Let's turn in our Bibles to Nehemiah
chapter 2. Nehemiah chapter 2. Let's read verse 17. Then said
I unto them... This is Nehemiah speaking and
he's speaking to the children of Israel, the remnant. He said,
Then said I unto them, Ye see the distress that we are in,
and how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned
with fire. Come, let us build. Come, and let us build up the
wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more of reproach. I've titled this, Come, Let Us
Build. When I began preparing this message
a few weeks ago, two things were on my mind. I was wanting to
prepare a message for these new believers that we baptized yesterday. And I was wanting to prepare
a message that might be a good send-off, a good last message
for this conference. Don sometimes says in his message,
let me put it in shoe leather. And we like something we can
walk around in, something we can get a hold of, something
we can understand where we live. And so that was my goal. We come
to these conferences and we hear these wonderful messages of our
Redeemer and great things He's done for His people so freely
by God's grace. And we go home so full and so
ready and just thinking, I want to serve the Lord. And you hear
men speak here sometimes of serving the Lord. And you think, what
is it? What is that? What is it to serve
the Lord? What is it to serve the Lord?
Christ has left us in this earth for one specific purpose. It's to spread this Gospel of
our Redeemer throughout the world. That is the work. That is the
work. And everything else we do in
this life is to revolve around and be toward that end of spreading
the Gospel. Everything. It's through His
Gospel that our Lord Jesus is going to call out all of the
lost sheep of His pasture. And to go with the type of our
text, he's going to call out all his children and make them
living stones and build up his temple and build up the walls
of his city and build up his heavenly Jerusalem. The day in
which Nehemiah lived, this faithful man, it was like our day. The
Lord had already sent the Deliverer, and He had delivered Israel out
of Babylonian captivity, and the King had sent forth a proclamation
and said, the redemption is accomplished. He said, go to Jerusalem, and
began the work of building the Lord's house, of building the
Lord's city, rebuilding it, and so the people went. And it's
a picture, it's a type, brethren, of Christ who has come and redeemed
His people out of our spiritual bondage, and who has sent forth
the Gospel and called some of us already, and He has called
us into His heavenly city. Hebrews 12 said we have not come
unto the mountain that might be touched. We haven't come to
Mount Sinai. We have come to Mount Zion. Not
that one over there in the Middle East, but we have come to Mount
Zion, the true Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem. We have come
to the city of the living God. This is the church and kingdom
of God we've come to. And now the work is to build
the city. And you and I are just vessels.
We're just vessels. We're puppets of grace. Now a
man will say, I don't want to be a puppet. I feel sorry for
you because you're mighty weak, man. A puppet of grace can do
a lot more than a man who thinks he's free. We've been called
to spread forth this Gospel and God's going to call His people
out. Now there's where Nehemiah was. And Nehemiah got some news
that struck him in his heart. Look at Nehemiah 1 in verse 1. It says, It came to pass in the
month Chislu in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the
palace, that Hanani, one of my brethren, came, he and certain
men of Judah. And I asked them concerning the
Jews that had escaped, which were left of the captivity, and
concerning Jerusalem." He's asking about his brethren. And they
said unto me, the remnant that are left of the captivity there
in the province are in great affliction and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem also is
broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire. And it
came to pass when I heard these words that I sat down and wept
and mourned certain days and fasted and prayed before the
God of heaven." Why did Nehemiah become so sorrowful when he heard
this news that his brethren were afflicted and bearing reproach
from the world and that the city was broken down, walls and the
gates? Why? Why did he get so sorrowful? He was a faithful man. He was
a man, as Brother Don read this morning, who was constrained
by the love of his Redeemer for him. We thus judge. If one died for all, then we're
all dead. Right then when He died, we died
in Him. Died to the Law. Our body of
sins died, and the Law died to us. So that they which live by
His grace, by His Spirit, should not henceforth live unto themselves,
but unto Him that died for us and rose again. That's what it
was that made Him sorrowful. I want to show you Five things,
and I'll be very brief on them. I know you're tired. I want to
show you five things that it is that a man will be constrained
by God's grace to serve God, by the love of Christ to serve
God. Five things. First of all, he'll
be constrained to confess his sin and pray for his brethren
and ask God's grace. Look at this. Now, Nehemiah heard
his brethren were reproached. And the world around them, they
were saying things like this. This is over in Nehemiah 4. Let
me just give it to you. They were saying, what do these
people choose? Will they fortify themselves?
Will they sacrifice? Will they make an end in a day?
Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of the rubbish which
are burned? They won't, but God will. We
won't, but God will. But that's how they were mocking
them. They were reproaching them. The Lord and His people are so
one. The Lord Jesus said, I have given
them the glory which thou hast given me that they may be one
even as we are one. That's one, brethren. That's
one. So that whenever reproach comes
upon one of His children, it comes upon our God, our Savior. When Hezekiah's day, when the
king of Syria was popping off and talking big to Hezekiah,
the Lord said this, He said, Who hast thou reproached and
blasphemed? And against whom hast thou exalted
thy voice and lifted up thy eyes on high? Even against the Holy
One of Israel. But they were talking to Hezekiah
and to the children of Israel. So Nehemiah knew this reproach
that was coming to the children of Israel was reproach against
his God, against our God. and it struck him right in his
heart. This is somebody speaking evil of God. Don't you hate to
hear somebody take his name in vain and reproach your God and
mock your God? Well, I'll tell you what made
it worse for Nehemiah. Nehemiah knew his God was being
reproached and his brethren were being afflicted while he was
in the palace at Shushan with a pretty nice job being the cupbearer
for a heathen king. and living in ease. And he got
that news and God used that news and broke his heart. Have you
ever had something like that happen? God will take our circumstances
we're in and He'll show what we're doing and show us that
we're putting way too much affection and too much attention on our
worldly occupations, or He'll show us that that we've become
separated from the Lord's work and our affections and our heart,
if not in our body and our attention and our showing up, that we've
become distracted from the Lord and from the Lord's people. And
that natural man never considers those things. He just goes through
life doing his thing and trying to get more and more and more.
But God works this in the heart of His child, and when He does,
He makes us to think of Christ our Lord. Jesus was with God
in His palace. He was in glory. He was in ease. He was there in glory. But when
He saw the affliction of His people, and He saw what His people
were bearing, because we fell in Adam, and we were ruined in
Adam, He came from glory and came down to where we are. He
came into this broken down, cursed world that we live in, and He
lived for His people. And He bled for His people. And
He died for His people. And He redeemed His people. And
now He's ascended. And He's sitting there on His
throne right now, ever living to make intercession for us.
Is there anything, let me ask you, anything at all too great
to give up for Him? Anything? Brethren, the reason
this was such a great heartache to Nehemiah was he felt it was
his sin that was the reason for this reproach. He felt like it
was his neglect of his Redeemer that brought this affliction
on his brethren and this reproach on his God. When God's given
us a new heart, that's how we'll feel about anytime anything said
about our brethren or anything said about the place where we
worship or the God we serve. That's how we'll feel. That it's
our fault. It's my fault. Young people,
let me tell you something. I wish somebody had told me this
when I was young. And the sad thing is they probably did. Always remember the Lord might
use you one day. So live in the present like he
might use you in the future. Don't ever do anything today
that might bring reproach on His name tomorrow because of
something you've done. Do nothing to bring reproach.
Live today expecting to be used tomorrow. They were constrained
by the love of God. He was constrained by the love
of God. And so he began to pray. And he said this. He prayed to
God who keeps mercy and covenant. And he said, You love those and
you keep mercy and covenant for those that observe your commandments.
But He said, both I and my brethren have sinned against you. We haven't
kept your commandments. Now brethren, we're not under
a law of works. We're under the everlasting covenant
of grace. God comes and gives us a new
heart and when He makes a covenant in the heart with His child,
it's not, I'm going to do this if you do that. It's, I've done
it all. And He makes you to know that it's done. It's finished.
The work is accomplished. But He does, as it says in the
end of the verse there, He does gather them from thence and bring
them to the place that He's chosen to set His name there. That's
where He brings His people. That's where He brings them.
But when He turned there and He confessed His sin, the Scripture
says, If we confess our sin, He's faithful and just to forgive
us our sin. We have an advocate with the
Father. And look at this, while He prayed, look at this, look
at verse 11. This is Nehemiah's words. But you remember the Scripture
that says, while they're praying, I'll answer them while they're
praying. Just hear this as Christ interceding for us, brethren.
Look at verse 11. Now these are thy servants and
thy people, whom thou hast redeemed by thy great power and by thy
strong hand. Oh Lord, I, your mediator, your
son, I beseech thee, Father, let now thine ear be attentive
to the prayer of thy servant, to the prayer of thy servants
who desire to fear thy name. And prosper, I pray thee, thy
servant this day, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.
God hears Christ. He hears him. He hears him when
he makes intercession for his people. Nehemiah went into the
king and he asked, he asked favor. He said, I need favor with this
king. And he, Artaxerxes, and he went
in there and he asked, he needed some letters so he could go down
to Judah and go through all the other provinces and make it to
Judah. And he needed a letter that said that there would be
another king that would make the provision for everything
they needed to build the walls and the gates. And when he went
in there and made this request to Artaxerxes, Artaxerxes says,
I'll not only give you that, I'll give you my horsemen out
of my army and an armed guard escort to take you all the way
down there. And Nehemiah said in Nehemiah
2 verse 8, he said, The king granted me according to the good
hand of my God upon me. That's why he did it. Because
of God, that's why he did it. Turn to Christ and confess your
sin. Turn to Christ. We hadn't kept
God's law. We hadn't honored God. We've
been too busy in all our occupations and all our grand scheming and
all our pursuits. We hadn't served God. And beg
God for grace. Beg Him for favor. Don't you
want to serve God? Ask Him to make you a servant.
And I tell you what He'll do. God will provide everything you
need. He'll provide everything you need if you really want to
serve Him. He'll provide everything you need. Now, look here, here's
the second thing. The love of Christ to constrain
a believer to join himself with his brethren in the work of furthering
the gospel. But Nehemiah 2, 11, he says,
So I came to Jerusalem. He left that palace. That ease,
that luxury. And he went down there to that
broken down city. He went down there where his
brethren were. And what do you think he preached to them when
he got down there? What do you think he told them when he got
there? Look at verse, Nehemiah 2, 17. I said unto them, You
see the distress that we're in, how Jerusalem lies waste, and
the gates are burned with fire. Come, let us build up the wall
of Jerusalem, that we be no more of reproach. What's the message
that's going to constrain them in their heart to do that? Then
I told them of the hand of my God which was good upon them."
The gospel, that's what's going to do it. Do you see the distress
we're in? He walked around that city for
three days and looked it over. That city is a picture of the
church of God. He walked around and looked at
that city for three days. If you walk around and look at
the visible church, the church you can see, it looks like Jerusalem
looked in that day. Men have compromised the gospel.
Men have compromised the gospel. And it looks, they think they've
built it up by doing that. But it's not built up by doing
that. And men come into what they call worship these days
and treat it just as common as dirt. Just common as dirt. In the attitude, in reverence,
in word, in song, in dress, in everything. I'm thankful there's
a church within the church though. There is an elect people within
the people. This weekend, we've been hearing
this gospel preached, and I've been just delighted. I've just
been thinking about the simplicity of Christ, and hearing what He's
done for us, and it's filled my heart with joy, great joy.
Doesn't it make you want to serve Him? Doesn't it make you want
to go home, and what can I do to serve God? We're going to
go back to our local churches. We're going to visit a little
while, and we're going to go back to our local churches. We're
going to go refreshed and revived. You know how we should go back
there? We ought to go back there not just like we believe the
doctrine that our God is sovereign, but that we believe our God is
sovereign. That He's able to do what we've
heard men declare He's able to do. That He can do what we've
heard. You just think what He's done.
Just think what He's done. Come, let us build the wall of
Jerusalem that we be no more of reproach." That's the message
he used. The hand of my God was upon me. Let me tell you about the hand
of my God on me. The Lord God chose me before
the foundation of the world. I didn't do anything. I didn't
have any... Just get this. There's no difference
in any sinner whatsoever. We're sinners. We're ruined.
There's nothing good about us. Everybody that's going to be
saved will be saved by grace alone, by God's grace alone.
And not only did he choose me, he sent his only begotten son,
his only begotten son. And he came into this world and
he poured out his life for me. And when He did that, brethren,
He gave the law holiness of nature, which is my sanctification. He
gave the law righteousness in deed, which is my righteousness.
And He gave the law the suffering of justification, which is all
my justification from the law. I don't owe the law of God anything. Christ gave it everything it
demanded. And now I'm complete in Him.
And then he came, or then he took his hand upon me all the
days I walked this world and didn't know it. And he fed me
and clothed me and gave me breath to breathe and he protected me
and he kept me all the nights I was running the roads and could
have just as easily been wrapped around a pine tree somewhere
down in South Arkansas. And he kept me. Because He don't
save by accident, He saves on purpose. And He had the time
appointed when He was going to cross my path with the gospel.
And He put His hand on a preacher, and He brought the gospel to
me. And then He put His hand in me, and He made me new. And
gave me a new spirit that I didn't have. Just like Adam sinned in
the garden, and before God I was a sinner then. But I had to have
a being before Sin could be imputed in the court of my conscience.
I had to be born of Adam's seed. I had to be made a partaker of
Adam's nature. Christ died for me, and I made
me righteous before God, but I had to be born of His seed.
I had to be made partaker of His nature so God, when He, when
He, when He, imputed righteousness to me in a court of my conscience.
It was a just charge because that's what God had made me by
what Christ did for me and in me. It was done. And you know what brethren? All
that happened when I didn't know anything. I was blind. I didn't
know a thing. I didn't put my hand to it. I didn't scheme.
I didn't plan. I didn't worry. I didn't say
now let's just be careful in this thing how we're going to
go about it. And so that tells me, brethren, He says this, He
that spared not His only Son, but delivered Him up for us all,
how shall He not with Him freely give us all things? That means
you and I don't have to put our hand to it. We don't have to
say, now let's stop and figure and re-figure and plan and see
how exactly we need to go about this. Just believe God and preach
the Gospel. decide they're going to do something
else in the world. They're going to get them another job. They're
going to take a promotion. They're going to do this or that.
And they'll plan and be careful and, you know, and all this.
And you should. You should do that. If you're
changing something in this world because of you and the better
you and the better your name, you ought to be very careful.
The Solomon said this. He said this, that as a bird
that wandereth from her nest, so is a man that wandereth from
his place. But when it comes to God and
serving God, if your heart is constrained by the love of Christ,
then that's the only motive making you want to serve Him. That's
the only motive. It's the love of Christ for you. Do it with everything you've
got. Don't look back. Don't doubt.
Don't second guess it. Just do it with everything you've
got and trust God will provide. A man came into Spurgeon's office
one time Spurgeon was sitting there and he was talking to him
about how he was spending on this ministry and that ministry
and kind of scolding his pastor a little bit. And he said, don't
you worry we're going to ever run out of money. And Spurgeon
said, I don't ever worry about that. God put me in this ministry
against my will. He said he's done everything
for me up to this point, why would I doubt that he's going
to continue to do everything for me? And somebody knocked
at the door right then. It was a mail carrier and I don't
even know how much it was in English dollars, but it was a
big sum of money that somebody gave for one of the ministries.
And that man said, Brother Spurgeon, let's pray and ask God for forgiveness. Here's the third thing. The love
of Christ constrains us to take every burden off our brethren
so they can join us in this call. And these are the ways we serve
the Lord. Do you want to know how to serve Him? This is the
way. We confess our sin. We pray for our brethren. We
ask for His grace. We join with our brethren. We
forsake whatever it is come between us and the gospel and our brethren
and we join with them in the Word. And number three, we do
anything we can do to take every burden off our brethren so they
can be committed to this work too. At this time, there was
a dearth of famine in Jerusalem. And the rich nobles and the rich
rulers, they were taking, they were giving loans to the poor
brethren, their kinsmen in Jerusalem. and charging them a huge interest
to pay back. And so the poor folks couldn't
pay back the interest, and their lands were gone. They had nothing.
So they were having to give their sons, their daughters, as servants
to work the debt off, selling them into bondage. And the rulers
were even willing to give their sons and daughters to the heathen
kings, the heathen people, to sell them into bondage. And this
was the cry, Nehemiah 5, in verse 5. Yet now our flesh is as the
flesh of our brethren, Nehemiah 5, 5. Our flesh is as our brethren,
our children as their children. This is family, they're saying.
And lo, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to
be servants, and some of our daughters are brought under bondage
already. Neither is it in our power to
redeem them, for other men have our lands and our vineyards. This was after they came back
from being in bondage in Babylon. Any man who claims to rejoice
in the redemption of our Lord Jesus Christ and is willing to
bring his brother into bondage in any way, spiritual, temporal,
with the law of God or the law of the land or any other way,
he denies the redemption that he claims to rejoice in. This
was our case, brethren. We had a debt we couldn't pay.
We couldn't pay our debt. And it was to God. The God we
owed. The God we could not... We owed
righteousness. We owed justice. We owed... We
couldn't pay Him. We owed holiness. And He sent
His own Son. And His own Son came and with
His life paid every debt His people owe. So that in the ledger
book it says He's blotted out. He just blotted out our transgressions. They're gone. They're not even
there anymore. They're gone. And so Nehemiah,
when he heard this, you know what he did? His heart was broken. His heart was broken. He said
this to him, down in verse 8, Nehemiah 5, verse 9. He said, I said, it's not good
that you do. Ought you not to walk in the
fear of our God because of the reproach of the heathen, our
enemies? You know what men say? You know what the world says
when they come into a church, and that church is having to
use church covenants to get their people to come to church, and
they're having to use the law to get them to act right, and
they're having to go out and check up on them like they're
the FBI, you know, and keep an eye on them. You know what people
say about that? You know what the reproach is
about that? Their God can't do it. So they have to do it. Our God
can do it. Just preach the gospel and watch.
Just preach the gospel and watch. Look at verse 10. My brethren
and my servants might exact of them money and corn, Nehemiah
said, but he didn't. He said, I pray you let off this
usury. Restore, I pray you, to them,
even this day, their lands and their vineyards. Where did he
get that from? He said, also the hundredth part
of the money and of the corn and of the wine and the oil.
Brethren, our God did not... Christ didn't only save us from
our sins, He restored that which He took not away. He gave us
above and beyond what we lost in Adam. He gave us eternal redemption. He gave us everlasting righteousness. He gave us eternal life so that
we can never be separated from God, ever. Every precept of the
gospel is so we can help keep the burden off our brethren.
People look at the precepts in the New Testament, you know,
and they get all bent out of shape. They're not for you to
draw attention to yourself and for folks to look at you or me. You know what they're there for?
Every one of them has this intention to get to get your attention
off of me and my attention off of you and your burden off of
you and my burden off of me so we can all have our focus on
Christ. That's the purpose of it. And so what you can do is
look for every opportunity you can to take the burden off your
brother, to take a burden off your brother or sister. It doesn't
matter what it is. If it'll help them, just do it.
It'll be one more way, one less thing they got to do where they
can, at the end of the day, maybe they read a verse of Scripture
they wouldn't have been able to read otherwise. Whatever.
Whatever it is. You think, this is too little,
this won't do anything. Just do it anyway. Do it anyway. That's the law of Christ. It's
called the law of love. Faith that works by the constraint
of Christ's love. Here's the next thing. Love will
make a believer deny himself for the cause of Christ. Nehemiah
was made the governor. I can see why. He would be a
good governor. And he was made the governor. And it says in
Nehemiah 5.14, he said there at the end, I and my brethren
have not eaten the bread of the governor. He said, but the former
governors that had been before me were chargeable unto the people
and had taken of them bread and wine beside forty shekels of
silver. Yea, even their servants bear
rule over the people. But so did not I, because of
the fear of God. He didn't want to put any burden
on his brethren. He reverenced God so in his heart
that he didn't want to put any undue burden on his brethren
so that they could give themselves to this work of building the
Lord's house, of spreading the gospel. And so he didn't take
that which was lawfully his. Christ is our governor. Christ
is the one on whose government the whole government of heaven
and earth rests on his shoulder. Christ didn't lay down His life
because law made Him. He didn't come to here and be
made of a woman made under the law because some law demanded
it. He entered into an everlasting
covenant with our God, our Father, willingly. And He came here willingly. And He came here because love
constrained Him to come here. And He laid down His life because
He would honor His Father and save His people from our sins.
He did it to glorify God and to save His people. You look
to that cross and you look at his blood and you think, if he
exacted from us what we owe to him for what he's done for us
as our governor, how in the world could we ever pay anything that
matched precious blood? Look to His throne and look how
He's governed your life and my life and what He's done for us
in the churches He's established, the things He's done in this
world. How could we ever give to Him if He exacted of us as
the governor? There's a constraint for a believer
that's far greater than law and just morality. It's faith and
love. It's the strongest constraint
there is. Because here's what it does.
It doesn't say, this is lawful for me, so I'm going to take
it. It says, what's going to glorify God and be the best for
my brethren? Paul said it's lawful for me,
but that don't mean it's expedient for me. Just because it's lawful
don't mean it's the best thing. That's how a believer That's
the law we're under. Here's the next thing. Constraint
in love makes a believer reject the offers of this world. This
is the last point. Worldly men tried to make Nehemiah
an offer to better him four different times. Four different times they
came to him trying to make him an offer. And this is what he
said, Nehemiah 6, verse 3. And I sent messengers The MI6 verse 3. He says, I sent
messengers unto them saying, I'm doing a great work so that
I cannot come down. Why should the work cease while
I leave it and come down to you? That was his answer to them.
What if tomorrow you got a big promotion, big offer, big job
offer, but they're going to say, but now you're going to have
to be doing it seven days a week. No, no exception. Or they, you
know, you got a big offer, but you got to move now. You got
to move out here in the middle of nowhere, not a gospel church
out there. But now you're going to have
this title, and you're going to have, we're going to give
you this company card, we're going to give you this house,
give you all these things. What you going to do? What God's
grace constrains us to do. Because if He takes His hand
off of us, I know what we're going to do. The Lord's work is a great work,
and there's no greater work. Whatever it is that would take
us away from being able to meet with God's people and hear the
gospel preached, whatever it is, I don't care how great it
is, it's a demotion, it's not a promotion. You remember when
the story of the Spaniards that came here, and when they came
here, they came with beads. And they got here, and the Indians
here had gold. And they traded those Indians
gold for beads. You trade anything for this gospel
right here and you're trading gold for beads. Gold for beads. I don't care what it is, what
it is. And the fifth time those men came to him, they did to
him what they had in their heart those first four times they came.
They came the fifth time and they threatened him. They threatened
him. They were going to make up a
big story and shut this whole operation down. You know, if
he had taken any one of those first offers, so that he's trying
to serve God on one hand and mammon on the other hand, and
he's working his fingers to the bone, and he's between the two,
and at night he's just so worn out he can't do nothing. When
they came to him making those threats, you know what he'd have
done? I'm just too weak. I can't. Just shut it down. Let's stop it. It's not worth
it. But because he was walking with God, because he was looking
to God to strengthen him, because God was the one constraining
his heart and keeping him and holding him, when they came back,
you know what he said? He told them, y'all made all
this up. He said, it's just a big bunch of lies. And he turned
and said, now therefore, O God, strengthen my hands. That's what
you'll be able to tell folks. But if you depart from the Gospel,
the world don't take it all at one time, they just take a little
bit. And you get a little weaker. And a little bit more, and you
get a little weaker. Remember that Bob in early 2000? Bob was running in a political
office, and the more higher he went, the weaker he got. And
in our lives, me and him, every time that he's weak, the Lord's
been gracious to make me strong. When I've been weak, He's been
gracious to make him strong, so that we could turn each other
the way we needed to be turned. But that's how it always works.
The more higher you go, the little higher you go, the weaker you
get spiritually. And the lower you go spiritually, the lower
you go spiritually, the stronger you get. When that light comes
on in the room, at first it's so dim and you just see the furniture
sort of turned upside down in the room. And you know the room's
a wreck. You can't see what damage has
been done, really. You just know it's a wreck. Ain't
no living in this house. And that's how it is when God
turns the light on. We see ourselves. And the more
Christ turns that light on, you see Him some more, then you start
seeing, man, there's a lot of cobwebs in this room too. And
you start seeing, I need to trust Him more because I sure can't
trust this house. And He turns that light on a
little bit more and you start seeing, you know, ladies, after
you clean the room and the sun's shining in through the window,
you see all that little stuff floating in the air. You start
seeing, man, this place is dirty from the ceiling to the floor.
And the more light you get, the more dependent you get on Him,
because you're living in a condemned, run-down shack that can't be
trusted. And that's growing in grace.
That's growing in grace. Alright, I want to just give
you one last thing. I'm done. Those that honor Christ
got honors. In all this work right here that
they did, When Nehemiah determined he said he's going to join the
Lord's people, God gave him above and beyond what he asked for.
He gave him an armed delivery down there to Judah. If you're
not in a faithful local church, you do your dead level best to
get in there. Just get in one. The Lord teaches
His people in connection with the gospel by being in a local
church. He does that. You've got to hold
the stones in the wall. You've got to sweat with God's
people. You've got to be in there having this one over here that
gets on your nerves and this one over here that's good and
helps you. You've got to have all that to learn patience and
long-suffering and grace and to learn what God's done to us.
You need all that. You need every bit of it. An
orphan can read all they want to about a family, but they don't
know anything about it until that father wraps their arms
around them when they're bawling their eyes out. Then you know
a family. And Nehemiah spoke of God's grace,
and he prayed to God for strength for his brethren, and God gave
them a mind to work. That's how they were made to
work, through this gospel. Where are you going to learn
that? Where are you going to learn
how to do like Nehemiah did? The seminary. You've got to go
to seminary to learn it. Seminary at the Valley of Drought
Bones. That's where you've got to go. He said, preach Christ. Pray for the Holy Spirit to bless
it and wait. Preach Christ. Pray for God to
bless it and wait. Preach, pray, wait. What have
you been doing for seven years, Clay? Preaching, praying, and
waiting. Preaching, praying, and waiting. That's it. And the
more God blessed the work, the more God discouraged the enemy.
It said this in Nehemiah 6.16, it came to pass that when all
our enemies heard thereof, all the heathen that were about us
saw these things, they were much cast down in their own eyes,
for they perceived that this work was wrought of our God.
And that made them afraid. They started out jawing, talking
big, and the more God did the work, the more they hushed. And
most important, look at Nehemiah 8, 17. The more they gave themselves
to the Lord, the more the Lord gave them worship, true worship. Look at this. At the end of verse
17, it says, They hadn't worshipped like this since the days of Joshua
the son of Nun, until that day had not the children of Israel
done so. And there was very great gladness.
They hadn't worshipped God like that since Joshua. And here's
the last thing. The Lord finished the work. They
built the wall. And not only that, look at Nehemiah
12, 43. That day they offered great sacrifices
and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy.
The wives also and the children rejoiced, so that the joy of
Jerusalem was heard even afar off. God even made sure the enemies
heard it. He made sure they heard it. I
pray God will give us an understanding, brethren, everything we do, Everything
we do about our personal lives, about the way we use our substance,
our appearance, where we worship, our attitude, our conduct, our
timeliness, our dress, anything, everything, is either going to
say to this world, this is of God, or it's going to give them
a reason to reproach God. One or the other. One or the
other. Honor the Lord by believing Him, following Him, giving your
heart to Him, serving His people, depending upon Him, and He honors
those that honor His Son. Scriptures say He does it. And
one day real soon, one day real soon, our Redeemer's going to
put the last living stone in the wall. And when He does, that
wall's going to be complete, that city's going to be complete,
that temple's going to be complete, and everything there's going
to be the product of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's going to be
perfect righteousness. Perfect righteousness. And He's going to bring that
stone crying, grace, grace unto it. And we're going to shout
with joy and our enemies are going to hear it afar off, afar
off. You imagine this, just imagine,
we fix it all, I have to go home. Just imagine one long eternal
conference where we don't have to go home. That's right. Thank you. Thank you for this
church. Thank you for everything you've done and Lord willing,
we look forward to seeing you next year.