Skip to content Episode 13 | Nehemiah: Is God The Center of Your Attention Aug 24 · 43 min ...more
Episode 13 | Nehemiah: Is God The Center of Your Attention
August 24, 2026 · 43 min
Series Nehemiah August 24, 2026 · 43 min · Nehemiah
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In this video 0:00 God at the Center: First Love Analogy & Nehemiah Recap11:00 Willingly Offering Ourselves to God19:00 Dedicating Our Lives to God26:30 Celebrating with Joy Unspeakable35:40 Joy as Witness & Gospel Call
God at the Center: First Love Analogy & Nehemiah Recap 0:00 Let me ask you this. So, I know you're you relaxed this morning. You got your caffeine. You're watching from home or some of you are already at the park. Let's get personal for just a minute. Just, open up. And I know0:11 everybody in here is gonna know the answer to this question. I know you are. Ever it's gonna take you back in time to that that moment. You're gonna remember. This is something that everybody has an experience with. Do0:21 you remember the 1st person you fell in love with? You did. Or you well, the 1st person you thought you were in love with. Let me rephrase that. The you remember that? The 1st boyfriend you had, 1st girlfriend? Let me0:32 see if anyone's brave enough in in the room, to do this. Don't mention their last name because they might be sitting right over there. But 1st name of your 1st love. What was that? Wanda? Alright. See, this man said that0:44 with confidence. He's grinning from ear to ear. He's like, hey, Wanda, if you're here just saying. Anybody else? And Robbie.0:56 We got Robbie. We got 1 a Bobby. Bobby, not Robbie. I just got totally corrected. And I know Rob this is Bobby. That's Bobby with a b. Don't be messing up. In the chat, if you're watching1:07 Facebook, whatever, let let me know. I'm curious. I'm gonna go back and look at who who who it is, in your life that it was just at 1 moment, at 1 time, you your whole world revolved around them. You know what I mean?
1:17 And everybody had that, whether there's 4th graders, 3rd graders, 2nd graders, 6th grader. Everybody had that person that they were like the center of your universe, like the center of your attention. And you remember
1:28 when you thought you were in love, like, I mean, you you just over that that's the only they they are the only thing that mattered in the world. Like, it didn't matter what was going on in school. It didn't matter what
1:38 kind of grades you had. It didn't matter. It was all about that person. Mine, I I I was, like, in love with this girl named Courtney. Now I'm not gonna mention her last name because some people that I went to school with
1:49 go here, and I know what you're gonna do. You're gonna be sending her looking her up, send her these links. Don't. She's moved on. I've moved on. We're good. Okay? Don't embarrass me. But my whole world revolved around
2:01 Courtney, 6th grade. And I'm my whole world I didn't I don't know what classes I took. I don't know what grades I made. I don't all that mattered that I was I saw Courtney
2:12 in gym class and in the hallway. It was only twice away. 2 2 2 times a day. That was the only the only time I saw her, but I was in I mean, she was the center of my attention. I dressed for Courtney. I wore this green
2:23 Nike shirt 3 days a week. My poor mom, I had to wash that shirt over. Because you know as a teenager, you must ski, you know, and you just change it in gym class. So I wore it because, she went down and said that I look
2:35 cute in in green. And so I wore that shirt 3 days a week, you know, and, I wrote her a little we didn't have text message. We had to write our feelings on a piece of paper with
2:47 a actual tool that you use to write, and you would have to be bold enough to hand them your feelings in a letter. Anybody remember that? And, so I would write her my
2:59 fill. We had a song. I know you did too. You had a did you have a song? We had a song. It was, what was it? It was Celine Dion, Because You Love Me. You remember that song?
3:11 I'm everything I am because you love Like, really? I'm everything I am because you love me in 6th grade. I thought it was. I thought I was everything
3:23 I am because because because she loved me. We had our even our own landline for I'm dating myself here. Before cell phones, y'all, you're really cool if your mom and dad lets you have your own phone line in your
3:34 house. Now later as adult, I I I realized what this was. This was so that my mom and dad could ease in on my conversations. So you could take the button and ease it up and you could be listening to everything going on.
3:46 And and, we I was so in love with her because she was just the center of my attention that we would just breathe on the phone for hours. I mean, we just this was our conversation just
3:59 just for hours. And the next day, I'd be like, you mad at me? She said, No, you you're breathing seemed a little. I didn't know if you were mad at me. And, I I was in love with
4:11 Courtney and she was the center of my attention. Chances are whoever it was that you were in love with, they were the center of your world and that you didn't think about nothing else but them. That's all you thought
4:20 about. I'm over here reading in Nehemiah 11 and 12 this week and praying about where to go with this because, these are 2 chapters. You studied the Bible for a long time. You know this. They're the chapters that you get
4:32 these long list of people that you can't pronounce and nor can I and you just kinda I don't think God was leading me there today? You turn over. The both these chapters are are just full of names and and, the the
4:44 gist of them was chapter 11 was, the list of people that would populate the city. We've been talking about Nehemiah. And the chapter 12 was the list of people that now would work in the temple, in the church, and on the
4:54 outside, and inside of the church. And as I begin to look at chapter 11, 12, this theme jumped out to me and I'm thinking, this is unbelievable. These people had God at the center of their attention so much that nothing
5:06 in the world mattered except for pleasing God. I mean, it didn't matter what was going on the outside of the wall. It didn't matter what was going on with the personal life. They were completely obsessed with pleasing
5:15 God and being in God's will. All they
5:27 cared about was pleasing God. And all they cared about was living for God. Them here in these 2 chapters just saying, God, we just want to do whatever your will is. We want to be close to you. We want to be
5:39 near to you. And so when I'm looking at this, there's 4 different things that both these chapter shows. We're gonna cover both today. And there's 4 things that really should answer a question for us, today. A very
5:50 important question, is God at the center of your attention? And if not, then what is taking the spot at the center of your attention? So this message today is just really a it's gonna be kind
6:02 of a a measuring ground, a gauge, so to speak, so that we can say, is God at the center of my attention or have I drifted spiritually? You do know that, God does not remain at the center of our attention
6:13 without intentionality. Right? Human beings, we we drift by nature, don't we? We drift out of the the will of God. And, and so this is gonna be a great thing for us to just gauge and say, where
6:25 am I at? And is God still at the center of my attention? And so let me catch you up because we've been following along now for 12 weeks, this guy named Nehemiah. And, what I don't want to happen is you ever been at the
6:35 movies and, somebody took a cell phone call and they end up talking on the phone the entire time, and they walk in at the end of the movie, and everybody is waiting for the the ending, and you're you're you're dialed in,
6:46 and here comes the guy that's been on the cell phone the whole time. And everybody's like, I wanna hear how the movie ends. And he's like, I don't even I don't even know what's happening. Want someone here today that's
6:57 been invited for the 1st time or someone watching online or someone down in our park, to come in and go, man, I'm feeling like I'm kind of on the outs and I don't even know who Nehemiah is. So let me give you a speed
7:07 kind of recap of where we are so you can jump right on this train with us and go on this journey. Nehemiah is a guy who is very important. He's very trusted guy. He's a leader of all leaders. He wrote in kinda
7:19 journal style. So we have this personal journal, and it's like having the personal journal of 1 of the greatest leaders in the past 2400 years. And he led through an extremely difficult season, much
7:31 more difficult than even 20 20, and he made it through successfully. And the last 12 weeks, we've been reading his personal journal that is found in our Bibles, and we've been taking wisdom from it on how we can
7:43 lead through this difficult season of 20 20. And Nehemiah worked for the king of Persia, King Artaxerxes. He would taste his wine and taste his food to make sure there wasn't poison in there because that's how they would
7:54 assassinate kings in those days. And 1 day, 1 of his Jewish brothers came in and he began to catch up with him and have conversation, and he found out that the walls of Jerusalem, the walls of his hometown were
8:06 torn down. There were no more officers there to watch over the city. The gates were burned with fire. The people were in great distress. They were in debt. Their kids were having to be sold off into slavery. They
8:18 couldn't, run their businesses. We're now having to be sold to other people. They were, charging each other interest. It was just a mess of a situation. And now Nehemiah's
8:29 heart begins to break for his people in his hometown, begins to pray to God about what to do, and God will lay on his heart for him to go rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Now keep in mind, he's not a miracle worker. He's
8:39 not a construction worker, any of these things. He goes to the his boss, the king of Persia, asked for permission, and he gets it. And the permission that he gets also comes with a blank paycheck to buy all the cedar and
8:51 all the material he needs. So Nehemiah now sets off on this 4 month journey. He arrives in Jerusalem, and he gathers all the people there, and he shares the vision of what could be and what should be. And he begins to
9:02 say, open your eyes. Look at all the rubble. Look at all this mess. Do you really wanna live like this? Things could be better, and let's all come together and rebuild. And, they jump on board, and they begin to build
9:13 the walls around Jerusalem, and they face discouragement
9:24 and distraction, but they get the wall built. And get this. They get this wall built around the entire city of Jerusalem in a record 52 days. Amazing.
9:36 Amazing feat. And you would think when we get to this point of the Bible that we would just press a big have a big period here. We would close the book and the story would be over. Because after all, isn't that the story
9:46 that you heard growing up about Nehemiah in Sunday school perhaps? That Nehemiah's life is just about some god that built a wall in 52 days. But if we've been looking at the last 12 weeks, it's more than just that.
9:58 It wasn't just about Nehemiah building a wall. It was about God building a leader in Nehemiah who would then build a group of people, who would rebuild a culture, who would follow God in a
10:10 world that didn't. I believe that that is our call as believers right now in this moment in time, this unique moment in time where we can look out in the world and see there is a world so
10:22 far from God. I believe that God is looking for men and women just like Nehemiah that he can build into a leader that would build their family, their work environment, their office into
10:34 leaders that would change a culture to follow God in a world that doesn't. And now as we fast forward the story here and we catch up to chapter 11 and 12, we see that the walls are completed. We see
10:46 that they're so on fire for God that you remember they signed the contract saying we are going to live by God's word. And now we find ourselves here in chapter 11 where they're repopulating the city. And here's where we
10:57 start off today. It says, now the leaders of the people dwelled at Jerusalem. The rest of the people cast lots to bring out to bring 1 out of 10 to dwell in Jerusalem, the holy city. And 0.9 were to dwell in
Willingly Offering Ourselves to God
11:09 other cities. So what we see here is now the people are so eager to live in the holy city. And you know why it was called the holy city. Right? It's called the holy city because the temple was the center of the
11:20 city. The temple was the place where the presence of God dwell. The church, as we would call it. Now people are so hungry, so fired up to live in this new city, to be next to the church, to be in the
11:32 presence of God, that they're saying, Hey, put our names in a hat and we hope we get chosen to live there. Now verse 2 says this, and the people blessed all the men who willingly offered
11:44 themselves to dwell at Jerusalem. Now this is interesting, That willingly offered themselves, that means that they said, we will uproot our entire lives and we are willing
11:56 to put our agenda 2nd. And we're willing to uproot our entire lives and move into the city. Any of you ever moved before? It's a lot of work, isn't it? My mom we moved all the time as growing up. My
12:08 mom, she was doing this fixer upper, this Joanna Gaines or whatever, flipped this house. I don't know. Before this was even popular, She would buy the these homes and then and just being honest, they were ugly. And they
12:19 had purple walls and they just it was just ugly. And mom would spend about, you know, 8 years or so fixing up this home, making it perfect. And when it was just perfect and beautiful, she
12:31 smiled. Okay. We're done. Let's move. And all the boys because it was 2 you know, we had 3 boys in our home. We would have to we never hired no no moving crew. It was all us. 2 men in a truck, it was 3 boys and a dad
12:42 saying, load this up. Alright? And we would move and then she'd do it again, and she'd do it again, and she'd do it. 1 time, we literally moved next door. Literally, she's like, oh, alright, guys. It's time
12:54 to move again. We're like, oh, no. We're moving. Alright. Go get your 4 wheelers and trailers that we're gonna move all the furniture next door. And we're like, we're buying Tommy's house? Moving into Tommy's
13:06 house? You know? And so we moved all the time. It was a lot of work. Now these people are willingly offering themselves. Remember, they lived on the outside of the walls. Here's what they were saying. We are going to
13:16 move away from family, friends, our community. We are gonna move away from our businesses. 1 theologian that I read said, think about it this way. There was still rubble all in the
13:28 inside of the city and these people were willing to move in and move all the rubble out of the way and begin to farm and begin to start over with their vineyards not knowing what kind of soil or not
13:40 knowing how long it would take to grow crops. They're willing to start all the way over and they had threats on their lives because this is a new new city here. And they were willing to do all that. They just say, I
13:51 wanna be close to God. I wanna be close to the church. I wanna be wherever God's at, I wanna be. And so the 1st thing that we see is that when God becomes the center of our attention
14:03 is we're willing to offer ourselves to him above everything else. His agenda, his priorities, his word, his standards become 1st, and our agenda becomes 2nd. I've
14:15 often said it like this that, human beings are self centered. You do know that. Right? We are. I can prove it to you. If I were to take a picture right now of the congregation and put it up on the this big screen over
14:27 here, who would you look for? You. A matter of fact, some of you have been doing Christmas cards, have been receiving some of your Christmas cards, and guess what? You decided if it was a good Christmas card or not when
14:38 you looked at you. The whole family's in there, and you look around and you said, that's a good 1. Or I don't like that 1. I was like, we are very self centered. And we talk about willingly offering ourselves to God and
14:48 his ways above our own. Most people go through the life with the the attitude and the thought of living for the man in the mirror or the woman in the mirror. How can I best please him? What'll be most comfortable
15:00 for him or her? Or the plans for the weekends? What's best for them? And we live life going around with a mirror in our hands saying, how can we make life most comfortable and
15:11 pleasurable for that person in the mirror? But when we willingly offer ourselves to God above all else, here's what happens. We trade the mirror life, walking through life with a mirror, for a window.
15:23 And we begin to say, God saved me. And so now I know I don't just go through life living for me. I go through life looking through the window, seeing how can I offer myself to God in such a way that
15:35 I can reach those and help those and meet needs to those through this lens? And we begin to live life with a different lens. And I believe that we pick up a lens of this, that we live for God,
15:47 God becomes 1st, people become 2nd, and then ourselves become 3rd. We become last. When we willing to offer ourselves to God's ways above our
15:59 own, that's what happens. God becomes 1st and others become 2nd and we kinda become last. And that's okay. Jesus came. Remember, he washed the feet of the disciples. Remember, he said whoever's
16:11 last will be 1st in my kingdom. That's the way we live when God is at our center. We become less self centered, and we become more selfless. And now we see these people
16:23 saying, we don't care about our needs. We don't care if we've gotta start over. We don't care if we've gotta move from the neighborhood. We don't care what we've gotta if our lives are at long. We will willingly put your
16:33 will above ours, and we wanna be in on what you're doing. And they begin to be so excited about living next to the church in the temple. Some of you do this every single week in our local church here.
16:45 We see you serving and teaching bible classes and cleaning in between services and out in the parking lot and in the the park down here in the cold, helping people get service for the, the messages and
16:57 things like that. Every week you're saying, I'm willingly I'm willingly offering myself, God, for your service, whatever you want. Now before we move on to, chapter 12, I noticed something when we're talking about God
17:08 being at the center of our attention here in chapter 11. As I mentioned, there's a long list of names that are difficult to pronounce. But when we talk about God being at the center, you know, when you read your Bibles,
17:19 an old theologian taught me this 1 day. He said, when you read your Bibles, always look for Jesus. Just look for Jesus. No matter what you're reading, look for Jesus. Let him be the center of your attention. And so I'm
17:30 reading these long list of names the other day and I said, I remember what he told me, look for Jesus. And I thought, you know, I wonder if if Jesus and all all this these long list of names. And I I began to look and
17:40 and 1 of these names stood out to me. Throw verse 4 up on the screen for us. You'll notice it's still telling all the people that dwelt, in Jerusalem. And at the very end, it said, the sons of and the children of Perez.
17:52 Now, you know, we don't know them like Noah or Elijah or, you know, Jonah. I mean, who who are they? And I began to look into that. You know, it's very interesting because remember Christ would come from the tribe of
18:03 Judah. And in Genesis 38, there's an interesting story. I'll tee it up and you can read it on your own. Very interesting. Judah, who Christ's lineage would come from, Judah was tricked
18:15 to sleep with his daughter-in-law named Tamar and, who dressed up like a prostitute, and they had 2 children. I told you the Bible is so much more interesting than Netflix. You you ought to read it sometime. And they,
18:26 and they had children named Perez and Zira. Now when you read this, it says the sons of Perez, here in the center of this passage, this long list of names,
18:38 we have the Christmas story, the seed to the Christmas story. We have the lineage of Jesus right here in the center of this random passage in Nehemiah 11. When you read your Bibles, ladies and gentlemen, look for Jesus
18:49 and you'll always find him. Okay. Now let's jump over to chapter 12. As I mentioned, chapter 12 is where they're talking about all the people that do all the temple work on the the temple. It's all about the church when
Dedicating Our Lives to God
19:01 you look at chapter 12. Okay? And verse 27 shows us the 2nd thing that happens when God is at the center of our attention. It says now the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem, they sought out Levites from
19:13 their places to bring them to Jerusalem so they could celebrate the dedication with joy, with songs of thanksgiving and songs, with with all different types of instruments. And we see them do something that is the
19:25 2nd thing that we do when God is at the center of our attention. Our entire lives become dedicated to God's ways. Our entire lives become dedicated to God's way. You know what the word dedicate means. Right? It means
19:37 to set aside for the Lord's purposes. That means in our time, in our talent, in our money, we begin to dedicate and set aside the best of all of that for
19:48 God's purposes. It's actually exactly what you're doing right now. You have time. You know, you can get money back. You can get possessions back if you lose them. The 1 thing you can't get back is time. Time is the most
20:00 valuable thing that you have. You cannot get it back. You will never get this moment back in time. But yet you are saying God is so important to me that out of my time every week, I wanna set aside
20:12 and dedicate time to worship God. And now we're seeing them doing this saying, time out. Before we get to, into building this new city and going about in our our lives,
20:24 hold up, stop the bus, press the pause button. Let's dedicate this wall and all he's done to God. Let's have a day where we can just dedicate it to God. And now you're seeing
20:36 thousands of people saying, remember where we was. This is just 52 days. Remember where we were months ago when we were in debt, we were having to sell our children off into slavery? Remember where we were in debt so
20:47 much, we were having to sell our homes and sell our businesses and we were just in a mess? Remember the rubble that was here? Remember the the the the the the mess that we had here, and now we're looking at a
20:59 completed wall in a city that's about to be gone? This is a miracle time out. Pause. Let's dedicate this to God. Let's set aside a time right now to dedicate
21:11 all that God has done back to him. And that's what happens when Jesus when God is at the center of our attention, we find ourselves with our time, with our talent, with our money,
21:23 dedicating the best of what we have to God. Time out. Hold on. Look what you've done. Let me give you the best of my attention. And when God's at the center of attention, that's what happens. Now I know
21:35 that you guys have seen this, this year. We're seeing more and more this year, or I am at least, of people that are less and less dedicated to God than ever, aren't they? I mean, here's people that they're
21:47 uprooting their entire lives. They're starting over with no income or no nothing just to be close to the church. I'm I'm seeing people in in this day and hour, not you or
21:59 you're watching online or here you're here obviously, But are we seeing people now that we did something? We broke the habit of coming to church during this whole pandemic, and now there's a new
22:10 habit being formed. And that new habit is all about the man in the mirror. It's all about, wow, I can, I can do this on the weekends now? I can take my kids to the dirt bike track. I can do this and that. And and,
22:22 hey, will will we still love God? Here here's my iPhone. Kids, watch this on the way to the dirt bike track and and we'll check off church while we go over here and and do what's more convenient to me. You're not seeing
22:34 that too? We're seeing that's the truth. A new habit has has been formed that, if we're not careful, can derail our lives. If you're in a spot and maybe this is speaking to you and you say, you know, that that's
22:46 been me and I begin to drift, I wanna warn you, don't go down that route. I've seen how that route goes. And what happens is a train wreck, a disaster happens in their life, and where's the 1st place to run back to? We
22:55 gotta get back in church. Think about what you're saying to those, children. You're saying dirt bike riding or whatever we're doing, this is more important than God. See, we're always
23:07 speaking something. And I believe we gotta be very, very careful today in today's world not to take church for granted, not to take being in the house of God. Now let me tell you who I'm not talking to. I'm not talking
23:18 to the high risk person that's watching online right now. I'm not talking to the person that is part of our global family, that they do not have a church in their local area, or they move from here and they consider this
23:29 place a church. We it's the honor it is such an honor to be your pastor. And we have put a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of attention into making this your
23:40 global church home. Okay? I mean, it's I'm not talking about that, but I'm talking about the person that lives 30 miles from the church, but they've replaced the local church with something else. Right? That's
23:52 what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the person that, maybe has become spiritual, lethargic, and they're saying, you know, I it's I I it's not that I don't care about God, but just I don't care about God that much.
24:04 It's not a priority anymore in my life. Be very, very careful unless you begin to drift and you find yourself way outside of God being the center of your attention or the person that is right
24:15 now, they have allowed so much fear to get into their lives. I'm not saying the things that we see aren't there are out there aren't real. I know personally people that have, died because of COVID
24:27 19. But I wanna just say something when we talk about fear, guys. God has not given us a spirit of fear. He has given us a spirit of fear, and now fear has overtaken the world.
24:39 Think about this for just a 2nd. Alright? I'm not diminishing what's happening, but I just wanna put it in perspective. Alright? We're talking about less than 1 percent, people die from this. Did you know that every day
24:50 you're in your car and 3500 fatalities a day happen by way of vehicles. Now imagine for a 2nd if every day, every news channel you turned
25:02 on showed another 3500 dead in Georgia, another 3500 dead in Alabama, another 3500 dead in Florida, Yet we get in our vehicles every day with nothing but a yellow line dividing us.
25:14 We have faith. Right? Something else has enough faith to to get in there and say, I gotta go to church. I gotta take my kids to the daycare. I gotta do this and that. We must not be dominated by fear, but we must live
25:26 in a way knowing that guess what? I hate to be the spoiler of bad news, but my Bible says in Ecclesiastes that everybody has appointed a time to be born and appointed a time to be die to to die. Okay? And and
25:37 so no matter what we do, there there's an appointment coming. There's an appointment coming. And I wanna live in such a way where God finds me worshiping in his house and living according to his
25:49 ways and not being bound by fear. Okay? And so be very, very careful. Perhaps you're watching online, be very careful that you don't drift and something take the place of the time that you've dedicated
26:01 to God. Okay? When God's at the center of our attention, we begin to dedicate our lives, our best of our time, our talent, our money to him. Okay? Now the 3rd thing is this. Alright? It shows this and this is, verse
26:13 27. It says, now at the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem, it's the same verse. They sought out Levi's from their place and they began to come into Jerusalem so that they could celebrate the dedication with joy,
26:25 with songs of thanksgiving, with songs with different symbols and all kind of harps and instruments. They begin to celebrate. When God is at the center of your attention, you can't help but
Celebrating with Joy Unspeakable
26:36 celebrate. You find yourself just celebrating all the time. Do you do this? When you find when you're in that sweet spot with God and he's at the center of your attention, you find yourself all the time celebrating. I I
26:45 was getting the kids off to school and I had to run up to their room for something. And I walked in the room and there's little bunk beds there and I began to just celebrate. Say, God, thank you for those children. God,
26:55 thank you for for for my wife. Thank you for this opportunity. Thank you for you find yourself all the time when god said to send your attention, you kinda reek of celebration, don't you? You you just all the time just
27:05 kinda god, thank you for that. God, it could be something so small as a a sunrise and you go, God, that's that's that's beautiful. That I think when he's at the center, you begin to celebrate all the time and it's a
27:15 natural reaction. It reminds me of when my, my my wife found out that we we were having a little girl, we didn't have a girl in our entire purpose purpose of lineage. And we were starting to have kids, and the brother
27:27 started to have kids. And I remember my mom was in there and she prayed for a girl and a girl. And they got on the little, you know, ultrasound thing. They said, it's a girl. And my mom just leaped and begin to yell.
27:36 People thought they heard her for 3 blocks over, and they thought something was wrong. What was that? It was joy coming coming out. When you have God at the center of your attention, you can't help it. You walk through
27:45 life and you just you see God's goodness, and you begin to celebrate all the time. And that's what has happening here. They begin to celebrate what God's done. I noticed here 8 times I counted singing in this chapter. 6
27:56 times I counted thanksgiving. 7 times I counted rejoicing. 3 times I counted the different music instruments. They are having an out just praise party right now. I mean, they are
28:08 so joyful. They're they're they're singing. They're worshiping. Remember the Bible talks about joy unspeakable? Well, these people have got it. Look at verse 31. You remember earlier the critics said, not even a fox
28:20 could walk on that wall. Y'all aren't construction workers. You kidding me? If a fox jumps on the wall, it's gonna tear it down. Look what this right here says in verse 31. It says, then I had the leaders of Judah come
28:31 up on top of the wall. Alright? And I appointed 2 large choirs, 1st proceeding to the right on top of the wall to the towards the dungate. The 2nd choir, now they got 2 choirs, proceeds to the left while I
28:43 followed them with 0.5 of the people on the wall. And on that day, they offered great sacrifices and they rejoiced because God had given them great joy. Now you've got thousands of people up on the
28:55 wall. My studies show that Ezra led 1 choir while Nehemiah led the other choir. Can you imagine this wall with thousands of people up here? Now they're all out have celebrating God and having a
29:07 praise party. And when it says the leaders that got up on the top of the wall 1st, I started laughing because you remember a couple weeks ago, we talked about Nehemiah took it out his own money and he was paying and he
29:17 was feeding them. Boy, remember he was fattening them up out of his own money. He was he was paying every night and we joked about, man, think about how expensive it was to to feed hundreds of people. So these are these
29:27 are some heavy set people and they singing away and that wall is just doing just fine. Okay? It's holding up and they're celebrating God. That's what happens when God's at your center. You walk through life and you just
29:37 can't help it. You begin to celebrate how good God is. Parents, I wanna don't wanna throw something at you for a 2nd, or business leaders that could take this either way. What you celebrate gets repeated.
29:49 You do know that. Right? What you celebrate in your work, in your home, what you celebrate gets repeated. So that old comes with an old quote, the, what you reward gets repeated. Right? And so even in our staff
30:01 meetings, when we'll go through 1000000 different things that could be better and how we change it. And at the end, we go over the number that matters. How many people got saved this week and how many people got
30:09 baptized. And I've made them every time we get to this, we stand up and we applause. Because I don't want them to know that's the target. The target of the church is that lost person dying headed to hell and they heard
30:20 the gospel here at Cascade Hills and their lives got changed. What celebrate what you celebrate gets repeated. If you begin to celebrate the victories in your home and what God has done for you, 1 day your kids will
30:31 celebrate what God has done for them. What gets celebrated gets repeated. And, now these people are just publicly celebrating God and celebration is a reaction. I remember I think I've told you this
30:43 before about my my son who's on the autism spectrum that wanted to play baseball a couple years ago. And, he wanted to play baseball 4 days before the season started. And he's never held a bat in his whole life and never
30:54 thrown a ball. And y'all in Columbus, Georgia, for those our global family, Columbus, Georgia takes some things serious. And at the top of that list, baseball is at the top of the list. Like, you guys love
31:06 some y'all are and the kids in Columbus, Georgia play baseball, they're savages. They are I mean, they can play you would think they're like descendants of John Smoltz or Greg Madick. I don't know. But I took this kid to
31:18 the 1st practice and he didn't even know to stand sideways. I mean, I mean, we didn't know when I talk we don't know nothing. Didn't know how to hold a bat. My prayer life went to a different level because there are
31:28 balls flying by his head. I'm going, Oh, God. Put angels around. I mean, it was it was a scary scene. He never made contact the whole whole season until the end. I heard the just a just a slight
31:40 bing off the bat. I went nuts. I went celebrating. That's my boy. And I'm just going absolutely crazy. And they're looking at me like I am nuts because it was a foul ball.
31:53 I don't care. That's my boy. We're gonna sell it was in a natural reaction. We we celebrated women like crazy. Well, when you have God at the center of your attention, a celebration is a reaction. It's just
32:05 natural. You're just looking around all the time, you say, God, thank you for that. God, thank you. I never will forget a couple years ago, I bought my daughter a bike. We're gonna do a little triathlon together, and I
32:13 love bikes, and I'm a bike fanatic. Bought her this really nice bike. It was expensive. And, she told me 2 weeks after she said, dad, just randomly thank you for that bike. Oh, you meant so much. I'm like, golly.
32:25 2 weeks later? You know, kids nowadays don't think say thank you like, you know, they should. Like, when I grew up, you better say yes, sir, yes, ma'am, thank you. You know what I mean? And so now it's like a rare
32:35 commodity. And a month went by and that little girl said, hey, dad. Just, hey, thank you for that bike. That made me wanna buy her 4 more. You know? And I got to thinking, when we
32:47 talk about celebrating and going through life to celebrate how good God is, think about when we say to that wife, you know, to God that that wife we've been married to for 40 years, God, Thank
32:59 you. Thank you, God, for my salvation. Thank you for that 10 year old son. Thank you for the thank you for that marriage that we've been in for 40 years. Imagine God's eyes as if
33:11 my daughter 40 years from now comes back, knocks my door, Hey, dad. I just just ran. I just want to drive by. Thanks for that bike you bought me when I was 8. Aw. That's what happens when we do that with
33:23 God. When we go throughout life and we celebrate, we go, God, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you for what you've done here. Thank you for my salvation. God goes, now that that brings that bring that that
33:34 is worship. It brings me glory and that brings a smile. I believe it brings a smile to the face of God when we say, thank you. And we just celebrate the goodness of God. And, we see here these people doing this. Look at
33:46 this, verse 45. It says, they performed the worship of their God in the service of the purification together with singers and the gatekeepers in accordance with the command of David and the son Solomon.
33:58 Now this has jumped out to me so much because you know what David is known for. David is known for being a man after God's own heart. And we're talking about being the center of attention. You know what the heart is in
34:08 the Bible. It means the center of your thoughts, your emotions, your heart's desires. That's what the heart represents, the center. And now these people are saying, we want to worship like
34:20 David worshiped. We wanna worship like a guy that had God at the center, and we wanna do it exactly like how David told us to do it. And now they begin to worship God and celebrate God. Now the 4th
34:32 thing that we see here when we talk about, God being at the center of our attention is we see that our joy actually becomes a witness to others. Our joy becomes a witness to others. Look what happens. This is verse 43,
34:44 it says on that day they offer great sacrifice and rejoice because God had given them great joy and the women and children rejoice as well so that the joy of Jerusalem was was
34:56 heard from afar. Our joy actually becomes a witness to those afar. When people see us and we've been through circumstances that are just as difficult as the
35:08 things that they are going through and they see that we have joy, I believe that they begin to wonder what is it that causes them this went through much more difficulty than me or perhaps the same circumstances me to
35:19 have joy. I thought it was interesting that it says not it doesn't say that the music was heard from afar. It says the joy was heard from afar. Joy has a certain sound to it, a a feel to it. And imagine
35:31 now, here's thousands of people up on the wall, and now they're they're just celebrating God and their joy is heard from afar. And it makes me wonder, were the people on the outside of the city, the outsiders,Show more
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