Nehemiah 11-12 - Promise Keeper - Rick Graumlich

Church, if you would open your Bibles to Nehemiah chapter eleven.

We'll be in Nehemiah 11 and 12 this morning.

Lord willing, in a few weeks we will wrap up our march through Ezra and Nehemiah, which we began in September of 2022.

I want to read a part of the lyrics that we just sang, and then I want to pray.

Bless the Lord, he will give me his peace.

Bless the Lord, he will give me his strength.

Bless the Lord, for he gives me himself.

Bless the Lord, for he gives me himself.

God, there is not a person on this planet who deserves any of these things from you.

We do not deserve to receive blessings from you.

I do not deserve your peace.

I don't deserve your strength.

And I most certainly do not deserve you.

But yet you love us.

You've come for us.

You've revealed yourself to us in your word.

Not only have you said that you will bless your people, but you enjoy blessing your people.

It brings you great delight to share your peace with us, to share your strength with us, and to share yourself with us.

And we gather this morning simply to remember remember that.

To remind ourselves how unworthy we are, how amazing you are.

And let us rejoice in that.

Let us live in the light of this truth.

That you are a God who gives, who loves, who is caring for us.

We pray that you would create in us hearts of joy, that we be a people who are joyful.

Joyful comes through a desire to obey you, through knowing what you've done for us, through reminding us who you are.

May we be a people of joy.

For this is the day that you have made.

Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

You've made the day, God.

You made it.

What an amazing thing you've done for us.

May we rejoice.

May we be be a people who have a heart for obedience.

As we sh as Jimmy prayed, we, Lord, we do, we sin.

We're plagued with sin.

And you are righteous and you're holy.

And that is why you have such wrath against sin.

And that's why the gospel is so good to us.

Jesus, you died for us that we might you pay the price for our sin and that we might be reconciled to you.

So may that create in us hearts of obedience that long to obey.

That we would be a people who look around for goodness.

Where do we see light and truth and beauty and things that are good?

And may we enjoy those things, celebrate those things.

And may we be clear and quick to condemn things that are not good, that are wicked and that are evil.

May we be intentional in our own lives to root out sin in us that is evil.

All sin is evil.

We pray, Lord, that you would reveal that to us.

That we would enjoy the good things that you created for us.

Not the good things that the world says is for us, but God, the things that you say are good for us.

We pray that you would give us strength as we contend to fight for the unborn, for the issues, especially going on politically.

Contentious issues that should not be contentious, divided over issues that there should be no division over.

That you have created life and you sustain it.

You're the giver of life, and life is intrinsically good.

So may we be faithful to you, to honor and glorify you above all things.

May we be a people who who enjoy, who value, and who promote the good things.

Because all good things come from you.

I pray that you would give us strength to be a people of the word.

Lord, how dangerous it is for us who are in the word regularly.

We hear the preaching, we listen to good sermons, all these things, and they can kind of lull us to sleep.

There's enough obedience there to pacify our conscience, but yet we're not people of the word, in the word, studying the word, memorizing the word, sharing the word with one another.

May we be people of the word.

Pray that you would give us strength this morning, that we would be hearers and doers of your word.

We would be obedient to what you've given us.

Your word would convict, that it would bring life, that it would shed light on areas of our lives that we're seeking to kind of keep hidden, that we may walk in obedience in you, that we may delight in you and bring you glory.

We pray this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.

Church, we live in a um a day and age when everyone wants to celebrate something, but nobody wants to do anything really worth celebrating.

I don't know if you feel that, but people, we we love food, we love entertainment, we all want to have a good time, but at the same time, we just kind of want it without any work or effort.

We just want these things to come.

Can it just be a continuous, perpetual party?

Is that off the table?

Can we not do that?

We want to celebrate things, but we look around and we're lacking in things to celebrate.

So we just celebrate anything.

We'll celebrate people carrying a football down a field, celebrate people hitting a ball over the fence.

Which, don't get me wrong, those things get to me too.

I like those things.

But it's interesting how we celebrate these things that really have no value eternally, but we sometimes fail to celebrate what God has done.

When God has been faithful, when God has delivered on his promise.

And we might mention to a friend, like, hey, by the way, praise the Lord, something happened, and we'll share a way that the Lord has sustained us or blessed us.

But we also are a people who are created to celebrate, to celebrate God, to worship and adore him.

And as we've been going through Nehemiah for Ezra and Nehemiah, we've been tracking this story.

And this is the story of God bringing his people out of exile back into the promised land, that they would rebuild their city, their temple, the walls, and the people.

Now, if you're not familiar with this story, the reason that God's people, the Israelites, were in captivity is because they kept sinning and rebelling against God.

He was gracious to them.

He gave them his law, he gave them instruction, he gave them priests, he gave them scribes, people to teach the law, he gave them a pillar of fire at night and a pillar of a cloud by day to lead them through the wilderness.

He provided victory for them on the battlefield, he provided bread for them, he provided food for them and shoes for them.

All these things he gave to his people, and they just kept rebelling.

Thank you, God.

Well, take what you give us.

We appreciate that, but we're gonna do what we want to do.

And God lovingly said to them, if you stay in your rebellion, I will discipline you.

Lovingly, graciously, I'm going to discipline you.

You're gonna be carried off into a foreign nation for 70 years.

And this is what happened.

They got carried off by Nebuchadnezzar into Babylon and they stayed there for 70 years.

But after the 70 years, God was faithful.

He brought them back.

And we know they kind of came back in three major waves.

And the story of Ezra picks up with the second wave of people to come back after the temple is rebuilt, or that they to rebuild the temple.

And then Nehemiah comes back with the third wave and they begin to rebuild the wall.

And now we're coming to the conclusion of the book of Nehemiah and the story.

In chapters 11 and 12 is this kind of celebration in a sense.

Now it's a lot of names and lists of people and who they are, but it's a memorial, if you will, of what God has done.

Now, the theme through this series that I keep saying is God is faithful to renew and restore his people.

Hopefully you've heard that, and that sounds familiar to you if you've been here for a while.

God is faithful to renew and restore his people.

And as these last few chapters in Nehemiah have shown us, this is exactly what God has done.

He's given them victory to rebuild the wall and sustain them in that.

He's given them scribes who can understand the word.

They've discovered more feasts and how they can obey the word.

There's repentance, there's confession, there's obedience.

And then in chapters 11 and 12, there's kind of this recounting of people, this kind of giving some clarity and administration of what's going on, and then there's this dedication of the wall and this provision for the temple.

So these two chapters they fall into kind of three parts.

So the beginning in verse 1 of chapter 11, all the way through verse 26 of chapter 12, right?

This is the kind of the unglamorous aspect of what God is doing.

All we find here is a bunch of names.

Right?

So it's not glitzy, it's not really that exciting, it's just names of people.

And there's several of these kind of instances in the Old Testament where it's just names that I can't pronounce very well, maybe you could, but just names of people.

They feel insignificant, and relatively speaking, they were insignificant.

They've been dead for years.

But they're telling us something about these people that they were obedient to the Lord.

They're ordinary people living in obedience to God.

And then in the second part, the second chunk of this passage, there's just, we see in verse 26, 27 of chapter 12 through verse 43, just another big list of Levites and priests.

So you just look through there and you see all these people.

Again, a bunch of names.

Now, what they're capturing in that list of names are from the time the first exiles came back, Zerubbabel came back, and how the priests and the Levites were established and sustained from when the first exiles returned until Nehemiah's day, which at this point is about a hundred years.

So a hundred years they've they see that the priesthood has been sustained, they've come back, the Lord has provided for that.

And then in the last chunk, they do dedicate the wall.

This this magnificent work they've done, they dedicate the wall, they make sure there's provision for the temple.

And what God is teaching is that he has kept his promise to restore and renew.

And he does this through just seemingly insignificant people with normal lives and normal problems.

So that the Lord has kept his promise.

And we see this because the people preserve in obedience.

Now the leaders of the people lived in Jerusalem, and the rest of the people cast lots to bring out of out 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.

So we see just right out the gate, they've they remember they've rebuilt the wall, they've done all these tremendous things, they confess their sin, they hear from the law, they they celebrate the feast of booths, all these things.

Now it's time to kind of settle in.

And they're kind of looking around, like, okay, so who's gonna live in Jerusalem?

Who is gonna dwell here?

And the problem was, you know, this is a new kind of the people had just come back, relatively speaking, the wall was newly built.

Jerusalem was a target for the enemy, for kind of marauders coming through, for enemies in different nations.

So if they came, they're coming for Jerusalem.

So it's not a safe place to live.

It's not like a, hey, we get to live in the capital.

Isn't this great?

Everyone kind of wanted to live out in the villages or in the countryside where it was more safe.

And so they begin to cast lots.

Okay, someone's gonna live here.

So we'll take one out of ten.

And even some people, as verse 2 says, some people were willing and they offered to live in Jerusalem.

Look with me at some of the kind of titles they give to some of the people who stayed.

Look at verse 6.

If I get there in chapter 11.

Right, these are talking about all these men, they're valiant men.

And then verse 8 calls them men of valor.

928.

And then verse 14, men, mighty men of valor.

So we get this kind of picture, this respect for these men who are counted off.

These aren't, these are fighting men, men who are brave and who are like, hey, we're gonna live in the city and we're gonna work here and we're gonna protect it and defend it.

So this was the situation they were looking at.

They traveled back from the foreign land, rebuilt the altar, rebuilt the temple, rebuilt the wall finally, and now they have to just begin to do life.

All the fun things are kind of behind them.

It's funny, Candace and I talk about this with, she's, if you don't know, she's pregnant with uh our fourth child.

Um, and we talk about how like when you're younger and you're like before you is college and getting married and buying a home and having kids, and and you begin to kind of get into all that, and you're just like, well, I guess we're just gonna do this for another 30 years and then retire.

All the big things have happened, all the exciting things, all the things you're gonna write your friends about, they're done.

Now what are you gonna do?

Well, you just gotta work.

You just gotta go get the paycheck, you gotta put food on the table, you gotta cut the grass, you gotta shovel the driveway.

Like they just now life kind of just sets in.

We likewise, we we kind of rub against that.

And our culture doesn't help because I'm not on social media, but it when I was, what the image was is like you're always missing out.

If you just have a little bit more money or a little more charisma, or if you just dress better, or if you just read the right books, your life can be really exciting and it can be really good, and you just gotta just modify a few things, and your your life will be great.

But that's not life, right?

We we all have to just do laundry, we gotta do dishes, we gotta feed ourselves and our kids or the dog.

Like, life just goes on.

And we resist against that.

But that is what God has called us to.

And so some of these people, there's kind of this lull after all the exciting things, in a sense.

Now they're they're still gonna dedicate the wall, and that's a celebration to come, but it's like, well, who's gonna who's gonna work the fields out there?

Who's gonna protect the city in here?

Who's gonna do the hard work over there, and who's gonna do the hard, dangerous work over here?

I would just submit to you that you all have opportunities in your life to do hard and costly things.

You have a lot of opportunity to not do hard and costly things as well, and to just coast through life.

But as Christians called to follow the Lord, he gives us opportunities to witness to co-workers, to share the gospel with family, to pray daily for the salvation of people we know, to give sacrificially to the needs around us, to give of our time to the needs of others, or the needs of our spouse or our children.

And these are all things you can do, whether you're living and working here or you're living and working in another part of the world, whether you're in vocational ministry or not, all called to the same thing.

Just hard, costly things before us.

This is what the people are, they're persevering in obedience to God in this.

Some people they had to work outside the walls.

You know?

They weren't there when all the fanfare gets to happen, when dignitaries come in and the kind of big things are going.

They're out in the village working to support the people in the city.

The priests and the Levites, they're working as well.

They're seeking to be obedient to the Lord.

And then they don't get the privilege of just kind of doing whatever they want to do and picking their vocation.

Their vocation has been picked for them based on their family order, their family lineage.

So they work in obedience.

Obedience isn't always easy, it's at most times costly, but obedience is so good.

And that's like the most basic truth, right?

We have a lot of kids around here.

You you you were a kid at one point, if you're not a kid still.

And what you do with children is you try to teach them something.

The primary thing you're trying to do for like years and years and years, and even into adulthood, I would say, is you're trying to teach them to obey.

That's what you're getting after.

I just want you to obey.

Why?

Because obedience is good.

As a loving and caring parent, I want to teach my children, this is why you don't run into the street, this is why you don't touch a hot stove, this is why you don't hit your brother, this is why you don't talk that way to your mother.

You obey because life is better for you.

But you obey because you have to learn to obey God.

If you cannot obey me, you're not going to obey God.

God loves us.

And so he calls us, you and me, to obedience because his way is better.

Imagine that.

His way, your creator God, his way is better than your way.

So don't indulge in these things.

Don't give yourself over to these temptations.

Don't be caught up in these issues.

Why?

Because he's teaching us because his way is better.

So God is, the people of God are being obedient here.

Which is a wonderful, rare snapshot.

If you're familiar with the narrative of the Old Testament and God's people, the Israelites, they're not obedient people typically.

There's just a lot of rebellion going on.

And so we have this snapshot, this wonderful reminder hey, they are being obedient.

They're seeking to serve the Lord.

So the exiles, they struggled, but they obeyed the law which Moses gave to them.

They put priests in Levi.

In the temple and the servants in their places where they should, and they sought to follow the law.

They sought to keep the fasts, to make sure priests were legitimate, right?

To institute proper sacrificial systems.

The people sought to make the land flourish again, to rebuild, to replant.

These are all things that come with obedience.

If you're just walking in willful disobedience to the things of the Lord, do not expect to flourish in your life.

I mean, you might flourish in sinful, wicked ways, but don't expect that your love for God will increase when your time and energy you're giving to Him is decreasing.

And do not expect your love for God's word to increase when you're not in the Word and you have no regard for the Word and you don't want to obey the Word.

See, flourishing comes when people walk in obedience to God.

It's so good.

You see that in your own soul, you see that on a family level, you see that on the church level, you see that in the community.

When people are seeking to follow after the Lord, flourishing comes.

And if there's anything that like kind of stands opposed to the consumerism of our day and age, where it's just like, if you want it, go get it.

Just have at it.

Have at it and have as much as you can possibly take.

Be a glutton toward it.

What's opposed to that is just the f the simple flourishing of God's creation and his people in a way that they love him, they love his word, they love one another.

This is what obedience brings.

We persevere just like they persevered through hardship by following God.

And we come to this passage where they begin to again celebrate the wall.

And I think just this just proves again God's faithfulness.

After listing out all the priests and the Levites and the temple servants, we come to verse 27 of chapter 12.

They dedicate this, and this is a similar picture like we see in Ezra chapter 6 when they dedicated the temple after it was completed.

Ezra 6 · chapter mention

There was great joy and great rejoicing.

Read verse 27 of chapter 12.

In 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 thanksgiving, with singing, with cymbals, harps, and lyres.

This was a beautiful opportunity for them to come together and have this elaborate celebration.

It shows the high value and importance this wall was, and more importantly, what was inside the wall, the temple.

I will give you a little bit of historical context.

In 1 Chronicles chapter 24, David, who kind of lays out the priesthood, he makes uh 24 divisions of priests.

1 Chronicles 24 · chapter mention

So they would serve in the temple for two weeks at a time.

Right?

So two weeks out of the year, the priest would be in the temple, kind of doing temple duties.

In the rest of the time, in the 50 weeks, he would be out kind of tending kind of to the livestock and to the farm and to his family.

And so when it says that they gathered all the priests in, that's because there's priests all over the place, they gathered everyone in, everyone was brought in for this celebration, this worshiping of God and celebrating what he had done.

They gathered and they dedicated the wall.

Look in verse 28.

And the sons of the singers gathered together from the district surrounding Jerusalem, and from the villages of the Netophytises.

This is why I don't read all the names.

Also from Beth Gilgal and from the region of Giba, and as Maveth, for the singers had built for themselves villages around Jerusalem.

And the priests and the Levites purified themselves.

And they purified the people and the gates as well.

I'm just going to pause there.

We don't know exactly what the these rite of purification looked like, but or how they did this, but we know that it's interesting, they purified the wall and the gates and the people.

And in verse 31, Nehemiah takes the leaders up onto the wall.

He has two choirs and they divide, they have the root group, and they separate them, and as you'll see, they just begin to march around the wall.

And there's a symbolism here.

You have the wall, you have the gates, you have the people.

All these things, based on the world's perspective, should not even be here.

The people of God should have been destroyed.

The only reason they're back here is because like three really, really rich pagan kings paid their way and sent them all the supplies and sent them armies.

They don't belong here.

The timbers to build the gates, the iron, given by wicked kings and people.

The wall that was torn down shouldn't even be in existence.

It should be destroyed.

If you remember in chapter four of Nehemiah, one of the kind of the adversaries, Tobiah, he says, were they gonna rebuild the wall?

If a fox goes up there, it'll crumble and break down.

None of these things, by their worldly standards, should even be in existence.

And here they are, like parades of people marching around this ginormous wall.

How is that possible?

I mean, how in the world is that possible?

Because God is faithful to his people.

He does for them what nobody else can do, and what no one else thinks he can do.

You remember back when Nebuchadnezzar, or when Xerxes sent the people out, and then when Darius sent them out.

These are pagan kings, and they kind of give this like, you know, may God bless you, your God bless you, may it go well for you, kind of thing, and you know, they don't know what God can do.

They're almost blaspheming God in their little faith of him.

Well, maybe he can help you along the way.

And then they get into the land and the people of the land, and some who knew the promises of God, who knew the story of how God had delivered the people out of Egypt and through the Red Sea, and they even taught them and say, You guys are gonna rebuild the wall?

But before that, it was, are you gonna rebuild the temple?

Before that was, are you really gonna rebuild the altar?

All along the way, opposition saying, Can your God really do that?

Do you really think he loves you enough or cares enough or is big enough to do these things?

And here, you have a visual, physical representation of God's faithfulness.

Day after day, hundred years almost later.

This didn't happen overnight, this didn't pop up in a moment, but the people persevered in obedience to God, and God proved that he was faithful to them.

So I just want to encourage this church not to be a short-sighted people.

Not to be kind of looking out in our own lives and thinking, well, how is this gonna play out?

God, you know the longings of my heart.

When are you gonna deliver on those things?

Or you know the sickness or the illness before me.

When are you gonna heal me?

Or when is this thing gonna come?

We look out just culturally and we think, Lord, what's the future going to look like?

What's it gonna look like for my kids and my grandkids and my great-grandkids?

God proves himself faithful to his people.

He's faithful.

We trust him with those things.

So we must not be short-sighted and just think, well, I don't see the answer here today.

And I don't think it's gonna show up tomorrow, so let's just despair.

Let's just turn our backs and begin to kind of take care of ourselves and indulge a little bit.

If we're not gonna get our prayers answered now, then maybe we should just kind of indulge our flesh to help us pacify the difficulty of life.

Let us not be short-sighted.

Going through situations, hardship, heartbreak, tragic things, when we trust God's faithfulness.

And we just keep working on what's before us.

If you're here in the, we were talking about the when they're building the wall.

One of the things that Nehemiah did is he just said, Where do you live?

Okay, this is your section of the wall.

It's around your house.

And you're not worried about this part of the wall or this part of the wall or that part of the wall.

You're just worried about this part of the wall.

Now, don't hear me say, just worry about your life and no one else's life.

Because there was a, there was a the reality was it was one wall.

They all had to work together on this thing.

But I'm the point being, God has given you a work before you.

Do you have kids who are in the house?

Stuart well that time.

Parent your children.

Are you in college?

Be in college.

Study hard, work hard, be there, be faithful.

If you're older and your kids are out or you don't have kids, be faithful with the time and the resources you have.

Be faithful with what is before you.

Don't be short-sighted.

Be faithful with the work that is before you.

They labored together.

These people labored together, and now they celebrated it together.

Look with me in verse 43 of chapter 12.

And they offered great sacrifices that day and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy.

The women and children also rejoiced, and the joy of Jerusalem was heard far away.

I just, I would love to have that experience where you're, you just hear the noise of rejoicing from far away.

You know, it's like, like, you know, what's just that experience would be amazing.

They were rejoicing because of what the Lord had done.

They weren't going around saying, man, well guys, you know, our our kind of can-do attitude and our work ethic, and we just we got this done.

You know, we're just we're simple, but we worked harder, we're smart, and we we kind of figure this out.

Look at us.

Let's get our name kind of written down somewhere so people just remember us.

Let's make it about us.

It's not what's happening at all.

As a matter of fact, the moment when there's something to celebrate, the moment you begin to make that about yourself is the moment that the joy and the rejoicing just dies.

As soon as it becomes self-focused, the joy zapped.

Maybe it turns into pride for a moment, but you're left empty.

But when there's something to celebrate, and you celebrate the one who has given you that thing, the Creator God, then there's great joy, and there's great rejoicing in that.

And that's what the people did.

They rejoiced.

They celebrated God's faithfulness.

And then we see them kind of shift their focus to the temple and making provision for the temple.

Look at verse 44.

On that day the men were appointed over the storerooms and the contributions and the first fruits and the tithes to gather into them the portions required by the law for the priests and for the Levites according to the fields and the towns of Judea, and rejoiced over the priests and the Levites who ministered.

So we begin to get this idea that they're gathering in, they're putting in place what's needed for the temple.

They have the priests and the Levites and the servants.

Now they have the storerooms and the contributions and the fruits and the tithes.

This is all instructed to them, commanded through the Torah in verse 44, through the law.

So they had to be reading the law, studying the law to know what they were, what was required and what wasn't.

Now all these things might have seemed unnecessary.

All the food, all the singers, the provisions.

Like, wouldn't it just be easier if we just kept this like really kind of basic and plain?

You know, like God created the world.

We can look around and see that.

I don't know that we have to make a whole hubbub about it and gather resources together and get together as a people group.

We don't need to do that.

Can't we just kind of keep this simple?

But that's not what God commanded.

Now, one is that God has commanded us to worship Him.

So we don't just kind of give a mental assent to these things.

His people, they gather together, they put their resources into things, they work hard toward the giving to the things of the Lord.

And so we give as an act of worship.

We're not commanded anymore to give a tithe of 10%, but we are commanded to give to the offering, to the work of the local church, but not to the needs around us.

It's a command of God on us.

So we need to be faithful.

So that what's that look in your life?

It looks like you saying, well, financially, how much money comes in and what are my bills?

What I need to do with those things, okay, take care of those things, but be faithful and generous with what God has given you.

You know, most people in our and where we live have an abundance of time, money, resources.

You might not feel like you do, but you do.

So there's the reality of saying, if you can give, you know, 5% of your income or 15%, whatever that is, that's between you and the Lord, be faithful with that.

Something I try to live by, and I tell people it's a good, wise thing, is give until you feel it.

Give until you feel it.

Like, mmm, okay.

There's some there's some money there going somewhere.

You know, you should feel it.

It's sacrificial.

And so we give to the things of the Lord.

And we see this picture of the people, they're being faithful to obey the law, they're being faithful to celebrate what God's done in his faithfulness.

They're being faithful to give to the resources of the temple.

This models something.

This outward display models a worshiping heart.

And we live in a day and age which is the same today as it was when they lived, where people could give their fruits and their vegetables or whatever, their tithes, they could do those things.

But their hearts could still be not worshiping God.

Selfish, conceited.

And so we need to be careful that we don't let our own hearts do the same thing.

Where it's like, well, I'm I give to the church and I help out on Sundays and I serve in this way, and I'm out in the community doing this thing, and you're doing things, but your heart isn't longing to worship God.

And I just want to encourage you that we all struggle with that, making sure our heart is worshiping the things of God.

This is what God has called us to, to worship Him.

As we look over chapters 11 and 12 and we think what this means for us today, it's that God has always been pleased to use normal people to do extraordinary things.

I mean, just if you know the Bible, you know the story of the of the disciples.

Right?

Ordinary men, simple people, fishermen, carpenters, tax collectors, like these are not the people you're selecting, right?

These are not kind of the first-round picks for anything, but these are the people the Lord chooses.

So with the nation of Israel and his work.

These aren't the people you would choose, but these are the people that God uses to do extraordinary things.

So listen, church.

Simple obedience.

Trusting God's ways are better than your ways or the ways of the world.

That's what he's called us to.

We we walk in obedience to him.

There's simple patience.

God, he provides for us.

He's our provider.

We put our faith in him, just being patient on him.

And there's simple living as we support the work of the church and the work that God has given for us.

We're not seeking to make big names for ourselves, we're not seeking to make much of ourselves, but we're seeking to glorify and honor God.

And all this is possible.

You can do all these things because of what Jesus Christ has done on the cross.

If you hear me say, walk in obedience, be patient, live simply, give to the needs around you, and you just hear, well, a to-do list, to-do list, to-do list.

Now I just need to go do those things, and then I'm doing the right thing.

And you have no regard for how you're enabled to do that, then you're missing the whole point.

You're able to do these things because Jesus Christ loved you enough to die for your sin.

You know, he sang that song, The Wrath of God now satisfied.

And if you don't know anything about God, that sounds kind of like a harsh, like who's this wrathful God?

He needs satisfied.

Well, he's a holy and righteous God who cannot tolerate sin, who will not tolerate sin.

He will have nothing to do with it.

And the only way, the only way you can have a relationship with him is through the atoning work of Jesus Christ.

So that is the gospel, the good news that there is life in Jesus.

We follow him.

And in our obedience, in our patience, and in our living, it all flows from what he has done for us.

Not to earn something.

And let me tell you, that's the good news of the gospel, and that is worth celebrating.

Let's pray.