Beyond Sunday (Nehemiah, A faithful servant of God)

Welcome to Beyond Sunday, a podcast that's based on the OR

it comes from actually the preaching ministry of Leamington

Emci am Pastor Jonah Chitty, joined as always by Pastor Joe

Pinner. Hello.

And today we have a special guest, the one the only Mr. Carl

Barge. Hi.

We thought we'd start with a new segment that we're calling Dad

jokes Jox. I don't know if that's going to

stick or not. That was Kyle's idea.

And so Joe, this is, you know, invite your kids in.

This is a dad joke. So, Joe, you got one for us.

Yeah, why? Why?

Why was Nehemiah such a great leader?

Why? He always knew how to build up

his team. What's frustrating is how much

joy you have. Knock, knock.

Who's there? Nehemiah.

Nehemiah who? Nehemiah Business.

I'm just here to fix the walls. OK, it's.

Not even clever. It's not even clever.

It's not. Even that good.

They're awful. And I love it because Kyle was

laughing so, so well. Well, this started this started

one that with a joke that you brought up, Kyle.

Yeah, which this one also was a stretch.

It was like, how tall was Nehemiah?

He's about NIA. Well.

Some jokes. Sometimes jokes are so bad

they're good. Yeah.

You know, I, Joe was just talking about your podcast.

You have a podcast I do and it's called Cat.

GPT. Yep, it's called Chat KJP.

Yeah, you got it. Nailed it.

Send us coffee. Yeah, first.

And you guys are talking about all sorts of crazy things on

your podcast. Oh yeah, yeah, it's never a dull

moment. But I really wanted to like what

I enjoy about your podcast is when you get really like tickled

and you start to laugh, really like high pitched.

And I wanted that on our podcast.

And so that was the whole point of getting.

Well, with these jokes, it's not going.

To happen it did though. That was the thing.

Very good. You don't even know when you

laugh that. Way I don't even realize I just

lose it. I'm just, I'm just a joyful

person. So we brought Kyle on the

podcast for a specific reason, not just for dad jokes with an

X. We brought him on to talk about

your sermon. You preached the sermon last

night. And we're not going to call it a

sermon or a devotion because you went 27 minutes, bro.

It's on the, it's on the in the stream right now.

So if you want to go back and listen to it, feel free.

It's on 1st John chapter 1. But before we get to yours,

John 1 · chapter mention

we're going to talk about Nehemiah chapter 2.

Nehemiah 2 · chapter mention

Yeah, for sure. Pastor Jake preached the sermon

on Nehemiah chapter 2. He went from verse 1 to 11.

Nehemiah 2 · chapter mention

Yep. Is that right?

Verse through verse 10. Oh, through verse 10, Yeah,

Yeah. So I didn't grab the title.

Oh, Nehemiah, a servant of God, I think was.

A faithful servant. A faithful.

Servant of God, So So yeah, Joe, you want to give us a recap?

Yeah, yeah. So Jake had four points in his

sermon. He started off with Isaiah 40

Isaiah 40:31

verse 31 that talks about those who wait on the Lord, they'll

renew their strengths and and rise up with wings as eagles.

And sort of introduced the, the topic of, you know, like

Nehemiah's patience and waiting for the right time, waiting to

approach the king and, and it, you know, his patience to wait

and pray and wait for the Lord's timing.

And then his first point was Nehemiah showed faith through

courage, that in his courage to do the right thing, he still he

showed his faith and trust in God.

His second point was that Nehemiah shows faith through

trust and that his trust was shown in God, which is shown in

his prayer. He was a faithful man of prayer.

And the Third Point that Nehemiah shows faith through

confidence, again, trusting, trusting in God.

And then how the Lord worked it all out, answering his prayer

and in even more than he was expecting.

And the point #4 Nehemiah showed faith through resolve that even

when opposition began to to be stirred up, he still persisted

and, and still continued faithfully on.

And so I think he's sort of some of his closing questions we're

drawing on like those sorts of ideas are, are we a people of

God who really trust him, you know, and is our trust in God

evident in our prayer life, which I thought was it was

pretty convicting. Yeah.

And sort of again, just like, do we really surrender to God or,

you know, do we surrender just a little bit, right?

Like Nehemiah was willing to give all of his status, all of

his position up to go and do what he felt the Lord was

calling him to do, something bigger than himself.

Right? Yeah.

And when we surrender to God, do we say, you know, yeah, I'll do

whatever you want from this nicely compiled list that I've

made for you. Right.

And I thought that was, you know, a helpful way of thinking

through it because it is the way we think, right?

You know what? We will go so far for God, but.

But maybe not a whole lot farther than what we're

comfortable with. I think a lot of times the Lord

is asking us to do things that are far beyond what we're

comfortable with. I thought that was a good point

in the sermon when he talked about the the fact that Nehemiah

didn't have to go like he he had all the status, right.

He had. Yeah.

He'd really just didn't have to go like, and to come.

I think that's what you're touching on there.

It's just like he it was, I'm Jake just really stretched that

out in the sermon. He like really like like told us

what position he had and like what that meant and like how

good Nehemiah actually had it as far as like as far as a slave or

somewhat servant could have. He he was as high as he could

possibly go, right come bear to the king.

He close proximity, probably slept in some comfortable place.

Didn't have to. He wasn't starving, didn't have

to do manual labor. He just tasted food right.

That's what we assume or serve the king.

But like but Nehemiah did and I wrote down like he had no need

to, but he was deeply grieved over the state of Israel.

So like his, he, he saw what was happening in his, in his home

and he was just like grieved over it.

And so he could not do something.

So I just thought that was just a good point to bring out.

Yeah. Well, yeah.

And kind of going along with that too, like you kind of

touched on it too, Joe, where it's like we don't tend to trust

God very much, right? But it's interesting to look at

Nehemiah's example and seeing that like even in his like in

his trust of God, like you said, it exceeded any expectations he

could have had originally, right?

Like I think that we have a hard time even trusting God sometimes

to just give us the bare necessities in our prayer.

And I feel like that that's, I mean, even just for me, I know

that like I get really anxious. And so sometimes it's like, OK,

God answered my prayer last time, but this time it's not

going to happen, right? And so I don't know, it's, it's

a good point to look to. I get it for other people that

just kind of struggle with that idea that sometimes, like when

we pray and when we trust in the Lord, it isn't just like he's

not going to just like begrudgingly give us, you know,

OK, well, here's your basic whatever.

So in some cases, he will exceed those expectations because he's

a good God who loves us. You know what I mean?

Yeah, but. Yeah, and I think the like the

do we have the faith to to go Yeah and ask, right.

Like even to trust that God is good and he wants what's good

for us, right. Like we think of, you know,

Sermon on the Mount where he says, ask and it will be given

to you seek and you'll find knock and it will be open to you

for to the one who asks receives and the one who seeks finds and

to the one who knocks, it will be opened.

And then he sort of like brings out this question.

He's like, which one of you? If his son comes to him and asks

for bread, we'll give him a stone.

Or if he asks for fish, we'll give him a serpent.

If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your

children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give good

things to those who ask him? It's like, you guys know how to

do this with your kids. How much more do I know how to

give good things if you ask? But a lot of times we just don't

have the faith to ask at all, right?

Like you said, do I really trust God?

And often times it's like the how much I just sort of like,

oh, I have to do now, I have to work harder.

I have to sort of do something to make this situation fix.

Shows that I'm really trusting in myself rather than trusting

in God. That's a good point.

I don't think that Nehemiah's faith like was built on just

like him, like it's just random asking God for big things,

right? Like that.

That's like when you were talking, Kyle, and then you were

sharing that, Joe. I'm thinking like, like we're

OK. Like we, we think we can handle

the small stuff. Like like I think I can handle

providing for my family and, and buying my groceries and putting

a roof over my head and doing all those things.

I feel like I can do that. Like, I don't know about you

guys, but honestly, I feel like I can do that without prayer.

Like if I'm being honest, right, you can do that without prayer.

Oh, this is I'm doing this in my power.

But, but I don't, I don't think we can like we, we really can't.

We the only thing all we have is because God has been like

gracious to us and faithful to provide for us.

We can think that we've done something or had something to do

with it, but we're wrong. I think ultimately I think we

would be wrong. It's just God's goodness and his

grace in our lives. I mean, like tomorrow you can

wake up and not have anything. And so I think like, but like

Nehemiah didn't get to this, like this point in chapter 1

where he's like asking this big ask of God by only asking for,

for big things. Like he, he knows God's faithful

because he's been faithful for his entire life, right.

And so, yeah, I think that's just like a like talking about

like his he, he believes God is really, really big in, in other

words, you know what I mean? Like that's his view of God is

big. And we're going to find out

more. And like as we, as we progress

through the chapter, he's always going to be pointing back to

God's strength. Yeah.

Well, yeah, it's good. Well, that reminds me of EM

Bounce has a book on prayer. And in the very beginning of

that book, he shares like an illustration from, you know, a

very well known guy. I don't know who it was, it was

like back in the day, but he shares the story of these two

guys are having a conversation. And the one guy says to the

other guy, you don't mean to tell me that if you lost your

pencil you would pray. And the other guy says, of

course I would. And I'm just like, I've, I've,

I've never forgotten that illustration because I just

thought to myself, I'm like, I would never, I would never pray.

But like you said, like there's things that I think like I can

just do myself or maybe that I think are beneath God.

And I don't, I don't want to give myself any credit in the

sense of like, maybe I just think it's beneath God.

I think it's pride in my own life.

But you're right. It's like, I think that I got

that and I can do it myself. But you're so right that it has

to become like our prayer has to become the first thing that we

do, the first thing that we go to.

And it can't just be when big things come, right?

And I'm reminded of a of a story that a pastor shared about

someone in his church who would. We've talked about praying

specific prayers recently. I think last week we talked

about that and he would write them down.

He would write down specific prayers and then he would follow

that up with like in a couple weeks, he'd be like, hey, you

asked me to pray for this, how's that going?

And then he could write down the date that it was answered.

And he said he would go to this man's home and he would have

books on the shelf of prayer, prayer requests answered.

And he just said about that man, he's like, do you think that man

ever doubts the faithfulness of God?

No, of course not. And you pray in the little

things and that's why you have faith to pray like in other

situations, right? And that was, that's been really

convicting for me. I for real.

Yeah. Well, and like, I think there's

something to say too about like, because I know that Jake also

talked a lot about courage and he mentioned too that like the

courage, he mentions a quote from Napoleon Bonaparte, right,

where he says that like, you know, someone asked him like,

how do you conquer people? I don't know what the quote is.

And he just goes, I've learned to not consult my fears, right?

It's not that you don't feel fear.

It's that you feel fear, but you act anyways.

And I sometimes wonder if like or gut reaction.

Like for me, my gut reaction when I'm fearful or anxious, but

something isn't to immediately go to prayer.

Often times my gut reaction is to like try to drum up every

possible solution in my head before I have to confront that

issue. And then I'm like, OK, I'm

ready. I figured out all the possible

solutions and I like. But then you just end up

becoming anxious, right? That entire stuff builds anxiety

in your heart. Oh yeah.

It's horrible. It's a terrible spiral.

But like, I don't know, just looking at the example,

Nehemiah, who like despite having this kind of a well, he

appealed the two kings early. He appealed to God and then

appealed to to our Xerxes. But seeing like the fear that he

built or that he was able to kind of overcome and to even

make that appeal because of his confidence in faith and prayer.

I think that for us too, like we're not going to be able to

build up a confidence in God if we're not actually going to God

and seeking an appeal to him. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think, I think the secret

is like when maybe Jake talked about this in the sermon too,

like patience, like waiting, like waiting on the Lord.

I, I'm preparing for this week's sermon.

And something that's like really standing up to me so far is he

says a number of times in the first first few verses of the

next section that I'm preaching, he's like, I didn't tell anyone

what the Lord had laid on my heart.

And then he says it again, he's like, I didn't tell the

officials, I didn't tell the Jews, I didn't tell the priests,

I didn't tell anybody. And it's like, because like you

said, our first or maybe our first fear is to like try to

deal with it ourselves. The second thing we most

naturally do is go tell other people, right?

And it's like, I need to go get, I need to go seek wisdom or

advice from other people, which isn't a bad thing.

But the first place we should go is God, right?

That's the first place where we get wisdom.

And Nehemiah was just allowing this to simmer in his own heart

and to wait for the Lord. I mean, we, we think there's

like four months, four months in between the time he hears the

report and then goes to the king and then who knows how I however

long the journey took, right. Some people say it, it was about

a four month journey on foot. And so if they're on horseback,

maybe it's faster. We don't know how long it took

them to get there, but it's like there's months of patience and

waiting here for Nehemiah where he's just waiting for the Lord

to reveal to him slowly his plan.

Yeah. As Kyle was talking, I came up

with another dad joke. Oh, why was Napoleon so feared?

Why? Because he pulled everyone's

bones apart. Oh.

My God. Anyway, that's a reach, man.

That was a reach. Hey, but you know what?

That's the first thing that came to mind when he said Napoleon

Bonaparte. That's.

That's better than any of mine. Yeah, well, yours.

From Jack GBT No way, there's no SO.

But yeah, sorry to get back, I just thought I couldn't let that

go. But this is like what?

Kyle, what Kyle kind of mentioned, I found this quote

because I knew, like when Jake brought up this, like courage is

not the absence of fear. I knew that was a quote I'd

heard before and that there was like another portion to it

somewhere. And, and Franklin D Roosevelt

has said courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the

assessment that something else is more important than fear.

And I'm thinking about like I'm thinking about Nehemiah.

And you know, there's fear about, well, what's going to

happen when I come to the king? What what's he going to do?

What's he going to say? Like he could kill me?

And you know, there's obviously that fear, but there's some

there was something more important than fear.

And that was obedience to God. And we might even say a more

important fear than that fear, right?

He feared God more than he feared the king.

He then that man. And so it's, it's having the

right fear. And it's like, well, if I'm

going to be disobedient or if I'm going to consult my fears,

you better pick the right one, right?

Like God or this earthly king, the little, little K king.

And I'm, I'm going to fear God. No for.

Sure. Yeah, That was something I, I, I

was picking up on a little bit too.

Is that I find it interesting that, like, Jake really kind of

expanded on like that he was dreadfully afraid, right?

And like, I think that in certain circumstances, we've all

kind of felt that like really like bitter, dreadful fear,

right? And to have a fear of God that

overcomes that is kind of is like is amazing, you know what I

mean? And it's like, I wonder what

kind of fear Nehemiah had of God to look at a king who had the

total authority to just get him beheaded or I don't know, these

what media Persians. So probably worse than

beheading. And to still say, you know what

like my fear is for the Lord is greater, right?

Yeah, yeah. I think honestly everything

points back to like his, his view of God.

Like he, he had total trust and God, he got his courage from his

belief that God was big and he was going to take care of

everything, right? That's where it came from.

It didn't come from him at all, right?

He didn't have, he didn't have courage in himself or it didn't

come from himself. It came out of his belief that

God is faithful. And I just sort of like clued

into like again. So I've just been reading the

end of chapter 2 this morning, but I've noticed now it's like

when Nehemiah refers to God, he calls him the God of heaven,

right? He says that in verse 4, he's

praying before the God of heaven.

And in his prayer verse 50 Lord God of heaven, when he prays to

the like in the sight of the king in verse verse. 4.

Yeah, verse four, he says it there too.

So I pray to the God of heaven. And then in the next section

too, he he says the same thing in chapter 2, verses 11 through

20. I and I just lost it now in

verse. 20 He says The God of heavens.

Yeah, he says. The same thing there.

And so it's like he's constantly looking to a God who is outside

of the universe, who is outside of his circumstances.

Like he is a big God. And it's like he's outside of

all of this and he's in control. And so that's why he's like

trying to gain that perspective of like, you know, a big God.

You know, you've been talking a lot about that the last the last

week because of the Bible reading plan going through

Genesis and Job, and it just keeps coming.

Up because it's true, right? And the application for us is

that like they were like, I mean, we're not rebuilding

Jerusalem's walls, right? Like how do we apply this to our

lives as well? Like we need to have faith in a

very big God, like he the same God.

That's like dealing with this situation with Nehemiah.

We, we serve the same God. It's not some different God.

It's not like some different. It's not just a story in the

Bible, right? It really happened.

And I think we talked about this on last week too.

It's just it's incredible to think about and how.

How upsetting is it is that that like all of us have access to

this really big God and still struggle with that faith aspect

to go to him in prayer before anything else?

I know. You know.

That's something that like just hits me so hard every time

because you're right. Like God is massive, like so,

so, so big, so much bigger than in any circumstance.

And yet, you know, my truck didn't start today and I about

had a temper tantrum, you know what I mean?

Like, I almost cried, like I was so mad and like how petty and

foolish all of my, like my, like my arguments that like I have

with, you know, my, my family, how small these issues are in

comparison to God and how still I'm just like, like you said

earlier, Joe, it is such a pride thing to say.

Oh, I got this. You know what I mean?

When literally we have access to an infinite number of

possibilities and power in the Lord that we in the Lord that we

worship. Yeah, Yeah.

And. As I was thinking, like I know

Jake said at one point that Nehemiah, you know, we would

speculate that if he's always testing the King's food or

testing his wine, that like he has a he's in the presence of

the king, you know, a few times throughout the day, right?

Every time the king is going to eat or drink.

And immediately in my mind, it went to like the access that we

have to God, like unhindered, we can go to God whenever.

It's like if you wake up in the middle of the night and you

know, you feel like the need to pray, it's like, you know, God's

not sleeping. You know he's awake and he'll

and he'll hear you. And we have that unhindered

access to God and he wants us to pray.

He wants us to, he says if. You know, the eyes of the Lord

search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts

are fully committed to Him. Like draw near to God and he

will draw near to you. Like He's asking us to do that.

But like you said, we struggle to have that faith.

We struggle to have that confidence and that trust to go

to God, right? It's crazy.

It's crazy for us to think about that, right?

It's like, like, I don't know. I don't know why we don't sin.

Sin. It's sin.

Yeah. I like the way Jake, he like,

and he made this clear in his points.

Like, it's not like Nehemiah's courage, his trust, you know,

it's not his confidence and his resolve.

It's not all about Nehemiah. It's like this is how Nehemiah

demonstrated his faith. And I felt like that was that

was really good. It was like good application for

us. Like our faith will be evident

to others by the way we respond to things in our lives, right?

For sure. So yeah, Kyle, you got anything

else on Nehemiah Chapter 2 I like?

Nehemiah 2 · chapter mention

It. I like it too build those.

Walls. Let's do it.

Let's build up the walls of Jerusalem.

Is that the plan? Yeah.

Let's do it. We're gonna build.

Walls around LAMC. Oh man, I hope they're.

Gonna look bad. It would probably look bad that.

Might be a bad look. Maybe.

Maybe Donald Trump needs to promote the Book of Nehemiah

some more. Rebuild the Walls.

My favorite book. We love it.

I'm really sad we don't edit on this podcast.

I kind. Of feel like you should do a

Trump personation for the rest of the podcast I think.

No, please. That's all right.

I'll leave it speaking about. The rest of the podcast let's

talk about Kyle's sermon. So we'll switch gears.

Kyle, you spoke on 1st John Chapter 1.

John 1 · chapter mention

The whole chapter, Yeah. Which is a lot, yeah.

Do you feel like regret over choosing the whole chapter?

Yeah. Yeah, I I went 27 minutes and I

skipped a lot of my notes, but yeah, did you?

Did you have a title? No, it was.

It was titled First John 1. I don't know, I sometimes.

I want to title my sermons that same way.

Good job. To be totally real, I I see the

utility in titles, I really do. And like every course I've ever

taken in preaching has been like, once you're done, it's

important to tie that bow up you've.

Taken more than one course. A few.

Yeah, and I can't. Tell no, I'm kidding.

No, it was great. It was.

Like every time, I'm always like, why don't we need title?

I don't know. It just doesn't make sense to

me. Well, I think like you said, I,

I've often been in that bandwagon too.

And I've, I've gone through all the, we've talked about this a

number of times, talking about like just go for a fact and make

something dramatic. But like the fact that you can

have something where that might spark somebody's interest.

Like if they're on the website, yeah, you're looking for maybe

something particular. It's like maybe I'm looking for

the Lord to lead me in something that's like you said, the

utility of titles were like a practical nature of how is this?

How is it going to apply? I think it starts, it can it can

sort of kick start application in the in the hearer's mind if

they see a title or if they hear it.

Like Jake's sermon yesterday was like Nehemiah a faithful servant

of God, right? Is that what it was?

Yeah. Yeah.

So like, and all of his points tied back to Nehemiah's faith.

So I think sometimes they're helpful, but you're you're

didn't have one. We'll.

Call it. We'll call it the the the

Apostle. John, watch out for these guys.

All right? That's good.

Yeah, that's good. So.

Give us like a quick like you don't have 27 minutes, no today.

And so give us a quick recap. Sure.

So yeah, essentially there's some weirdness at the time of

that, John's writing this to the church, There's Gnosticism,

which we talked about Gnosticism.

Is talked is filled with AG with AG.

It is, yeah. It's it's a cool word and comes

from the. Word gnosis like it means

knowledge, right? So yeah.

Like. Secret knowledge is what they

were after. Like some people had secret

knowledge. There you go.

OK. Yeah, I didn't know that.

Gnostic. Gnostic, Yeah.

And so to combat a lot of these sort of weird Gnostic beliefs in

the church, John, the essentially first John and the

other epistles, he's writing about false teachers and about,

you know, the qualities that Christians should have.

And the 1st chapter specifically talks about like, you know, the,

the, the core of what we should believe, right?

That the gospel that God is light and there's no darkness at

all. That's.

Pretty central to that first chapter.

And then following up with some practical steps, like, you know,

if you hear someone talk about so and so, these things are the

things to look out for, right? And even in our own hearts, I

think that that was something that I was trying to like, I

don't know, maybe I should just focus on one either like look

out for teachers or look out for yourself.

I try to do both, but I feel like it's, it's important for us

to take that kind of stuff and to look at more broadly our own

faith and in our own hearts, right?

Like, I think it's easy for people to kind of slip more into

these. Sort of.

Like bad habits of belief in their own lives than it is for

them to get swooned by some charismatic speaker or something

like that. Yeah, I think it's easy.

I think it's really easy for us to like go to the opposite side

though, and not examine our hearts and just bash false

teachers. Yeah.

It's true. So like it's.

Easier for me to like point out the negative in someone else

than it is for me to like turn my, my, my eyes back on myself.

Oh, 100%. You know, I'm talking about the

log in your own eye, right? It's like, like it's very easy

for me to do that. And that's why.

There. That's why there are like 100

YouTube channels that are all like, this guy's evil, this

guy's bad. And then eventually they all

just start talking about each other back and forth.

Yeah. They.

Don't have. That's not discernment.

Yeah. The discernment bloggers of the

day, Yeah. Yeah.

Carrie Newhoff had a podcast that just dropped today or a

little video that I watched. It was about about the bully

pastor and how, how like to build a platform online is very

easy. It's just find something, take a

hard stance and go after everybody that's opposing you.

Yeah. And you'll, you'll get a

following and but it's not healthy.

It's not loving. And the, the negative part is

like what you're like is not doing what like what you talked

about last night. It's like thinking about like,

where do I really love my sin? That was a really good point,

man. Like thinking about, do I like

if I'm thinking about sin, do I think about it the way God looks

at it right? Do I look forward to it?

Right. And maybe it was a bit of an

over generalization to say that like those who walk in darkness

are people that want to be there.

But I think that that holds true, right?

Like I think that the desire of our hearts is naturally going to

be where we end up going, you know what I mean?

And so like, I don't know, to walk in, to walk in light, to

want to walk in light, that just shows evidence of something

that's happened, right? That shows evidence of a desire

to not be in darkness anymore. And as someone who's born in

darkness, it's supernatural for us to not want that at the time,

for sure. You know what I mean?

And so that's what that goes back to like the First

Corinthians, the new creation, right?

Where our hearts are renewed, our minds are renewed, and the

old self passes away, right? And so I don't know, I just, I

just want people to like, want to be in the light, I guess.

Yeah, well, what you're asking and what, what, what you're

asking people to want and what the, what the text is saying is,

is like you're walking exposed like light exposes everything.

Like if you put a spotlight on my face, you'll see every

blemish, right? Every white hair, every, you'll,

you'll see all the negative things that, that are there.

And So what you're asking people to do is really hard.

And like you mentioned earlier, it's going against your nature.

Like you're you were born in the darkness into sand.

We're born into it. We, we are all sinners.

I think we all believe that around this table.

And like, you're asking people to go against their nature, and

so there has to be something supernatural.

Oh, like 100% change, Yeah. Yeah, that was it was super

convicting, very convicting. Your sermon, like Jonah said,

like really calling out the sin, like do you love your sin?

Do you want it? Are you pursuing it?

Do you enjoy it? Like I think you were clear to

say that like believers still struggle with sin.

They still do sin. That doesn't mean that we're

perfect, but there is an overwhelming desire, which like

you said, I mean, it has to come.

It has to come from the Holy Spirit.

It has to come from somewhere. There is a point in our life

where we sin and and we don't even feel any conviction over

it. Right, Right.

You know, maybe you do a little bit because you're is in a

religious home and, and you know that like there's this angry God

out there who might be upset about it, but you love it, you

enjoy it, you want to do it. And then there comes this point

in your life where you know, regeneration, where you know God

does something in your heart, he circumcises your heart and all

of a sudden, like now that sin that you used to not feel bad

about, now you do feel guilty about.

And so that's the difference between someone, someone who's

who's sees the shame and guilt of their sin, doesn't want to do

it and doesn't even want to expose it, but still does comes

to the light, right? Because that's we're talking

about fear that sort of ties in, right?

It's like that's the right fear, right?

I have a fear of like exposing, you know, exposing myself of

coming to the light. Because John says that in his

gospel. He's like, he's all about that

all through his through his gospel and his letters that it's

like those who come to the light are true believers, right?

And those, and Jesus is going to condemn those because they

refuse to come to the light. Why do they refuse to come to

the light? Because they love their sin.

They love the darkness. And so they purposely don't come

to Christ. But we, we do, you know, as hard

as it is we do, we come to Christ and we let him expose our

sin and we need to fight more to deal with it.

Be strong for purity. Well, and it also comes down

right like to sanctification, and I think that to grow more

towards being like Christ or to desire holiness and to seek

after it. Like when we're saved, all of us

are we, we begin our sanctification journey, right

where we begin that process of becoming more and more holy.

And like for a new believer, the, the, the, I guess

expectation of sin frequency in their life is going to be

different than someone who's like seasoned in the faith,

right? Like someone who is just freshly

saved. We almost expect them to not be

very good at being saved because they are new.

You know what I mean? And the same thing it went like

on the opposite side. When you talk to somebody who

has been a Christian for a long time, who is diligent in their

study, who is seeking the Lord, We always have this higher

expectation of them. And we should that they know

more. They've been in it more.

There should be a a less desire to sin than that of a new

person. And so I think it the I worded

it carefully that we should be seeing a decrease in the

frequency of which we are sinning, right?

I read this book a little while ago, which I highly recommend

called Saved without a doubt by John MacArthur.

And it was a book that like completely changed my life.

Like before I read it, I was like always just so nervous

about like, am I saved? Am I saved?

Am I saved? I wasn't sure what to do.

And I was like, really like everything that I did was like,

oh, man, but that's a sign of an unsafe person.

So what do I do? And like reading this book just

completely shifted my mind and brought me back to like a really

good sort of like it kind of undid a lot of anxiety tangled

mint and kind of let all my like, it left all my wires

straight so that I could go back to the Bible and to actually

like have this fresh view. And one of the points that he

makes is do you decrease in the sin that you're committing,

right? Like you said, as Christians,

it's impossible for us to like on this side of heaven to never

sin again. And John says in first John that

if we say we have no sin, we're liars, right?

Right. So even the Bible knows that.

But seeing the decrease, seeing the sanctification, the growth

and the process towards towards holiness, I think that that's

supposed to be an assurance for us to be able to look at that

decrease in our desire to sin and our increase in our desire

to serve the Lord and to say that's, that's the spirit there

it is. I'm seeing that.

And so, yeah, I feel like first John as as a whole book, people

tend to look at it and get real nervous about their faith,

right? They tend to be like, well, he

who has sinned, you know, he, he, he is not saved.

And it's like, well, I sin. Well, like, I think John was not

writing this to, like, bash people.

He was. It was a volatile time of false

teaching. He was trying to build people up

to give assurance to their faith.

And so I think that when we look at this book, it's important for

us to to realize that this is supposed to be for our benefit.

Yeah. For an assurance of our faith.

Right. Well, he says that at the end of

the book too, right? He's like, I've, I've written

these things so that you may know that you are saved.

Right. And so you're absolutely right.

Yeah. To me, this is it's the first

John is called in my mind. I always think of the this is

how you know. So I call it this is how you

know book like this is how you know you're saved.

But I mean he gives them and he'll say it Chapter 2 like 9

times. Yeah, maybe not that many 6 I

think at least this is how you know this is how you know this

is how you know, right. So yeah, it's all about

assurance. It's good.

Well. And one of the things you said

sort of in your first through like verses one through 3, you

talked about true Christians find joy in the message of

Christ and speaking about it. And so you were just talking

about like, because that that's why John was writing.

He's like, man, we're, we're writing about what we've seen,

what we've heard, what we've touched, you know, all these

things. And we're writing to you so that

our joy may be complete, right? And it's like there's this idea

that if we have this truth, you know, like you said, there's,

there's Gnosticism, there's these different beliefs about

who Jesus is or isn't. And we're trying to tell you

that like, no, this was really the Son of God in the flesh, the

true Messiah. He was the one that was

prophesied. He was the fulfillment of all of

those promises in the Old Testament.

And we saw him, we witnessed him, we heard him, we touched

him like, and we're writing to you so that our joy would be

complete. The implication being that you

would believe in him too, and that you would be your savior.

And it's like that really struck me because I think a lot of

times, you know, I've heard this joke.

I think it's Dave Ramsey says like, you know, this Christian

lady who's like, I'm a Christian.

He's like, well, maybe you should tell your face.

It's like. Do we want, you know, it's like,

do we walk around with that joy, right?

And does it impact other areas of our life?

And we hear testimonies of people like that, right?

Even though going through trials, even though you go

through hard seasons, there is times of weeping, there is times

of hardship, but is there a joy that that surpasses those those

feelings, a commitment and a peace that comes through knowing

Christ? Yeah.

What's? The undertone of your life,

right? Like, do you have an undertone

of just being completely miserable all the time?

Like even when things are happy and you're in a good mood, it's

the general undertone still that you're miserable, right, right.

I think as Christians, we don't really have an excuse to to have

that. And believe me, I don't know, I

feel like there's a lot of times in life where it's just really

easy to be really pessimistic. But like, what is the undertone,

right? Like we have so many things to

be thankful for and to be joyful for.

And so like, just even John John's example of, of saying,

like the whole reason why I'm even doing this is because it's

a complete of my joy, like to give you assurance and to spread

this mess message. It brings me a completeness of

joy, right. And it's like we should be like,

we should be happy to, to give assurance or to like, maybe not

to rebuke, like we shouldn't be like excited to be like I'm

going into rebuke, but like we should, we should be happy when

people hear us out when we're, when we're being truthful.

And so I think that there's just, there should just be like

a general joyful undertone to the Christian life, even when

things are really, really hard. You know, well, maybe that's

maybe that, though, not sharing the gospel is why we lack joy

because I mean, wait, I, I've said this, I, I feel like I've

broken record. I know I've said this a couple

times in sermons over the last year, but like the joy, like the

completion of the joy, like sharing it is a completion of

the joy, right? It's like we don't go to a

restaurant, enjoy the food and just keep it to ourself.

It's like, no, once you then what do people do when they go

to a restaurant? What do people do when they come

back from vacation? They tell you all about it.

They tell you all the fun things they did and how good the room

was and how nice the sun was or how good the food.

Like that's actually a part of the fulfillment of the joy.

And so maybe we lack joy in our lives because we're not talking

about Christ enough. We're not giving him glory

enough. You know, maybe we are being too

pessimistic and too whiny and complaining and man, maybe,

maybe the solution to the problem is just talk way more

about Christ, I think. So that's what John's doing like

all right, so like verse one, what was from the beginning,

Jesus was in the beginning. We learned that from John one

right? What we have heard, we heard

him. What we see, what we've seen

with ours, we've seen him. What we observed and we've

touched with our hands concerning the word of life.

Like this is the message I'm giving you, the message of the

good news that the God of the universe took on flesh and came

and spent time with us. This is This is why I'm happy.

My joys may complete when I give this message to you.

Yeah, it was revealed and we have seen it.

And we testify and declare to you the eternal life, right?

That was with the Father, and it was revealed to us.

Man, it's just so good. And then he goes into this idea

of fellowship, like Jesus came so that we could have fellowship

with the Father. It's good news.

That's joyful, right? And now we get to share

fellowship with you around this one thing.

Do so good, well and. When you tie in, like, you know,

to Jake's point in his sermon about waiting and being patient,

when you tie in, like when we're in the book of Nehemiah, I mean,

they're going to rebuild the wall and it's going to be OK,

but it's not going to be what it was, right?

And everybody's left wanting. Like this still is not what

we're expecting. And then you have 400 years of

silence. Nothing.

Yeah, that's. What's coming, right?

That's what's. Coming after Nehemiah like this,

Nehemiah is right before that, 400 years of silence and you get

nothing. God doesn't speak through

prophets. He doesn't speak anything.

And you get nothing. And then you get John after

Christ comes. That's why he's like, man, we

saw it with our own eyes, like he came and it was the

fulfilment of all of our hopes and dreams.

It's like, yeah, of course he's going to be excited.

You know? That's what they've been waiting

for this whole time. Yeah.

Yeah, One other thing like when we talk about when we talk about

this, I think it's important for us if to to understand our joy

is like Jesus is not something that was like was right.

Right, that's one thing. We have to keep in mind, oh,

yeah, like, yeah, he was at the beginning and he was during this

time, but he still is. And I think that's hard for like

sometimes I think there's a disconnect there for people is

like, like, OK, I'm just talking about this stuff that happened

2000 years ago for now me and my I'm talking about something

happened 2500 years ago. And it's like it's all back

there. And I'm just trying to figure

out to just draw principles to help me live my life in a better

way. And like in that way, this book

is a self help book. But like, if I'm thinking about

like, OK, the same God is the God I worship and he's alive and

Jesus is this, he's here now that changes your perspective.

Well. For sure.

And like I know that like I've heard, I've seen like online

threads and whatever that talk about, like how hard it is and

how like how am I supposed to have joy?

And then people will list off, you know, X amount of

circumstances, right? But the reality is, and this is

far easier said than done, and this is painting with a very

broad brush. But the reality is that like if

you, you know, lost your job, your house, your family and you

were out and homeless on, you know, on the road, if you have

Christ, there's nothing that can take that from you, right?

Like that joy can still be made complete.

Like we, what do we find our joy in?

I feel like when people think about the joy that they feel in

their life, they're like, well, I don't feel joy.

I'm miserable. And you ask them why and they

go, well, my car won't start like mine this morning.

Or they're like, and you know, I'm all alone and I'm going to

lose the house. And it's like, like, those are

all terrible traumatic circumstances, but those are all

weird places to be or not weird, but like they're all wrong

places to be finding fulfillment of joy, right?

Like the joy that we have as Christians shouldn't be in our

job or in our car or in our family.

Those things can be by products of joy.

Yeah, they can help. But we can 100% be happy with

our families. It's good.

That's a good thing to find joy and be happy with your family.

It's a good thing to have a home.

It's a good thing to have a car. But if those are the things that

we ultimately find that joy in, we're not going to be complete

in that joy like like John outlines, right?

We're going to be miserable at some point.

There'll always be more, but we can lose it all with Christ and

still find that fulfillment of joy.

And that's why I don't mind saying that there should be a

general undertone of joy to the Christian life because in all

circumstances that joy is still available.

Yeah. Absolutely.

And that's so encouraging. It reminded me of like Paul, the

way he opens his second Corinthians he's talking about,

he's praising God, you know, God who comforts us in all of our

affliction. And then he goes on to say, for

we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the

affliction we experienced in Asia.

For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we

despaired of life itself. Man, it was so hard.

We just wanted to die. We just thought life would be.

Then he says, indeed, we felt that we had received the

sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on

ourselves, but on God, who raises the dead.

He delivered us from such deadly peril, and he will deliver us on

him. We have set our hope that he

will deliver us again. And so it's just like, man, it's

like, like you said, that hope that we have that.

Yeah, in these situations, they suck.

And it's like, man, we, I I don't even want to go on living

anymore. But God is allowing those

difficulties in those trials so that we'll rely on him even more

than we do. And I and then, you know, the

Lord allows suffering in our life for that reason.

Now he can sanctify us in ways of suffering that he just I

don't want to say he can't. But like that when things are

going good, you just you just don't right, because you become

self reliant. That's one of the warnings God

gave to his people. Israel, once I bring you into

the land, you know, don't forget where you came from.

Don't forget that all this came from me.

Don't forget all of that. And that's exactly what they

did. But there was so much hardship

in going in. They had to trust God.

But then it's like now we're here.

Now we're in the promised land. And.

And immediately the next generation forgets God.

Yeah. Well, God is it's, yeah, it

comes down to like God is good and through the good things he

can sanctify you. But God is so good that even

through the worst of things, he can still sanctify you.

Right. Like his goodness Trump's those

terrible circumstances in every turn.

So on. Yeah, for sure.

I don't want to leave off first. John 19.

Oh yeah, Gospel you. Ended on that verse.

Yeah, you held it out. You you tricked us.

I did. You got 3 sermon.

And then he said, oh, but first John 19.

And now? 7 more minutes.

It's OK. That's why I didn't feel like,

honestly, your sermon didn't feel like 27 minutes.

No, I didn't, I thought. I went for five and I got real

nervous. It was good.

No, it was, it was good. But yeah, I think all that, all

that stuff like living in darkness and then and then like

the desire, why would we desire to have our lives exposed,

right? Because he's faithful.

He is faithful. And righteous.

That's the, that's the whole point of first John 19.

It's like if you confess your sin, like if you live in the

light, he's faithful to forgive your sin and to cleanse you from

all righteousness. But he's, he's faithful and he's

just, that's the that is one thing to think about too.

Like, like forgiving your sin. It's not something that you

deserve, but He is just in forgiving your sin because he's

the God of the universe. Exactly, exactly Isaiah 61.

What is 61? Eight Fry the Lord love justice,

that justice is served in Christ, right?

Right. Because what is what does our

sin deserve? Wrath.

Wrath. The just thing would be for us

to die and never be, never ever be like connected with the Lord,

right? It deserves wrath.

But in God's grace, he, he sent Jesus.

If we confess our sins, he, he's talking about Jesus.

The word is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins.

Yeah. And he cleanses us from all

unrighteousness. Yeah.

So. Yeah.

And I think. In I sort of like, I know we're

going a little long, but we're not we're good.

I was like in like going along with that.

I think that's also why it's so important that John highlights

in verses 8 and 10 that, you know, he who says he has no sin

does not have the truth in him. It's because understanding your

sin, it's pretty vital to being able to repent of it.

It is. Yeah.

Like if you're not, if you're sinless in your own mind, what

do you have to repent of? Right.

And so I think that it's it like I think that those verses are so

perfectly, well, obviously it's God, but so perfectly like put

together because it shows like it doesn't just, it doesn't just

say like, you know, if you say you're without sin, you're a

liar. Moving on, it gives the reason

why and that when you repent of your sins, that is when you know

Christ is faithful and just to forgive you, right?

And so you can't do that if you have no cursory, if you have no

knowledge at all of sin. Yeah, that's good.

Yeah, Cuz what are we doing when we say, when we say that we're

not, we don't have sin. Like you gave one example.

What are we doing? What what is that God doing when

he says, Hey, I haven't sinned since I was converted?

Well, he's not really pointing to Christ.

He's pointing to his, his own strength and power, right.

And that doesn't point. Like, I would much rather see

someone who's like a like a very vulnerable, repentant person and

willing to confess their sin than someone who's just super

prideful and, and doesn't. And so, yeah, it's just a really

encouraging message. I really appreciated it all.

Glory being to Christ that reminds.

Me of the pride reminds me of a story I heard once.

I have no idea if it's true or not but I guess some some men

were hanging out like a men's Bible study or something like

that. A man stood up in the meeting

and said, I haven't sinned in 15 years.

And the the guy who was leading or the pastor, whoever says, I

bet you're pretty proud of that. Yes, I am.

Streak broken. That's awesome.

Well, I was gonna just. I don't know what you're saying,

actually. Like you said that.

Like, what does it mean? Like what are we doing when we

are denying our sin? And you mentioned that, but I

think it's also important to ask what are we doing when we are

confessing our sin? We look at like the Life and

Times of Jesus and like Jesus, like we look at the guy that

comes through the ceiling where he goes, your sins are forgiven.

And the Pharisee goes, well, who can forgive sins?

But God, And he says, well, what is, what is more like difficult

for me for a man to forgive sins for or for a man to command

someone to walk. And like, when we are confessing

our sins, we're acknowledging that he is God, that he is holy

and he is able to forgive sin. That's right.

When we're laying then at his feet, we are saying God, we are

in agreement that only God can forgive sins and he is God, you

know, And so that's why I think those two are.

So those verses are so like well put together because they're

complementary in so many different ways.

Well, it. Reminds me of something you said

about repentance, right? Repentance is turning away from

sin. And when you turn away from sin,

you're turning towards something else, right?

And it reminded, and then you said you're turning toward God.

That's repentance. It's turning from sin, turning

from your own way of living, turning back to God.

And it reminded me of my sermon in Nehemiah, which is exactly

what he said. He said in verse 8, he's like,

remember the word that you commanded your, your servant

Moses saying if you are unfaithful, I will scatter you

among the peoples. It's like if you're unfaithful

to me, I'm going to scatter you all over the place, right?

I'm going to take you from this land, I'll uproot you and I'll

punish you. But if you return to me and keep

my commandments and do them. And so that's exactly what I

thought of in that when I was preaching that sermon.

It's like it's turning you. You went this way away from God.

And then when you recognize your sin and confessed it, you turned

back to God and then started to follow his word in his ways,

right. Being led by the light, which I

just thought, I thought was really good that you drew that

out. Well, yeah.

It's light and darkness, right? And you turn away from 1, you

turn towards the other right. Exactly.

That's good. The two ways to live, two ways

to live, Yeah. So any final words on any either

one? No, cuz you're just gonna say

that I talk too much. No.

I'm. Not gonna say that I'm not

gonna. Say that no.

Repent of your sins and believe in Christ.

Repent. And believe the gospel, yeah.

That's my final word on that. Good, Joe.

Yeah, I I'm good. I thought it was really good.

It's nice to see young guys. I'm 26, I'm not that young

anymore. Joe A.

Young buck, my back. Hurts.

No, it was good. It was really encouraging.

See people come out and yeah, it's fun that we have an

opportunity for for up and coming preachers to Yep.

To preach. Yeah.

Yesterday was an encouraging day overall, Yeah.

Thanks so much for the opportunity.

I really appreciate it. Well, we'll.

Be looking for more and so I'm sure you'll be just be ready,

ready for the shoulder tap. OK we'll put you on again.

So yeah. So we've been starting to end

with prayer. Would you mind praying Kyle to

to close this out today? I can do.

That, yeah. All right, Father, thank you so

much for this opportunity and I thank you again just for the

ministry at LAMC got I thank you for Joe and Jonah and Jake and

for their willingness to lead us and to and to preach your word.

And I thank you God, that I thank you God that we have you.

We have access to you like we just talked about with me and

Maya. I just thank you God that we

have the ability to come to you to be courageous because we know

that we are on your side and that we can lay our our hearts

to you God, and that you will hear us and that you provide for

us. We thank you for every good

gift. We thank you for all the hard

times as well Lord, because we know that in them you are

sanctifying us and growing us closer to you.

We thank you God. We pray this in your heavenly

name. Amen.

Amen. All right.

Well, LMC, we're praying for you and we hope you have a great

week. See you next time.