God’s Word to the World January-February Sermon Series Kenwood Baptist Church Pastor David Palmer February 21, 2021
TEXT: Ezra 1:1-11
This morning, we reach the end of the historical arc of the Old Testament that began with the baseline story of the Pentateuch, and then Joshua takes us from entering into the land, our experience in the land, the exile, and then, we encounter God's gracious act to restore and to return us to the place of His dwelling. This morning, we look at Ezra and Nehemiah, these two books that take place near the end chronologically of the Old Testament narrative. We are going to look at three kings, two critical archaeological discoveries, and one amazing God. I want to ask you to buckle in, join with me, and stay with me because I am telling you right up front that the first call to action from the sermon is that it is critical that we know our history. It is critical that we know our history, not so we can pass a history exam, not so we can wow people in a game of Trivial Pursuit. It is critical that you know your history, because if you forget your history, you forget your identity. What's at stake in knowing our history is knowing our identity. We come from a people who experience God's grace and power. If we don't know that, then we don't know our God or who we are as His people. So, I want you to remember with me these three kings, two important archaeological discoveries, and one amazing God!
Let's open to Ezra 1. We read: “In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia. . .” This is the Cyrus we met last week, the Cyrus who led the invasion of the city of Babylon and took the city without a fight, diverging the waters of the Euphrates, and Belshazzar's feast collapse in a single night. This is the Cyrus, king of Persia, in his first year, 539 B.C. We read in Ezra 1:1:
“In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the Word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, . . .”
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This is astonishing. It means that God, the God of the Bible, who is Creator, who is Redeemer, who is Covenant Lord, who is righteous Judge, gracious Restorer, is also the King of the kings of the earth—that God stirs up Cyrus, and Cyrus acts. He acts by the prompting of Almighty God. And what does he do? He issues a decree. The Persian king sends a decree in Hebrew that charges people to go back to Jerusalem to rebuild God's house. He sends us back to go to Jerusalem, saying in Ezra 1:3: “Whoever is among you of all His people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the LORD, the God of Israel—He is the God who is in Jerusalem.” Moreover, the king says in Ezra 1:4: “And let each survivor, in whatever place he sojourns, be assisted by the men of his place with silver and gold, with goods and with beasts, besides freewill offerings for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.” God stirs the heart of a Persian king to issue a decree to send us home. It is astonishing to think that God would act in such a way. We discover about this amazing God that we worship this morning that He is in the business of restoration. He is in the business of rebuilding and returning. It seems like an impossible dream. It seems like something that cannot be explained from a human perspective; it seems like a political impossibility. Some might claim that the king of Persia, the leader of a world empire, would never say to God's people, say to us: “Why don’t you go home? Why don’t you rebuild God's house? Whatever people give to you freely, just take it.” It seems impossible.
Our first archaeological discovery is a barrel-shaped clay foundation deposit. It is about the size of an American football, and it is on display in the British Museum. It made a world tour just a few years ago. It stopped in New York, Washington, DC, Houston and Los Angeles and was visited by hundreds of thousands of people in the United States. In a joint work sponsored by the British Museum and the national Museum in Tehran in Iran, the Iranians were given the privilege of asking for one object in the British Museum, and they asked for this object. It was taken to Iran for four months and over a million people came to see it. This barrel-shaped clay foundation deposit was discovered in 1879 in the walls of Babylon. It was written in Babylonian
Page 2 of 12 and was celebrating the reconstruction of the city wall and was deposited there by Cyrus, the king of Persia. When it was discovered in 1879, no one could read it because the knowledge of Babylonian had been lost. That's homiletical suspense because I am going to tell you in just a few minutes how Babylonian was re-understood. The Cyrus Cylinder, when it was translated, revealed a decree of Cyrus, who identified himself as king of the world, who says he had entered Babylon without a fight. Then, Cyrus describes his policy of restoring people to their ancestral lands and rebuilding sanctuaries. This was an object that was placed in Babylon, and so he mentions Babylonian deities and Babylonian sanctuaries, but it's the text of a Persian king written in Babylonian to restore local worship. It's exactly what we see happening in Ezra 1 in the parallel case of our people written in our language. It's a breathtaking departure from standard practice of kings. The decree of Cyrus has influenced generations and societies. This thought of a king to say that “my kingdom will be run in such a way that will allow religious freedom and people to worship according to their ancestral gods” is unprecedented. In fact, this is the reason Thomas Jefferson told his grandson that the first book he should read in Greek is about Cyrus because of the idea of religious liberty and that a society would flourish if people were allowed to worship, even if they worship differently. He said that if they worship freely, that was good for society. Cyrus' approach to society influenced the founding fathers. No European state had managed to build religious freedom and liberty into the structure of their society. In England, they have a state religion, the Anglican Church. In France, there was opposition to all religion, and Thomas Jefferson found in the model of leadership of Cyrus, ancient king of Persia, a model that would actually be good for society. It didn't influence just the founding of the United States. It is also something that greets you when you walk into the building of the United Nations today.
If you walk into the UN building, you see the Cyrus Cylinder, a model of religious freedom as good for society. It has influenced modern Iran. Reza Pahlavi, in his book, The White Revolution of Iran, written in 1967, said that the decree of Cyrus is the first example that we have of basic human rights and religious liberty. It's an immensely important text. It shows the reliability of Scripture. It also explains why my Iranian neighbor, within five minutes into our first conversation of greeting each other, asked me what I think of the Cyrus Cylinder. What do you think of it? It is really important to her. It is important to her because it signals something about society. It also signals something about where she is coming from in terms of modern Iranian politics. It also gave a great open door and a bridge to the God of the Bible, because part of what I think of the Cyrus Cylinder is that it testifies to God's control of history. In Isaiah 45, the Lord names Cyrus by name 200 years before he was born. God spoke in Isaiah 45:1: “Thus says the LORD to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped, to subdue nations before him and to loose the belts of kings, to open doors before him that gates may not be closed:”
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Cyrus is the only non-Israelite to be called the Messiah, His Anointed One. God says: “I am raising you up for this purpose, even though you don't even know Me.” Do you believe this morning in a God who is so powerful that He can direct the hearts of kings who do not even know Him? I do, and I want you to trust Him. That is the bedrock foundation-ground to stand on. So Ezra 1 is consistent with this. Cyrus is our first king. The cylinder is the first object. Let’s keep going.
What you do if God moves the heart of the king of Persia and says: “Go home, rebuild God's house, and whatever people give you to support the work, just take it!” What do you do? Do we need to have a whole set of extended meetings about that? Let me just give you the answer. You go! You go, and a huge number of us went. Forty-two thousand of us walked 900 miles over five months, various ages, diverse clans, bringing our will, our love for God, our memories, the free will offerings of our neighbors, and oh, by the way, Ezra tells us that Cyrus brought out the vessels of the sanctuary that Belshazzar had been partying with last week. He said: “You might need these!” Just to get the visual image of the amount of plunder that Nebuchadnezzar had taken, they brought with them 5,400 vessels of silver and gold for use in the worship service. This isn’t dinnerware. These are the communion trays, 5400 of them, and they walked 900 miles, for five months, and arrive safely. What was the first thing they did? They started with the altar. They rebuilt the altar in Ezra 3:2, and offered offerings. When you want to rebuild your life, the first thing you should do is worship. If you go through a hard season in life, or time of loss or pain or suffering and you want to get back on track, the first thing to do is to rebuild the altar. The first act of reconciliation and restoration is to start with that wellspring of worship – to rebuild the altar of the Lord. They celebrated, and then they laid the foundation of the temple, the house of the Lord, and then they brought in the worship team with symbols and trumpets. They brought in the singers to sing the Psalms responsively: “For God is good and His steadfast love endures forever.” When the foundation stone of the temple was laid, people shouted with joy and other people wept. It was a mixture. Some of those who had seen the Lord's house before it was torn down were weeping.
The text doesn't explain to us fully why they were weeping – if they were weeping tears of joy, if they were weeping tears of God's faithfulness, if they were just remembering the memories of the life they thought they would live, and now had they had come back. These are people who were probably in their 20s when they saw God's house torn down and burned to the ground, and now they are in their 60s, 70s, or 80s, and they’re back in that spot and they cannot hold back the tears. In the Christian life, there is room for rejoicing and room for lamenting. Sometimes when you experience great loss, there can be times when you laugh and times when you cry right next to each other. Some of you know what I'm talking about. These
Page 4 of 12 are both good in the Lord's eyes, and so there is rejoicing and weeping. The foundation of God's house is laid, and everything seems to be going great until the neighbors hear about it.
Some of you live in places where if you just want to add a screened-in porch your house, you have to get approval. Some of you live on land that's your own, and you can build a screened-in porch and who cares? We’re in the middle of a building project here at Kenwood, houses are coming down, but other things are coming up. God is rebuilding and renewing our sacred space here, but we have to get approval from government officials around us, and they granted that. Praise God! This work in the book of Ezra, though, stirred the opposition of their neighbors, and they acted against them and stopped the work, and the people got discouraged. And so, from 539 all the way up to 522 B.C., the work on the house of God stopped. The people around were opposed, and Ezra 4:24 says: “Then the work on the house of God that is in Jerusalem stopped, and it ceased until the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia.”
Here’s king number two. King number one was Cyrus; king number two is Darius. This is not the Darius the Mede in the book of Daniel. This is Darius, king of Persia, and the work stopped until his second year. Darius' first year was a big year. It was so big, in fact, that he wanted everyone to know how big, and this is our second, really important archaeological discovery. Darius picked a large space to communicate. He picked the cliff side of Mount Bisotun. This very large mountain cliff face, Mount Bisotun, is about 5000 feet high. It is overlooking the royal road that connects Echatana and Babylon, a major thoroughfare. You can see in this picture from Google Earth, the young girl in the bottom right-hand corner. She is looking from the royal
road to the mountain, and she is looking in the right spot because if you are standing where she was standing, you would be captivated by what she is captivated by. You would see this large section of the mountain cut out and made flat. It is the largest inscription ever written in old Persian, and it’s big.
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This inscription is fifty feet high and one hundred feet wide, and it’s carved into the cliff face three hundred feet up in the air. It’s like an ancient billboard written in three languages: old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian, and it has a graphic depiction from Darius’ big first year.
After the death of Cyrus and his son, the Persian Empire spun out of control and people revolted. They said: “We don't want to be part of that empire,” and Darius said: “Oh, yes you do!” and he exercised his powers of persuasion with military weapons. There was a man named Gaumata who said: “You know, I want to be king,” and Darius said: “You’re not really the legitimate king.” That's why you see Darius depicted in this relief with his left foot standing on the chest of Gaumata. Not only is he standing on Gaumata’s chest with his left foot, he has roped together into some sort of ancient Persian tug-of-war nine imposters, and then he describes his big first year. These kings had revolted against his rule. He fought 19 battles in his first year, subdued nine kings, brought them into his domain and recorded it. This text is so important because this inscription is the Rosetta Stone for ancient Babylonian and Akkadian. The Rosetta Stone is the most viewed object in the British Museum. People who don't know anything about archaeology or the Bible know about the Rosetta Stone. It is even the name of a great software that can teach you other languages. The Rosetta Stone is important because it is a trilingual inscription. People knew Greek, and it was also written in demotic Egyptian and hieroglyphs, and the Rosetta Stone allowed for the recovery of the knowledge of hieroglyphs which had been lost. This inscription of Darius allowed for the recovery of the knowledge of Babylonian and the cuneiform language. We could not read the Cyrus Cylinder when it was discovered, but this inscription in old Persian allowed for the decipherment. An English scholar, Henry Rawlinson, and an Irish pastor named Edward Hincks figured it out and this whole world of Scripture opened up.
It was a big year for Darius. He had been opposed, and now it's a second year. In his second year, we had been opposed. The work that was happening under the decree of Cyrus was being opposed, and so we sent a message to Darius and said: “What are you going to do about it? Your ancestor said we could rebuild God's house and the people around us are opposed and what do you have to say? Check the public record.” Darius did, and in Ezra 6, Darius checked the public record, he searched in Babylonia in the house of the archives, and he found the documents. They found a scroll, and Ezra 6 preserves the text of it, that Cyrus did issue a decree to go back to Jerusalem to rebuild God's house. He even gives the dimensions of the house, and Darius issues the decree and says: “Go ahead and continue to work.” Then he goes a step further. He not only says for them to continue the work, but in Ezra 6:8, he says:
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“Moreover, I make a decree regarding what you shall do for these elders of the Jews for the rebuilding of this house of God. The cost is to be paid to these men in full and without delay from the royal revenue, the tribute of the province from Beyond the River.” Wow! This would be like the Kenwood Baptist equivalent of having the state government of Ohio saying: “I hear that you're doing something exciting there, how much does it cost?” Are you seeing this? God doesn't only move Cyrus to say: “Go home!” He moves Darius to say: “I’ll write the check!” That’s Who we belong to, beloved! If God is for us, who is against us? Darius in great Persian style says in Ezra 6:11: “Also I make a decree that if anyone alters this edict, a beam shall be pulled out of his house, and he shall be impaled on it, and his house shall be made a dunghill.” Amen! And so we got back to work. We had fresh funding from the government and the house was finished. In Ezra 6:15 we read: “. . .and this house was finished on the third day of the month of Adar, in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king.” This is 516 B.C., so important. God's house was rebuilt, restored. It is so important because the Word of the Lord is fulfilled in this, the Word that He had spoken through Jeremiah. Jeremiah 29:10-11 says: “For thus says the LORD: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you My promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11 is a cherished verse in Scripture. We celebrate it. We remember it. We memorize it. And yet Jeremiah 29:11 is accomplished in the rebuilding of God's house in 516. We have to know our history because we know our identity and the identity of a God who says: “Go back,” and a God who says: “I will pay for it.”
God's house is rebuilt and remade, and brothers and sisters, we have to know our history, because without it we don't know our identity and we don't know the identity of our God. What's so powerful for us in the book of Ezra is that everything we talked about in the first five minutes of the sermon happened before Ezra's life. Ezra doesn't come into his own book until Ezra 7 and our third king. The third king is Artaxerxes. Darius was followed by Xerxes. This is Esther's husband and beyond our scope this morning, but Artaxerxes followed Xerxes. In the seventh year of Artaxerxes, Ezra enters the narrative, in 458 B.C. Ezra comes to Jerusalem in the seventh year of the king. Ezra is identified in Ezra 7:10 as a man who had set his heart to study the Torah, the Law of the Lord, to do it and to teach His statutes and rules in Israel.
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Artaxerxes, the third king in our sermon this morning, issues another decree. It is a decree preserved for us, written in Imperial Aramaic, the global language of the day, and Artaxerxes sends Ezra back to Jerusalem. He says: “Go back, take people with you, return.” He says: “Take the funds that people give you.” We’ve seen that before, and he adds a decree in Ezra 7:21: “And I, Artaxerxes the king, make a decree to all the treasurers in the province Beyond the River: Whatever Ezra the priest, the scribe of the Law of the God of heaven, requires of you, let it be done with all diligence.” Whatever Ezra asks from them, they should give it to him. So, he adds regional support. He even grants tax exempt status to the growing restored community. As great as all that is, let me tell you where my heart just exploded with exegetical euphoria this week. Artaxerxes goes one step farther. It’s good, isn’t it to say: “Go home”? It's good, isn’t it, to say: “I'll pay for it”? It’s good, isn’t it, to say: “Tax-exempt status”? That's all good, wonderful, in fact! But Artaxerxes goes one step further and he tells Ezra: “I want you to teach everyone the Bible when you get there! He says in Ezra 7:25: “And you, Ezra, according to the wisdom of your God that is in your hand, appoint magistrates and judges who may judge all the people in the province Beyond the River, all such as know the laws of your God. And those who do not know them, you shall teach.” This is the God that we serve and worship this morning, the God who meant it when He said the heart of the king is like a watercourse, and He directs it wherever He wants. That is why Ezra 7:27 should be a memory verse. Ezra 7:27 says: “Blessed be the LORD, the God of our fathers, who put such a thing as this into the heart of the king.” Oh, praise the Lord! God is good. He said He would do this. He didn't tell us how He would do it, and He displays His power and His holiness and His righteousness, accomplishing it by moving the hearts of these Persian kings who don't even know Him.
You want to be encouraged this morning? Read Ezra 7. God said: “When you go back, teach everyone the Bible.” Wouldn’t it be great if the government of our city or state said: “I’d really love you to redo that sanctuary there at Kenwood with tax-exempt status. Just make sure that what you do there is to teach everyone the Bible.” So, Ezra went back and he says in Ezra 7:28b: “I took courage, for the hand of the LORD my God was on me, and I gathered leading men from Israel to go up with me.” Beloved, we have a beautiful house here that we’re restoring and renewing and it is a place where we want the Bible to be taught and learned and read, not so we can pass a crash course
Page 8 of 12 on Bible trivia, but so that we know who we are and who God is, and so that more of our neighbors know who God is and what He's like. This is the God we meet in these books of Scripture.
I want to add a brief addendum to complete the narrative arc of these chapters by bringing Nehemiah into the picture. Nehemiah is a contemporary of Ezra, and Nehemiah served at the Persian court. He was there in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes. This is 445 B.C. He was there in the twentieth year, and he served before the king in Nehemiah 2:1: “In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king.” Nehemiah was the cupbearer. To be the cupbearer of the king was a very high security clearance job. You had to know that the cupbearer was loyal to the king, because the cupbearer brings the cup of wine to the king, and the cupbearer tastes it and gives assurance that there's no poison in this wine, and it's got to be someone that you trust. This is a trusted servant of the king. This is what the cup looked like that Nehemiah held. It's a rhyton that would be filled with wine. It's a fancy cup. This cup is actually here in Cincinnati. It's just down the street. It's one of my favorite objects in the Cincinnati Art Museum. It could have been the cup that Nehemiah was holding in this moment. It is right next to some gold dinnerware from Darius, right here. Nehemiah brought the cup in this passage, and his face looks sad. Now, if you're Artaxerxes and your cupbearer comes to you, looking sad, you have a few questions. Are you ill? Are you feeling well? Should I be worried? Is there something that you need to tell me? Nehemiah says in Nehemiah 2:1: “In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence.” The king asked in Nehemiah 2:2: “Why is your face sad, seeing you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of the heart.” Nehemiah was very much afraid. Nehemiah’s sadness was driven by the fact that though God's house had been rebuilt, the city wall and the gates of Jerusalem were still in ruins, and his ancestral home was still so vulnerable. So Nehemiah was vulnerable to Artaxerxes. He said in Nehemiah 2:3: “Let the king live forever! Why should not my face be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers' graves, lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?”
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“Let the king live forever!” This is always the right way to start! Nehemiah, the cupbearer, suspended the privilege and protocol of the Persian court by making known his own personal need. The king of Persia looked at him and asked: “What are you asking for?” Nehemiah says in Nehemiah 2:4: “So I prayed,” and in those few seconds of silence when the king of Persia said: “What you asking for?” Nehemiah drew his breath and prayed in his heart, and he said in Nehemiah 2:5: “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers' graves, that I may rebuild it.” “Dismiss me from the court and send me to rebuild the city.” In those few moments of silence after Nehemiah made his request known, the king replied with a question of his own: “How long will you be gone, and when will you come back?” Artaxerxes trusted Nehemiah, and he asked for letters to be given for his protection, and he asked for letters to be sent to the keeper of the king's forest, that he might receive timber to restore the gates and the walls and to build a palace or house for the governor. In Nehemiah 2:8, we read: “And the king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon me.” Nehemiah came back to Jerusalem and rebuilt the walls and the city gates in fifty-two days. It's an astonishing conclusion. He rebuilt the city wall and the gates that had been torn down, and when we read through the book of Nehemiah, we see that everyone was involved, and they rebuilt them in less than two months.
Beloved, I am encouraged by the God of the Bible who is amazing. I do want you to know those three kings: Cyrus, Darius, Artaxerxes. I do want you to know those two objects, those two discoveries. The Cyrus Cylinder is a great conversation piece at the very least. But it also provokes us to think about how we see society and even how to honor the cultures of our neighbors. I want you to know about the Cyrus Cylinder, too, because it gives us a firm basis yet again for knowing that God's Word can be trusted and is reliable. I want you to know about the Bisotun inscription as well. It's a fantastic monument, but it also shows the importance of the hard work of scholarship to make the world of the Bible speak again. It also shows us that this Persian king, who was so powerful and so victorious in battle, was the same one who issues the decree and says: “I’ll pay for the rebuilding of God's house,” and Artaxerxes who says: “Teach the Bible when you get there.” I want you to know those three kings. I want you to know those two artifacts: the Cyrus Cylinder, the Bisotun inscription. But, above all those things, I want you to know and trust the one amazing God that we have and that we worship. The God we meet in Ezra and Nehemiah is a God worthy of our worship and service.
Let me just apply this in three very concise ways.
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Number one: We have to know our history. We have to know it because it is critical for our identity. Latasha Morrison, who wrote Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation, says: “When we lack historical understanding, we lose part of our identity.” We have to know our history. This is a history that is recorded for generations, multiple languages, on an international scale, and the God that we meet in Scripture invites people to share that history. The history of the Scriptures is the history of God's people, and without it, we really don't know who we are or who God is, where we’ve come from, what we have to celebrate, what we have to lament.
Number two: God works through rulers who do not even know Him. When we get to the New Testament in a couple of weeks, we see God working through Roman emperors and local governors who do not know Him, and this is consistent with what we find. So, our posture towards those in authority is that we pray for whoever is in office at the time. We pray for earthly rulers. We even willingly receive their support in unexpected ways. We also do not hesitate to ask for their intervention in God's cause. We are willing to serve in public office, like Daniel or Nehemiah. There's a whole vision of public service and a relationship as believers to the state that we learn from Ezra and Nehemiah. Know our history and trust that God works through rulers who do not even know Him.
Number three: The God of the Bible is in the business of restoring. That is what we learn in the end. We learn that God is Creator, from Genesis; Redeemer from Exodus; that He is Covenant King, faithful husband through our experience in the land. We learn that He is righteous judge in driving us into exile, and the end of the Old Testament signals to us that the God of the Bible is in the business of restoring. You may be living in a broken place right now – your home, your career, relationships, your finances, your job. You may feel that you've lost your way in this life, but this portion of God's Word teaches us beautifully that the God we meet in Scripture is in the business of returning, restoring, and reconciling. He renews and re-creates, and this note that is signaled in the final stage of the Old Testament points us dramatically towards how this will be fully accomplished in the New Testament. Jesus Christ renews, restores and reconciles. He rebuilds that which is broken. If you have never met Him or trusted Him, do so right now. You can know enough of Him from Ezra to know that He can be trusted. So let's fix our eyes on Him, knowing our history, trusting He's working through those who hold power and knowing that He is at work to renew, restore, rebuild. That's what He does, and He's the only One who can do it. Let's pray.
Lord Jesus, we praise You this morning. We praise You for Your Word which takes us on these extraordinary, vast arcs of history. Lord, thank You for the rhythm of the Old Testament which covers centuries in a breath and yet shows us You in every chapter. Father, I pray this morning
Page 11 of 12 for those of us who have forgotten where we've come from or what You have done, that You would rewrite Your history on our hearts, and that we would make a renewed commitment to You and Your Word. Lord, I pray for us who have felt despair or discouragement and we’re not sure what's happening in the world around us, that You would cause us to plant our feet on solid ground, that You can be trusted and that we can relate to our society and those who hold power in it as we see in Ezra and Nehemiah. Lord, we ask Your forgiveness where we have set limits on what You might do through them, and we praise You. We do pray right now for our local city leaders, for our state leaders, for our national leaders, for those who hold power in different nations in the world, and we pray, Lord, that You would be merciful to them and that You would use them to advance Your kingdom, willingly or even unwillingly. Father, we ask now that You would be at work in the broken places in our souls, for the broken places where we need You and You alone to rebuild, would You rebuild? Lord, where we have grown estranged would You cause us to return? In the places, Lord, where we feel deep sadness, would You restore Your joy? We thank You, Lord God, for Your mercy. Your mercy is strong; it is new. Your mercy, Lord, renews us and rebuilds and restores us, and so we rightly praise You for Your mercy and your kindness You have shown to us in Jesus Christ.
In His Name we pray. Amen.
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