seem like it's really cynical and really depressing.

But I'm telling you, as I'm studying it for these sermons, I don't see it that way.

I don't think so.

To me, in the end, solomon's angle is positive.

But the book does help us understand that asking hard questions and even realism, even maybe skepticism, are important parts of our faith If we want a simple, like supernatural, shallow, kind of faith.

This book really gets on our nerves.

But there's some of us that want deeper answers and ask harder questions and can smell a fake from 100 yards away and they've lived long enough to know that life is not as easy as everybody says it's going to be.

It's not rosy, and I need some real answers.

I need somebody who will speak reality to me.

Well, solomon's your man, because he does it.

But his thoughts are swinging like from pessimism to joy and from living life to the full to it's all vanity.

What are we supposed to think?

What do we think about life?

Is it vanity or is it beautiful?

Is it worth living?

And Solomon says it all depends on how you orient yourself toward God.

That makes the difference.

So let's look at this passage here a second.

And we see this.

This is a pattern that we see in this book.

I don't know if you've noticed it yet, but it's all through this book and the pattern is I saw.

And then I said I saw these things.

And then I said in my heart I saw, I said I saw, I said so, solomon is observing, I'm seeing.

And then Solomon is drawing conclusions.

That's what's going on here.

But you can't always take his first words as his final answer, his conclusions.

You know, man is like an animal, there's no difference.

Okay, yeah, but let's keep listening.

That's not.

You can't just stop there, because he goes a little further, right, but look what he says.

He says I saw unto the sun that in the place of justice even there was wickedness.

That's verse 17.

Here's a problem, right, there are institutions that are ordained by God, that were supposed to reflect his character and make life easier for us, like the court of law and the house of worship, the righteous judge and the holy priest.

These places are supposed to be places of where we are getting some kind of justice and righteousness right.

So there's no real way to have a sustainable society unless there's law and order and a place that we can get justice and a fair trial and accurate representation.

Fair representation and institutions are supposed to be the place of refuge and safety.

But something's broken.

Something's broken.

He's just saying it.

We all kind of see it.

Right, if you're actually looking, you see it, but he's saying it.

The Solomon looked at those places where he's supposed to find justice and righteousness and he only found wickedness, prejudice, corruption, bribery, no recourse for justice.

I thought about Paul when he was on trial in Acts, chapter 24.

Acts 24 · chapter mention

He was before Felix and Felix is having Paul come in.

And then he lets Paul speak and he says Paul, I'll talk to you later about this and and it says that many times Paul came in to see Felix.

And it says why.

It says because Felix thought Paul would eventually offer him some money.

It slipped him a little bribe to get out of jail, but Paul didn't play the game.

And Paul spent over two years in custody because he didn't play the game.

I mean, it was true in Solomon's day, it's true in Paul's day, it's true in our day too, right?

I remember I was in one African country, which will remain nameless, but I was stopped.

We dropped somebody off at the airport and we were just leaving, drop them off, leaving.

We're driving out the exit and we were pulled over by the police and the officer came up to the window and while he came to the window, another officer ran behind and clamped our wheel.

We're stuck, we can't go anywhere until we paid 140 Ghana CDs, which is about 50 bucks, something like that.

I was in another former communist country, which will remain nameless, and there was a pastor who was driving us to church and he pulled.

He was pulled over for some reason.

There was no apparent reason to us.

He was pulled over and in that country the police officer stays back and you get out of your car and you bring it, and so you bring whatever they're asking for, you go to them, and so the pastor went back and you know what he took with him.

He took three things with him Vehicle registration, driver's license, wallet and really the officer didn't really care about the first two, he just wanted I think it was 10,000 Kazakhstan-y-tengays, which is about 40 bucks.

I think 40 bucks is about the going price.

Basically, 40 bucks is like the price of integrity.

People sell it out for about 40 bucks, or 30 pieces of silver, maybe I don't know.

Maybe that's it too.

The people who are supposed to protect and serve were just running a racket, and it happens.

It happens here as well.

Sometimes the stakes are a whole lot higher.

One of my favorite films of the last five years or so is called Just Mercy, and I don't know if you've seen it or not, but you might want to think about seeing it.

It's a great film based on a true story, and it's about this defense attorney who moves to Alabama and his intent is to help defend poor people who can't afford proper legal representation.

What he ends up doing is defending these death row inmates in the South in Alabama, most of them African American.

Among those were Walter McMillan.

His nickname was Johnny D.

He was an African American man.

He was convicted of killing an 18-year-old white girl, put in prison wrongfully, and through the hard work of the lawyer Stevenson and his team, the injustices were uncovered and eventually he was released.

But he was released only after he had already spent six years on death row.

The prejudice and the injustice portrayed in that story are ugly.

It's a true story and, lonnie, you probably could tell us a lot of stories like that, couldn't you?

From the prison?

I mean, there's no justice where there should be justice.

This is what he's saying and he's calling it out.

Why is it?

In places that are supposed to be safe, there's no safety.

Same in Solomon's day, same as Paul's day, same in our day.

But he goes further.

He says something even more disturbing.

He says even in a place of righteousness, even there was wickedness.

Man.

Now there's the rub, right, because even in places where you think there would be righteousness a place like church, there's unrighteousness.

Even sometimes, the very ones who are supposed to be representing the right sometimes have wrong hearts, and even good institutions can become corrupt, or good institutions can have corrupt people in them, and even sometimes the very leaders are the ones that are corrupt.

So what happens?

When we experience something men and women who represent God, contrary to the way that he has revealed himself into scriptures then there's sometimes it's hard to disentangle the God who loves you from the leaders, the immature leaders or believers who have hurt you and sometimes you begin to just be angry with God.

But that doesn't mean these God-ordained institutions are corrupting themselves, because they're just corrupt people in them.

I mean, you can't throw them out?

Well, you can, but it's not a great idea to do that.

There's a lot of people who've been hurt by people in the church.

I mean, can we talk?

Is this okay?

Good, all right, that's great, because we're going to.

So it might as well be okay.

They're hurt by people in the church they don't attend.

Many of them are now in the process of deconstructing their faith because of experiences that they've had with people in church.

But you know what their story isn't over God.

It doesn't mean God's through with them.

God is very well able to shepherd their souls if they're searching, and you know what, I'm fine.

You can deconstruct with a good heart or a bad heart too.

You can ask honest questions, which I think Solomon's asking here.

He's asking real questions from a real, honest heart, genuinely concerned about these things.

That's okay.

You can also have bad motives.

You can have bad motives anywhere, even deconstructing.

You can have bad motives.

But pray for them.

Pray for them, love them.

God's not finished with them.

Yet the story is not over yet.

It's okay.

Their hearts are searching.

That's a good thing.

It's a good thing.

God is well able to bring them back.

When I got hurt by a church, I'm not going to church again.

It's like you know, people get hurt in marriage and they just quit marriage.

I mean, they quit that marriage.

They also sometimes quit marriage.

Marriage is no good.

It's no good.

Well, I mean, that doesn't mean the instant.

That's not a factual or accurate assessment of the institution of marriage, because God created it and God says it's very good and it is very good.

But it sometimes goes bad and you can't just throw the institution out because there's some bad hearts in it.

That's what I'm saying.

I had a flat tire once and that tire really let me down.

I said I'm not driving anymore, I'm done with driving.

That's not true.

I drove to church this morning.

Okay, I got food poisoning once.

I said that's it.

I am not eating ever again.

That's kind of silly, isn't it?

Of course I ate breakfast this morning.

You know I got hurt.

I'm quitting church.

Okay, I've been church hurt.

You've been church hurt.

All God's people been church hurt.

Believe me, your pastors have seen some of the worst of it.

Believe me, if you want to share stories, we have a cup of coffee, strong, long cup of coffee, and I'm not making light of any experiences you might have, because your pain is real, my pain is real.

But we have to think correctly about the church.

The church is a wonderfully strong, resilient, nurturing place, with people in it who've been redeemed, who are healthy.

The church is also a discourate, can be discouraging, degrading, degrading, toxic place, because there are people in churches that are not healthy.

But it just surprises us and it disappoints us when it happens in the church because it's not supposed to happen in the church.

Right, I looked into place of righteousness and I saw wickedness.

But human beings are complex and sometimes current reactions are tied to past hurts and there's a degree of immaturity and a degree of insecurity.

And sometimes, yes, there are bad motives.

There's just bad hearts involved.

Sometimes Humans are flawed, and I'm one of them.

But church hurt, parental hurt, job hurt, friend hurt, it's really all.

People hurt, right, it really comes from people.

And even though we may have been hurt in church, the fact remains that Jesus Christ loves the church.

Jesus Christ gave himself up for the church.

Jesus Christ continues to intercede for his church and he's cleansing his bride and he's making her spotless.

She's just not spotless yet, but she's gonna be.

My personal church hurt and it's significant.

After I've dealt with it, after I've seen it through the lens of Scripture and after I've seen allowed the Holy Spirit to enlight me on things about that hurt has actually caused me to draw nearer to God instead of push me away from God, because it's actually shown me what his heart is, and here's what I've seen about his heart God loves justice, mercy and humility.

That's Micah 6-8.

God is for the poor, the grief stricken, the humble, the brokenhearted and the peacemakers.

That's Matthew 5, verses 1 through 12.

Matthew 5:1–12

God stands against the proud and for the humble.

That's James 4-6.

Jesus got angry at religious leaders who impeded rather than encouraged the faith of others.

That's Matthew 21, verse 12 through 12 and 13.

Matthew 21:12

What I found is that God's heart breaks for the brokenhearted.

He really cares for you, even in the midst of your broken heart, and I believe that he did not ordain your abuse.

And so we can't, we can't run from church.

We can run from church, but we can't really run from church if we're thinking correctly.

Think about it.

God gives gifts to the church to mature the church.

So it doesn't make any sense for me to say, god, make me like you and then refuse to put myself in the context which he uses to make me like him.

It doesn't make any sense.

And how am I going to learn how to love unless I'm challenged to either love or hate, to be offended or forgive.

And now I'm going to use my pain as justification to hate and be bitter toward others?

I mean, where does it ever stop?

Where does it stop Unless we humble ourselves?

I choose to love the church because I have to say this I have to choose.

I choose to love the church despite her faults, because Jesus Christ chooses to love me despite my faults.

I receive grace and that's how I can give grace.

And, honestly, sometimes I think what we're expecting from people is just unrealistic, because we're looking to them for approval or for security or significance or some provision that only God can give, and that's too much pressure for anybody to handle.

And it's almost.

It's always going to disappoint when you're putting your trust in people.

It's always is a.

I believe we should strive to live in such a way that we bless and not stress other people.

I believe that that we are able to show Jesus to people, honor people and and give value to people, represent Jesus.

But we strive to do that.

But here we are.

We're humans, right, we're humanity.

We're the rose and the thorn.

We're beautiful and we're pain inflicting both.

So, yeah, there are hypocrites in the church, there are hypocrites on your job, there are hypocrites in politics, there are hypocrites in the media, there are hypocrites in sports, there are hypocrites in your family, and there's a hypocrite in your mirror and in mine.

It's just the truth.

So what are we going to do?

What are we going to do?

We have to humble ourselves, I think, and and give people the grace that we would want them to give to us.

And I think Solomon is actually trying to help us learn about ourselves.

In a lot of this book and here in this passage, even in verse 18, look, he says I set in my heart, with regard to the children of man, that God is testing them, that they may see that they themselves are butt beasts.

All those rascals in church, all those unjust judges, all those preachers that are faking it.

And Solomon is saying that God is challenging us.

So we can see, we're no different.

We're no different.

He's.

We're not behaving like men and women made in the image of God.

We're behaving like beasts.

And the nature of man is corrupted even from the fall.

It's a fatal flaw.

We're a crooked timber.

It's hard to build with that.

It's tough, tough to work with people, and I am one so and man is not basically good.

I love this.

I saw this this week.

As I was preparing this sermon, my friend, kasia, in in Poland, put this on her Facebook.

She said man is good.

That's what cannibals say Awesome.

It's also what people say who are not really paying attention.

You know, yeah, there's goodness, of course there's goodness, but we're a mixed bag.

That's the thing.

But Solomon's paying attention.

He's paying attention.

These places, I'm looking, these places where justice and righteousness are supposed to be, and all I'm seeing is this is a reality, is we need a redeemer to change our hearts?

And he goes even further.

He says man has no advantage over the beasts.

Animals and humans all go to the same place.

That's not talking about heaven and hell.

That's talking about we came from dust, we go to dust, we all, we all die.

That's what he's saying.

And who knows what happens after death?

Who knows what happens after death.

Really, only God knows what happens after death.

I mean, we don't.

We don't have any empirical evidence about what happens after death.

Maybe we have some testimonies of people who died and came back, but we're we can't measure it, we can't see it.

Everybody lives in in faith on this subject, whether you believe there's something after death or you don't believe.

We're both living by faith here.

But our faith is informed by the scriptures and also by the very power of God that has transformed us.

We have experienced the power of God and so it's not really like a visual thing.

We don't see it.

We don't know what's beyond death by observation, but we know it by revelation.

Job talks about it, daniel talks about it, isaiah talks about it.

The New Testament is full of it.

Jesus talked about it.

Our hearts, the spirit of God, bears witness in our hearts about it.

If there is something after death, we believe it.

We do believe it.

But Psalm is saying here you know who knows?

Only God knows, ultimately All of these questions.

But it's really curious to me when you look at all of his questions.

I think Solomon's conclusions in the end are not really about trying to figure things out, because he seems to be really okay with not figuring everything out.

Have you noticed that?

Yet he's laying it out here, but he's not figuring every single thing out.

He's not.

He's pretty comfortable with attentions, but he's more concerned with what we're doing right now.

So what?

What do what we know and what we don't know?

How does that affect what we're doing right now?

So that's what he says.

I saw, I saw.

I said, okay, I'm seeing all these things.

And then I said in my heart there's a conclusion here that he's coming to.

How do we, how does what we know and what we don't know affect how we live?

And I think what I see him saying here is don't let what you see leads you to the conclusion that life is not worth living, because what he ends up with is not a suicidal thought he's not talking about, it's just worthless.

Let's just die.

He says these things are not what they ought to be, but we all are given a lot in life.

We should rejoice in the lot that we're given.

A lot means a measure of good things.

That's what it actually means.

There's something allotted to you, your family, your job.

So what else is there for men to do except rejoice in the job that he has, and he goes on.

Later on he says rejoice in your family, rejoice in the wife that God gives you.

He tells all through the following chapters it's not, life is worthless and we might as well die.

And it's not, we might as well live it up because we're going to die.

It's not just a selfish and self gratifying and narcissistic thing.

I think what he's saying is live a life centered on God and appreciate every day as it comes as a gift of God from you, and live it, live it, live it.

What else is there for us to do but to live it?

It's actually more positive than we think it is.

It sounds pretty hard, because he's being realistic, he's being real.

We should patiently and joyfully embrace daily life as it comes to us from God, as a gift.

And then he says this I said in my heart God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there's a time for every matter and for every work.

So he goes on to say, though there's wickedness in places where there should be justice and righteousness, ultimately there is a righteous one who will judge righteously, and I believe Solomon is really genuinely concerned about righteousness and justice, and I think he's looking for it.

I think he's really searching.

He wanted to find righteousness, but he also saw that even in his own reign as king and as judge and as God's representative on earth, he was falling short.

And I say that because he wrote a song about it.

Did you know?

Solomon wrote a song about these things?

We actually read it a few weeks back in our daily Bible app.

It's Psalm 72.

And so he wrote this song and it was a prayer to God.

It seems to me like it's a prayer to God for his own reign, his own position as a king.

It's a prayer God, give the king justice and let the king rule with wisdom and justice.

And the Psalm was sung at the coronation of kings.

It's like a coronation to him.

When they crowned the king, they sang this song.

But I think it's pointing to somebody else.

So see what you think, let's read it.

Psalm 72, starting at verse one give the king your justice, oh God, and your righteousness to your royal son.

May he judge your people with righteousness and your poor with justice.

Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people and the hills in righteousness.

May he defend the cause of the poor of the people.

Give deliverance to the children of the needy and crush the oppressor.

And in verse eight, may he have dominion from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the earth.

May the desert tribes bow down before him and his enemies lick the dust.

May the kings of Tarshish and the coastlands render him tribute.

May the kings of Sheba and Siba bring gifts.

May all kings fall down before him.

All nations serve him, for he delivers the needy when he calls and the poor in him, who has no helper.

He has pity on the weak and on the needy and he saves the lives of the needy from oppression and violence.

He redeems their life, and precious is their blood in his sight.

This song goes beyond Solomon.

This is not just about the son of David, the physical son of David Solomon.

This is about the spiritual son of David, jesus Christ.

This is about the Messiah who was promised to come and reign forever in God's kingdom.

This is going to be on Solomon's day.

It goes on forever.

There is a righteous one, there is a just one.

Jesus is the great high priest, the righteous one in the place of righteousness, and Solomon looked and he saw only wickedness there.

But there's a righteous one and he's also the king of kings, the just one in the place of justice.

He will judge righteously.

And this is what he's looking for.

Solomon's looking for him in this book of Ecclesiastes, and we're looking for justice in our own lives.

We're trying to figure out is there any justice anywhere?

Is there a just one anywhere?

Is there a righteous one anywhere?

And there is, there is.

It's the king of kings.

There is a place for recourse.

There is justice.

In the end, justice is going to be done.

God will judge.

And Solomon ends the entire book with this same thing, the same idea God will judge.

And Paul said it this way at Acts 17.

When he was preaching to unbelievers, he said times, the times of ignorance.

God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent because he is fixed today, on which he will judge the world in righteousness, by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

Jesus Christ, the righteous will judge in righteousness.

It's a promise and it's a warning.

Every one of us will be judged righteously.

It's a day of beauty for some, triumph.

It's also a day of terror for some.

And which will it be for you is the question.

So we're all looking for justice and there is one who is just and we're all trying in vain to shepherd the wind, and yet there's one that controls the wind in the ways, with his very words.

It's Jesus, and I think what Solomon is doing is saying ultimately, his message is fear God, the one who shepherds the wind and controls your life and controls your death.

He has the right to judge righteously, because he is righteous, and take what you've been given, what he gives to you as a gift, every day and live it to the full.

I think, as we're going through the next few weeks, I think we're going to see this message over and over and over.

The earth is a mess, but it's not hopeless and there's a purpose for us.

I think we see that because he's honest.

Solomon's honest here, and this righteous judge is the only one who can take away our sin, take our hearts of stone, give us hearts of flesh.

He's the only one who's able to touch this crooked timber and bring us up straight.

He's the only one.

We need it.

We need this, savior, amen.

Let me pray for you, father.

I thank you that we can hear the words of Solomon, the greatest in his day and the wisest of our world and a man who has had so many experiences and has so much that he's lived, lord, and this place of power he was in this place of wisdom that he sat in and he's able to speak to us, god, and thank you that it's real.

It's not sidestepping issues, but even as he's looking for justice and righteousness, lord, we can see even in his song he's speaking prophetically about the one who is righteous and just Jesus.

In Jesus, we look to you this morning.

You are our righteousness, you're a place that we go for justice and we look to you, lord, to help us to know how to deal with our own hurt.

Lord, I pray for those of us who are dealing with church hurt right now.

Well, really, people hurt right now.

Our institutional hurt of any kind, lord, is that we're supposed to be supportive or safe that have turned out to be unjust and unrighteous.

Lord, I pray that you would help us to have hearts that are soft, to not harden our hearts and be bitter and hold unforgiveness.

I pray you teach us how to have victory over those times, lord and Lord, any time that we've put our hope and trust in people and looked to them for things that only really you can give.

I pray that you would forgive me for that, god and Lord, we pray that you would open up our eyes to see that and help us, god, to put our trust in you completely.

And I remember the words of Peter about Jesus.

Lord, he speaking about Jesus, speaking to us, his church, for to this you've been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you as an example so that you might follow in His steps.

He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth.

When he was reviled.

He did not revile in return when he was, when we suffered.

He didn't threaten, but he continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously, and he Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

By His wounds you've been healed.

So, lord, I pray for that kind of healing as we pray this morning with a prayer group.

Lord, that was something that you put on our hearts this morning to pray for healing.

This morning, we pray for that healing by your wounds.

We are healed, lord.

By your stripes, jesus, we're forgiven and we're healed.

And, lord, I pray that you would give us the out of that place of forgiveness, that courage and the enablement to be able to release people, lord, I just pray that there would be.

We would be free.

I pray for a release, god.

We would release as we have been released and we would forgive as we have been forgiven, and we could walk in freedom, god, and all of those things that have been done to us that we could hold on to.

Lord, we let go and we trust you.

You're the one who judges righteously and thank you for showing us Jesus in this passage today.

Lord, thank you for a wonderful Savior and Father.

We pray for all the ones that we know who have been hurt and who are deconstructing their faith or who are walking away from the church.

Lord, I know that you're a great shepherd and you can come, you can bring them back in and we pray for them, lord, as you have gone after us, leaving the 99, and gone after us, and you've brought us back to you, lord, I pray that you would do the same for them, god, that you would bring them back in, that you would draw them by your spirit and in their questions, lord, and in their searching God, you would lead them to the Lamb, we lift all of them off.

Just if there's someone in your life that is in that position, just lift them up.

Lord, we all pray together in agreement and ask you Lord, we want to see them back in in the fold, in church, in relationship with you.

God, we pray for that.

We ask you to bring people back, lord.

Thank you for that in Jesus' name, amen.