Nehemiah: The Right View: Nehemiah 1:1-7 Pastor Daniel Reese

Well, good morning.

If you have your Bibles, we're going to go to Nehemiah, chapter one.

We're going to go through this book this fall.

If you don't have a Bible, there's one in front of you.

If you turn to page 398, you'll find where we'll be here in just a few minutes.

Now as we go through the book of Nehemiah, Nehemiah is going to attack this idea of individualism

and really show us what thriving looks like according to the Bible.

And the truth is our idea of what it looks like to thrive goes against what the Scriptures

say.

Because of our nature, we have this sinful part of our heart that makes us believe that

we are the center of our universe and everything and everyone around us should serve to make

us happy and do what we want them to do.

Then on top of that, we live in a culture that celebrates individualism and undermines

God's picture of how we should live.

It's all about our comfort, our preferences, our way of doing things.

And we become offended by anyone who tries to take those things from us.

Living our life that way is crippling and it will stunt our growth and keep us from

being what God intended us to be.

God's picture of human flourishing starts when our preferences become secondary to God's

will and how God has revealed Himself to us in His Word.

So it's not that our preference isn't important, it's just not primary.

It becomes secondary to the will of God so that we in glad submission to the will of

God over and beyond what our preference is, over and beyond our comfort, over and beyond

the way that we want things to happen.

Then the second thing, when all is said and done, we need to be people who pursue joy

as primary and happiness as secondary.

Now that is not the mantra of our age.

And every commercial that you watch is going to exalt you.

It's going to tell you what you're worth.

It's going to tell you what you're worthy of.

It's the air we breathe.

But God's picture of human flourishing is your pursuit should not be happiness because happiness

is cheap and it betrays you.

Your pursuit should be joy because joy is unshakable.

Joy transcends our circumstances.

In fact, everyone in this room would have a testimony of something you thought was going

to make you happy only to find out later that it betrayed you.

It only made you happy for a second or two.

Joy doesn't work that way.

God's picture of human flourishing says, you're not up for most I am.

Your preferences are secondary to my will.

And your happiness is subservient to the pursuit of joy.

Nehemiah is going to attack individualism in this book.

Now let me catch you up on Nehemiah.

God calls the nation, we're going to start in Exodus, not Genesis, so you're welcome.

But God calls the nation of Israel out of slavery from Egypt.

He leads them to the border of the promised land, the land that's flowing with milk and

honey.

And there the people of Israel doubted the goodness of God.

They doubted the grace of God.

They doubted the power of God.

So God allowed them to wander in the wilderness for 40 years while he killed off that generation

that refused to put their trust in him.

Then under Joshua, God leads the people of Israel into the promised land.

He drives out the Canaanites and they are established as a nation.

They began to look around and they want a king.

And so God gives them the desire of their heart which was a king and he gets a man's

man.

You get Saul.

And according to the Bible, it was a foot taller than any other man in Israel.

He was the best hunter.

He had muscles coming out of his turtleneck.

This was a man's man, just hair everywhere.

Right?

Men wanted to be him.

The ladies loved him.

Look at the picture, right?

This is who Saul is.

Saul, like our brothers and sisters in the wilderness, who doubted the goodness of God

and doubted the provision of God, doubted God and he began to offer sacrifices that

were unacceptable to God and he was removed as king.

And he's replaced by David, who was a shepherd boy and played the harp.

So we went from a foot taller to everybody else, a man's man to David.

Now David is a boss.

He killed a bear with his own hands.

That's better than anything you've done.

If you can kill it with your bare hands, I'll give you your man card.

But if you're feeding it all year long and then cap it, I don't even know what to call

that.

Unfair?

I don't know.

So David is made king and under David's kingship, Israel thrives.

In fact, all the threats against the nation of Israel are in many ways crushed under the

reign of David.

He goes to war with the Philistines.

He goes to war with anyone who threatens the borders of Israel.

I mean, he just wrecks shop in my head.

I just can't get my mind around while the Philistines kept going, let's try that again.

Let's recoup and try that again.

And then David dies.

And he turns the kingdom over to his son Solomon.

And Solomon builds the temple of the Lord and peace continues to happen.

And Israel becomes a regional power.

No real threats to its border and it's doing well.

And you begin to see some concern in Solomon about what would come after him.

And if you pay attention to the book of Ecclesiastes, he says, what good is wealth and power if your

kids are idiots?

You're just going to pass on that wealth and power to a bunch of morons.

Now that's a paraphrase.

It's not going to re-like that in Ecclesiastes, but that was his point.

Sure enough, right after Solomon, you see the nation of Israel.

That was a regional power fracture into two kingdoms, the Northern Kingdom and the Southern

Kingdom.

It's what would have happened to the United States had the Confederate States won.

You would have had the Northern United States and then you would have had the Southern Confederate

States of America.

The Northern Kingdom was called Israel, the Southern Kingdom was called Judah.

The Northern Kingdom did not fare well.

They had wicked king after wicked king after wicked king.

Finally in 722 BC, the Assyrians laid siege to the Northern Empire and they deported and

really spread the Israelites out around the ancient empire.

Judah fared a bit better.

They were able to hold on for a bit longer.

They had a godly king than a wicked king.

Then a godly king than a wicked king.

But 136 years after the Northern Kingdom is conquered, the people again are deported and

exiled.

The Southern Kingdom falls not by the Assyrians, but now by the Babylonians who are the reigning

empire in the world at the time.

So the Babylonians, they export and deport the Israelites in the Southern Kingdom and

spread them around the ancient world as slaves and servants to the reigning Babylonian empire.

Now just to catch you up on history, Persia shows up and decides they're going to run

the world.

So the Persians now conquered the Babylonians who had conquered the Assyrians.

Now the Persian Empire has taken root in the ancient world.

And in 2nd Chronicles, the Holy Spirit hard presses Cyrus, the king of Persia, that the

Jews should be released to go back, or at least a portion of the Jews.

They should be allowed to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple.

And that's where we get the book of Ezra.

Now here's something interesting.

The book of Ezra and the book of Nehemiah are happening simultaneously in history.

In fact, some ancient manuscripts, Ezra and Nehemiah are one book, not two.

So that's where we are in history.

So now we're going to read Nehemiah starting in verse one.

I'm going to invite Yordi to come up and read our text this morning.

I encourage you to stand as we honor the Lord's word.

The words of Nehemiah, the son of Hakeliah.

Now it happened in the month of Kislev in the 20th year as I was in Suza, the citadel,

that Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah.

And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile and concerning

Jerusalem.

And they said to me, the remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is

in great trouble and shame.

The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are destroyed by fire.

Nehemiah's prayer.

As soon as I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days.

I continued fasting and praying before the Lord, before the God of heaven.

And I said, oh Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast

love with those who love him and keep his commandments.

Let your ear be attentive and your eyes be open to hear the prayer of your servant that

I now pray before you, day and night for the people of Israel, your servants confessing

the sins of the people of Israel, which have sinned against you.

Even I and my father's house have sinned.

We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes

and the rules that you commanded your servant Moses.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Father God, thank you for Nehemiah.

Thank you for your d.

Thank you for his willingness to read your word.

I pray, Father, that as we look at this text, we will see Nehemiah's heart.

We will see your heart.

We will be convicted of just the sin that's in our life.

And I pray, Father, that you move during this time.

We ask all these things in your name.

Amen.

Thanks, bud.

Now, we had to do a little work with this because we are not people who now depend on

gates and walls for our protection.

But in this period of human history, gates and walls are as important, if not more important

than a city's army.

See, without walls, a city could not control its own affairs.

And they would really be dictated by outside forces and what occurred in their own city,

in their own province.

See, without walls and without gates, a city would be at the mercy of any group that was

passing through.

Any violent outside forces could just kind of come in and take what they wanted.

And there would be no way to funnel the enemy or directionally challenge that enemy.

This is why Proverbs 25 verse 28 says, a man who does not control his temper is like a

Proverbs 25:28

city whose wall is broken down.

So the Bible is telling us like a man with no self-control is a city with no walls.

They can't control their own affairs.

They are left, unfortunately, to other devices.

Now let me talk to you for a minute about Camden, New Jersey, because you're not going

to vacation there.

Several years ago, Camden, New Jersey had 79,000 residents, most of whom were below

the poverty line.

So impoverished is Camden, New Jersey, the entire police force.

That's not just boots on the ground.

Those are those that are working the desk jobs and answering the phones.

The total police force in Camden, New Jersey was 40.

Only police officers and support team for a city of 79,000 people.

To give you a bit of compare and contrast, the city of Spring, Texas that has nearly

50,000, nearly 25,000 people less than that, far less dangerous than Camden, New Jersey,

has 125 members of its police force, with 86 of those being boots on the ground.

Those that carry the guns and protect.

Camden, New Jersey is a city without walls.

When a city doesn't have walls, when there's no effective police force, when there's no

one to call, right?

Like really the officers are just outgunned and so outman that almost anarchy is occurring

in Camden.

There's one story where somebody had their house broken into.

It was ransacked.

They called the police and the police asked them to take pictures and email it into them.

I mean I can't get my head around that.

911, right?

Somebody just broken into my house.

They ransacked everything.

Oh my goodness.

Are they still there?

No.

Okay, good.

You might just taking some pictures and emailing that into us.

I mean that's a city with broken walls.

I mean that's hard for us to comprehend.

When you hear an eldritch, that's hard for us to comprehend.

Mostly y'all don't even have fences.

The police and eldritch will sometimes knock on your door to let you know your garage door

is open.

That's where we live.

That's our community.

So with that established, I want you to see Nehemiah's response to this.

But by the way, when Hannah and I tells Nehemiah, the people are in great danger and they're

in shame.

Listen, if you've ever been in an environment with an unbelievable amount of poverty and

violence, there's a type of fog that sets over that community.

A type of fog where it feels like you can't get out of.

A type of fog where you give into things that you probably hate just in order to survive.

There's an air of shame that dictates the lives of people.

Look at Nehemiah's response in verse four.

He says, as soon as I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days.

And I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven.

Now let me tell you why that's an odd verse.

Nehemiah hears from Hannah and I that Jerusalem's walls are down and the gates have been burned.

It knocks his knees out from under him.

He sits down and weeps for days about the walls not being there and the gates being

burned down.

Now let me tell you why that's odd.

Nehemiah at this time is the cupbearer to the king of Persia.

He lives in a palace 800 miles from Jerusalem.

What reason would he have to be empathetic?

His role as a cupbearer is to sample the wine and the food of the king to make sure it's

not poisoned among other roles.

He's in a palace living in luxury, drinking the best wine on earth.

Not that little box of blush you have in your fridge.

He's eating food in luxury.

He's safe.

There's no real threat to the Persian Empire at this point in history.

Now in a couple hundred years there's this little startup called Rome.

Things are going to show up and things are going to change but at this point in history

no threats, living a life of luxury 800 miles away with no television to update him, no

Twitter feed for him to watch pictures of his people suffering.

Yet at the news of the state of his people, most of whom he had never met, his knees are

knocked out from under him.

His guts turned and he weeps before the Lord and he begins to fast and ask God to act.

When I began to prepare this six or seven months ago my first thought was is this prescriptive

or is this descriptive?

Is this historical?

Is God just telling me this is what happened?

Is this kind of like when Paul tells a dead guy he's not allowed to be dead?

That's descriptive not prescriptive.

God's not telling me to go to the morgue and try to wake everybody up.

He's just kind of letting me know in history, hey here's what happened.

So I look at this and I'm going okay is this compassion and is this empathy that's burning

in the heart of Nehemiah?

Is that prescriptive or is it descriptive?

Is God just telling me this is what Nehemiah felt or is he setting before me what he wants

my heart to look like?

Now I'm here to tell you whether you're going to enjoy this or not, this is very much prescriptive

and not descriptive.

If you look at the Bible's expectation on us as believers concerning in particular other

believers in Christ, we are to feel and be bothered like Nehemiah is.

Let me read you some of this.

I said earlier that God's view of human flourishing, of thriving, goes against individualism.

In Deuteronomy 16 verse 17, he writes, everyone must appear with a gift suited to his means.

Deuteronomy 16:17

According to the blessing the Lord your God has given you.

See that simple verse once again goes against individualism.

What I mean by that is what the Bible just said in Deuteronomy is that when God blesses,

our response to the blessing of God is not to hoard those blessings and as the Bible

would later say build bigger barns and continue to upgrade and upgrade and upgrade as we are

able but rather to receive and enjoy the blessings of God but understand in all things it's not

10% that God owns, it's 100% that God owns.

We are called to be stewards of the blessings of God.

Those blessings are not to terminate on us but rather be used to bless.

Listen, enjoy God's blessings in your life.

It's not a bad thing to have nice things.

What is a bad thing is a failure to understand and see all that you have been given.

Has been given to you by God.

Their blessings by God and they're not just to terminate on you but rather flow out of

you towards the purposes of God.

This is preferences becoming secondary to the will of God.

This is our understanding that God has been unbelievably gracious to us and that that

should free up your hands to be unbelievably gracious to others.

So as God is painting this picture of human flourishing, he has us focused outward and

not inward.

He has us focused on loving one another, serving one another, not oppressing other people of

caring deeply for the fatherless, having us cared deeply for the refugee, for the alien,

for the stranger, for the impoverished, engaged outwardly, not inwardly.

See I find so often for evangelicals, for those of us that go to church, really where

our head is and where we are spiritually.

We say things like, how are we with the Lord?

How are we doing?

Are we holy?

Are we not holy?

Are we struggling?

Are we not struggling?

You know I wish our church would do this differently.

I wish that we would sing these types of songs.

I wish we didn't have to stand so much, right?

But really the attention of the saint in the Scriptures is not inward but rather outward.

Let me give you one more, Matthew 7 verse 12.

Matthew 7:12

We've kind of distilled it down to the golden rule.

But here's what it says, therefore whatever you want others to do for you, do also the

same for them.

This is the law and the prophets.

So if there's a greater verse to prove we are individualized, it's verses like, do

unto others as you would have them do unto you.

And we kind of twist that, right?

We kind of twist that and instead of pushing it outward we think about us.

Instead of thinking about others we think about us.

So this verse means that we should think, if I lived in Camden, New Jersey, if I was

in Iran, if I was in situations like my brothers and sisters are in, what would I want someone

to do for me?

How would I want them to interact with me?

How would I want them to love me?

We think about that and then we do it.

That's how we're supposed to act.

So as a community of faith we model to the outside world what it looks like to be the

people of God and we walk in the type of flourishing that God would have us walk in.

It is being mindful of the hearts and hangups of others and entering into some very simple

and some very complex ways of being the picture of God with love and compassion for His church

in our presence and in our interaction with those around us.

I think in some ways we do this really well as a church.

But I also think we could do much better at this as a church.

Now if you know anything about Texas A&M, one of the things that the Aggies boast of

is as cultish as they are, what they boast of is they boast of the Aggie network.

And here's what they boast of.

If an Aggie loses his job, if an Aggie gets hurt, the network, the alumni base is like,

hey, we share a border collie and a football team.

We have that in common.

And so we're going to come together and we're going to support our own.

It's called the Aggie family.

If you have the Aggie ring and they're very proud of that Aggie ring, you will get almost

any job you walk into if an Aggie is your superior.

How much more than should the body of Christ love our brothers and sisters than those who

would rally around school colors and a location in which they were educated?

Should we not, as people of God say, there's a network within Cornerstone that cares deeply

enough for its own that will sacrifice, will give way to our personal preference, will

find jobs for them and will care deeply for them, will walk in the long haul with men

and women?

Absolutely, that should be the case.

We should boast about the network that we have as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Okay, so here, I kind of want to answer this question as we begin to close out.

On top of us, caring for others like Nehemiah, what you see happening is that love for one

another spills over the walls once they're repaired.

It spills over the walls to the world around us.

So how do we grow in compassion?

How do we grow in love?

Because the truth is, you can't just flip a switch and begin to feel things deeply.

You can't just flip a switch and automatically start caring for those around us to be moved

forward.

You can't flip a switch to make our preferences secondary to the will of God.

That's not an easy thing to do.

So how do we do that?

Let's look at verse 5.

There's two things here.

And these two things are going to be necessary for us to grow in empathy.

Verse 5, Nehemiah says, and I said, Oh Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who

keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments.

Let your ear be attentive in your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant that I

now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel, your servants confessing

the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you.

Even I and my father's house have sinned.

We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes

and the rules that you commanded to your servant Moses.

Now if you want to thrive, if we want to thrive, if we want to grow in compassion and we want

to grow in empathy for one another and for the world around us, there's two pieces here

that are imperative for our growth.

We have to have a right view of who God is.

Do you see what's happening here in this text?

There's no tangible evidence right now in this point that in this moment that God is

faithful and God is keeping his promises.

They are scattered like the wind all over the ancient world.

They have been exiled out of the land flowing with milk and honey.

But what's Nehemiah's prayer?

You are faithful.

You are good.

You are a covenant keeping God.

You have not abandoned us.

You are here even in our hurt.

You love us.

You will keep your promise.

Nehemiah has a right view of God in this moment.

He's not blaming God.

He's not angry with God.

He understands that his desires are secondary to the will of God.

He understands that what matters most is the will of God.

And sometimes that's not going to make sense to us.

Sometimes we're left with more questions than answers.

Sometimes we just don't have the answers as to why things are happening.

Nehemiah had a right view of God.

That's also coupled not just by a right picture of God but a right picture of us.

Nehemiah, he then begins to confess the sins of Israel.

We have not been faithful.

We have not kept your commandments.

We have not lined ourselves up on how you designed the universe to work.

Then he's like, look at me.

Nehemiah knows himself.

He says, even I and my father's house have sinned against you.

The more elevated you view yourself, the more it will be impossible for you to show compassion.

The easier it will be to find fault in everything else.

If you spend more time complaining about something that you find wrong, more than you

notice the good that is going on around you, you have a wrong view of yourself.

So look right at me.

If you have godly kids because you're awesome and not because God is gracious, then you're

going to have a hard time showing compassion for anybody who has a wayward child.

Because if they would have just done things the way you've done them.

If they would have followed your protocol, if they would have lived their life like you

did, then they would have a godly kid too.

Why didn't they follow your steps?

If you're financially set, and that's not because God has been gracious to you, but

because you've worked and you've earned and you've set yourself apart from somebody else,

instead of feeling indebted to God for His mercy and grace, how impossible is it going

to be for you to show empathy towards someone who is impoverished?

If you are quick to complain about work that is being done around you, but you are unwilling

to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty, you will fail to celebrate someone

using the gifts that God has given them.

See, the more you are the author and perfecter of all things, the more all the blessing of

your life is because of you and not because God has blessed you.

The more it will be impossible for you to show empathy to others who are struggling.

Why?

Because you're awesome.

They should have just done what you did.

That will rot out the soul's ability to be compassionate and merciful.

It will breathe in us indifference that is unacceptable before the Lord.

It will rot out your ability to walk in unity, to walk in love and compassion with one another.

It will create a judgmental harshness among us that God will have nothing to do with.

So my prayer in this message and as we move forward into Nehemiah is that more and more

and more we would feel small and see God as big.

And in that we might find our compassion for others growing.

I just want to ask a couple questions while we have a few minutes of quiet.

If you have found yourself growing indifferent, if you have found in yourself a growing coldness,

maybe you have come into this place and you see that that's what marks your life, a strong

judgmental attitude toward other people, well aware of other people's weaknesses.

Quick to justify your successes as belonging to you and other people's weaknesses belonging

to them.

If that's you, I want you to ask that the Holy Spirit would soften your heart today.

That the Holy Spirit might in mercy grant you compassion and rescue you from the silliness

that you are in right now.

I want to challenge you once again just as we begin to conclude our service that you

not just attend here.

That's not rebuilding the walls.

That is when all is said and done, creating an environment where you won't flourish.

You have not been called to attend church.

You have been called by God to belong to one.

There is no way for us to show one another compassion when we are not known.

In order to be known, preferences have to become secondary and happiness has to be subservient

to joy.

If you want your preferences and happiness, you will never be happy here.

You will never let your weaknesses be known by others and you will try to act and look

perfect.

You will hide your weaknesses and in so doing, it will shrivel up your soul's capacity to

walk in high levels of joy, to walk in high levels of compassion and empathy for others.

So really, one of the litmus tests here can even be in our time together.

Have you entered into a covenant community of faith or are you purposefully just staying

on the outskirts for one reason or another that is more than likely just easier?

It's easier to come in and leave because that's what your preference is.

Or are you entering into the community of faith?

Are you willing to reject your idea of individualism and instead put in the hard work of walking

with others, of loving them, of serving them, of encouraging them and then being able to

receive that same truth?

Have you grown short-sighted in how you see the work of God in your life?

Have you grown short-sighted in how you've seen the work of God in this church, in the

world around us?

Let's confess and repent of that.

We're going to end our service today by doing two things.

Both are commanded by God in Scripture and both are when all is said and done desperately

needed by your soul and mine regardless of how we've come in here.

The first thing is we're going to remember the motivating force for all this.

Our motivation for compassion and empathy can't be a drive-by, guilty sermon.

Our motivation for compassion and empathy, belonging, community, rebuilding walls, pouring

ourselves out for others has to be the compassion we were shown in God rescuing us while we

were still sinners.

The motivating force for our spiritual journey is while we were yet sinners, Christ died

for us.

While we were stuck in the muck and the mire, God reached down with His holy, clean hands

and pulled us out and set our feet on the rock.

That's our motivation.

Our motivation must be the forgiving, saving work of Jesus Christ for those of us who are

in Him.

So we remember that and we confess where we have fallen short.

That's the first thing we're going to do today.

And the second thing, we are going to sing to the Lord.

And I feel like we get confused about what singing is and why it matters.

I want to plead with you not to feel like it's a secondary part to what we do here.

In fact, the Lord commands us to sing to Him.

It's not because He needs to be sung to.

The Bible tells us there are heavenly creatures on repeat in the throne room of God that never

stops saying, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and who is and who is

to come.

It's on repeat right now.

He doesn't need us to sing to Him.

No God has commanded us to sing to the Lord because we need to sing to Him.

Because in singing to Him, God takes what's intellectual.

He takes what we have in our mind and he drives it down into our heart and he connects the

heart with the head and worship as we sing to Him in song.

As we sing what is true about the Lord, what is intellectual is connected to what is spiritual

and emotional.

That's why God says, you sing to me.

You sing to me with joy.

You sing to me loud.

So I want to plead with you.

Not to view it as something secondary and use it as a chance to hurry up and get out

of here.

Rather, take the limited time that God has given you this week to gather together as

the saints and ring out all of it that He can as we're gathered together in corporate community

and as we worship God.

So let me pray for us and then we'll begin to celebrate the compassion of God made available

to us in Christ.

We're going to give Him this time as we confess these things before Him.

As you think through, real quick, as you think through your week, your month, your attitude

over that time has been more about you and your comfort and your preferences and your

desires and you have nitpicked everyone else around you.

They can't do anything right.

And you've made your spiritual journey all about you.

Let's confess that today.

If you have failed to see God work in this church, in your community, in the world around

us, because you've been so consumed by what you want to see, let's confess that today.

Our preferences become secondary.

Our happiness becomes secondary.

And so as a church, can we pursue joy?

As a church, can we pursue empathy and compassion just like Nehemiah?

So let's confess those things to Him today.

You can do that in your seat.

You can do that here at the altar.

I'm going to challenge you though.

I'm going to make you a little uncomfortable.

Yeah, I'm going to do it.

If you are quick to criticize publicly, but fail to confess publicly, you don't have a

right view of who God is.

And I'm just as guilty of that.

It's easy to criticize, isn't it?

It's hard to lay these things before the Lord and lead spiritually, isn't it?

So I'm going to put that before you.

And whatever the Lord does in this time right now, we just walk in obedience.

Let's pray.

Father, I pray right now that as we sing to you, as we sing to you boldly and loudly

and joyfully that your presence, your Holy Spirit would fill this place that you would

speak to our hearts.

Father, help us be like Nehemiah.

Help us walk in compassion.

Help us walk in empathy.

Help us see how you are still working.

Help us see that you are a promise keeping God.

That you provide, that you equip, that you care.

And so Father, we humbly come before you this morning.

And I confess to you that my household has sinned against you.

And I ask you to forgive us.

We have been slow to show empathy.

We have been slow to show compassion.

And that is on me.

And I pray, Father, that you will forgive me.

So God, we hand over this time to you as we sing.

We sing the truth of who you are.

We sing the truth of what you've done.

And I pray, Father, that as we remember and confess that you will be honored in this place,

we ask all these things in your name.

Amen.