Nehemiah 10 - Action Follows Confession - Rick Graumlich

One thing that uh separates Protestants from the Catholic tradition or Eastern Orthodox tradition, there's a lot of things that separate us.

But one of the major ones is our view of salvation.

So we believe that salvation as Protestants is a gift from God.

You cannot earn your salvation, meaning you cannot go out and do something to contribute to your salvation.

Either God has atoned for your sins and saved you, or he hasn't.

Either way, you can't add to his work.

Adding to his work would be like things like baptism, or you have to be baptized to be saved, or you have to take communion, or some kind of first rites, or any really any kind of action like that that you must perform in order to be saved.

Clear Protestant teaching is that the work of salvation is all on Christ, and he does it perfectly.

This is his work.

Now, once we are saved, there is action.

And if there is no action, we'd say there doesn't seem to be any salvation.

But they're not one in the same.

Action does not equal salvation.

Similarly, if I profess my love to Candace, action must follow that.

There must be some action behind.

If there's no action, then there's probably is no love.

Now, action isn't the thing, right?

It's love or or faith in the salvation that God has given us, that He's granted to us.

But action follows that.

Now, if you're confused or have questions about that, I'd love to talk with you after the service.

But this is a very, very, very clear and important distinction.

And if you were with us in the spring, we went through the book of Galatians, which is Paul just hammering this point again and again.

And the same thing we read in our assurance of grace, that we're saved by faith.

This is the work of the Lord.

Not because of what we've done.

But once God has done a work in us, there is then action that follows.

And in Nehemiah, we're gonna see that this morning.

Last week in chapter 9, we covered how Ezra and the teachers of the law brought everyone together and they made a confession.

And they confessed that God is the creator of all things and that he is good, and they confessed that they are not good, and them and their fathers have rebelled against God and been stiff-necked toward God.

But God was so merciful and gracious to them again and again and again.

But they rebelled.

But here they were in chapter 8 or chapter 9, crying out for mercy to the Lord and confessing that they were wrong, confessing that they had rebelled, confessing what they had messed up with, that they had rejected God and his commands.

But then there is something that follows that confession, and that is action.

Now there's a pattern here, if we just zoom out just a little bit, because in verse or chapter 8, they got everyone together and they gave them the law.

And they made sure everyone understood the law.

This was really important.

They made clear the law, they started to obey the law, and in their hearing and understanding, they realized we have not been keeping the law.

So then they confessed this.

God, we've rebelled, we've sinned.

And then in chapter 10, they begin to take action.

And we see them take action after their confession.

We see that they they commit their relationships to God, they commit their resources to God, and that their hope is in God.

Now, if you're new, we've been walking you through this Ezra-Nehemiah series for quite some time.

And so I want to just step back and give you a kind of a high, very high-level summary of what's going on.

So in the Old Testament, right, God called Abraham and said, I'm going to make from you a mighty people, and you're going to be my people.

And so he gave Abraham all these descendants, what turned into like a really big family, then a tribe, and then a nation.

And then God supplied them and he gave them his commands and instructions so that they might know how they should live and how they should worship God.

But even in that, they rebelled against God.

God lovingly provided for them.

He revealed himself to them with his standards, and they rebelled against these things.

And God showed a mercy and grace, and God graciously and lovingly disciplined his children, saying, Listen, you're going to be taken into captivity.

There's going to be an enemy from this other land who's going to come in, and he's going to destroy the city, he's going to destroy your towns, he's going to destroy the temple and carry you off.

And then for 70 years you'll be there.

But I will bring you back.

That was the promise.

And the story of Ezra and Nehemiah is how God brought them back.

They begin to rebuild their city, rebuild the wall, rebuild the temple.

God rebuilds his people.

And that's the theme through this.

God is faithful to restore and renew his people.

And we see how when he's doing that, we see the word in chapter 8 having an effect.

They're opening God's law and reading.

This is what God has for us.

This is who God is.

This is how he's instructed us to live.

And then they confess their sins.

And then in chapter 10, they begin to take action toward these things.

And we're going to go through this chapter just kind of a piece at a time.

And we're going to actually begin at the very end of chapter 9, in verse 38.

Because of all this, we make a firm covenant in writing on the sealed documents, are the names of our princes, our Levites, and our priests.

On the seals are the names of Nehemiah the governor, the son of Helkaliah, and Zedekiah, who was the priest at the time.

Now I'm going to save you and save me and not read all these names.

But there's something really interesting that begins to happen in verse 28.

Look with me.

The rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers of the temple, the servants, and all who have separated themselves from the peoples of the land, to the law separated themselves from the people of the land to the law of God, their wives, their sons, their daughters, all who have knowledge and understanding.

Join with their brothers, their nobles, and enter into a curse and an oath to walk in God's law that was given by Moses, the servant of God.

Excuse me.

Moses, the servant of God, the servant to observe and to do all the commandments of the Lord our Lord and his rules and his statutes.

So let's pause there for a moment.

So you get a picture here of a bunch of names of all the leaders and everyone who's entering into an oath.

And the oath is listen, we're gonna obey God and keep his law as he delivered it to Moses.

We're gonna do that.

And if we don't do it, there'll be a curse.

Now it doesn't tell us what the curse is, but there's a curse that they're kind of invoking.

If we don't do this before everyone, God, you're right to bring a curse on us.

So they are very serious.

But it's interesting, the oath was also taken by whomever wanted to follow God's ways.

If you remember back in Ezra when they were trying to figure out the priesthood, they've been gone and they're like, well, who are priests?

And there's a bloodline to this, and they're trying to figure that out, and it's confusing.

And in here, they're not talking about priests, they're just saying whoever wants to be a follower of God.

Doesn't matter your land or your tribe or wherever, but those who want to separate themselves from the people of the world into God's law are welcome to partake in this.

And then there is a complete adherence to the law.

They're not committing to changing just a few things.

You know, this isn't like, well, we're gonna stop watching R-rated movies and we're gonna kind of clean up our language a bit and we're gonna stop smoking as much.

That's not what they're talking about here.

They're not saying, well, you know, we're gonna kind of dress a little bit more modestly and kind of fit in with the church crowd, and we'll kind of, you know, cover up our tattoos and all that stuff.

That's not what they're saying.

There's no kind of posing to fit in.

Just kind of put on the right facade and then we'll be good to go.

They're talking about a radical change in everything they do.

Everything they do.

How they do business, how they go about conducting worship, how they relate to one another throughout the day, every day, how they treat their children, how they observe the law.

Everything.

It touches everything in their life.

And they're saying, yeah, we're gonna keep that.

We're gonna do that.

And they begin with marriage.

And this issue of intermarrying.

Look at verse 30 with me.

This is their their relationship, that they've committed their relationships to God.

We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons.

Now, this is a big issue for the Jewish people.

We know that God commanded them when they went into this land that God gave them to not intermarry with the people of the land.

And this wasn't like a race issue, like we've got to keep the bloodline pure.

This was an issue of pagan religion.

He says, you start to intermarry with these other pagans, they will corrupt your faith.

So don't do that.

It's interesting that marriage, which is the most fundamental and impactful relationship a culture, any culture has, is where they begin.

They say, we've got to figure out this marriage problem first.

We're wondering why we haven't know God's word, why we're not following God's commands.

It's because we've allowed pagans who don't worship our God, who don't love our God, to come in and pull us away from God.

Now, if you've grown up in the church, you're probably well aware of 2 Corinthians 6.14.

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.

For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness.

And that verse, rightly, I think, is almost always applied to relationships.

If you're a Christian, you are commanded to not marry a non-Christian.

I think there's a broader application here as well for some business and life and different things.

It doesn't mean we're kind of alienating.

If you're a non-believer, we can't be with you.

But there's an element here of that Christians are people of light, non-Christians are people of darkness.

And when you begin to try to do, become one flesh and walk through life together, you quickly realize how harmful that is to your love for the Lord, to your walk and your obedience to Him, and how difficult that is.

Now, I just want to say, our God is much, much bigger than bad marriages.

Right?

He's much bigger than, well, I married an unbeliever and I guess I'm stuck here and this is it.

God is so much bigger than that.

There isn't a mistake you can get into that God can't redeem.

But it doesn't mean there still are not consequences for these things.

God here is renewing and restoring his people.

But what's the consequence for their action?

Well, just disaster for generations and then captivity for 70 years.

Right?

Heavy consequences.

Is the Lord still good?

Can he redeem?

Yes, and amen.

But they begin with saying, we've got to make a priority here to honor God in our marriages.

So they're committing these relationships.

The thing in our culture that we kind of hold out, like, yeah, I want to get married, I want to find a spouse, and it's really important, and I will go through life together.

And so you begin to kind of make exceptions.

Well, they're I they're a Christian, they grew up in the in the church.

They're a Christian, they have a Christian verse tattooed on their body.

Listen, I'm not anti-tattoos, I'm making a lot of tattoo jokes, but get your tattoos, I don't really care.

So, but there's these things that we just begin to assign.

Well, they're doing X, Y, and Z, therefore they must be a Christian.

But do they love God?

Is God supreme in their life?

And I would just say, especially to those younger people or people who just who are looking to be married who aren't married, this outside of your walk with Jesus Christ, who you marry really, really matters.

It very, very much matters.

If you want to go, just go find anyone else in the room who's married and ask him, does it matter who you marry?

It does.

It really does.

And the thing is, if you're I'm going off on like a marriage talk here, if your standard is here, it's unmeetable, that's a problem.

But if your standard's down here, it's like you don't have standards, that's a problem as well.

The first standard you should have is that they've loved Jesus Christ.

They don't just say they love Jesus Christ.

You can see that they love Jesus Christ.

They're involved in the church.

They love his word, they're studying it.

You see the word having an effect on their life.

They're obeying the word.

They're not just kind of saying, Well, I'm a Christian, I go to church.

They're following Jesus, they're doing what he commands, they're contending for righteousness, they're putting sin to death.

So seek after people who love Jesus.

They guard these relationships.

Their relationships were committed, and their resources were committed to God.

Look with me in verse 31.

And if the peoples of the land bring any goods or any grain on the Sabbath day to sell, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or on a holy day.

And we will forego the crops of the seventh year and exact every um exact every debt.

So there is this Sabbath law that God had given his people, that on the Sabbath you're not to do business.

You're not to transact business, you're to worship the Lord, to set aside that time, not to just kick back and relax, but to be intentional in your worship of the things of God.

And then there was this Sabbath year that they had, where every seven years they would not work the land.

Right?

They would just kind of let it rest.

So you have a Sabbath day that they're to keep in the Sabbath year.

And when you look at the Sabbath day, it seems like what's just one day among seven, surely that wouldn't be that difficult.

But I would just challenge you to try to set aside one day for anything in your life and see how it goes.

Just to set one day apart for something and see that the things that come into that day, the distractions, the issues, the needs.

Like life just happens.

So they had to be intentional to set this day apart and to trust the Lord.

We're not gonna do business on the Sabbath.

The Lord's gonna provide.

The time is God's time.

So they're not thinking, well, I have my time, and then I'll give God the time in the morning.

I'll give him some 15-minute time of devotion or five minutes in the evening.

They're saying, Lord, we want to display that all time is yours, and we're gonna do that by setting aside one whole day from sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday to worship you and to just observe and to show the nations that we are not like them.

That we have a God that we set aside this time for.

And that, you know what?

We trust Him that whatever I could get done on that day, it's gonna be okay.

Whatever I need to get done, it's gonna be okay because God is sovereign and he's good, and if I obey him, he's gonna honor that.

So they have this command to set aside their time once a week, and it's God's time.

They're committing this to God.

We're trusting him.

And then again, with their their food and their money.

I mean, think about the Sabbath year thing.

So this is an agrarian culture, right?

This is kind of their bread and butter.

Literally.

This is what they do.

They grow crops, they harvest crops.

And they're saying, well, for a year we're just not going to do that.

Now I know, like, in modern age, and especially different parts of the world, like vacation time has gotten, you know, it's gotten a bit extreme.

You know, it's like people taking off eight weeks, twelve weeks, six months.

It's like, what if everyone just stopped for the year?

No one's pumping gas, no one's driving trucks to the groceries.

Like, we're just stopping for the year.

Right?

This is a radical idea.

Now, this is, I don't want to oversimplify, this is a grand culture they stored up for six years in preparation for the seventh year.

But they didn't just wake up on the new year and say, well, fridge is empty, darn it, it's gonna be a long year.

But they they prepared for this, just like they prepared for the Sabbath.

Right?

They made their food ahead of time, they prepared, but they were trusting God to go a whole year, that in the next year after that, that the crops would come back in.

And for the six years that they were working, they were trusting that God would provide for them.

And so they're committing.

And so they've gone through this confession where they've acknowledged, I mean, God has done nothing but provide for us, and we've rebelled.

Let's restore what God has given to us.

Let's commit to observing the Sabbath, and let's commit to observing the Sabbath year because God has always provided for us.

So they, their food and their money, it was it was God.

They weren't worried about these things.

Or maybe they were worried, but they were still acting in faith.

They were committed with their resources to God.

I just think about for us, like, we have more resources than any other time in human history.

I mean, we just do, like, no one's gonna deny that.

Even those who don't have much, relatively speaking, have so much.

I mean, we have so much extra time, we have so much extra food.

I mean, we throw out as a culture, just as a community, just so much food gets thrown out.

And in one sense, it's like, well, that's a real shame because there, because there are hungry people around the world, but it's also like it's gonna go bad.

We just gotta get rid of it.

We just have so much in abundance.

We have so much wealth in abundance.

I mean, even those who are who are going paycheck to paycheck and are like, man, I'm not sure how we're gonna make ends meet here.

Most people have a vehicle.

Most people have a TV or a phone or these different like kind of luxury items.

Like we just live in abundance as a people.

And we become numb to those things.

And I'm just as guilty as anyone.

You just become numb to the resources in the abundance that we have.

And the danger there is that we we say, God, we're trusting you for this.

God, I'm trusting for my income and for my job and for my family and a house and food.

But then we don't pray for those things.

We don't ask the Lord for provision.

God says, I already have it.

What am I what do I need to pray for a job for?

I already have a job.

Why would I pray for bread?

I already have bread.

But yet it was the bread was the very thing that Jesus taught his disciples to pray for.

That God would give us bread.

And so God is an abundant provider.

And we need to be careful that when we think about that, we're gonna we're gonna be God's people, we're gonna follow him, we're To follow his word.

We're examining our hearts.

Does he have our relationships?

Are our relationships committed to him, or are they committed to our own interests?

Like I'm going to work this relationship as long as it works for me.

I'm going to kind of observe the Sabbath, or I'm going to gather with the church on Sunday and do the Christian thing as long as it's working for me.

I'll tithe and I'll kind of do that thing as long as it's working for me.

And these things kind of test our heart.

Are we serious?

We say we're trusting Jesus.

Or we're kind of going along with the Christian culture, the sub-Christian culture that we are a part of.

And the ultimate test of that is where is our hope?

What are we serving?

What are we doing that points to our hope?

And I think their hope, it was in God.

And we're going to read this passage in verse 32 down to 39, which talks about how they're going to supply the temple to not neglect the house of the Lord.

And the temple system, before we get into that, was designed by God.

But it was not God's final or ultimate plan.

It was the system in place, and where the people kind of recommitted to following God's commands to sustain and provide for the operation of the temple.

Look at verse 32.

This is the people and their oath.

We also take on ourselves the obligation to give yearly a third part of a shekel for the service of the house of our God.

For the showbread, the regular grain offering, the regular burnt offering, the Sabbaths, the new moons, the appointed feasts, the holy things, and the sin offerings to make atonement for Israel and for all the work of the house of our God.

We, the priests, the Levites, and the people, have likewise cast lots for the wood offering, to bring it into the house of our God, according to our fathers' houses, at times appointed, year by year, to burn on the altar of the Lord our God, as it is written in the law.

We obligate ourselves to bring the first fruits of our ground and the first fruits of all fruit of every tree, year by year to the house of the Lord.

We also also to bring the house of our to the house of our God, to the priests who minister in the house of our God, the firstborn of our sons, and our cattle, and as it is written in the law, in the firstborn of our herds and our flocks, and to bring the first of our dough and our contributions, the fruit of every tree, the wine and the oil, to the priests, to the chambers chambers of the house of our God, and to bring to the Levites the tithes from our ground.

For it is the Levites who collect the tithes in all our towns where we labor.

And the priests, the son of Aaron, shall be with the Levites when the Levites receive the tithes.

And the Levites shall bring up the tithes, the up the tithe of the tithes to the house of our God, to the chambers of the storehouses.

For the people of Israel and the sons of Levi shall bring the contributions of grain, wine, and oil to the chambers where the vessels in the sanctuary are, as well as the priests who minister, and the gatekeepers and the singers.

We will not neglect the house of our God.

There's something important to understand about this kind of temple system and why it's so weighty what these people are making an oath to do.

They're saying, Listen, the temple, we will sustain it.

God has commanded us to bring our sacrifices, to bring the first of our fruits and our grain and our dough and our first of our child and our cattle and our herds, and all these things are brought to sustain practically the temple functioning, but also, more importantly, to keep reminding ourselves in our hearts that this all belongs to the Lord.

It's all his, and if we have it, it's a gift from him.

And so we're doing this symbolically to show that it is the Lord's.

And we're just giving back to show that it's his.

And we're helping that the temple function.

So the temple was a sacrificial system where God's people, through, mainly through priests, would make sacrifices for their sins.

You know, they had food sacrifices, they had oil sacrifices and grain sacrifices and animal sacrifices.

But it's really important to know these sacrifices, they did not have the power to forgive sins.

They did not have the power to forgive sin, to atone for sin.

That was never God's design.

And they didn't just, they weren't designed to kind of make God happy.

Like, well, God's angry with you, give this kind of temple sacrifice thing, and now he's gonna be happy and change his mood a little bit.

That's not the design of the temple or the temple system.

The idea was that God loves his people.

He's given to them the law by how they should live.

This is his instruction on how they are to live and how they are to worship.

So now that God has given his people the law, how who God is his standards and how they are to live, when people break that standard, or they don't worship him as they ought, they bring a sacrifice acknowledging that they've missed the mark, that they've made a mistake.

And it costs them something.

It costs them maybe a lamb or a calf or some grain or some doves.

It costs them something to come and make this sacrifice.

I just want to take a step back for a moment and get a big picture view of the Bible, what God is doing.

Because we know that the story of Nehemiah and Ezra, we know it takes place in the Old Testament.

And this Old Testament has this kind of temple-centric sacrificial system, which I just spoke about for how the people are to relate to God.

But I did mention this is not God's ultimate design or plan.

He had another plan that worked perfectly with this plan.

This old temple sacrificial system is called the old covenant.

And the old covenant was designed primarily to do two things.

And I just mentioned them to reveal who God is, his holiness through the law.

And to reveal also through the law how much we need a Savior.

That we need a savior.

If you're a student of the Bible, you grew up in the church, or maybe you don't know, so I'm going to tell you now.

If you go through the Old Testament reading about this old covenant, there is something that just screams out in the Old Testament.

You know what it is?

It's that you need a savior.

That you need a savior, that you cannot earn your salvation.

You can't get there on your own.

This is a problem because God is holy.

And he again revealed that to us through his law.

So the old temple covenant system was God's plan to reveal, you need a savior and a messiah.

And not just someone who comes in and delivers you from the enemy.

It says, okay, here's your temple back, and here's your city back, and here's some of your provisions back.

But someone who would come in and deliver you from your own wickedness, who would deliver you and me from our own sin and bring us salvation.

And so even in this temple system, as the people are they're seeking to support and to be a part of, it's a shadowing and it's telling them again and again every time they have to bring the sacrifice up, and every year they have to give the tithe and all these things.

Because we cannot deliver ourselves.

And God has promised to bring that Savior.

He promised to bring that Messiah all through the Old Testament.

We see it in Genesis 3 when the fall, when it was said that the offspring of Eve will crush the head of the serpent.

God promises to Abraham and to Moses and to David when He said to make His offspring holy.

He would redeem a people, that He would dwell with them forever.

He made this promise clear through the prophets and through the Mess and through the Old Testament prophets in Isaiah and Ezekiel.

Listen to Isaiah 53.

He was despised by men.

This is speaking of Jesus Christ.

Way before Jesus Christ came on the earth incarnate.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, as one from whom men hide their faces.

He was despised and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, and upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.

And with his wounds we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray, and we have turned, every one of us, to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquities, the sins of us all.

This is Isaiah giving a prophecy of what is to come, the Messiah.

Another promise to the people who are striving to earn.

He says, I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them.

And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.

I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land.

And I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanliness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you, and I will give you a new heart, and I'll put a new spirit within you, and I'll remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statues, and be careful to obey my rules, and you shall dwell in the land that I give to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.

I will deliver you from all your uncleanliness.

And they're in, they're seeking to support the temple.

Not because they think, well, I've got to give these things to earn salvation.

But they know that salvation is coming.

There is a Messiah that has been promised, that will come for them.

And this was God's plan all along to bring salvation through Christ.

Christ died and atoned for the sins of God's people, for all the sins yet to come and all the sins that had already been committed.

He died for all of them.

This is why in Hebrews 10 it says, the blood of man cannot forgive sins, and the blood of animals, a sacrifice of animals, cannot forgive sin.

It was the perfect, righteous Christ.

It was his life and his blood that atoned for your sin.

I just want to remind you, you never get past that.

That's never an elementary part of the faith.

That's not something that's just kind of basic 101 Christianity, and then we move on from that.

Because it's the same power that redeemed you, that changed you, that gives you the ability to walk in faithfulness to God, to love Him more, to obey Him, to confess your sin, and then take action and walk in obedience.

We know in chapter 9 that people confessed their sin.

It was a good and right thing.

And then they took action.

It's never enough for us to acknowledge the wrong in our life and even just feel bad about it.

There must be action that follows true confession.

We must do these things.

They committed their relationships to God.

They committed their resources to God.

They committed their hope.

It was all in God and in God alone.

We've got to ask ourselves, all of us, being honest, are we doing the same?

Our relationships, are they committed to the Lord?

The resources that are is it committed to the Lord?

Is your hope tied to, bound in, and sealed in God?

Be honest.

The worst thing you can do is be dishonest with yourself.

So we're remind you that you're not the judge of yourself.

God is.

And he's given us his word.

And so we use his word to judge ourselves.

Are we honest?

Are we true?

Are we genuine?

Are we serious about these things?

If you have confessed Christ is your Lord and your Savior, are your actions in accordance with that?

Are you living that out?

And you know, I don't mean that perfectly, because nobody can do it perfectly, but are you striving to be faithful in that?

If Christ is not your Lord, he's not your Savior, I just want you to reflect, what is it that you're worshiping?

What idol do you bow down to and surrender to?

Are you looking for fame or for pleasure or for popularity or security or control?

If you're not bowing down to God, you're bowing down to something.

Be honest about that with yourself.

What has gripped your heart?

I mentioned this last week that when we get to the end of Nehemiah and to the end of the Old Testament, really, it's very clear that people are not able to save themselves.

No matter how many vows or oaths they took, no matter how long they stood and listened to the word or the law being read, no matter how much they strived and worked to obey, that system doesn't bring salvation, but it does point them to God and the grace that they can cling to.

And just as the in the old covenant, the hope of everyone under the old covenant was Jesus Christ.

So as in the new covenant, the hope of all of us is in the person and finished work of Jesus Christ.

We need a Savior.

We need someone to rule us.

Someone who has can make all things new.

Someone who can give us grace and mercy.

And we freely accept the grace that God has given to us.

Not trying to earn it, but receiving it.

And as we do that, following after Him.

Christ is the all-sufficient Savior.

There is no person he cannot reach, there is no sin that he cannot atone for, and there's nothing better.

Hear me.

There is nothing, nothing, nothing better than to belong to Jesus Christ.

And I don't mean like you kind of you have a shirt or something.

I mean you're his.

You're his.

You belong to him.

He knows you.

He loves you.

You know that he knows you.

You know that he loves you.

There is nothing better.

Let's pray.

Gracious God, you are merciful.

You have been so merciful to us.

May we again not be hearers only, but doers of the word.

May we examine ourselves.

Are there things in our life that we're clinging on to?

May we confess those things and may we walk in obedience.

May we act on that.

May we follow after you.

Pray for those who are here who do not know you as their Lord and their Savior, that they would confess to you that they have rebelled and that they're in need of a savior.

And Lord, that you would redeem them and save them and bring life to them.

Oh God, you are so good to us.

May we walk in your goodness.

We pray this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.