Welcome to Beyond Sunday. That's.
Good. Welcome back, Joe.
Well, I, I just told you that I didn't listen to the whole
podcast last week, but you guys were making fun of me the way I
introduced. We did make fun of you a little.
Bit that's all right. Welcome to Beyond Sunday.
Which is. An extension of the preaching
ministry here at LEMC and I am joined.
I am Joseph Penner, the Associate Pastor here at LEMC,
and I'm joined, as always, by Jonah Chitty.
Jonah, we can't say pastors anymore.
We're not pastors. We're just people.
But you preached this last
Sunday. We were not here.
We we were away. But I did listen to the sermon
and, you know, you guys got to share in the Lord's Supper this
last weekend. How?
How was church this last weekend?
It was good. Church was really good as
always. You know, you nor Jake were here
and so I was a bit whatever frazzled, but we have a good
team here. Like the Deacon team did an
awesome job setting everything up.
I didn't ever really think about communion much.
Mr. Phil Ham took care of the the Scripture reading and
getting us in our hearts ready for that part.
So that was, that was easy, easier than I was expecting.
I was a little worried when I woke up was like, oh, I haven't
heard from anybody. But then why don't I even care?
I mean, they, I knew they would already have it done.
So. But yeah, the church was, I
thought, I thought things went really well.
Good. We have a good worship team that
you've trained up that knows what's that, what they're doing.
And, yeah, everybody knew what they were doing.
And yeah, it's good to know that.
Honestly, it is good to know that you're not really needed.
Like the, the. That's a weird thing to say, but
it is good that the church is built.
It's full of people, and we all have the abilities to help and
do things. And so, yeah, it went out.
It went, it went like normal. Yeah.
Yeah, that's good to hear. No, it we are so blessed to have
so many people who are willing to serve and to give of
themselves and to help the body. It it is such a blessing to know
that, you know, there's times where we're we're not going to
be able to be here. We're going to be away.
Those are few and far between, actually.
But it is a blessing to know that people are there to to
serve and to take ownership of this thing.
So we're very blessed in that way.
Yeah. All right.
Well, you preach a sermon. We're here to talk about your
sermon. And then making a little bit
further application, you know, the rubber hitting the road.
Did you get my title? I I didn't.
I worked so hard on my title, Joe.
No, it was priorities for godly living.
Priorities for godly living? Well, why don't you give us a
quick overview of your sermon? So it came from Nehemiah Chapter
7, picking up on really the priorities that Nehemiah had as
he was setting up the city that they just finished building the
walls in record time, 52 days of just just under two months as
it's done complete something that over 100 years hadn't been
done. He comes in with a plan.
He's got priorities there too, but but it's finished.
And so now they've got to figure out all right now what like, I
think I use the example of like a house is dried in, but now
they're the hard work comes in, right?
Like you've got, you've got baseboards and walls to put up
and you've got carpet and flooring to put in.
You got to figure out who's going to pay the bills and take
out the trash and all those different things.
And so that's that's where Nehemiah comes in.
He starts to like figure out and put people in place to really
set the city up for what it's meant for.
And so Nehemiah, he prioritized the my points.
My points were Nehemiah prioritized the, the praise of
God, the pursuit of godliness, the people of God and the
purpose of God. And the implication is that if
Nehemiah's priority was the were these things, then we should
have these priorities as well in our, in our Christian walk.
And so, yeah, the city is built and made for worship.
Like we will know that like I, I didn't go into this when I was
preaching, but like, you know, in Revelation, whenever God is
or Jesus is giving John the revelation, he's talking about
how like the dimensions of the city and it's like, it's a new
Jerusalem, you know, And so like Jerusalem is a purpose.
The purpose of that city was worship.
And so like Nehemiah is setting the tone for that.
And I think I saw I said something about like our hearts
are meant for or we're designed for worship.
And so like the city's also designed for worship.
My second point was that Nehemiah prioritized the pursuit
of godliness by the people he chose.
So he chose his brother Hannah and I who brought in the news,
but he also chose this guy named Hananiah.
So it's pretty convenient that they're that close in name.
You can just start like if you're calling them for for
something you say Han and both of them respond.
That's like us all pastors having.
This Jane and Jane Joe. Jonah, Jane.
So, yeah, so but to talk about Hananiah's, his character being
one of a man who was like really godly.
And so that was his, that was his biggest qualification.
Even though he's really qualified for the job, His
biggest qualification was that he was more God fearing man than
many. The Third Point was prioritizing
the people of God. That's just there in the text,
like really throughout the whole chapter.
I mean, like Nehemiah, he knew that he had to figure out who's
going to like populate the city. And so he went to the census and
looked at the census and said, OK, this is the list of people
who we have. So he prioritized the people of
God and who he put it in there in the city.
And then my final point was prioritizing the purpose of God
linking the, the story in the grand, the grand narrative.
Like there's a rubable connection to the, like he's in
the genealogy of Jesus. He's in here, but he's also in
the genealogy. So he's, Zerubbel is, is part of
the people who came out of the Babylonian captivity.
He's part of that original group that came to Jerusalem.
And then he's also a part of like this new this, this new
people of God, which is ushered in through Christ and through
the genealogy of Jesus. So God is doing way more than we
can ever imagine, even though like, even though they're doing
a lot here, like they have no idea what God's doing.
He's like Doctor Betts in his commentary said is like this
weaving this like beautiful tapestry that we, we can't see
because it's, we're looking at it really close.
But God is standing back and looking at this whole picture,
and he's doing so many amazing things.
So yeah, prioritize. We should prioritize what
Nehemiah prioritized. That's kind of the basic the
basic point of the sermon. Good.
Yeah, no, it was really good. I, I really enjoyed listening to
it. I thought it was really good.
I, I know at the beginning you sort of addressed like, man,
there's a lot of names in this chapter.
Yeah, I really started reading it to Valerie, she says.
Jonah, you can't read that. It's too boring.
And I'm like, it's not boring. You know, everything is
profitable for us and so. Well, and I just thought like,
like somewhere in your sermon, you did say, you know, that
numbers matter to God and and because people matter to God,
they should matter to us. You said something to that.
Warren Wearsby, I think, is the one that said he's he's like,
it's not so much that the people were counted, but that the
people count, right. So like that they these these
people matter. Yeah.
Like, and there was another one somebody else like texted me and
said that the Joshua connection is like the high priest Joshua.
And he comes up later and too and, and and and so it's like,
yeah, these all these names and these people, they're just not
arbitrary names. They're, they are people and
families like that that were part of like this.
Literally, they put their lives on the line to leave Babylonian
captivity and to to go back and to start like this city and
like, yeah, they these are the real heroes.
Nehemiah comes in and like, and you think, oh, in 52 days he did
the wall and it is amazing, right?
But these people left without really any kind of idea that
anything would be successful. Like these 42,000 people said,
we're OK, we're going to go. We've been able to go and
Nebuchadnezzar said we can. So we're going to go.
And then they just didn't have the direction that they needed.
So Nehemiah comes in 100 years later and gives them direction
and, and there we are. So I don't know.
Yeah, and I thought, I thought that was a really interesting
point that you brought out. Like these people risked, like
you said, they sort of risked their lives to go out because it
was like, yeah, OK, we're going to let you guys go back.
It, it wasn't like, you know, it wasn't like looking for the
promised land in the sense of like, oh, we're looking for
this. Great, it's not going back to
ruins. Exactly, it was a skin it you're
you still, the enemies are still all there.
They don't like you. They don't want you to rebuild
that. That's clear.
That's been clear from the book of Nehemiah as as we come back.
And so the thought that like they really were taking a big
risk and going back. I thought that was really
interesting, the way you drew that out.
Yeah, it was a, it was a a dangerous endeavour and and the
fact that they did it is, is amazing.
Yeah. What I thought I, I, as I was
reading through the text again this morning, I, I sort of
thought about, you know, there's this one verse in verse 33 where
it says the men of the other Nebo 52 And I just I, as I
thought about that, I thought about like, what if you did this
in our church? We got a lot of people, we got a
lot of people with similar last names, right?
So you go like you know the of the family of the Friesens, you
know the other Friesens. One of the things if I had, if I
had more time, I might have gone down this road.
But like in the early stages of like when I was looking at the
text and trying to figure it out, I was like, all right, we
could. We could literally do this.
Talking about church membership and the importance of the
importance of being known in your church is what I was
thinking. Yeah, these people are known as
inhabitants of Jerusalem, right? These are, these are like the
people who came back. So like it is important for for
the people you like are in church with, it's important that
you know them and they know you. And so because people matter,
right. And so like my, one of my first
ideas was like to just to like read off these names.
A portion of them. I probably wouldn't have read
all 73 verses, but then, but then like to like break in there
and like read in like Penner, the men of Penner, you know, 18
the, the fairs, you know, 39 the other fairs, 52 whatever, you
know, but sort of sort of like that to, to sort of like just
bring home the point that, you know what it does matter that
you're counted. And so like for that church
membership in my mind is it's so important like for us to know
who is like, who is, who are the people who have, who have come
together and said, for lack of a better word, there is no better
word. I don't think covenant together
where we come together and we we we commit to one another that
this is our family, this is our this is our family around the
word and around around the Lord and what he's doing in this
community. And I just think it's it means
so much. And like that's why these
censuses are that I think that's what they point.
That's one thing they point to anyway.
Maybe that's the most. Important.
No, I think that's exactly right.
I think that point exactly that that is a very powerful
illustration and reminder because you read these names and
we have no connection or relation to these names
whatsoever. So you just read them very like,
you know, your brain sort of switches off as you go through
them. But like you said, if you sort
of think about the people in our church, and it's like, well,
it's easy for us to look at all these names and numbers and go,
how does it really matter? And it's like, well, exactly
like what you said. Do the Friesians matter?
Right. You know, that guy who's married
to that, does he matter? Does his wife matter?
Do his kids matter? Do his grandchildren matter?
Yeah, they do. They matter a lot because, like
you said, they matter to God. And so we have to remember when
we're reading these names that these were families and
households of people that were connected.
Like, yeah, like, like verse 30, just just for fun, the men of
Raima and Giba 621, the 621 isn't an arbitrary number.
That's 621 men in that in that group, not counting their wives
and children or their servants. And so like those are people.
And that's why I think whenever we like we made the comment, I
think in our last big meeting is like numbers matter because they
represent people, Like they represent individuals who are
coming here, learning the word are, are coming here and, and
being participants and like teaching the word.
Numbers matter because they're people, not because they're
numbers, like not because we want to just count numbers or be
like, no, oh, we got 750 people on a Sunday.
No, there are 750 people here and they, they have 700 people
who have been exposed to God's word.
And that's that's an important thing to to count.
Absolutely. Because they count, right?
Yeah, Anyway. Well, and we see this consistent
all through Scripture too, right?
Like God, God keeps records. He he has numbers.
You know, even in we think of the early church, you know, we
know that 3000 were added to their number.
How do we know that it was 3000? Because somebody was counting.
Somebody counted it right? And so it they, it matters,
numbers matter very much to God. And so like you said, I think
there's, there is a pitfall there where we have to be
careful of like, you know, that's the only thing that
matters. It's no, it's not.
It's about, like you said, those are people being exposed to
God's word. Those are people that can build
relationship and connection. It can be in community together
and be in. That's right.
And the more people that come to faith is that's the whole goal
of what we're doing as a church and.
Committing to each other is, is equally important, right?
Like I think that's why I think membership is important, yeah.
Like we're going to commit and covenant with each other.
We're going to know. I know that, oh, you're in it
100%. I'm in it 100%.
We can hold each other accountable to that.
But also like, if like we know who like, for lack of a better
phrase as well, is like, we know who that we're in charge of or
not in charge of is the wrong word.
We know who we're supposed to be shepherding, right would be the
right word using biblical language.
Yeah. Like the flock at LEMC is all
the membership at LEMC and we have a lot of people who aren't
members but are, you know, are here.
They would probably consider it their home church.
They might even consider themselves members, but haven't
like done the official thing, right?
It just makes it harder, like, and I don't know, you know,
anyway, we could go down that rabbit trail if we want to, but
that was my whole point there. I would have done that in the
sermon had we had time to talk about that.
Yeah, you were. You were limited.
Because of, because of communion, Yeah.
But do you think that? Do you think that's a, would you
draw out that application further when it comes to when it
comes to the people who came and they couldn't prove their
father's houses and they couldn't prove where they that
they belong to Israel, Do you think that that that translates
and applies to the church as well?
I don't know. That's a good question.
Like people who can't prove that they're Christians or what?
Yeah, I guess. I guess that's.
What I'm sort of thinking of like.
No, I think that's true. I think it's important like one
of the ways, like one of the things about membership, like
when we take up membership, is that like there's an interview,
right? Like there, there is at least
some kind of questioning about your, your faith.
It's not, it's not in depth, right?
It is, but it's not right. We're just, we basically just
want to know, do you understand the gospel and have you have
you, do you profess faith in Christ?
That's essentially what it is. And so like, I think so like
our, our, that in that way you're tracing your lineage back
to if you're adopted into the Kingdom or not.
The important thing to hear to note is that they didn't turn
them away, right. He didn't say you're not allowed
to stay in the like you can't, you can't live here.
You can't even consider yourself Israelite.
It just means you can't serve in like the priestly places.
Like you may not be one of the 10th percent, like the 10% that
live in Jerusalem, but you can still, you can still be here.
You're still welcome in. I mean, the, that was one of the
other points too, is like the in the, in the big grand picture of
what God is doing throughout the history of the world.
He's, he's always been drawing people from outside of Israel
into his chosen people. He's always done it even like
even in the exodus, we were reading the exodus in our
reading plan. You'll read like the the rabble
or the others that that came along with them.
Those aren't Israelites. Those are Egyptians or people
from other areas that were enslaved that came along with
them in the Exodus that came along.
You know, So he's always been about bringing people to
himself. And then like even Rahab, all,
you know, all of those stories that we see of outsiders, Ruth
coming in from the outside and he's he's God.
God loves us all. He welcomes us all.
We just have to believe in him and believe in the promise,
right. In the Old Testament, they
believed promise. The Messiah is coming anyway.
I'm getting off on a rabbit trail, but yeah, I think so,
Joe. I don't, I think there's
something to think there. I don't know.
I haven't given it a ton of thought.
No, I just. I just, so I figure I'd draw on
that, 'cause I think, I think the, the, something that's
important is making a distinction, you know, 'cause,
you know, in our church boundary plan, it's like we're, we're
going through Exodus and, and God makes a distinction between
his people and not his people, right?
Then when he starts sending the plagues, at some point, I think
it's the, the 4th plague, he, he starts to make a distinction
between, all right, you know, your, your animals are gonna
die, all the Egyptians, but not one animal of all of the
Israelites will die. And so I think when we think
about the church, I think it's important for us to think, you
know, we do have membership and we do have, you know, those,
those sorts of things so that we can determine, like you said,
who, who is a part of our church, who is a part of our
flock and who is not right. And that's where we have things
like church discipline. Because if you know, someone
might come in and like you said, on the one sense, you know, we,
we do have an interview process where we're trying to determine
if people understand what the gospel is like.
Are you truly a follower of Christ?
And so in a sense, there's, there's like a, there's a step
that you have to take. It's not necessarily a hard
step, but at the same time, we we we're affirming whether the
truthfulness of that profession of faith over the next coming
months and years, right? And so if we see someone living
in sin, we are supposed to call them out in their sin.
And if they refuse to obey and eventually even to the church,
then we're supposed to remove that person from membership
because their profession of faith is not valid because
they're refusing to be corrected by by God's people.
And so there there are things that we're supposed to do so
that we're truly discerning who who is a Christian and who is
not a Christian, who is in the family of faith and who is not.
Yeah, there are ways to do it and they in their biblical ways,
right. That's the thing too.
It's not arbitrary. It's not man made.
This is something that that Jesus said to do.
Exactly. Yeah, I think, I think
membership matters that that if that's the point that I'm
driving at, there is like it's it is important to to covenant
with your church. Yeah, it is an important step,
absolutely. And and that's it's people are,
people are. That's the, that's the beautiful
thing. You know, we, the more we talk
about things like that, the more we show the importance that's in
scripture, people respond. And I'm grateful for it for
sure. Yeah.
Yeah, well in your in your point about prioritizing the praise of
God, I, I really appreciated that you talked about you've
already mentioned alluded to it. We were created for worship and
Nehemiah sort of sets up worship that you have already said, like
Jerusalem was a city, it was created for the worship of God
and we was sort of made for worship.
And then you sort of ask this applicational question, do we
prioritize the praise of God in our lives?
And so I, I just wanted to maybe have you like expand on that a
little bit and then maybe even ask the question about like, how
can we like, what ways can we be prioritizing the praise of God
in our lives? So praise would be like
something that you immediately think of what when you hear the
word. Singing, Yeah.
It's not necessarily that it can be right.
So, but it isn't it is what most people think of the immediate
thing. I I just link it to what what do
you worship? And like that's even a foreign
concept to a lot of people like the the word worship.
What do you what do you make the most important thing in your
life? Like is it, is it we would marry
people might say their spouse or their kids.
That's idols. That's, that's, that's an idol.
If you make that the most important thing in your life,
that's an idol. You, you might worship that and
you might praise that like, Oh, I'm praising my son for his
great hockey skills, you know, at the hockey match last week.
So dude, I, I think it's going to sound like a, like a dead
horse that were beaten right? The same thing over and over
again. But like the way that you can
prioritize the praise of God is by, by making your life centered
around his word. I I.
I don't know any I don't know any other way to do it, right.
Yeah, it it can include singing, which that's the most it is a
response, right? The doxology and like like
singing, like our, our, our theology, though, like the word
needs to be what informs what we worship and what we like, what
like outward expression of our worship is like.
So I think like a heavy diet of the word like is so important
for you to get to get it to like to make God the center of your
life. Yeah, I just want to, I want to
explain a little bit. So like you, you said theology
and we use the word theology and we talk about theology.
And I think a lot of times when people hear that word, they sort
of they get scared and they sort of disassociate themselves and
they immediately put that in a class of something that they are
not, Yeah. And that they don't think of.
But everybody's a theologian. Everybody is a theologian.
What is? Made that famous, yeah.
So theology is what Theos is gone.
Yeah. And then ology we we know that
it means the study of by all the different subjects you study in
school, like biology and sociology and psychology.
It's just the study of something.
So yeah, theology is just the study of God.
Yeah, it's, it's exactly, it's the study of God.
And so when we read the Bible, we are being informed of who God
is, right. And so when you read the Bible,
you're studying God. You, you're being a theologian.
And so. And you're interpreting it.
You're, you're reading it, you're trying to make
connections and you're trying to figure out what does it mean?
Yeah, like what is it saying about God?
What is it saying about me? What is it saying about the
world I live in? You're developing a theology.
Yeah. Study of what God has done,
whether you know it or think you are or not.
Exactly. Everybody's a theologian.
Yeah. And so when you see someone
living a certain way and you go, that's a sin, you just said
something about theology, right? You just said something about
who God is or who God isn't, right.
And so your beliefs, how you think that you should live or or
that we should live as Christians, what you believe
about God and what you believe about the Bible, what you
believe about being a Christian, that is theology, right?
And so I'm just, I just wanted. To.
So yeah, that's good. Clarify that just so that like
people don't separate themselves, right?
Everything that we do to understand who God is and and
how we how he is to be worshipped is is theology.
Yeah. So here's a challenge for you.
For anybody else that that's listening is just like, OK, so
figure out where does this idea like you use the example of
like, OK, that's sin. You pointed sin out in someone
else's life. OK, where does that idea that
that's a sin come from? Does it come from my experience
in my family? Is it come from just like
cultural things that's handed down to me or does it come from
me seeing it in God's word? Right, right.
So that's the distinction. So like you need to figure out,
is my belief system, is it, is it driven by God's word or is it
driven by culture and family, tradition, background, whatever.
And then then maybe they're right.
You know what I mean? They probably are right.
And a lot of the times we get it right.
Absolutely, we do get it right sometimes and maybe they're
reading their Bible. That's great.
But you want to test everything. You want to make sure that it's
all like that's centered and driven around the word.
So, so like I think that like our our worship or the praise of
God, prioritizing the praise of God in my life means that I'm
I'm seeking him out. I'm trying to know him right.
So that's that's the goal. I think that and I and for, for
Nehemiah, what they were doing is they were, they were setting
Jerusalem back up as this, as this image or this model of, of
worship and praise. So basically Jerusalem was
supposed to be this beacon of light in the world showing like
these people worship Yahweh and like you should too, right?
So that's what that's what it is.
So setting your life up to be that way would be OK.
I'm making the word a priority in my life and and I'm making it
such a priority in my life that I can't help but someone else
see me and say, oh, there's something different about that
person. You know, it's like that guy who
told us about meeting someone in the store and he's like, he was
telling us about that guy loves Jesus.
You know what I mean? It's like that's like something
wears on his sleeve. It's not a T-shirt, it's just
who he is. Yeah, you know.
Anyway. It just sort of naturally comes
out in your conversation and the things that you say or do.
Yeah. Yeah, I think that would be,
that would be where I would draw it.
I don't know, maybe that's not what you're going.
For no, that's great. But yeah, you're right,
theology, we need to we can't be scared of the word, right?
Don't shut down when you hear it.
And when there's a Wednesday night class offered about it,
don't don't shut down and say, oh, theology one O 1.
That's no, we're just going to study God.
We're just going to figure out who God is.
And so, hey, don't be scared of the words.
Well, and it's like you said, like we, we have to center it
on, on God's word. And, and that's going to be the
focus of my sermon next week in Nehemiah chapter 8.
If you want to read ahead, you'll you'll see that that it's
it is about. Let's put God's word back at the
center right of everything that we do.
I think, by the way, before we move on from like setting up the
city, like that's what Nehemiah is doing.
So Ezra's going to come and read, right?
I named my kid Ezra because he's a helper.
Ezra means help helper in Hebrew anyway, so Ezra's going to come
and read the word to the city as the priest.
But Nehemiah has done all the hard work to get this, the city,
secure so that they can all just stand there without worrying,
right? And listen to God's word.
That's what the city's intended for.
Yeah. So that's what he's doing.
So yeah, he prioritized praise. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, that's really helpful. I think that's really good.
Yep. And then you sort of talked
about, I kind of wanted to hone in on your second point, which I
don't have written down correctly prioritize.
The pursuit of holiness. Pursuit of holiness.
And in there you started to mention this Hananiah and
Hananiah. And Hananiah is is chosen
specifically because he's he is, as the text says, yes, more
faithful and God fearing man than many.
And so he doesn't note his like skill, his ability or anything
like that, but his character. Yeah.
So why don't you touch on that a little bit?
Yeah, I mean, so often we look at we look at people who it
says, I was just reading there. It says he, he Oh no, he gave
him the governor of the castle. So yeah.
So no, no, sorry, I'm I'm pausing there because I'm
reading it. So he get I gave my brother
Hananiah and Hananiah the governor of the castle.
So that's the parenthetical the governor of the castle charge
over Jerusalem. So I gave these two guys charge
over Jerusalem. But Hananiah specifically, he
had skills, right? So I don't want to overlook the
fact that he did have skills, but what the most important
thing for him was, and Nehemiah like picked up on is like this
is a God fearing man. He's more God fearing than many.
He may not have been the most qualified person there.
And that's the thing to think about.
Like he may not have been the most qualified physically or
with his leadership capabilities or whatever, but he was known as
a God fearing man. And I think that that's like,
like in our lives, we, we need to make that our like a
priority. We need to make the pursuit of
godliness like a priority in our life.
And that goes back to like all the things, the disciplines that
we talk about. We talk about Bible intake, we
talk about prayer, we talk about like silence and solitude and
meditation and fasting and all these things.
Those are the outward signs that show people that you're a God
fearing person, right? And then the way you treat other
people also shows that you're a God fearing person.
But like we, the world tells us to prioritize everything else.
Like literally you need to do whatever it is, build every
skill you can in order to, to get ahead in your job.
The way you're going to get a job and to get a get promoted is
you're going to do a good job. You're going to like, you're
going to do more than you're expected to.
You're going to, you know, whatever you maybe, maybe you do
something unethical to get ahead and you and to, to get
accolades. So doing the like the best job
or the person who seems like they do the best may not be the
best person out there. What's most important is to be
known as a godly man or a godly woman.
That is such a good encouragement because you're
exactly right. Our, our temptation is always
to, to feel like spending time praying, reading the Bible,
going to the Bible study, going to church, like those things are
a quote, UN quote waste of time. And like you said, that's always
the temptation in our mind. You know, that we don't want to
like slow down and stop to spend time with God, but that is the
most important thing that we can do.
And we have to avoid that temptation so that we can make
sure that we are being faithful. To exactly Yeah.
And another temptation is like to feel like you're going to
miss out on something. I may miss out on something if I
spend 30 minutes in God's word now, I may miss out on whatever
the the next thing. And that's both social media
feed is right. Who cares?
Like you literally are going to be like sitting with the, the,
the person who created the universe.
And that's just like, like, why would you?
Why would you think that? Honestly, I think it's because
we are just so weak. We don't see it.
Yeah. And so it's really hard for us
to to understand it. So.
Yeah. We're very short sighted.
Yeah, we are. Absolutely.
We can only like, yeah, that that's our faith is weak.
Mine is for sure. Well, it is so weak.
You know, I, we were talking about, you know, our Bible
reading Exodus chapter 16 and 17, where, you know, the people
of Israel begin to set out. They start to grumble, they
start to complain. And then God says he's going to
provide, he's going to provide food for them and he's going to
provide mana. And he does this to test them.
And so he first says, OK, you know, go out, take, you know, an
Omer for each person in your house for the day and like don't
leave any over till the next day, though.
And then, you know, there were some, some people who were like,
wow, I ain't eating this all today.
You know, I'm not, I'm not sure there's going to be any
tomorrow, right. So they save a little bit and
then it breeds worms, which. Is an Omer.
It's actually a 10th of 22 liters, that's what that's what
my footnote said. 2.2. Liters. 2.2 liters per person.
I don't know how you measure bread in liters.
Sorry, sorry for that guys. But yeah, it's interesting.
And then the next and then on the 6th day.
Spoils in your house, smells bad and everything, yeah.
And then on the 6th day, it's like gather, gather enough for
two days and don't come out the next day.
What do the people do the next day?
They come out, right? And the Lord, like, just why are
they not listening? I have given you the Sabbath to
enjoy. And it's like, why won't you
just listen and heed my word? Yeah.
And it's just, you're right. We're so short sighted.
And I find so often that it's like, you know, the same thing,
right? It's easy for us to look at them
and go, man, you guys are just so dumb.
You know, it's like their fingers pointed right back at me
too. And it's like, why are you?
Why do you have such little faith?
That's right. Why don't we trust God and his
promises and his commands more and trust that he is going to
bless us if we're faithful to him instead of always feeling
like. And, and the thing that I
thought was really interesting about this season of Israel's
life is they're just starting a journey in the wilderness that's
going to last 40 years. And then in that entire 40
years, they don't do a single thing to make food for
themselves for 40 years. You wake up, you pick it up off
the ground. Yeah.
They don't, they don't plant a garden, they're not farming.
They're they're doing nothing. And God is literally providing
for them for 40 years and he's wanting them to learn to trust
him. It's like I am going to take
care of your needs. I'm going to take care of you.
Your responsibility is to listen to my word, to follow my
instructions, to hear me. And the other interesting thing
is we talk about, well, well, God's people following God's
revealed word at any given point in time, right?
They don't have the 10 commandments yet.
They don't have all the laws. Here's God's word for you today.
Go take an Omer of manna for each person in your house.
That's God's revealed word for them at this point.
And it's like, just obey that. And for us, it's like, you know,
we are in the New Testament. It's like we, so we have all
this, all the scripture from the Old Testament that leads us to
the New Testament. And we have all of Jesus
commands which are summed up and love the Lord you God with all
your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor
as yourself. But it's like, do we trust God
enough, like you said to not take the shortcut of like, how
am I going to get ahead in business?
It's like, do I trust God enough to go?
No, my integrity and honesty is more important than another
dollar. Yeah, it's and it's work, It is.
It's not like you're not going to get godliness.
You're not going to be I think this was one of the points I
made in the sermon is like you're not become known as a God
fearing man unless you put in the work and do the things that
that that are required to be 1 Like you can't just be known as
a God fearing man, right? Like a God fearing man fears the
Lord, which means he like reveres him.
He prays, he reads his word, he he, he prays with his family.
He demonstrates how to properly love a spouse by loving his wife
and praying for her. Like in the presence of the
kids. Like you don't.
You don't get there without working.
That's actually a really helpful way of thinking about this.
OK, well, how do you know who's like a God fearing man in the
church? Probably a good way to to answer
that question would be, well, if if you wanted help or advice or
assistance or, you know, from some godly man in the church,
like who comes to your mind. Yeah, and that those would be
people that you would instinctively think of like, OK,
those are people that that are godly people, right?
Like you, you know them for for that the fact that they love the
Lord and and their desire is to live their lives to be faithful
to him. Right, and that shouldn't be
like our we should look for leadership for people who are
qualified to do the do the actual tasks.
But like if there's two people or three people that are
qualified to do the task, look for the most God fearing person.
That's that is that. To me, that's the application.
If you're looking for leaders, yeah, that is the application.
That actually, hey, you know what?
We never talk about single people on the podcast.
It's true. We don't I'll draw in something
here. It's.
Harder though. All right.
So yeah, in we're married. We're not single anymore.
It is harder to like. Anyway, sorry, I'm.
I'm now making excuses. No, that's OK.
I, I, I've heard people say this before and I, I do think it's
something we need to address more often, but something you
just said, maybe think about something that I've heard a
pastor say about, you know, like people single who are single.
A lot of times we, you know, people get to a point maybe
where they're, they're thinking too much about like trying to
find this perfect person, this perfect soul mate.
And, and he sort of says I know. Where you're going with this?
He sort of says, you know what, what you ought to do instead of
trying to find like this soul mate that's out there somewhere,
which you know, I don't believe in either.
You ought to find the most godly person you can find and just
marry them. That's obviously like that's
obviously stretchy, right? Like we are, we're not talking
about like go pick a person and go marry them tomorrow.
That's not what we're saying, but the the point stands strong.
It's like if you're looking for any characteristic in a person,
the one that should matter the most is their godliness.
That is, that's the thing that God is the most concerned about
their heart. And that's the thing that you
ought to be the most concerned about.
Find the most godly person of the opposite sex that you can
find, it's so true, and begin to pursue them.
And you'll have what what you'll have from that is like that
person will point you to Christ every day, right?
Like you, if you're especially if you're, if you're pursuing
godliness yourself, you're going to sharpen each other and your
marriage. They're going to point you to
Christ. They're going to encourage you
when you're down. You're going to be there for
them. And yeah, exactly.
It's so it's such good advice. Yeah.
So that that that goes beyond just leadership, Right, Right.
And all your relationships to even your friend groups, like
picking friends, but yeah, specifically spouses.
That's important. That is a good advice.
Yeah. Yeah.
What else did you want to talk about?
Priorities for godly living. Man, I just, I thought there was
so much good stuff in your sermon, like. 30 minutes too,
Joe. Yeah, you can't do it, No.
As a low blow, that was I'll, I'll accept it.
But yeah, even your your point and prioritize the people of God
and point #3 you shared this anecdote from Doctor Cook.
If you don't love people, you have no business being in
ministry. But you sort of began to apply
that to to every Christian, everybody, every Christian.
It's if you don't love people, then you don't really have any
business with you. Now I'm even thinking of like
your business, you know, like if you own a lawn care business or
if you work, no matter what you do, like you should do it out of
a love to serve people, right? If if your priority is making
money, it's like that's the wrong priority to have as a
Christian that that shouldn't be your priority.
It should be to love people, to serve people.
Those are opportunities for you to be a blessing and to use your
business as an opportunity. Because you said in a previous
point that you know, Israel, the whole point of Israel was to
show the world what God is like, who God is.
And that's our goal as Christians.
The way that we live shows who God is and what he's like.
And so every way that you live in your business, in your home,
in your marriage, and as parenting, when you go to work,
when you go to school, when you go around you, your life should
show who God is. I think it's one of the the best
apologetics. OK, so apologetics, another big
word. Sorry.
It just means defense of the faith.
So the so one of the best ways that we can prove to the world
that Jesus is real and that like, like salvation and like
what he does, life change is real through Christ is how we
treat each other. Yeah.
I think I said that in the sermon in some way, in some form
like that. But like, that's your best, your
best, like defense, that proving to the world that that what what
you claim is real. Yeah.
Is by how you treat other people, especially those who are
closest to you. Yeah.
Like your family, things like that.
Yeah. Yeah, people matter, yeah.
And if you if you don't love people, if you don't have a
heart for people, pray for one, pray that the Lord will give you
like that's that's one thing too.
Like I, I, I, and I think I even like did some confession in
this, in this point where I, I am a very like I could be a
recluse if I wanted to be and not talk to anybody and not like
engage in any kind of relationships.
I to an extent I need, I need like one or two to be like, OK,
but like you just have to ask the Lord for help.
Like if you, if you need, like if you, you need to really
truly, if you don't love people, I mean, that's the I have to ask
the Lord for help all the time, like help me to love my family
like, because right now I'm pretty angry, you know what I
mean? Or whatever, Pretty like pretty
like just whatever. I could just go be by myself for
if I, if you ever hear me say I need to go get in the woods
somewhere, I just need to go be alone for like 2 days.
But but yeah, I mean, I need to pray and ask the Lord to help me
with that. And so that's that's the thing.
If you don't love people, you can.
You can. You just need to ask for the
Lord's help. Well, and and you and you should
right, like, like if you don't love people.
I mean, John talks exact specifically about this in in
First John. First, John, Yeah.
It's like if you don't love your brother.
You can't say you're from me, right?
Then you can't say you love God. Yep.
And so that is a prerequisite to, to loving God.
You can't, you can't love God if you don't love people because
God loves people. And so we actually have to.
Yeah, we are absolutely right. We have to be prioritizing that.
And I think sort of to a further point, if people feel like they
genuinely could live without other people, like I, I
definitely don't need people. I, I guess just thinking off the
top of my head, my, my initial thought to that is you haven't
had a real friendship, right? You haven't really truly
experienced any good friendship that really edified you.
Because I, I get those feelings at times too.
I think everybody has them where you're like, you know what,
sometimes I just need, I need to be able in my house and just be
able to. I think that's healthy.
Yeah. I think it is healthy to like,
just like to, to be pursue some silence and solitude.
We talk about that as a as a personal spiritual discipline.
It is a healthy thing to do. Pursue it, but don't like live
there, right? Right.
But when you have, when you have a true, like true, genuine
relationships in your life with people that you can have godly
conversation, conversations with the Bible and you can really
feel like when you leave feeling like really encouraged and
blessed for having had that conversation.
I, I don't, I don't see how you could ever say you could live
without people. And I, I just think those people
just haven't truly experienced it.
We got to write that book on friendship.
That's good. Yeah, for sure.
Well, then your last point was prioritizing the purpose of God.
So just reminding us that like, you know, we're zoning in on a
specific time in history, but as you sort of zone out, like zoom
out and look at the whole scope of things, it's like God is
doing something bigger than just what's going on here in the book
of Nehemiah. Yeah.
And the, the application there is like in your own life too,
you're very, very focused on the, the 24 hours than that day
that you have, or you're very focused on like the, the, the 50
square feet that you live in the most, like wherever you are,
whatever is around you. But like God is doing so much
more. I think we've shared that quote
so many times from John Piper is like he's doing whatever,
however many millions of things at once.
And you're, you know, you have like the knowledge of like two
of them. And so just keeping that in mind
is like God is doing so much and we see like a, a picture of it
with Zuru. Dr. Betts.
His commentary was so good that to point that out.
And so I didn't, I can't claim credit for that, but like he, he
pointed out that connection and I was like, this is, this is how
you connect this to Jesus. Because that was one of the,
that's one of the things we always try to do in our sermons
is we try to point to the gospel in some way.
And this is like the most obvious thing, like what what
Nehemiah is doing, what God is doing in this time with Nehemiah
is part of something way, way bigger and way more beautiful.
Because Jerusalem's not going to be around, right?
It's going to fall. It's, it's it's temporary.
Like I think you said that in one of your sermons, too.
They're doing all this work for something that isn't going to
last. Yeah, and, and, but, but what
God is doing in the underneath of it all is like he's he is
doing something that will last forever.
And he's drawing people to himself throughout it all.
It's an incredible story. It is.
And that's such an encouraging thing to think about, right?
Because there's a sense in which everything that we're doing in
this life, like from an earthly temporal perspective, is going
to, like, fade away. Yeah.
No matter what I do to my house, no matter what business I build,
it's, it's all like, it's all going to be torn down, right?
Like we've talked about this church, right?
In 100 years, it's like it might not be here.
It probably won't be here. You know, it will be replaced by
something else or whatever, right.
And if we focus on those things, it can feel sort of depressing.
But that's where we're focusing on the eternal things that last
forever, right? And whether people's souls,
that's really the thing that matters.
Right. And and then also like, like you
just made me think maybe this doesn't even really connect, but
the building won't be here. And maybe and the people won't
be either. The same people won't be here,
right. But our ancestors will
potentially like the people who are the like the legacy of faith
if unless Jesus comes back and it's all done, right, Yeah, the
legacy of faith will be present in some form in this area, in
this community. That's what we're building.
We're not building like programs or anything like that, where the
reason that we want you to focus on the praise of God and
prioritize on that is because you're building a legacy of
faith in your own heart. But also as you, as you give it
to your kids, other people's children, if you're, if you're
teaching Sunday school to other people's children, you're,
you're adding to that legacy of faith.
And so that's important for us to remember like God is doing
something through us that's going to outlast us and, and
into eternity. Yeah, it's incredible.
That's really encouraging. So he's doing a big thing.
Absolutely. Yep.
All right, well, do you have any last words on Nehemiah Chapter
7? No, I think, I think we hit it.
I, I think like the priorities matter.
And I really like the, the point that hit me the hardest in the
sermon was the people part. Like people matter to God and so
they have to matter to us. Yeah, they have to.
And so like if I made this connection and, and I cuz I, I
struggle with it too. There's there's if you have
someone in your family that's like that, you have a like a
strained relationship with, go for it.
Go, go like send it. You know what I mean?
Go to those person to go to that person, those people.
If it's your parents, if it's your sister or brother, go to
them. And then be humble.
Like don't be proud. Don't don't go into the place
that got you there. Forgive, like forgive everything
and seek forgiveness for your own sin and work to re establish
those relationships because you only have so much time here and,
and you want, you want them to see that, that you're
prioritizing God in your life. And what did God do for you?
He reconciled you to himself. And so that's the thing that we
have to, we have to seek reconciliation.
We have to seek unity. Yeah.
And so people matter to God, so they have to matter to us.
Yeah. So.
I'm going to launch into from there, into things that we like.
Sometimes we do this. Thing about things, you got
something you like. Well, because I felt like this
tied in really well with a book that I read.
Well, while we were away on vacation, I, I read a book.
I read a book. It was recommended to me by
Brother in the Church, The Devil in Pew #7 Ouch.
It was. It's a true story of this
couple. It gets married.
I would highly recommend it to anybody.
It's a it's a crazy story. This couple goes and plants a
church in Sellers Town, North Carolina.
And there's this man in the church who isn't even a member
of the church but has authority and power because of his
position in the community. And that sort of gets taken away
from him with this pastor who comes in and sort of gives the
authority back to the church and sort of pushes this guy out.
And he doesn't like it. And so he spends like five years
trying to get them out. And we're talking like, cut the
phone lines, shoot the lights out, slash the tires, detonating
bombs in their backyard, hiring snipers to shoot in their home.
Like they lived in constant fear from this man and people that he
would hire to try like getting them to leave.
And it is insane. And the entire time the pastor,
his wife, and like it's written from the from the daughter,
she's writing this story like with hindsight, she's like a
young girl at the time. And she talks about like her
parents constantly. Their attitude through this
whole thing is forgiveness. Like the whole time it's going
on, it's we need to love like Jesus.
They're praying for this man's salvation and forgiving him over
and over and over and over again.
And it's just a like you said, you're talking about people
matter because and just to think that, you know, this husband and
wife could continually forgive someone who was so attacking
against them. It's just a phenomenal story
about forgiveness and grace and and just loving people that are
unlovable. And it's just, it's just a crazy
story. I'd, yeah, I would recommend it
to anybody. The Devil in Pew #7 by Rebecca
Nichols. Crazy.
You were almost there in North Carolina.
You should have just visited the town.
That's where that sniper shot came through.
Things were like, I don't have anything ready today.
I mentioned in my sermon I've been playing with chat with AI
for. A while, that's the thing I was
going to ask. I was going to say the thing.
Maybe you'd want to mention your your app that you mentioned your
sermon. I'm building an app, an
application also known as an app.
I just got bored and I was pulled up the the AI that's
linked to Twitter. It's called Xai Grok.
And I said, what like can you help me build an app that would
help me journal my Bible journal using the here method?
And it said, sure, I can help you build an app.
And then it helped me build 1 for my computer.
And I was like, huh, can you, can you help me build it for the
phone? I said, sure, I can help you
build it for your phone. Then he had me download he, it
had me download some things from my computer and then it wrote
the code for me. And you type it in and then then
you just spend time just asking it to make refinements to the
code if any errors pop up. It was a lot of fun.
One thing I did the danger at the I made the comment in the
sermon it on like in the moment. It wasn't in my notes to talk
about it. Is that it I can get fixated on
things like that. My personality is one that can
fixate on things and stay there for a long time and like make it
an idol, like making creating something, not the not the AI an
idol, but just making like the fact that I'm I'm making
something. I'm I'm, I'm using this or doing
this, using this tool to do whatever takes up all my time
and I ignore family or whatever. That was my point in the sermon.
But it is really fun. So I'm I'm trying to play with
it some more. Maybe maybe one day you'll see
an app from, from, from Jonah. I don't know, maybe, maybe not.
No, it was fun. It is a lot of fun.
It's something to honestly, I've been going through some like
some discouragement in my life and not, not necessarily related
to anything that's like I could point at right.
But but it helped me distract myself for a little bit.
This is if I'm, if I am alone and I don't have anything to do
for a while, I'll, I'll find myself spiraling out and this is
just fixating on the negative things.
So I found something like I was just trying to find something
positive to, to fixate on for a little while and it did distract
me. My and even Valerie was like,
yeah, that's, that's really cool.
I'm glad you were able to do that because you know, you're
not really fun when you're fixated on negative things.
So anyway, yeah, it's true we're not, but yeah.
That sounds cool though. You know, having a tool that you
can sort of like categorize and keep a list of all your here
journals. And stuff.
Yeah. So it'll, yeah, it's, I'm trying
to get it where it'll save to the cloud and all that stuff.
Yeah, yeah, that's cool. My mom says she wants it.
But then, you know, moms always want what you do.
It's like here, here's my, here's my ashtray you know that
I made in crafts today. I know you don't smoke, mom, but
here's an ashtray I made with clay.
It's cool. And then you know, it's like
here, here's an app for your phone.
I know you barely know how to use it, but anyway, Mom, I know
you know how to use the phone. It's fine.
You're good at that stuff anyway.
That's good. Yeah, it was fun.
Yeah, well, thank you for sharing.
Yeah. Welcome back, Joe.
Yeah, Well, thank you back. I know that Kyle and Ryan are
glad they don't have to be on the podcast today.
So yeah, it's been good. So you got you got Chapter 8
coming up. Yes.
Looking forward to it. Yeah, me too.
I'm very excited for it. Yeah, you get, I was thinking I
got assigned Chapter 7 because, well, it was, it was out of
necessity. You were on vacation, right?
Jake had an emergency. But then you get Chapter 8 with
Chapter 8 looks easy so. I felt that way a number of
times throughout Corinthians. I'm like, I'm getting all hard
chapters. I'm getting all the hard
chapters and everyone. But we're looking forward to it.
Yeah, to Sunday. So hey, would you want to pray
to close this out? Yeah, great.
Cool. Well, we're so grateful for your
word and every single part of it is inspired.
Every single part of it is authoritative and useful to us
in some way. And we're just so thankful for
Jonah and, and, and the way that you worked through him by the
power of your spirit to give us things that we could glean out
of this passage of Scripture. Some of them take a little bit
more work than others, but we trust, Lord, that your spirit
has given us exactly the word that you want us to have so that
we can learn from it and grow, grow in it, Lord.
And we pray that that we could be a people of your word, a
people that put your word at the center of all that we do and
that your spirit would faithfully transform us through
it. And so I want to pray
specifically for our church and in their Bible reading.
I know there's many people who've joined us in in the Bible
reading plan and and maybe others are doing different Bible
reading plans or we're just so grateful to have your word, word
and pray that your spirit would continue to be at work in and
through us as we spend time in your word, as we grow in it.
Lord, that you would grow us and shape and mold us into the image
of Christ and Lord that you would grow us together as your
people as we seek to build your Kingdom and make your name
great. We ask this in Jesus name, Amen.
Amen. Well, thanks for joining us.
We will look forward to seeing you again next week.
Have a great day.