Would you turn with me in God's Word to Isaiah chapter 55? We'll read Isaiah chapter 55. Our special focus for exposition will be verses 10 through 13. Again, reading Isaiah 55, our special focus will be on 10 through 13, though we'll pick up a few themes from earlier in the chapter. This is the word of the Lord. Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. And he who has no money, come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear and come to me. Hear that your soul may live, and I will make with you an everlasting covenant. My steadfast, sure love for David. Behold, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. Behold, you shall call a nation that you did not know, And a nation that did not know you shall run to you because of the Lord your God and of the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord that he may have compassion on him. And to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not as your thoughts, neither are your ways as my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. And now our text for today. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there, but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower, and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that for which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace. The mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress. Instead of the briar, shall come up the myrtle. And it shall make a name for the Lord, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. Thus far, the reading of God's holy word. Amen. Would you join with me in a brief word of prayer asking his blessing? Our good Father, you who give to the ravens that cry, we would open our mouths and we would ask for your word. We confess, Lord, that if you leave us to ourselves, this is a vain exercise to speak and to hear. Or even worse, Lord, like the hearers of Isaiah, this word will just harden our hearts. O God, do not leave us to ourselves. O God, by your Spirit we pray, come. And may your anointing be on the one who speaks. May your anointing be on each of our ears. May your word benefit us, Lord, and fall into our souls. Prepare our hearts, Lord, as good soil, that we might receive the word and it might sprout in us, we pray. For we ask in Jesus' sake and for Jesus' glory. Amen. Congregation, dearly beloved of our Lord Jesus Christ, God in His great kindness has given us a message through this prophet Isaiah in 66 chapters. Many people have called Isaiah the fifth gospel. Here is an ever-relevant, here is a powerful word from God that will change your life if you can accept it and if you can hear it. Campegius Vitringa, one of the greatest commentators on Isaiah who ever lived, who taught for some 40 years at the University of Froniker in Friesland, and by the way, whose birthday was this Tuesday, some 353 years ago, he had this to say about the power of the word. He said, this living word alone can give life to the soul and can restore the soul from the death in which it was. This word is like a flame that warms and illumines, like the light of the sun that shines and heats and penetrates deep into the earth and produces a stirring of life in all things that receive the influence of its rays. Similarly, the word of the gospel, when you read it or when you hear it from the mouth of the teachers who preach and explain it with the faithfulness that it demands of a minister, When it is animated by the Spirit of God, it revives your conscience, illumines your spirit, purifies your judgment, instructs you concerning the true faith, sanctifies you, purifies you, consoles you, and leads you to the contemplation of the glory of God as it shines in Jesus Christ. In this way, it excites in the heart of a person who was dead the stirrings of real life, That is, a movement of sincere and spiritual love, a holy desire to be united to the communion of God, from which the soul separates itself from all other objects and is intimately united to its creator. Do you know the influence of this word? Have you been drawn? Have you been impacted by this word? I hope that's the case. And the invitation is for all of us, as we'll see in our text. Come, come. These invitations are for you and for me. If you'll look with me in our text this morning, and I would encourage you to keep your thumb in your Bibles this morning, if you'll look with me at verse 13, there is a twin image here. It speaks of a cypress on the one hand and a briar on the other. I believe here in verse 13 we have a summary in many ways of the whole message of Isaiah and, dare we say, the whole message of the Bible. Verse 13 tells us, instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle. We have two contrasting pictures of plants here. Children, have you ever been in a briar patch? Or have you ever found yourself amongst thorns, maybe when you were out walking somewhere? It's a terrible place to be. I know when I was a kid, sometimes we would, in Illinois, You'd be right in the midst of all these briars. You don't want to be there. It's a horrible experience to be kind of caught up in the stinging nettles or stingweed. You're surrounded by all kinds of prickly plants. The briar and the thorn for Isaiah is a picture of unproductive, deserted ground, but it's a picture of God's judgment in particular. Starting, for example, in Isaiah chapter 6. This is a common theme throughout Isaiah 7, verse 23. We read, In that day, every place where there used to be a thousand vines worth a thousand shekels of silver will become briars and thorns. With bow and arrows a man will come there, for all the land will be briars and thorns. And for all the hills that used to be hoed with a hoe, You will not come there for fear of briars and thorns. This is a picture then for Isaiah of God's wrath and judgment poured out on his disobedient people. If briars and thorns point to this negative reality, what then do myrtle point to? What do cypresses point to? They are the opposite image. They're a picture not of a deserted, unfertile, uncultivated area, but quite the opposite, of a fruitful woodland, of a place that's productive and evergreen. A cypress is a fir tree, it's evergreen. A myrtle, do you know what a myrtle is? I didn't really know, maybe a number of you are gardeners and nursery keepers, but a myrtle is an evergreen shrub. It's always sweet-smelling and it's always verdant. These fruitful and productive trees, on the other hand, point to the end of God's judgment and the beginning, then, of God's blessings. So, for example, we read in Isaiah 41, verse 19, I will plant in the wilderness the cedar and the acacia tree, the myrtle and the oil tree. I will set in the desert the cypress tree and the pine and the box tree together. So we have a summary of the whole message then of Isaiah summed up in these two images. On the one hand, thorns, thistles, briars. On the other hand, the myrtle, sweet-smelling, the cypress, productive, the negative, and the positive. Isaiah has two messages. The first is the law, the second is the gospel. We might say that's the message of the Bible as a whole. Isaiah then gives us the law when he exposes our sin, when he threatens God's punishment on us for our waywardness, our perversity, and our resistance to his word. Isaiah begins and ends on this note of the law. We see, starting at the very beginning, chapter 1, verse 2, it says, The Lord has spoken, children I have reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner, the donkey its master's crib, but Israel does not know. My people do not understand. Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly. They have forsaken the Lord. They have despised the Holy One of Israel. They are utterly estranged. Why will you still be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel? This is the law. The law is the x-ray that exposes the tuberculosis in your lungs. The law shows just how far you have fallen from the glory of God. Even as we prayed, we read that God requires perfection and we confess that we have fallen short of that perfection. We have a glimpse of the law in our own passage in chapter 55, verse 7, when it talks about the unrighteous man. Is that not you? Is that not me? It talks about the wicked. Outside of Christ, is that not us and our sin? Yes, we, you and I, deserve God's judgment for our rebelliousness and our thick-headedness and stiff-nickedness against God. The bad news that Isaiah gives us, the bad news exposed by the law, is that we are twisted and unequal people. That we are not law-abiding, righteous people. We do not love the Lord our God with all our heart. which is what God's law demands of us. We do not love our neighbor as ourselves, which is what God's law demands of us, a full hearty love of neighbor. But no, we're turned in on ourselves and we've fallen short. We are sinners who deserve what? We deserve the thorns. We deserve the briars. Each of us. Isaiah exposes our sin. Isaiah threatens God's condemnation throughout his book to the very end. Matter of fact, Isaiah kind of ends on that jarring note of the law and of God's judgment at the very end in chapter 66, verse 24. He says, And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me, for their worms shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh. Our Lord Jesus picks up this imagery of an undying worm and an undying flame, and he uses it to talk about hell. You can't get more serious in talking about the judgment of God than to talk about hell. This is what Isaiah threatens us with in the law. It used to be popular for liberal academics to talk about Isaiah as having been written by three different people. By first Isaiah, second Isaiah, third Isaiah. But even now, many critical scholars agree that that is super simplistic. That's a very superficial reading of Isaiah. There are in Isaiah, there are very carefully crafted themes that go from the beginning to the end. It's one book with one message. And one of the themes most outstanding is the law throughout Isaiah. But the other glory to God is the gospel. The gospel. Throughout these 66 chapters, from beginning to end, God, through Isaiah, gives us the gospel. What is the burden of our passage in chapter 55? The burden of chapter 55 is not the law. The burden of 55 is the gospel. The gospel is God's word as it promises good things to us. The gospel is God explaining to us what he has done for our welfare through our Lord Jesus Christ. That he has committed himself to do and has done the things that we could never do for ourselves. When he tells us about what Jesus has done, when he tells us of all the benefits that we have in Jesus Christ, this is the gospel. This is the Cyprus. This is the Myrtle. The law is God's demand. The gospel is God's assurance. The gospel is the singing of the soloists and handles Messiah, those beautiful words of chapter 40, verse 1. Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, says your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished and that her iniquity is pardoned. That is the gospel. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert, a highway for our God. From chapter 2 of Isaiah all the way through chapter 6, this is a constant theme. The gospel. The gospel. God giving us a message of Cyprus. God telling us that He'll do us good. God giving us a message of Myrtle. God convincing us or trying to convince us that He has our welfare close to His own heart, even more than we have close to our own hearts. That God will bless us and that God is for us. The gospel climaxes as it shows us what God has done for us in Christ to assure our well-being and all the promises that he has for us in a new and renewed heavens and earth with unspeakable joy of blessings that are impossible for human words to capture even at their highest, most poetic and most glorious. This is the gospel, unspeakably glorious and wonderful. But look at verse 12, would you, in our text. Here we have the gospel made concrete, as it were, at this time. It says there that you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace. We understand that hell is the threat of the law, that heaven is the promise of the gospel. Here at this time, what is the threat of the law? The threat of Isaiah, which is the same threat that Moses made, is what? You will be yanked out of the land. You'll be taken into exile. And the promise then is for return to the land. The law and the gospel, so to speak, take concrete form in the threat of exile and then in the promise of return. There's a particular focus in these chapters, these chapters 40 through 55, on this promise of return. God is promising that he will lead his people out from captivity in Babylon and bring them back to their land in peace. For example, in Isaiah chapter 40, verse 4, we read, and perhaps you can hear Handel's music playing in the background as I say this, Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight, and the rough places plain. What is God promising? He's promising a California highway straight back to his land. He's going to make the way smooth. He's going to bring his people back from captivity. We see this again in chapter 48, verse 20. It says, Go forth from Babylon, flee from the Chaldeans with a voice of singing. Declare, proclaim this, utter it to the end of the earth. Say, the Lord has redeemed his servant Jacob. And they did not thirst when he led them through the deserts. He caused the waters to flow from the rock for them. He also split the rock and the waters gushed out. The Lord is promising another exodus. We sang in our Psalter selection about God providing for his people across the wilderness. He's saying, I'm going to do it again. A new exodus. I'll bring them back. If you would, look at chapter 52, verse 11. There we see again, it says, depart, depart, go out from there. Touch no unclean thing. Go out from the midst of her. Be clean, you who bear the vessels of the Lord. For you shall not go out with haste nor by flight. For the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard. God is promising a new exodus. He's saying in chapters from the beginning to the end of chapter 40 through 55, I will bring an end to your exile. I will smooth the way for my people to come back to my land. We read in chapter 40, verse 5, it says, The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. So, in effect, from the beginning of 40 to the very end of 55, as we're considering this morning, God is saying, on the one hand, my word will be performed. And he's saying on another, my people's situation will be transformed. I'd like for us to take those as two points. I know I've given you a long introduction here, but let's take those as our two points this morning. First, that God's word will be performed. And secondly, that God's world will be transformed. If you look at verses 10 and 11 of our text this morning, we see there an emphasis that God's word will be performed. We read in verse 10 of chapter 55, For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth, It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and it shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. Scripture often reminds us of the transformative power of God, and that's why we read it in our homes, that's why we put so much emphasis on preaching it in our pulpits and listening to it whenever we have the opportunity. But here in verse 11, when it speaks about God's Word, It's speaking less about God's written word as it is about God's spoken word, if I can put it in that way. What do I mean by that? God's word here is his intention, his purpose, his resolution, what he has determined to do. God is saying, oh my people, no matter how unbelievable this may seem to you, I will fulfill what I've said. I will do my word. Now the people are living in what kind of situations at this point? The people are living under the power of these foreign folk. The Assyrians have control of them, have hauled off the northern kingdom. Then the Babylonians come and have hauled them off. What have they lost? They've lost their lands. They've lost all their money. They've lost their national identity. They're scattered throughout Mesopotamia, modern Iraq. They've even lost their children, as we see with Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, for example. The people have lost everything in this world. And God is yet saying, I will fulfill my word. God is promising. He says, not only will he bring about bread for the eater, which is food security for today, which is no small thing in the ancient world, but he says, I'm going to give seed for the sower. In other words, there'll be food security for the future. I'm going to take care of all your earthly needs. Can it be we impoverished here in this foreign land? We've even lost our language? Yes, God says, my word will be fulfilled. The promises God makes to his people are so great that they're tempted to react like Zechariah acts when the angel promises that he'll have a son, right? What has Zechariah said? How can this be? Are you tempted with that same reaction? Yes, you're tempted. You're tempted. You're tempted not to believe the goodness of God's promises. They are so good and overwhelming. We're tempted, each of us, not to believe. Christ, we read in Scripture, has been made the heir of all things. You'll be celebrating that on Ascension Day, right? And if Christ is the heir of all things, we are co-heirs with Christ, that we are heirs of all things. The Scripture tells us that all things are ours in 1 Corinthians 3, 21. We read that Christ has become the judge of all things and that somehow we will join with Him in cosmic judgment, that we will judge angels? What does that mean? I'm not sure, but it's an amazingly glorious thing. Do you believe that? The Lord tells us that He will never leave us, never forsake us, that He will cause all things to work together for our good. Can you believe that? Can you believe that? Brothers and sisters, we are forced to pray along with the man speaking to Jesus, Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. You and I are tempted by unbelief. But God and His kindness here in Isaiah is trying to convince you to believe. To believe that He has your welfare close to His heart. He says, my word will be performed. My intention will infallibly come to pass. There's no question of this. I will take Babylon out of the picture. I will raise up a conqueror, Cyrus the Great. I will see you out of bondage and bring you back into freedom. I will destroy the false gods of paganism that have you under their grasp and bring you out to myself to worship me again in Jerusalem. I am the sovereign Lord. I am the Holy One of Israel. And I will infallibly bless you. I will unavoidably bless you. I will ineluctably bless you. I will certainly bless you, says the Lord. My word will come to pass. It is just as sure as the effect of the rain on the earth. I'm a new immigrant to California, and when we arrived here in August and came to the seminary campus, there is a field just to the side of the seminary that was utterly barren, Completely, it's just red dirt. Not very good looking. But what happened come end of November, December? What happened? This is kind of a marvel to me as an outsider. What happened? Right away, that field just transformed within a few short weeks into a beautiful, verdant field. You could almost see some cows going out there to eat. It's a complete transformation. And God's saying, just as sure as when the rain comes down, the blessings come up just so sure. My intention will be fulfilled. There's no question of it. When the rain comes, life jumps out. And that's what God is saying. My word surely will be performed. But consider with me a second theme from our passage. Not only will God's word be performed, but God's world will be transformed. God's world will be transformed. There's all kinds of positive images here in our passage. Verse 10 speaks of a fertile land. Verse 11 speaks about success. We see this movement from judgment to blessing very, very clearly, and especially verse 13, we've already considered that. If you look at verse 12, it's almost as though the earth itself is responding to the good news of God saving his people. And we read in verse 12, You shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace. The mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. You shall go out in joy and be led forth in what? In peace. The Lord wants to convince you, Christian sister, that he has your peace very close to his heart. And what do we mean by that? What is this peace? What's the Hebrew word for peace? Shalom. Surely you probably know that. Shalom. But what is shalom? What is shalom? Is shalom just the absence of hostility? Is that what's being promised here? Shalom means every good thing you could possibly desire. Shalom means welfare. Shalom means blessing. Shalom means all that's to be longed for. That is shalom. The good things. That's what God is promising. God is promising a comprehensive blessing to you in Jesus. God is saying that I have your full-orbed welfare close to my heart. That's shalom. That's what God is promising us here. He wants you to be convinced that He has your back covered. He has your welfare assured. He wants you to be convinced that that's your future so that you live a new way today. Are we not all, shall we say, eschatological people? Can I use that word? Are not all human beings eschatological, referring to the future? Is not, if I can say it this way, is not the stock market kind of an eschatological barometer? What I mean by that is in the sense of what is the stock market? The stock market is simply a barometer of people's expectations about the future. If people think that the future is going to be prosperous, the stock market goes up. if people think that the future is not going to be prosperous, the stock market goes down. It's eschatological in that sense of it's looking to the future. The Lord wants you to be an ultimate optimist in your eschatological point of view. What do I mean by that? Do I mean that we can have some guarantee about what the stock market will do the rest of this year? Of course not. Do we have some guarantee that our national politics that there will be some glorious national revival and there will be major political changes of some sort. No, we have no guarantees of how things will go in the short term or the longer term political future for our country. But the Lord wants you as his people to know that he has your welfare close to his heart and that the future will be good for you in our Lord Jesus Christ. You may say, well, how can this be when there's so much trouble and there's suffering in this life? How can this be in the light of what Isaiah says? Twice in chapter 48, 22, chapter 57, 21, it says there is no peace, no shalom for the wicked. We know that all the sufferings of this world are due directly or indirectly to human sin and rebellion against God. How can we have shalom? How can there be welfare for us? Let me leave my text very briefly. Look at verse 3 of chapter 55, would you? Look at verse 3 of chapter 55. Here we read about an everlasting covenant and God's steadfast, sure love for David, who is described then in verse 4 as a leader and a commander of the peoples. Now, this is a text that sends liberal academics into spasms because according to the old way of looking at things, chapters 1 through 39 are about David and chapters 40 through 55 are about the suffering servant. But here, right here, right at the climax of this second section of Isaiah is David. David makes his appearance. How can this be? How can this be? David makes his appearance here in chapter 55 because he made his appearance two chapters earlier in chapter 53. How can you have shalom? You can have shalom because for David, for David's son, that's what was taken away from him. We read in chapter 55, verse 5, He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our shalom was upon him. And by his stripes, we are healed. This is the gospel, you see. This is the message of myrtle. This is the message of cypress. You get shalom because he was denied shalom. You get blessing because he was given the judgment. You get the fruitful treatment because he was given the thorns and the thistles. and literally the briars on himself. This is the gospel, God's commitment to your welfare in the future because God has shown himself faithful to your welfare in the past and what he's done for you in our Lord Jesus Christ. So you can be convinced that all things will work together for your welfare. Verse 13 tells us that instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress, instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle, And it shall make a name for the Lord, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. There is a river in Lebanon. It flows out into the sea. And the river is called the Nahar al-Kalb, the Dog River. And there is a section of rock there at the end of that river where the great armies of antiquity and of modernity have set their seal, have made a name for themselves there. We have Thutmose III making a monument for himself. We're talking 1500 BC. We have the Assyrians putting their own monuments there. Even in modern times, we have the French putting monuments there. We have even General Allenby in World War I putting his name there. Why is it? Because they had to pass through there. If you want to come from the north in Syria down into Palestine, you have to come right through that narrow area. But in that area, what happened to the Assyrian description? They thought they would put themselves a name that would not be cut off, but the hated Assyrians had their names chiseled off. And all the human empires, what happened to the Egyptians? What happened to the Babylonians? All human names get cut off. And Pharaoh's inscription, though it's not cut off, all those 3,500 years have just worn it away. It's completely illegible. But when we consider what God did first under Moses in drawing his people out from Egypt and bringing them into the land, and then again in drawing his people out from Mesopotamia and then establishing them back in the land, and then preeminently through our Lord Jesus Christ, in God liberating us from sin, liberating us from his judgment and the very threat of hell itself, and reconciling us to God and promising us the glories of a heavenly life. This is an accomplishment of God that will never, ever, it is a name of God that will never be cut off. And he will surely finish what he has begun. Let me conclude, brothers and sisters, with a brief word of application. If you look at verse 10, the very beginning of our passage, you'll see that it begins with a very short word. And what is that? It's the word for. For. For is a word that assumes a previous logic. So our passage is giving us the reason for something above. And what is that? It's an exhortation. It's a call. And that call we see in verse 6. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord that he may have compassion on him and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. How do you respond to all this that the Lord has done for us? We respond in gratitude by seeking God, by turning away from our self-willed, self-driven life, and turning and reorienting ourselves to God. That's the call here then. To seek the Lord. The Scripture promises us here and over and over again of blessing for us as we seek Him. Psalm 9.10 Those who know Your name will put their trust in You, Lord, for You have not forsaken those who seek You. Amos 5.4 Seek me and live. Psalm 14, verse 2 The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there are any who understand, who seek God. My friends, this is what distinguishes a believer from the unbeliever. If you are an unbeliever, then you don't seek God. That's what it means to be an unbeliever. God is far from your thoughts. You don't care. But if that's your situation today, I hope you'll reconsider. This is serious business we're talking about. We're talking about hell and heaven. God's making you these marvelous promises. I encourage you this afternoon, go back. Meditate on chapter 55 and think about these promises that are made in the whole chapter. But there's a call for each of us then to seek the Lord, to seek Him, to respond in faith and orienting our life back toward him in faith, in Christ, and in repentance. Remember these promises, Lord, friends, from Psalm 34.10. The young lions lack and suffer hunger, but those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing. Psalm 119.2. Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with the whole heart. What is the very end of the message of Isaiah? I know I've been biting off a lot here. We've been kind of dealing with Isaiah as a whole. But Isaiah ends precisely on this note of a transformed world. It says in 65, verse 10, Sharon shall be a fold of flocks, the valley of Achor, a place for herds to lie down, for my people who have sought me. Brothers and sisters, then, in light of these truths that God's word will be performed, that God's world will be transformed, In light of this truth that instead of the briar of judgment, we receive the cypress and the myrtle of gospel blessings through Jesus Christ. Brothers and sisters, then let us respond by committing ourselves then to seek him and to gratefully orient all aspects of our life around him. Would you join me in a brief word of prayer? Our Lord, we thank you for your promises that we will find you if we seek you. We thank you for your invitations to come without money, without price. Nothing in our hands we bring. Simply to your cross we cling. Lord, we have nothing to commend ourselves to you except that one thing which means more than anything else, and that is our Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for the mediator. We thank you for the reconciler. We thank you for the one who is connected with us, the man, but who is God, who has done everything necessary to secure our welfare. Oh, Lord, remember him for us. May your judgment pass over us. And we pray, Lord, that you would grant each one of us saving faith, that you would grant us renewed repentance, renew our orientation to seek you in all things, in each aspect of our life, and to walk in integrity out of gratitude for your grace in Jesus. Lord, have mercy, and may your word sink in to each of our minds and hearts, and may it produce even fruit there as we saw the image of the rain producing grass. Lord, may that be the case in each of our lives, we pray. For Christ's sake, amen.