Nehemiah 8

We have constant access to you in that you take care of all of our needs. I pray as John speaks through your word this evening that we would glean something from it to apply to our lives this week in your name I pray Amen. All right. All right.

Hey, if you have bottles open up to Nehemiah, Nehemiah, it's in the Old Testament. We're going through this series in the book of Nehemiah just looking at how God uses people to build his church. It's a timely message for our church in the season of the life of our church because we are doing something that's similar to Nehemiah. Nehemiah went into a place that needed someone to come in and to remind people that of the passion and purpose and love that they could have in God and their identity in God.

And he comes to the people in Jerusalem that had been broken down. The walls are broken down. The gates are burning. It is a mess.

People are scattered everywhere. And he has this vision to see God's people ignited for passion for him. A passion to serve him and to love him and to continue just to proclaim his name to the world. And so this is his vision.

I'm not unlike us. Right? This is our vision to come to DC and to plant a church that loves Jesus, wants to serve him, wants to worship him, but also wants to build community around us. We've been looking at how Nehemiah wasn't just focused on building walls.

He was focused on building a community. So you see him looking and caring for the poor in their community. You see him working the kind of ministry aspects of the church, making sure that we're actually building healthy people, right? Not only spiritually, but also emotionally.

We see this throughout the book of Nehemiah. And so far in this book, what we've seen is Nehemiah, the words, the attack of opposition. We saw him how he handles opposition and how he trusts in the Lord, even when people have it out for him. We saw how he handles attack from inside.

Right? He's inside people who are trying to tear down Nehemiah's vision for this people. It was even church people that were trying to tear down Nehemiah's vision. And so we saw how he took care of that.

We saw in taking the care of physical needs of the poor that if you're going to be the church, you need to take care of the community around you. That's a mandate for God's people taking care of those around us. Then in verse chapter seven, which we haven't covered yet, we're going to skip it. We're just going to go to chapter eight because all it is is a chapter about how he organizes the people.

And here's the important lesson for us. Just straight off up front is this. Nehemiah has to, if the word attached to other people, he has to take care of the physical needs of the people. He has to organize the people before he can actually start to work on the spiritual aspect, the spiritual growth of the people.

See, sometimes just right there, very funny is sometimes God gives you a vision or a goal or something he wants to see accomplished in your life. And it's not the next step for you. Sometimes you have to take other steps in between to get there. And so Nehemiah, even though he has this grand vision of restoring the spiritual health and love and vitality for God, he has to first take care of some other things.

All right? And so I'm not just a free lesson at the very beginning that sometimes you just got to do things in order and sometimes the thing that God wants you to do, there's a couple steps you've got to take and work for you to get there. But what we have here in chapter eight in Nehemiah is a six-hour church service. It's a long service.

I spent a couple weeks in the Caribbean one time with the admissions trip and we went to a church service. And you know, this in Caribbean, church service is a lot different than Western services, right? We like to be out in like an hour and 15 at the most, all right? I was at the church service for four and a half hours.

All right? It was wrong people. And so this, they know how to worship really good and they know how to worship the Lord. And sometimes it was just 30 minutes of reading scripture.

It was really a great time of worship. But it was wrong, okay? And something that we learned in seminary, first they have sermon delivery classes this, a good one hour sermon can feel like 15 minutes and a bad 15 minute sermon can feel like an hour. And apparently it was good this day because they lasted six hours in Nehemiah.

But here's the deal, Nehemiah is now starting to switch. He's trying to, he's starting to transition now to the spiritual growth of his people. He's dealt with organizational issues. He's dealt with the nays, right?

He's even now completed the well fully, right? The physical things that needed to happen. He has taken care of the people. And now he finally gets to see that beautiful moment where there starts to be spiritual growth, that the longing that he had to see his people on fire for the Lord, are wanting to worship him and have a zeal for him is now starting to, he's going to start seeing the first fruits of this.

Now, this is really important because, you know, when we talk about our church, you know, and I've been doing this for a long time, we've been in church planting for over two years. And it's the small evidences of God working that keeps us going. It's seeing people come to know Jesus and seeing addictions breaking and seeing people grow in the relationship with Jesus. That's what keeps us going continually to serve the Lord.

And for me and my, this is what he needs. It's been a tough road for eight chapters, right? He said people try to kill him. People try to win his credibility.

He's gone through some deep stuff here. And now he's at a point where God's going to give him a small little glimpse of those, that little evidence that he's working. And sometimes it's all we need when we have been given a vision from God, when we're going through a really tough spot in life, recognizing those little victories, right? Those little evidences of God's grace working in your life can be the very thing that keeps you moving even in the most difficult of times.

And so, me and my is about to see this here. Here's what he's trying to do is Nehemiah is trying to restore and renew their love for God in chapter eight. That's what he's trying to do. And if there's a main point for today, here's the main point that we're going to be breaking down.

It's this, renewing our love for God is grounded in God's truth. It's rooted in our reception of God's word. It's expressed through our worship and it's cultivated in our celebration. All right.

So let's break that down a little bit. That's what we'll get. Chapter eight, verse one. All the people came together as one in the square before the Watergate and they told Ezra the teacher of the law to bring them out the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded for Israel, verse two.

So on the first day of the seventh month Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, which was made up of men and women and all who were able to understand. He read it aloud from day break until noon, about six hours as he faced the square before the Watergate and the presence of the men, women and all who can understand. Let's just stop there. First point is this, renewing our love for God is grounded in God's truth.

The people gathered and asked Ezra to read the law. Now, I love this because Nehemiah on one hand, he recognizes that, hey, I'm the governor, I'm the political organizer here. I need somebody who's able to teach the scripture. So he says, Ezra, the priest, I need you to come out here at the law.

I need you to teach his God's word. Now, it's really interesting that some people believe that the book of Ezra, which you'll find right in the before the book of Nehemiah, they used to believe that that was actually one full story as Ezra and Nehemiah put together. That is one full story, but for editorial sake to make it easier to find stuff, they split it apart. But this is one of the things where the story of Ezra and the story of Nehemiah are all intermingled in Nehemiah.

So listen, I've done my job, right? I've built, I am getting the people ready, but I am not able to do this. I need the priest. I need Ezra to come out and bring the law.

Now, if you need a Christianity, the law that this time was considered the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, the books written by Moses. Now, it's interesting here that we see in verse 1 that they read it from dawn until noon, but the amount of authority that they gave to this book. And here's why. Some people like to say that the Pentateuch or parts of this particular part of the Bible was added much later on and that it couldn't have been, like they wouldn't have seen it as authoritative.

And yet what we have clearly here in Ezra and some other places is that they really believed that this was the word of God. They believed what we call authority of Scripture. They believed that this was God's inspired word, right? This is the word that he inspired his people to live by.

And that is extremely, extremely important because today we live in a day where people say, well, the Bible, we don't know if he can really count it as authoritative. And what I want you to see here in a second is this, that if we do not believe that the Bible is authoritative, so what I mean is this, if we believe that our opinions are greater than the Bible's, then why are we actually sitting here? The only way this makes sense that we worship Jesus and try to glean wisdom from his word is if we believe that this is actually God's words to us. It doesn't make sense to do this if we just think this is another book, right?

I know our self-help book. It just doesn't make sense. But if we might point a little bit more, Jesus believed that the whole entire scriptures was authoritative. Look at Matthew 17 and 18.

Do not think that it came to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill it, for truly I say to you until heaven and earth passed away that the smallest letter or storage will pass from the law until art is accomplished. So here's the deal. Even if you don't want to look to the rest of the New Testament, they talk about how God's word is inspired, which the New Testament clearly talks about that on the 2nd Timothy.

Jesus himself says, I believe that the word of God, that the Bible of scriptures is authoritative. And when he says, I didn't come to get rid of it, right? I didn't come to kick the law out. I came to fulfill it to give you a more complete understanding of what the Old Testament is pointing to, namely his sacrifice on the cross.

And so what we have here is Jesus saying that he believes that the Bible is the inspired, the scriptures are the inspired word of God. Now, I notice there's a common trend today in Christian culture to say, well, I follow Jesus. I don't follow the Bible. And I'm working on that.

Yeah, we follow Jesus, right? We follow him completely. But we must follow the Jesus that is described in God's authoritative word. If we're making up our own Jesus, because we don't believe that parts of the scripture are inspired when others aren't, then we're just fashioning a Jesus that we want to fashion together.

Oh, I want to Jesus that says, this is okay, that this is okay, that this is okay, I want to Jesus that says that, you know, I don't really have to change beliefs or passions or desires in my own life when I come and follow him. Oh, I want to follow Jesus that says he doesn't demand anything from me after I give my life to him. And the problem is scripture tells us that a Jesus that the Bible describes is one who died on the cross for us, gave up his life, so that we are passions and our desires and our purposes will align with his. That's the Jesus of the Bible that the Bible describes.

And so it's really important that what we believe, if you want to renew our hearts and our love for God, we must believe that God speaks to us through his inspired word. Again, if you're new to Christianity, what this means is this, we believe the Bible is inspired by God, which just means is that God used human beings through their personalities, right? He uses their personalities. He uses unique writing styles that the writers use, right?

He uses all those things, but he does it, the viny influencing them in a way that is the very word of God. So that's what we describe as how God came about to write the Bible. So if somebody asks you, did God write the Bible or did humans write the Bible? It's a very complex question because God used humans and their personalities and their small nuances in the way that they write.

He used all those things, but he inspired it in such a way that it was his words. And so when we come to scripture, we have to recognize that if we want to renew our love for God, we must do what these people did and hold God's word as authoritative. We are just really trusting in our own opinions. You may feel emotion for God, but true emotion comes from, and true love for God comes from a true knowledge of who he is.

And God had given us, he could have communicated us in multiple different ways, right? He could have brought an angel down, he could have written in the sky, he could have done all sorts of ways to communicate who he is. Yeah, he chooses to do it through God's word, through scripture, through the Bible. It's a pretty amazing thing.

So if you want to renew our love for God, we have to be grounded in God's truth and recognize that the Bible is authoritative, that it is what we consider God's word to us. Second thing we do is renewing our love for God as we need to root it in the reception of God's word. It's not, it's one thing just to say, yeah, I believe this is God's word. But we actually have to hear it, right?

And make it a part of our lives. And so that's what he says here at the end of the verse three, three beat. And all the people listened attentively to the book of the law. Do you ever notice that having ears does not guarantee that you actually hear somebody?

Everything about that. I think the greatest example is this, if you're married, or you know, like how many times has Amber been talking and then she's like, what do you think? I'm like, huh? Right?

Like I'm not listening, all because I've got ears doesn't mean that I'm actually attentively listening to her. And so that's why Jesus and the gospel often says he who has ears to hear that I'm here. He says, take care how you listen for whoever has to him shall more be given and whoever does not have, even what he thinks he shall shall be taken away from him. So if the Bible contains a very words that God himself is saying to us, then we should certainly want to listen, right?

So if the Bible is the word of God, is his love letter, right? The words that he's trying to speak to us so that we can know him better, that we should actually try to listen. And so these people in the on the on eyes they said, please keep reading, right? Ezra brought the scroll out.

He's reading God's word. Even three hours into people say, please give us more. We want to know more about who God is from his own mouth. We want to know what he has to say about himself.

And so that is what we see here. My biggest pet peeve in ministry, particularly when it comes to youth ministry, is when people tell me, well, I don't feel God or I don't know him or it feels like God is hiding or something. And my first question is just this. Have you read God's word lately?

And normally they say no. Listen, you cannot understand God fully or know God, right? When we're going to go and know fully because he is far greater than us, but you will never even begin to know who God is if you're not reading God's word. You may be able to see evidences of God in the world.

You may be able to see a sense that and God is a beautiful creator and artist, right? You may be able to see a mountain. I think that's huge. I wonder how big God is.

So there are some things that we can look at the world and understand who he is, but it is just in a finite amount. When we look at God's word, we get to see a greater picture of who God is. He's not only bigger than a mountain, right? He's bigger than a universe, right?

There's no size limited to who God is. He's not just we can feel the love right as fathers. We can feel the love of our fathers. The best father in the world can love us tremendously and that would still only be a fraction of how much God loves you.

And we go to the scriptures to understand what blinks that God would go because of his love for you. You see how scripture helps us to see more of who God is better than anything else in this world. So we must go to God's word. We must listen.

We must have a position where we say, you know what God? This is your word and I'm here to listen. I think oftentimes what we try to do is go to God's word and make it say things that it's not meant to say. And so where we go and say, you know what God, you know, we twist it when we're in it.

It's taking a verse and twisting it to our own means. But the other way we kind of do this is we go to God's word and just say, you know, I don't think that's what you mean by that. And I'm going to find another interpretation of this so I can continue doing what you want me to do or what I want to do. And equally those are just offenses against God because God says, I'm giving you this word to understand.

Understand who I am. By the way, that's why it's important that when we study God's word, what we do is we try to study it so that we understand who the author is and who the audience is. We try to understand. Okay, what did the author mean when it was inspired by God?

What did he mean? So that when I get up here, I'm not just telling you my opinion, right? When I get up here, I want to be able to do so much work where I can say, listen, God's word says if you want to love him passionately, if you are draining in the love area between your relationship and God's start with God's word, find the passion for God's word like Nehemiah's people did right there. They were soaking in God's word and they couldn't get enough of it.

I've been loved if by the end of this time together, you said, please keep going for another six hours. That would be amazing. I won't do that. It would be amazing.

It would really be beautiful. So we must listen. Listen, the depth of your love for God will never exceed the amount we listen and follow him. You cannot expect to grow in your relationship with God if you're not learning about who he is and following him according to the Bible.

It's just impossible. Let's see the next thing that we see here. Look at the first five. Ezra opened the book.

All the people could see him because he was standing above them. And as he opened it, the people also, let's just stop there for a second. This is not a part of the main point. We're back in the day.

I'm a history buff, so this is a history thing. Back in the day that you see design churches so that the pulpit was really high up. So if you haven't been in an older church, like I really meant even around 1700 still, there are barely any churches and a pulpit would be at least five, ten feet raised. And the reason why was because they wanted to make sure everyone knew that it was not man's opinion that they were listening to, but it was God's word.

That God's word was above everything. Even man comes out. Even there's some people that say that there's a shelf. Even about that, that they put the Bible on and the person reading it had to be below the Bible.

That's how much they wanted to show people through their actions that God's word was, but that's just a cycle. So it is right above everybody right here. And he says, praise the Lord, the great God, and all the people who lifted their hands and responded, Amen, Amen, then they bowed down and worshiped the world with their faces to the ground. And then just means an agreement.

We're agreeing with one another. And so they hear God's word and they say, Amen, I'm agreeing, that's who God is, right? We're agreeing with scripture about this. And so when you're praying by the way and you say, Amen, what you're doing is saying, I'm agreeing with one another, right?

With what we just prayed about, we're all agreeing that this is what we want to ask God for. But then he bowed down and wished the Lord with their faces on the ground. Here's the point, all the meaning we've got is expressed through our worship. See, worship is the outpouring of our gratitude and love we have for God for what he has done.

Here's the deal, you can have the most passionate, emotional worship session of your life. But if it is only powered by the depth of your own human heart and disconnected from a deep love and appreciation for God, you're not worshiping your acting. So sometimes we can like the emotional aspect of worship and it is a good thing. I think God can use those emotions to help us connect with him.

God's an emotional God, he created us as emotional creatures. However, that must be grounded in who God is. We can't worship God if we don't know who he is. Where we worship God with a false perception, if we just decided this is who God is and then we, it's not in scripture, we don't know if it's not when it got us to worship him for that.

That'd be just weird, right? Worshiping God for a characteristic that he actually says, you know, maybe just be weird. So worship and worship can be done here. Look at this.

It's a human heart expressing gratitude. So worship can be a journal entry, the moral of your seat or read. But if it's an expression of your outpouring of the grace and love of God, then that's worship. I'm praying that God uses our church to worship in many ways.

So like for example, if you write poetry, where I pray that the Lord would use poetry for worship, write poems, right? Use poetry to glorify God and who he is. Or there's just one example of the way that God can use our giftings to worship him. If it's done out of an appreciation and law for God, that's why I love when sports players give all the glory to God, right?

They recognize that it's not their abilities, but it's, you know, God giving these gifts so that they can use that platform to worship him. That's a beautiful thing. And so we can use that as well. Look at verse 9, then the M.I.

The governor, Ezra the priest and the teacher of the law and the Levi's who instructed the people said to them all, this day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep for all the people who had been weeping as they listened to the words of the law. They're just not only noticing in verse 9, they had an emotional reaction to the law. Now, if you've ever read the law, guys, it's not that thrilling.

Okay, it's brilliant. Don't need shellfish. Don't wear mixed cottons, right? It's just like super boring, to be honest with you.

It's not boring, it's God's words. But it's one of those things where it doesn't really strike emotion. That's what I'm trying to get at, right? It doesn't make you weep, right?

But here's the beauty of it. What they had done in that moment and the reason why they were weeping, because I think they realized that they could never obtain God's law. See, the difference between Nehemiah's day and our day is that we have the finished story of Jesus coming on the cross. And when he says, I didn't come to get rid of it, I came to fulfill it.

He says, guess what? My sacrifice on the cross fulfills the law. If it fulfills it, for you. So you don't have to avoid all that stuff and do all this stuff in the Old Testament, because Jesus has died for you on the cross.

So if you have a beautiful picture, if you have a beautiful Jesus who does that for us, but imagine you're a Nehemiah's day and they're reading these laws over and over and over again. And you're thinking to me, how can any person not do this, right? How can anybody obtain this type of life with another breaking the law and they realize as people, not only have they sinned against God, but as individuals they've sinned against God, and then they realize the distance that it's caused between them and the God and they realize, man, something needs to be done and they start to weep. See, in this moment, they have a right view of who God is, and they have a right view of who they are.

They offended God. They sinned against God, and now they're separated from Him. And they're asking the question, well, what can I do to make it right? And they're weeping.

But I love Nehemiah's response, verse 10, go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks. And send some of those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve for the joy the Lord is our strength.

The Levites calmed all the people saying, be still. But this is a holy day. Do not grieve. Then all the people went away to eat and drink and to celebrate with great joy because they now understand the words.

They now understand the words that have been made known to them. So the last point is this, renewing our love for God is cultivated in our celebration. See, they're grieving over their sin, and that is a good thing. It is a good thing to grieve over our sin that we have sinned against God.

We should be saddened that we are the cause or the reason why we can't have a relationship with Jesus. However, I think many churches like to keep people in their state of grief and fear. When scripture tells us that when we ask we should grieve over our sin, we should celebrate. We should celebrate because Jesus has come.

We have the full picture. We know that Jesus came to time to cross for us to reconnect us back to God. That when we were the reason why we were separated, he steps in and our place. His place, right?

Our cross, he comes, takes our place, and now we can have a relationship with God again. And then it's a beautiful feeling that happens. So that's why Nehemiah says, and they go and enjoy this food. Because there has been preparations made.

There is a way for you to be having a relationship with God. He says rejoice. Listen, on your worst day, if you're a follower of Jesus, on your worst day, you can rejoice because God loves you. And God has accepted you not because of anything you've done just because he loves you.

Your worst day, what this means is this. You can be the most unattractive, untalented, ungifted person in the world. You can have no friends to aid you, no family to comfort you, no job to support you. You can have the tallest obstacles in your way and the deepest valleys where all your anxieties wait, and still you can rejoice because God has made a way for you.

Because God has made a way for a relationship with God, with him. And that's why he says, do not mourn and do not grieve. Why? Because the Lord is our strength.

We can rejoice because of our weakness and our sin. God shares his strength to the world. I mean, we were in that state. God sent Jesus, his one and only son, to die on the cross for us.

He lived that perfect life. He lived the Old Testament law. Where everyone else said, how can we accomplish this? How can we meet this criteria in order to be saved?

You ever wonder if God said a criteria if you just did everything perfect, you can go to heaven? Yeah, do the Old Testament. The problem is it cannot be done except for one, and that is Jesus, the Son of God. He fulfilled.

He completed that law to bring in a new law of love and grace in our lives. But it doesn't stop there. It doesn't stop just from addressing what God has done. We celebrate also, look in verse 10, because we can send those who have nothing prepared.

Celebrating what God has done in our own lives, but also celebrating it with others. I love this because he says with people who have nothing prepared, people who are ignorant of what's happening. They don't know what's going on. They're not a part of this group, and yet Jesus says, go and celebrate with them.

What this means is he's telling us, listen, you need to go and you need to love your community. You need to go and share the message of Jesus and celebrate what God has done in your life with the world around you. But you also need to take care of the needs of those that are around you. Listen, I hope that has been changed by Jesus, seeks the welfare of those around them.

A Christian who does not care for his fellow man does not follow Christ, but he follows himself. So what Nehemiah is sharing here is this, because of what God has done, we should be the most gracious people. We should be the most celebratory people. Even on our worst day, our actions should look different from people who don't have a relationship with Jesus.

When they have their worst day, where do they go to? May they go to their parents or bank account or self-help books or anxiety things. We look at them and say, where are you going to? And in our worst day, we say where do we go to?

We go to God. There should be, you know, those things are good. I'm not trying to negate the positive influences that books can have and even medication can have. What I'm trying to share is that if that is what we're building our life upon, to give through life, we're going to have a very unsatisfied life that is not going to be very celebratory.

But if we build our life on Christ, build our life on who God is, and we go to Him and those things come up in our life, we can rejoice even on our worst day, because at the end of the day, we know that God has saved us from our sin and has called us a son and daughter. That is a beautiful, beautiful thing. So here's your homework for this week. I want you to job down one spiritual goal that you can work on in response to one of these four areas.

Maybe for you, you need to prioritize God's truth in your life. Maybe you go to a lot of different avenues in order to figure out what to do. And maybe you just need to prioritize reading God's word. That might be a good goal.

Maybe you're someone here who you just need to hear God's word. You may know it, but you may not be reading it. Or maybe you've been kind of closed off because you don't want to welcome the change that's going to happen when you open yourself up to the whole spirit to working in your life. Maybe you just have to have an honest conversation with God and say, I have been following you, but I've been closing myself off from the change that you want to see in my life.

And you've got to have an honest conversation with Him and say, God, I want to open myself. I want to hear. Maybe you learn from you on how you want my passions to change and my goals to change and my desires to change as a result of following you. Maybe somebody says, you know what?

I need to worship. I need to worship better. I need to use my gifts and talents to worship God. Maybe it's in the workplace.

Maybe it's here at church. Maybe you find a place around the area to use your gifts to worship God to show that little gratitude. Maybe it's as simple as starting a journal and praising God. No one's ever going to see that except for you.

But even in that, God knows how much of a worship expression that is. And maybe it's celebrating. Maybe you're someone here who has just been defeated. You're thinking of past sins that have separated you from God.

You have haven't forgiven yourself. You haven't forgiven other people. You haven't forgiven other people. And you're just not celebratory.

There's no celebration in your heart for what God has done. Don't lose out on the fact that yes, you have sin against God, but God made a way and we can celebrate. It reminds me of the swear of the prodigal son. What happens when the younger son comes back home?

What do they do? They celebrate. We should celebrate when there's life change. We should celebrate in our own lives what Jesus has done because that's what he calls us to do.

So what ways do you need to celebrate what God has done in your life? Well, if you've given your life to Jesus and you follow him, they've never been baptized. How can you use your giftings to worship Jesus in your everyday and in the church? What distractions do you need to limit from you hearing God in your life?

What ways do you need to make time to read God's Word? These are all practical things that you can do as a result of the importance of God's Word. I love this because Nehemiah is about to, you know, in a future, he's going to enter some difficult waters. And I really believe for him God's Word pays a pivotal role in what God's going to accomplish in the book of Nehemiah.

When we lose our focus on God's Word, we lose everything because that's just human opinion. We must be grounded. We must cultivate worship. We must follow Jesus as a one described in the Scriptures, over-lost.

We're completely lost. Let's pray. Lord, we love you. We're grateful.

We're not really afraid that this would be a moment that we would just understand just how important your Word is. I wish I could be there to see thousands of people gathering when the book of the law came out. They weren't worshiping the law. They weren't worshiping the book.

They were worshiping the Creator, the one who says that, that he cared for them and that he loved them tremendously. I would love to see people who were far off from God that day, just emboldened with the passion for what God could do in their life if they just submitted their life to him. He got six hours they read. You're a word to them.

It's beautiful. But what's even greater is that today we have the fulfillment of that. We get to read the New Testament. We get to read the story of Jesus and how he died on the cross for us.

Father, we get to look back at the Old Testament. We get to see how it's been pointing to Jesus all along. And that's where our confidence comes into living this life. Father, may we not fashion a Jesus from our own opinions, but we would go to your Word that is true.

That we would love what you love. We would believe that what you say is harmful to us. Father, we believe it's harmful to us when we stay away. Lord, when you say something with benefit, Lord, I pray we just get our hands on whatever that is that we can benefit from this life that you've given us.

But Lord, I know that there are people that come in and go in mercy, who don't have a relationship with you. And Father, every week I just ask that you would just show at least one person that your love is greater than their sin and that they can put their faith in you. If I didn't be looking at someone in here who hasn't given their life to Jesus, but says, you know, I want to follow Jesus. I want that relationship with God.

That's what you would just raise your hand so we can be praying for you and help you next steps. Lord, we're grateful for you. We're grateful for your sacrifice on the cross. Lord, let's celebrate and worship who you are to us.

When we are far off, you came to save us. What a beautiful, beautiful thing. God, thank you for Father's. Thank you that you have given us them.

Father, I know not many of us have had, some of us haven't had good relationships with others. Where they have failed, what I pray you would come in and show them, the love and affection of a true Father. And Father, for those of us who may have good fathers, what I pray that you show us is how more amazing God is as a Father. Lord, we thank you.

We do thank you for those of us who try to leave a legacy for your glory. And just say my pray. Amen.