Bible with you I want to turn with me please to Nehemiah in chapter 8. Nehemiah chapter 8 we're going to read verses 1 to 6 and then we're going to read verse 8 and if you want to look at verse 7 you'll see why I'm not going to read it but I can give you prizes if you can manage to read some of those names. Amen. Now, it's not to to disrespect these great men but we are just not going to read verse seven. Alright, Nehemiah chapter eight verse one and this is God's word and let's trust that God will come powerfully among us and upon us Nehemiah chapter eight, verse one, and here's how it goes. And all the people gathered themselves together as one man into the street that was before the water gate. And they spake unto Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses which the Lord had commanded to Israel. And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation, both of men and women, and all that could hear with understanding, upon the first day of the seventh month. And he read therein before the street that was before the water gate from the morning until midday, before the men and the women and those that could understand, and the ears of all the people were attentive unto the book of the law. And Ezra the scribe stood upon a pulpit of wood, which they had made for the purpose. And beside him stood Matthiah and Shema, Ananiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, Messiah. On his right hand, on his left hand, Padiah, Mishael, Malkiah, Hashem, Hashab, Banna. I should have let that verse out as well. Zechariah and Meshulam. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people. For he was above all the people. That means he was elevated. And when he opened it, all the people stood up. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, Amen, and Amen, with lifting up their hands, and they bowed their heads, and they worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. Verse eight. So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading. Nehemiah, which is the Tershatha, And Ezra the priest, the scribe, and the Levites that taught the people said unto all the people, this day is holy unto the Lord your God. Mourn not nor weep, for all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Then he said unto them, go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them, for whom nothing is prepared. For this day is holy unto the Lord, our Lord. Neither be ye sorry, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. I think the Lord's speaking to us from this day through this passage. So the Levites stilled all the people, saying, hold your peace, for the day is holy, neither be ye grieved. And all the people went their way to eat and to drink and to send portions and to make great mirth, because they had understood the words that were declared unto them. And it says here on the second day, you could really say, and they came a second time. But it says here, and on the second day were gathered together the chief of the fathers and of all the people, the priests and the Levites and the scribes, even to understand the words of the law. So they wanted a deeper understanding, a deeper meaning. And they found written in the law, which the Lord had commanded by Moses, that the children of Israel should dwell in booths. Well, that's the feast of the tabernacles, in the feast of the seventh month. and that they should publish and proclaim in all their cities and in Jerusalem saying, go forth onto the mount and fetch olive branches and pine branches and myrtle branches and palm branches and branches of thick trees to make booze as it is written. That would be something the environmentalist wouldn't like. And so the people went forth and brought them, and made themselves booths, every one of them upon the roof of his house, and in their courts, and in the courts of the house of God, and in the street of the water gate, and in the street of the gate of Ephraim. And all the congregation of them that were come again out of the captivity made booths, and sat on to the booths. For since the days of Joshua, the son of Nun, unto that day had not the children of Israel done so for hundreds and thousands of years. I say, sorry, for at least 1,000 years, they hadn't observed the Feast of Tabernacles, and there was very great gladness. Also, day by day, from the first day on to the last day, he read in the Book of the Law of God, and they kept the Feast seven days, and on the eighth day was a solemn assembly according on to the manner. Amen. You know where we've been reading, what we've been looking at. We know that Nehemiah has returned back to Jerusalem. It has been ravished by Babylon. The things of God, the holy things, the place of worship, the atmosphere, the fellowship of God's people, the hub of worship, the center of God's worship has been absolutely ravished by the Babylonians. left bereft of everything. And now God has brought his people back. And supernaturally and wonderfully, Nehemiah has been greatly blessed of God, motivated the people. The walls are built up in 52 days. The gates are back on their hinges. And people are placed back in positions where they can function as a fellowship once again. Jerusalem is a picture of the church. It's a picture of a church fellowship. Jerusalem is a picture of each individual as God has reconstructed them and has reclaimed that broken and destroyed property for which God wants to dwell within. And so that's it. That's 14 studies on a couple of sentences. Now, now that they're back, Now that Nehemiah has come to an end of his ministry per se, to the extent in which he's been involved, Ezra takes over. He's the priest. Nehemiah had a different function, telling us that within a church fellowship, every individual has a particular function. We are called on to the priesthood of God. You have a gift, I have a gift. Your gift's not my gift, my gift's not your gift, but you're all gifted of God. You can have the gift of helps, encouragement, the gift of evangelism, discipleship, Bible teaching, management. Not everybody has all the gifts. Everybody's got a gift. Now Nehemiah has handed over, as it were, to the prophet of God, that man that communicates for the people from God to the people and from the people to God. He gets the word. Now this, as you know, is Back to the Light. That's the title that we started with last week. And this is where revival starts in chapter 8. God has been working through the obstacles, through the difficulties, through the challenges in the first seven verses. God has been working. The discouragements that they face, the encouragement, the disappointments, and you know that our disappointments are his appointments. All of those things have happened and brought them eventually to a place where God can bring revival to the land. Last week we looked at the significance and the importance of God's Word. Our relationship to the Word of God is a vital part of our relationship with God. Prayer is how we commune with our Heavenly Father. It is in these times, I mean prayer times, we have intimacy and interaction. God's Word is how he communicates to us. I don't hear voices, sometimes I feel impulses, sometimes I feel impressions, sometimes when I read in God's Word it becomes completely new. It's almost as if it jumps out at me and it comes alive and I've read it, maybe read it a hundred times and the hundred and first time God's Word is completely different and it means something completely different to me. And so God, His Word is how He communicates to us. It's how He communicates His will and His guidance. It's how He corrects and directs us. It's how He builds us up and encourages us. It's how He instructs us, constructs us, and reconstructs us. That's not easy to say with my teeth. And so when it comes to the regathering, the refreshing, and the rebuilding of a people that have been so devastated and disorientated, what we need now is not a booklet on self-helps, or not a booklet on confidence building, nor do we need a series of talks of how I did it, or how, I was gonna say how I'd done it, but how I did it, how they did it, or how you should do it. What they do is they get a book on how God rebuilds. how God reconstructs, how God rebuilds the broken lives of our hearts. It is one thing to have a fully furnished and fully decorated, as you were, church if you haven't got the mechanism, the power, the light, and the impulse and the compulsion within that to function as God desires. And God will have. And so the book was brought out. That is what we have in this chapter. God's people are back in the land. You can see they're back where they belong. That is what salvation does for us. It brings us back to where we belong, back into fellowship with God. But that's only the beginning of the journey. It's not the end of it. And that is what we're seeing here. God's word. Nehemiah has done his bit. Now, he stands inside and God's prophet with God's word comes into view and the wonderful thing is that though they are gallant home again, they want to go further than that. They want to know God's word on the matter. The way forward. And you notice in verse one of chapter eight, I think it's in chapter one. All the people gather themselves together, one man in the street that was before the water gate, and they speak unto her as it is described, bring the book, bring out the book, the book of the law. It speaks to me of a people that want to get it right this time. They want to get it right. They want to go the right direction. They want to properly glorify the Lord. Bring us out the book. That's the relationship. The water gate that I said to you always signified the place of washing. The washing of water by the word. the open place. Lord, my heart's open. I'm in an open place before the Lord. I want you to come and communicate, correct, reconstruct, redirect, guide my life by your word that we won't make the same errors again. That's what this book does. That's what this book does. So we looked at that, and I gave you examples of men who memorized the scriptures, William Evans, Billy Graham, and various individuals that told you about that. I told you about the location. I told you about those people who gathered. They were fathers and mothers, and they were young people of understanding. That meant when they had come to the age of understanding, they could have been five-year-old, they could have been four-year-old, they could have been 10-year-old. But we do know this, that when they had come to the age of understanding, they were all brought in under the Word. That was what. they were talking about there. And I applied that to fathers and mothers in this fellowship. When there's problems, difficulties, or need, bring out the book. To the members of this church where we have division, or where there's conviction, conflict, bring out the book. A mention to the leaders of this church, me included, when we have serious, serious decisions to make, bring out the book. The second thing then that we notice, and I'm gonna go very quickly, we notice that they respected God's word. verse five and six very quickly and it says, and Ezra opened the book in the sight of the people before he was above. In other words, they made a soapbox and he was elevated, not because he is any more important. Don't get that idea. He was raised up so that everybody, even the people at the back, because if I did that there, you couldn't see me and I could see you. Oh, where is he now? So he was elevated. He was raised up so that the first, the furthest one away could see him. That's what that means. And verse six says, verse six says, and Ezra blessed the people, blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people said, and in the Hebrews, amen, amen, or amen, amen, so be it, we agree. And they lifted up their hands, and they bowed their heads, and they worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. When's the last time you did that? when we opened up the book, when we read God's word, and when all he did at this stage, he hasn't read it, he's only opened up the book, and they worship, and they bow down. That tells me they held great respect for the word of God. It shows us the measure of the respect God's returned people had for the Word. So much so that it caused them to prostrate themselves as the book was opened. Now, brothers and sisters, men and women, God's not asking you and I to publicly fall every time with our faces on the ground every time we read the Scriptures. Oh, that it would happen. But He's not asking us to do that. But He's asking us to greatly revere and greatly respect the Word of God in our homes and in our hearts. Because only when we come to God's Word with a sense of attitude and respect and value in God's Word Will he have the effect that we will see shortly in our hearts? We are far too familiar with this word. Do you know that men give their lives so that you and I would have this book? The streets of Edinburgh ran red with the martyrs who give their lives for this book. And if you notice how loathed and how hated this book is by the enemy, they have sought to burn every copy down through the years, and yet we still have this book. In fact, this is the most common and most popular book in all the world. In all the world. God forgive us for being so familiar with God's Word. If you want to know the secret of the consequences of this reading and the preaching of God's Word, it was because the people's hearts were humble and they respected God's Word to the point that it was God's opinion overrode their opinion. God's direction overpinned their direction. God took the field. Whatever God said, they did. They came without question or without query. And they came before God. And they came before God's Word. And God's Word was going to have the trump card. And I don't mean that by over in America. Do I give God's Word proper place in my life? Do I allow it to challenge me where I'm an error? Do I allow it to guide me? Do I allow it to dictate to me even though it's uncomfortable and discomforting? I believe that's the attitude that we need. God's Word that's important, not what I say, by the way. And I'm not gonna talk to you about science. And I'm no good in predicting the weather. And I'm not much good in talking about an awful lot of things. My only calling, when it comes to my calling, is to take God's word and seek to expound it. Now, I do know men that can gather a crowd. because of the particular themes that they entertain in God's Word. And we could get a crowd by the negativities that we can come out of God's Word, but God's Word and the whole counsel of God's Word is what's needed to build people up. And so they respected God's Word. And it said there in verse three, if we notice just very quickly, verse three, and they read therein, before the street, that was before the water gate, from the morning until midday, that's about seven hours, five hours, and those that could understand. It means two things, those old enough to know and those spiritually aware enough to know. Spoken in their language. I love this. spoken in their language. Now the thing is, the word of God was written to God's people from Moses, but in their language? They had forgotten their language. Have you forgotten that they have been taken captive and they have learned the Babylonian language? I love it. Whenever I can come who in my darkness, and the word of God is alien to me, whenever you got saved, you knew you had to read God's word, and you knew you had to get into God's word, but what's this really saying? I can't make head nor tail of what they're saying. And then as you go through and as you grow, you become more and more and more aware of what God's Word says. It's the Spirit of God beginning to open up our hearts and minds. Enabling us to understand, but here's the thing. I said it, maybe I said it on Sunday, I know I've said it before, gonna say it again. I love whenever people come to me and they said, you know, pastor, I really got that, you made that point, and I don't ever remember making the point. Sometimes the miracle is as much in the hearing as it is in the speaking. And they understood. They understood. That tells me something very quickly, because I'm trying to go through this as quickly as I can. That tells me something, that the preparation of my heart before I come to God's Word, and I plead that the Holy Spirit will interpret for me in my circumstance and in my situation, that He, the Holy Spirit, the Messenger of Heaven, will open up God's Word. Because I'm going to make an announcement shortly, and you're going to value what I'm going to say now, later on. As we get into God's Word, ask the Holy Spirit to interpret to your heart His Word, to speak your language, so that you can share it to others, so that you can share it to others. And it was done very simply, preaching. Now, you can imagine Ezra. There's a huge crowd. There's 3 million people here. No, sorry, not 3 million. There's quite a number of thousands. They don't have a big fancy PA system, and they haven't got all the things that we have. And they probably didn't have the same loud voice. I could really definitely hear if I wanted to, but I'll try to moderate my tone at times. But there were several men to the right, and there were several men to the left, and they were placed strategically within earshot and further back. And one would repeat, Ezra would say the word, he would then say the word to the next man, and the next man would say it to the next man, and so it went round to the crowd. Didn't you see the spiritual application? There's teamwork here. There's involvement. Did you hear what the pastor said in church today? I thought I was in a bad point. He said, you can see the odd good thing. And you repeat. And you repeat. Instead of talking about the weather. Instead of talking about how many people's now infected with the coronavirus. Repeat what God's saying to your heart. Spoken in their language. Let's go to the next point. They received the preaching of the word, verse 8. So they read in the book of the law distinctly and gave the sense and caused them to understand the reading. Now we're looking at these men that did the preaching. I'm not going to say very much about this by the way. There's preaching and there's preaching. Now any man can get up and rehearse a sermon. But I want to tell you, there's a lot of people in pulpits and they don't have got that essential ingredient. called the unction. Do you know what the unction is? John says it's the anointing that breaks the yoke. I will be honest with you. There's times when I get fed up listening to myself. Do you know what I mean? I'll put myself to sleep. You know what I mean? Were you ever in the service and you said to yourself, I wonder when is that man ever going to shut up? Can I get a bit of rest? Have you ever been there? No, amen. Remind me to give that man a tenner, Tommy. But you know what I mean? There's In our early day, and in the days whenever the certain churches, I was going to name the particular denomination, but it wouldn't be right and proper, when they went into liberty, they were liberals. In other words, they were, as Isaiah calls them, dumb dogs. What happened was, that's what Isaiah calls them, dumb dogs. They lie sleeping. You look it up, put that in your Bible. I'm not making those words up. It calls them dumb dogs. They were in it for the profession. They weren't in it because there was a calling. They were in it because there was a position. And there used to be a time when the eldest son of every family, they always needed somebody in the ministry because it was always good to have a man in the ministry. And what happened was because they didn't have that ingredient called the unction, which must start when you're saved. But even though you're saved doesn't mean to say you've got the unction. Because sometimes people are in the pulpit because they think it's an easy job. This looks very glamorous, doesn't it? Him up with his tie on, doing a bit of preaching. And so that's all he ever does. Comes and does a half hour's work every Sunday, and that's it all sorted. I believe in men being called of God to preach the Word. And I'm going to tell you this, preaching is about communicating from your spirit to the hearts and the spirits of the people that are hearing you. It's called the unction. And it's, John puts it like this. The anointing breaks the yoke. In other words, what could be hard, arduous. I mean, some workmen used to be able to make you laugh and cry in one sentence. He had the anointing. And a few men since then. The chief element here is not only the word. Because that word can be the dead letter. Are you with me? That word can be the dead letter. But when someone who's anointed of God, called of God, filled with the Spirit, who God has burned the message of the Scriptures into his heart, that person has the anointing that breaks the yoke, that causes the deaf to hear almost. That's why these people got understanding. That's why they got understanding. And that's why they had an effect as we saw in verse eight. I'm gonna rush through here. By the way, can you imagine how difficult it must have been that these people, the people who have been under Babylonia's domination, have learned their standards, they've learned their language. Now they're listening through Babylonia's ears, and it takes more than just repeating verses for these people who have been in bondage in Babylon now to hear the spiritual interpretation. You with me? You and I were in bondage in Babylon. We were in darkness, and we were in despair, and we were deceived, and we were entombed in darkness. And God, by his supernatural power, exploded us into life. And now our minds and our hearts need to be retrained, reprogrammed, re-instructed, so that we begin again to restruct, rebuild the walls, to put the gates back on the hinges, and we begin to function as God first called us to function. And that's a process. I was brought up, whenever I got saved, a few years ago, more than a few years ago, of course, the mentality of that day was, when you got saved, it was all sorted. You didn't need discipleship. You didn't need guidance. You didn't need mentoring. You didn't need lecturing. That everything was sorted. In a sense, you were brought into a right relationship with God. You were brought into a good standing with Him. But then God begins to reconstruct. He has to deprogram us through the truth and then reprogram us with the truth. That's what's going on here. That's what goes on in our hearts. And that's our burden in this church. not just the bums on seats, but people who know the Lord, and people who know God's Word, people who take God's Word serious, and then they apply it to their hearts. Because in verse 9, we see that they responded with sincerity. Nehemiah, which is the Tershatha, and Ezra the priest, the scribe, and the Levites that taught the people, said unto all the people, this day is holy unto the Lord your God. Mourn not, nor weep, for all the people wept. Oh, they wept when they heard the words of the law. You see, what did the law do? This is the, you know, by the way, when they, they didn't have, they didn't have a Bible like you and I had, they had scrolls, and they had the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, which is the, the Pentateuch was the five books of Moses, Pentateuch, which is the five books of, which was known then as the law. That's why they called it the law. This is God's word to their hearts. They had this scroll, and they could open up to certain sections. And this is what it says in Genesis. This is what it says in Exodus. And you know, but as they read, as they read of God's calling for their lives, as they read of what God had purposed for their lives, they realized how far they had drifted from where God had wanted them. And they mourned. So they responded in sincerity, Lord, I didn't know we'd strayed so far away. I didn't know we had desecrated your name so much. I didn't know. We didn't know. The mess that we'd made of the reputation of God amongst the heathen, the purpose for which we were called is that the nations may know that there's a God in heaven. And so they wept. And so they responded in sincerity. The preaching brought them back to basics. Back to where they ought to be. Back to what they should be. Back to what they were purposed to be. and it broke their hearts to see how far away they were from it. The word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow, and is the discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. I don't know where you'll find that, but I've memorized it. I think it's Hebrews. Verse 9 to 12, very quickly, they'd rediscovered the source of joy. Maybe you're wondering, it says here, don't be weeping, don't be breaking your heart, don't be weeping, don't be crying. Maybe you thought that God would want them to continue to stew in their misery. God doesn't want you and I to continue to stew in our misery. He says here a couple of times, don't be sorrowful. Don't be full of sadness. Rejoice, rejoice. And you know why he's telling us to rejoice? Not that they had failed the Lord, but that God had in his mercy brought them back again to what they were purposed to be. Rejoice. Why did God want them to stop crying? because God had made that a day of holiness, a holy day. And any day that's a holy day ought to be a happy day. Here are three reasons. God wanted them to be more aware of his strength than their weakness. That's a great thing to think about. God had brought about the circumstances for their captivity. God had brought about their means of deliverance and return. Our God is a great big God. Second thing, God wanted them to be instilled with the joy of his presence more than the lingering of their own sense of failure. I know lots of people, I'm so sorry I failed the Lord. Well we all fail the Lord, get over it! Because God wants you to rejoice in the fact that he has been merciful and gracious. Yes, we have failed the Lord, but He doesn't want you to dwell there. He wants you to rejoice that He's delivered you. He wants you to be more aware of His goodness than your failures. Isn't that something wonderful? Here's the third thing. God wanted them to know what a wonderful thing it is to gain insight into God's Word so that they could obey. than just to sob over what they had disobeyed, but they could rejoice in what they had obeyed. Who ever said that Christianity is a straight-faced affair, eh? I mean, I used to hear in meetings, well, I used to look at Christians, and as that's what Christianity is, I've got enough troubles of my own. God never intended it to be a sad, broken-hearted, weary, wearisome experience. The joy of the Lord is your strength. I'm going to bring this to an end, if I can get to the end. There's 12,000 words in this sermon, and I've only given you two and a half. Notice verses 13 to 17, they recovered lost truths. Look at verse 13 to 17, this is important. Verse 13, on the second day, all right, our hearts have been warmed, and we want again to hear, but we want a deeper understanding, and so they're calling, and this time they gathered the chiefs, and on the second day, They were gathered together, the chief of the fathers of all the people, the priests and the labors, unto Ezra the scribe, even to understand the words of the Lord. And they found, and they found some lost previous truths. When you find something, it means that you've lost it. What did they find? The Feast of Tabernacles. There were seven feasts, by the way. There were seven feasts, and they all happened in and around the same time. You'll find the reference for this is Leviticus 23 and Deuteronomy 16. Go home and read it in your own time. but these feasts. I remember a man preaching one day on the seven feasts, the feasts of God. And the man, give us an idea, why do we have Christmas? Why do we have Easter? Why do we have certain, what we call church holidays? Because God wanted to always instill in his people something to look forward to. Now I want to tell you, I'm not looking forward to the next four months, are you? But is there anything that we could look forward to in the next four months? Absolutely. An encounter with God. Experiences. Because God wants his people to look forward to better days. To happy days. I get the feeling that my God's a happy God. And he wants his people to be happy. to look forward to these feasts. But here's the important thing about the Feast of Tabernacles, that here and now, yes, God has been our Ebenezer. He has brought us this far. He has brought us back to our homeland. He has given us these wonderful blessings. He's prospered us in our way. but we're not here to stay. Tabernacles is not a permanent residence. It's a movable residence. They were not here to stay. Don't get too comfortable in your newly built up Jerusalem because you're not here to stay. You're back into your new place. You're back into your new environment. But listen, don't get too comfortable because you're moving on to a far better place, a far better land, a far better environment, a far better experience. That's heaven. That's heaven. But it goes back as far as Joshua's day. Joshua never thought of it. David never thought of it. Saul never thought of it. I wonder. Are there aspects of God's call, God's blessing, God's teaching, God's word, God's experience, God's, the things that God, are there things of God that we have forgotten that we need to go back and revisit again? And so they rediscover lost truths. Let me give you the three feasts here, the Feast of Trumpets. That was in the month Tishri, which is September, October. It was called Rosh Hashanah, which according to Jewish teaching, this begins 10 days of judgment when all the people of Israel, all the children of men pass before the Creator, talking about the coming day of judgment and repentance. And there's the day of atonement, Yom Kippur, sixth month, 7th Tishri, September, October, again, autumn, a solemn assembly of repentance and forgiveness, representing the day of judgment when the sheep were separated from the wolves. Oh, that sounds familiar, doesn't it? And then the Feast of Tabernacles, or the Feast of Booths. the seventh in the month, sixth Tishri, September, October, autumn, a harvest celebration, a memorial of the wilderness travelings. Our wilderness traveling's soon gonna be over. And we're gonna be in the near presence of the Lord. Well, I've rushed through this. Folks, that's basically What Nehemiah chapter 8's about, this is one last truth. Verses 17 to 18, we see them reveling in God's truth. They're rejoicing, they're the happiest people alive. The happiest people alive are the people who dwell in this book, but not only who receive a top-heavy knowledge of what it says, but actually are feasting at the truths of which they convey. Trust and obey, for there's no other way. to be happy in Jesus, and to trust and obey. You look around you, you look at the sadness, you look at the heartache and the heartbreak, my business, and I feel so sad and so sorry for everyone who's suffering and struggling at this time, and they're in for an awful lot of struggle. We see people who, who are going to lose their jobs and have got a mortgage, or see businesses that are about to go under. Never has there been a scale as what we have seen in this generation. That tells me one thing. Our happiness is easily disturbed when it's dependent on the world. But if our happiness is in who Jesus is, he never changes. Sure he doesn't? He never changes. And the people were saying, it's 330 billion pound just for hotel businesses and mortgage holidays for three months. Well, that's grand. I'll accept that. And all of these things and whatever. The people are looking to poor old Boris Karloff, I was going to call him. The people are looking to poor old Boris Johnson for happiness. They're not going to get it. They're looking to a man, Macron, in France. Not going to get it. Leo Veruca, or whatever you call him down south. They're looking to him to give happiness. They're not going to get it. Because as soon as you get it, somebody else is going to take it. Or something else is going to take it. These people are happy. Because they found God in His Word. And you can't steal that from anyone. See, over these next months, folks, find your happiness in Jesus. Find your happiness in Jesus. Because not even death can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus. Let's pray together in prayer. Let's pray. Father, we pray that as we conclude this meeting this evening, we commend ourselves into your hands. pleading and praying for your love, your grace, your mercy, your pardon, your power, and your freedom. Keep your hand over this church and over this fellowship and the people that gather here. We ask, Lord, that you'll watch over our families, our friends, our loved ones, our children, and those that are near and dear to us, and grant your peace will accompany each one throughout the days that lay ahead. In Christ Jesus we pray, amen.