Foreign Nehemiah, Chapter 7 today, and page 530 in that blue Bible in your pew in front of you if you need that one.

This is one of those chapters that I promise you, most of you probably skipped or skipped a lot of it. And I know that because I tend to as well. There's a whole bunch of names and numbers that just don't seem fun, but there's a reason for them. And I'm not going to read the names and numbers. I'm not even going to tell you that.

You have to. It's not a bad thing to do, but I'm going to help. By the time we're done with this, hopefully it makes sense to you at least why some of them are in there. So, and, And Amy, I don't know why it is, but I hear me in a monitor and I don't know why. So that's dial number one on my channel, and it shouldn't be there.

And I don't know what happened for that, but I don't like hearing myself echo. It really throws me off. And I'm just stalling until we figure it out. So where my channel is with my microphone? No, that's the wrong direction for whatever you just did.

There we go. Turn one all the way down. Is two up Just a little bit? I don't know. Okay, good.

It is what it is. So In Nehemiah, chapter seven, we're going to read. I'm going to read verses one through six and then skip down to verse 64. When the wall had been rebuilt, I had positioned the doors and. And the gatekeepers, the singers and the Levites had been appointed.

Then I put in charge over Jerusalem, my brother Hanani, and Hananiah, the chief of the citadel, for he was a faithful man and feared God more than many do. And I said to them, the gates of Jerusalem must not be opened in the early morning until those who are standing guard close the doors and lock them. Position residents of Jerusalem as guards, some at their guard stations and some near their homes. Now, the city was spread out and large, and there were not a lot of people in it. At that time, the houses had not been rebuilt.

My God placed it on my heart to gather the leaders, the officials, and the ordinary people so they could be enrolled. On the basis of genealogy, I found the genealogical records of those who had formerly returned. And here's what I found written in that record. These are the people of the province who returned from captivity of the exiles whom Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had forced into exile. They returned in Jerusalem into Judah and each to his own city.

Then whole bunch of names, numbers and more names. Skip down to verse 64. They searched further records in their genealogical materials, but none were found. They were therefore excluded from the priesthood. The governor instructed them not to eat any of the sacred food until there was a priest who could.

Who could consult the Urim and Thummim. Which, by the way, Urim and Thummim is a thing that they would use that was made for the priest to do, where they believed that in. In utilizing these things, God would speak to them and show them his answer on a certain thing. And so it was their way of saying, God, show us what we're doing here. So they needed a priest in place who could consult God with those things.

So the entire group numbered 42, 360, not counting 7,337 male and female servants. They also had 245 male and female singers. And this is also. I don't know why this is so interesting, but they listed it. They had 736 horses and 245 mules.

That'd be like saying how many cars we had. I guess they had 435 camels, 6,720 donkeys. Some of the family leaders contributed to the work. The governor contributed to the treasury. Which, by the way, is interesting because that's Nehemiah.

Like, he's speaking of himself. Well, maybe if somebody else wrote this. They're saying Nehemiah himself gave this much. He gave a thousand gold drachmas. How many of you have a drachma in your wallet or your purse?

Nobody? Okay. 50 bowls, 530 priestly garments. Some of the family gave to the project of the Treasury 20,000 gold drachmas and 2200 silver Minas, where the rest of the people have gave amounted to 20,000 gold drachmas, 2,000 silver Minas and 67 priestly garments. I'm sure you guys were just dying to know all that.

The priests and the Levites and the gatekeepers and singers, some of the people, the temple servants and all the rest of Israel lived in their cities.

Now, I'll get to it in a little bit what that was all worth. Like, how much? How much was that worth? Don't get hung up on that. But it is interesting that they included it in here.

But I notice in this passage or these passages a few things. And we might say, pastor Nick, how is this even important to us here today? Great questions. First of all, notice when it talks in here. It says that Nehemiah selected a couple guys to be in positions of leadership in some way.

This was after they had finished their rebuilding. Remember, they've rebuilt the walls around the city of Jerusalem. The temple had already been rebuilt, but it, it wasn't actually operating as it should be. This would be like somebody building a brand new church, having some people around, but not really having church services. And then when people did show up, they didn't have singers, they didn't have people at the doors greeting, they didn't have people praying, people preaching.

They didn't have any of the things that we consider part of the service. And so they had the temple there, but they didn't have everyone in the right places, in places of servanthood or in leadership. And so Nehemiah, he's worked, and Ezra before him had worked to get the things in place, the physical things in place. They rebuilt the temple, they've now rebuilt the walls, and now they've gotten the gates hung. Last week, they didn't have gates hung up when we talked in chapter six.

Now they have the gates hung up so the city is able to fully be secured. And what Nehemiah does is, is he selects some men who are not just capable, but they're faithful. He, in fact, he says of one of them that he was more faithful than most. It's interesting. You, you think, well, these are the gathering of the servants of God.

These are all the Jews, the Israelite people, the chosen people. They're all supposed to be doing the right stuff. We think of people in church the same way, too. Well, we're all here. We're all doing the right things, right?

But he says that some were more faithful than others. And these men, or this man in particular, was so faithful that he put him in charge of the gates. And you think that's not a very lofty position, right? That's not a position of, like, respect, where you're like, oh, I'm the guy that makes sure the gates open and close on schedule. But this was important, and the gates were important in opening and closing them at the right times was, was important because they, they.

If you notice, there's nothing. There's no words in scripture that are just thrown in there to be wasted. The words in scripture are there for a reason. The Holy Spirit of God is the author of this, this book. This.

This Bible contains 66 books written by 40 different authors over 1500 different years. But there's one, one author, the Holy Spirit, and 40 human authors who, who wrote down those words that were inspired by the Holy Spirit. And so this, what's contained in here is not just by mistake or by happenstance. God, by the Holy Spirit, put these things in here for a reason. And so he tells us that there was a detail about how they would open the gates and what they would do with them.

He says, close the gates at night, open them in the morning after the sun has gotten hot. If you're in Florida, that's like an hour ago, you know, like it gets hot quickly in Jerusalem. A little bit different, but once the sun got hot, in other words, there's, there's no, there's no haze, no fog left, there's no shadows left. It's, it's good for security. When you open the, the gates after the sun is up high, you can see clearly and make sure there's no enemies waiting in the shadows to come in and attack the city or take advantage of it when their guard is down.

There's also the idea that says you don't have to be in such a rush. You don't always have to be in such an all fire, hurry and say, okay, sun's up, gotta get going. See, there's something to it that says, you know what, let's just wait a little bit. There's time this morning before, before the gates are open, before life has started happening where I can get up, I can get my scriptures, I can get my, my, my devotional, my, my book, my journal, whatever it is that you might do, and I can just have my time with God. Maybe you listen to sermons or other encouraging Christian material on your phone or on a computer, and that's your time to do it and say, okay, I'm going to do this.

But then he also gives instructions for closing the gates, if you'll notice that. He says we close the gates while people are still on, on duty, while it's still, while they're still at work. In other words, they're the gatekeepers while they're still at their post. They close the gates at night, they put the bars in place and the gates are locked. In other words, the city gets secured at night.

Now we all wish that we still lived in a world where we didn't have to use security measures, where we didn't have to lock the doors. I wish that we were in a place where I could just leave the doors to the church unlocked and if somebody wanted to come in and pray, they could. I'm also quite aware that we have equipment that could sell, you know, at the pawn shop for a few bucks, and people would take it, and we'd come in on, you know, a day of the week and say, well, guess we don't have a computer. Well, I guess the TVs are gone. Like, oh, I guess, you know, all that.

That's about it. That's the only things of value in here whatsoever. So anybody who's watching online, we're a low target. Don't. Don't break in.

It's not worth it. But, you know, it's like. It's like we wish we could leave our doors unlocked at home. We wish we could leave a bike out on the side yard if the kids, you know, dropped it off there and ran inside. Or a lawnmower out there when it ran out of gas.

And you said, oh, I'll go to the store and get gas, and then I'll come back and finish mowing the lawn. And then you forgot about it. And then you come, you're like, where is my lawnmower anyway? You realize, somebody stole my lawnmower. It wasn't even worth 20 bucks.

Why would they do that? People just do things. And so we. We. I mean, I remember when I lived in Tennessee, we.

We had. We lived in a parsonage that was in a nice neighborhood, and our house faced the street, but then there was, like, an alley at the back end, and that's where we would park. And all the way up by the house, you know, probably 75 or 200ft from the alley, I had two bicycles. One was one that somebody had given me, and it had street tires. And I would ride it around this paved trail.

The other was this mountain bike that I had saved up as a teenager. I'd worked during the summer, saved up my money, bought this bike for $400 and loved it. And I wrote it on trails. I wrote it in woods and all this stuff. And.

And I. And it had all kinds of things that needed to be repaired. And I came out. It was a Sunday morning. I come out the back door, and just in my peripheral, I said, something's not right.

My bike's missing. Somebody walked all the way up there and took that bike. And I thought, if I ever see somebody riding that down the sidewalk, I'm gonna tackle him and take it back, you know, like, it was my bike. And then I thought it was probably some homeless guy. He probably needed it.

And I was never gonna fix all the stuff that was wrong with it. Fine. It's not like I was riding it much anyway, you know, like, I I, I acted like I wanted to, to get healthy, but then I didn't. We do that stuff, don't we? Anyway, so security, we, we wish we could live in that place where we didn't have to worry about those things.

Even in Nehemiah's day, they still had to worry about security. They had to worry about locking not their home doors, but the, the doors of the city. Because in the city, the, there was the people who were supposed to be worshiping God, devoted to God. And that always seems to attract enemies. I think the church has enemies today.

And I know there's people out there that'll tell you, well, the church in America is not persecuted, okay? Not persecuted in the ways that they are in other parts of the world. In other parts of the world, the church has to go underground. Sometimes literally, but usually just metaphorically. They meet in places where they don't advertise it because if they do, some type of military presence or police presence will come in and arrest or attack and kill them for just for worshiping God.

But church, Church doesn't. In America, church doesn't have that attack going on it. But yet at the same time, culturally, we're under attack. To promote the words of God from the scriptures is, is something that's not popular and it will always bring attacks. We broadcast this service online in multiple places, and that always opens us up for the possibility that somebody is going to get on there and start targeting us because we declare the word of God.

In fact, if we live our lives as Christians in such a way that the world is saying, oh man, you guys are just like us, we're good, we're not doing it right. In other words, we should live our lives in such a way that there is a visible difference between the Christians and the non Christians. The biggest thing that's visible is that we should actually be quite visible in how we love others. We need to love others in such a way that they say, I can tell that they love us, and yet I can also tell that there's truth in how that they live. See, Jesus came and I shared this last week.

He came in grace and truth. He came with grace towards all and love towards everyone. But he also declared the truth. And when he did that, many times people would leave him. They would stop following him.

They said. They said, well, that word's difficult. We don't like it when you preach difficult words. Jesus, we're gone. He looks at his disciples and you know what he said?

Oh, please stay. I really need you guys. That's not what he said, is it? He says, are you guys leaving, too? The door is that way.

And Peter says, lord, who else are we going to go to? You have the words of life. He recognized there was truth in what Jesus said. And he says, we're not going anywhere. Now, maybe some of the other disciples might have left if it wasn't for Peter standing up and saying, no, you speak words of truth.

We're sticking with you. And they said, yeah, that's right. See, in America, we might not have persecution in the ways that we think. And yet I remember a time just a few short years ago where we were told in churches for the health of everyone, that we could not gather together. You know who told us that?

Governing officials, you know who wanted to still meet you guys. I had more people from the church say, I don't really care what that thing says. I want to be in church. Can we please come? Pastor, what do we have to do in order to be allowed to come to church?

I can't tell you how many people said that to me. And so I said, okay, we're. We're meeting. We're going to do it. I don't think it was in defiance of any law, but I don't really care.

We were about six weeks where we said, okay, well, we don't know what this thing's going to do. Let's keep everybody safe. I don't know if you guys realize it, but most of you are in the demographic that we were told was the ones most susceptible to this Covid thing that was going around. And I look back at it at the time, I thought, this doesn't jive with me. This doesn't feel right.

I look back at it now and I say, satan uses a lot of wicked things to try to shut the church down. And the thing is, he can't do it because Jesus says, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not be able to withstand against it. Well, they closed up the gates at night. They protected the city. And then they had guards assigned, both, if you pay attention, both at guard posts and at their homes.

Now we stand guard. We stand at watch. There's homes. Sometimes you'll still see these signs up that say neighborhood watch, or this community has a neighborhood watch. And in some communities, I think they might actually mean that.

Most of them, what it means now is there's a Facebook group for that neighborhood. And people get on there. Did you see this thing happen? I saw a car at somebody's house that I didn't recognize somebody has a visitor over. I don't know, I saw a man go into her house.

You know, something. I don't know. But. But so all these things happen, and they just. They just get in these little neighborhood groups and do that.

I wanted to start a neighborhood group for. For what I call this little neighborhood. It's like from. Just from like North Avenue up here to Henry Drive by the high school, and then from 12th street over to the back side of the post office over there where the police station is and all that. And I just.

I consider that my little neighborhood, my few square blocks, those are my neighbors. And I wanted to start a little neighborhood group and maybe we could, you know, do a cookout or a thing, this thing or that. And then I realized what it would just kind of devolve into. And I was like, I don't want to deal with all that. Never mind, you know.

And so I didn't. But there is a way that we can watch out for our neighbors that doesn't involve the gossip wheel on Facebook or the human gossip wheel from door to door, phone to phone. And I remember times when we would be. We had a mowing business that would work in some of these mobile home parks. And there was a guy that I was talking to that was a manager, and I'm sitting there talking with him.

We're having a good time. And he says, I came in early today because there was a problem with the resident in the back. And I walked there, I had a conversation with them inside their house. And before I made it to the office, I had people on the phone with me telling me what I had allegedly said to this person. Turns out their windows were open.

Somebody next door heard it, starts talking to people, and before he could walk from the back of the park to the front, they were already spreading the word of what was going on. And so it's like, oh, my goodness, you know, and it's just. It's everywhere. That's not necessarily the things we stand on guard against that's important, but the things that we can do as guards, as neighborhood kind of lookouts is to look around in our neighborhood and say, what's going on that threatens the life and well being of my neighbors? What is happening just down the road that threatens the safety and security of my neighborhood?

What evil forces are at work to drag people away from Christ? When I'm praying for them to come to Christ? One of the first things that we do on the lookout is we pray for our neighbors. We have the. The is on the screen every week, the Bless Every Home app that you can join.

And also, if you hit the. The little white dots that are on there, you've seen the little video where you kind of hold your phone up to it and you can click on it, you can join the Bless Every Home app from there. And every day, you pray for your neighbors. Sometimes prayer doesn't always change the people that we're praying for, but a lot of times what it will do is it will change us. It'll open up our eyes, it'll open up our hearts, and we start being aware more of what our neighbors are going through and how they are living.

And so as we look at our neighborhood, we're looking as guards, saying, I'm here to make sure that my neighbors are in a place that there's things around them, whether that's a hedge of protection, that we're praying over them, or whether it's keeping an eye like a guard on the wall, saying, what attacks are coming that I can thwart or. Or throw aside so that people can come to Christ. And so guards are important. We also need more than just in our own little neighborhoods. I defined what my neighborhood is, and if you live in a.

Like an RV or mobile home park, I can kind of tell you what your neighborhood is. They usually put a fence around it, say, this is ours. You know that those are your neighbors. And you can say, these are my people. These are the ones.

This is my mission field. But another thing that we do is, is we. We need to stand up. There needs to be more Christians doing things like running for school boards, running for city councils, county commissioners. And I know it's a tough game.

I've been involved in those things with different candidates. I even did this myself, saying, okay, I'll step up if no one else will. And it's a lot of work, and it's hard to do, and you're not guaranteed to make a difference. But you are guaranteed to get into the conversation and start injecting into it the things that matter in our country and in our city, in our community. So we stand as guards on the wall and guards at the gates.

But there's another thing that's happening here is he talked about how the cities. The city of Jerusalem wasn't well populated. But I see the church as a city within the community. The church is a city within the city. And yes, there are many churches, and each one might be a city within the cities.

And this congregation is called to be a light that is visible to the rest of our community, you see, we look at ourselves. If we look at ourselves as a city, we have to function like a city does. We take care of each other. We support each other. When there's a need, we stand as guards and lookouts.

When there's a problem, we pray. We attend to those issues. We care for one another. We need to make sure that there's people in the right places that work and that volunteer and that serve so that the work of this city, of this church can go on. And one of the things that Nehemiah found was that city had few residents in it.

It had few people there, and the city wasn't functioning like it needed to. And so they took stock of who they had. Because what they realized was the thing that we need to realize anyway, that we need to love God, love our neighbor, and stand guard against spiritual attacks. The church is to stand guard on those spiritual matters for our city and on behalf of our city. I've been to city council meetings, and I promise you they're not sitting there wondering about what evil things are happening in the city.

They're worried about water supplies and sewers and building permits and all these things that they discuss. And they're not talking about the spiritual attacks. That's what we do. We work on behalf of our city to stand guard for those things. But.

So they looked at their city and they said people weren't living there. So they put these long lists of names. They. I skipped over all of them, but the first thought I had is this. If you're fortunate, lucky, successful, one day your name might be on a list somewhere.

You know, these people were just living their lives, having kids. They. But, but, but they made it on this list. And why. See, they left this.

By the way, this list is the same as one that's in Ezra Chapter 2. It's almost a carbon copy of Ezra Chapter 2 here. And there's why it's included twice, because he wants us to see something that's going on here. They needed to populate their city with godly people, and they. They were working with the descendants and the kids of the people that had made the.

The move to leave the. The empire that they were. They were living in. They had been taken into captivity and now they're living a somewhat successful life in this empire. But they decided when the opportunity was given them to leave that empire and to go back to the.

The promised land of Israel and around Jerusalem and to start the hard work of rebuilding that so that there could be a temple There so that there could be a place where one day the Messiah would come and be presented at that temple. They worked with faith for the future to get the nation to that point without their sacrifice, of leaving behind the life that was apparently one of somewhat good prosperity, where they lived in Babylon in exile, and then later in the Medes and the Persians empire that they lived in and left from when they left, that they left the. The possibility of continuing a life of affluence and. And of wealth building. And they came back to Israel to do the hard work of pioneering in there and starting over there.

And we know that they were doing all right because we see the, the. The things that they gave. But they had this move of faith that they would come and they would do these things and their name made a list. And to us that list is almost meaningless. It's just data to us.

But when we look at it, it's a list of people that did the hard things and said, I'm going to be part of this. They made the sacrifices and said, I want something that lasts. I want to build something that lasts.

America started out that way. People that came from other countries, maybe some of them were greedy, maybe some of them were opportunists, maybe some of them were adventurers, maybe some of them were trying to leave behind a warrant for their arrest or a bankruptcy. Who knows what it was. But America was a place where people would come for the opportunity for something great to happen. And many of them came because they wanted the opportunity and the freedom to worship God in the ways that they saw fit.

And I say America started out that way. There's many times I think that we're there. I know this. There are people that are trying to move us away from that. They want everybody to be the same.

They call it inclusion and equity. They want everybody to be of the same income bracket. So they'll take from the ones who have more and give it to the ones who have less. And they'll say, that's equality. I don't know, just feels like theft to me.

Feels like giving somebody something they didn't earn or work for. And I'm not saying that everybody that has wealth earned it or worked for it. Some of them, it was handed to them. Some of them will lose it from bad practices and business deals and just simply because of greed. That's not really my concern.

But there's things that there are people that are trying to do in our nation that I see as antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ, but really What I'm more worried about is the idea that not only can can people live how they feel they ought to, but that we can worship how we feel we ought to. And there could be a day if we don't stand guard against it, that there will be people that will tell the church where we can meet, when we can meet, and how often we can meet. And then they'll say things like, well, you need money? I'll tell you what, we'll give you money, but you have to do it our way. Oh, you need a roof, we'll come fix your roof for you.

You guys don't have to raise money for that. The government will take care of you. But here's what you're allowed to say. And if you think that I'm just making that up, I could give you stories of pastors who were told that their sermons were offensive and that they had to submit their manuscripts before they were allowed to preach them because their city told them what they could and couldn't preach. You wonder why I say cities are evil.

There's evil people that lead cities. Sometimes these people came together, the people that are on this list. I pray that someday we would be considered so faithful in our day and in our generation that we would make a list someday. That someday when the history books are written because the Bible's finished, the Bible's closed, there's not adding to it, but there are things that are being written that are saying, this is what took place. And when those books are written, I would love for my name to be on there and to have you guys following that, that say, here was this group of people that stood up in their city of Zephyr Hills that even though it's bigger than what I like, is still a small town.

And they say there's a small town of Zephyr Hills, Florida. There was people that stood up and they said, I'll stand guard. I'll populate those cities. I'll populate those places where people need to worship, to. To serve so that others can worship God.

And I'll stand there in that gap and I'll do that. And that we'll be found so faithful in our day that we'll be on a list that somebody else will just read over and say, eh, I'm not reading all that. I don't know how to pronounce all those names, but praise God that there's a list. And one of the things that they did was they gave. They gave gold, they gave silver, they gave garments for the priests.

And bowls, I don't know why bowls made the list. Like it doesn't really say how big the bowls were. I don't know if they were cereal bowls, decorative bowls, probably big bowls for washing different things to continue. The sacrificial system is what it really was. And the value of all of that, it's hard to, to, to say, but they tell us how much all of those metals weighed.

And so by my calculations of looking up what those things are worth today and looking up how much does a suit cost? I don't know what priestly garments cost to create. I just figured how much it cost to buy a nice suit for somebody. And I just figured those are the priestly garments. A suit, clearly I'm not wearing a suit.

So my priestly garments, if you will, are a lot cheaper than they used to be. But suits, they're pretty expensive now. And I just figured that into the price and this number of everything they gave, both the governor, the nobles and the everyday folks, by my calculations is around $25 million. They gave a lot. Not only did they leave behind a life of prosperity and move here to do hard work, but now they're also giving out of their, their wealth and their everyday money.

I look at it this way. Gold, that's kind of the, that's your wealth that you hang on to, that's your, your net worth. They gave, out of their net worth, they gave silver. Silver was kind of more for daily use. It was maybe the daily usage coins and whatnot.

And sure, they had copper coins and other types of money, but, but silver was a lot more common everyday kind of thing. And so they, they, they gave a lot of silver, they gave a lot of gold, they gave garments. The priests needed their priestly garments according to the law of God for what they would wear as they were ministering before the people. And so they provided for the priests so that the priest didn't have to do it on their own. And then they provided the instruments that the priests needed to minister before the people and before God.

They made sure that the, the worship could go on. They cared for the house of the Lord and they cared for those who ministered within the house. Look at that. And I look at where we're at today and I know that we have challenges. We have things that need to be fixed, things that need to be rebuilt.

We have things that need to continue on in this life and in this world that the church needs to do to ensure that our neighborhoods are being able to be led towards Christ and that Takes service, that takes money, that takes a lot of these different things. And so we have to be about these things.

But as I looked at this list of names, as I realized that it was the same as Ezra, chapter two, almost word for word, I noticed something that's. In both places, there was a group of people that it says their genealogy, their family history couldn't be proven. It couldn't be tracked. They couldn't prove who they were. They couldn't prove what, what, where they belonged within this society.

And so they were excluded from the priesthood. It says they were excluded from ministering before God and ministering to the people until it could be determined that they belonged there. Now we have things that we do that people go through in order to be sure that they are called to minister as a like, say, as a pastor, that they're called, that they're. That they've prepared themselves in their studies and in their education as a pastor. And, and then also that there's others who stand around and bear witness to say, yes, I see the hand of God on them that they are ministering in this way because God has called them and empowered them to do this.

And then they're. The hands are laid on them as they're ordained. As a minister, as a pastor, we have those things. And, and if those steps along the way aren't in place, then we don't call that person pastor. And so we do have those things.

And, and, and so these people, they couldn't prove their place in the priestly lines, and so they weren't allowed to be priests. But it's more than that. You see, God keeps a list of names. You see, more than being important that your name might be on a list of people that did big things. God keeps a list of names.

You've probably heard this before. Moses was aware of it. Moses told God, he says, you know what? I'm here leading these people. And they're stubborn and I'm tired of them so many times.

But God, I'm going to keep leading them. But God, if you won't go with us, if you won't lead us yourself, then take my name out of the book you've written. What's Moses talking about? See, Moses says, God, you've written a book and it has names in it and it has my name in it. But if you're not going with me, I don't even need my name in that book anymore.

In other words, Moses is saying, God, you won't be with me on this earth. I don't want to be with you in heaven. If you won't be with me right now, I don't want to be with you in eternity. I want to be with the God who is with me. I want to be with the God forever who is with me now.

Now, the beautiful thing is God didn't say okay. So be it. Erase what God said was, okay, Moses. You got it. I'll be with you.

I'll go with you. I'll stay with you. I'll lead you and I'll guide you. If we turn to the back of our Bible, to the Book of Revelation, I want you to see In Revelation, chapter 21 something beautiful that happens. Revelation 21, verses 22 through 27.

This is John the Apostle talking as he's seen this vision in heaven. He says this. I saw no temple in the city because the Lord God, the all powerful, and the Lamb. By the way, the Lamb is Jesus, the all powerful and the Lamb are its temple. What's the temple for, by the way?

The temple on earth is supposed to be a place where people meet with God, where God designates that. He says, this is the place where heaven meets earth, where you can come here and you can meet with me. But now, here John is saying that in this future, in this eternity future, that he says, I saw no temple in this city because God and Jesus are its temple. In other words, we don't need a place where heaven touches earth because it will be here. He says the city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on them because the glory of God lights it up and the lamp is the lamb.

Remember what John had said in the Gospel of John? He says, the light came to the world, and the light was the life of all men. So now in verse 24, he says, the nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their grandeur into it. Its gates. Listen to this.

Its gates will never be closed during the day, and there will be no night there. They will bring the grandeur and the wealth of the nations into it, but nothing ritually unclean will ever enter into it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or practices falsehood, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life. The truth of the matter is for your name to be there. You don't have to give or serve or do anything to get your name written in that book, but you must be a believer in Jesus Christ, and you must be born again. When Jesus talked with Nicodemus and we read the scripture earlier, from John 3:16, that was who he was talking to, or that those words came out.

It says that God loved the world so much that Jesus came, gave his life for us, that what whoever believes in him won't perish, but will have everlasting and eternal life. See, that's how we get our name in that book. We get our name in his book, the book that says it's like the guest list. Your name isn't on the guest list. You don't get in.

He's saying, heaven is all about whose name is here, but not about what I did to earn my name on that book, what I gave, how I served, how I lived. It's, did I believe in Jesus Christ? Did I yield my life to him? Because when Jesus was talking to Nicodemus, he said, you must be born again. You must be born from above.

Nicodemus didn't understand that. He was one of the religious teachers of the day, and he didn't understand this thing. And Jesus was saying, you've got to think about it from the eyes of a child. A child doesn't remember being born, but they. They understand that when you're born, you're an infant.

You're starting life from scratch. You're starting life brand new. And Jesus is saying, when you are born again, you start life brand new. And you allow God to cleanse you of sin. And.

And the Holy Spirit joins you in your life and speaks to you and leads you and guides you. That is new life. And you, you, you, you live that. You're still you, but he allows you to be born all over again. But folks, if you don't know, if you can't say, well, I had this time where I.

I prayed. I had this time where I yielded my life to God. And you might not remember the day, you might not remember the date, but you have to know that time in your life. I was talking to somebody last week, and I asked them about when they. About just their life.

And they told me about their history. Going to church. Oh, I went to this church. I went to that church. Cool.

When did you receive Christ as your savior? Well, you know, I started kind of getting religious around this time. Yeah, but do you remember receiving Jesus as your savior? And the conversation just kind of shifted after that. I think inconveniently, a phone call came in on his phone or something like that.

And it's like, okay, we'll come back to this later. You know, like, folks, if you don't know that, you say, I. I have this time I don't remember the date because I don't. In my life, I don't remember the date or the day. But I can tell you there was a time in my life where I said, jesus, I give my life to you.

I repent of my sins and I want you to be my Lord and Savior from that moment on. It's a new birth for you, a new birthday for you. This is the most important birthday you might celebrate. If you don't know that that's you. If you don't know that you had that moment in your life, I promise you won't make it on a list of names in a book like Nehemiah or a list of names that's most importantly in the Lamb's Book of Life.

See, the Lamb's Book of Life isn't just about, oh, cool, you get to be in heaven later. See, it's about having life now. People are living in this world, trying to just do things their way. And, and, and I was talking with somebody on Friday night. I was on an airplane, I was talking to somebody Friday, and we were talking about people that all they do is just, they're, they're doped up all the time.

And I said, you know, I don't have a problem with somebody, you know, whatever they need to do from time to time, that's their business. But when it's all that people ever are because they say, well, I just, I don't know how to get through the day without this drug or without that drug, folks. That's not actually living. That's not life. That's not living how God has designed you to live.

I'm not saying, oh, that's sinful and evil. What I'm saying is God has so much more for us than just trying to get by. God has life that's so abundant, so rich and so full, and yet so many of us say, well, I went to church. Well, I served. Yeah, I gave, I did a little bit of the stuff.

No, no, no, I don't care about all that at this moment. I care to know, are you living life with Christ as a born again believer? Is your name written on the most important list, the Lamb's Book of Life? And if it's not, we're just playing around here because we're not actually living real life. You're just acting like you know what it is.

So I don't want you to leave here today thinking, oh, I've got this. Oh, I'm good. Oh, I've, I've I've done the church thing enough that I should be all set. Every man on the street interview that says, if you died today, would you go to heaven or hell? And people give their reasons for why it might be.

Oh, well, I've been pretty good. I've done a lot of good stuff. I'm not a bad person. I've never gotten in a fight with somebody or gone to jail or done this or that. Yeah.

And are you born again? Is your name on the most important list? If you're not sure you're going to be there. Today is the day of prayer for you. Today is the day that you need to say, God, I don't know where I'm at with you, but I need to talk.