and may you hear the request of your servant and your people Israel when they pray toward this place. Please hear from heaven where you live. May you hear and forgive.
But if they think again in their land of captivity and repent and plead for mercy from you, saying, ‘We have sinned, we have done wrong, we have acted wickedly,’
please listen and focus your attention on the prayer of your servant that I am praying to you now, day and night, on behalf of your servants, the Israelites. I confess the sins that we Israelites have committed against you, including my own sins and those of my family.
Then I confessed my sins to you. I did not hide the wrongs I had done. I said to myself, “I will confess my disobedience to the Lord,” and you forgave the guilt of my sins. Selah.
I go on showing my trustworthy love to thousands, forgiving guilt, rebellion, and sin. But I will definitely not clear the wicked—the impact of sin will affect not only the parents, but also their children and grandchildren, up until the third and fourth generation.”
Discuss this together, and then speak up, present your case. Who predicted this long ago? Who said what would happen in the future back in the past? Wasn't that me, the Lord? There is no other God except me, no other God who does what is right, and who saves. There is no God apart from me.
Just admit you did wrong, that you rebelled against the Lord your God. You spread yourself around, committing adultery by worshiping foreign gods under every green tree, refusing to do what I told you, declares the Lord.
They won't make themselves unclean anymore with their idols or disgusting images, or with any of their rebellious sins. I will save them from all their sins when they abandoned me, and I will make them clean. They will be my people, and I will be their God.
Be happy and celebrate, people of Zion! Shout loudly, people of Jerusalem! Look, your king is coming to you. He does what is right and has salvation; he is humble, riding on a donkey—on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
Some of you were once like that, but you have been made clean and holy. You have been made right in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.
That's why you can be sure that the Lord your God is the true God, the faithful God who keeps his agreement based on trustworthy love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.
He gave himself for us, so that he could set us free from all our wickedness, and to make us clean for him—a people who belong to him, keen to do good.
By her trust in God even Sarah herself was given the ability to conceive a child though she was too old, because she trusted God who had made the promise.
God wouldn't be so unjust as to forget what you've done and the love you've shown for him by the care you've shown for fellow-believers—something you're still doing.
But if we are living in the light, as he is in the light, then we share in this friendship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, makes us clean from every sin.
and they sang the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb: “What you have done is tremendous and marvelous, Lord God, the All-powerful One. Your ways are right and true, King of the nations.