As we turn to Nehemiah, chapter 8. What we've seen so far is this man, Nehemiah, was a cup bearer to the king, who was not an Israelite king. They were in captivity and he was serving the king. And there were many Israelites who lived in the land of Babylon and were doing fairly well. They were.

They had set up their homes there. Even some of God's prophets had spoken to them that said, settle down and seek the good of the land that you're in exile for. When they prosper, you too will prosper. Well, as that happened, they did prosper there. And then God put the favor of the people of Israel on the hearts, especially of the Mede and Persian kings, as the empires switched and they had the favor of the king to then go back to Jerusalem, which within the nation of Israel, and to rebuild the temple.

And so that was led by one man, and then later was continued by a man named Ezra, who was a scribe, and he'll play into our story today. Ezra was one of the scribes and, and teachers of Israel, of the teachers of the law. And he had been there kind of laying some of the religious groundwork. But the. The walls around the city of Jerusalem were crumbled from the invasion that had happened decades and decades before.

So Nehemiah was the cupbearer to the king, but his heart was broken for the condition of the city that he. That his ancestors were buried in. And so he spent four months praying, four months on his face before God in prayer. And then God's God put on his heart to move. And he said, today is the day.

And he had to go before the king with his capacity as the king's cup bearer. And so he said, lord, give me success today in front of this man, the king. And so sure enough, the king looked at him and he says, you're sick, but your sickness isn't physical. It's an illness of the heart. What's going on with you?

Now? The king normally wouldn't really care about somebody in a position like Nehemiah in such a way, but God had moved this king, who was actually a quite brutal guy, but he moved him with compassion in this case. And so Nehemiah said, well, my heart is broken over the condition of the city where my ancestors are buried in the city where the temple to my God is. And so the king said, well, what would you like for me to do? Could I get a leave of absence and go there and work for the good of this city?

The king said, absolutely. He says, Is there anything else? He sends with him a battalion of soldiers as guards. He sends with him letters to acquire resources and building materials, letters of permission, almost like a building permit. The king cut through all that red tape with his letters, puts a seal on it.

Nehemiah is good to go. So they go out there and he. He shows up. He does this investigation at night, going around the city and just kind of seeing what. What the conditions were.

And he realizes that one of the things that's happened is the people have lived in these conditions for so many years that they've actually gotten a bit complacent. They just kind of stopped noticing the things that. That were going on in their city or the things that weren't going on. Sometimes you don't notice the things in your own house until somebody's about to come over and you do that mad dash where you start throwing stuff in. This is how I learned to always check the oven before you preheat it, because sometimes my mom would hide, I'm sharing a secret, she's not even in the room.

Hide some of the dirty dishes that were in the sink and put them in the oven where they're out of view. And so she always taught me, don't turn on the oven without looking first. There might be Tupperware in there that'll melt. You know, it'll be nasty and we'll have to just. You never getting that clean.

They nobody. You don't notice the condition of your own domicile until somebody's about to come over unexpected, and you're like, quick, hide all the stuff that looks like we live here. Make it look unlived in. You know, that's. That's women more than men.

Men are kind of like, well, I live here. It looks like I live here. You know. But women are like, we can't let them see all this stuff. But.

But you start to notice how. How you're living, you know, when you come at it with fresh eyes. And that's what Nehemiah did. And what he noticed was that the leaders of the people had gotten to a level of complacency with the way life was, and they had just maybe stopped trying, stop trying to improve it, stopped trying to make it the way the city ought to have been. So Nehemiah came in and he just presents a vision for them, and he says, here's what we're going to do.

And the people got behind him, and it probably didn't help that he says, the gracious hand of our God is upon Us. And the letters from the king, a king that shouldn't have cared. In fact, it was predecessors long before him, in fact, from a different empire that had overthrown this city. And it would have made sense, mostly in a strategic viewpoint, to leave that city in ruins because it had a history of bucking against the rule of nations that had tried to overtake it. So it made sense to leave it defenseless.

And yet this king, because God put it on his heart, said, okay, you can go ahead and rebuild it. So they begin this work against much opposition. The opposition that they faced was from neighboring nations all around them. And these nations came together in unity against what the Jews were doing to rebuild the city walls around Jerusalem. Of course, these walls would protect the life within Jerusalem, and they would protect the temple where God had placed his name.

And so as this is going on, the people around them are working against them or trying to stop them, but they legally have no recourse because the king has provided them prot. Provision. So all they have is intimidation and insults. In fact, as they start building the wall, these guys would come up and mock them. Now, I've been on a few construction sites and landscaping projects and things, and I've had setbacks.

I've had things that I didn't plan for, but I never had people actively, like, insulting the work as it was going on. You know, like, that's just. That's not a good working condition. One of the insults is recorded is the guy saying, like, look at this silly little wall they're doing. If.

If even a fox climbed on it, it would crumble. And he's probably, like, not really that funny, but everybody just. That was around him just like, ha, ha, ha. Yeah, you know, that polite chuckle because he's their boss and. And so he.

These guys are mocking them. Well, the joke was on them. It only took 52 days for the Israelites to complete the building of the wall, because everybody worked except for the nobles of the. The town of Tekoa. Those guys wouldn't do it.

They were too good. They were looking down their nose at everyone, but everyone else did. Everyone that lived in the city, people that lived in neighboring villages that were Israelite communities would come in and they would all put their shoulders to the work. And they had to do it at one point because people were coming to physically attack them with weapons. They were trying to kill them or put a stop to the work.

So the Israelites had to work, it says, with a. A sword in one hand and a trowel in the Other they had a tool and a weapon. And then they had people standing guard, people that were ready to fight. They had people doing everything. And people took care of their sections of the wall outside of their home or their business.

The priests built a section, everybody went to work, and they finished the work in 52 days. They hung the gates and they put the bars and the bolts in place. It says, and everything is good. And so after that's happened, you would think they would take a nice period of rest and just kind of say, there, we did it. Go home, get a shower.

Okay, they probably didn't have showers, but some type of bathing. 52 days, and half the time they were working and half the time they were standing guard. In other words, these men were exhausted. They didn't rest, they didn't even change their clothes. It said they needed that shower and some fresh laundry.

You know, they needed to get a home cooked meal as they go home and like, you know, maybe like, try to remind their wife what their husband looks like and all this stuff. And they all go back home and they're home after the wall was completed for a total of five days. Five days. And then they come back and this is where we pick up in Nehemiah chapter 8. They come back to, to Jerusalem.

Now, some of the men, okay, so I've talked with guys that do like trade services, plumbing, H vac, you know, pressure washing, whatever it is. And. And you say you drive past a house, you're like, I worked on that house. Landscaping. You're like, I used to do the yard there.

Oh, I mowed that one. Oh, I planted that tree. We're so proud of these little things. And our families couldn't care less. I mean, it's not that they don't respect the work we do.

They just like, okay, I know you work and you know, like, that's it. You know, air conditioning. Guys are like, oh, I did that air conditioner. Man, that attic was tight getting up in there. Or just stuff like that.

That's how we. We just remember these things. I've done yard work before in different states, in different places. And I'll pull in there, I'll be like, I've been here before. That house, that yard.

I did such and such. Like, I didn't remember it. I don't remember the customer, but I remember the work. I'm sure these men, as they brought their families to Jerusalem are like, I built part of this wall. I did that section right there.

These stones have my chisel marks on them from fitting them into place, and they're like, it's a wall. Okay, they're not impressed. That's just my feeling. I don't know. But anyway, they were properly impressed by the wall.

They're happy that it's there. They come to celebrate because it's the. It's the first day of the seventh month, and that month marks the start of the religious New year. I don't know if that was why they had this quick timeline to get it done in 52 days, or they were just trying to get it done before anybody could really come in and stop them. But this day is called Rosh Hashanah, and on Rosh Hashanah is the religious new year.

And so they're going to go there. And it's not that you get a clean slate, but you kind of get this, like, this newness, just like we have on the January 1st, where you say, okay, I didn't quite do the diet and workout plan like I was. I didn't quite save as much as I wanted to. But you know what? I get a start over this year.

Like, we kind of think of a clean slate on New Year's Day, say, this is a fresh start over. And so on Rosh Hashanah, they had that mentality. And they also gathered together in Jerusalem. Everybody traveled in, men, women, children, and they all show up and they're here to celebrate this. But also, they built a platform that was.

Well, I mean, we got a little platform here. But theirs is up high so that they could see the whole crowd that was assembled. And Ezra the scribe stands there along with 13 other men with him. And these men were probably priests, and they were there to both show solidarity and unity and also to probably take turns, because has anybody ever read straight through, like, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Oh, even silently, like, just kind of reading it silently, you're like, this is a lot.

Reading it out loud. After a while, you're like, okay, I need a break to, you know, just tap somebody in. You know, kind of the wrestling thing. Like, you're. You're in now, you know, And.

And so not that many wrestling. Matt, I know you're a wrestling fan, you know. Yeah, Jeff. All right. And so we.

We've got you guys here. So it's like, tap in. You're like, your turn, you know? And so they hop in, they start reading, and they get through who knows how much. And all of a sudden, after a while, the people start weeping and mourning.

Now, this is important, because what they're Doing is they're reading through the law. They're hearing the story of God, what He has done in creation, what he's done in creating his own people, the nation of Israel. Because, you know, he starts with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the twelve patriarchs. And he gets all the way down through this whole story. And they get to the part where God leads them out of Egypt.

They were slaves in Egypt for 4, 400 years. And God leads them out. Miraculously, he parts the waters on the sea. They pass through on dry ground. The Egyptians chase after them, realizing the mistake they thought they had made in letting their slaves go, and they chase after him.

And then God closes the waters in on the Egyptian army because he told Moses, he says, the Egyptians, you see today, you'll never see again. You won't have to worry about that. I'm going to take care of it. I'm going to take care of you. The Israelites pass through there.

They're safe and sound on the other side of the sea. The Egyptians aren't able to chase them down anymore. They go to, to. To the wilderness. And they're there for a little while.

And Moses received the law, the commandments, the Ten Commandments, and he receives that. And they bind themselves to a covenant with God, that He would be their God, and they will be his people, and they will observe his laws. But then it comes time to go and investigate the land that God's going to move them into, that he's promised to them. And they look at this land, and they send 12 spies throughout. And they get scared of what they see, even though they've seen mighty things behind them with the Red Sea and the deliverance from Egypt and all those things.

They stumble in their newfound faith in God, and they say, we can't do this. Those people are too strong for us. There's no way we can get into this land. And so they shrink back. 10 of those spies are faithless.

And they say, no, we can't do it. Two of them say, yes, we can. And that's Joshua and Caleb. And Joshua and Caleb say, we can do this. But their voices were drowned out by the majority.

Hear this. The majority isn't always correct. See, we live in a country where democracy rules. The majority voice rules. And yet that doesn't always make the majority voice correct.

Sometimes we as Christians stand there weeping in sorrow over what we see our fellow countrymen saying and doing. And the leaders that we have elected supposedly working on our behalf, although it seems like they're working more on the behalf of those who have funded their campaigns and promised to fund their reelection campaigns. It seems like those maybe are the ones that are really in control. But we look at this and we see that the majority voice doesn't always really get their say so. But the majority voice won out in this.

And they led the people astray into this faithless unbelief, in the power of God to bring them into the land he had promised them to do. You know, sometimes I think about this and I think about it in our own lives. You see, we get to where we're living. We're growing. Christ has called us to a place of holiness and righteousness.

And we're living in that, in our lives, you and me. And we're progressing in holiness. We're getting more and more of the life of Christ within us, His Holy Spirit filling us. And then there hits a point where I say, I can't do that. I can't reach the standard in that area of my life.

And we stop believing that God can fully bring us to the place of holiness and Christian perfection that he has said he wants to do. And we give up. It might be something we read in the scripture and we say, well, I can't quite do that. It might be something the Holy Spirit speaks to us and says, I don't want you to listen to those things anymore. I don't want you to watch those things.

I don't want you to have that certain type of relationship. I don't want you to do these things anymore. And you say, I don't know if I can do that. And like those 10 spies, we say, I don't think that it's possible to move into that promised land that God has called us into. You see, we think that God can only take us so far into the life of holiness.

Well, the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. It was only supposed to be for a few weeks or months at most. But God kept them in there for 40 years until the generation that didn't have faith in him in that way had passed on, died, was buried in the wilderness. And the generation that came up were the ones that moved into the promised land. As they moved into that land, God had given them his law.

It wasn't just the Ten Commandments. It was the rest of the covenant of the law. And that covenant was designed to be their life. It wasn't just the law that guided them, or, if you break this, you're a sinner. That's true, but it was supposed to be.

If you follow these things, they give you life. And the people missed out on that. They forgot that they chose willingly to seek other things and other gods and false gods and idols that they would craft with their own hands. And so as they are doing that, they're worshiping idols and they're being led astray, and they're not living according to the law that God had given them. And their life suffered for it.

Because they were breaking the covenant with God is called a sin. When you, when you don't live according to how God has called you to live, we call that sinning. And they were, they were living in sin and they refused to obey God. And so per the covenant of the law, there were terms for what would happen to them if they broke his law. These are the things that would happen.

And one of those things that happened was a neighboring nation would come in, fight against them, overtake them and lead them out into exile, remove them from the land and destroy their place of worship, and tear down the walls of the city. But the other part of it was that God is a gracious and merciful and forgiving God and that he wouldn't allow that situation to stay, but that he would restore them and rebuild their city. And the fulfillment of that part of the covenant has been seen throughout the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. But as they're reading the law, they're assembled here in Nehemiah, chapter 8. Nehemiah, or Ezra's up on the platform, he's got the 13 priests with him.

They're probably tagging in and out and, and, and they're, they're sharing, they're reading the law to them. And the people that are assembled, both men and women and probably some children too, running around. Isn't it great to have kids running around making noise? I know ours, you can't really hear them. They're upstairs.

I keep going to these churches sometimes that I visit and they have slides that come down from the kids room down to the bottom. And I think it would be so cool if we put a slide from the upstairs that came down into this room. I know a church that did that in Tennessee that's really cool. But I'd also be afraid the kids would try to escape just to use a slide during service. And we just all of a sudden have a kid like tumbling down into the sanctuary.

So we're probably not going to do it. It's a dream of mine. I don't know. Anyway, I always have wanted to put a slide in this church, so I just I don't know why. Anyway, so it'd be pretty cool.

You guys know you would do it. Most of you, some of you wouldn't. Anyway, you got to ask my mom sometime about her story, her testimony about the slide that she encountered and how God finally took a fear of hers away. You really got to hear the story. It's good stuff.

So they're up on the platform, they're sharing the story. The people realize that they have sinned, they've broken covenant with God and they start weeping over their sins. We don't do that enough, we don't take sin seriously enough in our lives and in this world. There's this war even within many so called Christian churches against even talking about sin. And I'm certainly not going to go here and I'm not going to like start pointing you out and saying, I know this thing and that thing.

That's not what I'm about. I'm not doing that. If you read the scripture and you've got sin in your life, you probably know it, don't you? Now the question is, are you going to allow Jesus Christ to be the Lord of your life and allow him to lead and guide you and you submit to him, or do you just want him to be your Savior but not your Lord and master? Well, the people, they recognize their sin and so they began weeping over their sin.

The question is, what should be done for our sin? What is it that we can do about this? The sin is a problem in our lives. And so they were focused on that and they were weeping over it. So Nehemiah, the Levites, the priests, Ezra, they begin to tell the people, hold on a second.

This is Rosh Hashanah. This day we're going to celebrate. See, Rosh Hashanah was one of the seven festivals that God had created for his people to follow and to observe. And on this day they said, you know what? We're going to call it a day.

We want you to leave, you're dismissed from the assembly, and we want you to celebrate. Eat some choice food, like top notch food, some really good quality stuff, drink some sweet drinks, you know, just have a good time, celebrate with one another. And if you find somebody that doesn't have some food like that or didn't bring any with them, because remember, a lot of these people have traveled from other cities and towns. Share with them, find somebody you don't know and share with them. They celebrated that meal together that evening and they gathered again together the next day, the second day of the month.

And that's where we're going to pick up in Nehemiah. 8, 13, 18. On the second day of the month, the family leaders met with Ezra the scribe, together with all the people, the priests, and the Levites to consider the words of the law they discovered written in the law that the Lord had commanded through Moses that the Israelites should live in temporary shelters during the festival of the seventh month, and that they should make a proclamation and disseminate this message in all their cities and in Jerusalem, go into the hill country and bring back olive branches and branches of wild olive trees, myrtle trees, date palms and other leafy trees to construct temporary shelters, as it is written. So the people went out and brought these things back and constructed temporary shelters for themselves, each on his roof and in his courtyard and in the courtyards of the Temple of God and in the plaza of the water gate and the plaza of the Ephraim Gate. So all the assembly which had returned from the exile constructed temporary shelters and lived in them.

The Israelites had not done so. From the days of Joshua, son of Nun, until that day, everyone experienced very great joy. Ezra read in the book of the Law of God, day by day, from the first day to the last, they observed the festival for seven days. And on the eighth day, they held an assembly as required. So they're celebrating this festival called Sukkot or the.

The Feast of Booths. They would build these temporary shelters that were. They weren't, like, real secure. They weren't really sheltered from the elements or any of that stuff. And in this season in Jerusalem, this is when.

Or in Israel itself, this is when the barley harvest has already happened, and it's before the rainy season has started. It's kind of like our month of April in Florida, where it's just really dry. It's warm and dry. And that was what they had. So you really didn't need the roof.

It's not like you were living in it. They would actually just kind of stay in it throughout the day and eat their meals there and have times of prayer and fellowship within these huts that they constructed. But they went out into the hillside in the neighboring country, wherever they could find trees, and they started trimming branches off of them and kind of building these little temporary shelters out of them. And that was how they would celebrate this feast for seven days. And then on the eighth day after it, it was a Sabbath day of rest that they would observe and celebrate in a worship service together.

And so as they're doing this, it was supposed to remind them that during those days in the wilderness, the Israelites had lived in temporary shelters. They'd lived in tents. It was supposed to be for a short amount of time. It ended up being 40 years, what they considered a whole generation. But they would stay.

It was supposed to be observed every year, but it says they hadn't even observed this festival since the days of Joshua, who is one of those two faithful spies who had gone into the land and said that God would give it over to their hands that long. It's been hundreds and hundreds of years that people haven't been celebrating this festival. So they celebrated it with great joy. They would focus on the idea that there's some temporary things about this life, that even though we live here and now, and God's helped them rebuild this city, there's some temporary things about that. Life itself is temporary.

We recognize that we all have a dash that we live in. And someday on our headstone there will be our birth date and our death date, and we live in that dash in between. But that dash indicates ever you go to a cemetery or you attend a funeral or something, you see that, and you see these headstones all around, and you recognize that dash represents life. And on earth, it's temporary. The nice thing is there's eternal life that Christ has offered us.

And if you've received him as your savior, you enter into that eternal life. But they recognized living in these booths that they were temporary booths. But it also means that things about this life are temporary. And the situations we find ourselves in in the kingdoms that rule over us, those things are all temporary. Kingdoms would rise and fall, in fact, for the next four and a half centuries, from the time of Nehemiah on, Israel would be, you know, kind of ruled over off and on by other.

Other kingdoms and other nations that had risen to power. One of the prophets, Daniel, had a dream one night. He had a vision that. That he saw these different. Like creatures, these different beasts and things rising out of the sea, and that each one represented a kingdom that would come and go.

Of course, you had already had Babylon, and they're in the middle of the media Persian kingdom. There would later be the. The empire of Greece and then of Rome. And all those nations at the times would seem quite fierce and quite powerful, but they would come and they would go. But the prophet also spoke that there was one who would rise that he calls the Son of Man.

That was Daniel's term to speak of the coming Messiah. And so the Jews, as they. As time would go on over the next four and A half centuries, they would know of the. This coming Son of Man, this coming Messiah. And they were looking forward to his arrival, to his coming.

And if it wasn't for the people in Ezra and Nehemiah's day, rebuilding the temple, rebuilding the city walls, starting to the worship of God in a proper way according to his commands, if it wasn't for them being faithful in their generations, then things wouldn't have been prepared four and a half centuries later for the Messiah to come in. But in fact, the people living in and near Jerusalem had this hope, alive and well at the time of Jesus Christ. You see, four and a half centuries after the faithful work of the people in Nehemiah's day, Jesus Christ had been doing his ministry for over three years. And he borrowed a donkey, some might say stolen. He just sent his disciples to go pick one up.

As if you're like, hey, guys, if you go over here two blocks and up the way, you're going to find a Buick. And the keys are up in the visor, you know, just snag that for me. I need a ride. That's kind of what he did, right? He just says, hey, guys, there's a donkey is just tied up.

Literally all you have to do is untie it and bring it to me. And if anybody says, hey, what are you doing? Just say, hey.

Okay. I mean, he says, hey, the master needs it, you know? And the guy's like, okay, you know, I guess you can have it then. And so they take the donkey and they lead it, they bring it to Jesus. They put their cloaks on.

He gets on. He's fulfilling a prophecy from another prophet from Zechariah. It's in chapter nine, verse nine, by the way. And he tells that. He tells Jerusalem.

He says, your. Your king is going to come to you riding on a donkey. The people knew this prophecy. They were looking forward to its eventual fulfillment. Every generation has the hope that maybe they are the generation in which this will happen.

And the people that were alive in the day of Jesus, there was already this. This idea that says, could he be the Messiah? In fact, there was a conversation that says all these things that he's done, all these miracles, all these things. If when the Messiah comes, would he do more signs than these? He must be the guy.

And so sure enough, Jesus comes riding towards Jerusalem on a donkey, and his disciples are there with him. And all the people that were in the area nearby, they start to pick up on what's happening and they start going and cutting down branches. Now, the Part of me, I would love for this to have happened around Sukkot just because the. The imagery would be cool, but it's not. It's not at that time.

But they still. They go out to the surrounding countryside and they begin cutting branches off of trees and they start bringing them in and paving this dirt path in front of Jesus. I don't think it made the ride any smoother. I don't think it made it any more pleasant, but have you ever walked on a road made out of palm branches? Nah, I tried it in here one year.

I was just kind of putting them out on the. Like, we lined the whole floor with them from some palm trees. We trimmed, and nobody knew where to walk. They were trying to walk around them. I'm like, no, you're supposed to walk on them.

Okay, never mind. I didn't do that again. You know, like, canes and walkers don't go over them very well. And so I was like, ah, okay, we're not doing that one again. You know, live and learn.

So anyway, Jesus goes on a road, you know, lined with palm branches. It might have looked like Florida after a hurricane, I'm not sure. But anyway, you know, just a road lined with branches. So he walked. He goes on this road and he goes into the Sheep Gate.

Who remembers Nehemiah, chapter 3. The priests had rebuilt the Sheep Gate. I had to look it up. I didn't remember. I knew somebody did.

The priests had rebuilt the Sheep Gate, the very gate that Jesus comes riding into town in to fulfill the prophecies that God's men had written down long ago. He comes riding into town through the gate that the priests had rebuilt. That was their section of the wall.

I wonder if those guys knew. As they're working, sleeves rolled up, robes tied tight around their waist, sword in one hand, trowel in the other, chiseling away at stones, fitting them into place, putting the beams in place to hang the gates on, strengthening them, doing all these things. They knew that one day, centuries later, the Messiah would come through the place where they had been working. I bet they didn't. I bet they didn't expect that the king doesn't ride through the same gate that the sacrificial animals are led into the city with.

But Jesus comes riding into town through the gate where sacrifices were brought in sacrificial lambs. Jesus being called the Lamb of God, he is the sacrificial lamb that died on behalf of your sins and mine and the sins that the people had wept over in Nehemiah's. Day, while Ezra was reading the law, Jesus would come once and for all to deal with that problem of sin. Jesus would come in himself, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. That's what John the Baptist had said of him.

When he sees Jesus walking as John is baptizing people, he says, look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Now Jesus is riding into the city through the sacrificial gate as the Lamb of God who's about to take away the sin of the world. I wonder about us. See, we do work. We do.

We, we. We serve Christ. We do different things. And I wonder if we have this idea that three, four, five centuries later, it might have an impact on people. Or do we look at what's going on right now with short viewpoint?

I mean, news changes every 24 hours. There's something else that you've got to worry about. The things of two weeks ago are a distant memory. We have such short attention, such short attention spans. And I wonder if we think too far into the future and say the things that we're doing today will have a big and significant impact, even an eternal one.

And because of that, I want us to focus this week on seeing the things that we do right now have an impact for generations to come. I wonder who you might invite to come on Good Friday with you or Easter Sunday morning. Who is it that just needs to hear, not so much, oh, here's your sin, here's what you've done wrong, but to hear the celebration that God has done something about that and to say, today is the day to enjoy what God has done. For, you see, we might not be cutting branches off of trees and waving them before him anymore, but we should be celebrating what Christ has done today on Palm Sunday. Today is a day of celebration.

Today is a day to enjoy what he is doing.