Nehemiah 13
Amen. Turn in your copy of God’s
word to Nehemiah 13. I mentioned earlier, this is,
this is it. So we’ll carry on to other things
as you’re turning there. Remember, this has covered a
little over a hundred years of exiles returning from punishment. banishment in Babylon, not everybody
came back, but a sufficient number did that allowed them to rebuild
the temple, to reestablish the cultic practices of the Jewish
faith. It allowed them to rebuild the
city, to rebuild the walls, rebuild houses and repatriate the city
and get it up and running. Now, when we get to chapter 13,
you’re gonna notice in one of the verses early on, Nehemiah
is gonna say, I was gone for a little bit. Remember he was
the cupbearer to Artaxerxes and he did not have a pass to stay
on forever. So he went back and this account
is him telling us, I had to come back and straighten things out.
As we like to say, while the cat’s away, the mice will play.
And so keep that in mind as we read God’s word. Look along with
me, if you will, beginning in verse one of chapter 13. On that
day, they read from the book of Moses in the hearing of the
people. And in it was found written that
no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God,
for they did not meet the people of Israel with bread and water.
but instead hired Balaam against them to curse them. Yet our God
turned the curse into a blessing. As soon as the people heard the
law, they separated from Israel all those of foreign descent.
Now before this, Eliashiv, the priest who was appointed over
the chambers of the house of our God, and who was related
to Tobiah, prepared for Tobiah a large chamber where they had
previously put the grain offerings. the frankincense, the vessels,
and the tithes of grain, wine, and oil, which were given by
the commandment to the Levites, to the singers, the gatekeepers,
and the contributions for the priest. While this was taking
place, I was not in Jerusalem. For in the 32nd year of Artaxerxes,
king of Babylon, I went to the king, and after some time, I
asked leave of the king and came to Jerusalem. And then I discovered
the evil that Eliashib had done for Tobiah, preparing for him
a chamber in the courts of the house of our God. And I was very
angry and I threw all the household furniture of Tobiah out of the
chamber. Then I gave orders and they cleansed
the chambers and I brought back there the vessels of the house
of God with the grain offering and the frankincense. I also
found out that the portions of the Levites had not been given
to them so that the Levites and the singers who did the work
had fled each to his field. So I confronted the officials
and said, why is the house of God forsaken? and I gathered
them together and set them in their stations. Then all Judah
brought the tithe of the grain, wine, and oil into the storehouses,
and I appointed as treasurers over the storehouses, Shalamiah
the priest, Zadok the scribe, and Padaiah of the Levites, and
as their assistant, Hanan the son of Zachar, the son of Mattaniah,
for they were considered reliable, and their duty was to distribute
to their brothers. Remember me, O my God, concerning
this. and do not wipe out my good deeds
that I have done for the house of my God and for his service.
In those days I saw in Judah people treading wine presses
on the Sabbath and bringing in heaps of grain and loading them
on donkeys and also wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of loads,
which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. And I warned
them on the day when they sold food. Tyrians also who lived
in the city brought in fish and all kinds of goods and sold them
on the Sabbath to the people of Judah in Jerusalem itself.
Then I confronted the nobles of Judah and said to them, what
is this evil thing that you are doing profaning the Sabbath day? Did not your fathers act in this
way and did not our God bring all this disaster on us and on
this city? Now you are bringing more wrath
on Israel by profaning the Sabbath. As soon as it began to grow dark
at the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I commanded that
the doors should be shut and gave orders that they should
not be opened until after the Sabbath. And I stationed some
of my servants at the gates that no load might be brought in on
the Sabbath day. And the merchants and the sellers
of all kinds of wares lodged outside Jerusalem once or twice.
But I warned them and said to them, why do you lodge outside
the wall? If you do so again, I will lay
hands on you. From that time on, they did not
come on the Sabbath. Then I commanded the Levites
that they should purify themselves and come and guard the gates
to keep the Sabbath day holy. Remember this also in my favor,
oh my God, and spare me according to the greatness of your steadfast
love. In those days, I also saw the Jews who had married women
of Ashdod, Amnon, and Moab, And half of their children spoke
the language of Ashdod, and they could not speak the language
of Judah, but the language of each people. And I confronted
them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their
hair. And I made them take oath in the name of God, saying, you
shall not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters
for your sons or for yourselves. Did not Solomon, king of Israel,
sin on account of such women? Among the many nations, there
was no king like him, and he was beloved by his God, and God
made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless, foreign women made
even him to sin. Shall we then listen to you and
do all this great evil and act treacherously against our God
by marrying foreign women? And one of the sons of Jehoiada,
the son of Elisha, the high priest, was the son-in-law of Sanballat,
the Horonite. Therefore, I chased him from
me. Remember them, oh my God, because they have desecrated
the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites.
Thus I cleansed them from everything foreign and I established the
duties of the priest and the Levites each in his work. And I provided for the wood offering
at appointed times and for the first fruits. Remember me, oh
my God, for good. Amen. The word of the living
God for us. Some of you like to keep an orderly
and clean house, I know. Perhaps you have a routine, you
clean on Tuesdays or Fridays or whatever the day is and you
dust and you vacuum and you put things back in order, you rearrange,
you get it in ship shape and give it a day. You know, give
it two days, give it a couple kids and a dog and maybe the
grandkids coming over or the leaves falling and them coming
in the doorway. Give it a week and before you
know it, the house is dirty again, the house is out of order and
it begins to bug you. It begins to maybe work at your
sensibilities and so you get it back in order again. You clean,
you neaten, wash the sheets, you do the laundry, you wipe
things down, you get things back into good working order, and
your house becomes livable again, you might say. Well, what about
the church of the living God? And I’m not talking about vacuuming
and dusting, that’s wonderful. But what about when the church
gets out of order? What about when the things of
this world creep in I love how James Montgomery Boyce, the pastor
for a long time in Philadelphia, used to say, what do we do when
the church does the Lord’s work in the world’s ways? He also
said over and over, what we win people with, we win them too.
And so he was a big proponent of do the biblical things well,
and that will gather the church. We speak very often of the means
of grace, just as Israel had their temple and their cultic
practices. We have a simpler practice given to us by Jesus,
where through the preaching of the word, the administration
of sacraments, the prayers, and the simple ordinances of the
church. We believe God will bless his
people. He will save sinners. And we
carry on until the end of the age, until the Lord Jesus comes
doing these things. But the church, particularly
the church in America has been rolling along the ground and
as things do when you roll around on the carpet, maybe you pick
up every piece of lint, you pick up every thing. And we have invented
all kinds of things in the church. And it’s good from time to time
to consider Reformation. There’s a wonderful little cycle
of reformation that I hear from time to time, and it’s formation,
deformation, and reformation. So God forms something, his church,
he establishes her. But over time, in the sins of
the people, there’s deformation. They quit doing things God commands,
and they start doing things God doesn’t command. And then somebody
like Nehemiah or Martin Luther where others come along and say,
no, we need to read the Bible and do what God says. God’s house
from time to time gets out of order. And you see it throughout
history. You saw it in the garden with Adam and Eve. You saw it
in the wilderness with God’s people making a golden calf.
You saw it in the stretches of history with the Kings. They
did evil in the sight of God. And from time to time, Reformer
would come and read the book of the law and do things right,
but it was few and far between. We’ve seen it post-exile through
Ezra the scribe and Nehemiah the governor. God’s house out
of order. They put it back into order.
I think of Paul in Corinth, or maybe Martin Luther and John
Calvin and others during the Protestant Reformation. And we,
from time to time, have to do some cleaning up, some tidying
up in our church. But most of all, I think of the
Lord Jesus Christ when he came to his earthly ministry, there
were money changers in the temple. They were sellers of animals
for the sacrifice. And he cleanses the temple and
says, my house will be a house of prayer, but you have made
it into a den of thieves. And so we remember ultimately
that it is Jesus who cleanses, Jesus who sprinkles clean, Jesus
who makes the reformation of the church possible. Well, God
sends a man, it’s Nehemiah, back to Jerusalem to shine a light
on their practices, their wickedness. And he comes in, and I think
you heard in some strong words, he says, no more of this. I mean,
I think there were some beatings, right? There was some hair pulling,
there was some cursing, and he was chasing some people. Wouldn’t
you like to have seen some of that? but he did what needed
to be done and was quite bold for the sake of God’s church
and the sake of God’s kingdom. Well, I wanna ask and answer
a couple of questions as we think about this passage. First of
all, what begins reformation? What begins reformation in the
life of God’s people? What begins reformation in the
life of his church? Well, I think you find the answer
to that in verse one. It says, on that day, they read
from the book of Moses in the hearing of the people, and in
it was found, and it goes on to explain what they found, and
we’ll see what Reformation looks like in these areas. I think
of 2 Timothy chapter three. verses 15, or I’m sorry, 16 and
17. All scripture is breathed out
by God, Paul tells Timothy, and is useful for teaching and for
doctrine. But he also gives some, maybe
what you might call negatives, reproof, that you need to fix
this. He uses words that give the picture of setting up what
has been knocked over. Maybe the kids have run through
the house and knocked some things over. Pillows aren’t on the couch
where they ought to be. And you go back through and you
put them in place. Well, that’s the idea that Paul
gives to Timothy. Things are out of order and the
scripture can put them back into place. The word is profitable.
It can teach you divine instruction. It can give you doctrine and
it can give you precepts. It can reprove. It can refute,
it can rebuke error and sin, but it can also correct or restore
back to order, getting rid of faults and errors and things
that are wrong. And so what brings or begins
reformation? It’s God’s word. It’s God’s spirit. And hopefully every day when
we’re in the word, God’s word and spirit sink into us. And maybe we see some errors
in our lives, some sins in our lives. We see some ways we can
serve God better. This morning in the adult Sunday
school class, we talked about digital technology and how it’s
an enemy to the Christian. It’s a big help, yes, but it
can be a great enemy to the Christian. And one of the things that I
think has happened in our day of smartphones is the first thing
we do when we get out of bed is we reach for our phone. And
from then on, it’s our digital pacifier. We can’t live without
it. Or perhaps we flip on the television
or we turn on some source of information news, and it begins
to just carry us in its current for the rest of the day. My encouragement
to them this morning, and I want to encourage you in this way,
because what begins Reformation is God’s Word and Spirit. And
in our digital age, once we pick up the phone in the morning,
it’s over with. You will never have a quiet brain. You will
never have a quiet moment. You’ll just follow this little
idiot in your pocket everywhere it takes you. And one of the
things that we can’t do very well in this digital age is read
and meditate and think and perhaps even fall under conviction of
sins. And I’m mainly speaking of our
quiet time before the Lord each day where we spend time with
him and his word. And we let his word and his spirit do its
work. We’ve eliminated that because
with the digital age, everything is passing. We just, we skim,
we just, we’re surfing on the waves. Um, but we’re never down
in the depths of the sea of God’s wisdom and grace. And so I encourage
you with this thought of what begins reformation, it’s his
word and spirit. And every day we ought to spend
some time in his word, under the power of the spirit, having
our desires affected so that we might live better to do God’s
word and let him show us the way. Let his light shine into
us, revealing to us where we as individuals need to grow up
in the Lord, maybe It can give our marriage a tune-up. It can
encourage our family, or our home, or our church, or our life,
our professional life in some way, shape, or form. The Word
and the Spirit can fix, and rebuke, and correct. And it can even
topple our idols. And I mean individually, as families,
but also as a church. and as a people of God, as we
see here in Nehemiah. Well, that’s the question, what
begins reformation? It’s the word and the spirit.
Second question, why do we need reformation? You might say, my
house is in good order. My church is in good order. My
life is in good order. Why do we need reformation? Well,
you need reformation because you’re sinners. We need reformation
because we are sinners and we, erect idols every day. Um, our
hearts lead us astray. The world leads us astray. Uh,
Satan, uh, wants to give us all the Turkish delight. We want
to use a Narnia, uh, picture and we don’t mind if we have
a little Turkish delight, right? And we, we carry on in the vein
of being lured and enticed. So why do we need reformation?
because we’ve had a deformation. We’ve fallen apart. Our houses
get out of order. We all want blessing, don’t we?
Sometimes we don’t want the obedience part. We all want blessing, not
curses, not chaos, not God’s displeasure, but blessing comes
through obedience. Obedience brings order. And when
God’s word comes into our life, it, it, It deals with the sin. And Nehemiah is the governor
of Judah to this third wave of refugees who’ve returned from
Babylon. He’s come among them to rebuild
Jerusalem and to reestablish everything God would have them
do. The big thing they have done is they have repaired the reproach. The city was in ruins and that
was a reproach to Israel. That was a reproach to Yahweh,
their God. What do you think about these
people and their God when their city lies on ruins? Well, let’s
not be much. And so he’s found great success
in building the city, building the wall and reestablishing all
these things in order. The covenant of God is on display
in this little band of people in this little bitty 13 acre
or so stretch of Israel. And he’s got it running like
clockwork. Well, he goes back to Artaxerxes.
He goes back, we assume to be the cup bearer. And he goes back
and he’s gone for a little while. And then he asked to leave with
the king. I need to go back. I need to check on things. You know,
the cat’s been away. The mice will play. Well, he
comes back and they’ve been restless with obedience. They’ve been
bored with normal. And can’t we get that way from
time to time? I hear it as the pastor. Why’d we sing that hymn? Why didn’t we sing my favorite
hymn? Why are we studying the Bible? Why don’t we do something
fun? Why don’t we do cotton candy? I don’t hear that here, but that’s
the way it can get in church. You hear it with your children.
But sometimes following Christ is, well, it’s mundane. It’s
changing another diaper. It’s taking out the trash. It’s
working for your 41st year. You know, it’s the same thing,
the same way every day. And it gets kind of old. And
we need to remember not to be restless with obedience, not
to be bored with normal kingdom business. Because what begins
to happen, our minds wander. What can fill our pews with people? Well, let’s make something up
that will excite them and will attract them. Let’s make something
up that’s not commanded in the word and let’s do it and see
if it will draw a crowd. And so we do stupid things. We do faithless things. We do
greedy things. We do worldly things in the church
and even in our own lives. We try to do the Lord’s work
in the world’s ways and it never promises success. So why didn’t
we need reformation? Well, because we cool off from
the standard God has given us and we deform. And you see this,
don’t you? After the great awakening, one
of the greatest stretches in the history of America where
many people came to Christ under powerful preaching and powerful
spirit wrought change. But there was a cooling off and
the morals in America declined again. Or how about after 9-11,
back in 2001, God had everyone’s attention, but gave it a few
weeks. Everybody was back to paganism
and doing their own thing in their own way. There’s always
a cool down. And you remember the words of Jesus in Revelation
2, he gives seven letters to the seven churches. And in those
seven letters to the seven churches, just to summarize it, he says,
you’ve quit doing what you’re supposed to be doing. And when
you quit doing it, you replace godly things with really wicked
things. And isn’t that what they’ve done
in this passage? I mean, they’re married to Ammonites. They’re
married to Moabites. They’re married to these foreign
people that do detestable religious things. And Jesus says to the
seven churches, repent, change, get with the program. If you
don’t, I’m gonna come like Nehemiah did. I’m gonna pull out some
hair. I’m gonna beat somebody with
a stick. He’s serious about his church. Well, and sometimes we
can lapse. in our fidelity to the church,
we can not be separate, but conform to the world. We can neglect
the house of God, we can desecrate the Sabbath, and we can defile
marriage. And that’s what’s taken place
in the church at Jerusalem. So we’ve thought about what is
reformation, or how does it begin? It begins by the word of the
Spirit. Why do we need reformation? Well, because we’re sinners.
Third question, what does reformation look like? And it’s actually
rather painful, I think. Reformation can be rather painful,
but what does it look like? Well, it looks like going about
the house, going about the church, going about life and setting
things back up. They’ve been knocked over. They’ve
been put in storage. They’ve been done away with and
it’s time to stand up, to clean up and get God’s house, perhaps
our house, perhaps our own life in spick and span order. And
the word of God shines. I think of maybe being in the
military and there’s barracks inspection. And the commander
or whoever, I don’t know about all this ranking business, he
comes in and he’s got his flashlight and he wants to see that your
shoes are spit-shined. He wants to see that your bed
is made, that there’s hospital corners. He wants to see that
your top sheet is on the right way and folded over your blanket
or the pillow is straight. He wants to see that the barracks
is in good order. And God does come and inspect
the church. God does come and inspect. individuals,
God does come and shine the light of his word, exposing sin and
disorder. And he shows us where our formation
has been deformed and needs now reformation. And there’s a couple
areas that we see specifically in this passage. The first is
they’ve not separated from the people of the land. They have
married other people of foreign origin. Now, this is not about
race. This is not about keeping the
race of the Jews pure. This is about keeping religion
pure, not being unequally yoked. We have the same command only
as Christians. We should not marry unbelievers.
We should not marry one who loves Christ and one who doesn’t. That’s
called missionary dating, right? I’ll just love him so much, mom
and dad. I’ll love him so much, he’ll come to Jesus. Well, you
got a pretty good high view of yourself, right? Only the Holy
Spirit through the word can change a person. And so the command
that Paul gives and that is usually read at the beginning of a wedding
service, is that we should not enter into marriage unadvisedly
or lightly. And so there ought to be equal
yoke in beliefs, not just that a person is in Christ. But I
think there’s trouble when you have people of significant view
differences coming together. For example, one says we baptize
babies, the other says we don’t. Well, that’s a view of the covenant
that’s rather serious. And there are other things that
really matter that ought to be brought together in marriage
or kept apart if they’ll bring strife. And so there’s separation
from foreign people. And I don’t have to tell you
how nasty and dirty some of these people were. Some of the things
they did, sacrificing children, their detestable practices, it
was an awful thing. And it’s obvious. shouldn’t have
married, but our eyes wandered all day. And we say, Oh, I’m
in love and love. Love is love, as they say nowadays,
and so we give it a shot and it’s painful. And that’s what
had gone on in the life of the people. But oughtn’t we also,
in the church, ought to encourage people to marry in the faith? Well, that’s one of the ways
reformation needs to take place. They’re not separate from the
other people. The other thing is the sanctity of the house
of God. Tobiah, you remember him, don’t
you? Sanballat and Tobiah, they were
the guys running around. You know, you can’t rebuild the
wall. If you did, a fox will get on it and knock it over.
Remember how bad they were? Well, Tobiah has moved into the
temple. I mean, he’s got the big chamber. He’s got the master
bedroom, as it were. He’s moved in and Elisha, the
priest, has allowed it. What in the world has gone on
in the community of the people of God when the priest of God
lets this pagan enemy of God’s people set up shop and move into
the house of God? Elisha has failed. He has let
his guard up spiritually. He’s lost his mind, you might
say. He’s been blinded. And you know
how we can say, well, we’ll, it’ll be okay. I think I’ve told
you all about how elders were nominated in my first church.
I was sitting at a session meeting and let’s nominate Billy to the
session. We haven’t seen him in a while
and maybe if we make him an elder he’ll come back to church. That’s
not going to work and somehow Eliashib has let his guard up
and he has been blinded Well, we remember why Jesus came with
such energy and strength to cleanse the temple. It’s a holy place. It’s the house of God. And I
can’t help but think if you fast forward to the life and ministry
of Jesus as it’s applied to each of us by the Holy Spirit. God
by his word and spirit comes and cleanses each of us. We are
temples of his Holy Spirit. He cares about our bodies. He cares about our souls. And
he does work to cleanse each of us and to sanctify temples
where he dwells. Well, what does Reformation look
like? Well, it looks like cleaning
up marriages. It looks like sanctifying the
temple space. It also involves Sabbath-keeping. The merchants were keeping market
on the Sabbath. The crops were being tend to
on the Lord’s day. And this seems to upset Nehemiah
perhaps the most. In verse 17, he says, I confronted
the nobles of Judah and said to them, what is this evil thing
that you are doing profaning the Sabbath day? Now, most of
us have, Well, I think all of us have lived with Sabbath blue
laws. You know, I can remember in the
1980s as a child, if you wanted gas, not on Sunday. If you wanted
groceries, at least not until maybe one or two o’clock. If
you wanted to eat out, restaurants were closed. I can remember when
the NFL played on Monday night. It was called Monday night football.
I can remember when people did not do things on Sunday, there
was still a tradition of Judeo-Christian values in our culture and hasn’t
that changed? We live in a day and a time where
Sunday is the new Saturday. We’re so busy, we’re burning
our candle at both ends. Now, if you want to hear more
about Sabbath, come on Wednesday night. We’re going to be studying
the fourth commandment this Wednesday. We’ll take a break for the Wednesday
of Thanksgiving and we’ll pick back up with part two of the
fourth commandment, keeping the Sabbath day holy. But Nehemiah
was upset. He was upset and confronted the
people and he kicked out the merchants. And did you catch
it? There were people camping outside the gates. They were
camping outside the gates, hoping maybe the gate would open and
they could bring in their fish, they could bring in their wheat,
they could bring in their wares and sell them. And Nehemiah was
smarter than that. Let’s lock the gates, let’s keep
the gates shut, and let’s also run off the campers. And it gets
rather humorous as you read on through the passage. I love in
verse 21, he warned those who brought things into sale, if
you do it again, I will lay hands on you. Probably not good for
the preacher to be, you know, threatening people physically,
but he’s rather upset. And he commanded the Levites
that they should purify themselves and guard the gates to keep the
Sabbath day holy. Then there’s a fourth thing that
needed reformation. What does reformation look like?
Well, it hits the marriages, it hits the temple and its sanctity,
it hits their Sabbath keeping, but it also hits the sanctity
of marriage, mixed marriages, holy unions, unholy unions, holy
seed, people of faith. These are things that were important. We need to be separate from the
other people. We need to be a holy people,
a holy nation, priest unto God. Well, a big question, is Reformation
worth it? How does Reformation start, word
and spirit? Why do we need Reformation sin?
What does Reformation look like? It looks like picking up what
we’ve broken, what we’ve knocked down, but question, is it worth
it? I’ll tell you my experience in
the church, in 20 years of ministry, a lot of people will tell you,
no, it is not worth it. You’ll upset people. The family, you know what I mean
by the family? They tell people they give the
most or people think they do. What we found is the people who
complain the loudest give the least. Not that I want to think
too much about that, but that’s, that’s been true, hasn’t it? The loudest people give the least,
they put their foot down, but is it worth it? And I think you
have to say absolutely yes, because our goal is to please God. Our
goal is not to please men. Our goal is to be governed by
his word in our worship. Our goal is to be governed by
his word in our family. Our goal is to be governed by
his word in our work. Our goal is to be governed by
his word in all of life. And you will meet ridicule in
the church. If you set about to be biblical,
you will meet ridicule among your extended family. If you
seek to raise your children in the fear and admonition of the
Lord, you will meet opposition in the workplace. If you seek
to live according to the Christian work ethic. And you will meet
ridicule out in the world. I imagine Americans are gonna
face persecution as Christians. It’s already happening in Canada.
They jailed ministers for holding public worship during COVID.
Thankfully, that did not happen here. But is it worth it to discover
God’s word and to put it into practice? Yes, I think you’ll
be blessed. Yes, I think you’ll live in God’s
heavenly light. You’ll have a pure conscience.
You’ll have a much more happy life if you do God’s ways. It’s a small picture of life
on this earth, of what life will be like in the new heavens and
the new earth. Somebody once said very well, if you don’t
like Sunday worship, you’re not gonna like heaven. And I think
you could also say, if you don’t like a quiet, godly, and content
Christian life, you’re not gonna like new life and the new creation. You’re gonna be very dissatisfied. Well, that’s not possible. But
we should desire to please God, who is the judge, and simply
say, thy will be done, Lord, on earth as it is in heaven. There’s a little saying among
Protestants, at least good Protestants, I think, and it’s the Latin semper
reformanda. And it simply means from the
Latin, we are reformed and we are always reforming. And I hope you’re not at a place
in your life I hope we’re not at a place in our church life
where we are content and saying, doggone, we’re doing pretty good. I mean, I can check eight or
nine boxes out of 10. That’s, you know, who could complain? There’s always room for improvement
because this side of heaven, we are tainted with sin. And
so may we say, Lord, thy will be done on earth as it is in
heaven and be reformed and always reforming. Let’s do pray together. We give you thanks, Lord, for
the chance to be under your word and let it shine its light in
our lives. And Lord, how dare us presume to think we’re doing
okay. Thank you very much. When your
word shows us otherwise, we do daily break your law and thought
word indeed. And our church, our worship,
our ordinances, where they’re pretty dim in light of the eternal
realities that exist in heaven. So help us, Lord, to live by
your word, to live by your spirit, and always be willing to be bent
and broken and shaped and formed and chiseled and fashioned and
even have our dross removed by your refining fire. We pray all
this in the name of Christ our Savior. Amen.