Let’s turn together to Nehemiah chapter 11 tonight; it can be found on page 406 in the Bibles in the pews in front of you.
Most of us are familiar, having lived in Mississippi with small towns that have declined in population and have been left to deteriorate in some way, there are places scattered around this state that look like ghost towns. I heard someone say recently that, “The war on entropy,” or the war on breakdown, “is constant and unrelenting.” And I’ve been thinking about that some as I drive around Jackson, or think about my own house, how much it takes to keep it up. Well so far in the book of Nehemiah, the city walls have been rebuilt, Jerusalem has been put back together to some extent, but it’s still a ghost town in many ways. The last few chapters that we’ve looked at over the last few weeks have been all about the people gathering together in Jerusalem. They have assembled together there for worship, for rejoicing, for repentance, and for making promises, but for the most part the people still lived in the towns and the villages surrounding Jerusalem, and Jerusalem remained quiet and relatively unpopulated. That was not right. And so what we have in this passage is a list of the people who willingly offered to go and to live and to take up residence in Jerusalem.
Verse 2 of chapter 11 says, “And the people blessed all the men who willingly offered to live in Jerusalem.” This is a memorial. It’s a memorial of those who committed to live in Jerusalem after the days of the exile and devastation. It doesn’t seem like much. Some may even find it tedious to read. But there’s something remarkable here. Don’t despise the day of small things. Don’t miss in this passage the goodness of God and the faithfulness of God and His preparation for the Messiah that we find in this list of names and places in chapters 11 and 12.
This is a long chapter, and I want us to see three things from it. We’ll see commitment, contentment, and covenant promises of God. I’m going to read the whole chapter, and so it’s going to take a little while, but just something to be looking for as we read through these lists of names and places. Be on the lookout for a few different categories and groups of people. Be on the lookout for Jerusalem and the villages, and then be on the lookout for Judah and Benjamin, the priests, the Levites, and the gatekeepers. You’ll see that showing up several times through this passage. So before we turn to God’s Word, let’s turn to Him in prayer.
Father, we give You thanks that all Scripture is breathed by You, it’s inspired by You, and it’s useful, it’s profitable for our teaching and rebuking and correcting and training in righteousness that we may be equipped for every good work. And so we ask for Your equipping grace as we read this passage tonight, as we study Your word, that Your Holy Spirit would use it and make it profitable to us. We can’t do that on our own understanding. We need Your Spirit, and we ask that You would give us Your grace to do it tonight, and that we would see Jesus and grow in our likeness to Him. We pray this in Christ’s name, amen.
Nehemiah chapter 11, verse 1:
“Now the leaders of the people lived in Jerusalem. And the rest of the people cast lots to bring one out of ten to live in Jerusalem the holy city, while nine out of ten remained in the other towns. And the people blessed all the men who willingly offered to live in Jerusalem.
These are the chiefs of the province who lived in Jerusalem; but in the towns of Judah everyone lived on his property in their towns: Israel, the priests, the Levites, the temple servants, and the descendants of Solomon’s servants. And in Jerusalem lived certain of the sons of Judah and of the sons of Benjamin. Of the sons of Judah: Athaiah the son of Uzziah, son of Zechariah, son of Amariah, son of Shephatiah, son of Mahalalel, of the sons of Perez; and Maaseiah the son of Baruch, son of Col-hozeh, son of Hazaiah, son of Adaiah, son of Joiarib, son of Zechariah, son of the Shilonite. All the sons of Perez who lived in Jerusalem were 468 valiant men.
And these are the sons of Benjamin: Sallu the son of Meshullam, son of Joed, son of Pedaiah, son of Kolaiah, son of Maaseiah, son of Ithiel, son of Jeshaiah, and his brothers, men of valor, 928. Joel the son of Zichri was their overseer; and Judah the son of Hassenuah was second over the city.
Of the priests: Jedaiah the son of Joiarib, Jachin, Seraiah the son of Hilkiah, son of Meshullam, son of Zadok, son of Meraioth, son of Ahitub, ruler of the house of God, and their brothers who did the work of the house, 822; and Adaiah the son of Jeroham, son of Pelaliah, son of Amzi, son of Zechariah, son of Pashhur, son of Malchijah, and his brothers, heads of fathers’ houses, 242; and Amashsai, the son of Azarel, son of Ahzai, son of Meshillemoth, son of Immer, and their brothers, mighty men of valor, 128; their overseer was Zabdiel the son of Haggedolim.
And of the Levites: Shemaiah the son of Hasshub, son of Azrikam, son of Hashabiah, son of Bunni; and Shabbethai and Jozabad, of the chiefs of the Levites, who were over the outside work of the house of God; and Mattaniah the son of Mica, son of Zabdi, son of Asaph, who was the leader of the praise, who gave thanks, and Bakbukiah, the second among his brothers; and Abda the son of Shammua, son of Galal, son of Jeduthun. All the Levites in the holy city were 284.
The gatekeepers, Akkub, Talmon and their brothers, who kept watch at the gates, were 172. And the rest of Israel, and of the priests and the Levites, were in all the towns of Judah, every one in his inheritance. But the temple servants lived on Ophel; and Ziha and Gishpa were over the temple servants.
The overseer of the Levites in Jerusalem was Uzzi the son of Bani, son of Hashabiah, son of Mattaniah, son of Mica, of the sons of Asaph, the singers, over the work of the house of God. For there was a command from the king concerning them, and a fixed provision for the singers, as every day required. And Pethahiah the son of Meshezabel, of the sons of Zerah the son of Judah, was at the king’s side in all matters concerning the people.
And as for the villages, with their fields, some of the people of Judah lived in Kiriath-arba and its villages, and in Dibon and its villages, and in Jekabzeel and its villages, and in Jeshua and in Moladah and Beth-pelet, in Hazar-shual, in Beersheba and its villages, in Ziklag, in Meconah and its villages, in En-rimmon, in Zorah, in Jarmuth, Zanoah, Adullam, and their villages, Lachish and its fields, and Azekah and its villages. So they encamped from Beersheba to the Valley of Hinnom. The people of Benjamin also lived from Geba onward, at Michmash, Aija, Bethel and its villages, Anathoth, Nob, Ananiah, Hazor, Ramah, Gittaim, Hadid, Zeboim, Neballat, Lod, and Ono, the valley of craftsmen. And certain divisions of the Levites in Judah were assigned to Benjamin.
These are the priests and the Levites who came up with Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua: Seraiah, Jeremiah, Ezra, Amariah, Malluch, Hattush, Shecaniah, Rehum, Meremoth, Iddo, Ginnethoi, Abijah, Mijamin, Maadiah, Bilgah, Shemaiah, Joiarib, Jedaiah, Sallu, Amok, Hilkiah, Jedaiah. These were the chiefs of the priests and of their brothers in the days of Jeshua.
And the Levites: Jeshua, Binnui, Kadmiel, Sherebiah, Judah, and Mattaniah, who with his brothers was in charge of the songs of thanksgiving. And Bakbukiah and Unni and their brothers stood opposite them in the service. And Jeshua was the father of Joiakim, Joiakim the father of Eliashib, Eliashib the father of Joiada, Joiada the father of Jonathan, and Jonathan the father of Jaddua.
And in the days of Joiakim were priests, heads of fathers’ houses: of Seraiah, Meraiah; of Jeremiah, Hananiah; of Ezra, Meshullam; of Amariah, Jehohanan; of Malluchi, Jonathan; of Shebaniah, Joseph; of Harim, Adna; of Meraioth, Helkai; of Iddo, Zechariah; of Ginnethon, Meshullam; of Abijah, Zichri; of Miniamin, of Moadiah, Piltai; of Bilgah, Shammua; of Shemaiah, Jehonathan; of Joiarib, Mattenai; of Jedaiah, Uzzi; of Sallai, Kallai; of Amok, Eber; of Hilkiah, Hashabiah; of Jedaiah, Nethanel.
In the days of Eliashib, Joiada, Johanan, and Jaddua, the Levites were recorded as heads of fathers’ houses; so too were the priests in the reign of Darius the Persian. As for the sons of Levi, their heads of fathers’ houses were written in the Book of the Chronicles until the days of Johanan the son of Eliashib. And the chiefs of the Levites: Hashabiah, Sherebiah, and Jeshua the son of Kadmiel, with their brothers who stood opposite them, to praise and to give thanks, according to the commandment of David the man of God, watch by watch. Mattaniah, Bakbukiah, Obadiah, Meshullam, Talmon, and Akkub were gatekeepers standing guard at the storehouses of the gates. These were in the days of Joiakim the son of Jeshua son of Jozadak, and in the days of Nehemiah the governor and of Ezra, the priest and scribe.”
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God endures forever.
So that’s a tough passage to read. And it’s a tough passage to figure out what to make of it. But if you take away the names, and the names are important, but if you take away the names there is a basic structure that emerges. There is something like the saying, “You can’t see the forest for the trees.” In other words, you miss the big picture by being caught up in all the details. Well some of the names might, at first, cause us to miss the big picture of this passage, but really this passage is pretty simple. It’s about those things that I mentioned before we read. It’s about Jerusalem and the villages and it’s about the people of Judah and Benjamin, the priests and the Levites and the gatekeepers. The first 24 verses of chapter 11 are all about Jerusalem. If you look back at verse 4 of chapter 11 it says, “And in Jerusalem lived certain of the sons of Judah and of the sons of Benjamin.” And then there’s listed in verse 4 the sons of Judah and in verse 7 the sons of Benjamin. And then included in Jerusalem, the city of Jerusalem with those groups, are the priests, verse 10, the Levites, verse 15, and then verse 19, the gatekeepers. So you have this pattern – Judah, Benjamin, priests, Levites, and gatekeepers. And it’s basically repeated in the passage.
When you get to verse 25, the focus shifts from Jerusalem to the villages, but notice the pattern. It’s first Judah, verse 25 – “Some of the people of Judah lived in Kiriath-arba and it’s villages.” Then Benjamin, verse 31 – “The people of Benjamin also lived from Geba onward.” Then there’s these separate lists – by the time we get to chapter 12 – separate lists of the priests, chapter 12 verse 1, the Levites, verse 8, and then the gatekeepers, verse 25. There’s that pattern again – Judah, Benjamin, priests, Levites, and gatekeepers. So there are a lot of names, but overall it’s not that complicated. There’s something about this passage that is very ordinary and it’s very plain. And I think that is exactly what makes it so helpful because it makes us take a closer look, to look again at some things that we may take for granted or tend to overlook as we read Scripture, but also as we think about our own lives and what God is doing in our lives today.
The Importance of Commitment
And one of the things that I think we see here is the importance of commitment. One thing that we have to notice about chapter 11 is its association and the way it ties in to what we read last week in chapter 10. If you look back at chapter 10, the very last sentence, you notice what it says – and Ed focused on this some last week – it says, in chapter 10 verse 39, “We will not neglect the house of our God.” And there was a commitment in chapter 10. The people were not going to neglect the house of their God. And that word itself, or that phrase, “the house of God,” appears several times throughout chapter 10. Well the same thing we find in chapter 11; I don’t know if you noticed it, but that word, that phrase, “the house of God,” is repeated multiple times in chapter 11 – in verse 11, 12, and 16 there is mention of work happening at the temple. And on a couple of occasions, verse 1 and 18, Jerusalem itself is called – what? “The holy city.” Why was Jerusalem the holy city? Well it’s the holy city because it is the place and location of the holy place of God, the house of God, the temple.
And so, what we have in chapter 11 is the people are fulfilling the commitment that they had made in chapter 10. They are doing what they said they would do. Now it’s true, by the time we get to chapter 13, much of that had fallen apart. There is a mess and there is a need for reform, but don’t miss that before the failure there is faithfulness. Before they broke their commitment, they actually made the commitment and they did something about it. Men from Judah and from Benjamin uprooted their lives and they went from the towns and the villages and they went into Jerusalem and they went to live there, to support and to protect the city. And there are a couple of times they are called, verse 6, “valiant men,” or “men of valor,” verse 8. This is a small force of men going into Jerusalem to live there. You see, if the city is not thriving and if the city is not protected, then the house of God will be neglected. These things have to happen for the house of God to be protected and to promote it.
And then we see also the priests and the Levites, even the gatekeepers have a direct hand in the work of the temple. They have a direct hand in the house of God. There’s order and there’s attention; there’s care and there’s oversight in these lists. And there’s praise and there’s worship and there’s thanksgiving and there’s sacrifice from these people who are found in the list of names in this chapter. They did not neglect the house of their God. They kept their commitments and they are commended for it. That’s the whole reason that they are listed here. That’s the whole reason their names are found in Scripture. They made a commitment not to neglect the house of God and then they did what needed to be done not to neglect the house of God. “And the people,” it says in verse 2, “blessed all the men who willingly offered to live in Jerusalem” to promote and protect the house of their God.
You know, one of the things that I’ve thought about, I’ve asked myself as we’ve been studying through the book of Nehemiah, is, “Where do we find opportunities in our lives, in our congregation and in our life together, where do we find opportunities to do some of the things that are found in this book?” So for instance, we read in chapter 9 how the people gathered together and they engaged in confession and in repentance of their sin. They fasted and humbled themselves before God. Well where do we do that? Where are we intentional to humble ourselves and to confess our sins as the gathered people of God? There could be a number of places that we do that. It could be in our Sunday school classes; it could be in Bible study groups or discipleship groups or in prayer meeting on Wednesday night. But that’s hard work. It’s hard work to do that. Are we doing those things? Are we confessing our sins and humbling ourselves before God? And what are we missing in our discipleship if we’re missing that sort of ministry among ourselves?
Well the same thing, likewise, I asked myself as we read this passage, “Where are we committing ourselves to serve and to worship and to live for the glory of God and then doing it, and then living those things out in our lives?” That’s what this passage is calling for us to do – to make this commitment and then to do it. Where are we saying like Joshua said, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,” and then doing those things? Where are we doing like what Jesus calls us to do, to count the cost and to follow Him, to take up the cross and costly, self-sacrificial, self-denying discipleship to Him? There are a number of places that we could do that. There are examples in precedence throughout church history of God’s people binding themselves together in covenants, in covenant commitments to be faithful and engaged in the ministry of the church; to have a ministry mindset and to protect and to keep the Lord’s Day holy, to care for marriages and to pursue sexual purity and to parent our children according to Biblical priorities and to go against the flow, the mainstream, when we’re called to do that. That takes commitment and it takes being intentional to live up to those commitments.
You know we basically do those things, we basically make those kinds of commitments when we take vows – our vows of church membership and our vows of marriage and our vows of baptism. We’re committing to do those things in the church and in our marriages and for our children for the next generation. And we are to strive, by God’s grace, to keep those commitments, to keep those commitments in a culture that is hesitant at every turn to make commitments and to keep them. Of course we’ll fail and of course we will be imperfect and inconsistent, but these names here in Nehemiah 11 are recorded in this passage to commend such efforts of making a commitment and keeping them before God, of being faithful in our commitments to one another. It is no small thing to make a promise and then to keep it. So there’s commitment here.
The Importance of Contentment
It’s also no small thing to notice and to recognize the goodness of God and what He has done for the people that are found listed in these chapters, in this part of Nehemiah, in this part of their history. And there is something in this passage that can point us not just to commitment and fulfilling it but to contentment as well. You see there’s no reason that any of this should be here. There’s no reason that any of this that’s found in these chapters should be here. The fact that it is recorded here for us is due only to the mercy and the grace and the kindness of God.
The People of God
Just take an inventory of what we find in this passage, some of the things that we see here. Number one, there are people. That was obvious, right! There are people here, and more specifically, these are the people of God. These people have names and they have a family history and they have children and they have a future and they make up a community. They are a community of faith; they are a community that has been formed and shaped and maintained by God’s grace and according to His promises to them. We’ve already noted, as we’ve looked through this book, the importance of people – what good is the city and the city walls and the temple without the people there to enjoy the things for which they were created – a relationship with God and a relationship with one another. You see, there is no greater blessing, there is no higher esteem, than to be counted among the number of God’s people. And that’s what we find here. The sons of Judah and the sons of Benjamin and the priests and the Levites and the gatekeepers – they are a part of the people, the people of God.
The Worship of God
And then we also see, secondly, worship. There are a number of places in these verses that talk about the leader of the praise, those who led the people in giving thanksgiving to God. Chapter 12 verse 8 talks about those who were “in charge of the songs of thanksgiving.” When we read about the priests and the Levites and the gatekeepers, we are to equate them – those people and their roles with worship – with praise and thanksgiving to God. In fact, these verses that we finished with chapter 12 verse 26, they are preparing us for what is about to happen – what we’ll read about next week with chapter 27, if you look there. It says that, the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem, “they sought the Levites in all their places to bring them to Jerusalem to celebrate the dedication with gladness, with thanksgivings, and with singing, with cymbals and harps and lyres.”
You see what’s happening here. This wasn’t just a repopulated city. No, this is a city that is set to the praise and worship of God. And at least part of the purpose of those names in the first few verses of chapter 12, the lists of the different priests, at least part of the purpose for them being included is to show that there is a succession of the priesthood that has been maintained through the exile and over the generations. And so as the people come back into the city and they go back to the temple to worship, they can worship God according to the standard of God’s Word because there has been a succession of the priesthood. These men are qualified to do that for which they have been called, and that is to lead the people in worship.
The Provision from God’s Hands
The other thing we see, thirdly, in this passage is provision. There is provision for the peoples’ needs. There was food on the table. There were crops in the barns. There were livestock in the fields. How do we know that? How do we see that from this passage? Well it’s because there were gatekeepers. The gatekeepers are listed as 172 in chapter 11:19, but if you look down at chapter 12 verse 25 it says this – that Mattaniah and the others with him were “gatekeepers standing guard at the storehouses of the gates.” They were standing guard at the storehouses. This was the place where supplies or gifts were brought in for sacrifices, where gifts were brought in for the priests and Levites. If there had been no crops that had been brought into the storehouses, there would have been no need for the gatekeepers to stand guard over them. So the very fact that there were gatekeepers in Jerusalem standing guard at the storehouses points us to the fact that God had provided for His people in such an abundant way that they were able to bring their gifts and their sacrifices, their first fruits, their grain offerings and so on to the temple to offer up as a gift of thanksgiving to God.
None of that was guaranteed. There didn’t have to be people in worship and provision in Jerusalem. In fact, basically all of that had gone away less than 150 years before. Before the events of this chapter, the people had been defeated and they had been taken away into exile. The city and the temple had been destroyed. There was no worship or praise or thanksgiving in Jerusalem. And the crops were left to rot in the field and the people starved. It was devastating. Devastating. And all of it happened because the people had turned away from God. They had turned away from God. They had turned to their idols; their own sin had brought God’s judgment upon them. They didn’t deserve God’s blessing. They didn’t deserve the blessings that we find in this chapter. In fact, what did they deserve? They deserved what William taught the children about tonight in the catechism. “What does every sin deserve? The wrath and curse of God.” And yet what do we find in this passage? Not the wrath and the curse of God, but the mercy and grace and the blessing of God to these people. They are His people and they are in worship to Him and they are enjoying their daily bread, their needs supplied. This is nothing less than God’s amazing grace to undeserving sinners.
Now I wonder, as we read this passage, have we sometimes overlooked or taken for granted some of God’s, what we might call, His “unpretentious blessings,” blessings like this? One writer says this. He says, “These things” – the people and the worship and daily bread – “they are the essence of everything that people should have longed for, everything that had been withheld in judgment.” These understated blessings, they force us to ask ourselves the question of, “What counts as true blessing to us?” And he says this, “Are we obsessed with material blessings to the neglect or devaluation of true spiritual blessing, and do we see material blessings as further opportunity to get on with our daily service to God?”
The passage preaches to me, because let’s face it, one of the things about midlife, being middle-aged, is to have a little bit of distance to look back and maybe notice some unmet expectations or even ask the question, “Is this it?” And that’s why people talk about some of the dissatisfaction with middle-age and the midlife crises that come with that. This passage is a helpful corrective to those sorts of thinkings. And this passage has something to say for those of us here who are going through a time of suffering, who are in a time of trial and pain and sickness and loss. This passage has something to say to us in this room who have an uncertain future, who do not know what tomorrow brings. Or maybe for those of us who are struggling with fear or with anger with the situation and the culture around us. Take an inventory. Take an inventory of your life right now. And can you identify in your life these three things: the people of God, the worship of God, and the provision from His hands. Do we deserve those things? Are they guaranteed? Can we take credit for any of them? No. They are the gifts of God’s hands, of His abundant mercy and grace and kindness to us because He loves us and has promised to care for us in these ways, to meet our needs in this way. And that calls for a contentment and a gratitude from us; a heart that overflows with contentment and gratitude.
There was a line from a sitcom several years ago, and it was about two men having a conversation. One of them was very wealthy and the other man said to him, he said, “You know what? You are the richest man that I know.” And the rich man said, “Ah, yes, but I would give it all for a little bit more.” We think that way sometimes, don’t we? And we let that subtly creep into our lives. We think, “Oh yeah, we have all of these nice things, good things, blessings of God, but we’d give it all for a little bit more,” wouldn’t we? And yet this passage is calling us to contentment, calling us to say what the psalmist said that we read with our call to worship – Psalm 126, “The Lord has done great things for us, the Lord has done great things for us and we are glad.”
The Covenant Promises of God
There’s one more thing to notice from this passage and it’s that not only has the Lord done great things for us but He will do greater things yet still for us. And maybe we could look at the covenant promises of these verses. And maybe it’s better to say that we need to recognize what we don’t notice in this passage. Something is missing here. In the events of this passage, in what is recorded here, something is missing. One theologian has said that you can define or describe God’s kingdom in the Bible as “God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule.” He says that the basic idea is woven throughout Scripture. And in this passage, what do we have? We have God’s people, the Old Testament people of God in Judah and Benjamin and Levi. We also have God’s place, the place in the Old Testament where God made His name to dwell in Jerusalem. And yes, we could say that obviously they are under God’s rule, but in another sense they’re not, are they?
You notice that the king that is mentioned in this passage is Darius, the king of Persia. They’re still under Persian reign, they’re still under the reign of the Persian king. In fact, we read in chapter 9 verse 36 that the people all said, “We are slaves this day.” They considered themselves slaves to the Persian Empire, to the Persian king. And for all of the leadership we read about, the overseers that we find in this passage, everything we see about Zerubbabel and Nehemiah, they are governors of the people but there is no king. There’s no king of Israel on the throne in Jerusalem. There’s no son of David sitting on the throne according to the promises of God. In fact, there’s a lot missing from this passage that don’t match up or meet the expectations that God’s Word had promised to through the prophets in the Old Testament. We only read about three tribes of Israel here – Judah, Benjamin and Levi. Nothing to say of all of Israel who will be gathered together as the one people of God. Nothing like that.
And that’s not to mention what Isaiah and Malachi and Zechariah said would happen. They said that all nations would flow to Jerusalem and many peoples would come and say, “Let us go up to the house of the God of Jacob that He may teach us His ways and that we may walk in His paths. Thus says the Lord, in those days, ten men from every nation, from every tongue, will take hold of the robe of a Jew, saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’” We don’t see that here. And the prophet Joel had promised that there would be an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in those days, in the last days. We don’t have any of those things happening in this passage. But what we do have – and don’t miss this – what we do have is God preserving His people and He’s preserving this place to make way for the coming of His promised King.
Four hundred years, four hundred years later, Jesus will be born. And we are told in Matthew chapter 1 that Jesus is the offspring of Zerubbabel. He’s from the family of King David. He’s of the tribe of Judah. He is the Christ. He is the expected Messiah. He is the promised King of Israel who suffered and died and was raised to bring about all of the fulfillments of the promises of God that He had promised to his people beginning in the book of Genesis to this point and beyond. Jesus is the one who gathers from every nation, people, to be His people, a people of God to enjoy the blessings of God, to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And He is the one who pours out peace and blessing in ways that these men, that we, can hardly imagine. It’s beyond our expectations, beyond our imaginations what Jesus will do for us, what He has accomplished for us on the cross and by His resurrection. And so this passage, these lists of names, they cast our sight into the future from this point and they remind us of what has happened in Jesus Christ – of God’s faithfulness to His promises, to fulfill them all to His people in Jesus.
This passage, you see, gives us hope. It gives us hope because where we see no king here, we now know that the King, Jesus, is on the throne and He shall reign forever and ever. Amen. Let’s pray.
Father, You are good and Your mercy endures forever. We give You thanks that You have included this portion of Your Word that we might slow down and look closer and take a harder look at what You are doing and revealing to us in Your Word. And so we ask that You would fill us with wonder, fill us with awe at what You have done for us. That we would be like those who dream, like those who are filled with laughter and with shouts of joy. That we would say, “You have done great things for us and we are glad.” We pray all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.