The After Sermon /// What draws people to Jesus?

Welcome back to the after sermon where we get to sit down with the communicator from the weekend, and we have a rookie to this space, but not to preaching.

Not us preaching.

First time here on the podcast.

This is great.

Welcome, buddy.

Thanks for being here.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

All right.

So what we do here is we just ask you kind of what you taught on and give us a brief summary so that we can get into maybe some deeper questions or things maybe that got cut.

You betcha.

Well, we wrapped up the Nehemiah series this weekend.

And one of the themes that we talked about was it's all through Nehemiah's this idea that people participate, but God built.

And so people were faithful to participate.

And we see that in Nehemiah where the people are building, rebuilding the wall and the city, one stone at a time, being faithful to what they're doing.

But then we see in chapter 13, it takes a twist.

In chapter 12, there's a crescendo where the people are all celebrating uh what God has done.

Um there's a worship moment, and it says that their the echo of their joy it resounded out far from Jerusalem.

And that mirrors a little bit of our 20 20th anniversary celebration that we had.

Yeah.

But the point is this is that that that moment was actually really fleeting because in by chapter 13, we see that their hearts have really started to drift.

And really what we talked about is at the heart of the matter is the matter of the heart.

And that the the temple was rebuilt, the city was rebuilt, the wall was rebuilt, but the people's hearts weren't transformed.

And that's what they really needed.

They needed a transform of the transformation of the heart.

Yeah.

And Nehemiah, as good a leader as he was, uh, he he could come in and and he takes care of business and makes things right again.

But what he couldn't do was transform the human heart, which is what they needed most.

Yes.

Okay.

So we talked about this idea of like the wall is still standing, right?

The wall's still standing.

Yeah.

But then we also talked about how like the inside, there's something else on the inside.

Expand on that a little bit.

What we see in Nehemiah is that the people, the walls were standing, the temple was restored, the city's restored, but already their hearts were wandering and drifting from the commitments that they'd made to God.

And I think it's probably human nature, on one hand, for our hearts to drift.

You know, we call that sin in the Bible.

Yeah.

Um, but but our heart drifting um can happen without really anybody seeing it on the outside.

So the walls can be standing, we can look good on the outside.

And often I think in the world we live in with social media and in the area we live in, a lot of people that at least I know and myself included, I think we're trying to make sure that the outside doesn't really betray some of the things that are going on in the inside, just for fear of what people might think if they knew what we were, you know, kind of having in our hearts or we were thinking, or maybe what they might do with it.

So I think there's some self-protecting of making sure that the outside really doesn't portray what's going on in the inside of the heart.

Yeah, no, that's so interesting.

So you mentioned Tobiah or Toby.

Toby, Toby, as you yeah, as you said in your sermon.

Um tell us about how he connects to this story of formation and what Jesus is doing on the inside.

Yeah, well, Tobiah's a really interesting guy because we see him in chapter four um opposing the work that Nehemiah and the people are doing, the rebuilding of the wall.

In fact, he's quite threatened by it, and he and his buddies they manipulate, they threaten.

You might remember if reading the text, there's a point where they are threatening so much that uh the people go out, and some of the people are building the wall, and then some of the people are standing with swords in their hands, ready to defend in case they were attacked.

And Tobiah was one of those enemies, and somehow by the end of Nehemiah, he is living inside the temple complex.

And the priest Eliashib that we read about in 13, he invites Tobiah in, and Tobiah, they make to make room for Tobiah in there, they actually clean out all of the things that were necessary to worship God there in the temple complex.

So, uh, as I said today, is that um Tobiah moved in and worship moved out of the temple complex.

Wow, and so it's this idea of our hearts drift when we invite people or things into our heart that will cause either our hearts to drift away from the things of God, um, but maybe even worse, is it might harden our heart to the things of God.

And that's what we see in Tobiah.

He's kind of a living example of something taking up residence in our hearts that keeps us from God and worshiping God.

So then I think that it's really interesting that you pair Tobiah's story with this idea of witness being our witness, and it really kind of gets back to this whole journey we've been on as a church and follow, and how we're trying to develop practices that bring us into the presence of Jesus.

Um, and so could you talk a little bit about that and how the withness withness actually becomes what draws people towards Jesus?

Yeah, yeah.

And I think this is important, and it it is perfect for the theme that we see in Nehemiah, which is people participate, God builds.

And so when we do those practices and we we follow Jesus and connect with Jesus by practicing the practices, if you will, and we've been talking about that a lot, uh the practice is us participating, and then God and the Holy Spirit begins to form and change our hearts in there.

And so what happens is we become more and more like Jesus, and Jesus is building his people.

And one of the reasons that heart work is hard work is that people it requires the presence of other people.

So as God builds a people, he's building a people essentially so that what he's doing in us, he wants to reveal through us to other people.

So when we're with people, um, our witness is our witness.

Somehow God uses our witness to do that heart-transforming work, but that requires our presence, and that's hard because it requires the greatest commodity all of us have, and that's our time.

Easier to run a program, easier to run a service, even to give a sermon in many ways than to give our time in our life being with people.

Wow, that is so good.

Um, okay, so you also uh this weekend was next gen weekend, yeah, which I thought was pretty cool.

And you had something in your sermon where you talked about how uh it took 52 days to build this wall in Nehemiah, which is like a miracle worth celebrating, so amazing, and yet it takes generations to form a people.

Could you unpack that just a little bit for us?

And I've got one more question for you.

Yeah, well, I I think the point of Nehemiah wasn't the build building of the wall or the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem.

That was part of what God was doing, but the main point was that God was rebuilding a people.

So when Nehemiah starts, the the people of God they're scattered all about, and they had lost their identity, they had forgotten who they were as the people of God and whose they were God's people.

And so we see in Nehemiah the start of the rebuilding of his people, and that's that's really a story and a work that works through the generations.

See, we can build things.

In fact, we're in a building uh phase right near here at Plum Creek.

I wish it was gonna be 52 days.

That would be a good one.

Wouldn't that be great?

Yeah, I think everyone would enjoy that.

But it's it's probably gonna be a year, but after a year, we're gonna have a new building, right?

But the ongoing work of God building his people, which is the church, the church isn't a building, it's a people of transformed hearts going into the world, bringing heaven to earth.

And the transformation process for us individually, it's gonna last a lifetime.

This side of heaven, that's not done.

Um, so really kind of heartwork moving through the generations, that's never ending until Jesus comes back, and that and that's when everything's made right.

Until then, he's gonna keep building his building a people, his church.

I love that.

I mean, that's literally like what we're all about, and I think it makes sense because Jesus is in the people business, he's in the life change business.

So I think that's so beautiful.

Okay, last question.

All right, last question.

We were talking pre-roll about how hard it is to uh fit everything into a sermon, and I know every pastor will say, I said everything I wanted to say, but if there's one thing maybe you didn't get to say, what would that be?

Yeah, I I think one of the things that I found fascinating, and I'd never seen it before in a passage I bet you I've read and studied maybe a thousand times.

It's the Great Commission, it's Matthew 28, it's Jesus' final address to his disciples saying, Hey, here are your marching orders, here's what I want to do.

And as I read this with this idea of presence, um, the Great Commission actually is bookended.

It starts with presence and it ends with presence.

Yes, yes.

So the passage starts, he's talking to the disciples, and he says, Go.

And that go means that the disciples are to go be with, to be present with the people that they're gonna make disciples of.

So they have to be there in person and with the people.

And then the end of the Great Commission ends with a promise from Jesus who says, and surely I am with you always.

Oh wow.

So the Great Commission even models this idea that heart formation happens through presence, the presence of Jesus, the presence of the spirit, and the presence of a transformed heart, another person.

And that's how God essentially, if Daniel, the whole sermon could have been summed up in changed lives, changing lives.

And some people probably wish I did that.

No, no, no, no.

But that's why we do this podcast because it's so cool to get those insights, and uh, that's something that we never would have heard.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks for making my first time fun.

Oh my god.

That was great.

That's amazing.

All right, so you guys know the drill.

If you want to listen to the sermon, which we know you do, head to YouTube and uh get it wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll see you next time.