Gracious God, our hearts renew. Make our spirit right and true. Father, we thank you that you have not cast us off away from you, but Father, have brought us and gathered us even now in your presence. that Father, we would take heed of our lives and of our hearts and of how we have lived before you. Perhaps not in a grievous way like Judah in times past, but Father, you know us and you know our hearts. And we pray, Lord, that as you tell us your will, as you confront us with our sins, whatever those may be, that we would take heed, that we would confess them to you, that we would turn away from them and turn to you, the God of our salvation. Work in us such repentant, obedient hearts, Father, that only you can bring about. And we, Father, entrust our lives to you. In Jesus' name, amen. Here are the word of the Lord. While Ezra prayed and made confession, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, a very great assembly of men, women, and children gathered to him out of Israel, for the people wept bitterly. And Shekinah, the son of Jehiel, of the sons of Elam, addressed Ezra, We have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land. But even now there is hope for Israel in spite of this. Therefore, let us make a covenant with our God to put away all these wives and their children, according to the counsel of my Lord and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God. Let it be done according to the law. arise, for it is your task, and we are with you. Be strong and do it.' Then Ezra arose and made the leading priests and the Levites and all Israel take oath that they would do as had been said. So they took the oath. Then Israel, Ezra withdrew from before the house of God and went to the chamber of Jeholhanin, the son of Eliashib, where he spent the night neither eating bread nor drinking water, for he was mourning over the faithlessness of the exiles. And a proclamation was made throughout Judah and Jerusalem to all the returned exiles that they should assemble at Jerusalem, and that if anyone did not come within three days by order of the officials and the elders, all his property should be forfeited, and he himself should be banned from the congregation. of the exiles. Then all the men of Judah and Benjamin assembled at Jerusalem within the three days. It was the ninth month on the 20th day of the month, and all the people sat in the open square before the house of God, trembling because of this matter and because of the heavy rain. Ezra the high priest stood up and said to them you have broken faith and married foreign women and so increased the guilt of Israel Now then make confession to the Lord the God of your fathers and do his will Separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign wives Then all the assembly answered with a loud voice it is so we must do as you have said and but the people are many, and it is a time of heavy rain. We cannot stand in the open, nor is this a task for one day or for two, for we have greatly transgressed in this matter. Let our officials stand for the whole assembly. Let all in our cities who have taken foreign wives come at appointed times, and with them the elders and judges of every city, until the fierce wrath of our God over this matter is turned away from us. Only Jonathan, the son of Asahel, and Isaiah, the son of Tikva, opposed this, and Meshulam and Shabbatai, the Levite, supported them. Then the returned exiles did so. Ezra, the priest, selected men, heads of fathers' houses, according to their fathers' houses, each of them designated by name. On the first day of the 10th month, they sat down to examine the matter, and by the first day of the first month, they had come to the end of all the men who had married foreign women. Now there were found some of the sons of the priests who had married foreign women, Maaseah, Eliezer, Jareb, and Gedaliah, some of the sons of Jeshua, the son of Josedek, and his brothers. They pledged themselves to put away their wives, and their guilt offering was a ram of the flock for their guilt, of the sons of Emer, Hanani, and Zebediah, of the sons of Haram, Maaseah, Elijah, Shammaiah, Jehiel, and Uzziah, of the sons of Pasher, Eli-o-ni, Maaseah, Ishmael, Nethanel, Josabath, and Elasa. Of the Levites, Josabath, Shimei, Keliah, that is, Keliah, Pethahiah, Judah, and Eliezer. The singers, Eliashep, of the gatekeepers, Shalem, Telem, and Uri, and of Israel, Of the sons of Parash, Ramiah, Isaiah, Malchijah, Mijamin, Eliezer, Hashabiah, and Benaiah. Of the sons of Elam, Mataniah, Zechariah, Jehiel, Abdi, Jeremoth, and Elijah. Of the sons of Zatu, Eliol, Einai, Eliashib, Mataniah, Jeremoth, Zabid, and Aziza. of the sons of Bebi were Jehohanan, Hananiah, Zabbi, and Athli. Of the sons of Bani were Meshulam, Malik, Adai, Jashub, Sheol, and Jeremoth. of the sons of Paheth, Moab, Adna, Kelal, Benea, Measea, Mataniah, Bezalel, Biniwai, and Manasseh, of the sons of Haram, Eliezer, Eshiah, Malkijah, Shimea, Shimeon, Benjamin, Malik, and Shemariah, of the sons of Hashem, Matanai, Matata, Zabid, Eliphelet, Jeremiah, Manasseh, and Shimei, of the sons of Bani, or Bani, Maadai, Amram, Uel, Benaiah, Bedea, Keluhai, Benaiah, Merimot, Eliasheth, Matanai, Matanai, Jaasu, of the sons of Binuai, Shimei, Shalamiah, Nathan, Adiah, Machnadabai, Shashai, Shariah, Azarel, Shalamiah, Shemariah, Shalom, Amariah, and Joseph, of the sons of Nebo, Jael, Betathiah, Zebed, Zebina, Jadai, Joel, and Benaiah. All these had married foreign women, and some of the women had even born children. Amen, thus far the reading of God's holy and inspired word. Our gracious God has been merciful to his people. And by way of review, don't lose sight of where we have been in Ezra. God has returned his people Judah back to the land, to the land of their ancestral forefathers. And he has given them strength and leadership to rebuild not only the altar where sacrifices were done, but to build the temple where God's worship had been held But after the altar and the temple had been rebuilt, what about the people themselves? What about the heart of Judah? It is here, you see, that we see that not only the altar and the temple have to be rebuilt, but the people themselves have to be rebuilt. Because they have gone astray, they have sinned greatly and grievously against God. And the question we ask ourselves that God asks you this afternoon is simple, but it's this. When the Lord Jesus confronts you with your sin, what do you do? When the Lord Jesus Christ comes to you in his mercy and in his grace, because it is a gracious thing to have the Lord come to us and speak to us, but when he does so, to confront you with your sins, what do you do? When your conscience is pricked by the Spirit of God, when your sin lays exposed to yourself in the light of God's Word, when God describes you to yourself, do you deny? Do you redirect? Do you play dumb? Are you like Psalm 32 verse nine, like a donkey or an ox or a brute animal who doesn't have understanding, that refuses to be sensible, that doubles down on their error? And they won't ever obey unless you whip them and coerce them by force. The Bible says, don't be like that, but rather receive the grace of God. The grace of God that shows you your sins, the grace of God to confess your sins to God and to turn away from them. Receive God himself, whose gracious character is the basis of our repentance. And you see, it is this person, the person who receives the grace of God, who confesses his sins and turns away from them, who will receive God's forgiveness and God's mercy and the renewal of the Spirit. And I want you to see this. Illustrated for us in the example of Judah Judah is oftentimes an example of what not to do but here in this rare occasion as Act one the book of Ezra comes to an end God gives us his people as an example for us to follow I want you to see it in four simple points. First of all, God confronts His people with their sin. And what's the response of the people? Secondly, they confess their sins to God. And thirdly, they convert to God. That is, they turn away from their sins. And then fourthly, They turn because of the comfort, the consolation that is God himself and his gracious character. So first of all, the people are confronted by God with their sin. The very end of chapter 9, if you keep your Bibles open, you see in verse 15 that Ezra, as he concludes his prayer, says, we are before you in our guilt, for none can stand before you because of this. What guilt, what sin is Ezra talking about? It's the sin of intermarriage that he's referenced earlier in chapter 9, verse 1. They have not separated. The people of Judah had not separated from the peoples of the land. Verse 2, the holy race has mixed itself with the peoples of the land. And then, chapter 9, verse 4, we're told that there are some who trembled at the words of the God of Israel because of the faithlessness of the returned exiles. Judah had married unbelievers. They had taken for themselves foreign wives, not of the people of God. And so you might ask yourself, well, what's the big deal? As Judah perhaps asked itself at the time when Ezra ministers. And the big deal here is that intermarriage is not only a sin, but it's representative of covenant faithlessness, of betraying God. The church had welcomed in the world and had become like the world in its religion, in its values. Intermarriage meant that the distinct character of the church had been compromised, because Israel had rejected the covenant love of Yahweh. her God, and had sought other lovers. And here you see, even after the exile, when God has returned his people back to the land, Israel has begun on the road to apostasy, one foot in the truth of God and one foot in the world. And that's what sin does. The church is meant to win the world for Christ by preaching the gospel through the spirit of God and his work of regeneration and the hard and time-intensive work of discipleship. We are to go into the world and make disciples of the nations. But we don't win the nations by conforming to the world. People of God, we may never win the nations by adopting the values and the religion and the paganism and the consumerism and the irreverence to God of the world. By adopting a casual approach to life and to God, by seeing some parts of life as neutral, as separated from God, right? I give God some hours on Sunday, but then the rest of life is mine to do according to what I want to do in my life. That's the way the world lives. That's the way every pagan religion operates. That's man-made religion. That's not biblical religion. God is Lord over all, or he is Lord not at all. We don't win the world by rejecting the absolute truth of God's world. And of course, this is of direct application to those who might want to be married. You may not ever cultivate a romantic interest in those and for those who do not love God and who refuse his word. And you're interested in them and maybe even romantically interested because of what? What's the criteria? Because they come from a good background, a good family, they have a high-paying job, They're good looking. They have good education. They make you feel warm and fuzzy inside. Who cares about any of that? God doesn't. Beloved, if the world becomes more important to you than what God says, you've aligned yourself with the world against God. And our gracious God comes to us here today and came to the people of Judah then and there and confronts them with their sins, which if they were to continue in them, chapter 9, verse 14 tells us that they would be destroyed and erased and wiped from the face of the earth. What a gracious God we serve, that he doesn't just let us go in our own way, in our own sin, but he comes to us to rescue us. And what then, secondly, is the response of Judah? Chapter 10, verse 2. And Shekeniah, the son of Jehiel, of the sons of Elam, addressed Ezra as representative of the leadership of Judah. And this is what he says. We have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land. You are who God says you are. And this is true of you in Christ, but it's true of you in your sin as well, even in Christ, as you go astray. You are not what you say you are. You are not what you imagine yourself to be, but you are what God says you are. And this is what confession is. In the Greek, it's homo logeo. And the Hebrew word here in Ezra is very similar. Homo means same or similar. Logeo means speak or to say. To confess your sins to God, in other words, is to speak the same word as God. It's to agree with God. It's to say with your heart and with your mouth and with your mind and with your life, Amen, Lord. Amen. And that's what Shekinah says here. When Ezra goes to the Lord and he weeps and confesses the people's sins, but he confesses it as his own, Shekinah and the women and the men and the children and the whole assembly of Judah gathers around Ezra and they hear Ezra speaking to God and imploring God on their behalf. And they hear the description that God, through his servant, has of them. What is Shekeniah's response? What is the people's response? Yes, Lord. Amen. That's me. Notice what Shekeniah says. We have broken faith with our God. We have broken faith with our God. It is against God. As David says in Psalm 51, it is against God and only God that I have sinned. And when you come to the Lord, when you're confronted with your sin and you go to the Lord and you confess your sin, you must say, Lord, it is against you that I have sinned. Now, it is true, beloved, that our sins injure and affect others. but fundamentally your sin, my sin, our sin is a personal offense against a personal and holy God, not against someone else and not fundamentally against some kind of moral abstraction, some law of the universe. No, we have sinned and broken faith with our God, our God. We have broken faith. We have separated ourselves from God. Our sin, Shekenai, in other words, is saying, has estranged us from God. My sin, you are to say, has dimmed my life, has short-circuited my communion, and has separated God's presence from me. It's not God who's done that. It's you. It's your sin. It's my sin. Isaiah 59, verse 1 and 2 says, Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, or his ear dulled that it cannot hear, but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you. It's not God that's left you. It's you in your sin who have left God. Like in Eden, in the garden, when Adam and Eve fell, what did they do? They went to go hide themselves, and it is God, our gracious God, who goes out and seeks them and pursues them. And He asks that first and fundamental question in Scripture, Adam, where are you? Adam, where are you? Oh, man! Oh, woman! Oh, child! Oh, teenager! Where are you? God has been near you. God has sought communion with you. God stands ready to help, to strengthen, and to forgive you. And notice what Shekinah says. We have broken faith with our God. But then he confesses his sin and the people's sin with great specificity. This is not a generic confession, you know, we've sinned, we've fallen short. Yes, but how? How, how, Judah, how have you sinned? Shekiniah, how have you sinned? We have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land. This is why you see the names are listed in verses 18 through verse 43. Judah is admitting the specificity of their sin. This is no generic confession of sin. And of course, we have weekly in our worship before the Lord, a confession of sin that is generic because we can't list our personal sins here from the pulpit publicly, each and every one of us. But beloved people of God, you are to list your sins to God. Not to a priest, not to another man, but to God himself. And you are to say, Lord, I have sinned in these ways. The priests, the Levites, the singers are listed first because as leaders they bear a greater guilt. They have set a wrong example to God's people and thus stand more culpable. And this is how we've sinned, Shekeniah says. We have married foreign wives. We've taken wives who don't belong to Judah. We've intermarried. We've broken covenant with our God in this specific way. And you see, the Lord is pleased to hear your specific confession of specific sin in order to receive specific help and specific grace from God. This is how you must speak, right? Children, you know this, when you have homework that you're struggling with, right? It's of no use to tell your mother, to tell your father, well, mom, dad, I can't seem to finish my homework. And they'll come to you and they'll say, well, which one, which homework, which subjects, which topic are you struggling with? Well, you know, I don't know, the whole thing, the whole, everything. Well, I can't help you, you gotta work with me, your parents would say. Well, what is it? Is it math? Is it arithmetic? Is it reading? Is it copy work? Is it something else? So it is with God, we go to the Lord, not saying, well, I just need help. Well, help for what? Lord, I am an angry man. Lord, I am a covetous woman. Lord, I am lustful. I am lazy. I am proud. I am self-sufficient. I am hateful. I'm resentful. I'm discouraging. And I need your help in these specific ways. What does God do? He draws near to you. He says in Hebrews 4, Come to the Savior, come to Jesus Christ, and draw near to the throne of grace to find help and aid in time of need. The Lord invites you to come to Him, not so that He would reject you, not so that He would rebuff you, not so that He would mock you and laugh at you, but to help you, to rescue you in the pit of your sin and misery. We are to take this as our great example here, Judah's confession of their sin. But there's something else here that we are to note thirdly. Notice the conversion of Judah. Notice how they turn from their sin. It's not enough to confess your sin. The Heidelberg Catechism in question and answer 88 through 100 tells us, 88 through 90 tells us what is conversion. And conversion in the Heidelberg is not being born again. There's a sense in which, yes, you can define conversion that way. But conversion really is, for the Heidelberg, the process of sanctification. The process of converting, of literally turning from our sins and returning to God. But Heidelberg points out very carefully what Scripture teaches us here, that it's not enough to, when you're dying away and putting off sin, it's not enough to feel sorrow for sin. That's important. You are to be sorry and be sorrowful for your sin. But it also means hating your sin and running away from it. These marriages, with foreign women and the children that had been produced from these marriages were a stench before the nostrils of God. They were an abomination before God. And this is what the people say. This is what Shekinah says. He says in verse three of chapter 10, which we read, therefore, let us make a covenant with our God to put away all these wives and their children. And then notice the conversion. Notice how God graciously is working in the heart of his people here in verse eight. They say that there's a decree that's passed that all have to show themselves and assemble at Jerusalem within three days. And if you don't show up to verify your marriage, then you will forfeit your property and you will be excluded from the congregation. And then again, Ezra says in verse 11, separate yourselves from the people of this land and from the foreign wives. Now to our ears, this sounds so foreign and This is one of the rare occasions. It'll happen again in Nehemiah, where God says, I don't even recognize this marriage. It's not even divorce. In a certain sense, it is. God hates divorce, but here, he hates something even more. He hates the fact that his people have forsaken him and have gone for foreign wives. And you can understand, you can understand the harshness of it all. Judah had loved these wives. They had been married to them. They had born children. But the question is not, had they loved their wives? That's not the question ever. The question is, did they love God more? The question is not, have you loved your sin? Of course you have. Of course you engaged in it. Of course you did it. Of course you have been that. It's not the question, it's simply assumed. But the question with repentance is simply this, do you love God more? Do you value your covenant and the covenant relationship you have with God as a more fundamental obligation? And notice what the people say. In chapter 10, verse 11, Ezra says, you must separate yourselves from the peoples of the land. Then all the assembly, verse 12, answered with a loud voice, it is so. We must do as you have said. It is so. We must do as you have said. They've accepted the verdict of God, and they're ready now to receive God's forgiveness. They're ready now, and they're showing by their works that they are ready to live out repentance in real life. You have loved your sin. But you have come to understand how destructive, how ruinous it is. Now what? Do you love the Lord more? Are you committed now to taking drastic steps to deal with your sin? Do you want to serve the Lord no longer serving your flesh? People of God, don't play games. You must put away your sin. You must bear fruit in keeping with repentance. You must not only confess your sin to God, but you must run away from it and turn back to God. For it is this person who receives mercy. Proverbs 28, 13, whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper. But he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy. The people say, in verse 13, it is so, we must do as you have said, but the people are many. They continue speaking to Ezra. And it is a time of heavy rain. We cannot stand in the open, nor is this a task for one day or for two, for we have greatly transgressed in this matter. Let our officials stand for the whole assembly. Let all in our cities who have taken foreign wives come at appointed times and with them the elders and judges of every city until the fierce wrath of our God over this matter is turned away from us. This might sound like an excuse, but it's not. The people understand what they need to do, but they realize that the sin is so great. It's so extensive. They've been in this for years. And besides that, they're standing under heavy rain and cold, inclement weather. And so they say, can we do this over some time? And this tells us, of course, that repentance and turning to God is immediate, but oftentimes, putting things back to right under God may take some time. It doesn't happen overnight. You think about our country and all the things we've done as a country. And if we were to turn to God tomorrow or this year, does the country change overnight? No, we've transgressed over years, decades, even centuries. It takes time to put things back to right under God. And yet the people here say, we're committed to this long, arduous work. We repent right now, but we want to address this as soon as possible. And we're told in verses 16 and 17 that it took From the first day of the 10th month, they sat down to examine the matter, and they were resolved by the first day of the first month. It took them three months from the 10th month to the first month. And you see, this is a lesson for us, people of God. It doesn't matter how long it takes, you must be committed to radical repentance. The kind of repentance here that we see that pleases God In the book of Luke, we read chapter 19 of Zacchaeus, who was a short man of stature, probably no more than five feet tall, and he couldn't see Jesus. He was a man who was a tax collector, and yet a Jew, and he climbs up on a tree, and the Lord points him out, and he says to Zacchaeus, Zacchaeus, today I must go to your house, for salvation has come to your house. Do you remember what Zacchaeus says? Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold. His heart had become repentant, convinced of his sin, confessing his sin, and yet it would take time to figure out who he had defrauded. But he's committed to it. Fourfold I will return to those I've stolen from. In Acts chapter 19, The Ephesian church were told those Christians in Ephesus were converted. They turned to the Lord. They believed the preaching of the gospel of Christ. And so in that city that was marked, its economy, its politics, all of Ephesus was marked by witchcraft and by magic and by Covenants with Satan and demons. What are we told in Acts chapter 19? That in their repentance, they bring all of their books of magic arts and they burn them. The equivalent of six million dollars worth of books. This is what repentance looks like. Yes, it may take time. It may happen over a period of weeks and months, and yet it's happening. The radical steps we need to deal with our sins are laid out for us in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter five, verse 27 and following. To enter the kingdom of God, sometimes you have to gouge out your right eye. You must cut off your right hand. Some in church history have taken that literally. That's not what scripture, that's not what Jesus is meaning for us to do. Otherwise, none of us would have eyes, none of us would have hands. No, you see, what Jesus teaches is that you must take radical steps. You must take steps that seem drastic and even harsh, and perhaps to some, unnecessary, in order to fight your sin and temptations to sin. Otherwise, you must ask yourself the question, beloved people of God, for which of your sins are you willing to lose your soul? For which of your sins are you willing to spend eternity in hell? For which sin are you willing to give your love rather than to give your love to Christ? And it may be that for the sake of Jesus Christ, you cannot take that job. For the sake of Jesus Christ, you cannot date and marry that person. For the sake of Jesus Christ, you may not live and cohabit together with someone to whom you're not married. For the sake of Jesus Christ, you cannot live like that. Your sin. requires you, as it required Judah, to take drastic steps to deal with it. But why is Judah able to do any of this? Why are you called by God to do any of this? Because of the consolation of the gospel. Not only are we turning away from our sins, but who are we turning to? We are turning to God, who is merciful and kind. Ezra chapter 10, at the very end of verse 2, notice what Shekeniah says, and he alludes to the consolation of Christ. He says, yes, we have broken faith with our God. We have married foreign wives. But notice what he says, but even now there is hope for Israel in spite of this. Even now, we serve a God who is gracious and kind and compassionate, who has a forgiving disposition for his people. And Judah, Shekeniah, the leader of Judah, understood this very basic truth that yes, we have sinned, yes, we have broken covenant with God, but yes, we must go to God. For there is no other alternative. To whom will we turn, Peter says to Jesus, if only you have words of life. God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. That doesn't mean that you presume upon God and say, well, I can live however I want. It's God's business to forgive me. No, that's presumption. Don't ever do that. But you are to say, God is kind. God is merciful. And the compassion of my God means this, that when I sin, even when I'm faithless and break covenant in such a grievous way as Judah did, that you have an advocate with God. You have a Savior, Jesus Christ. who is a covering for your sins and a covering for God's wrath. You have an advocate with God the Father, Jesus Christ, the faithful one who ever lives and stands to intercede for you at God's right hands. For many years, theologians, even within Reformed churches, Reformed theologians have asked the question, what is the warrant for going to Christ? What warrant, what basis do we have for going to Christ? And the warrant simply is given in Scripture, and it's simply this, that God himself has invited you to come in. You and me, condemned, defiled sinners. Seek the Lord, the Lord says, while he may be found, call upon him while he is near. God himself says to you and to me, let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let the wicked return to the Lord that he may have compassion on him. Let the wicked and the sinner go to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. What is the basis? What is the warrant for us going to Christ? As Shekeniah says, that even now there is hope for us in spite of our sins. What commends you to God's throne of grace is not you, is not your prayerfulness, is not how strong and how sincere your repentance is. It's not your prayer life. It's not your well-ordered life. It is Christ and his grace and his compassion. The hymn, come ye sinners poor and needy, says it well, says it best. Let not conscience make you linger, nor of fitness fondly dream. All the fitness he requireth is to feel your need of him. What fitness! What commends you to God's throne? You say, what would God want with the likes of me? No, it's precisely for the likes of us, the likes of you who have sinned, who have broken faith with God, that Jesus Christ stands as a savior, as a great high priest. Not to massage you in your sin, but to forgive your sin and to transform you away from it. This is the grace of our God for undeserving sinners. And when you read the whole of scripture, you understand how amazing and marvelous and undeserved God's grace is. For Abraham, yes, our father in the faith, but Abraham who had lied, For Rahab, who believed in God, but Rahab, who was a prostitute in Jericho. For David, yes, a man after God's own heart, but a man who had murdered and had committed adultery. And you get to the book of Jonah, where Jonah doesn't even proclaim a gospel of grace. He just proclaims condemnation. Repent for in 40 days Nineveh shall be destroyed. And what is it about the Ninevites that compels them to God, to fast before God, to cry out before God? And God says that he turned his wrath away from the Ninevites, the cruel and ruthless capital of the Assyrian empire. Because God is gracious and kind and abounding in steadfast love. And this is the grace of God for undeserving sinners like us. But you must go to God. You must go to God and not presume upon God. You must go to God and you must confess your sins to God. And you must turn away from your sin and turn to God who forgives all your sins through his blood shed for you. and through his spirit gives you new life and renews you to obedience. It was the goodness of Yahweh that led Judah to repentance. And it's the goodness of our God, of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who leads us to repentance. And what we find when we go to Jesus is not a condemning judge, but a merciful Savior who forgives you. who renews you and transforms you to now live for him. For it is this one who finds forgiveness and mercy. Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy. Amen, let us pray. Gracious God and our Heavenly Fathers, we conclude our brief study of the book of Ezra. We rejoice with you and your grace and your people throughout time that Father, you do not leave us in our sin, but you prick our conscience, you confront us with our sins, our failings, our horrible character, our deficiencies, our bad habits, our sinful habits, our predilections, our heart, Father, you do not simply confront us, but you offer us forgiveness and the grace of transformation to move away from our sins and to move to you, to move and to live in light, to live, Father, every day, praising your mercies, devoted to you in love, the mercies that have been showered upon us in Jesus Christ. Father, I pray for all of us, for each person here, especially, Father, for any who are oppressed by their sin, that, Father, they would be oppressed no more, that they would fly to the fountain that is filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and there, plunge within that flood, lose all their guilt and stain. Father, we thank you for your grace, Hear us for these things we ask now, in Jesus' name, amen.